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.