User talk:Tivelmat
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[edit]Hi Tivelmat! I noticed your contributions and wanted to welcome you to the Wikipedia community. I hope you like it here and decide to stay.
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Happy editing! -- Patar knight - chat/contributions 03:39, 17 November 2025 (UTC)
November 2025
[edit]
Hello, I'm Patar knight. I noticed that you have been adding short descriptions to articles. However, the short descriptions you added are too long to be effective, such as at Charles James Jackson. The guideline is that short descriptions should ideally be under 40 characters long, and no longer than needed. For more information, see the short description guidelines. If you have any questions, please let me know. Thank you. -- Patar knight - chat/contributions 03:39, 17 November 2025 (UTC)
Hello. Thank you for your contributions to Wikipedia. I noticed that one or more recent edits you made did not have an edit summary. Collaboration among editors is fundamental to Wikipedia, and every edit should be explained by a clear edit summary, or by discussion on the talk page. Please use the edit summary field to explain your reasoning for an edit and/or to describe what it changes. Summaries save time for other editors and reduce the chances that your edit will be misunderstood. For some edits, an adequate summary may be quite brief.
The edit summary field looks like this:
Edit summary (Briefly describe your changes)
or in the visual editor:
Edit summary (Briefly describe your changes)
Please provide an edit summary for every edit you make. When logged in to your Wikipedia account, you can give yourself a reminder by setting Preferences → Editing → 
Prompt me when entering a blank edit summary (or the default undo summary), and then click the "Save" button.
Thanks! -- Patar knight - chat/contributions 19:19, 21 November 2025 (UTC)
Birth dates in short descriptions
[edit]Hi, Tivelmat. I noticed that you added birth dates to the short description of many biographies of living persons. Dates are generally useful context for "biographies of non-living people, articles on specific publications, and dated historical events" (as indicated by WP:SDDATES). But for biographies of living persons, there is no guideline advising whether short descriptions should include a birth date. The short description have to be very concise, and birth dates usually don't really help readers understand who the person is. Birth dates are rarely useful for disambiguation (even when disambiguation is needed, "British actor" is e.g. more useful than "(born 1987)"), and the birth date is often repeated anyway in the first sentence and the infobox. So I believe they should be omitted, especially when we don't have information about the exact year or when it makes the short description too long. What do you think? Alenoach (talk) 07:03, 21 November 2025 (UTC)
- The SD would never include the full birth date, just the year. For living people, the SD should generally start with a nationality and profession or why the person is notable. The SD would then end with "... (born 1999)". Of course, this assumes that we have a known birth year and it is reasonably sourced. There is always a trade-off with including details, since a SD should still be short — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 13:21, 21 November 2025 (UTC)
- Thanks for your answer. When I said "birth date", I actually meant "birth year". Since there is no official guideline on whether to include it for BLPs (biographies of living persons), the question is probably about whether it's sufficiently useful for readers to warrant being in the short description of BLPs. But since short descriptions have to be very concise, it seems to me that birth years aren't sufficiently essential to be there for BLPs. That can be debated of course. I believe the main argument from people in favor of birth years in BLPs is that it's useful for disambiguating between multiple people with the same name among the search results. But I'm skeptical of this: most often disambiguation isn't needed; readers rarely know the birth year of the person they're searching; the image and description of the role are often more informative and better for disambiguation; and worst case scenario one would just have to open the article. Plus, the birth year is already at the beginning of the first sentence, so having it in the short description feels redundant to me. Birth years can give a sense of the age of the person, but short description should only contain essential information. Alenoach (talk) 21:11, 21 November 2025 (UTC)
- WP:SDDATES does generally recommend birth year for BLPs if it's properly sourced, outside of certain officeholders. At a glance, they allow readers to quickly assess if something is a BLP if the birth year is recent enough, since not having any years could mean either dead or alive. WP:SDLENGTH isn't a hard rule and as long as the core information is in the first 40 characters, adding a "(born XXXX)" is only 11 characters of which the last is perfectly fine to cut off. -- Patar knight - chat/contributions 08:17, 22 November 2025 (UTC)
- WP:SDDATES says that biographies of non-living people generally benefit from dates (which I totally agree with). It intentionally does not say biographies in general. I guess you refer to the last sentence:
- "Care should be taken when the biographies of living persons (BLP) policy applies: birthdates for living people should not be included unless sourced within the article."
- It does not say that if sourced, birth years should be included, it just sets an additional constraint on respecting BLP policies: you may or may not add birth years, but if you do, it has to be sourced, as per BLP policies. That's how I interpret it. Alenoach (talk) 16:30, 22 November 2025 (UTC)
- Understood. I will refrain from adding the birth year unless it is supported by reliable, published sources. Tivelmat (talk) 19:15, 23 November 2025 (UTC)
- WP:SDDATES does generally recommend birth year for BLPs if it's properly sourced, outside of certain officeholders. At a glance, they allow readers to quickly assess if something is a BLP if the birth year is recent enough, since not having any years could mean either dead or alive. WP:SDLENGTH isn't a hard rule and as long as the core information is in the first 40 characters, adding a "(born XXXX)" is only 11 characters of which the last is perfectly fine to cut off. -- Patar knight - chat/contributions 08:17, 22 November 2025 (UTC)
- Thanks for your answer. When I said "birth date", I actually meant "birth year". Since there is no official guideline on whether to include it for BLPs (biographies of living persons), the question is probably about whether it's sufficiently useful for readers to warrant being in the short description of BLPs. But since short descriptions have to be very concise, it seems to me that birth years aren't sufficiently essential to be there for BLPs. That can be debated of course. I believe the main argument from people in favor of birth years in BLPs is that it's useful for disambiguating between multiple people with the same name among the search results. But I'm skeptical of this: most often disambiguation isn't needed; readers rarely know the birth year of the person they're searching; the image and description of the role are often more informative and better for disambiguation; and worst case scenario one would just have to open the article. Plus, the birth year is already at the beginning of the first sentence, so having it in the short description feels redundant to me. Birth years can give a sense of the age of the person, but short description should only contain essential information. Alenoach (talk) 21:11, 21 November 2025 (UTC)
Question re Short description templates
[edit]In passing ... Why do you start by adding a blank short description template? Is this due to the specific app or editor that you use? — GhostInTheMachine talk to me 13:24, 21 November 2025 (UTC)