Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biography

Sex in CONTEXTBIO?

MOS:CONTEXTBIO doesn’t make mention of sex (or gender), but it seems like there would be no reason not to treat it the same. We don’t need to clarify someone as a “female soccer player” or “female scientist”, except in cases like “first woman to win a Nobel Prize” (and so on). Am I missing something, or is this sort of consideration so obvious to be CREEPy? — HTGS (talk) 04:16, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

We don’t need to clarify someone as a “female soccer player” or “female scientist” — but we do categorise them (Category:Women's association football players, Category:Women scientists) and thus we should define them as such. Mitch Ames (talk) 05:06, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

@Mitch Ames I am not talking about categorization, but about the text (and specifically the lead sentence) of a biography, per MOS:CONTEXTBIO. And specifically, I am wondering out loud whether CONTEXTBIO should explicitly advise against including gender in the lead sentence. Whether or not people are put into gendered categories is of no concern to me. — HTGS (talk) 01:41, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

• Would this idea also apply to trans people? Would we no longer state “X is a trans-female soccer player” or “Y is a trans-male actor”? Blueboar (talk) 02:05, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

  I would assume that in most cases of trans athletes, their gender would be central or pertinent to their notability. This may also be true of trans people generally, but it would still align with people like Rachel Levine, who is notable (largely) independent of her gender, and whose lead paragraph currently does not mention that she is a trans woman.

  FWIW I didn’t pose the question with trans people in mind (I had just made this edit … is a New Zealand female rugby union player) so a carveout for trans bios would be fine by me. Eg, a footnote like “for trans individuals this guideline may not always apply”. But I do feel that CONTEXTBIO's current wording (gender … should generally not be in the lead sentence unless relevant to the subject's notability) would cover it well enough for the good judgment of good editors. — HTGS (talk) 02:32, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

  And, to be especially clear, I was (and am) posing an open question. The addition of gender seems to logically follow for me, but reasonable minds may differ. — HTGS (talk) 02:39, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

Proposed GENDERID text revision redux

Per EddieHugh's request, below is proposed revised text based off what consensus here was showing, but edited to address their concerns.

When a living transgender or non-binary person's former name is not notable, that name should not be included in the article. For example:
When a living transgender or non-binary person was not notable under their pretransistion pretransition name, that name should not be included in the article.
For example:

• From Laverne Cox: Laverne Cox (born May 29, 1972) ...
• From Rachel Levine: Rachel Leland Levine (/ləˈviːn/; born October 28, 1957) ...
• Avoid: Not notable, do not use: Jane Smith (formerly John Hammer, born May 1, 1980) ...

In the case of a living transgender or non-binary person who was notable under their prior former name, that name may should be included in the lead sentence of their main biographical article. Introduce the prior former name with "born" if they were notable under their birth name or "formerly" if notable under a prior former professional name, stage name, or pseudonym. For example:
In the case of a living transgender or non-binary person who was notable under their birth name or a former professional name, stage name, or pseudonym, that name should be included in the lead sentence of their main biographical article. Introduce the prior name with either "born" or "formerly". For example:

• From Chelsea Manning, notable under birth name: Chelsea Elizabeth Manning (born Bradley Edward Manning, December 17, 1987) ...
• From Elliot Page, notable under prior former professional name: Elliot Page (formerly Ellen Page; born February 21, 1987) ...

Thoughts, objections, concerns? CapnZapp, Newimpartial —Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 14:58, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

I think using the old language for the first case, like "when a living ... person was not notable under a pretransition name, that name..." is more precise (and therefore better) than your proposal. The test is the notability of the person while using the name, not the "notability of the name itself" (whatever that would mean). Newimpartial (talk) 15:32, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

Okay, adjusted above... Does using "pretransistion name" instead of "prior name" create any gray areas around gender change without a medical transition? —Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 16:09, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

I wouldn't have thought so, since the relevant transition here is social, rather than legal or medical for example. But I would like others to weigh in. Newimpartial (talk) 16:19, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

• "pretransition" is misspelled "pretransistion"
• I would have thought that the usage of green/red text is standard and that the reader can be assumed to understand its meaning ^{(actually, is green/red text color-blind-friendly?)}, but okay - if MOS generally explains examples in red as "don't actually write this, this is an example of how to do it wrong" then we should definitely repeat that here as well. If this would be an isolated case, however, I think the explanation "do not use" from "Not notable, do not use:" should be removed.
• I like how the new text avoids claiming Page's prior name is not a birth name, since we appear unwilling to actually explain that.
• I like how the new text explicitly tells us when to use "born" and when to use "formerly". (Just wanted to point out this, since the new text adds a rule that wasn't there before. Previously there wasn't an actual rule against using other words than "born" for the notable under their birth name case - we just stated editors should use "born" or "formerly". The examples hinted at which word to use where, but examples aren't rules. And to be ultra clear: I have no objections, I just want to raise awareness in case anyone missed the fact the suggested edit doesn't just change the presentation of the MOS rules, it actually changes them)
• I concur with Newimpartial's objection.

CapnZapp (talk) 17:55, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. I've fixed the spelling. Looking at other examples on the page, some red text is introduced in the sentence preceding it with "do not use" or similar language. Others (particularly when paired with a green text example) it's introduced with Avoid on the same line, so changed to that. —Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 19:04, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for bringing the discussion back here. Comments:

• Is "When a living transgender ... For example:" needed? Most of that is in the existing "If a living transgender ... the person's current name" paragraph. Would adding "For example:" to the existing paragraph be enough?
• The current "...former name should be included in the lead sentence of their main biographical article only if they were notable under it" isn't very clear in its use of "should", but it differs significantly from the proposed "that name may be included in the lead sentence" ('should' versus 'may').
• I'm not sure about adding "pretransition name" to the list of terms used: what counts as "transition"? But then there's already "transition" in the same section. EddieHugh (talk) 23:09, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

I agree that the first sentence of the proposed text is not needed, as it just repeats the existing "If a living transgender or non-binary person was not notable..." sentence. I also think that shifting from "should" to "may" reduces clarity and is likely to lead to unnecessary disputes about when to include the former name. The section as written establishes that by "former name" we mean a deadname. The proposed text would result in switching between "former name", "pretransition name" and "prior name", which reduces clarity. Finally, I oppose mandating that birth names be introduced with "born", as opposed to the current guidance which says both "born" and "formerly" are appropriate, leaving the choice up to the editors of a particular article.--Trystan (talk) 23:59, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

Comment: Yes, with Just wanted to point out this, since the new text adds a rule that wasn't there before. above I hope to have helped made sure this change didn't fly under the radar. (Unlike you Trystan I don't mind the change, but then again, I don't have a strong opinion either way). CapnZapp (talk) 07:10, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

Okay, tried to address the seemingly repetitive first sentence, use former name throughout, and replace may with should when talking about someone notable under a former name.

Regarding formerly vs. born. The examples as MOS:CHANGEDNAME all use born for birth names, as does MOS:NEE. The discussion of "also known as" names at CHANGEDNAME and MOS:PSEUDONYM puts a different emphasis on the professional or stage name (e.g., Timothy Alan Dick (born June 13, 1953), known professionally as Tim Allen) than I think is what's intended in GENDERID. To my mind, presenting "born" as the proper word for a birth name aligns with the rest of MOS:BIO and "formerly" covers well the instances when the notable name is something other than a birth name. Can you provide an example of a case where it makes more sense to use "formerly" for a birth name or "born" for a stage name? —Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 00:55, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

Just to point out that examples can't make rules (or at least, shouldn't). That is, just because all examples use X doesn't mean there is a rule saying "you must use X"... unless there actually is rules text to that effect. We can't (shouldn't) expect readers to infer rules from examples. (I have no opinion either way; just want to keep the level of clarification high throughout this discussion, which I'm mostly monitoring so my proposed changes aren't lost half way) CapnZapp (talk) 07:06, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

Can you suggest a better way to phrase things then? The existing text at GENDERID says introduce the name with "born" or "formerly":. MOS:BIRTHDATE says Birth and death labels are included only when needed for clarity. When given, use full words, whether immediately preceding a date or not: (which is referring to writing out "born" instead of using "b."). Examples may not be "rules", but they demonstrate the proper application of the rules to help aid in understanding them and almost every time a birth name is used in the examples when the person is known by a different name, "born" is used to mark the birth name. The only exception is MOS:NEE says specifically, when a birth name is given for someone who's changed their surname, Editors may denote this [the birth name] with "born" ... or, if the surname change is due to marriage, né or née may be used instead of born. (The conditional may is used here because of the exception for when né/née might be used instead.)

CapnZapp, as I see it, it's not a new rule, just a clarification that aligns with the rest of the MOS. The current GENDERID text specifies to use either born or formerly. The only difference is the revision specifies "born" for use with (notable) birth names (which is in alignment with the rule at MOS:NEE and the examples that illustrate the rules at BIRTHDATE, CHANGEDNAME, etc.), leaving "formerly" for use with other sorts of former (notable) names. Are there any cases where this would be problematic or where an editor would reasonably choose to use the words differently? Or should "may" be being used here instead of "should" (to mirror the verbs in MOS:NEE)?— Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 14:45, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

Trystan, can you elaborate on your last point (let editors choose when to use born or when to use formerly)? Is there an instance where born would be used for a stage name? Or where formerly would be more appropriate for a birth name? How do you see this deviating from the rest of MOS:BIO, such as the statement at MOS:NEE to use born, unless you're dealing with a surname change due to marriage where né/née may be used instead? I'm seeing this not as a rule change but a clarification that aligns with the rest of MOS:BIO, but if there are cases where it doesn't work I'd appreciate being educated about them. — Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 14:25, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

The current guidance to use either born or formerly came from a compromise solution achieved in this RFC, which discussed the different connotations born can have for trans individuals. I have no objection to testing if that consensus has changed (in either direction), but I suggest it be done through an RFC.--Trystan (talk) 14:52, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, I hadn't located that discussion. I've revised again to reflect that RFC; however, I also went back to "prior name" in one instance here so as not to have a soft implication that "former name" was connected to use of "formerly" (which was the assumption I was working under). —Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 15:51, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

Just so that we have everything on the table at once: yes, the 2015 RfC mandated "born" or "formerly", but it didn't mandate specific guidance about when to use one or the other, nor did it come to any particilar conclusion about the possible connotations of "born".

Also, the most recent prior discussion of this guidance, which resulted in the status quo text and determined the current selection of examples, was this one. Newimpartial (talk) 16:20, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, Newimpartial, I think with the revisions above there's nothing in conflict with either of those RfCs, but the changes still add some clarity, including the Avoid example, in response to the concerns CapnZapp raised in the "please explain (GENDERID examples)" discussion. — Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 18:19, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

I'm fine with that. Newimpartial (talk) 18:31, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

Looks good to me as well.--Trystan (talk) 20:04, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

Maybe I'm just slow today, but I'm struggling to understand what the strikeouts at the start are meant to communicate. What would come before "For example?" Both suggestions are struck out. What would that be an example of? - Astrophobe (talk) 17:44, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, those were parts of the initial draft struck in response to comments and questions. The striking of everything but "For Example:" was because others felt the proposed line was too repetitive of an existing paragraph that wasn't being considered for change. So, now "For example:" would follow the existing "If a living transgender or non-binary person was not notable under a former name (a deadname), it should not be included in any page (including lists, redirects, disambiguation pages, category names, templates, etc.), even in quotations, even if reliable sourcing exists. Treat the pre-notability name as a privacy interest separate from (and often greater than) the person's current name." — Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 18:07, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

Any further thoughts/concerns/edits, or does this look good to deploy? Clean (hopefully) final version (with the existing, unchanged preceding) below ... CapnZapp, EddieHugh —Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 14:17, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

If a living transgender or non-binary person was not notable under a former name (a deadname), it should not be included in any page (including lists, redirects, disambiguation pages, category names, templates, etc.), even in quotations, even if reliable sourcing exists. Treat the pre-notability name as a privacy interest separate from (and often greater than) the person's current name. For example:

• From Laverne Cox: Laverne Cox (born May 29, 1972) ...
• From Rachel Levine: Rachel Leland Levine (/ləˈviːn/; born October 28, 1957) ...
• Avoid: Jane Smith (formerly John Hammer, born May 1, 1980) ...

In the case of a living transgender or non-binary person, their birth name or former name (professional name, stage name, or pseudonym) should only be included in the lead sentence of their main biographical article if they were notable under that name. Introduce the prior name with either "born" or "formerly". For example:

• From Chelsea Manning, notable under birth name: Chelsea Elizabeth Manning (born Bradley Edward Manning, December 17, 1987) ...
• From Elliot Page, notable under former professional name: Elliot Page (formerly Ellen Page; born February 21, 1987) ...

Comment - I don't blame you for not knowing the tedious background, but many editors would regard your change to the final intro paragraph, from should only be included if to In the case of .... should be included as substantive and, given the background, even as requiring its own RfC. (The former only sets limits on inclusion, while the latter positively mandates inclusion when the condition is met - at least, that is how many of us read that policy language.) Newimpartial (talk) 14:28, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

I don't read it that way. Both the existing text and the revision use "should" with the same limitation on inclusion (when the person was notable under the former name). That said, does this improve it for you? "If a living transgender or non-binary person was notable under their birth name or a former professional name, stage name, or pseudonym, only then should that name be included in the lead sentence of their main biographical article." —Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 14:44, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

That's marginally better, but I'd be much more comfortable with, "In the case of a living transgender or non-binary person, their birth name or former name (professional name, stage name, or pseudonym) should should only be included in the lead sentence of their main biographical article if they were notable under that name." Newimpartial (talk) 15:42, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, that works for me (and has been inserted above). —Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 15:56, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Can that be changed to "in the lead" rather than specifically saying the lead sentence? For example, if someone was somewhat notable under their former name and if their lead sentence is already stuffed with more notable aspects of their life post transition then we might not want to put the former name in the very first sentence. I think it would be best to make this a "best but not mandatory" MOS practice. Springee (talk) 23:53, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

MOS:GENDERID currently specifies "in the lead sentence." MOS:FULLNAME says "should usually be given in the lead sentence," so there is wiggle room elsewhere in MOS:BIO... What do others think? —Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 02:02, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

User:Tcr25, I have concerns about Rachel Levine being used as an example above. She was an academic researcher into eating disorders pre-transition, and published a number of articles in medical journals under her birth name. Obviously pre-transition she was a lot less notable than now, but I'm not sure she was entirely non-notable – and I think that's a rather different situation from someone like Laverne Cox, who as far as I am aware was a complete nobody pre-transition. A person might be interested in Levine's academic career/research/publications, and a person who wants to pursue that interest would need to know what name she published much of her work in that area under. By contrast, a person's reasons for knowing Cox's birth name couldn't be anything other than interest in celebrity trivia. SomethingForDeletion (talk) 23:06, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Notable in the guideline links to WP:GNG, which is a specific and well-defined threshold to meet. The consensus at the subject's article seems quite stable that she was not notable under her former name, so I think the example stands.--Trystan (talk) 23:55, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

I don't have a strong feeling either way. If there's an alternate person you can suggest who is relatively high profile and would serve equally well to illustrate things, please suggest them. That said, and as Tyrstan noted, the consensus seems to be that Levine fits the case of not notable under her prior name. (She's also one of the existing examples on the article, so she's not a new example here.) —Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 01:48, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

I think examples in the MOS should be really clearcut cases. I agree Laverne Cox is such a case but not convinced that Rachel Levine is one. I don't think the consensus on Levine's article is necessarily dispositive as to whether it is a "clearcut case". If we can't find another example to replace it with, I think just having the Laverne Cox example is enough. SomethingForDeletion (talk) 09:37, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

You can see the discussion above why it is desirable to have more than example to show there isn't a single set format. I'm not opposed to changing the example, but would need some suggestions about who to use instead. In the meantime, since the Levine example doesn't change what's already in the MOS, I wouldn't hold up the rest of the changes over this example. —Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 13:03, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

Given the repeatedly-estsblished consensus at Talk:Rachel Levine that her pretransition name is not notable, and its consistent exclusion from the article, I think the example is a good one. Newimpartial (talk) 13:34, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

Given that discussion seems to have died out on this, I've moved the stable version of the examples and intro text to the MOS page. —Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 16:34, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

"should only be included in the lead sentence of their main biographical article if they were notable" would be less ambiguous as "should be included in the lead sentence of their main biographical article only if they were notable". That would also match the previous wording. EddieHugh (talk) 17:26, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

I find the present text less ambiguous than the prior language, for what it's worth. Newimpartial (talk) 17:37, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

The first makes the inclusion conditional; the second highlights the condition to be met for inclusion. I think the effect are the same either way (the only reason to include a deadname is because the person was previously notable under it), just maybe a difference in which you stress. Neither feels more or less ambiguous to me. —Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 18:09, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

The ambiguity: is inclusion to be in the lead sentence and nowhere else if the person was notable under that name ("only... in the lead sentence"), or does inclusion in the lead sentence require the person to be notable under that name ("only if... notable")? We mean the latter, I think. EddieHugh (talk) 22:12, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

I restored this phrase to how it was ordered before the recent changes. Crossroads ^-talk- 00:29, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Should MOS:GENDERID apply to a person whose sole notability is due to a heinous crime such as murder or rape?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Consider an individual such as Amber McLaughlin (born Scott A. McLaughlin). McLaughlin was executed for the murder and rape of a woman, committed while living as male, only transitioning to female while on death row. You will find a number of other cases of individuals who have transitioned post-incarceration for heinous crimes, although this is the only case (thus far) which has ended in execution. McLaughlin's notability is due to committing heinous crimes; although the primary source of notability is only for being executed for them, being executed for a crime can't really be separated from the crime itself (especially in a case such as this, in which nobody–to my knowledge–is suggesting this was the execution of an innocent person). (Technically MOS:GENDERID doesn't apply to McLaughlin, since it only applies to living persons–but I'm trying to raise a broader point here than just that one individual case.)

Here are some arguments why MOS:GENDERID should not apply in such cases:

1. In very many cases, the victim or their family will be offended by extending recognition to the murderer/rapist's newly claimed identity
2. Many victims of similar crimes will be offended – many female victims of male sexual violence (and their supporters) have expressed opposition to the recognition of such identity claims by perpetrators
3. The intention behind the policy is to extend respect to transgender people; I don't think making an exception in these narrow cases exhibits any disrespect to transgender people in general. On the contrary, unequivocally accepting these individuals' claimed transgender identities may actually promote transphobia

Note, I am only suggesting we should carve out an exception for heinous crimes such as murder, rape, child abuse, etc, not for less inherently abhorrent offences. Such an exception would not apply to e.g. Chelsea Manning, since whatever your view on her criminal convictions, few would seriously suggest they are on the same level as rape or murder. I was thinking about filing an RFC on this topic, but thought it would be better to raise it informally for discussion first. SomethingForDeletion (talk) 23:46, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Misgendering someone – for any reason – disrespects all transgender people. Deciding it is alright to misgender someone based on crimes they did implies having your identity recognized is a privilege that can be taken away, which should not be the case.

Furthermore (and maybe more important for Wikipedia) deadnaming and misgendering someone is factually wrong. Amber McLaughlin isn't not a woman because she is notable for committing horrible crimes. We don't misgender cis people who do horrible crimes, there is no reason this should change for trans people, unless Wikipedia decides transgender individuals are not really the gender they identify as, which is obviously incorrect. Catgirl-su (talk) 18:24, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

 Disagree We at Wikipedia don't offer extrajudicial punishment by imposing a different set of standards to convicted criminals than to other people. This should be SNOWBALL closed. CapnZapp (talk) 19:50, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

I think, as with most things, it comes down to what reliable sources say, and ultimately WP:Consensus is the foundation. If the preponderance of reliable sources cease to recognise the transition as 'genuine' for some reason, then we could clearly discuss reflecting that in the article. But what you're discussing is a fringe case among fringe cases (fringe²), the MOS will never cover every single eventuality. JeffUK 21:59, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

WP:Ignore all rules. I agree with JeffUK that we should follow how the topic is described in the preponderance of reliable sources. If the MOS guide attempting to be respectful to people with gender dysphoria means that we're helping a criminal obfuscate their crimes for posterity, then ignore the MOS. Cuñado ☼ - Talk 15:54, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

How would you demonstrate that we're helping a criminal obfuscate their crimes for posterity as opposed to the possibility that their gender dysphoria was one of many issues they were struggling to cope with? – Muboshgu (talk) 16:33, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

It certainly should not be solely Wikipedians making that call. Reliable sources. BTW I disagree with the proposal to change the MOS, I was trying to point out that it doesn't need to be followed in every case. Cuñado ☼ - Talk 00:12, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

It seems to me that a person who committed a heinous crime under their former name is de facto notable under that former name (provided of course that the crime is attested by reliable sources), and thus the mention of that former name is covered by the existing wording of GENDERID. Rosbif73 (talk) 16:15, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

Agree with Rosbif73… no need to change existing language. Which names to mention depends on which names the subject used when they became notable. There is no “one-size-fits-all” rule here. Specifics matter. Blueboar (talk) 16:32, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

Also disagree for the same reasons everyone else does. There's no problems with the existing policy. Loki (talk) 02:47, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Proposal: Moving post-nominals from lead sentences to article bodies

To bring WP:POSTNOM in better agreement with MOS:BIOFIRSTSENTENCE, I propose that this policy be altered to specifically omit post-nominal letters from lead sentences.

Per our guideline on biographical opening paragraphs, "the opening paragraph of a biographical article should neutrally describe the person, provide context, establish notability and explain why the person is notable, and reflect the balance of reliable sources." Post-nominal letters, many of which are unknown to laypeople, do not do any of those things. If anything, they actually delay a reader from getting to the part of the opening sentence that describes a person's notability.

Instead, WP:POSTNOM would advise that post-nominals be placed in the body of the article. If needed, the exact wording of this revised section will be determined after this RfC concludes. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 04:22, 4 March 2023 (UTC) edited/turned into RfC 00:42, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Discussion (Moving post-nominals)

Absolutely nothing should ever be in an infobox unless it is also in the real text of the article. Infoboxes are a summary, not a replacement. So "move to infobox" is a non-starter. Whether postnominals are lead-worthy is another question, but I think they are. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:03, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

I'll remove that part of the proposal then. What makes them lead-worthy, in your view? What information do they impart to a reader that is critical to their understanding of the subject? Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 14:32, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

They are part of the thing we do in leads of giving the person's name in as full a version as possible. They are a part of the name. Maybe not a very important part, but more important than most middle names, which we also give in full when we know them in the lead. There is usually nowhere else in the article that the full name can naturally get spelled out; as I said above, the infobox is definitely not the place, because it is wrong and bad to put anything in the infobox that is not in the article text. In some cases articles have a section for honors or recognition or awards where some of these can go, but not naturally in a form that would explain the postnominal lettering. So by process of elimination the lead is where it should go. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:26, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

They are a part of the name. — No. By definition post-nominal letters "are letters placed after a person's name", so the are not part of the name. Mitch Ames (talk) 08:25, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

You can argue semantics all you want, but they are part of the string that you write when you address someone in a formal-enough context. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:33, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

they are part of the string that you write when you address someone in a formal-enough context — That may be the case, but the lead sentence of a Wikipedia article is not necessarily a "formal-enough context". There are many formal forms of address, but Wikipedia is not obliged to use them. For example, in a formal context, one would probably refer to His Majesty King Charles III, President Joe Biden, or The Honourable Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, but none or our articles use those forms in the lead sentence. Mitch Ames (talk) 01:02, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

You are missing my point. The question is not whether the lead is a formal-enough context. The point is that the lead is where we standardly provide the most-complete form of address of the subject, and this is an important part of that most-complete form of address. —David Eppstein (talk) 02:45, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

That reasoning doesn't seem to be supported by anything in MOS:INTRO, though. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 04:16, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Albo doesn't have them in the lead because he doesn't have them at all. Consider the Governor General instead: David Hurley. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 22:59, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Anthony Albanese's infobox includes honorific-prefix = The Honourable. Prime Minister of Australia's infobox includes style = ... The Honourable (formal). Mitch Ames (talk) 00:24, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

• I support this proposal. There was a similar discussion a while back at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Biography/2022_archive#Fellowships_by_subscription,_e.g._FRSA regarding post-nominals. As I said at the linked discussion, I've always thought post-nominals in lead sentences were ridiculous and clunky looking (e.g. (and emphasis mine) "Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, KG, OM, CH, TD, DL, FRS, RA (30 November 1874 – 24 January 1965) was a British statesman"[8]...)[1] and would support the removal of post-nominals from the lead sentences of biographies altogether. No opinion on whether they are listed in the infoboxes, although if they are, the post-nominals need to be verifiable (sourced) and discussed in the body of the articles first. Some1 (talk) 16:10, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
• Strong support and probably more, and long past due. Postnominals should never be in running text, let alone in the lead sentence. I'm perfectly fine with them being in an infobox. Yes, ideally they should be in the article proper too, but only in prose, not as inscrutable acronyms. Having an occasional bit of statistics in an infobox but not the article is fine when done sparingly, and as long as it's sourced. Presumably, these letters are all linked to some sort of award or honor that the subject has received, and the article can talk about, though. 35.139.154.158 (talk) 18:26, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
• Support If any of the postnominals are critical to their notability, that can be spelled out in the lede prose. --Masem (t) 19:05, 4 March 2023 (UTC)
• Support - the lead should explain notability, but I suggest that a person is not notable because they have postnominals, but rather they have postnominals because they have done something notable (and it's the "something notable" that we should mention in the lead, not postnominals). Mitch Ames (talk) 00:31, 5 March 2023 (UTC)
• Support These postnominals clog up lead sentences and devote undue weight to royal and aristocratic privilege. Describe the person's actual accomplishments in the lead and reserve the confusing alphabet baloney soup for the prose in the body of the article. Cullen328 (talk) 07:40, 5 March 2023 (UTC)
  • You do know that most people with postnominal letters are neither royal nor aristocratic? Comments like this just show the fundamental misunderstanding of the subject, particularly by people from countries that do not commonly use postnominals. -- Necrothesp (talk) 16:12, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
• Support As above, and also brings wikipedia into line with the practice and style of other encyclopedias. I think most readers do not expect, or want, this kind of clutter, which is often applied retrospectively and anachronistically to people in the past who did not actually use post-nominals. Celia Homeford (talk) 09:34, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
• Support - particularly per Cullen. Parsecboy (talk) 23:39, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
• Support per Cullen. Ealdgyth (talk) 23:49, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
• Support - while POSTNOM, as currently written, allows only for significant honors and appointments, it is IMO frequently abused to justify post-nominals associated with fellowships, degrees, and memberships in certain groups, and not only in the lede. Such misapplication is often redundant within the same sentence where the membership is stated in prose. We don't allow religious honorifics like PBUH and given the misuse of the current policy, it might be worth not allowing any at all and spelling out the significant honors in prose as others have noted above. I am not against their usage in infoboxes as summaries of info within the article body. --FyzixFighter (talk) 15:32, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose. Absolutely not. Commonwealth postnominals are a fundamental part of a person's style and are very commonly listed. I appreciate that people from countries that do not use them may not understand this and may not like them, but that's beside the point. Postnominals should be restricted to genuine (as opposed to made-up) postnominals for honours, fellowships and state-awarded appointments (like KC or JP) and only for countries that actually use them (that's mostly the Commonwealth). Infoboxes should never be a substitute for the lede and many articles do not even have infoboxes. And if the postnoms are bluelinked, as they should be, I see no confusion as some editors above have described. -- Necrothesp (talk) 16:03, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
  • @Necrothesp: I respect the difference in opinion and only want to respond to your last point, as WP:EGG exists for a reason. Bluelinks alone aren't enough to ensure a reader's understanding. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 17:04, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
    • How does WP:EGG possibly apply to the expansion of abbreviations? -- Necrothesp (talk) 17:15, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
      • "Keep piped links as intuitive as possible", WP:EGG says, and something like FRSA is not intuitive to most readers. Hence, a link alone is not enough for a reader's understanding. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 17:35, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

        "FRSA" is the correct form of the postnominal and links to an article explaining what it stands for. This is completely unrelated to eggs or submarines, where an abbreviation, word, or phrase that means one thing is wikilinked to a different thing. Here, the link goes to the right place, not the wrong place. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:00, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

• Support per nom. Gog the Mild (talk) 16:49, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
• Support Coming to this from the perspective of someone who neither speaks English as a native language, nor was raised in an English culture context, I've always found things like Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, KG, OM, CH, TD, DL, FRS, RA an incomprehensible jumble of letters, distracting from the actually important bits at the start of the lede. Where post nominals are actually crucial for the notability of the person (for example, someone notable primary for a Victoria Cross), I'd expect them to be written out as prose. Where they are not, they can be left for the body and discussed there where relevant. -Ljleppan (talk) 16:52, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

  Those are the important bits at the start of the lead, and a VC winner will be introduced with the abbreviation. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 22:54, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

  The suggestion to write out "Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Garter" in place of "KG" in the lead is ridiculous and would contribute much more to WP:LEADCLUTTER than this proposal. Writing it "KG" in the lead, and expanding much later in the text that he was knighted in whatever year, is exactly the summarizing of later content that leads are supposed to do. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:03, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

  This is a bad read of my point, so let me write it out in more detail. My premise is that the lede, and especially the first sentence of the lede, has a single goal: to establish, as understandably as possible, the absolutely most vital biographic information about the article subject (name, when did they live, where were they geographically important) and their claim to fame, i.e. what is the very most important thing or two they are known for.

  For example, we write Sauli Väinämö Niinistö (born 24 August 1948) is a Finnish politician who has served as president of Finland since March 2012... or George Smith Patton Jr. (November 11, 1885 – December 21, 1945) was a general in the United States Army... or Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 1874 – 24 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice.. (I'd go as far as arguing that Churchill's lede should move the prime ministership closer to the name, as soldier is so vague).

  For almost any person-honor/award pair, that award itself is not the source of their fame/notability. We don't talk, at the start of the lede, about Niinistö's Grand Master and Commander Grand Cross with Collar of the Order of the White Rose of Finland, or about how Patton has the Grand Cross of the Military Order of the White Lion or, indeed, about how Churchill was a Knight of the Order of the Garter: those awards and honours are not those people's (main) claim to fame, and they are very high awards indeed.

  It is even more clear cut for lesser (in this context) awards, such as Churchill having the Territorial Decoration, Patton having the Legion of Merit or Niinistö having nine honorary doctorates. For all these things, appending them — as an incomprehensible soup of acronyms, none the less — to the subjects name in the very first sentence of the article highlights the less important, confuses the reader, and pushes the actual main claim to fame further and further down the article. They are, in my view, given WP:UNDUE weight in the first sentence of the lede.

  With that out of the way, there certainly are some cases where the honour/award, or rather the action that led to it, is the main claim to fame. These probably include those awarded with e.g. Victoria Cross or Medal of Honor or Mannerheim Cross. But even here, too, the actual post nominal is redundant for the first sentence of the article: we can simply write Robert Vaughan Gorle (6 May 1896 – 9 January 1937) was an English recipient of the Victoria Cross... without any need for the postnominal.

  And there will be some cases where the honours/awards are sufficiently important, in the context of the person's other accomplishments in life, that they warrant writing out in a subsequent sentence of the lede, but not in the first sentence. The practice of always writing out the post nominals immediately following the name ignores all nuance and considerations of dueness in preference for a notation that is horribly reader-unfriendly and more often than not highlights the (comparatively) unimportant, distracting from the crucial. Ljleppan (talk) 05:48, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

  Your claim For almost any person-honor/award pair, that award itself is not the source of their fame/notability turns out to be incorrect and false. For many people in academia in post-nominal-producing countries, in particular, and many of the post-nominals commonly used by those people in those countries, the post-nominal indicates being "an elected member of a highly selective and prestigious scholarly society or association" (e.g. FRS) for which membership is an automatic pass of our academic notability criteria. So putting it into the lead has the purpose, for those competent to read it, of clearly asserting the subject's notability. For those not already familiar with these abbreviations, the expanded form of the same recognition should be included later in the article text, of course, just like the expansion of other claims in the lead should be in the article text. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:34, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

  I don't see how this is any different from my example of Victoria Cross. Ljleppan (talk) 20:17, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

  (edit conflict) There's several further bad examples in the post-

  The Finish Award has postnominals but they are only used when writing in Finish., not in English.

  The Czech award has no postnominals, and even if it did, Patton being American wouldn't use such.

  The American awards mentioned have common abbreviations, not postnominals. They are NEVER used as postnominals.

  Honorary doctorates should never be worth mentioning in the lead unless it is somehow relevant to the persons notability and justification for having an article in the first place (ie Guiness World record holder for most honorary doctorates might be an exception).

  Gecko G (talk) 20:19, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

  This misses my point so wildly I don't even know how to start addressing your comment, so I'll just leave it at saying... well, that. Ljleppan (talk) 20:37, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

  Our point is that your post has so many not relevant points that we don't see what point you are trying to make. So either A) you got sidetracked in making your point (happens to me all the time on wikipedia), or B) you misunderstand postnominals, or C) you have no point. I'm assuming good faith and that it is one of the first 2, but I don't know which (A or B). Care to attempt to make your argument again? Gecko G (talk) 20:44, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

  My main argument flows as follows:

  1. The goal of the lede, and especially the start of the lede is to convey the most important biographical information
  2. Postnominals are primarily associated with honours/awards, while granted for notable things, are rather rarely the source of notability themselves. Yes, there are notable exceptions such as the Victoria Cross.
  3. Postnominal-awarding honours that are not the underlying source of notability are undue especially in the first sentence of the lede.
  4. Postnominal-awarding honours that are the underlying source of notability should in any case be written out in the first sentence of the lede, thus making the postnominal itself redundant.
  5. In both cases, postnominals are a poor method of conveying information in a general, global, encyclopedia.

  Regarding your A, B, and C, I'll just note that there's a certain set of further options you apparently didn't consider. But perhaps we'll just agree that a side conversation of increasingly snappy retorts is probably not useful here. Ljleppan (talk) 21:02, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

  ok, thank you.

  I agree with #1.

  Number 2 is wrong.

  Numbers 3 through 5 don't take into account WP:ENGVAR nor various Wikipedia MoS's (and I further also personally disagree with #5, but that's not relevant).

  Postnominals are not primarily associated only with honours/awards. They are also connected with Fellowships (some relevant and important, some not, as discussed elsewhere), Academic Degrees, Professional Qualifications, and various religious things, and likely others that I'm unaware of due to my own ENGVAR.

  Different ENGVAR's put different importance's on those or use some, or none, or just different mixtures of them. For a global English language encyclopedia, Is the best practice not to use the ENGVAR that the individual whom the article is about would use, rather than forcing one particular ENGVAR onto everyone even when the subject themself would never use such? Gecko G (talk) 21:19, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

  I fail to see why you are making the distinction about academic fellowships etc. or how it somehow undermines my point. Either those postnominal-awarding fellowships/degrees/whatever are the primary underlying source of notability for the article subject, in which case they ought to the spelled out, or they are not and they are most likely undue at the start of the lede. Perhaps you, in turn, could spell the argument out more clearly. W/r/t ENGVAR, we already discourage other notational variations (see e.g. MOS:CRORE) that make articles more difficult to understand than necessary for a global audience. Ljleppan (talk) 21:29, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

  I don't see why you think that being sources of notability means that they need to be present in an expanded form in the lead. Leads are for summarizing briefly, not for expanding. If your argument is that they should be in an expanded form elsewhere than the lead, then yes, of course, but they should still be summarized in the lead. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:36, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

  See MOS:INTRO, especially the second paragraph. Ljleppan (talk) 21:48, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

  (edit conflict)I'm out of time right now, I will reply later. Gecko G (talk) 21:41, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

  Ok, back for a moment (not sure how long before I have to leave again).

  You asked me to spell out why I mentioned the various examples (ie Fellowships, professions, etc.)- I did it to specifically refute your point #2, they are examples showing that they are not only nor primarily associated solely with Honors.

  MOS:CRORE is about number formats just like the American vs European number format of 1,234.56 vs 1.234,56 or vs. the Indic numerals so I fail to see the relevance (and really I'd argue that "Crore" is more of a translation issue, like using the archaic but correct "score", though admittedly that can be a blurry line distinction - but expounding upon that could result in a not-relevant side discussion, so I won't go into that unless you feel it's particularly relevant).

  In your above reply to David Eppstein about the second paragraph under MOS:INTRO you may have the germination of an argument, but it's a weak one (One vague broad sentence of an MOS may be interpreted to partially conflict with much more topic specific MOS's elsewhere - I would always go with the more specific instructions over the broad, general ones).

  If you think that only something 100% relevant to establishing notability guidelines should be in the lead - and I'm not sure if that's where you are in fact going with this, but if you are, then this conversation is merging into that which I have discussed elsewhere in this section, so rather than repeating myself and risking fracturing the discussion thread I would instead refer you to some of the various arguments below. (If that is not the point you are building to, then ignore this last part).

  Gecko G (talk) 23:37, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

  As I said, you are free to mentally append fellowships, professions, etc. into my argument and explain how the underlying argument regarding dueness and redundancy is affected. Second, fellowships are, in my view closer to honours/awards than professions, and e.g. the first sentence of Fellow of the Royal Society seems to agree. Third, WP:POSTNOM already limits the use of postnominals, excluding [a]cademic (including honorary) degrees and professional qualifications, which should be omitted from the lead, so I don't see the point of going on about professions. W/r/t the MOS and more specific instructions over the broad, general ones, the MOS is absolutely filled with language highlighting how important it is that the lede is easily understandable. See both paras of MOS:INTRO and MOS:LEADSENTENCE regarding clarity; MOS:REDUNDANCY regarding redundancy and MOS:LEADREL regarding due weight. Yes, these are high-level principles, which is precisely the point of this discussion: many members of the community appear to believe the "more specific instructions" clash with the fundamentals, and it is the "more specific instructions" that should be adjusted so as to be in sync with the fundamentals rather than the other way around. PS, reading WP:ENGVAR with fresh eyes, I don't see what part of that this would fall under, as it talks about vocabulary, spelling and grammar rather than dueness of information. Ljleppan (talk) 06:40, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

  As I said..." Where did you say that? That may perhaps significantly change and clarify my understanding of the argument you are attempting to make.

  I went and read all 4 of your linked MOS's, and other than perhaps an extreme technicality with MOS:BOLDAVOID, I don't see any reason in any of them to omit postnominals unless one is a die hard republican ("republican" in the anti-monarchist sense, not the American political sense) and even then that would itself be WP:UNDO and based on the false connection that all postnominals are monarchical honours (as myself and others have pointed out, but every time we do you just question why we are mentioning non-monarchical examples).

  Favoring overly broad Wikipedia wide guidelines (which have to be vague enough to be used for all kinds of things, Articles about historical events, about physics concepts, about work of art, inventions, places, political movements, etc., etc., not just Biographies) over that of more specifically narrow guidelines (i.e. just WP:Biographies, let alone very specific subsections of the later) is illogical to me, especially when the later were developed within the context and under the overview of the former.

  Regarding your ENGVAR comments, I am once again surprised that is being brought up (as mentioned elsewhere it seems obvious to me), but I'll refer you to the exchange further down between Mitch Ames & Tcr25, rather than repeating my own comments from there. Gecko G (talk) 00:09, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose They will not appear in the article body; the article body will list them as they are earned, but usually they will not all come together until the end. The whole purpose of the lead is to summarise the contents of the body, and the post-nominals do that. Putting them in prose in the lead is absurd. Commonwealth postnominals are a fundamental part of a person's style and often appear on monuments and documents. Infoboxes are not a substitute for the lead and many articles do not, nor are they required to, have them. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 22:54, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

  postnominals are a fundamental part of a person's style — no more so than prefixes such as The Most Honourable, ... Her Majesty, His Holiness, etc, which MOS:PREFIX explicitly says should not be included. Mitch Ames (talk) 00:35, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

  A more accurate comparison would be to pre-nominal titles like sir and dame, which per MOS:SIR are included in the initial reference and infobox heading for the subject of a biographical article. —Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 00:47, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose They contribute to providing a concise overview and summary of the person. I would hope (expect?) the awards will be discussed in the body with context, although that could be just a sentence. I would not oppose a limit on the # of post-noms to include in the lead (and maybe even the infobox) to address the cases where someone's got an arm's length of 'em like the Churchill example above.  — Archer1234 (t·c) 01:27, 10 March 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose particularly per Tcr25 & Archer1234's reasonings. If this was the Simple English Wikipedia I would instead support, but here oppose. Though not a thing in American English, my understanding is these are very important in other English's and even some none English languages (ie Portuguese, Swedish, etc.). I could understand placing a limit on what to include or not (like the prior discussion about Fellowships, which never really reached a satisfactory conclusion), or a maximum number to include, or issues like only including certain types (ie should Order of Saint John be included?, etc.). If, conversely everything is going to be excluded then the prenominal stuff like "Sir" should also be dropped and then that would run into issues of how do we name articles about people's who's name includes titles, ie William, Prince of Wales. Further, if there was a reader who doesn't understand postnominals, I would think having it only in the infobox would lead them to the assumption that the string of letters was article vandalism - whereas if it's on both the lead and the infobox that should give such an unaware reader at least reason to wonder if something else was going on, and hover over the links to see, and thus learn as I did the first time encountering such many many many years ago. Gecko G (talk) 02:11, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

  If ... everything is going to be excluded then the prenominal stuff like "Sir" should also be dropped — I would support such a change. I've never been a fan of (MOS:SIR) including "Sir", "Lady" and the like; I don't see that they are any more special than other honorifics.

  issues of how do we name articles about people's who's name includes titles, ie William, Prince of Wales — I think they are fundamentally different, in that "Prince of Wales" here is a disambiguator - there are many Williams, but only one Prince of Wales. Mitch Ames (talk) 02:25, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

  I would support dropping the prenominals from lead sentences too. Readers who aren't familiar with such stuff might think "Sir", for example, is a part of the subject's birth/legal name, especially when Sir is bolded and is not wikilinked to anything else. Pre-nominal and post-nominal letters are better left for infoboxes; see Winston Churchill's infobox, for example. Some1 (talk) 04:51, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

  (replying to both): At least removing absolutely everything would be consistent, but now you are talking about modifying several MOS's (not just 1) and violating WP:ENGVAR. On the other extreme, including every single minor fellowship or academic degree would also be consistent but is clearly way too much (WP:LEADCLUTTER, WP:UNDUE, etc.). So there obviously needs to be a middle ground somewhere (a cut off in importance/quality and/or number?). I would argue that removing all postnominals is way too severe to place the middle ground at, especially since I don't find the arguments about confusion relevant when the proposed alternative (as mentioned in posts above, not in either of your two's posts) would be even more confusing. I think our current de-facto placement of the cut-off is good (ie leaving out lesser fellowships and the religious one's when not relevant, leaving out most academic degree achievements, etc., etc.) but could definitely be better clarified in the MOS, but as I'm a native speaker of an ENGVAR that only ever uses a select few postnominals so I would put more faith on the input from native speakers of ENGVARs which use more postnom's than my own to try to succinctly phrase that short enough to be included in an MOS. Basically I understand it, but am bad at explaining it because it's not something in my native dialect. Gecko G (talk) 20:07, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

  now you are talking about modifying several MOS's (not just 1) — Obviously a separate specific RFC would be required, but there's no reason why we could not modify other parts of MOS (given appropriate consensus). It is not unknown for a proposed specific change to be shown to be a specific instance of a more general change that should be considered.

  violating WP:ENGVAR — Several posts have mentioned ENVAR, but I don't think this comes under ENGVAR at all. ENGVAR is about differences in vocabulary, spelling, grammar, date formats, not the importance of honorifics. Can someone quote the specific part of ENGVAR (or Comparison of American and British English) that they think applies here? Mitch Ames (talk) 03:49, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

  It's not that WP:ENGVAR directly applies to postnominals, but that a similar principal is at play. Articles from some nations may have a different style than otherwise similar articles because of which orthography, date format, measurement system, etc., is used in that nation. A similar strong national tie is at play with the use of post-nominals and some countries (particularly the Commonwealth). The counter argument would be to think of postnominals as similar to MOS:CRORE; there's a strong national tie, but their use requires extra care and explanation because many readers will find them confusing. —Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 20:53, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

  If you are going to change multiple long established wiki standards that affects thousands of articles (including what I'm assuming are hundreds of articles that have reached high quality reviewed status {GA, Featured, etc.}, thus would need to be all reassessed), there better be some very good arguments, none of which I'm yet hearing.

  If your stance is that a lead should be either 100% all or nothing (as discussed here and elsewhere), while I disagree, I can at least understand such a position IF editors are both upfront about that (I fear some editors are trying to piecemeal introduce it on unrelated issues) and are consistant with the stated all or nothing.

  I notice that several of the editors here have independently made the connection to ENGVAR issues, and once again Tcr25 ssays it far better than I am able to, but I would further note that it seems obvious to me so I'm surprised that would even be questioned. Parts of it might even fall under the MOS:TIES part of ENGVAR since they are country specific (the OLY postnominal being the only international exception I can think of- but even there countries that don't use postnoms at all wouldn't use OLY either). Wikipedia's own articles on both postnominals and list of post-nominal letters even break things down by different english speaking countries. Different countries use differnt types of postnominals, some use more or less than other countries, or different categories, or order them separately. If you look up biography or style guides from different countries, you'll see differences (I even came across one at one point, I think it was an Australian government one, that suggested postnominals should even be used when speaking! that seems like ridicoulous overkill to me, but I'm not Aussie so I don't feel qualified to say otherwise).

  Gecko G (talk) 00:02, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

  To turn it around, you could think of it as leading us down the path towards an expansion of WP:ENGVAR to include how different areas view post-nominals. Gusfriend (talk) 07:58, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

  I would of thought it was obvious, but given that 2 editors have questioned it, perhaps so. Gecko G (talk) 22:08, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

• Hesitant support, in favo(u)r of some alternative: I understand this is often important info for some people (subjects and readers alike), so I am not averse to keeping it, but I wouldn't be sad to see it leave the lead sentence. Perhaps we want to allow/recommend a separate section or sentence at the end of a lede? Something like The formal style for him is "Sir John Grey Gorton GCMG, AC, CH" or The formal address for the prime minister is "The Honourable Anthony Albanese MP" (or whatever would be actually correct). Royal folk like Elizabeth II would still have their section like Titles, styles, honours, and arms, since for them, the topic is too extensive for the lede anyway. MOS:POSTNOM should continue to proscribe academic postnoms like "Ph.D" (and MOS:CREDENTIAL things like "Dr."). — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 09:30, 10 March 2023 (UTC)
• Comment I think post-nominal letters are generally lede worthy. I'm less sure that they're first-sentence worthy, and I can see the point that they might pile up and create an alphabet soup. An end-of-lede sentence along the lines of "She is formally styled..." may be a decent option in some cases. On the one hand, extra short paragraphs stuck at the end of ledes are, I think, generally frowned upon. On the other, such a line might flow naturally in the prose ("In recognition of these accomplishments, she has received many accolades, and so her formal style is..."). I'm not sure. XOR'easter (talk) 14:35, 10 March 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose. I'm not finding the arguments that postnominals are confusing or vague convincing, which leaves the main argument being either they clutter the lede or WP:IDONTLIKE. To a degree I think this is similar to MOS:ENGVAR or MOS:DATEVAR. In the Commonwealth, postnominals like VC are more frequently seen, understood, and accepted. Elsewhere, they seem superfluous or confusing. It may be that more specific guidance around how many postnominals are too many is needed (currently, MOS:POSTNOM says: When an individual holds a large number of post-nominal letters or seldom uses them (common among heads of state and members of royal families), they should be omitted from the lead, and the titles only described in the main body of the article.), but I'm not seeing a good reason to get rid of them entirely. —Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 14:41, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

  Oppose. I find Carter's explanation here pretty much sums up what I wanted to say. Half-a-dozen post-nominal letters are no more intrusive than a middle name and can be quickly skipped by people who aren't interested. The template that hyperlinks the letters to the full names of the honours easily allows people who are interested but unfamiliar to learn what the honours are.

  I would also contrast post-nominal letters with peerages, which are many words long and often obscure the person's more commonly-known pre-peerage name. --Mgp28 (talk) 15:25, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

• Support as a matter of WP:DUE weight. The first sentence should communicate the most fundamental, essential aspects of the topic. For a person, that would generally be, when and where did they live, and what sort of activities or accomplishments are they most notable for. The lead of Stephen Hawking (which is used as an example at MOS:POSTNOM) mostly hews to this ideal. If you needed to explain who Stephen Hawking was to someone who had never heard of him in the briefest possible terms, the points you would hit on are more or less what's in the lead sentence. Theoretical physicist. Writer. English. Died recently. Cambridge University. The element of the lead that sticks out as something you would not mention is the "CH CBE FRS FRSA". I can easily name a dozen aspects of Hawking which are not mentioned in the lead sentence and which are far more salient. And I'm not just saying this as a matter of opinion - I think that claim can be supported by RS. RS coverage of Hawking surely gives more weight to, say, his popular science writing, or his work on black holes, or his disability than it does to his formal titles. Colin M (talk) 15:22, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

  The same argument could be made about the appropriateness of including a middle name in the lead sentence when the person and RS coverage do not commonly include it. To use this example, you would say "Stephen Hawking" when talking about him, not "Stephen William Hawking", but per MOS:FULLNAME "William" is included in the first sentence regardless of what weight RS give to his middle name. —Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 17:35, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

  I again find myself agreeing with Tcr25. For Stephen Hawking, how is his middle name being William, the fact that he was born on January 8th, or the fact that he was English, relevant by your argument, yet those are included in his lead sentence and all are typically included. Likewise you mentioned that there are several more salient aspects (ie his disability isn't even mentioned until the second paragraph, yet it's very well connected to what people commonly know about him). The lead sentence is never either 100% everything or 100% nothing. And given that we are dealing with different WP:ENGVAR's it can quickly get confusing, but since there aren't separate wikipedia's for each ENGVAR, we use the ENGVAR the individual would use. Gecko G (talk) 20:39, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

  I don't disagree with any of that. I don't think exact dates of birth and death should go in the lead most of the time, and would be happy to see them moved to the body (though they can stay in the infobox). The same goes for middle names which are not usually included in RS. I even wrote a mini-essay related to the latter problem. Colin M (talk) 21:08, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

  ok, then see my above reply to Mitch Ames & Some1, as you are in the same boat. Gecko G (talk) 21:23, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

  Noooooo! At my estimate (a pure guess), about half the views of biographies come from people wanting this and only this. You don't think most people actually read them, do you? Johnbod (talk) 04:51, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

  the appropriateness of including a middle name in the lead sentence when the person and RS coverage do not commonly include it. — As with dates of birth, one primary reason for including it is that is part of unique identity. A common way (in formal/official scenarios in real life) of distinguishing between two otherwise identically named people is by middle name, and/or date of birth. I might distinguish between John Henry Smith and John Joseph Smith, or possibly John Smith born 1970-01-01 and John Smith born 1981-02-03, but rarely if ever (possibly in some very specific cases) would I distinguish between John Smith AO, John Smith MBE, and John Smith (with no post-nominals). Mitch Ames (talk) 04:17, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

  I'm not from a country that uses much postnoms, but don't some of those countries consider postnoms "part of uique identity"? As for middle names, if they are only for distinquishing between two similar things, aren't disambiguators supposed to be used only if necessary? How is that consistent with a 100% (as discussed & defined elsewhere here) stance? Gecko G (talk) 00:05, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

  don't some of those countries consider postnoms "part of uique identity"? — Not the I'm aware of. It's common (in Australia) to request "full legal name" and date of birth, but I've never had anyone (or any form) ask for postnominals. Even the Australian passport does not have a space for postnominals, suggesting that they are not part of identity for other countries. Mitch Ames (talk) 03:17, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

  I would caution against trying to link the, possibly fictitious concept of a "legal Name" with "Identity". Different governmental authorities don't even agree what is and is not part of one's "legal name" (as just one example The US Social Security administration omits both middle names and suffixes from "legal name"), and even when you just substitute "legal name" with "birth name" that can cause problems if trying to forcibly link one with the other (ie Cassius Clay vs. Muhammad Ali, or trans issues of identities, to name just 2 examples off the top of my head)

  Given most citizens have no postnominals I wouldn't expect a government form's lack of a separate entry spot as proof (people worthy of having a biography article are more likely to have postnominals than some random citizen). I also don't see how one particular countries lack of such a form spot for postnominals means that other countries that make more usage of postnominals don't use them more. Postnominal usage varies, even just within the Commonwealth (ie compare Tanzania with Belize with Britain with etc., etc.) let alone outside the Commonwealth.

  A quick websearch finds one example, [#26 on this guide from the Canadian Defence Department] saying postnominals should be used in, specifically, Biographies. That's just one quickly found example, I would expect similar could be found for other countries.

  Gecko G (talk) 22:07, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

  I also don't see how one particular countries lack of such a form spot for postnominals means that other countries ... don't use them more. — I'm not saying that other countries don't use them; I'm saying that other countries do not require then as part of official identity. (My original point - in response to "the appropriateness of including a middle name [and/or DOB] in the lead" - was that middle names and date of birth can be part of your unique/official/legal identity, but postnominals are not, hence middle names and date of birth (DOB) are fundamentally different to postnominals.) I gave the specific example of the passport application form because the passport is used by countries other than the issuer. If other countries considered postnomimals to be part of unique/legal/official identity then the passport issuing country would probably include them in the passport (as they include middle names and DOB) because the other countries would want to know about them.

  Reiterating: I'm not say that postnominals are not important - just that middle names and DOB are fundamentally different to postnominals because the former are commonly part of unique/legal/official identity, but the latter are not. Mitch Ames (talk) 06:07, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

  What goes on/into a passport is at the discretion of the issuing country (within certain minimal International norms), so I don't see how that helps your line of reasoning w.r.t. Identity, nor do I see how it in any way undermines any of my points raised above.

  For the sake of argument, If country A uses them as part of "identity" (problematic per above, but for the sake of trying to understand the subpoint you are making let's temporarily go with it), and Country B doesn't, why would the fact that Country B's application form lacks a spot for it somehow be relevant "proof" that they aren't used in Country A? I'm afraid I don't follow (and we may be starting to get very off topic). Gecko G (talk) 07:06, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

  From the Passport article, with my emphasis:

  A passport ... contains a person's identity. ... It is typical for passports to contain the full name, photograph, place and date of birth...

  There's no mention of postnominals. The absence of postnominals isn't intended to be "proof" that another country doesn't use them; it's intended to support my original assertion that middle names and DOB are fundamentally different to postnomimals. Middle names and DOB are commonly and globally used as part of a person's unique identifiers - they are part of the minimal International norms of a "person's identity" and thus included on passports - whereas postnominals are not part of those international norms, and not so commonly used to uniquely identify ("disambiguate", in the real world) people with otherwise identical names. Mitch Ames (talk) 11:43, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

  Ok, I think I might now slightly better understand the sub-point you are arguing (though I still disagree) and I still find it unconvincing to the larger issue for the multiple reasons raised previously. Gecko G (talk) 18:27, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose: I had an instinctive dislike of the proposal but couldn't think of how to articulate it until I read WP:ENGVAR in the discussions above. I suspect that it comes down to commonwealth countries. It would be interesting to see the numbers of the different countries in Template:Post-nominals. Gusfriend (talk) 21:52, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

It looks like the template supports 21 countries — Antigua, Australia, Barbados, Belgium, Brunei, Canada, Fiji, Germany, Ghana, Hong Kong, India, Jamaica, Kenya, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Sweden, United Kingdom, and United States — but (in a spot check of Category:Pages using Template:Post-nominals with customized linking) there are instances from other countries where the template is used too. —Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 22:38, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

My guess is that usage is concentrated in Commonwealth countries which would give weight to the argument that it is like WP:ENGVAR. Gusfriend (talk) 22:49, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

I also wanted to say that, at least in Australia, post-nominals are included as part of the name on plaques, statues and the like which means that it is in a certain sort of common usage.

The more that I think about it the more that I think that the topic deserves a more nuanced RfC taking into account national usage and preferences in a wider forum. Gusfriend (talk) 02:47, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

• Stong Oppose, but support enforcing the existing policy, with only really important ones in the lead. I think there is an ENGVAR-type issue here. If Americans wanted no post-noms in the first sentence of American bios that might be fine, and not make much difference. America doesn't use post-noms for many things like gallantry decorations, where Commonwealth countries very much do. Plus who is going to do the massive work involved in removing them, & putting them in the right place? Johnbod (talk) 04:51, 11 March 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose, seems like taking a side on a cultural divide. Skyerise (talk) 17:05, 11 March 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose -- I have a great deal of respect for the OP and several of the supporters, who I've worked with at MilHist and FAC, but as others have pointed out this does seem to be dividing roughly (I emphasise roughly) along cultural lines. Post-noms are a Commonwealth convention rather than an American one but we don't try and ram one English language style across all articles. Also regarding an earlier comment that they are a feature of aristocracy and privilege, I can say that the vast majority -- probably all -- of the relevant subjects for which I've written WP bios were working- or middle-class people doing deeds above and beyond the call of duty. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 19:24, 11 March 2023 (UTC)
• Strong oppose - Yes, the postnominals are unwieldy in the lead sentences, but the same could be said about the middle names too. They are a fundamental part in understanding who that person is and what they did. The worst inconvenience in inclusion is maybe an extra half-second of scanning the lead text, but the benefits in inclusion outweigh the pros in removal. We provide links to the relevant articles so that "laypeople" can understand them; the point of an encyclopaedia is to teach, not to withhold information for fears it may confuse people. Necrothesp also makes good points. Tim O'Doherty (talk) 22:16, 11 March 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose "the opening paragraph of a biographical article should neutrally describe the person, provide context, establish notability and explain why the person is notable, and reflect the balance of reliable sources" If you are playing that statement of guidelines post-nominals it equally applies to long names like those who have 4 middles names. You may as well "trim" Akon's full name in the lead since he is not notable for it. Post-nominals and their full name are essentially in defining the subject in a formal tone.  Spy-cicle💥  ^Talk? 02:04, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

  The problems I have with Post-nominals and their full name are essentially in defining the subject in a formal tone. (beyond not agreeing with it from the first principles) is that I don't understand why the same argument wouldn't apply to all other similar components often attached to names, such as academic titles, other honorifics, etc. Our manual of style takes a very strong, almost categorical, stance that these should not be included. Is your position that these standards should be relaxed to allow for further variation base on where the subject hails from? If not, perhaps you could help me see why these particular attachments to the legal name are distinct.

  As for Akon, I'd actually agree that the first sentence of the lede there is not very informative. In fact, I don't see the name the artist is commonly known with ("Akon") anywhere in the lede, which seems like a rather massive oversight. Ljleppan (talk) 04:43, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

  (It looks like Akon has been fixed ...) The difference I would see between VC, OBE, etc., and an academic title like Dipl.-Ing. or PhD is that the honor is earned in a way that is different and more notable/less common than the earning of the academic degree/title. Consider John Smith VC as an example: earning the Victoria Cross meets WP:ANYBIO; if he'd earned a PhD in economics instead, that alone would not be enough to support an article on John Smith PhD. Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 16:16, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

• Support. I agree with Colin M. Continuing with the illustrative example of Stephen Hawking, it is clear that the overwhelming majority of sources do not introduce him as CH CBE FRS FRSA (e.g. [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]), irrespective of whether the sources are British or from some other country – ENGVAR has nothing to do with it. In any case, decisions about the relative prominence of content within an article must be rooted in WP:NPOV and the practice of sources. Typical sources mention him being a fellow of the Royal Society etc. several paragraphs down, at the earliest, and do so without giving blanket greater weight to those honours, awards, etc. that happen to officially have letters than to comparably significant ones which don't. Adumbrativus (talk) 05:18, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

  The BBC one is a timeline not either a biography nor an obituary. Here's a BBC example biography that does include postnominals [Russell T. Davies OBE], and here's another Dr. Who producer's biography who had an OBE listed at another site: [Verity Lambert OBE], or a [John Hurt CBE obituary at Pancreatic Cancer UK Charity] and his CBE was for Drama, nothing to due with Cancer - I need to get away from Doctor Who connections, so [Keira Knightly OBE at Any Biography] a biography website. In other arts beyond TV how about [a ballet dancer with both a CH & a DBE], outside the arts and outside Britain [Here's an Encyclopedia entry with an Australian example that includes a fellowship], Here's even [An American example properly utilizing religious postnominals in an obituary in a secular newspaper] - And America uses very few postnoms! Gecko G (talk) 06:51, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

References

Avoiding thingies

Do you need to avoid Bill Gates III? ErceÇamurOfficial (talk) 18:41, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Could you please clarify the question. Do you mean that we should avoid referring to "Bill Gates III" at all, or possibly not use "William Henry Gates III" in that article"?

Relevant MOS guidelines include MOS:NAME, MOS:FULLNAME, MOS:JR, WP:COMMONNAME.

Mitch Ames (talk) 23:38, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Additions to JOBTITLES

Hi, an extra paragraph was added to WP:JOBTITLES in this edit, likely a response to a dispute I had with the editor over applying JOBTITLES to position leads following the use of "The". There was no discussion over this paragraph so unsure whether it is against consensus or a worthy inclusion. Or simply put, can such addition be checked, it seems to be a rewording of the third point above the examples table but excluding the exceptions, does this paragraph now argue that it should be capped even after using "the" or "a"? Third point above, stated it can be capitalised when it is not preceded by a modifier (including a definite or indefinite article). DankJae 00:33, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

Changes to 'Context'

These need to be discussed. The current wording is STABLE. Changing guidelines whilst involved in a dispute related to those guidelines (see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Football#user:Skyerise) is incredibly poor form. GiantSnowman 16:42, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

Not providing proper nationality context when possible leaves readers confused. I proposed that several uses of "usually" be change to "where possible" to prevent intentional omission of relevant nationality (-ies) by recalcitrant editors who assume every reader is going to know the relevant football nationality rules. The way it is being done is totally unclear. Skyerise (talk) 16:47, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

I disagree; we have literally tens of thousands of articles where the lede states 'X is a footballer. Born in X, they represented Y at international level' and as far as I can recall nobody other than you has ever said it is confusing. GiantSnowman 16:49, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

Question: is this dispute about what categories to use or about how to phrase the opening text of the article? Blueboar (talk) 17:48, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

In a way, both. Having the nationalities clearly stated, rather than assumed from football rules (note that the players on other than national teams are treated differently and typically state the nationality up front), leaves no ambiguity about which nationality categories should be included. The way it is being presented makes it unclear where the subject is playing as a national and where they are playing as an expatriate, making it difficult to select or verify the correct categories. Skyerise (talk) 18:07, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

Ok, so the next question is: does it matter whether a player is playing as a national or as an expatriate (and if so, why does it matter)? Blueboar (talk) 18:57, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

Skyerise is not correct here. A player with unambiguous nationality will be described as e.g. 'English footballer', regardless whether they play at club or international level. A player born in country X but who plays for country Y due to (most often) parentage will be described as above. This is how it has been done for years, covers tens of thousands of articles, and has never caused confusion (as far as I am aware). GiantSnowman 19:29, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

It's also perhaps worth noting that the expats almost certainly have press documenting their actual citizenship, but the players of "unambiguous nationality" (the ones for whom all documented life activities occur within some particular country) may well not, because it's so obvious that nobody feels the need to say it explicitly. Unless we have a source explicitly stating that they are a citizen of some country, or stating their birthplace in a jus soli country, all we can go on is where they flourished. So leaving it somewhat ambiguous (calling them an "English footballer" rather than a "citizen of the UK who plays football for England", say) can be an accurate reflection of our sourcing. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:40, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

My complaint is that, contrary to what GiantSnowman has stated, is that at least some articles, no nationality is being stated before the profession as indicated by WP:CONTEXTBIO. Saying something like "born in X, plays for Y", where the subject is a citizen of both, requires that the reader know that "plays for Y" implies "is a citizen of Y". There is no logical reason for not being explicit. There is a reason for being explicit - without this even an experienced editor who happens to know nothing about football may misconstrue what categories are appropriate. Obviously, a reader who knows nothing about football will not necessarily come away with the fact that the subject holds dual citizenship. That's the whole point of WP:CONTEXTBIO - to make sure that the context is clear without assuming knowledge on the part of the reader. Reverting the clarification of nationality is edit-warring that verges on vandalism (since the OP called me a vandal for trying to improve the article). The only possible problem I see here is if they were born in a country that requires them to relinquish their citizenship when repatriating, but that can be determined from the relevant nationality law article.It's my understanding that very few countries require this in these modern times. Skyerise (talk) 17:19, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

Does anybody besides GiantSnowman have a problem with my revisions to Kenneth Paal and Eduardos Kontogeorgakis. Is there some valid reason not to follow WP:CONTEXTBIO here? Skyerise (talk) 17:32, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

Yes, as has been explained to you here and at WT:FOOTBALL. GiantSnowman 19:08, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

Nationality issues

Hi All, There are numerous discussions going on both on wiki talk pages, via wiki (near) edit wars and within the art-world and in the media regarding reclassifying Ukrainian born persons (artists, chess players etc), current labelled as Russian. This could also impact other persons subject to historic colonial, conquered and other disputed areas. I think we need some clarity and potentially some individual ruling in some cases. So, can someone provide some expert guidance on the MOS.

Example Talk:Kazimir Malevich born in Kyiv, then part of the Russian empire, to Polish parent (does not clarify where they were born), studied in Russia, calls himself Ukrainian, was part of a Russian school (style of art, not educational)

Cheers 2404:4408:638C:5E00:75C2:43D3:364F:F481 (talk) 05:11, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

This is a complicated issue, by no means limited to Ukraine. I have ancestors in Europe whose birth places changed names as borders shifted, e.g., Gavrylyak, Polish White Russia. In such cases, should articles use the name at birth? The name at the time of writing? --Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 12:43, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

The article should give historical names and current names - example: “He was born in what was then Oldname, Russia (now Newname, Ukraine…”)” If necessary, explain it in more than one sentence. Blueboar (talk) 13:07, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

This is what I would have said, if Blueboar hadn't beaten me to it. — JohnFromPinckney (talk / edits) 14:09, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

MOS:NATIONALITY states that the opening sentence should refer to the country of which the person was a citizen when they became notable. It also says "in controversial or unclear cases, nationality is sometimes omitted."

I looked at Kazimir Malevich and I noticed that the opening sentence says he was a Russian avant-garde artist, with the hyperlink to Russian avant-garde. While his citizenship cannot have been Ukrainian at a time that Ukraine wasn't legally a country, this does not stop him being a member of the artistic Ukrainian avant-garde. He is the first person named on the Ukrainian avant-garde page so was certainly notable for it. So for this specific example I wonder if a formulation such as

Kazimir Severinovich Malevich (23 February [O.S. 11 February] 1879 – 15 May 1935) was an artist in the Ukrainian avant-garde...

would be more informative, less contentious, and remain consistent with guidance. I don't know if a similar formulation would help for the other discussions you mention. --Mgp28 (talk) 13:22, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

Actually, reading the whole first paragraph for Kazimir Malevich it seems he is considered an artist of both the Russian avant-garde and the Ukrainian avant-garde, so what I suggested might not help. Either way, given that Russian avant-garde is a single hyperlink, the word Russian already appears to be being used as an adjective for the art movement not the artist, so changing the word order as I suggested might at least make this clearer. --Mgp28 (talk) 13:31, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

Hi Mgp28 I am not sure at all that your statement "x wasn't legally a country", is the correct approach, forced or coercive citizenship is not necessarily what I would regard as my guide to "real" nationality or the heart is.121.98.30.202 (talk) 08:49, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

In this case, where an artist was clearly contributory to both Russian and Ukranian avant-garde movements, those facts seem more relevant to the context of the artist's life and importance than any direct statement about the artist's citizenship and/or nationality. I think Mgp28 is therefore likely to be on the right track. Newimpartial (talk) 13:01, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Native American

I'm interested in reading the discussion that led to Native American citizenships being added to CONTEXTBIO, but I can't seem to find it. Anybody know of it's location? – ².O.^Boxing 07:26, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

It was discussed here: [8]. Looks like there were no objections and even an approval (from me). I've restored it on the page, since it was discussed when it was added, we should have a discussion as to whether to remove it. Pretty sure it comes from a related Wikiproject's existing standards. Skyerise (talk) 11:30, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

We just (last month) had a longer discussion about this on one of our various noticeboards … but I can’t locate which noticeboard it was on. Consensus was mixed. Blueboar (talk) 11:43, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

I've noticed it's getting harder and harder to find old stuff. So many changes since the early days... Skyerise (talk) 12:53, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

I found what Skyerise linked above, the proposal to upgrade it from a footnote to an example, but I can't find the discussion that lead to it being added as a footnote in the first place. Seems contradictory to the rest of CONTEXTBIO to me (and at odds with the general understanding of citizenship and nationality). I'm hoping there's some discussions I can read to get a better understanding. – ².O.^Boxing 13:30, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

On the underlying issue (and this restoration), I would observe the following:

(1) I agree with the argument made in the discussion Skyerise linked that indigenous identities in North America (and probably in many other places) are best understood as nationality/citizenship, not as ethnicity;

(2) for Canada at least, I disagree that citizenship (as opposed to nationality) is always the relevant framing; it seems to fit better for First Nations but less well for other indigenous groups (Métis, Inuit);

(3) while the example presented is fine on its own terms, it doesn't necessarily represent a "best practice" that could be applied to other indigenous biographies (a problem that also confronts several of the other current examples with respect to other BLPs, IMO). Newimpartial (talk) 12:55, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

I can't disagree with Native American being viewed as such in North America, but Europe doesn't recognise their nationalities or tribal citizenships. There's also the article on Native Americans in the United States, which first describes them as Indigineous peoples, and that link says, The Indigenous peoples of the Americas are the inhabitants of the Americas before the arrival of the European settlers in the 15th century, and the ethnic groups who now identify themselves with those peoples (bolding mine). That pretty much fits my (and probably many others outside of North America) understanding of Native American; it primarily relates to ethnicity/descent and doesn't relate to nationality or citizenship (that would be American).

That being said, I agree with the format used for Wilma Mankiller as it's directly relevant to her notability (and noting the tribe in parentheses is informative), but certainly not for Donna Nelson, a notable chemist. I think any guidance would be more apprirate as a sentence or two in the ethnicity and religion part. Whether or not people view it as ethnicity or nationality/citizenship, it's clear it isn't on the same level as citizenship to a soverign state, which I believe is the spirit of the guideline. – ².O.^Boxing 13:30, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Tribal membership is a complex issue. But where it can be determined that the subject is a member of a a tribe which is considered a sovereign nation, they should certainly be described according to their membership in that nation. Some tribes do not have that status, see List of federally recognized tribes in the contiguous United States. I don't know whether any of this applies to First Nations. It is also my understanding that at least some nations at some times have had an open border policy with respect to indigenous peoples. My recollection is that England was one of the countries which extended this courtesy, though of course everything changed everywhere after 9/11. Skyerise (talk) 13:45, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Well, I will wait to hear more and probably reply again tomorrow (unless asked a direct question, per my editing restrictions), but I do think the spirit of the guideline is somewhat at issue here. I see two pieces of relevant text that can be used to discern this "spirit":

• In most modern-day cases, this will be the country, region, or territory, where the person is currently a citizen, national, or permanent resident, and
• Ethnicity, religion, or sexuality should generally not be in the lead unless relevant to the subject's notability.

I have seen editors pull back and forth over two main points of disagreement about these passages:

• some editors will gloss the first point as though it said, "place the person in the context of their country of citizenship or residence", while others take the language more literally and allow for more variety of outcomes;
• some editors will take the second point as though it established a very high bar for the mention of anything that does not correspond to a nation-state citizenship, while others do not interpret the text this way.

While editors aren't always keen to acknowledge this, much of the resulting disagreement has to do with what editors are or aren't willing to acknowledge as "nationalities". It is clear to some editors that Welsh is a nationality meriting first-sentence mention in most cases, while not acknowledging equivalent status for Catalan or Quebecois nationality. To some New Zealand editors, it may seem evident that Maori identity should be a nearly-universal, required first-sentence mention in relevant biographies, but this might not be obvious to others. And so on.

What I think we nearly all agree is that it is against the spirit and the letter of the MOS for editors to seek sources for family background and to insert hyphenated identities in article lead sections based on such references. But it seems obvious to me, from a Canadian perspective, that when indigenous people carry their indigineity as a highly visible aspect of their identity, that that form of national belonging should be presented in an article lead, and that any wikilawyering along the themes of "only one nationality can be included"/"it should reflect a recognized Westaphalian state" ought to be set aside as un-encyclopaedic, IMO.

Also, I would point out to Skyerise that while First Nations in Canada have a status that is essentially similar to "Federally recognized tribes" in the US, the respective statuses of Métis and Inuit indigenous people - while also constitutionally entrenched - operate along different principles.Newimpartial (talk) 14:15, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Tense for the dead

When describing dead people as they relate to achievements, records and currently-living people, what tense should I use? Specifically, for Puti Tipene Watene, we currently have “he is the only person to both represent the New Zealand national rugby league team and become a Member of Parliament” and “He is the great-grandfather of rugby league player Dallin Watene-Zelezniak” (emphasis added). If there’s general agreement on the right way to phrase these, I think it would be worth adding them to the Tense section, even if only to guide confused souls like me. — HTGS (talk) 10:54, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

I think 'is' and 'was' respectively for the two specific examples above? GiantSnowman 21:42, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

Most living people will be described with a single nationality...

This edit adding a section on nationality include the referenced phrase. Is there any objection to adjusting that, like the other similar guidelines here, to be explicit about exceptions where the subject still has a strong connection to a previous nation? --John (User:Jwy/talk) 04:26, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

Presumably you mean these edits by User:Skyerise. I see that Skyerise has since been using that section as a bludgeon to erase the national origin of people who grew up and were educated in one place but now work in another, making the lead give the false impression that these people were always of the nation they happen to live in, even in cases where we do not have evidence of their current citizenship. For example, Vida Dujmović, from the former Yugoslavia (if I remember correctly Herzegovina, not Croatia?), educated in Croatia, edited by Skyerise to say she is (only) Canadian. She moved to Canada as an adult and still works there. By now she may well be a Canadian citizen. But we do not have evidence of that, nor do we have evidence for what the answer would be if you asked her what nationality she has or what country she is from. If you asked the same question of me, the answer would probably be "it's complicated". A clause saying "most people have one nationality" is obviously true, in the abstract: greater than 50% of the world's population has not changed nationality, I think. But it is ridiculous to apply that clause to the minority of people to whom it is not true, as if we can only accept an oversimplified picture of the world where "most" somehow has morphed into "all".

What I would like to see is a much more explicit policy that, for people for whom the question of nationality is in any way unclear (there is more than one country they have been associated with), we refrain from stating a nationality without explicit sourcing for that citizenship. Otherwise, we can say things like "Yugoslav-born computer scientist who works in Canada". To do anything else is to guess, and guessing is something we should avoid in biographies and especially in BLPs. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:04, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

What I would like to see is a much more explicit policy that, for people for whom the question of nationality is in any way unclear...: Guessing on one's nationality is already covered by WP:V and WP:OR. —Bagumba (talk) 07:57, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

The whole point of WP:CONTEXTBIO, back when the shortcut used to be WP:OPENPARA, has always been worded to prefer the use of a single nationality. Back when it was at OPENPARA, it had nearly exactly the same examples as I restored. At some point the material got reorganized and the examples got lost in the reorganization. The examples I added are pretty much what was there before the reorganization. I know Asimov was used at the first example in the original examples. The other examples may use different people than the original examples... The original reason for this - yes, I was around during early discussions that led to the guideline - was that nationalists and revisionists of various stripes want to "claim" the person. Thus there were edit wars between Americans and Russians over Asimov. The short version is: there is no reason to mention a country in which the subject simply resided without becoming notable for anything. The guideline also accounts for people whose citizenship is unknown but who reside in another country at length with obvious employment. They can't do that in the US at least without a green card. And that's why the guideline states "or permanent resident". While I personally don't add nationalities where citizenship is not clear, it is completely within the guidelines to call someone who has taught at Harvard for 20 years an American - even if they were born elsewhere, retain their original citizenship, and are only a permanent resident of the US. In the original discussions, the key was: where did the work for which they are notable mostly occur? If it is predominantly in a single country, that's the context that supported them while they did the things for which they became notable. Only if notable work was done over multiple countries should we even think about adding a second nationality. The guideline only cover the first sentence. There is no bloody reason to say "Yugoslavian-born Canadian" when we can say "is a Canadian blah blah. Born in Yugoslavia, he moved to ..." The "nationality+profession" is used for both short summaries and a quick check on proper categorization, which are two reasons for preferring a single nationality in the lead sentence. Skyerise (talk) 13:18, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

Yes there is a reason to say "Yugoslavian-born who works in Canada", in exactly the example I gave. Because we do not have sourcing for any one citizenship. So to state a citizenship we would have to guess. We should not guess and we should not encourage guessing. It is very different from the case of Asimov that you cite: for Asimov, he came to one country (the US) as a child, and we have a source for him becoming a citizen of the US as a child. —David Eppstein (talk) 15:48, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

Ah, it seems footballers are some sort of special international citizen with different rules - or at least so said @GiantSnowman:. However, while GS claimed that there are different guidelines for footballers, they did not link to any such guideline. So I am not sure whether such an alternate guideline even exists. If it does, I'd be happy to follow it if someone would be so kind as to point it out to me. Meanwhile I'm just skipping footballer articles when they come upon 'random article' Skyerise (talk) 13:26, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

An alternative is to NOT MENTION nationality in the first sentence - at all: “Joe Blow is a footballer, currently playing for Puddlesby United” … “Jane Doe was an acclaimed actress, best known for her staring role in the silent movie ‘Hamster Capers’.” Blueboar (talk) 13:44, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

Why? It's much less informative and much less clear. The second example runs afoul of WP:PEACOCK - which frequently happens when the nationality is not present: then they are "famous", "prominent", or "acclaimed" rather than American or German. Skyerise (talk) 13:50, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

Because usually a subject’s nationality has little (or nothing) to do with what makes the subject notable. The first sentence should focus on what makes the subject note worthy. It should focus on what they do or did… not where they came from. Blueboar (talk) 15:02, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

Also because often for people who have flourished in multiple countries (as is very common in academia) we do not have sourcing for their citizenship. —David Eppstein (talk) 15:50, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

And we don't have to per "or permanent resident". The academic born in Europe who has lived and taught in the US for decades may reasonably be described as American even without a citation for naturalization. Skyerise (talk) 17:20, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

No. Stating a single nationality in the lead is unambiguously a claim that the person has a single nationality. In the cases we are discussing, it is often false and even more often unverifiable, and you are actively pushing for the inclusion of falsehoods and unverifiable claims in our article leads. In the case of someone who has one citizenship but works in another country, or a dual citizen, or someone who has held multiple citizenships while performing notable activities, we should not push the false narrative that they are entirely of one nationality. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:03, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

@David Eppstein: Just as a footballer's citizenship can be determined from football rules, permanent residency in many countries can be determined from length of residency and employment, at least in the US; though residents of Commonwealth of Nations countries I think can work in any CoN country, and I don't know how the EU handles such things. If you think we should not do this, then perhaps we should start a discussion about removing "or permanent resident of" from the Context section, though its been there as long as I can remember. Skyerise (talk) 13:03, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Just to comment on footballers, I believe the real-world issue is that at any one time, players can belong to one and only one national team - they must have a passport in their national team nationality, but of course they may have passports in other nationalities and their country of residence or of work need not correspond to their national team nationality. In this instance, it would be an unfortunate surprise to readers if the national team nationality were not prominently presented in the arricle; in some cases it may he the greatest claim to significance of the player, according to the RS. Newimpartial (talk) 14:05, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

What I am seeing is a misunderstanding between ethnicity and nationality and citizenship. Moxy- 14:25, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

This is intented as a reply to me, so I will ask what misunderstanding you see. "FIFA nationality" is a strict subset of legal citizenship - it could also be understood as a subset of nationality of occupation. Obviously, nationality of residence and nationality of occupation are distinct concepts. But for people who are notable precisely in relation to a certain form of nationality (e.g., national team membership), should Wikipedia not continue to present this consistently in biographical articles? I don't know what "misunderstanding" you have detected. Newimpartial (talk) 14:36, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

Americans are unlikely to differentiate between ‘citizenship’ and nationality’ in everyday language, this is not the case in other countries. Nationality should be listed only in addition to citizenship, and only in cases where it is verifiable and relevant to the article. For most articles, place of birth denotes nationality. When it comes to the United States, U.S. citizens are U.S. nationals. Still, not all U.S. nationals are U.S. citizens. Moxy- 15:20, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

We should not let footballers drive our guidelines for non-footballers. The fact that international footballers play for a national team, and are required by FIFA to be citizens of that nation, gives these people a definitive nationality that many other expatriates and emigrants do not have. We should not base our guidelines on the false assumption that nationality is as easy to determine for other people as it is for footballers. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:06, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps the solution is to not use any such descriptions in the intro of BLPs or bios-in-general. GoodDay (talk) 15:44, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

Nationality in the lede is important context for a biography. GiantSnowman 15:48, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

Consensus behind the section Skyerise added in November

I seem to have missed it, so could someone point me to the on-wiki interaction that established the consensus that was then documented in the series of edits under discussion above ([9])? While I see some useful clarification among those edits, I also see a good deal of confusion and an editorial preference to move further away from the sources of BLP articles than any previous consensus or community practice would require. Could someone clarify this, please? Newimpartial (talk) 14:05, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

Can we move away from reliable sources? That seems like WP:OR and no discussion anywhere on Wikipedia can validate such an approach. Slywriter (talk) 15:26, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

I, for one, am not suggesting that we can move away from reliable sources. I am suggesting, rather, that the added policy text encourages editors to depart from following the reliable sources in many cases. Newimpartial (talk) 15:35, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

I'm also interested in finding the discussion that lead to these additions, specifically the Native American example. I found this proposal from November with only one reply from Skyerise before it was added. It's probably worth noting that CorbieVreccan was the one who added the footnote in March 2022. I had a look in the WP:IPNA talk page archives but couldn't find any discussion there. I'm still presuming there's one thats eluding me. – ².O.^Boxing 14:31, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

I posted on this talk page. There were no objections. [10] Skyerise (talk) 16:36, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

Native American wasn't in the previous examples. Considering there doesn't appear to be consensus for something so contentious, I'm going to remove that one until its been appropriately discussed. I don't really have much comment on the other examples; they're close enough to the previous ones and seem to accurately reflect the guideline. – ².O.^Boxing 08:46, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Determining 'which' nationality to use in a bio, has at times been a thorny topic. Do we go with "birth country"? The country the person lived in most of their lives? The 'only' determining factor, would be what do reliable sources do, per individual. GoodDay (talk) 14:53, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

Might be naive of me, but don't we just follow reliable sources? Or is the issue these are all database entries deemed notable that have no RS coverage? Slywriter (talk) 15:25, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

Then there's the United Kingdom situation, which can certainly be thorny. Some individuals prefer to be called British, which they're called as such in reliable sources. While others prefer English, Scottish, Welsh, Northern Irish or Irish, which they're called as such, in reliable sources. But, that's another rocky area. GoodDay (talk) 15:41, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

The problem with that is that different sources have different standards. Many sources are reporting ethnicity instead of nationality, using terms like Italian-American, which is ambiguous. We should not follow such sources, but rather follow our own Manual of Style. Skyerise (talk) 16:32, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

Err no... we follow sources, not our MOS. If our MOS disagrees with sources, the MOS is wrong and must be corrected to conform with WP:V and WP:OR. Slywriter (talk) 17:49, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

The MoS is not wrong. Whether to present nationality alone or combined with ethnicity is an editorial decision. Another publication's MoS may permit such constructions, or even encourage them, which is why they present the material that way. Neither our or their MoS is "wrong", they are simply incompatible. We do not "follow the sources" just to put ethnicity unnecessarily and inexplicably in the lead sentence. Better to take a whole sentence to explain it, usually in the early life section. Otherwise every black American will be described as "African-American", which conveys too little information to be clear. Were they born in America or Africa? If an African-American moves to Africa, are they now an American-African? Wouldn't white people who moved from the US to Africa also be American-Africans? It's best to unpack into ethnicity and nationality, and follow WP:ETHNICITY. Really. 20:59, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

My issue is that I know being hyphenated-American is important to the subjects of two biographies I take an interest in. They are proud of their origin, have been back to inspire those in their country and have even attempted to play for their country-of-origin national team. The current guideline strongly discourages leading with their (well documented) hyphenated status when it is a key part of their identity. The MOS should not do so, IMO. --John (User:Jwy/talk) 20:49, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

Ethnic pride is specifically why ethnicity is not encouraged in the lead sentence. In such a case I'd suggest detailing why they pride themselves on their ethnic heritage as an Italian-American (or whatever) later in the lead. Skyerise (talk) 20:59, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

Why discourage it if it is key part of who they are? I can see discouraging it if the editors are using it as an expression of their own view on matters independent of the subject, but if the subject is active in their birth country (it's not necessarily ethnic) it seems a good way to help establish "who they are." --John (User:Jwy/talk) 23:40, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

The problem is not so much people who are notable for their ethnic pride, but rather people who might possibly be of some ethnicity, maybe, if you guess by surnames, and Wikipedia editors with a lot of ethnic pride who want to highlight that supposed ethnicity everywhere they can find it. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:02, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

@Skyerise: Your addition of nationality examples in November had the edit summary: "add examples of presentation of nationality according to the committee-written guidance". For reference, can you provide a link to the old version where these came from, or a link(s) to relevant discussion for the specific wording. Thanks.—Bagumba (talk) 12:09, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

@Bagumba:, the MoS pages have been moved and reorganized so much that I cannot find them. I remember discussions leading to the examples being added (vaguely as I am elderly), and remember the examples being in the guideline in 2010 - 2012, when I was mostly working on New Mexico topics and Taos art colony biographies, before the whole MoS page and subpage structure got renovated. At some point during that renovation the examples got removed. I am sure they were there as I have been following these examples since about that time. At one time they were at the shortcut WP:OPENPARA, but that's been re-targeted several times and I suspect deleted at least once as I remember it existing before the current redirect was created. I continued to use it to point to the examples for some time, not realizing they weren't there anymore. Though perhaps I am just getting old and forgetful... I've also been unable to find a discussion leading to their removal, so I think the removal was probably inadvertent. I think examples are good to have, though perhaps some of the wording and intent can be improved, since I had to write them anew from memory there may be differences from the original that may need to be addressed? Skyerise (talk) 12:27, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Nationality issues again

Could some outsiders please comment on what is the proper way to introduce Christopher Columbus (1451—1506) when taking into account WP:MOSBIO? On the talk page there's been a year-long continuous discussion over whether Columbus should be introduced as 'Genoese' or 'Italian', which are the two most frequently used adjectives in literature. There is a general consensus that Columbus came from the Republic of Genoa, one of the Maritime republics on the northern Italian peninsula, though his origins are sometimes disputed (see the article Origin theories of Christopher Columbus), and he later moved to Iberia working for the Crown of Castile. There's also plenty of sources that suggest the origins of Italian nationalism can be traced back to the Renaissance which was already underway in Columbus' lifetime. My position has been to introduce him by 'Genoese', and I've tried to impose a middle ground solution by removing nationality altogether, but such edits always get reverted back to 'Italian' instantly. WP:MOSBIO has been introduced to the discussion only recently, but there is ongoing discussion over the proper interpretation, with some even questioning the guideline itself. Machinarium (talk) 14:10, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

I will take a leaf out of the long story over at Nicolaus Copernicus (go trough the talk-page archives if you want, but it's a tedious read)...and would say that labeling him as a "Renaissance explorer" might be an approach that could at least be tried (if it hasn't been tried before, I haven't looked). Lectonar (talk) 13:08, 27 March 2023 (UTC)