Wikipedia talk:Biography dos and don'ts

Dated statements

I find it rather puzzling that the list of "Don'ts" includes "Don't make statements that will become out of date". Since biographies of living people will use the present tense, and this will have to be re-written in past tense after the subject's death, this is a rather obvious way in which all biographies of living people make statements that will become out of date (unless certain people are immortal in a mundane sense). However, there are less obvious in which biographies may make statements that will become out of date. Suppose, for example, a biography of a politician states that s/he is leader of a political party. As soon as the party gets a new leader, this will be out of date information. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Vorbee (talk • contribs)

Like the rest of this information page, this reflects the official guideline at Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Biographies#Out-of-date_material – the consensus for the guidance is determined there, not here, as the edit notice at the top of this talk page explains. As with all Wikipedia guidelines, there are common sense exceptions. The point is to avoid statements that will quickly or predictably (date-wise) become outdated. —swpb^{T go beyond} 15:36, 3 October 2017 (UTC)