Talk:NNDB

message: Should some of NNDb's factual inaccuracies be included? Being someone who is nitpicky about having correct dates of birth, I noticed that NNDB has incorrect listings for Jennifer Lopez, Joseph Stalin, Whoopi Goldberg, and Paulette Goddard (to only name a few). Not to mention they rarely (if ever) update their pages when corrections are submitted, even when extensive documentation including voting and residence records are found.--Fallout boy 22:22, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps some of your "facts" are wrong. I did a check, and Joseph Stalin's NNDB birthdate matches that given in Encyclopedia Britannica. I believe there is confusion as to Old Style and New Style, and the date given there is New Style. Which is fine. And there is a debate as to Whoopi Goldberg's actual birthdate. Hollywood actors and actresses lie about their ages, so choosing one of them is more art than fact, and in some cases even records are forged for this purpose. But even more so, this kind of debate amounts to original research, WP:NOR. Poledancer 23:10, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I know when it comes to things like disputed dates of birth, there are no "facts", just which one is more likely. I know exactly how NS and OS dates work, and they vary by the day of the year (ie. December 9 or December 21). The dispute with Stalin is over the year (1878 or 1879). The date you saw in Britannica was what he claimed, everything else says he is a year older. I also never use one site as a source (particularly Britannica) since all can be fallible, so I always coss check with records, school graduation years, etc. Even though Whoopi Goldberg says she was born in 1955, I never believe claims solely by face value since 99.9% of the time ages are lowered, so I checked her birth certificate from ancestry.com and voting records from ussearch and both say 1955. As for the paranoia that all of it could be forged, it is a slight possibility, but as I stated before there are no "facts". And this debate does not amount to original research since dates are verifiable and all this information has been previously published. It also says right on WP:NOR: "Research that consists of collecting and organizing information from existing primary and/or secondary sources is, of course, strongly encouraged ... This is not 'original research'; it is 'source-based research', and it is fundamental to writing an encyclopedia."--Fallout boy 00:21, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

text: This controversy was pointed out to me. I can shed some light on this. Submissions go into a hopper where an administrator may look them over and apply any corrections or additions. MANY birthdate changes come in. Most of them are wrong. The general public seems to think that if a birthdate is published as X somewhere, it must be right, and NNDB is wrong. Before a birthdate is *changed* because of a user submission, it must be sourced to an acceptable place, but this takes time, and there are many submissions. Wikipedia citations as source must be looked at skeptically -- there have been cases of people editing Wikipedia with the intent to get an NNDB record changed. We also have added a footnoting mechanism by which disputed dates may be discussed. On the whole the birthdates are as accurate or perhaps more accurate than Wikipedia dates, and definitely more accurate than Britannica dates. Nndb 00:57, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not mad at NNDB, just nitpicky as I mentioned before. I have to give them kudos that they changed 50 Cent's birthdate after I submitted an update for how they could find it on his inmate records, whereas most other sources (*cough*) have never gotten around to it.--Fallout boy 00:21, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Inaccuracies

message: For what it's worth, the NNDB site is far from objective.  I don't know if its developers claim or intend it to be.  For one of many examples, check the entry on Dr. Laura Schlessinger.
:Wikipedia claims objectivity but is far from objective. Dr. Laura, on the other hand, is a sleazy opportunist and a proven liar. Quatloo 05:11, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The NNDB is itself a POV (if not partisan) rant.  Why is its objectivity not a primary topic within the article?  Someone write into the article how academically senseless and non-transparent it is!  Dr. Laura really is the perfect example--the article cites nothing but adjectives and unprovables.  --Mrcolj 20:48, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've wasted the last hour playing on the NNDB.  It is a fun site.  cf. however, here: "[Tom] Cruise's fans and detractors have long wondered what engorges his member. Cruise is rumored to be as in-the-closet as a winter jacket in July"  Wow, I guess those who didn't finish high school would see that as an academically sound sentence.  --Mrcolj 21:24, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Michael Jackson's page—"Executive summary (sic): Lover of children everywhere" Wow. Quadzilla99 06:23, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Objectivity 

message: keep I have looked at a dozen history articles and they are of good quality--often as good or better than Wiki. The criteria for deletion is not whether a source contains some mistakes. If so we wouldn't have Wiki. Rjensen 04:22, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: seriously?  --another R. Jensen Mrcolj 21:00, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  good quality 

message: Do we really have to have the "source" tag here?  If so, then we need one for "1911 EB" as well.  This is self-sourced, as is IMDb, and as Wikipedia is not supposed to be.  This seems to me to be a placating of a disappointed loser in the deletion debate.  NNDB is a most imperfect source, as are all sources.  As we have recently seen incessantly, the fact that something is published anywhere, including The New York Times, doesn't necessarily mean that it is true, but just that it has been published in The New York Times, which is still superior to citing its publication in the National Enquirer, Weekly World News, The Sun, or The New York Post.  Rlquall 12:43, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This website is obviously not reliable and shouldn't be used as a source for Wikipedia articles. However, there definitely needs to be an article on the NNDB in Wikipedia - regardless of how reliable it may or may not be. NNDB, by the way, has based several of its newer articles directly on the content of Wikipedia articles. Which is, of course, part of the reason why they should never be used as a source here Mad Jack 02:52, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Care to cite examples? NNDB has never plagiarized Wikipedia, but the reverse is not true. Poledancer 05:36, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, I wouldn't say "plagiarized" - they have a different format so they can't physically plagirize us. What I meant was they based info entirely on the Wikipedia entry. At some point, someone submitted the full names of several actors' parents to Wikipedia - off their birth records - so this info was available basically exclusively on Wikipedia. And then NNDB copied these names exactly   when they created the entries - and later the names were copied elsewhere as well. Another one, an actress named Mara Wilson - our entry used to say her mother was "Jewish American" - and we were the only website to use that exact wording (i.e. "Jewish American" as opposed to just "Jewish"), and then the NNDB created a profile for her exactly matching that wording  - her mother's maiden name was also copied there - and it was also something that seemed to be posted exclusively on Wikipedia beforehand (the same wording is no longer on her Wikipedia entry) But this has nothing to do with why the NNDB is not reliable. The NNDB is not reliable because it is a second-hand source that does not, alas, for the most part, cite its sources. How do we know were they got their info from? If we're lucky, it was from a good source. If not, not. When we see something on the NNDB, if we want to include it, we need to find the actual first-hand source where it came from. Otherwise we're talking 50-50 in terms of it being reliable. Mad Jack 05:56, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

text:  I won't address the Sean Faris example, since IMDB also has same information. For Mara Wilson -- the NNDB entry contains a lot of information that was not present in the Wikipedia article  at the time the NNDB entry was created in 2005. Almost all of that information was added to Wikipedia later. You simply cannot say it was based on the Wikipedia entry -- "exclusively" as you claim. Incidentally NNDB does keep reference notes internally, and on average there are more sources cited than with Wikipedia articles. At some point some of this information will be systematically exposed, but this is still under development. Poledancer 06:35, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The Sean Faris information was not on the IMDB until after it was on Wikipedia. The NNDB either got it from IMDB or Wikipedia - and neither is a reliable source (unless we cite our sources). Internal reference notes don't help people who need to verify if the information is correct or not. What NNDB needs to do in order to be reliable is to actually cite the sources so people can see - so we know what is cited and what isn't - because, obviously, not everything is cited. Without these sources, as I said, the NNDB is just a second-hand source like the IMDB and Wikipedia. And when second-hand sources start citing each other, they become third-hand sources. By the way, do you want more nuggets? Topher Grace's entry lists some women he has supposedly dated  - but Grace is notoriously private and does not talk about his private life - so what you're publishing is gossip elevated to fact. What I'd do on Wikipedia is say "Source B alleged that Grace dated person X" and cite the source. Or this one, for Richard Gere, which had me laughing for a long time  - says "Gere was born Jewish and raised Methodist". I guess the online rumors that Gere was Jewish were too much for the NNDB - and they caved in and combined all the second-rate stories on his background into one (they also have "Irish ancestry" there at the bottom). Well, Gere was not born Jewish - he was born, of Anglo-Irish descent (which is not the same as Irish) and indeed raised Methodist. I'm not saying Wikipedia doesn't have similar errors - but A. at least with the citations we have you can tell what is 100% reliable and what isn't and B. we don't cite ourselves. Citing NNDB would be like citing ourselves - i.e. quite potentially error-ridden Mad Jack 06:49, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I was not disputing that a fact might be occasionally be obtained from Wikipedia by NNDB, just as the reverse is true. Particularly for D-level celebrities such as the example of Mara Wilson. The claim made by "Mad Jack" above was that the article was "entirely based" on the Wikipedia entry, which is a demonstrably false statement. We are largely in agreement about citing sources. I will make two further observations, first, the average number of sources cited in a Wikipedia article is less than one, and probably alarmingly close to zero; and second, a sizable percentage of sources cited by Wikipedia articles do not fit the standards one would expect of a source. Many of them cite oddball things like Geocities pages, or agreggates of information that do not themselves contain citations (such as Encyclopedia Britannica, Almanacs, etc). Poledancer 07:28, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh yeah, that certainly may well be true (although not for the pages I edit, natch :) ), but my whole point throughout this has been that NNDB can't be used as a source when citing facts on Wikipedia - for basically the same reason that (uncited) Wikipedia can't be used as a source. Mad Jack 07:34, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Source 

message: If this isn't NPOV, then this article is entirely written by people who really consider the NNDB a legitimate newssource.  Of course this article is largely written by NNDB employees, for what that's worth...  I tried to put in, as politely as I could, the line "Whereas these statistics are based solely on submitted information from anonymous readers, the information is largely unsourced and is often marketed toward those seeking entertaining gossip," and it was deleted with no discussion.  The NNDB is a gossip site at best, with little to no sources or efforts thereto, and gaining spikes of popularity earlier this year entirely through writing sassy, shocking, sensationalist articles with no sources.  That's not my opinion, that's just what they did.  No one there is trying to be objective, so having an article that doesn't mention their most universally accepted attribute--their slant--is just a lame attempt at getting more backlinks from the wikipedia.  --Mrcolj 22:36, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Regardless what your intent was, you entered a false statement, and that is why I backed it out. You wrote that NNDB "statistics are based solely on submitted information." This is totally false. It is POSSIBLE for people to submit information to NNDB via a web form, that is correct. But that information is not the main or even a major source of NNDB data -- perhaps one tenth of one percent -- probably much, much less than that -- comes from there. NNDB maintains a large library of printed reference works from many fields with which to verify facts. The user submissions are mainly a way to detect errors that may have crept in, or suggest possible areas to expand (such as adding a new individual to the database). But even then a user suggestion is almost never applied without being checked by some other source, and even then it may be applied in a way the submitter did not anticipate. Also your claim that NNDB data is focused on gossip is also false. That information is there if you look for it (if you look up a "gossip" person, yes, that person will likely be there, but you found it because you looked for it.) Such individuals are a small percentage of the 20,000 profiles that exist in NNDB. Poledancer 00:26, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: NPOV

message: and should not be used as a definitive news source in Wikipedia bio pages. NNDB profiles are consistently plagued by one-off judgments about the lives and works of the "notable people" it features, and until the writing quality improves several times over it should not be linked to from Wikipedia. JDG 01:55, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  NNDB is shabby 

message: Seems to be an orchestrated effort by some loser to try to turn his or her site into a majpr net presense by spamming the hell out of it to this encyclopedia. It's upper crap, nonencyclopedic, and we don't need link to it when so much of them are jus pointless when there are already IMDB, etc. links. 216.165.158.7 20:00, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The site shouldn't be treated as a serious resource- NNDB Keanu Reeves article- "Executive summary: Dude". Gustav von Humpelschmumpel 01:12, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  This site is nothing but god-awful spam 

message: Why does it have it as a risk factor?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.118.118.88 (talk) 11:06, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Yoga?

message: NNDB has some strange issues with designating ethnicities for certain people. It notes Hispanic as a race, when it is not. I know this because when a person is of mixed Hispanic and non-hispanic white, they're listed as "multi-racial". Two examples of this are Freddie Prinze Jr and Christina Aguilera. But then when Cameron Diaz is listed, who is likewise half Hispanic, half non-hispanic white, she is listed as just being Hispanic. Another thing that is really stupid is that the site lists people from the middle east as being "Middle Eastern". What the heck is that? There is no race or ethnicity that says one is Middle Eastern. I mean this just reads like common man talk (Hispanic a race, this guys is Middle Eastern), not a well researched database.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.232.29.249 (talk) 15:42, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: You think that's strange: the individuals in charge think all heart-related deaths are by "heart failure". That's so mind-numbingly wrong and stupid that it's not much worse than calling every death from asthma "lung cancer". --NellieBly (talk) 21:51, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

text: Of note, those are simply the racial classifications commonly used for census and labor statistics (Caucasian, Black/African-American, Asian, Hispanic, Pacific-Islander, "Other"). Sloppy, but hardly non-standard. 96.25.188.62 (talk) 06:00, 26 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Is NNDB run by a child?

message: Is NNDB a reliable source for a BLP?--Nowa (talk) 23:05, 2 September 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm also wondering this. --82.170.113.123 (talk) 23:46, 10 May 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, never mind, it's not. --82.170.113.123 (talk) 23:56, 10 May 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: No, definitely not -- it neither cites its sources nor has writers with reputations to protect in case of error. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 17:30, 15 March 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Reliable source

message: I've noticed that certain articles have sections that cite NNDB as a source. Should we remove claims that only cite NNDB as a source?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by GrandPhilosophe (talk • contribs) 01:27, 3 March 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, , NNDB is not a reliable source. If there is ever doubt about something like this, you can ask at WP:RSN (Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard). -- Softlavender (talk) 12:12, 3 October 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Should We Remove Entries that cite NNDB as a source? 

message: I was thinking to nominate this article for deletion, 13 years after its first such nomination, but I seem to be getting way too much template when I try to add it as a second nomination. Anyone like to jump in? (I noticed the page after a Roy Cohn edit by ... perhaps you would look into it?) Lindenfall (talk) 20:23, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Glancing at the article, the ref from BBC The Guardian may be enough to meet the notability requirements to prevent deletion. As for the article itself, it's a soapbox that should be stubbed or rewritten from The Guardian ref. --Ronz (talk) 21:17, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  13 years later