Ways should be explored to reduce the number of living persons being shown as Deceased in FT
I don't think it should be beyond the capabilities of the programmers to devise a piece of coding that can considerably reduce the number of living persons that are being found as "Deceased" in the open area of Family Tree.
If a birth date that is less than 110 years ago is entered under Birth in the Vitals section, I feel the default status could be made to show as Living, rather than Deceased, if there is no death date inputted.
I confess I know nothing about the viability of such coding being applied to the field concerned, but know from my experience with "Basic" programming back in the 80s that commands could be written to show that if a figure (say a year) was greater than or less than a certain number, the option was there to "go to" (say) line 20 or line 30. So, in this case, if the year inputted for the birth was greater than 1913 the status in the Death field would be set to Living.
Okay, maybe I am talking nonsense with this example, but I cannot see that here in the 2020s there can't be a way to program something along these lines.
The current problem is causing distress to many Family Tree users and I'm sure non-users would be equally distressed if they knew their living relatives' (perhaps even their own) details were open to public viewing, instead of being in a private space.
Publication of the 1950 census has probably made the situation worse, as the United States laws seem to be far more relaxed than here in the U.K. - where, for example, names are redacted from the published version of the 1939 National Register if the birth year is under 100 years ago, or unless there is proof an individual (under that age) is deceased.
I am very surprised at the lack of concern of the issue of privacy for the living in Family Tree (which perhaps reflects the amount of details of those living in the US that is generally available from other sources), but do feel this is an issue that needs some urgent attention, by one means or another.
Obviously, I appreciate the problem will never be eliminated: a non-standardized date in the Birth field, or a user mistakenly adding a death date (for someone still alive), would still not overcome the problem in many cases, but I'm convinced the problem could be largely addressed.
Comments
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Perhaps the program could be more explicit when marking a person deceased. A simple popup that states "To protect the privacy of living persons, please do not mark anyone as deceased if there is any possibility that they are living."
The system could also require either a death date or a reason statement in order to save person as deceased.
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