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Connect-a-Thon 2020

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The 2020 Connect-a-Thon is now complete. See the wrap-up on G2G and join us in the upcoming Source-a-Thon

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Connect-a-Thon

The Summer Connect-a-Thon is one of our four big events of the year, alongside the Spring Clean-a-Thon, Fall Source-a-Thon, and Winter Scan-a-Thon. They are all fun and productive for our mission.

Our mission in the Connect-a-Thon is to bring the world closer together by connecting more people on our big tree. For 72 hours we add missing relatives to existing profiles. It's like adding missing pieces to a puzzle. The more pieces of the puzzle we add, the more they connect.

See "Participation Instructions" below for more details on exactly how it works.

Schedule

We're starting Friday morning at 8:00 AM EDT (GMT -4), July 17, 2020.

The event runs until Monday at 8:00 AM EDT, July 20, 2020.

Here is a time zone calculator if you need help figuring out the right time in your part of the world.

Video chats

We will be hosting live YouTube video chats throughout the weekend to cheer each other on and announce t-shirt prize winners. There will be a chat every four hours, around the clock, with one winner drawn per chat.

You can find the schedule and links to the chats here. You can also add the schedule via Google Calendar to get reminders.

Registration connect_a_thon_2020.gif

You need to register in advance.

Simply post an answer saying "Yes, I'd like to participate" along with what team you'd prefer, if any. If you're not sure about a team, say a few things about your location, genealogical interests, and/or what you like to work on at WikiTree.

After you post, we will award you the participant badge.

To participate you do need to be a WikiTree member who has signed the Honor Code.

The cut-off date for registering is midnight on Wednesday, July 15, 2020.

If you have any trouble or questions, contact Eowyn at eowyn@wikitree.com.

Teams

For fun, participants are divided into teams.

If you don't choose a team (see the list below) we will assign one that seems to fit your geographic or genealogical interests.

Starting a team

Would you like to organize a team? Teams can be organized around anything, or just for fun.

Team captains are expected to:

  • Create a free-space profile for your team to communicate on.
  • Recruit for your team by replying to members who post on the register messages asking if they'd like to join your team.
  • Communicate with team members to encourage them and cheer on the group.
  • During the Connect-a-Thon, post to the team thread on G2G with updates about how the team is doing.

Are you interested in being a team captain? Contact Eowyn at eowyn@wikitree.com and let her know. If you don't have an idea for a team, she can let you know which ones are needed.

Notes:

  • Every participant should be on one and only one team.
  • Teams can have co-captains.
  • Aleš can offer weighted team statistics (number of contributions divided by number of team members) so we will not be splitting teams this time.

Current teams

New Teams

Countries

US states

Non-regional teams

Participation Instructions

Our goal is to reduce the number of Unconnected profiles on WikiTree. About 80% of the profiles on WikiTree are connected within 100 degrees of each other. This leaves about 20% out in the cold.

Since tracking connections is somewhat complex, for this challenge we are just counting the number of parents, siblings, spouses and children you add to existing person profiles. Often these will be "collateral" relatives that members neglected to add when adding their family tree. Each relative you add increases the chance that a tree will intertwine with our global tree.

Tracking for the challenge is done automatically. You do not need to use the "challenge tracker" or manually keep track of how many profiles you add.

Where to work from

There are a few different ways to choose profiles to add to:

  • Work from your Watchlist
    • One of the easiest ways to participate is to work on building out your own family lines. Sometimes we focus so much on our direct lines that we forget about the collateral ones. You can work on building outward, not just upward or downward.
  • Work on your Unconnected Profiles
    • If you click here you will see a list of the people on your Watchlist who are not yet connected to the main tree. You can sort that list several ways, and also limit it to a particular surname. If you click on the highlighted word "total" in the first paragraph on that page, you will see a list of all unconnected profiles on WikiTree, which works the same way.
  • The Connectors Chat Page
  • The DBE Unconnected page
    • The DBE Unconnected page lists reports for different countries in the world, showing unconnected branches with at least one profile which says that the person in the profile was born or died in that country.
  • Needs Profiles Created Category
    • This category exists as a way of noting profiles that have sources for family members who do not yet have profiles on WikiTree. For example, a member might have only created a profile for a daughter mentioned in a census. However, the rest of the family still needs to be added to WikiTree.
  • See also: Places to find unconnected profiles.

If you'd like further help, Mindy Silva created this great tutorial.

Scoring

Each time you add a new profile to an existing one, you will earn a point. New profiles must have at least one valid source.

Note that for scoring purposes it doesn't matter if the person for whom you're adding a parent, sibling, spouse or child is connected or unconnected. Every missing family member we add increases the chances of connecting people.

Tracking and scoring for the challenge is done automatically. You do not need to use the "challenge tracker" or manually keep track of how many profiles you add.

Tracking progress

Here is how to see the current totals for individual members and teams. These progress reports are from WikiTree+.

Reports By User By Team By Team and User Update frequency
Simple User Team Team and User 5 min
By Day User by Day Team by Day Team and User by Day 1 hour
Total By Hour User By Hour Team By Hour 1 hour

You can also view the family members that are being added right now on this feed: Newly-Added Family. These additions are what are being counted in the reports above.

Prizes

We will be awarding special "2020 Connect-a-Thon" t-shirts as prizes.

  1. The top five winners who add the most profiles will get t-shirts.
  2. We will draw one participant at random during every video chat (see the section above). You don't need to be in the chat to win but you do need to register in advance and be participating.

Every participant can get only one t-shirt, therefore if you win a drawing, you can't win again or get a t-shirt as a top contributor.

Badges for Winners connect_a_thon_winner_2020.gif

In addition to the participation badge, the top winners will get the 2020 Connect-a-Thon winner badge. These winners will include:

  • The top 10 winners overall.
  • Everyone on the winning team who participated (both overall and by average).

If you have Connect-a-Thon questions, please post them in G2G (discussion thread coming soon).





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Categories: Connect-a-Thon