Reply

Thanks everyone for your input, both here and direct via email. Very helpful.

There are two main challenges with coding “sanity checks”:

1. Ensuring they run efficiently
2. Avoiding an unreasonable number of “false positives”

One suggestion was to include date and place checks in deciding if an event is a duplicate or not (two on the same date in the same place = duplicates; otherwise not). This is an idea, but one that breaks rule 1, especially on medium to large trees, of course depending on server resources.

Rule 2 I decided, as you have all pointed out, eliminates combining burial and cremation. Even in my own data I found too many cases where burial (of ashes) followed a cremation.

But, on balance, and given Jamie’s valid point about “adult baptism”, there is a case for treating BAPM and CHR as duplicates. This doesn’t mean it is never valid though. That is the point of “sanity checks”. They highlight possible errors, not definite ones. All results need checking carefully.

So in the next release there will be duplicate checks available for “Baptism or christening”; Burial”; and “Cremation”.

Nigel
My personal kiwitrees site is www.our-families.info

1 user thanked author for this post.

jacoline