Wikipedia talk:Persondata

Template:Persondata has been protected indefinitely. Use {{editprotected}} on this page to request an edit.

Persondata is not the same as DEFAULTSORT?

A few times recently I have seen the template used in such a way that leads me to believe that some users think that it is a substitute for DEFAULTSORT (for example, listing a name as Maccleavy, as one would do for sorting purposes in DEFAULTSORT, rather than McLeavy). I suggest that the documentation be updated to make this clear. – ukexpat (talk) 14:26, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

If you found this on existing examples, it is likely that it has been put there but a bot or a user running AWB as they commonly use Defaultsort to fill in the name parameter. Severo^TC 14:35, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

AWB does do this. AWB will fill in NAME parameter with the same value as DEFAULTSORT. There is currently a discussion to change its behavior at Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser#Alphabetizing "Mc" as "Mac". Bgwhite (talk) 19:24, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

In any event, AWB should not be adding the incorrect form to the PD name field, so that needs to be stopped. – ukexpat (talk) 20:56, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Ah, this probably explains why I see lots of persondata fields with the name just set to the last name. Kaldari (talk) 20:59, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

I also see persondata and DEFAULTSORT set to just the last name, but it shouldn't be AWB's fault as it does use all the names in the article's title. When I see it, it usually has been done by an editor, especially in footballer articles.

Hopefully the next version of AWB will have the Mc -> Mac issue fixed. But please chime in on the discussion about it as more people the better. Bgwhite (talk) 22:01, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

I mentioned this in the AWB discussion but I'll mention it here as well. If the decision is made to replace this I recommend doing a one time bot run to implement it. Also, does this Mac to Mc thing apply to Defaultsort and Listas functionality also or just Persondata? --Kumioko (talk) 02:21, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

A fix was committed to AWB's source code in which AWB will no longer do Mc -> Mac conversion. There is a discussion on whether to do a bot run to fix the persondata name field (Mac -> Mc) should be run or not. The link I gave above goes to the discussion. Bgwhite (talk) 18:53, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Actually, I came here to see if perhaps this template made DEFAULTSORT redundant, as they seem to me to be dealing with the same sorting mechanism for the subject's name. But that apparently isn't so? What is the difference in name-sorting routines between the two? __meco (talk) 09:04, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Good Question. There is an ongoing discussion at the bottom of this page on who uses persondata and how they use it so we can figure out what exactly the syntax the name parameter in persondata should be. DEFAULTSORT is a magic word used by the Wikimedia software to sort pages. Persondata only goes on biographies of individual people, while DEFAULTSORT can go on any page where a sort value needs to be set. FYI... the "listas" parameter in WikiProject Biography does the sorting for talk pages of biographies. Bgwhite (talk) 10:02, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Can we stop adding the annoying, useless comment now?

I just want to suggest a couple of changes to the annoying, ugly comment that is left on a lot of the Persondata templates. That is the comment: <!-- Metadata: see [[Wikipedia:Persondata]] -->. It could be argued that this comment was useful when the template was new and people tended to delete it but now that people have had a chance to get to know it and now that we have a bot that automates the addition of it, I think the comment has outlived its usefulness and is now just taking up space. --Kumioko (talk) 22:22, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Although I don't usually remove them from existing templates, I agree that new additions do not desperately need the hidden comment. Should people ask, it is easy enough to point them to this project page. 1ForTheMoney (talk) 01:19, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

I would say that if we are there already, doing something more meaningful, then we could remove it, but I agree that simply removing them for the sake of removing them is pretty pointless. --Kumioko (talk)

AWB also adds this comment. If consensus is reached here (and the documentation changed), you may want to add a feature request to have the code changed. Good luck! GoingBatty (talk) 04:30, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, I'm not sure if thats true. I know it moves the comment but I didn't think it added or removed it. You might be right though. Will do that. --Kumioko (talk) 04:34, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Just to clarify, AWB adds the comment when it adds the template. For example, try Ian Gardiner (musician). GoingBatty (talk) 04:37, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Oh yeah your right thanks for clarifying. --Kumioko (talk) 19:27, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Does anyone else have any objections to dropping the comment from the Persondata template. This discussion doesn't seem to have gathered much interest so I am going to leave a notice at the village pump for expanded visisbility. --Kumioko (talk) 20:47, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Drop the comment Anyone wiki-savvy enough to understand the comment will already know how to find Template:Persondata and then Wikipedia:Persondata. -- John of Reading (talk) 08:32, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

I agree with the points made by John of Reading. Severo^TC 11:54, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

Me too. The link doesn't even need square brackets as it won't work in the editing mode anyway. Rcsprinter (talk to me) 15:12, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

Remove Persondata has become standard practice now. Editors likely to misunderstand it probably won't understand {{reflist}} either (i.e. pretty low knowledge threshold). We previously had hidden comments for the reference section too, but as things become common, we can move towards dropping comments. Besides, the template's fields and context are not arcane. SFB 12:19, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

I agree the comment is now unnecessary clutter. Dsp13 (talk) 16:25, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

Since everyone that commented seemed to agree that the time has come to lose the persondata comment I went to remove it from the main page and found that someone has beaten me to it. The comment has been removed from the instructions. I will let the AWB developers now that so they can also stop adding it in the code used there as well. --Kumioko (talk) 02:10, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Is it worthwhile to develop a plan to remove the comment from the existing articles? GoingBatty (talk) 02:55, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

I think it is ok to remove it from articles if we are doing something more significant already (typo's, add or removing things, cleaning up references, etc.) but I wouldn't remove the comment if thats the only edit needed at that time. --Kumioko (talk) 03:29, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

A sensible idea - making thousands upon thousands of edits just to remove hidden comments is a waste of time, and ultimately counter-productive since I know plenty of users would take a dim view of such editing. Of course, doing it at the same time as adding descriptions would clear most of the comments out, so that's the best route forward. 1ForTheMoney (talk) 21:04, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Wonder if removing the comment could be added as a feature in Wikipedia:Persondata-o-matic? GoingBatty (talk) 03:07, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

I have added this feature in the latest version (2011-12-21), thanks for the suggestion! Dcoetzee 18:36, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

I disagree with the removal of the existing comments. Unlike all other templates persondata has no visible result on the rendered page and this makes me believe it continue be a mystery for newbies. -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:51, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

I sorta see your argument however since the addition of persondata is automated a variety of ways, if someone deletes it, someone else or a bot will just add it back. In fact we are down to a point where I dare say that there should be less than a couple thousand that don't have it (although I admit a lot still need filling in. --Kumioko (talk) 00:15, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

A few questions about names

While processing names recently I had a few points of confusion that this page doesn't seem to cover:

• When a person has an article titled by their stage name, e.g. El-B, should I put the stage name as their name as I did here and then their real name in Alternative Names? Or vice versa?
• Are alternative names sometimes listed surname first with a comma like the name field? Or should they never be listed so?
• How should the names of royal figures be listed? Sometimes people just include their most well-known titles even when they are ambiguous - for example, Edward Courtenay, 1st Earl of Devon (1485 creation) is currently listed with name "Edward Courtenay, 1st Earl of Devon". But at the same time Charles I of England has "Charles I of England" listed as his name, yet nowhere in his article is he referred to as such (it seems to be there just for disambiguation).
• I'm struggling to figure out whether to list the surname first in names in cultures I am unfamiliar with, including Indian, Malaysian, Indonesian, Arabic, Chinese, Native American, etc. people. This is forcing me to skip about half of all entries. Some guidance/background on this page would be very helpful.

Thank you! Dcoetzee 18:54, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Names are never straightforward, but I'll take the first crack at answering those questions.

• With stage names, I usually put that in the NAME field since it's likely to be their most commonly known name, and list the real name in the ALTERNATIVE NAMES field noted as such. Of course, there'll always be exceptions but this covers most cases.
• I use commas whenever I'm dealing with actual names. Aliases, such as stage names, should not have commas.
• Mercifully I don't deal with many articles involving titles of nobility, for the same reason as you. For the first example I would have listed him as "Courtenay, Edward, 1st Earl of Devon" but that would probably be wrong. Charles is more difficult, and I would probably have just left it alone so a more knowledgeable person can pick it up.
• With foreign names, although I don't know all the conventions, I try to follow the format "family name, other names" when possible. As an example, Chinese and Korean names put the family name first so they can be written as they appear (Yao Ming would be "Yao, Ming"). Overall, though, DEFAULTSORT generally sorts articles by family name so that can be followed as a guideline. Of course, If I didn't know I might take a wild stab rather than ignore the issue, since a mistake is easily fixed.

1ForTheMoney (talk) 19:40, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

"Edward Courtenay, 1st Earl of Devon" and "Charles I of England" are two different cases as one is a King and the other is a peer.

• "Charles I of England" is the formal name of the King of England and has no last name, thus he is just referenced as "Charles" in the article.
• A peer has a last name and is also treated different. The name should be listed in Persondata as "Courtenay, Edward, 1st Earl of Deavon" or "Thatcher, Margaret, Baroness Thatcher". In the article, "Edward Courtenay, 1st Earl of Devon" should be referenced as "Devon", but I have seen many cases were "Courtenay" would be used. They should never be referenced by their first name in the article. An exception is if they are more well known by their last name. To add to the confusion, the DEFAULTSORT value is also different for peers. See WP:PEERS on how to sort.

Foreign names are tough. But, there is a lifeline in that if the name parameter is not set, the article goes into Category:Persondata templates without name parameter and a person more knowledgeable (usually Me or User:Mandarax) sets it later. FYI on some general rules...

• Set Indian names as if they are traditional western names.
• Chinese/Korean/Vietnames/Cambodian, use the advice given by 1ForTheMoney.
• Burmese/Icelandic/Malaysian have no family or last name, so list as it is spelled out. An exception is Chinese Malaysian names... treat as tradition chinese names
• Almost all Arabic/Turkish/Native American names, that are roughly over 100 years old, list as they are spelled out as they have no family name. All hell breaks out after that and just leave blank if you are uncertain.
• If you have a question on any name, just drop me a note on my talk page.

Bgwhite (talk) 21:24, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Schema.org microdata

I'd like to propose and take a reading on having the table template also include the schema.org/Person microdata chunks in with the table itself.

<table id="persondata" class="persondata" style="border:1px solid #aaa; display:none; speak:none;">
 <tr>
  <th colspan="2"><a href="/wiki/Wikipedia:Persondata" title="Wikipedia:Persondata">Persondata</a></th>  </tr><tr>
  <td class="persondata-label" style="color:#aaa;">Name</td>               <td>Wales, Jimmy</td>   </tr><tr>
  <td class="persondata-label" style="color:#aaa;">Alternative names</td>  <td>Wales, Jimbo</td>   </tr><tr>
  <td class="persondata-label" style="color:#aaa;">Short description</td>  <td><a href="/wiki/United_States" title="United States">American</a> <a href="/wiki/Internet_entrepreneur" title="Internet entrepreneur">Internet entrepreneur</a>, co-founder of <a href="/wiki/Wikipedia" title="Wikipedia">Wikipedia</a></td>   </tr><tr>
  <td class="persondata-label" style="color:#aaa;">Date of birth</td>      <td>August 8, 1966</td>
 </tr>
 …
</table>

The changes required would be simple addition itemprop="name" microdata snippet to each of the existing <td> tags (keeping the existing table as-is), thusly:

<table id="persondata" class="persondata" style="border:1px solid #aaa; display:none; speak:none;" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Person">
 <tr>
  <th colspan="2"><a href="/wiki/Wikipedia:Persondata" title="Wikipedia:Persondata">Persondata</a></th>   </tr><tr>
  <td class="persondata-label" style="color:#aaa;">Name</td>               <td itemprop="name">Wales, Jimmy</td>   </tr><tr>
  <td class="persondata-label" style="color:#aaa;">Alternative names</td>  <td itemprop="name">Wales, Jimbo</td>   </tr><tr>
  <td class="persondata-label" style="color:#aaa;">Short description</td>  <td itemprop="description"><a href="/wiki/United_States" title="United States">American</a> <a href="/wiki/Internet_entrepreneur" title="Internet entrepreneur" itemprop="jobTitle">Internet entrepreneur</a>, co-founder of <a href="/wiki/Wikipedia" title="Wikipedia">Wikipedia</a></td>   </tr><tr>
  <td class="persondata-label" style="color:#aaa;">Date of birth</td>      <td itemprop="birthDate">August 8, 1966</td>
 </tr>
 …
</table>

This is very low-overhead to implement and serve, but immediately makes the existing data table much more palatable to search engines. I know there are other wiki* projects who are sucking this data out and processing it separately; but in this case it allows a very-low-overhead argumentation of the existing display format without requiring a massive make-over. —Sladen (talk) 14:46, 6 January 2012 (UTC) (Instead of just "name"; <span itemprop="familyName|givenName">…</span> and could probably be used if the position of the comma can be parsed, but that's secondary and would require more effort, and in danger of taking to make additions, rather than just annotating what's already there).

Articles about multiple people

What to do in articles about multiple people? GregorB (talk) 23:22, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Interesting one, that - as I see it, articles about the separate people might be fine for persondata, but articles about the group as a whole (such as bands) are not really suitable. In the ideal world we'd have one article per person, but as that doesn't always happen and as multi-biographies leave me exceptionally confused, I'd be interested to hear some answers on how to proceed.

One of the more recent suggestions I heard was to have multiple templates on one page (one template per person) - on dual biographies this is fine, but when three or more come into the picture that can start getting weird. 1ForTheMoney (talk) 00:16, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

It gets even more confusing one one person is dead and the other is living... this goes onto tracking pages, causing confusion and having living person category along with a death date category on a page gets real fun. I don't think there is a good solution out there. At the moment, I don't add persondata to the page and if I find it, I delete it. Bgwhite (talk) 06:58, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

I do the same, I just hit the Remove button on these. Dcoetzee 08:17, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Articles about groups are definitely unsuitable, but there are cases in which individual people are clearly enumerated in the title (say, Laurel and Hardy). So we have the following options:

1. Remove persondata altogether (definitely the cleanest option).
2. Provide only the parameters that make sense (Laurel and Hardy is a good example: only NAME and SHORT DESCRIPTION are provided).
3. List all values (all respective dates of birth, etc.) - obviously not really an option, since the template is not designed for multiple values.
4. Insert multiple persondata templates - is this possible at the moment?

Note that some of these problems are also applicable to categories. No clear solutions there. GregorB (talk) 12:49, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

My suggestion would be to treat Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy as articles about people with the Persondata template and person categories, and treat Laurel and Hardy as a performing group (like a band) with no Persondata template and no person categories. However, this doesn't resolve the issue for articles about multiple people where the individuals don't have (need?) their own article. GoingBatty (talk) 17:41, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

In that latter case, there's usually a redirect, and that's where the categories (might) go. Some people frown at this, and there's a case against putting persondata in redirect pages (even if it makes sense, in a way). So, I guess that for the time being it's probably best to restrict persondata to biographies of individuals. GregorB (talk) 19:56, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

It's absolutely fine to leave multiple persondata templates. There are no categories except to help fill in the template where stuff is missed out. Perondata's only function is to provide metadata to agents, and as such it should do what they want, which, at the moment, we do not know. Rich Farmbrough, 21:07, 19 January 2012 (UTC).

Updating WP:NAMESORT

I'm trying to update WP:NAMESORT, the guideline on how to sort people's names. I'm trying to reference why something is done and give help for names in certain areas or countries. Your comments are needed at: Wikipedia talk:Categorization of people#Updating WP:NAMESORT. Bgwhite (talk) 23:02, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Specific place of death?

If Lady Gaga died while touring the Eiffel Tower, would Place of death be listed as Paris, France or as the Eiffel Tower?Naraht (talk) 15:11, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Listing it as "Paris, France" is probably easiest - the guidelines on birth/death places recommend against being too specific. (No comment on the hypothetical scenario.) 1ForTheMoney (talk) 15:30, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Thank You.Naraht (talk) 16:05, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Alignment with Nav boxes

When both template types are used in an article, the top border for the Persondata box directly abuts the bottom border of a Nav box and presents poorly. See Helen Sobel Smith. This can be corrected by adding two lines of space (why two is a mystery to me) between the templates but this seems an indirect way to correct. Can the Persondata template be edited to provide some separation between it and a preceding Nav box? Thanks. Newwhist (talk) 22:38, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Diacritics, special characters

I see in the archive that this question was already asked, but not answered, so I repeat the question posed by PeeJay2K3 there: "is it appropriate for letters with diacritics to be used with Template:Persondata? Or, to put it another way, is there any reason why diacritics should not be used?" - I noticed that in most instances, people apparently tried to avoid diacritics in persondata, e.g. Alf-Jørgen Aas (PD: "Aas, Alf-Joergen"), Chérif Abdeslam (PD: "Abdeslam, Cherif"), or Johann Friedrich Höger (PD: "Hoger, Johann Friedrich"), this seems to be the standard approach. But on the other hand I can't see a good reason to omit diacritics. For the name in persondata is constructed like a heading in library catalogues and should, I think, be as close as possible to an internationally accepted standard form, which usually includes the diacritics. This is a case different from the "defaultsort" for categories, where diacritics are omitted for correct sorting - yet the "NAME" field in persondata is not a sorting field but intended for automated extraction of basic data about a person, of which correct spelling of the person's name is an important element. Just leaving the diacritics out (often resulting in plain incorrect spelling like "Hoger" for "Höger" - the alternative German spelling to "Höger", if no umlaut is available, would be "Hoeger", not "Hoger") lessens the quality of data. The German Wikipedia, for instance, never omits diacritics in their persondata. Regarding automated processing and display of persondata, there is e.g. the "Wikipedia-Personensuche" based on German Wikipedia's persondata, it generates person information pages like this one for said Fritz Höger. I'd say that, if there are concerns regarding sorting, I would rather add an aditional sort field to persondata (like the categories' "defaultsort") instead of mangling the names. Gestumblindi (talk) 01:43, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

My guess is some of this is due to AutoWikiBrowser's general fixes:

• Removes accents/diacritics in {{DEFAULTSORT}} tags and category sort keys so that sorting is alphabetical, not ASCIIbetical per WP:SORTKEY (English Wikipedia only)
• Sets persondata name using the article's existing {{DEFAULTSORT}}.

I'll post a link on the AWB talk page asking folks to join this conversation. GoingBatty (talk) 01:50, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes, AWB is generally the one to "blame" for the diacritics. If the NAME field is not going to be used for sorting, then I personally think diacritics should be included.

particles and prefixes

There is also the case of particles or prefixes. Otto von Bismarck is sorted "Bismark, Otto von", but his last name is von Bismark. So, the NAME field would be "von Bismark, Otto". AWB is partially at fault for this, but people do the same thing. I don't think it is possible to code this up as how one uses a particle to sort and as a surname depends on where and when a person was born. If I see it, I have been manually changing it. Bgwhite (talk) 06:54, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Well, no, in fact "Bismarck, Otto von" is correct in the NAME field, please see Wikipedia:Persondata#Name_and_titles. Whether to use "ABC, XYZ von" or "von ABC, XYZ" depends on the country. Usually, you would use "von ABC" for an American (of German descent), but "von" at the end for Germans (living in Germany), see also the quite usable cataloguing rules for that (AACR2, IFLA "Names of Persons"). Gestumblindi (talk) 14:13, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

You are misinterpreting it. It says to use the person's surname, but when in doubt, do as you would alphabetize it. Both in Germany, US and the rest of the world, sorting/cataloguing it would be "Bismark, Otto von", but the surname is "von Bismark". IFLA's guide, located here, says the same thing (pages 75—76) as does the Library of congress. U.S. phone books would also sort on Bismark. The German standard DIN 5007-2 differs from others on when to use the particles vom, zur, am, zur as part of the sort value, but this is applied inconsistently (German phone books can vary for example). See my post above about updating WP:NAMESORT. The updated guidelines are currently at User:Bgwhite/Sandbox. Comments are needed. Bgwhite (talk) 18:57, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

I think that you are the one misinterpreting here. The NAME field should either be constructed like a heading in a library catalogue, and then it would be "Bismarck, Otto von", or without any attempt at constructing a heading at all, I think - then it would be "Otto von Bismarck". But as the NAME field currently follows the "heading" approach, diacritics as well as the correct order of elements should be observed. Your LoC link, by the way, doesn't work, did you mean Bismarck, Otto, Fürst von, 1815-1898? "Von Bismarck, Otto" in any case would be wrong. On the other hand, it's "Von Stroheim, Erich", not "Stroheim, Erich von", because Von Stroheim lived and worked in the U.S. (and in this particular case just invented his "Von", but this is beside the point). There can be no catch-all rule for such particles, it really depends on the country, as the IFLA guidelines clearly point out. Gestumblindi (talk) 19:46, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Exact wording is "...the |NAME= field, in the following format: Family Name, Given Name Middle Names, title". It never says like a library catalogue, "heading", or anything at all. Just that it should be in the format above, but when in doubt, do as you would alphabetize it. Be careful with "Von" and "von" as that is two different things. A capitalized prefix usually is part of the search order and lower case is not. I don't know where you get that the U.S. sorts with von first. In my phone book, Chicago Manual of Style, New York Times, AACR2 and Library of Congress they all would say "Stroheim, Erich von". Erich von Stroheim is a bad example as he is known by both Von and von, so it gets confusing. Library of Congress has his name with "Von"... "Von Stroheim, Erich" with "Stroheim, Erich von" as a variant. (Reminds me that I need to add Sunset Boulevard to my queue) Don't add any more here. Take this to Wikipedia_talk:Categorization_of_people#Updating WP:NAMESORT. Your comments on the updated WP:NAMESORT would be very welcome, especially what is written on prefixes. Bgwhite (talk) 22:57, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Well... I'm answering here in order to keep this discussion in one place, and it's still about persondata, not about categorization.In my phone book, Chicago Manual of Style, New York Times, AACR2 and Library of Congress they all would say "Stroheim, Erich von" - I don't know your phone book, but the Library of Congress, following AACR2, very clearly sorts "Von Stroheim, Erich", see their entry, as they do with all Americans with a "Von". As you note yourself, later. Of course, library catalogues / authority databases always give entry variants (similar to redirects in the WP), but the heading is the correct one. You are, however, basically right in saying "A capitalized prefix usually is part of the search order and lower case is not", as Americans of German descent tend to capitalize particles like "von" after a while, and making it part of the family name, according to American custom. Still, Americans with a "von" are never sorted like Bismarck, and Germans living in Germany with a "von" are never sorted like Von Stroheim. This is in fact a rather easy rule, and one followed by most libraries. Gestumblindi (talk) 01:30, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

The correct German usage for "von" (and Dutch for "van" and French or English for "de") is probably that it should be lower case. Whether the defaultsort should be at "v" (or "d") is not clear to me in respect of natives. However, in England and America (not understandiugn that it means "of" "from" (or something of the sort), we treat it as part of the surname. Accordingly an English or American resident should probably be under v (or d). For those still in Germany (or the Netherlands or France) we should probably follow native practice. Peterkingiron (talk) 11:57, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes, that's basically what I say and what libraries around the world say :-). "Native practice" in this case being "Bismarck, Otto von". Gestumblindi (talk) 15:35, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Back to original question

I think to find the correct answer we should make the correct question: Where is Persondata used? I think the discussion won't conclude anything if we don't see who really uses Persondata. -- Magioladitis (talk) 19:50, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Good question. That would clear up alot of things on all the parameters. Bgwhite (talk) 22:57, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

• The question was about diactiticals and special characters. Personal data includes the Defaultsort item, though in my view, it would be better if that were kept as a separate item: less sophisticated users are inclined to think that there is no defaultsort (which is vital for a biography) and add one. The question is whether å ä and ö should be treated as separate letter at the end of the alphabet (as in Swedish) or in some way shown in the list of a and o. Since this is the English WP, I presume that we treat them as a and e. I am not clear how defaultsort would treat a name with a diacritical on it. If all the é items appeared after the e items, those not familiar with the convention might fail to find them, for example in a category. Perhaps the answer to the problem is to ask another - how is defaultsort programmed to sort items. It is effectively treating letters with diacriticals as separate letters, coming after the unaccented version, perhpas we need to ask for the software to be changed, so that it ignores diacriticals. Peterkingiron (talk) 11:57, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

The sorting of the same letter with diacritics varies also in different languages, e.g. the ä you mention is indeed treated as separate letter at the end of the alphabet in Swedish. In German, however, the "Umlauts" ä, ö, and ü, don't count as individual letters but as variants of a, o, and u, and e.g. ä is therefore traditionally sorted either with "a" or as if it were spelt "ae". But really it's not that much about sorting here, I think. It seems to me that names in the NAME field should use the correct spelling (with diacritics), with a separate solution for sorting, if needed. Gestumblindi (talk) 15:49, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

The problem is: We can only assume how Personata will be used. Is it going to be used for creating lists somewhere so we need to copy Defaultsort? Is it going to be used to displaying names directly from meta and in this case we will need the original name (i.e. the pagename)? Is persondats the only way to obtain meta info from a page? -- Magioladitis (talk) 20:45, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Persondata originally started on the German Wikipedia. Their page is here. (translated version). They give alot of examples on the right way and wrong way to enter things.

1) Name field. It contains how the person is known. It is listed how the name is sorted with diacritics and special characters.

2) Date fields. Dates are spelled out... April 27, 1980 and not 1980-04-27.

3) Alternate Name. Among the things listed was that it contains the real name of the person if the Name field contained a pseudonym.

Maybe update the English persondata page so it is consistent with the German one? Bgwhite (talk) 11:14, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

If persondata will be used to obtain databases then using ISO format for dates would make more sense. Diacritics are OK if you are discussing only Germany names. I am not sure we can fix any certain rule. Moreover, I wonder why we can't use Infoboxes to obtain meta info. -- Magioladitis (talk) 11:32, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ Between the hCard microformat and the push for standardised fields, you probably can. The only barriers to doing so is that we're often told not to add infoboxes to very short articles, plus there are lots of infobox templates and only one template for persondata. (Of course, you could send a bot/AWB to add the generic {{infobox person}} to every bio, but that leaves a big clean-up job for people who want to switch to more specific templates, and I'm not sure you'd get consensus to proceed.) 1ForTheMoney (talk) 16:12, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

I am aware of these problems but I am confident that Infobox standardisation will move forward. :) -- Magioladitis (talk) 15:45, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes, people have removed infoboxes form my stubs, meaning someone will have to replace them later. Simple and forward looking is the ticket, but that seems to much of a challenge.

The answer to the original question is "Yes, definitely diacriticals should be used." There is no point merely replicating defaultsort. And indeed I share the concern that we are overegging the pudding with cats, text, defaultsort, persondata, infoboxes, article titles, microformats and main text. And indeed there is dbpedia which specialises in this stuff. Rich Farmbrough, 01:52, 27 January 2012 (UTC).

Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2012 January 30#Template:Persondata

I have listed Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2012 January 30#Template:Persondata. Please read both options and my reasoning before condemning it :-) Fram (talk) 10:11, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

WikiProject Unique Identifiers

I have created WikiProject Unique Identifiers for discussion and coordination of all UID related matters. Please join! Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:07, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Village Pump

There is a discussion at Village Pump idea lab about lowering the short description parameter backlog. BCS (Talk) 03:12, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

This is now at the proposals pump. Comment on it (or don't) at your leisure. 1ForTheMoney (talk) 23:55, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Links in persondata?

Some articles, like [1], feature persondata containing links like "[[Ottawa]], [[Ontario|ON]], [[Canada|CAN]]". This seems very strange to me, considering that persondata is invisible and does not create actual links that people can click on. My intuition is that links in persondata are a bad idea, as it's supposed to be plaintext data. If this is the case, I could modify Persondata-o-matic to automatically remove these links (replacing them with the name of the linked article, subject to review by the user). Thoughts? Dcoetzee 20:10, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

I have no opinion on plain links, but I have issues with piped links like the ones above and actually do remove those on sight. Often they're used when linking historical names of places such as Saint Petersburg which was previously known as Leningrad and Petrograd (in these cases I use the name as it was when the person was born/died for historical context), or in abbreviations like the ones above (these really should be changed to plain text.) Overall, I'm not that bothered but would appreciate a straight consensus one way or the other. 1ForTheMoney (talk) 22:01, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

If there's consensus to not used piped links, could you please add it to Wikipedia:Persondata? We could then get a bot to remove the existing piped links, and ask the AWB developers to change AWB so it doesn't add piped links in the future. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 03:20, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Currently, Wikipedia:Persondata#Parameters says: These fields can possibly be extended in the future, and currently it isn't necessary to provide wikilinks in them; however, these might be useful in some future application, so feel free to add them to locations if you wish. I think that's reasonable, but I agree that piped links aren't necessary. Gestumblindi (talk) 22:25, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

• I guess wikilink syntax might be useful if the template is made to recognize these or external parsers one day become smart enough to recognize these as Wikipedia articles. I guess we can keep them for this reason. But piped links are pointless, they don't add anything as this is machine-readable data and machines don't need "prettification". —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 13:40, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Template suggestions

I am new to Wikipedia so please forgive me if these questions have come up before.

1. Why is it so hard to make Persondata viewable? Why doesn't someone add the ability of viewing it as a gadget or something underpreferences so all a users needs to do is check a box to see it?
2. Is it possible to add an edit link to the Persondata template like we do for navboxes? I think this would help a lot with filling this in. ShmuckatellieJoe (talk) 03:10, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

There's no reason why it couldn't be a gadget, but this is something you'd need to raise at the proposals pump. As for an edit link, obviously that requires Persondata to be visible first, but it wouldn't be as simple as editing a navbox (a conventional edit link would just take you to Template:Persondata, not to the entry for that page.) 1ForTheMoney (talk) 15:02, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. ShmuckatellieJoe (talk) 15:17, 11 March 2012 (UTC)