Top connected not on the "Notables By CC7" list

Question

I've always been uneasy with the very notion of notability, and why we should rely on external rules (those of Wikipedia) to decide who is or is not notable. WikiTree is not an encyclopedia, so the rules for notability could be different.

We've been monitoring since more than 3 years now, in the 100 Circles project, the growth of circles for one of the most connected profiles we had identified in November 2020, Samuel Lothrop. For the record, Shawn Ligocki was already monitoring the progress of this profile before this date.

History of figures can be found here, just one of them updated today : CC7 of Samuel Lothrop is currently over 260,000, and counting. In January 2021, when CC7 was not yet a concept, it was already over 200,000.

This would put him on the top of the list at https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Automated:Notables_By_CC7 well over the head of Brigham Young. Unfortunately, Samuel Lothrop is not flagged as Notable. He is PPP under the Puritan Great Migration project, but not notable.

I am no one to decide if he should or not be flagged Notable. But I am very sad not to see him featured at the top of the above said list.

[edited : added the tag PGM to attract attention of people in the Puritan Great Migration Project]

Comments

As a member of PGM, I support Bernard’s observation. I have always found the concept of tying notability to a Wikipedia entry questionable, to be charitable. It does seem that notability has any number of exceptions to the Wikipedia ‘rule’ and two projects where I am heavily involved can’t (and shouldn’t) rely on Wikipedia for inclusion of people who are notable. Why doesn’t PGM leadership simply decide that he is notable, give the designation, and let those who believe his inclusion in error make argument for his removal?

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Comment spot on, T! Hopefully "PGM leadership", whoever they are (I'm not familiar at all with the project) will at some point answer to this post. I also put a comment on the profile, so we should have an answer.

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I would guess that means the Puritan Great Migration project.

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Yes I know that! I'm not familiar means I've never been involved in the project.

Answer 1

I feel like given the nature of where we are, a site committed to the idea that we are all connected,  one of the things that would make a person worthy of note here is their connectivity

Comments

Celia I know we are on the same page, but please have a look at the last comment I made below, answering to Ann. The various answers pushed me to better set the problem, and not conflating "notable (wo)man" and "remarkable position in the network".

Answer 2

He seems at least as notable as Willard-105 (#3 on that list), or his own father, #5.

Comments

Maybe someone needs to create a Wikipedia page for him :)

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He is already mentioned on a Wikipedia page, his father's. Given his importance that ought to be enough to make an exception to the exact letter of the notability rule.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lothropp#Children

Answer 3

A supplementary question would be why do we have to have the Notables Sticker on a profile to force the CC7 to show? It's stating the bleeding obvious to have the sticker on Queen Elizabeth II, and it doesn't add anything to her profile. But we have had to add it because of the CC7. Why can't the CC7 show on all profiles as a default?

Comments

Hi Jo. The reason may be that it is too expensive in computer time to calculate CC7 for every profile.

But a workaround would be to allow some other template also to cause the display of CC7. There would have to be restrictions on use of this new template, but they could be different from and more generous than the requirement of the existence of a Wikipedia page.

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I fully agree with both of you. Yes, I already asked to be able to have the CC7 for any profile, not pre-computed for all profiles because of the server overload, but on demand, so to speak.

Maybe also it's possible to identify the very high CC7, say over 100,000, and generate a template like "6-digit CC7" which would trigger the computation and display. That should not necessarily be real-time data, because of the cost, recomputed like every month would be enough.

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I just asked Aleš what could be done, what would be the cost of detecting all those high CC7 profiles.

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Maybe a profile which has a Succession box could have the CC7 pop up.

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Sorry Ros, what is a Succession box? (OK, found). But I fail to see the relationship with a high CC7.

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It's a box which indicates who came before them and who will come after them, like on the Queen's profile: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Windsor-1

King George VI came before her, and Charles III after.

Works for American Presidents, elected officials, aristocracy etc.

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Yes, Thanks, I've figured that. But sorry, I fail to see what is the relationship with CC7?

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The only relationship would be that a Succession box would trigger the CC7 to display, whereas at the moment only the Notables Sticker triggers it.

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Ha, OK. Quite arbitrary, but why not, but it won't work for Samuel Lothrop.

Answer 4

I always saw notable as having made marked contributions to humanity/society, positively or negatively, in their lifetimes.  Having lots of descendants/relatives isn't what I would call a noble act or being worthy of being notable, but that's just my opinion.

Comments

Michel, I agree

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Michel and C, please see below my (too) long answer to Ann.

Answer 5

While I understand the drive to link CC7, I wonder why fecundity in itself is notable. Samuel was no more notable than hundreds or thousands of other emigrants to New England, or any other destination world-wide. 

Aren't we bending our rules on notability to make him fit the category? He doesn't have his own Wikipedia page, and other than emigrating - as a child - in the 1600s, what did he do that differentiated him from other immigrants? 

 "WikiTree's standard for notability is not based on whether or not an individual has a Wikipedia page, but whether they actually meet Wikipedia's requirements for having one." Does he?

Please understand that I'm not arguing he should be in the CC7 based on his numerous and sometimes notable progeny, but the way we're going about it is a little wonky. 

Comments

OK, let me phrase it otherwise. If having a large CC7 has nothing to do with notability, which basically I can agree with - although, as already mentioned, the whole notion of notability, whatever the rules, is a concept I globally can't buy -  what is the point of a list like https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Automated:Notables_By_CC7?  Why not simply a list of largest CC7, notables or not? Seems to me the answer is just technical : it would be certainly too costly to compute CC7 for ALL connected profiles, in order to figure the most connected. So this search has been limited to 2 arbitrary categories, WikiTreers and Notables.

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I fail to see why he should be counted as a notable. Also the prefix Honourable should not be applied to someone who has died. Would he have been addressed as such whilst alive?

CC7 seems to be a bit of a fad for some reason. I’m not sure why this has suddenly become of such importance in the past year or so. Perhaps I’m just old and grumpy!

Ann- waiting for the howls of derision!

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Ann, no derision at all, in my mind at least. I'm ready to hear and discuss all viewpoints on this issue like on any other one, in particular those viewpoints which are way off my cultural comfort zone. As you might know, or not, I'm French, agnostic and a mathematician by trade. Three reasons at least to have difficulties to understand and be understood here by many people, and that's OK. We have to build upon our diversity.

That said, again, as written in the post and in some answers, I am no one to discuss criteria for notability. To be honest, I don't care much if Samuel Lothrop is deemed to be flagged as notable, honourable, or whatever qualifier fits his merits and achievements as a man. He belongs to a part of History I'm not at all familiar with. I have no American, or even Anglo-Saxon at large, ascendancy. I eventually found a handful of US and Canadian remote cousins, but you see what I mean.

About CC7 : I plead only partially guilty as charged, being the one who introduced the original concept of circles into WikiTree, back in fall 2020, with a bunch of people interested by the local and global geometry of this huge network we have been building. How far are we really from each other? Under which metric? The circles idea was to say people to "look around" any profile instaed of focusing only on ancestors. The original idea is still living at https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:100_Circles.

CC7 was an over-simplification of this idea, I was, and still am against the whole idea of badges based on the CC7 size, because you can have a large CC7 with zero contribution to WikiTree, just by your position in the family network. I've been ranting against it at the time, publicly and privately, but now that CC7 is mainstream, I prefer to see the positive aspect of it, but still saying people to look "beyond CC7". See https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Beyond_CC7

But nevertheless, high values of CC7, like the one reached by Samuel Lothrop and others, have a signification, they are a measure of the density of the network around the position such profiles occupy. Otherwise said, it has not much to do with the merits of the man or woman sitting in this position, the number of spouses and children they had is of course a parameter, but it's not the only one. What is remarkable is their position in the network.

Say for example you assess the density of population in a city by measuring the number of inhabitants living at less than a mile from a given house. You will find houses with densities higher than others, and the areas where this density is maximal can be deemed "remarkable", which does not mean that people living there are "notable" by any all mean.

Of course, you might be interested in such questions or not. There are such a wealth of different fascinating things you can be interested in WikiTree. But some people are really interested in this geometry, and we want it to be assessed withouth the bias introduced by notability or whatever element which has nothing to do with geometry.

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Fair enough. I hate maths although I liked algebra! I suppose I am more interested in solving puzzles in genealogy and spend most of my time transcribing wills to help solve difficult and tangled families. I like finding out what people left in their wills, what was said about some relatives etc. I don’t have a CC7 as I have not put my own relatives onto Wikitree. It just seems that CC7 has become some sort of competition. I understand the interest to some people but we should be focussing on accuracy and well sourced and informative profiles rather than scoring points. Notable to my mind means someone that has done something exceptional or had a prominent place in society for good or bad reasons. Each to his own however but I wouldn’t say having a huge CC7 means that you are notable, prolific maybe,

I was under the mistaken impression that everyone had a CC7 if they had connected profiles on Wikitree, have I got that wrong?

Regards,

Ann

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I see. Technically you have a CC7, which is zero since your profile has no connection. But it does not show on your profile.

Yes, every profile, connected or not to the Big Tree, has a CC7 which can be computed different ways. Direct query, as we do for the 100 circles projects, which yields not only CC7, but CCn for all vallues of n.

CC7 is displayed on the profile for active WikiTreers and for Notables. For other profiles, it can be computed using the CC7 application under Tree Apps menu.Beyond computing, this app is showing the details of first circles, with missing relatives etc.

Answer 6

I think we're mixing metaphors a bit here, so let me separate a few things.

CC7 is simply a number of connections, which has zero to do with Notable status. While having it prominently displayed on the top of your profile is nice, it can also be displayed on demand in other ways, so while it's nice to have, it's not an essential part of any profile. I suppose if someone found an interesting factoid like a high CC7 count on a profile, they could document it in the biography (On xyz date, his CC7 was shown to be 1,027 - for example).

Wikipedia was determined to be the standard for Notability before my time here, but I do see the wisdom in choosing an independent arbiter of the standards, as it eliminates bias and allows us to manage the process of determining Notability with limited intervention. In essence, 99% of Notables are predetermined by Wikipedia's process, and the remaining small percent would require evaluation by Notables to determine if they fit within the scope of that project. Without this standard, it would make the inclusion of all Notables very challenging indeed.

Ultimately, Notables need to meet a standard of achievement, accomplishment, fame, or whatever you want to call it that shows they have great attention on their deeds, in a way that rises them above their peers. They must have documentation that is clear, well-sourced, and found in multiple places with unique information on each (no cookie cutter sources). They need a clear biography and sources to prove their Notability. These standards alone are difficult and while we have many profiles of interesting people, they typically would not meet a status of Notable. We can nitpick at why Wikipedia chose "him" or "her" as we disagree with whether they should be Notable, but by that same token, we should not use the exception as the mirror for how we do things here. I've seen many pages taken down after a period of time, and generally for the reason many express concerns about - too little support for a person, too little documented evidence, too few accomplishments to note. We should do our best to maintain the standards, promote those who meet those standards, and appreciate those who do not.

Comments

Scott, thanks for your well thought out (as usual) comment. Yours with other answers above leads me to acknowledge my question was indeed, as you say "mixing metaphors". So, if I had to rephrase it now, it would be that way : Can we have a list of Top Connected profiles (supposing CC7 is a good measure for that) independent of the fact that they are Notables or WikiTreers?

It might be that the very existence of the list at https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Automated:Notables_By_CC7 has blurred the issue, since as you say, notability and high connection level are orthogonal. The same as the list of Top Connected WikiTreers is hiding the fact that the most connected profiles in WikiTree are necessarily profiles of the past, not of living people, because CC7 needs more than two centuries to deploy completely.

Knowing that, it's just a technical issue. Computing CC7 for all profiles seems a non-starter because of the cost. We would have to pre-filter the population by some categorization of space/time/projects where the most connected profiles are likely to be found.

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Notability is not determined by whether a person has a WikiTree article, but rather by English Wikipedia's criteria for notability at Wikipedia:Notability (people). The criteria relate to two general themes (my words, not Wikipedia's)

• Whether the person has sufficient fame and/or accomplishments to cause people who aren't related to them or personally acquainted with them to want to look them up.
• Whether there has been sufficient independent third-party documentation of the person to form a basis for a meaningful and probably-reliable encyclopedia article about them.

The first of these criteria is highly relevant to the question of whether WikiTree should compute CC7 for a person. If the person is somebody that unrelated people are likely to look up for general interest, then there is value in showing their CC7 number. The vast majority of people who ever lived or who are profiled in WikITree aren't going to attract that kind of interest, and having an absurdly high CC7 number isn't something that is likely to interest most site visitors.

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Because of the particular concerns of people interested in genealogy, having a high CC7 might well cause WikiTree members and visitors to this site to want to look up such profiles.

From our point of view, not for notability but for importance and worthiness, the criterion in the second bullet point Ellen quotes translates to a profile being well sourced.

I agree with Bernard's points in his slightly earlier comment. High CC7 is of interest (round WikiTree, at least) independently of notability. If it can be achieved technically, a separate automatically generated and maintained page listing all the top 1000 CC7 profiles would be interesting and worthwhile.

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Thanks Jim. Very good summary of the conversation so far

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Wikipedia was determined to be the standard for Notability before my time here, but I do see the wisdom in choosing an independent arbiter of the standards, as it eliminates bias

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Wikipedia is not exactly free from bias as it is heavily slanted to white males, mostly Americans, and often those who have done little of true note.

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@Melanie: Wikipedia policies don't give some sort of extra credit to white males. The problem you perceive at Wikipedia is contributors who are misogynists (or obsessively devoted to stereotypically male interests) or uninterested in topics related to non-white cultures. It's also true that women and "people of color"  throughout history have had far less opportunity to achieve "notability," but that's not something a 21st-century website can cure.

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Yes, maybe the internal process and sociological distribution of Wikipedia contributors play a role, but mostly, Wikipedia, like Wikidata, is mostly an image of the world as it stands. A few years ago, I wrote about it in a post called "Half the sky of Wikidata", and it's certainly unfortunately still relevant, even if figures in this article would need to be updated.

Less than one person out of five in Wikidata is a woman. This is not of course a deliberate Wikidata policy, but a mirror of how the notability process works at large in our world, not only in Wikipedia (the main source of Wikidata) but also in other data sources such as library authorities.