Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography/Archive 31

Bot assisted auto-assessment for the Project

Assessing articles is an important part of the workload of most, if not all WikiProjects. However, many articles fall under the jurisdiction of two or more projects. As all projects use the same or very similar assessment criteria ( based on WP 1.0 guidelines ) , it seems unwanted rework for the same article to be assessed multiple times by different projects manually. Why can't the project look at the article and tag its banner based on other project banners if it is already assessed ? The TinucherianBot does this : It looks at the Talk: page for an article, and looks at the classes it has been given. Then, it adds the highest class to the template for the project that it is working for. E.g. if a talk page of article has one Project banner with 'Start' class and 'B' class from another Project banner, '|class=B' will be added to the Project banner class to our project banner. And also "|class=Stub" if the Bot is running over articles in stub categories (using the Kingboyk plugin option) and "|class=Cat" , "|class=Template" if it is category,template respectively etc. We may get a few false positives (less than 5% I would imagine) but it's a small price to pay for the huge benefit of automation. Also, a false positive is likely to result in the article being identified and properly assessed, which might not otherwise happen. This process saves hours of work (some projects have 9000+ unassessed articles!) for human editors, leaving them free to actually improve the articles in question. Moreover here we are trusting and reusing the manual assessment work done by human editors.

Examples: 1 , 2 etc

We have done this successfuly earlier for many projects like WP:PHYSICS, WP:Computing, WP:INDIA, WP:Christianity,WP:ROBOTICS, WP:UNI etc.

Currently this project has over 62,000 Unassessed articles, which will take a very long time and huge efforts to be manually assessed and updating the banner for the project. If you would like to do this autoassessment for this Wikiproject, please leave a message on my talk page -- Tinu Cherian - 06:12, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Any comments ? Coordinators , please have a look at my proposal -- Tinu Cherian - 04:34, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Historical event list - new template

Folks,

I have put together a new template {{event list}} designed to allow a 1, 2, 3 or more column table of key events to be added to an article describing events over time. The template allows the easy addition of date stamped events, and the easy addition or insertion or removal of events as the article evolves over time without editors having to worry about table syntax, adjusting and balancing rows or columns, etc. Peet Ern (talk) 09:51, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Erwin Schrott dispute

There is a disagreement in the article Erwin Schrott (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) about the admissability of a two-sentence paragraph which mentions the singer's dispute with a concert promoter. The section was first introduced by SeamusSweeney on 26-Apr-2008, and then twice (3-May-2008 & 7-May-2008) removed and re-added by Artistsrepnyc and Katharineamy: 1st removal, 1st re-addition, 2nd removal, 2nd re-addition. On 7-May-2008 Voceditenore then edited that paragraph with the edit summary: "… putting "breach of contract" into perspective. It was given undue weight in an article this short [article]." On 9-Sep-2008 Voceditenore added one sentence about that dispute's resolution; edit summary: "update on Rosenblatt Recital Series cancellation + ref".

On 24-Oct-2008 Ivy_Moon went through a series of eight edits —some of them self-reverts— without any edit summary. I found these edits confusing and their aim unclear, so I restored to a version before those eight edits, making some minor fixes at the same time: diff. On 25-Oct-2008 Ivy Moon conducted an edit marked as "revert" (of an intervening grammatical correction by Voceditenore), but removed also the disputed paragraph plus a fairly large amount of unrelated references, as well as introducing Wiki syntax errors. Voceditenore reverted that edit with the edit summary "Do not remove referenced content".

Ivy Moon then reverted Voceditenore's edit with the edit summary (that editor's 1st): "These changes have been made upon request of a direct interested party. Remember this is the bio of a living person." After mulling over the situatuation for a few days and consulting WP:BL, I edited the article and restored the two sentences with the edit summary: "Restore verifiable sourced episode in accordance with WP:BLP, see especially 'contentious material about living persons that is unsourced'".

On 3-Nov-2008 the IP address 200.115.248.66 then reverted that most recent edit (undoing other useful parts of that last edit, like an added source and a tag) with the edit summary: "As I said before, changes made upon request of a DIRECT INTERESTED PARTY; please, do not change, keeping in mind this is a living person's bio..)".

After all this, Voceditenore now provided his point of view on Talk:Erwin_Schrott. I agree with those points, except that I feel there is no need to drop those two sentences and their sources.

What's to be done? Michael Bednarek (talk) 10:55, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Captions for photos in infoboxes

Hello WikiProject Biography. I was wondering if I could get a feel for what people think about the captions appearing under the photos of subjects in their articles' infoboxes, such as in Douglas Adams, Michael Jackson, Gahndi, James Hetfield, Brian Lara, Serena Williams, Glynn Lunney, Clint Eastwood, Kate Bush, Brett Favre and Ed Gein. It seems that "(name) in (year)" or "(name) at/doing (place/thing) in (year)" are pretty widely-accepted and used in biography articles of all kinds and I, for one, am for that. As people age or their appearance changes it's helpful for readers to have a picture of them put into a time-frame context by these captions. What do others think?--Jeff79 (talk) 13:18, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

I understand your where you are coming from, but do not feel they are necessary within sportspersons infoboxes.Londo06 18:06, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't see why sportspeople should be treated differently. Enlighten us.--Jeff79 (talk) 10:31, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Max du Preez

I am pasting a comment I made on the discussion page of the above article. That biography standards should sink so low says a lot about a lack of checks and balances Rotational (talk) 12:16, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Platform for libel Is this supposed to be an objective biography? It looks more like an Italian ghetto on a dirty washing day. There is not a single positive assessment of this man. Even the Martin Flanagan quote is taken out of context. The article is a tragic indictment of what should be balanced journalism. For shame! Rotational (talk) 12:16, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Request for comment

I've opened a request for comment on Talk:Cate Blanchett#Are actors who worked on location in another country other than residence considered expatriates? It's fairly self-explanatory, I think. I'd welcome any input. Thanks. Wildhartlivie (talk) 04:29, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Barack Obama's priority = mid?

Barack Obama's article is given 'mid' priority, and according to the published criteria for priority, this is the correct fit. There is a warning on Obama's template suggesting that it ought not to be changed. I dare say he is the most important person in the world right now. Could we consider upgrading it? Jenna Jameson the porn star is given a higher priority! - Richard Cavell (talk) 12:25, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

In my opinion, it should be given top priority. High might not be enough w_tanoto (talk) 19:45, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

I've changed his priority to Top. Kaldari (talk) 20:03, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Amrozi bin Nurhasyim

As you might know, he is to be executed soon with two others for Bali bombing. An Italian source [1] said that the execution is tomorrow at 3AM. However, it is rather vague. It is now "today" in Indonesian time, and an Indonesian source said that amrozi et al still can perform their muslim obligation to pray every friday noon in a mosque. The article was published at 2AM indonesian time. Now, I am not sure if this means the execution is for Friday or Saturday. But from reading Indonesian medias, none of them are reporting it, though the italian source is still the latest. Please see the article talk page for this. w_tanoto (talk) 19:43, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Suggestion for opening paragraph

Hello! I've just posted a suggestion dealing with your project. Perhaps the place to discuss it is the Manual of Style talk page, so I invite you to do so. Thanks, Lwyx (talk) 02:10, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Caucasian race not Caucasian

I've adopted the Caucasian page, which is a disambiguation page, and I attempt to fix all the links to it as such. In order to make this easier and faster may I ask that you use the correct Caucasian race please? Don't forget you can use [[Caucasian race|white]] or [[Caucasian race|Caucasian]]. Thanks! Arenlor (talk) 02:06, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

The Core Contest

Hi,

This is Bill Wedemeyer, a biochemistry professor at Michigan State University. I apologize that this message is not directly related to biographies, but please bear with me for a moment. I've come to ask for your help, especially the help of my fellow professors.

I recently became aware of The Core Contest, which was run last year for a few weeks (Nov 25 – Dec 9). Briefly, it was an article improvement drive focusing on basic articles that belong in the "core" of an encyclopedia, with awards of $100 promised for the five most improved articles. Eleven of the articles, such as Golda Meir, Constantine I and the Wright brothers, belong to this WikiProject.

My impressions are that (1) the contest was remarkably successful in improving articles and (2) many younger students threw themslves into it, body and soul, partly for the fun of it but also in the hopes of winning the prizes. Unfortunately, circumstances seem to have conspired to prevent those prizes from being awarded.

I'd like to amend this and reward the prizes, as they were promised. I'm willing to sponsor the awards myself, but I hope you agree that it'd be more fun and more wiki-spirited if we all joined in. I'm especially interested in recruiting professors, who I think will want to be kindly to poor but hardworking students, especially in this season of many holidays. We probably all remember what it was like to be a poor student.

I've contacted Prof. Martin Walker (one of the judges of the contest) about the matter, and he's very supportive. Please contact me by e-mail if you're interested in donating to the cause. We would plan on announcing the winners in two weeks, on November 25th, the anniversary of the contest.

Thank you, Proteins (talk) 18:35, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Just to clarify things, but will the entries finally be judged as they were intended to be, or will the only prize recipients be these several "hardworking students" you mention? If the latter is true, it seems unfair to all of the others who participated. There were quite a few, if I remember correctly, and everyone worked diligently. María (habla conmigo) 18:52, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm so sorry to be unclear — of course the articles will be judged and the prizes awarded as they were originally intended. That's one of the reasons I wrote to Prof. Walker, to establish that he would be willing to share those judgments if I and possibly others would be willing to post the money. My emphasis on the students was not meant to exclude anyone, but rather to inspire my fellow professors to be sympathetic and generous. :) Proteins (talk) 19:49, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Great, that's exactly what I wanted to see. :) BTW, I think what tripped me up was the wording here: "I'd like to amend this and reward the students the prizes". I happen to be a poor, hardworking student, but I just wanted to make sure of the process. Thanks for clarifying! María (habla conmigo) 19:55, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Birth month categories

Mohsinwaheed (talk · contribs) appears to be adding biographies to Category:January births, Category:February births, etc. It seems like that categorization ought to have consensus, but I can't find a discussion anywhere, and this project seemed like the most obvious place. I can't think of any advantage to categorizing everyone by month. Was there a discussion about this, or is that user being bold and/or trying to climb the category-sorting equivalent of Mt. Everest alone? --Closeapple (talk) 02:31, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

I have raised the issue on the user's talk page and asked them to provide a comment either there or here. A previous CfD discussion in March 2006 showed a clear consensus to delete these categories, but I am not aware of any more recent discussions related to their recreation. Road Wizard (talk) 03:00, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

I noticed the new categories on several articles this evening and have been trying to find the discussion I assumed such a sweeping change would generate. It's a huge amount of clutter, and I don't see what the benefit is. A minor additional problem is that the new categories have loops in their hierarchy, with "Birthdays" as both a parent and a child of some month categories, which makes no sense. —KCinDC (talk) 03:21, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

They've now been nominated for deletion at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2008 November 12#Category:August births. --Closeapple (talk) 04:05, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Projects

Do biographies belong both at Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/Politics and government and Wikipedia:WikiProject Politics? I am not sure if they serve different functions or overlapping ones.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 22:12, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Barack Obama at FAR

Barack Obama has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets the featured quality. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. Dabomb87 (talk) 23:13, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Articles involving murder victims/murder cases

I am currently involved in an unusual debate over the naming of the article Gwen Araujo. The article is not really a biography but about a murder case. I personally feel that since the article is not about the life of Gwen Araujo but about her murder that the article should be titled Murder of Gwen Araujo (now a redirect since the article was moved back in total disregard to the talk page discussion). This is just one such case of literally hundreds where murder cases are titled under the name of the victim. I don't think this is really the best naming practice since what often occurs is a pseudo-biography of the victim, involving irrelevent details from their life that are not really encyclopedic or at times resemble a tabloid. Likewise it doesn't seem to fit well with the policies regarding victims at Wikipedia:Notability (criminal acts), which strictly prohibits articles on victims (unless they were notable for something other than being a victim). Any thoughts on maybe trying to set a policy in the naming of murder cases so as not to confuse them with ligit encyclopedia biographies?Nrswanson (talk) 13:25, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Friendly Notice of an Article for Deletion

The article Paul LaVinn is being considered for deletion. You may participate in the discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Paul LaVinn.

This notice is intended to make editors aware of the discussion and to help make Wikipedia a better place, not to influence the discussion in question in any way. Please notify the discussion group that you came to the group from this notice. If you feel this notice is a violation of Wikipedia:Canvassing please let the posting editor know.--Paul McDonald (talk) 19:33, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Frederick III, German Emperor FAC

The Frederick III, German Emperor article under this project is currently up as a FAC here. If you are interested please check it out and give your take. --Banime (talk) 01:28, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Prophets from scripture and the Bio tag?

I just noticed this deletion] from the article Mormon (prophet)'s talk page. I was curious and turned to Isiah, Moses, Esther, and Amos' talk pages and found the bio tag present on all of them. I am not sure what is the proper thing to do, but it would seem like the old adage "what is good for the goose is good for the gander" applies here. Do we accept these individuals as real people or do we only accept those that are proved to have existed? Of course, Moses would have to go under that standard as well as others. I have reverted the deletion, but I am open to whatever you conclude is best. --^StormRider 11:01, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

One might argue that some people in the Bible are probably more fictional than real. I'll leave it to the scholars to decide on that. But we aren't dealing with the Bible here, but with the Book of Mormon. The difference between the Bible and the Book of Mormon is that the former is from an actual historical context - whereas there isn't a shred of evidence that anything in the Book of Mormon happened, or that any of the people, or even peoples, of it have ever existed. The Bible is known to have been written by real people in ancient Israel and as such it has a certain historical basis. The Book of Mormon, as far as can be confirmed empirically, was written in the early 19th century by a person (or possibly by persons) who had no connection with the time or cultures he/they were writing about. It's only supported by claims of revelation and by faith. Wikipedia is supposed to be based in science, not in mythology. Also most articles about Book of Mormon people do not have a WPBio banner. I found almost none in Category:Book of Mormon prophets. Articles about other mythological people, like Arjuna and Pandu do not have a WPBio banner, and, of course, shouldn't. -Duribald (talk) 14:41, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

There are plenty of people who argue that various people mentioned in the Bible aren't real, but rather allegorical or completely fictional. For most of the people in the Bible, there's no empirical evidence they existed, either. Just a bunch of writings from people who may or may not have been making things up. (Just playing devil's advocate here since you seem to intent on disproving the existence of Book of Mormon people). ···日本穣^{? · Talk to Nihonjoe} 06:48, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

That would be up to scientific consensus to decide. Wikipedia is supposed to be based in science, and so is the WPBio project. The Book of Mormon is not a relic from the past scientifically speaking, although you are of course entitled to believe what you want as your personal belief. The Book of Mormon's claim to validity rests on the words of an alleged angel. This is not scientifically acceptable. As much as I respect people's right to believe in whatever religion they like, this not a church. -Duribald (talk) 06:57, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Reference library category

In order to help facilitate easier location of potential sources of offline information to help verify the notability of article subjects and contents, I have created Category:WikiProject reference libraries and placed into it all of the reference library pages of which I am aware. Please add more project reference libraries to this category if you know of more. Additionally, feel free to create new reference library pages for any particular project as well. They can be very useful. ···日本穣^{? · Talk to Nihonjoe} 20:03, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Request for comment on Leonardo da Vinci article

A request for comment has been made at the Leonardo da Vinci article, which is supported by this WikiProject. The question for the RFC is "Does the praise in the lead section constitute peacock terminology?" Please visit Talk:Leonardo da Vinci#Request for comment on style of lead section if you would like to comment. Papa November (talk) 13:29, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Neglected article Sathya Sai Baba

I was one the main authors of the article Sathya Sai Baba but I was deemed to have a conflict of interest and now I feel the article suffers from major neglect. It used to be better. Can somebody please improve it or at least revert to a version that does not contain major unsourced inaccuracies? I have many sources at my disposal which I can list on the talk page if needed. Nevertheless the article has issues that cannot resolved as the following quote shows

"The strict fact of his personal biography and manner of life are buried beneath layer upon layer of hagiography. (see esp. the works of Kasturi; also Gokak 1975). As far as I am aware no objective account of Sathya Sai Baba’s life has been written by anyone close to him. Indeed such an account may be an inherent impossibility: it unlikely that anyone who is allowed in to his inner circles would want to write in such a vein. [..]

Thus Sathya Sai Baba himself cannot be the actual subject of an account of his cult. For now, so supposedly ‘real’ Sathya Sai Baba’ can be anymore real than an imagined character in fiction."

by the anthropologist Lawrence A. Babb, Redemptive Encounters: Three Modern Styles in the Hindu Tradition, (Comparative Studies in Religion and Society, chapter Sathya Sai Baba’s miracles, published by Waveland press 2000 (original publisher is by Oxford University Press 1987) ISBN 577661532, page 160

Thanks in advance. Andries (talk) 14:50, 23 November 2008 (UTC) (amended 14:58, 23 November 2008 (UTC))

Classification of supermodels

According to multiple websites, tv shows, magazines, etc. women such as Heidi Klum, Kate Moss, and Petra Nemcova are known as supermodels. However, when this was added to wikipedia, the occupation 'supermodel' was changed to 'model' on their pages. And even models Cindy Crawford and Gisele Budchen are listed on the supermodel page on wikipedia, but not called one on their own pages. Why is it then that these supermodels cannot be reffered to as supermodels, but Tyra Banks and Naomi Campbell can? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tarheelz123 (talk • contribs) 16:34, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm a photographer. After all, I press the button on my camera, and photographs are the result. Most people are photographers. Probably you're a photographer too. Henri Cartier-Bresson was a photographer. Nobody will pay money for a book of my photos; pardon me if I appear rude, but I doubt that anybody would pay money for a book of yours, either. They'll pay for books of HCB's works, so I suppose we could say that HCB was a great, or super, photographer. However nobody calls HCB a "superphotographer". The mass media, even the "serious press", happily spews out out gushy hyperbole, whereby for example the mildly well known are "legendary". WP rightly resists this, not because it's new (language changes, and people have the right to adopt and popularize neologisms) but because it's uninformative gush. "Model" is a perfectly good word to include those who are well paid and appear in gossip columns, as well as the workaday types who appear in mail-order catalogues. I'd be in favor of zapping the word "supermodel" from Wikipedia (other of course than from direct quotations). -- Hoary (talk) 07:22, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Individual wikiprojects are deleting infoboxes from articles

Several people from musical Wikiprojects are systematically deleting infoboxes from biographies that are covered by their projects:

• "Rmv infobox as these are not used for classical musicians per Wikipedia:WikiProject Classical music#Biographical_infoboxes)
• "Rmv infobox as these are not used for composers, per Wikipedia:WikiProject Composers#Lead section) "

Here is an example at: Milton Adolphus, peek at the history for before and after.

Anyone have an opinion one way of the other? The discussion is at: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style, scroll down to the second from the bottom. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 03:19, 30 November 2008 (UTC)