Talk:Q692

Autodescription — William Shakespeare (Q692)

description: English playwright and poet (1564–1616)

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English vs. British

I think it makes more sense to call him English since he died in 1616, whereas Great Britain came into being in 1707. It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 18:57, 20 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

gender change vandalism

There were many edits that could be considered as vandalism, like changing from male to female. Please take care of. --Octahedron80 (talk) 05:58, 1 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

False death and birth dates

The stored birth dates are the Julian calendar dates, but Wikidata data dates are always stored as Gregorian calendar dates. Thus the stated birth and death dates are false. Jc3s5h (talk) 03:25, 24 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I have corrected the dates. My source for the corrections is http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/people/william_shakespeare/ but Wikidata lacks a workable referencing system to indicate this. Jc3s5h (talk) 03:37, 24 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I have removed the recently added date of birth for two reasons. First, the birth date is not known accurately, all that is known is the date of baptism in early infancy. Next the date was stored as a Julian calendar date but if you read the whole thread you will see this is unacceptable.

I have also removed the significant event: baptism because it was stored as a Julan date. The "date of baptism in early childhood" property remains and is correctly stored as a Gregorian calendar date. Jc3s5h (talk) 14:27, 2 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

If the date pf baptism is known and accurate, then probably he must have been born shortly before that. I suggest we put 1564 as "date of birth", with qualifier "sourcing circumstances" as: "presumably". In this way we can exactly describe that the date is probably that, but we are not 100% sure. I don't think using a calendar or the other is in itself a sufficient reason for removing a date: if the calendar is the wrong one we should correct the value, not remove it. Candalua (talk) 13:43, 6 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The item already has the property "date of baptism in early childhood". This has the advantage over just indicating it is a baptism because in some Christian denominations people are baptized as adults. Jc3s5h (talk) 15:03, 6 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

"date of baptism in early childhood" is perfectly fine. I was talking about a different thing: using this date of baptism to fill "date of birth" as accurately as we can (the source itself says that he was born "a few days before", and surely in his case it didn't happen as adult). In the meantime another user added this birth date as 1564. So now, if someone retrieves the property "date of birth", they will get some value (the most accurate that we can provide), instead of getting nothing at all. I'm sure you will understand the advantages. Candalua (talk) 15:52, 6 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I see that date of birth, set to 1564 with year precision, was added in this diff. So you are suggesting adding sourcing circumstances to the date of birth. That's OK with me. Jc3s5h (talk) 21:33, 6 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Jc3s5h, Candalua: All historians will agree he was born in April 1564 with overwhelming probability. As good as all historians will agree there is insufficient evidence for claiming it was 23 April. Many, and possibly most, historians will agree that the tradition that he was born on 23 April is not in itself unlikely, and that such traditions do have weight as evidence, just not conclusive or sufficient on its own. If pressed, most historians would probably guess 23 April +/- 2–3 days as the most likely; but after Schoenbaum went into detail on the issue in the late seventies (IIRC. I believe it was in his A Compact Documentary Life) I don't think it likely any serious scholar of Shakespeare would go further than "some time in April" and "probably within about a week of 23 April". Thus, I would suggest setting the date of birth to "April 1564" with month accuracy and a suitable sourcing circumstances (I haven't checked the details of the valid values). If there is any sane way to add book sources to Wikidata items, several high quality such can be provided. The footnotes in the enwp article, and that article's talk page archives, also discuss the issue at some length (with sources). And it's worth getting right here because it's an issue scholars have actually dedicated quite a lot of attention to, and the culture in general does stuff like celebrate his birthday and anniversaries of his birth. --Xover (talk) 09:11, 13 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

If there are quality books that address the issue and support April, I'd favor putting that in. I don't think the use of qualifiers and sourcing circumstances is consistent, and a problem is that many automated systems just grab the date and ignore the qualifiers and sourcing circumstances.

Help:Sources describes how to add a book as a reference, although it is laborious. A book I've added as a reference is Greenwich Time and the Longitude (Q45833057) and I'd be happy to help with the mechanics of adding a book. However, I don't add the actual reference in the item unless I've read the book myself. Jc3s5h (talk) 13:24, 13 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Religion

Searching the Internet, I see there is controversy about whether Shakespeare belonged to the Roman Catholic Church or the Church of England. The religion property has been set to both values recently, and neither claim had a reference. Considering the controversy and absence of a reference, I deleted the religion property. Jc3s5h (talk) 02:16, 24 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Jc3s5h: There is no firm evidence that Shakespeare, or his family or associates, had any particular belief; and what there is merely suggests he was an outwardly conforming member of the state religion. If the Wikidata item should say anything at all, it should be Church of England / Protestant and probably the sourcing circumstances should indicate some uncertainty or that it is disputed. And the latter is because there has been a lot of debate and attention among relevant experts to this issue, and the theories that make him a Catholic, Atheist, Agnostic, or Humanist are not dismissible as fringe or unfounded (speculative, yes; but not unfounded). Catholic, in particular, has a strong case and cannot be ruled out; and in the case of his father (John Shakespeare) it is even probable. I can dig up book sources that discuss these issues if needed (feel free to ping me for anything Shakespeare related; I have some access to relevant central sources in this area). --Xover (talk) 09:23, 13 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

SNAC ARC ID

{{Editrequest}}

Hi - can I change the SNAC ARK ID (P3430) for Shakespeare to w6qk86d3? I just updated the SNAC page and want to update the Wikidata information. Thanks!

Done Bovlb (talk) 17:24, 10 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Removed 1564 Gregorian birth date

I have removed the date of birth item claiming birth in 1564 Gregorian, because there is no reason to believe the sources cited used the Gregorian calendar in a region where the Julian calendar was in effect. – The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jc3s5h (talk • contribs) at 22 November 2020‎ (UTC).

How about using the Wikidata feature for this instead? --- Jura 17:38, 22 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I don't understand what you're getting at. Jc3s5h (talk) 21:30, 22 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Wikidata has a feature to indicate that a duly referenced statement is erroneous. This avoids that other contributors and/or researchers repeat the same error. Shouldn't we use this feature here? --- Jura 07:32, 23 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The remaining birth date statement has a more specific date supported by a source, Encyclopedia Britannica, that is at least as good as any of the sources used to support the purported Gregorian year. Also, the problem is not errors in the other sources, it is that the other sources do not state their date policies in any obvious way, and the editors adding Gregorian dates either never heard of the Julian calendar and don't know to look into the matter, or are running a bot and are content to tell lies as long as they don't tell so many that they get banned.

I am not aware of any source that states "Shakespeare was born in 1564, Gregorian" or words to that effect. Allowing that statement to remain, supported by sources that do not specify the calendar is putting words into the mouths of the sources and is dishonest. Jc3s5h (talk) 15:11, 23 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

If the reference supports another statement, it could be moved there. We don't delete some reference because we prefer another reference. --- Jura 22:10, 23 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree that references should not be deleted. I see no reason to keep an inferior reference when a superior reference is available in the same language. Some bot owners to aspire to add every single source in the universe that supports a given claim, but I've never seen any policy that says that is a goal of Wikidata.

In this particular case, since the deleted sources do not have an easy-to-find statement about their calendar policy, I wouldn't know which claim to associate the source with, the deleted Gregorian claim or the remaining Julian claim. Jc3s5h (talk) 00:39, 25 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I have removed the false claim that Shakespeare was born 26 April 1564 in the Gregorian calendar. and that this claim is supported by Archivio Storico Ricordi (Q3621644). The same entry in ARCHIVIO STORICO claims that Shakespeare was born 23 April 1616. Neither date bears an indication as to whether the calendar is Gregorian or Julian. But this site shows an image from the parish register of Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon, showing a date of 25 April 1616 for the burial date, and the gravestone shows a death date of 23 April 1616. Since Trinity Church is a church of the Church of England, it certainly would have used the Julian calendar. This demonstrates that, at least for Shakespeare, ARCHIVIO STORICO used the Julian calendar. The claim that the date given by ARCHIVIO STORICO is Gregorian is clearly false. Jc3s5h (talk) 17:42, 20 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

If a statement is supported by a reference, it doesn't really matter if it is correct or not. That question is relevant when one decides which rank to use. --- Jura 19:02, 20 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The statement is not supported by a reference. The problem is that User:LutiV makes huge number of edits grapping huge amounts of data from sources without bothering to investigate the calendar policies of the sources. It is akin to someone scooping up the date "9/3/2020" from this journal article and inputing it to Wikdata as September 3, 2020, without bothering to look at the other dates in the article, and discern that the policy of the author of the article was to write dates in the form day/month/year. Jc3s5h (talk) 19:20, 20 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Furthermore, a Google Scholar search on "23 April 1564" Shakespeare Gregorian with citations and patents unchecked yields only two results. One is a book where the relevant page is not visible, and the other is in German, so I cannot confirm (and seriously doubt) that either source claims Shakespeare was born on 23 April 1564 Gregorian. Repeating the search with "April 23, 1564" Shakespeare Gregorian returns only eight results.

At https://kb.osu.edu/handle/1811/34647 one finds an essay by James Phelan that clearly gets the date wrong. I'm not sure this is a sufficiently reliable source to cite in the item.
As far as I can tell none of the other sources contain a claim that Shakespeare was born 23 April 1564 Gregorian. Jc3s5h (talk) 20:03, 20 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, we have already removed all the dates before 4 October 1582. I am still checking if there are more to correct, but I am going to amend all of those errors. Thanks --LutiV (talk) 08:38, 21 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]