Category talk:Living people/Archive 2

message: This is the wrong approach. Categories are easy enough to remove from articles. A wiki-tool can keep track of everything --Cool CatTalk|@ 16:29, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Please use a wiki-tool not categories

message: When i first saw this catagory on a page I litterally laughed out loud.  So I clicked on the link, and after reading this page agree that the catagory is (amazingly) useful.  But please find a way to make this invisable on most pages, experienced editors can find it, and new users won't have the bots to scroll through 50,000+ articals.  So thats it, keep this little catagory, but please don't make me have to see it on the bottom of every single page --T-rex 06:16, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: While I agree with your logic (and remain a little disgusted that my fellow editors have so little regard for the navigational utility of the category system that they'd advocate polluting it in this manner), from my understanding, the only way to truly make this thing invisible would be through a fairly significant change to the MediaWiki code. And I think that, if we're talking about adding functionality to the system, we'd be better off coming up with something other than categories to do it. I would personally think that something like Special:Watchlist, but designed to be easily accessible by multiple users, would be easier to create, and far less kludgy than adding the ability to "hide" categories (which I think is potentially rife for abuse). But then, I'm not really a programmer, so what do I know? – Seancdaug 17:13, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Allowing categories to be hidden = adding a single simple conditional to the code.  Creating a publicly-accessible watchlist = rewriting large sections of the existing watchlist code.  But in any case, a template solves this neatly with all parties satisfied, so let's go with that. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 02:58, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I could live with this category if it was invisible.  I feel that could pick any object on my desk and think of 100 potential categories that it is a member of.  And maybe even scenarios where this categorization would be useful. But overdoing it could make for ugly and confusing encyclopedia articles.  ike9898 14:59, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't favor hiding it in any way. All readers are also editors, and we should allow them to notice if it's wrong, and correct it if necessary. Demi T/C 16:06, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That's demonstrably not true: all readers are certainly not editors (though they can be, if they so desire). The numbers indicate that there are a great many more people who come to Wikipedia simply to find information, not to participate in the editing process. And while I'm not in favor of hiding it, since I think it would be not much more than a band-aid over the deeper problem, having a category not designed to aid in information navigation thrown in amidst all the categories that are designed for that purpose is a significant problem. So I understand the desire to keep this thing hidden from public view, as its the same basic reason we don't link to Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration (or any number of other administrative-only pages) from the main page. – Seancdaug 16:11, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Does the same argument not apply to categories such as :Category:Articles to be split, :Category:Articles to be expanded, and:Category:Wikipedia articles needing rewrite? --Whouk (talk) 16:35, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

text: *Yes, I would say the same argument does apply.  Administrative categories should not appear on an article's page.  Or, if they do appear, they should be less prominent.  There are many ways to do this.  For example, administrative categories could be listed in a seperate section of the article page, below the rest of the article.  Even better, they could be listed on the discussion page, which is where editors should be looking if they are doing more than minor work on an article. Johntex\talk 16:42, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

text: *In principle, yes, it probably does. On the other hand, most other administrative categories are designed to be transitory. An article tagged with :Category:Articles to be split will lose that category once the split is completed. Same thing with the various stub categories. Articles in this category, however, while they won't be here forever (no immortals here, right?), are liable to be here for much longer (decades, as opposed to days, weeks, or months). The ideal goal is to make it so that :Category:Wikipedia articles needing rewrite is empty (i.e., that there are no articles on Wikipedia in need of a serious rewrite). That is not the case with this: for this category to be at all useful, it's has to stick around for the long haul. – Seancdaug 17:03, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

text: *Yes, and in the archives you'll see some of us had already mentioned this. ALL article-based administrative templates could/should fall under a different CSS/MediaWiki trick to list them separately from navigational templates, and be (IMO) hidden from unregistered users (readers, primarily) by default. -- nae'blis (talk) 19:54, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

text: I have to agree with you completely. I just saw this on one of the articles I monitor, and thought it was a sort of vandalism. I understand the utility, but it really destroys the whole concept of catagories as a navigational tool. Please, please, please find a way of doing this either through the talk page, some other back-end method or making the tag invisible to the generic user. PhatJew 09:48, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This is big. Sorry, I know that's not at all helpful, but yeah. This category is... really... big. -Xastic 12:39, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Then don't browse it. It's not... really... meant to be browsed. --Optichan 19:05, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wow 

message: I feel that (as I know at least some others here do as well) that sending the question of renaming this article to a straw-poll vote was a little premature.  Additionally, since the discussion on the entire topic got archived today, I am reposting my comment from yesterday in the hopes that further discussion will continue.  
Support for renaming: I support renaming the category and I believe that * would be less confusing. My reasons are:
# A single symbol is less noticable, so will gather less interest 
# A symbol gives us the opportunity to redefinte the meaning to something like "Articles that carry a high risk of libel".  That would be a productive change because we run the substantial risk of libel from any article is substantially about a controversial person, not just their main biography article.  We could also consider adding the same symbol to other high vandalism articles, such as those linked from the main page, or those mentioned in a slashdot article, or an article about another topic with highly controversial figures.  We are no less at risk for libel if Kenneth Lay is libeled at the Enron page than at his own page. 
# A symbol is less likely to encourage people to attempt to add subcategories.  
As to claims that a single character will create confusion - I think that is easily dispelled as soon as they follow the link and see the explanation about why the symbol is there. As to the argument by Gmaxwell about multiple single character categories - you are making a slippery slope argument.  Until/unless someone is proposing a lot of other single character categories, I am not sure it is productive to spend much time worrying about that problem.  For the record though, my opinion is that if we ever need more single-character categories for administrative reasons, we could still add them without unduly confusing the reader.  Perhaps in the medium term a software solution would make this cleaner, by allowing something like a "Cat-Admin:*" which would not show up on screen. Johntex\talk 19:35, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Support. This is essential to minimise the damage done by Jimbo's arrogant foisting of this dumb idea on the poor Wikipedia. Osomec 09:18, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Renaming

message: I have only just (as in within the last hour) become aware of Wikipedia:Persondata and have started to add it to some articles. I think this might be more useful than this category. Thoughts? 23skidoo 00:23, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If no other better mechanism exists, something that would work would be a simple convention that any article about a living person should contain an HTML comment at the top indicating that fact. A bot could go through all articles looking for such a comment and add them to a list. This could be done at the time of each edit - that would make it more efficient. A lightweight mechanism like that would have none of the much-discussed problems with using a category to serve this administrative purpose. Most importantly, it would be invisible to the readers of the articles. And if there is no mechanism in the existing MediaWiki software to accomplish the administrative needs, then the software needs to be changed rather than polluting the readers' view with useless categories. - Hayne 02:35, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Wikipedia:Persondata

message: If any subcategories are allowed it will be a road to disaster. Who is to say whether say categorising by nationality or my occupation is better. If either is created, both will have to be. Then it will get split more and more and some people will be in multiple categories in addition to their existing multiple categories. The category links at the bottom of articles will look horrible. Osomec 09:17, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: This must never be subcategorised

message: When I create more articles about golfers, which I'm sure I'll be doign plenty of as the season gets into its swing I won't put them in this category. I won't add year of birth categories either. Osomec 09:17, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree 1000%. What's wrong with assuming a person is alive unless there is some confirmation of death. I fail to see any benefit whatsoever in such a category that has a target population of 6 billion people. What's next? Category:Living males and Category:Living females? How about Category:Wikipedians who think the Living people category is a collosal waste of time and resources? At least that category might be slightly smaller than the Living people category. Alansohn 14:15, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

text: *Assuming someone is alive doesn't put them in a place where their article can be watched. Kappa 14:19, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Watch all articles related to people, unless they're dead. Voila. Now you have ameans to track the subject. Categories are meant for a specific purpose, and there is no reason to create a category that implies a completely unworkable project of tracking any and all changes to any article about any living person. Alansohn 14:46, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

text: And the target isn't 6 billion anymore than there is a target to have an article on every living person. Co-operation isn't required for this to be useful to those he wish/need to use it, as long as other editors aren't removing the category tag to make a point. --Whouk (talk) 14:50, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

text: *Um where is the handy link that allows me to watch "all articles related to people, unless they are dead"? Kappa 14:55, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: * The link is here Special:Recentchangeslinked/Category:Living people Lumos3 12:53, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

text: If the point is :Category:Articles which could get the Foundation sued, then this is not the ideal solution by a long-shot. I think that's the larger issue that this fails to address, as most knee-jerk solutions do. -- nae'blis (talk) 17:54, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

text: *Renaming the category to * would allow us the type of flexibility we need to repurpose it into "Category:Articles which have a higher than average likelihood of getting the Foundatiuon sued".  I think that would be far more valuable.  As I say above, libel is lebel even if it is not on a person's biographical article.  To included non-controversial living people in this category, while at the same time excluding controversial institutions composed of living people, is not the best use of our watchfulness.  Johntex\talk 18:48, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think that the idea of renaming the category to "*" or some similar scheme is a good idea too. -Will Beback 17:21, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: I will not cooperate with this stupid idea

message: I'm pretty sure that this category should be a subcategory of Category:Things_that_exist, which itself should be a sub of Category:Things.  Am I wrong?  Hmm. wonder what is the super category that contaings both Category:Things and Category:Non-Things. Wacky. ike9898 14:52, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: What about :Category:Tangible items and :Category:Non-tangible items? -_0 --malber 14:13, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Logical extension 

message: This is a joke, right?
Surely it could at least be subcategorised, by year of birth perhaps. As is, it stands no justifiable purpose. It's a laughing stock. When I saw someone adding an article to it, I thought it was meant to be a bad joke. BigBlueFish 15:52, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The other good reason not to subcategorise is that it wouldn't stop and will lead to hideous category clutter. Osomec 13:39, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Huh? 

message: One danger is that we miss biographical articles for living people with no Year of birth category because the bots and queries don't know it's a biography.  We need another category: Non-biography.  Then every article must have one of the following categories:
:Non-biography
:Year of death
:Living person (or possibly living, disappeared).
Any article without any of these would then need investigation.20.138.246.89 17:58, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  One more category? 

message: If we are going to closely watch Living People for vandalism, why not do the same for dead people?  Doesn't Martin Luther King enjoy the same protection?  Just because King is not around to file a lawsuit doesn't mean he deserves less protection than George W. Bush.   
Obviously, all biographies should be watched closely for vandalism.  But if the distinction is made between living and dead, the dead will be more ignored. Bubbachuck 21:32, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: *Actually, that first link, which is to a free legal advice website, says "In most states..."  That hardly seems conclusive.  It also does not address the issue of libel that could occur in an article about another topic.  For instance, an article on a specific person may include some information about that person's spouse, which could be libelous.  An article about a company could include libel about the president of the company. Johntex\talk 18:34, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: *The obvious solution that we more or less arrive at is that it's not desirable to have any articles with unreliable content. The only thing we can do about that is get on with working on articles. BigBlueFish 19:24, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  politics 

message: Disallow articles about anyone living. That should cut down on the libel suits... and save a ton of disc space in the process. :) Wahkeenah 09:45, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Or create 'Wikiography' to corral all biographical articles in a managed area?  User:Noisy | Talk 14:52, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That would not be sufficient - libel could occur at any article, not just an article on the person in question.  For example, someone could insert libelous statements about Bill Gates into Microsoft Windows or Internet Explorer or monopoly. Johntex\talk 01:42, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: How to prevent libel suits

message: :Category:Living people of South Korea has popped up. I've nominated it for deletion because if subcategories grow spontaneously we may end up with articles in several "living" categories at once. Deletion discussion. Kappa 11:17, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No, this is not a good idea. But it would be great if there is the mechanism provided to give the intersection of Living People and Golfers as discussed previously on this talk tage. -- Zondor 13:20, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Wikipedia:Category math feature -- Zondor 15:07, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: [[:Category:Living people of South Korea]]

message: If we must have this ridiculous category which will waste a huge amount of time, annoy a lot of people, make Wikipedia look ridiculous and achieve almost nothing, can it at least be put last on this list of categories in each article, rather than first? First place should go to the category which is most relevant and useful. Osomec 13:37, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That's a much wider discussion about cat ordering. Many people alphabetise cats, which is, at least, a NPOV way of doing it. —Whouk (talk) 17:19, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I couldn't agree more... It's completely rediculous category!
fizzerbear 18:52, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Please put this category LAST

message: A much larger contents is needed with quick links to two letters such as Ad, Af etc. It takes a long time to go through each letter as it is now. It should be something like Wikipedia:Quick index -- Astrokey44|talk 08:24, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The category isn't intended for browsing. The aim is to use Special:Recentchangeslinked/Category talk:Living people to watch changes to articles in the cat. —Whouk (talk) 09:10, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  larger contents needed 

message: I can understand having this category (though only barely), but it seems silly to have it show up on the bottom of every page about a living person.  Isn't there some way we can let this category exist, but not show up on the pages?  I think that would cut down drastically on the number of confused/nay-saying wikipedians also. - Crenner 06:29, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Currently, no, there is not. Personally, I'm ambivalent on the whole topic, since I feel that being to "hide" categories is just invite trollish abuse. But there's been a number of suggestions that this feature be implemented in future versions of the MediaWiki software. – Seancdaug 13:38, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  For what it's worth, if invisible categories were implemented, we could also, to some extent, have semantic relationships between articles (aka metadata, aka Semantic Web).  This is because the category's sort key data string is stored in the database, and is easily searched on.  So, for instance, Katie Holmes could have in the article Tom Cruise  172.  If such categories could be hidden, this sort of metadata could proliferate, and toolserver tools could allow users to do queries on the metadata (eg. show me the 10 tallest actresses currently alive).  (the only technical hangups that I can see is that cl_sortkey is max 86 characters, and it doesn't have an index on it currently, though an index could be added on the toolserver) --Interiot 18:30, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  This would be nice. Together with an enhanced Wikipedia:Category math feature, one could implement :Category:People shot by standing Vice Presidents as x . x \in Category:Vice Presidents of the United States . :-) /skagedal[talk] 11:45, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  'Invisible' category? 

message: If this category is not meant to be browsable, wouldn't it be benificial to somehow hide the link to the category on each living person's page? Some articles are really bloated with categories and it would help a little if this category could somehow be made invisible.  freshgavinΓΛĿЌ  08:28, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It sure would. This category is a pain in the ass. Golfcam 21:37, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Proposal

message: Given the logic of this category, we need a .  If you think that's silly, you may well think that the category is, too. - Runcorn 23:13, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Such a stub would be a warning to people to take particular care when expanding such a stub, because it is an article about a living person; it would thus be a second line of defence. - Runcorn 21:08, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm don't think such a stub would have much effect as a warning, but even if it did, wouldn't this category do the same?  The downside is that it would double the clutter in the articles while adding nothing to the monitoring process. ×Meegs 21:26, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. Anyone stubbing an article who knows that the subject is living should add this category. An extra stub on every living person stub would be unnecessary clutter. —Whouk (talk) 21:38, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

text: This category needs deletion, not subdivision. Choalbaton 17:24, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Stub too? 

message: :¿  :Category:Living people to include Zapatero's foreign policy and George W. Bush's first term as President of the United States  ?
Just wondering if this type of article should be included in this category. The other day I created :Category:José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero for the first article and series of others which were (are) all included in :Category:Living people. Personally I'd only include the main article (i.e. José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero). -- User:Docu
:I strongly oppose using this category for anything other than the main article.  Would the category be appropriate for an article about a book by a living author, or a film where the director or leading actor is still alive? - Runcorn 23:12, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:   ¿ To include [[Zapatero's foreign policy]] ?  

message: Exhibit Zed: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Peter_Tomarken&diff=prev&oldid=44200132
He's not living, and yet vandalism to his bio would be particularly sensitive considering his recent demise. Does Jimbo intend us to have a :Category:Recently deceased as well?? -- nae'blis (talk) 16:01, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: We already do effictively. If you'd bothered to read the archive discussion here you'd know that. There are users monitoring changes for people in 2005 deaths and 2006 deaths. Unlike living people (which could only otherwise be accomplished otherwise with an intersection on the unions of thousands of existing cats), the recently dead are easy to find with our pre-existing category. This has previously been discussed. --Gmaxwell 16:23, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why do people only read enough to complain, Was:Why this category won't work 

message: It would be useful with Paul McCartney. Lapinmies 14:19, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It comes up in various contexts. -Will Beback 00:42, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  We should add Category:Possibly dead people 

message: When going through the :Category:Category needed I've found several articles tagged as  or a more specific bio-stub (e.g. ), that are not inlcuded in this category. Perhaps it would be worth people (and/or a bot?) checking articles in the various bio-stub categories to make sure living people are included in :category:Living people? As a suggestion, perhaps a bot could produce a finite list of articles in bio-stub categories that are not in either this category or a year-of-death category, for humans to then categorise apropriately? I'm not a bot author so I don't know whether this is even feasable or not, let alone desirable. Thryduulf 00:27, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I keep finding articles like that.  One I've just fixed is for the Brazilian footballer Elzo. - Runcorn 08:40, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Bio stubs

message: RE Purpose: Because living persons may suffer personal harm from inappropriate information, we should watch their articles carefully. This category exists to help Wikipedia editors improve the quality of biographies of living persons by ensuring that the articles maintain a neutral point of view, maintain factual accuracy, and are properly sourced.
Surely the above applies even more to dead people. After all, the living can defend themselves. Or are we suggesting that once someone dies, the quality no longer matters. I hope not. Wallie 12:38, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Dead people can't sue for defamation, nor can we hurt their feelings. -Will Beback 00:41, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: What's so special about living people?

message: Just to let you know that Category:Living People (note the capital P) has got people (or should that be People) in it.  I realised this a while back and thought that I'd set it up so that a bot would go and automatically sort it out every so often, but it turns out that the Bot isn't active.  When I get a chance I'll move all the articles over but I think that the more people keeping an eye on this the better.  RicDod 19:39, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's unfortunate in a way that the category exists as it means that the cat link isn't flagged in red if the capitalisation is wrong. Anyway, I've emptied it again. It should be possible to do it with AWB if there are lots of article miscategorised and a bot isn't available. —Whouk (talk) 20:09, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Capitalisation problems 

message: This Category is so incredibly stupid, any attempt to explain its stupidity will let the esplainer feel so stupid, it will render him immediatly unconsious. --John.constantine 19:08, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Fear? What are you talking about? --Gmaxwell 17:16, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Presumably fear of legal retribution. Get over it guys. BigBlueFish 11:49, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Acting out of [[Fear]] is never a good idea 

message: I've been adding this category to articles because I've seen it on others, but the more I do the more I think I'm wasting my time. It looks stupid at the bottom of articles and I don't have confidence that it is usable or does the slightest good. It should be scrapped. Chicheley 21:33, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed. There are billions of living people, let alone those on Wikipedia. This caregory is too big, can never be fully sorted, and should be deleted.--sonicKAI 14:24, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: This category damages Wikipedia

message: This is a more appropriate name, as everyone in the category is a living person; it is a list of individual persons who are alive, not general masses of living people or social or biological matters related to people living. —Centrx→talk • 19:49, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rename to "Category:Living persons" 

message: This category doesn't include Shelly Poole, she should be added. —Preceding unsigned comment added by -Anthony- (talk • contribs) 
:It sure does, check: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Category:Living_people&from=Poole -- User:Docu
::There are articles on living people that have been around for over two years without being categorized here. I don't want to give many examples as I don't want to cause the category to be added to anything I work on, but I will mention Ingrid Mattson. I only edited her once after seeing her on TV.  As I saw her on TV a couple weeks ago I'm reasonably certain she's alive and as she's a woman leading a Muslim organization she has "vandalism potential." (In fact the article's been vandalized in least once) Still this category has survived longer than I expected so it must have some utility even I think it is still mostly worthless. John S I don't think sued in the first place and in the second place I don't think there's much hard evidence that vandalism of articles on people is less a problem. I think it's just only slightly better than when I left for a time because, in part anyway, of this category.--T. Anthony 09:24, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Looking I also found an article I created last September on a living writer that's never been categorized as such.--T. Anthony 09:42, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  This category.. 

message: So as Phil Sandifer pointed out elsewhere, how is it possible that even with this busywork category, John Seigenthaler, Sr. spent over a day vandalized with the same old JFK crap? -- nae'blis 17:12, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  efficacy 

message: The world today consists of about eight billion people. Of those, about maybe 200,000 are worth writing a wikipedia bio on. That's 200,000 pages in a single unsubcategorizable category. Does anyone have the faintest idea how much maintenance this is going to require? I understand there's a good intention behind the purpose, but really, if someone is going to spread dishonorable information,  will they really care about your system? Furthermore, you state that "This category exists to help Wikipedia editors improve the quality of biographies of living persons by ensuring that the articles maintain a neutral point of view, maintain factual accuracy, and are properly sourced.", but aren't those already  policies on Wikipedia? This system seems nothing more than a waste of time. Xhin 03:32, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: agreed     MorrisS 18:29, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed. I doubted this from the beginning and I still do. I'm not even sure it can work in theory or practice. I mentioned Ingrid Mattson here two weeks ago and to my surprise she's still not in this category. Even if added this proves little. (As I've now mentioned her here twice) Because even people in this category can still be subject to attack-vandalism as many living people are not of interest to Wikipedians so their articles are ignored as they were before. Further the category is so huge it's unlikely it could be properly policed even if that's the intent.--T. Anthony 07:49, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: T. Anthony, I added your article. In the future, feel free to be bold and categorize articles yourself. It's not hard, and takes about 10 seconds. --84.134.61.186 13:20, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: As I don't believe in this category, and think it won't serve its intended purpose, that would kind of be not worth it for me. Thanks anyway.--T. Anthony 00:38, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: When I first saw this on the footer of the Lilly Allen page, I thought it was a spoof. After all, people are either alive or dead, and the article would verify this. You might as well make a catergory called "people" or "things", or "Wikipedia articles".--80.42.105.233 19:59, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  This is quite possibly the dumbest idea I've seen to date 

message: I've added a new TOC template to this category.  There's some discussion about the parent template at Template talk:Navigation bar#CEASE AND DESIST..  If anyone from here has strong opinions about this template, please comment there.  Thanks. -- Rick Block (talk) 20:54, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  LargeCategoryTOC 

message: Many articles in the Cat get the Cat either unpiped, or with a Western name uninverted in the piping  --  with the result that those bios get alphabetized by given name. For instance, the Mic page has about 20 people with given name Michael, and a handful of Michels and Michelles. I've just fixed a bunch of other names in Mi, but there's a need for many editors willing to each undertake a small section: e.g., most two-letter prefixes like Mi or Th are likely to be a significant contribution without requiring abandonment of other editing efforts. (There are probably well under 676 substantial-sized pairs: 20x6 consonant-vowel combos, 6x20 vowel-consonant ones, 36 double vowels, and a limited number of double consonants.) Perhaps its worth having page listing two-letter combos, each with a rough count and a date when someone last scanned thru it. Perhaps it should be in "least recently scanned" order rather than alpha, or by the combo's count, or have one alpha, one chrono, and one size index.--Jerzy•t 07:42, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cat LP piping errors 

message: (Rotanalatesex (talk) 15:11, 19 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: hi please remember hassan tajor 

message: If a person in the living people category dies, but this is not reported in news media, they will remain in this category. Over time, there will be people who become very old for whom there is no recent news about. At what age should we move them to the possibly living people category, do you think?--HisSpaceResearch 14:34, 24 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This is now covered at :Category:Living people in its documentation. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont]  ‹(-¿-)› 15:32, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  If there's no news of a person's death 

message: I strongly suggest whoever decides Wikipedian policy ought to change the rules so that this category can be subcategorised in some circumstances.  Wikipedia does not segregate any category into living and dead, but should do so for living supercentenarians as this shows the extremes of age.  At present, there is a CFD on this category. Dovea 20:50, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: What is wrong with having living categories that are not sub-categories of this one? A category for living supercentenarians is inherently notable and if they're all also in this category I don't see what the problem is. Timrollpickering 01:24, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There is no consensus to date for such subcategorization of this category, and many proposals for it have been rejected. I believe that some such categories exist, but they are not subcategories of this category, which serves a special WP:BLP purpose. Also, such categories, under the general principles established at WP:CFD, should not include only supercentarians who are still living; we do not remove people from categories (:Category:People from Barcelona, :Category:Scottish pool players, etc., etc., etc., simply because they have died. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont]  ‹(-¿-)› 15:32, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Change the rules! 

message: Has anybody else noticed the bug in the fairly new two-letter navigation bar?  Even if you click on all twenty-six of them starting with one letter, you will not get all the people whose names start with that letter.
In fact, if you do that under the O's, there will be more than six hundred fifty people that are missed.
That's because both the space and the apostrophe (and any numbers and several other characters), plus all of the capital letters from A to Z as well, have Unicode numbers lower than the Unicode number of "a".  
Shouldn't it be fixed so that the single letters are also links?  Gene Nygaard 10:14, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Wrong venue; this should be addressed on the talk page of that TOC template. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont]  ‹(-¿-)› 15:32, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Bug in navigation bar

message: You need to add Martin Walsh to the list, as he is more "famous" than some others on the category page. Please comment back, if you add him to the list. 
Brylcreem2 17:17, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Missing entry

message: Total: 1,951,742
Living people: 211,156
--h i s   s p a c e   r e s e a r c h 16:35, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: So? I think the interesting comment is that 10% of wikipedia articles are about living people. --Gmaxwell 16:41, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Ahh, but there are over 4 million "living people" in the world. PS how do we know if a wikipedian has died? --Talk 17:36, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The size of this category is just astonishing. We need to write more articles on anything else! I'm not sure if the size reflects our vanity our lack of curiosity, or merely our referencing abilities. Gareth E Kegg (talk) 13:39, 2 May 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Over 10% of all Wikipedia articles are currently in this category

message: Give cattersect a shot. For example, living English footballers, non-living English footballers. Unfortunately due to the level of excessive sub-categorization and under-categorization on English Wikipedia it's not possible to simple get a list of all living footballers. 
If you scroll down to the bottom you'll see a list of categories frequently found in the results. In order to further refine your results, you can click the plus next to a category mandatory, minus to make it forbidden, or equals to start a new search with just that category. --Gmaxwell 16:48, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Useful tool for working with this category 

message: Can you please add Kelly Salmon and Duncan Duff to this list as I can't work out how to. Thanks. Jordan5001 19:21, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You just needed to edit their page, and add :Category:Living people to the bottom. the wub "?!" 18:53, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Kelly Salmon]] and [[Duncan Duff]]

message: I mean, there are (currently) more than 6 billion people in the world. Even if we count only persons of notability, this is a vast amount of people - and the category is not reliable either, for two reasons. 1) It's easy to forget to remove the category when updating an article on a recently deceased person, and 2) Far from all articles on living people use this category. LarRan 11:30, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: See the old discussions. This category isn't really for readers but helps editors to monitor these articles for libel, which could present legal problems for Wikipedia. Obviously it's not perfect, but if you see articles where it needs adding/removing then please do so! the wub "?!" 18:59, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I agree with LarRan. This list is inane. Anybody who is of any public interest will have their articles monitored without the aid of this list. 72.147.204.127 19:51, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

text: I'm no exclusionist, but this list is a bit much! I've seen lists for just about everything, but a list for living people? I suggest the creation of a whole new WikiBiographies. Honestly. Wikitank 01:08, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

text: I don't see why the living=yes field in the WPBiography template doesn't suffice for the purpose used as rationale for retaining this piece of semantic noise. We even have the blp=yes field for the WikiProjectBannerShell to make sure the WP:BLP concerns are properly advertised. I personally do not perceive how removing this category would result in a sigificant increase in disregard for BLP concerns. __meco 08:03, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

text: If the list is for bot/admin purposes, why not make it private or something? It's bizarre to scroll down to the end of a page and see 20 links clogging it up, and one of them being the absolutely inane "living people." Why don't we have categories for "Living People With Hair" "Humans That Are Homo Sapiens" and "Dying People" (wherein we also include everyone). Pages on Wikipedia should be meaningful... this one isn't. Pariah23 (talk) 10:54, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I agree. There is absolutely no point in adding this category. Specifying the person's date of birth and death in the biography is enough to tell whether they are alive or death. If the dates aren't known then they couldn't be classified anyway. And yes, for that matter we could add endless classifications (people without a classification, for instance).  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Josuedavila (talk • contribs) 01:32, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

text: Agree. This is a totally inane category and I don't see how it increases the accuracy of biographical info. If it really does then I suggest some hidden category flag instead. Karpouzi (talk) 11:26, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: And again... HOW DO WE DELETE THIS CATEGORY? It serves NO PURPOSE. --Ragemanchoo (talk) 06:39, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  We should have Cadavres category as well. --Tigga en (talk) 02:13, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

text: Actually not only the category, practically all these pesky biography articles are meaningless. --Mitra (talk) 05:37, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Articles that attempt to identify anything in any concrete way are absolutely pointless. nothing exists, including myself. I AM Mercurywoodrose (talk) 06:48, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is this a meaningful category? 

message: I have suggested per the category living persons that she be removed from that category since she is listed under the disappeared persons category. There was BLP concerns about monitoring this article that was discussed. I was told to take it up with the "BLP patrolers" who ever they might be. Can this category please be removed. There seems to be plenty of eyes watching this article to help avoid any BLP issues as well as all other policy and guideline disputes. Thank you.--24.250.59.250 (talk) 19:43, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Natalee Holloway]]

message: I've compiled three lists of people needing categorization by birth or death (as of mid-March 2008):
* User:Dsp13/Living people needing categorization by year of birth (containing about 26,000 individuals)
* User:Dsp13/People needing categorization by year of birth (containing about 11,000 individuals)
* User:Dsp13/People needing categorization as living or by year of death (containing about 18,000 individuals)
Any help gratefully received in adding the appropriate categories to these! Dsp13 (talk) 21:05, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Lists of people needing categorization by birth or death

message: I've started a discussion at Category talk:Year of birth missing (living people) about the relation between that category and this one. I've been routinely tagging people with both categories, because that seemed to be mostly what others were doing. However, I have no other reason to feel committed to doing so, and have noticed a few people beginning to avoid duplication of :Category:Year of birth missing (living people) with this, its parent, category. What do others feel the current consensus to be? Is it now time to agree to use just the one category, and delete redundant :Category:Living people categorizations of people within :Category:Year of birth missing (living people)? Comments welcome there. Dsp13 (talk) 12:14, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Discussion at [[Category talk:Year of birth missing (living people)]]?

message: Keeping track of the living persons will probably turn out to be a waste of time, since there is too much person to track. Unless this job is made by a BOT and that wikipedia as a lot of free space, this section should be destroyed! Acce  —Preceding undated comment was added at 15:04, 21 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I totally agree - although I'm not an administrator, so my opinion counts for very little! Adaircairell (talk) 17:58, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

text: I disagree too. It's completely plain. Less than 2000 admins wouldn't be able to keep track of the +292,000 people listed here. It'd be much easier an encyclopedical to have this main category with many subcategories, I don't know, maybe by place of birth: "living English people", "living Russian people", or maybe by profession: "living pianists" or "living footballers". That would make this easier to keep and take care of. Think of it at a country with no states. Mexico has 110,000,000 inhabitants. Each state (out of 32) has an average of 3,500,000 people. What would be easier then? --Fluence (talk) 08:44, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  This category is a waste of time and disk space.  

message: there is a page for articles lacking sources (:Category:Articles lacking sources) and there is a page for living people (:Category:Living people). is there a page for articles about living people that are lacking sources?   — Chris Capoccia  T⁄C 13:16, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: There wasn't then, there is now. :Category:Unreferenced BLPs is slowly filling up (well, the subpages are). There are now about 850 pages in it, but expectations are that this will raise to way above 10,000 pages (about one in 12 of :Category:All articles lacking sources belongs in here, plus a significant number of unsourced but untagged articles). On the plus side, many of these pages have no problems except the lack of sources (they are not negative, and seem to be truthful). On the other hand, I already have had to delete some pages on porn stars and nazi camp guards that were unsourced for two years or more, so it does serve a purpose... Fram (talk) 12:13, 4 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  unreferenced pages of living people 

message: The article, Rick Warren has been repeatedly vandalized by dozens of unestablished users over the past couple days and needs to have a partial lock added ASAP.
Manutdglory (talk) 23:46, 19 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rick Warren