Hello
I am writing this to announce the creation of a new category on Wikipedia-English: [[Category:Living people]]. The category should include the articles of all people who are still alive.
Before getting into arguments about the scope of this category, I would like to take a moment to explain its importance.
With our ever-increasing prominence, it is becoming more and more likely that questionable, unsourced information may sneak into articles, despite all of our goodwill and vigilance. Flagging all articles pertaining to living people will mean that our editors can keep a closer watch on these articles, check new articles more closely as they are created, and help to avoid potential problems.
This is not the ultimate solution. It is, however, one step toward a working solution to ensure that our materials are adequately referenced and NPOV and to avoid potential conflicts with the subjects of these articles.
Please keep this Category in mind when creating new articles and when reviewing existing articles.
Thanks
Danny
On 1/19/06, daniwo59@aol.com daniwo59@aol.com wrote:
Hello
I am writing this to announce the creation of a new category on Wikipedia-English: [[Category:Living people]]. The category should include the articles of all people who are still alive.
Before getting into arguments about the scope of this category, I would like to take a moment to explain its importance.
With our ever-increasing prominence, it is becoming more and more likely that questionable, unsourced information may sneak into articles, despite all of our goodwill and vigilance. Flagging all articles pertaining to living people will mean that our editors can keep a closer watch on these articles, check new articles more closely as they are created, and help to avoid potential problems.
This is not the ultimate solution. It is, however, one step toward a working solution to ensure that our materials are adequately referenced and NPOV and to avoid potential conflicts with the subjects of these articles.
Please keep this Category in mind when creating new articles and when reviewing existing articles.
What about implementing a Special page that lists all articles with a birth date category, but not a death date category? This would effectively be the same as a "Living People" category (after fixing articles that mistakenly omit a death category).
Carbonite
Carbonite wrote:
What about implementing a Special page that lists all articles with a birth date category, but not a death date category? This would effectively be the same as a "Living People" category (after fixing articles that mistakenly omit a death category).
It'd help locate some of those if the living-person list were sorted by birth year, everyone over 120 years or so old is probably missing a death date.
On 19/01/06, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Carbonite wrote:
What about implementing a Special page that lists all articles with a birth date category, but not a death date category? This would effectively be the same as a "Living People" category (after fixing articles that mistakenly omit a death category).
It'd help locate some of those if the living-person list were sorted by birth year, everyone over 120 years or so old is probably missing a death date.
Maybe [[Category:Living person born in 19xx]] categories, which can feed into the [[Category:Living person]] and [[Category:Born in 19xx]] ?
-- Abi
Bryan Derksen wrote
It'd help locate some of those if the living-person list were sorted by birth year, everyone over 120 years or so old is probably missing a death date.
I'm beginning to wonder about all this.
Adding [[Category:Living person]] - is that suppposed to be fact-checked or what? [[Category:No death date]], that would be fine.
Charles
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charles matthews stated for the record:
Adding [[Category:Living person]] - is that suppposed to be fact-checked or what? [[Category:No death date]], that would be fine.
Charles
Good point. I suppose "I shook hands with him this morning" would be disallowed as original research.
- -- Sean Barrett | All life is six-to-five against. sean@epoptic.org |
Sean Barrett wrote:
charles matthews stated for the record:
Adding [[Category:Living person]] - is that suppposed to be fact-checked or what? [[Category:No death date]], that would be fine.
Charles
I'm totally flexible on the name of the category, and this suggestion seems sensible enough to me. It also holds some promise of us someday being able to actually automate it with a proper metadata system.
--Jimbo
On 19/01/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
I'm totally flexible on the name of the category, and this suggestion seems sensible enough to me. It also holds some promise of us someday being able to actually automate it with a proper metadata system.
Have you noticed the testing of implementing [[Wikipedia:Persondata]], roughly similar to the German metadata system? It's imperfect - it's all inside the article, for a start, rather than real metadata - but it's promising.
-- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk
From: wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Sean Barrett
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charles matthews stated for the record:
Adding [[Category:Living person]] - is that suppposed to be fact-checked or what? [[Category:No death date]], that
would be fine.
Charles
Good point. I suppose "I shook hands with him this morning" would be disallowed as original research.
Nor would it confirm the status of "living person".
Pete, who has shaken some very cold and limp hands in his time
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charles matthews stated for the record:
Adding [[Category:Living person]] - is that suppposed to be fact-checked or what? [[Category:No death date]], that would be fine.
Quick: provide a citation proving that [[Nancy Reagan]] is still alive.
However, I have it on very good authority that [[Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead]].
- -- Sean Barrett | All life is six-to-five against. sean@epoptic.org |
From: wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Bryan Derksen
Carbonite wrote:
What about implementing a Special page that lists all
articles with a
birth date category, but not a death date category? This would effectively be the same as a "Living People" category (after fixing articles that mistakenly omit a death category).
It'd help locate some of those if the living-person list were sorted by birth year, everyone over 120 years or so old is probably missing a death date.
It's the articles that would be missing the death date; the people themselves would not.
Pete