Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons/Proposals

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[edit] Reversing the AFD default for BLPs

I want to re-propose a simple solution to many of our BLP problems. This has been proposed several times before in different forms, including here last year, by Jimbo on the mailing list, and by Doc Glasgow.

The proposal is to add the following to the section on AfD-based deletion:

When the biography of a living person is submitted for deletion, whether at the request of the subject or not, the default 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.

SlimVirgin ^talk|edits 05:13, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Straw poll

Straw poll with comments, to be more precise, and a discussion section below, all added much later, including the headers...

Update - sorted (roughly) based on comment below that a review of the points for and against might help. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 14:35, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Before commenting here, please note that there are other proposed solutions to this problem (using semi-protection instead of deletion); see #Another proposal and #Proposed changes to wording of policy further down this page. Your views on these would be appreciated too. Many of the comments below were placed before these alternative proposals were raised.Kotniski (talk) 12:25, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Support

Support. I believe we have a responsibility to do this, both to the project and to the people affected by it. SlimVirgin ^talk|edits 12:20, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Strongest support losing some marginal bios (which can't get a consensus to keep) will not be much loss to the project and of significant good in reducing the real harm to subjects (indicated here). Such biographies are underwatched, under maintained and we can give no guarantees to the subject that they will meet and be maintained at out standards of neutrality and accuracy. We manifestly failed here, and this small change is too long overdue. The change still leaves the decision as which ones we need in the hands of the community.--Doc^g 12:49, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Support. Not because I'm a deletionist, which I am, but because I have seen too many OTRS tickets form marginally notable people where articles have been scraped together from tabloid tidbits; unless we have absolutely robust sourcing, primarily from independent secondary biographical sources, we will be wrong a lot of the time, because news media will report the cause du jour and then lose interest, rarely if ever going back to correct errors of fact which may be quite important to the subject. The time has come, I think, to start removing any BLP article that does not have strong, credible biographical sourcing, and that means a resumption of the presumption, as we already have where the subject expresses a preference, to prevent any danger of WP:ILIKEIT overwhelming WP:V, WP:RS, WP:NPOV and so on. Guy (Help!) 12:56, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

I thought it was already policy (or at least practice) to disregard facetious arguments when determining consensus, i.e. by mentally striking out the bullshit and evaluating whatever is left. That's nothing new and exiting. I'm concerned that making consensus "default to delete" (what is actually being proposed here) would lend undue weight to viewpoints based on policies and guidelines other than verifiability and NPOV, ones which argue that a particular article ought to be deleted despite counter-arguments that said article does have robust, credible, rock-solid, idiot-proof sourcing. — CharlotteWebb 14:54, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Support, this was in the last version I helped put in place.[1] It is unbelievable that this is being removed, as it has been SOP that admins operate by. It needs to be explicitly written in the policy, and kept in there. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 13:04, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Support. While I do not think that this change will solve all (or even most) of our BLP problems, it is an easy change that will lead to considerable improvement at least in some situations. In order to avoid harm, we should - where in doubt - err on the side of caution, which can sometimes mean not to include a biography. --B. Wolterding (talk) 13:23, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Support. Most of the arguments for this were made last time this was proposed. I think they weigh in favor of this. It's a small thing, changing a default, and doesn't hurt the ability to keep any article if there is consensus to keep it. The Wikipedia project isn't meant to affect what is known about a person or how prominent they are, only to make encyclopedic note of it. I am generally in favor of being broadly inclusive of information on all sorts of topics—but in the case of people, especially those who are only barely public, we need to be mindful of what we are doing and what effect we have. Kat Walsh (spill your mind?) 13:28, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Support. This is just common sense when it comes to living persons. If there is no consensus to keep a BLP, let's just take that as a sign that we all have better things to work on. The encyclopedia will not suffer. Slrubenstein | Talk 13:29, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Support. SlimVirgin and Slrubenstein put it well. <ec> While this is a revolutionary change in how we deal with "no consensus" AfD's, I think the reasons behind it are sufficiently compelling. As an encyclopedia, we are here to provide a resource for those in need information. In borderline articles, the benefit of trying to achieve that goal is sometimes overshadowed by the harm of simply serving as a vehicle for the salacious or sensational. We have a hypothetical goal of serving as a compilation of "all information." However, not every scrap of information, especially that which is negative and potentially defamatory, need be included. We have an obligation and a responsibility to our readers, our subjects, and to the long term goal of sustaining this project to be more discerning in what we include and exclude. Dloh cierekim 13:34, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Support. The popularity of Wikpedia English, and the high rank in on line searches, has the strong potential to boost awareness of an individual. Someone's 15 minutes of fame can be extended into eternity if we have an article on them. Delete the article if there is not consensus to keep it. If the person warrants an article, over time it will become more clear and the decision can be reversed. FloNight ♥♥♥ 13:48, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Support. --Random832 (contribs) 13:53, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Support Utterly logical, albeit just the first-step the journey to sorting the BLP issue out more comprehensively, hopefully George The Dragon (talk) 13:58, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Support per many editors above. EdJohnston (talk) 14:00, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Support as per Doc G's essay. Horologium (talk) 14:05, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Conditional support - Just as the purpose of this is to take the misery out of BLP subjects, measures should be in place such that this clause is ungameable lest it causes a lot more misery in deletion debate amongst editors. 1) The nomination should make it clear right from the beginning it is a BLP and it has problems relating to that. 2) BLPs that are clearly well-established in notability should not be deleted as a result of this clause just because war breaks out between editors in the article, and as a result no consensus is reached on AfD. (We are dealing with borderline notability, don't we?) 3) This clause should not be used as a weapon for the subject/editors to get things their way and violate WP:NPOV. - Mailer Diablo 14:06, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Support As said above, this is responsible and ethical - it also solves a problem we are seeing with borderline cases. Shell ^babelfish 14:09, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Obvious support. This does not solve the whole BLP problem, other steps are needed, but it's a step in the right direction. It should be blanket, applied to all BLPs regardless of whether a BLP "problem" is alleged or not. Commonsense should be used to prevent gaming of course. Make the change in the policy page now please, if it hasn't been done already. ++Lar: t/c 14:16, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Support It may not be perfect but it is a step in the right direction. Thatcher 14:41, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Support concept but strongly against proposal as stated: It will allow a minority to force a deletion. "No consensus" frequently occurs when 40-60% of people favor deletion and make good arguments for it and 40-60% favor keeping and make good arguements for it, not counting abstentions. As written, all it would take to force a deletion would be a sizable minority giving good arguments for deletion. Is that what we want? Better wording would be "if there is no consensus, the closing admin should count opinions. If questionable votes were taken in the light most favorable to keeping, and a majority is in favor of deleting, then delete." Questionable votes would be suspected but not confirmed sock- or meat-puppets. "Light most favorable to keeping" means a questionable vote to keep stays, a questionable vote to delete is not counted. In other words, if the discussion is corrupted by suspect edits, give the benefit of the doubt to the "keep" crowd if possible. Example: 20 editors want to keep, 24 want to delete, with everyone giving a reasonable explanation for their opinion. 3 of each are suspected but not confirmed sockpuppets. The final head-count would be 20 to keep, 21 to delete, so you delete. Example 2: Same as above but 4 of each are suspected sockpuppets. The final headcount is 20-20, a tie, so you keep. Example 3: 24 editors want to keep, 20 want to delete. Keep. Under today's rules, all three would be no-consensus/keep. Under the proposed rules as written, all would be no-consensus/delete. The last example is the reason why the proposal as written is a bad idea. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 14:44, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

David, percentages and vote-counts are not relevant. A dozen users making the same argument are not more persuasive than one person making it. — CharlotteWebb 15:07, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

That's not always true, in particular if the argument itself is not universally accepted and the discussion boils down to finding out what "notability" really means. In deletions for royal infants, for example, if 1 person each made the argument "11th in line for the throne for a 2-day infant is not notable, notability is not inherited, and newspapers around the world reporting the facts surrounding this child's birth do not make the child notable" and another editor said "The first child of the king, the crown prince, is notable at birth simply because the birth is widely reported. So is his 2nd child. So is the first child of the crown prince. You have to draw the line somewhere. This child at 11th in line for the crown is notable as his birth was widely reported," and nobody else contributed to the discussion, it would be "no consensus." If 90 more editors joined the discussion and 96 agreed said "not notable, even if notability is inherited, the line for notability is above 11" or "notable, the line for notability is below 11" then there would be consensus. If 49 joined each side, it would be a "no consensus" and a tie. If 60 joined one side or the other, it would be "no consensus" but there would be a clear majority to keep or delete. I do not want articles deleted over interpretations of policy, in this example WP:N, that are accepted by only a minority of those involved in the discussion. Remember, policies evolve out of use. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 15:28, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Support. Sensible proposal. Mackensen (talk) 15:24, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

This proposal doesn't really make sense to me. Someone starts a deletion discussion, and a consensus doesn't form to delete the article - so as a default, its deleted? Isn't this switching around the whole way that consensus decisions operate on Wikipedia? A consensus is typically required to make a change, I'm not sure why that particular convention should be altered in this case. The appearance is that folks are upset at the way the GdS AfD is going, and the minority for deletion on that AfD wants to be able to achieve deletion for these sorts of articles even in the absence of a consensus to do so. Avruch ^T 15:19, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

I wonder if I can help. If you don't understand why we think the convention should be changed in this case, you're obviously not too aware of the specific problems biographies of living people are causing - and the particular harm this type of article is doing to people. This isn't just about the usual internal deletionst/inclsuionist fight - it is about people getting hurt by wikipedia. Can I ask you to read User:Doc glasgow/The BLP problem which outlines the issues. I know it is a bit of a read, but this is (as you'll gather) a pretty serious issue, and I trust you'll want to do the right thing.--Doc^g 15:29, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

You're right in the sense that I am not an OTRS volunteer and have worked significantly on only a few BLPs, only the obvious one of which is contested by the subject. My concern is that we're basically saying that even if folks can't agree that an article should be deleted, it will be - regardless of the nomination rationale or the specific problems of the nominated article. I haven't read your essay yet, I will now. It looks like I am in the teensy minority so far on this one, anyway. I wonder if this discussion shouldn't be had at the deletion policy page? Avruch ^T 15:38, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

That is a very comprehensive and persuasive essay, Doc. Nice work. Any progress on filling out the statistics on the bottom of the page? Understanding the underlying issues and the relative lack of a mechanism for solving them, I still wonder if changing the default of the discussion is the best solution. I can agree with the ultimate outcome - the deletion of many articles written about marginally notable people. Time will tell if changing the debate causes serious unintended consequences. Avruch ^T 16:04, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Meaning that an article about the latest missing white girl or internet "meme", which will always have enough fans to generate a no consensus answer, will now be deleted rather than kept. Truly important and notable people will not have a problem generating a majority keep vote. And, frankly, this is worth trying just because it can not do worse than we are doing now. Is it better to keep many crappy BLPs in order to keep a few possibly good articles that lack sufficient support, or better to delete a few unsupported but maybe good articles to clear out crap that is clearly hurtful. (Coatracks and one-event people and crime victims.) Thatcher 15:49, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Indeed. Dloh cierekim 15:54, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Right, I can see your point. Essentially we will be enforcing a higher notability standard on BLP articles. I'm not sure that it doesn't make more sense to simply enshrine the higher standard in policy rather than alter the method of discussion, but perhaps both changes can be made simultaneously. Avruch ^T 16:09, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

AfDs can have 5 outcomes, which are distilled in to either "keep" or "delete" by the closing admin: Clear consensus to keep, no consensus but a clear majority to keep, no clear majority/close to a tie, clear majority to delete but no consensus, clear consensus to delete. Remember, consensus is usually achieved when it's clear those on the losing side will accept the outcome. This typically means a large supermajority but it can mean 100% or it can mean 50%+1 depending on the issue and how determined the minority editors are to fight for their point of view. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 15:28, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Strong support. Everything possible should be done to give the benefit of the doubt to living people. This seems a natural extension of the "do no harm" part of BLP. --El on ka 15:59, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Strong, but strictly conditional support. Proposals of this scope need to have a clearly defined sunset clause. This must be continually supported by an assessment that the justifications for it, as defined by DocGlasgow and others here and now, still obtain in the form now described. It would be a travesty, if we used these eminently sound arguments to implement this policy tweak now, and down the road, the situation on the ground were to significantly enough change, for instance due to the ways patrolled revisions and stable versions turn out to function, that the fundamental maintainability roadblocks are all lifted. In such a situation, I would trust and enjoin that there would be no difficulty in overturning the policy to the status quo ante. -- Cimon Avaro; on a pogostick. (talk) 16:07, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

...no difficulty in overturning the policy to the status quo ante. ? I wonder how many people share your optimism in this regard. I unfortunately do not. — CharlotteWebb 20:48, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Support. As others have mentioned, Wikipedia BLPs can have real, lasting effect on their subjects, especially when there aren't very many other sources available. This particular proposal would help restore a bit of sanity when AfDs fail to achieve consensus. Additionally, it isn't carved in stone, so we can revisit this later on as necessary. - Jredmond (talk) 16:17, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Support - I don't think this addresses our most critical BLP problem - the problem of people doing stuff to biographies when nobody's looking - but it will at least help repair the damage after the fact. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 16:57, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Strong support. Per reasons already presented. Brimba (talk) 17:02, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Strong support I've suggested this in the past, we've needed it for a while now. Mr.Z-man 17:34, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Support Works for me. MBisanz ^talk 18:08, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Support this excellent approach. ˜ jossi ˜ (talk) 18:11, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Support but only when the primary reason for the AfD is BLP. If a BLP article is nominated for another reason, or if many of the delete arguments were not related to BLP issues then it should not be reversed. A real BLP complaint based on our policy would be needed to reverse the default, and a substantial number of people endorsing it. I don't want to see people reversing the default for "The subject of the article wants it deleted" nominations. I have changed my mind due to serious concerns about this idea being gamed and extended well beyond BLP issues. _(1 == 2)^Until 18:19, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Support. Also support the changes proposed by Davewild above to ensure that low participation doesn't result in inappropriate deletion. If this policy change doesn't work then we can adjust it, but it seems like a step in the right direction. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 19:01, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Support, as I argued in years past[2]. Again there seems to be concern that this would somehow lead to increased AfD manipulation, but I don't believe the proposal changes the manipulation exposure at all: If AfD is vulnerable to manipulation via socks, meatpuppets, inclusideletionist mindrays, or what-have-you it will continue to have that same vulnerability regardless of the default behavior. If AfD is really that broken it simply needs to be fixed, but that is completely separate matter.

The purpose of the default behavior is not to avoid biases or resist influence, the purpose of the default is to perform the safest action in case of uncertainty or doubt. Many compelling arguments have been made here and elsewhere that in some cases, particularly biographical articles on living people, the safest action is to delete. .... and can we really say that we can muster the resources needed to guard an article against defamatory material when we can't even get a consensus to keep it?

Of course, no proposal can hope to address all possible eventualities. This is a small step in the right direction. After making this change the community may discover that additional changes are needed because of new problems. Fortunately, policy isn't a suicide-pact unless we choose to make it one. --Gmaxwell (talk) 19:19, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Support I have stayed well clear of BLP matters (and therefore BLP articles) since enduring a very sharp couple of exposures in my early days. It has been fairly easy to spot the obviously notable and the obviously non-notable, but the ones in that difficult grey area... The problem with most living people is that notability is often unlikely to be established in their lifetime; even the film and music stars of today will likely end up as footnotes (or would have, in the paper bio days) some twenty years after their deaths, while people now working in the sciences will perhaps be known for their work when an application based on it becomes important - perhaps posthumously. Since it is therefore impossible to know what the future will regard as notable it is possibly common sense that if there is no good argument for current notability then the default should be delete. If notability becomes established later, then it can be resurrected (no pun intended). The establishment of notability in itself will provide the necessary resources at that time, so there is no fear of "losing" information after deletion. I think a policy that provides for only well sourced notability of BLP subjects will encourage other editors like me who are not keen to get into what has often appeared to be muddy (if not actively soiled) waters. LessHeard vanU (talk) 19:21, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Support. This will help. We can still keep biographies when there is a clear community consensus to do so, but this will eliminate a lot of the problem ones. And the "problem" ones are becoming more and more problematic, as anyone who hasn't been hiding under a rock recently knows. Antandrus (talk) 19:24, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Weak support I was a strong support before I read the examples compiled by DaveWild.. About half of those, I'd probably rather see kept than deleted. However, I still do support the proposal even though it will lead to some borderline-notable content being lost, as per the well-articulated argument by Gmaxwell -- in the case of BLP, a delete is just "safer" than a keep (whereas for most topics, the reverse is true, hence the current default). Now, that said, I put the odds of this being adopted as policy at about ZERO. As soon as you change the policy, it will get reverted and fifty people will show up asking why the hell you didn't try to get consensus first. heh... --Jaysweet (talk) 19:25, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Strong support: There is a problem in general assessing the longterm contribution of living people without the perspective of history. At least in this case, we will not be focused on minor events that overshadow a full picture. Danny (talk) 20:21, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Support, I'll accept this one. Stifle (talk) 20:56, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Strong support. Do no harm. I urge everybody to read Doc's essay on the subject. Bishonen | talk 21:17, 21 April 2008 (UTC).
Support per common sense. MrMurph101 (talk) 21:21, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Support Been thinking about it, and yes. Obvious support. Lawrence Cohen § t/e 21:33, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Support with the qualifier that the relevance of BLP must be clearly disclosed during the discussion and early enough that the discussion participants can properly evaluate it. Alleging the relevance of this BLP clause at the last minute would be inappropriate. Rossami (talk) 21:35, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Support, common sense. Sceptre ^(talk) 21:47, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Support Finally! Someone's actually being constructive on here. Pop the champagne! -Pilotguy contact tower 23:38, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Support as per Guy and Doc. User:Zscout370 ^{(Return Fire)} 23:41, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Stronger than strong support A small step in the right direction, but a step nonetheless. Raymond Arritt (talk) 00:18, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
Strong Support per Guy. We have a number of nn BLPs that survive AfDs because there are more meatpuppets interested in !voting in the AfD than Wikipedians who understand policy. Then the BLPs sit around and only a few people ever pay attention to them. Some of these then get used for astroturfing in walled gardens. I think this proposal would help clean up a lot of the ~~cruft~~ edit: unsourceable and non-notable in addition to the defamatory - Kathryn NicDhàna ??? 01:28, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Your use of the term "meatpuppets" is strongly objected to. In these discussions many users routinely watch them, both favoring deletion in general and not favoring deletion in general. Neither group is in any more composed of meatpuppets than the other. The bottom line is that this is not in general something that we have much community consensus on and this is reflected in these AfDs. JoshuaZ (talk) 02:03, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm fairly confident Kathryn was talking about the common usage of meatpuppet, meaning an army of friends of an agenda pusher come to push a single issue on the project... and that she was not referring to other Wikipedians who happen to be on the other side of this great inclusiodeleteo crusade you seem to be involved with... After all, she clearly contrasted them "Wikipedians who understand policy". Please give up the crusade for long enough to read what people are saying and consider the real and serious ethical implications of Wikipedia's policies. --Gmaxwell (talk) 03:14, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, by "meatpuppets" I was not referring to anyone who regularly votes on AfDs. I was referring to SPAs. Specifically, to a number of AfDs where people strongly invested in the article canvassed off-wiki to get new users to come !vote in their support. Regular users who contribute constructively to WP are not Meatpuppets. - Kathryn NicDhàna ??? 03:17, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

I've struck my comment. Thanks for clarifying. It wasn't the interpretation that came to me because a) it isn't a very reasonable concern since the vast majority of admins are able to notice and resolve meatpuppetry and b) I've seen pretty heavy accusations of "meatpuppetry" by people both generally favoring BLP inclusion and people favoring BLP deletion, so it looked like another one of those comments. JoshuaZ (talk) 03:21, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
Very Strong Support per so many above. I'm particularly attentive to the problems of questionable BLPs becoming backwater WP articles with only a few contributors, often friends or enemies of the person, and NO adequate WP:V or WP:RS. Factchecking some of these articles is impossible, sometimes even when there are sources, because the contributors/editors already have personal knowledge of the subject and fill in gaps in the BLP from this knowledge. This makes it difficult to verify positive or negative info. Pigman? 01:46, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Um, what? If you can't verify it you remove it. That's not complicated and doesn't need some magic new rule for deletions. JoshuaZ (talk) 02:03, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

13,700 BLPs marked as unreferenced. 103,000 BLP have ^{[citation needed]} tags. Are you willing to check and verify all the allegations in these? If not, who will? And how long will it take? Eventualism is discredited by the fact it is getting worse. And my sampling tells me a high proportion of these articles contain clear BLP violations. How are we going to fix that? And how can we justify our default inclusionism of marginal BLPs on real live living people, when we are manifestly failing to maintain them in the neutral accurate accurate state we are supposed to favour? Especially since OTRS ops are testifying to the daily howls of distress of our victims? We don't need to do something differently? Really?--Doc^g 02:17, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

You're absolutely right that we have a massive problem in that regard. But this proposal doesn't do anything to solve that.; Indeed, the AfDs that end in no consensus are generally those where we have decent sourcing and the question is whether the sourcing is enough. JoshuaZ (talk) 02:18, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

This proposal won't remedy this problem. If nominated for AfD, the majority of them will get improved and kept. Those that can't be, won't, and will get deleted as such. I don't see any way in which it helps improve the project; all it does is make it easier to delete something, which doesn't help. At AfD, if something can be improved, it generally is; I've done cleanup at AfD for a number of articles brought there. This isn't some kind of magic bullet that will fix BLPs. All it'll do is create process problems and result in pushes for longer AfD periods to give more people more time to contribute, more backlogs, more deletion review, and longer time to close discussions. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 02:23, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Also Doc, if you want a proposal that might make sense why not instead use the version you proposed in your essay? I frankly don't like that one much either but it makes a hell of lot more sense than this one. JoshuaZ (talk) 02:26, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

See my essay. The damage is being done my us keeping more marginally notable BLPs than we can possibly maintain - reducing the threshold of inclusionism will over time see us retaining less of precisely the type of article that is causing the real-world harm. Of course, just about any individual article can be fixed when put under the spotlight, but it is quite impossible to sort the systemic problem of this scale without changing the system. In general, we can't maintain these things as accurate and neutral, so in general we should start removing them. This makes that easier, whilst retaining community scrutiny over what we keep.--Doc^g 02:31, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

That's not a solution about anything at all strictly related to BLPs. That's just a standard deletionist argument. We should be improving our system for dealing with BLPs that exist not throwing up our hands and pairing away good content. Indeed, I suspect that some variant of OPTOUT along with semiprotection of BLPs as default status would likely work much better than this. JoshuaZ (talk) 02:34, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

You also make the fallacious assumption that all marginally notable subjects are kept by default, when this is obviously not the case. I see deletions of the kind all the time; when adequate sourcing can't be found, people vote for delete. While there are a few exceptions (User:Kurt Weber) comes to mind, it's not like there are people going around who vote keep on everything they see. If there's a good reason to delete something, it'll get deleted. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 02:30, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
Support — A very sensible policy change. The damage that can be done by unjustified biographies of living persons outweighs the encyclopedic value of writing about borderline non-notable people. --Cyde Weys 03:24, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
Support Although I haven't read the entire discussion, the comments I find most persuasive are by Doc G at timestamp 12:49, Guy at 12:56 and Thatcher at 15:49. I can't say it better than they have. The idea of having low-participation AfDs relisted would improve the idea and should be proposed once this passes. Noroton (talk) 03:30, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
Support Our current mechanisms for protecting the subjects of biographies are ineffective, under-monitored and often not sufficiently aggressively enforced. This problem is an order of magnitude worse for borderline-notable subjects whose biography will, at best, be only very occasionally viewed by experienced editors after it falls off Special:Newpages yet may still be the top Google result for their name. Consequently, the risks to the subjects of borderline notable biographies significantly outweigh the loss of a small amount of tenuous content from the encyclopedia. CIreland (talk) 05:44, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
Support I find the arguments in favor to be more compelling than those in opposition. Sure, there will be gray areas and resulting disputes, but we will have disputes no matter what. Let's give it a try. alanyst ^/talk/ 06:52, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
Support - Eminently sensible, fair and cannot possibly result in the deletion of any really worthy article. FCYTravis (talk) 21:57, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
Support. I’m very happy to see this proposal brought forth, I found it a wise approach when I first saw it mentioned at the Wikback forum awhile back. It’s common sense and I hope to see some form of it implemented. I tend toward keeping articles, but when it comes to people, we should tread more carefully. Requiring a consensus to keep, in the case of living people, provides a simple layer of protection. --MPerel 03:38, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
Support strongly as I have feltt his should be initiated since way back, thios would be a real step in the right direction re BLP. Thanks, SqueakBox 03:45, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
Strong support. --Hans Adler (talk) 16:27, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
Support. A very logical extension. Crum375 (talk) 20:11, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
Support. Makes sense to me. Seems a step in a socially responsible direction, when real people are concerned. Amerique^dialectics 20:22, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
Support. Eminently sensible. Jayjg ^(talk) 02:02, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
Support as a step in the right direction. I think the heart of the issue however will be biographies that 'the community' wishes to keep, but is unwilling / unable to properly maintain - I'm not sure this hits that one on the head - but it's a start.... Privatemusings (talk) 06:24, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
Support. Like so many are saying: sensible. --jpgordon^∇∆∇∆ 06:54, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
Support. This is a minor change, in fact, it doesn't change that much at all. We're here to make the best possible encyclopedia and we do this by using the best possible sourcing for any article. Yet this is a policy that should be more strict. This isn't about a board game, or a shoe, its living people. If marginal BLP's who pass by the skin of their teeth cannot be agreed upon, it wont hurt wikipedia by being deleted, only strengthen it. SynergeticMaggot (talk) 07:55, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
Support Per all the above. --David Shankbone 11:50, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
Polls are evil!Hiding T 12:35, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
Support Something needs to be done this sounds good. Z gin der 2008-04-24T13:14Z (UTC)
Support. Sensible and ethical. I cannot imagine there is any danger that it would lead to the deletion of an article about somebody really important. Do people seriously think there's a danger that there might not be a consensus to keep the article on George W. Bush? Ashton1983 (talk) 14:04, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Not so much George W. Bush no, but I do think there is a danger of deleting articles of someone who is encyclopedicly notable (by this I mean: covered in paper encyclopedias) if that person is not known to a large number of English Wikipedia readers. See my comments further down for elaboration. Sjakkalle (Check!) 14:23, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
Support, but with misgivings. The risk is that POV warriors and hardline deletionists use this as a basis to get articles because they find them disagreeable. I'm mindful of the AFD on Solveig Fiske, a bishop in the Church of Norway - a clearly notable subject for all kinds of reasons, that seemed to be listed because some editors felt Norway was too small a country. I think this policy should be accompanied by vigilance to avoid these kinds of deletions. --Leifern (talk) 14:45, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

I honestly doubt this vigilance will accompany it. I think we're more likely to see the derailing of consensus by minorities on a mass scale in order to force deletions, and many good articles will be washed away - as will articles which had the temerity to tell damaging truths about figures who want those facts whitewashed. The dangers outweigh the benefits, I feel. François Metro (talk) 01:13, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
Weak support While I do have qualms about the proposal, this would probably not affect most cases and would not be much of a negative change to our deletion policy. --Wikiacc (¶) 15:04, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

I feel that there is a strong danger posed here: that people of minor but real notability will be able to whitewash their articles of damaging truths about them simply by enlisting an alliance of Wikipedia ideologues (the kind who feel that only 50-100 living humans on Earth are notable enough for an article, plus the kind who have become obsessed with "safeguarding" BLPs against imagined hordes) and impressionable !voters. This could damage the integrity of the encyclopedia long term, and the minor benefits of this policy (assuming there are any, which I myself doubt) are far outweighed by the dangers. François Metro (talk) 01:13, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
Strong support. We have far too many borderline cases of people who are not really notable. This change should cut down on that substantially and prevent a lot of BLP problems. Kaldari (talk) 15:27, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
Support. Yes, we'll lose a lot of articles this way, but so what? Eventually they can be rewritten if history finds the subjects notable after all. Wikipedia clearly has a hard time dealing with articles about living people, and the resulting problems, directly and indirectly, detract us from our general mission of writing an encyclopedia about actual topics of general and non-ephemeral interest such as Geography, Mathematics, Sex or Railway stations in Wales. I'd be minded to rule living people outside the scope of Wikipedia entirely, if it weren't for the fact a handful of them, like George W. Bush or the Pope, do in fact qualify as inportant topics of encyclopedic interest. This proposal solves that little problem nicely, which is why I wholeheartedly support it. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 18:14, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
Support Not every BLP we have is of a sufficiently notable person and the ones lacking reliable sources should not be kept if there exists no sound sourcing with none to be found and the keep or delete reasoning is stripped down to no clear consensus sans sock/meat puppets and SPA's. --71.28.245.153 (talk) 19:52, 24 April 2008 (UTC) — 71.28.245.153 (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
Support as a start. Basic human dignity and decency demands Wikipedia have mechanisms in place to protect people against the possibility of defamation. Given the way Wikipedia articles are scraped, archived, echoed, and mirrored all over the Internet, I'm afraid this won't be enough, but it's a start. What we really need is something more proactive which stops negative and potentially defamatory BLPs from ever reaching publication on Wikipedia in the first place - such as required review and preapproval of submitted BLP articles by a team of admins before it is posted. In the meantime though I will support anything which makes it easier to get rid of problematic articles, although this chasing after bad articles after the fact is really not a viable long term solution since by the time they are deleted or corrected the bad version has already spread all over the Internet like cancer. KleenupKrew (talk) 20:48, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
Support This will help weed out the really marginal stuff, as well as limit negative WP exposure. IronDuke 23:15, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
Support Tentatively. FeloniousMonk (talk) 01:19, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
Support Per Doc glasgow. Biographies of living persons present us with their own set of problems.— Ѕandahl 03:37, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
Support the concept of inverting de defalut for AfDs on BLPs. Assuming usual procedures still stand (namely ignoring bad faith votes/opinions) it's mostly impossible any relevant article to be deleted. The gain in protecting common people lives - and that's you! Or me... - is larger than the loss of a few borderline notable articles. The actual wording could be improved, but practice will show what needs further clarifying, if anything. - Nabla (talk) 15:55, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

PS. The actual problem is not in AfD process. The process is fine, when in doubt, keep, don't destroy information. The problem is a way too low bar of notability for living people, mainly the assumption that any couple of lines in the news are trustworthy and asserts notability. They are not and they don't. Yet if this gets consensus... fine. - Nabla (talk) 17:47, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

What are some examples of "common people" of contested notability harmed by BLPs? That is, harmed by falsehoods? We should have some examples before enacting radical policy changes based on a "problem" many of us doubt is very serious. François Metro (talk) 01:13, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
Support I've been on different sides on BLP issues recently. IMHO, this proposal provides a valuable tool to those who take on the difficult task of measuring consensus as closing admins in controversial BLP processes. Over time I'm coming to the view sustaining and protecting the project's integrity, not mere accuracy, is a priority as a wikipedian. Users can differ on exactly how best to serve that priority, but this raising of the acceptable threshold for BLP articles is an institutional example of the occasional need for ignoring all rules when accepted practice tends to hamper good-faith efforts to protect the integrity of the pedia. BusterD (talk) 17:53, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

IMO, the integrity of the 'pedia is more likely to be damaged by a system where people of contested notability can force the removal of truths they don't want seen, simply by enlisting a few anti-BLP ideologues and a few naifs. François Metro (talk) 01:13, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
Support. I'm still on wikiholiday, but I read the Signpost, and I had to stop in to lend my support to this. It really is in the interest of Wikipedia (and common decency). – Quadell ^{(talk) (random)} 18:34, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
Support I just discovered of this proposal through the Signpost, and I fully support this proposal which can cut out those controversial cases where the Wikipedia community cannot agree on a notability consensus but, despite this, are kept by default. --Angelo (talk) 20:22, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
Support Delete them. Good first step. Notable persons shouldn't have "no consensus" and the considerable harm that bad bios cause is reason enough. --DHeyward (talk) 04:54, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

What are some examples of "bad bios" causing harm to subjects of contested notability? That is, harm based on falsehoods? We should have some examples before enacting radical policy changes based on a "problem" many of us doubt is very serious. François Metro (talk) 01:13, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
Weak Support, for a trial period first. This would be quite a radical change to deletion process, and would mean BLP articles would be judged by a very different standard than all other articles. That doesn't mean it's necessarily a bad idea, only that the full consequences aren't immediately obvious. Therefore, I suggest changing the deletion guidelines in this way for a trial period of 1-2 months, and examining the results then. That will give us a clear idea of what the impact of this proposal would be.
I do support the general principle behind it, but I'm just not ready to support such a serious change before we fully understand the consequences. Terraxos (talk) 21:00, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
Strong Support -- I find Doc's arguments, and many of those above, very persuasive. The borderline cases in both notability and consensus are the most troublesome ones in the BLP category; and nothing is lost forever if better information becomes available later. — Catherine\^talk 02:15, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
Support per Slim and Slrubenstein. In the case of BLPs, it makes sense to find a consensus to keep than to delete, if a subject is truly notable, then consensus should be clear. Adding weight to the wishes of the subject who is asking for deletion makes sense also, generally they're asking because it harms them in some way, and we should be sensitive to that - even tho it shouldn't be the overriding factor in a deletion decision. Dreadstar † 03:21, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
Support. If it's not good enough to keep, then don't keep it - sounds about right. Such marginal articles don't help the encyclopedia and can hurt real people. Sbowers3 (talk) 00:58, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
Strong support per many of the arguments above. If a person is genuinely notable there is very little chance it will end as "no consensus". Note that votes by obvious sockpuppets or meatpuppets on one side or another of a debate can and should be ignored by closing admin. Orderinchaos 01:16, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
Support, but please be aware that people may be very notable outside of the English speaking world. I hope that these can be kept. Like commercial encyclopedia's we have to accept the limits of what we can maintain. Andries (talk) 11:28, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
Support Perhaps doesn't go far enough but its a great start. Spartaz ^Humbug! 18:02, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
Strong Support per all of the above. -- Comandante {Talk} 23:11, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
Support Not sure if one more vote matters, but I think this is such an important change policy. Mahanga^Talk 00:49, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
Support - As a start. Lara ❤Love 21:43, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
Support. Seems like it would work well to assure that subjects of borderline notability are given that extra insulation. Would force 'Keep' arguments to focus on issues, not signatures in borderline cases, and might help us clean up a number of the petty ante people who show up regularly on AN/I with 'legal threats' and OTRS resolutions. They could just nom the article and get more results that way. Frankly, a BLPfD would be even better; a process where BLP situations can be more deeply examined, reviewed and debated by those more willing to examine the issues relevant to each BLPfD. Regulars would over time get better at examining and determining actual notabilities vs. 'White woman of the month' style newsblips, and make better, cohesive arguments for or against. Over time, those regulars would be an asset to adjusting our notability guidelines and our overall BLP policy, as time in the trenches would engender real, salient experience on the topic. ThuranX (talk) 23:42, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
Strongest possible support in the case where the subject of the article has requested deletion, and weak support otherwise. In cases of marginal notability, we should give the subject of an article the benefit of the doubt. 69.140.152.55 (talk) 11:33, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Oppose

Oppose. The fact that the subject wants the article deleted may change the consensus, but this proposal causes a very severe imbalance in Wikipedia's notability standards (between those who want an article vs. those who don't want an article) for a reason which has nothing to do with notability, and that is not good for an encyclopedia which aims to be comprehensive and consistent. Another objection is that this proposal allows these "borderline notability" subjects to set ultimatums, "if you don't write about me the way I want you to write about me, I will request it to be deleted", and that is a WP:NPOV problem. Finally, I think having just parts of the community supporting deletion is a flimsy reason to delete anything considering what I have seen members of the community suggesting. I have seen at least one admin in good standing, and in all seriousness, suggesting that we should delete the Eliot Spitzer article if a request came to do so, and quite frankly, I don't think that a few more people with that opinion should be able to prevent a consensus from forming to retain an article on a NY governor. Sjakkalle (Check!) 13:08, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't think you've read the proposal. It operates regardless of the subject's wishes. There's no longer any need to take them into account. And you you think for a moment that Eliot Spitzer would not get a clear keep consensus? Eh? Red-herring. This is NOT a proposal to allow subject "opt outs".--Doc^g 13:12, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

(ec) If you look at either the wording above, or the revision I pointed out (which was heavily contributed to by FT2), it is careful to only switch the default outcome. If Wikipedians have consensus that the BLP stays, it stays. Of course we do not want subjects to control the content in their biog. This measure is to ensure that biogs where only one or two people actually care about are not kept simple because two people could not agree. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 13:14, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, the problem here arises in situations where the subject wants it deleted, what about when the subject wants it kept? Eliot Spitzer is an extreme example, but it does show that one user, who was not trolling, wanted it deleted in the given situation. I can easily imagine that if that situation did occur, ten or twenty others would come along agreeing with him, and that an admin who agrees with all this would then close an AFD with "the result of the debate was that serious and good faith objections have been made against this BLP's existence, therefore no consensus, and delete". What about less notable figures like a member of parliament in Colombia, Norway, or Bhutan? What if there is "no consensus" on a subject which is covered in a paper encyclopedia? Sjakkalle (Check!) 13:20, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

This is hypothetical paranoia. Can you show me a deletion debate for any subjects of that level of notability that has failed to get a keep consensus or indeed a speedy keep on AfD?? And if a freak result like that happened, DRV is certain to reverse it. You are bringing up irrelevances and hypotheticals as a reason to do nothing about a real and present problem? Show me some evidence to support your concerns?--Doc^g 13:24, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, Don Murphy was gone for a week even though nobody was really disputing his notability. Sjakkalle (Check!) 13:27, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

And Don Murphy got a keep consensus three times on AfD. So this proposal would change nothing there.--Doc^g 13:32, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

There were people in good faith recommending speedy deletion for what amounted to non-policy reasons. Had there been slightly more of them they would have blocked a "keep" consensus. Sjakkalle (Check!) 13:51, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

But the fact is: that didn't happen. Mr.Z-man 19:13, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Barely. Furthermore, we already have no consensus being within admin discretion if it is reasonable, why force it with this overkill? JoshuaZ (talk) 23:27, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Oppose, but Support Jimbo's version The referenced email from Jimbo suggests this for deletions for notability reasons only. I think that might be a good idea. Doing so for any BLP deletion is a bad idea since they are usually for reasons completely against policy (as in the current case where the only reasons given are "The subject is going to sue us" and "We mustn't harm people", neither of which are policies). --Tango (talk) 19:11, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Heh, that last bit is a little disturbing. Indeed, there is no policy that says we mustn't harm people. I think the idea here is to change policy in order to reduce the amount that we unnecessarily harm people. It's fair to debate to what extent this proposal actually accomplishes that goal, but it's a little disturbing to here someone basically assert that since there is no Wikipedia policy saying we can't needlessly harm people, that it is okay.... --Jaysweet (talk) 19:16, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

This is a proposal to change procedure. If you want to change an underlying principle, you need to do so explicitly. --Tango (talk) 20:37, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

In the above discussion I see two statements to the effect that we have no policy against harming people. How do people reconcile that with this statement from WP:BLP? "An important rule of thumb when writing biographical material about living persons is "do no harm". Wanderer57 (talk) 20:00, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Strong oppose. Deletion should never be the default outcome of an AfD. All articles, regardless of type, should be kept by default unless clear evidence can be shown that would support the contrary. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 20:10, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Why?--Doc^g 20:18, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

(ec)Why? I see no reason that someone should be stuck with a poor quality biography that is highly unlikely to bloom into a well written high quality article anytime soon. If during the time that the Afd was open, no one took the time to improve the article so that it is high enough quality to show that it warrants being kept, then I think that it is unlikely to happen anytime soon. FloNight ♥♥♥ 20:26, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

We're here to write an encyclopedia, not delete one. As such, the burden of proof should be on those in favor of deleting something, not those in favor of keeping/improving it. Our default policies should reflect that. If something is at AfD that can be made not at AfD through regular editing processes, then it has no place at AfD (see BEFORE). AfD is not cleanup, and this is what tags and talkpages are for. The system is fine as it is: If it's obvious that something can't be improved or sources can't be found, it will be deleted. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 21:38, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Why? For some contributors, given the prior probabilities [3][4][5] , a reasoned position would be surprising and the absence of one should be expected. ::shrugs:: :) --Gmaxwell (talk) 20:39, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

What do my userboxes have to do with anything? The fact that I speak German, use SwiftfFox and am an AIW member aren't relevant at all to whether or not we should delete articles by default. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 21:38, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

You hadn't told us why deletion should never be a default outcome in AfD. It often makes sense to consider the speaker, especially in the absence of an explicit explanation. In your case, you've placed three separate pro-inclusionist userboxes on your userpage. Implying to me, at least, that you'd oppose practically any proposal which might increase the deletion of some articles and that the merits of this particular proposal were probably not especially relevant in your decision to oppose it. I do not begrudge you your prejudices on deletion policy, but I do think that its reasonable to consider them in determining how much information we've actually gained by learning your position. I suppose other people will decide the relevance for themselves. Thanks for following up. --Gmaxwell (talk) 21:57, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm not a radical. I just don't think things should be deleted that are notable and verifiable. Apparently, that makes me an inclusionist. Deletion should never be a default outcome because we're here to primarily create things, not to primarily delete things. I don't favor keeping everything on-wiki; obviously, some things don't have a place here. If more articles about crappy subjects get put to AfD than articles about good subjects, then I'll end up favoring deletion over keeping. As it stands now, when a good argument is given in favor of deletion, then people concur with the argument and it will get deleted. If the arguments to delete something aren't strong enough, then it gets kept. I read the essay, and I've yet to see any evidence that suggests that we need to make it easier to delete BLPs than to keep them. Rather than deleting things when they come to AfD, efforts should be made to improve the article (despite the fact that AfD isn't forced cleanup, many people use it rather than the more appropriate WICU or ARS; thus, it serves many of the same functions). Consider the following scenario: Someone nominates article on little-known but notable living subject. 12 people come along in the first hour and !vote in favor of deletion. One person comes along and improves the article, adding sources and inline citations for every other sentence. None of the delete !voters come back to review the article. At this point, it's up to the admin; on one hand, consensus is well beyond clear to delete. However, the article has been improved. Most admins that I have seen in such situations close with no consenus with a mention that the article has been improved. In this case, despite the fact that the delete voters issues were properly dealt with, the article gets deleted anyway. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 22:39, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

I've mentioned this above (albeit in fewer words) as an existing problem with AFD which needs to be addressed before changing the process. Some have argued that deletion review exists for situations like that, but it is hard to make a convincing argument about an article when its edit history is not visible, and deletion review tends to focus primarily on whether process was properly followed and only reluctantly on the actual quality of the deleted article, leaving concerns like these between a rock and a hard place. — CharlotteWebb 00:24, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree; AfD has a lot of issues that need addressing before this can be approached. If (I don't want to say when, because its unlikely it'll ever happen) AfD is reduced to what it should be (i.e, proposals for the deletion of unimprovable or unmaintanable articles or non-notable or non-verifiable subjects), then I could support this. However, AfD isn't used for that these days. It is mostly used for cleanup (i.e, "Article doesn't assert notability" when there are forty-six articles about the subject that haven't been included yet.) In order to prevent notable, verifiable material from being mistakingly deleted, AfD has to be fixed before anything like this can be considered. And DRV is not a substitute. DRV is for disputing decisions based on deletion policy, it isn't a recapitulation of the AfD; people who try such these get endorsed deletions and speedy closures. With the edit history and contributions no longer available except to admins, the regular editing community can't do anything to remedy the issues that are brought about by a deletion under this proposed changes. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 02:16, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
Oppose. Overkill. Should only apply in cases where the material is defamatory (in which case the article should probably be speedy deleted anyway rather than AfD'ed). In any other case, no reason to treat articles in this category any differently from other articles.--Kotniski (talk) 20:24, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

~~Oppose in favour of #Alternative proposal: RfV for BLPs. Black Falcon ^(Talk) 20:28, 21 April 2008 (UTC)~~
Oppose. I don't normally comment on Support/Oppose issues, but the proposal being submitted here is absurd. If something is put up for deletion where a consensus involved and there is no consensus to delete, then it shouldn't be deleted. Common sense.--Rockfang (talk) 23:13, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Does it make any less sense than considering weather to keep an article and then keeping keeping it when there was no consensus to do so? AFD decides the fate of an article, it doesn't necessarily have a built in default ... but we give it one in order to try to achieve the best outcome as often as possible in cases of uncertainty. In the case of most articles we error towards keeping with the belief that the article is currently harmless will eventually be good, useful, and needed. But in cases where the article is harmful or risky, and the eventual need is not clear? The supporters of the proposal would suggest that a different default is justified. To dismiss this proposal as absurd after it has garnished the support of dozens of experienced and respected contributors is a bit insulting. Perhaps you should give it some deeper consideration? --Gmaxwell (talk) 23:27, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

I've thought about it a bit more. This proposal is still absurd. Another reason I've thought of (and read others express as well) is because it does not distinguish between the various reasons for an article goes to AfD. If the proposal was changed, then I might support it. A blanket, forced delete when there is no consensus for such a thing is counter productive to creating an encyclopedia. A BLP article should not be any different in this respect compared to other articles.--Rockfang (talk) 01:16, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

No consensus does not just mean no consensus to delete, it also means no consensus to keep. If a consensus exists to keep the article, then the provisions of this proposal do not apply. Orderinchaos 01:21, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
strongly oppose essentially per Sjakkalle and Rockfang. If the community consensus taking into account a BLP-penumbra issue doesn't call for its deletion then we shouldn't delete. We already have admins able to close no consensus as delete if they think the strength of the arguments is strong enough. There's no reason to make this any stricter. Especially when we are in the process now of actually making a reasonable opt-out policy. The fact that this would result in many deletions where there are no actual concerns for the individuals in question makes it particularly jarring. JoshuaZ (talk) 23:23, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Oppose proposed wording. This really should only be able to be used where there are BLP problems (vandalism, hatchet jobs, etc.) instead of normal deletion concerns (primarily notability; if the article doesn't do any harm, we shouldn't be taking it down). The version Doc suggests at his essay is quite a bit better at this, since it only allows this to take effect when editors have explicitly suggested that BLP issues exist in the article. I'm not sure whether or not the idea is a good one overall, but I do know that the suggested wording is sub-optimal. --lifebaka (Talk - Contribs) 23:16, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Oppose, because I see no reason to change the current system. Generally speaking, if it's not clear from the article why it belongs on Wikipedia it will get deleted, and if it's clear it will be kept. No consensus means just that: no consensus either way. This defaults in "not changing the existence" of the article. If an AFD closes as no consensus, it should be cleaned up. If that doesn't help, it can be renominated. If there are serious BLP concerns, AFD is not the proper venue to address them. That's what we have the Biographies of living persons noticeboard for. A ecis^Brievenbus 23:36, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

You seem to be dismissing the proposal because some fundamental law or truth demands that the default be keep. Would you agree that in an ideal universe an article on each and every living person would be published in Wikipedia? If not, why do you believe that the necessary way handling of uncertainty is continuing to publish? --Gmaxwell (talk) 23:44, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

I oppose the proposal because no consensus means no support for change, which imo should result in no change. This does not preclude against cleanup or renominating in due time. And what do you intend with those questions? If a subject is desperately non-notable, the article will either be speedied or deleted after AFD. The mere fact that there is no consensus demonstrates that the article is well above that level. And yes, sometimes there may be procedural errors, or an admin may err in the interpretation of the discussion. That's what we have deletion review for. A ecis^Brievenbus 23:52, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Ah. My view is that AfD isn't deciding to change a previous decision since there almost certantly was no prior community decision to create the article in the first place. If I saw AfD to be the reconsideration of a prior consensus decision then I would probably agree that the status-quo enjoys a special position as a natural default. I don't think the default should generally be to delete, only that there is no natural default, so we should be completely free to select whatever behavior will produce the best outcome. In any case, I guess understand your postion although I do not share it. Thanks for elaborating. --Gmaxwell (talk) 00:00, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Oppose - I was neutral, leaning towards support until I read "I think this proposal would help clean up a lot of the cruft." Thank you for reminding me how the closer of a discussion is a distinct part of this process. Whenever I see the word "cruft", I immediately think of WP:IDONTLIKEIT. So this could be a way that someone could close a discussion as "delete" without needing consensus to do so? Ouch. (Anyone who says that we don't have instances where a closer closes something per their personal opinion is at least more naive than I am.) Yes, I'm starting to agree, WP:DRV is that way... - jc37 02:28, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Sod cruft, and sod the usual deletionist/inclusionist debate. I really couldn't care. Please don't reduce it to that inhouse ping-pong game. This is about a class of articles that's doing real harm, not the latest wikipedia pokemon score. Please ignore that deletionist knee-jerk that's upset you and look at the wider picture and effect on real people.--Doc^g 02:34, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

I understand what you're trying to do, and I really do presume good faith at the attempt. My concern is what happens after these floodgates are opened, and how they will be used/misused/abused. As a regular reader, commenter, and closer of XfD discussions, I can tell you that quite often someone will choose to close a discussion as "no consensus" by "counting votes", rather than attempt to read for content and find consensus, simply because it "easier" (read that as it inspires less drama on their personal talk page). I find the prospect of changing this instance of the "closure stuck in neutral" to "default to delete" downright frightening. - jc37 02:56, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Doc, but the arguments used due boil down to what have been to some extent classical deletionism v. classical inclusionism. I'm always disturbed by how when I was first on Wikipedia many thought of me as a deletionist and now I'm regarded as an inclusionist. My views haven't changed much, but what was considered the line that's being argued about has shifted drastically to deletion. Furthermore, I have yet to see any coherent explanation of how this will substantially stop harm of real life people. Siegenthaler cases are rare and don't occur frequently. And in many situations well-written, NPOV articles about marginally notable people help them a lot by making an NPOV article about them being the top google hit rather than various extreme smears or such. JoshuaZ (talk) 02:38, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

"Siegenthaler cases are rare and don't occur frequently"? You haven't examined this have you? They happen daily. And I find dozens of unverified and sometimes plain libellous articles every day simply using Google. But do people like you offer to help? Do you search for this stuff? Do you know what you are talking about? No, you resist all change and bury your head in the sand. And if that sounds pissed off, well I am. I'm sick of the ethical abdication.--Doc^g 02:45, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

I think you misunderstood my point. Siegenthaler cases are rare. Not cases where there is bad material but cases where the material actually is causing harm. And actually, I do try to spend time looking for this stuff. I've been heavily involved in dealing with BLP issues. Not as much as you but that's partially because I don't apparently have as much free time as you do. I'm not resisting all change. I've stated quite clearly that I'm more than willing to support general semiprotection and some version of OPTOUT. I might even be willing to support a variation of defaulting to deletion as you've outlined in your essay rather than this much more general one. JoshuaZ (talk) 03:00, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

"not cases where there is bad material but cases where the material actually is causing harm." I'm at a loss as to how you could think that such material could exist without causing harm. Could you explain yourself? Sarcasticidealist (talk) 09:36, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm an avowed inclusionist (feel free to look through my AFD contributions and my response to speedy tags), but I support this proposal. This is not just a classic inclusionist/deletionist debate, but a debate primarily between people who sincerely recognize a BLP problem with Wikipedia and those who don't (there are a few exceptions, in that some of the opposers seem to genuinely recognize the problem without being prepared to back this specific proposal; I used to be more or less in that camp until I realized that getting any kind of partial solution in place was so difficult that I should just support all of them in the hopes that the occasional one would slip through and become policy). Sarcasticidealist (talk) 02:56, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Many of us are willing to support things that will actually work. There's no reason to believe this will help matters at all. The problem we have is primarily articles that aren't getting enough attention that are BLPs. Once something is getting to AfD it already has a lot of attention paid to it. JoshuaZ (talk) 03:00, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

This isn't my first choice of policy change, either. But it will do something, by reducing the number of BLPs in the encyclopaedia (which, as an inclusionist, I don't like to see happen, but it's preferable to doing nothing). What policy changes do you support to deal with our BLP problem? Sarcasticidealist (talk) 09:36, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Whenever I see cruft, I automatically respond CRUFTCRUFT, and am heavily inclined against the nominator. It's a word that carries a strong negative connotation and should never be used in objective discussion (although, admittedly, I've used it a few times in topics I'm personally biased against; all the more reason it shouldn't be used). Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 02:33, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

I was thinking more WP:Vanispamcruftisement, myself, but have withdrawn the word "cruft" and been more specific, as I should have been in the first place -> "unsourceable and non-notable in addition to the defamatory." Cheers, 03:31, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
Oppose Per Sjakkalle. Also, this turns all of our long held notions and conventions on their head. FeloniousMonk (talk) 03:34, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
Opposed

Looking only at the examples above, it appears unnecessary. For many of these sorts of BLPs I am not particularly an inclusionist--my feelings about them now is 6 delete, 3 keep., 3 uncertain. For 2 of the keep, I said keep in the AfD, and for 2 of the deletes I said delete--I did not participate in the other 7. For none of them does it make a great deal of difference. But here's the reason I am oppoosed--keep and delete are not symmetrical. If an article closes as keep, it can be renominated in a few months for a 2nd Afd, while for a deleted article, especially a contested BLP, a Deletion Review is generally necessary. But a no-consensus can be taken back to AfD in a month or so to se if a consensus can be formed. What more is needed than that. If there is no consensus, there is no agreement what to do, and it can and should be discussed later until agreement is reached one way or another. What more can be wanted? discuss, until we can agree.

But examples such as those given above are not actually the issue. The issue is controversial BLPs which are often closed as no consensus because there are good experienced WP editors with strong views on both sides--the result of these will be to say that any article to which there is any strong opposition will be deleted if it is a BLP. As some people here think that all controversial BLPs which have a negative implication towards the subject, however fair, will be deleted. The small cohesive group of editors who do not represent the consensus, but are strong enough to represent a minority, will prevail. In short, this is a backdoor approach to removing negative BLPs from WP, and becoming as far as living people are concerned, Wikipedia, the encyclopedia of articles that praise the subjects. DGG (talk) 03:44, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
Oppose per above.--Filll (talk) 03:46, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
Strong Oppose Unless I'm not understanding this, but anyone could request their article be deleted? So if Bill Clinton, Bill Dembski, or Bill Buckner don't want their articles, because none of them are all that happy with their well-referenced article, we then delete it? What kind of encyclopedia is this? Then the next silly step will be they want all reference to them in any article? Well, without Bill Clinton, we have to negate 10 years of US history, without Dembski, we can't write about Intelligent design, and of course without Bill Buckner, a certain year in Red Sox history is kind of negated. This proposal is merely a method to censor Wikipedia. Wow. I can't believe anyone would support this thing. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 04:16, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Hi OM, the proposal wouldn't allow Bill Clinton to be deleted. All it says is that BLPs up for deletion will be deleted unless there is a consensus to keep. So it just reverses the default position. It would have nothing to do with the subject of the article. It would still be up to Wikipedians to decide. SlimVirgin ^talk|edits 05:28, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
Oppose in current form. I would support if limited to cases where the subject requests deletion, as it seems a good way of enshrining the quality of mercy and courtesy that we try to extend in these cases. As a general rule, though, it seems to me a nightmare that would lead to far, far too many abuses Phil Sandifer (talk) 04:23, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Phil, Wouldn't you be concerned that if we remove articles because the subject requests removal that we'd be creating a lot of incentive for writers to suck up to subjects, violating NPOV, in an effort to avoid removal? A systemic bias towards flattering articles? A lot of people who's articles are perfectly fair as well as well maintained, would probably prefer not to have an article. Isn't waiting until the subject asks waiting until the harm has actually been done and the subject has taken notice waiting until far too late? --Gmaxwell (talk) 13:36, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree that the "if requested" system is also not ideal. The ideal system would be one where we are capable of coming to rational decisions on BLPs without a number crunching rule to help us. Given that the community seems incapable of that, we are left to consider what processes we do have that we can use to fix the problem. AfD seems to be the one people have settled on, which is fine. But AfD is a deeply flawed process that has known and visible issues, and a rule like this seems certain to have horrible collateral damage. Both solutions seem likely to fix the main problem, and both have some danger of collateral damage, but I think this proposal has a near certainty of wide collateral damage, whereas requiring the subject to request deletion narrows the probability and scope of it. Phil Sandifer (talk) 14:39, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
Oppose. Show me an actual lawsuit and I'll change my mind on this. Let's not self-censor by anticipating lawsuits lurking in every dark corner. As for the "no harm" argument, NPOV trumps it. If a subject is felt to be notable and the article is written neutrally, we cannot give into pressure (internal or external) to self-censor.--Father Goose (talk) 04:47, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

So "Sod who we harm, as long as we can't be sued" - that is a disgusting, morally degenerate attitude.--Doc^g 07:20, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Mainstream news organizations have apparently considered it moral, and even their responsibility, to write about people such as Giovanni di Stefano and Aliza Shvarts. So why am I a disgusting moral degenerate for feeling the same way as them? Think about what you just said to me. If you saw somebody else using that kind of language during a legitimate debate about just what is and isn't our responsibility (To knowledge?; To people?), wouldn't you take it as a sign that the person you were conversing with had completely lost their sense of perspective on the issue?
I recognize that we have a variety of responsibilities -- which must be balanced against each other. Do journalists say, "Hmm, this person doesn't want to be in the news, I better not write this story?" Not any that are serious about their profession. If the story is news -- if the person is news -- they write about it. Now, I agree with most of what is laid out in BLP -- I don't think every person who's been in the news needs an article on Wikipedia, and tabloid news, as far as I'm concerned, might as well not exist. But our responsibility -- our moral and ethical responsibility -- is to write an encyclopedia. A good-quality one, an accurate one, a comprehensive one. If we have a sound reason to have an article about a person, I will place that above some abstract, conversation-stopping notion of "avoiding harm".
Stop characterizing those who disagree with you as immoral.--Father Goose (talk) 08:44, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

You suggested that the only reason to change direction was to avoid litigation. You suggested that NPOV trumps "do not harm" - whateve that means. When you reject ethics and morality as a valid concern you are by definition arguing a case for "amorality". You want to talk about Journalism and compare Wikipedia's freedom to write on a subject to that of a professional journalist? Fine. But let's really compare them. Journalists do not simply publish anything their lawyers allow, they also have, guess what? Codes of ethics!!!! Or at least respectable ones do. Further, the argument here is not "why shouldn't wikipedia publish neutral verifiable information?" In general, I have no problem with publishing neutral verifiable information (there are some very limited ethical exceptions). I have a huge problem with us publishing tens of thousands biographies on low notability people when we know many of them are neither verifiable nor neutral and that we simply have no way of keeping them as such. Please read my essay User:Doc glasgow/The BLP problem. I am arguing for this change not because NPOV should be sacrificed, but because we are abjectly failing to ensure that our material on living people is NPOV. NPOV demands we do something here. Wikipedia must not retain an unmaintainable database of non-NPOV and inaccurate information that we have no change of reforming. Again, see my essay for the compelling arguments. We are "doing harm" by failing to maintain WP:NPOV and WP:V. I'm genuinely sorry if I overreacted, but your soundbite response seemed a trite answer to real harm we are doing to real people - harm that no respectable journalist would countenance (whatever the legal situation).--Doc^g 09:33, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Doc, the only one who sees there is a problem is you and your supporters. Secondly, NPOV is a part of WP:FIVE, worrying about the BLP subject's feelings is not. NPOV demands that we examine the facts and if they are verifiable and of significance, we include them. NPOV does not, however, require us to make a subjective decision on how the subject will feel about the inclusion of such material. Like I said elsewhere, we aren't a tabloid but we aren't pravda either. When you can demonstrate there is a real substantive legal threat, then it is appropriate. Otherwise, it is just too bad for the subject. Life isn't fair and the world isn't there to make them happy. Since you are from across the pond, perhaps you heard of the phrase, "stiff upper lip?" We can play the morality game until you are blue in the face, but the fact of the matter is that worse injustices happening to tons of people every day. A bad biography on Wikipedia is not such a case. Besides, they are welcome to correct it if they find it inaccurate or to try to nominate it for deletion. But if they loose, then they should just suck it up and move on. That's the way the cookie crumbles, as my dad would say. --Dragon695 (talk) 21:21, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
Oppose as preposterous. People who do BLP a lot should simply do some other stuff occasionally to relax. The whole thing has been exaggerated beyond all proportions. Zocky | picture popups 05:04, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Evidence? And is that your offer to take over? Another ostrich comment.--Doc^g 07:20, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

How about evidence that this change is necessary? Are we currently swamped by law suits of people whose biographies were kept as no consensus on AfDs? Zocky | picture popups 09:22, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

This is primarily an ethical issue, not a legal one. As for evidence, get yourself an OTRS account and you'll have more evidence than you know what to do with. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 09:31, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

An ethical issue makes us have separate rules for BLP articles? To make an example, how exactly is it worse if the article John Seigenthaler, Sr. says that Seigenthaler killed Kennedy than if Assassination of John Kennedy says it? And as for the other thing, get off OTRS for a while, and maybe in time, you'll stop thinking that this is the most important issue on Wikipedia, i.e. one that requires us to throw out the regular rule book. Zocky | picture popups 09:38, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

First, allegations are severe whether they're in the biographical article or a different article (although perhaps slightly more serious in the former case, since that's the one that's going to have the high Google ranking). This proposal admittedly doesn't deal with the latter case, but pointing out that it won't solve all problems isn't really an argument against solving some problems. Second, we're not throwing out the regular rule book, we're amending the regular rule book; that our current set of rules tells us to do one thing is not evidence of the rightness of doing that thing (and therefore an argument against changing the rules to do something else), although it's surprising how often I've come across that argument. Third, I think my contribution history reveals that only a tiny percentage of my edits have been the result of my presence on OTRS. I think this is the most important issue on Wikipedia not because I spend all of my time on OTRS, but because it's the only issue I've seen harm people in real life. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 09:46, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

OK, so we agree that this won't actually solve the problem of libel. On the other hand, it will create problems that don't exist now - a group of editors will be able to get any BLP article deleted by nominating it for AFD and voting delete, and there will be no way to stop them. Or are we going to change DRV rules for BLPs too? Zocky | picture popups 10:10, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Zocky, you are 100% correct. The problem here is that many of the BLP extremists have spent too much time in this area. If they got out more, they would realise that most of the world just doesn't give a shit. They like to call us ostriches, but it is they who are the proverbial "frog at the bottom of the well." --Dragon695 (talk) 21:38, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
Strongly oppose. Our first priority should be service to our readers. If a significant number of participating Wikipedians believe that an article should be kept (enough of a number to make clear that there is no consensus for deletion), then that's a very strong indication that a significant number of readers would want to read that article. The articles that would be affected by this radical change are already subject to extra-stringent standards under WP:BLP. If WP:BLP means anything, it means that some statements that would be acceptable about deceased persons are not acceptable (based on sourcing or whatever) while the person is alive. Therefore, the articles that would be deleted under this proposal are less prone to inaccuracies than the typical Wikipedia article. JamesMLane t c 07:24, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Exactly! Sometimes we forget just who we are writing for. --Dragon695 (talk) 21:38, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
Oppose for reasons stated above by others (though I don't agree with all of them, such as the one directly above...) - Quite simply, this proposal does not actually do what it claims to, which is to reduce the number of problematic BLPs on Wikipedia. The best mechanism for removing contentious, unsourced content is not AfD the article and take "delete" as the default; rather, it is to "edit this page" and remove the problematic content. If needed, the article should be s- or f-protected. The argument that this will reduce monitoring costs does not stand up to scrutinity, IMO. This change will probably result in no more than 5-20 extra deletions per day, which is not all that much in the grand scheme of things. If there is a need to reduce the BLP-related workload (and I think there is...), then I believe the RfV proposal is a more viable option. Black Falcon ^(Talk) 14:31, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
Oppose. If there is truly a serious BLP vio it can be dealt with on sight before waiting for discussion, as Jimbo urges. I see very few AfDs that are truly on BLP grounds, or BLP arguments coming up in AfD discussions. Most deletions of BLPs are on notability grounds, and on issues of quality, COI/advert, and so on, not BLP. I doubt the proposal was meant to address these, but if it was the proper way is to change the notability thresholds, not the procedure. Making AfDs easier would only increase the rancor, wikigaming, and sockpuppetry problems that are already present in the process. AfDs are frequently proposed, and supported, by people who don't really understand notability or the AfD process all that well. There is a lot of "idontlikeit" and often some background noise of incogent arguments on both sides. Having a default wherein consensus is required to delete an article cuts down on a lot of this. There has to be a rather good reason to delete, or else we keep an article for the stability of the project. Wikidemo (talk) 15:33, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Have you read Doc's essay? --Gmaxwell (talk) 15:51, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Pretty much everyone has read that essay (and if they haven't they certainly should). The problem is this proposal doesn't deal with the concerns there substantially. If an article makes it to AfD it already has a lot of eyes on it. JoshuaZ (talk) 15:54, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

As I said, I think BLP-related AfDs are a small minority. The revised language is a step in the right direction but still too broad. Perhaps what is needed is a policy tailored to articles that are intrinsically harmful to semi-notable people. That could simply be a reason for arguing for deletion rather than a change in the deletion method, which I believe can lead to disruption. I'm uncomfortable with the notion that anyone could argue for hypothetical harm without word that the subject of the article actually objects, because that encourages disingenuous argumentation. Moreover we need to consider the nature of harm. Simply not wanting the truth to be told is not enough, IMO, if the truth is already out there. Wikidemo (talk) 13:30, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
Oppose as currently worded. I share many concerns raised above, do not think this proposal will do what the proponents feel it will do and think the cost will be too high in deleting articles that do not merit it. I have previously supported the third wording proposed by FT2 here "Note that for a deletion discussion of a biographical article where BLP is a concern, the traditional AFD standard may be reversed -- a closing decision of 'no consensus' may be taken as delete and not keep." This gives the closing admin discretion and does not expand it to all BLPs but only those where a BLP violation is a concern. I would continue to be able to support that. My personal ideal preference remains to implement flagged versions on all BLPs as soon as it can be implemented with the flagged version being shown as default to non logged in users. I would think that after a reasonable time those BLPs which we cannot find a reasonable version to be flagged could be nominated for deletion with a presumption that if a good version cannot be produced after the end of the process the article would be deleted. Davewild (talk) 17:27, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
Oppose We "err" on the side of keeping articles, even for BLPs. -- Ned Scott 21:18, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

"This is just what we do" is not an especially compelling argument against a proposal to change what we do. :) Can you convince me? --72.165.204.88 (talk) 21:25, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

What we do is write information, and cover things that pass a certain threshold for inclusion. When we are generally split about that evaluation, we default to keeping it. Why? Because we're here to collect information. We'll do our best to make it accurate, fair, and neutral. Saying that we have to have strong consensus to include in the first place would be an extreme break from our norm, and be detrimental to the Wiki. We're set up to be fair about our evaluations, but to anticipate that we might not always agree about them. -- Ned Scott 07:01, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
Oppose -- Or, hey, let's get rid of all BLP articles -- it's not like anyone reads them anyway. •Jim62sch•^dissera! 22:18, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Would you be surprised to know that some of the BLP extremists have proposed just such a remedy? --Dragon695 (talk) 21:42, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
Strong oppose As an encyclopedia trying to cover all human knowledge it's a bad thing because it would cause lots of articles on living persons to be deleted just because some people decide that they don't want the article. Causing a lot of noise on a AfD can cause it to close as non-consensus, so you can imagine what would happen: people that don't like an article calling for supporters to appear at the AfD and make noise and force a non-consensus closing. --Enric Naval (talk) 00:50, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
Oppose as worse than Docg's proposal – at least that was conditional on expressed concerns that the biography could cause distress to the subject, or will be particularly difficult to maintain in a fair and accurate state. I'm sympathetic to the idea that a default of keep where there's no consensus can be too onerous whre there are these concerns, but would prefer that the closing admin have discretion where there's no consensus to delete or protect the article (full or semiprotection, depending on the maintenance concerns), subject to review in all such cases. .. dave souza, talk 14:28, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
Oppose. I've found too many BLP nominations where the person submitting it to AfD did not give the article due diligence. After two or three delete votes "per nom", someone would come along, list plently of reliable sources, and the article would be kept, even without "Consensus to keep". I cannot abide changing the default presumption to delete. MrPrada (talk) 08:16, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
Oppose. Gives far too much power to people who tend to like deleting articles. Need a better solution. I add from personal experience that even for clearly notable people, there is often a substantial minority who want to delete, sometimes for ideological, political or religious reasons. If this were passed, that minority would have its way automatically! Dovi (talk) 08:37, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
Strong oppose This is basically a licence for admins to do what they like, another sign of Wikipedia's descent into an unchecked oligarchy. Luwilt (talk) 12:31, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
Oppose We are here to build and encyclopedia, not to destroy/delete what's already been built. BLP's that are full of unsourced controversial information usually get that information removed when the article comes up for deletion. There are always some contributors who will comment 'delete' even when the article has multiple reliable sources. Royalbroil 13:18, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
Oppose - leaves non-fawning articles overly vulnerable to meatpuppets and manipulation by outside forces and fanbases. --Orange Mike | Talk 18:22, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
Oppose - proposal misses the point by a country mile, see [6]. MickMacNee (talk) 18:29, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
Oppose - First of all, Doc, kudos on taking up arms on this. Your essay is well written and the proposal well thought-out. I'm glad that the Signpost covered this, otherwise I might not have even known the discussion was happening.

My primary concern is that 'no consensus usually equals keep' is a long-standing and reasonable standard, and I worry about turning that standard on its head for a particular category of articles. In a perfect world, an article gets created with all the proper sourcing, etc. that's needed to truly be encyclopedic. In a less-perfect but collaborative world, articles missing the proper sourcing either get tagged or hopefully improved by other editors. Unfortunately, as Celarnor has pointed out, Afd is broken, and what too often happens is that an editor will come across a poorly-sourced article and throw it under the Afd bus as 'doesn't demonstrate notability', without even a cursory search for sourcing. I see this practically every day and, while editors reading the Afd will often do the leg work and make the save, I can easily see not-obviously notable BLPs getting deleted as a result of this change in policy. I'd also ask the question 'how far does this extend?'. Would this change apply to all BLPs, or would BLPs that fall under some of the WP:BIO sub-categories like athletes or entertainers that have specific notability criteria be handled normally?

Personally, I think you've captured the real solution in a statement and question within your essay - "However, the fact remains that we have thousands of unreferenced bios. A percentage of them will be libellous, and a larger percentage grossly unfair. Where is the urgent task force fixing that?". We do need a serious, all hands on deck effort to tackle the BLPs that have already been identified as unreferenced, to supplement the good work that the folks who patrol BLPs regularly are already doing. I'd much rather try to fix the problem within our existing structures than change the structures due to the problem.

Otherwise, in terms of more radical solutions, semi-protection of all BLPs might be a good first step, with full protection of particularly problematic articles that regularly have unverified or unverifiable content added. Alternatively, I liked the structure proposed in WP:BOO recently by PrivateMusings - I was disappointed to see that idea die on the vine. Mlaffs (talk) 19:29, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
Oppose, changing the rules of consensus for one type of article will snowball into people wanting to set up different rules of consensus for roads, for songs, for buildings, etc. If you want to change the way AfD works, propose an no consensus goes to delete for all articles. Personally, taking into account the subject's wishes is offensive. Not to the subject, but to the subjects of the 100,000 or so other unreferenced BLPs. That is like saying "it's alright to slander someone, unless they find out about it." The process should correct problems irregardless of input of the subject. --Rayc (talk) 20:14, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
Oppose per Sjakkalle's norwegian example below. The intent may be to protect living people but the result will be to unreasonably strenghten notability requirements. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 12:01, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
Strong support, we strongly need to get rid of every last vestige of BLPs, the eternal source of discord and drama. Destroy them all! Let confusion, fear and surprise be our two weapons. Three weapons. Our three weapons are... Not really. =) Oppose, simply because this needs more conditions for deletion other than just merely "lacking consensus", because the consensus can be divided due to variety of reasons, not always related to the notability or sourcing. In current form, I see this open to various ways of gaming the system. Even if it say, to the effect, "if there's a strong doubt that the article would not pass the notability criteria", that'd be much better. --wwwwolf (barks/growls) 09:33, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Note: I didn't see the revised wordings below. Those are much better IMO - but my point is that we can't do this on overly broad terms like in the original proposal. --wwwwolf (barks/growls) 09:35, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
Oppose. AfD commenters and closing admins already have the ability to take BLP concerns into account when closing an AfD; if, even with those considerations, there is still no consensus to delete, then we should err on the side of retaining information. Also, this sets up a two-tier AfD system, dividing all pages into either "this is a biography of a living person" or "this is not a biography of a living person". Unfortunately (since that certainly would be convenient), we have a lot of articles that contain information on living people but are not entirely about those living people. (As an example, consider Stan and Jan Berenstain, which is half about a living person and half about a dead person. Would such an article default to keep or to delete?) I don't like having different rules for different categories of articles; it confuses users. Were this to be implemented, I'd have to suggest splitting the discussions between "Articles for Deletion" and "Biographical Articles for Keeping" (worded such because of the reversed default). Powers ^T 15:56, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
Oppose People are no different from animals or other topics of articles. Lab-oratory (talk) 17:13, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
Oppose A no-consensus reverts to the status quo, which is to keep the article. As other's have commented, we are here to build an encyclopedia, no, the best encyclopedia we can. Secondly, a no consensus sometimes just means that there needs to be more discussion. Saying no consensus == delete is just stupid. -Royalguard11(T·R!) 17:48, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
Oppose as stated. This would mean that a controversial minority can delete an entire article on any grounds they aren't snowed out of, whereas under BLP as it stands, they must show that statements are unsourced before they are removed. If this were restricted to unsourced articles, or articles where the closing admin can't find any credible claim of notability, I would support. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:17, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
Oppose Too many articles are already being deleted without consensus by admins who act in the way they would have voted, rather than on the opinion they expressed. This would become a deletionist charter. If the articles have unhelpful BLP elements then edit the article rather than deleting it. --Rumping (talk) 20:01, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
Strong oppose. As currently worded, this would be a deletionist's charter. Articles on living people appear on AfD all the time and end in the large grey area where at least some admins would consider there to be no consensus, and the great majority of those I've seen are entirely harmless articles with no conceivable BLP concerns. I'd support "no consensus plus valid BLP concerns = delete" and "no consensus plus subject requests deletion = delete", but this is just throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Espresso Addict (talk) 21:39, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
Oppose, apart from the massive potential for abuse, this effectively subverts the concept AfD. At the moment, you need a consensus to do things (such as delete an article), and "no consensus" is to retain the status quo. I think this system works quite well, and I see no compelling reason to change it. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 02:40, 26 April 2008 (UTC).
Oppose. As worded, no way I can support. I do support the spirit behind it, but the specific formulation offered by SV does not work for me at all. As others have said, defaulting to delete in BLP AfD's will (not might) result in all kinds of utterly non-problematic BLP's being deleted because there is a debate about notability. That's a serious, serious problem and Sjakkalle provides some good examples below. This proposed policy change is also ripe for gaming, as a few like minded editors can set about AfDing BLP's about figures they don't want articles on, for whatever reason. Often it only takes a few well-worded delete !votes to end up in a no consensus. The problem, which others see as a virtue, is in the black-and-white wording of the proposal. I'm very much open to more flexible wordings along the lines of some mentioned on this page and hope we come up with something. The BLP issue is a major one and we need to deal with it. I don't mind taking a sledgehammer to our policy on this, but this proposal as worded is a one-ton wrecking ball which sorta fixes one problem while creating another one. Let's have a discussion/straw poll on two or three alternatives where the language is dialed back since this proposal does not seem to have consensus. I think we can get the same results with more refined language. I'm extremely glad that we're having this discussion though.--Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 04:40, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
Oppose. I think I understand the rationale for the proposal; that is, it is based on potentially defamatory nature of BLP articles. While I don't understand is why this is the solution. An AfD could quite well end up with no consensus for no libel related reasons. -- Taku (talk) 05:48, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
Oppose I am firm in my conviction that this is not in line with either our normal standards for deletion, or the BLP policy. Also, I think the recent result of the Giovanni di Stefano AFD is a prime example that belies this proposal. The first choice, whether it's a BLP or not, should be to keep articles if there is not a consensus to delete them. The letter and the spirit of BLP is to improve biographies (it advises the removal of libelous content, not the complete removal of a biography altogether), not delete knee-jerk delete them. VanTucky 21:34, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
Oppose In The Strongest Possible Terms. I have just read Doc's essay, and I am completely unconvinced. I oppose for the following reasons:

1.) This is another example of the tendency of those involved with BLP issues to become obsessed with all things BLP. BLP patrollers tend to be activists with extreme views on the subject, gradually developing Stockholm Syndrome and acting almost like security guards or PR flacks for any article subject in sight. Here, we see a veritable non-issue inflated to the point where radical changes to AfD are being demanded - just the latest step in the attempted transformation of Wikipedia into a pleasure garden for living article subjects. I have watched over the years as BLP has become the most overblown and self-serious region of Wikipedia policy, and I have a message for the BLP-patrol crowd: you are not on a mission from God. Please, tone down the moral outrage. All that's going on is the whining of oversensitive people (of minor but real notability) who are annoyed that truths about them can be posted on the internet in a place where others will preserve them. We have no responsibility to protect people's reputations from the truth. The peevishness of the Brandts of the world is of little moral urgency, so to couch this discussion in moral terms is a stretch.

2.) All people involved with OTRS develop similar tendencies, gradually coming to identify entirely with article subjects and never with article readers or the viewing public, let alone Wikipedia editors.

3.) If this is an ethical issue rather than a legal one, we need similar protection for fringe historical (i.e. dead) figures - who often have the most out-of-the-way articles and are frequently subject to a ludicrous level of bias, especially from the old Britannica fragments. Where's the outcry? Think of the descendants!

4.) Regardless of any good intentions, this will be used as a weapon by those who don't want the truth about themselves to appear on the internet. It's hard to create consensus to delete, but incredibly easy to derail consensus and force a default deletion. Add to that the fact that there are a lot of radicalized Wikipedians who will essentially urge deletion in all contested BLPs (if you want examples, look above), and you have a built-in minority who can bring any AfD to "no consensus" within minutes: an unappointed auto-deletion taskforce.

5.) This policy will doubtless clog deletion review.

6.) This policy will also overload AfD to an even greater extent, as deletion attempts will be floated again and again. Setting a lower bar - a radically lower bar - will encourage more repeat attempts for all articles.

7.) Many more solid examples of real-world damage are needed before any policy change - let alone an absolutely radical overhaul of procedure - can even be considered. Can we have at least 10 examples of serious real-world harm that would be prevented by this policy change? 10 is low for a change so major. Since the problem is supposedly so pressing, so great, 10 examples should be easy to come up with.

8.) This decision will spread beyond BLPs, make no doubt.

9.) To repeat, this will be used as a weapon against controversial and damaging truths, not falsehoods.

10.) This policy puts far too much power into the hands of those who hold minority views, who will now be able to force the deletion of any notable-but-obscure or notable-but-minor BLP they dislike.

11.) This policy puts far too much power into the hands of AfD closers, who are free to imagine "no consensus" in the face of a substantial majority of Keep support.

In essence, the incredibly low bar set for deletion - a simple requirement to derail consensus - is very open to gaming. This policy will be used to remove controversial-but-true information through wholesale deletion of entire classes of article. Any minor-but-notable or obscure-but-notable living figure (or their supporters, or others with a COI) will be able to ally with a determined minority of BLP ideologues, deletionists, and impressionable naifs to force the deletion of articles. For these reasons and more, I oppose this decision in the strongest possible terms. (For anyone checking my history: I am using a new account, but am not a newbie or a sock.) François Metro (talk) 01:24, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
Oppose (I see this proposal has garnered a rather high amount of support already, but I guess it doesn't hurt to vote oppose on the off-chance :)) When editors vote keep for BLP articles, enough to avert consensual deletion, it is reasonable to assume that many have considered BLP concerns, prospective risks and still favor keeping. No-consensus, condensed to its basic spirit, is no compromise being reached, another discussion being held later, meanwhile, the articles can be given a second chance. A keep is open to alternatives, since articles will be subject to more changes (trims/expansions/merges), more discussions, and even deletion when an agreement is built (granted, it happens at a later time, but renominations can be done easily in due course). A delete, however, means no alternative as, of course, there will be no article after deletion. In other words, deletion is the termination, the end, the death of all other options. Taking "delete" automatically as the default hardly ever makes any sense.

When the result is no consensus, it means the matter is undecided. When the matter is undecided, people usually keep their options open, until they can decice. One way to do this is not to choose an approach that will shut the door on every other solution, which a deletion will do. Retaining articles to allow the hoped-for improvement until there is consensus as to what we do with them is a simple, logical, and fair treatment; our default system is perfectly fine as it is. --PeaceNT (talk) 04:06, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
Oppose — Deletion, by its very nature, is something that can be difficult to reverse. When an article is kept after a contentious debate, there can always be another debate. When it is deleted, there can be no further debate since the topic of debate no longer exists. The article would have to be recreated, thus sparking another debate. We would, in effect, begin arguments about whether an article could be created instead of whether it should be kept. JKBrooks85 (talk) 05:59, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
Oppose. The deletion of accurate, verifiable information is not something that should be done lightly. At the very least, consensus for deletion should be achieved. If an argument for the deletion of a biography of a living person is persuasive enough, I trust Wikipedians and the Wikipedia process to achieve consensus for the biography to be deleted. If no consensus is achieved then I don't think the judgment of Wikipedians should be discarded. --Oldak Quill 08:57, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
Oppose - As per Oldak. - Shudde ^talk 04:21, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
Oppose, this is much too radical. The best way to handle the problem is to full-protect BLPs on subject request (if at a low-to-moderate notability level), and if problems/complaints somehow persist after that, consider deletion, possibly with a 50% requirement for delete instead of two-thirds. Changing the AfD requirement for all BLPs is extending the problem into a vast number of articles where it does not exist and otherwise would never arise. Any solution which extends this problem beyond articles that are the subject of actual complaints is dangerous for the content of the encyclopedia and is a means of shifting the standard for content towards deletionism. Everyking (talk) 18:20, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
Oppose probably per many others above. This would not help the difficult conundrum we face with this kind of article, it would just shift the balance more towards deletion. I don't see why it needs to be shifted that way... and in any case, a new equilibrium would form with the new meaning. The best solution to this problem is to come up with a clear standard for what to do in these cases. Otherwise this will be all about voting. Mango juice^talk 18:44, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
Oppose per Phil Sandifer. Removal of content, and biographies approved of by their subjects in particular, generates nearly as much ill-will as the BLP concerns that motivate this proposal...even if most of those complaints don't show up in OTRS. I expect the harm created would be created than the harm mitigated, and there are other ways of dealing with the problem.--ragesoss (talk) 19:36, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
Strong Oppose per Father Goose. This is getting to the point of reductio ad absurdum. Enough hand-wringing, folks. Content is seriously being degraded by these bad policies. Wikipedia is not your therapist and is not your PR agent. We aren't here to make subjects of BLPs feel good. --Dragon695 (talk) 20:57, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
Oppose even though many people I respect and often agree with are voting support. With the note that I would certainly enforce this policy in closing AfDs if it were enacted.
I respect and understand the importance of BLP concerns raised by the support voters, and have read Doc's essay which I think makes some good points (not all of which are unique to information on Wikipedia however). I second many of the concerns above, in particular the effects on the dynamic of deletion debates and the deletion process. I would remind the support voters that last summer, a coordinated campaign by some of the newer deletionists got rid of a huge number of our "X in popular culture" articles. I closed a few of those AfDs and deleted the articles, and they probably should have been deleted. But, it has since turned out that the editors behind this campaign were socking the debates heavily ... we don't know how many will be overturned in DRV and restored, but to me this is one of those real embarrassments to us that, fortunately, never will get mainstream media coverage because only we understand how serious it was.

That campaign was made possible by the existing AfD rules, which as with everywhere else require that a clear consensus for deletion be reached. I am not sure this policy will solve the BLP problems, potential or actual, that Doc's essay identifies. It seems tailored mainly to problems like Daniel Brandt. I am sure that this will launch yet another army of idealistic zealots who devote 99.99999% of their edits to finding "cruft" articles they could get deleted under this new policy, without a care as to how many longterm editors they alienate from Wikipedia in the process, and then pat themselves on the back in each other's RfAs. With all the attendant increase in DRVs, RFCs and RFARs that would come along with that. Just like the tighter free-image policy did. Wikipedia needs editors who are editors first and foremost whatever their user-rights status. There have been far too many users becoming self-appointed mujahedin for this or that policy with far too much blood on the floor for us to so cavalierly do it again.

I am also concerned that adding yet another complexity to Wikipedia policy, especially a very basic one, is yet another brick in the garden wall. In the name of credibility and progress, we have done so many things in the time since I started editing that, while some have been necessary and desirable, have had the unintended consequence of making Wikipedia that much harder to master for newcomers. And now we want to say "oh, this rule is absolute ... except for this large group of articles, where it's the other way around". LPs already get a fair amount of special treatment: 3RR suspended for reverts of libelous info, can't use fair-use publicity photos of them (which irks quite a few; ask David Shankbone about Alan Alda). Ask yourself, really, if you were new to Wikipedia today or after the adoption of this policy change, would you be as likely to stay as you were when you came aboard?

And I may contradict myself here, but it is also possible that this change in policy may actually result in more of these articles getting kept? AfD regulars may feel like dropping a "keep" for an article they would otherwise have left alone, or admins may unconsciously lower their threshold for determining consensus out of fear that the process could be being manipulated (Believe me, it's easy to secure a "no consensus"). If we do do this, we probably need a separate BLPfD page, with separate rules and a separate template. All of which further increases the complexity of Wikipedia to a newcomer. In time, we won't need WP:BITE because our policies will do all the biting for us.

Doc's essay also mentioned raising the notability standards for living people, which I think is the solution this problem actually needs. It may not be sexy, it may not be bold, it may not make you feel like a radical new thinker for embracing it, but it's what will work IMO. Daniel Case (talk) 04:48, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
Oppose - As per above. There is no compelling reason to reverse the status quo just because the subject is alive. - hahnch e n 17:31, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
Oppose As others have said, we're an encyclopedia. There's simply no rationale for hiding information about certain subjects from our readers, all the more so when those subjects are living people who could effect their lives in some real way. We need to put our readers first and have the same standards here as they expect us to have for anything else. -- Kendrick7^talk 02:44, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
Strong oppose given the potential for abuse and the fact that WP relies on consensus to do something, including deletion. The exception to this should, however, be this proposal. Given the clear no consensus for this proposal we should delete it. :-) JRG (talk) 03:35, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
Strong oppose No clear need for such strong action. Sets a horrible precedent. 68.40.58.255 (talk) 03:02, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Neutral/other

Comment. I am still worried about George W. Bush which was discussed last time [7]. I can image a protest group breaking what would otherwise be a consensus to keep. Bush wouldn't now even need to ask for his article to be deleted! So, shouldn't any decision explicitly involve consideration of whether the deletion would prevent us from "improving or maintaining Wikipedia". WP:IAR may be too much of a last resort. Thincat (talk) 13:52, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
- You are "worried" that George W. Bush might get deleted by accident? Come off it.--Doc^g 13:56, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

No, not at all. I am worried that if someone mischevously submits it for AfD then other fun loving editors might lead to "no consensus", hence deletion. I am also wary of introducing a new rule that might only work if it was sometimes ignored. Thincat (talk) 14:04, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

The notability of a US president is pretty well presumed on the one hand and verifiable on the other, and we are only talking about borderline notability articles where the BLP concerns outweigh the encyclopedic value. Dloh cierekim 14:14, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, I think that depends on whether the phrase "When closing an AfD about living persons whose notability is ambiguous," also governs the proposed additional sentence. To me, the meaning is ambiguous. Thincat (talk) 14:18, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

I have the same minor concern as I had last time when this came up (see here). A lot of biographies aren't nominated for deletion because of possible WP:BLP problems, they're simply nominated for deletion just like any other article is, and I don't think we should change the deletion standard for them, too. It's perfectly fine to no-consensus-keep a totally uncontroversial, sourced article (or BLP) after all, right? This should only be about biographies with (perceived or real) BLP problems, IMHO. --Conti|? 14:05, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
- The BLP policy was intended to move us from complacency because we acknowledge that content about a living person has real world consequences beyond what was originally imagined when Wikipedia was started. One of the mistaken impressions that people have is that the BLP policy only deals with the removal of unsourced material. And mistakenly think that unless that section of the policy is invoked in a discussion, then we are not dealing with a BLP problem. In fact the BLP policy was written to strengthen our enforcement of all Wikipedia's policies and guidelines when we are make decisions related to content related to living people. The policy was intended to have an impact on all of our practices. FloNight ♥♥♥ 14:26, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
I have long doubted that explicitly naming "BLP" as the exception to every single existing policy sends the right message. I might support "changing the default AFD result" if such a change applied to all AFDs, but even then the usual concerns would apply:
1. Disinterest of "AFD regulars" in the actual topics covered in articles listed on AFD.
2. Apathy of editors who may have the knowledge and skill to improve articles listed on AFD.
3. Cynicism of potentially interested editors who see no point in improving an article which will probably be deleted anyway.
4. Reluctance to revisit arguments stemming from issues which have been corrected (e.g. lack of sources).
5. Failure of AFD participants to consider solutions other than deletion.
6. Temptation of closers to "count votes" when in doubt rather than "identify unique arguments and weigh them".
7. The stub-o-phobic view that articles which can't be expanded beyond [fill in the blank] should be deleted or merged (or worse, both).
8. Deletionism in general.
9. etc.
10. This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

Right now I think "defaulting to keep" is a necessary safe-guard against the perennial problems of AFD. IF (I hesitate to say "WHEN") these are ever corrected, I could support this proposal, but right now I don't see it working. — CharlotteWebb 14:28, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Comment I did some research to see what articles this proposal would cover. I looked at the AFD logs for the first 10 days of April (all of which have been closed now) and produced this list of BLPs which this change in policy would affect:-
Sky Soleil
Terry George (entrepreneur)
Lauren Harries
Eric Himan (this AFD was closed by a non-admin and has subsequently been moved to an album)
Shalini Ganendra
Muhamad Naji Subhi Al Juhani
Lucas Baiano
Neil McMenemy
Szilvia Molnar
Toby E. Rodes
Kiva Kahl
I urge people to look at these articles as a representative sample of what articles could be affected. After looking at these AFDs I would strongly urge that as Doc orignally proposed at Wikipedia talk:Biographical optout#A simpler proposal the wording or to relist where participation has been low should be added to the proposal in order to ensure that an article with an AFD where there has only been a couple of comments is not deleted as a no consensus. Davewild (talk) 18:42, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
- I don't want to fork this discussion with this discussion with amendments, but I'd be happy to see that added if this passes, and don't think it is likely to be controversial with those supporting the proposal. We can work on the wording later, but if participation is low then relisting is going to be more appropriate.--Doc^g 18:47, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
- It's not too useful to reference prior AfDs since the change in rules would certainly result in a change in behaviors. In the past if I thought an AfD should be kept and it was at 50% keep I wouldn't bother commenting. In terms of not deleting things with no participants, we already manage to do fairly well in avoiding the situation of only a single delete voter with a marginal argument. --Gmaxwell (talk) 19:19, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
  - I suspect that for the majority of would-be participants, the first hint of a policy change will be a surprising red link at the top of AFD discussions where they "didn't bother commenting". — CharlotteWebb 20:53, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
I would support this but only where the biography contains negative material/ a specific BLP problem has been identified. I would be disappointed to see this principle applied in a case where the subject was known to want an article on Wikipedia and the discussion ended in "no consensus". But where there are good reasons to believe that the subject would not want us to have an article, I would support a reversal of the default position where a consensus can't be reached. WjBscribe 18:52, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
I've now noted this at the talk page of AFD. In as much as this is a bigger change to AFD than to this policy, discussion really has to include AFD regulars if any real consensus is to form. GRBerry 19:14, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

I posted the same notice on the Admin noticeboard as admins will be the ones who would implement the change. Davewild (talk) 19:22, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

If adopted, this should apply only to AfDs which raise BLP-specific issues; common, everyday notability debates should not be turned into more serious BLP discussions. Black Falcon ^(Talk) 22:40, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Comment - I think many of the opposes are missing part of the point. The point here is not just to delete BLPs that are the target of defamation, but also to reduce the total number of BLPs from the current unmaintainable number, to reduce the number of BLPs in which defamation can be inserted without anybody noticing. I'm not this proposal's strongest proponent, because I don't think it will do nearly enough (my personal hobby horse is semi-protection of all BLPs and full protection upon subject request), but it will do something, so I support it. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 23:30, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
~~Qualified support~~ (switching to neutral - see below) - a good principle, but articles are not the only way that living people can be affected by Wikipedia. They can also be affected by poorly-sourced material in any article (be it an article about another living person, or be it a non-person article), and this proposal does not address that. See Wikipedia talk:BLP#Avoiding BLP by-pass (above). I also raised this at the di Stefano AfD, but no-one seems to be considering this larger problem of both finding and correcting material about people in other articles. Previously, we could use BLPs as a locus to be monitored and kept clean, and we could monitor "what links here" to make sure that other articles were saying the right things (well, in theory anyway). Now, with an article deleted, we would be reliant on searches and normal monitoring of articles (and we know how successful that has been) to ensure Wikipedia is "doing no harm". In essence, when an article gets deleted, we move from situation A (monitoring an article and its links) to situation B (monitoring a disparate set of delinked mentions spread out over lots of articles). We shouldn't fool ourselves. A lot of the material that was in an article will end up back in other articles - and the clean-up process will be more difficult. Maybe things won't be as bad as I'm predicting, but we will all need to be aware of this fragmentation of the problems over different articles. Carcharoth (talk) 23:35, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Maybe I should say I'm considering switching to oppose to get some eyes on the issues I've raised in my comment above? :-) The opposes are certainly getting a lot of attention. Anyway, I've made some more points here, and I am actually quite serious that a better system might be to stub an article if there is no consensus, and possibly protect an article in an acceptable stub state to contain the problem, unless people are prepared to regularly check "what links here" for deleted articles, and to also do searches for material in other articles. Carcharoth (talk) 00:09, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

First off, I'll point out that it's usually very difficult to pass any improvement on English Wikipedia because no proposal can possibly address all issues. I beg you not to contribute to that sickness by opposing something which, by appearances, you think is generally in the right direction.

My thought when reading your comment is "how frequently are people actually checking what links here?". I don't believe they are, and certainly no where near as much as the clearly inadequate level of patrol on BLP articles, especially considering the lack of a watchlist like functionality for whatlinkshere. Beyond that, I can't recall an instance of by-pass defamation that went along with a wikilink, the people adding the libel often don't know to add wikilinks. I know I've seen cases where the word was not already wikilinked. So search will still be needed. In my eyes this proposal is mostly useful for biographies so insignificant that no one will care enough to monitor them. Hopefully the same does not happen as frequently in the more general events and history articles where by-pass libel would most likely be found. Finally, Bio articles can be argued to be attractive nuisances: People look up people they know or dislike and add things. Although by-pass BLP is harder to find it seems far less common, though still a serious one.--Gmaxwell (talk) 00:21, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

~~Nah, I was never going to oppose.~~ I do think that we should still be considering alternatives, but you are right that a plethora of alternatives and "good ideas" just gets in the way of things getting done. I would just ask that people be open to tweaking the system once in place, and not point to this discussion as a reason not to change things later. Thanks for the other comments as well. Carcharoth (talk) 00:38, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Switching to neutral, leaning to oppose (sorry, Greg). The arguments by AfD regulars below (who know how AfD work) have convinced me that the (unintended) consequence of this change would be that borderline obscure subjects (with perfectly OK articles and no complaints from the subject, just vague "don't like it, or non-notable" comments from the nominator) will end up deleted (see the arguments by DGG and Sjakkalle). The argument that "we are only talking about borderline notability articles where the BLP concerns outweigh the encyclopedic value" is fine in theory, but in practice this may not be what happens, unless a new process is set up that is separate from AfD, but still listed there. I think we need to run this as a trial for a month (or two), so see how it would actually work, and then revisit the issue when we have examples of debates to look at. As others have said, looking at past debates does not actually work at the moment. Carcharoth (talk) 07:10, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
- Thats sad. For any significant proposal there will be people who hypothesize grave harm, usually those most invested into the current procedure. While these may be educated guesses they are still only guesses and the one thing we should have all learned by now is that our policies often have surprising unforeseeable consequences. By making a change we have the opportunity to actually learn what the effect will be (and learn more about what the effects of the current system are...) and once we know we can take corrective action. We don't have to resort to guesses. Of course, there are some decisions which can't be reversed, or which risk so much short term harm that testing isn't acceptable. But EnWP policy pretty much contains no such things, policies are mutable, deletions can be and frequently are reversed, and the policies never bind us to doing something that is obviously bad. If English Wikipedia continues to reject the opportunity to act based on objective information and continues to allow fear to preserve the status-quo then the existing policy really will have become a suicide pact. --Gmaxwell (talk) 13:56, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
  - Maybe I should be clearer. I agree there is a problem and want something to be done, but I don't want anything to be rushed through, and I think a month or two of debate will give us a better system at the end of it, and avoid the collateral damage possible in the above system. Of course, carry on repairing/stubbing/deleting problematic BLPs that are raised, but don't rush into this change. Have a look at Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Image placeholders for an example of how a structured debate can still take place. It just needs people willing to stick it through to the end of the process. If you have a large enough and long enough, and visible enough debate, most of the objections from late-comers who claim "not enough people were aware of this" can be overcome. And address enough people's concerns and eventually you do find something that everyone will support. I know this is not ideal, but better to do it this way than try and impose something or give up. Carcharoth (talk) 09:44, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
    - Please also examine the argument that much of this pot stirring is being done by people who have spent way too much time in BLP-land and OTRS. As we discussed previously on my talk page, I think our bios are being adversely affected by this insane desire to fix problems that are being blown out of proportion. I also urge you to consider a point raised above. Are we here to serve our readership by building an encyclopedia, or are we here to serve the interests of people who feel aggrieved by their biography? It is not a false-dichotomy. This is essentially what this debate is about, erring on the side of preserving information or erring on the side of deleting it. Personally, I think many waste too much time worrying about how others will feel and completely forget that we should be sticking to NPOV and providing more, not less, content for our readership. NPOV, by its nature, would say that it doesn't matter what the subject thinks, only that the facts are correct, notable, and without bias. Serving our readership would insist that we plentiful, high-quality content. I'm sorry, but a firm stand must be taken against the hand-wringers. There is just too much what-if-isms and corner-cases being trotted out to take proposals such as this seriously. --Dragon695 (talk) 22:34, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

At a minimum, this proposal should be implemented for biographies in certain specific categories. By definition, since we are talking about presumptions on an AfD result, we are dealing with subjects whose notability is subject to reasonable disagreement. If the reason for the disagreement is that the subject is a professional athlete, who is almost surely destined to be notable when the next athletic season starts but arguably might not qualify as notable just yet, I can see an argument that there is no need to reverse the AfD presumption. On the other hand, this proposal should be implemented in situations where:
- An article substantially constitutes the biography of a living person, where that person has specifically requested that the article be deleted;
- An article substantially constitutes the biography of a living person who is a minor, or whose alleged notability stems from events that took place when the subject was a minor, and the article content (even if adequately sourced) can reasonably be expected to have a negative impact on the subject's reputation; or
- An article substantially constitutes the biography of a living person whose notability arises primarily from his or her having been victimized by the actions by others, and the article content (even if adequately sourced) can reasonably be categorized as continuing or contributing to the victimization (compare, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Badlydrawnjeff and related policy changes to WP:BLP).

I suggest that this aspect of the change, or a similar one, be implemented forthwith while discussion continues as to other aspects (and the discussion can be informed by the results of the partial implementation). Newyorkbrad (talk) 15:28, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

I understand your second and third points (though I think these should be implemented by more robust policies than just vague presumptions about consensus in AfD debates). I don't get the first point though. We don't have to do something just because someone has requested it. If no good reason is given for a request, we just send them a polite reply and carry on building our encyclopedia.--Kotniski (talk) 15:59, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

~~Strong oppose~~ per common sense. This means that a marginally notable person, where only a few people are watching the article, could have his article deleted. Doc's proposal in the essay is more reasonable. I'd consider supporting if all BLP AfD's were automatically posted to this page, but that might make this page unreadable. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 21:39, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm strongly supporting this, but I think we will need to tweek it to advise admins to relist no-consensus BLP debates where participation has been lower. However, in any case any inappropriate deletion that slipped by could be taken to DRV. I don't want to complicate things in mid debate by tweeking it now, but I'm willing to committ to ensuring that does happen. I can't see the supporters opposing it. Would you consider switching to a conditional support based to the kind of "relist when low participation" caveat I suggested being inserted?--Doc^g 21:57, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

You could just wait for a problem case to happen before bothering with the corrections. If there was a serious risk of low participation in AfD producing bad results we'd already be seeing it, in both (keep/delete) directions, since low participation can cause 'landslides' in either direction given how consensus is usually determined. --Gmaxwell (talk) 22:15, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Change to conditional support, provided that: it only applies if the BLP notice is at the top of the AfD, some BLP-related reasons is given for deletion (I'd prefer to leave it to admin discretion as to whether the BLP-related reasons are credible), non-consensus AfD's defaulting to delete should be relisted for additional comments, and all BLP AfDs are noticed on this page or some other page frequently watchlisted. I trust Doc to handle the last even without explicit agreement, but the others seem appropriate. As AfD's are not searchable, and the closing admin sometimes forgets to put a link to the AfD in the delete reason, deletes should never be easy, even if they can be reversed. (To User:Black Falcon below, notability debates are BLP discussions, in many cases.) — Arthur Rubin (talk) 23:02, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

That's true, although I was thinking mostly of the common one- or two-paragraph biographical stubs that contain no contentious or negative content and fail to prove the subject's notability. In these cases, I think discussion is better handled from the context of WP:BIO rather than WP:BLP. Black Falcon ^(Talk) 23:15, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Poll II : Revised wording

Would you support the wording that is put forth above per se, or would you prefer the following put forth by Doc in his essay to be added onto BLP and the deletion policy :

In the case of biographies of living people, where a number of editors have expressed the opinion either

a) that the biography could cause distress to the subject, or

b) that the biography will be particularly difficult to maintain in a fair and accurate state - due to the poor available sourcing or it being of such low interest that few but biased editors will be willing to maintain it,

In such cases, the closing administrator shall close the debate as keep only where there is a consensus that Wikipedia should retain the article. In all other cases the default shall be to delete the article, or to relist where participation has been low.

- Mailer Diablo 14:46, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

This is a non-starter because no objective criteria exists to match either of the above points, nor do I believe any such criteria could be agreed on. People would just argue endlessly over if any particular case met those criteria. ... Unless, of course, you take the completely reasonable but, I expect, unintended position that any biography of a living person could cause distress to that person in which case the above is effectively the same as the original but with more flowery wording. What say you, Mr. unsigned proposer? --Gmaxwell (talk) 14:38, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
- The original wording is too much of a carte blanche. With the additional qualifiers I hope it would address some of the concerns raised (including my own) And oh, I simply forgot to put my tildes in. - Yours, Mr. unsigned proposer. 14:46, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
First, what is "a number"? As a mathematician I'll tell you that 0 is a number. Also what is preventing editors from forcing a higher inclusion bar by arguing, "the biography might cause distress to subject!" when what they really mean is "subject is not notable enough for me to care about it." I think the philosophy behind this proposal is better than the original proposal, but I cannot see it working. Sjakkalle (Check!) 14:43, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
I do not think that we can easily pry notability from the hands of AfD unless those fingers are cold and dead. Phil Sandifer (talk) 14:45, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
We can't really know if an article may cause the subject harm unless the subject actually complains or the article is in violation of BLP already. I agree with the poor sourcing part, but people supporting deletion then have the challenge of trying to prove the negative. "Low interest" is even harder to define. Given that the average number of edits per page is slightly less than 17 (and that includes page like ANI and the sandbox), most articles could probably be defined as "low interest." Mr.Z-man 15:01, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
I'm much more divided on this one, I don't think for now I'll support or oppose it. I strongly disagree with assuming that an article is harmful to a subject if we haven't had any contact from the subject and frankly once an article gets to AfD there are many eyes on it. Still, this is much better than the previous proposal. I might suggest replacing "a number of editors" with "multiple editors" and that would almost put me into supporting this. JoshuaZ (talk) 15:25, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
Neither. The whole thing's misguided. There's no need to use big words like consensus and talk about overturning the general policy, and whatnot. It just causes suspicion and distress to editors, plus it has the potential to be a slippery slope to more deletionism. And anyway, the problem is that it's unclear what consensus means here. If it's agreement of all or most people on the final result, than it means that all articles that are potentially distressful will be deleted. That clearly can't be the intention. Actually, consensus can't mean anything else. I think the whole point is that AFD should not be about consensus.

AFDs should be, and most are, decided on the balance of arguments, not by consensus. When it's unclear which side "wins", the default is to keep, because keeping of potentially unneeded material is outweighed by avoiding the destruction of volunteer work on the possibly valid article. What this proposal is trying to do is legislate that if there aren't irrefutable arguments for keeping, and somebody mentions distress/difficult maintenance, the article should be deleted.

Apart from being open to abuse by a determined group of POV pushers, the principles invoked completely miss the point: Distress is a serious concern, but it can't be a criterion for inclusion. If somebody has done notable things that will cause them distress when (re)published, it is beyond our power. The word that should be used is libel. We can't say bad things about people if we can't prove them, and we can't let the overall tone of an article be unduly influenced by detailed discussion of petty misdemeanors and/or gossip.

The closing admin should (and most probably do) take into account all sides of the matter, and these include libel and potential for libel. It's entirely possible that the potential for libel will be the decisive factor in most cases where notability of the subject is hard to establish. Maybe the importance of this needs to be reiterated to some closing admins. But we certainly don't need to legislate that mentioning distress changes the rules of the game. Zocky | picture popups 15:26, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Its a step in the right direction, but it still doesn't take into account that AfD isn't cleanup. I could support this:

In the case of biographies of living people, where a number of editors have expressed the opinion either

a) that the biography, considering current sources available in the article and elsewhere, can only be written in such a way that it would have to include material that could cause distress to the subject,

In such cases, the closing administrator shall close the debate as keep only where there is a consensus that Wikipedia should retain the article. In all other cases the default shall be to delete the article, or to relist where participation has been low.

Also, it would have to be conditional; i.e, if new sources that could help maintain NPOV and prevent undue weight on negative coverage, then it no longer applies. I can't support the second qualifier because it doesn't matter how many people are interested in it. This is a wiki, and we take all interests equally. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 18:26, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Continuing to oppose We already have a workable standard; consensus. We do not need one enshrining the vague and dangerous concept of pressure groups of "a number of editors". The rule is workable: if there is a consensus to deleted it will be deleted. What more can be desired--WP editors at BLP are presumably sensible, and if most of them are not convinced that a deletion is proper, they know what they're doing. I see this as a sort of veto: if two established deletionist editors object to keeping, they can delete any BLP. Since several established editors are of the opinion that any negative BLP should be deleted, that's the end of objectivity. Just as before. If they have good arguments, they'll gain consensus. If they don;t, they won't. We have enough problems with a single standard. (

further, I have yet to see any evidence t hat the current practice permits the keeping of inappropriate articles. Yes, it permits the keeping of articles that only a few people think are inappropriate, and that's exactly what it ought to do. DGG (talk) 23:57, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Continuing to oppose very strongly This version is more reasonable, but the incredibly low bar set for deletion - essentially, a simple requirement to derail consensus while raising certain specific concerns - is very open to gaming. This policy will be used to remove controversial-but-true information through wholesale deletion of entire classes of article. Any minor-but-notable or obscure-but-notable living figure (or their supporters, or others with a COI) will be able to ally with a determined minority of BLP ideologues, deletionists, and impressionable naifs to force the deletion of articles. François Metro (talk) 01:22, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Continuing to oppose very strongly Like François Metro wrote, but I feel it is necessary to kick the camel's nose. Someone has to take a stand against creeping deletionism, and these nicely worded proposals are just camel's noses in my humble opinion. I want rich, complete biographies, not stubs. If that means hurting somebodies feelings, well too bad. --Dragon695 (talk) 22:40, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Trial period

Please indicate here whether you would support a trial period or a direct switch to one or other of the new systems proposed above. Carcharoth (talk) 07:29, 22 April 2008 (UTC) Updated 14:29, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Won't this just divide the supporters into 2 camps, making consensus even more unlikely? I don't see how this is helpful. Mr.Z-man 14:52, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Direct switch

If one of the proposed systems is implemented (and I do not like either proposal) it should be a direct switch. The nature of article deletion defies trial periods - if the trial were abandoned as a failure, what would become of the deleted articles? They are still gone. No - changes to deletion policy that delete more articles should be done decisively. Phil Sandifer (talk) 14:41, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
Trial periods just mean we argue about it twice. This is an ideological issue, we all know what will happen, that's not the point. The point is whether we want it to happen. --Tango (talk) 18:10, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
I don't care which way we do it. Mr.Z-man 20:56, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
I support a direct switch as my first choice but am fine with either. ++Lar: t/c 23:32, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Trial period

Carcharoth (talk) 07:29, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
I would strongly prefer that this not be implemented at all, since I think it will cause considerable damage to Wikipedia's comprehensiveness. (I think the scenario I have outlined below is very possible.) If it is implemented and we see hair-raising deletions occur because of it, we need an easy way to stop the policy from continuing the bulldozing. Sjakkalle (Check!) 07:39, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
For obvious reasons (at least to me), I strongly dislike the idea of any implementation at all; numerous problems at AfD aside, one thing Wikipedia doesn't need is a rush of deletion nominations where you could improve the article to a clear keep in less time than it took to put it to AfD. Until the proposal has measures in place to allow for changes to the article during AfD and perhaps strike no longer relevant delete votes, extends the AfD from five to at least ten days to allow a wider response from the community, and a participation requirement that would reduce no conensus results, then I can't support any implemention of this, even if it was just for one article. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 13:04, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
I don't care which way we do it. Mr.Z-man 20:56, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
In the event this gets support, which I hope like heck it doesn't, we should at least proceed with caution. There's likely other concerns and tweaks that would be needed. A direct switch could be very chaotic. -- Ned Scott 21:22, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
Nothing should ever be done with out a trial period. Z gin der 2008-04-24T14:18Z (UTC)
A trial period is my second choice but I'm OK with it. ++Lar: t/c 23:32, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
I am strongly opposed to this proposed policy, which I feel will undermine the integrity of the encyclopedia. BLP ideologues and deletionists will find alliance with article subjects who want their articles whitewashed, and they will derail consensus in AfD after AfD in order to scrub the encyclopedia of articles which contain damaging or controversial truths. I oppose a trial period, which would likely result in an unacceptable loss of information, particularly controversial-but-true information. I oppose a direct switch as strongly as I have ever opposed any policy change. François Metro (talk) 01:18, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
I would support testing this new proposal for a trial period of, say, 2 months, and judging it again then. The trial period should be long enough to get a clear idea of the impact of the proposal, but preferably not too long, since if it were then rejected after all we would suddenly have a bunch of no-consensus-BLP-delete articles sent to Deletion review. Terraxos (talk) 20:52, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion

[edit] Further comment from Sjakkalle

When I first saw the proposal, I was in a hurry, and my opposition comments wound up being a bit terse and exaggerated. To answer some of the responses, then I do not think there is any big chance in the near future of an Eliot Spitzer AFD ending with anything other than a clear "keep" consensus. His name is simply too high profile, and if it pops up on the AFD log, it will attract a lot of attention. However, I am very concerned about what might happen to articles like (with a semi-plausible deletion reason in brackets)

Sven Nordin ("Non-notable Norwegian actor. Article is mostly a collection of films he has played in.")
Yngve Hågensen ("Leader of some Norwegian labor union. He has apparently written an autobiography but that does not confer notability.")
Herborg Kråkevik ("Simply a Norwegian singer and actress. According to the article she has released one CD, but that is insufficient to pass WP:MUSIC guidelines.")
Einar Gausel ("Norwegian chess player who is clearly pretty strong, but the championships he has won are for a pretty small country and hardly a strong indicator of notability.")
Monica Mæland ("Local politicians are not inherently notable, and she does not even hold the position of mayor, just leader of the city council. Claims that this is the most powerful position is clearly WP:PEACOCK, and all the references are non-independent.")

None of these people are well-known to the majority of Wikipedia editors, and I can easily imagine that an AFD on these subjects would attract very little attention. I would guess that three or four editors might accept the nomination reason at face value after a quick review of the article and go with "delete".

Now deleting any of these five articles would be an enormous blunder from Wikipedia, for each of these subjects are in fact "encyclopedicly notable" by any reasonable definition. (They have individual entries in Norway's main general purpose paper encyclopedia, Store norske leksikon. Indeed if anyone tried nominating any of these articles for deletion at the Norwegian Wikipedia, they would probably be blocked for trolling pretty quickly.) Yet, none of the articles are particularly good, and an editor who does not know much about the subjects can very easily agree with a reasonable looking AFD nomination.

Under the present policy, a person who does understand the importance and notability of these subjects could notice the AFD, cry out "this AFD is crazy!" (or something more civil and well-articulated) and easily turn a "delete" consensus into a "no consensus", resulting in the proper outcome: the article being kept. However, by the proposed system, this person would need an army of editors to come to an obscure AFD debate to demonstrate that, not only is there not a consensus to delete, there is in fact a consensus to keep.

I have very grave fears that a consequence of this radical change in deletion policy will be the deletion of articles on subjects which are covered in paper encyclopedias, but who's fame is little to non-existent in the English-speaking world and hence to the majority of Wikipedia editors. Sjakkalle (Check!) 06:22, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree. To address this concern, and the concerns that AfD is broken with respect to borderline material (of any sort, not just biographies), I suggest that a separate deletion process be set up (as an adjunct of the BLP noticeboard, maybe) where the question that is asked and voted on and discussed is whether an article has irredeemable BLP problems (set some clear criteria - unsourced controversial material keeps getting added to the article, and so on). Once people have agreed that there are problems, the article then goes to AfD, and no consensus will result in delete. OK, that probably won't work in practice, but there has to be something better than the proposal above. I will also note that a backlog of 130,000 is not difficult to tackle and deal with - we managed it (sort of) with images, and we could do the same with BLPs if everyone put some work in on it. The problem is that this would encourage sloppy work to clear a backlog, and that some articles would need permanent watching - too many for the resources we have. There is a problem, but I'm not convinced that anyone has found a solution yet, and as DGG and Sjakkalle have pointed out, there may be big problems with this current proposal in practice. The sensible thing, to me, would be to have a trial period and a mandatory discussion after the trial period (unlike for rollback where what discussion there was seems to have died off). To this end, I will start a new section above to find out if anyone objects to implementing this a trial period. Carcharoth (talk) 07:24, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

What you discuss (i.e, the question being asked is whether an article has irreversible problems) is exactly what AfD is supposed to be. If that were the case, then this might be more feasible, although I still think it's a solution looking for a problem. In practice, however, AfD is just cleanup, and until that's remedied, I think the massive losses in process are worse than the marginal "gains" (if you want to call the loss of articles gains) to be had. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 13:10, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Excellent point, Sjakkalle. I too fear that articles whose subjects are notable outside of the English-speaking world would find themselves marginalized. Lazulilasher (talk) 19:13, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Surely that's why we have deletion review and I'm not sure I agree with your premise. Any admin worth their salt should be assessing strength of argument against policy not headcount in closing discussions. In my opinion any assertion that the subject has an entry in a real world encyclopedia is going to shut down any afd discussion.Spartaz ^Humbug! 18:12, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

I am thinking about situations where none of the early participants know about a paper encyclopedia entry, and a late-comer tries to stop the deletion. While it's easy to present a strong argument ("It's covered in paper encyclopedias!"), it is not easy to demonstrate consensus. Also, an assertion of entry in a real-world encyclopedia ought to be a deal-breaker for notability, but in practice this has not always been the case. At Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Lotto (Norsk Tipping AS) I cleaned up the article, and sourced it in part with a paper encyclopedia article on the very same subject. Then two editors, fully aware (if they read the debate) that the subject is covered in an encyclopedia, endorse the view that the "game is not notable on its own"! (That debate would probably have been "no consensus" had it not been for a few late-comers who shared in my amazement at seeing "merge" votes.) Sjakkalle (Check!) 08:15, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Alternative proposal: RfV for BLPs

As an alternative to the proposal to reverse the AFD standard for BLPs, I would like to propose consideration of a different means of reducing the number of problematic BLPs: a requests for verification-type system. Under such a system, any biography of a living person that does not cite print or web sources may be tagged for deletion; if, after a set number of days (e.g. 5, 7, 14, 21, 30), no sources have been added to the article, it may be deleted.

I think that this proposal has three advantages over the proposal above:

It directly tackles the problem of unsourced BLPs, leaving decisions on more muddled issues to consensus.
It encourages improvement of BLPs, as opposed to increasing the likelihood that any effort spent on improving a BLP will be wasted.
It may be less contentious, since it doesn't call for deletion in cases where there is no consensus for deletion.

Thoughts? Black Falcon ^(Talk) 20:25, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Are you ready to delete 124,000 BLP articles that are currently marked as unreferenced? Plus if you see my essay User:Doc glasgow/The BLP problem you'll understand that sources do not mean that articles are neutral and verifiable. Simply sticking some link at the bottom of a page does not mean a word in the article is true. Now I'm not opposed to some version of this, but it does not address the problems of maintaining incredibly marginally notable BLPs. This is not a direct alternative to the above.--Doc^g 20:33, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, I don't expect that they will all be deleted -- in most cases, it takes only 1-2 minutes to find and add a source. (By the way, from where did you get that number?) I know that this proposal does not address the problem of neutrality (verifiability can be checked ... a completely unrelated source can simply be ignored for the purposes of RFV) and only indirectly addresses notability, but that's what I meant with "leaving decisions on more muddled issues to consensus". It seems to me that the proposal is an attempt to deal with NPOV problems through deletion of the article rather than editing and/or partial removal of content. Black Falcon ^(Talk) 20:39, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

For the numbers: I disagree with the 124.000, and have posted some numbers based on category intersection here. However, we're still left with about 30.000 BLPs with sourcing issues, which amounts to about 1 year's AfD volume. I don't think that "just add sources" is a workable alternative here. --B. Wolterding (talk) 21:03, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

The one problem it does not address is how to police articles where notability is borderline (meaning once the "RfV" is over, there will not be many eyes on the article) and the likelihood of future libel is high. This RfV idea is a good way to make sure a poorly-sourced BLP is either fixed or deleted, but it doesn't do anything to protect the article in the future. (unless one were to fully protect the article after the RfV process, but that's likely to meet loads of opposition, because of Wikipedia's extremely idealistic egalitarianist mandate) --Jaysweet (talk) 20:32, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Unnecessary bureaucracy - just remove the content you disagree with. Anyone re-adding it without a source should simply be blocked (after a couple of warnings, anyway). --Tango (talk) 20:40, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

This would create an incredible incentive to add inaccurate or low quality sources... which in many ways would be a worse problem because the complete absence of source is at least fairly obvious. Furthermore, as Doc says, this isn't at all an alternative... it's an orthogonal proposal which should live or die on its own merits. The inability to come to a decision on a policy because every one of us is capable of generating our own favorite 'alternative' is one of the traps the self-governed must avoid. --Gmaxwell (talk) 20:45, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

I think that Black Falcon's suggestion is not an alternative to the above, it rather addresses a different part of the problem. The first problem is: how to react properly in the (few) cases when an issue is found in a BLP, e.g. when the subject complains. This is addressed by the "AfD default" proposal above. The second problem that remains: What to do with all those BLPs which may contain libel, unsourced statements etc., but where this goes unnoticed because no one has ever reviewed them. This is largely a capacity problem. I actually agree that we would probably benefit from a system that removes BLPs from mainspace per default if they are not reviewed for some time. But that's independent of the AfD question, and rather a major change; this should be considered separately. --B. Wolterding (talk) 20:56, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. There's perhaps something in this, but it needs more thought, definition, and analysis if it is to be helpful without being damaging. It is premature to propose this as a reaction to the above. Take it away for longer discussion, and maybe a good idea will be born from it. As it stands it is hopeless - but maybe it can develop into something.--Doc^g 21:02, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

(ec) Fair enough. Given the virtually unanimous negative reaction to the idea (at least as an alternative to the initial proposal above), I think we can put this proposal aside and perhaps revisit it at a later time. For now, considering these two side by side will probably only be a source of confusion. Black Falcon ^(Talk) 21:07, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

A few years back someone (me?) made a proposal that all unsourced articles be moved to a separate namespace which is not indexed by search engines after a time limit. With a minor software tweak regular browsing could fall through to that namespace, so regular browsing would be undisturbed. I think this idea never got traction in part because of the believe that some kind of stable-versions system would resolve that issue in the near future... Perhaps it's an idea worth investigating again? --Gmaxwell (talk) 21:03, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I would support that. Actually, this might become interesting when Wikipedia:Flagged revisions/Sighted versions is implemented. All maintained BLPs would be flagged as "sighted"; and after some time, we could easily (and automatically) identify those which never get flagged, which should strongly indicate that they do not get sufficient attention or maintenance. --B. Wolterding (talk) 21:10, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

People would advise you from experience not to hold your breadth waiting for rescue by extensive technical features, except all who've tried it have long since died. ;) If you can see a reasonably solution which needs no software changes, or only minor ones, you should flesh it out and propose it. Cheers!--Gmaxwell (talk) 21:19, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

I know, I've worked in the business. Anyway, it rather seems a medium-to-long-term proposal. --B. Wolterding (talk) 21:30, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

This should apply to all articles, not just BLPs:

I would love to see a special "cleanup effort" for unreferenced articles: If an article has no references, it gets bot-tagged with {{AUTOPROD-NOREF}} or something similar. If there are no references added within 30 days, buh-bye. To keep from overwhelming editors trying to keep up, the bot would have to limit itself to a few hundred or thousand new taggings per day.

New articles and drafts moved from User: to main-space would be checked for references after a week in main-space. Once all existing articles have been checked, the time could be lowered to 5 days for new articles just like a normal PROD.

Note that it isn't always easy to automatically spot a non-web reference, so there will be false positives for articles that relied only on paper references and who do not include a section named references or something similar. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 21:34, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

That was fairly strongly rejected back when it was proposed at WP:RFV... Black Falcon ^(Talk) 22:45, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Black Falcon's idea mis-conceives the problem. Any admin can already delete a negative BLP that has no sources. The problem is WP:COATRACK, WP:ONE and other similar articles that have sources but are not suitable topics for an encyclopedia biography. Thatcher 21:40, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Here's my problem with this: people can and do disagree on whether an article is a coatrack or a case of WP:BLP1E. The goal of my proposal was to address one BLP-related issue (unsourced articles) so that more time and resources would be available to consider the more complex issues of encyclopedic suitability. Black Falcon ^(Talk) 22:45, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

I also share the concerns expressed here about the "volume" or "capacity" problem, which is related to the workflow problem. What is desperately needed is a thorough analysis and gathering of statistics, in this and other areas - otherwise we are just speculating on the numbers. Carcharoth (talk) 23:55, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

I like this idea a lot. It may help to reduce the number of notable but unsourced articles on Wikipedia; ultimately, though, such things already exist (WP:WICU, WP:ARS), but they are seldom used. Most people use AfD as cleanup instead. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 05:59, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree with B. Wolterding above, that this will just shift the argument to the question of the adequacy of sources. It was the same with the proposal to delete unsourced articles in general--the result would have been to add quickly whatever sources seemed approximately relevant, without actually looking at them. Most of the present unsourced biographies are nor particularly controversial. DGG (talk) 01:47, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

I would support this alternate proposal - indeed, I suggested something similar recently as a new Criterion for Speedy Deletion. It was overwhelmingly rejected, but if a reasonable time limit was used - say, 30 days - then I think this proposal could be acceptable. The deleting admin would have to be careful to check that sources for verifying the article do not actually exist, to avoid the deletion of articles on notable people that simply haven't been sourced; but assuming there were sufficient people watching these articles and improving them, that would be avoided and this would work well as a policy. Terraxos (talk) 20:45, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Discussing the poll

Can we split the above poll into sections of support and oppose? I'm assuming it was no meant to be a straw poll but its looking like one. SynergeticMaggot (talk) 04:58, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

I changed the header to something more informative and ruthlessly merged sections (some of the alternative proposals looked a bit dead), and tried to keep things on track, while still keeping an eye to asking the community how best to implement this. I don't want to go further than this, so could people please discuss what I did here, and if they want to add more stuff and questions, to discuss here first. Adding more will soon make this unwieldy, so I think we should just limit it to what we have and defer further discussion until after this discussion has run its course. Can I plead, once again, for people to give a clear end date when setting up these sorts of discussions? Otherwise people just dither about whether the discussion should stop, whether more discussion is needed, or whether to just go ahead. Since this proposal is gaining a lot of support, the proposers should be working hard to draw up details of how it would work in practice, and then possible a sitenotice will be needed for such a drastic change (or appeal to Jimbo if you like - didn't he make the big BLP change last time?). Carcharoth (talk) 07:48, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Alternative proposal: temporary deletion

Proposed: By default, any BLP article up for AfD be moved to a subpage of that Afd (for viewing by the commenters), with the redirect to that location (the BLP's old location) deleted and protected for the duration of the AfD.

For example, let's say that there is a nomination at afd for the article on Jane Doe MMXI (There may have been a few by that name, though few notable enough for an article : )

The nominator does the nom, as normal, complete with tagging. (For the page history, if nothing else.)

The some helpful admin moves the page (and its talk page, to keep them together) to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jane Doe MMXI/Article, and then deletes the redirect of the page and it's talk page, protecting the page from editing, leaving a link to the afd in the edit summary of the deletion of the redirects.

Now if the afd results in keep, then the closing admin (or some other helpful admin) unprotects the orignal page, and moves the article and talk pages back to mainspace/talkspace.

If it's no consensus to delete, the same as keep.

If it's delete, then the subpage is deleted.

In any case, while the article is in question, we stand by "no harm" by removing the article from article space, while leaving it available for those commenting. - jc37 02:49, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

How is this an alternative? It seems to address a completely different issue: A bad article staying around for the time it takes AFD to complete. I'd say that it would be worth proposing but in practice it's not needed: Articles that are so bad and incurable that they need to be effectively deleted quickly are simply speedy deleted today. I really suggest you read User:Doc glasgow/The BLP problem if you haven't... preventing articles that virtually no one cares about from gathering libel is a serious problem. So are instances of really bad stuff, but the speedy deletion we already have is the best we can do short of something proactive.

Ah.. and your proposal would have the problem of making disruption really easy if people followed it religiously: Nominate GWB for deletion and the article is gone for a week? Whoo! --Gmaxwell (talk) 03:08, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, but the above proposal doesn't directly handle the problems discussed in Doc's essay either. Semiprotection of BLPs will help a lot, but the above doesn't. I agree that the above suggestion by Jc wouldn't help much either. The essential problem as I see it that once something is on AfD we have people looking at it. By nature, once something is there it isn't in the massive set of unchecked BLPs. The problem is dealing with the unchecked BLPs not AfD. JoshuaZ (talk) 03:12, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

In your initial oppose you claimed one of your reasons for opposing the proposal was because you believed that we'd soon have a viable opt-out procedure for subjects who don't want to be included. Do you honestly think that is going to happen? --Gmaxwell (talk) 03:16, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, I still think WP:OPTOUT has a decent chance of passing as does semiprotecting all BLPS. But it is only relevant to a minimal extent since this proposal wont deal with the bad BLPs. Semiprotection does. Once a BLP has advanced to AfD it has multiple eyes on it. These aren't the BLPs that are the problem as discussed in Doc's essay. The problem BLPs are the ones that regular users never get a chance to look at. Neither proposal above (SV's or Jc's)deal with this fundamental issue. JoshuaZ (talk) 03:35, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Well first, I'd like to give our admins at least "some" common sense. Note that it would require an admin to make the move, etc. That same admin could speedily close the request instead, or indicate that it can be a "regular" AfD, without the added need to article (re-)moval. (And I thought about this when proposing it. Though I was thinking more about those who repeatedly nominate something. Again, admin discretion should "save the day" : )

Second, when you say "bad article" you make me think of how "Afd is not cleanup". But I'm guessing (hoping) you meant an article that has BLP concerns.

Does that better clarify? - jc37 03:20, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

If an article is a genuine BLP problem, as in, contains unsourced unverified information, that's not really an AFD issue anyway. BLP is designed exactly to get around the time users would need to debate content, if it's visibly problematic. AFD is for cases where BLP deletion isn't really relevant. The concern at AFD is matters such as notability and the like, as in, "should we have an article on this person at all" rather than "does this article contain unsourced BLP-breaching content". Two entirely different issues and results. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 14:00, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] No consensus

I would like to note that there is no consensus for reversing use of consensus when closing a BLP deletion discussion. One key problem is that the proposal did not limit itself to semi-notable BLPs. Another key problem is that Wikipedia has butchered the meaning of the word "consensus" so much that there is no consensus on the meaning of the word "consensus". Can I get a consensus on that? WAS 4.250 (talk) 11:43, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Probably better if someone tries to read through all the comments and extract the key points from the main arguments and attempt to come up with a proposal that satisfies some of the valid concerns that are being raised. That is more likely to make progress than abstract talk about consensus. For example, would you agree to a trial period? Carcharoth (talk) 11:50, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Personally, I would oppose a trojan horse period. I don't mean to be an extremist, but this is one of the most dangerous policy proposals I have ever seen. An unacceptable amount of information - particularly information of the most vulnerable sort, which is controversial-but-true information - would be lost during the trial period, and the trial period would inure the WP public and make this policy more "established" and difficult to remove even after its great dangers have become clear. François Metro (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 01:28, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Even some of those opposing and commenting (I commented) would be happy with something along the lines of the proposed addition. Several people gave conditional support. Many assumed that the proposed additional wording was limited to closing article discussions on "semi-notable BLPs" others thought it was not so limited in the way it was written. Also, BLP has been used variously: some mean a article violating the WP:BLP policy, others mean an article which happens to be the biography of a person still alive. I think a re-write as Carcharoth suggests (and in line with Doc's essay, [8]) could be pretty widely accepted. Thincat (talk) 12:38, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

An article that violates WP:BLP is not acceptable no matter what the AfD consensus is. So I think we are talking here about articles that happen to be about a living person. I think I agree that the intention is for "semi-notable" individuals -- although I can't imagine there would ever be a No Consensus on an AfD for a "clearly notable" individual...

If it makes people feel better, the policy could be changed to reflect that the main subject of the AfD debate has to be notability. But honestly, it doesn't make any difference because if we address all of the concerns of people who are participating now, then change the policy, fifty more people will show up with objections as soon as the policy page is modified. Actually, I'm sort of sad now that I just spent two minutes of my life typing this. :( --Jaysweet (talk) 12:45, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Policy can be changed. It does need time and effort though. If changing policy was easy, Wikipedia would suffer. Equally, if people give up on needed policies (like this one) then Wikipedia will suffer. No-one said any of this was easy. Just keep going and we should get there eventually. Even if swift, ruthless change might be more efficient, this way of changing policy is in some ways more sustainable. Think of it as a series of stages, with larger debates at each step of the way as more people become aware of this, and then finally a concrete change and a new process. Carcharoth (talk) 13:00, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

That's all fine in theory, but can you tell me the last time that a Wikipedia policy was actually changed? (Not a change in wording, an actual change in policy) --Jaysweet (talk) 13:48, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

I think someone (Uninvited Company on WikBack I think) said that the last big sweeping autocratic change was, ironically enough, the implementation of BLP by Jimbo 5(?) years ago. Can anyone confirm this? Carcharoth (talk) 13:57, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

If true, this sorta proves my point... Five years ago, or maybe even three years ago, Wikipedia was a lot smaller, and a policy change would attract a lot fewer blowhards (like me ;D ) to jump in with their opinion. It's all a matter of scale. --Jaysweet (talk) 14:01, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

I would like to note that there is no consensus behind WAS's pronouncement of no consensus. --Gmaxwell (talk) 13:37, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

How to achieve consensus WAS 4.250 (talk) 13:43, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

BTW, for the record I am a firm believer in the consensus process when you are talking about a group of five to ten people, and maybe even when you start talking about groups of 30 to 50, if you loosen up on your definition of consensus. When you start talking about groups of hundreds of people though (and really, that's how many people will put in their two cents if you actually try to change a policy on Wikipedia), I simply don't believe consensus to be even remotely effective.

Wikipedia works extremely well most of the time because people break off into small groups and achieve a localized consensus. Generally speaking, we hope that not everyone in that small group is a crackpot, and that the consensus is at least reasonable. If the consensus is not reasonable, hopefully someone in the small group will raise the alarm via RfC or some other process, and whatever the issue is will get fixed.

Very occasionally, a major issue arises that is hard to tackle, and then you see as many as fifty people participating (e.g. on RfCs that impact dozens of articles, for example). Getting consensus in those cases is like pulling teeth, but it is achievable, and generally the results are good.

But a policy change? Any time you change the policy, you are affecting all of Wikipedia, which means you attract a much larger group. And I'm sorry, but you will never convince me that a group of >100 can use consensus as an effective decision-making process. --Jaysweet (talk) 13:54, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Of course huge groups can make decisions through a consensus(-like) process, but it requires that participants to recognize that for the good of the group they must occasionally put down their personal fears and agendas and support trying something they aren't completely sure of, rather than digging in and perpetually enforcing the status-quo. Not that people shouldn't make those reservations known, but they should be realistic about them and recognize that occasional change is necessary for progress and learning and that no non-trivial proposal can hope to address all possible fears or be found superior by every person to his own pet proposal. I think that for the majority of the users in the majority of the cases here, people actually do put down their arms and give change a chance... but not quiet enough, so we often end up deadlocked, but I still have hope. --Gmaxwell (talk) 14:16, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

I absolutely agree that consensus "requires that participants...recognize that for the good of the group they must occasionally put down their personal fears and agendas and support trying something they aren't completely sure of..." If we assume that for every person, there is a certain probability p that they can be convinced to do that, then the probability of a group of size n coming to a consensus is p^n. As n gets large, this number gets very small -- hence, it becomes very difficult to achieve consensus.

I also absolutely agree that "the majority of the users in the majority of cases..do put down their arms and give change a chance." But that minority who does not can be extremely disruptive, especially when you go to larger group sizes.

Meh, my comments here are not really productive and they are way off topic. Anyway, if anybody would like to make a monetary wager on this policy (or any modification to BLP policy) being adopted by consensus alone (Foundation intervention doesn't count), I'm interested! --Jaysweet (talk) 14:32, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Consensus:

In fact WP's standard way of operating is a rather good illustration of what it does mean: a mixture across the community of those who are largely agreed, some who disagree but 'agree to disagree' without disaffection, those who don't agree but give low priority to the given issue, those who disagree strongly but concede that there is a community view and respect it on that level, some vocal and unreconciled folk, some who operate 'outside the law'. You find out whether you have consensus, if not unanimity, when you try to build on it.

≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 03:12, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Jossi, there is no consensus for this proposal, no consensus for the meaning of this proposal, and by its wording it can be taken to mean that any BLP can be deleted if even one editor insists that it be deleted. That's just nuts. So people say that the proposal does not mean what it says. So write a proposal that does mean what it says. Like "If 50% of established editors commenting on a deletion of a BLP article claim the person in the article's title is non-notable, then the article is deleted." That would make sense. The proposal as written does not even have a single agreed to meaning. WAS 4.250 (talk) 10:09, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Another proposal

What it all seems to boil down to is this: normally the safer thing to do with a borderline-delete article is to keep it (one very good reason for this, in my view, is that decisions to delete make the content invisible and are thus beyond normal scrutiny); but in the case of a BLP, although we would still like to maintain that position, there's the additional overriding danger that the article will "attract" defamatory statements, and the large number of such articles means that they cannot be properly monitored.

So instead of deletion in the no-consensus BLP cases (obviously where there is no defamation as yet), the default outcome should be protection (semi-protection will probably be enough). This would seem to be enough to keep all parties reasonably happy - it's better than outright deletion (except for those deletionists who are licking their lips over the main proposal), and it should reduce the defamation attraction to manageable levels.--Kotniski (talk) 17:35, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

This might help a little, but much of the the problem is non-public, marginally notable people suddenly getting a Wikipedia article as the number 1 google hit for their name. I guess this would help the issue of libel creeping into said article and the search results, but so would semi-protection of every BLP. I would also appreciate not making this a "deletionists v. inclusionists" thing, it isn't helpful. Mr.Z-man 05:20, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't see any problem with people getting Wikipedia as the first hit for their name if there's nothing derogatory about them there - I guess most people would be quite chuffed (particularly if the previous first hit was derogatory), and anyway we're not talking about completely private individuals since they are at least on the borderline of notability. Maybe general semi-protection for BLPs is the way to go then - it's been proposed before (though an obvious weakness is that an article's author might be prevented from working further on it).--Kotniski (talk) 14:27, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

You may not see a problem, but it is a frequent complaint to OTRS, though not quite as frequent as "your article about me is wrong." Mr.Z-man 17:48, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Can you elaborate on this? What is the basis for the complaint exactly? (Just because it's frequent, that doesn't necessarily mean the complaint is in any way justified.) --Kotniski (talk) 18:10, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] yea or nea

Ok, I know wikipedia is not a democracy but this discussion seems endless. The bottom line is a remedy has been proposed and we have all this talk but no real conclusion. How about this: On a subpage, put all the wordings about this policy change that have been proposed. Editors can vote yes or no to them. The proposal needs a 2/3 majority with at least 100(maybe more) yea votes. If no proposal reaches this threshold in, let's say 2 weeks, then there's no change and end of discussion. If two or more of the versions reach this threshold then the one with the most yea votes wins. MrMurph101 (talk) 03:08, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Administrators have more leeway with BLP articles

I think we lack consensus to continue automatically close BLP as default keep if no consensus is clear. From this discussion it is obvious that administrators will be supported by a large segment of the community if they delete articles that do not have a clear consensus to keep. They have more leeway, I think. FloNight ♥♥♥ 20:35, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

I think that we also lack consensus to default-delete BLP articles, and administrators deleting BLPs that do not have a clear consensus to keep before this discussion reaches a conclusion will also be opposed by a large segment of the community. In my opinion, part of the problem is that there are so many proposals currently floating around, and the structure of a single straw poll is not suited to evaluating the merits of and support for each. While there seems to be fairly large support for some type of change, it is not clear whether any particular change is generally supported. Black Falcon ^(Talk) 20:56, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

The thing is, we don't need a consensus to keep the current policy as it is. Per WP:POLICY, policies are those things that have a "wide acceptance among editors" and are a "standard that all users". That is a much higher standard than having a mere consensus or majority opinion on the issue. We presumably have widespread consensus that BLP policy, as it is, is all supportable. If anyone wants to take BLP policy farther, to ban a new set of content on the encyclopedia, they need to show that has widespread acceptance. Almost by definition, if there is no consensus to delete an article, there is not going to be a consensus that consensus is unnecessary. Wikidemo (talk) 21:42, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

The existing policy enjoys the consensus it has always had until there is consensus to change it. The alternative would be what? Delete the policy till we all agree on something? Admins can already use their discretion to give greater weight to BLP arguments if they see a pressing need. _(1 == 2)^Until 21:44, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

the existing policy is the one that has consensus. The change is of so radical a nature that it would require a very large formal supermajority. I think that if t he matter were pursued to with the necessary general discussion there would be nothing of the sort--I think that there would be a majority in fact, though I do not know how large, in the opposite direction. If one prefers to think of consensus as being something that all can live with, it is fairly clear that there we have been able to live with each other under the rules we have been using--not without conflict, but rather as 1==2 says, with the necessary adjustments for individual cases. DGG (talk) 02:53, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

It really depends on how you define "can live with". There are plenty of Wikipedia policies that I don't think are especially good. They don't cause me to quit the project. Does that mean that I've declared that I "can live with" them? How do we recognize editors that can't live with a given policy? If it's because they quit, as Doc glasgow did, then their voice no longer counts in consensus discussion. If it's because they engage in tendentious editing to try to change the policy, they get blocked, and their voice no longer counts in consensus discussion. If these are the alternatives to "living with" a policy, it seems to me that we have a system designed to ensure that every policy is one that everybody (who counts) can live with. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 23:02, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed changes to wording of policy

I've made some concrete suggestions for amendments to the wording of the policy. The aim is to make it more robust in both directions, i.e. in terms of preventing undesirable editing (chiefly by allowing wider semi-protection as proposed several times above), and in terms of preventing drift towards excessively sympathetic BLPs. It's still under construction: please have a look at User:Kotniski/blp (you can see the diffs from the current policy by comparing with the first version in that page history) and either comment or simply make constructive edits on that page.--Kotniski (talk) 13:52, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Also, someone added At a closing admin's discretion, where there is no consensus to delete an article on a living person, the admin can choose instead to semi-protect it. to the "protection" section. It's redundant. Protection and deletion are the solutions to two entirely different problems - unsuitability to keep (for deletion) and vandalism/problem editing history (for all forms of protection). If there is problem editing then that's covered by the section on "protection", regardless of whether or not there was an AFD just held. Protection norms don't need saying twice, once normally and a second time in the context of an AFD close. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 20:49, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

I added it. It grew out of discussions above and a number of editors felt it was a good edit and presented a compromise position. Still, there's no point arguing about it. Like I keep saying, this place is getting too big. Hiding T 21:17, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Saying "Administrators who suspect malicious or biased editing, or who have reason to believe that violating material may be re-added, may protect or semi-protect the page" and also that after an AFD the article may be semi-protected, is duplication. If there's problem editing (or a concern over it) when an AFD closes, then the first wording says all that's needed, if not then semi-protection's not relevant anyhow. Bascially, not a problem; it's already in there. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 22:06, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

The point is whether we want to allow semi-protection for a second reason - not where there has necessarily been any malicious etc. editing yet, but just on the grounds that any BLP article which few editors are likely to be actively watching (as is the case after most AfD's) is potentially going to attract harmful edits and should therefore be protected. It isn't duplication, it would be a totally new policy, but I'm not sure we yet have strong enough consensus for it, so I would say leave it out for now. (You can also compare my slightly different proposed wording on the page I linked to above.)--Kotniski (talk) 12:01, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Like Kotniski said. You prepared to revert yourself? Hiding T 19:47, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

I will at least say for semi-protection that, though I think it generally unnecessary, it wouldn't have the truly harmful effects on NPOV of the more drastic alternatives. DGG (talk) 04:11, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

If this is being considered a note should be put on the talk page of the Wikipedia:Protection policy as it would necessitate a change in that policy as well and editors who work on that policy should be aware of this proposal and have the oppurtunity to comment on it. Davewild (talk) 20:02, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
- Thanks for doing that. Hiding T 10:19, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
I could support a change to allow admins to semi protect any article closed as no consensus where they believe a BLP issue may arise in the future (until flagged versions are enabled anyway), not just where such problems have happened before. Perhaps something along the lines of 'the closing admin is encouraged to semi protect articles, which have been closed as no consensus, where they believe BLP issues will arise in the future.' Davewild (talk) 17:40, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

In the absence of objections to my proposed wording, I'm going to start making some of the changes (starting with the less controversial ones). If anyone objects, please feel free to revert and discuss here.--Kotniski (talk) 10:02, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

which proposed wording--I hope just relating to semi protection because I see no agreement on anything else?DGG (talk) 22:51, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

I mean the changes I made to the policy page a few days ago. No-one reverted them so I guess they can be considered non-controversial (basically just changing the emphasis of a couple of paragraphs). The semi-protection thing seems to be a major step, however, so I haven't made that change yet since I'm not satisfied there's consensus (though if nothing happens in a day or too I might make that change and mark it with a "proposed" template, to generate discussion).--Kotniski (talk) 16:57, 4 May 2008 (UTC). Which I have just done.--Kotniski (talk) 14:10, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

The proposals above have a majority in favor of the opposite of what you've inserted into the text of the policy. If there is no consensus for changing the policy, it shouldn't be changed. What that paragraph notes is a restatement of what is already part of standard deletion policy. Since a consensus was seemingly not achieved in the proposal above to change the default, no change occurred. It is unnecessary to enshrine this lack of change in a change to the BLP policy stating the opposite. Avruch ^T 14:31, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Makes sense. But if we're sure consensus was not achieved about changing the default, isn't it about time that discussion got marked as closed?--Kotniski (talk) 15:14, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

The proposed wording goes far to far, in practice it would lead to semi protection being applied to lots and lots of BLPs (I feel the wording would in effect result in a gradual move to semi protecting all BLPs as some would interpret "is not sufficiently widely known to ensure that the article will necessarily be watched by significant numbers of editors" very widely indeed). Considering that the German wikipedia has just implemented flagged versions it would be better to start working on drafting a proposal to implement it here and particularly on BLPs. As flagged versions are no longer a pipedream I feel there should not be any extension of semi protection but concentrate on getting flagged versions up and running. Davewild (talk) 20:55, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

I know flagged revisions have something to offer, but I don't think they can be considered an alternative to semi-protection as a solution to the problem at hand here. The point is to cut down on libel etc. creeping into WP articles unmonitored. (Semi-protection is itself presented as an alternative to the original proposal to increase BLP deletion.) Flagged revisions might offer certain benefits, but I dont see that they would do anything to keep libel etc. off the site.--Kotniski (talk) 11:44, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

If the flagged version is shown as the default to non logged in people then I think they are clearly superior to semi protection. Semi protection does not prevent people from entering vandalism/libel on the talk page or elsewhere on wikipedia, so having the non flagged version of pages, which may be vandalised, makes no real difference as neither is what people immediately see when they come to the article. The flagged version will be checked before being updated so keeping a check on unwelcome content. The non flagged version of the page can clearly say that it is possibly more up to date but may contain vandalism etc. A clear advantage to flagged versions over semi protection is that it still allows non logged people and new editors to update and correct articles which is one of the huge strengths of wikipedia. I would also note the poll on Wikipedia:Autoconfirmed Proposal/Poll to increase the level at which autoconfimation happens which makes semi protection even less desirable than it is currently. Davewild (talk) 17:32, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Possibly there won't ultimately be much difference in effect between semi-protection and flagging as you anticipate it (though it would depend what class of users were allowed to flag). However, last time I looked at a discussion on flagging, it seemed highly unlikely that the idea of flagged versions being displayed by default would get consensus generally. Of course, it might be accepted for BLPs specifically, in which case we could update our policy here and drop semi-protection. But rather than wait for an unknown time for an as yet indeterminate flagging policy, why not start taking steps now with tools that already exist? --Kotniski (talk) 18:10, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Because it drives away the new contributors who think that they can just correct the mistake or update articles with new information. This is how I started when I first found wikipedia about 3 years ago, I edited as an ip address for a little while and corrected some mistakes and added a little. This lead to me creating an account and becoming throughly hooked. I remember this and feel that if the articles that I first started editing had been semi protected I doubt I would have started contributing or stayed. Using the talk page to suggest changes will be less than effective on articles that are "not sufficiently widely known to ensure that the article will necessarily be watched by significant numbers of editors" as they will very likely not be spotted on such articles. Davewild (talk) 18:27, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I agree that's the obvious downside (but it would apply almost to the same extent in the case of default flagged revisions). However we're only talking about BLP articles here - which need special protection because of other concerns - and new editors would still be able to get into WP by contributing to other kinds of article. And the possible alternative solution - deleting BLPs in larger numbers - is likely to be even more off-putting to newcomers if they create reasonable articles and later find they've vanished into thin air.--Kotniski (talk) 08:24, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

But with flagged versions new editors can still edit the non flagged in version, reports can be produced (they are being done on the German wikipedia) showing articles where versions have been waiting to be flagged the longest thus enabling them to be checked and flagged in a systematic basis. This should mean that the new editors edits should be flagged pretty quick leading them to feel they are still contributing. With semi protection this is lost. I agree deleting is worse but flagged versions are better and what we should be working on implementing. With the amount of BLPs there are I feel the impact of expanding semi protection will be significant especially with the extension of autoconfirmation I mentioned above. Davewild (talk) 15:36, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

(unindent) So perhaps you could fill us in on the current status of flagging? How close is it to being rolled out? And what is the policy likely to be? I'm interested in two main issues: will flagged versions in fact be displayed by default to IPs? (I can't see this being approved for WP in general, but it might get through for BLPs, if the software allows different policies for different classes of article.) And who will have the right to flag? All right, three issues: In how much depth would a flagger be expected to check an article before flagging it? We really need to know all these things before we can speculate about how effective it would be as a solution to the specific problems of BLPs.--Kotniski (talk) 16:03, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

This post by Erik Moller at the Foundation gives a better summary than I could - [9] If we can demonstrate a consensus for implementing it will be done and we can configure flexibly. Note that the German wikipedia has the flagged version being shown by default to non logged in users. Pretty much we can make up the rules as we feel they are needed here on the English wikipedia. Davewild (talk) 16:09, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] A case for discussion

Here is a test case for everyone to discuss, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kristi Yamaoka (fifth nomination). Are we improved by having the article, or not. Here are some starting thoughts:

If you already know this girl's name, how much more do you learn?
Are we satiating idle curiosity or active research?
Imagine you are Kristi Yamaoka.

Please keep an eye on Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Living people/archive for other suitable test cases. This will also aid us to see if high profile articles will ever fall into the rubicon of the proposed policy amendment. Hiding T 10:26, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion

considering she went on the TODAY show, and that the sport is intrinsically not for the shy, I don';t see how she'd object. Has she done so? Does need an attempt at updating. DGG (talk) 19:55, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Needs some updating, but otherwise looks like a good article. It's certainly a step in the right direction of more coverage of individuals. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 01:06, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Looks fine to me. Her case is relevant for the restrictions placed on cheerleading squads after the event. A rename seems an odd route; I understand that the incident may be more notable than the person, but there's no other good title that could be used. Powers ^T 17:46, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Yet another proposal

This whole idea for making "no consensus" default to delete is missing the point. The point is this: it's fine to close debates as "no consensus" when there isn't any urgency. It's a laissez-faire approach to the problem of debates that don't attract enough attention, generally, that assumes things will work themselves out in the end. But for BLP cases there is urgency. Therefore, I propose that the rule say:

::In [Whatever wording, to specify BLP-related AFDs], administrators may not close the debate as "no consensus": the debate should be kept open and relisted if necessary until consensus is reached.

The point is, no-consensus-default-to-keep is like us dropping the ball in an urgent BLP-related deletion issue. This doesn't mean we should delete in those cases: it means we should avoid those cases. This would effectively remove the time limit on some debates, and have them run until consensus is formed one way or the other. Thoughts? Mango juice^talk 18:40, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

important non-consensus debates are normally reopened after a reasonable period -- the people who wanted to delete rarely let the matter rest if they think it important. After a considerable amount of discussion, it is usually clear that everyone has said what they are going to have to say for the time being, and still don't agree. The better thing to do is to take a break, and then continue a month or so later--the situation is much clearer when started again. I think it any clear case where the BLP policy is being violated there will be clear consensus to delete--wikipedians in general are neither fools nor trolls, nor evil-minded. DGG (talk) 22:56, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Alternative

Rather than clogging the AfD with permanent entries, I would suggest that a new, harshly worded template for the top of the article page be devised, which contain instructions that they not be removed until underlying problems have been resolved - very roughly along the lines of:

As of May 13, 2008, there was no consensus that this article should be retained on Wikipedia. Please check the AfD discussion and the article talk page for serious reservations about the appropriateness of this article.
Please help to improve Wikipedia by addressing these concerns and ensuring that this article adheres to living persons policies.
This notice should not be removed until consensus is reached on the talk page that that the article should be retained, or it is relisted under Articles for Deletion

At the same time any relevant tags for poorly referenced articles, notability concerns, etc. should be placed on the page if not already present.

I am glad to see that deletionists did not get the upper hand here, because it is far too easy for a "no consensus" to be manufactured by anyone for any reason. I think that often this would have had less to do with protected a person from defamation than removing information about a person that is judged politically inconvenient, whether by more moderate supporters or opponents of their position.

People here should always remember that the merry prankster looking to do a hatchet job on someone's name or the advertiser looking to improve his profile will not give up simply because one path has been blocked. They will be perfectly content to tag on their information to any vaguely relevant article. We cannot fly through Wikipedia with a planeload of unguided munitions trying to bomb one guy on a motorcycle dodging through traffic. This sort of problem has to be fought on the ground, edit by edit, fact by fact. Wnt (talk) 14:04, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

The problem with that tag is the distraction it does to the reader of the article who we should be concentrating on providing the articles for. Most cleanup tags are there to point out some problems with the article so the reader, as well as the editor, can see what the problems are. Example is the unreferenced tag which lets the reader know that sources have not been provided and thus the content should be regarded very cautiously until sources are provided. This tag tells the reader nothing except that we are not sure whether the article should be retained. We already put the old afd tag on the talk page of the article which is where I believe such tags should be kept. Davewild (talk) 18:09, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons/Proposals

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Contents

[edit] Reversing the AFD default for BLPs

[edit] Straw poll

[edit] Support

[edit] Oppose

[edit] Neutral/other

[edit] Poll II : Revised wording

[edit] Trial period

[edit] Direct switch

[edit] Trial period

[edit] Discussion

[edit] Further comment from Sjakkalle

[edit] Alternative proposal: RfV for BLPs

[edit] Discussing the poll

[edit] Alternative proposal: temporary deletion

[edit] No consensus

[edit] Another proposal

[edit] yea or nea

[edit] Administrators have more leeway with BLP articles

[edit] Proposed changes to wording of policy

[edit] A case for discussion

[edit] Discussion

[edit] Yet another proposal

[edit] Alternative

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