Discover Two Ways OneGreatFamily Helps Your Family Tree Grow
OneGreatFamily's service is designed to help people extend their family trees as they discover how they are related to others. This discovery often takes place as new relationships are discovered through matching and merging. This matching and merging takes place through two processes: 1. Automatic matching and merging performed by OneGreatFamily, and 2. Manual matching and merging performed by members.
Automated Matching and Merging
Every individual entered into OneGreatFamily is automatically comprehensively compared to every other individual in our database. This comparison goes beyond names, dates and places to include relationships, including parents, siblings, children, spouses, etc. If two compared individuals are identified as being the same person by our patented technology then the two records are merged together.
Merging is the process in which two separate and distinct individual records are combined into one. In OneGreatFamily merging never results in the loss of data. Instead, any differences are maintained within the single combined record, and those differences are marked as Conflicts. You will retain the value you had prior to the merge, and any other values will be kept, marked as conflicts. If, for example, an ancestor of mine who I have with a birth date of July 15, 1853 was matched and merged with someone else who had a birth date of July 19, 1853, both values would be maintained. When I look at the ancestor, I will see the birth date of July 15, 1853. However, it will be marked with a Conflict, and if you look at the Conflict you will see the date of July 19, 1853.
Merged records are marked with an exclamation mark in the Starfield ( ). When two records are found to be similar, but not similar enough to be considered a sure match, a Hint is created. A Hint is displayed as a light bulb in the Starfield and signifies a possible duplicate ( ).
A list of merged records and hints is sent out in our periodic email, known as GenMail.
Matching and Merging Performed by Members
Individuals within OneGreatFamily that are similar, but who aren't identified as being the same person by our patented technology are often marked as Hints. These Hints, which are indicated by light bulbs in Genealogy Browser, should be carefully reviewed and, if appropriate, accepted. Often a Hint occurs because, even though all the information present is identical, there simply aren’t enough pieces of information for our system to consider them a match. This frequently happens with wives, where perhaps there is only a name, a husband and children, but no parents, siblings, birth and death information, etc.
Accepting a hint will merge the two records in question and provide the same opportunities for collaboration as an automated merge. Accepting relationship conflicts often results in the merging of families in OneGreatFamily as well.
With any merge, you will likely discover new individuals who are also working on your family tree. Working with others from around the world will help you verify and expand your family tree over time.
Any merge can also result in the addition of new information to your family tree. Individuals who are added to your family tree will appear in gray boxes. New information that is added may result in new hints and conflicts as well.
OneGreatFamily is pleased to be helping millions of people research and expand their family trees as they become part of OneGreatFamily. With between one and three million names being added to OneGreatFamily each month, you are sure to find new information for your family tree and meet others who are researching your family lines.
The automatic matching and merging process is only available to OneGreatFamily subscribers. Become a subscriber today and watch your family tree grow over night.
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