Have we outgrown the surname activity feed?

Question

I've loved using the surname activity field and find it really good to follow relatively rare surnames like Turvey, Tulloch and Starling - all of which currently have a few thousand profiles on WikiTree.

However, I've recently been investigating a branch of my family called "Scott", which has over 30,000 profiles. The surname feed is overwhelming, partly because the surname has multiple origins and occurs in lots of different regions.

WikiTree is growing at an impressive rate - >10% per year. Soon we will have more than 20 million profiles and it won't be long before this is 50 million. Presumably my problem with "Scott" will affect an increasing number of surnames.

As a solution, would it be possible to develop the feed so you can restrict it to surnames in a particular location? I would be interested in Scott in Norfolk, England as an example?

Comments

Andrew, I, like Natalie, focus on the unusual names and the categories I follow. One of my tags is Shepherd, and I rarely get a hit on my branch of the family. Lots of others Shepherd families, though. However, I do keep the tag as sometimes when others are helping me out with stickers, categorization, or just tightening things up, I want to know. This is so I can put an acknowledgement under the sources for their work. Most recently, Natalie worked on my Dad’s profile, so I added an acknowledgement.

Yes, it does make for long feeds sometimes, but I can usually narrow it down, even if there are 578,385,916 contributions to the Shepherds each week!

Answer 1

Hi Andrew, 

I have a few names that are common like that, so I know what you mean. Although the feed is determined by surname in the newsletter, so it can't be narrowed down - our wonderful tech's have improved the search feature and it does include two location fields. 

I tried with just the surname Scott and born in Norfolk, England. This returned 176 profiles for me. If you change that to only include Scott as Last Name At Birth it is 152 profiles. I know this isn't what you are looking for, but it does give a return much less than 30,000 

Comments

Thank you for Best Answer Susan  

Answer 2

My solution for that was to follow only a surname I am actively working on, and the rest of my tags are related to projects and/or WikiTree roles. Even with the surname I always follow, which has only 1400 profiles, the feed can be busy. 

Andrew, this may be the way to go in the future. I mean, I'd never follow "Smith" even though it occurs in my tree in a couple of spots. I cannot imagine the feed would be of any use.