What if I don't trust my own gedcom?

+6 votes
112 views
Funny question....I am working through my GEDCOMpare, and I have found a few people in my own gedcom that I think may not be accurately connected  and are not well documented. However, there are suggested matches on WikiTree for them. I can't confirm or deny, so I don't want to reject or match anything...but if I don't, then (I think?) I can never finish the compare and get to the "add" stage.

Is it best to just reject all matches, then sort it out later? Or...??
in WikiTree Help by Marci Abraham G2G6 Mach 1 (11.5k points)

1 Answer

+4 votes
If you are unsure then I would neither reject the match nor add it as a new person. Can you ignore that person? I haven't used the new GEDCOM process so I don't know. If you ignore it you can go back and research the profiles in more detail.
by Rosemary Jones G2G6 Pilot (263k points)
You don't have to use the data from your Gedcompare if you don't like the data in the Gedcom. I suggest that you mark the Gedcom records as "completed" (meaning you don't intend to do anything with it) and reject the suggested matches.

(I've done the same thing with some Gedcom records.)
Hi Ellen. You come to my rescue quite often :) So are you saying that Rosemary's suggestion to "ignore" can be accomplished by checking the box? I think I'm finally beginning to understand how this works...!
With the new GEDCOMpare 2.0 system, we process each record in our Gedcoms individually, so when you find that a particular record has bad data (or adds nothing to the existing profile in WikiTree) you should not import the data. The checkbox records your decision to ignore that particular record (i.e., to not import the data).

For background, under the old system, after suggested matches were reviewed, Gedcom records that weren't marked for exclusion were imported in a single batch job. Under that system, you had to mark a record in order to prevent it from being imported. With the new system, it's no longer necessary to tell a computer how records should be processed. Instead, the "completed" checkbox helps us humans keep track of what we've decided and what we've already done. With this new system, however, you cannot avoid making decisions on suggested matches by marking the record as one to be ignored; you have to choose either "match" or "reject" for every suggested match. If you discover later (after processing other records in your Gedcom) that your decision on a particular profile was wrong (maybe you marked a match and you now realize it's a different person), you can go back and change it.

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