I've been working on the Notables List, generally cleaning it up, making sure that Notables are listed in the correct sections, and breaking up the list into smaller pieces so nobody has a problem loading it into their browser because it's so long.
- I've been removing living notables from the list, since nobody can work on them except for the profile managers anyway. (And, for the ones I managed, I have replaced the {{Notables}} template or the {{Notables Sticker}} with [[Category:Living Notables]], partly to put all the living notables in one place so we can find them at need, and partly to clear out the Notables Categories, which mostly consist of unlisted profiles these days.)
- I have spun out the list of Notables who don't have WikiTree profiles (yet) onto a separate page, so if you're looking for profiles to create, you might want to check there, and if you create a profile for someone on that page, please move their entry to the appropriate page.
- I also spun off 1500-1700 notables and pre-1500 notables onto separate pages, partly just to reduce the size of the main page, but also because only people with those badges can work on those profiles anyway.
- I'm also working through the list and removing any notables whose profiles are managed by other projects from the list. That's not to say that they're not notable, but we don't really want different projects arguing over how to manage profiles.
I have also noticed that, after the lack of Wikidata links, probably the second most common reason for profiles to be stuck at the bronze level is the lack of categories. In some cases, I've seen profiles with only one category: Notables, and that's only there because the template or sticker applies it. Recently, we've been making a lot of progress in connecting up unconnected Notables, and that's great. But there are a number of different things that a profile needs to make it to the gold level, including categories. You could say that, to get a profile to the gold level takes skills from a bunch of other projects: Sourcerers, Connectors, Biography Builders, Categorization, and so on. Does that mean that the Notables Project constitutes the playoffs? (Better not say that too loud...)
I have been thinking of dividing up the remainder either geographically or by field of endeavour, but I think which way to go is a decision for the Notables Project to talk about as a whole, rather than something for me to impose. I'm okay with going one way, or the other, or both at once. There are already categories under the Notables category of both kinds, so that might be the way we end up going anyway, but I'd really like a sense of the will of the project as a whole before sinking a lot of time into building out pages.
For that matter, it's probably high time that the Notables Project talked with the Categorization Project about how we want the Notables categories to work, because right now, it's clearly the result of a whole bunch of ad hoc decisions, so we have a bunch of categories with different naming styles, like:
- Place, Notables
- Place Notables
- Placian Notables
- Notables of Place
- Famous People from Place
- Famous People of Place
- Place Famous People
- Famous Placians
In some cases, there are multiple categories for Notables from the same place. It would be nice if we could eliminate the duplicates ("This sounds like a job for EditBot!"), but before we start making a bunch of changes there, it would probably be a good idea to agree on what the naming pattern should be.
The categories by field of endeavour have all those problems, plus even more, because some of those categories have gotten mixed in with the occupation categories.
This is most likely to happen with categories like authors and entertainers, because when most people think of those occupations, the first people who come to mind are probably people like A.A. Milne or Mary Pickford, but for everyone in those fields who count as notable, there are probably a hundred ink- or greasepaint-stained wretches whom nobody would consider notable (except possibly their own family members). But of course, there are people who have risen to such prominence in their field that they're considered notable, even if they work in a field which is not normally something choose to go into if they want to become rich and famous, so there is still some mingling of Notables categories and occupation categories in other fields.
It may be that we will need to build out a set of categories which specify notability, such as "British Columbia, Notable Entertainers" or something like that, to distinguish between Notables categories and occupation categories. But, again, that's something for the whole project to discuss, probably in consultation with the Categorization Project.