"Adding Friends"
Im not sure how long the "FRIENDS" option has been around . . .
https://www.familysearch.org/en/home/friends/my-friends
Can anyone type in my name - and send me a friend request???
Is there any "opt out" of this service (so we dont even get the requests?)
Answers
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This is a very new option.
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Yeh - and it surprised me that anyone could type in my name and find me . . .
Traditionally FS has avoided this type of option. (though it has been part of Roots Tech for various years)
I just figured there would be an opt out or opt in setting. (beyond just accepting or not the invite)
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At first I thought it must be LDS-only, because the link comes up 404 for me -- but if I go to the homepage and click "Friends", it comes up -- with that exact URL (https://www.familysearch.org/en/home/friends/my-friends). Or no, wait, it's not the same: Dennis's link is missing the "/home/" part.
@Áine Ní Donnghaile, my apologies for not asking first, but I tried it on you, just to see what would happen. I have no idea what "You’ll be able to share posts with each other" actually means. Posts where or to what?
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that was my confusion too - - sharing what/where?
but I think its a messaging system - between friends
(making FS work more like social media)
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I also don't know what posts. I saw it a few months ago and discussed it with another friend. He and I connected with each other, but other than using it as another way to communicate, I have no clue. It's been around since at least late 2022.
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is there a knowledge document on this? I'm struggling to understand any purpose let alone any benefit other than to say "it's just like FacebooK" .... ?? In a collaborative tree, isn't what we do all "sharable" anyway? How is Friends any different than Messaging?
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OK, but what does it do?
The name isn't clickable. The sideways ellipsis gives two options: remove or report.
I suppose I can select the name and copy it, then click the speech bubble in the top right menu and click the New button and paste the name and eventually come up with a way to write an internal message, but that's all awfully convoluted. What's the actually-intended usage here?
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Perhaps it is not quite ready for prime time? I have not found a KA nor have I found a use for it. I think Gordon mentioned the new "chat" format that is coming. Perhaps it is part of that? I dunno.
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You all got me curious about a feature I have been ignoring so I started poking around. I've concluded that Friends is just a directory. It's just where you build a list of other users so that you can clutter their homepages if you all like that kind of thing.
On the Home tab on the home page we have at the very top the "What would you like to share..." box:
It looks like a text entry box but is really just a link which opens this pop up:
Notice the "My Friends" under my name. Clicking there opens another popup where you can choose who gets this post:
Not sure what that Public Share "visible to anyone with the link...." means. The Myself is straightforward although I'm not sure why I would want to post something only I can see. My Friends, My Lists (which I assume without testing is a sub-group of all my friends), and Family Group seem straightforward, also.
When I post my comment, it appears on my homepage:
Before testing, I added my wife as a friend and when she checks, she now sees:
She can click on Comments and add a comment.
So it looks like Friends is just a list of all the people who will see a shared comment or image on their homepages. This makes the homepage a mini-Facebook. It seems it would be more of a newsfeed with comments than a chat.
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Thank you for that investigation, Gordon.
I think I will continue to ignore this, um, feature.
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It occurred to me after a few hours, what if my wife doesn't want to be my friend? What if my daily family history trivia gets annoying?
So with her signed in we went to her Friends tab and found that she can just remove me:
When she did, this removed my post from earlier today from her home page.
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Yeah, all the friends are for the posts that appear/are written on the Home page. It is a means of interesting other folks in family history/genealogy. Some people care. Some don't. You can share cool information that you find, memories, records, whatever. Some people really like to share, some people only want to see the results of your research, but aren't interested in doing any research. If you don't want to. Don't use it.
By the way, some of that can be blocked in the Permissions setting in your Profile:
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