 We're here at Reach Tech, and here's the Wiki Tree booth. We have David, and Alan, and Lush. We have the life size of Elvis, Henry VIII, and Martin Luther King, for people to take pictures with. Right now, we're going to talk with David Randall about the Notables project. So just one moment, and we'll be right back. Hi, everyone. Sorry about that. We had some technical difficulties. We have Judy and Scott Folkerson. And it looks like Russell has joined us as well. Thank you for bearing with us as we had some technical difficulties here at the booth. Hope everybody is having a great day. So, a question that came up here at the booth when we had to sign up about what's going on is what is Notables project? So... Does Scott want to take that one? Sure. So the Notables project is a project to create profiles and maintain them of people who essentially are of note. Those who have attained some sort of fame or notability in the world. Typically, because we follow the Wikipedia guidelines for notability, they tend to be people that have profiles within Wikipedia already, although we do make exceptions for those that deserve it. But the vast majority of them come almost directly out of a Wikipedia page somewhere in the world. It doesn't always have to be in English or in the United States, but it can be really in any of the many Wikipedia languages of the world. Yeah, so I like the project page that it's not just US-focused, but it's around the world and throughout history. Yeah, we have Notables that go all the way back to really the beginning of history. You know, pre-1500, all the way up to your modern pop stars. Everything in between. Yeah. So we have just like that around the world, we have people from all over. We have Darren in from New Zealand. We have Mira from Slovenia. And of course, Chris is in Massachusetts. No, he's in New Hampshire, right? Who is it? Chris Ferriolo. I'm not sure where Chris is. Chris can tell us. Yeah, Patty's in Washington State where I just came from. So great to see everybody joining us from all over. Karen's from California. So please feel free to ask your questions, everybody. What questions do you have for the Notables project? Oh, here's a question. So I'm at Roots Tech in Salt Lake City. This is my first year. David, it's your first year as well, right? It's my first year. Yep. Very exciting. And I said it's walking into Roots Tech is like walking to the inside of the internet. It's like it's every website you've ever been to for genealogy purposes is here. It's actually a bit overwhelming at first. Yeah, I kind of assumed it would be a lot like drinking from a fire hose. Yep. So Russell, it looks like we just heard of your audio. Was there something that you wanted to talk about specifically? I wanted to make sure we cover about the Notables project about how to join. Yes, you can ask for a badge. And then once you get your badge, you remember. But one of the new things that we have is a Google groups. So you can send a message to the Google groups to get a badge. But if you already have a badge, please send us a request for the Google group. And we'll add you on and we hope to be having discussions there coming up in the near future. That's great. And then David, you were talking about the different sub projects that. So, so yeah, this is something we're still working on with the Notables, but we're trying to create more activities for people that join the Notables in the past. You know, for the longest time, I don't know if people realize, but Scott really ran the program by himself. And, you know, obviously his time was very, very limited and stretched. So Russell and I have now joined him and we've now got Judy on board as well and a couple others that will be joining us shortly. So being able to divide some responsibilities is, it leaves us some opportunity to create more projects and activities that we weren't able to do before. So two things that we've got going. Some of you have been aware of the challenges that we're posting every month. We'll have some new challenges coming up tomorrow. Right now every month we do a sports challenge and we do a TV challenge focusing on American television, but we pull up the profiles of past either sports legends on a particular sport or TV stars from the past and not just try to connect them. It's not strictly a connectors project, but it's a profile improvement project. So some of these profiles may have some really nice profiles, but they may be lacking in CC7. They may be lacking sources. We unfortunately run into situations where somebody has cut and pasted a Wikipedia article over to WikiTree. So we want to get those fits. So there's a whole lot of activities. You know, some people are real excited about connecting and others that doesn't doesn't thrill them, but they like writing bios or even just coming in a proofreading. So that's our challenges. But then beyond the challenges, we've got some stationary projects that we're working on developing. And this is really new just from the beginning of the year. So it's in its infancy, but you can see a list of projects, project categories there, entertainment, sports, history, military. So if somebody has a project idea and they want to create a free space page, and they want to get some publicity so they can get help with it, just drop us an email and we can get you connected to the site. You can get you out on G2G and kind of give you the notable stamp of approval. And like Sam, you're interested in military figures or science personalities. We have a member who just recently created a page for female scientists from throughout the world. It's a really pretty amazing page. If you click on, go to the Notables Project, click right there on Science and Exploration, and you'll see a link to her page, Women of Science. And this is just something an individual member has created, but she'd love to get some help. So if people are interested, they can join in. Again, if you've got another topic that you haven't seen covered, we can help you set up a page. We can get you started. So if you know what you're doing, go ahead and do it and let us know. If you don't know what you're doing, contact us and we can get you started. But the more ideas, the merrier. So anything you'd like to do that you don't see already done, we can get you going on that. So it looks like Lisa has a question. Who decides who is classified as a notable? What is the criteria? So I know I've seen that question show up a lot in this board. So the basic, the simple rule is if they have a Wikipedia page, they're a notable. That's just the easiest way for us to do it. Now, we will, if you know somebody who doesn't have a Wikipedia page, but you feel that they're still notable, let us know. And we can discuss it and depending on the circumstances, we can make a decision as to whether that person is notable or not. So it's a little bit subjective. But if you've got an argument that, hey, this person's famous, but they're not. They don't have a Wikipedia page. Not every famous person is on Wikipedia. You'd be surprised. Some members have 4 million profiles of individuals on Wikipedia. But there's still a lot of people that should have what profiles that aren't. So again, just let us know if you find somebody that doesn't fit. But if you see somebody and they have a Wikipedia page, go ahead and put the sticker on. Now there's additional criteria for living notables. Wikipedia, I'm sorry, WikiTrees policy is that you're not supposed to be creating profiles for living people unless you have their permission. So unless you know that famous person personally and get their permission, you should not be making a profile for them. However, there is an exception that if you're working with a project, a project can give approval to create that profile. It doesn't necessarily have to be the Notables project, but we're happy to work with you if you have a notable who is living and you'd like to create that profile. But if you're working with a country profile, they're able to do that for you. Now, creating a profile doesn't mean that that profile is going to be allowed to be opened and made public. There's very strict criteria on that. And the criteria is they have to have at least two, I'm sorry, at least three Wikipedia pages in at least three languages. And then two of those pages have to have a family member, a nuclear family member mentioned by name. It doesn't have to be the same family member, but at least two Wikipedia pages have to have a family member mentioned by name. So if they don't have three pages and if they don't have two pages with a family member, we are not allowed to open. That's a WikiTree rule that is not a Notables rule. And that's something that all the other projects have to follow as well. So you can't just go to another project and ask them to open it. They're under the same guidelines that we have. And that's really just for legal purposes and privacy reasons. So Scott, was there anything that you wanted to cover for Judy? Or to add. Or to add? Well, just kind of to add to what David was talking about. I know you mentioned the large number of Wikipedia entries. And of course, that's a worldwide thing. So it's rather interesting. I think a lot of times we get very English centric and we look at just what's focused on the English Wikipedia side of the house. But worldwide, I mean, there's a large number of people we could create profiles for. However, on WikiTree, at least as far as what we've identified today, there are probably nearing 71,000 profiles that have been identified with notable status. Out of those profiles, somewhere in the realm of I think a little over 4,000 are these private living profiles. Those are something that because not every member would have access to them. Typically, the leadership is the one that's kind of shepherding those particular profiles at this time, along with a good number of the team members who are allowed to get into them for various reasons. It's just a very large number of profiles. Now, one thing that helps us is that we partner with just about every other project that's out there in some way or another. And they will take on a certain number of those profiles as well that fit within the confines of their project. So it's kind of a team effort. We try to take the idea of WikiTree to heart, which is collaboration. We want to work with other projects. We want to work with other team members and try to make this a full team effort, not just us alone, but everyone on WikiTree can contribute in some way or fashion to other profiles. David mentioned kind of the different things that can be done. But it's the same thing being done to really any profile, which is they all need some sort of improvement either in their basic data, their biographies, the general nuclear family that's connected to them, or even trying to establish a connection to the global tree. We get very focused on that whole connection to the global tree. And that's important too, because I think the more that people feel connected to one another, the more that they feel they want to improve upon a distant cousin's profile. So I think all those things are important for us to remember. I think we've been muted. I think the booth is muted. The booth is muted. Okay, can you hear me? Okay. So one of the things that we do discourage along those lines, as Scott was mentioning, we have a lot of profiles of people who are notable, but they are not eligible to have their profile because they either don't have enough Wikipedia pages. So we do discourage people from creating those profiles, because ultimately you're the only one that's going to see it, or be able to have access to it. So to create a profile of a notable who nobody's ever going to be able to see doesn't have a lot of doesn't have a lot of value to wiki tree. And in a sense, just add more profiles that need to be monitored unnecessarily. So that's one thing that we do discourage. But beyond that, we encourage people, if you've got an interest, if you're interested in sports figures, if you're interested in entertainers, etc., go ahead and create those profiles. If they're still living, just check either with us or with another top level project and ask if we'll be able to open the project. And if we will, go for it. Somebody here has asked if a recent sports figure has passed away, should we open or should we create a profile? And that's absolutely fine. Get them on. We'd like to do that. People say, well, you know, maybe you shouldn't do that when they just passed away. But I think some of our members see that as a way to memorialize a celebrity that they were fond of and get them on whether kind of still freshen on people's minds. And, you know, if you've got a celebrity that you hear has passed, get them on. Let's see if we can get them connected. And one thing also to keep in mind with that is once you get past that celebrity, you're just connecting another family. So you're doing a benefit to any Wicked Trees that may have a connection to that line. It's one more opportunity for them to connect their families. So absolutely, if you know of somebody who may have passed recently, create that profile. We have another question here. How do you collect sources for living notables in the Netherlands? That's very hard because of privacy rules. So I know one thing that I look for is newspaper articles. Yeah. So again, we'd have to go back to is this person on Wikipedia? You know, are they famous enough? And if they are then just like any other person, you would need to figure out in that country what resources are available. There's no obituaries online if they're deceased for it, but if they're living, you might find an article written in a newspaper that gives their biography. If they have some sort of accomplishment that got written about, sometimes they'll talk about where they were born or where their parents were. But that will be one of the challenges is if you're going to post just again, just like any other person, if you're going to post their information on a profile, you're going to need to have sources to back that up. So Scott, maybe you want to answer this one or Scott or Russell or Gideon or David? Let me just add that Wikipedia is a good source itself because there are lots of times that there are other reference articles in there that you can look at. So that is always a good place to start. So that's one of the things I would suggest. There usually are footnotes, not always, but they're usually our footnotes and a list of sources at the end that you can pull up and hopefully there's actual links to the resources so you can go straight there and validate them and borrow them. So who wants to answer? Does anybody know? I don't have an answer for that question. I don't know, but I do know that they were definitely born in the first century. You have notables that go all the way back. Unfortunately, the way that Wikipedia is structured, we cannot create profiles for anyone that was born before the year one, I believe. So it would have to be somebody back at that stage. Now, as we're all well aware, sources on the stone tablets are not real easy to come by these days. But there's usually enough historical evidence to believe certain people existed during certain periods back in first century. It's just some of the challenges are being able to prove how true some of that information can be. People grow into mythological proportions, unfortunately. But yeah, I have noticed that there are some, we'll say Roman emperors or things of that nature that probably are around that first century period who are in the Notables project. And again, we do not, Wikitree does not allow for people who lived in the BC era before the year one, I believe you're correct Scott. And so it would likely be some sort of royal individual from Rome or Greece or Egypt somewhere along there. But whether or not they're connected to the tree, you'd have to have not only that notable person, but you'd have to have all their descendants documented as well. So that would be a challenge. But there is archaeological evidence for some, I said, some of the royal families in that. So, but off the top of my head, I wouldn't be able to tell you which one. So, Judy, your, your new is a project coordinator for the project that we're It hasn't been determined at this time. Okay. But I have been a highly active member for a number of years after I pretty much exhausted my own family tree I looked around and thought what would be a fun project to get into. And the notables project kept emailing me every Wednesday, it's on. And it's some wonderful information, and it's a way to connect with others through the notables project and find out how many degrees your are away from from any one person. And so I got into the notables project, and I am especially fond of the creatives. So I will regularly look at people in the music industry, actors, authors, artists, and make sure that they have visible presence on wiki tree. That's wonderful. And then all those notables of course are really great for bringing in more attention to wiki tree, you know, getting the word out about wiki tree to people. You know, adding the link to wiki tree on the wiki data page is wonderful. You know, absolutely, absolutely. And then I realized, you know, there's also the fact that not everybody watches TV as much as we do, we're a lot of us are a child of the 80s, and it seems like we grew up in front of the television. And some people are into sports. So I actually created a sub project for the LPGA at one time, and made sure that all of the founders of the LPGA were had a good profiles and photos and got linked to the wiki tree. So, yeah. Yeah, we have a Super Bowl challenge that's actually wrapping up today. And Kathy, now that has created some Super Bowl pages linking to the, I think it's the first three Super Bowls. And she has every player and coach, et cetera, listed there. So people that are into the Super Bowl players or football players, that's there permanently. So again, you can link to that, go to the Notables project, look for the sports project, look for the football project, and then you'll find Kathy's Super Bowl project there. But we have quite a few sports projects that have popped up, and those are a lot of fun. We have an individual I didn't work directly with, but a couple years back suggested you pull out your old baseball cards or basketball cards and start adding players from there. They've got their birth dates and some information on that. So there's a good resource. Absolutely. Let's just add that a lot of projects also have Notables teams. Judy, for example, has been an outstanding contributor to the Canada Project Notables team. So there are many opportunities, both subject matter and geographically based. Yeah. And, you know, we've started up the global project recently and we are creating a Notables page for every one of our country projects. So, Chris just mentioned here that we've been working with the Italy project. You know, Italy has some amazing historical figures, you know, artists and writers and that. So they've got some really spectacular Notables with amazing profiles already. But some of the smaller countries, I'm having a really good time just locating, you know, I try to find about a dozen Notables from each country. And just finding these, sometimes their big names, I had no idea they were from Azerbaijan or whatever they're from. But yeah, finding a dozen Tahitian Notables or Fijian Notables, it's fun. I don't actually do the work on the project so much, but I send them over to the country project and get them started. I absolutely agree with you. Along with working on the Notables project for musicians, I got into Grammy winners. And there's Grammy award winners even in the country of Mali, where I had no idea I would be reaching all the way across the pond in order to be able to develop profiles for somebody in Mali. Yeah, two similar categories that I've been amazed. Nobel Prize winners in science and astronauts. Almost every country has managed to get an answer, either an astronaut or a cosmonaut working with the Russians. But it's sort of a badge of honor to get at least one of your citizens out into space. And it's amazing how many African countries and South Pacific Island countries have an astronaut. So that's fun as well. I actually have an answer for the previous question if you want me to present, I can show you those profiles. So there's a couple interesting ones here. Oh, let's see. Okay, so we're going to start with this guy. So I think somebody will recognize the name. So this guy was actually born in one AD, so he wins the prize for the oldest. But he's there. There's old Saint Peter. It would be interesting if somebody were to connect him, but he's not a profile, but he's not connected. Wow, that's really cool, Scott. Thanks for showing that. I'll bring the next one up here. It would be really amazing if somebody could find a documented trail to themselves too. All the way to these guys. Yeah, there's another one. Saul and Paul of Tarsus. He's the second oldest at 5 AD. So he's pretty far back there too. But we've got one that's actually connected. And he was in 25 AD. And I don't recognize the name, but I'm sure somebody will. So Vola Gossis of Parthia. Wow. So this guy in Persia, which I think I ran. And he was around 25 AD to 78 AD. And if you'll notice he's connected at 62 degrees for me. He's your 60th great-grandfather. Yeah, he's actually my grandfather. So you've actually got your tree traced back to the year 25. Wow. So pretty amazing. And he has a CC7 of 11. Wow. Anyway, I figured that was the answer people were looking for. So those are your Iranian roots. I guess would have never thought it. But my DNA does say I have some unusual, you know, one percenters. So maybe that's my one percent. But it does give a whole new perspective on, you know, to be able to trace your line that far back and realize that. You know, that's almost unfathomable to, to be able to do that. But that's. Now we need to convince him to do a CC 60 or something. So I can include him. Alash, we found one of the oldest profiles and he's just stepped in. Scott's 60th. You want to show that profile again, Scott? Oh, sure. Let me put him up there. It's his 60th great grandfather. I know it goes up to 64 levels. Oh, wow. So I don't know if that's the oldest connected profile. What's the birth year? It's 25. I mean, those are the first, the earliest ones, but some can have more generations. It's pretty amazing. So I think with the ancestors, the most I saw was 64 degrees of ancestors. Wow. That's so crazy. This is very known. I mean, familiar name for me. I saw it a few times. Well, a lot of profiles end on this profile. Oh, right, right. All that goes that far back. Wow. Maybe we should work on his parents. Yeah, we should work on his parents. I don't think they're allowed on WikiTree if they were busy. Oh, yeah, they may actually be known. We just don't include them. Yeah, you never know. Yeah, but I thought that was interesting. Yeah, that is really interesting. Thanks, Scott. So does anybody else have anything they want to share or anybody in the chat want to ask any questions? Oh, it looks like Steven saying, check out Mario Saletti. Looks like he's got the WikiTree ID. In there. So just to answer while somebody's looking that up, Scott, were you doing that one? I can look. Sure. So Lisa's asking no BC profiles when some filters have records going back further than year zero. I think that's just the technical. Yeah, I can't answer that question for WikiTree. It's a WikiTree rule and it was long before I was ever around. So I don't know when that was put into place, but I don't know what the rationale was. It may be a technical issue. When he comes back through, but he walked away. But there also is a concern when you start getting too far back as to whether or not records are reliable. You're correct that there are some that are some cultures that have archaeological records, like we're very stripped on 3500. You know, you get back free, free year one. It would take some real, real caution as to what we accept as fact versus myth. But whether or not that's officially part of the rationale or not, I don't know. Yeah, that profile that was brought up is one of those that is a real good example of the kind of things we encounter off and on throughout the project. Profiles that were created, they don't have an identified Wikipedia page in the profile itself. However, there is a Wikipedia profile for that person. So they're what we might call a hidden notable. They're out there. They have a beautiful profile. But no one's ever put the notable sticker on it. So what I would do here, hang on, let me bring this up real quick and I can show you. So typically, if we find something along these lines, we'll just fix it while we're in here. Okay. So here she is Bernard or Bernadette. So I don't know. One of those things anyway. So as you notice, there's no sticker in here for anything that notifies that she's a notable. And then if we go even further down to her sources, there is a Wikipedia citation in here. Somebody just never added the sticker to her. So typically, if you find one like this, the easiest way is just going to edit because they've already been qualified. Put the notable sticker in it and save it. And it's really that simple. Once you found it, I usually mark it as categorization or categorizing her within the project. And then of course, the sticker will start showing up on her page. And then I think LS usually, he gets his reports updated within a week. So we'll, we'll see that appear here shortly. Yeah. So we'll know that it's now out there and, you know, can make sure it's taken care of properly. That's great. And the CC7 will show up tomorrow. And the CC7 will show up once you put that sticker on. I love that. The CC7 will show up on the page. And Aowyn did answer the question about the BC. It is a technical constraint for having BC profiles. So. Okay. Any other questions? Anybody have questions about roots tech? Well, we're here. What's the most interesting thing you've learned so far, David? Well, I've only been able to attend one class so far, but I attended a class on finding your World War One and World War Two ancestors. And it was led by Melanie McComb. One of our wiki-triers. So that was when I didn't know when I took the class that she was leading it. But it was really very informative. You know, for people that don't know a lot of the World War Two records, in particular, I don't know about World War One, but they were burned up in a fire. So the personnel records in that are missing for most of our World War Two ancestors. But there are other resources out there. And she gave us a whole bunch of them. And that was really cool because I have two grandparents that grandfather said fought in World War Two. And I know nothing about their military career. So that'll be my next project. Okay, so there's been a couple of requests to see the booth. So I'm going to take the computer out. Melanie, by the way, is also an active member of the Canada notable scene. Oh, nice. All right, let me just. We've seen quite a few wiki-triers that have stopped by our booth. So there's a lot of them here. Okay, here we go, everybody. I'm just going to show you guys the booth. There's our elf. And Peter Roberts is helping somebody. All right. Thank you everybody for tuning in. And thank you, Scott, Judy and Russell for joining us. We'll see everybody later. Be sure to tune in at 430 for the DNA session. Bye. Bye.