Talk:Constantine Zochonis/Archive 1

Notability tag

@Nikkimaria:. Please would you kindly explain what is the necessity of the notability tag? It asks for sources which are independent of the subject, and they are all independent of the subject except two citations from PZ Cussons: one is just for the share price, and the other is about the history but is supported by the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. The tag mentions triviality, but there is no trivia in the article: there is just the family background (significant to show that this was originally an international business run by an international family) and the history of the business. We need the whole story of the business, because the biography subject contributed to it part-way along its history and pushed it forward in a certain way. If he hadn't done that, the business might not be where it is today. That is the main notability of the subject: he had influence on the development of what is now certainly a notable company. But there is something more important than that. For a lot of us, the soap made by that company is a household name, but most of us don't know the background history of it, and most of us have no idea of the human side of that - let alone that it was originally a company functioning mostly in Africa. So what I don't understand, here, is why you added a tag to say that it's not notable? Storye book (talk) 10:16, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

The issue is that the notability of the company is not conferred on all people associated with the company. Most of the article and most of the non-primary sources are not actually about this person. It would probably make more sense to build out the history of the company in its article. Nikkimaria (talk) 02:27, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

I would argue that because C.P. Zochonis developed the company in a major way, such that its future development and success would not have happened otherwise, he is notable. That is why we have a paragraph about that very point. He was not just another desk-job manager or grateful recipient of nepotism. JStor has over 120 article references about him, which other editors (who have full access to them, unlike me) can add in due course. I have added a few facts, about the development of the company under C.P. Zochonis's managment, from JStor where I can read relevant bits in article summaries. Storye book (talk) 10:04, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

He may well be significant to how the company developed, but unless there is more sourcing out there, he does not appear to meet the notability standards for biographies. Nikkimaria (talk) 02:57, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

This objection seems a bit weird to me. The article remained unchallenged for five years as a stub, with hardly any sources, until after I had expanded it with a lot more sources, and it had successfully gone through the DYK process. As you will have noticed, since you added the tag I have continued to expand it with more sources, but you have not acknowledged that. Since I am still working on it, there is every chance that I'll find more sources. If you could please kindly show me how to open the articles in JStor, so as to read them in full, that would make all the difference to the number of sources which I can use. I have JStor in Wikipedia Library. Why can't I open the articles or download them, to read them? Storye book (talk) 10:55, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

It's great that you have expanded it and added sources, but as of yet this has not addressed the fundamental issue.

When you say you cannot open the articles or download them, can you explain what you mean by that? What are you doing that is not working? Are you receiving an error message of some kind? Nikkimaria (talk) 11:37, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

OK, what aspect of C.P. Zochonis would you like to see addressed, since I've already addressed what he did that was important, as manager of his company - as expressed in the lead. Does a biography subject who is a businessman need to have done something outside the company to get an article?

Haha, some magic has happened. I have just accessed JStor to get a link for demonstration of its problems, and the problems are (at least at the moment) fixed. I can see the whole article online by hitting "save", for some reason. Also the arrows beside the summary now work for some reason, to reveal the rest of the article. Let's hope that lasts. I will not be able to go through 175 journal articles quickly, particularly as it's on a set of subjects (business, Africa, soap manufacture, particular Greek family, history of colonialism in Africa etc. etc.) I know nothing about. I'll do what I can. Please have patience. I'll put up a construction tag. Storye book (talk) 14:38, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

As far as I'm aware there isn't a special notability guideline for businesspeople, so the standard is WP:NBASIC. Nikkimaria (talk) 02:27, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

So all we are dealing with here is the number of secondary/tertiary sources. Since none of the content of this article is trivial, we can't say that the sources are there for trivial reasons. It all deals directly with how and why he got the job, his historical place in the job, what he did in the job, and how what he did affected the business - and Africa. None of that is trivial. Storye book (talk) 10:02, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

What we are dealing with here is secondary/tertiary reliable independent sources containing significant coverage of the biographical subject. What is presented so far is potentially valuable content for the history section of the business article. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:11, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

What is presented here is the direct effect that the management of C.P. Zochonis had on the company, i.e. what he did in his job. What else is one supposed to write about a businessman, other than his career in business? I am continuing to research and expand this article, and I have told you that it will take time. Now is not the time to judge the content in a negative manner, but rather it is the time to look at the ongoing work positively. Patience, please. Storye book (talk) 09:55, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

Storye book, I see you have removed the construction tag - do you have more to add yet? Nikkimaria (talk) 03:43, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

Out of the 175 journal articles which come up in a Jstor search, I have checked through half of them, and of those I used all the ones which I felt qualified to use, i.e. I did not use the legal and financial articles - others can use those later. Under C.P. Zochonis' management, the company did affect the economy of a number of countries in Africa (we've got a citation for that), so some of the financial articles will be relevant to the article. Some of the remaining articles used by me were directly about the business workings of the company (in C.P.Z.'s era) from a western point of view. However the bulk of the articles used by me are about the colonial effect of the company on Africa in C.P. Zochonis' era of chairmanship, because that aspect has been the main discourse in the journals in relation to PZ. Sigcov mentions triviality: there is no triviality here: it is all about C.P. Zochonis's work as chairman and majority owner of a major company.

In answer to your question, I shall be continuing the task using the second half of the search-result articles, gradually. If I were to use Jstor alone, and use the other half of the search-result articles, then the article should almost certainly end up with double the amount of material on C.P.Z.'s complicity in the colonial effect of PZ in Africa during his term as hands-on chairman and prime shareholder. I have no intention of saying in the article that C.P.Z. was complicit (using that word) unless we find a citation for it, because I don't think I need to. He led the company, he mostly owned it (we have a citation for that), and the buck stopped with him. As far as company behaviour and policy in Africa was concerned, he was the company, in that his leadership had a direct effect on Africa through the company. Storye book (talk) 09:44, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

Okay, thanks. I'll readd the notability tag for the moment with the understanding that it can be revisited should there be sigcov sources added in future. I do think some of the content you've written would be valuable in the company article - perhaps a merge discussion would be an appropriate next step? Nikkimaria (talk) 00:33, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

I think you may have misunderstood the content and intention of sigcov. No OR has been needed to extract the content of the sources. The information has been repeated in the article without comment. Sigcov says that our article topic "does not need to be the main topic of the source material.". Well, it isn't always the main topic of every source, but our topic is mentioned by name in the sources, and it is made clear in the sources what C.P. Zochonis, through PZ, was up to. No synthesis has been misused to insinuate editorially-perceived or doubtful connections between the sources on that subject. Each nugget of information repeats an aspect of what PZ was doing in Africa. That is a consolidation of non-trivial information, which is very different from synthesis. I have just listed aspects of C.P.Z,'s work, in the article. The concept of colonialism is already well-known to all. The only way for a WP editor to do harm in that respect would be to leave out all mention of C.P.Z.'s effect on the people of Africa, or to include untruths about colonialism being OK - or, come to think of it - to attempt to minimise or destroy the article by merging it into another article when it needs to stand by itself for the reader to get the full import of what was happening, due to that man, in that era, in Africa.

Merging is inappropriate in other ways too. A company is not just a contract and finance. It is people. To disguise a biography as a company article by merging, we would have to change the principles of WP. This article is about C.P. Zochonis and the effect of his personal management of his company on British business and on Africa during his chairmanship. If we were to merge that into what is currently a smaller and weaker article, we would have to split the bit about colonialism from C.P.Z's complicity, and put it (that being your intention) into a separate history section in the article, as if it had nothing to do with the men who owned the company, and as if C.P.Z. were not complicit in his policy's effect of local people. The amount of detail that we have on C.P. Zochonis would overwhelm the small article, and if we were honest about our material on C.P.Z. the PZ Cussons article would suddenly become, not an article about a currently very successful and modern company which has now disassociated itself with its past, but almost wholly a historical article, mainly about one of its past chairmen, when the company is no longer run that way. Yes, we can add a short paragraph into the PZ Cussons article to balance its neutrality, while leaving the Constantine Zochonis article whole, but a merge would have to destroy or remove all the valuable information that we now have on C.P. Zochonis and his contribution to the history of British colonialism in Africa. @Edwardx: @Philafrenzy: Storye book (talk) 09:37, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

Sigcov indicates that being mentioned by name is not sufficient. Which specific source(s) do you feel meet all the criteria outlined there?

The other benefit of a merge discussion is it brings in wider viewpoints on whether this content is better framed in the context of a biography (as you argue) or the company article. I agree that given the amount of detail you've been able to collect about this period of the company's activities, more detail on other periods would be required to balance it - but I don't see that as a negative in any way, but an opportunity to significantly improve that article while retaining the content you've worked on. Nikkimaria (talk) 12:47, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

The sources don't merely mention the company or C.P. Zochonis by name. They say what the company (or C.P.Z. via the company) did, and they connect that with the effect of that action. So, for example, in the article you will see separate instances of what C.P. Zochinis did via the company, together with what was e.g. the effect on African people of what he did, together with the citation(s) to an independent, authoritative and peer-reviewed source from a journal. The detail in the article is not about the period (as in dates) alone. It is about the period when C.P.Z. was chairman and majority shareholder, and therefore answerable for all actions of the company. The company could not have done those things without him knowing and approving, and basically being up to his neck in it. All the company actions which I have mentioned are major actions, e.g. not just marketing soap in a colourful wrapper (which would be trivial) but affecting human lives in a major way.

You say that more detail is required to "balance" it? The article is neutral. I cannot balance it by trying to find sources which say that colonialism is OK. That is not balance; that is, in the present world moral climate, unacceptable and inappropriate. That would be like writing an article on Hitler and then trying to find balancing neo-Nazi sources to say that actually he was OK because he did watercolour paintings and made the trains run on time. Or are you trying to balance the article by adding large sections to illustrate the non-colonialist periods which followed 1951 when C.P. Zochonis died? I have included a little bit about the company's subsequent corporate development, to show his notability in being one of those who substantially and effectively built up the company so as to have an effect on its later success as one of our major companies. But any subsequent changes in the company which resulted in better attitudes towards African peoples is about subsequent company chairmen, and nothing to do with C.P.Z., and is therefore not included.

I repeat, I can add a brief summary of this article to the PZ Cussons article if you like (even though I am under no obligation to do so), but I am not going to agree to a merger. I still have the other half of the sources to go through. I live two bus rides away from the British Library, and could probably find more literature there on C.P. Zochonis in due course. All this takes time. I have taken down the construction template because I did not want to feel tied to editing the article once a day for several more months. I wanted to continue improving it a little less frequently. The construction tag publicly records when the article was last edited, and if I had left the construction tag up for, say seven days, and edited it on the eighth day, that would give anyone the right to remove the tag anyway.

None of what has been said so far in this discussion is evidence that the subject of the article is not notable. If C.P. Zochonis is not notable, then neither is any other hands-on chairman and majority shareholder of a major household-name company in the UK notable. If he were an under-manager and zero shareholder with no effect on company policy or actions, then I would agree with your above comments. But that is not the case. This article subject has been notable since it was a stub, and still is. It may help WP to add a little to the PZ Cussons article, which is in itself weak anyway. However it is not going to help WP to remove this article which is complete in itself, and which is useful in that it lets new light into the subject of colonialism in Africa. The current international discourse on this subject welcomes articles of this type, and finds them notable and relevant to that discourse. The more we know about colonialism, and the more that major historical colonialists are identified, investigated and named, the better we can deal with our international historical past.

It worries me that you don't seem to have read the sources fully. That is probably because in most cases you have to read the whole journal article to get perspective and context, and check that it is relevant to the article. That is why I have put several pages in the citations, not one page or line. Also I don't think you have read most of what I have written here, because you seem to have missed a lot, so that I find myself having to elaborate and explain over and over again. What I am hearing from you at this stage is a repetitious demand for a page merge, with little relation to the contents of the article and its sources, and little relation to my explanations to you. Look above, at the amount that I have written here, to help you understand, and think of the time and care that I have taken to do this. Yet I don't think you have read or understood any of it. Storye book (talk) 14:07, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

I did not say that more detail is required to balance this article; I said that should this article be merged to the company article, more detail would be required there for balance. I suggested a merge so that the material you put time and care into developing could still have a home, but I'm also not in any way requiring you to do that work. I appreciate you don't feel I'm hearing you, but I'm not sure you're hearing me either.

If C.P. Zochonis is not notable, then neither is any other hands-on chairman and majority shareholder of a major household-name company in the UK notable. There is no notability conferred automatically by being a chairman or majority shareholder of any particular company; what matters is sourcing. There are certainly sources in this article that speak to and demonstrate the notability of the company and its activities. But in the absence of sigcov sources on him, those are better placed in the company article - this is why I asked specifically which sources you feel meet those criteria for this subject. Nikkimaria (talk) 15:15, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

All the sources used in the article are directly about Constantine Zochonis. As I have repeatedly explained above, between 1929 and 1951, when C.P. Zochonis was chairman and majority shareholder of the business, he was Paterson Zochonis, and Paterson Zochonis was him. They were one and the same, especially when it came to major company decisions, and major company decisions are covered in the sources. So if a journal names the company's important actions during that era, then it is naming Constantine Zochonis' actions, which happened according to his policy. All the sources mention either Constantine Zochonis or Paterson Zochonis in relation to his actions during his lifetime, therefore all sources meet your criteria. (I have not used sources which mentioned Paterson Zochonis in situations which would not necessarily have involved C.P.Z. personally. Storye book (talk) 15:55, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

If they were as you suggest one and the same, then this article is redundant to the company one and should be deforked. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:22, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

I didn't mean it in that way, and I think you know it. If you cause a fatal accident while driving your car, it is you whom the police arrest, and not the car, because when it comes to use of the car in which the greater world is affected, the responsibility is yours; the fatality is part of your biography. If you shoot up a school with a gun, you get the rap and not the gun, because you did the shooting. If you are tha hands-on manager and owner of a local cafe, and you neglect hygiene and the customers are poisoned, you did that, not the cafe building or company contract. The authorities will shut down the cafe business, not because the cafe business poisoned the customers, but because you did, and they want to stop you doing it again. (No, I don't mean you personally). Constantine Zochonis was responsible as chairman and majority shareholder for all the company's major actions. So he did that, just as much as the cafe owner poisoned the customers. I am no expert in business, but since C.P.Z was a shareholder I understand that to mean it was a limited company, which means that actions of management have a damage limitation in law. So if the newspapers and journals report that the company did this or that bad thing in Africa, it's safer for them to name the limited company which is sprawled across several African countries than to name an individual and get sued separately. I think that could be another reason why the name of the company is used in some cases instead of C.P.Z.'s name in reference to his era of chairmanship.

If one were to follow your principle of redundancy of biographies of company chairmen/owners, then every biography of a company chairman/owner should be deleted/merged - and we have plenty of those. Why pick on this one and not all the thousands of others?

This biography is significant and necessary in that it highlights the different management style of C.P.Z. Before his era, his uncle George Zochonis' management style was at first almost a chickenshed startup, and even though it was expanded and became a respectable business, it remained mostly parochial to Sierra Leone. The uncle also actively took care of the locals in Africa. We need all the detail to show how Constantine's management was all about the money, and he did not care about the locals. It was pot luck whether his management harmed or assisted the locals; business came first. Then when his son John Zochonis took over, his management was much more modern in business style, and people had become aware of colonialism and he took steps to move away from it. You need to be able to see this article as a whole to really understand what was going on due to the actions of Constantine Zochonis. The human mind needs a pattern or story to understand what is going on. If you break up that article construction to merge it elsewhere, you will lose that spotlight onto Constantine and the chance of a deep understanding of what he did and why and how. It all reflects on what kind of man he was, and how he was very much a man of his time and place - while at the same time being an extraordinary one. In his era there were only about three international company owner-managers operating at that level in West Africa. Storye book (talk) 09:46, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

If one were to follow your principle of redundancy of biographies of company chairmen/owners, then every biography of a company chairman/owner should be deleted/merged - and we have plenty of those. That isn't the case, because for many company owners, there is the sourcing to meet SIGCOV for the individual themselves - whether that's an ODNB entry as for John Zochonis, an actual biography, or what have you. Is that true for all business owners? No, which is why there isn't a presumed-notable rule for them: the owner of a notable company is not necessarily notable themselves. Might there be other articles of this kind also lacking sigcov? Sure, but that's not a reason to dismiss issues here. I appreciate what you're saying about wanting a coherent narrative, but I don't agree about the solution. You can contrast different management styles and impacts over the evolution of the company in a much clearer way in an article about the company, rather than by building a series of overlapping biographies. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:09, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

This article has sources which meet Sigcov, as I've explained above. Also, it's not necessary for every source to have been written entirely about the subject. E.g. for a (hypothetical) article about a historical UK army veteran who earned the Victoria Cross, one authoritative source may be the London Gazette, where he is listed among the other soldiers who were awarded various medals at the same time. This may be backed up by a local newspaper article which describes his heroic-rescue exploits (by name) along with the exploits of other soldiers who won medals. He may have other points of notability, but his Victoria Cross will be one point of notability, and those refs would be perfectly valid for that. Similarly for C.P. Zochonis, he has some citations which are entirely about him, and some which are partly about him, like the Victoria Cross example above. If this Sigcov rule is used for every citation in every biography, then we are not using that rule with common sense, and using rules with common sense is one of the rules.

I am not building a series of overlapping biographies in relation to PZ Cussons or to any other businessmen, and I have no intention of doing so. I have only expanded this one. I came upon it when going through the req-photo list for articles in need of images. I didn't find an image of C.P. Zochonis, but his story piqued my interest, so I expanded it so as to learn more. To be honest, he is not my type of hero, but he is of interest to me because the information which is out there about him shines a light on the character and intentions of one individual who was a very successful entrepreneur at the height of colonial business adventuring. A biography of one such individual is certainly of use to understanding that era and that place and that situation, especially as colonialism and its operators are a current subject of discourse. Biographies make it real.

I agree that we could put an extra paragraph in the PZ Cussons article to fill in a bit of history, but that is a business article. The bulk and focus of that particular article needs to be about its products, which are a household name in the UK, and have been since the end of the 19th century. Because the company has been so successful for so long, it also needs a big section on finance. Yes it has an important colonial history, but I believe that the best way to expand that aspect is to expand the biographies of its Zochonis owner-chairmen, because they are interesting characters with international lives, who made a big difference (good or bad) to the countries they operated in. And no I'm not going to do any of that expanding of those articles, as I have said. I'm just saying that if anyone else expands them, that is what is needed. So I don't see how there would be any overlapping or bifurcation. To merge would gain nothing at all, and would lose all the bits that matter. Storye book (talk) 09:23, 13 June 2022 (UTC)