Digging Into the entire FamilySearch.org website: Family Groups (Part Six)

 

https://www.familysearch.org/en/blog/shared-family-groups-feature

Just when you think you have a handle on the vast FamilySearch.org website, FamilySearch adds a whole new feature that extends the website into altogether new territory. Family Groups have been requested and "under discussion" for years. The main idea is that based on the issue of why family members have to duplicate all the entries for living people. As it stands today, if you add you living, parents, grandparents, children and grandchildren to the program, no one can see them except for you. This means that if every other living member of you immediate family also adds in these living people, the FamilySearch website adds a distinct individual for each of these entries. So, as I stated, for years we (those of us who would like a resolution of this problem that allows family members to see each other's entries) have been talking about this issue and asking for a solution. 

Surprise!, FamilySearch.org as added family groups to the website. However, this is just a minor "baby step" towards solving the problem of the massive number of duplicate entries for living people. Here is what FamilySearch says about the groups; "The new family groups feature makes it easy to send FamilySearch messages to a selected group of your living relatives on FamilySearch." The new feature is mainly a way for families to communicate inside of the program. By they way, this has been a feature of the MyHeritage.com website for years. The rest of the features of the new program benefit members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by adding the ability to share temple ordinance reservations with family members. You can see the link to Family Groups under the settings menu.

I look forward to the time when we can actually share the memories and other information about living people with our immediate family members. One issue raised by the current status of the information locked into each person's entries about living people is what happens to all your personal memories, information about living people, and your reserved temple ordinances when you die?

I have been searching in the FamilySearch Help Center for a current answer to this question for some time now. Here are some of the articles in the Help Center that talk about the situation, but so far, I have not been able to find an answer. 

• Why does a person in my Family Tree private space have multiple contributors?
• How does Family Tree protect the privacy of living people?
• How do I change a status from living to deceased in Family Tree?
• How do I merge duplicates in my private space in Family Tree?
• Can I add memories about my living relatives to Family Tree?
• Who can view the items uploaded in Memories for living people?
• Can I transfer my Family Tree private space to another user?
• Can my living relatives share a Family Tree private space to work together?

The last comment comes as close as I can find to the answer but does not address the issue of memories or documents attached. 

As I said, a nice baby step but not a solution. 

Here are the previous posts in this ongoing series.

Part One: https://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/2021/10/digging-into-entire-familysearchorg.html
Part Two: https://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/2021/10/digging-into-entire-familysearchorg_29.html

Part Three: https://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/2021/11/digging-into-entire-familysearchorg.html

Part Four: https://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/2021/11/digging-into-entire-familysearchorg_5.html

Part Five: https://genealogysstar.blogspot.com/2021/11/digging-into-entire-familysearchorg_9.html