Help:Connect-a-Thon
Categories: Connect-a-Thon
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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
Our April 2024 Connect-a-Thon will start on Friday morning at 8:00am EDT (UTC -4) April 12, 2024 and run until Monday at 8:00am EST April 15, 2024.
Here is the video chat schedule for those who want to watch.
Here is a time zone calculator to find corrresponding times in your part of the world.
Registration
You need to register in advance. To participate you only need to be a member who has signed the Honor Code.
Simply find the answer for your team (they are listed alphabetically) and post a comment under it saying you want to participate. If you're not sure about a team, comment here with a few things about your location or genealogical interests.
After you post, we will award you the participant badge.
The cut-off date for registering was midnight on Wednesday, April 10, 2024.
If you have any trouble or questions, contact Eowyn at eowyn@wikitree.com.
Teams
For fun and support, participants are divided into teams. (Every participant should be on one and only one team.)
If you don't have a team preference, reply here and we will assign one that seems to fit your geographic or genealogical interests.
Current teams
Please note teams are listed alphabetically by team name.
New
- Grave Guardians Captain: Steve Harris, Karen Lowe, & Robin Shaules ----> register
- The NEWT Team New WikiTree Members Captain: Betsy Ko, David Draper, Kathy Zipperer ----> register
Countries
- Team Austria Captain: Beate Hauer ---> register
- Banyan Tree (India). Captains: Lauren Thorpe ---> register
- Canadian Connectors. Captain: Christine Daniels ---> register
- Flying Dutchmen (Netherlands). Captain: Coen Dijkgraaf ---> register
- French Fries. (France) Captain: Léa Haupaix ---> register
- Germany Genies. Captain: Florian Straub ---> register
- Irish Seanchaithe (Ireland). Captains: Feargal Hennigan & Karen Haney ---> register
- Kiwi Crew (New Zealand). Captain: Campbell Braddock & Fiona McMichael ---> register
- Mighty Oaks (England). Captains: Joan Whitaker & Janet Wild ---> register
- Nordic Noir (Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Iceland). Captain: Jeffrey Wall ---> register
- Smoking Snakes (Brazil). Captains: Morgana Patrocinio Costa & Adriana Hazelton New!! ---> register
- South African Springboks. Captain: Susanna Hendrina Elisa de Bruyn ---> register
- Southern Cross Stars (Australia). Captain: Gillian Thomas ---> register
- Super Aussie Genies (SAG) (Australia). Captain: Danielle Lautrec---> register
- Team Italy. Captain: Chris Ferraiolo ---> register
- Twisted Thistles (Scotland). Captains: Sheena Tait & Suzy Cairns ---> register
- Wizards of Aus (Australia). Captain: Kathleen Cobcroft ---> register
US states and regions
- Appalachia Roots. , Captain: Sandy Patak ---> register
- Cornbread Catchers. (Southern USA, formerly Southern Sourcers). Captain: Kelly Kley ---> register
- Little Team on the Prairie (Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas). Captains: Judy Bramlage & Judi Stutz ---> register
- 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 ---> register
- Nor'Easters (Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island). Captain: Steven Tibbetts ---> register
- Northwest Terriers (Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin). Captain: Karen Lorenz & Shonda Feather ---> register
- Southern Super Sweepers (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas). Captains: Nan Lambert & Dorothy Barry ---> register
- Southwest Sunshiners (Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada and Utah). Captain: Russ Gunther ---> register
- Team Massachusetts. Captain: Bob Keniston ---> register
- Team Missouri (Missouri and surrounding states). Captain: Lori Zukerman ---> register
- Team Virginia (Virginia, West Virginia, and Kentucky researchers from other states also welcome). Captains: Liz (Noland) Shifflett ---> register
- Western Red Cedars (Alaska, Hawaii, Washington, Wyoming, Montana, Oregon and Idaho). Captain: Azure Robinson ---> register
Non-regional teams
- A Rose By Any Other Name (aka Team Roses). Focusing on US Black Heritage profiles. Captain: Emma MacBeath ---> register
- Globetrotters A truly global team covering all countries not covered anywhere else! Captain: David Randall ---> register
- Legacy Heirs Covering all profiles. Captain: Lisa Murphy ---> register
- Musty, Dusty Team Covering pre-1500 profiles. Captain: Rich Devlin ---> register
- Splendid Spruces Team Covering all profiles. Captain: Allan Entwistle ---> register
- Team L'Chaim Focusing on Jewish profiles. Captain: Elaine Martzen New!!! ---> register
- Toddlin' Tortoises Captain: Melanie Paul & Susan Anderson ---> register
- Tree Nuts Captains: Julie Ricketts ---> register
Inactive Teams
- Seamróga agus Fòghnain (Ireland and Scotland, a Gaelic alliance). Captains: Feargal Hennigan & Suzy Cairns
- Welsh Dragons (Wales). Captains: Hilary Gadsby & Jutta Beer
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.
- Engage with your team on G2G and/or Discord throughout the event.
If you're interested, email 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.
Team Splittings and Team Divisions
Team Splittings: When a team reaches more than 50 members, they will be asked to split the team. It is up to the team captain to decide how to divide up the team or they can ask Eowyn to split it for them.
Team Divisions: We are going to split the teams into three divisions based on size. Here is the break out to for this event:
- Division I has teams with 1-11 members (14)
- Banyan Tree
- French Fries
- Globetrotters
- Little Team on the Prairie
- Musty Dusty
- Smoking Snakes
- South African Springboks
- Southwest Sunshiners
- Splendid Spruces
- Team Austria
- Team Italy
- Team L'Chaim
- Team Massachusetts
- Team Virginia
- Division II has teams with 12-20 members (13)
- Cornbread Catchers
- Flying Dutchmen
- Germany Genies
- Irish Seanchaithe
- Kiwi Crew
- Nor'easters
- Southern Cross Stars
- Super Aussie Genies
- Team Missouri
- Tree Nuts
- Twisted Thistles
- Western Red Cedars
- Wizards of Aus
- Division III has teams with 21-50 members (13)
- Appalachia Roots
- Canadian Connectors
- Grave Guardians
- Legacy Heirs
- Mid-Atlantic US
- Mighty Oaks
- NEWT-A
- NEWT-B
- Nordic Noir
- Northwest Terriers
- Southern Super Sweepers
- Team Roses
- Toddlin' Tortoises
This will give teams an opportunity to take top place in their division as well as overall or with the team average.
Participation Instructions
Adding missing puzzle pieces. |
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+.
- The column "Normalized" indicates the score for each team and user taking in consideration the total number of team members participating.
Score/Number Participants of Team
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 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 "2024 Connect-a-Thon" items as prizes.
- The top five contributors who add the most profiles will get their choice of a prize.
- We will draw one participant at random during every video chat. You do need to be in the chat to win.
Each participant is eligible to win one WikiTree prize every six months. This includes marathons, Bingos and other challenges. It does not include badges or stickers.
Badges for Winners
In addition to the participation badge, the top winners will get the 2024 Connect-a-Thon winner badge. These winners will include:
- The top 10 winners overall.
- Everyone on the winning team who participated (overall, by average and by division).
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
- Connect-a-Thon April 2023
This page was last modified 23:31, 18 April 2024. This page has been accessed 84,801 times.