Template talk:Birth year and age/2007-2008 archive

Proposed change in output format

This template is a great idea, but it imposes formatting requirements that keep it from being used in a number of articles.

I propose to change the format to be more minimalist, and more consistent with {{birth date and age}}, and merely return the year and age.

For example, right now

{{Birth year and age|1993}}

returns:

(Born in 1993 ^{(about 31 years old)})

I propose that it instead return:

1993 (about 31 years old)

This is consistent with {{birth date and age}}; {{Birth date and age|1993|1|12}} produces:

(1993-01-12) January 12, 1993

Here's a typical use case, Maxime Rodriguez. In this article, it says:

Maxime Rodriguez (Born 1975 in Colombes, France) is a French composer.

Using this template in its current form:

'''Maxime Rodriguez''' (Born {{Birth year and age|1975}} in [[Colombes]], [[France]]) is a French composer.

leads to

Maxime Rodriguez (Born (Born in 1975 ^{(about 49 years old)}) in Colombes, France) is a French composer.

Even getting rid of the extra "Born" in the article, and otherwise editing the article to accommodate the formatting imposed by the template, it's still awkward:

Maxime Rodriguez (Born in 1975 ^{(about 49 years old)})(in Colombes, France) is a French composer.

This approach requires that the article be reworded to serve the template, instead of the other way around. With the change I propose, we'd get:

Maxime Rodriguez (Born 1975 (about 49 years old) in Colombes, France) is a French composer.

I think you should be able to use {{birth year and age}} in pretty much the same way as {{birth date and age}}, without worrying about format changes imposed by the template.

There are only about 25-30 articles that use this template; updating them to check format would not be a huge task (and I volunteer to do it). I'd been close to using this template a few times, and not used it solely because of this issue.

Any objections? -- TJRC (talk) 20:12, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

That sounds like a good idea and you could do the dame with, Template:death year and age -- Esemono (talk) 04:44, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

I concur, especially with removing the small superscript which renders illegibly in my implementation of IE7. —Elipongo (Talk contribs) 00:46, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Okay, hearing no objections, I'll do this. This is my first template edit, so I'm testing out in my sandbox this week, but I should be able to have this done in a couple days. --TJRC 01:32, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Further simplification

I would further propose changing the note from (about 14 years old) to
(age ≈14)
Note the link to Approximation on the ≈, and the use of ≈ so this will show properly in all browsers.
This would 1) be more in line with Template:Birth date and age, 2) Fit better in tables and Infoboxes, and 3) still clearly denote the age as approximate. —MJBurrage^(T•C) 18:02, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

I'd be quite happy with MJBurrage's proposal, or even if the template simply returned "(age about 14)". The "years old" part is a bit long for infoboxes and not in line with {{Birth date and age}}. Or does anyone think there should be slightly more precision – for someone known to be born in, say, 1990, the template should return (in 2007) "(age about 16–17)" or simply "(age 16–17)"? — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 14:46, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

I'd be happy with either MJBurrage's or Jacklee's proposal. I made the last update, but I'm not married to the format. I mostly wanted consistency with the {{Birth date and age}} template. -- TJRC (talk) 18:01, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

If I had to choose between the different forms that I suggested, I would pick "(age 16–17)" since that seems to be the most precise. It also avoids the need for readers to click on the "≈" symbol if they're unfamiliar with it (it also occurred to me that as the symbol is rather small, readers may not even realize that it is linked to "Approximation"). If everyone's happy with that, I'll go ahead and tweak the template. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 18:19, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

OK, I've tweaked the template and rewritten the documentation. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 20:51, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Dead people

Is there any way to use this template for dead people? I have created a couple of articles where the year of birth is known, but not the exact date. DuncanHill (talk) 02:24, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

See Template:Death year and age. —MJBurrage^(T•C) 18:02, 23 December 2007 (UTC)