FamilyTree (iOS app) Tasks - please revert to <8 generations and direct relatives only
I apologize if there’s a better category for this question, but if there is, I’m overlooking it. As best I can tell, the FamilyTree app changed the “Tasks” activity a few versions ago to expand to 8 generations and to include siblings of any ancestors within those 8 generations.
Additionally, a new problem started yesterday that contradicts the help text for the activity, plus I did not update the app or iOS. The only trigger seems to be that I finally whittled my tasks down to ~20). The app is now is including VERY distant cousins in my Tasks. My Tasks list currently includes a first cousin SEVEN times removed (!?). Please, for pity’s sake, please tell me this is a bug that will be fixed in the next release.
Even if the bug that includes distant cousins is resolved, expanding the list to 8 generations is very undesirable and will result in degrading the quality of the One World Tree. That change means that other users who have very little incentive to get things right are trying to clear hints, while an actual descendent who MIGHT care will overlook the hint among the sea of other hints. As one example, the max of 300 tasks means that the Hint for my great-grandfather’s brother disappeared in favor of a first cousin 7x removed.
To preempt the obvious question, I have confirmed that the toggle for Expand Tasks is deselected (help text says include tasks for people you have recently viewed…). I have also force-closed the app to restart it. The bug remains.
Environment: I am running the FamilyTree app 4.7.7 on iOS 17.1.2 on an iPhone.
Thanks in advance for your help!
Answers
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@GenealogyDataNerd said:
Additionally, a new problem started yesterday that contradicts the help text for the activity, plus I did not update the app or iOS. The only trigger seems to be that I finally whittled my tasks down to ~20). The app is now is including VERY distant cousins in my Tasks. My Tasks list currently includes a first cousin SEVEN times removed (!?). Please, for pity’s sake, please tell me this is a bug that will be fixed in the next release.
You may find this disappointing, but this behavior is very much an intentional feature, not a bug. The idea is to provide record hints to people as much as possible. The initial scope of the search for record hints is something like back 6 generations and down 1. If that scope provides insufficient tasks (I believe the threshold is 20), then the scope is expanded by a generation up and/or down. That process of expanding the scope continues as hints are resolved and the threshold gets crossed again.
The problem is that no one should be "trying to clear hints"; hints are provided as research opportunities, and as you attach (or dismiss) hints for closer relatives, FamilySearch will dig deeper to provide hints for you. You can feel free to stop (or slow down) the process of attaching record hints whenever you would like.
That change means that other users who have very little incentive to get things right are trying to clear hints, while an actual descendent who MIGHT care will overlook the hint among the sea of other hints. As one example, the max of 300 tasks means that the Hint for my great-grandfather’s brother disappeared in favor of a first cousin 7x removed.
The tasks are sorted with closest relatives listed at the top. So it would indeed be a bug if a hint for your "great-grandfather’s brother disappeared in favor of a first cousin 7x removed." Personally, I've never seen that -- I always see the closest relatives listed first.
My personal opinion is that working on somewhat random lists of record hints is not the best use of anyone's time. It's much better to focus on a set of closely related families, often from the same region, becoming familiar with the people, geography, and supporting records involved. A list of available hints may well lead you to embark on such a focused research project, but bouncing around all sorts of different parts of your ancestry doesn't allow for the focus that careful research requires.
Here's a related community discussion: https://community.familysearch.org/en/discussion/154856/hint-queue
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bouncing around all sorts of different parts of your ancestry doesn't allow for the focus that careful research requires.
Oh, I know how to conduct research. I have taught myself to read Kurrent. You appear to be assuming that I bounce around to different parts of my ancestry because that’s all that is allowed by the changes to the Tasks functionality. Nope. I watch my Tasks list because my ancestors are sometimes found in new record sets, but just as often, the “hint” is because someone merged two different people or similar other nonsense (like attaching UK baptism records to children of US born parents who lived their entire lives in one Appalachian county).
Instead, you seem to be telling me that the intended functionality is to serve up infinity hints, in batches of 300, for ever more distant cousins. OK.
If that’s the case, then can you kindly clarify why the functionality “swipe left to remove a person from the list” doesn’t do what is described? Any dismissed profiles reappear as soon as I refresh the list or it auto-refreshes. It would be annoying but survivable if they were dismissed from my list for good. But the only way to clear profiles for which I’ve resolved all hints is to refresh the list, so I fail to see what functionality that provides.
The tasks are sorted with closest relatives listed at the top. So it would indeed be a bug if a hint for your "great-grandfather’s brother disappeared in favor of a first cousin 7x removed." Personally, I've never seen that -- I always see the closest relatives listed first.
Can you kindly define how FamilySearch defines closest relatives? On my current Tasks list, the first person and several people of the top 10 profiles are “spouse of my third cousin once removed.” My fourth great-grandparents are #280 and 281. And to reiterate, although you, personally, have never seen that, I already stated that I see that, precisely, for my great-grandfather’s brother. That’s even more ridiculous, because he was also my step great-grandfather (he married his brother’s widow). So please, explain why this is not a bug.
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@GenealogyDataNerd not sure if this will help...
Has the swipe Left issue been resolved?
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@Rhonda Budvarson The swipe left feature works the same way it has for many years. It's not the most useful feature the way it works -- it simply temporarily removes an item from the list, but when you refresh the list (which may happen simply by leaving the list and coming back), the hint will return. As I understand it, that's because the list of hints is synchronized with the hints on the website, and so there are only two ways to permanently remove it from the list: you can attach the hinted record to the person, or you can mark it as "not a match." Clearly, you should only attach it if you're sure it's a match, and you should only mark it as "not a match" if you're sure that it is not. Neither on the website nor on the app is there a feature that lets you effectively say "I'm not sure if this is a match, or I just don't want to deal with it, so don't show it to me ever again." On the app you have the ability to swipe left, but that's so temporary that I certainly would agree with those who think that is quite a mediocre feature.
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@Rhonda Budvarson Thanks for trying to help, and linking to that. Apparently it working as FamilySeach intended. I work in tech, so I know this is all ridiculous. So it goes.
Given that spouses of 3-5 cousins are still appearing at the top of the Ancestors With Tasks list, long before my grand-grandfather’s brother (who was also my step-great-grandfather) and 4th great grandparent, then it’s clear that FamilySearch doesn’t consider this a bug. So…Situation Normal.
Between this, a large bug with the place-name standardization that’s utterly ruined searching in West or regular Virginia, and the bug where using the much-touted edit functionality for a source entry seems to delete the person more often than it works (it seems to be 4 out of 5 times for me), I think it might be time for me to take a break from FamilySearch for the new year.
In any case, I appreciate your response!
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Mod note - a post was edited to comply with the Code of Conduct.
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