Biography Template‑class

This template 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.BiographyWikipedia:WikiProject BiographyTemplate:WikiProject Biographybiography articles Template This template does not require a rating on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.

This template calls {{BLP unsourced}}, which places articles into Category:All unreferenced BLPs, so this template also places articles into that category. This is not ideal in my opinion. Browsing through the related changes of Category:All unreferenced BLPs, I saw the articles Carrie Underwood and Jessica Biel, articles with multiple sources. Category sorting can be turned off using methods outlined in Category:Category suppression-supporting templates. But perhaps a category called Category:All BLPs with unreferenced sections should be created, which this template would put articles into. I suggest the code of {{BLP unsourced}} be pasted here and modified to do so. --Pixelface (talk) 05:56, 11 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Alternatively we could use {{BLP sources}} categorization. Rich Farmbrough, 14:37 11 April 2009 (UTC).

Yeah, I think Category:BLP articles lacking sources would be okay. --Pixelface (talk) 04:11, 12 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

So will this suggested change of categorisation happen soon please? I've just been totally confused by the highly-sourced article Robin Shroot coming up as unreferenced BLP, finally worked out it came down to a stats table which I'd tagged as {{unreferencedsection}} being changed by a bot to {{BLP unsourced section}} thus putting the article into Category:All unreferenced BLPs. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 10:32, 7 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed with all of the above, so changed. Fram (talk) 07:29, 7 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've now undone this change, as per the latter part of talk. This template is for otherwise non-biographical articles which have a section which is a biography. That section must be sourced, per BLP, and if it is not then the general unreferenced BLP category is the correct one. This template should not be used simple to tag sections of a BLP which are unreferenced. Furthermore the template name plainly makes this a derivative of {{BLP unsourced}}, and that alone should have nixed the above change. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) - talk 20:26, 12 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Please revert the latest change. Chris, if this template was only used on non BLP items I'd agree, but it is used on 100s of partially referenced BLPs. The-Pope (talk) 00:42, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The those uses should be corrected. It was incorrect to alter the template in the first place because of misuse; this is not just the BLP equivalent of {{refimprove section}} as it deals with biographical sections and not just sections of biographies. Nevertheless I've undone this (temporarily) until the kinks are sorted out. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) - talk 06:43, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for reverting and discussing. This might be the impetus for a complete review of the tagging/cleanup/categorisation system... but I'm not sure which forum should host it! I never thought that this was meant to be used on non-BLP articles with a BLP section. Makes some sense, I guess, but I always thought that it was to be used when an otherwise referenced BLP had a section that was completely unreferenced - and if you look at the 1000 uses of this template, it seems like most people who have placed the tag think like me, not you. And I can't see any advice or usage guidelines anyway to tell editors how to use it. Do we need a new cat for unreferenced BLP sections of non-BLP articles? I think the concept of using

• {{cn}} to highlight a couple of sentences/paragraphs,
• {{BLP unsourced section}} for a whole BLP section that is unreferenced when the remainder of the article is referenced (and hence belongs in the same cat as {{BLP sources}},
• {{BLP sources}} for when it has some, but not enough and
• {{BLP unsourced}} for when it has no refs at all

with {{Primary sources}}, {{No footnotes}}, {{BLP IMDb refimprove}} and other similar more specific tags as appropriate, makes sense to me, but probably does miss out the "unreferenced BLP section of non-BLP articles" portion of the pie. And lets not even mention about whether band articles, articles on positions (Prime minister of Foo) or other "almost-BLPs" are BLPs or not! The-Pope (talk) 12:52, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Almost nobody uses this template to label sections of a non-BLP which relate to living people. In fact I can give you a complete list of all mainspace pages using this template that aren't in Category:Living people: Agnes_of_God, Bereza_Kartuska_prison, Catupecu_Machu, Egypt men's national handball team, Grand_Saline_High_School, Kapampangan_people, List_of_Jewish_American_politicians, Martina_Navratilova_career_statistics, Phillips,_Craig_and_Dean, Stratford-upon-Avon_High_School, The_Real_Housewives_of_New_Jersey, Tom_Robinson_Band, United_World_College_of_South_East_Asia and Willowridge_High_School_(Houston). Miscategorising over a thousand articles in order to correctly categorise fifteen is a very bad idea. If you want a template to label unreferenced sections of non-BLP pages which relate to living people then I suggest you create a new template. Hut 8.5 13:44, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Won't comment on the whole discussion but I feel strongly that {{BLP unsourced section}} belongs in {{BLP sources}} not {{BLP unsourced}}. If someone is tagging a particular section there must be sources in other sections. J04n(talk page) 15:30, 13 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Previously, the template read, "This biographical section of a needs additional citations. . ." which made no sense. As far as I could tell there weren't any parameters that would make it make sense, so I just changed to "section of an article," which seemed to be what the original author had in mind. If that's wrong, or if there were parameters that are now broken, please change accordingly. Chick Bowen 19:56, 25 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If this template is called unsoruced section then the tag should say: This biographical section of an article does not cite any references or sources. Mattg82 (talk) 02:10, 14 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Change wording[edit]

The wording of this template is wrong. Unsourced means there are no sources, not that "additional" sources are needed. At the moment, it says exactly the same thing as {{BLP sources section}}.

The wording should therefore be changed as follows:

This biographical section of an article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.

Can someone please make the change? Thanks.--Bbb23 (talk) 20:56, 3 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I see this was first brought up in 2010, so I have merged these two sections. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 00:41, 20 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The situation seems to be as follows:

• We want the wording of {{BLP unsourced}}.
• We want the categorisation of {{BLP sources}} (because an unsourced section does not imply an unsourced article, so it is not appropriate to categorise in "Unreferenced BLPs")

Proposed coding is now in the /sandbox. Comments invited. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 00:54, 20 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for helping out. It doesn't track my proposed language (I believed I based it on {{Refimprove section}}), but it does track {{BLP unsourced}}, which is fine.--Bbb23 (talk) 01:03, 20 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Okay. I'll let this proposal sit for a day or two in case anyone else has a comment. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 01:13, 20 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Now  deployed — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:40, 29 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Because that this template is only for Living People, how about when you add this template, it also adds Category:Living People. ~~EBE123~~ ^talk_Contribs 14:08, 10 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

See WP:CAT#Categoization using templates. Due to the undiscoverability of editing categories which are added via template transclusion they are discouraged at present. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work) - talk 13:40, 13 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Please add

|small=left

just below the "|subst=" line to use the section-type template style, per discussion at Template talk:unreferenced section

70.24.251.71 (talk) 05:54, 13 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Not done: I tried that in a test page and it did not seem to work. Could you have a look? Thanks, Celestra (talk) 15:18, 13 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like I missed a step, {{BLP sources}} is missing the param acceptor. I'll request that change presently. 70.24.251.71 (talk) 15:56, 13 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, editrequest filed at template talk:BLP sources, once that is done, then this change should work. 70.24.251.71 (talk) 15:58, 13 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, this is what it will look like:

Largest cities or towns of [[{{{country}}}]] Source?
Rank	City name	[[Administrative divisions of {{{country}}}|Administrative division]]	Pop.
1	[[{{{city_1}}}]]	[[{{{div_1}}}]]	{{{pop_1}}}
2	[[{{{city_2}}}]]	[[{{{div_2}}}]]	{{{pop_2}}}
3	[[{{{city_3}}}]]	[[{{{div_3}}}]]	{{{pop_3}}}
4	[[{{{city_4}}}]]	[[{{{div_4}}}]]	{{{pop_4}}}
5	[[{{{city_5}}}]]	[[{{{div_5}}}]]	{{{pop_5}}}
6	[[{{{city_6}}}]]	[[{{{div_6}}}]]	{{{pop_6}}}
7	[[{{{city_7}}}]]	[[{{{div_7}}}]]	{{{pop_7}}}
8	[[{{{city_8}}}]]	[[{{{div_8}}}]]	{{{pop_8}}}
9	[[{{{city_9}}}]]	[[{{{div_9}}}]]	{{{pop_9}}}
10	[[{{{city_10}}}]]	[[{{{div_10}}}]]	{{{pop_10}}}

, and with a single indent:

Largest cities or towns of [[{{{country}}}]] Source?
Rank	City name	[[Administrative divisions of {{{country}}}|Administrative division]]	Pop.
1	[[{{{city_1}}}]]	[[{{{div_1}}}]]	{{{pop_1}}}
2	[[{{{city_2}}}]]	[[{{{div_2}}}]]	{{{pop_2}}}
3	[[{{{city_3}}}]]	[[{{{div_3}}}]]	{{{pop_3}}}
4	[[{{{city_4}}}]]	[[{{{div_4}}}]]	{{{pop_4}}}
5	[[{{{city_5}}}]]	[[{{{div_5}}}]]	{{{pop_5}}}
6	[[{{{city_6}}}]]	[[{{{div_6}}}]]	{{{pop_6}}}
7	[[{{{city_7}}}]]	[[{{{div_7}}}]]	{{{pop_7}}}
8	[[{{{city_8}}}]]	[[{{{div_8}}}]]	{{{pop_8}}}
9	[[{{{city_9}}}]]	[[{{{div_9}}}]]	{{{pop_9}}}
10	[[{{{city_10}}}]]	[[{{{div_10}}}]]	{{{pop_10}}}

Is that what you're looking for? Celestra (talk) 04:12, 14 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the small text and box at the left side.

70.49.126.147 (talk) 05:07, 14 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The edit request at template talk:BLP sources was declined. You may want to present your argument there and see if you can establish a consensus. Celestra (talk) 14:24, 15 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

{{BLP unsourced}} says:

"Contentious material about living people that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately."

while this template, {{BLP unsourced section}}, includes these extra words:

"Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful."

I suggest that the two templates are harmonised by removing the words "especially if potentially libelous or harmful", which are confusing and contradictory. The word "especially" implies that there are other circumstances in which such material might not have to be removed immediately. This contradicts and undermines the assertion in bold, which appears not to be intended to admit any exceptions. (At the same time we might want to harmonise the "people"/"persons" difference too, though that one hardly matters.) 86.179.7.122 (talk) 00:53, 20 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Should this article be used only on biographies of living people, or on all articles where BLP applies? In other words, BLP applies to people recently deceased and musical ensembles. Should this template (and {{BLP unsourced}}, {{BLP sources}} and {{BLP sources secion}}) apply to articles about the recently deceased and musical ensembles or should the equivalent generic template be applied instead? 208.81.212.224 (talk) 00:48, 15 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Template:BLP unsourced section has been listed at Templates for discussion (nomination), but it was protected, so it could not be tagged. Please add:

{{subst:tfm|help=off|1=Unreferenced section}}

to the top of the page to complete the nomination. Thank you. 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 21:25, 4 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

 Done. P.I. Ellsworth - ed. ^put'r there 06:14, 5 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]