A conflict on the geometries or the shape attribute of a feature class will arise any time the shape has changed on the same feature in the two different versions being reconciled.
At 9.2 and earlier ArcGIS releases, if there was a conflict on the shape field only one representation could be chosen. We didn’t really think this made sense because there were many cases where the geometry changes occurred in different parts of the shape, why couldn’t these changes be merged together? At 9.3 they now can with new functionality added by the geodatabase team for merging conflicting geometries during a reconcile operation.
This conflict occurs at the field level and is associated specifically with the Shape attribute. The option to merge geometries is available when there is a conflict concerning the Shape field. If two editors both edit the geometry of the same feature but do not edit the same area of that feature, they now have the option to resolve the conflict by merging geometries and accepting both edits.
The option to merge geometries is only available on the Shape field shortcut menu.
Once the geometries are merged, the end result is a feature that contains the edits made by both editors:
If the edits made by one editor share a region that was also edited by another editor, their edited areas will overlap. Although the option to merge geometries may be available, trying to do so will fail.