WikiQueer:Persondata

"WQ:PERSON" redirects here. For the guideline about grammatical person, see WQ:TONE.

Persondata is a special set of metadata that can and should be added to biographical articles (only). It consists of standardized data fields with basic information about the biographee (name, birth and death days, and places of birth and death) that, unlike conventional WikiQueer content, can be automatically extracted and processed by cataloging tools and then used for a variety of purposes, such as providing advanced search capabilities, statistical analysis, automated categorization, and birthday lists.

Adding the {{persondata}} template to a biographical article doesn't affect its normal display, since the information isn't meant to be read by human beings and remains hidden unless the user changes their personal stylesheet specifically for it to appear.

Motivation

Without uniform formatting, it is very difficult to automatically extract useful information from biographical articles. It is also impossible to automatically alphabetize all the biographical articles since the titles typically begin with the person's first name. By adding standardized metadata to such articles, we can facilitate the creation of new applications for WikiQueer content, such as custom search applications, etc. Hopefully, this will be the first of many steps towards enriching WikiQueer with semantic content.

Viewing persondata

A screenshot showing Persondata from Mahatma Gandhi

By default, persondata is invisible to normal users. In order to make persondata visible, you must edit your user stylesheet as explained below, causing persondatas to be always visible.

To make persondatas permanently visible, first make sure you are logged in. Then edit (or create) a page at Special:Mypage/monobook.css and add the following line:

table.persondata {display:table !important;}

or, if you use Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 or earlier:

table.persondata {display:block !important;}

Tip: After saving monobook.css, you must empty the browser cache to see the changes: Mozilla/Firefox (Windows): Ctrl-Shift-R; Mozilla/Firefox/Camino (Mac): Cmd-Shift-R; Internet Explorer (Windows): Ctrl-F5; Opera (all): F5; Safari (Mac): Cmd-R; Konqueror (Linux): Ctrl-R. Some Firefox (Linux) users report that both lines must be present in their monobook.css (though they can probably be simplified to table.persondata {display:block table !important;}), and users who switch between browsers and platforms may need to do likewise.

If you can see a block with data about Ferdinand Magellan between this paragraph and the next, you have successfully made persondata visible:

Otherwise this paragraph will follow direct below the previous one.

To make the persondata box invisible again, simply remove the CSS line provided above from your user stylesheet.

Warning: Since persondatas are by default invisible, editors rarely plan for them when designing the layout of an article, which means that making them visible might cause some article bottoms to look strange for you. For the same reason, if you have persondatas visible while editing and previewing, remember that most people don't, so planning the layout to accommodate it might cause them to find a strange-looking article bottom. Thus, take care to edit from the perspective of the majority. It is best to follow the persondata placement advice given on this page.

Using the template

Position

To use the {{Persondata}} template, copy the wikitext below to the end of a biographical article and fill in the parameters manually. If you add the template manually, place it just before the categories and interlanguage links. {{DEFAULTSORT:Sort key}} is not a real template but a direct part of categorization, and therefore should be located between persondata and categories. The same applies to the {{Lifetime}} template, which implements DEFAULTSORT.

{{Persondata         <!-- Metadata: see [[WikiQueer:Persondata]] -->
|NAME              = 
|ALTERNATIVE NAMES = 
|SHORT DESCRIPTION = 
|DATE OF BIRTH     = 
|PLACE OF BIRTH    = 
|DATE OF DEATH     = 
|PLACE OF DEATH    = 
}}                   <!-- Goes above DEFAULTSORT/Categories -->

Next, fill out the data fields. Make sure the name is entered with the surname first (the same way you would with a category listing). Do not delete empty data fields, for example, if a person is still alive, you'll leave the date and place of death blank. Here is an example of a properly filled out template:

{{Persondata         <!-- Metadata: see [[WikiQueer:Persondata]] -->
|NAME              = Magellan, Ferdinand
|ALTERNATIVE NAMES = Magalhães, Fernão de (Portuguese); Magallanes, Fernando de (Spanish)
|SHORT DESCRIPTION = Sea explorer
|DATE OF BIRTH     = Early 1480
|PLACE OF BIRTH    = [[Sabrosa, Portugal]]
|DATE OF DEATH     = 27 April 1521
|PLACE OF DEATH    = [[Mactan Island]], [[Cebu]], [[Philippines]]
}}                   <!-- Goes above DEFAULTSORT/Categories -->

Parameters

The parameters NAME, ALTERNATIVE NAMES, SHORT DESCRIPTION, DATE OF BIRTH, PLACE OF BIRTH, DATE OF DEATH, and PLACE OF DEATH are used to construct a persondata record. These fields can possibly be extended in the future, and currently it isn't necessary to provide wikilinks in them; however, these might be useful in some future application, so feel free to add them to locations if you wish.

Please follow these general guidelines when filling these fields:

Name, alternative names and titles

When specifying the person's |NAME=, use the following format: Family Name, Given Name Middle Names, title. For most cases this will be straightforward. For example, "George Walker Bush" becomes "Bush, George Walker". Family-name-first names, common in Asia, do not take a comma: "Ho Chi Minh" is specified in this parameter as "Ho Chi Minh". In some cases, however, there may be ambiguity about a person's surname. When in doubt, format the name according to how you would expect it to be alphabetized. For example, Ludwig van Beethoven would be alphabetized under "Beethoven", while Townes Van Zandt would be alphabetized under "Van Zandt". Also please note that some multi-part family names (e.g. commonly in Spanish) may appear to be a middle name and family name to a native English speaker. If you're not sure, ask someone familiar with the subject how they would alphabetize the name or consult a cataloging guide such as the AACR2. For European names with "van/Van", "del/Del", etc., the most common Continental European practice is to alphabetize by the significant part of the name (e.g. "Zandt", "Toro"), while the typical UK, North American, Australian and New Zealand practice is to alphabetize by the entire surname (e.g. "Van Zandt", "del Toro"). Names that do not include a family name should be given as-is, e.g. "Brutus of Troy", not treated as if they had a family name, e.g. not "Troy, Brutus of".

It is usually a good idea to list as much of a person's name as possible in the name field to avoid confusion with similar names. Unless it is part of a title of nobility, do not include |TITLE=; i.e., do not include honorifics such as "Dr.", "Professor", or "PhD".

The optional |ALTERNATIVE NAMES= field is used to list other common (usually international) forms of the person name, but not simply abbreviated versions of the full name. It follows a similar pattern to the |NAME= field, but with added information, adding as many semicolon-separated names as needed to fully identify the person:

|ALTERNATIVE NAMES=Alternative Name1 (language); Alternative Name2 (language); Alternative Name3 (pen/stage/etc. name)

An alternative name in another language should not be added unless the subject has a particular connection with that language (e.g., the Japanese romaji for Oprah Winfrey is not important metadata for her article on the English-language WikiQueer, while the Italian and Spanish for Christopher Columbus definitely are, since "Christopher Columbus" is simply an English translation of them).

Short description

A small description of the person. Try to be concise but informative enough so that anyone reading this entry in a table will roughly know who the person is/was or does/did. The first letter of this should be capitalized, but non-proper nouns should not otherwise be capitalized, e.g. |SHORT DESCRIPTION=Rock musician not |SHORT DESCRIPTION=Rock Musician. If the article name is disambiguated, or a disambiguation redirects to it, the disambiguation term/phrase is usually a good selection for this persondata parameter; e.g., |SHORT DESCRIPTION=Cyclist and |SHORT DESCRIPTION=Billiards player are good bets for Eddy Merckx (cyclist) and Eddy Merckx (billiards player), respectively. An exception is when the disambiguation is a description of a field instead of an occupation/role (e.g. Connie Mack (baseball), whose article details suggest |SHORT DESCRIPTION=Baseball manager and team owner).

Dates of birth and death

Follow the Manual of Style guidelines on whether to use DD Month YYYY format or the Month DD, YYYY style when filling the |DATE OF BIRTH= and |DATE OF DEATH= fields, and do not link the date.

Do not use templates within these fields, as they can interfere with data extraction. Abraham Lincoln's birthday, for example, should be listed as February 12, 1809 and not as {{birth date|1809|2|12|mf=y}}.

Places of birth and death

Be specific, but not to the point of listing a street address. Usual formats are City/Village, State/Province, Country; or City/Village, country; or State/Province, Country; etc. You can link to articles if you wish, and use pipes to produce a reasonable result, but try to be concise. For example, there's no need to link "Mount Juliet, Tennessee" as "[[Mount Juliet, Tennessee|Mount Juliet]], [[Tennessee]]" (resulting in "Mount Juliet, Tennessee") when "[[Mount Juliet, Tennessee]]" ("Mount Juliet, Tennessee") is available. If a concise redirect of this sort does not exist, feel free to create it.

Examples

Fieldname	Examples
NAME	Magellan, Ferdinand Bush, George Walker Beethoven, Ludwig van Van Zandt, Townes Brutus of Troy King, Martin Luther, Jr. Wainwright, Loudon, III John Paul II, Pope Elizabeth II John the Baptist Francis of Assisi, Saint Tokugawa, Ieyasu Fujiwara no Michinaga
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Magalhães, Fernão de (Portuguese); Magallanes, Fernando de (Spanish) Clemens, Samuel Langhorne (real name)
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Sea explorer German philosopher Anarchist writer and publisher 39th President of the United States
DATE OF BIRTH	1480 25 October 1806 October 25, 1806 c. 470 BCE
PLACE OF BIRTH	Sabrosa, Portugal Texas Newark, New Jersey
DATE OF DEATH	27 April 1521 April 27, 1521 January 1945 1421
PLACE OF DEATH	Mactan Island, Cebu, Philippines Mount Juliet, Tennessee Ushuaia, Argentina

Extraction of persondata

From an SQL database

Using an SQL query, the persondata can be filtered from WikiQueer articles stored in a database. As an example, here is an SQL query that can be used to extract persondata:

SELECT
   pages.cur_namespace,
   pages.cur_title,
   SUBSTRING(SUBSTRING(pages.cur_text FROM INSTR(pages.cur_text,'{{Persondata')), 1,
      INSTR(SUBSTRING(pages.cur_text FROM INSTR(pages.cur_text,'{{Persondata')),'}}')+1)
      AS 'Persondata'
FROM cur AS pd
JOIN templatelinks AS tl
   ON pd.cur_namespace = tl.tl_namespace
   AND pd.cur_title = tl.tl_title
JOIN cur AS pages
   ON tl.tl_from = pages.cur_id
   AND pages.cur_namespace = 0
WHERE pd.cur_namespace = 10
AND pd.cur_title = 'Persondata'

In order to be useful, however, the persondata must be further divided into individual data fields.