Wikipedia talk:Persondata

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

Wikilinks

Just a bit ago, User:Thorwald removed wikilinks from an article's persondata in this diff. The documentation doesn't say you can't use wikilinks (or templates). A section on this Talk page above talks a little about using links and the participants couldn't agree. If wikilinks can't be used, the doc should say so. If there are times when they can be and other times when they can't, the doc should say so. Same for templates.

According to WP:PERSON: "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." Although it doesn't address templates, that would appear to mean that wikilinks are optional.--Bbb23 (talk) 19:48, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Personally I don't think it necessary to add wikilinks to the persondata template. The point of the template isn't to be able to link the fields and I think its a bit of a reach to think that there will be a need for it in the future. However, there is no consensus at this time either way so I don't think that people should be delinking the data in the template. --Kumioko (talk) 20:04, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Indeed, adding them is a matter of discretion, but they should not be added/removed from existing templates just because a user does or doesn't like them. If and when a consensus is reached that links are useful or unnecessary, they can be dealt with then. For the moment, persondata has other, much more pressing concerns, such as the 720,000 (and rising) templates that have no descriptions. 1ForTheMoney (talk) 21:04, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Heh, I just saw someone add a description to one of the pages I watch, so that's one less.--Bbb23 (talk) 23:16, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

And by tomorrow another 50 will probably have entered the list. It isn't really possible to clear the backlog without automation, but that won't be easy. I've been mulling a possible solution (automatically assigning descriptions based on the categories an article occupies), but I don't know the first thing about programming so someone else would have to do it, plus there are certain hurdles to overcome before going ahead. 1ForTheMoney (talk) 23:37, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, was it me Bbb23? I just finished clearing out a category with the help of a bot. My next bot run will be on persondata. However, it will be limited to only sports figures as it is more straight forward if a person is a footballer, cricket player, etc. Any other category and it gets too complicated... Military figures are often politicians, painters are often engravers or sculptors. Novelists could also be poets or journalists. Politicians de-evolve from other vermin such as lawyers, criminals, ceo's, Bgwhite (talk) 23:50, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

I was thinking something similar across many categories. For example, everyone in Category:British actors can probably be described as a "British actor" without too much fuss. With any luck it will be possible to reach the vast majority of persondata templates this way, although uncategorised articles (and some special cases) may need manual oversight. 1ForTheMoney (talk) 14:34, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Vermin?--Bbb23 (talk) 22:52, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

I don't know, there are alot of people in Category:British actors that do acting secondary. For example, David Bowie and Sting. There are just some categories that there would be too much confusion about. It is going to take come creative thinking to solve it. Bbb23, sorry about vermin. Comparing cute rabbits or squirrels to politicians is very unfair to the bunnies, squirrels, rats, mice or cockroaches. Politicians are the lowest life form of all, after my mother-in-law. Bgwhite (talk) 23:24, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

You're very funny. I hope your poor mother-in-law isn't a lawyer or a CEO. In any event, I posted a notice on her userpage so she can respond to your comments. :-) --Bbb23 (talk) 23:28, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

The issue of secondary categories is what I referred to by "certain hurdles", since it's entirely possible for someone to be many things - actor, singer, director and so on. I don't know how feasible/easy it is to program descriptions for these scenarios, but I guess they'd take some of that creative thinking. There's also a need for balance here - we want to be specific enough to accurately describe a person, but not so specific that we take in everything they have ever done in their lives. 1ForTheMoney (talk) 01:39, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

If you used an edit summary along the lines of "added Persondata SHORT DESCRIPTION=British actor - please improve if needed", that would give page watchers a nudge to use something better if needed. GoingBatty (talk) 18:19, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

Agree. I just saw and edit of Waacstats show up in my watchlist. It said, "Add persondata short description using AWB". It got my attention. Need to give him some kudos. He is adding it to a ton of Politicians. Bgwhite (talk) 07:36, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

ISO dates

I'm in disagreement with another editor over whether ISO dates (YYYY-MM-DD) are permitted in persondata templates. Are these acceptable, or are they not recommended? Furthermore, if they are acceptable, is it suitable to replace them with the spelled out date type used in the article? SFB 17:47, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm the one Sillfolkboy is having a disagreement over. I have never said they are not acceptable as it plainly states it in Wikipedia:Persondata. They are acceptable. Bgwhite (talk) 18:53, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

They are certainly acceptable, although I've never got into the habit of using them (if necessary a bot could convert them without major issues.) My personal preference is to use the same format that is used in the article, but changing date formats without good reason is a bad idea. 1ForTheMoney (talk) 23:14, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

PERSONDATA-style templates for all articles?

Why only biographies I think that it's neat that we have these extractable templates, but why does it only exist for biographies? Reading today's Signpost, there are apparently services that create micro-Wikipedia articles suitable for tweeting. Couldn't we do them one better and have our own small template format for every type of article and create a snippet-sized version of the entire encyclopedia? Why do we have this just for biographies? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 16:18, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Who knows? Persondata is a form of metadata for standardising biographical information, but there's no reason not to extend that principle for other subjects if there's a particular need for them - in fact, Wikipedia:Persondata#Purpose says that "hopefully, this will be the first of many steps towards enriching Wikipedia with semantic content.", which we already do to an extent with microformats. Towns, villages, cities, ships, species genuses, asteroids...we have lots of articles on all of these subjects, so it would be a matter of consulting the relevant WikiProjects and agreeing on standard fields for each template. 1ForTheMoney (talk) 19:53, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

I would be interested in having metadata for Awards articles, in particular Category:Literary awards. I'm a bit overwhelmed by the Persondata page, it seems a lot of work to create a new metadata set, if it means creating another page like WP:Persondata. And there seem to be a lot of users out to tear it down, sadly. I wish there was an easier standardized way to go about it. I'm a believer in metadata and symantic wikipedia. IMO what we need is for it to be integrated directly into the Mediawiki software, it's kludgy using a template. Are there any plans for something like that in the future? Green Cardamom (talk) 18:11, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Semantic MediaWiki may well provide the answer, and it was covered in a Signpost report in April 2011. Unfortunately, the developers don't believe SMW will scale up to a website this big, and they're reluctant to allow untrusted code to run on their projects anyway. So until they do, we have to make do with templates that incorporate metadata and microformats. 1ForTheMoney (talk) 21:59, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

You can create a regular infobox template for the Awards articles. The problem with the people's articles is that they already have many different kinds of templates, so instead of standardizing all the infobox templates for people, they created a new, common one. --V111P (talk) 03:36, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Duh, thanks V111P. I should have thought of the infobox templates, the Awards infobox provides most of the fields I need. See what you mean about the special case of biography articles. Hairy situation getting hairier. Green Cardamom (talk) 07:42, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

If you want a really short "article", just pick the first sentence. If you want it to be a little longer and more useful, take the whole introduction. It's simple as that. --V111P (talk) 03:36, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Yes, there are many different infoboxes for people as encoding all the necessary fields and parameters into a single template wouldn't really work (although that doesn't seem to have stopped anyone trying with {{infobox person}}). To make the best of the situation, efforts have been made to standardise some of the field names whenever possible, as seen here. 1ForTheMoney (talk) 14:29, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps it would be useful to add "machine readable" descriptions of each field in each template, for example in a subpage of the template. I'm not sure exactly what these "machine readable" descriptions could look like, but for example they could indicate if the particular fields should be used for "statistical analysis" and "automated categorization", to quote two of the possible uses of Persondata cited in the intro of this article. --V111P (talk) 11:26, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

I admit I'm lost on what form that would take - microformats put the information into the form of HTML classes, as seen here. The HTML5 specification might also include microdata, which nests semantic data directly into a passage of text rather than through other templates, but that's a long way off if it happens at all. 1ForTheMoney (talk) 20:19, 17 November 2011 (UTC) Actually, that doesn't seem very relevant, but descriptions would still need to be parsed and interpreted. 1ForTheMoney (talk) 23:03, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Never mind, "machine readable" descriptions are probably not needed: dbpedia seems to be doing well at extracting the info from the templates: [1] (Look at 2.3 Sample Resources and 1.3 Example queries). They are unifying the template field names externally. [2] --V111P (talk) 00:30, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Follow-up question

Please clarify As pointed out above, machines are pretty good at scraping information from infoboxes and then making databases, lists, XML, etc. so why does this template exist at all when we have person-related infoboxes? Why not just make sure that we deploy those instead? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 16:26, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

This is a fair idea and probably what will end up happening (data within infoboxes is automatically made available to DBpedia and microformats are already in place), except that a lot of shorter articles don't have infoboxes; they can overwhelm the article and often end up being a lot longer than the text, not that this stops some users adding them. Persondata, on the other hand, can be added to articles of any length as it's usually invisible and unobtrusive. Like most things, this requires editors to decide that's a good idea. 1ForTheMoney (talk) 19:02, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

Template displaying

Please assist Not sure how/why, but Template:Persondata is showing on the current revision of Quantis Graves. Can anyone explain and fix this? Also, it has several fields filled in which are apparently not supported...? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 08:53, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Unclosed earlier template, which I've now fixed. The previous IP editor seems to have mixed fields from the fight history table and persondata together. Rjwilmsi 09:07, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

I've also taken the liberty of removing the extra parameters from persondata. As you say, they are not supported so they just end up bloating the template for no good reason. 1ForTheMoney (talk) 13:12, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Persondata templates without short description parameter

I don't use this template often so can I ask for some help. The Cleanup listing for WikiProject Somerset has just had 256 articles added to it under the heading "Persondata templates without short description parameter". I presume this relates to Wikipedia:Persondata#Short description. Has this suddenly become "required" or something?— Rod ^talk 18:59, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

That was probably the decision of whoever generated the listings, but with persondata names and descriptions are essentially the vital fields, and they have tracking descriptions because every template should have them. There might be no record of a person's birth and death dates or places, and not everyone will have alternate names, so those don't have tracking categories.

Considering that there are still a total of 690,000 templates with no descriptions, I would encourage any effort by projects or individuals to bring the total down (especially if you use AWB - which I don't.) 1ForTheMoney (talk) 22:07, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

"Most commonly known name"

If there is clear guidance on this, I haven't seen it... There is confusion between editors on how the "Name" parameter should be addressed in cases where entertainers, for example, have become famous using a stage name. For example, should Cliff Richard be shown, as now, as |NAME=Richard, Cliff, Sir |ALTERNATIVE NAMES=Webb, Harry Rodger (birth name)...? Should Ringo Starr be shown, as now, as | NAME=Starkey, Richard | ALTERNATIVE NAMES=Starr, Ringo (stage name)....? Obviously, those two examples are diametrically opposed to each other. If there is any guidance on this, where is it? Ghmyrtle (talk) 15:39, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Persondata#Name and titles is the relevant guideline on this, although judging from your section title I'm guessing you've already read it. I often take the article title as the most commonly known name, since that's what people are likely to search for and know the subject as. Of course this can mean that stage names will end up in the NAME field, and real names end up in the ALTERNATIVE NAMES field denoted as such. So in your example, Cliff Richard and Ringo Starr would be the NAMEs, but ultimately this is something for the editors to decide as I've never really thought about it. 1ForTheMoney (talk) 18:49, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

I think that's generally sound advice. The article title should be the most common name used anyway. SFB 19:07, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

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)

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)