Template talk:LoPbN Entry

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The template creates a LoPbN entry in the standard format. It will generate a link directed to Fname Lname, but displaying as "Lname, Fname."

Contents

[edit] Documentation

1- given name
2- surname (blank for single-name people)
3- year born
4- year died
5- nationality
6- occupation
7- alternate article name

{{LoPbN Entry|First name|Last name|born|died|Nationality|occupation|alternate article name}}

Last name, First name (born–died), Nationality occupation

[edit] Alternate usages

[edit] Other naming systems

For those naming systems in which the surname is always the first component of an individual's name (e.g. oriental systems):

1- surname & given name
2- always blank

{{LoPbN Entry|Surname Given name||born|died|Nationality|occupation|alternate article name}}

Surname Given name (born–died), Nationality occupation

[edit] "fl. XXXXs"

If the birth and death date are not known, but the time period of the individual's principal activity is known, an alternate entry is possible:

3– "fl" ("flourished")
4– dates (e.g. 1940s, 1931-42, etc.)

{{LoPbN Entry|First name|Last name|fl|1900s|Nationality|occupation|alternate article name}}

Last name, First name (fl. 1900s), Nationality occupation

[edit] Unknown Birth/Death

An unknown date of birth should be left blank, but may optionally be entered as "?". An unknown date of death should always be entered as "?" to distinguish from living persons. Date of death should be left blank for living persons. See also "fl. XXXXs" above.

[edit] Examples

*{{LoPbN Entry|Stephen|Hawking|1942||British|physicist}}
*{{LoPbN Entry|John|Johnson|c. 1545|1594|English|musician|John Johnson (composer)}}
*{{LoPbN Entry|Archimedes||c. 287|212 BCE|Greek|philosopher}}
*{{LoPbN Entry|Archimedes|||c. 212 BCE}}
*{{LoPbN Entry|François-Marie|Arouet|1694|1778|French|philosopher|Voltaire}}
*{{LoPbN Entry|Voltaire||1694|1778|French|philosopher}}
*{{LoPbN Entry|Voltaire||||French|philosopher}}
*{{LoPbN Entry|Mao Zedong||1893|1976|Chinese|activist & politician}}
*{{LoPbN Entry|Mao Zedong||fl|1950s|Chinese|activist & politician}}

[edit] Issues

First thing to say is "what a great idea". It's hard for many newcomers to conform to the predominant format, and this will be an effective aid for instructing them on one hand, and speeding entry construction for all of us on the other: assuming it is not used with the subst option, the markup for any entry illustrates what to do with most future ones in the same section or page; even for those familar with the format, the template saves fiddling with the "fiddly" business of the commas and spaces, the piping, and the choice of date separator.

These other things may be worth saying:

  1. The dash (i guess it's an en-dash, as specified somewhere in WP:MoS. I have objected to applying it on LoPbN, primarily bcz it is such a stumbling block in editing: IFAI remember, the en-dash and hyphen can't be distinguished in the editing window of either of the browsers i use; mass correction of formats using global replacement would in some cases take double effort (which i admit i have never personally experienced); too many editors have no idea of the (simple) steps needed to generate an en-dash. AFAI can see, the template dissolves all those objections.
  2. While i haven't figured out whether it will fit together with the Persondata tag, IMO it would be a tragic mistake to fail to unify these two concepts, probably by naming this one {{Tl:PersondataL}}. (I doubt there is any serious barrier to unification.) This would encourage those who either add the Persondata tag to the article or make the LoPbN entry, to also do the other at the same time, and others who find one to add the other.
  3. The documentation should reflect the imprecision of the expressions "first ..." and "last name". I would do that by
    • mentioning the "official" specification first:
      #- given name
      #- surname (blank for single-name people)
    • using "first..." and "last..." only in an example, and
    • including a well known example of the predominant and most sensible format, such as
      suname= Mao
      given-name= Zedong
  4. The conventional and most valuable layout for the sensible CJK (and traditional Hungarian) format is
    Mao Zedong
    not
    Mao, Zedong
    IMO, the comma must be avoided. The (non-sensible) Western format will long continue to predominate in en: WP, and the layout of the markup should preferentially accommodate it. Probably the means of doing that should be keeping the current content of the template, but using as an example
    *{{LoPbN Entry|Mao Zedong||1893|1976|Chinese|activist & politician}}
    * Mao Zedong (1893–1976), Chinese activist & politician
    with an explanation that implies (either)
    {{LoPbN Entry|Full Name that is not subject to inversion||born|died|Nationality|profession}}
    or
    {{LoPbN Entry|Full Name that is not subject to inversion||born|died|Nationality|profession|(optional) alternate article name}}
  5. I don't see any purpose to not building the "*" (for the bullet heading) into the template. Building it in would avoid the occasional entry where the * is omitted, and the name appears at the left margin instead of bulleted and indented.
  6. "Profession" and "Occupation" are both commonly used as synonyms for "job", but the corresponding field in the LoPbN entry (which i sometimes summarize as "area of notability") is occasionally an amateur activity. I would prefer "occupation" as the field name: this is consistent with the usage of occupational therapists of including brushing one's teeth, making one's own coffee, and hobbies that are never jobs, in their realm; it also avoids the modern connotation of "profession" as "paid work" rather than as "calling, even if unpaid".
  7. The "English" and "British" examples are IMO correct, but deserve clarifying commentary: English was a nationality in the WP sense in the 16th century, and British became the corresponding nationality in the 17th, with the union of Scotland and England as the two components of the British state. (The modern criterion is "what is on your passport?", whence in special cases i make entries for what i could state as "nationality and relevant regionality/ethnicity": Pau Casals is IMO well described as a "Spanish Catalan musician", and i favor "American Puerto Rican", "American Sioux", and (for politicians who represent Scots, and writers whose notable subjects are distinctly Scottish) "British Scottish". -- However, i find "British English" to be so unremarkable as to always be pointless.)

--14:50 & 15:03, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
On second thot, including the * in the template content probably prejudices against schemes (which i favor and have created some experimental examples of) for subdividing sections by use of multi-level bullet headings. So i favor, after all, keeping the * in front of the braces used to invoke the template.
--Jerzy•t 15:03, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
I was remiss in not promptly offering thanks and praise to User:Eliyak for building this fine and painstaking piece of conditional Wiki-markup! I'm not a barnstar fan, but this is an example of the kind of work that best justifies that practice.
--Jerzy•t 15:22, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
_ _ As to

An unknown date of birth should be left blank, but may optionally be entered as "?". An unknown date of death should always be entered as "?" to distinguish from living persons.

i would not argue in all cases against the use of q-marks in the vital stats of bio articles, but the sole purpose of the info on LoPbN is navigational, and informing a user about the unknowability of vital stats is highly unlikely to be helpful in being sure they are being lead to the right bio article. Thus discussion of it should be left to the bio article, which has room to avoid confusion about what the question mark means. (Wiki-theory frowns on error msgs, and i know of only one template that uses one. But coding the template to ignore "?" in those fields by treating it like the absense of an argument, and an explanatory note in the documentation (in a no-include passage within the template or on this talk page), would IMO be an enchancement.)
_ _ (As to date of death in an article, i would argue that a question mark for "unknown" is insufficient: it should be used only where WP knows that the date is accepted, essentially univerally, as being unknowable (e.g. George Mallory's depends on whether he survived into the day following the one when he was last seen); in such cases the distinction should be made clear within the same 'graph. Where WP eds have merely found no date of death -- even if the fact of death is explicitly known or implied by being born over 120 years ago -- but we lack evidence of unknowablility, the word "was" in the lead sentence suffices to make the distinction between dead and living. But the lack of both a date and a statement about unknowability indicates that the article remains incomplete, awaiting evidence either of a DoD or of its unknowability.)
--Jerzy•t 19:08, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

  • I have incorporated your ideas for CJK names (etc) in the documentation above.
  • For an unknown (but not unknowable) date of death, how do you feel about "????" ? My concern is that there should be some distinction on the list between dead and living persons, especially in cases where the implication that the person is alive would be ridiculous.
  • One other issue: what about (fl. XXX0s) type dates? Is this an option that should be available? I think it should be possible to code for it in a user-friendly way if necessary...
--Eliyak T·C 01:18, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
_ _ I'm embarrassed to realize how long my attention has been elsewhere, and i think you've been thoro and effective in your documentation enhancements.
_ _ As to "????", i think it's worse than "?" bcz it's more distracting, conveys no more info, and suggests urgency re replacing them w/ a date that may be undeterminable, which is BTW again a concern more suitable to the bio article than to this navigational structure. I don't think we're going to find a common view on this, but on one hand your attempt to do so is admirable, and on the other failing in it is no problem: your scheme is valuable despite my fault-finding, and my opinion is probably far less important than i try to make it sound.
_ _ What finally has brought me back here (i confess i haven't been using the template, tho i think i should start doing so) is the prospect of incorporating a variable number of asterisks into the entry template. I haven't gotten beyond the "i can see the general concept, and there must be a decent way to implement it phase", and i may be smoking something i shouldn't, as it were, but for the moment i'm going to use LoPbN Entry inside my prototype mockup stubs and see whether it gels into anything. At the worst, i should get some practice with your template that'll probably get me over the hump of familiarization & into using it routinely.
--Jerzy•t 04:10, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
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