Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography/Archive 35

Starting line for a dead person biography
Hi there,

The first line of a wiki article related to a biography of a dead person almost always says (for example):


 * Konrad Hermann Josef Adenauer (German pronunciation: [ˈkɔnʁaːt ˈhɛɐman ˈjozɛf ˈaːdenaʊɐ]), 5 January 1876 – 19 April 1967) was a German statesman.

Is this correct? Or is it better to say this?


 * Konrad Hermann Josef Adenauer (German pronunciation: [ˈkɔnʁaːt ˈhɛɐman ˈjozɛf ˈaːdenaʊɐ]), 5 January 1876 in Cologne – 19 April 1967 in Rhöndorf) was a German statesman.

As you can guest, we are having a content fight in the Konrad Adenauer‎ article related to the topic if the place of birth and death should be added in the fist line as stated in the second sample.

Can anyone please give advice?

Thanks, Miguel.mateo (talk) 00:10, 17 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I capitalized Cologne in your example. If the places for both is known I see no reason not to include them. It appears to be general practice for regular encyclopedias. Have you tried comparing the featured articles? By the way, I'd hate to add more fuel to the fire, but I'd prefer it if the pronunciation was either retained to a sound file or have its "German pronunciation" bit removed to save space. In this case the IPA takes up too much space and it is unlikely a regular reader knows how to pronounce it from that anyway. - Mgm|(talk) 14:58, 1 February 2009 (UTC)


 * It might be helpful to look at WP:MOSBIO which would appear to favor the first example given, as all the examples given there show only name and dates. Unfortunately it does not specifically discuss the place names to give a clearer yes or no to your question.  Rossrs (talk) 15:27, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Milestone Announcements
I thought this WikiProject might be interested. Ping me with any specific queries or leave them on the page linked to above. Thanks! - Jarry1250 (t, c) 21:42, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Yoweri Museveni
nominated Yoweri Museveni 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.  YellowMonkey  ( click here to vote for world cycling's #1 model! ) 03:27, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Workgroup or department for articles about children
While perusing my article creations and the ones I have in the works, I've come to the conclusion that I write a lot of articles about notable children (or people who became notable while they were a minor). I think organizing the efforts to improve these articles about children (in this case defined as anyone under 18) would be much improved by a workgroup or department. Is there anyone else that would join such a group? - Mgm|(talk) 13:52, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Since my initial post didn't garner any responses, I'm moving it to the bottom of the list. - Mgm|(talk) 12:18, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Coordinators and MILHIST
Hello, all. As you may know, once every six months we at milhist elect a number of coordinators who oversee the various aspects of the project. Given that your project and our project share a common task force (or to be technically correct, work group) a question has been raised as to whether a project member in good standing from BIO would consider running for coordinatorship at MILHIST. It is our opinion that this may help the military work group by encouraging members from both projects to participate. You are invited to comment on this here or at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Military_history/Coordinators. TomStar81 (Talk) 06:44, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

GAR on Christian Bale
Christian Bale has been nominated for a good article reassessment. Articles are typically reviewed for one week. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to good article quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status will be removed from the article. Reviewers' concerns are here. Cirt (talk) 08:08, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

A Modest Proposal
Hello, Everybody!

I started out working on Category:Pages with DEFAULTSORT conflicts which led me to Category:Biography articles without listas parameter. As a result I have many interesting details about various project banners.

The one thing I noticed that prompted me to write this is that most of the information about an article that is in the Military History Project is in a hidden category so that the average editor / user would not see it. This seem to me to be a very good idea.

There are a large number of articles whose category listing is larger than the article. The average user / editor does not really care that an article is in Category:Unknown-priority biography (politics and government) articles, for example. A user / editor who does care about that will be working from the category as I am for the Category:Biography articles without listas parameter.

Could this project make all its class and priority parameters produce categories that are hidden on the pages that populate them? As this is probably the category with the most members such a move would be a strong support for making all the class and priority categories hidden and greatly reduce category clutter at the bottom of the talk pages.


 * JimCubb (talk) 05:13, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Raymond Aaron
This article has had an unfortunate history in that a very great deal has been edited by the subject of the article. I and another editor have been giving him advice on cutting the puffery out of it. Frankly biography is not my strong point. I'm living mine, not writing it! I'd appreciate an experienced project member or two casting their eyes over this article. I've left some notes of my own thoughts on the article talk page, also on Mr Aaron's user talk page.

Mr Aaron is hopeful that the COI banner might at some point be removed. I would very much prefer a project member here to get involved with that discussion when the time is right. Fiddle Faddle (talk) 10:38, 10 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Not that any objection I might have is relevant, but I would have no objection to consensus being reached about notability, something that seems borderline, via an AfD discussion. I'm too close to the article now to participate in that myself.  Fiddle Faddle (talk) 14:01, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Concern about motivational speakers
Those of us who remember the last recession may have been touched by the huge number of rogues and charlatans amongst the real and tested motivational speakers who came out of the woodwork and parted those desperate to find work, any work, and money, any money, from that money by selling courses that ranged from the mundane to the somewhat useful.

These people are skilled at self promotion, write excellent marketing puffery about themselves, often support each other because they are creating the market for their services. It starts to look very like incest with money.

The object is to establish notability and to sell, sell, sell books, tapes, courses, the lot. Who can blame them? They have to make money too.

Our duty is, of course, to report even handedly on the good, the bad and the downright appalling in a wholly factual manner based upon reliable sources. There is no better WikiProject than this one to go through biographies and rip out the puffery and the non verifiable stuff, and to ensure that these biographies are balanced and worth including in our encyclopaedia in the first place.

So I am alerting folk here to Category:Motivational speakers which contains many of them, and suggesting a jaundiced eye be passed over the contents with a view to validating, though AfD is necessary, the presence of the articles here. Fiddle Faddle (talk) 07:51, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Fiona Bruce - ethnicity in infobox
The infobox for Birography of British newsreader and television presenter Fiona Bruce has been editied to include a definition of her "ethnicity". Born in Singapore, to a Scottish father and English Mother, this has actually sparked of an edit war as different editors try to re-define her ethnic background as they perceive it to be. It surely has no relevance to how she reads the evening news! I cannot see a precedent for this, and other British newreaders and TV presenters are not defined in this way. I know that guidelies are not to stress ethnic background in the opening paragraph unless it's actually relevant (which the biography also does). Can this be extended to infoboxes (or we may end up having to re-edit every single biography infobox on wikipedia in the same way, with resulting edit wars as various contributors seek to define peoples ethnicity as they see fit.) Indisciplined (talk) 20:53, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Fashion model templates
See discussions on fashion model templates at Talk:Sports_Illustrated_Swimsuit_Issue and Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Fashion.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 07:57, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Adult Bio (Infobox)
Currently there are three infobox templates that serve the identical purpose:, ,. Currently these are almost the same except for some minor differences like the external links on the gender specific templates (all links are present on the non gender spefic named template) and some parameter descriptions such as alias results in Alias(es) on the non gender and female specific template and Stage Name(s) on the male specific template and image/photo on the templates.

I'm thinking about making sure has all the required fields as well as changing the image field so that it only takes the file name and extension and adding imagesize then move it to and then placing a Bot Request to go though all the pages that use the templates which will allow for easy updating and management for future changes.

The changes that the bot would have to do would be, adding gender= so they retain their correct colouring, photo → image for the female templates, ensure that image is just the file name and extension (eg: <tt>image = John Doe.png</tt>) so that <tt>imagesize</tt> can be implemented cleanly as well as on the pages that featured the male template add <tt>measureispenis = yes</tt> to correct the difference between the male specific template and the gender in-specific template.

What are other peoples views on this before i do it? Peachey88 (Talk Page 09:50, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

History of American Anthropology proposal
The article on Franz Boas ends with a list of his most notable students, who went on to play a key role in developing academic anthropology in the US, here (this list was compiled by reference to Marvin Harris's Rise of Anthropological Theory and a couple of biographies of Boas). Several of the names are in red. Since some notable sources say these people were important anthropologists in their day, I think they deserve article providing their biography, bibliography of their works, and something about the nature of their contribution to anthropology. Indeed, biography can be a useful way of exploring history, so writing these articles can help fill in blanks in the history of American anthropology. I am afraid that I do not have time but maybe others can chip in and do some research on these names. Slrubenstein  |  Talk 22:08, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Witold Pilecki
nominated Witold Pilecki 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. Tom B (talk) 16:53, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Danny Boyle
Can anyone advise with this page, how best to phrase the name of the town in which he was born? Radcliffe, Greater Manchester was, at the time of his birth, in the historic county of Lancashire - from 1974 it was in Greater Manchester. The article is being subjected to repeated edits and reversions over this matter, and its frankly starting to annoy the hell out of me, particularly as I'd rather spend my time clearing up the cite requests. There is a discussion in Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Greater_Manchester. Parrot of Doom (talk) 12:18, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Ralph Bakshi
Hi there. Ralph Bakshi is a current featured article candidate, but I'm not exactly 100% clear on some of the references. Does anyone have the book Unfiltered: The Complete Ralph Bakshi? Could you check it to make sure that there's nothing missing from the article, or that any of the information in the article is incorrect? (Ibaranoff24 (talk) 13:49, 24 February 2009 (UTC))

WikiProject Coordinators' working group
Hi! I'd like to draw your attention to the new WikiProject coordinators' working group, an effort to bring both official and unofficial WikiProject coordinators together so that the projects can more easily develop consensus and collaborate. This group has been created after discussion regarding possible changes to the A-Class review system, and that may be one of the first things discussed by interested coordinators.

All designated project coordinators are invited to join this working group. If your project hasn't formally designated any editors as coordinators, but you are someone who regularly deals with coordination tasks in the project, please feel free to join as well. -Drilnoth (talk) 00:29, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Wikifying birthdates
I have a question about wikifying birthdates (and death dates, if applicable). Media Wiki has a really cool feature that automatically formats dates according to the viewer's preference. For example, February 22, 1982 will show up 22 February 1982 if that's the way the user prefers it. But it only works if the dates are wikified (e.g. 22 February 1982 ). But since wikifying birthdates and death dates is forbidden now (for some strange reason) dates show up however the original editor entered them. Is there some way to wikify dates without linking them? And why are wikifying birth and death dates forbidden now? Thanks. &mdash; Frecklefσσt | Talk 15:07, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Nope, there isn't atm which is a pitty and i have bought that idea up several times in the discussions on wiki, mailing lists and bugzilla. Peachey88 (Talk Page 23:31, 18 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I fail to see why dates should be linked for the feature to work. Devs should make it work regardless, but until they do, we should return to the original status quo before the unlinking started. - Mgm|(talk) 08:59, 20 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Because there is no way to detect if its actually a date and some dates shouldn't be automatically formatted either. Peachey88 (Talk Page 09:48, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
 * No way to detect if it is actually a date? A date has only so many possible ways it can be expressed. It's easy to see if something is a date. It can even be coded for a bot to recognize. Some shouldn't be autoformatted, but the only ones I can think of right now are articles like September 11 attacks and that can be accounted for by simply discounting dates that are part of an internal link (rather than the only content of a link). I totally agree with Frecklefoot that we should somehow make sure autoformatting by a user's personal preference should somehow be enabled. If it is, people are less likely to change the article to fit their own preference. - Mgm|(talk) 09:30, 23 February 2009 (UTC)
 * There is a rocket called the Long March 2 rocket. Rich Farmbrough, 19:43 25 February 2009 (UTC).
 * So do we start wikilinking birth/death dates again or no? &mdash; Frecklefσσt | Talk 14:58, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
 * No, there's no reason to start re-linking dates. While there may ultimately be a guidelines developed for what should be definitively be linked, it will end up being de-linked by someone. As dates are being delinked, they are being done so in the format used in the country from which the person came. My thoughts are that since there are so many versions of Wikipedia, that the variation is something to which people can adapt until something better comes along. The other issue with linking dates is that it creates wholly useless lists of otherwise unrelated things. Wildhartlivie (talk) 20:20, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, this is a little off-topic, but dates could be expressed such that they'd be formatted, but not linked, which is really the only reason we want to link them. For example, wikimarkup could be modified to recognize something like this:
 * <tt> [20 September] [2005] </tt>
 * and produce theis:
 * September 20, 2005
 * without wikilinking the dates. That way it'd be formatted per preferences, but wouldn't create the useless lists that were bothering people.  Just a suggestion, but probably doesn't belong here. Feel free to make a suggestion at Wikipedia proposals or Wikipedia technical (not sure which would be better).  I think this would resolve the problem, though a feature like this wouldn't show up for a year or two. &mdash; Frecklefσσt | Talk 15:43, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Note: this subject is amazingly contentious and the arguments are subject of a current Arbcom discussion. Rich Farmbrough, 19:44 25 February 2009 (UTC).


 * Really? Where? &mdash; Frecklefσσt | Talk 20:01, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Microformats upgrade
Since 2007 when it was announced on this talk page, many of the biography infoboxes have been upgraded to allow the encoding of microformat data. Large numbers of infoboxes now include them, including templates such as these and and these. This metadata allows among other things mapping of events that occurred during the person's life, as well as ease of interchange of information between web applications and Wikipedia. To see some of these functions, further instructions may be found here.

In the coming days, I shall be upgrading more of these infoboxes unless there are objections. The upgrades should have no visible effect on the infoboxes whatever. I will checking these as I progress, but if you feel this is not so, please feel free to revert immediately. Thanks -J JMesserly (talk) 06:03, 26 February 2009 (UTC)