How beneficial would be new "Private with Public Family Tree" privacy level be?

Question

Hi WikiTreers,

 

This is something that hasn't come up in a while.

 

Lisa Franklin asked whether we could add a new Privacy Level: "Private with Public Family Tree".

 

We have "Private with Public Biography" and "Private with Public Biography and Family Tree." See the Privacy page.

 

In other words, you can't currently have a public family tree without also having a public bio/text section.

 

Lisa's position: "I think folks would be more apt to share their tree before their bio, as more personal and more identifiable information may be in the bio.  So, having said that it would be nice if someone would consider adding a new privacy level that was just sharing of only the family tree of a person.  I think living folks might go more for that and then perhaps we could get all of our DNA testing to show up correctly.  Just a thought and one I'd pondered since joining as it seemed 'backwards' to have an option to allow bio and no tree, but not one with tree and no bio."

 

The main reason we didn't offer this from the start is that we wanted a uni-directional system of increasing privacy. That is, each level up is more public than the previous.

 

A uni-directional system is simplest. There are literally thousands of places in the code where we do greater-than or less-than privacy checks. That said, it wouldn't be out of the question to add this new Privacy Level if others strongly agree with Lisa. (Rearranging or changing the meaning of the Privacy Levels is pretty much out of the question. This would be an additional level.)

 

How valuable do you think it would be?

 

Do you see any downsides to adding it, besides the technical ones?

 

Thanks!

 

Chris

Comments

I think it would make wikitree more into what their mission is too connect one big tree world wide. You can't connect with road blocks up.

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Great idea, yes from me.  On a side note I would love to see a Public Profile with a Private Bio setting, especially for profiles under 100 years.

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Great idea - this would make wikitree much more useful for people with DNA matches to track possible connections.

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I would also love a 'Private with Public Family Tree' privacy level.

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As of a few minutes ago, the new Privacy Level is now live!

Answer 1

Will this allow the relationship finder work more often? Many times when I try to use it I'm informed that the tree is private.

Comments

Hi Doug. If people whose profiles were previously Private used it, it would. We wouldn't be automatically changing any profiles' privacy level. Members would have to select it. (On the other, we could decide it should be the default privacy level in certain contexts.)

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I love it too. And I would think it might be appropriate for newly created living profiles.  We don't need detailed vital statistics, but we do need to see where each person fits in the global family tree. (Living minor children should still be unlisted, of course.)

Answer 2

I love this idea. I agree with Lisa - I've had trouble wrapping my head when you would want a private tree with a public profile. Maybe for famous people, I guess. But for most of us, a public tree with a private profile makes more sense.

Answer 3

The proposal sounds reasonable to me.  And if everyone buys the rationale that a bio is normally more sensitive than a tree, then I think you could argue that adding another level isn't really corrupting the uni-directional system of increasing privacy.  The new level would fit logically between Private with Public Bio and Private with Public Bio and Tree.

 

I guess the only downsides would be the learning curve (admittedly not very steep), and PMs having to review some fraction of those 7.5 million profiles to see if a change of level is in order.  Plus, you might have to look pretty hard at the color spectrum to find a colored ball that fits between that orange and lemon!!  :)

Comments

Oh, no. I didn't even think about what color the icon would be. Now I wish I hadn't mentioned it. ;-)

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Purple!

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I think it much more than just reasonable.  It makes absolutely no snese to me how we can have the goal of one world tree without having all of the branches present and connected.  When a branch on my tree stops I call it a "brick wall" and am very frustrated that I can not connect it anywhere.  I do not have a problem with real privacy issuses but when they exist the information probably should not be on a public forum in any fashion.  If you want to keep something private, you should probably keep it off of the internet completely.   I think that all "trees" should be public.  WikiTree without the public trees is just Wiki.

Answer 4

My understanding of the purpose of WikiTree is not just one world tree, but one public world tree. In my experience, it's not reluctance to make a bio public that is a hindrance to a more open profile, but (1) not fully understanding the WT privacy system and (2) an attitude of ownership of a profile. I do not think the proposal, while well intentioned, addresses either of those. It is a lateral move that makes a complex system more complex, and I don't believe it will coax people into openess. 

I understand the need, given the times and sensitivites, to keep information about living people private. That said, I think the mission of WT is incompatible with private information in a biography, particularly for the deceased. In my opinion, the solution is to exclude the sensitive information if it is in fact so sensitive. Not every fact about every person needs to be included. But I would also question hard how sensitive the information is. At some point, history is just history, the good and the bad.

After two years with WT, my protocol is private (living persons, and I only add them if I have their express permission), public bio/family tree (deceased with living nuclear relatives, bio limited to publicly available info, which is a lot more than people think), public (deceased with no living nuclear relatives, but for whom I feel I can add value by "moderating" the editing) and open (everyone else).

My two cents.

Thanks to all who think about these tough issues and make WT possible.

Comments

I don't think this applies to 'famous' living people. Those we generally make public bio/public tree, with private living relatives, and add publicly available sources and supporting information to their biography but no info which should be considered 'private'. The more likely use case is the family member who wants to be connected to the tree, but who has biography info they want shared only with trusted family members. Or perhaps they may want to be found only through their tree connections and not by name search. I agree the bio is generally more sensitive than the tree, so it preserves the hierarchy. Mother's maiden name is generally not used as a password any more, by those who are somewhat security conscious.

Today we handle this situation by limiting the info in the biography if the tree is public.

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One thing that privacy helps a lot with, at least with me, is for people who are recently deceased and thus whose biographies contain a lot of information about currently living people who they associated with.

Answer 5

Another yes vote for adding this new security level. I don't have any dialogue to add as I think most all of the valid pros and cons have already been addressed by the previous posters.

Answer 6

I think this is a great idea.  It does help the DNA cause and provides a good middle ground for those concerned about sharing top much info.

Answer 7

YES (again), thinking more about this I realised how helpful it would be in my case.  I have introduced a few cousins to WikiTree that have been DNA tested and some are not comfortable using the system (it is complicated for newbies), with this feature we could plug them in, keep them private and enable the tree to still use the DNA comparison, awesome.  A question though, would you be able to keep the first 2 or 3 generations as "Living" or "Private" for those that are super privacy oriented?

Answer 8

(For some reason, I missed this question when it was first posted, but that means I get to bump it now.)

Yes, YES! Please give us this option and make it a beautiful blue color.

Answer 9

If this was implemented I would use it for deceased relatives whose biographies had information about living relatives: I completely support this.