I'd say go in the opposite direction - start with the 6-month-olds and work backward. Articles created after the introduction of the BLP policy should be referenced, people should have known better. Older articles were created when a different set of standards applied - back when I started references were an afterthought, not a necessity. That also would allow DASH bot to finish doing its job, and allow older, but less active editors the opportunity to save articles the may well have forgotten about (I was surprised by some of the notifications I got from DASH bot). Guettarda ( talk) 17:38, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
Next question - how many do you think "the system" could handle, a month? And how best could we get the community involved? Right now it feels polarised between people who want to delete, and people who want to save. I'm sure that's more a perception than anything else. But if we're going to tag articles in manageable blocks, my thought is that it should be done by a bot, but should require human verification.
That's where I see a potential problem. It's easy to say "yeah, I looked at it" without doing an even cursory search for sources. On the other hand, if meaningful examination is required, the whole deadline thing goes out the window. Looking through the prods that have been done, some of the "mass prodders" are actually doing a good job, using existing notability guidelines. Others are simply tagging articles because they're unsourced. Most people are going to be happy with the former, many are going to get upset by the latter approach. (Of course, there's always going to be subjectivity. Bali ultimate's prods of video game musicians looks good to me, but attracted the ire of others.)
That leads to a third point - how many articles can we handle? I think that's really an unknown. It all depends on how many people choose to get involved. Keeping in mind the goal to get this done in a reasonable amount of time, I think any system needs constant monitoring. Are they getting done? Is a backlog building up? If we can get 100 people to do a minimum 10 articles a week, we could clear this up in a year. But the reality is that there are thousands that fail the notability guidelines, and that could be dealt with quickly people who know the guidelines well. But there will also be thousands that are important articles - third world political leaders, jurists, business and community leaders - but that will be difficult to source. And fixing these require a very different skill set. There should be a reasonable way to ask for 'more time', be it userification, movement to an incubator, or something else set up specifically for this drive. Guettarda ( talk) 18:50, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
This seems quite reasonable. But I'm not even attempting to follow all the discussions going on on this same topic all over the place. Is any attempt being made to centralize them, so we can have one discussion where people can see all the currently proposed options?-- Kotniski ( talk) 18:00, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
1) Don't "prod" new unreferenced BLPs. Speedy them. If we're going to deal with established articles via a prod or prod-like manner, allowing new into the same queue (or one that will compete for admin attention with the other) is counterproductive. First, we must stop the problem expanding, and a harsh moratorium on new unreferenced BLP articles doesn't harm the current contents of the encyclopedia, nor does it drive away contributors any more than {{ db-band}} does. Jclemens ( talk) 19:00, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
2) Overall, this really isn't a policy, but a specific course of action. Let's be sure to separate how we deal with the backlog from ongoing policies for handling new BLPs. Jclemens ( talk) 19:00, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
This is pretty useless since multiple other proposals have been made, and separation of discussions reduces the likelihood that any given proposal can ever be viewed as consensus. My strong views on BLP (including strong support of flagged revisions) is clear, but this sort of proposal will benefit WP not a whit. Collect ( talk) 20:45, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
Strong oppose in favour of this suggestion. The proposal is similar, but was made in the right way, and takes the view that we should use a carrot with the threat of a very big stick, rather than start with a stick with the threat of a bigger stick. WFCforLife ( talk) 18:12, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
Oppose This does almost nothing about the original problem of keeping libels out. Long-existing material is particularly unlikely to contain libels that have not already come to notice. On the other hand, an intentional libeler can easily create fake sourcing that will let a statement remain until someone actually researches it. Anti-libel efforts need to concentrate on actual negative statements rather than wasting effort on the huge body of statements that are not negative but not yet sourced. -- JWB ( talk) 22:28, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
Moved off topic discussion of my behaviour to my talk page.-- Scott Mac (Doc) 22:59, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
That's a deal-breaker for me. PRODing -- as long as it's not indiscriminate, and follows some set pattern -- is simply not an issue. My current efforts have led me to review 163 unreferenced BLPs, placing 120 PROD tags, and stub-ifying or simply removing the unsourced tags from 43. Many that I have tagged have since been "saved" by people who looked up a couple of sources on them. It's been effective and quite useful. Only Prodego (as far as I can tell) has simply removed the PROD without attempting to source the articles he removed them from. While I've no idea why he did this, it was only perhaps 15-20 of the articles, and in no way does it negate the usefulness of the work I've been doing. Forbidding this work hurts the project, and I fail to see how such a prohibition aids in any way the effort to solve the problem at hand. Unit Anode 22:04, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
If an article talk page is tagged with a wikiproject, or the article itself is tagged with a category associated with a wikiproject, then that wikiproject needs to be notified. Editors there are probably going to be the people most capable of saving the article. Even if they do not meet the 30/60/90 day deadline, these are the people most likely to revive it to an acceptable state in future. Can something to this effect be added to the proposal? In the event that this gets off the ground, I'm sure a bot for the task would be found. WFCforLife ( talk) 01:38, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
I agree that identifying and inviting members of Wikiprojects that carry a banner for the project is an excellent way to get the right people reviewing the BLP content. Organizing this with a bot notice would simplify it. FloNight ♥♥♥♥ 21:29, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
Might I recommend this be removed from WP:CENT, pending the outcome of the RfC, so as not to duplicate the conversation (as well as being temporarily mooted/superseded by the RfC)? -- Cybercobra (talk) 03:42, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
There may be unreferenced BLPs around that are not tagged as unreferenced, so will not be included when dealing with the backlog. Should the provision for new BLPs be extended to cover older ones which are spotted after the backlog phase is complete? Cassandra 73 ( talk) 13:04, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
By the time articles go through speedy, speedy is contested and declined, then through AfD, very messy content can be all over the mirror/clone sites. Their crawlers may not obey HTML noindex tags when they scrape content. It would be good to be able to hide content until "cleared". Esowteric+ Talk 18:35, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
I just added the following:
As Wikipedia continues to lose editors, organizations decide not to work with our projects, and several journalists severely criticize our deletion policies and the way we treat new editors, it is important that we warmly welcome new editors. Quickly deleting other editors contributions will only increase the decline in editor membership.
Thank you. Ikip 01:42, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
As Wikipedia continues to lose editors, organizations decide not to work with our projects, and several journalists severely criticize our deletion policies and the way we treat new editors, it is important that we warmly welcome new editors. Quickly deleting other editors contributions without effective communication will only increase the decline in editor membership. - IKIP (moved from proposal text)
As a project in project space, I thought this was a proposal that anyone can develop. Mr. Scott MacDonald just deleted my edit saying that my addition was a "comments go on talk", [1]
Scott MacDonald also insisted that his flagged revision petition had no opposes. [2] [3]
I think Mr. MacDonald needs to allow other editors to edit project space articles he is working on collaboratively as a community, even those editors he disagrees with. Otherwise we should decide if this article belongs in project space at all by putting it up for MfD, and it can be moved to Mr. MacDonald's user space, were he will have full control of this article. Ikip 05:28, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
This proposal starts by reminding us that controversial unreferenced material should be removed. It then discusses the mechanics of removing all unreferenced biographical material, whether controversial or not. Whilst many editors favour removing unreferenced but uncontroversial material, a substantial number do not. That debate is already in progress with a wider audience at Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Biographies_of_living_people (WP:RfC/BLP, 1 megabyte).
Do the authors favour the removal of unreferenced but uncontroversial material, and are they hereby proposing to change Wikipedia policy to match that view? If so, that part of this proposal duplicates WP:RfC/BLP, and this proposal should be suspended until WP:RfC/BLP is concluded then revised to accept its consensus. Certes ( talk) 00:07, 2 February 2010 (UTC)
And a very simple one, based on existing policy. Require the use of WP:BEFORE, prior to all nomination for deletion via prod or AfD to the extent it is relevant. In particular, require point 9 before any suggested deletion for lack of references. This will automatically rebalance the procedure to keeping what can be kept, and removing without much argument anything that cannot. Both of these are necessary. DGG ( talk ) 21:44, 2 February 2010 (UTC)
Please join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/Biographies of living people#Next step(s). Maurreen ( talk) 21:31, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
I've created a page at WP:RANDUNREF which provides a random Unreferenced BLP every day. It's transcluded below.
Stephen McKeon (random unreferenced BLP of the day for 14 Jul 2024 - provided by User:AnomieBOT/RandomPage via WP:RANDUNREF)
This approach could possibly be worked into something more elaborate, since the bot can filter by other categories too (eg five unreferenced BLPs of the day, from different topic areas). Note though that the bot can only do one entry per page, so it would involve making various subpages and transcluding them. See the use at WP:VRNB. Rd232 talk 10:52, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
I have been working on the unreferenced BLPs. In the February group [4] I found a number of entries that were actually not biographies of a person; they were about musical groups. On several I changed the tag from "BLP unreferenced" to simply "unreferenced." But then I saw in the history of one of them that the same change had been made before, and someone had changed it back [5] with the comment "This is a BLP." So now I'm confused. Is it WP policy to treat an article about a group as a "biography of a living person"? The project page here doesn't seem to say so. -- MelanieN ( talk) 00:02, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
I'd say go in the opposite direction - start with the 6-month-olds and work backward. Articles created after the introduction of the BLP policy should be referenced, people should have known better. Older articles were created when a different set of standards applied - back when I started references were an afterthought, not a necessity. That also would allow DASH bot to finish doing its job, and allow older, but less active editors the opportunity to save articles the may well have forgotten about (I was surprised by some of the notifications I got from DASH bot). Guettarda ( talk) 17:38, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
Next question - how many do you think "the system" could handle, a month? And how best could we get the community involved? Right now it feels polarised between people who want to delete, and people who want to save. I'm sure that's more a perception than anything else. But if we're going to tag articles in manageable blocks, my thought is that it should be done by a bot, but should require human verification.
That's where I see a potential problem. It's easy to say "yeah, I looked at it" without doing an even cursory search for sources. On the other hand, if meaningful examination is required, the whole deadline thing goes out the window. Looking through the prods that have been done, some of the "mass prodders" are actually doing a good job, using existing notability guidelines. Others are simply tagging articles because they're unsourced. Most people are going to be happy with the former, many are going to get upset by the latter approach. (Of course, there's always going to be subjectivity. Bali ultimate's prods of video game musicians looks good to me, but attracted the ire of others.)
That leads to a third point - how many articles can we handle? I think that's really an unknown. It all depends on how many people choose to get involved. Keeping in mind the goal to get this done in a reasonable amount of time, I think any system needs constant monitoring. Are they getting done? Is a backlog building up? If we can get 100 people to do a minimum 10 articles a week, we could clear this up in a year. But the reality is that there are thousands that fail the notability guidelines, and that could be dealt with quickly people who know the guidelines well. But there will also be thousands that are important articles - third world political leaders, jurists, business and community leaders - but that will be difficult to source. And fixing these require a very different skill set. There should be a reasonable way to ask for 'more time', be it userification, movement to an incubator, or something else set up specifically for this drive. Guettarda ( talk) 18:50, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
This seems quite reasonable. But I'm not even attempting to follow all the discussions going on on this same topic all over the place. Is any attempt being made to centralize them, so we can have one discussion where people can see all the currently proposed options?-- Kotniski ( talk) 18:00, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
1) Don't "prod" new unreferenced BLPs. Speedy them. If we're going to deal with established articles via a prod or prod-like manner, allowing new into the same queue (or one that will compete for admin attention with the other) is counterproductive. First, we must stop the problem expanding, and a harsh moratorium on new unreferenced BLP articles doesn't harm the current contents of the encyclopedia, nor does it drive away contributors any more than {{ db-band}} does. Jclemens ( talk) 19:00, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
2) Overall, this really isn't a policy, but a specific course of action. Let's be sure to separate how we deal with the backlog from ongoing policies for handling new BLPs. Jclemens ( talk) 19:00, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
This is pretty useless since multiple other proposals have been made, and separation of discussions reduces the likelihood that any given proposal can ever be viewed as consensus. My strong views on BLP (including strong support of flagged revisions) is clear, but this sort of proposal will benefit WP not a whit. Collect ( talk) 20:45, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
Strong oppose in favour of this suggestion. The proposal is similar, but was made in the right way, and takes the view that we should use a carrot with the threat of a very big stick, rather than start with a stick with the threat of a bigger stick. WFCforLife ( talk) 18:12, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
Oppose This does almost nothing about the original problem of keeping libels out. Long-existing material is particularly unlikely to contain libels that have not already come to notice. On the other hand, an intentional libeler can easily create fake sourcing that will let a statement remain until someone actually researches it. Anti-libel efforts need to concentrate on actual negative statements rather than wasting effort on the huge body of statements that are not negative but not yet sourced. -- JWB ( talk) 22:28, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
Moved off topic discussion of my behaviour to my talk page.-- Scott Mac (Doc) 22:59, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
That's a deal-breaker for me. PRODing -- as long as it's not indiscriminate, and follows some set pattern -- is simply not an issue. My current efforts have led me to review 163 unreferenced BLPs, placing 120 PROD tags, and stub-ifying or simply removing the unsourced tags from 43. Many that I have tagged have since been "saved" by people who looked up a couple of sources on them. It's been effective and quite useful. Only Prodego (as far as I can tell) has simply removed the PROD without attempting to source the articles he removed them from. While I've no idea why he did this, it was only perhaps 15-20 of the articles, and in no way does it negate the usefulness of the work I've been doing. Forbidding this work hurts the project, and I fail to see how such a prohibition aids in any way the effort to solve the problem at hand. Unit Anode 22:04, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
If an article talk page is tagged with a wikiproject, or the article itself is tagged with a category associated with a wikiproject, then that wikiproject needs to be notified. Editors there are probably going to be the people most capable of saving the article. Even if they do not meet the 30/60/90 day deadline, these are the people most likely to revive it to an acceptable state in future. Can something to this effect be added to the proposal? In the event that this gets off the ground, I'm sure a bot for the task would be found. WFCforLife ( talk) 01:38, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
I agree that identifying and inviting members of Wikiprojects that carry a banner for the project is an excellent way to get the right people reviewing the BLP content. Organizing this with a bot notice would simplify it. FloNight ♥♥♥♥ 21:29, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
Might I recommend this be removed from WP:CENT, pending the outcome of the RfC, so as not to duplicate the conversation (as well as being temporarily mooted/superseded by the RfC)? -- Cybercobra (talk) 03:42, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
There may be unreferenced BLPs around that are not tagged as unreferenced, so will not be included when dealing with the backlog. Should the provision for new BLPs be extended to cover older ones which are spotted after the backlog phase is complete? Cassandra 73 ( talk) 13:04, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
By the time articles go through speedy, speedy is contested and declined, then through AfD, very messy content can be all over the mirror/clone sites. Their crawlers may not obey HTML noindex tags when they scrape content. It would be good to be able to hide content until "cleared". Esowteric+ Talk 18:35, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
I just added the following:
As Wikipedia continues to lose editors, organizations decide not to work with our projects, and several journalists severely criticize our deletion policies and the way we treat new editors, it is important that we warmly welcome new editors. Quickly deleting other editors contributions will only increase the decline in editor membership.
Thank you. Ikip 01:42, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
As Wikipedia continues to lose editors, organizations decide not to work with our projects, and several journalists severely criticize our deletion policies and the way we treat new editors, it is important that we warmly welcome new editors. Quickly deleting other editors contributions without effective communication will only increase the decline in editor membership. - IKIP (moved from proposal text)
As a project in project space, I thought this was a proposal that anyone can develop. Mr. Scott MacDonald just deleted my edit saying that my addition was a "comments go on talk", [1]
Scott MacDonald also insisted that his flagged revision petition had no opposes. [2] [3]
I think Mr. MacDonald needs to allow other editors to edit project space articles he is working on collaboratively as a community, even those editors he disagrees with. Otherwise we should decide if this article belongs in project space at all by putting it up for MfD, and it can be moved to Mr. MacDonald's user space, were he will have full control of this article. Ikip 05:28, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
This proposal starts by reminding us that controversial unreferenced material should be removed. It then discusses the mechanics of removing all unreferenced biographical material, whether controversial or not. Whilst many editors favour removing unreferenced but uncontroversial material, a substantial number do not. That debate is already in progress with a wider audience at Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Biographies_of_living_people (WP:RfC/BLP, 1 megabyte).
Do the authors favour the removal of unreferenced but uncontroversial material, and are they hereby proposing to change Wikipedia policy to match that view? If so, that part of this proposal duplicates WP:RfC/BLP, and this proposal should be suspended until WP:RfC/BLP is concluded then revised to accept its consensus. Certes ( talk) 00:07, 2 February 2010 (UTC)
And a very simple one, based on existing policy. Require the use of WP:BEFORE, prior to all nomination for deletion via prod or AfD to the extent it is relevant. In particular, require point 9 before any suggested deletion for lack of references. This will automatically rebalance the procedure to keeping what can be kept, and removing without much argument anything that cannot. Both of these are necessary. DGG ( talk ) 21:44, 2 February 2010 (UTC)
Please join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/Biographies of living people#Next step(s). Maurreen ( talk) 21:31, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
I've created a page at WP:RANDUNREF which provides a random Unreferenced BLP every day. It's transcluded below.
Stephen McKeon (random unreferenced BLP of the day for 14 Jul 2024 - provided by User:AnomieBOT/RandomPage via WP:RANDUNREF)
This approach could possibly be worked into something more elaborate, since the bot can filter by other categories too (eg five unreferenced BLPs of the day, from different topic areas). Note though that the bot can only do one entry per page, so it would involve making various subpages and transcluding them. See the use at WP:VRNB. Rd232 talk 10:52, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
I have been working on the unreferenced BLPs. In the February group [4] I found a number of entries that were actually not biographies of a person; they were about musical groups. On several I changed the tag from "BLP unreferenced" to simply "unreferenced." But then I saw in the history of one of them that the same change had been made before, and someone had changed it back [5] with the comment "This is a BLP." So now I'm confused. Is it WP policy to treat an article about a group as a "biography of a living person"? The project page here doesn't seem to say so. -- MelanieN ( talk) 00:02, 15 April 2012 (UTC)