149 year old profile, no death date - red lined message tells me it needs to be open. - Why? [closed]

Question

So I have a green locked profile of a person who was born in 1868, which makes them 149 years old. I don't have a death date entered yet, because I don't know it. There is a red banner at the top of the profile telling me I must open it. Why? 2017 - 1868 is 149. The policy is 150. The person isn't marked as born before this date, so I should not be being asked to open it, surely?

Comments

It's not the only one either https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Matley-15. In fact all of the handful of 1868 profiles I have green lock on have this same red line message.

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But we are just 2.5 weeks from 150 yrs. and wondering why you would not want them open.  I tend to think all profiles should be open, except for PM's parents and living relations.

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I didn't say I didn't want it open, I asked why, if the policy is 150, am I being asked to open a profile that is not 150. This person's birth was registered in Q4 of 1868, incidentally, but I have obviously not specified the quarter, only the year, since we don't deal with quarters. A policy is a policy and what we think of it personally is not the question. I don't object to opening a profile, but there have been profiles of this age I wanted to work on and was told it couldn't be opened for the sake of two months.

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Perhaps you can adjust the DOB to "after" Oct 1?

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I've also found this banner on profiles for individuals with 1868 as the birth year. And as Gillian notes, NONE of these profiles should have this banner before January 1, 2018.

When I edited this profile - Phillips-15104 - without altering the birth data, the profile was automatically opened and I could not change the setting.

After editing the date several times, I could reset the profile to the Green/Public privacy level only when I reached January 19, 1868. That is more than 5 weeks of privacy we are being denied, in violation of the current policy.

I doubt that this problem will be corrected, so my solution will be to reset the birth dates a couple months beyond my current estimates whenever this banner appears!!

Answer 1

Hi Gillian,

I checked,  and you're right! On our end,  it looks like the system is rounding up already.  I think without an exact birthdate, it's going to keep doing that.  Let me check on this, though with only 2.5 weeks to go,  I am not sure what we can do. Maybe we can prevent it from jumping really next year. Thanks for pointing it out.

Comments

Thank you, Abby.

Answer 2

I'm no expert but could it be recent? Its only a few weeks until 2018 so maybe its meant a a flag for you to do what you need with the profile before the deadline? Just a guess unless profiles become unlocked as they reach thee end of next year in which case I have no ideas other than a technical error on that particular year. Have you unlocked it by the way as its showing unlocked on the link?

Comments

Hmm - interesting. I would have to agree that it shouldn't show that message until January 1st, although having no "month and day" might be part of the issue. Shouldn't be - if you're willing to try an experiment, change the month and date on the DOB to something like June 15, 1868 and see if the message still comes up. You can always change it back. If I had to guess (and I hate guessing, but this seems logical) the trigger might show up a few weeks in advance to begin notifying people that they've got an "upcoming" profile that needs to be changed. If you adjust the DOB to June and the message goes away, then returns when you remove the Month and Day, then I would presume this is a warning that you will need to change this soon and also presume that you don't officially have to change it until January 1.

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Having no month or date shouldn't matter, Scott. A person born in 1868 won't "be" 150 until 2018, plain and simple.

The system is simply shorting us of our privacy. I just wonder if this situation only occurs at the end of the year; perhaps some proactive coding for the holiday and winter-up-north season?

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I agree with you, Lindy, but I believe the system will assume that a year without month and day is January 1st by default, if no information is provided (which is typical of most coding things out there).

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I doubt that the system assumes, Scott; it simply does as it is programmed. If we are seeing the banner now, it is because the system has been programmed to display it prematurely.

Since we haven't reached January 1, 2018 yet, we shouldn't be seeing the banner for any profiles for individuals with a birth year of 1868 that also have no death date entered.

Regardless of how the data is entered, if the birth date field contains 1868 and the death date field is empty, we should not receive the banner before January 1, 2018.

Answer 3

If I'm not mistaken... I believe with the absence of a death date, the policy is only 100 years

Comments

Except it says that "Profiles of people who were born over 150 years ago OR who died over 100 years ago need to be Open. "

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yeah, I don't think the policies are very well defined (and help pages tend to fall behind code changes -- not to mention the potential for conflicting code)

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Living_People

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Dennis, It does not change without a death date it would still be 150 years after the birth. If you have a death date then it is either 100 years after death or 150 years after birth whichever comes first.

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Thank you for clarifying, Dale.

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Then its likely a bug in the code -- perhaps a common "off-by-one" error (which is a super easy mistake to make).

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In reality, we can only guess at the actual implementation of the written policy (assuming the help pages are up-to-date). It would require someone with access to the code to verify.

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Dennis I have many profiles still on Green or above that were born over 100 years ago and have no death dates. These have no warnings or suggestions about needing to be Open so I do believe that my understanding of the policy is correct. I could open them up totally if I wished but there is no policy demanding that I do so until they are 150 years after birth or I find that they have died more than 100  years ago.

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That's a good point, Dennis, regarding the actual implementation of the police.

With a full date, or even just the month and year, the target opening date would be more easily established; with just the year, how is the implementation set?

Even with a wider target set, it still shouldn't be before the 150th year begins!

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Lindy I know from experience that even if you have a full date they will start bugging you no later than 1/1/2018 to open any profile that has a birthdate anytime in 1868, even if the actual date is December 31st of 1868, they only check the year. But I do think that asking us to change any profile before the year of birth is less than 150 years is just plain wrong.

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Gillian's and my experiences prove otherwise, Dale. We are receiving the banner now for profiles that have not yet "aged" to 150 years.

On my test profile, I received the banner even when using full dates until I reached the date of January 19, 1868; from that date on, I did not receive the banner.

Clearly the parameters include the month and date, not just the year.

Also, I don't believe that I was receiving the banner for "born in 1868" profiles until recently. That is why I wonder if it is an end-of-this-year, beginning-of-next-year buffer. Perhaps our tech team is planning a group skiing trip or something!!

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Well whatever the reason for it, it's not right that it's happening. if you have a policy in place, you should code to meet the terms of that policy and that's it, it shouldn't change for the holidays or a month before them (who knows how long it's been like this though - I only just noticed it, because I have very few green lock profiles but it could have been happening longer). For it to do so is not very professional, in my opinion. Trust happens both ways, or should do and Wikitree should not be silently chipping away at privacy. We had a lengthy consultation about this and we agreed on the 150/100 rule, which Wikitree should honour and I think it is disrespectful that it isn't honouring that.

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Gillian, I don't believe its anything intentional or disrespectful. I'm sure its only a simple coding mistake.

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Oh really? This is an issue?  Couple weeks? 149 years and you are concerned about that?  Wow seems ...