German Notables appearing on all profiles I manage.

Question

All the profiles (I think) that I manage have a list of German Notables attached to the bottom of the page. These are totally irrelevant as in fact any notables would be. How do I remove this?

Comments

By disconnecting yourself and all such profiles from the main Tree -- which would NOT be something you should do.  (It would likely be viewed as vandalism.)

If you don't wish to see the featured Connections of the Week,* don't scroll all the way down the page.

* They change every week, sometime between Monday and Wednesday.

---

That's a bit of a glib comment, isn't it? If you don't want to see it don't scroll all the way down the page. Why would I want to see notables? Or indeed anyone else want to see this?  In many cases, notables are a very moot point anyway.  Please find a way to get my profiles serious again!

---

To be honest I wouldn't have expected a reply like that from Wikitree!

Answer 1

Chris, check your email that comes out on Wednesday each week with a subject line of 'WT Family News'.  It indicates the profiles that Wikitree is 'highlighting' that week. 

In the email that I received Wednesday this past week, it has a line 'This week's "Feature connections for <your name>" are German notables.

Last Wednesday, it said This week's "Featured Connections for <your name>" have colorful names, in celebration of Easter.

Comments

I think I know where you are going Linda the emails with irrelevances do mask things you should read. This is not a go at just Wikitree but a whole lot of organisations I am a member of a few political and human rights orgs.  One, in particular, has increased the emails with stories etc. I now delete without reading and miss important things. I have been getting that way with Wikitree. I need to filter. I gave up as a DD as I felt I was getting OCD and realised that doing very minor corrections was prompting messages to managers. If I do any corrections now I try to make sure it's worthwhile. and try to do a bit of research as well. That's in between checking corrections to profiles I created, we all make mistakes ;-) I must do better.

Answer 2

The WikiTree Browser Extension has a great new Readability Options feature. One of the options is to hide this section.

Comments

Thank you that was the sort of reply I was hoping for. :-) I must admit I do have doubts about what value the "entertainment" adds to the need to concentrate on ironing out the problems of so many of the duff profiles and unlinked trees etc. that remain. The difficult lists!

---

Chris, Just because 'you' don't like something that Wikitree does, does not mean that there is always a way of getting rid of it.  If Ian had not built something into the browser extension, you would not have the option.  There are lots of people that do not and will not install the browser extensions. There are plenty of things on wikitree that people do not like.

---

Just to be clear, you can thank Jonathan Duke for this one. 

---

Ian, I'd love a video walk through of "reading mode". I'm having a difficult time getting my head around it. But it looks powerful.

---

Jillaine, since there are so many options, I created a page here with more detailed explanations of the settings:

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:WikiTree_Readability_Options

There are more parts to it other than just reading mode, but it basically adds a toggle button to the header that lets you turn reading mode on/off.

You can use the default settings, or you can customize with parts of the profiles that you want to hide by changing them from "never" to "in reading mode" or even "always" which may be what Chris wants for the notable connections.

Here is an image of the way I have mine set:

(note that checking the "Enable reading mode" box is the same as using the toggle switch to turn it on/off directly from the profile pages)

---

So if I understand correctly, "reading mode" is like a layer of interface that must be turned on in order to use any of the readability options contained within "reading mode".?

---

Some can be used without reading mode, but the reading mode button gives you a way to toggle back and forth easily. For instance, if you want to hide the sidebar, comments, sources, etc. in reading mode but not all of the time, you would be able to click the button at the top of the page to switch show/hide them easily. In the example below using Amelia Earhart's profile, it would toggle between these 2 formats (depending on which options you have set to hide in reading mode):

If necessary, I can try to make a more detailed video that discusses the different options when I get some time.

---

Thanks Jonathan for helping my old brain try to "grok" this. 

Fascinating. So Reading Mode is actually an alternative interface.

---

Yes, it is basically an alternative minimalistic view that lets you choose which elements should be hidden, but you can quickly switch back to the normal view without having to go back into the extension settings. The idea came from this request.

There are other options not related to reading mode that allow you to customize the way sources, citations, lists, etc. are formatted. That came from comments on this post.

If you play around with it and have any problems or suggestions, please let me know here. Thanks!

Answer 3

The featured connections at the bottom of profiles aren't new, they've been there as long as I've been on wikitree and appear on every profile that's connected to the main tree. They change each week depending on theme.

Its up to you if you find it interesting or relevant, but I don't see it taking away from the seriousness of profiles. One of wikitree's great strengths is focusing on how we are all connected. I always enjoy looking at the featured connections each week, I find it gives me a good sense of which lines on my tree are well connected, and it's a chance to learn something new and interesting