• From ANI (Rdm2379 has been deleting unreferenced BLPs).

This is a completely understandable action by Rdm2376, and personally I'm sure I'd be fine with the vast majority of unreferenced BLPs being deleted, whether or not it was possible to add sources. But I'm not sure that this particular effort will actually succeed since there will be the inevitable objections that have gummed up the BLP reform works too often in the past (and there's the potential for lots of drama here, e.g. admins wheel warring over deletion and undeletion). One of the principle objections (which I would somewhat agree with) is that there are undoubtedly articles in the unreferenced BLP category which we would want to keep were they properly referenced, and simply deleting en masse does not give enough time for citations to be added. However the status quo wherein these articles simply hang around unreferenced for months or even years is simply not acceptable.

The right process to use here should be proposed deletion, but as mentioned above it does not seem to work. However a simple and very quick change to WP:PROD as currently written (which I think could gain consensus) would get around that difficulty—namely making an exception whereby prods of unreferenced BLPs cannot be removed until the article is adequately referenced, meaning that deletion is automatic after one week if improvements are not made. This would allow editors wary of mass deleting 50,000 articles a chance to step in and make improvements, but would also put these unreferenced articles very much under the gun. If a couple of others think this is a possible path to explore I'll boldly make the policy change myself and we'll see if it sticks.

If it did, I'd recommend moving extremely quickly, prodding perhaps as many as 5,000 unreferenced BLPs per week and logging that on daily or weekly pages akin to how we log DRVs and the like (I would think a smart programmer type could write a bot that would both prod unreferenced BLPs in a run of X number of articles and then log the action on a page somewhere). Editors would have a chance to add citations to anything that was prodded, and after one week admins would come in and delete anything unsourced en masse. Even accounting for creation of new unreferenced BLPs at the rate of about 1,000 per month, we'd be able to clean out the whole category in about 2 1/2 months, at which point keeping in place a similar process would prevent the problem of unreferenced BLPs from getting out of control in the future. Some might say 5,000 per week is too many, but a lot of others would see it as too few, and a log would give editors in the former camp a chance to go back and look for sources for articles that were deleted. The point is it would all be transparent but still proceed fairly quickly.

Honestly if those who have objected to past proposed changes in practices related to BLP (e.g. allowing no consensus BLP AfDs to "default to delete") cannot agree to something like this then we probably do need to take a more drastic course like Rdm2376's, but I think the above route is a better one. -- Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 06:54, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Let's be clear - there are actually two things being proposed here: (1) a rule that says that you can't remove a prod from an unreferenced BLP without referencing it (which seems reasonable); (2) a practice of administratively deleting a certain set of prodded articles en masse without examining them individually (which is the real controversial proposal being snuck in here).-- Kotniski ( talk) 10:50, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

AGF a bit, will you? I simply posted a comment to ANI which has now been moved here (as it should have been) and which has engendered a lot of discussion. There was no attempt to "sneak" anything in anywhere. If it helps to divide up the proposals then fine, but this was not something I brought to WT:PROD for an up or down vote, it was a comment in an ANI thread. -- Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 18:46, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

This is true - it was I who moved this thread over here. - Tbsdy (formerly Ta bu shi da yu) ^talk 07:34, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Addendum from proposer

I regret that this has gone into the inevitable support/oppose split discussion. When I proposed this (on ANI at first, and it was just a rough idea), it was not with the intention of this leading to a formal up or down vote on my comment as written.

Rather than dividing off into warring camps as is the norm on these kind of questions, lets try to come to a mutually agreeable solution. Specifically, there are any number of ways which this could be tweaked to placate current opposers, for example: 1) Drastically cut back on the proposed 5,000 per week prodding; 2) Don't let a bot do the prodding (which would have the same effect as number one); 3) Don't immediately delete prodded articles that don't get sources added, rather move them to the incubator (and then presumably delete eventually if nothing happens with them for months); etc. etc. It would be useful if those opposing did not simply shoot this down but said what would need to change in order for them to support something like this, since I think we can all agree that unreferenced BLPs are no good and we need a way to deal with them given that we have over 50,000. And those supporting should be open to compromise. That is, let's actually work toward consensus for once instead of just saying "yes" or "no." It really should not be that difficult for us to come up with a way to systematically improve or, if necessary, weed out horribly sourced BLPs, and that's all this is trying to do. -- Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 18:46, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Comments in Support

• Can't see anything wrong with this. NW ( Talk) 06:57, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

  Having this split off as a vote was silly. I hope someone will merge the two subthreads. In any case, here is my deeper analysis. The idea of tagging a set number of BLPs a week is a good one. However, I recognize that not all in the community accept that. However, it seems that the vast majority of people do agree with the fact that unsourced BLPs should not be deprodded. A change about that could probably be made within a short period of time. NW ( Talk) 21:42, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

  Vast is a bit of an overstatement, don't you think? It's somewhere in the low 60%s. Hardly enough for a policy change. Also, I find it kind of hillarious that somebody felt compelled number the support comments. - Chunky Rice ( talk) 00:02, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

(I never meant for this to be a vote when I put the headers up... just a bit more organized... *sigh*... I'm gonna turn mine bak into a * Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 00:16, 21 January 2010 (UTC))

• Seems reasonable to me. -- MZMcBride ( talk) 07:00, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• This sounds like a job for MBisanzBot! MBisanz ^talk 07:02, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• Long overdue. Make it so! JBsupreme ( talk) 07:02, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• I'm comfortable with this idea. Killiondude ( talk) 07:04, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• I would be willing to support this. Something must be done about BLPs, but it needs to be reviewable by the community, not just Kevin
• Can't see any problems with this suggestion. (On another note, I'm really beginning to hate Edit Conflicts...) - Tainted Conformity ^SCREAM 07:07, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• Support but the term "adequately referenced" needs fleshing out. -- NeilN ^{talk to me} 07:09, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• Mumble. People have been calling things "unreferenced" because they couldn't tell that "references" was spelled "sources" on the article. Mass deletion means mass errors. But Category:All unreferenced BLPs stands at 50.000 or so. Sigh. Guess we'll just have to live with the errors. -- Alvestrand ( talk) 07:14, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• Support. <>Multi‑Xfer<> ( talk) 07:18, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• You mean to say "may not be removed" rather than "cannot be removed." While the idea is interesting, it is not, I think, entirely thought through. Inevitably people will disagree about whether an article is adequately referenced, and without a process to determine this, there will be lots of drama and edit-warring over PROD tags. If we want to do this, we must also provide that in the event of any disagreement about whether an article is adequately referenced, it shall be referred to AfD.  Sandstein  07:19, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• Support - Sure, why not. For one thing, it'll make deleting PRODs easier. For another, irresponsible BLPs are a danger to Wikipedia and the subjects. -- Atama 頭 07:25, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• I've changed the appropriate policy. By all means tweak it or move stuff around, this was just a first pass and I'm sure it could be better, but you get the gist (Sandstein your proposed language about disagreement going to AfD seems fine, luckily I think that would happen relatively infrequently). We'll see what happens on the policy page, but so far there seems to be a clear consensus for this change here (and I'm not saying that's a permanent consensus, just enough to boldly make the change for the time being). Now maybe people smarter than me can figure out something with a bot that would allow us to systematize a process of cleaning out unreferenced BLPs. I'd recommend starting with the articles that have been unreferenced the longest and moving steadily forward, and also obviously publicizing that this is all happening. -- Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 07:29, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• Support - absolutely, and long overdue. The issue of unsourced, largely NN BLP stubs has been a festering problem for years on here, and has only been getting worse as time goes on. This effort here really needs to happen - Alison ^❤ 07:43, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• Support in theory, but I'm concerned that 5,000 a week is so many that no meaningful review will take place- and could so clog the PROD categories that other things may slip through that usual processes would have caught and de-prodded. This is a great way to clean out this mess- and a mess it is- but 2,000 or so a week would be small enough to allow interested editors to work on repairing a greater number of them before throwing them out. A separate template- and categories- should be made for these "BLP Prod"'s, at any rate. Bradjamesbrown ( talk) 07:49, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• Support We could havea a bot programmed to do this if it would ease the workload. Kevin Rutherford ( talk) 07:53, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

  A bot making the tags off the category is one thing- and might be a good idea. Run the bot 00:00 UTC every Monday morning to tag the oldest x articles in the category. However, if you're proposing an adminbot (and you didn't specify which part of this you want a bot to do) to actually carry out the deletions, that strikes me as a bad idea- one of the reasons prod works is that some human will review the tagging- even if only the deleting admin. Changing that to 'bot work' would be far more problematic than the original proposal. Bradjamesbrown ( talk) 08:20, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

  I would agree that admins should be doing the actual deletion rather than a bot, though the latter would be fine for tagging. One critical thing is that we need someone to actually look at the article and make sure the unreferenced BLP tag belonged there in the first place (obviously sometimes it will have been placed in error). Perhaps a bot could be used for deletion if we had a system whereby people patrolled articles dumped into that week's prod queue and made an edit somehow noting that the article was indeed unreferenced (non-admins could help with this). Then if no further changes were made a bot would delete after a week. I have no idea whether this is technically feasible or not, but if not I do think we'd need to do deletion by hand, so to speak. -- Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 08:44, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

  This proposal does not only affect administrators and needs to be discussed more widely than in an AN/I thread.-- Michig ( talk) 07:56, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

  Wrong venue. I was under the impression that AN/I was for incidents requiring imminent administrative action, not proposing changes to our deletion policies. A rudimentary search through WT:CSD's archives would reveal that similar proposals have failed to garner consensus in the past. That's not to say that this proposal will suffer the same fate, but this is not the right venue. decltype ( talk) 07:57, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

• Support In all honesty, I've been of the (potentially minority) opinion WP:PROD needs some changes for a while now. One of the biggest problems with PROD is the tendency, especially on new articles, for editors to remove the PROD tag with no justification and no effort at improvement to address the problems identified. While this action does not even scratch the surface of this issue, this is a step in the right direction as community consensus is definitely in favor of BLPs needing reliable sources, and PROD is a reasonable compromise to address the issue by giving sufficient time to attack the article's problems while avoiding the overhead of WP:AFD for what has been reported to be 50,000 unreferenced BLPs. -- Shirik ( Questions or Comments?) Forgot to sign. Time originally posted was 08:15, 20 January 2010 UTC. -- Shirik ( Questions or Comments?) 18:13, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
• Ideally I would see them all speedied. This is a fair compromise, giving the author over a week to source an article that should have been sourced in its very first revision. -- TS 08:20, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

  There is a related discussion over at WT:CSD to create a new category for long-time unreferenced BLPs. <>Multi‑Xfer<> ( talk) 08:35, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

• Support Much better than the CSD proposal. > RUL3R^{> trolling}_{> vandalism} 08:44, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• Support - definitely a good idea. - Tbsdy (formerly Ta bu shi da yu) ^talk 08:46, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• Support. I would tag 100 a day, and only those tagged as unsourced for at least three months, but apart from that I totally agree that these articles whould either have the most basic sourcing or be deleted. Many of them are easy to source, so 100 a day should be an easy target (not for any individual, but for a group of dedicated people). Fram ( talk) 08:52, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

  100/day = 519 days to deal with them all using current numbers. Seems a bit slow. MER-C 08:56, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

• Absolutely overdue. As I write this 12% of BLPs are unsourced and another 3.5% tagged {{ BLP sources}} (determined using the PAGESINCATEGORY function over {{PAGESINCATEGORY:Living people}}), which is unaccpetable. Implementation notes: add an {{#if:{{{blp|}}} to Template:Dated prod that replaces the usual text about contesting the deletion with more appropriate stuff, adapt Template:Prod uns blp for the purpose and redirect Template:Prodblp there. MER-C 08:56, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• YAY! (=support) Finally. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 08:58, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• Support This is long overdue. Dougweller ( talk) 09:06, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• Support All articles should be referenced. Notability is established by Verification through Reliable Sources. A complete lack of Reliable Sources means no Verfiability means no Notablilty. This is especially important for BLPs, where Wikipedia may also be straying into areas such as libel and defamation. Ideally, all unsourced statements should be removed from all BLPs. Mjroots ( talk) 09:21, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• Support I think Rdm2376 actions are positive. People should not expect to be able to write stuff and just expect others to source it for them. This sort of behavior is disrespectful and is the real disruption not the person who removed these unsourced comments / pages. Doc James ( talk · contribs · email) 09:22, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• Support A proposal that, in a proportional manner, enhances the integrity of the encyclopaedia, protects its legal position, and minimises harm to living persons, has my backing. -- Mkativerata ( talk) 09:28, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• Support with Sandstein's qualification that a dispute about the adequacy of references should go to AfD. Unreferenced BLPs are a serious problem and this is a good way to tackle it. JohnCD ( talk) 10:55, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• Support This is good proposal which will increase reliability of the site and will minimize harm to living persons. -- Defender of torch ( talk) 13:06, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• Support - Whatever steps are taken to minimize the harm done by having poorly or unsourced BLP articles around is the right thing to do. I'm ashamed there is even an opposition section for this proposal, but looking trough some of the names, I'm not surprised. Tarc ( talk) 14:03, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• Support I don't see anything unreasonable about this and the benefits are pretty hard to ignore. Vyvyan Basterd ( talk) 14:09, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• Tarc hits the nail on the head yet again. – Juliancolton |  ^Talk 14:39, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• Support as proposed. PeterSymonds ( talk) 14:46, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• 51k pages of unreliable information about living people isn't helping the WP cause at all. Prod 'em, whack the backlog, and make it clear that another backlog won't happen. -- SB_Johnny |  ^talk 15:17, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• Support The less unreferenced, "biographical" drek around, the better. An it harm none, do as thou wilt should be what we look to here. — Jeremy ^{( v^_^v Boribori!)} 15:22, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• Support Many of the old unreferenced articles will be of borderline notable people, and many are stubs. Whilst we are trying to build and encyclopedia, it does not benefit us to have articles like these. A quick look shows that we had 2779 articles tagged as unsourced BLPs in September of last year, which is nearly 100 per day. Whilst it would be a good idea to try and source all of these, they are being created faster than people are willing to source them. My only qualm is the idea of using robots to do this, I would prefer to see a human make a decision, as some could be speedied, and a small percentage could be tagged for special attention to be saved. Martin451 ( talk) 16:11, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• Support unconditionally. Long overdue. –  ukexpat ( talk) 17:00, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• Support No deletion process on Wikipedia English should end with a BLP remaining unreferenced as to the core information about the subject that makes them notable and other core identifying information. My research shows that this happens regularly so the deletion process is not helping to resolve the backlog of poorly sourced BLP. I'm open to alternative proposals but support this one as acceptable. FloNight ♥♥♥♥ 17:39, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• Support - Way overdue policy change. ++ Lar: t/ c 18:40, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• Support. This is a good idea. Since articles deleted by prod can be restored by request, these are not permanent deletions. Users will understand this sourcing requirement for real, living people better than for articles on, for example, fictional characters. Abductive ( reasoning) 18:51, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• *Do* it — and bot-prod them all. Respect the project; raise the bar. lather, rinse, repeat. Jack Merridew 19:00, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• Yes - Making prod non removable on unref'd BLP's is an elegant solution to the problem. Not sure on exactly how the deletion should proceed (whether it's best to do x thousand/week, etc), but that's not the important part of this proposal. -- Bfigura ^{( talk)} 19:02, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• Strongly support unreferenced BLPs need to be dealt with, and this seems like an ideal solution. -- AnmaFinotera ( talk · contribs) 19:10, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• overdue. Viridae ^Talk 20:16, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• Support step in the right direction. Bali ultimate ( talk) 20:34, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• Support as a common sense move. Something I strongly object to is people who decline speedies/contest PRODs but do nothing to improve the article if it truly needs improvement. That way, they help perpetuate whatever problem the article included. This is most important with unsourced BLPs. There is a "burden of improvement" on whomever inhibits the deletion of any given article if that page contained unsourced or POV material. Like it or not, this is the only way this encyclopedia will ever move forward on the BLP problem and removing unacceptable content. Jamie S93 21:46, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• Support FloNight said it very well. My only objection is that I don't believe that this should be done by a fully automatic bot, as there is likely a significant amount of articles in the category that are at least partially sourced. Mr. Z-man 22:23, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• Support with the caveat mentioned above by Sandstein and the hope that Rd's comments below are incorporated into the process. Re: some comments in the Oppose section, it'd be nice to see a parallel process which seeks to organize efforts to ref the unreffed and check some of those loosely reffed which include potentially controversial info. A template along the lines of "This BLPs references have been (or have not been) proofread by other editors" to add to the article or talk page perhaps? radek ( talk) 22:42, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• Support = for wholly unsourced BLPs - seems like a sensible idea. Cirt ( talk) 23:08, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• Support. This is a very sensible idea and Bigtimepeace does a good job of articulating it and deserves kudos for having the stones to do it and stand by it. Many of these unreferenced BLPs could be easily sourced if someone is willing to spend half an hour separating the wheat from the chaff with a google or GNews archive search and their lack of sources is due to laziness. However, many of those that date back to October 2006 (yes, 2006!) in which case, it's probably unlikely that any sources could be found and frankly, deleting these would do no harm. I have two slight concerns- many of the newer ones will have been created by inexperienced editors who do not know how to put proper references into articles and some will be obviously notable, but nigh on impossible to find online sources for. For example, while browsing the category for easily verified BLPs, I came across a Saudi prince (obviously notable) but could not find anything online about him. Care should be taken in these instances and the suggestion below about notifying wikiprojects could be very useful here. I also think Radeksz's idea is very sensible, though I'd suggest it should be a template or a category to put on the talk page. I would suggest starting this with a small trial run of the oldest unreferenced BLPs. HJMitchell You rang? 23:32, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• Support Way overdue. ⇌ Jake Wartenberg 01:43, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
• Support. There's nothing unreasonable about requiring editors to say where they got their info when they start a new BLP. Someguy1221 ( talk) 02:08, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
• Support. Commonsense, responsible change. Lara 02:15, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
• Support, for what it's worth, I wholeheartedly agree with this idea. The BLP problem has gone unaddressed for too long. Lankiveil ^{( speak to me)} 11:32, 21 January 2010 (UTC).
• Support. Those opposing should realise that the alternative is speedy deletion. I am willing to stop speedy deleting if something like this is agreed.-- Scott Mac (Doc) 19:13, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Comments in Opposition

• • I object to this policy change--it essentially amounts to pushing of a mass content purge of the encyclopedia, which for many articles may be undeserving. Robert K S ( talk) 07:34, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
    • If someone is going to create an sourceless BLP article, then completely abandon it, then it shouldn't stay on site, as it may invoke a whole host of problems. If someone thinks that a person deserves a Wiki page, then it's their job to prove it. If the deletion is contested, then it's contested. The pros outweigh the cons here. - Tainted Conformity ^SCREAM 07:40, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
      • While Rober K S is the only one of about a dozen people who have commented here to object overtly to the proposal, that editor has already reverted the changed language. Predictable, but I think this can and will gain consensus in the end, and Robert needs to articulate a better reason for objecting to a change that so far has been largely endorsed, and which clearly is not a "a mass content purge of the encyclopedia" (since sourced articles would not be deleted). -- Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 07:48, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
        • I see nothing wrong with his action. It is quite in-line with the typical bold, revert, discuss lifecycle, and, while I support this proposal, I have no objection to the change being reverted while it is fully discussed. For a change as big as this, a few hours is not sufficient for a thorough discussion, and there are surely viewpoints that have not yet been heard. -- Shirik ( Questions or Comments?) 08:19, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
        • I have re-removed this policy change. Clearly it needs to be widely discussed more than a few hours. -- Banjeboi 09:21, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
          • And Allison [1] has reverted. Anyone else see this as bullying through BRD process? -- Banjeboi 09:27, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose, unless proders under this provision are required to certify that they have actually looked for sources (with santions if obvious sources are found that demonstrate that no search was made) or unless the total use of this provision, by all editors across the entire project is limited to some reasonable figure, say 50 per day, and posted to a list page where interested editors have a reasonable chance to find sources. Otherwise this simply amounts to institutionalizing disruption, as far more useful information is apt to be deleted than is inaccurate information. DES ^(talk) 08:59, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

  Shouldn't the onus for sourcing be on the person that created the shoddy article in the first place? Tarc ( talk) 15:56, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

  No, at least not for the backlog, because deletion of valid but unsourced articles actively harms the project. If we have the article sources can (usually) be found, but not once it has been deleted. Use of WP:BEFORE should be expected if not required of would-be deleters. Not also that many, probably most, of the backlog was contributed by relative newcomers. They often didn't know that sources were needed, nor how to find and add them, and that in many cases aren't around now to assume this "onus". Partly this is because -- in my view -- in the absence of an actual problem (such as contentious unsourced content) a "shoddy" articel is better than no articel at all -- it may be a starting point for something better at any moment. DES ^(talk) 16:24, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

  I do like the incubation proposal for new unsourced BLPs that can be found at #Alternative proposal: Proposed BLP Incubation below. DES ^(talk) 16:24, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

• Opposed to Mass Prodding/Deletion. Last I checked our efforts here were to build an encyclopedia not delete everything that has been ignored for sourcing for whatever reasons. I suggest an alternative course - start a concerted effort to systematically go through allegedly unsourced BLPs (sometimes sources are there but not formatted as such) with a team of editors willing to put in the work to actually look for sources. If none are found then look to a prod. Deleting notable BLPs simply because the right person hasn't added the needed source in the right format is a really bad idea. It wastes resources and discourages those unfamiliar with how Wikipedia works. Mass prodding and deletions is guaranteed to delete content we shouldn't, having an unsourced BLP of a likely nn-BLP for an extra month or even months is a small price to pay to preserve the work and energy already donated to the project. If a "dissolving task force" to go through these is formed I'll help and I imagine with a little promotion others will be happy to help as well. -- Banjeboi 09:02, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

The above proposed change in policy allows this suggestion to be carried out. It however puts some time lines on it. Will definitely make Wikipedia better and hopefully garner the encyclopedia some more respect. Doc James ( talk · contribs · email) 09:26, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

In theory I agree with the spirit of demanding sources being added before the prod tag is removed however merely adding a source hardly guarantees it is the best or even adequate. Good articles are built by reviewing all the best sourcing to see what they state and then applying them. A add-a-source or-we-nuke-it tag seems a bit un-welcoming. That aside the other part of the proposal where they all are prodded over a few months is incredibly draining and disruptive. I'm willing to do even more than my share to work in this area but an effort to systematically go through the articles WP:BEFORE mass-deletions start rolling out should be done prior. And even then we will makes some mistakes and prod articles that Wikipedia should certainly have. It's easy to delete - it takes much more work to build and research and format, etc. We should find ways to work through a backlog instead of finding ways to simply delete most or all of them. -- Banjeboi 09:57, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

"merely adding a source hardly guarantees": True. However, having no source for a long period of time should be grounds for deletion since obviously no-one cares. Adding the PROD with the risk of having it nuked might call attention to the problem while adding some pressure.

"unwelcoming": That's why (as far as I understand it) this proposal is mainly aimed at those BLPs that have been neglected for a long time (refining the wording could clarify that). Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 10:01, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

If we delay it for 3 months from creation. The person who created will either hopefully have a better understanding of verifiability or no longer edits. I do not see any concerns with "unwelcoming" happening. Doc James ( talk · contribs · email) 10:04, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Nonsense. Merely because an article has been ignored does not mean no one cares. The standards for sourcing and notability have both radically changed over the past few years. Additionally Wikipedia as a whole being uncivil and un-welcoming has been documented as an ongoing problem. We should err on the side of being too nice IMHO. A little extra time to be considerate to one another seems like a humane approach. The core problem remains that instead of an effort to vet and improve these articles the proposal is to delete them one way or another. That's counter-productive in the short and long-term. Generally borderline notable people become more notable as their career progresses. -- Banjeboi 10:26, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

If someone needs help with sourcing, we can give them help. Heck, I still haven't fully figured it out yet (lazy). Just because we're PRODing the article doesn't mean that we're going to spit in the editor's face(s) in the process. As long as they display a wanting to improve the article I'd be happy with helping them do so. Maybe a note on the talk page advising them where they can go to get help? - Tainted Conformity ^SCREAM 10:37, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Outdent. Actually putting a line on the prod tag itself where to seek sourcing help would be best. However this still doesn't address that mass prodding hundreds or thousands of articles at once remains a rather unsurpassable flaw in the current proposal. -- Banjeboi 10:45, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose. Pointless idea which will make the encyclopedia worse. Whether a BLP contains libel is independent of whether it also contains references. If you are considering deleting an article (that looks to be about a notable subject) you should at least try to find references yourself. I believe that in most cases (whether it's a BLP or some other type of article) references could be found if tried. But some people seem to like the feeling of power that comes from destroying others' work. -- Kotniski ( talk) 10:11, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• Opposed can't believe that some people have the audacity to propose this now. Talk about gall! I don't really need to add anything to what there saying above, though.
  — V = I * R ( talk to Ohms law) 10:13, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

What's wrong with proposing it now? It's not like it's going to be decided tonight this morning. There's obviously people awake to discuss it. Unless you're refering to something else? - Tainted Conformity ^SCREAM 10:18, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm a bit confused about that comment also. I moved it at around the middle of the day. - Tbsdy (formerly Ta bu shi da yu) ^talk 12:38, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose deleting unsourced articles without making a reasonable attempt to find sources, for the same reasons as I gave here. This proposal has the additional problem that "adequately referenced" could be interpreted as practically anything from an external link to full inline citations for every statement. There is no way in hell we could get enough editors to make even the most cursory check for sources on 5,000 articles a week. A better course of action would be to set up a project to make a concerted effort to reference these articles, and I would be happy to participate in such a project. Hut 8.5 10:16, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• Strongest possible Oppose - For several reasons:

1. Being unreferenced is something that can be solved with editing. Therefore deleting unreferenced articles only because they're unreferenced is prohibited by deletion policy. Deletion is a function of the subject of the article being proper for the encyclopedia, not with the current state of an article. The proposal is also strongly in contradiction with WP:BEFORE and WP:PRESERVE.
2. Being unreferenced does not mean at all being wrong, libelous or in general harmful to the subject. It just means that either we have to add sources, and discuss deletion if and only if we cannot find traces of notability, per WP:GNG. Please someone explain me what is the intrinsic problem with being unsourced that so strongly requires mass deletion instead of proper editing. I understand perfectly BLPs are a touchy subject, but mass deletion of BLPs doesn't help the problem. The problems with BLPs are mostly vandalism and bias. Removing unreferenced articles doesn't help vandalism and bias being pushed on BLPs. Semiprotecting them would help much more, and would not lose information.
3. Personally I think that the PROD mechanism in general is a disgrace that should be throwed away forever. Either an article is blatantly, clearly to be deleted (therefore falling into WP:CSD) or its deletion should be decided by the community with a proper AfD discussion. The PROD default-to-delete mechanism is clearly harmful in removing information without a community discussion on it, and it is by no means clear that PRODded articles are more statistically worth of deletion than AfD articles -for example the majority of articles I've deprodded later survived AfD.

On a side note, I've found the attempts to directly change policy only after a few hours of discussion absolutely disgusting in their arrogance. I understand WP:BOLD, but such dramatic and potentially disruptive changes require, by their very nature, a reasonably long discussion and consensus-building process. I hope no one closes this discussion and takes action until at the bare minimum a couple of weeks, if not a month, regardless of the outcome. -- Cyclopia ^talk 10:36, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Regardless of the outcome this is a serious issue which needs to be addressed. Doc James ( talk · contribs · email) 10:46, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

We're addressing it: we're discussing it. -- Cyclopia ^talk 10:50, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

• Honestly if those who have objected to past proposed changes in practices related to BLP (e.g. allowing no consensus BLP AfDs to "default to delete") cannot agree to something like this then we probably do need to take a more drastic course - What does it mean? -- Cyclopia ^talk 10:48, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
  • That's an artifact from the AN/I discussion that prompted this proposal. It doesn't really have any direct impact on this, but you could read the AN/I discussion for the details. Long thread short, a user was burning through old unsourced BLP articles without strictly following procedure, and someone was questioning it. - Tainted Conformity ^SCREAM 10:52, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Some people think (or like to talk as if) BLPs are a huge problem that needs to be addressed by some kind of drastic measure. Any evidence of the hugeness of the problem, or the relevance of the proposed measure to the problem, is generally lacking. -- Kotniski ( talk) 10:55, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose. I recently got an unsourced BLP message from a bot for a completely uncontroversial article on an author, which mostly consisted of a list of his works. Okay, so sourcing wasn't hard to find: a simple reference to the British Library online catalogue sufficed. But suppose I hadn't been around, and nobody had responded? Then we would have lost a perfectly useful article. Gone. WP:BLP and WP:V say that any controversial points, or points likely to be challenged, must be sourced; and we have a lot of articles written on that basis. Yes of course sourcing is useful, good, and important. But this radical proposal would inflict far too much avoidable collateral damage on far too many existing articles. Jheald ( talk) 11:21, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose. This is a lazy deletionists' charter, yet another in a series of attempts to mass delete unsourced articles. Rather than bothering to look for sources, some editors simply tag bomb or add a prod based on the current state of the article (ignoring WP:PRESERVE), and this will just embolden them. This makes it someone elses problem to find sources to avert deletion. I've done some clearing up of the unsourced BLP backlog, and I found it was perfectly easy to get the dodgy ones deleted via prod or AfD without this change. The hard part of unsourced BLPs is sourcing the notable ones, not getting the non-notable ones deleted, as sourcing actually takes some effort. Fences& Windows 11:35, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose Apart from the many good points made above, I notice BLP being introduced as a consideration into articles that are not biographies. This then opens to door to gaming such as placing BLP tags on any type of article prior to prodding it. PROD is not meant to be a means of bypassing due diligence and proper oversight and should not be abused to facilitate a mass-purge. Colonel Warden ( talk) 11:38, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose As well as Cyclopia's first 2 points, deletion is for things that are not notable. While unreferenced articles cannot prove their notability instantly, this does not mean they should be deleted without due care. Besides, we already have WP:CSD#A7 for articles that fall under this category so do not need a suspect, controversial, exploitable and unchecked new auto-delete process. OrangeDog ( τ • ε) 13:47, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose Jheald demonstrates the problem with this proposal very well. It currently is phrased that admins will delete en masse everything that way tagged for X days without any further oversight. As such, it creates multiple problems:
  1. If we really use a bot to do the tagging, the tagger (who per WP:PROD should check whether the article can be deleted) does not do the check requested by the very policy it is based on.
  2. The admins will not be able to process some thousand expired prods in a deliberate fashion, i.e. will likely not do the check that the tagger has not done.
  3. The editor notified for an old article most likely has left the project by now and will not notice a message within a week.
  4. Editors willing to fix those articles will not be able to do it on the scale of thousands per week. We will lose countless valid articles to such a procedure.

The point of PROD is that it's a four-eyes system - a tagger who checks whether the article can be fixed or not (per editing policy and deletion policy) and an admin who checks whether the reasons for deletion are valid. The proposal as written removes the main pillars on which PROD rests, leaving a system that will most likely result in a bot tagging thousands of articles and admins deleting them after a week without any possibility of fixing them as required by the policy. Even WP:BLP clearly says

"Biographical material about a living individual that is not compliant with this policy should be improved and rectified; if this is not possible, then it should be removed. If the entire page is substantially of poor quality, primarily containing contentious material that is unsourced or poorly sourced, then it may be necessary to delete the entire page as an initial step, followed by discussion." (emphasis added)

As such, the very policy that is cited in favor of this proposal says that deletion can only be a valid step in strict cases and only after improvement has been attempted. This proposal effectively eliminates the requirement for improvement by automating both tagging and deletion. I think WP:PROD itself can handle such BLPs and I would support forbidding to de-PROD unless sources are added. But I will never support a change that proposes to automatize parts of the process. It's against the very spirit of the policy. Regards So Why 13:58, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose First, I oppose changing the way WP:PROD is used. Currently, WP:PROD is meant only for articles where no one would object to deletion, even unreasonably. Making these articles a special case for WP:PROD would be confusing. Second, I oppose the mass deletion of unsourced BLPs. Most BLPs contain no controversial statements at all, and there is no need to delete them quickly through a special process. Calathan ( talk) 14:59, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose: violates the soul of prodding. If you need a new tool, go make one. Don't abuse one that was invented for an entirely different purpose. Hesperian 15:03, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose: Why go against the ideal of an existing process to force it to be what is needed? Invent a new process and see if it gets support. I also don't think that BLPs should be deleted without community input as people often over extend BLP to things that do not really apply. Chillum ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 15:31, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose basically per SoWhy.--- Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 16:10, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose SoWhy's put it extremely well. Aditya Ex Machina 16:26, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose This is a horrible idea. Large numbers of BLPs are relatively unreferenced, decent stubs. To summarily delete that scale of useful, user-contributed information is contrary to everything Wikipedia stands for. If the article is sufficiently objectionable, we have CSD G10. Otherwise, you can pare it down or fix it. Ray ^Talk 16:37, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose. Regarding the first proposal, a PROD may be removed towards the end of the 7 day PROD period, and if I see an article that I know can be referenced, I'll deprod it first so that it doesn't get deleted and then work on adding references. If a PROD is removed, there's always the option of taking it to AFD. The second proposal seems unnecessarily dangerous and would surely result in many articles being deleted that could easily be fixed. I don't see the numbers being suggested per week as particularly workable. There are editors who I'm sure would be prepared to work through these articles and add at least a minimal set of references, and I would do this myself, but the first I heard of this being considered a major problem is a proposal to mass delete articles and a change in policy before it could be properly discussed. I would like to see more effort going into organizing editors into fixing these articles before we start deleting them en masse.-- Michig ( talk) 18:07, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• Note. I've just been through 5 of the first articles in Category:All unreferenced BLPs, and in the space of 16 minutes, I found one was at AFD (and will get deleted in due course), 2 were wrongly tagged as BLP unsourced, and 2 others were easily sourced. That's a little over 3 editor-minutes per article to sort them out, at least with respect to being tagged as unsourced BLPs. I believe the problem here is a lack of editors willing to constructively work on these articles rather than a hole in our policies. If the editors who have expressed opinions either way in this discussion were prepared to each spend 30 minutes a day on articles in this category, we could solve the problem in a much more constructive fashion.-- Michig ( talk) 18:41, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose - This is not what PROD is for. If you want to create some special deletion process, go ahead, but this feels like trying to backdoor a policy shift into a procedure that doesn't even really fit. PROD is for uncontested uncontrovertsial deletion. It's a clean, successful procedure. It doesn't need to get dragged down into this. - Chunky Rice ( talk) 18:13, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose. PROD is not the right venue for this procedure. Powers ^T 18:44, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose. Completely counterproductive mass deletion of thousands of perfectly legitimate article topics is the inevitable result of this proposal. Ultimately, it's just lazy, proposed by editors who are not willing to slog through articles individually and determine their worth. Chubbles ( talk) 18:47, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• Strong Oppose. Let's leave aside the massive harm this will wreak; the complete absence of any rationale for this beyond 'I feel BLPs are special, so special we need to destroy the village to save it'; and the dubious benefits (would this have stopped the Seigenthaler incident? No, because someone could trivially have added a ref for, say, his birthyear.). Let's remember that on Wikipedia, there's always a slippery slope for harsher policies and guidelines (when was the last time we became more inclusive and not less?); what is after auto-deletion of BLPs? Will we purge all fair use images which don't meet our ever more arcane and difficult to comply with templates and procedures? Will we purge all pop culture articles without X references & links? Or fiction articles without X reviews? Articles with external link sections which are too big? Articles with lots of quotes (ZOMG fair use!)? You name it, there's a constituency of Wikipedians who despise it and want to burn it with fire. We should not be building in dangerous backdoors into PROD & AfD. -- Gwern (contribs) 19:37 20 January 2010 (GMT)
• Oppose - I'm a member of the WP:FOOTBALL project and although there are thousands of unreferenced BLPs of football (soccer) players, we have significantly reduced the amount over the past several months (at one point a few months ago there were more than 8,000 and now it's less than 5,000). I'm certain that there are plenty of unreferenced BLPs we've missed because they haven't been tagged yet, but progress is being made by asking interested editors with a knowledge of the area to manually source the backlog. We've also deleted hundreds of non-notable footballer BLPs using the standard procedure, and several initially PROD'ed articles have been fixed up or sent to AfD. The process works. I have only found a handful of problematic statements in these thousands of BLPs - almost all of them are completely harmless articles that give a profile of a soccer player without any qualitative or controversial statements. The better solution to the BLP backlog is finding interested/knowledgeable editors to source them and crucially to work with new editors to stop them from growing the backlog. Jogurney ( talk) 20:13, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose Unsourced != libelous. Libel is the reason BLPs are treated somewhat differently; if there's no libel, an BLP's lack of sources isn't more of a problem than it is for any other article type. -- Cybercobra (talk) 20:17, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose. Deletion is a poor solution to the BLP problem, which would likely only serve to degrade the encyclopedia without solving any of the fundamental problems with libelous content. Requiring referencing does absolutely nothing to solve drive-by vandalism, and more insidious cases where someone is determined to attack someone is only marginally more difficult (<ref>..some obscure book or magazine</ref>). Mass deletions would only serve to improve the numbers game, and do very little towards protecting people in any real way. We should work to develop other solutions than deletion to the BLP problem, such as better technical tools for monitoring large number of articles. henrik• talk 20:38, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose. mass tagging of content creates a massive amount of workload, with a high proportion ending up at AfD which I think would triple in size, leading to reams and reams of debate. I remember the ripples of TTN in full swing and this might trump that well and truly. I appreciate the problem but see this as the tip of the iceberg. What next? delete all health articles with no references (might mislead someone into using some product in a dangerous way)? Casliber ( talk · contribs) 22:34, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
  • in a sense the workload is already there - it's just the work isn't being done. So tagging at a manageable rate is better than doing nothing. What rate is manageable can be determined by consensus + trial&error. Rd232 ^talk 23:21, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
    • I disagree. The backlog has been declining steadily for several weeks, months even, precisely because many editors are doing a lot of work on it. Let's find ways to facilitate that work (and give them time to do it). Jogurney ( talk) 00:06, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose the mass tagging aspect of the proposal; I'd be fine with applying the restriction to new BLPs, or to old BLPs as well if there was some way to limit systematic sweeping and overwhelming nomination runs. Christopher Parham (talk) 23:03, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• Comment I done my part to be constructive, so what have those of you supporting this change done recently? Aside from delete things?
  — V = I * R ( talk to Ohms law) 23:13, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose The amount of work needed does not mean we remove simply because no one has gotten to it (yet)... specially without showing diligent efforts to otherwise address concerns. Schmidt, ^{MICHAEL Q.} 23:37, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose Stop trying to fiddle this through with backdoors. The whole point of PROD is that anyone can remove it. If you want unsourced BLPs to be speedy deletable, that propose that. I believe it has been proposed several times before and met with large opposition. -- Apoc2400 ( talk) 00:29, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose The efforts so far to fix this have been ham-fisted. PROD is for uncontroversial deletions - if they really think it should be deleted and someone else thinks it shouldn't, they can do the work and defend an AfD on it. I am probably best defined as a "rational deletionist" - keep what is good, delete what is crap - but the botlike insanity which has raged behind this proposal in recent days really demonstrates that those behind it are probably more in need of ArbCom or community sanctions than supreme power. Orderinchaos 02:00, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

• I think your remarks here cross the line in terms of assuming bad faith, among other things. I'm the only person "behind" the proposal (no one else was involved in crafting it) so basically you're talking to me. To speak of "supreme power" being sought seems like a willful misreading of the proposal. Elsewhere on this page I've continually expressed a willingness to alter the proposal in drastic ways, and I've even signed on to an alternative whereby articles would be incubated rather than deleted. If you really think that people who make obviously good faith proposals and then engage in civil discussion need to be sanctioned then I think you've gone rather far off the rails. You're reading the worst into what was proposed (and the motivations for doing it) which poisons the whole discussion here. If you have other ways of dealing with the problem of unsourced BLPs I for one am all ears. Finally it's rather facile to point out that prod is only for uncontroversial deletions, since the essence of the proposal is to change the WP:PROD policy. Policies can change, and proposing and then discussing possible changes is not verboten. -- Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 02:54, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

• Um... You assume bad faith of the rest of the community, then accuse me of bad faith for pointing out the obvious? The proposal is the Wikipedia equivalent of ordering the troops out against anyone who questions the coup leaders. It is a proposal deliberately crafted to ensure less transparency, to put more power in the hands of a limited few. That's why I assumed bad faith of it - it is a fundamental violation of WP:5. I am on the same side on the BLPs question but I think this madness has got to stop, otherwise it will tarnish every further effort to resolve the BLP issue. The easiest way is use toolserver to produce lists which can be passed around WikiProjects, that would probably solve about 80% of them as a lot of users are looking to edit something but don't know where they are needed. Orderinchaos 06:33, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose - The problem is the decline in editing. This is not the solution, and will actually make WP worse. - Peregrine Fisher ( talk) ( contribs) 02:22, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose now, I'm open to it when the drama recede. Sole Soul ( talk) 03:28, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose A) I'm getting tired of all these attempts at deleting these BLPs. It has become disruptive to see a new scheme every month or two. B) there is no need to break PROD in this way. If the deletion is controversial send it to AfD. If there are so many people who are that worried about this, 100 folks sourcing 1 unsourced BLP a day will get pretty much all 40K of them in a year. In other words SOFIXIT. Hobit ( talk) 03:34, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose. Obviously braindead per Casiliber, CyberCobra, WP:BEFORE, etc. The real problem, unsourced negative BLPs, can be speedily deleted as CSD#G10 anyway. Pcap ping 04:07, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose Most of the good things have been said already, but if PROD is used, PROD can be undone for the asking. That's what makes it PROD: even after deletion, any admin can and should restore any PROD'ed article for the asking. Note: I've been handling quite a few PRODs lately. I find that the people who use the process tend to supply better rationales than CSD'ers, and I'd say that maybe 20% of the PRODs are unreferenced BLPs, which are already being processed efficiently (though not capriciously) through the PROD process. Jclemens ( talk) 05:19, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose It takes the same time to search for a source and improve an article as it does to prod it. Lugnuts ( talk) 08:04, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose Completely crazy idea, draconian proposal that does nothing to fix the problem it claims to fix. Unsourced contentious info is the problem, not if an article is sourced or not. And per Fences&Windows above. Power.corrupts ( talk) 14:58, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose Not the best way to treat our contributors, nor to protect the people we write about, and a recipe for endless arguments as to whether an article is unsourced or merely poorly sourced. There are better ways to improve the pedia. Ϣere SpielChequers 16:07, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose Every policy, guideline, and rule we have states that information must be verifiable not verified. Deletion requires consensus, and PROD does not get the number of eyes on an article that we desire. The objective must be to follow WP:BEFORE, WP:SOFIXIT, WP:DEL, WP:AGF and WP:V as they are written. There is no justifiable excuse to delete material without first trying to satisfy our processes and guidelines. The goal needs to be to get the most eyes on these articles as soon as we can and get them sourced. We do not judge importance, impact, longevity, or fame under our notability guidline, and deleting any article about a notable subject is in complete disregard of WP:5P. Jim Miller ^{See me | Touch me} 21:17, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose We should focus on unwatched BLPs, not unsourced BLPs. Sources don't prevent incorrect damaging and libelous information, editors do. Gigs ( talk) 22:29, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Discussion

I'm happy to support the general idea of the proposal, though it seems there are some details that would need to be agreed in relation to

1. the definition of "properly referenced"; (" the {{ prod}} tag may not be removed until the article is properly referenced")
2. whether it matters that "properly referenced" seems to conflict with the fact that such BLPs are in category unreferenced. There seems to me a gap between "unreferenced" and "properly referenced" which is more than merely taking BLPs out of category "unreferenced". Maybe that's OK, and the next step will be tackling poorly referenced BLPs, but you see my point.
3. what happens if referencing is in progress when the week runs out;
4. the rate of mass prodding of BLPs;
5. the handling of mass-prodded BLPs which remain unsourced or insufficiently sourced to be described as "properly referenced". One suggestion I would have here is that they might be transferred to the WP:Incubator rather than merely deleted.

Rd232 ^talk 09:46, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

In relation to point 1, Hut 8.5 put it a lot more clearly above: it "could be interpreted as practically anything from an external link to full inline citations for every statement." Rd232 ^talk 10:22, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Honestly, as long as at least one good ref is supplied in the week period, I'd be happy with letting the page progress naturally. If no-one does anything during the 7 days, then kill it. If it looks a little iffy, then whoever is deleting the page can make a judgement call. The amount of BLP pages that are PRODed per week is something better discussed by people other then me, as I don't know much about that particular field. Beyond that, I agree with your points. - Tainted Conformity ^SCREAM 09:53, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Seven days is perfectly reasonably until multiplied by dozens, hundreds or thousand of articles. The volume is what is the most problematic, this is why mass AFDs are seen as disruptive - it's ridiculous to look at so many articles at one go and repeatedly for several weeks or months. -- Banjeboi 10:00, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

I may be off on this, but I think that the idea is that whoever made the article in the first place would take the initiative to fix it. I can understand newbies making a sourceless article through inexperience, but they won't learn anything if everyone else is expected to clean up after them. If you care enough about something to take the time to make a Wiki article about it, then you should care enough to work on said article. Sorry if that sounds crass, but that's my opinion on the matter. - Tainted Conformity ^SCREAM 10:10, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

This shouldn't be about editors vs. editors, it should be about good encyclopedia vs. bad encyclopedia. We don't care who wrote what when or whether they're still around to improve it - we care whether what's written is worth keeping and what we can all do to make it better. If something's lacking references, and we think that's a major problem with it, then let's look for some. If we just go around deleting everything we find that's unreferenced, we (a) destroy Wikipedia (most of the information in it is unreferenced); (b) encourage people to insert poor-quality or bogus references just to get the cops off their backs; (c) sneakily remove references from little-watched articles and then prod them.-- Kotniski ( talk) 10:18, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

There is a disconnect here that the current proposal includes mass prodding all "unsourced" BLPs. We should encourage and welcome newbies get through our systems to add sources in a format we like. This may help in that effort but the issue remains in the mass nomming of thousands of articles when we already are losing volunteers. We are equating a BLP without any properly formated sources as a BLP that should be removed asap. That's a disservice to our readers and those editors who took the time to add the content or maintain it in the first place. There is a way forward but it requires actually researching each case on it's own merit - that takes more time than simply prodding everything. -- Banjeboi 10:21, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

( edit conflict)I think the primary reason for opposition I've seen so far is that users are worried that unreferenced does not necessarily mean problematic. Furthermore, there are arguments that users will tag these articles for PROD without even bothering to look for references themselves. To be quite frank, you can't really ask someone to research something they aren't interested in. However, most, if not all, of the contributors on Wikipedia are interested in maintaining a high quality on Wikipedia, so there seems to be a significant number of users willing to tag these articles as PROD. What I'd like to stress is that a significant factor in my support is that the PROD can be taken as a "final warning". It doesn't delete the article immediately, and it takes only a single reliable source to fulfill the requirements. I don't see why this should be an issue, as anyone that is intent on keeping the article in place should be able to find a source for it (assuming the subject is fit for inclusion). If the source is deleted before someone can correct the problem, there's always WP:REFUND; you don't need the article in existence to find a source, show it to an admin, and request an undeletion and add in the source. -- Shirik ( Questions or Comments?) 10:25, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Again the main issue becomes the volume of mass prodding. Why not convene a temporary task force of those willing to vet every one and only prod those they were unable to find sources for? This would take time but net us much better results minus the drama and needless clogging Prod with regular clean-up issues. And for those perhaps a bit clueless the natural progression is that Prod tags would be un-removable on all articles without properly formatted sources. That itself may be a great idea but we still need to find non-disruptive ways to deal with all the articles currently in that state. -- Banjeboi 10:32, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

(ec)All this is based on the false assumption that for every article, there's someone around with special motivation to fight that article's case. Not so - the author may have long gone. But that doesn't mean the encyclopedia isn't made better by that article's presence (and as with any article, that doesn't depend on whether references are given, just whether they could be).-- Kotniski ( talk) 10:33, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

( edit conflict) I agree, it is reasonable to assume that many of these articles are no longer actively worked on because their authors have left. So how about this (and this is partially based off Bejiboi's comments as well): Consider the fact that all of these articles will have to be deleted by hand anyway (we're not talking about automatically deleting 50 thousand articles, I hope -- there's still admin intervention). I don't want to argue that all unreferenced BLPs be automatically put into PROD. However, if a proposer and the admin both believe there is a problem with the article, then that's two checks in place saying the article does not improve Wikipedia as a whole.

On an unrelated note, if the article isn't being watched by others, then there's really nothing preventing a PROD already -- if nobody's going to contest the deletion, it would be deleted, with this procedure or not. The proposal is primarily to prevent contesting the deletion with no intention to address the concerns. -- Shirik ( Questions or Comments?) 10:46, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

The point is that a deletion should be for articles that damage WP, not for articles that merely "do not improve" it. There is a burden on the nom to show why an article has problems that cannot be solved with editing. The fact that an article is unreferenced and generally abandoned is a problem that can be solved with editing (and putting it on a watchlist), therefore deletion policy requires it to be kept. -- Cyclopia ^talk 10:53, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

From WP:BLP: "Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced—whether the material is negative, positive, or just questionable—should be removed immediately and without waiting for discussion." If that leaves nothing because the article is unreferenced and some effort has been made to reference it, then deletion (or perhaps incubation) is entirely reasonable and within policy. Rd232 ^talk 10:57, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

It is my opinion (and I am willing to admit my opinion may not reflect that of the entire community) that unreferenced BLPs do in fact damage Wikipedia as a whole. It may not be directly evident because some may consider the content "obvious" and it's certainly not libelous, but the problem can arise later: because the article is in no way verifiable, there is no way to identify if future changes are accurate or not. The end result becomes an article that is impossible to track because there are no sources to fall back upon. This is increasingly becoming an issue with vandalism where vandals have chosen to pick out facts that are unsourced and change them, and most reverters (including myself in many cases) will ignore the change because there's no way to determine that it was inappropriate. Where there is a source, it can be re-checked. In that respect, unreferenced BLPs do harm Wikipedia's reputation as a whole, perhaps not directly, but indirectly. -- Shirik ( Questions or Comments?) 11:03, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

I understand but there is a very important thing to remember: Not being verifiable and being unsourced are two completely different things. I'm all for deleting articles which fail WP:V. But failing or not failing WP:V does not depend at all on the sources present in the article; it depends on what objectively the external sources say. Often such sources exist, but no one put it into the article: this means that the article does indeed pass WP:V, but needs to be edited to include such references. On the contrary, an article can contain references but of dubious quality, or biased, or not really meaningful, and therefore be referenced but fail WP:V. -- Cyclopia ^talk 11:08, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately "verifiable but without sources" is a very grey area. Is it verifiable? Potentially. Unfortunately this is almost always more obvious to the content creator than it is to the reader. With regards to BLPs, as Rd232 has pointed out, this content must be removed if it's contentious. All of these terms are very subjective, though, but with regards to BLPs my interpretation of these policies tends to lean towards "favor less content over contentious content". If 2 editors (the proposer and deleting admin) do agree there's a problem with the article (under the assumption that we aren't doing a massive automated deletion, as I mentioned before), then there's definitely some "contentious material" that needs to be deleted. When the entire article is unsourced, this quickly becomes the entire article that must be deleted. Unfortunately, talking on very general terms here, this is difficult to make concrete and there are always exceptions. -- Shirik ( Questions or Comments?) 11:23, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Then change the deletion policy. These articles all have had the chance of being improved through regular editing, but the problems have been tagged for years, and the backlog only grows (in the last ten months, only three months have been cleared). The problem is getting worse, and many people agree that something more drastic needs to be done: if the only thing that makes this impossible is policy, then policy should be changed. By the way, BLP is also policy,and contains lines like (bolded even): "When in doubt, biographies should be pared back to a version that is completely sourced, neutral, and on-topic." The only completely sourced version of these articles is the empty, i.e. deleted version. Fram ( talk) 11:12, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Not if you can source it. I think the "drastic" thing that needs to be done is for those people who spend their time "tagging" problems to switch to using that time to try to solve those problems instead.-- Kotniski ( talk) 11:27, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Since it takes vastly longer to fix problems than to tag an article with Twinkle etc, this cannot possibly be a real solution (could be an illusory one if the proportion of problem articles which are tagged declines a lot). Getting more people involved, yes; switching from tagging to solving, no. Rd232 ^talk 11:33, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

But if tagging is happening at a faster rate than solving, then something's not working. Whatever tagging is supposed to achieve, it isn't achieving it. So even if it takes longer, it's better to do something that has a positive result than something that has no positive result (at most, causing someone else to address this problem rather than another - quite likely equally important problem).-- Kotniski ( talk) 11:42, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

"Whatever tagging is supposed to achieve, it isn't achieving it." Not at all. Tagging is supposed to signal problems so that (a) they can be fixed on a case-by-case basis and (b) so that systemic problems can be identified and hence perhaps addressed. If this proposal goes through in some form (or even if something completely different is done to address the perceived problem), tagging played a big part in that. Rd232 ^talk 11:48, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

In theory every article except the featured ones can be littered with clean-up tags. It's better to push to fix problems instead of simply tagging them but of course that takes work. Tagging articles means I'm tagging for someone else to fix it. Guess what? It's easy to pick out work for someone else and a bit disingenuous to complain when that mythical other person doesn't do it in the time frame you are now insisting on. We remian volunteers here and as such we ask for people to invest their time to fix and create. Let's see if this community can rise to that occasion instead. -- Banjeboi 02:17, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Backlog vs new BLPs

Would it be helpful to clearly separate the mass prodding of the unreferenced backlog from the prodding of new unreferenced BLPs? For instance the proposed change to WP:PROD might become "you can't remove tags from BLPs created in 2010, if they are more than a month old, until referenced to an accepted minimum standard, which is demonstration of notability with reference to reliable sources". The month gives a reasonable period for new articles to get referenced, and we could agree on what basis incubation may be used for BLPs failing it. The issue of mass-prodding or mass cleanup of the unreferenced backlog can then be separated out. Rd232 ^talk 10:45, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

It would make the discussion more productive IMHO. There may be very good reasons not to do this on new articles either but those more experience in Prod and CSD areas may have better insight. -- Banjeboi 10:48, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

I can fully agree with this. Of course, offical wording would have to use a floating timeline, not a strict date ("BLPs created in 2010"). - Tainted Conformity ^SCREAM 10:57, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, of course - "in or after 2010" perhaps. Rd232 ^talk 10:59, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Would something along the lines of "PROD tags on BLP articles that have not been edited for 30 or more days should not be removed until the article has been referenced to an accepted minimum standard, which is demonstration of notability with reference to reliable sources" work? We could also extend the deletion deadline if that would help, as a week may be too short for lesser known persons. - Tainted Conformity ^SCREAM 11:10, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Not really necessary to extend the deadline if it's made sufficiently clear (in the article tag I guess) that the article may be PRODded on such-and-such a date if no sources are found by then. Rd232 ^talk 11:53, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

As I've pointed out, the proposal only makes sense if we assume that the prod is going to motivate someone to find refs. The older the article, the less likely an interested author is going to be watching it. So we want a higher level of protection for older articles, not the other way round. This whole "backlog" thing is some kind of invention - if there is no deadline, then there is no backlog.-- Kotniski ( talk) 11:01, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

"the proposal only makes sense if we assume that the prod is going to motivate someone to find refs." Given the existence of the Article Rescue Squadron, a PROD will motivate some people to find refs via Category:Proposed deletion. Hence the issue of the rate of mass-prodding, so as not to complete overwhelm people. Also the issue of incubation instead of deletion, which gives a second chance. Rd232 ^talk 11:32, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

There are not nearly enough editors at all, let alone ARS editors, to check such a mass PROD. This proposal is clearly meant to "legalize" mass deletion bypassing completely deletion policy. -- Cyclopia ^talk 12:51, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

WP:AGF much? I just said that the issue of the mass-prodding rate was to establish one which would be OK for the available editors to handle reasonably well. What that rate is could be found by cautious trial and error - start low, increase a bit, get feedback. Rd232 ^talk 12:56, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

• Comment. I think the BLP backlog is the hot-button issue for those pushing for deletion so why not approach the problem to be more proactive to enlist editors and wikiprojects to help eliminate the backlog? A bot sent me a message that a BLP I created was absent sources, why can't we create a temporary task force just to deal with the backlog and notify Wikiprojects which of their articles need attention asap. Offer a shiny barnstar to anyone who helps find reliable sources for thirty (or so respectable number) and utilize various existing avenues to announce the effort, recruit and update until the backlog is addressed. Then look to enact what changes may make sense and encourage best practices from newbies and lazy editors. -- Banjeboi 11:40, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Makes sense, though I still say there is no backlog, and despite the fuss people make about it, this isn't necessarily the Most Important Thing.-- Kotniski ( talk) 11:46, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

If there is no backlog, what on earth do you call Category:Unreferenced BLPs from November 2006? If people truly cared about eliminating unsourced BLPs (if you don't see them as a problem, I am afraid there really is nothing for us to discuss), then that category would not exist anymore. I would not be adverse to giving the articles a month to improve. However, we are better off having no article than an unsourced BLP, so eventually these articles will have to go. NW ( Talk) 12:07, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

With respect Kotniski, it's very difficult to take seriously someone who "still says there is no backlog" when it is undeniably true that: A) Unsourced BLPs (more than other articles) are not okay; B) We currently have over 50,000 of them. If your argument is that unsourced BLPs are okay then I guess I see what you are getting at, but I would suggest that anyone who can make such an argument simply does not care about (or at least doesn't understand) our BLP policy. The fact that "there is no deadline", while generally true, is not remotely the issue here. We are not talking about the task of writing the encyclopedia per say, but rather the task of preventing harm to BLP subjects which is also very much our responsibility per policy. In that context, articles that have been tagged as unsourced BLPs for three years are indeed the biggest problem (and not remotely in need of a "higher level of protection" as you suggest above), since no one has even bothered to attempt fixing the problem in all that time. -- Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 17:03, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

why can't we create a temporary task force just to deal with the backlog - We can, but that would require finding people willing to do the work, which to date, we haven't been able to do in any useful amount. Unless you have a big list of people willing to go through all 50,000 articles (and the 100+ new ones we get every week), that's basically a proposal to continue with the status quo. Mr. Z-man 18:35, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

• Comment At first I need to say I'm not good in understanding guidelines and/or policies and discussions of it at all, I think of myself as an editor not a cop or watchdog. But I have several concerns about articles of living people without any sources. Sometimes if they were in my small scope of interest I tried to add sources, but there are so many unsourced articles, it's frustrating. After finding some articles with really denigrative information I looked for a tool to remove them or have them deleted completely. I found this discussion, after a few articles -- I watched -- were deleted, and I thought, wow this is the right way to do it. And this proposal seems to give other users and me the instrument to do something about unsourced unreliable articles of living people, but on the other hand I can't support it completely because of some really competent comments in opposition. Now I think a completely new tool should be used for BLPs. Yes, this will cost time and manpower, but maybe someone is willing to work on this serious problem. Sebastian scha. ( talk) 16:46, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Why are unsourced BLPs so problematic

Would you care to elaborate why and how unsourced BLPs are so problematic by themselves to be such a problem and to require deletion? Do you prefer a biased BLP based on libelous sources to a neutral, harmless unsourced BLP? -- Cyclopia ^talk 12:35, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Talking about loaded questions and false dilemma's... No one has suggested replacing the unsourced BLPs with sourced biased BLPs, so your question is a straw man (yes, I can't quite decide which style figure it is, but it's not good). The suggestion is to replace long-time unsourced BLPs where no one does the effort of sourcing them with, um, nothing, i.e. a deleted article. So if the question is "Do you prefer thousands of BLPs which have been unsourced for years to no articles on these subjects at all?" then my answer would be "no". Fram ( talk) 12:41, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

It is not a strawman, but I understand you read it as such, so I rephrase the thing. What is the real problem? Is it unreferenced BLPs or libelous/biased/harmful BLPs? The answer is clearly the second, yet we're discussing about deleting the first. Why? -- Cyclopia ^talk 12:44, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

No longer a strawman, but still a false dilemma. That the second is a problem does not mean that the first can't be a problem as well (and of course the two groups are not mutually exclusive either). Fram ( talk) 12:47, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

So we come again to my first question, which you didn't answer, and I repeat: Would you care to elaborate why and how unsourced BLPs are so problematic by themselves to be such a problem and to require deletion? -- Cyclopia ^talk 12:49, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Cyclopia has a point. Though I am for the basic idea, I am skeptical of having a bot run through these. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 12:56, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Because the potential of them being harmful or prblematic is much larger than with other categories, and because it is clear that without drastic measures, not enough is done about them (with an ever increasing backlog). We are supposed to be an encyclopedia, and a work in progress, and this group of articles is at the moment not worth being in an encyclopedia, and show no indication of sufficient progress, despite being tagged as seriously problematic for a long time. In the case of BLPs, these concerns for me are stronger than the general "it will happen one day, give it time" attitude which may be sufficient for less potentially problematic articles. We have more than fifty articles on pron actors tagged as unsourced BLPs, we have more than 140 articles on criminals tagged as unsourced BLPs, we have thousands of unsourced BLPs which aren't even tagged yet as such, and no serious effort is being done to tackle them (as a group, individual articles are corrected by individual editors all the time). So yes, I see them as a problem, and this solution will have collateral damage, but I believe that loosing a number of poor but harmless articles for the moment does not outweigh the removal of many potentially problematic articles. I haev had to (peedy) delete five year old articles where living people were accused of being mass murderers, nazi prison camp guards, ... without any sources. Any effort to get rid of more of these has my support, even if this will also remove harmless articles on obscure soccer players and so on. It won't solve all BLP problems, but it will be a good step in the right direction. Fram ( talk) 13:00, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Because the potential of them being harmful or prblematic is much larger than with other categories: Citation needed.

and because it is clear that without drastic measures, not enough is done about them (with an ever increasing backlog).: WP:DEADLINE

and this group of articles is at the moment not worth being in an encyclopedia: WP:BEFORE, WP:ATD, WP:SOFIXIT

and no serious effort is being done to tackle them (as a group, individual articles are corrected by individual editors all the time) : Where is it written that they have to be dealt as a group? You just asserted that process is working. WP works like that: individual editors fixing individual articles.

many potentially problematic articles : All articles are "potentially problematic". There is nothing stopping some vandal in putting dangerous libel even into non-BLP articles, for example. If we have to deal with "potential problems", let's just close WP. I'd like to hear about real problems, instead. If you have statistics that prove that there is a high risk in these articles, please provide them.

It won't solve all BLP problems : No, it will solve no problem at all. It will just lose information which will be harmless and probably roughly accurate in more than 90% of cases. If it's a problem, please provide evidence of this problem. You have a problem with unsourced things? Please source your claims. -- Cyclopia ^talk 13:14, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

So... essentially, what I'm hearing between the lines (somewhere, not just you) is that you are pointing to the general disclaimer. That could probably be the strongest argument here... Let me start a new section... Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 13:18, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Um, I wouldn't say so (even if for sure applies). I simply hear people talking of a "problem", but without giving a hair-thin evidence of a problem actually existing. Since the problem is "unsourced BLPs", I find somehow bewildering they cannot source their own claims, for example. -- Cyclopia ^talk 13:22, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

That you can point to policies which indicate in your view that it is not a problem does not mean that it is not a problem. Your first "citation needed" is a bit ridiculous; BLPs have a larger potential for being harmful than BDPs and so on, otherwise why would we have our BLP policy? Your others, BEFORE, DEADLINE? SOFIXIT, ... arevery nice, until it turns out that it is not happening, as I explained. Your reply is looking like "it will all disappear, somehow, someday, just wait and see". Well, no, the backlog only gets longer, so my faith (and apparently that of many others) in "no deadlines" and so on is diminishing. As for my statement about individual editors: I just wanted to point out that I am not claiming that no one is doing anything, only that the work of those individuals is, as a whole, insufficient. I am not criticizing any individual editors, certainly not those trying to fix it, but that doesn't mean that the group of articles affected is not being tackled enougn. As for potential problems vs. real problems: the chance that libelous info in unrelated articles looks credible is less. The chance that anyone interested in person X will find the libelous info in article Y instead of article X is also clearly less likely. If the notorious Seigenthaler claims had been included in the article on some species of wombat, it wouldn't have caused such a stir and would not have looked credible. Included in the actual bio though, it does give credibility to the ridiculous claims. Fram ( talk) 14:21, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

BLPs have a larger potential for being harmful than BDPs and so on, otherwise why would we have our BLP policy?: Of course. But what I want to know is why unreferenced ones are so much more problematic that we need to slash them all at once. Otherwise your arguments holds for deletion of all BLPs, sourced or not.

Well, no, the backlog only gets longer: So what? Even if it grows forever, what is the real problem? Everyone's here screaming about this growing backlog, yet no one explains me why that particular backlog requires to be fixed now by obliterating it.

As for potential problems vs. real problems: the chance that libelous info in unrelated articles looks credible is less. : What about non-biographical but related articles? If the notorious Seigenthaler claims had been included in List of United States presidential assassination attempts and plots, it wouldn't have been less serious. So what do we do? Do we extend this PROD proposal to all articles, BLPs or not? Do we extend it to all articles having a single unreferenced sentence? (after all, it could be problematic!) Etc.etc. Again: the real problem is vandalism and libel. All people who support this proposal still have to show some evidence that articles in which N_of_references=0 are significantly more prone to vandalism and libel of articles in which N_of_references > 0. And I wonder why these people do not instead propose semiprotection by default on BLPs, which would be much more effective and much less problematic. -- Cyclopia ^talk 15:01, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Hm. "Semi-protection by default"... well -- just as you say that the referencing problem is true for any article, then "semi-protection by default" could be true for any article as well. In other words, if you see "semi-protection by default" as a good solution to this problem, then we could just as well force people to create an account before they're able to edit any article. (Which, by the way... could well be argued as a reasonable proposal) Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 15:31, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

In fact I pretty much support that, personally. But it's a perennial proposal which will never take on in general. For BLP, however, it is generally agreed that more attention should be made, so at least bringing semiprotection on these articles could be a compromise that helps to mitigate many concerns.

But my point is another: The point is that referencing is irrelevant to the BLP problem. What is relevant is avoiding libel and vandalism. No one has yet brought me proof that articles without references are significantly more prone to libel and vandalism than articles with references - so significantly to justify such a draconian proposal (If anything I expect negative correlation, given that probably many sourced articles are about more famous persons, who are more likely to be vandalism targets, than unreferenced ones). But anyone is welcome to provide some data and prove me wrong. -- Cyclopia ^talk 15:46, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Since someone came up with some sorta bot-idea, would you support a bot that scans for keywords (similar to the tag "possible BLP issue or vandalism") and then puts the articles in question into a category? (example of keywords: "Murderer," "Racist," "Nazi," "Pedophile," "convicted," .../Rationale: Once the tagged disappears from Recent Changes, no-one will find it anymore...) Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 15:54, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Something on these lines could indeed be useful to put really potentially problematic articles into attention. -- Cyclopia ^talk 16:28, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm responding here in general to Cyclopia's original question, even though I find it incredible that someone could ask it. Are unsourced BLPs the only problem when it comes to BLP issues? No, of course not, there are sourced articles that are just as problematic. But Cyclopia's comments above seem to say, "there are too many other problematic articles, so dealing with this small set is worthless." I find that to be completely illogical. We cannot deal with the entire set of BLPs in one full swoop, and this proposal is a way to take on a subset. There are undoubtedly a number of unsourced BLPs that have problems right now (if you seriously need an "example" then you haven't looked at many unsourced articles in your time here), and the other issue is that adding harmful material later is easier because none of the material is sourced (nothing can be checked), so there's an issue of preventing future harm (which is central to the entire BLP problem, but which some folks don't seem to care about).

It's precisely these unsourced (and therefore almost certainly little-watched) articles that are the biggest problem. Cyclopia's comment about "famous persons, who are more likely to be vandalism targets" shows a lack of understanding of the general issues. This is not about simple vandalism (which does happen all the time on "famous" articles but which is generally cleaned up quickly) but about a marginally notable BLP that sits unsourced and unwatched for years, and then someone comes along and adds defamatory material which no one notices for months, leading to real-world consequences. That's the (extremely real) problem we're trying to deal with. When it inevitably crops up in the future as it has in the past and we hear about it, I would hope that those who have blocked any efforts to take on just a chunk of these articles would explain to victims of defamation why it was so important for us to leave their unwatched article sitting around unreferenced for years because to do otherwise would destroy the quality of the encyclopedia. -- Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 17:38, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

You do realize, though, that the problem in the scenario you describe has nothing to do with sources. The problem is that they are unwatched and unmaintained. The lack of sources isn't great either, but it has almost nothing to do with the problem you describe. - Chunky Rice ( talk) 18:21, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

From my above comment, "the other issue is that adding harmful material later is easier because none of the material is sourced (nothing can be checked), so there's an issue of preventing future harm." So yes this does have something to do with sources in and of themselves. Obviously though, as your comment admits, there is a relationship between articles being unsourced and unwatched/unmaintained. Even if you think the problem is only with the latter, the fact that the former almost inevitably means that an article is not maintained makes working through the category of unreferenced BLPs an easy way to begin dealing with the issue of unmaintained BLPs. I'm not really sure what you're getting at with your point as it seems rather semantic to me, and if you are concerned with unwatched BLPs and think they need cleanup en masse I would think you would support the spirit of the proposal and suggest ways to tweak it. I'm quite open to that. -- Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 18:33, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

If sources are added to an article, but it remains unwatched and unmaintained thereafter (as many articles on people of marginal notability inevitably will), it is just as easy for a vandal to add defamatory matter later, and indeed such might be less likely to be looked at critically and fixed because on a first glance the defamatory content may appear to be sourced. Sourcing all BLPs (which would be a good thing) would do little or nothing to prevent or deter this kind of vandalism, nor make it easier to find and fix. RC patrol is probably the only hope of finding it. DES ^(talk) 18:56, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

It's certainly not a solution that solves all BLP problems, but I strongly disagree with your central argument. If a BLP is well sourced and some odd bit is added in without citations it will definitely stand out more, including if one happens by the article a week or two after the bit was added (e.g. after clicking "random article" or the like). If an article is completely unsourced it might all look questionable, and short of blanking the entire thing it might not be obvious what to do. Of course this proposal does not deal with BLP violations that seem to be (or are) sourced, but that doesn't mean the proposal is a bad idea since I think it's impossible to argue that it would not clean up some serious issues with a subset of BLP articles, hopefully via improved sourcing but if necessary via deletion. I'm just not buying the "there would still be problems" argument (it suggests that we can't do anything until we fix everything at once), and I'm really not buying the "better sourcing might make it easier to add defamatory material" argument (that does seem to be what you said) since it would suggest a better solution would be to start deleting sources from BLPs. That is actually the logical conclusion to your suggestion, and obviously I don't think you mean that, but it does follow. -- Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 19:11, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

First of all there is a difference between "sourced" and "well-sourced". But even for a well-sourced article, i would expect a vandal to simply add the defamatory content between existing content and a ref tag, so that it now appears sourced. Unless caught on recent changes (which should equally note the addition of unsourced defamatory content to an otherwise unsourced but non-contentious BLP) such vandalism will actually look sourced until an attempt is made to verify the sources, something that few do without already existing suspicion. If the article is unwatched, this is just as much of a problem, if not more of one, than the addition to the unsourced article. My argument is not "better sourcing might make it easier to add defamatory material", but "vandalism added to sourced but obscure articles is if anything harder to detect and fix than when added to unsourced ones, surely no easier". Obviously I don't advocate removing sources, and i happily agree that adding valid sources is a good thing. What I argue is that unsourced articles are no more subject to vandalism, and no harder to deal with, than are sources ones, and therefore mass or near-mass deletions don't solve any problem are are therefore unjustified. A cooperative effort to cleanup BLP sourcing would be good in itself, and i would participate (indeed i already have in a few cases). If after diligent search no sources can be found, then deletion is reasonable IMO, but that can't be done with a mass process such as some are advocating. In short i'm arguing that this proposed change doesn't help the problems that do exist, and would do harm. (By the way, do you actually use random article? I never do and I can't imagine why anyone ever would.) DES ^(talk) 19:30, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Special:Random has been used 28,646,028 times this month alone. [2] – Juliancolton |  ^Talk 19:33, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

• Bigtimepeace, many thanks for taking the time to answer. Here are my points:

1. "there are too many other problematic articles, so dealing with this small set is worthless.". No, that's not what I am saying. I am saying a different (and if you like more radical) thing: being unsourced is not problematic per se. What is problematic is libel and vandalism, and this happens regardless of sources being in or not.
2. none of the material is sourced (nothing can be checked). Not so. Imagine having an article sourced with obscure book sources: will you go to the library checking them? On the other hand, unsourced material can indeed be checked, if someone looks for sources about it. In fact, it happens all the time when dealing with a controversial unsourced statement: someone goes and looks for sources (and doing that, the thing is checked)
3. so there's an issue of preventing future harm - Which is fine, but actions must be proportional to the risk of such harm. If we want no possibility of harm at all on WP, the only course of action is to shut down WP. There is a risk of harm? Yes, obviously. The point is: how strong? Are there data on that?
4. and then someone comes along and adds defamatory material which no one notices for months, leading to real-world consequences. That's the (extremely real) problem we're trying to deal with. - Semiprotect them all and send them by default on a couple random active editors/admins watchlist. This would do much more to solve the problem and would risk no loss of valuable information.
5. It's certainly not a solution that solves all BLP problems - No, in fact, it solves no BLP problem.
6. since it would suggest a better solution would be to start deleting sources from BLPs. - Obviously not. The better solution is following them and semiprotecting them, and maybe have some kind of alert if suspect words come out in such BLPs (see suggestion).

• I hope this helps understanding.-- Cyclopia ^talk 19:35, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

It's obvious your views on this matter are firmly entrenched, so further efforts at persuasion are not really worth the effort, and I'm not going to respond to your point by point above. However I will point out that being unsourced is, per multiples policies, quite problematic, particularly on BLPs. It's complete uncredible to claim otherwise even with the qualifier "per say." Also for all your verbiage, you do not (and cannot, I would think) dispute the fact that systematically going through 50,000 unsourced BLPs, cleaning them up, and deleting ones that do not end up being sourced would help at least somewhat with the BLP issue. For one thing even having 50,000 unsourced BLPs is a blow to our credibility (some people think that it's unacceptable, whether you believe it or not, and again I'd be curious to see you defend us not pursuing this project to someone who in the future is defamed in their article, one which we could have cleaned up or deleted had we made this policy change—if you do nothing else just think about being put in the position of talking to that person in real life and arguing then what you are arguing here). For another, surely you agree that there are BLP problems right now in at least some (maybe a few hundred?) of those 50,000 articles, and this proposal clearly would have an effect on that if implemented. Even if you only think it's ten articles (which is absurd), it could make a real difference to a real person which is what this is all about. Frankly I think your arguments show an extreme lack of understanding of the nature and seriousness of the BLP issue, but as I said you seem to firmly decided on your view so I'll leave off engaging and give you the last word. -- Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 19:54, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

While 50,000 is an enormous amount, keep in mind that we had well over 56,000 (I think it was over 58,000 at one point) in December. Now it's slightly under 52,000. We are definitely reducing the backlog (and by a large amount per month), but I agree it will take many months, probably some years before it's gone. There is hope. Jogurney ( talk) 21:28, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Pareto says: Wasted Effort

Look, guys, this is all well and good, and yes, BLPs should be referenced, but the entire brouhaha is around the wrong issue. It's not J. Random Nobody who's going to be harmed by BLP violations, or even attract much attention from vandals. Rather, it's Joseph Farah, Barack Obama, James Dobson, and other high-profile controversial figures, or the person currently experiencing their 15 minutes of fame. Nothing about this proposal does anything to help either of those sorts of people. Hmm, I know--how about we go to flagged revisions for BLPs instead? Jclemens ( talk) 19:44, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

FlaggedRevs will never happen. – Juliancolton |  ^Talk 19:45, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Notable BLPs aren't the only targets of gross BLP violations but if you can magically convince the foundation to enable flagged revisions then all power to you. So far that hasn't happened though and the whole thing will obviously never happen. Hence the deletions. Vyvyan Basterd ( talk) 19:50, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

You miss my point--whether or not we do deletions or not is irrelevant to the real issue, which is high profile BLPs. The deletion is looking at the wrong problem. Jclemens ( talk) 19:54, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Random example. Barely notable girl is the target of repeated vandalism by horny 16 year old boys. Either we do flagged revisions, which will never happen, or we delete. Vyvyan Basterd ( talk) 19:55, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Most people think the problem is low-profile BLPs. Barack Obama will not suffer a blow to his reputation or lose the 2012 election if his article is edited such that is says he is "teh Muslim gay" for 30 seconds, but a not-well-known actor or businessperson who has their BLP edited such that it says they have been charged with a crime, or received terrible reviews in a recent stage production (put there by someone with a vendetta against them) could have a definite real-world effect, particularly if it sits there for six months while they are interviewing for jobs. While we hear more about the "famous person X just died" vandal edits in the media, I don't think they are not the main ones to worry about. -- Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 20:03, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

FlaggedRevs is only part of a solution to the BLP problem. All FlaggedRevs does is ensure that once an article is reviewed, a reviewed version is always shown to the general public. If FlaggedRevs were installed today, and if we assume it takes on average 3 minutes to do a basic evaluation of an article (make sure all information is sourced or non-contentious, that reliable sources are used, and that it meets NPOV), it will take the equivalent of 6.2 years of effort to cover all current BLPs. Bigtimepeace is correct that major public figures are not the ones susceptible to real BLP issues. In my time working on OTRS, I don't know if we've ever been contacted by a head of state or an Oscar-winning actor. The majority of complaints come from semi-public and non-public figures like minor artists, scholars, local politicians, and businesspeople. People like Barack Obama and James Dobson have PR people to shield them from things like this (Obama's person is even notable enough for his own article). Mr. Z-man 22:51, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Stubbify all unsourced BLPs

I propose that we stubbify all unsourced BLPs, leaving only the claim of notability like "Mr X is the education minister in country Y". If no claim of notability can be found in the article then we prod them. We can then make a bot that list unsourced BLPs with a size of more than a usual stub. A controversial addition to a stub is easier to spot than to a large page. Also this will make the claim of notability more clear. Sole Soul ( talk) 03:04, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:General disclaimer

Any thoughts on this? We have it. Does it apply? In a way, it has bearing on this question. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 13:21, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

It does not override WP:BLP, which is the underlying issue here. -- Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 17:39, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

OH. good to know... Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 18:21, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

{{ unsourced BLP}} being overused?

Not a scientific study, but I clicked on ten of these "unsourced BLPs" and found that seven of them contained at least one relevant external link, or a "bibliography" section where more paper sources are available. There may be many reasons for this, perhaps people don't see the link as reliable and tag the article as unsourced, or perhaps people forget (or are afraid to remove) the tag after sourcing the article. Here is a diff of someone tagging an article as "unreferenced" despite sources being cited. I suggest that we get a grip on the real number of unsourced BLPs rather than rely on the 50000+ number which Category:All unreferenced BLPs is telling us. Sjakkalle (Check!) 12:04, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

If the BLP has sources and is still tagged with {{ unsourced BLP}}, that tag could be easily bot-converted to {{ BLP sources}}. In fact, wasn't there a bot that already did that? NW ( Talk) 12:07, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Part of the problem is people sourcing articles tagged with unsourced BLP, but leaving the tag. Part of the problem is incorrect tagging. More difficult is a difference in interpretation; is an article that e.g. only has an external source to IMDb (in itself not a truly reliable source, but not a terrible one either) unsourced or not? Anyway, you are right, many articles currently tagged are not really unsourced, indicating that the problem is not as severe as it may seem to those supporting , and that the solution is also not as severe as it may seem to those opposing. Fram ( talk) 12:15, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Oh, and the first 10,000 or so, before a bot took over, were added manually and contained at the time very few errors. The bot just converted articles tagged as unsourced and at the same time in the cat:living people to the BLPunsourced cat, and all those that were tagged incorrectly before that were incorrectly moved to the new cat obviously. Fram ( talk) 12:24, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Even if a BLP has one or two somewhat-legitimate sources, that's probably not good enough. As a tertiary source, we need to seriously crack down on dubiously sourced articles and enforce a far, far higher standard of referencing. This holds especially true for BLPs, whose effects could reach into the real world (and often do so). I'm not sure why people are so vehemently against mass-deletion of stale, unsourced and marginally significant BLPs to be honest, since they're not really making much of an effort to utilize the alternative method: cleaning up every single article by hand until Category:All unreferenced BLPs is empty. But that would take up to fifteen years if several people worked on several articles each day. What the community is doing right now—fighting veraciously to preserve potentially harmful and low-quality pages—is frankly disgraceful, and leaves me with confidence that we'll never be taken seriously as a resource or an encyclopedia. – Juliancolton |  ^Talk 15:18, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

random sample I'm finding about a third already have at least one source, also finding articles like this Wolfgang Abraham sure it's a BLP and unreferenced but that one is more a WP:Athlete problem. Improper sourcing is the number one issue on wikipedia, having said that I think the issue of BLP's is being a both a bit overstated and oversimplified at the same time. Adding sources randomly will not fix the BLP issue. You can have a 1000 references in an article and still have major BLP issues. Ridernyc ( talk) 15:38, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

So it's better we keep all unreferenced BLPs than delete them because even sourced ones can be problematic? – Juliancolton |  ^Talk 15:53, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, because "being unreferenced" has no correlation whatsover with "being problematic". That's the point. If you have sound data that prove the opposite, feel free to post them. -- Cyclopia ^talk 15:55, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

If you really think that we have nothing to discuss unfortunately. – Juliancolton |  ^Talk 15:57, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

I am happy to change my mind. But please provide evidence. It's kinda funny, discussing about unreferenced BLPs being such an emergency to require these draconian measures, completely subverting a process, etc. and no one can find anything to back up their claims. -- Cyclopia ^talk 16:00, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't need any evidence to prove that unsubstantiated claims against living people are bad. It's common sense (which, sadly, appears to be severely lacking in this debate). – Juliancolton |  ^Talk 16:01, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree with you. But so, remove the negative claim, not the article. -- Cyclopia ^talk 16:26, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

I would like some evidence, so far I see a lot of false numbers being thrown around and I have seen zero evidence of major BLP problems. Others have gone through the list and shown false positives in it, now it's your turn go through these articles and find me 10 that have actionable false claims in them. If the problem is so widespread that everything must be deleted immediately without question it should take no time at all. Ridernyc ( talk) 16:35, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

An unsourced biography of a living person is inherently problematic. Period. – Juliancolton |  ^Talk 17:16, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Evidence please. You keep making grand statements despite multiple examples to the contrary. Ridernyc ( talk) 17:19, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

No evidence needed, as I said above. You're blindly asking for "evidence" when it's clear you're intentionally missing my point. We can't afford to be lenient about our standard of sourcing in BLPs. Since you seem to think there are other practical options, I expect to see Category:All unreferenced BLPs substantially less populated by this weekend. – Juliancolton |  ^Talk 17:27, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Why can't we? I've seen lots of examples of unsourced BLPs mentioned in this discussion that did not include contentious content, and were doing no harm to either the project or any person. I haven't seen any examples cited of articles that were actually doing harm to anyone. The potential for vandalism is just as present with sourced but unwatched BLPs. What is the urgency here? I don't see it. I see massive, blockable, disruption (mass deletes) for no good reason. DES ^(talk) 19:03, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

An unsourced biography of a living person is inherently problematic. Period. - Why? That's all what we're asking, and no one yet produced an answer. Why? You seem to be so convinced of that, so why it is so difficult to answer such a little question? What's "inherently problematic" in such an article? It's ugly, it requires help, references are always a good thing. Agreed. But why it is so inherently problematic to require deletion? Dogmatic statements are meaningless. Why? It's really a good faith question. Why? -- Cyclopia ^talk 19:20, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

The answer is obvious, and you're deliberately ignoring it I fear. – Juliancolton |  ^Talk 19:29, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

It isn't obvious, and I am sincerely missing it. See discussion above with Bigtimepeace for example, you are welcome to explain there. -- Cyclopia ^talk 19:37, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

It's because Wikipedia is effectively serving as a repository of unsubstantiated, often negative claims about real, living people. We need to enforce a stricter standard for referencing for all BLPs, but since that's obviously never going to happen, our only option is to delete potentially harmful articles that no-one will ever miss. – Juliancolton |  ^Talk 19:42, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Fine, but what we need is to protect and source these articles, not deleting them. Also, you talk of "potentially harmful", but so far no one has quantified this "potential" -which is essential to understand how strong measures should be. And who are you to say that "no one will ever miss"? -- Cyclopia ^talk 20:05, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Wow. I never thought I'd see some of these arguments but, then again, it is the Internet... That said: WP:V is policy. WP:BLP depends on verifiable, reliable sources to show that the information contained in the article is accurate. The "potential harm" is that something innocuous sounding turns out to be false in such a way it causes the subject harm. Something as simple as a claimed religious/political/ethnic affiliation, if wrong or misleading, can cost someone a job (or scholarship), or subject them to harassment by their peers. Unsourced BLPs are a minefield waiting for someone to be harmed. It's a problem we can fix: it would be nice if we could easily find sources for these but, failing that, they should be deleted. The question is, at what point do we declare the article "unsourcable" (and, therefore, unsalvageable)? — The Hand That Feeds You: ^Bite 22:57, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

My answer is that we don't declare it "unsourcable" until at the very least, some responsible editor says that s/he has actually looked for sources and failed to find any. Give the example below, where one editor found no sources and another found sources quickly, perhaps not until at least two editors have looks and found noting. The amount of time an article has been static with no one looking for sources is irrelevant. DES ^(talk) 01:00, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I should add that I don't see any mines in this minefield, and I have yet to hear any explosions. DES ^(talk) 01:02, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Then you haven't been paying attention. There are complaints at AfD and ANI about people's BLPs that turn out to be hoaxes posted by schoolmates and whatnot, which can be harmful to that person's future. As to your first comment, do you really want documentation that multiple individuals have looked and haven't found anything before someone could prod an unsourced BLP? — The Hand That Feeds You: ^Bite 15:07, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

An Example

Here is an example to show why one or two sets of eyes are not enough. Tolu Ajayi was one of the articles deleted in the original mass deletes. An admin who was reviewing some of those deletions undeleted it, and then re-deleted it as "unverifiable". In a few minutes I found a single source, and in a couple of hours I was able to make these changes This is because I knew of a place to look (and not an obscure one, WorldCat) that apparently didn't occur to the other editor, and i tried a Google search with apparently different search terms. This now looks like a reasonable if brief article to me, and given that we now know (from worldcat) that the author's books are in major libraries easily accessible to many editors, further primary sources ("about the author" sections if no more) can surely be found if wanted. The facts stated in the article are now pretty much all verified by reliable sources. All with only online research, using widely known tools. This shows that even though one person fails to find sources, another might do so easily. Any proposal which makes it unlikely that that second person will see and work on such an article harms the project in my opinion, to no good end. DES ^(talk) 19:15, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

I disagree with your final sentence, in that some articles shouldn't stick around to find other citations. That said, congrats on finding additional sources for this article. The question is, how can we bring these articles to more people's attention, rather than leaving them to sit for months (or even years) unsourced? At what point do we say the potential harm outweighs the potential worth of the article? — The Hand That Feeds You: ^Bite 23:12, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

If we are going to take actions based on potential harm we would have to get rid of every BLP referenced or not. Ridernyc ( talk) 23:22, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

That's a straw-man argument. Sourced BLPs are less likely to cause harm, because we can verify the statements within. — The Hand That Feeds You: ^Bite 15:08, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Remember that unsourced contentious statements in BLPs can already be removed on sight. so this or any proposal for change must be aimed at uncontentious BLPs. Given that, Hand, what sort of article "shouldn't stick around to find other citations". I can't think of one that isn't already either speedy-deletable or redily handeld via Prod or AfD. You say that "the potential harm outweighs the potential worth of the article" at soem point. I don't see any potential harm with an unsourced BLP that isn't equally there with a sourced but rarely visited and unwatched BLP. And I don't think, in any case, articles ought to be deleted based upon potential harm. I would want soem indication of actual harm in a specific article. Or at least evidence that a significant number of members of an identified class (such as unsourced BLPs) are actually harmful to the project or to someone. For the matter of that, having a site that can be freely edited and is as widely read as Wikipedia is an immense source of potential harm. At what point do we shut down the prohect to ward it off?

That said, a way to bring more such articles to people's attention and get more of them sourced would be good, but I don't see the backlog as a crisis, nor do I see sourcing every such article as likely to avert or significantly reduce any potential harm that these article represent. A vandal can just as easily dn just a s plausibly add defamatory content to a sourced or even a well-sourced article as to an sourceless one. DES ^(talk) 00:19, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

WP:BEANS alert: I've yet to see the point made on this issue that by far the most insidious vandalism is adding plausible yet damaging statements to stable, well-sourced articles, and seeming to come from an existing, credible source. If this slips by watching editors, it can stay indefinitely, and with a credibility vastly exceeding the same statement in an entirely unsourced article. Rd232 ^talk 08:37, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Are you seriously suggesting we wait until there is actual harm before doing something? The entire point of BLP is to do our best to prevent harm from occurring! — The Hand That Feeds You: ^Bite 15:09, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Alternative proposal: Proposed BLP Incubation

Here's an alternative, Proposed BLP Incubation, which addresses some of the things arising from the discussion. It's essentially part of the PROD process, because the article is still removed from mainspace.

1. New unreferenced BLPs, if they are more than a month old, get tagged with {{prod|BLPincubation}}. The tag may not be removed without the article being sourced to the minimum standard, which is demonstration of notability with reference to reliable sources which are independent of the subject. If at the end of the week they're referenced to the minimum standard, the tag is removed. Otherwise, the article gets incubated.
2. Old unreferenced BLPs (pre-2010) be gradually nominated for BLP Incubation at a reasonable rate. Starting point for discussion: max X old articles tagged for BLPincubation at any one time (i.e. max X in Category:Old unreferenced BLPs proposed for incubation); and/or for every Y articles to be tagged by any one editor, they need to source a tagged article such that the tag can be removed.

Rd232 ^talk 15:22, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

I prefer the prod solution discussed above, but the advantage of this one is that it is already in the deletion policy, so everyone who only opposes the above for policy reasons should be a supporter of this one: "Articles which have potential, but which do not yet meet Wikipedia's quality standards, should be moved to the Wikipedia:Article Incubator" (from WP:DP). Fram ( talk) 15:40, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

• Now this I could, reluctantly, support. It had far less potential to cause the unwarranted deletion of valid but as yet unsourced articles, and it is far less likely IMO to WP:BITE newcomers who add a valid article but don't know that sources are needed, what constitutes a reliable source, nor how to find and add sources. Most unsourced BLBs I have encountered seem to be the result of such newcomers, and many can be at least minimally sourced with little trouble. DES ^(talk) 16:13, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Good point on the BITEyness, and maybe it would be good practice as part of the incubation to notify the creator, so if/when they come back, they can see what happened and possibly fix it. Rd232 ^talk 16:56, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

• Makes much more sense than the mass PROD. Not sure if I endorse it 100%, but for sure I have far less objections. -- Cyclopia ^talk 16:33, 20 January 2010 (UTC) No, it's basically the same: apparently the incubator deletes articles automatically after a while, and as such it is mass deletion in disguise again. -- Cyclopia ^talk 20:09, 20 January 2010 (UTC) Things change fast Ok, it looks like kind of a decent compromise, provided that the articles are given the widest possible time frame to improve and that once incubated, there is no rush whatsoever in getting rid of them. -- Cyclopia ^talk 00:54, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

• I still don't like the extraordinary process here. If at the end of a week, you're not happy, just turn contested PRODs that don't mean your standards into automagic AFD nominations. See how well such nominations fare at AFD. Ray ^Talk 17:38, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Uh huh. Do you see any potential problem with sending thousands of BLPs to AFD? It's easy enough with WP:Twinkle and a couple of committed people. Rd232 ^talk 17:41, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• I oppose this alternate measure. While I do see the merit in the thought process behind it, I believe that incubation would just sweep things under the carpet rather than address the problem completely. Killiondude ( talk) 17:50, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
  • How is it "sweeping under the carpet"? Incubation is the collaborative equivalent of userfication, with enforced noindexing so the pages don't appear in search engines. The difficulty rather is ensuring that the incubated articles can be found by those interested in improving them (that can be done, with some thought). Rd232 ^talk 17:54, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• I would be fine with this, what we need is agreement on some process that starts going through the huge list of unreferenced BLPs and improving them or deleting them/moving them out of article space if improvement doesn't happen. There are also any number of ways that the original proposal could be tweaked (e.g. not letting a bot do the tagging or otherwise limiting the number of prodded unsourced BLPs per month) that would bring more folks on board. So long as the unreferenced BLPs are being dealt with with some alacrity (to date that simply has not happened) I'll be fine with whatever solution is agreeable to most editors. The one issue I see with this proposal is the automatic incubating of articles described in number 1. Some of these articles would be candidates for a (traditional) prod and really should be deleted, so we'd need a way to still delete those if that's what people wanted without going the full AfD route. As currently worded prodding that results in deletion would simply not be an option for new unreferenced BLPs. -- Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 17:51, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
  • I thought about a "or PROD or AFD" possibility, but I didn't want to complicate things - and in any case it seems obviously reasonable for a reviewing admin to have latitude to turn a Proposed Incubation into a PROD or an AFD (at the expense of waiting another week for deletion, it's true). Rd232 ^talk 17:58, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• Per Killiondude, I don't feel this would satisfactorily address the main problem. – Juliancolton |  ^Talk 17:52, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
  • How so? They're out of mainspace, and noindexed. What more do you want? Rd232 ^talk 17:55, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
  • And remember that the Incubator automatically deletes pages not edited after a time, or it is supposed to. Might need a bot to tag incubator-expired with this. DES ^(talk) 18:59, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
    • Oh good lord, the incubator automatically deletes pages? I remove any support to the incubator idea. -- Cyclopia ^talk 20:08, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
      • Never let the facts get in the way of a good bit of hysteria. From WP:Incubator: "While there are no hard limits, an article will generally be deleted (at administrator discretion) if there is no substantial progress after about a month of incubation. The reviewing administrator may choose to keep the article longer if they feel there is a reasonable chance the article will see future improvement. To suggest the deletion of an article currently in the article incubator, update its status to read {{Article Incubator|status=delete}}." Basically, there's an entire second PROD procedure within the incubator!! Rd232 ^talk 20:51, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
        • I've read that bit, but if someone says "automatically", I prefer to err on the safe side and assuming that the guy above knows something I do not. If there is the possibility of automatic deletion, I say no. I hope you're right and that it isn't the case. -- Cyclopia ^talk 22:10, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
          • • Oops i both misremembered and misspoke. The above is correct, i ahd remembered the deadline as being a bit more hard and fast. What I should have said was 'the incubator is not designed to allow unimproved articels to hang around for more than a limited time it is "up or out"' "automatically" was a poor choice of words. DES ^(talk) 23:06, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
            • It can take more than a month to find references, because of the offline, in-one-place nature of many references and a lack of volunteers willing to do such research. Orderinchaos 02:21, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
              • Well in the circumstances of mass incubation, we'd have to raise the guideline for deletion anyway (a year, perhaps, for mass incubated articles). And anyone actively working on an article who needs a lot longer can always ask for userfication. Rd232 ^talk 08:29, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Having slept on it, I much prefer this proposal the the original. It handles a lot of the points raised in opposition, but kinda gives the support side what they're looking for. Looks like a solid compromise to me. - Tainted Conformity ^SCREAM 04:35, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

• Comment Incubation remains a form of deletion especially as ignored incubation articles are also deleted. We should find ways to fix the perceived problems including verifying if the unsourced tag still applies. -- Banjeboi 04:39, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Well I think most people would agree that given a reasonable time and effort for sourcing, unreferenced BLPs should be deleted. Obviously, some don't, but most of the debate is about what constitutes "reasonable", from the two perspectives of "taking far too long" and "not giving the article a chance". Incubation helps bring those perspectives closer together. Rd232 ^talk 08:32, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
    • We may have to agree to disagree. From the threads above and elsewhere it seems like these articles aren't quite the ZOMG alarming problem deserving of mass removal from mainspace - that's what incubation, prod and deletion are in various forms. When done on a mass scale we inevitably screw up and valid but completely boring subjects are deleted because the right editor didn't come along and go - "a Hungarian Prime minister! I'll fix that". No, we should use our tools, energy, processes and creativity already available to address the backlog. Frankly we are better than this. We have creative and clever bot-ops who can help us do things like identify wikiprojects, add {{ find}} and notify the main contributors. Why not empower editing? -- Banjeboi 20:55, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
      • "Editing" has been empowered since the inception of the project yet here we sit with tens of thousands of unreferenced BLPs. Setting up bots to notify members of WikiProjects that there are unsourced BLPs under their project's purview, or to tell editors that they need to source an article they created (I know a bot has been doing the latter to some degree) are fine ideas. But those ideas and setting up a method to delete BLPs that don't get sourced are not remotely mutually exclusive. Indeed it's become clear to the majority of people who have considered this issue that without the threat of deletion most of these articles simply will not get sourced (we have years of history to go on). That's the problem, and because of our BLP policy it's a big one. "We'll be able to fix this through normal editing eventually" is simply not a credible view to take at this point, the problem has been around too long already. -- Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 21:08, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
        • Again we may have to agree to disagree. In reviewing the many discussions on these issues there is wide agreement that "ignored" BLPs would be better with quality sourcing, that's where varying opinions on where to go from here diverge. As noted, many of those do have sources, could be redirectly without drama, easily can have sources added with little work, are clearly notable just need sources, have absolutely nothing libelous on them, are not the "real" BLP problem articles, were created by folks who for whatever reasons didn't know or know how to add sources, etc etc. Incubation is a tool that is readily available yet i object to it being used in this way. It may be helpful for some articles but frankly we should look to other efforts first and simply have this as yet another available tool. -- Banjeboi 21:16, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
          • Without a specific idea as to what those "other efforts" would be, and with a number of admins ready to start mass deleting unsourced BLPs again (which ArbCom seems to support), I'd say you're better off agreeing to a solution that gives folks plenty of time to source articles before they are deleted. What's the problem with that, honestly? There's a lot of fear mongering around this proposal and ones like it, when all it's saying is that BLPs need to be sourced and once there are they won't be deleted. -- Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 21:20, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Prospective (not retrospective) proposal

Okay, how about this - Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Possible_way_forward_on_BLP_semiprotection_-_proposal as something which is using tools we have and might be acceptable overall. Not good for the past but is so for the future. Casliber ( talk · contribs) 02:03, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm all in favour of setting a minimum bar for *new* BLP articles - this is because a warning can be placed on the editing screen which users have no excuse for ignoring. Orderinchaos 02:20, 21 January 2010 (UTC)