Problem with living relatives
I have encountered an issue where one of my cousins is listed as deceased, however there is no date of death given. I have not had contact with my cousin in years so I don't know if she is living or not. I can't find a date of death, so she very well may be living still. But someone has entered her as "deceased"...no date. I see this as a problem because this happened to my own profile also and I am living. Someone entered that I was deceased and I'm very much alive. I tried messaging the person who changed it and they didn't answer, so I had to contact Family Search to get it changed. The problem with people just putting "deceased" and no date, it makes that person's profile public. If you are living you may not want your profile to be viewed in detail. If you are listed as "living" I was told that your profile is private. I suggest that a death date field must be mandatory for entry, otherwise that profile must be listed as living...until a date of death can be verified with a source, and enter the source.
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You are correct in saying that, if you are alive, only you can see your profile. Of course that does not prevent someone else creating a duplicate record of you (assuming they know your vital details) and marking that person as deceased.
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Perhaps then this Idea needs to include that if creating a new/duplicate profile - a living person match is found (in the background) - it will prevent that duplicate from being created? Maybe generate a message "You cannot create a Deceased profile for a Living Person." Or, I would assume the FamilySearch duplicate finder should be able to group Living profile duplicates and then prevent any from being marked Deceased until someone enters a valid Death record reference? I receive Record Hints for Living profiles - why not duplicate hints?
How many doppelgangers of me are there in Family Tree?
Hmm, maybe that's an Idea ... allow me to see the duplicate Living profiles of me only and merge the content from others - then delete those profiles. Yeah I realize that invades others Private Living Space - but I am me so .. it's my Private Living Space. Then when I die - if I've done a good job there will only be one of me.
I realize this has some thorny issues ... endless looping ...
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@genthusiast, no, that'll never work, because the computer can't necessarily tell people apart, especially when profiles are incomplete -- and I don't know about you, but my private-space profiles are highly, highly incomplete. On purpose.
As for the original poster's idea of requiring a death date in order to mark someone as deceased, that'll never work, either: there are quite literally millions of profiles in the Tree for which no dates are entered, and for many of them, no dates are known. What would you like FS to do with those? And, like the dratted required reason statement when entering a profile via Source Linker, a required date would do absolutely no good. I fill that required field with an exclamation mark, and if it now wanted a date, I'd make one up and preface it with "about". (I would be equally unhappy about both requirements.)
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