Overall ' Watch' icon to press and watch entire family tree.

LegacyUser

Carole Whitthread said: May I also add, we currently have the option to watch ' Individual' data on ie yours and mine if we so choose. That is, if I had for example 500 + names ,I could potentially watch all 500 just simple pressing each one...but I and many others would like an 'Overall' button for those 500 + . It's just teadious work to stroll through them individually when one button would make an easy adjustment.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: Ok (just trying to understand here :-) When you just said "It is only for my ancestors", I assume that you really mean just ancestors and not your relatives. Some people use the term "ancestors" to mean more than just parents and grand parents. They are incorrectly referring to ALL of their relatives when they use that term. "Relatives" and "Ancestors" are not the same. Your "Ancestors" are a small subset of your "Relatives", although they all exist in your tree.

So yes, if you are only talking about the "Ancestors" in your tree, and you limit it to going back a maximum of 10 generations, that would be a total of a little more than 2,000 records. That would fit within the limits that the system currently has, but adding one more generation would take you over the 4,000 record limit currently imposed in the system. So 10 generations of ancestors only would possibly be doable. Note that I have lines of ancestors going back 20 generations in the FSFT (not that I believe or trust any of those records). Those would be disqualified from being watched.

But as soon as you start including other relatives such as aunts, uncles, siblings, cousins, etc., the number start going up exponentially in orders of magnitude. So you can see what my original concern was.

Perhaps a simple solution could work with an 'Overall' button is to simply turn off the notifications...?

That would certainly offload the system significantly. But then the question is, if there are no notifications when changes occur to records on the watch list, what does being on the watch list actually DO now? The watch list is all about notifying you when changes occur to a record that you are watching. If you turn off the notifications, what is left? What does "watching" records mean when you do not get notifications when changes have occurred?

I guess one of my driving passions here is that I personally have a tough time keeping up with only 700 records that I'm watching. I only need to have one or two screwed up merges to be applied to a record, and I'm then several hours to get them fixed. I can't keep up with 700 records and I'm not even employed at this time. If I had a formal job outside the home, I'd never be able to keep up :-)

So I REALLY don't want change notifications being sent to me for records that I'm not yet prepared to step in and research and correct when they've been messed up. :-)

LegacyUser

Carole Whitthread said: Hi.
The beauty of technology is about ' Ideas' and 'Beliefs' that things can happen, if we desire and apply ourselves. Who would have thought, for example, we would have computers or hand held devices now, to do genealogy 200 years ago...amazing progress and talented people we have today, throughout the world. I, like many are very thankful for wonderful advancements we have today.

LegacyUser

Carole Whitthread said: Hi Jeff.
On one of my husband's file goes back 1085ad on HIS account and of course a lot of 'watch' if he so chooses, as do you.

It appears, that this 'Overall' option is doable.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: The issue isn't whether it is doable, but whether there is enough need by those who use FamilySearch FamilyTree. Given that there are solutions, including free ones, that do the same thing (and beyond), I would not expect FamilySearch to invest the resources to produce that kind of watch ability -- and yes, I understand that the users would have a choice of no watched relative, specifically selected relatives, or all relatives to watch, which could go far beyond what the current limit is (4,000 profiles).

It took us ten years just to start getting a means to add to, change, or correct indexes. There is much yet to do on that project alone. One can always hope, but I would not hold my breath.

LegacyUser

Carole Whitthread said: Yes, one can only hope, Tom.