Add Filter to Following to filter out my changes.

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Adrian Bruce said: Incidentally, the headings on the Following screen are not very informative. I've had to try each option several times to decide what I think the options actually mean.

I think that "View By / All Changes" means show all changes to followed / watched profiles separately, automatically in date order.

"View By / Person" collects all changes to followed / watched profiles and groups them under the profile. Two sort orders are possible - alpha order of the full name or sorted by date of last change made to profile.

In all cases, I assume (please correct me if I'm wrong) that the changes shown go right back to the implementation of this facility....

I think that the headings don't convey the grouping aspect - my suggest would be:

Replace "View By / All Changes" heading by "View / All Changes Separately"

Replace "View By / Person" heading by "View / Changes Grouped by Person" with sort options as now.

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Adrian Bruce said: NB - yes my headings do contain multiple words!

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Jeff_Luke said: That's good that it meets your needs.

However, I still want to be able to look at a view by person and still filter out the changes that I have made.

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Jeff Wiseman said: Jeff_Luke,

Just curious here. Would it be an issue if you have to go the person's detail page and look at the Show all changes if the ability to filter out your own changes was made available their instead?

I'm just thinking of options that the developers might be able to use. The above might actually be more flexible than putting it in a "Recent changes" view.

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Rebecca Lorena Stewart said: Your description is exactly what I need. I used the old Watch List to keep track of those coming up for the 110 year deadline. There is no other way to do that with the newly changed software. Any suggestions Jeff? You seem to really know this in and out.

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Jeff Wiseman said: So when you select "Following" under the FamilSearch menu, it doesn't really take you to your "Following" list (used to be know as your "watch" list). Instead it takes you to the list of ALL CHANGES that have occurred for people you are "Following". So anyone you are following who have had no changes may not show up there (not too intuitive).

(BTW, I haven't bothered to walk through the gazillion "Mores" on my list to get to the end, but I wonder if that list labeled as *ALL* changes is really *ALL* of them. It used to only be the most recent ones back a few weeks. So is that label "ALL CHANGES" really true?)

But if you select the "FOLLOWING" button on that page:



then THAT will take you to your actual "Following" list. Unfortunately it's pretty clunky. It's not compact so you have to scroll and scroll, constantly having to select the "more", etc.. It is only presented in alphabetical order and cannot be resorted. In fact, the only value that it seems to have is the ability to "Un-follow" someone on the list. So it seems pretty useless for the moment

I am hopeful though, that FS will hear the folks here and expand their following list to be an actual list that is fast to scan through and has a few other sorting or filtering features such as a sort on birthdays, surnames, etc.. It needs to be far more useful than it is at the moment (i.e., more like it USED to be before all of the features were hacked off of it)

In the meantime though, I don't know what you could do with FS's current software. For me, I use Ancestral Quest on my iMac all the time to make up for many of the weaknesses in the FSFT. Almost all of the records in my AQ database have been linked to FS records in the FSFT.

AQ has a general "name list" feature. Similar to a spreadsheet (but in a far simpler fashion) I can add or remove any of the attribute columns in that list. In your situation I might add a birth column. The name list can be sorted any number of ways using primary, secondary, and tertiary keys. By sorting on the birth column, I could get the 110 year potentials you are looking for. You also have various filtering capabilities. You can filter by families, generations, locations, etc.

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Bryce Roper said: This morning we turned on the ability to hide your changes in the following list. You can find this ability under the options tab. In the coming weeks we will add the ability to sort by name, birth and death date, sex, and ID.

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Paula Blake said: Many thanks Bruce - having the option to take out my own changes makes the list work much better for me.

Just checking re: the sorting ability being added - is this to the same "changes to the records that we are following" list?

Or is the pop-out "records that we are following" formerly known as the watchlist to which you are adding the sorting ability?

Fingers crossed for me that its the latter ;-)

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Jeff_Luke said: Hi Bryce - thanks for adding that feature!

As I was playing around with the following list I realized that it only shows changes made to a person after I started 'following' them. Maybe it was like that before the watch list was changed to the following list, but I had not noticed that before.

It made me think that it would be nice to know the date when I started 'following' someone. And it would be nice to be able to sort by that date.

There are a few people on my list that I had a hard time remembering why I put them on the list. Having a following date could be helpful in organizing the following list.

Thanks

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Jeff Wiseman said: If I want to see what has happened to a person before I started following them, I'll go to the change History for that person. Normally the reason I put a record on my following list is because I just put a whole bunch of effort researching and documenting that person to the point I feel that I can leave them for a while. THAT's when I put them on the following list so I can tell if any new information is useful or incorrect and act accordingly.

But since there is usually a bunch of things I am changing and adding to a record as I vet it, I don't want all of that showing up on my change list. I'm only interested in changes AFTER I've "stabilized" the record to something that seems reasonable in my own opinion. Then THAT is the point I add it to my watch list.

(it is also the point where I sync the record to my Ancestral Quest database so I have a backup of what it looked like when I last looked at and and thought it looked ok :-)

There is only one change list for every record in the system, but that information would have to be replicated to everybody else's own personal "changes to my following list", this would add a huge load on the system resources, I suspect. So showing all changes to everyone on your following list is likely impractical. As a result, what use to be incorrectly labeled as ALL CHANGES on your following list would be far more accurately named as RECENT CHANGES.

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Jeff_Luke said: Thanks Jeff. It makes sense that changes are tracked from the point you start 'following' someone.
Having a field that tracks the 'following' date would I think be a useful addition.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: Yea but remember that in the past couple of years the old "watch list" would only show the last 60 days or so depending on system capacity. It wouldn't even show you everything back o when you started watching a record. That seems reasonable though when you consider the system resources it takes

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Jeff_Luke said: Yeah. That makes sense and would be ok with me.

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Bryce Roper said: Jeff_Luke,

I liked your comment about sometimes having a hard time remembering why you added a person to your watch list. We have been working on a concept where you could add labels and a note to the people you are following to remind you why they are on your list. You would be able to filter the following list by these labels.

I would like feedback on what labels we should include. A label would not be required but you could add one if you want and a note that only you would see.

Some labels that have been suggested are:
Researching
End of line

If we built this feature what labels would you like to see?

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: I have three end of line persons that I am following. So "End of Line" is an important label for me.

Researching is also fine
Same name confusion -- (this takes place where the family lived in the same area for a couple of centuries.)
Sibling with same/similar name -- (John vs Jonathan)
(user entered) -- user enters reason they are following the name

There are likely others, as well, that would work well.

I really like this concept and hope that it will be incorporated in the near future.

LegacyUser

Chas Howell said: Instead of Labels, how about just a 200 character text field?

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Jeff_Luke said: Hi Bryce,

Thanks for reading these comments and for asking for suggestions! This is great.

A good implementation for labels might be to have one column with drop down labels, and a second column with a text field. The drop downs would be nice for quickly sorting or filtering, while the text field would allow for more detail and/or categories not in the drop down.

I use the watch list for keeping track of:
• people who need more research, that i plan to come back to later to research further
• people approaching the 110 year mark
• close relatives that i want to keep an eye on in case of a change made by someone else
• key ancestors that have incomplete information (where I have hit a research wall) that i want to keep an eye on to see if someone adds more detail to their record
• relatives that are not close that need temple work, especially if someone has made a change to them recently (i don't want to 'take' ordinances from someone who is actively researching a person, but I also want to know the ordinances will get done, so i frequently will keep an eye on someone for several months to a year to see if a closer relative or more active researcher will claim the ordinances before i do)
• possible duplicate people for which I don’t have enough info to merge them yet, but will check in periodically to see if there is more detail
• end of line (furthest back ancestor along some line)
• interesting people that i may or may not be related to (I am a direct descendant of Henry the 8th, so it is fun to see when changes are made to him or to be able to quickly find him)

so maybe categories of:
• researching
• incomplete information
• end of line
• temple reservation opportunity
• key relative
• possible duplicate
• personal interest

plus a text field.

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Jeff_Luke said: see my message below
i broke it out as a different post because the responses get stacked and are easy to miss.

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Paul said: I'm not so bothered about labels, but a text field would be very useful. I often think, "Now why did I add THEM to the list?" Being able to add a note like, "Not related, but 'following' him as has been incorrectly merged in past with relative of same name", would be very helpful.

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Rebecca Lorena Stewart said: I would absolutely love this. I would use this feature.

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Rebecca Lorena Stewart said: Hi Bryce, I would love to see labels that included:
1. Brick wall
2. End of Line
3. 110 year mark
4. Return to work other family members
5. Needs Maiden Name
This would be an incredible feature and I would use this feature every day. Thank you for all you are doing.

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Chas Howell said: I think a simple text field would be more useful, instead of an endless list of labels

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Adrian Bruce said: Bryce does mention adding "labels and a note to the people you are following" and the "label would not be required" - so I think Chas' desire is satisfied.

My concern over not having any label would be that it would make searching a lot less effective for me because I'd be trying to remember whether I used the term "End of Line" or "Brick Wall" in my note - having a specific, basic list of labels would reduce that confusion. (And is "End of Line" someone with unknown parents or no children? Sickly grin!)