Talk:Enoch White Clark

Burying the subject in genealogical trivia

This page is about one man, Enoch White Clark, and it is ridiculously overboard to list out everyone descended from him and the various other genealogical ephemera: it is completely out of proportion (WP:PROPORTION) for a biographical article to have three times as much genealogy as it has biography. And it is almost all unreferenced. (WP:V) There are many online genealogical web sites where one can go to town with genealogical trivia, but Wikipedia is WP:NOTGENEALOGY.) It is all simply unjustifiable in any manner consistent with policy. Agricolae (talk) 23:59, 14 August 2018 (UTC)

The information serves to support the reader's understanding of a notable topic: the scope and significance of Clark's family, among whose members are 17(!) people with their own Wikipedia pages. Indeed, there is a Category:Clark banking family that lists them, but that page's bare list does not hint at their relationships, significance, or even their placement in time. The text on Enoch White Clark does so, and rather efficiently. You raise a good point about proportion, but I would suggest that the remedy is adding more about Clark's remarkable life (some of which is limned at E. W. Clark & Co.), rather than removing existing information. Finally, your assertion that "it is almost all unreferenced" suggests that you may have read too quickly past the section's 27 footnotes. Certainly, more citations could be added, but I would suggest the first remedy is CN tags, not deletion. PRRfan (talk) 17:08, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

The scope and significance of the Clark family isn't the notable topic of this page. Likewise, it is an entirely specious argument. Do we understand Enoch's death by nicotine poisoning better because his great-grandfather was named Eliakim (admittedly living with that name would drive anyone to kill themselves, but their great-grandson)? Does knowing he was great-grandson of someone named Eliakim tell us something about Enoch Clark that furthers our understanding of him? No - this is just WP:COATRACKING, trying to repurpose a Wikipedia biography to become your own personal family genealogy website. And it is WP:SYNTH, because I am pretty sure you are not, in any WP:RS, going to find a biographical account of the subject that names all of his descendants, down to the great-great-grandchildren. Yes, you can probably find this on genealogical sites, but they are genealogical sites, which Wikipedia is not. You celebrate having 27 whole references, but some people are documented with multiple references while more than half of the people given have no reference whatsoever. And let's look at some of those references. Ref 30 reports that Mary Crawford Burnham was daughter of Mary White Clark and John Appleton Burnham. How is that possibly a valid reference for "Helen Clark Burnham (born in Massachusetts)"? But wait, there's more. It is also the reference for "Annie Crawford Grew (born in Massachusetts), who married Edward S. Grew", shown here as if she was another daughter of the Burnhams but she was actually born a Clark and wasn't even descended from Enoch - this is one reason why Wikipedia isn't a genealogical web site, because people just can't help doing original research, and they usually do a half-assed job of it. And there is the reference to a crowd-sourced web page, passing reference, WP:PRIMARY, etc. It is not the number of references that makes a good article - it is their relevance and quality. Yes, you can do original research and put together a family tree, but it is original research, and again, is an example of what Wikipedia is not. I am not going to CN tag Noel (Clark) Miller, because she has no business being in the article at all, and the same is the case for most of what is shown. We have a page for Edward White Clark, and anyone interested in his children and further descendants can follow it - that is what links are for. This is genealogy for genealogy sake, nothing more. Agricolae (talk) 18:01, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

In this case, the subject appears to have about 16 notable (bluelinked) descendents. That's worth noting and explaining, whereas a typical geneology is not. I'm not saying the current format is ideal, but it's not something that should be just thrown out either. Dicklyon (talk) 02:00, 16 August 2018 (UTC)

So that make Eliakim noteworthy? And Noel? And Anne Crawford (Burnham-but-really-Clark-and-actually-his-niece-and-not-his-granddaughter) Grew? We just gotta name her because the DAR knows she exists, right? Yeah, let's name every one of his ancestors all the way back to Adam and all the other descendants of Adam while we are at it, because just imagine how much more we will know the life of Enoch Clark by giving his great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-. . . . .great-grandmother's uncle's wife's fifth cousin. This isn't Ancestry.com. Agricolae (talk) 02:35, 16 August 2018 (UTC)

I can't see how your slippery-slope argument is going to lead to any kind of compromise or resolution here. Yes, I agree WP isn't Ancestry.com. Note that some other encyclopedias have decided it's appropriate to include some of this info, e.g. as "Clark, Enoch W., banker, was born in East Hampton, Mass., Nov. 16, 1802, a descendant of Capt. William Clark, who came from England in 1630". Dicklyon (talk) 03:38, 16 August 2018 (UTC)

An encyclopedia written in, what? 1896? When a critical aspect of the biography of a true blue-blooded American was to proudly prove that they were Real Americans and not any of those recently-arrived Irish or Italians or (heaven forbid) Jews. (It is no mystery this guy's granddaughters joined the DAR - the organization was founded with exactly this motivation.) Just like for some reason many British biographical works of the same time period decided it was important to name the most recent king of England a family could trace their descent from. It put them within the socially-constructed hierarchy of their era. Guess what - trends change and it ain't 1896 any more. Modern biographers recognize that the name of someone's great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather really does not reflect who they are, and you just don't find the name of someone's immigrant ancestor (or royal ancestor) in modern biographical encyclopedias, just as it is now reasonable to have articles on Irish and Italians and maybe even women. Once notable, always notable, but the same doesn't apply to noteworthiness. It is the modern trends that our 21st century encyclopedia should conform to, not the 19th century chauvinistic elitism that such an obsession with immigrant ancestors represented. Agricolae (talk) 05:26, 16 August 2018 (UTC)

The article's not WP:COATRACKING, for it does not "fail to give a truthful impression of the subject." It's not WP:SYNTH, for it does not "combine material from multiple sources to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources." It's information that illuminates the background, life, and legacy of Enoch Clark. PRRfan (talk) 12:34, 16 August 2018 (UTC)

Please show me the consensus for violating WP:NOR, WP:V and WP:BLP (and WP:NOTGENEALOGY.) Agricolae (talk) 01:09, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

And it is still completely out of proportion - 7 lines of text relating to the subject (and that only by having a bunch of rudimentary one-sentence paragraphs), and 53 lines that are providing so-called 'context'. Agricolae (talk) 01:15, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

Again, where is the consensus for violating WP:NOR? Agricolae (talk) 01:30, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

Improvement tags

Many thanks, Agricolae, for adding the various improvement tags, particularly the call for more citation tags; the article would certainly be improved with more precise referencing. And thanks for flagging the citation of the 2002 Orphans' Court decision; I took the opportunity to fix the amount bequeathed to reflect the decision, and improve the reference by changing it from a generic Template:Cite web to the more specific Template:Cite court. Of course, the NOR tags are mistakenly applied to a citation of a court decision, so I've removed those as well. PRRfan (talk) 17:14, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

And how about WP:BLP? - you seem to insist, on your own say-so, that at least one living person who is both non-notable and unreferenced be included nonetheless. WP:BLP then is also to be ignored? And all those tags are supposed to be telling you something - this is a blatant violation of WP:V (and that doesn't even address how much or rather, how little, of this content is really appropriate for a biography).

When I have suggested that some out-of-control editor would put a 12-generation pedigree or longer into an article if the policies limiting such trivia are not enforced, I have been accused of argumentum ad absurdum, that nobody would really commit such an absurdity. This article has thirteen generations. Agricolae (talk) 18:05, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

Thanks again, Agricolae, for the helpful nudge to add citations where needed. I've replaced all the cn tags with citations; most of the necessary references, of course, were already in the article, and I shouldn't have been lazy about citing the various facts. (And thanks for flagging the dead link; I've replaced that as well.) So that should assuage your WP:V concerns, and of course, WP:BLP doesn't proscribe basic, well-cited facts. PRRfan (talk) 19:30, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

To a degree, now the concern is just that it is a massive collection of referenced trivia that has no business being in such a biography. Having a 15-generation genealogy in this article is patently ridiculous. Agricolae (talk) 16:27, 2 April 2020 (UTC)