Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography/Archive 25

Laura Nativo
I would be eternally grateful if someone could make sure I have added information to this article correctly. I'm still learning the ropes so obviously don't want to make things difficult. I was unable to find much information about her, though I did add her full filmography. Thanks in advance. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Samdvd1 (talk • contribs) 19:03, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

living=maybe as a default
Many articles have WPBiography but have "living" left blank. I recommend the following changes to WPBiography if the living parameter is missing: Good idea? No? Your thoughts? davidwr/ (talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail)  23:25, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Put up a box similar to the BLP box saying this person "may be living" and the BLP policy should be followed until he's known or presumed dead.
 * Add the article to a new category that a robot or person can browse through
 * Create a robot that compares the life-related elements of the article and fixes up the living= parameter if possible. For example, if the person is in Category:1999 deaths or Category:1801 births then a bot can tag him living=false, if he's in Category:living people or a related category, then a bot can mark him living=yes.
 * I see the intent but I think it would be better as maybe a hidden/maintenance cat than a box on the talk page, which could lead to confusion for our readers (and also probably look a little silly for obviously-dead people). I like the idea of a bot that could be programmed to tag as "living=no" better. Biographies of dead people still way outnumber biographies of living people. Is there are a category for "living= parameter not filled in"? That would be the same for maintenance purposes, I think, and would force a human to check the biography out. -- phoebe / (talk to me) 18:01, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

How much info on embarassing associates should be in a presidential candidate's biography?
The Barack Obama Featured Article is one of the more prominent biography articles in Wikipedia, and an important discussion is going on there now (at Talk:Barack Obama) that could affect other articles on presidential candidates.

Some editors here think that when a U.S. presidential candidate is embarassed by someone associated with that candidate, no information about it should be mentioned in the WP biography article, even if the campaign (and therefore the person who is the subject of the article) was affected. Others think WP should only mention that this person was controversial and leave a link in the article to the WP article on that controversial associate. Still others (including me), think we should briefly explain just why that person was controversial in the candidate's life, which can be done in a phrase or at most a sentence or two. Examples: Whatever we do, we should have equal treatment, so anyone interested in NPOV-, WP:BLP-compliant articles should look at and participate in the discussion. We've started the discussion by focusing on how much to say about former Weather Underground leader Bill Ayers in the Barack Obama article, but, again, this will likely affect many other articles. Noroton (talk) 15:48, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Hillary Clinton and Norman Hsu
 * Barack Obama and Bill Ayers (and Jeremiah Wright, and Tony Rezko)
 * John McCain and John C. Hagee
 * Rudy Giuliani and Bernard Kerik
 * On some other pages where I've posted this, people have been responding only beneath the post, which is fine, but won't help get a consensus where it counts. So please excuse me for raising my voice, just to make sure I get the point across: Please respond at the Talk:Barack Obama where your comments will actually affect the consensus!!! Sorry for the shoutin'. I promise not to do it again (on this page). Noroton (talk) 18:13, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Isaac Brock nominated for FA review
Isaac Brock 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.

Andrew Johnson
I've been doing quite a lot of work on Andrew Johnson and think it's come a long way since it was assessed as a B-class article back in May 2006. Would appreciate a bit of help finishing it up to GA status or possibly even higher.

Cheers.  Jaakobou Chalk Talk  09:38, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

RFC on Harvey Milk
A request for comment has been posted at Talk:Harvey Milk. Other editor's input would be appreciated. Banje boi 04:07, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Jim McKay on Fark.com
Just to give you guys a warning, the Jim McKay article has been linked to on the main page of Fark.com. I've already added a high traffic warning to the talk page. JPINFV (talk) 17:33, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Unreferenced BLPs
Hello everyone,

In case you're not aware, Messedrocker has been kind enough to update his list of unreferenced biographies of living people. There are over 14,000 biographies that are listed as being entirely unreferenced! Let's get to work :) -- phoebe / (talk to me) 17:52, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

WPBIO country taskforces versus country WikiProjects?
Hi guys. I've had a quick look around and couldn't find anything that addressed this directly. Is there any kind of long-term plan to set up country-based taskforces within WPBIO, or is it just going to be handled informally based on the intersection of WPBIO and the various country Wikiprojects? It would just be nice to know because I'm in the middle of a tagging frenzy for WikiProject Italy and I thought I'd check before tagging 12,000-odd articles. Given that the Italy Project only has about 8500 "town" articles and ~2000 "other" articles at present, I can't help worrying that I'm about to turn WP:Italy into WP:Italy-biography by default. So assigning those 12,000 articles to a taskforce of WP:BIO might make more sense, although we can probably survive taking them on directly. There is a precendent for this, we've effectively outsourced our football articles to the Italy taskforce of WP:FOOTY, and I'm a bit worried about negating the whole point of having a WikiProject in the first place, that it allows you to focus on a particular set of articles. I'lll obvious WPBIO-tag any that need it as I go along, from what I've seen they're fairly good in that regard, and there's some fun bits of history in there, lots of medieval nobility and condottieri and the like. I've plenty of non-bio articles to tag first, and I can see that any decision to set up country taskforces would be a big deal for you guys, so I'm happy to let this one stew a while.... FlagSteward (talk) 22:18, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Spotlight
...... Dendodge  .. Talk Help 11:34, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Jack O'Reilly (gangster)
Not sure how legit this article is. I found the text tagged on to end of Jack O'Reilly (footballer) and then created separate article. This guy sounds a bit scary. Don’t really want to edit it as he seems to be still alive. I have linked some of it thou. Any takers Djln--Djln (talk) 00:09, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

RfC on Lizzie Borden
A request for comments on issues arising on the Lizzie Borden article has been opened. Please visit Talk:Lizzie Borden to respond. Thanks! Wildhartlivie (talk) 10:22, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Win/loss records of attorneys
Not sure where else to ask, so thought I might try here since some of you might have experience writing about attorneys. Are there any resources that objectively document an attorney's performance in court, something like a win/loss record? Ham Pastrami (talk) 21:33, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
 * You might try asking at WikiProject Law. Wildhartlivie (talk) 02:04, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Help request: Martin Luther King, Jr.
Hello, I would like to request some help with this article. I fully sourced it over the past week, and I would like to help it get to GA or FA status. It would be great if any editors from this project could look it over, possibly do some copyediting, and give some feedback in the peer review. Thanks, GaryColemanFan (talk) 23:32, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Judith Butler reception: Summary style or POV fork?
See Talk:Judith Butler and Talk:Influence of Judith Butler's concepts. Thanks! Hyacinth (talk) 03:29, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Image Talcott Parsons
User:Thorsten1 has recently removed the image of Talcott Parsons from his article, with the argument:
 * "remove image - no image at all is still better than this. The colors are hurting people's eyes and it's not even very similar."

I think this is unacceptable.

Could somebody take a look at this, and respond at Talk:Talcott Parsons. Thank you.

-- Marcel Douwe Dekker (talk) 14:51, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Luke Ravenstahl's GA review
The article on Pittsburgh's mayor, Luke Ravenstahl, is currently on hold in its Good Article review, and it needs some copy editing and the lead in weak. Can anyone take a look at it and help out? Thanks!--TheZachMorrisExperience (talk) 04:00, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Peer-review, A-Class sections; a shame for all of us
It's a pitty to see the current status of especially the A-Class section. I wanted to close some of the nominations there, but, because of the lack of interest (there are nowhere at least 2 supports) I should close them as failed! And I do not think this is fair for some of the articles there. I watch the continued interest in the WP:MILHIST respective section and I envie them!

In the Peer-review section the situation is better, but again, when I am not there active, many articles will remain with no comments, because there is no other revewer editing there on a frequent basis. But, especially the current situation on the A-Class section is a shame. I see a long list of members in this project, but where are they? The main purpose of the project isn't it to upgrade the article within its scope? If we are not contributing to that, what are we doing here?--Yannismarou (talk) 10:11, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Joel Furhman - Citation/Verification box
How do I get someone to review this page and remove the verification box at the top? I have added a few citations etc. Does this still need the citation/verification box? If so what else do I need to do to have it removed? Can I do this myself? I know I have the power to do it but I want to make sure it is done right. Thanks

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_Fuhrman

--Healthyelijah (talk) 21:13, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Cleaning up Biography articles needing priority parameter replacement
If anyone wants to help, Category:Biography articles needing priority parameter replacement only has 40 articles left in it (down from about 500 at the beginning of the week). Let's finish it off! Kaldari (talk) 21:58, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Done. Wildhartlivie (talk) 08:06, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Margaret Dryburgh
Hi, I wondered if someone could give a rating to my new article on Margaret Dryburgh. Thankyou.-- seahamlass  10:13, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

FL-class
Is there a reason why there is no FL-class in the assessment table for this project? e.g. List of Governors of Pennsylvania was promoted to a Featured List but is listed by all of its WikiProjects, including this one, as FA-class. --Millbrooky (talk) 18:13, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Michael Q. Schmidt
There is a rather large argument and edit war going on at Michael Q. Schmidt ("an American actor and fine arts model") in addition to an ongoing. I don't have the time nor inclination to join in, but it really needs someone impartial to join in and sort it out. Is there anyone here that would be able to step in and help? Mike Peel (talk) 10:24, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Possible addition of "C" Class rating, also question about possible additional work groups
A new rating class, C class, has been created. Would the members of this project wish to add this new class, which falls between Start and B class, with provisional details of the new grade's criteria being available to be seen here, to the assessment system of this project? Also, if those changes are to be made to the project's banner, it might be a good time to consider whether there are any other subprojects of Biography which might be added to the banner at the same time. Would any of the members care to see creation of new work groups, and, if yes, what would the scope of these groups be? John Carter (talk) 16:57, 21 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I've tested out the C-Class in the sandbox version of the template. I personally think it would be good to include C-Class in the template as a lot of other WikiProjects will be following suit in the same way. I can't see no disadvantages of adding the C-Class, and there is also no harm of adding it, after all it will give the user a wider scale of options of what level they think a particular article is at. D.M.N. (talk) 17:03, 21 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, it is easily tested in the sandbox, the question is; is it relevant? and will it have any impact on out articles? I don't see it being much use to be honest. I'm not sure about new workgroups, I am sure I remember a couple of requests a few months back. Woody (talk) 17:08, 21 June 2008 (UTC)
 * There's currently about 15 000 B class biog articles so it will hopefully give an incentive for people to get articles up from C to the new B, Tom (talk) 17:14, 21 June 2008 (UTC)
 * If others are using it, I think we should, though some discussion first of the assessment criteria would be good, to sort out exactly what it means to be a "C-class" biography article. I also support the idea to discuss the possibilities of more workgroups, though at some point the issue of template bloat will have to be tackled. Which of the workgroups have been most productive and will adding more help or not? Carcharoth (talk) 17:11, 21 June 2008 (UTC)
 * For what it's worth, I can't answer that question. My own personal choices would be to try to break up some of the work groups to more nearly balance to some of the extant other projects, so maybe, for example, a Chemist group, a Physicist group, a fiction writer group, etc. where the scope more closely parallels that of another project, might be the way to go. Also, while I agree that we should use the new C-class, I don't think there's any real need to rush to adopt it, particularly not until after all the basic ideas regarding the new class are worked out elsewhere. John Carter (talk) 17:15, 21 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Also note some of the old discussion above (or rather, non-discussion). FL-class and some other topics. Anyone want to scour the archives so we can get all the possible changes in one edit? Carcharoth (talk) 17:17, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Wizardman made the change here. Not sure if he was aware of this discussion, so I've pointed him here. It looks like it was done right (did he use the sandbox or not?) but any more changes should wait a while. How long, I'm not sure. The discussion here seems to have died down, unfortunately. Carcharoth (talk) 03:27, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Oops, didn't even notice this conversation going on. I made sure that my edit was 100% accurate before i posted it though, so hopefully nothing bad should come out of it. Wizardman  20:51, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Maybe I'm being nitpicky but I really don't like the new lime green colour for B class. Is this a permanent change or just until they are confirmed B class (not C)? Sillyfolkboy (talk) 04:26, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Regarding new possible work groups, I get the impression that the Actors and Filmmakers group and Musicians group are fairly effective, because those groups, given the crossover between genres of music and "position" in a film cross over so often. We do already have several other projects which focus on Biographical content which might reasonably be added to the Biography banner. These include WP:SAINTS, WikiProject Religion/Religious leaders (currently inactive), WikiProject Baronetcies, WikiProject Comics/Comics creators work group, WikiProject Japan/Gaijin tarento taskforce, WikiProject Japan/Royalty and nobility taskk force, the inactive WikiProject Leaders by year, WikiProject Rugby union/Biography work group, WikiProject US Governors, WikiProject US Congress, WikiProject US Presidents, the inactive WikiProject United States politicians, WikiProject Beauty Pageants, and probably several more. Would there be any interest in maybe adding these to the banner? John Carter (talk) 17:09, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Assessment Drive
I am new to this project, and I have decided I will participate in the assessment group. My question is, is there going to be a Summer Assessment Drive? The Spring has ended, and there's still about 50,000 articles left. Is there somewhere I can propose it? I'm unsure where to go for this, so I'm asking it here. If there will be a Summer Drive, I would be glad to help.--LAA Fan 18:04, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Talk:Tupac Shakur
Can someone figure out what happened there? Couldn't quite fix that template. Lord Sesshomaru (talk • edits) 02:13, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Fixed. Wildhartlivie (talk) 04:25, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks ;) Lord Sesshomaru (talk • edits) 04:51, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Images of extra people
In some biographies, they have begun to put images of people mentioned in the text, but without the subject. Sometimes (as for ancient people) there is no joint image. This seems generally undesirable IMO except when image is of spouse and children, some of whom don't have a separate article. This seems to be a boundary issue. Editors who wouldn't dream of inserting text that didn't have anything to do with the subject of the article, will insert images that don't directly relate to the subject.

Try three cases (mostly made up):


 * Emperor Orange Julius was important in the ancient world. If any images of him with other people were ever made, they did not survive. Editors place random images of enemies, friends and family, none of which include the emperor himself.


 * Bill Clinton met thousands of people. Would it be proper to insert an image of the Queen of England, the pope, the secretary general, without Bill Clinton? Some joint photos were taken but may not be in the public domain or not look as good.


 * Seaman Able was awarded the "Medal of Valor" by President Madison for his key role in a pivotal battle in the War of 1812. There are absolutely no images of Able anyplace. There are some nifty portraits of Madison. Can his be inserted (instead).?

My thought in all three cases is no! Student7 (talk) 21:25, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Charles K. Hofling
The article Charles K. Hofling is tagged as being in this project's purview. The article isn't really a biography, but the description of a particular experiment. I plan to move the article to reflect that (something like Hofling hospital experiment, probably). Anyway, if anyone has a different idea, please let me know at the talk page.Cretog8 (talk) 21:56, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
 * It's moved to Hofling hospital experiment, and I took this project's tag off of it. There's a void now if anyone wants to fill in a real biography.Cretog8 (talk) 03:08, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Missing archive
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Biography&diff=221128296&oldid=221119269

Where was this material archived? I can't find it anywhere.


 * See the archive box at the top of the page? It's located there, split into months. María ( habla  con migo ) 14:35, 25 June 2008 (UTC)