What does being "connected" actually mean?

Question

I just discovered that I have 300 unconnected profiles among the profiles I manage. I rarely create a standalone profile. I am usually adding new profiles to my own lines, or to lines that are part of a challenge. Some of the 300 have extensive CC7 connections to profiles of their own relatives.  Yet they are "unconnected". So, what's the "big tree" that they should connect to?

Answer 1

There are two sorts of connected.  

1. 'connected' with a small 'c' is when a profile is connected to parents, spouse, siblings, or children.

2. 'Connected' with a capital 'C' is when a profile is connected to the main tree (or 'big tree' as you called it).  When they are related to or connected via marriages, parental or spousal relationships, sibling relationships and so on.  You can tell if a person is Connected to the main tree if, at the bottom of their profile, you see the section which goes something like "Mary is 25 degrees from Emeril Lagasse, 24 degrees from Nigella Lawson"...and so on.  The main tree is so huge, you could not see all of it in one go.  From the Home Page: "Our shared tree has 37,965,304 profiles" - and some of them are going to be unconnected (so far).

Comments

Thank you. I hadn't thought it was so difficult to be connected to the main tree. It would seem that someone in a family network that includes marriages would be quickly connected. I'll pay more attention to the bottom  of the page.

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I believe the largest unconnected branch is over 30,000 profiles in it. But all it takes is one profile to add a connection to the main tree and every one of the branch will be connected.

Answer 2

When I'm working on my One Place Study and enter a profile from a local obituary, I'm sometimes able to connect the person to the One Big Tree quickly.  However, sometimes I have to work hard and it takes several days and 20-50 profiles to finally make a connection.  It's especially hard when a young person dies, because we can't enter their parents (without permission) due to privacy concerns.  Every few months I go back over my list of unconnected to see if I can finally find the connection as more source material comes online, and maybe my research abilities change...