Mixing problem around Thomas Hunt

Harald, I'm not familiar with this profile. a quick view let me understand that a mixup can occur to similar names wit similar father/son
I suggest to add the birth year to the person's first name so it won't merge them automatically or suggest new wrong merges

No Yaacov no! That's abuse of database fields!!!

Use the SUFFIX field to help disambiguate between generations with similar names ...

Images help also, particularly unique ones that are associated with care and thought of our ancestors. It takes work to find a good association; but it also shows which profile manager cares.

Also? Sourced profiles with documents attached show in "merge view." So the more a profile is appropriately "sourced out," the better the merges will be.

I am not a close relative of Thomas Hunt - I show him as 8th cousin something. Hopefully a curator or manager with more familiarity on the line will be along.

Erica,
please look at the mentioned profile, see how many John Hunt are around him, I'm sure the abuse is better than wrong merge.
Think about the situation that a new or non responsible user will start suggesting cross-generation merging.

Please avoid putting dates in the first, middle, and last name fields. The display name field is much better for this purpose as they don't interfere with searches and tree matches. It's as effective without the unwanted side effects.

(Further, placing dates in the display field, rather than in the first/middle/last name fields saves me the effort to go around changing them when I run across them later.)

Ben - I agree,
It's better than my first suggestion and help avoiding wrong merges

Erica - if the merging panel that shown from the tree will show birth year as well as the name - all this suggestion will not be needed

Yaacov

In the Anglo American tree we have long since determined that we will follow the field names as labeled. Your suggestion, while perhaps helpful in other parts of the tree - I can't speak to that - is contrary to what us very hard working curators have determined as "best practice."

So the suggestion in fact ends up with much more work for me as a curator. If no other Anglo American steps up on the Hunt family, I would. Don't give me extra work, please!

Many thanks.

Yaacov, the merging panel shows the birth year. If there isn't room for it, you can get it to show by hovering over the profile.

The problem here (which is all too common) is that there are lots of profiles with no date of birth.... I have often (ab)used the "suffix" field to put disambiguating notes in it.

Not to mention curators can make curator notes. I do it all the time with "mini genealogies" (we're limited in how many characters we can include on a note).

Erica - since I never heard of the Hunt family, I never thought of changing someone's profiles there
I saw an interesting discussion, I thought I had a tip for cleaning up the mess someone made.
If my tip is bad - It's OK to throw it away
Harald - 10x for the info about hovering

I'm glad you chimed in and found it interesting. It was a chance to clarify how and why I do the things I do.

Erica Howton - I never thougt nor said that your work is not important
:-)
As a database manager(for many years) I understand clearly the importance of DB maintenance. That why we need more DB tools for maintaining the data integrity

It's been 9 years since this discussion was started and the tree is still messy. I came into this tree at the fourth generation, adding and citing as I went.
https://www.geni.com/documents/view?doc_id=6000000128643126187&...
I kept finding duplicates and tried to merge them, left notes with the managers and, today, tried to start where I finished off yesterday and couldn't find MY Martha Sprague (Hunt). Okay, okay, don't get mad. Go further back to a profile known to be mine and go from there. I went back to Amelia Lee (Hunt) created by me, pulled up her tree and started climbing. I got to Martha and found a new profile by Garald "Jerry" Norton. Of course none of my information was there. I gave that up and started following my great grandfathers back and found at Joseph Hunt 1672-1764, the parents were different than what my source said and the discrepancies were numerous in the overview. I googled Geni great granddads back till I found a match and that was here.
The book I've been sourcing & citing from is:
Ancestors and descendants of Samuel Hunt of Pauling, Dutchess County and Cambridge, Washington County, New York Written by Jerome D. Traver Published Oct. 2005 https://www.familysearch.org/library/books/records/item/595894-ance...
Since my last few days of work have been attached to the wrong tree, my question (one of many) is, "What now?" Start over working my way from this known profile? Cringing just a bit. /-)

Private User Post profile links so they can be merged into MPs.

Only the ones I've cited past Joseph, yes? There's a whole bunch of them. I hate to add this to your workload. I could table this for a bit and work on the homework you gave me. I was just all excited about finding a new citeable source. LMK