Template talk:WikiProject Biography/Archive 2

Confusing reference
When class=Cat is aplied the following text will appear in template.

"This article has been rated as Cat-Class on the Project's quality scale. [FAQ]"

The problem is that quality scale does not provide any info about Cat-Class.--Poa 18:31, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
 * It just means "category". Could somebody add a line to the quality scale? --kingboyk 19:37, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
 * By the way similar situation with class=Dab and class=Template. And just wondering if there any example where class=Template was used?--Poa 22:54, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

|attention=yes
I added |attention=yes on Talk:Toni Price so that it says. Apparently, that added the page to Category:Biography articles needing attention. I expected it to be automatically added to Category:Musicians work group articles needing attention. Did I miss something, or could it be the template isn't fully working? Cheers, BNutzer 15:50, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Bump! Can you answer this one too please Plange? Sorry :) --kingboyk 20:40, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
 * OK, this has been added to -- will port it once I know rest of code (for below) is okay --02:55, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
 * all okay? Need to get it moved to here and implemented before any more edits are made --plange 15:55, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
 * If you've tested it and it works, take it live. It's not as if it can't be rolled back. I don't have time to run tests right now. --kingboyk 16:00, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
 * It works-- the above was easy, it was the BRoy one I was worried about, but I'll go ahead and add... --plange 16:25, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

New parameter
I recently tried (and failed) to implement a "list" parameter, so that we can specify how each article is list on the Category pages.

For an example, see  , where most of the articles are listed under  'P' , because they start Prince or Princess 

If articles are categorised manually, we can tell it where to list the articles, thusly:

I attempted to acheive this by replacing

with

Firstly, what does evryone think?

Secondly, can anyone tell me what was wrong with my code? Or simply perform the edits for me? // D  B  D  22:25, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
 * hmm, not sure, will try it out in my sandbox... Good idea! --plange 19:49, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Okay, I've added it to . Can you take a look and make sure it's working as expected? I made the parameter listas intead of list
 * This has been added --plange 16:33, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

musicians?
I came across a page using the parameter "|musician-work-group=", but I hadn't ever run into that before. It's still working, so why isn't it listed on the main template page as an optional parameter like the others. —  pd_THOR  undefined | 17:22, 31 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Template instructions updated. -- Avi 17:35, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Oh, thanks! —   pd_THOR  undefined | 17:36, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks Avi! --plange 17:37, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

musicians override arts and entertainment?
When adding "|musician-work-group=yes" to a WPBiography tag on Talk:Thomas Anders that already contained "|a&e-work-group=yes", the result was that a&e did not show on the talk page anymore, neither did the a&e categories. It also shows on this page in : a&e is invisible, so the effect seems to occur only with a&e? Is that wanted? I have found it irritating, since it would generate some kind of competition between the two work-groups. Regards, BNutzer 12:30, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
 * It's by design, yes (because musicians is a subset of arts). That's not to say the design can't be reviewed should you wish to propose it. --kingboyk 13:25, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
 * The music group does not list Arts and Entertainment in its parentage. Arts and Entertainment has not actually listed WikiProject Musicians as a Descendant WikiProject. I think think the present WPBiography template setup is correct since WikiProject Musicians is in fact its own WikiProject. -- Jreferee 18:08, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Parameter living=
The "Usage" section on the main page states: living: Answer yes if the subject is living; remove line if subject is dead. Shouldn't that be Answer no if subject is dead? Cheers, BNutzer 20:26, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Doing either performs the same function, so removing the line just cleans up a little bit of clutter. —   pd_THOR  undefined | 20:57, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Isn't that a bit short-sighted? An article with is not at all necessarily an article about a dead person from what I have seen (and tagged), whereas an article with living=no should most likely be about a dead person. I think the flag should allow three different results: yes, no, and unknown==not set. BNutzer 21:11, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
 * No objection; that makes sense, I agree. —   pd_THOR  undefined | 21:28, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Sports and Games workgroup icon
The Sports and games workgroup uses Image:Soccerball.jpg as its icon. That file is a JPG file and has a white background. I think that the icon should be changed to Image:Soccerball.svg, which is transparant, is smaller in file size, and is in the public domain. –  Heav  e  n's Wrath    Talk  04:45, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
 * I changed it --plange 16:52, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Peer Review Broken
Have a look at Talk:William Shakespeare: The link to the peer review page doesn't work. I've tried to fix it, but, alas, failed! Vanished user talk 15:50, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
 * > Works for me? --plange 16:34, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Hmm. Maybe my fix worked, but took a while to update? Or maybe it was just one of those funny temporary bugs. Vanished user talk 19:29, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
 * No, just did a test by temporarily making a new copy of the template with the old code (then requesting a speedy delete): My changes are, for some reason, necessary for it to work properly. Ah, well! Vanished user talk 19:42, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Weird, I wonder what had broken it, as it's worked in the past... Thanks! --plange 22:20, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

WP:BIO peer review
In the template, on articles which have had an archived peer review, the link is broken. On Talk:Frank S. Scott, the archival link inserts a superfluous colon before the archived page name -- thereby leading to a redlink page. —  pd_THOR  undefined | 17:31, 27 November 2006 (UTC)


 * It appears it because of this link code, specifically the colon in the middle which stays there even if there is no namespace.   could be removed but then if a portal was reviewed then the link would be broken for it. So anyone know what to do?  - Tutmosis  21:09, 28 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I added a similar fix to the way the "request for a peer review" code works. It seems to work on my end now.  –   Heav  e  n's Wrath    Talk  21:53, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Including photo requests?
How about a new "needs-photo" parameter? I'm thinking it should add Category:Wikipedia requested photographs of people (same effect as adding ), or more spesific subcat(s) if one or more workgroups are set in the template (Category:Wikipedia requested photographs of artists and entertainers for example). I've started trying to subcat the huge Category:Wikipedia requested photographs category and I've noticed a large number of these articles are biographies, so I think it would be benefitial to bake the photo request into this template, that way it can "piggyback" on the workgroup data and save some categorisation effort. --Sherool (talk) 23:30, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Excellent idea! I'd done something similar for the WikiProject Virginia banner, so will test it in my sandbox before implementing here --plange 03:20, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I've been playing around in my own sandbox and it seems to work well with all the various workgroup parameters, so I went ahead and implemented the "needs-photo" parameter. --Sherool (talk) 14:20, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I updated the examples above to use the "needs-photo" parameter. Good job with it.  –   Heav  e  n's Wrath    Talk  04:10, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Persondata
How about a new "needs-Persondata" parameter? This is step 4 of the WikiProject Biography 11 easy steps to producing at least a B article.

Christmas wish
If the article has an infobox but does not have a Persondata metadata, is there a way to have a bot create the Persondata metadata from the information in the infobox? That is what I would like for Christmas. Thank you. -- Jreferee 17:29, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Layout for biographical articles
Every article created on Wikipedia passes through Special:Newpages. At least half appear to be biographies. Of those not speedy deleted (which many are), most are written by first time Wikipedia users who have no clue about biographical layout. Many of these articles eventually are passed onto AfD because they editors do not know ways to Wikify them. To give better guidance to these new Wikipedia editors and to reduce the load on AfD, how about a new "needs-biographical layout" parameter (see Template:Biography or something like a "This article may benefit from editing based on these 11 steps."? -- Jreferee 16:39, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Also, many of these new editors do not know about talk pages. If this parameter is yes'ed, then perhaps something can appear at the bottom of the article page to let the editor know to go to the talk page and read it similar to a note appearing on the bottom of the article page to show that the article is a stub. -- Jreferee 16:41, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Activepol
I'd STILL like to support the comment about "public relations manipulation" after coming across an absolutely terrible PR text dump in a minor politician's page. 68.39.174.238 01:39, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Size
Why is this template so big it's at least twice the size of the average talk page banner (Gnevin 09:41, 18 December 2006 (UTC))
 * Even now, with the living tag it is still bigger than most. Some projects with large templates shrink the text slightly, still for legibility but considerate of the talkpage. Can we shrkink this down to 90% or something using <div style="font-size:70% ? Chris 00:21, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Auto parameter
The auto parameter instructions state that "This parameter is for the use of bots. It calls the ." However, there is no indication on how to make an entry for this parameter. Do you enter "yes" to call the bot or is the parameter for use by the bot? -- Jreferee 15:56, 20 December 2006 (UTC)


 * This parameter is only used when a user has there bot tagging pages. A few users have a bot that will automatically tag the page as a stub if there is a stub template on the article's page.  The auto parameter is just a reference to indicate that the article was assessed based on the stub template.  –   Heav  e  n's Wrath    Talk  22:12, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Listas parameter
The instructions state This parameter is used for bios whose title is in the first part of the article, i.e. Prince George of England, you can instead have listas=George of England, Prince -- so that it will show up in the G's... Where does the article show up in the G's?  Will the article show up in the G's for every category listed at the bottom of the article without the need to added a piped extension to the category such as Category:kings|George of England, Prince? -- Jreferee 16:48, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
 * OK, see New parameter above. The explanation on the template article page should be clarified to explain that the article show up in the G's for every category listed at the bottom of the article without the need to added a piped extension to the category.-- Jreferee 17:05, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Almost everything listed under "T"?
I have noticed that lately most articles (their talk pages, to be precise) are listed in categories as if they were starting with "T" (due to being "T"alk pages?), see e.g. Category:Start-Class_biography_articles. I doubt that is a wanted effect, is it? Cheers, BNutzer 15:35, 6 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Please refer to the discussion below. - cgilbert(talk 15:51, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Class parameter
The class parameter states that Descriptions of the options can be found at WikiProject Biography/Assessment. However, Dab, Template, and Cat are not on that Quality scale. The description may need to be updated to explain what Dab, Template, and Cat are. -- Jreferee 17:15, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Also see above discussion, confusing reference. -- Jreferee 17:17, 20 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Check the page again, I added a little comment about each of them. I also added WPBiography with the template-class to provide an example.  –   Heav  e  n's Wrath    Talk  22:32, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Screwy formatting
Something appears to be screwy with the formatting. I just added this to the Ashley Eicher talk page, and now this appears in the center box: This article is supported by the Arts and Entertainment work group. Anyone know how to fix this? Valrith 23:07, 10 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Hmm, you bring a good point. After the new picture request feature was added, it seems to break the template if the "listas" parameter is listed, but not filled in.  I tested this by adding some words into the "listas" parameter, and also by removing it.  Both cases fixed the problem.  This can be a problem if someone copies all of the template code from the talk page.
 * As my knowledge of some of the more complex template syntax is limited, I would appreciate someone to fix the "need-photo" parameter to ignore the "listas" one even if it is added, but not filled in. –   Heav  e  n's Wrath    Talk  01:59, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Tweak of wording regarding infoboxes
In the coding, there is currently this bit regarding infoboxes: "An appropriate infobox needs to be added to this article, or the current infobox needs to be updated. Please refer to the list of biography infoboxes for further information." Can this please be tweaked to replace both instances of "needs" with "may need". This is to avoid prejudicing the discussion that should take place at each article on whether an infobox is appropriate or not, rather than implying that there is a rigid rule that every biographical article must have an infobox. Thanks. Carcharoth 18:00, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Done. Proto ::  ►  19:12, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Carcharoth 23:56, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Multiple work groups/Single template?
Since some people might be appropriate for more than one group and of differing priorities for those groups, it would be convenient to be able to do something like:

instead of having to clutter up talk pages with two separate templates. Caerwine Caer’s whines 00:27, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Sometimes different projects assess in different ways. Also, overlap between projects is not always clear. I suspect it is best not to try and merge them this way - messes up assessments and bot tracking of the assessments. See also Template:ArticleHistory (now in use), Template:Multiproject (under development - see concerns on talk page) and a mock-up at User:Raul654/multiproject. Carcharoth 01:18, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

free-image stipulation

 * I've moved this conversation from the above to generate more input on it. —   pd_THOR  undefined | 22:17, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Would it be possible for this to calculate whether to use reqphoto or reqfreephoto dependent on whether the "living" variable says "no" or "yes" respectively? I've utilized the "needs-photo" parameter on living people before, only to have rfu images uploaded in an effort to comply with the request. —  pd_THOR  undefined | 18:37, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
 * It would be possible. Is this needed, and is there a consensus on adding this? --PhantomS 22:08, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Living parameter
The present instructions state: "living: Answer yes if the subject is living; remove line if subject is dead." The omission of the living parameter line also could mean that the living/dead status has not been assessed. Given the importance of WP:BLP and a need to prevent duplicate efforts, instead of removing the line of the subject is dead, I believe that the Answer no should be inserted and that the template instructions be revised to say this. Please change the instructions if there is a concensus. -- Jreferee 22:21, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I concur. —   pd_THOR  undefined | 03:27, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I also agree as Jreferee says, if we don't know if the person is dead or alive, it would be best to err on the side of caution and presume that he/she is alive unless it's impossible for them to be alive (e.g. born any time prior to 1850 or flourished over 120 years ago) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Kimonandreou (talk • contribs) 13:13, 24 February 2007 (UTC).
 * That's totally unnecessary. living=no and a non-existent living= are functionally identical. Furthermore, empty params are just taking up database space. The instructions are fine as they are; WP:BLP is not something to get paranoid about. --kingboyk 20:24, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
 * That said; living=yes should probably be used if the subject might be alive but nobody is sure. --kingboyk 20:25, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
 * The WP:BLP tag on the talk page could be the difference between a lawsuit being filed and not filed and between whether Wikipedia itself gets named in a lawsuit or only the person who posted the libelous material. Also, if the living=no is not on the talk page, then how would someone else know that the living status already has been assessed? As for taking up database space, I'll defer to kingboyk on this and leave it to his judgement. On a similar note, I was taken to task here for using an expanded WPBiography template rather than a "compressed" WPBiography template. Can't please everybody. -- Jreferee 18:46, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I suppose. (The database issue is trivial btw). I'm not worried though, if it were a Foundation issue - i.e. important - we'd have heard about it by now. I suggest folks just carry on with their personal preferred way :) --kingboyk 19:07, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

WPBiography with needs-photo and military-work-group
I've noticed that the template behaves incorrectly when both the needs-photo and military-work-group parameters are true. Instead of adding the relevant page to Category:Wikipedia requested photographs of military-people, it adds the text " " to the WPBiography template. This might also happen with other work groups, but I haven't checked.

For an example, see Talk:Charles Burnett (RAF officer).

It's probably a fairly minor fix, but given that the template is protected I'll leave it to someone else to do.

X damr talk 13:31, 2 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Actually it seems to affect other work group tags as well, in this case politics and government, see Talk:Francis Charles Bridgeman.
 * X damr talk 13:49, 2 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I took a look at the code, and the "needs-photo" parameter needs the "listas" parameter to be filled in. It would be nice though someone could make it use just the page name if the "listas" parameter did not exist.  –   Heav  e  n's Wrath    Talk  20:11, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
 * What exactly is the point of listas= anyway, other than adding code complexity? Maintenance categories don't need sorting. --kingboyk 20:28, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
 * The problem wasn't the template, it was the commented listas= parameter. Works fine if listas= is removed. --kingboyk 20:37, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Listas parameter
Maybe I'm missing something but can't listas= be removed in favour of the DEFAULTSORT keyword? I'm not liking this listas parameter as it's adding a lot of code bloat for very little return. --kingboyk 12:06, 5 March 2007 (UTC)


 * DEFAULTSORT works for categories listed at the bottom of the article page, but not for those included from banners and other templates. The listas parameter is used specifically for the WPBiography related categories such as Category:FA-Class biography (musicians) articles, where I've used the listas parameter on all relevant articles that should be sorted other than by the proper name of the article, for example, with The Waterboys, I used "listas=Waterboys, The".  - cgilbert(talk 13:55, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
 * But why do those categories need to be sorted? They're maintenance categories for use by a bot, no more. --kingboyk 14:08, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I would have to disagree. As a project member, I find these categories useful to look up other articles with the same class rating or priority to get a better sense of the musicians articles in general. - cgilbert(talk 15:03, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, so do I, but I don't need them sorted :) Oh well, we'll have to agree to disagree on this one.
 * Do you know if there's any documentation about DEFAULTSORT anywhere? --kingboyk 16:14, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
 * There is limited documentation at Template:DEFAULTSORT, with links to other minor documentation. - cgilbert(talk 16:58, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
 * My tests in the sandbox show that DEFAULTSORT works perfectly well with categories coming from templates. I've just made a version of this template in my sandbox, and called it with this syntax:
 * Lo and behold, the page appears in Category:Unassessed biography articles sorted under #. Bottom line: we don't need this massive code bloat now that DEFAULTSORT is available. I'm removing the listas= parameter. --kingboyk 20:20, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, I'm noticing some changes as per your template edits. Any talk page edited since you made those changes now gets sorted under T for Talk. Take a look at the T section of Category:B-Class biography (musicians) articles. At least before, there was some logic as to where these articles were sorted. - cgilbert(talk 21:44, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, of course, because the listas= parameters will need to be replaced with DEFAULTSORT (I'm coding right now to have my bot change any it encounters; perhaps the assessment script could do the same).
 * Observe Talk:Beth Orton with DEFAULTSORT added, sorted to O
 * 10k of code bloat, or a DEFAULTSORT magic word? Easy choice I would think :) --kingboyk 21:54, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
 * What if instead of a bot going through to change everything, we simply call DEFAULTSORT from the WPBiography template if the listas field is defined? - cgilbert(talk 21:58, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
 * That would be preferable, but I couldn't get it to work. The problem was when listas wasn't defined, pages were sorting to {. It might well be possible though... I'll restore my test templates now to User:Kingboyk/Sandbox, and test template calls to User talk:Kingboyk/Sandbox. Feel free to edit, tinker, revert, whatever you like - I'll just delete when you've finished. If you can get DEFAULTSORT working inside the template to use the listas= param that would be great. --kingboyk 22:06, 5 March 2007 (UTC) (edit conflict)
 * And if listas is not defined we should still use in the WPBiography template code so that pages are not all sorted under Talk:PAGENAME. - cgilbert(talk 22:01, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I've made the appropriate changes to your testpage at User:Kingboyk/Sandbox. Feel free to test it with a number of the parameters selected.  It should work. - cgilbert(talk 23:20, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Excellent! Thank you very much. I'll test it in a moment and then move it over if it's OK. Just let me finish current task please :) --kingboyk 23:21, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Final working version is now available at User:Kingboyk/Sandbox. It's funcitonality can currently be seen at User talk:Kingboyk/Sandbox. - cgilbert(talk 01:00, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
 * All the article in Category:Unassessed biography articles now are listed under T for "Talk" as opposed to their first name, then last name, as before.-- Jreferee 18:11, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Uh, once you removed the listas parameter, everything defaulted back to being listed at T. Basically it's near-impossible to do the assessment drive now. Basically what Jreferee said (TRIPLE edit conflicted)-- Wizardman 18:13, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Kingboyk and I have been working together to fix this problem and re-add the listas functionality, but with more efficient code that will not hinder some of the categorizations such as the combination of military-work-group and needs-photo. The new code will make use of DEFAULTSORT and actually remove the need to add a DEFAULTSORT for the categories if the listas parameter is set.  listas is not limited to the use of titles, but also if we want pages of people to be sorted by last name instead of first, or if we want bands with "The" in the title to be sorted by their title and not by "The", such as "listas=Beatles, The" for The Beatles. - cgilbert(talk 18:38, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I previously was under the impression that listas affected the categories on the article page rather than categories on the talk page. Would it be appropriate to let listas also affect the categories on the article page? -- Jreferee 19:29, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Technically impossible at the moment so far as I know. --kingboyk 19:40, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I previously was under the impression that listas affected the categories on the article page rather than categories on the talk page. Would it be appropriate to let listas also affect the categories on the article page? -- Jreferee 19:29, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Technically impossible at the moment so far as I know. --kingboyk 19:40, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

OK, now we've got the listas parameter back in a more sensible form, I've added some code to my plugin to add a listas= param when one isn't already present. One slight problem is that musical groups will get "incorrect" results. Since from what I can see the only real purpose of the param is to bring some order to the unassessed articles category, I think this downside is outweighed by the advantages.

However if folks don't agree, the alternative (besides turning this code off) is to not apply a listas automatically for articles which are tagged with musician-workgroup=yes. Of course, there's no guarantee that all musician articles are actually tagged with this parameter.

I'll release the code as is but any objections can be made here on my plugin's talk page. --kingboyk 20:24, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Requests for additional parameters
(partial repost from above)

Wikipedia:Persondata
How about a new "needs-Persondata" parameter? This is step 4 of the WikiProject Biography 11 easy steps to producing at least a B article. If the article has an infobox but does not have a Persondata metadata, is there a way to have a bot create and locate the Persondata metadata from the information in the infobox? -- Jreferee 19:33, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Layout for biographical articles
Every article created on Wikipedia passes through Special:Newpages. At least half appear to be biographies. Of those not speedy deleted (which many are), most are written by first time Wikipedia users who have no clue about biographical layout. Many of these articles eventually are passed onto AfD because they editors do not know ways to Wikify them. To give better guidance to these new Wikipedia editors and to reduce the load on AfD, how about a new "needs-biographical layout" parameter (see Template:Biography or something like a "This article may benefit from editing based on these 11 steps."? Alternatively, perhaps the bot can create a new thread, such as I did for Talk:Yuichi_Komano, Talk:Yuji_Hamano, and other articles. -- Jreferee
 * Could create a wikify template specific for biographies? RHB Talk - Edits 20:45, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
 * The template might be good. I've just been making threads on talk pages about the 11 steps. See, for example, Talk:Shigeo_Hirose -- Jreferee 18:32, 9 March 2007 (UTC)


 * ✅ Resolution -- Post thread on the talk page re the 11 steps, which includes Persondata step. -- Jreferee 20:36, 22 March 2007 (UTC)