Wikipedia talk:Autobiography

Misleading advice

If your life and achievements are verifiable and genuinely notable, someone else will probably create an article about you sooner or later. Er, no; there are more notable living people without articles than with them. I would certainly not give this advice to, say, an Algerian pop singer who peaked in popularity in the 90s. Mach61 (talk) 18:45, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

It's a bit of a hollow, unverifiable claim to make, and I think it should be worded another way. However, to be blunt—the point of the advice is to dissuade people from making autobiographies, because most autobiographies are bad. Any rewording has to somehow maintain the firm tone and intent, or else it's mostly a useless verbiage in the context of this page. Remsense留 18:48, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

Merge

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

I propose to merge this page into Wikipedia:FAQ/Article subjects, and to make the various shortcuts point to that page.

My reasons for doing so are several: the content is duplicative; it is often not clear which page should be recommended to enquirers at help desks; it is confusing for people searching for such pages to find so many variants; and it will reduce the maintenance overhead.

Rather than merging in the other direction, I would keep the "FAQ/Article subjects" title, as it is part of a series; it also applies to people wanting to write about their company or organisation.

Thoughts? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:19, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose this is a guideline and therefore holds weight. WP:FAQ isn't even an essay. Further Wikipedia:FAQ/Article subjects is about subjects who already have an article, which is different to most situations where this guideline applies when people are trying to create a new article. It's not uncommon for us to have a formal guideline or policy and then another page which explains it - following your reasoning would mean merging multiple policies and guidelines into the FAQ. SmartSE (talk) 17:59, 15 February 2024 (UTC)
  • You are incorrect; the FAQ page is also about people who want or think there should be an article about them (e.g. Q11: "Can I start an article about myself or my company?"). We can easily say the FAQ page is a guideline. I make no proposals to merge policies into FAQs. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:33, 15 February 2024 (UTC)
    • There's a specific process for properly making a page into a guideline. Graham87 (talk) 07:02, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose. This is an important page with hundreds of incoming wikilinks and probably thousands of incoming external links (I just made one myself from a question on Quora). Andrewa (talk) 04:39, 11 March 2024 (UTC)
  • So? We have redirects for that. Our internal housekeeping should not trump convenience for people with concerns about what we write about them. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:56, 10 April 2024 (UTC)
• Strongest possible oppose. This is an in-depth explainer with plenty of good reasoning that I think would be either (1) a lot longer than a lot of the FAQ answers on the suggested page and dominate it, or (2) would be required to be trimmed down to fit the size of that and a lot of the valuable info would be lost. Wikipedia has plenty of explanatory project pages explaining community conesus and guidelines and offering advice. We don't need to trim them down for the sake of slimming the project. E-ink is free. If you want this advice proffered there, an except can be included with reference to the page, possibly with {{main}}. microbiologyMarcus ^{[petri dish·growths]} 00:36, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

How To Add information?

What needs to remember when adding information? and to ensure not violating any rules of Wikipedia? I hope someone mentor me. Tricounty17 (talk) 06:59, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

I recommend reading the various guidelines and policies that the page itself links to. Remsense诉 07:35, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Or have a look at Wikipedia:Simplified ruleset and feel free to ask on my talk page of there's anything there you don't understand. Or drop in to the teahouse to seek a more formal mentor. Andrewa (talk) 04:46, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Language softness?

Of course, I have to start this discussion by pointing out this is a content guideline: Editors should generally follow it, though exceptions may apply. To me, what that means is there's no worrisome contradiction if a guideline unambiguously states an editor should not do something.

And forgive me for my cynicism, but I really do feel (as stated above) that almost the entire purpose of this guideline is to firmly dissuade people reading that might not really "get" the whole building-an-encyclopedia thing yet. I do not think one can avoid the reality that every "generally", "sometimes", "in all likelihood" a guideline like this uses, will soon serve to make many eyes light up, thinking they're the exception and we want their autobiography. Really, I think that's the overwhelming majority of difference that the change will make. Remsense ‥ 论 04:49, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

Oh, and ping @Clovermoss. Remsense ‥ 论 04:50, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping. I expected this to be discussed, but the main reason I think it's important this softness exists is because such editing isn't actually prohibited by policy. Even WP:COIE says "strongly discouraged". The "only acceptable" phrasing concerns me because it might lead someone to believe that there is actually a blanket prohibition against such editing and they can be blocked for that alone, which is not the case. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 04:52, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

As for entire purpose of this guideline is to firmly dissuade people reading that might not really "get" the whole building-an-encyclopedia thing yet, I agree, which is why I added content about that compounded issue in this edit before I was even pinged here. I've since included information about WP:BLPSELFPUB [1] and WP:BLPREQUESTDEL as well [2]. The way I see it, there's two main groups reading this article: newbies who see this as Linkedin and notable people who already have an article and are looking at what they might be able to do about it. Anyways, this page should be informative to everyone, while not misrepresenting our current requirements, so I think my recent edits have helped with that. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 05:11, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

I circle back to that this isn't a policy, this is a guideline. The MOS plainly says not to do plenty of things, but we understand exceptions may apply. And those "should not" statements exist for exactly the same reason—to prevent a higher rate of wrenches needlessly being thrown into the works according to some pretty clear behavior patterns that we observe and are why the guideline has to exist to begin with. "Generally" just doesn't do anything but dilute what is a pretty simple point being communicated—either editors shouldn't do this (EMA), or we don't really need the guideline. Remsense ‥ 论 05:11, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

I'm okay with a "should not" statement instead. To me, either that or "generally" gets the point across that this isn't the recommended path. "Only acceptable" implies that you literally cannot do something. The nuances between PAGs is something the average new editor isn't going to really know (they'll see the word guideline and think something is set in stone), making careful phrasing even more crucial from my perspective. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 05:15, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

I see no issue with that, cheers. Remsense ‥ 论 05:17, 26 April 2025 (UTC)