Add Filter to Following to filter out my changes.

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Sharon Esther Prouting said: I like the new Following page, but could you add a Filter so that you can choose to see changes others have made and not have your changes showing. I do a lot of work in Family Tree and so there are a lot of changes showing.

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Paul said: Apparently, this was considered by the developers but deemed unnecessary as it was not a feature utilised by many users.

I completely agree with you - this will cause me a lot of inconvenience. As will the inability to sort the main list by last name.

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Adrian Bruce said: C'mon FamilySearch - please read this feed-back about what people actually used Watch for....

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D. Llewelyn said: The change from watch to following, removed vital features, such as filtering by birth date and ID number. Please bring them back! I need to filter by birthdate as I watch and wait for ancestors to hit the 110 year mark so I can get their temple work done. The new layout also only shows 4 names in my screen at a time - which is very inefficient as this list is used to sort, filter, scroll and easily pinpoint people I need to finish work on. I also used to filter by ID number, which was a great way to pinpoint where Iast left off.

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Heidi Kuosmanen said: I know what changes I have made. "Following" is in reality following what changes others are making to those persons who I am watching (following)!

We NEED to have the possibility to filter out My Changes. It is very frustrating to scroll down and search changes what others have made.

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D. Llewelyn said: The recent changes have made visiting Family Search a very frustrating experience and have slowed down workflows.

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Ann H said: I agree that the Following list needs to NOT include changes I made, or at least have an option to filter my changes out. I use the Following list to see if anything interesting is added or changed on some profile I have contributed to or am very interested in. I also use it to make sure that someone doesn't come along and change something that used to be correct to something that isn't on someone I care about. It turns out that an incorrect change to someone I'm following happens far and away more often than something else of interest. I usually immediately fix the problem and move on to the next person on the list

Right now I'm rather annoyed because when I went to my Following list, on the first entry on the list someone had done a Merge on someone I follow. The Merge should have been done, but it was done wrong, and the person ended up with the wrong mother and with a bunch of sources deleted. So I fixed the mother and reattached all the sources that also got lost, and I then went back to my Following list to see what was next on the list. I was greeted with all the changes I had just made--VERY frustrating!! Just as Heidi Kuosmanen above said, I know what changes I have made--I wanted to see what other people had changed.

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C Hodgins said: I agree that there needs to be a filter for filtering out my changes. We follow to see what changes others are making. I can look at the changes I've made in the new My Contributions.

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Tom Huber said: One of the things that I've noticed with a number of recent changes (actually going back all the way to the change a couple of years ago to a person's profile -- splitting it from a single page into tabbed sections) is that FamilySearch's approach may be quite different from the way we use the site.

For instance, splitting to profile allowed FS to add the timeline and map feature, it also allowed the site to load faster if there was a slow internet connection between the users and the servers (according to at least one report I read, that was the situation in the Philippines)

The new Change Log is typical and while it still lacks a filter for notes, the changes bothered a lot of people, particularly getting rid of the green border surrounding a merge.

Sometimes, the changes are made when old code needs to be replaced by newer code to facilitate better handling and a new approach was used to help the loading speed -- in many cases, it can take refining the code to achieve that end, and that was certainly the case when the profile was split into tabs, but now the system loads faster on slow internet connections.

I am sure we will see more changes and some of them likely will not please many people. But if there are features, such as being able to remove (by choice) our changes from the list that many users liked, I believe that FamilySearch will do what they can to provide the feature, and if not, something that will work just as well.

The one thing that I have noticed with the new follow list is that related changes are grouped, which should allow the list to load faster, so again, it is not the approach that we have become accustomed to.

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Paul said: Put another way, you don't have to be a FamilySearch developer to know about genealogy, but it would help if more developers were genealogists.

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Adrian Bruce said: I actually suspect from what I've read here that lots of the developers are family historians. However, I do question how much experience they have of the various software used for family history and genealogy. For instance, every single system that I've used from PAF onwards has used sources to justify all facts and events, not just the 4 vital events plus sort-of marriages. But FSFT? Who made the decision that relating sources to vital events was necessary but rejected the idea that relating them to other events made sense?

It's one thing to miss the necessity of relating sources to non-vital events, but quite another to explicitly decline to provide the facility. Missing can be explained by a lack of experience. Declining, in the face of knowledge, makes little sense.

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Tom Huber said: Shortcuts were taken to implement elements of the program. Now the developers will have to go back and replace what was done with something that actually does what it is supposed to do.

If nothing else, that is the reason why I don't use FamilySearch as my repository for my research. I use a local program where I can control every aspect of sourcing, including using source-centric sourcing instead of person-centric that FamilySearch favors.

I can also completely document my living relatives as well as myself, produce reports that FamilySearch does not support, as well as a wealth of other features. The big advantage is that I can transfer my findings, pull in the FS sources, and provide the appropriately tagged memories once I am done with a profile.

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Paul said: As soon as I saw the Following feature in the beta version I requested it not to be placed in the production version without modification. I'm not saying the developers should have listened to me, but consulted more widely with everyday (and I mean that literally) Family Tree users. I'll be delighted if the old "watch list" features are added back, but such a shame it needs to be achieved by a further tweak of the feature, instead of retaining these important elements from the start.

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Bryce Roper said: After reviewing the feedback, we are working to allow users to chose if they want to display their changes in the following list.

Thank you to everyone who posted constructive feedback and explained their thoughts and desires without degrading others intellect or experience. Thats the feedback that I heard.

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Jeff_Luke said: I don't understand why such a basic feature would be removed in the first place.

Not trying to degrade anyone's intellect, but it is really hard to understand why this wasn't flagged as an issue before rolling it out to millions of users.

The changes made in the last month or so to the temple list and watch list are demoralizing in that I can't work effectively anymore and I hate to waste time trying to come up with new workflows for easy tasks instead of actually contributing to the tree.

It's particularly frustrating when the UI for the temple list and watch list were excellent before the changes.

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D. Llewelyn said: I agree 100%! They took something that worked very well and changed it for the sake of changing?

Honestly, the only thing they needed to do to make a very user friendly system even better, was to allow people to grab shared ordinances. That's it! Everything else worked great for novices and professional genealogists alike.

I don't want to now follow people and see who has changed what (that was easily listed before on any given individuals page). Sometimes when I discover a new ancestor with a lot of kids, I used to "watch" their spouses, so I could get back to them and research further and get their work going. The new system makes it nearly impossible to easily sort and find people I need to get back to. Especially ancestors who will be celebrating their 110th birthdays in the next year or so.

Everything in the new layout from the major waste of space in lists, no longer easily sortable (and can't sort by next ordinance that needs to get done), less colors with colors now having multiple meanings. Green for available, green for shared, gray for work is done, gray for work not needed, not to mention the dark bold pink and blue people backgrounds which are super distracting for those of us here to work, the list goes on. I've clicked on 20 people with green today and finally just gave up and walked away). More steps to filter with less options to sort is so incredibly frustrating, especially when you can't pull your full watch list up, sort and scroll through the whole thing base on birthdate, etc.

Everyone in my family (parents and cousins) who diligently research and take names to the temple are equally as frustrated, but they have a difficult time actually finding this forum and they don't think people are listening anyway. All think the new temple icon looks cartoony and it doesn't actually look like a temple (more like a church - but we'll keep this change if the system can revert back to what was clean, clear, concise, professional looking and user friendly).

I used to spend hours and hours in family search. Now I have to force myself to get back on (I have ancestors who need their work identified and done), but it's hard to get in the right spirit when everything is so difficult now.

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D. Llewelyn said: I star (follow) people that I need to sort and get back to. I'm not interested in seeing other people's changes. I can do that on individual pages.

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Adrian Bruce said: Bryce, please pass our thanks to whoever decided to restore the filter. Indeed, thanks for actually telling us of the decision.

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Nancy Ann Scott said: Good news that we will be able to not follow changes that we made for people that we are following. It was a feature that I used.

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Jeff Wiseman said: D. Llewlyn,

Sometimes when I discover a new ancestor with a lot of kids, I used to "watch" their spouses, so I could get back to them and research further and get their work going

A lot of people have been forced to use the Watch List for these types of activities because FS has not provided more appropriate ways to do it.

This is something that really belongs in a To-Do or Research activities list. Unfortunately, the To-Do list on the FS website is extremely anemic. I generated a list of generic improvements for the To-Do list over 2 years ago and I don't think that we've seen any of them yet. As you can see from the list, item #2 from that list would not only allow you the capability that you wanted, but also many more useful applications.

I still hope that someday the FS To-Do list will become far more than what it is as it is sorely lacking in capabilities.

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Rebecca Lorena Stewart said: I use it for the 110 year rule every day for my ancestors

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Bryce Roper said: I have a question that I would like your feedback on.

FamilySearch has heard the feedback on allowing users to filter out their changes on the new following page. This will be done by adding a button in the options panel.

With the release of the following page we added the option to view changes by the date of the change or to view by person by date.

It is a relatively easy change to allow users to not show their own changes when viewing changes by date. When the changes are viewed by person it adds a lot of complexity to filter out your changes.

My questions is what if we only allow you to filter out your own changes when you choose to view them by date? And we continued to show your changes when you choose view by person.

What are your thoughts?

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Tom Huber said: Changes by person by date ... do not filter out our changes
Changes by date ... allow us to filter out our changes.

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Ann H said: I am fine with filtering out my changes when viewing by date.

I do wish that the displays would put the date in the first or middle column. I usually look at the changes on a daily basis. Items of most interest to me are who was changed and when. If the change occurred since I last looked at the list, then I want to know what the change was. As it is, the date is on the far right and the name is on the far left. It would be easier to scan the list if these two items were closer together--as it is I can't just look at the screen and see what I want without physically moving my head from one side to the other. The older and creakier I get, the more these kinds of things matter. Thank you.

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Rebecca Lorena Stewart said: Please add the option to filter on birth date. I think your other changes mentioned in this thread are great.

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Jeff Wiseman said: Bryce,

So what are the Use Cases for those other permutations? Why should be they be put there? What problem does it solve? If you can’t answer those questions, then the answer to the “should we put them in” question is obvious.

Now that the core concept of a “Watch list” has been kinda scrambled, answering your question is more difficult.

Originally, there were several Use Cases that required you to start with a single, self generated list of “Records of Interest” that you were watching. We had that. Those use cases would have included activities such as:

1. Allow me to select a view of my watch list showing me changes made by everyone else to records in my watch list in chronological order so that I can determine if improvements or damage has been done. Obviously if something has not changed, it should NOT be in this view. If a list of ALL changes is impractical, the view only needs to contain the most “recent” changes where “recent” should be maximized as determined by any capacity limitations of the system.

2. For the view in #1, allow me to temporarily add all changes that *I* have made to those same records interleaved chronologically with the changes others have made so that I can see whether or not I have address and corrected mistakes made by others.

3. Allow me to sort my Watch list by order of birth date. Note that this is NOT sorting the view of the watch list changes shown in #1 and #2. This is the full watch list being sorted. This is so that one can monitor records approaching the 110 Year mark.

4. Allow me to filter on my watch list to view all records that have been deleted so that I can investigate any merges that may have occurred a long time ago that I missed and choose whether or not to remove that record from my watch list.

5. Allow me to filter on my watch list to see all living records that I have so that I can track what is typically invisible to me in my private space.

Note that 3, 4, & 5 do not directly involve “following” somebody, they are just operations central to a watch list that allow questions to be answered.

There may be some other Use Cases for a personalized “Watch list”, but combining a view of that list showing recent changes that has been sorted by person name is redundant. If someone wants to specifically see the changes to a person, that feature already exists in that person’s change history log.

If you want to add that capability in the watch list when it is already in the person’s change history log, you need to have a good reason for it. What does duplicating that function in the watch list give you that the change history log does not? IMHO there is no practical reason to do it.

A normal workflow when a person sees that a recent set of changes has been made to a record they are watching, is to immediately bring up that person’s details page and go to the change history log for that person to use that as a reference as they work on any corrections to past changes that are necessary. Even if you duplicate that feature in a view of the watch list, they STILL will always go to that person’s details page.

Besides that, the contents of the change history log files has always tended to have more information in them than the recent changes reports anyway. Don’t know why that is, but they frequently don’t match exactly—so you have to look at both of them anyway.

End result—you are still having to go look at the person’s change history log which has everything about changes to that person including reasons and details that never show up in the recent changes information.

A person should only have to remember a single place in the system to get certain information or to perform a specific operation. When it … [truncated]

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Jeff Wiseman said: Hi Rebecca!

I think understand your need here. However, I suspect that it is not quite as simple as stated. For example, what if none of the people you were watching had any changes for months? Then a list of the recent changes would be pretty empty and even if it were filtered or sorted by birth date, you would already have holes in the list.

What I suspect you really want is like the old watch list that could be displayed with every record you had put on watch being displayed--and THEN be able to sort and/or filter by birth date

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Adrian Bruce said: Re "It is a relatively easy change to allow users to not show their own changes when viewing changes by date. When the changes are viewed by person it adds a lot of complexity to filter out your changes.

My questions is what if we only allow you to filter out your own changes when you choose to view them by date? And we continued to show your changes when you choose view by person"

I am not sitting in front of a Watch/Follow screen right now but my belief is that I am perfectly happy with only filtering out my own changes in the view by date option.

My reaon is that I use the Watch/Follow as a mechanism to check what's happened to my profiles of interest since the last time I looked. That means that the primary key (?) is to display the changes by date so that at some point I can say, no need to go further, I've checked those. That will normally be the date of the last notification of changes. I don't require to see further back than that. Please don't try to code that limit because I don't always keep up to date.

Obviously I know about my own changes so don't need to see them.

Now, as for viewing them by person - I don't understand why I would want to do that so am happy not to filter there. I presume that in this view I could see all changes made to that profile since the implementation of this facility. I can see no reason for that so don't mind not being able to filter.

So filtering out my changes only in the view by date option is fine by me. It matches what I use this facility for.

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Paula Blake said: As another daily user, I agree completely with Jeff.

I would like to see two separate lists:
1) a list of people I watch/follow (and the ability to sort and filter this list)
2) a list of changes made to the people I watch/follow.

Whilst on the new following screen, I can click on the "following" button to get an alphabetical pop-up list of people I follow - this is of no use to me as I can't filter / sort or download this pop-up list.
In addtion to items 3-5 in Jeff's post, I used to use the watchlist to identify my next research opportunities. i.e. sort by birthdate and then research those without any birthdate added, sort by surname and then research those without any surname on the record, etc.

In answer to Bryce's question:
Yes, please add the option to remove my changes from the list of changes by date. It usually reduces my list to 20-30 people in a week (as opposed to 2000 with my changes included).
No need to add the option to list of changes by person (as I can not see any use for this view of the changes anyway)

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Paul said: In other words, you (like many of us) would like to go back to the way we managed things with the former Watch List feature. Unfortunately, that's just not going to happen - so, basically, we will just have to be grateful for anything that will make working in Family Tree a little easier for us, i.e. compared to the present, restrictive nature of Following. (Filters removed that were deemed to be unnecessary.)

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Adrian Bruce said: "as for viewing them by person"
Now I'm looking at the screen...

I have to say that yesterday, when I was using this facility I was using the View By Person / Sort by Date. Does this make me a liar in my reply above? Well, not really, as if the changes displayed for that profile gradually accumulate and never lose any events, then the list for a profile would become useless as I only want to see the stuff back as far as the last time that I sense-checked the changes.

So no, I'm still happy filtering out my changes only in the view by date option.