Sharing living individuals on FamilySearch

[kpraeger]

There was a YouTube video posted a couple years ago by Ron Tanner here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Adx0pET1IMQ that described a feature coming where the "living" could be shared. Has this come out yet, or does anyone have any information on it? As I have used FamilySearch for several years now, and helping other family members use FamilySearch, it seems like it would be a great feature. I can imagine in large families, a living person could be duplicated many times, requiring lots of merging later when they pass away. Thanks for any information.

[kpraeger]

Does anyone have any info on this?

[davesudweeks]

Living persons on family search are in your private space and cannot be shared (at least not at this time as I understand it). I personally can think of lots of privacy issues if people were allowed to share information on living persons without their express permission and managing a system to do that could be cumbersome. It would seem that Family Search is not as concerned with multiple duplicates that later need to be merged as they are with complying with the myriad of different privacy laws all over the world.

[kpraeger]

I understand the privacy and complexity, but I wonder what Ron was talking about in the video above then?

[lajackson]

I wonder what Ron was talking about in the video

I think he was talking about exactly what you would wish to see, a cooperative family space for living family members.

And since that video was posted two years ago, I am guessing they either had second thoughts, or the programming priority is not high enough to have gotten it done in the last two years.

[jwthomasbennion]

Ron has talked about the progress on it much more recently (RootsTech Feb 2018), but it sounded like it was still in the design stage. So probably still a year out or so.

[kpraeger]

Thanks for your feedback. Any further progress?

[drgdraur]

The FS answer at this time to the question is "Famicity"...

[bwhittin]

One of the most often asked question we get is about seeing memories on living family members added by other family members. We (wife and I) have served as Ward & stake consultants, FH center and MLS missionaries for many years and are very sensitive to the privacy concerns for the living. That said I’ve polled many of those we’ve trained and never have I received a negative about a opinion to link with close family members.
We teach grandma how to post memories and she’s so excited then can’t understand why her 50+ grandchildren can’t see the stories she just posted. I have to tell her that the can..... when she dies. But what a mess that’s going to be, with ten adult children of her own, all of which are active on FS (i’ve trained many of them) and now many grandchildren there’s going to be a-lot of merging. She’s not likely to die any to soon so 3 generations are missing out on a wealth of spiritual strength. It’s hard to motivate people to post personal memories when no one will see them. Or as in the family we taught today, mom, four children and grandma, each had stories to share but how?
So I rant! I know the Family Search folk are working wonderful things in connecting our families and I hope this will be another.

[drepouille]

Another option for members of the church is to create free member accounts on FamilySearch Partner sites, such as Ancestry. Ancestry allows you to create a private family tree, upload "memories" and share that tree with your family members.