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If any of my relatives who are Tanners start a FamilySearch User Tree and enter Joshua Tanner as an ancestor, Joshua Tanner will have his own distinct ID number.
The FamilySearch ID numbers are an essential part of avoiding duplicate entries in the family tree. For example, if you are adding a source, the source linker may indicate that the record is already attached to that person. This indicates that there is a duplicate entry. The only real way to tell the difference between the duplicate and the original is to compare the ID numbers and look at the information entered for the individual.
Duplicate entries on the FamilySearch Family Tree are endemic. An untold number of hours have been consumed by eliminating duplicates from the FamilySearch Family Tree. The process of resolving duplicate entries is an ongoing background to almost every entry.
The reality of the international genealogical community is that anyone starting a new family tree on any online website will more than likely be doing duplicate research. For example, when I am doing research on my Ancestry family tree, any new entry that I make will almost always come up with a match to some other user who has already entered that information into their own tree. If any of my grandchildren or great-grandchildren were to work on the FamilySearch.org website, they would immediately find that their ancestral files were complete back at least six generations. Of course, this is limited to the direct lines going to me and my wife. Many times, people who are new to the FamilySearch Family Tree are surprised to find so much of their ancestral information already available. If this new person is beginning a family tree on other websites, they may not be aware that FamilySearch already has a substantial amount of information about their family.
Given the state of technology, there should be a way for individuals working on their own private or unconnected family trees to immediately see that they are entering information already on a variety of family trees. This should be particularly the case with individuals uploading GEDCOM files to the FamilySearch User Trees. As soon as the GEDCOM file is uploaded, there should be some way to notify the new user that the names they have uploaded from another program are already on the FamilySearch Family Tree. Otherwise, there is a significant possibility that the FamilySearch User Trees will end up increasing the number of duplicates on the FamilySearch Family Tree. The generation of a new ID number for people who already exist on the FamilySearch Family Tree will add to the confusion and duplicates.
