Follow direct line
It would be great if there was a box that we could tick that automatically followed or unfollowed all of our direct ancestors in our tree. As a Stake Consultant I always teach people to follow their direct ancestors and then they will know if anyone has changed any information on their relative so they can then go and check that change.
Comments
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Dianne
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FYI
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Users/Patrons can ALREADY easily check on what changes have been made to Ancestors.
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Users/Patrons can "Follow" (formerly "Watch") up to a Maximum of 4000 individuals/persons in "Family Tree" of 'FamilySearch'.
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Users/Patrons can get a "Weekly" Notification of any "Changes" to any of those they "Follow".
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OR, better still, as I do, they can check the "List" of "Changes" to those they "Follow", each and everyday, as often as they wish - it is great for keeping on top of "Changes".
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Here are some "Knowledge Articles" in 'FamilySearch':
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How do I follow or unfollow a person in Family Tree?
https://www.familysearch.org/help/helpcenter/article/can-i-follow-an-individual-in-family-tree
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How do I view all the records in Family Tree I am following?
https://www.familysearch.org/help/helpcenter/article/how-do-i-view-all-the-records-i-am-watching
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How do I find out who else is following a person in Family Tree?
https://www.familysearch.org/help/helpcenter/article/who-else-is-watching-my-ancestors-record
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I hope this helps.
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Brett
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I'm not sure it would be good to automatically follow direct ancestors in the tree. If a user is inexperienced, they will sometimes think that changes being made are automatically bad until they have more experience and can understand which changes are good and which are not. I'm not sure automatically giving people this information would be good, to me it seems more likely it could cause people to panic when they don't need to.
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I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want a the capability to accidentally click on a box and instantly lose the custom list of nearly 1000 specific people I am following since there are specific reasons I am following each of them.
Also, by selecting that box that basically puts all of your "direct lines" into your following list, you would create a massive list that would quickly hit the 4000 name limit in the system. The FSFT has over 1.3 Billion names in it. You don't have to go back many generations before you are into 10's of thousands of ancestors since it is an exponential increase. Do you REALLY want such a huge list like that where you are constantly having to check up on changes made to thousands of names that you haven't ever looked at?
Once you go back so far and records become scarce, you start running into many "Change Wars" where so many records are being flipped back and forth with no useful evidence. Do you REALLY want to swamp your inbox with all of that? Just one person record in the 10,000 you are following can generate massive amounts of changes under such circumstances.
A more practical approach is to start at their parents and walk back through the tree examining each name to see how well documented it is, adding to or modifying as needed. THEN, once you've gained some satisfaction on that name and feel it is fairly stable for then evidence available at that time, you put it onto your following list so that if a change is made, you have something to measure it against.
If this type of application were implemented, I'm suspect it would very quickly get turned off by everybody.
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I think this is a fantastic idea. It could be refined and you could make it per line, following everyone back from a given person. For example, I don't want to follow my mother's step father's line, so I subscribe to the entire line of my mother's mother and biological father. Then from my father I can follow the entire line back.
Someone "accidentally" do anything. They could subscribe or unsubscribe. They could think there is an issue or not. Those aren't sufficient reasons not to allow a large scale subscription. The individual clicking of stars on EVERY person (yes thousands) is onerous and a poor user experience.
The amazing programmers at Family Search can find ways to instate safeguards to protect users from themselves.
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Regarding the numbers issue, I don't think that would present much of a problem for most FT users. After 35 years work, I still only have around 600 ancestors on my tree. I calculate, to get to just over the 4,000 mark would require finding every ancestor 10 generations from ones grandparents (4,8,16,32,64, etc.). I've gone back further than that with some of my lines, but - with a couple of them - am still stuck in the late 1700s.
The idea has merit, but most serious researchers would want to select far more than their "direct" ancestors to add to their Following list.
Incidentally, I have been using Family Tree from its introduction and still have less than 1,400 individuals on my Following list: these include many totally unrelated persons. I dread to think the work I'd be creating for myself if I was watching 4,000 - as things are, it frequently takes me a day or two to sort out the mess made by careless users on some of my family branches.
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Thanks for all your comments.
I find a lot of people, even members, who don't like using familysearch because anyone can change anything. I like the set up now, compared to before when it was only the person that entered the data that could change it. I always teach people to follow as this eases their frustration or concerns.
I think as an option it would be good for people and you can also opt in for any other relatives. It won't be a large number of relatives as it would be direct ancestors only, not your whole tree or children of, or cousins etc.. You could definitely have it as an option, doesn't need to be used, but as User16082421304883888913 has said, it is a very time consuming task although done a little more efficiently while viewing your fan tree.
If you had this you could also choose people individually that you wanted to watch, especially those that you know may cause issues.
Just a thought to make it a little better for those that don't like the fact people can change things so prevents them from using the site
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