Avoiding Premature Death Designation?
Within the past two weeks I have encountered two people listed in the world tree as deceased who are very much alive. Yes, they are quite elderly, but not deceased. The only reason given for one of the profiles being marked as deceased was "age" - no proof of this death was recorded - because that doesn't exist. He celebrates his 96th birthday in a few days.
The other gentleman - entirely different family - was in his 80s and loudly proclaimed - I ain't dead yet! Unfortunately, this discovery happened while teaching a FS class as a FS Affiliate Library. Can you please implement some sort of birth year stopgap that prevents anyone marking an individual deceased unless there is a source cited? Perhaps anyone under the age of 110? There are more and more people living past the age of 100 and marking them as deceased presents a security issue in a time when the elderly are bombarded with scammers. In other words, I consider this a VERY serious issue that should be bumped up to the developers ASAP!
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@Historiana I agree that finding a living family member listed in FamilySearch Tree as deceased is concerning. I too have reached out to an elderly living relative that somehow got listed as deceased. However, this system works properly as it is designed. This request really needs to be sent through the Suggest An Idea process in order to get it to the product team and engineers that work on that particular area of FamilySearch Tree.
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Thanks, @AnneLoForteWillson for the feedback and clarification about the limitations of the Community space. Unfortunately, I disagree on a couple of points: If it is working properly as designed then they have implemented a living/deceased designation that has a significant loophole which puts the information of living people at risk - rather quickly and easily - which is alarming. I was hoping that product team members/programmers/engineers would be monitoring these questions and community conversations for important issues as they arise - or that moderators would be able to convey this information up the proper channel. Again, I consider this a significant security flaw that puts our elderly at risk - an issue that needs to be addressed quickly and not lost in an "idea" platform.
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@Historiana This is indeed a concern, but I would make some observations:
- First, the Family Tree is a community project. Everyone has a responsibility to help make it as accurate as possible. Whenever any of us encounter a person in Family Tree who is incorrectly marked as deceased, we should promptly take action to mark the person as living. This will send a request to a special Support team. In my experience, they act quickly on such requests. (I'm curious if you took such action when you encountered the cases you noted above.)
- The suggestion to require a source before marking someone as deceased has been made before. It might help a bit, but it will by no means fix the problem. I see many cases where it is a source that leads to people incorrectly mark someone as deceased. For example, someone is listed in an obituary, even as a "survivor," but a user chooses to mark them as deceased as they attach that source. That would satisfy your requirement that a source must be provided, but a person could still be incorrectly marked as deceased.
- Sometimes someone is certain that someone has died, but no source is available. They may have been at their bedside when they passed. In such circumstances, the surviving relative may find it unreasonable to require a source.
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Thanks, @Alan E. Brown - Yes - I immediately reported both cases - which takes about 48 hours to correct during regular business days.
Unfortunately, the examples you gave above did not apply to the two examples I discovered. For one gentleman, no reason (nor source) was provided, and for the other gentleman the reason of "age" was reported. This is the loophole that needs to be fixed.
Again, per my original post, this is a security issue not just another use suggestion for the community tree. I'm hoping FS takes this seriously and steps up as advocates for our elderly to protect their information. I mean, why do we have a protective designation for living versus deceased in the first place if we are not going to make every effort to uphold that designation and protect the information of the living? Or rectify issues, such as these, when they arise?
As for an incorrect source being used to justify a deceased designation - of course that could still happen - but at a tremendously lower rate than the open barn door we currently have in place.
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@Historiana Your concern for the privacy of living people is totally justified, however your suggestion that profiles may only be set to deceased when proof is provided raises issues.
1: Without such proof of death, any person created by a user will always be living, no matter how old, and that person profile would be invisible to other users. This would increase the probabilty of having multiple profiles for the same person.
2: In some cases, e.g. death in another country, a person might not have a death record on file, hence no record can be attached. In such cases, without actual proof, it would then be necessary to add a reason such as "Family anecdotes say he went prospecting in Peru and died there"
3: In cases where the name is common (or has variations), there might be many death records that could possibly apply, but without reviewing every one it would be impossible to determine which applies. Grave records are not yet sufficiently widespread although volunteers are improving this daily, and it is not often that death certificates can be obtained free of charge. In many cases researchers have taken one for the team and bought a certificate that was then found to be not the right one and then donated the data to FreeReg so that others may benefit. This kind of activity is mutually beneficial.
3b: ditto for names that have been misread or mistranscribed.
In summary, I personally don't think we are at the stage where it would be helpful to prevent a profile being marked as deceased without tangible proof.
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I would be totally supportive of not being able to mark a person deceased who is not over 110 without a source tagged to the data even if sometimes that source has to be "Personal Knowledge - I was at the funeral." That is only going back to 1915. Which is really recent. One of my grandfathers was 34 then.
Regarding the concern of making some people be alive forever, FamilySearch already has a routine that somehow sweeps through the database every day marking people who turned 110 that day. I would think they could adapt the routine that sets that marker to automatically change anyone of the same age from living to deceased as part of that routine.
For common names where there might be many death records, those common names also have many birth records and people don't seem to have any trouble being willing to sort those out no matter how much trouble it is.
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Thanks for your feedback, @Re Searching - I agree that personal knowledge as a family member/acquaintance should suffice as a legitimate reason for adding the deceased designation.
But again - per my original post - there is currently NO restriction or requirement that prevents someone from just declaring someone deceased because they think they're too old to be in the "living" category. Which is exactly what has been happening as listed in my original post. And to review - I'm not even talking about someone over 100 - my two examples were for folks in their 80s and 90s.
I'm really saddened by the number of users who have responded to defend this ability, instead of encouraging FS to tweak the requirements for a designation switch. If we started doing this with younger people the outcry would be intense - but because it's only affecting the elderly - we are fine to look the other way? I'm a big fan of trying to keep our elderly safe - especially with something that would not constitute a heavy lift on the side of the programmers.
P.S. - Thanks @Gordon Collett for the info about the 110 sweep! That sounds like a great fix for any "immortal" profiles.
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There is another practical element to be overcome w.r.t creating a person, for example when a new person related to an existing one in a marriage or census record. The currrent API requires that living or deceased is checked, but at this stage nothing else is known about the person, so the process would either mark them as living or grind to a halt without proof or a reason.
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@Re Searching "Living" would be the appropriate designation if the person's current age fell within pre-applied parameters. My research grinding to a halt while I figure out whether someone is still alive or not is a small price to pay in lieu of exposing personal information of the living. Besides, I can still add them to my tree as living people - which is released once they are deceased. None of this prevents us from seeing the records - but building a tree profile gathers the details into something easily harvested by those with ill intent.
Again, FS has built in the living/deceased designation for a reason (as has every other cloud based software company) - so I'm confused by the defense of skirting that policy for tree/research convenience - especially when it puts others at risk. I'm sure some of what you suggested above could also be a great new project for AI implementation to help avoid unnecessary floods of incorrect "living" people.
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@Historiana I'm guessing that I am one of the people you are accusing of defending "skirting that policy for tree/research convenience - especially when it puts others at risk." That's not at all what I said, and I haven't seen any comment in this thread that could fairly be characterized that way. I strongly oppose anyone marking a living person as deceased. You will never find any of my posts that defend that practice.
All I ever said is that your proposed solution of requiring a source to mark someone deceased:
- Might help in some cases, but would certainly not fix the problem. At least half the cases I run into where someone has been incorrectly marked as deceased have a source — it's just being misapplied.
- Would definitely create hassle for some people who are accurately marking someone as deceased, and supply a valid reason, but may not have an actual source document.
FamilySearch does have policies and procedures for protecting the privacy of living persons, but they are not perfect. I'm all for exploring ways to improve them. Hopefully a conversation that points out some weaknesses in a proposed solution can lead to further brainstorming that improves the idea or produces other proposed improvements.
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@Alan E. Brown My previous comment was specifically directed toward the poster right above that - who summarized that the process of adding individuals to the tree based on their appearance in a document would "grind to a halt" if we don't know anything about them beyond that one appearance - and therefore forced to designate them as "living". By using that as an argument to keep things open without any changes is supporting a status quo on purpose to skirt the standard living/deceased designation - not to intentionally violate privacy, but to continue an ease of profile creation. It is understood that some stricter stopgaps in the policy may cause some research inconveniences, but I fully believe this is a small price to pay.
In a nutshell, I have not accused you of anything.
Your original response listed the reasons why we may not find a source to confirm a death - which is true - and why I have already agreed with the premise (through the original post + following responses above) that personal information as a reason is perfectly fine. Of course someone may attach a record to the wrong person - accidentally switching the living/deceased designation - but hopefully those instances would be few and far between. What we have now is much too easy to skirt the policy for various reasons - regardless of intent.
As a recap: My original post also said without "reason" nor source. As discussed previously, the reason given as "age" does put that information at risk when the person is very much alive - and serves as another way of intentionally skirting the policy - no matter how well intentioned the person may have been.
As for the policy not being perfect - that's the reason I posted an alert about this issue, suggested a solution (more than one throughout the thread), and hoped that the programmers would figure out a way to better safeguard the information of living people. Again, nothing is completely safe - but we also have a responsibility to implement the best possible strategies to help protect the privacy of our living loved ones.
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@Historiana Well, you did say "I'm really saddened by the number of users who have responded to defend this ability." I assumed that you were referencing more than one person in that comment. If that didn't include me, then I apologize for making a poor assumption. But I don't want to get lost in misunderstandings of intent; I will try harder to assume the best and not take offense where none was intended.
Maybe I'm thinking too much like an engineer, but if your suggestion is to require a source or a reason, then "age" is unquestionably a reason and it meets your requirement. Now we would both agree that it is an exceedingly poor reason, especially if the age involved is anything less than 110, but from a pure engineering perspective, it meets the requirement, unless FamilySearch starts analyzing reason statements and applying heuristics to determine if it's a sufficiently good reason. That sounds like a quagmire.
I'm sincerely trying to understand the proposal and how it will improve this process. Perhaps you could summarize what your proposal is now.
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@Alan E. Brown Actually, my original post and this thread should be sufficient for FS programmers/admins/engineers to begin discussions about the situation. Since I am not an engineer, that is the purpose of posting here in the first place.
Legally, as FS has implemented a living/deceased procedure to help protect the privacy of the living, I'm sure they will care enough to take up this issue to help stem the tide of our elderly's information being frequently exposed to those with ill intent.
One previous responder explained that they already have a procedure in place to sweep through profiles of people over 110 to switch them over to deceased - so I'm sure there is a simple solution to help mitigate this problem. Which is where I happily turn this issue over to the brains who can help.
We have all agreed that the loophole allowing this abuse is disturbing. I had no idea how prevalent it was until just recently. If I had only noticed one, I would have reported the single instance and moved on - but two within two weeks - alerts us to the fact the problem is more wide spread and should be brought to the attention of FS engineers who have the ability to help. To stay silent when seeing these egregious errors is irresponsible.
As for analyzing reason statements, I'm sure their AI component is already actively learning about the diverse reasons people change anything within the trees. No quagmire necessary - and I'm excited about how they can creatively solve issues such as these when they arise.
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