Forum:Proposed change to name/date convention so as to eliminate the question-mark

Pages are called Given_name Surname (Year_of_Birth-Year_of_Death). In case YoB or YoD is unknown, it is replaced with a question mark (?). Question marks are not very informative and they cause problems with forms (as they are a reserved character in the user interface).

It would be good to replace the question marks with something else. rtol 07:25, April 13, 2010 (UTC)

Robin's proposal
Do it gradually as pages come up for edit. Move existing pages; change redlinks on sight.
 * 1) Birth year unknown: do an estimate (using "c"). Make it the same as spouse birth year if any unless there's contrary indication such as parent or child birth year; if none, make a stab at it. If we later find we have a duplicate, we can fix one or other to distinguish. Better than a question-mark, which would be more likely to create a duplicate and has its own problems. Even a fairly wrong estimate doesn't actually matter, because we don't take date from pagenames as a rule.
 * 2) Death year unknown: omit hyphen and question-mark entirely, just as we do for people known to be still living. Do an estimate if you think you're within a few years but otherwise nothing.
 * 3) Both unknown: do just the birth year estimate as above.

— Robin Patterson (Talk) 07:57, April 12, 2010 (UTC)

Rtol's proposal

 * 1) Birth year unknown: do an estimate (using "c") -- Birth years can be estimated from the age of the parents, siblings, children and spouse, and from the time of death. Record the reasoning in Birth_date_notes.
 * 2) Death year unknown: do an estimate (using "c") -- Death years can be estimated from birth year, wedding year, and birth years of children. Record the reasoning in Birth_date_notes.

It does not make sense to me to come up with a rigid procedure on estimating birth and death years, as circumstances vary and we have little experience with what works best.

We should, however, provide some guidance. SMW allows us to calculate such things as the average age of the mother at birth (in case the birth year of the mother is known), the average age at the first marriage (in case the wedding year is known), and the average life span (in case the death year is known). I've made a start here. rtol 07:25, April 13, 2010 (UTC)