Should WikiTree Allow Living Notables to be Visible? [closed]

Question

Hi WikiTreers,

In 2018 WikiTree made some changes to the way living people were handled in response to the European Union's "General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)". You can read the previous announcement here. One of those changes was to make the profiles of all living people Unlisted privacy unless they had a WikiTree account. A casualty of this change was that the profiles of living notables were no longer visible to members.

Should WikiTree allow the privacy of living notables to be opened up again?

How I envision it could work:

• For a profile to be considered eligible, they would need to be notable enough to have an entry at WikiData, and they cannot be a child. There would be a marker on the profile, similar to Project Protection, that could be set by Project Leaders.
• The living notable would need to be managed by a project. This could be the Notables Project, or it could be a project related to the profile such as the US Presidents Project.
• The information on the profile would need to be information that is public knowledge. WikiTree would need to have similar rules to what Wikipedia has, where the information has to come from widely published sources or information the person has released themselves. Public figures still deserve privacy, and we don't want to include any information they wouldn't want to be published.
• Living family members of notables would remain Unlisted, unless those family members are also notable.
• We would not allow DNA test information to be added to the profile.
• If the notable or one of their nuclear family members requests it, WikiTree would make the profile Unlisted again, or remove it entirely.

Any thoughts? I've posted an answer for "yes" and one for "no" that you can upvote or comment on, or if you have questions you can post another answer below.

Edit: I'll make a second draft addressing the concerns expressed below and will post a new proposal sometime next week.

Comments

I have thought long and hard on this as the US Presidents Project lead.   I can live with the fact that we do not open up the profiles.   What I think we need to change is the rule that living notables cannot be mentioned.

This goes to the number of critiques that the project received when we posted the need to work on the ancestry of the new US President and Vice President.....clearly, it was an error on our part by mentioning their names on G2G.   That is really what needs to be fixed.

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I could live with moving them up one click on the Privacy dial - to Red privacy. At least then the basic information could be seen, and less duplicates would be made.

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I don't understand why anyone would object to private with public tree.  

Living individuals attached to the notable would still be invisible, unless they, too, are notable enough to require a more open profile.

I've never  understood the thing about jumping on even the mention of a living person, when the stricture was (is) against discussing their genealogy in public.  I agree with Robin that this really needs to be addressed.

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I came across this page on the BBC, and wondered where Wikitree is currently in regard to living notables?  That page discusses in some detail all the nearest living heirs to Elizabeth II of England, down to her newest great-grandchild - an infant.  I cannot help to wonder why Wikitree keeps a stricter standard than those living elsewhere.

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To my understanding, the requester received a good amount of feedback with a number of different approaches and recommendations towards what people are interested in seeing. I believe the next step is to put forth a new proposal based on the feedback received, as there were a lot of different recommendations that will need to be reconciled in some fashion. Hopefully we'll see the new proposal soon.

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Scott, the note on closing says "sometime next week".  That was on the 25th March. This is now the 19th April, almost a month later.  I thought it was fair to ask what the status is.

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No worries, Melanie. I was only providing what I'd heard about where this was going, but it's certainly a valid question. I suspect the answer is that they're still deciding exactly how to carefully word their next proposal, so that we don't hop down too many bunny-holes (but of course we probably will).

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Re-writing the proposal got pushed down in priority on my to-do list but it's still on my radar.

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We are getting close to finishing a new proposal. I'm going to close this conversation for now.

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Here is a new draft and discussion:

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Living_Notables

https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/1228205/any-input-on-this-living-notables-policy-draft

Answer 1

Yes, I think the privacy of living notables should be opened up.

Please vote up this answer if you agree, and add any comments below if you have them.

Comments

If this were allowed, it would cut down on the number of duplicates  made for some of the more "popular" of these folk.

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The only problem I see with notables bring private is that duplicates get created because it isn't possible to see that someone already has a profile. I wonder if it would be possible to have a setting where living notables have their profiles visible just enough to see who they are, but have everything else private.

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I agree with the suggestion to open up notable profiles and your proposed process sounds workable.  I don't think the Australia Project would have any objection to managing any Australians in that category.

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It would make the US Presidents project much easier to manage as we could mention the name of a living US President and would allow people to see their connections.   The project whole heartedly supports this proposal

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Yes I believe it would be helpful if the profiles of living notables were open.  For example, Prince Philip's mtDNA is in the published scientific literature:

http://www.mun.ca/biology/scarr/Gill_et_al_1994_DNA_analysis_of_Romanovs,_Nature_Genetics%206,_130-135.pdf

His mtDNA could be used to confirm his direct maternal line ancestry back to Princess Alice (daughter of Queen Victoria and mother of Tsarina Alexandra - whose mtDNA was recovered from her remains).

[added] Now I see "We would not allow DNA test information to be added to the profile."  I believe there should be exceptions like this one.

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If the profile has to remain locked, would it be possible to show a link to their WikiPedia article?  This would help to eliminate duplicates, and only notable living people would be included.

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I strongly endorse this proposal. I appreciate the need for living persons to have privacy. However, I think WikiTree has carried privacy concerns (and fear of liability under GDPR) to an absurd extreme when it insists that we must not breathe the names of the Queen of England or the living ex-presidents of the United States (and must keep their profiles Unlisted) -- ostensibly for fear that they would sue WikiTree for breach of privacy.

Just as living WikiTree members have private profiles (with varying degrees of privacy), well-known notables should continue to have private profiles, with editing privs limited to the project that agrees to manage the profile, plus other carefully vetted profile mangers.

And WikiTree can start slow on this. Start by relaxing the privacy on the profiles for the Queen of England, her royal consort, and the Prince of Wales; the living President and ex-Presidents of the United States and their living spouses; the Pope of Rome; the Prime Ministers of the UK, France, and Germany; and other exceptionally well-known individuals.

Beyond the people who are universally known, there are degrees of notability, and it probably does not make sense to relax privacy restrictions on most of those degrees of notability. Example: The Unlisted profiles of notables currently on my watchlist include some [independently notable] adult children of a now-deceased world-famous movie star (family members were added to help connect the star to the tree), spouses of those children, and other people that those spouses were or are married to. Almost all of these family members are accomplished professionals who are the subjects of individual Wikipedia articles (and therefore also Wikidata pages), but only a couple of them are people whose names I would recognize if it were not for their more famous relatives. WikiTree should retain Unlisted privacy on most of these people, at least until after gaining experience with this proposal.

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I agree with Ellen that only the most notable of notables should be made visible. As noted below in other answers, drawing the line will be difficult.

- I think it would be OK if the information available on the profile should just allows visitors to identify who it is. It doesn't need to be much more.

- Since this is a genealogy website, notables with no public information on their parentage should remain unlisted (and creation of their profiles strongly discouraged).

- By notable children I assume notables under 18 years of age. These should remain unlisted.

It would be extremely helpful to relax the rules and allow living notables to be at least mentioned on the public profiles of their deceased notable relatives, which so far is not allowed. (ie, it should not be a problem to mention on the profile of a deceased President that his son also became President, even if said son is living. Or that a racing car driver's son became a Grand Prix world champion, etc.)

On the practical side, the France project would be happy to manage such living notables as fall in the project's scope. As said above, it should be really notable notables. A 3 line Wikipedia page without family information won't do.

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I upvoted this. Like Ellen and Isabelle I think the visibility of living notables should be applied with caution.

But since I expect that the visibility of a living non-member would have to be turned on by the projects (project leaders) I also expect that due caution comes automatically with the feature.

Since these people are living they are well within the time span for red or green privacy locks; I see no need for extra privacy measures apart from what the project sees fit to disclose in the biography.

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I have upvoted even though I have some reservations.  I see potential problems here.  Wikipedia spends a lot of time managing edit wars and most of those are on the pages of living people.  We do not want to end up there.

In addition to the restrictions above I would add that not only must a profile be created and owned by a project but that it could only be edited by people in that project with a certain level of badge, say team leader or some such.

Comments should be switched off to avoid insults on the profiles of Donald Trump or Joe Biden as well as people posting 'I'm Her Majesty's 13th cousin, twice removed' on QEII.

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I agree provided we have the right privacy settings and as Stephen states turn off comments and restrictions on who edits a profile.  If someone wants something adding they can ask the Project managing the profile to do this.

We do not want anything adding that is going to cause issues with the regulations.

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i upvoted the proposal, but with some hesitation. I agree with Stephen Trueblood's suggestions. I have witnessed edit wars on Wikipedia. I would like to add one further suggestion: that the guidance should say that what goes on the profile should be purely factual and not stray into judgements or opinions.

I also agree with previous comments that this should, at least at this stage, be confined to the really notable, even though the borderline will be hard to determine. Decisions on this could perhaps be taken by the Project which is going to manage the profile. This will also help to keep the extra workload for Projects manageable: there are a load of relatively minor people with, for example, entries in Wikipedia, and without some restriction, some Projects could be overwhelmed.

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I think that this is a sensible suggestion. Any 'Notable' who is still living, is already well known by the public, and there is no reason to hide their profile. Having said that this must be done correctly, as pointed out by more than me. As a living person, their privacy must be maintained and strictly controlled.

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I support the idea of making some information about a limited number of living notables publicly viewable. For this to be manageable from the managing project's point of view, I would suggest that:

• the privacy setting be similar to "public" -- i.e. the content will be public but only people on the trusted list can edit it.
• the project gets the final say about who is on the trusted list -- e.g. if another member creates a duplicate and it gets merged with the project managed notable, the project can remove that member from the trusted list.
• the other restrictions be similar to project protected profiles (PPPs) -- e.g. only the profile manager, a leader or project coordinator can edit the relationships.

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Good point about the removal of managers who get on to the trusted list because of having created a duplicate. This is a policy point that should be made very clear.

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While I agree the Queen and living presidents should be opened up,  I like the idea of a preview profile for other Celebrities.   

When I was leader of the GITM - Genealogy in the Media Project we created lots of profiles for celebrities who appeared in such programmes as Who Do You Think You Are.   While one line may have been openly listed in such programmes the other family lines we found in our research might not.   We would need to carefully consider who and what we now open up.   e.g. we had to be careful not to mention the living personality in any of their deceased ancestors profiles.

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Yes, absolutely. As for worries about edit wars about profiles, I think it would make sense to not have elaborate biographies anyway. No one goes to Wikitree to learn about who Hillary Clinton, Paul McCartney or Daniel Ellsberg are. If you look them up here it is only because you are interested in their relations. A single line so you know you are looking at the "right" McCartney is quite sufficient, together with a Wikipedia link.

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The idea of I Speed sounds reasonable. I am also in favor of opening up the profiles of Notables (and if it's only to not create duplicates). There is so much info available about Notables that I think we can open them, but close the editibility. That would mean to put them at (the best) the green privacy. I support the thought of having projects as PMs who are the only ones that can edit the profiles. That way we should be able to prevent edit wars.

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As long as we are able to manage the privacy to keep the profiles protected, I don't see any issues with opening up the profiles for visibility. I have more concerns with open editing as there are numerous controversial profiles that could be damaged if they're not carefully managed and monitored. There are often not enough of us to mind the store when it comes to these types of things, so it's a bit challenging if we were to open things too much at first, so it would be good to do this in phases. I'm also concerned about the potential onslaught of Trusted List requests that this will most certainly generate, but we'll have to address those sooner or later. I did see the recommendation that all users be removed from at least Profile Manager if not Trusted List on all project managed profiles that are Open. I have mixed feelings on this. Involved Profile Managers can be a great help if they have a vested interest in a profile and as long as they're doing a good job managing or co-managing the profile, then I see no reason to remove them. I suppose we'd need to discuss this a bit more, as I'd like to understand the reasons behind this. Having others on the Trusted List also allows them to be notified of changes to the profile, which means more eyes on what's going on and more opportunities to correct issues more quickly. I don't know that we want 20 people on a Trusted List, but I wouldn't rule it out on certain more popular profiles. I guess what I would think is this is more of a case-by-case basis. And different projects may have different perspectives on this, so I can't say I speak for all.

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For the US Presidents Project it is not so much to prevent the creation of duplicates....it is the number of times that we have received a "critique" because we mentioned a living president/vice president in another profile or here on G2G.   Maintaining the profiles as Private with public biography and family tree is what we plan to do for the US Presidents Project.

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I believe that notables should be opened up to a limited extent.  For example Pope Francis is invisible to most people.  Only those on the Notables Project can see that his profile gives his name Jorge Bergoglio which is freely available in the press at the time of his election and the biography simply says: Better known as Pope Francis.  A simple single sentence.  Also with a photograph readily available from the Vatican website and other Wikicommons sites.

It would be great if we could open up those notables that are extremely well known world wide eg Royalty.  The biography should be restricted to well published information.  In the case of royalty everyone knows the line of succession etc and that should be available.  

Its personal information that can be used to undertake identity theft that needs to be restricted and that is the purpose of the legislation, eg dates of birth etc.  A year or decade isn't specific enough for identity theft.

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I upvoted mainly with this in mind. If Wikipedia articles give a reasonably full bio of a notable, why would it be necessary to include all that info. We are, after all, a genealogy website. Showing someone’s genealogical connections does not mean we have to have all of a life story when it can be found elsewhere.

Opposite this, this is why I write as full a bio for common stock folks (like all of my relatives for the past 200+ years.) It won’t be found anywhere else.

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For example Pope Francis is invisible to most people.  Only those on the Notables Project can see that his profile gives his name Jorge Bergoglio 

commented by Deborah Talbot

I am a member of the Notables project, and what I see is "Living Bergoglio".

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While it might be acceptable and helpful to have some sort of uneditable profile for notables so duplicates are not created, how will Discussion Rule 3 be managed as members are not allowed to discuss the genealogy etc. of living people? I presume the Comments box on profiles might need to be removed.

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WT provides the space to write about the lives of our ancestors, and many of us do, so I don't see why notables should be excluded from that.

Wikipedia does contain errors and unsourced information. If we write a bio here and add original sources where possible, they are better than using a Wikipedia article as a source. I don't think it is good genealogy practice to discourage people from looking at original records and just accept the word of a Wikipedia article.

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Leandra, I'd be interested to know where you think to find original sources for living people.... I doubt that the original marriage certificate for the Queen and her husband is publicly available, and they married more than 73 years ago. So we will *have to* take the word of second hand sources if we are able to work with profiles of living people.

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@Jelena

I know in the US there are birth and marriage indexes available for living people.   Mine is out there.

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Jelena, English marriage registrations of that period are freely available on FamilySearch never mind the GRO.

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I know in the US there are birth and marriage indexes available for living people.   Mine is out there.

commented by Robin Lee 

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I have a 90-plus-year-old aunt by marriage whose birth record is also "out there", and I have had to fight to keep her off FamilySearch (although she has no objections to being added to Wikitree). 

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Sonuvagun! I discovered that my marriage record is on Ancestry. I did not know that...

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Contemporary newspaper coverage of royal weddings etc would be considered primary sources.  I agree that the actual marriage certificate is the most primary but that would be unreasonable.  Every time a new royal is born it news headlines around the world so I would consider that as a primary source.

For example Prince Philip died yesterday. It’s been reported in tweets, newsfeeds etc around the world.  I don’t need to see his death certificate to know he has died.  Newspapers report that to us all.  This is the type of sourcing we can use for notables and not be breaking the legislation.

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@Jelena - there's an image of the marriage register for one Philip Mountbatten and Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor on Wikimedia Commons.

Images of birth and marriage certificates for a few living British Royals are available online.

And ^^^ what they said.

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I think that it is much more respectful of the privacy of super-famous living notables to base their profiles on newspaper reports, Wikipedia, and similar widely circulated sources than it would be to display or quote their birth and marriage certificates on this website.

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In the case of the British Royal family, in recent generations they have chosen to release the BDM certificates into the public domain, which meets the criteria in the proposal. In some countries public access to BDM records of living people is legal.

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I would like to see Living Notables profiles opened to at least Public (green) or Yellow status, just so we can prevent duplicates and be able to see their connections. Also at least one or both of their parents should be deceased in order for the entre line of descent to be seen.

I have a number of notable profiles that i created and linked, and who all went unlisted when the GDPR rules came into effect. I would like others to be able to see those profiles again!!!

I would have to agree with spouses and children to remain private (unlisted) and ONLY the notable be public.

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Yes. By all means, put some controls on it, but if they can have profiles on Wikipedia, which often lists wives, parents, children, or siblings, why not have notables on here. Perhaps a discussion could be had on what controls would be necessary. Like a living person not being able to be presented, unless it is protected by a project, with predetermined limitations for privacy.

Answer 2

No, I think the privacy of living notables should remain Unlisted.

Please vote up this answer if you agree, and add any comments below if you have them.

Comments

I just want to point out that just because a person has a Wikidata entry or Wikipedia entry that doesn't mean their profile on WikiTree will be changed from Unlisted privacy. If there was any possible controversy or privacy issues surrounding a profile, it could remain Unlisted or locked to editing. It would be up to the project managing the profile.

Also, I don't see how this diverges from the purpose of the site. The original people in the connection finder were all living individuals, and the only reason that notables were made private was because of a wait-and-see approach to the GDPR rules. After 3 years, it was time to revisit this.

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I am against any privacy level changes that will display the personal data of any living profiled individual to non-WikiTreers. I am against any exceptions to this general privacy rule, as per the potential for legal problems.

I can see the benefit of allowing WikiTreers (possibly limited to Honor Code/Wiki Genealogists) to see the personal data for Unlisted profiles, but I don't believe we should expose that data outside WikiTree.com.

Perhaps one of the superfluous Privacy+ levels (I suggest Private with Public Biography) could be retooled as a Notables privacy level.

In my opinion, this decision is a website owner/management decision. Hopefully, they will keep the potential legal nightmares in mind when they make the final decision.

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Honor Code/WikiTree Genealogists would definitely NOT be a criterion for seeing unlisted profiles.  It's much too easy to obtain those statuses, so no protection for the Unlisted profiles.

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Hi Jamie.

How do you reconcile the Wikipedia rules on Biographies of living persons which adhere strictly to all applicable laws in the United States with the GDPR laws on which WikiTree has based its rules?

Are you saying that the GDPR based rules on WikiTree are now to be abandoned?

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With tens of thousands of deceased notables with entries in Wikipedia who don't have profiles on WikiTree yet, I really don't understand this obsession with living celebrities. Aren't they being hounded enough by paparazzi, gossip shows, gossip magazines, and cyberstalkers? Leave them alone, and honour notables from the past! If we were running out of deceased notables to document, it would be one thing, but out of the 13 surnames I have tallied so far (Crozier, French, Gerschefske, Kelso, McNair, Miller, Pudder, Slade, Waddell, Welch, West, Westfall, and White), I've identified 596 deceased notables with those surnames as their Last Name At Birth on Wikipedia, and only 232 of those (38.9%) have profiles on WikiTree. Multiply that by the hundreds of surnames on WikiTree, and you begin to grasp the sheer number of deceased notables who have been neglected so far. So why are so many people obsessing about living people, when there are so many deceased people yet to be commemorated?

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Second Greg's motion!

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Add to Greg's very valid point that there are tons of profiles already in existence for deceased notables that are nothing more than a copy and paste of an entire Wikipedia article, or from a dictionary of biography. There's more than enough work to do on those profiles.

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Well said Greg, I 110% agree.

But... those profiles will potentially generate a lot of traffic thus money, so isn't that the real question here?

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If this proposal is one brought about by revenue considerations, that should probably be stated.

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As many above, I'm vehemently against such a change.

First, who is notable? A lot of useless conflicts ahead.

Second, as Greg pointed, zillions of dead people who can qualify as notable have no WT profiles.

Answer 3

I agree that privacy should be opened up 'for visibility', but only allow editing by the PM or Project.  Allowing anyone to edit profiles of Living profiles can cause inappropriate or incorrect information to be added, requiring the Project and PMs to be much more diligent.

Project Protection currently allows others to Edit the profile, but cannot change relationships. Living Notable profiles should remain locked to editing until the normal 'Open Profile' timeframe occurs after their death. Comments can be added with information and PM or Project could add the information.

The proposal, as stated, does not clearly indicate, if anyone would be able to edit the profile of Living Notables.

Comments

WikiTree already has the ability to prevent editing as described.

The least restrictive setting available for profiles of living people is Private with Public Biography and Family Tree. This means that the profile can be edited only by people on the Trusted List. This is how the profiles of living WikiTreers are treated -- and it is how the profiles of living notables were treated before the advent of GDPR led to them being converted to Unllisted.

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We were imagining that profiles marked with the "notable" designation could be any privacy -- Open through Unlisted, at the discretion of the project managing the profile.

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Jamie, when I posted this, no one in the Yes Group had said anything about limiting who can edit these profiles.  Now, there are several posting in that group that agree that they should not be edited outside of the PM / Project.  I don't think it should be responsibility of Projects to lock the editing.  I think that should be a system requirement, as it is with Member profiles.

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I will have to reconsider my vote if there is any possibility that living profiles become Open or even Public. I had assumed the Notable profiles would not be any more opened than they were pre-GDPR, and that was Yellow Privacy. If profiles are allowed to be Open that indeed opens the way to edit wars. If they are Public anyone can see content that was previously removed through the Changes log. IMO that could quickly become unmanageable, especially if the criteria on Notability is so low (Wikidata has imported, for instance, anyone who is in the Peerage.com or Genealogics databases, including living children and intensely private families. It also contains many entries with no info at all, no dates, no places and sometimes not even given names).

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I'd have to think a full-open approach through for a long time before I'd commit to something along those lines. My approach is similar to Robin Lee and the Presidents project. Aim for Yellow privacy in the beginning and we can examine what additional changes might be warranted after the dust has settled. I won't rule anything out, but at the same time, I have the same concerns about details that should not be included. If we have profiles with key personal information that can't be shared, they probably won't make it to the open biography status. We'll just have to deal with those on a case-by-case basis. There might also have to be a bit of sanitizing before certain parts can be opened. That might depend heavily on availability of people to get that part done. This could end up being a slow process.

Answer 4

I do agree with you Linda Peterson...

It would be a good idea, but more like a "Preview" that provides very basic information, but while the notable is thankfully still living, can only be edited by (what I would call) the "PPM" (Project & Profile Manager).

If Wikipedia provides certain basic information for a Notables, then why not provide this limited Preview like view.

If someone has a question, correction, etc... then they could comment or private message.

I hope I had explained this okay via text... :-))

~Brian Kerr

Answer 5

I have mixed feeling on this. Personally, I would love to see more openness regarding "notable" profiles. It seems silly, for example, that we can't see the profile of living ex-presidents when that information is so easily obtainable so many other places. At the same time I would be concerned about who is considered notable and what information is considered permissible to post.

I checked out a random living notable on Wikipedia and discovered that not only were the names of her minor children posted, but so were each of their exact birthdates (they are notable only for being her children). With that as an example, I think we are opening the door to a very slippery slope here and I'm not sure our project managers would be equipped to monitor the 1000s of profiles this would suddenly open up.

Comments

Presumably, each one would have to be opened by its PM, so it wouldn't need to be a sudden wholesale change.

Answer 6

I assume that this proposal to weed out the duplicates that occur to the fact that living notables are hidden.  I can't imagine how many duplicates are/have existed for some people.

I would support opening the profiles visibilities but echo comments that they be managed appropriately and that only trusted persons be allowed to edit.  I would further posit that the trusted list be vetted based on some criteria (that likely exists in Wikitree rules) so that we aren't subject to notable "hoarders" or overrun with multiple managers.

So privacy settings could be set to either public (with limited access) or up to "Private with public bio"

Answer 7

Has WikiTree management assessed the legal ramifications of this proposed change?

Is Norbert's comment that GDPR does not apply to persons of public interest correct - does GDPR specifically state that?

Comments

The GDPR rules were taken into account by management before this proposal was made. This proposal is mostly to see if this is something the community wants, not for the WikiTree community to discuss if it's legal or not.

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What does it matter what membership wants if it is not legal? In my opinion, membership should always consider the legalities of any policy changes.

I believe my questions are relevant to this discussion. I would especially want an answer to my 2nd question.

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GDPR would have no bearing on notables living outside the EU so a yes/no should not depend entirely on the GDPR rules.

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By the same token Jamie, although WikiTree was started in the US, there are notables who are neither in the US nor in Europe, and the laws of each country are not the same.  

We also don't want to fall into a ''papparazzi'' slot (if that's how it's spelled).

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Thanks for answering my questions, Jamie.

GDPR was just an example, since it was the primary rationale for making profiles for living non-members unlisted in the first place.

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Lindy, your concern for WT's legal liability is reasonable, but I would rather rely on WT management to make that determination.  Given the information about living celebrities that can be found all over the internet, much of it probably more critical and damaging than we would ever post, can it really be that dangerous for WT to simply reveal profiles?

I think revealing celebrity profiles would be likely to give WT more credibility, rather than us looking like some odd little website with eccentric rules.

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Anyone can sue anyone for any reason, and they dont have to win to tie up funds. If this holds the risk of sinking the ship, we should back away rather than risk taking the site down over wanting movie stars' profiles opened up.

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Not our decision.

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I do not think this is about movie stars.

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Julie, I would prefer to be told upfront that WikiTree management thoroughly considered the legalities and potential risks before they made this proposal, rather than presuming that they did.

I am no more concerned with notable profiles than I am with profiles for non-notables. I don't feel that the rules for notable profiles should be different than the rules for non-notable profiles. In my opinion, we should respect the privacy rights for ALL living profiled individuals.

Of course, I realize that my viewpoint is the minority viewpoint. However, as long as I have sufficient relevant information on which to base my opinion, I will accept the final decision.

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I agree that the message could have been more explicit, but as Jamie is a Team member, I doubt she would have posted without agreement from the Team.

On what some people may or may not consider a related matter--it seems like it would be a good improvement to G2G if, when people post, they are identified by their most important title, rather than Pilot, Astronaut, etc.  Instead:  Leader, Moderator, Team...

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Living notables could relocate to the EU at any time.

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I recently removed unsupported salacious gossip from a notable profile. It involved someone else who is still living, and their loved ones are also living. These days the media is so invasive in the lives of notables, and the gossip often outrageous, so opening up the profiles of living notables could increase the amount of policing necessary to maintain polite standards.

Answer 8

I cannot understand why the managers of these living notable peoples profiles are reluctant to contact these living people and obtain their permission to open the profiles. Even if you put aside the legal arguments, why would WikiTree not want to extend a simple courtesy to these living people. After all it is our honour code to do so.

You never know you might make a new WikiTree friend who might turn out to be a great ambassador for WikiTree.

Surely it is not our intention that we want the editorial freedom to write what we "legaly" want to and that obtaining a living persons permission might hamper this?

Answer 9

I agree with opening a highly notable profile providing their parents are both deceased. I also agree with only allowing it if they are highly publicize sources, nothing too controversial until notables immediate family have signed off or have passed or via the notable's own autobiography. Keep their non-notable relations whom are still living unless they are notables unlisted as well. You can give them that basic profile without overstepping privacy of family members. Save controversial sections for after their spouses and offspring have passed or again the notable writes about it.

Biography can be limited to profile managers and top sourcing guides.

I am also good with leaving it as is. You can trace back a few generations via Wikipedia and other sources enough to find connection.

Answer 10

Yes I would like to see living notables visible on wikitree.