Any possibility of changing the privacy handling of photos including both private and public/open persons?

+2 votes
99 views
The method WikiTree uses for handling photos containing a mix of living and deceased persons it to mark the picture as public, which seems backwards to me. Would it not make more sense to make any photo containing a private person private? That is for example the way TNG handles that issue.

As things work at the moment it is safe for me to upload any picture including only living people or only deceased people without compromising anyone's privacy, but I dare not upload any picture containing both living and non-living persons, as the living ones will be displayed to everyone rather than hidden, even though they are living.

Is there any chance that this method might be reconsidered? I do not want to risk displaying any picture of a living person, with the sole exceptions of myself and my parents.

thanks!
in Genealogy Help by Brant Gibbard G2G Crew (580 points)
I'll be interested to hear what others think of this suggestion.

Technically, it wouldn't an easy change. Anything privacy-related has to be done very carefully. But it's not a huge thing.

The question is what's best for WikiTree. We have a strong interest in encouraging photos and content to be public rather than private. This benefits the community and furthers our mission. It also helps draw in cousins searching Google because a page with photos will rank higher in search results. Plus, we can only offer so much free, private storage for things like photos. If a high proportion of photos were kept private we'd have to start limiting them.

1 Answer

+2 votes
It isn't ideal, but a compromise may be to only tag the deceased people in a photo with a mix. That way the picture only shows up on the page for the deceased person, and nothing turns up in a search for the living. That does mean the living person's image still is online, but there wouldn't be anything connecting it with their name. The odds are pretty slim of someone figuring out that it is Cousin Harold in the photo with Great Grandma if you don't attach his name to it.
by Erin Breen G2G6 Pilot (222k points)
I'd been thinking as a workaround more in terms of the reverse. Tag only the living, but also give the names of the deceased in the comments. In that way the picture would not be visible to the general public, but anyone on the trusted list that could see the photo would also be able to see the comments and know who was who.

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