Please define "Connected to the Family Tree"

Question

I am trying to understand what we mean by "Connected"?

To AJJacobs, Kevin Bacon, or  Queen Elizabeth? If the latter, then "no chance" I have no blue blood. If the first two, possible if some relative has married & gone to US. Few of mine have!

What am I missing?

Comments

I have recently wondered about being "connected" as well. A couple of things jumped out from this discussion: "convoluted" connection, and poorly/undocumented profiles.

Basically, verify all the relationships before accepting them.

Answer 1

It refers to a relationship "connection," through some combination of marriage and blood relationships, to any one or all of these people. You may not have a biological relationship to any of these people, but you "connect" to all of them -- at 35 relationship steps or less -- through convoluted combinations of connections by blood and marriage.

Comments

So most of the world's population, past & present, will never be connected to two relatively unknown persons in US and Queen Elizabeth 2 unless we are with 35 convoluted steps! That may be the definition but sorry, the revalence of being connected, still escapes me!

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When I said "you," I was referring to Ron Woodhouse. You are connected to all of these people within 35 steps or less.

A person will count as "connected" if they connect to at least one of these people within 100 steps.

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Find your "connections" at the bottom of your profile. For example, you are  32 steps away from the Queen.

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I know that the programme says that I am connected to all three. As a Mentor, it does not tell me the answer to the question which I am asked: Why these three persons & how these steps are considered the basis we are connected?

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It's all about emphasizing the interconnectedness of all people. Due to migrations of people and marriages between people of different continents and cultures, it's reasonably likely that everyone (excepting indigenous cultures that have not yet been contacted by "civilization") has a connection within about 100 steps to everyone else. (Although we probably can't find documentary evidence for all of those connections.)

As a regular reader of G2G, it's a bit surprising that you don't know that Al Jacobs inspired the Global Family Reunion, Kevin Bacon is the key person in a popular theory of "degrees of separation," and the Queen was chosen because she's interesting and well-known. And we also map connections to the two most recent "winners" of the monthly Connection Combat.

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Yes as a regular reader & contributor to G2G, I am well aware af all three people. In truth, they are three arbitary people; then if a person's profile is not within a prescibed number of steps to these, you are not connected.

In mapping the winners of the Connection Combat, please explain the relevance. Would you now be connected to the overall tree or just the winner?

Answer 2

A "connection" as used by the Connection Finder is the same as "degrees as separation." You can find information here about how that started: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_degrees_of_separation. The difference being that on WikiTree, "connection" is by some relation, whether by direct lineage or marriage in the global family tree.

The reason you see the connection links to AJ, Kevin Bacon and Queen Elizabeth is that they are connections found to be interesting and fun on WikiTree and they are they are the default connections found on the Connection Finder page: http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Special:Connection.

You can find your "connection" to anyone on the tree using the Connection Finder by inputting your ID and someone else's ID as long as you and the other person are within 10 degrees of each other. Here is the page that describes the details: http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Connection_Finder.

In addition to the 3 people you mentioned, there is always a 4th, who is the winner of the Connection Combat (http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Project:Notables/Connection_Combat). This month, it is Mark Hammil, the actor that plays Luke Skywalker in Star Wars.

Comments

Unless I am in error "Connection" to AK Jacobs, is not the same as found in the Relationship Finder, I have "Connections" to all three, but only to  Queen Elizabeth do I have a relationship. We're something like  "Queen Elizabeth II and Tom are 13th cousins once removed".  Now THAT'S a relationship.

Connections are fun, relationships are real.

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Yes as a regular reader & contributor to G2G, I am well aware af all three people. In truth, they are three arbitary people; then if a person's profile is not within a prescibed number of steps to these, you are not connected.

In mapping the winners of the Connection Combat, please explain the relevance. Would you now be connected to the overall tree or just the winner?

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Ron, for the special connections, like AJ, Kevin Bacon, and the Queen, it's beyond the 10 connections or degrees of separation, which is one of the things that makes them special besides who the person is.

With regards to the Connection Combat, the special connection is made only to the winner and of course, the winner changes every month.

I provided a number of links in my answer which should help fill in some of the gaps. :)

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Tom, yes, very true, that is why there is also the Relationship Finder, which serves that very purpose! :)

http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Special:Relationship

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With few exceptions, if you are connected to the overall tree, you also will be connected within 100 steps to Al Jacobs, the Queen, Kevin Bacon, and the latest combat winner.

And sometimes these "connections" can be more real than the genealogical connections we get from Relationship Finder. Relationship Finder says I'm 11th cousins three times removed with the Queen, but that relationship goes through some dubious genealogy. On the other hand, my crazy 15-step connection path to her, which goes through the Dutchess of Windsor and is based mostly on marriages between some people who married and divorced rather frequently, is based on solid information.

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Sadly, my 'connection'  to the Queen seems far from real. 

 Up to step 3 it's 'general knowledge' , the third step may be OK but is from a gedcom with no sources http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Cavendish-Bentinck-4 as is the next step,

Things improve a bit when I get to step 5 and 6 , Richard Wellesley and his brother the Duke of Wellington .

Step 7, the Duke's wife Catherine, apparently shares both her name and year of birth with step 8,  an undocumented  sister  married to a  Henry Lloyd http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Pakenham-33,  (fortunately from the messages, the profile managers are aware of this)

  From there my 'connections' continue with a series of  unsourced profiles until  http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Lloyd-1733 ,his wife is apparently the next step but because of the privacy tag  she isn't visible on the profile. I gave up at that point with another 20 steps to go.

As far as I am concerned, I have no real connection through that route.

I didn't check the other connections but have a horrible feeling that they may be just as problematic.

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It seems like bad genealogy is a problem with almost any genealogical connection that involves aristocracy.  I don't trust most of my "relationship" connections beyond 9th or 10th cousin because they appear to come from somebody's contrived ancestral connections to aristocracy.

Currently, my most problematic "connection" in the "Connections" group is the one with Mark Hamill. It depends on the impossible premise that William Shaddock and William Shattuck were brothers -- even born the same day, but on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

Answer 3

If you're Connected to any Connected person, you're Connected to all the other Connected people.

If you aren't Connected to any particular Connected person, you aren't Connected to any other Connected person either.

About 3/4 of WikiTree is Connected.  The rest of it is detached offshore islands.

If you start from a Connected person and follow any chain of genealogical links, you'll never arrive at an Unconnected person, nor will they appear in any tree chart or descendancy chart etc.

This is important when searching for duplicates.  Connected profiles can be found through their relatives, but Unconnected profiles are much less visible and can only be found by name searches (if you can guess the spelling) or through the Unconnected lists.

Answer 4

The simple answer, is to remember the goal of Wikitree, and that is to create just ONE tree.

If you, and the profiles on your watchlist are 'connected' to the targets, then you must be part of the one tree.