Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography/Archive 30

Aaron Sorkin at FAR

Aaron Sorkin 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. Dabomb87 (talk) 15:24, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Featured article review/Aaron Sorkin. An editor seems to disagree with what this article said just a few days ago and has removed many references and substantially rewritten the article. I fear the changes are WP:POV. Please review and comment. -- Ssilvers (talk) 04:35, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

L. Ron Hubbard good article reassessment

L. Ron Hubbard has been nominated for a good article reassessment. Articles are typically reviewed for one week. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to good article quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status will be removed from the article. Reviewers' concerns are here. Cirt (talk) 09:38, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Request for initial assessment: Carroll Pickett

He's in the news this year so I created an article for him. I'd like to get an independent assessment and some recommendations to get the article up to at least B-class if it's not already there yet. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 18:49, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Zora Suleman

I happened across the article for Zora Suleman (a popular UK TV personality) and found that several months ago a newbie editor made his one and only contribution to Wikipedia by completely rewriting the article. Which is fair enough, but the information given, although credited to various publications, did not include any citations or anything and was written like a fanpage article. Some significant information such as her date of birth and birthplace was changed, etc. I do not feel the article was vandalised - the edit was clearly good faith - but the fact no citations were given and some substantial changes were made, plus it lost all wikifying, led me to revert all the changes made back to about June per WP:BLP. The edit in question, of course, is still in the history and I thought I'd toss it out to any project members who would like to give the article a go. (I would but I'm on work deadlines and won't have time). There's nothing BLP-violating in the older version, but it needs to be updated (i.e. a movie she was supposed to be in was never made, etc) and if there are any factual errors they should be corrected. Unfortunately the editor who made the revision never left any "chapter and verse' citations and hasn't made a single edit since redoing the article, so unless there are some Suleman fans out there with an archive, it might be a challenge! 23skidoo (talk) 19:55, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Walter Brierley - also an author [1]

Could someone please collect information on this author and create a page on him? He is mention in this week's TLS (issue 5505), page 3.Zigzig20s (talk) 20:15, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

William Nelson Page FAR

William Nelson Page 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. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:58, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Discussion on gender metadata

Please see comment I made here about obtaining and recording gender (male/female) metadata. Opinions would be welcomed. Thanks. Carcharoth (talk) 13:38, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Biographical metadata

I recently started Wikipedia:Biographical metadata. I have lots to add to that, but wanted to mention it here in case anyone wants to help out. Carcharoth (talk) 02:15, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

FLC

List of Prime Ministers of Sri Lanka is currently a Featured List Candidate. All editors are invited to participate here. Any comments and suggestions will be welcome. Chamal ^Talk ± 03:58, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Recording gender

A discussion has cropped up at Wikipedia talk:Categorization/Gender, race and sexuality#Recording the gender of a person that may be of interest to this project. Cheers! Stepheng3 (talk) 18:17, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

The topic is already mentioned two sections above this one. Thanks for the reminder though. ^_~ Road Wizard (talk) 18:43, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

James Earl "Chip" Carter III

Is there a reason why we do not have a biography of this son of our former president? I understand that he is the President of The Friendship Force. JRSpriggs (talk) 12:14, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Niki Evans

I've removed some unverified claims from Niki Evans. Would somebody else take a look and see whether what remains is OK, please? Thank you. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 09:10, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Proposed bot that would involve this project - FYI, BLP tagging

Hi everyone, I'd proposed a bot task at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Rootology Bot 2 which would basically be placing {{WPBiography|living=yes|class=|importance=}} onto any talk page of an associated article that is in the Category:Living people and that does not have the appropriate tagging already Since the full assessments for class and importance require a human touch and review, the project (if it goes ahead) would result in a possibly significant sized number of articles going into Category:Unassessed biography articles, which has a current backlog today of about 61,000+ articles. From a small sample I tried my bot task on manually, I think I had a hit rate of about around 8%-10% approximately.

This could result in an addition of approximately 58,000~ additional pages to that queue. Eventually, each and every single one of these pages will be under this WikiProject anyway. This would expedite matters, to get them into the pipeline for evaluation and review, rather than sitting idle and lost until someone happens across them. An added benefit is the BLP tagging--every little bit of extra protection, weak as it may be, helps out our BLP subjects. Please share your thoughts on the idea here or on the bot request at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Rootology Bot 2]. Thanks! rootology (C)(T) 23:18, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

If you are going to look for biographical articles that don't have WPBiography on their talk pages, no need to limit yourself to living people. You could check all the articles under Category:Births by year and Category:Deaths by year, and putting "living=no" if they have a death year, and leaving those without a death year and no "living people" tag for humans to check. This won't, of course, pick up biographical articles that lack the "living person" tag and lack birth and death year categories, but it would be a bit more comprehensive than your proposal. Which I'm now going to read in case there is a reason you are limiting yourself t those in category "living people". Carcharoth (talk) 01:20, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Caitlin Hill at AfD

Caitlin Hill, a minor YouTube celebrity is up for AfD. You can view the discussion here. TwentiethApril1986 (want to talk?) 04:44, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

List of drag queens

The article List of drag queens, which has existed since 2005, was deleted after three hours at AFD citing WP:BLP concerns. I have opened a DRV and am notifying you as an associated Wikiproject. Otto4711 (talk) 19:14, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

Proposed category deletion of Category:Living people

A deletion discussion of Category:Living people has started: people here might want to put their views. Dsp13 (talk) 13:48, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

changes to my page

See Robert Dafford

Hello. Let me take the opportunity to say how much I enjoy your service.

I need to call attention to a problem.

An editor has rewritten my entry, and gotten several things wrong. One LARGE mistake- I was NOT born in Arkansas. I was born on a train traveling to a Naval station in Charleston, South Carolina. I 'arrived' a day early, and we were taken to a hospital in Chattanooga Tenn., which is listed as my place of birth. Where did you get Arkansas?

The work I do, which has kept me in a rather obscure status for an entire lifetime, has been dedicated to the idea that we need to save our small historic collections of buildings in our old downtowns. There are particularly intereseting remnants in the Ohio River Valley. They are being destroyed at an alarming rate, accelerated by the recent big-box fast-food 'post modern' strip mall development.

I try to draw attention to these treasures we are losing by the day. To add to the efforts to re-use them, to repopulate and re-energize our historic downntowns. THis political motivation is earnest, and has certainly not been any kind of a boost to my career promoting myself in our celebrity-driven arts economy.

The original entry was posted by my daughter, Miriam Dafford, artist, Los Angeles, and subsequently added and edited by her with further information from me. ALL information given was true, and not, as you claimed, promarily self promotion.

We would like to comply with your request to add whatever verification you need added to the statements made about my career and work, but I am not sure what form of 'proof' you need from us to do so. The sizes, locations, and contents of all the projects listed were acurate.

The murals on the Cincinnati riverfront are on the Covington side of the river, but they certainly face downtown Cinn. They were funded equally by Cincinati and Covington resources, but few people in America know where Covington is. Few enough know where Cincinnati is. What kind of verification do you need? Qutes from newspapers? Downtown Development Directors? Main Street Directors in each locations? Photographs? Miriam thought that there was already way too much information. The article only lists a highlight of the over 350 mural projects we've worked on.

I am currently working on location in Point Pleasant West Virginia on a 6 year, 1,000 foot long pre-revolutionary war mural project, have two of my main associate artists working on a 160 ft painting of the historic unions of Portsmouth, Ohio, and an 80 ft painting about the scenic byways on the Ohio R. from Steubenville, Oh to PAducah Ky. I dont have much time for this work you require of me, and there certainly isn't money to hire someone to do it for us. I looked over the pages of instruction for the physical process to edit, and it is beyond my ability and certainly time constaints.. It takes all the time I have to produce the works themselves.

PLease let us know what you require. And can you PLEASE return, or post, or whatever, the final original artical as it had all the information we would need to elucidate for you. It would further cost us to reconstruct what had been written before. As I understand it, the editing was done on the page itself, not composed somewhere else. So it no longer exists in any of our hands.

Thank you, and let me say againI enjoy your service.

Robert Dafford75.108.75.173 (talk) 15:14, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Hi. You have raised quite a few issues there, but I will try to give you a complete answer. I have had no prior experience with your article so I am unsure what other editors have said to you. I will therefore start with the basics.

Wikipedia has three core policies that all articles must abide by to be included here. They must contain only verifiable information with no original research and they must be written from a neutral point of view. One of the key concepts of Wikipedia is that we must present verifiable facts, not truth. While you may know that something is true, it only becomes a verifiable fact when it is published by a reliable source.

In addition to the three key policies, biography articles must also conform to our policy on biographies of living persons.

We generally discourage people writing articles about themselves or someone they know as they often find it difficult to remain neutral (See our guidance on autobiographies and conflicts of interest for more information).

The statement that you were born in Arkansas was added by an anonymous editor. I have removed the claim from the article as it has no source to support it.

The way forward for this article is for an independent editor to review it and, if necessary, rewrite it so that it conforms to our key policies. The quality and size of the resulting article will depend to a large extent on the quality and abundance of reliable sources that mention you or your work. Are you aware of any independent sources that have covered you or your work? For example, has your work been covered in arts journals, newspapers or magazines? Has anyone written a book about you?

On a separate note, you mentioned that you would like the text of a previous version of the article. Each article on Wikipedia has a change history which lists all the changes to the article since it was created. The history of the Robert Dafford article can be found through this link. The history of the article dates back to 25 December 2006 and you can open any version of the article you like back to this date. If you want a version before 25 December 2006 an administrator may be willing to check the article's deletion log and retrieve a previous version for your personal use.

I hope this answers your questions, but please ask again if there is anything else that you need to know. Regards. Road Wizard (talk) 18:25, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

spouses

A series of articles was written about the spouses of various Polish noblemen. Based on the very sparse information give there, & the equally sparse information in the Polish Wikipedia, they probably cannot stand on their own. (Personally, I am usually reluctant to invoke NOT#INHERITED, but it does seem to fit for these.) they were prodded. As reviewing I decided to redirect them when possible rather than delete. I did this for Zofia Zamoyska; but others among them were married successively to two different noblemen such as Róża Potocka, Konstancja Potocka & Maria Zofia Sieniawska. There's no way I know of for doing an appropriate redirect in this circumstance, unlike, say, when the same man had several spouses not themselves significant. QA proper database should have such a way, but we don't seem to. I have therefore considered this a situation not provided for, and appropriate for IAR, and left the articles,though I anticipate some trouble defending them. This isn't unique, and has occasionally arisen in other contexts also. How shall we handle this?DGG (talk) 22:26, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Maybe redirect to noble family person is hailing from (e.g Potocki) would be an option in cases like this?M0RD00R (talk) 22:30, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea, although being an inclusionist and per "not paper", I'd be content to leave them as they are.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 05:58, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Paper or not paper, having two husbands is not really encyclopedia worthy achievement. M0RD00R (talk) 06:12, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

My own feeling has long been the the spouse of noblemen should properly have their own articles, for completeness, lack of bias, and consistency, even if not known for something notable. I cannot see how it does any harm, and it makes for more efficient cross-referencing. DGG (talk) 00:01, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Paul Kenny (author)

Please read my comment there [2]. I hope someone can sort things out.Zigzig20s (talk) 12:58, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Frederick III, German Emperor Peer review

I'm not sure where to put this, but there is an external peer review taking place of Frederick III, German Emperor which is within this project. If you'd like to contribute please see the peer review page here. Thanks. --Banime (talk) 12:51, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Andrew Sachs

Considering the amount of airspace and printspace this is currently getting, I just wanted to highlight the relatively poor state of this article to the project members here. It's also the subject of repeated vandalism so those interested may want to keep an eye on it. I've already had one user blocked from editing. Parrot of Doom (talk) 14:55, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Really bad free images

Is there ever a point at which a free license photograph of a person can be deemed so bad, that it would be preferable to use a fair use image or no image at all? I know this issue has probably come up before, but I can't seem to find the previous discussions. Kaldari (talk) 16:28, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

The only exception to the free image rule that I am aware of is where the free image is not an accurate representation of the individual's appearance during their period of notability. For example, if we have an article about an athlete who won some events at the age of 20 and the only free image shows them at age 80, a strong argument can be made for use of a non-free image that shows their appearance at age 20. See WP:NONFREE#Unacceptable use (Images #12).

However I am far from an expert on Fair use images and other exceptions may exist of which I am not aware. Road Wizard (talk) 18:42, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Phil Hartman free-use image

Hi, I'm currently working on Phil Hartman's article. I thought I may as well ask, as my other attempts have failed, but does anyone have, our knows someone who has, or can find a free-use image of Phil Hartman? It would be really great if one could be found. Thanks. Gran² 14:45, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

A-class reviews

Given Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Biography/Archive/April_2008#Should_A-Class_review_go.3F, is there any chance this process can be reactivated? In particular, the James Morris III review was listed there before the "freeze" and should be closed and resolved one way or the other. Gimmetrow 16:44, 31 October 2008 (UTC)