Follow connections
Product promise
Move from one subject to related people, places, ideas, and documents. Understand what each recorded connection means, where it came from, and where it can take your research.
Start with a subject and a question
Open a subject from Search or Browse. You might be investigating how a monument relates to a place, how an author relates to a work, or why two organizations appear together. You need the name of a subject and something you want to understand—not a graph identifier.
Find the subject’s relationships or connected-material view. Treat its connections as invitations to examine other identified objects, not as automatic answers. One link might describe an association from a structured collection; another may point to a document, a publisher’s reference, or an independently maintained record. The connection tells you where to look next. Its source context tells you what kind of statement you found.
Read one connection before following it
Choose a relationship relevant to your question, then read it in this order:
- Starting subject. Confirm which object you opened. Two objects with the same display name are not necessarily the same subject.
- Relationship and direction. Identify what kind of connection is recorded and which way it points. “A is located in B” is not the same assertion as “B is located in A.”
- Related subject or document. Inspect the destination’s type and identity before opening it. A subject, cited document, and observation are different destinations.
- Origin and references. Look for the collection or provider that supplied the relationship and any documentary citation, qualifier, or time context. The original publisher of a cited document may be different from the provider of the relationship.
- Next action. Open the destination or its attributable source if it advances your question. Keep a way to return to your original subject.
You can now explain the connection in a sentence: This source represents [starting subject] as related to [destination] through [relationship], with [origin or citation] supplied as context. If you cannot fill in its origin or support from what is shown, say what remains unknown instead.
Continue without confusing a path with proof
Return to the subject or explore one more meaningful connection from the destination. Compare the steps separately: each edge has its own direction, meaning, origin, and possible reference. A two-step path can suggest an interesting line of inquiry without proving a direct relationship, shared intent, or cause.
When a view offers only the first group of related objects, use its continuation or next-page option to inspect more. A visible neighborhood is a bounded view, not the complete universe. If the next page is unavailable, distinguish the view’s limit from the absence of other relationships.
For an attributable documentary trail, follow the reference to the actual document and note its publisher and edition. A reference can identify material without proving that Counterpedia has retained its bytes or evaluated the underlying claim.
Leave with something you can reuse
Before moving on, keep the subject you began with, the connection you followed, its meaning and direction, the related object, and any source you actually inspected. That is a useful research outcome even if no relationship had an evaluable documentary reference.
If a relation appears reversed, ambiguous, missing, or unsupported, do not guess a correction. Recheck the endpoint identities, inspect another related view, or search the subject more narrowly. The distinction between a recorded connection and evidence for its truth should remain visible.
Related manual chapters
- Exploring relationships and graphs — complete a two-step traversal and record what each edge establishes.
- Tracing information back to its source — inspect a documentary reference associated with a particular assertion.
- Exploring sources and references — distinguish provider observations, source identities, and retained material.