Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/biographies

bio-cats template

I created Template:bio-cats to save just a little bit on the typing you always find yourself doing at the end of one of these pages. For example:

{{subst:bio-cats|1713|1803|French actors|Dumesnil, Marie}}

expands to

[[Category:1713 births|Dumesnil, Marie]]
[[Category:1803 deaths|Dumesnil, Marie]]
[[Category:French actors|Dumesnil, Marie]]

David Brooks 23:53, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

I would recommend using subst: here. – Quadell ^(talk) 17:16, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Progress

I hate not being able to tell how much progress a project has made so I went about trying to calculate it. Below are the starting numbers for each of the pages. "A" was the only page that was not broken down into sections so it started with 500, all the other pages started with 10 sections of 49, except G2 which has 299. There are a number of missing entries and pages. The original list claimed to have ~15,000 entries, but this only comes to 11,089. I wasn't around for the creation of the lists and the originals are no longer on the web, so I don't know where the other 4K have gone.

• a 500
• b 490
• b2 490
• b3 490
• c 490
• c2 490
• d 490
• e 490
• f 490
• g 490
• g2 299
• h 490
• h2 490
• k 490
• l 490
• m 490
• m2 490
• p 490
• r 490
• s 490
• s2 490
• t 490
• w 490

Reflex Reaction 16:00, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

My guess is that the other 4K is the Is, Js, Ns, Os, Qs, Us, Vs, Xs, Ys, Zs, and additional members of letters given. (There may have originally been a P2 and an M3, for example.) These would all have been fairly small, presumably, and were either done quickly or just lopped off. – Quadell ^(talk) 17:11, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Follow-up: Looks like I was right. There was originally a D2 with 190 entries, for example - it was finished up in April. If you're an admin, you can just go to where the page should be and read the deleted edits. If not, you can't see them. – Quadell ^(talk) 17:16, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

I had that feeling as well but thanks much for answering my question. I am not an admin so I can't see the original list, but the 11K number is fine for calculating the percentages since those were the numbers when this particular project (page) was started. --Reflex Reaction 17:50, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

"Correct names"

Having pruned a good few hundred entries, I've noted that in many cases we already have an article for someone, but none of the links we have for their name point to it. Articles named Forename M. Surname are very common, with our links here generally being Forename Middle Surname or Forename Surname; another common problem is oddly transliterated names (especially Russians!), or cases where our existing articles all use accents and this list doesn't.

As such, I've had to go hunting for these articles quite often, looking on what seem to be relevant pages for any links. In some cases, though, we don't have an article, but none of the names for that person linked here match the redlinks already existing in Wikipedia. What I've tried doing is adding the "right name" to the front of some entries, so that if someone does create an article from this list it'll get linked in to the encyclopedia without any problems. You can do quite a bit of research checking these entries don't exist, and it seems silly to not record the most useful result.

I've only done this to some articles on /M so far; any thoughts? Shimgray | talk | 03:40, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

There are some problems with this. I'm not sure whether "Forename M. Lastname", "Forename Middlename Lastname", or simply "Forename Lastname" is the right name - it depends on how the person was most often referenced. It's even harder with "Forename Lastname, Jr." The Jr. should be left out of the article name in cases where the subject is rarely referred to that way (such as Mitch McConnell or Al Gore.)

Another problem is those nicknames. Sometimes the bio list will refer to something like Andres Martinez (Trueba). This could mean his name is "Andres Martinez Trueba" (Spanish names tend to be this way), or it could mean his name is "Trueba Andres Martinez" (French names tend to work this way), or it could mean that his name is "Andres Martinez", but he was often called "Trueba" (or perhaps "Trueba Martinez"). It's unfortunately impossible to know which without doing some research into the person. – Quadell ^{(talk) (bounties)} 13:18, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, I'll clarify - the "correct name" isn't particularly the "right" name, but it is the one that we already use to refer to them in the rest of the encyclopedia. With Martinez, for example, Andrés Martínez Trueba already has links from the list of Uruguayan presidents (and from another politician) - creating it at Andres Martinez would only get you linked from references to a journalist and an athlete. Shimgray | talk | 14:17, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Oh, I see. Well that sounds good then. I'd put on the page what the bolding means. – Quadell ^{(talk) (bounties)} 15:00, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Great job! I've now merged M2 into M, so you might want to do the same for the other half of M. – Quadell ^{(talk) (bounties)} 16:27, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

I've noticed this too. I clicked on the "R" section, the first name immediately sprang out as I happened to have read the biography in question at Joseph_Radetzky just yesterday. --estavisti 15:19, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

Have few thousand more

See Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Missing_encyclopedic_articles#User:Piotrus.2FList_of_Poles for my list of (mostly missing) Polish biographies to add.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 18:20, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

Catholic Encyclopedia biographies

I am categorising Catholic encyclopedia Wikipedia:Catholic Encyclopedia cat People. I've got about 1000 entries so far. JASpencer 19:39, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Hooray!

The page is empty! Congratulations to all who've participated! --Alvestrand (talk) 21:05, 23 April 2009 (UTC)