Working together in FamilyTree with other community users.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: Yup, this may never be implemented, or portions of it may be implemented, so such discussions are very useful.

Thank you for creating this message thread.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: If there is one takeaway that seems to be important to most of us, it is being able to know who or message those users who are "watching" any given relative.

The ability to send messages to multiple people has made it apparent that this may one day be possible.

The only push back I've seen is revealing who those watchers are.

LegacyUser

Robert Wren said: Here you go, Joe, some random "key" takeaways (all quotes from above):

• It goes to the heart of the request, which is to be able to send a message to everyone who is watching a given person.

• That way a true discussion thread could develop,much like a discussion thread in this forum.

• The permanence of Discussion notes (the phrase "Discussion notes" implies something...) results in their use for "Notes" that require permanence rather than discussions.

• The original topic dealing with inter-patron communications seemed focused on messaging solutions, but the following issues keep coming up in ration to it.
  suppose that clicking on watch automatically and without recourse, opens up the user's account to receiving messages about the person they are "watching ."

• Joe is probably correct when he says, "This may never be implemented", even though his comments deal with positive ideas on collaboration. FamilySearch management has never shown any interest in the realities (positive or negative) of dealing with fellow FT users and I can't see why any change of attitude should be forthcoming.

• "Community roles will provide expert community members the tools they need to monitor activity in the tree, resolve issues, and “lock” ancestors when heated issues need a chance to cool before further changes are made."

• Currently, by restricting the ID of "Watchers" ( who, likely, are those who are very interested in the PID) FamilySearch has stymied most meaningful collaboration. NOT "control," just acknowledged "collaboration."

• In summary, I don't think we should be too judgemental about responses (of lack of them) from fellow users and, as far as possible, any proscriptive changes involving contacting them should be avoided.

• I have had times where it would be good to notify all the watchers first before I "disconnect" that person from a relationship. 50 years of family members passing on incorrect information ... where the attached sources today show otherwise ... it would be great to get all the watchers on the same page before I made the change, so that they stopped changing it back and forth until all 10 people figured out that the source, not the folklore was true. Could have saved hours of work and hours of back and forth communication.

• One can collaborate with another person, or maybe a dozen or two, but is virtually impossible to cooperate with a hundred, or worse, several million. This is especially true when the many of the directly interested parties are not even KNOWN (aka those who are fellow ANONYMOUS users on the 'watch list")
  Re numbers - in the sort of areas that I work with, I'd be surprised to see more than 5 or 6 watchers and other contributors in total. (I'm ignoring Group 3). So I don't see any spamming potential!

• you have brought up an important point -- getting to those users who are watching a person's details for changes. Then, some kind of bulk messaging (to be left on the person's messages page) is also needed, but with a way to report inappropriate messages and, a way to opt out of the messages.

LegacyUser

Adrian Bruce said: For me, I think it's both watchers and previous contributors.

LegacyUser

Robert Wren said: At least "previous contributors" can be SEEN (and contacted) - for some (unknown) reason, "watchers" are HIDDEN form view, and can NOT be contacted - expect as one of the (likely) "previous contributors".

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: You forgot one:

12. No one should be able to Opt-out of receiving messages sent to them regarding modifications they have made in the tree. They may choose to ignore them, but they should not be able to avoid them showing up in their messages (as well as email if possible).

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: I suspect that ANYONE who is a "watcher" is FAR more serious and committed to that record than those that are listed as just contributors. They have ASKED to be notified of stuff. Contributors may be nothing more than "drive-by-modifiers" who just hit and run, then never return.

The number of records I have made quick corrections on (as I was "passing through" that part of the tree) that I never plan on returning to are numerous. I really don't ever want to be receiving messages and discussions about them unless it is specific to the changes I made.

Being able to see contributors and not those people watching a record is another example of where FS got it backwards.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: Many times the contributor is reacting to a hint on their Recommended Tasks. They take care of the hint, often not taking the time to make sure the hint is actually for that person, and then move on to the next.

LegacyUser

Robert Wren said: Only one?? How about:

13. I suspect that ANYONE who is a "watcher" is FAR more serious and committed to that record than those that are listed as just contributors. They have ASKED to be notified of stuff. Contributors may be nothing more than "drive-by-modifiers" who just hit and run, then never return.

LegacyUser

Adrian Bruce said: The idea that Watchers are more committed than Contributors is eminently sensible. Restricting group messages to Watchers only, would also deal with one of my reasons for wanting to mute such messages for a PID, namely I did a "drive by mod" and don't wish to be contacted again about someone who I know nothing of.

Conversely, we have seen time and again that people who should be watching a profile for "their" relatives, simply aren't. Maybe the answer to that is promote the watch list more, rather than blur the difference between watchers and contributors as I am probably suggesting.

LegacyUser

Juli said: I'm one of those who just doesn't watch very many profiles. This is primarily because I'm the only person who ever touches most parts of my tree. If there were a "contact watchers" function, however, this would quickly change, because on those few points where I do connect to other FS FT users, I would love to be able to communicate about our research.

I concur with everyone that contacting contributors on a general basis is pointless. There are countless edits scattered around the tree with my name attached but where I have no clue who these people are; mostly, I was trying to get rid of nonsense hints or possible duplicates by adding conclusions or merging auto-profiles.

When FS FT presents me with a nonsense possible match, I try to find a way to edit the "offending" profiles so that they no longer even vaguely match my family. My usual method is to find the index entries that generated the profiles, look at the images, and compare things like house numbers and godparents. If the index contains multiple versions of the same parents (as is very often the case), then I merge them and attach the sources. (If it's not obvious, I just leave it all unchanged.) This means that the change log for those profiles will be all-me for dozens of entries, especially for families with three or more daughters. (For some reason, sons don't often have auto-profiles.) Any broadcast message that looked only at contributors would include me as a recipient, but I would have absolutely no idea who it was talking about, and zero interest once I did figure that out.

LegacyUser

joe martel said: Thanks so much for your comments. As I re-read this entire thread if I were king for today and had a short list to do I would provide the ability for a user to:

1. See a list of all the users who are "interested" in this PID. This list would include watchers and contributors. Maybe someday FS would show who contributed vs. watching but for now this obscuring may be enough to alleviate privacy concerns for now.
2. The user can contact any (one, not a group) of the interested users. Maybe someday a broadcast group message - but that still concerns me.
3. Make sure LifeSketch, Notes, Discussions trigger watch/notify (and makes up the "interested" users.)
4. Every user is auto opt-in for communication (messaging) and can't opt-out without rescinding write access.

I may change my view later. But, lots of good discussion about the other aspects (mute, abuse , showing who's on-line/snoozed) but that another tier of work.

LegacyUser

Juli said: Point 4 would seriously discourage me from "drive-by" fixing of unrelated-to-me messes. I'm fine being contacted about a specific action I took in Family Tree, and have no desire to opt out of such communication, but I really _do not_ want to be contacted about the profile in general. I'm not necessarily interested in it at all; in fact, it's likely that I made my changes exactly because I want the profile to GO AWAY from my suggestions/hints/whatever.

LegacyUser

Robert Wren said: I nominate JOE for KING for a day!! (Is it an elective office?)

I'd be happy just to SEE watchers' Contact Cards - even if they were allowed to opt out of receiving messages.

Just one small step for userkind, but one great step for collaboration.

I find it very difficult to "collaborate" with a million or so users!!

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: Point 4 (including rescinding all write access to the FT) is a terrific idea ONLY when it comes to messages they receive about changes that they made. For generic "watchers" and "Contributors" it is a totally different story.

Also, if there is an ability to "rescind write access" for a person in the system, it needs to be exercised far more frequently for individuals that are obviously ignoring all warnings and attempts to collaborate with them.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: And I would find it IMPOSSIBLE to "collaborate" with a SINGLE USER that has opted out of messages containing questions about why they made changes on a specific PID.

LegacyUser

Robert Wren said: True, but knowing some would be better than the current unknown watchers. (IMO, of course)

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: I like the idea of a "broadcast" message that could be bulk sent to a) all watching; b) contributors; or c) a combination of both. While this could be part of a "Conversation", I would like to see "Conversations" reserved for one-to-one messages with the option of adding additional people, as it is now.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: Tom, implementation for such a feature in the user interface could be made very intuitive. Right now if you want to send a message to someone who already made a change, you just select their identifier in the change log and the note goes out to them. If all the individuals watching that person had their identifiers displayed as a LIST on the main person page, you would just click on the watcher's list which would initial a group conversation for that record in that would show up in your "Conversation messages".

This would just one of the many enhancements to the "Conversation message" feature that I've been talking about that would improve collaboration. However, the group handling concept would have to be cleaned up much more than it currently is. You would also have to deal with the Opt-out notions as well.

E.g., if you were watching a record that someone initiated a group conversation on, you would start receiving all of the replies the same way a person on this forum would when watching a particular topic. Although it is inappropriate to opt-out of receiving the initial few messages (i.e., without completely removing your watch on that record), if the traffic in the conversation got too high and you aren't particularly interest in the subject, you might want to have the ability to be removed form THAT SPECIFIC discussion at some time.

But again, as I have recently mention in other topics here, you need to totally DETACH the conversation messages feature completely from all the other so-called "messages" features which are nothing more than announcements that you cannot even reply to. If FS needs to move that feature around as it evolves, it will be far more difficult if it is attached at the hip with other "messaging" features that do not behave anywhere the same and are for totally different features.

Just because the word "message" is used in describing a set of features doesn't mean that they should all be explicitly coupled together.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: OF course you only want to know watchers who are interested in a common record. If someone is totally absorbed with the lineage of King Tut, I doubt that they would have much interest in my grandfather :-)

We currently put watches on records so that when someone changes them in some unexpected way, you can go in AFTER THE FACT and discuss why that was done. Much better to identify before the fact what might be inappropriate.

Anyone that has a watch on a record has a vested interest in it. When a change is made on a record, they all want to receive a notice. When someone is ABOUT to make a change but has a question, I'm sure that all of those same people would want to know about it.

Oh, and it is important to realize that watchers and past contributors are NOT the same thing.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: True. I have a watch on a record that I created and if someone comes along and contributes, makes a change, etc., I want to know about it. Why? Because the only source I have is one of those weird "promptings" that sometimes happens.

But that is a very unusual case. In most situations, I have a watch because there is misinformation that is out there, such as a bogus DAR report when a missing connection, or in the case of the ever popular Pieter Claesen, a fraudulent genealogy. Likewise, my Swiss Mennonite ancestral lines are subject to getting confused because there were many families with the same names and as such, merging them can be problematical.