Template talk:Birth based on age as of date/Archive 1

Archive 1

Order?

Based on this edit, apparently some readers expect an implicit "respectively". Currently the template produces something like

Born: 1990/1991 (Age 20–21)

The edit seems to suggest that the order of ages should be switched, so template produces

Born: 1990/1991 (Age 21–20)

Alternately, the order of years could be switched, producing

Born: 1991/1990 (Age 20–21)

Wondering if anyone would find either form better. Gimmetoo (talk) 15:29, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

WP:Categories for discussion/Log/2013 February 13#Category:1955 or 1956 births

This template has been mentioned at: WP:Categories for discussion/Log/2013 February 13#Category:1955 or 1956 births.  FYI, Unscintillating (talk) 17:04, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Dead persons

Is there a way to omit the current age if the person has died? For example, the only reference regarding Faruq Z. Bey's age is that he was 61 in June 2003. This gives 1941/1942 for the year, but the template still displays his (approximate) age. Now that he has died, there really isn't another template that serves this purpose, other than simply plugging "1942" (which is probably correct, though I'm not certain) into {{BirthDeathAge}}. It would be nice if there was a way to turn off the current age with this template. -- Gyrofrog (talk) 03:14, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

 Done I just added an optional parameter, so that if you append "|noage=1" to the template, the age field is suppressed.  This option is also useful if only the year is known.  Unscintillating (talk) 22:05, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

I've created {{Birth date based on age at death}} for this purpose, but it currently just uses this template with the aformentioned "noage" parameter. (I thought it was important to create a distinct template in case usecases diverge in the future.) I've also created {{Death date and given age}} for the corresponding death date. —Gordon P. Hemsley→✉ 16:42, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Date line issue

Here's a quirky little issue with the template. Wikipedia uses UTC. When I edit in the mornings, the current local date in New Zealand is one day ahead of the UTC date. If I edit an item and enter age as of date with the local date (which I have to, because I'm quoting a newspaper article, say), then the template doesn't return the age that I have just entered, but an age range. Only when the UTC date catches up a few hours later, the template produces the correct age.

Confused? So was I. Here's an example for clarification. Roger Sutton's age was reported to be 47 in The Press published on 13 June 2012. Amending his page, I code {{Birth based on age as of date|df=yes|47|2012|6|13}}, but the template returns "(age 46–47)". That's because the UTC date is currently still 12 June. So I have to fudge the template by using yesterday's date in order for it to return "(age 47)". So hopefully, I will remember to adjust the template later today, so that I quote the correct newspaper publication date. Schwede66 21:25, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

If you just enter the correct information, won't the problem correct itself once UTC catches up? Is it really worth fudging the data just for those few hours? (Not that I'm saying the problem couldn't be corrected by changing the template itself.) —Gordon P. Hemsley→✉ 16:45, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Proposal: handle unspecified day/month

I've found a source which specifies a person's age in a specific year ("In 2001, when X was 17 …"), but not the date in that year. That got me thinking. The template I've just dropped in Template:Birth based on age as of date/sandbox will handle dates where there's no day and/or no month specified, giving the most accurate result it can.

The below table has examples – the first six are from the documentation page, to prove I've not broken existing behaviour, the remainder show the new behaviour with missing fields.

Template text	Result
{{Birth based on age as of date/sandbox|50|2023|11|23}}	1972 or 1973 (age 51–52)
{{Birth based on age as of date/sandbox|50|2023|November|23}}	1972 or 1973 (age 51–52)
{{Birth based on age as of date/sandbox|50|2023|1|15}}	1972 or 1973 (age 51–52)
{{Birth based on age as of date/sandbox|50|2023|Nov|5}}	1972 or 1973 (age 51–52)
{{Birth based on age as of date/sandbox|50|2023|Nov|5|noage=1}}	1972 or 1973
{{Birth based on age as of date/sandbox|50|2023|1|1|noage=1}}	1972 or 1973
{{Birth based on age as of date/sandbox|50|2023|November}}	1972 or 1973 (age 50–51)
{{Birth based on age as of date/sandbox|50|2023|10}}	1972 or 1973 (age 51–52)
{{Birth based on age as of date/sandbox|50|2023|Dec}}	1972 or 1973 (age 50–51)
{{Birth based on age as of date/sandbox|50|2023}}	1972 or 1973 (age 50–51)

This has changed the design of the template code; if folk want me to explain I can, but I'm not sure if that's useful. I don't think I've made it any more complex, in any case.

I have also moved the   from between the year and the brackets to between "age" and the age; a line break between parts seemed to make more sense to me than a line break between the word "age" and the age.

Does anyone have any thoughts or objections before I make this the live version of the template?

—me_and 18:19, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Seeing no objections, I'm going to make this change shortly. —me_and 19:56, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Made, then reverted – the current sandbox version leaves trailing whitespace with noage=1. I'll fix that up before trying again. —me_and 20:05, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Made again. This time using {{if}}, which, unlike {{#if}} is capable of handling whitespace at the start of its arguments. —me_and 20:16, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Two age citations?

I'm starting work on an article for the young actress Sydney Lucas, who just became the youngest recipient of an Obie Award. I have one reference dated 26 December 2013 which mentions that she was 10 at that time; per other references, she was still 10 as of Monday, when she received her Obie. Which date is it best to use with this template? And is there a way to specify that she was born in 2003, rather than 2002/2003 (since, given the two data points, she was clearly born between May and December 2003)? —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 04:47, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

Incompatible with WP:MOSNUM

I've just seen this used in the lead sentence of a biog article, displaying "(born 1996/1997)" but sadly this isn't compatible with WP:APPROXDATE which specifies it has to be "1996 or 1997". I don't know whether there's any mileage in (a) lobbying to change WP:MOSNUM or (b) producing a variation of this template which can display the longer format? PamD 08:53, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

I have to say that "1996 or 1997" makes a lot more sense when we aren't sure about the year of birth, so in my mind, option (a) isn't sensible. Schwede66 09:03, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Sandbox version now has |mos=1 which renders like this:

{{Birth based on age as of date/sandbox|50|2014|11|26|mos=1}}

1963 or 1964 (age 59–60)

is that what you want?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:28, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

WOW - that is so cool and so quick and I hope PamD will agree that it is just exactly what is needed!

By the way, for completeness I tested the variation I will use:

{{Birth based on age as of date/sandbox|50|2014|11|26|noage=1|mos=1}}

It produces: "1963 or 1964"

Please accept a gold star. --Gronk Oz (talk) 12:48, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Testing: "(born 1916 or 1917)" ... Yes, looks good. OTOH it's an awful lot of typing - I'll have to weigh up whether it's less effort to just do the sums! Or I might try to produce a cut-down version of the template with a shorter name and fewer parameters, for the simple case of "I have an age at a date, I want a birth year(s) only". But thanks very much, Trappist the monk, this looks great. When can it go "live"? PamD 12:58, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Now live. There is the redirect {{bbad}} which doesn't require as much typing:

(born {{bbad|92|2009|12|23|mos=1|noage=1}})

(born 1916 or 1917)

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:21, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

YI have used it in an article already: Josh Schache. Thanks, and thanks to PamD for identifying the issue.--Gronk Oz (talk) 14:15, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk: Thanks: {{bbad}} looks better - and even better would be something which defaulted to "mos=1" and "noage=1"! ({{bbad2}}?) PamD 16:29, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Forking templates to do stuff that is slightly different from the parent template is generally frowned on. The forks tend to get deleted.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:39, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

I agree that changing the default to use the new mos=1 parameter would be a good idea, as that way, the MOS is adhered to. Maybe there could be a second parameter and if some editors prefer the 1996/1997 format, the use of that second parameter would achieve that. Forking isn't a good idea, but changing the default is. Schwede66 18:09, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Except that the template is transcluded in 1200+ pages so each of those transclusions would need to be examined to determine if the 'new' default is appropriate.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:18, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

MOS:Slash

Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Slashes

Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format. JTP ^{(talk • contribs)} 03:47, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

Unpasteable examples

Not sure of the cleanest way to fix this, but the examples included in the table in this documentation all produce errors if copypasted into articles (Expression error: Unrecognized punctuation character "�"), because the {{braces}} template used to display them forces the inclusion of "thinsp" characters "to improve legibility", which the {{Birth based on age as of date}} template doesn't accept. --McGeddon (talk) 12:12, 12 November 2016 (UTC)

Indeed. It's a major annoyance. Schwede66 09:16, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

Change default to mos=1

See the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers#Approximate birth dates based on age as of date. Can we just make this the default? I understand that it's a risk to change the default behavior of a template, but I don't really see any downside here. Kendall-K1 (talk) 02:18, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

@Kendall K-1: I'm in agreement here and would volunteer to help fix any existing instances of the template after the change is made. The default for a template should be compliance with MOS. cymru.lass (talk • contribs) 22:44, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

Circa

I propose adding {{circa| at the front, since this template's output is, after all, an estimation. Thoughts? Jay D. Easy (talk) 07:21, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

Alternatively, here is an optional version. Jay D. Easy (talk) 10:37, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

Template text	Result
{{Birth based on age as of date/sandbox|50|2024|11|23}}	1973 or 1974 (age 50)
{{Birth based on age as of date/sandbox|50|2024|11|23|c=y}}	1973 or 1974 (age 50)
{{Birth based on age as of date/sandbox|50|2024|11|23|circa=1|mos=1}}	1973 or 1974 (age 50)

I'm not in favour of that. Circa means "approximately" but there's nothing approximate about the years returned by this template. It's either one or the other; nothing approximate. Schwede66 22:25, 24 December 2018 (UTC)

You certainly raise a fair point. I also came to the same conclusion shortly I made the post. Not such a good idea after all, but at least I got some practise out of it! Take care. Jay D. Easy (talk) 22:15, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

Square bracket option

I've seen this template used within parenthesis in the lead sentence. Would it be possible to add an option for square brackets around the age so that it nests neatly within parenthesis, as with the |disp=sqbr parameter of {{convert}} ? Trying to keep it simple here, with the addition of |sqbr= which uses square braces for any non-empty value. I believe this could be accomplished with the following two changes to the template:

1. ( → {{#if sqbr|[|(}}
2. ) → {{#if sqbr|]|)}}

{{Ping}} me and I can update the documentation. Thanks for your consideration. – Reidgreg (talk) 15:18, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

Setting default to display “1950 or 1951”

Per previous discussion there is desire from some (including myself) that the default behaviour should use the MOS mandated “1950 or 1951”, and use a slash (“1950/1951”) only when requested. I have set the sandbox to accept |slash=, but kept default behaviour as is (with |mos=1 in place, but to be deprecated) for until we are confident that all pages that will need |slash=y have had it added (for use in space-constrained places, like tables, or infoboxes?). This means that when we then shift default behaviour, any page that has |slash=y will remain the same, but every other page will display the or.

This first change should be invisible to the reader, but I do want to confirm no opposition before moving forward. Alternatively, if there is a sense that there are more slashes where they shouldn’t be than there would be ors where they shouldn’t be, we can just shift the default immediately, and review for |slash=y after. Of course help to review templates in either case is very much essential (via AWB/JWB).

@Trappist the monk, PamD, Schwede66, Kendall-K1, and Cymru.lass: Pinging users who expressed interest previously. — HTGS (talk) 01:47, 30 April 2023 (UTC)

Achieving MOS-compliance is always a good initiative. In my opinion, to separate the years by "or" is the most logical way of dealing with the situation. Schwede66 03:37, 30 April 2023 (UTC)

I've just edited another bio where this issue arises, and that brings me back to this discussion. HTGS, given that there was no opposition despite you pinging several users who previously showed an interest in this matter, I suggest that you have support to implement this change. Please proceed. Schwede66 22:37, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

After a moderate degree of checking pages transcluding this template, I have made the full shift, so the default behaviour is to display, eg: 1950 or 1951. In contexts where a slash is preferable (I could find very few), the template should be amended. — HTGS (talk) 23:24, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

Thanks! Schwede66 23:34, 22 July 2023 (UTC)