Please make it easier to add labels to individuals in "Following"
Surely the developers could make it easier to add labels to those in the "Following" list? I am following around 1400 individuals and, after several days (not continuously, of course), am still nowhere near half way through the list.
As previously reported, scrolling is very difficult - the page frequently reloads causing continual pauses. Also, there is no way of picking up where one left off, so if I take a break (and have to log back in) there I am back at the top of the list again and having to go through the long, painful process of scrolling back down to where I was.
I think the labelling feature is a great idea - I am concentrating on adding "Ancestor" labels at the moment, but will add several more to "classify" individuals not directly related to me. But, at the moment, the process is proving so painful that I feel like giving up!
Oh, and another problem (I believe raised elsewhere) is the time it takes to actually add / edit the label. I thought there was a problem with my internet connection speed, but found my work in other sections of Family Tree was just fine. There is usually a long pause before the label is added and I can move on to the next individual. This whole feature definitely requires some tweaking.
Comments
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Paul W.
I contacted FS support about the issue of the long pause before the label is added. They gave me several suggestions to try. I did as they suggested and it helped some. Here is some of their response to my inquiry:
"Sometimes when a part of the website isn't working correctly or it is very slow, deleting the cookies at FamilySearch.org and the browsing and download history in the browser/s you are using makes things work better. Also, our website works best when using Chrome or Firefox. So please do the following: First go to familysearch.org/cookies and click Reset. Then delete the temporary files in the browsers you are using. Chrome, Firefox and Microsoft Edge, allow you to delete temporary files, cookies, and other items when you press these three keyboard keys at the same time: Ctrl+Shift+Del (Windows users). Cmd+Shift+Del (Mac users).
Each browser handles this combination slightly differently by opening a new screen in your browser, which enables you to select specific items to delete. You should delete these three items: Browsing history Cache Download history In Firefox, select Everything in the Time range to clear drop down menu. In Chrome, select All time in the Time range drop down menu. Then click Clear, Clear Now or Clear Data.
If you are using Safari, you will need to do the following: In the upper left side of your screen, click Safari. In the menu that appears, click Preferences. In the window that appears, click the Privacy tab. Click the button Manage Website Data. In the pop-up window that appears, click Remove Now.
It might also be necessary to close the browser and reopen it. It might also be necessary to restart your computer. If this works, you might want to save these instructions, because doing them is often all that you need to do when a feature on our website is not working correctly or fast enough."
Also, "We tell patrons all the time that if a feature isn't working well in Firefox, use Chrome and visa versa. It is not unusual at all for a feature to work better with the other browser. And then another day the same feature might work better on the opposite browser. Firefox and Chrome are the two best browsers for our website. You can save yourself a lot of aggravation if you have both so you can switch when necessary."
Hope these things help you.
Sincerely,
Lyn
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Paul W.
I contacted FS support about the issue of the long pause before the label is added. They gave me several suggestions to try. I did as they suggested and it helped some. Here is some of their response to my inquiry:
"Sometimes when a part of the website isn't working correctly or it is very slow, deleting the cookies at FamilySearch.org and the browsing and download history in the browser/s you are using makes things work better. Also, our website works best when using Chrome or Firefox. So please do the following: First go to familysearch.org/cookies and click Reset. Then delete the temporary files in the browsers you are using. Chrome, Firefox and Microsoft Edge, allow you to delete temporary files, cookies, and other items when you press these three keyboard keys at the same time: Ctrl+Shift+Del (Windows users). Cmd+Shift+Del (Mac users).
Each browser handles this combination slightly differently by opening a new screen in your browser, which enables you to select specific items to delete. You should delete these three items: Browsing history Cache Download history In Firefox, select Everything in the Time range to clear drop down menu. In Chrome, select All time in the Time range drop down menu. Then click Clear, Clear Now or Clear Data.
If you are using Safari, you will need to do the following: In the upper left side of your screen, click Safari. In the menu that appears, click Preferences. In the window that appears, click the Privacy tab. Click the button Manage Website Data. In the pop-up window that appears, click Remove Now.
It might also be necessary to close the browser and reopen it. It might also be necessary to restart your computer. If this works, you might want to save these instructions, because doing them is often all that you need to do when a feature on our website is not working correctly or fast enough."
Also, "We tell patrons all the time that if a feature isn't working well in Firefox, use Chrome and visa versa. It is not unusual at all for a feature to work better with the other browser. And then another day the same feature might work better on the opposite browser. Firefox and Chrome are the two best browsers for our website. You can save yourself a lot of aggravation if you have both so you can switch when necessary."
Hope these things help you.
Sincerely,
Lyn
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Lyn
Thank you very much for raising this issue with Support on my behalf. In the past I would have done this myself, but - as their response illustrates - they are rather inclined to provide "copy & paste" answers than to escalate such matters to the relevant team for their consideration.
Sadly, FS employees visit this forum far less than when GetSat was the main platform for raising such queries, so I don't have too much hope of getting this matter resolved unless other users report being affected by the same issue.
Incidentally, the browser and cookies suggestions do not seem to be issues in this case. As I have stated, my current problems when working in FamilySearch are confined to this one feature. Regarding the specific scrolling issue, I have been advised this is found in similar features on other websites, but is a problem that is possible to resolve. Hopefully, the engineers will revisit "Following" and, as suggested, be able to make the necessary tweaks to improve ease of use.
Thank you again for your efforts.
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Lyn
Thank you very much for raising this issue with Support on my behalf. In the past I would have done this myself, but - as their response illustrates - they are rather inclined to provide "copy & paste" answers than to escalate such matters to the relevant team for their consideration.
Sadly, FS employees visit this forum far less than when GetSat was the main platform for raising such queries, so I don't have too much hope of getting this matter resolved unless other users report being affected by the same issue.
Incidentally, the browser and cookies suggestions do not seem to be issues in this case. As I have stated, my current problems when working in FamilySearch are confined to this one feature. Regarding the specific scrolling issue, I have been advised this is found in similar features on other websites, but is a problem that is possible to resolve. Hopefully, the engineers will revisit "Following" and, as suggested, be able to make the necessary tweaks to improve ease of use.
Thank you again for your efforts.
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Paul,
I had the same problem as you have had with the "following" list labels. It was painfully slow. Interestingly, at one point, I was so frustrated with it that I switched to Mircosoft Edge which was already on my computer and that seems to help speed things up a bit. That was a couple of weeks ago. Just a day or two ago, I added some labels and the process was very fast with Firefox. Go figure.
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Paul,
I had the same problem as you have had with the "following" list labels. It was painfully slow. Interestingly, at one point, I was so frustrated with it that I switched to Mircosoft Edge which was already on my computer and that seems to help speed things up a bit. That was a couple of weeks ago. Just a day or two ago, I added some labels and the process was very fast with Firefox. Go figure.
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Thanks, Lyn
I'll try Edge today. Firefox is where I have my real problems. I tried Chrome yesterday, which was an improvement, but still much slower than working elsewhere in FamilySearch.
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Thanks, Lyn
I'll try Edge today. Firefox is where I have my real problems. I tried Chrome yesterday, which was an improvement, but still much slower than working elsewhere in FamilySearch.
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Thanks for your feedback on the labels feature. We are looking at the performance issues for this feature and will hopefully have some improvements soon. There are a couple of things I want to comment on.
- The more people you are following the slower it is to add labels. There are a couple of reasons for this and we are working on them.
- There were some comments about how scrolling works. We have two options to display all of the names in a following list, we can scroll the page, and what I call lazy load the next few names when you get to the bottom of the page, or we can add paging where we display maybe 25 names and then you have to click a button to go to the next page. 95% of users of this feature are following 50 people or less, that's why we have currently chosen to scroll the page, it's much faster then paging. With that said there is some optimizing we are trying to make scrolling work better.
- The browser you are using should not make a difference on performance. I would be interested in having more information about that.
- Paging might make it easier to initially add labels if you have a long list but after they are added how do you use the list? i.e.-Is it to see the recent changes to persons you are following? In that case scrolling might we easier to use
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Thanks for your feedback on the labels feature. We are looking at the performance issues for this feature and will hopefully have some improvements soon. There are a couple of things I want to comment on.
- The more people you are following the slower it is to add labels. There are a couple of reasons for this and we are working on them.
- There were some comments about how scrolling works. We have two options to display all of the names in a following list, we can scroll the page, and what I call lazy load the next few names when you get to the bottom of the page, or we can add paging where we display maybe 25 names and then you have to click a button to go to the next page. 95% of users of this feature are following 50 people or less, that's why we have currently chosen to scroll the page, it's much faster then paging. With that said there is some optimizing we are trying to make scrolling work better.
- The browser you are using should not make a difference on performance. I would be interested in having more information about that.
- Paging might make it easier to initially add labels if you have a long list but after they are added how do you use the list? i.e.-Is it to see the recent changes to persons you are following? In that case scrolling might we easier to use
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Bryce
Lyn suggested using Edge as my browser when working on the Labels feature and I can confirm it is definitely better than Firefox (which is my first choice of browser) or Chrome. The improvement applies to the speed of adding the label (i.e. not being delayed in moving on to the next individual) and scrolling. With regards to the latter, I try a combination of dragging the scroll bar and using the mouse wheel. As you have explained, having around 1400 names in my Following list probably slows things down.
Currently I am up to "P" in my "A to Y" list of names and find it quite a pain to get back to where I left off the previous day! A partial workaround is to enter (say) "p" in the search field, although that also produces names that include the letter "p", of course.
On my other point, it would be great to have more labels (in number) available. I have so many family branches I would like to filter on that this would be a considerable help for me.
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Bryce
Lyn suggested using Edge as my browser when working on the Labels feature and I can confirm it is definitely better than Firefox (which is my first choice of browser) or Chrome. The improvement applies to the speed of adding the label (i.e. not being delayed in moving on to the next individual) and scrolling. With regards to the latter, I try a combination of dragging the scroll bar and using the mouse wheel. As you have explained, having around 1400 names in my Following list probably slows things down.
Currently I am up to "P" in my "A to Y" list of names and find it quite a pain to get back to where I left off the previous day! A partial workaround is to enter (say) "p" in the search field, although that also produces names that include the letter "p", of course.
On my other point, it would be great to have more labels (in number) available. I have so many family branches I would like to filter on that this would be a considerable help for me.
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Paul,
Thanks for your feedback on the number of custom labels. We knew there would be users asking for the ability to add more than 10. We are still evaluating this and might increate the number. What number would you suggest?
As for the browser issue I have my tester looking at this problem.
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Paul,
Thanks for your feedback on the number of custom labels. We knew there would be users asking for the ability to add more than 10. We are still evaluating this and might increate the number. What number would you suggest?
As for the browser issue I have my tester looking at this problem.
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Bryce
Thank you for the encouraging news that increasing the number of "custom" labels available is under consideration. As to the number, I guess - as many as possible! Personally, I would like to see at least 10 more.
When you have, say, 150-200 different surnames on your Following list it gets rather confusing as to whom they relate and/or why you originally put them there. So, at the very least, I would like to be able to have labels for my 8 great-grandparent branches, so I know straight away how an individual fits into each "main" branch of my ancestry. On top of this, I am following a number of unconnected individuals / families that have similar identities to my ancestors / close relatives and have been erroneously merged with them in the past. I must admit, I also have an interest in the ancestry of two "famous" individuals (an artist and a novelist), so want to label their branches individually, too.
I must say I am surprised at the apparent lack of enthusiasm about this new Labels feature among the community. To me, this is the best enhancement in a long while and will really help me in being able to quickly identify exactly where an individual fits - especially when another user makes an unexpected change or (usually incorrect) merge. As I suggest, many on my Following list are of no known relationship, but I still like to think their profiles are not being damaged or confused with my close relatives.
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Bryce
Thank you for the encouraging news that increasing the number of "custom" labels available is under consideration. As to the number, I guess - as many as possible! Personally, I would like to see at least 10 more.
When you have, say, 150-200 different surnames on your Following list it gets rather confusing as to whom they relate and/or why you originally put them there. So, at the very least, I would like to be able to have labels for my 8 great-grandparent branches, so I know straight away how an individual fits into each "main" branch of my ancestry. On top of this, I am following a number of unconnected individuals / families that have similar identities to my ancestors / close relatives and have been erroneously merged with them in the past. I must admit, I also have an interest in the ancestry of two "famous" individuals (an artist and a novelist), so want to label their branches individually, too.
I must say I am surprised at the apparent lack of enthusiasm about this new Labels feature among the community. To me, this is the best enhancement in a long while and will really help me in being able to quickly identify exactly where an individual fits - especially when another user makes an unexpected change or (usually incorrect) merge. As I suggest, many on my Following list are of no known relationship, but I still like to think their profiles are not being damaged or confused with my close relatives.
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Bryce Roper,
Like Paul W., I struggle with the scrolling because I have about 1300 people on my list. I can't imagine the time it takes patrons who have 2000-4000 names on their list! Sometimes I invert the list and scroll from the back of the alphabet to get through it. (The labels now do help sort these names into smaller lists, so thank you for the labels!)
However, could a way be made to "jump" to a particular place in the following list instead of having to scroll to a particular point?
BTW, I love the application to add labels in the "following" list. I love the blank labels that can be customized. I have used all 10 blank labels and only 1 or 2 of the pre-made labels. I only used the pre-made ones because I couldn't make another label to suit my desire. :-) I use the following list mostly as a place to hold names until I can move them over to my Reservation List. The customize labels show me what is the needed; such as "data problem", "SS ready; not spouse"; "90 day rsvd avail", "possible duplicate", " 'E' ready", " 'I' ready", "SP 110 yr rule", "SS 110 yr rule", "SP & SS 110 yr rule". I am still relatively new to research so for now I don't understand all the ins and outs of merging and unmerging. So my labels reflect that.
Thanks again for the labels in the "following" list.
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Bryce Roper,
Like Paul W., I struggle with the scrolling because I have about 1300 people on my list. I can't imagine the time it takes patrons who have 2000-4000 names on their list! Sometimes I invert the list and scroll from the back of the alphabet to get through it. (The labels now do help sort these names into smaller lists, so thank you for the labels!)
However, could a way be made to "jump" to a particular place in the following list instead of having to scroll to a particular point?
BTW, I love the application to add labels in the "following" list. I love the blank labels that can be customized. I have used all 10 blank labels and only 1 or 2 of the pre-made labels. I only used the pre-made ones because I couldn't make another label to suit my desire. :-) I use the following list mostly as a place to hold names until I can move them over to my Reservation List. The customize labels show me what is the needed; such as "data problem", "SS ready; not spouse"; "90 day rsvd avail", "possible duplicate", " 'E' ready", " 'I' ready", "SP 110 yr rule", "SS 110 yr rule", "SP & SS 110 yr rule". I am still relatively new to research so for now I don't understand all the ins and outs of merging and unmerging. So my labels reflect that.
Thanks again for the labels in the "following" list.
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