Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons/Archive 7

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The subject vs. "verifiable source" in BLP.

Here's from today's New York Times corrections: [1]

An article on Tuesday about the struggles of St. Louis in the wake of a population decline misspelled the surname of an assistant professor at Washington University who has been involved in municipal planning projects. He is John Hoal, not Haul.

This isn't the only NYT correction for the day, and every day has a list of corrections for previous issues. Nor is there any reason to believe that these are comprehensive. Anybody who has had any extensive dealing with journalists (10 interviews or more, which for example, I've had) knows that it's rare to see a major article about any subject you know about, which doesn't contain a major error which never goes corrected. This goes for major papers of major cities.

Now, this is a problem. Mr. Hoal may have got his name fixed, but nothing says the NYT had to correct it. If it hadn't, he'd have been stuck claiming his name his Hoal, not Haul, and in a dispute it would (in theory) have been his personal word as a Wiki editor (who has no way to verify his identity), against a well-sourced source like the New York Times. This happens ALL the time. It's not rare. It happens because editors trust overworked journalists who don't fact-check entire articles with article-subjects, and because there's very little penalty to newpapers which make mistakes. There really isn't. Much of what the NYT prints as errors, are designed to suggest to the pubic that they catch ALL errors at this level of detail. Wrong. They don't. Wikipedia policy doesn't really address this unbalance. Changes in this Wiki recently (See the change by WAS 450 recently in the history) suggests they don't intend to. WAS 450, I see you have little experience with being interviewed by the press. Write about what you know, please. Jimbo Wales, YOU have certainly had enough contact with the press to know I'm dead-on right about their general accuracy. Which doesn't somehow magically improve when it comes to information about living persons. So I'd like to have YOUR comment for the record on "newspaper vs subject" fact disputes in BLP issues. SBHarris 16:59, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Both "published reliable sources" (eg New York Times) and experts with a conflict of interest (eg the subject of a wikipedia bio) get stuff wrong. We can't just change properly sourced material every time the subject of a bio says "no, that's wrong." WAS 4.250 18:18, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
Why not? Since the source is the ultimate expert about himself and his own life, he's FAR more likely to be correct than is the journalistic squibbing of your "verified published source." This is one very acute example of the fact that there ARE objective experts on certain subjects, in this world. I'm a objective expert regarding me and my life. Nobody else knows it better. Wikipedia may have a general policy that there's no such thing as objective "truth," but on that, Wikipedia is simply wrong. (Show me the man who says he doesn't believe in objective reality and truth, but who does have a driver's licence and uses it, and remains alive, and I'll show you a liar). Regarding the question of my own expertise on my own life, if it's a question of my honesty vs. somebody else's mistake in print, there are ways to clear that up without resorting to having two more people print the "truth" (something more verifiable or citable). Wikipedia will not admit that, however, because that (again) gets into the sticky question of whether objective "truth" exists, outside of what people print. Which is a damn silly mire to be stuck in, but Wikipedia put itself there, with its own philosophies. I'm not responsible for this foolishness. SBHarris 18:29, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
I'm not sure what you're proposing. We base our articles on sources. It is possible for those sources to be wrong. It is possible that a person to see an article about themself with a mistake and fix it. But it's also possible for a person to see a statement about themself that is correct and sourced, but they just don't want in the article. How would you propose we tell the difference? And to be honest, people do misremember some details of their own life sometimes. There are also differences of wording, where the subject may prefer to use different terms to describe something than the sources use, should we let them write their own "autobiography"? --Minderbinder 18:39, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
Though flawed, it would be a better (and overall more acurate) solution than having other people write a biography about them, without their input or editing. Everything you say about the falability of individuals about their own lives, applies IN SPADES to their falibility in writing about other people's lives. Perfection is not available, so you pick the best alterantive. Autobio is here the best alternative. Autobio upgraded by more objective records is even better, provided that such records are not mere paper re-creations of the flawed processes that produce an autobio (ie, some reporter's memory of a phone interview.). But if it gets published in a big newspaper, you can get exactly that bias. Really, you need to interact with real, live, professional journalists on a few stories to understand just how bad and careless they are about facts, as opposed to (say) scientists and engineers. If you haven't had this direct experience, I really can't educate you about it. SBHarris 18:47, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
So I guess you're just proposing allowing people to edit articles about themselves? And in the case of edit disputes, the subject gets the final say? And what do you propose if the subject writes a biased or inaccurate article, or do you consider that an acceptable outcome. For the record, while people are discouraged from writing about themselves, they certainly can give input on the article talk page, as well as request corrections via a couple other avenues. --Minderbinder 18:57, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
If someone removes information from an article about themselves, claiming that it's inaccurate, I would say to give them the benefit of the doubt. If there's a dispute and the information appears to be well-sourced, well, move the statement to Talk, and figure it out. But keep in mind that newspapers and magazines get stuff wrong all the time. I was just talking to a writer the other day, who'd sent a manuscript to a magazine, and the magazine's editor chopped it around, making it look like the article's author was quoted as saying something which was never in the original manuscript. For Wikipedia's purposes, I agree that if the subject has a reasonable protest, that it's better to not include the information at all, than to possibly be including something that's inaccurate. --Elonka 20:44, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
So following that philosophy, if Bill Clinton went to Bill Clinton and removed all info about Monica and impeachment, saying it's "inaccurate", you'd leave it out? See why that could lead to some pretty bad articles? --Minderbinder 20:50, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
Who is Monica? Bus stop 20:53, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
I bet the article Bill Clinton will answer your question. --Minderbinder 20:58, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
Exactly. There is too much risk of the subjects lying to white wash negative information about themselves. We should stick with the published sources. The subject can publish a rebuttal (even on a blog if that is all they have) and we can cite that along with the original source. If the subject of the article wants to validate their identity (E.g. with a notarized statement) we might be able to include their rebuttal without it being published elsewhere, but that is as far as we should go. Johntex\talk 20:56, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
The notarized statement mechanism should indeed be in place, but isn't. And when it's used, it should trump any single-source journalistic report, since it's one person's word against another's. The situation described by myself and Elonka above is VERY common. Indeed, I would say probably it's the usual case in news articles. SBHarris 21:03, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
It is in place, please see WP:OFFICE. People can contact the Wikimedia foundation with proof of their identiry. Johntex\talk 21:34, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
Nope. Read WP:OFFICE carefully. It's a temporary and semi-emergent action taken where some NPOV has been alleged in regard to some BLP, and intended to fix things until wiki-procedure ferrets this out. But there's nothing in WP:OFFICE to suggest that if the NYT gets the facts of your life wrong, it ever will be fixed, long term. There's nothing in there that promises that you can send them a notarized and witnessed statement, and they'll fix it forever. Nada. Read it again. Quote to show I'm wrong. SBHarris 02:55, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Responding to the "Clinton" analogy: If the Monica story were just breaking, and Clinton went to the article and pulled out all the information saying it was inaccurate, I'd say move it to talk, get a consensus that the sources were reliable, and allow Clinton to state why he felt that the information was inaccurate. If he said, "A magazine misquoted me," I'd give him the benefit of the doubt. But if he was insisting that every independent reliable source was getting it wrong, then I think that would make his claim less reasonable. In other words, I'm saying that if an article subject disputes our information, it should be our responsibility to temporarily remove the information while we triple-check our sources, do our best to hear the subject's reasoning, and ensure consensus to re-add the information, rather than us insisting on keeping potentially false information in an article over the subject's objections. If it's a big enough story, the truth will emerge -- we're not trying to "scoop" the world here, we're trying to get it right, and if that takes time, so be it. --Elonka 21:05, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
We are after what is verifiable, not what is true. We report what others have reported, and we attribute them as our source. They need to go take it up with the primary source, not with Wikipedia. Johntex\talk 21:27, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
Despite this very policy saying that the subject can be used as a source? So if in the above example the subject said his name was wrong on say his own website, you'd wait until the other source changed it as well? One Night In Hackney303 21:30, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
No, I didn't say that. If sources conflict, you cite both sources. Example, "The New York Times said that the chairman of Allerca had been in jail for fraud, though he states that he was actually jailed for "contempt of court" during his trial and that he was later acquitted of the fraud." When reputable sources conflict, we cite both sources. If we have 10 sources to 1, we can generally ignore the 1 source that differs. Johntex\talk 21:34, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

(deindent) I'm not talking about major changes, I'm talking about minor changes. Contrary to what WAS 4.250 says, we can change sourced material if the subject says "no, that's wrong", depending on the nature of the material. One Night In Hackney303 21:38, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, for minor changes that is true. For instance, if the reliable source says that someone has 3 children, and they really have 4, they may not want their fourth child to feel left out. There is no reason for the subject to lie about that. It is not like they are denying negative information or trying to insert positive information. It is a neutral, minor change. In that case we could allow the change. Johntex\talk 21:43, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
If there is a published source where the person says they had 4 children then we can quote that. Otherwise, we might delete the "3" or add qualifiers like "As of (date) (source) claims (subject) had 3 kids". WAS 4.250 00:51, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Suggested Wordsmithing

  1. "The views of critics should be represented if their views are relevant to the subject's notability"
    Change "if" to "only if". Perhaps also clarify that criticism should receive space proportional to its relevance, notability, and the size of the rest of the article -- so a stub shouldn't include any but the most widely-known criticism.
  2. under the section on subjects that are not public figures: "editors should exercise restraint and include only information relevant to their notability."
    change "exercise restraint" to "exercise restraint, keep the article as brief as possible," -- it isn't just about restraint, it is about balance. It's not helpful to include all information relevant to someone's borderline notability, for instance -- include a quantity of information proportional to the notability; else you have a slippery slope where almost any information can be shoe-horned in; in particular, criticisms of a person's life tend to be sticky and to attach to everything they have done.

+sj + 21:13, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Proposed addition to BLP

Jimbo suggested some possibilities for slight changes to BLP on the wikipedia mail list to help with semi-notable people cases and Brandt has come up with a variation that seems to deserve a community evaluation. Brandt's proposal is: "Any deletion request initiated by the subject of a biography would automatically require the AfD "keep" voters to specifically state why the subject is notable under that definition. The "delete" voters need not state anything at all. If the "keep" voters cannot make a reasonable statement, then it does not qualify as a legitimate vote to "keep" but instead is discarded as if that User had never bothered to vote at all."[2] This seems workable to me. I believe it would be an improvement to BLP. 4.250.201.139 11:33, 22 April 2007 (UTC) (User talk:WAS 4.250)

How about re-evaluating this? Crum375 11:57, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Maybe something like this: BLP article deletion voting standards:

  1. If the person is in a standard encyclopedia: Not deleted no matter what the vote.
  2. If the person is legally a public person: Keeping the article is the default and it takes a consensus to delete.
  3. If the person is not legally a public person and all notable encyclopedic non-tabloid claims can not be moved to a single other article: Redirect and the content moved if
    1. 50 % or more vote other than keep
    2. 40 % or more vote other than keep and the subject of the article requests deletion
  4. If the person is not legally a public person and all notable encyclopedic non-tabloid claims can be moved to a single other article: Redirect to that other article and the content moved no matter what the vote.
  5. If the article lacks current BLP standard for existance: Deleted no matter what the vote. WAS 4.250 18:44, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
I think this proposal is unnecessarily complex, relies too heavily on arbitrarily selected vote thresholds, requires us to make legal determinations we don't have the authority or expertise to make, and provides insufficient flexibility for odd cases. —ptk✰fgs 03:11, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Reversing the presumption in favor of retention

I suggested a few months ago that we should simply reverse the usual presumption in favor of retention when it comes to BLP deletions. Jimbo has expressed some support for this on the mailing list. It would be a very simple step forward. For example:

When the biography of a living person is submitted for deletion, whether at the request of the subject or not, the usual presumption in favor of retention is reversed. That is, if there is no consensus to keep the BLP in the opinion of the closing admin, the article will be deleted.

After deletion, any admin may choose to protect the page against recreation and to courtesy-blank the deletion debate. Any subsequent deletion review that fails may also be blanked as a courtesy.

Any thoughts? SlimVirgin (talk) 20:38, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Too easily gamed. Nominate someone with little, but clear, notability, obscure consensus with meatpuppetry... oops, now it has to be deleted. -Amarkov moo! 22:17, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
Articles can be gamed now. With or without the change, people "gaming" articles would focus on the ones that are kind of borderline. This change would help to eliminate borderline articles that right now are generally kept only by default due to messy AfD's. —ptk✰fgs 22:30, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
Amarkov, anything can be gamed with sock or meatpuppets; the closing admins look out for it. SlimVirgin (talk) 23:00, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
I'd need to think about it a little more, but my first reaction is that I like it. ElinorD (talk) 23:04, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
And my reaction after a night's sleep, and after thinking about it a bit more and reading comments here and Jimbo's post on the mailing list is that I like it even more. I'm quite confident that admins would look out for meatpuppets, and would use their common sense. I can't think there's the remotest possibility that this would bring about a deletion of George W. Bush or Pope Benedict XVI. ElinorD (talk) 08:13, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Here's Jimbo's post to the mailing list for those who haven't seen it. SlimVirgin (talk) 23:04, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Do it. Do it. This is all we need. - David Gerard 23:58, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
I agree. I like KISS solutions. Crum375 00:00, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
This will solve many problems. Jayjg (talk) 00:17, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
So Ann Coulter gets ten or twenties cronies to vote to delete her article and it goes? That makes no sense to me. Wjhonson 03:47, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
Admins would be on the lookout for meatpuppets just as they are now. SlimVirgin (talk) 04:09, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
Oppose because as currently proposed George W. Bush would get his article deleted if he wants it so and thus it would be a huge restriction on our ability to be an encyclopedia, SqueakBox 03:52, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
Squeak, with respect, that's absurd. SlimVirgin (talk) 04:09, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
Well okay but my basic premise, that this is not the way to do it, isnt abusurd, SqueakBox 04:13, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
You haven't said why. That someone very powerful could drum up dozens of meatpuppets isn't an argument because they could do that as things stand if they were determined enough, and the closing admin would spot it and discard the votes. What are your other arguments? SlimVirgin (talk) 04:19, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
My first impression is no, I don't like it that much, especially in the typical AfD that doesn't pull in more then 10 folks, and undue weight would be given.. but I don't think Squeak's point holds up, I'm sure that any admin would invoke WP:IAR in such blatant circumstances and ignore "No Consensus=Delete" in certain circumstances. My suggestion is When considering an AfD for an article that falls under WP:BLP that does not have a clear-cut consensus, the closing administrator is strongly encouraged to seek consensus by closing the AfD as no consensus, but immediately relisting the article for deletion, to attempt to seek a consensus on whether the article should be deleted SirFozzie 04:26, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
I'm sorry, but this proposal simply makes no sense to me. If there's an AfD and the consensus is "no consensus to delete", then we delete? "No consensus" means that there is no consensus for a change from the status quo. Deleting is a change from the status quo and deleting "no consensus" results is tantamount to violating WP:CONSENSUS. -- Black Falcon (Talk) 04:30, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
The proposal is to reverse the current default. With BLPs, there would have to be a consensus to keep. If there isn't one, we delete. SlimVirgin (talk)
How can we reverse the default when there is no Wikipedia:Articles for keeping? People nominate articles for deletion ... if no consensus is reached, it means there is no consensus to endorse the nomination to delete. This proposal essentially makes it so that: if there is no consensus to endorse the nomination to delete, then we delete anyway. Huh?! I think this proposed measure is a tad too drastic. I must oppose it. -- Black Falcon (Talk) 07:43, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
I guess this proposal would define for WP:BLP define the "status quo" as being "deleted." For WP:BLP, then a consensus would be required to move from the default "status quo" of "deleted." --Rednblu 18:18, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

(outdent) Agreed, Black Falcon, I am VERY leery of deleting ANY AfD (not speedy/proddish, but an actual AfD) article without consensus. The proposal I made is an attempt to get consensus, one way or the other. SirFozzie 04:32, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I agree with Black Falcon. I think there may be a way of dealing with the odd article like DB but this isnt it, SqueakBox 04:42, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
Squeak, could you say what your argument is? The meatpuppet thing won't wash. Do you have another argument? SlimVirgin (talk) 05:43, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
I believe that the weight should be on the side of those deleting not those keeping to prove their argument when it is established that a spedy is inappropriate and I also think we shouldnt have such a policy only for BLP, ie if you are going to change in favour of deletion not keeping it should be for all articles and should be discussed on an afd talk page, SqueakBox 16:20, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
Umm ... I think that's a little overly hostile ("meatpuppet thing"), authoritative ("won't wash"), and dismissive ("Do you have another argument?"). We're discussing BLP, so let's try to keep this civil. -- Black Falcon (Talk) 07:39, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
Re: << Reversing the presumption in favor of retention >>

This is an excellent and very realistic solution for what I characterize as "too much OriginalResearch in Wikipedia articles about LivingPeople." In my opinion, Wikipedia editors generally have a useful understanding of when a Wikipedia article contains "too much OriginalResearch," and they therefore either try to 1) remove the OriginalResearch or 2) get the article with "too much OriginalResearch" deleted. On the other hand, in my opinion Wikipedia editors generally respect balanced articles, no matter how controversial, if there is minimal OriginalResearch, so I think there would be an expressed consensus to Keep for the articles that we should keep. The one caution, I would say, is that we should ensure that the "measure of consensus" is made on a large enough sample of Wikipedia editors. --Rednblu 05:36, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm under the impression that most biography articles that end in "no consensus" are challenged on grounds of notability rather than original research. -- Black Falcon (Talk) 07:39, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
I think you are right. I was making a tacit assumption that, if there existed good enough ReliableSources that had Verified their assertions so that the editors would not have to do OriginalResearch to create the article, then the person would be already be notable. --Rednblu 18:10, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
  • I like this, too. It is a pragmatic solution to the problem of barely-notable biographies we can't police properly. Guy (Help!) 06:39, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
  • I expect a clear positive effect. Any unexpected results to be dealt with as we go. Should it turn out to be a bad idea in practice, people (and especially opponents of this reversal) will have better arguments and we will go back to consensus deletions. AvB ÷ talk 08:28, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Strong support as a good start. Actually it doesn't solve much as many of the deletion requests from subjects come through OTRS and are confidential. But it is a start.--Docg 08:32, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
This proposal doesn't just apply to subject-requested deletions, but any deletion nomination. In essence, it states that if there is disagreement about an article's suitability for inclusion, it will be deleted. -- Black Falcon (Talk) 09:11, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Do I understand correctly that this is simply reversing the default, and not a blanket policy against BLP? It sounds like me that it just leads to a more efficient process and does not predetermine the outcome. If this is the case, i am all for it. Slrubenstein | Talk 08:56, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

This may be a good idea. But why not just apply it to all articles and start the long-awaited Deletionist Reign of Terror? ;) Haukur 09:18, 23 April 2007 (UTC)


  • Under that frivolity lies a serious point, so those admins closing such debates will need to be very careful. Disagreement about notability (cf. Brandt) would unquestionably not be grounds for a default delete here, since there is source material. I see this applying to those debates which currently default keep because one person says keep and one says delete. If in doubt, relist for greater input. The articles which are problematic, and therefore should be covered by any change in default (which should be on an experimental basis with a review after a couple of weeks or so. Guy (Help!) 10:38, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

This is a good idea. We've seen that a huge percentage of BLPs are unsourced or thinly sourced. We've seen that we have more biographies than we can maintain which leads to undetected vandalism. These problems exist with other article, but biographies of living people are uniquely capable of distressing or harming people. This solution is more easily implemented than an "opt-out" plan. Though "opt-out" has merit it would be difficult to process given Wikipedia norms, requiring confirming the identities of purported subjects, and it would on'y address situations where the subject is aware of the article. By comparison, this proposal uses existing WP systems with only a small shift in how AfDs are handled, and can reduce the number of biographies of minimally notable individuals. -Will Beback · † · 10:24, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Proposed criteria for deletion under the new rule:
  • Notability is marginal or debatable (very few sources, one of a large number of similar individuals, nothing compelling or singular about them - say a generic professor with a reasonable publication list and a couple of texts written, but not claimed to eb a thought leader in their field and not subject of profiles or biographies).
  • Low involvement in debate, excluding single-purpose accounts. If we start deleting Daniel Brandt we will unleash a shitstorm and the backlash will ensure that this proposal is soundly and irrevocably rejected, so if we want the benefits of this proposal we need to use it responsibly and avoid contentious cases.
  • Low bar to undeletion if taken to WP:DRV. Not quite the contested prod automatic undelete, but certainly not the "speedy close valid AfD" level of support for an article subject to a deletion debate.
Yes, this is an attempt to legislate Clue. Guy (Help!) 10:45, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
Question: Would it make sense to define subjects of marginal or debatable notability as: those who are not public figures? AvB ÷ talk 11:53, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
I still have problems seeing how a default delete makes sense (see my comment above starting with "How can we reverse the default ..."). But, if it were to be implemented, I think the structure proposed by Guy is a reasonable and good one. I think it's wise not to apply this proposed change to an AfD where 100s of people have participated and disagreed (then again, I think it's wise not to apply it all, but I digress). If enacted, this should apply more to cases where an article receives very little comment and sees no substantial changes during the AfD (i.e., no additional sources, no cleanup, etc.). However, that makes me wonder ... wouldn't we be better served by just encouraging admins to relist discussions with limited participation? That way, we avoid defaults and instead encourage discussion and (hopefully) improvement. -- Black Falcon (Talk) 16:14, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Overall, I like it. Pros: It's simple to understand, BLPs are an area in which quantity makes it dificult to focus on quality, and the proposal doesn't introduce subjective criteria such as "important" or "public figure". A gray area is: how do we define what is a biography? Articles about people primarily associated with an event or company can often be improved by retitling them under the name of the event or company, one example being the move of Ryan Jordan to Essjay controversy. If I move Jayson Blair to Jayson Blair controversy, nominate it for deletion, and have a no-consensus result, what happens? Kla'quot 16:22, 23 April 2007 (UTC) Overall, I like the idea of erring on the side of deleting BLPs. Giving admins free reign to delete AfD discussions is a really scary idea. Salting should only be temporary for reasons given in WP:SALT.Kla'quot 15:46, 26 April 2007 (UTC) Update: I am switching to oppose for now. I am already seeing articles deleted against the numbers at AfD, which is not always a bad thing. I am seeing a push to have the subject's wishes taken into consideration, which is probably a good thing to some extent. However, I think both of these things are putting us on a trend in which we consider it normal to delete when there is no consensus to delete, and I would like to see where that takes us before adding even more pro-deletion language to the policy. Kla'quot 17:17, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
If it has to do with a WP:BLP in a primary focus, then it would fall under this proposed change, is the way I see it. I would hope that this only be used where there's limited discussion on a living person AfD, and not like, say, the AfD's about he-who-shall-not-be-Named. SirFozzie 16:44, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
I agree with thew principle. To make it more obvious for closing admins, I would suggest we create a BfD (a subset of AfD) to deal with BLPs. If an article is listed on BfDs, the first pass would be to assess if it is a valid BfD (i.e. the Ann Coulter or George W. Bush examples). Only those articles that are low in notability could be listed there. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 16:54, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
One easy criterion to use for notability, which has been mentioned elsewhere, is the existence of the entry on any mainstream hardcopy encyclopedia (and we could list those if necessary). This criterion could be used, as a minimum, to automatically reject such entries into BfD. Crum375
I'm not sure if it couldn't be handled by AfD just with a note that this is under BLP/AfD, and there must be a consensus to keep in such cases. I'm not sure I'd like yet another XfD board, but if it would be simpler for folks that way, I could go along with it. SirFozzie 16:59, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Question. Shouldn't this discussion be advertised at WP:N, WP:BIO, WP:DEL, WP:DPR, and other pages? -- Black Falcon (Talk) 18:36, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes indeed. Why don't you be WP:BOLD and post notes there, or even a synopsis of discussion so far? This thread represents real progress by a bunch of smart people, on a core problem which should have been taken care of, a long time ago. So it's important. I note that there are all kinds of place where Wikipedia policy is discussed. There's a llot of good stuff on Wiki-EN-L, which isn't on Wikipedia itself, but is web-archived, and available to anybody, so it's not exactly secret. SBHarris 18:51, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
I have posted notes at the talk pages of the following pages: Articles for deletion, Deletion policy, Deletion process, Notability, Notability (academics), Notability (music), Notability (people), and Notability (pornographic actors). -- Black Falcon (Talk) 19:47, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Absolutely not. No need has been presented, there's no logical argument for it. --badlydrawnjeff talk 19:37, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
    • Let me see if I understand you correctly. You are saying nobody has presented any NEED to change WP's present BLP policy?? And "logic" has nothing to do with matters of empathy and the golden rule, oh anonymous editor. SBHarris 19:50, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
      • I'm still not really convinced of the need for the BLP policy as is, but certainly there's no need for this sort of change. As for my alleged anonyminity, I suggest taking a gander at my userpage. --badlydrawnjeff talk 20:10, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
        • Appologies. It is on your userpage, but after a long quote, and I missed it. The argument for problems with BLP is succinctly stated by SlimVirgin:

          Let's face it, it's kind of odd that we assume the right to expose a living person to the whims of anyone of any age anywhere in the world, people who don't have to use their real names, don't have to understand the policies, don't even have to be able to spell. It's a lot to ask of that person that they should simply acquiesce and dutifully check their bios every day for the rest of their lives, in case some 10-year-old, or a malicious enemy, has added insults or libel that thousands of people might read before it's fixed, and which Google may continue to distribute anyway.

  • No. While a closing admin can easily disregard the vote of someone who blatantly hasn't edited anything else, there are a number of controversial issues where there are plenty of not-completely-but-mostly-single-topic editors with a strong point of view. Say, for example, the LaRouche movement, the 9-11 truth movement, Scientology, Palestine, and so forth, and so on. If not reaching consensus on an article about a living person means the article is deleted, we will quickly lose all articles about living people involved in these subjects. --AnonEMouse (squeak) 19:52, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
  • This is the best proposal I've seen thus far for dealing with the BLP issues. I don't think that meatpuppetry is a concern either-obvious SPAs can be given little or no weight, as should happen anyway. If it becomes obvious from a DRV that it's possible a consensus exists to keep, we can simply relist. We wouldn't be deleting Daniel Brandt under this anyway, that was a consensus to keep, not a no consensus, so even if this had been in place at the time we'd still have that article. And if someone does go and nominate John Kerry or Bill O'Reilly for deletion, there'll just be an overwhelming consensus to keep and a nice troutslap for the nominator, so no big deal. Seraphimblade Talk to me 19:58, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Oppose reversing the presumption because, in the few cases I've seen that ended with no consensus, keeping seemed to me the right decision. I would like to see a significant number of examples of decisions that would have been reversed under this change, and for which reversal is the correct decision. To make this objective, is it possible to collect statistics of articles that were no consensus, and that then went on to a second AfD? In those cases, how often was the second AfD successful? —David Eppstein 20:00, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Just for reference, can anyone provide some examples of BLP's that recently got "no consensus" at AFD (which would be deleted under this proposal) that are significant enough that they'd be cause for concern about this proposal? --Minderbinder 20:05, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Comment HEY Slim, I am still blown away with how much "imput"/"effect" we/you/i/the foundation gives to the subjects of the bios in here. Everybody, I mean EVERYBODY, should be treated the same, period. Just becaue they don't like or don't want an article we are suppose to do what?? Tough nuggies. As long as we treat each article with care and respect, WHY would we "play favorites" with how articles are dealt with. Libel ect is a whole different ball game and should be/has been addressed it seems. Anyways, carry on --Tom 20:25, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

This sounds to me like a very reasonable suggestion. Unfortunately a lot of articles are kept as no consensus with reasoning that basically is "I'm pretty sure somebody will find references someday, somehow." When Wikipedia was in its infancy, there might have been some justification for such things, but we've come a long way from being that cool new site where anybody can post anything: we are, like it or not, in the line of sight (and consequently, line of fire) of the media and mainstream academia. Playing fast and loose with BLP and verifiability has bitten us on the ass more than once--I speak not only of the obvious Seigenthaler incident but other things just as recently as a couple of days ago. We NEED to start getting serious about how we handle BLPs, and this is a step in the right direction. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 20:39, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I understand the reasoning here, but I don't like this. From my perspective the problem is with the number and pattern of occurance of "no consensus" closures. Many debates are closed as no consensus when a conclusion would be possible, to avoid difficult calls on behalf of the admins, or to clear the workload. I consider this moderately damaging: the community spends valuable times on these debates and deserves a proper interpretation of the outcome. To simply reverse the default would lead to all those articles being deleted, rather than a mere wasteful lack of decision. I would suggest that the goal here should be to avoid "no consensus" closes as much as possible: I would recommend that we try to get the word out to admins that they should avoid no consensus closes in general. I could imagine a rule that says that BLP-related deletion debates (but not necessarily all debates relating to living people) should not be closed "no consensus" (or at least, not until a large number of participants have been heard from) - in other words, BLP debates should be relisted until a decision can be reached. Mangojuicetalk 20:58, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Oppose. Well put, Mango and AnonEMouse. My opposition stems from the following similar concern: we know that a lot of votes don't get a whole lot of participation. And so, it seems to me, that a few folks with strong feelings can cause a "non-consensus", which would then lead to deletion -- i.e., a few folks could have veto power over the existence of any number of articles. That would not be a good situation. -- Sholom 21:14, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

If the presumption is to delete all BLP articles unless there is a Keep consensus on record, what would be the basis to initially create the BLP article in the first place? This just seems to be a way of saying that you are not permitted to create a BLP article in article space until you first get permission through a Keep consensus. We are the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit and requiring permission to create a BLP article is not the wiki way. -- Jreferee 21:23, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

It's not saying that at all, Jreferee. BLPs that no one nominates for deletion will be fine. It's only if nominated that a consensus to keep would be required. SlimVirgin (talk) 21:51, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
What about creating new articles about deleted BLP's down the road? Generally when there's a delete decision, there's a specific reason for deletion and if that reason changes, either by writing a better article, or more sources becoming available, or by a person becoming more notable, an article can be created that addreses the reason for deletion. If an article is deleted by "no consensus" doesn't that mean there's not really a reason for deletion, and isn't that confusing for anyone interested in creating an article? --Minderbinder 21:57, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
My initial post assumed that a BLP article is presumed not to meet Wikipedia process initially. If a BLP article is presumed by consensus to meet Wikipedia process initially, it does not seem fair that one person can change that consensus presumption merely by nominating the article for deletion. Changing the AfD presumption for BLP material seems like a simple thing to do, but I think it eventually will unintentionally result in significant, fundamental changes to areas of Wikipedia not related to AfD. -- Jreferee 22:29, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Not that I agree with this, but what about letting users create BLP articles in user space or some space other than article space and then having an admin move it to article space if there are no significant BLB concerns. Another comment, part of the trouble may be the availability of BLP problem articles through Google. Perhaps Wikipedia could work with Google to keep certain BLP articles from being brought up in a Google search. I don't agree with this either, but just throwing it out there. -- Jreferee 21:39, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I do not agree with reversing the default on AFDs of living persons, however I would support Mangojuice's contention that we are doing a disservice by closing the "no consensus" to begin with. Relist or solicit additional opinions as needed, until the answer is clear. Don't carve out exceptions. -- nae'blis 21:39, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Relist and solicit additional opinions as needed seems to be the best answer since the stated problem is BLP no consensus AfDs and this answer goes directly to the stated problem. Kudos to Mangojuice. -- Jreferee 21:52, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

  • I do not agree with reversing the default on AFD's. The current proceedure is fine, and we should not start carving out exceptions for certain types of articles. Johntex\talk 21:42, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Oppose deleting articles by default on no consensus I oppose the proposal to delete articles which fail to receive a consensus one way or another at afd. I would rather keep borderline, questionably useful articles than delete possibly useful articles that have questionable reasons for deletion. Articles which are borderline keep/delete can and are tagged as such using disputed tags, unreferenced and verification tags, notability tags, etc. The use of such disclaimer tags serves, in my opinion, as sufficient warning to a reader that some or all of the article should not necessarily be taken completely at face value and that some of the article may be disputed. I would rather be VERY sure of deleting an article than deleting articles that may or may not, in reasonable people's eyes, be acceptable. Just my opinion. Dugwiki 22:38, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Oppose - I also oppose changing the way Afd's are handled with respect to BLPs. The current system works just fine, no need to change it in this way. Wjhonson 04:22, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Partial support I'm willing to allow deletion of "no-consensus" BLPs - just because someone created the article, doesn't mean it needs to stay if there are mitigating factors. However, I strongly object to deletion of AFD discussions: those archives may be useful if anyone wishes to recreate the article. YechielMan 16:47, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Oppose - Non-notable BLP are a big problem, but no-consensus AfDs usually represent deep interest in the community about a the notability of a particular subject (in both directions). I think that the community needs a list of these borderline cases before we change policy. This change will not make easier 99% of the work on NN BLPs. --Myke Cuthbert 05:28, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Oppose if the closing admins (if no other editor did so before) deleted all unsoucred BLP junk in the article - if any - and if much is deleted, s/he relists to see what the consensus is to the truncated article, that would solve the problem. Nearly every editor has different standards of notability, and the BLP issues rarely figure into them. Is a CEO of a fortune 500 company notable? Are they all? Is every member of a band that meets WP:MUSIC inherently notable? What about the member of a state or provincial legislative body? OK, is it the same if the state is not in the US/UK/Canada/Australia where lots of WPians live? Is every professional sports person notable if they play in the highest division of their sport? Every Olympian? There are lots of close calls/no consensus that has nothing to do with lack of sourcing, so the proposal is that if we cannot come to a consensus on someone's article then delete it and presumably an attempted recreation will be speedied and notwithstanding WP:CCC, we have a new rule: no consensus cannot change, lovely.... Carlossuarez46 03:07, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Oppose. The only time this would be appropriate is if the person in question requests that the article be deleted. Notability is not asserting some moral status, Hitler was certainly notable, but we are here to offer information to our readers and if it is properly sourced and NPOV there should be a strong presumption of retention. No-one is forced to read the article if they are not interested. NBeale 06:38, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Biographies of Living Persons are tricky ground indeed. I would suggest that erring on the side of caution is always smarter in this case. There should be room for, after some period of time, someone to return with a better article, or a more carefully written one, to gain consensus. In the meantime, delete it. Bielle 23:04, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Section break

This has my Strongest possible support. The objections here that the 'default' action is to easy to fake with outside influence isn't an argument against this proposal... it's an argument to shut down AFD entirely, or an argument in favor of this proposal. I don't personally think AFD default is that subject to influence, but if it is we should certainly make the default the safer action. It's always been the case that default is intended to be the safer action, but the 'safer action' isn't always the same. Based on our experience, it would appear that deletion is almost certainly the safer case for biography articles of low profile people. I don't think this is equal to a rule against creating BLP's in the first place, ... to reach AFD first someone experienced enough with our processes must object. A change in the default is no more a BLP prohibition than is the ability to delete them. --Gmaxwell 21:57, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I also vote to support this. There has been so much chatter going on about the topic on the mailing lists and IRC. It is about time we actually do something instead of talking it to death. Danny 22:07, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Most Wikipedians are not on mailings lists are IRC. For that reason, off-wiki discussion of policy mean little. This is the proper format for discussing such a change, and it should also be published at the village pump at at AfD if the proponents are serious about seeking consensus for such a change. Johntex\talk 22:20, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Give it a try for a few months. We can always review the policy if it looks like it isn't working.--Newport 22:28, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I also support this proposal. Every biography of a living person is a liability for the foundation, in ways that all other articles obviously aren't. If this proposal is implemented it will reduce the amount of them to a manageable level by eliminating those that the community can't decide one way or the other about and leaving the ones that people have reached a consensus to keep. Maintenance will become easier. Picaroon 22:29, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

  • People say this a lot, but it is not true. Libel of Bill Gates is libel whether is occurs at Bill Gates or Microsoft or at Ass to mouth. The same is true for less famous persons. Libel is libel, no matter what we call the article. Johntex\talk 22:31, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Super-strong support! This is a great idea, it's so simple, and it seems to me that it is almost exactly equally vulnerable to gaming as our current system, but at least with possible wrong results being damaging. Mak (talk) 22:32, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I do not support this proposal in general, but would support a modification that distinguished between BLPs where the subject requests deletion and those where the subject has not. In the former case, I think we need a very clear !vote at Afd to keep, so no consensus defaulting to delete is reasonable there. However, if the subject has not requested the article to be deleted I see no reason to treat the article any different from any non-BLP article. --Bduke 23:14, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I support this, as it currently stands, and would also like to see a higher rate of relists in response to this (which will probably happen anyway, but needs to be pointed out). Nifboy 00:45, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Oppose It seems as though AfD is analogous to prosecution in the US legal system. In the courts there is a presumption of innocence and a bar against double jeopardy, multiple prosecutions for the same offense. In the case of a draw there is a continued presumption of innocence which we call a hung jury. At WP we are defending our integrity against errors in judgment, boasting and libel, akin to crimes against our encyclopedic nature. Clearly this is serious, but not to the degree of crime in the real world. Why should we take a more drastic approach? We already give the "prosecution" multiple bites at the apple; I see no reason to make it more difficult to defend meaningful articles against erroneous deletion. --Kevin Murray 01:07, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Support—same reasons as gmaxwell. If there's going to be so much difference between defaulting to keep and defaulting to delete that it deserves outcry, the process is broken. 72.165.205.81 01:36, 24 April 2007 (UTC) — 72.165.205.81 (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.

SUPPORT Anything that makes deletion of semi-notable or questionably notable bios easier. I also wish somebody would create a special "end tag" for bios of semi-notable people (definition: people not in regular paper encyclopedias), which essentially says: This is a bio of a person who may not be in standard works. If the person who is the subject wishes its deletion and has not done so, please enter a request at: xxxx, and the matter will be reviewed. Thank you. Etc. And have a special page for requests of this type ONLY. This, to make it easier for non-Wikipedians surprised by bios about themselves, to rapidly get to AfD, ASAP. SBHarris 01:48, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Strong Oppose per Kevin Murray's points above and AnonEMouse's points way above. All this proposal does is change the threshhold for deletion -- basically allowing admins to delete BLPs at their whim.--JayHenry 07:27, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Admins deleting BLPs at their whim? Great idea, yes please. Put that together with blocking those who create BLP articles and then don't get them featured/GA'd, and we're onto a winner. Wikipedia is part of the big, scary real world and we do have a certain moral responsibility to living persons. Wikipedia suffers from major recentism, anyway. Hopefully this will cut down on the latest-crap-off-the-six-o-clock-news we get every 5 seconds. Moreschi Talk 14:08, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

  • Umm ... I hope this was intended to be sarcasm. -- Black Falcon (Talk) 17:13, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Strong Oppose per my comments (a long way) above and per Kevin Murray, Jreferee, AnonEMouse, and Mangojuice. All this proposal does is to try to forcibly delete articles that the community does not necessarily want to see deleted (i.e., it is in violation of WP:CONSENSUS). Jreferee is right that this is in the spirit of demanding that editors seek premission to create articles. That doesn't exactly go hand-in-hand with the concept of "the encyclopedia that anyone can edit". -- Black Falcon (Talk) 20:20, 24 April 2007 (UTC)


I also strongly support the proposal to require that AfD's for BLPs require clear consensus to keep, per GMaxwell: "Based on our experience, it would appear that deletion is almost certainly the safer case for biography articles of low profile people." These are articles that often have the potential to harm people (and hence Wikipedia itself, given all the time being spent discussing individual cases and the threat of a successful lawsuit), but that do not in aggregate greatly improve Wikipedia, especially if the article is pretty much a duplicate of what can be found on their own website or in a handful of news articles. We're not talking about bios of major politicians or Olympic athletes here; rather, people like a random college professor or someone who popped up in the news, and thus the limited and incomplete sources that are often listed (like newspaper articles, or university bios) are the only ones we can reasonably expect to find. "Not being in a traditional encyclopedia" seems like a reasonable criteria for taking a hard look at any given biography, per SBHarris. We should make removal of such bios much easier, for both the subject and for us. And remember to take the historical long-view here -- if the person really does turn out to be notable in the long run, they'll get an article eventually, no question. Taking an immediatist view helps enforce both systemic bias (since English-language online press only cover a subset of the world's population), weakens notability (since there are effectively two standards -- one for living people with coverage in the accessible recent English-language press, and everyone else) and leaves the project exposed to the threat of doing harm to real people. -- phoebe/(talk) 17:31, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Oppose per JayHenry. Anchoress 21:28, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Example of a problem with this proposal

David Heymann was nominated for deletion because someone thought the subject was "non-notabe", which usually just means the nominator does not happen to care about the particular subject matter. The article says nothing at all negative about the subject, and is well sourced. It has sinced passed GA.

However, the article barely passed AfD. If this proposal were to be implemented, perfectly good information such as this would be lost just because some people want to see it deleted.

The presumption at AfD should always be to KEEP. Johntex\talk 22:36, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean by "barely passed;" the result was keep and rightly so, since notability was asserted (the article getting better as the AfD progressed) - and those in favor of keeping made stronger arguments anyways. (Here is the AfD). So I don't see the relevance of your example. Picaroon 00:12, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
I don't see the relevance either. That wasn't a no consensus close (nor should it have been, it was a clear keep consensus), so even had this been policy at the time we'd still have that article. Seraphimblade Talk to me 00:49, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
As Picaroon said, the article underwent a dramatic expansion during the AfD. It was nominated for AfD on the same day it was created and only very fast work got it to the point of being kept. Had that effort been a little less dramatic, it could easily have been a no-consensus and "keep" by default. The point is that it can already be hard for a new article to pass AfD, even if it is a worthwhile stub. Johntex\talk 02:19, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

I understand the concern of "carving an exception" and the possible unintended consequences of such exception. On the other hand, the current status quo does not serve the project well (to say the least), and putting our heads in the sand will not make the problem go away. A process is needed to address non-notable/partially notable BLPs. We need some sound proposals that may rally some consensus around them. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 03:32, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

That's why I came up with my suggestion (IE, no consensus with little participation=relist to get more participation to determine consensus). I am not happy with any suggestion to treat no-consensus as delete. Gives too much power to the shouters in AfD, IMO. If we can get admins to be harsher to discount WP:ILIKEIT's and WP:IDONTLIKEIT to have real discussion with regards to notability in AfD's (I'm talking about Notability based on what the articles being used as a source say, not the unholy fusion of Notability via articles combined with WP:OR. It's just my viewpoint regarding Consensus, and while I'm not HAPPY with the proposal above, happiness is not a requirement when editing. SirFozzie 03:41, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
I don't think that goes quite far enough. Worse, it will take issues where the community is clearly divided where no clear consensus will emerge and makes us argue about them forever. Not good for anyone's mental health. I fear that with such a process AFD's would just be decided by which side exhausts the quickest. :( --Gmaxwell 03:44, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
How about some broad criteria for which the old AFD rule would apply, and anything failing that gets default delete AFD criteria. I might suggest "a widely published book with the person's name in the title", "holding an elected public office in any country", and "covered in a traditional encyclopedia" as some grounds for "notable enough to make the normal AFD rule apply". I suspect that we could expand my list of external references enough to keep all but the extreme anarchists happy. --Gmaxwell 03:44, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
If any of those three applied, I'd hope that any AfD on them would pretty much be speedily kept.. How about going back to Jimbo's post and instead of stating no consensus=delete, that we do not require the normal "Consensus Supermajority", and that a majority of valid !votes to keep are required (I could see a no consensus at 60-65% for example, if there's a lot of folks and discussion gets heated, I saw a MfD (the AMA MfD) at about 70% "Historical" get a no consensus, for example. Yes, I know Polling is bad and evil and makes the baby Jimbo cry, but I'd say with BLP, perhaps if a simple majority of !votes say it should go, then it goes. SirFozzie 03:50, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
That could work. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 04:42, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
That would definitely require a mechanism for dealing with SPA's, if we're going to make it strictly numeric, but it could work. Seraphimblade Talk to me 04:58, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
It's a LOT of extra work for the closing admin, but maybe put something on the page that "Any Single-Purpose-Account who expresses a desire to keep or remove the article without valid rationales to do so WILL be discounted when it comes to determining the outcome"? It would require the closing admin to check the contribs of !voters to determine SPA. Maybe two or three admins could volunteer to handle BLP type AfD's, or a clerk-like setup like ArbCom and RfArb seems to have? SirFozzie 06:39, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
I'd rather we not change AfD into a vote. AfD ought to be decided on the merits of the article and not on which side can gather the most supporters. Sure, numbers are a part of the closing decision, but by no means should they be the most important part. -- Black Falcon (Talk) 17:15, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
I think that SlimVirgin and Gmaxwell's points are well made. I suggest that we should prioritise working any kinks out of this idea; Wikipedia's profile isn't going to decrease and we continue to acquire articles that we do not maintain. Given that, it would be best if we, as the editing community, can come up with a solution to the problem before one we like less is imposed upon us through circumstance. Jkelly 21:40, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Request clarification

I kind of see the point of this proposal but I was wondering about how much of a problem this actually is. In other words, I'd like to see some examples of articles that would have been deleted under this new method, and examples of why keeping those is causing problems for Wikipedia. >Radiant< 07:32, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

  • I think a better question would be how keeping such articles is in any way good for Wikipedia. The evidence of harm is all around, as just about every time Wikipedia gets involved in a lawsuit or media scandal, there's a non-notable or borderline BLP article behind it. John Seigenthaler, some dead hacker, Daniel Brandt, Barbara Bauer, Wayne Crookes, and others. Examples are all over the place, and I don't see how anybody can seriously argue that such articles are doing any good for Wikipedia's reputation or future stability. What is the point of creating the world's greatest free information source if Wikipedia is eventually sued out of existance? Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 14:02, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
I don't think those are very good examples.
  • John Seigenthaler is an important academic/political figure. The problem with his article was vandalism that didn't get caught.
  • WP:BLP obviously doesn't apply to a dead hacker.
  • Daniel Brandt is a rabble rouser who's going to agitate regardless of what happens to his article.
  • Barbara Bauer went to a keep, not a no consensus. But again, the issue wasn't the deletion, it was the fact that people were using blogs to site slander. WP:REDFLAG.
  • As far as I can tell Wayne Crookes was never nominated for deletion in the first place.
These are all good examples of why WP:BLP is an extremely important policy. But they're not good examples of how lowering the deletion standard is going to accomplish anything. --JayHenry 17:02, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
Strongly agree with JayHenry - you may as well write that this would have resolved the Essjay incident, cured AIDS and reduced global warming. Most of the articles you cited would not be affected by this policy at all. --AnonEMouse (squeak) 17:55, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

[Outdent] Radiant would like to see article which would be deleted under the new process. Have a look at Crystal Gail Mangum the accusor in the 2006 Duke University lacrosse team scandal. She made accusation of gang rape occuring March 13, 2006. By 21 April 2006, 5 weeks later, there was a wiki bio on her, which has expanded ever since. Now, as it turns out, the evidence as of today is she is more victimizer than victim, but that wasn't true when her bio was started in April 2006. At that time, 2 of the team had just been formally indicted for 1st degree rape. There were news reports that the DNA evidence didn't match, but none of them were coming from official sources, and they then had the status of rumor. Under these circumstances, do you think that an AfD on a bio of Mangum-the-victim would have been voted as a "keep"? For that matter, what do you think of a bio of Mangum as a rather sleezy (potential) criminal NOW (even though she has yet to be even charged?). Is this Britannica material? I think it's Jerry Springer/ Nancy Grace material. It all demeans nearly everything it touches. There are lots of stories out there like it, but many of them don't make it into wikipedia. Do you have any idea how many reported rapes there are, each year? And how many of them fail to result in conviction? Do we want Wiki bios following all of these, or just the ones that CNN picks for us? Gag. SBHarris 21:19, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

  • Rape is sick. Some would say war is sick. Some would say politicians are sick(ening). Just because a subject is sickening doesn't mean we should pretend it doesn't exist. So, in response to your question, just the ones CNN picks ... as those are the ones that meet our notability guidelines. -- Black Falcon (Talk) 21:27, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
I'm sorry, but THAT notion IS sick. Wikipedia as super-amplifier for tabloid journalism. Wowie, what a boon to mankind. You can be proud to be spending time on it, yessirree. SBHarris 22:04, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
Uhhhh ... CNN is a tabloid? Are we discussing the same CNN? If we forgo our reliance on the availability of sources to determine what is included and what is not, we must either include everything, include nothing, include things at random, hand over inclusion decisions to mob rule, or hand over such decisions to Jimbo. -- Black Falcon (Talk) 23:31, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
CNN carries plenty of tabloid-quality material, and tabloid is as tabloid does (as Forrest Gump might have said). CNN carried the Duke Lacrosse rape case. And here's CNN's latest on the latest person to accuse William Kennedy Smith of something, thrown out by the judge. [3]. While we're there, take a look at THAT man's Wiki-biography. Here's a guy whose been accused in the past of serious crime and multiple torts, and never been convicted of anything. Since he's from a famous family, he has a target on his back. He spends his days as a physician, helping landmine victims. But because he's from a famous family, the mucky accusations, none of which have been proven, or ever will be, apparently, but all of which are well-sourced (meaning printed in tabloids after being aired in courts), are all documented by Wikipedia. Does this kind of thing make you proud? What makes you think the man deserves a Wikipedia biography of that character-besmerching sort? Maybe the Kennedys and their money bug you and you don't really care what grief any unsought publicity causes any of them, even if they never run for public office? Is that it? SBHarris 00:03, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Alright, let's all do stay civil, contentious though the topic may be. Why couldn't a compromise be achieved here? I don't know that we would have a ton of information about her life before the case, so we probably are providing undue weight by having a "biography" that's really only about a small part of her life. We'll never be able to update it, she'll just fade back into obscurity. So why not simply merge her into the article about the scandal, which is undoubtedly notable, and in which the information on her will be but one part of a comprehensive picture? Why can't we satisfy both sides on this one? Seraphimblade Talk to me 23:42, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

That would satisfy me, but there's one side which will never be satisfied until somebody they know about is profiled by name, and some kind of judgement is passed on them, whether explicitly or (as always here on WP) implicitly. I don't particularly think this judgemental impulse is even at the intellectual level; it goes right down to our social-judgemental primate brains. We need it. And our primitive emotional centers need to work to figure out who to vote off the Survivor Island or American Idol. We'll even pay money to do it! We gossip. When we're not figuring out how to get sex, we're figuring how best to dish dirt. That's what we humans DO. We're not (just) tool-using animals-- long before that, we were witchfinding and blamefinding animals! That's our whole history as a species. Do you think that giant brain behind your eyes was developed by evolution, just so you could finally, after a million years, read, or understand calculus? Bah! It's so you can figure out who's going to backstab you at community doings--- because, unlike reading and calculus, that's the real game which has been going on, all the way up from the African savannah: figuring out social "rep." Thus, I'm under no great hopes that proposals to ban BLP's, which really are like proposing to ban American Idol, are going to bypass tough sledding. Sure, the arguments for BLPs all sound like people are trying to fight for some continuity to Wikipedia. But really, they aren't. Nobody has that much passion for mere continuity, or they'd be wailing just as much as only the first word of sub-subject headers gets a capital letter, and the rest don't. Rather, these biographers and gossipers are simply finding convenient arguments to let them do what they're compelled to do anyway, for very subconscious, but no less deepseated and powerful, reasons. SBHarris 00:26, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Ethical issues aside, I believe that an article about someone who has been all over the news will get a strong consensus to "keep" it at AFD, so would not be affected by this proposal. I repeat my earlier request for clarification. >Radiant< 08:42, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Yes, but perhaps, once the media firestorm dies down, this will help people who've once had had their 15 minutes of fame thrust upon them, to quietly die away and disappear from Wikipedia biography and the public eye, if they like. Is the Britannica to retain bios (of example) on people who were once candidates to have been the father of Anna Nicole Smith's baby (about which topic, there is an entire Wiki devoted, complete with list)? Even if once they were commonly named on CNN, that non-tabloid bastion and exemplar of fine journalism? And BTW, lest you think I jest, the bio of the father, one Larry Birkhead, notable for nothing else, is 5 kB long. There is 10 kB devoted to another candidate, Howard K. Stern-- not the radio jock, but simply a lawyer and Smith's manager. That's more space than Wikipedia devotes to Euclid. Yes, that's partly because we have comparitively little bio info on Euclid, but it's also because there's no shortage of space to put in trivia about Stern. As a civilized and educated person, how can these facts not cause your gorge to rise? Is it not obvious that there's something way wrong with Wikipedia bio policy if Anna Nicole Smith's manager has more biography space than the father of geometry and mathematics? If I can't convince you of the problem, you'll have no incentive to think of ways to fix it. SBHarris 11:30, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
    • I am aware that we are biased towards recentism, but this issue is not resolved by the suggestion to delete biographical articles unless there is consensus to keep them. Precisely because of the recentism, a deletion debate on Euclid is more likely to result in no consensus than a debate on this Stern guy. Rather, a way to resolve this is to strengthen the suggestion that news items belong in WikiNews rather than here. >Radiant< 12:14, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
      • You say:

        Precisely because of the recentism, a deletion debate on Euclid is more likely to result in no consensus than a debate on this Stern guy.

        Answer: I doubt that any debate on deleting Euclid would fail to reach a concensus keep (though my civilization never fails to surprise me on such points--- you might well be right). But for all deep historical figures, Euclid and those less universally known, they tend to be protected from such things by the fact that they are invariably dead. In any case, I'm not pitching this as a solution for all recentism problems, but merely pointing out that it will at least help fix the problem for personalities so recent that they're still up and about, without affecting the dead. It asks us to more stringently evaluate the notability of the living, and that will at least tend to help make up for the bias of the fact that we know more about people we identify as living personalities, rather than mere (dead) historical figures. No, it's not perfect, but it's a step in the right direction, at least as involves human beings. (For other "news," as it becomes "history," there will have to be other filtering steps, as time goes on, to test for significance. Lest Wikipedia eventually come to resemble the house of an obscessive packrat compulsive hoarder, which is filled to the ceiling with stacks of old newspapers which the suffer cannot bear to discard, and which impede all activity until everything stops.)

        And BTW, your name works better in reds, oranges and yellows, than blues. The physics of black bodies works as you illustrate, at the long end of the visible spectrum, but for reasons beyond the scope of this discussion, you'll never see such a thing at the top. Cheers :) SBHarris 12:46, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

  • I don't like the proposal. If you're going to delete articles when there isn't a consensus to do so, then why bother with the kabuki theater of checking for a consensus in the first place? -Hit bull, win steak(Moo!) 16:03, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
  • To answer Radiant's original question, Seth Finkelstein would be complaining less if the proposed policy had been in effect on July 1, 2006. However, I agree that changing how we handle no-consensus closures would probably have little effect. It would be more effective to implement WP:NOTNEWS Kla'quot 07:20, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Use of categories

I would like to see a statement that tells us that the two criteria required for the use of religious and sexual preference categories also applies to actual content in the article. It doesn't make sense that there would be a rule, for instance, requiring a subject to publicly self-identify as a particular religion before the category can be applied, but would not prohibit the insertion of the same information in the article without meeting the same criteria. I am positive that this is the spirit of the guideline, yet since it does not actually state that, I often have to argue with editors who hold that the two criteria apply only to use of categories, not to article content. I am currently involved in an ARBCOM case that is pending acceptance, and if it is accepted, I will ask them to issue a finding clarifying this, since it is a related issue. But I thought it would be better to get this change rolled in by consensus here. - Crockspot 19:52, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Sounds perfectly reasonable to me. We can easily state that Dan Savage is gay, he's said so in his column a thousand times. But we certainly shouldn't be in the business of "deciding" someone's religion or sexual orientation for them, that's up to them. Seraphimblade Talk to me 20:02, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
It sounds reasonable to me too. I'm not sure public self-identification should be the only criterion; for instance, if a reliable source called someone a "prominent Bahai activist" then we shouldn't have to find a quote fom the person herself. But whatever the policy is, consistency between categories and article content makes sense. —David Eppstein 21:27, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
  • I disagree. The reason the rule is different for categories is that they do not allow us to convey nuances of information or to cite sources. In the text of an article, we are able to cite the source. Eg. "OUT Magazine claimed John Doe is a homosexual". A category does not have that same ability to cite sources and let the reader evaluate them as the source of the claim. Johntex\talk 21:48, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
  • I also disagree. It is a fundamental pillar of Wikipedia that we can add properly sourced material; to remove that pillar would leave Wikipedia a very fragile structure.--Newport 22:30, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
    • With proper attribution, yes, we certainly could note any claims of such (so long as such claims can be reliably sourced, are reasonably notable, and aren't just rumormongering). But ultimately, one's religion and sexual orientation are a matter of self-identification. If a lot of sources state that John Doe is a gay Catholic, but he self-identifies as a bisexual Episcopalian, we should state it just that way-"John Doe is a bisexual Episcopalian, though in 1999 Some Magazine identified him as a gay Catholic." If he's never spoken on the matter at all, we should present nothing as fact whatsoever, only as attributed claims-"Some Magazine and the Somewhere Times identify Doe as a gay Catholic." Seraphimblade Talk to me 22:43, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
      • You are pointing at a fine distinction that some of the others may have missed. It is acceptable, if notable and sourced, to cite a third party disclosing that someone is gay or a particular religion, as long as the statement is clearly attributed to the source, and not stated in the Wikipedia editorial voice "John Doe is gay" as fact. To use the WP editorial voice, we need the public self-identification. When you use a category, you are automatically using the Wikipedia editorial voice to say "this person is this". That is different than "Joe Source says that this person is this". As with many issues, Wikipedia must be careful at what it states is a fact, whereas stating that someone else says something is fact is a different matter. Clearly we would need to word this change carefully to convey this subtle difference, and not prohibit the reporting of reliably sourced information. Crockspot 18:09, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia policy and convention are very clear. We write "Statement (ref)", not "According to (ref), statement". Would anyone write "according to the Guinness Book of Records, Jupiter is the largest planet in the Solar System"? If editors wish to change that, this is not the right place to discuss such a far-reaching change.--Runcorn 21:19, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

That's not true at all, and never has been, especially in a case where a statement is unsure or disputed. Here's one example even of non-controversial information being handled, very properly, in this way.

"In 1999 Einstein was named Time magazine's "Person of the Century", and a poll of prominent physicists named him the greatest physicist of all time.[3]"

We wouldn't, and shouldn't, change that to "Einstein is the Person of the Century and the greatest physicist of all time.[3]" Seraphimblade Talk to me 23:46, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

That's a spurious example. The point is that if it is undisputed that someone is say Protestant, we should not say "according to (ref), he is Protestant". If there is a dispute, we should say "His religion is disputed (ref A says Protestant, ref B says Sikh)".--Runcorn 21:17, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Proposal for new BLP process

Perhaps we should have a process to blank a BLP article where the subject of that article asks, the subject of the article has a clear, demonstrated distress over having the BLP article on Wikipedia irrespective of the content, and the demonstrated distress significantly outweighs the importance/fame of the person. Daniel Brandt meets WP:N, but it seems to me that Daniel Brandt has demonstrated distress over the Daniel Brandt article through his numerous pleas on Wikipedia and his importance/fame is relatively small compared to the amount of this demonstrated distress. I don't think that there are that many individuals clamoring to have their BLP article removed and there are even less with such demonstrated distress. For example, Rachel Marsden's position was a request to fix her article to meet WP:BLP, not delete it. To derive such a process, we first need to compile a list of all those desiring to have their BLP article blanked and then review the compilation to figure out the proposed procedure. If interested, please list below all those BLP articles for which the person who is the subject of the article desires that it be deleted. -- Jreferee 00:03, 24 April 2007 (UTC) '

Strongly disagree. The subject's desire should not play into whether they have an encyclopedic entry about them or not. SirFozzie 02:13, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
Strongly disagree. The subject should be able to contact us and have redress over negative information if it is poorly sourced, but they should not have a veto power over whether we have an article or not. Johntex\talk 02:21, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
How are we supposed to evaluate distress against notability? They are two entirely different things. -Amarkov moo! 02:29, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
I don't think there's any way to evaluate levels of distress. However, we can take note of a subject's request about this intrusion into their lives, yea or nay. Surely you can identify with this desire for privacy, since you don't even choose to include your real name on your user page. And it would be the same if we bio'd you and put that you didn't like broccoli, since for all we know, you'd recently told somebody you badly wanted to impress that you loved their cooking after being served broccoli. What parts of a person's life are "negative" or sensitive, and should be available to the world by google, are not something Wikipedians should be deciding. Or their sources, either, for that matter, but we can only control what's within our control. We do have the power to make anything bad in that direction, even worse. So let's be kind, and not. Do unto others, oh anonymous editor, as you'd have them do unto you. SBHarris 02:49, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
The difference between people who have articles and me is that the information there is (or should be) sourced. I can go check to see that someone else said all the information that is allowed to be in BLP articles. Sourced information on me simply does not exist, and anyone who has no sources on them is perfectly justified demanding deletion without this addition. -Amarkov moo! 04:58, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
A claim like that begs to be tested, and I'm just beginning to understand Brandt's point of view when confronted with such statements. Even if it's now true, what allows you to look into your future? I'm sorry to be the one to inform you that you're not above the powers of mortal man, and you're vulnerable to all the same slings and arrows of outrageous fortune as rest of us. The results of which are increasingly well documented and published in our increasingly transparent world. You yourself may be blameless, but in your future may be a messy divorce, a law suit brought against you by crazy people with good attorneys, or you may be victim of a crime, or a loathsome disease, or simply the intensely bad luck of being made to look guilty of a crime you didn't commit. And a dozen others indignities. In all those cases, you may find yourself blameless, yet documentedly screwed. And Wikipedia, once the facts are in any measure public on a small and forgetable scale, may then, under present policy, very well help screw you, on a large and lasting scale. Yeah, I know you can't imagine it happening. That's the problem. Not that it can't, but that you can't imagine it. SBHarris 23:09, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
  • One need not evaluate levels of distress. Distress expressed should be taken and accepted at face value. Bus stop 02:55, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Taken at face value, yes, but then discarded. It plays no part in Notability, Verifiability, or anything else that goes into making articles for an encyclopedia. SirFozzie 02:56, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
  • It plays a part in keeping Wikipedia a compassionate forum, and it "costs" little. Bus stop 03:00, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia is not a compassionate forum, nor should it be one. There are many nice web sites out there for that. Wikipedia should be an online encylopedia that treats ALL articles evenly AND fairly. The cost, imo, would be the equivalent of selling one's soul to the devil for avoiding discomfort. Again, I feel like we are confusing libel issues with notable person's desire for privacy. Anyways, --Tom 12:28, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Yes, we do have to evaluate levels of distress. Distress that you don't get to control all information on yourself should have no bearing, while distress that information which isn't easily accessible is being distributed widely should. And we have to decide how much distress is being caused, because a minor amount of stress shouldn't be able to delete well' sourced information. -Amarkov moo! 04:55, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Every current policy falls into one of the following five categories: 1. Behavioral; 2. Content and Style; 3. Deletion; 4. Enforcement; 5. Legal and copyright: law. This proposed policy would be a new policy under Deletion, similar to Office actions. However, this new process will assume that the article otherwise meets all other article standards, e.g., Neutral point of view, Verifiability, What Wikipedia is not, No original research, and Biographies of living persons. As Jimbo states, "Wikipedia is not here to make people sad" and this proposed policy would address a person's desire to remove Wikipedia's republication of sourced information from Wikipedia's article space. The person's desire would not be enough to remove the article and much more would be needed as described above. Wikipedia:notability means published material, not importance/fame notability. It is the published material, in turn, that imparts importance/fame in the person and this importance/fame presently plays no role in Wikipedia article standards. A person described in only a handful of published materials may meet Wikipedia:notability which means the article should not be deleted via AfD. However, under this new process, the handful of published materials may only impart a low importance/fame. A comparison of this importance/fame could then be made to the person's demonstrated distress. Office matters already evaluate a person's level of distressed to make foundation decisions over articles and there is no reason why Wikipedia could not set up a system to evaluate a person's distress over the existance of a Wikipedia article on themselves. A low importance/fame compared to a great demonstrated distress would allow the article to be blanked under this process, even though the article would/did survive AfD. The power to decide under this process will be in the hands of people other than the subject of the article. Opinions contributed to this proposed new process could be restricted to registered users, administrators, bureacrats, or a selected committee. -- Jreferee 15:01, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Our direction?

IMO we are getting this so wrong. What is wrong with BLP is that it is far too restrictive. We should be making it easier and not more difficult to have BLP articles; otherwise I feel we just follow blindly the DB line without reflection just because we cannot handle him, and we make him the victor in all this. The reality is there are far more people clamouring for a wikipedia article than that minority who dont want an article. DB today said he feels he now has the alleged wikipedia cabal on his side, he has persuaded wikipedia by outing people rahter than enaging in a serious argument to do exactly the opposite of what we should be doing which is making BLP eligibility much greater. And I intend to defend this viewpoint from those who want to restrict the Jimbo goal of the encyclopedia of everything because, IMO, (no attacks intended) DB has got them scared, SqueakBox 02:38, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

I've been pretty heavily involved in the BLP noticeboard since a few days before it was even created, and to be honest, I really don't know a whole lot about Daniel Brandt, nor do I care what he thinks or wants. I also have worked a little bit with Jimbo on BLP issues, and I can tell you that he is very concerned that many BLP articles contain poor sourcing, original research, and have statements that should be removed with extreme prejudice and without discussion. I'm not sure if you've been in the trenches editing contentious BLP articles (like political bios), but there are armies of editors out there jamming every kind of piece-of-crap rumor they can smear a subject with. Without clear and firm rules that have serious concequences that we can use to threaten/cajole/intimidate these editors, we are out there defending the project with our dicks in our hands (forgive the colorful metaphor). Some violators won't stop for anything, but I have found that most, if you can convince them that they are clearly breaking a rule and you WILL see to it that they are blocked for it, will eventually back off, or move on. If we don't have the proper weapons with which to defend the project, then the project is doomed. No one is going to want to read an encyclopedia that is "the sum of all human rumors, smears, and libel". - Crockspot 18:23, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
Very, very well-said, Crockspot. And I agree. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 18:27, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
The biographies you refer to would be of individuals who are famous and probably highly notable. AfDs on such articles would be speedily closed as disruption. This proposal does not apply to such articles; rather, it applies to articles that no one cares about enough to vandalise. In any case, an article that goes through AfD will certainly experience some cleanup ... at the least, contentious statements will be removed. -- Black Falcon (Talk) 20:14, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
Oh please. 'We shouldn't listen to these people because they are scared of Brandt' is a disgusting attempt to attack the credibility of the large number of experienced Wikipedians. It's not like the people you disagree with are saying 'just because'... many people have been making some long, complex, and well reasoned arguments. I find them compelling, you might not, but that doesn't make me wrong and you right. It doesn't make you a tough defender of freedom and me some Brandt pawn. Your statement is amazingly disrespectful and I really hope that you'll retract it.
Sure, Brandt has been a jerk at times, but even jerks made can make a good arguments from time to time and even jerks can be right. I have never approved of Wikipedia as a bizarre experiment in extreme anarchy.... and increasingly, with comments like yours, I think thats exactly what some people are trying to use it for... as they argue that we must maintain articles about people with borderline notability... articles which exist to do nothing but attack, self promote, or otherwise further what appears to be a nearly prurient interest in trivia that some of our more autistic editors seem burdened with. --Gmaxwell 02:58, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
I am happy to listen to anyone's arguments but not necessatrily agree with them and havent actually said I wouldnt want to listen to any good faith editor. Nor do I claim to be right but I am making a reasoned argument. I certainly respect DB but I dont agree with him re the validity of BLP articles. I am certainly not trying to be a freedom defender either just expressing my opiniopn that we are headed in the wrong direction and should be seeking a more liberal BLP interpretation. You might not see any value in DB's article but I honestly do, SqueakBox 04:34, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
Eek. Speaking of retractions, you might want to reconsider your reference to "our more autistic editors," GM. But I agree with your larger point. Maintaining borderline BLPs is a waste of editor time and contributes little to the value of the encyclopedia. As for a "more liberal BLP interpretation," this is contrary to what Jimbo is intimating and the entire direction Wikipedia has been taking for quite some time. Marskell 10:51, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Proposal

  • Add a subset to the BLP noticeboard Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard/Deletion request
  • Possible criteria for requesting a deletion:
    1. Subject does not have a biography published in a reliable source
    2. Subject is the requester
    3. Subject is marginally notable
    4. ++ (other useful criteria)

Process:

  • Add a request to WP:BLP/N/DR
  • Post a notice at the BLP noticeboard WP:BLP/N
  • Post a notice at WP:RFC biography section
  • The review will take the form of an RfC.
  • Main difference with current AfD:
    • Wider participation by editors interested in biographical article, by means of these notices
    • The closing admin will err on the side of caution when closing, evaluating the comments made by the requester and the editors participating in the discussion.
    • If there is a small number of participants after the customary seven days,, the closing admin should extend the review period for another seven days.

≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 15:44, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Looks good, I would prefer straight AfD to RfC, but that's a nit, and a small one at that.. I would add that the closing admin should not be one who participated in the debate (probably goes without speaking, but). Otherwise, I like it. SirFozzie 16:52, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
Article for Removal should be an entirely new process since it gives weight to a personal request of the subject of the article. Since WP:N of a topic is measured by WP:RS, "marginally notable" can be measured by the number of WP:RS available for the article as well as the amount of text those sources devote to the topic. I think this process should assume that the article meets all article standards, e.g., Neutral point of view, Verifiability, What Wikipedia is not, No original research, and Biographies of living persons and that the requestor should demonstrate why the article should be deleted based on reasons other than article standards (something along the lines as "Having this article on Wikipedia has disrupted my life and continues to disrupt my life. I can't eat, I can't sleep, I constantly worry about what someone will post. People I know constantly ask me about what is posted in "my article" and its hurtful to me that I remain accountable in the real world for something posted on Wikipedia. I have met with several Wikipedia administators and they agree that I am distressed over this article." etc. etc. etc.) This process should be rigorous and used only in exceptional circumstances. -- Jreferee 20:15, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm all in favor of a noticeboard pointing to biography AfDs, so interested users can participate, per Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Deletion or any of the many other similar ones. But this can be done without any entirely new process. --AnonEMouse (squeak) 20:34, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

But why not? This will give a clearly signposted place for marginally notable people to state their concerns. No harm done if we are more accommodating than currently. Most non-Wikipedians will not know how to initiate an AfD. Having a Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard/Deletion request page, with an easy-to-use process could be the way. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 00:53, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
Any WP ed. can ask somebody else to place an AfD for them. I'm asked once or twice a week, and so are others. And various people and bots fix up the ones that people do wrong. Of course, a revision in the procedure to have a one-step template as in prod would be very helpful to everyone; I don't think it's beyond wikimedia capabilities. DGG 08:17, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Please explain why AFD is insufficient for this? We already categorize our deletion debates by subject area, one of which already covers people. Interested parties could simply watch that. >Radiant< 08:44, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Do no harm

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

Proposed: The rule of thumb must be "do no harm". Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a tabloid. It is not our job to be sensationalist, or to be the primary vehicle for the spread of titillating claims. We must be confident that the content we carry is correct, relevant, and fairly presented. Biographies of lesser known people or marginally notable people may not always attract sufficient 'eyeballs' to ensure that they remain free from unsourced material. If there is concern that an article is insufficiently 'watched', then it may be necessary to pare the article back to the bare bones of the subject's notability and, perhaps, to semi-protect it.

Removed: "In borderline cases,"

Justification: Do no harm is not optional, in any cases.

Changed: "should be" to "must be".

Justification: Do no harm is not optional. This doesn't mean we don't include negative material, but we only do so where the damage has already been done in mainstream media. We follow. We don't lead.

Removed: "about people's lives"

Justification: It not our job to be sensationalist or a vehicle for spreading titillating claims about anything.

Added: "We must be confident that the content we carry is correct, relevant, and fairly presented."

Justification: Not enough to be correct if it is unfairly presented, etc.

Added: "Biographies of lesser known people or marginally notable people may not always attract sufficient 'eyeballs' to ensure that they remain free from unsourced material."

Justification: Explains why we need to be stricter with lesser known people.

Added: "If there is concern that an article is insufficiently 'watched', then it may be necessary to pare the article back to the bare bones of the subject's notability and, perhaps, to semi-protect it."

Justification: When we go outside what is well known about a person, the chance of mistaken or deliberately misleading information surviving increases dramatically, sometimes with damaging results. See, for example, Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2007-04-23/Wikidetainment. We should cover these people, but we must only cover the aspects of the lives that are notable, so as to be confident that what we are putting in "correct, relevant, and fairly presented". That means not allowing our coverage to be too broad. And in some rare cases, for example, someone both obscure and controversial, then we may have to be more than usually restrictive in who we trust to edit the article.

Remember that what is carried on wikipedia can and has cost people their jobs, got them in trouble with their governments and I don't know what else. Regards, Ben Aveling 22:39, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Try the wording in the policy and see if sticks. I support this. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 00:51, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
Most of these sound fine, but I disagree with "If there is concern that an article is insufficiently 'watched', then it may be necessary to pare the article back to the bare bones of the subject's notability." If an article is well-sourced and NPOV, there is no reason to pare it back. If an article is is insufficiently watched, removing information from it doesn't prevent libel from being inserted into it. Semi-protection, however, does help.
If something needs to be removed from an article to make it BLP compliant, remove it. If you think it's on too few watchlists, watch it. If it's constantly vandalized anyway, semi-protect or protect it. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Kla'quot 07:07, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
"The rule of thumb must be "do no harm"." is too strong. The point is that "in borderline cases" the harm done is an important consideration. But we are an encyclopedia first and have many articles people claim are harmful and wish to censor. We are not a censored encyclopedia. But in borderline cases, harm should certainly be taken into account. By removing "in borderline cases", you have utterly changed the meaning. It is unacceptable. WAS 4.250 12:09, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
"If there is concern that an article is insufficiently 'watched', then it may be necessary to pare the article back to the bare bones of the subject's notability and, perhaps, to semi-protect it." Protection yes. Deleting valid encyclopedic material because someone is concerned it is insufficiently 'watched'? No way. We are an encyclopedia first. WAS 4.250 12:09, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
An encyclopedia is not a collection of old newspapers. As I pointed out above, Howard K. Stern, famous mainly for being a suspected father of Anna Nicole Smith's child, has more bio information on Wikipedia than Euclid. But Smith is now dead, and Stern was not the father. Yet nothing changes about his bio and Euclid's unless we change it. Try not to make Wikipedia an embarrassment for our entire civilization. SBHarris 12:54, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
I think we should remove the "in borderline cases" part - I see WAS's point, but non-borderline cases should also do no harm -- here, harm being defined as defamation or libel, not just printing negative material. I do think the part about removing material if a page is insufficiently "watched" is shaky. Perhaps it should say "If there is concern that an article is insufficiently 'watched', then it may be necessary to pare the article back to a state where it is totally sourced and written neutrally, and, perhaps, to semi-protect it. Mangojuicetalk 14:05, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
Disagree. It's not at all clear that "harm" is consistently defined as libel. It is all too often defined in BLP cases as printing negative material, regardless of its truth. Also, I think if our entire civilization is looking for things to be embarassed about, I humbly submit it should worry more about wars, famines, diseases, and extinctions; whether or not Wikipedia has an article about Howard K. Stern should come rather low on the list. --AnonEMouse (squeak) 16:05, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
  • But I can't do much about wars, famines, extinctions. And as for disease, while my dayjob actually involves medical innovation, it's all more intractable than fixing a bad WP policy. BLP may not be important as landmines or poverty on the general scale of bad things about the world, but at least this is something I can more directly help fix. So let's get at it. If it's important enough to argue about, it's important enough to find a solution for, before somebody else does it for us. This is probably the single thing that makes Wikipedia look most bad, to the world. The rest of Wikipedia's problems, when they occur, are at least transient. If Wikipedia was the U.S., present WP:BLP would be our Iraqi policy. Fix it! SBHarris 19:55, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
It is always necessary to do pare the article back to a totally sourced, neutral state. Whether it is watched is irrelevant. Kla'quot 16:24, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
I think that the "borderline cases" here refers to the fact that in the US at least, the laws are different for public and non-public figures. A lot of our BLP articles are subjects who don't fit the legal definition of a public figure, and some are even non-public minor children. Sooner or later our handling of these topics is going to screw us over, far more than it has already. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 16:25, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree with WAS 4.250's sentiments here. The current wording needs clarification though. The "do no harm in borderline cases" intention of WP:LIVING is a different concept from "Don't use tabloids as sources." How about, "When determining whether information about a private person is already public, in borderline cases the rule is, 'do no harm.' Kla'quot 16:24, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

I am not in favor of the "do no harm" proposed policy section. The primary focus of Wikipedia should be to provide verifiable referenced information on the subject and not to "avoid doing harm" by providing apparently accurate published information that might or might not be embarassing to the subject. There are already strong policies in place that say all information in Wikipedia articles should be properly cited, and so uncited rumors should be removed from articles under currently existing policy. I agree with the original nominator's sentiment above that "Wikipedia should follow, not lead", but only in so far that following implies we are using previously published information. If the information is verifiable and referenced and appears to be relevant to the subject of the article then it should appear... period.

I also do not like the "vote counting" language in proposal number 2. Wikipedia deletion discussions should be handled by rational debate on the merits, not by vote counting, and so policies should not refer to "50% or more" or "40% or more" of the "votes". Editors express their reasoning and it is up to the admins to decide which side of a debate is correct.

Obviously we should react quickly to correct misinformation at the request of living people in their Wikipedia biographies, but requests to remove properly cited, verifiable and relevant information should not have much weight. Dugwiki 17:38, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Relevant to what?

Relevant is the key word. Do you mean relevant to the article's topic, or relevant to the article's topic's notability? I assume the later. If so, then I don't think we do disagree. But were we to take the former position, then we would be taking chances with other people's lives for no real return. Apparently true but off-topic facts are the most likely to turn out false in damaging ways, and they don't add encyclopedic value. When something isn't obviously relevant to the subject's notability, it should come out. Regards, Ben Aveling 12:21, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
I mean relevant to the article's topic. Relevant to "the topic's notability" means very little, in my opinion, but "relevant to the topic at hand" is important. Obviously information that isn't relevant to the article's topic as a whole can be removed as being irrelevant to an encylopedic discussion of the subject. And I disagree with the sentiment that including well-referenced verifiable information that is relevant to a topic is "taking chances with people's lives". People make their own lives - the published, accurate and relevant information about them does not. Dugwiki 15:32, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
I oppose sweeping statements that anything controversial must be "relevant to the subject's notability." If it's been published in a secondary source such as a newspaper, it is one of the things making the subject notable. Where are we supposed to draw the line here? Hugh Grant is notable for his work in acting, but does that mean we can't mention the Divine Brown thing because it's irrelevant? As with any article, due weight is what's important. Kla'quot 15:43, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
Hugh Grant is a public figure. Even so, when we discuss the incident, we present just the relevant facts, and we present them fairly: "he was arrested in Hollywood for indecent conduct with a prostitute, Divine Brown, in a public place[5]". If you want to know what position they used, you can follow the links. There are exceptions, but in general, people are notable for specific reasons and stuff outside that just isn't encyclopedic. This isn't a change in policy. Policy already says "include only information relevant to their notability", and that "Presumption [is] in favor of privacy". Regards, Ben Aveling 22:27, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
OK, I see what you mean. Yes, Hugh Grant is a public figure and I forgot you are referring to a section that applies to non-public figures. Kla'quot 05:37, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Wikilawyering note added for PR

I recommended this policy to a pile of people who aren't normally Wikipedians (on blogs, etc). The whole thing reads beautifully and sets out our best practice in a way the world needs to know ... except that "Exception" section, which sticks out like a sore thumb. So I added a note about its provenance. This was strictly for purposes of enhancing our public relations to the outside world - David Gerard 17:09, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I think the Exception section doesn't go far enough. BLP certainly doesn't completely apply to user pages, think about its main clause: "Editors should remove any contentious material about living persons that is unsourced, relies upon sources that do not meet standards specified in Wikipedia:Verifiability, or is a conjectural interpretation of a source." Applying that to user pages, we should be removing all user boxes on otherwise anonymous users pages claiming university degrees, religious affiliation, nationality ... heck, the part on my user page where I claim to be a mouse... --AnonEMouse (squeak) 17:25, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
I have removed it pending better wording and clarification. To make the first obvious point, User:HappyGirl78 or whatever is not a "living person," but an internet handle. Marskell 17:48, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
I'm the one who added the section. I didn't add it in response to a piece of Wikilawyering; rather I added it after someone posted on Wiki-en that BLP can't possibly mean that it literally applies to every page, of which administrative actions are just one of the obvious exceptions. University degrees on your user page, etc. are of course other exceptions, but I didn't feel I could get consensus to put those in. (I later also noticed that the policy claimed that the user pages restriction came from Jimbo, but when I examined the Jimbo quote it didn't mention user pages.) I discussed it on Wikipedia_talk:Biographies_of_living_persons/Archive_6#Exception needed and while some people didn't like it, I think most people believed it is at least harmless.
And all internet handles are ways of identifying living people. To say that statements about User:Ken Arromdee are not actually about a living person because Ken Arromdee is a living person but User:Ken Arromdee is just a handle, is ridiculous, and is wikilawyering of a worse kind. Ken Arromdee 18:12, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
I do not think we need an exception as worded. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 19:00, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
I can live quite happily without it. I think I recall the message in question, and it struck me as a piece of wikilawyering ... Fairly obviously that would be autobiography, not talking about third parties. And talking about yourself on your user page is appropriate. - David Gerard 19:05, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
There are two problems:
First, I think there's a difference between writing a policy that misses a couple of rare edge cases, and writing a policy that misses cases that happen tens of thousands of times. I think the latter is a very bad idea, but it's essentially what we've got here.
Second, while this may be wikilawyering in the sense that not a lot of people will actually say "you can't call me a sockpuppet without a reliable source", that's one end of a spectrum, and some people are literal-minded enough that they'll go much farther on the spectrum than I feel is appropriate. Making it clear that the rule is not to be interpreted literally at least discourages this sort of behavior, even though it's not ideal. Ken Arromdee 21:41, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
The problem is that not thousands of words could make someone that obnoxiously robotic act enough like a human to pass the Turing test. You can't cluify the clueless by adding more rules - David Gerard 11:09, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Some external discussion of this

I've been following discussion of this elsewhere, and the general feeling there is at least disappointment. I have to say that on one level I agree with them.

Right now there's substantial cause for someone who gets stuck with an unwanted Wikipedia biography to take the Seigenthaler option and head straight for the courts. And it's especially so for someone whose notability doesn't begin to approach public figure levels. It's not just that an article can have false/hurtful statements; it's that it's wide open to have such statements inserted at any time by anyone. And no subject of such a biography is beholden to Wikipedia's processes. Whatever the responsiveness of those processes, they are Wikipedia's problem, not the world's problem; nobody makes a commitment to participating in those processes by simply existing.

We can expect people to say, "I don't give a fig about your procedures; supervising your editors is your problem, not mine." I don't think this is being addressed. Mangoe 18:37, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

By elsewhere, you mean WR, right? Just want to make sure on that.. I think that to appropriately address your concern, WP would no longer be "the encyclopedia that anyone can edit". Whether that's a good thing or not, is for the reader to decide, but I don't think that it can be fixed without blowing up WP and starting over. SirFozzie 18:50, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
Bah. Wikipedia was never the encyclopedia where anybody could edit by doing anything they wanted, without responsibilities. Which vary already from topic to topic. Some articles require sign-in's NOW, for example. And there are other rules. Pedophiles can edit, for example, so long as they don't self-identify as pedophiles. "Anybody can edit" doesn't mean "anybody can take anything they like as subject." Making BLP a place with extra rules is not going to make the whole place come apart, unless that was your gig to begin with (messing with BLPs of people not in standard works). In which case, I say "too bad." Try birdwatching or history. SBHarris 19:49, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
Well, Wikipedia is already the encyclopedia that not everyone can edit all of, so the commitment to that principle is not absolute. And it shouldn't be, unless one is willing to give up having an encyclopedia at all in order to preserve everyone's right to edit any part of it. There seem to be a lot of people here who presume that the breadth of Wikipedia's coverage overrides essentially anyone's desire not to be discussed in public. But many people-- and I'd number myself among them-- would hold the mere creation of a Wikipedia about themselves as a form of harassment, because it draws attention to them; and outside of Wikipedia, nobody has to assume good faith. Mangoe 19:50, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Another proposal

Noting Doc's comment in the deletion debate for Jeffrey St. Clair, I would like to suggest a variant of the {{prod}} tag as follows:

It is proposed that this article be deleted as a biography of a living individual which does not cite its references or sources.

If you can improve the article by sourcing it, please edit this page and do so. You may remove this message if you add reliable independent sources. This template should not be removed without first sourcing the article.

The article may be deleted if this message remains in place for 14 days. (This template was added: 13 June 2008.)

If you created the article, please don't take offense. Instead, please improve the article so that it is acceptable according to the policy on biographies of living individuals.

Nominator: Please remember to notify the author(s) of this article via their user talk page using:

{{subst:prodwarning|Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons/Archive 7}} -- ~~~~

WP:BLP article, unsourced, marked as such for 14 days, quietly deleted, no fuss, no mess, and undelete on request with the proviso that the tag be replaced on restoration, giving the interested parties a further 14 days to fix it. What does the panel think? Guy (Help!) 19:11, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

I like it, the only question is do we put this ONLY on BLP articles that have no sources entirely, or if the article is at least partially unsourced? SirFozzie 19:26, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
I know I fear this, but I can't pinpoint why. --badlydrawnjeff talk 19:41, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
Do you fear it because of the "reliable sources" can of worms? --Abu-Fool Danyal ibn Amir al-Makhiri 19:52, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
I hadn't thought of that part, but it certainly doesn't help. Let's say, just for example, Stephen King has no sources and gets tagged. No one fixes it, it's deleted in 14 days - if someone else recreates it, still without sources, does the clock reset? What if an article has sources, but they're not inline sources? What if someone contests the tag based on this? --badlydrawnjeff talk 19:56, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
I'm not sure that this adds anything to the basic WP:PROD and WP:BLP combination. If an article doesn't assert much notability, it can be quietly PRODded, and will go. If someone's notability is unsourced, the item can generally be deleted per BLP, since the fact that makes you notable is usually controversial enough that we require a source for it. So what does this add? --AnonEMouse (squeak) 20:01, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
I think it's a good idea. SlimVirgin (talk) 05:20, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
I dislike the idea. It seems to unnecessarily add another level of bureaucracy to Wikipedia ... this one on a 14-day cycle. If a BLP article has no sources and I can find none in a 1-2 minute online search, I just tag it with {{prod}}, bookmark the page, and wait for it to be improved within five days or deleted thereafter. -- Black Falcon (Talk) 06:17, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
  • To answer some of the above: no independent sources should be the benchmark. If questionable sources are added, they will of course be removed anyway per the policy as it exists. Yes, it does add something to the existing deletion mechanisms, in that an article which strongly asserts notability but without sources is likely to get "keep and clean up" indefinitely at present. Add a PROD tag, it can be removed by anyone, they can tweak the article wording a bit or just remove it, but without fixing the lack of sources. It's not bureaucratic, PROD is just about the least bureaucratic process we have, it does not require creating a deletion debate page and adding that to the day's log and getting people to chip in, it is a very lightweight process. What this should deliver is the fixing of a pressing problem (unsourced biography) in a timely manner. Guy (Help!) 06:39, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

A similar proposal to this was floated earlier - it's still a very damaging idea.

Consider Category:Senegalese politicians. All very notable, important sorts of people. About half of the articles are unsourced, generally stubs.

Now, yes, we obviously can find sources for articles on all the prime ministers of Senegal. That's not the issue. The issue is that there are very few editors working in this area - often not enough to handle a wave of PRODs on their articles. It's an area of high importance to the project and low participation. To add a rule that allows for deletion in this area makes it far too easy to overwhelm these vital areas with deletions and gut our coverage with no attention to whether or not the articles are actually erroneous.

BLPs and sourcing are a problem, but they need a far more subtle solution than this. Phil Sandifer 12:39, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Discussion of Acceptable Reference Sources

I am somewhat new to this process, so please forgive if it has already been discussed or if this is the wrong place for discussion. It has come to my attention somewhat by chance that there are large number of articles which have reference sources where the reference source in question has a specific agenda against the BLP. After a great deal of searching various WP articles I have noticed a disturbing trend of sites like Media Matters for America and Media Research Center being used as primary sources for criticism against a specific person within their BLP with the result being definate POV criticisms of these articles. It has been generally regarded that these references are acceptable since they do not represent blogs or specific OR by an individual which is then published on WP, however I have the following problem with these types of groups.

  1. Their sites read like blogs.
  2. Their information appears to be largely OR. They compile segments of audio, text, and video from various sites and provide opinion. While not viewed to be traditionaly OR, the fact that their information is self-published as news without going through traditional journalistic standards or any kind of peer review it is largely opinion. They draw conclusions from their opinion and form conclusions in a research format. Their opinion and research is not peer reviewed, nor is it normally published outside their site.
  3. Their sites have specific agendas to cast a disparaging light on well known idividuals.
  4. Their sites usually have specific political ideologies which further bias their POV and as a result have no objectivity.
  5. Agents of these sites (or perhaps just people with a similar ideology) use WP as an outlet for their agenda.
  6. Articles which fall victim to these types of attacks are easily open to libelous claims from the person, plus the article reads like a tabloid gossip page.
  7. Articles like these give credance to the thought that WP is biased and has no objectivity.

I propose that references from sites like these be held to a higher standard, not be used as the primary source for a critical review of a LP, and be limited to actual notable criticism. Also, after reading the preceding sections, I believe that this approach could also help solve some of the other issues currently affecting BLP articles within WP. Arzel 02:16, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

I am not familiar with those two sites specifically, but I can address some of the points you raise:
  1. WP:OR does not apply to external sources. Such sources are expected to conduct original research and arrive at original conclusions. The restriction on original research extends only to Wikipedia.
  2. Information from POV sources may be acceptable only if it is attributed directly to those sources rather than presented as fact. Essentially, the difference is between writing Tony Blair is the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and a servant of Lucifer (Thatcher 2004) and writing Tony Blair is the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and, according to Thatcher (2004), a servant of Lucifer. The first sentence fails to make a distinction between a fact and a normative and/or unverifiable claim.
  3. We really can't preemptively stop people from using Wikipedia as a place to air their political opinions. We can only take appropriate action when it occurs (e.g., discussing with the user, requesting administrator intervention, and/or taking the issue to dispute resolution).
However, your suggestion that such sources be held to a high standard and be limited to notable criticisms is one that I doubt anyone would oppose. Just out of curiousity, could you provide an example of such an article? -- Black Falcon (Talk) 03:56, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
  1. So if an external site does OR without any peer review to arrive at a biased point we are to accept it anyway, even if it is potentially libelous or slanderous? I'm sorry, but that is an invitation for disaster. I don't see the distinction between a non-journalistic group performing OR and an individual performing OR.
  2. I agree that is a good distinction to make perhaps additional clarification could be made for contentious issues specifically dealing with criticism directed at the BLP for the primary purpose of disparaging the individual.
  3. I agree, but it appears to be difficult to follow through on this without going into mediation when the viewpoints are particually strong and the negative criticism particually verbose.
I was hoping to find two articles on either side of the spectrum. Bill O'Reilly and Keith Olbermann will suffice, and since their feud is particually contencious, and probably not really of encyclopedic fact they are good polar opposites (of particular note is that the BOR article has it's own article just for criticism). Unfortunately the Olbermann article is not as extreme as the O'Reilly article, but I don't have that much free time to find a good opposition to the O'Reilly article. Additionally, just to clarify, my point is not to eliminate POV sites, but to limit them somewhat in order to reduce some of the criticism that many BLP articles seem to have. Arzel 22:19, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
First, let me address your first point. There is nothing slanderous or OR about stating that "According to X, Y is a philanderer." That sentence simply attributes a controversial claim ... it makes no judgment as to the claim's accuracy and is in no way an endorsement of the claim. If a publication lacks editorial integrity (which seems to be the issue here), then we cannot use it a source for facts. We can, however, use it as a source for claims made by that publication. That said, I agree that POV sources should be used with extreme care, particularly with regard to the content that is attributed to such sources (wording is very important in such cases). If possible, POV sources should of course be avoided ... but that's not always practical. I also agree that when X's criticism of Y is not important to Y's life and/or reputation, they should usually be removed. If there is significant opposition by other editors to such an action, then further scrutiny is probably needed. -- Black Falcon (Talk) 05:08, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
Not necessarily; "According to X, Y is a philanderer" can be a problem because it means that we accept that there is a reasonable probability that X is reliable in this claim. It leaves doubt, but it introduces uncertainty. Regards, Ben Aveling 21:37, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
Personally, I think MMfA should be handled using the reliable sources guideline in BLP which states that negative material from self-published sources should not be used at all. We should demand that there be third-party, reliable sources included with any partisan site's statements, such as those by MMfA. Kyaa the Catlord 05:11, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Blanked or deleted

Clayquot, I restored that AfD pages may be courtesy-blanked, or deleted if there's inappropriate BLP material on them, per Jimbo's comment, because we do as a matter of practise already do this. SlimVirgin (talk) 05:19, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

(Edit conflict, not a reply to SlimVirgin) The following has twice been inserted into the BLP policy page this evening: "[AfD pages may be] deleted if there was inappropriate commentary." This is an opinion Jimbo expressed once. He has deleted AfD pages a grand total of three times, by my count.
I personally think that courtesy-blanking is sufficient 99% of the time. Deleting community discussion pages should only be done in very extreme cases, such as libel in edit summaries or edits containing privacy violations. Even if some edits are downright illegal, deleting only the offending edits, not every edit made to a discussion, is a better solution. If we delete every page that once contained inappropriate commentary about a living person, there will not be much of Wikipedia left. What is the consensus on deleting AfDs? Kla'quot 05:21, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
Admins decide whether to blank, delete/oversight edits, or delete/oversight an entire page depending on what's on it. This seemed to be what Jimbo was saying in the comment you linked to. SlimVirgin (talk) 05:34, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
Yes, admins decide whether to delete pages and we have policies on how they are to use this privilege. The last time I checked, "Edit history contains inappropriate commentary about a living person" is not a speedy deletion rationale. Does anyone think it should be one?? Kla'quot 06:08, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
I don't see the problem. If SlimVirgin were trying to insert "must always be deleted", I could see that you'd say we need to get consensus. But Jimbo has said he believes that AdDs "should be deleted in all cases where there was inappropriate commentary". He has done it himself, and other admins have done it. So we don't need to get a consensus saying that it "may" be done. ElinorD (talk) 07:26, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
Yes we do, per Wikipedia:Argumentum ad Jimbonem. Kla'quot 06:14, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
That doesn't apply here, because we're not saying Jimbo said he thought they should be deleted, therefore they should be deleted. We're saying Jimbo said he thought they should be deleted, he has deleted them, others have deleted them, therefore they may be deleted. I think that's only logical. ElinorD (talk) 05:37, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Our opinions are probably not far apart here. I'm not saying these pages must never be deleted. I'm saying that it is not our usual practice to delete AfDs for the sole reason of "inappropriate commentary." For the rare occasions when AfDs have been deleted, the reasons have not, to my knowledge, been stated publicly. I think these occasions are rare enough for IAR to suffice; we don't need instruction creep. Kla'quot 05:44, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Bad idea. Blanking may be tolerable, but deletion simply is not because all users can find that information relevant to discussions. --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:54, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
Blanking is sufficient for anything short of personal attacks occurring on the discussion page itself, in which case redacting/refactoring is appropriate. I can envision no situation* worthy of deletion a community discussion page. -- nae'blis 20:43, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
  • WP:OFFICE is not my vision, so this statement does not encompass such extraordinary measures. -- nae'blis 20:43, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

So a one-thousand word article on George Bush can be blanked if a vandal adds "is an ass" to it? The wording leaves the door open to that impression. Wjhonson 03:20, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

This section is about blanking closed AfD discussions, not about blanking articles. Kla'quot 05:25, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

The recent "or deleted if there is inappropriate commentary" addition does not have consensus, so I will remove it. I understand that some AfD pages have been deleted in the past, presumably under WP:ATTACKPAGE or WP:IAR, and for these unusual circumstances IAR will continue to suffice. We are certainly not deleting AfD pages whenever someone says "vanispamcruftisement." Kla'quot 05:25, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

It certainly does have consensus; this is what admins do, and this page describes best practice. Please leave it alone. SlimVirgin (talk) 06:04, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Clayoquot, what you are playing at now? SlimVirgin (talk) 06:07, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
(Edit conflict and I'll ignore your inflammatory question) Under what circumstances do admins do it? Please give examples and/or specific criteria. Simply repeating "we do it" and "it's best practice" is not convincing. I am seeing no evidence of consensus either on this page or elsewhere. Kla'quot 06:10, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
I'm not sure you should ignore my question. My experience of you and your BLP editing is such that I'm concerned about any edits you make to the page. As for your question, admins must be allowed to use their discretion as to when to blank a page, delete it entirely, admin delete certain edits, or request oversight. SlimVirgin (talk) 06:27, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Alright, here's one example of blanking for you, I blanked Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kevin Sterne after the debate was done. It's very likely this guy's name will be getting googled, and a non-Wikipedian will not comprehend a discussion in which they see a bunch of people calling this guy that got shot at Virginia Tech "non-notable." They'd probably think that was some kind of attack, or that we're discussing the merits of the person, not the article. A Wikipedian, on the other hand, will know to look at page history if they want to review the debate. Doesn't hurt anyone. Seraphimblade Talk to me 06:17, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Seraphimblade, I am in favour of courtesy blanking. I have done it myself. I think it should be done more often. Courtesy blanking is not, in the discussion so far, contentious. What is contentious here is deleting AfD pages. I am not against deletion of AfD pages. I am not objecting to any particular deletion of an AfD page that has happened in the past. What I am objecting to is the current language, recently inserted, that an AfD page can be deleted whenever a sysop thinks there was "inappropriate commentary" on it. I hope this helps to clarify my position. Kla'quot 06:24, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
You object to admins using their discretion, but that's the problem. It's what they do and must be allowed to do. SlimVirgin (talk) 06:27, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
I won't reply in Kla'quot's stead, but I certainly don't object to admins using their discretion. I inserted the wording "In rare cases, the page may be deleted." (as a compromise), but that was reverted. And yes, a few cases out of a 1000 per month is rare. As for the part about page protection, I want admins to use their discretion on this matter as well, but oppose a wording that provides less guidance and in essence states "you can do it" without stating the conditions under which one might want or need to do it. -- Black Falcon (Talk) 06:34, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
That's the point of the discretion issue, BF. We don't want to draw up a list for admins (do it here, but not here), because first it would be impossible, and secondly not desirable. Admins are asked to use their common sense, and for the most part they use it well. No one is going to around wildly deleting or protecting AfD or any other pages because this policy says they may in certain circumstances. :-) SlimVirgin (talk) 06:39, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
With respect, I don't think "in rare cases" is providing undue restrictions, and does provide guidance. Both the intimation that any BLP can/should be salted after deletion, and the idea that we should be regularly deleting AFD pages, is offensive to me. Transparency is not just for 1000 users, it is for all users, when there are not extreme circumstances. The fact that regular users cannot see deleted revisions compels me to support some sort of guidance on when this should and should not be done. -- nae'blis 15:12, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Exactly. When a BLP is debated in an AfD, often there are sensitive BLP issues discussed. We need to be extra alert to offending living people by certain remarks that are often made on the AFD in the heat of the discussion, and once the BLP is deleted, it is important to ensure that those remarks are removed. Since the article is already gone, removing the discussion that contained the offensive comments may make best sense, per the admin's discretion. Unless it is oversighted (which should also be done under some circumstances), the discussion is available for any admin to review, if any issue comes up that requires access to it. The point is that admins need discretion to make these sensitive determinations, and we elect them specifically to be trusted to make them correctly. Crum375 06:53, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
And it comes down to the fact that there are a lot of other admins who can review deleted pages, and they're not idiots. If an admin abuses their discretion on this, just like on anything, it'll get figured out and they'll get called on it. But there are legitimate reasons it may need to be done, and when we're talking about pages with a real, living person's name on them that will come up on the first page of a Google search for that name (especially for the marginally-notable people who are the ones that wind up at AfD anyway), we should use a good deal of caution. In most cases, courtesy blanking would probably indeed be sufficient, but in some truly egregious ones, deletion may be required. What we want to say here is "If it needs doing, do not hesitate to do it." Seraphimblade Talk to me 07:17, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
My worry is not that AfD archives will be decimated by editors who are deletionist even when it comes to deletion debates. :) Deleting AfDs in rare cases (per admin discretion) is not really a problem for me as long as we note that this should generally be reserved for particularly nasty AfDs (and not just any debate were a person is called "unimportant" ... something which sadly occurs too often). My issue was with the sentence, "After deletion of a BLP, any admin may choose to protect the page against recreation." Why should a page that is a first-time deletion be protected against recreation, except in relatively rare cases? -- Black Falcon (Talk) 08:05, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
For the garden-variety "non-notable/unimportant/vanispamcruftisement" type stuff, courtesy blanking would probably be quite sufficient. What we'd be talking about is, for example, someone coming along and adding a detailed and totally unsupported account of John Doe committing some hideous crime to the discussion. Seraphimblade Talk to me 09:43, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
I don't think there would be any necessity to delete a page about a really famous person just because some crank/troll vandalised it with "[name of famous person] rapes little boys". Actually I think the more famous you are, the less unexpected it is that vandals will write that, and people like President Bush, Tony Blair, and Pope Benedict are bound to attract silly trollish comments like that which nobody is likely to take seriously. While it's inappropriate, and while such vandals should be blocked, it's doubtful that it does any harm to the reputations of very famous article subjects. What I'd be worried about would be a troll monopolising the discussion on an AfD page for a non-notable person, repeating all sorts of sleazy, unsourced gossip. And frankly, I'd like to leave it to the discretion of the administrator, without feeling that there'll be a lot of wiki-lawyering and public badgering about something that the admin is trying to handle discreetly. If an admin constantly shows poor judgment, we can be sure that other admins will be watching them. ElinorD (talk) 09:54, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
True, but Tony Blair, George W. Bush, and Pope Benedict are unlikely to end up on AfD in the first place. Usually the ones who do end up on AfD are marginally notable. Seraphimblade Talk to me 09:57, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
That was what I intended to say when I started typing that post. Haven't you ever made a long speech and then discovered that you had left out the punch line? So my point is that that's why we need to have admin discretion, as the kind of people who end up at AfD are people who could be more seriously harmed by trollish comments. ElinorD (talk) 10:12, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

(indent reset) Only more times than I can count. :) I get what you were saying now. Seraphimblade Talk to me 10:26, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

For the kazillionth time, I don't object to admin discretion. I object to the wording, "if there is inappropriate commentary." Kla'quot 08:19, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
"Inappropriate commentary" refers to comments made during the AfD discussion that present BLP issues in and of themselves (e.g. derogatory, defamatory or revealing personal information) that are inappropriate, along with the overall discussion, according to the discretion of the admin, and hence require deletion. I see no problem with it, I think it is properly worded. The point is to give the admin, elected and trusted by the community, discretion to make the deletion decision, along with the extent of the deletion (just some words, entire posts, entire AfD, or oversighting). As Seraphimblade noted, there are over a thousand other admins who can review the deletion decision at any time. Crum375 12:28, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Salting Deleted BLPs

Another item for discussion: Which of the following do people prefer? Kla'quot 05:27, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

"After deletion of a BLP, any admin may choose to protect the page against recreation."

or

"Per Wikipedia's guidelines on protecting deleted pages, pages that are repeatedly re-created after deletion in unencyclopedic form or against policy can be protected from further re-creation. "Salting" titles is intended to be a temporary measure, as it inhibits the creation of legitimate articles."

or

(neither of the above)

I like the first one. Crum375 05:28, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
I also prefer the first; admins have to be allowed to use their own discretion about the need to protect BLPs without waiting for them to be repeatedly recreated. SlimVirgin (talk) 05:34, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
Nonexistent pages can be watchlisted. I feel telling admins to just use discretion is insufficient guidance here. How are they supposed to assess the need to salt a BLP if the article has only been created once? I'm open to suggestions for wording this. Whatever we decide, WP:SALT and WP:LIVING should be brought into sync with each other. Kla'quot 05:45, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
I like the second one as it provides more guidance and clarity. The first one does not distinguish between a BLP article created and deleted only once and whose content was "Tommy is a great ball player." and one that is repeatedly created and deleted and contains the content "Tommy ritually sacrificed his neighbour's goat." -- Black Falcon (Talk) 06:08, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
I prefer the first, though I wouldn't have a problem with a compromise wording to make it a little less strong, for example to show that it shouldn't be done just on a whim. If an administrator thinks, based on the history of the article, or on the history of the person who wrote it, that there's a risk of recreation, especially for harassment purposes (bio of non-notable person created by vindictive and deranged ex-lover? / article about the real-life identity of an anonymous Wikipedian who has been "outed" by some stalking trolls?), the administrator shouldn't be obliged to wait around until it actually happens. ElinorD (talk) 07:40, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
The first, it's shorter and much more direct. I have frequently deleted attack pieces and salted immediately. If the person becomes notable enough later, it just takes an admin agreeing that's the case for the article to come back - David Gerard 11:11, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
The first. Less instruction-creepy, and more in line with current practice. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 12:39, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
I hope the first isn't current practice. The second one, please - it's absolutely more sensible.

--badlydrawnjeff talk 12:43, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

The first is current practice for BLPs that are a BIG PROBLEM. If someone becomes more notable and you can't convince a single one of 1200 admins to unsalt it ... perhaps they're not deserving an article after all. FWIW, I've had zero unsalting requests myself - David Gerard 14:20, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
How do you determine if a BLP is a big problem, and how do you decide how long a page should be salted for? Remember some people have been admins for years and some for minutes. Give the newly-mopped some help here. Kla'quot 15:56, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
The first describes how I have been doing it. Often it is better to protect a page quickly before it generates drama, and then remove the protection after something shiny has distracted the creator. Tom Harrison Talk 12:50, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Salting is not a big deal as all possible variations can not be salted. WAS 4.250 14:04, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

  • Second one, absolutely. "Just takes an admin" is a bad argument as it underscores the difference between us with the mop and everybody else. Especially note that there are lots of people for almost all names, and salting one marginally notable person's page makes it much more difficult for someone who doesn't know how the Wikipedia works to create a page for another person who merely happens to have that same name. --AnonEMouse (squeak) 15:44, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

revert in re the new language on protection

The old language, and the language currently on the page per my revert said,

"Per Wikipedia's guidelines on protecting deleted pages, pages that are repeatedly re-created after deletion in unencyclopedic form or against policy can be protected from further re-creation. "Salting" titles is intended to be a temporary measure, as it inhibits the creation of legitimate articles."

this was changed to,

"After deletion of a BLP, any admin may choose to protect the page against recreation."

The new language both worries me and strikes me as unnecessary. It doesn't link to WP:SALT, and both the language on how protection is meant to be temporary and language on reasoning for the protection has been completely removed.

Admins shouldn't protect pages just because it's a BLP--there should be a reason behind it. The first version doesn't exclude protecting it for some other reason than multiple page protections, and going all the way to a blanket version seems dangerous, because if an admin protects something and doesn't have a valid reason they can simply site that language and say "BLP + AFD → protection".

The original language could stand to be expanded on, but in it's current form it does not exclude other reasons for protecting a deleted BLP. Miss Mondegreen | Talk   01:18, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Proposed compromise wording

Others have convinced me that this is an area in which admins should have some flexibility. Admins should be able to use their tools to prevent creation of pages created for purposes of harassment, and particularly for purposes of violating privacy. However, guidelines are helpful to ensure that delete protection is not overused. I propose that WP:BLP be amended to say, "After deletion of a BLP, an article may be protected against recreation, according to the guidelines for protecting deleted pages." WP:SALT should also be amended along the lines of, "Administrators may salt a deleted biography of a living person if they believe that the article was created for purposes of harassment, and have reason to believe that a similar article will be recreated." Putting this text in WP:SALT, which is (I think) a guideline, gives admins more flexibility than putting it in WP:BLP, which is a policy. Kla'quot 04:32, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

BLP enforcement is everyone's business. Making salting the default actually harms the encyclopedia, because not every new editor will be able to sort out how to get rid of that 18-month-old block on Tom Black. -- nae'blis 20:46, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia Is Not Wikinews

In light of the proposal above to delete BLP articles unless there's consensus to keep them - a better way of solving the problem would be to be more strict about the fact that an encyclopedia is not a newspaper. People are frequently tempted to follow the latest media hype and make rather unbalanced articles about whatever CNN is talking about today, but that doesn't mean that these are encyclopedic. Everybody gets their proverbial fifteen minutes of fame, not everybody gets an encyclopedia article. >Radiant< 08:52, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

  • I'd go for putting "Wikipedia is not the newspaper (but Wikinews is!)" straight into WP:NOT. Seraphimblade Talk to me 08:56, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
    • Yep. "Wikipedia is not investigative journalism." They can go to Wikinews, where they then have to write it neutrally ;-D - David Gerard 11:12, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
    • Absolutely. Kla'quot 15:57, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Isn't this already covered in a myriad of other places? --badlydrawnjeff talk 16:21, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

This has been part of Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not since 2002. The wording has changed several times over the years, but you'll find the same proscription there in the current version.

The problem here isn't mis-placed news reports. It is the propensity of editors to present everything in individual biographical articles. That is what we should be more strict about. Michael Sneed (AfD discussion) is a prime recent example. The article (since renamed to Inaccurate media reports of the Virginia Tech massacre, completely rewritten, and deleted) was in its original form a discussion of one news report on a historical event that was pretending to be a biographical article of the person who made that news report. Some greatly misguided editors even opined in the AFD discussion that a biographical article about the journalist was the correct way to present discussion of the news reporting of an event, moreover.

That we should present such things within broad-scope articles that are not biographies, and not as individual biographical articles, has been part of Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not since 2003. Uncle G 17:50, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

The biggest argument in favor of relegating an incident involving a person to a non-bio page, is that a bio page features the name of the person in the title of the article. This causes the bio to rank much higher in the search engine rankings when searching for that person's name. By the time all the internal linking to that bio is carried out inside of Wikipedia, you also have the weight of anchor-text content added to its ranking. Presto! Number one in a search for that name. I'll bet this has never been raised as an issue before. That's because Wikipedia is blissfully oblivious when considering the effects of its policies on Google's algorithms, and what that means for BLP victims. 68.89.131.72 23:03, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
I'm not sure how oblivious we are, the point you're making on the Google rankings was spelled out in this guideline five years ago. Haukur 15:50, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
I am aware that it's already in policy. My point is that watching it more closely would help getting rid of a certain class of articles with BLP problems, and also that doing it this way is better than proposing to delete such articles unless there's consensus to keep them. >Radiant< 07:42, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
Interesting, I was skimming through this discussion, and decided to jump a few pages with the intention to leave precisely that comment: IMO a problem is that many editors use an encyclopedia as if it was a newspaper, editing into it info that is too fresh, from "tomorrow", even from "today". I've been away for a while, so I'm not into WP's current mood yet, and I don't know what to propose exactly, but thoughts and ideas along this line may be fruitful. Moreover because it is about improving the use of a long standing, if often forgotten, policy, rather than creating a new one. The larger problem I foresee is than many "news events" are harmless, and it is useful to add them right away, while editors are enthusiastic about it; but other, and most BLP's news are included there, need time to settle down so that we are able to watch them from an encyclopedic point of view. - Nabla 02:58, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Presumption of living?

We are now discussing at AfD the list List_of_Americans_in_the_Venona_papers and the question arises of which of these people are covered under BLP? As the material discusses people who were active in adult life in 1944, probably in the age range of 20 through 60, the younger of them may still be alive. For many of them, we do have death dates, but not for all. I'll mention the information is based upon a US government source, as previous published in several books, so that the possibility of libel does not seem to apply, although IANAL. DGG 01:59, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

If it's not reliably sourced that a person is deceased (or patently obvious, such as that we know their birth date was in 1850), they should be considered living until shown otherwise. Seraphimblade Talk to me 02:25, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
The 1930 Census which is now public, was released in 2002. That means the US Government considers it to be non-private 72 years after creation. Some states have taken the view of 100 years after creation. I don't think we need to be more strict than the governments. By the way, I don't see the issue with why a person sufficiently important to be named in a list couldn't be determine to have already died. If their documents are that obscure perhaps they shouldn't be on Wikipedia in the first place. Wjhonson 03:26, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
Indeed. SlimVirgin (talk) 06:24, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Well, they are supposed to have been spies, after all; obscurity of documents sort of comes with the profession... but doesn't make it any less notable of a profession. (That said, this particular list has issues.) --AnonEMouse (squeak) 19:29, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
What about disappeared people? See List_of_people_who_have_disappeared; Jimmy Hoffa is presumed to be dead, Natalee Hollaway is presumed to be living; it's not clear what stance Wikipedia takes on Michael Anthony Hughes. How long does someone have to be vanished before we assume they are dead? SmaleDuffin 23:04, 9 May 2007 (UTC)