Machine indexing of obituaries marks living persons deceased

dontiknowyou

Bad indexing of obituaries is causing the creation of many public profiles of living persons. Here is one of many, many examples.

In this case the actual obituary is available as an image. But there is no sidebar Feedback button to report the error. Months ago I asked the contributor to correct the first living profile but they did nothing and now someone else has created more profiles.

https://www.familysearch.org/search/linker?pal=/ark:/61903/1:1:QVSM-2L24&id=L1HL-G47

Paul W

A moderator should escalate this case immediately, as having this kind of material on the website could be potentially damaging to FamilySearch's stated position concerning confidentiality for the living.

If these individuals are being created in Family Tree as deceased persons, FamilySearch has to take responsibility for the incorrect status being assigned to them. As a first step to putting things right, it would seem necessary to take this collection down immediately. It is totally wrong for individuals who are possibly still alive to be marked as "deceased".

There also needs to be a thorough examination of any other collection (however it has been indexed) - to minimise the possibility of more and more living persons being inadvertently brought into Family Tree with a deceased status, due to similar errors.

The image at https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QSQ-G9JH-2C9K?i=6035&cc=2367299&personaUrl=%2Fark%3A%2F61903%2F1%3A1%3AQVSM-2L24 appears to relate to an event of 1996 and the details suggest a number of the individuals listed are probably still very much alive, but shown by the FamilySearch source as deceased.

Paul W

My argument relates to the fact that they are marked as "Deceased" before a user carries the record across to Family Tree (as illustrated in the screenshot above). If I carry across a record from, say, a 20th century census collection, I have to apply the living/deceased status myself, as individuals from these sources are not marked "Deceased" by default. In these obituary sources individuals are already shown as "Deceased", so FamilySearch does bear some of the responsibility in this matter, if it transpires they are still alive.

Okay, their ages might not be shown here (as they probably would be in census records), but the example in question was from a 1996 obit - so it should not be the default to mark all individuals as deceased here.

dontiknowyou

Living/Dead status for relatives is not currently added in obituaries

As the screenshot shows, in the Source Linker all the living relatives and officiants are marked Deceased. Here it is again, marked up.

Paul W

@dontiknowyou

Yes, I think some people are probably misunderstanding the issue (here and made in your other post).