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I have been working on the missing DOB entries in nonsport as time permits for several weeks, and finally got current. The list is now about 1530, or around half of the starting point. Without the help of someone more clever or some rule changes, I don't see significant further reductions. The remaining names fall roughly into three categories, with some overlap.

1. People who have no known date of birth. This includes mostly historical figures, especially those born before 1800. The data is better the more important someone was and the more recent the dates, but it just isn't there for a lot of people, including a couple of signers of the Constitution, a lot of frontier characters and Native Americans, and a fair number of non-royal Europeans. Perhaps we just accept the limits of the data and leave these alone, or possibly we ask Admin for a "historical" category or some other way to put in approximate or partial info for the people who simply do not have full DOB data available. This group is about half of the current 1530 missing DOBs. Thoughts on how this might work best, parameters of such a category, etc?

2. People who don't want their DOB identified. This group includes a bunch of actress/model types, many using only partial names or assumed names, criminals on the FBI 10 most wanted list who often have several potential DOBs listed, and for some reason I can't even guess at, a significant number of comic book creators/illustrators. The actress/model group is by far the largest of these, and accounts for 30-40% of the missing entries. As a rule with multiple exceptions, the more risque the card set the less identifiable the models, so DOBs in sets highlighting strippers are usually 95% undetermined, while Hooters waitresses are 95% identifiable. I suppose many of these could eventually be tracked down, but it would be a monumental effort and would probably require ways of finding out the "true" names I haven't seen, and I've learned a lot doing this so far. Who knew Boobpedia was a thing? Thoughts on this group, possibly a "desires anonymity" flag? 

3. People who aren't "famous" enough for the Internet to highlight their DOB info. The last 5-10% or so of the missing entries are people whose DOB is not clearly ascertainable from a common Google search of their name, with or without some descriptive term such as pilot, sheriff, or artist derived from the card info. Usually these are names shared by multiple people and the database entry is not sufficiently detailed to pinpoint the correct one, but in other cases there are names that don't turn up any DOB hits at all. Some of the second group overlaps here, especially with the younger model types who may have gotten married or otherwise changed names before becoming "known" or who just have "common" names. From the names I have identified, it seems that a number of these people are more readily identifiable through their obituaries, so this group may tend to thin out as these people die, but that's clearly an imperfect resolution. Maybe someone clever can sort out a way to access more info on these. Thoughts, including any searchable resources that might be useful?

Other ideas on cleaning up the missing DOBs in general?

Thanks

First off - wow - your efforts should be applauded. <clap, clap, clap>

Now, on to your queries:

1. We have this in sports as well, even as detailed as baseball reference is (and the other player info sites), there are several players who simply have "born in 1955" (as an example). Having an allowance of a partial date would be better than no date (I think).
2. "Undisclosed". Having experience from helping produce the first Hooters set (1992), I know some of the women were very private with their info ("her measurements are "perfect"" because she didn't put that on her profile that Hooters provided us). I think with the ones we did in 1992, the form must've had DOB required as I don't remember leaving those blank. Although, we may have made educated guesses on those cards <ahem>.
3. I know in golf there is a woman who I actually found her e-mail address, but I didn't have the moxie to e-mail her to ask her DOB. I think it's going to just have to be okay that some people are missing the DOB here.

All I know, is you'll have a lot more work in that department if we can ever get the Non-Sport Name Validation going. That's the one category that's been steadily going up. The rest have either stayed the same or decreased since the beginning of the year. (As of today [2/27], there are well over 5,500 non-sports sets needing to be validated. Well more than half our remaining sets.)

Good work NutHut, like Dan says you are to be comended for your efforts. =)

"Who knew Boobpedia was a thing?"

Quote of the day right there!

I know the Database has been glitching with old time dates...1700s and earlier. there are some that are known but can't be entered due to the system not accepting early dates- there are Roman Emperors with cards and PIDs. I like the Historical- Date Unknown concept.

I don't really think that the comic book creators are actually secretive about them...I think (as a lifelong comic book collector/reader) that it's simply considered not important and thus not documented.

At one point I had the name validation down to about 4400 sets (not just me, but that's what it was when I was working on it) but lately I've been working on scanning cards instead. It can get tedious and frustrating working on the validation, because most of the sets require so much work. Eventually, it'll get there, I have no doubt. Some of the sets can't be validated without scans, which are not present, also.

I just worked on the name validation while I ate dinner (yes, at 3 AM) and was able to knock it down from 5515 to 5474, just by verifying the sets that didn't need anything done, either no cards which get a PID or PIDs already entered and showing up in the list anyway. Everything on Page 1 as of this writing needs more indepth work than I felt comfortable doing with one hand while I ate.

i came across many of those issues, however, i was able to complete several biographies just googling the names. you may have to visit a few different sites and obituiries in same cases, but much of the info is out there on people. 

yes, it takes time, just grab a cold one and sit back. i thought it was over doing it when i started with it, but then you learn more about the person/history along the way. some pretty neat stuff out there. 

as far as the DOB, there are many many many cases where people are even recorded as having a DOB of (an example) >>>> Player Name dob c.1910  -- which naturally means during that year or before because it is uncertain of the acutal date or uncertain of it. if anything. i think Admin should allow that format in the DOB field. currently you have to enter the mm/dd/yyyy format.. be good to have a selection for c. and then enter year.. for the people i found, the had death dates, but no confirmed DOBs 

We just need a date field that allows wildcards. If we only know the year...  ??/??/1925