Merging duplicates moves an item to trash

aurimas

Merging duplicates seems to result in one item being chosen to remain in the library and the rest to be moved to trash. I guess this is how the feature works under the hood, but it's a bit odd to have items appear in the Trash after merging them together.

I also don't recall this happening before, so perhaps this is a recent regression.

dstillman

Pretty sure it's always worked that way. It's awkward, since the child items would have been moved to the other items, but the alternative is complete lack of undo, which seems worse.

aurimas

Worth noting though that the undo functionality here is not complete, since the item that is being kept is irreversibly modified.

Also, I wonder, if the item that was moved to trash is restored, would that cause any issues with item IDs? I believe after merge, Zotero stores an owl:sameAs relationship that equates the kept item to discarded one. What happens, for example with citations in Word, if the discarded item remains in the library?

dstillman

Worth noting though that the undo functionality here is not complete, since the item that is being kept is irreversibly modified.

Sure, but the deleted items are at least kept unchanged (not counting moved child items). Maybe someday we'll have real undo, but I don't see a strong reason not to do the best we can in the meantime.

Also, I wonder, if the item that was moved to trash is restored, would that cause any issues with item IDs? I believe after merge, Zotero stores an owl:sameAs relationship that equates the kept item to discarded one.

dc:isReplacedBy, not owl:sameAs. It's removed if the item is restored from the trash. (See 'deletedItemPredicate' in item.js.)