Help:Connection Counts
Categories: WikiTree Help | WikiTree Tools and Apps
Here is information on the "CC7" Connection Counts that appear on member profiles.
Contents |
What is a CC7?
A "CC7" is a person's number of connections on WikiTree within seven degrees.
"Connections" are family relationships, including relationships through marriage.
"Degrees" measure the distance of relationships. Nuclear relatives (parents, siblings, spouses, and children) are one degree away. Grandparents, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews, in-laws, and grandchildren are two degrees, i.e. they are connected through two relationship steps. The best illustration is on My Connections. It will show up to 1,000 of your connected relatives, sorted by degree.
Why do we show our counts?
A big part of WikiTree's single family tree mission is to show how we're all connected — how a web of family relationships connects everyone in the world. We are all distant cousins through shared ancestors, and marriages make us more closely intertwined. The more family members we add to WikiTree, the clearer this becomes.
A high CC7 means:
- your branch on our tree is very full, and
- you, or someone close to you, has done a lot of work!
If you have done this work adding connections, our community thanks you! Since we all share one tree, we all benefit from increasing connections.
Counts and scores aren't what WikiTree is really about, of course. But looking at numbers such as CC7s can be interesting and fun. As you grow your family connections on WikiTree you can watch your number grow and watch your connection paths to others across our tree grow shorter.
How to increase your count
Our community chose seven degrees for this count because at this distance you can make a big impact on your number. Even if you come from a small family, or have big question marks in your ancestry, there are almost certainly missing family members in some corner of your tree.
Do your ancestors have descendants who aren't on WikiTree yet? What about spouses? Ancestors of spouses?
Two community members have created apps that are perfect for seeing where family members may be missing:
- The CC7 Tree App by Ian Beacall. Use the "Missing Family" option in the dropdown menu.
- Missing Links by Jamie Nelson. You can set it at seven degrees.
Another tip: Encourage your cousins to join WikiTree. If you have a second or third cousin who's interested in genealogy, together your counts could explode.
When you're not sure what to do next, come ask our community in G2G. You can ask for help on a tough "brick wall" ancestor you can't get past, or simply ask for advice on what you should do next if you're feeling lost.
Counts can go down
Connection Counts don't always go up. They can go down if relationships are changed or removed.
For example, if you accidentally added Queen Elizabeth II as your mother, you would immediately have one of the highest CC7s in the world, but it would drop as soon as someone corrected the mistake.
Mistakes are expected and correcting them is a key part of how we grow an increasingly accurate single family tree.
How to see who is new
You may want to see more than a number. When your CC7 goes up, you probably want to know who was added, especially if you haven't added any relatives this week.
WikiTree cannot track this for all members. It would require too much data processing and storage. However, the community-managed, optional WikiTree Browser Extension enables it! Select the CC7 change tracking to begin tracking.
Where and When Counts Appear
Counts can found on:
- Member account profiles, above the Genealogist Section, unless the member has fewer than five connections.
- "My WikiTree" pull-down menus under "Connections."
- My Connections pages, when a member is viewing their own.
- Weekly WikiTree Family News email updates.
- Notable profiles.
Counts are recalculated twice every hour. When you add family members, your count will be updated within 30 minutes.
Counts are only available for active members and notables. They don't appear on all profiles.
The number of connections is public, but the names of connections are private unless both the starting person and the connected relative have public family trees, or you are on their Trusted Lists.
Connection count history
Here is your Connection Count History.
Counts for all members have been saved at weekly intervals since June 2022.
Your history includes your headline CC7 number, plus your number of connections at each degree or "circle". Your CC7 is the sum of your connections at these seven degrees/circles. Your Degree 7 count only includes the connections at degree 7, whereas your CC7 includes all your connections at degrees 1 through 7.
You'll also see columns for QEII Distance and KB Distance. These are your Connection Finder distances to Queen Elizabeth II and Kevin Bacon at each weekly interval. We use these two "connection anchors" just for fun. Unfortunately, you cannot see your connection paths at each interval. You can only see the historical numbers and your current path to them.
Connection count histories are not saved for notables or other profiles, only for members.
Top connection counts
Notables with the Top CC7s | Members with the Top CC7s
In addition to the members with the highest CC7s, you can see those who CC7 scores increased the most in the past month. (It's not a calendar month. It's today count compared with the count as recorded in the weekly interval from four weeks ago.)
We only include active members in these lists. Many active members have inactive family members whose counts are very high.
You can find this page by clicking the "Tree Tops" link in the Find pull-down menu.
Badges
Connection Counts are now used to award special badges. These badges are only awarded to Wiki Genealogists, i.e. active members who have signed the Honor Code.
This page was last modified 16:01, 29 January 2024. This page has been accessed 76,838 times.