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Here's from today's New York Times corrections: [1]
An article on Tuesday about the struggles of St. Louis in the wake of a population decline misspelled the surname of an assistant professor at Washington University who has been involved in municipal planning projects. He is John Hoal, not Haul.
This isn't the only NYT correction for the day, and every day has a list of corrections for previous issues. Nor is there any reason to believe that these are comprehensive. Anybody who has had any extensive dealing with journalists (10 interviews or more, which for example, I've had) knows that it's rare to see a major article about any subject you know about, which doesn't contain a major error which never goes corrected. This goes for major papers of major cities.
Now, this is a problem. Mr. Hoal may have got his name fixed, but nothing says the NYT had to correct it. If it hadn't, he'd have been stuck claiming his name his Hoal, not Haul, and in a dispute it would (in theory) have been his personal word as a Wiki editor (who has no way to verify his identity), against a well-sourced source like the New York Times. This happens ALL the time. It's not rare. It happens because editors trust overworked journalists who don't fact-check entire articles with article-subjects, and because there's very little penalty to newpapers which make mistakes. There really isn't. Much of what the NYT prints as errors, are designed to suggest to the pubic that they catch ALL errors at this level of detail. Wrong. They don't. Wikipedia policy doesn't really address this unbalance. Changes in this Wiki recently (See the change by WAS 450 recently in the history) suggests they don't intend to. WAS 450, I see you have little experience with being interviewed by the press. Write about what you know, please. Jimbo Wales, YOU have certainly had enough contact with the press to know I'm dead-on right about their general accuracy. Which doesn't somehow magically improve when it comes to information about living persons. So I'd like to have YOUR comment for the record on "newspaper vs subject" fact disputes in BLP issues. S B H arris 16:59, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
(deindent) I'm not talking about major changes, I'm talking about minor changes. Contrary to what WAS 4.250 says, we can change sourced material if the subject says "no, that's wrong", depending on the nature of the material. One Night In Hackney 303 21:38, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
+sj + 21:13, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
Jimbo suggested some possibilities for slight changes to BLP on the wikipedia mail list to help with semi-notable people cases and Brandt has come up with a variation that seems to deserve a community evaluation. Brandt's proposal is: "Any deletion request initiated by the subject of a biography would automatically require the AfD "keep" voters to specifically state why the subject is notable under that definition. The "delete" voters need not state anything at all. If the "keep" voters cannot make a reasonable statement, then it does not qualify as a legitimate vote to "keep" but instead is discarded as if that User had never bothered to vote at all." [2] This seems workable to me. I believe it would be an improvement to BLP. 4.250.201.139 11:33, 22 April 2007 (UTC) ( User talk:WAS 4.250)
Maybe something like this: BLP article deletion voting standards:
I suggested a few months ago that we should simply reverse the usual presumption in favor of retention when it comes to BLP deletions. Jimbo has expressed some support for this on the mailing list. It would be a very simple step forward. For example:
When the biography of a living person is submitted for deletion, whether at the request of the subject or not, the usual presumption in favor of retention is reversed. That is, if there is no consensus to keep the BLP in the opinion of the closing admin, the article will be deleted.
After deletion, any admin may choose to protect the page against recreation and to courtesy-blank the deletion debate. Any subsequent deletion review that fails may also be blanked as a courtesy.
Any thoughts? SlimVirgin (talk) 20:38, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
Here's Jimbo's post to the mailing list for those who haven't seen it. SlimVirgin (talk) 23:04, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
(outdent) Agreed, Black Falcon, I am VERY leery of deleting ANY AfD (not speedy/proddish, but an actual AfD) article without consensus. The proposal I made is an attempt to get consensus, one way or the other. SirFozzie 04:32, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
This is an excellent and very realistic solution for what I characterize as "too much OriginalResearch in Wikipedia articles about LivingPeople." In my opinion, Wikipedia editors generally have a useful understanding of when a Wikipedia article contains "too much OriginalResearch," and they therefore either try to 1) remove the OriginalResearch or 2) get the article with "too much OriginalResearch" deleted. On the other hand, in my opinion Wikipedia editors generally respect balanced articles, no matter how controversial, if there is minimal OriginalResearch, so I think there would be an expressed consensus to Keep for the articles that we should keep. The one caution, I would say, is that we should ensure that the "measure of consensus" is made on a large enough sample of Wikipedia editors. -- Rednblu 05:36, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
Do I understand correctly that this is simply reversing the default, and not a blanket policy against BLP? It sounds like me that it just leads to a more efficient process and does not predetermine the outcome. If this is the case, i am all for it. Slrubenstein | Talk 08:56, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
This may be a good idea. But why not just apply it to all articles and start the long-awaited Deletionist Reign of Terror? ;) Haukur 09:18, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
This is a good idea. We've seen that a huge percentage of BLPs are unsourced or thinly sourced. We've seen that we have more biographies than we can maintain which leads to undetected vandalism. These problems exist with other article, but biographies of living people are uniquely capable of distressing or harming people. This solution is more easily implemented than an "opt-out" plan. Though "opt-out" has merit it would be difficult to process given Wikipedia norms, requiring confirming the identities of purported subjects, and it would on'y address situations where the subject is aware of the article. By comparison, this proposal uses existing WP systems with only a small shift in how AfDs are handled, and can reduce the number of biographies of minimally notable individuals. - Will Beback · † · 10:24, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
Question. Shouldn't this discussion be advertised at WP:N, WP:BIO, WP:DEL, WP:DPR, and other pages? -- Black Falcon ( Talk) 18:36, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
Let's face it, it's kind of odd that we assume the right to expose a living person to the whims of anyone of any age anywhere in the world, people who don't have to use their real names, don't have to understand the policies, don't even have to be able to spell. It's a lot to ask of that person that they should simply acquiesce and dutifully check their bios every day for the rest of their lives, in case some 10-year-old, or a malicious enemy, has added insults or libel that thousands of people might read before it's fixed, and which Google may continue to distribute anyway.
Oppose reversing the presumption because, in the few cases I've seen that ended with no consensus, keeping seemed to me the right decision. I would like to see a significant number of examples of decisions that would have been reversed under this change, and for which reversal is the correct decision. To make this objective, is it possible to collect statistics of articles that were no consensus, and that then went on to a second AfD? In those cases, how often was the second AfD successful? — David Eppstein 20:00, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
Just for reference, can anyone provide some examples of BLP's that recently got "no consensus" at AFD (which would be deleted under this proposal) that are significant enough that they'd be cause for concern about this proposal? -- Minderbinder 20:05, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
Comment HEY Slim, I am still blown away with how much "imput"/"effect" we/you/i/the foundation gives to the subjects of the bios in here. Everybody, I mean EVERYBODY, should be treated the same, period. Just becaue they don't like or don't want an article we are suppose to do what?? Tough nuggies. As long as we treat each article with care and respect, WHY would we "play favorites" with how articles are dealt with. Libel ect is a whole different ball game and should be/has been addressed it seems. Anyways, carry on -- Tom 20:25, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
This sounds to me like a very reasonable suggestion. Unfortunately a lot of articles are kept as no consensus with reasoning that basically is "I'm pretty sure somebody will find references someday, somehow." When Wikipedia was in its infancy, there might have been some justification for such things, but we've come a long way from being that cool new site where anybody can post anything: we are, like it or not, in the line of sight (and consequently, line of fire) of the media and mainstream academia. Playing fast and loose with BLP and verifiability has bitten us on the ass more than once--I speak not only of the obvious Seigenthaler incident but other things just as recently as a couple of days ago. We NEED to start getting serious about how we handle BLPs, and this is a step in the right direction. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 20:39, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
I understand the reasoning here, but I don't like this. From my perspective the problem is with the number and pattern of occurance of "no consensus" closures. Many debates are closed as no consensus when a conclusion would be possible, to avoid difficult calls on behalf of the admins, or to clear the workload. I consider this moderately damaging: the community spends valuable times on these debates and deserves a proper interpretation of the outcome. To simply reverse the default would lead to all those articles being deleted, rather than a mere wasteful lack of decision. I would suggest that the goal here should be to avoid "no consensus" closes as much as possible: I would recommend that we try to get the word out to admins that they should avoid no consensus closes in general. I could imagine a rule that says that BLP-related deletion debates (but not necessarily all debates relating to living people) should not be closed "no consensus" (or at least, not until a large number of participants have been heard from) - in other words, BLP debates should be relisted until a decision can be reached. Mango juice talk 20:58, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
Oppose. Well put, Mango and AnonEMouse. My opposition stems from the following similar concern: we know that a lot of votes don't get a whole lot of participation. And so, it seems to me, that a few folks with strong feelings can cause a "non-consensus", which would then lead to deletion -- i.e., a few folks could have veto power over the existence of any number of articles. That would not be a good situation. -- Sholom 21:14, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
If the presumption is to delete all BLP articles unless there is a Keep consensus on record, what would be the basis to initially create the BLP article in the first place? This just seems to be a way of saying that you are not permitted to create a BLP article in article space until you first get permission through a Keep consensus. We are the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit and requiring permission to create a BLP article is not the wiki way. -- Jreferee 21:23, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
Not that I agree with this, but what about letting users create BLP articles in user space or some space other than article space and then having an admin move it to article space if there are no significant BLB concerns. Another comment, part of the trouble may be the availability of BLP problem articles through Google. Perhaps Wikipedia could work with Google to keep certain BLP articles from being brought up in a Google search. I don't agree with this either, but just throwing it out there. -- Jreferee 21:39, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
I do not agree with reversing the default on AFDs of living persons, however I would support Mangojuice's contention that we are doing a disservice by closing the "no consensus" to begin with. Relist or solicit additional opinions as needed, until the answer is clear. Don't carve out exceptions. -- nae' blis 21:39, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
Relist and solicit additional opinions as needed seems to be the best answer since the stated problem is BLP no consensus AfDs and this answer goes directly to the stated problem. Kudos to Mangojuice. -- Jreferee 21:52, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
Biographies of Living Persons are tricky ground indeed. I would suggest that erring on the side of caution is always smarter in this case. There should be room for, after some period of time, someone to return with a better article, or a more carefully written one, to gain consensus. In the meantime, delete it. Bielle 23:04, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
This has my Strongest possible support. The objections here that the 'default' action is to easy to fake with outside influence isn't an argument against this proposal... it's an argument to shut down AFD entirely, or an argument in favor of this proposal. I don't personally think AFD default is that subject to influence, but if it is we should certainly make the default the safer action. It's always been the case that default is intended to be the safer action, but the 'safer action' isn't always the same. Based on our experience, it would appear that deletion is almost certainly the safer case for biography articles of low profile people. I don't think this is equal to a rule against creating BLP's in the first place, ... to reach AFD first someone experienced enough with our processes must object. A change in the default is no more a BLP prohibition than is the ability to delete them. -- Gmaxwell 21:57, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
I also vote to support this. There has been so much chatter going on about the topic on the mailing lists and IRC. It is about time we actually do something instead of talking it to death. Danny 22:07, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
Give it a try for a few months. We can always review the policy if it looks like it isn't working.-- Newport 22:28, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
I also support this proposal. Every biography of a living person is a liability for the foundation, in ways that all other articles obviously aren't. If this proposal is implemented it will reduce the amount of them to a manageable level by eliminating those that the community can't decide one way or the other about and leaving the ones that people have reached a consensus to keep. Maintenance will become easier. Picaroon 22:29, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
Super-strong support! This is a great idea, it's so simple, and it seems to me that it is almost exactly equally vulnerable to gaming as our current system, but at least with possible wrong results being damaging. Mak (talk) 22:32, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
I do not support this proposal in general, but would support a modification that distinguished between BLPs where the subject requests deletion and those where the subject has not. In the former case, I think we need a very clear !vote at Afd to keep, so no consensus defaulting to delete is reasonable there. However, if the subject has not requested the article to be deleted I see no reason to treat the article any different from any non-BLP article. -- Bduke 23:14, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
I support this, as it currently stands, and would also like to see a higher rate of relists in response to this (which will probably happen anyway, but needs to be pointed out). Nifboy 00:45, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
Oppose It seems as though AfD is analogous to prosecution in the US legal system. In the courts there is a presumption of innocence and a bar against double jeopardy, multiple prosecutions for the same offense. In the case of a draw there is a continued presumption of innocence which we call a hung jury. At WP we are defending our integrity against errors in judgment, boasting and libel, akin to crimes against our encyclopedic nature. Clearly this is serious, but not to the degree of crime in the real world. Why should we take a more drastic approach? We already give the "prosecution" multiple bites at the apple; I see no reason to make it more difficult to defend meaningful articles against erroneous deletion. -- Kevin Murray 01:07, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
Support—same reasons as gmaxwell. If there's going to be so much difference between defaulting to keep and defaulting to delete that it deserves outcry, the process is broken. 72.165.205.81 01:36, 24 April 2007 (UTC) — 72.165.205.81 ( talk) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
SUPPORT Anything that makes deletion of semi-notable or questionably notable bios easier. I also wish somebody would create a special "end tag" for bios of semi-notable people (definition: people not in regular paper encyclopedias), which essentially says: This is a bio of a person who may not be in standard works. If the person who is the subject wishes its deletion and has not done so, please enter a request at: xxxx, and the matter will be reviewed. Thank you. Etc. And have a special page for requests of this type ONLY. This, to make it easier for non-Wikipedians surprised by bios about themselves, to rapidly get to AfD, ASAP. S B H arris 01:48, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
Strong Oppose per Kevin Murray's points above and AnonEMouse's points way above. All this proposal does is change the threshhold for deletion -- basically allowing admins to delete BLPs at their whim.-- JayHenry 07:27, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
Admins deleting BLPs at their whim? Great idea, yes please. Put that together with blocking those who create BLP articles and then don't get them featured/GA'd, and we're onto a winner. Wikipedia is part of the big, scary real world and we do have a certain moral responsibility to living persons. Wikipedia suffers from major recentism, anyway. Hopefully this will cut down on the latest-crap-off-the-six-o-clock-news we get every 5 seconds. Moreschi Talk 14:08, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
I also strongly support the proposal to require that AfD's for BLPs require clear consensus to keep, per GMaxwell: "Based on our experience, it would appear that deletion is almost certainly the safer case for biography articles of low profile people." These are articles that often have the potential to harm people (and hence Wikipedia itself, given all the time being spent discussing individual cases and the threat of a successful lawsuit), but that do not in aggregate greatly improve Wikipedia, especially if the article is pretty much a duplicate of what can be found on their own website or in a handful of news articles. We're not talking about bios of major politicians or Olympic athletes here; rather, people like a random college professor or someone who popped up in the news, and thus the limited and incomplete sources that are often listed (like newspaper articles, or university bios) are the only ones we can reasonably expect to find. "Not being in a traditional encyclopedia" seems like a reasonable criteria for taking a hard look at any given biography, per SBHarris. We should make removal of such bios much easier, for both the subject and for us. And remember to take the historical long-view here -- if the person really does turn out to be notable in the long run, they'll get an article eventually, no question. Taking an immediatist view helps enforce both systemic bias (since English-language online press only cover a subset of the world's population), weakens notability (since there are effectively two standards -- one for living people with coverage in the accessible recent English-language press, and everyone else) and leaves the project exposed to the threat of doing harm to real people. --
phoebe/(
talk)
17:31, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
Oppose per JayHenry. Anchoress 21:28, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
David Heymann was nominated for deletion because someone thought the subject was "non-notabe", which usually just means the nominator does not happen to care about the particular subject matter. The article says nothing at all negative about the subject, and is well sourced. It has sinced passed GA.
However, the article barely passed AfD. If this proposal were to be implemented, perfectly good information such as this would be lost just because some people want to see it deleted.
The presumption at AfD should always be to KEEP. Johntex\ talk 22:36, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
I understand the concern of "carving an exception" and the possible unintended consequences of such exception. On the other hand, the current status quo does not serve the project well (to say the least), and putting our heads in the sand will not make the problem go away. A process is needed to address non-notable/partially notable BLPs. We need some sound proposals that may rally some consensus around them. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 03:32, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
I kind of see the point of this proposal but I was wondering about how much of a problem this actually is. In other words, I'd like to see some examples of articles that would have been deleted under this new method, and examples of why keeping those is causing problems for Wikipedia. >Radiant< 07:32, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
[Outdent] Radiant would like to see article which would be deleted under the new process. Have a look at Crystal Gail Mangum the accusor in the 2006 Duke University lacrosse team scandal. She made accusation of gang rape occuring March 13, 2006. By 21 April 2006, 5 weeks later, there was a wiki bio on her, which has expanded ever since. Now, as it turns out, the evidence as of today is she is more victimizer than victim, but that wasn't true when her bio was started in April 2006. At that time, 2 of the team had just been formally indicted for 1st degree rape. There were news reports that the DNA evidence didn't match, but none of them were coming from official sources, and they then had the status of rumor. Under these circumstances, do you think that an AfD on a bio of Mangum-the-victim would have been voted as a "keep"? For that matter, what do you think of a bio of Mangum as a rather sleezy (potential) criminal NOW (even though she has yet to be even charged?). Is this Britannica material? I think it's Jerry Springer/ Nancy Grace material. It all demeans nearly everything it touches. There are lots of stories out there like it, but many of them don't make it into wikipedia. Do you have any idea how many reported rapes there are, each year? And how many of them fail to result in conviction? Do we want Wiki bios following all of these, or just the ones that CNN picks for us? Gag. S B H arris 21:19, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
Alright, let's all do stay civil, contentious though the topic may be. Why couldn't a compromise be achieved here? I don't know that we would have a ton of information about her life before the case, so we probably are providing undue weight by having a "biography" that's really only about a small part of her life. We'll never be able to update it, she'll just fade back into obscurity. So why not simply merge her into the article about the scandal, which is undoubtedly notable, and in which the information on her will be but one part of a comprehensive picture? Why can't we satisfy both sides on this one? Seraphimblade Talk to me 23:42, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
Answer: I doubt that any debate on deleting Euclid would fail to reach a concensus keep (though my civilization never fails to surprise me on such points--- you might well be right). But for all deep historical figures, Euclid and those less universally known, they tend to be protected from such things by the fact that they are invariably dead. In any case, I'm not pitching this as a solution for all recentism problems, but merely pointing out that it will at least help fix the problem for personalities so recent that they're still up and about, without affecting the dead. It asks us to more stringently evaluate the notability of the living, and that will at least tend to help make up for the bias of the fact that we know more about people we identify as living personalities, rather than mere (dead) historical figures. No, it's not perfect, but it's a step in the right direction, at least as involves human beings. (For other "news," as it becomes "history," there will have to be other filtering steps, as time goes on, to test for significance. Lest Wikipedia eventually come to resemble the house of an obscessive packrat compulsive hoarder, which is filled to the ceiling with stacks of old newspapers which the suffer cannot bear to discard, and which impede all activity until everything stops.)Precisely because of the recentism, a deletion debate on Euclid is more likely to result in no consensus than a debate on this Stern guy.
And BTW, your name works better in reds, oranges and yellows, than blues. The physics of black bodies works as you illustrate, at the long end of the visible spectrum, but for reasons beyond the scope of this discussion, you'll never see such a thing at the top. Cheers :) S B H arris 12:46, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
I would like to see a statement that tells us that the two criteria required for the use of religious and sexual preference categories also applies to actual content in the article. It doesn't make sense that there would be a rule, for instance, requiring a subject to publicly self-identify as a particular religion before the category can be applied, but would not prohibit the insertion of the same information in the article without meeting the same criteria. I am positive that this is the spirit of the guideline, yet since it does not actually state that, I often have to argue with editors who hold that the two criteria apply only to use of categories, not to article content. I am currently involved in an ARBCOM case that is pending acceptance, and if it is accepted, I will ask them to issue a finding clarifying this, since it is a related issue. But I thought it would be better to get this change rolled in by consensus here. - Crockspot 19:52, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia policy and convention are very clear. We write "Statement (ref)", not "According to (ref), statement". Would anyone write "according to the Guinness Book of Records, Jupiter is the largest planet in the Solar System"? If editors wish to change that, this is not the right place to discuss such a far-reaching change.-- Runcorn 21:19, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
"In 1999 Einstein was named Time magazine's "Person of the Century", and a poll of prominent physicists named him the greatest physicist of all time.[3]"
That's a spurious example. The point is that if it is undisputed that someone is say Protestant, we should not say "according to (ref), he is Protestant". If there is a dispute, we should say "His religion is disputed (ref A says Protestant, ref B says Sikh)".-- Runcorn 21:17, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps we should have a process to blank a BLP article where the subject of that article asks, the subject of the article has a clear, demonstrated distress over having the BLP article on Wikipedia irrespective of the content, and the demonstrated distress significantly outweighs the importance/fame of the person. Daniel Brandt meets WP:N, but it seems to me that Daniel Brandt has demonstrated distress over the Daniel Brandt article through his numerous pleas on Wikipedia and his importance/fame is relatively small compared to the amount of this demonstrated distress. I don't think that there are that many individuals clamoring to have their BLP article removed and there are even less with such demonstrated distress. For example, Rachel Marsden's position was a request to fix her article to meet WP:BLP, not delete it. To derive such a process, we first need to compile a list of all those desiring to have their BLP article blanked and then review the compilation to figure out the proposed procedure. If interested, please list below all those BLP articles for which the person who is the subject of the article desires that it be deleted. -- Jreferee 00:03, 24 April 2007 (UTC) '
Every current policy falls into one of the following five categories: 1. Behavioral; 2. Content and Style; 3. Deletion; 4. Enforcement; 5. Legal and copyright: law. This proposed policy would be a new policy under Deletion, similar to Office actions. However, this new process will assume that the article otherwise meets all other article standards, e.g., Neutral point of view, Verifiability, What Wikipedia is not, No original research, and Biographies of living persons. As Jimbo states, "Wikipedia is not here to make people sad" and this proposed policy would address a person's desire to remove Wikipedia's republication of sourced information from Wikipedia's article space. The person's desire would not be enough to remove the article and much more would be needed as described above. Wikipedia:notability means published material, not importance/fame notability. It is the published material, in turn, that imparts importance/fame in the person and this importance/fame presently plays no role in Wikipedia article standards. A person described in only a handful of published materials may meet Wikipedia:notability which means the article should not be deleted via AfD. However, under this new process, the handful of published materials may only impart a low importance/fame. A comparison of this importance/fame could then be made to the person's demonstrated distress. Office matters already evaluate a person's level of distressed to make foundation decisions over articles and there is no reason why Wikipedia could not set up a system to evaluate a person's distress over the existance of a Wikipedia article on themselves. A low importance/fame compared to a great demonstrated distress would allow the article to be blanked under this process, even though the article would/did survive AfD. The power to decide under this process will be in the hands of people other than the subject of the article. Opinions contributed to this proposed new process could be restricted to registered users, administrators, bureacrats, or a selected committee. -- Jreferee 15:01, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
IMO we are getting this so wrong. What is wrong with BLP is that it is far too restrictive. We should be making it easier and not more difficult to have BLP articles; otherwise I feel we just follow blindly the DB line without reflection just because we cannot handle him, and we make him the victor in all this. The reality is there are far more people clamouring for a wikipedia article than that minority who dont want an article. DB today said he feels he now has the alleged wikipedia cabal on his side, he has persuaded wikipedia by outing people rahter than enaging in a serious argument to do exactly the opposite of what we should be doing which is making BLP eligibility much greater. And I intend to defend this viewpoint from those who want to restrict the Jimbo goal of the encyclopedia of everything because, IMO, (no attacks intended) DB has got them scared, SqueakBox 02:38, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
Process:
≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 15:44, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
I'm all in favor of a noticeboard pointing to biography AfDs, so interested users can participate, per Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Deletion or any of the many other similar ones. But this can be done without any entirely new process. -- AnonEMouse (squeak) 20:34, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
Currently: In borderline cases, the rule of thumb should be "do no harm". Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a tabloid. It is not our job to be sensationalist, or to be the primary vehicle for the spread of titillating claims about people's lives.
Proposed: The rule of thumb must be "do no harm". Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a tabloid. It is not our job to be sensationalist, or to be the primary vehicle for the spread of titillating claims. We must be confident that the content we carry is correct, relevant, and fairly presented. Biographies of lesser known people or marginally notable people may not always attract sufficient 'eyeballs' to ensure that they remain free from unsourced material. If there is concern that an article is insufficiently 'watched', then it may be necessary to pare the article back to the bare bones of the subject's notability and, perhaps, to semi-protect it.
Removed: "In borderline cases,"
Justification: Do no harm is not optional, in any cases.
Changed: "should be" to "must be".
Justification: Do no harm is not optional. This doesn't mean we don't include negative material, but we only do so where the damage has already been done in mainstream media. We follow. We don't lead.
Removed: "about people's lives"
Justification: It not our job to be sensationalist or a vehicle for spreading titillating claims about anything.
Added: "We must be confident that the content we carry is correct, relevant, and fairly presented."
Justification: Not enough to be correct if it is unfairly presented, etc.
Added: "Biographies of lesser known people or marginally notable people may not always attract sufficient 'eyeballs' to ensure that they remain free from unsourced material."
Justification: Explains why we need to be stricter with lesser known people.
Added: "If there is concern that an article is insufficiently 'watched', then it may be necessary to pare the article back to the bare bones of the subject's notability and, perhaps, to semi-protect it."
Justification: When we go outside what is well known about a person, the chance of mistaken or deliberately misleading information surviving increases dramatically, sometimes with damaging results. See, for example, Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2007-04-23/Wikidetainment. We should cover these people, but we must only cover the aspects of the lives that are notable, so as to be confident that what we are putting in "correct, relevant, and fairly presented". That means not allowing our coverage to be too broad. And in some rare cases, for example, someone both obscure and controversial, then we may have to be more than usually restrictive in who we trust to edit the article.
Remember that what is carried on wikipedia can and has cost people their jobs, got them in trouble with their governments and I don't know what else. Regards, Ben Aveling 22:39, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
I agree with WAS 4.250's sentiments here. The current wording needs clarification though. The "do no harm in borderline cases" intention of WP:LIVING is a different concept from "Don't use tabloids as sources." How about, "When determining whether information about a private person is already public, in borderline cases the rule is, 'do no harm.' Kla'quot 16:24, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
I am not in favor of the "do no harm" proposed policy section. The primary focus of Wikipedia should be to provide verifiable referenced information on the subject and not to "avoid doing harm" by providing apparently accurate published information that might or might not be embarassing to the subject. There are already strong policies in place that say all information in Wikipedia articles should be properly cited, and so uncited rumors should be removed from articles under currently existing policy. I agree with the original nominator's sentiment above that "Wikipedia should follow, not lead", but only in so far that following implies we are using previously published information. If the information is verifiable and referenced and appears to be relevant to the subject of the article then it should appear... period.
I also do not like the "vote counting" language in proposal number 2. Wikipedia deletion discussions should be handled by rational debate on the merits, not by vote counting, and so policies should not refer to "50% or more" or "40% or more" of the "votes". Editors express their reasoning and it is up to the admins to decide which side of a debate is correct.
Obviously we should react quickly to correct misinformation at the request of living people in their Wikipedia biographies, but requests to remove properly cited, verifiable and relevant information should not have much weight. Dugwiki 17:38, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
I recommended this policy to a pile of people who aren't normally Wikipedians (on blogs, etc). The whole thing reads beautifully and sets out our best practice in a way the world needs to know ... except that "Exception" section, which sticks out like a sore thumb. So I added a note about its provenance. This was strictly for purposes of enhancing our public relations to the outside world - David Gerard 17:09, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
I've been following discussion of this elsewhere, and the general feeling there is at least disappointment. I have to say that on one level I agree with them.
Right now there's substantial cause for someone who gets stuck with an unwanted Wikipedia biography to take the Seigenthaler option and head straight for the courts. And it's especially so for someone whose notability doesn't begin to approach public figure levels. It's not just that an article can have false/hurtful statements; it's that it's wide open to have such statements inserted at any time by anyone. And no subject of such a biography is beholden to Wikipedia's processes. Whatever the responsiveness of those processes, they are Wikipedia's problem, not the world's problem; nobody makes a commitment to participating in those processes by simply existing.
We can expect people to say, "I don't give a fig about your procedures; supervising your editors is your problem, not mine." I don't think this is being addressed. Mangoe 18:37, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
Noting Doc's comment in the deletion debate for Jeffrey St. Clair, I would like to suggest a variant of the {{ prod}} tag as follows:
WP:BLP article, unsourced, marked as such for 14 days, quietly deleted, no fuss, no mess, and undelete on request with the proviso that the tag be replaced on restoration, giving the interested parties a further 14 days to fix it. What does the panel think? Guy ( Help!) 19:11, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
A similar proposal to this was floated earlier - it's still a very damaging idea.
Consider Category:Senegalese politicians. All very notable, important sorts of people. About half of the articles are unsourced, generally stubs.
Now, yes, we obviously can find sources for articles on all the prime ministers of Senegal. That's not the issue. The issue is that there are very few editors working in this area - often not enough to handle a wave of PRODs on their articles. It's an area of high importance to the project and low participation. To add a rule that allows for deletion in this area makes it far too easy to overwhelm these vital areas with deletions and gut our coverage with no attention to whether or not the articles are actually erroneous.
BLPs and sourcing are a problem, but they need a far more subtle solution than this. Phil Sandifer 12:39, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
I am somewhat new to this process, so please forgive if it has already been discussed or if this is the wrong place for discussion. It has come to my attention somewhat by chance that there are large number of articles which have reference sources where the reference source in question has a specific agenda against the BLP. After a great deal of searching various WP articles I have noticed a disturbing trend of sites like Media Matters for America and Media Research Center being used as primary sources for criticism against a specific person within their BLP with the result being definate POV criticisms of these articles. It has been generally regarded that these references are acceptable since they do not represent blogs or specific OR by an individual which is then published on WP, however I have the following problem with these types of groups.
I propose that references from sites like these be held to a higher standard, not be used as the primary source for a critical review of a LP, and be limited to actual notable criticism. Also, after reading the preceding sections, I believe that this approach could also help solve some of the other issues currently affecting BLP articles within WP. Arzel 02:16, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
Clayquot, I restored that AfD pages may be courtesy-blanked, or deleted if there's inappropriate BLP material on them, per Jimbo's comment, because we do as a matter of practise already do this. SlimVirgin (talk) 05:19, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
So a one-thousand word article on George Bush can be blanked if a vandal adds "is an ass" to it? The wording leaves the door open to that impression. Wjhonson 03:20, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
The recent "or deleted if there is inappropriate commentary" addition does not have consensus, so I will remove it. I understand that some AfD pages have been deleted in the past, presumably under WP:ATTACKPAGE or WP:IAR, and for these unusual circumstances IAR will continue to suffice. We are certainly not deleting AfD pages whenever someone says "vanispamcruftisement." Kla'quot 05:25, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
:)
Deleting AfDs in rare cases (per admin discretion) is not really a problem for me as long as we note that this should generally be reserved for particularly nasty AfDs (and not just any debate were a person is called "unimportant" ... something which sadly occurs too often). My issue was with the sentence, "After deletion of a BLP, any admin may choose to protect the page against recreation." Why should a page that is a first-time deletion be protected against recreation, except in relatively rare cases? --
Black Falcon (
Talk)
08:05, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
(indent reset) Only more times than I can count. :) I get what you were saying now. Seraphimblade Talk to me 10:26, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Another item for discussion: Which of the following do people prefer? Kla'quot 05:27, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
"After deletion of a BLP, any admin may choose to protect the page against recreation."
or
"Per Wikipedia's guidelines on protecting deleted pages, pages that are repeatedly re-created after deletion in unencyclopedic form or against policy can be protected from further re-creation. "Salting" titles is intended to be a temporary measure, as it inhibits the creation of legitimate articles."
or
(neither of the above)
-- badlydrawnjeff talk 12:43, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
Salting is not a big deal as all possible variations can not be salted. WAS 4.250 14:04, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
The old language, and the language currently on the page per my revert said,
"Per Wikipedia's guidelines on protecting deleted pages, pages that are repeatedly re-created after deletion in unencyclopedic form or against policy can be protected from further re-creation. "Salting" titles is intended to be a temporary measure, as it inhibits the creation of legitimate articles."
this was changed to,
"After deletion of a BLP, any admin may choose to protect the page against recreation."
The new language both worries me and strikes me as unnecessary. It doesn't link to WP:SALT, and both the language on how protection is meant to be temporary and language on reasoning for the protection has been completely removed.
Admins shouldn't protect pages just because it's a BLP--there should be a reason behind it. The first version doesn't exclude protecting it for some other reason than multiple page protections, and going all the way to a blanket version seems dangerous, because if an admin protects something and doesn't have a valid reason they can simply site that language and say "BLP + AFD → protection".
The original language could stand to be expanded on, but in it's current form it does not exclude other reasons for protecting a deleted BLP. Miss Mondegreen | Talk 01:18, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
Others have convinced me that this is an area in which admins should have some flexibility. Admins should be able to use their tools to prevent creation of pages created for purposes of harassment, and particularly for purposes of violating privacy. However, guidelines are helpful to ensure that delete protection is not overused. I propose that WP:BLP be amended to say, "After deletion of a BLP, an article may be protected against recreation, according to the guidelines for protecting deleted pages." WP:SALT should also be amended along the lines of, "Administrators may salt a deleted biography of a living person if they believe that the article was created for purposes of harassment, and have reason to believe that a similar article will be recreated." Putting this text in WP:SALT, which is (I think) a guideline, gives admins more flexibility than putting it in WP:BLP, which is a policy. Kla'quot 04:32, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
In light of the proposal above to delete BLP articles unless there's consensus to keep them - a better way of solving the problem would be to be more strict about the fact that an encyclopedia is not a newspaper. People are frequently tempted to follow the latest media hype and make rather unbalanced articles about whatever CNN is talking about today, but that doesn't mean that these are encyclopedic. Everybody gets their proverbial fifteen minutes of fame, not everybody gets an encyclopedia article. >Radiant< 08:52, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
This has been part of Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not since 2002. The wording has changed several times over the years, but you'll find the same proscription there in the current version.
The problem here isn't mis-placed news reports. It is the propensity of editors to present everything in individual biographical articles. That is what we should be more strict about. Michael Sneed ( AfD discussion) is a prime recent example. The article (since renamed to Inaccurate media reports of the Virginia Tech massacre, completely rewritten, and deleted) was in its original form a discussion of one news report on a historical event that was pretending to be a biographical article of the person who made that news report. Some greatly misguided editors even opined in the AFD discussion that a biographical article about the journalist was the correct way to present discussion of the news reporting of an event, moreover.
That we should present such things within broad-scope articles that are not biographies, and not as individual biographical articles, has been part of Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not since 2003. Uncle G 17:50, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
We are now discussing at AfD the list List_of_Americans_in_the_Venona_papers and the question arises of which of these people are covered under BLP? As the material discusses people who were active in adult life in 1944, probably in the age range of 20 through 60, the younger of them may still be alive. For many of them, we do have death dates, but not for all. I'll mention the information is based upon a US government source, as previous published in several books, so that the possibility of libel does not seem to apply, although IANAL. DGG 01:59, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
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Here's from today's New York Times corrections: [1]
An article on Tuesday about the struggles of St. Louis in the wake of a population decline misspelled the surname of an assistant professor at Washington University who has been involved in municipal planning projects. He is John Hoal, not Haul.
This isn't the only NYT correction for the day, and every day has a list of corrections for previous issues. Nor is there any reason to believe that these are comprehensive. Anybody who has had any extensive dealing with journalists (10 interviews or more, which for example, I've had) knows that it's rare to see a major article about any subject you know about, which doesn't contain a major error which never goes corrected. This goes for major papers of major cities.
Now, this is a problem. Mr. Hoal may have got his name fixed, but nothing says the NYT had to correct it. If it hadn't, he'd have been stuck claiming his name his Hoal, not Haul, and in a dispute it would (in theory) have been his personal word as a Wiki editor (who has no way to verify his identity), against a well-sourced source like the New York Times. This happens ALL the time. It's not rare. It happens because editors trust overworked journalists who don't fact-check entire articles with article-subjects, and because there's very little penalty to newpapers which make mistakes. There really isn't. Much of what the NYT prints as errors, are designed to suggest to the pubic that they catch ALL errors at this level of detail. Wrong. They don't. Wikipedia policy doesn't really address this unbalance. Changes in this Wiki recently (See the change by WAS 450 recently in the history) suggests they don't intend to. WAS 450, I see you have little experience with being interviewed by the press. Write about what you know, please. Jimbo Wales, YOU have certainly had enough contact with the press to know I'm dead-on right about their general accuracy. Which doesn't somehow magically improve when it comes to information about living persons. So I'd like to have YOUR comment for the record on "newspaper vs subject" fact disputes in BLP issues. S B H arris 16:59, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
(deindent) I'm not talking about major changes, I'm talking about minor changes. Contrary to what WAS 4.250 says, we can change sourced material if the subject says "no, that's wrong", depending on the nature of the material. One Night In Hackney 303 21:38, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
+sj + 21:13, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
Jimbo suggested some possibilities for slight changes to BLP on the wikipedia mail list to help with semi-notable people cases and Brandt has come up with a variation that seems to deserve a community evaluation. Brandt's proposal is: "Any deletion request initiated by the subject of a biography would automatically require the AfD "keep" voters to specifically state why the subject is notable under that definition. The "delete" voters need not state anything at all. If the "keep" voters cannot make a reasonable statement, then it does not qualify as a legitimate vote to "keep" but instead is discarded as if that User had never bothered to vote at all." [2] This seems workable to me. I believe it would be an improvement to BLP. 4.250.201.139 11:33, 22 April 2007 (UTC) ( User talk:WAS 4.250)
Maybe something like this: BLP article deletion voting standards:
I suggested a few months ago that we should simply reverse the usual presumption in favor of retention when it comes to BLP deletions. Jimbo has expressed some support for this on the mailing list. It would be a very simple step forward. For example:
When the biography of a living person is submitted for deletion, whether at the request of the subject or not, the usual presumption in favor of retention is reversed. That is, if there is no consensus to keep the BLP in the opinion of the closing admin, the article will be deleted.
After deletion, any admin may choose to protect the page against recreation and to courtesy-blank the deletion debate. Any subsequent deletion review that fails may also be blanked as a courtesy.
Any thoughts? SlimVirgin (talk) 20:38, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
Here's Jimbo's post to the mailing list for those who haven't seen it. SlimVirgin (talk) 23:04, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
(outdent) Agreed, Black Falcon, I am VERY leery of deleting ANY AfD (not speedy/proddish, but an actual AfD) article without consensus. The proposal I made is an attempt to get consensus, one way or the other. SirFozzie 04:32, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
This is an excellent and very realistic solution for what I characterize as "too much OriginalResearch in Wikipedia articles about LivingPeople." In my opinion, Wikipedia editors generally have a useful understanding of when a Wikipedia article contains "too much OriginalResearch," and they therefore either try to 1) remove the OriginalResearch or 2) get the article with "too much OriginalResearch" deleted. On the other hand, in my opinion Wikipedia editors generally respect balanced articles, no matter how controversial, if there is minimal OriginalResearch, so I think there would be an expressed consensus to Keep for the articles that we should keep. The one caution, I would say, is that we should ensure that the "measure of consensus" is made on a large enough sample of Wikipedia editors. -- Rednblu 05:36, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
Do I understand correctly that this is simply reversing the default, and not a blanket policy against BLP? It sounds like me that it just leads to a more efficient process and does not predetermine the outcome. If this is the case, i am all for it. Slrubenstein | Talk 08:56, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
This may be a good idea. But why not just apply it to all articles and start the long-awaited Deletionist Reign of Terror? ;) Haukur 09:18, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
This is a good idea. We've seen that a huge percentage of BLPs are unsourced or thinly sourced. We've seen that we have more biographies than we can maintain which leads to undetected vandalism. These problems exist with other article, but biographies of living people are uniquely capable of distressing or harming people. This solution is more easily implemented than an "opt-out" plan. Though "opt-out" has merit it would be difficult to process given Wikipedia norms, requiring confirming the identities of purported subjects, and it would on'y address situations where the subject is aware of the article. By comparison, this proposal uses existing WP systems with only a small shift in how AfDs are handled, and can reduce the number of biographies of minimally notable individuals. - Will Beback · † · 10:24, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
Question. Shouldn't this discussion be advertised at WP:N, WP:BIO, WP:DEL, WP:DPR, and other pages? -- Black Falcon ( Talk) 18:36, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
Let's face it, it's kind of odd that we assume the right to expose a living person to the whims of anyone of any age anywhere in the world, people who don't have to use their real names, don't have to understand the policies, don't even have to be able to spell. It's a lot to ask of that person that they should simply acquiesce and dutifully check their bios every day for the rest of their lives, in case some 10-year-old, or a malicious enemy, has added insults or libel that thousands of people might read before it's fixed, and which Google may continue to distribute anyway.
Oppose reversing the presumption because, in the few cases I've seen that ended with no consensus, keeping seemed to me the right decision. I would like to see a significant number of examples of decisions that would have been reversed under this change, and for which reversal is the correct decision. To make this objective, is it possible to collect statistics of articles that were no consensus, and that then went on to a second AfD? In those cases, how often was the second AfD successful? — David Eppstein 20:00, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
Just for reference, can anyone provide some examples of BLP's that recently got "no consensus" at AFD (which would be deleted under this proposal) that are significant enough that they'd be cause for concern about this proposal? -- Minderbinder 20:05, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
Comment HEY Slim, I am still blown away with how much "imput"/"effect" we/you/i/the foundation gives to the subjects of the bios in here. Everybody, I mean EVERYBODY, should be treated the same, period. Just becaue they don't like or don't want an article we are suppose to do what?? Tough nuggies. As long as we treat each article with care and respect, WHY would we "play favorites" with how articles are dealt with. Libel ect is a whole different ball game and should be/has been addressed it seems. Anyways, carry on -- Tom 20:25, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
This sounds to me like a very reasonable suggestion. Unfortunately a lot of articles are kept as no consensus with reasoning that basically is "I'm pretty sure somebody will find references someday, somehow." When Wikipedia was in its infancy, there might have been some justification for such things, but we've come a long way from being that cool new site where anybody can post anything: we are, like it or not, in the line of sight (and consequently, line of fire) of the media and mainstream academia. Playing fast and loose with BLP and verifiability has bitten us on the ass more than once--I speak not only of the obvious Seigenthaler incident but other things just as recently as a couple of days ago. We NEED to start getting serious about how we handle BLPs, and this is a step in the right direction. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 20:39, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
I understand the reasoning here, but I don't like this. From my perspective the problem is with the number and pattern of occurance of "no consensus" closures. Many debates are closed as no consensus when a conclusion would be possible, to avoid difficult calls on behalf of the admins, or to clear the workload. I consider this moderately damaging: the community spends valuable times on these debates and deserves a proper interpretation of the outcome. To simply reverse the default would lead to all those articles being deleted, rather than a mere wasteful lack of decision. I would suggest that the goal here should be to avoid "no consensus" closes as much as possible: I would recommend that we try to get the word out to admins that they should avoid no consensus closes in general. I could imagine a rule that says that BLP-related deletion debates (but not necessarily all debates relating to living people) should not be closed "no consensus" (or at least, not until a large number of participants have been heard from) - in other words, BLP debates should be relisted until a decision can be reached. Mango juice talk 20:58, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
Oppose. Well put, Mango and AnonEMouse. My opposition stems from the following similar concern: we know that a lot of votes don't get a whole lot of participation. And so, it seems to me, that a few folks with strong feelings can cause a "non-consensus", which would then lead to deletion -- i.e., a few folks could have veto power over the existence of any number of articles. That would not be a good situation. -- Sholom 21:14, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
If the presumption is to delete all BLP articles unless there is a Keep consensus on record, what would be the basis to initially create the BLP article in the first place? This just seems to be a way of saying that you are not permitted to create a BLP article in article space until you first get permission through a Keep consensus. We are the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit and requiring permission to create a BLP article is not the wiki way. -- Jreferee 21:23, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
Not that I agree with this, but what about letting users create BLP articles in user space or some space other than article space and then having an admin move it to article space if there are no significant BLB concerns. Another comment, part of the trouble may be the availability of BLP problem articles through Google. Perhaps Wikipedia could work with Google to keep certain BLP articles from being brought up in a Google search. I don't agree with this either, but just throwing it out there. -- Jreferee 21:39, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
I do not agree with reversing the default on AFDs of living persons, however I would support Mangojuice's contention that we are doing a disservice by closing the "no consensus" to begin with. Relist or solicit additional opinions as needed, until the answer is clear. Don't carve out exceptions. -- nae' blis 21:39, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
Relist and solicit additional opinions as needed seems to be the best answer since the stated problem is BLP no consensus AfDs and this answer goes directly to the stated problem. Kudos to Mangojuice. -- Jreferee 21:52, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
Biographies of Living Persons are tricky ground indeed. I would suggest that erring on the side of caution is always smarter in this case. There should be room for, after some period of time, someone to return with a better article, or a more carefully written one, to gain consensus. In the meantime, delete it. Bielle 23:04, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
This has my Strongest possible support. The objections here that the 'default' action is to easy to fake with outside influence isn't an argument against this proposal... it's an argument to shut down AFD entirely, or an argument in favor of this proposal. I don't personally think AFD default is that subject to influence, but if it is we should certainly make the default the safer action. It's always been the case that default is intended to be the safer action, but the 'safer action' isn't always the same. Based on our experience, it would appear that deletion is almost certainly the safer case for biography articles of low profile people. I don't think this is equal to a rule against creating BLP's in the first place, ... to reach AFD first someone experienced enough with our processes must object. A change in the default is no more a BLP prohibition than is the ability to delete them. -- Gmaxwell 21:57, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
I also vote to support this. There has been so much chatter going on about the topic on the mailing lists and IRC. It is about time we actually do something instead of talking it to death. Danny 22:07, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
Give it a try for a few months. We can always review the policy if it looks like it isn't working.-- Newport 22:28, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
I also support this proposal. Every biography of a living person is a liability for the foundation, in ways that all other articles obviously aren't. If this proposal is implemented it will reduce the amount of them to a manageable level by eliminating those that the community can't decide one way or the other about and leaving the ones that people have reached a consensus to keep. Maintenance will become easier. Picaroon 22:29, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
Super-strong support! This is a great idea, it's so simple, and it seems to me that it is almost exactly equally vulnerable to gaming as our current system, but at least with possible wrong results being damaging. Mak (talk) 22:32, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
I do not support this proposal in general, but would support a modification that distinguished between BLPs where the subject requests deletion and those where the subject has not. In the former case, I think we need a very clear !vote at Afd to keep, so no consensus defaulting to delete is reasonable there. However, if the subject has not requested the article to be deleted I see no reason to treat the article any different from any non-BLP article. -- Bduke 23:14, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
I support this, as it currently stands, and would also like to see a higher rate of relists in response to this (which will probably happen anyway, but needs to be pointed out). Nifboy 00:45, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
Oppose It seems as though AfD is analogous to prosecution in the US legal system. In the courts there is a presumption of innocence and a bar against double jeopardy, multiple prosecutions for the same offense. In the case of a draw there is a continued presumption of innocence which we call a hung jury. At WP we are defending our integrity against errors in judgment, boasting and libel, akin to crimes against our encyclopedic nature. Clearly this is serious, but not to the degree of crime in the real world. Why should we take a more drastic approach? We already give the "prosecution" multiple bites at the apple; I see no reason to make it more difficult to defend meaningful articles against erroneous deletion. -- Kevin Murray 01:07, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
Support—same reasons as gmaxwell. If there's going to be so much difference between defaulting to keep and defaulting to delete that it deserves outcry, the process is broken. 72.165.205.81 01:36, 24 April 2007 (UTC) — 72.165.205.81 ( talk) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
SUPPORT Anything that makes deletion of semi-notable or questionably notable bios easier. I also wish somebody would create a special "end tag" for bios of semi-notable people (definition: people not in regular paper encyclopedias), which essentially says: This is a bio of a person who may not be in standard works. If the person who is the subject wishes its deletion and has not done so, please enter a request at: xxxx, and the matter will be reviewed. Thank you. Etc. And have a special page for requests of this type ONLY. This, to make it easier for non-Wikipedians surprised by bios about themselves, to rapidly get to AfD, ASAP. S B H arris 01:48, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
Strong Oppose per Kevin Murray's points above and AnonEMouse's points way above. All this proposal does is change the threshhold for deletion -- basically allowing admins to delete BLPs at their whim.-- JayHenry 07:27, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
Admins deleting BLPs at their whim? Great idea, yes please. Put that together with blocking those who create BLP articles and then don't get them featured/GA'd, and we're onto a winner. Wikipedia is part of the big, scary real world and we do have a certain moral responsibility to living persons. Wikipedia suffers from major recentism, anyway. Hopefully this will cut down on the latest-crap-off-the-six-o-clock-news we get every 5 seconds. Moreschi Talk 14:08, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
I also strongly support the proposal to require that AfD's for BLPs require clear consensus to keep, per GMaxwell: "Based on our experience, it would appear that deletion is almost certainly the safer case for biography articles of low profile people." These are articles that often have the potential to harm people (and hence Wikipedia itself, given all the time being spent discussing individual cases and the threat of a successful lawsuit), but that do not in aggregate greatly improve Wikipedia, especially if the article is pretty much a duplicate of what can be found on their own website or in a handful of news articles. We're not talking about bios of major politicians or Olympic athletes here; rather, people like a random college professor or someone who popped up in the news, and thus the limited and incomplete sources that are often listed (like newspaper articles, or university bios) are the only ones we can reasonably expect to find. "Not being in a traditional encyclopedia" seems like a reasonable criteria for taking a hard look at any given biography, per SBHarris. We should make removal of such bios much easier, for both the subject and for us. And remember to take the historical long-view here -- if the person really does turn out to be notable in the long run, they'll get an article eventually, no question. Taking an immediatist view helps enforce both systemic bias (since English-language online press only cover a subset of the world's population), weakens notability (since there are effectively two standards -- one for living people with coverage in the accessible recent English-language press, and everyone else) and leaves the project exposed to the threat of doing harm to real people. --
phoebe/(
talk)
17:31, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
Oppose per JayHenry. Anchoress 21:28, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
David Heymann was nominated for deletion because someone thought the subject was "non-notabe", which usually just means the nominator does not happen to care about the particular subject matter. The article says nothing at all negative about the subject, and is well sourced. It has sinced passed GA.
However, the article barely passed AfD. If this proposal were to be implemented, perfectly good information such as this would be lost just because some people want to see it deleted.
The presumption at AfD should always be to KEEP. Johntex\ talk 22:36, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
I understand the concern of "carving an exception" and the possible unintended consequences of such exception. On the other hand, the current status quo does not serve the project well (to say the least), and putting our heads in the sand will not make the problem go away. A process is needed to address non-notable/partially notable BLPs. We need some sound proposals that may rally some consensus around them. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 03:32, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
I kind of see the point of this proposal but I was wondering about how much of a problem this actually is. In other words, I'd like to see some examples of articles that would have been deleted under this new method, and examples of why keeping those is causing problems for Wikipedia. >Radiant< 07:32, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
[Outdent] Radiant would like to see article which would be deleted under the new process. Have a look at Crystal Gail Mangum the accusor in the 2006 Duke University lacrosse team scandal. She made accusation of gang rape occuring March 13, 2006. By 21 April 2006, 5 weeks later, there was a wiki bio on her, which has expanded ever since. Now, as it turns out, the evidence as of today is she is more victimizer than victim, but that wasn't true when her bio was started in April 2006. At that time, 2 of the team had just been formally indicted for 1st degree rape. There were news reports that the DNA evidence didn't match, but none of them were coming from official sources, and they then had the status of rumor. Under these circumstances, do you think that an AfD on a bio of Mangum-the-victim would have been voted as a "keep"? For that matter, what do you think of a bio of Mangum as a rather sleezy (potential) criminal NOW (even though she has yet to be even charged?). Is this Britannica material? I think it's Jerry Springer/ Nancy Grace material. It all demeans nearly everything it touches. There are lots of stories out there like it, but many of them don't make it into wikipedia. Do you have any idea how many reported rapes there are, each year? And how many of them fail to result in conviction? Do we want Wiki bios following all of these, or just the ones that CNN picks for us? Gag. S B H arris 21:19, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
Alright, let's all do stay civil, contentious though the topic may be. Why couldn't a compromise be achieved here? I don't know that we would have a ton of information about her life before the case, so we probably are providing undue weight by having a "biography" that's really only about a small part of her life. We'll never be able to update it, she'll just fade back into obscurity. So why not simply merge her into the article about the scandal, which is undoubtedly notable, and in which the information on her will be but one part of a comprehensive picture? Why can't we satisfy both sides on this one? Seraphimblade Talk to me 23:42, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
Answer: I doubt that any debate on deleting Euclid would fail to reach a concensus keep (though my civilization never fails to surprise me on such points--- you might well be right). But for all deep historical figures, Euclid and those less universally known, they tend to be protected from such things by the fact that they are invariably dead. In any case, I'm not pitching this as a solution for all recentism problems, but merely pointing out that it will at least help fix the problem for personalities so recent that they're still up and about, without affecting the dead. It asks us to more stringently evaluate the notability of the living, and that will at least tend to help make up for the bias of the fact that we know more about people we identify as living personalities, rather than mere (dead) historical figures. No, it's not perfect, but it's a step in the right direction, at least as involves human beings. (For other "news," as it becomes "history," there will have to be other filtering steps, as time goes on, to test for significance. Lest Wikipedia eventually come to resemble the house of an obscessive packrat compulsive hoarder, which is filled to the ceiling with stacks of old newspapers which the suffer cannot bear to discard, and which impede all activity until everything stops.)Precisely because of the recentism, a deletion debate on Euclid is more likely to result in no consensus than a debate on this Stern guy.
And BTW, your name works better in reds, oranges and yellows, than blues. The physics of black bodies works as you illustrate, at the long end of the visible spectrum, but for reasons beyond the scope of this discussion, you'll never see such a thing at the top. Cheers :) S B H arris 12:46, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
I would like to see a statement that tells us that the two criteria required for the use of religious and sexual preference categories also applies to actual content in the article. It doesn't make sense that there would be a rule, for instance, requiring a subject to publicly self-identify as a particular religion before the category can be applied, but would not prohibit the insertion of the same information in the article without meeting the same criteria. I am positive that this is the spirit of the guideline, yet since it does not actually state that, I often have to argue with editors who hold that the two criteria apply only to use of categories, not to article content. I am currently involved in an ARBCOM case that is pending acceptance, and if it is accepted, I will ask them to issue a finding clarifying this, since it is a related issue. But I thought it would be better to get this change rolled in by consensus here. - Crockspot 19:52, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia policy and convention are very clear. We write "Statement (ref)", not "According to (ref), statement". Would anyone write "according to the Guinness Book of Records, Jupiter is the largest planet in the Solar System"? If editors wish to change that, this is not the right place to discuss such a far-reaching change.-- Runcorn 21:19, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
"In 1999 Einstein was named Time magazine's "Person of the Century", and a poll of prominent physicists named him the greatest physicist of all time.[3]"
That's a spurious example. The point is that if it is undisputed that someone is say Protestant, we should not say "according to (ref), he is Protestant". If there is a dispute, we should say "His religion is disputed (ref A says Protestant, ref B says Sikh)".-- Runcorn 21:17, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps we should have a process to blank a BLP article where the subject of that article asks, the subject of the article has a clear, demonstrated distress over having the BLP article on Wikipedia irrespective of the content, and the demonstrated distress significantly outweighs the importance/fame of the person. Daniel Brandt meets WP:N, but it seems to me that Daniel Brandt has demonstrated distress over the Daniel Brandt article through his numerous pleas on Wikipedia and his importance/fame is relatively small compared to the amount of this demonstrated distress. I don't think that there are that many individuals clamoring to have their BLP article removed and there are even less with such demonstrated distress. For example, Rachel Marsden's position was a request to fix her article to meet WP:BLP, not delete it. To derive such a process, we first need to compile a list of all those desiring to have their BLP article blanked and then review the compilation to figure out the proposed procedure. If interested, please list below all those BLP articles for which the person who is the subject of the article desires that it be deleted. -- Jreferee 00:03, 24 April 2007 (UTC) '
Every current policy falls into one of the following five categories: 1. Behavioral; 2. Content and Style; 3. Deletion; 4. Enforcement; 5. Legal and copyright: law. This proposed policy would be a new policy under Deletion, similar to Office actions. However, this new process will assume that the article otherwise meets all other article standards, e.g., Neutral point of view, Verifiability, What Wikipedia is not, No original research, and Biographies of living persons. As Jimbo states, "Wikipedia is not here to make people sad" and this proposed policy would address a person's desire to remove Wikipedia's republication of sourced information from Wikipedia's article space. The person's desire would not be enough to remove the article and much more would be needed as described above. Wikipedia:notability means published material, not importance/fame notability. It is the published material, in turn, that imparts importance/fame in the person and this importance/fame presently plays no role in Wikipedia article standards. A person described in only a handful of published materials may meet Wikipedia:notability which means the article should not be deleted via AfD. However, under this new process, the handful of published materials may only impart a low importance/fame. A comparison of this importance/fame could then be made to the person's demonstrated distress. Office matters already evaluate a person's level of distressed to make foundation decisions over articles and there is no reason why Wikipedia could not set up a system to evaluate a person's distress over the existance of a Wikipedia article on themselves. A low importance/fame compared to a great demonstrated distress would allow the article to be blanked under this process, even though the article would/did survive AfD. The power to decide under this process will be in the hands of people other than the subject of the article. Opinions contributed to this proposed new process could be restricted to registered users, administrators, bureacrats, or a selected committee. -- Jreferee 15:01, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
IMO we are getting this so wrong. What is wrong with BLP is that it is far too restrictive. We should be making it easier and not more difficult to have BLP articles; otherwise I feel we just follow blindly the DB line without reflection just because we cannot handle him, and we make him the victor in all this. The reality is there are far more people clamouring for a wikipedia article than that minority who dont want an article. DB today said he feels he now has the alleged wikipedia cabal on his side, he has persuaded wikipedia by outing people rahter than enaging in a serious argument to do exactly the opposite of what we should be doing which is making BLP eligibility much greater. And I intend to defend this viewpoint from those who want to restrict the Jimbo goal of the encyclopedia of everything because, IMO, (no attacks intended) DB has got them scared, SqueakBox 02:38, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
Process:
≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 15:44, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
I'm all in favor of a noticeboard pointing to biography AfDs, so interested users can participate, per Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Deletion or any of the many other similar ones. But this can be done without any entirely new process. -- AnonEMouse (squeak) 20:34, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
Currently: In borderline cases, the rule of thumb should be "do no harm". Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a tabloid. It is not our job to be sensationalist, or to be the primary vehicle for the spread of titillating claims about people's lives.
Proposed: The rule of thumb must be "do no harm". Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a tabloid. It is not our job to be sensationalist, or to be the primary vehicle for the spread of titillating claims. We must be confident that the content we carry is correct, relevant, and fairly presented. Biographies of lesser known people or marginally notable people may not always attract sufficient 'eyeballs' to ensure that they remain free from unsourced material. If there is concern that an article is insufficiently 'watched', then it may be necessary to pare the article back to the bare bones of the subject's notability and, perhaps, to semi-protect it.
Removed: "In borderline cases,"
Justification: Do no harm is not optional, in any cases.
Changed: "should be" to "must be".
Justification: Do no harm is not optional. This doesn't mean we don't include negative material, but we only do so where the damage has already been done in mainstream media. We follow. We don't lead.
Removed: "about people's lives"
Justification: It not our job to be sensationalist or a vehicle for spreading titillating claims about anything.
Added: "We must be confident that the content we carry is correct, relevant, and fairly presented."
Justification: Not enough to be correct if it is unfairly presented, etc.
Added: "Biographies of lesser known people or marginally notable people may not always attract sufficient 'eyeballs' to ensure that they remain free from unsourced material."
Justification: Explains why we need to be stricter with lesser known people.
Added: "If there is concern that an article is insufficiently 'watched', then it may be necessary to pare the article back to the bare bones of the subject's notability and, perhaps, to semi-protect it."
Justification: When we go outside what is well known about a person, the chance of mistaken or deliberately misleading information surviving increases dramatically, sometimes with damaging results. See, for example, Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2007-04-23/Wikidetainment. We should cover these people, but we must only cover the aspects of the lives that are notable, so as to be confident that what we are putting in "correct, relevant, and fairly presented". That means not allowing our coverage to be too broad. And in some rare cases, for example, someone both obscure and controversial, then we may have to be more than usually restrictive in who we trust to edit the article.
Remember that what is carried on wikipedia can and has cost people their jobs, got them in trouble with their governments and I don't know what else. Regards, Ben Aveling 22:39, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
I agree with WAS 4.250's sentiments here. The current wording needs clarification though. The "do no harm in borderline cases" intention of WP:LIVING is a different concept from "Don't use tabloids as sources." How about, "When determining whether information about a private person is already public, in borderline cases the rule is, 'do no harm.' Kla'quot 16:24, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
I am not in favor of the "do no harm" proposed policy section. The primary focus of Wikipedia should be to provide verifiable referenced information on the subject and not to "avoid doing harm" by providing apparently accurate published information that might or might not be embarassing to the subject. There are already strong policies in place that say all information in Wikipedia articles should be properly cited, and so uncited rumors should be removed from articles under currently existing policy. I agree with the original nominator's sentiment above that "Wikipedia should follow, not lead", but only in so far that following implies we are using previously published information. If the information is verifiable and referenced and appears to be relevant to the subject of the article then it should appear... period.
I also do not like the "vote counting" language in proposal number 2. Wikipedia deletion discussions should be handled by rational debate on the merits, not by vote counting, and so policies should not refer to "50% or more" or "40% or more" of the "votes". Editors express their reasoning and it is up to the admins to decide which side of a debate is correct.
Obviously we should react quickly to correct misinformation at the request of living people in their Wikipedia biographies, but requests to remove properly cited, verifiable and relevant information should not have much weight. Dugwiki 17:38, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
I recommended this policy to a pile of people who aren't normally Wikipedians (on blogs, etc). The whole thing reads beautifully and sets out our best practice in a way the world needs to know ... except that "Exception" section, which sticks out like a sore thumb. So I added a note about its provenance. This was strictly for purposes of enhancing our public relations to the outside world - David Gerard 17:09, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
I've been following discussion of this elsewhere, and the general feeling there is at least disappointment. I have to say that on one level I agree with them.
Right now there's substantial cause for someone who gets stuck with an unwanted Wikipedia biography to take the Seigenthaler option and head straight for the courts. And it's especially so for someone whose notability doesn't begin to approach public figure levels. It's not just that an article can have false/hurtful statements; it's that it's wide open to have such statements inserted at any time by anyone. And no subject of such a biography is beholden to Wikipedia's processes. Whatever the responsiveness of those processes, they are Wikipedia's problem, not the world's problem; nobody makes a commitment to participating in those processes by simply existing.
We can expect people to say, "I don't give a fig about your procedures; supervising your editors is your problem, not mine." I don't think this is being addressed. Mangoe 18:37, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
Noting Doc's comment in the deletion debate for Jeffrey St. Clair, I would like to suggest a variant of the {{ prod}} tag as follows:
WP:BLP article, unsourced, marked as such for 14 days, quietly deleted, no fuss, no mess, and undelete on request with the proviso that the tag be replaced on restoration, giving the interested parties a further 14 days to fix it. What does the panel think? Guy ( Help!) 19:11, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
A similar proposal to this was floated earlier - it's still a very damaging idea.
Consider Category:Senegalese politicians. All very notable, important sorts of people. About half of the articles are unsourced, generally stubs.
Now, yes, we obviously can find sources for articles on all the prime ministers of Senegal. That's not the issue. The issue is that there are very few editors working in this area - often not enough to handle a wave of PRODs on their articles. It's an area of high importance to the project and low participation. To add a rule that allows for deletion in this area makes it far too easy to overwhelm these vital areas with deletions and gut our coverage with no attention to whether or not the articles are actually erroneous.
BLPs and sourcing are a problem, but they need a far more subtle solution than this. Phil Sandifer 12:39, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
I am somewhat new to this process, so please forgive if it has already been discussed or if this is the wrong place for discussion. It has come to my attention somewhat by chance that there are large number of articles which have reference sources where the reference source in question has a specific agenda against the BLP. After a great deal of searching various WP articles I have noticed a disturbing trend of sites like Media Matters for America and Media Research Center being used as primary sources for criticism against a specific person within their BLP with the result being definate POV criticisms of these articles. It has been generally regarded that these references are acceptable since they do not represent blogs or specific OR by an individual which is then published on WP, however I have the following problem with these types of groups.
I propose that references from sites like these be held to a higher standard, not be used as the primary source for a critical review of a LP, and be limited to actual notable criticism. Also, after reading the preceding sections, I believe that this approach could also help solve some of the other issues currently affecting BLP articles within WP. Arzel 02:16, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
Clayquot, I restored that AfD pages may be courtesy-blanked, or deleted if there's inappropriate BLP material on them, per Jimbo's comment, because we do as a matter of practise already do this. SlimVirgin (talk) 05:19, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
So a one-thousand word article on George Bush can be blanked if a vandal adds "is an ass" to it? The wording leaves the door open to that impression. Wjhonson 03:20, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
The recent "or deleted if there is inappropriate commentary" addition does not have consensus, so I will remove it. I understand that some AfD pages have been deleted in the past, presumably under WP:ATTACKPAGE or WP:IAR, and for these unusual circumstances IAR will continue to suffice. We are certainly not deleting AfD pages whenever someone says "vanispamcruftisement." Kla'quot 05:25, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
:)
Deleting AfDs in rare cases (per admin discretion) is not really a problem for me as long as we note that this should generally be reserved for particularly nasty AfDs (and not just any debate were a person is called "unimportant" ... something which sadly occurs too often). My issue was with the sentence, "After deletion of a BLP, any admin may choose to protect the page against recreation." Why should a page that is a first-time deletion be protected against recreation, except in relatively rare cases? --
Black Falcon (
Talk)
08:05, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
(indent reset) Only more times than I can count. :) I get what you were saying now. Seraphimblade Talk to me 10:26, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Another item for discussion: Which of the following do people prefer? Kla'quot 05:27, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
"After deletion of a BLP, any admin may choose to protect the page against recreation."
or
"Per Wikipedia's guidelines on protecting deleted pages, pages that are repeatedly re-created after deletion in unencyclopedic form or against policy can be protected from further re-creation. "Salting" titles is intended to be a temporary measure, as it inhibits the creation of legitimate articles."
or
(neither of the above)
-- badlydrawnjeff talk 12:43, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
Salting is not a big deal as all possible variations can not be salted. WAS 4.250 14:04, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
The old language, and the language currently on the page per my revert said,
"Per Wikipedia's guidelines on protecting deleted pages, pages that are repeatedly re-created after deletion in unencyclopedic form or against policy can be protected from further re-creation. "Salting" titles is intended to be a temporary measure, as it inhibits the creation of legitimate articles."
this was changed to,
"After deletion of a BLP, any admin may choose to protect the page against recreation."
The new language both worries me and strikes me as unnecessary. It doesn't link to WP:SALT, and both the language on how protection is meant to be temporary and language on reasoning for the protection has been completely removed.
Admins shouldn't protect pages just because it's a BLP--there should be a reason behind it. The first version doesn't exclude protecting it for some other reason than multiple page protections, and going all the way to a blanket version seems dangerous, because if an admin protects something and doesn't have a valid reason they can simply site that language and say "BLP + AFD → protection".
The original language could stand to be expanded on, but in it's current form it does not exclude other reasons for protecting a deleted BLP. Miss Mondegreen | Talk 01:18, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
Others have convinced me that this is an area in which admins should have some flexibility. Admins should be able to use their tools to prevent creation of pages created for purposes of harassment, and particularly for purposes of violating privacy. However, guidelines are helpful to ensure that delete protection is not overused. I propose that WP:BLP be amended to say, "After deletion of a BLP, an article may be protected against recreation, according to the guidelines for protecting deleted pages." WP:SALT should also be amended along the lines of, "Administrators may salt a deleted biography of a living person if they believe that the article was created for purposes of harassment, and have reason to believe that a similar article will be recreated." Putting this text in WP:SALT, which is (I think) a guideline, gives admins more flexibility than putting it in WP:BLP, which is a policy. Kla'quot 04:32, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
In light of the proposal above to delete BLP articles unless there's consensus to keep them - a better way of solving the problem would be to be more strict about the fact that an encyclopedia is not a newspaper. People are frequently tempted to follow the latest media hype and make rather unbalanced articles about whatever CNN is talking about today, but that doesn't mean that these are encyclopedic. Everybody gets their proverbial fifteen minutes of fame, not everybody gets an encyclopedia article. >Radiant< 08:52, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
This has been part of Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not since 2002. The wording has changed several times over the years, but you'll find the same proscription there in the current version.
The problem here isn't mis-placed news reports. It is the propensity of editors to present everything in individual biographical articles. That is what we should be more strict about. Michael Sneed ( AfD discussion) is a prime recent example. The article (since renamed to Inaccurate media reports of the Virginia Tech massacre, completely rewritten, and deleted) was in its original form a discussion of one news report on a historical event that was pretending to be a biographical article of the person who made that news report. Some greatly misguided editors even opined in the AFD discussion that a biographical article about the journalist was the correct way to present discussion of the news reporting of an event, moreover.
That we should present such things within broad-scope articles that are not biographies, and not as individual biographical articles, has been part of Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not since 2003. Uncle G 17:50, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
We are now discussing at AfD the list List_of_Americans_in_the_Venona_papers and the question arises of which of these people are covered under BLP? As the material discusses people who were active in adult life in 1944, probably in the age range of 20 through 60, the younger of them may still be alive. For many of them, we do have death dates, but not for all. I'll mention the information is based upon a US government source, as previous published in several books, so that the possibility of libel does not seem to apply, although IANAL. DGG 01:59, 29 April 2007 (UTC)