User:Charles Matthews/Companion

It is quite an old idea that the DNB-related author pages should be consolidated into a work on Wikibooks. One advantage would be that discussions of tricky identifications could be carried on in greater detail there than would be appropriate here; with others invited to be involved. Scholarship on the DNB hasn't actually yet tackled the biographical issue in the large.

Rough proposal
A Wikibook in three parts:


 * 1) Front matter, i.e. essays on aspects of the DNB.
 * 2) Main listing, i.e. information on each DNB author in the scope of the project here (DNB00, DNB01, DNB12). The economical way to do that would be to set up a basic template there, and fill it with data from author pages here, using some automation. Say design to place three templates on a book page. With around 800 authors, we'd be talking about getting on for 300 dense reference pages.
 * 3) Appendix: carry over discussions here to an appendix page wherever there seems some point in underlining the identification with references, or adding data for a potentially notable person that would be "original research" in WP terms.

For (2), we should set up a confidence level system for authors, such as 0% - 25% - 50% - 75% - 100%, as well as indicating potential notability. Where a WP article exists on an author, and the identification is solid, there is little need to labour the point. The idea would be to pick up the other cases. A Wikibook has the great advantage that it can be updated over time.