Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography

This is a WikiProject, an area for focused collaboration among Wikipedians.

Shortcuts: WP:WPBIO WP:BIOG WP:BIOGRAPHY

WikiProject Biography

General information (edit · changes)

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Things you can do (edit)

Write an article
Expand an article about:

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adding references

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Stephen Payne (naval architect) Stephen V. Cameron * Khwaja Muhammad Latif Ansari * Luis Buñuel • Nipo T. Strongheart • Bennett Greenspan • Edward Manville • Jaroslav Nešetřil • Stuart Milk • George M. Stratton • Paul S. Walsh • José Rizal • Joan Pujol Garcia • Lucius Arruntius the Younger • William Bliss Baker • Joe Clifford Faust • Tabitha and Napoleon D'umo • A. R. Rahman • Anna Hazare • Heather O'Rourke • Johnny Bright • Frithjof Tidemand-Johannessen • Frithjof Tidemand-Johannessen • Luigi Facelli

Assess an article

Biography article statistics

This list is generated automatically on alternate nights.
view full worklist

Biography articles by quality and importance
Quality	Importance
Quality	Top	Other	Total
FA	27	1,141	1,168
FL		150	150
A		80	80
GA	36	4,124	4,160
B	74	18,326	18,400
C	64	36,250	36,314
Start	1	341,741	341,742
Stub		714,363	714,363
List		2,959	2,959
Book		743	743
Category		14,241	14,241
Disambig		6,009	6,009
Template		1,173	1,173
NA		3,213	3,213
Assessed	202	1,144,513	1,144,715
Unassessed		124,012	124,012
Total	202	1,268,525	1,268,727
WikiWork factors (?)		ω = 7006620719100000000♠6,207,191		Ω = 5.56

Scope

The Biography WikiProject concerns the creation, development, and organization of Wikipedia's articles about persons (including but not limited to biographies). It includes only articles about individual persons, not about an organization or group or association, unless a substantial section of the article is a biography of a person related to that organization or group. It includes biographies of only real humans; thus, the project does not cover other animals or fictitious persons (such as pseudonyms) or fictional characters. As of 3 April 2015, there are 7006124074800000000♠1,240,748 articles and 7003313100000000000♠3,131 lists within the scope of WikiProject Biography, of which 7003133600000000000♠1,336 are featured and 7003415600000000000♠4,156 are good articles.

Goals

Get this project energized
Build all core biographies to Good Article status, at a minimum
What else?

Newsletter Archives

Check out the newsletter archives!

Announcements

Check out New Article alerts.

Structure[edit]

Tips for writing biographies[edit]

Shortcuts: WP:BTIP WP:B11

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.

Research the available literature to find reliable sources. Read them carefully, taking notes.
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 edit 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.)
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.
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 edit history easy to find.
Add images such as those obtained from Wikimedia Commons, the Images for biographies tool, image list, or by posting a request for an image from other editors.
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.
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".
Keep working on the article. Chances are that other editors 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 editing that you find a bit tiresome. Thus their work will complement rather than compete with your own.
Consider adding a list of works (bibliography, discography, etc.).
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.
Remember, there are 7 billion people in the world. While all of them have their own story, not all of them deserve a Wiki article. See WP:BIO for notability standards.
Relax! and take a break if you reached this point. You deserve it!

Policies[edit]

Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons

Guidelines[edit]

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

Templates[edit]

What to type What it makes What it's for

{{WikiProject Biography}}
Talk

WikiProject Biography

Biography portal

This page is within the scope of WikiProject Biography, a collaborative effort to create, develop and organize Wikipedia's articles about people. All interested editors are invited to join the project and contribute to the discussion. For instructions on how to use this banner, please refer to the documentation.

???

This page does not require a rating 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 edited as part of this Wikiproject. Please see the assessment page for parameters to use in rating articles.

{{Portal|Biography}}
Talk

Biography portal

Shows a standardized link to the Biography portal, and may be suitable for the "See also" sections of biographies.

{{User WPBiography}}
Talk

	This user is a member of WikiProject Biography.

This can be placed on your user page to show that you are a part of this Wikiproject.

Miscellaneous templates

Stubs

People stubs

Navigate to this category to browse for the appropriate stub

Infoboxes

Category:People infobox templates • List of Infoboxes

Navigate to this category to browse for the appropriate infobox

Project organization[edit]

Members[edit]

Generally see Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/Members

Admin members[edit]

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

23skidoo (talk · contribs)
AnonEMouse (talk · contribs) - BLP issues; adult film performers; and others as the mood strikes me
Avraham (talk · contribs)
Capitalistroadster (talk · contribs)
Catfish Jim and the soapdish (talk · contribs)
Cbrown1023 (talk · contribs)
Dank (talk · contribs)
Deiz (talk · contribs)
Drilnoth (talk · contribs) • I mainly just do smaller stuff in the course of my other editing
Dumelow (talk · contribs) I work mainly on biographies of civil engineers
FloNight (talk · contribs) Interested in WP:BLP issues. Writing biographies for Wikipedia:WikiProject Kentucky, mostly about people in civil war and politicians.
Ganeshk (talk · contribs)
Glen_S (talk · contribs)
Greeves (talk · contribs)
Jennavecia (talk · contribs) - In the area of BLPs.
John Carter (talk · contribs)
Johntex (talk · contribs)
Jreferee (talk · contribs) - I've written a bunch of bios and have a soft spot for those people who edit their own biography. Any problems in that area or other biography area, please contact me.
Kaldari (talk · contribs)
Kanonkas (talk · contribs) I am giving biographies files. I'm trying to edit 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.
kingboyk (talk · contribs)
MichaelQSchmidt (talk · contribs)
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.
Philosopher (talk · contribs) - Politics and Government workgroup.
Plange (talk · contribs)
Sandstein (talk · contribs) — I'm working my way through a biographical lexicon of jurists and should be done in, say, 2012.
Scimitar (talk · contribs) - I was the principal editor 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.
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.
SoothingR (talk · contribs)
TKD (talk · contribs) — My work in modern video gaming and science fiction popular culture has led me to work intermittently on related biographies.
UkPaolo (talk · contribs)
Vaoverland (talk · contribs) - I mostly work with history, geography and transportation articles related to Virginia and West Virginia, willing to help other project editors with moves, etc., try to avoid controversy, would rather work on content. aka Mark in Historic Triangle of Virginia
VegaDark (talk · contribs)
Wizardman (talk · contribs) - General improvement, lots of assessing and tag adding.
Xdamr (talk · contribs) mostly South African politicians and other notables, 1850-1950.
Yannismarou (talk · contribs)

Departments[edit]

Assessment[edit]

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[edit]

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[edit]

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[edit]

5 random unreferenced BLPs, updated daily: Clarisse Agbegnenou | Edward Rubenstein | Wusu Sannoh | Jim Osborne (American football) | Nejla Y. Yatkin

Inactive departments[edit]

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 recruitment of new members and production of newsletters.

Work groups[edit]

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

Work groups are informal groups of editors 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

Resources[edit]

Project templates[edit]

{{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[edit]

The Biography Barnstar - The Biography Barnstar can be awarded to editors who make significant or outstanding contributions to Wikipedia's biography-related articles.
The BLP Barnstar - The BLP Barnstar is used to recognize editors 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 editors 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.