Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography

WikiProject Biography

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Upside-down lists of works

If you spot a list of works, or a list of awards, that is in reverse-chronological order, please either correct it to chronological order as per the manual of style at WP:LOW, or tag it with the template {{MOSLOW}}. This template looks like this:

A helpful tool is User:Whilding87/ListReverser.

FAR

Isaac Asimov 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.

On the assessment of the article about [[Quintus Tullius Cicero

Hi! In the WP Biography assessment template of this article you can read it is a start class article. There is also the following comment:"This article has a deprecated non-null importance-parameter. It should be replaced with priority-". I consider the importance of this article as low, and I have edited the template into "importance-low" and "priority-low", but somehow it has not changed the text of the importance parameter. What has gone wrong? A second question: is priority a synonym to importance in WikiProject Biography assessment template? Tellervo 12:19, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Importance is the depreciated parameter that has been replaced by priority. A bot runs once in the while to replace the contents of the category for templates with an importance parameter with that of priority. Only Top priority will have a visible effect on the template - the other options will just assign the correct category. Priority ratings apply only to workgroups. Because of the scale of this WikiProject it was felt that assessing priority across the whole Project would be too much. (stolen from Template:WPBiography) RHB - Talk 09:39, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Idaho biographies

The Idaho State Historical Society is currently working with us to add articles on notable Idaho residents. These are based on papers in their collection, and will probably not be biographies of living people. See Margaret Cobb Ailshie as an example. Do you want us to add the WikiProject Biography template to these talk pages? If not, how can we notify you of new articles?

I am excited about this collaboration with WikiProject Idaho. They plan on adding some photographs, but the details need to be worked out on that, so the photos meet the Free image criteria. Do you know of any other collaborations with repositories (libraries, museums, historical societies) on Wikipedia? If we can contact them, we won't need to re-invent the wheel. --Robbie Giles 13:14, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Congratulations on getting the input of the historical society! Regarding the tagging of the articles, it probably is a good idea. Whether they're living or not, they qualify as people, and we might have specific work groups which deal with articles of that kind, should there be any need to have additional work on them. Regarding your second point regarding photos, I have a feeling you might want to contact Wikimedia Commons, as they deal exclusively with pictures, and probably know more such details than I do. John Carter 13:25, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

The only collaboration I can think of that is similar to this was the creation of the Russian History WikiProject by Marshall Poe. More information is here. RHB - Talk 22:05, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Creating a useful workgroup scheme

As of now the workgroups of WikiProject Biography serve almost no purpose. A workgroup on a very general topic such as Arts and Entertainment, covering tens of thousands of articles, is of little use. I propose a completely new workgroup scheme, where anyone who wants to write a biography, can find a workgroup that closely matches their interests.

The first step will be to create a new workgroup system. All workgroups will be on occupations or lifestyles, as they are now. We will start with general workgroups, such as Politics & Government and Arts & Entertainment. These workgroups will serve as an umbrella for more specific workgroups. The most specific workgroup should always be used, the more general ones are for articles that don't fall under any of the more specific workgroups' scope.

In WikiProject Mathematics they have implemented a data subpage to help sort their articles more specifically. In the mathematicians workgroup, data can be added to the subpage on the person's birth date and the field of mathematics they were involved in. I propose we implement a similar system.

First of all, we will replace the parameters: a&e-work-group, politician-work-group, etc. with workgroup1, workgroup2, up to workgroup5. The different values for these will be a&e, politician, etc. Then, for the data subpage, we will create a template that can be subst'd that explains the page's role in our project. It will include a hidden comment: "wpbiography" at the end of the message. The bot that will work with all of this will know to start reading there, to avoid any conflicts with WikiProject Mathematics.

For each workgroup there will be certain data that will be useful, and certain data that will not. All workgroups will have the birth-death data though. This is an example for the US House of Representatives workgroup:

Birth-Death: 1809 – 1876

<1>

• • US-State: Iowa

Let's say that this data is for John Doe, a B-Class article. The table would be as follows:

Article	Birth and Death date	Quality	Comments	State
John Doe	1809 – 1876	B	{{Talk:John Doe/Comments}}	Iowa

Our first priority should be creating the workgroup scheme, then worry about the implementation of the data subpages. I will start working on it tomorrow, I welcome everyone's input. Psychless 05:05, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Unless the workgroups do anything as groups, I see no reason for them at all. Please explain how you envision editors working together under the workgroups and what you envision the workgroups doing in the Biography project. If we have no clear idea of what the workgroups are going to be doing, I see no reason to establish them at this time. Awadewit | talk 08:34, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

After thinking through it more carefully, I guess the time it would take to assign specific workgroups to 400,000 articles would be better spent just improving articles. Feel free to ignore my proposal. Psychless 01:31, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Why I removed 11 easy steps

Getting an article to B class is not just following 11 easy steps. Some of the "steps" do not apply to some articles. If someone would like to rewrite them as helpful suggestions that would be fine. The main point is not sounding like you have to do A then B and take it to C and then it's B class. Surprisingly the steps failed to mention research. Here are the steps, for anyone who still wants to access them:

Type a title and click button "Create page"

Title:

1. Create a new page.
   • Use the above input box following Wikipedia's naming conventions or see m:Help:Starting a new page for details
2. Create an outline for the biography article you started:
   • Add {{subst:Biography}} into your article page and save.
   • See m:Help:Template for details and see Wikipedia:How to edit a page to understand the wiki markup used in the template.
3. Consider adding an appropriate infobox.
   • For lists of infoboxes, visit the appropriate work groups (which have them listed) or consult our infobox quick guide
4. Add the Persondata template.
5. Populate your article with images such as obtained from Wikimedia Commons, image list, or by posting a request for an image from other Wikipedians.
6. Add the appropriate categories.
   • Since categories at the bottom of the articles interwiki linked in your article may be appropriate to place in your article, go through each interwiki link in your article and review the categories at the bottom of the linked article for inclusion in your article.
   • For lists of categories, visit the appropriate work groups (which have them listed) or start browsing at Category:People.
7. Confirm that the interwiki links, footnotes, and external (non-wiki) links in your article go where you want them to go.
8. Post an article request at Wikipedia:Requested articles for each broken (red) interwiki link in your article OR remove the double brackets around the broken interwiki link OR write that article as well (these are your only three choices).
9. Publicize your article by ...
   • adding your article to the List of people and by
   • submitting your article for Main Page Did You Know consideration at Template talk:Did you know.
10. Request peer review of your article by following these instructions ONLY after you believe that you completed all the above steps.
11. Relax! and take a break if you reached this point. You deserve it!

If I've been way too bold tell me. Regards, Psychless 14:40, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject Biography 11 easy steps to producing at least a B article has been on the WikiProject Biography page for months and there easily are more than 1,000 article talk page links directly to the 11 easy steps. The many editors who have used the steps have found it very useful. WikiProject Biography concerns the creation, development, and organization of Wikipedia's articles about people and that is what the steps address. Regarding your reasons for deleting the steps, if some of the steps do not apply to some articles, I think we can assume a minimum level of intelligence in the person following the steps such that they would know enough to skip those steps that do not apply to their particular circumstance. In regards to stating the obvious in the steps, if they do not do research, how are they suppose to include a bibliography listed in MLA format as indicated in step 2 of the 11 steps? Getting an article to B class does require the person to include written content in the article, but that is covered elsewhere and would be brought to the editor's attention through step 10. -- Jreferee ^(Talk) 18:36, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, I still don't really like the tone of the 11 easy steps, but I suppose it doesn't hurt that much to have them on there. Psychless 19:13, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

I strongly agree that the tone is a problem. On what authority, for example, does this list of "steps" admonish me so sternly to submit all redlinks to Requested Articles? I don't think that is required by any policy or guideline. Submitting to "Did you know" certainly is not, yet that is included in a list of steps that says (in bold!) not to submit to peer review until the steps are completed. The combination of an authoritarian tone with a focus on superficial or peripheral aspects of article creation comes across as highly offensive to me.

I agree with this. I think that things like images, categories, persondata, etc. should be left until some serious content is established. I dislike the drive to force categories, infoboxes, etc. on articles early. Awadewit | talk 08:51, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

I also think it's inappropriate to call this a set of "steps to producing" an article when it doesn't say anything about researching or writing -- the actual production of the article! -- except by implication. Yes, it's obvious that the article has to be written at some point, but the omission sends a message that this project does not care about content as long as the listed hoops are jumped through.

Perhaps it could be rewritten as a set of suggestions rather than mandates, and renamed something like "Tips for new articles". —Celithemis 21:30, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Celithemis has some good ideas. Indeed, the actual writing of the article should be the focus of the steps, rather than infoboxes, metadata and so forth: right now the steps avoid the issues of writing and research altogether. Here are some possibilities: Investigate the possible sources to use to write the article; try to use more than one source if there is more than one; try to make sure all points of view are represented without undue weight; make sure NPOV has been followed; read it through to make sure it coherently tells the story; proofread for spelling and grammar. And then, if you post the article and feel it can still be expanded, or you know that something significant is missing, consider leaving "working notes" to that effect on the talk page, so either you coming back, or someone else happening by, can resume work. For my own part, I always try to post reasonably complete articles, since if I leave important parts out they will probably never get fixed (that's my experience after more than three years on Wikipedia--articles in out-of-the-way places tend not to grow).

I've seen these steps posted on talk pages of complete, but short, articles I have written and frankly found them to be patronizing, and quite beside the point. Once I asked someone why an obscure Renaissance composer got a "start class" assessment and my reply was to read these steps, when it was obvious the assessor simply didn't know anything about either the topic or the extremely sparse sources from which it was written.

Kudos to The Psychless for initiating a bit of reform here: it's already doing some good. Cheers, Antandrus (talk) 22:40, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

It's just Psychless now :). Anyways, I'll try to work more on possibly rewriting this, and working on the workgroup scheme once I start feeling better. Not really going to work on workgroup reform while I'm sick. Thanks for everyone that's been agreeing with me on this issue though. Here's how we could possibly make it work:

I agree wholeheartedly that the suggestions for how to write an article should focus on research and writing. They should outline what kinds of sources should be used, how to find those sources, and some possible layouts for a page (with links to FAs, perhaps). Awadewit | talk 08:51, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

==Suggestions on how to write better biographies==

Writing an excellent wikipedia article is a time-consuming, frustrating, wonderful and ultimately very rewarding experience. You will learn much that you did not know and you will meet many people who share your interests. Here are some suggestions for writing a good biography:

Pick a person that you are interested in but of whom you are not a fan (at least for your first few articles). Fans have a hard time obtaining distance from their subjects and sometimes editors construe criticism of the article as criticism of the subject; it is best to avoid those misunderstandings.

Once you have selected a person on whom to write, go to the library or bookstore and find some reliable biographies. This can be tricky. Popular biographies, while entertaining, are not always the most reliable. For example, Joe Jackson's biography of Joseph Priestley, while fun to read, has far less information and is actually factually incorrect. Robert Schofield's two-volume scholarly biography, while drier, is much more reliable (the fact that it was published by an academic press and has extensive footnotes were helpful clues). No wants the Priestley article to say that he invented the eraser when in fact he only promoted its use in a book he wrote!

Some people have a treasure trove of material published on them, like Albert Einstein. The problem to be overcome there is to determine the scholarly consensus. You will have to read many scholarly biographies; your article will present the material that scholars agree on and any important divergent theories regarding the person's life. In the case of Einstein, there is no agreement on exactly what his religious beliefs were, for example. Other figures have almost nothing written on them, such as Mary Martha Sherwood. In those cases, you must draw from all of the sources available, such as histories of the period, articles on topics tangentially related to the subject and so on; the article on Sherwood, for example, uses for one of its sources an article that is primarily about John Ruskin's autobiography. Finding the information for such articles will be the most difficult part of the process. It is also especially important identify your sources in the text of the article if they are primary sources such as an autobiography (again, see Sherwood for an example).

Once you have completed your research, which will take weeks or months, depending on the amount of material you have to read and how much help you have from other editors, you can begin writing. Some editors like to write a fairly complete draft of the article before posting it to wikipedia, either on a user subpage or on their computer; others like the give and take of editing in real time. Both methods are actively practiced on wikipedia and have their benefits and drawbacks. A highly trafficked page would probably benefit from a slow change rather than a brand-new article over night while few people would get their hackles up over a low-traffic page being suddenly improved.

The structure of a biography page varies widely for the type of figure you are writing about. Most pages are structured chronologically, although some contain sections after the "life", such as an analysis of an artist's works after the life. One of the best ways to see the range of possibilities is to spend some time looking at good biography articles. Here is a list:

• Johannes Kepler - famous 17th century scientist - deals well with an abundance of sources
• Harriet Arbuthnot - diarist from the early 19th century - deals well with the problem of few sources
• George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore - 17th century colonizer - deals with the problem of few sources
• Charles Darwin - discoverer of evolution - deals well with an abundance of sources and controversial issues
• Jake Gyllenhaal - actor - deals well with the problem of sourcing articles about contemporary people
• Jenna Jameson - pornstar - deals well with the problem of sourcing articles about contemporary people and a potentially controversial article

Once you have decided, roughly, how to structure your article and what material to include, you can begin writing. At this stage, it might be a good idea to quickly glance at wikipedia's manual of style. While this can be daunting, just look at the major pages so that you know how to format links, what to link and most especially, what information needs a citation. It will save you many headaches down the road. Now that you know the basic wiki-rules and what you want to say about your subject, start writing!

When you and/or the other editors working on the article believe that the article has reached the point that it could benefit from the input of outside readers, post it at the biography project's peer review. There you will receive feedback from editors uninvolved in the article who will provide a pair of fresh eyes. Usually, editors post their articles when they have reached a rating of "B" or higher. If you are interested in submitting you article for review through any of wikipedia's rating systems, such as Good Article (GAC) or Featured Article (FAC), it is a good idea to have uninvolved editors read your work first. It is necessary to have an external peer review before submitting an article to FAC.

Awadewit | talk 08:51, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

===WikiProject Biography 11 easy steps to producing at least a B article=== This section header is kept since many internal links still point to it. Please use the new suggestions.

(end example) Regards, Psychless 00:00, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Please feel free to edit my example - let's try to find something we can all agree to. Awadewit | talk 21:40, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

The 11 steps are more about the peripherals for a biography (Persondata template, infobox, suggested headings, use of categories, publicity, etc.) rather than writing better biographies. The actual writing of the article should not be the focus of the 11 steps since writing is covered by many, many other areas of Wikipedia. A significant number new users just put alot of text in a new biography. The 11 steps are more to give them ideas as to how most other biographies are structured and how they can generate the interest of other editors in their article. Maybe the title should be something like WikiProject Biography 11 easy steps towards producing at least a B article. As for the tone, I don't think people are reading it as WikiProject Biography 11 required steps to producing at least a B article. The steps even call them "helpful tips!" at the top. The 11 steps might not belong on the Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography main page. I wouldn't oppose moving them to a subpage so long as the links all still work. -- Jreferee ^(Talk) 01:02, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Of course people are reading it as a required set of steps; it says it is, in so many words. "Request peer review of your article by following these instructions ONLY after you believe that you completed all the above steps." And "these are your only three choices." Changing the word "to" to "towards" in the heading is not going to help, and moving it to a subpage will only hide the problem. —Celithemis 19:51, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Celithemis - the title says it all ("11 easy steps to producing at least a B article"). I would also dispute the "easy" part - people should understand that writing an article is hard work - it is not "easy". I think we should discuss writing and research here because wikipedia's discussion of those topics is spread throughout so many pages that editors don't read them. A concise emphasis on what is important for a page would be beneficial for the project. The primary goal of the project should be to produce quality biography articles, not "generate interest" in them. Awadewit | talk 21:39, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

As the primary author of about 150 biographies on Wikipedia, and every last one of them based on research, I far prefer Awadewit's discursive and honest approach over the mindlessness of "11 easy steps." In fact, what we want is consideration, judgment, and thought and not factory-built houses of the dead. I can, and will with the least provocation, rail at specific missteps of the "11 easy mistakes" (e.g. biodata? that's a -bot's favorite, not an author's; infobox? this is because human lives always have the same set of important facts? peer review? Wikipedia is peer review), but the chief mistake is mistaking process and regularity for quality. One cannot automate quality. One can rarely even have an absolute prohibition on a given impropriety, and therefore it is utterly foolish to believe that there can be an absolute process.

Additionally, the naive author thinks this is Wikipedia house style. It is not.

Additionally, authors of bad articles will defend theirs by swearing that they followed the 11 steps...look at those boxes and templates!...and therefore the article is guaranteed good and useful.

Simply put, an encyclopedist offers a thesis and makes sense of the chaos of a life, and "sense" is going to be an authorial and editorial decision. The organizing principle is going to differ from life to life, person to person, and all details will reflect our authors. Geogre 13:51, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Amen. Well, I've tried to make the 11 steps at least moderately more sane. Moreschi ^Talk 14:24, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Am I allowed to delate?

This may be the wrong place but I am relativly new to wikipedia. This page, Francis Dixon, is truly awful and I belive no one cares about it. Could you do the correct thing for the project and delate it? Tjnewell 20:28, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

I've seen worse, but you can list the article at Article for Deletion under concerns of lack of WP:NOTE. No, you are not personally allowed to delete articles, nor can we -- that's an admin power. Articles can be speedily deleted if they are obvious vandalism, copyright violation, or something as severely conflicting with the encyclopedia. Otherwise articles may be nominated for deletion and then discussed; after consensus, it may or may not be deleted. María (críticame) 20:41, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Barack Obama FAR

Barack Obama 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) 20:36, 8 July 2007 (UTC)