Canon of Humanity project

I've been wanting to make a list of the key people of history for some time now, although I had no idea about how to make it comprehensive and balanced, beyond making lists of people from the various Fields of Humanity.

However, I recently found out about a resource that would both give me a comprehensive list of names and a somewhat impartial ordering by Significance (their term). The resource is the Who's Bigger? project and website.

Their project determines a person's Significance by weighing up their Fame, Celebrity, and Gravitas, which are determined by a few metrics involving Google PageRanks and the subject's wikipedia article. They also weigh scores up based on recentness of the data, because more recent individuals, in particular living ones, will be more heavily represented by the metrics they use.

The problem with the method (beyond the sources and measures used) is that it relies too much on the English-speaking world. Perhaps this is not a problem of any significance for this forum (in regards being a resource of the most Significant people in history in regards the English-speaking world at least).

In many cases also, I suspect the scores will be messed up for individuals known by their mononyms, e.g. kings and saints and some musicians. I believe this will be more of an issue for individuals who lived in the last few centuries, during the time of mass print media (i.e. newspapers).

There are also some items in the rankings which clearly should not be there also (e.g. “Knitting” and “Sock”): oh well.

I am going to list the 1000 most significant people (actually 1001, due to a tie) in approximate blocks of 100, sorted in approximate (or actual) order of birth. Mythical and legendary people are included, because I thought that many hold to be real people, and in any case, for the purposes of a personality forum, they are noteworthy figures (presuming they had a discernible personality: even with some of the historical figures who certainly existed, little is known about their personality). I decided to put the mythical/legendary people in red text however. There are also many religious and even historical figures where much if not all of their life's story is most likely a fabrication, but I will leave them as they are.

The Who's Bigger project happened no later than 2013, so it does not include Pope Francis, and perhaps other people than it should, such as Adele. For some reason, it also omits (Tsar) Nicholas II of Russia: I think perhaps a case where a comparatively recent ruler is overlooked by their ranking because of (Tsar) Nicholas of Russia (Nicholas I of Russia). There are probably other notable omissions of this sort, although I suspect only in regards recent mononymic people. I'm thus not too bothered, as the list is quite satisfactory.

I believe the list contains 938 males and 63 females: I intend to post a binder full of Significant women at some point, as I think this would be an important resource for finding historic female type representatives.

(There is a fair amount of commentary on the methodology and the results of the Who's Bigger? project – I might post some interesting highlights at some later point).

Also: I put this thread in the “Famous People” section, but it may be better suited elsewhere. Perhaps we'll see at a later date, depending on how the thread develops.

Let's block ads! (Why?)

Canon of Humanity project