User talk:SirFozzie/BLP-Lock

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Contents 1 Has merit! 2 Too broad and too vague but the basic idea is good. 3 Version 2 posted + getting wider attention 4 Opposition

[edit] Has merit!

This has merit and should be batted around to work the bugs out. As I opine at various places, the current policy may not be ideal. ++Lar: t/c 16:35, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Agreed this has merit. Though I have strong reservations about the current version, this is a step in the right direction and such a policy would probably be among the most significant adjustments that Wikipedia has made since its creation. My reservations in no particular order include: (reservations on this early version)

• about point A).

• This needs more care. For one thing, referring to a guideline as vague and contested as WP:BIO is not particularly helpful.
• The reference to off-line encyclopedias is a bad idea. It is a fairly arbitrary criterion and goes against Wikipedia's chosen focus on breadth of coverage. The crux of the matter is not how notable this person is. It's whether or not we're dealing with a public person. That's not easy to define of course, but I think this is the direction we want to take. Politicians should not be able to appeal to this. Neither should Hollywood actors, spokespersons for significant organizations, well-known journalists, and so on. Basically: if you already live in an environment in which your private life is basically non-existent, it's unreasonable for you to expect Wikipedia to protect it. Of course, this policy is not meant to be a substitute for BLP. It's still important to make sure that the article is factual, neutral in tone, not focused on stupid little incidents like "actor X was arrested in 1984 after a fight in a club".
• To clarify the above, note that I think a number of people who do "have an entry in an off-line encyclopedia" should be able to ask for this protection and that a number of people who do not shouldn't be able to do this.

• About point B)

• Not necessary in my mind. If your Wikipedia bio is causing you distress, then it's causing you distress. In most cases, it's impossible to judge whether there truly is possibility of causing real-world strife, or excessive Wikipedia edit-warring. Heck, maybe you're just completely paranoid. But we should be open for discussion nonetheless: the fact is, we should not be hurting anyone and if a person feels hurt, the least we can do is listen.

• About C), D), E),

• Agree with most of the principles there.
• E) is very important. BLP-lock does not mean the article is frozen in time. The BLP-lock simply slows down the editing process so that the growth of the article is carefully monitored.
• We probably need to spell out what a bare-bones article is. Is date of birth appropriate? Is geographic location appropriate? What would be appropriate for, say, Don Murphy? Or, to take a completely random example, what's the bare-bones version for Bill Oakley? This will be extremely tricky to spell out but if this is to be accepted as policy, there will need to be a careful description of the compromise we are ready to make. My preferred solution is tied to my point above: if the information in question can be reasonably considered as a significant part of your public life, then it should be included.

• About F)

• Why six months? If we do this right, there should be no time limit. E) still allows for growth. For the same reasons, I think it's inappropriate to explain why the BLP-lock is necessary: reference to the OTRS should be enough and the whole thing should be automatic if the subject "qualifies" (whatever we decide that this means).

Finally, I think that if and when we decide to enact this as policy, it will be important to publicize this and to let people who complain about their WP bio that this sort of lock is an option. That will wreak havoc for a few months because I suspect that lots of people will request this. But I believe it's a worthwhile objective to improve the public opinion about the vast tendency of WP biographies to be tainted with unflattering junk. (or, for that matter, flattering junk). Pascal.Tesson (talk) 18:58, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

I like this essay and think it could well be developed into a policy for use in various articles, Don Murphy and Angela Beesley being 2 obvious examples. Thanks, SqueakBox 19:10, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

I suppose you mean Angela Beesley? In any case, I'd strongly advise to avoid writing the policy with too many examples in mind because we'll end up with a crappy policy that simply ends up matching the decision made in those difficult cases. If we're to consider examples, I suggest using completely random people from Category:Living people. Pascal.Tesson (talk) 19:52, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

If being a public figure is what matters, then Murphy certainly won't get redress from this. Indeed, with the exceptions of Seth Finkelstein and Daniel Brandt, the community has never been willing to substantially alter an article about a public figure and even those cases were somewhat rammed through. The set of people who are not public figures and who have made requests like this is very tiny (I'm only aware of one). JoshuaZ (talk) 21:24, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't agree, I think both Murphy and Beesley would be marginally notable, Murphy because he is a film producer not a famous Hollywood director, but obviously deciding where to drawn a line concerning notability is bound to be an area that needs some vigorous and healthy debate. Thanks, SqueakBox 21:33, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Funny you'd say that JoshuaZ (or maybe I'm just misunderstanding what you wrote) but in my mind, Murphy is not a public figure. That's not to say he doesn't have a public life but it's not like he's going to be on Larry King anytime soon. (well ok, that's a stupid standard but still...) Details like his alma mater or the fact he loves comics, the name of his wife, and so on are unnecessary and in my mind are not part of his public life. Pascal.Tesson (talk) 21:37, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

We may be using the notion of public figure different. I'm thinking more of public figure as described here. What do you mean by a public figure? JoshuaZ (talk) 21:54, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

It is a very legal article but to define what exactly is famous is a critical issue because people will have different ideas. To some extent the Murphy article without the personal bit (the last non-stubby version) contained none of that and if that version was locked probably Murphy would feel okay about it, certainly its any prank kid accusing him of things that damage his reputation that caused the problem with Murphy in the first place, and only being able to edit the article via the editprotect template on RPP would avoid both silliness and insertion of personal details. The editor who added lots last weekend was actually willing to abide by BLP and if the article had been locked the community could have leisurely decided whether to add any of his material that was appropriate. Thanks, SqueakBox 22:05, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

I was indeed not using the term in the legal sense described in that article. The semantic difference might also be due to the use of the term in French (my mother tongue). What I mean is closer to what I wrote earlier in this section about people who have so much exposure that their privacy is essentially non-existent or at least severely reduced. (You know, the kind of people who cannot spend 15K on a high-class hooker without someone noticing.) Obviously, there is also a grey area there, but this is where I think the grey area should be. Defining in terms of specialized encyclopedias for instance creates a grey area in the wrong place. Pascal.Tesson (talk) 22:15, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Too broad and too vague but the basic idea is good.

See for example "That has a possibility of causing real-world strife, or excessive Wikipedia edit-warring" - excessive edit warring should not be a criterion. The most reasonable relevant criterion is request of the individual in question. "While a subject of the article does not get an automatic veto over information being added to the page, administrators who handle BLP-LOCK editprotected requests should be aware of the possible controversial nature of such edits and judge accordingly" also bothers me immensely. It gives way too much potential power to the subjects to whitewash articles. I would suggest replacing this with "While a subject of the article does not get an automatic veto over information being added to the page, all standard BLP concerns apply. This does not allow the subject to veto the inclusion of any information which in the judgment of the community is relevant to the individual's article and would be included under normal circumstances." If we did that, I'd be more or less ok with this. It is another step away from admins as janitors, but we've moved a bit beyond that in many ways in practice anyways. JoshuaZ (talk) 17:15, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Version 2 posted + getting wider attention

I've posted a version 2 with suggested changes on the main page, and I am thinking about requesting more eyes for it at the Administrators Noticeboard (or anywhere else folks think would be fair) let's see what folks think :) SirFozzie (talk) 17:18, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

I like version two a bit more, but why aren't we making an explicit restriction to requests by the living individuals or their representatives? JoshuaZ (talk) 21:45, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, why should we make someone monitor their articles even to catch ONE mistake.. if an administrator notices that folks want to vandalize a particular BLP article constantly.. we should just go ahead and BLP-LOCK it for them, I would think SirFozzie (talk) 21:56, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

I disagree. This would make this be way too used. We have semi-protection for that. Indeed, the possibility of a sliding semi-protection would work much better for this. We really shouldn't be fully protecting things on a large scale simply due to vandalism. If we did, we'd need to fully protect George W. Bush, Kent Hovind and frankly a large fraction of the encyclopedia. Situation where vandalism and other issues are so frequent as to need this are incredibly rare (indeed, I'm not even convinced we've really seen even one such example). Letting this occur due to normal, everyday vandalism concern would make this not be a wiki and gives admins far more power than their janitorial jobs are supposed to entail. JoshuaZ (talk) 22:17, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't see how this could be acceptable without requiring a request from the subject and that the subject be marginally notable (the idea proposed above about considering whether or not the subject is a public figure might be a reasonable alternative). Whether or not the subject qualifies for BLP lock should also be a matter for community consensus, not the decision of a single admin. Everyking (talk) 23:10, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

I cleaned it up a bit because it was pretty difficult to read. I support any step Wikipedia makes in this direction, although the OTRS involvement requirement seems odd and unecessary. -- Naerii 00:41, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Instead of editing your proposal to the point where it is completely different, I wrote my take on what such a policy should be like here: User:Naerii/blplock. -- Naerii 02:23, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

I like Naerii's version. I'd be willing to support that. JoshuaZ (talk) 03:01, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

I also think this is pretty good: it requires subject request, the existence of a controversy or some kind of unusual situation surrounding the article, and consensus for locking specific articles. I still don't like the required notability standard being the presence of articles in other encyclopedias, however. This is an exceptionally high standard: for example, how many of the current 535 members of the U.S. Congress have articles in other encyclopedias? I'm sure the answer has a lot to do with what you define as an encyclopedia for the purposes of this proposal, but the gap between what paper encyclopedias traditionally deem notable and what Wikipedia traditionally deems notable is huge. Could it really be acceptable, under any circumstances, for members of Congress to have their articles stubified, sanitized, and protected? Furthermore, paper encyclopedias are not very up-to-date compared to Wikipedia. A much better standard would be something more along the lines of our existing minimum notability guidelines, strengthened a bit to require major media coverage—articles in major newspapers or major magazines that are primarily about the subject, for example. Everyking (talk) 03:22, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Yeah I was thinking about that, I just couldn't figure out something that would do it neatly. I'll try editing it to be a bit more agreeable. -- Naerii 03:28, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

As for the articles being sanitised and stubbed, I don't altogether agree that this is necessary - perhaps the article being stubbed and THEN being built up again from talk page consensus. -- Naerii 03:36, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't see why we can't just protect them in an "ok" version and go from there. I don't see any compelling reason to stub either. If there are strict BLP concerns we can remove them, otherwise no need to bother absent very compelling penumbra concerns. JoshuaZ (talk) 03:38, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I do agree. In my view the main purpose of this is to prevent people of pretty low significance in the grand scheme of things becoming upset/distressed by drive by vandals fucking with their articles. I don't think it necessarily means that the article ceases to be edited, just that all edits are checked BEFORE they go into the article (as opposed to the usual process of checking diffs after the fact). So I don't think we have to worry about the effect to content too much. Incidentally, is there a way to get more people to look at this? -- Naerii 03:43, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, make a note at WT:BLP and also at the main talk page for the protection policy. Also, maybe the Village Pump policy page? JoshuaZ (talk) 03:52, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Done: [1] [2] [3] -- Naerii 04:02, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, I'd suggest willing public figure as the border but that standard makes logical sense when we are discussing deletions, not protections. As long as we are sticking to protections not deletions and the community can override if necessary I see nothing wrong with giving a lot of leeway to how notable people can be and still get this treatment. I think this is a reasonable comrpomise and balance between a lot of different issues. JoshuaZ (talk) 03:33, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

I'll go farther. I propose for discussion that the default condition of any BLP, no matter how notable, should be switched to BLP-Lock... we can then have a gradual process to unlock them (so many a week on a schedule, plus the ones that interested people nominate out of sequence, get reviewed) but with outcome "leave locked" being the default absent consensus, and the other possible outcomes, "unlock", "stub to bare facts and leave locked" and "delete entirely" all requiring a strong and explicit consensus... that's radical in the extreme, yes, but I think some sort of community process to GET locks is going to be too slow. I see this problem as only continuing to grow, and an actual philosophical change may be needed. ++Lar: t/c 00:45, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

How many cases of this have there actually been? Very, very few. This seems to have arisen from the Murphy issue. I support a solution similar to this for that particular case, because Murphy isn't particularly notable and because he has requested deletion. What I want is a way to effectively resolve these difficult cases where they emerge, not the expansion of an issue affecting a handful of articles into a nightmare that would demolish a huge portion of Wikipedia. There are a few controls that can be placed on this proposal, namely a reasonable notability requirement (combined with community evaluation of individual cases) and request from the subject, that would ensure that any detriment to our mission as an encyclopedia would be very slight. Without those controls, implementing a proposal like this would engulf the project. It's like proposing the demolition of a hotel because one of the rooms is infested with cockroaches. Everyking (talk) 00:56, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

• • It isn't very often that I agree with Everyking, but I think he makes a pretty good summary here of the worries. JoshuaZ (talk) 01:17, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Opposition

This falls foul of so many standing wikipedia policies, guidelines, and ethics it's hard to know where to start. What you are essentially suggesting is that a valid Wikipedia article can be stripped of content, then locked in that state for a period of at least six months, during which community consensus can be ignored, and the subject of the article can assume a substantial degree of control over its development. In the process, you require administrators (acting in an admin capacity) to make content judgements, and hijack the OTRS system to fulfil a purpose it was not intended for, which has no advantage over an on-wiki discussion but results in decreased transparency. So, from the top:

• Per WP:N and WP:BIO, an article about a person is either notable, or it is not. There is no 'borderline' position as this proposal claims.
• WP:BLP already sanctions drastic action to be taken against potentially libellous or offensive content in BLP articles, including suspension of WP:3RR. There is no situation where this, combined with the exemplary work of RC-patrol, RBI, semi-protection etc, will not be adequate to control vandalism or violations of WP:BLP.
• As mentioned above, requiring an admin make a unilateral content judgement in the capacity as an admin is frowned upon. Admins edit pages just like other editors, and their contributions are judged the same way. All uses of admin tools are generally restricted to situations where they are enacting community consensus, or where the action is uncontroversial. For instance, admins are not allowed to just go round arbitrarily deleting pages that they think are inappropriate - either community consensus has been developed at an XfD, or the page is unquestionably a member of a CSD category. Asking an admin to make a decision as to whether a BLP article should be reduced to a stub and then fully protected is a situation where it is impossible for an admin to be objective - either they believe the change should be made, in which case doing so is a massive violation of WP:PREFER, or they don't, in which case it won't happen.
• The OTRS volunteers are no better qualified to assess an article's suitability for this brutal treatment than an admin. OTRS workers are essentially clerks - they handle administrative tasks associated with the system, mainly in confirming rights-releases for images. I expect they will not thank you for involving them in this proposal.
• The next section manages to be both completely redundant to WP:PPOL and yet overly draconian at the same time. Edits to fully-protected pages should of course only be conducted via {{editprotected}}. But what is "full consensus", as opposed to simple "consensus"? Consensus, like notability, is not something that can be 'borderline'; either there is consensus for a change, or there isn't.
• However, if there is consensus, no policy can legitimately overrule it. The concept that "Any information that not reliably sourced should not be added to the article, even with consensus" is ludicrous, because no legitimate consensus will form that WP:RS should be ignored. Who is responsible for deciding that the community has made a collective mistake?
• Yet again, admins are being asked to make unacceptable judgement calls in E). Besides condoning a clear violation of WP:COI, how does this line add anything that is not already obvious from WP:BLP??
• Finally, F) seems to add nothing except instruction creep, as watching potentially troublesome articles is just common SENSE. However, once again the proposal mandates an attitude to protection which is completley unsupported from WP:PPOL.

That's all the clear policy violations I notice in a casual reading. However, there are much deeper violations of Wikipedia's ethos here. A few weeks ago I responded to an editprotected request at Talk:China. I discovered that the article had been placed under full protection for six months, in response to a campaign of vandalism from a master sockpupetteer. I raised the issue on WP:AN, where the general consensus was appalled. This is how the vandals actually 'win' - by preventing users making positive contributions to the encyclopedia. We have tools available which make it hundreds of times more difficult to damage an article that it is to repair it. We have systems and measures in place to deal with the most aggressive campaigns of vandalism. Why, with so many other options, we would want to make a mockery of ourselves by allowing "from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" to appear over a shell of a page which can only be modified by all-powerful admins, and the article's subject, is quite beyond me. Happy‑melon 15:17, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

What do you think about User:Naerii/blplock? -- Naerii 18:34, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Very much the same, as it is based on the same principles. Your version does not run afoul of so many specific policies, but I personally find this approach to dealing with BLP vandalism to be abhorent. Happy‑melon 19:36, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

I would suggest you read m:OTRS/info-en mission, specifically Primary mission #1 and Wikipedia:Contact us/Article problem/Factual error (from subject). Image permissions is only part of what OTRS does. Complaints from article subjects of articles about libelous materials and inaccuracies is a fairly major part of what OTRS volunteers handle. As for the proposal, I like the idea, but I'm not sure about some of the implementation. I would scrub the "material that has full consensus on the talk page" part and replace it with something like "material that is judged by an administrator to be in-line with all relevant policies." The problem is that many cases aren't going to have lots of people commenting on the talk page as the articles this will affect are mainly those where notability is marginal. In controverisal cases you might never get full consensus for anything. Mr.Z-man 03:12, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

I have, and they form the basis of my concern about this proposal's use of the OTRS system. OTRS is a messaging and archive service - someone has a problem (ie a libellous statement in an article), they send a message to OTRS, an OTRS volunteer receives the message, checks the article, and removes the statement if it clearly is libellous. The OTRS clerk is just doing exactly what any other user would do if they saw the inappropriate statement - the OTRS system is just a way of bringing it to their attention. This proposal would have OTRS volunteers make the final judgement as to whether an article should be fully protected for six months - that's way beyond the scope of the tasks they are expected to perform. Happy‑melon 12:11, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

In some cases, yes, that is all it comes to. But often the issue cannot be solved simply by removing a sentence. It may require stubbing the article, complete overhaul, semi-protection, or in some cases outright deletion depending on what, and how serious, the issues are. The only things that are usually turned down are minor, non-libelous errors (which the subject could fix themself without COI worries) or requests to replace the article with the subject's version of the biography. This would be extending what the OTRS volunteers do, but not greatly. I would appreciate you not trying to explain to others something you have no experience with. Mr.Z-man 17:29, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. If only bureaucrats were permitted to explain how Special:Renameuser worked, no one would have a clue what was going on at WP:CHU. I stand by my assertion, with which you seem to agree, that this proposal is an extension of the duties of the OTRS volunteers into an area where they currently do not operate. I am sure that most of the OTRS staff will not want the burden of having to make this additional judgement call, and that the community will not want them to have to make it. Happy‑melon 18:19, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Again, please don't speak for a group that you are not a member of. Mr.Z-man 20:08, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

That this falls foul of a number of specific and detail current policies is interesting, but irrelevant, really, so your detailed analysis shows which current policies need changing, and is thus helpful, but is not otherwise significant. This is a radical proposal for a radical change in how things are done. Normally policy is descriptive rather than prescriptive, but this policy would, if adopted, force other policies to change to align with it. BLPs are a big and growing problem. This isn't about one or two, it's about the 250,000 biographies we have. Note that you say "if there is consensus, no policy can legitimately overrule it". That is actually false. There are foundational principles (the five pillars, if you like) that consensus cannot overturn. No amount of consensus can change NPOV, for example. Please evaluate this from the viewpoint of whether there is a longstanding and growing problem with the encyclopedia doing harm to living people which our current processes are not addressing, rather than from alignment with current detailed processes and policies. What **I** find abhorrent is the state of many current BLPs and our inability to speedily come to grips with them. Thanks. ++Lar: t/c 21:25, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

If you are seriously considering placing a quarter of a million Wikipedia articles under indefinite full protection, then this proposal is even more misguided than I initially realised. "Radical" is not the word I would have used: I would have used "fundamental" - Wikipedia simply will not be the same place if 15% of its pages can't be edited. You are proposing to throw out at least a dozen other policies because of perceived problems with the implementation of one other, and sacrifice Wikipedia's sense of openness for easy maintenance of the status quo. And given that fully-protecting a page for any prolongued period essentially kills any chance of it being improved, I simply do not understand how anyone concerned about "the state of many current BLPs" would want to make it such that 99.98% of users can't improve them. How do you think 1,500 admins are going to be able to maintain this system if even 1% of those 250,000 BLPs were placed under this proposed lock, whilst still completing all the other admin tasks that currently only just get done? It would be weeks before articles were even updated to reflect births and deaths - notable events, filmographies, bibliographies, would all fall months and then years behind reality.

As I noted in my initial statement, the specific policy violations are not the most important factor. There certainly is a problem with BLP articles, in the same way that there is a problem with Homeopathy-related articles, and articles involving depictions of Muhammad, and articles across Wikipedia which are the subject of heated, damaging and even sometimes violent edit wars and disagreements. But the reason that Wikipedia is still here, a community which spans across cultures, languages, religions, ideologies and spelling conventions (:D), and hasn't descended into an internecine bloodbath, is because we Assume good faith at every turn. If there's one policy which is fundamental to Wikipedia, it's that we assume that every contribution is constructive until proved otherwise. That's why we don't block before a final warning, that's why we don't (and never will) prohibit IPs from editing. On its most fundamental level, this proposal is an explicit revocation of WP:AGF on (potentially) a vast section of Wikipedia. That is what I find most abhorrent. Happy‑melon 22:04, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

If we did something like Naeri's proposal it would be more manageable, but locking 250,000 articles isn't practical; we don't have nearly enough admins to even begin to let those articles grow at all. Naeri's version would restrict this to a small subset of articles in a reasonably natural fashion. JoshuaZ (talk) 22:20, 22 March 2008 (UTC)