Template talk:Biographical Directory of Congress

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U.S. Congress Mid‑importance

	United States portal This template is within the scope of WikiProject U.S. Congress, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of the United States Congress on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.U.S. CongressWikipedia:WikiProject U.S. CongressTemplate:WikiProject U.S. CongressU.S. Congress articles
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Template:Biographical Directory of Congress is permanently protected from editing because it is a heavily used or highly visible template. Substantial changes should first be proposed and discussed here on this page. If the proposal is uncontroversial or has been discussed and is supported by consensus, editors may use {{edit template-protected}} to notify an administrator or template editor to make the requested edit. Usually, any contributor may edit the template's documentation to add usage notes or categories.

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CongBio2[edit]

By the way, {{CongBio2}} adds more information for Senators and members of the House who served in or since 1991. Therefore, I think it is better to use for them. —Markles 00:55, 5 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Bot?[edit]

Does someone know how to create a bot? There are approx. 2,600 articles that use:

http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=

instead of

{{CongBio}}.

This search here gives those results: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Search&search=%5Bhttp%3A%2F%2Fbioguide.congress.gov%2Fscripts%2Fbiodisplay.pl%3Findex%3D&fulltext=Search

Can someone create a bot to replace all of these?—Markles 15:31, 16 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Inline reference?[edit]

Does anyone know of an inline reference version of this? This template won't work for reference purposes because it starts with *. —Wknight94 (talk) 20:35, 31 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Instead of an inline version, someone comfortable with m:ParserFunctions, such as the people listed within Category:User template coder, could introduce an optional argument so that editors could use something like the following inline:

<ref name="congbio">{{CongBio|d000191|inline}}</ref>

67.101.6.61 00:30, 4 July 2007 (UTC).[reply]

Done. Use {{CongBio|number|name if necessary|inline=1}}. east.718 at 21:44, December 22, 2007

Display format[edit]

how about listing the subjects name in the display thus:

Barbara Billingsley Biography at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress

it's a bit more in line with the other wp db referrals. --emerson7 | Talk 19:11, 3 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Category request[edit]

Hi, can someone please be kind enough to add Category:Wikipedia articles incorporating text from the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress to this template (within includeonly tags, of course)? —Eastlaw (talk) 21:47, 19 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Would that be accurate? This template is used for the sake of linking to the Directory. It doesn't necessarily mean that the article used text from the Directory.—Markles 13:15, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The main reason I am asking is because a lot of articles were created by Polbot but don't include the proper attribution tag, {{Bioguide}}. If you don't want to add the category to this template, could you find a bot which would make sure all the articles created by Polbot have the {{Bioguide}} tag on them? --Eastlaw (talk) 19:58, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know much about bots, alas. I agree that all of the Polbot articles need the Bioguide tag, but I don't know much more about adding that tag to those articles. I guess what you're asking really is to put that tag on those articles, not really to add this Category to this template.—Markles 20:46, 20 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

John Black[edit]

If you understand this template, could you please be so kind as to fix the use of it at John Black (U.S. Senator). I'm afraid it's beyond me what's actually wrong with it, but it's directing me to http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index={{{1}}}, indicating that the {{{1}}} parameter's missing, which I'm fairly sure it isn't. Thanks. — Hysteria18 ^{(Talk • Contributions)} 18:02, 5 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Seems that template doesn't support the use of named parameters. older ≠ wiser 18:09, 5 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Findagrave[edit]

I don't think the automatic Findagrave functionality is working correctly. It's not showing up on Jacob Johnson (U.S. politician); did I do something wrong? Ntsimp (talk) 09:33, 13 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Never mind; I figured it out. The documentation just needs to be rewritten. To make it work correctly you have to use "name=" and "findagrave=", not the given example format. Ntsimp (talk) 09:37, 13 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

No bullet, pls[edit]

{{editprotected}} Please remove the leading asterisk output from this template. This is more useful as a <ref> than as an item in an External links section, but it formats oddly. Some older uses in External links might have to be updated, but it is a small price to pay for progress.--Workbrick (talk) 00:12, 27 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

There is an inline parameter that you can pass to the template that prevents the bullet from being shown. For example, {{CongBio|s123456|name=John Smith|inline=y}} produces "United States Congress. "John Smith (id: s123456)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.". — RockMFR 00:54, 27 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Change to this template[edit]

I made a few changes to this template in its sanbox and I wanted to present them here before implementing. First I simplified the coding by using the Cite web template, I added a couple more option fields (such as work and accessdate) and I removed the logic that links it to the Find a Grave template. In my opinion if we are going to link to the Find a Grave template we should use the Cong links template or keep them separate. If the decision is made to keep the logic however then it can be added in before implementing it. Any comments on these new changes? I alinged it so its easier to read but here is what I changes the code to look like:

{{Cite web
 |url=http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index={{{1|{{{grid}}}}}}
 |title={{{2|{{{name|{{PAGENAME}}}}}}}}
 |publisher= [[Biographical Directory of the United States Congress]]: 1774 - Present
 |work={{{work|}}}
 |accessdate={{{accessdate|}}}}}

Here is what the code currently looks like:

{{#if:
 {{{inline|}}}||*}}[http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index={{{1}}}
 {{{2|{{{name|{{PAGENAME}}}}}}}}] at the ''[[Biographical Directory of the United States Congress]]
 ''{{#if:{{{date|}}}|. Retrieved {{{date}}}|}}
   {{#if:{{{findagrave|}}}|
* {{Find a Grave|name={{{2|{{{name|{{PAGENAME}}}}}}}}|{{{findagrave}}}|accessdate={{{date|}}}}}

--Kumioko (talk) 13:39, 27 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

{{CongLinks}} only works for folks who served later than 1991. Findagrave is useful for earlier people.—Markles 16:54, 27 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
- Thanks thats good to know. I still think were mixing apples and oranges with these 2 templates though. --Kumioko (talk) 17:18, 27 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I too can see no value in trying to subsume {{Find a Grave}} in this template. It is generic to (one supposes with very few exceptions - mostly under the witness protection program) a subset of dead people, and has no relation to Congress. Rich Farmbrough, 20:55, 27 July 2010 (UTC).[reply]

I've been bold and implemented the template with {{cite web}}. I did not see this suggestion from 6 years ago until after I had made the changes, but my changes are very close to those that were proposed here. I modelled them on the template {{National Heritage List for England}} -- PBS (talk) 20:23, 2 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

CongBio and BioGuide template[edit]

The categories for CongBio should be:

[[Category:People and person external link templates]] and [[Category:U.S. Congress external link templates]]

BioGuide is the template which should include:

[[Category:United States government attribution templates]]

Flatterworld (talk) 18:06, 20 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I have changed {{CongBio}}'s category, per your request. But why change {{Bioguide}}'s category?—Markles 21:26, 20 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ref at other than CongBio subject[edit]

Could someone adjust the code to make it possible to use the template for refs somewhere other than at the WP article for the CongBio subject? This would be especially helpful for simplifying code at lists. -Rrius (talk) 05:34, 11 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Publisher for refs?[edit]

When this is used as a reference, I think we ought to add United States Government Publishing Office as the publisher. It's not clear just from the work name that it's an official government website, and the citeweb documentation seems to advise including the publisher in situations like this where it can't automatically be inferred. Please let me know if there are any objections; otherwise I'll implement in a bit. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 22:43, 20 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, it gets more complicated than that, since we also have the author parameter. I think the more relevant values for that are Historian of the United States Senate and Historian of the United States House of Representatives depending on the member, rather than the current quite generic "United States Congress". This all gets very complicated, and it makes me question a bit whether it makes sense to have this dual-function template work as a reference at all. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 23:01, 20 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]