[The purpose of this message is to clarify my understanding of the matter. I hope that it is not too wrong and that it can help others in their understanding of it.]
The name - WikiTree - is sligtly misleading. When individuals trees are merged, the result is not a tree, but a "forest."
This forest has the shape of networks of profiles, linked by triangles Father - Mother - Child. Some triangles are uncomplete and part of them will remain so.
One of the reasons we love family trees is that they can be represented on a 2D plan with simple connections*. This is due to the fact that they use:
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either one child of every family, as an ancestor of the person at the bottom of the tree,
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or one parent of every family, as a descendant of the person at the top of the tree.
But many families have more than one child, many of them having their own family. Representing all of them on a 2D plan becomes tedious even with a limited set of generations and impossible beyond that.
I am not sure of the shape - in mathematical terms - of our networks, but my guess is that they are quite complex and that we cannot grasp them with our common sense.
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Our ideal is to achieve a single network that would gather all profiles, but we will only get close to it, as a fraction of the profiles will remain unconnected.
A concern is whether there is already a single network connecting a vaste majority of the profiles or not. My guess is that such a network does exist, but its extend is hard to know**.
The alternative implies several networks, corresponding to two main situations:
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The first one derives from human groups with limited connections, due to geographical, linguistics, social and/or religious differences. If these limited connections are not present here, these networks are likely to remain separated.
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The second one implies distinct networks with duplicates in common. These networks will certainly be merged, as many already are on a daily basis.
Moving through these networks is quite a fascinating experience, allowing us to have a glimpse of how people lived their lives at differents times and in different places. Hopefully, they will develop beyond the massive Europe - North America axis and extend our understanding of how human beings live their lives in all parts of our planet.
* Consanguine weddings makes it slightly more complex, but there are simple ways to cope with them.
** It would take a bot dedicated to that task to know more about this issue.
