App: Default Add-Person Living

LegacyUser

Tiffany Nash said: On app, please make Add Person default to Living instead of Deceased. We can easily make a Living person Deseased but cannot make a Deceased person Living. This will also help with privacy issues for Living. Thank you.

LegacyUser

Jordi Kloosterboer said: I agree with defaulting to living. However, it is easy to make a deceased person living if no one else has contributed to the person.

LegacyUser

Paul said: I disagree. Family Tree is primarily a program for holding the records of deceased persons. I rarely add any living persons, but have added / connected many thousands of deceased ones. Implementation of your idea would probably mean more work for Family Tree users.

LegacyUser

Jordi Kloosterboer said: That does make sense, actually. I was thinking on the lines that you should always be aware if a person is living or deceased before adding the person. So, maybe they should implement it so that neither is checked to force the person to think about it more. That's how it is on the web version.

LegacyUser

Don M Thomas said: I agree with Jordi. It should be like it is on the web version and default to (neither), leaving it up to the patron to decide.

LegacyUser

Tiffany Nash said: My main issue is that in the App it is too easy to forget to change it from Deceased to Living. As careful as I am, I have still accidentially made several people deceased without realizing it.

It might work if neither was selected, as suggested, as that would force you to make a choice.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: For anything older that the 110 Year rule, Living is inappropriate as a default.

For anything within the 110 Year rule, Living should be the default with the ability to override it if necessary during the creation of that record.

For anything within the 110 Year rule, changing the default Living status to Deceased should only be possible with a minimal reason documented (or a death or burial event).

I thought that this was actually the way things were working, although I know that some things have changed there recently.

LegacyUser

Tiffany Nash said: The 110 Year rule is great. Unfortunately, many times when you add someone there isn't a date with the source. I don't feel comfortable estimating in those situations.

LegacyUser

Tiffany Nash said: For instance: Obits.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: Yea, good example. If you don't know, enter it as living and then you can follow up later with a hunt for additional sources.

LegacyUser

Tiffany Nash said: That's exactly my point. If I am unsure at all, I always enter as Living. Thanx

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: From the original posting I got the impression that we were talking about automating the default in the tool when creating a new record, My point was just that usually there is enough information for the tool to set either value as appropriate rather than just always setting it to Living.

JenniferWhite64

In Feb. 2022, someone added myself and my exhusband as deceased. Obviously there is no proof we are deceased, the person just found our marriage license and made us both deceased.

This is really concerning as far as privacy issues. I'm am pretty upset. I have never been a fan of this site for this reason. People with no experience or sources, often change things to ridiculous ends here. Adding simultaneous spouses, and births after parents are long dead.

I've changed us to "living" but had to explain why I'm alive, and there's nothing preventing this person from changing us back. I've also tried to find a contact to voice my concerns and this is the closest I can get?

I'm all for Automating "Living" with in the 110 year range. 😠

genthusiast

Maybe only allow as deceased if it is a death record.

The living PID and the 'deceased' one will be different - maybe Find/compare when someone tries to add as deceased.

MinnWisRoots

Agree with @JenniferWhite64

Unfortunately there are some people who use the GenealogyBank Obituaries that were indexed by a computer to add new people to their tree and made everyone deceased. I had to contact FS and have my Dad changed to living (he'll be 92 this year and his mother lived to be 101).

I have a multitude of people on my tree that are under 80, but since the person who created their records didn't add any sources except for the obituary, and I can't find and death/cemetery records, I just assume they are not dead (and put "Dead ?" in the Reason This Information Is Correct box).