Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography/Archive 14

message: Does anyway else think it would be production for a bot to search new pages and create a subpage list of biographies - it would make it much easier to assess new pages rather than losing them in the millions of other articles - as lots are uncateogrised/wikified? RHB - Talk 20:06, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bot to sort new pages 

message: Eric of Good Harvests should be moved to Eirik Arsale or possibly Erik Årsäll! Or not!! Discuss! Said: Rursus ☺ ★ 19:24, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Controversial rename proposal, give your opinion!

message: The default in the Biography infobox is very small - is 100px?  125px?  It looks bad so small, the box dwarfing the photographs of the people the article illustrates.  The default should be set at 175px.  Any reason it is not?  --David Shankbone 14:10, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Biography infobox image sizes

message: Despite surviving a AfD reqest, this article appears to me to have serious violations of Bio policy. Could someone check it out? Murderbike 18:54, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Margita Bangová]] 

message: Hi! In the WP Biography assessment template of this article you can read it is a start class article. There is also the following comment:"This article has a deprecated non-null importance-parameter. It should be replaced with priority-". I consider the importance of this article as low, and I have edited the template into "importance-low" and "priority-low", but somehow it has not changed the text of the importance parameter. What has gone wrong? A second question: is priority a synonym to importance in WikiProject Biography assessment template? Tellervo 12:19, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Importance is the depreciated parameter that has been replaced by priority. A bot runs once in the while to replace the contents of the category for templates with an importance parameter with that of priority. Only Top priority will have a visible effect on the template - the other options will just assign the correct category. Priority ratings apply only to workgroups. Because of the scale of this WikiProject it was felt that assessing priority across the whole Project would be too much. (stolen from :Template:WPBiography) RHB - Talk 09:39, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  On the assessment of the article about [[Quintus Tullius Cicero 

message: The Idaho State Historical Society is currently working with us to add articles on notable Idaho residents. These are based on papers in their collection, and will probably not be biographies of living people. See Margaret Cobb Ailshie as an example. Do you want us to add the WikiProject Biography template to these talk pages? If not, how can we notify you of new articles?
I am excited about this collaboration with WikiProject Idaho. They plan on adding some photographs, but the details need to be worked out on that, so the photos meet the Free image criteria. Do you know of any other collaborations with repositories (libraries, museums, historical societies) on Wikipedia? If we can contact them, we won't need to re-invent the wheel. --Robbie Giles 13:14, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Congratulations on getting the input of the historical society! Regarding the tagging of the articles, it probably is a good idea. Whether they're living or not, they qualify as people, and we might have specific work groups which deal with articles of that kind, should there be any need to have additional work on them. Regarding your second point regarding photos, I have a feeling you might want to contact Wikimedia Commons, as they deal exclusively with pictures, and probably know more such details than I do.  John Carter 13:25, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The only collaboration I can think of that is similar to this was the creation of the Russian History WikiProject by Marshall Poe. More information is here. RHB - Talk 22:05, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Idaho biographies 

message: This may be the wrong place but I am relativly new to wikipedia. This page, Francis Dixon, is truly awful and I belive no one cares about it. Could you do the correct thing for the project and delate it?
Tjnewell 20:28, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I've seen worse, but you can list the article at Article for Deletion under concerns of lack of WP:NOTE.  No, you are not personally allowed to delete articles, nor can we -- that's an admin power.  Articles can be speedily deleted if they are obvious vandalism, copyright violation, or something as severely conflicting with the encyclopedia.  Otherwise articles may be nominated for deletion and then discussed; after consensus, it may or may not be deleted. María (críticame) 20:41, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Am I allowed to delate?

message: Barack Obama 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.SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:36, 8 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Barack Obama FAR

message: Ted Radcliffe 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.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM)  20:28, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  FAR notices for Ted Radcliffe and Steve Dalkowski 

message: As of now the workgroups of WikiProject Biography serve almost no purpose. A workgroup on a very general topic such as Arts and Entertainment, covering tens of thousands of articles, is of little use. I propose a completely new workgroup scheme, where anyone who wants to write a biography, can find a workgroup that closely matches their interests.
The first step will be to create a new workgroup system. All workgroups will be on occupations or lifestyles, as they are now. We will start with general workgroups, such as Politics & Government and Arts & Entertainment. These workgroups will serve as an umbrella for more specific workgroups. The most specific workgroup should always be used, the more general ones are for articles that don't fall under any of the more specific workgroups' scope.
In WikiProject Mathematics they have implemented a data subpage to help sort their articles more specifically. In the mathematicians workgroup, data can be added to the subpage on the person's birth date and the field of mathematics they were involved in. I propose we implement a similar system. 
First of all, we will replace the parameters: a&e-work-group, politician-work-group, etc. with workgroup1, workgroup2, up to workgroup5. The different values for these will be a&e, politician, etc. Then, for the data subpage, we will create a template that can be subst'd that explains the page's role in our project. It will include a hidden comment: "wpbiography" at the end of the message. The bot that will work with all of this will know to start reading there, to avoid any conflicts with WikiProject Mathematics.
For each workgroup there will be certain data that will be useful, and certain data that will not. All workgroups will have the birth-death data though. This is an example for the US House of Representatives workgroup:
Birth-Death: 1809 – 1876
<1>
** US-State: Iowa
Let's say that this data is for John Doe, a B-Class article. The table would be as follows:
Article 	Birth and Death date	Quality	Comments                  	State
John Doe	1809 – 1876         	       		Iowa
Our first priority should be creating the workgroup scheme, then worry about the implementation of the data subpages. I will start working on it tomorrow, I welcome everyone's input. Psychless 05:05, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Unless the workgroups do anything as groups, I see no reason for them at all. Please explain how you envision editors working together under the workgroups and what you envision the workgroups doing in the Biography project. If we have no clear idea of what the workgroups are going to be doing, I see no reason to establish them at this time. Awadewit | talk 08:34, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: After thinking through it more carefully, I guess the time it would take to assign specific workgroups to 400,000 articles would be better spent just improving articles. Feel free to ignore my proposal. Psychless 01:31, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

text: I am part of the "Arts and Entertainment group", but I hear little out of it. Do we have project leaders for these groups? Active leaders? I think now, with the Assessment Drives, these respective groups need to pull it together and begin reviewing the work that is in their domain. Tagging appropriately; reassessing; peer reviewing, etc. --Ozgod 14:59, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Creating a useful workgroup scheme 

message: Could someone check the article on Chuck Knipp?  I was browsing through and there is a lot of anonymous edits from a single IP that intertwine with things that may not be what it should be.  I'm not an expert on this biography and I don't have sources.  It just didn't look right.  Thanks --Mark @ DailyNetworks talk 11:04, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Question

message: I have a request of upgrading the Yasser Arafat article to A-class and perhaps after some issues have been addressed to the Featured Article-class. -- Al Ameer son 01:16, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Yasser Arafat 

message: ako pa si jocylin balamad na taga dito sa nueva vida sur carmen bohol,
  ako po ay single parent po sa apat na mga anak at,nahihirapan sa hanap buhay kaya po ako ay sumubuk sumulat dito sa inyong programa,
  at gusto kopong inyong matutulongan,alam nyo po sa ngayon andito po ako sa panglao,island namamasukan bilang katolong at ang mga anak kopo ay nag aaral doon sa amin,nasa mama ko ang hirap nang malayo sa kanila,
  wish kolang tolongan nyo naman po ako dahil sa ngayon ako poy may minahal sa buhay bukod pa sa mga anak ko nahirapan po kami dahil nasamalayo sya nasa davao po sya po ay si ferdinand bolotaolo,at nasa bahada davao po,atgusto napo nyang bumalik wala lang pamasahi pabalik dito po sa amin,nagmamahalan po kami pilit po ksing ipnaglayo po kami ng anti nya kaya parihas po kaming nagmmahalan,
   kaya po tulongan nyo naman ako sa problimang kong ito dahil nag sama napo kami ng matagal at nagdadalang tao napo ako,kaya po bigyan nyo naman po ako ng katogonan sa mga kahilingan ko,at gusto kopo na magkakaroon ng makikitaan at pati na ang taong nabangit ko ay gusto napo namin na makapiling habang buhay,wish ko lang tolongan nyo naman po ako,at sana po magkroon po ako ng kaunting o maliit na tindahan na kahit papaano ay makikitaan napo ako.at may ibobohay napo ako sa mga anak ko at sa magiging anak namin ni ferdinan.
    umasa po akong na inyo pong matugunan ang kailangan kopo...
                                nagpasalamat,..jocylin balamad
:The above is an appeal for charity in Tagalog. Basically what she is saying is that she is a poor single mother of four children in Manila, but she is originally from Davao and would like to return there, but can't afford plane or ferry fare. She's asking for help to return home and establish a small business to support her family. Videmus Omnia  Talk  03:21, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  daer,wish ko lang, 

message: Anyone willing to assist in determining whether articles nominated for A-Class status would be more than welcome to do so. Also, if anyone can figure out how to close the A-Class reviews of several articles which have been lingering for some time, I would be very grateful. Trying to understand the complexities of the closing process strains what few remaining brain cells I still have and is probably way beyond my own poor, pathetic abilities. John Carter 20:41, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/A-class review]] needs help! 

message: It has been proposed by me (SpecialWindler) that a new bot go through and assess certain articles. These certain articles are categorised in the Unassessed category but also in an Assessed category (either as FA, A, GA, B, Start or Stub). However there are many articles which have been assessed as one thing while another project has yet to assess the article. The bot's proposal would be to assess the unassessed article as the other projects assessment, which would save time for that assessment.
Take Talk:Shane Perry as an example, it is rated as Start for the WikiProject Biography but unassessed for the Rugby league WikiProject. Would it not save the time of the Rugby league assessment team to have it assessed as Start by a bot. However the problem is that various WikiProjects have different assessment criteria. While most projects base it of this , some may not and wouldn't like a bot to do that.
If you would like to make a suggestion about this bot proposal you may want to add a suggestion at this page under the section "Comments from WikiProjects", in which you should state which WikiProject you come from. You may also want to look at the background of this proposal at Bot requests (under "WikiProject assessing" section) and then Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team (under "bot" section).
This message was substed from this page to alert some WikiProjects whether this bot is a good idea, to see if it can be run. It is planned that some WikiProjects will not like the idea and can be excluded from this bot, if it does go ahead. Thankyou. SpecialWindler  talk 10:11, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think this is a very ill-advised idea - you need a human being for it. The reason is, if article contain information within the scope of several wikiprojects, it might deal well with one aspect but terribly with the other - take Scottish Parliament building for instance - before it's FAC it was really great on the history and politics, but badly deficient in its treatment of the architecture - if I'm rating an article that spans projects, I only consider the scope of my project, rather than assume an expertise I do not have. --Joopercoopers 18:50, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Proposal

message: The article linked above has been sitting in FAC for a little while and has been little noticed. Comments are welcome. Geraldk 02:50, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  FAC [[William Claiborne]] 

message: I ask a native English speaker to please correct my edit, and to check for further shortcomings. Please see also my request on Talk:Caesar Cardini#Fair use?. 'Thanks, Wolfgang -- any IP. 07:13, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Help needed on [[Caesar Cardini]] 

message: I am a fairly ignorant member of Wikiproject:biography, what do others think about this page? Is it appropriate for Wikipedia? What should be done about such articles? Anarchia 11:51, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The last paragraph is clearly POV and should be removed immediately. The format could be altered a little to conform better to the Wikipedia:Manual of Style (biographies) and evidently to Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons. I'm fairly sure that the individual is notable as per WP:NOTABILITY, but I didn't see anything in the article itself which I can clearly point to to attest to that. If there is a non-trivial mention in a published work, that should be included to establish notability. Generally, articles which might contain a lot of data, but are not particularly well formatted, are tagged with , with notes on the talk page to indicate the specific areas of concern. Also, if notability can't be established, sometimes the articles are nominated for deletion on that basis. That is the primary reason it's imperative to have either an assertion of notability as per WP:BIO, or have an explicit reference which can verify such notability. John Carter 17:36, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the advice - very helpful! Anarchia 21:22, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Shri Prabhuji]]

message: Hi, I am trying to get the biography article of Bill Clinton to FA. I however have been editing the article in great chunks over the last few months and am in desperate need of fresh perspectives from other editors, in particular on style, grammar and prose. The article is currently at Peer review and I would most welcome any comments! Wikipedia:Peer review/Bill Clinton. The article has over 100 references and is very close to FA, it just needs some finishing touches by other experienced editors.  Thank you for your help! (Barnstars will be given!) LordHarris 23:12, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Bill Clinton]]

message: For a few weeks now, there have been preliminary efforts underway to prepare the groundwork for a project to use bots and humans together to standardise and update the sortkeys (the parameters that ensure that John Lennon appears under 'L' in categories, instead of under 'J'). and birth and death categories used in biographical articles. Currently there is DEFAULTSORT (a magic word used in articles) and the listas parameter of the WPBiography template (used on talk pages, and which indirectly uses DEFAULTSORT as well). See Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Polbot 3, User:Polbot/ideas/defaultsort, and User talk:Carcharoth/Polbot3 trial run for details. This 'sortkey project' is also gathering data with the aim of having every biographical article on Wikipedia having the correct DEFAULTSORT value on both the article and the talk page. Once that is done, a category :Category:Biography articles can be created that will have all the articles correctly DEFAULTSORTed (at least that is the theory).
What I want to ask here is for volunteers to help analyse chunks of data. The current plan is to have 380 pages dealing with 1000 articles each. The data would list 10 parameters (many of which will be blank), some from the WPBiography talk page template, and some from the article page itself:
Name|cl=|nb=|mwg=|lv=|bc=|dc=|la=|ds=|pn=|cp=
A. N. Example|cl=FA|nb=yes|mwg=|lv=yes|bc=1956|dc=Living|la=Example, A. N.|ds=|pn=|cp=Example
Here, cl is the article's class (to help filter out lists and disambiguation pages), nb is the non-bio parameter (similarly, these can be filtered out), mwg is to filter out the musician workgroup articles (many of which are not about a single person), lv is for living people, bc and dc are the values of the birth and death year categories (if they are there), la is the listas parameter, ds is the DEFAULTSORT parameter, pn is the Wikipedia:Persondata name parameter, and cp are the category pipe-sorting parameters (if any).
The aim is to analyse the data to identify several possibilities (including missing birth death categories) and for humans to suggest the correct sortkey where it is missing, or merely to confirm that the existing sortkeys are correct and can be extended over all the places sortkeys are used. What volunteers would need to be able to do is to manipulate the data in a program like Excel (or whatever is suitable), identify cases like "has birth category, does not have death category, lacks living person category, lacks lv=yes" (solution: add :Category:Living people and lv=yes), and also to check the list for obvious mistakes. Another example would be "has death category but no birth category" (solution: add :Category:Year of birth missing or :Category:Year of birth unknown). Then there are the sort keys: an example here would be "only sortkey is la=Lennon, John" (confirm this is correct and solution is add ds=Lennon, John). Or a case where "cp=Lennon, John and la=Lennon, John" (solution: add ds=Lennon, John). These are simple examples, and there are more complicated ones, but that can be discussed later.
It is important that volunteers have at least a rudimentary awareness of index naming conventions (or a willingness to learn). Asian naming conventions for example, where the 'family name' is written first. Or Arabic naming conventions. Some of the material at Wikipedia:LoPbN Meta-structure may be of help here. Also, it helps to have some background in history, so as to be aware that not all historical people have birth and death dates, and how to handle articles on legendary people (eg :Category:Old Testament saints).
Anyway, the point is that this will take a lot of effort and needs lots of people to help out. If you would be interested, or want to be notified of further developments, please sign up below with some indication of what you would want to help with. Please also discuss in the discussion section. Thanks. Carcharoth 13:45, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sortkey and birth/death categories standardization project 

message: *Helping to analyse the data and keeping the overall project going. Carcharoth 13:45, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Sign up

message: *Many of the names in the :Category:Old Testament saints were listed as Biographies because generally at least one religious group will insist that they were all real people, and I didn't think it would be a good idea to alienate them by keeping the Biography banner off those particular articles. I'd be willing to help as possible, but acknowledge that the specific facts relating to naming conventions of other cultures are beyond me. Can we have some volunteers to work specifically with articles of people with non-English name structures? John Carter 13:56, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Discussion

message: I created the Limited Knowledge template - you can use it now by adding  to the talk page of an article that you, as an editor, are attesting has a limited resource of information. The template is editable, but won't update on any pages it has been added to. --Ozgod 18:20, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Limited Knowledge 

message: I do a lot of work on obtaining images from article subjects to illustrate biographies - for anyone else interested in this kind of work, I wrote an essay/how-to at User:Videmus Omnia/Requesting free content. Help yourself if it's at all useful to you. Videmus Omnia  Talk  22:18, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Obtaining free images