Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 21:30, 3 March 2007

• WT:BLPCD
• WT:BLPD

See also:

• Previous discussion at WT:BLP, December 2006.

First draft

I've put up the first draft of a proposal to delete marginally notable BLPs upon request of the subject of the article. It's rough and it needs hammering out, so all input is welcome. In particular, we need to find a working definition of "marginal notability," so that subjects who are clearly significant public figures are excluded from the provision.

As I see it, we're badly in need of a policy along these lines to avoid future rows over BLPs that cause distress to the subject and a lot of frustration for the editors involved. I'm thinking of BLPs such as Brian Peppers (now deleted), Brian Chase (now deleted), Gregory Lauder-Frost (now deleted), Sam Vaknin (now deleted), Rachel Marsden, Daniel Brandt, Seth Finkelstein, and Angela Beesley. SlimVirgin 03:50, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Tough one, SM.... We need to come up with some criteria to establish marginal notability. Maybe a Google test, a search on Lexis-Nexis, Newspaperarchive.com and the like? ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 04:13, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

I haven't made up my mind about this sort of thing. But from my reading of the current draft, Gregory Lauder-Frost, Daniel Brandt, Rachel Marsden would not be subject to this given the number of sources on each. As it is written it seems redundant to WP:BIO since it essentially says that if someone is not-notable and they object they can their article deleted. JoshuaZ 05:46, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

I would certainly object this proposal. --Parker007 05:49, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

I also object, perJoshuaZ's point. Further, I question whether it is wise for admins who are covered in the work of some of these people to be shaping policies or criteria in such a way that might directly serve personal interests tied to seeing these people's entries and the controversies that they have kicked up, go away. With respect. Tiamut 12:09, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

I object for reasons discussed elsewhere and pasted below, and respectfully request that you get your facts straight. One of the people in your list has been the primary subject of approximately one hundred reliable newspaper articles (plus nationwide TV news), mostly having to do with his/her arrest, bail conditions, and criminal trial in which he/she was found guilty. None of those articles mentioned Misplaced Pages. Kla'quot 17:37, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Suggestions for marginal notability.

The most obvious way of measuring marginal notability is if there is less than some number (say X) sources that would fit the WP:BIO criterion. Now, as I read it, WP:BIO is essentially two independent reliable sources. So maybe X =3 or x=4? JoshuaZ 05:57, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

No, just no.

Precedent is against this. If a person wants it deleted they can take it to AfD. Otherwise every scammer and huckster out there can use deletion as a club when the content of their article doesn't go their way. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 05:58, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Seems to go against Misplaced Pages:Misplaced Pages is an encyclopedia. -- Kendrick7 06:07, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Indeed. An encyclopedia is encyclopedic: it covers everything. While paper encyclopedias have to decide who rates being included, Misplaced Pages does not have such a constraint. I do agree that Misplaced Pages should not allow one person to use it as an instrument to inflict harm on another, but this can be - and is, as in the recent dispute over List of Internet phenomena - taken way too far, and that alienates the most valuable resource Misplaced Pages has, the average editor. Having that article totally emasculated over unwarranted WP:BLP concerns has essentially turned me off of contributing substantial content to Misplaced Pages. -- Jay Maynard 09:37, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

So who are all those people?

It would help if Slim gave us a backgrounder (without having to dig thru a dozen AFDs) as to why a precedent should be set based on who these people are and what their article said about them that they didn't like. -- Kendrick7 06:07, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Ok, skirting BLP with this, but I'll try to handle the cases I'm aware of(if I say anything grossly wrong feel free to correct me). I can't guaranteee NPOV in my descriptions of what occured, but I will try (excepting one obvious case where I really can't, but it isn't the subject of the article) Daniel Brandt I think everyone is aware of the ongoing issues. Gregory Lauder-Frost was a minor British politician whose biography contained accusations of criminal acts that were reasonably well sourced. Frost and his friends attempted to repeatedly delete the article in a highly disruptive fashion and some users sympathized with his demand of privacy. The final straw was an email claiming that Frost was sick and dying and that the Misplaced Pages article was adding to his suffering and possibly helping kill him. This pushed enough editors over to the side for deletion that it was deleted by a slim majority. (Editorial remark, the Frost's illness was never confirmed as of now Frost is still alive). Brian Peppers was an individual whose article was about an internet phenomenon- Peppers had a strange looking face and his picture along with claims that he was a sex offender became widely circulated among the sorts of stupid annoying people who like to vandalize Misplaced Pages and engage in things like YTMND nonsense and feel a need to make up for their lack of lives by making fun of someone who they think looks strange. After many AfDs, and requests for deletion by people who claimed to represent Peppers' family, Jimbo deleted the article and declared that it would not be undeleted in less than a year. Recently, the 1 year came up, a DRV was held, and the DRV was closed with a snow for staying deleted. Note that in the Peppers case, it was not clear that he in fact met WP:BIO anyways. JoshuaZ 06:20, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

There is something to be said in both cases for admins with enough WP:SENSE to rise above the will of the hoi polloi. A rule of thumb against detraction wouldn't be a terrible thing, or as the great theologian Thumper put it if you can't say something nice, don't say nothin' at all. Perhaps some exception for when the person at issue is connected to a notable "event" greater than themselves (for say, terrorists or spies, but not nurse gropers). -- Kendrick7 07:24, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

That seems like an unworkable standard or at minimum something that would need a lot of clarifcation (for example, a large part of the Brandt article is about his accomplishements, the Frost article also had positive elements, the only one that is indisputably nasty of all the one's SV gave as examples was Peppers). Furthermore, would a Thumper clause affect Kent Hovind or Jeffrey Dahmer, or Fred Singer (nota bene, I'm not comparing these three people to each other or saying they are similar but in fact attempting to give three very different examples all of which could plausibly be included under some form of Thumper clause). JoshuaZ 07:30, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, in your example of Gregory Lauder-Frost, I didn't get the impression he was either indicted or tried, merely that there were these criminal "accusations" floating around (unlike Dahmer, who isn't a Living Person anyway). Special:Whatlinkshere/Kent_Hovind and Special:Whatlinkshere/Fred_Singer makes clear both are connected to "larger events". -- Kendrick7 07:41, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Ok, well pretend Dahmer is alive and you get the same question. As to the others having many links from other articles, does that mean we want that to be the criterion for what makes them more than marginally notable? JoshuaZ 20:20, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Whack a bio

This is an unworkable proposal for two reasons:

1. It does not provide any operational definition of "marginal notability." Whether it is even possible to provide such a definition is debatable.
2. It suggests the creation of a new Misplaced Pages game, called "Whack a bio", where administrators can essentially undermine deletion procedures if they manage to do so within a 72 hour period. The proposal even suggests the protection against recreation if the admin successfully "whacks" the bio.

If we wish to take the subject's opinion into account in AfDs, we are free to do so: there is no need for a new policy. It might help to make the fact that some editors feel this is a legitimate reason for deletion in some cases explicit in the existing deletion guidelines, in case it isn't already. I think this is the only way to deal with this issue: allow each editor to weigh the arguments on a case-by-case basis, including the subject's opinion if they desire to do so.--Eloquence* 06:33, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

The problem is that we currently end up with intractable situations such as Daniel Brandt and Rachael Marsden, and Gregory Lauder-Frost until a few sensible admins managed to sort it out. We need to recognize that with certain bios, Misplaced Pages becomes a participant in determining their notability, not just a reporter of it, by dragging up material from a long time ago that would otherwise have been forgotten; by having endless debates about the notability of the subject, much of which ends up on Google; and in the case of Brandt, by being part of the process of increasing that notability because of the subject's attempts to have the bio taken down. I have no fixed ideas about how a policy should approach this, but I think we do need some minimal process to give us a handle on how to deal with these situations. SlimVirgin 20:26, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Rachel Marsden is clearly notable and her notability has nothing to do with Misplaced Pages. Brandt and Frost were intractable situations, but Marsden has been through AfD three times and all three were speedy keeps based on obvious notability (and nominations by sockpuppets). Kla'quot 20:48, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

A comment on Rachel Marsden -- shouldn't there be some guideline that calls for us to rely on secondary sources for negative info? It seems like the negative info about her relies upon the judgement against her itself, which is a primary source, so isn't that borderline OR? -- Kendrick7 20:54, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

That's a good question, Kendrick. The judgment is a primary source, and we probably shouldn't refer to it unless we can find secondary sources that do, then we should use those in preference. Primary sources may be relied upon in certain cases, and when they are, the claims based on them may only be purely descriptive, but the danger is that we pick and choose which bits to quote, so there's definitely an element of OR there. SlimVirgin 20:59, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

I second this proposal. There is no need for a new guideline, but there is definitely a need to allow people whose bios are inaccurate, a means for correcting them and vigiliantly patrolling BLPs to ensure there is no unrealiably sourced and defamatory material. If I recall, this was part of the issue that sparked Daniel Brandt into wanting to delete this own entry. The presence of inaccurate and offensive comments about him and his work - without a way for him to change it (you cannot edit your own article, anon admins enjoy protection, and no oversight) is what sparked his campaign. Perhaps he wouldn't have even wante dthe article deleted had the guidelines surrounding WP:BLP been better regarding the right of bio subjects to participate in fact-checking their own bios, rather than treating them as though they are always on the cusp of a POV violation (WP:AGF remeber?). To call the guideline "Courtesy deletion" is also absolutely Orwellian considering the history of the players involved and how deletion was refused before. Just expand the section on WP:BLP that grants people more rights to oversee/edit articles on themselves. I believe some of those changes have already made. There is really no need for a new guideline. I think too, it's only going to make the situation worse. Tiamut 12:26, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

_{::Comment:Tiamut's comment was made before SlimVirgin's, SlimVirgin has moved it below hers twice, and I'm not going to continue to revert-war over it. Kla'quot 20:42, 3 March 2007 (UTC)}

No to limits on DRV

This provision seems unacceptable in its entirety:

A BLP that has been the subject of a courtesy delete under this policy may be re-created if the courtesy delete is overturned by a two-thirds majority at deletion review, if and only if the subject's situation has changed, since the deletion, in a way that makes him more notable than before. If the deletion review is unsuccessful and the BLP stays deleted, the closing admin should blank the discussion.

First off, if a deletion is made in error, this says that it cannot be reverted unless the subject has become more notable. This is bad. If an administrator deletes an article in the erroneous belief that the subject is not notable, this provision requires that the article stay deleted. This is incompatible with the goal of making an encyclopedia.

Second, there is no excuse for blanking discussions. Our process is, and must remain, open. Blanking discussions makes it difficult or impossible (depending on whether the revision history is censored, too) for people in the future to refer to those discussions -- for instance to cite them as precedent or as examples of a rule or a behavior.

All in all, this provision leans so strongly in the direction of deleting articles that it may as well read as follows:

Anything someone complains about will get deleted, if it's not on anyone's watchlist who's active, and the complainant chooses to contact the most deletionist administrator available. And no take-backs.

This is just wrong. --FOo 11:22, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Rethinking the proposal

SlimVigin on my talk page says (in part):

"The thing I'm aiming for is simply to come up with a way of judging when we should allow BLPs to be deleted if the subject asks for it. I wasn't thinking of going into other possibilities such as stubbing, but then again, maybe a range of options would be better. I don't have fixed ideas about it."

in respose my saying on her talk page (in part):

"my mind turns to ideas of ranges of options: from deletion to redirect to moving data to minimizing (stubbing) to disclaimers"

How do people feel about a guideline proposal that offers a range of options for dealing with semi-notable living person biographical articles (let's stop calling them biographies - most are not biographies). Also I like to structure things as a range rather than discrete. Shades of grey versus black/white. Rules of thumb versus bright line distinctions. How do people feel about that approach? WAS 4.250 14:52, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

I appreciate your attempt to draw up a compromise position here, but I think the proposal is flawed from the outset. If Misplaced Pages were to provide some kind of "courtesy deletion" function, or other options (like stubbing as you propose) I think it should be as a last resort, to support the existing policy of WP:BLP. For example, it could be listed to be used only as an absolutely last resort when repeated attempts to make sure an article is in line with WP:BLP fail, and the subject of the article is seriously disturbed by this failure. Such a clause could be added to the existing policy, under the section "Dealing with articles about yourself". In general, I feel that there should be a more open process for people who wish to correct articles with factual inaccuracies in them. They should be treated just like any other editor with a known POV; in other words, we should WP:AGF and allow any editor to add to their own article and only prevent them when they repeatedly ignore core policies like WP:NPOV, WP:ATT (or WP:RS, etc. Following this line of thinking might prevent frustration on the part of people who feel that their bios are inaccurate and unrepresentative and that they are being unjustly shut out from participating in editing an article whose subject they would ovbiously know a great deal about. Just my two cents. Tiamut 15:44, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

I support most of these, as an essay to be eventually promoted into a guideline. Stubbing per se should be used as an interim measure, not a permanent one. I like the idea of finding common ground through information architecture. Kla'quot 17:45, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

This is still unnecessary...

...and is being proposed only due to the latest Brandt flap and the Essjay situation. No, no, a thousand times no. It's unnecessary, unworkable, and will act as a net negative to the project. --badlydrawnjeff talk 14:30, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Iffy

I don't know. By creating a new process we're creating a new venue to have a person's name in lights when they specifically don't want their name in lights...

On the language:

• We should drop the masculine usage.
• DRV and AfD do not, last I checked, work on a hard two-third's basis. Specific numbers for closure at AfD are deprecated. Marskell 14:52, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

A similar proposal failed at WP:BIO

I proposed something similar here a week ago: Wikipedia_talk:Notability_(people)#Proposed_courtesy_deletion_for_persons_of_borderline_notability. The discussion is too long to paste here. Here is my attempt to summarize the discussion:

Thanks everyone. Let me try to summarize the discussion so far and interweave my own opionions:

• There is no support expressed here yet for the concept of automatically granting deletions, upon request, to people who are minimally-notable.
• There is some support for the idea of taking the wishes of the subject into account in a deletion debate.
• There is little support for expansion of policy or guidelines. I beg to differ on this one because I keep seeing experienced, dedicated Wikipedians, in good faith, each follow their own "common sense" and end up bitterly at odds over biography deletions. If guidelines are not explicit, people make up their own rules and this can easily result in more deletions of worthwhile articles than would have taken place under explicit guidelines. I've seen people argue that a person was "borderline notable" when the number of published works on the person numbered in the hundreds. This is the kind of thing I want to prevent.
• I think we might have in mind at least two kinds of scenarios which could require different approaches.
  • The first is cases where the article is obviously embarassing to a person who is only notable for having done something stupid once, with no lasting historical significance. We can probably address most of these with WP:NOTNEWS, which I've already cited in the AfD for Amir Massoud Tofangsazan.
  • The second scenario is where the article is about someone who is notable for something of real significance. In many cases, the subject would appreciate a purely positive-POV article, but asks for deletion after failing to get that. And then there are a few cases such as Brandt's, in which the subject Just Wants it Gone for reasons that may be hard for others to understand. The community, if not the people on this Talk page, is in a stalemate about the Brandt case.

My general feeling is that we should do our best to accomodate the person's wishes, without removing the information pertinent to what made the person notable. In practical terms, I think this can usually be accomodated by either a) retitling the article to focus on the event that made the person notable, or b) merging into the relevant article(s) about what the person has been involved in, with a brief description of the person instead of a hyperlinked name. If we can make the result of the rename or merge no more flattering than the original article, censorship should be a non-issue. We'd usually lose some biographical details, such as photos and hobbies. If that kind of information is of real encyclopedic value, then it's perhaps a sign that the bio should be kept. If it's not of encyclopedic value and we remove it, then the subject's right to privacy will have rightly prevailed. Kla'quot 09:04, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Kla'quot 17:22, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

This is instruction creep and subject to abuse

We don't need this. Admins can already delete unsourced or poorly-sourced negative articles about living people under G11, editors can remove such information under WP:BLP. If the negative information about the person is sourced, and there's enough secondary material to write a comprehensive article on them, they're notable, even if relatively non-public. This would flood us with requests from people who don't like their biography, even if everything in it is perfectly well-sourced, and effectively put the subject in charge of the bio ("Don't you put that information in, or I'll just have the damn thing deleted"). If the person appears to be marginally notable, the fact that the person wishes the bio to be deleted should be stated at the AfD, but should not be an automatic speedy criterion. Seraphimblade 19:58, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

If you think this policy would trigger a flood of people wanting to take advantage of it, then it's clearly needed. As an encyclopedia that wants to be a force for good, we shouldn't be causing distress to large numbers of people. SlimVirgin 20:17, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Absolutely right in your premise, which is why we have WP:BLP. But that's as far as we need to go. If information is sourced reliably (which means that whatever the information is would already be publicly available), it is not we who cause any "distress". If it's not, we should remove it immediately under BLP. What we don't need is to have "whitewashed-only" bios, and everything else deleted, even if we can perfectly well source negative information. Seraphimblade 20:30, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree about not wanting white-washed bios, but this is a proposal to delete bios on request, not to remove certain awkward parts of them. This was a problem with one bio that I won't name here, but the subject or his friends created it as a vanity page, then when someone added a well-sourced negative thing about something that happened a long time ago, the same people kicked up a huge row trying to get rid of it. The important thing is that the bio should never have been created in the first place, because the subject was of very marginal notability, so deleting the page in that kind of case is the best thing, rather than arguing back and forth for months about how much of the negative material to include. SlimVirgin 20:36, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, if they're non-notable, AfD 'em, and they should go. But we shouldn't try to get into "marginal notability" here-either a subject is notable and appropriate, and we should include well-sourced information of any stripe, or it's non-notable and inappropriate, and it should go regardless of other considerations. (Generally, the stuff people see as "marginally notable" is stuff I see as non-notable, so you'd likely get my delete vote anyway.) But what about people who are mainly notable because they get in trouble? Have a look at Kent Hovind. He may have some notability outside being a tax fraud, but that's certainly what kicked up the most coverage. Presume, for a moment, that Hovind (or a representative of his, since he's in jail), has contacted you, and this had become policy. You've contacted the representative at his office, and are well-satisfied that he's authorized to represent Hovind, and that Hovind wants the bio gone. Would it be deleted? Seraphimblade 20:42, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

No, I wouldn't delete Kent Hovind under this policy. He's serving 10 years in jail and the case was covered by multiple mainstream news sources, including the wire services. Also, a lot is known about his background, education etc. I'm talking about cases of marginal notability, and I accept that that's hard to define, and maybe impossible as Eloquence suggested, but I think we do know it when we see it. SlimVirgin 20:50, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Hrm. You do have good motives here, and it's something to think about. I might be willing to support this, but the other concern here is that the decision, once made, is very hard to overturn (and tough to take to AfD, since non-admins then can't see the article, unless it's restored somewhere during the debate, which would kind of defeat the purpose anyway), with this as it's written currently. If there were a clearer (even if imperfect and subject to some interpretation) definition of "marginally notable", and it were easier to overturn a decision there's no clear agreement on, I think this might be workable. Seraphimblade 21:01, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

SV, I think you overestimate how much people will agree on a know when they see it test. For example, I see Brandt as not marginally notable but fully(is that the right word?) notable and saw Frost as plausibly marginally notable if we had such a rule. However, at least one editor had the reverse attitude, seeing Frost as notable and Brandt as much less so. The only plausible general standard I can think of is (as I suggested earlier) to make it have a numeric basis in terms of how many sources we actually have, but that doesn't sit very well with me. JoshuaZ 21:26, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Previous discussion

I posted a suggestion about this on WT:BLP a few weeks ago to test the climate, and I felt there was sufficient support to proceed with a proposal, though as I said above, I have no fixed ideas about how it should be worded. The previous discussion can be found here in case anyone wants to milk it for ideas. SlimVirgin 20:45, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Meta-Notability

Just to reiterate some discussion above, I believe this would be an easier concept to define that "marginal notability". If a BLP's bio can be reasonably linked to two or more notable articles, they would be meta-notable, and using "What links here" would be easily checkable. The devil still lies in the details, and I don't like the proposal as a whole, but this seems like a concept which could move the whole debate forward a step. Thoughts? -- Kendrick7 21:23, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

This idea is interesting but flawed. Two concerns: first, this could conceivably lead to disruption other articles by editors either trying to get it linked or to take links off and also makes things too much of a function of how well expanded other articles already are. (I know you say "can be reasonably linked" rather than "is linked" but I think these concerns still apply). Second, if we use this test, then almost every case we've had of this sort would fail. Frost is mentioned on multiple articles, as are Marsden and Brandt. The only one which wouldnot meet such a test of the examples given above is Brian Peppers and it was questionable whether he met WP:BIO anyways. JoshuaZ 21:30, 3 March 2007 (UTC)