Template:Lifetime/doc

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Shortcut: {{BD}}

Contents 1 Usage 2 Options 3 Examples 4 Technical 5 See also

[edit] Usage

{{Lifetime}} is for automatically generating all category tags related to birth and death years, including living people and missing or unknown values. The general DEFAULTSORT can be embedded as well.

{{Lifetime|year of birth|year of death|sort key}}

will replace:

{{DEFAULTSORT:sort key}}

[[Category:BIRTH births]]

[[Category:DEATH deaths]]

Other cases are handled with options, see below. As with the original, the embedded magic word DEFAULTSORT also applies to all categories listed below the template.

[edit] Options

For each option, the default value is displayed in bold and automatically assumed if the field is left blank.

1 (birth)

• MISSING : when year seems possible to be found.

  Category:Year of birth missing or Category:Year of birth missing (living people)

• UNKNOWN : when year seems unlikely to be found (pre-19th century).

  Category:Year of birth unknown

• year of birth : such as "1899" or "1890s" or "19th century" (known approximations).

  Category:1899 births or Category:1890s births or Category:19th century births

2 (death)

• LIVING : living or assumed living people.

  Category:Living people

• MISSING : believed dead and year seems possible to be found.

  Category:Year of death missing

• UNKNOWN : when year seems unlikely to be found (pre-19th century).

  Category:Year of death unknown

• year of death : such as "1986" or "1980s" or "20th century" (known approximations).

  Category:1986 deaths or Category:1980s deaths or Category:20th century deaths

3 (sortkey)

• {{PAGENAME}} : should usually never be left blank (especially with Asian names, it is hard to make the difference between a missing sortkey and a sortkey identical to the article name due to a family-first name).
• Asian name, Honorific prefix (qualifier suffix) : for assertion of sortkey assessment.

  "Mao, Zedong" - "Kim, Il-sung" - "Matsuo, Basho" - "Nu, U" - "Wang, Li (politician)"

• Family name, Given name, Honorific-prefix (qualifier suffix) : for proper sorting.

  "Newton, Isaac, Sir" - "Karlsson, Ove (sports journalist)"

• For further details, see Wikipedia:Categorization of people#Ordering names in a category.

Most values are case-insensitive ("LIVING" or "LiVinG" work the same), except when it matters (such as century names).

[edit] Examples

For a living person

{{Lifetime|1899||Surname, Name}}

or

{{Lifetime|1899|LIVING|Surname, Name}}

will replace:

{{DEFAULTSORT:Surname, Name}}

[[Category:1899 births]]

[[Category:Living people]]

For a missing birth and living person

{{Lifetime|||Surname, Name}}

or

{{Lifetime|MISSING|LIVING|Surname, Name}}

will replace:

{{DEFAULTSORT:Surname, Name}}

[[Category:Year of birth missing (living people)]]

[[Category:Living people]]

For a dead person

{{Lifetime|1899|1986|Surname, Name}}

will replace:

{{DEFAULTSORT:Surname, Name}}

[[Category:1899 births]]

[[Category:1986 deaths]]

For an ancient birth not recorded by history

{{Lifetime|UNKNOWN|12th century|Surname, Name}}

will replace:

{{DEFAULTSORT:Surname, Name}}

[[Category:Year of birth unknown]]

[[Category:12th century deaths]]

Etc.

[edit] Technical

Before changing the template's code or text, please bear in mind some points that should be preserved:

• The template's name and its aliases are in all-caps and feature the suffix -SORT so as to clue in editors that it embeds and replaces DEFAULTSORT. (The original alias "BD" was renamed and is unlisted for the same reason.)
• The use of quotation marks around tested parameters (such as "{{{1}}}") and double switch values (such as "MISSING"|"") instead of just {{{1|MISSING}}} is required to handle defined-but-empty parameters that disable default values with calls such as {{Lifetime||1986|Sortkey}} (in this case, {{{1}}} is empty but defined, its default value wouldn't be triggered, and a #if would be considered true despite its actual emptiness, so we explicitely check against an empty value surrounded by quotes).
• Extra whitespace around years doesn't matter, because MediaWiki strips whitespace from each end of template parameters. Calls such as {{Lifetime| 1899 |}} will, therefore, still work with Category:1899 births despite the extra whitespace.

The template provides a local sandbox and testcases for developing and testing changes (see documentation's hatnote).

[edit] See also

• Help:Category#Default sort key, about categories and DEFAULTSORT
• Help:Magic words#Parser functions, about DEFAULTSORT technically