Is it a good idea to collect documents for living relatives, attaching them in my Family Tree?
My sister and I are wondering if it would make things easier if we collected, for example, birth and marriage certificates, and other official documents, and even newspaper articles and attach them to living relatives in my Family Tree. How do we ensure that the attached documents become available (visible) to the public once the living relatives pass on to the other side of the veil?
Answers
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Thats the complicating issue - is that you do all this work, link them to liivng people, mark them private, and then get hit by a bus - it may mean your items are not ever retrievable.
Unless you made sure that someone else also had your user id and password.
But if you are LDS - even that is very short term - as - as soon as the ward clerk - marks your record as deceased - no one will be able to access your account - even if they have the user id and password.
You surely are doing a great job in collecting and preserving the documents.
but NEVER use FS as your ONLY source of document storage. You should have it all backed up somewhere else also.
will be interesting to see what other perspectives other people have.
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An even bigger question is - "Is it really worth the effort to add all your living close relatives to your tree in FS in the first place. If you have a large set of living cousins many of whom are also interested in genealogy - and you are all doing the same thing - adding all the living cousins to your own family tree accounts - - one could at least argue that for the extended (possibly very large) set of living relatives - thats its simply a lot of duplicated effort.
There just isn't a good tool at the moment within FS to allow for a collaborative effort on living people. It might possibly exist at some point - but a ton of thought has been put into it - and we still don't have anything - so I don't expect to see it anytime soon. Part of the reasons are complex privacy and security isues and laws.
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Dennis brings up some great points. We also have to consider the important factor of who is ready, willing, and able or even interested in being the family historian. If you and your sister are the only ones at present. I personally see no real harm. But you might consider making the documentation available on a separate digital platform to share with your family now. This could spark interest in others to engage in the work now and even down the road. Who knows!
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agreed.
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Other platforms could include
something as simple as a BOX folder or a face bok page or various other resources.
each one of which has its pros and cons.
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by BOX folder I meant such things as
DROP BOX, BOX.COM, GOOGLE drive and more . . . on line cloud storage services.
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@Minnie Mae Wilding-Diaz
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FYI
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Personally ...
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Short Answer: 'Yes', 'Collect'; & 'Attach', EVERTHING you can about the "Living".
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In most cases ...
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You DO NOT know who is a User/Patron (ie. "Living") of "Family Tree" of 'FamilySearch', with their OWN, 'FamilySearch' Account.
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And, even for those (ie. "Living") Users/Patrons of "Family Tree" of 'FamilySearch', WITH their OWN, 'FamilySearch' Account, you DO NOT know what they are, "Finding"; and/or, "Attaching", about and to themselves.
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At this current juncture in time, there are "Privacy" issues and concerns with SHARING "Living" individuals/persons BETWEEN Users/Patrons; hopefully, that will get worked-out and resolved; so that, over time - and, we may be able to.
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Better to be safe, than sorry ...
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Better, NOW, to "Find" and "Attach" WHATEVER you can about the "Living" individuals/persons in "Family Tree", your in "Private Spaces", of 'FamilySearch'.
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That way, WHEN they die/pass away, the many versions (ie. "Duplicates") of them can eventually be "Merged"/"Combined"; and, the "Surviving" individual/person WILL have ALL those "Documents" that you and Other Users/Patrons have, "Collected"; and, "Attached".
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The more, the merrier ...
'Leave no stone unturned' ...
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Again ...
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'Yes', 'Collect'; & 'Attach', EVERTHING you can about the "Living" ...
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Just my thoughts.
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Brett
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Thanks you all. Let me expand a little on what we are wondering...
If I attach documents for a living cousin, say, Cousin A, and he passes away. He does not have a FS account. Will Cousin B who has a FS account now have access to the documents that I had attached to Cousin A because he is no longer living?
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The PROFILE record in YOUR account representing living persons - will never be accessible by others until YOU mark the person as deceased. Whether or not the person dies - has no direct impact on anything - until YOU mark the record as deceased. other people marking the person as deceased in their records - has no impact on your records.
As to Memories attachments to the profile record -
if you have marked them as "private" they will never be accessible to anyone - even after the persons death. If you mark them as public - there are ways that they could potentially be accessed - but if the profile record is still private - it will not be accessible simply by accessing/navigating the family tree record.
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So... if we attach records to living people in our FS accounts and then mark them deceased and public after they pass away, will the records then become accessible to anyone who may be related to the now deceased person? Is it, then, worthwhile?
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Memories, unless marked private are available publicly. Here - see if you can see this memory of myself that is attached just to me in FamilySearch. You should be able to see the memory. But not the FamilySearch ID of me, since I'm living:
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Also, go to https://www.familysearch.org/photos/find and type in Amy Archibald 2018. Can you find this same picture of me?
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yes - but the more important question is not so much what happens when your Uncle dies
but rather - what happens when YOU are no longer around.
It is critical that whatever you have in FS - you have a backup copy outside of FS so that people can access - because your private items in FS - may be inaccessible forever - even beyond your death.
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Yes - Amy's comments are true -and I need to slightly modify the wording of my original response to reflect her correct comments.
There are, however, both PROS and CONS with the private and public setting on FS Memories (documents, images etc uploaded to FS memories and linked to livbingf persons) - note the private/publci option applies to the memories items and not to the person record itslef.
The PRIVATE option SEEMS like a nice option - for keeping stuff private for living persons. And it is. . .
BUT the problematic side of it is - ONLY YOU can make it non private. So if YOU get hit by a bus
your items marked as private - will probably for the rest of time - be inaccessible.
You are not forced to use the PRIVATE option for items linked to living persons. It is up to you.
BUT some people may choose the public option - to avoid what was discussed in the paragraph above.
There are ways that you can (for the most part - but not 100% effective) avoid people finding items that are public .
In the case that Amy discussed - leaving off the title or description - would have kept it from showing up on her search.
(while I think you could still add a description in a comment that would not be searchable).
So there is kind of opposing views as to which is better - Private Memories items or Public Memories items for living persons.
But if there is something that is very sensitive - you should consider whether you should avoid uploading it at all to begin with.
In my mind a picture of myself - is not so much a big deal - and I have uploaded photos of myself and I have NOT marked them as PRIVATE - I may also have left off a title or description to make them even more more difficult for people to even find. But the person record itself - for a living person - is always private - so people can NOT navigate to that record to then see the memories items hooked to it.
Truth is - something as simple as using a credit card at a restaurant -which all of us do - is much more risky for identity theft - than whether or not I post my own photo in FS and set it to public. But to each his own as to private and public settings.
Also whether you are LDS is a factor in all of this - since LDS accounts are disabled when the ward clerk marks the church member as deceased. Whereas nonLDS accounts could/would remain active indefinitely.
another nuance in all of this is that an LDS Member - can indeed create a secondary account that is not hooked to their membership record - and thus would be treated as a NON LDS account.
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another nuance to all of this - is the use of ALBUMS and sharing the ALBUMS URL with others - especially close family so that they can access all of my Memories items. THis however, again, does NOT work if I have marked an item as private - - this another reason that I choose - NOT to use the private option.
see: https://community.familysearch.org/s/feed/0D53A00004uWiWLSA0
http://yanceyfamilygenealogy.org/passing_away.htm
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right - but most people would not have had the URL in the first place
and if you leave off a title and decription - it becomes less and less probable it will be found via a search.
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Not unless you give it to them. Same with sharing an album in the gallery. For example I could create an album with all the birth, marriage, and death certificates of my immediate family and share that album URL to all others in the immediate family. Then they too would have access to the documents. Then it doesn't matter if/when I die and when my account is made public. If those records are attached to the remaining living persons from my account, then no one is going to see them at my death either.
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agreed
this is one way to make the attachments accesible (sharing the URL) beyond death of user.
The "person records (profiles) " themselves on the other hand - dont become public unless the user marks them as deceased - which was what I was alluding to in my original response as to what happens when user gets hit by a bus - which was a bit confusng - because I gave an incorrect single answer as if it was the answer for both "the person record (profile) as well as the attachments (memories items).
The person record itself (for a living person) - the profile - will never become public - unless the user (or someone using their credentials) marks the record as deceased.
yes as Amy points out there are ways to share the url or album url to allow for access to the documents beyond the death of the user.
If BOTH the profile record and the attachments are made public - it makes it much more easier than these "tricky" methods to get around the issue of access.
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So to summarize and correct some of the confusion that I caused
Here are some bullets
- FamilySearch does not have a facility for collaborating work on LIVING persons. Person records under your account are not visible to anyone else.
- You can upload memories items and hook them to living persons in your account if you wish - but how to balance the privacy issue (how to share them with people you want to share them with and avoid access to other people) - thats a tricky balance with no 100% solution.
- if you mark a memories item as private it is 100% private both now - and even after their or YOUR death. Of course you can change your mind and make it PUBLIC if you wish. but that can only be done via YOUR account.
- TO answer some of your questions - it may be best just trying a few records and memories items and seeing how it goes and what your challenges are that you encounter.
- There are some tricky ways to give access to memories items for living persons but no one but you will be able to navigate to the memories items via the family tree.
- What other people do on their accounts - related to people who die etc. has no direct impact on items in your account.
- If you are LDS - access to your account will be removed once you ae deceased (even if someone had a user id and password)
- You should never allow FamilySearch t be your only source of data storage. You should make sure your items in Family Search are backed up elsewhere.
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Thank you so much, all of you!
We will need to go through all the possibilities and figure out what works best for us.
Thanks again!
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