Template talk:Ahnentafel

Neutrality Concerns

Like some others, I became aware of, and took exception to a large number of deletions and re-deletions of ancestry sections by a user that did not seem to be as respectful as they could be, nor neutral. Not having personally had to address any real grievances on this site before, I had apparently brought those concerns to the wrong place twice, as cited by that administrator, you learn something new everyday. I would hope that one person's views and edits do not keep getting in the way of these ancestry sections being up here in the broad and neutral way that they had been intended, from the time this website was started up until now, and that any issues with these sections from here on forward will be dealt with respectfully, neutrally, and on an individual basis, to keep this website as fair and neutral as possible. Thank you.--JLavigne508 (talk) 17:07, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

Have an RFC on the topic. How long has it been since the last one (if there was one). GoodDay (talk) 21:43, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

There was an RfC 2 years ago. JLavigne508 wants this template used in all articles at once or in no articles at all; that is not something an RfC can enforce. Surtsicna (talk) 21:51, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

All of them or None of them? Doubt anybody could get a consensus for either. GoodDay (talk) 21:55, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for talking, I will say this one time, if I have failed to communicate this I am not surprised. The articles' whose sections have been removed here had been put up early on in the beginning of this website because they are considered to be for major historical dynastic figures. What I said rather frustratingly but to the point is, "either eliminate them all, or leave them up FAIRLY." This has indisputably thrown that fairness off in that regard. The other template is just fine, but that's not the broad one for these sections, so the way they coexisted for some, but not others, has VERY WIDELY been considered appropriate and proportional these last twenty years. The articles recently affected, are now disproportionately represented here. Likewise, the ones that did not have these sections all along anyway, were nearly universally considered AS more irrelevant, and as such DID NOT have the sections. That seems appropriate as almost everybody has agreed this entire websites history, the same as if it is fairly applied, they should likewise remain for the major figures' articles that are now missing them that are just the same as the others with them. As it is now, that is not neutral representation, as it had been from the year 2000 up until apparently 5-8 months ago.--JLavigne508 (talk) 22:21, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

Not "early on in the beginning of this website". Not "from the year 2000". And has not been "VERY WIDELY considered appropriate and proportional these last twenty years". Please start providing evidence for your assertions. Surtsicna (talk) 22:39, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

Very simple, the edit history on all of these thousands of pages lol.--JLavigne508 (talk) 23:26, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

There is surely no point demanding evidence for the popularity of this template, (or ancestry sections generally), or arguing about exactly how popular it is. But I agree with Surtsicna (if I understand correctly) that there is no obvious RFC to have. Is anyone still arguing that these templates are always deleteable, or always not? I continue to believe that it needs to be looked at case by case. Factors to be considered can IMHO include whether the information is a graphical representation of what is in an article, or a set of connected articles. (Tabular representations of the ways in which articles link, for example in biological articles, or articles about the institutions of a country, are very common and widely-accepted. Using hyperlinks to show how notable and verifiable topics can be seen as connected is part of what we do (WP:BUILD) and should not need endless debate about the general principle. There are however cases where editors go overboard with genealogy.)--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 06:55, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

Seconded - not at all helpful, is exasperated at the sight of the table using cherrypicked individuals to dismiss the entire ancestry (not exactly their entire genealogy being listed) AlbusWulfricDumbledore (talk) 23:23, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

Look, I am not going to go on back and forth forever complaining with how things were done here, I don't agree with a lot of it, that is pointless now. However, I would seriously suggest that any people going through seeing these sections missing at the bottom on pages they have been going to for many years like myself, and are confused, and restore those sections and suddenly have that reverted, really need to be politely referred to this page immediately saying it is being looked at or something, and told to create a section here for that specific issue (it would seem in the spirit of this website that process should really have been done in reverse, and dealt with case by case). I actually don't disagree with most of the nature of what's being discussed here, despite not liking how it was undertaken. I also think that these pages can look better without these sections, but in the spirit of impartiality and uniformity, what looks worse is a large number of these pages for major figures having them, and others that don't. I would argue maybe some of them that were taken down, such as the intermediary Electors of Brandenburg of the 15th century, would be pertinent to have them removed (unless someone wants to specifically argue otherwise), and I like a lot of people never really agreed with having these sections in royal bios from the European Dark Ages.

− I would also quickly point out that the other major European Wiki's are very generous with these sections and will continue to be (I started in and am in one of these), as it is a Western tradition, and even though I am in America, this Wikipedia does encompass Britain, which actually still has a monarchy traditionally thought to be inheriting authority from these people, so not speaking to any specific page design or sections, maybe it is worth trying to tread a bit lighter here if for nothing else but perception. Also, it is worth pointing out that this here is reducing the number of these sections from where it had been widely considered proportional and appropriate up until now. As for a number of these other sections that were removed, the Kings of France and Holy Roman Emperors of the Medieval Period to start, I mean come on.--JLavigne508 (talk) 07:11, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

Have any of these been removed from bios of monarchies that still exist? GoodDay (talk) 14:23, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

Yes, nearly all. For example, see Talk:Prince_George_of_Cambridge/Archive_5#Why_shouldn't_this_article_contain_George's_ancestry?. Also discussed at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Royalty_and_Nobility/Archive_9#Royals_Ancestry. Surtsicna (talk) 17:09, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

If your sole problem is that some articles have [unsourced, poorly sourced, or not appearing in any published biographies] ahnentafeln while some others do not, then what you should do instead of adding more [unsourced, poorly sourced, or not appearing in any published biographies] ahnentafeln is to remove such unencyclopedic content from other articles. Surtsicna (talk) 17:09, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

Please do take this as a friendly gesture. It is clear that you have a very strong bias against the standard ancestry format of this site, and that is fine, everybody has personal preferences and opinions, but it is also clearly affecting the content and neutrality of this site. I would suggest that your time and effort on here be spent adding and contributing to the content, and move on to another area of this website.--JLavigne508 (talk) 22:47, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

@JLavigne508: on WP the term "neutral" has become semi-reserved for "POV" problems, to do with biased content, not formats etc. I presume what you mean in this case is that problems have come from editors having very strong feelings about this table as such. I tend to agree because in practice the way these tables were deleted, at least in the past, often couldn't be explained purely by verifiability and notability concerns. Sourcing and notability are common problems on all medieval articles, but we don't normally fix that by deleting the whole article (as tempting as it sometimes is). These tables are, the way I see it, normally just representing the information in our articles. If there are problems with them, there are problems with the articles. Even more obvious: deleting one whole generation, one of the most common ways of attacking this format, simply can't be presented as any kind of strategy to improve sourcing or even notability, because it is by definition not looking at the details. Note that I don't add these ahnentafels, and I don't think they are beautiful, but they are compact and for editing or reading articles about members of dynasties these tables are a handy tool (much handier than our very awkward family tree template) and I continue to be opposed to them being deleted or partly deleted without proper case-by-case consideration. To give an example just from my own use of Wikipedia as a reader, yesterday I was reading about René II, Duke of Lorraine and his family and I found it was a case where a 5 generation table would have been helpful. The basic idea of this template is in some ways similar to templates or infoboxes used in biology articles which also show how sets of articles are connected by a "tree" (phylogeny).

@Surtsicna: it is obvious that there is no rule on WP which says we need a source for every decision we make about how we present information. It is the information itself which we should be focused upon. IMHO you should stop trying to make that argument because it makes you hard to take seriously, and that can only hurt the push for better sourcing of the information in medieval articles.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:09, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

How we present information is not the problem, and I never claimed it was. The information we choose to present is. The tables never represent the information in our articles; you will never, not in any article, find prose saying that A was the son of B who was the daughter of C who was the daughter of D who was the son of E and so on for 30 subject-great-great-grandparent connections. Surtsicna (talk) 07:14, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

@Surtsicna: why keep flogging this dead horse? We do not need a source for 1+1=2, or "Socrates was mortal". If A is connected to B and B is connected to C then the question of whether to mention the less direct connection between A and C is purely one about presentation and notability, and must be handled case by case. There is no policy problem with mentioning that a cat is a vertebrate if we know a cat is a mammal, because we know all mammals are vertebrates. That would simply be an editing decision about how to present information. That's how Wikipedia works, and I can't believe you don't understand this. Phylogenies and hierarchical categorizations are extremely commonly used for things like infoboxes and templates, and are all based on systems of connections including indirect ones. Outside of this one never-ending discussion, I have NEVER seen anyone use this argumentation, that would mean, for example, that we can't mention that a village is in England, if we only have a source which says it is in Cambridgeshire. That would be nuts, right?

On a second somewhat more complicated point you are wrong to say this: "The tables never represent the information in our articles; you will never, not in any article". You've misunderstood, and switched from plural to singular. One major aim of this template is that it works like many templates do, to show the connections within a group of related articles. Non-genealogical examples of similar templates would be "Y-DNA", or "Noble gases" or "Governments of Belgium". Wouldn't it be silly to demand that every article in such a set of topics has to contain full explanations and sourcing for all the other related articles, or else all infoboxes or templates mentioning other members in the group should be deleted? If our Neon article does not discuss Argon can you imagine anyone, apart from yourself, arguing that this means that we may not use the "Noble gases" template on that article? Of course not. If you want to see the sourcing for Argon, you go to that article. This is simple and it works.

What we should be working on are cases where there is a real verifiability problem. This discussion is certainly not helping achieve anything in that direction, but rather working against other editors. It is a massive distraction, and purely artificial, because in most of these cases your own explanations show that there is no real verification concern. In other words, while this is such a high priority for you, you are pushing the "core content" priorities which the community shares to a lower position. It is way too eccentric and out of sync with other editors. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:15, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

There is no, and has never been any, consensus to enshrine this template as exempt from WP:V, WP:PROPORTION, and WP:NOTGENEALOGY policies. That the connection between A and C would require a citation was stated by multiple editors during the 2019 discussion, including Agricolae, Celia Homeford, and PBS. There is indeed a policy saying so, WP:SYNTHESIS, and I am likewise surprised that you do not understand that. Agricolae has also warned against what he/she called the Schrodinger's Template phenomenon, whereby this template is compared to navboxes (such as Template:Noble gases) when verifiability concerns are raised and yet not treated as a navbox when navbox rules are to be applied to it. So no, I would not say that I am out of sync with other editors. But this is something an RfC could settle. If you truly believe that the community would support exempting this template from the project's WP:V, WP:PROPORTION, and WP:NOTGENEALOGY policies, an RfC can be set up to settle that once and for all, so that the dead horse can finally rest in peace. Surtsicna (talk) 09:01, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

Now you are just changing the subject. No one is asking for any exemption to those policies, so why would we have an RFC about it? Another thing that is absolutely clear with or without a new RFC is that there is no support for widespread knee-jerk deletions, so they should not happen. That was the real debate. I have only ever said to you that there is no policy against this template the way it is normally used, and until there is, any problems with them should be handled case by case. I am totally in agreement that there are lots of problems with medieval articles. But attacking that by attacking ahnentafels is just a distraction from the real task. Burning all our energy on this artificial problem is in conflict with the aim of improving the verifiability of medieval articles.

Agricolae's post is worth considering, because the rules about navboxes which it mentions would only have an impact on where the Ahnentafel should be placed on the page. So yes, this whole discussion IS just about PRESENTATION and FORMAT! If you take that direction of discussion further you will quickly realize that there is also no rule on Wikipedia which says all such boxes are either navboxes or else the equivalent of a full article. We also have a wide range of other similar tools such as various infoboxes and many of these contain "navigation" information about how the topic is linked in a "family tree" with other articles. You have talked past me on this point before, but have a look at the article Cat or Federal judiciary of the United States for goodness sake. Do you see people demanding a source for the link on Cat to Chordata? And the Ahnentafel is already normally at the bottom of the page and collapsed, so the "spirit" of its typical use is similar to other templates. But sure, if there are proposals about using a smaller font or moving the ahnentafel to the right-hand side of the page, make those, and let's have a real discussion about PRESENTATION, instead of pretending it is about anything else. Personally I am more interested in working on the content, but I do not want these useful templates being removed without case by case consideration. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:50, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

My mistake then; would you like, instead, an RfC to settle whether the use of this template "the way it is normally used" contravenes WP:V, WP:PROPORTION, and WP:NOTGENEALOGY policies? You deny that it does, and yet the 2019 discussion has shown that many editors feel that it does. If the RfC finds that it does, then the removal of such content can only accelerate. Do we want this clarified? If so, I would strongly suggest having the RfC at either Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard or Wikipedia:No original research/Noticeboard.
No, the rules of navboxes would not affect only the placement. Please read the rules at WP:NAVBOX (points 1 to 5). No, the discussion is not solely about presentation and format. Surtsicna (talk) 10:08, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

There is no consensus for mass deletions. Don't do them. [ADDED: If you want an RFC to support mass deletions, word the RFC in an honest way and ask if the community accepts a programme of mass deletions. They don't, as you know.] You have, over a very long period, spent enormous energy to try to make the discussions as confusing as possible, and the RFC wording you've just suggested is clearly silly in a way which is consistent with that long and painful tradition. There is no clear definition of "the way it is normally used" that can be used for an RFC, and the words in my post are context dependant. That can't lead to anything but more controversy. The real situation is simple, and there simply shouldn't be any more time wasting on this:

• No-one is denying that there are verifiability and notability problems in medieval articles. In such cases, the ahnentafel is just a side issue. Attacking them is a distraction which does NOT address the real problems. This has become such a silly and long debate that it is even in conflict with improving the articles.
• We should know how to work on the above. We do NOT solve verifiability and notability problems by deleting articles or significant parts of articles without discussion or careful consideration. Best practice is to ADD sourcing and better information, and to remove large amounts of material only after careful consideration. (On less busy articles, I tend to post the removed material on to the talk page with an explanation. I encourage others to do the same.)
• Ahnentafels normally represent information within a group of articles. Such things are common on Wikipedia and completely acceptable, as explained above. When they don't, then that should be looked at case by case. This is consistent with the navbox points 1-5 you mention, but I see no reason for us to need to decide whether this template is a navbox or infobox or just something similar:

1. All articles within a template relate to a single, coherent subject.
2. The subject of the template should be mentioned in every article.
3. The articles should refer to each other, to a reasonable extent.
4. There should be a Wikipedia article on the subject of the template.
5. If not for the navigation template, an editor would be inclined to link many of these articles in the See also sections of the articles.

Also see WP:INFOBOXREF:

References are acceptable in some cases, but generally not needed in infoboxes if the content is repeated (and cited) elsewhere or if the information is obvious. If the material requires a reference (see WP:MINREF for guidelines) and the information does not also appear in the body of the article, the reference should be included in the infobox. However, editors should first consider including the fact in the body of the article.

If you are arguing that the ahnentafels are not currently being used in a way consistent with the infobox or navbox philosophies, please make it clear in which way you think that this is the case.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:03, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

I do not know, nor do I accept as true, that the community does not support removal of this policy-violating content. What I am removing are sections tagged as unsourced for a year or longer (often 7 or 9 years), and you have failed to convince me that doing so is wrong. I reject your attempts at trivializing the ahnentafel issues. You are free to define what you consider normal use of the template or the use you would support. Then we can work out an RfC statement that would inquire as to whether such (actual or proposed) use is in line with the said policies.
Whatever they may be, ahnentafeln are definitely not infoboxes. They do not meet WP:NAVBOX requirements 2 (fourth-generation descendants are not mentioned in ancestors' biographies), 3 (biographies of great-grandparents do not mention great-grandchildren at all and vice versa), and 5 (nobody would list 30 ancestors in the See also section of individual biographies). Surtsicna (talk) 11:29, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

Please everyone I am done here, there is no dispute. I just hope that peoples time on here will be spent more productively, and in keeping with the nature and policies of this website.--JLavigne508 (talk) 13:28, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

@Surtsicna: that is incredibly unconvincing and mixed up. If you honestly believe you have support on simple mass deletion of all ahnentafels, write a clear, simple and honest RFC asking for permission for a few wikipedians to do mass deletions without discussion, instead of wasting everyone's time like this. Stop pretending this is about verifiability. I for one will certainly vote against it, because this has no connection to improving the encyclopedia. Issues of verifiability and notability should be discussed as usual, case by case, looking at the article bodies, not these appendage "-boxes" which are a presentation issue. Tagging and deleting these boxes that show connections between articles, WITHOUT making any attempt to address problems in the bodies of the articles, or post anything on talk pages, is tendentious, and in conflict with our priorities as a community. FWIW I also see ...

• No reason to say we are limited to infoboxes and navboxes,
• No reason to say these are certainly not infoboxes, though that question is not really interesting
• No reason to say ahnentafels are certainly not navboxes under WP:NAVBOX, though that question is not really interesting. (The list is introduced only with "Good navboxes generally follow most or all of these guidelines". That is clearly not meant to be "legislation", but anyway your dogmatic generalizations are quite obviously not true. Great grandparents are often very important in medieval articles, for example.)

But to repeat: none of this would be a discussion about how to improve medieval articles in terms of the quality of their content. None of it would be a discussion about problems for our core content policies. It is a big distraction, and it is all about "taste". De gustibus non est disputandum. If we may instead focus upon improving article content, then the ahnentafels simply need to represent what is in articles. The rest is just a discussion about the curtains.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:30, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

Not without discussion. The matter has been discussed extensively and at least since 2007, producing no consensus to enshrine this template as exempt from the said policies. But I am offering to you an opportunity to establish that kind of consensus - if we can agree on the wording of an RfC question. You refuse to acknowledge that the aforementioned editors and I have policy concerns. Since what we consider to be impermissible synthesis and gratuitous genealogy is completely fine by you, it is no use to rehash this any further between us. Neither that nor the presumptuous insistence that we are only offended by the looks of the template, as if we were lying when stating that the policy issues concern us, will ever yield an agreement between us.
On another note: A good reason to say that Template:Ahnentafel is not an infobox is the definition of infobox at MOS:INFOBOX. I have no interest in arguing whether Template:Ahnentafel is a navbox (and have never argued either way) but it is clearly not what WP:NAVBOX describes as a "good navbox". Surtsicna (talk) 14:59, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

Fair enough but maybe it is worth pointing out that in practice our concerns are or should be similar when we look at real article bodies as opposed to these appendages which are tools to help see linked topics (whatever you want to call them).

My objection to what I see as an obsession about these link-containing tables has always been based on my concern about strict general "legislation" which is not needed, and which has led to blind editing sweeps that were certainly controversial.

So yes, you'd have to make a much better RFC proposal. All the ideas I have seen are basically pushing the idea that anyone who does not agree is working against WP:V. That is never likely to lead to a real consensus - only more misunderstandings.

Actually I think WP:V, which pertains to article content, is much more important than avoiding genealogical information, which is not forbidden. If banning all genealogy is you primary goal, then WP:V is not.

Let's remember: you have no real WP:V concerns about most of the links which you delete mention of by deleting these tables, or parts of them. Your concern is generally a concern about the notability of real verifiable links which editors chose to show as existing between articles. But notability is not what WP:V is about, and it is very difficult to generalize about.

Remember also that my concern has been especially in the area of medieval families whose ancestors are by default important for more reasons than interest in genealogical trivia. I am very concerned about the writing of strict rules when they are not needed, but if ever this community writes one about this topic I think it will need to make a distinction about for example medieval versus modern biographical articles. It is obvious that there is a major difference, at least in the average/typical types of cases. To properly account for the diversity in the importance of ancestry/family in one simple "law" is however going to be impossible - whereas common sense should be a much better tool to judge it.

I also fear that one of the confusions here which is coming from attacking the tables instead of the articles themselves, is that we must not loose sight of the fact that many medieval biographies we have are stubs which probably should not be separate articles. This is an example of the types of problems I think we need to be working on as the higher priority - for example merging them into articles about families, or whatever. That would fix many/all of the Ahnentafel problems automatically, whereas putting effort into removing Ahnentafels is putting the horse before the cart, and will NOT help us improve articles. (Indeed, what does it achieve at all? With no discussion or record of the reasoning people can just put them back in.)

I hope these thoughts are helpful in some way for future discussion. I am happy to leave it there for now and see what other ideas develop.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:01, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

My goal is not banning all genealogy. My goal is getting rid of gratuitous genealogy (per WP:NOTGENEALOGY policy) so that the relevant genealogy (relevance being determined by inclusion into general biographies of the subject per WP:PROPORTION policy) can shine. I must reiterate that I know which concerns I have. If I am not stating them clearly enough, please ask for an explanation. I wholly agree with having genealogical tables in articles about families (e.g. Astur-Leonese dynasty) and agree, if I am understanding you correctly, that they would be a suitable alternative to ahnentafeln in individual biographies.
An RfC could, for example, ask the following question: "Under which circumstances should Template:Ahnentafel be included in biographical articles?" The options might be: A) If sourced to published biographies of the subject that meet WP:RS requirements; B) If sourced to genealogical publications that meet WP:RS requirements; C) If individual entries of the template are sourced to individual publications; D) If the information presented in it can be found in other Wikipedia articles.
Thoughts? Surtsicna (talk) 21:02, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

I fear that "gratuitous genealogy" is easier to handle case by case, than by writing a rule. Concerning your RFC idea at first sight it looks a bit like an over-specific version of Wikipedia's normal rules and practices.

not sure if these notes about the ABCD idea help

(What is the difference between B and C? What is C about? It seems to be about footnoting, which is a format issue, not WP:V per se because there are different ways to make things verifiable. Concerning D, you just mention "other" articles. You seem very reluctant to focus upon a smaller set of articles much more obvious to "common sense", which is the articles linked-to in the template. This template is literally a set of links to a small number of articles which are asserted to be linked in a specific way. It is obvious to any random visitor that to find out more about each of the linked-to topics, you click on those specific links. So clearly in any discussion about whether we've got a good enough "paper" trail for verification, those linked-to articles would be considered. This is how websites work, and this is also the kind of thinking behind many similar types of navigation tools we use on WP, and indeed which are used on all kinds of websites. Footnotes are based on old printed media and work ok for book-like blocks of text, but not within internet-style navigation tools which use links. Any primary school student would, these days, recognize these boxes quickly, precisely as something to click on to get more detailed information, hopefully including sourcing, on the related topics mentioned in the box. In the end though, all of this is kind of beside the point for me. I believe we should primarily be working as usual according to our normal rules and practices, in the article. IMHO if an article is badly sourced, which is common, we should fix the article first. We don't normally delete the article, so why would we delete any kind of representation of the information in the article? That is beside the point. If the boxes summarize the information in the articles they mention their quality is just a reflection of that group of articles. BTW, from what I have seen, most of these boxes are almost entirely made up of people with their own articles? In cases where someone feels the need to insert an ancestor with no article, maybe a footnote would be the least worst way of avoiding controversy.)

I personally prefer the way that WP tends to leave rules written in terms of broad principles. It seems to me this approach is trying to solve the problems we don't have, instead of the problems we do have, because as I mentioned before, much of the disagreement I've seen has been about situations where there was no real verification concern. Above you used the example of a great grandparent and made it clear as well that even if the relationship is verifiable you are opposed to mentioning this relationship because you judge it to always be too distant, unless there is also a source to prove that great grandparent relationship was important? (So what you really seem to want is not just normal verifiability of a "fact". It is a special demand for verifiability of notability of a fact appearing because of a linking box that shows how several articles are connected. So it is like demanding that there should be no mention of cats being Chordates in the Cats infobox until someone finds proof that this is important. Imagine someone arguing that.) It is easy to see how this approach is always going to lead to controversy because it is basically one person imposing a very strict arbitrary decision on others. Presumably, given your way of explaining it, no amount of verification about the mere existence of a great-grandparent relationship is ever going to stop you being opposed to such presentations of information in any kind of linking box. I feel that approach is a dead end. I also think such judgements about what is too distant are especially difficult to write a detailed rule about, but relatively easy to handle case by case. Things like when and where a person lived are for example relevant.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 23:01, 20 June 2021 (UTC)

That is correct: verifiability is the first requirement but is not enough. According to WP:VNOT, verifiability does not guarantee inclusion ... not all verifiable information needs to be included in an article. Another policy, WP:INDISCRIMINATE, says that merely being true, or even verifiable, does not automatically make something suitable for inclusion in the encyclopedia. My expectation that the content of Wikipedia biographies reflect content of published biographies is hardly special or unusual; it is policy. WP:PROPORTION states: An article should ... strive to treat each aspect with a weight proportional to its treatment in the body of reliable, published material on the subject. Wikipedia is not the place to dump the names of one's great-[great-]grandparents without any context, as stated in WP:INDISCRIMINATE: To provide encyclopedic value, data should be put in context with explanations referenced to independent sources.
Now back to the RfC question and options. The difference between B and C is not in the footnotes; and again, none of this is about formatting. Under B, the entire chart, with the connections as given in it, would be sourced to a single entry in one genealogical publication. Under C, information could be compiled from different sources and each of the names could be cited individually. Yes, D refers to articles linked to in the template's boxes. So for the sake of clarity, the options could be rephrased as follows: B) If sourced as a whole to a genealogical publication that meets WP:RS requirements; C) If multiple reliable sources are compiled as references for individual names but not necessarily for the chart as a whole. D) If information presented in it can be found in Wikipedia articles linked in it. Is this clear enough? Surtsicna (talk) 10:15, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

Right, so what you really want, or at least the aspect of it which others disagree with, is nothing to do with WP:V, and your proposals should not be framed that way. You want very detailed legislation about how to handle specific cases of balancing due weight, and notability, so that verifiable information can be deleted without discussion. Such a legislative approach can take no account of the massively different importance that ancestry had, for example, for most (not all) medieval people versus most (not all) modern people. Personally, I think one reason Wikipedia did not turn into a giant committee meeting (yet) is that it has tried to avoid encouraging the natural human tendency of people to try to invent unnecessarily detailed rules that other people have to follow.
Concerning your ABCD these are all about verifiability of "facts" - concerning which I think there is no major debate? The articles themselves need to be improved, and the ways in which this should be done are pretty clear. As long as these structured link collections follow what is in the articles they are a secondary matter that can be handled as the article bodies are worked on. I am opposed to inventing detailed rules that are not needed, and frankly, for medieval nobility articles, which is where I think most controversy has been, there is nothing shocking about the public being exposed to the names of some great grand parents? It is by default likely that readers and editors need to navigate these families as a group because much of what we can say about people in this period can be associated with their ancestry. It seems pointless to argue about how important each ancestor was if we are making a basic naigation tool for that purpose - just as it would be pointless to argue about whether it is important that cats are chordates.
I think normally poor articles cause poor ahnentafels, but ahnentafels themselves are normally not the cause of any knock-on problems apart from the fact that they mention (according to you) a few too many grandparents. The perceived seriousness of "gratuitously" mentioning too many grandparents therefore seems to be what your disagreements with others all boil down to?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:10, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

No, not right. Three times in the past two days I asked you not to tell me what I want and what my concerns are. I know what I want and what my concerns are. And as I said countless times so far, WP:V is one of them. If you do not intend to accept what I am telling you about my wishes and concerns as true, then this discussion is entirely meaningless. No, the intention of the RfC would not be to come up with new rules but to ascertain whether the existing policies apply to ahnentafeln. And can we please keep the replies concise? Other editors will not be inclined to read through a dozen 4,000-character-long posts. Surtsicna (talk) 12:47, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

I think you are misunderstanding me a bit. I feel I'm the one objecting to you telling me (and others who disagree with you) that our position is one which is against WP:V, and your RFC would be about whether there should be an exemption to that rule. Those who disagree with you do not recognize themselves in this description of the controversy, and to me it seems you are even diverting away from WP:V (of facts in article bodies) as a priority, towards a concern with having specific rules against mentioning verifiable great grandparents (or whichever exact relationship the legislation would describe as too distant) in the navigational appendages of an article. I think it is self-evident that there is no general rule about this. It would be crazy to treat medieval and modern people the same, and it would be silly to have to constantly prove that ancestry was more important in the middle ages. Editors working on medieval articles are always going to tend to mention more about ancestry than editors working on modern people. Why do we need this formalized and fixed? I agree we've failed to keep it short, but hopefully our own explanations above now show how the similarities and differences between our explanations are possible. Thanks for the discussion. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:16, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

BTW maybe a different approach to defining real disagreements, if you continue to find that important, would be to create a workpage to explain proposals in terms of realistic examples. I would delete X in case Y because of rationale Z, for example. Initial debate could be on its talk page. That could reduce the load on this talk page.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:20, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

I don't understand this comment; "It is clear that you have a very strong bias against the standard ancestry format of this site". What standard ancestry format would that be? Hawaii has it's own MOS that get's its standards from the main MOS as well as cultural considerations. There is a proposal for a genealogy Wikipedia but not sure where that is a the moment. There is no standard format for ancestry other than all sections and all content should be cited to reliable sources. A template is nothing more than mark up or code. It is not part of Wikipedia's standard "format". Each article has its own consensus and no discussion or smaller consensus can override the larger consensus of the community guidelines. A template can be used or not used. There is no "rule" that says this template must be used in all dynastic biographies. It could even be nominated and discussed for deletion. Of course one can get around that if one knows the mark up so, what would be the point? By the way...is there some reason using this template, that the content added cannot be sourced and properly cited?--Mark Miller (talk) 11:07, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

@Mark Miller: I don't see anything controversial in what you say, but I think JLavigne508 was not using the term "standard" in any formal "jargon" way but just referring to the fact that this is a very commonly used template for any biographies where editors feel it appropriate to show recent direct ancestors (a simple "family tree"). I think the historical controversy has lain in systematic mass deletions, so case by case discussion is not controversial as far as I know. Concerning footnotes, see previous discussions: I at least feel happy to know they are an option, but I don't see them as strictly necessary when the template is being used to show connections between articles that are explained properly in those articles that are directly linked to within the template. Generally, as with a lead, or any type of box, I prefer sourcing to be in the main body. By the same reasoning, concerning the tagging of badly sourced, or non-notable articles, I would also not start by attacking such boxes, but by tagging the appropriate sections of the body. In practice, I feel that attacking the box created unresolvable controversies about non-existent "rules", which diverted attention away from the problems in the bodies of such articles. Maybe in the (far?) future we need a noticeboard for help and advice concerning such things.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:09, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

Historical controversy has lain in the creeping of this template into hundreds of biographies without discussion and despite opposition from editors who created and/or significantly contributed to those articles, as seen (for example) in this 2007 discussion. This creep is now considered a fait accompli and portrayed as a "standard". Surtsicna (talk) 12:57, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

Yes that is also a valid perspective, and I also sometimes find the template grating. (I just don't like mass deletions at all. Sometimes this template is helpful.) OTOH standards often develop like that on WP, so it also does not make the opposite-seeming description of JLavigne508 completely wrong. Notice BTW how some of those early discussions were not claiming to be about strong WP:V problems and the like, so they are IMHO better discussions, that did not over-dramatize or get all "legalistic". Concerning the presentation concerns, FWIW I suppose that discussion was before this template became collapsed by default, which was a very big improvement. There has also been the push to remove the 5th generation (which is clearly a presentation tweak also). --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:17, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

"I think JLavigne508 was not using the term "standard" in any formal "jargon" way but just referring to....." let's not try to speak for other editors but I appreciate your willingness to compromise. Let me just say this, I support the removal of content that is NOT cited to reliable sources.

"In practice, I feel that attacking the box created unresolvable controversies about non-existent "rules" I am now becoming a bit more concerned but possibly in a different direction than you might support. Again, I ask why this template cannot or should not be held to the same standard of every other part of this project when used ~ Consensus and verifiability? That is my concern. If I must source the family trees I post...why should not others be held to that standard? No Biography is above our pillars. I am a bit confused by all of this.--Mark Miller (talk) 13:40, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

My personal idea, at least for now, is that most such convenience boxes like this have been working ok as far as WP:V is concerned, something like leads: WP:V should be confirmable by looking at the relevant article body, and we try to avoid footnotes which would effectively double up the ones in the body. But when there is dispute, I have no problem with the idea of doubled footnotes when needed. Complication: these templates refer to a small group of articles, not one article. Concerning deletion of unsourced material, I'd just add the normal rejoinder that in general, deletions imply some caution and discussion. Only the very worst material is normally deleted without discussion, and we are supposed to check a bit before taking such an action. Except when there is a very special case, it is normally frowned upon when an editor deletes materials in many articles at once based on some general principle, rather than based upon case by case inspection.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:27, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

These templates were not added based upon case by case inspection. Nobody who added them stopped to wonder whether the topic needed the names of all of the subject's great-great-grandmothers. Rather they were literally copy-pasted from one sibling to another, from cousin to cousin, etc, and all despite being very much unwelcome. I do not see why they now need to be treated with any reverence. Surtsicna (talk) 09:09, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

(edit conflict) "My personal idea, at least for now, is that most such convenience boxes like this have been working ok as far as WP:V is concerned". Not from my viewpoint having been stopped several times by admin for creating dynastic tree charts without references. I even have King Tut's small tree cited to the DNA verifications, as it is now accepted consensus.

"something like leads: WP:V should be confirmable by looking at the relevant article body, and we try to avoid footnotes which would effectively double up the ones in the body." I know of no guideline that allows a template to purposely go unreferenced in all articles blanketly. Lede sections may need to have citations even with the body of the article containing the content and reference depending on what claims are being made.

"we try to avoid footnotes which would effectively double up the ones in the body" who is "we"? Because I was told point blank by admin that these charts and graphs must be referenced. Many times a single tree chart may be used on several different articles, so not not all the subjects in the tree will apear in a particular article. In fact, with Hawaiian genealogy several people will be so closely related, it is very difficult to weed people down to the barest minimum but then the tree can be used on more than one biography. Also you can hide the list if it is unusually long such as in the; "Kalaniʻōpuʻu, Kamehameha, Kānekapōlei and Peleuli family tree". This tree can be used on far more than the four listed subjects. But I wonder if both charts are needed. If there is cited family tree chart and an uncited Pedigree chart...do we even need the uncited Pedigree?--Mark Miller (talk) 09:25, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

We can put footnotes in leads, just like we can put footnotes in ahnentafels. It is not normally considered best practice for leads, assuming that the same information is properly sourced in the body (which it SHOULD be), unless there is some special reason to expect misunderstandings to continue or if other editors specifically say they think it is needed. ("We" means Wikipedia. See MOS:CITELEAD.) Navboxes and infoboxes normally don't have footnotes, and in the case of navboxes they would not work because they are supposed to be after the references section. Infoboxes are in practice a bit like leads: they tend to get footnotes when there has been a concern raised. I am suggesting, and it seems many people agree, that with the ahnentafels we should have a similar philosophy to infoboxes and leads. Concerning the Keʻelikōlani article, without suggesting any real concerns, just comparing to controversies here on this talk page:

• Perhaps some editors people might say this is too much genealogy and also just too big. One of the concerns most often raised about the Ahnentafel is that it is too big and ugly. They will presumably accept that for this article ancestry seems important, meaning some amount of genealogical information is appropriate, and the fact that it is collapsed helps, but they might complain that not all the ancestors mentioned are equally important to the subject of the article. (Consider WP:NOTE.) I seem to remember seeing editors removing less important individuals in some cases. A common "compromise" which has been controversial has been to set a "red line" and remove everything further back than 4 generations.
• Other editors such as myself don't feel that a few low notability ancestors are a big concern, as long as ancestry is important for the topic of the article and there is some type of verifiability that readers and editors can work out from the articles mentioned in the template, with some common sense, like in infoboxes and leads.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:13, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

... it seems many people agree, that with the ahnentafels we should have a similar philosophy to infoboxes and leads. If this were an article, I would put {{cn}} after that comma. Just how many people agree, and whether they have sound arguments, could be determined in an RfC. Another RfC question proposal would be:
"Is it appropriate to remove Template:Ahnentafel from articles when unsourced and when published biographies of the subject do not mention the people and connections shown in that template?"
A very simple yes-or-no question asked at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard or Wikipedia:No original research/Noticeboard would settle all of this, hopefully once and for all. Do you agree with such a question? Surtsicna (talk) 12:33, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

Honestly I find that a bad RFC question because it would confuse people concerning the types of edits it is meant to justify.

• First, not everyone will notice that this is an extremely specific and unusual extra rule which goes beyond our normal WP:V and WP:NOTE rules, and those rules in their normal form are fine for me. I really don't like attempts to write extremely complex legislation. For me, if a relationship is verifiable, then it meets WP:V. Why does it specifically have to come from a biography? I can't see any good reason that we should be forbidden to cite a work about, for example, the history of a county.
• Second, what you're looking for out of this is really a mandate for being able to delete en masse, without discussion or consideration of each case in a way which we do not normally do. That's also not clear.
• Third, it is also not going to be clear that (as far as I can see) in most cases the information you want to delete is not itself unverifiable, but rather the article is a stub with poor sourcing - i.e. one that needs work (or perhaps needs deleting in some cases). I feel that in those cases we should work on the article first, and update the Ahnentafel as we go along, because our aim is to keep improving the encyclopedia. Deleting this appendage, if anything, just makes it harder to work out what to do with the body. In the same way, we would not normally tag and delete the lead of a stub article as a first step. We would look at the article body and update the lead to match the body as it gets improved. Just makes sense?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:06, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

The content of Wikipedia articles should reflect the content of reliable sources specializing in the subject per WP:PROPORTION; in the case of biographies, that means published biographies. (A work about the history of a county will certainly not name all 16 great-great-grandparents of any person anyway.)
That any of this goes beyond WP:V and other policies is your interpretation. Whether or not it does is what the RfC would establish. It is perfectly clear from the question that the topic is the removal of ahnentafeln that fail certain requirements. If you are against removing such content without discussing each of them individually, you are free to answer "no". The same applies to your third concern: just say "no". The question is not meant to reflect your point of view or mine. Surtsicna (talk) 15:38, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

Yes you could try an RFC and I would vote no to that proposal. If you truly think only "biographies" (only monographs about single individuals?) contain information about family relationships between people then there would be no reason to invent rules banning the use of other publications. OTOH you seemed to be asking my opinion on a RFC wording. That's worth doing too, because if an RFC leads to largescale unexpected consequences due to misunderstandings, the knock-on discussions could get time-consuming, and impact those of us working affected articles. And as mentioned I think the wording could indeed lead to misunderstandings. It is not explaining what the real intended edits would look like. (I've suggested before that maybe you should construct a set of examples on a workpage to explain what you would do in specific situations. That is what we really need to agree upon.)--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:53, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

• "We can put footnotes in leads, just like we can put footnotes in ahnentafels. It is not normally considered best practice for leads, assuming that the same information is properly sourced in the body (which it SHOULD be), unless there is some special reason to expect misunderstandings to continue or if other editors specifically say they think it is needed." Best practice is to follow both the letter of the guideline as well as the spirit. In this case, saying "not normally considered best practice for leads" is simply not accurate. MOS:LEADCITE is very specific; "verifiability policy advises that material that is challenged or likely to be challenged, and direct quotations, should be supported by an inline citation. Any statements about living persons that are challenged or likely to be challenged must have an inline citation every time they are mentioned, including within the lead." and; "there is not, however, an exception to citation requirements specific to leads. The necessity for citations in a lead should be determined on a case-by-case basis by editorial consensus. Complex, current, or controversial subjects may require many citations; others, few or none. The presence of citations in the introduction is neither required in every article nor prohibited in any article."
• "Infoboxes are in practice a bit like leads: they tend to get footnotes when there has been a concern raised". WP:INFOBOXREF is also pretty clear; "References are acceptable in some cases, but generally not needed in infoboxes if the content is repeated (and cited) elsewhere or if the information is obvious." It is suggested to see if the information is/or could be added to the body of the article. So, in the case of using the Ahnentafel chart, the argument is that it can contain a large amount of information not in the article. So this guideline actually argues for the use of citations in templates, where the content is not in the body of the article.
• Concerning any article I am currently or have previously edited, please add any discussion of concerns on the talk page of those articles. Thank you. Frankly I think the family tree with the images might be too much even for me.--Mark Miller (talk) 08:14, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

I basically agree with all that. Note: case by case consideration is what I call for. If information in ahnentafels is contentious then this might be various different reasons, and so it is difficult to generalize what the best solution is, but in many cases in practice the problem has been that an ahnentafel is just reflecting the poor sourcing in the article. In those cases I believe attacking these tables first, is sometimes a bit like deleting the lead of a stub because you don't like the quality of that article. It can literally make it harder for anyone to work out what to do with the stub.

FWIW there is also one technical point of disagreement which has reappeared many times in discussions about this template (though really this discussion should apply to all diagrams of any form) and that is that many of us feel that it is good enough for the sourcing of a set of relationships to be the group of articles linked to in the box. An extreme version of the counter argument is that every person in the box, and every relationship it shows, needs to be mentioned and sourced within every specific article where the table appears. I disagree with that position, at least as a strict general rule. Thought experiment: Such a demand could often be resolved by merging medieval families into single articles, but if the problem can be fixed that easily then surely it is artificial to begin with. Furthermore, in practice people on WP are never going to stop making individual articles for individual notable people.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:28, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

This template has crept into over eight thousand articles without any consideration. Case by case consideration is now neither practicable nor necessary. The issue with all of them is the same. Surtsicna (talk) 14:00, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

"[C]ase by case consideration is what I call for". And that seems to be the argument distilled down to the very basics. Surtsicna has done more than a few deletions however, he has not been found guilty of any infraction of guidelines, but may be guilty of becoming a bit of a warrior with so many deletions.

I suggest this may be an editorial dispute and may be best taken up at WP:DR/N, the dispute resolution noticeboard. I am a volunteer there but would recuse myself as a moderator if this should find its way there.....which I seriously suggest.--Mark Miller (talk) 14:10, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

I have already suggested having an RfC on the deletions with the question:
"Is it appropriate to remove Template:Ahnentafel from articles when unsourced and when published biographies of the subject do not mention the people and connections shown in that template?"
Does that seem like a fair question to you, Mark Miller? Surtsicna (talk) 14:14, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

But a key controversy in practice has been about how to define "sourced".--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:25, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

""Is it appropriate to remove Template:Ahnentafel from articles when unsourced and when published biographies of the subject do not mention the people and connections shown in that template?"" After reading through this dispute, I believe furthering yet another RFC may not be supported. As a Volunteer for other noticeboards mentioned, I feel they might only prolong this dispute, which I truly see as an editorial one, a content dispute best discussed at WP:DR/N. That noticeboard is entirely voluntary and would require all editors involved (or the editors with the main dispute) take time to discuss the situation. Aloha!--Mark Miller (talk) 16:23, 24 June 2021 (UTC).

Somehow I stumbled upon a related discussion from 2018: Wikipedia_talk:Featured_article_candidates/archive69#References_for_Ancestry_sections. Surtsicna (talk) 21:08, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

Problem with some of those old discussions is that they confuse WP:V with footnotes, and as we know they did not lead to any stable consensus. Footnotes are not the only way of referencing, and referencing is not the same as verifiability. (We don't always put footnotes in leads either, unless challenged.) If your concern is purely about having more footnotes, then the discussion is a presentation/formatting discussion. If your discussion is about WP:V, then we should be discussing whether the articles themselves are sourced. If that is not your concern, then you need to work out how to explain it in a more convincing way. (In fact, you use all different types of explanations. See your edsums. Many indicate that it is a notability and/or "taste" issue.) The people in that old discussion don't seem to have discussed it as far, but you've certainly discussed all this before with me. Insisting on presenting the people who disagree with you as people opposed to WP:V is unlikely to lead to a better discussion?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 22:24, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

It is fairly clear what that discussion was about and what the consensus there was. Surtsicna (talk) 08:24, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

Yes, in a way. But it is about tagging and not necessarily deleting. What is important to you is deleting, and the tagging has often only been a formality. I am not against tagging or even deleting, when it involves case by case consideration. Your policy of aggressive deletion is particularly impractical for the short poor quality 10th-12th articles I like to work on. It is like deleting bits of drafts, and it just makes it more difficult to start work on them, which is often very time-consuming, because they often need to be looked at in groups to work out what the articles were really intended to be about.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:29, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

Break 2

Ping User:JLavigne508, User:Surtsicna, User:GoodDay, User:Andrew Lancaster, User:Mark Miller ( I think that is everyone who commented back in June, if not please ping them for me), User:JBW as (s)he was mentioned as an administrator tangentially involved, and User:Agricolae and User:Celia Homeford, who like me were pinged by User:Surtsicna back on 20 June 202

I have been AFK, hence this tardy replay. I have not looked through other discussion places to see if this conversation has carried on in other places. If it has then please inform me here and I will close this thread and repost in the more recent conversation.

I think "Neutrality Concerns" is a misleading header for the section. This template can be used for neutral and biased presentation, but is itself neutral. I see no point in an overarching RFC about the use of this template reaching any useful conclusions because the Wikipedia community has been split over the issue of family trees in articles for most of its existence.

Let me give you an example to considered. In the case of the English and British monarchy usually a family tree of grandparents is adequate (that is an Ahnentafel of 7) because if the grandparents are notable their ancestry can be followed via an Ahnentafel in the grandparent's articles. However occasionally a much larger ancestry tree may be informative. Two examples I can think of is explaining

• The Palatinates and the Wars of the Roses, because the conflict is between family members and those dynastic struggles can be illuminated by family trees that span more generations.
• George I of Great Britain, because it is helpful to see how he was related to Queen Anne.

1. So perhaps we could come up with wording limiting the use of Ahnentafel to seven unless there is a good reason for a larger tree.
2. I think we should go back to collapse by default as a compromise -- as then the tree still exists but is not so noticeable to those who don't care for the information, and because the dictionaries of national biographies of various countries do not usually provide them).
3. I think that all Ahnentafel trees like quotes should have inline citations next to them for all members in the tree. I have explained in detail many times why that is necessary, and can do so again if required.
4. If a "section needed" has been on section, or "citation needed" on a branch of a tree, more than one year and no inline citations have been added then the queried text ought to be deleted (per Wikipedia:Verifiability#cite ref-Wales 2006-05 Wikimedia wikien-l 6-0 "Zero information is preferred to misleading or false information"). AND the WP:BURDEN "to demonstrate verifiability lies with the editor who ... restores [the] material"

Are these reasonable compromises that could be written into the documentation of this template's documentation, or some other page as guidance? -- PBS (talk) 16:15, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

Note: Surtsicna has been away from Wikipedia, for nearly a month now. What style should we use for royal family trees? I'm content with either version, as long as the 'same' version is used throughout all the royal bio articles, where required. GoodDay (talk) 21:31, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

I was thinking all family trees in biography articles not specifically royality. I personally don't care which style of tree is used (Help:Family trees). I am more concerned with specifying a default number of leaves for a standard biography that contains such a tree, unless there is a specific "notable" reason to add another generation. Apart from clutter, there is the problem of verifiability and SYN that tends to become greater with every generation added to a tree. -- PBS (talk) 13:50, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

Ok, all family trees. I'm content with whatever form is chosen, as long as it's used across the entire project. Consistency makes a good appearance for our readers. GoodDay (talk) 15:59, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

History isn't consistent. The content necessary to contextualize a subject differs with each particular situation. Forcing consistency equates to most pages having either too much or too little information (often both with this template), rather than letting the circumstances dictate the need. Agricolae (talk) 16:24, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

When I point to consistency, I mean the type of Ahnentafel we use. Not the # of ancestors added to it. GoodDay (talk) 16:56, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

If Surtsicna is on break, and if this discussion is about family trees in general, then maybe someone should mention that Surtsicna is not against family tree representations in a general way, but that they prefer custom-made family trees which show connections that are important for understanding the topic of an article. I don't personally see any reason to believe we need a rule forbidding the graphic representation of more than 7 generations, and I don't think Surtsicna does either. The concern of Surtsicna is (if I understand it) that many articles automatically show 5 generations without any specific study being done to determine whether all those ancestors were important. My own answer to this is that I'm fine with custom-made family trees replacing "vanilla" ahnentafels, but I see no reason to delete the latter in the mean time because they are still normally harmless, and often even a bit useful.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:34, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 24 June 2024

Please implement the "Simplifications, formatting improvements and error fix" that User:Lemondoge has made in the sandbox. Also add the fix that I added which makes this template leftaligned always, and only centered when set to align=center. The current template is leftaligned by default, but changes to centered when collapsible=yes. With the change in the sandbox it is always leftalignet unless align=center is set. Please see the diff in the sandbox for the changes. Tholme (talk) 19:59, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

 Done * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 02:10, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

Deleting Ahnentafels from royal bios

I thought there was a consensus, to have these Ahnentafels deleted from royal bios. GoodDay (talk) 00:33, 24 December 2025 (UTC)

Well, now I'm not certain if there's a consensus to delete or add. GoodDay (talk) 00:55, 24 December 2025 (UTC)

I don't think there is a clear consensus for deleting all Ahnentafels. When it comes specifically to royalty their family tree is almost always relevant to who they are, although 5 generations is sometimes considered too many. One concern with Ahnentafels compared to other family tree formats, is that they give equal weight to all ancestors. They ignore cousins, uncles, and aunts, while still including distant ancestors who might be relatively unknown and non-notable. Making a custom made family tree can seem difficult, but editors can use the talk page to discuss who should be in a family tree.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:55, 24 December 2025 (UTC)

There is no consensus that all article should have ahnentafeln or that no articles should have ahnentafeln. We dropped them from modern royal kids and medieval figures articles a decade ago and nobody misses them there. Whether an ahnentafel should be included depends on whether one is found in RS biographies of the subject; but about 99% of these will use a custom family tree instead. Surtsicna (talk) 10:17, 24 December 2025 (UTC)

I've undone my mass deletions, per apparent lack of consensus in either direction. GoodDay (talk) 15:19, 24 December 2025 (UTC)

Dark mode problems

In dark mode, I see on Miss Meyers#Pedigree that this template is generating white lines and text, but a black box which is not really visible on the dark grey background. -- Beland (talk) 00:30, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

What does it look like with boxstyle applied? DrKay (talk) 08:45, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

That makes black text on a light background of various colors, depending on the box. I assume that's what 's intended, though you can see for yourself if you just click the eyeglass icon next to your username at the top of the page. You can switch to dark mode, take a peek, and then switch back to light or automatic. I presume this fix should be applied to the template to deal with other similarly affected articles? -- Beland (talk) 17:04, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

For this particular article, the Ahnentafel template could alternatively be switched out to Template:Pedigree, which I believe is the more commonly used one for horses on this site. RandomEditsForWhenIRemember (talk) 20:11, 15 March 2026 (UTC)