Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography/Archive 15

New Template

For your information, an infobox has been created for use on biographical articles of clergy. It can be found at {{Infobox clergy}}. Pastordavid 15:25, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Overhaul on some aspects of the Biography Project

As this was almost entirely about article assessments I have moved it to Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Biography/Assessment#Overhaul_on_some_aspects_of_the_Biography_Project. --kingboyk 12:36, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Driveby kick in the mouth

Moved to Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Biography/Assessment#Driveby_kick_in_the_mouth. --kingboyk 12:38, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Introductory sentences

I would appreciate some input over on Alan Jones (radio broadcaster) on whether it is appropriate to describe him as a 'convicted criminal' in the first sentence of the article. The dispute is not about the accuracy of this statement - he was convicted in April 2007 of breaching a suppression order on the name of a witness - but whether placing it in the first sentence breaks NPOV by giving it undue weight. Editors unfamiliar with Jones might want to look Jones up off-Wiki first to form their own impressions on how this incident should be weighted. --Calair 02:47, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Of course not. It's bias - he's not a career criminal, but listing it with his occupations gives that impression. I've removed that statement. It can be reported in the lead that he has had legal problems including a criminal conviction in a much more honest and straightforward fashion. --kingboyk 12:44, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. That was my opinion also, but I wanted to get a sanity check before it degenerated into a revert war. --Calair 14:09, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

James Underwood

Hi, how does a biography article get upgraded from stub? I have made some changes. Part 18:28, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

It appears to have been done. There's no specified procedure for removing most cleanup and stub notices; If they're no longer applicable, remove them. Notices that are associated with specified procedures, such as those used with WP:RM and WP:AfD, should point you to the specific procedures. Andrewa 22:03, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Jack Straw (politician)

There's a discussion at Talk:Jack Straw (politician)#Requested move that may be of interest to some here. As most would be aware, he's an active and newsworthy politician. The question is, should his article displace the disambiguation with the historical article Jack Straw (rebel leader)? Andrewa 22:09, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Zhou Tong (archer)

My article, which falls under the scope of your project, is currently the "Today's Featured Article". I must leave for work shortly, so I won't be able to monitor the page for vandalism. I hope that people from your project will help safe guard the page against nonconstructive edits. Thanks.--Ghostexorcist 00:26, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

FAR

Corey Mitchell has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by The Mask of Zorro (talk • contribs)

Note: I've removed the listing from WP:FAR. Corey Mitchell is not a featured article. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:34, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/Collaboration

I've tagged Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/Collaboration as historical (inactive). In a moment I will take care of Wikipedia:Biography Collaboration of the Week, which appears to be a duplicate.

Given how successful the assessment collaborations have been, somebody might want to have a go at reviving the COTW... If so, feel free to "dearchive" it. --kingboyk 12:59, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

I think we might want to wait to see if the bot which will help indicate the "overall" importance of an article is available. Then, we'll know which biographies are probably of the broadest interest, and will probably be a lot more effective then. John Carter 19:41, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Dictionary of National Biography

As a newcomer to Wikipedia, I have been enjoying myself creating/adding to a number of biographies, especially of British people. But it has occurred to me that the old edition of the Dictionary of National Biography is a gigantic source for everyone before 1900 and is, I presume, now out of copyright(?). Rather than struggling to create new biographies from scratch, would it not be better to use the old DNB article as a starting template, to be added to or amended as desired. I understand that the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica has sometimes - and not uncontroversially - been used the same way, but a hundred-year old article about, say, a 17th century bishop does not suffer from the same disadvantages as a hundred-year old article about, say, electricity. 45ossington 07:35, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

It has already been used that way on a few articles, e.g. William Shearman, and Template:DNB can be used for articles so created. --Calair 08:26, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Proposal for new workgroups

I would like to propose to create the following workgroups:

• Religion
• Activists
• Literature
• Music
• Business/Economy
• Academic

Unless there are any major oppositions (I am little iffy myself about the Business/Economics one - what other names could we give it?), I would like to create these new workgroups a week from now. --Ozgod 13:48, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

I think it would be a good idea to first check to see if there's sufficient interest first. We already have Wikipedia:WikiProject Musicians to cover the musicians, the "Activists" proposal only has three interested parties so far on the Proposals page, Business people has only two, Lawyers has four (probably enough for a start), the same with Writers and Comic creators, and religious leaders has enough for a start, if someone can alter the banner to include them. I wouldn't object to seeing them all created, though, as I'm fairly sure each would eventually get enough interest to make a go. John Carter 13:57, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

I meant for workgroups within the Biography project. When it comes to tagging subjects to specific biography groups - religious figures, activists, lawyers, etc. do not necessarily have a place to go. --Ozgod 14:39, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

So did I. The one real stumbling block that I can see, like I said, is altering the project banner to include these work groups. John Carter 14:44, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

This is true. --Ozgod 14:57, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

I think we actually need an admin to alter the template, given its current protected status. If there are any admins out there who would feel comfortable doing so, I think the rest of us would be really grateful. I think at least one of the people who regularly view this page is an admin, right? John Carter 15:58, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Admins do watch this page, yes. But it would be better to ask at Template talk:WPBiography. In fact, the real problem is not the protected status but the need to test everything carefully in a sandbox, and then integrate things in one go to avoid overloading the job queue with incremental changes. Carcharoth 16:32, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

I've been looking at the template. I think (think!) I am slowly beginning to understand how the stuff works. It's not that difficult to integrate new groups. There is absolutely no point, though, in creating workgroups without enough interest. It would be best to set a minimum standard so that the interested group has demonstrated interest and has some aims in mind. The absolute minimum would be a list of articles they want to work on. They can generate that using the normal article categories to browse, and adding others they are interested in.

Just creating a workgroup to help classification isn't that helpful. What would be helpful is identifying those biographies that haven't been assigned to a workgroup. At the moment, I count 11 workgroups (core is sort of a workgroup, but not a subject-based one, so is not included in that 11). To do this, we probably need to redesign the template to allow a new category of "articles not assigned to a workgroup" to be created. That would involve consolidating those 11 parameters down to a "workgroup=" parameter that can take multiple values from a separate template, but that will take some time to design. Carcharoth 16:32, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

• The religious leaders group has six members signed aboard, although one seems to be inactive. The remaining five should be enough to start it. And the Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/Recognized content page does have a separate listing of GAs, FAs, and former GAs and FAs that haven't yet been "assigned" to any work groups. That might be a good place to start looking for which major areas aren't yet covered by work groups. And thanks for your efforts to date. I looked at the template myself a while ago, and was intimidated by it in a big way. John Carter 17:07, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

One of the things that is needed is to document, simplify, streamline and demystify that template. Does the religious workgroup have a page up and running yet? That would be the other minimum requirement. ie. (a) home page; (b) list of editors ready to start work; (c) some initial plans; (d) a list of articles ready to take under their wing; (e) if possible, some other projects to work with and get advice and editors from. That should be enough to warrant integration into the template. If those are all checked off, then we can start working out how to update the template. Carcharoth 17:46, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

• It's actually at Wikipedia:WikiProject Religion/Religious leaders work group. The goal was to make it a "split" subproject between Religion and Biography, officially a subproject of Religion but using the template of Biography. It probably would have started already if I could have gotten anyone to work with the template. I tried adding it to the Religion template, but couldn't get it to work right. But we might want to hold off until at least the end of the week, to see if any of the others "take off" in that time. John Carter 17:53, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

is there any thing about king asoka

Coordinators

I've resisted the idea in the past, but given the size of the project now, given that User:Plange seems to be away for good, and given the strong example set by MILHIST,- I'm wondering if we should have a coordination committee. Perhaps a lead coordinator, an assessments coordinator, somebody who manages the template, somebody who ensures we put out a newsletter, and so on. I don't wish to do any of those myself on a formal basis, although I'm happy to formalise my role developing the kingbotk plugin and taking care of automated talk page tagging.

Thoughts? Would anybody be interested in taking any of these roles? I know many of you are doing these things informally already... --kingboyk 21:19, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

I couldn't commit to anything formal, as that's not how I work on Wikipedia - hey, I'm not signed up so I don't even get the newsletter! :-) But I could commit to helping out where needed and giving (hopefully helpful) advice. ie. staying active around here for at least the next few months. Carcharoth 22:07, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Not signed up? Ahhh... a rebel :) I believe there's an option to receive the newsletter even if not signed up, and if there isn't such an option create one! It doesn't get sent out very often and is generally fairly useful I believe! --kingboyk 22:30, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

A coordinator for the different sections would really help keep them active. The newsletter and collaboration parts of our project are the ones in greatest need of help, I believe. Psychless 15:30, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

A list of the various "positions" available might help, as it might let people know what kind of tasks are out there. Also, would these be elected positions, or would people just volunteer for them? John Carter 15:43, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Lead coordinator would have to be elected. Not sure about the others. As always we should look at what WP:MILHIST are doing and steal their best ideas :) --kingboyk 23:13, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

A few that come to mind:

• Lead coordinator
• Department coordinators (one for each of the below)
  • Assessment
  • Automation
  • Collaboration
  • Outreach/Newsletter
  • Peer review/A-Class review
  • Translation
  • Vandalism
  • Portal/maybe combined with Recognized Content
  • Template coordinator - responsible for managing existing templates and maybe requesting creation of new ones, like maybe stub templates
    • Stub templates aren't within our remit, they're covered by another project. By "template" I was thinking more of somebody who knows their stuff syntax wise and understands the "philosophy" of our main template, {{WPBiography}}", and who could keep an eye on it, implement changes etc. Doesn't have to be an admin but would be easier if they were. --kingboyk 23:13, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
      • But they would need to have someone propose them in any event. But point understood. John Carter 23:53, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Arts and entertainment coordinator
  • Actors and filmmakers coordinator
  • Musicians coordinator
  • Military coordinator
  • Politics and nobility coordinator
  • British Royalty coordinator (unless merged with above)
  • Peerage coordinator and
  • Baronetcies coordinator - both might also be merged somehow
  • Science and academia coordinator
  • Sports and games coordinator
  • Payola coordinator
  • Invoking the gods coordinator

Anything else? John Carter 18:43, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Would we be able to find enough people to do all the above? I doubt it somehow but would be happy to be proved wrong. --kingboyk 23:13, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Possibly there is scope for co-ordinating copyediting and wikignome activity on biography articles, and for producing (or consolidating existing) guidance on different approaches to biographical articles according to subject and time period (for historical ones). Payola? Oh, I get it now. :-) I'd be interested in helping out with planning template stuff (though sadly I can't write template code to save my life, well, not yet anyway), and newsletter stuff and overall strategy and providing advice and tips. I also like completely useless stuff like reading about and researching the history of projects like this (how they started, what they've done, reading talk page archives, and so forth). I've barely scratched the surface here so far, I suspect. Carcharoth 22:23, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

One way to find out if there would be enough interest.

Please find below a list of positions "open". If you would be interested please add your name following.

Lead coordinator

Department coordinators (one for each of the below)

Assessment

Automation

Collaboration

Outreach/Newsletter

Carcharoth - I could try restarting the newsletter, though if previous editors want to do this instead, I don't mind. I'd need advice on certain aspects like delivery, but should be able to put together content based on previous newsletters and new ideas. Monthly or bi-monthly? Carcharoth 10:51, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Peer review/A-Class review

John Carter - would be willing, but need help understanding the setup

Translation

Vandalism

Portal/maybe combined with Recognized Content

can help a little here, still don't know what I'm doing though John Carter

Arts and entertainment

Actors and filmmakers

Musicians

Military

Politics and nobility

British Royalty (unless merged with above)

Peerage

Baronetcies both might also be merged somehow

Science and academia

Sports and games

Any interested parties should indicate their willingness above. All nominees will also have to pass a complete review by the intelligence service of their nation of origin. ;) John Carter 23:53, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

• I just found Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/Coordination Council - long lists of jobs like the above, and excessive bureaucracy should be avoided in favour of producing visible results. We mustn't take on too much, or over-reach. The active editors of articles should be deferred to - the aim is co-ordination and documenting good practice, not telling people what to do. I suggest we avoid a lead co-ordinator until it becomes clear that one is needed. Carcharoth 10:56, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

While Emperor of Biographical Articles sounds like an interesting title, I also think a lead coordinator is unnecessary. If anyone is going to take on any of these positions, I would like them to be able to tell the project why their position is needed and what they're going to do. Otherwise we're just going to end up with a long list of "jobs" people have taken on, but nothing has changed. Psychless 22:53, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Gotta admit, I like the sound of that title, though. :) The A-Class review/Peer review people are those who do the A-Class reviews. If I can figure out how to archive old nominations, that's where the formal A-Class reviews for this project are given out. I admit though that Peer review could well be a separate section. Regarding the Recognized content, all that gets done there is ensuring that FAs and GAs get listed. Whether it's necessary I dunno, but it does at least potentially give a place from which to select articles for the Portal and could, if one wanted to, be a place where an editor could find articles similar to ones they're working on for ideas on formatting, style, and the like. I'm more or less maintaining that page already. John Carter 23:02, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

biography.com workgroup

I propose a new workgroup for the improvement of all biographical articles that have a corresponding article on biography.com. Biography.com has about 25,000 articles. I believe that these articles are some of the more high-traffic articles and as so could benefit from improvement. The goal would be to improve all the articles to B class, possibly GA if most reach B class. To compile the list of articles an editor with wikEd could just copy and paste the content from biography.com's browse pages (and hit the [W] button). It would output something like this (just a small portion of this page) :

Aëtius, Flavius (c.390–454) Roman general, born in Moesia. In 433 he became patrician, consul...

Aïshah or Ayeshah (c.613–78) Third and favourite of the nine wives of the Prophet Mohammed...

Aśoka or Ashoka (3rd-c BC) King of India (c.264–238 BC)...

Aafjes, Bertus (1914–93) Poet and novelist, born in Venlo, SE Netherlands.

Aakjaer, Jeppe (1866–1930) Novelist and poet, born in Aakjaer, Denmark.

Hopefully a bot could go through and try to create links to the proper Wikipedia article. Humans will have to find some of the articles though. Then the bot could do some formatting changes to output something like this:

Flavius Aetius (b) (c.390–454)

Roman general, born in Moesia. In 433 he became patrician, consul...

Aisha (b) (c.613–78) Third and favourite of the nine wives of the Prophet Mohammed...

Ashoka the Great (b) (3rd-c BC) King of India (c.264–238 BC)...

Bertus Aafjes (b) (1914–93) Poet and novelist, born in Venlo, SE Netherlands.

Jeppe Aakjær (b) (1866–1930)

Novelist and poet, born in Aakjaer, Denmark.

The main goal of this workgroup though, will be to provide something for the members of this project to collaborate on. The assessment drive has been successful because we were working towards a specific, common, and feasible goal. Please comment on this workgroup idea/proposal below. Note: this is not a place to complain because your article was assessed as Start. Regards, Psychless 22:49, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

It's been two days, could someone please voice their opinion on this proposal? Psychless 18:06, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm not entirely sure what the "official" purpose of this group would be. One of the potential complications might be whether the source in question is currently copyrighted. If it is, all that could be done would be to ensure that all the information is included, but in an altered format, which is a bit more work. Personally, I would welcome some sort of collaboration, and think this might work, but I would need to know what the specific details would be. Additionally, who would be volunteering for maintaining the list? Somehow, I think that might well be the most difficult part of the entire proposal. John Carter 19:31, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Do we know what their sources are? Unless they indicate what their sources are, they can't be considered a reliable source, IMO. We can only give them as our source, and the trail stops there. With something like DNB, we know they are reliable. Carcharoth 10:42, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

The purpose of the workgroup is to ensure that Wikipedia has a B-Class article for each person that has a biography on biography.com. The project has nothing to do with using content from biography.com. We really could use a different source than biography.com if anyone can think of a better one. The goal is just to identify a large number of articles people could work on. I just chose biography.com because it's an easily accessible online source. Psychless 02:18, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Ah, right. Yeah, that sounds fine then. Carcharoth 00:42, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/A-class review

This page has more or less stalled, in large part due to my own near-total lack of any computer expertise in trying to be able to archive the old reviews. Anyone who would be willing to assist in reviews, and, better yet, can figure out how to archive existing reviews, would be more than welcome to do so. John Carter 19:43, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Have a look at how other WikiProjects do this. Without looking, I'd suggest a subpage system like AfD and RfA, with transclusions onto the main page. But that has one disadvantage - it is easy to lose subpages that aren't reviews amongst the mass of reviews. This might be why wikipedia.org has the "/w/" bit (look at the URL in your browser window). Carcharoth 10:39, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

I think I might be able to do it, if I knew what the "permalink id" referred to in the instruction is. Right now, obviously, I don't. John Carter 16:34, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Images in bios...

I recently came across the following edit summary:

"Do not use fair use images to illustrate living persons. Keep the fictional character images to their respective articles, or that of their movie."

Could someone point me to these two guide lines?

Thanks,

- J Greb 07:31, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

The WP:NONFREE page should explain stuff. If you have an actor, we need someone to take a free picture of the actor for that page, and the picture of them acting in a movie would be fair-use only on the article about that movie, or in the section on the actor's page about that actor's career. Please ask if you have any questions. Carcharoth 09:49, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Ah... so the reference would be to the examples of unacceptable use under #s 6-8 and 17. That makes sense, thanks. - J Greb 16:14, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Making some minor corrections within Category:People by occupation

In the course of working on a related category I noticed that Category:People by occupation has some subcategories that actually are redundant with other subcategories and should be removed. For example, Category:Stage actors should be removed because it's clearly a subcategory of Category:Actors which already appears in Category:People by occupation.

In addition there are a few categories that don't actually belong here at all because they're not actually categories of individual biographies. For example, according to its description, Category:Abortion providers "lists notable physicians, clinics, and organizations whose primary practice is or was in the provision of abortion." Therefore it's not actually a category with biographies about people, but is an umbrella category including all sorts of different entities. So it doesn't really belong under Category:People by occupation because it includes a lot of articles that aren't about individual people. (It's other parent category, Category:Abortion, is valid.)

So I'm going to go through all the subcategories and remove the ones that don't seem to belong here. That will hopefully make this easier to navigate by making it more of a set of highest-level occupational groupings. Note that no articles will be changed or categories renamed or deleted - the change is entirely in what parent categories are listed within each subcategory. Obviously if anybody disagrees with any specific change I make, feel free to discuss or revert it. Dugwiki 15:48, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Done with my pass. Probably 1/3 or 1/2 of the original subcategories were taken out and placed (if not already there) under other appropriate subcategories. It could still probably stand another pass and some more condensing, but I think the pass I made did improve things a bit. Dugwiki 17:31, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

English/Scottish/Welsh or British

I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask this, but I can't find anywhere better so I'll start here. I see a lot of biographical articles going through many reversions of the nationality between someone being British and giving their nationality as English/Scottish/Welsh or Northern Irish. Their passport will say that they are British but their birth certificate will say they're English/Scottish/Welsh or Northern Irish. Which is the preferred form? -- SteveCrook 22:21, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

A class reviewers needed!

The A-Class review department is in desprite need of reviewers for conseusus. Please help! SpecialWindler talk 09:48, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

User:Errabee who previously did the A-class review has left Wikipedia. She/He did the process of the A-class review. If this project can't find a user to do that then the A-Class review system will have to be merged into assessment or peer review, which would be a great shame. SpecialWindler talk 12:36, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

There's bound to be a FA reviewer or reviewer to take over. SpecialWindler talk 12:36, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

I've actually tried to update the older reviews myself. The only reason I haven't is because I can't figure out exactly where to find the permalink ID referred to in the archiving reviews section. If anyone can point out to me where to find them, I'll try to keep that section updated. John Carter 15:43, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

A quick guide to permalink IDs: If you go to the article and click on "Permanent link" in the toolbox (located to the left and above the interwikilinks in the standard skin), the URL of the page you end up at, will end with "&oldid=" followed by a number -- usually with nine digits. That number is the permalink ID of the current version of the article. Hemmingsen 18:40, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for the info. I'll start archiving the older nominees now. John Carter 20:47, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

AfD DJ Rossstar

I didn't see an appropriate place for this AfD (or at least this type of bio) on the project page, so I'm mentioning it here - Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/DJ Rossstar ~ JohnnyMrNinja 20:42, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Jean Schmidt FAR

Jean Schmidt has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here.--SallyForth123 00:56, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Infoboxes Person & Biography: merger proposal

You might be interested in commenting on, or assisting with, this proposal to merge {{Infobox Person}} and {{Infobox Biography}}. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 15:00, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

{{Infobox Biography}} has been deprecated, and redirected to {{Infobox Person}}. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 20:03, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Infobox fields for resting places of dead people

{{infobox person}} now has fields for "resting_place" and "resting_place_coordinates"; see, for example, Alfred Nobel. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 17:15, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Chris Young FAC

You may want to come by and comment at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Chris Young (pitcher).--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 23:37, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Proposed subproject

Considering there are so many ideas about subprojects, I thought this one might be useful. I know the Core biography group is right now kind of inactive. Would any of you object to seeing it maybe expand to cover all the bios that have been selected for the various Wikipedia:Release Versions? These articles are generally among the most important biographies out there, there are rather a lot of them, and I think that given their importance and number they might merit a bit of dedicated effort. Anyway, just an idea. John Carter 15:01, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Template:Recentdeath and Category:Recent deaths

I recently added a category (Recent deaths) to {{tl:Recentdeath}}. I've found it useful in keeping an eye out for vandalism on the biographies of the newly departed, and in maintaining the {{recentdeath}} template itself, making sure that he correct name sort and date parameters have been applied, for example. Check it out, and, whatever conclusion you reach about the usefulness (or not) of the category, I invite you to join the discussion at Categories for discussion. Few opinions have so far been voiced, and, even though I "have a horse in this race," I primarily want to see the discussion process be broadly participated in. --Ssbohio 00:23, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Rank/coverage comparison - LibraryThing top authors

I started an experiment on Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/LibraryThing top authors. I'd appreciate feedback, either here or on the list's talk page. As described there, the beginning is a list of the most "popular" authors from the website LibraryThing, ordered by popularity rank. (You can have any opinion on this ranking, it might be biased or miscalculated in every way, but my experiment could be applied to any ranking of this kind. This one happened to be available.) For each author name, I have linked to the Wikipedia article and a little bar graph indicates the current length of that article, where green is longer (better) than yellow, which is longer than red (see documentation on template:lengthlink). Hold the mouse pointer above the bar graph to see the exact length of that article. The length is taken from the latest database dump, so it isn't automatically updated. In addition to the length, one might want to have a quality indicator here. The point with having this kind of list, is to immediately spot that John Grisham, Laurell K. Hamilton, Neal Stephenson, and Lemony Snicket have a rather short bios (around 10-12 kbytes) for being among the top 30 authors. At rank 43, Janet Evanovich has a tiny 5 kbyte bio, compared to the 56 kbyte bio for Mark Twain at rank 42. (This might also be an indication that Janet Evanovich shouldn't be ranked 43.) --LA2 06:39, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Pro Wrestler

I'm not sure this is the right place to ask, if not please forgive. I was wondering if the pro wrestlers should be considered fictionnal characters. The discussion arose when reviewing the GA status of The Undertaker. It will lose its GA anyway for other reasons (insuficient referencing if nothing else), but has been criticized as being too "in-universe". Is there a consensus that wwf aliases (sp?) qualify as fiction? Thanks in advance,--SidiLemine 14:37, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Pericles

Pericles has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. Vassyana 08:34, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Peer review requested

Hi. Ruth Kelly is up for peer review here. Your comments are welcome. SP-KP 18:25, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Image for Alan Jones (radio broadcaster)

There is a bit of an edit war happening over the image Image:Acrunt.jpg being used in the Alan Jones (radio broadcaster) page. Whilst the image is amusing, it does seem a little inappropriate for use in a bio article. Could someone with a better grasp of appropriate Wikipedia policies care to comment on the article talk page. Thanks! PalawanOz 08:40, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Katharine Graham and Phil Graham

An editor recently introduced the rather controversial assertion that there is 'continuing speculation' that Phil Graham may have been murdered at the behest of his wife Katharine Graham. I reverted the edits with a note on Talk:Katharine Graham requesting further substantiation. I am not an expert on Wiki biographical standards but I cannot accept that one source speculating murder would be sufficient cause for Wikipedia to repeat the accusation. Additionally, I find the referenced publication to be questionable under WP:RELY. The editor responded in a most uncivil manner, accusing me on my talk page of trying to 'bury' the truth. I will not attempt to pursue a measured conversation with an editor who immediately resorts to conspiracy theories; I would appreciate any objective input on his edits here and here. Maralia 03:37, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Infobox fields for dead people

The templates {{Infobox person}} and {{Infobox actor}} now have parameters for resting place and resting place_coordinates (see Marylin Monroe for an example using both). Please use them and feel free to add them to other templates. Please be as precise as possible when giving coordinates for graves. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 22:24, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Advice needed for Antoni Dunin

I was wondering how we could get some outside input at Antoni Dunin. There are claims of non-notabiliy and unreliable sources. Its clear to some that the sources are not reliable and personal websites of family members do not qualify as reliable sources for an article's subject but some people refuse to accept this. Any feedback from uninvolved editors would be appreciated. --Matt57 ^{(talk•contribs)} 05:01, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Honoré de Balzac

I just finished a major revision to the page Honoré de Balzac. Perhaps the project would like to review its rating (currently B-class). -- Scartol 18:16, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

The work is good. Unfortunately, only two reference sources are cited. I think that it probably wouldn't qualify as "A"-class on that basis. You might however want to check with the Good Article people about whether they think it would qualify for GA status. John Carter 20:10, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Thank you kindly for your feedback. I have nominated it for GA. (Is this appropriate? Is there some interim step I should have taken before nominating it?) -- Scartol 22:46, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

WP:GA/R notices Gustavus Franklin Swift and Gordon Griffith

I am notifying you that both Gustavus Franklin Swift and Gordon Griffith are being placed at WP:GA/R.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 22:51, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Major revision to the article on Philopoemen

Recently I read this article and realised that despite the detail and effort that had been put in by previous editors, the point had been reached where a major revision to the article was required. The article had become much too long and was written in a style that was very difficult for the reader to follow. Therefore, I have removed what I considered to be unnecessary detail, as well as work to improve the grammar and layout of the article.

I would really appreciate feedback from anybody interested in this famous ancient Greek general on the changes that I have made to the article. Any additions to improve the quality and accuracy of the article would also be appreciated. --Chaleyer61 12:57, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Wilco and Loose Fur bandmembers and discographies

Since both Wilco and Loose Fur have categories in them which cause them to be included set of articles that are tagged by bot with {{ChicagoWikiProject}}, it might make sense for the band members and related discographies to have similar categories. I was looking at Jeff Tweedy and noticed that he has Category:People from Belleville, Illinois and Category:Illinois musicians in his article. If he had Category:People from Chicago or Category:Chicago musicians in his article then he would be tagged with {{ChicagoWikiProject}} and thus they would fall under WP:CHICAGO. As WP:CHICAGO director, I would like to monitor these musicians, but I generally leave category decision to the editors of the pages. Please make whatever category decisions you feel would be correct with this in mind for all band members, the bands and all discographies.

I am placing this message several places. I am asking all respondents to respond at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Alternative_music#Wilco_and_Loose_Fur_bandmembers_and_discographies. — Preceding unsigned comment added by TonyTheTiger (talk • contribs)

Eh? WP projects don't have - nor need - "directors". Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 14:32, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Problem with your template

Hi, when the WP Biography banner is used on talked pages using the WikiProjectBannerShell template, and you have the photo option on yes, it doesn't hide under the shell. As seen here. I don't know how to fix this, so I'm bringing it to the attention of this project. Thanks --Borgarde^talk 14:01, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Reality TV star noteability guidelines

Hello, I've just created a seperate page proposing guidlines for noteability of Reality TV contestants and if they should have their own articles. I did this due to the mass number of articles being created and deleted on these subjects in recent months, and confusion among editors if they are in fact noteable or not. You can read this here. All edits and comments on the talk page are welcome. Thanks, Dalejenkins | 18:24, 23 August 2007 (UTC).