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Question about murder victims

I've been working on Wikipedia:Find-A-Grave famous people, a list of "missing" biographical entries based on the Find-A-Grave website. A small number of entries on that website are dedicated to "famous" murder victims, i.e. people who were victims of a serial killer, a shooting rampage, a particularly well-documented murder investigation and so on. With a few exceptions, there is no reason to create an article for these people but I'm wondering about redirects. I'm sure such issues have been discussed extensively but I don't know if they've resulted in some set of basic principles. There are for instance redirects for most, if not all, victims of Jeffrey Dahmer. I think that makes sense. On the other hand, I'm not as comfortable with redirects for very young victims of recent events though I suppose a search will inevitably lead to the murder article. Anyways, thoughts and comments would be appreciated. Pichpich (talk) 19:53, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

In most cases, murder victims don't have separate articles, usually based on a rationale of them being notable for one event only, although as you note, some do have redirects. However, I would not create redirects for very young victims (or perpetrators for that matter) due to privacy concerns. There are certainly a few articles for very high profile victims, but in most cases, the ones that are redirects are so because an article on that person was redirected instead of being deleted. Just to ask, are you using the template {{findagrave}} when you add links (I hope)? Wildhartlivie (talk) 20:26, 31 May 2009 (UTC)
Well, if the name is mentioned in the original article, and is found in publically available secondary sources, then there shouldn't be a problem from a policy point of view. There are reasons for deleting redirects, but this isn't one of them. I can agree that the issue can be a sensitive one, but it should then be discussed in the context of the article, not the redirect. Of course if the name does not appear in the article, then the redirect makes no sense and can be deleted. Keep in mind that Wikipedia is not censored from objectionable material and murder victims are not covered by BLP. -Duribald (talk) 20:41, 31 May 2009 (UTC)
No, but in some cases, young murder victims and some perpetrators are protected from names being used, based on laws governing a country. There was a situation last year where an article regarding a murder in Canada was subject to a lot of debate because Canadian law prohibited the publication of the name of one of the perpetrators because of her age, although I can't recall the article name at the moment. Wildhartlivie (talk) 20:56, 31 May 2009 (UTC)
Wikipedia only answers to the laws of the state of Florida, where the servers are located. Legal problems can, of course, arise for editors who put the information on Wikipedia, because they are legally responsible according to the laws of their contries. But Wikipedia doesn't censor. If - and only if - the name is publically available from reputable secondary sources, it is not per se a policy problem. One can of course make the argument that the information is unnecessary, or not notable, and does not need to be included in the article. But that should be discussed on the article talk page. If the name is already in the article there's no reason to not have a redirect. -Duribald (talk) 22:24, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the input. I'd like to note that in the case of Find-A-Grave entries, privacy is already dead (no pun intended). So I'll follow the obvious rule of thumb and create redirects whenever the victim's name appears in the redirect target. In some cases, adding a {{findagrave}} reference makes sense but in others, the info that victim X was a cheerleader at school so-and-so is of marginal value or even relevance and borders on morbid curiosity. I don't really see the point of, say, the find-a-grave link on the Columbine High School massacre article but I don't think I'd win that debate. It has little to do with whether or not Wikipedia is censored but more with whether or not Wikipedia articles are able to focus on things that actually matter. Pichpich (talk) 02:51, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

My comments were more of a general nature, but I feel I need to add that there is factually situations where privacy concerns in jurisdictions other than Florida is considered. The one of which I spoke is the Richardson family murders. There's a very long debate on using the girl's name, which at this time is not included on the article although she is imprisoned for the crimes. There is a vast difference between censorship and the validity of attempting to consider all points when legality in some jurisdiction becomes an issue. It isn't so black and white, or the Richardson girl's name would be included. Wildhartlivie (talk) 04:57, 1 June 2009 (UTC)
The Richardson girl is not a murder victim. She's a very much a living, and underaged, girl. I agree wholeheartedly that her name should not be revealed, and it was discussed in the context of the article. This is covered in BLP. Of course it's not all black and white and it has to be discussed on a case to case basis, but the question here was that of policy and precedent. :-) -Duribald (talk) 11:31, 1 June 2009 (UTC)
Indeed, this is a completely different issue and personally I believe that in such cases, it is best to simply follow the jurisdiction of the state/country where the crime took place. Anyways, I see that in the case of my original question, there's a pretty solid consensus that, save a few exceptions, redirects are ok. Pichpich (talk) 15:46, 1 June 2009 (UTC)
I'm a little unhappy with the idea of putting redirects for all the victims - mostly because of the situation (which occurs frequently) where someone else has the same name. If one creates an article for that person, is one honor-bound to put a {{for}} link or other means of locating the murderer's article in the otherwise completely unrelated one? In other words - what is the positive value of adding the links that outweighs the negative value of the fact that they do get in the way at times? --Alvestrand (talk) 20:00, 1 June 2009 (UTC)
I agree that using {{for}} is unnecessary in most cases. However, there's still value in keeping a redirect from Jane Doe (murder victim). For one thing, it will turn up in the search but it will also appear as a suggested completion now that this feature is available from Wikipedia's search box. Pichpich (talk) 21:06, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Requesting input

Please see this. Thank you.--Rockfang (talk) 22:30, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Sorry but I do not understand the question.
JimCubb (talk) 02:25, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Please Help

Category:Biography articles without listas parameter is growing. Many of the new pages cannot be handled properly by a bot as they do not have a sort value on the article page.

The good news is that when I first got involved with the problem there were over 375,000 pages in the category (375,812 on 6 February 2009). After the work of some crazed editors there were only 344,000 pages in the category when listasbot jumped in (date unknown). Two days ago there were 45,000 pages in the category. Then listasbot found that the efficiency dropped like a rock, from around 170/200 to 1/400. There are now 51,512 pages in the category.

This means that people are needed to look at each page, apply a listas parameter to the page by whatever valid manner possible and put that value on the article page as the DEFAULTSORT, if such is needed. Can you do this?

Please wander over to Category:Biography articles without listas parameter, pick a page at random from the menu (Suggestion -- click the right arrow of the ToC menu the number of times you get from the last two numbers of your phone number but you may have another method.) and putter around the the pages. If you find that you can fix some of the pages and you enjoy doing the work, register your interest on the Talk page of the category, here.

You may find that the exercise is fun.

JimCubb (talk) 03:34, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Bernard Williams at FAR

I have nominated Bernard Williams for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Cirt (talk) 11:42, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Eduardo Paes

The Air France Flight 447 article states that the mayor of Rio de Janeiro died in the crash. The Rio article states that the mayor is Eduardo Paes, but that article doesn't state that he has died. Can anyone confirm that this is the correct person? (copied at WP Brazil) Mjroots (talk) 05:26, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Woody Guthrie

I have nominated Woody Guthrie for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here.—141.155.159.210 (talk) 12:12, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Sophocles GAR notice

Sophocles has been nominated for a good article reassessment. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to good article quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status will be removed from the article. Reviewers' concerns are here.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 23:43, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Pope Benedict XVI GAR notice

Pope Benedict XVI has been nominated for a good article reassessment. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to good article quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status will be removed from the article. Reviewers' concerns are here.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 00:43, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

GA Reassessment of Egardus

I have done a GA Reassessment of the Egardus article as part of the GA Sweeps project. I have found the article to not meet the GA Criteria. As such I have put it on hold for one week pending improvement. I am notifying all interested projects and editors of the possibility that this article will be delisted from GA if work is not done to bring it up to GA standards. If you have any questions please contact me on my talk page. My review can be found here. H1nkles (talk) 02:19, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

GA Reassessment of Emanuel Swedenborg

I have done the GA Reassessment of Emanuel Swedenborg as part of the GA Sweeps project. I have found the article does not meet current GA Criteria. As such I have placed the article on hold pending work that needs to be done to bring it up to current standards. My review is here. I am notifying all interested projects and editors of the possibility that the article will be delisted if work is not done in the next week. Please contact me on my talk page if you have any questions. H1nkles (talk) 15:53, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

GA Reassessment of George Washington

I have done a GA Reassessment of the George Washington article as part of the GA Sweeps project. I have found the article to need work on referencing. My review is here. I am notifying all the interested projects that this article is on hold for a week pending work that needs to be done. I don't think it will require too much to satisfy the GA Criteria and I sincerely hope that someone will step forward and take this project on. It would be a shame to delist what is in all senses but one, a good article. If you have any questions please contact me on my talk page. H1nkles (talk) 21:13, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Shia LaBeouf

Shia LaBeouf has been nominated for a good article reassessment. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to good article quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status will be removed from the article. Reviewers' concerns are here. Nikki♥311 19:21, 9 June 2009 (UTC)


"Year in literature" linked years on Philip K. Dick

An editor is proposing that all "year in literature" links be stripped out of the article of Philip K. Dick. Ed Fitzgerald t / c 04:48, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Commemorative Biographical Record of Washington County, Pennsylvania

I came across some bio articles created with some material from a public domain resources, like the Dictionary of National Biography that were tagged with {{DNB}}, and I got to thinking that I know of another public domain source that would be a good candidate for a similar treatment: The Commemorative Biographical Record of Washington County, Pennsylvania By J.H. Beers & Co., 1893. These bios have been transcribed here: [1]. From what I can tell, any copyright on this book would be expired. Any copyright claims on the translation at the above-link would not be valid, so long as we only copy the text and not any of the layout/intro material/other original material. Before I start this, I would like to see if anyone would like to assist me in this project.--GrapedApe (talk) 17:33, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Suman Ranganathan

There is a need of sources, citing her real name. The page is protected due to this issue. Please help. --Stopthenonsense (talk) 14:21, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

GA Sweeps Reassessment of John_Baldwin_(educator)

John_Baldwin_(educator) has been nominated for a good article reassessment. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to good article quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status will be removed from the article. Reviewers' concerns are here. Ruslik_Zero 15:42, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

What is the point?

Please also see Scope of the project and assessment concerns for the background to this discussion. --Kleinzach 05:37, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Can someone please explain to me the point of this project? I quite frequently add musicians, composers etc. to Wikipedia and I list them under composers or opera WikiProject etc. as appropriate, where eventually someone comes along and grades or comments on them. But very quickly a bot (usually) also adds a WikiProject Biography banner. This remains 99% of the time as an unrated blank. When I check I see that there are untold thousands of unassessed WP Biography articles and it is clear that most of these will not be assessed in the next century or so. So why bother to put up a Biography banner if it is beyond the capacity of the project to deal with it, and if there is a more appropriate, relevant banner already up? I only ask because I want to know.--Smerus (talk) 18:44, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

At this point, it's in the hope that this project becomes more active in the future. At various points in its history, it has been very active, and a series of assessment drives helped it to assess the more than 1/2 million articles that are currently given an assessment score in the Bio tmeplate. However, no one has stepped up in a while to take a leadership role in the project and start another assessment drive. Geraldk (talk) 18:58, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
To which I should also add that you should feel free to request an assessment on our assessment page. Those usually get addressed within a few days. Geraldk (talk) 19:00, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
Well I don't want to request assessments - appropriate assessments will eventually arise out of the banners I have put up (opera, composers, etc). I just want toremove these apparently pointless Biography banners from the pages concerned - but if I do delete them, doubtless some bot will put them back again.--Smerus (talk) 19:50, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
I frequently assess articles, just request assessments on the assessment page - and if the quality was assessed by another project, extend the rating (Wikiprojects should have the same quality rating, but not importance rating, according to the guidelines from the Version 1.0 Editorial Team). Do not delete the biography project banners, with them you know an article is about a person and these articles must adhere to the policy on biographies of living persons. Again, do not delete the banners. Thank you. Hekerui (talk) 20:00, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Thank you, (Hekerui), for your comments. I have noted also your new assessments on some of the articles I have started. These raise further issues. (1) You ask in your assessements for infoboxes to be provided. However the consensus and practice for WikiProject composers is not to provide infoboxes. (2) You state that the articles come under WProject Musicians. But as I have already bannered them under the more appropriate WProject Composers, this makes yet a further form of 'double-counting'. As, with categories, one goes for the most specific available, shouldn't this be the case with project banners? All this seems a manifestation of Wikispam, rather than information. Best, --Smerus (talk) 05:04, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Here are my two cents worth, cheap at half the price.

A biography is the story of a person's life as told by another person. There is a concern about Biographies of Living Persons. I think this concern is legitimate and I think that most would agree. So articles that are stories of persons' lives are within the purview of WP Biog and WP BLP. Such articles could also be within the purview of other WikiProjects. Musicians, Composers, the country of birth, all have categories into which the article will fall.

While it may be policy to reduce the number of categories to which an article is assigned, the practice is to slap on every category that is possible, including extreme stretches of credulity. The same is true of projects.

Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your point of view, some projects have more rigorous standards than others. WP Biog really wants infoboxes. If another project includes biographies within its purview, some editor or bot will come along and insist on an infobox. The really bad news, Smerus, is that Composers are persons and every article about a composer is a biography.

This means that a bot will come along and slap a WP Biog banner on your latest article, another bot will come along and slap a blp banner on your latest article (if one is applicable), and other bots will come along and request person-data, pictures and other things.

Those are the cards as they have been dealt as far as I know.

JimCubb (talk) 05:34, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
Just a short note: Infoboxes are not mandatory. For example Hannah Primrose, Countess of Rosebery was promoted to A-class by us, and then to FA, without having an infobox. The consensus among the main contributors to the article was that the infobox was unnecessary and aesthetically unappealing. Personally I like infoboxes, but if there is consensus on the individual page then it should not be required. Most of the information is found in the lead anyway. -Duribald (talk) 06:12, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
The parameters in the banner are suggestions, not demands. Hekerui (talk) 06:59, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Hi. I've been involved in the bannering and assessments of the Opera, Composers, Contemporary music and Wagner projects (and the debannering of Music). Unfortunately the Biography Project banners and assessments have caused us many, many problems.

For example I've recently been spending hours of my time going through 500-odd unassessed Composers articles. These pages — not marked as stubs on the article page — were to have been bot-marked as 'Start class', but we had to cancel the run because the bot operator reported that the 500 articles had been rated as stubs by other projects. It turned out that all the anomalous ratings were by the Biography Project and 95% of them were wrong/out of date.

It's clear that the Biography Project doesn't have enough people to make assessments on particular subjects (like composers, artists, politicians or whatever etc.) or keep them up to date. There are 712,399 articles under the Biography project — with 53,882 articles in Category:Musicians work group articles alone. Most of these articles were bannered in the 2007 bot run. I think it should be clear now that this was a colossal waste of everybody's time.

My recommendation is that this project should concentrate on biographical guidelines/MOS work etc. to guide specialist editors and set overall standards, while leaving the coalface work to specialist editors identified with narrowly-focused projects.

The best thing that could happen to kick off a new era of cooperation in Wikipedia would be to remove the Biography Project banners — just as we did at the Music project. How about that? Thank you for reading this. Best. --Kleinzach 06:57, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

The really bad news, Smerus, is that Composers are persons and every article about a composer is a biography. So says JimCubb. But he is wrong. The really, really bad news is that all humans are primates, and on his logic, that would mean we could banner them all with WikiProject Primates. My point is simply that, as with categories, we should use the lowest appropriate level for projects. 'Biography' is just too vague as a catch-all topic - to quote W.S. Gilbert, 'when everyone is somebody, then no-one's anybody'. --Smerus (talk) 17:32, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
Exactly. The biography project should stick to looking out for WP:BLP violations if it wants to do something useful. --Folantin (talk) 18:11, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

I really do not see how any of you are supporting your projects' decision to do something that contradicts other projects. That a handful of people at a couple projects decided infoboxes are not going to be used has nothing whatsoever to do with removing WP:BIOG banners from the talk pages of those articles. I find it quite odd that you would suggest that a major project that oversees multiple biography articles "concentrate on biographical guidelines/MOS work" or "stick to looking out for WP:BLP violations if it wants to do something useful" or even using hyperbolic logic like "all humans are primates, and on his logic, that would mean we could banner them all with WikiProject Primates" or "it is clear that most of these will not be assessed in the next century or so". That is very plainly offensive and demeaning commentary that has no place in seeking a new era of cooperation. That this project is currently not as active as it more usually is does not give any of you license to say "go away, let us do what we want". It is absolutely not in the province of other projects to decide that a different project should not consider an article relevant to that project. That makes assumptions that you should not be drawing. I would suggest you find another way to deal with issues that arise when you are actually concerned with biographies than to attack the Biography project. Otherwise, you should probably go to WP:EQUINE or WP:Olympics and tell them that Kentucky Derby winners or gold medal athletes do not belong under their province because they have some other quality that makes them special. It makes no more sense than that. Wildhartlivie (talk) 21:55, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Wildhartlivie: Can we focus on the problem of thousands of wrong and out of date assessments made by the Biography Project? What is the best way to deal with this? Removing the banners or fixing them? If the latter, how do you propose to do it? --Kleinzach 00:02, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
Well, you know, that would be ideal, wouldn't it? But I really think the comments by Smerus and Folantin about whether this project has any business notating a biography article as an article under this project do require a response, since they are particularly pointed and clearly disregard this project's interest in those articles. First of all, in many, many cases, if not all, when an assessment is updated, that assessment should be updated for the other projects involved. Not many projects have criteria that stray from the Version 1.0 Editorial Team, as Hekerui noted, nor should they. In the cases where they do, I've yet to see one that has less stringent criteria. When I assess an article for WP:ACTOR, I extend that assessment to other projects listed on the talk page, including WP:BIOG. Apparently that isn't something that the music projects have been doing, since you all admittedly are removing the banner instead of indicating the assessment change. That is simply an inappropriate way to deal with it. It certainly does not foster an air of cooperative editing or acknowledgement that other projects have concerns in the article. As I was reminded elsewhere recently, the articles do not belong to an individual project, the projects work for the benefit of the entire encyclopedia. So why, as many other projects do, did your projects not extend the assessments?
You seem to want immediate remedy, which you seem to think is best found by just eliminating relevant project interest banners. That is counterproductive and as has been noted in various ways above, does not remove the need for WP:BLP concerns, which of course, some of you have commented should be the concern of this project. One problem in that is once you've removed the WP:BIOG banner, you've removed the ability to be concerned with WP:BLP. What is needed, and will very likely come in the near future, is a new assessment drive for WP:BIOG. Last year, at the end of the assessment drive, 471,595 articles were under this project and a very productive 43,647 articles were assessed during the drive. The number of articles under this project has grown to 712,399 tagged articles since that time, out of the whopping 2,908,255 articles on Wikipedia. That's well approaching 25% of all articles. The number tagged for this project has grown by over 50%, mostly because of efforts to at least get project banners in place. Yes, that means that a lot more assessments are needed, and that takes time, especially given the growth of articles in this project. On the other hand, it's a lot easier to keep up with assessments on 4391 articles for WP:COMPOSERS or 5833 articles (or 5642 depending where you look) for WP:OPERA. What I can say very clearly is that if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem, and simply removing the WP:BIOG banner is part of the problem. Wildhartlivie (talk) 00:56, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
Wildhartlivie: Could we possibly keep the lines of this discussion clear? (Rhetorical effects can be tiring to read, e.g. "What I can say very clearly . . . " etc.) You write "it's a lot easier to keep up with assessments on 4391 articles for WP:COMPOSERS . . . " That exactly the point being made by music coalface editors like myself, Smerus, Folantin and all the other editors who have made similar comments about this project in the past. We know you use extensive automatic processes, but can you tell us about your human resources? How many editors do you have? Are they available to correct wrong/out of date assessments? --Kleinzach 01:30, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) Excuse me, but I made a number of very clear points, and if you don't happen to like the manner in which I write talk page posts, that's fairly much too bad. Don't direct me to only respond to the specific questions you want answered and ignore the specific questions that are asked in return. You pointedly ignored everything I said in two full paragraphs to only complain about two comparisons I made. Everything so far that has been posted on this page by the three of you have been attacks upon this main project or commentary on my response style. Meanwhile, you've completely and totally ignored the points I have made about assessments for a given article falling under more than one project, assessment criteria, and you've failed to respond to the direct question I asked, which was "So why, as many other projects do, did your projects not extend the (updated) assessments?" No one here is required to justify the existence of this project or the present lower participation in this parent project, which generally increases during the (northern hemisphere) summer months, or the fact that tens of thousands of articles were tagged as part of this project in the last few months. If you are not part of the solution to the problem that there may be incorrect or out of date (read that as also failure to be upgraded) assessments, then I would suggest it is because you adjust the assessment up or down and ignore the other project banners on the page, or, as you've said, removed them. Yes, it is a pain to request reassessments from the other projects, but then, if you do not do so, there is really no way for those projects to know the assessment was changed somewhere else. Projects only get reports on the articles under that particular banner. I'm not aware of any device under which a report is generated to indicate changes in class by other concerned projects.

You do not have the authority to remove WP:BIOG banners from biography articles. If you are aware that some article has been reassessed to a higher class, and you do not address the other projects whose banner might fall on that page, then the incorrect or out of date assessments are as much your issue as it is another sister project. I'm sorry, but it is arrogant to say that it isn't your problem. Like I said, your project does not own the articles under your banner. You work for the betterment of the entire encyclopedia. It is that simple. There are sub-projects for this project. In those cases, the sub-projects carry the weight of current assessments. The parent project is not the only part that deals with assessments, nor is it the primary that does so. The articles under the main umbrella of WP:BIOG includes the articles included under its subprojects, including:

That there are problems in catching up to the huge number of articles added to WP:BIOG likely means that the relevant sub-project parameter has not been filled in on those articles, although I don't personally know when they were tagged, although a cursory exam of the unassessed list reveals quite a number of non-biographies that were tagged as such by Yobot. I don't know how much of the overall work is done by bot, and I cannot speak to how many people are active under only the wing of WP:BIOG. My suspicion is that it is very few. Every editor under all of the projects listed above work under the main umbrella of this parent project. The problem isn't that someone from this talk page/project page isn't assessing the articles necessarily, the problem is that someone from one of the WP:BIOG projects isn't doing so. It's only when the project undertakes an assessment drive for all subprojects that a main effort brings the overall numbers down. Wildhartlivie (talk) 04:25, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Wildhartlivie : Can we take your points one at a time? You write:
" . . . you've failed to respond to the direct question I asked, which was "So why, as many other projects do, did your projects not extend the (updated) assessments?""
I don't understand. Did you mean 'out of date' rather than 'updated'? As you suggesting that other projects should do assessments on their own — or that other projects should do Biography project ratings on their behalf? Please explain. (P.S. WP:MUSICIAN is not the parent of WP:OPERA, which is one of the performing arts.) --Kleinzach 05:20, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
No, my question was in regard to an assessment/reassessment done on an article that is a biography. Let's take Luciano Pavarotti as the case example, and for the sake of argument, let us assume it is currently assessed as a B-class article. Pavarotti currently falls under three projects: WP:OPERA, WP:BIOG's subproject WP:MUSICIAN, and WP:ITALY. If someone comes along and expands this article and adds sufficient content and sourcing to warrant a reassessment, in this case, for a WP:GA status, then would not that status apply to all three project assessments? So if we were to assume that the same article was currently a Start-class article, if WP:OPERA were to do a reassessment on the article, are you saying that the project would not update the assessment for the other two projects?? And if that is case, why would you not do so? Why would collaborative projects ratings only work in cases where the outside review/assessment process for FAs and GAs applies? It isn't a matter of your project doing Biography ratings for them. I didn't clarify well enough what I meant by WP:OPERA and WP:COMPOSER articles falling under WP:MUSICIAN, a subproject of WP:BIOG. The articles that are biographies on those projects would fall under the WP:BIOG subproject of WP:MUSICIAN for purposes of biography categorization, and therefore, assessment. My points regarding this parent project's overall involvement must also be considered in that question. Biography articles, for the most part, aren't assessed by the parent project WP:BIOG, but under the subproject to which it pertains. That's sort of like saying that one wouldn't go to WP:FILM to make comments about actor or filmmaker biographies, when WP:ACTOR is the biography subproject that does those. Neither would one come to this WP:BIOG talk page to make comments about the actor or filmmaker biographies. I can tell you that during the main assessment drive this parent project did last year, when I was working on Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/Sports and games articles that were unassessed, if an unassessed article was covered by Sports and games as well as WP:NORWAY, WP:FIGURE, and WP:ACTOR, I would have extended the assessment to all of those projects. When I was helping assess biography articles that another editor had created prior to the Olympics, I filled out the assessments for whatever projects were also associated [2]. Again, why wouldn't I? If an article is reassessed by another project, I simply do not see why the same courtesy of updating the assessment shouldn't be extended. A sister project assessment would in most cases only ever be outdated if an assessor - from any other project - only bothered to update one project's assessment. So yes, I am saying that such things should be done for other projects as well if the case arises. That would harken back to my question of how the other projects would ever know that your project reassessed and upgraded an article. Wildhartlivie (talk) 07:50, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
Wildhartlivie: Look, I probably don't agreed with you but as a strong supporter of open debate etc. I do think your point of view should be heard. Unfortunately you've written more than 2,000 words here. That's way too much. Could you summarize your ideas so that people can understand them? No one has time to search through vast swathes of text looking for the main points. Sorry if that inconveniences you, but it's for your benefit. --Kleinzach 09:34, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
In a word, no. I've made 4 posts on this page regarding this. You only managed to criticize how I respond on three of those, and said you didn't understand my response in the other. In the last post, I gave specific examples of what I meant to make sure it was clear, I didn't stutter and I wasn't ambiguous. If you don't want to bother reading my post, then don't respond to it. Wildhartlivie (talk) 09:52, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) Per WP:ASSESS: "Unlike the quality scale, the priority scale varies based on the project scope." End of story. Hekerui (talk) 09:15, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

I am (almost) sorry that I started this. What has surpised me greatly is the general attitude of some contributors that WProject Biography rules the world, and everyone else must toe their line. This is certainly not the language of 'a new era of cooperation' (unless perhaps the speaker is Gordon Brown). What is also interesting is that, although there has been much to-ing and fro-ing sbout the process of WProject Biography, there has been little attempt to answer my original question, viz., what is its purpose? If there is, in practice, no raison d'etre except to put up banners via bots and insist that other WikiPedians accept the project's rules, it doesn't seem to me to contribute much to Wikipedia. If it is argued that it could do lots of things if it had the manpower - well, so could we all. Perhaps it would be much the better for some restructuring and downsizing, like the US motor industry.--Smerus (talk) 11:44, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

The purpose is to help coordinate work on biographies. Could the project do it better? Probably. But if you're surprised that some editors react badly when you suggest, in so many words, that a project they are involved in is useless, well, I'm not sure what to tell you about that. WP:Bio has helped to drive some standardization of biography articles and improvement of the biography-related portions of the MOS, its assessment process has helped motivate a lot of editors to improve articles, and its peer reviews have helped work plenty of articles towards FA. And as an aside, in the name of harmony, you may want to refrain from the gross hyperbole in the first sentence of your most recent response where you imply arrogance on the part of WP:Bio participants. It's not very helpful. Geraldk (talk) 12:08, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
Now please don't put words into my mouth. I did not call the project 'useless', nor did I 'imply arrogance on the part of WP:Bio participants' - although I certainly criticized the comments of one or two of them (which were not exactly mealy-mouthed about me or my supposed objectives), there was no intention, nor did I make any expression, of generalisation. To suggest otherwise would be indeed 'gross hyperbole'. My original enquiry, at the head of this thread, was absolutely genuine - a comment from a WP habitue who wan't a member of WProject Biography and wanted to understand why WProj Biography headers were appearing on articles to no apparent (to me) purpose. Your comment, Geraldk, does explain some of the things that WProjBio has acheived. But it doesn't explain the advantages to Wikipedia as a whole of banering articles liberally by bot without having the resources to follow them up.--Smerus (talk) 12:49, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
Well, then that's less a question of whether WP:Bio has worth generally and more a question of whether WP:Bio has the resources to keep up with assessments. I think with any project this large there is bound to be a lag in assessment, and unfortunately you've asked this question at a time when WP:bio is historically low in participation. I don't think you'll have much success convincing WP:Bio participants to drop the assessment process because, frankly, it works in many cases and especially for our sub-projects. So the best I can tell you right now is this: if it's annoying you that an article is not assessed either a. request an assessment on the WP:Bio assessment page or b. assume that if the assessments of all other projects are different that the WP:Bio assessment for that specific article can be altered to match. Geraldk (talk) 12:55, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
Geraldk: Please look at a sample assessment by the Composers Project, for example Talk:Hugo Wolf/Comments. (We have hundreds of assessments of this quality.) Correct me if I am wrong but the Biographical Project has never been able to work at this standard. There are 5,000-odd composers articles with Biography project assessments, but not one of them has contributed to article improvement. If you don't believe me then please check a sample batch of articles. If you can find one example of a well-considered helpful rating by the Biog Project, then please point us to it. --Kleinzach 13:57, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
That's a pretty impressive and thorough assessment. In fact, I haven't seen that level of assessment from any other project on wikipedia. Is your suggestion that any project whose assessments are less thorough should stop assessing articles? Geraldk (talk) 14:27, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
No, of course not. (Let's try to keep up a decent level of discourse here!) I think the message we are trying to get across here is the 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' one. Better for editors to concentrate on areas with problems, rather than give problems to projects that don't need them. Common sense, no? Sometimes we need to remember that we are building an encyclopedia, right? (WP:ENC and all that.) --Kleinzach 23:33, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
Nor have the comments made by some of you about this project been mealy-mouthed, however mine were intended to point that out. That these projects have adapted more stringent assessment and stylistic criteria for a relatively small project is both commendable and troublesome. It is troublesome because it also means they tend to demand the same standards of participation for other projects. That simply isn't possible in most cases. For WP:COMPOSER, it has only grown by 400 or so articles in the past year. Granted, the field for that project is more limited and specialized, which is true for any of the subprojects here. I mostly refer to WP:ACTOR, which is the subproject in which I'm largely involved. It too, is more specialized and we do as good a job as any other subproject in assessment and addressing style problems. WP:BIOG does not impose specialized rules regarding biographies. As Geraldk noted, this parent project mostly oversees subprojects, standards, which are derived from community-wide policies and guidelines, including manual of style, WP:BLP, WP:RS, WP:V and other basic tenets. And again, the project itself does not employ bots for "banering articles liberally by bot without having the resources to follow them up." As I said more than once, the assessments are largely handled by the individual subprojects which cover that particular division of biographies. And as I noted, at least one bot at which I looked has mislabelled some articles as biographies which are not. Those bots are run by individuals and in response to requests. That a very large quantity of articles have been added in the last actually 3 or 4 months without subproject parameters is a problem, but removing the WP:BIOG is not the solution and does not remove those articles from the being of biographies. I am curious however. Why would you have a bot run assessments? How does the bot make the quality determination that an article is a start instead of a stub, except perhaps based on the human-error prone stub template on the article page?? Wildhartlivie (talk) 21:45, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
Re: " Why would you have a bot run assessments?". The Composers projects uses bots for special defined tasks, not assessments per se. Bots are used to banner articles within particular categories. They are also useful for sorting stub-template-bearing articles into stub class, something which is tedious to do by hand. --Kleinzach 23:44, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
Given your last couple responses, I fail to understand what exectly it is that you are asking for. You've made your critiques of the WP:bio assessment clear, but what is it that you want? Abandonment of the assessments for this project? If so, I'm opposed to that, for reasons I've stated previously, and I'm pretty sure that other members of WP:bio wouldn't want to abandon it either. Geraldk (talk) 15:10, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
  • One of the key points of the {{WPBiography}} banner, which I don't think has been mentioned above, is that it serves as a way to track the number of articles on Wikipedia about people (whether living or dead, whether musicians or sportspeople, whether scientists or politicians, whether French or Australian, and so on). It might seem a simple question: "How many biographical articles are there on Wikipedia?" But unless you have WPBiography banners on the talk page of all biographies (and making sure that is almost the case is a never-ending task), then you don't know the answer to that question. The more general point about the purpose of separating biographical articles out as a distinct class should be obvious when you start asking questions like "do other people do this?" (yes, see various biographical dictionaries, such as the Dictionary of National Biography), "is the writing of biographies a recognised speciality" (yes, see biographer and biography), "how many featured articles are biographies?" (the current answer is 598 out of 2,537). I should say here that I'm not 100% convinced either that the WP:BIO assessments are sustainable in the long-run, but the presence of the banner on the talk page (or some tracking device on the talk page) is essential. The banner also helps co-ordinate some of the Wikipedia:Biographical metadata concerns. Still, there are questions that even WPBiography can't answer, because no-one built a gender specification into the system at the beginning (compare the question about how many of the biographical articles are about living people, which can be answered). The question is: "How many of the biographical articles are about men and how many about women?" Answers on a postcard please! Carcharoth (talk) 16:54, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
Excellent. Thank you. This is the first real answer I've seen to the original question posed by Smerus. Tracking biographies throughout Wikipedia (including gender) would obviously be a good idea. I'm sure all the Music editors would understand and cooperate with this, especially if it means replacing all the Biography box clutter on talk pages with something that is 'fit for purpose'. (One possibility would be to imbed a 'biography tracker' in the banners of projects like Composers.) 'Wikipedia-behind-the-articles' appears Byzantine to the new or would-be editor. Cutting down on talk page clutter would help make participation look simpler. --Kleinzach 00:33, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
Banner clutter should be easily handled by nesting them into a main banner shell. Imbedding a biography tracker in the banner for a few projects that don't want a biography banner is a backstep. You've be removing one banner, how would that replace all box clutter? That would then mean that data would have to be accumulated from more than one source, which would complicate compilation much more. Wildhartlivie (talk) 03:17, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
Removing this project's banner would eliminate Category:Biography articles without living parameter which would upset both the legal staff of the foundation and the folks at BLP.
Removing this project's banner would also cause pages that are in categories that are in other projects to be sorted incorrectly. Aaron Copland would not be sorted as "Copeland, Aaron", where most would expect the article to be. Oops! His article is listed in the wrong place in Category:WikiProject Composers articles, the second one, right under A. J. Potter and before Aaron Jay Kernis.
Removing this banner from the talk page of an article about a person could be considered vandalism.
JimCubb (talk) 05:16, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
I understand that |listas= has now been fixed in the {{WPBannerMeta}}, so this is no longer an issue. --Kleinzach 02:44, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
As soon as something happens to each of the articles they will be listed correctly. The good news is that things are resolving themselves nicely.
JimCubb (talk) 03:50, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Sam Toy article remains a stub

Last calendar year (i.e. 2008) I created the page on the industrialist Sam Toy. This page is under the auspices of your project group, but I see it has not received a rating on the quality scale. Could this be rated as a stub, which would be consistent with categories at the end of the article? Many thanks if some one from your project group could see to this. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 19:43, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

In the future, put assessment requests here. Thanks. Hekerui (talk) 11:10, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

"Is" or "are"?

There has been some strong editing going on at the Bad Brains article in regards to whether the use of the word "is" is correct in the lead. I was under the impression that it was generally considered best to use the word "is" in describing an ensemble rather than a single person ("Bad Brains is an American hardcore punk band"), whereas an anonymous editor has repeatedly changed the lead to read "Bad Brains are an American hardcore punk band", adding a note stating that "Some U.S. band names are a plural noun, so please don't change it back to 'is'". Can someone determine what is correct in regards to the formatting standards? (Ibaranoff24 (talk) 11:47, 15 June 2009 (UTC))

WP:PLURALS suggests that in this case "is" would be most appropriate; North American English as they're an American band; the fact that "Brains" is plural isn't really the point... the term refers to an ensemble. Indeed, "United States" is technically plural but used exclusively in the singular. If the band were British, the plural "are" would have been preferable. Blackmetalbaz (talk) 13:17, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

FAR notice for Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

I have nominated Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here.Cirt (talk) 06:34, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Rich Rodriguez

Alright, this problem will probably never die... but I'll just ask the question anyway. Rich Rodriguez is a college football coach who is indisputably from Grant Town, WV. He grew up there, went to high school there, etc. Most biographies also list it as his birthplace. The issue is that in an interview with the official alumni newspaper of the University of Michigan, Rodriguez drops the bomb that he was born in Chicago. This is reinforced by his official University biography in game programs. However, these are the only sources and the Grant Town view dominates the sources. So far this has led to a couple of rather minor edit conflicts, but as Rodriguez enters his second season at Michigan I imagine this could get worse. -- MichiganCharms (talk) 08:33, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Request for input

I've been working on improving some bios - starting with a fairly narrow range of interest - college women basketball players. As I reviewed a number of existing bios, I realized the organization structure varied considerably. While I don't want to encourage a rigorous cookie cutter approach, I think there is value in starting with a structure, even if one departs from it where warranted. I put together a proposal User:Sphilbrick/sandbox for current bio structure, specifically tailored for sports bios, but someone suggested people involved in the overall bio project would be a good resource, and I agree. Following is the notice I'm posting on selected bios and the talk pages of people active in the bios. Any suggestions you have on the proposal itself or how to improve the bios would be appreciated.

I'd like to work on improving bios of basketball players, starting with current and past players at UConn. I've created a page summarizing some of the issue and proposed solutions User:Sphilbrick/sandbox for current bio structure. I'd love to have some feedback on my proposed changes before going ahead and making the changes. I know Wikipedia encourages bold editing, but every one of these pages represents the contributions of people who may have deliberately chosen the section titles or or current order - if there's a good reason not to change, the current format should remain. I would like consistency, but not a foolish consistency.
Please comment at the talk page whether you agree with my approach, or have better ideas.

--SPhilbrickT 11:56, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Peer review for Charles Lindbergh

I wanted to let you know that I submitted the Charles Lindbergh article for peer review. Any comments or suggestions you have are greatly appreciated. --Kumioko (talk) 16:53, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Sheila Jeffreys is under attack!

The Sheila Jeffreys page has had attacks and insults added to it repeatedly over the last several days. I have had to remove them three times over now. Other editors, please take a look at the history of this page and remove the attacks, as they are likely to be added again and again. The IP has varied, but it is probably the same person behind all the attacks. Guuao (talk) 06:04, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Vincent van Gogh GAR notification

Vincent van Gogh has been nominated for a good article reassessment. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to good article quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status will be removed from the article. Reviewers' concerns are here.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 05:18, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Gordon Brown GAR notification

Gordon Brown has been nominated for a good article reassessment. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to good article quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status will be removed from the article. Reviewers' concerns are here.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 06:04, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Bibliographies of people who may never have existed

I'm think here specifically of Madoc - a figure for whom we have no historical evidence and almost certainly did not exist

although his historical reality is still asserted (though without hard evidence) by fringe writers. Should such figures really be covered by this project? Dougweller (talk) 15:36, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Harold Pinter

Hello, everyone. There is a longrunning debate about referencing and MOS style at the Harold Pinter article. Both ref tags and parenthetical references are used together, and the result is that the article is very difficult to read. The article appears to me to be overwritten, and I believe that there is a very serious overuse of quotation marks. The footnotes are very long and often contain references to multiple sources. Editors at the current peer review had suggested various kinds of simplifications, but an editor at the article is very persistent in discouraging changes. There is a lot of useful information and research at the article, but here is a situation where (bad) style is overwhelming substance. Can anyone help? Best regards, -- Ssilvers (talk) 22:56, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

New Businessperson Infobox?

Wikipedia seems to highlight "celebrities" and doesn't seem to have very much on the movers and shakers in the business world. Considering there is are lots of different infoboxes for every sport ever created, what about an infobox specifically for businesspeople and entrepreneurs? There are some parameters i feel could be created specify for businesspeople that can't be included with the standard infobox. Anyone else agree? NThomas (talk) 01:13, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Group vs. individual bio

I'm stuck with expansion of Vesnin brothers and individual articles on them. Most of their notability rests on collaborative work as a trio (definitely true for Leonid Vesnin who died young, less so for Alexander Vesnin who had a succesful solo career in stage design and abstract art). Unlike Marx brothers, where anyone can see each individual face on the screen, individual art of Vesnin brothers completely blended in their collaborative work; critics can only reconstruct individual stylistic cues by conjecture.

What would be the correct way to write individual articles without copying the same text three times and without making a false impression that their individual work was more significant that their team work? NVO (talk) 09:59, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Jean Keene GA Sweeps: On Hold

I have reviewed Jean Keene for GA Sweeps to determine if it still qualifies as a Good Article. In reviewing the article I have found several issues, which I have detailed here. Since the article falls under the scope of this project, I figured you would be interested in contributing to further improve the article. Please comment there to help the article maintain its GA status. If you have any questions, let me know on my talk page and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 22:53, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Bruce Springsteen GAR notification

Bruce Springsteen has been nominated for a good article reassessment. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to good article quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status will be removed from the article. Reviewers' concerns are here.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 03:34, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Use of United States in articles

Comments to this would be appreciated (of significance for this entire project --> please add comments here, on talk for WikiProject Biography, rather than on the Michael Jackson talk). In short, it is suggested that WP:NCGN means that people born in the United States should not have this included in the infobox, but only the city and state (not "city, state, United States" – e.g. for Michael Jackson it would be "Gary, Indiana" versus "Gary, Indiana, United States"). I have disputed that this is correct, as the intro for WP:NCGN specifically says it is for determining the names of Wikipedia articles on places, but if it applies *everywhere* on wiki, it means that a large percentage of the featured articles for this project should be changed, as they all (at least all the ones I checked that involve people born in the US) use "City, State, USA/United States". 212.10.90.224 (talk) 21:53, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

I too have found a fair percentage of articles with the incorrect usage. It is far more than I as one editor can handle on my own. There are also many other articles that are written correctly. A structured and firm interpretation of the above policy does suggest that only the articles title should not be City, State, Country. It is, however, fairly silent on the usage within the article or the infobox. I believe that in the absence of any strict wikipedia policy in either direction towards the articles body, we should trust hundreds of years of precident on this subject. Although The Chicago Manual of Style is not binding on wikipedia, it is by far the best and most well known reference on this subject. Wikipedia may be its own beast, but its probably best to stick with what has worked in the past and not try and rewrite MOS.--Jojhutton (talk) 22:05, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
Seeing that Jojhutton has replied here rather than on the "old" discussion under Michael Jackson, I will also add an additional comment here (and request that further comments on this matter are kept here to avoid further "split" in the discussion). First, as requested elsewhere a number of times, please point to *any* place on wikipedia where it is mentioned that the non-use of "City, State, United States" applies everywhere, such as the articles in project biography, and not just in the specific city articles. Notice also that even featured articles for cities (at least the ones I've checked) do include United States, though elsewhere in the infobox. This is entirely sensible, as wikipedia is an international (not just US) project: While it is fair to assume everybody knows the most populous/"famous" states (New York, Texas, California, etc), it is just as fair to assume that some of the less populous/"famous" states (Indiana, New Mexico, Rhode Island, etc) are not immediately obvious to everybody as being in the US. While a specific country category exists in the "city infobox", that is–as far as I know–not the case for the "people infobox" (nor would it be useful, as born/death/where someone lived most of his/her life easily would result in conflicts). This is easily solved by sticking to what appears to be the current de facto standard in this project; including United States. Fortunately, having checked additional featured articles for this project, I have yet to find an article with another format than the "City, State, USA/United States" – with the notable exception of Michael Jackson (where removed earlier today by Jojhutton). 212.10.90.224 (talk) 23:42, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
You do realize that you and I may be the only two who actually post here.
That being said, I concede that there may actually not be a wikipedia policy that specifically states that the format should be (City, State). And I concede that many articles (biographies and non-biographies) do use the non-MOS structure of (City, State, Country). The way that I look at it is that Wikipedia policy has up to this point been silent on this issue. There is no policy that supports either way. This may have been missed up to this point, or it may be a conscious decision by the creators of wikipedia early on. Either way, absent any policy direction I believe that we as editors should use our own common sense and follow the standard rules of MOS. Adding both the state and the country to a single line is over kill. Should we say Houston, Texas, United States, when just saying Houston, Texas gets the job done. Is it going to be confused with another Houston, Texas somewhere else? 200+ years of Manual of Style usage tends to agree with me, regardless of wikipedia's silence on the matter. Any article on wikipedia that already has the incorrect MOS usage of the City-State-Country format was probably updated by editors who were unfamiliar of the correct MOS format. Its not something that you learn in High School.--Jojhutton (talk) 02:02, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
To your 1st question: Yes, I am fully aware we may be the only people posting on this, but considering its significance... let's wait and see in a number of days. Secondly, you state that "There is no policy that supports either way", then follow it up by "Any article on wikipedia that already has the incorrect MOS usage of the City-State-Country format was probably updated by editors who were unfamiliar of the correct MOS format". While the first part of this apparent contradiction is correct, I have still not been pointed in any direction suggesting the second is supported by anything on wiki. You may think that it is entirely obvious where the cities & states are, and while one could argue that the example you mention, the 4th largest city in the US, indeed is obvious, you did not present this as a case of just the "big and famous cities". Why the United States should get a different treatment in biographies than all other countries still remains unclear to me (and would arguably be a bias). As said before; wikipedia is international, not just US (and even within the US, there are "rumours" of a percentage not always being up to speed on these issues; New Mexico... USA or Mexico?). Otherwise, the same could be argued for other large countries with a divisions comparable to that of the US. E.g. Tamara Almeida Silva was born in Ipatinga, Minas Gerais; a locality which certainly is as obvious to some wiki users as Kearney, Nebraska would be to others. If WP:NCGN had applied everywhere (not just for determining the names of wiki articles on places) as you suggested initially, that form without the country would appear to be supported by the Brazil subsection (and comparable sections can be found among the other countries). To sum it up: It appears you are trying to force the "City, State" rule upon all articles, but this is not supported by any wiki rules (MoS or elsewhere), arguably represents a bias, and (based on featured articles) it goes directly against the de facto standard of WikiProject Biography. 212.10.90.224 (talk) 06:58, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
I have to agree with 212 here. Policy on this matter is quite clear, as shown by the large number of articles (remember policy does not have to be written). For article titles, yes you use city, state but for elsewhere, either city, state, country or city, country. Los Angeles is not a particularly good example since there is argument we don't even need state there. But for some obscure US city in some relatively unknown US state, expecting that everyone will know where the city or state is is ridicilous and not supported by any aspect of policy. As I mentioned, it is not always necessary to mention the state, this is needless trivia to most people outside the US. The Chicago Manual of Style is a reference for US English. Clearly not a good thing to look at in this instance. If Jojhutton wants to change policy, he/she is welcome to attempt to do so. I would suggest the manual of style is a better place to start such a discussion. And such a massive policy change definitely needs amply discussion and probably should be advertised to WP:VPP and perhaps the signpost at a minimum Nil Einne (talk) 16:04, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

lists of requests for photographs

Would welcome comments on proposal to address list of photo requests. See User:Traveler100/bio-photo-bot for details. Traveler100 (talk) 08:56, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Colleen Fitzpatrick (forensic genealogist)

Could someone please have a look at this article and do some work on it? (It's a resumé.) I don't have the time to get at it for a while. Thanks. --Sift&Winnow 22:43, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

The fact that a scientist is a member of the editorial board of a journal?

I have a quite fundamental question about biographies of scientists? I wonder if an Wikipedia article should or shouldn't mention that a scientist is a member of the editorial board of a notable journal?

On the WikiProject Academic Journals here I have raised the opposite question, if a Wikipedia article about a scientific journal should or shouldn't list the notable scientists of the editoral board? One opinion was (simply said) that the Editor In Chief is the only real important person in the journal, and that editorial members shouldn't be listed. And... that biographical article preferable shouldn't mention that the person is a member of the editorial board of any journal? This last remark seems rather extreme to me, but maybe there is something I am missing. I would like to hear your respons here. Thank you. -- Marcel Douwe Dekker (talk) 01:15, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Picture of Timothy Garton Ash available

It's no big deal, but I figured I could make a note for the community that there are nice pictures of Timothy Garton Ash available for his biography page. Would someone receive it or point me in the right direction? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Timothy_Garton_Ash CarlJohanSveningsson (talk) 20:21, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

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