Talk:Neil Forrester

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article must adhere to the policy on biographies of living persons. Controversial material of any kind that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous. If such material is repeatedly inserted or there are other concerns relative to this policy, report it on the living persons biographies noticeboard.

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography. For more information, visit the project page.	Biography Portal
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the Project's quality scale. Please rate the article and then leave a short summary here to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article. [FAQ]

A recent change was made to this article in which the content was COMPLETELY wiped out and a redirect was made, with the assertion that 'everything worth saying about this person' was already contained in the article for "Real World London." Not only does that statement express an extreme POV (it is up to the community, not one user, to determine what is "worth saying",) the wipeout was discourteous to the users who have worked to edit this article. Further, the content at the Real World: London article mostly revolves around Forrester's involvement with that show and makes no discussion of his current pursuits, nor does it contain the recent photo of him found in this article. If anyone would like to state their case as to why or why not Forrester should have his own entry, please do so here. Pacian 01:35, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

I shall append a copy of a message left on Pacian's talk page.

I'm very sorry for upsetting you. I think you've taken my edit in the wrong vein - the reason I didn't want this to be deleted is that I did want the work of the editors to be preserved. But in its current form the article requires cleanup for at least one reason. The cleanup queue is long enough as it is; my mental decision was "do I want to add to the cleanup queue the task of cleaning up material which is basically a duplicate of material elsewhere?" On the other hand, did I want to delete the article? No, because there didn't seem any point removing the edit history from WP. If the article was deleted, the correct path would be to redirect the article anyway afterwards. I came to the conclusion that "let's just redirect for now, since the material is basically duplicate, and if anybody wants to come back and do a cleanup/expand job on this article, they'll have the edit history available to help them". The fact that he is only notable for appearing on the show, and that there appears to be a dearth of further sources to draw information from beyond what is known already, suggested that is unlikely but maybe plausible.

My prime concern is that this a WP:LIVING person biography and there are strict guidelines as a consequence. Having duplicate biographical information for a living person is dangerous, especially if they are notable for one thing only. Since in that case it's a TV show, an article describing that TV appearance (their sole notable characteristic) is probably sufficient. If a distinct article is required, it must abide by the rules of WP:LIVING. I thought these sections quite pertinent:

Non-public figures

Wikipedia also contains biographies of people who, while notable enough for an entry, are nevertheless entitled to the respect for privacy afforded non-public figures. In such cases, editors should exercise restraint and include only information relevant to their notability. Material from primary sources should generally not be used (see above).

In borderline cases, the rule of thumb should be "do no harm." Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a newspaper. It is not our job to be sensationalist, or to be the primary vehicle for the spread of titillating claims about people's lives.

Using the subject as a source

In some cases the subject may become involved in an article. They may edit it themselves or have a representative of theirs edit it. They may contact Wikipedians either through the article's talk page or via email. Or, they may provide information through press releases, a personal website or blog, or an autobiography. When information supplied by the subject conflicts with unsourced statements in the article, the unsourced statements should be removed.

Information supplied by the subject may be added to the article if:

• It is relevant to the person's notability;
• It is not contentious;
• It is not unduly self-serving;
• It does not involve claims about third parties, or about events not directly related to the subject;
• There is no reasonable doubt that it was written by the subject.

A blog or personal website written by the subject may be listed in the external links/further reading section, even if the subject is not used as a source.

Hopefully you can now see why I felt my decision was not just justified but probably necessary. His notability is purely through the TV series. The stuff in that article not relevant to his notability and drawn from himself as main source must be removed. Once you've done that, you'll end up with a smaller entry than the subsection of the main article which it was spun off from! Hence my redirect.

I apologize for the following particulars:

• I didn't flag up a warning on the talk page or contact the article creator/editors. That wasn't acceptable editing behavior.
• I didn't raise my prime concern (i.e. that the article breached WP:LIVING) in my edit comment.

I wholeheartedly apologize for these slips. Nevertheless, there were reasons behind my mistake - in particular that the article as it stands requires attention immediately (and since I didn't have time to fix it myself, redirecting it seemed safest). The most serious breach has been the creation of a living person biography which isn't actually in Category:Living people so can't be as rigorously monitored as it should be. I'll fix that for you now. Kept or not, it does require urgent cleanup, with the standards of WP:LIVING.

I hope this helps clear things up. I believe you acted in good faith when creating and editing the article. I also hope you will assume good faith for my own editorial decisions. Sincerely, TheGrappler 11:51, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I have included the photo on the other page (this was on my to-do list, I just didn't have time for it when I made the redirect). I reiterate that unless he is notable for his current pursuits (i.e. is he still a media star? The current article suggests he is basically nothing more than a research assistant) then Wikipedia simply should not be reporting them. In five or ten years time, who on earth is going to be keeping the current pursuits of a former reality TV show contestant up to date? That's basically what WP:LIVING is all about. If he's notable for something else, please assert it in the article. TheGrappler 12:01, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Maggie Ausburn as an example

(Cross-posted to help centralize discussion, after it was pointed out that the Ausburn article contains information about her career beyond TV) If you look at the article on Maggie Ausburn you'll see the only information given about her comes from before or during the show. The stuff before is clearly relevant to some extent (people would have read about it or heard about it during the show). It doesn't describe her life after the show. That's exactly right - it's a correct interpretation of WP:LIVING. The Forrester article will, ultimately, not be kept up to date (unless he becomes notable for something else), and since the non-duplicate information seems to focus on his post-TV career (for which he is not notable) some axe-wielding is required. Currently the two entries (his biography and his subsection of the show article) are about the same length, which is a silly situation really. Expand his main article by all means, but some of it does need to be cut. The fact that this article wasn't put into Category:Living people indicates that you hadn't read WP:LIVING, which is one of the most important documents about Wikipedia editing. Hopefully now it's been flagged up to you, you'll be able to take the necessary editorial actions. Maggie Ausburn is actually a good model to follow in this regard, the editors have clearly applied WP:LIVING well. An instance where it is worth talking about post-reality show career would be Jade Goody, where, again, WP:LIVING has been applied well: the distinction is that Goody has remained a major media figure, while Forrester apparently has not. The fact his main website has been shut down is at least an indication he regards himself as a private citizen, not a public character, and we shouldn't go round trawling up information about him that is not relevant to his notability. That's what WP:LIVING is all about. My problem with this article is that once you strip out the stuff that absolutely has to come out, the article is basically a shorter duplicate of the section of article it's been spun off from, which would be odd to say the least! So, expand it if you want to (I have no difficulty with the existence of the article per se, so long as WP:LIVING is stringently applied) but you may wish to trim down his entry on the other page to eliminate as much redundancy as possible (redundant information is just a chance for contradictions or POV forks to emerge and two more things to monitor for vandalism or misinformation). Again, no ill will intended, and I hope my apologies are accepted. TheGrappler 16:56, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

It is my belief that the primary interest of someone who comes to wikipedia and looks at an article on this subject is to see what kind of a life this person has lived SINCE the pinnacle of their "fame". None of the information in this article is private; it is posted on a public website. If Forrester ever wanted to live a life out of the public eye - EVER - he should not have gone on a television show. I appreciate your kindness in addressing the issue, but I still feel your actions - and all of your straw man arguments here - are patently wrong. Pacian 04:55, 16 July 2006 (UTC)