Help:Anonymous Placeholder

Categories: WikiTree Help | Account Help | Privacy Help

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An anonymous placeholder is the best way to ensure that information about a person is not shared on WikiTree.

1 What are Anonymous Placeholders?
- 1.1 What is on a placeholder?
- 1.2 Profile anonymization vs. deletion
2 How to Create a Placeholder
- 2.1 If a family member created your profile

What are Anonymous Placeholders?

Anonymous placeholders are profiles for living people and the recently-deceased that do not include any personal information. Their purpose is to inform others of the person's privacy preferences.

Generally speaking, profiles of living people who are not members should be placeholders. See Help:Living People.

What is on a placeholder?

Placeholders essentially just have:

A last name.
One or more family relationships. This is what gives a person their unique place on the family tree. If there is no connection to any parent, sibling, spouse, or child, it would be impossible for family members to determine whose privacy is being protected.

Anonymous placeholders are not public, even though they don't contain any personal information. They are Unlisted, the highest privacy level on WikiTree. The relationships that connect them to the tree are only visible to family members on the appropriate Trusted Lists.

Profile anonymization vs. deletion

An anonymous placeholder is the best way to prevent someone's information from being shared on WikiTree. If a profile is deleted there is nothing to indicate that the person doesn't want their information on WikiTree. Family members may add the information in the future.

For example, let's say John Smith is the father of Mary Smith. If John does not have a placeholder, Mary will appear to have a missing father, and family members may add him. However, if the father of Mary is "Anonymous Smith", family members will know not to add information about John.

However:

if especially sensitive information has been recorded on a profile, deletion is the best way to entirely remove it.
if the profile represents you, the choice between a placeholder and deletion is yours alone.

How to Create a Placeholder

Members do not generally create placeholders. Profiles are automatically converted into placeholders when a family member declines an invitation or does not respond to it for 30 days. If you do not plan to invite a living person to WikiTree, do not create a profile at all. See Help:Living People.

Former members can convert their profile to a placeholder when closing their account.

We also convert profiles into placeholders if they were created in a way that does not conform to our current policies on living people (these have changed over the years).

To anonymize your own profile or the profile of a living family member who has declined an invitation to join WikiTree:

1. Click the Edit tab.

2. Change the First Name to an initial or Anonymous.

Leave the Last Name at Birth intact.

3. Clear out all date and location fields.

Leave the family relationships intact.

4. Clear out all information from the biography. Replace it with {{Invited|Declined}}, which inserts this box:

This person was invited to join WikiTree but respectfully declined. Please do not invite them again, do not add any information to this profile, and do not remove this {{Invited|Declined}} message box. See Help:Invitations.

You must leave the last name and family relationships intact. Doing otherwise would defeat the purpose of creating an anonymous placeholder. See Help:Deletion instead.

Note that anonymization is only for living people or very recently-deceased nuclear relatives of living people. Anonymization of profiles of people who died many years ago is prohibited. Also note that members can anonymize their own profile but it is not considered a placeholder. Members cannot use the Unlisted privacy level. See Help:Unlisted Active Members or Help:Closing_an_Account.

If a family member created your profile

If you did not create your profile, ask the Profile Manager to anonymize or delete it. You can send them a private message through the envelope link by their name on the profile and point them to this page <https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Anonymous_Placeholders>. Our members sign an Honor Code that says they will respect the privacy wishes of others.

If you prefer, see the section on "Take-Down Requests" on Help:Privacy Conflicts. You don't need to communicate with the person who violated your privacy to have WikiTree remove your profile. However, if you are in communication with the family member, telling them your wishes will help ensure they don't share your information on other websites.