Living People

Categories: WikiTree Help

Identifying Living People

How does the WikiTree system "know" whether someone is alive or not?

This is important because it determines whether a profile will default to Private when it's created and whether the system will prohibit the Profile Manager from making it public. Any profile, unless it's for a person over 200 years old, can be made private by the manager. And any profile, unless the WikiTree system knows it's for a living person, can be made public by the manager.

Here are ways to make it clear that a person is living:

• Mark the Death Date or Death Location as "blank because still living."

• Include an e-mail address.

Here are ways to make it clear that a person is non-living:

• Include a Death Date or Death Location.

• Mark the Death Date as "uncertain but definitely non-living."

For purposes of setting the default privacy level the following also applies. This is only for the default, before the manager makes any adjustments.

• If there is a Birth Date and no Death Date the profile defaults to Private unless:
  • the Birth Date is more than 100 years ago, and
  • the Death Date or Death Location is not marked "blank because still living".

• If the person is added as a non-living family member of a living person, it defaults to Private with Public Biography and Family Tree.

Why not always default to private?

Some members ask why the default setting isn't always "living." This way a profile would be private unless the manager proactively sets them as public or specifies that the person is non-living.

This is what we did when WikiTree was first created.

We changed our policy because too many profiles were being left as private. This became a major impediment to collaboration. WikiTree's mission is all about collaboration and sharing. Moreover, if the majority of profiles were kept private, we could not remain a free website. Advertising on public profiles is how we cover the expenses of offering free and unlimited private profiles.

This page was last modified 10:09, 9 May 2013. This page has been accessed 2,661 times.