Filter the new Following pop-up menu

dontiknowyou

(PS: the only appropriate tag I could find is obsolete. Watch feature is now Following feature)

dontiknowyou

My Following list has hit 4000 and I'm having to triage it. Help me find all the profiles that have been merged, so I can stop following them without first scrolling through 4000 profiles.

I try to follow the heads of all tree fragments in my surname study. For most surnames, Family Tree has 1 tree fragment head for every 2 profiles. Probably most are duplicates awaiting merge.

(An outline of what I do is illustrated in this 1-minute video about the Guild of One Name Studies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFfhh7_OJ_Y)

Paul W

Rather a laborious job, I agree. The problem I found when the "Label" feature was introduced was even worse, as I had to spread my labelling of the individuals being followed over several days and there is not a method of filtering on the letter of the alphabet the surname (or first name) begins with. I could only type in (say) "c", but that produced a list of names containing the letter "c", not beginning with it. It was taking me a long time to scroll towards the end of my list, say once I got to "W"!

Without the ability to filter your "Person Deleted" IDs, I see your problem. I originally thought these IDs would disappear with the merge, but it makes sense to have the option to keep them on the "Following" list, in case you, or another user, decides to Restore them. However, they seem one of the more likely choices to remove from your list if you wish to add further names, having reached the 4,000 mark.

Personally, I would find it too much work to have around 4,000 names to keep a watch on (my work is hard enough in dealing with other users' changes on around 1,500 individuals I am following), but as long as Family Tree provides that option, I believe the Filter feature needs to be enhanced - including adopting your suggestion.

dontiknowyou

my work is hard enough in dealing with other users' changes on around 1,500 individuals I am following

I do surname projects, so I follow only the profiles that head tree fragments, meaning no attached father profile with the same surname, and the profiles I know are conflated, and a few other issues.

Unfortunately, FSFT has about 1 tree fragment for every 2 profiles. Many are bare-name duplicates or those vexing 2- and 3-person seed trees, but there are also large tree fragments waiting to be joined up.

All that is to say, when another contributor changes a profile I am following, most of the time I rejoice. I especially like when the profile gets merged correctly. Then I can stop following it. Yesterday I removed about 100 deleted profiles from my Following list. They were the result of my own merges; in order to see changes by others I do not watch my own changes.