How do I handle potential double entries (profiles) when others won't respond to my queries?

Question

I love the concept of "one tree" as presented here. However, I'm having tremendous difficulty in getting responses from anyone I've contacted so as to avoid creating a new profile for one that already exists. I've come across several existing profiles of my ancestors via transferring a GEDcom file of my tree here. Though I've contacted owners of existing profiles, not one of them has responded. How do we deal with this? It certainly defeats the purpose of "one tree" when others aren't participating so multiple profiles aren't created. I'm disheartened.

Answer 1

If these are Open profiles, you could edit them. But your question implies that they aren't Open.

The standard protocol here is to submit a Trusted List request to get editing access to a profile. There's a link for the purpose on the profile, under the heading "Collaboration." If you don't get a response to your Trusted List request, see https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Unresponsive_Profile_Managers for information on the next steps to take.

To learn more about the role of a profile manager (note: they are not profile owners) in relation to collaboration in WikiTree, see https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Profile_Manager

Comments

PS - You will need Trusted List access to connect members of your family to non-Open profiles for their first-degree relatives.

But it's worthwhile to note that we should not use GEDCOMpare to make other edits to existing profiles unless we find that there is good information in our GEDCOMpare that supplements the existing profile.

Answer 2

That is a problem....it sounds like you have mergeable profiles, which you can always propose a merge for. There is a time limit, I think 30 days, beyond which the merge can be completed in some cases....it says something about no response and kicking in the default approval, but try it on 1 or more and see.

Comments

If one of the profiles is not open, the 30 day time limit does not matter. It won't default to allowing the merge. Even if they are both approved and one of them is not open, if they haven't been merged, only a PM of the privacy protected profile can complete the merge.  I have a number of profiles that are matches and the PM's are not active. The profiles are Privacy protected and they are not going through to allow a merge.

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I have have run into the case of a merge involving a private profile with an unresponsive profile manager. What you can do is to send the duplicate profile numbers to info@wikitree.com and ask them to look at merging them. If they are dups, the 2 profiles will get merged.

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If one profile is not open, you can also send a note to info @wikitree.com, asking for their assist in merging them.  Default approval will still happen if one is locked, but no one can do the merge other than Trusted list or admin.