Frequently Asked Questions

• What is Who2?
• How old is Who2?
• Where do the biographies come from?
• Why do you include a space for "death" in the profiles of living persons?
• Why do you mix real people with fictional ones? Isn't that misleading?
• Can you give me Oprah's email address?
• Can you give me the email address of other celebrities?
• I think you've made an error. Who should I contact?
• I'm a student. How do I cite Who2 for my report?
• What is Who2's privacy policy?

Who2 is an encyclopedia of famous people. We research and write profiles of real people, fictional characters, and some figures (like Robin Hood) who may be either. We also profile celebrities who aren't people, like Ham the Chimp and Hal 9000.

Who2 went "on the air" in January of 1998. The site was inspired by our frustration in trying to find a simple online source of information about Princess Diana after her death in a car crash in August of 1997.

All material on this site is researched and written for Who2 by our professional editorial staff. For details on our staff, please see the page About Who2.

We include the "Death" field on every Who2 profile, including those for living figures. We do this not to be ghoulish, but to be informative.

One of the questions people often ask of Who2 is, "Is Paul Newman [or Zsa Zsa Gabor or whomever] still alive?" If we included only a field for birth date, with no field mentioning death, that question wouldn't be answered. The user might reasonably think that we had neglected to mention it, or that our profiles included only birth information, not death information. This way it's made plain that yes, those figures are still very much alive.

We have tried other systems which simply didn't work as well. That's why we have settled on this simple, if bluntly direct, system of including the Death field in all profiles, and entering "--" if the person being profiled is still alive. It's not subtle, we agree, but in the end giving the clearest information possible is the most important thing to us.

Our goal is to help the average user learn the basics about any famous figure. In our eyes, that includes helping people discover if that figure ever really existed.

It's easy for students in particular to be confused about whether Sherlock Holmes or Allan Quatermain was a real historical figure. That challenge is heightened in the modern era where cartoon characters record hit records and chess grand masters tangle with non-human opponents. If we simply omitted fictional characters from our database, as many encyclopedias do, the curious reader wouldn't be helped.

Fictional or quasi-fictional characters are always carefully explained to be such in our profiles. While users are occasionally upset to find a serious figure like Chief Joseph indexed on the same page with a fictional character like Indiana Jones, we assure you that no direspect is intended or implied.

We suggest you try to contact Oprah Winfrey through her official site.

We can't. Who2 is not connected in any way with the famous figures we profile, and we have no information on how to contact them. We regret that the volume of mail we receive prevents us from doing email research on individual celebrities.

Please send your editorial comments or suggestions to: editorial@who2.com.

Who2.com profile of [name of profile subject]
Authors: R.F. Holznagel and Paul Hehn
Copyright 1998-2006 by Who2, LLC