Did you see the new Category Activity Feeds?

Question

Hi WikiTreers,

This morning we released a new feature, Category Activity Feeds. You can now easily stay updated on the latest changes to profiles belonging to any category.

To see an example, click the "Activity Feed" button at the top next to MyConnections on the Arlington National Cemetery category.

We think this will really be useful to projects and members with specific interests. In some cases, it may replace the need to have lots of profiles on your Watchlist.

For example, the Puritan Great Migration Project plans to use this to monitor the profiles in Category:Puritan_Great_Migration without having to manage them all.

Myself, I will be using this to monitor profiles in cemeteries I am interested in. This will help with collaboration with other local researchers / potential cousins.

In Discord, some have mentioned using this for Name Studies and Place Studies.

If you encounter any issues or have any feedback regarding the Category Activity Feeds or any other aspect of WikiTree, please share it here. Be sure to post your feedback as an answer if you want others to see it. Comments at the top will be hidden once read.

Thank you for being a part of the WikiTree community!

Steve and the WikiTree Team

Answer 1

Excellent! I've already got several uses figured out for this enhancement. Thank you all for your work on making this happen!

Answer 2

This is a great new feature. Reminds me though that I still have some categories to create.

Answer 3

Awesome and very helpful for One Place Studies. Thanks a lot!

Answer 4

Love this new feature! Thank you!

Answer 5

I'd never even seen some of the old activity feeds!

The "Paddy Waldron Connections Activity Feed" at
https://www.wikitree.com/index.php?title=Special:NetworkFeed&who=Waldron-201&set_id=connections
seems to include my connections out to ten degrees, although the number of degrees does not appear to be specified anywhere on the page.

I presume this page predates the more recent emphasis on CC7.

It might be a good idea to tidy up some of the potential confusion between CC7, CC10 and "Connections" with no number.

Answer 6

It looks like this is a manual operation?

Can we add a category to appear in our regular daily or weekly email feeds like our Family Activity Feed (Watchlist)?

Comments

That would be ideal!

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Categories are very different from profiles and free-space pages - in that they do not have Profile Managers or Trusted Lists.

This would be challenging to implement, but I will keep a running list of ideas and suggestions for future review.

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I was just wondering the same thing. I think being able to "follow" a category or add it as a tag so contributions and changes appear in regular activity feeds would be wonderful.

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You can already see category changes in any category by clicking the link at the bottom right of the category page. You don't need a "feed".

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The category change history link Natalie refers to shows edits to the text of the category. Instead, I think Joe, Nan and Nelda are talking about an emailed feed of additions of profiles to a category, and perhaps removals of profiles from it.

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Agree with that.
Why make life even more complicated?

Brava, Natalie

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Yes, what Jim Richardson said

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Correct, Jim, that's what we're talking about.

Answer 7

Wow, that's amazing news! The ability to see an activity feed for a category will be such a valuable tool for us genealogists. It will make tracking updates and edits on profiles tagged with a certain category so much easier and more efficient. This is particularly great for one name studies or other projects that involve multiple profiles linked by a common category.

I can see this new feature becoming an essential part of my workflow on WikiTree. It's another example of how WikiTree consistently enhances and refines its platform in response to the needs and interests of its user community.

A big thank you to the WikiTree team for continually working to improve our experience and capabilities on the site. Your dedication and creativity are deeply appreciated.

Comments

Thank you, Patrick! I agree: I think this is a great new feature. This and MyConnections really make categories powerful -- in ways we never expected they would be.

Answer 8

This is helpful for me when looking at the U.S. Civil War project categories especially the regiments.

Thank you

Comments

I was thinking the same thing Andrew.

Answer 9

The Appalachia Project will be using it for our Notables especially to monitor the accuracy of the profile being a Notable for our Project.  We have a couple "Projects Related to Appalachia" that we look at but not constantly.  So, this new feature is fabulous for those!

Answer 10

This is AMAZING!

I've been looking at some of these, and it's so informative. What a great tool.

Answer 11

Next up I'd like to have the ability to send this activity feed to Discord. That would make the 14 day limit unimportant. I'll pay in chocolate ...

Comments

I just sent out a message to the developer community to see if someone would be interested in creating an app to generate to an RSS feed for categories.

Ian and Flo both have experience with this, and have some apps available already, so this may something they can work on relatively quickly. *fingers crossed*

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Actually I've build something like this last Friday and I'm currently testing and improving it ...

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Wonderful! Thanks Flo. We look forward to the results.

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Oh wait, actually my RSS feed only is about additions and removals to a category and not quite the same as this feature.

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This seems to be working for these new category feeds:

https://apps.wikitree.com/apps/beacall6/rss_feed_maker.html .

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Excellent, Ian!!

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Thank you thank you, Ian!!! We'll make great use of this.

Answer 12

Wow! What a great idea. Congratulations!

Answer 13

Very nice feature. Thank you.

Answer 14

Nice improvement. How would you create a feed to a sosial site from this?

Comments

There is no RSS function currently available for this, however, I will reach out the developer community and see if someone would be interested in creating an app to generate to an RSS feed for categories.

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Hey, Louis.

Ian has you covered with an RSS feed now.

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Thanks Steven

Answer 15

Thank you for this new feature! It will be a big help in my work with the Black Sea Germans!  I'm so excited!!!!

Answer 16

Thanks for this helpful feature.

Would it be possible to display an indication of how many days of activity are reported? It looks like it's 14 days, but when I looked at a category with "no recent activity," I couldn't tell what that meant.

I don't think the duration of the report is based on my Settings, although 14 days is the maximum option in the settings.

Comments

Category Feeds only report 14 days of information currently. If the server load is minimal, we could look at expanding this further (say 30 days). It is not affected by any user-configurable settings.

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My notion is that the text "There has been no recent activity." could be revised to say "There has been no activity in the last 14 days."

Answer 17

This is fantastic. Thank you!

Answer 18

Awesome!  Ty so much for this!  I have some family cemeteries and I manage the space page. I was surprised to see some new memorials in them. I can definitely see the appeal to this. It will be useful

Answer 19

This is a great new feature! Evidently it doesn't work with all Categories. It would be nice to see this Activity Feed for Categories that only contain Free-Space pages.

Comments

I also would like to be able to see activity on the free-space profiles within the selected category.

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Hi Rick (or Ellen), do you have an example of a category where it isn't working?

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There are no Activity buttons on categories that only contain free-space profiles. Example is Category:Disambiguation_Studies.

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Ah, so it's just that the button is missing -- it does seem that the feeds do show activity for the pages: https://www.wikitree.com/index.php?title=Special:NetworkFeed&category=Disambiguation_Studies

Thanks for pointing out this bug :)

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Thanks! Based on your example, this is the feed I was interested in: https://www.wikitree.com/index.php?title=Special:NetworkFeed&category=Sources_by_Name

I will bookmark this link.

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The button should now appear on categories that only contain FSPs :)

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Thanks, Jamie.  I see it now. (Alongside the "MY CONNECTIONS" button, which is useless on a profile that contains no profiles for people. I hope that folks will be willing to ignore that CONNECTIONS button!)

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Very nice! Thank you.

Answer 20

I really like this, very beneficial to projects where I’m involved, especially Puritan Great Migration. Thanks.