If a profile manager's profile is managed by a third party how do you contact them?

Question

I have come across a situation that I have never encountered before, and I'm thoroughly confused about why and how it happened and what the consequences are. There is a profile manager of a large number of profiles whose own profile is managed by someone else. So, if you send a private message to the manager of a profile, whose own profile is under another the control of another manager, who gets the email? I am completely baffled by this.

I am not going to link the profile here, but if someone thinks this warrants a look by the team, I am happy to send an email. If this is an acceptable practice and doesn't cause issues, I'll just move along. ;)

Thanks!

Comments

for the particular case you mention... its a good indication that the middle person is no longer active. That's person's "manager" should be contacted instead (or in addition).

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A similar issue is causing a problem in a recent G2G post where a new Wikitreer would like access to her mother’s profile, but it is managed by someone who does not manage their own profile. I have been wondering whether to advise making direct contact with info@ to ask for help under these circumstances.

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that's the case in question.

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Yes, that's the situation that prompted my question. The problem is most people are not going to go to the profile manager's profile to see if they manage their own profile. They are going to request trusted list access from the profile they want access to, which in turn sends an email to the profile manager. In this case, the profile manager does not manage their own profile, so who does the email go to, and if they aren't managing their own profile, it seems to me they are inactive, in which case they should not be managing any other profiles.

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A message to the PM will go to the PM.

A message posted on the PM's profile will go to the PM's PM.

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I guess the thing that is bothering me is why would someone, who is not active to the point of having someone else manage their profile, be managing numerous other profiles? It causes confusion and situations like the one occurring now. This shouldn't happen.

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I can imagine lots of valid reasons, including dying (and not (yet) marked as such).

It can be a lot of trouble to change "ownership" of many profiles (and typically not necessary anyway).

This case just needs simple admin intervention (from the unresponsive manager process -- if not more immediate direct intervention)

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Bothers me too Deb. I cannot understand why they would do it and certainly do not fully understand the consequences.

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but oddly enough, the one person looks to be more recently active than the manager of that person.

I've had other people add me as a manager to their profile, simply because they didn't understand how it all worked (thinking they were granting me permission to other profiles they managed)

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Dennis,

I get adding another manager either accidentally or on purpose, what I don't understand is removing yourself as manager if you intend to remain active. Open orphaned profiles are preferable to profiles managed by inactive managers whether they are deceased or otherwise occupied.

Yes, unresponsive profile manager may resolve the issue for one person, but it doesn't address what may be a more significant issue here.

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without additional facts, all we can do is speculate :)

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Adding another manager to your own profile is fraught.  They can remove you.  Not sure if they can change your email without your password, but if they can, they can then change your password and impersonate you.

So when I said messages go to the PM, they go to the email address on the PM's profile, but there's no telling what that might have been set to.

Answer 1

From the information that you provided, I suspect that an innocent mistake was made in creating new accounts for relatives and adding those family members to other family members' trusted lists.

Seems like the best plan here is to send private messages to both of these people, describe the situation you observed, explain that it's puzzling that an active member would not be manager of their own profile,  and ask them if they need help straightening things out. If they can't figure out how to fix this themselves, the Team should be enlisted to help.

Comments

Thank you, Ellen. That's the answer I needed. I'll send PMs to both and ask them to contact info@youknowho if they need help putting things in order.

Much appreciated.

Answer 2

I manage my wife's profile, she manages her brother's profile. If someone sends her a message (from her brother's profile), she gets it -- assuming she's reading her email. I get no notification.

Someone would have to send me a message from her profile.

This is not an unusual situation.

Comments

for Project Protected Profiles (PPP), there's usually a team email defined as the "manager"