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Other names bug

As can be seen in the before and after of this edit, |other names= (with a space) is working but |other_names= (with an underscore; as documented) is not. I can't see why. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:12, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

It's not a problem with this template. If you look at the previous version of Carolyne Christie, you'll see that the infobox contains two instances of |other_names=. It's a feature of the MediaWiki template parser that if any named parameter occurs more than once with identical names, only the last instance is processed - even when it is blank. Your change to |other names= takes advantage of the fact that aliases are processed after duplicates; and |other names= has higher precedence than |other_names= --Redrose64 (talk) 22:26, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Doh! I should have spotted that. Thank you.Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:40, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

RFC regarding signature images in biographies

I've started an RFC over at Stephen King's bio. As it involves information presented through this template, it might be of interest to editors who monitor or work on it. Thanks. §FreeRangeFrog^croak 17:48, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

This infobox in the Wikidata project

Phase 2 of the Wikidata project will soon affect Wikipedia infobox content, perhaps some parameters in this infobox. The project is currently collecting infobox data from different Wikipedia language versions and storing it in a multi-lingual database, and will within short allow automatic translation of infobox content between Wikipedias, and also automatic update of infobox data from external sources. The mapping between the parameter names of this infobox, and the corresponding Wikidata property names, is a use case at the d:Wikidata:Infoboxes task force/persons page. Please contribute to the Wikidata project, for example by discussing how parameter and property names and definitions can be harmonized. Mange01 (talk) 18:17, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Much as I support Wikidata, a change such as this should be discussed here on en.Wikipedia, if it is to have the support and goodwill of the en.Wikipedia community, and if it is to operate with their consensus. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 23:42, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Yeah. An infobox is supposed to summarise information which is given elsewhere in the article; and we would normally put the sources as refs in the article text. What if the Wikidata infobox is amended so that it contains information not present in the en.wp article (or is present, but different) - does that mean that the en.wp article text must then be edited to add (or synchronise with) that information? If not, how do we stand wrt WP:BLP? --Redrose64 (talk) 00:33, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Good point. I think collecting data from infoboxes of the various Wikipedias to Wikidata should be discussed on Wikidata.org. But any infobox inclusion (transfer of data from Wikidata to this Wikipedia) or any change of this infobox to better utilize available Wikidata content, should be discussed here on this infobox talk pages on the Wikipedias. I'm not worried about sources - Wikidata will soon provide references, and should also be able to update data from new version of reliable sources. Conflicts between data from different Wikipedias might be tricky to deal with, but I hope that only sourced data will be collected from the infoboxes to Wikidata by the bots. Mange01 (talk) 23:49, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

"Birth-date and age"?

Can someone please explain why the template example (blank template) has something called "birth date and age"? Is there such a thing? The sarcastic person in me says that everyone has the same age at birth, but maybe there is some technical issue I am not aware of? If not, then it it is a typo, but it should be corrected because it can be confusing. LaurentianShield (talk) 17:50, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Never mind, I answered my own question. It is documented, sorry. LaurentianShield (talk) 17:55, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Birth name parameter

The documentation is unclear here. Is this field meant only for cases where a person has a stage name (for example Elton John) different from their birth name (Reginald Dwight), or is it intended for a person's full birth name, such as in Niall Ferguson - his "career name" is the "same" as his birth name, albeit that he doesn't use his full four names (Niall Campbell Douglas Ferguson). I favour the former, Elton John/Reginald Dwight, approach, but I know others take the latter approach. Thoughts please.--ukexpat (talk) 21:31, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

For the record, I favor the other approach. Since we record birth date and birth place the infobox, it seems appropriate to record the full birth name (Niall Campbell Douglas Ferguson, in this case), since it has no other place in the infobox. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 21:53, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

I favor the former as well. The addition of middle names is handled right at the beginning of the lede in bold lettering no less. So to have it in the infobox as well is just redundant. Please take a look at the layout of the average page. You have the name at the top of the article - then at the top of the infobox - as well the beginning of the lede. Add to that the fact that the caption for the photo occasionally as some part of the name as well. By including it in the birth name field that is five times within the first inch or two of the article. To my eyes that is about as redundant as it gets. MarnetteD | Talk 22:45, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

The current instruction reads "Name at birth; only use if different from name." I think the operative word is "different." The addition of middle names does not make the name "different" it just makes it longer or more complete if you prefer. MarnetteD | Talk 22:48, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Everything in the infobox is - or should be - in the article as well. Their purpose is to summarise key facts (which the full name certainly is and emit them as machine readable metadata. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 00:09, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

"The addition of middle names is handled right at the beginning of the lede in bold lettering no less" - the birth date is given at the beginning of the article, too (though not in bold lettering). Sometimes, it is also given in "early life". Besides, I often see people adding middle name to the "name" field, and I think it's much preferable if it was kept under "birth_name" instead. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 00:21, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Everything in the infobox? really? - height and weight? personal website? info from the caption? - I've never seen those in the body of the article. The middle name does not make the name "different." Repeated use of the same name in up to 5 places at the top of an article looks for all the world like the filling out of a 150 word theme paper about an Xmas by gift by saying I really really really really really like my Red Ryder BB gun. But that is just me. If consensus is to include the name a second time in the infobox then that is fine. Please make sure to remove the word "different" from the instructions. MarnetteD | Talk 00:33, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

I agree with all those things (height and weight, and so on) being irrelevant to an infobox most of the time. However, one's birth name, which almost always isn't the exact same as the public name, seems like a very important attribute for an infobox. "Niall Campbell Douglas Ferguson" is really not the same as "Niall Ferguson". All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 00:36, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Internal links from nationality

Is it useful to include internal links such as [[United States|American]] for nationality, citizenship, and the like? Personally, I think linking to 'United States' seems like overlink, but I can see an argument for linking to, say, Nevis and I suppose consistency is a good thing. On the third hand, some templates such as Template:Infobox film suggest that users should not link to English language but do link to other languages. I wonder if something similar might be worthwhile for (some set of common) nationalities. Thoughts? Cnilep (talk) 08:06, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes, though I prefer to link to, say, United States people. The concerns of WP:OVERLINK apply less in infoboxes, were the links don't interrupt prose (though of course only the first instance should be linked; for example if the birthplace and deathplace are in the same town). I think English language may be an exception, as this is the English language Wikipedia Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:33, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Regarding documentation

I think that the documentation of this template should include a reminder about adding Persondata to biographical articles, because a lot of people add Infobox person template to their biographical articles and often miss out Persondata. If it really is important to use Persondata template in such articles, I think it would be a good idea to include a reminder of doing so in this template's documentation. — smtchahal 14:04, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Whatever Persondata does (and I for one have no idea what that is), would it not be simpler to make infobox:person do it instead? It is remarkably tedious to be expected to enter the same identical data twice over in any biographical article - which might help to explain why people tend to miss that step. Or perhaps Persondata could be set up to get its info from the infobox; or vice versa? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 22:20, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

I wrote an essay on this topic. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:49, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

I once thought of precisely that, Justlettersandnumbers, but I realized that it won't be a good idea. Persondata is mandatory on all biographical articles, while infobox is not. You expect a biographical article to have an infobox if it's of a fairly good length, but stub biographical articles (that still follow the guidelines and don't get marked for deletion) usually don't have an infobox but they still must have Persondata. smtchahal 04:17, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks to both for replies. I added the addpersondata script which seems to do a fairly good job of getting the info out of the infobox and into persondata. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 18:37, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

Date formats

I see that the infobox template caters with nested templates for those who like to use reverse Polish (xxxx-yy-zz) dates, incomprehensible though those are to ordinary mortals, and to those who like ordinary US-style m d, y format. But what about those of us who prefer to write dates from left to right, in plain d m y format (such as 21 March 2013)? Would it be possible to add this option also? Or otherwise to remove the existing two options and let people write their dates as they wish? Because as it stands, the template appears just a touch regionally biased. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 22:31, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

There is no need to "add this option", because you can already enter dates as prose if you wish. However, entering them using the templates means that hey are machine-readable, so that computer programmes can understand and process them. You will note that the templates will output dates in your preferred format. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:47, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply; and for drawing my attention (above) to your essay, which I enjoyed. But no, I don't note that the template outputs the date format I want (the third button of the five in the "Date and format" bit of the preferences, as in 30 March 2013). What I note is that the template outputs whatever it wants, which appears to be uniquely the US usage (or what I believe to be that usage). I made an example in my sandbox. The output I see is (without the exact formatting) Born: January 1, 1850 (age 163); Died: December 31, 2099 (aged 299). So I'd like to re-iterate my previous request, that the capability to add machine-readable d m y dates be added to the template. Or, just a question, wouldn't it be fairly straightforward (for those that know how) to make a single birthdate/deathdate/age template that correctly filled those fields with a user-selected output format parameter? 'Cos, though it's no big deal, it's anyway sort of silly to have to enter the birth date twice over for dead people. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 18:37, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

Birth name question

Is the birth name field always filled, even when the subject's current name remains unchanged? Andrew³²⁷ 21:32, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

No. It should only be used when the names are different. DrKiernan (talk) 21:48, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! Andrew³²⁷ 21:51, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

Gender

There is no mention of gender in the infobox. The only way of determining the gender of a person is by the pronouns used (he, she) in the article. When articles contain little information it can be hard to work out the subjects gender. I propose gender be added to the infobox. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Asdasd23 (talk • contribs) 00:42, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

I agree that it would be beneficial to have some sort of flag for gender, but I imagine a good many editors would be opposed to listing displaying it in the infobox. There are also edge cases around "gender queer" and transexual people. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:03, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

IMO it is a rare article where you can't tell the gender from the persons name but if you are having problems one suggestion is to hit the "end" key on your computer and read the categories at the bottom of the article. In most - though I admit not all - cases you will find the gender mentioned there at least once. Andy is correct that there would, no doubt, be some opposition. I remember the edit warring that went on for several days if not a couple weeks when Laurence Wachowski became Lana. MarnetteD | Talk 21:08, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

On the contrary; it seems to me that most biographies' categories do not include gender. Humans may be able to tell the gender, from the article's prose and use of pronouns, but machines can't. Without recording the subject's gender in a consistent, logical and predictable fashion, it's not possible to programme queries like "all the female scientists from Germany" or "male songwriters born in 1933". Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:39, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

You may be right. I usually see Male/Female writers or stuff link that but I don;t get around to as many articles as you do. In any event it was just a suggestion to the OP. MarnetteD | Talk 21:46, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

I've put a hard-coded mockup in the sandbox; please see the test cases. We'd need to work on styling (I envisage it being the bottom-right corner of the infobox); wording ("m" or "male" for men, for example); colours (pink and blue are traditional, but some would object to the stereotype); and to add a switch for the values "male", "female", and, say, "other". Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:07, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

It looks pretty good. I would tend to steer away from colors - well bright ones anyway. As you suggest there is the stereotyping issue - although those haven't been around as long as we sometimes think - a year or so ago I learned that pink was associated with boys at one time and it wasn't until the 1950's that it became the color to denote women - in the US anyway. Maybe more neutral colors like grey or tan or some such. You might also want to get more input from other editors. Again these are just a suggestions. Congrats on your efforts. MarnetteD | Talk 22:23, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

It looks terrible. For programme queries something like this should be put into persondata rather than the infobox. DrKiernan (talk) 22:25, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Indeed it does. That's why I said we need to discuss styling (including positioning), colours and text content. I have written an essay explaining the problems with Persondata. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:34, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

I know. You told us yesterday. DrKiernan (talk) 22:37, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Can anyone improve the styling? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 01:02, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

Gender or sex

I'd like to suggest that before dealing in detail with gender, the person's sex should be added. And then perhaps have an additional field for gender in those cases where it is different? I certainly can't do a test case like Andy's, but the input might be something along the lines of:

| caption     = 
| sex  = <!-- Male, Female or [[Intersex]] -->
| gender  = <!-- only if different from sex: Male, Female or Other -->
| birth_name  =

It seems that a fundamental bit of data is missing from the infobox, and indeed from many articles, and that that should be remedied. But I see all sorts of potential difficulties with such a project. Who will determine the gender of, say, George Eliot? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 19:04, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

You seem to be making a distinction that would be opaque to most people. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:40, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

Taking the common but not universal view that sex is what you are born with, gender is the social construct, the identity that you choose (or in cases which I hope are rare, are forced) to assume. These distinctions are well explained in our articles on these topics. Facebook, or indeed Wikipedia, asks for your gender (you can of course reply as you wish); the doctor or the passport office wants to know your sex, and probably expects the truth. The two are not (yet?) synonymous. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 21:36, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

I oppose all the additions that are under discussion. I don't need or want the infobox to tell me that George Eliot is a woman of male gender. In virtually all cases it is absolutely unnecessary to detail a person's gender in the infobox because it will be obvious from the article title, first sentence of the lead, or lead image. We should be trying to reduce the size of infoboxes not bloat them with even more extraneous parameters. At most, such information should be hidden for the purposes of data-mining. DrKiernan (talk) 20:23, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

The sex (or gender) will not be obvious, from the article title, first sentence of the lead, or lead image, to a machine, which is what is under discussion here. As noted in the essay of which you are already aware, hidden data has a number of problems, not least that it isn't easily scrutinised. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:59, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

DrKiernan makes a valid point: there is no need to put sex in the infobox if it is already obvious from the article. But doesn't the same criterion apply to all other infobox data, such as the person's name? That is usually perfectly obvious from the article title, and yet we persist in including it in infoboxes. I don't know what others think, but to me it is more important to know a person's sex than, say, that person's net worth. And as Andy says, if that stuff is in the infobox then it is also machine-readable (at least, that's what I've been told - myself, I wouldn't know). Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 21:36, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Marriage template deletion

—[AlanM1(talk)]— 18:46, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Parameters that can optionally be called from Wikidata

Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Wikidata Phase 2 was just closed with a consensus to allow "modify[ing] existing infoboxes to permit Wikidata inclusion when there is no existing English Wikipedia data for a specific field in the infobox", but with an advisement that this be done very deliberately and cautiously. To that end, I'd like to start a discussion on picking a handful of parameters (three to five, I'm thinking) that we can try this out on. They would be called using a syntax like {{#if:{{{parameter|}}} | {{{parameter|}}} | {{#property:p000}} }} – in other words, as was decided in the RFC, any Wikidata value would only be displayed if the parameter were left empty here. Essentially the question is what parameters do we think this would be the least controversial with? A few I'd suggest are: spouse (d:P:P26); birth_place (d:P:P19); death_place (d:P:P20); birth_name (d:P:P513); and maybe something like signature as well (d:P:P109), which could be called from Commons with a File: prefix. A full list of person-related properties can be found at d:WD:List of properties/Person; an automated list of all properties can be found at d:Special:AllPages/Property:.

Oh, and, if people are concerned about cases where there's a consensus that one of these parameters should NOT be set to anything, we could always come up with some syntax to override without displaying anything locally, e.g. {{#ifeq:{{{parameter|}}} | __NULL__ | <!-- don't display any Wikidata values --> | {{#if:{{{parameter|}}} | {{{parameter|}}} | {{#property:p000}} }} }}.

— PinkAmpers&^{(Je vous invite à me parler)} 19:56, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

Regrettably, it's likely that spouse and signature, and perhaps birth name, would cause drama (though it would be interesting to see how a subject who was married twice or more would be handled). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:52, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

For any properties with multiple values, the claims are shown separated by commas, as you can see at Wikipedia:Wikidata/Wikidata Sandbox. I'm not sure if they can be configured to display differently, but I can find out, if you'd like. As for drama-inducing-ness, which parameters do you think would be less controversial? I have absolutely no preference myself; those were just the best examples that came to mind. — PinkAmpers&^{(Je vous invite à me parler)} 05:46, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

For most parameters, multiple properties should be displayed using {{flatlist}} (instead of commas or other in-line separators), or {{Plainlist}} (instead of new lines); per this (and other) infobox's documentation and WP:LIST. If wikidata can't accommodate that, then that's a bug. Comma separators are particularly inappropriate where included values may contain comas - consider |occupation=Teacher, Westminster, headmaster, Eton. I'd suggest hon. suffix and prefix (comma separators may be acceptable there); and URL (which should use {{URL}}). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:14, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Actually Wikidata should be returning a data structure consisting of several items whenever there are multiple values connected to a single label in Wikidata. We ought to be using Lua to read that data structure and filling a list with its values. That would yield the granularity we need to be able to make links as well. I'll see if we can make some progress on that on Sunday at wmuk:Lua on Wikimedia. Wikidata isn't going to get far in infoboxes until it can store a data of type "date" though :( --RexxS (talk) 03:11, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes, it's rather annoying that what would probably be the least controversial data to use (dates) are somewhat overdue in the development pipeline. Valid on pretty much any biography, very rarely the subjects of controversy, and would probably very often be supplied on Wikidata but not here (e.g. relatively obscure politicians form foreign countries). — PinkAmpers&^{(Je vous invite à me parler)} 10:01, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

I won't be there, but I'll raise the matter at the Amsterdam Hackathon the following weekend. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:15, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

I'm assured that this is doable. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:08, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Adding 'Radio' alongside 'Television'

There is a Parameter 'television' defined as 'Television programmes presented by or closely associated with the subject' and I think that there should be a similar 'radio' parameter.

This may be unique to the UK but there are some radio programmes (mostly on what is now Radio 4) that are long-running and so well known that they are regarded as part of the nation cultural.

One example that may be better know to non-UK readers is Letter from America by Alastair Cooke. There that is listed under 'Notable credit(s)'.

I was prompted to raise this because I looked at the Tamsin Greig article, where her work on The Archers is listed under Television, which seems more than a little surreal to me!

FerdinandFrog (talk) 10:59, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

We could either add this, or change the label of |television= to "Media appearances" or suchlike. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:10, 31 May 2013 (UTC)