Cannot delete living person.

LegacyUser

David Wynn said: Now that we have a list of private persons on the mobile app, I've been reviewing my list. When I tried to delete one particular profile, the app told me I did not have sufficient rights. Why wouldn't I have rights to delete pretty much anyone I want that I can view and is currently marked living? If the profile is in my private storage area, why can't I update, or delete as I please? Who else could have an interest in my living profiles? Please update the tools to always permit deletion of any private profiles.

LegacyUser

David Wynn said: P. S. I don't mind filling out a reason form, but I should never get a message of insufficient rights on a living profile.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: Hi David,

I'm not exactly sure why your specific situation has occurred, but I'm also not sure that your stated generality in your P.S. is true.

Frequently records of people who are living get incorrectly added to the system as deceased (a lot of times this is even intentional). While in this state, if anyone other than the creator of the record touches them or adds any tweaks, even the person who originally created them can then no longer delete them. That is because that record is now a collaborated record and should NOT be deleted.

If such a record is then modified to be a living record, would that history with other patron's contributions now be allowed to be deleted? If so, then any patron to FamilySearch could delete any deceased record they wanted to by first simply marking that record as living (I would assume that this is one of the reasons that in the past you always had to get assistance from the help desk to mark a deceased person as living)

I do not understand the idiosyncrasies of the living records in a person's private space that have been changed from a deceased status, but because of the above reasoning, I can see situations where you might not want to allow those living records to be deleted.

This is an interesting question. I hope that someone from FS can throw some light on it.

LegacyUser

David Wynn said: "in the past you had to get assistance"
Has this policy changed? Last I knew, it was still in effect, and I would argue it should remain in effect. It should require a review panel before a profile is removed from public access and returned to a single person's private space. Because yes, once a profile is placed in private storage, it is at least temporarily and potentially permanently now under private control. And, I contend, that user should have the ability to update or delete as they see fit.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: Agreed. That's why I'd like to know how that situation is handled. I once found a person record that had multiple contributions to it. I knew that the person was still alive though so I reported it to FS. The next thing I knew it had been changed to Living and placed in MY private space. So I wonder if I could have deleted that record.

(Things have happened there so I can't go back and examine things (the person actually passed away recently, so their death information had been added to the record sending it back into the FamilyTree.)

LegacyUser

Juli said: I believe there has not been any change in the procedure: only Support or the person who created it can mark a profile as living. This was certainly true three weeks ago.

LegacyUser

DougHo said: Jeff - sometimes when I report person not deceased to support, in support's answer they state that they have placed a copy of the person in my private space. that might be what happened in the case you described.

That is in contrast to the typical situation where support changes the status and I can't see them after that. like you, I don't know the idiosyncrasies involved when there have been multiple contributors (usually when I see such person, I notify the contributor and if that doesn't work I notify support - without contributing anything such as sources on my own).

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: Yea, I only have to assume that if someone else created the record and nobody else has touched it, they would be more likely to move it to the private space of of the person who did all the editing on it.

I'm still rather curious as to how they handle the situation when they are dealing with a record that has been touched by more than one patron. And if you get a record like that added to your private space, is it set up so that you can delete the record if you want?

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: Interesting. If that happened, that there were some tweaks made to a deceased person in the tree that was then moved to the private space of a user, it would be understandable that the record could not be deleted.

I don't know, but I would then open a case with support to delete the record with an explanation for why I want it deleted.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: Exactly. That's why I said that David's statement about how "I should ever get a message of insufficient rights on a living profile" may not be universally applicable here.