Template talk:Lifetime

Lifetime vs Lived

Why do we want this which duplicates template:lived? --Phil | Talk 09:39, Mar 1, 2005 (UTC)

It's easier to use (see below). -- User:Docu

Mini controversy

Alternative for Jean Baptiste Audebert (born in 1759, died in the year 1800):

• {{subst:lifetime|1759|1800|Audebert, Jean Baptiste}}

There are two main reasons for requiring the former usage such that this template is left as a template and not substituted. The first is that it provides potential for expansion of its functions in the future, if any reason is found to add additional biographical formatted data at the foot of all biographical articles. The second is a corollary, in that if all biographical articles have this template, then that is an easy way to index into the set of biographical articles via the 'What links here' feature. There is no way to access this set at the moment, other than indirectly through Category:People. There is a third trivial reason that it's shorter so there's less chance of cocking up the two category invocations. User:Noisy | Talk 19:27, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

The reasons for substing it are explained here, if you want to stop this being subst:d then I suggest you take it up there, as few monitor these pages. Martin 20:40, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Defaults now available

A few adjustments to the template now allow for generation of default categories:

• blank birth year: results in Category:Year of birth unknown
• blank death year: results in Category:Living people

Name sort key from the 3rd parameter will also be included in these cases.

Existing usage of this template should not be affected. Dl2000 03:34, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Problems

• note: i posted earlier on the village pump before i realised this page existed..

Hi, this template is causing me some difficulties. It works fine when years are entered, but when one or both of the years aren't entered it defaults to Category:Year of birth unknown and Category:Living people, as you know. For the former, this is unhelpful because the majority of articles without birthdates are of people where the birthdate could be found, just hasn't been yet - the "unknown" category is supposed to be for those people whose birthdates have been obscured by bad record-keeping or the sands of time, or is disputed by historians or might never be found. I know this might seem like a pedantic complaint, but one of the main things I busy myself with here is going through the year of birth missing category trying to fill in the dates, so I started trying to keep these two categories separate, a task which isn't helped by this template. In the latter case, the default is even less helpful, since it may result in people dead hundreds of years but with no listed deathdate being categorised as living people. I propose that both default instead to the Category:Year of birth missing and Category:Year of death missing categories, which play the part of some kind of triage. Alas I have no idea how to go about this. How does anyone else view this matter, and could it be changed? Jdcooper 18:44, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Here is how you would do it:

{{{1{{{1|}}}|[[Category:{{{1}}} births|{{{3}}}]]}}} {{Ifndef|{{{1}}}|[[Category:Year of birth unknown|{{{3}}}]]}} {{{2{{{2|}}}|[[Category:{{{2}}} deaths|{{{3}}}]]}}} {{Ifndef|{{{2}}}|[[Category:Living people|{{{3}}}]]}}

{{{1{{{1|}}}|[[Category:{{{1}}} births|{{{3}}}]]}}} {{Ifndef|{{{1}}}|[[Category:Year of birth missing|{{{3}}}]]}} {{{2{{{2|}}}|[[Category:{{{2}}} deaths|{{{3}}}]]}}} {{Ifndef|{{{2}}}|[[Category:Year of death missing|{{{3}}}]]}}

--Splarka (rant) 02:03, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Right. So would i just paste the second box onto the Template: namespace? Jdcooper 19:21, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

I have reverted to the original version, because most of the current usage is predicated on the way it used to be, therefore changing the layout would involve revisiting all usages to check that they were correct. Noisy | Talk 12:49, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

So how exactly do you address the problems I detailed? With my edits, if no dates were listed for someone without researched life-dates the worst that would happen would be that the "missing" category were used, which would be harmless. Under the current edits, if no dates were listed it may list 18th century people as Living people, and would list currently living people as Year of birth unknown, which are serious factual errors. The vast majority of usages of this tag are incorrect, placed on articles where these errors would subsequently arise. Furthermore, not using my edit would involve revisiting all usages to remove them entirely, because they are not used appropriately. Please respond soon, or I will revert back, because we cannot have factual errors on wikipedia. Jdcooper 17:02, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

I would concur with reverting the unfilled birth year to the "missing" category. If the birth year was truly unknown, this should be handled manually after some research effort is documented.

But defaulting to the "missing" death year introduces other factual problems. See the "How to use" section on this talk page - it currently indicates that living persons are represented by leaving the death year blank. To categorise living people as "Year of death missing" would imply they are dead, introducing a serious factual error on the other side.

The only other default death category that might be considered would be Category:Possibly living people, although that would likely bring a new set of problems.

Therefore we need a consensus whether this template should be used for deceased people only, or for both living and dead people. That will determine the default death year category setup.

Dl2000 18:05, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Using it only for deceased people would solve the problems, theoretically, as you say otherwise either way there could be factual errors (though the Possibly living people alternative seems even better, perhaps). However, the problem in the first place comes from the fact that people have used the template wrongly without reading the instructions and results, how could we make sure that the template is only used on articles about dead people? Jdcooper 18:20, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

DEFAULTSORT magic word

A great new feature's been added to Wikipedia's software. As mentioned at Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2007-01-02/Technology report, we can now change the default sort key for a page like so: {{DEFAULTSORT:Washington, George}}. If this were in George Washington then all categories that didn't explicitly override it with their own sort key would put this article under "W". How about adding this to this template, since it seems like something that would be useful to universally apply to biographical articles? It's a pity this template gets substed so much or this would allow us to do a massive categorization cleanup in one fell swoop, but at least future articles will be handled more easily. Bryan 05:56, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Not working correctly! If there is no 3rd parameter given, it sorts it to "{". Also it overrides any preexisting DEFAULTSORT declaration Caerwine Caer’s whines 08:10, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Hrm. I see why my original testing missed this, I was passing a blank third parameter instead of no parameter at all. But I've now spent half an hour messing around with every permutation of parser function I can think of and can't get it to correctly omit the defaultsort under that condition so I'm going to revert myself for now and go in search of more experienced templatesmiths than myself (I posed the question here). As for overriding previous defaultsorts, is there a situation where this is a problem? I'm unable to think of any offhand, but haven't spent a lot of time pondering it. Bryan 09:56, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

It could be if someone wasn't expecting that behavior and was using a different key for an explicit DEFAULTSORT. But I can't see why one would want to use different keys or how such a situation could be detectable. Caerwine Caer’s whines 10:50, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Categorization to Category:Year of birth unknown removed

I commented in the edit summary that this is a maintenance template, however, Jdcooper reminded me that this is in fact not the case (as would be with Category:Year of birth missing). I still nevertheless assert that the removal should stand as it would otherwise incorrectly categorize many individuals who should rather be placed in the missing category, the missing and unknown categories being mutually exclusive. __meco 21:38, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

• So now, if someone used this template without a year of birth stated, what cats would be generated? (Apologies, but as I said my computing skills are not hot) Jdcooper 14:51, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
  • If you try out the template example in the top of this page: {{lifetime||1374|Milic, Jan}} and preview the page, when you look to the bottom of the page you'll see only the year of death category showing. __meco 19:15, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
    • I see. In that case I am completely in support of your solution. I raised that issue myself a while back, and no-one seemed to appreciate the problem. Jdcooper 20:07, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Possibly living people ?

How would we use Lifetime to populate Category:Possibly living people ? GrahamHardy (talk) 22:04, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

What for?

What's the point of using this template? Does it make editing easier? No, people have to remember how to use yet another template. Does it make Wikipedia friendlier? No, newbies don't understand what's that thingie for. it saves a copule keystrokes? Then subst it! But keeping it in articles makes no sense, IMHO. MaxSem^{(Han shot first!)} 15:11, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

• {{Lived}} does that job. Maybe you are right. -- Magioladitis (talk) 16:27, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Agree with MaxSem, having this template sitting atop the categories in an article serves no purpose whatsoever. --Closedmouth (talk) 14:20, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Many users seem to use it. In fact, I have notices users replacing defaultsort by lifetime. If you would like, you can nominate it for discussion. -- Magioladitis (talk) 14:37, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

I also agree with MaxSem. Categorising articles is an easy thing to do as a new editor and this makes it harder for people to understand as the template gives no indication as to what the numbers or anything are for, or even that it is for categorisation. This is especially true if just BD is used. All it is doing is creating a dependence on a template for something that shouldn't. Use of this template should be avoided and people should definitely not be going round just converting articles to use it. mattbr 14:30, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

We have two options. Delete it or give instructions to avoid it. Some users are replacing categories with this template and some users do the opposite. -- Magioladitis (talk) 17:02, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

This should probably go to TfD for further discussion. ----— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 17:20, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

OK. But let's prepare for a LONG discussion there. -- Magioladitis (talk) 08:21, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't see what the problem is, it's not very difficult to understand how to use the template and it's much more efficient to use in biographical articles than defaultsort is. For An Angel (talk) 13:56, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

AWB

Why does AWB replaces this tpl with categories?--Kozuch (talk) 12:56, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

I think this is better taken to WP:AWB. I had not used AWB in a while, so I had to do an update and look at this. It does replace lifetime with the birth and death cat, but does not add DEFAULTSORT. --— Gadget850 (Ed)talk 13:09, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Check Wikipedia_talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Bugs. The problem is already reported twice. It's a AWB discussion. -- Magioladitis (talk) 13:11, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Please stop

Please stop massively substituting this overly and unnecessarily complex template (as seen shere) for the impler code that is used on most biographical articles. Even editors such as myself who have edited here for years can't make sense of this template. Please stop. Badagnani (talk) 17:48, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Please stop. Badagnani (talk) 18:42, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

I concur with Badagnani. Is there any reason why category links and default sort have to be replaced by this template? I'm going to revert the changes. -- Taku (talk) 21:20, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

It's a question of the huge bandwidth all of this is taking. I wish we had consensus before the change had been done, in bot-like fashion (or is it a bot?). We really should always try to keep our code as simple as possible for new (and old) users to figure out and use on a regular basis. Badagnani (talk) 21:26, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

I already asked for MaxSem, who is an administrator, to nominate this template for deletion. -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:49, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree that this template is not a good idea, and have asked the editor who adds them to stop. Rettetast (talk) 21:27, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Can you go for an AfD? -- Magioladitis (talk) 21:33, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree 100%. I thank the creators / etc. for their intentions but please, you need consensus before mass changes like this. I also think it's much harder to work with this template than with the three others and it makes it impossible to order categories as I have before. I'd also like to see consensus that mass rollback on this is permissible. gren グレン 22:12, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

I am starting rollbacking because of all the errors in the edits. Rettetast (talk) 22:16, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Better before involving in edit wars let's bring it to Afd. I can't do it because the article is protected. -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:19, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

I have just created a TfD which is currently at the top of: Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion/Log/2008_May_22#May_22. Your input is appreciated. gren グレン 22:21, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Some of the above mentioned bot-like mass-changes (one edit per second) are also done plain wrong, for instance this: [1], or even replacing a correct DEFAULTSORT with a new "automatically generated" wrong one:[2]. Oceanh (talk) 23:15, 22 May 2008 (UTC).

The same user, Archanamiya, ignored my requests to stop putting special characters in the template. If this editor is using a bot, I would like to ask: Is he/she allowed to? -- Magioladitis (talk) 00:39, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Substitution?

The TfD is going to be keep for no consensus. So, should we go about getting a bot to do the substitution work for this? I never minded the template as a means to easily add categories. I minded pages with categories and sort keys being arbitrarily changed into this template (sort of like arbitrary British English <-> American English switches). How should we precede on that end?

The problem with this, though, is that this is what a substitution looks like (ignoring the TfD|inline). I think it's possible to rework the template to make substitutions look as they should... gren グレン 20:03, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

It's horrible. Keep WP the way it was meant to be: as transparent and easily usable/learnable as possible. If some new editor (or even an old editor) finds that code on a page and can't figure it out for the life of him/her, that would not be beneficial to our project. Badagnani (talk) 20:04, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

We certainly have to create instructions who disallow the subtitution of existing categories with Lifetime, at least in many cases. -- 20:39, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

It is possible to structure templates so they subst cleanly using lots of subst tags inside includeonly tags, but it's not usually worth the effort. If you ever request a bot to remove {{lifetime}} in some articles, don't use the terminology "substitution" or anything that implies "subst:". It's really more a case of "replacement" if you change the template to a defaultsort and two categories. Gimmetrow 22:09, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

BIRTH-DEATH-SORT

In order to make things simpler i nominated the old redirection BIRTH-DEATH-SORT for deletion. Check Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion#Template:BIRTH-DEATH-SORT and please express your opinion. I think BD is enough as a redirect. -- Magioladitis (talk) 23:15, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Removing defaultsort from Lifetime

Discussion held in Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2008 May 22#Template:Lifetime showed that many editors believe that defaultsort has to move out from Lifetime. Do you support this modification? I support it. -- Magioladitis (talk) 00:11, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

No, it showed that the majority of editors believed the template is fine the way it is, and only the most vocal people disagreed. For An Angel (talk) 02:11, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Lifetime vs YOB and YOD categories

I suggest we add this in the template documentation. "If both born and death categories exist, lifetime should not be used". Replacing these two categories with lifetime is not consider as a constructive contribution. -- Magioladitis (talk) 00:13, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

I disagree, I believe it is constructive because it simplifies the wiki text, the same way we used to use the defaultsort template to simplify the sorting of categories. Now with the new lifetime template it makes it even simpler. That's a good thing. For An Angel (talk) 02:16, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Optional substitution now supported

This template now supports optional substitution - an explanation of how to do this is in the documentation. This is the first step in hopefully making this a subst-only template. --- RockMFR 19:49, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

I am with you in that! -- Magioladitis (talk) 19:53, 28 June 2008 (UTC)