Template talk:Biography

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Biography template.

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Protection

Perhaps semi or full protection would be in order for this template, no?--12 Noon ^2¢ 21:15, 2 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Need more templates

This is not a good general purpose biography article template (if such a thing even exists). Maybe there should be several templates, tailored to different types of subjects? WCCasey (talk) 22:46, 6 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hatnote without a valid link

This is a hatnote without a valid link. Someone should correct it or remove it.

{{dablink|For other possible meanings see [[Subject's last name (disambiguation)]]}}

Thank you. --DThomsen8 (talk) 13:39, 13 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Recent edits to docpage

It looks as though over the past couple of weeks, an editor has replaced Template:Biography/doc with an actual biography (possibly their own, judging by their username). I'm guessing the docpage should probably be reverted to its original state, but I wasn't sure what should happen to the current content - should it just be deleted, or userfied, or something else. DH85868993 (talk) 05:42, 14 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Published Works

Use of Charles Darwin as an example for this section has caused some disagreements and misunderstandings as to what kind of information should be included in a "Published Works" section (see Talk:Jane Philpott ). Darwin is somewhat exceptional and it may not be appropriate to apply that example to other types of subjects. Other possible examples could be Chrystia Freeland or (for a more extensive example) Jane Francis. I propose adding these examples to show the variety of published works descriptions and formats that might be included in such a section. It might be beneficial if other editors could suggest additional examples of good practice in this area. If there are no alternatives or objections in the next week I will add these examples myself.

EncycloCanuck (talk) 16:35, 6 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

EncycloCanuck -- very good idea DGG DGG ( talk ) 15:41, 14 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Semi-protected edit request on 28 April 2019

This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

I am not happy with the "published" page. Please take it away and I will try and add a more proper one. I also want to put some photos - how do I do that? Thank you beforehand! TW Teresa Wennberg (talk) 08:40, 28 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Teresa, I've fixed your article and moved it to Draft:Teresa Wennberg. You can upload photos over at Commons. – Þjarkur (talk) 10:07, 28 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Edit notice might be helpful

Even though this template is semi-protected, it still seems to attract editors who are mistakening it as a place to add/propose article content, etc. Perhaps they think that by filling in the template's parameters with their content that it will somehow be added as an infobox to whatever page they're working on, or maybe they think the template is like a draft in that they can create it here for someone else to add to an article. Maybe an admin could create a WP:EDN for the top of the template's edit window that says in big bold letters " Do not edit this template page directly if you just want to create a new article." because lots of people don't really seem to be reading through the template's instructions before clicking the "Edit" tab at the top. -- Marchjuly (talk) 06:46, 4 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Done, using {{Article creation editnotice}}. — The Earwig ^talk 08:28, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks The Earwig. — Marchjuly (talk) 09:52, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Published works section unpublished

The "Published works" section cites Charles Darwin as an example, which uses "Works". It might make more sense to shorten it to "Works" since some authors may have unpublished works (e.g. List of unpublished books). Jroberson108 (talk) 21:37, 5 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Why "This template should always be substituted (i.e., use --subst:Biography--)."

It is stated in the article that "This template should always be substituted (i.e., use --subst:Biography--)." Can the reason for this policy please be explained?

Also, I destroyed this talk page above, help! Sorry! Maybe I have fixed it already.

Full Decent (talk) 16:11, 13 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Full Decent: No idea if you're still wondering about this a year later, but I figure no reason not to answer this question anyway, even just for others with the same question. Placing subst: before the name of a template replaces the content between the brackets with the full template data as you hit publish (this process is called substitution). Typically, the software that runs Wikipedia will just leave the template in the original notation, and only display the template's data to readers when they look at the page (this is called transclusion) - this isn't useful in this case because the goal is really just to copy-paste the content of the template onto the page, which is what the subst: does. Tollens (talk) 05:15, 26 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]