Ralph, all, 

Regarding the Wikipedia template for VIAF, haven't tried it myself, but I believe the following syntax works: {{Authority control|PND=119408643|LCCN=n/79/113947|VIAF=59263727}}

Based on description on this Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Authority_control

/ Daniel

-----Original Message-----
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ralph LeVan
Sent: Tuesday, May 24, 2011 10:23 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] wikipedia/author disambiguation

>
> Are there any guidelines us wikipedians should be using to increase the
> likelihood of matches? I'm thinking in particular of the representation of
> uncertain dates.
>

The first step in the process is identifying entries for people.  The
presence of a Persondata block in the article is very helpful.

An unambiguous way to encode titles would help.  Apparently there are markup
rules for titles, but they are much abused by editors using them to
emphasize text in articles and are unreliable to the point of being ignored.

Dates is not a big deal.  Wikipedia records are full of dates and we cope
with fuzziness in dates reasonably well.


> Are there perhaps 'ground truth' URLs such as links into identities / VIAF
> which we can use? If so, what is the exact form of those URLs?
>

There is a template for entering WorldCat Identities URLs.  I don't believe
there is one yet for VIAF.

We've been working for a couple of years now on getting permission to put
Identities and VIAF links into Wikipedia records.  As it happens, several of
us in Research are meeting again on Thursday to discuss this.  Apparently
there has been some sort of movement on that topic.  Any help you can
provide would be appreciated!

Ralph