Have you seen "Tree Tops" and your CC7 history?

Question

Hi WikiTreers,

Tonight we released a round of changes. There are some small technical things, which are only worth mentioning because of the possibility of bugs (see the P.S. below).

The part worth talking about is Tree Tops.

The name is a nod to Peter Roberts' "WikiTree Tops," a set of superlatives that he started collecting manually in 2016, such as the member with the most identified ancestors or the longest Y-chromosome line.

We've put together four superlatives: the existing Top Contributors by Surname ("Most Prolific") and Top G2G Scores ("Most Communicative") with two new ones:

1. Top Thank-You Counts ("Most Appreciated"), the members with the most thank-yous.
2. Top Connection Counts ("Most Connected"), the members with the highest CC7s.

Along with the latter we're enabling all members to see their CC7 histories. Has your connection count grown since we started tracking them in June? Which degrees have grown? Have you grown closer to our connection anchors, Queen Elizabeth II or Kevin Bacon? See it all here!

Scoring and ranking like this is what some people call "gamification," but WikiTree is not a game. I don't know any member who thinks it is. Members participate because they love genealogy, believe in our mission, and enjoy the community. Still, although we may aspire to high ideals, it can be motivating to see measurable progress. Friendly competition can be fun, and we all like to see our efforts noticed and appreciated by others.

So, I hope you'll join me in congratulating everyone who appears on these Tree Tops pages, and I hope we continue to find new ways to recognize those who contribute so much of themselves to our community and our shared tree.

Onward and upward,

Chris and the WikiTree Team

P.S. As mentioned, Tree Tops is one part of a round of changes, most of which are small and technical. For example, we introduced some additional "data validation" checks when creating new profiles. If you experience any sort of problem, or have a question or comment, please post an answer below. Comments at the top will be hidden after they are read once.

Answer 1

Fantastic!  The CC7 history is  very helpful, answering questions that I frequently have.   LOVE the Kevin Bacon column.

Comments

I was a bit disappointed that the Kevin Bacon count histories start after the week-long campaign to add to his connections. My distance to him went from 19 to 17 steps during that campaign, and I imagine that many of us saw similar changes.

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Disappointing perhaps, but the goal is accuracy, not the  numbers.

Answer 2

I really love these new features! I think it helps to show us that we are making progress, genealogically. I sure recognize a lot of names on those lists!  What a great community we have!

Answer 3

Thank you, Chris, and the WikiTree Team! Great new features!

Answer 4

Chris,

Is there a way for me to determine which profiles were added to the connection count in the last month?

I can see that there was an increase of 7, but do not know how to identify them.

Thank you.

Comments

Hi Philip,

I bet this will be a common question in the future. I'm sure a lot of members would like to see *why* their connection counts and distances changed. But I don't think this is something we could add anytime soon. Theoretically, all the data is available. A program could scan the change histories of all connected profiles to see what relationships changed and what the consequences were for the starting profile. But that's a lot of data gathering and analysis. I bet someday someone will figure out an efficient way to do it.

Chris

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Chris,

I suspected that was the answer.

Is there a way to create a feed of the changes - so the information is captured when the change is recognized?

The only changes I see are in my 6th and 7th C.C.  If I knew which profiles are involved these might be those that I could expand on.

Thank you.

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If you check your family activity feed, there is an option to see changes to your connections.  You may need to install Wikitree BEE for that to appear.  It only works on the 1st 1000 connections so it's a limited use to people like me, but very handy if you're still at smaller numbers.

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Stu,

Thank you.  I am just under 4,000 and would like to get over that number at this point the only possibilities seem to be in the 6th and 7th C.C.

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It's surprising how fast you can grow the connections just using findagrave and familysearch.  I thought mine was just about tapped out.  My brother found the immediate family of our cousin's wife using FAG.  I cross referenced it just now with FS and found her family has a huge extended family in Sicily. That's easily another 100 connections in the 6-7 level.

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I have tried to make note of my last fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh CC. (My third CC rarely changes.) That way when I add new connections I can see that they fall after my previous final connections.

Answer 5

I love the Connection Count! Cool to see the degrees of separation, I'm seven degrees away from the branch of Niebs I am working on. Which is kind of an extended research project I embarked on. Haven't heard of Tree Tops, will check that out.

Answer 6

The G2G Top Scoring Users list (pages) now has missing names and unbalanced columns.

Comments

The list now only shows active members.

It will be updated to match the other Tops pages soon.

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Hmm, I don't get the rationale for this.  Are you saying an ex-member cannot be a Top anything?  Isn't that a bit like stripping old baseball and football players of their home runs or passing records when they leave the game -- a rewrite of history?  I wonder how quick you'll be to purge the site of personal data when you find out a member has died?

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Yes, deceased and former members will not show on any of the top lists. Project accounts and bots such as Editbot will also not show on the lists.

As to deceased member's personal data: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Death_of_a_Member . If they were active contributors, they also get added to https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Memorials .

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Are family members going to show up?  My brother and sister who are not active are both near the top of the connection list but don't show up now.

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Only Honor Code signers will show up in the top connected list.

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Jamie, I did not know we had a memorials page.  This is welcome to see.  Thank you.

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Jamie — So, this is still a work in progress?  The not having Projects show, I mean. 
Because page 20 shows 

US Presidents Project WikiTree

7.2k

and page 16 shows 

Magna Carta Project WikiTree

9.7k

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That's pretty much as far as I have gone since those no longer here (deceased or otherwise no longer members) are not shown.

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Yes, it is a work in progress. We figured it was pretty low-risk to release as is so people could play with it while things are adjusted.

I know the WikiTree accounts have been removed from the thank you and connections lists.

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Thanks.

(I just find it sad that the contributions of such folk as Sir William are no longer visibly recognised along with everyone else.  I know he is on the Memorials page, but to have him otherwise vanish as though he'd never been an active member just seems odd to me.  Emphasis on to me.)

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I miss him too.

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Sir William still shows up on Peter Roberts' WikiTree Tops page.

Answer 7

Fun!  Can we get WikiTreer contributions as a group?  

How many profiles did WikiTreers add per year and per month?  

What was our most prolific year?  

What month do profiles get added the most?

Comments

I think that data might be available in WikiTree+ in the statistics section.

Answer 8

When the badges for CC7 10,000 were announced I was surprised to see that badge holders from South Africa outnumbered badge holders from the USA. Looking at the 50 members with the most connections with in their CC7 the trend still holds:

Country	CC7 Treetops
South Africa	21
USA	16
Canada	6
Australia	5
New Zealand	2

Comments

Eva, I thought that was really interesting too.

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This brought home two things to me - firstly how the South African contingent forms a somewhat unique cluster in the Global Tree, which I hadn't noticed before. Presumably this is due to the quite endogamous nature of the population the South Africans have been profiling in WikiTree, plus the early presence of a fair number of diligent WikiTree members from there.

Secondly, ten thousand is not a very large number compared to the 26+ millions of connected profiles in the Global Tree. I have looked at the mean distances to all connected profiles for a few of the members with a high CC7 score and the South Africans typically have a mean distance of 25 to 26, whereas the Americans have a mean distance of 20 to 21, so in this respect they are much better connected. (My own mean distance is close to 28, which I guess is pretty typical for Sweden).

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South-African genealogical lines as researched on this site in different projects, reflect a tight but vary varied Gene-pool - meaning from all over Europe and the globe, but not in-bred. There had been many instances of cousins marrying cousins, but to state sec that the "South African" population is 'endagamous', is based on incorrect assumptions. So too the statement that an 'early 'presence' of said members 'from there' also makes a difference. South Africans are just very keen genealogists and have the luck to have excellent sources to validate their lines with, and we have long been avid active members on WikiTree. As far as that goes, anyone South African is highly likely to be related to someone else that is also of South African descent. Much more likely than an American would be. How that relates to being higher related to the likes of Fred Astaire or many of the modern day connections WikiTree provides us with, I cannot explain either. But it is certainly not Appalachian type inbreeding.

As far as DNA connections / research goes, this recent post on Facebook of Patric Tariq Mellet provides an interesting reading: HOW ONE CAN VALIDATE A CLAIM TO KHOE ANCESTRY ...

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I am very sorry for using the word endogamous in a too wide sense. I certainly did not mean any Appalachian type inbreeding, just that once people got to South Africa they tended to stay there and marry others who lived in South Africa.

I am not very interested in my relationship to Fred Astaire,  on the other hand I am very interested in the general "shape" of the WikiTree connection network as it can be explored through the Connection Finder and additional queries rendering the total of connections from a chosen profile.

I actually don't think that the CC7 is a very good measure of who is "most connected" - in my opinion the mean distance to all other connected profiles would be a better measure. But this is probably too heavy on the computation to implement for all members.

The Americans with a high CC7 score typically have a mean distance of about 20 to 21 and a smooth curve. The South Africans with a high CC7 score typically have a mean distance of 25 to 26 (sorry for repeating myself) and an uneven curve with an intitial false maximum a little beyond CC7 followed by a trough before the curve rises steeply to the maximum.

We have been exploring these curves since November 2020, but we have previously failed to study South African profiles, being more used to coping with the very long and low approaches to the main "hill" that characterise profiles from many European countries.

If you are interested you can see more here: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:100_Circles

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Thanks Eva, I think I understand now. [Edit] I understand now. Yes, many marriages per profile, certainly pre-1800. That is not even including the not yet recorded extra-marital & concubinal relationships.

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Thanks also for confirming my observation that there was an early presence of diligent South African genealogists in WikiTree.

The Connection Finder is not really about blood relationships, morke like the social networks of intermarrying families - although social may not be the proper word: just being neighbours, business partners or members of the same church doesn't cut it.

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Thanks Eva! Here is another pearl of thought regarding genealogical Tree Tops ... 

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That was nice, Philip.

I am the proud owner of a tree including the full set of 128 fifth great-grandparents. I should also say lucky - I don't have any "father unknown" within that distance. Swedish records are very good, but there is a "record horizon" somewhere between 1624 and 1700, depending on the area. The early records are, of course, often quite cryptic - the vicar knew his parishioners - and women are often neglected, even  in their own death record they may be registered without name, as "the widow of".

Answer 9

Love it, thank you

Answer 10

All I can say is DARN YOU WIKITREE!

Now you've made me look closer at my immediate family and while I was mildly impressed that I had a good amount of my close family with profiles, there's a whole lot more I can and should be doing to improve things. So now I've got yet "another" thing I need to look at, which I should have been doing all along anyway. Plus there's quite a few profiles I created way back when and thought "I'll get back to that... eventually". So DARN YOU for making me look, but THANK YOU for making me look.

Comments

I hear you!

I had been working on getting the rest of my father's 3Cs in, on my paternal line, but it turns out that they're "Degree 8", and don't even count!

This got me looking at how scandalously neglected my more immediate relatives were ... yikes! So I added 83 people to finish off Degree 2, Degree 3, and Degree 4, and I've added 124 to Degree 5 so far (which is most of the way there). Maybe I'll calm down about it once my Degree 5 is done, which should just about get me to that spiffy 2k CC7 badge. 

I guess I could add more at these first 5 Degrees, but I don't like adding profiles for the living below my parents' generation, and adding the relatives of people who are married to my blood relatives, just isn't a priority for me.

Answer 11

Bug to fix:

I just noticed the "Movers & Shakers" list on the CC7 page: supposedly the members whose scores increased the most in the past month. There is something very wrong with the list at the moment -- it is in seemingly random order, and it includes a few people whose CC7 counts increased by only 1 or 2.

Comments

It's sorted by members whose count increased the most (the far right column).

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The column with a 1 or 2 in is the what the CC7 was on 12 Jul 22. The increase amount is in the third column and it is in order from the highest increase to the lowest increase. Edit - I wrote the above before I had seen Tommy's comment which says the same thing.

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So, essentially, most of the 1s and 2s on the list are new members who connected their parents' profiles to the tree, where there were already many relatives.

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Check their contributions.  There are a few that have put in a lot of work and a lot of people that recently connected themselves to the tree.

Answer 12

This is just great! Thank you for this and congratulations to all on tree tops!

Answer 13

How does this place constantly seem to get cooler? B)

Answer 14

Very good. It is so impressive seeing the continual roll out of new features, and evidence of a lot of hard work, and great thinking minds.

On the CC7 Histories page, could you make the Current numbers under each Degree, a link to those names?
By the way. What is Queen Elizabeth II's CC7 and Kevin Bacon's CC7?

Comments

There's a link at the top of the page (counts at each degree) which displays the profiles for the first 4 degrees with a button at the bottom of the page to load additional names at each additional degree.

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Somebody should really talk to QEII and KB about getting on WikiTree so we can see that...  

I kinda wonder if KB knows about this extension of the whole "degrees" thing that attached itself to him, and whether he'd be amused, or irritated. I suppose in his business, any publicity is good publicity.

Answer 15

DUH...I just figured out how to figure out using the counts! Very interesting. For me, though, I pay less attention to counts and more attention to doing will sourced and full biographies. I've been on WikiTree four four full years as of this past July and am still learning the ropes of writing full biographies.

The amazing thing is that I wish I had the technological skills that many of you have (Chris Witten and Eowyn Elf). I did my dissertation on a typewriter (yes, it was electric) with carbon paper copies.

I do thank you for making WT life more interesting. You all are a joy to work with!

Answer 16

My CC& count went backwards? how does that happen?

On 26 July it was 979.

On 2nd Aug it was 980

On 9 Aug it was 979 again.

I thought it could only grow?

Comments

I wonder if there was a merge?

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oh yes, good point. There was. Thanks for pointing this out.

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Mine definitely went down at one point then I remembered I’d merged a family and removed someone linked incorrectly who obviously had a few linked to him.

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On a related note, I've noticed that if you change a LNAB that both versions of the name are counted for a least a few hours. So the CC7 score bumps up by one, when it really shouldn't, but eventually comes back down again.

In general, though, the main reason why it could go down would be because of mistakes. You could say that if a merge is needed that it means that somebody made a mistake, so that's one example.

I'm thinking more about, for example, if you had some relative as married to somebody, and then you found out that it was really the wrong person. If the wrong person had a bunch of relatives that contributed to your CC7 count, then it could go down significantly when the correction is made.

Answer 17

Wow its amazing!!

Living persons who are the most distant cousins from each other

1. 30th cousins once removed for Pieterse-13 and Roberts-7085 -><-

Answer 18

My connection counts remain unaffected since June.

WikiTree Tops is doubtful: for example, the top entry involves a person whose existence is unproven, so clearly the Y-DNA of his bodily remains cannot have been analysed.

If we're going to accept Beli Mawr, then how about the Dagda (died circa 3200 BC, buried in Newgrange) who, by all reports, has living male-line decendants?

Answer 19

Are dead people supposed to be assigned connections badges?

Joseph Gérard Jean Pierre Côté (1944-2018) is dead and is listed on the 10,000 connections badge page.

Comments

I guess there's different ways to take that!

On the one hand, getting a badge from the grave is kind of impressive.

On the other hand, I'm being shown up by a dead guy... 

Answer 20

I thought the "Most Communicative" page was OK when I thought the "Tops" page was separate from the standard G2G "Users" page, but I don't like that the "Tops" feature has now replaced "G2G Users." The huge font size and generous spacing on https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/users now make it all but impossible to use that page to find information. Can we please have the old format back?

Comments

It's always been a "top users ranking" page.

What sort of information were you using it to find? Maybe we can come up with an easier way than browsing the list.

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Yes, it has always been a "top users ranking" page, but I used to be able to see many names on one screen display, and now I can see no more than about 10 names at a time (unless I fool with my display to reduce the font to the extent that everything else is too small to read).

I have sometimes used this list to remind me of the full name, or maybe find the user ID, of someone I recall as a prolific poster. These are people whose names were almost always on the first page. They still are on the first page, but it takes a lot of scrolling to see the names and I can no longer visually scan the list easily because each individual name is now enshrined in a large amount of space.

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On further reflection, I realize that I have been in the habit of using the G2G users list as a Contacts list and also as a G2G search utility.

Why it's a Contacts list: It can be the fastest way for me to find the profiles of some of the members I "see" the most. (Faster, for example, than doing a Name Search, then looking for the active members in a results list of people with similar common names.) It helps that I often remembered approximately where the person's name was on the G2G Users list display.

Background for why it's a G2G search utility: I often want to find a recent or not-so-recent G2G thread about a particular topic, maybe because I want to add an answer or a comment on a question I saw recently, or maybe I want to refer another member. It can be difficult to find a particular thread after it has scrolled off the main G2G page, although it helps if I remember the tags on the question. If it was my question or if I posted an answer, I often can find it from my G2G user page. The "recent activity" item on my G2G user page may help if I recategorized or retagged the question or commented in the thread, but because I do a lot of recategorizing and retagging, that list usually covers just 2 or 3 days, and most of the items in it are not items I am interested in revisiting.

How the G2G Users list helps me find G2G threads:  I often recall at least one other member who posted in the thread I am looking for (very often this is someone on the Top Communicators list) and I can find the thread in that other member's list of recent activity (or their lists of questions and answers).

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I think Ellen makes a good point, on aesthetic as well as practical grounds, that the new display is too sparsely formatted. Returning to two columns would help, and would match better with Most Appreciated and Most Connected. If that would be difficult, even reducing the vertical white space above each name would be a help.