Please Require Proof or Knowledge of Decease for a Person Born within the past 110 years.
Some contributors mark a person born within the past 110 years as deceased, but they offer no proof or personal knowledge of the decease of that person. I have contacted FS two or three times recently because my sibling and some cousins were marked deceased, yet they are alive. This can be disconcerting to these people. It also exposes the personal information of a living person. It makes me hesitant to send my relatives who are not connected with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to the FamilySearch site. I feel that this carelessness on the part of some contributors could be controlled by requiring proof or personal knowledge to indicate a person born within the past 110 years is deceased.
Comments
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@ Sharon Seiter
Hi Sharon,
Your concern about contributors being able to mark people as deceased in FamilySearch without sources is very valid. I like your idea about somehow having to require a source before marking people as deceased is a great one. In a Help Center article it clearly states that one must have proof of death in order to mark someone as having died. https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/article/how-does-family-tree-determine-whether-a-person-is-living-or-deceased Having said that, not everyone follows the suggestions given.
There is another article that explains how to change a deceased person to living. https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/article/how-do-i-change-the-status-from-deceased-to-living-in-family-tree If you need to correct your relatives.
Also, for now, you may want to message the person that made the Latest Changes to those individuals and kindly explain to them that they need a source before marking someone as dead. Also maybe assure them that you know that the individuals are "very much alive". Hope this helps and that FamilySearch can remedy this. Thanks for bringing it to the attention of the FamilySearch for all of us.
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There have been a number of reports of late from Family Tree users, upon finding their "very much alive" close relatives as being labelled "Deceased". I'm sure this is a difficult area for FamilySearch to address, but feel the organisation will soon need to take further action in an attempt to safeguard details of the living.
The argument is that the onus is on the contributor of the record to ensure this status is recorded correctly. However, I feel FamilySearch does have some responsibility to make extra efforts here (as Sharon suggests), as this issue appears to be causing a good deal of upset among the relatives concerned - let alone the actual living persons (who are being shown as deceased).
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