Is it possible to know beforehand if a change will make a profile confidential?

Adrian Bruce1

The other day, for reasons too complex to mention, I was looking at the profile for the mountaineer George Mallory (L717-KNM) who died in 1924 on the North Face of Mount Everest. Both his death and burial are marked with a display and standardised placename of "Nepal". According to my memory and to Wikipedia, the North Face was, and still is, in Tibet. (Nepal was a closed kingdom at this time and the boundary between Nepal and Tibet apparently runs across the top of Everest.)

I added a comment to the reasons for both death and burial to say "On Mount Everest. The North Face of Everest was in Tibet, not Nepal" or similar.

I did not alter the display or standardised placename values because I know that the status of Tibet is controversial and FamilySearch may choose discretion as the better part of valour at some point and make places in Tibet subject to confidentiality rules, just like Turkey, etc.

If I had altered the placenames to "Tibet" and that was confidential at the time of my alteration, would I have got a warning and would I have been able to back out the change to successfully revert to the non-confidential (if incorrect) value of Nepal?

I recognise that if Tibet isn't confidential now but became confidential in the future, then there's nothing I could do about George Mallory disappearing from FamilySearch.

Áine Ní Donnghaile

Have you considered testing on the FS Beta platform? https://beta.familysearch.org/search/

Adrian Bruce1

@Áine Ní Donnghaile - thanks for the suggestion. I just tried some experiments with that profile on the Beta Site - I altered his birthplace to Turkey (or the Turkish form of the name as it is now), then to the Ottoman Empire (the predecessor and one which is time accurate), then to Egypt. Nothing happened when I did the changes, nor after, when I refreshed the screen and I was able to change things each time. (NB - I always use a different browser to access the Beta site).

I would conclude therefore that one or more of the following might apply

• Those countries are not restricted in Beta, or...
• The restriction gets put on by a 'Bot running periodically and either it doesn't run in Beta or I was too impatient to wait to see any change or...
• I'm misunderstanding what I (the updater) would see if something goes into the restricted countries or ...
• ???

Separately I also updated the place of death and burial to read "Tibet" on the display and "Tibet, China" on the standardised names - that worked but I expected that to be OK so that was just for personal satisfaction.

Chas Howell

Adrian, just one comment on your beta site methodology , there may very well be a time delay between the time you change the location and the time FS recognizes that change.

Sorry rereading your last comment, I see you already accounted for that delay possibility.

Adrian Bruce1

"... there may very well be a time delay between the time you change the location and the time FS recognizes that change ..."

No harm in re-checking - nearly 24h later, there's still no sign of any restriction on the Beta site for that profile. Again, I have to say that there are still too many gaps in my knowledge of the Beta setup for me to be able to reach any conclusion from that experiment. Worth a try but...

Alan E. Brown

I'm pretty sure that the process that checks for sensitive countries doesn't run in Beta. I've done lots of testing on Beta, and never seen a person marked as confidential, even when they have life events associated with countries that would have that effect on the main site.

Unfortunately that makes it difficult to discover details about how that process works by experimentation. Obviously doing testing by creating fake people on the main site is not a good thing to do, nor is it good to apply fake data to real people on the main site.

Adrian Bruce1

Thanks @Alan E. Brown

Totally agree with you about fake stuff on the main site.