Idea: place or project where managers can ask for a written biography as long as they provide sources

Question

A lot of profile managers say they are not good in writing biographies. A part of them do want them.  Is it an idea  to start a group/place/project/whatever where someone who wants a well written biiography can ask for it.... as long as they provide the (links to the) sources someone else could write the life stories. I have been doing it in the week challenges this january. Something for the bio builders??

Answer 1

There is a Maintenance Category for Needs Biography, plus sub-categories for different Projects that Need Biographies.

There are hundred of profiles in the main category.

Categories: Maintenance Categories

This category is for profiles that have sources and information, but need the story put into sentences. They may also need to be formatted according to wiki style guidelines. Simple sentences are ok.

Comments

I didn't know but I have taken a look at quite few of them  in different sub categories.

Most of them lack sources so you can't just write a biography. It's like people thought "oh, no sources and no biography, just put a category up for them both"

It would be better if people just added lack sources and left out the lack biography.. You need the first to write the second. And if they just added sources they could remove  the "unsourced" category and add the "need biography"

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Eef, if they lack sources, then someone added them to the category without understanding its purpose. As Shirley said, that category is supposed to be for profiles that have a lot of sources and are ready for at least a first pass on a narrative biography.

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I do understand that Joyce. But if almost no one uses the instrument as it is meant to be used something should be done about it. Otherwise everyone having a look at them learns from the wrong example.

Maybe a kind of overhaul for the category so the profiles in it are split in ones without sources (removing the category need biography and only keeping the "need sources") and the ones with sources but only lacking a biography

...... or another solution.

I did the first 50 or so profiles in the category for the Netherlands. Only 3 of them are left. Letters A-F done.

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There is also a gap between unsourced and sufficiently sourced to write a good biography. Needs more sources.

For the Dutch ones, I think a lot may have recently had both unsourced and needs biography added to them. I noticed a couple this week and improved them. Thanks for fixing the ones you did, Eef.

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The Needs_More_Records category was designed for profiles that can't be categorized as Unsourced, but still need more sourcing. Since there is no central watchdog on profiles added to these maintenance categories, I think all we can do as individuals is fix the mis-categorized profiles as we find them. That probably could be best managed by each project for the profiles in regions it covers, perhaps with a volunteer or team focused on profile improvement.