Would you like to help test our special "My Connections" feature?

Question

Hi WikiTreers,

Here is something extraordinary: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Special:MyConnections

Actually, that link won't seem too extraordinary. It just gives you your closest connections on WikiTree. That's something you can't see elsewhere so I think it's useful but not all that interesting.

What's extraordinary is what this tool does in combination with a category. For example, click to Mayflower Passengers, US Presidents, or Magna Carta Surety Barons and then click the "My Connections" button in the upper right corner of the page.

This one click is equivalent to as many 200 concurrent searches with the Relationship Finder and Connection Finder. It searches any category to find your ancestors, cousins, and relatives through marriage, and then ranks them in order.

If this doesn't seem extraordinary, stop and imagine the possibilities. I think members are going to find some really creative uses for this. Categories can be created for just about anything. Imagine, for example, standing in a cemetery and seeing how everyone buried beneath your feet is related to you. This is going to transform the significance of categorization on WikiTree.

We have been building up to this feature for months. See the Relationship Finder improvements announced here on June 23. As many members have pointed out, the major downside of those recent improvements is that if you add a new person or change a relationship, your changes won't be reflected immediately in the Relationship Finder. That's because we are no longer searching the live database with these features. We're using a special database created by Aleš Trtnik that is optimized for relationship searches and it's only updated once a day. Using data that's a day old is not ideal (and we will be working on more frequent updates) but the separate index is what makes it possible to search millions of relationships in milliseconds. It's like with Google, where you're not actually searching the live internet, you're searching Google's optimized index.

We are not formally announcing My Connections yet. I'm posting here but we don't want to draw too much attention to this. We still need to see how the system performs under pressure. Aleš and Brian have been working hard on further optimizations as new problems emerge, and this process is probably not over.

So, please be patient if you experience any problems, and report them here. Thanks!

Chris

P.S. See Help:MyConnections for some additional information. If you have a question that isn't answered there, ask it here and we'll improve the help page.

Comments

Nice.. accurate .. Magnifique ! 

---

Things are operating smoothly, so we're inviting more testers. If you're reading this, please give it a try!

---

Oh great! Like I really need this? (No…but it sure is fun!)

Looks like I’ll be spending tomorrow running relationships instead of adding that last “lost” person to a family in my tree!

---

I tried it just on the Mayflower Passengers. I had no idea I had a direct ancestor. This is a cool feature.

---

I have  tested  some  of these  before/and recently ie  the  signers of  constitution, Presidents, and magna carta, is this  something "new  and  improved? I  sometimes  miss  things  so  please  forgive me  if I  seem unaware  or  not  so  savvy. Guess  that's why we  all  help  one  another.

---

So very grateful,,,thank you

---

Enjoyed trying the new connections system. Seeing the degrees makes for easier understanding of my place in history.

Answer 1

Amazing I really never  understood the degrees  and to see it actually in line makes it alot easier for people like me who get confused  on the degrees

Answer 2

Wow! Amazing! I was able to see my connections in a city cemetery. I like that they were separated into those of ancestors and relations versus just connected people.  The yellow highlights on my ancestors is useful, too. Great job!

Comments

I will have to go through and verify that every profile has a useful, pertinent category. This is a very useful tool to trace families and communities.

---

Cool, that made me think that this will be awesome for One Place Studies connections.

Answer 3

Truly amazing, I referenced Magna Carta Surety Barons for my connections and the accuracy was incredible based on the fact they are all linked to me as per my Ancestry.co.uk tree entries with pretty accurate degrees of separation. At least that tells me I am doing something right in my research pre 1500 all things being equal, even if my early tree is on another website. Thank you, Chris.

Answer 4

Gosh - it's absolutely wonderful! I can envision some Wikitreers who say they dislike categories changing their minds swiftly with the advent of the My Connections button.  I love it already!

Comments

You're going to love it even more when they implement regular expressions across multiple categories.

Answer 5

Wow - that's kind of amazing! I took a swing at the first page of the Notables and it was fascinating to see how many of them I am actually blood related to. I have to admit that I was not prepared to see this function operate so efficiently and quickly, so major kudos to the team that worked on this. I'll have to explore this in a bit more depth when I have a little time, as this could be kind of fun to experiment with.

Answer 6

I absolutely love it! I'm going to have lots of fun with this.

I have noticed that when I go to the notables category and click on "My Connections" it shows the closest as 18 degrees although I know I have connections in the notables category that are closer than this.

Comments

Hi Samantha,

One thing to note: The Notables Category has 42,000 profiles in it. The new feature is powerful, but it still has limits. It will only do 200 searches at a time. So, if you want to go through the entire Notables Category you need to page forward with the "Next" button (over and over).

Chris

---

Thanks Chris. I didn't notice that all in my list began with the letter A.

Answer 7

Thanks for adding yet another interesting feature, Chris and the Team!

Do you plan to add a more logical arrangement: parents, siblings, children; 1st cousins, 2nd cousins, etc; other relationships represented by the lists; and/or an alphabetical or chronological arrangement?

Comments

Hi Lindy,

If you've never tried it, see https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Special:FamilyList

Chris

---

Do the 2 features cover all the same relationships?

Could a number head count be added for each Degree level on the new feature?

edit: replaced strike-through text

Answer 8

Oh my word - this is amazing!! Quick question though; when I click on My Connections for a category it says "Connections are limited to 20 degrees" but in a category like US Presidents the list it provides starts at a 28 degree connection and goes up to a 32 degree connection. So what does it mean?

Comments

The limits are a matter of configuration. Since I am monitoring the performance of ConnectionFinder under full usage for the first time, my plan is to adjust the limits to be as big as possible and still fast enough.

We started with 60 generations or 5 million relations to check for blood relation and 30 steps or 5 million relations for connection. the first of both limits is the end of checking.

The actual distance to the last found connection depends on the tree and is different for each person. For some people 5M relations are processed in 18 generations, for others in 28.

These limits will most likely change. I do have some ideas of optimizations that could extend the search range.

Doing full check of 24 million relations takes approximately 14 seconds. While it is possible to wait that long to get more results, it would eat too much processor time to do this on all requests. we are trying to balance the computer power and getting more results.

You can still search for further connections one by one in connection finder.

Answer 9

This is fantastic. I don't think it allows us to do a quick search for all our closest Active Members or Notables yet, but I love that you can scroll down and see Active members at a glance though. I wish you could scroll back more generations or limit the step list to relations. But make no mistake about it, this is absolutely fantastic. Biggest edition since Connection / Relationship Finder!!!

What is more fantastic, is the ability to click on a category, and immediately have the steps back to every person in that category. That is very impressive, and I love that it automatically separate relations and connections, and highlights ancestors. I can see that we will need to increase the number of yearly Challenges that we have. Perhaps a shout out to Julie on Date Night!!! We need to start making sure that people have categories assigned to them, particularly cemeteries. Doing a search for unknown relatives in a cemetery, looks like the most fantastic feature to come out of this, but will only work best, if we make sure we are adding cemetery categories to everyones profile. I think we have some work to do. Think I might start by working down my own connection list, and making sure everyone connected to me, has a listed cemetery. And what a motivation to go down, and make sure your local cemetery is completely represented on here.

Comments

Find A Grave and Billiongraves needs to find out about this. I'd imagine this would spark a great deal of interest with them, with this ability to search how everyone at a cemetery is connected.

---

And thank you Chris for the reply to Samantha above. The Notables category is what I was hoping for, very good.

Answer 10

Partly not working; Harry Truman doesn't show on the list of presidents when I click on "my connections", but he's 16 degrees away (we're 6th cousins 3x removed). Barack Obama is also 16 degrees and a tenth cousin through Mareen and Susannah Duvall, but shows as 22 generations to a common ancestor; Bill Clinton is a 7th cousin once removed and also 16 degrees but shows as having a closest relationship at 17 generations with no connection at 20 degrees or closer.

Comments

I do see mentioned profiles except the living presidents.

Did you use this URL? or some other?

https://www.wikitree.com/index.php?title=Special%3AMyConnections&c=US_Presidents&w=Handy-530

---

It shows who are you related to, and if you aren't related to the person then it will show you how you are connected to that person. A person won't show in both lists.

Answer 11

Here is something extraordinary: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Special:MyConnections

Actually, that link won't seem too extraordinary. It just gives you your closest connections on WikiTree. That's something you can't see elsewhere so I think it's useful but not all that interesting.

Wow, this link just allowed me to discover an (IN)Active member that I wouldn't have discovered otherwise.  I had to go 8 degrees back before one was identified.  It turns out the Family Member is a third cousin once removed. In one more week, it will have been 6 years since the member's last contribution.  It's time to get this member Active again.

Who else can identify (IN)Active members using the above tool?  How many do you have going back as far as you can go?

Answer 12

That's so fantastic! It shows my Magna Carta Surety Baron ancestors to 28 generations, but says no connection found because "Connections are limited to 20 degrees".  What does that mean?

Comments

See my comment to David above.

Answer 13

This is amazing! A fun tool, for sure, and probably will be very useful. I'm already finding "cousins" I didn't know about previously.

Answer 14

Very nice. But is there a list of "Categories" that is easily accessible?

I am looking for Euro-Aristo specifically.

Comments

Never mind - I found it. It takes a few seconds for the My Connections button to show up...

I have to look at each house (family) seperately..

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:Aristocracy_and_Nobility

Answer 15

This has potential, a question related to this post and about the new connections finder.  

https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/1245480/can-a-group-have-a-membership

As you can see from this thread I have been working on identifying all the relationships between my husband and those buried in the Alton, Ontario cemetery. And the relationships between all the approximately 1400 persons buried in the cemetery.

I have so far added 220 people to the Alton cemetery category, it will probably take 12 months to complete entering profiles for all those buried there.  

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Category:Alton_Cemetery%2C_Alton%2C_Ontario

When I went to the new connections finder, under the Alton Cemetery category, it says enter your WT ID to see your connections or enter another person's ID, when I put his WT ID in the search, the result is:

You do not have permission to view MyConnections for Dods-239;

I can see his connections on the relationship finder or on the connections finder but not on the New Connections finder.

Yes he is living and not a WT member, however as I created the profile and can see his relationships on the other 'finders' I am wondering why I can't see his relationships or connections on this potentially incredibly helpful addition as it relates to this cemetery project.

My only connections to those interred in the cemetery is through marriage, and will not be of interest to others.

Thanks for any suggestions.

Comments

Aleš, why can't I see my husband's 'My Connections' on the Alton Cemetery category?. I created the profile, he is related by blood or marriage to all 220 profiles on the list.

---

He is and I can see all his connections. Also looking at your connections all those relatives are "connected" to you.

Maybe the problem is, that he is unlisted. I am not sure how the privacy is handled, but I think since you are the manager, you should be able to see them.

---

Thanks, Aleš I'll look for someone who can tell me how it could be connected to privacy setting.

---

Hey M, we updated MyConnections so you can view it for a private/unlisted profile if you are on their Trusted List.

---

Hooray! Thank you, it works 

---

Nice  Gif,,,someday when I grow up I will know how to acess a gif here on wikitree

Answer 16

Is the listing of the entries correct when on a Cemetery page?

In M Ross's cemetery listed above, the cemetery has 220 entries.

I get a listing of 19 entries on the first page (4 - 21 degrees and 15 - 22 degrees) then on the next page are 4 entries (3 - 21 degrees and 1 - 22 degrees).

I don't think the listing and sort by degrees ranking are working.

Comments

Not all connections are found and displayed. Unconnected profiles are such by definition and also distant connections are skipped. It is limited to 5 million relations which means 19-30 generations, depending on the tree density. We are preparing optimizations to extend the range, but it will still not find all connections.

---

So why was a second (next) page created with the 4 entries instead of them all being on the first (same) page?  Arn't the 4 entries on the "Next" page part of the 200 entries processed? Why another sorted list of only 4 entries?

---

Can it be programmed to list the unconnected profiles in a section?

Can it be programmed to list the distant profiles in a section?

Can it be programmed to list a summary count of the profiles displayed in each section?

Can it be programmed to list a final summary count of the profiles examined? i.e.:

• 0 profiles are blood relations
• 19 profiles are close connections
• 81 (*) profiles are distant connections and not displayed (or displayed in its own section)
• 100 (*) profiles are unconnected and not displayed (or displayed in its own section)

(*) These two numbers were made up in this example, but the goal is to identify each type of profile examined on a page and count it so that the sum matches the total number of profiles on the page being examined for a connection.

---

2nd page checks the profiles 200-220 and only 4 are connected.

It might be. I just started a discussion about the change in display in the team.

---

So how many pages will the program process until it stops?

---

It will process up to 200 profiles displayed on the category page.

Answer 17

This is very interesting and is going to take me a while to figure out how to fully utilize it! 

One thing I've learned is that if you are working in a large category, you can go to the alphabetical list and start your examination anywhere. For example go to the "V" on the list and then click on the "My Connections" button instead of having to start at the "A" and cycle through.

Comments

Correct. You can navigate on the category page to the profiles of interest and click MY CONNECTIONS button on that page.

---

Great design!

Answer 18

I am getting an error message when I try to use the My Connections feature for the Marine Companies to New France category.  It states, "Error gathering category distances."  I've tried to use the tool in both the English and French language versions of the category, and am getting the same error message.  I know that it can't be because there are no blood ties or close (within 20 degrees) connections, as I can easily scan through the list and find ancestors, cousins, and connections within the limit.

In contrast, when I run the same command for the Carignan-Salières Regiment category, I am having no problem getting accurate relationship and connection results.

Comments

Hi Greg.

Thanks for reporting this. Maybe you have so many connections that it's choking on sorting them out.

We know how endogamous the Acadian population was. I appear to be connected to all 200 myself, and you must have much deeper and more complex connections.

We'll check it out.

Chris

---

I found the problem. There was a new profile in the category, that didn't exist at the time of the database import. Today it should work.

We are working on a solution.

---

Thanks,  Aleš.  I can confirm that the MyConnections feature is now working for the Marine Companies to New France category as intended.

---

This tool is extremely useful in those endogamous populations! In the first 200 for my tiny hilltop Italian 'hometown', I get 74 people related and 115 connected

Answer 19

Love this, it has been fun watching this get better and better.  Thank you.

Reminder that you will need to wait a day for the system to update if you make any changes to parentages.

I currently have a bunch of Magna Carta ancestors. However.

This morning, I corrected a change in parentage to an ancestor that someone had mistakenly made. I will loose all but one of the Barons tomorrow when the system updates.

Answer 20

I'm up late and just tried this out. Awesome! This is yet another great feature. Thanks Chris and Team!