On 24 March 2012 11:25, Carcharoth <carcharot...@googlemail.com> wrote: > On Sat, Mar 24, 2012 at 9:22 AM, Charles Matthews > <charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com> wrote: > >> *We are currently lousy at judging "ephemeral notability", and issues >> around it seem to be classic time-sinks. There is a bigger picture here, >> and digging around in older biographical dictionaries can help to explain >> what is going on. > > This is an excellent point (along with the rest of the posts from > Charles and Andreas). I was thinking explicitly of the sense you get > of what constitutes a 'proper' biography when reading how it was done > in the past (especially the 19th-century Dictionary of National > Biography and the 2004 update/expansion/revision of that, the ODNB). > If you spend your time reading and looking at numerous biographies > across a wide range of subjects (as I do, both on Wikipedia and > elsewhere, and as Charles does), then you get a good sense of what > sources are used for a genuine biography, and what sources are > features of more ephemeral biographies. > > Other biographical sources I'm familiar with include the Australian > and Canadian dictionaries of national biography, the Biographical > Memoirs of the Fellows of the Royal Society journal, the similar > publication in the USA, produced by (I think) the National Academy of > Sciences for their members, and the Dictionary of Scientific > Biography. > > The point about Wikipedia (for BLPs) being ahead of the proper sources > to use is another excellent one. There is a natural progression to > biographical sources that (for obvious reasons) parallels the > subject's life. People record their own lives at first (diaries, > letters, CVs and the like), and then gradually others start to write > about that person and you get short descriptions such as author and > contributor biographies, and short news items. Then, as someone > becomes more prominent, you get more considered material, such as > interviews, feature articles, and so on. Very prominent people get > official and official biographers that document that person's life > (e.g. US Presidents and some other politicians). Towards the end of > someone's career, you may get tribute articles and the like. Then, > when the person dies, you get obituaries, and then (possibly) entries > in the histories relevant to that person. Very prominent people get > entire books written about them. Others get less. > > If Wikipedia jumps into that natural progression too early, and tries > to establish, or maintain, a biography before there are sources to > support one, the result can be a mess. Even if done carefully, it can > still be a problem. I mentioned the example of Robert E. M. Hedges, > who's article I've just been updating. If I hadn't updated that > article, it likely would have remained without an update until more > material was published. In all four cases I've given as examples of > BLPs that I've created or edited extensively, I've felt uncomfortable > at times that I was doing what should, properly, be left until the > right moment for those people's colleagues and peers to do - write > that person's life story (in some ways, the difference between an > authorised and unauthorised biography). That is why it is important to > have the foundation of a proper biographical source to build on, not > go too far, and to be clear that BLPs are always a work in progress, > waiting for the definitive accounts to be written by others (and then > summarised and incorporated into the Wikipedia article). > > There are other examples, but I'll leave those for another time. > > Carcharoth >
Zee problem with this standard is that it would preclude having an article on the person currently running mali (admittedly the article isn't up to much but I think it could be argued that we should at least try). -- geni _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
