Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography

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Importance (2), from Wikipedia talk:Core biographies

When we get this sorted out, which Levels relate to which importance flag they get? plange 19:16, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

The templates and assessments are fuzzy to me. I would lean toward putting the top level here with the top level importance, and so on, for lack of a better option. In other words, the top 15 would be top importance, and so on. Maurreen 08:24, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Problem with that is that it puts core biographies into Low if we do a 1=1. And then anyone not on the list is lumped in with them too. How is 1.0 wanting us to use this? Thought that was what it was for, to help them pick what should be in there? If they only want Level 1, then we can say only those 15 people get Top, then perhaps the rest are High? After all, they made it to a Core Biographies page.... I was thinking about this, as we need to nip emotions in the bud with this, and I came up with some rough additions to the importance scale ratings, based on our discussions above:

Top - Must have had a large impact outside of their main discipline, across several generations, and in the majority of the world. For instance, Einstein, brilliant physicist, but his theories have affected people outside of physics and in many other countries besides his nation of origin and several generations. His ideas have changed the way people think. [And if we nail down who on this list gets this rating, we can add this] No member should give this rating to any biography without first getting Project approval from the other members.

High - Must have had a large impact in their main discipline, across a couple of generations. Had some impact outside their country of origin. [We could put same disclaimer here]

Mid - Important in their discipline

Low - a contributor to their discipline and is included in Wikipedia to expand depth of knowledge of other articles. plange 14:56, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Your suggestion is well thought-out.

Conceivably, there might also be eventually levels within levels, in case any get too big.

Some background informaton --

The list of core bios is in a relatively early stage of evolution. It started from a list of bios approved for 0.5, but that has somewhat low standards. The contents of 0.5 are a hodgepodge, in my view.

The use and value of the wikiproject assessments has always been fuzzy to me. They are used somewhat of a guideline for inclusion in 0.5. But they should not be used exclusively, because that would give a bias to active wikiprojects. And the overall release version project has several subprojects, etc.; everything is evolving and not always neatly aligned.

In my view, the ratings have more potential value as guide within the projects themselves, to help people narrow down what they want to work on.

Also, the general importance ratings don't align very well across subjects. Top-rated articles in some subjects are not what most people would agree with, often because the subject is so narrow. Some wording uses "importance within this field"; I think some uses "importance within a a general encyclopedia." (Those are approximations.)

You mgiht take a look at Category:Top-importance articles. For instance, Category:Top-importance Narnia articles includes 27 articles that someone considers "Subject is a must-have for a print encyclopedia." Maurreen 17:06, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps this should move to the wikiproject talk... Anyway: Every article here should be Top, and perhaps a few contenders which didn't make it to core should be top too. There are other 100,000 bios on Wikipedia, so having only 150 top level would make the assessments bottom heavy. Furthermore, we need to reserve Low for crud (e.g. Norman Pilcher or Brooklyn Beckham), and mid for run of the mill celebs, politicians and so on. --kingboyk 19:34, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Adding infoboxes

If I add an infobox, what procedures should I follow to remove it from the list and category of articles needing infoboxes? Apologies if this is addressed somewhere already. I'm a newbie to this project. --Wisekwai 10:27, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

no problem, thanks for asking! You will need to go to the Talk page and then edit the call to our project banner to take out this parameter needs-infobox=yes

plange 15:15, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Peer reviews

Hello all! Our project has got some healthy activity now and I thought I'd see if everyone could pitch in and help with any peer reviews that get added. These are articles that fellow members have asked us to give feedback on....Also, a more informal task is assessing the class of an article that fellow members have requested. Thanks! plange 19:30, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

If anyone has a bit of free time, we've several peer review requests that could use more attention; having me being the only one to answer is probably limiting the feedback there somewhat :-) plange 05:18, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Have a back log now, can anyone help? Also, if you nominate one, can you review another? plange 18:50, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Still need help here :-) Pretty please? Especially if you've asked to have a review... We have 2 still needing attention (one is mine and the other I don't feel qualified to review) -- there are others there too who've only had one reviewer and it would be nice to have more than one... Thanks! plange 03:37, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Sneak peek at new work group page

Okay, I went ahead and presumed the Politics one was going to be created so we could work out the page structure and also give everyone an idea of what a task force is. Here's the first go at the Politics and Government Work Group

You'll notice that this work group I divided by country as that seemed the most logical for this work group. However I'd see the bulk of the others breaking down their Work Group into disciplines, i.e. Arts and Entertainment could be divided by Actors, directors, Musicians, etc.

Let me know what you think and what suggestions you'd have for improvement. To give everyone a taste of what you can do, I collected here and there stubs, templates, etc., and put them on the page, and then I fleshed out China (picked this arbitrarily) and then since the US was already so huge, I made it a subpage so you can see what could transpire if another country/region gets that large too. And then within the US, I expanded Virginia (because that's my interest)... Before anyone gets mad at me for how I divided up the world, I went by how Wikipedia organized the Category:Politicians by country category. And then the decision on which country got a subhead was solely based on whether it had any politician stubs, since that's a pretty good barometer of how many articles there are (since I think you have to have at least 60 stub articles to be approved for a stub template). Anyway, please assume good faith and know that I did not intentionally mean to hurt any national pride, I was just attempting to get this started. I've made a template to assist in organizing a particular country, and how I picture this is that whoever is interested in that region will take it from here in organizing the rest.... Cheers! plange 03:07, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Also, did we decide to go with "work group" or "task force"? plange 04:00, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, another note: So that you can also see how project banners will display (and why we need to nail down what it will be called) I added politician-task-force=yes into just this one article I've worked on. Don't use this yet, as it might change to politician-work-group=yes. If we go with task force, I'll need to change language to that, and vice versa....plange 04:05, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Well personally I like "work group", sounds more homey and personal. "Task force" sounds like we're ready to blast off in our jet-powered backpacks. Wjhonson 05:10, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Me, too. Maurreen 05:14, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Okay, work group it is -- more importantly, what do you guys think of the structure of the Work Group page? plange 03:49, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Smells good. ...._(Complain)^{(Let us to it pell-mell)} 05:56, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it looks very good. You're very industrious. Maurreen 06:01, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Okay, hearing no objections or comments otherwise, I'll start stubbing out the other work groups that got more than one nom plange 19:58, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Okay, have also now made Royalty and nobility work group. It needs fleshing out, so whoever voted for this you're welcome to take over! plange 05:01, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

The Beatles

Two questions:

1. Are music groups to be considered within the scope of this Project? If so, I guess I should tag Talk:The Beatles.
2. The Beatles are a core topic. Can I tag Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Starr as Top and if not why not?

Thanks. --kingboyk 17:03, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

At the moment, The Beatles are a core bio; core topics is a separate subproject.

I think The Beatles are in their own class. They might be an exception to a general standard against including bands with this project. And I think the members individually are not nearly as important as the group.

I think we plan to hold off on tagging importance until the list gets more settled.

In that case, probably the best plan would be to list The Beatles as a core biography but not tag it with our template, so as not to confuse matters. I'm the founder of WP:BEATLES so if there's any dispute about that article's inclusion anywhere I'll know about it's core status. Besides, I think it's such a no-brainer for inclusion there's little chance of it being overlooked. --kingboyk 17:30, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good. Thanks. Maurreen 17:36, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree, The Beatles we're making an exception for for the core bios list, but wouldn't get our project banner on its talk page. plange 19:53, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

The list

kingboyk suggested expanding the list of core bios. That's probably a good idea. Maybe 200? I'm thinking of the list as essentially a work list. The more it grows the less doable it is. Maurreen 17:24, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Also, as I have explained before, there is no one-to-one correspondence between the list and any planned release version. If you think any bio is important, you can nominate it for release, regardless of whether it's on the list.

You can also add stuff to another CD planned for release.

Version 0.5 includes such things as Ann Arbor, Michigan, which demonstrates that the standards are pretty open.

Also, it's more useful to think of the list as a work list, guide for priorities for people who want to use it while considering what they want to work on. Maurreen 18:00, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Infoboxes when not wanted

There is no consensus amongst editors to add infoboxes to all biographies of people. In some cases the overwhelming consensus among editors of a given article is not to include an infobox. For articles with lots of regular editors (Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin) I think it would be highly advisable to ask on the talk page before creating an infobox. Just a note from someone who doesn't find infoboxes for scientists useful, and is somewhat irked by this project's apparent determination to add infoboxes even where they are not wanted. --Fastfission 22:17, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

The scope of this Project is massive, and "we" can't be everywhere or control everything, so I wouldn't be too concerned if I was you. What I would most heartily recommend, however, is signing up as a participant and helping to dictate policy yourself. There's no need for an "us and them" approach; most Wikipedians have edited a biography at some time and have some interest in what this project is about, I think. For me, I think it's helpful to have guidelines and also a central point for WP1.0 work but the scope is too large to try and control articles. --kingboyk 22:21, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree, I wouldn't worry about the tag being placed just yet, we're still a long way to getting around to that, it's just a housekeeping note right now. We welcome discussion of this and perhaps we can work out which types of articles get these. If for scientists it just doesn't make sense, that's fine. Perhaps we also talk about if this is not an article you are a regular editor of, we ask first on the Talk page. Should we start a guideline discussion? plange 18:28, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Don't forget I've already started mass tagging (and still maintan it will be easier to weed out a few false positives later than to do the whole thing manually). I've had a few queries on my user talk and a few reservations have been expressed below of course but considering I've tagged several thousand now there's been no great commotion, which is good. I'm trying to help, so the last thing I want is to annoy. --kingboyk 18:40, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I should have been more explicit, I didn't mean the tagging you're doing (keep going!) -- I meant the needs-infobox=yes parameter we manually put in if we don't see one. Sorry for the confusion! I meant to say not to worry if one has that parameter because I doubt we'll get around to adding infoboxes anytime soon. My whole comment was relative to that only (whether we should add infoboxes, etc) plange 19:14, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Scope

Does anyone else find the scope of this project way, way too massive? We might as well create WikiProject Articles in Wikipedia. Of course, everyone will disagree; otherwise why would you be active in the project. But I wish more thought had been put into this. Adam Bishop 00:04, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

I concur with this assessment 100%. The project is unnecessarily broad in scope and should be rethought before tagging every biographical article about all sorts of people that may already be tagged as part of one or more other projects. Further, unlike specific other projects (projects devoted to specific nations or subjects) this one is so broad that it will likely attract editors to articles regarding subjects they know little or nothing about. It's best in the case of biographies, a subject that is so broad, to let articles develop at their own pace, in narrower WikiProjects. These enormous WikiProject Biography "tags" are beginning to colonize English Wikipedia, but unfortunately it doesn't seem that this project was well thought out to begin with. Badagnani 04:45, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Ideally every article on the wiki will have at least one Project template, so that the article may be assessed and considered for Wikipedia 1.0 (and any other uses which may come about in the future for article assessments). Furthermore, every living person article ought to have {{Blp}} or {{WPBiography|living=yes}}, so I think the tagging currently underway by my bot shouldn't be a problem. As for the very use of project templates themselves, it was discussed on one of the admin boards recently and although a few people were against it the consensus I think was that it's necessary (or a necessary evil if you prefer).

That said, you're both absolutely right about the scope. (This project wasn't my idea, and I've signed up simply because like most people here I work on biographies at some time or another. I'm tagging on behalf of the project because I have great interest in the article assessment scheme.) I think when people start to appreciate the number of articles involved - which my tagging will surely help with - there will have to be some refining of the project's aims and operations. I see it as a central point for policy, guidelines, and assessments, rather than a Project which will actively seek to manage articles like e.g. WP:BEATLES does. It's just too large for that kind of hands on approach. Is it too large, period? Well, I don't know; I think the taskforce idea may have some merit and I think if this is viewed as a policy centre and a parent WikiProject it's ok. Comments? --kingboyk 08:42, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

I see this as a central point for people working on biographies. I don't understand the complaint, unless it's just about the tags. And althrough the project has recently picked up more steam, it's not new. Maurreen 11:44, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Like others, I'm here because I often write or edit biography articles. I must say that the tags make me uncomfortable. Wikipedia is suddenly developing too many of them and they are much too big and prominent. The good thing about Wikipedia has been that it's businesslike and worth reading: that's no longer the case if you open a talk page and find nothing but boring irrelevant text, classroom evaluations, competitions to get into the CD, rules about what the talk page is NOT, etc. It's only a personal opinion, and I don't want to hurt anyone, but I would love to see fewer, smaller tags! Andrew Dalby 17:43, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Fair point. One thing I would say though in regard to the recent "new breed" of tags like {{WPBiography}} is that, through the use of conditional logic, they can actually replace multiple other tags. Ours replaces {{Blp}} for a start, and some - I'm not sure of ours but I think it might - anyway, some replace the peer review, FA and other tags too. So, the tag will be a bit bigger but it will at least knock a few others off the talk page. --kingboyk 17:49, 6 August 2006 (UTC) PS If you want to see a monstrously large tag, see {{WPBeatles}}. One of our members is a bit keen on verbosity; I'm thinking perhaps we should trim it :)

I don't think it's too large either to merit a project. There needs to be a central place to manage and control policy in relation to writing biography articles, and not every person-article will fall within a WikiProject to help... Also, some of the smaller WikiProjects seem to die off after awhile and our task force project is meant to help with that. Also, it's not a new project, it just regained some energy. plange 18:35, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Some questions or issues have been getting mixed up together -- such as about tags and a biography wikiproject.

In general, I think tags on WP are overdone myself.

But matters about templates are separate from whether this wikiproject should exist, or whether its scope should be restricted. Maurreen 20:30, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Quite true. Yes, it should exist, and it will be useful to have all biographies under the same umbrella! Andrew Dalby 20:43, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm part of the way through building a list of articles within the subcategories of Category:Dead people, and already I have a list of over 100,000 articles. My (wild) estimate is that biographies form ~25% of the over 1 million articles on Wikipedia. That is, to put it mildly, a lot of articles. I don't know how so many articles can get assessed, nor how people would feel about 250,000 articles being tagged with a WikiProject banner. I'm continuing with tagging living people for now, because the living=yes warning is helpful and is wider Wikipedia policy. I'm a bit uneasy about this scope issue though.

I'm not sure that "task forces" help much; child WikiProjects are likely to be far better imho. --kingboyk 16:28, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

A month ago, I counted the number of articles in the "birth", "death" and "living people" categories out of a (May) database dump. The result was 193.000 articles, if I remember rightly. So there you have the current scope of the project... --Alvestrand 08:25, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Immanuel Kant

Attempts to bring this article to compliance of the project request for inline citation are being disrupted by the additions of user Spinoza1111, who has considered my warnings as "authoritarian". I am tired of arguing with him and am beside myself as to what to do. Amerindianarts 00:39, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Have you referred him/her to WP:CITE? If it's gotten out of hand, it sounds like you need a mediator (I'm not one, sorry) plange 04:15, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Another user complained about his name calling directed towards third parties; me, I think. I will proceed according to seeking peer review, and if I have further problems consider WP:CITE. Thanks. Amerindianarts 04:22, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

I think peer review might be a little too early for this article. You should first get it in line with GA criteria and get the GA nom, and then get a peer review in prep for FA. WP:CITE isn't something to consider, it's a guideline on how to properly mark inline citations, etc...plange 04:26, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

I realize the article still needs a lot of work. I am not familiar with GA and FA. Amerindianarts 05:05, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

oops, sorry, didn't mean to thrown acronyms around without linking. GA is the process of getting an article listed as a Good Article and to be designated as such a reviewer looks for it to meet these criteria. You can nominate it by following the instructions on the Candidate page. FA means it has gone through a rigorous peer review/vote and is selected as a Featured Article on the Main page of WP. Hope this helps and good luck! plange 05:13, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Pericles, Alcibiades, Demosthenes

I think you should check the following articles and evaluate them, adding the Wiki-project biography template: Pericles, Demosthenes, Alcibiades. I'm working on all these three articles and I soon intend to submit them for FA. After all, these were very important personalities and I think that your project should be interested in.--Yannismarou 07:16, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

I've added Pericles' and Demosthenes' infobox, but I've not done the rating. I also asked for a Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/Peer review/Pericles and a Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/Peer review/Demosthenes.--Yannismarou 08:13, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Portal:Biography upkeep

We need volunteers to help keep this portal fresh. We are now accepting nominations for selected articles - add your nomination now or vote on nominations that have been added. Only FA or GA articles should be nominated. Also we've added a Portal Upkeep department plange 05:33, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

No one has any articles to nominate? That can't be possible :-) plange 02:58, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

WPBiography template too large

It seems to me that the WPBiography template takes up an excessive amount of space. See this page for example. Maybe we should remove some of the less-needed content from the template. Personally, I don't think we need the link to the Biography Portal or the Biography to-do list in the template. What do the rest of you think? Kaldari 21:51, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

The problem is, in that example you gave, taking out the portal and to-do really won't help since it's the transcluded {{blp}} template that takes up most of it, or at least half...plange 00:23, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, the living person template is a bit of a space hog. Maybe we could come up with a reduced-size version to include in the WPBiography template. Kaldari 00:40, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

I did have one, but it was deemed necessary to directly transclude theirs instead of having our own version, since the wording was still in flux. plange 00:49, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

See what you think of the version I just saved. You can see it in action here. Kaldari 00:51, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

I appreciate your effort, and the funny thing is, that's pretty much how I designed it in the beginning (warning symbol and all!) but the folks at BLP complained it wasn't prominent enough and wanted me to put it at the top, and so I did and I had it nice and compact though, but someone else was the one that said we should transclude it directly... Let me see if I can talk to the BLP people and see if we can both transclude common text.plange 00:54, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Incidentally, WP:MILHIST is experimenting with some code to help reduce the size of their template and asked us for feedback. When they have the code worked out, they have generously offered to let us share it. They welcome comments and feedback. What do you guys think? This will help reduce the size of ours. We could put the assessment and work group notices behind the hide/show pane. plange 01:48, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Michael Ignatieff

This article is having a bad time. I have stepped in as an admin with the view of enforcing policy, but it would be extremely useful if any experienced editors could take a look in here with a view to achieving consensus for a NPOV result. The article itself is protected at the moment to give things a chance to settle down, but this can be lifted if there is a reassurance of good input. I will still be available if/when needed. Tyrenius 13:21, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Wow that looks like a mess-- not sure how much help I can offer, maybe more experienced editors here can pitch in... Anyone here able to help? plange 06:41, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Update: I've taken on a mediating role and things have settled down a lot recently. Tyrenius 09:49, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Something Broke

The BioWikiProject template no longer shows an articles importance ...._(Complain)^{(Let us to it pell-mell)} 00:11, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Yep, I changed it to only show Top, since we decided not to worry about classifying people other than for that level. You can still rate the others and it will show in the work list plange 01:46, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Tagging living people

I'm now up to J, about half way through. --kingboyk 13:53, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Woohoo! plange 14:35, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Advice Wanted

I am trying to get some advice on a potentially-controversial issue. I have initiated a discussion on the Talk page for James E. Edmondson, on the possible inclusion of information relating to his daughter Sarah Edmondson in the article. See Talk:James E. Edmondson and share any thoughts on the matter on that Talk page. --TommyBoy 15:41, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

New essay

has begun here about biographies written about academics and artists-- thought you guys might be interested in it....plange 02:17, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

SciFi Channel programming guy.

A few days ago, I created the article for Chris Regina and, even though I'm pretty proud of how it has turned out, was wondering what categories he should be placed in, &c. DrWho42 09:18, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Something under "science fiction" and "television"? Maurreen 15:55, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Category:American television producers? plange 06:12, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

oops, I guess he's not really a producer, so perhaps Category:American television? plange 06:15, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

That would be just about right. DrWho42 20:31, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Image concerns

A few months back, a number of Wikipedia users went on a witch hunt which resulted in most magazine covers being removed from the encyclopedia, even those illustrating fashion models. I just noticed that another user is presently removing screen captures of actors and actresses (see Kate Winslet). Pretty soon we're going to be restricted to running low-quality images people happen to get on their digital cameras at movie premieres. For my part, I feel screencaptures are perfectly acceptable under Fair Use as the wikipedia policy states the images must be used in articles describing "the film or the film's contents". As far as I'm concerned, an actor or actress featured in the film qualifies as "a content". 23skidoo 15:46, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Whither images?

As a followup to my above comment (but listed here as a separate thread), I've just been made aware of a comment by Wikipedia head Jimbo Wales here which in my opinion spells the death knell for images on Wikipedia in toto. He basically is saying we can't even use publicity photos unless Wikipedia has arranged a free licence for them, and that he'd rather see no images at all. 23skidoo 15:57, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

...one man's opinion. A powerful man around here, certainly (too powerful if you ask me), but just his opinion at the present time. And, hey, the great thing about this free content is we can always take it somewhere else if we don't like the rules further down the road :) --kingboyk 20:20, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Infoboxes

New categories added! Now when you mark an article with needs-infobox=yes and it is also in a work group, the article will appear in a subcategory for that work group! Makes it easier now to help do these. Word of caution! I've found that certain biography articles have opposition camps on infoboxes. I think with the work groups we have, it's generally safe, but, for instance, I've noticed that scientist articles can have some heated debates on these. I would say that if you are tagging a scientist or academic, first ask on the Talk page. Does anyone know of any other category where it's generally not liked? I know actors and musicians and military people and royalty it's normal to have them.... Also note that each work group has a section that lists infoboxes... plange 06:07, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Version 0.5

About two weeks are left for general nominations. Maurreen 06:58, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Martin Luther has been promoted to GA Status

Dear Friends: Martin Luther has just been promoted to GA Status. We're also in something of an informal improvement drive. Would someone swing by and assess it again and share any improvement suggestions on its talk page? Thanks! --CTSWyneken^(talk) 11:13, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Biography categories

I feel that there ought to be category or category tree containing nothing but biographies. A category where every article and subcategory is within this Project's scope; a category where I can go if I want to browse bios and nothing else.

Category:People is currently a bit of a mess, a mighty category tree full of all sorts of articles. Perhaps this could be cleaned up, or perhaps we need a new category? (Category:Biographies is already taken I see; it contains biographical books). Category:Living people is great - and could be a subcategory, to save tagging 100,000 articles - but finding dead people's bios is not so straightforward. --kingboyk 20:18, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

If nothing else ... "Biography articles" ... Maurreen 08:28, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Which we already have, Category:WikiProject Biography articles plange 16:53, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

That's talk pages, and they get into that category by being tagged with {{WPBiography}}. My ulterior motive is - of course - to have an easy way of finding biography articles so I can get them bot-tagged and into that category! :) I think it would be useful for humans, too, though. --kingboyk 17:06, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Ah, gotcha! hmmm....So, then the people one sounds like a good candidate, what makes it messy? Perhaps we can make an ad hoc committee to hash out what needs to be done to make it not messy... plange 17:16, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Last time I looked it contained biographical and non-biographical subcategories. It's also a very deep category tree. I suppose what I'll have to do if I have the time and inclination is trawl through the categories and subcategories right down to the bottom level (and tag their talk pages), coming up with a list of which categories beneath it aren't biographical. Or, better still, if someone else wants to do that and give me a list of "good" categories (or articles) and present the others here for consideration about what to do with them I'd be more inclined to do a bot run. At the moment I'm not sure I fancy a massive category trawl followed by another hurculean bot run. (I still have 20,000 living person bios to do, AWB keeps freezing up on me or crashing so it's not going as fast as I would like at the moment). --kingboyk 17:51, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

I went through a lot of the trees copying them to the work group category lists, and I remember that some had categories for fictional versions, argh! For instance, if we were in a category of Kings, there'd be a bunch of very relevant categories and then one of "fictional kings". What to do? Do they really belong in a People category? Do we need to get permission to move them to some other uber-category like Fictional People? I can tackle this if you want, but I'm kind of a WP noob, so not sure of procedures. Do I just leave comments on the Talk pages of categories I think shouldn't be there? plange 04:27, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

(unindent) Just found one that should be nice and clean Category:Burials plange 17:14, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

You're doing well for a newbie! Have long have you been with us?

Generally if there's only a minor categorisation issue at stake, editors can just be bold and fix it on the spot. Wholesale reorganisation should be discussed somewhere - perhaps category talk of the parent cat, perhaps at the Wikipedia categorisation page, perhaps here...

Anyway, I have some tagging jobs queued up for albums and songs, plus the last 15-20% of living people, so I won't be doing anything just yet. I'm thinking of tagging by subject next - so I can tag with workgroup params - in which case I'd build and examine the category tree manually. --kingboyk 18:55, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

1.0 assessments and this work group

Thanks to kingboyk, we now have the assessments split into work groups to make things easier to digest! What does this mean? Well, now we have a nice work list that shows not only the quality scale, but also any comments left in the project banner template. Also, you'll notice we now have stats for each workgroup displayed on the workgroup page, and we also now have our own log of changes to quality and importance for each group... :-) plange 05:20, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

What exactly is our gameplan for collaborating with the version 1.0 project? Right now, for example, our Core Biographies page says that it has no relation to the 1.0 project. Also, we have zero articles listed under the WP Biography section of the v1.0 Humanities collabaration page. This gives me the impression that we are not participating in the v1.0 project whatsoever. I would like to motion that we officially endorse the 1.0 project and come up with an official plan for collaboration. As part of this plan, I would also like to motion that we officially make our core biographies list a v1.0 worklist (with the approval of the v1.0 team). What say thee? Kaldari 20:10, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

1. The Core Biographies page does not say it has no relation to the 1.0 project. It says, "It has no one-to-one correlation with any current plans for a release version."
   • I have no idea what that means. Why don't we change it to say "This list is being used as a worklist for the version 1.0 project."?
2. It is already a work list -- "It is essentially a work list for people who choose to use it."
   • Yes, but are we choosing to use it for version 1.0? If so, we should state that on the page. If not, why not?
3. Version 0.5 will be out before 1.0. Version 0.5 is now accepting nominations. I've listed some below that are not included. Maurreen 21:17, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
   • Thanks for doing that. Kaldari 22:28, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

OK with me. Maurreen 22:31, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

I have created a Core Biographies worklist at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Biographies based on the WP Biography core list. Kaldari 23:03, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Biography Portal nominations

We are now accepting nominations for selected articles - add your nomination now or vote on nominations that have been added. Only FA, A or GA articles should be nominated plange 07:55, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

G. Patrick Maxwell

I'd be grateful if some experienced editors could keep their eye on this one and help with editing where appropriate. There's been some extremely nasty stuff on the talk page, which ended up on Google and was seen by the subject. The reaction was as one might expect. There are also a couple of legal incidents in the article, which I have removed, one about a court case, where there was no final judgement handed down. They have references and are a judgement call, but as per BLP one might err on the side of caution anyway, and, after recent events, there is an even greater need to tread carefully. Because of this the article and talk page histories have been deleted. OFFICE are aware of this situation, but are leaving it to admins to see through (4 admins are watching the article at the moment). Thanks. Tyrenius 09:46, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Biographies missing from 0.5

I moved this to Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Biographies. Maurreen 23:02, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Fred Phelps

This looks like a pretty serious WP:BLP violation. I hope this group knows who is dealing with BLP stuff. Some very critical statements are not referenced, and although the article appears well referenced, almost every reference points to the same source (one book, or websites about that book). Sandy 22:36, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

The problem is that anything that comes from Fred Phelps or his organization is more-than-likely not going to be useable as it is too extremist and suspect. You can't quote Al-Queda on Al-Queda except for mundane trivia. Same applies here. Wjhonson 01:33, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Problem with removal of templates

Hi - I tagged Talk:Jake Gyllenhaal with the standard templates to indicate it's part of the project but now I've having problems with another editor who keeps removing them. What's the best way to proceed - I think they are very useful, especially in terms of giving new editors a handy reference point about what is expected in such articles.

Advice please!

--Charlesknight 21:48, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

There's a bit of unsightly space between the two boxes, I agree with the complainant... we'll have to try and trim that.

The upper box is Wikipedia policy (the {{blp}} template). I'm not sure how the folks over at Template talk:Blp would feel about people removing that message - it might be considered vandalism, restoring it probably wouldn't have 3RR applied. I don't know though, you'd have to ask them.

The rest of the text, i.e. this WikiProject's template... well, I think at the end of the day we can't do anything about it if somebody decides to remove it. I'd hope we'd also be willing to listen to complaints and suggestions to try and ensure that was a rare occurence. If it became such an issue that project templates were being removed in large numbers, it would need to be discussed centrally as the WikiProjects need these templates for the Wikipedia 1.0 article assessment. But, in this case, I'm not too bothered because, as your complainant says, we have plenty of articles still to assess anyway :) And, of course, my bot will probably put it back again eventually anyway. --kingboyk 22:06, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Comment

Is this the right place to ask this?

Regarding the article on Richard Maybury. Would it be fair to classify him as a paleoliberterian. He does not use this label for himself. However it seems fairly accurate. And much more accurate than simply liberterian— Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.8.44.185 (talk)

Uh no, you usually don't place an unsigned, "unheadinged" comment on a page completely unrelated to the topic you are asking about, particularly in the middle of an important poll. As for your question, just be honest on the page: "Richard Maybury is considered by most to be a paleolibererian, though he has not used that label for himself..." Make sure that you have sources to back that claim up. 24.126.199.129 01:12, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Is there a Scientists & Scholars workgroup?

I come across biographies for scientist, mathematicians, historians, etc., a never have a workgroup category to put them in. If there isn't a group for these people, one must be created. 24.126.199.129 22:31, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

I'd love too-- we didn't get much interest in our initial straw poll, but now that we have more people here, I'd like to open this up to new nominations. 23:02, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

If philosophers aren't included in this group, the name should be changed to Science & Academia. 24.126.199.129 01:12, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

I definitely think philosphers should be part of this, as otherwise I'm not sure what other umbrella they could fit under.... plange 02:14, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Scientists & Scholars Workgroup

1. Support plange 23:02, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
2. Support 24.126.199.129 01:14, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
3. Support Wjhonson 01:23, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
4. Support LotLE×talk 17:26, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Other workgroups

As long as we're considering new workgroups to add, here are some more suggestions 24.126.199.129 01:30, 23 August 2006 (UTC):

• Warriors & Explorers - The Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/Military workgroup could be renamed and expanded to include Frontiersmen, astronauts, colonialists, etc., as well as (more properly describe that it includes) the likes of Genghis Khan
• Athletes - Considering other workgroups, this might be a bit "narrow" of a category. Perhaps it could be moved into Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/Arts and entertainment which would be renamed Arts & Athletics.
• Saints & Sinners - For serial killers, murderers, etc. and saints, philanthropists, and the likes of Mother Teresa. You'll probably have to rename it :)
• Business & Practical - For businessmen, entrepreneur, lawyers, engineers, etc.
• Religion & Occult - For popes, preachers, etc. and magicians, cult leaders, etc. If philosophers are to be included in this category, it should be renamed Philosophy & Theology
  • Comment - I was wondering if maybe we could call it "Belief Systems", that might cover a wider swath. For example it could include activists like Cindy Sheehan (spelling?) who isn't exactly a politician. Or do you all think "activists" left and right should go under politics? If so we need a new template there for these type of people who are well-known but never elected, and don't *campaign* for office Wjhonson 19:11, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Activists should definitely go with politics. You've got these categories too narrow. I also think the phrase "Belief Systems" is a bit too vague, as activists shouldn't be placed in the same category as religious figures. 24.126.199.129 20:28, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

I still don't even understand what a workgroup... isWjhonson 01:36, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

well, we already voted on Sports as one (which would not only include athletes, but sports announcers, and coaches, etc... and also Religious Figures as another, but what does everyone think of the combination of philosophy and theology instead? I don't like combining "saints and sinners" though and the saints would fit well under philosphy and theology (religion)

to answer the other question, best way to see what a work group is, is to visit the ones already created and you'll see that one of the main functions is to put in one sport categories, infoboxes and templates that you would use a lot. Plus it's a place to find support on articles from other editors, post missing articles, find to-do lists in the work group you'd like to help out and lend a hand in doing some of the tasks, etc etc. Really it's what we make it. Think of it as a project within a project, so really the question is - what does a project do and that will hopefully answer your question ;-) plange 02:26, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Regarding Sports group: Where's their page? Why don't they have an option on the Template:WPBiography? Also, are there any other groups that exist that don't have items on the Template:WPBiography? If so, why don't they?

Regarding Saints & Sinners, where would we put philanthropists and non-religious people famed for their selflessness? And where would we list criminals?

Also, what about my other suggestions? 24.126.199.129 03:12, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Sports hasn't been created yet-- it's a lot of work to create and I just got done creating the military one, so I'll get to Sports soon. When they're created I add them to our menu, so what you see there is what we have live. Also, not every bio needs to have a corresponding work group, so it's not vital we find someplace to put criminals etc. (just like every article doesn't have to be a part of a project)-- it's more of seeing if there's enough members who are willing to put the time and energy into a workgroup in deciding if one is created and also if there's a large body of articles for it. Which leads to your next question: let's see what others respond with. You've proposed them, so let's see if there's any interest. Also, take a look at Archive 2 and 3 to see previous discussions and straw polls for the work groups... plange 03:54, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

I'd just assume put sports in Arts & Entertainment. You can always have subcategories within the work groups, can't you? 24.126.199.129 20:32, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

New organization

You guys have had the perfect organization all along in Wikipedia:Core biographies (additional categories added in italics):

Arts and entertainment

Athletes and related

Artists and architects

Music

Performing arts misc.

Writers

Leaders and public figures

Politicians and leaders

Religious figures

Revolutionaries and activists

Military

Thinkers and explorers

Explorers

Inventors and scientists

Mathematicians

Philosophers

Social scientists

Other

Criminals and victims

People of questionable existence

I know it'd be a bit of a bitch to change, but why don't you base the work groups and their subcategories on these? 24.126.199.129 03:52, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

I don't have a problem with putting athletes in Arts and Entertainment, but I wonder if others like that idea? I guess in a way it is entertainment.... I think Religious figures should probably be on its own since there's issues very specific to them that others in that group don't need to worry about. I like Thinkers and Explorers... Don't like a work group called "Other" though :-) plange 03:57, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Same with military (which includes activists and warriors and revolutionaries), it needs to be on its own. We work very closely with WP:MILHIST and that relationship needs to be made very clear at the top, etc. The categorization made sense for categorizing 200 articles, but not when dealing with 200,000+ plange 04:00, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Grumble. I don't want to think about this. Categories are Wikipedia's weakpoint: lots of people with lots of ideas may be good for editing, but it's a real train wreck when it comes to organizing things. If you want to keep special little groups for military and nobility, be my guest, but all I know is that there needs to be another category in which people can put biographies. In keeping with the "keep-it-simple-and-smart" categorization I had espoused, we might as well make it Thinkers and Explorers - covering explorers, inventors, scientists, mathematicians, historians, philosophers, teachers, etc. Ignoring my aforesaid dedication to keeping it simple, however, I think we probably still should have a separate category for Business & Practical. 24.126.199.129 03:50, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Best infobox for this?

Frank Klepacki is the article. He's a video game music composer, but there isn't a CVG biography infobox available. I glanced at the templates, but music artist doesn't quite cover it. Is there anything for musical composition? By the way, suggestions are welcome on the article, as I will eventually nominate it for featured status. --Zeality 18:23, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Tagging BLPs

I have a concern about the way living bios are being tagged in terms of importance. First of all, who is making these judgments? More importantly, it's arguably a violation of BLP for us to put a big tag on someone's talk page saying they're of "low" importance. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 01:37, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Well, we're no longer judging importance, and for those that are using it, nothing but Top gets displayed, so even if someone is tagged with Low, it doesn't display. plange 02:54, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, plange. I saw a bio tagged with it yesterday and it did show up as "low," which is what brought me here. Now that I look again, I see it's no longer visible. Can I ask what the point is of categorizing in terms of importance, and who is still doing it? SlimVirgin ^(talk) 04:46, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

I don't know who's still using it, but I imagine it's very helpful to the work groups to prioritize work... plange 05:12, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Can you say a bit more about how it would be helpful, or direct me to where I could find out more? SlimVirgin ^(talk) 05:26, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Encyclopedic importance of the subject for Wikipedia 1.0 - surprised you don't know about this! Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Index is a good starting point. We have discussed removing importance= and replacing it with core=yes for the top 200 bios only, the thread ought to be knocking around here somewhere. --kingboyk 08:50, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

The importance ranking is something of an anachronism. It's supposed to be a ranking of how important the article is for that particular WikiProject. For example, Harrison Ford may rank Top for WikiProject Films, but would rank Mid for WikiProject Biographies. Officially, we are no longer doing rankings actively. All of the core biographies have been ranked Top, and that's all we're interested in for now. There may be some people still ranking importance on their own however. Personally, I would like to see importance dropped in favor of core=yes, but there is the matter of what to do about all the existing rankings. Some people think it would be a waste to erase the 20,000+ existing rankings. Personally, I think it would be a much needed purge. Kaldari 17:33, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Help requested on essay

I've started work on Wikipedia:Academic and artistic biographies. For now it's an essay, and I've got a number of helpful suggestions and contributions. But if it tightens up sufficiently, I believe something along these lines would be appropriate as a guideline. This is only one class of biographies, but one which has a somewhat special class of concerns (and the type of bio I've personally worked on, which is obviously my motivation). LotLE×talk 17:24, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

I see you've found the workgroup chat further up the page :) Probably this is something which could be integrated with one of those. No doubt Plange will have more to say on the subject... --kingboyk 17:50, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Victoria of the United Kingdom

Victoria of the United Kingdom is up for a featured article review. Detailed concerns may be found here. Please leave your comments and help us address and maintain this article's featured quality. Sandy 22:50, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Mary II of England

Mary II of England is up for a featured article review. Detailed concerns may be found here. Please leave your comments and help us address and maintain this article's featured quality. Sandy 16:21, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, this was added to Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/to do plange 15:38, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Hooray!

At times I thought it would never get finished, but Kingbotk (talk · contribs) has finished tagging all 115,000 or so articles in Category:Living people (articles in that category as of a couple of days ago). Please keep up the assessing, folks!

I'll give it another run through that cat to make sure we're fully up to date, and then - if I can write suitable regular expressions - I'm going to start tagging by theme, starting with Category:Military biographical stubs. --kingboyk 08:36, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

(clapping hands) Thanks kingboyk!! I've started using the manual AWB tentatively yesterday and used your brilliant idea with the Stubclass thing and tagged some Virginia politician stubs :-) plange 15:18, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Thank you! Looks like you didn't do it quite right: use the auto=yes parameter, the article then gets put into auto-assessed categories for both it's work-group and general biography (hopefully!). I'll update one now at random to see if it works... and give you the diff... Aye it works! :) [1] --kingboyk 15:26, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Oops, cool! Doing things in small chunks like this for this very reason-- was afraid I'd do something wrong! plange 15:29, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

It's no big deal, not enough to go back and retag them! Just more concise code and an extra category :) --kingboyk 15:30, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Girls Aloud biographies

Can someone help me edit these?? I'm new to this project! --TheM62Manchester 09:36, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Well, you contacted me, i personally dislike them and don't find them interesting, project wise i'd say nom that article for "Good article" status, which perhaps may be helpful to your cause.--I'll bring the food 09:44, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Actually I'm new to this project and how it works, that's the problem... --TheM62Manchester 09:45, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

The article wouldn't be part of this project. You might try contacting Wikipedia:WikiProject Musicians or some other project that deals with bands? An article on the individual members would be, but first you need to make sure they pass the notability test. plange 15:14, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

They do. By a country mile. --kingboyk 15:17, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Wow, I guess I'm really out of it as I'd never heard of Girls Aloud! LOL! plange 15:29, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

(unindent)TheM62Manchester, what kind of help are you asking for? Are you wanting the biographies assessed? Do you want a peer review? plange 15:33, 25 August 2006 (UTC)