Forum:Removing ages from actor pages

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Is there a point in having actors' ages on their pages. I mean, they constantly need updating. David Tennant has been 39 since April and has just been updated to reflect this. He's one of the main actors in Doctor Who, so if he hasn't been updated, I wonder who else hasn't. There's no reason to have both the date and age. If people want to know how old they are, they can calculate it themselves. We shouldn't have to continuously update it. Removing that part would remove another thing from the list of things to do. The Thirteenth Doctor 12:49, August 25, 2010 (UTC)

I'm fine with removing it, it's likely just because when they were set up the style (and in some cases content) was taken from Wikipedia. I think it's enough to have their date of birth. Actors who've died, their age can be noted. --Tangerineduel 13:06, August 25, 2010 (UTC)

On Memory Alpha, we created a template that automagically calculates the age when the page is viewed. Doing something like that might be worthwhile.

See the {{Age}} and {{Born}} templates. -- sulfur 16:54, August 25, 2010 (UTC)

Resurrecting

I saved this one from archiving because I think we should eliminate ages and even date of birth from real world people's pages. IMDb have suspended this practise, as it could potentially jeopardise actors' ability to get work, and I think we might want to consider following suit.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 23:58: Sun 06 Nov 2011 

Noting cast and crew's birthdays is fairly traditional in fandom, and deliberately leaving out that information when it is publicly known seems a bit anti-encyclopedic. Maybe we just need a strict policy on citing birthdates to a trustworthy source, which should provide adequate protection for any of those individuals who have taken measures to keep that information non-public. — Rob T Firefly - Δ∇ - 00:20, November 7, 2011 (UTC)

The issue isn't whether it's public information, but whether it should be so very easy for a casting director to discover that information. Most people's birthdays are public record, because we all tend to do something (accepting a student loan, getting a parking ticket, having a credit issue, etc.) which puts our birthday on the record, at some point, past the age of 18. But you still have to do a little bit of digging to find a private citizen's birthday.

Plus, where do any of us know this information? Most of it is from IMDb, back when they regularly displayed that info. So it's in violation of T:SOURCES. A tiny bit of it comes from obituaries, which generally are from reasonable sources. So it's operationally easier just to strip the information from articles than to verify every single one.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 00:36: Mon 07 Nov 2011 

Perhaps that was a bad choice of words; when I say "public information" I mean it in the sense that it is generally known via publicly-prominent published sources, not just in the sense that someone might dig for it in the public record. Matt Smith's birthday was mentioned in the Radio Times. The birthdays of many of our deceased actors are prominent in their obituaries. Others have written autobiographies, or otherwise made their own birthdays known. I'm pretty sure birthdays have been printed in DWM and licenced reference works. I seem to remember having seen some birthdays listed on their dates in licenced Doctor Who calendars.

It may be operationally easier to remove all birthdays, but I think we'd be losing ground as an encyclopedia if we did so. With all the depth we go into on here to cover our subject matter to the fullest possible, it seems silly to leave out such a basic piece of biographical information of encyclopedic interest. If we just require a reliable published source, like the licenced stuff mentioned, rather than stuff like IMDb (which should never itself be considered a source anyway, as its users can and do submit any info they like with minimal editorial oversight - the damn thing is basically a very slow-acting wiki with disinterested admins) we really would filter out most, if not all, of those individuals who haven't decided to have that info put out there. — Rob T Firefly - Δ∇ - 07:36, November 7, 2011 (UTC)

Date of Birth was stripped from a lot of IMDB pages not because of uncertainty, but because an actress is suing them on the grounds that it makes it harder to get jobs. I believe that when we have information -- and there is no reason to think the IMDB DOBs were inaccurate -- we should publish it. I expect that this being a US case, it will go away -- if the information is true, that's a valid defense. I understand that British law differs. I happen to think that British law is clearly wrong in this case, but people here might wish to consider the ramifications of forum-shopping. Boblipton ^{talk to me} 01:05, November 7, 2011 (UTC)

I don't really understand what you mean by forum-shopping, nor the relevance of British v. US law. The question is, where are we getting this information? How do we know that, for example, Thomas Sangster was born on 16 May 1990? We know it from IMDb. IMDb is explicitly considered an invalid source by our own rules. So what's the rationale for having this information?

And, Rob, I agree with you. We should require a source for every birth or death date, and that indeed it might be fairly easy to find such sources. My point is that, from an administrative perspective, it's much easier to wipe the slate completely clean and delete all dates. This would then force them to be re-added, with proper citation. If we just say, "You must add citations for dates", but don't delete the current state of things, nothing will happen. We've said for years that British spellng is required on the wiki, but in the last month, I've made around 50,000 edits upholding that and others of the most basic rules on the wiki. Clearly, we can't just make a rule around here and expect it to be followed. Until you actually enforce a rule, you're just pissin' in the wind.

Bot elimination of dates forces people to do something about the dates. I also think we should wholly eliminate Real world birthdays and real world deaths, and heavily redact most "real world" sections of year pages from the late 1800s to the present.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 14:31: Mon 07 Nov 2011 

Oh, I see! I thought you were speaking of eliminating birthdates in the sense of just not having them in articles anymore. Wiping the slate clean and re-adding everything from better sources would appear to be the way to go. — Rob T Firefly - Δ∇ - 19:17, November 7, 2011 (UTC)

Archivist's notes

Although nothing much has been done with this discussion, it does seem as though it firmly establishes the policy that birth/deathdates require references. Basically, this thread is waiting for me to develop a bit of bot programming to "wipe the slate clean" and remove the existing, unreferenced dates. However, users should feel free to remove unreferenced dates manually, based upon this discussion.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 13:46: Wed 02 May 2012