29th million connected in less than 3 months!

Question

By Saturday, March 25th, based on the current trend (and I see no reason for it to change over the next two days), the connected number will pass another million threshold (29M).

The 28M connected was passed on Dec 26th, 2022. Connecting the 29th million will have taken less than 90 days!

This amazingly short time span is simply exploding the previous records. Previous millions had taken more than 100 days.

Is this a CC7 frenzy consequence? It might be, although the previous million was also reached after the CC7 race launch, and it was rather slower than the previous ones. Just statistical noise, or the beginning of a new trend? Time will tell. But now we have a challenge to keep up with this new pace. One season, one million connected? Rendez-vous in late June for the 30th million!

[edited] : ... for those who still wonder where this number can be found : https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Special:Connection

Answer 1

This is so exciting - I think it is a mixture of several projects calling people to connect profiles, of CC7 race, and of some people trying to shorten connections between already connected people, which also increases the number of connected profiles.

Answer 2

This is wonderful, I have been watching the increase in connected profiles over the past year. 

The increase must be 'connected'  to an increase in better sourced profiles, or a decrease in unsourced or poorly sourced profiles. which in turn makes it easier to connect profiles to each other. 

Well done everyone! Our newer members who take time to add reliable sources for all the profiles they create, the many people who participate in Source a thons, Saturday Sourcing Sprints and the many unsung heroes who keep working on unsourced profiles. 

Answer 3

I started on WT about 2 years ago.  It's mind boggling to me how the expansion has taken place.  My wife was a skeptic at first, now she is a member! My kids are skeptics, but are thawing out.  

I'm am very happy I found the right place to park my family and find my cousins. At work, I found a cousin who I had been working with for 4 years and because of WT  connection finder we discovered this.  I found recently others at my work place are also already on Wiki! We are checking our connections also as I write this!

Answer 4

Maybe Wikitree has approached the tipping point in dealing with GEDCOM fragments, so that users can spend more time filling in family groups than performing merges.

Much appreciation for the greeters team, the orphan trail programs and PIP Voyages, the people putting out YouTube tutorials and Eowyn Walker & Betsy Ko new member zoom sessions. Rob Pavey is in a class by himself in terms of increasing efficiency with the Sourcer app- many thanks!

Answer 5

Way to go everyone!

Answer 6

For me,  Wikitree sourcer has made it easier to add all the cousins in a Census, so that could be a factor.

Answer 7

I don't know where to get that number, but the main page says 33,872,855, and another page says that 4,789,934 are not connected, leaving 29,082,921. It's about 5:30am Eastern Time (in the US), on 25MAR2023, so I guess that was a good estimate.

By my count, 25MAR is the 89th day after 26DEC, so yeah - pretty fast!

Comments

OK, I found where the number is [Find->Connections].

It says 29,003,032 people, which makes more sense. 1M in 100 days is 10,000 per day, so if my previous number was right we would have crossed it 8 days ago. As it is, this number looks like it would have hit 29M an hour or two before midnight, in my local time.

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Find->Unconnected people is where the 4,789,934 number was from. 33,872,855 is from the main WikiTree page. Hmmm. Maybe some of these numbers don't get updated very much, or my subtraction would be closer to the "Connections" number...

Answer 8

My hypothesis about this sudden increase in connected profiles: With the CC7 has come a motivation to connect relatives from the recent past, say people born between 1850 and 1900. This is usually quite low-hanging fruit, if your family stuck to one place. I figure that it's quite common in the hunt for relatives in the outer CC7 circles to accidentally stumble across clusters of abandoned and disconnected families, where somebody have created 10-20 profiles and then left. I've discovered a couple of such clusters, although there aren't many of them from where I've got my roots.