Connection Finder Confusion

Question

Viewing the connection finder with an adoptive child/parent relationship ... How can there be a private person between an adoptive child and their adoptive parent, if the connection finder is returning the shortest path?

Also, the Connection Finder fails to properly inform the user that the user is looking at an adoptive (or non-biological) connection versus a biological connection. This can (and probably does) lead to viewers thinking that this is a biological connection when in fact it is not.

Answer 1

Viewing the connection finder with an adoptive child/parent relationship ... How can there be a private person between an adoptive child and their adoptive parent, if the connection finder is returning the shortest path?

This could be because of a recent merge or relationship change and the CF hasn't done a full update yet. Without the exact IDs, I can't tell you if it's just timing or if there is actually a bug.

Comments

I have shared a screenshot of the connection finder results with you on discord.

update:  upon further analysis, it looks like the private person in the Connection Finder path is correct and the Table feature on the page is incorrect with the missing entry.

---

more confusion #1:  The table feature on the page does not have the private person as the second entry.

more confusion #2:  The adoption box on the adoptive child profile has the adoptive father listed. The adopted child is connected to an Unlisted (Living, private father) profile, but the adoptive child profile does not indicate that it is connected to a non-biological father connection in the vital data area. The WikiTree Browser extension does not properly indicate that it is a non-biological connection.

more confusion #3:  The adoption box on the adoptive child profile has the adoptive mother listed with the surname of the spouse as opposed to the last name at birth. Also, the adoptive child profile does not indicate that it is connected to a non-biological mother connection in the vital data area. The WikiTree Browser extension does properly indicate that it is a non-biological connection.

---

For 1, the API is probably not returning the private person in the data. We made a change earlier this year (or maybe it was late last year) because even including placeholder data could potentially reveal more information than someone could find out by clicking around on the site.

Most people that use the "non-biological" marker are living and have chosen to attach themselves to their adoptive parents, and don't necessarily want a big advertisement on their profile that their adoptive parents aren't their "real" parents. So it's not show in the vital section. It is shown in the relationship finder though.

For WBE bugs, make sure Ian knows :)

Also a lot of this may change once this gets worked on after the redesign: https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/1646304/new-plan-for-biological-non-biological-parents