I do not agree on this separation. What scientists (or artists, or whatever) are known for is their work. Just as we discuss the events of a politicians career in the bio articles on them, we discuss the work of a scientist or an artist in the article on him.
The content rule should be that the material should be pertinent to the notability of the individual. Where the work is individual, and the material is not too extensive, the bio article is the place. Where it is very extensive then there needs to be separate articles. What we need to do in most cases is to avoid discussing the entirety of a general subject in the article on an individual who made a notable contribution to some specific corner of it. In the article mentioned just above, is not the place for the general discussion of galaxy formation. It is the place to discuss his specific work on it. After all, a person's work is why we want to know about them Furthermore, for any person who is actually famous, as distinct from merely notable, unless the fame is very recent, there almost invariably will be peer-reviewed articles discussing both his life and his specific career, and of course they should be included. For most individual bios, however, we do not have this amount of information about the person. On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 12:18 PM, Ray Saintonge <sainto...@telus.net> wrote: > Wily D wrote: >> On Tue, Jan 6, 2009 at 10:14 PM, <wjhon...@aol.com> wrote: >> >>> The vast majority of citations >>> are to newspapers, new magazines, and online news and opinion sites, >>> while very few are to peer-reviewed publications. >>> >>> Can you point to any source in a BLP which comes from a "peer-reviewed >>> publication" ? >>> I mean any of them at all? >>> >> Of course, there are some. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alar_Toomre >> cites a few peer reviewed papers, although one is by the subject. But >> that's still only ~10% of the total references, and the biography >> mostly recounts the science he's done. >> > > That seems reasonable enough. A biographical article is about the > person, and not the place for a detailed explanation of his ideas. > Where there is no controversy around someone's personal life any number > of directories or the like should satisfy the need for sourcing. > Controversies around someone's scientific views is best discussed in the > article dealing with that idea. Sourcing standards there will > necessarily be different. > > Ec > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l > -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
