Template talk:Ahnentafel/Archive 1

Archive 1

Qazi Mohamed Shamsuddin

Since the recent change the template is causing a at Qazi Mohamed Shamsuddin. I assume it’s a problem with the template or module as the article has not changed, but that error does not give any clues what the problem is.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 02:41, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

The error has now been fixed by removing some data from the template in the article. It still might be worth looking at though, to see if it can generate a more useful error when unsupported data is provided to it.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 17:23, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

I will put an upper limit on the number of levels. Frietjes (talk) 13:26, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

Thanks

@Frietjes: Good job with this template. A suggestion: would it be possible to tighten it up a little bit liker the previous template, in order for it to better suit general screen resolution limitations? See for instance Conrad III of Germany. Unfortunately, the previous ahnentafel designs worked well even on telephone devices, whereas the new one don't. Chicbyaccident (talk) 22:29, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

Chicbyaccident, are you asking about the line-height? Frietjes (talk) 13:31, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

It seems as though the entries now are thicker, making a 5 generational ahnentafel extending beyond the vertical limits of typical screen resolutions. Chicbyaccident (talk) 13:53, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

Chicbyaccident, do you see where you removed the 'line-height' in this edit? I can make the default something with less vertical spacing, but if the reason why the old version was using less vertical space was because someone set the line-height to be narrow. if I recall, the default is around 160%, so 110% is much less. Frietjes (talk) 14:05, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

160%	130%	110%
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.	Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.	Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

Sorry, that is beyond my competence. But yes, please revert to more narrow spacing in general template that is called for from all individual articles, including that of Conrad III of Germany. Chicbyaccident (talk) 14:12, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

I changed the default to line-height to 130% and the default font-size to 88%. Frietjes (talk) 15:01, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

@Frietjes: Unfortunately, it still looks like articles applying this template has another look than the what ahnentafel compact 5 used to have, which was better suited for general screen resolution limitations. The former, more tighter rows I suppose were more suitable. Furthermore, there seems to be other incorrections of black lines over some of the updated ahnentafels that I don't understand. Chicbyaccident (talk) 07:03, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

Chicbyaccident, you should provide an actual example since I can't understand what you are saying. also, ping only works if add ~~~~ at the exact same time. you can't go back and add a ping and have it work. Frietjes (talk) 17:38, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

I put the old compact5 code in sandbox2 and added a comparison in the testcases Frietjes (talk) 17:44, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

Alright, please check it in mobile devices and you should see the incorrect rendering of the tables. Chicbyaccident (talk) 20:14, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

by the way, for that particular example, them HTML output for the new template is 1250 characters (20k) vs. 3778 characters (52k) for the old template. so, the new template generates about 1/3 the html code, which should be much better for mobile viewers. Frietjes (talk) 11:26, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

Making this work on mobile view

after some testing, it looks like even the old non-Lua versions of this template had problems with rendering correctly on mobile devices. I am hoping that some mobile-browser css experts can help come up with a solution. here is the basic output in (wikitable format) for a two level diagram.

				2
	1
				3

as far as I can tell, it looks fine on all desktop browsers that I tried, and even looks fine through the mobile interface on a desktop browser. however, on the Chrome browser on Android, it looks bad, with dangling edges, etc. I did some experimentation where I split the multi-row/multi-column spanning padding and branch cells, and that fixes the problem. however, it dramatically increases the size of the HTML for diagrams with more than 2 levels. does anyone know of a better way to fix the rendering on mobile devices (e.g., Chrome on Android)? @RexxS, Redrose64, Chicbyaccident, TheDJ, and Great Brightstar: or someone else? I can post screen shots if that's helpful, but you should be able to see the problem on a mobile device. Frietjes (talk) 22:04, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

				2
	1
				3

of course, the moment that I post something, I stumble on a possible solution (sorry for the unnecessary ping). it looks like using 'border-collapse:separate; border-spacing:0;' works (now added to the main module). Chicbyaccident can you tell me if this fixed the problem? and/or if there are still issues on any other devices? Frietjes (talk) 22:21, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

Good! I don't see any table issues anymore. Thanks. Now I only wonder whether the row height is optimal as opposed to the seeimingly tighter row heght in the previous template, wasn't it? Chicbyaccident (talk) 22:45, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

on my browser, Template:Ahnentafel/testcases#Old_templates shows that the row height is tighter on the current version vs. the old version in sandbox2. Frietjes (talk) 22:48, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

Great. Another remark, though: please consider making the tables consquently a little bit longer horizontally. See for instance Grand Duke George Mikhailovich of Russia. Chicbyaccident (talk) 22:03, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

when uncollapsed, the table adjusts to fill the width of the page. can't really make it any wider than the page. Frietjes (talk) 22:54, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

Needs a way to set the title

Currently, this template automatically sets the title as "Ancestors of {PAGENAME}" but that leaves no way for us to insert citations into the title, which is useful when one or two sources cover every person in the tree (instead of adding individual citations to each person). Thanks. —howcheng {chat} 16:28, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

Howcheng, use |ref= for a reference at the end of the title and |title= to completely override the default title. Frietjes (talk) 19:01, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

How did I miss that in the documentation? Thanks. —howcheng {chat} 03:19, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

While at it, what about implementing the design and look of the title (header) in accordance with that of Template:S-anc? This way a natural space for notes and references would be part of the template, while also harmonising its header and frame with the look of succession boxes. Chicbyaccident (talk) 17:42, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

it's not a succession box, and there is already a place for notes, see |headnotes= and |footnotes= and |ref=. Frietjes (talk) 17:54, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

It isn't, but if so the look of it would be harmonised with those, which arguably look better than this ahnentafel in its current state, isn't it? Chicbyaccident (talk) 18:21, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

bug

This template seems to leave }}</noinclude> in the result, which looks strange. I don't know where it comes from, though. Gah4 (talk) 00:23, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

There also seems to be a duplication issue, where the ancestry table is repeated twice. See Mary Tudor, Queen of France for example. Ruby2010 (talk) 03:00, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

It was caused by a test edit by an IP editor. I have reverted it so hopefully fixed it, though pages may need purging.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 03:21, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

put this as top line of the code

{{ahnentafel top|width=100%}} 68.40.122.133 (talk) 20:35, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

where? Frietjes (talk) 14:20, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

just above

{{ahnentafel |collapsible=yes because it confines the width of the unopened header, making it easier to navigate68.40.122.133 (talk) 03:00, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

Support 100 % as default width, if nothing else is stated. Chicbyaccident (talk) 10:48, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

you can set |width=100% to override the default min-width when collapsed. if you check Thomas Seymour, 1st Baron Seymour of Sudeley (which you were editing) you will see that when you uncollapse it, the table expands to the space required. Frietjes (talk) 11:05, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

Footnotes

If the parameter "footnotes" "Adds optional text below the chart (most useful in collapsible mode)" then it would be useful. However it does not do so in the article James FitzJames, 1st Duke of Berwick It adds footnotes to the {{reflist}} if one exists. This is a bad idea as the format of the footnote may not match that of the format used in the rest of the article. This is a specific problem when an Ahnentafel template is used in other templates as may be done with category:Family templates or some of the sub categories.

Also as in the case of James FitzJames, 1st Duke of Berwick it may encourage editors to lump all the sources used to build the tree under one parameter instead of adding the appropriate source to the relevant leaf. I think to stop this type of lumping of sources more documentation needs to be added discouraging it.

-- PBS (talk) 15:46, 21 May 2018 (UTC)

agree that "footnotes" are not the same as references in this situation. I have fixed James FitzJames, 1st Duke of Berwick. Frietjes (talk) 16:07, 21 May 2018 (UTC)

Idea: Lua module with Wikidata

Recently, I have been adding references to ancestry tables across many articles. When I finish for one person, I can copy-paste most of it to their siblings, and I can use most of it for the parents' articles. In the course of doing so, I was trying to think of a way to make this more efficient. The traditional way would be to make a template that could transcluded for all siblings with the same parents, but this is kind of unwieldy because each template would only be used by a small number of people, plus it doesn't solve the problem of when part of a tree is used in a different article. It then occurred to me that we have these relationships in Wikidata, so the best solution would probably be to have code that generates the tables in the articles. That way you could just do something like {{#invoke:Ahnentafel|generate}} in the article, and we could put the references in Wikidata. Does this sound like something worth pursuing? Although I'm a software developer, I've never done work in Lua, but I'm willing to tackle it if no one else wants to do it. —howcheng {chat} 20:04, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

Upon closer inspection, I guess we are already using Lua to do the rendering, so we could extend the module to grab the data. Then make a template like {{ahnentafal-auto}} that will invoke the auto-generated version. —howcheng {chat} 20:12, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

In the sandbox, I moved the rendering code into its own function and created a new function sample that manually sets the people, which seems to work fine (see Template:Ahnentafel/testcases#Sample), so theoretically this should be doable, assuming we can get all this info from Wikidata. —howcheng {chat} 20:47, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

the hard part isn't the rendering. the hard part is recursively traversing the wikidata without causing unnecessary load on the servers, or introducing errors. this is going to be especially problematic when the wikidata is incomplete, or ambiguous. Frietjes (talk) 23:00, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

@Howcheng: Some automatic Wikidata-referring templates of this kind could perhaps be implemented in the future, for encyclopedically relevant entries. Possibly ultimately including a fairly grand family tree on Wikidata in equivalence with Wikitree, Geni.com etc., but naturally with larger concern for personal integrity as well as encyclopedical relevance. Why not take some early steps on investigating the matter? Feel free to ping Wikipedia:WikiProject Genealogy to get the attention of more concerned users. See also: Wikipedia:WikiProject_Genealogy#Wikidata_equivalent. Chicbyaccident (talk) 10:07, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

@Frietjes: Makes sense. My company actually does something similar in that we run a daily job to regenerate the org chart (who reports to whom) and store that in a database table. @Chicbyaccident: Good idea, but I'm not interested in leading such an effort, as I'm not particularly interested in genealogy itself. My interest was mainly in doing the references to improve the articles and possibly doing some of the coding (just so I could learn Lua). As the idea is already out there, I'll leave it to others. —howcheng {chat} 16:00, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

Noresize class for mobile

Moved from Module talk:Ahenntafel

 – {{3x|p}}ery (talk)`

@Frietjes: this template breaks the viewport in mobile severely impacting reading experience. I noticed while looking at the Charles I of Austria page.

Can we make the containing div scrollable? I think adding a noresize class to the containing element should suffice.

I attempted to fix in the template level on my mobile phone but I couldn't work it out. Jdlrobson (talk) 14:07, 27 July 2018 (UTC)

Jdlrobson where does the noresize class go? in the outer collapsible table, or in the inner content table? I added the class to the inner table, but I don't know if that helped. Frietjes (talk) 14:15, 27 July 2018 (UTC)

Entire table should be wrapped in a div e.g.

<div class="noresize">{table}</div>

Jdlrobson (talk) 14:19, 27 July 2018 (UTC)

Jdlrobson, okay, I added the div. did that fix it? Frietjes (talk) 14:27, 27 July 2018 (UTC)

sure did!! So fast! Thank you :) Jdlrobson (talk) 14:28, 27 July 2018 (UTC)

Transforming into the standardised navbox look

@SMcCandlish: inter alia: This template retains an exceptionate style in its collapsible heading frame for no obvious reason. Other than the graphical style aspect, this can bring about problems as seen for example in Template:Muhammad's ancestors2. I see two solutions to this problem: 1) Transform the code and graphical style it into the standard look of Template:Navbox. 2) Let go of the collapsible heading althogheter. As for my two cents, I advocate the solution n:o 1. Chicbyaccident (talk) 12:23, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

Depends. If this is meant to be a navigation tool, then option one, but update the doc to require that it be used as a navbox, at page-bottom, not in mid-article (navboxes never, ever go there). However, it appears to be intended to be informative article content, and it is rarely if ever at the bottom of the page as a navbox. In that case, eliminate the collapsing option, per MOS:DONTHIDE. We also need to remove that from track list templates, and several other things. A collapse option can be present, it just cannot auto-collapse in article prose, just be a manual collapse widget. Auto-collapsing is a both an accessibility problem and a usability one (can't be uncollapsed in a screen reader, nor in various mobile browsers). We permit it in navboxes and perhaps infoboxes, but not in the actual article body.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:02, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

To change the default behaviour from collapsed to not collapsed wrong. It has for many years been collapsed as a compromise, because many editors do not consider these boxes to be suitable for Wikipedia articles. If the default behaviour is to be changed then there needs to be an RfC to agree it. -- PBS (talk) 13:23, 16 August 2018 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 8 August 2018

Please set the default width for this template at 100%. AlbanGeller (talk) 18:00, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

 Not done: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{edit template-protected}} template.

I can't see anywhere that you've recently used or discussed this template, even less anywhere that you've used the |width=100% option for {{Ahnentafel}}. Cabayi (talk) 19:54, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

@Cabayi: I edited the article for William Cavendish-Bentinck, 3rd Duke of Portland yesterday which uses the said template. I really don't see why the width shouldn't be set to 100%, I'm editing on a tablet and the template is so disproportionately wide that it zooms the entire page out of focus. AlbanGeller (talk) 20:31, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

@AlbanGeller: Have you contemplated the proposal in the section just above this one as a solution (it does implicate 100 % width)? Chicbyaccident (talk) 20:26, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

@Chicbyaccident: I agree with your proposal. AlbanGeller (talk) 20:31, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

If you do, please state so right under the proposal. Hopefully we can get a consensus for that. Chicbyaccident (talk) 20:34, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

If the width is set to 100% this can cause formatting problems with images, leaving large areas of white spacing. I suggest that the default is set to what is was in the old templates (what ever that was). -- PBS (talk) 13:26, 16 August 2018 (UTC)

agreed. the default width for the module is the same as the default width for the old template. Frietjes (talk) 14:18, 16 August 2018 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 8 September 2018

Please set the default width for this template at 70%. On tablet screens, the current width stretches the page, causing the entire page to shrink slightly, please see screenshot for example. AlbanGeller (talk) 20:20, 8 September 2018 (UTC)

The problem seems to be the use of em for min-width. Using percent widths as I did in the sandbox seems to fix the issue but could have other side effects depending on the screen - ping Frietjes for their thoughts Galobtter (pingó mió) 12:01, 9 September 2018 (UTC)

percentage-based min-widths are bad on narrow screens as well. I have reduced the default value for the min-width, but I am open to exploring other options (e.g., scrollbars). Frietjes (talk) 13:26, 9 September 2018 (UTC)

Issue

Moved from Module talk:Ahnentafel

 – {{3x|p}}ery (talk) 21:26, 21 February 2019 (UTC)

There seems to be an issue with the ahnentafel template, but I can't tell whether the issue originates here or not. The current issue is that the genealogy table is repeated twice, and has }} in between the two repeats... Hires an editor (talk) 02:39, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

Hires an editor, can you link to an example with the problem? Frietjes (talk) 14:16, 27 July 2018 (UTC)

Hires an editor, never mind, it looks like it was caused by this edit which was reverted. Frietjes (talk) 14:17, 27 July 2018 (UTC)

Standard for formating of boxes starting with "1.", "2.", etc.?

Some articles has the template rendering simply "Earl X" in every box, whereas other say "4. Count Y". There seem to be some inconsistency. Should a standard (with or without) be determined and introduced into the documentation for this template? PPEMES (talk) 22:41, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

Ahnentafel template raison d'être, WP:V issues, and 5 generations default extent?

Surtsicna insisted that 5 generations is overdetailed for a person like Valdemar IV of Denmark. The users insists that a "standard" was never agreed upon. I am surprised to learn that. Ahnentafel article seems to indicate 5 generations has been standard since the beginning, before Wikipedia came around. There seems to be 1,000s of articles applying the 5 generation standard where ancestry template is deemed relevant. Feel free to chime in, though. PPEMES (talk) 22:26, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

I would love to be pointed to a discussion that concluded with the agreement that articles about a certain group of people should feature a 5-generation ahnentafel. That there are thousands of articles with the 5-generation chart is the bold copy-paste work of a handful of people who did not obtain a prior consensus. Surtsicna (talk) 22:38, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

(New addition) The article Ahnentafel does not say that 5 generations is the standard. If it did, I'd put a {{cn}} next to the statement. Surtsicna (talk) 23:14, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

Well, doesn't the first ahnentafel imaged in the article come with 5 generations? See also this. Doesn't it seem like WP:BURDEN is on you should you wish to promote something else than 5 as a a priori standard?

"One possible explanation is that the example given in the documentation is the five generational one." So the reason why most articles use the 5-generation one is that someone, likely arbitrarily, decided to use a 5-generation example in the template documentation. And as WP:BURDEN says, the burden "lies with the editor who adds or restores material", not on the editor who removes it. If you can demonstrate that a historian or biographer of Valdemar IV shows a genealogy chart with the names of his great-great-grandparents or even mentions his relationship to them in the text, then surely they should stay. If not, they are irrelevant and we are threading dangerously close to original research. These charts are an egregious violation of our verifiability policy anyway. Surtsicna (talk) 10:38, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

Is the general tendence of presentation totally irrelevant for the reflections of facts available in individual biographical articles? Meaning, at least in the year 2015, that 7976 applied 5 generations, whereas 97 used 4 generations and 51 used 6 generations? PPEMES (talk) 10:58, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

Is the 5th generation really useful in understanding the subject, or is it just gratuitous, included either just to satisfy someone's curiosity (usually the editor's) or out of a misplaced desire for uniformity? I would argue that for each additional generation the utility of the information is exponentially lessened, and that we rarely find any connection only in the fifth generation that illuminates the actions, alliances, motivations, etc. of the article subject, and as such it is simply gratuitous genealogy for genealogy sake - WP:NOTGENEALOGY, (and that including a 6th generation is unjustifiable in every possible circumstance). Even when there is a specific relationship that is relevant in the fifth generation, such as the derivation of a title, it is almost always better addressed textually than by showing 15 incidental people just to include one of importance.

There is a precedent for such ahnentafeln in encyclopedias - I remember an early 20th century one that included similar charts, but only for a very small number of extremely-prominent monarchs (just three or four among all the English/British rulers). While I can accept that WP:NOTPAPER might allow more liberal use, editorial discretion is still required: it doesn't justify incorporating these charts for every person who ever held any title, their wives, siblings, and even children who died in infancy - what possible actions and motivations are we trying to contextualize. And that doesn't even touch on the WP:OR and WP:V concerns (I don't want to think about all the times I have had to go through dozens of pages to purge all the charts of a single bogus relationship, and the more generations are included, the more pages have the information). No, I am of the 'less is better' school regarding these charts and think Surtsicna's change is an improvement. (I also agree with that editor's removal of ahnentafeln in which nothing but the male-line and their wives were known - all context we might learn from such a chart can be better stated in one sentence.) Agricolae (talk) 14:43, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

In principle, I am all for detailed ahnentafels for people where ancestry is a significant aspect of their biography. However, the degree of detail should be endogenous to the individual, at least to a degree. That is, if there is no reliable source about an individual that discusses the individual's second great grandparent, it is a bit of a stretch to include that information in an article about the individual. That is, evidence of the relevance of a detailed ahnentafel and WP:V concerns should/could be satisfied simultaneously. Similarly, using multiple entries in a directory or encyclopedia to create the Ahnentafel would be OR. On the other hand, for a King of Denmark from the 14th century, I am sure that 4 or 5 generations of genealogy could be found in a source somewhere. However, going beyond 5 or 6 generations is likely unnecessary even if a reliable source exists that presents the information. I would note, however, that the most important question is what defines a reliable source for the relevance of an extended ahnentafel - genealogical almanacs (Burke's, for instance) may not be very reliable, nor would they be good indications that a large ahnentafel is relevent. Smmurphy^(Talk) 18:45, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

There seems now to have been an individual enterprise of priorly undiscussed mass changes from former consensus of 5 generations. PPEMES (talk) 10:20, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

You have not yet pointed to the discussion that led to such consensus, so it is reasonable to conclude that such consensus has never existed. Surtsicna (talk) 11:50, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

Right. 7,000+ articles means nothing at all? PPEMES (talk) 13:14, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

They mean that someone made a priorly undiscussed mass change without consensus. Surtsicna (talk) 13:26, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

That applies to thousands of articles - for years. That pretty much brings us to "Wikipedia - a priorly undiscussed mass change without consensus", is it? PPEMES (talk) 14:28, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

I don't think someone made a mass change - somebody did it on a few pages, and various other people used some combination of, 'if we can, we should' and 'if he has it, she should have it too' and similar to have these 5-gen trees spread like a cancer (example, a few years back I had to take one off a page for an actor). This does not represent a tacit consensus, just mission creep. Agricolae (talk) 17:36, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

5 generations was the original scope of the original creator of the ahnentafel for centuries, as seen in the ahnentafel article. This standard has also been reflected on Wikipedia since its beginning. Now, after centuries of use preceding Wikipedia, and years of rendering here, you claim that there was never a consensus to keep this on Wikipedia. And so now you delete information on thousands of pages, calling it a "cancer". I'm not sure this is helpful to the readers. Just for starters, now the ahentafel of Hugh Capet doesn't graphically render what substantial part of the text of the particle talks about. PPEMES (talk) 12:26, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

The original creator did display 5 generations, but his choice for whatever he was doing in the 16th century is not really a useful indication of what is the best way to satisfy the mandates of Wikipedia. We have a policy for what genealogy is to be included - that necessary to assist in understanding the subject (not just for its own sake, because we can). Rarely if ever does the identity of a great-great-grandmother contribute sufficiently to this understanding to merit its inclusion along with the names of every other person in this generation. That is not to say that there is can never be an informative relationship in the fifth generation of a chart, but this is by far the exception, and the usefulness of one specific relationship does not mandate including everyone in that extra generation on that page, let alone on every page where the template is used. It is not the case that more information, no matter how trivial, equates with a better page. (As to Hugh Capet, the change was made over 4 years ago, explicitly because the extra generation was "unsourced, [containing] several errors and speculation" - sounds like an action entirely consistent with VP:V. Equally important, the actual individuals in the 5th generation are not named at all in the text - not a one of them - so it is hard to see how their inclusion would address your complaint that the chart doesn't represent the text. While I agree that the chart doesn't represent the text very well, I see that as an argument to replace it with one that is more bespoke to the purpose rather than to keep adding generations until we get to Charlemagne, the only named ancestor outside of the generation span in the 4-generation chart.) Agricolae (talk) 19:19, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

OK. Seems rather like a WP:IDONTLIKEIT conflict of subject interpretations - yours and mine - of what readers can be estimated to find helpful. Third part opinions would be welcome. PPEMES (talk) 16:01, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

Four people have taken part in this discussion so it's a bit late to seek a third opinion. Surtsicna (talk) 16:42, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

Until someone can explain based on policy why it is important to tell the reader that Constanza Manuel was great-great-granddaughter of Sibylle d'Anduze, a connection that cannot even be arrived at without WP:SYNTH, I will continue to view this as violating WP:NOTGENEALOGY (and SYNTH) - policy, not the frivolous IDONTLIKEIT you would like to portray it as. And the exception proves the rule: if there are any cases where it is not appropriate, then all cases should be evaluated by their merit and not just include this because 'a lot of pages have a 5-generation ahnentafel'. Agricolae (talk) 18:14, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

I prefer a case-by-case basis for a question like this, but I think a general principle certainly exists that would cover a 14th century European Queen Consort. That is, if the question is, is 5 generations of ancestry of Constanza Manuel (or Valdemar IV of Denmark) fit to include in an encyclopedia, I would say yes. It is trivial to find a genealogy with Ferdinand I of Portugal as the root in reliable histories going back 6+ generations. I agree that there may not be a single page of a single book or scholarly article that includes Manuel and the matrilinial line of Manuel's father, and if there were an active discussion on Manuel's page with an aim to bring the article to A-class, I would defer to those in that discussion. But Manuel's family tree is fundamental to her encyclopedic value, the synthesis required is not more than the synthesis required to write an article about her, and 5 generations seems perfectly reasonable. So in principle, I support a family tree of 5 generations for Manuel's page. If it were removed, of course I wouldn't notice. But I wouldn't see mass deletion of these things without a discussion to be within the spirit of building an encyclopedia, either. Smmurphy^(Talk) 18:48, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

I'm with Smmurphy here - with the addition that I could imagine probably lists of people qualifying in the same way as the couple above mentioned examples. As for mass edits, these are already caried out, and it would be hard to see all instances. I have seen some examples, though, without revering or discussion any singular case, but have reacted still. If we took the reasoning of Surtsicna on the money, I fail to see why we should have two generations presented in some ancestry chart, let alone any ahnentafels whatsoever. Then only parents should suffice to talk about in article texts, effecticely ruling any need of some redundant ahnentafels. PPEMES (talk) 19:20, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

This seems to be presented as if it were an argumentum ad absurdum, but I actually agree with it in principle. There are cases where a tree is entirely unnecessary, such as with a princess who died in childhood, yet many of these have a full five generations to contextualize their infancy - I deleted one some time back that was for a child who only lived for hours, but for some reason the reader nonetheless needed to be told the identity of his father's mother's mother's father to place his tragic life in appropriate context. In many cases, naming the parents does indeed provide all the context that is necessary, and only occasionally does anyone beyond the grandparents prove necessary. How often does ODNB name all great-grandparents? Never. In a few specific circumstances they will briefly account for one specific great-grandparent when the there is an inheritance critical for context, but that hardly makes everyone in that generation relevant. I can't think of any instance where they name an ancestor in the fifth generation. Yes, NOTPAPER, but just because we can doesn't mean we should (WP:PROPORTION). Agricolae (talk) 21:18, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

Constanza Manuel's family tree is indeed fundamental to her encyclopedic value, but not up to her great-great-grandparents. Her descent from the kings of Castile is relevant, and we only need 4 generations to show that. Her descent from Charles I or Charles II of Naples, on the other hand, is far from fundamental. Why should a general principle involve an ahnentafel anyway? They are not standard in biographies. Biographies include genealogical charts that show the subject's relation to relevant individuals, normally those mentioned in the text. Since an aunt or a cousin is more likely to be relevant than a great-great-grandparent, Template:Tree chart is much more deserving of being part of a general principle. In your previous comment you said: If there is no reliable source about an individual that discusses the individual's second great grandparent, it is a bit of a stretch to include that information in an article about the individual. I concur with that entirely, and I dare say that generally there are no quality sources discussing an individual's mother's father's father's mother, so ahnentafeln consisting of five generations should not really be a general principle. Surtsicna (talk) 19:41, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

I don't agree with Smmurphy at all. It is not non-trivial to find a WP:RS account of Ferdinand I of Portugal that traces 6 generations in every line, and in terms of encyclopedic value the relevant relationships for Constanza are that she was daughter of Juan Manuel and descended via infante Manuel from her first husband's great-grandfather (providing the pretext for their divorce), and that her mother was daughter of the King of Aragon, pretty much just what is laid out in the text. All the rest is just decoration. There is not a single iota of informative context to be derived from the fact that her great-great-grandmother was Sibylle d'Anduze. That "If it were removed, of course I wouldn't notice" pretty much summarizes my argument in a nutshell - if it was necessary for encyclopedic context (WP:NOTGENEALOGY) its removal would be noticable. Agricolae (talk) 21:18, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

Well, the first 5-generation ahnentafel appears to have been published by Michaël Eytzinger in Thesaurus principum hac aetate in Europa viventium in 1590. As PPEMES pointed out above, this is explained in the introduction to the Wikipedia article on Ahnentafels. This method of presenting genealogy appears to have been standard since then. That's why so many articles on royal and noble subjects in Wikipedia use that genealogical numbering system.

Since that format is clear and presented in a drop-down menu, so that only interested readers even end up seeing these charts, it seems to me that it's a very good idea to retain that system in articles where editors have found and provided sourcing about genealogical material. We should retain this system because that's how genealogy has commonly been presented in published sources for 430 years. Flyte35 (talk) 04:04, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

@Flyte35: I'm sorry, this has already been mass changed. If you inquire, they will say that this has never been standard in nor outside Wikipedia, that none cares or wants it on Wikipedia anyway, and that in any case it is not relevant, at least not generally, to the scope of biographical articles on Wikipedia. PPEMES (talk) 11:44, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

That's why we're discussing it here, to try to come to a consensus to determine whether it's inappropriate to provide ancestry of 5 generations in genealogical charts. The fact that some editors are being WP:BOLD and editing charts is, I assume, the reason for this discussion. The goal is to reach WP:CONSENSUS so we don't have to keep having this discussion on individual articles. Flyte35 (talk) 13:48, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not 16th century Austria. Ahnentafeln are not "standard since then". They are very uncommon in biographies and you will not find a 5-generation ahnentafel in virtually any biography. It is not true that genealogy has been presented in published sources using ahnentafeln "for 430 years". If you had ever read a biography of a royal person, the kind on which our featured article are based, you would know that genealogy is not presented in 5-generation ahnentafeln but much more commonly in charts that include uncles, aunts, cousins, and other people who actually had an impact on the subject's life. Surtsicna (talk) 09:49, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

This method of presenting genealogy appears to be standard among genealogists. This is about whether or not to change the the Ahnentafel template. The idea of presenting ancestry and relatives some other way to reflect whatever you may have been reading in contemporary trade biographies is outside the scope of this discussion. Again, since the format is clear and presented in a drop-down menu, so that only interested readers even end up seeing these charts, it's a very good idea to retain that system. We should retain this system because that's how genealogy has commonly been presented for more than 400 years.Flyte35 (talk) 13:48, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

The numbered ancestor table is common among genealogists and has been used for centuries, true, but that it should be 5 generations is not so limited. One American journal has been publishing an ahnentafel in serialized form for decades and they are well over a dozen generations back by now. The only thing special about 5 generations is that (and this is likely behind its popularity) it represents about the number of people who can be put in tree form on a printed page with bmd data and titles, without it been too compacted for easy reading. Wikipedia is not constrained by the size of the printed page, but it is constrained by what content is appropriate - editorial decisions on Wikipedia are not subject to the practices or whims of specialist communities. For biographical entries, Wikipedia aims at mirroring the coverage in scholarly biographical encyclopedic works of a general nature, not the distorted perspective people with an interest in one specific aspect of biography (e.g. genealogy, military, political or religious history, etc.) might apply. A 'genealogists do it this way' argument really carries little weight: Wikipedia is WP:NOTGENEALOGY - a specific policy limits the degree to which genealogical information is to be included in articles, and a 5-generation chart is inconsistent with this policy in most instances. Agricolae (talk) 15:14, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

I don't think WP:NOTGENEALOGY, really applies here. That's a guideline about how family histories should be presented only where appropriate to support the reader's understanding of a notable topic. Clearly many of editors here believe the standard chart is entirely appropriate. It's the sort of thing that might guide an editor against, say, including 4 paragraphs in Barack Obama's article explaining how he's related to David Cameron. It's not rule against including genealogy altogether. Flyte35 (talk) 23:45, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

It is exactly what should be applied here. You are drawing a distinction without a difference. The fifth generation almost always consists of family history information that does not help in the least in understanding the subject of the article. You learn nothing useful whatsoever about Constanza Manuel by being told that her father's mother's mother's mother was some obscure woman with the name Sibylle d'Anduze - though the relationship you mention is equally trivial, at least David Cameron is himself a notable individual. Agricolae (talk) 00:28, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

Nevertheless, WP:NOTGENEALOGY doesn't prohibit including genealogy altogether, nor does it indicate the number of generations that should be included in a genealogical chart.Flyte35 (talk) 05:03, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

Well, may I suggest another perspective on this? Please be reminded that we have plenty of footer templates around various articles. These contain links of which some may be more indirect than others, but they are there often more in order to assist navigation rather than by implication of immediately relevance in article text or sections. The way I interpretate it, the ahnentafels are present quite often for considerably comparable reasons. That is, link-navigation help in a graphical overview format, rather than necessarly strictly implying for the reader any significance per se of included links/topics. For an indication of this dimension of the issue, few ahnentafels exist containing no links at all. I would suppose for part said reaons. That is why I was surprised to this new proposed policy of disclosing these templates. There are other topics in certain footer templates that some may consider even more digressing in this and that biographical article, should we apply these changed policy proposals more extensively, isn't it? I'm not sure how that would be helpful for the readers, though, if we would apply that rigidly. What I'm trying to say is that this might not so much a discussion about whether something is trivial, but also or at least combined with to what extent a navigations template might help readers simply navigate in fashions that certainly does exist across Wikipedia. This includes surfing freely through history - including perhaps sometimes in genealogical routes, notwithstanding eventual positions on the importance of such navigation by us Wikipedia users. PPEMES (talk) 00:43, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

That is it exactly. There's a template for US Second Ladies and Treasurers of the United States. I doubt anyone would argue it was terribly significant part of Lynn Cheney's life that her husband's predecessor's wife was Tipper Gore or that it was at all important to William Alexander Julian's life that Georgia Neese Clark moved into his office after died. Templates like ahnentafels are here in part because they provide useful navigation for Wikipedia users. Flyte35 (talk) 01:38, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

While I see where you are going, it strikes me as significant overkill to formulaically show 31 individuals, some of them completely unlinked (often completely unreferenced, and in some cases completely fictitious), just to cater to the rare person who feels the need to jump back four generations in one fell swoop without having to click through pages of intervening generations - it's not like we don't name their parents in both the text and the increasingly-ubiquitous infoboxes. They entail too much downside for minimal upside, in my mind, if all they are is a navigation aid. Agricolae (talk) 01:53, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

It goes without saying the material should be referenced and reflect real people. Since the charts are presented in a dropdown menu that no one sees if he's not interested in the material I don't think there's really much downside at all. Flyte35 (talk) 02:07, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

It certainly doesn't go without saying, if actual practice is any indication. The overwhelming majority of these are entirely unreferenced, and that is the downside - they are conveying novel factual information, not just handy navigation links, and that information seems to be treated by actual editors as if it was completely divorced from the strictures of WP:V. Hiding it not only hides it from the disinterested, it also hides it from those who might see that it is wrong. A template with too many generations simply invites this kind of behavior. Genealogical hobbyists see a chart with empty fields, they feel an irresistible pressure fill it in, independent of policies like WP:V and WP:NOR, and the more generations are included, the more fields there are to be filled, the more opportunity there is to add unverifiable or controversial material. When I ended up having to spend time I didn't really have just to write an entire detailed Wikipedia page on someone that arguably isn't really notable just to get people to stop repeatedly putting the same disputed information back into a set of these charts, that told me everything I need to know about their upside vs downside. Agricolae (talk) 02:42, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

That's not a downside to Ahnentafels; that's Wikipedia itself. Literally all of the encyclopedia is something to which hobbyists feel an irresistible pressure to contribute independent of policies. All templates contain fields to be filled, with opportunities to add unverifiable material. The fact that a structural entity like an Ahnentafel encourages contribution from users is not something to avoid in an encyclopedia whose purpose is to "benefit readers by acting as a... comprehensive written compendium that contains information on all branches of knowledge."Flyte35 (talk) 05:03, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

It is a downside of Wikipedia itself, a downside that is at least attempted to be mitigated by policies like WP:NOT and WP:SYNTH, policies that the use of this template encourages the violation of. It can indeed be a problem with other templates, including infoboxes and even succession boxes in some instances. That is why infoboxes, for example, are reviewed and fields that are inherently problematic, that represent trivia or encourage original research more often than not, are routinely reviewed and sometimes removed (as was the Religion: field for non-religious historical figures) to minimize this downside. A template that actively encourages violation of the very policies enacted specifically to temper such editorial excesses is absolutely 'something to avoid', with each generation added to this template more egregious invitation. Agricolae (talk) 11:17, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

The question under discussion here is whether or not the Ahnentafel template is too detailed. If you believe the template itself should be removed there's a procedure to go about that.Flyte35 (talk) 03:07, 28 April 2019 (UTC)

Maybe I wasn't clear. When I said every additional generation makes the situation worse, that was meant to imply that if the template is to be retained, then the fewer generations that violate content policy by being superfluous genealogy, the better. Agricolae (talk) 21:46, 28 April 2019 (UTC)

Let me add that if these are to be viewed as nothing but navigation boxes, then they should be treated as such - placed at the bottom of the page among the other navigation and succession boxes, and not be presented in an Ancestry section in the body of the article. That the template is universally placed in the body, often with a section heading, tells me they are being used as content and will be viewed that way by readers. Were there an agreement that this template is nothing but a glorified navigation aid, then this should be explicit, with both the template documentation stating it is to be placed with the navboxes (after the citations and bibliography) and not in the body, and with a visible line at the top of ahnentafel stating that all information it contains is intended solely for navigation purposes and should not be interpreted as verifiable article content. Agricolae (talk) 03:03, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

No one said that they are nothing but navigation boxes, but it does seem reasonable to place them at the bottom of the page among the other boxes, if that solution seems reasonable to other editors. That really might be a good way to fix this problem here and get out of the WP:IDONTLIKEIT conflict of interpretations here. Flyte35 (talk) 01:43, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

So this is a Schrodinger's Template: both a Navigation box when it otherwise be subject to the content restrictions like V and NOTGENEALOGY, and yet not just a Navigation box when subjected to NAVBOX - and you can't tell whether it is a Navigation box or not until you try to apply a policy, then it becomes whatever in needs to for that policy not to apply. (Oh, and IDONTLIKEIT doesn't really apply when the argument has been 'I don't like it violating this specific policy'.) Agricolae (talk) 04:03, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

So, place the Ahnentafels at the bottom of the page among the other navigation and succession boxes? That solution seems reasonable to me.Flyte35 (talk) 05:03, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

Agricolae has just explained to you that it is not a solution. How does that solve the problem of verifiability and pertinence? Surtsicna (talk) 10:01, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

That was the idea Agricolae proposed. The question under discussion is whether the Ahnentafel template is overdetailed. What would you prefer, Surtsicna? Flyte35 (talk) 02:34, 28 April 2019 (UTC)

Not my proposal. My proposal was explicitly conditional, that if it is nothing but a navbox, it should be treated as a navbox (and implicitly, subject to the policies on navboxes). You responded that no one said it was nothing but a navbox. That negates my conditional and hence the consequences of it - if it isn't a navbox (which turns out to have been a red herring), it is content, subject to the content policies, wherein every generation not needed to understand the subject is superfluous (i.e. what Surtsucna has referred to in edit summaries as "overdetailed"). Agricolae (talk) 21:46, 28 April 2019 (UTC)

And if these ahnentafeln were meant to function as navboxes, then WP:NAVBOX would apply and the only people mentioned in them would be the people with a biography on Wikipedia. None of us here honestly see this template as a navbox, as even those supporting such interpretation argue that people such as Johann Friedrich Waldau should be mentioned in the ahnentafel of Crown Princess Victoria. Furthermore, treating Template:Ahnentafel as a navbox would effectively absolve it of WP:V, which is unacceptable. Surtsicna (talk) 10:22, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

It is over-detailed and there's no agreed standard for how many generations should be included. Celia Homeford (talk) 13:59, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

The standard is the template we're discussing here. The discussion is about whether 5 generations is too detailed. How many generations do you think is the appropriate level of detail? Flyte35 (talk) 23:45, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

This is begging the larger question - not what the right number of generations is in a standardized systematic ancestor spew, but whether we shouldn't instead be showing a person's relationships that are relevant to their inheritance, actions and immediate context, whether they be aunts, cousins, step-fathers, etc., that actually may help the reader understand their interactions, as opposed to giving some arbitrary number of generations of direct ancestors because . . . well, just because! Our decisions regarding what genealogy to show should be dictated by the content of each page, not a by some uniform template. Agricolae (talk) 00:28, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

Request for comments advised

I'd still say we could use a RFC on this discussion. It regards a substantial amount of articles information that have been around for a substantial amount of time. PPEMES (talk) 11:14, 20 May 2019 (UTC)

That is a great idea, yes.Flyte35 (talk) 03:01, 23 May 2019 (UTC)

What would this RFC be about anyway? Whether we should make this template the standard in all royals-related biographies? Or whether it should contain a set number of generations? I cannot imagine an RFC that could enforce the use of any template across thousands of articles. Not even infoboxes are a given. Surtsicna (talk) 07:03, 23 May 2019 (UTC)

That depends on how user:PPEMES sets up the RFC. This is exactly the sort of ambiguity we've been wrestling with here. Flyte35 (talk) 02:30, 26 May 2019 (UTC)

It doesn't really. No RFC could force or prohibit the use of a template across thousands of articles. Surtsicna (talk) 05:53, 26 May 2019 (UTC)

Things as there were until just recently may have been nuts. But can you at least agree that the reforms you brought unto Wikipedia have meant a significant change in a short time? As such, would a "Request for comments" really hurt awfully? PPEMES (talk) 19:56, 26 May 2019 (UTC)

It would not hurt. It would just be a waste of time. What could it achieve? No template has ever been mandated on any page and no template should ever be regarded as a sacred cow. Content that fails basic policies such as WP:V and WP:OR must be eligible for removal and the rest must be open for individual discussion, don't you think? Surtsicna (talk) 20:59, 26 May 2019 (UTC)

Presumably the RFC PPEMES is proposing creating would be aiming to establish whether it's appropriate to include the template in articles, so that we could get out of this WP:IDONTLIKEIT morass. No one is proposing mandating anything. Flyte35 (talk) 01:35, 28 May 2019 (UTC)

Nobody is suggesting that this template should never be included in articles, so I again do not understand what the proposal is about or what it could accomplish. If anybody thought this template inappropriate to include in articles, I assume it would be nominated for deletion. Surtsicna (talk) 14:11, 28 May 2019 (UTC)

It regards the typical 5 generations standard question, prevalent for half a millenia on Planet Earth. PPEMES (talk) 16:47, 28 May 2019 (UTC)

I do not know which biographies you are reading, but a 5-generation ahnentafel has never been prevalent or typical. Ealdgyth demonstrated this very clearly. Surtsicna (talk) 10:58, 29 May 2019 (UTC)

I would like nothing better than for this template to go away, but I am not so much of a fool not to recognize that the template is too much of a 'shiny object' that people like putting on pages just because they can for such a proposal ever to pass. Wikipedia would benefit from almost all of them being removed or replaced with purpose-designed trees that only have the relationships specifically relevant to each subject, rather than this grossly-overused, one-size-fits-none, policy-violating chart showing only direct ancestors (e.g. it would be a whole lot more useful to see how Empress Matilda was related to Robert of Gloucester and King Stephen than by being shown she was great-great-granddaughter of Fulbert the Tanner). Agricolae (talk) 19:39, 28 May 2019 (UTC)

As has already been pointed out, it is disingenuous as well as inaccurate to dismiss the argument that existing policy (WP:V and WP:NOTGENEALOGY) should be followed with regard to all content as if it were nothing but IDONTLIKEIT. Indeed, the suggestion that such policy should be ignored smacks a whole lot more of WP:ILIKEIT than the opposing argument that favors following policy resembles the opposite. (And again, the choice made by a 500-year-old Austrian are not binding on Wikipedia.) Agricolae (talk) 19:39, 28 May 2019 (UTC)

In fact I would be happy to delegate this to Flyte35, if you don't mind? PPEMES (talk) 06:49, 28 May 2019 (UTC)

Delegate? Delegate what? Flyte35 (talk) 22:04, 30 May 2019 (UTC)

Creating the request for comments? PPEMES (talk) 22:35, 30 May 2019 (UTC)

Sorry. If you want this to happen I recommend you just go for it.Flyte35 (talk) 14:38, 31 May 2019 (UTC)

Why couldn't you go ahead with it? You seem also better informed than I am. PPEMES (talk) 14:38, 1 June 2019 (UTC)

Sorry, no. If you want this to happen I recommend you just go for it. Flyte35 (talk) 22:16, 1 June 2019 (UTC)

OK. Sorry. I thought you wanted it. If I am alone in calling for this, I guess I better not bother. PPEMES (talk) 10:36, 2 June 2019 (UTC)

As I said, I think it's a good idea you proposed. I just think you need to go for it if you want to see it happen. Flyte35 (talk) 15:39, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

A request for comments on what exactly? Surtsicna (talk) 22:51, 30 May 2019 (UTC)

Interpretation and application of WP:NOTGENEALOGY in this case? PPEMES (talk) 08:47, 31 May 2019 (UTC)

Now, there's a lot of trivia floating around in biographical articles. While few individuals can offer 5 generations of encyclopedically relevant family background in each and every instance, a vast amount of biographical material has included such information for a half a millenia, and for 15 years across Wikipedia - its existance until now. Even if ahnentafels in their standard scope since half a millenia would be considered trivia, perhaps we should channel our frustration of this renduncy on biographic writers and genealogists, telling them to drop what they're doing and get on with something else? Until, however, I fail to see concluding arguments for why Wikipedia should not reflect the external world in this regard. At least, perhaps a request for comments would help us who doubth the merit of this recent information deletion with more convincing arguments? PPEMES (talk) 11:01, 29 May 2019 (UTC)

It is demonstratively not true that "a vast amount of biographical material" includes 5-generation ahnentafeln. It never has. I am getting a strong feeling that you have not gone through many biographies of royal and noble people and so I am genuinely confused as to which "external world" you are referring to. Surtsicna (talk) 11:15, 29 May 2019 (UTC)

As I already have pointed out, I know of only one encyclopedia (the style of biographical publishing to which Wikipedia aspires) that has even made use of 5-generation charts, the 1913 (?) Encyclopaedia Larousse (going from memory here - I last looked at it in the 1980s). It used such charts (not ahnentafeln) for a very small number of exceptional individuals, not for every king, noble, politician and actor for which the compiler could find the information, and I don't recall any other biographical source doing so at all. As to genealogists always doing so, even were this the case (which I dispute), that is completely irrelevant - while genealogical writing often incorporates some biography, and biographical writing often incorporates some genealogy, they are fundamentally different branches of history - genealogy is not biography, and Wikipedia is WP:NOTGENEALOGY. Agricolae (talk) 12:14, 29 May 2019 (UTC)

Requests for comments (RfC)

Please see above discussion for background. Changes has recently been enforced across a wide range of articles. Large changes after a discussion with quite few participants. Then again, perhaps more voices would be welcome to settle the issue: Is this template motivated, and if so where, according to what criterias, and to what extent? 5 generations being the standard in genealogy and quite some biographies as well external to Wikipedia. PPEMES (talk) 20:54, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

• Comment. The policy at Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not#Wikipedia is not a directory states that 'Family histories should be presented only where appropriate to support the reader's understanding of a notable topic.' In almost all cases, the family relationships ancestry of the subject of a royal biography can be understood from a 4-generation pedigree. More remote ancestors that have no bearing on the article's topic and that reliable sources never discuss in relation to the topic should be excluded. Furthermore, according to policy at Wikipedia:No original research, if an article is about person A, it is incorrect to provide a citation that shows A is related to B, and then another one that shows B is related to C, and then another that shows that C is related to D, and then another that shows D is related to E, in order to show that A is related to E. That is the same as 'original research by synthesis': taking two citations, one showing that A is related to B and another that B is related to C, to show that A is related to C. There should be a single citation that shows A is related to B, C, D, and E. The citations should all mention person A. If they don't, then that information doesn't belong in an article about person A. These two policies, and the policy at Wikipedia:Verifiability, are project-wide policies that have very wide consensus and that have been agreed and discussed by a large number of participants. For royalty four generations is ideal enough: it shows the relationships and ancestry of the article subject but without going into too much (often uncited, poorly cited, or irrelevant) detail. Celia Homeford (talk) 07:28, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

  I don't entirely agree with this - I agree that a five-generation chart is not ideal for the reasons stated, WP:NOTGENEALOGY (the part of WP:NOTDIRECTORY quoted) and WP:NOR - but not that a 4-generation chart is necessarily ideal. I would rather see the chart template (or a chart image file) used in almost all circumstances, showing the relationships relevant to someone's biography, importantly including those who are not direct ancestors, as we do on Empress Matilda, but in many cases the problem is more basic - there is often no content-related reason to name anything more than the parents of the subject (e.g. for an actor or media personality, a politician or minor historical figure) and they don't need a chart at all. In such cases, we shouldn't be using a chart at all, not a not 5 generation tree, not 4 generation, not anything else. Agricolae (talk) 13:40, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

  Yes, I see now that my comment should have been more restrictive. I have changed it and marked the inserted text in underline and the deleted text as struck though, as described at Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines#Editing own comments. I also accept that bespoke charts or family trees showing the relationships relevant the topic are often more useful and explanatory than the one created by this template. Celia Homeford (talk) 13:58, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

  Thanks for the clarification. I am fully on-board with your revised text. Agricolae (talk) 14:26, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

  "I would rather see the chart template (or a chart image file) used in almost all circumstances" see Help:Family trees#Image file for why image files are not a good idea, particularly if they are constructed by Wikipedia/Commons editors as they frequently suffer from problems of WP:V and they can not be edited easily. -- PBS (talk) 08:52, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

All charts suffer from WP:V issues - it is not something that affects image charts uniquely. When a chart requires inline citations, it is usually because they are WP:SYN, not because they are image files. They do require use of different software to edit, but they are more flexible and more elegant than the {{Template:chart}} template, which can occupy inordinate screen-space and can become real mazes of lines going every which way in an attempt to fit is all in (plus they are ugly, but that is just MHO). Agricolae (talk) 14:09, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

Not all trees suffer from WP:V issues (Eg ahnentafel tree in the article Charles I of England). The images are kept on WP:COMMONS and usually they are in the form of an image that can not be edited. In practice often the only option with a poorly source image is to remove it, because the person who uploaded it onto commons has (1) no ability to edit it, (2) can't be bothered to or no longer has access to the sources used to create it, (3) -- the most common -- has long since stopped participating in the Wikipedia project). Also in practical terms where do the citations go (as notes in the image they may not meet the requirements of WP:CITE for consistency)? -- PBS (talk) 08:04, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

To be more clear, all types of trees have WP:V issues, not just the image ones. Given that the Charles I chart is adequately documented with a single citation at the top, I am not really seeing the problem. We put citations in image legends all the time. Agricolae (talk) 21:08, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

@User:Agricolae: verification is not the only problem. Suppose an editor wishes to remove a leaf (because the person is not notable), this can not be done as easily as it can on a Wikipedia article page. But staying on the issue of verification and images you write "We put citation in image ledgends ..." (1) in many cases it is not just in the ledgend where citations are needed, if more than one citation is used in a tree then they need to go on the leaves and it may see for example Henry Percy, 3rd Earl of Northumberland#Ancestry. See also how few images have any citations: c:Category:Family trees of the United Kingdom and c:Category:Family trees of England. So I put it to you that in paractice images are not a sutible subsitute for trees created with templates such as {{tree chart}} on Wikipedia if the tree is to be easily edited over a number of years by several editors to meet the guidence in the three content policies. -- PBS (talk) 14:16, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

There are pluses and minuses to each. It is easier to edit the chart template (at least once an editor familiarises themselves with the code), but it is harder to do complex relationships (double intermarriages, six spouses) in an elegant manner, and they also take inordinate space, which means that to display large families you end up either having them go way off the side of the screen or stacked/compacted so tightly with lines zigzagging all over the place such that they are nearly unreadable. As to 'See also how few images have any citations', see how few ahnentafeln have any citations, see how few chart templates have any citations. It is not compelling to put forward a general fault of all charts on Wikipedia as if it was a specific fault that makes one type inferior to other types that have the same fault. Agricolae (talk) 17:19, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

Anyone with a basic knowledge of how parameters work in templates (eg citation templates) can figure out how to add citation to any in-en-wiki family tree (if not a request at the Wikipedia:Teahouse will find someone who can help). Modifying a commons-wiki image is quite another thing and is further still from "the free encyclopaedia that anyone can edit".BTW ancestry trees never include multiple spouses and if anything there a plus for ahnentafel trees and lack of complexity as the traditional way of showing someone is an ancestor more than one way is to number the relationship; eg to show that both paternal great-grandfather and maternal great-grandfather is the same person is to include "12.=8" for the maternal great-grandfather leaf. Although of course Roman emperor's family trees with public adoption of an heir are never going to be good candidates for ahnentafel trees helping to clarify things (horse for courses). -- PBS (talk) 07:57, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

And yet they don't add references. The lack of citation is a problem with all types of trees - just looking at the trees on Wikipedia makes this evident. That the ahnentafel lacks the capacity to display relevant but non-ancestral relationships is not an advantage, even if it does make it simpler. A straightforward sentence stating that X is daughter of Y and Z would beat any templates or image in lack of complexity, but were that a plus, we wouldn't be arguing over using templates and images to display more complex genealogical information.Agricolae (talk) 14:57, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

• Comment The question is unclear ('motivated' ??) and it is non-neutral, ending with with one premise (that 5-generation charts are standard in genealogy) that is unsupported and not entirely relevant and a second that is blatantly false (that quite a few biographies external to Wikipedia use them). I would strongly recommend the question be restated in a clear and neutral manner. (Suggestion: Should a five-generation ahnentafel template be standard for biographical articles? or maybe simpler: Should the 5-generation chart be the preferred standard when the Ahnentafel template is used?) Agricolae (talk) 13:40, 4 June 2019 (UTC)
• Comment. I have explained two or three times here that a 5-generation ahnentafel is not standard in biographies outside Wikipedia. I have linked to an extensive overview of literature proving that. The premise of this RFC is thus not only biased but a blatant lie. I just cannot wrap my mind around that. Surtsicna (talk) 17:29, 4 June 2019 (UTC)
• Comment. There is some debate as to whether this sort of thing constitutes trouble with regard to WP:NOTGENEALOGY or WP:NOR, but that's a concern about genealogy itself, and has nothing to do with what level of detail is appropriate to include in this particular chart. The first 5-generation ahnentafel appears to have been published by Michaël Eytzinger in Thesaurus principum hac aetate in Europa viventium in 1590. This method of presenting genealogy appears to have been standard (meaning commonly used and accepted by genealogists) since then. That's why so many articles on royal and noble subjects in Wikipedia have used that genealogical numbering system. Since that format is clear and presented in a drop-down menu, so that only interested readers even end up seeing these charts, it seems to me that it's a good idea to retain that system in articles where editors have found and provided sourcing about genealogical material.Flyte35 (talk) 16:52, 5 June 2019 (UTC)
  • No, 5-generation ahnentafeln are not standard in biographies outside Wikipedia. They are not found in academic and peer-reviewed biographies. I have provided a link to an extensive overview of literature proving that. At this point, claiming that this is standard is no longer ignorance but a blatant lie and I will keep pointing it out. Surtsicna (talk) 18:20, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

It's not standard in trade biographies no. The chart is commonly used and accepted by genealogists, in genealogical materials. Flyte35 (talk) 20:07, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

All kinds of charts are commonly used by genealogists. There is no standard chart. Agricolae (talk) 21:30, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

It a simply not possible to divorce NOTGENEALOGY from the question of how many generations of genealogy to include on a Wikipedia page. If five generations exceeds the amount of genealogy necessary to understand the subject of the article, then that is exactly what NOTGENEALOGY forbids, and it is completely fallacious to suggest that Wikipedia editorial choices must be determined by a decision made by an Austrian in 1590. Agricolae (talk) 21:30, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

• Comment. Politely invited by user Flyte35 to engage in this discussion and give my opinions, here I am. The main problem that I have encountered with ahnentafels in my significant years in this Wikipedia is the absence of direct sources. For instance, an article of a "subject X" will say that he/she is a parent of "subject Y", and the article on "subject Y" will say that he/she is a parent of "subject Z", but that, apparently, is not enough to form an ahnentafel of "subject Z", because, as I said, in a subject's article other Wikipedia articles do not serve as source, which is sort of contradicting. But that is besides the point. The huge problem, literally and figuratively, and the one that I shall strive to tackle here, is the needlessness for a 5-generation ahnentafel. This amount of intricate detail goes against Wikipedia's inclusion policy and that fact alone should be enough for all editors to reduce the size of all ahnentafels. By observing the work of great Wikipedians such as DrKay and also Celia Homeford and Surtsicna, there is a reasonable argument for the reduction of the size of ahnentafels and is this: uselessness. A 5-generation ahnentafel is useless; it serves no other purpose than to satisfy a fetiche on pedigree that does not belong in this community. As I have recommended to some, if you wish to discuss genealogy, who is the "great-great-grandmother on his/her grandmother's father side"—almost had a stroke describing this situation—, do it on a Genealogy forum, not Wikipedia. Wikipedia needs to strive towards objectivity and precision, and a 5-generation ahnentafel does not attend to these needs, and it is quite ugly and unpractical to look at, be that on a computer screen or, and especially, on a mobile phone screen. So my recomentadion is: let's stick with a 4-generation ahnentafel, consisting of subject, parent, grandparent and great-grandparent, and that is enough. Examples are the articles on British royalty in all ages, and on current members of Belgian, Danish, Dutch, Luxembourgish, Spanish, Swedish, Norwegian, etc, royal families, some of which do not even contain an "Ancestry" section. That is the pattern we must emulate. M. Armando (talk) 18:33, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

The chart provides information about a subject's ancestors. Such information is only useless if you don't think a subject's ancestors are important. But that's an argument against studying genealogy itself. Such an opinion doesn't really have much to do with this chart in particular. The template was created in March 2018‎ by Frietjes, apparently as a merger of several templates (I think that's what's going on anyway). The only reason the truncated 4-generation ahnentafel is now used in the articles on members of the British, Belgian, Danish, Dutch, etc. royal families is because a few Wikipedia editors cut them down recently. It looks like the 5-generation ahnetafel was pretty standard there earlier. Flyte35 (talk) 20:07, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

And the menu of Henry II at the feast of St. Michael in the third year of his reign is only useless if you are not interested in it. All information is useless to those not interested in it. That is an argument for including any trivia anyone wants. However, we have a policy that says only to include genealogical information that helps understand the subject (NOTGENEALOGY) and we have another (PROPORTION) that says we should cover a subject with similar emphasis to the coverage given in reliable secondary sources, and as you have already accepted, most reliable secondary biographies don't obsess over the complete ancestry of their subject. Agricolae (talk) 21:30, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

If we took your idea, Agricolae, and applied it universaly—that is a Kantian principle by the way—we wouldn't have biographies of less than 4,000 pages. What you say, pardon, is nonsensical. We are the controllers of information, we get to decide what is important and what is not and we even get to discuss it, like right now. That is the truth. So let's be true to that and reach a 4-generation compromise, as DrKay proposes below, and I enthusiastically agree, and run with it. And finally move on. Now Flyte35 you are quite right about what used to be the consensus. And it was not a few editors who decided to change it, it was the administrators. Without administrator backing our ideas are as good as nothing. Let's change with the tide and reach that compromise. I accepted it. Now it is your turn. Respectfully, M. Armando (talk) 20:36, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

Wait, what? "It was not a few editors who decided to change it, it was the administrators." (Noting the point of Surtsicna about administrator authority, below btw) At what point did the administrators decide to change the standard here? Who decided that all genealogical charts should have only 4 generations? Please point us to that decision. I'm not being a jerk here, seriously, M. Armando if there was a decision about this I think that decision would help guide this discussion. If you know of one please point us to it. Thanks.Flyte35 (talk) 06:56, 7 June 2019 (UTC)

You overestimate the power of administrators. Their role is to perform certain special actions but their opinions are not worth more than those of other contributors. Of course, Wikipedia should not have 4,000-page-long biographies. But if we base our biographies on comprehensive works of reputable historians (as we should) and condense the information found there to fit into an encyclopedia (as we should), then it does not make sense to habitually include information that such thousand-page-long biographies do not contain at all. Our decision on what is important should not be arbitrary but based on what is found in high quality sources. I agree that, when included, the default number of generations displayed in this template should be four. I do not, however, agree that the template itself should be included by default. Surtsicna (talk) 22:23, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

Flyte35, If I can paint a picture here, no one sat around a table and decided to do anything. I did not mean to sound like some sort of conspiracy or even a planning went on. It was something that began happening organically and now it is a point of discussion here. Apologies if I expressed myself poorly. The reality is: you make an edit; an administrator deems it unworthhy, unreasoable, inconsequential, unnecessary, or whatever, he/she undoes the editing, and I dare you, any of you, to undo the undoing or to bang heads with them. The administrator position is a very important one and should be respected. A sense of hierarchy needs to be maintained, if royalty taught us anything. And Flyte35, noticed how Surtsicna agreed with the 4-generation display compromise on ahnentafels? About content and all else, how our decisions on content should not be arbitrary, but rather based on fine pieces of historical work, I agree with Surtsicna. Respectfully, M. Armando (talk) 18:29, 7 June 2019 (UTC)

With all due respect, royalty has taught us nothing of the sort. Administrators should be respected when they carry out administrative functions. When it comes to their edits, they are not imbued with special weight above those of any other editor, except in so much as they are better able to defend their edits due to the (assumed) greater familiarity with policy. Any administrator who claims that their role makes their edits beyond contestation is misusing their position. The only administrative decision that was made with regard to these ahnentafeln was that a set of individual ahnentafel templates with 4-generation, 5-generation and 6-generation charts should be consolidated into a single template that could be used for charts with any number (? up to 6) generations, an action taken following consensus in a discussion over the proposal. When the combined template page was then produced, a 5-generation one was shown as the featured example, but this was never intended to imply that this was the preferred version (the issue of a default number of generations was explicitly raised in the discussion and specifically answered by those carrying out the merge that the display of a five-generation chart on the new combined template was only being done as an example, not a directive). There has been no administrator decision to change the standard, because there never was a standard.

As to the 4000-page biographies, that is not what I was saying at all. As Surtsicna indicated, I am saying we should use information in proportion (not full extent) to its use in biographies. If there are biographies like ODNB or HOP that are similar length to a Wikipedia article, we want to provide similar amounts of coverage for the same topics, while if we are using a 300 page book, then something that gets a page might merit a sentence (at most) in our article, while something mentioned only in passing in a single sentence in the book probably shouldn't be mentioned on Wikipedia at all. What we don't want to do is add material that is in excess of what is covered by such sources, which really could result in 4000-page biographies if taken to extreme - as I said above, an American periodical has been publishing a serialized ahnentafel of Charles I of England since the 1980s, and if I remember correctly, last time I checked a few years back it was on the 14th generation and would now be hundreds of pages long in total, but its inclusion on the Charles I Wikipedia page would be completely out of WP:PROPORTION). Agricolae (talk) 19:58, 7 June 2019 (UTC)

Can we reach a consensus here or we're just going to endlessly repeat ourselves in a loop? "A four-generation chart in a collapsed section is a reasonable compromise", said DrKay, who is not just an administrator, but a Wikipedian, and, apparently, you're choosing to disregard what DrKay said entirely and dismiss the job that DrKay does and the experience DrKay has. So I ask again: can we reach a consensus on a 4-generation display on ahnentafels? And by the way, what has royalty taught us, then?, if anything! Respectfully, M. Armando (talk) 22:02, 7 June 2019 (UTC)

• Comment. In ancestry sections of royalty articles, which is really only what's being discussed here, four generations is easily sufficient in almost all cases to demonstrate relevant connections and relations. Some people think these sections should be removed entirely, others think they should be expanded or maintained at five-generations as a minimum. A four-generation chart in a collapsed section is a reasonable compromise. DrKay (talk) 20:22, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

I completely agree with you. Nothing further to add. Respecfully, M. Armando (talk) 20:36, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

• Comment. Following thus far, I interpretate that there is WP:CONSENSUS to maintain this template for at least some biographical articles. Part as visualising genalogical trivia in biographical text where exceptionately relevant, part to facilitate navigation. Moving on, opposition against that this template should keep its tradition of 5 a generational scope since the inception of Wikipedia, tend to refer to WP:NOTGENEALOGY. I suppose more specifically to this WP:NOTGENEALOGY paragraph: "Genealogical entries. Family histories should be presented only where appropriate to support the reader's understanding of a notable topic." Should the prior five generational standard be shrinked to 4 generations (or less), wouldn't this be a reinterpretation of WP:NOTGENEALOGY not previously asserted? If so, am I the only one that would be happy to see more arguments that can refer to prevalent use of 4 generations ahnentafels outside of Wikipedia? PPEMES (talk) 23:01, 7 June 2019 (UTC)

There never was a 5-generation standard, and there is nothing novel about the interpretation that superfluous genealogy shouldn't be put in articles, even if people do it all the time (people regularly break all kinds of policies, but that doesn't mean it is a reinterpretation of the policies to clean this up). Ealdgyth analyzed the use of genealogical charts in biographical articles and books (this analysis is linked to by Surtsicna, above), and found no use of ahnentafel-type charts at all, not 5-generations, not 4-generations, though several had purpose-designed charts showing relevant relationships (showing non-ancestor kin, while only showing some ancestors). Agricolae (talk) 01:19, 8 June 2019 (UTC)

• Comment: Although five-generation ancestry charts are very rare in published sources, I don't see why the information shouldn't be included when they do exist, e.g. here. Sir Iain Moncrieffe wrote a whole book about the ancestry of the yet-to-be-born Prince William called Royal Highness (1982). Opera hat (talk) 14:31, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

Special-interest publications have special-interest focus that is not the best indication of appropriate proportional coverage for a general biographical account such as a Wikipedia article. The standard should not be whether a published 5-generation chart can be found anywhere, but whether any general biographies of the subject includes such a chart. Agricolae (talk) 16:32, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

I'm afraid few articles follow that ridigity. Conversely, I'm afraid if that would be the case, substational material on Wikipedia would qualify as WP:SYNTHESIS and WP:ORIGINALRESEARCH. PPEMES (talk)

Hyperbole aside, it is a problem - special-interest trivia litters biographical articles. Just because you find something in print somewhere doesn't make it appropriate for a general-interest biography article. Agricolae (talk) 21:24, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

Substantial material on wikipedia is synthesis and original research, but that doesn't mean more should be added. It should be removed. Celia Homeford (talk) 08:22, 11 June 2019 (UTC)

There is a danger of SYN when multiple sources are used. -- PBS (talk) 20:19, 17 June 2019 (UTC)

It is very easy to construct an ancestry tree from unreliable sources published on the internet. However it only takes one mistake for large parts of the tree to be incorrect. For example if a grandmother is recorded as the first wife rather the second wife (the correct mother), then a quarter of the tree will be inaccurate, even if all the other entries for every single person are correct. For this reason trees need accurate sourcing from reliable sources. It is easy to find the parents of a child in the child's biography, but it is often difficult to find all the children of couple. However if some of the children are notable enough to have their own biography in a reliable source, this can lead to editors unwittingly adding WP:OR into an ancestry tree. Let us suppose we are looking for the parents of a daughter X (the grandmother of the subject of an article). However X does not have a biography in a reliable source, but the father of X does (call him Y). In the biography of Y it names his wife (Z). The biography of Y states that Y and Z had a son (A) and four daughters, only 2 of which are named (B,C), but not the other two. Now it maybe that X is one of those two unnamed daughters, or it may be that X is the daughter of another marriage not included in the biography of Y. If one jumps to the conclusion that X is the daughter of Y and Z then this breaks the WP:NOR policy specifically a "synthesis of published material", because to conclude that the mother of Z is the grandmother of X is a synthesis.

• Comment This RfC is missing the point. A far better question is "ought Ahnentafel trees in Wikipedia articles follow the usage in reliable sources for the subject of the article?". For example the biography article of Charles I of England while a "featured article", was reduced from 31 to 15 ahnentafel leaves (five generations to four) when challenged for the leaves of the tree to be backed up with inline citations to reliable sources (Revision as of 12:39, 18 November 2013 and Revision as of 19:36, 18 November 201). There sould be no golbal rule, but each article sould follow the usage in reliable sources that support that article. Sections that contain ancestry trees that are not supported by reliable sources should first have a {{unreferenced section}} added to the and if no reliable sources are added after resaonable time the trees ought to be deleted per the policy section WP:UNSOURCED. After a suitable length of time all entries that are not supported by reliable sources, and any ancestor of those entries, ought to be removed. This is just following standard verifiability policy which for ancestry trees is far too often ignored. -- PBS (talk) 20:19, 17 June 2019 (UTC)
• Comment: I concur with PBS in that I don't think it particularly matters if there are 4 or 5 generations shown, as long as the relationships between parents and children can be cited to reliable sources. That being said, I don't think it's good form/etiquette to be removing a 5th generation just because you think it's overly detailed. There are plenty of WP precedents/guidelines that state that later editors should not arbitrarily change the way things are done in an article (e.g., date formats, variety of English, and citation style – yes, I realize that those are simply stylistic edits, but the principle is the same). When such edits are made, they are governed by WP:BRD. If you delete the 5th generation and you are reverted, it's your responsibility to convince the other editors of your position, and you can't do it, you need to recognize when to fold. —howcheng {chat} 22:41, 21 June 2019 (UTC)
  • I disagree with your comparison of this content dispute to stylistic edits. It is not nearly the same principle. Whether an article should contain a 5-generation ahnentafel or a 4-generation ahnentafel or no ahnentafel at all should not depend on how many editors like or dislike the content but on whether reputable biographers include it. Surtsicna (talk) 22:50, 21 June 2019 (UTC)
    • Many of the biographies I've seen don't even use ahnentafel genealogy trees; they tend to use top-down family trees. Would you agree then if a major biography of a historical figure uses the latter type of family tree but goes back 5+ generations, then a 5-generation ahnentafel might be acceptable? —howcheng {chat} 22:54, 21 June 2019 (UTC)
      • Yes, that would be perfectly reasonable IMO. If a major biography mentions all 30 5th-generation ancestors even just in prose, it would be acceptable to include a chart (say, an ahnentafel) containing those names. Surtsicna (talk) 23:03, 21 June 2019 (UTC)
        • I don't think that is the scenario Howcheng is describing - not when a biographer includes an ahnentafel. They are suggesting that when the biographer includes a descendants chart that includes the subject (e.g., were they to include a War of the Roses chart that traces the lines from Edward III down to the claimants), that if that chart happens to have five generations along that single line(s) traced, that would justify showing an ahnentafel that traces five generations in every line for a person at the bottom of the tree. Agricolae (talk) 23:44, 21 June 2019 (UTC)
      • No. If a biographical source shows a line descent for five generations, they have selected which relationships they think are historically relevant, and that justifies including a similar pedigree tracing that relevant line that goes back five generation (or even more), but not an ahnentafel that traces every line of ancestry for five generations with a majority of the included individuals being people the biographer did not think were worthy of displaying, while excluding uncles, step-relationships, etc., that the biographer might have included in their chart. It justifies using Template:chart, not Template:Ahnentafel. And as much as this appears a stylistic distinction, it is not - this is about including relationships biographers have deemed relevant (and not including those the biographer did not deem relevant). Agricolae (talk) 23:49, 21 June 2019 (UTC)
        • I agree with User:Howcheng, it is similar to style issues if one removes the 5th generation and that is reverted then WP:BRD applies. However if (as is likely) the 5th generation is not supported by inline reliable sources, then it becomes a case of WP:BURDEN ("burden to demonstrate verifiability lies with the editor who adds or restores materia"). One can argue that 5th generation is not covered by WP:PRESERVE (one can argue that a whole family tree of any number of generations is not relevant) -- PRESERVE "as long as any of the facts or ideas added to an article would belong in the "finished" article, they should be retained if they meet the three article content retention policies". If the 5th generation is supported with reliable sources then it becomes a consensus issue over preserve and should be decided on the article's talk page -- In the example of ancestry in Charles I of England I gave above, a request for sources was all it took gain a consensus that 4 generations was enough (no discussion was necessary). -- PBS (talk) 07:51, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
        • User:Agricolae in response to your comment "If a biographical source shows a line descent for five generations, they have selected which relationships they think are historically relevant" there is a danger of systemic bias. Thanks to primogeniture in the past in parts of Europe there was a strong bias towards paternal ancestry (in countries such as England, it was normal from 1066 onwards for the eldest son to inherit everything titles and land). It means that for many notable family not only for the first son but for all children their paternal decent will be better documented. As many secondary sources (eg Burk) were written by authors and for audiences who all assumed this is was the most important relationships to record. However in these more enlightened times there is a danger of that presenting a systemic bias which the Women in Red project is trying to address. Perhaps it is no coincidence that ahnentafel trees were popular in Germany where inheritance tended to divide property between all male descendent and it ended up in those very small states where marrying you cousin could reunite territories split in a previous generations (picking one at random as an example ernestine duchies). -- PBS (talk) 07:51, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
          • If I misunderstood Howcheng, and Agricolae's interpretation is correct, then I agree with Agricolae. A family tree should include only those people who are included in the family tree presented by the biographer or at least mentioned in the prose of the biography. The fact that ahnentafeln are extremely rare in published biographies, as noted by Howcheng, means that they should not be the norm in Wikipedia biographies, not that we should break our backs trying to justify their inclusion. PBS, style issues are not comparable to content disputes. If some relationships are not well-documented, as you say, and for that or any other reason the biographer does not consider them relevant enough to mention, then it is not up to us bring them up. It is undue and means threading dangerously close to original research. Surtsicna (talk) 11:33, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
          • Some biases are due to historians, but some are due to history. If a historian decides only the historical passage of the title is informative enough to include in a chart, it is SOAPBOX, trying to right a historical wrong, to conclude you have to show all ancestors in all lines just to balance the historical bias of male-preference primogeniture. Some ancestors of more noteworthy than others based on the historical context in which the subject lived, even if (especially if) that context was gender-biased. For a biography of Alfonso VII, his maternal grandmother is more noteworthy than his paternal grandmother, his maternal grandfather more noteworthy than his paternal grandfather, (for that matter, his mother more noteworthy than his father,) and one really can't understand his biographical context without showing his step-father, his sister, one of his aunts (the other three are less relevant) and her son. Using a 5-generation ahnentafel as a supposedly-unbiased way of presenting his genealogical context does a severe disservice to the reader's understanding. Agricolae (talk) 12:54, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
            • I and other readers may find it a service. I really don't understand why the rush to try to censor available information there. Doesn't it border WP:POINTy about asserting that just because something is of little to no importance to me, that shall apply also to others? PPEMES (talk) 13:44, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
              • Thankfully, we can rely on academic biographers to indicate which information is and which is not important to understand the topic of an article, so we do not have to stoop to what-if-I-like-it kind of arguments or accuse each other of censorship or WP:POINT. Surtsicna (talk) 14:05, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
              • (e/c) This 'someone may be interested' argument could be made about the most trivial tidbits of information - what Henry II had for dinner on Michaelmas eve of the third year of his reign, for example. The world is a diverse place and there is going to be someone interested in just about anything, no matter how obscure. Someone will be curious about a subject's astrological sign. Someone will care about their blood type. Someone will be fascinated by a description of their genitalia. As far as that goes, the same argument could be made for the 12th generation, or the 32nd generation of ancestry - someone is certainly going to find it a service to give as much genealogy on all sides as can be determined back to the dawn of time. However, 'someone may be interested' cannot be the basis for inclusion decisions, or we would just get random collections of obscure facts rather than coherent biographical articles. WP:PROPORTION says we should focus on those aspects of the subject in proportion to the degree to which they are covered by reliable sources, not based on our personal whims or our suppositions about the interests of some hypothetical reader - for biographical articles we leave it to the published biographers to make those decisions and we mirror their treatment. This is discernment, not censorship. (See also WP:IINFO - Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information, and an ahnentafel is nothing if not an indiscriminate collection of ancestors.) Nothing POINTy about this whatsoever. Agricolae (talk) 14:37, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
                • I certainly do not advocate limitlessness. Just some humble harmony with tendence of typical extension on this trivia in sources, where deemed relevant on a case by case basis. As such, excuse but I'm not sure the reductio ad absurdum comparisons really fly. PPEMES (talk) 14:47, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
                  • Deemed relevant by whom, editors or academics? I do not understand what you mean by "humble harmony with tendence of typical extension on this trivia in sources". Surtsicna (talk) 15:07, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
                    • I'm sorry, I don't buy this argument. When we write articles, we cobble together information from multiple sources to make one narrative. Fact A may in be multiple sources, but let's imagine that Fact B shows up only in one single source. The questions that concern us as editors are 1) are the sources reliable; 2) does our content accurately reflect what is stated in the sources (not original research nor synthesis). If those conditions are met, then the last question is, are those facts relevant to and/or worth of inclusion in the article? That's a decision best left to the individual editors of an article, not applied across-the-board. —howcheng {chat} 16:58, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
                      • If the argument you do not buy is that the content of Wikipedia biographies should reflect the content of published, peer-reviewed biographies, then I am afraid we have some fundamental disagreements that go well beyond genealogy charts. Yes, we cobble together information from multiple sources to make one narrative, but those sources should all be publications specializing in the subject of the article if we want the narrative to be a comprehensive, general biography. If Fact B shows up in a single major biography of the subject, then its inclusion is justifiable; if it shows up only in a specialist, non-biographical publication, then it does not belong in a general biography article. For example, the fact that Henry VIII wore a lot of rings on Saint George's Day in 1515 appears in a perfectly reliable source published by a reputable historian. Should that fact then be mentioned in Henry VIII of England? No, because the source is not a biography of Henry VIII but instead specializes in Tudor fashion. What the article Henry VIII of England should include is information gathered from biographies of Henry VIII. Surtsicna (talk) 17:48, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
                        • Yes, exactly - we do not take our lead from the focus given by special-interest sources, whether they be fashion, geology (I can remember seeing an obituary in a geological society publication that never mentioned the subject had been Prime Minister but went into detail on their presentation to the Royal Society of a fossil from the Pennines) or genealogy publications. For thoroughly-studied people, there is going to be any number of such articles in special-interest publications that focus on the intersection of that person with their topic of interest, because that is how academics can publish something new on a well-trod ground, but we weight our coverage based on coverage in general-interest sources. Agricolae (talk) 18:10, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
                          • You have misunderstood me. What I meant was that in addition to information that is taken from major biographies of the subject, it is permissible to include other information, assuming it's reliably sourced. The decision to do that is up to the editors of the page and should be decided on a case by case basis, not dictated as a policy. —howcheng {chat} 19:19, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
                            • I think it would be incredibly presumptuous for Wikipedia editors to decide that a Wikipedia article should include information which is not found in any of the major biographies of the subject, as it would suggest that all the academics who invested years of their life into researching the subject failed to include something important and relevant. And if inclusion into (or exclusion from) published, peer-reviewed biographies is not the decisive criterium for inclusion into (or exclusion from) Wikipedia biographies, what will be? Voting? Personal preferences? "I don't like it so it should go", "I find it useful so it should stay"? Surtsicna (talk) 20:07, 24 June 2019 (UTC)
                            • I didn't misunderstand you at all. I just disagree. I don't think editor whim ('I think it is interesting', 'I think someone may find it useful') is sufficient basis for including information. One editor's curiosity is another's mindless trivia. That is why we have policies like WP:PROPORTION. Agricolae (talk) 20:43, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

This conversation is drifting off topic. If you wish to pursue the last couple of posts perhaps you would like to take a look at the articles George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, Art patronage of George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, and Talk:George_Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham#Art patronage of George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham (and walk the walk). As you will see I am not against your arguments, and I repeated something similar at Talk:Edward the Black Prince over the section on the name "Black Prince".

However ahnentafel trees (as are most other family trees) are presented collapsed in articles as a compromise between those who want them and those who do not (this compromise is a contradiction of MOS:DONTHIDE, but has held for a decade or more). As they are collapsed by default, I think that the issue is one that editors can decide on case by case using the talk page for dispute resolution, as the impact of ahnentafel trees is one line in the body of an article whether or not there are four of five generations, and it does not affect a reader unless (s)he choose to open it. At a technical level the number of additional bytes that are contained in an extra line of an ahnentafel tree is not enough to concern us. -- PBS (talk) 16:56, 23 June 2019 (UTC)

I am amazed by how much leeway this template gets. We turn a blind eye to the violation of MOS:DONTHIDE, WP:SYN, WP:INDISCRIMINATE (there being no context or explanation why someone's mother's mother's father's father is relevant enough to mention), WP:PROPORTION, and, most egregiously, WP:V policy (with over 95% of these being unsourced, even in FAs). And so it stays an untouchable holy cow for another decade - because it's collapsed.
The use of this template should be deprecated on the basis of ahnentafeln being completely alien to published, peer-reviewed biographies, and preference given to Template:Chart, which mirrors academic usage. Surtsicna (talk) 18:50, 23 June 2019 (UTC)

Not to mention WP:NOTGENEALOGY. Using an ahnentafel instead of a chart is sacrificing usefulness for uniformity. We should use charts, not just because that is what biographers do, but also for the reason biographers do so: the flexibility of charts allows them to convey the important relationships, not just whichever ones have a field in a standard template. Agricolae (talk) 20:43, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

1. The compromise over collapse is best left alone because there will almost certainly be no wide consensus either way and I for one would not like to have these trees uncollapsed, and I am sure a lot of editors would be upset if they were removed. Hence the compromise as is.
2. WP:NOTGENEALOGY is not an issue because either a family tree is notable in its own right (eg Family tree of the Greek gods) or it is supposedly there to support notable subjects. Although it does happen that one can argue that a specific tree is NOT "appropriate to support the reader's understanding of a notable topic", this is often debatable.
3. Likewise WP:INDISCRIMINATE, can be used to remove a leaf from a tree but if it is verified to a reliale source is that something to bother about. Ie if it is not false do halfd a dozen names in a tree in a collapsed box matter, when there are so many trees with no sourcing what so ever. Personally I might be bold and remove some sourced entries, but if they were reverted I would not bother to debat the issue on the talk page.
4. The issue of WP:V. This is a much easier issue thanks to WP:CHALLENGE/WP:BURDEN. Providing editors are given reasonable time to provide references it is not a matter of opinion whether the unsourceed information is deleted -- so no long debates on the talk page. Whenever I run AWB to change something I include a search to add {{Unreferenced section}} template to any sections I fins that contain ancestry trees that do not have inline citations (or {{refimprove section}} if there are some but not for every leaf)--I already gave the example of Charles I of England and in 2015 I added "Unreferenced section" to all the templates in Category:Family tree templates. There are 187 templates in that section many of them where no new citations have been added since 2015 (eg Template:Morice family tree) and they are now candidates for deletion because the WP:CHALLENGE has not been met. This sort of method of dealing with unsourced trees seems the best was to removed unsourced trees as it follows WP:V challange, burden sequence.
5. Checking for WP:SYN is time consuming, but if the relationship meets WP:PRESERVE and the 3 content policies, then time consuming is not a reason to delete a branch.

So does anyone want to walk the walk and follow up what I started in 2015 in Category:Family tree templates? --PBS (talk) 20:06, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

NOTGENEALOGY is an issue, exactly the issue you raise. Showing genealogical information in an article, just because we can and because there is a template that has that number of fields, is not making any judgment whatsoever of what is appropriate to support the reader's understanding. PRESERVE is one of the most miscited policies, used to support a 'nothing should be removed no matter how tangential or trivial' argument - it specifically applies to fixing appropriate text that is problematic in its presentation, not saying that all content should always be retained. You also make what amounts to a 'what does it hurt?' argument. How it hurts is that including well documented but tangential genealogy serves as an encouragement for others to include tangential genealogy no matter how badly documented, and there is a lot more of that latter type out there than the quality kind. Much more so than the chart template, the ahnentafel template has evident missing fields that are an open invitation to be filled in, and more likely than not, it will be filled in from whatever web page happened to come up on a Google search. Likewise the use of 5-generation trees on some pages has encouraged its spread to the pages of actors, TV personalities, dirt-farmers, (none of these are hypotheticals), etc., with content that even if verifiable is simply gratuitous. There are some instances where an ahnentafel might be justified, but nowhere near the number of places it is being put. Further, while another editor called this reductio ad absurdum, if only the parents are necessary to understand the subject, but 5 generations are given, what is the argument not to give six generations, or seven,. . . ? If you open this door, that any genealogy is allowed as long as it is verifiable you end up with the naming of 32-generation ancestors or descendants (and yes, it is absurd, but again, not a hypothetical). Charts (and all genealogy) in articles should be of limited extent, showing the most relevant relationships and not a set number of direct ancestors; as to walking the walk I think effort would be better spent replacing most ahnentafeln with charts or removing them altogether. Agricolae (talk) 21:08, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

actors, TV personalities, dirt-farmers, well of course most aristocrates are and were dirt-farmers (altough some of them were also tax-farmers). However you have obviously not seen the category Fictional family tree templates! -- PBS (talk) 11:29, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

WP:PRESERVE does not say nothing should be removed. It says that "As long as any facts or ideas would belong in an encyclopedia, they should be retained in Wikipedia". It is up to you using the talk page of the artilces to convince editors who use Ahnentafel templates that they are mistaken and that the content they have included ought to be deleted or changed into tables that use {{tree chart}} (WP:CONSENSUS). You write "as to walking the walk I think effort would be better spent replacing most ahnentafeln with charts or removing them altogether" that is the whole point of my asking for citations for these templates. Now that more than a year has passed and for many of them no citations to reliable sources have been provided, there is justification for using the Wikipedia:Templates for discussion process to have them deleted, or just to radically edit them. BTW most of them are not using Ahnentafel templates, but {{tree chart}} or {{family tree}}. Once you have delt with them there are only around 9,000 articles with an ahnentafel left to be sorted out. I suggest you start with those that have featured article status, then good article status etc. I look forwards to seeing how many you have managed to do by the end of the year. Personally I keep my ambitions smaller and just insist that if a family tree is to exist in an artilce then it must meet WP:V and WP:SYN (I find that removes much of the problem and meets much less opposition). -- PBS (talk) 11:29, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

• I just remembered that Seize Quartiers were a thing: being able to show nobility in all sixteen great-grandparents was held in very high regard in European court circles. This information would not have been regarded as trivial during the lifetime of many historical figures, but in fact an important part of their status and identity. Opera hat (talk) 17:31, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

  Just as well they did not have DNA testing: Richard III: Solving a 500 Year Old Cold Case by Dr Turi King -- PBS (talk) 19:41, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

  • Yes, it was a thing in 17th-century ballrooms. In 21st-century academic biographies, it isn't a thing. Surtsicna (talk) 17:48, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

Can we at least agree that we lack consensus on 1) categorically withdrawing this template, and 2) that 5 generations lack real, more source-backed competitors as standard count after all? PPEMES (talk) 15:51, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

I am not trying to be incivil here, but I can't even figure out what you are trying to say for point 2. Agricolae (talk) 21:55, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

Sorry. Do we have any sources support claims that 4 or less or 6 or more generations would be the standard rendering for ahnentafels? PPEMES (talk) 07:17, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

No, because not only is there no such thing as a standard rendering, but biographers, by far, prefer a different type of chart entirely. If something like a standard is to be deduced from practice, it would be for using the chart template instead of an ahnentafel. Agricolae (talk) 07:56, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

I intended to refer to ahnentafel generations practice exclusively in this case, though. PPEMES (talk) 08:01, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

Well, then the answer is 0 (zero). The "real, source-backed competitor" as the standard number of generations to be shown in Wikipedia articles is 0 (zero). That is because 0 (zero) ahnentafel generations are found in academic biographies. That much has been demonstrated. Surtsicna (talk) 09:52, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

Could we at least move on from the argument that everything in biographical articles needs to be strictly found in biographical books on subjects? Source-weighting on other data doesn't seem to work like that in practice around Wikipedia biographies, so I don't know why this should be so rigidly referred here. PPEMES (talk) 11:56, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

No, I don't think we can move on from that argument. It is not a small thing to ask for. Besides, you yourself asked for "source-backed" arguments. Inclusion into academic biographies is the only objective criterium for inclusion into Wikipedia biographies. Everything else revolves around "I like it" and "I do not like it". I don't know what you mean by "source-weighting on other data". Surtsicna (talk) 13:04, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

I don't think that's right. It's wikipedia policy to treat material with proportion. Celia Homeford (talk) 14:11, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

Actual monographs about medieval people are rare, often not even particularly good, and yet we still have articles about many such people. I think that is not a real problem? This discussion seems to have pushed itself into an extreme position. It is obvious our articles about individuals are not only sourced from biographical works.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:55, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

Generational extent standard (5?)

For the record, all other prerequisites met, I for one am not convinced there is any better extent than 5 generations, as has been repeatedly suggested as preferable (again, other comme-il-faut prerequisites met). PPEMES (talk) 16:35, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

And I for one am not convinced that 5 generations is ideal. The reason I am unconvinced is that this is unheard of in academic practice. What's the reason for your conviction? Surtsicna (talk) 17:52, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

The convention established by Michaël Eytzinger as covered in Ahnentafel, as echoed by seize quartiers, Geni.com etc., for lack of better determining candidates for default extents. PPEMES (talk) 18:42, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

I think 5 generations is just a practical thing that has been reinvented several times in the history of depicting families. It is about as far as you can go without making a big mess. I don't see any reason to insist on it at all times. For example with famous people who we already know lots about, or people living in modern times when family connections were not interesting, less generations might be interesting, or of course no ancestry discussion, or the typical parents remark in the first section which we often do.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:11, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree that paying tribute to this convention is also the ideal or at least the least bad solution also from a mere practical and technical Wikipedia view. Which, yes, doesn't mean 5 generations has to be stretched all the time, but at least settled as a default - and a default maximum. PPEMES (talk) 19:29, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

Eytzinger did not establish any convention. He proposed a format, and that format has not been used by biographers. Therefore your repeated references to a convention are unsubstantiated. That said, I oppose mandating the use of this template and, naturally, I oppose settling any number of generations as "a default". Surtsicna (talk) 20:35, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

Feel free should you have any more substantiated default extent alternatives than the typical 5 generations renderings of Eytzinger's ahnentafel, the Sosa-Stradonitz method, and seize quarters, as reflected in Media related to Category:Ahnentafel at Wikimedia Commons? PPEMES (talk) 23:50, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

I am not sure I understood what you said. Surtsicna (talk) 23:56, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

I do not have any default extent alternatives to propose because I, as clearly indicated in my preceding post and numerous others in this discussion, do not believe that this template should be included by default. It should be included only if warranted by the subject of the article, as with any other template on Wikipedia. I do not believe that this one should be made into a sacred cow. Surtsicna (talk) 00:24, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

All prerequisites provided for actual warranted inclusion of this template by the subject of the article, though, do you have any more substantiated default extent alternatives than the typical 5 generations renderings (as seen in Media related to Category:Ahnentafel at Wikimedia Commons? PPEMES (talk) 00:45, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

If the inclusion of this template is warranted by the subject of the article, the number of generations required will be clear from the context. Surtsicna (talk) 12:19, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

I do not think we need to have one standard number of generations, and I am not aware of 5 generations being any generally recognized standard. Having said that, it is a common format for individuals whose genealogy is important. (And ancestry pedigrees showing all known direct ancestors are of course a standard format which show something relevant for many articles, and can complement other types of complex genealogical table.) I see no problem using 5 generations for medieval individuals whose main importance is as a cog in the wheels of the various dynasties they belonged to, with short articles. To both sides in this particular part of the discussion: My advice is that we should not seek drama about things which cause no problems. We should not go around deleting things or imposing rules out of general principles, but instead we should work on each article as needed. Also concerning tagging, be informative and tag in the most clear and detailed way possible. Use the talk page.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:24, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

Well, the problem is that there seems now suddenly to appear a new de facto standard imposed over the board without prior discussion: 4 generations. You suddenly see it here, and there, and everywhere around biographical articles. I have seen no discussions about support for such a 4 generations default. Still, suddenly that became the case. Hence this discussion, to which I would invite more commentators. PPEMES (talk) 17:39, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

I agree 4 should also not be seen as a standard. What needs to happen on each article is a bit of discussion about the pros and cons of each case. That will be possible if discussion is constructive enough. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 21:45, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

It is recently enforced a de facto standard, though. Until arguments are brought up for why 4 generations happens to be more correct than 5 generations previous standard, with why that is discussed now immediately here above, I suggest these revert be reverted back from 4 to 5 generational ahnentafel scope (all other prerequisites provided). Again, please review Media related to Category:Ahnentafel at Wikimedia Commons for starters. PPEMES (talk) 13:54, 27 July 2019 (UTC) Interestingly, 5 generations seems also be the distance which seems to be the limit for discussing family background in plain text, such as Boris Johnsen case here below. It seems to be a recurrent convention. PPEMES (talk) 13:54, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 31 July 2019

Under the "ref" parameter can we note that the ref></ref mark-up is still needed?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:41, 31 July 2019 (UTC) Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:41, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

The template documentation isn't protected. We don't need a template-editor to edit that part. Celia Homeford (talk) 10:11, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. My mistake. I've added a few words to the ref parameter. I hope they make sense to everyone. Now we just need people to know about it.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:30, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Proposal: can this template have its own tag for unreferenced cases?

ADDED: Attempt to summarize below discussion conclusions. If the summary is acceptable, others may wish to collapse the below discussion to save space. There is clearly no consensus to create a new tag specially for Ahnentafeln templates with no footnotes. The original policy-based reasons for the proposal could also be addressed if more care taken to use appropriate (case by case) tags, edsums etc. Given the difficulty of discussion it seems likely that looking at examples of article talkpage discussions which spun-off from this template talkpage give a better practical understand of the real concerns, and how they can be handled. Examples: Talk:William I, Count of Hainaut#Source removal by DrKay, Talk:Margaret II, Countess of Flanders#deleted ancestry table--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:22, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

I would like to propose a specific tag for this template, to replace generic tags, which includes text that...

• Makes it clear (just by being a specific tag) that the tag really is meant to be used for this template.
• Gives a quick link to somewhere where there is an example and instructions showing how to add references to the template.

I note from discussion on this talk page and in various places that the major reasons the template is often never given footnotes are that:

• Most editors including myself have historically believed that normal "unreferenced section" tags were being used wrongly for the template.
• No one realizes how to place a footnote into them. (I discovered when I pushed quite hard for an example in a discussion here recently.)

As a result we've seen examples of the template being entirely deleted, section and all, in short articles where the required source is already there and actually quite obvious, but just not in a footnote. In other words we have a situation which should be easy to fix, but which is not being fixed by the current approach of tagging in a standard way and then deleting. If no one sees a problem we can start looking into it.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:39, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

No. If a section containing an ahnentafel cites no sources, then Template:Unsourced section is perfectly appropriate. The community has rejected every attempt to have ahnentafeln treated differently than other content in regards to WP:Verifiability policy, and so I reject this one. Surtsicna (talk) 15:07, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

I am not saying WP:V would apply any differently, only that there would be extra clarification. How can that be bad? Can you explain any policy basis for you personally wanting to make the explanation poorly understood? --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:16, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

There is nothing unclear about the wording: "This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed." Surtsicna (talk) 15:23, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

WP:IDHT. See above. You know very well this is not clear to everyone, or read in the same way when it comes to this template. This talk page is full of direct and undeniable evidence, including people like myself who are examples. Please see if you can find any policy-based reason to want these situations to be unclear. And anyway, if it would be easy to attempt this, what bad could it do?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:31, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

Not agreeing with your point does not mean refusing to get it. I do get your point and I reject it. The wording of Template:Unreferenced section should be read in the same way whether it comes to this template or any other content. If it is unclear to you, go to Wikipedia talk:Verifiability. Surtsicna (talk) 15:57, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

We have seen that people can read the situation differently without having any problem with WP:V. As you know this, why would you want this to remain the case? And even if you claim to think there is no problem, what risks can you see?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 06:15, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

• Strong oppose. There's nothing wrong with the usual tag. A specific one is unnecessary duplication. It's also more likely that people will not know or understand about a specific tag than the generic one. The template documentation includes details of the ref and footnotes parameters. DrKay (talk) 16:05, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

What we are seeing in practice is that the generic one is not working and there are good reasons for that. Obviously many editors reasonably believe based on similar situations on WP that this generic tag is not appropriate here. Just saying the tag is clear is not enough in such a case because these tags are made by other WP editors, not some higher authority, and no WP editor can accepts every demand made by every other WP editor. It is also not practical to say that people should just know about all the parameters and how they work. In practice they don't.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 06:15, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

It works for me. I think it's appropriate. I didn't say that people should just know about all the parameters and how they work. DrKay (talk) 17:21, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

If something is not working for many editors it can lead to deletions by misunderstanding. I can not see anyway to deny this is opposed to some really basic aims of Wikipedia? Can you explain any mistake I am making in my thinking?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:02, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

I refer you to my previous comments. DrKay (talk) 18:45, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

Sorry, but which comments contain the answer I am looking for? I want to understand. Please note I am a also quite frustrated with the low quality of content and sourcing in articles, not someone looking for an excuse to keep crap in Wikipedia. But how can we edit confidently if we know we jumping into a stupid game that is being played? The more we can create transparency the stricter we can edit without the risk of drama and reversions. I want to work with rationales on record, not by playing games in the shadows.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:36, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

To be clear in case you missed it BTW I looked at the template pages, but did not see how to add a neat reference until Surtsicna finally agreed to show me a real example of an article with a citation that was as desired (George V). Nothing here explains all the details. Apparently you still need to add <ref></ref> mark-up into the template. Also, that there is a practical problem can be seen in the example of William of Hainaut which brought me here. The deleted section had its obvious source neatly posted just below it in the article.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:01, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

I don't see it there and the one you've just added is from CreateSpace. Self-published sources don't count as Wikipedia:Reliable sources. DrKay (talk) 17:24, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

Schwennicke, Europäische Stammtafeln, will clearly have this information. This is a case where common sense and knowledge of the background basics, such as what kind of book this source is, gives clear guidance about where to put the onus/burden/risk. It looks very much like the table (which was deleted) is what all the sources were mainly backing up.

Concerning the new source Richardson I had his books to hand, and have acted quickly because forced to. (There is a race, apparently, to put in sources before big chunks of thousands of articles are deleted at a rate of dozens a week. So much for the old "no deadlines" rule.) But very well-known and widely cited self-published sources like Richardson are commonly acceptable, and have presumably been discussed on WP:RSN before. We can discuss at WP:RSN of course, but the fact is that we can be 100% sure William's ancestry is in Schwennicke too, and I have seen no claims of failed verification in any details. BTW Richardson cites Schwennicke too.

It is always relevant, at least from a best practice point of view, if we have evidence that actual verifiability is almost certainly not a real concern, but only things like citation formats.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:02, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

I'm not aware of huge deletions -- they've not happened on the articles I watch -- though I have seen the reduction of sections to a reasonable length on many articles, in line with the views expressed in the RfC. DrKay (talk) 18:45, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

Ah. But if you were aware, what then? I presume your remark might just mean you looked quickly only at recent edits. Suddenly Surtsicna is deleting 5th generations for a few hours. But those are articles which were not tagged before, and they are now being tagged. Surtsicna has surely made it clear above that once there is a tag that is all that needs to be said. Deletion is the next step. So why would we not at least communicate a bit more clearly? Looks like a big game. Not really a great environment for creating good articles.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:36, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

I see nothing wrong in deleting 5th (or 6th[1]) generations. They are excessive, irrelevant and undue. DrKay (talk) 19:57, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

Are you changing the subject? We were talking about fast table deletions making it hard to have any possibility to footnote instead? Surtsicna deletes one generation sometimes but also then always tags for deletion in the future. The deletion rationale has been discussed above, and it is happening in practice. You said you only saw generations being removed. I said... (In most cases the deletion of the 5th generation is fine by me. I don't believe we need a general rule that 5 is always bad though?) I've also been reverted when I've asked to be allowed to reinsert for a short period while I try to put sourcing in. Now, please explain how this style of "cooperation" is consistent with what we are supposed to be doing here.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:36, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

No, I'm not changing the subject. And to prove the point, I will no longer respond to comments not related to the subject line of this section. DrKay (talk) 20:48, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

OK, so see above where you said your answer on the subject line topic has been posted somewhere else. Which comments contain the answers? Where can I find your explanation about why we would want people to misunderstand or not be informed about what they can do to improve verifiability? --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:00, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

Above. DrKay (talk) 16:40, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

You mean that people can look at the template page? But as I explained, this did not work for me. Surtsicna showed me the George V example, which uses <ref> mark-up that I think does not appear on the template page. That makes it work. Maybe the template page should be added to at least? BTW, (1) I wonder if the referencing option was available when many of the old disputed unreferenced tags were placed. It seems to me that when a situation was debatable and adapted we can expect misunderstandings, and we have a common sense responsibility to be concerned to avoid misunderstandings? (2) It is also clear from looking at examples that the unreferenced section tag is not really the appropriate one in many, and probably most cases where it is being used for this table. The tag's own instructions say it should be removed even if the citations are not in a good in-line format.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:44, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

The tag's own instructions don't say that. DrKay (talk) 16:43, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Please explain why you say that. From Template:Unreferenced...--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 06:33, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

Do not add this template: In articles that have some citations, but not enough, the {{More citations needed}} template should be used instead as a general template, or the {{Unreferenced section}} template for individual sections that have no citations. In articles containing a list of sources at the end, but no inline citations, including parenthetical references or in-text attributions, consider {{no footnotes}} when the article would be significantly improved by detailed attribution of sources to specific claims. Watch out for lists of general references that someone has incorrectly listed under ==External links==. If the link leads to a reliable source that supports some article content, then that website is a reference, not an external link. Other templates, listed below, should be used when the citations are inadequate for other reasons.

The tag also has a link "(Learn how and when to remove this template message)" which goes to Help:Maintenance template removal, which says amongst other things...

Case in point is the {{Unreferenced}} template example used above. It is placed on pages with no references. Thus, adding just one suitable reference renders that maintenance template inapplicable. However, that change does not take care of the overarching issue of poor sourcing. In this example, a change to a different template may be appropriate, depending on the type, quality, depth and manner of sourcing added to fix the issue, such as {{refimprove}}, {{No footnotes}}, {{Primary sources}}, or one of the many others listed at Wikipedia:Template messages/Sources of articles.

You've been told at least twice already that it is Template:Unreferenced section that we're talking about. We're only talking here about unreferenced sections not unreferenced articles. DrKay (talk) 07:41, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

It is the same template and help page for sections and whole articles. Coming to how to handle sections, I thought it was clear that the spirit of the situation is clear enough in the cases of the middling medieval nobles I am most concerned about, because these are mainly short articles, and if they cite anything at all it is books with titles like "the ancestry of...". We would be more in our rights to therefore delete everything except the ancestry tables in some of these cases (which I am obviously not suggesting anyone should do). Or to put it in perspective with another thought experiment, if there was no tradition of putting these tables in sections, it would be completely different verification guidelines? I think that is a red herring, and of course keep in mind I am going through quite a few real examples as well. Some have been discussed above. I can say with some confidence that the demand being made by the tagger/deleter is explicit that these are not based on verification check, and not on whether there are obvious sources on the article.

Q. Do you agree that the spirit of everything written about WP:V tells us that good practice is to be looking actively to avoid deleting material which is likely to be verifiable or has sourcing which is just badly formatted?

Keep in mind that concerning due weight concerns I do not see myself as any less strict than anyone else in this discussion but I find it a very bad method to deliberately leave a smokescreen about what our real concerns are, in order to avoid discussion. This is a boomerang problem. Article stability will be best if due weight concerns are noted as due weight concerns.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:27, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

I've changed my oppose to strong oppose. Your inability to distinguish between two templates and between sections and pages is either incompetent or disruptive. I'm ignoring your comments on due weight because they are not relevant to the subject-line of this section. DrKay (talk) 12:03, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

Very WP:POINTy, and very unconstructive. I used the template and help pages which are being linked to on the articles under discussion. The central question we are discussing, from the subject line, is whether the best tags are being used or whether a new one can help. One thing I notice about you is that you do not ever want to answer clear direct questions, that would get to the heart of issues. For example to get beyond red herring questions about templates, I asked you: Q. Do you agree that the spirit of everything written about WP:V tells us that good practice is to be looking actively to avoid deleting material which is likely to be verifiable or has sourcing which is just badly formatted? Why won't you answer that?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:15, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

I've told you why twice. DrKay (talk) 13:00, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

Difficult to imagine how you could have answered that in any way which would have been more evasive. There are no clear explanations about anything in the above posts from you, and I take it you are not going to give any. The way I read it, you first said "no" in a way which implied there is no problem, but then you revised that a bit to say there might be a problem you have not noticed. Then you've made these recent comments which imply the "no" is a kind of punishment of me personally because I showed how the tags really being used with this template link to messages which are inappropriate. Which is kind of a strange approach, and sort of devalues everything you've said even more. Anyway, fine. I am happy to leave it there because you are clearly not in a mood to think about this topic anyway.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:22, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

No, that's not my view. DrKay (talk) 15:01, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

You complain when I talk about wider issues, and then you complain when I don't. You can't have it both ways. I've decided to accept the complaints when I don't, and you'll have to put up with me not talking about wider issues. DrKay (talk) 15:04, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

No, I simply complained that you never give straight answers on any issues at all. Let's not get excited and describe you actually talking about anything. I have no problem putting up with you not saying anything else. You had nothing to say. As far as I can see you've hardly even thought about the topic.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:24, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

I have thought about it. I just don't feel the need to respond with endless reams of text. I warned you above that if you posted huge walls of text, the discussion would become bogged down. You ignored me. You've been editing this page for barely a week, yet you're already the largest contributor to it; more than one third of all comment ever posted here has been posted by you; nearly a quarter of all edits to this page were made by you.[2] You've lost the opportunity to gather support by scaring supporters off with posts that are too long and instead gathered greater opposition by insulting, berating and belittling anyone who expresses an opposing view. DrKay (talk) 18:29, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

You do not have to be involved in this discussion, but you keep writing. Your way of expressing a "view" is things like "you've been warned", "you've been told", "I'm going to change to strong oppose because you don't agree with me", and look, now you've gone and made this stunningly pointy edit about one of the articles explained on this talkpage, with no reply from you then. (I will address it at the article.) Another little act of petty revenge! But still absolutely nothing constructive or relevant. I wonder what kinds of edits you are making in WP that have got you being so disruptive, personal, and deliberately obtuse, on this template talk? My question in italics above seems to have hit a nerve.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:48, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

I've edited that article before, as you can see from the history, and replied to you about that article on this page and the problem with it at 17:24, 29 July 2019 (UTC). No, I don't have to keep writing here, but you keep asking me questions and insulting, berating and belittling me, which usually calls for some sort of response. If you stopped, then so would I. DrKay (talk) 08:15, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

For the record for other users, I think the ensuing discussion on the article talkpage is illuminating both in terms of getting to the real core of the issue, and also in terms of how to handle it in a practical way.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:46, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

• No/Oppose. This is a bad idea. Wikipedia has project-wide rules that have very broad consensus, acceptance and support. You can't stop editors from applying them or from using cleanup templates that point them out. Either improve the ahnentafel documentation or accept you were wrong and move on. Celia Homeford (talk) 08:19, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

There must be some misunderstanding. Which project-wide rule are you referring to, and what am I "wrong" about? (There are clearly many different approaches to WP:V, not only in-line footnotes, and also to tagging different WP:V related concerns in WP.) Please can someone name one good reason why we would NOT want to explain to editors how to add footnotes properly to these templates?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:37, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

If you're talking about changing the verifiability templates, then you need to discuss that at those templates. Celia Homeford (talk) 10:11, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Ah! No, I am not proposing changing any verifiability templates. You mean "unreferenced"? OTOH (1) There are of course many different tag templates for various types of verification concern, including specific ones for tables, and ones which specify that the real concern is that the citations appear to be there, but not yet in a footnote. I've been going through examples, and seeing many cases where the wrong tag is clearly being used. (2) I also don't see why we would not be a bit worried to learn that editors are not understanding how the tag can be resolved reasonably easily. Before Surtsicna showed me an example, I thought the ref function did not really work well enough to add much. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:27, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

• Comment. Can't see why Template:Unreferenced section shouldn't suffice, if needed. For the sake of clarity, while at it, again, I'd still insist that largescale mass changes to the templates in question would be unappropriate. In other words, I perceive a longstanding WP:CONSENSUS of inclusion of 5 generational ahnentafels in relevant articles, and that this is not in opposition to WP:NOTGENEALOGY in my and several other users' interpretation. PPEMES (talk) 14:42, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

And in my and several others' interpretation, this is not the case. Funny how that works. Agricolae (talk) 14:47, 23 September 2019 (UTC)