I dismiss 99.9% of these notifications outright without even reading them. About the only ones I find interesting (or useful) tell me how many people I added and how many records I worked with the previous week. Otherwise, they're almost a complete a waste of time for me. However, the very few I do want to see would be buried if I didn't regularly clear all the others. So, I dismiss over and over...and over again.
But the worst is a photo hint I saved a couple months ago from someone else's tree. I get notification after notification there may be a new photo in hint in their tree. I dismiss the notification several times a day, only to have it keep coming back. I mark it read before I dismiss it....and you guessed it...it comes back. I've clicked and gone to the tree, but no joy. I've probably dismissed the same notification (shown above), 300+ times in the last two months (and I'm not exaggerating.... upwards of 5 times times per research session the same exact notification pops up, day after day after day.) I truly wish I'd never saved any photos from the specific tree in question. It's not even a tree I'm a guest or contributor to - it's just a random public tree I saved a photo from. It's almost like this one notification is stuck in the queue. I've saved many other photos and they don't haunt me like this one does.
Please Ancestry - give us an option to disable or at least filter these notifications. Or even an option to permanently delete or mute specific ones would help. Make it a ProTools feature. I'd pay for ProTools forever if it meant I could get rid of these notifications (or at least stop this one notification from haunting me day and night!)
In general, I love Ancestry. I really do! But this feature is not a help for me and it's not a time saver. Quite the opposite. I fully acknowledge, maybe it's just me and how I work. Maybe others DO find these notifications helpful. I wish I could just ignore them completely. Unfortunately, it's not how my brain works. I need a tidy screen. I have the same challenge on my cell phone. I can't stand badge counts and have to clear them straight away. It's most definitely an OCD thing....but it's a real thing, even if it's not something everyone understands. You never know, with the ability to customize these notifications, I might even embrace them.
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe other users truly do find the feature useful. Or maybe, many just ignore the icon completely. I just wish Ancestry would give us options . And now, with my frustrations vented, I shall jump down off my little soapbox, tuck it under my arm and scurry back to my research....right after I dismiss he same photo hint yet again...
It would be great if we could monitor which hints we no longer want to see. I hate seeing the same flag or ship, etc. popping up over and over as a "photo" hint because it's an image. Those things are worthless.
ReplyDeleteTotally agree! When I dismiss one of those image hints, I always type in "not an image I want to save". I'm sure the algorithm doesn't read (or care about) my notes, but it makes me feel better.
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