I've noticed recently on one site that I look after that a small number of records appear to have 'lost' their membership record. The site in question has organisational memberships and individuals have membership by dint pf their relationship. What I've seen is that while the individuals involved continue to show their membership, the related org record is showing no membership record. Invariably there is an org record in the trash which has the membership record associated with it. So I've got a little digging to do to understand why the org record with the membership is getting deleted, while a duplicate with no membership remains.
Odd behaviour with merging records may be part of the issue: if I recover the deleted record I then have two 'duplicate' records, one with a membership and one without. If I merge the record with the membership into the other one, and ensure that the checkbox is ticked to move the memberships, I end up with a single record with no membership. If I flip the two records and then merge, I end up with one record with a membership, which is what I want. Why, when I have explicitly ticked to move the membership record, is it not getting moved? This strikes me as highly dangerous behaviour - at the very least I would expect to see a large red alert to warn me that I was about to delete a record with a membership record that isn't being transferred to the merge result. Unless it's a bug?
I note that there is also an additional checkbox when merging, to "add a new membership". Do I need to check this as well in order for the membership to be moved, even though I'm not adding a new membership but moving an existing one?