Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography/Archive 41

Call for reassessment

Is Talk:Francisco M. Carreón really a C-Class and High article? Is my previous assessment to the article good, so far?--JL 09 _^q?c 13:07, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

It's a solid Start class article in my opinion. I think it needs to be fleshed out more before it can be bumped up to a C. In addition it relies heavily on one source, with the remaining two appearing to be University lecture notes from the same professor. Jezebel'sPonyo^shhh 14:06, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

request for article review

Hello all,

I've started a discussion on the biography article for Jody Turner about getting it reviewed for subjectivity. I just wanted to re-iterate here that I'd like to have someone review the article for accuracy and objectivity. Thanks.

Groundfloor711 (talk) 01:33, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Can I please suggest a task force?

Can I request a task force,please,within your group to have a team of people who oversee insertion of images of people - especially living people - where biographical subjects have, on their talk page, a request for a picture? This group could also ensure that only pictures in the public domain,i.e. not those that are copyright, are used for this purpose. Many thanks, ACEOREVIVED (talk) 22:48, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Bob Hope

A little help would be appreciated; I don't want to edit war, but I do believe these edits, while surely good-faith [1], [2], [3], [4] introduce an event that was not of major import, either nationally or to Hope's biography, and of questionable merit for inclusion in the article. Partially sourced, overall tone is personal/essay. Any help/suggestions will be appreciated. Thanks, JNW (talk) 03:12, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

I've reverted the content as unsourced. You can generally post your objections to edits on the article talk page. Thanks. Wildhartlivie (talk) 03:28, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Much appreciated--I rather expect this will continue. You are right re: the article talk page. I chose this page as a venue thinking that it would have a better chance of being noticed. JNW (talk) 03:32, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

There are a few of us who have that article watchlisted, so it would get noticed. You can also use the Actor project. We catch the notes there are well. Wildhartlivie (talk) 04:11, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Good advice, which I'll follow if need be. Thanks, JNW (talk) 04:51, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Husband and wife

This issue doesn't appear to be covered explicitly by any policy or guideline, so I thought I'd ask about it here. I am preparing to write a biography about a woman who clearly meets the notability standards. Her husband is frequently mentioned in reliable third party sources, but I'd estimate that he is just below the threshold of notability because there's never been a profile on him alone. As individuals their notability derives from a shared involvement in the same field of endeavor, and their activities have considerable overlap. I figure his material might take a short section. Another option is that there are articles about actual married couples:Category:Married couples. However they are rarely referred to together, as in "John and Jane Smith" (thought there are a few such references). Any thoughts on the best way to proceed?   Will Beback  talk  03:57, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

My not-very-profound suggestion, given the situation you describe, is to write her article first and then consider whether there is enough separate material to make him notable. Discounting fictional pairs like Castor and Pollux, real people, if notable at all, are usually notable as individuals; from what you say, she is: therefore she, at least, should have an article under her name. Andrew Dalby 14:24, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

You can always make a separate section about the husband and create a redirect there. -- Magioladitis (talk) 17:13, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

That would be my instinct - start with that and spin off a separate article if it seems justified. Rd232 ^talk 17:48, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Writing on polymaths

What would be the correct way to structure an article on a person who made lasting, distinct contributions to architecture and ethnography and lesser contributions to geology, music, endineering etc.? Unlike Leonardo or Galileo he lived a very short life, twenty years of active work, and practiced all his arts concurrently. I was thinking of a structure:

Early years - Architecture - Geology and engineering - Poetry, music and ethnography - The last years

with the middle three sections describing the same 20-year period. I suspect that these concurrent sections may confuse the reader; what would you suggest? NVO (talk) 08:45, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Who are we talking about? Hekerui (talk) 09:16, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Lvov. NVO (talk) 13:37, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Would you like Xenobot to lend a hand with the 180k+ unassessed articles?

Please comment here. –xeno^talk 22:42, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm about two-thirds of the way through the auto-stub task, (set class=stub if there was a {{stub}} template on the article), which will have reduced the unassessed backlog by about 48,000 articles at completion.

The next step would be to inherit classes from other project templates already present on the page. If anyone objects to me proceeding onto an inheritance method, please make your objections known here. If you support the idea, please also visit that link and let me know how you would like me to proceed (i.e. what ruleset to use). –xeno^talk 18:53, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Joel Chandler Harris

I've expanded the Joel Chandler Harris article quite a bit over the past few days, and would appreciate it if anyone would want to help add, subtract, clean up, and/or de-bias it. There is some forthcoming peer-reviewed scholarship to be released on his journalism work sometime this fall, so I have chosen not to make much headway in that section until that's released. The "Other Works" section is a little scrawny too, mostly because I haven't gotten to it yet. BardSeed (talk) 21:42, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Bands

Should {{WPBiography}} be listed on band articles? — Ched :  ?  20:44, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, and tagged with |musician-work-group=yes. PC78 (talk) 20:53, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

I thought we were doing away with this due to the strain on the BLP project and servers and all. Load time and such with too big of a CAT. — Ched :  ?  21:09, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't recall such a discussion. PC78 (talk) 21:10, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

this was all I can find at the moment in project space, I know I've had other conversations, but don't recall the links - I notified several folks of this that I know are involved in BLP areas. If you know anyone who might be able to shed more light, could you let them know? Doesn't matter to me - just hoping to get on the same page here. — Ched :  ?  21:17, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, that discussion about the mainspace category Category:Living people isn't quite the same thing as what you're asking here. That said, the issue has been discussed here in recent times; you might be as well skimming over the most recent archives of this page. Regarding the banner, bands fall under the scope of WP:MUSICIAN which is part of this project and shares this project's banner, hence it is necessary to tag the articles with {{WPBiography|musician-work-group=yes}} and the larger scope of the biography project should be seen as flexible (though not without limits). Whether or not these articles should be tagged with {{BLP}} via the |living= parameter in {{WPBiography}} is another question; that too has been discussed, my understanding being that BLP applies to all articles equally so it's not inappropriate to do so, though it may be better if they were tagged with {{BLP others}} instead (which does not add pages to Category:Biography articles of living people). IMO, while band articles aren't biographies per se, I do regard them as biographical and am inclined to liken them to biographis of multiple people. If I can think on I'll try and throw you a few links to past discussions. PC78 (talk) 21:55, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

There are a few somewhat-related issues here.

1. There are no clear guidelines regarding whether Category:Living people should be used with groups (like bands); as such, the current mix is inconsistent; (there are similar debates regarding whether an article about an event that goes into detail about a specific person qualifies for Category:Living people)
2. By using {{WPBiography}} on the talk page, it makes it more difficult to do a comparison between talk pages and articles when trying to find articles that are not in Category:Living people that should be; in fact, from what we've seen, an unusually high number of band articles are in the list because bands generally use {{WPBiography}} but generally do not use Category:Living people
3. There are no server or technical issues to be worried about; the issues here are content-related, not technical.

--MZMcBride (talk) 22:27, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Can you clarify point #2? A comparison between Category:Living people and {{BLP}} would seem more productive. PC78 (talk) 22:32, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Doesn't WPBio hook {{BLP}}? Same difference? Still, working from talk-page tagged pages to see if they have Cat:Living people seems a little ass-backwards. –xeno^talk 22:37, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

No, because not all transclusions of {{WPBiography}} include {{BLP}}, only articles of living people. PC78 (talk) 22:42, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Right. I knew that but my brain wasn't working =) –xeno^talk 22:53, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

xeno: There are likely still hundreds (possibly thousands) of unaccounted for biographies of living people on Wikipedia that aren't properly categorized in Category:Living people. Do you have a feasible suggestion for finding them? :-) (By the way, K-Ci & JoJo is a pretty good example of the band issue discussed above.) --MZMcBride (talk) 02:03, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes many can be found by searching for "' ' ' (born date) is a/an <nationality> <claim to notability>. Rich Farmbrough, 19:05, 7 October 2009 (UTC).

Here is a list of nearly 8000 articles: maybe 20-30% are people, all match ' ' ' is a/an (American|British|Russian|Spanish|German|French) - none are (were) categorised as living people. I am doing another avenue of attack from category:people. Rich Farmbrough, 04:10, 8 October 2009 (UTC).

Tonnes of false positives in that list... "Late Show with David Letterman is an American tv show..." –xeno^talk 18:55, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

"' ' ' (born" might be better? PC78 (talk) 19:25, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm sure it will be. Rich Farmbrough, 19:28, 8 October 2009 (UTC).

Indeed. As I said maybe 20-30% are people. Suitable for picking out manually and swiftly catagorising, but no good for bot work. Rich Farmbrough, 19:28, 8 October 2009 (UTC).

re MZM : This is both a suggestion, and a question for my ongoing regex tutelage you're providing : isn't it possible to match

\{\{WPBiography.*?living[ ]*=[ ]*yes.*?(!musician-working-group[ ]*=[ ]*yes).*?\}\}

? –xeno^talk 19:30, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

The problem with this approach is that you're focusing on one particular template and one particular subset of pages that use it (musician-working-group). There's an assumption being here that most bios are tagged with {{WPBiography}} and that most bands are using |musician-working-group=yes. For all I know, it could be half of all applicable articles. Or it could be 95%. No real way to know without sampling. The broader point is that while your method may work for these specific pages (though it requires downloading the page text of each talk page and scanning it), it's very likely ultimately a very small subset of all the articles that need to be examined. There are ways to find larger number of articles that aren't in Category:Living people that should be (e..g, looking for pages in ___ births that are not in ___ deaths) or by using the technique described above. Any method has a false positive rate. When I was doing list generation, it was about 33% false positive. It looks like Rich's method has an inverse ratio of 70% false positives. It's pretty difficult to get people to work on lists when over half the entries are just noise.... All of this is a bit off-topic for the original post, though. Ched wants to know what the policy regarding bands or groups is. We really ought to clarify this once and for all and then clean up the current mishmash. --MZMcBride (talk) 14:19, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Just a note: Category:Biographies of multiple people. Rich Farmbrough, 17:32, 9 October 2009 (UTC).

Model biographies?

Can anyone recommend two or three model biographies of current business leaders, to which the authors of PR fluff like this could be pointed as examples of how to do it? JohnCD (talk) 23:13, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

John W. Rogers, Jr. and Buddy Fletcher have both been listed as Good Articles in the last 12 months. Those two are the closest I can find to what I think you're looking for. PC78 (talk) 23:26, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Did I Miss Something?

There is a category, Category:Biography articles needing priority parameter replacement that is populated by “{{WPBiography}}-tagged talk pages have an active |importance= parameter which needs to be changed to |priority=.” I have been taking care of the pages that drop into the category from time to time, no more than five in a day.

There are now more than 56,000 pages in the category and the number is growing. I have looked at five pages to verify that that many could have been lurking waiting to be found. None of the pages has a |importance= parameter and each has a |priority=. Did one of the many programmers and template "experts" screw up again? How quickly will the category be de-populated? JimCubb (talk) 20:00, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Did the same mega-vandal cause Category-class articles to appear in Category:Biography articles without listas parameter? Can the offender be banned?

There have not been any vandals who have managed to screw up 60,000 pages and allowed to continue editing. JimCubb (talk) 20:11, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

I see that the discussion is continuing at Template talk:WPBiography and the issue relates to a glitch in the conversion of the template to Meta code. "Mega-vandal" is perhaps more than a slight exaggeration of the problem. ^_~ Road Wizard (talk) 21:28, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Your comments at the template talk page (where this discussion belongs) were quite enough, Jim. You seriously need to lose the hostility and adopt some good faith and civility. PC78 (talk) 23:09, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Oskar Milosz

The present English article on Milosz overstates the Lithuanian component of Milosz's identity. When I have made attempts to add or change information to the article, a Lithuanian correspondent immediately erases them. He should be banned from editing Wikipedia articles.Palmieri2 (talk) 11:00, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Kanhopatra GA nomination in progress

The Kanhopatra GA nomination is being considered. Your thoughts are welcomed on the GA review page. --Nemonoman (talk) 12:11, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

I believe Mr. Hill drowned, and did not die during knee surgery. 67.52.232.130 (talk) 19:06, 15 October 2009 (UTC)10/15/09

Bio C/E Assistance requested please

The high importance article Aboriginal peoples in Canada needs some copy editing assistance as "the notable people section is very long relative to the other sections of the article". There was a pre-requisite that the lead section images are discussed in article, and the title lends itself to highlight some of the more notable Aboriginal peoples in Canada. Many notable Aboriginal peoples have been cropped from the list format when the section was converted to prose format. How can the section again be cropped without conversion back to list which is eliminated for GA success.Thank you. SriMesh | talk 22:34, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Anne Hathaway (actress) GAR notice

Anne Hathaway (actress) has been nominated for a good article reassessment. 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.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 07:34, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

27 dead people

Ron Stone was the oldest surviving NZ football rep when he died in 2006 aged 93, and was therefore 19 or 20 when he played for NZ in 1933. Annalie Longo was up to 5 years younger when she became New Zealand's youngest full international, playing at age 15, therefore, knocking off 5 years from 1933 (being 1928), and any player making their debut for NZ prior to this must have been over 93 in 2006 and must be deceased!. Verging on WP:OR, and unable to prove it on an individual basis, so do I leave them as Category:living people or tag them as Category:Possibly living people, or is that enough to tag them Category:Year of death missing? Mostly I have no DOB as yet, so cannot use the "born before 1887" rule, and for the most part they would probably have been born between 1890 and 1905--ClubOranje^T 08:17, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Why would you use Category:Year of death missing when you have a source which specifies a death in 2006? The problem you seem to have is a missing birth year, in which case you would tag as Category:Year of birth missing & Category:2006 deaths. Road Wizard (talk) 07:18, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm not concerned with Ron Stone, I'm referring to the 27 other people in this list (sorted by years, anyone who's first match was 1927 or earlier) for whom I have no date of death, only an assumption that they almost certainly are based on the information in Stone's death article.--ClubOranje^T 08:58, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

I would mark them as dead. -- Magioladitis (talk) 10:16, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Boeta Dippenaar

I have recently heard on TV that Boeta Dippenaar has a commercial pilot license. I wanted to start a discussion topic about this in his page itself but couldn't figure out how to. Please advise me on how to do this.

Sardaga (talk) 11:40, 21 October 2009 (UTC) Ska

You go to the article talk page to discuss how to improve the article. The article has two main links on the top, "article" and "discussion". Click "discussion" and then click on "new section" as you did on this page, give it a title in what appears and write a comment and you're done. Hekerui (talk) 13:34, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

I wonder if the Professor has considered self-awareness when we are asleep and dreaming? We appear to be able to make decisions in that state. Also - can it be memories of the past are carried within our DNA? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.165.213.220 (talk) 14:38, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

August Derleth Biography Edits

At the request of the August Derleth Society executive secretary, Kay Price, I am gradually making additions to the existing Wikipedia biography to more fully represent his entire literary output. Edits began a few days ago, and will continue, with citations from original and secondary source material over time. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ian D Campbell (talk • contribs) 03:08, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

GA Sweeps Reassessment of Ollanta Humala

Ollanta Humala has been nominated for a good article reassessment. 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. --Malleus Fatuorum 15:30, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

My name is Vimalkumar Chandrakant Naik.I was born in Ahmedabad in 1954.I was raised in Valod since 1963 upto 1975.My family also belongs to Palvada Samaj.Shri Umedram Lalbhai Desai's biogrphy is wonderful.I do not know wether he belongs to my family tree as one of the forefathersor not.Still I feel proud of him. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.230.149.151 (talk) 00:00, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Dharmachari Subhuti

This article has clearly been put up by a member of a minor religious group trying to promote one of its leaders. Subhuti is not someone of general interest or of notable achievement, and I think the article needs to be removed.

Rudra85 (talk) 21:17, 23 October 2009 (UTC) Rudra85

Peer review for BLP of Khaldoon Al Mubarak

I'm trying to bring the BLP article on Khaldoon Al Mubarak up to GA, I'd appreciate if people have time to help, comments at the current peer review would be most welcome. Rambo's Revenge (talk) 10:40, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Many errors (daugybe klaidu tekste)

pasiziurekit koks baisus vertimas,vienos klaidos tekste?cia verte arba mokyklos nebaiges arba ne lietuvis? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.58.21.56 (talk) 12:44, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

We would prefer you to write in English on the English Wikipedia as most of our editors can't read Lithuanian (me included). Doing an translation through an online tool you appear to be complaining about a translation error from Lithuanian to English. What error do you mean and which article is it on?

Hopefully you will be able to understand this message because otherwise I can't really help you. Road Wizard (talk) 14:12, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Andy Williams

ABOUT ANDY WILLIAMS BIOGRAPHY

During the early 60's I used to watch a radio chat program called "Your Make Believe Ball Room".

As far as I remember, this radio program had chatted the song "Roses and Roses" at least among the top 20, since the program included only the top 20, but it was probably among the top 10.

This song is a version from the Brazilian composer Dorival Caymmi song "Das Rosas".

I think "Roses and Roses" single was a quite big hit by Andy Williams, but it's not included in his Wikipedia biography.

Regards,

Joao Manso

From Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Joao Manso (talk • contribs) 13:23, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for the suggestion but we will need a bit more evidence than a half remembered song from the radio. If you are correct that he made such a song then I am sure it will be added to the article eventually. Road Wizard (talk) 21:09, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Sydney Godolphin

Can anyone varify this statement on the Sydney Godolphin wiki?

"the gift of his late younger brother William"

Cant find any evidence for this gift, or the dates of death for Sir William Godolphin, the brother who raised the regiment.

A —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hatsock (talk • contribs) 20:43, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

It is usually a good idea to link to the article you are talking about as other editors are more likely to comment if they can find what you are talking about. We have four Sidney Godolphin articles but you appear to be talking about Sidney Godolphin (poet). Unfortunately I don't know anything about this individual.

It is often a good idea to try asking on the article talk page before coming to the WikiProject as other editors of the Sidney Godolphin article may know the answer. Road Wizard (talk) 21:05, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

In addition Acoustic Guitar Magazine has interviewed ambeR for a feature article in a article soon to be published (potentially Dec '09). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.70.222.210 (talk) 03:08, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

RE: Timothy D. Bellavia / timothydb (copyright permission)

This note is to clarfiy that I hold the copyright to this biograpghy /company material in regard to the biograpghy of this living person.

I have sent an e-mail from an address associated with the original publication to permissions (at)wikimedia(dot)org and / or a postal message to the Wikimedia Foundation permitting re-use under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License and GNU Free Documentation License.

Thank you for your time.

Timothydb (talk) 12:10, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Timothy D. Bellavia —Preceding unsigned comment added by Timothydb (talk • contribs) 12:09, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

pronunciation

If this is not the right place to make this post, please move it.

Others have pointed out IPA is no readily understood by the casual reader - you do want Wikipedia to be understood by the casual reader don't you.

So my request is that pronunciation guides are written in a form of an Anglicised spelling ( such as easy = ee-zee) In particular I couldn't understand the pronunciation guide for the Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin in his biography. Alternatively you could possibly link to some speech software which can decode IPA (and its Irish variant) and create ( dynamically possibly) the sound of the name or words. thanks Davidseed (talk) 14:50, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne has been nominated for a good article reassessment. 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. Awadewit (talk) 18:39, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

John Means

I am John Means and I like the information posted. However there is more to the story. Dr. Gonzo existed from 1979 to 1999. In those twenty years, I opened for numerous bands including Joe Walsh, Night Ranger, Men At Work, Joan Baez, ABC, Haircut 100, Ambrosia, Blue Oyster Cult, Dave Mason, Ricky Nelson, Jerry Garcia, The Tubes, Pablo Cruise, ZZ Top, Missing Persons, Jefferson Starship, Starship, Greg Khin, Molley Hatchet, Santana, Lionel Hampton, The Doobie Brothers, Michael McDonald, and many more. Comics I've appeared with include Drew Carrey, Rob Schnider, Bobby Slayton, Franklin Ajaye, Gary Schandling, Robin Williams, Ellen Degenerious, Will Durst, and many more. I hope your readers understand how the 80's and 90's were the pinnacle of stand-up comedy. Fixing my hometown is my priority with my wife Peggy. PJ's is named after Peggy and John and Jack & Jo's Steakhouse is named after my parents. Thanx, John —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.52.146.169 (talk) 06:09, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

I'd suggest making posts like this to the article talk page - Talk:John Means, especially since you've not made any notes regarding specifics. Wildhartlivie (talk) 08:53, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Hands of Perón

Am I wrong to think there's no reason to have a separate article about this incident? Shouldn't it be included in the main article about Juan Perón? LargoLarry (talk) 20:16, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Please see the discussion I started at Talk:Hands of Perón. Thanks! LargoLarry (talk) 20:24, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Cato June/archive1

Please feel free to comment at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Cato June/archive1.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 21:21, 31 October 2009 (UTC)