Do you have any Connect-a-Thon Questions?

Question

Our April Connect-a-Thon has started! I'm so excited!

Here is your chance to ask any questions about the Connect-a-Thon, or express your own excitement. We began on Friday April 21st at 8am EDT (Noon UTC) so I hope your fingers are warmed up and ready to go.

Don't miss our Hangouts on YouTube. We have them every four hours and let you know some fun stats, as well as give away t-shirts or mugs. You can find them listed as Events in our Discord server, or on our Google Calendar, or here. Hope to see you there!

Comments at the top will be hidden once read.

Comments

The Tracker was stuck for about 9hrs / Everything was still counted

Answer 1

I'm looking forward to my second Thon.  Is anyone willing to share the process used by the participants who are able to add 1000+ profiles?  I struggled to get to 150!

Comments

Good point, Linda. It almost sounds like we need a quality component to the point system.

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Luckily there are so many projects and generous members that can check for errors later. Can you imagine if we asked the top people to keep all of their profiles on their Watchlist?! They might be surpassing the recommended amount of profiles. 

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My suggestion for adding profiles is to prepare/plan in advance. This will be my first Thon. I decided to focus on a particular area and I have made a list of all the people who appear on the census lists in that area, and identified the various families. In advance of the Thon I have created one profile for each family, so that once we kick off tomorrow, all the other people in the family will count as connections to the first person already created. I have 150+ on my list and hope to get through them, as I know my primary source and can find them all quickly, but I will spend a few minutes on each profile and try to add birth/death records if I can, and then the "Needs Biography" category.

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Ive wondered that as well. The last one there was someone who had that many.

I’m in the process of adding the book of the Tuckers. I plan on putting in everyone who has a bio in there. It mentions the kids as well but not all have bios. The ones that don’t have bios will be the ones that I’ll add during the connect athon. Some have info some very little.

I’ve found some really cool family history this way and in the long run it will straighten out some of the profiles that have had mistakes or no info in them.  I’m hoping to eventually get passed a brick wall that I’ve had for years.

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It sounds like you've got this! I'm sure you'll do well.

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That's my problem, I manage too many already, so any I create will have to be orphaned, however that doesn't stop me keeping track of them and upgrading them later.

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But can it hurt so much to hold the new profiles for two or three weeks, giving time for any suggestions to show and be corrected before orphaning, rather than hope someone else will correct them later?

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Yes, until I can get my watchlist down a lot I lose Wikitree functions unless I work on one in, one out.

 Yes, it is a big watchlist, including family profiles I adopted that were created then orphaned in past connectathons, or otherwise orphaned.

 I won't orphan any profiles currently on my watchlist until they are sourced to the best of my ability.

 I've not participated in these 'thons because I don't like the one source only approach, but I'm having a go this time and as the rule allows one source that's how I'll do it.

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For anyone that orphans profiles right away (as I do), it is good to do a post-Thon wikitree+ search for Creator_YOURWIKITREE-ID (e.g. Creator_Robertson-6617) to find profiles you have created. At the top there is a link for suggestions so you will be able to make corrections on profiles you made. Cleaning up your own suggestions is much more collaborative than waiting for the generosity of others. Projects have plenty to do already.

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I am so far working on profiles in a ONS I manage, all of which needing further work have a ONS category for that purpose.

 Any non ONS profiles I create will have a similar personal category so I can readily find and improve then later.

 Good tip and I'll keep it in mind

Answer 2

I have lots of questions? that always go  unanswered, but if People wonder what they are Feel free to Private message me on here. Thanks.

Comments

Please do feel free to put your questions here S! There are so many helpful WikiTreers that can answer them.

Answer 3

Since this is my first 'thon I had a look at the tools, and right off the bat found something that confused me.

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Special:Unconnected gives me one profile from my watchlist:

• Christianna Loy 3 May 1787 Loysburg, Bedford, Pennsylvania, USA - 13 Apr 1855 ~ managed by Lorena Wolfe [3 connections]

She has three connections (two parents and a spouse). So why is she showing up as unconnected when the app itself says she has "3 connections"? I feel like I'm missing something stupid-obvious. :-)

Comments

Being attached to other profiles is not the same thing as being Connected to the main Tree.
You could have someone with a "cluster" of two, or even three, hundred other profiles, but they are not Connected to the Tree.

The underlying premise of the Connect-a-Thon is that, especially for those unConnected clusters (and singles), the more profiles that are added, the greater the chance that one of those being added will be the 'missing link" for another profile to make that final Connection.
For profiles that are already Connected, the premise remains - the more profiles that are added, the greater chance that someone working on an unConnected branch will "meet up" with those already Connected.

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Thanks Melanie! You always explain things so well.

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Ah, I get it. :-) I connected her husband to his father, who I think is part of the larger tree. If he is, how long should it take for her to go off the Unconnected list?

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If you make a connection to someone already Connected to the main Tree (has the featured profiles of the week at the bottom of the profile), it can take up to 24 hours before the newly attached profile shows as also Connected.  (The database updates around 1 or 1:30 am US Eastern time.)

Answer 4

Hi, I have one question!

Let's say person A has a profile. When the connect-a-thon begins, I add person B as A's spouse and get a point. Do I also get points when I add B's parents, or does it not count because B's profile didn't exist prior to the Thon?

Comments

Oh no, it looks like I just missed out  I was looking forward to my second challenge with Wizards of Oz. E. Rudd.

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E, you can still cheer them on!  (Do you have discord?)

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Yes, if you add B’s parents they count as 2 more points because they are still connections to A. This is a case where with A as the existing starting point, you can add siblings, parents, spouse, in-laws, children - anyone that connects to A through birth or marriage. Think of it as increasing A’s CC7 count.

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Liza is correct that they count.

One simple way to summarize it: all new profiles count, unless they are not connected to anyone.

More details are at https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Connect-a-Thon#Scoring

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Great, thank you Liza & Chris!

Answer 5

Dear Mindy,

    Thank you for keeping us organized AGAIN for a 'thon.  Even though my team focuses on New England and Maritime Canada,  I plan to start with some of the US Black History Project profiles.  The USBH Project has plenty of "needs profiles created" and "Family tree size 1" category profiles that anyone can work on.  Categories are the thing to know!  Good luck, everyone. -NGP

Comments

Awesome Nanette! There are plenty of USBH profiles to create. I hope people take advantage of this and grow those branches!

Answer 6

Hi!  Will each of the teams have a channel on Discord?  I joined The Irish Seanchaithe but don't see anything about discord yet (or I missed it).  thanks!

Comments

Hi Karen,

The Ireland Project has a discord channel for the Seanchaithe on the project's own server. Send me a pm and I'll make sure you get an invitation to join it.

Jen

Answer 7

Hi All,

I am a first timer and have a whole line flagged ready to add from my genealogy database.  

Once question:  How are the points physically counted, do we use a tracker?  Is it automatic?  What procedure do we use to count?

Ready to go!!

Comments

Tracker is automatic and does the counting.  This is the link from January, but it should update at some point for this Thon.

https://plus.wikitree.com/Challenges/ConnectAThon/TeamAndUser.htm

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I hope you are having fun Bob!

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Thank you!  I really am!  I can't believe all you do with this!  Thank you for your time,  it is very much appreciated.

Answer 8

I heard I can’t join a team atm because it’s too late? Is this true? I will be on “team collaboration” and plug along hoping it helps  !

Comments

If you have discord, go cheer on your team!  Or just chat in the general channel.

Answer 9

Where are the stats?

not to worry, found them

Comments

You can find the stats Here: Connect-A-Thon stats

Remember, you don't have to do anything to have your connections count.  On the Statistics page, you can sort by User, Team, etc.  

Yippee to all of  you who are adding profiles!

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Thanks Kathy!!

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My latest connection totals are not updating, although they were this morning.

Is there some way to fix thiws?

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The tracker is down.  Aleš is probably asleep and will fix it when he wakes.

Answer 10

I am not sure how this event works and what i do to help with the event?  I have a lot of family roots from KY, VA, TEN, most of my Lawson roots are located from these areas.

Comments

It's really all about adding profiles Robin. The more family members you add, the better chances we will improve the connections on the global tree. You can work on your own profiles, or work from a suggestion list. You can also check out the Team Virginia page (covering Virginia, West Virginia, & Kentucky) for tips.

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this helps me to understand, i have a lot of profiles that i will be adding, i am working through from Ancestry files that i have worked heard on locating to WT.  thank you WT is impressive with the helps i am getting here.

Answer 11

What does the "normalised" number on the stats page mean?

Comments

It's basically the team average (per person).

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It is exactly what Tommy said. If you look at just the teams and see their normalized scores, you will see who is doing the best with team averages factored. For example, right now the South African Springboks and the Germany Genies are at the top of the list, if you look at normalized scores. 

Answer 12

My new profiles don't seem to be counted.  I'm starting from an existing profile, and have added parents or children.  Only one of the many I did yesterday is shown in the count.  I did two more this morning, no change (even after 5 minutes).  I haven't had this problem in other thons.  Is something different with this one?

Comments

There shouldn't be anything different Cindy! It may not have updated when you looked. I see you have added 19 profiles.

Answer 13

Is the scoreboard broken?

WikiTree contributors, "Alger Edmund Morey (1907-1941)," WikiTree: The Free Family Tree, (https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Morey-2685 : accessed 22 April 2023). Has not counted yet. I have credit in my contributions but not on the connectathon scoreboard.

Comments

The count hasn't updated for an hour or so. Not sure what happened.

eta: My CC7 count shows 20 more profiles added than the scoreboard says.  The numbers are no  longer changing

Answer 14

I have added 11 new profiles since I came back online a bit ago.  My totals are not updating from when I was on this morning.  Am I doing something wrong?

EDIT: I see that someone posted that it's just not updating right now.  I'll just assume it'll be fixed soon!

Comments

Aleš is probably asleep and will fix it when he wakes.

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No worries Carla! It will look back at all of your contributions once it is restarted. Thanks for participating!

Answer 15

I won a Tee shirt on Friday I was on the Team Irish Seanchaite. How do I get it?

Comments

Mindy will contact you after the Thon.

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I'll send you an email after the thon, like Melanie said, and get your address etc.

Answer 16

Anyone one else having issues with FamilySearch? They did an update and now it won't let me log in. It gives me a prompt to put in my email and allow or not allow messages, and it takes me right back to the sign in screen. When I click to sign in, I get the same message prompt!