Portal:Biography/Selected article/Candidates

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This is the nominations page for Featured biography on Portal:Biography. A featured article is selected for the main Portal page intermittently.

Contents 1 Nominating articles 2 Vote for the next selected article 2.1 Richard Francis Burton 2.2 Automatic rotation

[edit] Nominating articles

For potential candidates, see Category:FA-Class biography articles and Portal:Biography/Featured articles.

To nominate a featured article:

1. Write up the text that would appear if picked. The template below may be used as a guideline:

===[[Name of article]]===

[[Image:image name|right|100px]]

Approximately 100 words of blurb in a single 
paragraph with the '''name of the person''' 
in bold. '''[[Name of article|(read more...)]]'''


'''Support'''
# ~~~~

'''Comments'''
*

2. Place this at the bottom of the list of candidates, filling in the name of the article, image and the blurb.

[edit] Vote for the next selected article

The nomination with the most votes will be selected. To vote add: # ~~~~ to the support section of your chosen article(s).

Please place comments in the comments section.

[edit] Richard Francis Burton

Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton KCMG FRGS (March 19, 1821 – October 20, 1890) was a British explorer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, ethnologist, linguist, poet, hypnotist, fencer and diplomat. He was known for his travels and explorations within Asia and Africa as well as his extraordinary knowledge of languages and cultures. According to one count, he spoke twenty-nine European, Asian, and African languages.

Burton's best-known achievements include traveling in disguise to Mecca, making an unexpurgated translation of The Book of One Thousand Nights and A Night (the collection is more commonly called The Arabian Nights in English because of Andrew Lang's abridgment) and the Kama Sutra and journeying with John Hanning Speke to discover the Great Lakes of Africa in search of the source of the Nile. He was a prolific author and wrote numerous books and scholarly articles about subjects including travel, fencing and ethnography. (read more...)

Support

1. John Carter 16:46, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Comments

• GA about a person whose accomplishments dwarf most of those of most other people of his or subsequent eras. First European to return alive from Mecca, translator of the Arabian Nights, (basically) found the source of the Nile, and more. John Carter 16:46, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
• I would prefer the selected article to be of FA status. DrKiernan (talk) 08:59, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Automatic rotation

This page seems dead. There's no to little activity. My new suggestion is that we select 12 featured articles, perhaps from the archive, ensuring a mix of gender, discipline, nationality and ethnic background, and then rotate them automatically every month. This is currently done for the selected picture (7 pictures rotated daily), quotes (52 quotes rotated weekly) and anniversaries. DrKiernan (talk) 08:59, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. I might make it a rotation of 52, though, one for each week of the year. John Carter (talk) 14:26, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

I'll set it up as monthly, just because that's less work for me, but I certainly have no objection to it being more frequent. DrKiernan (talk) 08:31, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

I've set up other portals for rotation, so I could probably do the same thing here. If we could come up with a list of the articles to be included, though, that'd help a lot. I'd think we'd probably like to include people from as broad and diverse a range of fields and eras as possible. I don't think there's any particularly rush on setting up the changes, though, so maybe if you just came up with a list here or somewhere else, I could set up the rotation thereafter. Anyone out there have any favorite FA biographies they want to see included? John Carter 16:19, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

How about we set the portal up so that it selects a different featured article each day of the year? We now have enough (403) to do this. I've put the current list (February 2008) at Portal talk:Biography/Selected article. Note that it excludes articles about rock groups, but still includes biographies of living and contemporary people, as opposed to the more "serious" historical figures. Carcharoth (talk) 04:24, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Looks good to me. The only question that comes to mind is how would we want to organize them? Personally, I think what might work best is place as many FAs for their individual birthdays as possible, and then use the others to fill in the various days that don't yet have such an article. Would that be acceptable? John Carter (talk) 15:30, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

If you want to find out their birthdays, or get a bot to extract the data, then fine! :-) I thought chronologically would be nice (by year of birth or death), but that might get boring. Maybe a random order is best? Alphabetical gets similar names (eg. lots of kings called George) ending up together. I suggest some combination of random or thematic, together with manual checking to make sure no silly orders appear, or inappropriate dates. Hitler (even though not a featured article) on his birthday might not be appropriate, for example. We might also want to put articles that have been featured on this portal at the back of the queue, and add new biographical articles to the back of the "new" queue, if that makes sense. That would need a closer look at what has been featured already. Carcharoth (talk) 21:08, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like a lot of work. I certainly don't object but I would rather not help out at this stage. DrKiernan (talk) 13:59, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

The list is ready to be used at any time. Is it difficult to set up a 365-item rotation list, as opposed to a 12-month rotation list? Or is it the work to select an appropriate order that is the hard bit? Carcharoth (talk) 15:44, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

I think it's a lot of work because you'd need to create 366 pages. Do you have an automated way of doing this? DrKiernan (talk) 13:52, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

The Portal talk:Biography/Selected article page is now set up for each individual day of the year. If there's any particular order that anyone would like to see articles placed, or if there are any particular individuals anyone thinks should be included on particular days, now's the time to indicate as much. The previous content has been moved to Portal talk:Biography/Selected article/Archive. John Carter (talk) 14:16, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Could you talk me through the next few steps in this process? Carcharoth (talk) 15:06, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Not entirely sure what you mean. But, basically, we'd probably take the Portal:Biography/Selected biography/Layout, copy it onto the link for the day at Portal talk:Biography/Selected article, and insert the relevant lead and image etc.. There is a question whether we'd want to expand the list to include all the articles in the daily rotation, though. Anyway, when we're done with that, that page will be moved to the existing Selected article page and it'll be set up. John Carter (talk) 15:15, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

That is sort of what I meant, thanks. Will need to think about this - it is rather a lot of work - especially setting up the lead sections and images. Would that be done on a daily (or weekly) basis throughout the year to ensure the leads were as up-to-date as possible? Carcharoth (talk) 15:51, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

I actually hadn't thought of that about changing the leads to match most recent revisions, but considering that we will gain and lose FAs on a monthly basis maybe it would be a good idea to have someone come in around the beginning of every month to verify the existing choices, and maybe at the same time adjusting any selections to match the current phrasing. And no rush on placing articles. Right now, it would probably work best if we just placed any we think are specifically relevant to specific dates, and just inserted the rest to fill in the available dates. John Carter (talk) 16:15, 10 March 2008 (UTC)