Wikipedia talk:Biographical optout

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[edit] a simple idea

I've heard this being discussed fairly widely, and haven't been able to find a proposal which relates to the concept.. so thought I'd start one... Privatemusings (talk) 01:00, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Audio Chat

If you're interested, you can hear a conversation between wikipedians about this sort of thing, at Wikipedia:NotTheWikipediaWeekly - it's the 4th bit of episode 7. Hope that helps! Privatemusings (talk) 02:15, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] public figure criteria

I've kicked this off with a well known, and easy to research criteria (though not so easy to determine where the cookie crumbles... but c'est la vie...) - mainly to allow folk to see the conceptual framework for how such a policy might, in fact, work. The nature of the criteria is obviously subject to analysis, and change - probably through discussion on this page. Ultimately I suspect it will come down to an individual administrator's judgment call - the hope is that people can, over time, get a good feel for where the community does (and should) draw the line... Privatemusings (talk) 01:15, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

The trouble with this is that the concept of a "public person" is murky under U.S. law, and I just don't think Wikipedia - its community, its administrators, its OTRS volunteers, whoever - is well-placed to evaluate this. The only alternative criterion I've heard is "covered in a paper encyclopaedia", which does strike me as slightly too exclusionist, but might be a start (we could talk on additional criteria as the policy evolved - heads of state and national government, for example, might be exempt). Sarcasticidealist (talk) 01:37, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
I'd hope that as a starting point it will allow some people to uncontroversially remove their biographies if they wish - I guess I'm thinking of someone like Angela Beesley. The determination of 'public figure' or not, if questioned, could always be discussed, with a consensus view of salient argument determined by an impartial adjudicator (I guess just an uninvolved admin).
In other news, I removed reference to the US law, because I think it quickly obfuscates the real issues - the value of the 'public figure' test remains, I hope..... Privatemusings (talk) 01:41, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
I like the change, but I think you reversed your meaning, no? The word "not" should probably appear in there. I'd still prefer a more unambiguous standard, but a step in the right direction is a step in the right direction. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 01:43, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Ooops! - fixed (but maybe needs tidying further...) Privatemusings (talk) 01:46, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
I disagree about removing the legal definition of "public figure". This is not a murky term. It is defined in Black's Law Dictionary, & is a third-party definition -- which covers anyone who is a politician, celebrity, or head of a business -- so we would be using an existing & currently accepted standard. "Politician" is a fairly self-explanatory category; "celebrity" is anyone who makes an effort to be mentioned in the news media, so if the person has a PR agent (or has been described somewhere as a celebrity), she/he is in; as for businessmen, if we include only executive officers of corporations included in the Wilshire 5000 -- & non-US equivalents -- that category is covered. (Although I'm not that enthusiastic about the idea of "opting-out"; at least using this definition would allowus to get away from contradictory terms like "semi-notable".) -- llywrch (talk) 23:10, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
well the actual definition hasn't been removed - just the reference to it being a legal one. I noticed in chatting with some people that the 'US Law' bit was causing confusion (ie. 'what about where US law doesn't apply? Isn't this just US centric?' - missing the point that it was a definition we were co-opting, not a context. Does that ease your concerns at all? (ps. I totally agree that the use of a proven criteria is a huge plus) - Privatemusings (talk) 23:19, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
To be honest, I'm against this proposal altogether. My intent in contributing here is to try to encourage people to stop using bastardizations like "semi-notable" & "marginally notable", in favor of more concrete terms, e.g. "notable but not a public figure". I hope you don't mind, & apologize if you do. -- llywrch (talk) 21:17, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] General thoughts

This is not my preferred option. I would rather semi-protect all BLPs by default (as I proposed last week at WT:BLP) and fully-protect upon subject request. However, if the community refuses to implement these steps, I think this proposal would be preferable to doing nothing (if the community implemented the steps I proposed, I think this proposal would do more harm than good). It should be noted, though, that this proposal (like mine) suffers from a number of shortcomings, the biggest of which is that BLP-content can be found in places other than actual BLPs. Still, this proposal would at least give subjects some recourse in the event that they felt uncomfortable with a Wikipedia presence, which is more than they have now. (Incidentally, anybody who thinks that the current system is working should spend some time on OTRS). Sarcasticidealist (talk) 01:41, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

I would also rather impose a semi-protection of all BLPs. Opting out is not an option to consider, unless the person is not notable for an article, which is already covered in WP:NOTABILITY. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 01:46, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
The trouble with this approach is that it fails to help in situations where the only reliable sources are for negative events. To paraphrase GTBacchus (you can hear us, and others, discuss this very issue in audio format here) - sometimes a newspaper article shines a small light on something, and wikipedia acts as a huge set of mirrors in bringing that light more attention. We shouldn't pass on the responsibility for the mirror, no?
Let's also flip this just for a moment, and ask what problems would this cause? - it would certainly help greatly in some specific cases, no? Privatemusings (talk) 01:49, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
It would cause the problem of diminishment of information. If it's either that or continuing to offer living people no recourse if they don't feel comfortable being editable by anybody any time then sure, let's diminish the information. It's just not my first choice. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 01:58, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
I think you're right about the 'cost' bit (talking in terms of cost / benefit) - but I think the benefit of allowing anyone to edit most biographies outweighs the cost in losing information on some figures.... agree that it's tricky though... Privatemusings (talk) 02:09, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Semi-protection still allows anyone to edit, it just makes them wait a few days. Most (not all, I admit) people with significant valuable contributions are going to be prepared to wait (although it would probably dissuade a few of the anonymous wikignomes, which I can live with). Most (not all) people who want to add information about somebody being a pedophile won't wait that long. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 02:30, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
actually, semi protection sounds like a great idea! - and I don't want to fall into the trap of thinking that it's an either / or situation.... how can we go about suggesting / promoting it? If it's not discussed centrally somewhere, perhaps we should set something up? cheers, Privatemusings (talk) 02:37, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
scratch that! - found the BLP talk page - and will comment further there too..... Privatemusings (talk) 03:40, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
I agree with the idea of semi-protecting all BLPs for the reasons that have already been given, but I oppose this proposal as it currently stands, at least for the moment.--h i s s p a c e r e s e a r c h 11:38, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] revised wording

I revised the proposal by tightening wording and some mechanical fixes. The only intended substantiative change was to add the Admin Noticeboard as the first option to find an admin. If I removed an intended feature of the proposal, I apologize in advance. —EncMstr 03:27, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

I think the changes are good (I do go on a bit!) - can we take your edits as an endorsement also? cheers, Privatemusings (talk) 04:04, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Not endorsement, just wanted to hone the language so the underlying issues are clear. Both sides have good points. —EncMstr 08:43, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Violation of a foundation issue

One of the foundation issues is that we keep a neutral point of view as the guiding editorial principle. Allowing the subject of an article to decide if it is deleted is a such a departure from neutrality that it constitutes a violation of a foundation issue and as such this proposal cannot fly on this project. Sorry.

If there is good reason to delete a BLP article then that will be decided through the consensus of editors who do not have a direct conflict of interest in the subject. (1 == 2)Until 04:15, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Interesting idea. But is it a violation thus? Does NPOV relate to solely an individuala rticle article on can it relate to wikipedia mainspace as a whole? If so our systemic bias problems also violate NPOV. But my instinct would be to argue that if an article does not exist it cannot violate NPOV. Thanks, SqueakBox 04:25, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

It applies as our "guiding editorial principle", so ya I would say it applies to the very existence of an article as well as the article's contents. WP:UNDUE goes both ways, failing to mention a subject that is notable because of the request of a person with a conflict of interest is an example of undue weight. (1 == 2)Until 04:26, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

ah, well I think you've kinda got to squint at it to see removing an article as a statement of non-neutrality..! I don't really look at it that way - but fair enough, if you, or others, do! Also: let's try not to conflate too much here, we don't want to fall into the trap of finding a quick way to not have to think about or discuss stuff like this properly.... Privatemusings (talk) 04:26, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Of course the decision to delete an article needs to be approached with neutrality. It is a content decision, and it should be decided through editorial consensus. A person would of course be more likely to ask for their article to be deleted if it accurately contained verified negative information than if it was a puff piece. The very threat of the ability to arbitrarily have the article deleted will damage neutrality, and the deletion itself would deny it entirely. (1 == 2)Until 04:29, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

But, in an effort to not "conflate", I will sit back and watch. But if this comes to being seriously considered as policy I will renew my objections. We are here to document human knowledge in an encyclopedia, not help people bowdlerize, or outright censor our documentation of their already documented life. (1 == 2)Until 04:31, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

The other side of the issue is that people who are marginally notable have reputations that matter to them in their professional and personal lives that means wikipedia can have a real effect in their lives. I would argue that wikipedia article can have a much stronger effect fopr the semi notables than say for notables like Clinton or Obama who are so much in the news anyway. We should not do harm to people is also a pillar of our work but one we seem to be failing at to the point where we are facing this whole BLP and this particular opt-out issue. And if x gets an ot out and has some books we can link to her in articles about his books and maybe put relevant info there (eg she was pregnant when she wrote this book or whatever) as anyone with an article who isn;t mentioned in various other articles should not have an article anyway, eg we mention Brandt though he has no article and if he had opted out one could argue it doesn't violate BLP as long as we do not remove any mention of him from the encyclopedia. Thanks, SqueakBox 04:45, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Until. Deleting a biographical article because it is "impractical to produce an accurate, fair and balanced article" is one thing (and should be done); deleting articles based on subject request is completely unrelated and goes against the principle of NPOV. Black Falcon (Talk) 05:29, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

If somebody is so unimportant, that we can delete the article at their request, then we aught to delete the article regardless. Any article that exists "at the pleasure of the subject" will be promotional. Also, this proposal does nothing to protect all the BLPs exempted from it (office holders). Rather than excluding "marginally notable people" we should be excluding "marginally notable facts". Wikipedia has a bad habbit of broadcasting negative facts widely, when they were only reported in obscure locations. Here is an example of a claim reported exclusively in a college paper, being added to Wikipedia, for the world to read. The bio subject is a "public office holder", and therefore not protected by this proposal. The best solution, is to remove such "marginally notable facts", but keep the person if there are other facts about them, that are actually notable. --Rob (talk) 05:50, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

I've got to strongly disagree with this proposal. Besides being practically a definition of a Slippery slope, I don't see how it can be applied without conflicting with WP:COI and WP:NPOV. If a person, in their entire life, as only done something extremely notable, yet very negative (say being a thief of many rare paintings), then the only verifiably notable information will be on that negative event. If their notable, even for something only negative, we should include them, describing that negative in as neutral a way as possible. In order to abide WP:UNDUE that may mean a short, stubby bio. But its still a bio of a notable person. Also, our COI policy clearly discourages editors from editing their own biographies. While OTRS and editrequested serve to correct factual errors or gross biases in an article, deleting it would seem to me to be a form of edit by proxy. And back to the slippery slope argument, lets say Charles Smith Inc, is only notable for producing a product that killed 100 people. And Mr. Charles Smith, the owner, objects to an article that lists his company's name with the only notable information being negative? Do we delete there? What if it were C.S. Enterprises and Mr. Smith objected to the only thing being notable that they were caught using slave labor? Right now the rule "BLP everywhere" seems to be working very well in ensuring that only balanced, factual information on notable individuals is placed in the encyclopedia. If we can't trust community consensus to judge notability through AfD and reliability through RSN, and neutrality through NPOVN and to protect individuals with BLPN, editprotected, OTRS, and COIN, then what can we trust community consensus to judge? And the idea of giving any administrator the right to delete any bio they are contacted on that they feel should be deleted, without giving recourse to WP:DRV, smacks of censorship and a Hierarchy in which some special editors views (admins) are given supremacy over the views of any number of regular editors. Sorry, but this is really a bad idea MBisanz talk 07:20, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Also, I never thought of the issue of subjects trying to blackmail use. I'm Huey Markeson (talk · contribs), and Huey Markenson is an article of which I am the subject of. I'm only notable for at the age of 21 I beat an IRS officer senseless in a courtroom because we were alone there. My article has survived a notability CSD and a notability AFD. If you don't make my aritcle the Right Version, I hereby opt out of wikipedia! So in a fell swoop, 1 person with an insurmountable COI and 1 admin could overrule a SNOW keep AFD. Again, a bad idea. MBisanz talk 07:52, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Until and Rob. This proposal is opening the door wide open for allowing individuals to set ultimatums about their biography. "If my biography does not say what I want it to say, then I will not let you write about me" is a practice which will undermine Wikipedia's mission to be a comprehensive encyclopedia. Another concern I have is that this proposal wants to leave the decision of subjective things (e.g. "[not] placed themselves at the forefront of public controversies in order to influence the issues involved.") by one person, an admin perhaps, and has no door for anyone to contest the deletion. I don't think an individual has any right to deny being covered in Wikipedia any more than they have the right to deny being covered in a newspaper. They have the very clear right not to be libeled, and if libel against a biography is a problem, we should be quick to protect the bio and ban the users adding libel. Sjakkalle (Check!) 07:24, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

I see that as a positive: If you do not succeed in writing a fair article about me, I opt out. 195.216.82.210 (talk) 10:43, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Or: if you do write a fair (i.e. neutral, not positive-only) article about me, I opt out. Fram (talk) 11:03, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Yes, we are talking about "fringe" BLP's whose notability is already questionable, and who'se Bio generally is made by someone that wants to "stick it to them" as shown to be the case by many BLP's EVEN CURRENTLY. Their notability is of course pushed by the author/any friends he has (canvassing/gaming ftw) thus retaining the POV version. Why is this bad? Well uhm... if you google their name... what happens to be the TOP result, a biased POV version of a bio that I can't do didly about because my opinion/actions ticked off some random wikipedian that understands the system and can game the system well.
Adding to the problem is that a ticked off individual will of course be appropriatly p...ed off and thus immediatly giving the editor and his friends an opportunity to jump on his "incivility" which results in blocks/bans. (worst case scenario) Usually what happens is that the everyone rallies around the poor editor that is being attacked by some "newbie" "big shot" or something, resulting in the bio remaining, and deteriorating.
As noted, and stated in the proposal, this proposal wouldn't allow Bush and other high profile individuals opt out... only people that 99% or more of the wikipedia editors haven't heard about till their bio came up for AFD :P 195.216.82.210 (talk) 09:26, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] What are we at OTRS supposed to tell people?

I actually agree with most of the criticisms above. I'm uncomfortable with allowing people to have their articles deleted. But the community seems to have no willingness to take any other measure to protect BLPs (universal semi-protection and full protection on request is my measure of choice) and honestly, if we're faced with a choice between either allowing deletion of articles or leaving living people with nothing they can do about problems with their articles, then I'm going to go with the lesser evil. Seriously, when somebody writes to the OTRS and says "I'm upset because Wikipedia's spent the last two weeks saying that I'm a child molestor, and now it's been picked up by mirror sites and a majority of Google results for my name include that tidbit", what am I supposed to say? "Sorry, Wikipedia's model means that anybody can post anything they like to your article and, while we'll certainly correct it once we're made aware of it, we won't do anything to prevent it from happening again (unless it reaches a really absurd volume) and we won't let you do anything about it after the fact"? Because stuff along those lines comes up daily at the OTRS (from what I gather - I'm new there), and I'm already getting tired of giving that answer. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 07:35, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

  • OTRS should be more liberal when it comes to protecting BLPs, at least from anonymous contributors. People adding libel to BLPs should be blocked, without warning in many circumstances. Sjakkalle (Check!) 08:28, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
I don't understand why Opt-out would help with this problem. Presumably, in those cases, as soon as the person complains, OTRS immediately removes the article in question. So what would be different with this policy? Now, as soon as the person makes an opt-out request, ANI immediately removes the article in question. Same thing... right? --Jaysweet (talk) 17:40, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
We certainly don't immediately remove the article in question, because there's no policy allowing us to do so. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 22:21, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Indeed, the very farthest we would go is to start an AfD. More likely we just watchlist the article and remove any material that violates our policies. And if they are complaining about properly sourced accurate information that is relevant and neutral then we tell them that while they are welcome to talk it out on wiki we are not going to remove the material unless there is an editorial consensus to do so. (1 == 2)Until 22:24, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] All sources negative. Alternative

The problem the proposal aims to tackle is the situation where all sources are negative. I know that the media can be harsh and quick to jump on the bandwagon when dealing with someone unpopular all in the name of sensationalism, and I don't think Wikipedia should be sucked into this, indeed jumping on with lots of negative details from the press with nothing positive is a WP:NPOV concern. However, I don't think deleting biographies is the best way to deal with such problems. However, we should allow input from the subject who has been attacked in the press. If that person wants to respond to a negative but sourced biography, we should let them. There are nearly always two sides to a story, and denying one side coverage due to a WP:RS guideline will breach the WP:NPOV policy. For example

  1. A blog entry on another site by the subject of the biography is a primary source but valid one when used about itself. If we can verify that the blog is indeed written by the subject we can use it and cite it in the biography.
  2. Another possibility is to allow subjects of biographies set up a userpage or something similar with his or her response to the article, and have that userpage linked to from the article or its talkpage. ("The subject of this biography has made a response to the content, and may be viewed here") Again we need to verify that the response is really written by the subject and not some impersonator.

The fact that all independent and reliable sources are negatively loaded does not mean that the other side of the story cannot be found or provided, even if this is from the subject itself. Sjakkalle (Check!) 07:36, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

That is a very small part of the problem. The larger part of the problem is that we have very little moral right to publish articles about living people that we cannot say with reasonable certainty are accurate, and that we have no moral right at all to do so in the face of an explicit request by the subject no to. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 07:39, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
But if the info is accurate and sourced to a reliable source, what moral right does the subject have to demand its removal. We removed unsourced BLP on sight. Newspapers print corrections and retractions of errors when their shown them. I'm wondering if this isn't a bit like the fairuse image debate. Since we don't have the OTRS staff (apparently) to correct/monitor all the BLPs, our only option is to implement a solution that dances around consensus issues and deliberation of each item. MBisanz talk 07:56, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
I agree with you completely on the first point. I don't want to give subjects the right to demand that their biographies be deleted. I would much rather take reasonable measures to prevent the articles from being filled with unsourced lies. The measures we have taken so far have been manifestly inadequate, and the community isn't showing a lot of willingness to implement new ones. As long as the community isn't willing to implement new ones, I'm in reluctant support of opt-out. Also, with regards to OTRS, the issue isn't a staff shortage. Once issues are reported, they're dealt with pretty swiftly. The problem is that severe BLP problems are allowed to stand for extended periods of time before anybody (editors or subjects) notices them. Opt-out wouldn't solve that (which is part of why it's not my preferred option), but it would at least give BLP subjects meaningful recourse after the fact, something that they're also currently lacking. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 08:01, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
So basically, this change would give the appearance of doing something about biased bios, by deleting them permanently, while not solving the problem of unmonitored BLP creations? Sounds like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. MBisanz talk 08:05, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
There are two basic problems: Wikipedia doesn't do as much as it needs to to prevent BLP violations, and it doesn't give victims of BLP any real recourse. The less severe the first problem becomes, the less severe the second one becomes. This proposal doesn't do anything about the first problem, but addresses the second. I'd rather address the second primarily by addressing the first, but I can't think of any ideas to address the first that haven't already been rejected. I'm not thrilled to be in the position of supporting this proposal, but here I am. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 08:23, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Hmm, if we're only trying to solve the second problem with this proposal, I can think of some other things that haven't been tried yet. What about indef perma protection of BLPs brought to OTRS? Or a public tracking list like Watchlist/Recentchanges that OTRS/Admins can add problematic bios to. Or this new flagged revisions thing to show only "Wiki approved" public versions? Or even letting subjects include a protected+transcluded rebuttal to sourced negative facts? These all would be less damaging than outright deletion. MBisanz talk 08:32, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Indefinite full protection upon subject request is my preferred solution to the second part (see the above section). But any attempt I've made to propose an expansion of protection criteria as a solution to the BLP quagmire has been met with some decidedly tautological arguments about how we can't expand protection criteria like that because that would violate our policy on protection. But yes, I'd be more than happy to bail on opt-out if we could get indefinite full protection upon subject request. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 08:38, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Daniel Brandt

Doesn't this proposal remind anyone of some bio dispute from Wikipedia's history? Have we learned anything from it? SynergeticMaggot (talk) 08:23, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't really see the high profile cases - Brandt and Murphy - as being the best case studies here, since I think both articles receive (past tense in the case of Brandt) the best protection Wikipedia can offer. I'm not sure of the early history of the Brandt article, but Murphy originally had a pretty legitimate complaint (we lamentably failed to protect his bio from malicious vandalism). That complaint isn't really valid anymore, though. I'm thinking of people who aren't prepared to devote huge amounts of time to being pains in the asses - those are the people who this policy would benefit. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 08:25, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
I'm specifically bringing to this proposal's attention a non consensus on this threads DRV and AfD's alone. Letting things like this happen is a wrong move in my opinion, guideline, or policy. SynergeticMaggot (talk) 08:29, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Wow! Daniel Brandt has 2,683 deleted edits! Guess I missed a lot.... —EncMstr 08:44, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Heres what you missed (unless your an admin): the article, the user, the MfD, the open letter, the afds, and the drvs. Anything else I believe is deleted (false positive?). For the DRV's: just click history and view it befoore the courtesy blanking. Cheers! SynergeticMaggot (talk) 09:27, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Oppose

People don't get to decide whether they're notable or not, any more than they get to decide whether a newspaper writes about them or not. Stifle (talk) 09:42, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Obviously we should still apply the BLP procedures that we have, including strictly removing unsourced material and blocking users who put negative uncited information into bios. I'm not saying there isn't a problem, just that this isn't the solution. Stifle (talk) 09:43, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Do you have any thoughts on what the solution might be? Sarcasticidealist (talk) 09:45, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Looking at the criteria:

"Out of respect for those not wishing to have a biographical entry within our encyclopedia, this policy allows individuals to 'Opt Out': to have their biographical article deleted without recourse to a discussion. These criteria must be met: * The biography is of an individual who is not: * A public official or any other person pervasively involved in public affairs, nor * An individual who has placed themselves at the forefront of public controversies in order to influence the issues involved. * The individual requests article deletion."

This means that almost all artists and so on can have their Wikipedia articles deleted without the slightest discussion, just because they don't like to have one. Why would we agree with that? If a person is notable, we report on it. The info has to be accurate, of course, but why would we delete an article if star X prefers to not have one (which may contain references to things star X rather would forget, but which are well sourced)? If Stan Lee decides that he doesn't like Wikipedia for some reason and so wants his page gone, OptOut would give us no choice but to delete the page, thereby severely reducing the completeness and encyclopedic value of Wikipedia's coverage of comics.

My suggestion would be that if someone wants their article deleted, it gets discussed (at AfD probably), and if the reasons pressented are more important than the notability of the person (e.g. a small-time crook with a few newspaper articles who now wants to start a new life), we delete it, but if the person is clearly notable and no good reason for deletion is given, the article is kept. Fram (talk) 10:20, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Unclear

To evaluate the sensibility of such a policy, it needs to be a lot clearer - I'm unable to identify who might successfully employ it versus who we'd have to turn down. Specifically I'm concerned about people who aren't particularly contraversial, but who're enormously influential people who're not particularly political. Maybe some examples of keeps and deletes would help clarify what we're going for here. WilyD 13:01, 10 April 2008 (UTC) Specifically, it's remarkably unclear what "An individual who has placed themselves at the forefront of public controversies in order to influence the issues involved" means? Does this mean Conrad Black can opt out but Bono cannot? That Paul Bernardo can opt out but Cindy Sheehan cannot? That Jérôme Kerviel can opt out but Henry Morgentaler can not? (I think my nationality is showing) WilyD 13:12, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

You're right, of course, Wily - and this is certainly not an easy course to take - however, it's my opinion that the difficulty of framing clear criteria is outweighed by the desirable need for the community as a whole to take responsibility for what we collectively put out there. P'raps it's useful for a moment to consider this proposal conceptually before zooming in on the criteria issues, thorny as they undoubtedly are... regardless, I've dropped a few examples below just showing you kinda where I'm coming from.... Privatemusings (talk) 13:18, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

I should add, just out of interest, that the criteria I decided to kick off this proposal with are actually used to define Public figure under US Law - and as such, are successfully employed in many cases - although it's generally accepted that it's often not easy to determine where the line is.... hopefully it would be something that wiki folk would be able to get better at as time went on... Privatemusings (talk) 13:20, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Keeps

  • Stan Lee - uses his name on the front of comic books, has appeared in movie adaptations, becomes a 'public figure'
  • Gordon Brown - very clearly a 'public figure'
  • Anyone who doesn't explicitly request a bio be removed (probably most?)
  • Kent Hovind? He keeps deliberately inserting himself into the public "debate" on creationism, even though is article is overwhelming negative. WilyD 13:22, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Deletes

  • Angela Beesley - has requested article be deleted, has been involved in notable efforts, but is not a 'public figure'
  • James Tour - (has not, to my knowledge, requested the article be deleted - so it only would be if he were to) - has a barely notable career, with one reliably sourced reference from the New York Times, which may create a balance issue for the article. Is not a 'public figure'

[edit] Unclears

  • Don Murphy - only because I don't know enough (well, anything actually!) about this situation. Has been involved in very notable efforts, but professionally is a 'behind the scenes' sort of guy... not sure......

[edit] examples

as offered by Privatemusings (talk) 13:14, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Keeps

  • Anyone who doesn't explicitly request her bio be removed. Among 1500 admins, any person could find someone willing to agree they're non-notable and therefore deletion-worthy.

[edit] Deletes

  • Zacarias Moussaoui - Bio and notability are almost entirely on a single negative event. Current Google search has vandalism version in search detail. Never tried to be a notable living person.
  • Adnan Bukhari - Entire bio solely relates to single negtive event. Again, never tried to be a public person or involve self in public affairs.
  • Ramzi Binalshibh - Three lines of 28K bio do not deal with a single negative event that this person never tried to make public.
  • Peter Braunstein - Entire bio slanted on a single negative life event he didn't try and publicize.
  • Lakireddy Bali Reddy - Entire bio describes him as a sex slave master, never tried to place hiimself at "forefront of public controversies"

[edit] Unclears

[edit] examples

Yea, just as I figured, you can go through any of our criminals categories and find lots of notable people who would survive AFD, yet if they requested it, would meet the rules for proposed OptOut. Not willing to agree an admin alone could or should make this call. MBisanz talk 13:30, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict, reply to previous version) Thanks for the examples. However, the criteria do not discuss "public figures" like Stan Lee, but "public officials" and "people involved in public affairs", which is completely different. Stan Lee (e.a.) does not fit this description. As for the deletes: Michel Fourniret is known only for negative things (he is an alleged serial killer), has not tried to be a public figure (he only wants to talk behind closed doors at his trial, doesn't want to be photographed at his trial, ...). If he would opt out, under the current criteria, his article would be deleted without any discussion. Why? He has been in the newspapers for a few years now, is a well-known figure, ... in short, he is the kind of person an encyclopedia should have an article on, whether he wants it or not. Fram (talk) 13:33, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
(reply to MBisanz) - you're right in a way - in that the 'public figure' bar is set quite high - do remember of course, that the individual would have to request that the bio be removed as well. I am suggesting though, that we have to balance the desire to have as comprehensive source of information as possible with the responsibility of being good stewards of that information. It seems right now that the wiki is actually being rather irresponsible, which is likely to ultimately be self-destructive to some degree or other. Do you think maybe the bar should just be lowered a bit? Might that help your concerns? cheers, Privatemusings (talk) 13:37, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
ps. brief response to Fram - it's worth taking a look at Public figure to sort of see where I've been coming from - though I totally understand that (by design to a degree) it's not completely clear. As you've seen, I assert that Stan Lee meets the criteria for 'public figure' - hence would not be deleted! cheers, Privatemusings (talk) 13:37, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Stan Lee seems to fail both criteria listed on the front page though. If we want to be able to tell Mr. Lee to take a hike if he asks to opt out, we probably need different criteria. WilyD 13:45, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Privatemusings, please check the proposal again: it does not talk about public figures, but about public officials, which is completely different. George W. Bush is a public official, Stan Lee isn't. Fram (talk) 13:56, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
sorry it's a bit hard to get, but the criteria I've suggested off the bat are actually borrowed from our very own page describing a Public figure - which is why I used that term! - it's a 'bar' which has the benefit of being tried and tested rigorously in legal contexts, though it's rarely straight forward on first glance! I assert, for the reasons given above, that Stan Lee meets this criteria, and therefore would not have his bio removed. It wouldn't be up to me, of course, and a sensible way of determining this (maybe even at an office or Foundation level? haven't really thought about that...) will have to be considered.... cheers, Privatemusings (talk) 14:01, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
If Stan Lee is not supposed to be able to opt out, the policy needs to be written so that's clear, which it certainly isn't at this time. If this were approved today, I'd probably delete his bio given this page the way it's written if he asked (and I've got one of those nifty "delete" buttons). WilyD 14:10, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
OK, seeing Zacarias Moussaoui on the list of people who could "opt out" reinforces my opposition to this proposal. This is the only person convicted for conspiring in the worst terrorist attack ever. He has generated an enormous amount of press attention and is clearly a figure of public interest. Are we really going to give him the power to eliminate a major part of our 9/11 coverage? Having a policy which opens the door for that is really going to destroy Wikipedia's reputation as a comprehensive encyclopedia. Sjakkalle (Check!) 14:03, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
ah, well read carefully Sjakkalle - in my view, Zacarias Moussaoui would meet the second given criteria, and therefore not have his biography removed... the examples above are only the thoughts of individual editors (the first set are my thoughts, for example) - it's probably better to try and consider this proposal conceptually before dealing with specifics (but maybe the specifics help flesh out the concepts!) - the key point is not to form a view based on something specific at this stage - just to kinda chew it over, I reckon... Privatemusings (talk) 14:07, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
But if I take the definitions you use, I have two questions: a) why make it so hard with two unclear lines, when you could just put "public figure"? b) What the difference between "a public figure" and someone who meets WP:BIO? Fram (talk) 14:09, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Now this is very confusing, I objected to seeing an example by which the Zacarias Moussaoui article would be deleted based on a "Never tried to be a notable living person" argument (well, he wanted to be one of the hijackers, and probably wanted to be a notable dead person) and now you are saying that this proposal would not let him be deleted? Sjakkalle (Check!) 14:15, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Zacarias was an example provided by Mbisanz: the examples by Privatemusings are above his name. It does show that the proposal, as it stands now, can be interpreted in very different ways. How I now understand it, is that if you are notable but not a public figure, you can request deletion. However, it is unclear where the distinction between the two is. Fram (talk) 14:21, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Ah, OK thanks for the explanation. And I agree with you. Sjakkalle (Check!) 14:28, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
So basically I think we've just proven that even among trusted, individual admins, the idea of who has placed themselves in the public eye and who is legitimatly a public person are very debatable things. This to me signals that BLP-opting out is soon to turn into a "shop for deletion forum". Stan Lee asks MBisanz (talk · contribs) to delete, and MBisanz says "no". So Stan searchs the admin userpages for someone who is a fan of Spiderman, and asks him to delete it. Repeat ad infinitum. Maybe this is like userboxes. We all agree there are BLP issues and that they must be respected. What if adding an aritcle to Cat:Living Person, added a little WP:BLPfD link. Subjects could click it and propose their own article for deletion on the grounds that it fails BLP, notability, hurts their personal lives, whatever. Then its the community's job through discussion (read: !voting) to prove the bio is compliant. Possible !votes would be Keep, Delete, Perma protect, List on BLP-watch. Certainly a more transparent method that respects WP:CONSENSUS and would still protect living people. MBisanz talk 15:27, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

It also rules out all academics who haven't written books directly attempting to change public policy, authors who haven't appeared in movie adaptations...--Relata refero (disp.) 06:43, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Proxying

Someone brought up the point that such a proposal would discriminate against people in jail, as in theory they'd be unable to request via email or onwiki deletion. My question is, what sort of proxying would be permitted. Lets say the subject has alzheimer's, could their child request it? What about a legally designated agent, like a person's lawyer or PR firm? What about a wife for a husband's article? What sort of proof would be require? MBisanz talk 15:41, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Proof of identity is a serious concern. On-wiki its nearly impossible to prove someone's idently, and pretty damn hard on OTRS as well, given the widespread use of free email services and the propensity of people to choose email addresses that don't remotely resemble their name. Currently we tend to just AGF and believe that the person emailing us asking for their article to be taken down really is the person in question. We could request that people send proof of their identity, but having volunteers reviewing drivers' licenses and birth certificates would probably not go over well. Mr.Z-man 17:15, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Yea, but if we're gonna have a policy that says "If you prove your really the subject of the article and ask any admin to delete it, we'll delete it", we're gonna need rules of what proof is. Otherwise I can imagine all sorts of problems with disgruntled spouses, competitors, fans, and generally nutty people. MBisanz talk 17:34, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
The only thing I can think of to make this reasonably fool-proof would be to require an attorney as intermediary, and then we could hardly have volunteers handling the complaints. --Dhartung | Talk 02:16, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Who makes the final call?

Not the Foundation, they won't touch this, I'd imagine. By that, OTRS should be able to validate (as they are screened as volunteers) the authenticity of a request.

But who actually makes the decision then? Admins? Community? What if needs to be overturned later (nothing is permanent here)? Lawrence § t/e 17:40, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

As the proposal is currently written, any admin with the delete button makes the call on their own and that decision may not be overturned by anyone, including WP:DRV. MBisanz talk 17:45, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
No DRV? I don't think people will accept that. (1 == 2)Until 17:48, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Well that isn't good, it would not take that much effort to create a sleeper admin account precisely for the purpose of doing this, 100 hours over 3 months, and for the reputation of the rich and semi-notable that would be a small price top pay (someone else for instance). Thanks, SqueakBox 17:50, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
There always has to be a way for the community to fix it's own mistakes or messes without having to always rely on IAR to do it. I'm not sure this will get any kind of wide approval without having a clear path laid out on how to get one of these deletions done, and how to get one undone. Neither step should rely or have anything to do with adminship or the Foundation/OTRS beyond the technical aspects of verification of the request and someone to actually "hit" the delete button. The rest should be a community discussion. We need something like this, I'd think, but it needs to be nigh ungameable because of it's implications, and no class of users can be entitled to any kind of carte blanche here on these. Lawrence § t/e 18:02, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
I have an idea, if we think an article should be deleted, we hold an WP:AfD and see if the arguments for deletion merit deletion. (1 == 2)Until 18:08, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] This proposal is much too weak

Daniel Brandt feels the proposal is too weak for reasons he has outlined in the History of this talk page. User:Ryan_Postlethwaite feels his post should be removed, and has done so. The following comments are preserved for the record... Privatemusings (talk) 22:59, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Well we should definitely not remove this interesting and well thought out comment. Thanks, SqueakBox 17:59, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
I should remove per WP:DENY, but I'll leave that for someone else to do. To answer your question Mr. Brandt, a banned individual has no right to edit any page of wikipedia for any reason. There are the OTRS and various other mailing lists that may be used to comment on pages a banned user believes affects them directly. MBisanz talk 18:10, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
returned by me - come on folks, let's not be silly! - this is interesting, to the point and it does far more harm than good to mess with it.. Privatemusings (talk) 21:40, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
If you want to put that there and sign it, that is your call. I will consider it posted by your discretion. (1 == 2)Until 21:42, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
If this is to be kept then provisions should be made for editors to provide thoughtful and constructive comments from ALL banned users. Seddon69 (talk) 23:03, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Absolutely not, most banned users are trolling idiots with nothing helpful to say. Thanks, SqueakBox 02:13, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
I don't mean for ALL comments from all banned users. I'm saying that if this message were to be kept then in future, similar constructive comments from other banned users should be welcomed on a case by case basis. Seddon69 (talk) 07:46, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] this proposal is much too strong

The article should be kept if the person is more than marginally notable. This is complete contradiction to established policy. It's libel law which makes the distinction between public figures/non-public figures, but libel is covered by other aspects of BLP, and our standard is, and should remain, notability or importance or however its worded. This gives people in effect the censorship over the content of their articles, and is a total violation of the fundamental principle of NPOV. Personally, I think the whole idea of taking the subject's views into account is somewhat ridiculous, but attempting to extent it to even fully notable people who are not public figures in a narrow sense is ridiculous altogether,.

for example, as written, if even a very important scientist publishes a fraudulent paper, and this is perfectly well documented, then we would have to remove the article at his request. With respect to living persons, this turns us into PublicRelationsPedia, the place where only good things can be said, and where every living person not a politician can rewrite his bio to suit himself, or insist on its removal. DGG (talk) 18:14, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Well said. (1 == 2)Until 18:17, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Case by case discussion

In case anyone forgot, the Don Murphy debate was, at DRV, a snowball overturn of a speedy delete, and at AfD a fast snowball keep. Under this proposal, that article would be deleted. I like Until1==2's idea. If someone says "I want my article deleted," we discuss whether or not we should do so, taking their wishes into account without making them the single overriding factor. There are going to come times when we will have to say "Sorry if you don't like your biography being here, but a biography about you belongs in a comprehensive encyclopedia. If you disagree with the accuracy of it, OTRS is that way." There will be other times when the person is of very questionable, marginal notability to begin with and we could certainly live without the article. But that's something we have to evaluate case by case. It is simply not possible to have blanket criteria here. And any policy which someone could assert, with a straight face, could lead to the deletion of Zacarias Moussaoui, is silly. I don't think there's a much clearer case where a subject is, like it or not, of lasting and encyclopedic significance, even if mainly known for a negative event. Seraphimblade Talk to me 18:22, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Here here!
At present, this looks like a solution in search of a problem. As I said in WT:BLP, the only thing I could see is if OTRS is swamped with these sorts of problems, a much narrower OptOut criteria could be developed, just to offload some of the OTRS work. But in general, this needs to be a case-by-case type of thing, just as Seaphimblade says. --Jaysweet (talk) 18:30, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Glad to see that my opinion that AfD is a better way than letting the subject of the article decide is not a lone one. (1 == 2)Until 18:31, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Pile-on. AFD of BLPs isn't broken IMO and works better than this would. Jaysweet: a bit higher up this page, one of the OTRS guys says they aren't backlogged on BLP issues. MBisanz talk 18:35, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
As an OTRS volunteer I can say that BLP issues are far less common than copyright complaints, and general complaints about inaccuracy. (1 == 2)Until 18:49, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Cool, so there ya go. There is no problem here, as far as I am aware. I suppose I could see a guideline or essay saying that if a person's notability is borderline and they request an opt-out, we should give their request some weight, e.g. like if an AfD doesn't have a clear consensus on keep vs. delete and the subject is voting delete, then delete it. But a binding policy is a bad idea, because (as any time spent on AfD will prove) it's impossible to establish unambiguous criteria for notability. --Jaysweet (talk) 18:59, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Censoring

This "opt out" feature would constitute censoring. As we would write about the Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China, we would at the same time implement a similar system of our own. The opt out censoring feature should be disabled, at least unless the person in question gives a very reasonable explanation why should we censor his/her page. Admiral Norton (talk) 18:56, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

If you don't like the content of the article on you, then you can have it removed. Yup, that is censorship. Now if we used our internal editorial decision making process(consensus) to make the content decision(as we do right now), it would not be censorship. (1 == 2)Until 18:58, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
That's true, but if I'm not mistaken, this proposal would mean that almost anyone notable enough would be able to have his article removed for no real reason. AfD provides the possibility to veto the removal by requesting a valid explanation as to why should the article be removed. Admiral Norton (talk) 19:18, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Censorship is a word that gets thrown around a lot for affect, sometimes inaccurately. Most definitions of Censorship require or imply that it be handed down from a position of authority. When authority gets in the habit of forcing censorship on a community, who then has no say in the matter, authority tends to abuse that power - thus the evil rap that "Censorship" has.

In this case, it's the community making this decision about what to include or not. This isn't the big bad "censorship" that we all love to hate, it's editorial judgment. It's a partial acknowledgment that Wikipedia has enormous power over someone's reputation but assumes little responsibility or stewardship over that power; it's an acknowledgment that some people have been unjustly harmed by poorly maintained bio's; it's the community saying we can do something about this - we are empowered. Nobody's forcing this down our throats, it's simply one responsible thing we can do, at this point in time, to protect individuals from the imperfections of the wiki. --Duk 18:29, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

This policy takes the decision out of the communities hands. This is basically making a decision to allow future censorship. Now I know that is a fine distinction, but I think it is an important one. Of course, this is all academic because this will never be policy, it violates 2 foundation issues. (1 == 2)Until 13:49, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
The community is empowered to make decisions like this. You contend This policy takes the decision out of the communities hands, well go look at Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion, are you going to call that censorship too? same thing. --Duk 21:54, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
Lets look at this policy compared to WP:CSD.
  1. Ojectivity
    WP:CSD is based on objective criteria.
    WP:BOO is based on the opinion of the subject of the article.
  2. Community involvement
    WP:CSD can be reversed if anyone disagrees with it by talking to the deleting admin, or by going to WP:DRV.
    WP:BOO has no appeal and cannot be reversed by the community.
  3. Encyclopedia
    WP:CSD is based on our academic standards for publishing content
    WP:BOO is based on the whim of the subject of the article.
I hope I have demonstrated by WP:CSD is not the community deciding to take the decision out of the communities hands, and WP:BOO is. (1 == 2)Until 14:15, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Semi-Protect, not Opt-Out: Give an either/or to the community - no status quo

It's dismaying to read comments on both sides where people are callous to the fact that many notable people have defamatory statements written about them, or the truth is hidden or not accurately presented, etc., and the affect that can have on a person's career. That said, I completely disagree with the "OptOut" idea. I think it violates our core policies, and I think the idea threatens the viability of the project. I think SarcasticIdealist's ideas over at WT:BLP are sensible and the way to go. Semi-protect all BLP articles, and full protection upon request of the subject. That gives the Talk page the place to hammer out new additions and fix problems. At this point, we have to come up with a community-wide "Either/Or" proposal that does not include the status quo, which isn't working. It should be something the entire community takes part in. I don't mind the either/or being "SemiProtect or OptOut", with "no change" not being an option. Don't forget: notable people also lie about themselves, and I've been lied to about such things as their ethnicity. Back when Michael Richards was going through accusations of racism and anti-semitism, he told his PR people that he was Jewish, leaving them trying to explain why, in fact, they repeated that to the media when...he's not Jewish at all. --David Shankbone 00:46, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

You looking for WP:RFA, thats a pretty well reasoned summation and solution. I'm sure a bot could be coded to semi-protect articles in the Living Persons cat, and giving admins the right to full protect on request would still be transparent. Good idea! MBisanz talk 01:22, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] An extremely bad idea

If the sole concern here is that biographies of living persons are being vandalized or edited in a defamatory manner, the interests of the subjects would be adequately vindicated by blocking the users responsible for the offending edits and/or the use of semi-protection or full protection to prevent WP:BLP violations. Note that full protection renders vandalism and defamation essentially impossible. While the use of high level page protection significantly inconveniences normal editing, it is far preferable to completely destroying articles. Additionally, the flagged revisions extension will soon give us the ability to prevent vandalism and defamation from appearing on the primary versions of articles, while retaining normal editing of draft versions. Since the complete removal of articles is never necessary to prevent vandalism or defamation, performing deletions on these grounds would be needlessly and gratuitously destructive. John254 01:55, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Well that's been the approach tried to date, and this proposal is coming firmly from the 'it's not working' camp. I'm nervous that the community may take longer to decide on how to adopt flagged revisions than the developers did to release it, and I really think that we need to improve the projects level of responsibility urgently - hence this proposal! - if we're failing to do the right thing at the moment - we really have to do something about it, I'd say.... Privatemusings (talk) 02:00, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
With all due respect, there has never been any attempt to implement what I am describing in an effective manner. We currently have no means by which to semi-protect or fully protect articles at the request of their subjects, even where the level of vandalism or defamation present in the page history falls below the usual threshold for page protection. Additionally, we are far too tolerant of users who vandalize biographies of living people or add unreferenced or inadequately referenced controversial information concerning living people to articles. In consideration of the harm that can be caused by such vandalism or defamation, we need to be willing to block users responsible for serious, deliberate violations immediately and without warning. While implementing page protection upon request and vigorous WP:BLP enforcement would require a significant effort, it is a far more constructive approach than deleting a large number of biographies under the assumption that we are unwilling to enforce the biographies of living persons policy, an assumption under which we couldn't have any biographies of living persons at all. Furthermore, deleting articles due to vandalism or defamation has the perverse effect of rewarding and encouraging the vandals and slanderers, by permitting them to completely and permanently destroy the articles which they attack. This proposal, if adopted, would hoist a large white flag over Wikipedia, inviting vandals to write lots of nasty things about living people in an effort to destroy as many articles as possible. John254 02:53, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
So, tonight the BAG codes a bot that will semi-protet any page in CAT:Living Persons. Tomorrow we run a quickie RFA and have it do that. OTRS is told to full-protect and stubbify any violating BLPs their contacted on. We site-notice all admins to do the same. We then begin the flagged revision debate to reduce the need for as much protection. Same result as what your proposing, but without chopping out notable articles. MBisanz talk 02:08, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
Yes. This is the way to go per MBisanz. But no "OptOut" destruction, per my comments in the previous section. --David Shankbone 02:18, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
If there is consensus for that it may just help, but I think it is an overreaction. We can use a measure of sense when deciding what to semi-protect and what to full-protect. I could make that bot in 5 minutes, but I don't think it would get approved by BAG or RfA until there has been a lot of discussion and a consensus formed. (1 == 2)Until 02:19, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
I have no idea why, but right now this seems to be run as "We will do Opt Out if nothing else is done NOW!", hence my expedited timeline. MBisanz talk 02:23, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
I would like to add my opposition to this proposal. DS (talk) 02:30, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
Ok, MBisanzBot (talk · contribs) is registered, the code can be ready to semi-protect on 10 mins notice, and four hours after admin flagging in RFA, all BLPs can be protected. So Opt Out isn't the quickest fix anymore. MBisanz talk 03:13, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] mark as rejected

The community opinion seems obvious. DGG (talk) 04:29, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Concur. (1 == 2)Until 04:46, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
well I'd say there's no rush... and I'd rather it stay as a proposal for a lot longer (a month is not a huge amount of time!) - imagine for a moment that all voices on this page to date were in favour, I would certainly not conclude that this policy be immediately implemented.! - I think a broad range of voices is required, and I'm glad that everyone has shown themselves open to sensible discussion. In my view the correct process should be a lot slower, and more measured than this marking would indicate... Privatemusings (talk) 05:18, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
Rejecting seems very premature. I would think it needs a good week of discussion at the very least before it could be called rejected by any stretch of the imagination. As an aside, I tire of people shooting down proposal after proposal without actually giving workable alternatives, just reiterating that the status quo with respect to biographies is fine. I'm sorry, not in my view it isn't. ++Lar: t/c 06:04, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
Ok, I can see not rejecting right away, but look up about 2 inches, I'm giving a workable alternative. MBisanz talk 06:17, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
While I don't object to the rejected tag being delayed, I think it is pretty clear that it is eventual. (1 == 2)Until 13:57, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
Although I don't agree with this proposed policy, I agree with Lar that discussion should be allowed to run a week. Sometimes discussion will lead to a better idea -- as shown above. In any case, this page should not be deleted, & if someone insists on doing exactly that, this page should then be retitled as an essay. -- llywrch (talk) 21:23, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
Aside from asking for you to leave this idea not marked as 'rejected' to humour me (and go on - I'd appreciate it, and it won't do any harm!) - I thought I'd drop a small note in here as to the damage that such a marking can do. It really doesn't encourage more people to think about these issues, and rather closes the door on debate - which I think is a bad thing. Maybe no more support will be forthcoming, and in a month or so feel free to slap a tag on it - the intent of the tag is certainly not to prejudice discussion on the proposal, or the issues it deals with, but unfortunately I feel that is the effect it would have.... Privatemusings (talk) 07:27, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
I agree with Privatemusings - I think such a drastic proposal serves well to fight inertia over making a change to BLP articles; I just think semi-protecting them all is the solution. --David Shankbone 12:59, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
I don't see the reason to keep a proposal that is clearly rejected by the community open so that unrelated debate can go on. If you want to propose semi-protecting all BLPs, propose it. But this proposal will never get consensus, nor would it be compatabile with foundation issues if it did. There has been plenty of debate on this subject, and if other subjects need debate then they can be debated on their own proposals.
Now I agree this should sit a week, but at that point we need to put this idea to bed. I don't think a drastic proposal is the best way to draw attention to a problem that does not need as drastic a solution. Not attributing any motives mind anyone, but just responding to David. (1 == 2)Until 13:21, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Good idea, bad standard

We obviously should have articles on Joe Gibbs, Tom Hanks, and Jerry Seinfeld even though none of them have held office or been at the center of a controversy. A better standard is whether or not anybody else has felt the need to write a BIOGRAPHICAL piece on the subject. In other words, if five newspapers have profiled someone (not merely mentioned them, but actually written a profile) they are probably important. On the other hand, if we can't find the year the guy was born and are picking up a few random bits of trivia from a couple of articles here and there, then we should change our guidelines to not consider them notable. --B (talk) 05:14, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

quick reply - I'd say that all those you mention would, in fact, meet the Public figure criteria we're using here, and therefore not be permitted to withdraw their biographies... cheers.. Privatemusings (talk) 05:19, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
Privatemusings, it looks to me that there are a lot of editors (including me) who don't recognize "if you are a public figure, your article won't be deleted" in the current proposed text. Is there any reason why you don't just replace the current legalese with "if X is a public figure, deletion won't happen" or something equally straightforward? I would still object to it (see my earlier questions: what's the difference between a notable person and a public figure?), but at least more people would understand it, I think. Fram (talk) 07:02, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
Agreed. I see know reason to believe Hanks, Seinfeld or Gibbs couldn't avail themselves of this option as its currently written. WilyD 11:52, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
We could use an AfD to determine if the person is notable. (1 == 2)Until 13:59, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:BLP subject response

I have expanded on the post I wrote further up on this talkpage, and formed another proposal. Sjakkalle (Check!) 07:11, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Wrong solution

This is the wrong solution. Wikipedia is not censored. That's pretty much fundamental. If we start taking down articles at the subject's request, we are allowing ourselves to be censored. Now, I get what the idea is, and I get that this is a possible solution, but it is fundamentally the wrong one. Any proposal under this method is likjely to become overly bureaucratic, somewhat divisive and perhaps akin to a star chamber.

What do I mean? Well assume we place the decision in the hands of a group of trusted editors? It's possible at some point they will feel the need to communicate in private, because there may well occur conversation of sensitive nature. At some point a decision to delete an article on a subject of some renown will be made, with no discussion appearing in public. This will divide the community.

There are other possibilities. We could have a requests board, and when a subject makes a request, we could stub the article and semi-protect it, and then a group of editors could pick over the previous version and add back in what they decide through consensus as material which does not breach our policies. But again, this could become bureaucratic.

Another possibility may just be to list for deletion every article for which a request for deletion is made. Maybe semi-protect or even fully protect the deletion debate, blank the article whilst the debate is in progress and ultimately decide if it is possible to write a comprehensive article on the subject which complies with policy. We would have to properly debate, considering the topic and whether the secondary sources provide enough material to delineate the subject fully.

Another possibility may be that if we can't source their date of birth in a secondary source, we don't have an article on them. For any really notable person or public figure this information is readily available. I'd argue that if you've released this information to the media, then you're probably putting yourself in the public eye. But then again, this might not be as cut and dried as it appears.

There's the germ of an idea in this proposal, and there's certainly a problem which needs fixing, but we need to find a way to fix it which we can all live with and which will not evolve into something that can cause us problems. Whatever we produce must not be bureaucratic, must not amount to censorship and must not institute a cabal. They're bloody tough nuts to crack. For me, I think semi-protection is the first step. The possibility of full protection may need to be considered as well. We are the encyclopedia which anyone can edit. That does not mean it is the encyclopedia anyone can write. Editors often make suggestions, proposals and provide sources and facts. We have talk pages to facilitate such moves. We can fully protect articles and allow them to be rewritten. We can allow anyone to edit. Sort of. Damn. If only we weren't so principled. I guess in this instance we have to work out which principle to betray. I'd suggest the one we don't is WP:NPOV. If the sources we have don't allow us to write from a NPOV, then we don;t write at all. Is that a fair reading of the principle? That's the one I'd suggest we defend.

I haven't really helped, have I? Hiding T 08:36, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't agree with all that your saying, but it did give me an idea: what if we propose that if living persons ask for the removal of strictly private information (i.e.: date of birth, name of wife and children, location they live, etcetera), we remove it, unless the info is truly notable (e.g. for Britney Spears, the name of Federline is notable, the name of her children not so much)? That way, we keep the info for which people are notable (their jobs, publications, performances, crimes, whatever, like any encyclopedia should do), but still protect their privacy. Fram (talk) 08:57, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
Any information that's not already public knowledge can be removed anyways, and should be, especially in BLPs. If we can't show something is public knowledge, it simply shouldn't be included. WilyD 11:51, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
True, but I mean information that has been published somewhere (the tabloids or so), but that the subject doesn't want to see here anyway. If the name of the partner of celebrity X is published in the un and the Daily Mail, but said partner is not notable in any way and has never sought the publicity, then it should be removed from the article if the subject so prefers, even if the info is verifiable. It is not important for the notability of celebrity X, and can harm the privacy of the partner. Fram (talk) 14:00, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
I don't think so, not one bit. If we give celebrity X the option to cross out partner Y, we essentialy (as someone already said) become the PR-pedia, giving out only information that suits celebrity X. It kills NPOV. I think that's the worst compromise of all. Admiral Norton (talk) 15:28, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
It would not just be a compromise, it would be completely giving up one of the projects founding goals, and going against one of the mandates of the 501(c)(3) tax-deductible nonprofit charity that runs our servers. (1 == 2)Until 15:30, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
Mandate? Can you clarify what you mean by such strong language. Hiding T 15:08, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
My mistake, it is not a part of the Charities mission statement that we be neutral, that was an incorrect assumption on my part. However, it does go against the Foundation's core issues. It is a requirement of Wikipedia that it be neutral, and that its content is determined through the "wiki process" in order to be part of the Wikimedia Foundation. These requirements are "essentially considered to be beyond debate". This proposal denies both of those. (1 == 2)Until 15:30, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
Sorry, can you clarify again for me. Why do you say it is a requirement? Have you read the note at the top of the page which states Note: Over time, the opinion of the community does evolve slowly. As changes occur they will need to be negotiated and/or integrated into this document.? That indicates that the community can make changes. I'd also be interested as to how you see protection as being against the "wiki process". Hiding T 08:43, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
Is not this process and its proposed solutions itself part of the wiki process. Thanks, SqueakBox 15:34, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
It is a decision to stop using the wiki process on this type of content decision. It is a decision to stop using NPOV to decide this type of content decision. While consensus could come about to do this through the "wiki way", the result is incompatible with the wiki way. We can't decide through consensus to stop using consensus and let biased people make content decisions, we cannot as a community decide to stop using NPOV, it is beyond the scope of the very wide discretion the project has given the public. (1 == 2)Until 16:02, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] moved

to biographical opt out as more descriptive. WP:BOO works as well. NonvocalScream (talk) 11:40, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

*GASP* You startled me. (1 == 2)Until 15:32, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Do we need a whole new system?

This proposal will create a whole new system when the current system works fine in the majority of cases and is not close to being overwhelmed. A few tweaks to existing systems may be better. I would propose:

  • Liberal use of semi-protection on BLPs. There's no need to semi protect a tenth of the encyclopedia, just articles that actually get vandalism.
  • Quicker blocking for BLP vios. Right now vandalism to BLPs generally takes the same amount of warning to block the user as regular vandalism and users who insert BLP violations that aren't blatant vandalism may take even longer to block.
  • Change the "no consensus" action for BLPs at AFD or DRV from "keep" to "delete" or "redirect if possible."

There's really no reason to add a whole new process when the current ones aren't broken. Mr.Z-man 16:20, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

"There's no need to semi protect a tenth of the encyclopedia, just articles that actually get vandalism." I completely disagree with this statement. Z-Man, have you any idea how many problems we have with our BLPs, and how few people care? There seems to be this notion that we have an army of volunteers ready to rush to the aid of William French Anderson or Zacarias Moussaoui. We don't, and the vandals are more vested in changing those pages than the volunteers are in cleaning them up. Semi-protect all BLPs, and Full Protect the ones suffering from vandalism. It's the only way to go. --David Shankbone 16:28, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
I know we have problems with BLPs, but from my experience on OTRS, most of the serious problems are not from anonymous vandals. Mr.Z-man 17:03, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Logical reasoning to scrap this proposal

Making here two points that logically scraps this proposal:

  1. If a person is notable enough to be included into Wikipedia, then that person can't decide if that page should exist or not. (Would create a conflict of interest between the person in question and the public interest.)
  2. If a person isn't notable enough to be included, then there isn't a problem, a prod is enough.

Following this logic, I can't see any reason for this policy to stand. →AzaToth 16:35, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

  • Your logic fails at the point where you assume that "notability of a person" is unambiguously defined. However, there are many disputed and borderline cases. The question is, who decides? And if the Wikipedia biography damages the reputation of the subject, what authority do we have to endorse this, saying he's notable by our self-defined (and fairly low) standards? --B. Wolterding (talk) 16:52, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
    • For that we have WP:BLP. The fine line is that the subject of an article may not have authority over the article in question. →AzaToth 17:07, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Write up a proposal for hard and fast rules for notability, perhaps with some sliding scale of notability, and then we can discuss OptOut criteria for those with different levels of notability, a blanket policy isn't going to work when we don't have a benchmark against which notability can be measured easily. Nick (talk) 17:09, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

We don't need hard and fast rules for notability. We do just fine with AfD debates where people defending the articles existence seek out sources and present them, and those that oppose the article can rebut these claims and make claims of their own. It is not a perfect system, but it works. (1 == 2)Until 18:09, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

true, there are problems defining just who counts as "borderline notable" enough to have the chance to opt out. The way to avoid this problem is not to have the class in the first place, and simply not take the subjects opinion as being anything more than anyone else's. They should certainly be permitted to argue that they are or are not notable, just as anyone can. If they see things that are wrong, they can change them or ask that they be changed, just as anyone else can. If challenged, they can provide sources, just as anyone else. If they see something libelous, they can ask for oversight, just as anyone else can. I'd always listen to what the subject has to say. And then everyone interested in the matter can form his own opinion about what should be done with the article, and say so, and the consensus followed. And the closing admin should give weight to those whose arguments are based on WP policy, regardless of who tthey might be. DGG (talk) 18:33, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Well one criteria must be that there is enough reliable sources on the subject so that a well referenced article could be written. Ultimately notability boils down to if people have taken note of you. There are many criteria, and they are not black and white and need to be examined through debate as we have been doing. (1 == 2)Until 18:40, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] The criteria need to be refined

Here are two perverse effects such a proposal might have:

  • Osama bin Laden does not fit the criteria for this proposed policy not to apply to him. Therefore, he may request that the article about him be deleted at any time. So could, as a matter of fact, any major league athlete who has played in an all-star game, or even people such as Britney Spears.
  • Now suppose John Doe requests that the article about him be deleted (and salted, if I understand correctly). And not long after that, a new senator gets elected, and his name is John Doe. No article can be created about him, because the name is salted. See the problem here?

--Blanchardb-Me•MyEars•MyMouth-timed 22:54, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

I disagree with your reading of the criteria - no biggie, but I think they may work better than you think! - the problems you mention seem feasible to overcome! Privatemusings (talk) 22:37, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
The whole thing is a useless idea; as Stifle pointed out above people don't get to decide whether they're notable or not, any more than they get to decide whether a newspaper writes about them or not. By ignoring the longstanding legal concept of public figures this proposed policy/guideline/whatever renders itself moot. Odd nature (talk) 23:16, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
G'day odd - actually, you'll probably notice that the proposal in fact co-opts the longstanding legal concept of public figures! - p'raps you support it more than you think! - Privatemusings (talk) 22:37, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] This proposal fundamentally conflicts with the essence of Wikipedia

If we were to boil down Wikipedia to its most fundamental, essential, and basic elements, it would be about like this:

  1. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia.
  2. All articles must be written from a neutral point of view.
  3. All content must be verified with reliable, independent sources.
  4. Anyone can edit Wikipedia.

I think we can all agree on that much. Now, let's take a look at what this proposal suggests.

  1. That the subject of an article can override the community's authority on their own article on making a highly significant judgment: whether an article should be included in Wikipedia. How can there be any expectation of neutrality when an article that is deemed "too negative" by its subject can be deleted for that reason alone? This proposal is suggested as an extension to the policy on biographies of living persons, but will it also be applied to corporations?
  2. More generally, that some articles may be deleted for content issues when notability is not in question.

An article being in a bad state or a frequent target of vandalism is a reason for cleanup or protection, not deletion. Even when the issue is a BLP problem, the same should apply. If a BLP article contains potentially damaging, badly-sourced information, remove it immediately and work on improving the article. If the potentially damaging information is properly verified, notable, and relevant, then it is not—and for maintaining NPOV, cannot be—the decision of the article's subject to include or remove it.

If an article is vandalized often, protect it. While I believe that semi-protecting all BLP articles would go too much against the idea that anyone can edit pages, it is much better than deleting some outright at the request of the article's subject. Better yet, take things on a case-by-case basis. When a BLP article encounters potentially defamatory vandalism—and not before it attracts such vandalism—do not hesitate to semi-protect it for a while, even if the defamatory vandalism only occurs once. If the vandalism is persistent, fully protect. Full protection is infinitely better than deletion.

We must remember that Wikipedia is a work in progress, and that in cases where notability is not in question, cleanup is always preferable to deletion. If a subject requests that action be taken to protect their article from defamation, then protection (semi or full dependent on circumstances) is the best option, but in the spirit of open editing, don't outright delete it, and don't keep it protected forever.

The biggest problem, which I mentioned briefly before, is the problem of maintaining neutrality with such a system in place. We strongly discouraged autobiographies and writing about yourself or your business, the reason being that non-neutral articles result. Basically, we don't want people to exert direct editorial influence over article on subjects they're almost certainly strongly biased on. But what stronger editorial influence is there than the threat of deletion at will, regardless of consensus? Even if it doesn't always immediately manifest itself, consider this hypothetical situation:

A biographical article on a living person is a decently well-written article. It's not a GA or FA or anything, but it generally says what one would expect it to. It mostly has sources where it needs them, including on a properly sourced and verified section that contains some accurate and neutrally written criticism. Now let's suppose the article runs into some defamatory vandalism that slips by for a few hours before being reverted, but this vandalism comes to the attention of the article's subject.

Think about it like this. The regular editors of the page, who have invested significant time and effort in its construction, now face a dilemma: they could continue working on the article as before, being especially careful to fix vandalism. But then they'd risk the article's subject requesting that the page be deleted to remove the criticism section, thus wasting all their work. The incentive then exists for them to tone down or outright remove criticism in the article to salvage the rest from OptOut-mandated deletion. In effect, a conflict of interest now exists not only between article and its subject, but between the article and its own main editors! You see the problem here.

I might not object to a similar, less heavy-handed policy involving protection rather than deletion. But in its current form, this proposal simply goes against some of the most basic premises of Wikipedia. By endorsing certain conflicts of interest as valid in making editorial decisions, it undermines consensus and neutrality. The intent behind it is good, and this is indeed an issue we must address, but this proposal is not the way to go about it.

Pyrospirit (talk · contribs) 03:59, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

This proposal isn't intended to apply to all biographies. If George Bush, for instance, requested that his article be deleted, nobody would do anything. It's supposed to apply only to people who are not obviously public figures. Yes, it will cause some conflicts of interest among article editors, and may undermine consensus and neutrality. But that's quite frankly too bad. If it comes down to a choice between defamation and abandoning NPOV, the latter is always the correct course of action. Wikipedian policies are not moral principles.

[edit] Support

Speaking as a notable person myself, I support this proposal. People have a right to privacy. They have the right to unlist their phone number from the phonebook. They should have the right (within reason) to unlist themselves from Wikipedia. I'd add another exclusion factor though, which is if they're someone who is already very public on the web, using their real name, promoting themselves via a website, etc., then I think that should count against them being able to opt out. For example, a public speaker who has a big website promoting themselves and their books, but wants to invoke "right to privacy" on Wikipedia? Nope, I have trouble buying that. But a typical "semi-notable" who's just had their name show up in the papers a few times, but has never set out to "promote" themselves? I think they should be able to pull the switch and say "I'm a private person, I never asked to be famous, I don't want to be famous, please don't write about me." --Elonka 08:04, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

The difference between maintaining a website about yourself and having an article about yourself on Wikipedia is that on Wikipedia your article can be edited with any amount of libel and slander at any time. -- Naerii 08:17, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
The nature of Wikipedia is such that instead of requesting that no article be written about them, they can edit the article themselves (of course, within the rules of WP:COI). As for the kind of information you say one should have the right to prevent from appearing in Wikipedia, such information is already banned by existing policy. Before Wikipedia says one cannot have an article written about him, the same should be expected of newspapers. --Blanchardb-Me•MyEars•MyMouth-timed 11:21, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
Actually, you don't have a "right" to not be listed in a phone book. Phone companies often charge more for this privileged, and private phone book companies will store your name and number regardless. No, you don't have a right to prevent other people from gathering public information on you. While I can understand this policy as a compassionate action, it is not to preserve people's "rights". (1 == 2)Until 13:46, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
Exactly, Wikipedia works exactly the same way as the phonebook. You pay the phone company to have an unlisted, you pay Wikipedia to have unfavorable biographical information removed. Just ask Jeffrey Merkey. Whoops, was that too cynical? heh... --Jaysweet (talk) 18:13, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Unworkable, but a possible option

I can't see how this could be workable without causing a chain reaction of some sorts. It might even force Wikipedia to change its notability policy to the point where -- and yes I'm exaggerating but I could see this happening too -- that BLP articles might well fall by the wayside except for the most pervasively notable individuals like the president of the US. I'd much rather see a policy that gives the subject the option to request an article be locked at a certain edit, with all future edits restricted to admins (or even higher powers if necessary). There's a bit of a bias against indiviudals creating and maintaining their own articles. I think an adjustment to WP:COI might also be in order. Bottom line: if the subject of an article is concern about how he/she is treated in the article, then they or their representatives should be encouraged to get involved in the maintenance of that article. Of course then the issue arises of being able to confirm that the actual subject/representatives are being contacted; perhaps the Foundation can set up some sort of confidential "identity verification" procedure in those cases. Perhaps also an AFD-like process could be put in place to ensure that if the subject gets involved, it's not with the intent of doing "whitewashing". I'm sorry, but if Celebrity X got involved in some scandal, and an article in good faith includes this information with sources etc., then they have as much right to ask for that information to be removed as they do demanding newspapers not report the information. 23skidoo (talk) 14:54, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

The reason there is a bit of a bias against individuals creating and maintaining their own articles is because almost nobody is able to do no neutrally. (1 == 2)Until 14:58, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
in fact, a considerable number of them say what's important to them, but omit notable things in their career. There's a good many over-modest people, or people who, although notable, think that listing their name and position is enough for an article. That said, probably most of our acceptable living bio articles originated from people with COI. I look upon COI as a sign that careful examination and editing will be needed, not necessarily rejection.DGG (talk) 17:18, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Re-Factoring this page....

I've chatted with some wiki folks about whether or not some more active refactoring ('talk page clerking') might actually help communication a bit - would anyone mind if I asked an independent editor (I'm thinking of User:AGK) to fairly aggressively refactor this page to try and help us avoid redundant threads, and help keep the conversation moving forward? - I really think it might help! - what do you reckon? - Privatemusings (talk) 05:07, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

I trust AGK's judgement, but why not just have him archive things or what not. And if this is only gonna be out there for a month or so, I can't see it being a long term problem. Slim <5% chance it passes, then we just archive it. Otherwise it'll just be a long rambling page with a rejected proposal tag on the front. MBisanz talk 06:34, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
I've just got a feeling that an independent eye may see some redundancies, and structural improvements to the page which would help all of us (like putting similar issues in a similar section). I don't think it's important to worry too much about the chances of this proposal 'passing' - I do think it's important to talk about these issues, and I think some facilitation of the discussion might help a great deal! - cheers, Privatemusings (talk) 07:07, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
I don't mind summarizing, but I don't think the text people's comments should be changed. (1 == 2)Until 15:58, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] WikiExtortion

What the current system is called. MessedRocker (talk) 18:51, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] A simpler proposal

The basic problems with this are:

  1. trying to define who is "public" or "marginally notable" remember we are talking about a range of people notable for different reasons - no definition is going to be satisfactory. A "dead tree" standard is going to hit against the person who has just recently become VERY famous. (Imagine I shoot George Bush on Monday, and then e-mail OTRS on Tuesday to reject a wikibio.) Most of us would agree Angela Beesely isn't public, but what about block buster film producers. We're simply not going to get a workable definition here. And any case-by-case will just look like afd.
  2. The subject asking I've already outlined the problem with this elsewhere. It is open to people trying to manipulate entries "I'll let you keep by bio, but only if...." and on the other hand it leaves the subject having to ask - if we've got a bio that on a not-very-notable subject and it is routinely the target of POV pushing, and hatchet writing, why should we wait until the subject becomes aware of it (when it is already done its damage) before saying "Let's not"

I'd like to push the discussion round looking for a solution that does not (necessarily) involve the subject asking, and does not need us to define "marginal notability" - I'd like a way where it is easier to be rid of troublesome BLPs, but the community alone gets to decide on a case by case basis, what to keep and what to remove. Here's my idea:

Change the deletion criteria for AfD to read:

In the case of biographies of living people, where a number of editors have expressed the opinion either
a) that the biography could cause distress to the subject, or
b) that the biography will be particularly difficult to maintain in a fair and accurate state - due to the poor available sourcing or it being of such low interest that few but biased editors will be willing to maintain it,
In such cases, the closing administrator shall close the debate as keep only where there is a consensus that Wikipedia should retain the article. In all other cases the default shall be to delete the article, or to relist where participation has been low.

The advantages are

  1. We get rid of troublesome BLPs
  2. We don't need to involve the subject at all, or consider their views
  3. We don't end up with the nonsense of having bios of four members of a gang, but none for the the fifth, cos he didn't like the idea.
  4. We don't need any new process or policy, we just use afd
  5. We don't have to define "marginal notability" or "private person" - afd can decide each on its merits
  6. No power is given to individual admins or OTRS people - everything gets an open community debate
  7. We don't end up deleting an article because it falls foul of some arbitrary definition - we consider everything on a case-by-case basis. If you can convince people that this BLP is needed, we keep it.
  8. Daniel Bradts, Allison Stokke, Brian Peppers, Angela Beesly articles probably die on the first afd, and don't become community footballs. Even an AfD on Don Murphy is likely to give us a clear answer - although it may be "keep".

Thoughts?--Docg 18:58, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

I would definitely support this, or even go as far to suggest deletion as the "no consensus default" for all BLPs, as the most common reason for AFD is lack of notability. Mr.Z-man 19:08, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
That would simplify things, but will probably be rejected by inclusionists that will point out it will lead to the deletion of harmless Bios of numerous footballers that contain only their stats. I'm aiming soley at the problematic, more likely to get consensus.--Docg 19:10, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
Is distress to the subject really something we should be considering if the article is neutral, and sourced from previously published reliable sources? This can only take us away from neutrality, we should not be making these judgments. I think that the most of the second criteria, "that the biography will be particularly difficult to maintain in a fair and accurate state - due to the poor available sourcing..." is plenty and it is already what we do. The number of editors editing the page is irrelevant as anyone interested in deleting that page could just as easily remove the offending content. (1 == 2)Until 19:13, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
I'm afraid that response simply denies the problem. What we "currently do" is simply no longer acceptable.--Docg 19:14, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
I have yet to be convinced of that. Regardless, even if I was convinced that we needed to take action, I don't think it would require sacrificing NPOV. We are not writing from the sympathetic point of view. If we are to be neutral then we simply cannot put such undue weight to the position of one person. (1 == 2)Until 19:17, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
Please see User:Doc glasgow/The BLP problem where I have outlined the problem at length. You response shows you simply don't get it.--Docg 19:20, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
Well I can read all that later, it is too long to read now. Regardless of the problem this proposal is to much of a departure from NPOV than I think the project allows for. Like I said, there may be a problem, but we don't need to sacrifice neutrality to solve it.
One solution I have supported in the past is the speedy deletion of any BLP article that has no references, that would get rid of thousands of the worst BLP articles. Unfortunately this has been rejected repeatedly at WT:CSD. (1 == 2)Until 19:25, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
I't is a bit silly me reply to you, as I'd just be repeating the arguments I set down elsewhere that you can't be bothered reading. When you've got time maybe we can continue this. But lack of sourcing is not the only problem here. Most of the really bad OTRS cases do have some sourcing - the problem is that there's a biased editor using the sources and not enough notability for any neutral editor to care about battling the highly-motivated POV pusher. Inclusionsist should "keep this can be fixed" and then move on without fixing it. --Docg 20:10, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
I find it interesting that some people here argue that not covering a person violates WP:NPOV. In fact, there are certainly millions of people who pass WP:BIO but are not currently covered on Wikipedia. Probably we will not be able to cover them even in the next 100 years. A gross violation of foundation issues? --B. Wolterding (talk) 20:04, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
I don't think that not covering a person is NPOV in and of itself -- I think the concern is that if you aren't covering a person because the subject requested they not be covered may violate NPOV, because of course we are now giving greater weight to the subject's POV regarding their own notability.
That said, I think with BLPs, special concerns apply. I am not at all opposed to a policy that basically says, "A no-consensus AfD regarding a BLP, and where the subject has participated in the AfD, should default to the wishes of the subject, rather than automatically defaulting to keep." Yes, we are giving one POV some added weight, but only in a narrow circumstance and (and this is the key) only when the NPOV Wiki way was unable to establish a consensus. I figure, if it's no consensus then it's a coin flip anyway, and we might as well give the call to the subject.. --Jaysweet (talk) 20:10, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Three ideas;

Further to the above - it's important to note that there are now three concrete proposals for addressing concerns over biographies. For me, it's really important to note that these ideas aren't actually exclusive, or even really in tension with each other - so we could choose 1, or 2, or all 3 of them to trial / fully implement or whatever we decide! - Someone wiser than me may come up with the best way to centralise discussion, which is in danger of becoming unhelpfully split (RfC?) - but here are the three anywhoo.....

cheers, Privatemusings (talk) 21:46, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

As my "essay" pointed out - random vandalism isn't the BLP problem, so I can't see how semi-protection helps against the POV pusher, libeller, and hatchet job - all they'll do is create an account. The bigger problem is that Wikipedia is no longer structurally capable of making any of these changes. You'll never get consensus, as too few users have examined the complexity of the problem, and the minute you convince those engaging in the debate, another 50 users will appear and rewind the discussion. Unfortunately, I am extremely pessimistic about any major changes to policy - there is simply no one or group with the influence to take an effective lead. Jimbo once promised the OTRS group to lead a change to the deletion policy for BLPs - but he either forgot or changed his mind - and he doesn't now have the influence (or probably interest) to lead it.--Docg 21:52, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
As your essay points out, false allegations are one of the most damaging types of BLP violations, and a very high percentage of these are carried out by anonymous IPs and new accounts. Semi-protection would prevent many of these (although not all, since some people would register accounts and wait the few days) from ever occurring. The other two proposals listed above are designed primarily to deal with BLP problems, but both of them require the attention of either the subject or the Wikipedia community in order to have any effect. These curative solutions are helpful, since we'll never manage to prevent all BLP violations, but BLP semi-protection is preventative and could co-exist quite nicely with either or both of the other proposals above. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 22:12, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
The bigger problem is that Wikipedia is no longer structurally capable of making any of these changes. You'll never get consensus, as too few users have examined the complexity of the problem, and the minute you convince those engaging in the debate, another 50 users will appear and rewind the discussion.
How painfully accurate... I don't like the WP:BOO proposal, I kind of like yours, but I'm not going to waste my breath because I wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment, and have complained about it in other contexts. "structurally capable" is a nice way of putting it (I always said "too big", but your way is more eloquent ;) ) --Jaysweet (talk) 22:17, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
Not that it matters (as per above), but to reply to SarcasticIdealist -- just because a large percentage of the problem edits come from IPs does not mean that semiprotection would eliminate a large percentage of the problem edits. I am also skeptical that semi-protection will do very much. Now, semi-protection in conjunction with a swifter response to vandal-only and pov-pusher accounts, that might make a difference... --Jaysweet (talk) 22:21, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
I agree, and acknowledged above, that semi-protection wouldn't stop all of the IP/new account malicious edits. It's my hypothesis that it would stop quite a large percentage of them, because I think the profile of the person making those edits is more likely to be "idiot with free time on his hands" than "determined hatchet-type", but there's no doubt that some would slip through. And a swifter response to pov-pusher/vandalism accounts would be nice, but first somebody has to notice what they're doing, and at this point I think noticing flagrant BLP violations is half the battle (as I understand Doc's proposal, one of its advantages would be that it would reduce the number of BLPs that nobody's watching, which is where an awful lot of the serious problems are occurring now. I agree with both you and Doc about the will of the community to do something about this, though, which is why when a proposal like this comes up, I generally chime in in support early on and then stop following it very carefully, since it only induces stress and depression in me for now reason. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 22:28, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] *Fourth idea

    • Use the existing policies. They work very well if people pay attention to the articles. Nothing will work if people don't. Looking at recent major discussions that have caused dissension, they arise when people try to stretch the present rules one way or another. DGG (talk) 23:36, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
      • I actually agree with this more than you'd think. The only thing that I completely disagree with is "nothing will work if people don't", unless by that you mean "nothing will work completely if people don't", in which case I agree. I'd still prefer to give BLP subjects some recourse if they feel that Wikipedia's model is consistently serving them badly - my preferred model for this is full protection upon request - but I'm much more interested in preventing as many BLP violations as possible, which explains my semi-protection hobby horse. Given sufficient community attention, I think BLPs are generally okay (Mssrs. Brandt and Murphy would of course disagree). My real concern is for the BLPs that aren't given sufficient community attention, and I don't think eventualism is likely to be of much comfort to subjects of such BLPs. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 23:48, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
and in turn I agree with you--the problem for many BLPs is indeed lack of sufficient participation, which leaves us open to people with a mission, and ill-considered decisions. It was suggested earlier that we were too large and participation was unwieldy--what we need is to encourage more people to participate in some of the routine discussions. we're not too large, just perhaps a little poorly distributed. DGG (talk) 03:34, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
I don't think it's quite as much about getting people involved in discussions, because once there's any discussion at all we're already more than half way to solving the problem. My concern is more about people slipping malicious edits into articles that nobody's watching very closely. This is the example I usually trot out, because it was added to an article that I do watch, but I frankly think I was the only thing preventing that edit from persisting for a few weeks and getting picked up by some mirrors. I'm new on OTRS, but I've already dealt with three similar cases there, with subjects pointing out malicious but believable edits made to their articles by IPs. I don't want to go the route where we try to prevent that by deleting articles hordes of less notable BLPs - I think you and I are actually on similar parts of the inclusionist-deletionist spectrum - but I do think that problem would be cut down enormously if we'd just semi-protect articles like that.
As to your comments about distribution, I more or less agree with that too. If we could distribute editors' efforts such that every BLP was being watched by two or three active, experienced, and diligent editors, that's all that would really be required. But one of Wikipedia's weaknesses is that there's no central allocation of labour (nor should there be), which rather makes that possibility a pipe dream. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 03:44, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
Ooooo, new idea.
Editors' attention being "poorly distributed" is a great way of describing the problem. AfDs usually work out pretty well, because a dozen or so people will show up, come to a consensus, and move on. Policy changes never happen because they affect everyone, i.e. as soon as you have consensus and start to move forward, you'll attract the attention of fifty more people and you don't have consensus anymore.
The problem with POV and hatchet jobs on obscure BLPs is the opposite of that with policy changes. It doesn't affect enough people, and there is no high-profile clearinghouse like AfD, so you have trouble even getting a quorum of six or seven editors to pay attention. (I have seen the same problem with obscure RfCs as well)
So, what if we had some kind of clearinghouse for obscure BLPs? "BLPs for Attention," or "BfA" or something like that.. and try to get people to pay attention to it? I think that's sort of what the other proposals on the table are trying to do, except to use the AfD process or OTRS to get the attention. That said, the RfC listings don't seem to help that much either, heh, but there may be other problems there.
I dunno, just a thought. To reiterate, I think the AfD process works well because the high-profile centralized listing means you'll almost always get a few pairs of eyes on any given AfD, and often ten or more. The problem is getting eyes in the right place. --Jaysweet (talk) 14:26, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

The existing policies and process are NOT working, if by working we mean ensuring that we don't have libellous, unfair, or hatchey job bios. That's been demonstrated, and the failure is on a massive scale - thousands of bios are marked as POV or unreferenced never mind the ones that are hatchet jobs or libellous and no-one has yet noticed. The scale of the problem is that we simply are not maintaining thousands of bios in a fair manner. Any proposal that amounts to "do nothing much differently, but create a new notice board or something" is just ignoring the problem. It simply shows that the proposers haven't grasped the scale of the problem, or don't think it much matters. It's time to get real. If we want to keep thousands of bios, we need to start mitigating against the unfairness to the subjects.--Docg 16:26, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

When I say that existing policies work where there is sufficient attention, I'm referring not to any attention, but to sufficient attention. Somebody noticing that an article is POV and tagging it as such is not sufficient attention. Articles where there are several talk page posts per day, on the other hand, are almost always in an acceptable, if not optimal, state (I welcome counter-examples). I agree that a new noticeboard is unlikely to help very much, just because I don't think there's sufficient editor attention to go around at this point. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 19:06, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
I quite agree. There isn't enough attention (or the right sort of attention) on thousands of low-notability articles, and that's to do with the nature of the articles. Now "eventually" someone may fix some of them, but eventualism isn't a good ideology for living biographies. This is the essence of the problem, we retain more than we can structurally maintain. We need to like retention to maintenance with BLPs. Which means removing more under-maintained bios.--Docg 19:35, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

I find DGG's analysis, that we are "a little poorly distributed", very interesting. To mention some numbers: As of March 12, we had 13.908 BLPs tagged as lacking any sources whatsoever, 13.740 as containing unsourced statements, 5.475 as needing additional references, and 1.918 as needing third-party references. Of course, these are only the articles being tagged with problems, not necessarily all those having problems, but cleaning up the tagged articles would be a start. If anybody has a workable idea how to re-distribute our resources so that those articles could be improved, say within a year, that would certainly improve the encyclopedia and could mitigate our BLP problems. --B. Wolterding (talk) 19:32, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Attempts to significantly re-distribute resources on a volunteer project never work. People will work on that which interests them. The problem here is that these articles don't interest a critical mass of wikipedians. That's unlikely to change. Any "drive" will fail except at the very temporary margins.--Docg 19:37, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
From a practical standpoint (and from experience with WP:WPNN), I tend to agree; but some have expressed other opinions above, so maybe someone has a bright idea? --B. Wolterding (talk) 20:00, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Oppose on principle

I strongly oppose this on principle. The only criteria for inclusion of a biographical article should be the subject'snotability, and whether we have sufficient reliable independent sources to write a full and balanced biography of them. The subject's wishes should not enter into the equation at all.

The proposal says where the only reliably sourced information may be seen as negative, the subject of an article may not wish to be covered in Wikipedia. - Tough. If it appears in reliable published sources, then we shouldn't exclude it from Wikipedia just because the subject doesn't like it. If the sources in question have been defaming them, then they can sue the authors of the sources. Protecting people's reputations isn't our problem.

The other inherent problem is that it requires us to determine what constitutes An individual who has placed themselves at the forefront of public controversies. This is inherently a POV judgment call, and Wikipedia editors should not be called upon to make it.

We need objective standards. The wishes of the subject should not be taken into account. We aren't here to promote the interests of our articles' subjects; to do so is not NPOV. Our only responsibility to our subjects is to refrain from defaming them - and since all unsourced negative information must already be removed from BLPs as a matter of strict policy, there is no need for any new policy to address this. WaltonOne 21:34, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm not a great fan of trying to define "public figure" principle because it can't be objectively defined. Nothing can on wikipedia - life the sum of human knowledge isn't a "sum". But, your last sentence is departing from reality. Our "responsibility to our subjects is to refrain from defaming them" - absolutely. And it is an absolute responsibility. "since all unsourced negative information must already be removed from BLPs as a matter of strict policy, there is no need for any new policy to address this" - EH? That does not follow from your first statement at all. We might better say "despite the fact that our existing policy requires all unsourced negative to be removed, we are still failing miserably in our absolute duty not to defame people, so there is an obvious need to come up with a solution to address this. We have a duty of care, and we are grotesquely failing to discharge it. 1) Wikipedia is brimming with statements about living people that are wholly unsourced (15,000 BLP at a bare mninimum have no sources - never mind the unsourced statements in the other 250,000 BLPs. 2) Just because something is sourced does not mean the source supports the allegation - who is checking the sources in the 250,000 BLPs? 3) Even if everything is sourced, it is a fallacy to believe that the article is fair, or not highly detrimental. "Nelson Mandela was a South African criminal, convicted of violent crimes and was regarded as a terrorist in South Africa and by many foreign governments. His ex-wife has been accused of dishonesty, extortion, and murder.". All that is true, accurate, and can be verified from legitimate sources. If you think there's no BLP problem to be addressed, please take a look at User:Doc glasgow/The BLP problem or ask anyone who has ever handled OTRS or spend any time reviewing and patrolling BLPs.--Docg 21:51, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
How about kinda flipping it round, Walton - imagine the situation where there's a particular bio which has been edited poorly, and imagine the subject contacts us to complain. Now imagine that someone helpful fixes up the article, and all is well for a while - until another complaint pops in 3 or 4 months later, at which point the individual understandably says 'can you just delete it please' - so an AfD kicks off, and is voted 'keep', and some helpful people fix the article up again, and all is well for a while - until another compaint pops in 3 or 4 months later, at which point the individual understandably says 'can you please just delete it please, because I'm getting really upset here!'.....(rinse and repeat, as the bottles tell us.....)
I'm told this is happening every day, and we need to find an answer urgently. I understand that you're not into this one, so please consider giving some thought to the best way forward you would recommend... thanks! Privatemusings (talk) 22:44, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
worse than that. People vote "keep, this article can be fixed" and then they don't fix it. Or they insist that persistent POV pushing should be reverted, but they are not the ones who will have to monitor it daily for crap - no, the previously libelled subject will have to do this themselves. Inclusionism on problematic biographies is simply power without responsibiluty taken. "We can do this, we arn't breaking any laws, so screw you".--Docg 23:17, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
I'd say it's more like 'we do what we must because we can' - Privatemusings (talk) 23:23, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
OMG, that should be the bad BLP writer's theme song.--Docg 23:40, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
In response to Doc's comment of people saying "keep but fix", but then doing no fixing; perhaps we should empower admins to delete such BLPs if there's a proven track record of the article lacking attention from neutral editors, regardless of the fact it might be attention for the moment (e.g. during AFD attention). Instead of debating how notable somebody has to be get adequate attention by neutral editors, maybe admins should instead look on what's the reality been. If an article's only garnered attention from people with an axe to grind (except during AFD), then maybe such articles should be deleted, even if the article was "fixed" 5 minutes ago during the AFD. I'm not suggesting admins should delete articles just because they're attacked. But, if they're attacked, without proper response (e.g. prompt reverts/protection/blocks), maybe we should take that as meaning they should be deleted. Basically, admit we can't fix some articles, and make the decision of what we can fix based on what's happened, not on what we wish would happen. We already have good policy on what articles should be. We need some policy on what to do when we are unable to do what policy says we're supposed to. --Rob (talk) 04:17, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

I do agree that we need to do something about the 15,000 unsourced BLPs, and about the problem of defamatory material being inserted into existing BLPs - but that doesn't require a new policy, just better enforcement of the existing policy. It is already policy to remove unsourced negative information from BLPs on sight. If the subject of an article sends an e-mail complaining about unsourced defamatory statements in his or her article, we can remove the statements immediately; if the article is entirely unsourced, we can delete it or reduce it to a stub. This is already policy. But if the article is sourced, and the subject of the article wants it deleted anyway, then I don't see why we should. (Furthermore, as regards Doc's Nelson Mandela example, an unfair and unbalanced biography is not defamatory, from a legal standpoint, if all the information is sourced and accurate. It certainly does violate WP:NPOV, but we can't be sued for that.) WaltonOne 07:40, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Walton, you're right that our policies do currently allow us to have great biography articles - the trouble is, they don't seem to be working in practice. I don't think we need to frame this conversation in terms of legal liability - rather responsibility (particularly to the article subjects). You mention that we need to do something, but you kinda then backtrack a bit and don't seem to offer a way forward. Sorry if I'm not getting something - but what do you think we need to do? cheers, Privatemusings (talk) 11:00, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
Walton is making the mistake of assuming that legal liability is the main concern. It is not. Personally, I care more about wrecking the lives, or needlessly harassing a real person than whether the WMF gets sued. Everything that is legal is not necessarily ethical. See my essay for my longer views.--Docg 13:24, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
Everything that is legal is not necessarily ethical. - I fully agree. But there is an ethical dilemma here. On the one hand, as an encyclopedia committed to the cardinal principle of NPOV, we should not, as a general rule, factor in our subjects' wishes. If a large multinational corporation contacted us and asked us to remove any sourced material critical of their business practices because they were losing trade as a result of it, we would not do so; likewise, if a prominent politician contacted us and asked us to remove negative information about him because it was damaging his electoral prospects, we would not do it.
I realise that, ethically speaking, we are more predisposed to be sympathetic to, say, some obscure person who's been the victim of an Internet meme, and had their name dragged through the mud as a result, than to a large corporation or a prominent politician. But, in the end, our sense of human decency is just another POV. We need to apply the same rules to everybody, regardless of what we personally believe to be the ethical approach. We can't make exceptions because of our own moral desire to avoid wrecking a person's life. Either we allow the subject's wishes and interests to be taken into account - in which case we need to do so on all BLPs, including the likes of George W. Bush and Bill Gates - or we don't bother.
Basically, I don't see that, in this field, there is a major gap between the legal and ethical position. Our responsibility to our subjects consists solely of ensuring that the information we have about them is fair, sourced and accurate. If we have an article claiming that "Person X is a paedophile who rapes small children" and this becomes widely known across the Internet, and it isn't true and isn't backed up by any evidence, then this is both illegal and unethical, and he has the right to sue the Foundation and/or the author of the article. But if our article claims that "Person X is a paedophile who rapes small children" and includes several reports from reputable news sources detailing his conviction for multiple child rape, then it is neither illegal nor unethical; if Person X doesn't want this information to be known, that's his problem, not ours.
To Privatemusings: what we need is a stricter drive towards enforcement of current policy. I would have no problem with someone going through all the unsourced obscure BLPs and deleting all of them, with the proviso that they can be recreated if sources are found. I'll do it myself if you wish. But we don't need a new policy, IMO. WaltonOne 13:54, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

The idea that we breach NPOV by not having an article on a subject is bollocks. The suggestion that to allow lower-notability means we'd have to delete George Bush if he asked is also bollocks. Current policy is an abject failure - and if you can't see that then you are simply not getting it. This isn't just about unsourced bios, it is about people dealing with slanders, innuendo, sourced hatchet jobs, - it is about he onus being put eternally on the subject to watch their own bio against slander - since even when we remove slanders we have no means of guarenteeing that they won't appear again next month. This goes way beyond legal liability. Abd the notion that "human decency" offends against npov is actually offensive. Wikipedia is here, as a charity, to improve the world. That will mean judgement calls at times - but if we're not even going to attempt human decency but substitute laws and rules then forget it. All human life can't be reduced to a set of objective rules. As I've said, unsourced biographies are not the only problem, but if you genuinely want to start deleting them, please go ahead. A which google shows me you'll add up to 122,000 articles to your deletion log. see here--Docg 14:24, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Question (re Walton: "We don't need a new policy"): Is it covered by current policy to delete BLP articles which do not cite any sources? If so, that would simplify matters very much. --B. Wolterding (talk) 14:34, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
No, it is not. The current consensus is to remove from BLPs material that is unsourced and contentious or unsourced and negative; there is no consensus to actually delete BLPs (or, really, any article) for a lack of sources unless a good-faith search fails to produce such sources. Black Falcon (Talk) 14:36, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
I agree that a lack of an article is not really a breach of NPOV... However, allowing the subject of an article to determine its content and/or existence is. As for the notion of "decency", it is unfortunately much too subjective to be a criterion for judgment, and I'm afraid that its use as a deletion rationale tends to turn discussions into mostly pointless arguments over morality rather than more practical evaluations of the suitability of an article for inclusion. Black Falcon (Talk) 14:41, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
Are you arguing that because "decency" is subjective, we should ignore it? Sarcasticidealist (talk) 14:43, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
No, I don't think that we should ignore it; however, we cannot rely primarily (or entirely) on it to inform consensus or discussion. Black Falcon (Talk) 05:14, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

For a start, we don't have "objective" deletion standards for anything. Life can't be categorised that way - we work by consensus, that's the sum of individual judgement, not objective criteria. But no-one is suggesting "decency" should be a deletion criteria - that's absurd. What's being suggested is that the motive of wanting to do the decent thing should move us to recognise that the status-quo is needlessly and unjustifiably hurting a lot of people, and so we look for some workable changes that will reduce the harm of masses of unmaintainable bios. I'm not actually sold on consulting the subject, I think we need policies that can work independently of that. But I'm not going to repeat my essay, or the solution I offer at the end of it.--Docg 14:49, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

I read your essay, and the solution. If I understand it correctly, your proposal is basically to reverse the burden of proof (so to speak) on AfDs of BLP articles, i.e. to require the Keep !voters to establish why it should be kept, meaning that if no consensus is established then the default will be to delete, rather than to keep. I don't have a major objection to that idea, but I don't see that it would make much of a difference - most of the thousands of problematic BLPs to which you refer never come up for AfD at all. Your proposal would have given faster closure to a few high-profile and controversial cases such as Daniel Brandt and Angela Beesley, but I don't know that this would have been a good thing, and it wouldn't address the main problem.
I disagree that we don't have objective deletion standards. The basic criterion for notability is substantial coverage in multiple reliable published sources; this is the minimum we need to write a balanced, sourced and verifiable article. I have no problem with the idea that BLPs should be held to a more rigorous standard, and I have no problem with deleting BLPs that are lacking in sources; I do understand that m:eventualism may not be the approach to take with such cases. But the basic criterion must always be the presence of sources. If there are enough sources to write a decent, verifiable, NPOV article, then there is no reason not to have an article. WaltonOne 15:08, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
Here's the important difference. "If there are enough sources to write a decent, verifiable, NPOV article, and there are editors willing to write and maintain that article in a decent neutral way, then there is no reason not to have an article.".
What I've added to your statement goes to the heart of this. If the subject is low-notability then it isn't just that sources may be problematic, it is that there will often not be enough people interested to maintain the article - that's really the key point in my essay. It may well be that a good article could be written and maintained, but whether it will be is another matter. My deletion change wouldn't quite do what you suggest. Firstly it is aimed precisely at the articles that is difficult to maintain - let's make it easier to get rid of this stuff. That's not just about Brandt, indeed the Brandt article doesn't trouble be as it notoriety ensured that it was fairly maintained, it is the thousands of Brandts that are not getting that type of attention that concern me. My proposed change would sort that, because it would be easier to delete such things, and that would mean that over time the notability bar would be raised for BLPs. (Less notable ones would not get keep consensus.) Gradually we'd say, "on aggregate we don't maintain low notability BLPs sufficiently well, so let's only keep the ones we agree we need." As my essay points out - more notable BLPs get more attention, and even if they are problematic are less likely to be the sole piece of internet info on the subject - thus when they "go wrong" slightly less damage is done.--Docg 15:32, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
why should we want to raise the notability bar on BLPs? What we want to raise is the quality. DGG (talk) 15:44, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
I'm interested in reducing the number of harmful BLPs. As I've argued in my essay, these lie at the low end of the notability scale, where they are underwatched, undermaintained and prone to motivated POV pushers being the only person interested. Now, if you've got a better idea as how to reduce the harm BLPs cause, I'm all ears. But the status-quo is not fine, and simply wishing that people would suddenly become interested in maintaining and regularly checking is burying heads in the sand. There's no means of significantly altering what people are interested in. Again, it's all in my essay.--Docg 15:52, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
Doc, I actually don't disagree with much of what you've said. I would be happy to adopt a policy of routine deletion of unsourced low-notability BLPs, without prejudice to re-creation if someone is willing to create a sourced, balanced article on the subject. I also agree that saying "keep and cleanup" in an AfD on such an article, and then not doing anything to clean the article up, is not very helpful.
I think the class of articles we're both talking about here is where the subject just about meets notability guidelines, but the article is a mess and has no sources, and due to lack of attention it is unlikely to get any better; it's also an obvious target for subtle defamatory vandalism. At the moment, such articles are usually kept at AfD, but I would argue that they should generally be deleted, with the proviso that they can be recreated if anyone creates a sourced, balanced version. This seems to be substantially in line with what you're arguing.
So while we have different philosophical standpoints on this matter - and I disagree with your assertion that Wikipedia's goal is to make the world a better place; I'd say its goal is to describe the world how it is, without favour or partiality - I think we basically agree on the solution. And as I said, I have no problem with the adoption of the limited proposal you make at the end of your essay. WaltonOne 16:23, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Maintained or unmaintained?

From the discussion above, I think there's one basic point which we should try to get consensus on: Do we aim at having BLP articles maintained? With maintenance, I mean checking a BLP for accuracy, removing libel, adding missing sources, removing unsourcable statements, cleaning up vandalism and so forth. These are tasks that need to be performed by humans, automation will generally not be possible.

Of course, we cannot guarantee that a particular BLP is maintained. But the question is whether we reasonably expect typical BLPs to be maintained or not. I think there are in principle two distinct options:

  • Maintained: We design our processes, policies, etc. so that most BLPs will be maintained, i.e. are initially reviewed on creation, changes are regularly checked, and problems will be dealt with in a reasonable time frame (regardless how this is implemented on the procedural or technical side).
  • Unmaintained: While everybody can perform maintenance tasks, we do not expect that BLPs are typically maintained. Rather, maintenance occurs when a problem is brought to wider attention (e.g. when someone nominates the article on AfD, or when the subject complains via OTRS).

Judging by the numbers, it seems that we are de facto running in "unmaintained mode" at this time. On the other hand, WP:BLP suggests the contrary ("we must get the article right"). I'm not sure which option really meets consensus, and I appreciate your comments. I'm not saying that only the one or only the other option is possible. But we should choose one of them, state that clearly, and accept the consequences. Setting standards by the first, but living the second, seems like a grand delusion. --B. Wolterding (talk) 08:59, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

That gets to the heart of a good deal of this discussion. thanks.--Docg 10:27, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
Great post, B Wolt - I'd add the note that the these options aren't necessarily solely a matter of choice; it's important also to discuss / consider what 'the community' is capable of systemically (and in my opinion remember sometimes where the road paved with good intentions leads!). I largely agree with the way you sum up the problem - and think it's a great neutral way to get people thinking... cheers, Privatemusings (talk) 10:40, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
A bot could be made to make a list of every BLP page that has not been edited in 60 days, then point out on an IRC channel when it is edited. That will get a lot, but of course not all. (1 == 2)Until 14:19, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
Good summary, B.Wolt! I'm still inclined to support SarcasticIdealist's twin concepts as a way to do this: semi-protect all BLPs by default, and fully-protect upon subject request. --Orange Mike | Talk 17:05, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Rejected, still

Okay folks it is clear that this proposal has been rejected by the community as contrary to our project goals. I suggest we mark it as rejected. A week has passed since it was last suggested to be rejected and it is still rejected for basically the same reasons as them.

However, I am the first to admit that much productive discussion has resulted from this page. Perhaps it will lead to future proposals with a greater chance of success. (1 == 2)Until 14:18, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Policy changes take a lot of time and thought. This is a long term game. I see nothing gained by marking it as "rejected" other than to try to close down discussion. After a week? No, I suspect we'll still be here in several months. THis is a valuable discussion to have.--Docg 14:32, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

I only mention it now because the last time it was suggested this be rejected it was said that we should wait a week. Like I said in my first comment I agree that the discussion is useful. But the discussion is really about how we should address BLP issues and thus should be continued in such a venue.

The discussion on if this proposal should come into policy is all but settled. It is clear that for a variety of reasons that it will not gain wide acceptance, nor do I see any indication of the proposed policy changing. What we would gain from marking it "rejected" would be an accurate reflection of the communities take on this proposal.

I suggest someone setup a more generalized discussion about BLP so that people who are interested in BLP issues, but not this proposal itself, will know that such a discussion is taking place. We certainly do need to continue this discussion on BLP issues, but doing so on the talk page of a proposal that will not pass will only limit the community participation. It is a larger subject than this pages scope, and a more generalized venue that can be properly advertised to the community is needed. (1 == 2)Until 15:19, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

I have to agree this fix to the BLP is still rejected. This doesn't mean the idea of changing our BLP policy is a bad idea, just that this way of changing it is. Doc, take a look at what Carcaroth did at WP:NFCC-C, I'd suggest restructuring your lengthy analysis of the BLP problem to something like that in the Wikipedia space, so that discussion and a central place for referencing all proposals could exist. MBisanz talk 22:02, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
"Not yet accepted" does not mean rejected. Major change is simply unavoidable here, the community's has engaged in ostrich behaviour for far too long.--Docg 22:06, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

It is preposterous to say that a one-week old proposal is rejected. Lawrence Cohen § t/e 23:26, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

"Not yet accepted"? Well, I may be wrong, but I don't think this will ever be accepted. NPOV is sort of a security blanket around here, we don't like to give it up. Looking at the opinions on this talk page I would say that it is certainly rejected now. Consensus can change, but this is rejected today. If you don't want the tag there then fine, but that won't change the facts. (1 == 2)Until 15:57, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

NPOV does not have anything to do with keeping an article. That's a ridiculous argument. The fact is that we need to do something drastic about BLPs sooner or later. The status-quo (or anything like it) is not an option. Maybe this idea won't take right now - but well need to do this or something fairly similar.--Docg 16:02, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Deciding to keep or delete an article is a content decision and as subject to NPOV as any other content decision. Of course deleting an article base the the sole opinion of a person with a bias is a violation of NPOV. That is not ridiculous. (1 == 2)Until 17:11, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

  • I've marked this as rejected. The idea has clearly not caught on or gathered consensus. I suggest putting effort into Wikipedia:BLP subject response as something has to be done — this just wasn't exactly the right thing. Stifle (talk) 11:40, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree, simply refusing the "rejected" tag won't make this proposal any less rejected. It simply reflects the communities feelings on the idea, it does not stop ongoing discussion and if consensus changes then so can the tag. But it is rejected now, and for the last week, and most likely next week to. (1 == 2)Until 13:41, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Semi-protect and article patrolling are better solutions

Semi-protection and article patrolling are far better solutions.

If edit histories could have a "request hide" button to attract administrator attention it would go a long way to keeping BLP- and other -VIOs out of the public eye. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 02:10, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

People who are interested in BLP proposals may have long since abandoned this page. This is a poor venue to propose a new idea unrelated to the WP:BOO proposal as you will only get a very limited set of people who had an interest in this proposal. Perhaps the village pump will get a more abundant and rounded set of opinions? (1 == 2)Until 16:00, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Support

Ideally, Wikipedia shouldn't have ANY articles about non-public figures. Since that's never going to happen, we should at least let non-public figures opt-out of having their private lives smeared all over the internet by Wikipedia. Public figures have the luxury of being able to respond to criticism through the media, non-public figures do not. Funny how no one cares about Wikipedia's ability to harm people's lives until they're on the other end of it. Kaldari (talk) 20:52, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

I wonder whom you regard as a public figure. Most Nobel prize winners or Pulitzer prize winners, are not usually public figures in any real sense. should we eliminate them form the encyclopedia? DGG (talk) 08:16, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
I support this, but there are a few types of people that we need that can optout. How about a Or in a print encyclopedia clause. Zginder 2008-04-22T14:14Z (UTC)
Who is a public figure? How does this differ from our notability standards? Is this decided by consensus, objective criteria, the figure in question, committee? (1 == 2)Until 13:42, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
Like everybody else, I wonder what you mean by "non-public figure"? I see this as a solution in search of a problem; but I may be misunderstanding what you are talking about. --Orange Mike | Talk 16:10, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Rejection?

Can the parties supporting this proposal state what they will consider a rejection of it? ie. how long it must remain open, what ~% must oppose, etc. This moving target business of "Major change is simply unavoidable here" and "Maybe this idea won't take right now - but well need to do this or something fairly similar" is getting rather annoying as trying to fatigue those rejecting into giving into an eventuality of consensus to support, even though I'm seeing less than a handful of people supporting THIS particular BLP proposal. MBisanz talk 16:01, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

According to Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines#Proposals:

A rejected page is any proposal for which consensus for acceptance is not present after a reasonable time period. Consensus need not be fully opposed; if consensus is neutral or unclear on the issue and unlikely to improve, the proposal is likewise rejected.

In other words, there is no need to demonstrate that there is no consensus to reject the proposal; a lack of clear consensus to accept the proposal is enough. While there seems to be broad-based agreement that something needs to be done about BLPs, it seems extremely unlikely that this proposal will be that "something". Black Falcon (Talk) 16:39, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
I would say that consensus is unlikely to improve, and that is why I put the tag there. I got reverted. (1 == 2)Until 16:54, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
Yea, thats what I was thinking, I was mainly asking as things seemt o be running counter to Black Falcon's quote from policy on this issue. MBisanz talk 17:34, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
If it helps, I'll add my voice of rejection to this proposal as well, as it's a fundamentally flawed violation of WP:ENC. Notability should be our sole guideline, imo. As long as we adhere to our other guidelines -- particularly WP:SOAP which is the usual underlying cause of problems in BLPs (he said/she said type "sources") -- I think we usually end up OK. -- -- Kendrick7talk 18:54, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Rejected - keep tag at the top of the page. --David Shankbone 20:11, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Rejected here--and similar proposals on about half a dozen pages elsewhere. Let's return to what we need to do, which is to work on the individual articles which need more general attention for NPOV and sourcing. The discussion has ended in an affirmation of our pre-existing core values. DGG (talk) 02:17, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
I don't really like the concept of such tagging - really because it seems to just act as a stop sign for useful discussion. I say this without prejudice as to 'community consensus' because it's clear that this proposal isn't going to be implemented tomorrow (it should be! but it's ok for it to take more time!) - I'm not sure having the big 'rejected' sign is a good look in the current climate, as we may be unnecessarily heading towards entrenchment (bad, right!). I see less of an affirmation of values here than a worrisome indication that we're still not showing ourselves able to accept, let alone deal with, the problem. It's important, in my view, not just to return to work on individual articles, but to recognise that this approach isn't working well enough at the moment, and the tide seems to me to be coming in. We can ask it to wait (or go back) - but I reckon our ankles are getting wet...... Privatemusings (talk) 02:59, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
Although a discussion about the problems of BLP needs to happen, this is not the way to go. This is a bad idea any way I look at it, and it has been resoundingly rejected by the community. Instead, we should effort to discuss the BLP issue on neutral ground. We don't need this failed policy proposal to discuss BLPs. In other words: BLP discussion is good; "OptOut" is bad. Let's take the discussion somewhere else where it isn't filtered through this failed idea. If anything, I think trying to discuss BLP issues on the page of a failed proposal hinders discussion. Time to move on. --David Shankbone 04:31, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
glad we agree it's good to talk! - where should we head d'ya reckon? cheers, Privatemusings (talk) 06:13, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
WT:BLP is one location, User talk:Doc glasgow/The BLP problem is another. MBisanz talk 06:17, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
More exact: Wikipedia_talk:Biographies_of_living_persons#Reversing_the_AFD_default_for_BLPs. --David Shankbone 06:19, 24 April 2008 (UTC)]]

<-- cool - thanks guys - I'm going to continue to try and drum up support for this proposal - but will see you on those pages too! - cheers, Privatemusings (talk) 06:20, 24 April 2008 (UTC)


[edit] Non-public figures with notable careers

Yeah, I know I'm coming to this after it's rejected now and everything, but I still wanted to advance a little discussion.

To me, the biggest problem with this is it makes it possible for non-public figures with notable careers to delete information for arbitrary reasons; for example, a medievalist scholar who's published a a number of academically important but little-read books. Such a person would not be a "public figure", though their work was quite notable.

But isn't the public figure test (in law, anyway) all about personal information? If we had an article on Jane Doe (medievalist) that might have all sorts of personal information about her family etc., that might be inappropriate for a non-public figure. But if we simply had an article on Writings of Jane Doe (medievalist), I don't see how there could be any "public figure" argument. Compare the "Murder of..." articles for murder victims. Thanks.--Pharos (talk) 00:50, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Reboot!

There's some good discussion in the archive section - and I've heard lots of discussion around the place on this important issue (quick plug for this audio chat which features a very interesting panel discussion on this).

I think it's a good time to reboot the conversation, and would like to remove the 'rejected' tag in the next couple of days to continue to move discussion forwards - I think there's a lot more ground to cover here, and lots of people are piping up all over the place. At this point, I think the tag probably prejudices the discussion, and isn't really helpful.... whaddya reckon? - Privatemusings (talk) 23:46, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

I think you are wrong as there seems to have been consensus that this had been rejected mere days ago. Sweeping all that under the rug doesn't change anything. -- Kendrick7talk 23:53, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
no rug intended! - and I kinda feel that the consensus you refer to looks a bit like a consensus to reject amongst editors who feel the proposal should be rejected (does that make sense?! not sure!). I won't be the one to take the tag off, because I'm clearly in the 'other camp' - but I do think that it should be removed. Maybe the tag is no big deal - but do you see any merit in the perspective that such a tag prejudices discussion? cheers, Privatemusings (talk) 23:58, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
While the "rejected" tag does create a prejudice against discussion, the tag is supported by more than 170K of discussion... The current version is really no different from the version that was amply discussed over the past few weeks. Black Falcon (Talk) 00:09, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
ah, well I certainly wouldn't say that the 170K of discussion really relates to the rejection - but am glad you agree a prejudice is created. Given that prejudice, do you think it's sensible to say that a consensus for such a tag should be established to continue it's presence? - That would make sense to me, and I'm certainly one voice asking for its removal... we'll see how the discussion continues.... cheers, Privatemusings (talk) 00:22, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
I'd like to offer the following quote from Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines:

A rejected page is any proposal for which consensus for acceptance is not present after a reasonable time period. Consensus need not be fully opposed; if consensus is neutral or unclear on the issue and unlikely to improve, the proposal is likewise rejected. It is considered bad form to hide this fact, e.g. by removing the tag. Making small changes will not change this fact, nor will repetitive arguments. Generally it is wiser to rewrite a rejected proposal from scratch and start in a different direction.

Based on various discussions here and elsewhere, I think it's fairly clear that there is broad support that something needs to be done about the BLP problem. However, in my opinion it's equally clear that biographical optout will not be that "something", at least for now. Black Falcon (Talk) 00:28, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
I'm glad that there's a growing feeling something will happen, and I look forward to seeing how things go from there (as and when....) - the quote you drop in is great too, and probably worth discussing further. I think we'd agree that this proposal is somewhat of a 'big deal' - as in large(ish) cultural shift here at wiki. It's also a proposal with quite far reaching implications both for us as a project, and of course the real people currently affected by our articles. It doesn't really seem accurate to me to present such a large issue as having been fully considered at this stage - especially when you consider the prejudicial nature that a rejected tag might have. I'd say that the large shift cultural shift (though a small proposal) probably warrants a significantly longer time period to qualify as 'reasonable' per the above (I'm thinking 6 months?) - are we really sure that we've thought this all through to the point where we're ready to prejudice discussion towards an outcome? if not, then maybe we can look at how well the tag fits.... cheers, Privatemusings (talk) 00:38, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Privatemusings, I disagree with your tactics here. You don't archive consensus and "Reboot" discussion because a week later. Please don't be disruptive. --David Shankbone 00:45, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
ah - I think we need to slow down a bit!! - couple of quick things... I didn't remove the tag, and I hope you don't think that I did (I'm sure you've read the above, where I say quite clearly that I won't be the one removing it!) - actually I hadn't even noticed that Zginder had popped in and returned the page to a 'proposal'. Now you'll also be pretty clear that I think the tag should be removed, and we're really talking about that matter right here - if we can avoid chat about tactics etc. (hey - this isn't a game, right!) - that might be cool, and I'll reiterate what I see as the important question; are we really sure that we've thought this all through to the point where we're ready to prejudice discussion towards an outcome? cheers, Privatemusings (talk) 00:48, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
I think you are the one who is playing games here, and your glib response isn't winning any hearts and minds. We can't even get to a "Default to delete with no consensus" (which I support) passed with this community. Don't be disingenuous. Consensus has not changed in a week, and the OptOut is a crap proposal. What is needed is Semi-protect all BLPs, default to delete, and no Google indexing of discussion pages. Not this turkey. --David Shankbone 00:57, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
I kinda find it a bit hard to follow your thread, David - and you're coming across quite forcefully, which might be part of why I'm a bit unclear..... I don't really like being called glib either - and am certainly not intending to be. I think the ideas you mention (semi-protect, consensus to delete and the google thing) are interesting, but per the below, I'm afraid I can't really see evidence that they're actually helping that much at the moment. Nor do they seem exclusive at all - in some ways all of these ideas are steps in the same direction - each with strengths and weaknesses. I don't think this proposal is crap, or a turkey - I think it's sensible, and overdue... but hey, it's ok to disagree..... cheers, Privatemusings (talk) 01:04, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Support by Libertarianism

The two ideas of Libertarianism are let people do what they what and do let let people harm others. Per the second ideal we should not do harm. Zginder 2008-05-01T23:55Z (UTC)

I think you have some typos in there, but if I get your gist, then it's a catch-22. We either harm are readers by hiding information from them about our subjects, which they trust us as an encyclopedia to provide, or we harm our subjects by providing information about them instead that they don't want our readers to know. I'm on the side of our readers all day long. Librarianism, not some muddle headed libertarianism. -- Kendrick7talk 02:38, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
Its not a bad plan to frame the discussion in terms of trust - and I love the idea of Librarianism! - I think it's important to ask ourselves what sort of librarian we're currently being - there's the kind of soft spoken shy and retiring type who works hard to deliver to you material which is both interesting, and which you can rely on - but I rather feel quite a lot of the stuff we're currently putting out there is rather less than reliable (in fact - I think there are around 14,000 BLPs with unsourced statements?) - given our role in discussing policy is akin to the library management in your analogy - how should we go from here? - I see this policy as helping to control the provision of material which will not only harm living people, but ultimately bring the project into disrepute - and I don't think we should be free to be self-destructive based on an abstract or conceptual idea of a greater good..... (I think I started rambling at the end there - sorry!) cheers, Privatemusings (talk) 03:54, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] A pressing (urgent?) need

Many arguments have been put forth explaining the tensions between this policy and our overall goal. It's interesting to talk about how this proposal bumps up against WP:NPOV or WP:ENC or others - but it's also somewhat tangential to my (and perhaps others) motivations in supporting it. You see there's a really big problem right now, which is that we're really not achieving anything like an acceptable level of responsibility to the subjects of our biographies. The trends in article quality may well be pointing upwards over time - and at some point we may come up with a system which allows us to be confident that we are behaving responsibly enough to publish articles on anyone and everyone who meets certain criteria - but right now we're not there.

The issue of our structural irresponsibility is gonna be a really hard one to address - and I don't think anyone's got the answers just yet - but please do take a look at this proposal in what I believe is its true light - that it's just a step in accepting some responsibility for some of the stuff 'we' as a project are putting out there.

On a tangential note - I guess there's another more 'wiki'ish way to go about this, which might be to create a page where folk can sign up as interested in hearing the subject's wishes in regard to their article (see User:Privatemusings/OptOutNoticeboard) - and folk like the OTRS volunteers can drop some sort of notification should they be contacted and be confident that the subject does want deletion. That at least has the benefit of empowering the many people I see around who are trying to move things in a healthy direction - without recourse to a big 'policy' decision - whaddya reckon? - Privatemusings (talk) 00:15, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] The Tag and this talk page

per the above - I'd love some advice from anyone with a spare moment to take a look on the issue discussed above of the 'rejection' tag on this page - it just seems a little hasty to me (insert an entish 'harumph harumph' here!) - and I'd love to hear more thoughts..... also some advice about archiving would be appreciated because we need to ensure openness and transparency, whilst also enabling the talk page to be functional - so yout thoughts on when / how to archive would be appreicated too! - please check the histories of both this page, and the proposal page itself for a bit of background on who's been doing what over the last little while..... cheers, and thanks for taking a look! Privatemusings (talk) 04:01, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

  • This proposal was, is, and will remain a bad idea. This talk page shouldn't be archived, or summarized, or refactored. It should remain tagged as rejected. How many times must we discuss this before you will agree that this proposal, does not have the comunity's support and will not have it in the forseeable future? Why must you keep trying to push the issue by changing the tag? MBisanz talk 05:08, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
you're coming across as somewhat exasperated, MB - and I hope you can understand that I just think this stuff continues to be worth talking about - and for the reasons I've outlined above, I don't think the tag should remain (I think our tendency to try and 'finish' a discussion quickly is problematic). I also advocate a complete lack of pushing on any issue... which in my book means no tag... now it's not really a big huge deal if others disagree - so we'll see how the cookie crumbles.... ps. my question re : archiving was somewhat inspired by the little note that appears when you click 'edit' saying 'you might like to archive' - and I just wanted some advice on that - again we'll see how it goes... Privatemusings (talk) 06:06, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
  • It is galling that a rejected proposal has its rejected proposal tag removed, its negative consensus archived, and is then "Rebooted" as if just one week ago it was not clearly rejected. We don't let other people decide what we write about - the community decides what we write about. The community should only be using reliable sources to write BLP articles. If a person has a problem with what the sources outside of Wikipedia write about them, take it up with those sources. We aren't original. --David Shankbone 05:51, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
sorry you're galled, David - it's really not the intention to annoy you at all - though I understand that the timing of my suggestion, and Zginder's removal of the tag pissed you off a bit. I've re-read the above, and I hope I've explained why I don't really think that it's a smart move to label anything about this issue as 'clearly resolved' in any way... I just don't think it is yet... so that's my aim in chatting here - to keep things moving forward... cheers... Privatemusings (talk) 06:06, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

If you want an opinion from someone not already involved, I can give you one... I don't like the proposal. At all. The issue is not opt-in or opt-out, it's notable or not notable. If they meet the notability guidelines, they should be in Wikipedia. If they are not notable as per Wikipedia guidelines, they shouldn't be in it. All disagreement about whether an article should exist should be based on that... only. And if an issue you feel strongly about merits additional consideration after it's been rejected, it's not in good faith to re-propose it the next week. --Pesco (talk) 00:22, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] a wiki way forward?

per the section above - I've created a page here where if you would like to register a simple support or oppose you'd be most welcome - and I guess I'm envisioning a sort of parallel system to the emerging 'blp watch' scheme - where people who would like to try and help with the difficult area of not-very-notable-but-have-an-article people can sign up - and p'raps we can build some support for such an idea in this way..? - cheers, Privatemusings (talk) 11:34, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Bad-faith requests

This proposal (which was thankfully rejected) would have been a logistical nightmare for one very important reason--it would have been difficult to determine whether the request to opt out was made in good faith. The textbook example of this is Don Murphy. From what I know about the case, his behavior (i.e., sending armies of meatpuppets to vandalize his article) indicates his request was clearly made in bad faith. It's difficult enough as it is for us to determine whether requests to delete a marginally-notable BLP are actually being made by the subject or someone close to the subject--but considering how sweeping this policy would have been ... Blueboy96 15:25, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

well the proposal actually doesn't really have to take into account the intention or faith of the subject - which actually has the benefit of being quite a 'clean' process, I think - that's certainly one aspect which I think might help the proposal gain ground over time. Privatemusings (talk) 02:08, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
It would be interesting if other media gave its subjects the right to "OptOut" of coverage. With all the pedophilia talk going on lately, I bet a real pedophile like William French Anderson would have like that! --David Shankbone 02:42, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] a 'no rush' long term straw poll

ok folks - after some discussion we've figured out a good spot for a long term straw poll about some of these ideas.... it's located Wikipedia:OPTOUT/Long_Term_Straw_Poll - I'd encourage you to sign up in support, but take a look, and register your position either way... cheers, Privatemusings (talk) 06:18, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] How this works in practice

WikiFur actually does this. Any person we cover may request personal exclusion; by default, it will be granted. If not, a majority of community members feel it is in the best interests of the furry fandom that the article remain. This has works fairly well for us.

Of course, WikiFur and Wikipedia have several differences:

  • WikiFur allows pages on "non-notable" people, as Wikipedia defines them. We do not require references, reliably published or otherwise. All that is required is that there is some material connection to furry fandom and someone - which may be themselves - is willing to write about them neutrally.
    • This means that we have a lot more articles about people - of the ~3000 or so of these, fewer than ten have made it to Category:Furry fandom here. Most are not "public figures".
  • WikiFur is created to serve a specific community, and so tends to avoid hurting members of that community if possible while remaining neutral. Wikipedia serves the world and (to an extent) actively avoids being constrained by social expectations; though it's interesting to note that different languages - and, to an extent, different WikiProjects - may have differing policies.
  • Wikipedia's editors are not all subject matter experts, but are expected to rely on third parties. Conversely, WikiFur's editors often are experts, typically by virtue of being actively involved in/with the subject.
  • WikiFur has over 9000 articles in total; Wikipedia has over a million. (Of course, Wikipedia has more editors, too.)

We have also come up against the question of being an "internet courtroom". Ultimately we see it as an ethical decision that we have the right and the duty to make. It's our website, so we decide how to run it, within the boundaries of the law and our sense of ethics. In practice, we're a lot more compassionate about it than some wikis I could name. Indeed, that's the objective of the policy; we want to help our community, not hurt members of it.

While many WikiFur pages are not backed by references, the debatable cases typically are, such that it is not "the facts" that are in question, but whether or not we should refrain from publishing them. I think this should be the core of any further debate for this topic - unsourced assertions can already be aggressively removed at Wikipedia.

In practice the people requesting exclusion fall into the following bins:

  • The people who are offended at the very idea that someone would be writing about them
  • The people who feel that being associated with the fandom is cause for concern (this is one reason we prefer giving people's fan names unless they also use their real-life names; for some this is not possible, or not enough)
  • The people who are concerned that bad things will be written about them.
  • The people who have had something bad written about them, and want it gone.

The first two tend to go fairly quickly into exclusion, usually because there is no convincing reason for us to deny their request. We try to convince the third group to use the tools available to monitor the page about them, but they will be excluded if they persist. If there turns out to be a good reason for their concern, and it's on a matter of substance, they may be unexcluded. The last group (which is also the smallest) gets active debate before exclusion. We tend not to exclude a page in the middle of an active debate.

Who doesn't get excluded? Mostly people who have harmed furry fandom in some way, such that the fandom considers them a danger and wishes to actively warn others about them. Typically a criminal act would be involved, such as theft, copyright infringement, a pattern of breach of contract for paid commissions, or sexual harassment. Mere "drama" would probably not be sufficient unless it was of a type that caused problems for people (like stalking). And they are very rare - I can only think of a single example for each of these.

You can normally deal with this by moving the truly notable material to other pages. For example, say a person created notable work of literature, but were not otherwise notable, and wished to be excluded - they would have no article, but would be mentioned on the article about the work. In practice this is already done here by redirecting to the article about the work.

Some argued that refraining from writing an article is a violation of NPOV. I disagree with this; it implies that Wikipedia is in violation of its own policies for having written about some people before writing about others. I also disagree with the view that "we can't make exceptions because of our own moral desire to avoid wrecking a person's life." It's the community's website, so it is up to the community to decide whether or not this is a criteria. You are weighing the wish of the many for complete information against the wishes of one person, so the relative amount of damage it does may be a factor.

The end result is that we do have a fair number of people excluded, but not an overwhelming number. I personally get about one request a week, on average, and the other WikiFur admins as a whole deal with about one a fortnight. Many understandably wish to keep the discussion confidential to avoid stirring up any more tracks, but I personally use my discretion about this - if I see a reason that editors would object, then I'll say upfront that they should open a discussion on it or look for some other way of dealing with the situation. GreenReaper (talk) 23:01, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

thanks heaps for this info, Green - I suspect that the levels of such requests would actually be pretty similar here on en, and really I just see this as a small step in helping an untenable situation in the short / mid term..... I think many oppose on ideological grounds, and unfortunately talking about this proposal seems in many ways to entrench those views - feels a bit like a community catch-22 to be honest! cheers though, Privatemusings (talk) 23:26, 18 May 2008 (UTC)
Thank you Green for your detailed explanation, it is an interesting read. However I am still not convinced that this proposal is a good idea and continue to oppose its implementation. MBisanz talk 00:45, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion in June

I'm still keen to talk about this proposal, and still believe that it's a sensible, and important step to take. I'm loathe to arhive this page myself, because it's caused a bit of broo ha ha in the past, but would support anyone who thinks it's a good idea... cheers, Privatemusings (talk) 02:01, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

I, for one, find the idea revolting. People don't get to choose whether coverage exists about them, thus they shouldn't be able to choose whether or not we discuss their coverage here. The only time I could ever think where not including subjects who have received coverage is in instances where they didn't have a choice in getting coverage, and there is already notability discussions on those subjects. Thus, opt-out doesn't really make sense to me. To me, it looks like a really good way to hurt a project to build an encyclopedia project, and a really bad way to improve it. Celarnor Talk to me 03:04, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
My two pfennig is that WP:NPF provides adequate protection to people who are marginally notable. If they are truly notable, then WP:NPOV applies. I would strenuously oppose any version of this proposal that includes people other than those now covered by WP:NPF, though I could see a version of this being appropriate for children who have not chosen to make themselves famous. I'm sort of wondering about Louise Brown, for example, since human cloning will probably happen in the forseeable future and while the procedure is notable, the child isn't. Somedumbyankee (talk) 03:22, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
I see the need for something like this in cases where WP:NPF, and other policies and guidelines, haven't been followed consistently over a period. Here's the imaginary conversation this is intended to address;
real life person : I'm unhappy that my bio has contained lies for ages
OTRS chap / other editor : Sorry about that, I've fixed it up
real life person : So can you stop it happening again?
OTRS chap / other editor : Um, well I could protect it for a while, or semi-protect it
a few months pass
real life person : It happened again, and I'm pretty angry
OTRS chap / other editor : Sorry about that, I've fixed it up
real life person : So can you stop it happening again?
either
OTRS chap / other editor : Well under the criteria at WP:OPTOUT, I could delete it for you, if you don't mind identifying yourself to the wikimedia foundation somehow...
real life person : Okey Dokey, thanks....
or.....(return to the start?)
you get the idea! cheers, Privatemusings (talk) 04:15, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
No, I still don't like it, too easy to game, violates community decision making, etc. MBisanz talk 04:18, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
In real life, this is likely to be exploited by the kind of person who believes he/she is above public scrutiny (there's a member of the British aristocracy who wants us to take down his article, for example, because it includes embarassing things he has said or done (properly sourced), and (in his apparent opinion) that is none of the public's business. --Orange Mike | Talk 04:27, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
would you guys have any ideas as to where the 'or... above should lead, other than back to the start? - I don't really think that's acceptable at all...... Privatemusings (talk) 04:32, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
Watchlists. Recent edit patrol. These all fix the original problem while still keeping content in the encyclopdia. Celarnor Talk to me 06:17, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
I've agreed with perma-semi protection, and banning registered accounts on the first vandal edit, but other than that, iI don't see another "or" issue, than restart the process. MBisanz talk 04:39, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
I know you've been very busy elsewhere, MB (understatement!) - but I wonder if you've any news on the discussions about perma-semi protection? - are we getting closer? I agree it's a good step too..... cheers, Privatemusings (talk) 05:28, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
Mmm, no, my proposal to change the blocking policy to implement quicker blocks on BLP vandalism was widely shot down, and after Doc Glasgow left, all the other proposals appeared to atrophy. I don't know if the change to the default AfD consensus even changed. MBisanz talk 05:32, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
It's hard to keep momentum for any of these ideas! - I'll try and dig through the BLP policy pages, and see where it's at.... cheers, Privatemusings (talk) 05:38, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
The proposal to change the default AfD outcome didn't work out. I left a less drastic version on the proposal talkpage, but it seemed like it had died off by then. Celarnor Talk to me 06:14, 12 June 2008 (UTC)