How is the privacy level for new profiles determined?

Question

I decided to take a look at the privacy level for the profiles I just added during the connect-a-thon and was unable to figure out the logic behind this. I didn't set any explicitly but I see a mix of  three different categories for the non-living people, even those with death dates. All were created as connections, of course, but some were added as children, others as parents, others spouses. Is this documented somewhere?

Example: My cousin, Conklin-3923 (1936-2007), was created as a child of Conklin-3914 (1909-1995). Her profile is Open. Am I misunderstanding the 150/100 year rules?

Example: OTOH Head-6194 (1944-2001) - very similar dates - is private with public biography and tree. Her profile was created from Ancestry using WikiTree Sourcer. Hmm, maybe I'm answering my own question there.

Anyway, I only knew about public and private before last week, so that's progress. :-)

Comments

I have observed that when a new profile for a deceased person has a first-level connection to an unlisted profile (for a living person) or a private profile, the new profile often gets set as some type of "private." I am not aware of any documentation about the logic the system uses for these settings.

But I have a question for you. I noticed a big green checkmark on the profile you created for Arthur Hughey Chambers. What is that about? Is this related to some new WikiTree feature I haven't been told about?

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Also, if you are using the check mark as a complete profile ...this is wrong usage, The bio and more sources and even images can be added. I suggest that you omit the check mark out of the suffix box.

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@Ellen That makes sense to me. But what bothered me was different kinds of non-private, like Open vs Public. I'll find some actual examples and edit my question.

I have no idea what that check mark is or how it got there. I tried to see if I could remove it but couldn't figure it out. @Gary, Thanks. I deleted it. Don't know how it got in that box at all.

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The privacy levels ( are described at Help:Privacy.  

In general, the profile manager decides what (if any) privacy level to use for the profile of a deceased person born in the last 150 years. It's the automatic assignment of  privacy levels for new profiles (as you experienced recently) that is mysterious.

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And yet somewhere there's a bit of code that does it and (presumably) one or more people who know what that code contains. :-)

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I edited the question with two examples. I think the key thing remaining, which I don't get. Is how the rule of 150 years from birth / 100 years from death is intended to work. I would have expected Conklin-3923 to be public rather than open.

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For profiles of deceased people born <150 years ago or died <100 years ago, YOU can choose the privacy levels you want. The only required privacy settings are for living people.

If YOU want editing access to a profile like Conklin-3923 to be limited the trusted list, YOU can set the profile as Public. We are not required to accept the decisions of a computer algorithm.

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Mystery solved about the check mark: https://www.wikitree.com/index.php?title=Special:NetworkFeed&who=Chambers-13847 It looks like Sourcer did that as well. Probably something odd about the Ancestry record.

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Thanks, Ellen. I guess the simplest thing is to always check the privacy level when I'm done adding and not assume I know who the default is decided. As far as I can see, all my non-living additions are Open except for those created from external saved data using Sourcer.

Answer 1

Some privacy levels will not work correctly if linked profiles can show information for those profiles with a higher privacy level. The software tries to set a level that is appropriate. So not all new profiles are open (White) automatically.