Template talk:WikiProject Biography/Archive 1

message: I had some wine with my lunch so I don't much feel like tackling conditional code at the moment :) It needs to be done though. --kingboyk 17:50, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've already added that :-) I think I did it Friday... plange 23:00, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: oops, now I know what you're talking about-- forgot to actually include them in this template ;-) done...plange 01:28, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You also need to add usage instructions. --kingboyk 08:31, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Importance categories need to be implemented 

message: This template seems to produce an extra gap after it (e.g. here) that I can't quite figure out. Kirill Lokshin 04:39, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I noticed that too, and it's only if it's been given a quality and there are no comments left, which I can't figure out why it's doing that...plange 04:44, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Attempting to narrow down:
***Talk:Abraham_Lincoln no weird spacing - has quality scale and importance scale and comments
***Talk:Albert_Einstein weird spacing - has quality scale and importance scale and no comments
***Talk:Vivien_Leigh weird spacing - has no quality scale but has importance scale and no comments
***Talk:Norman Pilcher no weird spacing - has no quality scale but has importance scale and comments
***Talk:Allan Williams no weird spacing - has no scales but has comments
***Talk:Arthur Conan Doyle weird spacing - no scales and no comments
plange 04:58, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

text: It's got to be the coding at the bottom (adding category if it has comments), since I added that today plange 05:01, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: We need to get rid of it, it's downright ugly. I can't see what the problem is at the moment but I'd suggest removing all not-strictly-necessary linebreaks and empty HTML comments. --kingboyk 19:18, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yippee, Andrew C fixed it! plange 18:38, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think there's probably a bit more white space we could get rid of. If anyone wants to try it I'd strongly recommend trying in a sandbox first though as it's real easy to break the code. --kingboyk 19:11, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Strange extra spacing 

message: I don't like the name of the template. First of all, I'm finding it hard to remember. Secondly, "Bio" could be biology etc etc. I wondered about using Template:Biography but that slot is filled by... well I'm not sure what it is, it seems to be an instructions page rather than a template. --kingboyk 09:10, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree, I'm having a hard time remembering too. This was inherited from previously... how about WPBiography? plange 15:18, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, that might be better. I've freed up Template:Biography but I think I might have misunderstood the purpose of what was there and may have to move it back. WPBiography would be a safer bet :) --kingboyk 19:18, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yep, sorry, that's an article outline, so we need to keep that plange 19:20, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Moved it back. --kingboyk 19:24, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Thank you kingboyk! plange 18:37, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Template name 

message: I have now added usage notes and examples above. However, my second example, which uses all available fields, has automatically placed this talk page in several categories. Does anyone know of a way to avoid category inclusion without removing the example? Thanks. Road Wizard 23:01, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Not sure, I'm just learning the ins and outs of these things, but thanks for tackling the documentation! Also, in doing so, I see I have some red-links I need to populate in the categories below plange 23:10, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

text: If you're feeling brave, you could subst the template and remove the categories. Kaldari 00:11, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the suggestion, but I was hoping that we could keep the examples as a current reflection of the template. However, if this isn't possible, we will just have to live with it. There is also the option of leaving the template in the categories, as one extra page in each of those categories won't do too much harm. Are there any suggestions on which way we should go? To misquote Shakespeare, "To subst, or not to subst, that is the question." Road Wizard 00:20, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I would vote to subst, since some of these categories are going to be actively used for the 0.5/1.0 effort and should remain uncluttered. Kaldari 00:45, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Problem with usage note examples 

message:  doesn't place talk pages in the correct categories, it leaves them in unassessed. We need either to fix this or make the instructions more robust on this point. --kingboyk 13:37, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've found that the class and importance are case sensitive, so typing start will not work, but Start will. ···日本穣? · Talk to Nihonjoe 17:45, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hopefully fixed. --kingboyk 20:27, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's only partialy fixed as you have only corrected the category assignment. Template assignment is still case sensitive. It shouldn't be a problem for the single character and word options, but dual character options require the second character to be capitalised. This is because fa and ga do not have associated templates, i.e.  and  don't exist yet, but  and  do. Should the alternative templates be created as redirects? Road Wizard 21:22, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Aha, hadn't thought of that. In answer to your question, I'd say yes. Could you do it? I'm doing some heavy template work and reparameterising at the moment. --kingboyk 21:26, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lower case parameters 

message: I'm wondering if we ought to transclude the "living person" warning text, either by transcluding  or by having both templates transclude the same boilerplate text. This would allow us to more easily pass on "complaints" (such as I have just received) about the content of that warning direct to the people responsible for the policy.
On the other hand, if my bot run is allowed to complete there might not be any usages of that template left, since I will be replacing any found with our template and living=yes. --kingboyk 16:03, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Wouldn't be a bad idea-- they still keep changing the dang text on that template and so it hasn't finalized. I keep checking on the tag and changing ours whenever they make another change. Sorry you're having to bear all the complaints! plange 19:23, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well without having read this (and noticing that the text of this template was out of date) I went ahead and changed the code to transclude . This should properly cover the  template. :-) (→Netscott) 18:05, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Blp 

message: How do I test that something does not eq something? I'd like to not show the line that asks for comments if it's rated FA, but not sure how to do it... Thanks! plange 02:14, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Has this question been answered, or are you still looking for help? Road Wizard 22:04, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  How to test <> 

message: I'm tying to add the importance code to another project template (), but somewhere I'm messing it up. Would someone much more familiar with this code check it out (that template, above) and let me know where the extraneous code is from. The extra bit of code appears outside the project template. Thanks! ···日本穣? · Talk to Nihonjoe 17:43, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: sorry, couldn't help you much! I tried.... plange 06:55, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for trying to figure it out. Anyone else willing to give it a shot? ···日本穣? · Talk to Nihonjoe 17:35, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Can you put the code you are having trouble with in my sandbox? I can then play around with it a bit without messing up the main template. Road Wizard 18:03, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Done. Thanks for your help. If we can get it to appear only when it's been specified (as with the class) that would be great, too. This code is just too complicated for me. (^_^;; ···日本穣? · Talk to Nihonjoe 18:23, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Help with importance 

message: Have we abandoned using the importance field on this template, or has it just been disabled by accident? If you take a look at the full example above, you will notice that "importance" is used in the example code but that no entry appears in the template. Road Wizard 18:06, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: We've decided to only show it for Top...plange 18:15, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Should the usage notes be amended then? I assume that using the other options is still valid for categorisation purposes? Road Wizard 18:19, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not sure it's such a great idea to have a visible effect only for Top. The reaction I had when I first assessed an article was "hey, that template does not work properly." I think it's also important for people that want to review the assessment to make it more visible. Pascal.Tesson 14:57, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. I think also that Comments should be displayed and encouraged for all classes of articles, including GA and FA. --kingboyk 15:00, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, will show comments again, but since the project has decided as a project not to grade below Top, I can't see how showing the others helps things-- it gets us into tugs-of-war on who should be high, mid, etc., that we don't have time or energy for. We're having a hard enough time deciding who gets Top. Was actually thinking I'd change the word Top to "Core"...plange 15:39, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh I see. I must have missed that discussion. In that case then, perhaps we should discard the importance= parameter and replace it with a boolean (yes/no) core= param? (We'd silently discard importance=, of course, so that there's no need to revisit the 50,000+ articles already tagged!!!). --kingboyk 15:51, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Better decide soon. The Core list is almost complete and as soon as it is we will be auditing the 200 Core articles to make sure they are marked "Top" or "core=yes" or whatever. Kaldari 05:23, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

text: So would I. VegaDark 08:23, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Please see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Biography#Tagging_BLPs --kingboyk 08:48, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Importance field 

message: The "Living people biography" box has just disappeared from Talk pages where "Living=Yes" is included in this template. Anyone know why?  --Mais oui! 08:28, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's case sensitive, so make sure you're using living=yes plange 15:21, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Living people 

message: The amount of space that this template takes up on a talk page is a bit excessive, IMO. Any ideas for how we could reduce it? Personally, I don't think we need the link to the Biography Portal or the Biography to-do list in this template. Kaldari 21:20, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Can you bring this up on the Project talk page? Not many members watch this page, thanks! :-) plange 21:22, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Will do. Kaldari 21:32, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Template size 

message: Can someone change the BLP box when its being transcluded with this template so that it doesn't look as bad?  At least change the background and widen it out; the space around the BLP box doesn't look very professional. Hbdragon88 23:53, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Whitespace is ugly 

message: Seriously, add a hide/show dotad to this thing, it's freaking HUGE. -- Ned Scott 14:33, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed, something seriously needs to be done about the size of this template. Kaldari 15:37, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

text: I personally think the size is quite reasonable. It doesn't seem overly padded or verbose. Just putting the opposing view. --kingboyk 15:47, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Wow, don't think it's any bigger than normal-- the only thing that makes it bigger than other projects is if the person is living and it's actually saving space because before you'd have the  template separate and now they're combined. Same with , so we're actually saving space on the talk page by combining them into this template. If the person is dead, it's not very large at all. We hide the extra stuff like if it has had an assessment, etc., and we took away the to-do list. plange 19:49, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: While that is true, the living persons template and other project templates are also too large. It's rediculous that half the pages I edit require scrolling down a page or two before you can even see the table of contents on the Talk page. And of all the space-hogging templates, this one is the worst. At the very least, we should remove the Biography to do list. First of all, it's confusing since it has nothing to do with the article. My first assumption was that it was a place to put to-do items for the article. Second of all it's redundant since you can see the same list of tasks by clicking on the WikiProject Biography link. Either way it requires 1 click. Thirdly, it takes up significant vertical space in the template, which is already too big. Kaldari 23:25, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The Todo list is long gone isn't it? I don't see it anyway. --kingboyk 23:32, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Yes, the to-do list was removed several days ago. If you have a problem with the size of the living person template, then you need to take it up with . That template HAS to be there and truly, if you just put  and our tag (without the blp warning) separately on the talk page, the amount of space it would take up would be larger-- by us incorporating blp into our template we were doing our part (I thought) to help reduce the amount of space taken up. plange 00:47, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  freaking HUGE 

message: is directly transluding  as indeed this template used to do. Now, I've found that (imho) it looks much tidier if the Blp template is displayed outside the WPBeatles box. See Talk:Dhani Harrison. It looks like two seperate templates but actually the living person warning is coming from WPBeatles. --kingboyk 13:55, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've done the same here. See if you like it. If you don't, feel free to revert. --kingboyk 13:17, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Blp (2) 

message: I didn't add importance for work groups for a reason. Importance to the Biography project and importance to a workgroup are quite different.
Consider QE2. Top importance in royalty, surely, but currently considered only High in biography.
Furthermore, some people can belong to more than one workgroup:
*Ronald Reagan - Top importance in politics, low importance in A&E.
*Grace Kelly - Low to middle importance in royalty, high importance in A&E.
The only way you're going to do importance for workgroups in any sane way is to have a seperate importance parameter for each workgroup. I personally don't think it's worth the hassle but if you want to track importance that's what you'll have to do. --kingboyk 13:18, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, here's my reasoning. Project already knows that Top is only assigned to people on the Core biographies page, so I figured the work groups can be the ones to hash out High on down, since it's the work groups that can judge their importance within their discipline (which is the main qualifier for the other importance ratings) and I figure that, for overlaps, it's not a big deal because we'll just go with the higher one.... plange 17:35, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: it's not quite as straightforward as that though... the idea is that the WP1.0 team will have some sort of formula, Project Importance * Article Importance = Enyclopedic Importance (I'm not entirely confident it will ever come to fruition but that's the idea). What you're proposing has the potential to break that formula to an extent. It's not a huge deal so I'm willing to overlook this slight bodge ;) but just be aware that it is a bit of a bodge :) --kingboyk 17:47, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well except that I see the work groups as the best judge for what meets the High, Mid and Low definitions since the definitions are discipline specific. Perhaps the part of the overlap is a bodge and we can tackle that separately-- perhaps we say that the overlapping workgroups reach a consensus on how it relates and fits instead of picking the highest. But even the examples you gave would be fine with going with the highest. Ronald Reagan meets High and so does Grace Kelly for the project as a whole-- they meet the definition for High. plange 19:25, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't disagree that "the work groups a[re] the best judge for what meets the High, Mid and Low definitions", that's really my point :) Are you challenging me, by the way, to find examples other than those I gave? Hmm... I'll sleep on it! :P --kingboyk 19:38, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: me confused...plange 21:16, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Done. --kingboyk 10:30, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Importance for work groups 

message: Also something I didn't implement for a reason :) At present numbers it's OK, but if I or someone else bot-tags large numbers of articles with workgroup params (see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Biography#Biography_categories), thus increasing by many thousands the number of unassessed articles in a workgroup, we could find Mathbot on a go-slow again. So, whilst I have no objection to the latest edit (it's good in a way) if we see the numbers increasing much beyond 1,000 we ought to alert Oleg. He can then decide whether to do the workgroups as part of the seperate Biography run. We don't want other projects hating us because we make Mathbot go slow :) --kingboyk 19:03, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmm, so should we keep an eye on it and request a separate run in advance if we think we're going to need it? The reason I did it that way was because I figured people in certain work groups could have an easy link to go to to assess articles.... plange 22:21, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Keep a close eye on it, yes please. --kingboyk 10:08, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unassessed articles cats 

message: The Living Persons version of the template says, in part, "Poorly sourced, potentially libellous material must be removed immediately." Does this mean:
:a) material must be BOTH poorly sourced and potentially libellous to be removed immediately and immune to the 3RR?
:b) material can be EITHER poorly sourced OR potentially libellous to be removed immediately and immune to the 3RR?
--Calton | Talk 14:46, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Don't know, you'll need to ask that over at  - they're the ones that worked out that template plange 14:49, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Ambiguity

message: Maybe I'm missing something, but if all the articles are in one of the sub-categories of :Category:Biography articles by quality, is there any need to add them to :Category:WikiProject Biography articles directly as well? Kirill Lokshin 16:04, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Not really. I was going to say it makes it easier to get lists for a bot, but what-transcludes-here can be used for that. Ditching it is fine by me. Plange? --kingboyk 16:09, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Fine by me-- that was kind of an accident anyway, since I think I just copied the code from MILHIST - I must have done something wrong... plange 17:29, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Redundant category? 

message: I see that somebody has protected the template, meaning that only admins can edit it. I think it's a good idea because of the template's exposure, but OTOH non-admins - in particular Plange - have made substantial contributions to it and would be likely to continue doing so. Are any non-admins affected by this change happy to submit their changes via me or another admin or do you want to lobby for unprotection? --kingboyk 10:06, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: hmm... Let me think on this... Thanks for asking! plange 14:03, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd rather have it unprotected but on many watchlists until such time as protection becomes necessary. The reason is, of course, that as the only admin round here I have to do all the work and it's become something of a full time job :) --kingboyk 18:08, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree-- it's been rather frustrating as I feel helpless not being able to implement things or help out... What if we just protect it against non-logged in users? We could also word it more strongly to say something like, no changing unless discussed first on Talk page or it will be considered vandalism and action taken accordingly? --plange 18:23, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Let's try it. I'll downgrade to semi-protection and move protection. Hopefully though it won't need any serious work until we get any more child projects. As well as announcing the template changes in the newsletter we can also ask members to watchlist the template to look out for vandalism. If vandalism does become an issue we can protect it again but let's take the optimistic route for now. --kingboyk 18:45, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I made a tiny change.  I only put in a comma but I was affraid to click the save button.  All these warnings and protection have me all up tight.  As it should be.. haha Morphh 19:20, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm about to block you for 1 week. ONLY KIDDING!! :P Thanks for that change.--kingboyk 19:27, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Protection 

message: Please change :Image:Azure-Cross-Or-Heraldry-small.png to :Image:Azure-Cross-Or-Heraldry.svg.  Silversmith  Hewwo 14:32, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Done, thanks. --kingboyk 14:39, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Admins 

message: See the discussion at  concerning the image used in the "Biography of Living Persons" (BLP) part of the template. I see a comment above that there was a lot of discussion over the use of an image. Was it this image being discussed? Carcharoth 15:57, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Replied at . --kingboyk 19:22, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks. Carcharoth 00:03, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Picture used in BLP part of template 

message: I think the workgroup parameter names are unneccesarily lengthy. Shorter is always better, for editors to remember and to minimise tranclusion size.
|a&e-work-group=
|politician-work-group=
|british-royalty=
|royalty-work-group=
|military-work-group=
could have been...
|arts=
|politics=
|british-royalty=
|royalty=
|military=
I don't know whether we should rename and retag existing instances or not, but I'd certainly recommend more concise names for any new parameters. --kingboyk 16:16, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Can't the template be set up to recognize either set of parameters?  I know I'd prefer the shorter version, but it does seem like it'd be a lot of trouble to change the old ones...  --Tim4christ17 talk 17:15, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It can be, but it's not as simple as in a real programming language (unless I'm missing something). There's no "or" operator and no assignment. --kingboyk 18:36, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

text: I used MILHIST's method, as I figured that would be familiar to most-- US-task-force=yes, etc. Seems like a lot of trouble to change and personally I like having similar parameters having a portion that is the same; makes it easier to know they have similar functions and purpose. --plange 18:08, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There's certainly no need for a hyphen in work-group. Maybe I'm just a bear of little brain :) --kingboyk 18:36, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Workgroup parameters 

message: Could you change the parameter for infobox to "infobox=" instead of "needs-infobox="?  Simple=easier to remember/figure out=better.  --Tim4christ17 talk 23:21, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think we need to check what other Projects use. Because I'm busy writing code for WikiProject templating it's easiest for me if we have consistency, and I think that's easiest for editors too (as most are involved in more than one project). I'll be looking into other project's template in coming days and will report back. --kingboyk 23:23, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Consistency LOL.  If WPBiography was interested in consistency, why'd it change from "importance" to "priority"?  Importance has already proliferated...I now have it in my mind, but when I saw that it was depreciated, I was all, "WTF?" Hbdragon88 03:35, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I expect other groups will change to priority as well.  People were offended that we would rate the biography of a person with "low" importance.  Having the idea that we considered the person of low importance in general.  It seemed very POV and insulting to the person/article.  Priority is more specific and associates with the workgroup.  It is easier to see this is the priority of the workgroup as appose to the articles importance. Morphh 10:37, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Exactly right. That change was forced upon us. A senior and well-respected admin complained about labelling people by importance, and I felt we had better act rather than place the whole assessment scheme in jeapordy. As it happens, Oleg (Mathbot's author, he writes the code that builds the worklists for WP1) has implemented priority= support and it can be used by any project now instead of importance=. As Morphh says, I expect some other projects will follow suit. (My plugin for AWB also supports both formats). --kingboyk 10:54, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Minor change proposal 

message: Why did we remove the image of the two girls from the living persons banner? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Morphh (talk • contribs) 
: See the (long) discussion here. Template talk:Blp#Image change. Garion96 (talk) 00:43, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Image