Template talk:WikiProject Biography/Archive 1

Importance categories need to be implemented
I had some wine with my lunch so I don't much feel like tackling conditional code at the moment :) It needs to be done though. --kingboyk 17:50, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
 * I've already added that :-) I think I did it Friday... plange 23:00, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
 * oops, now I know what you're talking about-- forgot to actually include them in this template ;-) done...plange 01:28, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
 * You also need to add usage instructions. --kingboyk 08:31, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Strange extra spacing
This template seems to produce an extra gap after it (e.g. here) that I can't quite figure out. Kirill Lokshin 04:39, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
 * I noticed that too, and it's only if it's been given a quality and there are no comments left, which I can't figure out why it's doing that...plange 04:44, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Attempting to narrow down:

plange 04:58, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Talk:Abraham_Lincoln no weird spacing - has quality scale and importance scale and comments
 * Talk:Albert_Einstein weird spacing - has quality scale and importance scale and no comments
 * Talk:Vivien_Leigh weird spacing - has no quality scale but has importance scale and no comments
 * Talk:Norman Pilcher no weird spacing - has no quality scale but has importance scale and comments
 * Talk:Allan Williams no weird spacing - has no scales but has comments
 * Talk:Arthur Conan Doyle weird spacing - no scales and no comments


 * It's got to be the coding at the bottom (adding category if it has comments), since I added that today plange 05:01, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
 * We need to get rid of it, it's downright ugly. I can't see what the problem is at the moment but I'd suggest removing all not-strictly-necessary linebreaks and empty HTML comments. --kingboyk 19:18, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Yippee, Andrew C fixed it! plange 18:38, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I think there's probably a bit more white space we could get rid of. If anyone wants to try it I'd strongly recommend trying in a sandbox first though as it's real easy to break the code. --kingboyk 19:11, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Template name
I don't like the name of the template. First of all, I'm finding it hard to remember. Secondly, "Bio" could be biology etc etc. I wondered about using Template:Biography but that slot is filled by... well I'm not sure what it is, it seems to be an instructions page rather than a template. --kingboyk 09:10, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree, I'm having a hard time remembering too. This was inherited from previously... how about WPBiography? plange 15:18, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes, that might be better. I've freed up Template:Biography but I think I might have misunderstood the purpose of what was there and may have to move it back. WPBiography would be a safer bet :) --kingboyk 19:18, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Yep, sorry, that's an article outline, so we need to keep that plange 19:20, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Moved it back. --kingboyk 19:24, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

I've renamed it WPBiography. Existing template instances ought to work, but any I find on bot runs I'll rename. --kingboyk 18:10, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Thank you kingboyk! plange 18:37, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Problem with usage note examples
I have now added usage notes and examples above. However, my second example, which uses all available fields, has automatically placed this talk page in several categories. Does anyone know of a way to avoid category inclusion without removing the example? Thanks. Road Wizard 23:01, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Not sure, I'm just learning the ins and outs of these things, but thanks for tackling the documentation! Also, in doing so, I see I have some red-links I need to populate in the categories below plange 23:10, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
 * If you're feeling brave, you could subst the template and remove the categories. Kaldari 00:11, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the suggestion, but I was hoping that we could keep the examples as a current reflection of the template. However, if this isn't possible, we will just have to live with it. There is also the option of leaving the template in the categories, as one extra page in each of those categories won't do too much harm. Are there any suggestions on which way we should go? To misquote Shakespeare, "To subst, or not to subst, that is the question." Road Wizard 00:20, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I would vote to subst, since some of these categories are going to be actively used for the 0.5/1.0 effort and should remain uncluttered. Kaldari 00:45, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

These templates should never be subst'd in real usage, never never never. However, when it comes to examples/demonstrations on Wikipedia: pages substing and editing might be the only way. The alternative is to make the template even more complicated for little return. --kingboyk 13:35, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Lower case parameters
doesn't place talk pages in the correct categories, it leaves them in unassessed. We need either to fix this or make the instructions more robust on this point. --kingboyk 13:37, 6 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I've found that the class and importance are case sensitive, so typing start will not work, but Start will. ··· 日本穣 ? · Talk to Nihonjo e  17:45, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Hopefully fixed. --kingboyk 20:27, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
 * It's only partialy fixed as you have only corrected the category assignment. Template assignment is still case sensitive. It shouldn't be a problem for the single character and word options, but dual character options require the second character to be capitalised. This is because fa and ga do not have associated templates, i.e. fa-Class and ga-Class don't exist yet, but FA-Class and GA-Class do. Should the alternative templates be created as redirects? Road Wizard 21:22, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Aha, hadn't thought of that. In answer to your question, I'd say yes. Could you do it? I'm doing some heavy template work and reparameterising at the moment. --kingboyk 21:26, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Blp
I'm wondering if we ought to transclude the "living person" warning text, either by transcluding Blp or by having both templates transclude the same boilerplate text. This would allow us to more easily pass on "complaints" (such as I have just received) about the content of that warning direct to the people responsible for the policy.

On the other hand, if my bot run is allowed to complete there might not be any usages of that template left, since I will be replacing any found with our template and living=yes. --kingboyk 16:03, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Wouldn't be a bad idea-- they still keep changing the dang text on that template and so it hasn't finalized. I keep checking on the tag and changing ours whenever they make another change. Sorry you're having to bear all the complaints! plange 19:23, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Well without having read this (and noticing that the text of this template was out of date) I went ahead and changed the code to transclude . This should properly cover the template. :-) (→ Netscott ) 18:05, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

How to test <>
How do I test that something does not eq something? I'd like to not show the line that asks for comments if it's rated FA, but not sure how to do it... Thanks! plange 02:14, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Has this question been answered, or are you still looking for help? Road Wizard 22:04, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Help with importance
I'm tying to add the importance code to another project template (WPJ), but somewhere I'm messing it up. Would someone much more familiar with this code check it out (that template, above) and let me know where the extraneous code is from. The extra bit of code appears outside the project template. Thanks! ··· 日本穣 ? · Talk to Nihonjo e  17:43, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
 * sorry, couldn't help you much! I tried.... plange 06:55, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks for trying to figure it out. Anyone else willing to give it a shot? ··· 日本穣 ? · Talk to Nihonjo e  17:35, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Can you put the code you are having trouble with in my sandbox? I can then play around with it a bit without messing up the main template. Road Wizard 18:03, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Done. Thanks for your help. If we can get it to appear only when it's been specified (as with the class) that would be great, too. This code is just too complicated for me. (^_^;; ··· 日本穣 ? · Talk to Nihonjo e  18:23, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Importance field
Have we abandoned using the importance field on this template, or has it just been disabled by accident? If you take a look at the full example above, you will notice that "importance" is used in the example code but that no entry appears in the template. Road Wizard 18:06, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
 * We've decided to only show it for Top...plange 18:15, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Should the usage notes be amended then? I assume that using the other options is still valid for categorisation purposes? Road Wizard 18:19, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure it's such a great idea to have a visible effect only for Top. The reaction I had when I first assessed an article was "hey, that template does not work properly." I think it's also important for people that want to review the assessment to make it more visible. Pascal.Tesson 14:57, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree. I think also that Comments should be displayed and encouraged for all classes of articles, including GA and FA. --kingboyk 15:00, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
 * OK, will show comments again, but since the project has decided as a project not to grade below Top, I can't see how showing the others helps things-- it gets us into tugs-of-war on who should be high, mid, etc., that we don't have time or energy for. We're having a hard enough time deciding who gets Top. Was actually thinking I'd change the word Top to "Core"...plange 15:39, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Oh I see. I must have missed that discussion. In that case then, perhaps we should discard the importance= parameter and replace it with a boolean (yes/no) core= param? (We'd silently discard importance=, of course, so that there's no need to revisit the 50,000+ articles already tagged!!!). --kingboyk 15:51, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Better decide soon. The Core list is almost complete and as soon as it is we will be auditing the 200 Core articles to make sure they are marked "Top" or "core=yes" or whatever. Kaldari 05:23, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

I'd personally prefer that all levels of importance are displayed. -- Zanimum 19:26, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
 * So would I. VegaDark 08:23, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Please see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Biography --kingboyk 08:48, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Living people
The "Living people biography" box has just disappeared from Talk pages where "Living=Yes" is included in this template. Anyone know why? --Mais oui! 08:28, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
 * It's case sensitive, so make sure you're using living=yes plange 15:21, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Template size
The amount of space that this template takes up on a talk page is a bit excessive, IMO. Any ideas for how we could reduce it? Personally, I don't think we need the link to the Biography Portal or the Biography to-do list in this template. Kaldari 21:20, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Can you bring this up on the Project talk page? Not many members watch this page, thanks! :-) plange 21:22, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Will do. Kaldari 21:32, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Whitespace is ugly
Can someone change the BLP box when its being transcluded with this template so that it doesn't look as bad? At least change the background and widen it out; the space around the BLP box doesn't look very professional. Hbdragon88 23:53, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

"Biography To-do"
This ought to be removed, and put onto WP:WPBIO or somewhere else, not lurking on every single living person's biography's talkpage. It is: As far as I can tell, this todo list has only the questionable saving grace of presenting a tasklist in many places, though not in anything approaching a highly visible form, which somewhat (entirely?) reduces its usefulness. Clicking a link to WP:WPBIO is exactly the same number of clicks as clicking 'Show', and has neither of the drawbacks listed above. --Sam Pointon 23:18, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
 * 1) Not actually contributing anything to the talkpage the template is placed on;
 * 2) Useless and unviewable for those with Javascript turned off, effectively serving as a means of wasting bandwidth and load times (in Firefox at least). Javascript-unfriendliness may also disadvantage those using screenreaders, though I cannot test this myself.
 * this has been done... did it just a little earlier today. plange

freaking HUGE
Seriously, add a hide/show dotad to this thing, it's freaking HUGE. -- Ned Scott 14:33, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Agreed, something seriously needs to be done about the size of this template. Kaldari 15:37, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I personally think the size is quite reasonable. It doesn't seem overly padded or verbose. Just putting the opposing view. --kingboyk 15:47, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Wow, don't think it's any bigger than normal-- the only thing that makes it bigger than other projects is if the person is living and it's actually saving space because before you'd have the blp template separate and now they're combined. Same with activepol, so we're actually saving space on the talk page by combining them into this template. If the person is dead, it's not very large at all. We hide the extra stuff like if it has had an assessment, etc., and we took away the to-do list. plange 19:49, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
 * While that is true, the living persons template and other project templates are also too large. It's rediculous that half the pages I edit require scrolling down a page or two before you can even see the table of contents on the Talk page. And of all the space-hogging templates, this one is the worst. At the very least, we should remove the Biography to do list. First of all, it's confusing since it has nothing to do with the article. My first assumption was that it was a place to put to-do items for the article. Second of all it's redundant since you can see the same list of tasks by clicking on the WikiProject Biography link. Either way it requires 1 click. Thirdly, it takes up significant vertical space in the template, which is already too big. Kaldari 23:25, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
 * The Todo list is long gone isn't it? I don't see it anyway. --kingboyk 23:32, 16 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, the to-do list was removed several days ago. If you have a problem with the size of the living person template, then you need to take it up with blp. That template HAS to be there and truly, if you just put blp and our tag (without the blp warning) separately on the talk page, the amount of space it would take up would be larger-- by us incorporating blp into our template we were doing our part (I thought) to help reduce the amount of space taken up. plange 00:47, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Blp (2)
WPBeatles is directly transluding Blp as indeed this template used to do. Now, I've found that (imho) it looks much tidier if the Blp template is displayed outside the WPBeatles box. See Talk:Dhani Harrison. It looks like two seperate templates but actually the living person warning is coming from WPBeatles. --kingboyk 13:55, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I've done the same here. See if you like it. If you don't, feel free to revert. --kingboyk 13:17, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Seperate Mathbot worklists for the Workgroups?
Another innovation in WPBeatles is seperate assessment categories based on sub-topic. This gives us thematic worklists at Wikipedia 1.0: I think the same strategy would be an absolute winner in WPBiography. All you would need to do is place the talk pages in the Bio quality/importance categories as before (I think in the case of Biography all articles should appear on the main list), but for those articles belonging to a workgroup place them in additional new articles by quality/articles by importance/articles with comments categories. If you have a mooch about through WPBeatles' categories you'll see what I mean. Set up fake WikiProjects and WikiProject talk pages for each name by redirecting (see Version 1.0 Editorial Team/George Harrison articles by quality, WikiProject George Harrison, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject George Harrison), and a category tree for each (see e.g. Category:George Harrison articles by quality). Let me know if you decide to run with this as I'd need to modify WPBeatles and WPKLF too. --kingboyk 14:02, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
 * The Beatles
 * John Lennon (
 * Paul McCartney
 * George Harrison
 * Ringo Starr
 * Apple Corps and Apple Records
 * George Martin
 * Brian Epstein
 * I definitely want to do this! This was the thing I tried last week that I was having trouble with and posted about-- I'll take a look at your code and see where I went wrong. When I did it, I had all the bio articles appearing in the work group... plange 14:06, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Please consider leaving unassessed articles in only Category:Unassessed biography articles though; we have so many articles that it's caused Oleg some problems, so let's keep the workgroup lists small.


 * It's relatively easy to do: just nest the conditionals. if a&e group then (if class=Stub then...) end if. --kingboyk 14:23, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
 * That's what I thought I did... it was late at night though, will take another look. I put the code in my sandbox which you blanked, but will revert it and try again. plange 15:22, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Right on man.... give me a holler if you need any help. I'm currently searching out and tagging stray living people bios. --kingboyk 15:39, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Hollering :-) I tried it again last night and got wacky results :-P plange 14:50, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
 * OK, when I have a moment I'll see what I can do. --kingboyk 15:59, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Tis done. 99% sure it works (tested in sandbox). --kingboyk 21:57, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Awesome, thank you! very weird though, because it looks like the only thing I did wrong was put the things in there? plange 22:23, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Not sure. Maybe! It doesn't matter though, tis done. I hope you weren't experimenting on the live template?! That's a big NO NO NO now :) It's used in getting on for 100,000 articles and every little change can cause 100,000 jobs to go onto the Mediawiki job queue. Edit and test in a sandbox, and then paste in the new code. (I broke this rule today too as I didn't know that substing in Blp would break things... ;) --kingboyk 22:28, 18 August 2006 (UTC) PS I'm setting up the new assessment categories now. They're not nicely formatted or owt like that, it's a rush job. If you want em nice and neat follow behind me. I've called them all "Biography (subject)" so that they appear together in the Mathbot lists.
 * oooh, I didn't know about the queue thing! Yikes. Where can I learn more about these kinds of things? I didn't even know about Mediawiki. plange 22:35, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

<- (reindent) The job queue can be seen at Special:Statistics and there's a link there to read about it. Meta is the site where all the stuff on Mediawiki can be found. You can even download and install your own copy if you like. (My Linux box has a complete - but now old - Wikipedia running! :)). --kingboyk 22:39, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Importance for work groups
I didn't add importance for work groups for a reason. Importance to the Biography project and importance to a workgroup are quite different.

Consider QE2. Top importance in royalty, surely, but currently considered only High in biography.

Furthermore, some people can belong to more than one workgroup:


 * Ronald Reagan - Top importance in politics, low importance in A&E.
 * Grace Kelly - Low to middle importance in royalty, high importance in A&E.

The only way you're going to do importance for workgroups in any sane way is to have a seperate importance parameter for each workgroup. I personally don't think it's worth the hassle but if you want to track importance that's what you'll have to do. --kingboyk 13:18, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Well, here's my reasoning. Project already knows that Top is only assigned to people on the Core biographies page, so I figured the work groups can be the ones to hash out High on down, since it's the work groups that can judge their importance within their discipline (which is the main qualifier for the other importance ratings) and I figure that, for overlaps, it's not a big deal because we'll just go with the higher one.... plange 17:35, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
 * it's not quite as straightforward as that though... the idea is that the WP1.0 team will have some sort of formula, Project Importance * Article Importance = Enyclopedic Importance (I'm not entirely confident it will ever come to fruition but that's the idea). What you're proposing has the potential to break that formula to an extent. It's not a huge deal so I'm willing to overlook this slight bodge ;) but just be aware that it is a bit of a bodge :) --kingboyk 17:47, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Well except that I see the work groups as the best judge for what meets the High, Mid and Low definitions since the definitions are discipline specific. Perhaps the part of the overlap is a bodge and we can tackle that separately-- perhaps we say that the overlapping workgroups reach a consensus on how it relates and fits instead of picking the highest. But even the examples you gave would be fine with going with the highest. Ronald Reagan meets High and so does Grace Kelly for the project as a whole-- they meet the definition for High. plange 19:25, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I don't disagree that "the work groups a[re] the best judge for what meets the High, Mid and Low definitions", that's really my point :) Are you challenging me, by the way, to find examples other than those I gave? Hmm... I'll sleep on it! :P --kingboyk 19:38, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
 * me confused...plange 21:16, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Do you want me to add the workgroup importance categories to WPBeatles and WPKLF then? --kingboyk 18:59, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Done. --kingboyk 10:30, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Unassessed articles cats
Also something I didn't implement for a reason :) At present numbers it's OK, but if I or someone else bot-tags large numbers of articles with workgroup params (see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Biography), thus increasing by many thousands the number of unassessed articles in a workgroup, we could find Mathbot on a go-slow again. So, whilst I have no objection to the latest edit (it's good in a way) if we see the numbers increasing much beyond 1,000 we ought to alert Oleg. He can then decide whether to do the workgroups as part of the seperate Biography run. We don't want other projects hating us because we make Mathbot go slow :) --kingboyk 19:03, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Hmm, so should we keep an eye on it and request a separate run in advance if we think we're going to need it? The reason I did it that way was because I figured people in certain work groups could have an easy link to go to to assess articles.... plange 22:21, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep a close eye on it, yes please. --kingboyk 10:08, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Ambiguity
The Living Persons version of the template says, in part, "Poorly sourced, potentially libellous material must be removed immediately." Does this mean:


 * a) material must be BOTH poorly sourced and potentially libellous to be removed immediately and immune to the 3RR?


 * b) material can be EITHER poorly sourced OR potentially libellous to be removed immediately and immune to the 3RR?

--Calton | Talk 14:46, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Don't know, you'll need to ask that over at blp - they're the ones that worked out that template plange 14:49, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Redundant category?
Maybe I'm missing something, but if all the articles are in one of the sub-categories of Category:Biography articles by quality, is there any need to add them to Category:WikiProject Biography articles directly as well? Kirill Lokshin 16:04, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Not really. I was going to say it makes it easier to get lists for a bot, but what-transcludes-here can be used for that. Ditching it is fine by me. Plange? --kingboyk 16:09, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Fine by me-- that was kind of an accident anyway, since I think I just copied the code from MILHIST - I must have done something wrong... plange 17:29, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

picture needs rotating
the picture sould rotate every now and then. I'll kick it off. WP:BB, and change it every week or so. --Ghetteaux 21:43, 27 August 2006 (UTC)


 * No, it doesn't. And there is now a fair use image in the box, which is prohibited in the template userspace. Hbdragon88 22:00, 27 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Be bold, yes, but not so much when editing a template which is used in over 100,000 pages. First of all, every time a link changes in the template (including changing an image) Mediawiki has to update over 100,000 entries in it's link table. Secondly, the image being used was the result of a lot of discussion, unlike the one you've decided to add unilaterally.


 * Finally, and most importantly, the image in question is copyright. It's here under the fair use laws. It's not fair use to splash it over 100,000 talk pages and Wikipedia policy forbids fair use images outside the main space and the front page.


 * Please don't replace the image again without discussing it first. --kingboyk 22:03, 27 August 2006 (UTC) (edit conflict with Hbdragon88)

Protection
I see that somebody has protected the template, meaning that only admins can edit it. I think it's a good idea because of the template's exposure, but OTOH non-admins - in particular Plange - have made substantial contributions to it and would be likely to continue doing so. Are any non-admins affected by this change happy to submit their changes via me or another admin or do you want to lobby for unprotection? --kingboyk 10:06, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
 * hmm... Let me think on this... Thanks for asking! plange 14:03, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I'd rather have it unprotected but on many watchlists until such time as protection becomes necessary. The reason is, of course, that as the only admin round here I have to do all the work and it's become something of a full time job :) --kingboyk 18:08, 5 September 2006 (UTC) (or we get Plange promoted! :P )
 * I agree-- it's been rather frustrating as I feel helpless not being able to implement things or help out... What if we just protect it against non-logged in users? We could also word it more strongly to say something like, no changing unless discussed first on Talk page or it will be considered vandalism and action taken accordingly? --plange 18:23, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Let's try it. I'll downgrade to semi-protection and move protection. Hopefully though it won't need any serious work until we get any more child projects. As well as announcing the template changes in the newsletter we can also ask members to watchlist the template to look out for vandalism. If vandalism does become an issue we can protect it again but let's take the optimistic route for now. --kingboyk 18:45, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I made a tiny change. I only put in a comma but I was affraid to click the save button.  All these warnings and protection have me all up tight.  As it should be.. haha Morphh 19:20, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm about to block you for 1 week. ONLY KIDDING!! :P Thanks for that change.--kingboyk 19:27, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Major change
I've just made some major changes, which in my edit summary I described as being "per talk" - actually, it's per Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Biography.

It seemed to be working in my sandbox, but of course paste it in and let it go live and a little bug shows up (fixed now).

If somebody would undertake to clean up, we need the following done (jobs in italics I will do):
 * Move our importance categories to the newly named priority categories per this diff (Basically, it's just rename everything from -importance to -priority. When it's done, let me know and I'll delete the old categories. I don't think there's enough categories to make it worth asking someone with a suitable bot to do it.
 * Create Category:Biography articles needing priority parameter replacement (I'll do this) done
 * Update template instructions (I'll do this) Done, needs copyediting
 * Change all mentions of importance in project docs to priority, any other updates that need to be done
 * Urgent: replace all core articles' importance=Top with core=yes and priority=Top. Done by bot
 * Liase with Mathbot author to have the bot pick up "by priority" categories (I'll do this)

--kingboyk 19:36, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Looking at a few live examples belonging to workgroups, I think the conditional code importance= might need to be moved (to within the catch-all part of priority=?). Have to do some jobs, will look into this when I get back. --kingboyk 19:42, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I started to populate these redlinks, but shouldn't we make sure Oleg can (and is willing to) change the bot to pick these up? Also, do we need to have core articles marked with both core=yes and priority=Top? Wouldn't we only populate priorities for High and lower? plange 02:13, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I've asked but he must be away. I couldn't wait any longer as I want to get my bot running again, and I'd be extremely surprised if Oleg wouldn't oblige - it's not a major change in coding terms, and it's been forced on us a bit.


 * priority= is now for workgroups only!!! An article could be Top priority to a workgroup but not on the (very small) core bios list. So, yes, core articles need both parameters :) --kingboyk 08:37, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Ah, cool (on all counts) plange 13:15, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
 * When the new categories are blue, we should have a truckload of old categories (which will empty over time, the Mediawiki job queue is currently very high). Please give me a list of any such categories you've replaced, and I'll delete the old ones. Please don't forget to put onto the new cats' talk pages :) I'll do a bot run for core=yes. Got to pop out, so au revoir for now. --kingboyk 15:40, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

BTW, have you heard from Oleg? Getting worried that it won't be possible as we haven't had importance/priority appearing in our statistics in awhile... --plange 18:49, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
 * He's still away I think. It shouldn't be a major change so I'd be surprised if he won't do it - he was willing to run WPBio as a seperate process and has implemented every other change we've asked for (/Comments and importance categories weren't part of the original specification, these are all addons he's provided upon request). --kingboyk 18:56, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Minor Suggestions
Couple small suggestions to the template - After rating an article, the statement "If you rated the article please give a short summary at comments to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses." Proper grammar would have an comma after "If you rated the article,". Also, I haven't seen many people follow the "comment" recommendation. Perhaps something else may be more appropriate - "If you would like recommendations, see WPBiography criteria, post to xyz talk, or create a peer reveiw". Just a thought.

Also, can we get something in the template that does something when you set the need-infobox=yes. I expect many people would add them if they knew how too. Perhaps something like the template that links to the infobox list. Perhaps it could be placed in the "show/hide" feature if not on the main. Just a thought... Morphh 21:13, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I think that's a great idea, though like you said, have it in the show/hide area... plange 03:08, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I don't think we want to abandon the /Comments, since they get picked up by Mathbot. I like the idea about telling editors about the other options though.


 * Totally agree with you about the infobox. In fact, what I've done with album is transclude the "official" album-infobox-needed template. We could either do the same or add a message in the show/hide area. I'm planning to work on my plugin today, but if somebody wants to make these changes in their sandbox then let me know when they're done I'll add them (or, if they're an admin, they can of course edit the template directly :)). --kingboyk 08:26, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
 * oops, I didn't see that he wanted to get rid of /Comments! Yep, I agree, they are used and are very helpful! BTW, I would do the sandbox thing, but I'm about to take a wikibreak for 4 days (!) for Dragon Con (!) so not sure if I'll be able to get to it before then plange 15:50, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Hmm... lol... well, have fun! Please make sure you come back, you're needed! --kingboyk 15:54, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Alright I've done it but in a bit of a hacked fashion (just using Infoboxneeded). --kingboyk 16:08, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Just wondering if using the is the best choice as this project covers many article types.  An actor would be better served with the  or a politician with,  or .  Perhaps a link to Category:People infobox templates or People Infobox templates would work better for this tag.  Morphh 13:41, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
 * See below. If someone can come up with a better solution please change it, or if not an admin post it here for me to change it. Cheers. --kingboyk 13:44, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Admins
Please change Image:Azure-Cross-Or-Heraldry-small.png to Image:Azure-Cross-Or-Heraldry.svg. Silversmith Hewwo 14:32, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Done, thanks. --kingboyk 14:39, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Picture used in BLP part of template
See the discussion at Image talk:Two young girls at Camp Christmas Seals2.jpg concerning the image used in the "Biography of Living Persons" (BLP) part of the template. I see a comment above that there was a lot of discussion over the use of an image. Was it this image being discussed? Carcharoth 15:57, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Replied at Image talk:Two young girls at Camp Christmas Seals2.jpg. --kingboyk 19:22, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Carcharoth 00:03, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Template takes up too much space visually
Visually, these ponderous templates tend to overwhelm low-traffic talk pages. I prefer a cleaner look to most talk pages. Will someone be upset with me if I start removing them from pages where they serve little purpose(i.e., articles to which no one is in a hurry to assign "grades")? Perhaps someone can educate me on the purpose of these templates and why they have to be so huge. And no, I'm not volunteering to redesign the templates to look smaller, I'm just asking if I can delete them from some of the articles I edit frequently.--The Fat Man Who Never Came Back 15:05, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Talk pages aren't for the visual gratification of users, they're a tool. The WikiProject template does such things as:
 * Give us a list of unassessed articles
 * Track gradings and priorities
 * Inform users about the Blp policy
 * Advertise the WikiProject
 * Denote that an article needs attention or an infobox
 * In short, we wouldn't be happy if you went around removing them and sooner or later a bot would put it back anyway.


 * If you look at the code you'll see that considering what the template does it's actually reasonably concise. I do agree though that it could be a bit smaller, trimming some whitespace and a word or two here and there. I don't think it can get any smaller through cutting out features though as they're all useful. --kingboyk 15:26, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

More new parameters
I was hoping to continue and maybe finish work on my plugin today, but I got sidetracked by FAC work (an article from WP:KLF got promoted overnight - hooray!! - so I have to prepare the next nomination), and then along came a massive job for the template. Basically, I've incorporated BRoy belonging to WikiProject British Royalty who are becoming a child project of the Royalty workgroup. See Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Biography/Royalty for some example template instances.

New parameters:
 * british-royalty=yes, within the scope of that project
 * non-bio=yes, for use by Brit Royalty (BR from now on) but maybe other child projects in the future - for tagging articles which are in the scope of BR but aren't biographies, e.g. Windsor Castle
 * template=templatename, for use when infobox-needed=yes can supply a name of infobox template.

--kingboyk 16:13, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Since there are so many different infobox templates - even just in the U.S. section of the Politics workgroup, there are 7 different infoboxes - that it would be better to just say that an infobox is needed.


 * Alternatively, it should prefer the "default" infobox for the workgroup. Infobox Politician for the Politics workgroup, etc.   The way it is, it's just going to result in confusion and a lack of uniformity among articles that should be using the same infobox as eachother.  --Tim4christ17 08:24, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes. I don't like the default template feature at all to be honest. Is there a parameterless template we can call, or could somebody design something for use just within our template? --kingboyk 13:43, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Perhaps a link to Category:People infobox templates or People Infobox templates would work better as a default for this tag. We may want to consider creating our own Infobox page with "recommended" infoboxes for our project.  Also, I wanted to point out that it looks like there is a small format problem with the way the Royalty and nobility work group is presented in the template - see above. Morphh 14:00, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Oh yes, so there is. Well, for the sake of the job queue and my efforts to pull myself away from Wikipedia to programming, I'll fix that little bug at the same time as changing the infobox code (unless someone else fixes it for me in the meantime - this is the downside of the template being protected isn't it! :.


 * Do you approve of at least the way we display "infobox needed". Is is "suitably promiment" or "too large"? If it's suitable, I can subst the infobox-needed template and change it to point to a WPBio infoboxes page as you suggest (provided someone - probably you my friend ;) - is willing to set that page up. --kingboyk 14:04, 5 September 2006 (UTC)


 * The display looks fine to me. I guess the height could be a little smaller but that's getting picky and personal preference. :-)  I can set up a page and get something started but I might not be the best one to determine what is "recommended". We'll need to post this into the project talk so we can get some consensus. Morphh 14:14, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I started this page WikiProject Biography/Infobox. Morphh 14:32, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Nice! I've added a word of caution.... Thanks for tackling this! I've also got infoboxes listed in each work group for ones to use that we can take from there for this... --plange 14:37, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Lovely. Can you please add Infobox British Royalty? Must keep our new bedfellows happy :) --kingboyk 14:40, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Added British Royalty Morphh 14:48, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
 * How about Infobox Military Person? ;-) Kirill Lokshin 14:50, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Added Military Person Morphh 15:16, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

All fixed, I hope and trust. --kingboyk 18:07, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Looks good now - telling them to go to a (short) list of templates is definately the way to go! Good job!  --Tim4christ17 05:33, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure I like the changes to the Royalty. How come the Royalty WG was removed? Why should the BR workgroup have a big banner of its own? I think it should look like the other workgroups. Seems to have two rating boxes as well. Morphh 15:23, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
 * What do you mean it seems to have 2 rating boxes? Talk:Henry VIII of England seems OK to me. The royalty work group shouldn't have been removed, if they've disappeared it's a bug - I'll look into it.
 * Oh, I see - I thought the BR Tag was in addition to the WPBio tag above it. I now see that it replaces the WPBio tag with their own tag. Morphh 16:33, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes. I've configured it as an either/or. (Hopefully) it will work with both tags, but the royalty one is ignored if british royalty is present. --kingboyk 16:55, 6 September 2006 (UTC)


 * As for the formatting, you can't please everyone all the time! :) That's the look they wanted, and they were under no obligation to join with us so I obliged them by giving them the look they wanted. --kingboyk 15:33, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
 * The royalty work group issue was a bug. Geez, it's difficult with so much conditional code because with no colour coding or indentation it's not always clear which text is inside which block of curly brackets :)


 * Anyway, the royalty articles should be added back to the lists overnight . British royalty get their own list as currently configured . --kingboyk 15:51, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
 * ...that's not to say you can't complain about their formatting, if you wish to do that it's a case of complaining to them directly as though their template were standalone. All we've done (I've done, I suppose) is sweeten their joining with us by integrating their template. I felt - and feel - it was a small price to pay to integrate the projects and remove talk page clutter. For the record though, if we're expressing opinions on this, I like their formatting better than ours ;) --kingboyk 16:55, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I know that I've listed Bio's with multiple workgroups (like both Politics & Entertainment). I could easily see selecting someone as both Politics/Brit Royal.  Our format is very nice for this as it lists the additional items.  I also like that we have the Portal and such.  :-)  Morphh 17:26, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Visual output removed due to auto-category effects // D  B  D  21:37, 16 October 2006 (UTC) It all still works. The only thing missing is the portal box, which could be added if need be. --kingboyk 17:29, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
 * You the Man! Morphh 17:42, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Workgroup parameters
I think the workgroup parameter names are unneccesarily lengthy. Shorter is always better, for editors to remember and to minimise tranclusion size.

could have been... I don't know whether we should rename and retag existing instances or not, but I'd certainly recommend more concise names for any new parameters. --kingboyk 16:16, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
 * a&e-work-group=
 * politician-work-group=
 * british-royalty=
 * royalty-work-group=
 * military-work-group=
 * arts=
 * politics=
 * british-royalty=
 * royalty=
 * military=
 * Can't the template be set up to recognize either set of parameters? I know I'd prefer the shorter version, but it does seem like it'd be a lot of trouble to change the old ones...  --Tim4christ17 talk 17:15, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
 * It can be, but it's not as simple as in a real programming language (unless I'm missing something). There's no "or" operator and no assignment. --kingboyk 18:36, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I used MILHIST's method, as I figured that would be familiar to most-- US-task-force=yes, etc. Seems like a lot of trouble to change and personally I like having similar parameters having a portion that is the same; makes it easier to know they have similar functions and purpose. --plange 18:08, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
 * There's certainly no need for a hyphen in work-group. Maybe I'm just a bear of little brain :) --kingboyk 18:36, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Priority = POV
This priority tag is pure POV. Actors/Actresses etc are rated as low, this is pure POV, those interested in that sot of thing may rate them higher such as medium importance, yet Queen Elisabeth is ranked top priority, i may think she is low priority.

See how it is POV, if there are no objections i will remove this in a few days. thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 20:55, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
 * As the tag is only used to facilitate work on the articles, I fail to see how this is a NPOV issue. It's simply a tool to help facilitate work on biography articles.  Also, Actors/Actresses aren't necessarily rated as low - there is an entire Biography WikiProject workgroup dedicated to people in the arts...  --Tim4christ17 talk 23:02, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
 * The priority tags are only for the use of the Biography WikiProject. If you are not a participant of the project, how can you claim that Queen Elizabeth is a low priority for the project to work on? Feel free to start your own project for Actors and Actresses and rate their priority however you please. Or join WikiProject Biography and help us work on improving biography articles (in which case we would certainly appreciate your assistance in rating their priority). Regarding Queen Elizabeth specifically, there was about 3 pages of debate involving half a dozen people to decide her priority. I would not suggest changing it to Low on a whim. Kaldari 23:22, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
 * It was a comparison. priority is POV in the sense every has there own POV on the priority, and only one persons priority can go there. Also, all articles should be treated equally. thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 23:37, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
 * It isn't a question of treating things equally or of POV.  Quite simply, only a certain number of articles can be dealt with in a certain amount of time, so the priority system was developed.   This is a COMMONLY used system that is used by a great many WikiProjects and is considered to be a standard tag for WikiProject banners.   The consensus (that is what controls things like this) has decided, both within this WikiProject and in the community at large, that priority is a useful tool for WikiProjects.   This is not going to change, so just live with it.  --Tim4christ17 talk 23:42, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm afraid the dozen people working in this project cannot work on all biography articles equally, since there are about 20,000. You are correct that in many cases the priority assessment is merely 1 person's opinion, which is not ideal, however, we do not have time to debate the priorities of 20,000 articles. We are much more interested in actually working on them. Regardless, the priorities system is now virtually unused by this project, so really we're all wasting time by debating it. We have recently migrated to the core/not-core system. This is why priority assessments are no longer displayed in the template. At some point it is likely that the priority assessments will be deleted altogether (so as to prevent misunderstandings such as this one). Kaldari 00:06, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Make that 200,000 (or more). We already have 130,000 or so tagged. --kingboyk 08:59, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
 * And actually priority was changed from importance which others complained about. We changed it to priority and we removed it from being a project-wide priority and are leaving it up to the work groups within our project to decide what is the priority for their group... As said above, it's a quick way for us to see which articles are High at the moment but are Stubs or Start classes-- it's a signal that we need to get cranking on those articles to get them up. --plange 00:14, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
 * It's not just that. It will be used by the Wikipedia 1.0 team in selecting articles. --kingboyk 08:59, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
 * So any articles which are part of The 4400 wikiproject could be rated high prority? thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 07:41, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
 * What's the 4400 WikiProject? Anyway, in a short word 'no'. I'm assuming here you're talking about assessing the articles within your own WikiProject, using your own banner. Unless you're dealing exclusively with biographies, you can call it "importance" rather than "priority" and that wording gives you a better idea of what this scheme is all about. It's the importance of articles within a WikiProject. Grading all of them High or Top within a WikiProject would make no sense, because it's highly unlikely that every article in your project is vital to it. You should grade your articles across the entire range, Top for the core articles (The 4400 and 1 or 2 others), High for the nearly vital supporting articles, down to Low for trivia and fluff (if you have any). For a good example of this with a small WikiProject see Version 1.0 Editorial Team/The KLF articles by quality.


 * Look at that page and you'll see that we have the eponymous article The KLF as Top priority along with their alternative name K Foundation and the biographies of the two members, Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty. Key albums and songs are High, lesser stuff is Mid. We don't have any Low because we don't have any articles on trivia or vaguely relevant people.


 * At some point in the future, the theory goes, the WP1 team will come along and look at this list and say "well, The KLF, not very notable in the wider scheme of things, but very influential in British electronic music and arts culture. We assign this WikiProject a low to medium priority. They then "Multiply" the WikiProject's importance by the importance of each article and then, considering the article quality, decide whether to include it or not. The net result would be in this case, I suspect, that only our top priority and Featured Articles would be included.


 * Now, if you're asking about the priority of actors from The 4400 within the scope of the Arts & Entertainment workgroup of WPBiography you'd be better off asking at the assessments department. Remember though that the scope of our workgroups is very large, and the actors in a new sci-fi drama are likely to be of low to mid priority only when compared against John Lennon, Alfred Hitchcock, James Stewart etc.--kingboyk 09:12, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Of course it's POV. That's the whole point. It's an editorial assessment! The assessment happens on talk pages so NPOV doesn't apply. I also know for a fact that Jimbo is aware of this scheme (he made a comment querying the grade given to the article about him, saying it was too high). --kingboyk 09:12, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Minor change proposal
Could you change the parameter for infobox to "infobox=" instead of "needs-infobox="? Simple=easier to remember/figure out=better. --Tim4christ17 talk 23:21, 14 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I think we need to check what other Projects use. Because I'm busy writing code for WikiProject templating it's easiest for me if we have consistency, and I think that's easiest for editors too (as most are involved in more than one project). I'll be looking into other project's template in coming days and will report back. --kingboyk 23:23, 14 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Consistency LOL. If WPBiography was interested in consistency, why'd it change from "importance" to "priority"?  Importance has already proliferated...I now have it in my mind, but when I saw that it was depreciated, I was all, "WTF?" Hbdragon88 03:35, 21 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I expect other groups will change to priority as well. People were offended that we would rate the biography of a person with "low" importance.  Having the idea that we considered the person of low importance in general.  It seemed very POV and insulting to the person/article.  Priority is more specific and associates with the workgroup.  It is easier to see this is the priority of the workgroup as appose to the articles importance. Morphh 10:37, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Exactly right. That change was forced upon us. A senior and well-respected admin complained about labelling people by importance, and I felt we had better act rather than place the whole assessment scheme in jeapordy. As it happens, Oleg (Mathbot's author, he writes the code that builds the worklists for WP1) has implemented priority= support and it can be used by any project now instead of importance=. As Morphh says, I expect some other projects will follow suit. (My plugin for AWB also supports both formats). --kingboyk 10:54, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Image
Why did we remove the image of the two girls from the living persons banner? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Morphh (talk • contribs)
 * See the (long) discussion here. Template talk:Blp. Garion96 (talk) 00:43, 15 September 2006 (UTC)