Marking Living People Deceased
Moderation Note: Partially restored the original post, redacted sensitive information. Very informative thread, thank you to those who responded to this.
" Someone" contacted FamilySearch and complained that I had entered people in our shared tree and listed them as DECEASED, when they were still living. I did so, not knowing that it was against the rules. FamilySearch sent an email stating that my account has been disabled, as a result. I sent 2 replies to that email, over the past 2 days, asking if my account can be reinstated, but FamilySearch won't respond. I called them, this evening, and they told me that over 600 people per day are entered as DECEASED but accounts are rarely disabled. My purpose in using the DECEASED feature was due to the fact that the individual is not visible to others and can only be updated by the person who enters the individual in the tree, if marked LIVING. Very disappointed by FamilySearch's response to my situation. They could have sent a warning or at least responded to my emails. I only recently started adding records to this tree but have contributed to their indexing services. Has anyone else experienced this kind of discrimination and how did you handle it?
Answers
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Deliberately marking people as deceased when you know they're living is not only against FamilySearch's policies, but also a breach of those people's privacy, which is a topic that FS takes -- and must take -- very seriously. That said, permanently disabling your account without at least a warning does seem like an unwarranted overreaction. Unfortunately, I have no idea how to remedy the situation.
The only even remotely similar case that I know about is someone who typed a cuss word in a required reason statement -- and then promptly deleted the reason statement, as per usual, which is why s/he entered the cuss word in the first place: s/he knew it wouldn't be there longer than a few seconds. Unfortunately, The Powers That Be did not take that into consideration, and locked the person's account for a week. (Lesson learned: avoid certain four-letter combinations at all costs. God help you if your relatives had a name that's a variant spelling of the German word for "fox".)
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I never thought I'd wish for GetSatisfaction's uneditable posts....
The question was from someone who got reported for marking a bunch of people deceased because they were invisible to others otherwise. (I.e., he/she apparently completely misunderstood the purpose and structure of Family Tree.) FS's response was reportedly to disable this person's account, without any warning or recourse.
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At least your answer was thorough enough that it was very clear what the original post must have been.
It's encouraging to hear that FamilySearch does keep an eye on what is going on in Family Tree and there are times when they will take action against users. When that reaction is or is not warranted and how they should go about it, I'll leave for others to discuss.
However, regarding your comment about the other person who had an account locked, that "s/he knew it wouldn't be there longer than a few seconds," that isn't really the case. Reason statements, like almost everything else, are permanently stored in the Change Log:
This is the case for those required reason statement when merging, also.
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What happens with FamilySearch accounts should probably be kept between the account holder and FamilySearch administration, and perhaps should not be aired in the Community. Often things in the Community have been removed to protect the privacy of others, and we never want to post comments that could be embarrassing to ourselves or others.
If and when accounts are blocked at FamilySearch, every effort is made by our Administrators to work with guests to help them learn how to comply with the Terms of Use they agreed to when they created their accounts. Sadly, many individuals are so excited about getting started that they don't read those Terms when they register, and they don't review them later even though they appear at the bottom of most FamilySearch pages.
With that being said, thank you @Julia Szent-Györgyi and @Gordon Collett for reminding others that Family Tree has a change log which allows us to review everything that has been done with a record in Family Tree. This section cannot be edited by users and does maintain any statements or comments that were added in the details fields of our ancestors. Because there is a specific standard of conduct we are asked to use as we work in Family Tree, it would perhaps be a good idea to occasionally review the Terms of Use so that we do stay within the agreement we made when we registered.
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