Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography/Archive/July 2007

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[edit] Bot to sort new pages

Does anyway else think it would be production for a bot to search new pages and create a subpage list of biographies - it would make it much easier to assess new pages rather than losing them in the millions of other articles - as lots are uncateogrised/wikified? RHB - Talk 20:06, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Thomas R. Bard

I have made significant changes to Thomas R. Bard's page and would like to have have it reassessed (it no longer fits the criteria of a stub article). Is this the place to nominate the page for reassessment? If not, where should I do this? Thanks. user:notecardforfree 1:43, 27 June 2007 (PST)

[edit] Controversial rename proposal, give your opinion!

Eric of Good Harvests should be moved to Eirik Arsale or possibly Erik Årsäll! Or not!! Discuss! Said: Rursus ☺ ★ 19:24, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Biography infobox image sizes

The default in the Biography infobox is very small - is 100px? 125px? It looks bad so small, the box dwarfing the photographs of the people the article illustrates. The default should be set at 175px. Any reason it is not? --David Shankbone 14:10, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Margita Bangová

Despite surviving a AfD reqest, this article appears to me to have serious violations of Bio policy. Could someone check it out? Murderbike 18:54, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

On the assessment of the article about [[Quintus Tullius Cicero

Hi! In the WP Biography assessment template of this article you can read it is a start class article. There is also the following comment:"This article has a deprecated non-null importance-parameter. It should be replaced with priority-". I consider the importance of this article as low, and I have edited the template into "importance-low" and "priority-low", but somehow it has not changed the text of the importance parameter. What has gone wrong? A second question: is priority a synonym to importance in WikiProject Biography assessment template? Tellervo 12:19, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Importance is the depreciated parameter that has been replaced by priority. A bot runs once in the while to replace the contents of the category for templates with an importance parameter with that of priority. Only Top priority will have a visible effect on the template - the other options will just assign the correct category. Priority ratings apply only to workgroups. Because of the scale of this WikiProject it was felt that assessing priority across the whole Project would be too much. (stolen from Template:WPBiography) RHB - Talk 09:39, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Idaho biographies

The Idaho State Historical Society is currently working with us to add articles on notable Idaho residents. These are based on papers in their collection, and will probably not be biographies of living people. See Margaret Cobb Ailshie as an example. Do you want us to add the WikiProject Biography template to these talk pages? If not, how can we notify you of new articles?

I am excited about this collaboration with WikiProject Idaho. They plan on adding some photographs, but the details need to be worked out on that, so the photos meet the Free image criteria. Do you know of any other collaborations with repositories (libraries, museums, historical societies) on Wikipedia? If we can contact them, we won't need to re-invent the wheel. --Robbie Giles 13:14, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Congratulations on getting the input of the historical society! Regarding the tagging of the articles, it probably is a good idea. Whether they're living or not, they qualify as people, and we might have specific work groups which deal with articles of that kind, should there be any need to have additional work on them. Regarding your second point regarding photos, I have a feeling you might want to contact Wikimedia Commons, as they deal exclusively with pictures, and probably know more such details than I do. John Carter 13:25, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
The only collaboration I can think of that is similar to this was the creation of the Russian History WikiProject by Marshall Poe. More information is here. RHB - Talk 22:05, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Am I allowed to delate?

This may be the wrong place but I am relativly new to wikipedia. This page, Francis Dixon, is truly awful and I belive no one cares about it. Could you do the correct thing for the project and delate it? Tjnewell 20:28, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

I've seen worse, but you can list the article at Article for Deletion under concerns of lack of WP:NOTE. No, you are not personally allowed to delete articles, nor can we -- that's an admin power. Articles can be speedily deleted if they are obvious vandalism, copyright violation, or something as severely conflicting with the encyclopedia. Otherwise articles may be nominated for deletion and then discussed; after consensus, it may or may not be deleted. María (críticame) 20:41, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Barack Obama FAR

Barack Obama has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here.SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:36, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] FAR notices for Ted Radcliffe and Steve Dalkowski

Ted Radcliffe has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 20:28, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Steve Dalkowski has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 20:28, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Creating a useful workgroup scheme

As of now the workgroups of WikiProject Biography serve almost no purpose. A workgroup on a very general topic such as Arts and Entertainment, covering tens of thousands of articles, is of little use. I propose a completely new workgroup scheme, where anyone who wants to write a biography, can find a workgroup that closely matches their interests.

The first step will be to create a new workgroup system. All workgroups will be on occupations or lifestyles, as they are now. We will start with general workgroups, such as Politics & Government and Arts & Entertainment. These workgroups will serve as an umbrella for more specific workgroups. The most specific workgroup should always be used, the more general ones are for articles that don't fall under any of the more specific workgroups' scope.

In WikiProject Mathematics they have implemented a data subpage to help sort their articles more specifically. In the mathematicians workgroup, data can be added to the subpage on the person's birth date and the field of mathematics they were involved in. I propose we implement a similar system.

First of all, we will replace the parameters: a&e-work-group, politician-work-group, etc. with workgroup1, workgroup2, up to workgroup5. The different values for these will be a&e, politician, etc. Then, for the data subpage, we will create a template that can be subst'd that explains the page's role in our project. It will include a hidden comment: "wpbiography" at the end of the message. The bot that will work with all of this will know to start reading there, to avoid any conflicts with WikiProject Mathematics.

For each workgroup there will be certain data that will be useful, and certain data that will not. All workgroups will have the birth-death data though. This is an example for the US House of Representatives workgroup:

Birth-Death: 1809 – 1876

<1>

    • US-State: Iowa

Let's say that this data is for John Doe, a B-Class article. The table would be as follows:

Article Birth and Death date Quality Comments State
John Doe 1809 – 1876 B {{Talk:John Doe/Comments}} Iowa

Our first priority should be creating the workgroup scheme, then worry about the implementation of the data subpages. I will start working on it tomorrow, I welcome everyone's input. Psychless 05:05, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Unless the workgroups do anything as groups, I see no reason for them at all. Please explain how you envision editors working together under the workgroups and what you envision the workgroups doing in the Biography project. If we have no clear idea of what the workgroups are going to be doing, I see no reason to establish them at this time. Awadewit | talk 08:34, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
After thinking through it more carefully, I guess the time it would take to assign specific workgroups to 400,000 articles would be better spent just improving articles. Feel free to ignore my proposal. Psychless 01:31, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
I am part of the "Arts and Entertainment group", but I hear little out of it. Do we have project leaders for these groups? Active leaders? I think now, with the Assessment Drives, these respective groups need to pull it together and begin reviewing the work that is in their domain. Tagging appropriately; reassessing; peer reviewing, etc. --Ozgod 14:59, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Why I removed 11 easy steps

Getting an article to B class is not just following 11 easy steps. Some of the "steps" do not apply to some articles. If someone would like to rewrite them as helpful suggestions that would be fine. The main point is not sounding like you have to do A then B and take it to C and then it's B class. Surprisingly the steps failed to mention research. Here are the steps, for anyone who still wants to access them:

Type a title and click button "Create page"
Title:


  1. Create a new page.
  2. Create an outline for the biography article you started:
  3. Consider adding an appropriate infobox.
    • For lists of infoboxes, visit the appropriate work groups (which have them listed) or consult our infobox quick guide
  4. Add the Persondata template.
  5. Populate your article with images such as obtained from Wikimedia Commons, image list, or by posting a request for an image from other Wikipedians.
  6. Add the appropriate categories.
    • Since categories at the bottom of the articles interwiki linked in your article may be appropriate to place in your article, go through each interwiki link in your article and review the categories at the bottom of the linked article for inclusion in your article.
    • For lists of categories, visit the appropriate work groups (which have them listed) or start browsing at Category:People.
  7. Confirm that the interwiki links, footnotes, and external (non-wiki) links in your article go where you want them to go.
  8. Post an article request at Wikipedia:Requested articles for each broken (red) interwiki link in your article OR remove the double brackets around the broken interwiki link OR write that article as well (these are your only three choices).
  9. Publicize your article by ...
  10. Request peer review of your article by following these instructions ONLY after you believe that you completed all the above steps.
  11. Relax! and take a break if you reached this point. You deserve it!

If I've been way too bold tell me. Regards, Psychless 14:40, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject Biography 11 easy steps to producing at least a B article has been on the WikiProject Biography page for months and there easily are more than 1,000 article talk page links directly to the 11 easy steps. The many editors who have used the steps have found it very useful. WikiProject Biography concerns the creation, development, and organization of Wikipedia's articles about people and that is what the steps address. Regarding your reasons for deleting the steps, if some of the steps do not apply to some articles, I think we can assume a minimum level of intelligence in the person following the steps such that they would know enough to skip those steps that do not apply to their particular circumstance. In regards to stating the obvious in the steps, if they do not do research, how are they suppose to include a bibliography listed in MLA format as indicated in step 2 of the 11 steps? Getting an article to B class does require the person to include written content in the article, but that is covered elsewhere and would be brought to the editor's attention through step 10. -- Jreferee (Talk) 18:36, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
Hmm, I still don't really like the tone of the 11 easy steps, but I suppose it doesn't hurt that much to have them on there. Psychless 19:13, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
I strongly agree that the tone is a problem. On what authority, for example, does this list of "steps" admonish me so sternly to submit all redlinks to Requested Articles? I don't think that is required by any policy or guideline. Submitting to "Did you know" certainly is not, yet that is included in a list of steps that says (in bold!) not to submit to peer review until the steps are completed. The combination of an authoritarian tone with a focus on superficial or peripheral aspects of article creation comes across as highly offensive to me.
I agree with this. I think that things like images, categories, persondata, etc. should be left until some serious content is established. I dislike the drive to force categories, infoboxes, etc. on articles early. Awadewit | talk 08:51, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
I also think it's inappropriate to call this a set of "steps to producing" an article when it doesn't say anything about researching or writing -- the actual production of the article! -- except by implication. Yes, it's obvious that the article has to be written at some point, but the omission sends a message that this project does not care about content as long as the listed hoops are jumped through.
Perhaps it could be rewritten as a set of suggestions rather than mandates, and renamed something like "Tips for new articles". —Celithemis 21:30, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
Celithemis has some good ideas. Indeed, the actual writing of the article should be the focus of the steps, rather than infoboxes, metadata and so forth: right now the steps avoid the issues of writing and research altogether. Here are some possibilities: Investigate the possible sources to use to write the article; try to use more than one source if there is more than one; try to make sure all points of view are represented without undue weight; make sure NPOV has been followed; read it through to make sure it coherently tells the story; proofread for spelling and grammar. And then, if you post the article and feel it can still be expanded, or you know that something significant is missing, consider leaving "working notes" to that effect on the talk page, so either you coming back, or someone else happening by, can resume work. For my own part, I always try to post reasonably complete articles, since if I leave important parts out they will probably never get fixed (that's my experience after more than three years on Wikipedia--articles in out-of-the-way places tend not to grow).
I've seen these steps posted on talk pages of complete, but short, articles I have written and frankly found them to be patronizing, and quite beside the point. Once I asked someone why an obscure Renaissance composer got a "start class" assessment and my reply was to read these steps, when it was obvious the assessor simply didn't know anything about either the topic or the extremely sparse sources from which it was written.
Kudos to The Psychless for initiating a bit of reform here: it's already doing some good. Cheers, Antandrus (talk) 22:40, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
It's just Psychless now :). Anyways, I'll try to work more on possibly rewriting this, and working on the workgroup scheme once I start feeling better. Not really going to work on workgroup reform while I'm sick. Thanks for everyone that's been agreeing with me on this issue though. Here's how we could possibly make it work:
I agree wholeheartedly that the suggestions for how to write an article should focus on research and writing. They should outline what kinds of sources should be used, how to find those sources, and some possible layouts for a page (with links to FAs, perhaps). Awadewit | talk 08:51, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

==Suggestions on how to write better biographies==

Writing an excellent wikipedia article is a time-consuming, frustrating, wonderful and ultimately very rewarding experience. You will learn much that you did not know and you will meet many people who share your interests. Here are some suggestions for writing a good biography:

Pick a person that you are interested in but of whom you are not a fan (at least for your first few articles). Fans have a hard time obtaining distance from their subjects and sometimes editors construe criticism of the article as criticism of the subject; it is best to avoid those misunderstandings.

Once you have selected a person on whom to write, go to the library or bookstore and find some reliable biographies. This can be tricky. Popular biographies, while entertaining, are not always the most reliable. For example, Joe Jackson's biography of Joseph Priestley, while fun to read, has far less information and is actually factually incorrect. Robert Schofield's two-volume scholarly biography, while drier, is much more reliable (the fact that it was published by an academic press and has extensive footnotes were helpful clues). No wants the Priestley article to say that he invented the eraser when in fact he only promoted its use in a book he wrote!

Some people have a treasure trove of material published on them, like Albert Einstein. The problem to be overcome there is to determine the scholarly consensus. You will have to read many scholarly biographies; your article will present the material that scholars agree on and any important divergent theories regarding the person's life. In the case of Einstein, there is no agreement on exactly what his religious beliefs were, for example. Other figures have almost nothing written on them, such as Mary Martha Sherwood. In those cases, you must draw from all of the sources available, such as histories of the period, articles on topics tangentially related to the subject and so on; the article on Sherwood, for example, uses for one of its sources an article that is primarily about John Ruskin's autobiography. Finding the information for such articles will be the most difficult part of the process. It is also especially important identify your sources in the text of the article if they are primary sources such as an autobiography (again, see Sherwood for an example).

Once you have completed your research, which will take weeks or months, depending on the amount of material you have to read and how much help you have from other editors, you can begin writing. Some editors like to write a fairly complete draft of the article before posting it to wikipedia, either on a user subpage or on their computer; others like the give and take of editing in real time. Both methods are actively practiced on wikipedia and have their benefits and drawbacks. A highly trafficked page would probably benefit from a slow change rather than a brand-new article over night while few people would get their hackles up over a low-traffic page being suddenly improved.

The structure of a biography page varies widely for the type of figure you are writing about. Most pages are structured chronologically, although some contain sections after the "life", such as an analysis of an artist's works after the life. One of the best ways to see the range of possibilities is to spend some time looking at good biography articles. Here is a list:

  • Johannes Kepler - famous 17th century scientist - deals well with an abundance of sources
  • Harriet Arbuthnot - diarist from the early 19th century - deals well with the problem of few sources
  • George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore - 17th century colonizer - deals with the problem of few sources
  • Charles Darwin - discoverer of evolution - deals well with an abundance of sources and controversial issues
  • Jake Gyllenhaal - actor - deals well with the problem of sourcing articles about contemporary people
  • Jenna Jameson - pornstar - deals well with the problem of sourcing articles about contemporary people and a potentially controversial article

Once you have decided, roughly, how to structure your article and what material to include, you can begin writing. At this stage, it might be a good idea to quickly glance at wikipedia's manual of style. While this can be daunting, just look at the major pages so that you know how to format links, what to link and most especially, what information needs a citation. It will save you many headaches down the road. When you know the basic wiki-rules and what you want to say about your subject, you can start writing!

While you are writing the page, you should think about what kinds of images would best illustrate it and either include those if they are already available or upload them. Again, the sample pages should give you an idea of what types of images are used. All images must follow wikipedia's free and fair use policy. Some editors prefer free images to fair use images.

When you and/or the other editors working on the article believe that the article has reached the point that it could benefit from the input of outside readers, post it at the biography project's peer review. There you will receive feedback from editors uninvolved in the article who will provide a pair of fresh eyes. Usually, editors post their articles when they have reached a rating of "B" or higher. If you are interested in submitting you article for review through any of wikipedia's rating systems, such as Good Article (GAC) or Featured Article (FAC), it is a good idea to have uninvolved editors read your work first. It is necessary to have an external peer review before submitting an article to FAC.

Awadewit | talk 08:51, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

===WikiProject Biography 11 easy steps to producing at least a B article=== This section header is kept since many internal links still point to it. Please use the new suggestions.


(end example) Regards, Psychless 00:00, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Please feel free to edit my example - let's try to find something we can all agree to. Awadewit | talk 21:40, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

The 11 steps are more about the peripherals for a biography (Persondata template, infobox, suggested headings, use of categories, publicity, etc.) rather than writing better biographies. The actual writing of the article should not be the focus of the 11 steps since writing is covered by many, many other areas of Wikipedia. A significant number new users just put alot of text in a new biography. The 11 steps are more to give them ideas as to how most other biographies are structured and how they can generate the interest of other editors in their article. Maybe the title should be something like WikiProject Biography 11 easy steps towards producing at least a B article. As for the tone, I don't think people are reading it as WikiProject Biography 11 required steps to producing at least a B article. The steps even call them "helpful tips!" at the top. The 11 steps might not belong on the Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography main page. I wouldn't oppose moving them to a subpage so long as the links all still work. -- Jreferee (Talk) 01:02, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Of course people are reading it as a required set of steps; it says it is, in so many words. "Request peer review of your article by following these instructions ONLY after you believe that you completed all the above steps." And "these are your only three choices." Changing the word "to" to "towards" in the heading is not going to help, and moving it to a subpage will only hide the problem. —Celithemis 19:51, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
I agree with Celithemis - the title says it all ("11 easy steps to producing at least a B article"). I would also dispute the "easy" part - people should understand that writing an article is hard work - it is not "easy". I think we should discuss writing and research here because wikipedia's discussion of those topics is spread throughout so many pages that editors don't read them. A concise emphasis on what is important for a page would be beneficial for the project. The primary goal of the project should be to produce quality biography articles, not "generate interest" in them. Awadewit | talk 21:39, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
As the primary author of about 150 biographies on Wikipedia, and every last one of them based on research, I far prefer Awadewit's discursive and honest approach over the mindlessness of "11 easy steps." In fact, what we want is consideration, judgment, and thought and not factory-built houses of the dead. I can, and will with the least provocation, rail at specific missteps of the "11 easy mistakes" (e.g. biodata? that's a -bot's favorite, not an author's; infobox? this is because human lives always have the same set of important facts? peer review? Wikipedia is peer review), but the chief mistake is mistaking process and regularity for quality. One cannot automate quality. One can rarely even have an absolute prohibition on a given impropriety, and therefore it is utterly foolish to believe that there can be an absolute process.
Additionally, the naive author thinks this is Wikipedia house style. It is not.
Additionally, authors of bad articles will defend theirs by swearing that they followed the 11 steps...look at those boxes and templates!...and therefore the article is guaranteed good and useful.
Simply put, an encyclopedist offers a thesis and makes sense of the chaos of a life, and "sense" is going to be an authorial and editorial decision. The organizing principle is going to differ from life to life, person to person, and all details will reflect our authors. Geogre 13:51, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
Amen. Well, I've tried to make the 11 steps at least moderately more sane. Moreschi Talk 14:24, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
But why are people creating pages before they have any content, i.e., before they have done any research and/or writing? Awadewit | talk 14:31, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
You mean placeholder articles? I have no idea. It seems to have crept into practice to allow things to stand if "he's working on it." I have seen, several times at the speedy delete page, contested deletions, "I'm going to work on this." Well, work on it. Then write it. If people can write a paragraph of protest at a deletion, then they could have written a paragraph of content. The idea, though, that one can go step by step and not have the first step be "have an interest" and the second step be "have some research/knowledge" is fundamentally in error. While doing a random page click, I found Popa Chubby yesterday. It has been assessed (love those passives). The thing shouldn't even be here, and I would have deleted it, but I thought I would let folks know that the assessment drive has been as blind about passing things as it has been about denigrating things. Geogre 14:49, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
I have been encouraged to create stubs at FAC when my articles had redlinks. I didn't want to, because I didn't want to create articles like this, but I was forced to (note the infobox I had to add, too). I was too busy during the FAC to make a proper "start" article and I have never gotten back to it, because it is not something I am dying to do. The article should exist (all Locke works deserve an article), but no one is working on it, unfortunately. When I was assessing for the biography drive (my laptop has died, so I have currently stopped), I nominated many articles for speedy deletion. Unfortunately, many of speedy deletes were termed "notable". Apparently all full-time professors at all academic institutions are notable. Awadewit | talk 15:04, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
Popa Chubby was assessed by User:Kingbotk, a bot that automatically assesses articles as stub if they have a stub template. So you really can't blame it on the assessment drive. Psychless 23:16, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
Noooooo, I sure can. The fact that the assessments are going about from -bots automatically invalidates them. How is a reader going to know the difference between "this has been assessed stub" done by a human and a -bot? We can tell via the History, but how is the 0.7 project going to know? How is the schoolboy going to know? How is the now very satisfied vanity band author going to know that he didn't get away with it? In what way has an assessment taken place when an automated process is converting any template, placed by any one, for any reason, into an assessment? In fact, it is a null operation: no human assessment has been involved, and it's a bit fraudulent to claim that it has. Geogre 02:57, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
On the talk page of the article there is a notice below the main template saying it's been automatically assessed. You can see for yourself. And if someone has placed a stub template on it then the article has already been assessed as a Stub, we're basically just updating our banner. Also, I've changed it back to easy steps, not relatively easy steps. There are thousands of links to that section and changing the title of it breaks all of them. If that doesn't matter, then perhaps we should completely retitle it and not have it be steps? Psychless 17:13, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Proper steps

As my example above demonstrates (which I wish more people were discussing - it took me a while to type all of that out), I am rather against the rigid step by step process. I would endorse a looser one, though (such as "research", "think", "draft" "write", etc. with the kinds of explanations I offered) I still wouldn't want to call it a "12-step program to B happiness", though. Is there any way to change all of those links using a bot or program? Is there a way to know what links to that title? Awadewit | talk 17:44, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
I've tried to fix the issue of the links with some fancy code. Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography#WikiProject Biography: 11 easy steps to producing at least a B article should now take you to a section called "Tips for writing biographies". That title is only intended to be a "proof of concept"-thing, so do edit my edit mercilessly. Hemmingsen 17:22, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Regarding the links to the old name, for some reason, the "cite id" wasn't working for me, and "span id" wasn't either. Maybe it was a cache problem, but I eventually put in "_" (underscore) instead of spaces, and that seemed to fix it. More radically, I've switched the order of the first two steps, to remind people that they really, really should do some research before writing the article. Not "oh, I remember this about this person", or researching and writing "on the fly". That can be done, but at least a little preparation before creating the article can really help. Carcharoth 08:52, 14 July 2007 (UTC)


=='''Actually, it's not about our goals, it's about welcoming new editors'''==
There are important encyclopedic goals, like research and accuracy, that genuinely need to be emphasized, but there is a "real world" consideration: This isn't going to stop being a wiki. "Easy" is a built-in feature.
That is to say, we need to cleave to the learning curve. If fledgling editors can't find steps they think are easy, they'll ignore you're scholarly masterpiece (citations are not "easier to do" first if you've never done them, however necessary they are) and they'll do up pages based on the first couple they see. We don't want fledgling Biography editors to arrive and edit away cluelessly. We've all seen those pages. They ain't pretty. Nor accurate. The "Tips for writing biographies" as they stand as of this writing will help intermediate editors (a lot)-- but will put off the inevitable newbies.
I write rules for games. I know what the hell I'm talking about here.
(I also have no time to "solve" this myself during July 2007. My Wikipedia time is almost all during work hours, while on standby at my boss' computer. Even these words are cutting into my precious lunch.)
I'm not suspending my linking to the 11 Easy Steps on the talk pages, until a new title, etc. is settled on-- the linking solution will have to prevail eventually. I never took "Steps" as gospel, and rarely applied the technique myself. But let's get something up for newbies up quickly, for as long as this is a wiki the Tide of Newbies is unstoppable. -- Yamara 16:37, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

As has been noticed by at least a couple of people, I've done some work on this stuff. My greatest change was to tell people to start off an article on a subpage in their userspace. I understand that this brings the complication of explaining, or linking to an explanation of, "subpages". Still, I'm certain that it's a good idea, especially for newbies. There can be little more discouraging for a newbie than to have their fledgling article slapped with a PROD, or worse.
My main idea is as follows, but I'm aware of the trouble I've had expressing it. There's no obligation for an article to be good, in any normal sense of that word. However, what's in it should be good as far as it goes.
Let's consider the Jonathan Routh article, in its earliest form (by yours truly). As an article on Routh, it's atrocious. It concentrates on perhaps 5% of the man's work (the 5% that I happened to know about). It's not sourced at all, and it's perhaps a bit POVy. (I was younger and less scrupulous then.) But I think it was already presentable, in its ho-hum and scrappy way: I'm not ashamed of it. There's a major difference between it on the one hand and on the other [let's imagine for a moment] Jonathan Routh, b. 1923, was in the British version of the TV show "Kandid Kamera" and co-starred with German Grere and Kenny Evellet in "Jolly Time". With John Glashan, Routh did some really wierd guidebooks like "The Good Loo Guide". He's a funny guy.
It's this difference that the instructions should get at, rather than (or in addition to) talk of adding multimedia, submitting to "peer review", etc. -- Hoary 05:51, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Yamara says that he writes instructions for programmers, so he knows what he's talking about. He knows how to talk to computers, I suppose, but the "eleven steps" are utterly worthless. You must have a box? Oh, really? You must go to peer review? Oh, really? Nothing about research. You must use a cite format? Oh, really? These are small percentage opinions, at very best. They will not create biographies of worth. They will create steps. Steps are GIGO. Geogre 13:42, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

I feel that if we're going to cater to established editors and newbie editors there will have to be two headings: "Writing your first biographical article" and "Suggestions for writing better biographical articles". The first can explain some of the basic steps, the ones that will help newbies not get there article speedy deleted or how not to get WP:FUC'd when uploading an image for use on there article. The suggestions should deal with the more advanced side of things like the {{cite web}} templates and more advanced research. Psychless 16:58, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
"Cite" is not a requirement, any more than infoboxes are. Some of us feel very, very strongly that they are inappropriate and detrimental to article quality. Although I'm on the extreme end of that, there remains no consensus in their favor. No "steps" should tell people to use these elements, although they can, with proper language, tell people where to find the man pages. (N.b. those of us who deplore footnotes don't go around stripping them or demoting articles on the basis of them, while the people in favor of them tend to go about denigrating any article that doesn't conform to the favored system. We've even seen FAR's where they had massive footnotes, but, alas, the footnoting format changed, and so all those little numbers disappeared.) One wonders why people representing the minority view tend to be so darned dogmatic about it, but one does not really need to know the answer. Geogre 20:07, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
Yamara says that he writes instructions for programmers, Wrong answer! I said "I write rules for games." Rules for people so they can play together. Not unlike the social atmosphere of a certain online encyclopedia.
My use of the "11 Easy Steps" link comment derives from its being recommended for use during the March 2007 Assessment Drive. I'm hardly the only one who's used it. But this serves my point: First habits die hard, which means we really need to encourage good, simple beginner actions.
We need to make it easy... at first. The tips should look, IMHO, like this:
1) Recommend newcomers to first try editing Biographies that interest them. Point them to a couple resources to find ones they'd like. Mention that this is an excellent way to learn how other Bio editors put together killer articles, and that they should follow the basic guidelines.
2) List some very basic guidelines (yeees, better ones than the "11 Easy Steps"). Mention that these are guidelines to refer back to when first starting to edit Bios with other editors. Point to basic Help pages and sidebars.
3) List some intermediate guidelines. Maybe this is where the most of the current "Tips" should reside.
4) List expert guidelines. This will likely be a rundown of the more complex (to newbies) concepts like Harvard citations. These guidelines should really be reviewed by experts, and probably deserve their own page.
By breaking it up, you encourage the learning curve to follow your lead.
I hate just leaving "guidelines for writing guidelines"; I'd love write this up myself in real, sparing, detail, but I cannot until sometime in August, if then.
Yours with no lunch,
Yamara 15:45, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Question

Could someone check the article on Chuck Knipp? I was browsing through and there is a lot of anonymous edits from a single IP that intertwine with things that may not be what it should be. I'm not an expert on this biography and I don't have sources. It just didn't look right. Thanks --Mark @ DailyNetworks talk 11:04, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Yasser Arafat

I have a request of upgrading the Yasser Arafat article to A-class and perhaps after some issues have been addressed to the Featured Article-class. -- Al Ameer son 01:16, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Biographies on the main page

Just as an FYI for the project, i've been keeping an eye on the main page this last week. Any persons who articles appear that are sans biographical infobox in their articles are having the correct ones promptly added. Get me on my talk page if there's any q's. Cheers, Thewinchester (talk) 02:55, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

A look at Thewinchester's list of contributions shows such recent edits as this one, which implies that what the above actually means is that he is one of the people who are adding what they think are appropriate biographical infoboxes to biography articles that haven't yet been dehanced in this fashion.
(This isn't the first time that I've seen stunningly cheerless messages concluded by the word "Cheers".)
I hope that none of the articles I've worked on gets anywhere near the main page while other people are indulging this grotesque obsession with the addition of superfluous gimmickry. -- Hoary 05:02, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
Hey, how about assuming a little good faith. Those comments were both rude and absolutely uncalled for regardless of your opinion. Infoboxes on biographies have a number of advantages, particually when correctly structured they add article subjects to categories such as YYYY Births and Deaths for starters. If you don't like infoboxes, then that's your opinion. If because of your opinion you identify something which could be improved by them, then speak up and put the idea forward, otherwise in your case saying nothing is really the best course of action. Thewinchester (talk) 08:55, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
I have identified something that could be improved: stop adding infoboxes to biography articles, because they are ugly, superfluous. and in my opinion unencyclopedic. We're building an encyclopedia, not a table of ephemerae. Nandesuka 11:14, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
I consider infoboxes useful, but I find it a pity that {{Infobox Biography}} is supposed to be the "Default Template". Other work groups use infoboxes that are a bit more elegant (in my view, at least), with the single sections' headings aligned left, e.g. {{Infobox Monarch}}, {{Infobox musical artist}}. I'd suggest that the layout of WPBio infoboxes should be more standardized. Regards, BNutzer 12:50, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
"Absolutely uncalled for"? My comments were called for by your announcement of some sort of crusade of infobox-splattering. ¶ For all I know, "infoboxes" within biographies may have advantages for certain kinds of people, maybe baseball players, porn stars, or others whose significant achievements or dimensions or whatever are unambiguously identified and tabulated. Novelists, chemists, linguists, photographers, economists, etc.: I think not. ¶ In order to add an article to the category of 1899 births, you just stick "[[Category:1899 births]]" on the page. ¶ If you do like infoboxes in general, that's your opinion. Mine is that they're pointless gimmickry that duplicates what appears elsewhere and obviously degrades the great majority of articles in which they appear. (Now and again I remove them, just as I remove little flags, the generic silhouette portrait asking for a different portrait, and miscellaneous other junk.) ¶ No I can't think of something that could be improved by infoboxes. Thank you for not dehancing more articles in this way. -- Hoary 12:59, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
Wow, you dislike flags, infoboxes and placeholder images as well! A kindred spirit! Though to be fair, I think infoboxes are OK, except that they should be tailored to the individual article, rather than standardised across a group. The main problem with infoboxes is that they are often insufficiently flexible. The text that the readers sees should be all editable, not standardised (especially the titles of the fields), while still grouped together like entries in a database, where that is helpful. {{Infobox Scientist}} is my personal bugbear. Carcharoth 16:09, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
"Assume Good Faith" is the most cited, least understood of all policies. It's the rallying cry of vandals, and it's rarely necessary for experienced contributors to cite it. Good faith isn't the issue: bad effect is the issue. When an article is on the main page, that means that it has gone through WP:FAC and been selected by User:Raul. At that point, two very careful reviews of it have taken place, and both have liked the article as it is. If it has a box, then they like the box. If it doesn't have a box, then it shouldn't have a box grafted on it. There are significant reasons for this.
Boxes are ridiculous in biographies. As I have said over and over again, when there is a standard life, there can be a standard box. When lives are complex, no box is meaningful. Can Winston Churchill and Harry Reems be equally summarized by the same features? Can Nap Lajoie and Lief Eriksson be equally summarized?
Boxes compete against the content of the article. They say, "Don't read all those words: all you need to know is the following." In all cases, this is either extraneous or competitive, but in the case of an FA, it is an obscenity.
Do not add boxes to FA's. You will be reverted, I assure you. Geogre 13:33, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] daer,wish ko lang,

ako pa si jocylin balamad na taga dito sa nueva vida sur carmen bohol,

 ako po ay single parent po sa apat na mga anak at,nahihirapan sa hanap buhay kaya po ako ay sumubuk sumulat dito sa inyong programa,
 at gusto kopong inyong matutulongan,alam nyo po sa ngayon andito po ako sa panglao,island namamasukan bilang katolong at ang mga anak kopo ay nag aaral doon sa amin,nasa mama ko ang hirap nang malayo sa kanila,
 wish kolang tolongan nyo naman po ako dahil sa ngayon ako poy may minahal sa buhay bukod pa sa mga anak ko nahirapan po kami dahil nasamalayo sya nasa davao po sya po ay si ferdinand bolotaolo,at nasa bahada davao po,atgusto napo nyang bumalik wala lang pamasahi pabalik dito po sa amin,nagmamahalan po kami pilit po ksing ipnaglayo po kami ng anti nya kaya parihas po kaming nagmmahalan,
  kaya po tulongan nyo naman ako sa problimang kong ito dahil nag sama napo kami ng matagal at nagdadalang tao napo ako,kaya po bigyan nyo naman po ako ng katogonan sa mga kahilingan ko,at gusto kopo na magkakaroon ng makikitaan at pati na ang taong nabangit ko ay gusto napo namin na makapiling habang buhay,wish ko lang tolongan nyo naman po ako,at sana po magkroon po ako ng kaunting o maliit na tindahan na kahit papaano ay makikitaan napo ako.at may ibobohay napo ako sa mga anak ko at sa magiging anak namin ni ferdinan.
   umasa po akong na inyo pong matugunan ang kailangan kopo...
                               nagpasalamat,..jocylin balamad
The above is an appeal for charity in Tagalog. Basically what she is saying is that she is a poor single mother of four children in Manila, but she is originally from Davao and would like to return there, but can't afford plane or ferry fare. She's asking for help to return home and establish a small business to support her family. Videmus Omnia Talk 03:21, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/A-class review needs help!

Anyone willing to assist in determining whether articles nominated for A-Class status would be more than welcome to do so. Also, if anyone can figure out how to close the A-Class reviews of several articles which have been lingering for some time, I would be very grateful. Trying to understand the complexities of the closing process strains what few remaining brain cells I still have and is probably way beyond my own poor, pathetic abilities. John Carter 20:41, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Question about these "ratings"

So I go and look at an article I created a while back. I see it has been rated as "start" class, with no explanation of why. Is this the common practice? If it is, then of what use is this rating drive? Neil ╦ 16:36, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

You can always take a look at the quality scale at Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/Assessment, which is linked to in every assessed template. These are the guidelines to which assessors, not just in this drive, base their opinion on. All WikiProjects which include assessments have their own quality scale. María (críticame) 16:46, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
Part of the purpose of the rating drive is to ensure that all biographies of living people are marked as such. Part of it is to let this project and its subprojects know what the current status of each article is, so that they have a better idea which are best candidates for collaboration or other efforts. There are other reasons as well. John Carter 18:52, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
Where the ratings are: The quality scale is linked from every WPBiography tag. (As noted by María)
As you can see, the table itself says things like, "Articles that are close to GA status but don't meet the Good article criteria should be B- or Start-class articles." So it gets pretty subjective.
There's always room for improvement. I use the Biography template with a standard comment (revised version, now visible on the talk page of Sir William Congreve) hoping to encourage others to work on Biographies, which make up over 400,000 articles of the English Wikipedia's 1,900,000. The number is possibly much higher, because this is only the number of articles with a Bio tag, and I've found dozens with none. (See my current User page for an abbreviated list of discovered Biographies).
Note the phrase "Barely a Start class" in the Congreve comment. This is not part of my cut-and-paste template. Sometimes I feel it's necessary to give an extra parameter, like "Nearly a B" or "Could be GA with minimal work", but most of my schedule doesn't afford me time to make lengthy, unique assessments. Sometimes I have hours where I'm allowed to multitask into my real world work the rotework necessary to complete the Bio Drive (and the rotework of wikifying many articles themselves). The rest of this month, much less than usual.
In addition to flagging living people, this rotework includes adding listas= for proper alphabetization, assigning workgroup status, noting whether a picture or an infobox is needed (always dicey with the arty bios), and of course assigning one of three ratings that don't require peer review. The process is not going to produce the next John Ruskin, but perhaps a Harriet Martineau; one does learn "how to observe": What needs to be done, not how or by who. Hope that helps, because my bosses will kill me for spending this time on this now. -- Yamara 18:57, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
What I'm driving at here is I appreciate you guys have set yourself a pretty tough target - and please don't misunderstand me, I have nothing but admiration for the effort that's being put in, my worry is of what value is the effort?
I just have a concern that a label such as "nearly a B" or "Could be GA with minimal work" doesn't tell the editors who work on the article anything; all it does is cross another article off the list with no actual benefit other than meeting an arbitrary target. Is the reviewer looking for better structure, an image, correct image tagging, inline citations, more citations, less redlinks, grammar fixes, tone, a better intro, what? If things went at half the pace but reviewers took the time to drop a sentence or two on the talk page stating what they believe needs doing, even if they were unable to do it themselves, this process would be a lot more than twice as useful. As it stands, by the first of September or thereabouts (probably earlier, at the current rate), we will have all the biographical articles categorised as FA/GA/A/B/Start/Stub. What benefit then happens - what value is obtained for Wikipedia? In and of themselves, the categories don't really help editors without any reasoning provided. And all this is working off the assumption that all articles have been correctly categorised as per the criteria.
I appreciate John's point that a small side-benefit is that it will guide the collaboration team, but their rate of pace isn't that fast - even at 50 articles a week, it would take them 8000 weeks or around 160 years to go through all the currently existing biographical articles; identifying suitable articles for collaboration has never been a problem.
I doubt at this point anything will change, as this is a project you guys have been working on for a long time now, and with the end hoving into sight, you won't want to change anything to how you're working on this. But the main reason I see for this work is "the purpose of this ratings project is to rate articles". Okay. But why? To respond to Yamara's point, how does a "start" or a "B" tell an editor what needs to be done? The rating scale (this, right?) is too vague and subjective.
The scale says "(this is) the best system we've been able to devise; if you have a better idea, please don't hesitate to let us know!. My idea is to slow things down and ask participants to take the time to explain your rating on the talk page of each article you rate. If that means this arbitrary September target isn't met, so be it. If that won't wash, how about just a few of you do this to a few articles (say fifty articles or so in total - that's not many in the scheme of things) in a pilot scheme of sorts, noting the articles you rated and left comments upon, we could then compare and contrast the ensuing improvements with articles that recieved no such comments, just a tag. Thoughts? Neil ╦ 20:58, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
You make a good point, but obviously your proposal basically encompasses an entirely new system of assessment; I actually envision a multi-functional template with pre-programmed suggestions and room for customized notes. Many editors do make these kind of notations on talk pages in a less standardized way, and the current WP banner options ("needs photo" etc.) are a bit technical in nature. It would perhaps slow things down, but as a separate, related process it could be very helpful for many articles.
However, I think you're missing the (albeit rudimentary) point of the current system. I think it basically serves to classify articles in a basic way for potential editors; if you're looking for something to work on within a Project, knowing an article's status as a stub or a B-class at least lets you choose something that needs the level of work you're able to attempt at that time. Suggested edits and improvement would of course be helpful, but I don't know that editors are really looking at Talk pages for that kind of advice anyway. TAnthony 03:10, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
The problem with leaving comments on every page is that, in many cases, there isn't a lot to say. I just rated Erick Avari as Start. Clearly, IMHO, anyone who's seen any of the FAs knows that this article has a lot of potential content which doesn't seem to be there yet in this article. Are you proposing that in a case like this, we go into detail "Further biographical content would be useful. Needs references", or something similar? Also, it is always possible to contact the person who did the assessment and ask for more specific feedback from them. I know I make it a point to respond to any requests I receive for such comments, particularly when there are no comments on the existing "comments" subpage linked to in the banner, and I've assessed I think almost every article in the Category:Saints at one time or another. Generally, though, the people who wrote the articles don't seem to view the assessments as being particularly important to them one way or another, or already understand the strengths and shortcomings of the article as others would perceive them. Maybe the banner could be adjusted to include something to the effect of, "If you have any questions regarding this assessment, please contact the editor who performed it," but I'm not sure if that addition would be of any use to many article writers or not. John Carter 21:26, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
If the people who write articles "don't seem to view the assessments as being particularly important to them", again, what is the purpose of the rating?
What benefit will Wikipedia have from having every biographical article rated and only rated? A rating on its own is useless. Of course the people who write articles would not see any importance to the rating.
A quick sentence such as your example "Further biographical content would be useful. Needs references" would immediately make that rating have some use to aid in article improvement. It's still not the most effective way of doing things, and as a business process consultant it makes me wince, but it adds more value than just a rating. Please, if you and a few others tried it for a day or two and give me a list of the articles you leave advice on, I'll go through them and a matching number of "rating-only" articles in a month or two and compare the improvements. Neil ╦ 21:36, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
The fundamental flaw in your first paragraph, ":::If the people who write articles "don't seem to view the assessments as being particularly important to them", again, what is the purpose of the rating?" is the fact that it is inaccurate, in that I think all of us reviewers have ourselves written articles. I've gotten around 20 or so I've written included in the DYK section of the Community Portal, for instance. And the assessments are used by the Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team, of which I'm a member, to determine which articles are going to be included in the various "release version" of wikipedia.
Also, please note that in the case I indicated, the article already has an {{unreferenced}} tag on it. Presumably the people seeing that article will see that tag on the article itself more often than they will look over comments on the "Comments" subpage. In fact, if you'll check my talk page, I recently got a note from someone saying that few people ever even look at the "comments" subpage, or even know that it's there. If you're proposing the removal of the subpage, that would probably be better done elsewhere, at least in a separate thread.
It is true that, at least potentially, the members of a given project will try to "destub" any articles which their process have assessed as Stubs. I think I found around 200 articles with the Wikipedia:WikiProject Saints which were improved in the three months between my doing project-wide reassessments on that basis. On that basis, it may draw additional editors to the article. Granted, that won't hold with a "Start" article, but in those cases the fact that the article has been assessed might also, depending on project, get the article included on the project's article list, which would make it one that can be checked for recent changes. Here I know I update the Wikipedia:WikiProject Saints/Articles list regularly, but I can't know if other projects do so as well.
If you're asking what purpose there is to assess a Start-class article as a Start, though, the answer is probably a qualified negative. The start-class assessment indicates that the article isn't horribly bad, as it were, and needing work before it reaches even Start class quality. However, it also makes it clear that it isn't a stub, which does need such improvement. So, it does mark that article as being, as it were, at least acceptably thorough, and in a sense allows others to know that it isn't a stub that does need work to reach "start" class level, allowing them to concentrate on those that still are stubs.
If you are honestly proposing a "pilot program" though, you should probably do so in at least a separate section, and add additional qualifiers. Would "comments" from a previous assessment for another project count or not? How would the articles be selected for getting comments or not? Would this apply to all articles, including those one paragraph or less, or not? Some of us might be willing to work with that program, if we had a clearer understanding of the experiment's parameters. John Carter 22:05, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
I'll figure out the best way over the next few days and come back with a proposal. If anyone has any thoughts, let me know. Neil ╦ 22:12, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
A rating alone isn't useless, because the ratings will be used to help decide which of our nearly 2 million articles goes into Wikipedia 1.0. However, I think you make a very fair point that we could be doing more to help people improve the articles. Leaving comments for every article might not be scaleable, and I would wager that a minority of articles are actively managed by eager editors; if that's correct perhaps we could consider having our template direct people to a page where they can get more assistance about what improvements are needed? --kingboyk 22:07, 17 July 2007 (UTC) (edit conflict)
I thought only FAs and GAs went into WP 1.0? And perhaps only leaving comments on articles where it's obvious there's been people using the talk page? I don't know. I don't think there's a formal rule that needs to be put in place here - just a request to participants that if they have the time and the inclination, try leaving a quick sentence on the talk page whilst posting the assessment template to suggest what could be done to improve the article whenever they can. Neil ╦ 22:12, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
Unless things have changed radically since I last looked, they were going to use some formula of quality and importance (actually quality/importance of WikiProject/importance within WikiProject, for those WikiProjects which assess article importance). So, a stub article on a vital subject would go in, an FA on a marginal topic would probably go in too; a stub on something trivial certainly wouldn't. For the current state of play I suggest you ask the nice folks over there, though :) (and perhaps let me know too ;)). --kingboyk 22:16, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
I would imagine any stubs on a "vital subject" (if any remain) would be a priority for collaborative improvement. I'll see if I can find their latest criteria, it's exact mechanics changes on a weekly basis, pretty much. Neil ╦ 22:39, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Proposal

It has been proposed by me (SpecialWindler) that a new bot go through and assess certain articles. These certain articles are categorised in the Unassessed category but also in an Assessed category (either as FA, A, GA, B, Start or Stub). However there are many articles which have been assessed as one thing while another project has yet to assess the article. The bot's proposal would be to assess the unassessed article as the other projects assessment, which would save time for that assessment.

Take Talk:Shane Perry as an example, it is rated as Start for the WikiProject Biography but unassessed for the Rugby league WikiProject. Would it not save the time of the Rugby league assessment team to have it assessed as Start by a bot. However the problem is that various WikiProjects have different assessment criteria. While most projects base it of this {{Grading scheme}}, some may not and wouldn't like a bot to do that.

If you would like to make a suggestion about this bot proposal you may want to add a suggestion at this page under the section "Comments from WikiProjects", in which you should state which WikiProject you come from. You may also want to look at the background of this proposal at Bot requests (under "WikiProject assessing" section) and then Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team (under "bot" section).

This message was substed from this page to alert some WikiProjects whether this bot is a good idea, to see if it can be run. It is planned that some WikiProjects will not like the idea and can be excluded from this bot, if it does go ahead. Thankyou. SpecialWindler talk 10:11, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

I think this is a very ill-advised idea - you need a human being for it. The reason is, if article contain information within the scope of several wikiprojects, it might deal well with one aspect but terribly with the other - take Scottish Parliament building for instance - before it's FAC it was really great on the history and politics, but badly deficient in its treatment of the architecture - if I'm rating an article that spans projects, I only consider the scope of my project, rather than assume an expertise I do not have. --Joopercoopers 18:50, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] FAC William Claiborne

The article linked above has been sitting in FAC for a little while and has been little noticed. Comments are welcome. Geraldk 02:50, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Help needed on Caesar Cardini

I ask a native English speaker to please correct my edit, and to check for further shortcomings. Please see also my request on Talk:Caesar Cardini#Fair use?. 'Thanks, Wolfgang -- any IP. 07:13, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Shri Prabhuji

I am a fairly ignorant member of Wikiproject:biography, what do others think about this page? Is it appropriate for Wikipedia? What should be done about such articles? Anarchia 11:51, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

The last paragraph is clearly POV and should be removed immediately. The format could be altered a little to conform better to the Wikipedia:Manual of Style (biographies) and evidently to Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons. I'm fairly sure that the individual is notable as per WP:NOTABILITY, but I didn't see anything in the article itself which I can clearly point to to attest to that. If there is a non-trivial mention in a published work, that should be included to establish notability. Generally, articles which might contain a lot of data, but are not particularly well formatted, are tagged with {{cleanup}}, with notes on the talk page to indicate the specific areas of concern. Also, if notability can't be established, sometimes the articles are nominated for deletion on that basis. That is the primary reason it's imperative to have either an assertion of notability as per WP:BIO, or have an explicit reference which can verify such notability. John Carter 17:36, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the advice - very helpful! Anarchia 21:22, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Bill Clinton

Hi, I am trying to get the biography article of Bill Clinton to FA. I however have been editing the article in great chunks over the last few months and am in desperate need of fresh perspectives from other editors, in particular on style, grammar and prose. The article is currently at Peer review and I would most welcome any comments! Wikipedia:Peer review/Bill Clinton. The article has over 100 references and is very close to FA, it just needs some finishing touches by other experienced editors. Thank you for your help! (Barnstars will be given!) LordHarris 23:12, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sortkey and birth/death categories standardization project

For a few weeks now, there have been preliminary efforts underway to prepare the groundwork for a project to use bots and humans together to standardise and update the sortkeys (the parameters that ensure that John Lennon appears under 'L' in categories, instead of under 'J'). and birth and death categories used in biographical articles. Currently there is DEFAULTSORT (a magic word used in articles) and the listas parameter of the WPBiography template (used on talk pages, and which indirectly uses DEFAULTSORT as well). See Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Polbot 3, User:Polbot/ideas/defaultsort, and User talk:Carcharoth/Polbot3 trial run for details. This 'sortkey project' is also gathering data with the aim of having every biographical article on Wikipedia having the correct DEFAULTSORT value on both the article and the talk page. Once that is done, a category Category:Biography articles can be created that will have all the articles correctly DEFAULTSORTed (at least that is the theory). What I want to ask here is for volunteers to help analyse chunks of data. The current plan is to have 380 pages dealing with 1000 articles each. The data would list 10 parameters (many of which will be blank), some from the WPBiography talk page template, and some from the article page itself:

Name|cl=|nb=|mwg=|lv=|bc=|dc=|la=|ds=|pn=|cp=
A. N. Example|cl=FA|nb=yes|mwg=|lv=yes|bc=1956|dc=Living|la=Example, A. N.|ds=|pn=|cp=Example

Here, cl is the article's class (to help filter out lists and disambiguation pages), nb is the non-bio parameter (similarly, these can be filtered out), mwg is to filter out the musician workgroup articles (many of which are not about a single person), lv is for living people, bc and dc are the values of the birth and death year categories (if they are there), la is the listas parameter, ds is the DEFAULTSORT parameter, pn is the Wikipedia:Persondata name parameter, and cp are the category pipe-sorting parameters (if any).

The aim is to analyse the data to identify several possibilities (including missing birth death categories) and for humans to suggest the correct sortkey where it is missing, or merely to confirm that the existing sortkeys are correct and can be extended over all the places sortkeys are used. What volunteers would need to be able to do is to manipulate the data in a program like Excel (or whatever is suitable), identify cases like "has birth category, does not have death category, lacks living person category, lacks lv=yes" (solution: add Category:Living people and lv=yes), and also to check the list for obvious mistakes. Another example would be "has death category but no birth category" (solution: add Category:Year of birth missing or Category:Year of birth unknown). Then there are the sort keys: an example here would be "only sortkey is la=Lennon, John" (confirm this is correct and solution is add ds=Lennon, John). Or a case where "cp=Lennon, John and la=Lennon, John" (solution: add ds=Lennon, John). These are simple examples, and there are more complicated ones, but that can be discussed later.

It is important that volunteers have at least a rudimentary awareness of index naming conventions (or a willingness to learn). Asian naming conventions for example, where the 'family name' is written first. Or Arabic naming conventions. Some of the material at Wikipedia:LoPbN Meta-structure may be of help here. Also, it helps to have some background in history, so as to be aware that not all historical people have birth and death dates, and how to handle articles on legendary people (eg Category:Old Testament saints).

Anyway, the point is that this will take a lot of effort and needs lots of people to help out. If you would be interested, or want to be notified of further developments, please sign up below with some indication of what you would want to help with. Please also discuss in the discussion section. Thanks. Carcharoth 13:45, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sign up

  • Helping to analyse the data and keeping the overall project going. Carcharoth 13:45, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Me, of course! – Quadell (talk) (random) 02:17, 19 July 2007 (UTC) (operator of User:Polbot)
  • This is not my sign-up, but a gesture of support, an endorsement of the importance of the work contemplated. I can't comfortably commit before November, tho i'm confident that subtracting my contrib count now from that in early April (yes, my contrib count surely decreased) would demonstrate my potential for contributing to such dog-work, when the timing is better.
    --Jerzy•t 19:47, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion

  • Many of the names in the Category:Old Testament saints were listed as Biographies because generally at least one religious group will insist that they were all real people, and I didn't think it would be a good idea to alienate them by keeping the Biography banner off those particular articles. I'd be willing to help as possible, but acknowledge that the specific facts relating to naming conventions of other cultures are beyond me. Can we have some volunteers to work specifically with articles of people with non-English name structures? John Carter 13:56, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
    Good idea. Any idea where to ask for that sort of specialised knowledge? Carcharoth 14:10, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
    • I'd think the members of a given geographical area or state project would probably be the best ones in general for info on how to alphabetize names of people from that area. John Carter 14:40, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Regarding naming conventions, I have found Wikipedia:Categorization of people#Ordering names in a category and the talk pages archives and latest talk pages at Wikipedia talk:Categorization of people are also relevant. And more naming conventions than you can shake a stick at are here. Carcharoth
    • See also: Name#See also and Category:Surname_disambiguation_templates Studerby 15:45, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
    • Please don't blindly trust the native speakers' opinions. E.g., Icelandic 2nd names are patronyms and thus disappear rather than passing into the next generation, so no, they aren't really surnames. But the "use common names" guideline should be paralleled with "don't ignore how names are commonly construed", and it seems clear that while engaged in economic activity abroad, Icelanders overwhelmingly pretend their patronyms are surnames, except with those interested in the distinction. Some WPians, perhaps Icelandic nationalists or terminal cultural egalitarians, seem to believe that even cultures encompassing 1/3 million people are entitled to the "respect" of taking it for granted that the rest of the world remembers what their esoteric quirks are. (We of course need to describe these. E.g., we presumably note that the Eastern Orthodox don't regard Christmas as falling in January, but that shouldn't stop us from putting "Eastern Orthodox celebrate Christmas" (or some similar expression) on our page for the appropriate January day: unless otherwise noted, all references to modern dates refer to the Gregorian calendar, not others that use the same 12 months and usually agree on what year it is; pretending blindness to that, or to users' likelihood of thinking of Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson as "President Grímsson", would be obstruction of accessibility.)
      --Jerzy•t 21:20, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Some of the guidance linked to above is worth quoting in full:

    "People with multiple-word last names are usually sorted by the first capitalized element, though this is a complex field and there are exceptions and inconsistencies. But for coding reasons the first letter of each word is capitalized in the actual sort text. The French and Spanish "de" or "du" and German "von" are usually not sorted on, except for some examples living in English-speaking countries, like Corne Du Plessis (D). But the Italian "De" or "Di" usually is sorted on. Dutch/Flemish/Belgian/South African names are especially unpredictable. Often, historical European figures with local names are treated differently from modern figures with the "same" name living in English-speaking countries - thus Anthony van Dyck and Steve Van Dyck are sorted on D and V respectively. Some examples: "Ludwig van Beethoven → Beethoven, Ludwig Van", Otto von Bismarck → "Bismarck, Otto Von", Giuseppe Di Stefano → "Di Stefano, Giuseppe", Jan van Eyck → "Eyck, Jan Van", Guy de Maupassant → "Maupassant, Guy De", Martin Van Buren → "Van Buren, Martin, and "Jean-Claude Van Damme " →Van Damme, Jean-Claude"." - Wikipedia:Categorization_of_people#Ordering_names_in_a_category

    • That entire section will have to be compulsory reading for anyone getting involved in this. Carcharoth 14:02, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Questions of fact on the John Galsworthy page

Hello to the members of the Wikiproject Biography. A fellow editor posted the following questions of fact about this article on my talk page. I am taking the opportunity of posting them here so that you members of this project can take a look at them and see if you can iron out the conflicting info. Any help that can be provided by the wikipedia community will be appreciated. MarnetteD | Talk 16:31, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

I am worried by some possible misinformation in the article on John Galsworthy, the English novelist, playwright and essayist.
Galsworthy lived at Grove Lodge, Hampstead. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1932, and died a year later. The received view is that he was interred at the nearby Highgate Cemetery, close to where Karl Marx and novelist George Eliot are also buried, But the Wiki article states that he was cremated and his ashes scattered from an aeroplane over the South Downs.
Further obfuscation follows with an External Link to John Galsworthy's Gravesite, which suggests he was buried at New College, Oxford, complete with a fuzzy pic of the gravestone.
In today's Sunday Times, a literary puzzle identifies a famous author '"buying a house in a village in 1920.....his ashes scattered nearby upon his death in 1933, one year after being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature."
I would prefer not to resolve this conflict of information myself, but do you know of a wikipedian who might check all the facts and eliminate the nonsense? Best wishes John Thaxter 09:17, 22 July 2007 (UTC)


John Thaxter found the answers to his questions above. Please go to the discussion pages for Mr Galsworthy to see what he found if you are interested. MarnetteD | Talk 22:11, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Limited Knowledge

I created the Limited Knowledge template - you can use it now by adding {{Limitedknowledge}} to the talk page of an article that you, as an editor, are attesting has a limited resource of information. The template is editable, but won't update on any pages it has been added to. --Ozgod 18:20, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Obtaining free images

I do a lot of work on obtaining images from article subjects to illustrate biographies - for anyone else interested in this kind of work, I wrote an essay/how-to at User:Videmus Omnia/Requesting free content. Help yourself if it's at all useful to you. Videmus Omnia Talk 22:18, 22 July 2007 (UTC)