Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 15:27, 23 October 2009

The project page associated with this talk page is an official policy on Misplaced Pages. Policies have wide acceptance among editors and are considered a standard for all users to follow. Please review policy editing recommendations before making any substantive change to this page. Always remember to keep cool when editing, and don't panic.

• WT:LIVING
• WT:BLP

To discuss issues with specific biographies or personal mentions, please use the Misplaced Pages:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard.

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Biographies of living persons page.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic. New to Misplaced Pages? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help. Assume good faith Be polite and avoid personal attacks Be welcoming to newcomers Seek dispute resolution if needed

Archives: Index, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58Auto-archiving period: 14 days

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Biographies of living persons page.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic. New to Misplaced Pages? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help. Assume good faith Be polite and avoid personal attacks Be welcoming to newcomers Seek dispute resolution if needed

Archives: Index, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58Auto-archiving period: 14 days

Radical suggestion for fixing BLP problem

There are currently just under fifty-four thousand articles in Category:Unreferenced BLPs. I submit that backlog is far, far too large to address effectively or indeed to keep an eye on. Therefore I suggest the following:

• All articles in the category to be bot-checked for use of {{cite}} templates or <ref> tags and <references/> or {{references}}. Any articles containing them to be shunted to Category:Possibly unreferenced BLPs.
• Editors given one month from the conclusion of the check to add referencing, pruning all unreferenced information (on the principle that we should stay well within the bright line of BLP policy, and not skate on the edges).
• Through the month, check Category:Possibly unreferenced BLPs and add referencing and/or remove from the category as necessary
• At the end of that month, run the bot process again. Any articles left in Category:Unreferenced BLPs to be summarily deleted and re-creation allowed only with referencing to a RS. This may require creation of a new CSD criterion, I'd suggest calling it BLP-UN. Maintain, of course, a list of all deleted BLPs for ease of re-creation when referencing is found. Add, via bot, an editnotice to all deleted articles instructing users to be sure they are using adequate referencing in re-creation.
• Users doing WP:NPP instructed to request speedy deletion for any new unreferenced BLPs they find. Added: optionally, that are more than one week old.

This will allow us to guarantee that there is at least some referencing in all extant BLP articles, and no new BLP articles will last long without referencing. The problem is massive, much like an overgrown garden; the only way to fix it is to plow everything under. Random weeding isn't working, IMHO. → ROUX ₪ 22:38, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

• Much as I agree with this, I have a sneaking suspicion that it will never fly. Kevin (talk) 22:58, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
  • I'm not so sure. If nothing else, it might provide something actually useful for the Article Rescue Squadron to do. → ROUX ₪ 23:00, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
• I fully support this. Lara 03:19, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
• How is this different from Misplaced Pages talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/blp (which the community rejected)? --MZMcBride (talk) 03:27, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
  • That's where my suspicion originated. Kevin (talk) 03:37, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
    • I either had no idea that existed, or had forgotten. In any case, CSD is something of a red herring here; BLP is mandated by WMF, and there are currently ~54K articles in direct contravention of it. That is the issue which needs to be dealt with here. And frankly, speedying new unreferenced BLPs is also covered by the policy, no need for CSD to be involved as that is a purely internal maintenance system, not something required by WMF. → ROUX ₪ 03:41, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
      • Huh? "speedying new unreferenced BLPs is also covered by the policy"? Got a cite? --MZMcBride (talk) 03:44, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
        • "Biographical material about a living individual that is not compliant with this policy should be improved and rectified; if this is not possible, then it should be removed. If the entire page is substantially of poor quality, primarily containing contentious material that is unsourced or poorly sourced, then it may be necessary to delete the entire page as an initial step, followed by discussion." → ROUX ₪ 03:47, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
          • That's all true. Where I get off is how that applies to pages where no one has asserted that the page is of poor quality or that the material is contentious. Protonk (talk) 03:52, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
          • Ah, I was under the impression (given the ordering of your response) that the Wikimedia Foundation had said it was okay to speedily delete unreferenced biographies of living people (which certainly would've been news to me). As Protonk notes, unreferenced biographies don't necessarily contain negative information, they're simply unreferenced. Still, I'm curious what has changed since the discussion about this at WT:CSD a few months ago. As I noted then, the category (Category:Unreferenced BLPs) was at about 15,000 items and would soon grow to by about 30,000. The fact that it is now at 54,000-ish is (or should be) a surprise to few.... --MZMcBride (talk) 03:58, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
            • I return to the analogy of the overgrown garden. There are 54 thousand articles that need to be checked. This is not a reasonable proposition. Plow everything under and re-plant. → ROUX ₪ 04:00, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
              • No. It is not a reasonable proposition to summarily delete 54000 articles because someone hasn't added references. Protonk (talk) 04:09, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
                • And your suggestion is...? Emptying the ocean with a teaspoon isn't feasible. → ROUX ₪ 04:15, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
                  • (edit conflict)My suggestion is threefold. First, the problem doesn't really lie in unreferenced BLPs, it lies in BLPs which have references, appear neutral but are really wholesale character assassinations. Unreferenced BLPs offer a big number an easy target but they aren't necessarily bad. Second, problems like this can't be policied away or swept aside by rough measures. Elbow grease is the solution. Third, I'm not sure that your judgment of feasibility is accurate. It doesn't lend itself to a manageable solution by a small team but it isn't outside the realm of expectations that it would be done eventually. Protonk (talk) 04:23, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
                    • Here we have the benefit of having some history. The fact that Category:Unreferenced_BLPs_from_October_2006 even exists shows that such an expectation is not realistic. Kevin (talk) 04:28, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
                      • Does the fact that the Unreferenced articles category exist stand as proof that collaborative editing won't produce encyclopedia articles with references? If you are asking whether or not 'the wiki way' will ever result in 100% compliance right now with BLP, the answer is of course not. Where we go from that knowledge is not determined, though. Protonk (talk) 04:31, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
                        • Of course not, but what a lovely strawman. You're arguing that 54K articles will magically grow references while more articles are added to the category daily, when articles have existed for three years without referencing. → ROUX ₪ 04:33, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
                          • It's not a strawman, but I'm happy to abandon it. I'm not arguing that things will happen with magic. I'm arguing that things will happen with concerted effort and time. Take away either and you won't have results. Protonk (talk) 04:35, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
                            • And three years... not enough time, I suppose? → ROUX ₪ 04:37, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
                            • (e/c)The discussion in April had roughly the same conclusion. Since then, the number of BLPs identified as unsourced has grown by more than 20,000 and the number of newly created unsourced BLPs per month has grown from ~350 to ~430. "Elbow grease" and "it would be done eventually" are, again, looking like obviously non-workable ideas. Mr.Z-man 04:40, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
                              • And I suspect the discussion here will have relatively the same conclusion. "Unreferenced" just doesn't fill me with the fear of god. Those articles could be attack pages, hoaxes, self promotions, or totally innocuous articles. They could have inline urls, they could have vague pointers to proper sources. We don't know. I understand the argument which treats them all as potentially problematic, I just don't agree with it. Protonk (talk) 05:11, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

←Well, it's not reasonable to summarily delete 54000 articles, neither is it reasonable to leave them unsourced forever, nor is it reasonable to pretend that tagging them with {{BLPunsourced}} will make the problem go away. Where does that leave this mythical reasonable editor? Kevin (talk) 04:21, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

You have three options there. Only one of them is compliant with BLP. That is the least unreasonable path to take. → ROUX ₪ 04:24, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

That third sentence doesn't follow from the second. Compliance with policy is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for reasonableness. Protonk (talk) 04:26, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

It does, actually, as the other two options are not compliant with a policy mandated by the Board. → ROUX ₪ 04:27, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

All you've just said is that one option is (in your mind) compliant and that the other two aren't. Not that compliance is a necessary or sufficent condition for reasonableness. If I shuttered wikipedia today I would be in full compliance with BLP, but it is obviously not a very reasonable route to take. Protonk (talk) 04:32, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Please note the actual words I used: 'least unreasonable.' → ROUX ₪ 04:37, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Noted. That's a separate premise which needs to be justified. Protonk (talk) 05:07, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict)That's a false dilemma. The solution is to work on them, weeding the innocuous ones from the contentious or defamatory ones. But it is obviously easier to just nuke them all from orbit. Protonk (talk) 04:25, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Indeed it is easier to nuke them from orbit and start over, ensuring they are compliant. The fact that the category has grown so much in 6 months should be a clue as to exactly how many people are willing and/or able to do the work necessary. → ROUX ₪ 04:26, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Of course it is easier. Doesn't mean it's the right answer. Nor does it comply with BLP. It complies with a particularly hard edged interpretation of BLP, but the policy section you quoted above was quite clear about what pages may be deleted. Protonk (talk) 04:28, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Dont know why everyone has to bulletpoint their comments, but I am going to be unique and not do so, I'm a maverick (and a rogue)! While I am never in favor of deleting truthful information in normal articles, articles about living people are unique and special and deserve to be farther from the edges of policy and guidelines than normal articles where citation needed templates are good enough and removing uncited information is rarely called for (yes, rarely, with the exceptions of damaging, false, POV, etc; "if it doesnt hurt then leave it alone!" is a good policy). So, while I agree that BLPs are special and need more control over I can bring myself to agree with all the points proposed EXCEPT the last one proposed regarding any new BLP articles that are created and have no citations are to be speedily deleted. I propose changing that to giving them an arbitrary time period to clean up (as our policies state articles are a work of progress and can not be expected to be perfect upon creation) or they get deleted. Or- better yet- the person who is about to speedily delete ANY article get off their ass and do some freakin research themselves and add a couple citations. If you go to an article help it, if you have no intent to help then dont be at that article. Most citation needed templates are on information that could be looked up within five minutes, the problem with the information is not that it is wrong, it is that there are too many editors who think it is easier to delete than it is to verify. Do some research or get out of the way, deletion should be the last resort not the default. Of course the exceptions are libel, untruth, damaging, illegal, POV, copyrighted, etc etc. If the information does no harm, then no foul. You shouldnt delete an entire article unless the subject is non-notable, not based on problems with citation.Camelbinky (talk) 03:49, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

I would agree with a delay--say, one week from creation. Beyond that, no comment. → ROUX ₪ 03:55, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Ok, so general question. How many false positives (and/or false negatives) would be enough to make this a 'bad' idea? Absolute or relative terms. Protonk (talk) 05:07, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Define. Do you mean 'article classed as unreferenced actually posessing references' being a false positive? → ROUX ₪ 05:10, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

No. I mean articles which have references but to fake sites or attack sites or to otherwise unusable sites which go undeleted as false negatives. I mean articles which are not defamatory, contain no contentious claims and are not of poor quality which are deleted as false positives. In other words, a BLP vio we keep is a false negative, an article that would otherwise pass BLP that we delete is a false positive. Protonk (talk) 05:13, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Given that many of the 54K articles are guaranteed to be vios, the net result would be fewer vios. It's a reasonable tradeoff. Losing some good unreferenced BLPs is likewise a reasonable tradeoff, as they can all be easily recreated--but if they've been languishing for three years, clearly nobody has any interest in improving them, which almost certainly guarantees they haven't been read very much. So no loss there. → ROUX ₪ 05:17, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

that doesn't answer my question. 5% false positives? 25% 50%? how many false negatives? Protonk (talk) 05:31, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

(e/c)If an article has no sources at all, there is almost no way for someone with no knowledge of the subject to know that its not a poor quality article, without actually doing the work to find the sources. Even if its unequivocally positive, it could still be 100% factually incorrect. I would guess that most of the articles are not actually blatantly defamatory, most would probably range from "apparently neutral" to "questionable." Mr.Z-man 05:34, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

The false negatives already exist. So, as I said, we would be losing a bunch anyway. Net benefit. False positives, again, can be easily recreated. So the shorter version? I don't much care. Plow it under and start over. And bear in mind--you seem to be ignoring this--that the deletions would happen only after a month of concerted effort. → ROUX ₪ 05:35, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Ok. Thanks for the answer. Protonk (talk) 05:40, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Hi Roux! I just want to say that if there is any way I can support this project (such as rummaging through the results to help look for sources, notify creating/contributing editors, etc.), please let me know. Also, I just want to clarify: you're proposing we run a bot to check for and categorize unreferenced BLP's and then take a month to go through them all and see if there are any we can weed out of that category, right? What if we have the bot put them in a new category, say, |Category:Possible BLP vio| and then if we find BLPs that are unreferenced and yet clearly not defamatory, we can move them to |Category:Unreferenced BLPs| and move on, let other editors look for sources while we finish with this project. When we get done, then we can come back to them after whatever's left gets deleted. What do you think, good idea? Wilhelm Meis (Quatsch!) 08:17, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

I feel myself with Protonk on this proposal. If it passes, however: is full deletion necessary? Couldn't they be mass-moved to the WP:INCUBATOR (and maybe kept out of Google)? I understand the BLP concerns, but destroying thousands of articles seems a monstrous waste of potentially reasonable efforts. Moving them out of article space would have the same benefits, without losing information if someone can rescue them. --Cyclpia - 09:12, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

(Disclosure: I notified WP:INC of this discussion - --Cyclpia - 09:39, 6 October 2009 (UTC))

I think incubation may be a great idea for the latter group, but attack pages (which is what we are sifting through here looking for) fail criterion 1 for incubation. I would say once the unreferenced BLPs have been segregated, they should be sorted into articles for CSD (by tagging {{db-g10}}) and articles for rescue (incubation). This seems to solve the problem using processes we already have in place. Or have I missed something? I'm really not familiar with incubation. Can someone more familiar tell me how workable this solution would be? Wilhelm Meis (Quatsch!) 11:26, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Sorting 54K articles is not a feasible proposition, which is why I suggested a bot run to segregate out those that appear to have some referencing--which, yes, will need to be checked. Those found without referencing will be given a month to be given some, and then kablooie the rest. I would strenuously object to moving pages into the incubator; for one I am not convinced of the utility of the project (it just seems to be moving the problem of languishing pages from userspace to projectspace), and for another the entire point of the proposed deletions is to remove probable BLPvios from the project, not simply remove them from Google indexing. → ROUX ₪ 13:23, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

The concept is that BLPvios are a potential problem mostly in article space. Away from article space and non-googleable, they become material to work on, practically accessed only by interested WP editors, and it is unlikely that people will use them as authoritative sources. The utility of the project is exactly in moving languishing pages away from article space: WP, for the public, is the article space, basically, and moving stuff that needs serious improvement away from it helps maintain both objectives of quality and of editability. --Cyclpia - 13:28, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

The problem is the probable BLPvios--and BLP applies to every page on Misplaced Pages, not just article space. See also Category:Unreferenced BLPs from October 2006 for why this idea of 'they'll get worked on eventually' is completely unsupportable. → ROUX ₪ 13:34, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

But you don't know what's effectively violating and what not, and most probably problematic articles are a small minority. Slashing 54K articles is a solution like cutting a whole arm because a fingertip is infected. I understand concerns, but we have to find a middle ground. The large majority of such articles is probably fully legitimate material. --Cyclpia - 13:58, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

And these are going to be checked how? Again, see Category:Unreferenced BLPs from October 2006 --three years ago-- for why this eventualism idea simply does not work. → ROUX ₪ 14:04, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

But it is working. That category contains 86 pages, out of the likely 10000+ BLP articles created during October 2006; the task is 99% done and I'm sure that in due course the category will go the way of Category:Unreferenced BLPs from September 2006. A scan of the category suggests that few to zero of these articles have major BLP issues that would cause problems down the line should they remain. In general, I am wary of any argument here that claims either (A) a problem is too large for case-by-case assessment - given the scale of the project this is highly unlikely to be true - or (B) that an arbitrary or sweeping solution is best for a specific and identifiable problem. The best way to deal with these articles is to continue grinding through them as we are today. Christopher Parham (talk) 15:33, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Since April of this year, the size of the main category has grown by more than 20,000 articles. We're currently almost 3 years behind and pages are being added faster than they're being removed. We might be making progress on the oldest ones, but in general, we're not even breaking even. Mr.Z-man 16:13, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Also, I'm not sure how you determined that there would have been 10,000 articles in the category. Last month, we got about 430 newly created unsourced BLPs, not including ones that have since been deleted. Others in the category are from older articles that are later discovered to be unsourced (the date on the category is the date they were tagged, not the date they were created) None of the more recent categories have much more than 7,000 pages as a result of people finding more of them. I just checked a few random ones from the April 2009 category; several of them were created in 2007. Mr.Z-man 16:30, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Roughly, I am taking net article growth of about 50k plus about 1k a day article deletion (or 30k in the month). So 80k total article creation multiplied by the roughly 2/15 of articles that are BLPs is about 10k new BLPs per month in 2007 (this is probably conservative); some % of this was referenced initially and most of the rest have been processed via deletion, adding references, merging, etc. Obviously the creation-time vs. tagging-time issue skews things in terms of assessing unreferenced articles by creation date, but the point is that the size of the problem is managable and we have already chipped away the bulk of it through normal processes. If you know a way to get better statistics, that would be helpful but it is problematic since many of the relevant articles are deleted quickly, before they ever even enter sutiable categories.

To your main point, we need to separate growth from tagging old articles from growth by new unreferenced BLPs being created. If you are correct that only 430 new ones were created last month, that's great (seems extremely low to me - I figure we probably speedy almost that many every day) -- we don't need a new process to handle a long-run level of 430 articles per month. There's obviously a backlog that needs to be worked through but that's not refelctive of us "not breaking even", it's reflective of us fully encompassing the scope of an existing problem. The rate comparison needs to compare the # of new unreferenced BLPS to the # that are resolved via speedy deletion, PROD, AFD, merging, redirection, or addition of references. Only if we are falling behind under those long-run conditions should we consider more aggressive tactics. Christopher Parham (talk) 17:41, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Not every BLP that's created is unsourced. BLPs created by established users (who tend to create more "lasting" articles) will typically be at least partially sourced. I should have noted that the 430 number doesn't include deleted articles. Its based on the number of articles created in the last 30 days that are currently tagged as unsourced BLPs. But, the number is steadily increasing. I did the same estimate in the April discussion and it was "only" 350. Its certainly possible that a "wait and see" approach will work, but all the evidence we have right now says it won't. Mr.Z-man 22:29, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Well we would expect the number to grow steadily in line with Misplaced Pages's growth, but I'm not sure the sample size of two is enough to extrapolate a trend in this case. At any rate, ~400 per month is a better statement of the burden at hand than 54k existing. I feel confident that a few hundred articles a month is a number with which current processes are very capable of dealing. However, it's true that we lack good measures of either the actual target size of the population, or the actual rate at which we resolve problem articles, so it's really quite speculative. Based on your comment, 400-450 a month after early-stage deletions may be a good approximation of the first figure, but we have no concrete information about the second. How fast are we removing articles from this category by adding references or via later-stage deletion? Does anyone know? Christopher Parham (talk) 23:19, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

(undent)The problem is that we don't have any existing processes for this. With the exception of things like WP:Peer review and the incubator suggested elsewhere (which probably would be overwhelmed by an extra 400 articles per month) we really don't have any "process" for dealing with low-quality articles that doesn't involve requesting deletion. Right now if you want an article to be improved, the process is "fix it yourself" - there aren't even that many places to ask for help. Mr.Z-man 00:59, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

We definitely have processes for it: they are informal and diffuse rather than strictly centralized, but they are also the method by which the overwhelming majority of the encyclopedia has been created. Perhaps a new formal process would be a good idea, but in my experience formal processes for article improvement tend to function poorly (e.g. WP:COTW). Christopher Parham (talk) 12:53, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

In response to Wilhelm, incubation is a new project that hosts sub-standard new articles that would otherwise be deleted or User-fied. The solution might work, but practically speaking that proposal might swamp the new project in its infancy. - Draeco (talk) 13:48, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

As the editor that created the unsourced BLP cat and manually tagged the first 10,000 or thereabouts, before bots took this over (phew), I can with some certainty claim that a) most of these articles are neutral and acceptable (e.g. thousands of articles on soccer players: even when a hoax, not much harm is generally done); b) a significant minority is potentially very controversial: articles about supposed mass murderers, yakuza members, porn stars, nazi camp guards, ... When I noticed these, I speedy deleted as G10, but there are probably a lot more of those still around.

What I would suggest is not speedy deletion of all of them, but noindexing: make sure they don't turn up in Google searches and so on. This should be fairly easy to achieve, by adding the noindex property to the BLP unsourced tag. The articles are still available, people can source them, history is kept, but as long as they are unsourced, they don't appear in searches (which often includes the first few lines of the text as well). It will not make the backlog go away any faster, but it will minimize potential problems.

Flagged revisions would help as well, certainly for new unsourced BLPs, but that's a different story. Fram (talk) 14:24, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Noindexing problematic articles is certainly an option, but on English Misplaced Pages requires a software setting to be changed to make it possible. See {{noindex}}. Rd232 14:39, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Another reason to bring them away from article space and within incubator, if really felt as problematic, therefore. --Cyclpia - 15:08, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, no. That's just shifting the problem of 54K articles from mainspace to projectspace. → ROUX ₪ 15:12, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

We should be fixing articles, not destroying them automatically. You continue to cite the list of unreferenced articles since 2006, but this doesn't mean at least some of them won't be done in the future. Even the creator of category agrees most of these articles are probably perfectly legitimate. WP:DEADLINE. Since BLPs are a sensitive issue, moving them outside article space and noindexing them is the best way to acquiet BLP concerns without destroying thousands of individual and mostly positive efforts. Deleting them seems to be a textbook case of throwing out the baby with the bath water. --Cyclpia - 15:18, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

None of them have been done in three years. What gives us any confidence that any will be done in the next three? I'm aware that Misplaced Pages has no deadline, but BLPs are a special--the only special--case.→ ROUX ₪ 15:26, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

That's because of them being (somehow) special that I proposed to move them outside of article space, which already seems exceptional enough. --Cyclpia - 15:58, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

I think the overall idea has merit, but it is more likely to be accepted if it is worked into existing mechanisms where possible. It seems to me the first step should be building the proposed bot that would review BLPs tagged as unreferenced and sort out those that truly lack any ref. I looked at several articles in the Unreferenced BLPs category and found about half now have at least one reference. Others had sources in external links or infoboxes. I prod'ed several that lacked any ref or claim to notability. Tuning the bot to do useful triage would take some effort, I think. Once a reasonable level of quality is achieved, adding a bot that prod'ed completely unreferenced pages at some manageable rate might be a next step. If the resulting proding creates too much work, we can look at more automated deletion mechanisms. Meanwhile, I'd suggest everyone in this discussion review a dozen articles from Category:Unreferenced BLPs from October 2006 to get a sense of what is involved. --agr (talk) 15:36, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure if it is possible to program a bot to do anything about this, but one thing I noticed in looking over a few dozen articles is that in several cases (probably 10-15% or so), the article said the subject had died, but the "BLP unreferenced" tag was still being used instead of just plain "Unreferenced". That doesn't change the issue of them lacking references, but it does remove some of the pressue that exists for BLPs. --RL0919 (talk) 22:14, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

• The present policy, which I think an excellent policy and fully support, "Biographical material about a living individual that is not compliant with this policy should be improved and rectified; if this is not possible, then it should be removed. If the entire page is substantially of poor quality, primarily containing contentious material that is unsourced or poorly sourced, then it may be necessary to delete the entire page as an initial step, followed by discussion." does not justify the deletion even manually of unreferenced BLPs, unless the entire page is substantially of poor quality, primarily containing contentious material that is unsourced or poorly source , and even then, leaves it as a matter of judgment: "may". I would strongly oppose any automated deletion process. Unless it is asserted that the BLP is of poor quality, primarily contains contentious material, and cannot be fixed by sourcing after a reasonable try, it does not qualify for deletion via any process for being unsourced--though if sources cannot be found it might well qualify for lack of notability. I think those limitations are good ones, and a necessarily defense against excessive zeal. Removing them will remove the good with the bad, which does not improve Misplaced Pages. Those conditions require intelligence and judgment. (I leave open the possibility that it may be feasible to design a bot showing more of both than some editors.) And any truly harmful article is already covered by the CSD for attack page--I and all other admins who check speedys routinely delete for that reason, and with particular speed. DGG ( talk ) 22:19, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree the the assessment that unreferenced BLPs don't automatically fail the BLP policy. I also agree with the idea that mass deleting these is not necessarily a net positive for the project. On the other hard, I certainly agree with the assessment that current methods are unlikely to "break even", let alone reduce the backlog, in the near future. Thus, something has to be done - but I don't see any easy answer as to what. However, I would like to point out while adding a reference to a BLP technically "fixes" the problem - it doesn't really do anything to address the underlying reason for the policy to begin with; that is, the possibility of unsourced, potentially damaging information. As pointed out above, an article with one or more references can violate BLP policy just as easily as an article with no references. The real problem is lack of interest in these articles. The lack of references is a result of this problem, not the cause of it.

Moving to specific ideas... Incubating a tiny number of these articles would not be a bad idea, but keep in mind the project is only in its infancy. The initial results have been positive, but even 400 articles would completely overwhelm the current project volunteers.

I think idea of a bot notifying (still active) creators of old unreferenced BLPs mentioned below is a very good suggestion. I have no idea how much of an impact this would have, but it likely have some impact.

On a related note, I have been approached about automatically adding infoboxes to certain classes of articles via information derived from RS databases. Technically, this could "fix" some unreferenced articles. Of course, the only things referenced would be the new info added, which rather proves my point above that it isn't the lack of references per say that is the real problem here. That is, these newly referenced articles wouldn't be anymore accurate than before the infobox was added, but they would no longer be unref'd BLPs. --ThaddeusB (talk) 02:40, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

" The real problem is lack of interest in these articles. " I think that's right, and that's one excellent reason to have a notability policy set at a level which ensures some minimum level of interest in most BLPs. Rd232 07:36, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

• A strict don't delete any article choosing "radically" easy way from my point. If wikipedia had an archive feature instead delete, where registered users can track history of archived article, fix issues then revive archived pages, while archived pages are not visible to common reader, I would supported it. All these deletion debates and nominations getting out of hand year after year, wasting countless time and hardwork of users who tries to add something Kasaalan (talk) 15:01, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

• I wholeheartedly agree. Actually, deleted articles are visible to admins, AFAIK. It would be nice maybe for registered editors to have a way to view such articles (and as such work on them), say on a case-by-case basis like the rollback feature. Good idea -worth to work on it. --Cyclpia - 17:35, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

• Except copyright violations or serious wrongdoings, there should be some archive option. Then all the deletion debates would be more easy. It would lessen bureaucracy and weight over admins too. I strictly advise a hide-archive page process, so that deletion side effects will become less, and wikipedia will be more progressive. And whenever a mistake happens, it will be much more easier to correct it. Kasaalan (talk) 18:32, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

This is a perennial proposal, which is almost certainly not going to happen. Mr.Z-man 18:33, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Argh. Too bad it didn't pass, really. I'd have a lot to comment, but that's not the place to do it -and it'd be pointless. Only... arrrgh... --Cyclpia - 23:04, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I would say this idea is somewhat different than viewing deleted articles. Kind of a "deletion lite" where articles don't appear when searched for and aren't indexed, but are still viewable by non-admins (i.e. ina special holding area.) I personally have no opinion on the wisdom of the idea, but I do think it is different than "deleted pages should be viewable" --ThaddeusB (talk) 00:50, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

How is that substantially different, except that it uses an entirely different system than deletion (and as a result would be more work for the developers)? The proposal is that every deleted article except for copyright violations and seriously problematic articles would be viewable by logged-in users (which is essentially everyone). Mr.Z-man 01:03, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Well I didn't say substantially different, but rather somewhat different. :) I kinda assumed it would be only for unreferenced BLPs since that is what the thread is theoretically about, but re-reading that original post I guess the editor is really just saying "don't delete anything" - an idea that definitely won't fly. And yeah, it is unlikely to happen even if similar to what I was saying due to it creating dev work for limited benefit.

On the plus side, WP:INCUBATE does incorporate some of functionality of this proposal. Namely, bad articles are moved out of mainspace and no-indexed, but not hidden (i.e. deleted) from non-admins. Of course articles can't stay in incubation indefinitely (for good reason), and the project is small, so it can't handle any significant portion of these articles any time soon. --ThaddeusB (talk) 01:14, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Should article creators and/or major contributors help reduce the backlog?

Sub-section inserted around existing content by Pointillist (talk) 00:38, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

I've taken a look at a few articles from the August 2009 cohort, and it was interesting to see that many of them are old articles that have only recently been detected by bots, e.g. David Andrews (Irish politician) created August 2003, Sergiu Anghel and Clara Ant created October 2005, Janet Amsden created November 2005, Stephen Andrew created April 2006, Len Ardill created October 2006, Shelly Altman created December 2006, etc. In half of my small sample the original creators are still active on Misplaced Pages, e.g.

• Ralf Altmeyer created November 2004 by MichaelJanich (talk · contribs)
• Sam Apelbaum created February 2005 by CJCurrie (talk · contribs)
• Ken Allemann created March 2005 by Esteffect (talk · contribs)
• Philip Andrewes created September 2005 by CJCurrie (talk · contribs)
• Mitch Aliotta created September 2005 by Jokestress (talk · contribs)
• David C. Alexander created January 2006 by Ncox (talk · contribs)
• Mohammed bin Nawwaf bin Abdul Aziz created March 2006 by LCahill (talk · contribs)
• Johnnie Allan created July 2008 by Skb8721 (talk · contribs)

...would it make sense to bot these editors a note asking if they could please help find references? - Pointillist (talk) 17:34, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes be aware that if SmackBot comes across (in the course of dating tags, possibly not if it's doing another job) an article tagged as unreferenced and in the living people category it will change the tag to BLPunreferenced. Same applies to refimprove and BLPsources. The date will remain. We have something over 300,000 articles categorised as unreferenced, approximately 10%, a similar ratio (13%) seems to apply to BLP, which is good going since people are more anxious to tag those. Rich Farmbrough, 18:38, 6 October 2009 (UTC).

(ec) I've moved this into a sub-section for clarity. My concern is that—even though some of these unreferenced BLPs date back to 2003/4/5—in many cases the original article creators are still active on Misplaced Pages and we need to consider whether to warn these editors that their old articles need references. Without naming names, I can see that some of these editors have a long history of creating unreferenced articles and are still doing so. - Pointillist (talk) 00:38, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

I think bot messages to contributing editors to ask for references could be a big twofold help, IMHO. For one, it brings their attention to an article they have already expressed some serious interest in, which they may not have looked at in a while, and they may now be more seasoned editors and make higher quality contributions (not in all cases, but in some of these cases where the article has just been sitting there since 2006). The other reason is that notifying thousands of editors of the issue and asking for their contributions shows that this is a serious issue that needs attention, and some of them may choose to help the project. How would we do this, just notify the article creators, or is there a way for the bot to also check for the editor who made the most edits to an article and notify that user too (if they are not the same person)? Wilhelm Meis (Quatsch!) 23:58, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

This seems the only thing which, given a little time, might make a serious impact. The bot should contact the creator, substantial editors, and possibly recent editors (ideally filtering out editors who haven't been active for a very long time - not sure that's possible though). It needs doing carefully however - in particular you don't want to send people dozens of messages - but a single message with a list of articles needing attention which they've created or been involved with would be good. Rd232 08:20, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

I see your point, and I fully agree with it, but I wonder how we could implement this. It seems like the messages would just stack up on a repeat offender's talk page. Can a bot edit successive notices into its own original message? Do we even have somebody here who knows how to set up a bot that could accomplish the tasks we have outlined here so far? I'd love to learn more about how bots work on WP, but this would certainly be outside of my skills! Wilhelm Meis (Quatsch!) 09:49, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I think a bot can edit successive notices into its own original message. That seems to be what Erwin85Bot does when leaving {{NowCommons}} messages: ncnotifier.py leaves a shorter message when it finds the marker <!-- ncnotifier --> on a user's talk page (source code). - Pointillist (talk) 10:12, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

I see what you mean. I like it. Wilhelm Meis (Quatsch!) 13:20, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Although that seems to do it as separate edits. That might be a bit annoying for some users, who might constantly get "you have a new message" flashed up. I don't know if some form of caching would be possible, so that multiple messages can get bundled into one post. Rd232 16:38, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

If we agree it's a good idea and no-one volunteers here, there's Misplaced Pages:Bot requests. Rd232 16:36, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Erik9Bot was the main bot responsible for tagging unreferenced articles in general, and BLPs in particular. Since Erik got banned, the bot is obviously no longer running. There was a botreq to replace its functionality that went unanswered - primarily because the task was rather controversial to begin with so no one was jumping at the opportunity to get gripes about it. (I should note that originally The BLP part did come first and was somewhat less controversial.)

Now, this proposal to make the bot notify people about their old article(s) that are unreferenced makes the task both more useful and more interesting to me. Thus, making it easier to persuade me to take it on. That's the good news - the bad news is that I have a poor record of getting things done in a timely manner. --ThaddeusB (talk) 02:20, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Cool. Well if there are no objections forthcoming to this task, we should list it at Misplaced Pages:Bot requests, and then hopefully someone will take it on reasonably quickly. I actually don't think it's that difficult a task for an experienced botwriter (but I could be wrong). Rd232 07:38, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Added a request at Misplaced Pages:Bot requests. Rd232 14:35, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Greetings from the coal face

Entirely coincidentally, I've just reviewed all of the articles in the unreferenced BLP categories from November 2006 to March 2007, looking for obviously deletable articles. I can report that the situation is, in reality, much as Fram describes it above. The large majority of unreferenced BLPs are not problematic beyond the simple lacking of sources. There are a few outright advertisements, puff pieces, and otherwise suspect articles here and there (like Benjamin Mkapa whose recent wholesale overwrite was almost certainly the product of a public relations organization) but in the main most unreferenced BLPs are like Debbie Greenwood: reasonably innoccuous and not immediately obvious that they are unverifiable. Indeed, there are a significant minority that are tagged as unreferenced but to which source citations have since been added.

Of the approximately 2,000 articles that I looked at, I nominated just 25 for Proposed Deletion, mainly because the people simply turned out to be wholly undocumented as far as I could tell. (See Peter Penny, for example.) That's 1% of the total that led me to believe that they would be unverifiable and turned out to be unverifiable when I went looking for sources. The nearest that I came to a serious BLP problem was Judith Ralston, which was close to being a coatrack for some exceedingly poor external links and some bad tabloid journalism.

For what it's worth, here are the remaining BLP articles that I still have outstanding, open in WWW browser tabs as I write this, which you might care to review and deal with yourselves:

• Brian Roehrkasse — I sent this through Proposed Deletion, and it was deleted. It has been since re-created, alas, and the problems that I explained in my Proposed Deletion rationale remain.
• Pascall Fox — According to our article, this is a person famous for having orange hair.
• Susan Tom — According to our article, this is a woman famous for having children.

One final note: Jorge Lankenau was an unsourced BLP from 2005 that was largely blanked for supposed BLP problems. A little bit of research effort turned up the fact that the original content was verifiable and largely accurate per national newspapers of Mexico. Uncle G (talk) 00:38, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Ward Churchill

There is discussion about whether or not Press Releases from the American Indian Movement can be used to substantiate the position AIM has taken in regard to Ward Churchill in a section that deals with Churchill's history with AIM. The discussion can be found here07:21, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

The content is being inserted in the subject's "Ethnic Background" section, not in "a section that deals with Churchill's history with AIM" (that would be the "Involvement with Indian organizations" section). The discussion could use more eyes upon it. The 2 issues being discussed are 1) can the AIM press release be used (with its inflammatory rhetoric) as a primary source instead of reliable secondary sources (newspapers) covering the same information, and 2) does this disparaging content (the opinion of an organization long in contention with the BLP subject) qualify in significance and import to be included in a BLP? Xenophrenic (talk) 19:51, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

I think this question belongs at Misplaced Pages:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard, not here.--agr (talk) 01:03, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Short answers: 1) The AIM press release is authoritative for what AIM says, and can be addressed appropriately in an NPOV manned such as "AIM issued a press release disputing Churchill's status...." and so forth. Don't try to make them an authority on what Churchill is or is not; make them an authority solely on what they say Churchill is or is not. 2) Sure, when used appropriately. BLP isn't a license to say nothing bad about someone, it merely insists that we source negative material appropriately. Jclemens (talk) 01:36, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Question about sourcing

The BLP policy says all unsourced information should be removed, and whether it's positive or negative is irrelevant. Then it goes on to say only contentious and defamatory material that a good faith editor objects to should be removed. Which one should I follow? If an article says- ABC worked with company X for 20 years. And that's unsourced, should I remove it? Assuming I've tried to search for sources. Additionally, should I even bother to search for a source? Or should I just remove it with the burden of evidence argument? ƒ(Δ)² 19:11, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

My opinion: Of course you should bother to have at least a look around, before removing something, otherwise you just unnecessarily remove information that could just be a Google search away. For the main question, I would follow the second advice (only clearly contentious and defamatory material should not be given the benefit of doubt), but I'm sure you'll find a plethora of different opinions. --Cyclpia - 22:10, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

That apparent discrepancy between the lead and the section further down does point to the same thing - that not all material should be removed, just that which is questionable or contentious, with contentious defined as material to which a good faith editor objects. That means that if you remove something in good faith, and are not vandalizing or being deliberately disruptive, that is OK. Where you will run into trouble is if you remove something that most editors would not find questionable or contentious. Easily sourced material may fall into this category, and while you are within the policy to remove it, you will find that locating a source, or tagging with {{fact}} is preferable. Kevin (talk) 22:48, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

I find that to be exceedingly vague. Where you will run into trouble is if you remove something that most editors would not find questionable or contentious. Easily sourced material may fall into this category, and while you are within the policy to remove it, you will find that locating a source, or tagging with {{fact}} is preferable. So I would be correct to remove material that I can't find a source for, even if it is not contentious? (Refer to my question in the original statement) ƒ(Δ)² 08:21, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

I would say that if you cannot find a source then the material is by definition questionable or contentious, and should be removed. Sorry if this doesn't make my point clearer. Kevin (talk) 23:32, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Indeed. If you cannot find a source for a claim, remove it. Even if it seems harmless, inaccurate information is no good. We are an encyclopedia. We build our articles by compiling already published information. If you can't find where it's been published, take it out. As Kevin pointed out, it's easy to run into trouble when you remove information that many others don't see a problem with. In addition to his suggestions, removing the information and then placing a note on the article's talk page explaining why you did can often prevent drama. Lara 18:21, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Indications that bio policy is FAILING

http://www.johnderbyshire.com/Opinions/Culture/gossipedia.html

First, understand that I deleted my old user page with my real name at the time of the Seigenthaler incident. I did it not because I am notable, but because some of the regulars involved in that incident were so unreasonable that they scared me.

Derbyshire did not know what to do about his slanderous Misplaced Pages page so he attempted to fix it himself. He was immediately slammed as if he were some stupid newbie instead of a notable person with a bio. Now listen here you regulars, I know for a *fact* that such behavior is flat prohibited by this policy and it has been ever since Misplaced Pages almost got the crap sued out of it during Seigenthaler. I don't know how much clearer Jimbo could be about this policy. I also know for a *fact* that such behavior is both unfair to living people and harmful to Misplaced Pages, and if you don't understand why, please read this policy *again*.

One of the things that so irritated me during Seigenthaler was how regulars could quote chapter and verse of Misplaced Pages policies to other people but used that ability to avoid following those policies themselves. What happened to Derbyshire proves this. What happened to him should *never* have happened.

I apologize, but I find myself unable to keep from ranting on this issue.

To continue, I have found that anyone who wants make an effort to keep controversial bio articles clean gets the exact same negative treatment. I have attempted to work on the Palin and Limbaugh articles, and I have found that there are regulars who use their extensive knowledge against normal editors like me and who make POV edits. Working on these articles is such a battle that I have given up and so have most other editors like me. Like Derbyshire, I have neither the time nor inclination to become a Misplaced Pages expert just to keep a bio cleaned up.

Once again, this is a problem, it needs to be fixed, Jimbo *knows* it needs to be fixed and I don't see what else he can do without the help of all of us. Your goodwill and cooperation is always greatly appreciated, but as Derbyshire shows, it is certainly not forthcoming.Jarhed (talk) 18:03, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

The second thing I noticed was that my Misplaced Pages page was written by an AAM — that is, an Angry Asian Male. This needs a bit of explanation. Among East Asian males, there is a large subgroup who are flipped into a mode of blind fury by the thought of Asian women consorting with non-Asian males. In the young-adult cohort of mainland-Chinese males, I would estimate the subgroup as about one in three. These are the AAMs. One recent target of their rage has been Chinese movie star Zhang Ziyi, whose affair with Israeli venture capitalist Vivi Nevo has stirred quite horrifying levels of vituperation against Ms. Zhang on Chinese-language blogs. After hanging out among Chinese people for forty years on three continents, and having been married to a lady of Chinese ancestry for twenty-three of those years, I am exquisitely well-sensitized to the AAM mentality. I can, as it were, spot an AAM at five hundred yards. That the author of my Misplaced Pages page is an AAM shone out loud and clear.

• From that rant. I'm sure their were innacuracies in his bio. It was (and probably is) too long, focused on trivialities, slanted by the likely bias of editors and readers of wikipedia, and generally well below par for a 'real' biography. But he's not a sympathetic figure. And he's not making a clear case. And you are presenting his unclear case as some call for immediate action as if there were a solution right in front of us that would allow anonymous (or even just pseudonymous) editing, provide for redress of wrongs and allow our biographies to instantly reflect the will of their subjects (except where that would be wrong). There isn't. So I don't see the need to give more credence to a quasi-racist rant (With the important caveat that he knows asian people, so he can't be racist!) than would normally be due to it. Protonk (talk) 18:39, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

You are *exactly* the type of editor I am talking about.

But he's not a sympathetic figure.--Pure POV and anyone who has even the tiniest inkling about how this place works knows that is *not allowed*.

And he's not making a clear case.--You are attempting to use a blog entry as a *primary source* for keeping slanderous data in a *bio*. You don't have to know much about sources or bios to know that THAT is *not allowed*.

some call for immediate action--I have a documented case of a living person being reverted from changing slanderous data in his own bio. Not only that, the person is a writer with a national platform who is criticizing Misplaced Pages's bio policy, and it is not like this is the first time. Don't you consider THAT "some call for immediate action"?

as if there were a solution right in front of us that would allow anonymous (or even just pseudonymous) editing, provide for redress of wrongs and allow our biographies to instantly reflect the will of their subjects--How about this commonsense and easy to do approach: how about none of you regulars revert bold changes to bios without being careful not to bite a newbie notable trying to fix his own bio? Merely *that* would have prevented this issue.

So I don't see the need to give more credence to a quasi-racist rant (With the important caveat that he knows asian people, so he can't be racist!)--That is more POV crap. It is good that you didn't put quotes around that "knows asian people" because in fact the man said that he lived in China for forty years, and remember, he did that on a *blog post*.Jarhed (talk) 19:14, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

So could you please elaborate on how exactly the policy has failed? The policy seems fine to me; if people don't follow it, then that's a different issue which should be handled here. Astronominov 18:44, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

The policy clearly says to be careful about reverting a good faith edit by a notable person attempting to fix his own bio. I have been editing here for years and I have no clue what a BPLN is without researching it, how do you think a notable person trying to fix a slanderous bio feels. Once again, I am saying that there is a real problem here and that regulars who quote policy in leiu of trying to actually fix the problem are actually making the problem worse.Jarhed (talk) 18:59, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

This is a problem and has been for as long as I've been paying attention to BLPs. WP:BLPN is the BLP (biographies of living people) noticeboard. A better place to take these issues is actually WP:OTRS. Ranting usually doesn't do much to help one's cause in these situations, but trust me that I understand. Really, I do. I'll look over the article but would appreciate a simple, clear list of issues, preferably on the article's talk page. Lara 19:09, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

See, I don't know the *exact* policies about raising an issue like this. Rather than forcing me to learn them could you give someone like me a little help instead? I know enough about the policies that posting about this issue *here* should be enough to get this issue raised properly, whatever that is. The article has already been fixed by other editors, so the article as it stands is not the problem. The problem was the violation of bio policies documented by Derbyshire on his blog and the thousands of people who have read them.Jarhed (talk) 19:14, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

We all start somewhere. You aren't being "forced" to learn the policies; Jennavecia has just helpfully pointed out where you can go to register a complaint about a BLP. As you have noticed, posting a message on a relevant talk page usually elicits help pretty quickly. — Cheers, JackLee 19:31, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

My understanding of this problem comes merely from reading this policy, and it seems so obvious to me that it should be obvious to anyone. This policy is shot through with warnings to be careful with bios. I have already encountered tremendous institutional resistance trying to do something positive about this in the past, and if I can't get any traction here, then I am unwilling to attempt it again. If that is the case, then let's just drop it. However, I know for a fact you are all wrong.Jarhed (talk) 20:10, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't know what you are talking about. I've never edited that guy's biography, and I never plan to. Nowhere have I said "yeah, blog posts are great sources for biographies". I also fully admit that the bias (in the aggregate) of wikipedia editors is likely to push this guys article toward defamation. I'm just pointing out that a racist and misleading attack from the subject of the article isn't a great place to start. If you want to fix the article, then do it. If you are uncomfortable doing it, then list precisely the problems with the article. You don't need to know or reference wikipolicies, just say "this is what the article says, this is why it is wrong/inaccurate/out of context." But broad rants about how bad biographies are aren't in short supply. Protonk (talk) 20:32, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

We have >400K BLPs. Every here and there, someone rants about his/her own BLP. Sometimes rightly so, sometimes not. All I can say is: meh. Not that we don't have to get these cases seriously, but we cannot assess things with isolated anecdotes. If there is a problem, let's bring statistics about the size and depth of this problem. Data. Until that moment, some dozen of BLP complaints over 400.000 overall BLPs tell us that the policy is working exceptionally well, if anything. There will always be some problematic cases, it is in the nature of WP -we must reduce them to a resonable minimum, without crippling the encyclopedia. I'd say the current BLP policy is good enough, and my personal opinion is that the real problem is that it is already interpreted even too much restrictively by most editors (have a look to AfDs to get an idea). --Cyclpia - 20:56, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Stats would be nice, but I'd settle for simple enumeration of the problems with a specific article. Protonk (talk) 21:27, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

He was in no way treated like a "stupid newbie"; see User talk:Ptvydanh. WhyDoIKeepForgetting (talk) 02:21, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Cyclopia, you're doing nothing to help the situation. Our policy is not working exceptionally well. A HUGE chunk of those BLPs are worthless stubs. A lot of people don't know they have a biography here, because we'd surely see complaints from them if they did, considering how poorly they're written and the garbage that gets stuck and left in them. Not to mention you don't know how many complaints we get each week from subjects of biographies. "Some dozen" is about how many we get a week. If you want stats, get to coding something, otherwise relegate yourself to the discussions where you know what you're talking about and can be helpful. Lara 16:16, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, but you're no one to tell me where I should "relegate". I have my opinions on the BLP stuff and I can express them, politely and respectfully. You had a shining career as an admin involved in this thing: If you have statistics on how many complaints are received each week on BLPs (and how many of them are actually serious complaints), please share them and if they are as overwhelming as you claim , I am willing to change my mind. Maybe I talk out of ignorance, absolutely, but it's hard to do otherwise when the people who supposedly know don't share with us numbers and facts. Please do. --Cyclpia - 17:02, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

some numbers to support that BLP is failing CAT:BLP 53,000+ unsourced, that in itself is a scary figure, while it will be inaccurate 10% either way as for complaints. Year to date we have 1000+ disputes via Misplaced Pages:Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard thats just the discussion that reach the notice board, there are more that just occur on talk pages and even more that come via OTRS. As for actual articles according to WP:BIO there 747,000(467,000 stubs & 152,000 start) bio articles 436,000 articles are tagged as living=yes Gnangarra 17:32, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the numbers, Gnangarra! A quick look on WP:BLPN shows that , while many of them are reasonable complaints, they are in vast majority complaints between editors on the quality, bias etc. of BLPs. If anything, it shows that the process is working and vibrant. In any case, 1000 (or even 2000) complaints on the noticeboard for 436000 BLPs mean anyway that significant problems are acknowledged in substantially less than 1% of biographies. There's room for improvement, and for sure an underestimate; but not bad, I'd say. But anyway: what are meaningful about "failing" are the complaints of the BLP subjects, and in this respect an estimate of OTRS tickets by subjects would be most helpful.

That said, I am personally a big fan of semiprotection on all BLPs -it would really help avoid at least basic vandalism. --Cyclpia - 17:47, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Forgot to comment: Yes, the unsourced figure is more concerning. However there's a discussion above just about that, and it turned out that 1)the figure is inflated because many articles are added sources but stay tagged as unsourced 2)most probably the ratio of problematic BLPs in this subset is not substantially larger than in all the BLP set. --Cyclpia - 17:50, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

I am someone to tell you, as I am someone who knows what I'm talking about when it comes to BLP. Whether you listen or not is up to you. I'd think you'd not want to make inane comments, but that's just an assumption on my part and I'll admit that I don't understand the deniers. That said, I don't have specific figures. I haven't nor do I plan to scour through thousands of pages and email archives to gather up statistics. I also am not able to detail you into OTRS stuff, but if you like, go ask User:Keegan about how many BLP OTRS tickets we get a week. He's been working with them far longer than me. Also, my "shining career" is unfazed by the loss of my tool belt. Lara 18:08, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

I wasn't sarcastic abou your admin work (I am aware of the recent drama and I'm sorry for what happened, but this has nothing to do with what we're talking about now). Now, the point is that I'm more than willing to listen, but I'm not going to listen arguments that amount to "I know this stuff and you do not" without ay more explanation. I am more than willing instead to listen factual data, instead, but it seems that almost no one (except our fellow Gnangarra) wants to expose them. We can invite User:Keegan to the discussion for sure and listen to his estimates. --Cyclpia - 18:17, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

It's a privacy violation to give out details of OTRS tickets. There may be numbers, but I don't know of any compiled statistics, so I can only go by what I've seen. I handled I think about a half a dozen BLP tickets last week. There were others that I read but did not feel inclined to take on, and I'm sure still others that I didn't see. Last week wasn't an exceptional week, in my opinion. Keegan, though, should be able to give a more solid opinion on numbers. Lara 18:33, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Enough to understand orders of magnitude. 10 a week mean 540520 a year. Let's make it 600 a year. On the total of ~400000 BLPs, it makes 500600/400000 = 0.15% of BLPs in one year led to an OTRS ticket. That is consistent with rough estimates above. It seems all evidence points to the fact that the odds of a given BLP to create trouble to its subject are between 0.1 and 1%. That's the magnitude of the BLP problem, it seems. --Cyclpia - 22:11, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

What an amazing use of mathematical formula - 10 a week = 540 per year(?), let's make it 600 (okay...) so 500(?)/400,000 (never mind the stubs previously referred to). That's accurate quantitative research followed by top analysis right - so that you can reach a statement enough to understand orders of magnitude? BLP issues are qualitative in their nature not quantitative or statistics as you wish to put it. Perhaps this is another something not understood. Oh and Cyclopia you were being sarcastic about Lara's admin work - indeed you were very rude and your comment was not helpful nor professional, indeed it was placed simply to poison the well, raise argument and disrupt this project. To move on - in terms of the general premise that BLP policy is failing - yes it is failing to the tune of hundreds, perhaps thousands of living persons each year, and no movement to statistical analysis (even very poor statistical analysis as described above) regarding a qualitative situation is going to be able to adjust the level of concern that this project must hold over that situation.--VirtualSteve 22:30, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Not to mention that OTRS stats only cover those aggrieved parties who actually find their way to OTRS in the first place. Kevin (talk) 22:36, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes exactly - statistical analysis such as directly above(?) - bloody hell what a load of perverted nonsense!--VirtualSteve 22:42, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

VirtualSteve, don't dare putting in my mouth things I've never said nor thought to say. I wasn't sarcastic at all -me and Lara may have argued about a lot of things, we may be at the antipodes on a lot of stuff, but I think she was doing a good job and in good faith. It's only your malice thinking that I had been sarcastic. I've read what happened to her and I have my opinion on that; but she was anyway doing a good job on the BLP stuff, even if from a position that I may disagree with.

That said, you can be sarcastic with me instead as you like, but that trivial back-on-the-envelope calculation gives us an estimate. I did it hastily and got funnily a lot of numbers wrong, right, so you can laugh at it as much as you like, anyway the substance does not change: we're still between 0.1 and 1%. And yes, if someone says that "BLP is failing", one has to do that on some quantitative basis, we cannot just scream "FAIL" bringing out the latest odd anecdote. Now, we have an idea of the overall magnitude of the problem. Next, it would be interesting to see if the problem is getting worse or better over time: that's the only meaningful way to say that "we are failing".

That said, I'm not gonna say people can relax and abandon BLP patrolling -quite the contrary, if numbers are that low is probably because of the alert on the thing. But one thing is saying that we should be vigilant and that we could improve, another is screaming "we're failing!" without any data backing it. --Cyclpia - 00:16, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Sometimes we all need to take a "leap of faith" we can all manipulate numbers to support our arguments 520p.a. you've calaculated as having issues is enough to cause serious damage 520 potential litigants in the US is enough to cause many companies to abandon a project as a class action even a minor judgement of $1,000 per person would see $520,000 gone in an instance given that such judgements are never that low but I've just thrown out a suposition based on figures that have no intrinsict value. Lara is just one person working OTRS there are many more the numbers she is seeing can be reflected by a magnitude of 10 maybe even 100 because there are more than that answering OTRS tickets. When it comes to issues in BLP they arent limited to unsourced articles from my experience most of the serious concerns come from sourced articles as they are guarded by editors with barrows to push. BLP is failing because a POV editor with a barrow can disrupt for weeks, even months on end while editors(OTRS volunteers) with no prior knowledge of the subject are expected to find sources to disprove the claims, demostrate that the source isnt reliable, find sources to balance arguements in the article. Misplaced Pages is turning in to a great place to attack a person and because we all have/are working hard to raise our credability to point where we are accpected as reliable a slur against a person is given credit and considered important because are recognised as an authorative source. This policy doesnt give editors/admins the ability they need to address the problems, 1 article out of 436,000 will be enough to destroy the work we have done that may appear to you be an exageration but consider if that one is about you. Gnangarra 01:17, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

The debate over numbers is a waste of time. Even if it is only 1% of half a million, it's still 1% of half a million. It's too much. There should have never been the incidents of Taner Akçam. Some BLP editors are in it for the foundation, to protect against potential lawsuits that could, if not for Section 230, cripple the project. I'm not in it for the foundation, though. I'm not trying to keep the Foundation from getting sued. I'm trying to get the project to a place where people aren't given a reason to sue. The policy isn't working exceptionally well. Exceptionally well will be the case when there's a drastic decrease in the number of shitty biographies making it through AFD, and when the number of OTRS complains from subjects dwindles into nothing of importance. The fact of the matter, despite the percentages, is the policy is not only not working exceptionally well, but (as the header notes) it's failing. It's been failing for as long as it's existed because if it had ever been good enough, we wouldn't have tens of thousands of problematic BLPs. Lara 02:14, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Dates of birth

I wonder if the policy on dates of birth needs to be strengthened or clarified. Right now, the policy is vague: "Caution should be exercised with less notable people. . . When in doubt about the notability of the subject, or if the subject complains about the publication of his or her date of birth, err on the side of caution and simply list the year of birth." Obviously if one is in doubt about the notability of a person the article can be nominated for deletion. If deletion does not take place, and the subject does not object, this policy implies that a precise DOB is acceptable. Many people have their DOBs and even their mother's maiden names in Who's Who editions of some years ago, before identity theft became a matter of concern, and this opens the door to publishing their DOBs in the world's most-clicked-on website and exposing them to identity theft.--JohnnyB256 (talk) 14:59, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

"less notable" does not mean "not notable". We have tens of thousands of biographies on people who are not widely notable. Those articles shouldn't include birth dates, but many of them do. Lara 18:11, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

I thought so too. But a rather protracted talk page discussion in Stephanie Birkitt indicated otherwise.--JohnnyB256 (talk) 15:32, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

The rule that I personally go with is that if we can only find a year of birth, use it. Don't use a full DOB unless you can find it widely cited (and, of course, the subject does not object). User:Zscout370 23:32, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Proposal to bring BLP in line with actual practice with respect to 3RR

In WP:BLP, subsection WP:GRAPEVINE, editors are instructed as follows:

Remove unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material

Remove any unsourced material to which a good faith editor objects; or which is a conjectural interpretation of a source (see Misplaced Pages:No original research); or that relies upon self-published sources (unless written by the subject of the BLP; see below) or sources that otherwise fail to meet standards specified in Misplaced Pages:Verifiability.

The three-revert rule does not apply to such removals. Editors who find themselves in edit wars over potentially defamatory information about living persons should bring the matter to the Biographies of Living Persons noticeboard for resolution by an administrator. Administrators may enforce the removal of such material with page protection and blocks, even if they have been editing the article themselves. Editors who re-insert the material may be warned and blocked. See the blocking policy and Misplaced Pages:Libel.

Administrators encountering biographies that are unsourced and negative in tone, where there is no neutral version to revert to, should delete the article without discussion (see Misplaced Pages:Criteria for speedy deletion criterion G10 for more details).

Now whilst this may have seemed like a good idea at the time(?) it is evidently not the policy that is applied in practice either by experienced editors or administrators.

Just a day ago a fairly new editor BluefieldWV (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) was blocked for 24 hours for removing material from Anthony Watts (blogger)'s biography that is subsequently regarded by uninvolved consensus (at least four genuinely uninvolved editors all agreed that the material being added was not in any way supported by the source) as unsupported by the source (therefore OR or SYN). I have also been threatened by uninvolved administrators with blocks for edit-warring whilst trying to keep material that was later agreed to be violating BLP out of the article until the BLP dispute was resolved.

The policy in practice seems to be, instead, that 3RR always applies unless there is an "obvious" BLP violation.

So at the very least, the BLP policy needs to be updated to actually say this. It is not fair on new editors to be threatened and blocked by administrators for doing exactly what BLP stresses that you must do.

That said, I believe it would be better still just to remove from the policy any suggestion of 3RR not applying to removals. Saying it only applies in "obvious" cases is a recipe for disaster; how is "obvious" defined? What is obvious to one person is completely wrong to the next. In the case of BluefieldWV, he has been blocked for is to me a very blatant BLP violation (one of the most blatant I've seen), and I have no doubt that Bluefield was acting in good faith.

(References, WP:BLP/N#Anthony_Watts (blogger), Talk:Anthony_Watts_(blogger)#Surfacestations, User_talk:BluefieldWV#October_2009, User_talk:Sandstein#BluefieldWV). Alex Harvey (talk) 15:12, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

There's no question that certain policies are observed in the breach. When was the last time you saw a serious effort to consistently and strictly enforce WP:CIVIL? But the policy on 3RR for BLP breaches is a good one and should not be changed. Good policies, like BLP and CIVIL, should be enforced, not changed just because people don't observe them. --JohnnyB256 (talk) 15:30, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

That's an enforcement issues, not a policy issue. Lara 16:06, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that's my point (I don't know if you're responding to me or Alexh19740110). The policy is sound.--JohnnyB256 (talk) 16:14, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

I was responding to Alex. Lara 18:15, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) I agree with these responses so let's look at it another way then. Let me quote WP:EW:

Exceptions by content type

...

• Libelous, biased, unsourced, or poorly sourced controversial material which violates the policy on biographies of living persons (BLP). What counts as exempt under BLP can be controversial. Consider reporting to the BLP noticeboard instead of relying on this exemption.

Unlike the WP:BLP this is hopelessly vague. "What counts as exempt under BLP can be controversial. Consider reporting to the BLP noticeboard instead of relying on this exemption." That's kind of like saying, "Okay, on second thoughts, maybe edit-warring to enforce BLP is not such a good idea after all. Go to BLP/N instead?"

The point is, whilst policies may not get enforced properly, because we don't live in a perfect world, we can surely agree that having people being blocked, and quite often I'm told, for doing the right thing is an very, very bad outcome for Misplaced Pages. Alex Harvey (talk) 10:18, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

As Alex knows, the reason he (the other editor) was blocked is because the material in question wasn't a BLP issue, hence he wasn't exempt from 3RR. This issue wasn't such a pressing one the edit warring was sensible or required. No change to BLP or 3RR is required. Editwarring is never a good idea. Verbal chat 11:08, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Here are some things Alex knows: (1) unsourced material was added to a biography of a living person. (2) the BLP policy states that unsourced material that is added to a biography of a living person should be aggressively removed. (3) an editor was then pursued through AN/I and subsequently blocked for aggressively removing unsourced material that was added to a biography of a living person. (4) It is subsequently argued that only "obvious" BLP violations should be aggressively removed. This is supported by a vaguely worded note at WP:EW but unsupported by anything in WP:BLP. Alex Harvey (talk) 12:04, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

1, It was poorly sourced material about a website, not unsourced material about a living person, and many felt within the bounds of OR; but the current decision is a better source is needed. 2, "aggressive" is not supported by policy, and definitely counter to many policies. 3, An editor was reported to WP:AN3, not ANI, for editwarring, where a neutral admin decided if editwarring had occurred. The option of requesting an unblock was open but unused. 4, Nothing should "aggressively" be removed apart from copyvios and gratuitous vandalism, but even then it should usually be done with an assumption of good faith. All BLP violations should be removed, but where there is dispute they should be discussed, and OR etc being on a BLP does not necessarily make it a BLP issue.

Basically, if you are reverting more than one good faith editor you should escalate, not editwar. Verbal chat 15:39, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

@Alex Harvey: Though I disagree with your suggestion to change the policy, and am not familiar with your personal situation, I think you have raised what is in principle a valid point. Editors who remove BLP-violating text should not be blocked for doing so, just because other editors are determined to add bad stuff to the article. The question is, how does on deal with this situation? Is there some process for "expunging" a 3RR block in the narrow circumstance of remedying in good faith a BLP issue? After all, going to the BLP noticeboard is frequently an exercise in futility. The board is backlogged and many postings go unanswered.--JohnnyB256 (talk) 15:43, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

@Verbal: But escalating often doesn't work, and sometimes editors in "good faith" want to skewer people they don't like. I think Alex has a good point, in theory at least. I've seen administrators, who are supposed to know the ropes, showing abysmal lack of knowledge of BLP. If you want specifics, I can email.--JohnnyB256 (talk) 15:47, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

As the editor who was blocked, I wanted to put my $.02 in here.

Why have the policy if its not going to be uniformly and unequivocally enforced? One of the first lines of BLP states that: Material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced—whether the material is negative, positive, or just questionable—should be removed immediately and without waiting for discussion. If this is not the case, as it was not in the article I was blocked for, why have it? Having a policy like this enforced and followed at the whim of fickle and sometimes partisan editors/administrators opens it to abuse and severely undermines the credibility and perceived legitimacy of Misplaced Pages and its functionaries.

Either enforce it all the time and make it apply to every editor and every article, or remove it. BluefieldWV (talk) 15:57, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

If you're going to remove every policy that is sporadically, inconsistently or unfairly enforced, you'd have no policies.--JohnnyB256 (talk) 16:16, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

It sounds as if you are making an argument for better enforcement of policies already in place and some sort relatively quick remedy when they are not? BluefieldWV (talk) 16:23, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Or another proposal.

The policy states that material should be removed if it violates BLP but this could be abused by partisan editors. Policy also states that it is up to the editor who wants to include the material to demonstrate why it isn’t a BLP issue. A simple solution would be as follows. 1.Require any material removed on BLP grounds to be justified on talk. 2.If anyone objects to the removal, it should be sent to the BLP notice board until it is resolved. 3.The material cannot be restored until it is resolved on the notice board 4.After a resolution, the material can be restored or rejected 5.The original resolution can be referred to for future incidents

BluefieldWV (talk) 16:03, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

"sent" to the BLP noticeboard by whom? All this would do is shift large numbers of discussions from one place in Misplaced Pages to another, and does not increase safeguards for BLP subjects. Better to provide more protection for editors who remove BLP-violating material.--JohnnyB256 (talk) 16:16, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

“It would be “sent” by the individual who wants it to stay on the article. The entire reason to get the discussion off the article’s talk page and onto the notice board is so that a fresh set of eyes and uninvolved parties can take a look at it. It has been my experience that the article talk page is dominated by people who edit the article and there appears to be very little input from disinterested third parties. BluefieldWV (talk) 16:23, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

As I see it (and I did try to warn BluefieldWV he was seriously violating rules although I was not the blockin admin) there is a huge issue with subjectiveness here. Editors without ability to see anyone else's point of view (and I speak only generically with no particular editor in mind) are a real menace on WP, and we cannot word BLP policy in a way which gives them carte blanche for bad edits on grounds they claim they can see a "BLP angle". In general most admins still enforce 3RR aggressively as important for policy and if there is a serious BLP violation other channels exist to deal with them. Sure if a group of students get accounts and gang up to slander their College Dean credible editors will go over 3RR to stop them. But disagreement with good faith editors on whether something is a genuine BLP violation does not give the remover divine rights to go over 3RR --BozMo talk 16:35, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

BozMom, that is absolutely positively untrue. No where in this policy does it discuss either the good faithed or bad faithed nature of an editor, only that there is a BLP violation. In addition, the violation is not a matter of degree, its only a true/false statement.

Back to this specific case, mine, there was most certainly a violation, everyone agrees with that. We can argue if it was a tiny BLP violation, or whether it was a gigantic BLP violation, but the policy does not make that delineation. I followed the rules, as laid out in this policy and was punished for following them.

If Misplaced Pages is going to have statutory rules, I would suggest that they be followed to the fucking letter, otherwise shitcan them and go by some kind of common law system. BluefieldWV (talk) 17:28, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

WP is not a bureaucracy, and policy is not written in stone. It is the spirit, not the letter that counts. (with the possible exception of 3RR). BLP violations are invariably about a person and with regard to material that is "Libelous", "biased", "harmful", "hearsay"... The key word is about a person. Its not narrowed down to material that happens to be on a biography article. It applies to most material on a biography, and some material in regular articles. There are gray zones everywhere, and black/white thinking isn't furthering things. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 17:53, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

You keep saying that, but nothing in the policy would seem to back your opinion. BluefieldWV (talk) 18:45, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:IAR, which is policy, supports Kim on that of course. --BozMo talk 19:03, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Until there is a formal change in policy, I would tend to interpret the BLP exception to 3RR quite narrowly, as in 'So-and-so committed serious crimes and was never brought to justice.' In hotly-contested articles people tend to wave WP:BLP arguments around even when there is no immediate threat of defamation. Some of the leeway given to 3RR closers, I think, allows us to try to figure out where the reverting editor is coming from. BluefieldWV was a very new editor who seemed to be doing lots of reverts on global-warming related articles. In my mind that tended to reduce the seriousness with which we should take the BLP claims, since they already were questionable. Since the phrase 'partisan administrators' was used by Bluefield above, in my personal opinion at least one of the things he was trying to remove was in fact OR by others and deserved to be removed. The question of whether something is OR is usually left alone by admins so that editor consensus can make the decision on it. EdJohnston (talk) 16:55, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

The rules apply only to the extent we want them to apply (regardless of what the actual policy says) and apply to those we want to apply them to. I appreciate the clarification. BluefieldWV (talk) 17:28, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Funnily as far as I have looked at it I am a bit sympathetic to his edits (viz, there are changes he is trying to achieve I probably weakly agree with) but the conduct was the issue. Most of the (mainly admin) editors on the article did not accept that there was a BLP violation. I can see BLP versus 3RR is an argument versus which takes precedent. As well as what is the better policy you also have to deal with the practicalities than BLP is a tiny proportion of WP and most of the admins who look at the 3RR noticeboard will shoot first and talk later. BWV I think you need to think more. Two admins warned you that you had crossed 3RR and you flatly contradicted both. The third blocked you for it. And yet you are still adamant they are all in the wrong, and claim "everyone" agrees with you. I wonder...

The only thing I am adamant about is the lack of consistency here, which is pretty confusing. There is a policy, BLP, and its non-negotiable .... except for the thousands of instances where it is. Whats even better is that no one can tell you what these instances are, you just better hope that when an administrator show up to kick some ass he agrees with your interpretation of the “non-negotiable” rules and not the other guy. BluefieldWV (talk) 18:45, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Well I did try not to kick ass, to be sympathetic and explain. And you are still a bit black and white where I see shades of grey. But I take your point on practise. --BozMo talk 19:00, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I'm not familiar with incident in which BluefieldWV is involved and I'm not sure I want to be. But I think that in general he has a point on the need to revert BLP damaging content, even if it is not as dramatic an example as EdJohnston mentions. A good example is in the Colorado Balloon Incident article. Experience editors, acting in good faith, wanted or perhaps still want this article to say that the hoax was "confirmed" and at one point the name of the article was changed to Colorado Balloon Hoax. There was no edit warring over that but there could have been, and if so there might be a 3RR situation. BLP issues can cause real life damage, and in this case the article is linked from Google News and can prejudice the legal case involving the parents. --JohnnyB256 (talk) 17:58, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree with most of what you've written. But the trouble is that the articles in question contain material that isn't biographical or relating to a person. The reasons for this are varied, but basically boils down to material that isn't considered notable enough to have its own article, and thus got relegated to related articles. In all of the cases here, it is that material which is in dispute. One side wants to use BLP as a hammer to remove, and the other side wants a more nuanced look at things. What is clear, is that we are talking about border-line original research, which is in content dispute - but none of the material is problematic with regards to the "do no harm" spirit of BLP. So it is a gray-zone, but not the one you are talking about. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 19:33, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Sure it's biographical, as "hoax" would mean that two specific people (the parents of the "balloon boy") committed a criminal act. I assume we're talking about the same articles, on the Colorado balloon case. BLP relates to text about living people, whether or not it is in a biography or not.--JohnnyB256 (talk) 19:37, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

I agree in your case with the Colorado balloon case (which i first heard of today), the usage of "hoax" distinctly implies a perpetrator (thus BLP alerts are chiming (someone is harmed if its not correct)). But the original reason for this thread lies with a different kind of dispute, where it is content related and not person related. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 20:27, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

OK, I guess we're talking about different specific situations then. I wasn't commenting on BluefieldWV's specific problem, as I don't know anything about it, but was speaking in more general terms about how, yes, 3RR can conflict with fixing bona fide BLP problems. That could certainly happen. --JohnnyB256 (talk) 20:51, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Yep - i can (and does). Mostly (except in extreme cases) 3RR in reality takes precendence, but gets fixed by unblock requests (if the user isn't hostile), from my experience of watching these. I've rarely seen 3RR get trumped by using the BLP card. Mostly because 3RR is demonstratable, while BLP can be tricky. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 21:52, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) KDP wrote ----- the original reason for this thread lies with a different kind of dispute, where it is content related and not person related

I respond ----- This is to say you are still insisting that an unsourced statement asserting (almost certainly falsely) that it is a goal of Anthony Watts' SurfaceStations project to not publish in the peer reviewed literature (thus diminishing in my opinion and in the opinion of others the credibility of its author, Anthony Watts) is a statement about the SurfaceStations project and therefore has nothing to do with Anthony Watts. I have not understood yet how a statement about the intentions of the project can be interpreted without believing those are actually the intentions of Anthony Watts. Let us be clear, it was for removing this allegation that BluefieldWV was blocked.

JohnnyB256 wrote ----- Though I disagree with your suggestion to change the policy, and am not familiar with your personal situation, I think you have raised what is in principle a valid point. Editors who remove BLP-violating text should not be blocked for doing so, just because other editors are determined to add bad stuff to the article. The question is, how does on deal with this situation? Is there some process for "expunging" a 3RR block in the narrow circumstance of remedying in good faith a BLP issue? After all, going to the BLP noticeboard is frequently an exercise in futility. The board is backlogged and many postings go unanswered.

I respond ----- (1) I don't know if expunging from the record is going to do much to undo the bad memory and experience that gets left behind. How are you going to make me forget the warning I received from an administrator for crossing 3RR to remove a BLP violation from another article? In that case too, it was finally agreed that I was right that it was a BLP violation. But I got very angry, and the whole thing was quite upsetting. The net result is to create ill will and diminish the credibility of Misplaced Pages. (2) What about the WP:EW policy; if you believe the BLP policy should not be changed, then would you not agree that the vaguely worded statement in EW with respect to how it applies in the WP:BLP needs to be changed? Alex Harvey (talk) 12:26, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

You can raise the subject at the 3RR noticeboard, and try to provide a wider exception to people citing BLP. But the sense I'm getting to this discussion is that there would be resistance to that, as it would open a loophole for people to bring bogus BLP arguments as a justification for edit warring, and that chaos would ensue.--JohnnyB256 (talk) 14:19, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Somebody changed to "may" from "does" the language in the paragraph on removing poorly sourced negative material (not being subject to 3RR). "Does" is the longstanding policy and should not be changed without extensive discussion on the talk page here. There is no consensus for this change, and I have changed back. We need to strengthen BLP protections in this day and age, not weaken them or undercut editors removing libelous and poorly sourced text.--JohnnyB256 (talk) 14:31, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Badly done. It is out of line with 3RR now. Consensus looks to me like only BLP related material gets a 3RR exemption which is what the 3RR article says. This one now implies lots of subjective non BLP edits to BLP pages get exemption which makes work on 3RR blocking all the people who have read the version here in good faith. --BozMo talk 17:35, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

It doesn't imply anything of the kind. The policy now is narrowly drawn, and should not be watered down, certainly not in the current climate in which Misplaced Pages is criticized for being insensitive to BLPs. Obviously there can be good faith disagreement about what is or is not a BLP issue, but right now, at the very least, we have a policy that protests someone from sanctions if he or she corrects a determined editor coming in and persistently adding unsourced negative content. It sometimes takes a while to get attention from BLP/N and other overburdened notice boards. There simply must be protection for editors who stick their necks out and protect BLPs from causing real life damage to people.--JohnnyB256 (talk) 19:17, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

What if, say, 4 or 5 good faith long standing editors think it isn't a BLP concern and have restored the material, which doesn't directly relate to the person but is a statement about a project they are involved in, and only 1 recently joined editor and one longer standing think it is a BLP issue? Make it simpler: if you're reverted by more than one editor, and those editors aren't SPAs, then you should escalate to BLPN/AIV/ANI as appropriate rather than editwar. I've noticed most people assume it is one person trying to insert material, but that doesn't parallel the situation that initiated this discussion at all (and neither does my hypothetical, it is a mere counterpoints). Verbal chat 19:29, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Simple: if there is no bona fide BLP issue, then BLP does not apply. I'm talking about the kind of situation addressed in the policy.--JohnnyB256 (talk) 19:38, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Also, you need to be reasonable and use common sense. If you are being reverted by good faith, non-SPA, long term editors, you should take the matter to the various boards before going way over 3RR. The policy already says that. Crum375 (talk) 19:44, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

This discussion started because BluefieldWV was correctly blocked for crossing 3RR in removing material he considered poorly sourced from a Biography, based on his understanding of this guideline. He was warned by one involved and one uninvolved admin (I was the uninvolved admin). Then he was blocked by a third blocking admin and the fourth reviewing admin all ruled the material he was edit warring was not specifically Biography of Living Persons even though it was in a BLP article. I do not doubt BluefieldWV believed in good faith that this guideline said any poorly sourced material in a BLP article can be removed ignoring 3RR. The guideline gives a false impression. --BozMo talk 20:05, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

It looks to me like the system worked just fine. An editor edit warred and was blocked. Most edit warriors edit war in good faith, in the belief that their cause is just. We don't withdraw protection from editors who do the right thing because of an editor who doesn't do the right thing (assuming he didn't; I have no personal knowledge of his situation). Assuming your assessment of the situation is correct, then it would seem that BluefieldWV made a mistaken interpretation of BLP policy. That happens all the time. I've seen administrators who seem not to know a thing about BLP policy.--JohnnyB256 (talk) 20:19, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

I disagree of course. His reading of BLP policy as written was literal and accurate. The policy does not suggest going and reading the 3RR text whereas "may" lets the reader know he should go and find out more, e.g. read advice like "post on the noticeboard unless ultra sure of your ground". BLP is a tiny corner of Misplaced Pages in terms of the numbers of articles and it seems perfectly fine to me if Misplaced Pages Admins have not realised we have particular policies for BLP. Anyway 3RR will be what determines the blocking so I guess I am not too fussed if it is downright misleading here. --BozMo talk 20:35, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

I have no idea what happened, but if BLP was violated he should not have been blocked. However, I understood this to be a situation in which BLP did not apply. So he was correctly blocked. This policy does not say, "you can edit war in BLPs. That's OK." No, it's quite specific. But as in all policies, you've got to get it right. Should blocking administrators go easy on editors who think they are correctly applying BLP? That's a separate issue, and really should be discussed in the edit warring noticeboard talk page or the 3RR policy talk page. --JohnnyB256 (talk) 21:24, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

I suggest that in order to be credible in this discussion you need to actually understand what happened. By saying now that he was in fact "correctly blocked" after all, this entire conversation has become a bit laughable. It makes Misplaced Pages's stance on BLPs laughable too. If Bluefield was correctly blocked, then it follows that the BLP is a policy that should not be taken literally. Even the group that supported his block seem to agree that his actions were supported by a literal reading of the BLP policy. Alex Harvey (talk) 23:16, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

I rather think your credibility in the matter needs attention as well. As far as I know, unless I missed a discussion somewhere, his block was not overturned and was supported by every admin who has voiced an opinion on it (of which I am aware of four). I did notice you proclaimed a consensus the other way which he seems to have repeated in a block appeal and perhaps undermined his credibility in the block review, which was not helpful to anyone. So as far as I can see there has not been any "after all" or "in fact", the summary above is correct. Personally I agree his actions were supported by a literal reading of this policy which is not in line with the more important edit warring policy and needs fixing. Certainly aside from 3RR his edits look correct, there was a problem with the edits he was reverting which went against several policies. Other people have agreed that the edits he was reverting went against policy. But we have very good reasons for the 3RR rule and there was no basis for over-ruling them. Just being right does not justify 3RR. --BozMo talk 09:04, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

@Alex. I'm not "defending" the block. I've said several times that I have no opinion on the block but am commenting only on policy. JohnnyB256 (talk) 12:49, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

@JohnnyB256, you just said that Bluefield's block appeared to be correct. If you believe in the BLP policy his block can't have been correct. This contradiction needs to be resolved, and although I strongly believe the BLP policy should trump 3RR I believe even more strongly that the policies need to be mutually consistent. You can't have it both ways: if Bluefield's block was correct, then the BLP policy needs to not say that 3RR does not apply. If the BLP policy is correct, then Bluefield's block was incorrect, and 3RR needs to be changed. Is this not just common sense? Alex Harvey (talk) 14:27, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

No, as I have said repeatedly, I have no personal knowledge of the block and have no opinion on it. I was responding to an editor saying as follows: "he was blocked by a third blocking admin and the fourth reviewing admin all ruled the material he was edit warring was not specifically Biography of Living Persons even though it was in a BLP article." BLP is not a get-out-of-block-free card for editors who improperly cite BLP. Again, I'm not specifically saying his block was incorrect, but you keep bringing it up again and again. We shouldn't be weakening protections for BLPs because of this controversial case, and we don't change policies out of spite or for "consistency." The fact is that the vast majority of policies on Misplaced Pages are contradictory or inconsistent in one way or another. --JohnnyB256 (talk) 14:46, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

<backdent> I work on a lot of bios where there is flagrant defamation of the subjects and it is important to be able to refer to this. I was scolded recently by an admin because I reverted a few times too many before finally bringing it to WP:BLPN. Anyway, an editor did come by and set the offending editor straight on his WP:OR in those quotes. Of course, now the editor is just doing it with other quotes in another part of the article. So I'm trying to decide how many times I can get away with reverting - while I'm waiting for a response from WP:BLPN on my second complaint. (I guess WP:ANI is next per the BLPDispute tag on top of page!) Anyway, I do think this is a necessary road block against defamation that is at least temporary while you are trying to get someone else to set offending editors straight. CarolMooreDC (talk) 14:24, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

What cities notables are from

Subjectively, 1), I'm uneasy that the Notability sections category tags are being used for promotion of individuals and cities.

Objectively, 2), Since I do a fair amount of anti-vandalism -- I'm concerned that the Notability sections are targets for unverifiable information.

But, 3), what really seems problematic is that there is an unstated, implicit assumption that something about a city is relevant to a person's notability. Let's assume -- for the sake of discussion -- that I am notable. I was born in one city. However, I was raised in another city, and it greatly affected me (and my hypothetical notability). However, I left that city and moved to still another city, where I have my (hypothetically) notable career. Which city influenced me most strongly? The second. Which city influenced me next-to-most strongly? None of them, it's another that I lived in only for a few months. If I was wonderfully notable, wouldn't all four cities like to "claim me as their own"? ... Including cities that I wouldn't care to identify myself with?

A practical example: In Amy Grant editors have categorized her both as "People from Franklin, Tennessee" and "People from Nashville, Tennessee". But then the article says she was born in Augusta, Georgia. There is no "Notable" section in "Nashville, Tennessee" or "Augusta, Georgia". There is a Notability section in "Franklin, Tennessee", but Grant isn't in it.

So, quite apart from promotion and vandalism issues, there doesn't seem to be a compelling argument that a notable who has lived in a city is notably associated with it. Thoughts? Should notable people who aren't worked into article text be excluded from the article? Piano non troppo (talk) 11:21, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Not everything in an article has to be related to proving the subject notable. Some of it can just be information. Mr.Z-man 17:36, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Unless I am misunderstanding the thrust of your comment, I don't see this issue as a WP:BLP issue (except to the extent it relates to the requirement that information be properly verifiable). The general subject of how best to organize information about where people are from has been extensively discussed at WP: Village pump (policy), notably here. --Arxiloxos (talk) 19:24, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Names of children in infoboxes in articles about politicians

I am currently in an "sort of editwar" with an administrator (User:Kevin) about Natalia Korolevska (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views). I didn't want to remove the names of her children from her infobox, User:Kevin said that was against Misplaced Pages:BLP#Privacy_of_names. I replied that there seems to be general consensus on wikipedia that says "kids name in politician-infoboxes please" cause most infoboxes on politicians have the names of the kids mentioned in there wiki-articles (from Obama to Roland Burris!) So I thought: 50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can't Be Wrong and simple acted (what for me looks like) in wikepedia consensus. If the other politicians infoboxes don't change then why should Korolevska's one change? Surely this "don't mention there kids name"-rule is completely outrun by reality and therefore should not be enforced any more. Besides "outing" the names of politicians kids does not do those kids any harm (especially if they live in Ukraine!). — Mariah-Yulia • Talk to me! 23:38, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

The difference between Korolevska's children and those other examples you mention is that her children are under 18 and are not widely named in published sources. Obama's children are very widely discussed in the media, and the Burris children are adults, and therefore accorded less protection per this policy. Kevin (talk) 23:44, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

OK, now I get it! Good argument, (now) I agree (well only with the "under 18" argument). I once got the tip to never argue on-line/e-mail when you can speak to somebody face-to-face (I regret we couldn't do that, I suspect we would have talked it out in 30 seconds). Let's just say this was a great example that one should never argue on-line and in future I will try to ask for exact arguments sooner!
— Mariah-Yulia • Talk to me! 23:57, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Need opinions on which photos are better

Discussion moved to Misplaced Pages:BLP/N#Need_opinions_on_which_photos_are_better Kevin (talk) 01:52, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Self published books for further reading

Quite rightly BLP policy says "Never use self-published books, zines, websites, webforums, blogs or tweets as sources for material about a living person, unless written or published by the subject of the biographical material". However, it does not mention the insertion of SP books in the "Further reading" section of a BLP. Unless this loop hole is closed anyone can write material that would be unacceptable in the article or as a link and place it in " further reading".Momento (talk) 12:38, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

It's not a loophole, it's rightly so. A self-published book is not a source but it can be for sure a further reading on the subject. That is: if I want to write about John Doeselfpublisher , I won't use his selfpubs as a source. But if I want to know more of John Doeselfpublisher, his self-published stuff is for sure an interesting and useful read. --Cyclpia - 14:14, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

If I am reading the question correctly, Momento is concerned about self-published works written by someone other than the subject of the article, an attack piece perhaps. However I think that possibility is covered by our WP:external links guideline. In particular under Links normally to be avoided, it lists "Any site that misleads the reader by use of factually inaccurate material or unverifiable research, except to a limited extent in articles about the viewpoints which such sites are presenting." It goes on to say "In biographies of living people, material available solely in questionable sources or sources of dubious value should be handled with caution, and, if derogatory, should not be used at all, either as sources or via external links. External links in biographies of living persons must be of high quality and are judged by a higher standard than for other articles. Do not link to websites that are not fully compliant with this guideline or that contradict the spirit of WP:BLP." --agr (talk) 14:25, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

The exception can't be for the subject's own works, because those are already allowed as sources per WP:SELFPUB, so surely they would be allowed for "Further reading" as well. Momento, can you point to where you saw the comment about allowing self-published books (other than those by the subject) in the "Further reading" section? At the moment I can't seem to find that in WP:BLP or WP:V, but perhaps it is somewhere else?

In any case, I've added WP:External links to the See also -- Relevant guidelines section of the BLP policy.--agr (talk) 14:34, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

A self published book was inserted in the Prem Rawat article "Further reading" section and was removed as being against BLP policy. It is being argued that since this SP book is not being used as a source nor linked to and is not specifically flagged as inappropriate for "Further reading" is should be allowed.Momento (talk) 15:26, 23 October 2009 (UTC)