Template talk:WikiProject Biography/Archive 3

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

Archive 5

Archive 6

NB. Several displays of templates on this page have been inactivated using 'nowiki' tags to prevent this page appearing in categories. See the page history, specifically the archived version here for an idea of what the templates looked like, though subsequent changes to the template will also be shown. Carcharoth 22:14, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Activepol

No offense to anyone, but... the activepol box is ugly. Why isn't this in a separate box like everything else? --Random832 04:21, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree it is a little ugly. We defiantly need the functionality on this template, and there is a seperate tempate: {{Activepolitician}} which looks like this

This page is about an active politician who is running for office, is in office and campaigning for re-election, or is involved in some political conflict or controversy.

Because of this, this article is at risk of biased editing, public relations manipulation, talk-page trolling, and simple vandalism.

Use only on talk pages, in conjunction with {{WPBiography|living=yes}} or {{blp}}.

Danski14 01:22, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

That one's very big. If we're to change it I'd prefer to just move the existing banner outside the main banner so it looks seperate. Is that what folks want? --kingboyk 18:21, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Separate is fine. We don't want banners taking over, so the content should only be about three lines. We also might want it to appear above the BLP template. -- Jreferee 20:07, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

BLP has priority, as that is a very serious warning about policy. This one is more of a guidance message. --kingboyk 21:42, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

OK, that's done:

{{WPBiography|activepol=yes|living=yes|class=NA}} {{WPBiography|activepol=yes|living=yes|class=NA}} {{WPBiography|activepol=yes|class=NA}} {{WPBiography|activepol=yes|class=NA}}

I'll do the new workgroup next, but as I'm getting tired I can't guarantee it will be finished tonight. --kingboyk 00:00, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I wanted to do a bot run deprecating most of the {{Activepolitician}} templates, but so far they've all got a parameter describing why the page is tagged. Please see Template_talk:Activepolitician#Bot_run. Thoughts? --kingboyk 17:02, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I would think that an active politician would have to be alive, so the case where activepol is selected but living is not selected does not make sense to me. - cgilbert^{(talk|contribs)} 18:28, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

No, I agree, and already updated the instructions on that template. --kingboyk 20:34, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

This diff shows my plugin changing a {{reqphoto}} to a WPBio param, a {{Activepolitician}} to a WPBio param, converting an old importance= to priority=, and adding a listas=. I think it's pretty cool to find all 4 in one edit :) --kingboyk 20:34, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

pornstar-work-group

See also: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Porn stars § WikiProject Biography

I think it's a good idea to integrate WikiProject Porn stars with the WPBiography template. In order to achieve that, a "pornstar-work-group" parameter that performs similarly to British-royalty and musician-work-group sounds like a good idea. Discuss. —Disavian (^talk/_contribs) 05:04, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

That would be fine by me, welcomed in fact. Have you made any formal ties with the arts & entertainment work group? --kingboyk 10:03, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

The more work groups we use in the WPBiography template and tag, the more likely the proper people will be aware of the article and improve it. -- Jreferee 18:33, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

I think this isn't too controversial then and we should accede. Would you be willing to make the code changes Jreferee? If not, I'll put it on my todo list. --kingboyk 12:14, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

On reflection, porn stars already are apart of Arts and Entertainment Work Group - Actors. If we WPBiography tag articles as following under "Actors", that sub-group can figure out how it wants to further parse actor articles. Using the WPBiography template to tag them porn might bring too much heat on the otherwise spectacular WPBiography template. -- Jreferee 16:49, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Okay. I'll have to remember to tag 'em that way. I think that WP:PORNSTARS is going to turn into WP:PORN anyway. —Disavian (^talk/_contribs) 16:54, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm not worried about the "controversy". However, what's the WP:PORN story? Are you going to expand scope to cover films etc? I'll hold off on this until we know what's happening. --kingboyk 18:09, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

(DING! Carrage return) Even if they went ahead with WP:PORN, WPBipgraphy template still may need to address porn stars. I just added the Porn stars category to A&E Actor categories. Now, lets assume we go ahead with the 10 or so fields under A&E. Under the Actor field, we could have sub-fields of Animal actors + Arab actors + Child actors + LGBT actors + Porn stars + Shakespearean actors. Kingboyk, if you do not think this too much, I would be for it. -- Jreferee 19:39, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Well my position has always been that biographical projects and workgroups should share our template. If the WP:PORN folks are going to, or are willing to, maintain a pornstars workgroup which is a child project of this WikiProject then I'm willing to add the code. What I don't want to do is waste time working on this and adding unnecessary code bloat if they don't want it. So, I need to hear the final word from them. As for the other parameters, see below: the A&E work-group hasn't asked for them, I think we have enough complexity already. I'm willing to be persuaded otherwise but by more than one person :) --kingboyk 20:12, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

50% of the Arts and Entertainment Work Group - Actors members desire the change and I probably could get the remaining 50%, but I understand what you are saying. : ) It a good idea for which there is not sufficient desire. I'll see if I can create a Wikiproject Actors group, recruit members, and then get a consensus for the field's addition. When you see this no longer red - WP:Actor - you'll know that we'll be coming for a parameter addition. And you are right, military, for example, shares the WPBiography template and not everything military is a biography. -- Jreferee 20:28, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

baronets-work-group

See also: Wikipedia:WikiProject Baronetcies

Please can baronets be included as royalty-work-group. - Kittybrewster 10:34, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

No, Baronet was a title that was was created simply to raise funds.

Only initially, by James 1st. There is no evidence of this under subsequent monarchs who bestowed the title as an honour the same way the monarch today bestows honours. 81.158.179.87 15:51, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

The following is from the Baronet page "A baronetcy is unique in two ways:

• it is a hereditary honour but is not a peerage and has never entitled the holder to a seat in the House of Lords; and
• a baronet is styled 'Sir' but a baronetcy is not considered an order of knighthood. "

At least the title of Baron gives that person a seat in the House of Lords (thankfully that is now being phased out also) but a Baronet meanings nothing except that one of his forefathers pumped a load of cash into the kings coffers - we already have WP:N and WP:BIO they should have to comply with that and not get automatic notability because a an inhertited minor title.--Vintagekits 12:08, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Possibly the most bigotted comment I have yet read on Wikipedia. Peers are not Royalty anyway. No title is "minor". Some are greater than others. Thats all 81.158.179.87 15:51, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

• They probably shouldn't be part of the royalty group then, but since the WikiProject exists wouldn't it be best to allow the request in some form? Template sharing is good as it reduces talk page clutter; workgroups are good as they encourage co-operation. (imho). --kingboyk 12:14, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

• I have a really problem with giving people automatic notability because of an title especially an inherited title. Rulings like this would see this type of person gain automatic notability even though they never achieved anything of note nor were they ever involved in an incident of note they just happen to by the son of the son of the son of the son of someone who paid a load of cash to the king to buy a title - I find that absurd to be honest.--Vintagekits 12:24, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

• I see. I'm approaching it from a different angle: if we refuse, they'll probably make their own template anyway. I'm certainly not advocating any change in the notability guidelines or any endorsement, but I understand why you would think that doing this might appear to be an endorsement. Perhaps the best way forward would be to let the wider community decide, by nominating the project for deletion at WP:MFD. If their area of scope is non-notable, it shouldn't exist. If it stays, we perhaps ought to allow this? Just a suggestion, other suggestions welcome :) --kingboyk 12:28, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

• Agree with Kitty- Baronets are notable people in the United Kingdom- having a place in the Order of precedence in England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. They should be included in the royalty-work-group Astrotrain 12:29, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

• Baronets are not notable people in the United Kingdom what power does the title give, it means nothing. The Order of precedence is an outdated format for making a seating plan at a dinner party and does not in anyway confer any notability so I do not understand your point.--Vintagekits 12:34, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

More open bigotry. Who is this Vintagekits fellow? Look, if you are announced at a function as Mr & Mrs Smith, no-one blinks an eyelid. If you are announced as Sir Roland and Lady Melon heads turn. Of course baronets are notable. You are trying to have your opinion override the facts. 81.158.179.87 15:51, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

• My point is that we should include a line in WP:Biog fpr baronets-work-goup which would work in the same way that royalty-work-group does. It has nothing to do with establishing notability; it is to assist the b-w-g editors to monitor and improve and expand articles about which they have interest or knowledge. It seems to me a no-brainer. - Kittybrewster 12:55, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

• As long as it is clear that the title-holder is a notable person, who would've had an article anyway, then I don't see a problem --Kimon^talk 13:20, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Consensus seems to be that we add it. We also need to add a param for the porn stars group. Is anyone offering to do it? --kingboyk 16:58, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

The requirements for adding a parameter to the WPBiography template are (1) the workgroup is shown to be active, (2) a spokesperson for the workgroup request the added parameter, and (3) a tech person OKs the additional code and complexity. The total number of baronetcies today is approximately 1,380. I'm all for using the WPBiography template to parse out the articles to the proper groups and with Outriggr's WPBiography tagging script, the fact that the extra parameter may only apply to 1,380 articles might not be a concern. Someone will have to make a request to Outriggr to modify his tagging script. As for the porn stars group, please see my comments above. As for anyone willing to develop the code, I don't know how to do it. -- Jreferee 17:59, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Why are you quoting the "rules" to me? Somebody requested it, there was debate but with reasonable consensus to proceed, let's do it. I'll write the code myself since nobody else has volunteered (I wrote a lot of the old code but I'm a bit rusty :)). Doesn't matter how many articles there are provided it's being used, right? --kingboyk 18:06, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Sorry. Most of my comment was not supposed to be directed to you but more in line with participating with the discussion. My : formatting created the lack of clarity. Also, I was trying to summarize everything in a concise statement for what I now see as a resolved discussion. Doh! No offense meant. -- Jreferee 18:21, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Lol, no worries. Thanks. --kingboyk 18:23, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

I need more information from the requesting WikiProject before implementing this. I've also proposed that the entire peerage group should become a child project of WPBIO, necessitating two new parameters. Please see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Baronetcies#.7B.7BWPBiography.7D.7D. --kingboyk 00:43, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

.PNG to .SVG replacement request

The old image used, Image:Crystal personal.png, hsa been replaced by Image:Crystal personal.svg, both on the commons. Is it possible to get the template to reflect this switch?--Vox Rationis (Talk | contribs) 15:14, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Y Done -- Harryboyles 10:33, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Proposed Arts and Entertainment parameters

WikiProject Arts and Entertainment is very wide in scope and includes Actors • Architects • Artists • Illustrators • Painters • Photographers • Sculptors • Comic artists • Comedians • Dancers • Directors • Musicians • Poets • Writers and critics. Musicians have their own WPBiography parameter. I have been troubled WPBiography tagging articles as part of Arts and Entertainment when I could have easily tagged them as a painter, photographer, dancer, director, actor, etc. At present, people interested in poets have to comb through the Arts and Entertainment tagged articles to find the poet articles. This may have been addressed before, but U think it a good idea to increase WPBiography with a parameter for each of Actors • Architects • Artists • Illustrators • Painters • Photographers • Sculptors • Comic artists • Comedians • Dancers • Directors • Poets • Writers and critics. This way, everyone who is interested in poets, for example, would know about all poet articles tagged via WPBiography. Please post your thoughts below. -- Jreferee 16:35, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Up until now we've added parameters upon workgroup request. If there's no customers for them there's no point adding yet more code and yet more complexity. I'd oppose adding these unless the workgroup is shown to be active and demands them. There's other ways of finding articles by topic (article categories for a start); the categories created by this bot are supposed to be for WP1 assessments only. Any extra benefit is just a bonus.

On a related note, you might want to take a look at this: Wikipedia:WikiProject_Mathematics/Table. It's pretty smart; maybe that WikiProject can tell us how they do it and let us share their bot? (Better still, that bot's code could be given to Oleg for inclusion in the official WP1 bot). --kingboyk 16:57, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

It looks like WikiProject_Mathematics used a field parameter (e.g., {{maths rating|class=XXX|importance=YYY|field=analysis|comment= ~~~~}}) for their Math template to get all the sub items of math. For that to work on WPBiography template, perhaps we could have a new WikiProject Arts and Entertainment field parameter where Actors • Architects • Artists • Illustrators • Painters • Photographers • Sculptors • Comic artists • Comedians • Dancers • Directors • Poets • Writers and critics are the potential entries. The other WPBiography template work groups might want their own field parameter, too (which could be difficult). For a lot of articles, WPBiography template is the first clue of the existence of the article to those who did not contribute the article since many articles do not have categories or do not have adequate categories. The demand for changing the Arts and Entertainment portion of the WPBiography template should come from Arts and Entertainment. I posted a note about this thread on the Arts and Entertainment talk page. Hopefully, we can generate some more discussion on this. -- Jreferee 17:28, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Sounds good. Having a field= would as you say allow for some more detailed breakdown of stats without creating new workgroups. --kingboyk 18:07, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

OK, here's where my knowledge is a little fuzzy on the down stream process. Suppose we create a "Arts and Entertainment Work Group - Actors" field and I tag as such. What happens? Does the article talk page appear in Category:Actors, does the article page appear in Category:Actors? -- Jreferee 18:30, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

No, there's no relation at all between talk page templates and article categories. They're totally and utterly seperate. As to the second point, also no, talk pages don't appear in main article categories. Articles appear in main categories, talk pages go into wikiproject categories and the like (but we shouldn't be overdoing this). As for what WP Maths do, I don't know as I haven't looked yet :) --kingboyk 18:43, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

(Ding! Carrage return) When someone put a&e-work-group=yes for the WPBiography template, that appears to put the talk page for that article in Category:Arts and entertainment work group articles. Math does not put field identified article talk pages into a category. Thus, if we create a "Arts and Entertainment Work Group - Actors" field, would may not want to create a Category:Arts and Entertainment Work Group - Actors category. Math has a Number theory field. Talk:Fermat's Last Theorem is a talk page that has a Number theory field. I tried to figure out how to find all tagged math articles having a Number theory field but could not. If we locate that set of articles, we might have a better idea on where to direct the Arts and Entertainment Work Group - Actors field. (Once we come up with a plan on how a&e-work-group fields would work, I'll run it by the Arts and Entertainment Work Group for approval). -- Jreferee 19:21, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

After looking over the members on the Arts and Entertainment Work Group and seeing little to no response on that groups discussion page, I think the Arts and Entertainment Work Group is not really being contributed to by anyone. -- Jreferee 19:48, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I don't think there's much activity there which is why I wasn't exactly excited by the idea of giving them more parameters :) Anyway, right, I'll try and get the baronets param done now. Would you look at the thread above re activepol please? --kingboyk 19:59, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

The new fields will bypass the relatively inactive Arts and Entertainment Work Group and categorize the articles in fields that people are interested in. In view of the Sinbad problem, I think we should start with WPBiography templating the Arts and Entertainment Work Group - Actors (which I am one of the two members). I plan to do some heavy recruiting for the Arts and Entertainment Work Group - Actors and it would be nice if the WPBiography tagging included an Actors field parameter. -- Jreferee 20:04, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Y Resolution: Need to generate concensus interest for each field parameter. -- Jreferee 20:34, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Comment If allowed to seperate WikiProject Film Biography covering actors and directors etc it would have large following like films. I'd imagine it would use the Biogrpahy banner with the film bio insertion into it e.g {filmbio|director=yes|class=start|importance=high} or {filmbio|editor=yes|class=stub|importance=low etc. I feel it is important to find a project that unites all characters associated with cinema. THis would be major project if seperated as the Arts and Entertainment is FAR! too broad and needs to split into areas of more specific concentration. However the template would naturally put it in the broader arts and entertainment/bio categories as a whole ♦ Sir Blofeld ♦ ^{"I've been expecting you"} 13:13, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Interesting idea. Collaboration with and support of WP Films would be a good idea if this were to be implemented, I think. --kingboyk 17:00, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Template changes

1. [1] Move activepol to a seperate box per #Activepol and remove some old crud.
2. [2] Although I really don't encourage folks to tag this way, I thought it would be neat if activepol=yes had the same affect as politician-work-group=yes. At the same time, I've let these parameters accept "Yes" as well as "yes". Perhaps we should do the same for all params? This was quite a technical change; it checked out in my sandbox but if there's any problems please let me know here.
3. Next I will add workgroups for peerage and baronetcies per #baronets-work-group and Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Baronetcies#.7B.7BWPBiography.7D.7D. --kingboyk 20:48, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
4. [3] Added peerage-work-group add baronets-work-group. Fixed an old unnoticed bug where a WP Musicians article with a /Comments page didn't get an entry in Category:Biography (musicians) articles with comments. As I write, that category has 9 articles in it thanks to {{WPBeatles}}; that number ought to go up a little now as the job queue works it way down to zero. --kingboyk 21:46, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Woot! Over 200 in the cat now. --kingboyk 09:34, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Redirects to this template

Please don't create redirects to this template without telling me about it. This is very important: my plugin needs to know what names it may encounter {{WPBiography}} under; the result - if there are alternative names it doesn't know about - is double tagging like this. Given that my bot can process thousands of pages a day, and other folks might be using it too, the end result could be one hell of a mess. --kingboyk 19:28, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Deprecating listas= parameter

I'd like to renew Kingboyk's call for deprecating the "listas=" parmeter. DEFAULTSORT already does this job, and is part of the software now. Doing the same thing with template code is a waste of time for both users and the servers. See Talk:Vilmos Foldes for an example. Note that DEFAULTSORT goes at the top, so both the WP:CUE and WP:BIO talk page headers inherit its value. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 22:08, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't believe that WP:CUE should have it's own template, but that's a different argument :)

I just want to say that I agree that listas= isn't really needed, but with caveats: 1) I believe that the current implementation is a vast improvement on the old one that I removed (less code bloat). 2) It would have to be deprecated like importance= is rather than removed, because a lot of folks have already used it to bring some order to our maintenance categories. --kingboyk 22:13, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

No biggie on the separate template issue; I saw your generic project templates page and will integrate everything it wants. That page of yours should be linked to prominently at the right places at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council. Most of us are doing these things rather blindly. The talk header for WP:CUE was based on that of WP:SNOOKER, which was based on who knows what at all... That standardized code even exists is invisible to many of us. :-) Also, agreed with your caveats. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 02:11, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

The "generic template" feature is just a way for my code to support WikiProject templates without any special programming. By specifying some standard parameters these templates can all use the same code in my plugin. It might indeed be a standard suitable for wider application across the wiki, but that's something I actually hadn't thought of. It was merely a coding issue when I "invented" it :)

The reason I think WP:CUE shouldn't have a seperate template is because it is wholly a subdivision of sports. That makes it suitable to be a workgroup of the Sports WikiProject, sharing their template, in the same way that many other WikiProjects and workgroups share this one. This also makes it different from, say, WP:BEATLES, which isn't a clear child of any project - it crosses scope with WP:MUSICIANS, WP:WPBIO, WP:ALBUMS, WP:SONGS and so on, or indeed from WP:SPORTS itself, which has some unique scope as well as some cross-coverage with this project. This, of course, is a debate which belongs elsewhere though :) (and is just my opinion, something which often turns out to be useless) --kingboyk 11:17, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Persondata

I'd like to suggest that [ Needs-Persondata = yes / no ] be included in the WP:Biography template. --Camptown 20:25, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

I second it per this post. -- Jreferee 06:10, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

• strong support. Articles with proper metadata have many important advantages. And the bigger Wikipedia gets, the more important it is to index article in a userfriendly way. Bondkaka 13:06, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Succession box

Moved from User talk:Kingboyk. --kingboyk 14:34, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Please can WPBiography include a tag needs-succession-box=yes as needs-infobox. - Kittybrewster (talk) 14:32, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Bump! Could somebody do this? (somebody other than me that is!) --kingboyk 23:30, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Request for comments - living=no

I've added a "Deceased persons" option to my plugin, so that when tagging dead people categories we can ensure there are no stray living=yes tags.

What I want feedback on is whether I should be just removing living=yes, or whether all dead people will get an explicit living=no. The benefits and drawbacks to writing living=no as I see it:

• Plus: It's clear that the living parameter has been taken care of
• Plus: It's a little easier to code
• Minus: It could result in lots of trivial edits, like this, where the only change is adding living=no. --kingboyk 21:46, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

I support living=no, because that makes the differentiation explicit, as opposed to implied. — pd_THOR ^{| =/\=} | 21:50, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

• Support living=no,which is explicit, whereas undefined is ambiguous - cgilbert^{(talk|contribs)} 03:20, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
• Support living=no per this discussion. - Jreferee 06:06, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Great, thanks. living=no it is then. I'm also turning off listas= generation in bot mode, as I've been getting too many complaints about mis-sorted Asian names and so on. --kingboyk 11:40, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

I suppose another point in favour of living=no is that we could if we ever wanted use living=no to create a category containing dead people (whereas living=<null> or living= not present would be excluded). --kingboyk 14:21, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

needs-photo=yes and living no/yes

A question/comment if I may. I brought this up before (Template talk:WPBiography/Archive 2#free-image stipulation), and I'll ask again here in case anybody can help. Can we adjust the template so that needs-photo=yes is subjective based upon living=yes/no?

If yes and yes, then use {{reqfreephoto}} (with respect to WP:FUC#1), but if yes and no use the more genericized {{reqphoto}}.

— pd_THOR ^{| =/\=} | 14:24, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Somebody just made an edit putting a load of spiel onto the template [4] (which I'm going to trim just a little, as I think it's a tad excessive).

We don't actually use {{reqphoto}} or any other template - we have our own text, and we put articles into Category:Wikipedia requested photographs of people (and similar but more specific categories for some of the workgroups). I've just had a look at the various templates and there doesn't seem to currently be any different categories we can use for free image requests. If they get created, or I missed them, we can add them later. --kingboyk 16:57, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

small=yes and living=yes

{{editprotected}} There seems to be a problem with the template. See below. - miketm - 03:26, 4 April 2007 (UTC) {{WPBiography|class=NA|living=yes|small=yes}}

This seems to be due to a recent edit by Kingboyk [5]. You should ask that editor why it was changed. Presumably he/she can change it back if consensus goes that way. CMummert · talk 03:42, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

That was unintentional. I didn't know the template supported small. --kingboyk 11:00, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Although it might have been a "good mistake" because I really think the BLP warning shouldn't be small. It's just about the most important template on any talk page... --kingboyk 11:02, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

It seems to me that the BLP warning should be a different template than the wikiproject banner. They have conceptually different purposes. CMummert · talk 13:06, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

It is available as a seperate banner, but having it available here too - as the preferred usage - has, I would argue, been beneficial to both Wikipedia in general (the tag has been propogated to just about every living person's talk page) and this WikiProject (folks routinely add our banner). Also, the status of WP Biography as "custodians" of biographies and biographical policy seems to have met with widespread consensus or, at least, I've not seen it challenged yet. --kingboyk 13:39, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Actors and filmmakers workgroup

{{editprotected}} Please add an actors and filmmakers workgroup to the template for the new child project setup for film-related biographies. Our project image is . --PhantomS 19:04, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

This would be easier if someone from your project would write and test the necessary template code and provide a link to it here. The best practice is to copy this whole template to a sandbox, make the additions, test them, and then provide a link here to the completed new template. CMummert · talk 12:12, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

I have made the changes at User:PhantomS/sandbox. --PhantomS 01:20, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

This better work. ;P Cbrown1023 talk 23:09, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

 Done but it will take a long while to update the database. Cbrown1023 talk 23:12, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Just noticed some category sections I forgot to add the new workgroup to. Could you please update the template with User:PhantomS/sandbox3? --PhantomS 02:27, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

It's been  Done Cbrown1023 talk 02:33, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure if this was intentional but the recent edits to the WPBiography banner have picked up at least one strange behavior, when the musician-work-group flag is selected, both musician-work-group and a&e workgroup appear in the banner despite the a&e workgroup flag not being selected. - cgilbert^{(talk|contribs)} 04:05, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

This is intentional behavior. The code was already there for a&e to be selected when a sub-workgroup was selected. However, the code was done incorrectly, causing a&e not to show up. I fixed this when I added the actors and filmmakers workgroup to the template. --PhantomS 05:42, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

In that case, no, you didn't fix it, you broke it :) Those two workgroups are mutually exclusive (I should know, I wrote it!). i.e. "if musician=true then a&e=false" even if a&e is selected. --kingboyk 11:15, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Ok. Try User:PhantomS/sandbox, which reverses it to the "proper" logic. Note however that this does not handle sections in the template where both were not set as mutually exclusive in the original code. The lack of mutual exclusivity elsewhere is what confused me. --PhantomS 14:02, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

No worries, thank you for fixing it. I ran a few sample transclusions before committing and it seemed fine. --kingboyk 14:13, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Sections that were never given mutual exclusivity: "Biography (arts and entertainment) articles with comments", "Category:Automatically assessed biography (arts and entertainment) articles". --PhantomS 14:21, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

They don't matter, as the WP1 bot won't pick them up if they're not in the class categories too. --kingboyk 14:24, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

There are some artists who have acted in films and also have worked in other a&e media, but I can't seem to get filmbio-work-group=yes|a&e-work-group=yes to behave as expected. I would expect both to be visible; instead only the first-listed is visible. Listing other combinations of two workgroups is possible, e.g. s&a-work-group=yes|military-work-group=yes does the right thing. Are my expectations wrong for the filmbio-work-group=yes|a&e-work-group=yes combination? (sdsds - talk) 04:10, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Please complete comments section of evaluation

Moved to Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Biography/Assessment#Please_complete_comments_section_of_evaluation --kingboyk 11:20, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Request for comments - line break between parameters when tagging with bot

Until now, I've always had my bot put the template parameters onto seperate lines. I think it looks neater. However, 2 people have asked me to put it all the same line. I'm therefore inviting opinions. Please note I will only change if there's clear consensus; if folks aren't too bothered I may as well do it the way I like it ;)

Possible solutions:

• Always put the template call and parameters onto one line
• Always put the parameters onto seperate lines
• Put the parameters onto seperate lines only if they number more than or equal to "x", where "x" might be, say, 5? (I think this could be done without too much trouble, but because of the architecture of my program - which supports other templates too - the best way to find out would be to test it.

Example of a fairly large template call from Talk:Napoleon I of France:

{{WPBiography
|living=no
|class=B
|priority=Top
|core=yes
|politician-work-group=yes
|military-work-group=yes
}}

{{WPBiography|living=no|class=B|priority=Top|core=yes|politician-work-group=yes|military-work-group=yes}}

--kingboyk 14:50, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

I prefer the one-liner. Otherwise the talk page becomes too large when you try to edit it. Errabee 19:34, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

I prefer the multi-liner, as it's easier to browse and adjust when necessary. But then I also always use the little "+" tab at the top of a talk page to start a new topic, and the edit links beside the topic name to contribute to an existing topic, so I never see the source for the templatecruft at the top unless I'm explicitly trying to edit it. Xtifr _tälk 10:52, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Likewise. Maybe that's the difference? --kingboyk 10:55, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I also prefer the one-line version. This is the most used version on higher class biography articles. Also, some articles use the WikiProjectBanners template which organizes multiple banners into one template for better use of space on the talk page (look to the AC/DC talk page for an example of its usage). Having each banner limited to one line makes makes editing of multiple banners easier. Thank you for requesting comments on this issue. - cgilbert^{(talk|contribs)} 14:08, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I won't consider the template containers issue when determining what to do, because my code doesn't support those containers. When the container issue has consensus at wiki level (hopefully soon) I'll make a decision then. I do however note your preference for one line. --kingboyk 14:12, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

British Royalty excluded from biography categories?

If the british-royalty parameter is set to yes, the template does not add the article to the relevant biography categories. This seems odd to me, as it is the only work-group that exhibits this behaviour. I propose adding the relevant biography categories for british royalty biographies. Errabee 15:00, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Don't really hold an opinion either way at the moment, but would default to agreeing with you unless somebody can remind me of a reason why we coded it that way in the first place :)

Certainly, BRoy articles should not be on the main bio lists if they are tagged with non-bio=yes. Such articles might be on things like royal titles or residences, which may be within BRoy scope but not WPBIO. Such articles are, of course, a very small minority, and template logic could take care of that. --kingboyk 15:07, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

What's happened to the template? The background color doesn't look right (used to be blue) and the text "style="background: #E5E5FF; border: 1px solid #8888AA;" is showing on some of the talk pages (evidently displaced from the template). DrKiernan 13:34, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Looks like SatyrTN's new code must have broken it. It seems to be more trouble than it's worth so I've rolled back. --kingboyk 13:40, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Sorry about that! Y'all have so many parameters! I've made the change to fix the royalty box. Looks kinda neat: Wikipedia_talk:Sandbox/blp1 :) -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 14:36, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes we do, but I think MILHIST has more. I like the colour scheme of the BRoy template a lot... Anyway, I've pasted in your new version. This had better work or you might find the natives revolting :P --kingboyk 14:42, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Smaller font on /Comments note

Please put <small>...</small> or CSS equivalent around the "If you rated..." passage, to slightly reduce the amount of talk page real estate consumed by this template.

Looks small already to me... ? --kingboyk 19:18, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Suggested change for "removal" output

I suggest we make the following change. Regards, Ben Aveling 21:23, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

The subject of this article has requested that they not be included in Wikipedia. While Wikipedia does not honor these requests, this article should be monitored for controversial or unsourced material.

The subject of this article has requested that they not be included in Wikipedia. Wikipedia does not currently honor these requests. As with all biographies of living people, this article should be monitored especially closely for controversial or unsourced material.

Fine by me. Anybody else care to comment? --kingboyk 22:44, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Problems with needs-photo

The (unnecessarily longwinded) output of needs-photo=yes appears cites WP:NFCC. This sub-template reads, in part, 'Note: Wikipedia's fair use policy almost never permits the use of "fair use" images (such as promotional photos, press photos, screenshots, book covers and similar) to merely show what a living person looks like.' I've just read NFCC from top to bottom and there is no verbiage at that policy which appears to support this assertion. Rather, there is such material at Wikipedia:Non-free content#Images. So:

• Fix non-free content policy link to go to Wikipedia:Non-free content.

— SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 19:18, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

There used to be a link there to foundation:Resolution:Licensing policy, with explicitly mention photos of living people, but it was aparently removed as redundant. --Sherool (talk) 08:58, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Furthermore, {{WPBiography}} already takes up far, far too much room in its typical fully-specified application. I would suggest removing that entire chunk of code and replacing it with a simple transclusion of {{Reqphoto}} if the needs-photo=yes condition is met. If there is a consensus that {{Reqphoto}} needs policy warnings, then that template should be modified to include them, and cite by #id precisely what in NFCC pertains to what the template is warning about. (No editprotected req.; just a proposal for discussion on this issue.) — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 19:18, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

No to that. WPBiography is only so large because it replaces many other templates. If reqphoto were transcluded it would still be large, but we'd lose functionality.

Also, the fair use stuff was added at outside request because of the current FU drive. I have no objections to trimming but there's nothing to be gained by moving to transclusion of {{reqphoto}}. --kingboyk 19:28, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

What functionality would we lose? If we need FU stuff in there, it should be in {{Reqphoto}} first and foremost. Transcluding it would make maintenance easier, reduce the complexity of this template, and get rid of the reqphoto vs. needs-photo consistency problem. I don't see the lost functionality. I'm not saying get rid of needs-photo, rather have it call up reqphoto instead of its own custom reqphoto variant. If there's something special about that variant, I think it would be better to upgrade reqphoto to support a parameter of its own that would do what is wanted, and then have this template call that one with that parameter if needs-photo=yes. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 07:33, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Well we would loose the "small=yes" functionality that makes the thing take up less space for one. You may want to consider using that if you think it's too big. Besides what would we gain exactly by removing the custum code, add it to {{reqphoto}} instead and then transclude it anyway? This way we can fine tune the wording to be relevant only to biographies. Seeing as it's a fairly big problem that people keep uploading non-free images to ilustrate living people it seems prudent to explain the rules in some detail in the photo request up front rater than leave people scratching theyr heads and cursing the "deletionist admins" after theyr non-free uploads get deleted. --Sherool (talk) 08:58, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Small: Trivial coding fix. If Reqphoto has no such parameter it should, and when it does, just pass it that parameter. What we'd gain is consistency and maintainability. I don't, generally, believe in having two templates when one will do, especially if a Policy (copyright in this case) matter is involved. Too much potential for something to change and one template to be updated to reflect that change without the other being updated, too. Object-oriented programming exists for a reason. :-) There's no compelling need to fine tune the wording for bios HERE, when the Reqphoto template can do that (from what I can see, it already has a lot of code for customization/specificity, and either already handles the desired case or can be made to do so very easily). The non-free rules: Those do not just apply to bios, so I repeat that if there's a broadly perceived need to spell this out in such templates (which I disagree with, but for the sake of argument...) it shouldn't just be for bios. And I'm skeptical that it needs to be even half as long as it is even if there is such a need. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 02:18, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

<-- Adding the fair use blurb wasn't my idea so I can't be expected to defend it :) Using reqphoto would lose our special categories for photo needed, and it would add some 350,000 transclusion links to the reqphoto template.

What we do with BLP is transclude some boilerplate text that {{blp}} also transcludes. If what you're getting it as that both templates - WPBio and reqphoto - need to have the same text message, we could do that.

Otherwise, if the text needs to be trimmed feel free. It was even more verbose before I took a knife to it. --kingboyk 11:04, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Special cat: Easy to implement in Reqphoto; it does lots of that kind of stuff already, for much more than bios (like cars and all sorts of other specific things). I don't see any difference between translcluding a "piece" in both templates hundreds of thousands of times and simply transcluding the other template, with some twiddles to make it work as desired. It's just code bloat from what I can tell. If I'm just being dense, I guess having WPBiography and Reqphoto have the same message (hopefully a transcluded one) would help somewhat, yes, but I just don't see any point at all in having two entire blobs of code drawing what should be the exact same box (with text and cat. effects differing where necessary with parameters being passed.) If I write a function to, say, generate a PDF file from a web page, I'm not going to write another function to do that just because this page is green and the other one was red, if you see what I mean. I'm not meaning to be tendentious here, I'm just saying I think the entire thing could be overhauled to use one block of code for both templates (for needs-a-picture code), with relative ease, including small=, special categorization for WPBiography, and so forth. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 02:18, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

In the interim, the bloat of {{WPBiography}} can be slightly reduced by making the policy note smaller in font-size.

• Apply <small>...</small> or CSS equivalent if preferred, to the policy note in the same needs-photo subtemplate.

— SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 19:18, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Redundant photo request category?

If both "needs-photo=yes" and "sports-work-group=yes" are included then the page gets put into Category:Wikipedia requested photographs of sportspeople and also Category:Wikipedia requested photographs of people. As the first category is already a subcategory of the second, it seems to me that inclusion in Category:Wikipedia requested photographs of people is unnecessary. For an example of what I mean, see Talk:Alan Dennison.

Install page protection notice template

As this page is fully protected seemingly permanently, it needs one of the standard templates that says so. Don't care which, even the small lock icon version would be fine. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 19:18, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Please place the modified template with the protection notice you want, the "free content policy link" you want, and the CSS changes you want, into a sandbox (my sandbox is fine) and place another protected edit request. If it all looks fine, which I'm sure it will, I'll oblige. --kingboyk 19:32, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

While you're here, what do you think of this request? Template_talk:WPBiography#Suggested_change_for_.22removal.22_output --kingboyk 19:34, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Image replacement request

Please change the use of image Image:Nuvola apps kcontrol.png to Image:Icon tools.png. Thanks. Siebrand 19:54, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

 Done --kingboyk 20:01, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. Siebrand 21:28, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Category with all the articles in it

Would it be possible to add something like Category:Biographical articles to this template, and thus produce a category that allows people to browse all the biographical articles? This would be a big load on the servers, as the warning says, so this would need to be discussed here first. Carcharoth 01:40, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Possible, yes, but impractical. There's simply too many to make it useful to humans. Bots can get a complete list by adding together our various categories. You can also get a complete list by browsing to the template and selecting "what links here" (and looking at articles which are marked "transclusion"; AWB can build a list this way too). --kingboyk 16:06, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

In case anyone is interested I fired up AWB and churned out a list (took a good while). The template is currently transcluded on 376274 main namespace talk pages. The full list is a little over 10Mb in size though tried posting it to a user subpage but I think I went over some limit because when my browser finaly unfroze and finished uploading all I got was a blank page. --Sherool (talk) 20:44, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

As a new AWB dev I'm happy to hear that AWB coped OK with a list that large :) I'll pass the good news on. (10MB is way too big for a wiki page btw, as u discovered). --kingboyk 21:45, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Yeah it worked ok. May want to consider wasting a couple of CPU sycles on some kind of progres indicator for very big build/filter operations though. A lot of people might just asume it's crashed when the application screen just go white and stop responding for half an hour while it does it's thing ;) --Sherool (talk) 22:01, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Brilliant. 376,274 is the number I was looking for. Now, is there any way of making that list of 376,274 articles available? The advantage of a category is that people can use {{largeCategoryTOC}} to go to the point they want to start browsing from. You can't do that with the "what links here" list. Have a look at Category:Unassessed biography articles for that TOC system in operation. I think creating a super-category to contain all biographical articles (just like the proposal I saw for Category:Wikipedia articles), is the way to go. That would go a large step towards replacing LoPbN, at least once pipe-sorting is applied uniformly, or the DEFAULTSORT magic key used uniformly. Carcharoth 23:17, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Well it certainly can be done. If one or two other folks speak up, I'll add the category for you. I probably wouldn't use it, but that doesn't make it bad :) --kingboyk 23:38, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. Using 'Fry' as an example, have a look at the Fs section of Category:Living people, click back one, and you will see a list of 21 living Fry's (some may not be on the list mentioned at the MfD).Abi Fry, Adam Fry, Arthur Fry, Barry Fry, Bertha Fry, Chance Fry, Charles Fry, Colin Fry, Hayden Fry, Hedy Fry, Jordan Fry, Ken Fry, Nick Fry, Nina Fry, Peter Fry, Russell Fry, Ryan Fry, Scott Fry, Shirley Fry, Stephen Fry, Taylor Fry.

This is exactly the sort of thing I want to be able to do for all Fry's, hence the need for a category covering all biographical articles. Given that demonstration of how it would work, do I still need to find some other people to support this proposal? Carcharoth 00:09, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Using the category intex to find such things only work as long as the sort key is properly set though, this is not always the case. Not that it would hurt to have such a cat though. Anyway that list of Fry's you asked for can be found here (not including things like "Frydenlund" and what not. --Sherool (talk) 10:07, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

By the way I uploaded the full list. Had to convert it to OpenOffice.org format though, plain text is not accepted, and SXW format is complressed so this way it's only 3.4Mb in size. File is here: Image:Bio list.sxw. --Sherool (talk) 11:04, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

• I think this is an excellent first step towards indexing what we've got. That's important for a lot of reasons: Wikiproject tagging, categorization in general, disambiguation, and the ultimate goal (at least in my mind) of replacing LoPbN with a more robust category-based approach. Unfortunately... even AWB's template-searching magic is going to miss a lot. Last night, I spent quite a bit of time brute-forcing Wikipedia via Special page searches and increasingly labyrinthine Google queries to build this Fry surname page. It seems I caught all the articles this AWB search found (except those with a middle name Fry, who I ignored anyway; and except again the two Chilean presidents due to Latin American naming convention), plus a lot more. The problem is that bio articles are probably the most likely to be created by inexperienced editors. Many lack the WPBio template on Talk. Some lacked any meaningful categorization at all — maybe a stub tag, sorted by the stub sorting volunteers. Those are going to be the most challenging articles to find. I don't know how to automate the process, either, which makes me gibber insanely when I think about trying to search Smith, Jones, Chan, etc. Serpent's Choice 02:18, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Wow. Another method for finding such things. This is very instructive. I'd like to try and list all the methods used so far, and their relative success levels. To some extent, finding all the articles is not needed, if only because the worst-formatted articles should be left for tidying and screened for notability (and sent to AfD or PRODded if not notable) before even being put in this proposed system. But that list is good. I think the methods used so far are:
    • LoPbN (human maintained - often out-of-date)
    • Existing disambiguation pages (human maintained - often out-of-date)
    • Using indexes of relevant categories (automagically generated, requires human use and maintenance of category tags and pipe-sorting)
    • Transclusion list of {{WPBiography}} (more difficult to generate, requires humans to identify biographical articles for tagging)
    • Brute force, extended Google searches (requires human ingenuity to construct search terms)
  • Have I missed any? Carcharoth 11:13, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
• See also Wikipedia talk:Miscellany for deletion/List of people by name#Proposed solution. Carcharoth 11:13, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Restarting discussion

Is no-one interested in this? Have a look at the revised proposal at Wikipedia talk:Miscellany for deletion/List of people by name#Proposed solution and the new discussion there. Also, see the test compact index for living people I've created at User:Carcharoth/List of living people compact index. That is identical to the URLs used by {{largeCategoryTOC}}, but using the same layout as at Template:List of people by name compact page-index. I would like to do the same for all biographical articles, but at the moment there is no super-category for that. What is the best way to get approval for a bot to populate and maintain such a category? Carcharoth 23:01, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

• And following up Serpent's Choice's gibbering over Jones, Smith and Chan, follow the links to see the articles we currently have on living people by those names (only where they are correctly pipe-sorted, of course). Carcharoth 23:01, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Redundant wording

I think the phrase, "Controversial material of any kind that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous." is longer than it needs to be. First it says that controversial material of any kind that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, then adds especially if potentially libelous. It already must be removed according to the lead clause. Can we shorten this sentence? Sancho 21:14, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Possibly this sort of change, if not essential, could be done at the same time as another change (one is being discussed above). Would that reduce server load? On the other hand, the discussion above might take a long time, so if others support this, I'd agree with a sentence like: "Controversial material of any kind that is unsourced, poorly sourced, or potentially libellous, must be removed immediately." It is possibly the longer wording was used for a reason though. Check the talk page archives or the template history if you want to be certain you aren't disturbing a carefully designed sentence. Carcharoth 11:17, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Material that someone might consider libelous but is sourced to really RSs is not usually deleted, except by Office action. Suggest

""Controversial material of any kind that is unsourced, poorly sourced, must be removed immediately." Take special care with potentially libelous material"DGG 18:22, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Please fix line 16

I've started working with WikiProjectBannerShell, and have noticed that WPBiography template has a small error in its implementation of nesting. In the 16th line, instead of

! colspan="2" 

it should say

! colspan="3" 

(rest of the line should remain unchanged, I have quoted only the start of the line)

As noted on Template talk:WikiProjectBannerShell, templates that have a {{Portal}} need its colspan increased to 3. Example: Talk:Hitoshi Doi

Shinhan 15:32, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

To further explain the error. When a WPBio is use within a BannerShell, WPBio is automatically hidden. If I click on "show", it will be normally shown, but the "hide" button will be moved to the left because of the Biography portal. Shinhan 14:38, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

{{editprotected}}

This is not urgent but I dont understand why was this uncontroversial error-fix ignored during the last template update. Shinhan 14:56, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

It's not line 16 for me. Can you give me a code excerpt so I can find the right spot? — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:09, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Contact me and I'll be glad to fix it. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:23, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

{{editprotected}}

Im sorry for requesting the same fix for the third time. CBM introduced this fix in revision 139246148, BUT then he undid this fix with his next edit in revision 139914083. Im not calling for undoing of everything CBM did, just for reintroducing the fix he undid (colspan=3). CBM is away for the next 2 weeks so I cant ask him... — Shinhan < talk > 14:02, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Y Done, I think. Can you check to make sure I've got it right? --ais523 14:06, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it works now. Hopefully it wont get undone again. Thanks. — Shinhan < talk > 06:21, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Queue of changes

There are now at least three proposed changes above. If needed, should they all be implemented in one edit to avoiding flooding the job queue? Carcharoth 11:26, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Meh. Just do one today, another tomorrow, etc. There's no major hurry, and a general coding principle is to make a change then test it, not make a bunch of changes and test the mass result and then be confused and at a loss as to where the problem is when something (or worse yet two or more somethings) broke, and what code change is responsible for the problem is a needle in a haystack. :-) — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 22:06, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Best banner ever

Hi, I've benn analizing this and noticed is the most implemented here, I have been improving template:PeruProjectBanner (without work-groups boxes) but I think we need some advice, wonder if could help me. There's an issue I wanna clarify about the importance box, should it be shown allways, or only if the importance is specified with a value; and things like that. thanks --Andersmusician $ 17:10, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Nesting and living

Hi. I've noticed that when nesting, the message about this being an article about a living person is also hidden. Is that what you want?

-- TimNelson 04:01, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

That is why {{WikiProjectBannerShell}} has blp=yes option in it, to show that warning above the nested collection. On the other hand, it is not possible to have BLP warning outside the box with {{WikiProjectBanners}}. Thats why BannerShell is better, but it does require more work. Come and join us at Template:WikiProjectBannerShell. Shinhan 09:09, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

While Shinhan is absolutely correct, I think all this fretting about the BLP banner is a bit much. Way too many people get lathered up over something so trivial. I think most of us can read and think pretty clearly; the absence of a death date, the presence of Category living people, and the use of present tense in the article, etc., etc., are plenty of indication. I'm not opposed to the talk page BLP banners, I simply don't think there is any consequence of any kind to whether one appears or not. Just for the record, because I'm a little tired of people treating its appearance (and it appearance first no matter what — insert numerous exclaimation points here) as if it were a WP:POLICY matter, which it is not: WP:BLP#Templates states "{{Blp}} may be added to the talk pages of articles with living persons mentioned in the article. It also may be added to the talk pages of biographies of living persons so that editors and readers, including subjects, are alerted to this policy. Alternatively, if a {{WPBiography}} template is present, you can add living=yes to the template parameters." (Emphasis added). Note "may" and "can", not "must". And there is certainly no policy that this banner "must" appear before all others. One of the good things about {{WikiProjectBannerShell}} (though as of this writing {{WPBiography}} is only about half-compatible with it; see #WikiProjectBannerShell & WPBiography major incompatibility immediately below) is that its "blp=yes" feature allows one to put the WP:BIO banner at the bottom where it belongs (being generic and not particularly conducive to gathering people to work on articles), below more specific ones, e.g. for the baseball or Spain or whatever WikiProjects. (end rant) — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 22:25, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

WikiProjectBannerShell & WPBiography major incompatibility

{{WPBiography}} needs more conditional code, to nest the photo/infobox sub-banners when nested=yes, or it renders {{WikiProjectBannerShell}} pretty much useless. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 05:26, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Actors and Filmmakers image

I wonder if the Actors and Filmmakers WikiProject could be changed from "Image:Fratelli Lumiere.jpg" to "Image:Applications-multimedia.svg". The Luminere photo is rather difficult to make out at such a small size whereas the cartoon clapperboard will work. Discussion on which image to use died out on the project's talk page some months ago—I forgot about it too—so I'm defaulting to my suggestion. Thanks, Doctor Sunshine talk 21:28, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Looks like a good bet. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 22:03, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

List-class articles

They're currently under unassessed articles when assessed as "list". Could a list category be added in to the template so we don't have this problem?--Wizardman 01:21, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Asian names & listas

A number of editors have been using scripts to automatically add the "listas" component to talk pages, and are consistently getting Asian names wrong. I recognize that this is the action of the script and not of the editor acting directly, but please please please take some care with this. This has, as far as I am aware, only become a problem within the last few weeks, but as more and more articles are automatically tagged in this manner, the problem becomes larger and larger. Something has to be done to cut it off. Please. LordAmeth 05:15, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Simple solution: Get rid of "listas". We've had the magicword DEFAULTSORT since ca. Dec. 2006 for this. There is a quirk, though (seems to be a MediaWiki bug) - the DEFAULTSORT must come after the project banners, or it won't work (at all, not even for maint categories that come after it); if placed after the banners, it works for both the banners that precede it, and categories that follow it. Go figure. This won't stop people from mis-sorting Asian names, but at least that will be a broader issue (MOS? VP? BOT?) and not one buried on a WikiProject template's talk page. :-) — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 05:43, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Please do not get rid of listas. In fact, listas accomplishes its function by using DEFAULTSORT. If the problem lies with a bot, fix the bot, not the listas parameter. Listas functions as it should. It is the bot that is dysfunctional. - cgilbert^{(talk|contribs)} 20:23, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Agreed that the bot is broken, but listas is redundant. It serves no purpose; if you want surname sorting, simply add DEFAULTSORT, since that sorting needs to be done for categories added by other WikiProjects too. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 21:01, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Ah. Now, I have a question about automatically adding DEFAULTSORT. Well, it's a bit more ambitious than that. I want to do the following, and would appreciate any advice on the best way to implement each step:

• Get a list of article talk page that transclude this template (someone did this a few weeks ago, it is long list).
• Examine that list for "listas" parameters and "DEFAULTSORT" parameters, and put those parameters (as DEFAULTSORT) on the article page as well as the talk page.
• (This is the human stage) Examine the list of biographical pages that lack DEFAULTSORT and mark those that are obvious "first name, last name" construction, and manually create a list of the correct construction for the rest of them.
• Use a bot to add the correct DEFAULTSORT parameter to the article and the talk pages.

This would then allow the use of a category on the biographical article pages to have a category alphabetically sorting all biographical articles. Can anyone advice on how feasible the above steps are? Carcharoth 16:29, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

LordAmeth, one of the scripts you mention has been changed to always look for the sort key in the article's categories, rather than making assumptions about first and last name order. I hope this calms your nerves!

I'd support DEFAULTSORT on talk pages as well, but the chances of it being generally adopted don't seem good.

Finally, scripts don't do anything until the results are saved. (Not sure what "bot" is referring to above.) If an editor chooses not to review a semi-automated edit, it is perhaps more accurate to call the editor broken. –Outriggr § 04:30, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I apologize if I came across as confrontational ... it's just that since it affects so many articles, so quickly, I felt that something had to be done fairly quickly. We'll see how this develops, and in the meantime, I'll keep my eye out for pages that are mis-sorted. Cheers. LordAmeth 09:54, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Why the /Comments place?

Why does the template ask people to make comments at /Comments (eg Talk:Edward Connellan/Comments) rather than on the talk page? I have seen a few anon. and new users get confused and ask questions on the /Comments page, I always wondered where they got the idea not to use the normal talk page.--Commander Keane 19:29, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

An answer (I'm sure other editors have their own take), the /Comments pages are basically a special archive of sorts, of material relating (exclusively) to improving the article to B/GA/A/FA levels. Having this material lost in regular talk page articles (or hard to find in a talk page that remains really long and unarchived, as many do) makes it harder to maintain the article. Also, the natures of the comments differs. An article's talk page is for any commentary, questions, problem reports, disputes, etc., etc. raised by any editor (or even any encyclopedia reader with no interest in being an editor). The direction and indeed the "quality" of such commentary varies quite widely. The /Comments page is for editors who are consciously and hopefully conscientiously and "wikieducatedly" acting as article assessors. They are not there to present a topical point-of-view on the article subject, or to argue over finer points of this or that, but rather to examine the article as objectively as posssible with regard to the applicable article assessment criteria, the Manual of Style, and other "official" benchmarks.

Another nice thing about the /Comments pages is that they can be tagged by a project (e.g. with a Class=NA or whatever), or categorized in a way that the project tag would have done, providing the project with a nice means of quickly identifying every article in their scope that has been assessed in some way with comments left for improvement. It's a quick way to ID articles that are likely raisable to GA (or A or whatever the next assessment level is) with some focused short-term work. (One problem here, though, is that a few editors think they know better than everyone else and go around removing such tags or categories from /Comments pages. I've had to dissuade people from doing this on at least 5 occasions. Hasn't happened to any of my watchlisted pages in the last month, though, so I guess the point is getting across.)

If some people get confused and post random issues or questions on the /Comments page (or for that matter post an assessment on the main talk page) simply refactor the material to the proper location (and leave the writer a note on their talk page about the difference between Talk:Foo and Talk:Foo/Comments).

The only real problems I see, to date, with /Comments are a) Too many editors will rate (or even demote from A) an article to B class without leaving any comments at all about what steps might be taken to get it to GA or A class, and far more seriously b) several WikiProject banners actually inline (transclude) the entire contents of the /Comments page in the banner template itself (I mean without making it hidden by default with a hide/show button), resulting sometimes in project banners that are 4 screens long. Those project banners need to be fixed immediately to stop doing that. Unfortunately, the piece of paper I'd written several of their names down on has somehow disappeared, so unless someone else has built a list of offenders in this regard, it's an all-new bug hunt from scratch. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 01:15, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

An additional advantage is that /Comments subpages can be transcluded on other pages: see my comments in the section immediately following this one. Geometry guy 11:34, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Proposed template change

{{editprotected}} Here is where it is being worked on: User:The Psychless/WPBiography

And what it will look like... {{User:The Psychless/WPBiography|class=Start|politician-work-group=yes}}

The changes: 1. The [FAQ] link has been changed to a small [FAQ] link

2. Comments, I really think it's unnecessary for the template to ask for comments. Not only does it confuse people, thinking we should be leaving comments on every assessment we do, it makes the template look messy when there aren't any. It's also pointless for a complete page for comments.

• Do we really need comments for our assessments? No. Most assessments done don't have comments and here's why. It simply takes too much time, we won't make any progress if we have to leave comments on every article. If an article is Stub or Start class it will be very obvious how to improve it. If it is B class, giving comments on how to improve it to GA class will have to be a peer review to be useful at all. We aren't giving peer reviews, we're simply assessing articles so we know which ones need improvement.

• "I still want to give comments though." Ok, but I really don't see why they need a complete page to themselves. If the page is active enough that they might get --Psychless 21:41, 21 June 2007 (UTC)archived or lost in all the messages, someone will see and apply them before then.

Cleaning up all the /Comments pages... Someone (not me, I have no scripting skills) will need to make a bot that generates a list of all the /Comments pages, then create a new section in their respective main talk page titled: Biography Assessment Comments. The bot puts the comments in that section, then blanks the /Comments page. Somehow we'll figure something out with MfD and we can get all those pages deleted. Please comment on this and I'll try to address your concerns as well as I possibly can. Also, if we can reach consensus on this an administrator needs to make the change for me. --Psychless ^{Type words!} 04:51, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

1. Support Works for me. Removes some of the unncessary/unused fields {i.e. the Comments subpage). --Ozgod 18:40, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
2. Looks good. Is User:The Psychless/WPBiography all ready for me to copy it in? Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 23:32, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

 Done As for a bot, try WP:BOTREQ. Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 23:40, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Um. The bot run to deal with the Comments pages should have been done first. How do you now propose to find those pages where Comments have been added. It's not a trick question. Think about it. Carcharoth 00:33, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

If we're going to deprecate the /comments pages, there's very simple code that can be used to generate a Category full of the pages where a comments page exists. {{#ifexist:{{FULLPAGENAME}}/Comments|[[Category:Whatever]]}} . Then, all a bot would have to do is look in the category and move the comments to the main talk page. Once the comments are moved, the bot could speedy-tag the articles (WP:CSD#G6) and admins could quickly delete them. You'll just need to give admins a heads-up before flooding CAT:CSD. Cheers. --MZMcBride 00:42, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

I didn't realise we had Category:Biography articles with comments. That should be sufficient. I think your code would pick up articles with comments from other WikiProjects than just WPBiography. In fact, the comments left on Biography articles may have been left after assessment by another WikiProject. What happens then? Carcharoth 01:28, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

I support this change, as adding comments on all biography articles is almost impossible. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 03:28, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

(outdent) There's a problem with having a bot tackle this task based on Category:Biography articles with comments, and it may be that this task should not be tackled at all. As Carcharoth noted, other WikiProjects use Comments subpages, as does the WikiProject 1.0 Editorial Team. For more information, please see WP:BOTREQ#WikiProject Biography Comment Moving.

Thanks! — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 04:29, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

As noted above and elsewhere, there have been problems with this. Please, revert back to the status quo and wait a bit longer (say, a week) for more input to the disucssion before going ahead with this. What is needed now is to repopulate the category of pages with comments, and find out how many biographical articles have comments - if it is too many to copy by hand, another solution may be needed. I would suggest finding the people who originally implemented the comments subpage system and talk to them about it. Carcharoth 10:07, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

This proposal has not been thought through. It is a big step backwards, and the arguments for doing it ("No one has time to leave comments" and "Comments don't need a whole page to themselves") are weak. Comments and /Comments pages are useful for many reasons:

• Whenever a rating is added or changed, it is helpful to sign and date it. This allows others to identify the assessor, and when the last assessment was made, without having to trawl through the edit history. Everyone should have time to type four tildes on the /Comments page.
• Separating the comments from the article means that they will not be seen in context, will be missed by many editors, and will go out of date more easily.
• A separate subpage for comments is useful because it can be transcluded on other pages.
• /Comments pages are used by several WikiProjects and facilitate communication. In particular they should not be blanked or deleted unilaterally by one project.

If you want to see the potential /Comments pages have, visit Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0/A-Class mathematics articles and related pages. Here the comments are listed with articles and ratings, so that editors can find articles needing their attention in a number of different ways. These pages are automatically generated, and comments are transcluded from /Comments pages. If you are willing to wait about 10 seconds for a long page to load, why not also check out Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0/Mathematicians, which is a list of all mathematician articles which have been assessed by the Mathematics WikiProject. This list is also automatically generated, and by using a further /Data subpage, the tables are sortable by date and surname, as well as Class and Priority.

The Mathematics WikiProject switched to using /Comments pages a couple of months ago. Before that, some editors left comments on the article talk page, others tried to compile lists by hand. If you are not yet convinced by /Comments, take a look at the state of these lists before /Comments and automation were introduced and imagine trying to maintain these pages. This is a page from April which has not been updated since January. Geometry guy 11:27, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Your arguments convince me. Again, I would like the status quo to be restored until this issue has been discussed at more length. The only caveat is that the WPBiography project is so big (nearly 400,000 pages are tagged by it) that changes to the template really do noticeably affect the job queue at the servers. To those who went ahead with this change, please, please discuss things for more than just 19 hours and three people before making changes like this. Carcharoth 12:49, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

And again, it is the scale thing at work. WPBiography are trying to do a "quick and dirty" assessment of tens of thousands of articles. That may, ultimately, be a waste of time, as more careful assessment, though it takes longer, is probably more productive, and needs to be done later in any case. To take an example, say a mathematician's article gets hastily assessed as start by WPBiography, and then not looked at for a year or so. During that time, a member of WikiProject Mathematics comes along and carefully assesses the article, adds comments, others come to work on the article, and the article is improved to B-class, and eventually, another year later, reaches FA-class. What did the WPBiography's assessment as start contribute to that process? Carcharoth 12:56, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Careful assessment is definitely better than the "quick and dirty" approach, but the latter has some value, because it puts articles on the map for others to assess more carefully. From that point of view, a complete but inaccurate assessment is better than a blank one, because any editors watching the page are more likely object to an inaccuracy and update it.

I have some experience with the "rough and ready" approach (as I prefer to call it!). I find it can be done surprisingly quickly using AWB. Here's how to fill in blank ratings.

• In AWB get a list of all talk pages in Category:Unassessed biography articles or Category:Unknown-priority biography articles and save it as a text file.
• In a text editor with search-and-replace, replace Talk:foo<newline> by foo<newline>Talk:foo<newline>Talk:foo/Comments<newline>.
• Load this list back into AWB, switch off all options (do not skip non-existing pages), and ask AWB to present the preview not the changes.
• Now start the process. You will first be presented with the article. Scan through it, form a "quick and dirty" or "rough and ready" opinion. Click ignore. You will next be presented with the article talk page: fill in any blanks in the template with your opinion. Click save. Finally you will be presented with the article /Comments page. Add four tildes, perhaps with a comment if one occurs to you. Click save. Go on to the next article.

A similar procedure can be used to add ratings to pages without a template. (At Mathematics we made a conscious decision that blank templates are pointless, so Category:Unassessed quality mathematics articles and Category:Unassessed importance mathematics articles are empty most of the time.) The first stage above needs to be replaced by the following three:

1. Get a list of all talk pages which transclude the ratings template and save it.
2. Get a list of all articles within the scope of the project. For mathematics, this can be obtained from the List of mathematics articles (which is automatically updated using the List of mathematics categories). Convert this to a list of talk pages.
3. Form the list difference with 1, and save it. This is now the list of all relevant articles with no template.

Do the search-and-replace as before, but then program AWB to prepend a blank template such as {{WPBiography|class= |priority = }}. This will not be saved to the article if you click ignore. Fill it in on the talk page and save. Replace it by four tildes on the /Comments page. I find I can do 1-2 articles per minute in this way, and have assessed about 1500 so far. Geometry guy 15:15, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Ok, we won't deprecate the /Comments page. I still don't think the template should ask for comments. My idea is to transclude the comments into the show/hide More information bar section. I would like the comments to look like they do in Template:WP1.0. For an example of the More information bar thing see here. I've been trying all morning to get the template to work but it just won't. I have very little experience in templates, so it would be greatly appreciated if someone with more experience could get it to work. I think it's fine to leave comments but the template shouldn't ask for them. It would be ideal if all of our articles have comments, but realistically, it isn't going to happen. --Psychless 17:01, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

The problem is in the code that decides whether the More information bar should be there or not. If you include one of the parameters like: |attention=yes or |past-collaboration=yes then it will show the comments. Somehow this needs to be fixed, and the background of things under that bar need to be the same color as the rest of the template. Could someone please help here? --Psychless 21:14, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm frankly amazed you can make head or tail of the code. Secretly I'm very impressed. Is it trial and error, or are you really learning how templates work (I gave up on that long ago). :-) Carcharoth 22:31, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Templates in general are not so hard. Templates mixed with wikitables (like this one) are painful. The main problem is a conflict between the wiki use of | in tables with its use as a parameter separator in templates: {{!}} is provided as a way around this, but it does tend to make the template unreadable. An additional problem is the fact that wikitable syntax is sensitive to whitespace, especially newlines, so you have to be careful in a table-generating template to put whitespace in thr right space, and eliminate it where it is not needed. This also tends to make the template unreadable. After much work, I roughly understand {{maths rating}} (and this one is broadly similar), but still I need to use trial and error when I edit a subtle point.

I'm not exactly sure what you are trying to achieve, otherwise I might be able to help more easily. Maybe I will try to implement a show/hide feature on maths rating comments to learn about the issues... Geometry guy 23:14, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Mainly trial and error. Geometry guy, I'm going to try one last thing then I'll try to explain it on your talk page. --Psychless 00:44, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Comment: Apologies in coming to this discussion late, but I, for one, find myself irritated that I can no longer readily get at the 'Comments' subpage. Apparently, I've been among what seems a distinct minority of editors who actually used the comments link on the few biographies to which I've contributed. I argue that there is an advantage in having a distinct area to comment on the editorial issues of a biography, a place that doesn't get lost in the noise of some (not all) biography talk pages. These are the sorts of comment pages I've been maintaining on the few articles I've taken under wing, both for my own and other editors' benefit:

• Soanya Ahmad
• Reid Stowe
• James S. T. Stranahan

It's the sort of activity I would encourage other editors to do, and now I am a bit chargined that the mechanism to do so has been compromised. I am also chargined by the cavalier implementation of this scheme. How is it, when we place so much emphasis on verification in the main space, that we throw the standard by the wayside in maintenence spaces? By what means has it been established that links to comments confuses people? Who has measured the extent of this confusion? Where are the results published? I feel I had a pretty good understanding of what comment links were for the first time I saw the facility in this template and never felt any confusion whatsoever. Insofar as taking too much time, is concerned, the last time I checked, I'm not being paid for contributions I make to Wikipedia, so nobody can set deadlines and expect me to adhere to them. Therefore, I can take all the time I need for full exercise of editorial craft. This includes using specialized facilities to note structural deficiencies in biographies, write links to promising reference materials and the like. Facilities such as these /Comments pages do suffer from a Catch-22 problem, I think: they are not useful if they are not used, and they won't be used until useful. I prefer the WikiGnome approach of using the facility whenever I can, thereby eroding this vicious circle a little at a time, rather than seeing the facility unceremoniously pulled. I agree with Geometry guy that the reasoning behind this proposal is specious. I feel that the case for /Comments pages raised by SMcCandlish in Why the /Comments place? have not been adequately addressed by the proponents of this change. I object that this discussion was not first aired at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography so that it could have been seen by a wider group of people. Please revert and do not proceed again until there are in the offing more compelling arguments than they take too much time or people are really confused. Diligent editors take whatever time is necessary to communicate with colleagues using every available channel at their disposal, and I fail to see any evidence of confusion paralyzing the Wikipedia community. Take care — Gosgood 01:04, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I apologize for not properly keeping everyone updated on this topic. I've made some other changes to the template that should be made shortly. The newest version of the template will transclude the comments in a show/hide section in the template. The code for it can be found here and an example of it in use can be found here. We are not going to deprecate the /Comments page. You may still leave comments on the article, and no /Comments pages will be deleted. However, there will be no sentence asking you to leave comments. The purpose of this change, now, is to make the template not imply that you should be leaving comments. If this was a wikiproject that had 1000 articles under it's scope it would be perfectly reasonable to ask for comments on every assessment. With our wikiproject, with almost 400,000 articles under it's scope, it is not reasonable. I will be happy to discuss this further with you if you believe that the changes that will soon be implemented are not sufficient enough. Psychless 03:39, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

I think that's a reasonable compromise even though I don't like the /Comments subpage and think all Wikiprojects should stop using it. 1. I dislike the fact that the comments are actually transcluded and shown on the template. This can sometime take up a lot of space and makes the banner area look messy. 2. I think all comments about ways to improve the articles should be in the one centralized place (and that's on the talk page). Currently it's all over the place - on the talk page, on a subpage at Wikipedia:Peer review, on a subpage at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates, on a /comments page, or even a /todo list. This means editors have to look all over the place for comments. - kollision 14:30, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. There is, however, disadvantages to both ways. On busy talk pages, the comments, peer reviews, etc. could get archived very quickly. Going through all the archives would be about as much trouble. Anyways, I don't think the change will take up that much extra space. It only shows the comments if you click show, and they are automatically hidden by default. --Psychless 16:00, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

With all due respect, I disagree with kollision. The issues kollision raise are one of wiki page organization that any editor who cares about input from colleagues should address, to wit: cross-link the peer, good article, featured article, project comment areas to a talk page table of contents so that all interested parties can find relevant commentary: the day-to-day diligence of a WikiGnome who is mentoring an article toward GA or FA addresses that issue.

Insofar as how this template should behave in this community, I hope that the template change proponents please, please do a Use case first to figure out how editors are to interact with it, which may differ considerably with how one might think editors ought to interact with it. Do not proceed until there is consensus among a decent range of editors that the work flow is usefully modeled. In that effort of gaining consensus, be wary of the offhand remark, both positive and negative, for neither does you service. "That's great! Go ahead!!!" is as useless as "That stinks. Go soak your head." because neither offer guidance on how to model interaction. In light of this, read carefully those editors who have left you more than an up or down vote. They have raised concerns, I believe, that change proponents have not yet adequately addressed.

In that light, here are my own particular opinions:

• Consider that, among use case actors, there is at least one incorrigible old editor who likes to explain to colleagues his reasoning on how he's dealt with an article; the action sits well with his queer, old-fashioned notions of collaboration and consensus building. He's a minority case. He may represent, say, less than one in a thousand editors. But we're not counting votes here; we're evaluating inputs to a work flow, and when it comes to quality input, that one editor is offering a higher dimensioned input than stub/start/B/GA/A/FA. That editor is writing about further sources of references, factual holes in a current biography, potentially libelous aspects in a person's life, or rationale behind what might seem an unfair assessment. That is input you should be encouraging for it is blessedly hard to come by and easy to chase away.
• In light of that, removing the link to the /Comment page is hardly an invitation to leaving higher dimensioned input. Instead, it lends to the further isolation of the /Comments page, inhibiting its use and driving it to uselessness — out of sight, out of mind.
• If the objection with the /Comment link is visual clutter, then please consider a Hide/show mechanism as in {{ArticleHistory}}. I wouldn't like it; I would object to it (out of sight, out of mind, again) but if the dominant opinion among a decent range of editors is that it is impossible to cleanly lay out the template any other way, then I could grumpily abide by the consensus. I'm not convinced, at the present, that this impossibility of a clean layout prevails.
• If the objection with the /Comment link is that it obliges project members to put "something" on 400,000+ pages, then I think the project team has got to re-think it's work flow. I would suggest a work flow change that places an editor who is rating a Biography article under no obligation to express the reasoning behind her assessment and is under no obligation to furnish collaborative information for other editors. That is how the work flow appears to be going now in any case. I would suggest rewriting the invitation: "Please rate this article; it has not yet been assessed on the project's quality scale. If you wish, make additional comments here about the article's strengths or weaknesses, or the basis of your assessment. [FAQ]. Again, if 999 out of a thousand editors choose not to leave comments, so be it. 999 editors are providing a one-dimensioned, scalar assessment and one editor is giving bonus dimensions. You should not be hampering that one editor for her input is rare; you should be thinking in terms of providing such editors one-click capture, not making it harder to comment.
• Observing a red link to the /Comments page in the template was, in itself, useful information; it flagged that the assessment was possibly a 'first-pass' rough effort, and should not be held in the same regard as a 'second-pass' detailed assessment where an editor has left comments or an assessment rationale. That red/blue link indicator constituted a not entirely useless 'assessment of the assessment' that has now sadly gone away. I would very much prefer to see it return.

My revert suggestion is unchanged. The functionality of the template has, I feel, been compromised.

• I find the reasoning behind removing the /Comment link specious. The fact that it is not used much does not drive one to the conclusion that it is useless, for I claim that when it is used, and used well, it furnishes a high order, valuable input to the project that would impossible to get any other way.
• The reasoning that the link 'obligates' people to furnish input to 400,000+ pages is also specious. In fact, most editors happily ignore the link now; one may as well change the wording to reflect that it is entirely optional input. Indeed, if the template is to be changed at all it ought to be changed to encourage such optional input, not discourage it.
• In my opinion, the assessment of 400,000+ articles is an internal, process issue that is orthogonal to the template's job of gathering assessment input. To my mind, the problem does not lie with the template; the problem lies with 400,000+ assessments. To that end, I think Geometry guy is on the better track when he outlined how he uses AWB to batch-assess articles. I would be one hundred percent pleased if template WPBiography would just revert back to the 12 May 2007 state and, functionally, stay there, and that the development effort move from the front end to the middle ware, where assessment automation is sorely needed. Good luck to all of you. Take care. — Gosgood 16:38, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

(Unindent) There seems to be a misunderstanding here. The original proposal did involve removing links to /Comments and even deprecating /Comments (!!), and there was an unacceptably hasty attempt to begin to implement it. However several editors (including myself) vigorously objected to this idea, citing exactly the kinds of reasons that you list above, and the plans have been radically altered. Furthermore, the group appears to have learnt a lesson in patience and is proceeding more slowly with the consultation and possible implementation.

If you check out the proposed template at User_talk:The_Psychless/WPBiography, you will see that it does link to the /Comments page. So, in fact most of your concerns (which I share) have been accommodated already. The main difference is that the link is in a show/hide box. Since comments can be rather long, and can be transcluded into several project banners, the use of a show/hide box seems sensible to me. Indeed, as a result of this discussion, I have implemented the same idea at the {{maths rating}} template.

There is another proposed change which I believe has generated the confusions: The Psychless and others do not want the template to instruct editors to add comments. You may disagree with them, and so do I, at least in part: the maths rating template invites the addition of comments if there are none, and asks editors to update the comments if there are some. However, this is a relatively minor point, and the current proposal seems to be a reasonable compromise to me. Geometry guy 17:12, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Addendum: I guess I should link to the maths rating template in action, lest anyone get the wrong impression from the template page. For an example of an article with comments, see Talk:Subset. For an article without comments, see Talk:Power set. Geometry guy 17:20, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Here are my counter opinions:

• Helping other editors improve articles is valuable. However, I do not believe that is the purpose of assessment. Assessment, in my opinion, is a way to help editors find which articles need attention more than others. It also helps us see the progress we are making. If an editor needs comments on an article, they can go directly to our project's peer review department, where they will recieve detailed and helpful comments. Some articles will not be improved for months, maybe even years, those comments will serve no purpose until then. Our efforts are better spent trying to improve Wikipedia right now.
• I would be more than happy to rewrite the invitation. I believe that is a suitable compromise. Editors who are going to leave comments will use the link and editors who will not will leave the link alone. If comments are not left the template will no longer insist that you should, which is how it should be.
• Now, instead of a red link/blue link indicator, it's a no comments transcluded/comments transcluded indicator. If you want to leave comments on an article after it's assessed then you simply type /Comments after the url. That likely takes two seconds longer than clicking a link.
• I have never said that comments are useless. The input from them are not impossible to get any other way. You can simply go to peer review or use your own judgement.

I've changed my version of the template again. Gosgood, please take a look at it here and decide if this a sufficient compromise. Psychless 21:41, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

I could live with this. Good work. Grammar pickiness:

• Please rate the article and, if you wish, leave comments here on the basis of your assessment or the strengths and weaknesses of the article.

I don't think 'on' is the best preposition for this phrase. It may be cleaner to say:

• Please rate the article and, if you wish, leave comments here regarding your assessment or the strengths and weaknesses of the article.

Take care — Gosgood 13:03, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Just a suggestion: in my experience with ratings, it is more helpful for the comments to suggest improvements rather than comment on current strengths and weaknessess of an article. Geometry guy 15:13, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

/Comments is part of the Wikipedia 1.0 assessments scheme and their bot. Please don't go changing it without at least understanding that and any consequences. That said, if it's not working you're entitled to ditch it! --kingboyk 16:25, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

{{editprotected}} Whoever would like to flood the job queue over grammar, ;), can change on the basis of to regarding. Thanks for compromising Gosgood. Regards, Psychless 18:34, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

I edited this once already today; just suggest the grammar change the next time another change needs done, or in a few days otherwise, and I'll do it then. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:55, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Actually, the job queue was too small for my taste, so I made the change. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:21, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Astronaut bios

There are currently over 500 articles in the main namespace that link to Template:Infobox Astronaut. A WPBiography banner makes sense for all of these, as does a WPSpace banner linking to WikiProject Space exploration. Could the two be combined, e.g. with a "space-work-group" switch to WPBiography? Or does it make more sense to just go ahead and have double banners on them all? (sdsds - talk) 19:43, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

As I understood it, astronaut bios were being dealt with by Wikipedia:WikiProject Space travellers. Maybe astronaut bios should have their banner instead, and the project be slaved to both WP Human spaceflight and WP Biography? Colds7ream 19:56, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

The template is ready

Go here to see how it will look when there are comments: User_talk:The_Psychless/WPBiography.

Here's how it will look normally, well with a class of NA: {{User:The_Psychless/WPBiography|class=NA}}

Now I'll let everyone discuss it for a while before asking an administrator to make the change.. --Psychless 20:01, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

"Let everyone discuss it for a while." I wonder where that came from... :-) Looks good to me. Carcharoth 17:23, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Since no disagreements have been brought up yet let's change it! Whichever administrator this may involve, just copy and paste the code at User:The Psychless/WPBiography.

Looks good to me. ludahai 魯大海 10:09, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

{{editprotected}} --Psychless 18:09, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

You have left it one day for discussion? Have you brought it up at the biography wikiproject talk page also? SGGH ^speak! 20:47, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes. Two people disagreed with my action last time: one helped me make this change, one has already supported this change. I suppose I can let it wait a few more days. --Psychless 21:25, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Could someone please make this change... Psychless 18:28, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

done. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:34, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

hehe you copied the commentbox idea from WP:PERU , right? user:andersmusician --190.42.191.129 05:57, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I copied it from Wikipedia Version 1.0 Editorial Team. :) Psychless 02:18, 25 June 2007 (UTC)