Adding second, third, etc. cousin who don't know me from Adam

Question

I am working through my GEDcompare, and part of this entails adding profiles for the children of my grandparents, great-grandparents, and so on. I would like to add them if possible (and sourced!) as it's frustrating to go looking for someone and only find their sibling. As I go along, though, I am troubled by the thought that I am putting names and details out there, when people more closely related to them have nothing to say about it. They might object, or they might find it interesting, so I don't know what to do. Is there a guideline that more experienced WikiTree-ers follow? Obviously, all living people are Private, but what do I do about the rest of them?

Any advice would be much appreciated, as I don't want to err to badly in either direction. Thanks.

Comments

I would add them.  If closer relatives (of the profiles) come forward, join Wikitree and would like to manage the profiles you could give them the profiles.  My experience is that they will see the work but will just offer tid-bits of information (sometimes very good information) and not really want to join Wikitree.  Good luck!

Answer 1

Private is no longer sufficient if you are adding living people who are not Wiktree members. They should be unlisted. Here is the Wikitree Privacy Policy.

Comments

If the birth date is less than 100 years ago and there is no death date, those profiles will become unlisted automatically!!!!

For me personally, I dont add any relatives that I know are still living unless they are from a generation earlier than mine - and therefore will most likely die before me.

I certainly do not add anyone whom I know is still alive and is younger than me - except for one nephew - but that was just so I could connect to his fathers family. And it was done before the GDPR went into effect.

I have not added my cousins except for one who chose to become a family member. I have another cousin whose husband has already passed, but since my cousin is still alive, I cant add her husband until she passes so that I can add both profiles.

I dont want to create a whole lot of unlisted profiles.

My own son does not have a profile. No need for that at all.

My husband did have a profile, which has gone unlisted. But he has such a large family - and many of his cousins whom I made profiles for, have now also gone unlisted.

Answer 2

I agree with the other comments about creating profiles for living people -- that's probably not a good idea in today's climate.  But I have added a number of profiles for deceased cousins and other collateral relatives, and have never encountered objections from their descendants who are more closely related than I am.  On the contrary, I have "met" a number of new cousins I didn't know I had who found me on WikiTree by searching the web for info on their own ancestors.  They are almost always happy to find the data, pleased to make my acquaintance, and say they are glad that someone is documenting all this.  Sometimes they provide additional info or photos that I didn't have.  I think if you stick to working on the deceased, you most likely will not encounter any objections or hostility.  If you do, you can always remove the offending data and apologize.  Just my $0.02.

Comments

Thank you all very much. I wasn't going to post living people - I am sorry that I didn't say that clearly - it was the two and three generations ago people that I was wondering about. So I'm going to put the spouses into my grandmother's 13 {!} brothers and sisters, and sleep peacefully. Unless somebody complains.

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Afterthought:  I should have added that my comments above about the reaction of new cousins applies to the 5% or so of those cousins who actually care about this.  I think it's likely that you'll never hear any reaction from the overwhelming majority of them!