BR Bullpen talk:Person Layout

This was originally posted by User:Rgmoore at BR Bullpen talk:Policy

I think that it's better to have more facts than fewer, even if those facts aren't well organized. It's a lot easier to turn a bunch of facts into an article than it is to find those facts in the first place.

That said, I'd like to propose that we come up with a few basic categories that could go into anyone's page. Those categories would be something like:

1. Basic information and picture
2. Biography
3. Notable Achievements
4. Records
5. Quotes
   1. Quotes by this person
   2. Quotes about this person
6. Bibliography
7. Related Sites

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Going with Rgmoore's format there should be a very basic format to all biographical pages. At the very top there should be a header template consisting of the basic biographical material (name, birthdate, career start/stop dates) as well as an image and links to stats (i.e. BR pages) were applicable.

Next there should be a lead section of one to three paragraphs (depending on the length of the article) giving a broad overview of the person's career. It should not be explicitly stated as the == Introduction == or have any equivalent header. The article's subject should be mentioned in in bold text (subject), not wikilinks ([[subject]]) at a natural place, preferably in the first sentence and as soon as possible.

The above on lead sections should be part of the policy for all articles.

Next is the biography header (== Biography==), with approprite subheaders within. Subheaders should consist of a minimum of two paragraphs.

Next is the Notable Achievements header (what were the notable achievements criteria?). This could be subdivided into Awards and Hono(u)rs, Records, and Statistical Milesotes.

Next is the Quotations, which would consist of a listing of quotations about or by the subject. The quotations should be either blockquoted with quotations marks around the quote the description in italics or bulleted

Note: inline quotations should be permissable but should always be blockquoted with quotations marks around the quote the description in italic

At the end of the article a set of appendices may be used:

• See also: This is a bulleted list of other articles that are related to this one but were unable to be listed within the text of the article as wikilinks. Should be used sparingly for people.
• References (or Sources): a bulleted list of all references (sources) used in the article. It may be used with the ref hook and/or citation templates.
• Further Reading (or Bibliography): a list of books, magazines or other non-electronic sources not used as sources in the article, but provide further information
• External links (or Related Sites): a list of websites, not used as sources in the article, but provide further information

Dead links may be accessible by the Internet Archive Wayback Machine

Foreign language links (non-English) should be identified as such

Rich media (PDFs, mp3, etc.) should be identified as such

The above on appendices should be part of the policy for all articles.

Other pieces of this might be to write in paragraph sentence structure, not in bulleted list of tidbits and to place all external links at the end of the article, except for possibly retrosheet links to boxscores. --MichaelEng 00:45, 6 September 2006 (EDT)