Removing Wrong Information
Back in April a user marked my uncle as deceased showing no sources. He is most certainly still alive. I noticed this gross error on Oct 14th 2021. I edited it remove the "deceased" marking. I just checked today, Nov. 6th and it's still marked incorrectly. I tried messaging the lady who made the error and received no reply. Why is it that this system allows someone to incorrectly mark my relative as deceased without any reason and then even after I report it I see nothing has been done. This is really disappointing.
Best Answers
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When living people are listed as deceased, it means their profile can be viewed by anyone. This is a serious privacy violation, and FS is at risk of huge financial penalties under legislation such as the GDPR in the European Union. And of course it can be upsetting if someone finds themselves listed as deceased. And while I'm not a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, I understand that if a living non-LDS person was accidently given ordinances, that would open up a big can of worms. So I would have thought that FS would take this issue much more seriously.
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"I know I shouldn't take this personally but honestly it really bothers me that someone would post such an incorrect thing about one of my close relatives. I don't understand why the Family Tree system allows someone to do that without proper sources. In genealogy we are taught to carefully document facts with traceable sources. In this case clearly that is not being adhered to."
Speaking as a fellow user, I can understand your concerns when people make changes like this to your data. FamilySearch urges all users to properly research and document sources for vital records, especially before making changes. Unfortunately, there is no computer system or algorithm which can discriminate that a source is valid when changes to vital statistics are made. In my experience, many times such changes are made in error, by assuming that someone is "likely" deceased, instead of doing valid research and confirming death dates.
In the interests of promoting collaboration and shared discovery, the FS Family Tree remains relatively open. Most users have good experiences, but there will always be a couple of users who don't observe good practices. I have located your request to change the record to living and actioned it.
Best wishes for your future research success.
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That's really, really strange: in my experience, dead-to-living requests take a day or two at most.
The best I can think of is to suggest you try again?
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Since you did not provide the ID number that is marked as deceased in Family Tree for your living Uncle, I could not review the information there or even check on the status of the ticket that the system automatically creates when you try to change deceased to living.
When you filled out the information to make the change, did you enter the reason in both the field on the existing page and in the additional popup before hitting submit? Did you get the ticket number as the system created your case in April?
If you did not get a case number, it is possible that the system did not create the case. Julia's suggestion about trying to create the case again is probably helpful since the system is designed to create a ticket or case that goes directly to the team that makes this change. They are currently backed up a bit, but a case created in April should have been resolved long ago.
I will be moving this case to the Family Tree category since it is an issue that appears in Family Tree. This will allow the discussion to be available for others who may have had a similar experience.
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ID number is GZQ7-J28. I just submitted it again. And, CDBurk, you messaged me that I should have been given a ticket number. Well, I can assure you that I was not given a ticket number---I was watching carefully this time and the system did not provide one. I watched carefully and never saw a ticket number pop up either time. As you can see, it shows that "Child Changed" was submitted by me on Oct 14th but it's clear that no action was taken from me posting this request as he is still marked as "Deceased" as of Nov 7th.
I know I shouldn't take this personally but honestly it really bothers me that someone would post such an incorrect thing about one of my close relatives. I don't understand why the Family Tree system allows someone to do that without proper sources. In genealogy we are taught to carefully document facts with traceable sources. In this case clearly that is not being adhered to.
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Thank you
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There is a weakness in the system, whereby if an ID is created for an individual born at any time ( even recently) no warning flag appears if the "Deceased" option is checked. An exception appears to be when adding individuals to a family (say from a census record) in the source linker process.
There should at least be a warning in the Family Tree program when one tries to add a "deceased" individual of less than 110 years old, without inputting a date of death. It would then be more difficult to accuse FamilySearch of not respecting the privacy of the living.
(I have created an "Idea" to this effect.)
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I went to the xxx in Family Tree this morning, November 8th, and I cannot see that record.
Next, we signed into the system as your helper, and this is the banner that verifies the xxx is no longer available for others to find in Family Tree.
We agree with your most recent comments which indicated that you did not get a "successful" message or a ticket number when you made your most recent attempt to change this record from deceased to living. We assumed you would be provided with an acknowledgement that your ticket has been created since the system used to provide a case number for you. My apology if that no longer happens with the current process. Apparently your concern has been taken care of since I could not find this ID number, and you should no longer have access to this record. Our knowledge article does explain that the person who created the record should still see it in their own Private Spaces once it is marked as living.
It is unfortunate that some users try to circumvent the way the Family Tree software is designed to work. If they aren't sure whether someone is living or deceased, they do sometimes mark records as "deceased" in an effort to generate more sources and possible find a death record, however, this is not in keeping with our Terms of Use which all users agree to abide by. In those terms, we promise not to enter incorrect information, and if we don't know someone is deceased and they were born in the last 110-years, we always want to assume they are living until we find death records for them as described in the following knowledge article.
Thank you for sharing your concern, which seems to be resolved.
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