"Changes to People I'm Watching" list has stopped showing current names

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: If I click on the Hide Changes I've made box, it outlines in blue. If I then go over to the "People I'm Watching" tab and then immediately return to the "Changes to People I'm watching" tab, the checkmark magically appears.

LegacyUser

m said: Has there been an employee response yet? Seems like this has to be fixed. Still ongoing as of today.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: Yea, I take it back. I now have a whole slew of names I've modified and they are almost all showing up as Unknown Name.

LegacyUser

m said: I'm clueless about what they have in common.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: It's Broke.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: Jeff, you need to capture a screen and specify what you are using for your device, operating system, and browser/app.

I still have not seen this problem with any of the systems that I have been using. It may have something to do with the number of persons I'm watching and the number of changes that have occurred on a specific day.

LegacyUser

Brett said: Jeff

Totally agree - it's broke (or, should I say, it's still broke).

Brett

.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: I think I mentioned it before, but here is the systems that I use with a side by side comparison of the results:

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: Jeff -- thanks for posting a side-by-side view three hours ago. This is something that FamilySearch needs to acknowledge as being a problem.

At one time, I was giving serious consideration to purchasing a Mac for genealogical purposes, but now I'm leery of doing that. Mac OS 10.12 is two versions old -- the current is 10.14. Is this an upgrade problem for your Mac?

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: And my information was out of date -- I just saw a reference to 10.15 (Catalina) -- https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201260

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: Just a quick note -- this may be OS-related. My checks with Firefox 75 showed no problems on Windows 7 or 10.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: I've been using this setup for months now and it just now has started to misbehave. Other areas seem stable.

You're right. macOS Sierra was the last really stable OS IMHO. Apple is making a lot of very strange choices for changes that interfere with people actually using their products to get real work done. Each new OS seems to break things that are never fixed. For example, stepping up to the next release (High Sierra) will result in the ENTIRE file system being converted to a brand new mechanism and a couple of my apps will no longer work. It should eventually be better, but once you go there, you can't go back. Going up to Mohave introduces a lot of bugs. Then going to the "latest and greatest" (Catalina), they have disabled ALL 32 bit applications which which means that most (more than 80%) of my apps will no longer work. They want Catalina to be 64 bit only.

Also, when you try to sync simple things like your contacts and calendar between desktop and iPhone, once one is upgraded the others won't work with it until EVERYTHING is upgraded to the same level. My 5s iPhone is still working great, but it can go no higher in software it uses. I'm see more and more built in obsolescence in Apple products.

But even with all these issues, it is still better than the Windows equivalents IMHO. But the gap is slowly getting narrower as Apple takes on more and more Microsoft tactics in product development and marketing :-(

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: That's sad, but thanks for letting me know. I noticed on one of the pages I was looking at, there was a comment that people will stick with an older version for the same reason you do -- the newer OS breaks things...

When I was still working, I was involved with converting various apps to the latest greatest version of Windows (XP) and we were able to even convert old programs that otherwise would not run under the new OS.

The thing that irritates me most about MS is that they can't leave things alone but have to move them around, meaning that there is a far-too-long learning curve every time they go to a new OS. There is no excuse for that, especially when a user gets fully acclimated to a give user interface.

I don't know if or when the developers will get the message that some of their changes actually drive people away from their newer products. I stopped using MS Office a long time ago for that very reason and now use an Open Office suite and have for probably a couple of decades.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: I just wish that FamilySearch's developers would not adapt so many "mobile" icons for the browser-based version, especially for those of us using big displays with plenty of room.

LegacyUser

m said: Filter also still not working as of today.

LegacyUser

m said: Unknown Name still happening.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: There has not been any FS employees that have participated in this discussion at all, even though it has been up here for 2 weeks now. I wonder if it has been seen.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: Keep in mind that this appears to be very operating system - browser sensitive and may be a case where the scaling of the list is getting to be a problem. I have yet to see a problem with my relatively small list -- 72 people.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: Perhaps, but I use this feature almost daily and have done so for well over a year. I've not had this issue until just recently

LegacyUser

Adrian Bruce said: I wouldn't call it very browser specific - I have the UNKNOWN NAME issue with Windows 10 running Firefox and Chrome. I just tried to run it under Android and Chrome on my phone and UNKNOWN NAME happens there as well, though I can't get it to show the dates to confirm that it's just that range of dates that are affected.

There are browser differences - last time I systematically checked, as above, the Copy Id pop up appears on Chrome but not on Firefox (IIRC my suspicion was that it was there on Firefox but invisible because it was underneath something else)

You may be right, Tom, about scaling - I have some 450 people in my Watch List. If it is size related, though, why does it only seem to affect changes made between those specific dates? (Last time I checked)

I find the lack of comment from employees disturbing. If their view is that they can't work out what's going on and can't reproduce it so they're going to ask us to use the work around of looking at the individual profiles' Change Log, well, why won't they say?

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: It would be nice to know if someone is looking into this or if it is a known issue and being worked, or if the team is aware, etc., etc., etc.

I suspect that a change took place that created the problem back when this was first reported. Whatever it was must have been something that created the problem as a side effect, but because it impacts some people and not others, some operating system and not others, some browsers and not others and not all consistently and once done, appears to be "stuck" in that situation...

Well, I'm speculating, but I think the issue is a complex one, possibly created when a bunch of changes were rolled out, but the one that created the problem (or a combination of changes) has not been found...

Still, we do need some kind of response, even if it is Joe Martel reporting that the team(s) is(are) aware.

LegacyUser

Adrian Bruce said: Agreed.

LegacyUser

Paul said: Just had a quick scroll through my list and my first "Unknown Name" appeared on 20 April. Of the (roughly) 50 IDs that have been subject to changes (from 20 April to date), 20 are showing as Unknown Name and the rest are displayed with the actual name.

I had not noticed the Filter function not working (fine in People I'm Watching itself) until I reread comments above.

Perhaps it's just not considered serious enough to fix, as there is little problem in identifying the "Unknowns", of course. I don't think I've ever used the Filter in the "Changes To" section, so am not particularly affected.

Must agree, it's very strange not to have had any response from a FamilySearch employee (not even Joe!), especially as the problem was raised 13 days ago and seems to be an issue for quite a number of users.

LegacyUser

joe martel said: Sorry I didn't reply before.
This all works for me. I tried some of you PIDs from above. I'm on Catalina Mac,  Chrome.

For the unknown name, that is typically a call to some service that is not returning the name. But it looks like the person is really there as it returns the change. What happens when you click on the PID? and go to that Person?

For the filter, this is most likely a browser issue. The whole list is downloaded to the computer and browser performs the filter against that list I believe. 

LegacyUser

Adrian Bruce said: Thanks for replying Joe. I'm still seeing the same problem - both Firefox and Chrome on Windows 10 (and also Chrome under Android on my phone though it's difficult to see the full story there). (I'm watching 464 profiles).

Just to re-emphasise, this is "Changes To People I'm Watching" from menu option FamilyTree / Lists. This is the problem that I've seen since this started:

All watched changes for 16 April show "Unknown Name". When you click that "Unknown Name", the card comes up and, as you can see, the card is fine and if I go to that profile, the details, including their change log, are all fine.

What is different today is that I've got a new "UnknownName"

This was updated on 27 April. Again, the card comes up fine, as you see. This might very well have been previously updated on 16 April - it's that same family.

Re "For the filter, this is most likely a browser issue."
If I enter something in the filter and hit enter-key on both Firefox and Chrome - nothing happens, so it's a browser issue with the code for both browsers.

LegacyUser

m said: Joe, thanks for replying.

Both the Unknown Name & the filter not working just for changes appear to be computer bugs. I noticed Unknown name on February 3rd.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: I'm not sure that the filter is browser specific. When the list is downloaded to the PC it could very well have names in the list with a value of "[Unknown Name]". And since I've been using the same OS and browser versions since the beginning of the year, nothing has changed on my PC.

A downloaded link has at least two pieces, the HTML reference and the Text that is to be used as the label for that link (in this case the text would be the name of the person).

You might be correct, but I suspect that the FSFT application interface is not providing the text for all of the names in the list correctly to the PC

Also the text for the PIDs are supposed to be active buttons. Even though the browser changes pointer and underlines the PID numbers when hovered over, clicking on one of them does not do anything (i.e., the copy to clipboard function has disappeared)

These were all working not too long ago on my same browsers and OS

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: A few days after I posted my note 9 days ago regarding the various other things that weren't right (such as the filter not working, the PID buttons not working, and the Hide changes I've made checkmark not always showing up), I noticed that someone was playing around with the code on that page. The checkmark started showing up correctly but the total "People I'm Watching" number disappeared. A few hours later, the behavior reverted back to what it was previously.

I really hope that developers aren't experimenting with code changes on the production database. I've seen this type of thing here before and the practice really worries me.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: I came across the unstable sorting thing many months ago.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: Note that these two views were not only taken with different browsers, but they were separated in time by up to 30 minutes. So system loading may not be contributing to this. The behavior seems to be deterministic, but in a rather bizarre way :-)