Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/Biographies of living people/Phase I

Let's try to keep it civil and succinct, eh?

Alphabetize views

Would it make sense to alphabetize the views by username? I've never really liked the idea of chronological ordering, as I think it unfairly favors earlier views too much. --MZMcBride (talk) 16:16, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

May I change my username first? ϢereSpielChequers 17:41, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

WSC---you make the proposal to go in reverse alphabetical order.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 21:50, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

The only way to make it fair would be to have them randomly ordered each time the page loads :-) Would be however a little confusing but would I think address MZ concerns.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:08, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Given the number of views that have been expressed, and the number of comments, it is probably a good idea to open a second round of comments later on, where proposals can be consolidated, refined, or withdrawn. The chronological order helps to see how the discussion has evolved, so in principle, I would be in favor of keeping that order. (Remark: As we have a specific policy on BLP, framing the current debate as an issue of BLP concerns versus policy and procedure seems unwarranted, in my view.)  Cs32en Talk to me  02:08, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

I'd agree with this. I came rather late to the discussion, and while I've put my two cents' worth down in one place, there's so much material to wade through that I'm probably missing something else I'd agree with. Once everything here is boiled down I think it would be helpful to have a second go at discussing it. ---Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.}

• I am strongly in favor of strict alphabetic order. I believe that Arthur Rubin would also support this change. Aymatth2 (talk) 17:40, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
• I would be in favour of alphabetisation.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 15:23, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
• Wouldn't that make it even harder to work out who said what last? There must be a way of grouping views more productively. Esowteric+Talk 15:44, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Collaborative views

Could we have a go at establishing some collaboratively edited views? I can see the volume of individual, partially overlapping, partially contradicting views spiralling into WP:TLDR extremely quickly. Perhaps this could be in a separate section at the bottom. Rd232 ^talk 16:44, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes please! I was away for inly a few hours, and this is already overwhelming. --Apoc2400 (talk) 00:09, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

NOINDEX

Unfortunately NOINDEX is disabled in article space. That can't be done without some fairly serious changes and risks. Jehochman ^Brrr 16:50, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

but everything in the WP:Incubator is noindexed! yay! Rd232 ^talk 17:25, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Template:NOINDEX/doc explains this. Flatscan (talk) 04:31, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

A reasonable rate

I think prodding 100 unreferenced BLP articles per day would be reasonable. If there are a few thousand, that will remove the backlog within a few months. Jehochman ^Brrr 16:53, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Actually determining the number of unreferenced BLPs would be useful, but there might be no way to do that without going through them all (and along the way we'd obviously do the cleanup, making the count moot). Apparently there are over 50,000 so tagged, but undoubtedly a significant number of those are not actually unsourced (the tags were added incorrectly, or sources were later added and the tags not removed). Still, 100 a day would probably be a reasonable starting point, and if we were handling that load we could quickly ramp it up. Even while this general RFC runs I really think we should figure out a means to deal with the unreferenced bunch just as a starting point for tackling the overall problem. Coming to agreement about prodding unreferenced BLPs (or this alternative, which is probably acceptable to more people), is something we need to do asap, particularly as ArbCom appears ready to validate a delete-on-sight approach. I don't have a problem with doing that if we can't come to another solution, but an organized effort that is logged centrally (as opposed to admins deleting at random without warning) is much preferred. Discussion should continue at Wikipedia talk:Deletion of unreferenced BLPs (and at WT:PROD though I think the former is a better route) since it's already well on its way. --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 17:08, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I've slowly started building a list of completely referenced biographies of living people. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:27, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Completely unreferenced, obviously (would be fun to debate what "completely referenced" means though!). That's great MZM, so are you saying that this list will weed out situations where the article should not be tagged as unreferenced to begin with (i.e. it does have sources but no one removed the tag), or is it basically just an easier to handle list of all of the stuff in the category for unreferenced BLPs? Also are you imagining that we would use this as a jumping off point for cleaning these up or deleting if clean up doesn't happen? --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 17:48, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Completely referenced? I'd say that would be where every statement in the article is supported by a reliable, third-party source, and is explicitly tied to that source. Of course such an article could still violate NPOV and BLP. Guettarda (talk) 21:29, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

But what if there were even better references than the ones already there? I was being largely tongue in cheek with the "completely referenced" reference, but the serious point to it would be that articles are never "complete" and references can basically always be improved, even if every statement is sourced. Anyhow it's an extremely tangential issue. --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 01:00, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

100 per day means it would take a year and a half to go through all 50K. I don't think people are that patient. Personally I'd be happy with a one-year schedule (150 per day?) but I think we might have to go to 500 or more to get everyone on board. Plus, there is probably an even larger category of articles with only a single source, or with only poor sources. I'll bet that's at least 100,000 articles. We can't take 5 years to do that. - Wikidemon (talk) 01:17, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Actually the rate should depend on day of week and holiday schedules. I would, moreover, suggest that a bot be set up looking for "key words" apt to be found in negative unsourced articles, thus making the task more focussed on the problem articles than just a random shotgun. Words to look for should include "felony", "convicted", "rape", "pornography", "drunk" , "alleged" and so on. I suspect that a very large percentage of the claimed negative articles will be sorted out expeditiously indeed. Let's act reasopnably and work on those ones first. Collect (talk) 01:24, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

We could start with the oldest ones first on theory that they really ought to be improved, or the newest on theory that they're the least likely to have been checked. Or work on both ends and the middle. - Wikidemon (talk) 01:26, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

100 per day is of the order new unsourced BLPS are being created. So it would have to be a lot more than this to make headway. Martin451 (talk) 08:25, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

100 per day seems like a big ask if we want to preserve a good proportion of the valuable information. In practice sourcing efforts would attract hostile scrutiny, which would soon begin to discourage folk from trying to preserve the data, so we might not have a large pool of volunteers for long. Last year there were scores of editors trying to save our bilateral relations articles, but when these were being AfD at a rate of more than 10 a day it was impossible to save them all. OK we might get more folk helping here but on the other hand the case against BLPs seem far stronger than for the BR articles. I suggest starting at a lower figure, say 10, and then ramp up slowly.

Martin451s point is important, and suggests we need to combine this plan with WereSpielChequers suggestion that new BLPs be treated differently – i.e. we can start deleting all new unsourced BLPs without prejudice (much as It pains me to say this.) Incorporating Collects suggestion might mean we'd deal with a good proportion of the genuinely problematic BLPs , some of which might turn out to be attack pages. FeydHuxtable (talk) 11:29, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

If we are getting 100 new unsourced BLP's a day, then it seems to me this a problem that is really too big for the community to handle, under current policies at least. I don't think we have the manpower to parse a couple of hundred BLP's a day for the next x number of years, do we? Gatoclass (talk) 09:09, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

100 new articles a day. Where do you get that number from? I for one don't believe it. Most of the articles that are tagged today are many years old. That they were tagged in January 2010 does not mean that they were created now. Rettetast (talk) 12:43, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree that "100 unreferenced BLP articles per day would be reasonable".... We already deal with about 60 to 100 AfDs and 100 to 125 ProDs per day, of which a large majority of those are BLPs. I think the system can handle about 200 to 225 per day. Much mroe than that, and it breaks down drastically. Bearian (talk) 20:43, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Change to PROD overall

Note that all of these proposals generally discourage removal of the yet to be devised BLP PROD template. Of course, current PROD policy is that the template can be removed, by anyone, even the creator. Personally I've always had issue with this, as it's almost always inevitably removed, thus forcing it to AFD. Thus I wonder how the differences in BLP PROD and normal PRODS will be reconciled on the guidance article, so as to not add too much confusion? Is it time to consider making it so that PROD's generally shouldn't be removed by the article's creator, unless they do one of two things (or both): 1) edit the article to address at least one of the concerns noted in the PROD template; 2) note on the article's talk page why they removed the PROD template, either by addressing the concerns in the template, or why they think the template was added in error. I don't think it's too much to ask of the editor to either attempt to address the concerns, or at least make one edit on the talk page before allowing removal of the template. NJA (t/c) 17:24, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Your proposal has been rejected many times; and the logic which rejects it was part of the rejection of the "BLP don't removed PROD unless sourced" proposal at WT:PROD. Not saying I agree with the logic, but there are arguments on both sides, and one side has always prevailed pretty strongly in the past. Rd232 ^talk 17:29, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

"Almost always" isn't my experience. I'd like to see some stats on: prods removed with no other change v prods salvaged v prods expiring and deleted. I suspect the proportion of deleted prods is far higher than you think. I'm certainly aware of enough deleted prods to disprove the Almost always charge. ϢereSpielChequers 17:49, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Okay, let's ignore what I felt to be a rational idea of requiring people to at least attempt to address the concerns in the PROD tag (or explain why they disagreed and removed it). Let's focus on how the treatment of BLP PROD's (if implemented) will be reconciled with the general PROD procedure to make a coherent guidance document that normal editors marking articles for deletion can understand. One will continue to allow removal by anyone for whatever reason or attempts to do anything really, whilst the other will not allow this unless the unreferenced BLP issue is resolved. NJA (t/c) 17:59, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I would agree with a modified prod system for these whereby the prod can be removed if the article is sourced, but you are not allowed to decline a prod if an article continues to be an unsourced BLP. I think prod policy should be left as is for sourced BLPs and non BLP articles. ϢereSpielChequers 18:02, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Regardless of the outcome, we should ignore the results of this RFC

As Scott MacDonald and Tarc espouse, should we hold the results of this RFC in "utter contempt" and "ignore" it?[1][2] Ikip 21:58, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion#Add_new_criteria_to_CSD

I just closed a discussion at CSD related to this topic and directed them here in an effort to centralize discussion.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 22:23, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Deletion of unreferenced BLPs

Similarly, I've notified the people discussing this issue at Wikipedia:Deletion of unreferenced BLPs of this discussion... we should not concurrent discussions going on all over the place. Personally, I was about to cry "Forum Shopping" until I saw that the RfC was instigated at the request of ArbCOM. This is being discussed in too many places.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 22:28, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I also notified the people at WP:PROD---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 22:42, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Meta-view by Kotniski

Moved from the subject-space page. --MZMcBride (talk) 23:11, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

This is just the same discussion that is already taking place in at least two other places. Can we stop this forking?

Users who endorse this summary

1. Collect (talk) 16:15, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
2. Yes, but an RfC is finally the RIGHT place to discuss this, so let's close all the others in favor of this, shall we? Jclemens (talk) 16:27, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

   Agree, and add links from those places to here, and move this Meta-view to the talk page, which is where meta things and threaded conversations belong. Jehochman ^Brrr 16:29, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

3. Cirt (talk) 21:08, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

NOTE: I've closed the discussions down at WP:CSD and WP:PROD, linking this RfC. I also notified the people discussing a proposed new policy about this RfC. See this pages talk page for links.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 22:44, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

PROD fails utterly

See Power.corrupts (talk · contribs)'s edits. Mindless removals of PRODs. The PROD process is obviously not the way this is going to be resolved. Woogee (talk) 23:42, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

It will if it cannot be removed if the article is not fixed. If thats the way we go, his behaviour is blockable. Viridae^Talk 23:43, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I'd endorse that if it comes to it, but as I say in my comment, it's better to clog up AfD than it is to throw the baby out with the bathwater with prods. Prodders can always watchlist the article and open an AfD if the tag is taken off without fixing the issue. HJMitchell You rang? 23:58, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Once a prod is placed it is visible in the history even after removal. Removing the tag doesn't significantly hamper identification of unsourced BLPS. --TS 00:02, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Power.corrupts is also putting oldprodfull tags into the Talk pages of all of the articles he's removing the PRODs from. Is this an appropriate action? Woogee (talk) 00:07, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it makes the problematic articles even easier to identify. --TS 00:09, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

OK, thanks. Woogee (talk) 00:17, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Prod without the "Proposed"

I agree with Woogee here actually, although I endorsed David Gerard's view, none of these views or opinions will work if they involve a BLP Prod that can be removed by anyone, what's needed is probably a deletion tag with Prod elements i.e a tag with a 5, 7 or maybe even more, day countdown but without the ability to be removed if the BLP in question is totally unsourced, that being said it would probably have to be a totally different deletion tag to any that we have at the moment as the BLP's it'll be placed on aren't being considered for deletion but will in fact be deleted inevitably if they remain unsourced. Jeffrey Mall (talk • contribs) - 14:19, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Oppose sections

I thought Requests for comments generally avoided oppose sections? Where is the RFC dictator? --MZMcBride (talk) 23:59, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Just remove it and put a hidden comment there reminding editors that these types of RfCs don't use oppose sections. Cla68 (talk) 00:00, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

I thought we were an autonomous collective. --Cybercobra (talk) 01:23, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

In the past that has been the standard, but there are a lot of oppose sections this time around... I personally think this is a contentious enough issue that it might be better to have the support and oppose sections together having them separated is going to make this much more difficult to read/follow.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 03:37, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

RFCs are supposed to have views and endorsements. Discussion should take place on this page. Lara 03:39, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, the votes are pointless. We need that mythical uninvolved person to come an do clerk duties. Kevin (talk) 03:46, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Seriously. The oppose sections should either be moved to this page or one added to every proposal, which is not standard for RFCs and will just make it a bigger clusterfuck. Lara 04:15, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Hey, well, when in Rome... til someone decides to move them all here, it's open season. Tarc (talk) 04:24, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

(nice to finally see you on the opposite side of an issue, Tarc :) Well, they're good for venting. But they're not a good gauge of consensus because some or most people are not going to weigh in on the "oppose sections". It's like counting the number of dogs howling at the moon at any given time. Only a few are doing it but you know they all want to. Anyway, I think this RfC is turning into more of a brainstorm session and talk board than anything else. Some very good ideas have come out of it, and I think there's a good chance of finding a constructive solution this way that will please most people. - Wikidemon (talk) 04:51, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

• Can't you guys see that people want an area in which to bitch about the proposals from those people actually trying to (gasp!) solve the damn problem? UnitAnode 04:32, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

(ec)This whole RFC exists because some people decided that procedural rules were unimportant, given the larger goal of solving a problem... Funny how, all of a sudden, people who said "screw procedure" have sudden fallen back in love with it. Guettarda (talk) 04:35, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't care what the hell you do here. It's more funny to me how quickly you're willing to discard protocol, when it suits you. And it's not just "the larger goal of solving a problem", Gut, it's the larger goal of solving the single biggest problem the project currently faces. If process gets in the way of that, process should be ignored. UnitAnode 04:42, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

WP:Ignore all processes? Might as well, everything else is being ignored by a certain group. Resolute 05:47, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

BLPs are a bigger problem than the possibly declining active editor count? --Cybercobra (talk) 05:57, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Possibly, but they certainly aren't a bigger problem than vandalism, though some feel they contain a disproportionate part of that problem. I'd agree that vandalism, including vandalism in unsourced BLPs is up there with spam and POV disputes as one of our three main problems; but I'd hesitate to put them in order of priority. As for our possibly declining active editor count, I'm concerned about the health of our community, and I think some aspects of this current kerfuffle haven't helped this - we need lots of volunteers to write and maintain wikipedia and wikiwars are not good for community cohesion. ϢereSpielChequers 18:52, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Technical question

How difficult would it be to make a separate stream of recent changes of edits to unwatched, unreferenced biographies? JoshuaZ (talk) 06:44, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

How does the existence of references protect an unwatched BLP from vandals? Unwatched BLPs, regardless of their references, are a problem. —David Eppstein (talk) 08:16, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm trying to understand what the limits are if we add additional streams to recent changes. Unwatched would possibly be an additional stream. But the discussion so far has focused on BLPs that are unreferenced. I'm wondering in particular if such a stream might not be helpful in that it would aperiodically bring such BLPs to people's attention. Moreover, if a biography is watched but has no references it is much more likely to be ok. (Given that the vast majority of BLPs with no references are also fine, it might be better to say that such biographies are even less likely to be a problem). The question was sort of in the brainstorming mode. JoshuaZ (talk) 17:26, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Framing issues

Request for comments like this are useless because most people read the first few views and support one from those, and then ignore the rest (i.e. there is a bias towards the people that start the RfC). What is needed to truly gauge opinion is to discuss the views first, get the major viewpoints established and documented by collaborative editing, and only then to start polling. As a minor and pedantic point, the first view omits the qualifier "living" (this is usually done when writing in haste to get one's view as the first one on the page). Carcharoth (talk) 08:11, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Views one and two are very different approaches. The second outpolling the first is good evidence of consensus. As the author of the second, I was not involved in starting this RfC. I was perceptive to spot the RfC early, and prepared with a proposal I'd thought through in advance. Framing will always be a challenge. Let's not allow perfect to be enemy of good. Jehochman ^Brrr 12:24, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Carcharoth makes a good point. I think we need an RFC on RFCs, because the current process clearly doesn't work very well for large numbers of responses. Rd232 ^talk 13:16, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

What's even the goal of this RfC? It's going in so many different ways with so much voter fatigue that pulling a consensus out of here is impossible. --Explodicle (T/C) 13:38, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

This RFC was mentioned in the WP:WikiProject Article Rescue Squadron/Newsletter/20091001

The newsletter was sent to 330 editors. As the creator of both newsletters, it was my decision mention this RFC. Ikip 09:30, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

A link to it might be good.  Roger Davies ^talk 09:42, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Thank you again Mr. Davies. See you soon.... Ikip 09:46, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Good, I think the more people who know about his, the better...

Proposal to refocus

There appear to be three major proposals on the table - summary deletion, prodwithteeth, and do nothing. I suggest we refoucus the RFC on those three proposals - allow their significant authors space to repropose/clarify/incorporate, and see if there's real consensus. As an alternative, we could see if there's any real objection to prod-with-teeth, which is "Prod can't be removed without sourcing." Hipocrite (talk) 13:48, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree with your overview of three classes of proposals (there is a fourth: commentary on the fiasco leading to this, but this category is far less constructive). I also concur with refocusing, although perhaps might wait another day or so. I am not sure what a good format would be, but I am confident the various authors will work something out. Baccyak4H (Yak!) 17:25, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

A truce! A minute to take fingers off both the delete and panic buttons and go through a normal process. Also a good time to end the righteous indignation of IAR flying everywhere.

I also endorse those as the core 3 directions, but how about a play toward realism to cover the large philosophical gap between "Delete on sight" and "PROD-like"? How about "delete systematically" as defined by some kind of time table per date of template added? Something over a set length of time blanketed to all articles that would be more binding, straight and strict than a PROD adaptation and its associated process. Takes a little more time but the queue will forcefully get to zero with minimum anarchy. Really, community health is a reasonable concern and also one more IAR rationale we can evade if smart. Oh, though I can't imagine many in favor of doing nothing, for simplicity saying "nothing" (in regards to any kind of default to delete under any policy) is understandable. ♪ daTheisen(talk) 17:36, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. I think we can throw out the "delete on sight" and "do nothing" as outliers - even if each has some support there are proposals closer to the midpoint that have more. The middle ground is some kind of deletion mechanism without all the bells and whistles of an AfD (nobody is proposing to use AfD). The question of structure and timing is important but orthogonal to the means. Still, it's very early in the RfC. A lot of useful ideas are being aired just by talking it through. I wouldn't give it a month but perhaps a week and then we can circle back and build a single proposal out of this. - Wikidemon (talk) 20:50, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

What is the point?

While I fully agree that we need a centralized place to discuss the issues here, I don't see how this RfC format is going to result in a consensus. We should be talking and exchanging ideas, not just making a position statement and then getting people to indicate support. Are we just going to go with whoever has the most votes? This is not how we form consensus. -208.97.245.241 (talk) 17:25, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Though a lot of that end up accidentally sounding contradictory, I think I get the concern. Obviously, no !vote totals mean anything. The only place they specifically do is ArbCom. What's the difference between a "policy statement" and associated replies and "talking and exchanging ideas", though? Honestly, I think the above section is already aiming for a really fast way through an RfC since it defines starting points instead of asking for a list of them. As its given above, it's not even for specific consensus to take any action now (I really hope), but a sounding board for where we start from as if this debacle started in discussions in the first place. Trying to be productive in the face of the past 36 hours at least sounds a lot easier if it's written up this way-- Do we want to delete all offenders as quickly as possible? Through a slightly modified process that will take some time but eventually catch everything? ...Or avoid the d-word completely right now? Those are nice broad areas that I think almost any user could comfortably rest in even 2 of without a need to get pitchforks for whatever's next.

If nothing more, it's an attempted call to civility and at least one central place for talk, so it reduces the number of forked disaster areas spread about already. ♪ daTheisen(talk) 17:52, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

I view this as a first step. From the endorsements on various statements, it seems obvious that a BLP-Prod type solution is favoured. This RfC is effectively the information gathering stage of the debate. Policy proposal comes next. Resolute 18:33, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

I share the 208.x.x.x's concerns. By obvious "law of wiki RfCs", there are several problems here:

• there are many overlapping statements, with minor differences
• only the top few statements will receive enough attention
• the only proposal that seems to have overwhelming support, that of Jehochman, is deferring the essential detail: the speed with which deletion should proceed.

Pcap ping 21:32, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Brilliant Idea!

The use of collapse boxes on this RfC was truly a brilliant idea. They make the positions easier to read, and help limit the unnoticed quality of the lower entries. This should be the standard on all RfC's that generate significant amounts of support/oppose/discussion. — James Kalmar 06:09, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree that the collapse boxes improve the format of the RFC, especially since it probably allows entries near the bottom of the page to be read more. However, as mentioned above, the overlap of the suggestions is still a major flaw in this particular system. But again, I applaud MZMcBride and Juliancolton for their work in tidying up the page. Killiondude (talk) 08:01, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Ditto!---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 01:13, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Discussion size and time concerns

At time of my writing this, we're nearing 450k for the full list and !votes. This is also a (apparently) time-sensitive matter where some users feel a need to rush and act on certain views instead of a comment length of longer than 2 days and without any official changes to discuss after. It's not good to see a wheel warring case filed at ArbCom but I admit it's incredible to have not happened in the past few days.

It's not the number of views to read over that is bad (it's great!), but the sheer bulk of text. From an accessibility and sanity standpoint it can't just continue to grow indefinitely. Even for several mpbs+ range we're hitting frustrating load times, especially on top of existing Wikipedia traffic. I feel bad for anyone that might get an edit conflict. I just don't want anyone to be driven away on load frustrations akin to when I remember how much I loved my 33.6 modem in the mid-90s, or dissuaded from participation in any way directly or indirectly related to the article size. Forget about any mobile broadband. Has this come up before to this kind of extreme? If so, what was done? Yes, we're not responsible for connection specifications and limitations, but I really dislike the idea of even one opinion getting lost or abandoned in attempts to post.

Even a rushed RfC close and refinement I would say needs to be Monday at earliest to allow for heavier weekend visitors, but am I right to think nothing can or should be done for at least some more days? ♪ daTheisen(talk) 11:48, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

As far as I'm concerned, as long as there is some progress and some hope of a mechanism that deals with this being agreed, the moritorium on speedy deletions stands. I'm not putting a hard time limit on that - ideally this will be a few days, but a few weeks we can live with. What we can't have is a "stall" where discussion goes stale and cold and nothing happens. It isn't that the matter is urgent, so much as we've stalled for 4 years and it isn't acceptable to revert to stalled mode. I suspect that in a day or two we will want to stop examining "what happened" and look at some concrete proposals that will not allow unreferenced BLPs to linger for long, and will set some (longer) deadlines for dealing with the backlog. Failing that..... well, I suspect BOLD admin action will be the only way - which would be regrettable.--Scott Mac (Doc) 11:56, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Prohibit removing prod tag unless referenced

The removal of prod tags from unref articles can not be permitted unless references are added for the notable claim and identifying information or we end up in the same situation with unref material in remaining in article space. See Richard McLean (Australia) for an example. This article was started in 2005, prodded twice, default keep at Afd in Sept. 2009 with one person commenting, and I found it unsourced with stale inaccurate information in Jan 2009. Our current deletion processes fail to prevent this loop. So requiring prod tags to stay on until the article is adequately sourced is a must. FloNight♥♥♥♥ 14:31, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Absolutely not. Prod tags are for uncontroversial deletions. If the deletion is opposed the prod tag goes, and the nominator is free to nominate the article for deletion under the usual procedure. This should not and cannot be a backdoor to creating a new policy on whether unsourced BLP articles should be deleted as such, or a process fork for dealing with these articles if we collectively agree on a program to fix them. - Wikidemon (talk) 15:40, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Agreed--If you want it irremovable, it's not PROD and calling it that just mucks up things. Better would be a process that automagically sends any closed failed deletion process (PROD, CSD, AfD) where the end product is an unreferenced BLP article, straight to AfD. Yes, that would result in an immediate re-AfD'ing in the unlikely event that an unreferenced BLP was kept at AfD, and looping if the process was repeated. That's not so bad, I think, as completely rearchitecting PROD for this purpose. Jclemens (talk) 18:53, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

I think that it is very poor practice for AfDs to be closed when there are no references (in the article). I've have this happen to me a few times in the past months. People opine 'keep there are lots of sources' and the article exits the debate with none. Peripitus (Talk) 21:32, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

I would be concerned if there are none in the article or the discussion, but if anyone wants to take issue with the a keep close where sources were listed but not edited into the article, that editor can feel free to add the sources from the discussion to the article. Jclemens (talk) 23:22, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

For the record, I support this unconditionally. Tarc (talk) 23:36, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose - But, if someone feels better, automatic "if PROD removed, then send to AfD" is OK, because at least it involves proactively community discussion and helps chances to rescue the article. --Cyclopia^talk 00:37, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Did anyone look at Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Richard_McLean_(Australia)? Plenty of references were given there, but nobody added them to the article. This happens sometimes at AfD. But you, FloNight, also did nothing about the article, even though you say you know something is inaccurate in it. Pcap ping 13:47, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

The removal of PROD tags in accordance with WP:PROD is entirely legitimate. Articles with contested PRODs can be sent to AfD. Alternatively we can develop a new BLP-PROD or similar, with different rules to the existing PROD. What we've got to stop doing is abandoning successive sets of rules and guidelines in the dash to address one issue. There's more to Wikipedia than BLPs (heresy!), and the PROD rules apply to these non-BLP articles as well.

I should add that I agree with Peripitus that its irritating that AfD's close as keep on unreferenced articles, especially where the AfD itself generated useful sources which no one bothers to add. And in passing, we should thank editors like User:Graeme Bartlett who actually added the references to Richard McLean (Australia) while all of us were here pontificating. Euryalus (talk) 08:18, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Query from Collect

Moved from the subject-space page. This is really a question for the WMF legal counsel, but this talk page is good enough, I guess. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:20, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

How many libel suits for unreferenced BLPs have ever been brought against WP or the WMF? Collect (talk) 12:52, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Replies

Not relevant. We should take all steps to make sure our BLPs are libel-free and maintainable as such because: 1) our core WP:V and WP:NPOV demand it 2) it is the right thing to do ("do no harm"). Ask a different question: how many people are adversly or unfairly affected by our failure to keep our BLPs properly maintained? Any OTRS person will tell you there are many many legitimate complaints every week.--Scott Mac (Doc) 12:58, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

The ostensible reason given was that libel may be found there. Are we in the position of the man who went to a shrink -- the shrink asked "Why do you clap your hands every five minutes" Reply "To keep the elephants away" "There are no elephants anywhere near here" "See! It works!" If no examples of libel suits are found, I ould suggest that clapping our hands will not do much <g>. And I would ask how many OTRS complaints are due to unreferenced BLPs which are not deleted by OTRS? In short - are we not using "libel" as a straw argument in such a case entirely? Is not the real argument that all unreferenced articles of whatever ilk should be excised? Collect (talk) 13:51, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

The ostensible reason given by who? Certainly not anybody with what might fairly be characterized as a good grasp of the BLP problem. Steve Smith (talk) 13:53, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

One can have a libel without a lawsuit. If you are asking are some of these unreferenced BLPs libellous, the answer is yes.--Scott Mac (Doc) 14:09, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Save your breath, Scott - he's in no mood to let facts get in the way of a good analogy. Steve Smith (talk) 14:11, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Inasmuch as Scott was one specifically raised "libel" as a rallying cry, I regard his comments as answering your question as to "given by who?" Clearly "libel" is an ostensible reason as given by one of the most active participants. And I would respectfully ask that you respect your own position as a member of ArbCom with regard to comments made about editors. Thank you most kindly. Collect (talk) 15:38, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Libel, yes. Libel suits no. As Scott noted, those are two different things. The lack of libel suits has virtually no evidentiary value as to the existence of libel. Steve Smith (talk) 15:40, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Lack of elephants is surely evidence that elephants must be stopped by clapping <g>. Scott only avers 1 or 2 percent as violating BLP ... seems that there are not all that many elephants to be found. Collect (talk) 16:07, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Back of the envelope estimates (necessarily very rough) for all BLPs (not distinguishing between sourced and unsourced) put ~0.2% of all BLPs having been problematic as a pessimistic value. --Cyclopia^talk 14:35, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Rubbish. I've done OTRS, manned the BLPNB, and used various tools to identify more. I've no way of statistically analysing it, but I can regularly find a bio that violates BLP in 2-3 minutes. Sure the % is probably in low single figures - but that's hardly relevant if you are the subject of the bio.--Scott Mac (Doc) 14:41, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. 1% is 1 too many to host here, and it is a continuing shame that some here can't comprehend that.

It is relevant in understanding how the draconianness of measures vs the problem must be measured. Since you've done OTRS, and you claim to have different data that contradict these ones, it would help a lot if you can share them -say, take a sample of "weeks at OTRS" and figuring out how many independent complaints you received per week, how many of them referred to unsourced BLPs and how many to sourced ones, etc. --Cyclopia^talk 00:35, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Given your statement here Cyclopia, I'm not sure why you even bother to keep asking for data, since it's quite obvious that no (realistic) number of complaints could ever convince you there is a problem. In the context of discussing 50,000+ unsourced articles, I asked how many of those would need to have BLP problems for you to be concerned to the point where we would need to go in and start the prod/source or delete process, and you replied, "I'd say that if there is overwhelming evidence of more than 10% such BLPs having actually harmed a subject, then there is a real problem." Which, to be clear, means that even if Scott or someone else said that there had been 5,000 BLP complaints at OTRS over the past few years, your first response would presumably be, "okay, but how many of those complainers were actually harmed, and is the evidence for that overwhelming?" Please don't bother bothering other people about data when you've made it clear that nothing can convince you that there is a problem with BLP. --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 07:48, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Don't personalize the issue. Measuring the extent of the problem is very important to figure out what the appropriate solution is, and I am flabbergasted that there doesn't seem to have been any serious attempts to do so. henrik•talk 08:22, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm all for more information about the extent of the BLP problem (undoubtedly there could be issues with collecting it given privacy issues with OTRS), though the whole point of BLP as a policy is that we should be concerned even if just a few people are harmed by false or misleading information in our articles. My comment above to Cyclopia has nothing to do with personalizing the situation, it's a simple fact that that editor's apparent threshold for admitting that there is a "real problem" is if 10% out of 50,000 articles did "actual harm" to an article subject (I doubt you would agree with that number). There's no way we have 5,000 cases with "overwhelming evidence" of real world harm, and as such any data provided would not convince Cyclopia that there is a BLP problem. That's not to say that such information would not be useful, just that it's clearly not going to have any effect on Cyclopia's views on these questions. --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 09:19, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Oh, absolutely. 10% is obviously completely unacceptable, and had I thought it anywhere near that number I would have mashing my delete button like crazy speedily deleting the lot. But we can't expect complete perfection. We can strive towards it, and rapidly fix problems as they are pointed out to us, and help encourage people to reduce the risk with various means. But there will be cases where we have incorrect information, and there will be cases where someone uses that information in such a way that could cause harm. But if all we wanted to do was to prevent that, the solution is simple: close down the encyclopedia. We have to make a mature risk-benefit analysis if we're going to come up with a good solution. Even if Cyclopia's views wont be changed, us who haven't taken extreme stances will be helped by such data, and I definitely encourage Cyclopia to continue in his efforts. henrik•talk 11:07, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

I would like to clarify. I am not going to ask real-life proof of 5000 people, say, losing their job. Call me crazy, but not that crazy! To me >5000 50.000 individual articles (~10% of the ~500.000 BLPs) generating independent and valid (e.g. related to actual defamation and not just "I don't like you write WP:WELLKNOWN stuff about me") OTRS complaints are enough to acknowledge that the problem is beyond control. Again, I wouldn't endorse tout court deletion, but I for sure would consider incubation/blanking/removal from search engines etc. But in this context what is mostly important is that unreferenced BLPs are indeed for some reason more problematic than referenced ones. I've seen there is now some more request for informations and I hope good statistics will be collected eventually. --Cyclopia^talk 15:09, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Scott, you mentioned that "I've done OTRS, manned the BLPNB, and used various tools to identify more... I can regularly find a bio that violates BLP in 2-3 minutes." Can you elaborate on your methods for finding bios that violate BLP? Maybe if more people can use those methods we'd be more effective than picking random articles out of Category:Unreferenced BLPs. And to give us a comparison, how many minutes does it take you to find BLP violations by doing random checks in Category:Unreferenced BLPs? I apologize in advance if you've already answered these questions somewhere. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 07:44, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Unreferenced biographies of living people

As a follow on to this RfC, I have started a policy proposal at Wikipedia:Unreferenced biographies of living people.--Scott Mac (Doc) 17:29, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Eep. Can you slow down a bit? We've finally got centralized discussion here.... --MZMcBride (talk) 17:37, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Momentum is good. Inertia is the problem. Anyway, there's already too many words to make this page much of a discussion - it is really just an expression of multiple views, with more people endorsing them. There's not progress anywhere. I read them over, and tried to formulate a policy that seemed to reflect consensus. I doubt much more will happen in this RfC.--Scott Mac (Doc) 18:22, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

At this point, your "momentum" is looking curiously like forum shopping, as in, "moving with high speed to successive fora where opposition is not yet great enough to slow you down." Ray^Talk 20:58, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

What happened to AGF? I opened a policy proposal, and notified people here (supporters and opposers0. While some may feel that premature, it is hardly "moving with high speed to successive fora".--Scott Mac (Doc) 21:03, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Mr. MacDonald, you have absolutely no creditability when it comes to quoting policy, since you have "utter contempt" for consensus.[3] Blocked yourself to avoid being blocked like the R... who was blocked three times. And intentionally created "drama and disruption". If there was in WP:equality on this site, you would be in the process of rightly losing your administrator status. As his actions clearly show, consensus only matter to Mr. MacDonald if it support his viewpoint, otherwise he will commit any and every amount of "drama and disruption" to push for his viewpoint. Ikip ^{Frank Andersson (45 revisions restored):}_{an olympic medallist for f**k's sake} 21:30, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

That's a little harsh. We're a herd of cats around here and we need a WP:BOLD cat herder to keep the herd moving. I think if we abandon further comments on this page and start again somewhere else we'll have a good next iteration because the discussion to date has identified two or three broad types of approaches. There are a lot of different opinions, particularly about what should have happened in the past, but what most commentators here have in common is that they will agree to create a process for cleaning out all the old unreferenced BLPs, and a process for making sure new ones don't get added. Maybe we can develop one or all of the proposals at this point and then see which one(s) look best. - Wikidemon (talk) 02:47, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

• And we have a similar prposal at Wikipedia:Deletion of unreferenced BLPs look like its going take a while to come to a resolution and that we need to be careful of not creating different consensus for the same system on different pages. Gnangarra 09:28, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Comment on the emotional context of deletion

I still see a great deal of anger in this RfC over the methods that Kevin, Doc, and Larry used to jumpstart this discussion. Though I think those methods were indeed somewhat abrasive, the backlash against them has been excessive. There are a couple things about this that need to be pointed out, I think. One important one is that from an admin's point of view, deletion just looks very different from an ordinary editor's view. We can see deleted articles, and we can undelete them with exactly the same number of mouseclicks it took to delete them; what's more, when we click on a redlink for a deleted article we get a link to the "view and restore deleted pages" page. To a non-admin, deletion is a wiping away of an article: it is as if it never existed, and they are naturally more upset than an admin would be if the removed article was on a notable subject. Both groups, I think, need to think about the other's perspective. I would remind non-admins that deletion of BLPs as unsourced will always be considered provisional, to be reversed without fuss the moment sources are provided (this unfussy undeletion, I believe, has worked fairly well with the PROD system--at least, when they've come to DRV they've been speedily and civilly dealt with); it should not have the same implications as an AfD closed as delete, but really be a separate category with lower stakes. I would remind admins that general offers to userfy deleted articles are not enough; we need to be as transparent as possible about these deletions and as helpful as possible to those who wish to source them, and we need to remember that deletion is experienced differently by those who don't have the undelete button available. Chick Bowen 21:50, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, thanks. A stubbified article, by contrast, has an older version that is available to any interested editor, although if people start working on the newly stubbed version the old information becomes harder to integrate. Another emotional thing that happens is a bit of defensive anxiety when people who have the power to freeze your account talk about their intentions in a boastful, belittling, officious, threatening, or otherwise indecorous way. - Wikidemon (talk) 02:39, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Chick, you present an interesting perspective. However, it seems to me that what it actually creates, and especially in light of this movement to mass-delete uncontroversial material, is a caste system amongst editors in Wikipedia--those who might have access to useful material deleted only because it was unsourced, and those who do not. I see this access/no access distinction as fundamentally different from the tools-empowered/unempowered distinction. In the latter, admins merely have additional functionality for performing administrative tasks. In the former, administrators are actually granted access to a much larger Wikipedia and have available to them a much larger amount of information than regular editors. Robert K S (talk) 09:23, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

show/hide

Personally I think that while the use of show/hide feature helps in condensing the page it also removing from sight thoughts and discussions that are an important part of the FRFC process. Much of the discussion is being stiffled by the hiding of responses/comments as editor are being focused only on the primary views not the ensuing discussions. Suggest some other limitations to size the page that enable ensures discussion on views Gnangarra 09:19, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

I'd like to see everything instead of having to click show each time, is there a way to get that behavior on this page but not globally? If not, I think we might want to rethink use of this. ++Lar: t/c 05:01, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

We could set all of the {{collapse top}}s to be expanded by default. There's no URL parameter or anything to make them all expand (though there really should be). There are benefits and detriments to hiding the content. If you really hate them, though, just remove them. --MZMcBride (talk) 07:57, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

I'd prefer to understand why they were added in the first place, first. If everyone else likes them, up and removing them because I don't doesn't seem a good approach to me. Is this a new norm for RfCs or is this the first(ish?) place it's been tried? ++Lar: t/c 11:09, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Extended discussion on Balloonman's opposition to NuclearWarfare's comment

1. I have to Strongly oppose this based upon NW's comments at WP:BN today. NW felt that a former admin should not have the bit restored because she had 35 unreferenced BLP's that she wrote that she has not even begun to fix. I looked at the first ten items from an automated tool that were give to her a week ago. Of those first ten unreferenced BLPs 4 of them did have in fact have references. One of them her last edit was last year; 3 of them her last edit was in 2008 (2 in Feb of 08)---but on most of them her last edit to the article was in 2004/2005/2006---when our expectations were much different. Heck, I think there was only one article where her last edit the article had been tagged as not having references! Instituting this criteria on articles that one may have written and last edited four, five, or even six years ago is ridiculous. If she hasn't edited the article in 4 years, she probably doesn't care about the article anymore (I've written ariticles that I don't care about.) To say that she should be denied or stripped of her adminship over that is just dumb---especially as expectations were existing at the time. Heck, to expect her to clean them up might be a stretch. Most of those articles have been adopted by Wikiprojects, contact those wikiprojects and let them know about the problems, we'll probably have better luck.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 23:47, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

   Last time I checked, we didn't normally do opposes in RFCs. Regardless, what does any of this have to do with his proposal? I think you're lost, B-man. Wrong venue and such. This isn't BN and it's not RFA and it's not Nuke's talk page. While I can appreciate you disagreeing with him on the matter of Rebecca's adminship (or lack thereof), opposing a view on an RFC because of that doesn't really do much to cast you in a positive (or reasonable) light. Perhaps you may considering reading his view and either endorsing it or not endorsing it. If you want to comment on specific points you disagree with, the talk page is that way. Lara 00:58, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   I completely oppose the proposal because the proposal, as envisioned by NW, would have applied to Rebecca... I don't know Rebecca. But she would have retroactively become responsible for editing and maintaining articles that she hadn't edited in up to six years! Her request and NW's desire to tie her to those articles provides the perfect reasoning as to why this is a flawed proposal.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 01:40, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   What does it matter if she hasn't edited them in six years? That just means she has, for six years, neglected to reference biographies of living people that she wrote. This project is in serious need of cleaning up this BLP problem. We need admins who contribute to fixing the problem, not worsening it. If an admin can't be bothered to reference their own BLPs, how in the world are we to expect them to not only reference others, but do anything proactive wrt to BLPs? Clearly if they're letting their own creations sit for years unreferenced, they don't really care. Not what we need in admins. Lara 01:48, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   Six years ago, the expectations were different. This proposal gives ownership responsibility to individuals. A person can no longer write an article and move on, they would be responsible to ensuring that article is properly maintained and updated based upon the current expectations. This proposal would make the creator responsible for the CURRENT content of an article. If somebody is responsible to ensuring that it meets current expectations, then that person had better have the right to say what goes into it! In other words, they would own it. They should also have the right to delete the article years down the road when they no longer interested in the subject, because it might be used against them. This proposal goes entirely against a community built project and places responsibility on the creator, regardless of how long ago they wrote the aritlce. Saying tha SHE neglected to refefence them is a false premise if she doesn't own the ariticles.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 02:00, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   What? Give me a break. It's not giving anyone ownership over anything. It's requesting editors clean up their own messes. Expectations were different then, true... but so what? If you're still here and you're requested to add a reference to BLPs you created and you can't be bothered? What does that say about you? (Collective you.) If an admin cannot be bothered to source their own article creations, BLPs in particular, they clearly do not care about the BLP problem or, in my opinion, the project. There is nothing positive about unsourced biographies, and if an editor is too lazy to look up references for their own BLPs, deciding instead to leave it to someone else, they're just contributing to the backlogs and contributing to the problem. No one of that mind should be an admin. In my opinion, they should be booted off the project. Lara 02:15, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   Except that this does miss a fundamental point: Most of these unsourced articles don't have any problems at all. It isn't an unreasonable course of action for someone to look over the article see that everything in it is clearly true and not harmful and then not bother. There's an assumption here that there's some deep moral problem with unsourced biographies. But the problem isn't in unsourced biographies. The problem is that some of the unsourced biographies might contain problematic material. And that's just a drop in the bucket to the serious BLP problem which this is really a distraction from. JoshuaZ (talk) 02:22, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   No, the missed fundamental point is that this is an encyclopedia which is, by definition, supposed to be written from existing sources. Unreferenced BLPs are not okay, Joshua. No article of an encyclopedia, including this one, should be unsourced. This is particularly important with BLPs. That said, what's the serious BLP problem, Josh? Because every push for anything BLP-related is met with a big ol' fight. Where should we be focusing? The BLP problem is vast. It's not one thing, it's countless things. No matter which one is the focus at any given time, there's always someone there to point out it's the wrong one. How about everyone stop complaining that it's the issue at hand and not some other issue, and just focus on the fact that it's a BLP issue and fix it. Then we can move on to the next, and the next, and so on until we get to the "serious BLP problem", whatever that is. Lara 02:37, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   You and people who live at WP:BLP may feel that way, but the rest of us are not so convinced. Having an unsourced BLP mean that the article was written in a vacuum, is researched, well written, or neutral. It merely means that there are no sources. Having sources is ideal, but not having them is not the end of the world. But, I will agree, BLP's are special. There is a stronger need to have sources, the problem is that not everybody agrees that unsourced BLP's should be blindly deleted en masse. In fact, there is a fair amount of opposition to this notion. A better idea would be to get help in cleaning them up and figuring out which articles are worth keeping and which ones should be deleted. Thus my proposal below, why not get the various wikiprojects to help out? Getting help from others would be much more desirable than mass deletions and will avoid the out cry that will come from mass deletions.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 02:48, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   This proposal has nothing to do with deletion. We're talking about this specific proposal, Balloonman. It has to do with making editors responsible for their contributions. WP:V puts the burden on the editor who contributed the information. You want Wikiprojects to do the work, and you want to get help from others. Fantastic. The people who created the article should be willing to help out with it. If they can't be bothered to hit up Google and grab a source to do their part on their own creations, they should not only be denied adminship, they should be shown the door. Everyone has so much time and so many ideas to contribute on what could be done and how it could be done, but at the end of the day, look at how many of those people are actually working on BLPs. I'll give you a hint: It's not an impressive numbers. Lara 02:58, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   My point is that the only proposal I've seen from the BLP crew here is CSD/PROD. There are other proposals out ther... but people should not be obligated to own an article six years after they wrote it. There may be other editors who are much more involved in the article and the articles development than the person who first started it. As for "their own creations" that only matters if they OWN their creations. Once they finish editing the article it is no longer theirs. Now, if you were talking about a person who routinely wrote BLPs today without providing sources, I'd be in full agreement with you... but you are talking about holding a persons feet to the fire for actions taken YEARS ago. You can ask them to do something, but they simply may not care enough about the subject, again you cannot attribute motivations for somebody failing to act in the way you want them to.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 03:49, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   You miss my point. Yes, our end goal is to connect everything to reliable sources. But if there articles that are truthful and whose soul problem is a lack of sourcing in the articles then that fundamentally isn't a high priority issue. The rest of what you said is simply window dressing. To say that this is a substantial part of the BLP problem is seriously missing the forest for the trees. Simply put we have far more serious problems with POV pushing, vandalism and related issues. If you want to do something useful send a note to your favorite member of the Board harassing them about flagged revisions. Or add more articles to your watchlist. Or help figure out which BLPs are getting regular vandalism and still aren't protected. All of those are far more useful. Frankly, the problem here seems to be that much of the actual solutions (aside from getting flagged revisions) simply aren't glamorous. That's how life works. There's far more work to be done maintaining content than engaging in this sort of destructive drama. JoshuaZ (talk) 02:53, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   I'm just going to assume that you neither read my response nor realize who you're talking to, because I know JoshuaZ did not just advise me on how to edit wrt to BLPs or what the problems are. Lara 03:01, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   I'm pretty sure that JoshuaZ did exactly that. If however, you insist on personalizing this to somehow being about you and me (it really isn't, and personalizing things likely would make a matter which is already quite emotional for a lot of people even more so) Just wondering when was your last edit that actually got rid of a genuinely bad statement in a BLP? From your contributions it looks like it was in November. JoshuaZ (talk) 03:14, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   I've done more than my fair share to fix this problem. Which one of the other signatures on this page is your sock account, used to keep BLPs that should be deleted... or do you not do that anymore? Lara 03:17, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   Thanks for not answering the question. Of course, you know that I've repeatedly denied those accusations. Now why don't we try to actually focus on the issue at hand which is the complete lack of utility in these deletions. JoshuaZ (talk) 03:36, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   ecx2 That is the definition of ownership. If a specific individual is responsible for the article, despite not working on the article for years, then you are putting ownership responsibilities on them. According to this proposal, the creator of an article is still responsible for the article SIX YEARS AFTER creating it. Guess what if I fail to add a source to an article I wrote SIX YEARS ago, it does not say anything about my concern for BLP. It probably says more about my interest in the subject. Let me give you an example, I wrote an article that was taken to AFD. Did I fight for the article? No, I didn't bother to get involved in the debate because frankly I didn't care about the article anymore. I had written it 2+ years ago and moved on. You cannot make the generalization that a person is responisble for editing an article simply because they wrote it, by doing so, you are putting more responsibility on article creation than was EVER intended.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 02:38, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   The verifiability policy, which ranks pretty high on the scale of importance, puts the burden on the editor who added the content. Your ownership argument remains ridiculous in my opinion. Lara 02:46, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   Expecting an editor to clean up an article they wrote six years ago and making them responsible to do so under threat of desysopping is pretty ridiculous in my opinion.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 02:52, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   The fact that you think admins would be that lazy and worthless is ridiculous to me. If you'd written a couple BLPs five years ago and I asked you to "Hey Balloonman, we're trying to get this backlog of 50 thousand unrefed BLPs down, can you do a couple Google searched and try to find a ref or two for these BLPs you created?", would you refuse? Lara 02:58, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   You are misconstruing doing the right thing and establishing bad policy---this is bad policy. As for your question: Depends... probably I would, but if it was on a subject I no cared about, I might not. Let's turn the issue around. You wrote an article five years ago. When you wrote it, it was a short stub and conformed to all of the guidelines at the time. In the intermeaning five years, the article has grown and policies have changed. Perhaps it was on a subject you didn't care about or perhaps the article took an editorial direction you disagreed with. Perhaps you left the article because somebody who cared more about it took the lead on its development. Or perhaps you merely stopped caring about the subject. The article is still well written and neutral, perhaps better written than what you had, but as far as you are concerned it is no longer your article---you could care less if it was deleted or not. The point is, that it is in no way shape or form the article you wrote and you haven't been involved with it for years. Based upon this proposal you would still be responsible for the content and if you don't clean it up, then you may be desysopped. If a person is going to have responsibility for ensuring that it conforms to guidelines in perpetuity merely because they wrote the first incarnation, then they need to have editorial powers. The point is, that you cannot deduce motives in failing to act and you should not impose penalties for failing to do what somebody else wants. We are ultimately volunteers here and you cannot force others to have the same set of priorities that you have.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 03:23, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   I would, without doubt, add a source. If I couldn't find one, I'd nom it for deletion myself. We are all volunteers, and you're right that we can't force people to have the same set of priorities. We also don't have to allow them to keep their adminship. People have been desysopped for less, after all. Lara 03:28, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   I'd love to see the call for a desysop based upon the fact that somebody refuses to edit an article they haven't touched in six years. The only basis for trying to force them to would be because they own, I mean, wrote it.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 03:44, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   You're surely stuck on that ownership thing, aren't you. Understanding the verifiability policy is hard. I know. But whatever. You're clearly the expert when it comes to who's acceptable for adminship, Ballloonman. I'll just rely on your expertise for basing my decision here. Lara 03:48, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   mmm... miss... i think you should know, you sarcasm and your barely concealed belittlement is showing. Ikip 19:08, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

   I fully understand verifiability. But do you realize that 6 years is a long time. If a person hasn't edited an article in six years, perhaps there is a reason. You want to make people responsible for articles that have been in the public domain for six years simply because they were the one to click the button that said "create this page." Verifiability is good and fine... but if you want to force somebody to adhere to that policy do so within a reasonable time frame. Years after the fact is not a reasonable time frame. The only way that you can expect somebody to do something six years down the road is if you expect them to be responsible for it.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 03:52, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   I don't care if it was nine years ago. It's a Google search. Help fix the problem or go away. Lara 03:56, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   I invite Jennavecia (who chooses to sign as "Lara") to consider WP:CIVIL

   Just for the record---that was NOT me.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 14:55, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   No it was me. I must have forgotten to sign: sorry. JamesBWatson (talk) 16:07, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

   It doesn't matter who it was, user Jennavecia would be better not bringing this community wide discussion down to a personal level with thinly disguised insults and personal attacks. Weakopedia (talk) 12:14, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

   If I may return to Balloonman's "Strongly oppose", a case in which NuclearWarfare made comments which Balloonman disagreed is irrelevant to whether we agree or disgree with what NuclearWarfare has said here. For the same reason all the above argument following from that is also irrelevant. The suggestion should be judged on its own merits, not on ad hominem arguments about something the same person said elsewhere. JamesBWatson (talk) 13:41, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   The problem is that this assigns responsibility to people who may not have been involved with articles since their inception. If the proposal were reworded to talk about an ongoing problem I could support that. But to make a guideline that can be applied to articles that an author wrote years ago is dumb. The next thing you know, we are going to try to instill a policy that if you edit an article, you are responsible for cleaning it up.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 14:58, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

2. I am VERY glad that Balloonman brought up this issue here, because it is very relevant. I think it once again shows the extreme views which editors who support deleting the 49,000 BLP articles have. Rebecca is one of the most veteran editors here on wikipedia, and she is such an incredible asset to this project, to say that she be barred from any adminship for her good faith contributions, shows the extreme views editors have who support these changes. This entire RFC began with editors who have "utter contempt" for consensus. Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Biographies_of_living_people#View_by_Ikip Since then Coffee is at arbitration a second time, and now extreme views are being voiced for punishing editors for their good faith contributions. These two arbcoms and Rebecca's case is all a precursor of the disruption and extreme drama which will happen when these extreme views are put into place. We judge editors on their character and edit history to determine whether they would be good fits for adminiship, by the same token, I think it is necessary to view a proposal by the character and history of the proposal, to see whether it would be a good fit for the community. Ikip 19:08, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

   if all the energy used in this discussion were used on BLP's, would there be a backlog? (awakening from dogmatic slumber for a moment) i can't tell you how many times i have written a BLP that was deleted, that had plenty of sources, and was notable, i've started pasting the deletion edits on the talk page. go ask the top editors to clear the backlog and see how long it takes. Pohick2 (talk) 16:52, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Interim summary of the RFC - 24 January 2010 at 09:56 UTC

It is exceptionally good to see this large a segment of the community participating in this brainstorming session for a critical issue, and many good ideas and valid points have been raised. I do encourage people to take the time to read the full text of several of the views on the main page here, but there is a lot of information, so I will attempt to summarise some of the thoughts that seem to have taken hold, and point to ideas that can be acted upon, many with fairly little effort.

What we agree on

• It seems broadly agreed that BLPs are sensitive content that always has the potential to cause harm, particularly when poorly sourced or written in a way that is noncompliant with core editorial policies (NPOV, verifiability, NOR and BLP)
• Unsourced BLPs are only one aspect of the larger issue of problematic content in BLPs
• There is a lot of work to be done
• Straight deletion of unsourced BLPs is supported by a sizeable minority of those participating, but is not the favoured process for addressing unsourced BLP articles
• Removal of contentious unsourced information should be immediate when identified, including use of CSD criteria where applicable

What we haven't come to a conclusion about

• The extent to which the level of notability of an article subject plays in determining risk for harm
• The degree or extent of discussion required before a deletion decision is made
• The impact on the encyclopedia of deleting articles versus retention of unsourced material
• Whether lack of sourcing/undersourcing is as critical a priority for other article types as it is for BLPs
• Deletion decisions need human input and should not be done automatically by bots or other tools

Proposal with the strongest support

• View by Jehochman, a variation of PROD which would result in unimproved articles being deleted or, in select cases, being sent to the article incubator; PROD tags should not be removed. All are encouraged to participate in the review process.

Readily implemented ideas

Many of these ideas can be put into place immediately, regardless of the outcome of this RFC and/or to supplement the processes that are favoured through this RFC, but are not overall solutions

• Logs identifying articles in which BLP violations have occurred (Bigtimepeace)
• Development of a timeline under which to carry out review of all unsourced BLPs, with set deadlines based on age (or other criteria) (Scott MacDonald)
• Engaging editors site-wide to actively participate in sourcing unsourced and undersourced BLPs (Cenarium)
• Development of a "BLP Brigade" with structure and recognition processes (Wikidemon, Hut 8.5)
• Tool/Bot to notify relevant wikiprojects of unsourced BLPs with strong urging to improve these articles (several editors, bot request made by Nuclear Warfare, a retasking of WolterBot suggested by Resolute)
• Edit filter to track removal of PROD templates (or whatever other template is used) from BLP articles (NJA)

Ideas that could be developed

Some other ideas that may work effectively as adjuncts to the processes selected through this RFC

• Templates identifying that an article has been stubbed/deleted to remove unverified material (Father Goose, Arthur Rubin, henrik)
• Every editor is to review and improve one unsourced BLP per comment in the RFC (Sjakkalle)
• "Draft" article space (FT2) and/or article incubator (Rd232 and others)
• Semi-protection for unwatched BLPs (Jake Wartenberg)
• Userfication of new unsourced BLPs with established time limit for minimal sourcing (Lead Song Dog)
• Specialised deletion process for BLPs that is similar but stricter than PROD, with set timelines (HJ Mitchell, David Gerard)

This is intended only to be an interim summary of the discussion; other readers might have selected or arranged this information differently. Risker (talk) 09:56, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Discussion

RE: "It seems broadly agreed that BLPs are sensitive content that always has the potential to cause harm, particularly when poorly sourced or written in a way that is noncompliant with core editorial policies (NPOV, verifiability, NOR and BLP)"

With all due respect, this Request for comment has only been open for 3 days the average RFC stays open for 30 days. I think a summary of what everyone thinks is incredibly immature at this point.

The two contrasting views which I see, which have the most signatures is Jehochman, with 124 signatures, and Collect, with 45 signatures.

If this were a Request for Adminiship, Jehochman's idea would be in possibly fail category: 73% support. 124+45= 169, 124/169 = 73% [4]

It is incredibly telling what Risker does not mention Collects ideas, which have 45 signatures, but Risker does mention:

Bigtimepeace: 2 signatures.

Father Goose: 0 signatures.

Jake Wartenberg: 12 signatures.

Sjakkalle: 5 signatures.

Keeping the status quo, is an viable popular option Risker, ignoring it does not change the fact that 45 editors support this position.

I encourage editors such as DGG, Casliber, or Father Goose, who support Collects view to write up a summary as Risker has. Editors who write up summaries often shape the debate. Ikip 12:37, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Hi Ikip, I haven't ignored Collect's position, because his view and others similar to it have been captured under the heading "What we haven't come to a conclusion about". His view itself is focused on notability, and that is the first entry there; other views about notability have also been expressed. The same is true of the part of his view that focuses on the "how", which falls into the general category of "requires human eyes" because that is the current process.

The purpose of the summary was to pull out some of the ideas that are either (a) able to be implemented whether or not there is any change in practice, so that work can be done on them now, or (b) ideas that are probably not implementable immediately but can benefit from more eyes to determine if they are viable. This is the largest and most complex RFC we have had for a long time, and it's important to tease out good ideas early. We do not need to wait 30 days, for example, for someone to set up a bot that brings these articles to the attention of various projects, in the hopes that they will review them, improve and reference them, and we wind up with superior content without deletion. The lack of signatures behind a view does not speak to its viability, particularly in an RFC that has collected +500K bytes of discussion in its first 72 hours. I'm trying to make sure these ideas don't get lost in the ocean of words, and that a reader new to this process can quickly identify the key themes. Risker (talk) 18:28, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for this effort. I think that's a good summary but I do have a few qualms. Obviously consensus is more than just a !vote, but particularly here you cannot measure consensus by finding the seemingly best accepted among a few dozen largely redundant proposals. Further, as noted this is more of a brainstorming session than a conventional RfC. Summarizing now is useful but I think we need to hash this through to narrow things down rather than trying to find a single answer. The solution is going to involve several different things in tandem, not a single solution that edges out all others. And it will probably be the best proposal for getting the job done, not necessarily the one that reflects the most common gut reaction among commentators here. I don't see agreement that unsourced BLPs are in fact a huge problem, just agreement that if some editors wish to make the issue a priority other editors are willing to help. There is a big distinction made in many proposals between dealing with the 50,000+ article backlog, and ongoing maintenance or new article patrol - any summary that conflates the two potentially confuses this issue. I see very little support for an ad-hoc PROD process, or for the contention that PROD tags placed in the normal course cannot be removed by way of challenging the deletability of an article. However, if we do have a comprehensive way of dealing with the backlog, then either adding or removing articles from the queue out of process would be a problem. Hope that helps. - Wikidemon (talk) 13:49, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Wikidemon, I agree with you that it is unlikely that a single solution will result from all of this. Risker (talk) 18:28, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Pretty much struck my whole section, after I wrote it, my little voice inside told me to reedit it, but ignored it at my peril. Risker, thank you for your comments and clarifications. If Wikidemon agrees, you could remove all of our comments here.

I apologize. I guess that is why you are a arbitrator, as a bridge builder and diplomat, you know how to work together with everyone to build a comprimise which most people we be satisfied with. Nice job on the overview. My apologizes again. Ikip 18:41, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Clarifications by Jehochman

I moved this content here to avoid confusing the proposal, per suggestions from several editors below. Jehochman ^Brrr 13:51, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Clarifications

• I changed from five to seven days to be consistent with existing deletion processes.
• Any user can remove a prod. We are not concerned with the occasional removal of a prod without fixing the article. Those few can go to articles for deletion. We are concerned about mass removals without cause and without attempting to make improvements. Such action would be tantamount to disrupting Wikipedia to make a point, and would risk a block. Existing policy is sufficient to prevent that if a few admins with cojones are willing to provide enforcement. Jehochman ^Brrr 13:46, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Jehochman, please don't change the key points about your proposal after significant voting. Removal of a prod tag and putting it back into main space unsourced is not an acceptable outcome. Many people will not support this change because it defeats the purpose that we are trying to achieve. The occasional prod removal IS a problem because those can fall through the cracks and end up remaining unsourced. FloNight♥♥♥♥ 11:35, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
    • Agree with FloNight, the majority of the supports below were to the fact that the PROD template cannot be removed at all unless the article is sourced. Please strike out that clarification, as it only serves to confuse and make a false look of consensus towards it. — Coffee // have a cup // ark // 22:17, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
      • Disagree. The irremovability of the prod is not something clearly consistent with the nature of a wiki, was a preliminary idea, and not fundamental to the proposal (which is essentially to affirm current mechanisms). --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:56, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
    • Also agree with FloNight: I hadn't supported yet (but was going to), but if the clarification means that the "prods" can be removed without adding references, I'm not at all clear whether this proposal actually achieves anything. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 01:25, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I am moving this threaded discussion to talk. My proposal means exactly what it says. The spirit of the proposal is that somebody who removes one or two prods should be warned not to do that. Mass de-prodding should result in a block. A small number of de-prods is not a problem because those articles can go to AfD. It is best practice if somebody raises specific objections to a proposed deletion to discuss the matter, not to bite them. The problem is when somebody has a blanket objection to enforcing WP:BLP and seeks to disrupt the cleanup campaign by removing all prods, regardless of the merits. That sort of behavior even on non-BLP articles would be disruptive, and blockable. Jehochman ^Brrr 13:27, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

You don't understand the issue. This has been a long term problem unrelated to this mass deletion tagging. The changes to policy must address how we handle these article on a longterm basis. But you're addressing this as an editor behavior problem when the issue is a quality improvement problem. We know that articles currently have prod tag removed, go to Afd and get kept and leave the deletion process without sources. We can not have these articles go through the deletion discussions and remain on site without anyone improving. Your proposal allows that to happen. So your proposal does not adequately address the problem. FloNight♥♥♥♥ 14:16, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

No, I think I understand the issue very well, and if you are going to say I don't, I'm going to follow Mark Twain's advice and stop discussing it with you. If prods are placed and dealt with in good faith, the issue will be cleaned up. At any point you can blank unreferenced content from a BLP. Anybody who repeatedly restores unreferenced content can then be warned and blocked. What you shouldn't do is summarily delete an article, thereby hiding its edit history from those who might want to go looking for sources. Jehochman ^Brrr 14:44, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

The current deletion processes do not address the problem of poorly referenced articles. It was not designed to address it and won't unless it is changed to explicitly include it as a criteria for deletion. And again, you are discussing editor conduct when the issue is a process that does not adequately address removing unreferenced material from Wikipedia. Currently the processes are much too labor intensive and have inadequate volunteer involvement. One person may spend a couple of minutes writing a low quality article but in order for us to delete the article for lack of verification of the content, multiple people need to spend double or triple the time (at a minimum). This method of quality improvement does not scale, so we need to build in ways to make quality improvement more effective and efficient. Requiring someone to spend time improving the article by adding references for the key identifying information and the reason for notability needs to be the minimum requirement for okaying the article staying on Wikipedia at end of a deletion discussion. Any process that does not include this minimum standard is inadequate and needs to be improved to explicitly include this criteria. FloNight♥♥♥♥ 15:44, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

How nasty does the Jerochman's proposal sound when the shoe is on the other foot? "Anyone who repeatedly adds PROD tags to content should be warned and blocked." Yeah, completely unreasonable. And quite offensive, really. PROD tag users in my experience are not interested in doing even the most minimal work to find a source that would mean an article on a notable subject would be referenced in some way. It takes seconds to place a tag, and minutes to find a source. What this proposal simply says is - we would rather not do the work of finding sources, and believe wholesale deletion of a great fraction of Wikipedia's biographies is a better solution. Mostlyharmless (talk) 01:26, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Question: There is no policy requirement in PROD to check for sources before adding the tag. Policy (specifically, neutral point of view and verifiability) require sources. How can notability, which is only a guideline be reliably established without sources? What is the best way to move this forward so that the requirements of policy are swiftly met without process being trumped by a guideline? (As an aside, I'm curious by the suggestion that it takes minutes to add sources: I've just sourced two BLPs on the French wikipedia by way of an exercise and with the associated copy-editing/expansion etc they took more than half an hour each.)  Roger Davies ^talk 08:27, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Run real proposals separately

Since this RFC is so large, and people support the views the like rather than voting support/oppose on each view, I suggest that any actual proposal for policy change is made into a separate page, advertised here and all the normal channels, and then a vote/discussion is held. It is just not reasonable to take the support/oppose ratio for a view here to show any kind of consensus. --Apoc2400 (talk) 18:42, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

that sounds wonderful. Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Biographies of living people/final decision after this RFC closes normally? Ikip 18:45, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. This is a thorny issue, and it's far better to whittle it down bit by bit rather than try and do a whole lot at once. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 22:24, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. The "community desysop" RFC made that mistake. Rd232 ^talk 13:18, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

• Separate RfCs are a good idea. Indeed, why not run a user poll (or separate RfCs) on the underlying basic basic questions, separately, such as:

1. BLPs in general:
   1. Who is responsible for checking the contents of new BLPs?
   2. Who is responsible for watching the edits made to a BLP?
   3. Who is responsible for fixing errors in existing BLPs?
   4. Should the basic WP editing principles be different for BLPs?
2. Unsourced BLPs (i.e. BLPs that contain no *explicit* references):
   1. Is the contents of unsourced BLPs of lower quality than that of sourced ones?
   2. Are unsourced BLPs of higher risk than sourced ones?
   3. Are unsourced BLPs a *top-priority* problem for Wikipedia?
   4. Is it OK to delete a BLP only because it is unsourced, without attempting to source it?
   5. Who is morally responsible for adding sources to an unsourced BLP?
      1. The editor who created the article
      2. All the editors who have worked on the article
      3. The editors who have it in their watchlist
      4. The editor who proposes it for deletion
      5. The editors who support the deletion
      6. The editors who oppose the deletion
      7. The regular WP editors in general
      8. The administrators in general
      9. Jimbo Wales (well, Wikipedia was *his* idea, wasn't it? 8-)
   6. Is blanking an unsourced BLP better or worse than deleting it?
   7. What should happen if there is a dispute about the deletion of an usourced BLP?
      1. The editor who says "delete" (e.g. by tagging) prevails
      2. The editor who says "keep" (e.g. by deleting a tag) prevails
      3. An administrator decides
      4. The article goes to the AfD
      5. The usual edit conflict resolution process applies (talk page, 3rr, arbitration, etc.).
   8. If a BLP goes to the AfD only for being unsourced, howlong should we wait before deleting it?
   9. What should Wikipedia do to the authors/editors of an unsourced BLP?
      1. Nothing
      2. Warn them beforehand
      3. Scold them
      4. Block them
      5. Apologize and justify the decision in their talk page
      6. Provide them with an "undo deletion" button
      7. Other
3. Non-notable BLPs (i.e. BLPs *with appropriate and fully verifiable contents* on "non-notable" subjects):
   1. Should Wikipedia attempt to label people as either "notable" or "non-notable"?
   2. Are the current notability criteria:
      1. Just right
      2. Too lax
      3. Too strict
      4. Too complicated
      5. Too rigid
      6. Too subjective
      7. I haven't read them
   3. Are non-notable BLPs harmful or beneficial to Wikipedia?
   4. Are non-notable BLPs a *top-priority* problem?
   5. Is it OK to delete a BLP *only* because *its notability has not been determined*, without attempting to determine it?
   6. Who is morally responsible for determining the notability of the subject of a BLP? (same alternatives as above)
   7. What should happen if there is a dispute about the notability of a subject? (same alternatives as above)
   8. What should Wikipedia do with any existing BLPs that are *determined* to be non-notable?
      1. Nothing particular
      2. Delete
      3. Merge and redirect as appropriate
      4. Move to user space
      5. Other
   9. If a BLP goes to the AfD only for being non-notable, how long should we wait before deleting it?
   10. What should Wikipedia do to the authors/editors of a non-notable BLP? (same alternatives as above)

For some of these questions we should also get basic statistics, e.g. what percentage of unsourced BLPs are/could be sourced, etc.

If Wikipedia only had a convenient mechanism for placing such surveys and tabulating their results. What about this: any userwho wishes to respond creates a copy of the poll's form as a subpage of their own user page, called "User:Foo/Polls/{POLL_NAME}",and ticks the boxes and fills the blanks in that page, preserving its layout. Then the poll tabulator uses the category mechanism to find all such forms, and a simple wikisource parser to extract the votes.

All the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 20:31, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Something useful, uncontroversial and parallel to any policy change: Enlist wikiprojects & editors

If we were to get many editors looking over unreferenced BLPs, much of the tension and disagreement on the RfC page would be reduced: The concern about losing acceptable articles and the concerns about libel, poor quality and worthless articles would both be ameliorated.

Several threads in the RfC address this problem with essentially the same suggestion: involve Wikiprojects in evaluating unreferenced BLPs. Just look at the threads started by:

• Resolute [5]
• Balloonman [6]
• The-Pope [7]
• Pohta ce-am potit [8].

There is no technical problem in identifying unreferenced BLPs by subject area (the discussions have links to already-existing programs that do this -- for instance, see The-Pope's discussion). Individual editors can identify unreferenced BLPs by cross-referencing with categories in their areas of interest.

So, I propose:

1. Setting up some organization to promote the idea that Wikiprojects that aren't already monitoring unreferenced BLPs start doing so. We shouldn't insist on any kind of regimented activity: Just contact the Wikiprojects and let them address the issue in their own way.
2. Publicizing the problem among editors at large -- perhaps with one of those big, annoying banners, something we do for Very Important Things All Editors Should Be Bothered With (VITAESBBW), and informing editors with a description of the problem and links to already existing tools that would lead them to unreferenced BLPs in articles of interest to them. All we have to do with editors is inform them on what they can do. If editors know about the problem, they'll be interested in working on articles in their area of interest, and nothing more need be done to help them.

Personally, I don't know enough about the technical aspects of programs like this, how best to inform and appeal to Wikiprojects and how to get a VITAESBBW strung up. Can we get some volunteers together, and will someone with some savvy in these things volunteer to coordinate? I can put some time into it, but I'm better with grunt work (I don't even know what to call some of these cross-referencing search engines -- are they all "bots"?). This should take maybe a few weeks to set up, and then we fold our tent and go our separate ways (although a page should be set up where individual editors can get information on how to help). You don't have to come down on one side or the other of any policy proposal to work on this collectively and constructively.

-- JohnWBarber (talk) 22:22, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Volunteers, please

1. JohnWBarber (talk) 22:22, 24 January 2010 (UTC) -- can do boring grunt work.
2. I'll definitely help draw the attention of Wikiprojects to the BLP issues. I'm not knowledgeable about the technical aspects how to create tools to do it, but will help out it other ways. For several weeks now, I've been pondering about how do a cross wiki project to work on international BLPs in many languages. I suggested this idea on the Wikimedia Strategic Planning wiki. I've also talked on that wiki about better using Wikiprojects as a way to collaborate. Many of the Wikiprojects have interested editors but they die because of problems with leadership. FloNight♥♥♥♥ 22:51, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Comments, suggestions?

• Don't overcomplicate this. As I suggested in View by WereSpielChequers "can someone write a Bot to inform wikiprojects of unsourced BLPs in their remit in the same way that DASHBot has been informing authors?" ϢereSpielChequers 22:43, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Left a note for DASHBot's owner, Tim1357, here. Let's see if he could give us a hand. NW (Talk) 22:54, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Interesting idea, but (1) The wikiprojects themselves are better at identifying the parameters of what categories to look at; (2) There are several options for what programs a wikiproject may want to use and how they may want to use them, and I'm hoping a group of volunteers can help wikiproject editors who have questions about this, and perhaps have questions about the impending deletions; I think a human touch is better to deal with these concerns; (3) I'm looking to publicize this among the majority of editors who don't concern themselves with project-space controversies -- a banner, coverage in the Signpost, for instance -- it requires more than a bot program. Thanks for the link to your suggestion, sorry I missed it. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 22:57, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

The way I envisage the Bot working is that projects would be notified of any unsourced BLP with their project marked on the talkpage. But they could also volunteer to be informed of any unsourced BLP in certain categories. That could still leave some BLPs for which a wikiproject doesn't exist, but I may be able to persuade the Article Rescue Squadron to take a look at them. I'm sure there will also be some moribund wikiprojects that can't or won't do much about this, but then many of the 17,400 editors who DASHBot is informing will be long retired, blocked, or in the case of IPs simply reassigned. On the plus side some BLPs will be of interest to multiple wikiprojects. I agree with the signpost article and so forth, but I think that a Bot that highlighted relevant articles to wikiprojects would break this into manageable chunks that are relevant to particular editors. ϢereSpielChequers 23:26, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Personally any proposal that does not include notifying the wikiprojects is destined to be problematic. If we notify them and they fail to act, then it is their problem. If we don't notify them and the BLP CSD'ers get their way, there will be problems. As for dead projects... if they are dead, then it is unlikely that they would have raised the ruckus I fear.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 00:46, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

User:Tim1357 has responded and offered to look into updating DASHBot, I've also asked him if he wouldn't mind restarting the process of DASHBot chiding the authors. Quite understandably some of the people who got a note from DASHbot closely followed by their article being deleted were complaining to him. So it seems that the first "achievement" of the summary deletion without notification process was to stop DASHbot after it had only requested that 14,400 of the 17,400 authors of our unreferenced BLPs go back and reference their creations. ϢereSpielChequers 01:39, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

I think notifying authors is of limited value---most have quit or moved on. The wikiprojects are the ones that maintain the ongoing interest. Take me for example, I've worked on a number of Brewery related articles, but the subject doesn't interest me. I just got a bug to work on some of them over a weekend and created two or three articles on Colorado MicroBreweries. If somebody came back and asked me to work on them, it would depend on what they needed, but in all honesty, its a subject that doesn't interest me. That being said, those articles are of interest to several wikiprojects that might try to rectify them.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 03:38, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

I notified WP:METAL and had a list created (Wikipedia:WikiProject Metal/Unreferenced BLPs) of unreferenced BLPs within the project. Haven't received much of a response yet but have a fairly manageable list to work on. J04n(talk page) 03:52, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

A Bot already exists to inform projects

User:WolterBot already generates a set of reports for subscribing projects that includes a list of unreferenced BLPs. Projects that want to subscribe to this just need to add {{User:WolterBot/Cleanup listing subscription|banner="insert your project banner here"}} to their project page (more details on User:B. Wolterding/Cleanup listings). It is an opt in service for projects and only works on articles that have been tagged for that project. So I still think there is room for a DashBot style listing and also a system for projects to request information on articles within particular categories. But if anyone is concerned about saving articles of interest to their project I'd suggest you try and persuade your project to sign up to Wolterbot. ϢereSpielChequers 00:12, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Indeed it does include a report of unreferenced BLP for a project. See Wikiproject Equine list of unreferneced BLPs for an example. So we know that we have the tool to alert people, we just need to make sure that they are aware of the significance that reviewing them will have on retaining them on site. FloNight♥♥♥♥ 01:06, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps someone could write up a draft -- a short, factual statement outlining the situation, telling projects that articles in their purview may be deleted, and that they can use that bot to figure out which articles are at risk (and maybe other bots). If that's written up, I'll put it on the talk pages of all the Wikiprojects. It would be better still if someone with technical savvy would just confirm that the other bots are also fine for this, but if we have one (and it's commonly used already), we have what we need. We might wait for the next edition of Signposts and link to the article about this. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 01:30, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

I think that WolterBot is only a partial tool as projects have to request it. Also it seems to rely on articles being tagged for that project as opposed to being in relevant categories. I'm hoping that we can get a DASHbot style note that every project gets whether they like it or not - perhaps some projects will be reinvigorated by the process. But I will drop a note asking if the author is OK with a number of extra projects joining, and if he can put extra emphasis on the Unreferenced BLP bit of his report. ϢereSpielChequers 01:45, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

The bot is fairly inadequate. Compare this catscan list with the one produced by the bot (same as the link of FloNight above). Further information on the method I used here. Pcap ping 08:06, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

I already notified several of the projects about BLP issues. As we all discussed. I created more or less a full list of all projects yesterday 72 in all, I would be happy to post this 72 anywhere you wish. Ikip 02:29, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Does a list exist of all BLP related wikiprojects?

Thank you. Ikip 02:09, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

While some would have more than others, almost every type of wikiproject could have a BLP related article because they are broad in the way that they cover topics. Who would have thought that Equine would have that many unref BLP articles. FloNight♥♥♥♥ 02:21, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Here's a thought...

Instead of spending so much time bickering here, why don't people click over to Category:Unreferenced BLPs. There's even a "random article in this category" button. In just over an hour, I've managed to reduce the population of said category by half a dozen articles. This is not a huge number, but imagine if 200 editors took half a dozen each and sourced them or prodded what couldn't be sourced... Keep going- more editors, more time, within a few days we can have an empty category and a redundant RfC. Surely that makes more sense than arguing over the minutiae of this proposal or that proposal????? HJ Mitchell | fancy a chat? 02:17, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Hopefully people are both working on BLP articles since their awareness was raised and commenting in the discussion. We need for people to do both. FloNight♥♥♥♥ 02:25, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

This is how Scott MacDonald, who helped start this RFC, by deleting several dozen articles, works on BLPs: [9] by deleting referenced sections and stubifying them. Same pattern as Bali Ultimate, who was a subject of an ANI recently.

It is impossible to work with such editors when they continue to show "utter contempt" for consensus which built our rules.

It will only get worse, much worse, the two arbcoms, the bickering, the planned "disruption" and "drama" which was planning by Scott MacDonald and friends. A precursor of how these new policies will play out.

We can all talk diplomatically about unity, working together and playing by the rules, but that requires a genuine effort by all interests. Ikip 02:39, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Be that as it may, my point is that people could do a lot more good by just picking a few BLPs at random and trying to source them rather than making rhetorical comments here. HJ Mitchell | fancy a chat? 02:48, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

I am tempted to say that many of the editors who contribute to these discussions ... I am more interested in adding (sourced) BLPs for the redlinks in List of all Nigerian state governors, which are all clearly highly notable. Nigeria is half as big as the USA by population and growing fast, major oil supplier, big political problems. Plenty of sources, all in English. Let's push to add quality content. Forget this stuff. Aymatth2 (talk) 02:52, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

There are many projects that are already doing this and have project work groups tackling this (Cricket, India, Australia etc etc). Of course a good chunk of the unreferenced BLP tags are legitimate, but there are a lot that are frivolous, I've had to remove an unsourced BLP tag from one with 15 sources, another from one that was fully sourced and not even a BLP, and many others with sources and/or dead people. Add to that PRODs for Presidents and Prime Ministers and it starts to become annoying. I'm not asking for people to not add the unref tags or PRODs, but is it too much to ask that they spend a few minutes evaluating the article before doing all this? For god's sake, we're here to build an encyclopaedia, not do enactments of Don Quixote. –SpacemanSpiff 02:59, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Because working BLP and random articles only appeals to those people who want to work random articles and BLP. Most people who are volunteers work in areas that interest them---and that does not include for most people, [[Nigerian governors. People who want to work CSD will focus there, AFD will focus there, Poker will focus there, etc. In the real world, we have to take the BLP issue to where people want to work and recruit them to help out. A person who is interested in TV shows will not care one iota about Nigerian Governors, but may work diligently on unsourced TV Actors. This is why getting the WIkiprojects is important... it is a realistic solution to the problem. We will not get the people to work on all 50K BLPs. Even if everybody who commented on this RfC worked 50 articles, we would would still be short by an order of magnatude... and many of the people may not be sufficeintly knowledgable on all of the subjects to adequately assess the subjects importance.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 03:35, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

It is an excellent suggestion to try and fix these articles ourselves, but there is one problem: our own bias when it comes to removing articles. Perhaps we should come up with a certain criteria for what makes an un-referenced BLP removable. Perhaps a new talk page on this idea is required? Ashwin N 03:59, 25 January 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by ANarayan (talk • contribs)

That's simple, if you don't reference it, then it should be deletable. I am in no way advocating giving the projects the right or power to say, "This article is important, despite the lack of references." If the article is notable and worth saving, then find references per our other policies/guidelines. My main concerns with the CSD/PROD proposals coming out of the BLP community is that they want to simply delete everything and gut the system. I have no problem getting rid of the articles, but we need to do so in a controlled rationale manner. If WP:POKER doesn't want to salvage it's articles, then it can't get upset when they are deleted en masse for not having references.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 16:42, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

My comment above was a bit off-topic. I find it hard to feel passionately that old unsourced bios have to be purged or that they have to be retained. Most of them are harmless enough. But it would take a huge amount of effort to clean them all up, some do not belong and others are presumably of marginal importance or they would have been sourced long ago. If they are deleted, it is not a disaster. They can always be recreated. I see more value in putting effort into adding well-sourced articles on notable subjects that are missing from Wikipedia, whether they are Nigerian Governors, TV Actors, Cricketers, whatever, than in struggling to patch up articles on relatively obscure subjects that nobody seems particularly interested in. Maybe a view that is not really relevant to this discussion. Aymatth2 (talk) 16:37, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

That's why we let the wikiprojects handle that. Governors of Nigeria may be important/notable, but not everybody is going to realize that or put the effort into saving those articles... now people interested in Nigeria or other possible wikiprojects may make the effort to salvage those articles. If they don't, then they can't get upset when they are deleted. Again, I am not opposed to getting rid of thousands of articles, but I am opposed to blindly doing so without consideration or forethought.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 16:42, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

How about Jennifer Holland? I have the feeling there are a lot like this. Possibly notable, if anyone is interested in fixing it up. But no great loss of content if it is deleted for now - it can always be recreated. There has to be some level of triviality where there is no need for extended process. Aymatth2 (talk) 21:53, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

How many articles?

I see some wildly different numbers being thrown around. Category:All unreferenced BLPs was right around 50,000 when I checked it sometime in the last two days, and it's 49,096 now. Flatscan (talk) 04:32, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree that the decrease in article count is probably a good thing. I was wondering specifically about the 60,000 number. Flatscan (talk) 05:18, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

There were 51,000 articles in the unsourced BLP category, and another 14,000 articles in the category "living people"" are tagged as "unsourced" instead opf "unsourced BLP". So that made some 65,000 articles about living people tagged as unsourced. On the other hand, a significant number of those are actually badly sourced instead of unsourced, a small number are not about living people (e.g. articles about bands), and a fair numbers of BLPs are unsourced but untagged. Fram (talk) 08:16, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the breakdown. Flatscan (talk) 04:28, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

While we try to broke a definite compromise here, others editors are anticipating the call and started their "project-brew" unsourced BLP sourcing drive or so. --KrebMarkt 07:04, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Ban them! How dare they? Where's the fun for admins if this cat is empty a month from now when this RfC ends? Pcap ping 07:52, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

That is an unhelpful remark. Surely you knew that already? Surely you know better? ++Lar: t/c 11:11, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

When the current kerfuffle started User:DASHBot was in the process of gently chiding the 17,400 authors of circa 50,000 articles, so we should expect to see a drop in the number of unreferenced BLPs in Jan/Feb this year regardless of the RFC and related dramatics. Its just very unfortunate timing that this all blew up in the middle of a major and uncontentious project to reference our unreferenced BLPs. ϢereSpielChequers 11:22, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm still wondering what we're going to do about all the new unreferenced BLP's, according to one user, 100 a day are added to the encyclopedia now. Don't we need to figure out a way to handle these before we start talking about dealing with the backlog? There isn't much point dealing with a backlog if more articles than are being dealt with there are being added every day. Gatoclass (talk) 11:28, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

If we had time to do our normal new page patrolling and vandal fighting, we'd referencing/tagging/csd/prod/AFDing them as per normal. Unfortunately we're all flat out referencing the 50000 old ones now. Come back in a month or so and we'll be able to do whatever Arbcom, Jimbo, Scott, Kev, Lar et al want us to focus on next. Regards, your humble serf, The-Pope (talk) 12:15, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

I want to see a source for the claim that 100 new unreferenced BLPs are created a day. As the person who maintains the output at Wikipedia:Database reports/Recently created unreferenced biographies of living people I usually see a number between three and ten. Of course this excludes the one that are not categorized in Category:Living people, but I have a hard time believing that over 100 is created a day. I have once seen more than 100 unreferenced BLPs created in a single day and that was one editor who went on a creation spree. After he was told that the articles needed references, he added sources. Rettetast (talk) 12:38, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

A quick look at special:NewPages should be all thats needed to confirm the 100+ figure - from my observations its an underestimate. However we are clearly talking about two very different things. The three to ten number is not how many new unreferenced BLPs are created every day, its the number of new unreferenced BLPs that wind up in that category as opposed to being referenced or speedy deleted. Hundreds of new articles get created and almost immediately speedy deleted every day, and as I said in my proposal changing the article creation process so that all new BLPs are required to have sources is a much more logical start than dealing with the old ones. As we found during wp:NEWT the current system of new article writers thinking that its acceptable that their first edit edit to a new article might not include either the references or the reason why the subject is notable, whilst some speedy deleters consider it acceptable to tag and even delete new articles in the first minutes after creation is just an unending train crash. Making it clear in the article creation process that new BLPs must be sourced at the time of the first save or they are liable to be deleted would save an awful lot of good faith newbies from being bitten. ϢereSpielChequers 13:00, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Full agreement with WereSpielChequers on every point above. 1 There are easily hundreds of unsouced BLPs every day. Do some NPP and it's immediately obvious. 2 A strong admonishment that all new BLPs need references would be a huge forward step and avoid much of the acrimony that accompanies CSD (and by extension AfD). 3 NPP needs help stemming the tide; the recent efforts to clear the backlog were enormously successful but it's crept back, sits at about 1600 right now unpatrolled (estimate). That doesn't include unreferenced BLPs that are simply tagged, often for notability. 4 Dashbot is a great idea and a great project. I don't believe it will be as effective perhaps as some others have, but I see no downside to it. Shadowjams (talk) 07:03, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree. On the Strategic Planning wiki the Community Health task force has identified the problems that new users have adding references because of the technical obstacles involved. Developing minimum standards for sourcing articles, education new contributors, AND developing easier ways to add references is needed to fully fix the problem. FloNight♥♥♥♥ 15:45, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Monitoring !voting trends

I've started compiling a table at User:Peter_cohen/sandbox4 to record voting statistics and how the pattern has changed from when the rfc was first opened.

At the moment I've just entered data for the first two proposals. I'm pausing so that people here can comment on my idea, suggest any twiddles before I go too far, put any objections in principle, point out that someone else has already produced a table etc.

So, should I continue?--Peter cohen (talk) 14:05, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Absolutely continue, please: cool! Thanks! --Cyclopia^talk 14:14, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I think it's a good idea to illustrate how supports/opposes vary once more proposals were added to the page, e.g. whether people started opposing a proposal once a new one was added that they thought better, whether a proposal that garnered much support early on was influenced by a certain group of people rushing to !vote on it before the community became aware of it. For example MZM's proposal started with almost 50% support but dropped to 30% now while Jehochman's started at 96% and is at 85% now: The former started with a lot of people advocating a harsh solution of the problem supporting and dropped significantly when the RFC became widely advertised to the community and the latter started as a compromise that could be accepted by many on both sides but which later turned out to be less good as people thought before (as they think it requires a separate process, etc.).

I think your statistics should also include the percentage and S/O/C in different columns although I admit that it's more wikimarkup. Later someone (or you) can use that data to create some graphs maybe. It would be interesting to see how the rate of support (i.e. S/O per day) for a proposal changed once a similar proposal was submitted (for example Jehochman's proposal suffered opposes because of DGG's view etc.) Regards SoWhy 14:30, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree - these are turning out to be interesting numbers already. Please do continue. :-) --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 15:08, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

How does this account for changes in supports/opposes. For example, I initially supported Jehochman's proposal, but after deciding that it would probably lead to mass prod deletions, changed to oppose.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 16:36, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

My table is based on what is visible in this version of the page. Therefore I don't think I took your original vote into account. I don't think one change of vote makes too much difference.--Peter cohen (talk) 17:44, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Following positive comments, I have completed the table to include all views that have garnered 50 or more !votes. It is now available for examination at User:Peter_cohen/BLP_RFC_stats. I think the drawing of any conclusions might be relevant to this talk page while the pointing out of any mistakes on my part, suggestions on improvements and dicussions on whether and how often to update the table are probably best kept in the talk page for the table itself.--Peter cohen (talk) 17:44, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Take home conclusion from that table: Even at its most popular point, MZMcBride's proposal never garnered more than half the people commenting and for the most part has had far less than that (at this point it has around 30% support rate). The other remarks propose a variety of different solutions, with Jehochman's being far and away the most popular. This may be due to it being the second listed opinion (there's a fair bit of evidence that options higher up are more likely to be selected in many circumstances. This is an issue in political elections that has been extensively studied). For comparison, Jehochman's proposal has more total supports than MZM's and fewer total opposes. If it were a normal policy proposal it would have clear consensus for adoption at this point (heck if it were the numbers for a 'crat election they might even be high enough). The other views that have more than 50 comments that are directly relevant to deletion issues and not a meta-issue (in particular leaving out Sandstein) all take views that are strongly opposed to mass delete on sight. It is overwhelmingly clear that the community does not favor that at all.

Let's look at the major views other than the top two, again leaving out Sanstein Of those views, David Gerard's has around a 2/3rds acceptance rate for a proposal similar to Jehochman's but more deletionist in approach. Oddly, DGG's proposal which emphasizes fixing articles rather than deleting has although fewer supports than Jehochman's, a higher percentage of supports (since this isn't a direct bullet election it may be that many people simply haven't scrolled down that far and so totals for the later views are naturally lower). At some level, there's very little real conflict between what DGG wants and Jehochman wants. The opinion by Power.corrupts emphasizing the problem is genuinely contentious material also has a lot of support. This is possibly the view most opposed to Jehochman's portraying this focus on unreferenced BLPs as close to a waste of time. Jclemens view that emphasizes the high value of unreferenced BLPs also has high support. Like, DGG's remark, it isn't intrinsically opposed to a proposal like Jehochman's. The consensus seems pretty clear and seems extremely unlikely to change before the conclusion of this RfC given that the rough percentages of each view have no changed much (aside from the continuing drop in support for MZMcBride's viewpoint) . JoshuaZ (talk) 05:01, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Hmmm. Maybe we ought to see what would happen if we moved the first two proposals to the bottom & the next two to the middle. Then again, that could be considered disruptive, so I don't know what the proper solution should be. (Randomly order the different proposals with each new viewing? Could the Wikimedia software support this function?) -- llywrch (talk) 22:05, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Page has become unmanageable

We need to address the size of this page. Does anyone have reasonable suggestions for dealing with the excessive page length? --MZMcBride (talk) 19:33, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

People could stop arguing and actually spend time to edit the BLPs? I guess that could work... Lugnuts (talk) 19:42, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Pigs could fly. :~) Aymatth2 (talk) 19:56, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

• Maybe close down this discussion and open two new ones: BLP policy changes and BLP clean-up approach. In each of the two new ones, put three main headings: "What is wrong with the status quo", "What is right with the status quo" and "What could be changed". Encourage contributors to copy/paste their ideas to one or the other of the new discussions. Start each discussion with an intro to each saying in balanced, neutral terms what the goal is, how long the discussion will run, ground rules, what the next steps will be after the discussion is closed. Also, encourage editors to add sub-pages to work out specific aspects. Might work, don't know. Aymatth2 (talk) 19:56, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

135K is nowhere near the size of many other talk pages. A rabbit's warren of sub-pages would wondrously confuse anyone wading in. Collect (talk) 20:45, 25 January 2010 (UTC) Well 680K for the main article is still far from a record. Does using transclusion for the "votes" reduce the effective size of the page? Collect (talk) 21:05, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

I hope that my table will help people identify where most of the action is and help people identify key places to look. That and they should check near the bottom for anything recent of interest.--Peter cohen (talk) 20:56, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

You could look at distilling out the proposals that seem to have obvious support and start discussing those - a process of elimination if you will - no point cluttering up the pages with proposals or idea that clearly won't be accepted. Fritzpoll (talk) 11:25, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Full disclosure

There are a couple of proposals that have "Oppose" !votes in "Neutral" sections. When I've noticed them, I've asked the user if the comment was intended to be an oppose or neutral. I have only made this request if the comment indicates that it is an oppose. (similarly, I would contact the user if they put Support in a neutral.)---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 23:18, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Just finished reviewing the whole RfC, there were 3 people I contacted: Dweller, RomaC, and PinkBull. All three indicated an Oppose to MzM's proposal, but did so in the Neutral area. I asked them if they meant to oppose or be neutral. There were no other comments in the RfC that appear to be in the wrong area.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 23:30, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

You read the whole page thoroughly? I am impressed. It makes my head hurt. Well done! Contains Mild Peril (talk) 00:54, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Nice work again Balloon. Ikip 08:40, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

No, I went through looking for the key words "Oppose", "Support", or "Neutral" (or something similar) under the wrong heading and looked to see if they actually read as an Opposer/Support/Neutral or was the person being 'clever.' There are several people whose comments read as something other than what the header indicates, but I only contacted those who explicitly stated something other than the header.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 15:02, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

How do unsourced BLPs look like?

Are the vast majority of unsourced or poorly sourced biographies stubs of people who are of limited notability, or are there a substantial number of longer, possibly well-written unsourced or poorly sourced biographies? One example for a BLP that has substantial content, but is completely unsourced, is this article about Andrea Ypsilanti, a German politician.  Cs32en Talk to me  05:24, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

There was a bit of analysis on the WP:PROD page. One article was about a former head of state of in Eastern Europe. It's probably 25-50% obviously notable bios, and the rest are hard to research or don't meet NOTE. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 05:38, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

See Category:Unreferenced BLPs for all of them. Ikip 05:53, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

My experience is that there are many I'd consider marginally notable (I especially can't figure out why "pro" wrestlers should be notable), and several for which thousands of web pages exist (so the person obviously exists, the info in the stub is most likely correct, and the presumption of a desire for privacy can be assumed to be false), but few/none of them up to WP:RS reference quality. The last category irritates me, since I can't add the sources for WP:RS reasons, but it's obviously not an article to which it's reasonable to say that the WP:BLP guidelines were intended to force a deletion. --Alvestrand (talk) 08:25, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I'd hazard a guess that in quite a few cases, substantive unsourced content on non-English persons derives from a translation of a foreign WP article, which may itself have sources. Certainly the German version of Andrea Ypsilanti has quite a few sources. Rd232 ^talk 09:26, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Make deleted material easier to reach

The major concerns of those defending the need to keep unreferenced BLPs is that, despite not being referenced, at least someone has gotten started. Deleting the material effectively hides it to all but sysops, which makes it hard to build upon the groundwork laid by others.

What if, instead of hiding deleted material from practically everyone, we allowed logged-in editors to view it? There would be much greater support to "delete" the unreferenced articles, hiding them from the vast amounts of anonymous users, but still preserving the groundwork for those with an account: the group of people most likely to improve upon such articles at some point in the future.

Debating whether or not we should take some form of mass-prod action is getting our community nowhere. The real issue that prevents it from going through is the desire to preserve potentially valuable, though unreferenced, contributions. Fixing the mechanics of deletion could be a wise solution that allows us to reach consensus. ...but what do you think? ~BFizz 07:16, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I think the "incubator" proposal is intended to achieve this goal. General viewability for deleted articles would be a non-starter, given the many reasons for deletion (attack, copyvio...). --Alvestrand (talk) 08:27, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I love the idea, similar proposals have been made. (Check the WT:Articles for Deletion) But keep in mind B Fizz, we are a group that is, "closed to new ideas" according to the New Scientist based on a study.

Aldhous, Peter (January 03, 2009). "Psychologist finds Wikipedians grumpy and closed-minded". NewScientist. Retrieved 2009-05-08. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help) Source: "Personality Characteristics of Wikipedia Members" CyberPsychology & Behavior (DOI: 10.1089/cpb.2007.0225)

Ikip 09:37, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Regarding the copyvio issue, perhaps we should consider providing different forms of deletion (I suppose you could consider the incubator to be such a "lesser deletion") so that we don't dump copyvios and unreferenced BLPs into the same black hole (see also on the rfc: my would-be proposal of BLPs innocent until proven guilty). Regarding the fact that WP has become a close-minded society...I for one find this very tragic and I am willing to fight for new ideas. ...but what do you think? ~BFizz

The actual restriction to administrators is, I believe, a result of legal advice from Mike Godwin of the WMF. The community can't overrule the WMF, so you'd have to change their minds. Fritzpoll (talk) 11:21, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps we could consider a view-deletion permission given to users that apply, though the idea of opting in or being voted into being able to view deleted content is very restrictive. ...but what do you think? ~BFizz 17:09, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Not going to happen, and in any case not worth pursuing in relation to the present issue since anything along those lines would take 6 months+ to implement. Rd232 ^talk 17:20, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Well Mr Wales himself has suggested a process which would take several months. I think this is a brilliant idea and it shouldn't just be discounted. There must be some way of implementing this kind of thing for trusted editors (not every logged in editor but a select few) without having to go through a gruelling RfA. As for the legal concerns, anything defamatory or that nobody should see should probably be oversighted anyway. I agree that it's not really a solution to this problem, but it's still a good idea. HJ Mitchell | fancy a chat? 17:41, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

[outdent] Sure, mass delete as per Jimbo Wales if that's the only solution and content isn't restricted to sysops only -- but where it makes sense, allow access to trusted Wikipedians to use the articles as first drafts to work on. Then release back into mainspace when "cleared". Think "hide" maybe, not "delete". Esowteric+Talk 18:09, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Well editors can request admins to check and undelete articles for them, perhaps for userfication. However doing this for tens of thousands of articles is a big burden. See Category:Wikipedia administrators who will provide copies of deleted articles. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:47, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

There are a few methods for hiding questionable or unvetted content:

• NOINDEX – will not work in article space, see Template:NOINDEX/doc
• Reduce article to stub or blank completely
• Move out of article space
  • WP:Userfication
  • Relevant WikiProject
  • WP:Article Incubator
  • New holding area for BLPs
• Delete – maybe open up view-delete user right

Flatscan (talk) 04:28, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

How d'you tell

whether a person is living (or indeed real) if there are no sources? They might have died recently. Or someone might create an article about someone who was vaguely famous for something 50 years ago & wrongly assume they're dead. Peter jackson (talk) 11:34, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

The traditional rule of thumb has been to assume that they are still living if they were born after 1890, unless there is proof otherwise. Obviously, this poses a problem to people like Olympic contributors from the early 1900s, but I would say that applying more stringent standards unnecessarily is better than the alternative. NW (Talk) 11:43, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Can we break this out somehow?

This is ridiculous. These proposals are of great importance, and yet they are hidden on various "show discussions" on the project page. There are a fair number of "Show discussion", and behind a few of them are these important proposals. Is this consensus building or whack the mole? I suggest that if a proposal receives ten or more support !votes, that it be broken out to its own page and a clear link left at the top of the page. Perhaps a summary box can be inserted with more or less up to date !votes, such as what is done for RfA's, but it isn't essential.--Wehwalt (talk) 19:45, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree that this is getting tl;dr, but perhaps the approach is to wait another day or two until this has been open for a week, then ask someone to close this and post a summary detailing the major points that seem to have most of the support. Then this could be closed, and we could have a more focused discussion of the top 'x' choices. (Unless someone finds that a clear consensus can be taken from this RfC alone, which might be possible). All that said though, if someone wanted to come along and summarize this now, I'd be fine with that. -- Bfigura ^(talk) 19:58, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree. let's declare (with a note at the top of the page) that the RFC as it currently is will close at 15.55 on 28 Jan (one week after opening). Someone will need to summarise and break out the main proposals (taking particular care with overlaps); ideally no more than 3 or 4 proposals should be listed in Part II of the RFC. Proposals should be flexible, by theme or type of idea, rather than Person X's proposal, Person Y's proposal etc; and Part II should focus on choosing a type of proposal, rather than choosing between fully fledged ready-to-implement proposals. Once a core proposal is chosen, it'll still need details hashing out in a Part III. Cumbersome, yes; but with this number of people involved in the discussion, I see no other way to make this at all practical. At least, with so many people and lots of interest, a week may be enough on each part. Rd232 ^talk 20:28, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

such as this? Feel free to make any suggestions/changes. If there aren't any comments after a while, I may copy this over to the project page:

Added. -- Bfigura ^(talk) 20:45, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Agree we should close this off and get some brave volunteer to summarise and organize as a start for round two. I would not try to restrict it to just three or four proposals, and would not ignore views expressed in the less active sections. There are many ideas that may be useful. Some policy or process changes could be implemented independently. It will be harder to get consensus if they are packaged together and presented as alternatives. Ditto some proposals about how to deal with the backlog. Then there are the extremes like “keep them all” or “delete them all” which are unlikely to get consensus, but may as well be carried forward to let off steam. Let’s see what the summary process turns up, and not limit it. Aymatth2 (talk) 21:29, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I think it should be left open a little bit longer than a week. It should at least be open for a week after it was advertised per watchlist notice because it was not well known to most experienced editors before this. I suggest a closing date of 31 January 2010 23:59 UTC, i.e. end of the month. Regards SoWhy 21:35, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I like this - I think it's better to detail all the main points from all ends of the spectrum, rather than attempt to only go for the ones with the most support. From looking at this, I imagine the summary would look something like a spectrum + a bit mentioning that people seem to be raising a few general ideas (such as the importance of not getting bogged down, etc). That said, I'm thankful I'm not an admin, I wouldn't want to be the one to try and close this. Finding someone "uninvolved" might be tough. Still, I'm sure someone will be up to the task. Also, I agree that a few more days would be good. I'll change it now if someone hasn't beat me to it. -- Bfigura ^(talk) 21:37, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I see it as multi-dimensional, not a pure spectrum. A policy statement like "if you find unsourced assertions that may be libelous or damaging, remove them at once" is probably broadly acceptable (I think!) and could be presented for stand-alone discussion. Whether the article itself should be deleted or kept, and if deleted how, is more controversial. Agree with the new date. Aymatth2 (talk) 21:55, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I changed it to 30 Jan 23:59, which is almost exactly 1 week after it was added to the watchlist notice. (It seemed more elegant than the end of the month, but I won't argue if you want to give it an extra day. -- Bfigura ^(talk) 21:42, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

The normal running time for an RFC is a month. Posting a closure notice way short of that with very few people in support seems to yield to the false panic being felt over this. If an early closure is insisted on, how about 7 Feb? Two weeks is not too long to let proposals gain adherents and comments. DES ^(talk) 22:36, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

(edit clash) There's still a fair amount of traffic. The second issue of my table of the most active discussions User:Peter_cohen/BLP_RFC_stats suggests that the number of !votes are still increasing by about 10% a day. I know that in the last 24 hours User:Ikiphas put a notice out in the Wiki signpost and did a round of the projects alerting them to the rfc. Your proposed end time is early Saturday afternoon in the Western States. I think we need to give time for weekend editors to react and see at what rate comments are being generated before confusing things by moving the discussion.--Peter cohen (talk) 22:43, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict)This will be open for about a month (see above about the 3 phases thing), however, what people are proposing is to solve the tl;dr problem. The current RFC is getting hard to parse and comment on (see this thread above, and one further up). I'm not sure how leaving it in the current form will add much, when it appears most of the positions have been enumerated. That said, I don't mind adding another day or two, but a month seems far longer than necessary for this particular proposed phase. -- Bfigura ^(talk) 22:46, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Sunday is a busy day. Maybe Monday? But first, is there anyone who wants to take on the job of sorting out all the views and proposals and creating a framework for action-oriented discussions on resolving the different aspects of the issue? Is there anyone out there who wants to take on the job? Hello... Aymatth2 (talk)

I'm not sure it matters much: the closure and summarization don't have to be on the same day. Perhaps the day before it closes we should post to ANI/AN/Pumps/etc to let people know it's closing that that there will be a need for a closer to summarize the issues? -- Bfigura ^(talk) 01:42, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

I removed the closed RFC tag. RFC's tend to remain open for 30 days.

"RfCs that are listed by the RfC bot are also automatically ended by the RfC bot after thirty days. If consensus has been reached before then, the RfC nominator(s) can remove the RfC tag, and the bot will remove the discussion from the list on its next run." Thanks.

This page is remaining on the top of my talk page all day everyday since it opened. 5 new editors just created new sections today. Interest in this subject has not died down, in fact it is has only grown. Ikip 06:10, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Closing the RfC entirely is not being suggested, Ikip - simply that it is already at a length where consensus-building will not advance - the best thing is to shut down this one and condense the current ideas that are not simply status quo into a new page to discuss. Otherwise, there will be no consensus reached at all - the very nature of the continued additions to this page that you highlight is what will cause us to only have the Arbcom motion to rely on Fritzpoll (talk) 12:37, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

I think it is important that everyone decide to close this, not just a couple of editors, there are a lot of people who should have the right to say their minds, otherwise they will feel left out of this process. Standard practice is to keep a RFC open 30 days, and with a RFC this important, which will effect so many editors, we should. Ikip 13:03, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

No one's suggested closing anything, simply a format switch so that this actually becomes parsable. However, in the interests of not getting bogged down in minutia, I'll leave the tag with a 30-day notice. RFC's typically do have a tag stating when they'll close, so I'm suring that re-inserting it with the conventional timing shouldn't be problematic. (Although my preference is for someone to reformat this sooner). -- Bfigura ^(talk) 16:47, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

My aplogogies then for misunderstanding. There is so much to read here. Ikip 16:50, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

I've added the notice, with a wording tweak: that this run for 30 days, but that sometime before then, this be summarized so that the community can actually parse and comment on the thing without having to try and read a 1MB page. I hope that's ok. -- Bfigura ^(talk) 16:53, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

I supported stream lining the page somehow above (lord knows I can't find it) so great job taking the initative. One option is to have subpages for the comments. Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Biographies of living people/Collect For example, that will shrink it immensely. I will test this on the section I wrote, if that is a problem, I will happily revert myself, restoring the content. Ikip 16:55, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

The only problem with subpages for comments is that it makes it hard to see which proposals are popular at a glance. (In as much as that's possible without Peter Cohen's table). Because honestly, at this point, there are 90-some entries. And while everyone is a unique and precious snowflake, not all of those sections are going to be equally important when it comes to implementing something:) -- Bfigura ^(talk) 17:16, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Biographies_of_living_people#View_by_Ikip LOL, true. I dont think it is that much of a problem to have my one section go to a subpage, but again, if anyone disagrees, I will return those "dear snowflakes". Ikip 17:19, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

How about the first step is to create a graph, with a quoted summary of the proposals which have 10 or more !votes as Wehwalt proposes. This will be easier to categorize when this first stage ends. Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/Biographies of living people/Phase II working on it now... Ikip 17:26, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. And thanks for moving the "What? Why?" heading. Probably a sign that the sooner this gets converted to a more logical format, the better :) -- Bfigura ^(talk) 17:33, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Phase II

In preperation of Phase II, I have created this:

Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Biographies of living people/Phase II

With actual quote summaries from the most popular proposals. If we can have User:Peter cohen update the statistics on the page, that would be great.

I welcome anyone editing this page. Anyone is welcome to add new users. Please keep the sortable table though. Ikip 18:12, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Just noticed this. You put percentages at the top of the table and inserted absolute numbers. I'm not sure which you wanted. I have updated with the absolite numbers from User:Peter cohen/BLP RFC stats I have noticed a distinct slow down since yesterday. This time of the "big nine" statements with more than 50 supports and/or opposes, only Jimbo's statement attracted more than 10% new comments compared with the previous numbers. There don't seem to be many new statements appearing either. We'll see what happens with the weekend editors, but I expect next week to be quiet here. So a new phase then would definitely make sense.--Peter cohen (talk) 16:44, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

The BLP offwiki forum dedicated to tightening up BLP practices

Caliber asked the arbitration committee to look into a BLP offwiki forum "dedicated to tightening up BLP practices" in October:

1. What did the arbitration committee find and
2. are any of the arbitration members on this list?[10]

Casliber: "In October while I was told about this website as a place where concerned editors were discussing what to do about BLPs, and that the board was private and pseudonyms were being used, and that there were a number of people using it (24?). Rather than detail all the rumours I was told, I thought I'd throw it up here and see what folks thought. At the time, I told the arbitration committee and left it with them. However, upon thinking about it, I am not comfortable with the idea that there is another secret board which I have on idea about whether it is wound up or...what? How do folks feel? Discussing this may highlight to WMF how frustrated some folks are with the BLP issue. I was tempted to make an RfC but there was no dispute as such so....do other editors want the board made not-secret? or what?"

Durova: "Unresolving. The word on the street is that this was a forum that was dedicated to tightening up BLP practices and that its members were coordinating to affect the outcomes of AFD discussions. There was nothing visible there because threads were deleted as soon as a discussion was closed. I'm hearing things about who was a member there, but am not repeating any names without independent confirmation. It appears possible to test the veracity of this by writing a script to test for unusual clusters of recent participation at AFDs of BLP subjects. Would one of our coders look into that avenue, please? At the very least it would help to settle the concerns if this is untrue. And if it is true (or nearly so) I would for my own part suggest amnesty for anyone who steps forward and explains this to the community within the next 24 hours."

MZMcBride : "It looks like a forum to discuss biographies of living people. Forums have a number of benefits over using Wikipedia (far less visibility, no database dumps, greater anonymity, better software, etc.). I didn't vote-stack and I don't believe anyone else did, though all of the discussions seem to have been deleted by the person running the site, so I can't really say for sure (it had been months since I last logged in before I did so a few days ago). For all I know, there could have been a massive cabal, but I doubt it."

Casliber: "MZMcBride, it has been suggested that you were the "person running the site." Do you know why people would say that? If it was not you, could you tell us who it was? Feel free to email arbcom-l‐at‐lists.wikimedia.org. I, for one, would appreciate candor."

Ikip 05:48, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't think this is very relevant to this RfC. Can we try to stay on topic please? There is however an ongoing RfAr for MczMcbride you could present relevant evidence there. JoshuaZ (talk) 06:04, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

I'd like to know more about this, since this RfC started out with a bunch of possible misuse of tools. I've seen a couple of things so far concerning this BLP case, where you have to go searching through wiki conversations to find out about weird secret stuff. I'm not a fan of that. We should keep everything above board. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 06:08, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

I too would like to learn more about a possible conspiracy taking place off-site, specially when such is referred to as having the "benefit" of "far less visibility". Schmidt, ^{MICHAEL Q.} 06:15, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

JoshuaZ, if you have say, 20+ editors on secret mailing lists, who helped create this crisis, and engineer this RFC, how on gods green earth is that not applicable? Ikip 06:26, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

First of all it's not a "secret mailing list", it's a forum. Secondly this question has already been answered, but perhaps you didn't notice it on the last RFAR: [11]. — Coffee // have a cup // ark // 06:45, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Coffee, should we take from your wording that you have been involved in this secret forum? Moreover, should we take from your choice of tense that this secret coordinating forum is still active? JoshuaZ (talk) 18:05, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

I would think it would be obvious by going to the site that it was back up. — Coffee // have a cup // ark // 20:15, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Fascinating. Going to the site confirms it is up. Moreover, apparently the forums aren't visible even after one registers if one isn't a special person. How this isn't the most blatant form of unacceptable off-wiki canvassing isn't at all clear to me. The incredible chutzpah is amazing. This looks absolutely no different than the recently closed case with the Eastern Europe mailing list. I seem to recall Piotrus losing his mop over that. I wonder if the same will happen to you. JoshuaZ (talk) 21:46, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

• • Don't remember confirming that I was a member anywhere... — Coffee // have a cup // ark // 23:28, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
    • Grow up. Really. Let's rephrase what you've said: "oooh, look, I never explicitly said I was a member, I just know a lot about it and implied I was." Because somehow if you don't say it explicitly its still ok. Never mind that at the very same time you are trying to argue three paragraphs below this that somehow this is ok because it is hard to enforce despite the fact that the ArbCom has deadminned other people for just this. You remind of the old joke about the two people who go to small claims court. One of them says that the other dented the pot he borrowed. The second guy says "First, the pot was fine when I returned it. Second, it was already dented when I borrowed. And third, I never borrowed your stupid pot." JoshuaZ (talk) 23:40, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
      • You apparently haven't read how much this has been discussed on wiki already, as everything I've said is on wiki, I haven't said anything that would require me to actually be a member of the site. — Coffee // have a cup // ark // 23:49, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
        • • I've got an idea. Instead of continuing your pusillanimous, mealy-mouthed game playing why don't you just say explicitly if you are or are not a member? JoshuaZ (talk) 00:03, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
            • I had to look up the word pusillanimous... any more long dictionary words from the peanut gallery? — Coffee // have a cup // ark // 00:15, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
              • Well, I was thinking of something more alliterative like pusillanimous pussy-footing but I happen to like cats, and would rather not quote Spiro Agnew even when it was one of his better coinages. I do however note that you still haven't answered the question. JoshuaZ (talk) 00:22, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't remember Mr Agnew asking me anything! Since we're quoting, here's a line you might like; "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt". Perhaps you should do more of the former and less of the latter. — Coffee // have a cup // ark // 02:02, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Your refusal to answer the relevant question is noted. JoshuaZ (talk) 02:56, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

I changed the title. You are quoting Lara, not anyone on the committee:

It would be nice if the committee could pull itself together and take part in some basic communication on its private mailing list. Considering the GodKing and various members of his court, both past and present, have been aware of sofixit.org since October 2009 and apparently, from my view, were comfortable enough with its purpose to let it go, if for no other reason than because it's out of Wikipedia's purview, it seems increasingly ridiculous that Roger Davies is being left to flap in the wind with his clueless comments. Between the group of you, not one could muster up the GAF to drop him a name of who to ask questions of to ease his aching mind?

More than a dozen editors/admins outed in the past month or so (including two children, as some here like to call them) as the BLP problem continues to spiral out. You guys keep them priorities set; it's working well so far. And for the sake of clarity, Durova, I resigned. Lara 20:11, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

You seem to know more about it than me, were you a member coffee? A member "dedicated to tightening up BLP practices" Ikip 13:00, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

I clicked on it at the time it came up. It redirected to a picture of a guy gaping his asshole. I saw no evidence of an organization dedicated to improving wikipedia's treatment of living people in the asshole.Bali ultimate (talk) 13:26, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

There was certainly no evidence of "tightening up".   pablo_hablo. 13:30, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Hilarious guys. really. I clicked on the link too, and thought it was some joke. Once the creator found out he/she was outed, they added that charming picture. Ikip 16:34, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Sounds like a Goatse.cx pic, often posted when a site is outed/discussed.--Milowent (talk) 17:22, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

• Ikip my friend, we've been down this road before. There's nothing we can do about stuff that is happening off-wiki, especially if the contibutors are not using their on-wiki identities. And please don't start accusing me of being a member of this secret cabal because I'm not. I don't do anything wikipedia related outside of en-wiki, because I believe in transparency, and because I already spend more than enough of my time here without spending hours in some chat room discussing what happens here. But apparently there are some among us who would prefer to conspire in private. It's not anything new to be sure, but honestly, there's nothing to be done about it, we simply can't control other websites. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:46, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Beeblebrox, coffee and MZMcBride's modus operandi seem almost identical. Ironcally both have seperate arbcom cases filed and open right now too. I may not agree with you, but I sure am not going to say you are a member of a off wiki forum, making a broad assumption that I would is not fair. Dismissing former arbcoms Durova and Casliber evidence as a "secret cabal" is not fair to them either. Ikip 21:29, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Um, if you recall, when this came up before at ANI, and I said essentially the same thing, you replied by asking if I was a member of this group or had been in contact with them. So it's not like I just pulled that out of thin air. Beeblebrox (talk) 10:03, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

• • Agreed, we haven't and won't be able to close a forum like Wikipedia Review, sofixit is no different. — Coffee // have a cup // ark // 21:04, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
  • We can require those who engage in significant off-site communication about Wikipedia to disclose such communications. If they ignore that requirement, at some point they will be caught and blocked/banned/de-admined or what have you. It doesn't need to be closed, but it does need to be visible. Hobit (talk) 21:06, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
    • How would you ever enforce something like that? When people are hidden behind aliases, there's no way to ever know who was part of a site. — Coffee // have a cup // ark // 21:15, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
      • I listed all off-wiki cases, there have been several, let me see if I can find them.Ikip 21:29, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
      • We have the same problems with careful socks, banned users returning etc. If you want to cheat you can probably get away with it, but those that try sometimes get caught. Hobit (talk) 22:15, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
      • Amazing. You are aware that we just had an arbitration hearing that desyssoped an admin over precisely this sort of off wiki stuff? Thinking that the rules don't apply to you because you have right on your side? You are not a holy crusader. Your are not even one of the Blues Brothers. You are not defending Rome against the barbarian onslaught that is editors who disagree with you. Please get that into your head or give up your mop. JoshuaZ (talk) 22:19, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
        • Blues Brothers? Does that make you the Illinois Nazi Party or the IRS? — Coffee // have a cup // ark // 23:28, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
          • Godwin's law!! -M.Nelson (talk) 00:30, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Someone seems to have broken the syntax of the project page

My comments show up in the page source, but after "View of Brambleclawx" everything is invisible when you view the page. - Jmabel | Talk 06:12, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Ikip just removed the uncollapse boxes. I suspect that the page length is now creating some issue with your browser. JoshuaZ (talk) 06:14, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

No, some of the collapse boxes are still there. Kevin (talk) 06:16, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm fixing it (step by step). People added {{collapse top}} without adding {{collapse bottom}}. - Jmabel | Talk 06:17, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

I restored it per JoshuaZ. Even at 1:24 EST people are editing here. Truly international. Sorry for any problems. Let me know if I can help. I restored Jmabel too. Ikip 06:25, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

WOW---working on the Poker List

Wow... I'm working on the list of poker players... and if some of these people had been deleted, it would have been a travesty. First, I'm working on my third article right now. Two of the three that I've done are marked as unreferenced, but have references! One of the three is for Lyle Berman a three time WSOP winner, Poker Hall of Famer, former CEO of Rainforest Cafe, Chairman of the World Poker Tour. One of them is for ten time bracelet winner, Johnny Chan---whose WSOP Main Event victory played a major role in the movie Rounders (1998 film). TV commentator Ali Nejad. Another is for the desperately needing help Mason Malmuth---but the founder of Two Plus Two Publishing and a recognized poker authority. Poker Hall of Famer Corky McCorquodale and Cindy Violette. Spot checking another 5 indicates that at least roughly half the poker articles are incorrectly tagged. The articles may need more references, but they are not unreferenced.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 07:12, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

I understand we need better coverage of articles. But something like Mason Malmuth is probably A7 speedable in its current form. This doesn't mean he isn't worthy of an article, just that the content provided thus far doesn't create one. There are probably a billion topics out there deserving an article, we just have the first 3 million or so created. MBisanz ^talk 07:24, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Being the owner of 2+2 is a claim to significance as is his being a poker author---but the article needs to be expanded and referenced. But the point of mentioning this, is to point out what would be lost if the BLP-CSD'ers had their way and blindly started deleting everything with the unreferenced tag. Some definitely notable individuals a number of which have references would have been lost.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 08:00, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Quite possibly, so this RfC needs to come to a consensus on a better way of handling it - the status quo is obviously unacceptable, and summary deletion seems to be going the same way. A compromise is needed, quickly Fritzpoll (talk) 08:37, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Frankly, I don't think it needs to happen "quickly". It needs to happen, and it can't be dragged on forever, there is no doubt about that. But I would much rather get it right, even if it takes a couple months rather than force some hackneyed, half-assed policy that causes far more issues than it solves. There is far more involved in this debate than "ZOMG! Unreferenced BLPs!!1" Resolute 16:04, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Heh, "quickly" is a relative term. On an issue that has lasted for year, a month could be considered "quick" Fritzpoll (talk) 16:25, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, but the consnsus is clearly *against* any quick solution. --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 20:59, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

It is comical, isn't it? On my list, I have two Hockey Hall of Famers and numerous Olympians. A lot of them are in bad shape, but as with yours, I am also coming across several that have references in the EL section or as general refs. The real scope of this problem is indeterminate. I would say a decent percentage of that 50k are improperly tagged, but at the same time, there are thousands more that haven't been tagged at all yet. Resolute 16:04, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

A bot found something like 16,000 that are tagged that actually have references. All the numbers are meaningless. We know have thousands incorrectly tagged, and I wouldn't be surprised if we have hundreds of thousands that have no tags and are sitting out there orphaned in some corner somewhere. 18:08, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Agree, which is why a bot/automated process should not be employed. It would not surprise me at all if there were some articles deleted in the initial fray that started this that were in fact referenced! So, one thing that we need to incrporate into the solution is what to do when we come across unreferenced BLP's after the clean up period.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 21:48, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Indeed it seems that a large fraction of the BLPs that were speedily deleted merely for being unsourced were actually pretty valid articles. So it is not just a problem of incorrect tagging. The "source now or delete" policy means the practically permanent destruction of the *good* work of tens of thousands of *good* editors — for *no valid reason*. If that is not vandalism, then what is? --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 20:59, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

All articles tagged with {{BLP unreferenced}} in order of popularity

I have, with help from MZMcBride, created a list of all roughly 50 000 articles which has been tagged as unreferenced BLPs ordered by popularity (number of views in December 2009). The first one, Laz Alonso, which was minimally fixed was one of our 1000 most popular articles during the month.

Here are the first 20:

1. Laz Alonso 182894
2. Kris Jenner 131527
3. Rob Kardashian 124270
4. William Shatner 123250
5. Donald Faison 79443
6. Michael Teutul 77601
7. Wendy Williams (media personality) 77337
8. Josh Klinghoffer 72391
9. Tony Shalhoub 62814
10. Emile Hirsch 61012
11. Pleasure P 58020
12. HaLo 56883
13. Mike Epps 54783
14. Leland Chapman 52470
15. Nicola Peltz 50725
16. Tia Carrere 47322
17. Ben Savage 45938
18. Tyler James Williams 45094
19. Glenn Howerton 44454
20. Paul Teutul, Jr. 44294

You can get the rest at this url (warning, large page). The list doesn't reflect the changes that has been made in the last few days, so some articles may already have been improved. henrik•talk 12:16, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Interesting. Any way you could add some more columns? I thinking size, first edit date, last edit date, inbound mainspace links, unique editors ... Purists would disagree, but I think stats can indicate priority for clean-up even if they don't always get it right. Aymatth2 (talk) 13:38, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Thank you, this is a very useful list. If any columns are to be added I would suggest categories, this way editors can focus on articles that suit their interests. I understand that in a list this long this may not be possible and understand if that is the case. J04n(talk page) 14:00, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Great resource. I wonder what would happen if Rob Kardashian was nominated for deletion!--Milowent (talk) 14:13, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Utile, to be sure. Once we get to number 12,000, the number of views per day is likely just web-crawler activity -- under 10 views per day. (Acutally, since the figures are for December with 31 days, one of the busier WP months, the cut off should be at 310 views -- at 11,691. Pages below that are basically unviewed. Would it not make sense to start at the top of viewed pages first? Collect (talk) 14:44, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

December has the Xmas dropoff, & is one of the less busy months, no? It is for edits. Johnbod (talk) 14:53, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

I get your point and agree, but (going by activity on my own web server) it's unlikely that spiders will come every day to these little-viewed pages, so "310" is pretty spurious. Esowteric+Talk 14:48, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

They might come once a week, once a month to these pages. Bing probably won't even bother, as there will be few decent inbound links. Esowteric+Talk 15:00, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't believe that 310 is "web crawler activity". I have followed the pageviews on the articles I wsa a major contributor to, and it looks to me as if webcrawler activity for rarely viewed pages is about 30-40 a month, or one a day. Articles with over 100 views a day are nearly certain to get a fair number of "human" visits. Fram (talk) 14:58, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Note how many of these do in fact not only have references but inline cites - only covering some points to be sure, but the tags are just wrong. The others I looked at all had external links that were really references. I doubt it would take more than a couple of man hours to validly remove the tags on all of them, without introducing any new material, but no doubt leaving lots of "citation needed" tags. Johnbod (talk) 15:02, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

"All of them" being the above 20, or all 50,000? Fram (talk) 15:07, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

This 20 obviously (was some humour intended?). But that would reduce the page hits on unrefed BLPs, which everyone is so worked up about, by a couple of million a day. Johnbod (talk) 15:21, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

(ec)In the good old days, CompuServe told us that any page with outside links to anything at all (likely including WP category pages) will get 10 web crawler visits per day. Some pages on the list got 1 visit in a month <g>. So if you choose 31 visits as being conservative, we can lop off the bottom 2000 or so as basically "unseen by outside eyes" indeed. Likely the bottom 6,000 do not get seen as often as the one article at the top. Collect (talk) 15:09, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

I think a weekly updated list of the latest top 500 would be really useful. Especially if it also listed categories other than living people and year of birth, I don't see any benefit in listing other details as the less we put on this the more we keep this as a practical bite sized weekly improvement task. Remember with actors and sports stars interest can wax and wane on quite short timescales, so some of the current top 1,000 will be much more rarely viewed this month and some of the scarcely looked at ones will jump into the top 500. It would also be good to have space on the list for people to sign that they've referenced one - that way we can get a handle on how much of the problem we are fixing each week. ϢereSpielChequers 15:13, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

To comment on Johnbod's comment, I would suggest removing unsourced info rather than adding [citation needed] on BLPs. J04n(talk page) 15:25, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Although I do not consider myself a referencing expert I went through the top 20 or so, most of which have references that I would consider good or at least decent (such as the internet movie database). I agree with some of the comments above though that many are missing inline citations (but thats true of more than 90% of all WP articles anyway) so I removed some of the unsourced tags. I would also recommend someone pointing a bot at these things and updating the dates or removing the tag if references have been added (factoring out the bad ones like Facebook, myspace and a few others). I randomly looked at some of the others in the middle and the bottom and a lot are stubs of people that I would consider of limited or no notibility to have a WP page (such as a guy from australia who won a yaht race I have never heard of, certainly not a major one). In addition to the references issue we could eliminate some from a notibility aspect as well. just my 2 cents. --Kumioko (talk) 21:09, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Why? What?

Why have I been directed here to comment on a proposed change. Yet I can't see any proposal, so how on earth am I supposed to comment on it? Jasonfward (talk) 16:31, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

The proposals are located on the main project page there's about 70 or so different proposals. Jeffrey Mall (talk • contribs) - 17:58, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Incorrect tag cleanup mini-project

As Johnbod and others commented above, many articles tagged BLPUnreferenced actually do have solid refs for whatever reason and the tag is just incorrectly applied. I have been working on this myself but I can't do more than a few hundred per day. I have created a page to help coordinate this type of effort: Wikipedia:Mistagged BLP cleanup. This was inspired by User:Betacommand's regex run to detect likely sourced BLPs with incorrect tags. Please come lend a hand, many articles can be reviewed in less than a minute. This project will help focus any efforts that come out of this RfC on BLPs that are actually unsourced. Gigs (talk) 23:22, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

That's a great idea - breaking into sections would make it easier to use though. The start count is 16,750, and the ones I sampled were correctly selected. Johnbod (talk) 23:55, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

• This is excellent. Two comments: It is difficult (impossible?) to edit / remove entries from the list because it is so long. I assume that is what Johnbod means. And when I find an article like Kate Brenner I am stumped. There are a couple of links, Google has lots of hits, but is the subject notable? Aymatth2 (talk) 02:53, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

That's what I meant - also everyone will go for the 1,000 odd "A"s & "T"s will be left. I'd just prod Kate. Really notability, and possible "official" biog copyvio, is the actual problem you find going through these items, not claims they are in league with Queen Elizabeth to control world heroin traffic - unrefed articles like that get zapped on sight. Johnbod (talk) 03:09, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

• Yes - Kate Brenner made me laugh, and there will be others like that. But before finding that one I found three that were valid and easy to fix. My guess is most of the articles in the list are reasonable can be fixed without much effort. Ideally though, to make the list workable, it would be broken into one page per letter of the alphabet, and each page would have one section per second letter of the alphabet - something like that. Plus a reasonably frequent full refresh. With that, it should be possible to reduce the size of the WUB (Wikipedia Unsourced Bio) problem by one third in a few weeks - real progress. Question to Gigs: how hard would it be to extract other bits of information about the unsourced bios, such as size and number of inbound mainspace links? I am thinking along the lines of focusing rescue efforts on articles where it seems most likely to be worthwhile. Aymatth2 (talk) 13:53, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
  • I am working on a Perl script to parse the dump to reproduce the report (keeping in mind I wasn't who created it originally). I'm not great at Perl, but I should be able to get it going so we can do full refreshes. I'm not sure on inbound links... for that I would have to do replication to a DB rather than just dump parsing. We'll see... one step at a time. Gigs (talk) 15:40, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
• I wish my programming skills were better, and I had some time. I would love to have a full-blown database for indexing the articles from different viewpoints. Possible mis-tagging is one aspect. Number of pages views is another, which another editor has done. I am interested in size, age, number of editors, inbound links, anything else that indicates potential or lack of potential so reviewers can work in from both ends, removing the trivial ones and rescuing the good ones. Still, what you have done is very useful in providing a way to quickly clear up a lot of the articles. Aymatth2 (talk) 19:49, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Tools for sourcing

I've generally used normal raw-text editing for everything. I just turned on Twinkle and it seems okay, but what I'd really like is a tool that makes inserting references easier. So boxes for cite web or some such. Buttons that just paste the refimprove tag and so on. Does Twinkle do that? Any good tool for it? I looked around the tool pages and nothing jumped out at me...Hobit (talk) 00:59, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

There is User:Mr.Z-man/refToolbar, which you can add as a gadget in your preferences. Kevin (talk) 01:07, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

• Wikipedia:Cite4Wiki
• http://toolserver.org/~dispenser/view/Reflinks
• http://toolserver.org/~magnus/save_a_blp.php

Jack Merridew 01:37, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks folks. Hobit (talk) 15:40, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Is there a javascript that can grab the vital ref info from a web page, such as title, url, date, author, accessdate and build a cite web that we can paste? It is an idea I have for a javascript, but someone may have made it already. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 04:05, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

http://toolserver.org/~dispenser/view/Reflinks works like that, you have to run it after saving raw link references on the article though. –SpacemanSpiff 04:14, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

First...

I've been diligently disregarding this for, what is it... 7 days now? I have somewhat strong feelings about this, and there was obviously no way to stop it, so I've simply remained quiet about it. Seems the only sensible course of action to take, really. I'm especially hesitant to bring this up because I don't see "The Dramaz!" which may be involved as being especially worthwhile, especially since I personally have no desire to hear your bitching and moaning at me for bringing it up (which is why I'm posting this on the talk page, at least for now). Let me just get to the point: I think those who started us on our present course ought to at least give up "the bit", hopefully voluntarily. Farcical ArbCom "amnesties" aside, you know who you are, and you know what you did. You folks outright admitted that you expected to have the bit taken from you anyway. Unless and until that happens though, this editor at least does not wish to be any part of this.
— V = I * R (talk to Ohms law) 10:08, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Did you really expect a reply even? Their bits are going nowhere voluntarily, not now after all they have achieved thus far. You won't even get a single one of them to even brave a straight admin only recall poll is my guess. These are our trail blazing leaders remember, and what good can a leader accomplish without his trusty side-arm? MickMacNee (talk) 02:57, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Who are you to wave your finger?
Ya' must have been out your head.
Eye hole deep in muddy waters.
You practically raised the dead.

Rob the grave, to snow the cradle.
Then burn the evidence down.
Soapbox, house of cards, and glass,
So don't go tossin' your stones around.

Tool — The Pot

I saw someone say something along the lines of "this is the first time in my 2 years editing here that I've actually been outraged" on the current RFAR, which sums up my own feelings about this whole thing very nicely. Tznkai has been on point throughout, luckily for all of us. To answer the question directly though, no I don't really expect anything good from those that this is directed at. They've well proven their disdain for others opinions, and the community in general. That one of them is a Steward (and one of the few people here who I trusted and respected previously) is even more appalling. I tend to be hopeful to the last, however.
— V = I * R (Talk • Contribs) 11:52, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Another Query from Collect

IF anyone knows about any WP:CANVASS being done on or off Wiki on either side, might they please note it now? I suggest it is better to make it known now than to have it come out later, per WP:AGF. And I would suggest forums, mailing lists etc. fall into this category. Many thanks! Collect (talk) 11:44, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Well, I suspect there is Wikipedia Review, but for some strange reason that doesn't seem to count. Hobit (talk) 13:08, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

I asked because of the relatively large number of "newbies" who have opined here -- some with as few as zero outside edits <g> From 0 to 50 - 6 editors, 51 to 150 - 8 editors, 151 to 300 anouther 14 editors. In addition, more than a dozen experienced editors who had made fewer than 10 edits on WP in the last month, made them here (most of them had been "gnomes" doing many minor edits) from their edit history). I had not known about any "secret forum" but the pattern amounts to a fairly large percentage of total comments, and my opinion on such is fairly well-established (see WP:False consensus) Collect (talk) 14:31, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

1. Support this proposal. Another off forum site, this time a "forum that was dedicated to tightening up BLP practices".[12] which Casliber asked the arbitration committee to investigate in October. To my knowledge no formal statement by the arbitration committee has been issued. What did the RFC do about this secret mailing list? Ikip 13:13, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

None afaik. There was some passive mentioning elsewhere by Pcap although it wasn't canvassing for this issue (no links, etc.). He merely listed articles at wikiprojects that were vulnerable to deletion. This wouldn't have to do with SirFozzie's "Oppose votes are obstructionists" or the ~2.3:1 ratio of Oppose-Support votes of de facto BLP Unreferenced tag votes, would it? Cause newer editors (logically) have a propensity to vote in opposition to deletionism. Lastly, 28 editors out of the 200 editors with relatively low edits wouldn't skew the poll considerably.ηoian ‡orever ηew ‡rontiers 16:12, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

The number is disproportionate to the usual ratios for RfCs entirely. I did not seek to see how anyone "voted" in this at all. Additionally, more than a dozen others with low usage have opined, and more than a dozen older editors who had not made any significant number of edits in from 1 to 6 months or more dropped by. Not 28 editors whom I am surprised to find - but well over fifty of them <g>. I am sure you can easily find if the "newbies" did disproportionately affect any single section, but doing such was not my goal. I just wanted people to know that such things have a way of eventually surfacing, and the sooner it does, the less damage will ensue. Collect (talk) 16:21, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

It seems possible, if not likley, if not certain that the newbies and other editors of limited activity are the result of ikip's canvasssing of every wikiproject he could find via bot and with a highly inflamatory message. Don't worry, though, there's clearly no obstruction here, officer. Hipocrite (talk) 16:54, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

[Joke] Okay, okay. Enough already I admit it: I am here at the behest of the Secret Chiefs (with 10k+ edits, though) Esowteric+Talk 16:56, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

And now I've gotten some responses pointing me at MediaWiki:Watchlist-details Hipocrite (talk) 17:25, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't think it is usually counted as canvassing, but there has been an unusual amount of activity on the EN Wiki mailing list. That mailing list is precisely for this sort of discussion, anyone can sign up, and while I'm a couple of days worth of Emails behind, opinions seem to range from wp:Pure wiki deletion to support for the deletionists. But I suspect that might have prompted a few of the experienced editors who hadn't otherwise been that active of late. ϢereSpielChequers 23:55, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

As Hipocrite mentions, I requested a watchlist notification, so some of the newer editors who are commenting probably saw it at the top of their watchlist. It always brings in lots of people. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 00:02, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm one of the newbies. I have this message at the top of my watchlist page, "A major change in how biographies of living people are handled is being discussed. You are invited to join the discussion. [dismiss]". I see messages there on a regular basis and thought they were notifications everyone gets. A biography of a living person is one of the things I've been working on a bit at a time for about 4 weeks which is possibly why I looked into this. Also the message seems to be on a general interest topic not about something I presume I have no current interest in. I've commented because this discussion is something I have an interest in and I have a strong opinion about what I perceive as a call for a search and destroy mission (many others obviously perceive it very differently). The question about about newbie participation suggests so few people out of all the editors Wikipedia has have voiced opinions because it isn't a notification everyone gets. Whatever the reason I got the message or where it came from it's not biased or inflammatory. Perhaps I got it because someone noticed I'd come across a BLP that needed improvement and was doing something to improve it. Refrigerator Heaven (talk) 07:42, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Moving the query from the page for which it was relevant - specifically concerning the appearance of votes from newbies was an error as far as I can tell. This page is for discussing the main page, and placing queries which were properly on the main page over here makes precsious little sense. Collect (talk) 16:56, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

No the main page is for proposals related to the subject at hand, Unreferenced BLP's. This has nothing to do with unreferenced BLP's, but rather the possibility of canvassing going on, which may impact the neutrality of the that discussion. This does not make a proposal or suggestion on how to proceed with unreferenced BLPs but rather provides information pertaining to the entirety of the RfC. Thus, having it on the main page is clearly incorrect.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 17:09, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

And comments by some very senior people which address editors and not the BLPs should then be moved here, right? Collect (talk) 21:33, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

What is "unsourced"?

Is Kate Brenner unsourced? I'd say no. But an experienced editor relabeled as unsourced after another experienced editor removed it, so I want to be sure we are all talking about the same thing. Basically do primary sources count (say the homepage of the person) count a source for this discussion/tag? Hobit (talk) 17:35, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

It has sources. These prods make me think this whole thing is really just an easy seeming way to delete articles. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 17:40, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

The article reads, in its entirety:"Kate Brenner is an American model, actress and radio personality." with her website and myspace page as "external links". The first question is - is she notable? Personally I have no problem with deleting articles like this with no assertion of notability, per whatever the policy is. If she is notable, the refs clearly have no claim to being independent or reliable. Johnbod (talk) 18:06, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Then does unsourced really mean lacking reliable, independent secondary sources? That's a reasonable standard for deletion via WP:Notability, but is it what we are discussing in this RfC on "unreferended BLP's"? (Apologies if this has been decided already.) / edg ☺ ☭ 18:29, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

• Unsourced MySpace and an "official" site not only don't meet RS, they don't even meet V. Jclemens (talk) 18:45, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

To elaborate, there's no particularly good reason to assume that either of them are, in fact, self-published sources, unless they in turn link to reliable sources that authenticate the content. In those cases, we should just use those RS to meet V in lieu of forgeable sites. If you'll look back in the history, there are assertions (removed appropriately per BLP) that that subject appeared in Playboy. If we can find a cite for that, that establishes V for the contentious BLP material (a reasonable man who had not posed for Playboy could reasonably be expected to be hurt if such an assertion were falsely printed), it would be sufficient. Once that's established, then we could talk about whether she's notable enough, and that should be a normal (non speedy, non PROD) deletion discussion. Jclemens (talk) 18:49, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

On her website bio she says she posed for Playboy frequently, FWIW. --Mdukas (talk) 18:57, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Description of WP:V says: "All quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged must be attributed to a reliable, published source using an inline citation." But is it "likely to be challenged" if the person's own website asserts it? (as opposed to some third party saying so and the subject denying it?). --Mdukas (talk) 19:06, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

How, exactly, do you know that it's her website, hmm? Anyone can put up anything they want and call it an official website; this has been repeatedly discussed at WP:FAC--A self-published site's assertion that it is official is not credible enough for BLP issues. Jclemens (talk) 21:39, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

That template says "This biography of a living person does not cite any references or sources." I read "any" to mean "any," and thus I think its wrong. the refimprove tag seems appropriate, i.e., "This article needs additional citations for verification."--Milowent (talk) 18:59, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

• Its thrown to AfD already as we speak, fyi, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kate Brenner.--Milowent (talk) 19:09, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

I was the editor who added the unreferencedBLP template. Note that the template explicitly links the word cite to WP:CITE in "does not cite any references or sources". It may be useful to review WP:CITE, and likely also WP:EL, which distinguishes external links from citations several times. If the external links had been to reliable sources, however, I would not have added the template. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 20:04, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

They were reliable per WP:SPS. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 20:13, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Did you perhaps mean WP:SELFPUB instead of WP:SPS? Even if you did, they fail as references (see points 1, 4, & 5). I have no objection to them as external links. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 20:24, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

They fail as good references (though I disagree about point 4 and even 5 and 1 to an extent). But it is sourced. The banner doesn't say "good" reference or sources. Hobit (talk) 21:24, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Since BLP is pretty clear on that, maybe we should just change the template text to make it crystal clear that non-RS aren't acceptable. Jclemens (talk) 21:41, 28 January 2010 (UTC)\

I've gone ahead and WP:BOLDly updated the template. It's fully protected, so if any non-administrator wants the change reverted, just drop me a note on my talk page, or get any other admin to revert for you. Cheers, Jclemens (talk) 21:52, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

• Well, we need to figure out what we mean. I've been assuming unsourced means unsourced: that is no sources at all. A homepage is certainly a reasonable source for information about one's self and is commonly used in BLPs for things like date of birth and the like. I'd say it was "sourced" at the time, though I do understand DC's thoughts. Hobit (talk) 20:55, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
• Pretty clearly was sourced. Per SELFPUB is a reliable source for information about the individual. Let's not confuse notability with explicit sourcing. JoshuaZ (talk) 21:22, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
  • I agree. BLP is quite clear that a site or any other material published by a person is an acceptable reliable source for an article on that person. Wikipedia:BLP#Using_the_subject_as_a_self-published_source. Point 1 & 5 in WP:SELFPUB have to do with the article and the material in it, not the source used; it makes very little sense to connect them to a template about sourcing. Point 4, "there is no reasonable doubt as to its authenticity" is something which uses editorial judgment. In the overwhelming majority of cases, (claimed) official/personal sites are acceptable, reliable sources. So I very strongly object to this change to Template:BLP unsourced, and request it be changed back.John Z (talk) 00:30, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
    • I've reverted the change to {{unreferencedblp}} per your request. I'll start a separate section below to seek input on this specific question. Jclemens (talk) 00:59, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
• What exactly makes these sites official? One ([13])is an anonymous domain registration apparently operated by modFX Network (not work safe), clearly an enterprise dedicated to making money, not publishing reliable biographical information. They will add to the "official" site whatever helps them achieve their goal. The other is myspace, and provides absolutely no biographical information at all. Kevin (talk) 00:43, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Here is what I read over at WP:SPS: (seems fairly clear)

Self-published and questionable sources as sources on themselves Policy shortcut: WP:SELFPUB

Self-published or questionable sources may be used as sources of information about themselves, especially in articles about themselves, without the requirement that they be published experts in the field, so long as:

the material is not unduly self-serving; it does not involve claims about third parties; it does not involve claims about events not directly related to the subject; there is no reasonable doubt as to its authenticity; the article is not based primarily on such sources.

--Mdukas (talk) 01:16, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

You miss my point - these sites are likely not controlled by the subject at all, but by someone interested in making money from her appearance. Kevin (talk) 01:26, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

You raise a good point. The problem is how these very complicated decisions are addressed in bot-like rapid PRODing. You basically need an AfD - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 01:35, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

My thinking would be that we should not have biographies that are solely sourced to these kinds of sites. I dont see how a bot could distinguish a good from a bad site, so bot prodding articles with some kind of external link seems like a bad idea. You could possibly program it to ignore imdb and myspace when checking for sources I guess. Kevin (talk) 01:42, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

They do not fail WP:SELFPUB. A sources reliability is based on how its used. Nothing is reliable or unreliable regardless of what it's sourcing. What they don't help with is NOTE, which I think this whole thing is largely a proxy for. Having a link to a persons official website, or to their IMDB page, actually stops an article from being unreferenced, which shows how silly this whole unrefed BLP thing is. It has nothing to do with protecting the individual, it's just an arbitrary rule that some people feel an easy form of deletion should hinge on. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 01:23, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

• Are we being over-theoretical here? The article has trivial content and fails WP:N and WP:V. Does the article make a significant contribution to the sum of human knowledge? If deleted, it can always be recreated if some editor feels the subject is notable and gives sources to prove it. Aymatth2 (talk) 03:41, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Maybe a bit. It's going to be deleted in its AfD, most likely. It's a good example that having or lacking a source isn't a good criteria to judge it by, though. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 03:54, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

I would say that the "unsourced" template should be used only for articles without any sources whatsoever. For poorly sourced articles, the "refimprove" template is more appropriate. That said, when no inline citations are given it's not immediately obvious whether sources in the "external links" section back up any or all of the information in the article, so I can understand the use of the "unsourced" template in those circumstances. The subject's notability and the reliability of sources (self-published or otherwise) are different issues: the "unsourced" template is not and should never be used to pass judgement on the quality of cited sources. Contains Mild Peril (talk) 06:11, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't understand the point of this discussion. Clearly there are arguments for both views, but the concern that BLPs are in danger of being summarily deleted if they are incorrectly tagged as unsourced seems to be hyperbole. Admins seem to be given the leeway to determine notability for speedy deletions without much fuss, why is it assumed they would not check for sources before deleting BLPs? Delicious carbuncle (talk) 14:20, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Because they didn't. Gigs (talk) 21:32, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

PROD tag comment

I stuck this on the main page, but since my concerns may be already considered through Wikipedia:Deletion of unreferenced BLPs, I figured that I'd move it here:

New PROD tag?

A more technical note I'd like to make is that WP:PROD is for "uncontroversial deletions", and "any person" may object to the tag. If it is decided that a new PROD criteria is formed, then I think that an entirely separate deletion process should be created; it could use PROD as an initial template, but would have the additional criteria determined by consensus (for example, some have suggested admin-only removal of the template). It is clear that deleting unreferenced BLPs is controversial; inserting new criteria into PROD (for example, "uncontroversial deletions except unreferenced BLPs" and "any person except for non-admins on unreferenced BLPs") would be unwieldy and confusing.

This problem would not happen with WP:SPEEDY; while PROD is used "to suggest deletions that no editor would disagree with", new speedy criteria can be added to comply with a change in BLP policy (as {{db-g12}} enforces WP:COPYVIO). -M.Nelson (talk) 19:23, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

-M.Nelson (talk) 19:28, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Unassessed articles

These kind of figures suggest to me that the community is getting bogged down:

• "Unassessed biography articles": 113,282 total.
• "Unassessed history articles": 6,767 total .... Esowteric+Talk 20:47, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Interpreting & clarifying WP:SELFPUB sources

Per the discussion above, I see three basic options:

• 1) SELFPUB sources are useful to back up any fact or assertion that doesn't run afoul of SELFPUB itself. After all, Wikipedia can't be held responsible for what someone else impersonating a particular person says. Most "official sites" and social networking websites are, in fact, controlled by the person in question, and if there is an impostor site, it would be quickly dealt with.

Support

Oppose

• Given the hoopla over BLPs, it just doesn't make sense that we're preparing to wage genocide (articleicide?) on unreferenced BLPs, yet let such usage stand. Jclemens (talk) 01:11, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
• Likely to hit the "can of worms" level too easily. Collect (talk) 11:42, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Discussion

• 2) SELFPUB sources aren't acceptable sources at all for BLP material. Any asserted facts need to be confirmed through reliable sources. Note that this would effectively eliminate or severely constrain SELFPUB.

Support

Oppose

• Too draconian for me. Jclemens (talk) 01:11, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
• Often the best basic data (birth date, early life, etc) comes from the individual on their own site, via press releases, or submission to niche publications. This stuff is rarely published in its entirety (guest bios for some people at SF&F cons can be pages long, needing edits.) This kind of SELFPUB stuff is useful for ground work. --RavanAsteris (talk) 03:55, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
• Draconian says it all. I heartily oppose this.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 09:54, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
• "Draconian" -- seems I know that word <g> Collect (talk) 11:42, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
• I can't agree with this. Hobit (talk) 14:19, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Discussion

• 3) SELFPUB sources are not RS and as such may not be used for contentious material. SELFPUB-supported assertions are thus limited to innocuous and non-controversial facts.

Support

• Most balanced approach in line with current practice, BLP concerns, and a pragmatic approach. Jclemens (talk) 01:11, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
• You figure if they put it out, it probably isn't controversial. Sometimes their stuff is a little self-aggrandizing, but that's what editry is for. --RavanAsteris (talk) 03:55, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
• Reasonable - where I would also include non-contentious as date of birth, hometown, parents, general occupation and works, and all degrees short of Doctor (for which any alumni listing, though "primary" to some, should be allowed). Collect (talk) 11:42, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
• Agree. Sources like an academic/work homepage might even allow for certain kinds of contentious material...Hobit (talk) 14:19, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Oppose

Discussion

• I could only support this if it were reworded to say "SELFPUB sources are not RS for contentious material" The "reliability" of a source is contextual and it's wrong to declare a source reliable or unreliable overall. I think this is what everyone else is saying as well judging by the voting pattern, but it's important to be clear about this. Gigs (talk) 21:17, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

  I don't have a problem with that. Jclemens (talk) 18:41, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

General discussion

I don't fully support any of the above. In the case of that porn star above that kinda started the discussion, an RS identified her MySpace page as really hers. You can't go by twitter/John_Smith and attribute it to John Smith, but there are ways to determine if self published sources are actually published by a person, in which case they will be reliable for some statements, and unreliable for others. If the BLPers have to go and rewrite a plethora of basic policy and guideline pages to finally get the OK to delete pages without searching anyone searching for sources on the subject, then they are bound to fail. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 01:28, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

How can you really know that she controls the page? Do we expect editors of varying investigative skill levels to go out and decide? Are we expecting BLPN to opine on controversial such usages of SELFPUB sources? Sure, things can vary on a case-by-case basis, but what you've said above provides little guidance. If you see a fourth option, by all means write it up. Jclemens (talk) 01:46, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

If a scientist has a personal web page at a university I am perfectly happy to accept that whatever opinions/facts are expressed there are attributable to that scientist, but an "official" site for a porn star is a very different thing. A blanket inclusion/exclusion will not work, so we have to use editorial discretion to figure out what is really self-published and what is not. Kevin (talk) 01:54, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Self-publication is not a binary thing. We have:

• information on web sites controlled only by the subject
• information on web sites controlled by the subject but served by the subject's employer
• information on web sites controlled by the subject's employer
• information in reliable print publications written by the subject
• information in reliable print publications written by the subject's employer

...etc. Different ones of these may be suitable for sourcing different kinds of information: for instance, a claim that someone has a certain job title would likely be more believable in something controlled by the employer than in something not. Let's try to use our intelligence when editing rather than tieing our hands with hard-and-fast rules. —David Eppstein (talk) 02:35, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

I am confused, shouldn't this be on the BLP page? Not the RFC? Ikip 03:10, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

This is useful for determining what we will consider a reliable source for the purposes of any mass-prodding/deletion that may come out of this RFC. Kevin (talk) 04:38, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

OK, what constitutes a "Reliable publication"? How about a print publication also put out as a PDF on a website? The reason I ask is that I have biographical material for various SF&F authors and artists that I've accumulated over the years in SF&F convention program books. I'm not the only one - there are hundreds of these. Usually the data is submitted by the person or their agent. Also, what is the difference between a biographical subject telling an interviewer "I was born in 1961" and publishing "Born in 1961" on their personal website? --RavanAsteris (talk) 03:55, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

• A lot of that is probably reliable, but it needs to be looked at on a case by case basis. WP:RSN can help with individual questions. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 04:05, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

In the case of porn performers, my assumption is that any genuine "official" site is controlled by the person with the rights to the images or videos. This may or may not be the performer themselves. In the case of celebrities (including porn performers) my assumption is that all "official" sites and social networking profiles (MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, etc) should be viewed with suspicion. I've seen more than a few cases of IPs substituting one "official" site for another in minor celebrity BLPs. These sites and profiles are money-making ventures and should be looked at with a critical eye. Just my opinion. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 14:34, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Case Study

In the autumn when Peter Brewis had helped me on a conferencing system with a query related to another article I was writing, I noticed that there wasn't an article about Peter on Wikipedia. I and a couple of other Wikipedians on cix agreed that this needed fixing and as the most active of the three I did some hunting around for sources. Unfortunately, he isn't mentioned in Oxford Music Online and the only reference I found to him in a newspaper article was a passing one here. I have therefore ended up using Peter's website as the source on which I based the article. There is some jokey material on the website (using a picture froma gothic movie to illustrate the Royal College of Music etc) but I have no reason to doubt the factual claims on Peter's site. Music of his claimed work is mentioned on IMDB, several Wikipedia articles already mentioned him by name etc. Earlier this week I found a page on the site of a musical theatre company that provides supporting evidence for one of the two Fringe First Awards he claims on his site.

I assert that, while this isn't the highest quality article I have created, it is still a truthful and useful article about someone whose musical contributions to a number of television shows and revues makes him notable. A hard line against self-published material would lose much of its contents.--Peter cohen (talk) 14:19, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't know anything about Peter Brewis but I wanted to offer a couple of opinions.

• Primary sources are not always a bad thing though they certainly should not be the central basis for an article. If an article is asserting things about a topic's opinions then using a primary source is sometimes reasonable provided the publication is somewhat formal (a blurb on a blog page is generally not a good source, but a serious essay is is more reasonable, preferably published in a neutral media source but the topic's website is sometimes ok depending).
• If it is really that hard to find decent secondary sources on a topic then the notability should be questioned. Notability should not be a personal opinion. In other words if the argument for notability is "I know that this topic is important but nobody else seems to recognize that" then this is, by definition, original research.

--Mcorazao (talk) 15:59, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

WP:GHITS explicitly rejects the ease of finding sources as an argument. In this case I've been able to find secondary conformation to his claims to have been involved in an Olivier-nominated production, and of one of the two productions he was involved in that won Fringe First Awards did so. This Google Books search is a big plus in favour of his claim to have won the Cobbett Prize while a student at the Royal College of Music, but as the text isn't available, I can't confirm it. That's enough to establish notability never mind his work on so many British comedy shows.

Peter Cohen, if Peter Brewis had been involved in some material that a reasonable man might find negative (say, allegations that he had fathered a child out of wedlock) would a website that claimed to be his own be sufficient for that detail (assume for the sake of argument that it would be relevant)? What if there was some clearly inflammatory allegations (e.g., he was a convicted child molester)--would that be appropriate to source to an allegedly self-published website? Jclemens (talk) 16:57, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

That's a different matter. It's the controversial stuff that needs special attention.--Peter cohen (talk) 22:47, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Working on the hypothesis

That there is a mass deletion programme, can someone tell me whether or not {{BLPsources}} might be involved? WFCforLife (talk) 03:16, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

the original "kill list" is reported to be some 50,000 "unsourced" articles. These 50K are tagged as unsourced, although some say that a significant % of these are actually sourced, but carry the unsourced tags as remnants from the past. However, the discussion here is broadening to question if there is a clear dividing line between "unsourced" and "shoddy"-sources, i.e. almost equivalent to "unsourced." These are shades of grey, but the deletion scythe will be wielded based on tags and bots. --Mdukas (talk) 08:01, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

I think there is a lot of opposition to using bots and tags. There are several proposals explicitly calling for bots NOT to be used and to require human intervention explicitly because there are so many articles that are sourced which have been mistagged.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 16:26, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

STOP THE BOTS! When wading through a whole heap of towns and villages in India, I came across a great many articles that only had one source: rainfall or geographical location, and more often than not these weren't listed under "Notes" or "References" but simply noted at the bottom of the page or in "External links". Quite often there are valuable references to be found in "External links" or "External links and sources" (and variations) as many older articles tend to use. Yet these articles deserve a place in an encyclopedia. Esowteric+Talk 16:34, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm currently working on books by a highly notable and influential historian and yet some of the books that he's published feature in just one academic journal (though they may be well cited according to google scholar and often referred to on .edu and .ac.uk web sites). Some of the links don't show up in google, but do in yahoo!. I'm prepared to "dig" long and hard to source an article and work on subjects "for Wikipedia", even if I don't have a particular interest in a subject, but I wouldn't expect others to go to that much trouble. Esowteric+Talk 16:34, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

More time before pausing, please

I have some ideas that I think are quite different from the views that have already been given. Can we leave this open for another week before summarizing and narrowing the discussion? This is obviously a complex issue and I think leaving it open for a bit longer would maybe let some creative ideas in. It takes time to ponder complex issues, especially when you're trying to keep your Wikipedia time grounded in the mainspace. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 05:46, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Given that this has been open for some time, heavily publicized for at least a week, and that comments started declining rapidly after the first few days (at least that was my impression from peter cohen's data), I don't see much benefit. (Especially given that there's 100+ sections already - it seems like most ideas have been covered). I personally wouldn't be in favor of leaving this open for another week since I'd hate to see people get burned out and this loose momentum. (Besides, this doesn't close for a bit, so there's plenty of time to add your comments). -- Bfigura ^(talk) 07:03, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Plus, once this is shifted to a topical style, I'm not sure why new entries couldn't be added. The main reason I originally proposed the reorganization is so that this could actually become parseable, and so that duplicate ideas could be combined/eliminated. -- Bfigura ^(talk) 07:06, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

OK thanks. That takes the pressure off. I can imagine it must be hard to juggle the many opinions on how to manage the many opinions :) Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 07:12, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Why editors leave Wikipedia: preliminary results

As we decide what we should do with 17,500 contributor's articles:

There are now preliminary results of a study sent to 10,000 editors. "This data could change radically"[14]

Question 5:

Why did you stop contributing to Wikipedia?

1. I haven't stopped contributing. 36.11%
2. I had other commitments (e.g. new job, new hobbies, started a family) 33.77%
3. Some editors made wikipedia a difficult place to work 25.07%

Number one is of no concern, number two is something we have no control of, so that leaves #3. Ikip 20:45, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

What is "difficult" is extremely subjective. Many Birthers have been driven off the project because they cannot get their pet conspiracy theory into most of the articles involving the president of the United States, for example. Just because 1/4 of the respondents cried in a user survey should not impact the necessity of ridding the project of unsorted BLPs. Tarc (talk) 21:04, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Based on experiences in the past, new user retention is not a priority to certain editors, no matter what evidence is shown, this wasn't addressed to those editors. Ikip 21:32, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Doesn't matter who you were addressing or not, bud, I will still see fit to comment as I please. You're raising this "issue" as if it should be a reason to reconsider mass deletions, and I find that to be ridiculous, honestly. Tarc (talk) 21:44, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

No.3 is possibly true for all editors who leave, irrespective of topic or category - I only need to think how often I still get harrased and have nearly left. Nevertheless, there should be a simple rule that could be incorporated in the site php that no new BLPs can be published to article space witout a minium of two (for example) sources already in a {{reflist}}. This could now be made a rule for BLPs under consideration for deletion: 2 sources within the next xx days or deleted.--Kudpung (talk) 22:07, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

I support some sort of rule like Kudpung suggest precisely because I believe the BLPers and others are driving away newbies at an alarming rate. A BLP article by a newbie is probably going to be deleted either way, and their talk page templated in a menacing manner, so we should make it clear to them what's about to happen. I think that would take a lot of the sting out of it. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 23:39, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree the current article creation process is a newbie biting trainwreck, requiring sources would do much to resolve that. But we need to do more research on the 25.07% to find out where they had problems I think a new question in tranche two would help. ϢereSpielChequers 23:56, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

I've seen a lot of suggestions above as to how we might PROD BLP's along, perhaps removing the ability to unPROD it without a reference being in the article or something, going to mandatory deletion after some number of days (8-9?). I think something should be put on user's talk pages when this happens. "But it's not our concern to make sure a person knows about changes that might happen to an article they created or substantially contributed to." Well, it is if we want to keep those people around as editors in the long run. Nothing is more frustrating than having life intervene, causing an absence of a year or longer, then returning only to find no trace of an article that you'd worked on before -- no redirect, nothing, it's just gone, deleted. We need to come up with some measure that both solves the problem in a succinct timely manner and also supports/coddles these editors, many of whom "have been kept from the truth simply because they knew not where to find it." "But," someone might respond, "then perhaps they should learn the rules before they attempt to make any further BLP's." That's true, but we want to make this easy for them, we want to be perceived as helpful, friendly, willing to teach them and support them, so that they continue to return and edit and don't decry Wikipedia as a "closed tome" filled only with an in-clique of editors who apparently jealously guard the secrets of making Wikipedia edits and who are quick on the deletion button. Banaticus (talk) 00:44, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Good people leave for all sorts of reasons. For example, consider this example; it's the final edit of Cryptic (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA). I think he got tired of a particular user getting away with constantly badgering people, especially in AfD discussions. ++Lar: t/c 02:48, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

To anyone who works regularly on many aspects of the encyclopedia, it may well come across that it is populated by a band of trigger-happy deletionists and corrupt sysops. I prefer to think (hope?) that they are in the minority although there are certainly plenty who believe that high Twinkle counts are the best recipe for passing the RfA promotion board, and some adolescent admins do mistake their tools for toys. If making restrictive, software based rules rule for the creation of new BLPs were to be too scary for newbs, at least a big red warning after pressing the "save page" button on a new creation, such as Remember you only have x days to provide at least x references, otherwise this article will be deleted will probably take the sting out as Peregrine Fisher suggests. IHMO , it's something that could be dione across the board anyway - most of the work the janitors do here is cleaning up after lazy editors who don't/won't read at least the basic rules before contributing. I'm sure that most contriibutors never intend to become regular Wikipedians; they probably just do a one-off edit in reasonably good faith because something doesn't look right or the article they expected to find was missing. But I'm off topic wiuth this - what we need to know is what to do with the 1,000s of unsourced BLPs already out there. What the 36.11% I haven't stopped contributing stat doesn't show, is how long it was since their last edit. 12 months is maybe enough to consider someone as gone missing. I work a lot on schools, a domain which is particularly prone to IP-user pupils who think it's cool to quickly create a joke bio about their buddies or their teachers.--Kudpung (talk) 03:18, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Joke bios about their buddies get speedy deleted. The unreferenced BLPs in question here are generally about notable people, or at least marginally notable ones. If you haven't yet, you should go click on about 10 random BLPs out of the category so you can get an idea of what is actually being talked about here. Gigs (talk) 05:07, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't imagine the uninvolved admin (poor, poor soul) who has to summarize this thing will read this. But, one way to describe this whole deal is, "should we delete 10-30,000 notable articles." Yikes. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 06:46, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

I like the idea of looking forward to creating tools that will make this a non-issue for future articles in a way that is actually helpful to newer editors. However any flagging or warning or instruction that's given might not easily find its mark if you can't find a way to automatically identify a BLP article at the time of creation. Do new editors use infoboxes? Which ones? Do they put in birth dates? Do they do anything that would consistently identify new articles as BLPs? I know it's easy enough to identify them after the fact via new page patrolling and such, but it's a lot more friendly to warn a new editor about deep waters before they stick a toe in, don't you think?--otherlleft 07:02, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

There's no way to tell. The notice would have to be there for every article's start. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 08:22, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

As the issue has been raised here, I'll mention that I've "left", in the sense that I no longer edit articles, though I still comment, as here, because WP has no effective procedure for resolving content disputes & enforcing content policy. I'm not sure why it has been raised here, though. It seems unlikely to me that a particularly large proportion of departures are connected to BLP. But I may be wrong. Peter jackson (talk) 11:58, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Let me give you a practical example of why people leave. One day, many moons ago, I happened to do a Wikipedia search for "shoop" and noticed that there was no reference to its extremely common use as slang for "digital photo-editing." I added the appropriate reference to the shoop disambiguation page and thought it was a minor task accomplished. Oh no. Not on Wikipedia. It seems someone had assigned himself the task of Guardian of the Shoop Disambiguation Page and reverted my edit without explanation. After a few rounds of edit warring, I was tartly informed that I could not add "shoop" without a reference. So I duly went and found a reference to shoop being used as a synonym for "digital photo-editing" (by a credible science journal no less, in reference to the growing problem of photo-editing being used to "cheat" in scientific papers). My addition was removed AGAIN -- this time because someone took exception to me having a citation on a disambiguation page! Having already wasted hours of my time on a minor and unimportant (but entirely factual) edit I hadn't really cared about to begin with, I said "fuck it" and left it as is. Once in a while, over the months, and out of a morbid and masochistic curiosity, I check back to see what's going on over at the disambiguation page for "shoop" and see the same obsessed Disambiguation Guardian defending the page against all comers. Since no one on EARTH is as obsessed with the word "shoop" as he is, it will likely never be corrected. Multiply my experience by 100 million and you have Wikipedia. And this is why normal people without OCD and/or Asperger's Syndrome flee Wikipedia and never come back. SmashTheState (talk) 18:34, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm actually half-tempted to go award Sesshomaru a barnstar for having the patience to deal with all that, honestly. "Shoop" in this context is a low-grade /b/-tard meme, not even worth a mention at internet meme, despite Shoop da Woop being a redirect to there. urbandictionary is user/fan-driven content, thus not considered a reliable source. You never showed the slightest bit of evidence that the term has passed into common usage to refer to image manipulation. So if this is the kid of editor we're losing, then hey, job well-done. Tarc (talk) 19:35, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

(golf clap) Congratulations on demonstrating the sort of sneering derision which drives normal people away from Wikipedia. SmashTheState (talk) 00:42, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Users who edit war to insert unsourced or poorly-sourced material into articles as you did, long after it has been pointed out why such edits are wrong and run counter to policy, are not editing in good faith. You were being disruptive, and were dealt with accordingly. Tarc (talk) 04:33, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

SmashTheState said, "And this is why normal people without OCD and/or Asperger's Syndrome flee Wikipedia and never come back." I guess the fact that I have both OCD and Asperger's is why I stay. I know that probably sounds like I'm joking, but I am totally serious. I really do have both. I love to edit wikipedia, and I have a huge problem understanding the deletionists who remove well sourced material. I have been blocked and topic banned multiple times, but I still consider my additions to be beneficial to the encyclopedia. Perhaps this is quite common among us well meaning editors who often get accused of violating the rules - we are well meaning, but we view the world very differently than most people. Grundle2600 (talk) 07:50, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

A 2-for-1 trouting in order. First, for the section top for suggesting long-term editors are autistic or that those persons have an inherent need to sit around making a mockery of WP:OWN, but as a "oh, duh!" trout over a good faith edit. A tuna-size trouting to the reply for pointless trolling and baiting incivility. At least comment on the big picture-- ownership concerns-- and not over the example itself, please. If it were being pushed as its own article repeatedly that might be actions of a disruptive user but even then we'd try to talk to them before acting. ... I will sympathize with the top that some odd articles have odd people following them and that ownership seems to be taken seriously by some at mostly low-traffic articles. It's completely relevant to the BLP issue since its those low edit count users that are most easily shoved away and editors knowing enough about a specific topic or person are never a bad thing for quality.

This is solvable! In a case like that, say... 2 days in a row you run up to but not over 3RR and its reverted back each time. It's edit warring, so go report it and it'll solve the ownership issue and officially have it written down. It's some work, I know, but we don't have any other way without an "ownership incident board". ...But that's for experienced editors. New or casual users are very easily bullied away and any incivility enforcement is far too late to likely get them to return. ♪ daTheisen(talk) 11:12, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Please keep in mind that Asperger's is known as high functioning autism - people who have if often have exceptionally high I.Q.s, and are very interested in minute details. I don't consider this "condition" to be an insult - in fact there are some things about it that I like very much. On the other hand, I do hate having OCD, and I am in therapy and on medication for it. Grundle2600 (talk) 14:16, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Lol, I know, but this being why SmashTheState's trouting was procedural as AGF! Any broader topic hitting the high end of "most trolled articles" isn't so great. Ironically though, part of AS is often a fixation to summarize the logical and blow off other views so actually I'd think that would mean some resolution after a WP:OWN mention. OCD? I've had similar problems in the past and to keep it away from here I deliberately choose not to mass edit articles in the mainspace at risk of turning into said "owners". All the more reason to report for edit warring if a victim, as a sincere apology is widely accepted by all, or the user remains stubborn and could well need sanctions of some sort. Still, it doesn't help new users. Any way to get lists of article histories noted to have 4+ edits with "revert" in the edit summary hit with a tag for a quick evaluation? Could at least try to write bitten new users that way. ♪ daTheisen(talk) 05:35, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Paused

I've paused the discussion so that uninvolved admins can summarize and sort the ideas discussed, and a call for closers has gone out to AN and ANI. (It's been suggested on ANI that it might take a few admins working together to get this done). As stated above in a few places, this isn't intended to halt the discussion, merely to summarize and sort it so that the community can arrive at a consensus. My best to whichever admin(s) want to chip in here. -- Bfigura ^(talk) 03:46, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

here are the top ideas, to help admins get started: Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Biographies of living people/Phase II. Ikip 04:55, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Is it worth archiving the page as it is now, and then refactoring into groups of similar ideas such as David Gerard's and Jehochman's, with a final section for clearly rejected ideas such as MZMcBride's? Even the deeply involved could possibly help with that part. Kevin (talk) 05:06, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

I prefer the graph form as in the above link I made, note how I have a stance section already, which is sortable? This could be broken out into three or four distinct sections. Ikip 05:11, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

...or the uninvolved admins could chose to not be led by the nose by an involved party... Jack Merridew 05:46, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, clearly I have nothing useful to add. Kevin (talk) 06:02, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Hi, I was not knocking you, at all; you've done great. Cheers, Jack Merridew 06:09, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, Jack was once again "knocking" me. Note he adds no constructive ideas to this conversation.Ikip 06:13, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Ahh, Thanks. Stocktaking today, so my hair trigger is set finer that usual. Kevin (talk) 06:19, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

You're welcome. Carry on… Jack Merridew ;) 06:24, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

(ec and unindent) Yes, although I think "clearly rejected" can be softened a bit so as not to hurt anyone's feelings. I think of consensus building as an exercise in pareto-optimization. If there is a given proposal lying at one extreme or another, and another one that will gain far more support by moving towards the center without alienating too many supporters of the first proposal, then the first may be stricken in favor of the second. So we don't exactly have to say that "delete ad hoc on sight" has no support, but that "delete on a scheduled program after some kind of process" will gain more support. - Wikidemon (talk) 05:17, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

(ec - to Ikip) Whoaaa...that's very useful. We can't directly apply the totals. And I think we should discount Jimbo's "no" !votes by 50% before repeating that consensus and majority are two different things, because a lot of people are contrarians around here :) - Wikidemon (talk) 05:17, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

I will add several more editors to the list at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Biographies of living people/Phase II, I welcome other editors adding the support/oppose/neutral totals and the stance. Ikip 05:24, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

For what it's worth, you aren't going to hurt my feelings by calling my view "clearly rejected." I'm just glad we're finally having this discussion. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 05:26, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

• Metacomments by Proofreader77 :-)
  1. The (small) number of participants tells you most of what you need to know.
  2. Only someone with, um, say, Proofreader77's gifts for rhetorical analysis/synthesis could possibly process that into a fair summary (slightly kidding, but only slightly — surely my reputation for humility precedes me;)
  3. We would need polling functions in place, and an orchestrated discussion with intermediate votes for a meaningful (rather than mis-representational) "result.
  4. But see #1. Then see what I said about "opt out" and legal exposure. (Hmmm, perhaps I have already reached an unwavering conclusion, and would not feel it worth my time to process the rest of the comments. LoL)
  -- Proofreader77 ^(interact) 05:39, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

  Clarification (as per request): As per request (elsewhere) for clarity (rarely as good an idea as one might think):
  (a) Most of the ideas expressed in the RfC are based on the myth of enough volunteers/time/energy to do what is proposed in some non-geologic time scale.
  (b) The world and Google will determine what Wikipedia must do about BLPs whatever the most vocal of the community believe.
  (c) ArbCom's motion (which many despise) was a reasonable response to the inability to the community to address the issue.
  (d) Implement opt-out, then do as you will.
  (e) As for the "Metacomments" above — they are to say that whatever we are doing right now is not an effective process of deliberation (no matter the fact that that is always the way it has been done). Wikipedia's current stature as a cultural institution will require changes in process to match the challenges created by that status. Change will come, or Wikipedia will crumble. Selah. Proofreader77 ^(interact) 06:48, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Small number? If you wish I'll move that you write a poem about this... - Wikidemon (talk) 07:32, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

The 300 Spartans ? Hmmm, I think that title's been taken. :-) Proofreader77 ^(interact) 07:39, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Progress being made in backlog

As we pause the RfC, it might also be good to pause and take stock of where we are in terms of the backlog of unsourced BLPs (if someone has already done that elsewhere my apologies for repetition). Obviously the number has been going down significantly and a lot of people are working on the problem, presumably by doing one or more of the following: 1) Removing unreferenced tags from BLPs that were in fact already referenced; 2) Sourcing unreferenced BLPs, then removing the tags; 3) Putting these articles up for deletion in one form or another, and eventually having them deleted via already existing deletion processes.

This entire discussion (even preceding the RfC—I think the origins were in an ANI thread here) began almost exactly 12 days ago early on the morning on January 20th. I don't have a diff in hand, but multiple people remarked at the time that there were just under 52,000 articles in Category:All unreferenced BLPs. As of this writing we are at 46,828. So in 12 days time we've reduced the unsourced BLP backlog by roughly 5,000 articles, which is a bit over 400 per day. I'm not sure we can keep up that pace, and perhaps people are picking the low-hanging fruit (e.g. articles that are already sourced and just require tag removal), but if we did keep up a similar pace, and even assuming hundreds of newer unsourced BLPs would be added and/or tagged in the meantime, we should be able to clear the whole backlog in around 4 months or so. This in the absence of a more organized process for clearing the backlog (as we will hopefully develop out of this RfC), and via which we can probably recruit even more editors to work on this.

My point here is that we're off to a good start and these efforts should continue even as we come to a consensus about how to put an end to unsourced BLPs and make sure they do not reappear. Indeed anyone who has participated in the RfC but has not worked on helping to clear out the category of unsourced BLPs should, if at all possible, pitch in one way or another, ideally trying to work on at least a few articles a week. --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 06:07, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Well yes, I really have to wonder why so much time had to be wasted on discussing possible bureaucratic procedures to deal with the backlog when the obvious solution all along IMO was simply to create some sort of taskforce to deal with it. I'm glad to hear that some people have started to tackle the actual problem. I will try to pitch in when I can find the time. Gatoclass (talk) 08:55, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

I do think you need some sort of centralized discussion page though, so people can co-ordinate their activities. Do you have one yet? Gatoclass (talk) 09:02, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

I definitely agree that the effort should be centralized and transparent to all (as far as I know it's neither right now). Ideally that's what the RfC should produce (in part), though really there's nothing stopping us from coming up with a centralized means for cleaning out the unsourced BLP category using already existing procedures (some of the suggestions in the RfC would change procedures such that we would presumably clean out the category even more quickly than we could now given current policies and guidelines).

Honestly I don't know what exactly has happened in the last 12 days to remove some 5,000 articles from the unreffed BLP category, but I assume these are just ad hoc (and largely unorganized) efforts by a number of people aware of the problem. Personally I'm cataloging the little I've done at User:Bigtimepeace/BLP log and I know a couple of other editors spoke of doing something similar, but there is no centralized spot to coordinate this as far as I know. Perhaps someone should just boldly create Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced Biographies of Living Persons (or something similar) in an effort to centralize our efforts while the RfC comes up with more permanent, codified solutions that perhaps have more "teeth" to them than a WikiProject would. --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 09:50, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

User:The Wordsmith/BLP sourcing is probably the most centralised place at the moment. I'd happily join a Wikiproject, and 20-odd people in the RFC agreed with me that one should be created. Hut 8.5 16:27, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for posting this update. I've been doing my small part and I've seen others hard at work, too, so it's good to see the overall effect. I would happily join a WikiProject - we could do with some centralisation of resources, eg I can never find that useful Category intersection tool. --Dweller (talk) 10:10, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

If/when something is decided, some blatant promotion is in order. Definitely in the Signpost. Not sure where else though. --Dweller (talk) 10:12, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

There are a lot of "low-hanging fruit" here - articles that actually do have inline refs already, or external links that are usable as refs - these groups started at 16,750 on Giggs' list (see above). Then Anglosphere actors/MAWs, sportspeople & politicians are relatively easy to handle, & found in vast numbers. Much harder are marginal foreign figures - look at the handful left from 2005 - 5 last time I looked, most Japanese. People who are still alive (maybe) but whose career finished pre-internet are also tougher. Actually one thing that is hard to source is whether people are still alive. Many "notable" people on our current standards are actually too obscure to get any press coverage at all if they die after 20 or more years in retirement. That will be an increasing issue in the long term. It would be good to have a place where any real examples of tagged as unreferenced possible libels are recorded, as despite I and others having asked for these, none have yet been produced. Johnbod (talk) 12:52, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it's often hard to find reliable sources about folk whose work was pre-internet before electronic archiving of newspaper reports. I've even seen that issue while looking for key facts about Idries Shah who sold over 15 million books worldwide and still sells. Very often there are usable sources to be found in "External Links" (and bundled variations like the "External Links, References and All sorts") section at the bottom of the page, or in an untitled, bare, inline URL, especially in older articles. Esowteric+Talk 13:11, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

I've stared at a lot of these articles recently, and I've can only remember two that were potentially libellous (one correctly said that the subject was dismissed for corruption, and the other that the subject had alcohol problems). I think the rate of copyright violations and plagiarism problems is actually higher. Hut 8.5 16:27, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Regarding possible libels in these articles, I've logged several in the couple dozen articles I've looked at in detail so far. Out of 24 articles, three had problematic material in terms of our BLP policy and potentially libelous statements. Obviously I have no idea if this is a typical percentage (I would guess not), but the point is there are examples of this, and I know others have provided specific examples in the past. In my comment on the RfC I suggested keeping a formal log of problematic BLP material we find as we work on the category of unsourced BLPs, and perhaps in the absence of a centralized location to do that (for now) it would be good if editors kept track of that on their own. --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 18:41, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

What I'm never sure of is how many sources is enough to remove the unsourced tag? On some of these musicians (that to me are obscure as hell), I can only find their "official site" that looks like a vanity site, but is actually maintained by their record label, and listings in music catalogs for their music. I can't use a mp3 download, CD catalog or a lyrics site as a source, can I? It certainly isn't reputable press, even if it's Amazon. If they don't tour much, don't do interviews with web available press, I have no way to source them except catalogs and their own web sites. --RavanAsteris (talk) 04:18, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

If there is no reliably published coverage then the article should probably be deleted as non-notable. One reliable and independent source should be enough to prevent deletion for being unsourced though. Kevin (talk) 04:40, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes see WP:BAND, the notability criteria. It doesn't sound as if these are met. Johnbod (talk) 10:48, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

So let me get this straight: If they don't tour and do interviews in the web published press, they aren't notable, regardless of how many albums they have? How about the ones who may have foreign language or non-web press that I can't find? What I don't want to do is propose for deletion someone who actually is a big name elsewhere in the world, but obscure in the "reliable" web-based English language press (which is really quite small, and shrinking daily due to newspaper failure and consolidation.) When you leave out blogs and other freelance reportage, the pool of reliable sources is not as big as one could wish. Frustrating. At least WP:BAND lets me figure out which ones can easily be dumped. -- RavanAsteris (talk) 09:39, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

One thing we'll never know is how much of this improvement was happening anyway because of user:DASHBot messaging the 17,400 creators of these articles and how much is a result of the current kerfuffle. However to keep the momentum going, there has been a lot of work is going on re a beefed up WolterBot's approach of asking the projects to fix articles that are relevant to those projects. I think that we can assist both of these in several ways, firstly an adopt a retired editor campaign to persuade current users to "adopt" long inactive editors and fix the unreferenced BLPs that Dashbot has messaged them about, secondly an "add a meaningful category" project to add further categories to articles currently only tagged with living people and year of birth categories, and thirdly we may need to try and revive some inactive projects that have suddenly been asked to fix huge numbers of unreferenced BLPs. Then in a few weeks we need a refresh to the bot messages to projects so that the newly categorised stuff appears and the stuff fixed by editors or other projects goes away. I also think that once these 17,400 editors have had a couple of months to come back and fix their unreferenced BLPs a second message from DASHBot might be in order, perhaps even by email this time. ϢereSpielChequers 13:04, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

• A first step might be to have a bot go through all articles tagged as unreferenced BLPs, and remove those with inline citations inside them, or transclusions of citation templates. Then at least we could have some confidence in the size count of the category. Honestly, I've probably removed the unref-blp tag (either by sourcing or by noting that it's already sourced) on more than 50 articles in the last couple of days, and I assure you this pace is absolutely not sustainable. Ray^Talk 16:49, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Quick note: in addition to User:The Wordsmith/BLP sourcing mentioned above, another place where there seems to be an attempt to centralize some of these efforts is Wikipedia:Unreferenced articles, though the former seems to have gotten more attention. It might make sense to use one or both of these pages as a springboard into a more formal (possibly WikiProject) page. One thing I think would be useful is a step-by-step "how to" guide that folks should follow when they come to an unreferenced BLP article (just reading the first sentence and sourcing it is obviously not good enough, for example). We should also encourage people to log their activities either directly on a central page, or in their own userspace and then provide a link on the central page. --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 19:09, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

I think this is too diverse and big to try and centrally micro-organise. Much is being done in relevant projects and by some of the 17,400 creators of these articles. By all means have a project to discuss the various BLP initiatives, but don't expect thousands of editors to report back to some central project that they've just fixed a BLP. If you do want stats on this I suggest programmatically extracting stuff from the database dumps and comparing the 52,000 articles tagged as unreferenced BLPs a few weeks ago with the current state of play - how many have more references, how many have been deleted (and of those how many as {{G10}}), how many changed to {{refimproveBLP}} ϢereSpielChequers 19:21, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

In terms of extracting stuff from a database I personally would have no remote idea how to do that though I'm sure it could be useful. Logging activities would just be a useful way to provide some anecdotal evidence, particularly about the number of unsourced BLPs with problematic material in them (a lot of people have been asking for data on that, and we cannot get it from a database extraction). Obviously it's great if WikiProjects and individual people are working on these articles, but I don't think that precludes some effort at centralized coordination. For one thing it would allow us to publicize the effort much more prominently and give people a page where they can get basic info such as where to find the category (many would not know), what they should do when checking an article (make sure there are not already sources, also read the entire thing and check for problematic material), and how to go about sourcing properly (not everyone has links to the pages or scripts that allow for easy referencing). If we don't log the activities of every editor and WikiProject, and if lots of people are working on their own outside of a centralized page, that's completely fine. A lot of other folks would be glad to have a centralized place to go for info and discussion about best practices, and the fact is there's no reason not to do it. --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 20:48, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

I would have thought that the number of the 52,000 that wind up deleted as attack pages should give a useful stat for the amount of major problems. The problems of a partial central log are three fold: People will denigrate its statistical validity, you will struggle to keep it free of repeats of the actual vandalisms, and you risk bumping into wp:DENY. As for a place for useful resources in improving articles, the Wikipedia:Article Rescue Squadron has a lot of useful info, or if people want to revive a more BLP focussed project why not restart Wikipedia:Living People Patrol? ϢereSpielChequers 21:14, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

The Wikipedia:Living People Patrol project seems good (if inactive), but what we're talking about here is rather more focused and need not be ongoing—it's just about getting people together to clear a backlog, and hopefully the RfC will come up with permanent solutions to prevent it from building up again. To your first point, most articles with BLP problems in them will not be deleted as attack pages—for example of the three I've come across so far I simply fixed the problems, which is what most people would do. As for the problems of a central log as you see it: 1) People will denigrate the statistical validity of anything, but a bunch of people have asked for specific examples—both in this RfC (indeed in this thread) and elsewhere—of unsourced BLPs that had problems; 2-3) It's pretty easy to avoid repeating vandalism and falling afoul of WP:DENY, see for example the three comments at the bottom of my own log which point to problems without saying anything specific, linking to anything, or bringing "recognition and infamy" to anyone. People have asked for this kind of data so why not provide it, even if only anecdotally? If you don't think a coordinated effort to deal with unsourced BLPs is a good idea then don't take part, but you're not convincing me that coordination of efforts is ill-advised, and indeed I'm only discussing it because a couple editors above brought it up. --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 21:47, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Second related RfC

To address an issue on which people still disagree, I'm considering starting a second, related, RfC on the question of what to do about unsourced content in BLP articles. Obviously, the ideal is to source all content, everywhere, with good reliable sources. But in the meanwhile, what can and should an editor do when they find content in a BLP that, though unsourced, appears to be verifiable and uncontentious? There's an AN/I on that relating to mass edits to stubbify articles, which has some of the same issues as mass deletions of articles. I don't want to expand the scope of this already-long RfC, but I do think we need to address this in a hurry because whichever way the AN/I case goes it is likely to reach ArbCom, and ArbCom will be much happier if there is a community resolution in the works. So again, okay to start a new RfC? Thanks, - Wikidemon (talk) 22:16, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Arbcom? Did you not see how the last one went, and removing content is on a whole different scale from wholesale deletions. Kevin (talk) 22:26, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

It's a potential subject for an RfC because there's a lot of difference of opinions about it - the edit warring and protection of the BLP page, one trip to AN/I and perhaps more, etc. I mentioned the AN/I and arbcom in the interest of full disclosure. The two most likely outcomes of the AN/I both have a pretty good chance of ending up before ArbCom. - Wikidemon (talk) 22:33, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

The verifiability policy says "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth—what counts is whether readers can verify that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source (see below), not whether we think it is true." So it isn't possible to have unsourced verifiable content, What scenario do you have in mind? - Pointillist (talk) 00:18, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and created the RfC here:Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Biographies of living people/Content. I'm referring to (uncontentious) content for which sources exist but their reliability is questioned or the sources have not been added to the article. Wikidemon (talk) 00:23, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

I understand your concern about established articles, but per WereSpielChequers, Newyorkbrad and Calliopejen1 I think that going forward there should be stricter rules for newly created BLPs. My view is here if you'd like to discuss. - Pointillist (talk) 02:15, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but your case (i.e. significant unsourced content in articles that have some info sourced) falls under the big RFC. At least from the shoot-on-sight viewpoint. It appears to me that the discussion there assumed "substance over form" approach, and anything marked with "unsourced blp" (the infamous fifty thousand) is under fire. But take a closer look, many of the suspects are under-referenced. But what the heck, they must go. The policy does not work anymore, and "removing unsourced content" now means "delete all". Everyone accepts (I hope so) that one unsourced syllable in Obama's bio will not get it speedied, but it is only a matter of expected reaction. Lesser characters will burn for a single misplaced comma. NVO (talk) 09:14, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

That seems rather an exaggerated view, not borne out by experience. ++Lar: t/c 14:52, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Concern is the "Big potential of abuse"

Step 1: Contest the reliability of source on a BLP article

Step 2: Remove the content asserted by that source because it isn't verifiable anymore

Step 3: Return to Step 1 until the article is completely botched or empty enough to go to AFD

All this is within what permit policies and guidelines and there is no safe guard against that kind of scorched earth tactics

In contrary of PROD or AFD which have related projects informed and thus could put a full stop to abuse. Abuse of WP:V is way more subtle and stealthy. Until someone have a better safeguard against abuse than belief in Good faith, i will not support a strict reading of WP:V even if i wish to but that technically no possible currently. --KrebMarkt 16:12, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

WikiProject created

I am obviously crazy, but at least I can move this from "no project exists" to "a project exists". It might be "a failed attempt to create a project exists", but at least nobody can claim that nobody tried.

Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced Biographies of Living Persons is now created. Hack away. --Alvestrand (talk) 17:06, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Barnstars

You might be on to something there, Michig. PeterbrownDancin's comments made me realize that some people are only motivated to do new work if there's a reward associated with it (like, for instance, deleting unreferenced BLPs because they now can delete articles). Maybe a motivation is needed in the other direction - has anyone stopped to make a barnstar specific to this task? That could really motivate some editors. Or maybe a UBLP marathon, vaguely based on the WikiCup?--otherlleft 13:37, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

I suggested that the cup change the points system to incentivise referencing BLPs but they didn't seem keen. I have dished out article rescue barnstars to people who have rescued prodded or deleted unreferenced BLPs by referencing them, {{subst:The Rescue Barnstar|message ~~~~}} and of course there is the BLP barnstar {{subst:The BLP Barnstar|message ~~~~}} which is probably more relevant if people are sourcing lots of BLPs that aren't under immediate threat of deletion. ϢereSpielChequers 14:19, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Unless i mistaken, i was among the dubious few to have mentioned that editors fixing unsourced BLP needed a form of recognition. For Anime/Manga project i'm holding a score board of who fixed what with diff as evidence so recognition and reward can be given out accordingly. --KrebMarkt 14:25, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Teasing with a game/point for referencing articles? That's good. Points for deleting them?

Any editor that experienced glee or any type of twisted pleasure for deleting, or being able to delete articles just because they can or think they "should" should really, not be deleting articles in this incident, and possibly just not ever period. It terrorizes me to think that anyone would consider this ability a "reward". If people only performed the core work that no one sees but keeps Wikipedia running if there were a reward involved, we wouldn't have Wikipedia seeing as we're all volunteers. Barnstars aren't a merit or a "+1" to anything as a credit and most editors either don't care about and/or are happy enough to edit without them. The proposed "encouragement" is proof in and of itself of everything wrong with it. What kind of rewards do people collect currently that show any proof that such a thing works? Not that it matters. ♪ daTheisen(talk) 14:30, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

I suggested that some editors might see deletion power as a reward because I don't think that's a good thing to encourage - in case I wasn't clear. Everyone is motivated by some form of positive reinforcement - that is part of the reason why DYK, GA, and FA are successful. Granted, many editors find that doing a good job is sufficient motivation, but a specific barnstar or contest could entice folks who are more moved by a trophy or competition of some sort. It's not my cup of tea, but I thought it worth a mention! --otherlleft 15:05, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

I gave several editors who are part of User:The Wordsmith/BLP sourcing {{The BLP Barnstar}}. I'd give it to anyone who has been working on sourcing BLPs, but there isn't a centralized list of who's been working on them, so I don't know who else to give it to.--Father Goose (talk) 05:59, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Is this dead?

What's happening here? I am really hoping some progress is being made.

We really must get agreement here or the consequences are not good. There seemed to be a momentum that was giving me some hope. But we must not let innertia set in again, or we'll be back to the very regrettable circumstances that drove us of us to start deleting the oldest of these. Those are circumstances we really must avoid as they were fairly disruptive, so an agreed way forward here is a neccessity. What's the hold up? I thought we seemed to have a growing consensus around a 7day prod mechanism for new unreferenced articles, with a fairly long, but set, timescale for dealing with the backlog before any deletions?--Scott Mac (Doc) 11:31, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Can anyone reply and say that they are working on it? The community paid already a dire price in term of mutual trust and respect to have that process started not finishing with a balanced compromise would adding insult to the injury. --KrebMarkt 12:05, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) From the template at the top of the project page and some comments above, I believe we are awaiting an admin with enough time, determination, bravery, etc. to read the voluminous comments and produce a summary, from which a second RFC with only a few, popular, concrete options may be produced. --Cybercobra (talk) 12:07, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure we need to be so process bound. There were some obvious points of agreement here:

1. Prodlike process for new unreferenced BLPs. The process should not bite the creator, and should flag any available wikiprojects for assistance. 7 days later, if still unreferenced, article is deleted without prejudice to undeletion if someone willing to source.
2. A very slow setting of deadlines for the backlog. (The timeframe still needs agreement.) Encouraging wikiprojects to source through lists of artilcle, and preventing a swamping of the process with thousands of articles at a time. However there will be a deadline - "after x months all remaining articles marked as unsourced for x years get deleted". (Timeframe to be agreed - but to allow plenty of time for sourcing, so that few or none require deletion.)

I know some are opposed to the above - but it seems most will support if the timeframes are right. So lets start with a very long timeframe indeed (longer than I would like) to get things moving. Maybe a year to clear the backlog?

Whether people like this or not, does anyone think it isn't somewhere near consensus?--Scott Mac (Doc) 12:39, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

I think we probably have consensus to require newly created BLPs to be sourced, though we do need to make sure this is communicated to the article creators, and to keep as many people as possible on board, if they don't meet the existing G10 or A7 criteria for speedy deletion we need a sticky prod rather than speedy deletion for newly created unsourced BLPs. However we haven't yet fully identified the backlog, and the unreferenced BLPs that we haven't yet found and tagged as such are probably even worse, if only because the tagger had a chance of spotting some attacks and vandalism. We are still finding unreferenced BLPs created in 2005, and have found 455 old unreferenced BLPs so far this month, along with 2,015 in January. I think we should finish the job of finding the remaining unidentified old BLPs before we set a schedule for deleting those that no-one can be bothered to reference, and to be realistic I think that would need to mean the number of old unreferenced BLPs being detected dropping below a hundred a week. On the bright side, I think User:DASHBot has done some useful work chiding the 17,400 authors of the known unreferenced BLPs and quite a few projects are now working on the ones of interest to those projects. I think we could do with a follow up note from DashBot in a few weeks, not least because so many thousands of unreferenced BLPs have been tagged since the first note, and we could also do with an update of the note to the projects, both because of the newly identified articles and also because of the categorisation that has been going on. ϢereSpielChequers 15:12, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Amidst the dithering and deliberate delaying, 455 unreffed blps have been added so far in February 2010. "backlog" is code for "the thing which gets larger and worse and more ethically compromising every day." The Gordian knot needs cutting, and soon.Bali ultimate (talk) 15:18, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

I think it would be more accurate to say 455 unreferenced biographies have been identified so far this month, it isn't as if many of these are newly created unreferenced BLPs. I think that the fact that we are identifying these articles is positive. The fact that the number of articles tagged as unreferenced BLPs is falling despite the thousands still being found is evidence both that rather than getting "larger and worse and more ethically compromising" the problem is actually getting smaller and less serious, and also that rather than "dithering and deliberate delaying" the community has been putting a lot of effort into this problem. ϢereSpielChequers 16:12, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes perhaps, but only because some of us took decisive action. If this resulting process stalls, then the backlogs will certainly grow.--Scott Mac (Doc) 17:58, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately because the deletion spree took place at the same time as Dashbot's campaign I doubt if we will ever know which had most effect on the backlog. It should be possible to extract some stats from the 2009 data dumps to see at what rate the backlog was changing during last year, but I would be very surprised if they showed that the backlog of unreferenced BLPs had been stable or growing. The backlog of articles tagged as unreferenced BLPs may well have been stable or growing, after all about 30,000 of them were tagged in 2009. But how many of them were created in 2009? Looking at the articles in Category:Unreferenced BLPs from September 2009, the first three I checked at random were created in 2005-2007, this fits in with much that I've seen recently. I'm pretty confident that the total backlog has been declining, whether the identified part of the backlog has been growing or not is of much lesser importance to me. ϢereSpielChequers 18:55, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

To Scott's original question, User:Risker is right now working on "summarizing" the RfC to date (see this thread on WP:AN). I would guess she'll post something in the relatively near future, though it's a lot to read through. I agree with Scott that there's clearly strong support for some sort of 7 day prod mechanism (or something similar) and once we get a summary from Risker we should proceed apace to figuring out how exactly that will work, either at one of the existing proposals along those lines or somewhere else (it doesn't matter really, so long as we hone in one page to discuss it). Probably there will be other good suggestions distilled into summary form and we should pursue those too, but an expedited process for clearing the unsourced backlog is the key thing.

And to WereSpielChequers above, I don't see any reason why we would need to wait until we finish finding and tagging all of the unsourced BLPs (who knows how long that would take, really it would probably never be complete) before setting a schedule. The schedule can always be slightly adjusted as we go—I haven't seen anyone opposed to that. So if, for example, we set a four month deadline, and then two months out realize we had tagged an additional 7,000 unsourced BLPs and would need a few more weeks, we could do that. The point is to get started asap and not lose what little momentum we have, plus (more importantly) the longer we wait the longer articles sit around with potentially problematic material in them. We've already done some good work on the backlog (it's down about 6,000 articles since this entire unsourced BLP discussion began), but we need to kick it into high gear and blast notes all over the project that this is a priority and that we've developed a formal process for it. --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 18:41, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, that's brilliant. Risker is an excellent choice. I suspect clearing the backlog may be more difficult to get agreement on. But if we can at least get a sticky prod thing going for new articles while we discuss the backlog that would be some result.--Scott Mac (Doc) 18:45, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Exactly, I think the "scheduling" aspect for the backlog will be the most contentious, and indeed at first we won't know what will be doable or not (so actually any firm opinion on the matter will be based on a wild guess). I think the point is to get started and discuss as we go, throttling back or forward as needed, but with an overall sense that we'll need a definite cut-off date eventually. --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 18:57, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

I think we need to think of three groups of articles. Already identified unreferenced BLPs where we can probably get consensus for some sort of timetable with a manageable throttle, a sticky prod with plenty of editor and project notification. New articles where we can agree a sticky prod system. But then we will still have newly identified old unsourced BLPs turning up for a long time to come. I think that this will need a rolling program to address, but provided we configure the bots to run more frequently and we put some sort of throttle on the process, I would think we can setup a monthly process whereby newly identified unreferenced BLPs get handled within a month of being identified. As for the schedule, I would like to see it fixed and gradual. Fixed so that a Bot could alter the templates on all 46,000 with a message to the effect that unless referenced this will be deleted on x date, and gradual so that there is a steady flow of them with some being deleted every day. The solution I fear most is one where on two or three dates this year thousands of articles will be deleted, I see that as a near guarantee that some editors will do low quality rushed rescues to save as much as they can at the last minute. That's why I would rather that after a certain date we start deleting the oldest five days of unreferenced BLPs per day (oldest in terms of the tag, not the article). ϢereSpielChequers 19:16, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

• I don't see a need to be in any sort of rush. There is still no evidence that unsourced BLPs are as bad as the BLPs that contain at least one reference, and plenty of anecdotal evidence to the contrary (as many contentious claims are referenced, most of the unsourced BLPs do not contain contentious claims). Another week or four of consensus-building before anything drastic is done (again) is probably still necessary to find a solution acceptable to most people. —Кузьма^討論 00:11, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
  • I'd say three years isn't a rush. But yes, a week or even more if fine as long as the process doesn't stall. This must not be kicked into the longgrass. We need to find a solution that works and saves unpopular solutions being neccessary. I think we're probably quite close to that objective.--Scott Mac (Doc) 00:19, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
• I am really appalled by the claims that there is a "consensus" of any sort, and at seeing that the so-called "deletionists" are discussing the implementation of some speedy-deletion process as if it was a closed issue.
  A 50-50 split is not a "consensus". A "150 oppose, 60 support" vote is defintely not "consensus"! Not even a "75 support, 25 oppose" vote can be considered a "consensus", when the proposal is to stomp on the fingers of 49,000 potential new editors who did not vote (but have implicitly voted against!)
  Not to mention that the poll was taken over a very small and very biased sample of editors; namely those who (1) understand what the RfC is about, (2) have the time and interest for adminitrative debates, and (3) understand enough of the jargon-laden "views" to vote on them. Obviously editors who would rather edit contents than discuss policies were sorely under-represented in the poll; while every deletionist who saw the call must have rushed to cast his vote. And yet, even with that bias, it seems that the votes on the proposal, and all variants thereof, generally went the "wrong" way.
  As for the 7-day period, that is just ridiculous, it seems chosen to ensure that no one will see the prod before the article is deleted. Why does it *have* to be one week, rather than one month or one year? (A longer period might allow some of those articles to get fixed, and therefore spoil the tagger's fun — is that the fear?)
  Every time the "notability requirement" comes under discussion, the result is the same: a long heated discussion that never gets anywhere near a consensus. The "notability requirement" is by far the most un-consensual and most hotly contested "policy" in Wikipedia; and seems to be the most frequent cause of nasty fighting and editor burn-out.
  Yet, after all these years and all those megabytes of discussion, I still haven't seen an explanation of what, exactly, is the harm that BLPs of non-notable people (or schools, or whatever) might cause to Wikipedia. I already got tired of asking that question. The answers I get back always boil down to a totally circular argument: "non-notable articles must be deleted, because otherwise WP will have thousands of non-notable articles, and that is bad because non-notable articles must be deleted."
  Bios of non-notable people are not particularly likely to generate lawsuits or embarassment. (In fact, all cases of libel and malicious pranks that I have seen in six years of editing were either in BLPs of *notable* persons or in non-BLP articles.) They do not attract as much vandalism as other articles; and since they are hardly visible to anyone but their authors, any vandalism that they may get is unlikely to be seen by anyone else. Non-notable BLPs are much easier to police than other kinds of articles, because it does not take an expert to sniff malicious or promotional edits, because the criteria for their *contents* are much stricter, and because the bio of a non-notable person necessarily be very short and basic. So, please, what is the problem?
  I submit that the problem that bothers the initiators of this RfC is not "the large number of unsourced BLPs". The problem is "the huge and growing backlog of unsourced BLPs that need to be assessed for notability". But this is a totally artificial problem! It was created when a group of editors invented the notability rule; namely when *they* decided that the classification of BLPs into "notable" and "non-notable", and deletion of the non-notable ones, was to be a priority-one project for Wikipedia. That problem bothers *only* the deletionists (and their unfortunate victims); and bothers them not because the articles are actually harming Wikipedia or anyone else, but *only* because they just *dislike* them. The reason why the "backlog problem" is so large is that the deletionists are a minority; and the other editors, who generally view that project as a very low priority one (if not an anti-goal or a form of vandalism) naturally will not help them.
  Well, that "problem" can be *easily and instantaneously* solved by scrapping the notability requirement and forgetting about that ill-thought project. This simple solution would spare us all from the work of assessing, prodding, re-assessing, documenting, discussing, and appealing about the notability of those 49,000 people.
  (The *contents* of every new BLP would still need to be checked and trimmed, of course, just as now; but the normal editing procedures and basic principles can take care of that, at the same pace as now.)
  In summary, the discussions over this RfC only strengthened my conviction that the notability requirement is not doing any good to Wikipedia, only a lot of harm. Logic, statistics and anecdotes say so. I challenge the supporters of the notability rule to *prove* (not merely *claim*) otherwise.
  All the best, grumpily, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 02:55, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

• (edit conflict) I agree. I know it's not a !vote, but Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Biographies of living people/Phase II shows 80%+ consensus for two incompatible groups of proposals: the 7-day deletionists such as Jehochman and the advocates of no change such as Jclemens. I do not see a clear preference for either, so let's wait for the closing admin's conclusions. Being process bound is less bad than jumping hastily in the wrong direction. Certes (talk) 03:03, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, we can wait a bit and get some type of agreement here. But only if people will be willing to work through this to find a solution. People burying their heads in the sand and thinking everything is fine and dandy don't help. The degree of harm is debatable, what isn't is that we want our BLPs to be referenced and that the current "system" has failed to do that - 50,000 backlog and things unreferenced since 2005 bears adequate testimony. If there are new ideas to prevent this, they should be considered. But they have to actually work with reality, the sort of "well in theory people can sort this, so let's just ...." is not good. We need to be realistic. It is agreed speedy deletion is amongst the worst ways out of this, so lets find another way. There are a number of good suggestions in the RfC, we just need to work with them and make one of them really work.--Scott Mac (Doc) 03:58, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

• "We want our BLPs to be referenced": okay, you may include me in that "we". As for the rest, including the priority and methods for that task, we probably disagree.
  As for the BLPs that are unreferenced since 2005, that fact could be read the other way around: it proves that an unreferenced BLP (notable or not) will not cause problems even if it stays unreferenced for five years. Indeed, we may assume that BLPs that have been there for five years either are notable, and therefore must have been read by many editors, and therefore are likely to be OK (even if unreferenced); or are not notable, and therefore are not read by anyone, and therefore fixing them should have lower priority than fixing regular articles. So, we should worry about the BLPs that were created this week, rather than those of 2005; and concenrtate on the most notable ones, if only we could detect them automatically (perhaps by access frequency?)

As for suggestions, if the notability rule is not repealed, consider this alternative way of implementing it:

if an article is to be deleted solely because of non-notability or lack of references, it should be blanked instead of deleted. Some differences between that and true deletion are

1. Any editor can blank an article, without having to go through the AfD or invoking special powers;
2. Other editors can still view the history and undo the blanking if they disagree with it, at any later time;
3. The search engine will index the title, which is useful for editors, but not the blanked contents;
4. The editor who blanks cannot presume he is superior to other editors;
5. Disputes about blanking and unblanking can and should be handled like any other editorial disputes (talk pages,3rr,etc.);
6. Blanking without due reason, caution and explanation should be handled as any other kind of improper editing;
7. Total blanking is only a special case of content deletion, so it does not need special rules and procedures.

The AfD and sppedy deletion would then be used only for truly uncontroversial reasons (malicious article creation, superfluous redirect, libel or copyvio that cannot be erased from the history except by deleting the article, etc.).

Non-editing readers will hardly notice the difference between a blanked article and a missing or truly deleted one. If the author of a blanked article is a vandal or spammer, any attempts by him to unblank the article will show up in the blanker's watchlist, like any attempt to undo an undo; and will be handled the same way. If the author is a misguided novice, he should find in the talk page a gentle explanation by the blanker; if he is not convinced he can just click undo, and then both will have to find an agreement as usual. Articles which have remained in a blanked state for a year or two could perhaps be deleted; however there is no real need to do so, since a blanked article (unlike a tagged one) is essentially harmless.

Even those editors who demand notability will hardly blank more than a small fraction of those 50,000 unsourced BLPs. While the proposal above allows creators to undo the blankings, only a small fraction of that small fraction will choose to do so. On the other hand, those authors will not have to beg and argue with the admins to do so. Therefore, in practice this proposal should save quite bit of work for everybody, blankers and authors — and a quite a lot of bile. All the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 06:57, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

• It seems Risker didn't find consensus for the concept of a deadline in the close, I agree there were none. Considering the progress being made (see here), I'm confident we'll be able to deal with most of the backlog within a few months. I long thought we needed to involve in the process a more important part of the community. The BLP unsourced tag was created only at the end of 2008, and the only major RFC we had on the issue happened ... just now. Cenarium (talk) 16:22, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

• Seeing as how you consider yourself a major stakeholder in the need to clean up the BLP issue, Scott, why don't you build a proposal out of what's been discussed and what the community has endorsed and rejected via this RFC? We can push forward from there. Resolute 16:31, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Notable and Non-Notable

Jorge Stolfi's comments above frighten me. One of the reasons for the "notable" versus "non-notable" characterization of individuals or groups should be that it allows a measure of privacy to those whose lives are not lived out in the public eye. Not everyone will consider having a page on Wikipedia to be a positive matter even if the text is completely benign and is never vandalized. (And how do we know what is benign? Everything from a date of birth to academic credentials or a parent's ethnicity may be a matter of contention to someone. Every statement needs to be backed by a WP:RS, or it should be deleted.) Wikipedia does not have some inate right to describe living people so that anyone can read about them, their lives and their families. If one of my former students were to decide to write a page about me, for example, I'd be horrified. With the notability guidelines, however loosely appplied, I would happily fail every test and my page would, quite properly, vanish into the ether. Without them, what could I, or anyone else, do? People's lives are not encyclopedia fodder. If anything, our "notability" rules need to be strengthened so that even those who are notable but whose "fame" is inadvertent and unwelcome (as the victims of crimes, for example) should not be memorialized. Bielle (talk) 05:07, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

• "People's lives are not encyclopedia fodder" - an encyclopedia without humans is an interesting development. No people - no problem, said the wise man. Hey, if Spanish wikipedia can do without fair use images, perhaps English wikipedia can do without biographies? NVO (talk) 08:00, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Dear Bielle, your concerns are quite valid, but the notability rule (NR) does not address *that* problem, and my radical "solution" would not make it any worse.

The *contents* of a BLP has to be factual, verifiable, true, neutral, relevant, etc.. I am not contesting those rules; they are pretty logical, truly consensual, and must be enforced even more aggresively for BLPs than for ordinary articles.

Because of those rules, a BLP can only contain non-objectionable information that is already publicly available in reliable and unbiased sources. An article about a non-notable professor, for instance, will probably have only the information that is listed in his school's website or yearbooks --- which therefore cannot be considered an invasion of privacy. Observe that the sources do not need to prove notability of the subject but only the accuracy of the informaton. Thanks to those rules, any editor can delete any statement in a BLP that he suspects is not public, true and proper iformation; this is a much more effective protection against objectionable contents than NR + deletion. (I bet that my standards on this matter are even stricter than yours; I generally delete things like religion, relatives, birth days, and anything that would not be appropriate for a professor's bio on a university's website — independently of whether the information is sourced or not, and whether the subject is notable or not.)

I have seen uncontable cases of obvious infantile vandalism, many of them in BLPs. The NR is obviously of no help against that.

I have also seen many BLPs that were obviously written by the subject himself, or an admirer/employer/agent — full of promotional matetrial and/or unverifiable personal information. Some of those subjects would qualify as notable, so the NR again would not help. Others may not qualify; but in all those cases it was much easier to delete all inappropriate *contents* leaving a stub-like article, than to determine the notability and seek deletion. Anyway, it is not those articles that worry you.

In five years of editing, I can rememeber only three articles that I found which contained libel or libel-like pranks (false information about a person that was carefully planted in order to embarass wikipedia). Two of them were about fairly notable people. The first was a bio of the Brazilian representative at ICANN; the original stub had been replaced by two pages of pure libel, written (I came to learn afterwards) by a guy who had been harassing the subject for years. That bio had no explicit refs, because it had been writen before 2006; but its author would certainly have added them if they were required. In the second case the victim was a NY Times columnist. The article had two references (a book written by the subject and a NY times column about him); and was not a biography, but a short article about some bogus philosphical principle that the journalist had allegedly invented and used in his book. Another one that that I remember (just two day ago) was a nasty statement about the CEO of some company, that had been inserted in a preexisting valid article about the company. Obviously none of those incidents would have been prevented by the NR rule.

So, again, I share you concerns; but I do not see how they could be used to justify NR-deletion. All the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 08:52, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

First, to User:NVO: You will not be surprised to learn that I approve of the Spanish Wikipedia's stance on "fair use" for images. Once again, WP has no right to "fair use" for anything for which it has not received explicit permission within the context of its own licencing, because it cannot, by virtue of that same licensing, commit to protecting the "fair use" aspect. Your claim that I advocate an "English wikipedia without biographies" is but a straw man distortion, fit enough, I suppose for a philosophy that would use living people's lives as fodder, defined in Webster's Ninth as "an often inferior person or thing that is used to supply a heavy demand (routine entertainment)". All this drama is about numbers: 50,000 this, 10,000 that. These are people's lives, and the focus should be on the people whose lives Wikipedia permits, even encourages, to be made as public as is currently possible, short of an ad on the Super Bowl telecast.

All of which takes me to Jorge Stolfi's careful and thoughtful response. There are two points on which I continue to disagree: first, the text that you find on a university's web site or even in a course calendar is not a reliable public document. The individuals vet what is presented there and do so specifically in the context of their professional positions. It is thus, "best foot forward" and may not always be exactly true. What is more important, though, is that there is no extended permission inherent in permitting one's "biography" to appear in a work-related publication that also permits its appearance in something as publicly accessible and essentially unprotected as Wikipedia.

And the second is that, while Wikipedia does try its best to repair or control the kind of vandalism that could be libellous, or is merely silly, these idiocies are noticed when they appear on the articles about public people (actors, reigning monarchs and the like) whose factual histories are both well-known and verifiable across a multitude of reliable sources. It is thus relatively easy to spot the trouble and to correct it. But what about that same university professor, the one who finds himself on Wikiedia for no reason other than that he has a job where he is required to present an potted history to impress potential students and investors? As long as he is on this site, he is fair game, just like the celebrities whose pages are watchlisted by hundreds. He may not even know Wikipedia is using his life to feed its obsession, until somebody notices on a mirror site that he has an ex-wife who was his agent and yet another wife of which he had no knowledge, none of which is apparently true and all of which is beginning to have ramiifications in his real life. (If you think this is far-fetched I refer you to this Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2010 February 1#editing erroneous info in my bio recent request. And this from a person who didn't mind the fact of his bio, just the details. All things considered, and presuming the facts he presented were true -something which WP still has not verified, as far as I can tell- he behaved very well.)

I continue to contest vigourously your contention that the notability rules do not protect individuals from vandalism. Of course they do; if the text is not on Wikipedia, it cannot be vandalized. And for many lives caught up in those "scare numbers" being tossed about, Wikipedia has no right to decide what is or isn't contentious in someone's life and, even more strongly, has no right to decide what otherwise private lives should be made public. I have no doubt at all that you will hear from those who want to be in WP; it's those who don't want to be in, and who do not otherwise live public lives, for whom I speak. Bielle (talk) 20:40, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Question is, who are public and who are not (keep or kill). Your point, as I can interprete it, is that "actors are public" and "professors are not" (sure, there are clear cases of the contrary, i.e. totally non-notable actors and absolutely notable Nobel prize winners, but they are a manageable minority). This is only one opinion. I would not even think of actors as public people in the sense of "public = having key biographic data verifiable through reliable sources". How come an actor's bio on his/her theatre or agent's site be any more public and notable than a professor's bio on a college website? Are bio strips in Entertainment Weekly more reliable than author data from Nature? No. I'd seriously discourage drawing the public/nobpublic line based on occupation or any other formality. If wikipedia believes the informal approach ("I know it when I see it") failed, then perhaps killing all is the only solution. NVO (talk) 03:41, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

True, not all actors are "public" and not all professors are "private". I agree that the personal or professional actors' websites and agent's promo are not reliable. I had no idea that we were using them as WP:RS when, by their very nature, they clearly are not. The test of "public" vs "private" would be the ability to locate WP:RS for each and every detail of the lives that we put into an article. If we cannot locate enough such sources then, by definition, the individuals are not sufficiently notable to be written up - are "private", if you like, and not "public". Writing up someone's life without such rigorous specific sourcing is unacceptable. We do not know, cannot know, what might be contentious, from a date of birth to a given name to the year of an achievemnt. If a statement doesn't have a specific source, it isn't included. And we shouldn't be writing up the article and then waiting to find the sources. These are real people's real lives. No BLP should be allowed to go "live" unless every single statement in it is properly sourced. Many of the articles would be short in the beginning, but quality matters more than quantity. Vandalism would be much harder to do and much easier to spot. An individual's right to privacy supersedes Wikipedia's greed for more and more. I suggest that the possibility of losing the interest of editors who, having spent hours producing material that does not meet such a standard, sulk when sources are required of them, is a small price to pay for respecting people's lives. Deleting even many thousands of articles about "notable" people is, in the long run (and WP is in it for the long run, is it not?) a good thing because the articles will come back, only this time, with sources. Bielle (talk) 06:03, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Foundations of any official proposal?

This is to the above section, but cleared out.

To me, a quick summary of things with the largest support and support margins brings me to something like these concepts in a final proposal and is me trying to add at least a flavor of all of the mass-supported statements or others with significant consensus. If this is up elsewhere, I don't know about it or it's at least not widely pointed at everywhere. This is not the deletion process proposal at WP:DUB that would specifically be detailing what is roughly the second through fourth her, but the larger community motion.

• Set a goal to fully clear the unreferenced BLP log, starting with the oldest.
• Have s "BLPPROD" system akin to our current PROD with the same fundamentals.
• Permit incubation with NOINDEX, and with good faith assumptions they won't sit forever.
• Contact article creators and/or primary contributors whenever possible with DASHBot's data mentioned by WereSpielChequers.
• Time given left open to repair articles, TBA. Either 'X' slowly per day/week, or larger groups over larger scopes per month.
• Make the process as transparent as possible and explain everything to the community so they understand we do not mean to belittle anyone's contributions.
• Encourage project heads to locate articles specifically relating to them for high participation. "Master lists" also publicly posted.
• Revising and update text and wording in various places. Likely a few new templates needed.
• Detail the policy to page creators, NPP and RCP. They're who we'll need to keep the log at zero in the future.

Ok. The last one is me, but this problem only ever started because the core was never cut off. It's possible to stop 100% of it at that level if we're wise. I'd also like to see the few loopholes that can get articles past the patrol requirement flag closed if possible. ♪ daTheisen(talk) 15:21, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

I think closing all loopholes isn't going to be easy, but that's a good suggestion - we should certainly be looking for them. Ones I can think of are:

1. Any autoreviewers or admins who are still creating unreferenced BLPs, as these largely bypass the newpage patrol process.
2. Newpage patrollers marking unreferenced BLPs as patrolled because they don't meet the speedy deletion criteria.
3. Editors turning redirects and other non-BLP articles into unreferenced BLPs.
4. Editors changing the subject of the article, - I think this is very rare, but they aren't always helpful enough to put "changing the person this is about" in the edit summary.

The first two of these we could partly address when and if we make the change to not allow new unreferenced BLPs to be created. It would be more than reasonable both to publicise that change widely, and after that change to trout and ultimately revoke rights for admins and autoreviewers who still create unreferenced BLPs. I'm not sure what would be the best way to deal with the other two examples, except perhaps if a program could be written to identify redirects being expanded into articles and treat them as new articles? ϢereSpielChequers 16:57, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Speaking of a "master list" of unreferenced BLPs for "special action," don't you think there are already deletion-happy zealots already quietly scouring Wikipedia for these articles -- covertly compiling their own "master lists" of articles to be eliminated once Arbcom gives the go-ahead for the "final solution," as it were. This whole process scares me. PeterbrownDancin (talk) 18:28, 6 February 2010 (UTC) -- Sockpuppet of banned user

Well there's already a master list so to speak, so I wouldn't worry too much about others being created. I think you're being altogether too alarmist (and the "final solution" language is more than a little offensive, not to mention that it proves Godwin's law pretty early in a discussion thread). Pretty much everyone who supported the outright deletions is fine with not doing that ever again so long as we develop a process to clear the backlog. Your assumption that these articles are going to be deleted en masse is simply not borne out by the facts, and indeed basically everyone is trying to avoid that which is largely the point of this entire discussion. --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 18:52, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

I've taken the opposite stance. I have progressively been going through the important people in my area of expertise, referencing and removing the "unreferenced BLP" marker. I'm well past 100 articles fixed. If other people would do the same in their areas of expertise, we'd cut down the number of unreferenced BLPs significantly. And some people are. I've watched the number of unreferenced BLP articles reduce by a couple thousand already. Of course, the method I have used for finding these candidates (lists that guarantee notability) have not shown one article that should be in danger of being deleted nor one that is hard to reference since there are parallel referencing sources naming these same people and their accomplishments. In other words, we are talking about killing the article because the editor who created the article didn't know how to include obvious references. In a sense, removing all the BLP flags is a bad thing, because stub articles now no longer have anything to draw attention to them and the longer articles have significantly more content that really should have supplementary referencing. However, the proposal makes merely having the flag place an article in jeopardy. So the flag must be removed or some (expletive deleted) administrator will delete the article and leave a residual notice that it had been deleted, which will make it that much harder for a legitimate article to be resurrected.Trackinfo (talk) 21:07, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

You're right that a number of people are doing as you are and referencing unreferenced BLPs. It's actually brought down the total of unreferenced articles by about 6,000 in the last 2 weeks or so (along with people removing tags where the article was referenced to begin with). But it's definitely not the case that all of these articles can be saved. I've only done about a quarter of the sourcing that you have, but I've already found several articles where the subject was simply not notable and/or where sourcing was essentially impossible. I think most of the articles can be sourced and saved (though one tricky problem is articles where the only sources are not in English, and there seem to be a number of those, and we won't always be able to find someone with the language skills to do the work), but there are also a number that really do need to be deleted because they never should have been created in the first place based even on our current notability guidelines. --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 22:47, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Notability standards, applied to BLPs or any other subject, are a different subject. Many people were supporting deleting an article simply because it was an unreferenced BLP, with no consideration to whether the information was valid or belonged here. What we should have been discussing is incorrect information, libelous information posted here in a BLP. None of the subjects I have dealt with are that prone to becoming libelous. I have included some things that might be considered negative, but I have carefully referenced them, usually with multiple references. And better yet, the other pieces of the puzzle fit. Is that now libelous, or closer to the truth?Trackinfo (talk) 06:03, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

What's going down?

"This has been one of the largest and most complex requests for comment within the community for some time...", apparently started by a group who wanted a certain outcome with the time to comment reduced by about 75% from the normal time judging from the frequent references to 30 days being the customary length for a request for comment. Is this factually incorrect? (Yes, I'm new enough this is a serious question.)

There's a lengthy official looking banner with statements that don't seem accurate or impartial to me. And the final sentence seems to be a disclaimer that this banner/proclamation isn't official. "There's something happening here, what it is ain't exactly clear..." Refrigerator Heaven (talk) 12:42, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

The problem here was that the discussion was pretty lengthy and becoming unparseable. So the RfC was paused not halted so that the basic positions could be summarised. The RfC will then proceed over at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Biographies of living people/Phase II in due course. It is through this mechanism that consensus can be achieved - otherwise we just have lots of disparate opinions and no agreement on anything Fritzpoll (talk) 13:26, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

As Fritzpoll states, this isn't an early close. The fact that this question seems to keep coming up (and being answered relatively satisfactorily by all accounts) would seem to indicate that even the talk page has begun to get too large to easily parse. -- Bfigura ^(talk) 22:14, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

I disagree with the closing opinion

The only result I feel that this RfC has achieved for me is that by expressing sincere skepticism towards the assumptions of this matter -- that "something must be done at any cost" -- I receive unhelpful comments like this and this on my User talk page. I guess that when it comes to certain issues on Wikipedia, holding a rational conversation to elicit opinions, educate each other & achieve a consensus is a waste of time, & the ends justify the means. -- llywrch (talk) 22:35, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

I regret to hear that you do not agree with my close, Llywrch. When I took on the task (one which nobody else seemed willing to attempt), I wasn't sure there was a consensus there. I was surprised myself at the strength of consensus for some variation of the BLP-PROD process; as I note in the close, for each of the views proposing something along this line, most of the opposes were related to the fine points specific to that view, and not to the overall concept. To paraphrase, "Oppose, no reason to shorten/lengthen PROD period, it should be 7 days" or variations thereof were much more common than "Oppose, prodding these articles is a terrible idea". This was clearly a (quite remarkable) discussion, despite the oppose/support headers, and pure head-counting doesn't work for genuine discussions. Nonetheless, I respect your opinion on this, and know that you speak in good faith. Risker (talk) 23:02, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm kind of puzzled by the close, mostly because I thought the "pause" was meant to rearrange and re-present ideas so discussion could continue further, rather than to declare a consensus already. Calliopejen1 (talk) 23:13, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Consensus can change, but the closure was a fair assessment of what consensus was evident during the course of the initial discussion. Consider it a primary... now we take the "winners" of the first discussion and consider which of them (independently or in concert) will best address the concerns of both sides, as well as what specific implementations will be acceptable to the greatest number of people.--Father Goose (talk) 23:56, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

I concur with Calliopejen1's comment. –Whitehorse1 06:56, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

First, Risker, let me state that I believe you acted in good faith in closing this RfC, & sincerely felt this discussion had run its course. Further, I believe that no one on Wikipedia doubts that something needs to be done to add references to these articles; no one wants slander or negative information on living people in Wikipedia. Where the consensus breaks down is over using PROD as a stick to get this "something" done. Many people who contribute to Wikipedia do so in an area which interests them; they are "scratching their own itch." To refer to an old Wikipedia adage, the editor who contributes great amounts of energy & content on Pokemon articles will not necessarily contribute the same energy towards fixing biographical articles on living people which lack sources. Another caveat here is that we have a group of Admins eager to immediately delete these articles on the slightest pretexts, whether or not common sense dictates we have some article, sourced or not, about the indivduals. Look at the list Okip compiled below: we have articles on leaders of countries being deleted. (On the other hand, personally I could care less about unsourced articles on random gay porn stars or net.personalities -- & all of them can be deleted today.) In the cases of clearly notable individuals, a better response should have been, at most, turning these articles into stubs. (Making them a priority for sourcing would have been the best solution; but to prioritize them requires a human to actually read the articles, not use a bot.) The question of how to handle this matter brings me to my last -- & perhaps most important point: this was not a poll on what to do, but a discussion over the problem. I will repeat my earlier objections: no one has provided a convincing argument that having biographical articles on living people is causing any harm, let alone unsourced ones; no one has provided a convincing argument that this is an urgent matter that needs to be acted on; & all of the responses were meant to be exactly that -- responses, not actions we need to take right now. Which is why, I suspect, Jehochman's proposal attracted so much support: that if something needs to be done, his proposal was as good as anyone's. -- llywrch (talk) 22:15, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't think it's fair to declare consensus at this point for a specific approach. We do have some opinions and proposals that are beginning to take shape. It is the final proposal that will need consensus. For now it's helpful to narrow and guide the discussion and set a path to get there. It seems likely that to gain acceptance a proposal will have to set out an orderly process to clean up the backlog of unsourced older BLP articles by tagging them and, if not brought up to some reasonable sourcing standards, deleting them at a scheduled, measured rate with some firm or target deadline for getting the entire task done in the scale of months, not years. There seems to be a consensus against, or at least no consensus for, tagging or deleting of old articles at a large-scale ad-hoc basis, except for things like attack pages, copyvios, speedy candidates, etc, which are not affected by this process. I think there is also some approval voiced for more aggressive policing of newer BLP articles. - Wikidemon (talk) 00:07, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Actually, I think what I say above is consistent with the long version of the closing comments - good job! - Wikidemon (talk) 00:20, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Assuming we are going around at least once more, I thought Risker did a good job on the summary too. I hope we can find a better term than "aggressive" for managing newborn/infant BLPs though—that sounds like sentencing newbies to death for their first offense. We want to attract and develop authors who reference new articles properly, and we don't want to feather-bed "drive-by" contributors who leave others to do sourcing for them. What's the right term for that stance? - Pointillist (talk) 00:42, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Carrotstickism.--Father Goose (talk) 01:08, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Have you got a RS for that...? - Pointillist (talk) 22:33, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm sure my friend Abraham Lincoln would be willing to back me up on that.--Father Goose (talk) 08:28, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

The pause tag stated:

This RfC is currently paused so that the proposals enumerated here can be summarized and sorted by an uninvolved admin, so that the community may comment with greater ease on the different types/themes of proposals suggested here. (As opposed to the current grouping by author).

The last edit on this page states: "closing of RFC"[15]... Okip (formerly Ikip) 07:29, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

I thought the close tracked pretty well with the table. There were a bunch of "no change"s that were supported, plus Jechochmen's idea. We should do a runoff between Jechochmen's and I guess DGG's, since they were the ones with a lot of support, and the highest percentage of support. The one issue with the close I guess, is that it seems to presuppose that change is required, possibly because of what arbcom said (and then clarified, and then...). - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 09:15, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Badly tagged unreferenced BLPs

Digging through all of these unreferenced BLPs, I have noticed about 30% of these BLPs already have references in them, using the <references/> tag. Whether these references were added after the BLP tag was added, I do not know.

I could create a study exactly how many of these BLPs actually have tags, if I thought it would change the alarmist position of those who want drastic changes, but I don't think it would. Okip (formerly Ikip) 02:19, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

I checked 50 at random today, and found that 20% were incorrectly tagged. Most of those had sources added after the tag, but the tag was left in place. Kevin (talk) 02:33, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Okay, so many are sources added after the tag, is it possible to have a bot remove these tags? It would be nice to have a accurate number of unreferenced BLPs. The number will still be large, just less large :) 20% less of 45,518 is 36,415, still a huge number...sigh...Okip (formerly Ikip) 03:29, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

No, no bot can do this. While many are indeed incorrectly tagged (at the time of tagging, or now), their are a fair number of articles that use the ref tag but don't have actual references, just some footnote without any source. Many also have empty references section, but have the reflist or references template in place. Just like no bot should delete pages, no bot should remove the tag either. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fram (talk • contribs)

It couldn't be done automatically, but a bot could draw up a list of articles that have refs containing external links, those that have a populated References section without inline citations, and those containing external links of any sort.--Father Goose (talk) 08:25, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

The articles which were deleted which led to the creation of this RFC

WP:ARS/BLP shows the quality of some of the articles which were deleted without process which led to this RFC:

Deleted by User:Rdm2376:

1. A president of Bangladesh
2. Acting Prime Minister of South Korea twice
3. Deputy prime minister from 1992 until 1996 the Executive Secretary of the Commonwealth of Independent States from April 1999 until June 2004

Deleted by User:Scott MacDonald:

1. Emmy winner
2. Grammy Award-winning American record producer
3. editor-in-chief of The Village Voice, credited for coining the term Brat Pack
4. Polish general, Chief of the General Staff of the Polish Army
5. United States Ambassador to South Africa during the Reagan administration
6. College football coach at DePauw University ,Penn ,Rice, and Temple
7. Film was submitted to the foreign films category in the 67th Academy Awards, the first submission from Guatemala
8. Author who created Where's Wally?, known as Where's Waldo in the USA and Canada
9. The Doobie Brothers member
10. Heavy metal drummer who played in the original versions of heavy metal bands Guns N' Roses and L.A. Guns
11. American climate scientist
12. Two-time World Champion in the Supersport World Championship in 2005 and 2006
13. Canadian ski jumper won a Ski jumping World Cup event at the age of 15 in 1980

User:Lar deleted:

1. Bosnia and Herzegovina Prime minister in 1996-1997
2. Prime Minister of Kyrgyzstan (briefly)
3. three-time Grammy nominee
4. Chief Secretary of the Cayman Islands
5. Lead creative developer for several Sega Arcade games such as: Altered Beast ,Golden Axe ,Wing War, Die Hard Arcade,Dynamite Cop, and Alien Front Online just closed keep.

Caveat I cannot fully vouch for the claims of these articles, as I was not the editor to source them. Okip (formerly Ikip) 02:19, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

yeah for actual facts about what is out there in these deleted articles! Looks notable.--Mdukas (talk) 05:57, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

• Hm, now imagine if it was a newbie editor who had blanked all those articles without asking... 8-/
  All the best (I hope, someday), --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 10:22, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Biographies of living people/Phase II

Can we move Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Biographies of living people/Phase II to this page, so the 450+ editors who have this page watched can have the conversation watch listed?

The original we can move to Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Biographies of living people/original

Thanks. Okip (formerly Ikip) 07:09, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Okay, we have two RFCs here, Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Biographies of living people/Content and Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Biographies of living people/Phase II, both which are split offs from this RFC, can we do one of the following:

1. Move the newer RFC to this page, archiving this old RFC, as described above.
2. In the alternative:

1. Make a notice at the very top of this page about Phase II, not buried in the text. Also mention the Content RFC?
2. Contact all of the editors who participated in phase I, but who have not participated in phase II yet.

Thank you. Okip (the new and improved Ikip) 15:17, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

third inquiry, can this be moved please, where can I ask for this to be moved? Okip (formerly Ikip) 17:27, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

fourth inquiry, I will now ask Risker to do this. Okip (formerly Ikip) 11:53, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Have you not yet figured out that noone is interested in moving these pages except for you? Kevin (talk) 06:57, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Link PROD

Can someone please link the first instances of "PROD" and "BLP" in the summary? Or at least make it explicit what the abbreviated jargon means with parentheses or something. I know BLP muself, but despite being active for over five years and participating in plenty of deletion discussions I had never seen PROD before I read this.

Peter ^Isotalo 08:10, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

When you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail

Over the past week, I have sourced around 200 unreferenced biographies of living people (BLPs), some important observations:

1. Everyone of these BLPs were legitimate
2. Everyone of these BLPs were clearly done in good faith.
3. All but one fact stated that I checked was correct. (the one minor exception was one person was a board member, not a director)
4. Two of these were clearly un-notable BLPs, and I put these up for speedy deletion.

These 200 articles I reviewed were legitimate articles because the 45,000 unreferenced BLP articles have to get through several steps of review. First they had to survive New Page Patrol, which gets rid of most of the hoaxes, then they had to be reviewed and tagged by an editor as an unreferenced BLP.

Editors are suggesting deleting tens of thousands of articles for the infinitesimally small handful of BLP violations. It seems that many editors, Jimbo Wales included have forgotten that the vast majority of edits are from good faith editors, who come here to build an encyclopedia, and without them, Wikipedia would never had been the success that it is today. Calling other editors good faith, beneficial contributions "sewers" and deleting articles on Emmy winners, Grammy winners, and prime minsters for the one article in maybe thousands that is libelous is the wrong way of handling this.

The deletion of thousands of unreferenced BLPs no way assures that the articles with references do not have libelous information in them. This suggested purge of 45,000 articles seems to have more to do with verifiability that the person exists and is notable enough to have something written about them, then about libel. As I trudged through these 200 articles, I realized that an editor can simply add one reference that the person exists, without checking the rest of the facts in the article, and suddenly the article falls off of the unreferenced BLP radar.

Okip (the new and improved Ikip) 12:46, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

In normal Anglophone commercial contexts and law the "board" is the Board of Directors, and to be a "board member" is to be a director, and vice versa. So I'm dubious that was a mistake, FWIW. Johnbod (talk) 14:28, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Your broad point that this is but one part of the problem is common ground with many of the BLP hardliners. I hope there will be more RfCs in due course on how to better protect other categories of BLP. This is "one bite of the elephant", as it were Fritzpoll (talk) 15:31, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Most articles are not "reviewed" before being tagged as an unsourced BLP, they are only reviewed as being a) about a (possibly) living person and b) unsourced. No check whether these were "legitimate" articles is done in general. Looking at how many of the articles I tagged as unsourced BLP have since been deleted through regular prod or AfD, plus those that have been deleted as G10 pages, I don't think claiming that there are only an "infinitesimal small handful of BLP violations" is correct. Fram (talk) 15:43, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Fram, in your searching of BLPs, name the BLP violation you personally have found? Okip (the new and improved Ikip) 08:12, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

An article identifying a government worker with a travestite performer? Deleted after an AfD, where there was evidence found that the stage name is in use by a performer, but not that she was notable nor (worse) that she and the govenrment worker were the same? A 2006 article claiming that someone was "sentenced in January 2004 to 14 months imprisonment for attacking a man" and that he was a "violent thug"? An article on a 10 year old obviously non notable footballer (respect for privacy of children? No way...). An unsourced 2006 article about a female Auschwitz camp guard, tagged as unrefed since April 2008? A single sourced article about "a convicted Australian child sex offender", where the source, mako.org.au, is clearly unreliable? Another unsourced article, this one from 2004, about a female Ravensbruck and Buchenwald camp guard? A 2005 article, tagged as unsourced BLP from August 2009 on, about a person, "now a fugitive from justice"? Just look in my deletion log at the G10 deletions if you want to check that I'm not making these up. You'll understand that I'll not give the names of these articles here though, I'm not going to add another BLPviolation to the long list of dreadful articles we had here for years... Fram (talk) 09:24, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Also, 200/45000 = ~0.4%. Not sure we can make any statistical assertion from such a small sample size Fritzpoll (talk) 16:03, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

I firmly believe, based on past experience, that there is no number of analyzed BLPs which would satisfy certain editors. I would happily do a statistical sampling if I thought it would influence these editors, but I am certain it would not. Okip (the new and improved Ikip) 08:12, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

I will chime in my experience. I have taken a different approximately 150 different BLPs in different subject matter and have added references to them. I have seen the same trend. There might have been a couple of fluff articles of lesser significant players, but I saw zero fraudulent articles, nothing libelous that was not referenced, or reference-able and I was able to easily find references for every article. I generally stayed in my field of expertise, so most of these people were automatically notable--Olympic Medalists, World Record Holders, World Champions. I am offended that the articles on these significant people are being placed in jeopardy by a mindless group of people who wish to simply delete anything that has had an unreferenced BLP tag hung on it for any period of time. As I have said before, even those tags are in error. Many have been placed by BOTS. Some were on articles that were already heavily referenced. Many of those heavily referenced articles had minor formatting issues, putting references under "Notes" "Sources" "External Links" or simply in line. And all too frequently the BOT tagged DEAD PEOPLE as BLPs. Too many of those articles were short stubs that could each be expanded. The short notes about a person's prime notable feature did not explain the expanse of a lifetime of significance. I could have written three paragraphs about a lot of them. Frankly doing that many sourcing jobs JUST TO KEEP THOSE ARTICLES OFF THE POTENTIAL DELETE LIST, I didn't have time to do justice to most of them. An example: Diane Dixon was a single unreferenced sentence before I started this. Just in my domain, its going to be a massive job to bring articles up to the quality they deserve. Removing those prods, might save the articles, but there is now nothing to call attention to them for future editors to add to them. We on wikipedia have to depend on the randomness of which articles an editor wants to devote the time to improve. But they won't get improved at all if they are deleted and are put on a list for future speedy deletion if they are recreated. All that is completely counter-productive to the efforts to make wikipedia the definitive worldwide encyclopedia.Trackinfo (talk) 18:33, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Nice work guys. That being said, I've come to the conclusion that the main actors in this little drama are simply trolls, and so all of us continuing to give them this much attention for their disruptive activities is simply feeding the problem rather then resolving anything. The fact that they're all "Admins", and that one of them is a "Steward", really says a lot about the failings of self-selection and the abusiveness that the lack of any form of oversight can lead to, but they have free reign because we've given it to them. I've come to the unfortunate conclusion that it's probably best to simply ignore them, and let them go hog wild at damaging the content we've collectively built up. Eventually they'll step on enough toes that we might be able to get some real reform around here, and then maybe we could prevent people from abusing their privileges in the future.
— V = I * R (Talk • Contribs) 18:52, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Did you just call several admins (including one steward) "trolls" in a discussion about the good faith of contributors? Perhaps you'd consider rephrasing those remarks. Feel free to remove this comment if you do. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 19:02, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

For the record, admins and stewards are no more immune to criticism than the average editor. Nor does being an admin or steward give one's editorial judgment more weight or credibility (other than the assumption of experience) than that of an editor. I'd say that if an admin can openly hold community consensus in "utter contempt", then an editor is fine to extend the same good faith (or lack thereof) to admins. -M.Nelson (talk) 21:53, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

I have no qualms about criticizing admins but, in my experience, calling people names doesn't tend to sway them over to your position. It was the specific use of the "troll" that I thought should be refactored. I think some people would view that as a personal attack. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 22:16, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

To toss in my 2 cents: I've done several hundred of these and this is my experience as well. The vast majority of these articles are about notable people. I haven't yet come across any libel. I've removed a few unsourced claims that had old fact tags, but even then the claims weren't particularly damaging if they were false. It seems that these 54,000 articles were no more or less likely than any other article to have problems, and that the entire effort is not even a particularly good allocation of resources. The correlation between "libelous statements" and "unsourced BLPs" seems to not exist at all. Gigs (talk) 19:55, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

A) The info on 200 BLP articles is useful info, it may be a small % of the 50,000, but 200 is still a large number; and this account is consistent to other similar reports. B) The deletionists have not offered statistics or evidence, beyond a count of the 50,000 as a number of tags but they do not claim to have actually looked at 50,000 articles. C) Trackinfo said: "We on wikipedia have to depend on the randomness of which articles an editor wants to devote the time to improve." What if we create a class of article below stub, ("pre-PROD) that would show up on the project assessment stats and then ask the Projects to systematically work through them. And we could certainly work on assigning the 50k to projects, if they are not already. --Mdukas (talk) 20:05, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

I will point out that what once was well over 50K in the "Category:All unreferenced BLPs" is now under 45K due to (I assume) other editors rapidly trying to save articles from deletion.Trackinfo (talk) 20:27, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

I wouldn't call it "trying to save articles" really. I've been working through the backlog and have tagged several for PROD or AfD if they were clearly non-notable. Working to clear the backlog makes any talk about involuntary mass prodding moot. Gigs (talk) 22:47, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

They are no longer unsourced, because Ikip sourced them. Deletion of an existing article simply because it's unsourced isn't supported by consensus, anyway. There's probably a rough consensus to have some deletion process for new unsourced articles though. You might want to get a little more experience under your belt before jumping straight into subtle policy debates. Gigs (talk) 22:47, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

How do you know they're unsourced? Quite obviously someone else, not you, not Ikip, will delete it, so your or Ikip's opinion doesn't matter. "They" will tell the world "It's unsourced" through pressing the button. NVO (talk) 03:45, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Since we're all "chiming in" with our "experiences", I'll join the party. I currently have a list of 242 formerly-unsourced BLPs that I'm working on in some way. Of these, I tagged 171 with PROD tags, meaning that I found that 71 of the articles were already sourced in some manner. Of these 171, I've analyzed he results of 89 of them. Of these 89, 59 are now properly-sourced. The other 30 have been either deleted (whether speedily, through PROD, or at AFD) or redirected to a notable parent article. That hardly supports the odd claims that an "infinitesimal" number of the unsourced BLPs are problematic. Scottaka UnitAnode 04:12, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

UnitAnode of those 171 which you prodded (ignoring WP:BEFORE I assume?), and of the 30 you helped delete, How many had libelous claims in them? I would be willing to bet zero. Unsourced is not a synonym for problematic. Unverifiable and unnotable is not synonymous with libelous. Thank you for sharing your experiences, because you experience, on so many levels, strongly verifies everything that I say above. If we want to frame this discussion as purging wikipedia of unreferenced articles, I will accept that rational, but lets please drop all pretext that this is the best solution to stopping libel. Okip (the new and improved Ikip) 08:18, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

First, you should change your sig: there's nothing "new and improved" about this version of you. Meet the new Ikip, same as the old Ikip. Second, who knows what was in those articles that was potentially libelous? They were unsourced! Meaning, it's impossible to tell what could have been "potentially libelous." And apart from that, the "potentially libelous" canard is nothing more than a ploy (as is citing BEFORE, which is neither policy nor guideline) of folks like you who are intent on claiming that this isn't really a big problem. A BLP without sources is contentious by definition. Adding trivial sources to such BLPs (i.e. sources that only mention the subject in passing, or that are no more than a confirmation that the person exists) makes the problem worse, not better. It's my experience that a significant minority of those who are "sourcing" these BLPs are doing only that. And they're not even bothering to stub them down to what is actually sourced afterwards. Let me reiterate, this makes the problem worse, not better. Scottaka UnitAnode 13:16, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

So, you found no libel in the 171 articles you attempted to delete. The "problem" you describe is a small infinitesimal exception. It is very important to keep that in mind. Your attempted deletion of 171 only strengthened that point. Can we both agree at least that the overwhelming majority of editors are good faith contributors? Okip (formerly Ikip) 17:08, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I'll type this one more time for you: THERE IS NO WAY TO EVEN KNOW WHAT MIGHT BE POTENTIAL LIBEL IN AN ARTICLE THAT IS UNSOURCED!!! Good god, Ikip/Okip, why is that so damn hard to understand? Unless they're sourced, we have no idea what material might end up being problematic. And the fact that 36 of the 89 I've examined thus far were deleted, and another 4 redirected lets us all see without doubt that the problem is not "infinitesimal." Please stop assaulting the corpse of that non-living equine. Scottaka UnitAnode 05:00, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Did you come up with stats or reasons that unrefed BLPs have more libel? I haven't heard much so far, but I may missed it. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 07:00, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

It proves nothing other than that the deletions were successful. A hit rate of 39 / 171 is extremely poor - you would do just as well nominating articles completely at random, which is not far from what this was. Having read many of these articles I see no indication that any of them were problematic from a BLP or libel perspective. Speculating that they are a problem because we don't know where problems may lie is beside the point, and no excess of repetition and markup excess can change that. It's very easy to evaluate an unsourced article and assess which claims are verifiable or not, and which are contentious or not. The likelihood that a statement like "so-and-so was born in Chicago" is libelous is about the same chance that it will trigger a mudslide. That's not to say that anything should remain unsourced, of course. I think everyone around here can agree that we will go on a program of either sourcing or deleting this group of articles, and if we do it carefully the encyclopedia will be the better for it. - Wikidemon (talk) 13:06, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

"Problematic" can refer to two things: non-notable bios, and inaccurate and/or libelous bios. The fact that they've been prodded doesn't necessarily mean they were either libelous or even non-notable -- even going to AfD doesn't necessarily mean that, since I believe some admins are now closing AfDs as 'delete' solely on the basis of the article being an unreferenced BLP. Turning an article into a redirect also doesn't signify that the content was libelous or non-notable -- it just signifies that you thought it was non-notable. So the evidence you present doesn't really tell me anything either.--Father Goose (talk) 05:15, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Exactly, this is precisely the crucial point. Unitanode is so concerned about contentious info, but cannot provide any evidence that it is a problem, and confuses the whole issue with notability. Notability has never been, and never should be, a legit reason for speedy deletion of the type that Unitanode favors. I have just been involved with Delicious carbuncle because he located a BLP problem in a sourced statement - there are problems with BLPs, but no evidence has been presented to suggest that unreferenced BLPs should be particularly vulnerable. To Ohm's law: If you define a troll as somebody who deliberately disrupts Wikipedia in a manner that causes large-scale animosity, abyss-deep rifts in the community, spurs bitterness, trench-digging and us-and-them mentality, just about everything that contradicts the Wiki-love thing I once heard - well, IMO, it passes the duck test. Predictably, it will lead to an exodus, editors voting with their feet, it has certainly crossed my mind lately. Power.corrupts (talk) 10:32, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

I think the whole shenanigans has led to an increase in collaborative editing overall, despite the outbreaks of chest-beating, torch-and-pitchork brandishing, and various calls of "woe unto the world" and "we're all doomed". Progress is being made; that's a Good Thing™   pablo_hablo.

A BLP without sources is contentious by definition So why are we wasting our time with this debate? Welcome to Vogonpedia...

how long would it take for one person to delete all 60,000 articles: It would take just as long as deleting 60,000 random articles. And it would have practically the same effect.

All the best (however slight the hope), --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 17:05, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

PS: an increase in collaborative editing overall: because a few editors have stopped contributing contents in a desperate attempt to save thousands of good articles from destruction? By that reasoning, the Haiti quake must be called a blessing... --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 17:13, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

There's that hyperbole and breast-beating again, Jorge. Easy with the Haiti comparisons unless you want an updated version of Godwin's Law named after you; those people are suffering in Real Life™ and probably do not think about Wikipedia too much from one day to the next.
Yes, there is an increase in collaborative editing; many wikiprojects have kicked into gear over this to vet the pages which fly under their banner. That's a good thing. Also, some unreferenced articles have been referenced. That's a good thing. Some unreferenced articles have been deleted. That's a good thing. What exactly is the downside?   pablo_hablo. 00:03, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

The downside is that people are doing less of other things, and they are distracted by all this drama. Do you really think this is all new editor time being devoted to this? Maybe this is your priority, but it isn't everyone's. To the extent that people are pressured to do things they don't like, they burn out. Calliopejen1 (talk) 00:08, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Earlier I put forth an article that I discovered and fixed: Diane Dixon. Excuse me if I get sarcastic. It was one of 50,000 unreferenced articles, so they all deserve to be deleted, right? How about opening the article and looking at it: a one line article that has been on WP since 2007, repeatedly vandalized by IP addresses mentioning what an abusive teacher she now is, tagged by a BOT as unreferenced. Obvious delete, before WP might be guilty of libel. The one line claims she won an Olympic Medal. Delete it, of course. We all know every Olympic medalist already has a perfect article on WP, so this must be a fraud. But I persist and actually google the name, or the event this claims she won. Sure I get a bunch of hits, but its a common sounding name. Must be an error, so lets go ahead and delete the article. No need to even nominate it for deletion. But I went ahead and looked at the sources, common sports reference books, sites hosted by the governing bodies. Obviously inside information and not usable as a reference. Lets delete it. Gee, this stuff says she won two Olympic medals, four more at the World Championships, and eleven individual U.S. National Championships--ten of them consecutively. Nothing substantial here. She is obviously not notable, forget the AFD, this has to be deleted. Do any of the people pushing for mass deletion understand what we are talking about?

The point I am making is each of these 50,000 (or now, less) articles needs to be addressed as an individual. Maybe in that pile of articles, you will find a few that are not notable, libelous, erroneous or contentious. Send them through the AFD process instead of wasting time trying to delete Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of The Simpsons couch gags (2nd nomination). MOST of these BLPs are legitimate articles that are simply incomplete. When you let the world edit this stuff, the quality of your editors may vary. They may not know how to reference things, or maybe they were in a hurry trying to post lists of information in the form of quick, incomplete templates. This article has been around for the better part of 3 years with no attack. It certainly could have been made better, which I did, but it still can be improved, as can most articles on WP. Who is going to take the time? Leave the stuff up there to give it a chance. Multiply by 50,000.Trackinfo (talk) 18:01, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

That be this Diane Dixon? Delicious carbuncle (talk) 18:38, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Hey, look at that. 15 years after her running career, she is still notable and there is more to write about her. And to think, this could have been deleted as an unreferenced BLP. Edit away.Trackinfo (talk) 19:22, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

My experience is very similar to Okip's. I haven't keep strict totals, but I suspect I've added references to three thousand-plus articles since I recognized the amount of unreferenced football player biographies back in November or December 2008. I've found plenty that were non-notables that I've PRODed (easily 100-200) or sent to AfD (maybe 25). A few that I thought were non-notable, actually were and another editor came in to provide sourcing (oops!). Out of this population of biographies, only a few had controversial statements (usually blatant vandalism like "John Doe is a ___er"). I think there were no more than 5-10 which had a plausible but unsourced negative statement (like claiming someone committed a crime or intentionally hurt another player). There were more hoaxes (more than 20 but less than 50) which were easy to invalidate. Overall, these unreferenced biographies about footballers were low quality, but not harmful to anyone. Jogurney (talk) 20:03, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

So this is the solution which the majority of the arbitration committee, veteran editors, and Jimmy Wales will push through: The deletion of 2990 articles, representing the edits of thousands of editors, for those 10 negative statements. For every 1 negative statement, 300 articles must be deleted.

There are viable collaborative cooperative solutions which editors have unfortunately failed to consider. Viable, peaceful, alternatives were never fostered. Okip (formerly Ikip) 23:59, 12 February 2010 (UTC) (refactored) Okip (formerly Ikip) 09:59, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

When such piss-poor articles sit around for several years, I do not begrudge anyone who expresses contempt for for the consensus and process that let them languish in the first place. This is precisely what WP:IAR was intended for; if bureaucracy impedes your improvement of the project, fuck it. Tarc (talk) 00:14, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

WP:IAR was not intended to allow a small group of users to take ownership of the project and impose their own personal policy upon everyone else. The fact that so many people view these actions as harmful to the project should make it obvious that IAR was badly misapplied. Resolute 00:40, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

I've done about 10 unrefed BLP articles. I think 2 were non-notable. I redirected one of them to her band's article, and the other I'm still thinking about. The other 8 were easily confirmed as notable with a google news archive search. About five of them were people that everyone would agree is someone who should have an aricle, no controversy. I can give you names, but one was Jerome Kersey (long time NBA player), who probably has 10,000+ articles that mention him. Another was a co-inventor of the artificial heart. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 03:31, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Predictions on how this RFC will close?

Predictions? I have my own predictions forming, but I would like to hear others ideas first.

Planning for the future end results will help plan, prepare for and possibly try to avoid a highly unpopular closing. Okip (formerly Ikip) 17:17, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

This RFC will end in rancor and acrimony. Perhaps the RFC will end when AARBCOM unilaterally shuts it down and quashes debate. Probably over half of those who took part here will be left with feelings of disgust and utter hopelessness. The predicted close result: Delete all 60,000 unreferenced BLPS at once, just as Mick MacAnee did. PeterbrownDancin (talk) 22:05, 12 February 2010 (UTC) -- Sockpuppet of banned user

I'm hopeful of an orderly solution coming from this, that results in a cultural change toward the unacceptability of unsourced BLPs, and a clear backlog in 6 months or so. It would be a poor result to have to go back to the method that started all this. Kevin (talk) 22:35, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

The dangerous precedents set in this Request for Comment

Terminology:

"Flagged Revisions" is setting an article that when a user viewed the article, they would see not the most recent edits to the article, but instead an older version of the article that had been tagged as a clean or "sighted" version. Established Wikipedia editors might be granted rights (possibly automatically) that would let them review page revisions and determine whether the flag on an article should be reset to a more recent version.

Incident	"New" precedent*
"Flagged Revisions" received a 60% to 40% approval. Many procedures do not get passed with such a ratio. For example, administers must almost always get 70-75% or higher to become administrators. Despite this, Mr. Jim Wales, founder of Wikipedia, by fiat decreed that "Flagged Revisions" was going to be new Wikipedia policy.	While Mr. Wales ruling by fiat is not new, and he reserves this right. This fiat shows the level of support for "flagged revisions".
Scott MacDonald, frustrated that the flagged revision decree is not starting quickly enough, starts a petition, calling Biography of Living people articles "sewers". Scott MacDonald and his supporters refuse to allow dissent or opposing opinion on this petition. When later petitions develop attempting similar one sided debate, anger erupts.	The idea of "petitions" is started, where only one side of the debate is allowed to discuss the argument.
Scott Macdonald, Lar, and Kevin* delete around 300 articles out of process. Many of the articles are extremely notable... is blocked three times, leading to an arbitration.	Any good faith editors contributions can be deleted out of process.
The arbitration committee decrees amnesty to Scott Macdonald, Lar, and Kevin.	Amnesty is introduced to editors who clearly broke many existing rules.
Scott Macdonald states he has "utter contempt" for "community consensus". He is later thanked by Mr. Jim Wales. In a later request for clarification, Mr. Jim Wales defends his decision to thank Scott MacDonald.	Mr. Wales gives support to an administrator who has "utter contempt" for "community consensus".
MZMcBride just lost his administrator privileges, partly because he had a blocked user conduct a biography of living persons breaching experiment, discussed on his "secret mailing list". This secret mailing list was "dedicated to tightening up BLP practices". MZMcBride created this RFC. Because of the nature of this "secret mailing list", there is no way to prove who was involved, but it is a valid assumption based on what the community does know, that this "secret mailing list" influenced this Request for comment.*	An administrator in arbitration, running a known "secret mailing list" to manipulate a certain policy starts a request for comment.
Many RFCs of this magnitude, which will change so much, are based on a simple support or oppose !vote, such as flagged revisions.	90 plus sections can decide community consensus.
Collapsed comment sections are introduced.*	Collapsed comment sections are introduced.*
Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Biographies of living people is broken up into three phases, with the understanding that the second phase will be a summary, instead the closing administrator decrees consensus, and only one position is advocated.	"Phased Requests for comment" is introduced. In which in the second phase, consensus is decreed and only one position is advocated, and all other positions are marginalized.

The reason there has been such blowback and opposition to these proposals is:

1. There simply is not wide-community support for these proposals.
2. The veteran editors who are the strongest advocates of these proposals have "utter contempt" for "community consensus" The most vocal editor is a desysoped administrators who enlisted banned users to conduct breaching experiments and use secret mailing lists to manipulate policy.
3. The new rules advocated go against the very core philosophies of what most Wikipedians see Wikipedia as.

Is it any wonder why flagged revisions and this proposal is receiving such strong opposition? The very editors who will enforce these policies have absolutely no respect for our existing policies. In a word: the community does not trust these editors to be impartial and fair, why? Simply because they have a track record of being impartial and manipulative, with a complete "utter contempt" for "community consensus".

The precedent set here goes way beyond this Request for comment. Are we, as a community, going to reward secret mailing lists, "utter contempt" for "community consensus", and give amnesty to editors whose position we support? Are we as a community going to push through unpopular proposals by deceptive means (phased request for comment, petitions)?

The behavior of those who are supposed to be our most trusted editors, truly shocks the conscience. Okip (formerly Ikip) 04:22, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

• Your "conscience" is easily "shocked." Scott aka UnitAnode 04:40, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

• An administrator in arbitration, running a known "secret mailing list" to manipulate a certain policy starts a request for comment. How is that a precedent of anything? Should being at arbitration mean that you're forbidden from starting an RFC?
• 90 plus sections can decide community consensus. - So... what? If a discussion becomes very long, it becomes worthless or something? It used to be that people favored extended discussions over plain votes.
• Collapsed comment sections are introduced - Oh no! People tried to make a gigantic page easier to read. This is not new, or at the very least, not dangerous.
• only one position is advocated - Yes, because simply starting all the discussions over again would have been so productive. I fail to see how that isn't significantly different from any other targeted RFC, except that we're calling it "Phase 2" instead of starting a new RFC. Nothing is stopping people from starting their own RFC if they disagree with this one.

Many of your comments in this section are bordering on personal attacks (comment on content, not contributors). If you are unable to separate people from ideas, I suggest you not continue commenting here, as your attitude is not much better than what you attribute to the people you decry. Mr. Z-man 05:39, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Mr. Z-man weren't you the editor who removed other editors opposing comments in the petition which called 17,500 editors contributions "sewers" along with Scott MacDonald?

RE: MZMcBride has a secret mailing list dedicated to "dedicated to tightening up BLP practices", the very subject of this RFC. The off-wiki canvassing is the unprecedented effect.

• Collapsed comment sections are introduced there is nothing inherently bad with this, I thought I would just throw that in, as it is unique. Note my hidden original comment: "I have no comment whether this is a positive step"
• I am glad that we both agree that only "one position was advocated" in phase 2. Okip 11:41, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, begin your reply with an attempt to discredit me via guilt by association before you even begin to discuss the actual substance of my comments. Thank you very much for proving my point. And no, I did not remove any comments, so your statement is also a lie. At most, all I did was rename a section header or 2 from "Oppose" to "Discussion" because as evil as you think Scott is, petitions don't have oppose sections. I was not doing it for some nefarious purpose but simply to keep the page consistent with what a petition actually is. I'm not aware of any comments being removed entirely. I think any comments that did get removed from the petition were put on the talk page. If you seriously think that this is the first time off-wiki canvassing has been used to influence an on-wiki discussion or that anything MZM may have done (given that the Arb case findings make no mention of a "mailing list", this seems to be more allegation than fact) would have had a noticeable impact on a discussion that included nearly 500 users, you are seriously deluding yourself. I note you also make no mention of the "invitation only" project that you created to attempt to influence the RFC. If you want people to agree with you, I would strongly suggest that you drop the attacks and character assassination of everyone you disagree with. Try making reasoned arguments instead. Its almost impossible to carry on a conversation with you, let alone give any serious consideration to your points. Mr.Z-man 19:15, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

About libel

I'm copying this paragraph from the "Hammer" section above:

Okay, I'll type this one more time for you: THERE IS NO WAY TO EVEN KNOW WHAT MIGHT BE POTENTIAL LIBEL IN AN ARTICLE THAT IS UNSOURCED!!! Good god, Ikip/Okip, why is that so damn hard to understand? Unless they're sourced, we have no idea what material might end up being problematic. And the fact that 36 of the 89 I've examined thus far were deleted, and another 4 redirected lets us all see without doubt that the problem is not "infinitesimal." Please stop assaulting the corpse of that non-living equine.

Scottaka UnitAnode 05:00, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

That is quite incorrect, whether you consult with the best lawyer or just a handy dictionary.

Here's a definition of libel:

• "1 a : a written statement in which a plaintiff in certain courts sets forth the cause of action or the relief sought b archaic : a handbill especially attacking or defaming someone
• "2 a : a written or oral defamatory statement or representation that conveys an unjustly unfavorable impression b (1) : a statement or representation published without just cause and tending to expose another to public contempt (2) : defamation of a person by written or representational means (3) : the publication of blasphemous, treasonable, seditious, or obscene writings or pictures (4) : the act, tort, or crime of publishing such a libel"

Notice these words: defamatory, unfavorable, contempt, defamation, blasphemous, treasonable, seditious, or obscene.

Here is the text of an article you indicated "had some sourcing issues:

Erika "Riki" Mahringer (later Spieß, born 16 November 1924) is an Austrian former alpine skier who competed in the 1948 Winter Olympics and in the 1952 Winter Olympics.

She is the mother of Nicola Spieß and Uli Spieß.

In 1948 she won the bronze medal in the slalom event as well as in the Alpine combined competition. In the downhill contest she finished 19th.

Four years later she finished fourth in the 1952 Olympic downhill event. In the same year she finished 17th in the giant slalom competition and 22nd in the slalom contest.

How do you imagine that can be construed as defamatory, unfavorable, contempt, defamation, blasphemous, treasonable, seditious, or obscene? Maurreen (talk) 07:48, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

So is your point that we should be allowed to write anything so long as it is not defamatory, unfavorable etc? The standard here is "do no harm", a very different proposition to yours. What if she had actually won the gold medal in 1948? No-one here is in a position to fully understand what may or may not be harmful to the subject of the article. When we have a sourced article we can honestly say that every effort has been made to ensure that the content is true, whereas with an unsourced article we announce in effect that no effort has been made. Kevin (talk) 09:28, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

The first thing is, my specific point here was about libel. User:Unitanode's statements that I quoted are factually incorrect.

The second thing is, this is a wiki. What we can and do say is, " WIKIPEDIA MAKES NO GUARANTEE OF VALIDITY."

In fact, the disclaimer page states (but I disagree with this part): "None of the contributors, sponsors, administrators, or anyone else connected with Wikipedia in any way whatsoever can be responsible for the appearance of any inaccurate or libelous information or for your use of the information contained in or linked from these web pages."

The current emphasis on listing a source just whitewashes more-substantive problems. Today's perfect article, perfectly sourced, could be libelous, etc., tomorrow and still contain all the same sources. Then could you "honestly say that every effort has been made to ensure that the content is true"? I could not and would not. Maurreen (talk) 10:19, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

I can't speak for Maurreen, but my point has been that the justification for these new rules is a hoax and the radical punitive punishment far outweighs the benefit. You are talking about quality again Kevin, not libel. Several editors have stated that an infinitesimal amount of articles are libelous or have contentious material. One stated above that for 3,000 articles on 5 to 10 had any contentious or libelous material. So your solution, most probably dreamed up in secret mailing lists, will delete 300 articles for every 1 contentious article.

Everyone wants well sourced articles Kevin. The key word in your sentence is "effort", how much effort did you personally put into referencing these articles:

1. A president of Bangladesh
2. Acting Prime Minister of South Korea twice
3. Deputy prime minister from 1992 until 1996 the Executive Secretary of the Commonwealth of Independent States from April 1999 until June 2004

...when, in "utter contempt" for "community consensus", you, Lar, and Scott MacDonald deleted several hundred articles including these three, and several other very notable articles.

How much effort Kevin? Did you even read the first sentence of these three articles?

The difference between myself and your group of editors who have a "BLP offwiki forum dedicated to tightening up BLP practices"[16] Is I sincerely believe that most editors contributions are in good faith. Whereas your group of extremely disruptive editors sees 52,000 articles as "sewers".[17] It seems this "BLP offwiki forum" will go to any length to push through their bullying, draconian vision of wikipedia, including recruiting a banned editor to do a biography of living persons breaching experiment.[18]

Okip ^{BLP Contest} 11:46, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

If you have any evidence of Kevin being in this "BLP offwiki forum", Okip, go ahead and state it right here or post a request for arbitration. Otherwise, associating Kevin's comments with the actions of MZMcBride and any supposed actions of this offwiki forum only serves to poison the well. NW (Talk) 20:08, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Stephin Merritt comments on his Wikipedia article

hopefully I'll be able to post this since it's a youtube video watch beginning at :55 when Stephin Merritt comments on his Wikipedia article and about how many errors there are in it even his date of birth is wrong. [19] I found this kind of interesting given the current debate, even highly visible frequently visited articles are totally 100% wrong. Ridernyc (talk) 10:59, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

By the way I have now tried to fix his birthdate, every source lists the same date we list. Here is the really interesting part, how many of them are using Wikipedia as the source, we are basically polluting the pool we use to draw information from. I'm going to do some digging try to find how long the wrong date has been listed. I doubt we will ever be able to figure out if there ever was a source for this, or did someone add the wrong date and it has now been published everywhere. Ridernyc (talk) 13:11, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

WP:RS can only get us so far if the sources are wrong. Sources written a year before his Wikipedia article existed also give his birthdate in 1966 so it's not a matter of Wikipedia errors influencing the sources.[20] If all the sources say 1966 and he now claims he was not born in 1966, something is fishy. Merritt's claims come as part of a rather uninformed view of Wikipedia amidst a rant about publicity in general. I note that other sources describe him as refusing to give his age,[21] so I think there may be a bit of a funny thing going on vis-a-vis the reliability of his claims about his age. Going beyond this example, it's not unusual for errors that could have easily been fixed with some rudimentary fact-checking to propagate among the sources. See, for example, False Moshe Ya'alon quotation. - Wikidemon (talk) 14:46, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Way more then 60,000

Using the random article feature I'm finding about 10 a day that have not been tagged. I really think we need to stop throwing around a meaningless number. We already know there are plenty miss tagged and it clear there are countless that have not been tagged, quoting a number that we know is wrong is pointless. Ridernyc (talk) 19:34, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

In the opposite direction, I've been using the random button on the "Category:All unreferenced BLPs" page and find a lot of already referenced articles tagged with the the "unsourced BLP" potential kiss of death. I still haven't seen anything libelous out of thousands of articles I've opened recently. Its been a hell of a lot of work. As I've been cleaning up some of the text and removing those tags, I am confronted with the immense amount of work, cumulated over years of wikipedia editing by probably thousands of people that some other people want to destroy, wipe out. First, if you do that, how many people will ever be inspired to do anything for wikipedia in the future, much less fight the battle replace all that deleted USEFUL INFORMATION (with Speedy Deletion chasing away previously deleted articles). Shallow as many these stub articles might be, THEY ALL SERVE A PURPOSE. They are all parts of this puzzle. Someone brought up the idea of WP:DEADHORSE. True. It is the people who are pushing for deletion of this information who MUST get off the idea of mass deletion. Its possible to open a couple thousand articles a day, I know, I've done it--though after this holiday I won't have that kind of time. If you are so fired up to delete stuff, one dedicated person can open every one of those supposed 60,000 articles in a month (or the work load can obviously be divided up). Show us the problem articles. Even show us the maybe articles, so people who understand the subject in question can analyze and fix them. Identify REAL problems, not mystery problems that MIGHT be hidden in that pile. Then we can go about fixing or deleting just those seriously questionable articles. If you don't want to dedicate the time to doing that. SHUT UP. STOP THIS MADNESS!!Trackinfo (talk) 05:00, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

I've noticed both. A lot the tagged articles have references of some form; usually in the external links. Hitting random turns up articles that don't have refs and aren't tagged. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 05:08, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

So far I found 2 that were referenced and removed the tag. I defiantly find way more untagged and unreferenced. Ridernyc (talk) 06:06, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Certainly there are a lot of unreferenced articles. In particular, some wiki editors have spent a lot of time posting a huge number of international footballers. There are a lot of stub articles mentioning the one notable accomplishment of many individuals, unreferenced. If one were to take the time to search out that claim, from my experience, most check out. But I don't work on subjects I don't understand and I do pass them by. But just because I don't know where to reference the legitimacy of a Latvian politician, or an Albanian academic doesn't mean those articles deserve to die or are in any way libelous or dangerous. Our REAL problems are microscopic. But with the forces pushing so vehemently for mass deletions, our serious problem is internal.Trackinfo (talk) 06:45, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Proposal: Close this manufactured RFC immediately

I have asked 5 times for Phase II to be returned to Phase I, with no response, except for Kevin. I asked the closing administrator personally to move phase II to Phase I, with no response. As I explained on the phase II talk page, and Mr.Z-man acknowledges,[22] only one position was advocated in Phase II.

The end result of phase II is too slow down wider community discussion, so that Jerochman's proposal will be adopted, despite serious and growing opposition. The actual intention is irrelevant.

This RFC has been marred by severe corruption, severe rule breaking, "utter contempt" for "community consensus" and dirty tricks from its inception, which should shock the conscience of any wikipedian. The creator of this Request for Comment, MZMcBride, just lost his administrator privileges, for running a "secret mailing list" "dedicated to tightening up BLP practices": Per: Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/MZMcBride 2

In January 2010, MZMcBride provided information, derived from special access to Wikimedia Foundation servers, to a banned user ("K."), knowing that K. intended to use the data to vandalize biographies of living people on the English Wikipedia. These are the circumstances: (A) In a discussion on another website, MZMcBride announced that he had created a list of unwatched BLP articles. In the same discussion, K. stated that Wikipedia lacks the ability to sufficiently protect the accuracy and integrity of BLPs and, to demonstrate this, K. proposed a "breaching experiment". (B) K. publicly asked MZMcBride for a list of unwatched BLPs for this "experiment". In response, MZMcBride publicly agreed to give a list to K. and subsequently supplied a list of twenty articles. (C) MZMcBride gave this list to K. knowing that K. would use the articles for his "breaching experiment" involving BLPs. The context strongly suggests that K. would subtly vandalise little-watched BLPs by adding false, misleading, or inaccurately sourced information to then; monitor them to see how long it took for the vandalism to be reverted; and publicise the results. According to K., even as MZMcBride handed over the list to him, MZMcBride expressed concern that it might be used in a "nefarious" fashion. (D) MZMcBride gave this list to K. knowing that (i) Wikipedia biographies come high, if not highest, in search engine results for living people and (ii) the introduction of inaccurate information into these articles—even if done by K. inconspicuously and without malice—could have unpredictable real life consequences. (E) MZMcBride gave this list to K. despite knowing, or at least reasonably suspecting, that (i) K. intended to use it to edit the English Wikipedia through sockpuppets and that (ii) K. had been banned from this project and therefore was not authorised to edit the English Wikipedia for any purpose at all. (F) After MZMcBride gave the list to K., K. under various usernames vandalised the BLP articles on it. (G) After questions were raised about the propriety of this "breaching experiment" and his role in it, MZMcBride continued for several days to defend his conduct and objected to any attempt to terminate the "experiment". MZMcBride ultimately posted a list of the unsourced BLPs he had identified to K. after an arbitrator requested on his talkpage that he do so, at which point various examples of vandalism were reverted. (H) MZMcBride may have subjectively believed that allowing BLPs to be vandalized by K. in the "breaching experiment" would serve the greater good in drawing attention to the vulnerability of lightly watched, unsourced BLPs to vandalism, an issue about which MZMcBride had expressed very legitimate concerns in the past. Nonetheless, we have little difficulty in concluding that his conduct in this matter fell well short of the standards expected of an administrator. Passed 12 to 0, 21:17, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Bad faith edits and libelous material in BLPs are uncommon and the majority of unreferenced BLPs are done in good faith. So MZMBcBride manufactured this crisis on his "secret mailing list" by "subtly vandalise little-watched BLPs by adding false, misleading, or inaccurately sourced information to then; monitor them to see how long it took for the vandalism to be reverted; and publicise the results". We as a community SHOULD NOT reward editors who actively take part in destroying Wikipedia.

If Kevin, Lar, Coffee, and Scott MacDonald, the editors who deleted hundreds of articles and manufactured this crisis care to comment, I ask, as I have asked before, are you a member of MZMBcBride "secret mailing list"? If I recall there were about 25-30 members, are you one of those members?

For these reasons I ask that a brave administrator close this request for comment. I would put this to a !vote, but MZMBride's "secret mailing list", have made a complete mockery of our consensus building system.

Please close this RFC now. Okip ^{BLP Contest} 04:26, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

"I would put this to a !vote, but MZMBride's "secret mailing list", have made a complete mockery of our consensus building system." Okip ^{BLP Contest} 04:34, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Where was it said that there were 25+ members? - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 04:36, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

I *think* what the OP was referring to was this. No comment on the rest of the section right now.  –Whitehorse1 06:10, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

• There is no relationship at all between the recommendation of the Arbitration Committee to the community to hold this RFC and anything you have stated above, Okip. Further, there is no reasonable correlation between the Arbitration Committee case involving MZMcBride and the participation of 470+ Wikipedians in this discussion. This RFC is not in any way a "reward" for MZMcBride, whose opinion did not receive the consensus support of the community. Risker (talk) 05:07, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
• Proposal: Close this thread immediately. Killiondude (talk) 05:43, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
  • I second the motion to table this thread. harej 05:49, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
  • Risker: The initiator of this RFC has a "secret mailing list" "dedicated to tightening up BLP practices". MZMcBride recruited a blocked editor to conduct a breaching experiment to "vandalise little-watched BLPs by adding false, misleading, or inaccurately sourced information" MZMcBride "secret mailing list", if I recall, has 25-30 members. Coffee, whose wheel warring led up to this RFC, has defended this "secret mailing list", and has not responded on whether he was a member, he is also the administrator who protected this RFC.
    Risker, as far as Phase II, even Mr.Z-man acknowledges only one position was advocated in Phase II. As the administrator who closed this RFC, why was only one position advocated, in complete contradiction to the reasons agreed upon to close this RFC? Okip ^{BLP Contest} 05:56, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
    • I'm obviously not Risker, but you need to present proof of MZ stating or somebody confirming that there is some sort of sekrit mailing list. I followed the arbcom case, and there was no mention of a mailing list, and I haven't seen evidence elsewhere. Personally, I feel like the phrase "put up or shut up" might be appropriate now, since you've stated this alleged mailing list as if it were fact, several times on this page. Killiondude (talk) 06:05, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
      • Former arbitrator Casliber: "In October while I was told about this website as a place where concerned editors were discussing what to do about BLPs, and that the board was private and pseudonyms were being used, and that there were a number of people using it (24?)." The website is Sofixit.org, which was replaced with a highly offensive porn photo when former arbitrator Casliber went public in December, and is now labeled as a forum "For discussing the sensitive issues regarding Wikipedia's biographies of living people."[23] Okip ^{BLP Contest} 06:11, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
        • Okay, I see. You're confusing two terms: mailing list and message board. It is starting to make more sense, but it's still not quite clear why you think that an RFC with over 470 distinct editors discussing a topic should be completely ignored. It's unfathomable. Killiondude (talk) 06:26, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
          • You made assumptions that the mailing list does not exist, you rudely tell me to "put up or shut up" and when I show you incontrovertibly that the mailing list does exist, you change the focus of the discussion. Does "put up or shut up" apply to the editor who was shown to be completely wrong? Okip ^{BLP Contest} 08:08, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
            • Assuming a secret mailing list doesn't exist is probably the default choice. Also, the thing Casliber brought up isn't a mailing list, it is a message board (allegedly). I'm not changing the topic, I'm agreeing with Risker in that "there is no relationship at all between the recommendation of the Arbitration Committee to the community to hold this RFC and anything you have stated above", as far as I can tell. Killiondude (talk) 08:44, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Okip, do not continue to use my comment in support of your claims. You are taking it of context, and you know that. Please remove your reference to my comment, as I do not agree with you except on a purely factual basis. I agreed that phase 2 only covered one aspect, but I disagreed that it was a problem and argued that continuing the huge number of discussions in phase one would not have been helpful. Your comments here are beyond the pale. You have yet to address my reply above, where I pointed out a blatant lie in your attack on me. You are now alleging, based on no evidence that MZM and 25 other users are using sockpuppets to vandalize BLPs. How you got from "using a forum to discuss BLPs" to "creating sockpuppets to vandalize" I have no idea, but you have yet to present any evidence to back up your major claims. The incident referred to on the Arbitration case was a completely different situation. The forum being referred to there was Wikipedia Review, not the BLP forum. And MZM did not vandalize any BLPs himself. Only one banned user did, on a handful of articles. You have taken a few isolated incidents, mixed them together, blown it out of proportion,and concocted a conspiracy theory. Somehow you've turned "a forum to discuss BLP", "a banned user vandalizing a handful of BLPs," and "MZM starting an RFC" into "25 users on a secret mailing list are using sockpuppets to vandalize BLPs to manufacture a crisis and subvert consensus." You've basically turned 3 things that are true into 1 thing that is completely false. Giving a banned user a list of articles did not happen on a secret BLP forum, it happened on a public WR forum. The banned user's vandalism was minor, limited, and I believe in most cases was self-reverted. You're accusing several long-standing editors of sockpuppetry and vandalism. Please either present real evidence or retract your claims. Mr.Z-man 06:32, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Quote:

• only one position is advocated - Yes, because simply starting all the discussions over again would have been so productive. I fail to see how that isn't significantly different from any other targeted RFC, except that we're calling it "Phase 2" instead of starting a new RFC. Nothing is stopping people from starting their own RFC if they disagree with this one.

Per above: "I agreed that phase 2 only covered one aspect" You are welcome to add "but", I now quoted you fully in context. I can post the entire section here if you wish.

RE: "The banned user's vandalism was minor, limited, and I believe in most cases was self-reverted."

Why do you continue to defend desyped MZMcBride who "gave this list to [a banned user] knowing that...the introduction of inaccurate information into these articles—even if done by K. inconspicuously and without malice—could have unpredictable real life consequences"?

How do you reconcile your continued fervent defense of MZMcBride, who helped introduce "inaccurate information" with your continued concern about "inaccurate information" (what you support calling "sewers") on Wikipedia? Are you a member of this "secret mailing list"?Okip ^{BLP Contest} 06:45, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

No, you're only quoting me fully in context right here; you're still using my comment out of context as something in support of your position, when it is most definitely not. Why do you continue to throw about allegations, attacks, and lies rather than reasoned arguments and evidence? I'm not defending MZM except against the attacks that are purely a figment of your imagination. Yes, I'm well aware that he provided a banned user with a list of unwatched BLPs. However, you have yet to present evidence that this "secret mailing list" is coordinating anything, let alone "manufacturing" a crisis. Perhaps you had your head in the sand until people started suggesting deleting unsourced BLPs, but BLPs have been a problem on Wikipedia for years. The instance of a banned user vandalizing 10 or so BLPs had little to no impact on the RFC (see Risker's comment above). OTRS gets around that many complaints about BLPs every day. Mr.Z-man 06:57, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

BLPs have been a problem on Wikipedia for years?

1. Does this include edits done by blocked users in "breached experiments"? Would you consider these a "problem"? How do you reconcile your defense of MZMcBride, who helped introduce "inaccurate information" with your continued concern about "inaccurate information" (what you support calling "sewers") on Wikipedia?

"OTRS gets around that many complaints about BLPs every day."

2. Do any of these complaints include the "breached experiments" which you are justifying?

Since you seem to know so much about what happened around the "secret mailing list", are you a member of this "secret mailing list"? Okip ^{BLP Contest} 08:25, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Moved from user:Okip:

== Your posts about MZMcBride ==

Your constant posts about how MZMcBride manufactured this BLP crisis and is now trying to deceive the entire community into doing something or another is bordering on harassment. Please stop. NW (Talk) 05:51, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

It is deeply troubling that established editors, who are held up as role models for the community, continue to defend the indefensible,

"MZMcBride gave this list to K. knowing that...the introduction of inaccurate information into these articles—even if done by K. inconspicuously and without malice—could have unpredictable real life consequences".

The creator of this RFC is directly responsible for the very violations this manufactured RFC was supposed to stop.

Lets keep the comments here please, all comments about this on my talk page will be subsequently moved here. Okip ^{BLP Contest} 06:05, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Okip, this motion is not going to succeed, and pursuing it is not going produce anything useful. Yes, MZMcBride has acted in a grossly inappropriate manner in relation to BLPs, but you're not going to get this RfC invalidated on that basis. Refocus on some initiative that has a chance of improving the situation.--Father Goose (talk) 06:45, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

The silly drama needs to stop. Ridernyc (talk) 08:23, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Move forward, no back tracking, no delaying action. MZMcBride ArbCom case is even anterior to all the unsourced BLP discussion and wrestling. Okip do you really want a compromise or you simply do not want one rejecting the negotiation failure and blame to the other side. There is a reality check: Unsourced BLP issue will be resolved once for all and this is not a negotiable change. You can oppose the change and get ditched on the road side or you can contribute to the discussion on how the change will occur in other words ride the wind of change. I'm sick of the Wikipedia indecisiveness and the "I don't want the other side winning" mentality. A real good compromise is everyone and Wikipedia winning but at this rate no one winning and Wikipedia losing is still a possible outcome. --KrebMarkt 10:33, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

I have found that strong statements like "this is not a negotiable change", are usually always made when negotiations are about to collapse.

You can't reach consensus when editors repeatably show they have "utter contempt" for "community consensus". As Mr.Z-man acknowledges, only one position was advocated in step II. Those of us who were ignored in Step II, a good portion of the 470, simply want a fair process. If this is really something you want too, I would suggest giving less ultimatums, and focus more on why so many editors are so frustrated at what is happening here.

If there really was community support for what you are advocating KrebMarkt, there would have been no need for "breach experiments" (vandalism); the deletion of hundreds of articles, and stopping the RFC early to advocate one position. Okip ^{BLP Contest} 11:25, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Comment about this by Fritzpoll

A number of points need to be clarified here:

1. Actions perpetrated by MZMcBride did not lead to this RfC - the motion regarding mass deletions by Kevin, Scott MacDonald and others did.
2. The outcome of the MZMcBride motion has no bearing on the propriety of these proceedings - if it had done, Arbcom would have made a finding to that effect
3. Disregarding a sizeable portion of the community who commented at the original RfC on the basis that one editor has been sanctioned seems rude to those concerned
4. Invalidating the RfC would mean invalidating all of it and returning to the apparent ambiguity post-Arbcom motion. If the RfC is flawed, as claimed, then all opinions and all possible consensuses arising from it cannot be said to have been found. That includes proposals from all sides of the discussions.

If the RfC doesn't come to a conclusion, I am extremely concerned that this will somehow end up back before arbitration which would be messy and drama-filled. I suggest continuing well-advertised and well organised discussion - Okip's suggestion of moving pahse II to the front page of the RfC would be a step in that direction. Best wishes, Fritzpoll (talk) 12:24, 15 February 2010 (UTC)