Help us find and connect profiles for next week's Twitterverse Feature [closed]

Question

Twitter is all over the news recently, so we're featuring the controversial Elon Musk in our WikiTree Challenge and doing a Connection Finder feature on notable and notorious Twitter users.

Here's who we're getting started on:

• Jack Dorsey, former CEO of Twitter.
• Donald Trump, US President and businessman, permanently banned from Twitter.
• Bill Gates, US businessman (Microsoft) and philanthropist.

Can you help with these profiles, or expand their families? Adding relatives in any direction helps with connections. Every missing relative you add will make our connections to them closer.

Who else should we feature? Do they need a profile?

All profiles we feature need a good biography and a connection to the big tree. We also want each one to have an image, and the image needs to have proper source attribution explaining why it's in the public domain or why we have the right to display it.

We can't feature everyone mentioned (we only have room for eleven per week), but if we don't feature a profile you work on, we may use it sometime in the future. And, of course, all contributions help improve our shared tree.

We'll make a final decision on which ones to feature early next week.

Please reply here with what you're working on so that we don't duplicate our efforts. Thank you!

Help us plan other themes to feature for the rest of 2022 here.

Answer 1

How about Seth Dillon, who now owns The Babylon Bee? He doesn't have a profile though, someone would need to create and connect it.

Or, we could go with Mike Lindell, who has also been banned. Well, darn, he's not on WikiTree either. I'm not good at picking this week.  Anyone else have suggestions?

Answer 2

For the other side of the controversy, how about The Squad (AOC is a good follow-up to this week, but some of the other members may be challenging because of the lack of records)?

Answer 3

Uodated:

This might be a tough one for some of us older folk, but according to "The Internet" the current top five Twitter accounts belong to:

Barack Obama 

Justin Bieber

Katy Perry

Rihanna

Cristiano Ronaldo 

Obama and Bieber have connected profiles; Katy Perry, Rihana and Cristiano Ronaldo all have unconnected profiles.

Comments

Ronaldo has a profile if you spell his first name correctly  https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Aveiro-4

Katy Perry also has a profile but it looks like it doesn't have her proper first name: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Hudson-4032

Neither of them seem to be connected

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Thank yoy, I knew those profiles had to be out there somewhere. I have updated my original question to reflect the new information.

Answer 4

Lady Colin Campbell nee Zaide - She doesn't have a profile, nor does her ex husband but this is his Father Ian Douglas Campbell

Comments

You could research her profile through her ex-father-in-law.

Answer 5

After Elon bought Twitter, these two people reportedly lost a significant number of followers:

Taylor Swift - Connected but needs a bio

Michelle Obama 

Comments

Taylor Swift and Michelle Obama have done far more interesting things to be featured for as EPOWs, than being allegedly dirty-tricksed on social media by an unpleasant man.

Answer 6

I would strongly advise against using the former guy given the current political climate. You do not want to attract negative attention at this time. If you really want controversial Twitter users, I would suggest:

Alexandria Ocasio Cortez has a tree on Geni: https://www.geni.com/people/Alexandria-Ocasio-Cortez/6000000079621587899

Here's a list of people who have been permabanned on Twitter: https://www.thewrap.com/people-who-have-been-banned-from-twitter/

I hope that helps.

But, yeah. The former guy and anyone associated with him would probably not be a good idea.

Answer 7

A controversial social media person is Greta Thunberg, she has a profile but isn't connected yet. Several family members are also notables and have profiles on Wikipedia
mother: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malena_Ernman
father: https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Thunberg
paternal grandfather: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olof_Thunberg

Answer 8

Just a comment : I feel very uneasy with the trend towards being ... "trendy" in the choice of themes and profiles. In that very case, the choice is between living people, many of them in the middle of public or private affairs.

Seems to me it's exactly the kind of people serious genealogists should stay at bay, letting them to future generations to sort out. Our work is about history, not breaking news. There is enough work with previous generations, enough famous people in the past, for whom we have enough historical distance to consider them with all possible neutrality, and close enough to be well documented.

Just saying. Count me out for that kind of themes.

Comments

I agree. This particular selection and the suggestions provided  has also made  me feel  very uneasy.

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I'm with Bernard on this.  I regard it as inappropriate.

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I fourth this. Please stop this theme.

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Très bien dit et merci de l'avoir dit. 

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WikiTree needs more social media and media attention, which tends to favor newsy stuff and controversy.
https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/885192/will-you-help-spread-the-word-about-wikitree

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Chris, it's not clear what media "needs" WikiTree has that are met by this kind of attention -- Is it financial?  Or are we competing with the for-profit genealogy platforms?  Are we hoping to attract more diverse users to contribute research to our one shared tree?

To my mind, some of the posters in this thread are suggesting an unworkable limitation of only featuring deceased people for WikiTree's social media presence, and I can understand if Admin is reluctant to adopt that.  

However, if I can build on Bernard's point here, promoting WikiTree content on the basis of "trends" leaves us vulnerable to being co-opted as a promotional platform by people who already have public relations machines spending resources to make their names "trend".  

Money talks.  We understand that.  Studying my genealogy has helped me understand how money talked in the communities my ancestors lived in, and how, in the end, history can usually sort out the shameless self-promoters from the people with something real to add to the conversation.  

TL;DR: Asking us to do free PR for the Tesla guy was misreading the room.  If Admin thinks that WikiTree "needs" for us to do this, then it might be helpful to have a conversation about what WikiTree's goals, especially on social media, are.

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E., just tune out things that don't interest you.

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I'm not interested in the Tesla guy, but I am interested in what WikiTree's needs are, Chris.  You linked to a thread citing google stats from 2019.  Is that the data still being used to determine the site's needs?

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While I fully agree that our tree is worthy of greater recognition,  I also fully reject the notion that engagement with internet nonsense will attract the attention,to our tree, of others like  the serious researchers that currently distinguish it,  or additional members, who might share those values.  Surely there are other opportunities to promote our activity, without descending into the quagmire of internet fame or infamy.

Answer 9

Oh boy, Musk and Trump the same week? It's like you're seeking controversy.

On top of that, I feel the same as Bernard: I would rather avoid themes built too much around contemporary, alive people, even when they're less controversial figures.

Answer 10

France project members conferred on this and agreed it would be hard to suggest a profile. The French person with most followers (born 1967) is not eligible to have a listed profile because information on his family is too scant (even his mother's name is not publicly known) and the next people on the list are still younger. It's really complicated for us to work on modern profiles, unless it's people with well-known celeb connections, so I expect we'll see less and less French profiles featured as we move toward more "trendy" topics. There is also less interest in these modern folk from our team of connectors.

We could suggest Emmanuel Macron as he once tweeted something that was retweeted a lot? He also has an interesting ancestry with an English branch which happens to be well developed on WikiTree, plus he was recently re-elected. Feels odd to feature him in "twitterverse" feature though.

Answer 11

Since Donald Trump is in, I'll suggest French President Emmanuel Macron, his tweet "Make our Planet Great Again" is the most retweeted one by a French or francophone account. He's already connected and only needs a bio.

Answer 12

How about JK Rowling?  She has been attacked quite vociferously on Twitter for her strong support of womens' rights and the prevention of violence against women and girls.

Comments

She is quite a controversial Twitter user indeed. Even before people were mad at her views on social issues, they made fun of her for adding "useless" detail on her magical world through tweets.

And on WikiTree, she's pretty well connected through her father.

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She's being challenged on Twitter because she is a TERF. She does not believe trans women should have equal rights.

Answer 13

I would suggest deceased individuals, who would be banned from Twitter if still alive today.

Andrew Breitbart, notably.

Whittaker Chambers

Milton Friedman

Phyllis Schlafly

William F. Buckley Jr.

L. Brent Bozell Jr.

Walter E. Williams

Senator Joseph McCarthy

Senator Barry Goldwater

Justice Antonin Scalia

Answer 14

If we could find enough resources or resourceful individuals to pursue it, I'd suggest Volodymyr Zelenskyy (and wife Olena Zelenska) or Vladimir Putin.

Putin's father is here.

I can't find any WikiTree contributions towards Zelenskyy. There is 1 Zelenska out there and that profile is connected, so in the remote chance that one is related to his wife, there's a slim chance we'd connect him and her.

Comments

I seriously highly discourage showcasing anything around Putin right now.

Answer 15

Mark Colvin was a highly respected Australian journalist and foreign correspondent and an early and enthusiastic adopter of Twitter as a News source during his years on kidney dialysis. His father is on WT and connected but on a privacy setting. I’ll create Mark and see if I can manage to get Mark linked up through him.

Comments

I've created a profile Mark Colvin and connected him through his mother. Hopefully he'll be able to be linked up through his father, John Horace Ragnar Colvin as well soon. Lots of work to do to on a biography and picture!

Answer 16

I reluctantly agreed to work on Musk. Do not include 45.

Answer 17

No. This collection of people is too controversial to make a EPOW of them. It can, in my opinion, damage our reputation. Probably not inside the genealogy-nerd community, but the goal of the EPOWs is to get interest of people who are not that deep into genealogy. I don't think this topic is a good selection. I'm out of working on any of this week's potential profiles.

Comments

I agree, Jelena. IF we could stick to profiling living people objectively and focusing more on their genealogy than what makes them newsworthy (and controversial), it might be okay, but I can tell from the responses here that neither is apt to happen. Perhaps WikiTree does need "attention" but not the kind apt to be garnered this way.

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Agreed, Jelena!