Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biography/Archive Feb 20 2003


hm, some good, some bad. It's good to aim for a 1-line header, in the form of a minor sentence, followed by a paragraph break something like:

John Smith (Octember 13, 1856 - April 45, 2002), Freedonian composer, novelist, freedom fighter and politician.

--- Tarquin 14:11 Jan 24, 2003 (UTC)

(with the years and dates linked. couldn't be bothered to type all the [ ]. of course typing this line has been more effort. but more fun ;-)


Yes. This is the current standard. DW's ideas are very arcane and insane. --mav
I don't know about insane, but I would say counterintuitive. I think most people gravitate towards prose as a means of describing a person's life; the "factbook" approach looks very dry & uninviting to me. Better would be to tell a few good anecdotes & get the reader intrigued if possible. (Ortolan88 is currently the wiki-master of this). Koyaanis Qatsi
Master, or not, I wrote thousands of obituaries in my newspaper days and I am accustomed to doing what works for readers. I don't think that making every biographical entry look exactly alike works for readers. I see that I have listed about 30 of the biographies that I worked on on my user page. I don't know that any of them would be improved by this format. What works for readers is immediate information on why this person is important and worth reading about. You can look at anything I list, but maybe Slim Pickens, Jethro Tull (agriculturist), and Karel Capek can stand as examples of articles that would be rendered less interesting and readable by application of this formula. Actually, this proposal to turn biographical articles into structured cells of a database will not succeed. There are thousands of biographical articles written as more ordinary narrratives that won't be changed, and almost anyone who comes across one written in this style will be inclined to revise it into a more humane and interesting format. Yes, paragraphs should be short, but that doesn't mean they should be tabular and tedious. Ortolan88 18:13 Jan 25, 2003 (UTC)

DATE: 24/01/02

FROM: Tannin

TO: Anyone who is reading this

CC: N/A

SUBJECT: Wikipedia talk:Biography standards (DW's proposal)

MESSAGE: Imposing global format rules on entries can produce stilted, difficult to read, and ugly results. It also risks requiring that contributors spend more effort learning about an arcane set of formatting rules than they spend on setting out the relevant information in whichever way is most useful in the particular circumstance. There is sense in loose guidelines (though the suggested one is overly elaborate and restrictive), but imposing that rigid style on every biographical entry would produce a lot of turgid prose and be counterproductive. Tannin 14:16 Jan 24, 2003 (UTC)

Well we do have global format rules at our Manual of Style and Guide to Layout. But the standards expressed there are natural and very likely to be followed by newcomers before the newcomers even read those pages. And of course, there are plenty of people like me that will clean-up any additional formatting. As you make very clear, DW's ideas would make Wikipedia's biography section look like a collection of memos on the people instead of encyclopedia articles. --mav
I prefer prose for as much as possible, though I admit my *own* prose frequently needs work. I'm willing to work towards breaking sentences & paragraphs more but I fail to see the benefit of DW's proposal. Koyaanis Qatsi

I also see a lot with links for the years so you can find you what happened on they year they were born/died. I don't know if that is usefull in practice though.

John Smith (Novtober 31, 1856 - April 54, 2002), Freedonian composer, novelist, freedom fighter and politician.

My opinion: I don't think we need any more guidance than what we have already on Wikipedia:Manual of style. There are too many reasonable ways of writing biographies to enforce a template. If we were to enforce standards, DW's suggestion is not one I would support, but I'd rather we scrapped the idea of biography standards altogether.--Camembert

One suggestion I have is that Julian dates not be adjusted and given as proleptic Gregorian dates, and that if they are, (and maybe if they aren't) that they be marked clearly as to calendar used (O.S. or N.S.) or some such abbreviation. It would help avoid confusion, especially as birth dates/death dates are being linked to the day pages. -- Someone else 22:31 Jan 24, 2003 (UTC)

This would be a bad idea since different countries adopted the Gregorian calendar at sometimes widely different times. For example (if memory serves) Russia was still on the Julian Calendar at the start of the 20th century! So having some period Russian-related pages in Julian and contemporary Western European-related pages in Gregorian, renders the day pages useless. If anything we need to standardize on Gregorian - otherwise events that look like they happened on the same day really aren't, just because a few countries held out for hundreds of years before they changed their calendars. --mav
The solution is to give it in both calendars if there's any question. Otherwise people seeking to verify our accuracy and finding different dates are going to quite validly question our reliability. If the consensus is to link to the proleptic Gregorian date, that's fine...but we should indicate which calendar the date is in. -- Someone else 22:49 Jan 24, 2003 (UTC)
As far as I know, except for the fact that the October Revolution took place in November, the variance of calendars has had little impact on history. Ortolan88
Which is an illustration that if you "convert" the dates of historical events they no longer correspond to the primary historical documents they generated. "Converting" birth dates is a bad idea for this reason. It's not a matter of things happening on the same day unless they happen in the same year. (And people generally didn't change their birthdate when the calendar changed.) I doubt that anyone here is converting dates PREVIOUS to 1582 to Gregorian, so we certainly haven't standardized on giving only proleptic Gregorian dates. I'm just encouraging that we specify which calendar we are giving a date in, in the time period in which there's any question. And yes, that will require a knowledge of when countries changed from Julian to Gregorian: Yugoslavia and Romania didn't switch till 1919. -- Someone else 20:25 Jan 25, 2003 (UTC)


Not to be rude, but the example at the top of the Talk page is in roughly the format listed as “DW proposes” on the reference page (Wikipedia:Biography standards). Is someone confused? Or have the topical referents been edited out of one or the other page? For your reference, DW is alleged to have proposed:

  • NAME: year dates, occupation.

and Tarquin has exampled:

Now the difference between these two is visible; Tarquin's example in DW's format would be:

While I would call this difference visible and perhaps significant, I don't think the changes can be described as rising to the level of “very arcane and insane”.

sign me confused

DW advocates line breaks and Tarquin does not. --Koyaanis Qatsi
See the full proposal at Wikipedia:Biography standards. There is more to it than just the first line. Tannin

-Sure, but Tarquin only exampled the first line. I think a first line like that is good, because that's what I always look at when I find a biography page. It's how I know I've found the right John Smith.
-Such a first line out to be followed by a new paragraph before the prose starts. The comment about breaking prose into paragraphs is perfectly true, though it ought to be part of the overall style guide. I'm curious still what part of the proposal is insane? I'm going to rewrite DW's proposal and make it clearer. Sue me. the librarian

-Having gone through that exercise, I have this to say: I don't think a format of "Guy's name, period he lived, why the hell he's in the wikipedia" followed by an empty line and then "Whatever in the hell you want that makes for a good entry" is overly restrictive. And since I never want to have to read an entire article to figure out of the person I'm reading about is the one I meant to look up, it is almost required, also a good idea, and ought to be the official style. -Any real format suggestion would describe how to handle normal edge cases like pseudonyms, foreign transcriptions, etc.the librarian

I like Librarian's biography of John Smith, and I see no reason why other bio's can't be written with a similar format: I mean it really struck a chord with me, so I hope we can all be harmonious about this and sing from the same page of music. --Uncle Ed

I also think that a general standard for biographical entries is a reasonable idea, but I wouldn't like to see it get too prescriptive. Apart from anything else, I don't propose to go back and amend the hundreds I've already contributed; I'd rather add new ones. Let's not get too heavy-handed about it, though. A standard format for an article is not as important as a naming convention. Deb 22:51 Jan 27, 2003 (UTC)

Fix all the existing ones? heehee. But no reason not to fix them up as you come across them. I'm also thinking that a unified Biography index would be cool. the librarian

there already is a biography list ... as the formatting existing articles: that's why there are http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiGnome ;-) -- Tarquin 23:06 Jan 27, 2003 (UTC)
Is that WikiGnome open source? I'd like to propose having it automatically [[]]ify the first occurrance of anything linkable in an article. Expecially all those dates are really annoying to [[]]ify manually all the time. Mkweise 00:00 Jan 28, 2003 (UTC)]] 23:37 Jan 27, 2003 (UTC)
the list of all biographies is List of people.
There is also Biographical Listing/A through Biographical Listing/Z.
Librarian's proposal, by my reading, can be reduced to the following:
Write about the subject. Keep the first paragraph short. List important works.
Consider it done. It is a good example. I replaced the '''</markup> with <nowiki>== (still kind of big in this browser, but hierarchical) and got rid of the HTML. Like other efforts along these lines, it reflects the best of what is already in the Wikipedia and does not require wholesale revamping. It should be mentioned in Wikipedia:Manual of Style Ortolan88
Isn't it redundant to mention birth and death dates twice? I've already fixed hundreds of articles so that the month and day are with the years in parentheses after the person's name. I also prefer complete topic/definition sentences. --mav
I second that emotion. I generally compelete sentence fragments where ever they dangle, though redundant biographical dates I've generally just left alone, since there seems to be no clear standard one way or the other. Mkweise 02:30 Jan 28, 2003 (UTC)
fixed both problems.
I still think (born <date> - died <date>) reads better than (<date> - <date>). Lots of those that mav changed were done in the brief period when that was the standard format :=). Ortolan88
If that's the consensus, then why not stadardize on the former when giving complete dates, but use the latter when giving only years? Although, I'd prefer (born <date>; died <date>) over (born <date> - died <date>). Mkweise 07:32 Jan 28, 2003 (UTC)

A flurry of talk-page-type comments and argumentative remarks on the article page has pretty well buried the slowly developing proposal. Ortolan88

I'm convinced several (I'll be polite and not say all) like to hear themselves talk. One says "not be restricted" but ZOE is running around doind exactly that: ENFORCING HER format as she interprets policy. If she hadn't screwed up my hard work and asserted HER POWER to do it, I would,t suggest any standard format. Second, all those who think anything current is good, think again. Wikipedia is a failure. Read your own Woe is me articles on attracting visitors and how to worship Google. READ what I said: We are talking first line set. We are talking about marketing. Anyone with a marketing degree or years in a successful marketing position, PLEASE STEP FORWARD. Sorry, but Slim Pickens is horrific on the eyes and my first two lines recommendation is talking visuals. However, while I'm at it, try the only place in the world named London (brillant for an encyclopedia) for an opening visual that drives any researcher (THE client/customer/market -- or is Wikipedia just a playground?) away thinking this is one dumbass, unprofessional, worthless sight. Please, instead of shooting off at the mouth. Look at articles and think....DW

And, shit, we are not talking about what YOU prefer. We are talking about changing something that currently isn't working.

AND, look at the FORMAT and even content for Amedeo Modigliani or any of the dozens of Montparnasse / Montmartre artists I've done, then go to Paul Cezanne, who is one of the greatest artists in the world (painting sold for US$60 million, ranks 4th all time). Ask yourself this: If a stranger clicks on Cezanne will he/she go WOW, what a great site! Or will they dismiss Wikipedia out of hand and leave permanently? (And using its a "work in progress" is bullshit). I write tons of articles I don't give a damn about, Modigliani is one of them. Or, if you like Cezanne, try Juan Gris, it is even better!...DW


DW, your last revision of Modigliani reads:

Amedeo Modigliani (July 12, 1884 - January 24, 1920), painter and sculptor.

which is pretty much the agreed cconvention. So what's the problem? The current version adds a "was a". The "was a" is redundant and reads badly, there's nothing wrong with opening with a minor sentence. -- Tarquin 23:19 Jan 30, 2003 (UTC) PS I really like Slim Pickens, I think Orto is right to give real name first, and "better known as ..." or "known by the stage name..."

Whose convention? The convention is that the first line of every article be a complete sentence. And it was a struggle to get DW to concede to THAT much above, because he wanted the dates in the body of the article and not in the first line. The only OTHER addition I've done besides make it a complete sentence is to say that he was an ITALIAN painter, which for some reason, infuriates DW. -- Zoe
The "was a" is not redundant, and reads better. In my humble opinion, complete sentences are always better than incomplete ones, in the context of encyclopaedia articles. But not necessarily in less formal writing, of course... -- Oliver P. 05:41 Jan 31, 2003 (UTC)