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Connect-a-Thon
The 72-hour Connect-a-Thon is one of our biggest events. Its mission: bring the world closer together by adding missing people on our tree.
It's like adding missing pieces to a puzzle. The more pieces of the puzzle we add, the more they connect.
Schedule
It's our Year of Community Connections so we're holding three Connect-a-Thons in 2023. The second one will start on Friday morning at 8:00am EDT (UTC -4) April 21, 2023 and will run until Monday at 8:00am EDT April 24, 2023.
Here is a time zone calculator to find the corrresponding time in your part of the world.
Teams
For fun, participants are divided into teams. (Every participant should be on one and only one team.)
If you don't have a team preference — see the list below — we will assign one that seems to fit your geographic or genealogical interests.
Current teams
Countries
- The Wizards of Aus (Australia) . Captain: Kathleen Cobcroft
- Team Austria. Captain: Beate Hauer
- Smoking Snakes (Brazil) Captains: Adriana Hazelton & Morgana Patrocinio Costa New!!
- Canadian Connectors. Captain: Christine Daniels
- Flying Dutchmen (Netherlands). Captain: Coen Dijkgraaf
- Germany Genies. Captains: Florian Straub & Jelena Eckstädt
- Banyan Tree (India). Captains: Rob Wilson
- The Irish Seanchaithe (Ireland). Captains: Feargal Hennigan and Jen Hutton
- Team Italy. Captain: Chris Ferraiolo
- Kiwi Crew (New Zealand). Captain: Campbell Braddock
- Mighty Oaks (England). Captains: Frances Weidman,
- Nordic Noir (Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Iceland). Captain: Jeffrey Wall
- Twisted Thistles (Scotland). Captains: Sheena Tait & Suzy Cairns
- Welsh Dragons (Wales). Captains: Hilary Gadsby & Jutta Beer
- SA Springboks (South Africa) Captain: Pam Cormac Smith
- Super Aussie Genies (SAG) (Australia) Captain: Veronica Williams New!!!
- Southern Cross Stars (Australia) Captain: Gillian Thomas New!!!
US states and regions
- Cornbread Catchers, (Southern USA, formerly Southern Sourcers). Captain: Debi Hoag
- Little Team on the Prairie, (Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas), Captains: Judy Bramlage & Judi Stutz
- Team Mid-Atlantic US, (Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Washington D.C., and West Virginia). Other regions welcome as well! Captain: Lucy Selvaggio-Diaz & Mickey Bazley
- Team Missouri (Missouri and surrounding states), Captain: Lori Zukerman
- Nor'Easters (covering Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island). Captain: Steven Tibbetts
- Northwest Terriers. Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin Captain: Karen Lorenz
- Southwest Sunshiners (covering Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada and Utah) Captain: Russ Gunther
- Southern Super Sweepers (covering Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas). Captains: Tommy Buch and Dorothy Barry
- Team Massachusetts. Captain: Bob Keniston
- Team Virginia (covering Virginia & West Virginia, Kentucky researchers from other states also welcome). Captains: Mindy Silva & Sandy Patak
- Western Red Cedars (covering Alaska, Hawaii, Washington, Wyoming, Montana, Oregon and Idaho). Captain: Azure Robinson
Non-regional teams
- A Rose By Any Other Name (aka Team Roses). Focusing on US Black Heritage profiles. Captain: Emma MacBeath & Christy Melick
- Team L'Chaim. Focusing on Jewish profiles. Captain: Elaine Martzen New!!!
- Legacy Heirs, covering all profiles. Captain: Lisa Murphy
- The Musty, Dusty Team, covering pre-1500 profiles. Captains: Marty Acks and Rich Devlin
- Toddlin' Tortoises. Captain: Melanie Paul
- Tree Nuts. Captains: Julie Ricketts and Robin Shaules
Starting a team
Would you like to organize a team? Teams can be organized around anything, or just for fun.
Team captains or co-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.
If you're interested, email mindy@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.
Participation Instructions
Our goal is to connect more people on WikiTree by adding missing relatives.
Scoring
Scores are tracked automatically. You do not need to use the "challenge tracker" or manually keep track of how many profiles you add.
Our system counts the number of non-living family members you add. Often these will be "collateral" relatives that members neglected to add when adding their family tree.
All profiles must have at least one valid source. If you have questions about what we call a Source on WikiTree and how to cite them, visit:
Fine print
Creating any new profile counts as one point, with just two exceptions:
- If you create a profile with no relationship to any other profile, it does not count.
- If you create a profile for a living person, it does not count.
For example:
- Create person A with Add an Unrelated Person: 0 points.
- Create person B as the spouse of person A: 1 point.
- Create person C as the child of person A: 1 point.
- Create person D as the parent of person B: 1 point.
For scoring purposes it doesn't matter if profiles are connected to the big tree or not. Every missing family member we add increases the chances of connecting people.
Note that our scoring counts new profiles. If you add a relationship between existing profiles, no points are awarded.
Ideas for where to work from
You can start anywhere! Here are some ideas.
- Use the Missing Links app to see relatives who might be missing.
- Start 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 Needs Profiles Created Category
- This category collects profiles that have sources for family members but these family members have not been added yet. For example, a member might have only created a profile for one child in a census and there are other children listed.
- Other ideas:
- The Connectors Chat lists the largest unconnected branches on WikiTree, unconnected branches which are particularly challenging, and unconnected notables.
- Data Doctors DBE Unconnected has reports for different countries in the world showing unconnected branches.
- More places to find unconnected profiles.
For further help, try this tutorial.
Current scores and 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.
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.
Prizes
We will be awarding special "2023 Connect-a-Thon" t-shirts as prizes.
- The top five winners who add the most profiles will get t-shirts.
- We will draw one participant at random during every video chat. 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
In addition to the participation badge, the top winners will get the 2023 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).
Archives
- Connect-a-Thon 2020
- Connect-a-Thon 2021
- Connect-a-Thon January 2022
- Connect-a-Thon April 2022
- Connect-a-Thon July 2022
- Connect-a-Thon January 2023
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