How do you see if parents are non-biological?

Question

In our effort to identify the LNAB for Unknown profiles I have posted the following message on various profiles:

Please change Last Name at Birth, under the edit tab, to xxxx
If this is incorrect please add explanatory note to the biography.

The reply I got on this particular profile was:

If you check the flags on this profile, you will see that his parents are not his biological parents

That turns out to be correct but I had to go into edit mode to see the non-biological selection for his parents.

Is there a way to make it clear on the profile page that it is indicated that this person is adopted? Or am I missing something?

Comments

The system indicates DNA and uncertain in the data sections. I see no reason it couldn't indicated adopted or non-biological, too.

Perhaps a fellow WikiTreer would be so kind as to ask for the addition of that indicator?

Answer 1

There is an adoption template that can be used for persons that are adopted.

Go to the following and add it to the profile.

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Template:Adopted_Child

The phrase "This person is Adopted and the biological parents are Unknown." could also be added at the beginning of the bio part of profile.

Comments

Thanks Chris, that is great. Will contact the profile manager and ask that he adds it.

Answer 2

Displaying status indicators for non-biological would be a great improvement! The system can already show relationships indicators such as "[half]" on half-siblings, so this should be very easy to implement.

Answer 3

Most people would never look at those buttons on the right side of the edit page. I make adoptions clear in the bio of both parents and offspring of the profiles I manage.

Comments

Well dang. I recently worked on my first profile of an adoptee and I looked in Wikitree help and I’m positive that what I (thought I) saw is that you don’t add parents for an adoptee. I did that wrong?

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You need to link the biological parents to the child, and mention the adoptive parents in the bio.  This is because WikiTree enables DNA-connecting.  Unless you couldn't care less about DNA, and want to follow your adoptive parents' tree!

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If you know the biological parents, they should be connected in preference to the adoptive parents.

Marking parents as non-biological prevents incorrect DNA test connections.

Answer 4

I like the sticker for the adoptee but Kim and Ros have a point.  Aren't we supposed to put the biological parent on and mention the adoptive parent in the bio?

"For public profiles without connections to living people, genetic connections should prevail. This is a choice that our community has made: our tree should be genetic."

So which would apply to https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Doucet-19?

Comments

Hi Cindy,

I'm generally not a fan of creating a profile when we have no information on a particular individual (though, based on the way that the internal database is designed, WikiTree does create such a parental profile when a sibling relationship is added to an existing profile for which no parental relationships exist).

Having said that - since Amerindien-1 is an existing profile created to represent the biological father of Germain Doucet (Doucet-19), I believe the Amerindien-1 profile should be connected as the father of Germain.

If it's decided not to make that change, and if the DNA sources indicate that the currently assigned father is not biologically related to Germain, the existing paternal relationship status may need to be changed to non-biological. That would prevent any additional future DNA tests that may be added to the relatives of Germain and/or his non-biological father from incorrectly propagating through that relationship. The two existing auDNA tests reflected on Germain's profile at this time (both test-takers are 8 steps away from him) don't happen to propagate to his father, since his father is out of range for auDNA propagation (9 steps away) for both of those tests.

The notes in the bios of the profiles should be updated if they are impacted by any change.