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Bill Gates
Bill Gates Net Worth is 114.7 Billion USD Dhanimation (talk) 13:53, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
Business magnate in first sentence
@MSincccc: terms are regularly being added to the first sentence of articles, sometimes with surprisingly little scrutiny. For example various people edited Steve Jobs's first sentence to say "philanthropist" (false and contradicts sources) and "industrial designer" (which he never was, despite his micromanagement of product development and design). Or Bezos being called an "industrialist" (which he isn't). There's a general lack of focus, and a tendency to cram vague terms regardless of relevance, and I'd like to address it across all these articles because it's bad writing ("written by committee"). Britannica does much better than us on this.
We should avoid overloading the first sentence, and subjective labels (like "magnate") should be avoided, see MOS:FIRSTBIO and MOS:BIO. I also think it's vague and puffery (see for example Musk happily using the term for himself). And neither "magnate" nor "billionaire" are a position, activity, or role, which are the criteria listed in MOS:FIRSTBIO.
For simplicity, I'd phrase it as "businessman and entrepreneur best known for co-founding Microsoft". "Entrepreneur" is how Britannica defines him and helps us transition to mentioning Microsoft's founding. It's what he's known for, and he's still an entrepreneur today (see TerraPower). But "businessman and entrepreneur" is redundant, so we could also say "computer programmer and entrepreneur" (also supported by Britannica), which is what this article used to say and was the formal activity/role for which he became notable. Gates, like almost every rich person, has a portfolio and hires other people to manage his investments, but that doesn't make him an investor (he's not Warren Buffett or Jim Simons), so I think that's best mentioned later in the lead as we do now, and not in the first sentence. DFlhb (talk) 17:23, 10 September 2023 (UTC)
- @DFlhb I myself preferred "businessman" and "entrepreneur" for a long time but seeing "business magnate" being mentioned on the vast majority of well known billionaire individuals pages made me drift towards supporting "business magnate" over other terms. MSincccc (talk) 17:45, 10 September 2023 (UTC)
Pioneer in Personal Computing Revolution
Steve Jobs' wikipedia page has in its infobox 'known for' = 'pioneer in personal computing revolution'. That's valid, I think it's equally valid in Bill Gates' as they were contemporary rivals that both had undeniably monumental impact in the PC revolution. I don't think Bill Gates' infobox merely saying 'known for' = 'co-founding microsoft' is sufficient to encapsulate what he is actually known for and achieved. While he is absolutely known for this, stating this alone trivializes the specific impact he had and reduces it similarly to any future CEO of Microsoft being known for merely their association to the company.
Is there any reason we don't have this information in the infobox like Steve Jobs'? Codeconjurer777 (talk) 13:27, 11 January 2024 (UTC)
Semi-protected edit request on 8 February 2024
Please remove this phrase:
He also made a guest appearance as himself on the TV show The Big Bang Theory. The episode on which he appeared was appropriately titled "The Gates Excitation".
and add this in its place:
He also made a guest appearance as himself on the TV show The Big Bang Theory, in an episode entitled "The Gates Excitation".
It's shorter, it combines two short sentences into one better one, and it removes the opinionated "appropriately". 123.51.107.94 (talk) 04:47, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
- Done, thank you, that is an improvement. ~Anachronist (talk) 07:12, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
Semi-protected edit request on 14 April 2024 - Changing Incorrect Hyperlink
Change hyperlink of German newspaper Welt under Public Image section of Personal Life from the magazine WET (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_(magazine)) to the appropriate page for the German newspaper "Die Welt" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Welt) MorosIntrepidus (talk) 01:51, 14 April 2024 (UTC)