Is it OK to alert members about possible guest/family member active duplicate profiles?

Question

Over the last few months I've spent a lot of time scanning lists of profiles by last name for possible merges and matches.

In the course of this I've found many active members' profiles that have very obvious duplicates - whether this is because they were Guest Members and then forgot about their account and then created a new one, or for whatever reason.

As the Propose Merge function does not work for active accounts, is it OK to leave an appropriately worded message on the page asking if XYZ-123 is also their profile, and requesting that they contact someone in admin to deactivate one of the accounts?

Apologies if this has been asked elsewhere - I did seach, but didn't find anything that seemed to address the issue.

Answer 1

I have done so more than a few times. Sent PMs to the manager and/or left a message on the page.

I think it is very appropriate, that is the best way to get the attention of the PM.

My personal experience is (anecdotal only) that the PMs who appear to have duplicate profiles, and seem to only drop in randomly ,do not answer my requests.

After a reasonable period waiting you can email info@wikitree with the details of the duplicates and it will be taken care of.

Comments

Thank you. What might be considered "a reasonable period waiting"?

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I think 30 days is the waiting period for a default approval on a merge.  So, I think thatʻs reasonable.

If the PM has been away for more than a year (no contributions or activity), I would go for two weeks. I dont know what the rules say.

Answer 2

As a supplementary question -

What happens to the profiles for which the deactivated account is PM? Are they automatically migrated to the PM's active account?

Answer 3

I would welcome that. Using myself as an example, my daughter started building her own tree, so I expect there are duplicates because of that.

Comments

Hi Keith,

It's possible you may have misunderstood the original question, which was about duplicate Profile Manager accounts for the same PM.

Some people join Wikitree as a Guest Member or a Family Member, then forget their log-in details or lose interest and go away for some time and may forget that they already have an account. Or maybe can't work out how to convert their account to full membership. Or maybe there is a glitch in the system that sometimes keeps the old accounts. Could be any of these things.

Anyway, these people have two accounts with identical Profile Manager names - and one of these accounts needs to be deactivated (Wikitree policy - one member, one account).

Because these profiles are "active" they cannot be resolved by the usual method of proposing a merge. Duplicate profiles in another profile manager's account, and duplicate profiles managed by you can be resolved through the Merge process.

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I would imagine that the profiles would be merged, not one deactivated.