Biography: Arts and Entertainment

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"Nationality" needs to be clarified. Does it refer to the citizenship or the ethnic origin of the artist? Iyi muhabbet (talk) 00:09, 13 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

See nationality. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:16, 13 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

While adding an image for a 19th-century British illustrator, I noticed that the Infobox artist template encourages editors to "include middle initial, if not specified in birth_name". This presumably is why the article for Sarah Drake uses Sarah A. Drake for the infobox name parameter.

I understand that sometimes we may want to distinguish among multiple Jane Does. We have rules to handle that for article titles; for systematic processes, authority control handles the issue well. So, is there a reason why we should include the person's middle initial in the infobox if that isn't/wasn't how they are known?

In the United States, the use of middle initials is fairly common when people wish to give a formal version of their name, although there are few artists who regularly use their middle initial. In the U.K. middle initials are almost never used in everyday life; people might use their middle name in preference to their first name or use their first and middle names together, but the form "John Q. Public" is almost exclusively American. Other cultures have very different conventions for personal naming and using a middle initial in infoboxes for these people would appear to be an arbitrary choice.

Am I missing some rationale for why we would want to specifically include middle initials for artists? If not, I propose that I remove this advice from the template. I'm guessing there are quite a few articles about artists where a middle initial has been included in the infobox based on this guidance. Is there an easy way to identify them? Rupert Clayton (talk) 17:42, 2 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds sensible, but I don't know how you would track examples down. Note that the use of two initials for authors etc was rather common in the UK a century ago: W.H. Auden, D.H. Lawrence, T.E. Lawrence etc. Johnbod (talk) 02:38, 4 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• FYI, the residence parameter does not more work, cf. Template talk:Infobox person#Removal. –84.46.53.221 (talk) 09:35, 15 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• This issue is still not resolved BuffaloBob (talk) 14:49, 3 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It's not supposed to work; a discussion last November (Template_talk:Infobox_person/Archive_34#Residence_parameter) resulted in a decision to delete the parameter. Ewulp (talk)

Anyone out here to take a look at the bottom of the template? It says '{{Sandbox other||, should probably be {{Sandbox other}} Thank you for your time.

It was news to me, but "residence" is apparently now deprecated.ThatMontrealIP (talk) 21:36, 23 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]