Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography

This is a WikiProject, an area for focused collaboration among Wikipedians. New participants are welcome; please feel free to join! Guide to WikiProjects Directory of WikiProjects Portal:Biography

Shortcuts WP:WPBIO WP:BIOG WP:BIOGRAPHY

WikiProject Biography
General information
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Announcements
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Departments
Assessment Core biographies Maintenance Peer reviews
Work groups and subprojects
Arts and entertainment Actors and Filmmakers Musicians Women artists Genealogy Living persons Military Orphaned articles Politics and government Royalty and nobility Peers and Baronetage Science and academia Aerospace Philosophers Sports and games
Things you can do
Write an article Expand an article about: a person an actor an animator an artist a bishop a businessperson a diplomat an educator an engineer a lawyer a military person a musician a photographer a saint a politician a scientist a sportsperson a writer Improve an article by: adding references adding categories Review an article Romano Volta • Suzanne Carrell • Mullá Husayn • John Gilchrist (linguist) • Thomas Brattle • Answer requests for comments Work on the Portal Portal:Biography Assess an article Assessment requests Unassessed articles
Biography article statistics
Biography articles by quality and importance
v t e

Structure[]

Tips for writing biographies[]

Are you starting from scratch and want some guidance on creating a biographical article? Follow these helpful tips! Some of them are also useful for work on articles that have already been started.

1. Research the available literature to find reliable sources. Read them carefully, taking notes.
2. Create a proto-article in a subpage of your own user space.
   • Right from the start, cite your sources: it's much easier to do this as you go along than to attempt to do so later.
   • See "How to a page" to understand the basics of the wiki markup language. Reference the proto-article, especially biographies of living persons.
   • Check your sources again. Balance and neutrality are vital.
   • At this stage, don't add categories or images. (You'll be able to add them later.)
3. Work up the proto-article until it's coherent and at least slightly informative and has had its facts checked. (It does not yet need either to present a rounded picture of the person or to be a good article in any normal sense; it merely has to be sound in what it does say.) The article, no matter how rough, should clearly state why the person is notable enough to be included in this project, see WP:BIO. It is a good idea to make reference to at least one of the notability determinants in the lead paragraph. Failing to clearly show notability may lead to your new article being quickly deleted.
4. Create a new article on your subject and paste the content of your proto-article there.
   • Read Wikipedia's article title conventions to decide what the page title should be. Also see m:Help:Starting a new page.
   • The history of your proto-article up to this point is unlikely to be of interest to anybody other than yourself, and moving it would force you to re-create your user sub-page. Thus copy/pasting makes sense. However, do note that copying and pasting existing articles is frowned upon in Wikipedia; moving makes the history easy to find and complies with the licencing policies.
5. Add images such as those obtained from Wikimedia Commons, image list, or by posting a request for an image from other ors.
6. Add the appropriate categories.
   • You may also be able to find suitable categories by looking at related articles, particularly articles about similar people. Failing that, visit the appropriate work groups (which have them listed) or start browsing at Category:People.
7. Linking: check that the internal and external links and footnotes in the article go where you want them to go.
   • Make sure that some other, relevant articles link to a new article, so that the new one isn't "orphaned".
8. Keep working on the article. Chances are that other ors will notice its existence and join you in working on it. If nobody seems to notice it and you'd like one or two to do so, mention the article in the talk page of a relevant "WikiProject" (e.g. Music), or this one, or both.
   • You may find that the newcomers will be interested in aspects of the person that don't much interest you, or will relish aspects of ing that you find a bit tiresome. Thus their work will complement rather than compete with your own.
9. Consider adding a list of works (bibliography, discography, etc.).
10. When you're happy with the article or have done about as much with it as you think you can, consider requesting a peer review by following these instructions.
11. Remember, there are 7 billion people in the world. While all of them have their own story, not all of them deserve a Wikipedia article. See WP:BIO for notability standards.
12. Relax! and take a break if you reached this point. You deserve it!

Policies[]

• Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons

Guidelines[]

• Wikipedia:Notability (people)
• Wikipedia:Manual of Style (biographies)
  • Manual of Style (Ethiopia-related biography articles:proper names)
  • Manual of Style (Ireland-related biography articles)
  • Manual of Style (Islam-related biography articles: honorifics)
  • Manual of Style (Japan-related biography articles:Names)
  • Manual of Style (Thailand-related biography articles:Names)
  • Manual of Style (dates of birth and death)
• Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people)
• Wikipedia:Naming conventions (royalty and nobility)
• Wikipedia:Categorization of people
• Wikipedia:Autobiography

No classification of biographies has been defined. See this example on dividing a topic into a hierarchy.

Templates[]

What to type	What it makes	What it's for
{{WikiProject Biography}} Talk	WikiProject Biography (Rated Project-class) v t e This page is within the scope of WikiProject Biography, a collaborative effort to create, develop and organize Wikipedia's articles about people. All interested ors are invited to join the project and contribute to the discussion. For instructions on how to use this banner, please refer to the documentation.BiographyWikipedia:WikiProject BiographyTemplate:WikiProject Biographybiography articles  Project  This article has been rated as Project-Class on the project's quality scale.	The project notice designed to be placed in the talk page of any article that has been or should be ed as part of this Wikiproject. Please see the assessment page for parameters to use in rating articles.
{{Portal|Biography}} Talk		Shows a standardized link to the Biography portal, and may be suitable for the "See also" sections of biographies.
{{User WPBiography}} Talk	This user participates in WikiProject Biography.	This can be placed on your user page to show that you are a part of this Wikiproject.
Miscellaneous templates
{{Wikipedia ads|7}}	Wikipedia ads file info – #7	To include the ad box on your userpage or talk page, simply your page and add {{Wikipedia ads|7}} in the appropriate place.
Stubs	People stubs	Navigate to this category to browse for the appropriate stub
Infoboxes	Category:People and person infobox templates • List of Infoboxes	Navigate to this category to browse for the appropriate infobox

Project organization[]

Members[]

Generally see Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/Members

Admin members[]

Below are project members who are also Wikipedia admins (in A-Z order)

1. 23skidoo (talk · contribs)
2. Avraham (talk · contribs)
3. Capitalistroadster (talk · contribs)
4. Catfish Jim and the soapdish (talk · contribs)
5. Cbrown1023 (talk · contribs)
6. Deiz (talk · contribs)
7. Dreamy Jazz (talk · contribs) Mainly WikiProject tagging.
8. Drilnoth (talk · contribs) • I mainly just do smaller stuff in the course of my other ing
9. Dumelow (talk · contribs) I work mainly on biographies of civil engineers
10. FloNight (talk · contribs) Interested in WP:BLP issues. Writing biographies for Wikipedia:WikiProject Kentucky, mostly about people in civil war and politicians.
11. Ganeshk (talk · contribs)
12. Greeves (talk · contribs)
13. Jennavecia (talk · contribs) - In the area of BLPs.
14. John Carter (talk · contribs)
15. Johntex (talk · contribs)
16. Jreferee (talk · contribs) - I've written a bunch of bios and have a soft spot for those people who their own biography. Any problems in that area or other biography area, please contact me.
17. Kanonkas (talk · contribs) I am giving biographies files. I'm trying to them with more information, mainly it'll be about celebrities. I'm also trying to remove unsourced BLP, that may be defamatory or not. I'll be happy to look after a BLP related article, or if you need something (e.g. protection) feel free to ask me.
18. kingboyk (talk · contribs)
19. MichaelQSchmidt (talk · contribs)
20. Nishkid64 (talk · contribs) I want to help out with articles on world leaders and politicians. Also have been helping out with WikiProject Missing regarding U.S. House politicians.
21. Philosopher (talk · contribs) - Politics and Government workgroup.
22. Plange (talk · contribs)
23. Rosiestep (talk · contribs) - Co-founder, WP:WikiProject Women in Red. I've created 1,400 women's biogs. Mostly, I focus on women writers. Also re-assessing.
24. Sandstein (talk · contribs) — I'm working my way through a biographical lexicon of jurists and should be done in, say, 2012.
25. Scimitar (talk · contribs) - I was the principal or on the Isaac Brock featured article, and have written around 200 bios and stubs, mostly in the field of Canadian politics and NHL players, although I dabble in anything that catches my eye.
26. SlimVirgin (talk · contribs) — I've written or significantly contributed to around 36 bios, three of which are featured articles, and I've created another 21 stubs, so it's a genre I've very interested in, and I'm particularly interested in BLP issues and the question of how to balance the need for fairness with NPOV.
27. SoothingR (talk · contribs)
28. TKD (talk · contribs) — My work in modern video gaming and science fiction popular culture has led me to work intermittently on related biographies.
29. UkPaolo (talk · contribs)
30. Vaoverland (talk · contribs) - I mostly work with history, geography and transportation articles related to Virginia and West Virginia, willing to help other project ors with moves, etc., try to avoid controversy, would rather work on content. aka Mark in Historic Triangle of Virginia
31. VegaDark (talk · contribs)
32. Wizardman (talk · contribs) - General improvement, lots of assessing and tag adding.
33. Xdamr (talk · contribs) mostly South African politicians and other notables, 1850-1950.
34. Yannismarou (talk · contribs)

Departments[]

Assessment[]

The assessment department focuses on assessing the quality of Wikipedia's biography articles. While much of the work is done in conjunction with the WP:1.0 program, the article ratings are also used within the project itself to aid in recognizing excellent contributions and identifying topics in need of further work.

The ratings are done in a distributed fashion through parameters in the {{WPBiography}} project banner; this causes the articles to be placed in a set of categories that serves as the basis for an automatically generated worklist.

Core biographies[]

The core biographies department seeks to bring 200 of our most important and visited articles to featured article standard (see also: v1.0 Biographies).

Peer review[]

The peer review department conducts peer reviews of articles on request; this helps to obtain ideas for further improvement by having contributors who may not have previously worked on particular articles examine them. Project members are invited to submit articles to the department in lieu of using the generic peer review process.

Unreferenced BLPs[]

5 random unreferenced BLPs, updated daily: Uli Edel | Piotr Bujnowicz | Anders Martin-Löf | Jim Harris (naturalist) | Igor Drobnjak

Inactive departments[]

A-class review: A-class review examined articles to ensure they met the A-class standards. Currently, there is a freeze on promotions to A-class.

Collaboration: The collaboration department sought to identify particular articles that would benefit from a significant collaborative effort. A single article was selected as the focus, and the project attempted to improve it, potentially to featured article standard.

Outreach: The outreach department acted as the project's central point of coordination for the recruitment of new members and the production of newsletters.

Work groups[]

Please discuss any proposals for new work groups with the project as a whole before creating them.

Workgroups are informal groups of ors gathered for collaborative work on a particular topic within the field of biography; all project members are encouraged to participate in any that interest them. Also included below are other WikiProjects that fall within our scope.

Work groups

Comprehensive lists of Women who require Wikipedia biographies are available from the Women in Red WikiProject.

• Arts and entertainment
  • Actors and Filmmakers
  • Musicians
• Living people
• Military
• Politics and government
• Royalty and nobility
  • Peers and Baronetage
• Science and academia
  • Aerospace
  • Philosophers
• Sports and games

Resources[]

Project templates[]

• {{Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/Sidebar}} – Project sidebar
• {{CurrentBioCOTW}} – Current Collaboration
• {{BioCOTWnow}} – Current Collaboration winner for article's talk page
• {{WikiProject Biography}} – Talk page project banner
• {{WPBiography Archive}} – archive banner for internal project pages no longer in use.

Barnstars[]

• The Biography Barnstar – The Biography Barnstar can be awarded to ors who make significant or outstanding contributions to Wikipedia's biography-related articles.
• The BLP Barnstar – The BLP Barnstar is used to recognize ors who strive to maintain the integrity, sourcing, and neutrality of biography articles, so they adhere to the biographies of living persons policy.
• The Royalty's Barnstar – The Royalty and Nobility Barnstar is awarded to ors who make significant contributions to royalty and nobility related articles that expand Wikipedia’s knowledge about the biographies of people belonging to royalty and/or nobility.

Related WikiProjects[]

• Wikipedia:WikiProject Anthroponymy – about human names and naming conventions in various cultures
• WikiProject Succession Boxes
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red – concerned with identifying women for whom biographies are required
• Wikipedia:Women's Classical Committee – concerned with improving and creating biographies for notable classicists who are women

Statistics[]

Cleanup listing for this project is available. See also the tool's wiki page and the index of WikiProjects.

• WPBiography articles by number of views^{[dead link]}
  • Living people^{[dead link]}
  • Possibly living people^{[dead link]}
  • Disappeared people^{[dead link]}