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User talk:Eryk (Wiki Ed)/Biographies

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Notes and comments

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Thanks to everyone who assisted in reviewing this page. The content has been laid out for print. While future comments or suggestions may be incorporated in future editions, the current draft is what will be printed (with minor adjustments for layout). Thanks again! Eryk (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:54, 3 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Page One (Front)

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Introduction
  • Comment: Perhaps "It is not easy writing a new article on Wikipedia, especially as there are a number of rules involved. This page is going to help you write a biography."
  • "Newbie" or "noob" is generally frowned upon as being a put-down by young students. Collect (talk) 18:56, 31 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Be accurate
  • comment: Perhaps something like "Wikipedia is relied upon as being accurate. In biographies, the more accurate and objective the information, the better. Try to be sure you use the best and most accurate sources you can. Collect (talk) 18:56, 31 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Understand the guidelines
  • Minor change "fixing it" → "fixing mistakes" (agreement with "when articles...", so could also be "fixing them") --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:10, 25 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • If you aren’t comfortable working within these guidelines, talk to your instructor about an alternative off-wiki assignment. - would this be better at the end/back cover? --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:10, 25 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: Perhaps: Take time to read and understand these suggestions which we hope will make your article be a success. Articles which do not follow Wikipedia rules end up taking a lot of time to fix. If you think this may be too difficult, talk to your instructor about your questions.? Collect (talk) 18:56, 31 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • You may want to try linking to one of the training programs on here that give an overview of the guidelines, like WP:TRAINING or WP:ADVENTURE. I know that a lot of people (not just students) have commented upon how overwhelming and confusing it can be to go through the various pages, so giving them a link to something that gives a bit of a brief overview of various guidelines (sources, notability, etc) might be helpful. This would give them a general idea of things before they tackle the huge policy pages. I know that some instructors ask them to go through one of these programs, but not all of them. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 06:16, 2 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Engage with editors
  • comment: Perhaps One key part of the process is working with other editors. If you try to do everything in one edit, others are more likely to find fault. Instead, when others seek to give you advice, or add information about the person, respond to their positions. You may not always agree with every editor, but the goal is to produce an article which is accurate and does not treat the subject of the biography as either perfect nor evil.
Watch out f or close paraphrasing
  • Never copy biographical anecdotes directly into Wikipedia. - Not sure what "biographical anecdotes" means such that it seems to be set apart from other sources here. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:10, 25 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Longer quotations, up to about six lines, are indented as block quotes and don’t take quotation marks. - This could be confusing, as how to do block quotes is not as self-evident as surrounding text with quotation marks. I could see someone reading this and just adding a space before the line and being scolded for not putting a quote in quotes. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:10, 25 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • comment: Perhaps Using the words of a source too closely is generally considered wrong. If a section is too closely copied, the article will fail - your goal is to use your own words as you would usually use them. Plagiarism has a high chance of being caught and is generally against all codes of honor, including Wikipedia rules. If you do quote a person or source, use quotation marks for simple quotes, and if you need to use a long quote, look into using the "block quote" commands. (stopping here as I think you can get my principle that we should write this as clearly and concisely as we can, and avoiding any sign of the dreaded "lecture mode") Collect (talk) 18:56, 31 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • It'd probably be a good idea to include something asking if the quotes (specifically long quotes) are really necessary for the article. I've ran into a lot of students who have used long quotes to make up an article. They've cited the quotes, but the result was that the article was overly bogged down with quotes, to the point where about 50-60% was a quote of one type or another. I think that it'd be good to say something like "Prior to adding a quotation, ensure that it would improve Wikipedia's coverage of the topic. If the topic is a person known for several notable phrases, consider adding the quotations to Wikiquote instead. If it is a quote about a topic, try seeing if you can summarize the quotes' contents in order to avoid giving WP:UNDUE weight to any one individual." That might be a bit more confusing, but you can see where I'm going with this. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 06:24, 2 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • Thanks for that! Since this is in print, it will be tough to add a section, but I've rephrased the paragraph to dissuade student editors from using quotations too much. How's this: "It’s rare that you’ll need to use a direct quotation. If you do, be sure to set it off with quotation marks, and cite the source. Longer quotes, up to about six lines, are indented as block quotes and don’t take quotation marks." Eryk (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:03, 2 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Page Two (Interior left)

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Choosing a person to feature
  • Some Wikipedia biographies are short (and will remain so) simply because there aren’t enough reliable sources to expand them. If you want to write about someone, first ensure that there’s lots of unbiased coverage to choose from — preferably corroborated by multiple, quality sources. - When first reading this I saw the first sentence as saying/implying "if it's not very long, don't worry about it", but the second sentence seems to say such short biographies are not ok? This probably isn't a big deal, but it may help to reword along these lines (my wording is not ideal by any means, though):
  • If you want to write about someone, first ensure that there’s lots of unbiased coverage to choose from — preferably corroborated by multiple, quality sources. Conducting a literature search before writing saves time in the long run as it prevents you from putting work into an article just to discover the sources available don't give you enough for more than just a few paragraphs." --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:00, 25 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Starting a new biography article
  • "'worthy of notice' or 'note'– that is, 'remarkable' or 'significant, interesting, or unusual enough to deserve attention or to be recorded' within Wikipedia as a written account of that person's life." - May be clearer if paraphrased in terms of sources. Going with these several more or less synonymous terms still may lead to a commonsense interpretation of notability rather than the very particular meaning it has on Wikipedia. Although WP:BIO is more specific to people and certainly the best place to link them to, when trying to explain the concept of notability to someone unfamiliar with the concept, I tend to go with a version of the WP:GNG (which WP:BIO is based on, more or less): notability means the subject has received significant coverage over a period of time in multiple reliable sources independent of the subject. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:00, 25 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • "more than one reliable source" - I'd probably say "more than a couple", as a subject for which you can only find two sources is really, really pushing it and we don't know the extent to which they'll interpret "reliable source" appropriately --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:00, 25 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Maybe this is a good place to point to other places to help other than BIO? Maybe content experts, or maybe the Tearoom/Help desk. Notability is, of course, a big source of problems for student work. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:00, 25 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't know where to request this, but you may want to include a section somewhere about using the draftspace or userspace as a starting point for articles. There have been a lot and I stress a lot of student articles that were started in the mainspace but were deleted because they did not meet notability guidelines and/or contained something that would cause someone to nominate it for deletion. (I've moved a lot of student pages to the draftspace to keep them from getting speedied or nominated for AfD.) Not all students know to tag their work as a student project, so giving them a recommendation to start in the user/draft spaces would be a really good idea. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 06:29, 2 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Expanding an existing biography article
Writing biographies of living people
  • "There are special considerations to determine if information..." In this section we refer to peer-reviewed authors. I think we're looking for a simple english explanation of what makes a source reliable, but the term 'peer reviewed' is not what we want. Also I'm not sure the 'consider the author' section is too distinct from 'consider the source' Adam (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:57, 21 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • I would recommend removing the 'consider the author' section and replacing it with a clear reformulation of BLP's main restriction: no unsourced or poorly sourced statements about living people. Perhaps might be worthwhile to justify it by noting that people can be hurt by information included in their wikipedia page. Adam (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:57, 21 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Keep it neutral

I'll take another pass today, but that's what I've got so far. Adam (Wiki Ed) (talk) 15:57, 21 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Page Three (Interior right)

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Writing your biography article
What is the lead section? (pullout box)
Organizing your article
  • I'm a little uncomfortable with this suggested list of sections. I would have to think that if we give this to a student, many of them are going to start with these sections and fill them in the best they can. Awards and honors is fine if someone has received multiple/significant awards and honors, but shouldn't be a default section. A section about credentials/degrees is not typical in my experience, and I think that except for, say, very significant historical academics, it would be more likely to be taken as a sign of promotion. (If these are suggested on some MOS page, please let me know so I can start a talk page thread when I finish work :) ). If we're going to list possible sections, we should qualify them or be clear that these don't always make sense. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:16, 25 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Page Four (Back Cover)

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