Have you been added to too many Trusted Lists? Improved Trusted List Changes tool.

Question

Hi WikiTreers,

The Bulk Trusted List Changes tool is new and improved.

This will be a familiar problem to experienced members, especially Mentors and others who help less-experienced members: You help a stranger or a distant cousin with something, and without knowing why not to, they bulk-add you to lots and lots of Trusted Lists for people you're not interested in. This bloats your Watchlist and makes your Activity Feeds less useful.

Many members have asked for a solution to this problem. Some have suggested requiring prior permission before adding someone to a Trusted List, but that's not practical.

What we have done is make it easier to identify the new additions and remove yourself.

There is now a feature on Special:TrustedListChanges that enables you to see just the additions to your Watchlist from the past three months (starting mid-October). This way you can more easily use the "select all ancestors/descendants" links to prune the unwanted ones.

It's also easier to get straight to this, with fewer clicks. See
https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Special:TrustedListChanges for the differences.

Admittedly, this doesn't solve the entire problem. The new tool will probably work best for those who want to proactively monitor their Watchlists, unless we also add other tools or notification systems. But I think it's a step in the right direction on an annoying little problem that we've neglected for a long time.

Onward and upward,

Chris

Comments

Chris,

Is there a way to get to all these "Special" pages? Can they be added to the Help Index?

Thanks,

Rosemary

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Hi Rosemary. There was a link under "Bulk Changes" and I added another "Trusted List." I'm not sure about linking to other tools and whether there is a better way we can do it. No doubt there is.

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Thanks.

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Dear Chris,

   This sounds like a great tool to remove profiles that end up on my Watch List as I do "Sourcerer" work.  Or is it better to continue to remove myself as manager of profiles I have created?  That is what I have been doing until now.  I keep going over the suggested 5000 maximum.  -NGP

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Thanks for the improvement.  Go Wikitree!

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Oh, wow!  I didn't know I could remove myself.  Good to know!

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Thanks Chris for making it easier!

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Fantastic tool once we learn to use it.

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Chris,

I have been using this tool to reduce my list as it was too large. At first I was using only the checkerd box, and found it worked beautifully, although it is a very long process to deal with over 5300 entries one by one. 

Then I tied the descendant and/or ancestors and siblings fields and loved it. But, after about 100 names and checking back after saving, I realised that these 2 commands were ereasing grand parents that I had kept previously as well as their children, including those that were also grand -parents that I wanted on my list..

Could it be that these two commands - descendant and ancestors and siblings should be removed?

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Hi Gaston,

Do you mean that the "select all" links were selecting people on your Watchlist that weren't recently added, i.e. that weren't displayed on the view you were looking at?

Chris

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Hi Chris,

The use of the descendant and/or ancestors and siblings was used to disconnect specific profiles from my watch list. They were most likely siblings or even children, some of them eventually became my grand-grand-parents through generations. 

In the list, the disconnect descendant and/or ancestors and siblings action is up and down if both command are used. 

I realised this situation while going through a Fournier-1017 group; 18 profiles appeared on my list, Going through them individually, I realised that 10 of them were my grand-grand-parents. When I clicked on ancestors and siblings links, all entries got checked out. All the names remained  in view with the box checked out. I removed the check mark and stopped using the wild keys.

I checked back on the list of the previous day and several others had been check marked without my doing. I suppose that I will have to ask to rejoin the family lists of those that I have lost.

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Hi Gaston,

I'm sorry, can you explain more?

[To clarify for my reference: It's not that ancestor/descendant select-alls on the "show only recent additions" view are also selecting ancestors/descendants that you only see when you click "view all" as I initially suspected. I tested this and confirmed that it works as expected, i.e. it only selects ancestors/descendants on the current view you're looking at.]

It sounds like you think it removed you from profiles that you didn't see on the list at all?

Chris

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Hi Chris,

Here is what I was following: 

1. Bulk Trusted List Link Changes: 

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Special:TrustedListChanges

2. Remove yourself from trusted lists:

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Special:TrustedListChanges

3. This is the list I was working on:

https://www.wikitree.com/index.php?title=Special:TrustedListChanges&action=remove&object_email=[deleted]

This is where the "descendant and/or ancestors and siblings" action removes (activates the check box) up and down the list on names related.

Once saved ("Continue" end of page) the check marked names are removed from the list - (including those not intended)

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Hi Chris,

From what I can see, this new tool is perfect if I dont use the two wild keys. Further, I feel that each profile has to be seen and selected or not, individually.

I have to maintain my previous remarks.

Regards,

Gaston

Answer 1

That is great.  Could we have a similar link please for Project Manager?

It would also be helpful if there could be an alphabetical list so we could   go straight to, for example, M

Comments

William, the same tool works for PMs.

Answer 2

I'm really appreciating this. As I help on various projects, I often create or adopt profiles for others or to clean up errors etc. but I don't need to remain PM (which this list also catches). I can use the recent changes list to review which profiles I'm still managing but don't need to anymore.

Comments

I'm really happy to hear that. Thank you for saying so, Jillaine.

Answer 3

This tool would be more useful with in "invert selection" button, e.g. if I wanted to remove all profiles except my ancestors.