Private Memories
If I mark a picture of myself or my children as Private to the Group, what happens to that picture after I die. I am assuming that it will still be private and only visible to the people in the group. I do not think that another administrator can change a picture that I marked as Private to Public, even after I die, whether that picture is just of me, or also includes presently living people. Is that correct?
Answers
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@Cathy DeCook Yes, that's correct. That's a definite weakness of the current way the Memories feature is implemented; most changes can be made only by the owner (creator) of the Memory, and once that person dies, no one else can change it. That of course includes changing a Memory from Private to Public. Group administrators have no special permissions in this regard.
Sharing the picture as Private to the Group does allow the picture to have some hope of becoming public, although the process is complicated and not obvious to everyone. A surviving member of the Family Group can download the picture once everyone in the photo is deceased. Then they can upload it again as their own contribution, making it Public, and adding back the appropriate tags, title, description, date, and place. Especially if there are a lot of tags, this can be tedious. Other items such as an attached audio description or comments require extra effort. None of these items will be attributed to the original person who contributed them, which is a definite loss in the historical record of the photo. And this requires some group member to be on top of when each Private memory becomes a candidate for this process because everyone referenced in the memory has passed away. Then they have to be willing and able to do all the above steps. But if so, the photo could survive and become Public.
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Thank you so much for confirming what I thought. I wish FamilySearch would add a category, such as Private Until I Die, to the now Public, Private, or Private to the Group. That sure would be helpful!
My fear is that other administrators in a family group will not know how to download the memories, make them their own, and then mark them as Public. Or they will just not take the time to do so. I hate to see all those memories lost!
I also wish that there was an alert note in the Gallery explaining to people that any memories that are not tagged to a deceased person or that are tagged to a living person will never be seen, until the person who added them marked the living person as deceased.
As far as the audio recordings, would a surviving person have to make a recording of the audio and then upload it into their memories?
Thank you so much for your help! I help to train the new missionaries and volunteers at the Lehi FSC and I really want to make sure they understand this and pass it along to our patrons.
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@Cathy DeCook Regarding preserving audio files that were marked Private to Group:
- If it's just a standard Memory of type Audio, then the process is the same as with a photo or PDF: someone in the group needs to download it, upload it as their own contribution, then apply any tags, title, description, etc.
- If it's an audio file that is attached to a photo, then when you click the Download button in the Memory viewer, you'll be given the option to download the photo, the audio, or both. You need to download both, then when you upload the photo, you need to add that audio file. This is extra tricky, since the FamilySearch website has not (yet) implemented the ability to add an audio file — it only allows you to record a new audio. So you need to use the Android or iOS Family Tree app to add the audio from the file you downloaded.
When I mentioned audio in my previous comment, I was referring to this second option.
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