Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Anthroponymy/Archive 5

Archive5: Anthroponymy article style and content &mdash; including article Assessment and content-supporting citation sources

surname-stub vs. class=stub: Best practice proposal
Presently there are two ways of designating an article about a surname as a stub: use of on the article page or use of  on the article-talk page. In the case of using, the articles appear in Category:Surname stubs and are not tallied toward the stub-article count at Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Anthroponymy articles by quality statistics. In the case of using, the articles appear in Category:Stub-Class Anthroponymy articles (which is now a sub-category of Category:Surname stubs) and are tallied toward the Project's stub-article count.

I would propose that we establish best practice for Project-affiliated editors to be that of using instead of  (removing 'surname-stub' where found) with the aim of populating Category:Stub-Class Anthroponymy articles at the expense of Category:Surname stubs. I would not suggest eliminating or discouraging use of, because this is a standard tool used by members of WikiProject Stub sorting (of which I was once an active member) and editors at large. A similar depopulation exercise happened a while back upon the invigoration of WP:WSS and formalization of the stub-sorting practices and stub-template life cycle processes, where Category:Stubs was depopulated in favor of stub sub-categories; now, this category is near empty most of the time, and surveillance of it is one of WP:WSS's regular activities.

Thanks for considering this proposal.
 * --User:Ceyockey ( talk to me ) 02:39, 29 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Sounds good to me. Remember (talk) 14:07, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Agree. Rosiestep (talk) 20:54, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Assessment
I have joined the project and created the first draft for WikiProject Anthroponymy/Assessment. I am also going to do a first go-over assessing the most important articles. Comments/Contributions are appreciated. --Yury Petrachenko 09:22, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I have started the talk page Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Anthroponymy/Assessment with two proposals, one related to the use of class=list and one related to the definition of class=stub. --User:Ceyockey ( talk to me ) 02:22, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Importance parameter for articles
I have started using the project banner's importance parameter a bit, but need guidance. To date, I have given a 'high' importance if surname is within the top 50 in use in a country at any one time (e.g. Edwards (surname). I have also given a 'mid' importance if a surname is within the top 100 in use in a country at any one time (e.g. Griffin (surname). These are really arbitrary and the prevalence should probably be one contributing factor to importance, but surely not the only one. If there are folks here who are actual name historians, it would be helpful if you could help in crafting a relevant set of criteria for each of the several 'importance levels': Top, High, Mid, Low. Thanks --User:Ceyockey ( talk to me ) 20:22, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree that those are good rough guidelines. I am not a name historian, but just a regular wikipedia who wants to organize these articles better.  If anyone else has an opinion, please let us know. Remember (talk) 21:31, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Surname articles (Top-High-Mid-Low)
I have put forth a pretty specific set of criteria for Top-High-Mid-Low assessment of surname articles (not given name or non-name articles yet) at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Anthroponymy/Assessment which I'll likely start implementing on previously un-assessed articles (not changing currently assessed articles). Your input about whether this is a good set of guidelines or not would be helpful. --User:Ceyockey ( talk to me ) 14:32, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Given name articles (Top)
I have put forth a criterion statement for assessing given name articles being of 'Top' importance, and have applied this criterion in a number of cases recently. Your input would be helpful. --User:Ceyockey ( talk to me ) 00:58, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Guild of One-Name Studies
Hi all, last year a discussion broke out on the Guild of One-Name Studies members forum about Wikipedia and the work that could be done to improve articles about the names that people are studying. Is it worth returning the courtesy and providing a link to their website from this project page? They could prove a useful resource for adding information to some articles. -- Roleplayer (talk) 23:20, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I think it would be beneficial to include a link-out from the Main Project page. I think that records found via searches against old record sets (e.g. this interface would be useful in providing citations for verification of facts.  Would this information on the origin of a surname withstand scrutiny as a reliable source? --User:Ceyockey ( talk to me ) 00:29, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I can't answer that question myself, being biased towards the organisation (having suggested it in the first place). I would say though that most members of GOONS are somewhat more reliable than other online sources because in the majority of cases they have actually traced the lines back to their origin, rather than just relying on hearsay evidence as to a name's origin.  The profiles are not required to have references however, which is a downside. -- Roleplayer (talk) 00:35, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
 * It would be eminently useful to communicate to the Guild that their including references in pages like the summary page I linked above would significantly increase the palatability of their site content to the stricter Wikipedia editors who are sticklers for tracing back to published sources. The truthiness of those published sources, though an important matter, is largely not in scope for WP:V or WP:NOTE consideration (yeah, there's a looooong conversation in that one).  Their existence and potential availability is what counts.  There is the matter of "trusted reliability" too, though.  For instance, most blogs are like poison to people who live for citations ... but how can you dismiss a blog entry such as this from the Wall Street Journal (just the top body, not the comments).  So if people have reason to believe that the content of the site is reliable, such as being overseen by eminent name historians ... who are named ... then the matter of internal references becomes much less of an issue.  Thanks for considering these comments.  --User:Ceyockey ( talk to me ) 02:20, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I second everything Ceyockey said. Remember (talk) 21:30, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Link to Guild of One-Name Studies added to WikiProject Anthroponymy/External name resources. --User:Ceyockey ( talk to me ) 01:34, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Web statistics tool
Something that I just came across: Web statistics tool. This tool is a beta-version right now and could disappear or change at any time. I thought it might be interesting to note what articles might be in the name-article space or one-removed from that space via a hatnote. For instance (ranks are for Feb 2008)
 * (23rd of 1000) http://stats.grok.se/en/200802/Muhammad &mdash; Muhammad &rarr; Muhammad (name)
 * (92 of 1000) http://stats.grok.se/en/200802/Newton &mdash; Newton &rarr; Newton (disambiguation) &rarr; Newton (surname) (recommend amending Newton hatnote to directly refer to Newton (surname)
 * (103 of 1000) http://stats.grok.se/en/200802/Rihanna &mdash; Rihanna (middlename=>single name for singer)
 * (309 of 1000) http://stats.grok.se/en/200802/Paris &mdash; Paris &rarr; Paris (disambiguation) (which is a split candidate)
 * (376 of 1000) http://stats.grok.se/en/200802/Juno &mdash; Juno (a disambiguation page with name content)
 * (388 of 1000) http://stats.grok.se/en/200802/Mario &mdash; Mario &rarr; Mario (disambiguation) &rarr; Mario (given name) (recommend amending Mario hatnote to directly refer to Mario (given name)
 * (477 of 1000) http://stats.grok.se/en/200802/Michelangelo &mdash; Michelangelo &rarr; Michelangelo (disambiguation) (which is actually an improperly titled list-type name article)
 * (490 of 1000) http://stats.grok.se/en/200802/Lolita &mdash; Lolita &rarr; Lolita (disambiguation) &rarr; Lolita (name) (recommend amending Lolita hatnote to directly refer to Lolita (name))

--User:Ceyockey ( talk to me ) 17:34, 6 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Its unclear what you are suggesting here. The hatnotes should point to the dab page as there is more than the name page listed there. (John User:Jwy talk) 18:53, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
 * "Amending" does not mean "replacing", Jwy. --User:Ceyockey ( talk to me ) 19:09, 6 April 2008 (UTC)