How to Remove Relationships
eangeli - Fri, 09/26/2014 - 09:05
Forums:
I just added my dissertation chair to my profile. Instead of it showing that he mentored me, it shows that I mentored him. How do I remove this information? And then how do I input this relationship? I followed the directions under "Ancestors," but it didn't come out the way I expected.
Thanks for your help.
non-admins can edit, but not delete
Dear eangeli,
The short answer is: you can create a new relation in the correct direction, and you can edit the false relation to say "delete me," but you can't directly delete it yourself; an admin will have to do it for you.
This set of permissions is our compromise between opening access to participants and protecting the site from malicious users. Because we want anyone to be able to share their knowledge, even if they're not currently affiliated with a university, we have to ensure that no one can go through and systematically destroy all the information that's been shared.
The longer answer:
The key to building a new relationship in the correct direction is to see that the first three fields in the "Add Relationship" box form a sentence with the relation type as a transitive verb. So, for example, "RJS mentored EA" is the same relationship as "EA was mentored by RJS," but a separate relationship from "EA mentored RJS."
The way the "Add Relationship" box is currently set up, the first person mentioned in the sentence -- the grammatical subject of the verb, whether it's passive or active -- is always the person whose page you're viewing when you first build the relationship. (That's why you can't change that first part, and why the only "endpoint" the system asks for is "endpoint 2": the object of the verb.) After the relation is created, you can view it from either end, and the verb will reverse appropriately. We're looking into ways to redesign the interface to make this process more intuitive.
To edit a relationship, you have to first navigate to the relationship's own page, and open the "Edit" tab. To get to the relationship's page, go to either "endpoint" -- i.e. you or your advisor -- and find the relation in the list. It will have two parts: the name of the other person, and some details such as the subtype of the relationship. In this case, the details would say "as a dissertation chair." Click on those details to open the relationship page. Once again, though, you can't simply reverse the endpoints here, because the database doesn't understand that to be the same relationship.
Finally, we as admins will need to delete the false information. We do sweep the site periodically for "delete me" notices, but we'll fix the problem much more quickly if you can email admin@writingstudiestree.org with a link to the offending relation page, and we'd be happy to delete it. Thanks for posting to the forum, and thanks for helping us to improve the site!
Ben