Show generic living offspring?
I note on Ancestry.com I can see living offspring with a "private" flag. Presumably if Ancestry is doing this then they have figured out all the privacy issues and it could be done here too?
I do not see that capability on Family Search. I have been trying to check if any of my deceased distant relatives (third cousins once returned) have living offspring. I understand that I won't be able to see details, but right now I don't even know if the family line terminated there or not.
There might also be a case where a grandparent or even a great-grandparent outlives their child. Wouldn't this make it impossible to see the younger part of the tree with the deceased person unless somebody set that deceased person and any others connected to them as an unconnected person? I do know of a case where the parents are still alive but a son is deceased. I could set up a lineage that only I could see but frankly I consider this a waste of time. Situation: "Yes, this dead grandparent who you can see had a daughter who is still living so you can't see her, but she had a son who is deceased and here's his details that everybody can see. He has 3 living siblings but that's all we can show you about them."
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It depends on whether you consider the existence of a person to be private data or not. Ancestry mostly doesn't, FamilySearch does.
I don't know how to solve the skipped-generations problem if the existence of the living person is to remain private information.
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I guess that "existence" is where the two sites differ. Ancestry tells you they exist but no information, FS tells you nothing unless you are the one who entered the information.
If all living people were given an entry but simply labeled "private" then it would only very minimally put personal information at risk. I would know that Bill and Maud, who are both dead, had a child <private> married to <private>, who had a son John who is deceased. I could then enter information for John and have it be visible, but it wouldn't be generally announcing the private information of the parents. If Bill was my grandfather's brother and I saw three <private>s next to John then I'd know I had a couple of cousins and male offspring would likely have the grandfather's last name. I don't know that that is revealing all that much to the world in general.
I also see cases - and myself do this - where if you don't know about somebody then unless they are 130 years old you play it safe and mark them as living even if they are 98 years old. As such I pretty much toss my hands up at doing any kind of filling out of information for anybody after about 1940.
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