Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biography/2011 archive

'the Great', as in Cyrus/Alexander the Great

At Cyrus Cylinder the number of 'the Great's has suddenly more than doubled, from about 20 to about 45. On the talk page this is explained as " it might feel a bit denigrating to the original figure, Cyrus the Great, to merely call him Cyrus. A good comparison would be using Attila, instead of Attila the Hun.". But our article Attila refers to him only once as 'the Hun'. Are there any guidelines on this? It isn't necessary as a way of distinguishing him from some other Cyrus in the article. Thanks. Dougweller (talk) 09:52, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

According to this edit summary editor Dr. Persi considers 'the Great' to be some kind of surname. He meanwhile has added about another two dozen 'the Great's at Cyrus the Great.[1][2] In academic writing, though, the custom seems to be 'Cyrus' only, as e.g. in Josef Wiesehöfer's 'Ancient Persia' or in the Encyclopedia Iranica. - Konstock (talk) 16:12, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Well, this particular Cyrus is known as "Cyrus the Great," by both his enemies and country-folk, incidentally before Alexander (who is also commonly referred to as "Alexander the Macedonian.") Which makes "Cyrus the Great" very well suited for the term, especially since the term is historically relevant and referencing him in wikipedia. I've looked at historians who rank far higher in academia than Wiesehofer--Richard Nelson Frye, Will Durant, and James Henry Breasted as examples--and the term often used is "Cyrus the Great." "Attila the Hun" is not a good comparison because Attila's historical influence (or name usage) is not on the same caliber as Cyrus or Alexander the Greats. Readers of wikipedia need to receive accurate information about historical personages. GoetheFromm (talk) 21:44, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

This is hard to believe, GoetheFromm. What do you mean by "looked at"? If I let Google do the checking instead, say for Frye's History of ancient Iran, ist comes up with one single page containing 'Cyrus the Great'[3], but with 34 containing simply 'Cyrus' .[4] -- Konstock (talk) 14:40, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Use of "foreign" characters after person's name...

Is there any standardization for using foreign characters after the subject's given name. I see that a number of Americans of Greek ethnicity as well as Asian(hope thats politically correct term) ethnicity use them in the lead sentence. I am limiting the scope of this discussion to folks with ONLY US nationality/citizenship if that helps. Anyways, TIA --Threeafterthree (talk) 19:26, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Don't like them, want to get rid of them. I don't find them very useful. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 00:10, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't find them useful, but then I don't have a need for birthdates, either. If they're verifiable and of use to a minority of our readers, where's the harm? Jclemens (talk) 01:46, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Ditto on what Jclemens stated (minus the bit about birthdates, which I find useful). ···日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WikiProject Japan! 06:19, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Headers again

There's a discussion here about adding headers such as "Biography" and "Life" to short biographical articles. -- Necrothesp (talk) 10:55, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Honorific titles section needs copyediting

As far as writing style goes, it's the most convoluted piece of wikilaw I've read in a long time. It also uses words such as "permits", which are not normally found in guidelines. Tijfo098 (talk) 13:26, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

What it actually needs is deleting (it's been deleted at least once before and restored by the author), as it stems from a disagreement here. I agree it is generally gobbledigook. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:17, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Some of the general guidance there is useful, but probably because I can read it to mean what I want it to mean, ha, ha. Tijfo098 (talk) 17:01, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Postnominal initials: FRSA

From time to time I come across a biography beginning, for example:

Sir Simon Denis Rattle, CBE, FRSA

I tend to delete the letters FRSA, explaining that they are inappropriate, and nobody seems to object. I wonder whether we could establish a policy of non-inclusion for this set of postnominal initials. It seems to me that this section is for memberships in organisations which denote genuine recognition of merit, e.g. Fellow of the Royal Soceity, Fellow of the British Academy, Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, Royal Academician, Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, etc. FRSA is a membership which most people can purchase for £150 p.a. (+£75 one-off joining fee). I know somebody who was approached by the RSA offering him a Fellowship, and, as somebody twice honoured by the Crown and a Fellow in two learned societies, he declined, stating that FRSA was no honour at all and just something one could buy. Other people take is as a genuine honour and are only too willing to accept, little knowing what they are buying. I know somebody else who is an FRSA but who does not use the letters because he says that he only acquired Fellowship because he wanted to be able to take guests to the RSA restaurant.--Oxonian2006 (talk) 12:13, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

I certainly delete them from non-Commonwealth holders, e.g. I've deleted it from James D. Watson. I don't add them to Commonwealth holders either, but let them be if they're already in the article. (Crick has a FRS suffix for instance.) Tijfo098 (talk) 22:34, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I would thoroughly agree with listing fellowship of the Royal Society after the subject's name in the lead, as the Royal Society is the UK's national academy for the sciences, and its fellowship is recognised as the preeminent distinction for academics in this field, like the FBA for humanities and social sciences. The FRHistS and FSA are likewise distinctions conferred for merit in their respective fields, as are other memberships in other learned societies. However, FRSA is one of those "distinctions" which can be held by almost anybody willing to work out how to fill in the application forms and pay the membership fee. Others in the category are Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society. Many holders of these distinctions are in fact eminent scholars, but there are also many people who join on the weakest of grounds just out of vanity. It is specifically the FRSA which I am highlighting here, not worthier distinctions such as FRS, FBA, FRHistS, and FSA.--Oxonian2006 (talk) 18:48, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Is the issue just the one, or is there a list of not-so-appropriate memberships? If the problem is primarily the one, then perhaps a footnote or a parenthetical comment could be added. If it's a long list, then we should probably think about a supplemental essay page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:14, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Spaces between dashes for birth/death dates

Is the convention that there should be a space between the dash that separates the birth and death in the lead (e.g. John Smith (1711 – 1798), not John Smith (1711–1798). At present, there are 2 examples showing no spaces. Should these be converted to "with spaces", and should some text be added to the MOS to indicate that spaces are preferred? Eldumpo (talk) 08:02, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

The examples follow the general MoS, that dashes are unspaced unless there is a space in the items being separated. So John Smith (1711–1798) is correct, but if a month were known, the endash would be spaced, as John Smith (August 1711 – 1798). See MOS:DASH and, specifically relevant to your query, MOS:DOB. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 09:20, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, that clears things, although I think it could be useful if there is a link to MOS:DOB from the relevant paargraph of this article. Eldumpo (talk) 09:55, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

There is: see Wikipedia:Manual of Style (biographies)#Opening paragraph point 2. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 10:37, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Cousins?

The following was recently added to the 'Marriage and family' section of the Aaron Burr article:

"Reverend Andrew Eliot was married to a cousin of Aaron Burr and, in a series of weekly letters from January 1777 to August 1778, he detailed the extent of spy participation by Thaddeus Burr (a first cousin of Aaron Burr). These missives were inherited by noted Long Island television and radio personality Bernadine Fawcett."

My first thought is to revert this edit because the info about one of Burr's non-notable cousins adds nothing (in my opinion) to the article. I found no guidelines or policies about this kind of thing. Thoughts, editors? WCCasey (talk) 03:45, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

I would tend to remove the information as unsourced and with no clear relation to the article's subject. Probably best to discuss it on the article's talk page.--Kotniski (talk) 08:23, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

WP:SURNAME and Siouxsie Sioux

WP:SURNAME says, People who are best known by a pseudonym should be subsequently referred to by their pseudonymous surnames, unless they do not include a recognizable surname in the pseudonym (i.e. Madonna, Snoop Dogg, The Edge), in which case the whole pseudonym is used. I am curious about the application of this to the artist Siouxsie Sioux. To me it is clear that 'Sioux' is her pseudonymous surname and should be used. Any thoughts? Elizium23 (talk) 19:51, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Listing of published biographies or just relying on the references?

After I added a "Biography Section" to an article about a person, the section was erased by another editor, the argument being that the material was already mentioned in the reference section, thus represented a "duplication", and "we" at WP don't do this. I wonder about this, as it appears inconsistently handled in WP. For example, if you check the article about Vladimir Nabokov, you will find a listing of his various published biographies, even though this represents a "duplication" as they can also be found in the references. In contrast, the article of Martin Luther King, Jr. does not display such a section, and you have to go to the references to search out his published biographies. I certainly find the situation in the former article better it being more informative and giving me an easy and concise overview, while it is not so easy in the latter case. Not only is it laborious to find them, they are haphazardly distributed, and biographies that are not referenced will be missed. Thus, it is my opinion that Biography Sections that list published biographies of persons are preferable and should generally be encouraged. Ekem (talk) 21:33, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

The normal thing to do is a WP:FURTHERREADING section, and the normal thing to do is to avoid duplication. Exceptions are occasionally made, e.g., in articles with 200 inline citations, and editors want to highlight a few truly important works. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:09, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it should be quite normal for sources cited in the references section to be biographies, so seems redundant to list them again. That is what "references" are for - it adds no new information. I would add that if there is a particularly notable biography, such as by an author who has an article, then it might merit putting a sentence about it in the body text too. Also if the subject wrote their own autobiography, it might deserve a mention in the body and in the references section, or "works" section generally. W Nowicki (talk) 16:07, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Proposal: 2.6 Post-nominal initials

I propose that individuals who do not use postnominals (for instance royals, who often have altogether too many! e.g. Charles, Prince of Wales) be explicitly exempted. DBD 22:45, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Since there were no objections, I have been bold and implemented my proposition. DBD 17:08, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Clarify OPENPARA

Is naming someone in the opening sentence by their nationality like, John Doe is an English/Irish/French/German blah blah against the guideline namely Ethnicity or sexuality should not generally be emphasized in the opening unless it is relevant to the subject's notability. Mo ainm~Talk 08:28, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

No. Ethnicity and nationality/country of origin are not the same things. What the guideline means is that we should not write, for example, "John Doe is a black English..." unless the fact he's black is relevant to his notability. -- Necrothesp (talk) 08:37, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, but in your example is English not an ethnic group? Mo ainm~Talk 08:48, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Not really. Used in this way it's someone who was born in England, who could be of any ethnic group. -- Necrothesp (talk) 11:59, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

It is also useful to give some context of the part of the world where the person was notable. Many articles are about people who are "famous" in one country only. Remember that Wikipedia has readers around the world (even just the English language one) and many an editor may consider "famous" might be totally unknown to most readers. Even if someone was born somewhere else or is of a different ethnic group, saying they are "English" would give a quick context of where they did their notable things right in the lead. Very useful when dealing with multple people who share a common name, for example, to make sure you are reading the right one. W Nowicki (talk) 16:16, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification. Mo ainm~Talk 16:17, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Common Titles (Mr., Mrs., Dr.)

I just removed instances of "Mr.", "Mrs.", and "Dr." from a lengthy list of board members of an international institution ( http://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Forum_of_Federations&action=historysubmit&diff=433953618&oldid=426656123 ). They are commonly used in academia/journalism in some dialects, like Indian English, but are not as widespread in academic/journalistic American English or British English. Is there an official ruling for when the terms can be used? samwaltz (talk) 22:39, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Yep, see WP:NAMES and its subsection WP:SURNAME. You did right. :) --CliffC (talk) 00:26, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

RFC: restructuring of the Manual of Style

Editors may be interested in this RFC, along with the discussion of its implementation:

Should all subsidiary pages of the Manual of Style be made subpages_of WP:MOS?

It's big; and it promises huge improvements. Great if everyone can be involved. Noetica^Tea? 00:27, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Infoboxes

I've been cleaning up a lot of biography pages lately, and I've noticed that very few have infoboxes. Is there any sort of consensus as to when Template:Infobox person should and shouldn't be used? --Kerowyn ^{Leave a note} 18:17, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

There is not yet a consensus whether infoboxes should ever be used. Many of us don't like them, particularly not the long infoboxes that tend to completely unbalance the article. -- Necrothesp (talk) 20:06, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

I generally like to use infoboxes for a concise look at important facts. If done well, they also add some visual interest to the page. To help avoid the over-long variety filled with irrelevant information, try selecting from the more specific templates on Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/Infoboxes. You may still, however, need to add or delete fields to yield the best infobox for a given article. WCCasey (talk) 20:59, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Yes, a reasonable compromise is to balance the infobox with the article. That is, a long prose body might merit a box with a dozen entries, while on shorter articles the box typically has a quick summary of why the person is notable. I also put birth and death dates there (and prefer to just put the vital years in the lead, although many oppose that too, sigh). Another way to keep the boxes clean and balanced is the rule that every bit of info in the box is included in the body prose with a citation there in the body. The box serves as a summary and thus does not need citation clutter, nor every little detail. That is what article bodies are for. I wish we made these guidelines explicit, but they seem contentious. W Nowicki (talk) 16:09, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

I'm one of those who most definitely opposes not putting the full dates in the lead. The infobox should only ever be a supplement to the article, not replace it. There should be no info in the infobox that's not in the article. -- Necrothesp (talk) 19:29, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Sounds like we agree on your second point - any chance we could make this explicit in the style guide? Without being too weasly, how about "Any information included in the lead or an infobox should be mentioned in the body of the article in prose. Citations for the details should be given in the body." My problem is I see more and more unsourced details going into leads and bodies. Editors might think they can get away with this since citations there look ugly. Hard to follow the negatives in your first sentence. My proposed compromise was to not force full dates to be omitted in the lead, but allow them to be in the body and infobox only, which seems more in line with the other guidelines they say only include when related to notability. W Nowicki (talk) 16:05, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

To clarify, I think the full dates should be in the lead. They're a vital piece of info. -- Necrothesp (talk) 16:12, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Child named for parent or predecessor

This section needs clarification. No comma before the Jr., Sr., or Roman numeral prefix, such as "Sammy Davis Jr.," but Sammy Davis, Jr. has a comma before Jr. Eagles 24/7 (C) 02:27, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Nicknames in lead

I hate seeing nicknames in the lead. Unless that's how the person is referred to the vast majority of the time, it shouldn't be a lead IMO. It seems to be a problem mostly for sport figures. Is there a style guideline I can cite when removing these, or do I just to go with the standard sort of subjective "not sourced well enough" or something gray area-ish like "not commonly referred to this nickname"? Here's an example: Mike Epstein. In this case, the nickname is weakly sourced in one of the external links. I know I can remove it based on sourcing, but am curious if there's something else I can use as justification. Thank you --CutOffTies (talk) 13:49, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

You need to ask at the Helpdesk. It's worth noting that in the article you cite, the nickname is very well sourced.Exok (talk) 14:00, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for your reply- my inquiry can go right next to "My own article got deleted", "Forgot to sign in can I remove my IP address to my user account?", and "wikipedia and facebook". Also, in the article I gave as an example, I see what you mean about it being referenced (thanks), but I still think it reflects poorly on this project to have silly nicknames in the lead. I'm sure posting at the help desk will help address my concern. --CutOffTies (talk) 14:07, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

I think it is entirely appropriate to discuss on this page. I don't entirely hate seeing nicknames in the lede, but they should only be included if the name is often used without an explanation of who it refers to. Can we also stop the inclusion of nicknames or shortened versions of first names in quotes in the middle of a subject's full name? Where the familiar name is a standard shortened version, eg someone called Michael who is known as Mike, the page will normally be located at the familiar name version and it will not be necessary at all to make explicit reference to the fact that their first name is shortened when giving their full name. In giving a full name, the full name should flow uninterruptedly from beginning to end, and any nicknames or alternate names should be given separately. Sam Blacketer (talk) 14:22, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Sam, thank you for understanding and providing feedback on my inquiry. --CutOffTies (talk) 14:33, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

I'll second Sam's dislike of the increasingly common practice of adding nicknames or shortenings in quotes in the middle of the name. Horrible. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:13, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

This does indeed seem the place for such style discussions. Generally sounds like the "use encyclopedic language" guide applies, which means nicknames only when used in cited sources, and use the last name after the first use. Worse yet are titles like William Wilson "Buffalo Bill" Quinn which does not seem encyclopedic. Military leaders often are given colorful names by their troops, which could be mentioned in the body with sources, but really, in the title? Although Buffalo Bill seems clearly known by the name. And embolden only if a search for that name in the title goes to that article. W Nowicki (talk) 16:17, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

W Nowicki - I agree with your concerns about nicknames in titles, but I was hoping to limit this to the name in the lead.

I think it'll be great if we can come up with something for the MOS stating that "firstname_"nickname"_lastname" should not be used, and also "firstname lastname, nicknamed ____" should not be used either. If an editor feels that the existence of a subject's nickname is important for the lead and/or anywhere else in the article, fine, go ahead and add something like "__ __ received the nickname ____, reflecting blah blah blah qualities..." as a separate sentence with sources, but just get it out of very the beginning of the article, as it's basically trivia that generally has nothing to do with their notability. I don't know if you can say there are exceptions.. take someone like Snoop Dogg. Of course that's not his real name, but it's not a nickname either - it's a stage name.

I never initiated a change to a MOS element, so I don't know if this needs to go through a formal consensus gathering process, but I'll be glad to help pursue it. Thanks again to those who have provided valuable feedback --CutOffTies (talk) 16:49, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

The real problem arises with examples like Spike Milligan. Our lede starts 'Terence Alan Patrick Seán "Spike" Milligan KBE (16 April 1918 – 27 February 2002) was a comedian, writer, musician, poet, playwright, soldier and actor..." Ugly, cluttered and confusing. Everyone knew him as Spike (except possibly his family - I've no idea), and if anyone ever referred to him as 'Terence Alan Patrick Seán "Spike" Milligan KBE' to his face, I'd be very much surprised. (And given that he was an Irish citizen, the KBE is questionable in his name in any case, I think?). So 'Spike Milligan, formally Terence Alan Patrick Seán Milligan (16 April 1918 – 27 February 2002) was a comedian, writer, musician, poet, playwright, soldier and actor..." A little less stuffiness and overblown formality would seem entirely reasonable - I doubt that people go to Spike's bio to find out his full name, and even if they do, it needn't be dumped on their lap in a big ugly heap, along with his nickname (which they presumably know already, given that this is in the article title), his (honourary) knighthood, and his dates of birth and death, along with everything else that happened to him ('Soldier'? Well, yes. And a very entertaining one with hindsight - and, despite his self-effacing memoirs, probably a good one - but not exactly what made him notable). This desire to compress all the essentials of a person into the first sentence of a bio lede make for poor style, and make everything that follows look rather disconnected. Style (as in MOS) isn't a set of rules to be blindly followed - so if Spike was known as Spike, we need to acknowledge that properly, not hide it in a jumble of other details. AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:29, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

Nationality

We currently have the phrase "In most modern-day cases this will mean the country of which the person is a citizen or national". In the case of the United Kingdom it has been the long standing norm to use Welsh/English/Scottish/Irish if that is a part of the person's identity, or self-identification, otherwise "British" is used. This has applied for a long time to actors, politicians, sportsmen and women etc. etc. In sports the constituent countries of the UK compete in their own right in many tournaments (Football, Rugby, Commonwealth games etc.). The qualification "most" allows for this, but we have some cases of where people are interpreting "most" as "all" so I thought I would raise it here for clarification. --Snowded ^TALK 09:14, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I think this should be clarified with an explicit mention of the UK situation.--Kotniski (talk) 09:18, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

It should be changed, to go along with the sovereign state, in this case British for all. GoodDay (talk) 19:13, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Any arguments for that GoodDay, or are you opining as usual? --Snowded ^TALK 19:16, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, we go with Canadian, American, Russian, Australian, etc etc; so let's go with British. GoodDay (talk) 19:36, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

None of those have constituent countries, or people who identify their nationality based on a country within the sovereign state. Also GoodDay, you really have no excuse given your "participation" in these matters not to be aware of that --Snowded ^TALK 20:39, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

According to you, the UK doesn't have constituent countries either, or have you changed your interpretation. Anways, I'm sticking with British usage, in these matters. GoodDay (talk) 21:02, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

And we will call you a North American. Mo ainm~Talk 21:11, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Irreleveant here, as I've not called for European. GoodDay (talk) 21:14, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Far from it you are pushing a designation on people who don't want it. And for some who are very much opposed to it. Mo ainm~Talk 21:20, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

I'm not seeking popularity. GoodDay (talk) 21:28, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

This is a difficult issue - without entering into the minefield of how to describe people from the six counties of Ireland at present within the United Kingdom, there are many editors who feel strongly on both sides. The present wording is, though it doesn't intend to be, ambiguous: Scotland, England and Wales are separate countries but they are not nations. Some, but only a few, subjects have made clear their own preference. My own view is that editors who think that we should always refer to English/Scottish/Welsh and only to British if the subject has said so, have probably gone too far. I would prefer to have British as the default, because most people have at least one ancestor from a different part of Britain, but to default to Welsh/Scottish/English if the subject is a sportsman or has identified with their home country rather than as British. Sam Blacketer (talk) 19:33, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Don't agree with the use of British as default for anyone from Eng/Sco/Wal/NI, as it will lead to more edit wars this is why I think we should move away from eg "Joe Bloggs (birthdate) is an English (occupation)" To Joe Bloggs (birthdate) is an (occupation) from England, it is factual and neutral. Mo ainm~Talk 19:41, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Sam has summarised what I for one think is the current default position (although they are nations as well as countries in many uses so I disagree with him there). So some people clearly identify as Welsh/Scottish etc. Others play for the Welsh or Scottish or English team at say Rugby. These are clear cases. Where there is no direct affiliation or preference we go with the press and citations - for Lloyd George for example we have Churchill as an authority for him being Welsh rather than British. "From England" is not really appropriate as many people in the UK are born in one of the constituent countries, but identify with another. Editors should remember than hundreds of articles are affected here.--Snowded ^TALK 20:35, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Change from to born. Mo ainm~Talk 20:43, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

I would prefer "British" myself for all (although personally I tend to identify myself as "English") as that is our official nationality, but given that many would object I think the status quo should be kept. The constructions "from England" or "born in England" are contrived given that we describe ourselves as "English" or "British". -- Necrothesp (talk) 22:54, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

The MOS in question was changed on 26 October 2010 (without discussion), from In most modern-day cases this will mean the country of which the person is a citizen or national, or was a citizen when the person became notable TO In most modern-day cases this will mean the country of which the person is a citizen and/or national (according to each nationality law of the countries), or was a citizen when the person became notable. It seems the edit was to make a point about South Korean nationality law (see here), but had unintended consequences. Any objections to reverting?
I agree with Snowded that we should go with whatever the sources say e.g. English, Scottish, Welsh, Irish, British, unless the subject is reliably sourced to self-identify differently to mainstream sources, in which case the self-identification should be preferred. Daicaregos (talk) 14:53, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Probably a good idea to revert that change, but perhaps a specific note about British v. English/Welsh/Scottish would be helpful. It seems that affiliation to a constituent country within a nation is not really an issue anywhere else in the world, though possibly it was when the USSR was still around, as for example the famous 1966 World Cup final's 'Russian linesman' who was from Azerbaijan. Sam Blacketer (talk) 16:09, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

OK, I've reverted that change. If it turns out to be controversial it can be re-instated. Daicaregos (talk) 17:12, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Even reverting that change, the guideline still states to go with where they are citizen/national of. For the UK there is only one option and thats British. The regional/ethnic nationalities that are Welsh, English, Scottish, and Irish/Northern Irish don't equate to citizenship in any form. In fact does point 3.2 not say we shouldn't state ethnicity unless is relevant to subjects notability? That alone is highly questionable for many articles, whereas its not for others.

In response to Snowded: None of those have constituent countries, or people who identify their nationality based on a country within the sovereign state. The term "constituent country" implies a far great degree of self-determination than actually exists and has no legal status and is a simple play on words. Instead those countries (Canada, Russia, USA, Australia) have states that have FAR more legislative independance and are more like countries than the so called countries of the UK - in the case of within the US, they refer to themselves as Texans or Californians not Americans, just as within the UK people refer to themselves as Scottish or Welsh. Internationally those same Texans and Californians would identify as American as that's their citizenship/nationality. Are English/Welsh/Scottish/Irish used by these people in an international context or inter-UK context?

Also ethnic wise, how many times do you read/hear of Americans identifying themselves as Irish-American or Italian-American etc? What about the various different ethnic populations in Russia who may not refer to themselves as Russian? Yet we still call them all American, Russian, etc. We don't use their ethnic nationality, we use their citizenship as that is what nationality refers to first and foremost in the world.

Having said that i have stated before i can back the use of ethnic nationalities in the lede as long as use the correct nationality (British) in the infobox which as far as i'm aware means citizenship, because no matter how you personally identify, you can't overrule your own citizenship without changing it.

Surely that would be the most NPOV stance on the matter - allow for their self-identification (of ethnic nationality) in the lede where they self-identify as that but state their actual nationality (citizenship) in the infobox. That way we don't cater to a nationalist agenda by keeping "British" out of the article, whilst getting out the fact the person identifies as one whilst stating what citizenship they hold. Mabuska ^(talk) 11:00, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

And how do we determine what citizenship someone holds, without doing original research? --Kotniski (talk) 12:30, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Let's just go by the sovereign state. GoodDay (talk) 12:56, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

We shouldn't conform to either a nationalist or an anti-nationalist/Unionist agenda. Per common use a large number of people identify as having Welsh or Sottish or English nationality,. They also compete in sports of those nations. The long standing practice is that we use British unless the person self-identifies as being Welsh/Scottish/Irish/English and or the article context (as in say Rugby where the UK never competes as a nation) makes the nationality clear. This does not exclude "British" it follows common practice. --Snowded ^TALK 11:29, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Manual of Style (infoboxes) states that the purpose of an infobox is "to summarize key facts about the article in which it appears". That suggests to me that the infobox content should summarise whatever is decided, in each particular case, about article content. So, if self-identification is accepted for the article, it should equally be accepted for the infobox; there should be no opportunity for confusion between the two. Ghmyrtle (talk) 15:41, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Common sense = common practice is the way to go for any manual of style. There are so many national galleries etc, and national sporting teams that represent Scotland, Wales etc that to say that Scottish can not be a nationality is preposterous. If a rugby player is famous for playing for his national team then it is blidingly obvious that that is his nationality, unless he has verifiably been quoted as saying he feels his nationality to be British. If a player plays for England for instance, English should be used as his nationality in the infobox. Let us not kid ourselves on that British can be the only nationality within Britain. The only citizenship, sure, but certainly not the only nationality. I'm surprised that anyone would think otherwise. Carson101 (talk) 15:49, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Carson101 nobodies denying that Scottish etc. aren't nationalities and that the UK is of one nationality. The issue is what definition of nationality the infobox is referring to seeing as it has two meanings depending on how you interpret it. Ghmyrtle has provided the best reasoning for the infobox yet. Though not all infobox information is actually in the article text.

I still have seen no evidence of a universal agreement on a consensus in regards to this issue despite asking Snowded many times for it. Now they label it "common practice", which seems like a change of direction. Would it not be best to actually draw up a guideline backed by editors to stick into a manual of style so that other editors can come across and find it or be notified of it? Daiceragos likes to provide WP:UKNATIONALS as evidence however it's an essay and a failed attempt at a guideline and shouldn't be used as if it was policy. So how about actually codifying this "established", "common practice" to prevent any future bother? Mabuska ^(talk) 16:54, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

It would be best to draw up a guideline, preferably in favour of the usage of British. GoodDay (talk) 18:36, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

I assume Mabuska is referring to me when s/he says "Daiceragos likes to provide WP:UKNATIONALS ... [sic]". Can I ask: what is there in WP:UKNATIONALS that you disagree with? Perhaps we could use that as a base and improve it. Daicaregos (talk) 19:54, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

This is a complex issue and I agree with Daicaregos that we should look at WP:UKNATIONALS and look at improving it and using that as the guide in future. Bjmullan (talk) 08:34, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Daiceragos you provide WP:UKNATIONALS in discussions on a troublesome matter as if it is a guideline that should be adhered to. It's an essay, a failed attempt at a guideline as i was informed by another editor. If it had any chance of becoming a guideline it would of become one rather than remaining an essay as it couldn't be agreed on. Mabuska ^(talk) 12:08, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I'm a terrible person. There may be no hope for me.
I'll try again ... Can I ask: what is there in WP:UKNATIONALS that you disagree with? Daicaregos (talk) 08:39, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

UKNAT is irrelevant & should be treated as such. GoodDay (talk) 11:12, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

pronunciation in lede, or in infobox (if available)?

I've noticed a lot of bios have so much trivia in the lede that the reader has to wade through half a paragraph before getting to the opening line. One of the culprits is pronunciation. WP:PRON advocates moving the pronunciation out of the lede if it becomes too heavy, but that hasn't been discussed here. In the astronomy articles, the pronunciations were moved to the info boxes a couple years ago. The main bio boxes also support a pron. parameter. If there are any comments, a thread has been reopened here. — kwami (talk) 22:09, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Rather than discussing pronunciation at WP:PRON and other matters at other pages, let's have a proper discussion here about the lead section of biographical articles as a whole. I will start a new section below, and leave notes at the discussions you started at MOSNUM and PRON. Carcharoth (talk) 15:22, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Archive issues

I fixed all the archive page links by moving the pages but MiszaBot archive search does not appear to like the current location being a search a subpage of a subpage, so the archive search does not work. Does anyone know how to fix it? ww2censor (talk) 15:39, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Style of lead sections

Notifications left here, here, here, and here. Please add further notifications if needed (and list them here), and list on WP:CENT if warranted, but maybe wait until discussion gets somewhere here first.

Starting a new section to discuss the style that should be used in the lead section of biographical articles. The current discussions centre on concerns that too much information is placed in the lead and clutters it up. All information needs to be in the main body of the article or sourced in the lead. A possible compromise is placing material in a proper footnote with a reference used down there. There are also suggestions to use infoboxes to hold information where possible, but that is not always possible as the use of infoboxes is not uniform across Wikipedia's biographical articles. The following should probably be discussed in terms of location and sourcing. Either just in the lead, or in both lead and article, or just in the article, or just in a referenced footnote.

• Person's usual name
• Name variants (spelling, name changes, titles)
• Name variants (transliterations)
• Birth and death years
• Birth and death dates
• Birth and death locations
• Pronunciation guides

The current wording is here, but confusingly uses the term 'opening paragraph'. Can someone clarify if that refers to the paragraph after the lead section, or whether it is another name for the lead section? The current wording of WP:LEAD is here and includes this (simply a redirect to here), this (on BLPs), this (on clutter) and also some material in footnotes 7-11. This all needs discussion if sweeping changes are going to be made. Carcharoth (talk) 15:42, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

I understand "opening paragraph" to be the first paragraph of tle lead section. --Boson (talk) 15:49, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

• Comment. "All information needs to be in the main body of the article or sourced in the lead." Not true. Info can be placed in footnotes and sourced there (as you note), but can also be placed in infoboxes and sourced there. There are thousands of WP articles with data that appears only in an infobox, and there is no problem with sourcing such data. Supposedly there is a policy against doing that somewhere, but in my experience any such policy is roundly ignored, and so is effectively obsolete.

"There are also suggestions to use infoboxes to hold information where possible, but that is not always possible as the use of infoboxes is not uniform across Wikipedia's biographical articles." Thus the phrase where possible. In cases an info box is used but doesn't support the info, support can of course be added to the box. As for the tens of thousands of articles which don't have a box, that is of course not an option, unless the editor wishes to add a box. Generally I would expect better formatting in better-developed articles, and not much in stubs.

IMO, anything goes in the lead if it can be argued to be sufficiently notable. Foreign transcriptions are, IMO, very rarely notable, but are very common and often simply a distraction or even an impediment to the reader, though I'm sure there are exceptions. Many naming variants are obscure, though of course many are common enough to be potential names for the article; in the latter case, the variant should certainly be in the lead. IMO years of birth and death should be required, as they position the person in history, but the full dates and places are not normally of sufficient importance for the lead, as long as they're readily available (infobox, footnote, first paragraph of the body, etc.). Common exceptions might be, say, Obama's birth place and date (given the silliness which surrounds it) or the date of death of someone who died in the last year and so is still newsworthy. Pronunciation, unless highly unintuitive and likely to trip up readers, does not IMO belong in the lead if another readily visible option (box, dedicated section, etc) is available. IMO full dates & places of birth and death and pronunciation are the kind of details which can be inappropriate clutter for the opening sentence but of sufficient import to be placed in an info box at the top of the page. — kwami (talk) 19:36, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Here are the examples I posted in the original discussion. First, one I ran across recently, Genghis Khan. (Here as I found it, apart from one adjustment to fix the display of a misbehaving template):

Genghis Khan (English pronunciation:/ˈɡɛŋɡɪs ˈkɑːn/ or /ˈdʒɛŋɡɪs ˈkɑːn/;; Cyrillic: Чингис Хаан, Chingis Khaan, IPA: [tʃiŋɡɪs xaːŋ] ; Mongol script: , Činggis Qaɣan; Chinese: 成吉思汗; pinyin: Chéng Jí Sī Hán; probably May 31, 1162 – August 25, 1227), born Temujin (English pronunciation: /təˈmuːdʒɪn/; Mongolian: Тэмүжин, Temüjin IPA: [tʰemutʃiŋ] ; [Temüjin] Error: {{Langx}}: text has italic markup (help); traditional Chinese: 鐵木真; simplified Chinese: 铁木真; pinyin: Tiě mù zhēn) and also known by the temple name Taizu (Chinese: 元太祖; pinyin: Yuán Tàizǔ; Wade–Giles: T'ai-Tsu), was the founder and Great Khan (emperor) of the Mongol Empire, which became the largest contiguous empire in history after his death.

How do we expect anyone to read that? Now compare it to the non-parenthetical text plus dates:

Genghis Khan (1162?–1227), born Temujin, was the founder and Great Khan (emperor) of the Mongol Empire, which became the largest contiguous empire in history after his death.

That's way too much stuff to move to the info box, of course, so I put the more important there and the rest in footnotes.

For a more typical example, consider:

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (/ˈroʊzəvɛlt/ ROH-zə-vɛlt or /ˈroʊzəvəlt/ ROH-zə-vəlt; January 30, 1882 – April 12, 1945) also known by his initials, FDR, was ...

with

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945), also known by his initials, FDR, was ...

We can make vital information available without bludgeoning our readers with it.

For an example of templates which support pronunciation (and not added by me), see iron and 4 Vesta. — kwami (talk) 19:43, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

As far as I'm concerned, information in the first sentence should be full name, common alternative names (e.g. FDR) or bithname (e.g. Temujin) and full dates of birth and death, along with nationality (or acceptable alternative) and occupation or reason for notability (in general terms). Nothing else needs to go in the first sentence. -- Necrothesp (talk) 20:48, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Necrothesp. I would also like to explain here why, as a reader of Wikipedia (putting aside the editing hat for one moment) I appreciate the birth and death dates being in the lead of the article. The reason is that the most common information I look for (in the lead section) when reading Wikipedia biographical articles are: name, birth and death dates, birth and death years, nationality, and profession(s) and claim to fame. For me, simply the birth and death years are not enough. The birth and death dates as well give that little extra context, mainly because it helps to work out how old someone was at a particular point in their life, or in (say) a dated picture of them that you are looking at. In articles that only have the birth and death dates in the main article, and don't have an infobox, the reader is forced to go hunting in the main article for the information they have by now come to expect to see in the lead.

I would also like to turn the question around and ask kwami what reasons there are for removing birth and death dates from the lead, when those elements contribute very little to the clutter. Pronunciations, and excess name variants, I agree, should be part of the de-cluttering, but why birth and death dates? Those don't actually clutter, IMO, and provide a degree of precision that makes Wikipedia different from other biographical publications (the ones I looked at were the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and the Australian Dictionary of Biography - both of which don't have lead sections in the same way Wikipedia does, so comparison is difficult - of course, neither of those publications have infoboxes either - someone should do a proper survey of Category:Biographical dictionaries).

But if kwami can provide reason other than 'clutter' for removing birth and death dates, I might be able to support that, though only if someone can provide concrete numbers on how many biographical articles there are (I think it was somewhere between 500,000 and 1 million at last count, wasn't it?) and how many actually conform to the style guide and how many would need to be changed. Some reasons I can think of is that it would make bot-generated name disambiguation pages easy to produce. Though really, the lead sentence should be constructed from elements obtained from the {{persondata}} template. Has that possibility ever been seriously considered? I'm now reminded of Wikipedia:Biographical metadata that I wrote once. Maybe this time someone will make a serious effort to harness all that data. (Completely off-topic, but if anyone has yet solved the problem of being able to identify how many of our biographical articles are about men and how many are about women, there is a barnstar waiting for them - quite why gender is not tracked for biographies, I don't know). Anyway, kwami's examples with birth and death dates included and not included are:

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945), also known by his initials, FDR, was ...

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (January 30, 1882 – April 12, 1945), also known by his initials, FDR, was ...

Genghis Khan (1162?–1227), born Temujin, was the founder and Great Khan (emperor) of the Mongol Empire, which became the largest contiguous empire in history after his death.

Genghis Khan (1162? – August 25, 1227), born Temujin, was the founder and Great Khan (emperor) of the Mongol Empire, which became the largest contiguous empire in history after his death.

Do the dates really clutter? Carcharoth (talk) 22:08, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

I second Carcharoth that full dates of birth and death are vital pieces of information for determining how old someone was at a particular point in their life. These should always be included (if known) and I see no good reason to exclude them. I notice that the tiresome question of infoboxes has once again surfaced. I would therefore point out once again that infoboxes are disliked by a significant number of editors and should never, ever be used to replace information that should appear in the lead. Although I'm not a big fan of them, I can see their use as a quick reference tool, but only as that. -- Necrothesp (talk) 22:55, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

I second posters above that full dates of birth and death are not vital pieces of information for the first sentence and are in fact distracting wastes of space. They certainly should be included further down the article in sentences such as "Roosevelt was born on 30 January 1882" and "According to X, Genghis Khan died on 25 August 1227". — LlywelynII 15:52, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

• The principle which should lead the manual of style is that the opening paragraph should quickly give the most common details which readers come to the article to find, and in such a way that makes the article easy to read. By that principle, the first sentence should contain, in addition to explaining the principal reason(s) for the notability of the subject, their full name, any significant other names by which they were known that are not obvious, the dates of birth and death, and their nationality during their life. Further detail may be cluttering and interrupt the flow of the sentence. Any less detail and readers have to search through the article for something which should be presented more prominently.

  Taking a few issues in more detail, the full name should be given uninterrupted, with any nicknames given separately unless commonly incorporated with the full name; this is partly for reasons of making the sentence flow smoothly, but also because it can cause confusion: it's not entirely clear whether 'Terence Alan Patrick Seán Spike Milligan' chose to use the fifth of his Christian names or whether he had only four to begin with and adopted a nickname to replace all of them. The urge to put a nickname in the opening line on all occasions should be resisted when the name is obvious, for example someone formally called Robert who is normally known as Bob; most people can be expected to know that Bob is short for Robert. Full birth and death dates are far the most frequent detail which people wish to check, in my experience; by the same token, birth and death places are far less important and also far less likely to be found. With regard to pronunciation, few readers are immediately familiar with IPA notation (I am only a beginner) and so the pronunciation guides can appear as gibberish; at the same point it would be unwise to go to any alternative standard for pronunciation which would be technically inferior. Sam Blacketer (talk) 22:58, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

• I agree full dates of b&d are essential. If there is no infobox the birth goes in section 2 & the death right at the end. Even if there is an infobox they should be in the text. Johnbod (talk) 00:35, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Everyone agrees that full dates of birth and death are essential. What is in dispute is whether it is essential that the full birth and death dates appear in the opening sentence(s) of the lead section, rather than just the years (as kwami has suggested). My suspicion is that the style varies enormously across all the biographical articles. Has anyone ever done a survey or audit of the biographical articles to see what people actually do in practice? i.e. whether they follow Wikipedia's style guidelines, make it up as they go along, or follow the style used in their sources (most likely, IMO)? I've now gone and looked up the approximate figure for biographical articles at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Biography articles by quality statistics. That figure is currently 940,706. That won't be entirely accurate because it does include articles on music groups which historically got included in the project scope (for reasons which probably seemed OK at the time - currently 65,796 in the musicians workgroup if you want an idea of size, though how many of those are groups and how many are individuals, I have no idea), and there is a small rump of similar 'group' articles (usually about duos such as saints and the like). But that figure is reasonably accurate. Maybe some statistical sampling of those articles will help get an idea of how many articles use which style (though some articles won't include birth and death dates because they are unknown or because no-one has looked them up and added them yet). But getting an idea of how many articles do include birth and death dates in the lead will help indicate how many could be removed (I believe this all started when someone started systematically relocating them as clutter along with pronunciation stuff, which I agree is clutter). I am also a bit annoyed that the recent 'clutter' section at WP:LEAD#Clutter got added without discussion here. Carcharoth (talk) 00:48, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
    • I agree with the other editors that pronunciation and anything else that looks like jargon (transliterations, identification of surname vs. patronymic, etc.) should go somewhere other than the lead sentence. Whether it goes in an infobox or a footnote or later in the lead is unimportant to me. I wouldn't miss the birth and death dates, either, because I don't feel that they're a crucial piece of information (as opposed to nationality, era in which they lived, reason for notability, etc.). FDR's life would be exactly the same if he were born in February 6 or March 10 or any other date. Everything else in the lead sentence is fundamental to his identity: if his name were different, if the year he was born was different, if his occupation were different, he would be a completely different person. If he were born three days later he wouldn't be (other than a butterfly-effect, but you get the point.)

      The fact that birth and death dates are omitted in many other encyclopedic publications makes a strong case for why they should be omitted here. They certainly belong in the article but I don't think they compare to other lead-sentence material in terms of priority. That said, I'd be fine with keeping them as long as we got the more offensive material (pronunciation) out of the way. —Designate (talk) 21:59, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

      • Agree with Necrothesp's comment above. I don't mind the pronunciation in the lead, but I also wouldn't mind it in the infobox. Also agree that full dates should be in the lead, but without locations (they create needless clutter). – Connormah (talk) 21:05, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
    • "I am also a bit annoyed that the recent 'clutter' section at WP:LEAD#Clutter got added without discussion here." Yes, I agree. That section should be removed forthwith, as it implies consensus that information such as full dates should not be included in the lead. That is certainly not the case. -- Necrothesp (talk) 21:31, 2 September 2011 (UTC)
  • I think we should agree to disagree. Perhaps some wikipedia editors always look for exact vital dates, but at least I never have looked up a person's exact vitals dates. Knowing the years lets me know the context much faster. Without a controlled survey, any claim that this is "common" is just an assertion of opinion. The belief that vital dates determine a person's life is astrology, and we should respect those who hold that view. But at least in the USA, exact birth dates could be considered an invasion of privacy, as discussed elsewhere. Giving just the years in the lead clearly complies with lead guidelines so should be allowed, perhaps not mandated., especially for people like FDR whose lead is so long. And I do still think that all information in the lead or infobox should be mentioned in the body and cited there (or a footnote in the body but I rarely use those and find them not very useful). The fact that newbies often create articles that are little more than unsourced infoboxes is a problem that should be fixed, probably by providing better training of new users and encouraging citations being added instead of creation of new articles by unexperienced editors. But I digress... W Nowicki (talk) 19:49, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
    • Sorry, but I like to see exact dates in the lead and I believe astrology is utter drivel, so I'm not sure what you're trying to say. As to exact birth dates being an invasion of privacy, I have to say this is utter rubbish. If that were true then publications such as Who's Who wouldn't include them (entries in WW are actually written by the subject, incidentally, and the vast majority choose to include their birth dates). If the dates are known then it's likely that they're already in the public domain anyway (unless rabid fans are out there delving into birth records), so in what way are they an invasion of privacy? -- Necrothesp (talk) 22:46, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
      • The privacy argument is pretty silly since we don't do original research. Any information on this site is supposed to be publicly available. I do think they're generally superfluous and don't have much importance to the person's biography, which is why most encyclopedias leave them out of the first sentence. They can go in the body of the article and the infobox if they're important, but they just take up space and most people aren't looking for them. —Designate (talk) 23:06, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
      • But merely being "publicly available" is not sufficient for inclusion of full dates of birth of living people. The dates must be widely available and/or there must be reason to assume that the person concerned has no objection, particularly for people of borderline notability.--Boson (talk) 09:03, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
        • What utter rubbish. Where on earth do you get this from? In fact, so unsensitive are they that dates of birth are not even covered under the British Data Protection Act 1998, which covers most other personal data. Why should your date of birth be sensitive personal information? Unless you're lying about it in order to perpetrate some fraud of course (sorry, but I just don't buy the whole identity theft thing)! If a date of birth is known then one can assume that it has been published. If it has been published then it is already in the public domain and for us not to include it for reasons of "privacy" would simply make Wikipedia look ridiculous. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:59, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
          • Where did I get this "utter rubbish" from? I got it from Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons, which is policy, and states

            With identity theft on the rise, people increasingly regard their full names and dates of birth as private. Wikipedia includes full names and dates of birth that have been widely published by reliable sources, or by sources linked to the subject such that it may reasonably be inferred that the subject does not object. If the subject complains about the inclusion of the date of birth, or the person is borderline notable, err on the side of caution and simply list the year. In a similar vein, articles should not include postal addresses, e-mail addresses, telephone numbers, or other contact information for living persons, though links to websites maintained by the subject are generally permitted. See above regarding the misuse of primary sources to obtain personal information about subjects.

            --Boson (talk) 17:53, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
  • It sounds like the UK is different in custom, if not in law (I am not a lawyer so do not know details). Perhaps "rubbish" but not "garbage" :-) If I call, say, my physician and ask for some sensitive information, they ask for my exact birth date to verify it is really me asking. In the US, I understand it is illegal to ask even one's age in a job interview, for example. Different countries have different conventions. As for my mention of astrology, my understanding was that astrology is the belief system that says the exact date of one's birth is a major factor determining a person's life events. If an editor or reader does not believe that, then it logically follows that they believe the exact date of one's birth is not a major factor in what happens to a person. Since the lead section by definition only contains a summary of what is considered "important" without undue weight, we should be allowed to summarize to only years in the lead. I am happy to compromise and say there are many cases where they do belong. They clearly are important events to the person in the article, just not necessarily most readers. My experience is that many cases have exact dates without any source cited. Many appear to be "tribute" articles to relatives or friends, which seem less encyclopedic than summarizing a person's more long-term impact. W Nowicki (talk) 20:40, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Use of German characters in English language articles

There is a discussion at Talk:Michael Groß#Spelling of surname in English; contested 2011 page move which may be of interest to members of your project, on which you may be able to share your knowledge and expertise. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 15:23, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Country of birth, for historic bios

The MoS does not seem to cover how to describe places of birth and death for historic people. An editor has been doing a number of changes, mainly to infoboxes, so that, for example Raphael was born in the Duchy of Urbino and died in the Papal States, rather than just Italy. While the historic entities should usually be mentioned in the text ("then in the ...." etc), modern political entities should imo be used in the first sentence and infoboxes. Such edits are also often made from nationalist/regionalist motives, though I think not here. Unless there is disagreement I will add something along these lines in a few days. It is different for figures from the ancient world I think. Johnbod (talk) 19:21, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure it's that simple - while "Italy" might be a general term that can be used for that part of the world in all periods of history (though still I'm not sure it's the best solution for an infobox), in many cases giving the modern political entity would be highly misleading. It would be bizarre, for example, to say that Kant was born in Russia (though the solution currently used, with "now Kaliningrad, Russia" in brackets after, seems fine).--Kotniski (talk) 07:35, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

I agree that it is not that simple. For Italy, see, among many, the talk page of Fausto Veranzio who was born in Šibenik/Sebenico/Sibenik/…. Assigning nationality based on today's map is inviting trouble. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 09:07, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

I am well aware of the troubles Dalmatians etc cause - see the edit histories and talk pages of many of them Giorgio da Sebenico etc, but nb we are not talking about nationality here, but the identification of the places of birth and death. It is by sticking to modern boundaries that nationalist arguments are avoided here. I'm open to suggestions, and "now fooland" may often be useful, but the MoS here should say something. Really this is yet another instance of the troubles infoboxes causes. Johnbod (talk) 09:34, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Whatever was the name of a place when the subject was born, is how the subject's place of birth should be described in the infobox. If it is known differently now, it should be Wikilinked, so the reader may learn more about the place should they choose. For example: had someone been born in Strasbourg in 1880 and died there in 1925, the infobox entry should read: born: Strasbourg, Germany. Died: Strasbourg, France. Daicaregos (talk) 10:27, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

A good point, but a slightly different one. I agree "Germany" should be used rather than (at various periods) Holy Roman Empire, German Empire etc etc. Johnbod (talk) 11:04, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

"Germany" is pipe linked to German Empire in this example. I wouldn't advocate pipe linking Germany to the Holy Roman Empire on territory that isn't clearly considered German today, e.g. what is now northern Italy. Daicaregos (talk) 11:36, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

I think for infoboxes and first sentences we should normally use the modern political geography, and save explanation of the contemporary context for the first section of the bio itself. Experience has repeatedly shown that (Johnbod's Second Law): "Complication + infoboxes = inaccuracy" and also confusion for readers, even when the information is accurate. Johnbod (talk) 19:15, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

I agree that infoboxes should be kept reasonably simple, but I would go the other way on this issue - it's the contemporary situation that we ought to be presenting as our first priority, not the modern one. So Kant was born in Prussia, not the anachronistic Russia nor the then nebulous Germany (though we can say "now...Russia" in brackets if there's room).--Kotniski (talk) 19:36, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

I agree. Daicaregos (talk) 20:11, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

There may be exceptions, like Kant, but in the biographical areas I am familiar with, mostly artists from medieval and early modern Italy, Germany & the Low Countries, the approach I have described is I think usual, and to my mind certainly preferable. National wikiprojects may well have made decisions on such points at some time. For many of these places, to discover the appropriate contemporary political entity is actually rather difficult, and frankly beyond the capacity of most info-box fillers to do correctly. Was it, for example, the Holy Roman Empire, or the princedom or free city within that? That is even before you factor in modern nationalist and regionalist concerns, especially in Eastern Europe, but also Italy. The infobox for Leonardo da Vinci used to say he was born in the Republic of Florence, except that as far as I can see at the moment of his birth the Republic was in abeyance and the city ruled by a Sforza duke. The places of birth and death are geographical information, and should be given a geographical treatment in the infobox and (usually) the opening line, without bringing in what will inevitably often be half-baked and inadequate information on the contemporary political situation, using Easter egg links etc. That should be done in the text where there is space to cover it properly. Johnbod (talk) 10:59, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

But readers won't read our minds, and I suspect that most of them will read the stated country as a political entity, applicable at the time being referred to. If we really don't know what country-like entity the place was in at the time (which must be a relatively rare situation), then better to leave the information out altogether than to say something that readers are likely to misinterpret.--Kotniski (talk) 11:18, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

On the contrary, I think that most readers, on seeing Rome, Italy as the place of death of Michelangelo or Raphael, will think the information geographical, rather than implying there was an Italian state in the 16th century - that really seems an odd conclusion to draw! Do you have any evcidence for your belief? Johnbod (talk) 11:41, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

OK, "most" readers possibly know there was no such state in this instance, but if you don't, then it seems a perfectly reasonable conclusion to draw, considering how common it is to refer to places in "City, Country" form, and how rare it is to refer to them in "City, Supranational geographical region" form (like "Madrid, Iberia"), or even worse in "City, Anachronistic modern country" form (like "Konigsberg, Russia"). Agreed that doing it with Italy is probably less bad than with most other examples.--Kotniski (talk) 11:56, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Well how about Ireland, Germany, Belgium & the Netherlands, Germany, Colonial America, Poland etc etc then? Kalingrad is a rather extreme case. I am surprised to see editors with Polish and Welsh connections opposing this frankly. A quick sample of Category:Signers of the United States Declaration of Independence shows that purely geographical links are used, not articles on the colonies, British America etc. Johnbod (talk) 01:22, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

FYI, something like the above discussion has been going on (but has subsided for now) at Wikipedia:Peer review/Jacques Offenbach/archive1 - scroll down to Geography —The Prussia/Prussian issue and the link from there to the preceding discussion at Talk:Jacques_Offenbach#Cologne_is_not_a_Prussian_city. Enjoy! --GuillaumeTell 15:18, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

That is somewhat different, as most of the row was about how much detail to include in the 2nd section on his early life. The article has no infobox. I'm not sure how happy I am about "...was a Prussian-born French composer..." in the lead though, with something of an Easter egg link. Johnbod (talk) 01:22, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

(outdent) Since I am the editor that "has been doing a number of changes", I would like to give my input here (I am aware of WP:TL;DR, but it's hard to avoid verbosity in a discussion about potential policy making). To be noted at the outset is that the issue at hand is not actually a discussion about ethnic disputes, nor a discussion about infobox-filling. However, since this issue was raised as well, I begin by making a passing remark on it.

Most experienced editors are quite aware of the problems infoboxes cause; but until the community decides to "burn them in Hell" forever, we ought to find a way to deal with them properly. In the case of former country infoboxes, the solution is usually to either not have an infobox at all (see Francia; where the infobox obscured everything that the article tried to explain) or to actually have an infobox featuring elaborate/cluttered information as an attempt to include all relevant subtleties (see Kingdom of Saxony).

Now in the case of historical biographies, my understanding is that (at some point) several editors started "changing place of birth or place of death to reflect contemporary political status" (this is is an actual edit summary I have come across with and now regularly use myself) either in infoboxes or in the body of the article. So for example (I will cite only articles I have never edited): Tesla was born in the Austrian Empire, Einstein in the Kingdom of Württemberg, Galileo in the Duchy of Florence, da Vinci in the Republic of Florence, and so on.

There are literally hundreds of articles that follow this practice (and I have made changes to a dozen more myself in order to "keep it consistent"). The only articles I am aware of in which the discussion led to following a different practice regarding the respective infobox were: the article about Mozart (no infobox) and the article about Schopenhauer ("according to Danzig/Gdansk vote policy. No further Prussia/Poland or other details [for the sake of lessening the controversy]. Leave that to the city articles"); in both cases, this happened because lame/persistent ethnic disputes were involved ("Mozart was (not) German"; "Schopenhauer was (not) Polish"), but even in these cases, the body of the article does give all the relevant historical information.

Now, I defend the view that we should always indicate the contemporary political status along with the present-day one (either in the infobox or in the body of the article; there is no reason to deem this "too much information"). Including only the latter (the present-day status) may often be:

1) Trivial; on the other hand, finding the contemporary (i.e., historical) political entity that included a modern city a few centuries or a few millennia ago on Wikipedia is not that easy; some Wikipedia articles about cities or villages don't even include this piece of information.

2) Unscholarly: what is common in scholarly publications is to always include detailed historical-geographic information in biographies (especially biographies of Eastern European/Russian/German/Italian artists or philosophers or scientists): e.g., "former district, f. region, f. province, f. kingdom, f. empire" or "f. uyezd, f. governorate, f. empire"; this may seem too tedious for encyclopedic purposes but it is very informative and reflects historical reality. (Some easily accessible Google-book links: [5], [6], [7], [8]; note also that Russian Wikipedia is meticulous regarding this issue: e.g. [9], [10].)

3) Confusing (at variable degrees): "Kant's birth place" is an obvious argument for illustrating this. But there are less obvious ones; when, for example, one indicates/hyperlinks just "Germany" as the place of birth of someone who was born in Berlin in the late 19th c. one assumes that the reader knows that Berlin was then part of the German Empire or that, for the purposes of a bio, these details don't actually matter. My experience is that these are a hasty assumptions: only a minority of readers have the necessary background to know when a present-day entity was established; and it is useful for the reader to have easy access (that is, within the biographical article) to information regarding whether, e.g., a person was born/flourished/died in Weimar Germany as opposed to Third Reich, or in West Germany as opposed to East Germany; this helps the reader put biographical information into historical context and avoid anachronistic fallacies. One solution is offering a piped link (an "Easter egg link" as is ironically referred to by Johnbod) containing a former country's constitutional/academic name (as opposed to common English name which is the one to be displayed) would do the job just fine; e.g.: "b. Rome, [[Kingdom of Italy (1861–1946)|Italy]]" instead of just "b. Rome, [[Italy]]". (Please note, incidentally, that English Wikipedia does have a separate article for nearly every European European country, no matter how short-lived it may have been; e.g. see Ukrainian State or Russian Republic). Alternatively, one could include a parenthetical note; e.g., b. Tartu, Estonia (then Derpt, Governorate of Livonia, Imperial Russia) as is done in the article about Wolf von Engelhardt). The reason for having an overall policy is to ensure consistency (as opposed to doing this only in some "special" cases; e.g. only for people born in "German Straßburg" or in "Prussian Danzig").

A final, somewhat trivial, remark regarding the need for terminological subtlety: It is common knowledge that in Europe, since at least the High Middle Ages, one can speak of definite political entities (republics, principalities, duchies, counties, and other domains) with well-defined borders. This entails that, after some point, people from Europe (please note that while we mostly talk about them here, similar arguments also applies to a variable extent to people from Ancient South Asia, Pre-Columbian America, Colonial Africa, Colonial India, the British Commonwealth Countries, the Arab World, etc) are not simply natives of broad geographical areas/cultural regions (such as Silesia, Prussia, Westphalia, Galicia, Macedonia, Candia, Normandy); and they are certainly not natives/subjects/citizens of "perennial states" (such as "Germany", "France", "Poland"). They are, instead, natives/subjects/citizens of specific polities (often bearing a specific formal designation or administrative name) which were established at a specific date (such as German Reich (1933–1945), French Second Republic, Tsardom of Poland, Silesia Province, Westphalia Province, Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, Kingdom of Prussia, Socialist Republic of Macedonia, Kingdom of Candia, Duchy of Normandy). If we are to render this basic fact more intelligible, we should have an overall policy that will encourage knowledgeable editors to add this kind of historical-geographic information (a useful supplement to strictly biographical information) to biographical articles either in the form of a footnote, or of a piped/explicit link in the body of the text, or a piped/explicit link in the respective infobox. --Omnipaedista (talk) 05:03, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

• That there are "hundreds" of biography articles using a historical/political convention in infoboxes and the first sentence is I'm sure true, but since there must be tens of thousands of historical biographies means very little; a few editors who decide this convention is a good idea can easily do a lot of (sorry) damage over time. That Omnipaedista is only aware of a few that don't is more remarkable. It suggests he rarely looks at American, English, Scottish, Welsh, Irish or French biographies, which almost invariably take a straight geographical line. I might mischievously suggest he tries changing a few prominent Irish figures to the appropriate political link for their period and see what happens. Equally editors never link to the appropriate French state for French figures. I won't go through the main arguments again, but will just say that his last paragraph, relating to the non-Western world, is actually one of the strongest arguments for a straight geographical approach. Deciding what is the appropriate polity for say a figure from medieval Islam is even harder than for one from medieval Germany, and likely to be equally confusing and un-useful for the reader. I have made it clear throughout that the contemporary political information should of course be included, but in the text, where it can be explained at the appropriate length, and without introducing absurdities such as saying Rome is "now Italy", or breaching the MoS with Easter-egg links. Johnbod (talk) 16:43, 24 August 2011 (UTC)
  • i) The point, again, is that finding a city (or a region) on a contemporary map is not enough. What is needed is to indicate the specific historical polity in which a historical person was born. One can easily deduce the former from the latter, but not vice versa. I am afraid you have yet to provide concrete arguments to support your thesis that historical-geographic information in infoboxes (either explicit or in the form of piped links) is damaging; aesthetical arguments are not enough. ii) You claim that former French or Irish states never get linked, but counter-examples do exist. You also claim that indicating the appropriate polity (Caliphate, Sultanate, Emirate, etc) for a figure from medieval Islam is hard/useless/unusual, but, in fact, a vast number of biographical infoboxes about people from Medieval Islam already contain historical information (see, e.g., Abū Rayḥān al-Bīrūnī). —Omnipaedista (talk) 16:01, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

And no doubt an even higher proportion of it is inaccurate than for European articles. You have produced no arguments as to why historical political information is needed in the infobox. Note that "Easter-egg link" is not, as you seem to think, a term of my invention, but well-established and used at Wikipedia:LINK#Piped_links, where of course they are strongly deprecated. See also Easter egg (media). Johnbod (talk) 13:05, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

And of course, when examined, the information for Abū Rayḥān al-Bīrūnī turns out to be wrong - the Saminids ruled his birthplace briefly when he was in his 20s, and the actual situation at his birth-date is typically complex. Johnbod (talk) 15:52, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

I'm afraid that you fail to make the distinction between regular piped links and easter-egg piped links (the latter are indeed to be avoided). There is absolutely nothing "easter-eggish" in writing a former country's common English name and linking it to its constitutional name ("conventional long name"): we are clearly talking about synonyms. As for my main argument concerning infobox-filling (after reading the thread below), it boils down to this: it is not (always) practical/applicable to include this kind of detailed information in the lede section or in footnotes; however, since historical-geographic information should be included somehow (as per my arguments above), the most obvious place to embed it is the infobox. --Omnipaedista (talk) 13:37, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

(ec) This gets us nowhere - the links you describe are indeed classic Easter egg links, but note that your own edits did not use such - putting Duchy of Urbino etc in plain text; the issue still remains. The argument that the infobox rather than the main text or footnotes is the place to put "detailed information" is so bizarre I don't think I need waste time countering it. As I've said several times, when the situation is really complicated the place for the full information is in the relevant text section, but normally the lead will accomodate perfectly well. Johnbod (talk) 14:08, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

(ec) Let me restate my argument: I am not saying that in all cases, the only right place to embed detailed information is the infobox; I do not believe that. But let's consider stub articles that only contain a couple of sentences about the subject. Putting historical-political information in the body of those texts would be like providing undue weight to trivia; also creating footnotes to embed this information would be unheard of. So, we can either have double standards (placing trivia in the body of the text in some articles, but in footnotes/infoboxes in the case of stub-like articles) or a uniform/coherent policy (that is, either not including historical-political information at all, or always including it in the infobox). --Omnipaedista (talk) 14:37, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

(to go back to the original post) On the contrary, the contemporary entity should be listed, with if necessary/useful the current country of that location in brackets. This is how it is done on e.g. Peter Paul Rubens or Jan van Eyck, and it looks to me the most informative and correct method of doing this. Fram (talk) 13:52, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

It will always be necessary to give the "current country"! How could it not be? This approach assumes a fantastic amount of historical/geographical knowledge in our readers, which we surely all know very many don't have. Johnbod (talk) 14:08, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

(replying to Johnbod) As I said above "I defend the view that we should always indicate the contemporary political status along with the present-day one." In Jan van Eyck's article-infobox there is currently no mentioning of the current polity that incorporates his place of birth. In Peter Paul Rubens's article-infobox there is mentioning of the contemporary polity and, parenthetically, of the present-day one. In the article about Galileo Galilei, on the other hand, the main text gives the present-day polity and, parenthetically, the contemporary one. I am fine with all those ways of displaying the relevant information, but I believe that we should take as an examplar the article about Peter Paul Rubens, and apply this practice to every article where it is meaningful to do so --Omnipaedista 14:37, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

(replying to Fram) That is fine. The only thing is that in the case of scientists' infoboxes, it is usually done the other way around; but this is only a matter of convention. As long as we agree that the information is needed in the infobox, we can more easily reach consensus regarding the way we want it to be displayed. --Omnipaedista (talk) 14:05, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

The convention for scientists is the original convention for all bios, until some people got it into their head to change it for selected countries - very often for political reasons. The science editors just guard their articles better & reverted such attempts. Johnbod (talk) 14:11, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

We are clearly not talking about political motivation here. We are talking about historical accuracy. The scientists' articles (I have come across several thousands of them during the last three years) always follow the practice of including the historical polity in the infobox (and parenthetically the modern state, if at all); and this the practice I defend. We have scrutinized so much this subject's details that I am beginning to wonder: Where is the point of our disagreement? --Omnipaedista (talk) 14:37, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Any evidence for this? On aricles like Rubens or Van Eyck, it was first not included, and then in its current form (i;e. with the old countries). Also for scientists like Andreas Vesalius or Nicolaus Copernicus, it lists the ancient country (Poland is no longer a kingdom), and has done so for a year or more. The Galileo Galilei article gives (in the infobox) first the Duchies, and then Italy. This was the same two years ago. Johannes Kepler? The "old" countries, with the current ones in brackets (this is the first one I found where this was done recently, but even here it has stood for two weeks without any problems). Thomas Aquinas has and had the old country. It looks to me a if the overwhelming majority of biographical articles that have infoboxes and where this issue exists, have the older countries, not the current ones, and that this is true for scientists as well as artists, and for the current situation as well as a year ago or so. Fram (talk) 14:39, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

We all know there are plenty of continental European examples either way, though when it comes to English-speaking countries this ceases to be the case. It has very often been politically motivated - Italy is a classic example. Johnbod (talk) 14:54, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

No, it does not cease to be the case; examples from English speaking countries: Karl Guthe Jansky, Reginald Fessenden, Andrew Carnegie. --Omnipaedista (talk) 15:06, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Ok- 2/?500,000. Carnegie does not count, as the states are exactly the same then as now. Jansky does not mention the USA at all, which it should. Johnbod (talk) 18:36, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

In Carnegie, United Kingdom is linked to the historical polity of United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Note a simple fact: English speaking countries saw few territorial changes since their establishment as opposed to Continental European ones. This is the reason why in the case of English speaking countries, such problems don't arise. --Omnipaedista (talk) 20:32, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

So another Easter Egg! How many people have ever followed that link I wonder? And arwe they any better informed if they do? In fact the article does not say it is about a polity, but about a name and a period. We do not regard the US as a different state before and after various individual states joined the union. The Irish case very neatly disproves your other point! You have quite a talent for self-refuting arguments. The situation is exactly the same for France, which nobody can say has been stable politically. Johnbod (talk) 21:26, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Changes in constitutional names of countries often denote the supercedure of a polity by a new one; such a change never happened in the case of the United States. In any case, you miss my point: denoting David Hume's place of birth simply as Scotland is enough; denoting Leonardo da Vinci's place of birth simply as Italy is not enough. You should have noticed that no one has agreed with your posts so far. --Omnipaedista (talk) 22:08, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Johnbod, meseems that all your argumentation (please correct me if I am wrong) centers around the observation that in the specific case of Italy, we should avoid referring to historical polities because this will cause controversy; but this is a baseless argument, since you have not provided any evidence about this having been the case in the past.

Let's take the article about Giacomo Leopardi. The opening section claims that "Although he lived in a secluded town in the ultra-conservative Papal States, he came in touch with the main thoughts of the Enlightenment." Here, Papal States are not linked, and nowhere can one get informed about the fact that Recanati was then part of the Papal States; not even the article about Recanati mentions it. Yet, this historical fact is relevant to this person's biography. What would be your proposal to remedy this situation? Incidentally, this edit of yours to Leonardo da Vinci's article removed at least one piece of information: that Amboise was then part of Touraine, a defunct French province. Why din't you relocate this to the main text? This is one of the reasons why I said above that is not always the best practice to include historical information in the main text. --Omnipaedista (talk) 17:36, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

So link it! The article on the town obviously should mention it, but that it doersn't surely tells you something! The circumstances in which any information should only be in the infobox are very, very few indeed. The province in which Amboise was then located is supremely irrelevant to Leonardo, who lived with the royal court, and is readily available from the article on the town. Loire valley would be a more useful link, if anything. WP:UNDUE barely applies to stubs, and would not in these circumstances. Your statement above that is indeed completely wrong about what I am saying; I suggest you reread (or read) my posts above. Johnbod (talk) 18:36, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Interesting discussion. My view is that the aim should be to provide the information and context the reader needs to understand the article. Sometimes that will be only a link, sometimes, if the situation is more complex, both the then-current and present geographical and political context will be needed. I rather like the approach taken where one is provided in the main text and the other in parentheses after it. You can't expect readers to realise that using the current country name is an oversimplification, but neither can you just name and link a historic entity without providing some modern context. To give one example, I recently had reason to look up Sigismund von Herberstein in order to write a brief line or two on him for another document. The Wikipedia article describes him as 'Carniolan', but for my purposes I needed a simpler way to put who he was. As he was born to a German-speaking family, I described him as German, which is likely a gross oversimplification, but is what I needed to say up front. I later said he was born in Carniola and was a diplomat for the Austrian regions of the Habsburg Monarchy, but failed to mention the Holy Roman Empire connections (that gets confusing at the best of times). Another example is someone called Achatius Hilling and his son Gregorius Hilling. The son was German, but how would you describe his father? The description here states that the elder Hilling was from Elbogen, Bohemia (now Loker) and had fought for Frederick V (briefly King of Bohemia) at the Battle of White Mountain, and then fled Bohemia and settled in Nuremberg. But as I said, the concept of nationality within the lands of the Habsburgs and the Holy Roman Empire has always confused me. Balancing the need to be accurate with the need to not throw a mass of confusing history at readers in the first few sentences (let alone in infoboxes), has always been tricky. How should those two cases be handled, and how should things be handled in general? Carcharoth (talk) 23:31, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

One's ethnicity does not necessarily overlap with their subjecthood/citizenship. In "simple" cases, a historical person's subjecthood/citizenship can be derived from the common name of the place they mostly lived in. Bertolt Brecht, e.g., was born in Imperial Germany and died in East Germany. Despite the fact that his country of birth and his country of death are different historical polities, in common English usage we describe this person's subjecthood/citizenship simply as German. In the case of people from the Middle Ages, though, the concept of nationality becomes blurry: a historical person's membership of a sovereign state does not univocally indicate this person's subjecthood/citizenship. --Omnipaedista (talk) 09:28, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

That's one thing O & I can agree on; "nationality" and ethnicity are whole different cans of worms, though also prone to be drastically over-simplified in infoboxes. In many medieval societies (European, Islamic etc) people born and living in the same place were often recognised as being of different "nationality" and ethnicity - they took the idea of a multi-cultural society rather more seriously than we do today. Johnbod (talk) 12:19, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

OK, ignoring ethnicity and 'nationality' (which was less of a concept then), what should be put for the geography in the two examples I pointed out? Actually, let's ignore Hilling as there is no article on him. Currently for Sigismund von Herberstein it says 'Carniolan diplomat, writer, historian and member of the Holy Roman Empire Imperial Council' in the lead, and in the first section it says he was born in 'Vipava (German Wippach) in the Duchy of Carniola (now Slovenia, then part of the Habsburg Monarchy) to [...] members of the prominent German-speaking family which had already resided in Herberstein Castle for nearly 200 years'. That current wording gives sufficient context, surely, but it seems too complex to put in an infobox (I agree with Johnbod that infobox-filling is fraught with dangers of oversimplification). But if someone did try and do an infobox there, what would they put geographically for the birthplace? (The death place is not given yet in the article). In general, the really stable information is what the situation was during a person's lifetime, as current names and places may change again in the future. Carcharoth (talk) 12:49, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

On the contrary, we should put Vipava, Slovenia, which is what the sort of users looking at the infobox are likely to want to know. In the very unlikely event of Slovenia's borders changing all sorts of articles would have to updated, by "what links here" etc. The Duchy of Carniola is especially obscure, & an excellent example of the sort of information infoboxes don't need. It is also the wrong link for a "state" or polity at this time, being just a component of the Habsburg state of Inner Austria - another link that should be avoided in infoboxes, since it is obscure, and sounds geographical while in fact being historical/political . Johnbod (talk) 15:17, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't think I actually said what I'd put in an infobox. Though reading what you have just said, I agree with you. What is really needed in the infobox is something like "Current name of place of birth" and "Contemporary name of place of birth". Going back to the Habsburgs briefly, and turning slightly to one side to look at the Holy Roman Empire, I just read Imperial Circle (I got there from Inner Austria) and that is fascinating reading. On borders changing, imagine if the UK ever did break up. And border changes are not that uncommon. Czechoslovakia and the Reunification of Germany are within the last 25 years. South Sudan was more recent. But you are right that lots of updating would be needed, and not just using 'what links here', as full-text searches would be needed to correct the non-linked uses of the older terms. Carcharoth (talk) 15:47, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

Actually, that's the point I should have emphasized since the beginning of this discussion: What is really needed in the infobox is something like "Current name of place of birth" and "Contemporary name of place of birth"; the really stable information is what the situation was during a person's lifetime, as current names and places may change again in the future. --Omnipaedista (talk) 16:29, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

A fairly desperate argument - Rome and Urbino are likely to be in Italy for a long while yet! Johnbod (talk) 23:50, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

One thing I'm not clear about is the closing sentence of your original post: "It is different for figures from the ancient world I think." This indicates that you don't always think modern states and modern names should be used, but you seem uncertain about where to draw the dividing line. There is no neat dividing line between the modern world and the ancient world. Isn't it logical to simply provide both, to avoid the issue altogether? Carcharoth (talk) 00:04, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

On relection, I think the modern, geographical, info should always be given in the infobox. Mind you, looking at some examples, ancient bios seem mercifully free of infoboxes altogether. Johnbod (talk) 00:17, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

1) Mind you, we are talking about a style guide which is to provide uniformity in Wikipedia articles; a style guide's major purpose is consistency. 2) The validity of your arguments has been refuted by every single commentator of this thread. You seem to believe that only "a few editors [...] decide this convention [contemporary geographic info in infoboxes] is a good idea"; actually, you are apparently the only editor who still champions a different convention than the one championed by Daicaregos, Kotniski, Fram, Carcharoth, and most editors of the relevant historical-biographical articles (who edit for at least the past two years). --Omnipaedista (talk) 10:49, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Nonsense, but it is clear consensus will not be reached here, and the wide and confusing variety of ways these fields are used will continue. Johnbod (talk) 14:32, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Putting on my "consumer of Wikipedia" cap on, if I was doing a quick read of some biography, I would want to get an idea of where a person was born geographically, what political regime he was born into would be of secondary importance, unless that was a factor in his notability. Therefore the modern geographical location should be in the info-box to facilitate the quick-read, while the trivia of the historical political regime should be in the text of the article for the more detailed read. --Martin Tammsalu (talk) 11:01, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Succession boxes

See Talk:George IV of the United Kingdom. It has been suggested that we should make some attempt to reduced the number of succession boxes in some biographies, as a large number can clutter up an article, particularly with some royal figures. This is particularly an issue in some cases where e.g. there is a large (though unfortunately not total) overlap between some posts e.g. "Heir to the British throne", "Prince of Wales", "Duke of Cornwall", "Duke of Rothesay". Any comments? PatGallacher (talk) 14:53, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Can they not be collapsed? --Tagishsimon (talk) 19:06, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Indeed. If you need help figuring out how to collapse them, I'd recommend taking it to the succession box project. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 03:45, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Cleanup of first sentence in biographies

• (If this should be addressed somewhere else, or if it's been dealt with before, please let me know.)

My hope is to make the first sentence of bios more readable and less cluttered by eliminating duplication. Here's a typical example - along with the accompanying infobox - taken from Rachel Roberts (model):

Rachel Roberts
Born	(1978-04-08) April 8, 1978 Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Spouse	Andrew Niccol (2002–present) 2 children
Modeling information
Height	1.75 m (5 ft 9 in)
Hair color	Blonde
Eye color	Blue-green

Rachel Roberts (born April 8, 1978 in Vancouver, British Columbia) is a Canadian model and actress.

There is no reason to duplicate the birth date and place of birth. It's all in the infobox. It would be much easier and more readable to just have this straightforward sentence:

Rachel Roberts is a Canadian model and actress.

If that's too short, this would still be an improvement:

Rachel Roberts (b. 1978) is a Canadian model and actress.

If the person is deceased, then something like this would suffice (1934 - 1978). What think ye? -- Brangifer (talk) 03:28, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

• Well, it has been discussed elsewhere, and often. An heavily-populated discussion is here: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)/Archive 132#So what IS the deal with birth/death locations in the opening?. I would say based on that, and this is just my personal opinion:

• "Rachel Roberts is a Canadian model and actress" is not going to fly, period, so don't even think of that. You have to include at least the year of birth (and death) in parens after the name, period. I'm not saying that's good or bad, just that that's how we do it and will continue to be.

• Everything else is, basically, up to the individual editor. If (in an article you create) you want to include just the year of birth, or also the day and month, or also the place, and base your decision on whether or not there is an infobox or whether the article is long or short -- my advice is, do what you think is best, and other editors should respect that on the principle of stare decisis. They may change it anyway, but if they do, they shouldn't point to any MOS, since no MOS specifies whether the vital info in parens immediately following the name should or should not include the day and month of birth (and death) and place of birth (and death). So thus you are justified in reverting them per WP:BRD and the general spirit of let's-not-war-about-this-stuff found at WP:RETAIN etc. If they persist you would then have to have to have a whole discussion about it, though. Herostratus (talk) 08:17, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

• I largely agree with Herostratus about this. There will be massive problems to no good purpose if the MOS is amended to require a limited amount of information in the opening sentence. Part of the background for this is that infoboxes are relatively recent additions whereas the manual of style was prescribing the format of opening lines of biographies from a very early stage. The infobox is therefore regarded as a secondary way of presenting the information which is primarily conveyed in the lede and in the opening sentence. There was a debate here not that long ago about whether birthdates or birth years should be encouraged in the opening sentence, and my take was that the majority thought that dates were preferable. Sam Blacketer (talk) 12:05, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

• Thanks for the excellent responses. I guess that is all I needed to know. -- Brangifer (talk) 19:26, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Nationality in biographies

I posted a query at BLP regarding nationalities, although the query applies to all Bio's really. If you have any comments please post there. Thanks. Eldumpo (talk) 16:05, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Country of birth, for historic (and current) bios, part II

I am coming from this discussion and my intention is to make a wide discussion about this so we could possibly reach a principle to be applied in these cases. I created numerous biographies, and until now I have been using allways the place of birth, preferably city+country existing at time of birth. The issue was also discussed often at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Football (last discussion) and there seems to be that historicaly acurate names and sovereign countries have the most of consensus. Our problem there is not so much with obscure middle age principalities, but more with recent former countries. Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia are widely used for people born in those countries while they existed, in oposition to the ones that gained independence by their disolution. The last one has to do specifically with Estonia. In my logic, a person born in Tallinn during Soviet occupation period (1945-1991) should have as birthplace Tallinn, Soviet Union, following the widely accepted agreement of using city+country at time of birth formula. But as middle way, for the Soviet case there has been the tendency to add the Soviet republic in between, exemple: Tallinn, Estonian SSR, Soviet Union. Yugoslavia or Czechslovakia don´t have this republic in between usually, and even the usage of (current Xland) has somehow not been welcomed. Now, what we have is a number of editors from Estonia that for several reasons want to use Tallinn, Estonia as birthplace for all people born there since 1945, totally ignoring Soviet Union. My main issue has to do with the fact that Estonia didn´t existed as such between 1945 and 1991, so how can a person born in 1976 be born in a country that only regained its independence in 1991? As I already mentioned in one exageration, that would be like saying that Moctezuma II was born in modern day Mexico! Now, Estonian editors have a series of argumens that range from illegal unrecognised occupation, to "Estonia" as geographical unit being more accessible to people nowadays than Soviet Union, however, despite understanding the specific sensible situation of the occupied Baltic States, I still don´t see a major reason why should they be exception towards other similar situations in the world. Also, my main concern is that creating such exceptions would encourage all editors from all these "recently liberated countries" to use their current states as place of birth as well. Exemple, if an Ukrainian editor sees written "Estonia" for a person born in Soviet period, what will prevent him of replacing all "Soviet Union´s" by Ukraine then? From the experience I have, I can say that a couple of years ago there was a big number of editors and IP´s changing former states for the new ones in many of those cases, however recently seems that people finally started accepting their past, and things have been much quit nowadays. However, seems that we still don´t have a written guideline on this, so perhaps is time to do it? My vote goes definitelly to historical accuracy when dealing with birthplaces in bio infoboxes. Best regards, FkpCascais (talk) 09:56, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

This "country of birth" issue was discussed for months back in 2008 and we were unable to achieve consensus back then for a globally applicable guideline, (see: Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Country of birth). In the years before and since that discussion the default style is to list Estonia rather than Soviet Union as place of birth in the case of BLPs, since the view of the majority of people editing Estonia related topics is that the geographical location is more useful to a reader than listing a defunct state that ceased to exist over twenty years ago for a BLP of a young twenty-something year old football players. Not withstanding the unique historical situation of the Baltic states, where the de-jure state continued to exist in parallel to the de-facto puppet state incorporated into the USSR, constitutionally the constituent republics of the USSR were sovereign republics in union in any case. In addition to this, the Soviet Socialist Republic covered the same territory, language space and ethnic groups, the only essential difference being the political system imposed; which is similar to the case of the communist East European states. Nobody states that Radosław Sobolewski was born in Białystok, People's Republic of Poland, but Białystok, Poland.

I note that there exists regional style guides such as Wikipedia:Nationality of people from the United Kingdom, Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Ireland-related articles and Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Philippine-related articles, there is a need to codify this practice that has been existing for years in a style guide for the Baltic states as well, to end this confusion. --Martin Tammsalu (talk) 10:35, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

• The trouble is that we don't say what information we are giving in infoboxes, whereas in text we have the room to say "then in ..." etc. And at the moment there is no way for a reader to know which convention we are using in an infobox. Especially where both countries still exist, but borders have changed (Germany & Poland etc) "historical accuracy" means geographical inaccuracy. To my mind place of birth information is initially about the place - ie geographical rather than historical. Johnbod (talk) 10:57, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Geographical accessibility to readers was my main point in previous discussions, but additionally the sui generis issue regarding the legal continuity of the Baltic states. As mentioned, Wikipedia:Nationality of people from the United Kingdom exists and according to that, infoboxes should use such places as Scotland or Northern Ireland, although they haven't been independent as a recent political entity, not to mention that the British rule over them isn't considered to be illegal by the international community as was the case with the Baltic states.

I have encountered wierd accusations as if "Estonia didn't exist before this and that date". Yes it did, Estonia has always existed just like Finland has, or Korea. It just wasn't independent before a certain moment in time. As someone pointed out, we don't have links to People's Republic of Poland when someone was born in Poland in 1974 - we just have a link to Poland, just as we should have a link to Estonia, regardless if the sub-state was called Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic. Picture Wikipedia existing in 1982. Estonia would link to something similar to Libya during the civil war or like Ireland right now, since some states recognised the Republic of Estonia and some the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic under the Soviet Union. Only after Estonia regained independence as the Republic of Estonia and its sovereignty over Estonia isn't questionable, Estonia would link to the Republic of Estonia. So there would be a separate article for the nonexistent Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya and Libya would finally link only to the entity controlled by the National Traditional Council. But this doesn't mean, that Khamis Gaddafi was born in the NTC controlled Libya, but in the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, or simply put - Libya. Same goes with Estonia, only that the Estonian SSR was annexed by the Soviet Union. But it wasn't just annexed and ceased to exist, the Republic of Estonia was considered to remain as the legal entity of Estonia by many nations and after the occupation ended, the current Republic of Estonia is the same Republic of Estonia (i.e. not a second or third republic) as in 1918-1940 and the exile republic. The fact that some people were born in Estonia that was occupied by another state is irrelevant. Furthermore, if there is a disagreement over the legal entity, then a vague one should be used. If there was a disagreement between the Republic of Estonia and the Estonian SSR/Soviet Union, just Estonia should be included in the infobox. The fact that Estonia now links to the Republic of Estonia is also irrelevant - it only lasts until a next state is somehow proclaimed. Let's say in 2042, the Republic of Estonia declares itself the Kingdom of Estonia and Estonia would then link to Kingdom of Estonia. That said, so would a person born in 1972 in Tallinn have an Estonia link that would link to the Kingdom of Estonia, although he was born during the Soviet occupation, in a land that legally still was the Republic of Estonia...

PS - Opposing editors have pointed out that war time occupations don't count while peace time occupations do count as reasons for place of birth change. Not only do I find this bizarre, it leads to question, what should we do with people, who were born in Estonia during the first Soviet occupation of 1940-1941 (Rein Aun or Jaan Kaplinski) or during the German occupation of 1941-1944 (Toomas Savi or Mati Unt), if they should ever need an infobox.. Should we then start adding Estonian SSR only after World War II ended or Germany surrendered? No matter how you take it, the second occupation came with a war and lasted as an occupation until 1991. H2ppyme (talk) 12:49, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

The article Poland covers the communist period of People's Republic of Poland and both were independent. It can´t be compared to Estonia, as Estonia became part of a larger Federation, Soviet Union, which replaced previously independent Estonia as country, with Estonian SSR becoming a minor unit within a larger soveraignity. Bad exemple. FkpCascais (talk) 19:09, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

It is debatable whether the People's Republic of Poland was truly independent, given the hundreds of thousands of Soviet troops on its soil, however you are wrong to say the Soviet Union was a "federation", it was a union of sovereign states, not unlike the European Union today but with a socialist system. The Soviet passport (like the EU passport) had one's nationality listed, not as "Soviet Union", but "Estonian" if one was born in Estonia. The Soviet Union even sought to have all fifteen republics gain UN seats, but Cold War politics meant that only three republics did, the Russian SFSR, the Ukrainian SSR and the Belarusan SSR. All that said, while this is all interesting, it is mostly irrelevant to any particular BLP, people just want to know where someone was born in a geographical sense, based upon their current knowledge of world geography. That is why "Place of birth" in the infobox should be the modern geographical location, the complex history (and legality) of the regime where that person was born is best treated in the body of the text, if it is relevant to that person. --Martin Tammsalu (talk) 19:32, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

It would be helpful to have a protocol for listing country of birth in the infobox. In addition to states formed after the break-up of the Soviet Union, there are dozens of African states which gained independence during the 20th century - is it reasonable to state that someone born in Kinshasa during 1975 was actually born in The Democratic Republic of the Congo? Perhaps stating Zaire as the country of birth is not as readily accessible to today's readers, but it is historically inaccurate to state otherwise. Jogurney (talk) 19:42, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Has anyone actually read the info box, it states "Place of birth", not "Country of birth". The example of the Democratic Republic of the Congo has often been used in these sorts of discussions, but do we want to have the tail wagging the dog here? Obviously there are regional differences, that is why the MOS has specific guidelines for particular regions like Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Philippine-related articles and Wikipedia:Nationality of people from the United Kingdom, attempting to have one size fitting the entire world just does not work. That said, apart from the different name, what has changed from Zaire to Democratic Republic of the Congo, the two covers the same territory, includes the same people and has the same capital city. It seems somewhat irrelevant to a person subject of a BLP to say the country they currently are a national of is not the same country they were born in, it is not as if all the people born in Zaire had to apply for citizenship of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. So in this case it is perfectly okay to state Democratic Republic of the Congo as the place of birth for someone born in Zaire. --Martin Tammsalu (talk) 20:14, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia policies definitely favours strict and clear criteriums, rather than vague ones. City and country are precise and clear, geographical territories are not and are vague... "Place of birth" has been clear until now, so don´t try to turn it now for possible usage of mountains, lakes or peninsulas... Also, your argument about Zaire is deeply wrong, as Zaire and Democratic Republic of the Congo do not cover the same territory as they existed in different time periods. And the precise place of birth is all but irrelevant. FkpCascais (talk) 21:36, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

I am sorry to say, but for time being the only reasonable and easy managable solution seems to be city+country (at time of birth) for infobox purposes. The proposal of geographical units is confuse and just an excuse. People can only be born in one precise place at one time, and that place can only be described encyclopedically with historical accuracy. We can debate not clear cases, but I really think that we should accept historical accuracy as principle for place of birth in biogaphies. As way to simplify the discussion, can we agree that a person born in 1960 cannot be born in a country that only existed from 1991 on? Basic logic. FkpCascais (talk) 21:36, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

To me it has to be name at time of birth. This is accurate information. Changing it to what it is now isn't encyclopaedic or factually correct.Edinburgh Wanderer 22:18, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

There is nothing inaccurate, unencyclopedic or incorrect about saying "Florence, Italy", rather than "Florence, Republic of Florence" to take an example from above. As discussed at length in Pt 1 here, one of the problems with using the historical convention is that it can be much harder to get correct, and in practice gives rise to an amazingly high level of inaccuracy. Johnbod (talk) 22:42, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Don´t forget it is only infobox use. In text you can expand and clearify everything, as mostly it will start the lead by saying Giovanni Giovannini was an Italian artist... In my view infobox place of birth should have the historically accurate place, from the exemple Florence, Republic of Florence. FkpCascais (talk) 07:59, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Exactly the point. The historical informnation is often much more complicated than the geographical, and infoboxes cannot handle complexity without bweing misleading. Johnbod (talk) 15:16, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

It is my impression that the issue of "country at time of birth" is being conflated with issues of "common name of country" vs "official name of country" and "sovereign state" vs "country". Or is it being suggested that the place of birth of Sean Connery or Scottish footballers should be changed? Is the argument that reliable sources consider Estonia to have been less independent than Scotland at the time of their birth? Or should Sean Connery's place of birth be given as the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland", rather than "Scotland"? Or do we need different rules for sports where Scotland plays against England, etc.? I would tentatively suggest following the advice at Wikipedia:Nationality of people from the United Kingdom, mutatis mutandis.--Boson (talk) 22:58, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Infobox clarity

Whichever way this point gets decided, information should be added to all infoboxes clarifying exactly what should be put in the field. The argument against historical name is well-illustrated by the Estonia/WWII point above. What happens during short periods during a war, what happens when there is not agreement on the country name at a given time. The argument against current name is that you would have to change loads of articles if a country's name changes. Maybe we should stick to what the sources say.Eldumpo (talk) 21:56, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

I agree that we should use the information provided in sources, and typically they will state that someone born in Kinshasa in 1975 was actually born in Zaire. I haven't researched the Estonian examples, but I suspect some sources will indicate people born during Soviet occupation were born in Estonia and others will say the Soviet Union. Jogurney (talk) 22:35, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Both UEFA[11] and ESPN[12] lists Estonia as the birth place of Sergei Pareiko. --Martin Tammsalu (talk) 02:49, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

UEFA doesn't lists Estonia as the birth place of Sergei Pareiko. Country entry there means citizenship, for example Ivan Tsvetkov was born in Bulgaria and on UEFA website he has got Netherlands under country[13].--Oleola (talk) 00:43, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps it would be most fruitful just to start an appropriate section in Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Baltic states-related articles talk page and after a rough draft has been achieved, notify the editors of the appropriate wikiprojects? It is pretty obvious that "one size fits all" solution will not happen, as there are just too many unique variables in history and modern-day countries - and in great many cases, even sources may contradict themselves on different pages. I will start a small idea collection there in a moment. --Sander Säde 07:29, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

I've started a draft here. --Sander Säde 08:19, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

I beleave we need to create a general principle on this first.Only then we can go to specific cases (Baltic States, Czechoslovakia, etc.).

Regarding sources, the problem is that we can have sources saying different things, further more because most of the sources are not specialised in geography or history. FkpCascais (talk) 07:56, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Re: general principle - I don't think it is possible or advisable, one size doesn't fit all. There are simply too many special cases - different countries, different histories, different sources and different people. There have already been tons of discussions without achieving a consensus on the principle, I am fairly sure it is impossible to achieve a global all-involving worldwide guideline for this, but different guidelines for different cases (Baltic states, Eastern Europe, United Kingdom and so forth) should be both achievable and recommended. Some of these guidelines already exist, we (the Wikipedia community) can create more as/when needed - they just need to be linked from MOS/Biographies.

--Sander Säde 08:19, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Sadly I think this discussion is pointless. Whenever this issue gets periodically raised by a sensible editor correcting an article, all the various nationalists and revisionists come out of the woodwork and wikilawyer and filibuster until rational editors give up and they are left to impose their POV on the articles related to people from their countries. Without huge outside input (which never happens), this will continue to go round in circles. Number 57 10:01, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

I happen to agree with User:Johnbod that the modern geographical info should always be given in the infobox [14], are you claiming he is a nationalist and revisionist who wikilawyers and filibusters until rational editors (like yourself, naturally) give up? That is a pretty strong accusation that really isn't helpful. --Martin Tammsalu (talk) 10:42, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

If you can point me to where I named Johnbod as these things I would be happy to apologise. As far as I was aware I hadn't stated who the disruptive editors were (although I think it's pretty clear to outsiders who they are). Number 57 10:59, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

It is not clear to me, who were you referring to? --Martin Tammsalu (talk) 11:31, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Wait a sec. Lets focus on the issue here. Can we agree that is logical that Adolf Hitler was not born in modern day Austria but in Austria-Hungary, that Lenin was not born and died in modern day Russia, but born in Russian Empire and died in Soviet Union, and George Washington was not born in modern day United States but in Colony of Virginia. Also, there is no doubt what "Place of birth" is, all encyclopedia allways use city+country whenever possible, and there are extreme rare cases where this is not applied. In Football Project we try to keep this historical accuracy as well, and often vandals came changing them moved by recent nationalistic tendencies, so that is why Number 57 said that.

We should always be bearing the readers in mind though. Perhaps a reader would find it easier to understand where 'village x' is, if a current country is listed after it, as opposed to a former country which they may know nothing about? Eldumpo (talk) 14:57, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

For infoboxes, no we can't - for text where both modern & historical names can be given yes. Examination of the category of Signatories to the Declaration of Independence shows that most use the geographical not the historical style. Johnbod (talk) 15:12, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Honestly, the feeling I have is that Estonian users in this case are doing all the possible and impossible to remove USSR from place of birth, and that if it wasn´t the case, none of you would ever think of questioning what place of birth means, for exemple. Now, I really think that the best way for all of us here would be to accept historical accuracy as the correct one to be used in place of birth, but, to admit that the Baltic States period during Soviet Occupation is a specificity needing to be discussed. I understand that is a risk for Estonian users here, however I also think that the tactic of questioning what place of birth is, isn´t going to take you nowhere either. I honestly propose that you all look at the way historical figures deal with this (as in the exemples I gave), that all of you accept that people are born in countries that existed in their time period and to accept the city+country formula. Now, on my behalve, I accept that Baltic States case has its specificity, and I propose we discuse it, and see what options we have and which are the one that should be applied. Can we agree on this? FkpCascais (talk) 12:13, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Firstly, I'm from Australia; secondly the claim "doing all the possible and impossible to remove USSR from place of birth" is misleading, all these Estonian football BLPs have Estonia as the place of birth in the infobox from the very beginning of the article creation, nothing is being removed; thirdly you claimed "We agreed a long time ago to use in infobox only city+country, with no provinces, territories or whatever", where is this link to this agreement? An attempt was made to workout a global formula at Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Country of birth, but it didn't work because there were too many exceptions to the rule, but I welcome your contribution to formulate specific style issues for the Baltics. --Martin Tammsalu (talk) 19:57, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

I tend to prefer using the historical name of the place of birth in the infobox. This extends not only to the country, but also the city. For example, the city of Titograd was not known as Podgorica during the 1960s and sources covering individuals born there typically indicate the former name of the city. By using a piped link, a curious reader can easily hover over the link or follow it to learn that Titograd is the former name of Podgorica (in case the reader is confused). I think the same logic ought to apply to the country name (do we really want to show Montenegro as the place of birth of someone born in Titograd in the 1960s?). Jogurney (talk) 12:55, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Jogurney, exactly, even the city names are used with historical accuracy for the time the person was born.

Martin, come on, you can easily verify that the vast majority of non-Estonian biographies have this unnoficial protocol for place of birth. See the xemples I gave (G.Washington, Lenin and Hitler), which are certainly constantly watched by numerous editors, and no one ever questioned that. By the way George Washington is a Wikipedia:Good article, and that would have been certainly corrected if wrong when the candidacy for a GA status was applied. Do you have even one GA biography saying Estonia for the 1945-1991 period? And to finish, Martin are you actually saying that those 3 exemples (Washington, Hitler and Lenin) are wrong and should have current states in place? We could do a test, you edit them your way and we see if it will be accepted. Wanna try? FkpCascais (talk) 20:25, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm talking about football BLPs. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Infoboxes says the aim is to allow readers to identify key facts at a glance, we don't want to add confusion. --Martin Tammsalu (talk) 20:47, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

We start the article by saying right in the lead that a person X is an Estonian footballer. So no one will be confused because of that and that by itself provides clear info at glance. However having a wrong country of birth (wrong country in wrong time period) is certainly missinforming and confusing. I can´t see at all what is confusing about people being born in the Soviet Union (???)... FkpCascais (talk) 21:03, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Actually the infobox clearly states "Place of birth", not "Country of birth". "Place" to me means the modern identity of the place as we know it today. I don't see how a reader would be interested in which political regime (that collapsed when the player was 4 years old) a player was born under, how has that any relevance to anyone other than those think sport is political? --Martin Tammsalu (talk) 22:21, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

To me, place of birth simply means the full location - city and country (possibly province/state is necessary to disambiguate since there are several Springfields in the United States). I don't see any connotation about current versus historical names in the wording place of birth. Let's stick with what the preponderance of sources say. Jogurney (talk) 23:06, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Martin, if you are so sure of yourself, why didn´t you go to George Washington article and changed Colony of Virginia by United States ah? And btw, USSR was not a "political regime" but actually a country where people were born in. Now what Estonia was (or wasn´t) during that time, that is what is not completely clear... And no, a person is not born in a "modern identity of the place as we know it today", a person is born in a actual city and country that existed at time of birth. That is why ALL biographies exept the ones you kidnaped are edited that way, including ALL the most important ones in all major encyclopedia´s. Now I will go to G.Washington article and change it as you desire myself, so lets see what people has to say about it. FkpCascais (talk) 02:40, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

I am informing everyone that my edit done as Martin wants in George Washington article was unsuccessfull. United States as country of birth lasted 9 minutes... FkpCascais (talk) 03:45, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

And as a sometime editor of George Washington, I want to thank you for making your point with this edit to a semi-protected good article – it sets a wonderful example for new editors.

Since your innovative canvassing method worked, while I'm here I'll add that I agree with Jogurney immediately above. I don't understand all the fuss about editors needing to make content decisions; just put what the reliable sources say, and settle and specific exceptional cases by normal consensus-building methods without the need to reach for a guideline-hammer to force home your viewpoint. I also don't see, even for infoboxes, the need for major concerns about eliminating intermediate governmental levels to save space. Practically every U.S. city of less than 4,000,000 population – and probably some larger ones as well – gets routinely listed with it's state; "Estonian SSR" or "Estonia, USSR" don't take up any more space than "Connecticut, U.S." (or the frequently used "Connecticut, United States") does. Fat&Happy (talk) 05:47, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Well, actually we support the inclusion of Estonian SSR in between, just as in all Soviet cases, we usually have city+republic SSR+Soviet Union formula. The issue is that users want to replace the republic SSR+Soviet Union part with current country leaving, exemple, Tallinn, Estonia instead of Tallinn, Estonian SSR, Soviet Union.

The sources are obviously to be used for major historical figures. However, sources for sportspeople usually are all but specialised with geography and history, and we may often have different sources saying different things. Sports sources usually confuse even simple things, and it is all but good to rely on them to anything else but sporst content. That is why sources are not as usufull as should be in this case...

Regarding my "almost-vandalism" to George Washington article, it was just an one time thing, probably the silliest thing I ever did in years long editing, but honestly, a desperate call for attention to this, as seems incredible that we cannot agree on something simple as this. Apologies for the incovenience, and many thanks for having accepted to help us solve this issue. FkpCascais (talk) 06:47, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Frankly I am not surprised that User:FkpCascais would make a pointy edit to the George Washington article, to make a largely irrelevant point using a historical figure on an issue about BLPs of football players. He continues to mis-represent the situation by repeatedly claiming that "users want to replace the republic SSR+Soviet Union part with current country", when in fact these BLPs never had "republic SSR+Soviet Union " from the very beginning, so there is nothing to replace. FkpCascais claims there is some kind of standard, but if we look at any other BLP of an East European footballer, it is clear there is no such standard, for example Ivan Tsvetkov, born in Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria, not Blagoevgrad, People's Republic of Bulgaria and Radosław Sobolewski born in Białystok, Poland, not Białystok, People's Republic of Poland. The whole thing is a non-issue. --Martin Tammsalu (talk) 11:34, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Nor, of course, do we use full official names for countries or provinces elsewhere; I don't recall any biographies listing birth in the United Mexican States, the Federative Republic of Brazil, or the French Republic – let alone "Town of Manchester-by-the-Sea, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, United States of America". Now there's a real infobox slayer. We generally use common names anyway; as I recall, even prior to their independence the common English names for the Baltic states were Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, not their formal names (or abbreviations thereof). But they were part of the Soviet Union (meh, sort of...), so I see nothing wrong with a formulation such as "Tallinn, Estonia, USSR". Fat&Happy (talk) 16:40, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

How can we compare Poland and Bularia´s simple regime changes with countries that became independent? Poland and Bulgaria existed as such and were independent before 1991, Estonia was occupied by Soviet Union, a larger sovereignity and until then it was not an independent state (as the article Estonia itself says: "regained independence in 1991"), so they are NOT comparable. Fat&Happy, actually no one is wanting to use extended country names, just piping to a correct country article, exemple Yugoslavia, not the other way around. The entire issue really goes around the issue of a person being born inTallinn in 1960 (exemple) was actually born inside the territory of Estonian SSR, Soviet Union, and the issue of the occupation is really not an issue, as a person born there didn´t certainly born in a regime without a country (the so considered Estonia that the Estonian Governament in Exile advocated. He could not be born there as the Governament didn´t had a teritory where people could be born in. FkpCascais (talk) 19:03, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

The standard worldwide definition of "Place of Birth" for living people is the current country name, for example from United States passport#Place of birth:"The name of the country is the current name of the country that is presently in control of the territory the place of birth and thus changes upon a change of a country name." Thus if Sergei Pareiko were to obtain a US passport, his place of birth would be listed as Tallinn, Estonia. Only in Wikipedia do we have people insisting on using defunct state names as places of birth for living people. --Martin Tammsalu (talk) 21:10, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

And how long after Sergei Pareiko dies would we wait before changing his place of birth to Tallinn, Estonian SSR, Soviet Union, since for historical persons we use historical designations? Fat&Happy (talk) 21:33, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Living people are subject to higher standards on Wikipedia, compared to dead people. Having global "Place of Birth" guidelines is in essence WP:OR and that is strictly forbidden in BLPs. Sergei Pareiko place of birth is Estonia according to ESPN[15] and Soccerway[16]. --Martin Tammsalu (talk) 23:52, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Again, the territory governed as the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic was commonly known in the English-speaking world at the time as "Estonia", in the same way that the territory governed as the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is commonly known as "Massachusetts". If indeed "no one is wanting to use extended country names", then the example I used above – Tallinn, Estonia, USSR (or a slightly modified Tallinn, Estonia, Soviet Union) – should be acceptable to those seeking historical accuracy (which I support) since as posited it did what you suggest – "piping to a correct country article".

Out of curiosity, have any famous sports figures been born in Jerusalem? Fat&Happy (talk) 21:33, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

However you sidestepped the fact that other BLPs of East European footballers use the current country, not the current name piped to the defunct former regime, for example Ivan Tsvetkov, born in Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria, not Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria or Radosław Sobolewski born in Białystok, Poland, not Białystok, Poland. --Martin Tammsalu (talk) 23:32, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

@Martin, the important thing is the sovereign country, and for Tallinn between 1945 and 1991 was Soviet Union, and not Estonia. You can´t compare People's Republic of Bulgaria and Bulgaria with Soviet Union and Estonia. The first two are both included in Bulgaria article (that is why Bulgaria is used for their communist period) and URSS and Estonia are two different countries with two completely separate articles. You can´t escape having Soviet Union for the 1945 to 1991 period, and that is something you don´t want to admit.

What on earth are you talking about? The soviet period is also mentioned in the Estonia article too (as well as other historical periods) see Estonia#Soviet Estonia. --Martin Tammsalu (talk) 03:16, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

The article of the COUNTRY for 1945-1991 period is SOviet Union, Estonia was NOT a country back then... FkpCascais (talk) 04:38, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

@Fat&Happy, of course we have famous sportsman from Jerusalem, why? You mean what they say in their infobox? FkpCascais (talk) 01:44, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Yeah. After scanning this thread, and having reviewed – and made very occasional, very cautious edits to – Israel, West Bank, and other articles related to the AI conflict, I couldn't help wondering about that, since there seems to be at least one talk page argument a month over whether Jerusalem is even in Israel or not. Technically off-topic, but related in principle to the current discussion. Fat&Happy (talk) 02:06, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Israel or the West Bank has nothing to do with the current discussion and is off topic. --Martin Tammsalu (talk) 03:16, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Um, I believe I acknowledged that. Small reading comprehension problem? Though saying they have nothing to do with the discussion is a stretch, since like the Baltic states they are areas that had their political status modified beginning around the middle of the 20th century, and presumably some notable people who originated there have bios on WP. Fat&Happy (talk) 03:34, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Unlike Israeli or the West Bank topics, this isn't an issue that crops up on the talk page once a month. Estonian football articles have been relatively stable, having always had "Estonia" as the birth place. There was one discussion about it back in early 2008, but no consensus was found on a global guideline. Since then there has been no issue, except now with User:FkpCascais wanting to change the status quo. --Martin Tammsalu (talk) 04:30, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Actually, we are discussing birthplace´s in infoboxes, so any exemple is usefull for the discussion. Martin, Estonian football articles have been all but stable... and they were only stable because you highjacked them and others didn´t care, but once we started caring, see all the drama you are doing... FkpCascais (talk) 04:38, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

FWIW, in the ice hockey project, we consistently use country at time of birth and have had little issue with that. So Jaromír Jágr, for instance, is listed as born in Czechoslovakia. I think we've managed to undermine some of the modern nationalistic problems with the national team field, as it is clear he is now a representative of the Czech Republic. Likewise, our roster templates use both country at time of birth and current nationality (example: {{Calgary Flames roster}}). So yes, that means someone like Sweeney Schriner was born in the Russian Empire. However, we're pretty inconsistent on the USSR as some (ex: Sergei Makarov) don't include the constituent country while others (ex: Alexei Ponikarovsky - Kiev, Ukranian SSR, USSR). Maybe we just get lucky being a smaller project with far fewer players from Eastern Europe as compared to football. Resolute 00:24, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

That is exactly what we have been doing as well in Football Project. We also agreed to generally use the republics in between for Soviet cases. There seems to be a general consensus on this. The fact that you mention this consensus in ice hockey project is specially important because it is a project that has much experience on dealing with this issue. FkpCascais (talk) 01:29, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Since when did "consensus" override WP:BLP and this kind of synthesised guideline override what has been published in reliable sources? --Martin Tammsalu (talk) 03:16, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Are you actually sugesting the consensus is against what reliable sources say? FkpCascais (talk) 04:38, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Actually, as it was mentioned before, according to the ESPN Sergei Pareiko's birth place is Estonia. But, again, this is really not about sources here. --Sander Säde 09:19, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Russian-language sources routinely indicate that sportspeople born in Tallinn during the Soviet occupation were born in the Estonian SSR (e.g., Relyesonv.info and Gol.ee). I agree that English-language sources tend to drop the SSR, but it's not so clear as it seems. Additionally, I think the treatment of places like Zaire will be different than ones like Estonia where the change was essentially from Estonian SSR to Estonia rather than Zaire to DR Congo). Jogurney (talk) 15:54, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

One size doesn't fit all - that is what I've been saying all along. This needs to be handled case-by-case basis, as the need arises, not "one ring to rule them all" type of guideline. We have different guidelines for different areas already, such as Wikipedia:Nationality of people from the United Kingdom, Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Ireland-related articles and Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Philippine-related articles that Martin linked above. I've started the draft for Baltics, but there doesn't seem to be all that much interest in resolving the issue instead of endless discussions (tbh, I haven't announced the draft in any wikiprojects yet, too, as I would like to have any feedback before that). --Sander Säde 16:23, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

But Jogurney, I beleave you miss the point of Martin, they want to remove Soviet Union from the infobox. FkpCascais (talk) 16:27, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Please stop making stuff up, I told you three times already, Soviet Union was never in the infobox, you want to add it. --Martin Tammsalu (talk) 20:03, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

See? FkpCascais (talk) 00:47, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Showing non-English spelling and pronunciations

How should one properly show non-English spellings and pronunciations in a bio? For example, I came across the following mess in the lead sentence of the article Yuri Alexandrov (ice hockey):

Yuri Alexandrov (Russian: Юрий Александров, Russian pronunciation: ['jʉrʲij ɐlʲɪˈksandrəf] ;born June 24, 1988) is a Russian professional ice hockey player currently playing for the SKA Saint Petersburg in the Kontinental Hockey League.

I think that it would be useful if MOSBIO would be updated to show the proper way to deal with lead sentences such as this. Dolovis (talk) 13:54, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Charlize Theron

Could somebody here please chime in at Talk:Charlize Theron? Some misguided soul thinks that we should "Americanize" this actress who clearly achieved notability while a South African national simply because the films she acted in were American films. She had 12 years of notability as a South African national before becoming a naturalized American citizen in 2007, and according to WP:MOSBIO should be described as South African, as that is the nationality she held at the time she became notable. Yworo (talk) 06:21, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Rank as the first word of a bio

I'm against it, I don't remember seeing it in A-class articles or FAs, and I think there's an argument that the MOS:HONORIFIC section already covers it ... but Ruhrfisch and I were wondering if there's been any discussion, and if that section would be clearer if we specifically include the word "rank". - Dank (push to talk) 03:48, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

It has been discussed before and there was no consensus either way (and not many contributors to the discussion in any case). I, for one, support its inclusion, for the reasons I detailed in that discussion. -- Necrothesp (talk) 08:43, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't feel strongly, except that British knights and Dames should usually do it. But not Professors. Johnbod (talk) 11:32, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

I actually assumed we were talking about military ranks. It's been established that we do it for titled people and don't do it for academic titles. -- Necrothesp (talk) 12:57, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

If so, Dank should have made that clear. The cited MOS:HONORIFIC does not seem to mention military ranks; no doubt they are covered somewhere. We very often/usually don't in fact do it for titled people, who are (rightly) introduced as "John Smith, Baron Neasden" not "Lord Neasden". Johnbod (talk) 14:51, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

The problem is that I can't find anywhere in the MOS that addresses military rank. I assume it is not included, but wanted a clarification. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 16:26, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

By "titled people", I meant non-peers with pre-titles (i.e. Sir, Dame, and Lord and Lady when used for younger sons and daughters of peers), not peers, who formally have their titles after their names and only use "Lord" and "Lady" as titles of address. -- Necrothesp (talk) 21:26, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

The common sense approach would be to use the title if most people referred to the person concerned with it, and not otherwise. There are many people who held military ranks but do not use them in civilian life, including those who were conscripted into the armed forces. Some people retained their rank for a time but then dropped it, as did Clement Attlee who was generally known through the 1920s and into the early 1930s as 'Major Attlee'. Incidentally in the UK an Army officer had to be given permission to retain their military rank on leaving the forces; it could be refused, although this was rare. Sam Blacketer (talk) 20:14, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I agree with this. If it is or was commonly used to refer to the individual then we should use it. In the case of general officers or equivalent it will almost always be the case that it is used, since this is almost certain to have been their main career and/or the main reason for which they are known (although there are, of course, exceptions such as James Stewart, who is almost never referred to as "Brigadier General"). For more junior officers, we should be guided by common usage. It was pretty much de rigeur, for instance, for former British military officers to continue to use their ranks in civilian life at least until World War II and it is not uncommon even today. Former NCOs, on the other hand, almost never continued to use their ranks in civilian life. Articles on serving members of the armed forces, or members who were killed while serving, of whatever rank should usually include it. -- Necrothesp (talk) 09:23, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

The convention was, and largely is, that only the ranks of major and above (and equivalents) were retained. Some army captains retained theirs, but this was generally considered "infra-dig". Nobody kept Lieutenant. Johnbod (talk) 14:19, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Actually, while that was certainly usually the case, it's not entirely true. Many captains did use their rank and even The Times frequently used it to refer to them. "Lieutenant" wouldn't usually be kept by former army officers (although I have seen exceptions even with that), but it was sometimes used by former naval officers (the naval rank is, of course, equivalent to an army captain). -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:43, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Opening paragraph and "citizenship"

Forgive me if this has been discussed before.

WP:OPENPARA states: "The opening paragraph should have: ... Context (location, nationality, or ethnicity); In most modern-day cases this will mean the country of which the person is a citizen or national, or was a citizen when the person became notable."

This guideline often causes disputes (see Charlize Theron section above, for example). My view is citizenship is often irrelevant. In the case of Theron, she did not become notable until she moved to the U.S. To call her a South African actress makes little sense. But let's posit a more extreme example. You have a person who is born in the U.S. and moves to England when she is 3 days old. For whatever reason, she remains an American citizen but becomes famous in England. Do we really want to label her an American actress? (As an aside, I wouldn't mind sticking to the facts and calling someone like Theron a South African citizen (or born in South Africa) but who became notable as an actress in the U.S., but that becomes cumbersome for a lead.)

I've seen some editors who argue that citizenship subsumes residency, which then means you can call Theron an American actress and my hypothetical actress an English actress. However, that is not what citizen means literally and, when challenged, it's hard to hold on to that argument.

Does anyone here believe the guideline should be changed?--Bbb23 (talk) 01:38, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

It could be argued that the wording is actually flexible enough to cope with such situations ("In most modern-day cases..."), but the interpretation tends to be highly inflexible in practice. Plus citizenship (often dual) is often very hard to establish via RS even for well known figures. Johnbod (talk) 02:11, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

I agree that citizenship is hard to prove. Most editors assume if one is born in a country, one is automatically a citizen of that country, but, as a legal concept, that isn't necessarily true.--Bbb23 (talk) 02:20, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

There's obviously a flaw in this guideline; suppose someone was born in, say, Nigeria, voluntarily (as in most cases) becomes American and in multiple interviews declares "I am proud to be American, I love my country, that's all I am. I hate Nigeria, I have nothing to do with the fucking place, and do not associate with it in any way." — we'd still insist that this person is Nigerian.

This makes about as much sense as saying "In wikipedia articles, a person's marital status will be the one the person had when s/he became notable, regardless of their current marital status. By default, all individuals who became notable before the age of 16 will be described as single." Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 10:32, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

I think these citizenship/nationality/ethnicity things are too complex and varied for us to want to lay down fixed rules. We have to describe a person in the terms that reliable sources describe them.--Kotniski (talk) 11:52, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

That's the point, we have a fixed rule now. A point in time, a citizenship, and that dictates irrevocably what we must write. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 12:16, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Well, it's a bit more watery than that (it says "in most modern-day cases" - I think I added that once), but I'd be in favour of watering it down (or rather explaning the possible approaches) even further.--Kotniski (talk) 12:19, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Proposed text

"The opening paragraph should have: ... Context (location, nationality, or ethnicity); In most cases this will mean the country the person resided in when the person became notable, or, if unclear, the country of which the person is a citizen or national."

I know this doesn't necessarily incorporate everyone's concerns, but my aim is to avoid disputes and endless discussions, not to mention sourcing issues. I also think we need to state a preference, not just provide two alternatives. A couple of items I believe my text doesn't address: (1) when a person becomes notable first in Canada (for example) but then the bulk of their career is in France; and (2) the use of dual countries, e.g., Irish American.--Bbb23 (talk) 16:55, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

This doesn't really solve it, either. How about incorporating the amazing idea that public statements made by the person take precedent over everything else? Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 17:56, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

That also leads to problems and can go against our core sourcing policies. For example, someone dug out a documentary where John Prescott (in a particular context) said that he considered himself Welsh (having been born in Wales), and insisted therefore on trying to make that his nationality in his article, despite the fact that independent sources (and probably he himself, the rest of the time) never describe him as such.--Kotniski (talk) 19:57, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

Can we leave the UK out of this for a while; that's a very unique and peculiar set-up where there's an entity that everyone in the world looks at as a country but claims to be four. This discussion is about a person's citizenship, and how we can claim in perpetuity that somebody is Mongolian or whatever when they take a test, take an oath, sign a form, say they are proud to be American. Wikipedia says "sorry dude, we don't give a shit even if you serve in the military and die for your country, it still ain't your country, you're still a foreigner, and we'll call you Mongolian". Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 20:41, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

I believe that Kotniski's point goes beyond the complexity of the British issue. As an editor, I rarely like acceding to the wishes of the subject of a Wikipedia article if they make little sense. As an extreme example, if someone is born in Australia, moves to Germany and establishes a career there but self-identifies as Iraqi because he likes that country and identifies with its people, would we call him Iraqi? I'm not going to call an orange an apple just because the orange says it's an apple. Self-identification can be problematic in other ways. It's generally very difficult to source and for some subjects it's quite changeable. Not the best of criteria to use for a guideline. It's not that I'm completely disagreeing with you - and I don't think you're alone in your thinking, either - I just think we have to tread with caution. Wikipedia often has very difficult policies/guidelines to follow, which then leads to disputes as to how they should be interpreted. I'm trying very hard to propose text that is reasonably straightforward.--Bbb23 (talk) 02:44, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, but I think this is such a complex issue that any attempt to dismiss it in one sentence is going to be misleading and lead to weird designations if people start following it. We need a whole section on this (and even then, not one that appears to provide an algorithm to give us a single automatic answer in every case).--Kotniski (talk) 08:15, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Well... in such (probably rare) and complicated cases as the Australian-born would-be Iraqi who resides in Germany, I'd simply write into the guidelines that in such cases, the lead shouldn't say anything at all; these cases definitely dictate an explanation in the "personal life"-section (or wherever). But a person's current citizenship is something that can be proven, takes a while to acquire, and is official, and should be the given as a default. It's not like the guy in your example suddenly becomes a citizen of Iraq simply by making a public statement; that kinda stuff can easily be dismissed. That's why I gave my "marital status" example above; just because someone declares a "facebook spouse" or a "daughter in spirit" won't make it so; adopted children, on the other hand, are mentioned as children.

The disputes, as far as I see it, mostly arise when people see someone leave the country, acquires notability elsewhere (often with the help of the people there), and now the folks in the individual's place of birth want to claim that "one of their own" became famous. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 17:31, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

I think it is often very difficult to "prove" citizenship.--Bbb23 (talk) 17:57, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

You think so? The only time when these kinds of disputes come up is when a person officially migrated and took an oath. Hitchens, Theron, Schwarzenegger... That's on the record... no? What other cases do you have in mind? Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 21:22, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

For me, this comes up relatively frequently, mostly entertainers, like Mila Kunis, Stana Katic, Matt Perry, and even Theron (which had nothing to do with taking an oath). On some, it becomes so exasperating, the "nationality" simply gets removed from the lead, and the body of the article speaks for itself.--Bbb23 (talk) 21:53, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

That's what I'm saying, removing it from the lead is always a solution. No idea which Matt Perry you mean, but I coulda guessed that the other cases are some Eastern European stuff. I'm beginning to sense that this has something to do with the different meanings of "nationality" on either side of the ocean. Yeah, well, iuno. Maybe we'll thus have to write two different rules. Or three. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 22:03, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Actually, I don't think it has to do with different meanings of nationality. With the ones I mentioned, it has to do with whether one uses the country of origin or the country where notability was achieved (Perry's is a bit more complex). I have no problem with eliminating it from the lead, though, but then we have to reword the guideline to say that. Otherwise, editors will keep sticking it back in because the guideline indicates that the description should be there.--Bbb23 (talk) 22:17, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't think we should start eliminating this very key information from the lead, at least, not in the vast majority of cases where it isn't problematic. And even where it is problematic, it's almost always possible to find some kind of phrasing that covers it (without misrepresenting what the sources say). Though there are some people, particularly historical figures like Mozart and Copernicus, where a point is already made of not stating their nationality (since no designation seems appropriate - bearing in mind that these matters were viewed quite differently in the past than in the modern world of - mostly - discrete nation states).--Kotniski (talk) 08:49, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

I just added 'permanent resident' to the section "Opening paragraph", as in some cases, the person has no citizenship, or as in the case of Hong Kong, the territory grants permanent residence but not citizenship. LK (talk) 07:24, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Honorific suffixes

We have a section on honorific prefixes, but nothing on honorific suffixes. In particular, should we use them for people like Helena Bonham Carter, who has been announced as being awarded CBE, in the New Year's honours list, but not yet invested? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:57, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes. British honours may be used as soon as they are gazetted. Investiture is not necessary. Since this issue comes up every time an honours list comes out, I have clarified the guideline. -- Necrothesp (talk) 12:11, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

The initials should be linked to the article on the honour in question eg Order of the British Empire, Order of the Bath etc. Sam Blacketer (talk) 12:44, 31 December 2011 (UTC)