Request to allow Wikitree members to share our marriage on our profile

Question

Here is my public profile:

Here is the public profile of my wife

Me, my wife and our three children are all living and all at the most open privacy level possible. And yet, WikiTree policy does not allow the possibility of showing even the fact that we are married, let alone the identity.

Our children can display both parents. For example:

Here is the form for recording marriages:

Notice that one can CHOOSE to not display one's spouse. This, plus use of more restrictive privacy levels, would seem to be an adequate allowance for folks not wanting to display a marriage.

I posted this issue a few days ago and didn't get much attention. This time, I'm respectfully requesting that someone leadership to help make this change. If there is some important reason why this cannot be done, please let us know.

Comments

I agree Douglas. I can't speak for how difficult it would be to implement from a technical perspective, but it has always struck me as odd that we have the ability to make children and parents visible but not spouses. Perhaps if both spouses have "Private with public family tree", they could be shown on each other's profiles.

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As a side note: This would also be nice for notables who are living and therefore have to have yellow privacy. I don't know how many times I've gotten messages demanding to know why Prince Philip isn't listed in the immediate family members on Queen Elizabeth's profile! :)

Answer 1

The non-ability to show your spouse on your profile is a result of the privacy setting. I really think it would take a major software rewrite to allow what you want.

Comments

I understand that is a possibility. But do you know this to be the case? I would like to hear from someone who knows. With what I know about websites and the tremendous skills of the tech people, I'm pretty sure it would not be that hard.

But like I said, I'd like to hear from someone who knows. Thanks for the suggestion, though.

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This is what Chris said the last time this issue was brought up: https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/273731/spouse-not-shown-on-private-with-public-tree?show=274377#a274377

Answer 2

Hi Doug,

Wikitree has privacy rules for those living and recently deceased. If you add anyone you want to the Trusted List they will be able to see details of your wife's profile. As an example my husband, you can't see, however if I added you then you see his whole bit of our tree.

Data Protection laws dictate what info can be public over the internet and what can't. Wikitree wouldn't violate those laws. I hope you understand, these profiles are public, as in my wikiid comes up when you google my name :-/ I am happy to share what I've shared but I can't speak for my siblings/parents..etc..etc

Hope that helps :)

Comments

But you DO decide for your parents and siblings. If you are Profile manager then YOU set the privacy levels. You decide that.

Thanks for the suggestion, but I'm afraid you are missing the point. As you can see, my wife and children's identities are showing publicly. There are other ways our marriage can be seen. We are both shown as parents of the children. This is NOT about privacy protection because no privacy is being protected. It is simply a case one's making a personal choice that affects no one else. It is about displaying information in a specific way that is already displayed elsewhere.

And remember...  If anyone does NOT want to do it this way, there are simple ways they can protect privacy as they wish. Perhaps you say it is not important. It is to me and I'm making a good faith effort to request a change.

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Get your point, I hadn't quite realised what you meant in full. The previous discussion makes interesting reading. I get that you can see your relationships in other ways so why not your marriage! However your last point that 'if anyone does NOT want it this way there are simple ways they can protect privacy..' I do think is back to front. Privacy should always be the default setting for everyone but hopefully in future you will have ways to override this. If there was a simple fix I'm sure Chris and the team would have made it by now, wikitree has evolved massively just in the 18 months I've been on here, all moving in the right direction :)

Answer 3

Hi Douglas,

I had a similar experience. I suspect it is a bug that slipped in with some automated protection setting that has been implemented.
 

On WikiTree was an open profile of a woman that was deceased, death date was completed as well, She was connected to a child profile that was set to private. I connected a husband (with death date completed and privacy open to the woman.
The moment I connected the woman's profile went yellow. The husband stayed open. When  I clicked on the woman's profile I cannot see the open husband whom I connected but from the husband's sided I can see the woman. This was caused by the woman being connected to I assume a living child profile. The marriage exists  it is just not visible. I'm just reporting it here because I think it might help tech to fix the problem.

The profile manager of the woman I connected to seems to have left WikiTree but left his deceased profiles open to assist development but WikiTree is changing those profiles to private the moment we connect to them.!

Answer 4

I agree with Douglas.

We should re-evaluate the privacy requirements regarding the display of marriages for living individuals when privacy is not an issue.

Why should we hide the spousal relationship but not the other relationships when the various profiles have the same privacy setting? At least for the lowest setting allowable for living people, we should allow the marriage to display since that level already allows the other relationships to display.

The displays of all relationships should be consistent for each privacy setting. We already have the ability to hide a marriage from display with the check box on the marriage edit page. We can expand the check box's use to hide any marriage that we want hidden. And we have several privacy settings that can be adjusted to hide relationships. We need at least one privacy level that allows the marriage to be displayed.

The marriage should be displayable in the Data section when privacy is not an issue, just as other relationships are displayed. Even if the interaction between different privacy settings only allows for [private spouse] to be displayed, that is preferable to having no indication of a spouse in the Data section.

Answer 5

Yesterday Jamie Nelson posted a comment with a link that I think bears elevation to an "Answer". This question has been strenuously discussed more than a year ago and Chris Whitten posted the kind of response I was seeking. While I wish to have heard differently, this appears to be the way it is. Thanks for sharing, Jamie.

https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/273731/spouse-not-shown-on-private-with-public-tree?show=274377#a274377

Answer 6

Considering the levels of WikiTree privacy, it is ideally you have both yours and your wife's profile as 'yellow'/private with public bio and tree, and have a piece in your respective biographies about your special day and have the other person linked so that they can get to the profle