Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography/Archive 32

Talk:Frankie Rayder/GA1
At Talk:Frankie Rayder/GA1, there is a discussion on the organization of Frankie Rayder. If anyone has any advice, please comment.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 07:12, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

"In Popular Culture" in a Biography
Is an "in popular culture" section an appropriate section for any quality biography article? Specifically, Bob Ross had a "trivia and in popular culture" section that contained a laundry list of unsourced claims of "Bob Ross" appearances and references in various shows, films, etc. It was removed in October 2007 (yes, 07) as WP:OR and unsourced trivia during an effort to clean up the article a bit. Now an editor wants to put it back in, but without being able to actually provide sources, proof of significant coverage, etc. Is this sort of content useful or valid in a good biography? Should such a section be restored or allowed? Also, should a video game about Joy of Painting, which was never made only sort of planned, be mentioned? Or a snowboard with Ross' face? Discussion (of a sort) at Talk:Bob Ross. Additional views will be heavily needed as Proxy User has canvassed some dozen users to support his proposal. -- AnmaFinotera  (talk · contribs) 22:04, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Michelle Obama/archive1
Be advised that there is a WP:FAC discussion at Featured article candidates/Michelle Obama/archive1.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 05:25, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Proposal for new speedy deletion criteria for unsourced BLPs
There is a proposal at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion for BLPs that remain without references for a certain period of time to be tagged for speedy deletion. Comments are requested. - kollision (talk) 07:47, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

question on how to handle BLP for commonly named persons
a question: I am a bit of a newbie, and wanted to write an article about industrial designer Michael McCoy. There is already an article there that is being maintained by an SPA, about a different Michael McCoy of dubious notability. I put a proposal at the talk page, but the article has been dead for edits for so long that I doubt anyone will write back. What is the "right" way to go about this? Is the proposal at the talk page the way to go?

Apologies if this is the wrong place to ask this question, but I have looked at 10 or 12 talk pages and have not found a process for this. This looked like the most appropriate fora. UnkleFester (talk) 19:33, 9 April 2009 (UTC)


 * First, make sure your McCoy meets the WP:BIO notability guidelines. If so, where there are multiple people with the same name, you generally have separate articles, using disambiguations. So yours would be Michael McCoy (designer), to avoid a name conflict, though I also agree, the existing one doesn't seem notable either and is nothing but spam so I've tagged it for deletion. But no, you wouldn't just completely rewrite the article to be about a different person. If McCoy the author isn't notable, the article should first be deleted. Either way, looking at the link you provided, I'd suggest doing an article on their company McCoy & McCoy Associates might be more appropriate. -- AnmaFinotera  (talk · contribs) 19:44, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Notable dermatologists
I have been working to organize and improve dermatology-related article via WP:DERM. With that being said, there are multiple dermatologist articles that I think lack notability, and so I wanted to know if perhaps someone would help me review Category:Dermatologists and weed through which are notable and which are not? Also, in the process, I would like to create a list of notable dermatologists (I am not sure what the article should be titled). Additionally, I think a general category "dermatologists" is needed, but not necessarily subcats based on nationality... what do you think? kilbad (talk) 14:09, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

need-photo category and template
How do we reduce the more that 10000 requests in Category:Wikipedia requested photographs of people? Comments requested at Template talk:WPBiography.Traveler100 (talk) 11:20, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Incorrect tagging
This list should interest the members of this WikiProject: could someone (probably with AWB) work through the list? It's probably not going to be too difficult to clear that problem before it gets serious. - Jarry1250 (t, c) 18:54, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Winona Ryder
There's a heated argument on the article about Winona Ryder, where an administrator is claiming that WP:BLP doesn't allow for you to add categories like Russian-American Jews or Russian-Americans to American people who have been sourced as being 50% of Russian Jewish descent. He has, unilaterally decided to change said categories and is now, for example, going to clean out everyone from the category Russian-American Jews who was not born in Russia. He ignores the fact that his definition of Russian-American, and so on, is not the same as in the article about Russian Americans and that it deviates from the standard use in the United States. He also threatens to block people. It's all a mess. Can someone, please... -Duribald (talk) 19:33, 29 March 2009 (UTC)


 * There are at least two admins who are convinced that a person's nationality / ethnicity cannot be X-Y unless the person was born in X and is a citizen of Y. Self-identification matters not to these admins.


 * They believe that President Obama is not an African-American, although is father was born in Ethiopia and his mother was born in Kansas because he was not born in Africa; Governor Richardson of New Mexico is not a Mexican-American because he was born in Pasadena, California; Daniel Inouye is not a Japanese-American because he was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, when Hawaii was a territory of the United States; and Tila Nguyen, aka Tila Tequila, is not a Vietnamese-American because there is no proof that she is a citizen of the United States.


 * Because this is a part of their belief systems they cannot be dissuaded from their positions by logic. Unless you can show enough evidence to get these people's adminship removed and then proceed to have them blocked, I do not think anything can be done about their vandalism.  Good luck!
 * JimCubb (talk) 03:33, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

RFC on Hak Ja Han
Ongoing WP:RFC on article Hak Ja Han, please see Talk:Hak_Ja_Han. Thank you for your time, Cirt (talk) 17:53, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman FAR
nominated Sheikh Mujibur Rahman for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Nishkid64 (Make articles, not wikidrama) 22:50, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Pics
Can someone direct me to information about what makes a good pic for the top photo for a biography? Thanks. Drawn Some (talk) 04:59, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Need help placing portraits
Hi all. Recently about 3000 high-resolution, high-quality portraits of famous English people (mostly 16-19th century nobility) were added to Commons in Commons:National Portrait Gallery, London. The most difficult part of integrating these images into Wikipedia is finding appropriate articles to add them to and inserting them appropriately. For the ones I'm not sure about, I use announce-image to notify users on the talk page. I've already done this with a great many of them (roughly from the beginning up through Henry Brouncker in alphabetical order) but I need help to do the rest. Please assist me in placing these images here and on other-language Wikipedias. Thank you! Dcoetzee 10:12, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Andrés Nocioni/1
Please comment at Good article reassessment/Andrés Nocioni/1.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 07:58, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Editing biographies for academics
I'm trying to clean up a lot of backlog in copyediting, as well as going through a lot of orphaned or lonely articles on various topics. There's a list of hundreds of philosophers with bios, most of whom have academic citations (of course) but may or may not meet requirements for notability. I've learned how to nominate for speedy deletion based on notability, but some of these orphaned bios made it through that process, so I assume the people in question are or were notable. Still, I find over and over that some academic claims to have "successfully argued against" some other academic or even some world class philosopher or mathematician or whatever - these are peacock words, to me, unless someone who is an expert comes along to provide citations (secondary sources saying that Prof. X has bested World Class Mathematician, etc.). There is one article, in particular, where I've been accused (by its subject) of heavy-handed editing (too many fact tags?). This is an article where the subject has been involved in some 100 edits to his own "biography," I haven't read every inch of the history. I was just wondering if some of you biography experts could go over there to Nathan Salmon and see what you think? Although the guy is not a major philosopher, you'll see that he expects that the reader should assume that "Kant's views" on something are well known (and uncontroversial) so that his arguments against Kant should be clearly validated by his own citations. Unfortunately, people editing the Kant page (also a biography page) have not been able to reach such agreement, nor do they cite this person as an expert on Kant. I hope you see the problem. I've tried to document all my changes, I'm practicing on this article because there are several others on the list that have similar problems - but this one is very long and detailed as to the person's views on things. Should some of this be out of the biography article and into articles on the philosophical topics mentioned? What do you think? Thanks - it's not a pressing issue, I'm just trying to learn.Levalley (talk) 23:28, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Upcoming User:MandelBot maintenance bot run
I am making this announcement in advance due to sensitivities about date manipulation bot runs. Many if not most of the 590 articles affected are biography articles.
 * This run will be by my bot: MandelBot
 * Purpose: Author (myself) of both templates and  wishes to convert the obsolete birth-year template usage to use the more general birth-date template.
 * Motivation: Birth-year (a function by me, J JMesserly) that calls Birth-date is obsolete.  Since birth-date can now handle this function, this run will convert all instances of usage and subsequently request delete.  This is maintenance procedure to remove an obsolete template.  Similarly, it will convert all Death-year to Death-date.

Anyone who wishes to comment or review further details and discussion of the change may do so at: Bot_requests. Regards, -J JMesserly (talk) 00:05, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Birthplace coordinates
In the infobox person template, there is a place for the latitude and longitude, the coordinates of the final resting place of a person, such as cemetery or tomb, but what about coordinates of birthplace? I'm curious because some expert yeoman legwork was done by a teenage girl and her father in 1995–1996 to locate the birthplace of Frederick Douglass; a birthplace which had formerly not been known. I put the birthplace coordinates in the article but I don't think they should show up at the top of the page—that space is for final resting spot. If somebody in the future adds to the infobox and enters the coordinates of Mount Hope Cemetery, Rochester where he's buried, there will be a conflict. Any ideas? Binksternet (talk) 00:58, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Serena Williams to be prepared for Featured Article nomination
Several editors believe that this might be the first tennis-related article to be nominated, and even to be promoted as a Featured Article. We are keen to attract editors to the article over the next month. The timeline for nomination is vaguely by the end of May. Please join in! Ohconfucius (talk) 15:10, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Jim Brandstatter needs a picture
Hi can someone help me find a photo of Jim Brandstatter? I found the University of Michigan yearbook with his picture during a game (class of 1972, image number 325: here) but it wants me to buy a subscription. I don't have a credit card though. Help? The talk page has other issues that need to be addressed too. Thanks. TomCat4680 (talk) 16:57, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Yezda Urfa
Was doing some work on the page for Yezda Urfa, and saw it was part of WikiProject:Biography. As the Yezda Urfa page is about a band, I don't think that it's appropriate. I thought I would ask here before removing the tag from the page, and see if there is anything else I need to do to effect the change. C.anguschandler (talk) 04:12, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Aviation/Aerospace biography task force
Shouldn't WikiProject Aviation/Aerospace biography task force be a shared TF with this WPP, and be indicated on the template? 76.66.196.218 (talk) 11:22, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

MOS:DERM
I am working on a manual of style for dermatology-related content, and am looking to create a list of suggested sections for biographies about dermatologists (see Category:Dermatologists for example articles). With that being stated, I wanted to know if someone from the biography project would consider helping me? Anyone? ---kilbad (talk) 18:51, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

An Ambitious Proposal
Preliminary comments welcomed. - Mailer Diablo 04:14, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Problem with 1.0 bio list
Hi folks - WikiProject Biography/1.0-List v.1 and WikiProject Biography/1.0-List v.0 are both in, which should only be for articles, not for Wikispace pages. Given that they have been copied over to several user sandboxes, userspace pages are also cropping up in there (as of a few minutes ago, non-articles outnumbered articles among the unsorted stub pages!) Is there any way you could amend the coding on these pages to stop them turning up in stub categories, please? Cheers, Grutness...wha?  00:20, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Biography
biography · n. (pl. biographies) an account of someone’s life written by someone else. – DERIVATIVES biographer n. biographic adj. biographical adj. biographically adv. – ORIGIN C17: from Fr. biographie or mod. L. biographia, from med. Gk, from bios ‘life’ + -graphia ‘writing’.

I am confused. The category biography does not mean human biographies. I can see where the logic goes and why the category biography is being removed by their bots from all articles that refer to human biographical information.

But the confusion will continue because of the dictionary defintion of biography. And it will continue because people will assume that human biographies should have a category of biography. And the bio type bots will continue to remove them.

On the discussion page of biography they say biographies of humans should be under the category human. Under that category there is no sub-category for biographical material.

May I suggest a category of Biography-Human with a search sub-catergory of last name, first name, birth year even if the birth year is estimated? Then the sub-sub categories of topic from the most important to the least?

Example: John Carpenter, town clerk of London - would have the category:Biography-Human.

Biography-Human then would list the person in question alphabetically as;


 * Carpenter, John, 1372|town clerk|London|author|Liber Albus|Member of Parliment|1425|City of London School|Late Middle Ages|England|1442|

I am a novice with Wikipedia, but might this solve the problem? And it would be easy for computers to search. Or maybe something similar?

John R. Carpenter Jrcrin001 (talk) 01:03, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Alexandrov Ensemble
The Alexandrov Ensemble page was last rated as "start", but that was in 2007. Since then, it has been considerably expanded, updated and wikified, and the process continues apace. Moreover it has spawned a subsidiary page of mini musical biogs of its soloists: Alexandrov Ensemble soloists, plus a new associated page, Evgeny Belyaev, about one of its world-renowned soloists. Now how do I get these reviewed and re-rated as appropriate? Any comments as to how these pages can be improved would be gratefully received. Research and editing is currently continuous on all these pages. Please kindly respond on my talk page if possible - or leave a note there to let me know that you have responded here. Thanks. --Storye book (talk) 12:42, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Panayiotis Zavos needs work
Article on Panayiotis Zavos (recently in press in relation to claims of human cloning) is in pretty bad shape. Article is currently very light on cites. Obviously, we always need to follow WP:BLP, but carelessness in articles that discuss controversial topics is just courting trouble. -- 201.37.230.43 (talk) 22:49, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Increase Sumner article - request rating
Hi everyone. I significantly beefed up the article on Increase Sumner today which was rated Stub-class. Can someone take a look at it and give it a new rating? Thanks! pmcyclist (talk) 20:10, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
 * You can request at WikiProject Biography/Assessment. Hekerui (talk) 20:17, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks so much for your help. I'll do that. pmcyclist (talk) 20:41, 27 April 2009 (UTC)Wazzup dudes I don't even know what you dudes are talking about. Laugh out loud!

RfC on name in lede of Gene Robinson
Talk: Gene Robinson

Your input is welcome. -- Banj e b oi   03:13, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Joe Louis
I've updated the Joe Louis article and listed it for peer review. It was B-Class but should be close to FA-Class now, hopefully. Any comments are appreciated. BillTunell (talk) 19:48, 29 April 2009 (UTC)