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I've just reverted this, both for WP:UNDUE and BLP concerns, but as I know the subject of the edit, would be grateful for a review by someone uninvolved. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:39, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

• @ Pigsonthewing: Given that Symonds' name was well publicized in multiple UK national media outlets, and further given the potentially serious impact on a UK national election, as well as the ArbCom outcome regarding Symonds' checkuser and administrator permissions, I'm shocked that no one has previously dealt with this scandal in the Wikimedia UK article. The incident needs to be addressed; Wikipedia is not censored and this incident is well documented in multiple reliable sources. Deleting any mention of it from the Wikimedia UK article strikes me as both censorship and favoritism.

Given your personal relationship with Symonds, I would also suggest you are the wrong person to be editing the article regarding this topic. There's an obvious COI and a violation of the spirit of WP:INVOLVED and WP:NPOV

I hope some of the other BLP/N regulars will take a serious look at this issue. If we can't treat a subject that directly involves Wikipedia fairly, openly and honestly, we really should not be writing about other controversial BLP subjects. That's our challenge. Dirtlawyer1 ( talk) 23:20, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

• Given your personal relationship with me, I'd rather hear from someone uninvolved. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 23:24, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

• Andy, I don't have a personal relationship with you; I know you only from your work on Wikipedia. You have a personal relationship with the subject BLP; big difference. I'm not going to edit the article, either, because I expressed some very strong opinions on the subject at the outset of the ArbCom proceedings. I suspect you will get your additional opinions here, and that is important -- as the credibility of Wikipedia is on the line here. Dirtlawyer1 ( talk) 23:53, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

The wording must obey WP:BLP and, alas, it fails. It is not neutrally worded, and uses a column with specific opinions. As such it is usable, at most, as opinions cited and attributed as opinion in the first place. Where it imputes specific motives to a person, and implications of improper or criminal actions by the person, it fails to meet the burdens places by WP:BLP on such a column. Collect ( talk) 23:44, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

Collect, there are multiple reliable sources available in the UK media that dealt with this subject -- both before and after the ArbCom decision. While there are undoubtedly multiple problems with the original addition to the Wikimedia UK article, omitting/deleting/ignoring the incident and not providing a factual account of it is an even bigger problem. Dirtlawyer1 ( talk) 23:52, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

The material as cited and written failed on NPOV and BLP grounds, and relied on a source which was clearly editorial in nature. If you find a source which dispassionately sticks to facts and not rumour or allegations, and then write a totally neutral section that would be a different edit entirely. All I can do is deal with the edit placed before us - and, in my opinion, that edit did not comport with Wikipedia policies and guidelines. Collect ( talk) 00:11, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for your considered response. I've again reverted its addition. I would be grateful if you or other BLP regulars would watchlist the article. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:57, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

Meta discussion

Collect, here is a small sample of the coverage about Richard Symonds' very public (and out-of-process) accusations against Grant Shapps, their impact on the 2015 UK national elections, and the ultimate outcome of ArbCom proceedings against Symonds:

• " Wikipedia administrator who accused Grant Shapps of editing pages of Tory rivals is Liberal Democrat activist", The Telegraph (22 April 2015)
• " Nick Clegg mocks Grant Shapps over Wikipedia affair", The Guardian (22 April 2015)
• " Did leading UK politician edit his Wikipedia page? Possibly, but the problem goes deeper", Christian Science Monitor (22 April 2015)
• " Wikipedia volunteer who blocked 'Grant Shapps' account: I stand by my decision", The Guardian (23 April 2015)
• " Wikipedia official who accused Shapps is a Lib Dem: Online administrator once described himself as 'Liberal Democrat to the last'", Daily Mail (23 April 2015)
• " Is Grant Shapps being naughty on Wikipedia – or did a Lib Dem stitch him up?" The Register (30 April 2015)
• " Wikipedia volunteer faces reprimand over 'Shapps account' investigation" The Guardian (8 June 2015)
• " BBC says sorry to Grant Shapps after Wikipedia Story", iMediaEthics (8 June 2015)
• " Censure for Grant Shapps' Wikipedia accuser", BBC News (8 June 2015)
• " The Waugh Zone June 9 2015", Huffington Post (9 June 2015)
• " Wikipedia: account at centre of row 'not linked' to Grant Shapps", The Guardian (9 June 2015)
• " Wikipedia story and the resulting BBC coverage", The Rt Hon Grant Shapps (14 June 2015) -- includes links to over 40 BBC broadcasts on the subject
• " BBC apologises over false Shapps Wikipedia allegations made by LibDems", The Rt Hon Grant Shapps (28 June 2015) -- includes copy of response letter from BBC News director
• " BBC (sort of) sorry for Grant Shapps Wikipedia smear reportage", The Register (30 June 2015)
• " BBC's James Harding says 'sorry' to Grant Shapps over scant coverage of Wikipedia story 'correction'", Press Gazette (30 June 2015)

We should never simply delete factual content about a subject if it can be improved to comply with our fundamental policies/guidelines embodied in WP:BLP, WP:V, WP:RS, WP:NPOV and WP:WEIGHT. If we're seriously looking for an impartial account of the whole affair, I might recommend the 8 June 2015 account from BBC News, or the 9 June 2015 story from The Guardian, both linked above. What do you think? Given the plethora of factual accounts available in reliable sources, the only problem I see is writing a relatively concise paragraph about the matter that does not overwhelm the Wikimedia UK article. Dirtlawyer1 ( talk) 00:45, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

If there's enough sources for a section on this in Schapps' article, there's enough sources for a section on this in the WMUK article. Brustopher ( talk) 01:24, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

The incident involved a volunteer, not a WMUK, action. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:58, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

I would have to agree with Andy M on that point. These actions were as a WP admin, not in any way that I can see as a WMUK action. "WP in the UK" is not the same thing as WMUK. This topic is notable, maybe it should be covered, but it's not part of WMUK specifically. Andy Dingley ( talk) 11:11, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

Again - the issue is whether any article must accord with WP:BLP strictures - which include making sure that claims of fact are supported by sources which are not opinion sources, and which furnish strong support for allegations of improper or criminal acts. The sourcing initially given failed to meet that hurdle. Collect ( talk) 11:20, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

Although to see a brief note, claim that it's "inadequately sourced" and then remove it, rather than adding the range of obvious sources available (nearly every substantial UK media source seems to have run a piece on this), does nothing to foster a sense that WMUK operates in an open and above the board manner. Andy Dingley ( talk) 11:35, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

WP:BLP requires removal of contentious claims which are unsourced or inadequately sourced. Contentious material about living persons (or, in some cases, recently deceased) that is unsourced or poorly sourced – whether the material is negative, positive, neutral, or just questionable – should be removed immediately and without waiting for discussion to be precise (bolding is in policy). Collect ( talk) 12:02, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

Yes, and that sort of response is why WMUK is held in the gutter-low esteem in which it is, and is seen as an inward-looking clique that uses bureaucracy to stifle all discussion of it. Andy Dingley ( talk) 18:26, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

I take back what I wrote. Andy's right, the sources either mention WMUK only in passing or don't mention it all. Doesn't warrant a place in the article. Brustopher ( talk) 17:49, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

However, this does warrant a place on List of Wikipedia controversies. I've reworded the paragraph on it in that list, and thought I'd bring it up here, in case anyone has any issues with the wording. Brustopher ( talk) 18:00, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

Deserves a brief mention - as far as I was aware the timeline was that the original Guardian contact was through WMUK's email. Which Symonds answered. Given that he was an employee of WMUK all his subsequent actions *despite being taken in his role as a WP admin* stem from his employment at WMUK. If he hadnt been employed by WMUK he wouldnt have taken the subsequent actions because he wouldnt know about it. WMUK would *like* the record to state that they had no involvement but the whole situation is entirely because a)they have terrible hiring practices, b) they cultivate a relationship with the press and government that suggests they can take action on wikipedia. They have represented themselves as being able to do so to parliament after all. Only in death does duty end ( talk) 11:57, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

I'll just leave this here Dan Murphy ( talk) 13:22, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

Wikimedia UK, the national charity supporting Wikipedia and its sister projects, has told the MP and former Conservative Party chairman Grant Shapps he can't see internal emails he has requested under the Data Protection Act ... because it has deleted them... During the campaign, LibDem activist Richard Symonds unilaterally suspended a Wikipedia user account that was reportedly responsible for derogatory Wikipedia edits against Shapps's colleagues, insinuating that it had been used by Shapps himself... Symonds says he did the work at lunchtimes, and on his days off, and that's the version WMUK is standing by.

Last month, Shapps requested to see personal data retained by WMUK. But the 80-odd pages returned to him have more than a few gaps. Most are pages from the Meltwater clippings agency, while a few internal discussions heavily redacted. Completely missing are any discussions by or about Symonds and Shapps.

The law firm engaged by the charity, Stone King, told Shapps that "the email had been deleted in the normal course of business, before the date of your Subject Access Request, and is therefore no longer held by the charity."

Along with the article linked by Dan Murphy above, there has also been coverage of WMUK's role in the Independent [1]. I think this and the mentions of the WMUK in other sources, could be enough to warrant a bit on it in the article. Brustopher ( talk) 19:55, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

Of course, Bru, and there are even more sources available if you Google "Shapps Symonds Wikimedia". Part of the "scandal" inherent in this whole mess was that we had a Wikimedia UK employee, who was also a Wikipedia volunteer/editor/administrator/checkuser, who was speaking publicly on behalf of Wikipedia, and who was cited by at least one major UK daily as if he had the authority to speak on behalf of Wikipedia, even though he had no such authority (and had misused the checkuser authority that he did have). And the apparent reason that he was contacted by the publication in the first instance -- using his WMUK email account, on WMUK work time -- was that he had some previous contact with the publication by virtue of his employment by WMUK. Apart from the immediate BLP issue at hand here, I sincerely hope that WMF and WMUK have taken steps to define who may and may not speak publicly on behalf of "Wikipedia" in the future. There is the public "scandal" that embarrassed Shapps in the middle of a general election, and then there is the internal governance scandal that should have embarrassed every director, officer and senior management employee of WMF and WMUK. ArbCom chose not to address the obvious internal governance problems (at least not publicly). Frankly, given the extensive coverage this mess received in the UK media, over a period of weeks, and the potential impact it might have had on the 2015 general elections, it probably should have a stand-alone article, rather than being buried in single paragraphs in obscure articles about the WMUK and "Wikipedia scandals." If anyone wants to start that article, I would be happy to contribute my research skills to that effort. Dirtlawyer1 ( talk) 20:27, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

Hello everybody, My name is Irene Novello, and I'm new in the wikipedia world. I started few days ago to edit and improve the voice of Andrea Liberovici italian composer and director I know very well. I saw there where many issue and I worked in this days to insert quotes and citations. Most of them are in Italian. I don't know who started the voice in english, but I'd like to know: How I can help to make the bio correct? The work I did is correct and enough to take off the issue? Thank you very much Irene Novello-- Irenenovello ( talk) 13:25, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

There is an appearance of conflict of interest here. Do you have any kind of professional relaitonship with Andrea Liberovici? Guy ( Help!) 10:05, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

Hello, I realize this probably isn't the "right" noticeboard for my request, but I've been there, and they sent me here, as the story goes.

  I've regularly sent folks with COI to the {{ edit_request}} mechanism, where they leave a talkpage note, and some unbiased disineterested reviewer comes along to help them out. But this is only good advice, if some reviewer shows up to do so, in a reasonably prompt fashion. The queue has been stalled for most of August. Can some folks please help declog? About a third of the entries in the COI queue are BLP articles, usually the person themselves (or their family/employees/etc), including half-a-dozen recent requests. (There are also some exemplars of the question discussed further up this noticeboard-page-here, about whether an organization with less than ten employees is subject to WP:BLP or not, currently in the edit-request-queue.) Thanks, 75.108.94.227 ( talk) 00:57, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

User 172.56.9.59 is repeatedly vandalizing Richard Rawlings. I have gotten close to WP:3RR before, so I am reporting the edits here. -- Jax 0677 ( talk) 17:04, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

@ Jax 0677: Clear 3RR exemption, don't worry about it. Mdann52 ( talk) 17:05, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

• Note: The page has been semiprotected for three months by Huon; also I've blocked the static IPs 172.56.9.59 and 172.56.9.82 for a week. (You might think blocking the tiny little range 172.56.9.0/25 wouldn't cause any collateral damage, but you'd unfortunately be wrong.) Bishonen | talk 16:02, 29 August 2015 (UTC).

Is this person notable per se? This BLP appears to focus on a single event at length, and I do not think this is notable in itself. Collect ( talk) 15:29, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

I've trimmed it a bit. I think he might meet WP:NACADEMICS. Gamaliel ( talk) 15:35, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

He easily meets WP:PROF, e.g. #6. Out of curiosity, Collect -- how did you come across this article? Nomoskedasticity ( talk) 18:14, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

Universe to look at is limited - and I find my every comment and edit carefully tracked, it seems. Why did you ask and why did you note this fairly neutrally phrased question? Collect ( talk) 20:23, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

As you know, I participate frequently at BLPN. And I'm sure you also knew that I created this article... Nomoskedasticity ( talk) 22:00, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

Actually - not. I very rarely (actually exceedingly rarely) give any concern as to who started any article at all. I tend to look at maybe a range of 50 edits in histories as that rather seems a default setting on Wikipedia. Collect ( talk) 00:29, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

States: Some sources report that Dollar's real name is Michael Smith,[3] which Dollar has called an "urban legend".[4]

We have had discussions about assigning names to living persons where there is reliable source for the other name. In this case, it seems someone elided that procedure in order to include a name which not only has no strong sourcing, but where the person states the claim of his "real name" is false. The source used to assert that it is his "real name" is an opinion column which provides no other sources for this claim made in August 2001 here in Salon (website). We usually state that contentious claims need strong sourcing - is an opinion column a "strong source"? As an aside, I found no strong sources for this claim at all, so am uncertain why this claim was added to this BLP. "Creflo Dollar" gets mentioned 20 times in the NYT - zero times saying "Smith" as his name. In fact the Salon source seems the only source remotely making the claim - and it fails our standards. Lord knows why anyone found this contested trivia to be usable. Collect ( talk) 16:07, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

I agree; if this belongs anywhere in the article, it certainly doesn't belong in the lede. I've removed it pending discussion on the talk page as to whether or not this, as you rightly say, "contested trivia," should be there. NorthBySouthBaranof ( talk) 18:00, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

Lennart Hardell (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) This past February, a lot of less-than-flattering information in this article about a scientist was removed. I wanted to know if the information that was removed violated WP:BLP. Everymorning (talk) 23:43, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

Not that I can see. - Mr X 23:54, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

Neither I do. Restored material that was properly sourced, and watch listed.- Cwobeel (talk) 00:42, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

A large amount of content cited to the New York Post and a "Muslim Conspiracy" blog was recently added by a disruptive SPA, Iran nuclear weapons 2 (whose User page says it is a valid alternate account because he's afraid of being assassinated by Iran ... srsly), who was previously cautioned by Anders_Feder regarding this statement, and others, where he denounced "Iran's worldwide campaign to murder." [4] I have removed it and started a RfC here. BlueSalix ( talk) 15:38, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

I do not believe I have cautioned him specifically, but I requested that the off-topic question be held out of AfD. Regardless, it seems valid to question the reliability of at least some of those sources you point to.-- Anders Feder ( talk) 15:50, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

Please point to evidence of "disruptive" behaviour on my part, or strike. Additionally, please correct your characterization of what my user page says. Thank you. Iran nuclear weapons 2 ( talk) 17:49, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Contains a waffle claim:

In April 2015, a Wikipedia account operated by Coburn's office was blocked indefinitely for edit warring over his own page. Coburn's office confirmed the edits were by them, and some, but not all, news outlets, attribute those edits to Coburn himself'

Several possible issues - are "blocks" by an administrator a significant event in a person's biography where the evidence educed does not imply the person himself committed any wrongful act or tort ("edit warring" does not appear to be a statutory offense AFAICT) ? Does "some but not all news outlets" imply stronger sourcing for the belief the person directly edited Wikipedia? Is the weight given for what appears to be a minor event excessive in a BLP? The Guardian source appears to be from Wikipedia. In past, BLPs did not contain "Wikipedia connections" vide editors who have BLPs whose connection to Wikipedia is never allowed. Collect ( talk) 16:28, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

The Guardian, an The Scotsman are reliable sources. If they found the subject to be notable, I see no reason to omit. - Cwobeel (talk) 00:45, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

IIRC, The Guardian has used "contacts" among Wikipedia editors in the past - in one case apparently "being aware of a block before it occurred." The query here was to whether Wikipedia itself is newsworthy on Wikipedia, and past practice has been, for example, to disallow mention that a noted person edited Wikipedia at all. The wording in the BLP, alas, strongly implies specific wrongful acts by a person, when the apparent reason was "COI" only. ("edit war" is a meaningless term for a person with few edits - unless they instinctively looked up all the terminology at the start) By this token, ought we add all cases where COI has been found to all articles edited by such a person? Just would like consistency here. Collect ( talk) 12:40, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

The newspapers specifically claim, in the piece-titles, that Coburn personally was 'banned' from wikipedia. I'm assuming the actual case, in actual wiki-jargon, is what our article says: that a wikipedia-username, making edits in the name of Coburn's office, was indef-blocked. Suggest we have a footnote attached to the indef-blocked-bit of our prose, that explains the distinction between a-specific-human-being-indef-banned (and that Coburn-the-human actually isn't banned-in-the-wikipedia-sense), and the case of a username-being-temporarily-but-indef-blocked-from-all-but-their-talkpage-for-requesting-unblock (and that this applies only to the human *personally* making such edits). I realize that this distinction is probably too much for body-prose, but part of the reason that newspapers NEVER get the wiki-jargon right, and always conflate block and ban, is that we try to avoid navel-gazing... and thus don't usually explain the wikijargon, even when obviously it needs explaining for the sentences in mainspace to be properly understood by the readership, some of whom we must presume, write for the newspapers. 75.108.94.227 ( talk) 20:57, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

allegations of multiple-mispronunciations of the name of the political opponent , with intent

FWIW, the "using funny names about the other candidate" allegation was made by the opposition candidate herself, not by outside reporters - and is a contentious claim. I doubt that the candidate is a "strong source" where claims in election campaigns are concerned . Collect ( talk) 12:50, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

The candidate herself is not the source here -- instead, the source is the various newspaper articles that ran the story. Nomoskedasticity ( talk) 13:24, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

The source says this is what the opposing candidate said about Coburn - it does not make the claim in its own voice. Suppose "George Gnarph" was running against "Mary Marph" and she said "George Gnarph called me a xxxxx" and there is no other source for that claim. It is a contentious claim ab initio,and as such it requires strong sourcing - a single person in a political campaign ,may not always be a paragon of veracity. Collect ( talk) 15:30, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

The Guardian is a perfectly good source. Nomoskedasticity ( talk) 16:57, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

And the Guardian specifically does not state it as a fact that he misspoke a name - in fact it carefully ascribes the claim to the person's opponent. I assume you have never ever heard a politician stretch a fact or three about an opponent? Thus a claim made by a political opponent without confirmation by others is a weak source.

Now it has been claimed that during his successful European Parliament campaign, Mr Coburn routinely muddled the first name of Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh, an SNP candidate.

Ms Ahmed-Sheikh said: "During last year's European election campaign, I was faced with David Coburn's ignorance as he repeatedly got my name wrong.

"During the days and weeks of the campaign he called me Pashmina, Jasmine and Tamzin before eventually settling on a combination of 'love', 'dear' and 'honey'.

"I found his remarks sexist - and possibly racist.

"We need to be doing all we can to encourage women and people of black and minority ethnic origin into politics.

Note The Guardian only attributes the claim to a single person - who is using it as a backing to a claim of the gay MEP as being "sexist and possibly racist." I suggest that this is possibly political rhetoric and not a strongly backed allegation here. As such, it is violative of WP:NPOV and WP:BLP. Collect ( talk) 17:11, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

It's attributed, Collect. We're okay here. Nomoskedasticity ( talk) 17:13, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

It is attributed per WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV, as long as we take Coburn's political opponent to be an expert on linguistics, speaking as an expert in linguistics, and not merely a political opponent, speaking to sling mud. Similarly, the rebuttal, which wikipedia also quotes at length, is somebody from Coburn's political party, who is speaking as if they were present every single time Coburn made an utterance during the campaign, and wikipedia is also quoting them without commentary, as if they may actually have been present, and are not merely slinging mud in return. Here is what we say now:

• According to SNP candidate Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh, Coburn repeatedly muddled her name at hustings during the European election campaign, when she was standing against him, referring to her as "Pashmina, Jasmine and Tamzin before eventually settling on a combination of 'love', 'dear' and 'honey'."[7][8] UKIP's Scottish chairman Misty Thackeray responded by saying "How humourless and thin-skinned are these people trying to make faux outrage stories about a slip of the tongue over a name? ... It wasn't mispronounced throughout the entire Euro campaign. It was mispronounced once; if memory serves me correctly, David called her Jasmina."[7]

Here is what I suggest we say, cutting the quotes entirely per WP:NOTDEBATE, and just summarizing the bare facts of the accusation and counter-accusation, with gory details left to the churnalists newspapers to which we link, for interested readership to clicketh upon should they see fit to do so:

• In 2015, Coburn's political opponent accused him of purposely mispronouncing her name multiple times; Coburn's party ^[1] said that mispronunciation happened once, and by mistake.[7][8]

References

1. ^ Specifically, Misty Thackeray the Scottish chair for UKIP.

With the back-n-forth WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV quotes currently in mainspace, we have 362 total words in David_Coburn_(politician)#Political_career, of which 98 words are about the alleged-multiple-not-singular-mispronunciation-incident, aka wikipedia is implying that 27% of his political career revolves around that incident. My trimmed version cuts that 98 down to 24 words (not counting my 8-word-footnote due to Thackeray being a redlink at present), which works out to around 8% of wikipedia's mainspace body-text-verbiage of Coburn being about the mispronunciation-allegations-and-response. Improvement? p.s. By contrast, the weight we give to the Humza Yousaf, and the relatively-brief quotes, seems likely to be more appropriate, since there was actually a WP:LASTINGEFFECT that a UKIP member changed parties, not just some newspaper-articles with the soundbites. 75.108.94.227 ( talk) 20:57, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

In our article on James Randi, there is a question as to what to call Randi's spouse. Possible choices:

• "José Alvarez"
• "José Luis Alvarez"
• "Deyvi Peña"
• "Deyvi Orangel Peña Arteaga"
• Two of the above with an "also know as" (but which name comes first?)

Note that in Randi himself calls his spouse "Deyvi Peña" [5]

At issue is the fact that Deyvi Peña was convicted of stealing New York resident José Alvarez's identity in 1987 to obtain a fraudulent passport and used that name until his conviction in 2011. [6] [7] most notably as the person behind the "Carlos hoax". [8]

This means that a lot of our Australian readers will have heard of him under the Alvarez name, and indeed that is how we list him at List of hoaxes#Proven hoaxes of exposure. Related: Redirect from Deyvi Peña to James Randi, no link from the José Alvarez disambiguation page.

So, what name should we use for this individual? Whatever we choose, we should be consistent across the encyclopedia. -- Guy Macon ( talk) 02:41, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Very interesting question. As an aside, for folks that might not know, the reason that "Deyvi Orangel Peña Arteaga" is being shortened to simply "Deyvi Peña" has to do with Venezuelan personal-names having the form FirstName MiddleName PaternalLastName MaternalLastName, whereas in the United States and American English FirstName PaternalLastName is the typical style. Also, I have seen the 2014 documentary about this, not sure if that makes me biased or not.  :-)     There are eight personas involved here (to date!), but only three humans.

So, with the redirect mostly covered, in terms of our *textual* use of names, in the prose of articles (as opposed to redirects and titles), I recommend the following: in the article on Carlos hoax ... and holy WP:42 batman, why don't we even have a dedicated article about that incident, there must have been hundreds of newspaper reports and television coverage and all that stuff, sheesh ... in the hypothethetical article Draft:Carlos hoax about the incident, we should refer to the stage-name The Great Carlos when we are giving details *about* the hoax-persona, aka "According to the hoax-paperwork, The Great Carlos claimed to be a psychic that performed at The Majestic Theater in Woodstock New York, when in reality no such theater actual exists." Elsewhere in the hypothetical article about the hoax, we can say that the WP:RS at the time reported that the person behind the stage-name was 'José Luis Alvarez' with scarequotes explicitly included, and then parenthetically mention that it was later discovered that the REAL unscarequoted José Luis Alvarez was not involved at all, but that the human actually behind The Great Carlos was Deyvi Peña ... and then give a fuller explanation, of exactly why Peña was using the 'Alvarez' persona, with all the extended details, over at the appropriate linked article. Most of this is hypothetical, all wikipedia has right now is a one-liner at List of hoaxes#Proven_hoaxes_of_exposure which says this:

• Carlos, a fictional spirit medium created by James Randi and Jose^(sic) Luis Alvarez.

My long-term suggestion is that we use the documentary and the 60 Minutes footage and all the other coverage, and write a dedicated article about the Carlos hoax, but for the short-term-moment, I suggest we revise the one-liner like this:

• The Great Carlos, a fictional spirit medium, created by James Randi and ' José Luis Alvarez' ^[1] (who also played Carlos), in an attempt to show the gullibility of the mainstream media.

We can leave the details out of the hoax-article (and the DAB-page and redirects and such), and concentrate on getting all the details right in our main article. Now, at the moment, we have no dedicated article on Deyvi Peña the human (under any article-title), nor on their various personas and stagenames used at earlier dates. What we do have, is a redirect to James Randi, their spouse since 2013, and also their co-worker and friend since 1988 in the skeptic-investigation-slash-debunking-business. Thus, the "main article" that wikipedia has about the human-sometimes-known-as-Deyvi-Peña, and thus the main article that we have about persona#3A thru persona#3D, is in fact the James Randi article (which also necessarily covers the human behind persona#1A thru persona#1C of course).

Apologies for the length of my reply. The BLP-conundrum is an interesting one, partly because the real-world-topics-which-led-to-this-BLP-conundrum are in fact real-world-interesting; I think wikipedia should treat it (the real-world-topic) correctly, and as neutrally as possible, but without varnishing nor censoring the cold hard facts. 75.108.94.227 ( talk) 20:13, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Malcolm Gordon (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

This article, about a longtime prep school hockey coach from around 1900, has no sources of any kind. It was created in 2004 but only has about 30 edits. Besides having no sources, the article includes an extraordinary claim that Gordon wrote what is regarded as the first set of hockey rules in the United States. Without that (unsourced) claim, it seems that Gordon perhaps is not even notable. I read WP:BLPPROD which explains about placing a BLPPROD tag for BLPs with no sources, but I am hoping that a much more experienced editor with BLPs could review the article and take whatever action is most appropriate. Lootbrewed ( talk) 03:51, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

The article was created before the BLPPROD policy came into effect, so I have sent it to AFD here.-- ukexpat ( talk) 14:02, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

One - he is dead. Two he is in the US Hockey Hall of Fame. Three he is mentioned in NYT. Four he gets in the list in the NHL official record book. [9] also a Hobey Baker connection (he was coach at the time). [10]. Collect ( talk) 14:48, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Can the profile image be changed to one of reggie wayne in a Pats uniform for accuracy's sake or is that not possible — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wolpack Gaming ( talk • contribs) 12:58, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

There are no suitable images at Creative Commons that we could use, and I did not find any free license image to upload to commons myself. -- Crystallizedcarbon ( talk) 16:11, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Hello all, The Wiki Education Foundation is creating a handbook for student editors who will write biographies as part of a classroom assignment. We'd love to hear feedback from editors familiar with these policies, including BLP. The draft is here. Feedback posted before Wednesday, Sept. 2 would be most helpful. Thanks in advance for your help! Eryk (Wiki Ed) ( talk) 17:56, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Is "Iran Bulletin" ( [11]) RS for information pertaining to Iran? BlueSalix ( talk) 15:50, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

That sounds like a question for RSN... Nomoskedasticity ( talk) 22:03, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

While this is obviously a question for RSN, it is also obvious that this is a reliable source. It's an academic journal with an editorial board consisting of people prominent in the field of Iranian studies. You don't get much more reliable than this. Brustopher ( talk) 22:55, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

You're right, this should have gone to RSN. But, no, it's not an academic journal. An online website that has an editorial statement on its masthead that ends with an exclamation point ("No to the theocratic regime!"), an "editorial board" consisting of a bunch of people with BA degrees in political science, affiliated with a political party (Organisation of Revolutionary Workers of Iran), not collected by any academic library, is not an "academic journal." And yes, you absolutely do get much more reliable, see: Iranian Studies (journal). BlueSalix ( talk) 16:39, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

I agree with that. The subtitle says "political journal", among other things. Nomoskedasticity ( talk) 16:56, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

I may have overstated its reliability, there clearly are some things which are more reliable, but it's still a reliable source. Per WP:BIAS "reliable sources are not required to be neutral, unbiased, or objective." Per the logic above the highly influential strongly Marxist leaning history journal Past & Present, would have to be considered an unreliable source for history articles. The editorial board includes Aziz al-Azmeh (PhD in Oriental studies) and Hamid Dabashi (professor in Iranian Studies). The writer of the article removed as unreliable [12] is Ervand Abrahamian, a heavily cited historian of Iranian history. Even if you don't view the journal as reliable, the writer should be considered reliable per his own expertise. Brustopher ( talk) 23:30, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

I agree, you may have overstated its reliability. BlueSalix ( talk) 06:04, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

He has a point about Ervand though, I wouldnt think twice about citing him as a reliable source in his own right. Only in death does duty end ( talk) 08:24, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

B. Alan Wallace (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

None have helped with my different requests so far, I have entered as responses to alerts, or within the material submitted. So the team at present seems rather impotent. Nevertheless all the info I would like to convey here is on those pages, and after all this time of pure abuse it should be. I suggested that two lines of text should be removed. Please comply with this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by DynEqMin ( talk • contribs) 18:22, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

That article was is very poor shape, with a lot of unsourced material, and longs lists of publications, article and essays. I have pared it down to a stub and whatchlisted it. - Cwobeel (talk) 03:00, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Sent to AFD. - Cwobeel (talk) 03:19, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Article was poor in quality - but the person has multiple books published by Columbia University Press , holds PHD from Stanford, translated the Dalai Lama's book, and is an expert on Tibetan Buddhism. I suggest that he is notable at the AfD. Collect ( talk) 18:46, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

The page contains no information from any reliable sources, has a heavily biased point of view and was probably written entirely by the person the article is about. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.53.158.111 ( talk) 01:29, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

It does have reliable sources, but there are some issues with the article. Feel free to jump in and help improve it. - Mr X 14:17, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

• Adam Carolla (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Is the Guinness World Record still standing? It was in 2011... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.251.94.128 ( talk) 18:16, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

I can't find a source that says otherwise. Even if the show doesn't currently hold the record, the page seems fine as-is, it's will always be true that his podcast set the record in 2011. — Strongjam ( talk) 18:45, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Date added in lead to prevent any confusion. Collect ( talk) 18:53, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Richard Ling (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Hi,

I see on the page for Richard Ling that there is a notice about potentially libelous material. I fail to see it. I am Richard Ling and I do not have any problems with the material on that page.

Is there something that I am not seeing?

Please let me know.

Rich Ling riseling@gmail.com — Preceding unsigned comment added by Richling ( talk • contribs) 02:15, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Are you talking about the alert box at the top of the talk page? This: "Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately from the article and its talk page, especially if potentially libellous."

What is your concern? - Mr X 14:11, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

My concern is the box. I am honored to have my bio on Wikipedia, but the box seems to suggest that it might be removed. You note that it would be removed "if" there is libelous material. However, I don't see anything that is a problem. Thus, I wonder why the warning was placed there. Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Richling ( talk • contribs) 21:52, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

There is a standard-warning-notice-box, placed on the talkpage of all biographical articles, including on Talk:Richard_Ling. (There is no tagging of Richard_Ling in mainspace, at present.) User:Richling, there is a good reason for that box to be where it is. Because wikipedia is the encyclopedia that anyone can edit, at any time, it is possible that libelious material violating the warning in the box, might someday (in the future) be inserted, by a badguy. The standard-warning-notice-box, on the talkpage, is not there to PREVENT the badguy from inserting libelous material... the badguy won't even see that box when they edit the biographical article about Richard Ling, right? The box is there, to tell some hypothetical goodguy, who *sees* the newly-inserted libelous material, but is not sure whether they should be WP:BOLD and instantly remove that libelous material, to just go ahead and please remove it, rather than *asking* whether or not it should be removed. In other words, the box is there as a preventative measure: if a badguy inserts something bad, and a goodguy wants to remove it, but feels like they should talk about removing it first, the goodguy will click the 'talk' button ... and find that their question has already been answered. Before the standard-warning-notice-box was put on all biographical pages, there were supposedly a lot of cases where goodguys would not have the self-confidence to click the 'edit' button and would instead click 'talk' and say something like "hey this looks bad should somebody remove it?" The answer is, yes somebody should, and that somebody is YOU.  :-)     Anyways, hope this explains what the box is for. It's to give hypothetical goodguys, the self-confidence to thwart hypothetical badguys, should someday in the future the hypothetical badguy insert libel into Richard Ling. p.s. Can somebody create a redirect from Rich Ling to Richard Ling, please? 75.108.94.227 ( talk) 13:53, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Can someone please take a look at Talk:Jess Greenberg and help decide whether the thread "Reasons for Popularity" is a violation of WP:BLP. (see [13] for reference.) The thread has been removed three times by Tuesdaymight ( [14], [15], [16]) because they feel it's a serious BLP violation that warrants immediate removal. There does not seem, at least to me, to be anything at all in that thread which is contentious and a BLP violation; It is just a discussion of relevant Wikipedia policies and how they might apply to any adding of content about Greenberg's physical appearance to the article. None of the editors who posted, outside of the original OP, proposed the adding of any such content to the article. No inappropriate or lewd comments about Greenberg were made. All that was posted was simply that such content could only be added if it was something which has received significant coverage in reliable sources. I have reverted the removals twice and tried to explain things at User talk:Tuesdaymight#Jess Greenberg, but there still seems to be a serious disconnect regarding what constitutes a BLP violation. Attempts were made to make the thread "more neutral sounding" by changing its name ( Arthur goes shopping with this edit) and striking a word from a post ( Dontreader with this edit), but still Tuesdaymight insists on removing the entire thread. It would help if some others could take a look a see if this thread is really something that should be removed per WP:BLP. Thanks in advance. - Marchjuly ( talk) 13:47, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

It was inappropriate for an editor to remove the section; there is no BLP violation there. Nomoskedasticity ( talk) 14:04, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Absolutely not a WP:BLP violation. Not even close. - Mr X 14:08, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Marchjuly, this small section (on Talk:Jess Greenberg) began with the heading “Mammaries”, and with a discussion of a particular woman’s breasts, and with the suggestion that the reason she’s popular is because of her mamary glands. That is really, truly inappropriate, and questionable, but really even beyond questionable. It’s offensive. And it is specifically forbidden, thank God, by the guidelines found in Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons. Changes to this section were made in a retrograde manner to try to make things better, but the section is still clearly about a particular woman’s breasts as the reason she’s popular. Marchjuly, your suggestion that it is okay for a WP page to contain a section with matter that is forbidden by Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons (because as you say, it might be helpful to other editors), seems to be an issue that you have with Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons. I suggest that you make that argument on that talk page. Also when you suggest that apparently it’s okay to discuss Jimmy Durante’s nose (on User talk:Tuesdaymight#Jess Greenberg), that really doesn’t support the section you’re defending, because Jimmy Durante unfortunately isn’t living anymore, and references to him are not covered by Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons. And your concern about “the entire thread” — well, it’s difficult to remove offensive material without altering the meaning or the comments of other editors — but offensive material needs to be removed and other editors will have to be appealed to for their understanding. The problem is that when guidelines of Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons are not followed, and this gets compounded by violations of the guidelines found in Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines, (by altering a conversation after it has already been posted) it all gets worse and worse, and difficult to deal with. I stand by what I said above, and I don’t think we’ve met the “burden of proof” which the guidelines require of the editor intending to reinstate offensive material. Tuesdaymight ( talk) 14:26, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

"Offensive" is not a reason for removal. Discussion is needed in order to determine how to edit the article. It's likely that the article will not be edited to say that her appearance is the main reason for her popularity. But individual editors may not decide that the matter may not be discussed, to the point of deleting others' posts. Nomoskedasticity ( talk) 15:10, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Just to be clear, and to respond to the above comment by referring to Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons: information about living persons on any Wikipedia page, if it's contentious material that is unsourced – whether the material is negative, positive, neutral, or just questionable – it should be removed. Tuesdaymight ( talk) 15:33, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia is NOTBUREAUCRACY. Talk pages are for discussion about potential article content. As the question posed by the OP was speculative, and Wikipedia is NOTCENSORED, it was perfectly legitimate and should not have been removed. - Mr X 15:44, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

• I agree that this is inappropriate, as were previous comments on that page and edits to the article. At one point a blog was being used to support that kind of material, in violation of BLPSPS. Sarah ^(talk) 16:05, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

I didn't realize that the blog was still in the current version, so I've removed it. Sarah ^(talk) 16:12, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

• Agree with Nomos and MrX here - not a BLP violation. Offensive, probably. The argument that its overly negative (no one likes to be discussed based on their looks) does hold some weight, but I dont see anything there that is a BLP violation. Only in death does duty end ( talk) 16:20, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

• If the subject is primarily known for being well-endowed, then that is certainly a discussion that editors can hold on the talk page. Here's the trick; try to discuss it without being crass. This was a proper edit. This was not. Tarc ( talk) 16:41, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

• Hi Tarc, I disagree that the former was appropriate. However expressed, the issue is being viewed through the eyes of certain heterosexual men only, and now that's the default on the talk page too. There's a mention of her appearance in the article, so the issue is dealt with. There's no need to go on about it on talk. Sarah ^(talk) 17:13, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

• The first link I provided was to a diff of an editor changing a juvenile section title to something more neutral, what was wrong with that? The discussion itself, while dumb and probably pointless, did not rise to a level that necessitated outright removal. Tarc ( talk) 17:35, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

• Tarc, that section and previous ones like it have made male the default on that talk page. There is no content issue, because her appearance is already mentioned in the article, so it's pointless locker-room talk. Sarah ^(talk) 17:47, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

• Ok, I see your point. If it was already mentioned in the article, then the discussion in quesiton seemed to want to discuss the specific...parts, it seems, that led to the subject's popularity. I'd still probably prefer hatting to deletion, if only to make it easier to find and reference in the future should the matter ever escalate into ANI or further. Tarc ( talk) 18:03, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Tarc, hatting would be an appropriate compromise. It has the added benefit of not removing the material for future researchers to see. Tuesdaymight, I think the sexism on Wikipedia is going to be of interest to historians, so hatting or archiving may be better than removing, unless the material is clearly harmful to a living person. Sarah ^(talk) 18:37, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

• Tarc nailed it. The BLP issue was resolved by removing the unnecessarily insensitive wording. There is no BLP justification for removing the thread altogether. VQuakr ( talk) 17:01, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

To respond to MrX, I’m not sure what you mean by "censorship", because while you seem opposed to material being removed from WP, you then link to a site that says: “Content will be removed if it is judged to violate Wikipedia policies — especially those on biographies of living persons”. Those are the words you linked to on NOTCENSORED, not mine. Are you being contradictory? I don’t know what distinction you’re thinking of between WP policies and your idea. Or perhaps you didn’t read the link you linked to? Or maybe you have an argument with the WP policies In that case your thoughts belong on another page. If that last possibility is the case, MrX, you’re not alone in preferring your own ideas to the guidelines of Wikipedia. This applies also to Tarc’s comment when Tarc says: “If the subject is primarily known for being well-endowed, then that is certainly a discussion that editors can hold on the talk page", etc. Tarc, you con’t cite any policies, but the truth is you’re not free to talk about a person with questionable or controversal unsupported comments. That’s the issue, and that’s the WP policy found here: Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons Tuesdaymight ( talk) 17:07, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

"... if it is judged to violate Wikipedia policies" is the operative phrase here. We are the judges. Not all of the judges agree about the interpretation of the policy. The discussion about the subject's fame and its relationship to her breasts may be awkward, and it may even be trolling, but it is a reasonable proposition for a talk page discussion. The appropriate response would have been to ask for sources, and when they were not forthcoming, simply archive the discussion. - Mr X 17:25, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Is there a reliable source that states authoritatively that Ms. Greenberg’s breasts, rather than her music, are the source of her popularity? Is there a reliable source that discusses her breasts at all? Are Ms. Greenberg’s breasts demonstrably notable? Even arguably notable? If not, this discussion is very unlikely to contribute to the article, and discussion of this topic casts Wikipedia in a very poor light indeed. ≥ MarkBernstein ( talk) 17:14, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

The relevant question is: is it reasonable to have such a discussion on an article talk page? There are sources that suggest that it is a reasonable discussion.

• "Fortunately – and despite the inevitable comments from viewers – her fondness for low-cut tank tops is ultimately overriden by her musical talent,..."
• "Sexy Cover von Metallicas ‘Enter Sandman’"
• "Moltissimi l'accusano di utilizzare il proprio corpo per far conoscere la propria musica"
• "Finché un giorno non Jess Greenberg non ha cambiato angolazione alla videocamera e ha indossato una maglietta più scollata."
• "It's sad that her boobs are valued more than her talent."

- Mr X 17:50, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

The reliable sources should come first, we should not engage in pointless and potentially offensive speculation without them. Keeping this discussion open without them was inappropriate. Gamaliel ( talk) 18:03, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Ideally, perhaps. I think we're fortunate that the IP editor had the good sense to raise it on the talk page rather than add it to the article. Simply deleting the thread was an unhelpful overreaction in my opinion. - Mr X 18:54, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Tuesdaymight, you wrote that the section began "with a discussion of a particular woman’s breasts". There was no "discussion" of her breasts. A question was asked, and I merely said that in order to include the breasts issue in the article, a reliable source that discusses the matter is needed (and better yet if she herself addresses the topic in a reliable source). Per WP:TALK#USE, editors are allowed to ask questions and to voice their opinions on talk pages, in order to try to improve the respective articles. That question was relevant. In fact, several of the article's sources mention her physical attributes, such as the article entitled " The Breast 'Highway To Hell' Cover Of All Time". Yet you don't seem to have a problem with such sources. Finally, you are misinterpreting Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons. It says, "Editors must take particular care when adding information about living persons to any Wikipedia page." That's exactly what you will find in Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines#Maintain Wikipedia policy. The key part of that sentence is "adding information". The person who created that section did not add information. It was simply a question. I did not add information about the living person either. If someone asks a contentious question or expresses an offensive (but relevant) opinion about a living person on Wikipedia, you cannot invoke Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons and expect the person to provide reliable sources, or else erase a comment or an entire section, as you did. Questions and opinions don't have "sources". However, if a question or an opinion provides contentious information about a living person, then a reliable source must be provided. For example, if on the talk page of a living person, someone writes, "Shouldn't we include in the article the fact that this actor kills babies for satanic rituals?", then the editor must provide a reliable source, or else the material must be removed immediately. Dontreader ( talk) 21:23, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

• The thread was not inappropriate, nor even arguably offensive, aside from the initial title, which was changed early on. Even that was not a WP:BLP issue, as it made no statements or claims, nor added any information to the page. Removal (and edit warring to enforce it) was a clear violation of WP:TALK. As my comment was one of those removed (and now hatted) I am at least arguably involved, but should the thread be removed again, or I become aware of similar removals of other editor's comments by the same person, i would be inclined to take the matter to ANI or AN3. DES ^(talk) 22:58, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Dontreader, don’t sweat the nomenclature — whether it’s a conversation or whatever, call it what you want. I’m sure it will be fine. And nobody wants to censor anybody. And about any new issues that you might come up with, both of you, it’s okay, I think instead, it might be better to find common ground. After all, Dontreader and DES, you both feel that there was something on the talk page that needed to be changed, and that the talk page was then altered to “clean it up”. I think that a number of editors have expressed that they were bothered by what was on the talk page, too. Let’s just agree that we should respect Wikipedia and it’s guidelines, and when we edit we should try to make it the best that it can be. My only issue has been about adhereing to the guidelines, and I will continue to hold to that, as I hope you both will also -- in our different ways. I was very pleased to hear that the offending passages are gone and the whole section has been hatted. I think Sarah did that, and thank God. The experience of participating on a notice-board was different than I expected. Maybe I expected it to be more deliberative, but instead it turns out to be way more random and anarchic - more like being in a mosh pit or something — certainly nobody’s finest hour. But the result may be the best we could have done. Cheers. Tuesdaymight ( talk) 03:07, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

• Lou Pearlman (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Could someone please take a look at material that has been added and beefed up regarding Pearlman's sexual practices? There are several IPs and one new editor involved, and I don't think the material is egregious enough for me to continue reverting. It was first added on August 30 here. Thanks.-- Bbb23 ( talk) 17:24, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

It is close enough to using innuendo where no charges have been filed for this over-zealous person to view it as a significant problem per WP:BLP. It is on the order of "XXX in a radio interview said YYY engaged in illegal practices No one else backs these claims but an author referred to anecdotes which might pertain to the allegations. No one has made any formal charges or allegations at all." Collect ( talk) 14:31, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Concur. Especially since the same author says he could find absolutely no record of any person who would confirm it. Using a source to bring up negative information (seemingly unfounded allegations in this case) and then using the same source to say 'but there is no evidence of this' just seems like an excuse to smear. Undue rather than an outright violation I feel. Only in death does duty end ( talk) 14:37, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

• I'm not sure what you're asking for here. He doesn't appear to have an article on Wikipedia nor does his church, so if you're looking to request an article be created you can do so here. I do have to caution you though, you should make sure that he'd pass notability guidelines prior to requesting this. Offhand I'm not seeing much to show that he's received coverage in WP:RS to where he'd pass notability guidelines. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 06:12, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

There is consistent sock puppetry occurring on the Sylvester Turner page. The same edits are made by different editors and are meant to negatively impact the individual's biography.

Here are the statements consistently added by two of users, Saq2015 and Bogg5576:

Huon has noted this apparent bias editing : /info/en/?search=Talk:Sylvester_Turner and removed the information. The page was protected on August 11 but now that the protection has expired, a new user — Preceding unsigned comment added by Princessbabylove3 ( talk • contribs) 17:31, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Actually, a lot of the BLP looks as if it were written for a campaign brochure, while the negative material now removed was certainly also pretty bad. I would blow this one up and stick to ascertainable fact, and avoid mentioning bills a person "authored", being "elected senior class president by his peers", and a section on "criminial justice." The meat of the BLP would easily fit in three easy-to-read paragraphs. (opinions applicable to a huge majority of BLPs for all countries entirely - if an item is not of major import, generally it is better to remove it rather than keep adding to it in the attempt to bring "balance" - almost invariably the best "balance" is by deletion of the entire litany of good and evil.) Collect ( talk) 17:42, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

(Asserting that these comments are not "political" for those following my edits and that this noticeboard is not a "political page") - the libel suit results make clear that this stuff under no circumstances whatsoever belongs in any BLP - the suit was won by Turner, and later thrown out due to the requirement of "actual malice" for a public person and not just "deliberate falsity." Collect ( talk) 17:49, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Page is being repeatedly vandalized. Often by anonymous edits and often with the anonymous editors accusing of vandalism those editing by consensus and policy to remove npov, puffery, copyvio, or unsourced info.

Users 65.96.43.135 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 108.46.19.25 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 108.29.184.240 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS) and Zagano ( talk · contribs) are of particular concern. Also, one edit from: 67.85.170.239 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS)

Notifying @ Justlettersandnumbers:, @ Elizium23: @ Joel B. Lewis:, and @ Eblem: who are active editors and @ Moonriddengirl:, who helped handle copyvio issue.-- Samuel J. Howard ( talk) 17:51, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Not sure how it constitutes vandalism; anyway today an established editor has had a look. Nomoskedasticity ( talk) 19:29, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Yes, there's a low level of background noise from (presumably) connected editors, who've made a few inappropriate edits and a couple of misplaced accusations of "vandalism". I don't see any cause for concern – the situation seems to be fully under control. If it hadn't been, I'd probably have taken this to WP:COIN. Justlettersandnumbers ( talk) 23:25, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Chris_Bell_(politician) or [[Chris Bell (politician)]

A quotation with a fully referenced citation in this article (about a politician) has been repeatedly deleted by someone who feels that the quoted and cited material has "negative connotations." I would appreciate some feedback on this problem. I have attempted to request a "Third Party" opinion but am not sure I have done so properly as I am not accustomed to being pulled into editing wars. NicholasNotabene ( talk) 19:13, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Above user blocked 24 hours for 3RR, other party warned. Please discuss issues on the talk page hereafter. Xymmax ^{So let it be written} _{So let it be done} 00:06, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

The last paragraph says more than I could even write here.

Slanderous, unsubstantiated, and crude accusations abound.

Vandalism reverted, page protected. Xymmax ^{So let it be written} _{So let it be done} 23:44, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Vincent D'Onofrio (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Reliable sources about Greta Scacchi's marriage to D'Onofrio are being removed again. The primary user doing so, User:Cvanderdonk, implied here that they are D'Onofrio's current wife, Carin van der Donk. If they are, this is a clear conflict of interest. If they aren't, that's another problem. Anyway, would appreciate others involving themselves in the discussion at Talk:Vincent D'Onofrio, as I believe I am not going to get far. Thanks all. --‖ Ebyabe ^talk - Union of Opposites ‖ 14:49, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

• Big Freedia (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

I saw Big Freedia (real name Frederick Ross), who I'd never heard of, on a TV show tonight. After going to the article, I discovered there has been a dispute going on for several years about which pronoun to use for this person. Currently, there is no consistency in the article as "he" and "she" are both used. An IP editor made their only edit a few days ago to change "she" to "he" in parts of the article, but not everywhere, and wrote a feisty edit summary about it. [17] It looks like the first time any pronouns were used in the article was in July 2012 with this edit, which greatly expanded the content and introduced the "she" pronoun. Before that edit, no pronouns were ever used. From a quick browsing of the article's edit history and the "He/She" thread on the talk page, it appears there's no dispute that Big Freedia is not transgender; the only disagreement is which pronoun should be used, which pronoun Big Freedia prefers, and which sources are more credible about which pronoun to use. Anyway, this issue is above my skill level so I was hoping some editors here could settle this matter once and for all to prevent ongoing he/she battles for years to come. Thanks. Lootbrewed ( talk) 08:16, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

• I think that one of the first questions is how Freedia self-identifies. Per this article she prefers to be called by "she", but will identify by either. I think that the norm on Wikipedia is that we go by the individual's preferred gender pronoun regardless of whether or not they identify as transgender or if they will answer to "he" or "she". I'm not sure what the policy is on gender neutral pronouns, although I think that the site will use those if the person has confirmed that this is how they identify. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 08:50, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Seems to me to be a pretty clear-cut case of MOS:IDENTITY. Use the pronouns they prefer, even if it doesn't make "sense" to someone or other. NorthBySouthBaranof ( talk) 09:26, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the responses so far. And thanks to North for referencing MOS:IDENTITY, which precisely addresses this issue of gender identity pronouns. It says, "give precedence to self-designation as reported in the most up-to-date reliable sources, even when it doesn't match what's most common in reliable sources. When a person's gender self-designation may come as a surprise to readers, explain it without overemphasis on first occurrence in an article. Any person whose gender might be questioned should be referred to by the pronouns, possessive adjectives, and gendered nouns (for example "man/woman", "waiter/waitress", "chairman/chairwoman") that reflect that person's latest expressed gender self-identification. This applies in references to any phase of that person's life, unless the subject has indicated a preference otherwise.". I noticed that North made this edit to the article, but I am confused as to why his edit summary refers to WP:BLPNAME, which is about privacy of names, rather than MOS:IDENTITY, which are the applicable guidelines about the gender pronouns. In any case, my primary concern is putting a permanent end to this pronoun battle. So can someone please post something on the article's talk page so that the determination is easily accessible to all future editors who want to change the pronouns. (Perhaps there's also a way to put a permanent link to this thread?) As things stand now, there's nothing stopping this problem from continuing until an official "ruling" is made. And North, can you or any others, please put that page on your watchlist? Thanks. Lootbrewed ( talk) 20:19, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Update: As I anticipated, North's edit has just been reverted. [18] by an editor who changed to all male pronouns. As Tokyogirl alluded to above, Big Freedia said in a 2013 interview: "my preferred pronoun is she". Lootbrewed ( talk) 01:42, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Per MOS:IDENTITY, I added the Out interview as a source in the article, alluded to the pronoun issue on the first occurrence (in the lede), and changed all the pronouns to female. Here' my edit. I will also add a comment on the article's talk page. Lootbrewed ( talk) 02:46, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

The link in the discography for Vertigo, his 2015 single actually links to the condition of the same name, and also does not specify he is only featured on the song. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.111.74.41 ( talk) 11:41, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Song title now unlinked.-- ukexpat ( talk) 12:56, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Prasad Ram (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

The current wikipedia article on Prasad Ram seems to be written as a means of promotion. The content and its presentation is more suited towards personal sites but definitely not wikipedia — Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.7.68.157 ( talk) 13:50, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

I am now blocked from posting any comments on the talk page of my bio. I have opened a new account RickAlanRoss1952 at Wikipedia. Please allow me to post at the talk page of my bio. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by RickAlanRoss1952 ( talk • contribs) 16:07, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Responding to this account directly on his talk page, especially with respect to an arbitration issue in play here. — C.Fred ( talk) 17:01, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Jackson5Dr (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) is repeatedly vandalizing the Direct Action Everywhere page despite multiple warnings and discussion on the article's talk page. Vandalism includes referring to people as sexual predators and cult leaders without citing reliable sources. Funcrunch ( talk) 18:23, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

I don't know why the links are showing up red in the above template, but they work in this one: Jackson5Dr ( talk · contribs). Funcrunch ( talk) 18:34, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Probably moot now as Jackson5Dr has been indefinitely blocked. Regards, TransporterMan ( TALK) 19:06, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

This article needs urgent attention from participants at this board. It is written by an experienced editor acting in good faith, but I think the salacious details and speculation in the media have crept into the article. For some particular issues, see my comment at the India noticeboard although those are likely just the tip of the iceberg. Related article, Indrani Mukerjea, Peter Mukerjea etc will also need to be reviewed. Abecedare ( talk) 15:09, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

• Hello Abecedare, thanks for your attention in this regard. Whilst others look into this page, I too will start cleaning this page up and bring it to shape. Since I have followed this case, it will be quicker for me to clean it. You may also want to keep this page in your watchlist for sometime (just in case I overlook something). Cheers, Arun Kumar SINGH (Talk) 15:17, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

• Abecedare, the link you were talking about has been fixed. Arun Kumar SINGH (Talk) 15:31, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

• I attempted to trim the article with edit summaries for each removal. These were promptly reverted. It's upto the community to decide if such egregious violations of the BLP policy, most of which is unsourced and/or presented as statements of fact without attribution to the tabloid journals quoted, should stay in the article. I won't be reverting again. The Masked Man of Mega Might ( talk) 09:01, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

I've semiprotected the article to hopefully cut down on some of the rubbish that's washing into it. Just so everyone is clear, sticking the word "speculated" in front of potentially defamatory hearsay is not a quick route around the BLP policy. Lankiveil ^{( speak to me)} 10:16, 4 September 2015 (UTC).

Thanks, TMMoMM. Your and User:Dharmadhyaksha's edits are certainly a big improvement. There are still quite a few BLP violations in the article including the mention of several names of non-public individuals who are AFAIK only tangentially involved (or linked only by gossip and speculation), such as the various relatives. Also there are statements made in wikipedia's voice (eg Upon his arrest, Rai narrated the entire murder incident to the Mumbai police including the fact that he was paid ₹1 lakh (equivalent to ₹1.0 lakh or US$1,509.70 in 2015) for the job.), which are not even supported by the cited sources! Can you take another look? Abecedare ( talk) 13:28, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

@ Abecedare: The article was obviously created in good faith, but even in its present form reads more like a First Information Report and not encyclopedic by any standards. Normally my advice would be WP:TNT and a rewrite but I understand this case is quite complicated and rather difficult to get the facts straight unless someone spends significant time on research. I tried but it's exhausting. At this point, my only hope is to keep out the potentially libelous BLP violations. - The Masked Man of Mega Might ( talk) 14:52, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

If you have the time, could you just read through the article and remove any sentence (or part) that is (a) a BLP violation in your opinion, or (2) not supported by the cited source? If there are objections to any such removal they can be discussed on the article talk-page and correct sources provided. I realize that such an exercise would make the article coverage incomplete/disjointed, but that would be preferable to having BLP violations in it. Abecedare ( talk) 14:58, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

At present this mugshot appears in the info box for the Ma Anand Sheela BLP. I can find no other photo to replace it. It appears to give undue weight to her criminal activities. Should it be kept or removed? Comments?-- — Keithbob • Talk • 19:17, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Keithbob I made a version which crops out the booking placard so it is not obviously a mugshot. I can upload it but I am unsure whether a modified non-free-use image is OK from copyright perspective since I have never worked with images. Please ping in reply. Jbh ^Talk 22:44, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

WP:MUG suggests that mugshots probably shouldn't be used in BLP articles. I suspect a cropped version of the non-free image would be okay as a replacement of the current image. Lankiveil ^{( speak to me)} 10:11, 4 September 2015 (UTC).

• Would someone please take a look at the file page. I uploaded a cropped version as a replacement however what is showing up in the article is some combination of the old picture with the new picture's aspect ratio. Adding pictures is new to me and it looks like I have bungled it somehow. Help... Jbh ^Talk 12:53, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

  It looks fine to me. You probably need to clear your browser cache and possible purge the WP cache. - Mr X 12:59, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

  Thanks for the check. It looks OK if I switch browsers but even purging the original cache does not work... wierd... I am also going to change the file name to something that does not include "mug shot". Jbh ^Talk 14:29, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

  Ooppss.. no "file mover" permission. Would someone who can move files please move the file to just Ma_Anand_Sheela.jpg or some such. Thank you. Jbh ^Talk 14:32, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

I removed the image, as Commons lists its license as copyrighted/fair use only. -- Crystallizedcarbon ( talk) 14:44, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

( edit conflict) Can we hold off on the image name change/deletion since it is possible that the image is in public domain and can/should be moved to Commons? I have asked at the commons OTRS noticeboard. To be clear, I have no objections to changing the filename in general, and whether/how it should be used in the article is a separate question from the public-domain/fair-use concern I raise. Abecedare ( talk) 14:48, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

No objection to holding off. Also no objection to removal. Jbh ^Talk 14:56, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

No objection on my part either.-- Crystallizedcarbon ( talk) 19:03, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Thanks everyone, for your continued attention to this issue. Have a great weekend!-- — Keithbob • Talk • 18:37, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Re: this diff and this discussion.

I was bot summoned by an RfC to comment on Jeremy Corbyn's page, where there is now a section, Association with alleged anti-Semites, that uses all kinds of allegations against other people with whom Corbyn has associated to link Corbyn's name to "antisemitism" a bunch of times. This for a leftwing labour politician who's probably as far from anti-semitism as they come. My efforts to improve the page were promptly reverted. I'm no fan of Labour or any of its politicians, but I view this as a blatant BLP vio; comment or help would be appreciated. - Darouet ( talk) 21:09, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

I've weighed in and made some changes to the article. This sort of thing is likely to continue/reappear... Nomoskedasticity ( talk) 10:17, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Noel Biderman (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Ameteurdemographer ( talk · contribs) introduced a highly contentious statement about the subject of the article. After I removed the content, Ameteurdemographer restored it, and after the material was removed again by Haminoon ( talk · contribs), Ameteurdemographer introduced the material a third time. I believe the sourcing of the highly contentious statement relies on questionable, gossipy sources and therefore violates WP:BLP. RJaguar3 | u | t 03:00, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

@ Ameteurdemographer: RJaguar3 | u | t 03:01, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

See /info/en/?search=Rick_Alan_Ross

I am Rick Alan Ross and am concerned about my bio at Wikipedia. One Wikipedia user has insisted that I can only post under an account. At one time I did have an account, but I have not used it for some time and am not sure that I have the password. I have now created a new account and am willing to verify my identify by phone (call me at the office) or fax (from my office agreed upon ID). It seems to me that I should bse allowed to discuss what is wrong with my bio on the Talk page per the process at Wikipedia. Please help me to continue that process. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by RickAlanRoss1952 ( talk • contribs) 15:56, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Per this, you will need to contact the Arbitration Committee. This link explains how to contact them: User:Arbitration_Committee. - Mr X 14:41, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

My judgment has been questioned for removing this addition to an article about a living person who is a CEO of a company one of whose sub-divisions has a branch that has likely been breaking some rules. The company in question employs large numbers of people who are paid the minimum wage in demanding circumstances.

My removal... which happened twice now... has been discussed a little on the talk page at Talk:Ruby McGregor-Smith#Neutral point of view and Wikipedia:UNDUE - National Minimum Wage. In particular I was surprised that the supposed controversy had not been mentioned in the Wikipedia article about the company itself, nor in any Wikipedia article about the sub-division, and that even the CEO herself is not mentioned in the body of the Wikipedia article about the company. I think the Daily Mail is one of the sources used.

Anyway, I ask for opinions or suggestions here or there about whether some or any of this material should be in the article about the living person. Arthur goes shopping ( talk) 21:43, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Should not really be in her article as it makes an implied connection of wrongdoing between her and the reports, if it is that notable it should be in the company article. MilborneOne ( talk) 10:00, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

I suggest that Wiki moderators and editors become more sensitive to and aware of the insertion of age prejudice into the content of articles. For example, the bio of Newt Gingrich offers a discussion of each of his marriages and characterizes each wife in relation to Mr. Gingrich's age. Why? The point is not stated.

I believe it is inappropriate to characterize the age of a spouse or any other third party in a Wiki article unless the relevance is stated. For about 40 years the standard of journalism has been to exclude discussions of race, religion, culture, and other personal characteristics unless the information is otherwise relevant to the article.

Thanks guys and keep up the great work. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:306:B8A9:B060:9506:137B:3BFF:877C ( talk) 22:28, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

• I have no true opinion on this, but I did want to separate this into its own section. Offhand, I think that if this is frequently brought up in news articles then it could merit being added to the article, otherwise I do have to question its relevance. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 07:16, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

There is a remaining, BLP violation that has not been removed. Several late ones have but I think the earliest edit by User:2600:100d:b12e:a480:143:eba1:9008:52fa should also be hidden. Red Jay ( talk) 08:53, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Done, thanks. Xymmax ^{So let it be written} _{So let it be done} 12:30, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

"Both Nithyananda and the actress had insisted that the video was morphed, a claim that was later proven by a confession by the ex-COO of Sun TV. Sun TV had released the fake video on YouTube.[7]"

The cited article contains nothing that suggests this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 1.39.80.120 ( talk) 09:20, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

While not elegant, the links in the two adjacent sentences, when put together, do mention these essential facts. However, this article could do with very thorough BLP scrubbing. Notable religious figure with a major sexual scandal always makes for a challenge. It's from 2010, so not new. No time to do any other than raise it here at the moment, sorry. Xymmax ^{So let it be written} _{So let it be done} 12:43, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

This article could use some love. I tagged two sections as UNDUE and commented out large swaths of text a year ago, but I never got back to clean it up as intended. Gamaliel ( talk) 02:41, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

At Wikipedia:Long-term abuse/Orangemoody/Articles we say:

In this specific case, however, in order to prevent article subjects from continued shakedowns by bad actors who are causing significant harm to the reputation of this project, the articles are all being deleted.

This text is being reproduced off-wiki by various parties, and the sense of it by many more, including generally reputable journals.

Clearly a shakedown is an act of extortion, illegal in most countries, and unethical everywhere. It is claimed that simply becasue we are not naming those involved, this does not constitute a BLP infraction (or libel).

I respectfully disagree for the following reasons.

1. A significant number of those blocked, if they are different people, operated under named accounts, and therefore can be considered named, notably Orangemoody, the eponymous account of the case.
2. It is quite possible that either the IP addresses, or the named accounts are easy to associate with natural people. It is not uncommon for people to use the same account on many services, to build an on-line reputation.
3. As far as WP:BLP is concerned it is material about a living person there is no requirement that the "real world identity" be linked.

It is certainly worth while blocking these accounts, and I would have no issue with them being prosecuted for violating WP:TOS. However we need to curb this extravagant use of language.

All the best: Rich  Farmbrough, 00:39, 2 September 2015 (UTC).

Shakedown is probably too strong a word. Coercion may be more appropriate. - Mr X 00:45, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

We are not mentioning any specific accounts. We are making clear the motives for deletion based on information we have had that these shakedowns have been occurring, at no point is it suggested that every single account is doing this. It is not extravagant language, it is very accurate language. When you tell someone "pay us or else" that is a shakedown pure and simple. I suppose we could use less colourful language like "extortion", but that is hardly a distinction relevant to BLP. Coercion as MrX suggests is accurate, however extortion means the same thing except refers to "obtaining something, especially money" which in this case is more accurate. Chillum 00:48, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

My concerns are not abated. Firstly if we were saying ""bad actors, who are some of the people who run the accounts, the others are all perfectly nice" then there would perhaps be some wriggle room, but the obvious reading is the group as a whole (assuming there is more than one). Secondly we require that such claims be verifiable, which at present, as far as I can see, they are not.

All the best: Rich  Farmbrough, 01:02, 2 September 2015 (UTC).

Oh and by the way, being, presumably, not public persons, the mens rea requirement is much lower if it ever does come to liability (in the US), so extreme caution, rather than merely caution is advised. All the best: Rich  Farmbrough, 01:06, 2 September 2015 (UTC).

My reading is that we are deleting to avoid shakedowns being done by bad actors. At no point do we call anyone a bad actor or suggest that all articles were made by bad actors.

We are saying that bad actors are engaging in shakedowns, "prevent article subjects from continued shakedowns by bad actors". We are not saying that any account or person is a bad actor or engaging in shakedowns. We are saying that this has happened and that deleting these articles will prevent that. It is like if we say "We delete harmful statements about living people" we are not saying "If we delete your stuff it means you are being harmful". Chillum 01:07, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Chillum, there is a conflict here between what wikipedia should say to alert AfC-queue-workers, admins, and other long-haul wikipedians ... and what wikipedia should say *about* the specific accounts being blocked, and *about* the specific articles being deleted (and the topics of said articles which are typically corporation-articles or BLP-articles or product-articles). The distinction is important, albeit somewhat artificial. For instance:

we are blocking a bunch of accounts, a lot of them are bad actors, there was some undislosed paid editing, there were shakedowns/extortions being used, thus we are deleting all the articles in scorched-earth policy, as a warning to future bad actors, all good apples please be aware that this situation could recur and may not be over yet

Phrasing such as my somewhat-contrived example above, as Rich pointed out, is pretty easy to misconstrue, especially if one is a lawyer, that actually know what mens rea even means. Compare with the phrasing below, functionally equivalent but somewhat-artificially segmented, that is a longer-winded description of the exact same situation:

we are blocking a bunch of accounts for socking and for meatpuppetry, since this is not permitted per wiki-policy, in some cases the ToU policy against undisclosed paid editing was violated, and there were allegations that some of these blocked accounts (but not all of them) were off-wiki-contacting some of the corporations and humans -- usually the subject-matter of the corporation-articles and BLP-articles in question -- then allegedly demanding payment and/or allegedly threatening article-deletion, if financial compensation was not forthcoming. Because of the troubling circumstances, we are mass-deleting the articles involved; this is not because the articles themselves are necessarily poor, nor the article-topics are necessarily non-encyclopedic ... indeed a small percentage do appear to pass WP:42 once the puffery is cleaned out. Most importantly, this mass-deletion is certainly not because the off-wiki victims of the bad-apple-socks, which is to say, the corporations and the biographical-subjects, were in any way at fault: quite often, in fact, some innocent good-faith COI-encumbered wikipedian would be diligently following wiki-policies, working in the AfC queue on their autobiography for example, or working in the AfC queue on a corporation-article about their employer, and in the course of receiving a (proper&correct) AfC decline, with instructions for improvement, these good-apple-COI-wikipedians would (allegedly) be approched off-wiki with cash demands and (allegedly) threats of draft-deletion, by some of the bad apples involved in this socking-ring. The topics of these articles, who are often themselves wikipedians, should be treated kindly; they are the victims here, not the perpetrators of the alleged bad-apple-actions. GOING FORWARD: all admins and wikipedians are advised that any sort of shakedown, coercion, or similar tactics -- which might theoretically be attempted by any bad apples in the future -- any such tactic being used against good-faith COI-encumbered wikipedian editors, or being used in real life against the corporations and biographical-subjects of wikipedia articles, will be treated most harshly.

Probably my overly-verbose rewrite could be cut down, trimmed for brevity, made as simple as possible but no simpler, but the point is, we need to clearly separate the allegations about what happened in the past, aka the accusations of shakedowns/extortions/etc (I personally witnessed one specific case where such allegations did occur), and keep them firmly in the alleged-category. Hypothetical *future* shakedowns/extortions/whatever, by hypothetical *future* bad apples, should be the main target of harsh expressions and intransigence.

    To be clear, I don't think the blocking was done poorly, and don't think (most of) the mass-article-deletions were an incorrect strategy, either. I thank those involved for their hard work, and offer kudos for a job well done. This language-suggestion is "merely" a question of phrasing-in-the-aftermath, and of PR-for-wikipedia, and of making clear whom is whom -- with precision. Such phrasing-things are not as important as the actual sock-investigations, and the actual sock-blocking, and the preparations for preventing (or at least mitigating) future such attacks on wikipedia's very core tenets. But phrasing does matter, and in particular, I have a hunch that at least one of the meatpuppets involved with the 381 blocks, got roped into the socking-ring without understanding what they were getting into. More crucially, it is *very* likely that if future attacks of this nature occur, they will be more sophisticated about it, and attempt to entangle good-faith editors into the hypothetical future scheme, so as to better obscure their wiki-illicit activities, and so as to make harsh responses less feasible. 75.108.94.227 ( talk) 13:39, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

As far as the deletion goes I don't think IAR is applicable since they were generally created from unattributed copy-paste plagiarism, even if someone had improved it then it was an improvement on a copyright violation and is not something we can include under our sites copyright license. I agree there is a difference between what we should say about those who engaged in this activity and what we should say about our reasons for internal actions. In this particular case we are not talking about the account involved, we are describing the basis for deletion of articles. These reasons include that some of them have been used for shakedowns, as well as copyright concerns. Chillum 22:29, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

We have no RS that they were used for shakedowns. (Apart from a lot of media that was fed by the very text I am objecting to.) All the best: Rich  Farmbrough, 02:18, 6 September 2015 (UTC).

Conflict-of-interest_editing_on_Wikipedia#Orangemoody

• We assign the crimes of blackmail and extortion to a specific person, without RS.
• We also repeat the word "blackmail" that is derived from an article informed only by what "we" i.e. unnamed Wikipedia editors, and possibly unnamed WMF staff or board members told them. It's clear that the Independent and most if not all of the other coverage has done little or no fact checking, their article revels a substantial lack of knowledge about how Wikipedia works, and should be treated with extreme caution, though it could be used carefully.
• The distinction between a "scam", "extortion", a "shakedown" and "blackmail" is not, as has been remarked "a lexical choice". We need to use these terms with care.

All the best: Rich  Farmbrough, 04:54, 7 September 2015 (UTC).

We have a new editor, BirthNamesAreGarbage ( talk · contribs), whose user name and edits so far suggest that they have a mission. -- Redrose64 ( talk) 10:01, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

I gave the user a level 2 warning. I suggest that if they continue to remove birth names that they fast-tracked for a block. - Mr X 14:28, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

See FuckYourBirthNameBullshit ( talk · contribs) -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 14:31, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Obviously disruptive, and I see someone has already reported it to WP:UAA. The other user name is a borderline case, I suppose. - Mr X 14:34, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

This user appears to be abusively using socks to carry out these WP:POINTY edits. Here is another account: DeletingDeadNamesForWhatAreUnequivocallyPoliticalReasons ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) Edgeweyes ( talk) 20:54, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Indef'ed that third one and also the first. Would have blocked "just one account" for a short time, or maybe even just a strong warning, but combined with socking and obvious intent by username, WP:NOTHERE. Anyone know the genesis of this? DMacks ( talk) 21:01, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Here is one more: TakingDownDeadNamesForWhatAreUnequivocallyPoliticalReasons ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log). I have started a SPI report at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/BirthNamesAreGarbage. ( talk) 20:54, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

One relates note another user (who I don't believe is connected to the socks above) removed the birth name from Rose Venkatesan citing that they were removin a non famous name per MOS:IDENTITY. It's that an accurate assessment since unless I missed something I did not see anything in that section against mentioning birth names at all unless famous.-- 65.94.253.185 ( talk) 05:45, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

I'm probably the user referred to as the 'another user'. I'm not related to the sockpuppet owner, and don't know anything about them. I'd suggest that there are two issues here - dealing with a sockpuppeteer, which is straightforward, and dealing with editors putting in dead names for transsexual people, a common enough way of harassing us. So the other task here is to work towards a policy that restricts the practice. Anniepoo ( talk) 23:15, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Just it be clear If I was being misinterpreted I did not believe that you were related to the sock otherwise I would have not stated that I did not believe that you were related.-- 65.94.253.185 ( talk) 00:00, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Hello

My understanding is WIKI is all about presenting facts right? AS a long time user I rely on the honesty of those inputting to the page.

I seem to be bullied out by more "experienced" editors.

My issue is this. Zoie Palmer in no legal way etc is a parent to her partner's child. He has a mother and father. She is not an adoptive mother, step mother etc... This is legal FACT. She may be awesome motherly figure etc but he is not her son. I implore you to show me tertiary evidence that he is her child.

Anyways your "editors" who have soo much experience etc have resorted to name calling (I screenshotted it(. The point is what I am saying is truthful.

Again show me tertiary evidence that it's not true what I said. I know it cannot be disproved as what I am saying is true. What I am saying is objective not subjective.

So please hold accountable those that resort to name calling and prevent the same from being repeated.

It's also in poor taste to publish a minors name.... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Correctfact ( talk • contribs) 12:26, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

You need to provide sources to back up your claim rather than removing information without any indication as to why. Your snide edit comment aimed towards User:AussieLegend wasn't needed either. -- Skamecrazy123 ( talk) 12:30, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

I am a little stunned about the lack of quality editors here.... and amused at you warning her I have reported this... Which part was snide by the way? And once again you are wrong... YOU HAVE TO put truthful facts on WIKI. I don't have to disprove lies? I cannot provide evidence she is the parent BECAUSE she isn't. I am not sure how much clearer you need it explained. The lack of reasonableness here drops Wiki into the gutter. I offered up early on find a label that fits, but her son, does not fit. The fact you can't step back and go well that actually is correct she is not his mother defies logic. Here you go. That kid has a mother and father, neither of which are Zoie. Zoie is not married to Alex so she isn't the step mother. I assume you know Alex was previously married and the son is a product of that marriage? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Correctfact ( talk • contribs) 12:43, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

And the sources which back up what you say are.... where? -- Skamecrazy123 ( talk) 12:45, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Some background: Correctfact has been edit-warring at Zoie Palmer, persistently removing sourced content despite being reverted by more than one editor. Eventually Bearcat fully protected the article and warned Correctfact that he would be blocked if he persisted. I left a message on his talk page suggesting he discuss the matter at the article's talk page. His response was to remove the content again and leave a message on the article's talk page, not to discuss. He has now been reported to WP:AIV and is one edit away from breaching 3RR. --12:56, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I took a look at the relevant messages on your talk page. -- Skamecrazy123 ( talk) 13:00, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Was that before or after you called me a jerk? You clearly ignored earlier (and missed stating it for your own benefit) where I stated I had not seen the messages. I know the parties involved first hand, I recall the day he was born. Zoie who? If you are so invested in a lie... ask her if what I a saying is correct. I am fine to accept an appropriate label, but not this. The problem with well known people in this situation is those that don't have a voice (ie the other parent) don't get a say into the domain their kid gets thrown into.

I would hope those that print lies get sued... You are basically claiming the father doesn't exist and someone else is his son's parent. You have printed it, it is false and harms his reputation.

Reported at ANI per WP:NLT -- Skamecrazy123 ( talk) 13:14, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Apologies it would appear it was someone else who does the name calling...

The same vandal, User:Correctfact, vandalized the article again with the same edits. User:Bearcat has put an Admin-only protection level on it. This will not stop User:Correctfact from wanting to distort biographical information about Zoie Palmer and he will return to do it all over again when the protection expires. What has really happened now, however, is that every editor has been punished for the actions of one jerk. Pyxis Solitary (talk) 09:28, 4 September 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Correctfact ( talk • contribs)

PS: I did not say I was suing.. I said I hope the other person does. You may want to look up the definition of what constitutes a threat #brightspark. If what you say is true... then there would be nothing to worry about in regards to your actions would there? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Correctfact ( talk • contribs) 13:22, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Bring it up at the ANI page. It's not relevant here. -- Skamecrazy123 ( talk) 13:35, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Reality check

The sources for this issue suck. One is "Hello". I checked "Gay Star News", [19]. It clearly says that the son Luca is from a previous relationship. So if there's another kid involved, it's not at all obvious that it's Zoie's. I'm removing the "son" claim until this is sorted out properly. Nomoskedasticity ( talk) 21:11, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

There are a class of articles related to the apparently deliberate deaths of people where the apparent culprit fled across an international border to China. These include Amanda Zhao, Murder of Shao Tong, Trial of Xiao Zhen and Zhang Hongjie. One of them ( Trial of Xiao Zhen) is largely my work, but I now see that other editors have taken very different approaches to the articles. Could I get someone to take a look and give me some feedback on the relative approaches? Does anyone know of similar articles that have got to GA status I can crib from? Stuartyeates ( talk) 09:49, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

The article says she has 30 children. Is this true? No other web source says so. Thank you. Anne C. Thomas — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.104.136.224 ( talk) 11:29, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Seems unlikely, and unsourced. Removed, together with some other minor vandalism by the same IP. Thanks for pointing this out. Eagleash ( talk) 11:35, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Richard Sherman (American football) (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Someone edited the page for Richard Sherman, the All-Pro cornerback for the Seattle Seahawks, to say that he now plays for the Green Bay Packers, even though no such news of this player leaving the Seahawks can be found anywhere. I live in Wisconsin and am surrounded by dipshit insane Packers fans. I have since edited the page back to full accuracy, but please ensure no more idiots in the state of Wisconsin, or anywhere else for that matter, make asinine other claims like this about a living NFL player in order to make their team look better. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.240.43.26 ( talk) 13:08, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Standard vandalism, reverted fairly quickly after being added. That user vandalized another article as well which was corrected. Thanks for noticing this, OP and quickly correcting it. Ravensfire ( talk) 15:01, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

I came across the biography of a writer and former professor Frank Ching from a page awaiting review, /info/en/?search=Draft:Analytical_drawing. Despite a long book list the article has no references. The only biographical information I could find on the web either came from his social media or the brief mention at http://www.amazon.com/Francis-D.K.-Ching/e/B001H6NK1W. I'd assume they must exist, but I was unable to find reliable secondary sources. Would it be possible for someone more experienced to have a go at it? Please always ping @ Ellin Beltz ( talk) 15:01, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

The personal life section is often edited and filled with lies to discredit Mr. Fassbender and his work. The sources of these lies are unreliable gossip articles so I deleted all the lies about his personal life, leaving the true facts. I hope you will do something about that next time it happens because it is unacceptable. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.77.169.227 ( talk) 11:51, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

• Not all of the information was content that would discredit him. The information of an ex-girlfriend petitioning for a restraining order could fall under that, but the information about his ex-girlfriends wouldn't really be seen as all that harmful so I wouldn't classify that as lies unless you can show articles saying that he wasn't in a relationship with them. However that said, there's no real reason to include either of those things in his articles, since we only include legal issues that have gone through court or have least been covered by an exhaustive amount of sourcing. To an extent this would also extend to his girlfriends since Wikipedia will typically only cover relationships that have lasted over a period of years or were exceedingly notable news-wise, partially because the average person will go through a good number of significant others to where it'd be a bit too WP:INDISCRIMINATE for the site's purposes. If you see this happening again, feel free to remove the data as you have here or let us know about it. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 12:16, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
  • I really don't think there's a problem with including information on his relationships as long as it's referenced and unbiased. -- Necrothesp ( talk) 14:33, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Benjamin F. Strickland II (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Not only this article, but Draft:London Eugene Livingston Steverson, too ( Draft:London Eugene Livingston Steverson ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)). The article on Strickland showed up in draftspace, was deleted, then recreated in draftspace and is now in article space. The article on Steverson showed up at around this same time also. Both articles read as if someone is using Wikipedia as a venue to bring some unimportant scandal in the U.S. Coast Guard to the world's attention. I also notice that these are AFC submissions. My complaints about AFC acting as an island unto itself and dumping questionable content on the encyclopedia are numerous, but I'd rather save that argument for another time. RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 21:43, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Is there something specific that you think violates WP:BLP that you're not able to fix with normal editing? I'm not sure I understand the issue.- Mr X 03:26, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

I get the impression that both articles were written to draw attention to a sexual assault which occurred on a Coast Guard cutter, and possibly a coverup of same. That's an appropriate use of a BLP article? RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 03:31, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

OK, I think I see the issue now. The sexual assault content (which is not neutrally written) is sourced to militarycorruption.com, which is not a reliable source. The content should be promptly removed, unless much better sources are added to the article.- Mr X 04:18, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

@ RadioKAOS: I have taken care of the BLP policy violation in the Strickland bio. If you see other similar violations, including in draft space, you should remove them.- Mr X 13:06, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Latest edit of Andy Crane ( /info/en/?search=Andy_Crane) mentions a meeting with a Dan Binks in Tipton. I can't find any information backing this up. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.221.21.200 ( talk) 09:48, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Nope. Unsourced, and opinionated. Possibly vandalism, since it gives no indication of who 'Dan Binks' is (presumably not the U.S. racing driver). I've removed it. AndyTheGrump ( talk) 10:00, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Please watchlist User talk:Everettstern and Everett Stern (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views). Thanks. Guy ( Help!) 13:37, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Now at AE
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
See: WP:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement#PraetorianFury Kim Davis trivially falls under WP:BIO1E, but a handful of editors are maintaining the article as if she's notable for something else. I think the goal for including all the extraneous information is to attack her character and undermine her position. The article currently reads as if she had a WP:BLP before the last couple weeks, but it was created on September 1st, in response to her actions protesting the Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage. The article currently has sources that do not mention the recent controversy at all, and that seems to be clear WP:OR, as editors are deciding which scraps of information dug up from 2011 or before to include in the article, rather than allowing the sources relating to the current event to decide what information needs to be included. Aside from this, the excessive detail into her election, including a colored table and 3 sections completely unrelated to the controversy seem trivially inappropriate and do not conform to the standards set by other articles about people notable only for one event. Furthermore, the section on her personal life is listed out of chronological order, in order to make her seem more like a hypocrite. If editors could please take a read and contribute to the discussing there or here, it would be most appreciated. PraetorianFury ( talk) 20:29, 8 September 2015 (UTC) I'm sorry, but first you claim that BIO1E applies and then you say there are sources not related to the controversy. How can both be true? In fact, Kim Davis is actually notable for several events, each documented in the BLP: Running for political office Winning an election Unlawfully refusing to issue marriage licenses to Same-sex couples in defiance of a landmark US Supreme court ruling Petitioning the US Supreme Court Going to jail for contempt of court Being released from jail - Mr X 21:13, 8 September 2015 (UTC) I'll just have a look at Category:County clerks and see all the other articles we have on people who have run for that office and achieved it. Oh. So: there's only one event: the refusal to issue marriage licenses. When someone's prosecuted for DUI we don't say they are notable for passing a driving test, buying a car, driving under the influence, being arrested, being prosecuted, being convicted, being jailed and being released. Guy ( Help!) 22:08, 8 September 2015 (UTC) Comment - as a human being, I think Kim Davis is an odious person, and I have no problem with having another article out there that exposes her hypocrisy. However, as a Wikipedian taking an objective long-term view of her notability, I can reach no other conclusion than WP:BIO1E saying she should not have an article at all. Mr. X's first two arguments in favor of her notability fail since her position is a county one, not "international, national or sub-national (statewide/provincewide), and all his subsequent ones are basically the same event. I think that consensus, which has been wrong on articles in the past (and thus subsequently reversed), is wrong again in this case. I think that too many people were caught up in the moment, in the current sensationalism of this case, when writing the article to begin with, and when replying to the AfD on it. There has been a lot of irrational incivility from people in favor of keeping the article, directed at people who dare raise even the most gently stated concerns about the validity of the article, BullRangifer's attacks on me being an example. That alone raises serious WP:NPOV concerns. It also concerns me that the AfD discussion lasted less than 24 hours instead of the usual 7 days. I get SNOWBALL and all, but consensus is not supposed to be votes, and there were enough people who spoke up that had legitimate concerns, even if they were in the minority, and I don't think those concerns were adequately addressed. Indeed, considering this is such a timely and sensational story that is provoking a lot of feelings one way or another, I think allowing the AfD to run the full 7 days would have allowed for not only less rushed and more measured consideration by the community, but also allowed more people to get involved. I for one did not know about the AfD, did not know Kim Davis even had an article, until after the AfD was closed, and I'll bet I was not the only one. I think the best thing that could come out of this RfC would be to reopen the AfD and allow it to run the full 7 days. But failing that, if the article is to stand, then I disagree with Praetorian's stance on the content in the article. If we are going to have an article on Davis herself (no matter how misguided it is to have one), there is no reason that we should not include all information on her from reliable sources. WP:BIO1E only governs whether we should have an article on someone or not, it does not govern the content of that article, so it does not say that we can only include information relevant to the single event for which that person is notable. I also do not see any original research in the article. Synthesis might be closer to what Praetorian is alleging here, but adding soured biographical details that don't relate to the controversy for which she is know does not constitute synthesis, either, the information is entirely appropriate. Mmyers1976 ( talk) 21:46, 8 September 2015 (UTC) I agree, this should be an article on the case, not the person. Wikipedia is not a tabloid. Guy ( Help!) 22:05, 8 September 2015 (UTC) I don't agree, and I think your above analogy is off, but I'm certainly not standing in the way of someone starting a move request discussion. Per WP:BIO1E, "if media coverage of both the event and the individual's role grow larger, separate articles may become justified". I believe that is the current state, others may disagree, but let's at least allow for the possibility that it's open to interpretation. - Mr X 22:18, 8 September 2015 (UTC) I also concur that this should be an article about the case, not the person. Does anyone have any suggested titles for the new article? Perhaps Rowan County, Kentucky marriage license conflict? -- The Anome ( talk) 22:11, 8 September 2015 (UTC) This is already under discussion on the article talk page? - Mr X 22:19, 8 September 2015 (UTC) As usual, the place to deal with this is at the article's talk page. This thread is forum shopping (first at WP:NOR/N) by a drive-by edit warrior who hadn't contributed before, and who hadn't used the talk page. They immediately and single handedly deleted large amounts of content. When editors reverted them, they repeated the disputed action (which is the first shot in an edit war). This appears to be an attempt at takeover/ownership, ignoring the protests of other editors and not recognizing that some of their concerns were being discussed. We are working on this and determining which direction to take the article. Those who are editing know the sources best, and that informs their decisions. We welcome collaboration, but not a battlefield mentality which dictatorially tries to tell everyone else that they know better. Let them contribute and civilly convince others. This antagonistic approach won't work. At Wikipedia, no matter how right one may be, one must collaborate. Edit warriors get blocked, and their rightness is not a factor in the decision. Can we hat this thread now? It's just a distraction from the work at hand on the talk page. There are no BLP violations in the article. Any negative information is properly sourced, and, when in doubt, we can deal with any problems there. -- BullRangifer ( talk) 04:52, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Irvin Mayfield (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Irvin_Mayfield&diff=679487364&oldid=679194124

The information that keeps getting added back is out of date, defamatory and slanderous. Part of the information is unfounded and unsubstantiated and the rest is based on out of date information. They are citing news articles from May 2015. The article below that I have cited is from June 2015 and refutes the inflammatory information the user keeps posting.

^[1]

It's out now. The next time this content is added, it should be removed and a discussion should be started on the talk page. It's likely that the users adding the content do not realize that Mayfield was cleared of any wrongdoing.- Mr X 12:56, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Pawel Lewicki page is for a living person and it appears to have inappropriate material in the PERSONAL section near the end.

I am an infrequent and novice wikipedia editor, so I don't know how to respond, nor do I want to get pulled into a conflict.

I removed the inappropriate material, but it was put back up right away. I also received a personal email with a link that had a lot of foul language and acquisitions.

This seems like a personal dispute, and is not appropriate for wikipedia. Judging by the names of the people cc'ed in the email I received, this might be an intra-family argument.

So I want to bring this to the attention of more experienced wikipedia editors who know how to handle such conflicts on living person wikipedia pages. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Krexer ( talk • contribs) 20:11, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

You were right to revert that content and it has been removed. You did the correct thing in reporting this instance to the BLP noticeboard because now more people will be watching this article in case it occurs again. It does seem like the editor who reverted you has some personal stake in the content they contributed and it was inappropriate for a Wikipedia article. Thank you, Krexer, for drawing some attention to this problem. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 23:34, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

@ Liz: This might be one for ANI, but I have an additional concern regarding a violation of WP:UPNOT in that it appears as though the relative has moved/added material regarding the personal dispute to his user page. - Location ( talk) 12:44, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

I think some BLP experts should give this article a look. In brief, it's about a forensic scientist who gained notability when her conclusions and testimony, which supported criminal convictions, were found to be inaccurate in several cases. All the material in the current article is negative, but it's also well-supported by the Chicago Tribune, a solidly reliable source. WP:ATTACK and WP:1E aren't clear enough about this situation to set my mind at ease. FourViolas ( talk) 04:03, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

What the hell? The section about her career starts out "In 1986, Fish stated that there were no semen stains available in the case...". I'm not sure she's even notable, but the article definitely needs to be fixed.- Mr X 13:00, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Nominated for deletion here: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Pamela Fish. - Mr X 13:56, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Tomas N'evergreen (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

It seems surprising that this article has been in such a badly-written, promotional state for as long as it has. I know this is me being a WikiImp rather than just fixing it, but I feel like the article could use a complete rewrite.

To be specific, Ugle82 ( talk · contribs) has done the majority of that writing, and appears to be exclusively here to promote the subject. — 烏Γ ^{( kaw)}, 04:52, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Stubbed it. Ugle82 hasn't edited since 2013 but I guess might keep an eye on it. He appears to be notable so the article can be expanded with sources. Doug Weller ( talk) 08:32, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Pete Kelly (Alaska politician) (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

First off, I've been bothered by the possible abuse of "Alaska politician" as a disambiguator. The prevalence of such lately suggests that we're trying to ghettoize people because they happen to be politicians in Alaska. In this case, Snappy ( talk · contribs) moved the article in November 2014 from Pete Kelly (politician) to the current title with the rationale that he's not the only politician named Pete Kelly, yet the former title was left as a redirect to the article and not retargeted to a dab page or to another article.

Now to the main purpose of this post: there has been a slow-motion edit war occurring here for about two or three weeks, where 66.223.168.231 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS) has added a paragraph about a recent criminal conviction of Kelly's son to this article at least a half-dozen times. The first time, the edit was sourced to an article appearing in the Alaska Dispatch News in June (coincidentally, Kelly's son shares a name with a female reporter for that newspaper), but the ref was formatted to instead link readers to Click Bishop's Project Vote Smart profile. I haven't checked to see whether that was the case each time. These edits have been repeatedly reverted by Jkshilling ( talk · contribs) and Independence21 ( talk · contribs), both of whom have edited almost exclusively on the topic of Republican state legislators in Alaska. It's been really funny watching these editors carry on as if no one else is watching. Well, if I have to bring this to the community's attention, then effectively speaking, no one is watching, but anyway... RadioKAOS / Talk to me, Billy / Transmissions 21:35, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

For the "first off" - Pete Kelly (politician) does redirect to the disambiguation page, which lists at least three politicians and a political consultant. So (Alaska politician) seems a fine disambiguator. If you have a better idea that won't be confused with any of those three others, please do say. But the other issue I do think needs to go. The son is 30 years old, news about him is not news about Pete Kelly. I note there is no discussion on the article talk page, I'll start it, and will delete the section. -- GRuban ( talk) 14:17, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

I've just removed an nasty unsourced accusation from this article. I don't have time to look for sources, or fix the other problems with the article. Would someone at this board be able clean this mess up? CWC 04:44, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

In the article more than a year. I revdeled it, but the article still needs basic clean up. Xymmax ^{So let it be written} _{So let it be done} 10:40, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

/info/en/?search=Michael_Kempner

Public Relations agency Owner Michael Kempner is best known for political fundraising, and most recently serving as the employer of Anthony Weiner. His page seems rather typical of public relations professionals in that it is very self serving. Would appreciate commentary to ensure accuracy of erstwhile edits pursued. Richard Thoma ( talk) 11:28, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

And while am at it one may wonder if his PR company should be merged into his personal biography. /info/en/?search=MWW_(company) Richard Thoma ( talk) 11:29, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

Ernest W. Adams (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

This article is being targeted by an offsite forum with a critical opinion of the subject of the article, who is arguing with IP editors on the talk page. Gamaliel ( talk) 13:32, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

Er, unless we are looking at different articles, there is nothing on the talk page since November 2013... I know a 3 looks like a 5 :) but it is hardly pressing. Even the article edits are stale. Is it more gamergate business? Only in death does duty end ( talk) 13:41, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

@ Only in death: Yes. It's popped up recently. Looks nothings come of it yet, and hopefully nothing will. — Strongjam ( talk) 13:45, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

Blah. Adams has strong opinions (on a wide array of things) which isnt necessarily bad. But if he gets himself involved in the gamergate rubbish he is less intelligent than he is reputed to be. There is a reason most people actively working in the professional games industry have stayed far aware from the conflict between the press, some independants and the small loud minority of the games-playing public which is now labelled 'gamergate'. Its toxic. Only in death does duty end ( talk) 13:52, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

As an aside, I have watchlisted it so I will keep an eye on it. Any obvious-coatracking/negative POV crap will show up pretty fast. Adams is a design consultant with very little recent development footprint, this works in his favour because there is little negative that can be spun out to smear him. He isnt 'news' in the way some developers opinions would be so I doubt it will get any real traction. Only in death does duty end ( talk) 13:56, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

Karlie Kloss (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

No citation for: Kloss is Taylor Swift's girlfriend, and appeared in the singer's music video for the single " Bad Blood" in May 2015. She is also the godmother of model Jourdan Dunn's son. She has been dating Taylor Swift since 2013.

• I deleted all of this. Some of it might be true, but some of it definitely isn't, and the rest needs a source. Townlake ( talk) 14:47, 11 September 2015 (UTC) (Edit: Someone else actually beat me to it... article seems to be attracting a lot of vandalism at this moment. Townlake ( talk) 14:49, 11 September 2015 (UTC))
  • I think me, you and Ravensfire all hit it at the same time. It was originally a small paragraph about appearing in a Taylor Swift video and dating someone else (her personal relationship to him was actually sourced) not looked closely. Only in death does duty end ( talk) 14:52, 11 September 2015 (UTC)
  • Also the same editor (and some IP's which I suspect are the same person) has been active at Calvin Harris. Low level flyby vandalism from the content. Only in death does duty end ( talk) 14:59, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

Better too many than not enough! And thanks for looking deeper and getting their other edits. Ravensfire ( talk) 15:07, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

Bobby Clampett I work with Bobby Clampett at Impact Zone Golf (his business, not mentioned in the Wikipedia article by the way)- and we want to get his page updated. The "controversy" section is inaccurate- he was never removed from air. In fact, it was such a small issue, it hardly warrants a "controversy" section! Also, we would like to update his Champions Tour stats. It would be good for the article to make mention of his daughter Katelynn Clampett who is a singer/songwriter out of Nashville. It could also be mentioned that people are always asking Bobby if he is a Beverly Hillbilly, a reference to the hit 60’s series, the Beverly Hillbillies. Bobby’s dad’s first cousin was Bob Clampett /info/en/?search=Bob_Clampett And there is a connection between the Clampett name and the Beverly Hillbillies after all. Bob Clampett and Paul Henning, the producer and creator of the Beverly Hillbillies were good friends. https://beanyandcecil.com/the-beverly-hillbobbies/

How can we go about making these changes happen?

Thank you! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Deshadiane ( talk • contribs) 16:10, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

I have removed the Controversy section as it seems a very minor incident of no significance in his life or career, and therefore falls under Wikipedia:UNDUE. If someone disagrees with me, probably we shall have a discussion on the article talk page at Talk:Bobby Clampett.

For the items you want added, you should identify independent reliable sources that mention these items, and places these here or on the article talk page. Arthur goes shopping ( talk) 16:33, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

The current link in ref. [4]: http://www.iam.conicet.gov.ar/cms/?q=en/node/185 is no longer active.

The official site for Ariel Fernandez has migrated to: http://www.conicet.gov.ar/new_scp/detalle.php?keywords=&id=33676&datos_academicos=yes

Please replace link accordingly.

AF has published a second book (not mentioned) "Bimolecular Interfaces", Springer, 2015, ISBN  9783319168494 The publisher link is https://www.springer.com/la/book/9783319168494

201.219.85.151 ( talk) 20:21, 11 September 2015 (UTC)Argentine Natl. Research Council

Please come to the RFC at Talk:Peter_Dinklage#RFC_on_the_inclusion_of_his_dwarfism_in_the_lead if it interests you to do so. -- Jayron 32 03:03, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

Can editors please look at this article? I've semi-protected following a OTRS-volunteer request but I think the bio could use a severe trim. -- NeilN ^{talk to me} 01:05, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

I removed some but it still needs a lot more. -- Malerooster ( talk) 13:18, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

The marital status of Vincent D'Onofrio and Greta Scacchi has come into question again. One interview with Scacchi says she has never been married. Various other reliable sources say they have. Some claiming to be D'Onofrio's current wife is trying to make the changes. The relevant discussions are on the respective article pages. I'd appreciate others getting involved so maybe this can be resolved one way or the other. Thanks. --‖ Ebyabe ^talk - Inspector General ‖ 06:02, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

I think there's a difference between someone saying "I was never married" and a source claiming that they were in passing when talking about something else. It's highly unlikely that the "reliable sources" looked at a marriage license, or anything else which we have a reason to trust more than the one person who should know saying the opposite. This is especially so since the "reliable sources" aren't biographies that say they were married on so-and-so date at so-and-so place--rather they mention the marriage in passing when talking about something else. Use of reliable sources is always subject to common sense. Ken Arromdee ( talk) 21:24, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

[20] There is an RFC on the Shaun King page regarding the prominence we are giving of the recent Breitbart generated scandal. Input would be appreciated. Artw ( talk) 22:03, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

Hi, I wish to have the following page about myself deleted as it violates my privacy. Please help & keep up the excellent work Wiki team. Northie (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Kind regards, Aaron Lee North.

OP has sent it to AfD: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Northie.-- ukexpat ( talk) 13:25, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

I nuked it. It woudl not stand a chance at AfD and we do not need the unedifying spectacle of people speculating as to provenance, identity of the OP and so on. The sourcing fell well short of WP:BAND/ WP:GNG. Guy ( Help!) 15:18, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

Shannon Lamb (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Recently created article that seems to have lots of problems and needs some serious attention. I came across this from this Teahouse question. It seems that WP:BLP1E and WP:BLPCRIME come into play here, but not sure how to best proceed. - Marchjuly ( talk) 05:08, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

This should be a redirect to the incident's article until such time that the subject of the article attains some notability independent of the actual crime. GraniteSand ( talk) 06:17, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

That seems appropriate, but not sure if such an article even exists yet. - Marchjuly ( talk) 06:27, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

I also picked this up at the Teahouse, and have done some tidying of the article. It seems that Lamb is no longer alive, but thoughts on the appropriateness of the article would still be helpful. Cordless Larry ( talk) 08:27, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

• This is definitely a scenario on the event would be more warranted than an article on the individual. However I'm not entirely sure if this would pass WP:N/CA in the long run. It's received coverage, but all things considered it's fairly light. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 10:41, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

The article on Terry Ryan, GM of the Minnesota Twins, skips over the fact that Ryan let David Ortiz go and got NOTHING (0) in return for him when he was cut in 2002. In fact, the article states that

"Ortiz would not show MVP-caliber numbers until he left the Twins a few years later. Similarly, in August 1997, Ryan unloaded another aging veteran for a future All-Star..."

This is an outrage. Ortiz was a rising star in 2002, and two days ago (September 12) he hit his 500th major league homerun.

If you are the first draft of history, you're going to do better than this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mwasescha ( talk • contribs) 08:03, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

• A quick look at the article shows that it does need to be re-written. The entire administrative career section at Terry Ryan (baseball) is pretty bad, as it comes across strongly like it was written as a news article. It's certainly non-neutral. I'd do it, but I think that it'd be best for someone more familiar with baseball to do it. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 10:38, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

HI I am a close friend of the singer songwriter Nikola Bedingfield and it is her wish to be named in Wikipedia as Nikola Bedingfield and not Nikola Rachelle. The reason for this being that Nikola Bedingfield is her artist name. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.185.209.145 ( talk) 10:03, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

I have moved the article to Nikola Rachelle Bedingfield, not because that's her "wish" but because the preponderance of the sources seem to support that as her WP:COMMONNAME.-- ukexpat ( talk) 13:20, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

This seems pretty much like a fan written or self-written article. There is an award, but actually he has won one, an been nominated for 2 others. Also see for the external links. Too much of external from sites that is not proofed.

• I've removed the EL spam. I'll try to take a look at the article later to rephrase things. It's slightly spammy. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 10:35, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

Fellow Wikipedians, I would appreciate another opinion at Rosin Jolly. A number of IP editors have added content regarding controversy & criticism of the subject, which does not, as far as I can see, appear to be either neutrally worded or supported by the sources. There is probably something which can be reliably sourced, but not the gossipy language which has been added.
Information is likely currently removed, so it may be necessary to review the page history. I am bringing this here for another point of view, which is preferable to a pattern of insertion & redaction. Many thanks for your time. - Ryk72 ^'c.s.n.s.' 12:15, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

Dennis Toeppen (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Please review the section Dennis_Toeppen#Arrest. Its details concern the arrest of a non-famous person (for whom I can't even find evidence of a prosecution, let alone the preferred/required conviction before inclusion). The simple policy on notability requires that any event be more than simply newsworthy (which the arrest clearly was, given two good secondary sources including the Chicago Tribune). I and others have contended in Talk:Dennis_Toeppen#Arrest that including the arrest is premature before conviction and seems to violate WP:BLPCRIME and the WP:BLP#Presumption_in_favor_of_privacy. And that calling it out in its own section seems particularly reckless. There's a bit of an IP/Sock Puppet/COI/Paid Editing mess that I can't quite figure out among some of the available editors and I'd rather not pick an edit fight, but I'd hope they'd respect a specialist from this noticeboard. Please take a look. KevinCuddeback ( talk) 17:15, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

Stephan_Dahl seems like a vanity page created by author — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tommacao ( talk • contribs) 17:41, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

This article in my view conforms to the requirements for inclusion in wikipedia, yet it is constantly being challenged due to insufficient citation. I have gone to a great deal of trouble to make sure that information is correct and that it conforms to the requirements. I can also point to numerous other articles which have little or now referenced citations and yet are not given the level of criticism this article receives. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tombeverage ( talk • contribs) 01:26, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

• I cannot comment as to the outcome of the ongoing deletion discussion, but the subject seems to be non-notable. There are currently no sources discussing him in detail, and he doesn't fulfill any criteria at WP:NAUTHOR. Best, FoCuS contribs; talk to me! 01:00, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

• "information is correct" Nobody is doubting that.

"conforms to the requirements" That is the bone of contention. Neither you nor anyone else has produced evidence that any of the criteria for WP:NACTOR is satisfied. If he collaborated in notable production, please state which one. If he has a large following, which reliable source says so? If he made a "unique, prolific or innovative contribution" to acting or literature, which one?

"I can also point to numerous other articles which have little or now referenced citations" Please do. As I pointed out earlier, WP:WIP. 85.178.206.141 ( talk) 12:21, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

• Juan Carlos del Valle (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

So much unsourced and glowingly interpretative content--this would be unacceptable if written about an artist dead for four hundred years, and is even worse in a BLP, with the implicit possibility that conflict of interest could be part of the problem. One can't turn sideways at Wikipedia without bumping into promotionalism. Anyway, now that that's out of my system, more eyes and assistance will be much appreciated. 2601:188:0:ABE6:5DC5:559E:75C4:C241 ( talk) 02:31, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

http://psimg.jstor.org/fsi/img/pdf/t0/10.5555/al.sff.document.nuun1991_11_final.pdf

In 1990 British Grandmaster James Plaskett broke the Apartheid ban.

(note for editors ... nearly all references to this have been purged from google... this is quite a significant event (negative) in his career. It should be included for balance IMO). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.171.128.167 ( talk) 12:57, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

Actually, not. Wikipedia likes to have reliable secondary sources making specific claims of fact - and an en passant mention in a list does not quite qualify to take this pawn. Collect ( talk) 13:26, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

Michael Derrick Hudson (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

The article as it reads now looks like it is almost the epitome of a BLP violation; basically, it looks like a hit-piece and contains a great deal of opinion Duedemagistris ( talk) 00:25, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

• Duedemagistris does not provide specific examples of any violations in his hyperbolic criticism (really, the "epitome of a BLP violation"...there are far more egregious BLP cases on Wikipedia, this isn't one. A user with 20 edits probably doesn't know what a real BLP violation is.), and I have explained my aims in writing the section as well an analyzed why the article is unbiased and balanced without undue weight in any direction on the talk page of the article. JackTheVicar ( talk) 01:21, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

Not the "epitome" but certainly in need of pruning to be sure. Collect ( talk) 13:19, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

Duuh. I meant to post this in Jimbo's page, not here, since it's from a couple of paragraphs up on here! I don't know how to hide posts, could someone please hide this one? Ken Arromdee ( talk) 20:15, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

Talk:Greta_Scacchi

Summary. Person claims to have never been married. Wikipedia editors refuse to believe her and instead go to the "reliable sources". Also, the person talking about her own marriage has a conflict of interest. It's hard to figure out exactly what these sources are but checking the related talk pages suggests that these are references made in passing of the "her and her husband are doing this" type that are easily explainable by the "reliable source" not bothering to research things they say in passing. Ken Arromdee ( talk) 21:14, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

• I have to concur with the arguments on the talk page. Because a marriage is referred to repeatedly in various RS, we need to have a little more confirmation than a brief mention in a paper and a Tweet that does not mention the specific changes aren't entirely enough. I've sent D'Onofrio a tweet asking him to send a ticket through OTRS about this. It's a little backwards, but necessary. It'd be a lot easier too if this were to get some news coverage since filing an OTRS ticket may not be enough for everyone. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 09:33, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

The page describes a backup actress (extra) and has attracted attention from numerous people for being unambigious advertising. The individual herself may or may not be notable enough to warrant a page but at this point the talk page participants (except the creator) agree that the page should be destroyed until it can be rewritten in an encyclopedic fashion with well sourced and accurate statements.

Page has been deleted when I checked just now KevinCuddeback ( talk) 14:08, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

• Ariel Fernandez (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

We have a content-related issue regarding the Wikipedia Biography article Ariel Fernandez. There is a line repeatedly edited and updated that includes 4 papers by the subject that have been questioned by the journals where they are published. This, in our opinion, is not adding meaningful content to Wikipedia. The papers have not been retracted and no definite action has been taken. By the same token, we could include the papers that have been published and have not even been questioned (some 350 of them). We believe the sentence "Four of Fernandez's scientific papers..." should be removed. Please advice.

Argentine Natl. Research Council 201.219.85.151 ( talk) 15:19, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

Given that another one has been retracted, I think there are grounds for retaining the material in question. There's no problem with the sources. Nomoskedasticity ( talk) 15:32, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

The retraction was on the basis of duplicated material from another published paper by the same author, so it's a matter of proper copyright adherence and not flawed research. The other four papers have indeed been flagged by their respective publications as "expressions of concern", which is a preliminary notification to the reader that some of the research has been called into question, but the claims/rebuttals have not been fully vetted. On balance, I think it's important to mention that the four papers are in this state, but the article should add that Fernandez stands by the data, and perhaps should also give some sense of proportion with respect to Fernandez's overall body of work. Certainly it would be premature to insinuate that something is shady about Fernandez's research. alanyst 15:41, 16 September 2015 (UTC) On further thought, I am persuaded by Only in death and Gamaliel that it's undue at this point. alanyst 16:01, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

As far as I can see the sourcing that the papers have concerns is primary - the journals themselves. There isnt any third-party coverage as to why these papers having concerns/retracted is notable. Given his body of work, this would be undue without reliable secondary sourcing covering it. Summary: yes there have been concerns (reliably sourced to the journals themselves), but why is this not UNDUE given the lack of coverage by anyone else? Only in death does duty end ( talk) 15:47, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

Completely agree, if this is just a collection of links to primary sources it is undue. Is this normal number for someone in this field or is this extraordinary? Without secondary sources, we can't say and we shouldn't include it. Gamaliel ( talk) 15:58, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

Secondary sources on the topic include https://scienceretractions.wordpress.com/2015/06/28/on-promoting-an-open-research-culture-policy-forum-science-magazine/ http://retractionwatch.com/category/by-author/ariel-fernandez/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterlipson/2013/04/23/scientists-should-embrace-criticism/ http://popehat.com/2013/04/23/today-in-unusually-stupid-legal-threats-you-cant-write-about-me-because-of-your-blogs-name/ etc. Stuartyeates ( talk) 21:45, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

In order: 1st is a blog that contains a repost of a comment by Ariel Fernandez on published findings in general and the culture of blogs/hangers on and nothing specific regarding his circumstances, or in fact mentions his papers being marked of concern. 2nd blog - specialises in reporting on retractions of papers however was threatened legally by Fernandez - hardly impartial, it refers to the 4th source (also a blog) which is actually just reporting on the threat to the 2nd. 3rd is a forbes opinion piece - the strongest of the sources but Fernandez is mentioned in passing (along with another scientist) in order to support the authors statment that scientists dont like criticism. He is neither the subject of the piece and is only mentioned because he has threatened legal action in the past. Weak, weak, passing mention, weak. Only in death does duty end ( talk) 07:17, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

The weakness of the mention is irrelevant, since we're not considering notability. Source 2 is reliable on the subject of retractions and is backed up on both the retractions and the law suit by source 3. As to balance I suggest the sentence be shortened and moved to the end of the Fernandez has published more than 250 articles paragraph, where the 4 articles standard in direct contrast to the 250 articles. Maybe something like

Issues have been raised ^{[1] [2]} with four (less than 2%) of Fernandez's articles, including data and analysis, ^[3] which Fernandez has defended ^{[4] [5]} and apparent duplicate publication. ^[6]

Short, well sourced, and it makes it clear that that things are not clear-cut nor widespread in his publication history. Stuartyeates ( talk) 08:36, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

The fact that Fernandez has sued Retraction Watch doesn't impair the impartiality of Retraction Watch. If Retraction Watch had sued Fernandez, then sure -- but an action of Fernandez doesn't undermine the credibility of the entity he has acted against. Nomoskedasticity ( talk) 08:40, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

You have a source that says Fernandez has sued Retraction Watch, rather than just threatened? That would change quite a lot, if there was a reliable source for that. Currently neither the article nor my proposed text mention the threats, since the way I read it it appears to have been a heat-of-the-moment threaten. Stuartyeates ( talk) 10:36, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, my statement was inaccurate -- I was going by what was posted above, but it only says "threatened". Either way -- this doesn't make Retraction Watch "unimpartial". Nomoskedasticity ( talk) 11:16, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

Using publications to makes claims about the publication is clearly using them as a primary source, and catenating material found by using original research (that is - no secondary reliable source has made the claim) is a violation of WP:BLP and WP:OR. I further note the genetics journal states "Annual Reviews, with concurrence of the review’s author, has decided to withhold final publication pending satisfactory resolution." This seems a lot milder than the imputation given in Wikipedia's voice by a mile. Someone - remove this dross -- Wikipedia is all too often used to "get at" people disfavoured by editors, and we are required to be very careful in using Wikipedia's voice to make allegations. Collect ( talk) 12:09, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

Actually, the journals are the best source to use here in order to know exactly what the situation is -- and if you're going to choose to ignore the other sources that have been provided then there's probably no help for it. Nomoskedasticity ( talk) 12:17, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

I am "ignoring" nothing - all I do is state what Wikipedia policies and guidelines state in simple language. If you demur, then say so. Attacking me personally does not, alas, impress me a great deal. Collect ( talk) 13:48, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

My feeling after reading over all this is that mentioning these retractions is definitely extremely WP:UNDUE. Papers get retracted all the time. A retracted paper isn't automatically worth including in an article, and definitely not in a BLP. Retraction Watch, as I understand it, covers retractions indiscriminately, which makes it useless to establish significance. The only other secondary source mentions it only in passing, only to note that Fernandez disputed it on Twitter, and is merely using Fernandez to make a more general point -- they make no assertion that the retraction has any significance in terms of Fernandez' biography. My feeling is that to mention something like this in a WP:BLP, we need a source specifically saying that it matters; the sources provided here definitely do not provide enough to include it. This is especially true in the context of the article -- it reads like someone has collected every issue or concern that has ever been raised about Fernandez' papers to try and imply some impropriety or some other negative judgment of Fernandez. This is WP:SYNTH; we would need a source explicitly attesting to the relevance of these things as they relate to Fernandez. Without that, my reading is that the entire paragraph beginning with "Four of Fernandez's scientific papers..." must be removed. -- Aquillion ( talk) 19:15, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

• please be aware that the subject of this article has a history of SOCKing and edit warring to make the article (and several others) promotional. The IP is likely the article subject (again). I do not support removal of this content, btw. It was hashed over endlessly in the past. It is quite a high rate of questioning for any academic. Jytdog ( talk) 20:13, 17 September 2015 (UTC)
  • Do you have a source saying that Fernandez has a high rate of questioning for an academic in their field? Without a source stating that, implying it (as the sentence in question clearly does) is WP:SYNTH. The behavior of the subject on Wikipedia isn't relevant; what matters is our policy and the clear lack of any sources indicating that this list of retractions has any relevance... though I'll note that there was nothing on the talk page about this whatsoever before I mentioned it there earlier today. Are you saying that people have repeatedly revert-warred to keep negative material on an article that falls under WP:BLP without ever making any effort to discuss it until today? -- Aquillion ( talk) 20:22, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

Our article doesn't say it. It is what it is; we don't have to imply anything. That content is not coming out; there is zero justification to take it out. Ariel gets all roar-y and we may well have to have the article page protected again. with regard to past discussions, please look at the talk page archives Jytdog ( talk) 20:28, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

The justification for removing it is that it is solely sourced to primary sources. I would support inclusion if the material was written to reflect the secondary sources cited here. Gamaliel ( talk) 20:37, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

Thanks Gemaliel. I added the most recent RW source as a secondary source, next to the primary ones. They reinforce each other. Jytdog ( talk) 23:47, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

This seems pretty disproportionate. The three papers mentioned (out of 350 as per AF CV) have not even been retracted, only questioned. The Annual Review publication has been postponed. As for the secondary source, Retraction Watch is just a blog, anyone says whatever they want, no discrimination, no expertise there.

CONICET (Natl. Res. Council) 201.219.85.151 ( talk) 01:45, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

We are uncertain as to Wikipedia bylaws. For example, MIT professor Robert Weinberg has had 5 key papers retracted, including several in the highest impact journals, and not a word is mentioned in his Wikipedia BLP. On the other hand, Dr. Fernandez has papers simply questioned, not retracted, that are mentioned. In fact, we have not spotted any Wiki BLP for a scientist mentioning papers that have only been questioned. Please advice. Natl. Research Council, Argentina 201.219.85.151 ( talk) 23:01, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

First, there is nothing stopping you form adding them. Wikipedia is edited by its users and what goes in is largely dependent on who turns up on the day. Second, he did not, as far as I can tell, take the spectacularly ill-judged course of threatening to sue for simply mentioning the established facts. That seems to have garnered a lot more attention for these problems in the case of Fernandez. Guy ( Help!) 00:00, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

The IP appears to have a COI and appears to be following the COI guideline to not edit the article directly; it is highly likely that the IP is Fernandez; he comes around every year or so. Jytdog ( talk) 11:08, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

His online CV mentions a number of secondary sources which discuss his work. We should improve the sections which discuss his work if we are going to include stuff on the retractions, otherwise his article is just blah blah blah chemist retractions. Gamaliel ( talk) 17:18, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

An IP editor Special:Contributions/167.192.150.201 claiming to represent Curt Thompson has returned unsourced material to the article that I removed in terms of WP:BLP policy on sourcing. Roger (Dodger67) ( talk) 20:24, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

Carly Fiorina (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

FYI, there are two ongoing RfC's regarding this person, and they raise some BLP-related issues, especially as regards neutrality and fairness:

• "RfC: Should the lede say that Fiorina has never held public office?"
• "RfC: Should the lede say that Fiorina cut 30,000 jobs without mentioning that she also created tens of thousands of jobs"?

  Anythingyouwant ( talk) 21:26, 18 September 2015 (UTC)