Template talk:Lifetime

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Why do we want this which duplicates template:lived? --Phil | Talk 09:39, Mar 1, 2005 (UTC)

It's easier to use (see below). -- User:Docu

[edit] How to use

Format:

• {{lifetime|birth_year|death_year|lastname, firstname(s)}}

From Jean Baptiste Audebert (born in 1759, died in the year 1800):

• {{lifetime|1759|1800|Audebert, Jean Baptiste}}

From Clément Chartier (born 1946, still living):

• {{lifetime|1946||Chartier, Clement}}

From Jon Glover (birth year unknown, still living):

• {{lifetime|||Glover, Jon}}

From Jan Milic (birth year unknown, died 1374):

• {{lifetime||1374|Milic, Jan}}

[edit] Mini controversy

Alternative for Jean Baptiste Audebert (born in 1759, died in the year 1800):

• {{subst:lifetime|1759|1800|Audebert, Jean Baptiste}}

There are two main reasons for requiring the former usage such that this template is left as a template and not substituted. The first is that it provides potential for expansion of its functions in the future, if any reason is found to add additional biographical formatted data at the foot of all biographical articles. The second is a corollary, in that if all biographical articles have this template, then that is an easy way to index into the set of biographical articles via the 'What links here' feature. There is no way to access this set at the moment, other than indirectly through Category:People. There is a third trivial reason that it's shorter so there's less chance of cocking up the two category invocations. User:Noisy | Talk 19:27, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

The reasons for substing it are explained here, if you want to stop this being subst:d then I suggest you take it up there, as few monitor these pages. Martin 20:40, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Defaults now available

A few adjustments to the template now allow for generation of default categories:

• blank birth year: results in Category:Year of birth unknown
• blank death year: results in Category:Living people

Name sort key from the 3rd parameter will also be included in these cases.

Existing usage of this template should not be affected. Dl2000 03:34, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Problems

• note: i posted earlier on the village pump before i realised this page existed..

Hi, this template is causing me some difficulties. It works fine when years are entered, but when one or both of the years aren't entered it defaults to Category:Year of birth unknown and Category:Living people, as you know. For the former, this is unhelpful because the majority of articles without birthdates are of people where the birthdate could be found, just hasn't been yet - the "unknown" category is supposed to be for those people whose birthdates have been obscured by bad record-keeping or the sands of time, or is disputed by historians or might never be found. I know this might seem like a pedantic complaint, but one of the main things I busy myself with here is going through the year of birth missing category trying to fill in the dates, so I started trying to keep these two categories separate, a task which isn't helped by this template. In the latter case, the default is even less helpful, since it may result in people dead hundreds of years but with no listed deathdate being categorised as living people. I propose that both default instead to the Category:Year of birth missing and Category:Year of death missing categories, which play the part of some kind of triage. Alas I have no idea how to go about this. How does anyone else view this matter, and could it be changed? Jdcooper 18:44, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Here is how you would do it:

{{{1{{{1|}}}|[[Category:{{{1}}} births|{{{3}}}]]}}}
{{Ifndef|{{{1}}}|[[Category:Year of birth unknown|{{{3}}}]]}}
{{{2{{{2|}}}|[[Category:{{{2}}} deaths|{{{3}}}]]}}}
{{Ifndef|{{{2}}}|[[Category:Living people|{{{3}}}]]}}

{{{1{{{1|}}}|[[Category:{{{1}}} births|{{{3}}}]]}}}
{{Ifndef|{{{1}}}|[[Category:Year of birth missing|{{{3}}}]]}}
{{{2{{{2|}}}|[[Category:{{{2}}} deaths|{{{3}}}]]}}}
{{Ifndef|{{{2}}}|[[Category:Year of death missing|{{{3}}}]]}}

--Splarka (rant) 02:03, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Right. So would i just paste the second box onto the Template: namespace? Jdcooper 19:21, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

I have reverted to the original version, because most of the current usage is predicated on the way it used to be, therefore changing the layout would involve revisiting all usages to check that they were correct. Noisy | Talk 12:49, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

So how exactly do you address the problems I detailed? With my edits, if no dates were listed for someone without researched life-dates the worst that would happen would be that the "missing" category were used, which would be harmless. Under the current edits, if no dates were listed it may list 18th century people as Living people, and would list currently living people as Year of birth unknown, which are serious factual errors. The vast majority of usages of this tag are incorrect, placed on articles where these errors would subsequently arise. Furthermore, not using my edit would involve revisiting all usages to remove them entirely, because they are not used appropriately. Please respond soon, or I will revert back, because we cannot have factual errors on wikipedia. Jdcooper 17:02, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

I would concur with reverting the unfilled birth year to the "missing" category. If the birth year was truly unknown, this should be handled manually after some research effort is documented.

But defaulting to the "missing" death year introduces other factual problems. See the "How to use" section on this talk page - it currently indicates that living persons are represented by leaving the death year blank. To categorise living people as "Year of death missing" would imply they are dead, introducing a serious factual error on the other side.

The only other default death category that might be considered would be Category:Possibly living people, although that would likely bring a new set of problems.

Therefore we need a consensus whether this template should be used for deceased people only, or for both living and dead people. That will determine the default death year category setup.

Dl2000 18:05, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Using it only for deceased people would solve the problems, theoretically, as you say otherwise either way there could be factual errors (though the Possibly living people alternative seems even better, perhaps). However, the problem in the first place comes from the fact that people have used the template wrongly without reading the instructions and results, how could we make sure that the template is only used on articles about dead people? Jdcooper 18:20, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] DEFAULTSORT magic word

A great new feature's been added to Wikipedia's software. As mentioned at Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2007-01-02/Technology report, we can now change the default sort key for a page like so: {{DEFAULTSORT:Washington, George}}. If this were in George Washington then all categories that didn't explicitly override it with their own sort key would put this article under "W". How about adding this to this template, since it seems like something that would be useful to universally apply to biographical articles? It's a pity this template gets substed so much or this would allow us to do a massive categorization cleanup in one fell swoop, but at least future articles will be handled more easily. Bryan 05:56, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Not working correctly! If there is no 3rd parameter given, it sorts it to "{". Also it overrides any preexisting DEFAULTSORT declaration Caerwine Caer’s whines 08:10, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Hrm. I see why my original testing missed this, I was passing a blank third parameter instead of no parameter at all. But I've now spent half an hour messing around with every permutation of parser function I can think of and can't get it to correctly omit the defaultsort under that condition so I'm going to revert myself for now and go in search of more experienced templatesmiths than myself (I posed the question here). As for overriding previous defaultsorts, is there a situation where this is a problem? I'm unable to think of any offhand, but haven't spent a lot of time pondering it. Bryan 09:56, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

It could be if someone wasn't expecting that behavior and was using a different key for an explicit DEFAULTSORT. But I can't see why one would want to use different keys or how such a situation could be detectable. Caerwine Caer’s whines 10:50, 12 January 2007 (UTC)