Is Family Tree AUTOMATICALLY programmed to change from "Living" to "Deceased" after 110 years

LegacyUser

Marilyn Starks said: As a FS Family Tree consultant I had this question today, "Are names that are submitted to Family Tree AUTOMATICALLY programmed to change from "Living" to "Deceased" after 110 years?" We couldn't find an answer in our information bank. Perhaps this can be written as a KA at some point in time.

LegacyUser

joe martel said: Great question. No, only a user can declare if a Person is living or deceased. It is never calculated. That date may be wrong, and calculations can go wrong (has child 110 yrs old...) but the relationship was wrong... Plus the potential for exposing living people as dead is a privacy problem. SO only a human can determine this.

LegacyUser

Ammon E. said: Well, from what I've heard, it used to be that it automatically changed 110-year-old person pages, but as Joe said, with a lot more people turning 110, and being alive (and some even active!), it was a privacy issue.

LegacyUser

Stephen Jorgensen Kelsey said: I still think that this would be useful and I don't see that there is any more potential for exposing living people as dead than what the system currently does. If you don't like 110 that is what the system currently assumes as dead. If you want to eliminate approximate dates that can also be done. By using only a human to
do this you are eliminating the data which otherwise will be lost. l No human will ever get to all the people entered NOW who have birthdates 110 years ago or more and are still shown living.

Does this mean that any living people we have entered automatically become deleted or inacdessible when we die?

LegacyUser

joe martel said: No living Person is deleted automatically. There are discussions dealing with a "bequeath" type model, but depending on data without the human touch is often fraught with unintended side effects.

LegacyUser

Stephen Jorgensen Kelsey said: I am sorry but I do not see any difference between people added to FT and the living people added to FT since the human has already entered the data. I am pleased to see that the program has started to have a little intelligence, i.e. death date before birth date, birthdate of person before parent's are born so that the
system begins to reject such data. If a person has an exact birthdate and birthplace and parents and is 110 years old, I see no problem making them available for temple work. I appreciate your point of view but I am not entirely convinced of its validity.

LegacyUser

Tracie Ann Perin said: Perhaps it could be changed at 120 years or 150 years so that those people who are non members and listed as living but are infact deceased with no one to change their living status will become visible for their great grandchildren and not be lost in the system. There is a big potential for names to be lost if they are non members and MUST be changed by a human if there is not a human left to change the information from living to deceased. If our next generation does not use FamilySearch but the next generation does how will they even know to look for a name if it is hidden in a relative's FamilySearch account and listed as living. Yes the information is there but not available for the descendants to know they exist and do their work.

LegacyUser

gasmodels said: Does it really matter, The information can just be added again after they are deceased. That is one reason why I do not add living people it just leads to too many questions and other issue.

LegacyUser

Tracie Ann Perin said: Yes, it does matter. if this is the only record available after their death or their information is lost.

LegacyUser

Brad Hurley said: I've been entering information into FamilySearch about my living relatives, based on a faulty assumption that the information I entered about them would eventually become public.

I can understand the concern about inadvertently exposing information about living individuals. But if the system waited 110 years after the CREATION of the individual record in Family Tree, it would basically guarantee that the information is not about a living person, no matter how incorrect that information may be. (If average lifespans increase, this cutoff could be increased)

I can also see that some people would want their private information to remain private forever, so I think it would make sense for researchers to opt-in if they want their living individuals to automatically change to deceased after a period of time.

In response to the question "does it really matter?", I have entered a bunch of source information that is not public (family bibles, photos, etc.), which would be very useful to future genealogists. I'd hate to see that go to waste.

LegacyUser

joe martel said: This was recently discussed here https://getsatisfaction.com/familysearch/topics/automatic-rollover-from-living-to-deceased-using-110.... I like your idea of the trigger being based on when the person was created. And one of the goals is to capture info about me, living for future generations not my own private store that never is seen. There are other ways to o that.

LegacyUser

Justin Masters said: I think that the difference from the initial question and some of the answers was the implied lack of birth date.

Ron has mentioned in public talks and on his streaming chats that if a birthdate is entered, it will flip to deceased after 110 years.

Putting a living person in without such a date, as Joe has mentioned, becomes problematic, unless (as others have suggested), starting the clock (assuming no birth date) for the 110 years from the date of creation.

RonTaylor

As many have left comments about the inconsistency of the 110 year rule...this morning I saw for myself that a deceased woman, born in 1911, had the 110 year permission required message. Please prove that a 1911 birth date is less than 110 years ago.

Brett .

@RonTaylor

Ron

I am just another 'lowly' User/Patron ...

[ And, I happen to be a Member of the Church ... ]

Just in passing ...

Question: Have you checked to ENSURE, that "Date of Birth", HAS been "Standardised"; as, 1911?

[ eg. And, NOT the likes of the Year of "0011"; as, has been proven to be the case, in many such cases ... ]

Just a thought.

Brett