Duplicates
A now closed discussion on duplicate detection in version 3.0b1 (http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/19230/30b1-duplicate-detection/) elicited the response that it was not possible to confirm detected items as non-duplicates. Is there any advance on this? It really is necessary, in my view. Zotero mistakes far too many items as duplicates - different editions of the same work, separate volumes of the same series, separate reviews of the same book, subsequent publications by the same author with similar or identical titles to earlier works, and so on. The work-around proposed in the earlier thread was to suspend duplicate detection for offending items. This is unattractive as an option, and I'm not sure it's available anyway. Essentially, whenever there is an algorithm that checks criteria to make a prediction there is the possibility of the prediction being wrong and there needs to be the option to correct it, surely?
I don't think I quite understand why that's such a big problem though? So there are a bunch of items in the duplicates folder that shouldn't be.
How many wrong positives are we talking here? If it's 10-20, I don't see how that makes the feature useless. If it's 100-200 the problem is mainly that the algorithm still performs poorly.
I'm sure the algorithm will be improved. But no algorithm will ever be sensitive enough to detect duplicates absolutely unerringly in all the many different areas of academic and professional publication that Zotero gets used for. Not would I expect unerring accuracy. But I would like to be able to put it right in relation to individual errors. It is irksome and messy that the programme thinks there are unresolved duplication issues in my material when there aren't, just as it is when a word processing programme wrongly thinks I've made a spelling error - but in the latter case I can add my spelling to its lexicon.
Thanks,
Tom
I had an idea that I could devise a workaround using "Advanced Search", e.g. tagging the "false positives" and then searching in Duplicates only for those items whose tag did not match that tag. But I notice that "Duplicates" isn't listed as a Collection, although Saved Searches are a type on which you can specify a query. Maybe somebody else is more knowledgeable or inventive with Advanced Search?
Alan.
When one imports 100% duplicates to existing entries, do these duplicates go to straight to trash or does one need to "weed" them out manually?
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Seeing that the last active post is 2012, and not so explicit in terms of its relevance to Zotero 4.0+, I decided to open a new thread:
https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/32538/duplicate-detection-for-zotero-40-/
But on this point, does one have to do one by one?
Some suggested sets to merge seem to be quite unrelated, how do I indicate not a duplicate?
And any batch methods?
Initially, I had mistakenly assumed the duplicates are 2nd and extra copies of what's in my library - so I trashed the whole lot out. But now it seems I need to go through it one by one.
Would be nice if there is one folder for 100% duplicates which can be safely deleted.
1 - when a citation (Podichetty ....) appears again in the text, it acquires a new reference number(10) and not the one (4) asit appears first in the text. How to proceed? Thanx a million!
Yes, I am inserting the second reference fom the "Cited" section.
And now?