Use different language in merge request errors
Description
Complexity
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- 25 Jun 2021, 03:40 PM
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Activity
Heather LemberMarch 31, 2025 at 2:30 PM
I also tested this and have been unable to reproduce the error message.
Michelle PaquetteMarch 28, 2025 at 6:04 PMEdited
Tested and could not reproduce this error message.
Christine Di BellaAugust 26, 2024 at 1:43 PM
From a search across the code, it looks like the “victim” terminology is common across all of the different types of merges, even though it may surface only rarely in error messages that a user sees. It will take some additional work and carefulness to ensure that the functionality continues to work as expected when the language is changed.
Christine Di BellaAugust 23, 2024 at 12:32 PMEdited
My suggested language for the different components of the merge is:
merge candidate - a record being selected to merge into another record
merge destination - the record that other records will be merged into
(only if there’s a need to distinguish between the end result and the merge destination) merge result - the record that is the combination of all the records in the merge
So this error message (cleaned up to be more human understandable) would instead read “at least one merge candidate is required”
Angela WhiteMarch 8, 2022 at 3:03 PM
Dev-Pri looked at this ticket during our March meeting and are recommending something slightly different to solve the problem--instead of changing the code (“victim” appears in numerous places), we’re passing this ticket for a better, more informative error message that does not say “victim.”
Details
Assignee
Thimios DimopulosThimios DimopulosReporter
Valerie AddonizioValerie AddonizioSprint
Priority
MinorHarvest Time Tracking
Open Harvest Time Tracking
Details
Details
Assignee
Reporter
Sprint
Priority
Minor
This is a ticket being submitted on behalf of a hosted Atlas Customer. The customer wrote:
"A couple of weeks ago, I was merging records in ArchivesSpace and I got the attached error message. I believe what happened was that I didn’t quite click the record to be merged, so it tried to do an empty merge and gave me an error. I tried again and was able to merge the records. The reason I’m writing to support, however, is that this phrasing, while it makes sense technically since the merged record is sacrificed as it is merged, it was very startling to see the term “victims” in an error message. I’m not sure if it is possible to change this language, but if so, I would hope you will consider finding a less traumatic term for this particular error scenario. Thank you for considering."
In additional discussion, tentative suggestions for changing the word victim were target/object, “absorbed” or “transferred”.
A screenshot of the resulting error message (v2.8.1) is included.