The Case of the Disappearing Photos -- This could happen to you!

There is an interesting issue with FamilySearch.org's Photos program that adds images to Family Tree. I received an email from a reader was working on adding photos to an ancestor. In order to see if anyone else was adding information, he had placed a watch on the ancestor. He was then notified that someone else had changed that ancestor by merging a duplicate. As a result, all of the photos attached by my reader to that ancestor were deleted. I suggested that he contact FamilySearch and so he did. Here is the response received from FamilySearch with a copy of his letter to FamilySearch below:

Dear ***, (name removed for privacy reasons) We are sorry that the photos you attached to your ancestor disappeared after someone did a merge.  We understand your frustration.  Unfortunately, there is no way to prevent that at this time.   All you can do is re-attach them to the new merged record.  They should still be in your My Photos.   Your suggestions for ways to prevent this from happening when people are about to do a merge are very good.  We are forwarding them to the appropriate department for their consideration. Patron feedback and requests for product enhancements are very important to us.  We encourage you to send any other suggestions you may have in the future.  We are including a link to an article that has instructions on how to do that.  Please click here  to view the article.   Again, thank you for your suggestions, and please send us any others you might have in the future. Sincerely, FamilySearch Patron and Partner Services ref:_00D301b00H._50030SFQY7:ref ------ Your Question / Comment ------ Your Original Case Description: I received notice in my weekly e-Mail that a person I was 'WATCHing' was modified. To my _HORROR_ I was surprised to see that the Photos that I had attached to this person were _LOST_ after the merge!!! They stay with the DELETED person! Does the person merging NOT get a warning that photos/documents/stories exist for this person. Why does the system not include photos in the merge information. This can cause _MASS_ problems if inexperienced/novice merge without looking first at the 2nd person in the merge to see if there are photos. The system should _MAKE_ them reverse the order if photos/documents/stories exist for one of the people being merged (mergee?). And what happend if BOTH people have photos attached?!? This is a serious problem and should be resolved ASAP. Now let's suppose that you have added a whole slug of photos to an individual and then someone does just what has been done here, merges that individual with another copy of the same person. Guess what. The person doing the merging may not even be aware of the photos and the person will certainly not know that the photos will disappear. This could be a very serious issue depending on the circumstances of how the originally loaded photos were discovered and whether or not the person uploading the photos kept a copy on their own computer.  Of course, I strongly suggest that you never put anything online that you don't want to lose at some time or another and that you maintain backup copies, but that isn't always the way it happens. Here's hoping that the reader has backups of his images.