Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Dictionary of National Biography/Archive 3

This is an archive of past discussions about Wikipedia:WikiProject Dictionary of National Biography. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Artists topical list

AT Wikipedia:WikiProject Dictionary of National Biography/Artists, and fitting in well with WP:Yours, i.e. the "Your Paintings" GLAM project. So far this is just painters: sculptors, engravers etc. will come in due course. They are not so relevant for "Your Paintings". Charles Matthews (talk) 12:05, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

Second supplement posted on Wikisource

With the completion of the articles from the 1912 supplement, that's all the DNB articles that are public domain on Wikisource. And now for the first time we get a realistic picture of progress: out of 30,687 articles, 8,377 remain to be matched with a Wikipedia article. That's just over 72% done. See s:Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement for the supplement, s:Category:DNB No WP for the remaining articles, and the DNB match tool. Wikipedia:WikiProject Dictionary of National Biography/Tracking is updated monthly, and it is time to raise the project's profile at Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles. Charles Matthews (talk) 06:47, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Merging template:cite DNB and template:cite ODNB

Re User:Johnbod's comment above, it looks a good idea to rationalise DNB referencing, where citations are currently done with {{cite DNB}} and/or {{cite ODNB}}. Basically a reference to the modern ODNB version alongside any reference to the old text would do everyone a favour, in terms of verifying the facts and seeing how scholarship has advanced since 1900.

I left some preliminary thoughts about this at User talk:Billinghurst. But everyone can join in. We are really talking about two editions of the same article, and two URLs, so it makes some sense. The details of the template may get a bit gory. Most of the actual programming can be done with the database codes from the ODNB site. These can be seen outside the paywall: e.g. http://www.oxforddnb.com/index/5/101005854/ where 5854 is the code. Charles Matthews (talk) 10:38, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

The conversation is now archived so I have copied the reply here:

Do you want them all merged and massaged into the one single template with multiple configurations to get right, or were you comfortable with some nesting where the ODNB template just applied some base components of a higher level template? (eg. what we do with header and disambiguation templates at another place.— billinghurst sDrewth 13:15, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

-- PBS (talk) 23:50, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Charles so far I am not convinced that this is a good idea, any more than it would be to combine the citations for the modern Encyclopædia Britannica and the 1911 11th edition. Please could you explain you reasoning in a little more detail. -- PBS (talk) 23:50, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

OK, one point is that the ODNB is supposed to be "upwardly compatible" with the DNB, so that every DNB article has a matching ODNB article. There are a few caveats with that, actually (merges and splits, mainly), but in broad terms it is true that there is an updated version available. At some point we are going to want to index in some fashion the matches, which amounts to knowing an ODNB database code of up to six digits for each DNB article.

So the first argument is this: do we not want convey to readers that there is an updated version? It is quite true, really for any book, that we can mention the 7th edition without alluding to the 8th edition.

I'm not currently seeing that as a decisive reason against what I am proposing. I do see that confusion is to be avoided: a given reference should make it clear which version is being referenced.

The first stab at this issue was {{DNB first}}, which is simply informative.

I can see one approach, which is that over time references to the DNB should be "eliminated": the ODNB is much more trustworthy. So {{cite DNB}} could be expanded to have a field in which the ODNB code goes, and a field saying whether the facts in the given reference had been checked with the modern version (with access date). The point here would be to aid fact-checking, and have maintenance categories generated, not to display more information to the reader. It gets a bit more three-valued when one realises that there is information in the DNB versions that the ODNB chooses to eliminate (typically bibliographical, family history, and some very useful remarks on portraits).

Charles Matthews (talk) 09:25, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

@Charles Matthews, I had not read this comment until today but have been thinking along similar lines. The only thing that is needed is the ODNB id number (just as we do in the {{Cite ODNB}} template). This is easy to add to the DNB template the only questions are what to name the parameter (eg ODNB-id=), and what to display on the screen (eg ODNB: number) -- its positioning would either have to be after the {{cite encyclopedia}} or embedded into one of the {{cite encyclopedia}} variables such as "id". -- PBS (talk) 12:13, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

That sounds good. The thing I would add, that is perhaps not going to be relevant immediately, is that there is now a Wikidata dimension. There is a tool for matching the ODNB index (and not just that) to Wikidata items. This is a fresh start on the business of matching the DNB on Wikisource, to articles here.

Obviously if a template here contains an ODNB id number, the article in which it appears is a good "suggestion", for its Wikidata item to be matched to that id. Though false positives will be very common.

So there would be reasons for keeping the ODNB id easy to extract, is all I'm saying. Just something to mention at the design decision stage. Charles Matthews (talk) 12:42, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

And there is more about the Wikidata side mentioned at User talk:BrainyBabe#ODNB missing women. This is actually the application that motivated the tool (link is there). Charles Matthews (talk) 14:20, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

New Year stats

They show the missing articles at about 8,200, so the article creation is 72% done. The next big milestone is at 75%, or about 7,500 missing, or about 10% of the current missing articles created. Things are going fairly smoothly, with many people creating articles from DNB material, and some matches hidden by quirks of the tool surfacing on closer inspection. Some mismatches on Wikisource come to light, also.

Of course, if it needs saying, the point of the project is "best use" of DNB material, not "maximum use". The point of diminishing returns on creation of articles is quite a way off: plenty of good catches still to find. Charles Matthews (talk) 10:00, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

Removal of year links in WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles

Please see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/DNB Epitome#Dates and Wikipedia:Bot requests/Archive 58#Unlink years -- PBS (talk) 12:19, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Dictionary of National Biography/Theatre

Another topical list to work on, this time of actors, dramatists and so on. Charles Matthews (talk) 16:57, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Year ranges

{{cite DNB}} and {{DNB}} either have a range of years for the date or if volume is set a specific the year. Both templates are wrappers around {{cite encyclopaedia}} which in turn calls the module CS1 and CS1 does not like year ranges. Solutions to this problem are being discussed at Template talk:Cite_DNB#CS1 errors when volume not included and others interested in this project are requested to take part to see if we can come up with the optimal solution. -- PBS (talk) 17:12, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Hmmm, if Identity of Junius is really so troublesome (not my intention in developing it) ... it might be better simply to have a custom template for multiple attributions. It isn't that common, I think: one case comes to mind with four DNBs. I suspect they may all be personal friends of mine. Charles Matthews (talk) 20:57, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

8000 milestone

According to the maintenance category on Wikisource, the number of missing DNB articles here stands at exactly 8000. So the project is 73% done (a little over) given that there are about 30000 articles in all. The next big milestone is 7500, which will in effect be 75% done. Charles Matthews (talk) 05:16, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Well done all! Johnbod (talk) 10:58, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

New list: Antiquarians

See Wikipedia:WikiProject Dictionary of National Biography/Antiquarians for a new topical list. Antiquarians are one of the DNB's strengths, but are various, and not always easy to fit in to WP. One way is to find them as authors, of many of the older local history books cited. Charles Matthews (talk) 17:50, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Importing articles

I will be creating draft article in my userspace on Wikisource. Anyone can feel free to let me know of issues, or to import the articles to Wikipedia, as they are of course, copyright free and attributed. If you have the rights you might consider an export-import solution.

If issues are brought to my attention and I can deal with them , I will make permanent improvements to the conversion process.

Since I am not even allowed to make lists of articles on en:WP, unless I type them all in, full lists will be on Wikisource.

Known issues

The DNB author transclusion from my en:WP user-space ideally will be substituted when the article is brought over.

this can be resolved. Done (I think!)

Parenthetical references () are also used

This may be "too hard" in general, but it might be worth picking up, e.g. Notes and Queries, and Gentleman's Magazine.

Comment The way I handle these is to turn then into ref tag pairs and add the DNB citation per WP:SAYWHEREYOUREADIT see for example Murrough O'Brien, 1st Earl of Inchiquin(although more recently I use {{harvnb}} for the DNB inline entries(. -- PBS (talk) 09:14, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Links

Not quite as many WP articles are linked as I would like - investigating this

Bracketed [] references

Need to be picked up, as small bracketed refs are. Should be simple. Done (I think!)

Comment The way I handle these is to place an "endnotes" at the end of the {{DNB}} and append then as a list using "**" in indent them. I also do limited formatting by placing the titles in italics -- PBS (talk) 09:14, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Lists of writings

Should be converted to a wiki numbered list. Can probably catch most of these.

Improvements I can fairly easily make

Outdated language
Abbreviations to full words or phrases

Example: "graduated M.A." to "graduated with an MA"

Comment please leave as M.A. (but strip spaces eg M. A. to M.A.) but please expand all dates from the three letters eg "Feb." to "February". Please place all dates in the format MMDDYYYY and strip out the "st, "nd" and "th" from dates.-- PBS (talk) 09:14, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

- The months should already be happening.
- The articles are tagged with {{Use DMY dates}} so the conversion should happen if any are left in other formats, but I will investigate what the system does now. I'll also check ordinal handling.
  - [[1]] shows the difficulties of re-ordering dates. In this case we have the sentence "In the following year he published 'Observations on the Report of the Earl of Sheffield to the Meeting at Lewes Wool Fair, July 20, 1820'." and the date is part of a title. It's still eminently do-able, of course, just a little more complex.
- The MoS deprecates using stops in degree abbreviations.
- All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 22:58, 22 August 2014 (UTC).

Index

The index is here.

Notes on process

Whenever a draft is moved to WP, if the DNB article is updated to link to the WP article, it should no longer be in the Wikisource category "DNB no WP". This means the conversion process will never look at it again. The draft on Wikisource can be speedy deleted to keep things tidy.
Do not fix up the drafts on Wikisource, they are liable to be over-written.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 00:07, 16 August 2014 (UTC).

Per article issues

Arundell of Cornwall being a family the name does not parse the same as for a person.

Comments

Hi Rich. One thing that occurs to me is that the topical lists (Wikipedia:WikiProject Dictionary of National Biography#Missing article topical lists) could benefit greatly from some rough-cut material on enWS. A good list of this kind has a couple of hundred entries only: that means we might be looking at about 40 more to do. They are labour-intensive, the way I have done them so far, so there are only half-a-dozen up now.

We can discuss this and other things via talk pages on Wikisource. When I have finished the current pass of DNB checking, with seven volumes to do right now, I'm going to get myself involved in the ODNB effort on Wikisource; which is having interesting repercussions now, in particular in the direction of Your Paintings. The mix'n'match tool by Magnus M. is key there. Plenty to talk about. Charles Matthews (talk) 10:52, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

@Rich Farmbrough: I have placed my thoughts on specific points inside your posting it seems the easiest and least verbose way to make such comments. In some ways my methods are different from Charles Matthews, for example I do not believe that Charles places the endnotes from a DNB article on Wikipedia articles. -- PBS (talk) 09:14, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

PBS

Thanks for that I have commented there where appropriate. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 23:19, 22 August 2014 (UTC).

Charles Matthews

I have a little coding to sort out before the "rough cut" is something I am satisfied with (and of course there will still be crazy stuff like The Arundells) - I have a few (identified) bugs that have moved things backwards - but some of your antiquaries at least exist in draft form now. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 23:19, 22 August 2014 (UTC).

Done I have prioritised the missing items lists there should be something usable for most of them pretty soon, about 370 of 861 are done now. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 02:23, 23 August 2014 (UTC).

Restrictions

For those of you who wouldn't be aware of it, Rich Farmbrough has a number of Wikipedia:Editing restrictions on Wikipedia (not on Wikisource), including one on using automation and one on mass creating pages in any namespace. Avoiding these by doing both these things on a sister project and then asking others to import them here doesn't seem like a very wise move. Even less so when a cursory glance of the drafts shows that many of the original problems are still present (from poor transcriptions to very poor scripts resulting in very badly formatted drafts, going so far as to introduce typos not present in the original wikisource transcription). Importing these as they are will probably reflect badly on both Rich Farmbrough and the importer. His statement at the start that "If you have the rights you might consider an export-import solution." seems especially ill-advised. Fram (talk) 08:12, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

I am not "asking" anyone to do anything. I am simply making a resource available. As you know I was planning on doing these a few at a time, manually fixing them and gradually improving the conversion process. Strangely this seemed to offend you, just as changing asteroids to redirects did (which hasn't stopped you doing it yourself). I also notice that strangely you were importing articles from a coevalDictionary of Painters. And that you have been mass editing articles to add unreferenced tags, another task I used to do. Others might draw interesting conclusions from this, I couldn't possibly comment.

As to issues with the drafts, both the Project Team and I are well aware of those. As to importing, of course they would not be bulk imported to article space, but to my user namespace by default, or the project namespace by choice, which would create no issues for anyone, except to make mass updating difficult.

Without your interference, of course, in two years we would have addressed many of the issues by now.

You are still welcome to proof-read or validate any of the pages in DNB, and if you let me know I will re-create their drafts, where appropriate. And you can add here any issues you discover which appear to be new. I had a nice system for logging these sorts of things, but, again thanks to your interference, it has been dismembered.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 11:50, 23 August 2014 (UTC).

@Fram: While I take your concerns seriously, I do not see that this project's forum is an ideal place to discuss them. As for jurisdictions, if you have issues with the use of space on the English Wikisource, you should raise them on the Scriptorium there. Charles Matthews (talk) 10:12, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

The issue is at ArbCom level (has been for a while now). I don't really care about Wikisource, I don't believe that the script-created pages (and the category) are of any use for Wikisource (being made with the clear purpose of eing Wikipedia pages, with Wikipedia categories and so on, which have no use in Wikisource), but wether Wikisource cares about such things or not is their business. I only care about the import (by whatever means) of these pages to Wikipedia. I don't think it would be smart or useful, for a number of reasons. The proxying for a restricted user is one aspect, the continuation of the problems that lead to the restrictions is the mor serious issue though (many of these pages have not been validated at Wikisource to start with, and the script adds a layer of problems; much easier to start from the basic Wikisource page after it has been validated, than to start from this). But I can only inform you (project) about this, it is up to you how you deal with this. Fram (talk) 10:18, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

I'm aware of the ArbCom case, in the sense that I contributed to it some time ago.

Let me make clear that the purpose of this project is to try to make the best use of DNB text here on enWP. There is no assumption that any article here started with DNB text is in a perfect state. The issue of the text and the textual problems, preferably, is at a level where it is less serious than the factual problems with the 19th century text (all DNB text that is public domain, as far as we know, is at least 100 years old).

I'm going to suggest that the import of processed text from Wikisource is a bridge we should cross when we come to it. In any case, this project's concern is not with who is doing the relevant editing. Charles Matthews (talk) 12:38, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Not the original ArbCom case, but the one now at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification and Amendment, started after my post here and the reply by RF. And I don't believe that it is wise to not concern yourselves with who is doing the editing, if it has been shown to be very problematic in the past. But I think I have said here what I needed to say, what you want to do with it is your business. Fram (talk) 13:06, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

You know, it is a basic principle here, "discuss the article not the editor". Well, I suppose you know that. Charles Matthews (talk) 14:53, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

No, the basic principle is "discuss the edits, not the editor". I have not given any opinion on RF as a human, I have discussed his edits and his editing restrictions. His edits were and are problematic, as has been recognized in the restrictions. Not discussing this, in a context that is about the exact same kind of edits but made at Wikisource instead of directly here, would be stupid or negligent. No basic principle is violated by my posts here. Fram (talk) 15:00, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Per Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines#Good practices for all talk pages used for collaboration, I would like this project to abide by the principle bolded there: Comment on content, not on the contributor.

The content you refer to is mainly hypothetical: what would happen if certain machine-processed content were used to create Wikipedia pages. Well, I have some sort of answer to that: we would look at a typical page on its merits. Quite likely we would produce a guideline for such pages, or show an example on how to adapt it (we have one example shown as diffs, and there could of course be others). I would say this kind of advice is normal for a WikiProject. Charles Matthews (talk) 15:24, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Possible reorganization

I wonder what the rest of you might think about maybe merging this in to maybe the Missing encyclopedic articles project as maybe a task force/work group. Specifically, I'm thinking we might maybe be able to establish some joint subprojects and groups with specific topical WikiProjects here to maybe set up both lists of relevant articles in other reference sources like those I created at Category:WikiProject lists of encyclopedic articles and additional lists of articles which are at least available theoretically for use in wikisource. I know it would be a great deal of work and consume a lot of time to create lists of relevant biographies in the DNB for the various projects here but I have already spent a lot of time setting up a lot of the projects here anyway and I'm kinda used to such tasks. John Carter (talk) 14:38, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

John, I would be quite happy for that to happen, though that project seems very quiet itself. "Reaching out" to other subject wikiprojects might well help. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 23:07, 22 August 2014 (UTC).

I was thinking of the merger primarily so other PD sources like Encyclopedia Britannica and maybe the Hastings Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics and others might eventually be included as well. Maybe the best place to try a first attempt at a joint subproject would be MILHIST and maybe if I broke up the relevant lists the religion projects. Any objections to giving them a try? If we do I will probably need to do the relevant lists myself and that might take awhile. I think we might want to have the list up before officially "starting up" a task force. John Carter (talk) 23:32, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

The "missing articles" part of this project should really be very quick, now I am creating drafts on WS. I have asked the Gender Gap task force to look at the "Missing women", they should all have drafts by the morning -or by tea time if I go to bed now. I thought the Britannica project was complete? All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 02:20, 23 August 2014 (UTC).

The articles exist but haven't necessary been compared with the EB article. Ideally I'd like to have some sort of table indicating that articles here and at wikisource are both created and compared against each other for all the major topics. That would be a lot of work but might wind up being worth it in the long run.John Carter (talk) 16:55, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

It would certainly be valuable to know which sources have been "mined dry" on a a particular topic. Of course there is no guarantee the information will remain in the Wikipedia article. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 13:56, 25 August 2014 (UTC).

granted information can be removed but the link to the wikisource page would still be intact for information recovery or use in subarticles. Also and here I am speaking somewhat hypothetically I have myself recently finished proofreading A Dictionary of the book of Mormon" for wikisource and am now in the process of adding interarticle links where the effective equivalent appears in the PD text. For many similar reference works including articles on more obscure topics I have a feeling that like many of those I have a feeling those pages in wikisource might appear in a Google search in the top ten or so results on their own given the interpage links. And of course such material could also potentially be added to relevant wikibooks, wikiversity and other sister sites much more easily.John Carter (talk) 16:26, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

@John Carter: I wonder why you think this project needs such attention. From a technical perspective, "redlink lists" may be better thought of in terms of Wikidata these days, and associated tools. Charles Matthews (talk) 10:14, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

75% milestone

The September stats are good enough to announce that the project's aim to create articles here matching the DNB on Wikisource is 75% done. With a few counting quibbles, at least 22,500 of the 30,000-odd DNB articles match to Wikipedia now.

There is steady progress, with many people creating biographies on DNB subjects, and some of the topical lists being given attention. Charles Matthews (talk) 10:07, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Comment on the WikiProject X proposal

Hello there! As you may already know, most WikiProjects here on Wikipedia struggle to stay active after they've been founded. I believe there is a lot of potential for WikiProjects to facilitate collaboration across subject areas, so I have submitted a grant proposal with the Wikimedia Foundation for the "WikiProject X" project. WikiProject X will study what makes WikiProjects succeed in retaining editors and then design a prototype WikiProject system that will recruit contributors to WikiProjects and help them run effectively. Please review the proposal here and leave feedback. If you have any questions, you can ask on the proposal page or leave a message on my talk page. Thank you for your time! (Also, sorry about the posting mistake earlier. If someone already moved my message to the talk page, feel free to remove this posting.) Harej (talk) 22:47, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Dictionary of National Biography/Medics

This is a new topical list, about physicians, surgeons and a few others. At around 400 names it is the most extensive so far (and I believe could probably be expanded). It represents something over 5% of the missing DNB biographies. Charles Matthews (talk) 15:15, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

{{ODNB data}} and the Epitome pages

I have put together a basic {{ODNB data}} template with four links in it. It will perhaps evolve a bit. See the use on Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/DNB Epitome 01.

Some points about this:

I have put in a Reasonator link, which is a good way, at least, to visualise the Wikidata entry for an article that is here (or on some other Wikipedia, which happens).
One thing it helps with is images. Note that the Wikidata image it draws on may be absent when there is an image in the Wikipedia article here, or vice versa. I'm generally trying to boost the images on Wikidata (using the Wikidata FIST tool).
The project to match the OBIN (Oxford biographical index) of ODNB articles to Wikidata items is about 80% done now. One by-product is the creation already of 6,000 or so Wikidata items for ODNB articles that are missing here; and there will be more. Therefore the Wikidata links may be filled in, and a Reasonator page available, even when there is no enWP article. Viewing through Reasonator gives an idea of what a stub article would look like.

Charles Matthews (talk) 10:11, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Dictionary of National Biography/Missing women

A call out for missing women..... The list above was put together sometime ago but its looking as if we could "do the lot". Its a small milestone, but en:Wikipedia could have every woman who was thought important in Britain the 19th century. I think this would help with positive gender bias. See if you can help. I've done "B" and "C" and some other letters. Can you sort one out? Victuallers (talk) 15:32, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

As a sidenote, a project on Wikidata should provide a further list, of women missing from the ODNB. The timescale for that is a couple of months. More details in the next thread. Charles Matthews (talk) 10:00, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

oh.... how many do you anticipate? I thought the list was complete? Victuallers (talk) 15:28, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

The list of about 200 here, as updated from the second edition, is probably complete to 1912. When we get to being able to query Wikidata, which I suppose I could do provisionally now, there could be 1000 who have been added since? And they will add more in January. Charles Matthews (talk) 16:43, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

Well, I haven't quite cracked Wikidata queries yet, but I have found out just now that Wikidata has 3706 items identified as female and in the ODNB. That is with 80% checking done. Charles Matthews (talk) 17:14, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

Struggling a bit here, but I have reason to believe 51 of those are not linked to enWP. (The relevant Wikidata query is CLAIM[21:6581072] AND CLAIM[1415] AND NOLINK[enwiki], which can be placed after https://wdq.wmflabs.org/api?q= .) If the Autolist tool was in better health I could point to a listing of those ones. I'll work on this some more, since it is instructive. Charles Matthews (talk) 19:27, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

And with Autolist2 running CLAIM[1415] AND LINK[dewiki] AND NOLINK[enwiki], I make it that there are 27 females with an ODNB biog, a German Wikipedia article and no English Wikipedia article. Quite an interesting list, if provisional. Charles Matthews (talk) 14:13, 24 December 2014 (UTC)

New Year stats

The stats page shows that the missing DNB articles number is down by 1100 since the beginning of 2014. Thanks to all who helped achieve that. Charles Matthews (talk) 09:47, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject X is live!

Hello everyone!

You may have received a message from me earlier asking you to comment on my WikiProject X proposal. The good news is that WikiProject X is now live! In our first phase, we are focusing on research. At this time, we are looking for people to share their experiences with WikiProjects: good, bad, or neutral. We are also looking for WikiProjects that may be interested in trying out new tools and layouts that will make participating easier and projects easier to maintain. If you or your WikiProject are interested, check us out! Note that this is an opt-in program; no WikiProject will be required to change anything against its wishes. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you!

Note: To receive additional notifications about WikiProject X on this talk page, please add this page to Wikipedia:WikiProject X/Newsletter. Otherwise, this will be the last notification sent about WikiProject X.

Harej (talk) 16:57, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

7000 milestone

The March stats show the number of missing articles is now below 7000. What remains to do is mostly short biographies, and I'm working on a list for the couple of hundred longer ones. Also the Wikidata project on the ODNB index is coming to a close, and that means better tracking in future. For example, as of today there are 39016 items marked with an ODNB link that have an article link to the English Wikipedia, out of 55270, or in other words 16254 missing ODNB people. (Many of those will be "co-subjects", i.e. what we have been calling subarticles, and need not be notable; also ODNB themes cover many minor figures.)

Just to give an example, there are 5181 ODNB women marked, and of those 3682 have a link here. In other words about 1500 missing women from the ODNB. Not all genders have been added to Wikidata yet for the ODNB dataset, so the number is likely to go up a bit. And the caveat about notability applies. Charles Matthews (talk) 09:56, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

Copyright Violation Detection - EranBot Project

A new copy-paste detection bot is now in general use on English Wikipedia. Come check it out at the EranBot reporting page. This bot utilizes the Turnitin software (ithenticate), unlike User:CorenSearchBot that relies on a web search API from Yahoo. It checks individual edits rather than just new articles. Please take 15 seconds to visit the EranBot reporting page and check a few of the flagged concerns. Comments welcome regarding potential improvements. These likely copyright violations can be searched by WikiProject categories. Use "control-f" to jump to your area of interest (if such a copyvio is present).--Lucas559 (talk) 16:15, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Dictionary of National Biography/Longer DNB

I have created a new list, of longer remaining DNB articles to do. A while in gestation, that: it basically means any articles not on that list can be assumed be on the short side.

I think this will be the last of the traditional redlink lists here. Wikidata developments mean that, with some further data work putting in occupations over there, a much more whizzy system of lists should be feasible.

By the way, progress with the project is faster than it may seem, in that it is not as easy as it used to be to pick up article creations. They come to light somewhat later, is all. Charles Matthews (talk) 20:58, 5 November 2015 (UTC)

Adding ODNB citations

Hi all,

I've finally got a project I've been working on for (literally) years off the ground, and begun to build indices of "Wikipedia articles which could link to the ODNB, but don't" - draft sample at User:AGbot/Articles with no ODNB citation, containing pre-generated citation URLs for the article about the subject of each page. I'm also working on producing a list of "articles linking to the ODNB but not using {{cite ODNB}}", and hopefully at some point in the future "articles with bare-text links to the ODNB". These may be of some use when updating articles - let me know if there's any useful tweaks you'd like to see. Andrew Gray (talk) 18:30, 6 June 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Dictionary of National Biography/Women in Red

The infrastructure on Wikidata for producing topical lists from the ODNB is now in good shape. Prompted by interest on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Women in Red, I have created a new page here. It doesn't take that much Wikidata savvy to change "novelist" to some other occupation in the WDQ code; which these days can be used in https://query.wikidata.org/ via the tools menu. Charles Matthews (talk) 17:03, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

DNB copyright revisited

Our footnote raises the possibility that a few DNB articles may still be in copyright, specifically any that were written by an author who died after 1946 ("life+70") and possibly an author who died after 1916 ("life+100"). I think the situation is less grim than that, for two separate reasons.

1) The 1994 revision to US law recognizes other countries' copyright law, but not for material published simultaneously in the US and the other country. Our DNB title page scans make it reasonably clear that the DNB was published simultaneously in the US and the UK, so US law applies and any publication prior to 1923 is now in the public domain.

2) Even if we apply UK law, I think we can ignore "life+100". If the DNB was published in the U.K. more than 30 days before it was published in the US, then "life+70" applies, so anything written by an author who died before 1946 is in the public domain. I suppose we should check the death dates of all of our authors.

-Arch dude (talk) 01:53, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. It may well be possible to construct a query that starts from author pages on Wikisource carrying {{DNB contributor done}}, and reads off those whose death date is after 1946, on Wikidata. This might be a good way to understand the scope of the Petscan tool, for instance. My impression is that the number of relevant authors who were alive in the late 1940s is quite small. These days doing things via a single query is the elegant way. Charles Matthews (talk) 11:54, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

Hey, and not so hard. Petscan id is 81392. There are 32 hits for deaths 1946 to 1970:

Charles Matthews (talk) 12:59, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, Charles. Six of these died in 1946, so I think they are now PD even in the UK. Only 13 of these guys were still alive in 1950, and the last one died in 1960. Again, I think we are covered anyway because of US law, even with the 1994 revision. The EB1911 project may still have a problem. -Arch dude (talk) 01:45, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

Only blokes left to do?

I'm pleased to say that (and I'm sure someone will find contra evidence) there are no women who were in the Dictionary of National Biography who have a missing English Wikipedia article. It is about two years since @Charles Matthews: put a list together and its now all blue linked. Missing Women on DNB is complete! May 2015. Do go along and add some extra detail and tidy etc. Thanks to all the contributors. Victuallers (talk) 09:59, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

Excellent news! And particular thanks to you, Roger, for working so consistently on the list.

And cue discussion of the ODNB! (Covers old DNB, deaths from 1912, amongst other things.) Today's figures are that Wikidata identifies 6114 ODNB females, of whom 3881 have links to enWP, so that 2233 of them do not have an associated article here. The grey area of ODNB-linked items for people, not yet assigned a gender, has been narrowed to 1352. Those are mostly men, since I have been removing women as I find them, but expect a couple of hundred more anyway. In round terms there will be 2500ish names from the ODNB to work on. NB these aren't all given their own article, so quite a few will not be notable "automatically". Charles Matthews (talk) 10:34, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, any chance of this new list being posted? Victuallers (talk) 10:53, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

There's a working version up at https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/User:Charles_Matthews/PagePile. We now reckon there is a good 10% missing - see the recent mailing list discussion on the UK list. Charles Matthews (talk) 18:20, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

One that got missed: s:Rowan, Frederica Maclean (DNB00) d:Q19102713 Charles Matthews (talk) 14:26, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

I'll have a look at it Charles. At present she seems to have two entries at wikidata. Victuallers (talk) 17:56, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

Nope, that's a common confusion. The metadata pages for Wikisource articles are things in their own right. They are "instance of biographical article", rather than "instance of human". Charles Matthews (talk) 13:43, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

And another has cropped up: Elizabeth Parsons (hymnwriter), s:Parsons, Elizabeth (1812-1873) (DNB00). Aka Elizabeth Parson in the ODNB, Elizabeth Rooker. Charles Matthews (talk) 10:01, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Elizabeth Parsons (hymn writer) and this list Victuallers (talk) 20:55, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. And another: s:M'Avoy, Margaret (DNB00). Charles Matthews (talk) 06:41, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Yet one more: s:Smith, Pleasance (DNB00). Charles Matthews (talk) 09:21, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

s:Vokins, Joan (DNB00), too. Charles Matthews (talk) 10:23, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

Henrietta Camilla Jenkin nee Jackson; s:Jenkin, Henrietta Camilla (DNB00). Charles Matthews (talk) 07:02, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

Jessica Landseer; s:Landseer, Jessica (DNB00), daughter of John Landseer. Charles Matthews (talk) 06:30, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

Maria Anne Lovell (1803–1877) nee Lacy, actress and dramatist, wife of George William Lovell, would be notable. See s:Lovell, George William (DNB00). Charles Matthews (talk) 09:03, 19 June 2016 (UTC)

Grace Gethin (currently redirects), s:Gethin, Grace. Charles Matthews (talk) 09:14, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

Left to do, then, just Grace Gethin (currently redirects).

Charles Matthews (talk) 11:37, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

Catherine Collignon, which redirects, has been overlooked (d:Q17353269). Charles Matthews (talk) 13:07, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

DNB contributors in wikidata

There is a "contributor" property (P767) in Wikidata that can take the value of an item: Item Q15987216 is "Dictionary of National Biography (1885-1900)".

However, we seem to have 840 authors in category "DNB contributors", while only four of these have a contributor property with that value.

If anyone has skills with petscan or any other wikidata manipulation mechanism, It would be very nice to add the appropriate contributor statements. Wikidata has items for each of the DNBs, so an author item can have multiple contributor statements. I have not yet been successful in learning how to do this. -Arch dude (talk) 01:36, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

Yes, underused. According to Wikidata, Edith Templeton was the unique contributor to The New Yorker. In principle this shouldn't be too hard with quick statements. Charles Matthews (talk) 19:33, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

Going through now, with Q1210343, though, which is the overall work. The way to handle the various editions would be to put them each as a qualifier. Charles Matthews (talk) 20:26, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

With some consequences. There are 388 DNB contributors lacking an article here.[2] Of those, 28 are people covered by the ODNB.[3] Charles Matthews (talk) 09:50, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

And now down to 23. Charles Matthews (talk) 10:21, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

Though note that I'm buggered if I can add an entry in wikidata to the wikipedia article Octavian Blewitt. The wikidata UI and I are not getting along well. --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:56, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

Done. You need to type "en"? Thanks anyway. Charles Matthews (talk) 11:08, 25 July 2016 (UTC)

Mmm. The wiki field was fine .. entered E, it produced a dropdown of matches, from which I selected English. Then entered Octavian Blewitt in the field to the right. But the save buttton stubbornly remained grey. --Tagishsimon (talk) 11:48, 25 July 2016 (UTC)

January 2017 tracking change

The headline figure is 6229 DNB articles on Wikisource still without enWP article to match. That means the 6K to do level, or about 80% complete figure, is still a little way off.

I have moved on Wikipedia:WikiProject Dictionary of National Biography/Tracking to a new system, tied more closely to Wikidata. The queries are divided into ranges of 1000 in the Oxford reference number; and they include "subarticles" (co-subjects); more about this in a footnote on the tracking page. The queries bring up lists that are sortable, if you tinker with the little greyed-out arrows on the columns.

One justification for this more complex approach is that the underlying queries can be customised (by gender, occupation, for example). Charles Matthews (talk) 09:18, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

March 2017 tracking changes

More innovation. Thanks to the PetScan query tool, fresh light is cast on "missing articles": the headline figure on the tracking page shows a drop of over 100. That is because it has become easier to pick up creations of DNB people here, via Wikidata. You can check out d:User:Charles_Matthews/Queries#Petscan: I now patrol daily for the new creations.

Also new is Wikipedia:WikiProject Dictionary of National Biography/Interwiki footprint. This shows how well we are doing in picking up DNB people who are represented by articles in other language Wikipedias. This is a whack-a-mole exercise, rather than just ticking off from a list: there are big backlogs, but also some languages that are steadily producing articles that really should be matched here. Some interesting topics come up. Robert Townson (natural historian) existed in five other languages before it was here, the record as far as I know. Charles Matthews (talk) 08:40, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

A kind friend has provided this query for a bird's eye overview of the whole interwiki footprint. Charles Matthews (talk) 16:50, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

6K milestone

It has been a while since the project met a milestone, but this is a big one. There are now 6,000 articles left, in the "old" public domain part of the DNB, that are not topics here in Wikipedia. As there are close to 30K of those articles in all, that means we are 80% done. Many thanks to the large number of editors who have got us this far. Charles Matthews (talk) 13:52, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

Interwiki footprint

I commend the interwiki footprint to make the point that there are still interesting things to do. People from the DNB who are represented in non-English Wikipedias are surely good to cover here. There is an identified backlog of about 100 of those, from Catalan, Welsh, French, German and Russian in particular. And it's a moving target. Charles Matthews (talk) 13:52, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

As of April, the interwiki footprint identifies 163 articles on other Wikipedias, with a little double counting. For those who like details, the query [4] cited above apparently shows more; but it includes some "soft redirects" that are false positives. Charles Matthews (talk) 06:35, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

Dash ndash in Template:Cite DNB

There is a discussion taking place of what to do if anything about replacing dashes with ndashes in article titles in {{cite DNB}}. See Template talk:Cite DNB#Hyphens and dashes again -- PBS (talk) 06:51, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

Online access

Can someone withe online access send me the text for this entry so I can update his biography here. Write me at my user page please. --RAN (talk) 18:18, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

January 2018

The headline number of missing DNB articles at the beginning of 2018 is 5,795. At the beginning of 2017 the figure was 6229, looking like some healthy progress over the year, but some part of that can (maybe 40%) be put down to better tracking via Wikidata. So the creation of articles was proceeding at a bit less than one per day, rather than a bit more.

Wikipedia:WikiProject Dictionary of National Biography/Tracking is currently dormant, because I have to figure out a way ahead for the detailed tracking. The ODNB changed its URLs in the latter part of 2017, not affecting Wikipedia (which was using DOIs in the template) but requiring work on Wikidata. So, the tracking query needs redoing somehow.

ODNB fans will also have noticed that there was no update after January 2017. A major update may be imminent. Charles Matthews (talk) 10:36, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Well, returning to the topic. With the current state of tracking by query, the main business now has been transferred to Wikidata. So with the time I have, I'm tending to look at articles here (esp. British biographical) their Wikidata items, to make the system work. Charles Matthews (talk) 19:42, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

January 2019

Well, in an honoured tradition, I can announce that s:Category:DNB No WP today has 5,595 articles. More often than not, there is an article created here on a DNB topic, on a given day, would be one way to put it. I use https://petscan.wmflabs.org/?psid=5415973 to keep that number updated via Wikisource.

We've been labelled "semi-active", which is therefore a bit misleading? There is also the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB) to look at. @Andrew Gray: Some queries:

This Petscan query counts articles here with {{cite ODNB}} on them. This is on the low side, at 6277 today, it has to be said, since that number is only just over 10% of the number of ODNB identifiers. Some other ways are used to link to the ODNB.
This external link search finds links directly made to ODNB URLs. Going {{cite ODNB}} is proofed against link rot, because it uses the Digital Object Identifier to make the URL stable.
This SPARQL query identifies 299 physicians with ODNB identifiers who are not in enWP (in terms of their Wikidata item).

That last query can be adapted via the "wdt:P106 wd:Q39631" line. If it is removed, it shows about 15K ODNB topics missing here.

Charles Matthews (talk) 20:38, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

A new newsletter directory is out!

A new Newsletter directory has been created to replace the old, out-of-date one. If your WikiProject and its taskforces have newsletters (even inactive ones), or if you know of a missing newsletter (including from sister projects like WikiSpecies), please include it in the directory! The template can be a bit tricky, so if you need help, just post the newsletter on the template's talk page and someone will add it for you.

– Sent on behalf of Headbomb. 03:11, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

January 2020

Now s:Category:DNB No WP has 5,595 articles, so that is down by 400 on last year. Charles Matthews (talk) 12:20, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

Update: given the URL changes on Wikisource (see below), this category no longer gives a reliable count for DNB articles on Wikisource whose subject does not have an article here. Something can be done to replace it, with a Wikidata query. I'll post again to this page when that is sorted out. Charles Matthews (talk) 08:47, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

For what it's worth, query https://w.wiki/nwM gives 22864 items on Wikidata, from the enWS DNB, whose main subject has an enWP sitelink. That is out of a total of 27581 such items having a main subject (query https://w.wiki/nwQ), for a difference of 4717. It suggests substantial progress of nearly 800 additions so far in 2020, but these numbers come with caveats. Charles Matthews (talk) 09:06, 25 November 2020 (UTC)