Every week I get notifications from wikitree.com about my relationships with famous celebrities. Some are actors, politicians, famous Canadians,and the list goes on.

The one niche that I don't see is my relationships with fellow sysOPs.

I would like to challenge anyone that is interested to go to wikitree.com and create your free account. The next step is to enter as much information about your profile as you can. This would also include information about your parents, their parents and the same for your spouse.

Once you have created your profile, you will be assigned a wikitree ID. Mine is Dippel-21

The ongoing challenge would be to use WikiTree to check our relationships.
At the bottom of your page you would see something like:
'See your connection or your genealogical relationship with ___' (here you would input your assigned ID)

I'm sure that the majority of you are not interested in genealogy, but I thought this might be an interesting way to get into genealogy and to see how we are related to each other.

Mike Dippel
Get Your Site Listed
https://bbs-list.net


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Re: WikiTree sysOP Challenge
By: Mike Dippel to All on Sat Jan 17 2026 09:52 am

Hi there, Mike!

(reposting this message now that things appear to be working in the echo again)

Every week I get notifications from wikitree.com about my relationships

The one niche that I don't see is my relationships with fellow sysOPs.

I would like to challenge anyone that is interested to go to wikitree.com and create your free account. The next step is to enter as much

You know, it was interesting - I hadn't heard of wikitree before your post in a few echos about it, and then within a day or so, my wife was mentioning genealogy stuff. I had set up humo-gen in 2007 and barely got started on it - updated it in 2015 to add in my child that was born in 2009, and have always meant to come back to it.

It seemed interesting the two mentions of it in such a short span of time, so I got started on updating humo-gen, deciding I didn't like it and replaced it with webtrees, and then started exploring wikitree. I also had data sent my way for spurs of the family tree from others I knew had worked on it.

Thanks to getting re-acquainted with places to do research through that aren't ancestry.com I've been able to start getting my feet wet again, though after piles of reading and doing a bit of playing around, I haven't done much but just try and get comfortable with doing things *well*. Slow going... but anyhow.

I have a bit to add to wikitree and then I'll see what connections with others look like.

I figured you may have wanted to know someone had picked up some of the genealogy bug recently.

You've been doing it for some time, I presume?
--- SBBSecho 3.36-Linux
* Origin: Yak Station - We do a lot 'o' yakkin'! (954:11/15)

On 2/13/2026 6:54 PM, The Wanderer wrote to Mike Dippel:

You know, it was interesting - I hadn't heard of wikitree before your post in a
few echos about it, and then within a day or so, my wife was mentioning genealogy stuff. I had set up humo-gen in 2007 and barely got started on it -
updated it in 2015 to add in my child that was born in 2009, and have always meant to come back to it.

It seemed interesting the two mentions of it in such a short span of time, so I
got started on updating humo-gen, deciding I didn't like it and replaced it with webtrees, and then started exploring wikitree. I also had data sent my way
for spurs of the family tree from others I knew had worked on it.

Thanks to getting re-acquainted with places to do research through that aren't
ancestry.com I've been able to start getting my feet wet again, though after piles of reading and doing a bit of playing around, I haven't done much but just try and get comfortable with doing things *well*. Slow going... but anyhow.

I have a bit to add to wikitree and then I'll see what connections with others
look like.

I figured you may have wanted to know someone had picked up some of the genealogy bug recently.

You've been doing it for some time, I presume?

Happy to see there are others that show an interest. It's been well over 25 years for
me.

What is your wikitree ID number?

Mike Dippel

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Re: RE: WikiTree sysOP Challenge
By: Mike Dippel to The Wanderer on Sat Feb 14 2026 03:15 pm

You've been doing it for some time, I presume?

Happy to see there are others that show an interest. It's been well over 25 years for me.

Now that I'm in my 50's, hopefully I can make slow and steady progress with it!

What is your wikitree ID number?

Clark-102504
--- SBBSecho 3.36-Linux
* Origin: Yak Station - We do a lot 'o' yakkin'! (954:11/15)

On 2/14/2026 10:30 PM, The Wanderer wrote to Mike Dippel:

Re: RE: WikiTree sysOP Challenge
By: Mike Dippel to The Wanderer on Sat Feb 14 2026 03:15 pm

You've been doing it for some time, I presume?

Happy to see there are others that show an interest. It's been well over
25 years for me.

Now that I'm in my 50's, hopefully I can make slow and steady progress with it!

What is your wikitree ID number?

Clark-102504

How do you like that! We ARE related through my maternal Grandfather. If you go to
the Connection Finder page and input Dippel-21 you will see the connection.

I will see if I can email you the screenshot.

I'm excited!

Mike Dippel

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* Origin: The Hobby Line! BBS - hobbylinebbs.com (954:895/1)

Re: RE: WikiTree sysOP Challenge
By: Mike Dippel to The Wanderer on Sun Feb 15 2026 09:49 pm

How do you like that! We ARE related through my maternal Grandfather. If I will see if I can email you the screenshot.

It's pretty cool that there is a connection (it's kind of funny how removed things are.. *but* that it can still find one is amazing), and that's with a large chunk of my tree not in wikitree yet.

I'm curious to see, once I've had further branches fleshed out a bit, what my connections to others, and notables, looks like, and whether they get shorter/closer.
--- SBBSecho 3.36-Linux
* Origin: Yak Station - We do a lot 'o' yakkin'! (954:11/15)

On 2/16/2026 12:37 PM, The Wanderer wrote to Mike Dippel:

Re: RE: WikiTree sysOP Challenge
By: Mike Dippel to The Wanderer on Sun Feb 15 2026 09:49 pm

How do you like that! We ARE related through my maternal Grandfather. If
I will see if I can email you the screenshot.

It's pretty cool that there is a connection (it's kind of funny how removed things are.. *but* that it can still find one is amazing), and that's with a large chunk of my tree not in wikitree yet.

I'm curious to see, once I've had further branches fleshed out a bit, what my
connections to others, and notables, looks like, and whether they get shorter/closer.

Because WE are connected, any notables that I am connected to are ones you are connected to as well. You should start receiving weekly emails from wikitree to advise
you of those connections.

Your cuz,
Mike Dippel

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* Origin: The Hobby Line! BBS - hobbylinebbs.com (954:895/1)

Re: RE: WikiTree sysOP Challenge
By: Mike Dippel to The Wanderer on Wed Feb 18 2026 08:05 pm

Because WE are connected, any notables that I am connected to are ones you are connected to as well. You should start receiving weekly emails from wikitree to advise
you of those connections.

Oh yes, I have started receiving those, and I think with the information the put in to them, they do a good job of incentivizing if you know there's much tree to be built yet. They are quite interesting on the whole, too.
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