Help talk:Contents/Purpose

Proposed change on Bios

Currently, the section entitled What the ISFDB Wiki is not includes the following text:

"The ISFDB Wiki is not a place to record author biographies. It's harmless to add biographical information to these pages, but it may be deleted by editors who work on the bibliographies of those authors. Wikipedia is an excellent place for biographies of sf authors, and the ISFDB has a facility for adding a link to the Wikipedia article for each author."

I propose adding a new section Biographies which will say:

"The "Author:" pages of the ISFDB wiki are not for recording biographies of authors. They are for bibliographic notes about the work of the author, and for discussing how that work should be recorded in the ISFDB."

"Wikipedia is an excellent place for biographies of SF authors, and the ISFDB has a facility for adding a link to the Wikipedia article for each author from the authors database page. For those authors who do not have and are not eligible for Wikipedia articles, or whose Wikipedia articles might plausibly be deleted in future, a brief, neutrally-written biographical article can be placed on the page Bio:<name of author>. (Note: Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion have varied over time, and are not always consistantly enforced. In general they demand a certian level of "notability" or "significance", and the existance of secondary reliable sources. Specifically, the notability criteria for biographies say "A person is presumed to be notable if he or she has been the subject of published secondary source material which is reliable, intellectually independent, and independent of the subject. If the depth of coverage is not substantial, then multiple independent sources may be needed to prove notability." and "The person has created, or played a major role in co-creating, a significant or well-known work, or collective body of work, which has been the subject of an independent book or feature-length film, or of multiple independent periodical articles or reviews." among other criteria.) "

I propose changing the What the ISFDB Wiki is not section to read:

"The ISFDB wiki should not be used for posting book reviews, whether favorable, unfavorable, or neutral in tone. It should not be used to publish advertisements or announcements of events, even if SF-related, such as conventions. It should not be used to publish advertisements for books or merchandise. Lists of an author's work ought to be made as entries in the regular database, not as wiki-pages, but such lists may be useful temporarily, while database records are being entered or modified."

Does anyone object to these proposed changes? -DES ^Talk 15:55, 19 June 2008 (UTC)