Template talk:Death date and age#"age" versus "aged"
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Feb 29
What happens if this template is used for someone born on Feb 29 1904 and died on Feb 28 1969? Would that show aged 65, aged 64, or aged {{ay|1904|1969}}? — Preceding unsigned comment added by KaiHunter12 (talk • contribs) 21:08, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
:Your account is provided with a sandbox, which you can use by clicking the word "Sandbox" near the top of the window. You can try it yourself. (I'm supposing that you are using a computer; if you're using a phone, I don't know if the sandbox is readily available.) Jc3s5h (talk) 22:44, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
::I'm scared to try it. If it gets aged 65, please change this template. KaiHunter12 (talk) 23:03, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
:::I tried it, it gives an age of 64. Jc3s5h (talk) 00:42, 23 June 2022 (UTC)
:Experiment shows this:
:*
→ {{Death date and age|Feb 28 1969|Feb 28 1904}}
:*
→ {{Death date and age|Feb 28 1969|Feb 29 1904}}
:*
→ {{Death date and age|Mar 1 1969|Feb 29 1904}}
:In the second case, the person died one day before completing their 65th year. Johnuniq (talk) 03:04, 23 June 2022 (UTC)
::Same goes with Template:ayd. {{ayd|1904|2|29|2022|2|28}} KaiHunter12 (talk) 21:02, 23 June 2022 (UTC)
Burial date
A significant fraction of death dates are unknown (prior to 1838 in England at least, when civil registers start) while a burial date may exist from a Parish Register. One cannot add an accurate burial date though one has it, whenever a date of death is called for at which one can clearly not just guess. Wikipedia templates relating to date of death should consider extending with date of burial. JohnHarris (talk) 12:18, 26 September 2023 (UTC)
:Uh... you're welcome to add a burial date to a page (as I'm not sure what the current consensus is regarding that information) but we should not be calculating anything based on that. As you say, one cannot know the relationship between when someone dies and when someone is buried, so saying "Born X, Buried Y (age Z)" is inappropriate. Primefac (talk) 13:40, 26 September 2023 (UTC)
I dont know how to change this exactly, so I cant add it in as a request
Right now, it gives an error if the birth date comes before the death date. I would recommend to change this so that in this instance, we just resolve it, and take whichever date comes later as the death year. DarmaniLink (talk) 14:30, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
:If the error says "you put the dates backwards" then that sounds like the template is functioning properly. Primefac (talk) 15:09, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
:If the dates are in the wrong order, the template displays "{{red|Error: Death date (first date) must be later in time than the birth date (second date)}}". In some cases the problem would be due to an editor entering the dates in the wrong order (it is confusing) but it is not a good idea for programs to "fix" problems like that because in other cases the error is due to typos or vandalism. Johnuniq (talk) 05:38, 10 February 2024 (UTC)
Unclear death date but known age
Deaths are often announced with no explicit death date but with a specific age. Is it possible to have an optional field to supply an age, and not have it shown with a computed range like "(aged 72–73)"? —Bagumba (talk) 06:00, 22 May 2025 (UTC)
:{{yo|Bagumba}} There's a whole family of templates at {{tl|Birth, death and age templates}} that covers various scenarios like this, and seem worth exploring. For this specific situation, {{tl|Death year and age}} might work. Left guide (talk) 06:37, 22 May 2025 (UTC)
::Those don't seem to allow an optional age override either. It's also preferable to avoid having to change the template back to "Death date and age" when the date ultimately is known. —Bagumba (talk) 07:12, 22 May 2025 (UTC)
:::I do not understand what output is wanted. Use {{tl|Death date and given age}} if a death date is known, with the age of the person at that time. If no death date is known, a template is not needed—just write something like "Died at age 35." If an approximate death date is known, write the text suggested in the discussion linked above. A template is only needed for the date if the machine-readable date is wanted. That format requires an unambiguous and full date. Johnuniq (talk) 07:55, 22 May 2025 (UTC)
::::@Johnuniq: This is specifically for the infobox. Typically, the first editors use {{tlf|Death date and given age}} with the date of the death announcement as their date, and then someone realizes that an actual date was not given, and then removes the day or month. See an example of removing the day [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Randy_Crowder&diff=prev&oldid=1291533502 here]. Depending on the month of birth, the computed age might sometimes show like "(aged 72–73)", but perhaps the source says definitively they were age 73. Sure, the worst case is just to remove (or comment out) the template, but I was just seeing if it would be more elegant to editors to codify the template to take an optional specific age. Thanks. —Bagumba (talk) 08:50, 22 May 2025 (UTC)
:::::I don't know what could usefully be done. I think the issue is shown in this example:
:::::*
→ {{death date and age|May 1, 1999|1949}}
:::::I don't like the idea of having a parameter to set the age because that rather defeats the purpose of a calculating template. That purpose is so editors can focus on the dates knowing that the age will be correct. I take the point about convenience of using a fixed template which could be updated later if the death date becomes known. I normally monitor :Category:Age error (although I haven't done that for a while due to being occupied elsewhere). That category often shows a lot of junk from people playing with dates. The fact that an age above 150 generates an error has exposed a lot of dumb vandalism and my reaction to the idea of having a parameter to set the age is nervousness because numbers in a template can acquire a magical "this must be ok" status. For the above example, why not:
:::::*
→ {{death date|1949|5|1}} (aged 49)
:::::Johnuniq (talk) 09:39, 22 May 2025 (UTC)
::::::Fair points. I was just hoping for a one-stop template to avoid cycling through different ones. Thanks. —Bagumba (talk) 09:45, 22 May 2025 (UTC)
:This might be a dumb question, but I think about it often when I see this sort of thing crop up - do we need to have a template that displays the calculated age at death, if a source is already providing the age? In other words, it doesn't really matter if the source says "Joe Bloggs died on Friday at the age of 85" or "Joe Bloggs has been reported dead at 85", the infobox can just be typed in "Death date: May 2025 (age 85)" manually. In other (other) words, should the death date calculation template be of the subst variety, since that information isn't going to change? Primefac (talk) 14:57, 25 May 2025 (UTC)
::Not so much the calculation, but leaving the template in place seems to allow the option to re-add metadata in the future. —Bagumba (talk) 15:07, 25 May 2025 (UTC)
::It's common that full birth and death dates are known. Using the template to calculate the age means that the age is correct (or at least, it is consistent with the given dates). If the age were entered manually, it would be another thing for number-changing editors to fiddle with. That would waste time and inevitably lead to important errors. It's not critical if an infobox has the wrong value for the length of a river, but, for me at least, it is somehow important that an infobox should get the age correct if the dates are known. Johnuniq (talk) 04:14, 26 May 2025 (UTC)
declared dead in XXXX *year only*
How can I use the template if the only known date of someone being declared dead is a year? For example, there is an article about Jarosław Ziętara, Polish journalist who disappeared on September 1, 1992, is still missing and has been declared dead in 1999, on unknown month and unknown day. I want to add this template but it gives me a bold red error "Error: Need valid death date (first date): year, month, day"
Please help. 83.11.167.64 (talk) 18:22, 30 June 2025 (UTC)
:I think you want {{t|Death year and age}}. Primefac (talk) 23:10, 30 June 2025 (UTC)
::This is exactly the template I needed. Thank you very much! 83.11.167.64 (talk) 10:05, 1 July 2025 (UTC)