What happens if a Profile Manager dies?
Here’s another interesting issue that Fay and Joanna brought up.
At the risk of sounding insensitive, Fay asked about what would happen “if some 80 year old comes in here and makes a massive tree then kicks the bucket?”
First, some background for new WikiTreers who might be reading this. WikiTree’s unique privacy and permissions system is based on “Trusted Lists”. Every profile (usually of a person, but it could also be for a pet, place, event, etc.) has its own Trusted List. Anyone on the Trusted List has full permission to view and edit the profile’s data.
One person on the Trusted List is designated as the Profile Manager. This is usually the WikiTreer who created the profile. The manager gets the request when someone new wants to join them on the Trusted List.
So, what happens if the Profile Manager dies? For that matter, what about the less morbid and probably more common scenario where a Profile Manager forgets about WikiTree when they change their e-mail address? Access requests start to bounce.
I’m ashamed to say I don’t have a good answer for this yet. The best I can say is that if you suspect a situation like this you can contact me personally and I’ll try to resolve it.
We will need a policy for this. Maybe it can be based on a certain amount of time going by without a response to an access request. If the Profile Manager ignores requests (for whatever reason) the request could go to someone else on the Trusted List. If there is nobody else on the Trusted List, it could go to me.
Any thoughts on this?