Orphaned profile added as family becomes private and unadoptable

Question

When the birthdate of an open orphaned profile is changed, or when it is added as a family member to a private profile, the orphaned profile then becomes private.

In this state, it is impossible to adopt the orphaned profile, change its privacy, or add additional family members, and requires admin intervention via info@wikitree.com. This has bitten a few times recently, and happens a lot more now with notable families post-GDPR when everyone living is unlisted.

This has come up a few times in G2G: K. Bloom suggested a fix in the answer to the first question below but it was just closed.

• https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/533146/orphaned-profile-made-private-before-i-adopted-it
• https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/689225/private-orphaned-profile-help
• https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/604243/i-want-to-adopt-an-orphaned-profile-set-on-private
• https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/420282/open-profile-changed-to-private-when-adding-as-child

I would suggest one of two potential fixes:

1. Always allow adopting orphaned profiles no matter what. It's already not allowed to orphan living/unlisted profiles. This would totally eliminate the problem.
2. Alternatively, never automatically restrict the privacy of an orphaned profile. Either leave it alone, or don't allow the operation that would restrict the privacy level until the user adopts the profile.

Edit: I found this thread from over a year ago that was closed saying the "situation is being addressed":

• https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/427928/policy-orphaned-profiles-privacy-strictly-private-changed

Answer 1

I think "don't allow the operation that would restrict the privacy level until the user adopts the profile" is probably the best solution, and I've added it to the to-do list. 

Comments

Thanks, that would help this issue. I do have concerns—founded or not—about implementing this approach. I hope the internals are such that you can catch all the cases; there are several operations that currently restrict privacy on connected profiles; and when you do, if there’s not a clear enough error message users may not know what exactly is wrong—will they get a link to the specific orphaned profile that they need to adopt, or might they have to hunt for it? I hope I am not trading one frustration for another.

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This would be part of a batch of data validation changes, one of which is improving the text of the error messages. I can't promise that we will catch all cases, but we'll try.