When I try to leave the Get Involved / Opportunities screen, I am asked to confirm

JulianBrown38

This happens after I have completed a batch of the Verify Places activity. In the following example, I have clicked on the Family Tree / Recents menu item:

This also happens if I try to close the browser tab, etc. Of course, there is nothing to save on this screen. It started behave this way in the last day.

sc woz

@JulianBrown38

My first step would be to clear your cache and cookies. This is different depending on which browser you are using. I would go to Trouble shooting help for FamilySearch. See if that helps and if not please advise. Thank you.

David Alan Webber

I actually got the same message as I left the main FamilySearch Opportunities page after finishing some Verify Places work. I don't get it if I haven't done anything new, as I go into that page again and leave it for other pages.

And I just tried it again after doing more Verify Places work, and got that same "Leave Site" warning.

I'm working on this site with the Microsoft Edge browser on Windows 10, if that helps at all?

David Alan Webber

Oh, and in addition, I was working from a fresh incognito/InPrivate window, so no cache or cookies involved from any prior sessions, other than simply leaving the Opportunities page for another page.

JulianBrown38

I've cleared the cookies from my Chrome browser (Windows 10), and that made no difference. The behaviour occurs only after I actually have started to process some items; if I start the Verify Places activity but bail out from the initial screen where I get to choose the country and batch size, the confirmation request is not displayed when I exit the Opportunities page.

Thanks for confirming this, David.

I've just tried a batch of Quick Name Review, and it doesn't show this behaviour. It seems to be an artefact of the Verify Places process.

There are changes being made to Verify Places from time to time, as I have noticed another bug. I think this one has been occurring since about 21 May (5 days ago). The final message for a batch displays something like "You just helped 4 people from !". The exclamation mark should be the selected country's name.

JulianBrown38

I'm thinking that this behaviour is a result of a change to the Verify Places activity. Prior to this starting, I was able to abandon a partly-completed batch of verifications and bail out from the activity by selecting another main menu item to be loaded into the same browser tab. (I did have a reason at the time for doing that frequently.) It wasn't clear what happened to the items that I had already verified in the batch. It looks like the intention of the change could have been to give me a warning that those items would not be processed if I bailed out. This sort of warning is not a bad thing, and is frequently implemented for other systems, but I can't recall seeing such a warning elsewhere in the FamilySearch website.

My guess is that the activity code is now setting a flag when a batch is started, and using the value of the flag when a bail-out is attempted. The behaviour suggests that:

1. the flag is not being cleared when a batch is successfully submitted by clicking MAYBE LATER or CONTINUE at the final screen, and
2. the change may have been tested before release for its behaviour when a bail-out is attempted, but not for its behaviour when a batch is completed.

Ashlee C.

@JulianBrown38 Thank you for reporting this. The engineers are aware of the issue and are working towards a resolution. Thanks for your patience.

JulianBrown38

Both of these issues appear to have been partially resolved.

1. The "Leave/Cancel" issue appears to work correctly now in most cases. However, it isn't fixed when you try to exit from the activity after receiving a "You did it!" message when the activity has determined (to the best of its ability) that it can't find any more candidate places to verify. In that case, the same "Leave/Cancel" dialog is displayed.
2. The "You just helped x people…" message is now displaying A country, but it isn't necessarily THE country that you selected. When you change countries (from X to Y) and process a batch, it may display the previous country's (X) name instead of Y. This seems to happen if you SKIP all the entries in a batch. Believe me, this happens very frequently because of the filtering that the activity does when selecting the places for verification, and the nebulous quality of a lot of the user-entered place names.

David Alan Webber

I didn't see any message when leaving the Verify Places activity, as of today, the 1st of June.

JulianBrown38

We're getting there. Today, when Verify Places runs out of places to verify, it doesn't display a "You did it" message any more if you attempt to CONTINUE. Instead, it shows the following:

If I attempt to leave that screen, the "Leave/Cancel" dialog is still shown.