Talk:Violet Blue

Old discussion
I've updated the 'on-line and media presence' section to replace links with citations. Please don't undo work, come here and discuss what needs to be fixed. I'll be trying to update this page a bit too. Thanks! Cap020570 (talk) 17:21, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

protection status
I see the page is protected. I hope you don't think I was trying to vandalize it. I was just adding/fixing links and I eventually want to redo this profile to include, not only her sex-positive work but her long media (investigative reporting) work. It's irritating that this is the 4th woman's profile I've come across that been targeted for vandalism.Cap020570 (talk) 11:34, 21 May 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm proud to say I'm a member of the Gendergap folks trying to address our gender-related issues here. That said: "Violet Blue" is a person who has been involved in a number of controversies and lawsuits; such people attract a larger than random number of vandals, NPOV violators, and persons who want to include information that others feel should be excluded. This need not be gender-linked; in other words, it may be about her and not her gender. -- Orange Mike &#x007C;  Talk  18:38, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

I only knew her from the tiny nibbles blog and don't even follow that very well, oh and twitter. I only got involved when she tweeted about the profile page. I had no idea she did so much tech reporting. I'd really like to just redo the whole page, like I said. :) Cap020570 (talk) 23:06, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

Does Gawker count as a reliable source? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 104.172.3.235 (talk) 18:51, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
 * No it doesn't. It simply notes that someone makes that claim. As you would know from looking at the rest of this talk page, this has been raised several times before. it cannot be included in the article without a reliable secondary source, and to date no such sources have been provided. -- Euryalus (talk) 19:13, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

Related discussion
(moved from my talk page)


 * Hi, I am hoping you can help me with improving the Violet Blue page. Her birth name is, and their are multiple sources online confirming this.  Unfortunately, it appears that due to wiki's rules, none of these sources qualify as a "reliable source".  So my question is this: in simple terms, what is required to include Violet Blue's birth name as part of her entry?  Could you possibly give me an example?  I am new to editing on wikipedia and would like to do this correctly.


 * It is obvious you are an expert with this sort of thing, so I am humbly asking for your help. It seems I keep running into a dead end when I attempt to include Ms. Blue's birth name on her page.  Very frustrating, especially since her birth name IS .  There is no doubt about this - it can be found on multiple online sources including the California Department of Motor Vehicles.

Thank you!

Mark — Preceding unsigned comment added by 104.172.3.235 (talk) 19:35, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

It's been repeatedly pointed out on this talk page that we cannot reference material in biographies of living persons via primary sources. Quoting WP:BLPPRIMARY:


 * Do not use trial transcripts and other court records, or other public documents, to support assertions about a living person. Do not use public records that include personal details, such as date of birth, home value, traffic citations, vehicle registrations, and home or business addresses.

This disqualifies all of the sources suggested in these talkpage discussions so far, except the Gawker article which a) may not be reliable and b) does not in fact confirm another name.

An example of a reliable secondary source is, say, the New York Times. If the Times reports something (as news, not opinion), we can reasonably expect they've done so after thoroughly checking the facts. We might then include those facts in the article and reference them to the Times. What we can't do is construct our own facts via primary documents, vague mentions on internet sites and original research. And to quote again from BLPPRIMARY:


 * Where primary-source material has been discussed by a reliable secondary source, it may be acceptable to rely on it to augment the secondary source, subject to the restrictions of this policy, no original research, and the other sourcing policies.

Hope this is helpful. In passing the regular attempts to incorporate alternative names into this article are a little disruptive. Please stop doing this unless there are genuinely reliable sources upon which to base the edits. -- Euryalus (talk) 06:29, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

Article Issues - How is she notable and what has she accomplished besides being controversial?
The article's narrative seems to be "here are her controversies" without establishing her notability or timeline of accomplishments. If I hadn't found a Forbes article that stated she was actually a high-profile online figure, I would have been tempted to challenge her notability. I'm not tag-crazy, but can we work together to clean this article up? EBY (talk) 01:24, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

Names without real reliable sources
Wikipedia is not the place to speculate about someone's birth name, and until and unless a truly reliable source appears discussing such matters, it is not suitable for discussion here. Please do not mention such names here without real sourcing, such mentions will have to be oversighted. Courcelles 20:27, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Someone has started a RS/N thread regarding this BLP subject Reliable_sources/Noticeboard. __ E L A Q U E A T E  04:42, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

San Francisco Weekly story
I revised my original edit regarding the SF Weekly story. I hope this is acceptable. Just an FYI, I cleared this with the BLP noticeboard before making the edit. If I need to make additional changes please let me know. Thank you. Marcos12 (talk) 02:16, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
 * You mean WP:RSN, not WP:BLPN. For one clue about the acceptability, please look at the article history where you will see that your edit at 21:31, 25 March 2015 has been removed (see the [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&page=Violet+Blue logs]). Editors strongly resist the accumulation of gunk, particularly on articles about living people. If someone managed to harass a person on the internet without legal repercussions, that's great for them. However, we don't repeat their claims in an article unless there is a really good encyclopedic reason. Johnuniq (talk) 02:31, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Now I am really confused. My edit was so egregious as to be redacted?  It was reported in a reliable source.  I guess I am confused as to what I've done wrong.  Blue's harassment of Burch and Alter would seem to be notable in this instance, especially since the harassment is against wikipedia editors.  My edits were done in good faith - if they are against policy I'll accept that, but I'd like to know what policy I am violating.  Thank you for your civility though, as a new(ish) editor, it is very much appreciated.  Marcos12 (talk) 02:44, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Bear in mind that I know very little about the topic of this article—stuff somehow migrates from noticeboards onto my watchlist—so I cannot comment about whether or not your edit needed to be revision deleted (@Bilby: you might like to check the current content of the article, which still includes the claim about a person's name that I think you previously removed). However, the general principle is very easy to understand. There are two issues: (a) news reports make a splash for a couple of days, then fade to nothing, while a Wikipedia article is forever at the top of searches; and, (b) people make many accusations every day, while very few of those accusations are suitable for a permanent record in an encyclopedia. Suppose a news report says "person X said person Y is a shop lifter", or "X said Y's real name is John Citizen"—it is a verifiable fact that the claim was made, but why should Wikipedia be used to amplify it? The policies are WP:RS (is the source really suitable?), and WP:DUE (does the assertion warrant a permanent record?), and WP:BLP (is it reasonable?). Why does your comment claim that the subject of this article harassed two people? Johnuniq (talk) 03:05, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I was simply going by your terminology: "If someone managed to harass a person on the internet without legal repercussions, that's great for them...." If you look at User:BenBurch it tells pretty much the whole story.  But I will read  WP:RS  as well as WP:DUE,maybe I have gone about this in the wrong way.  Marcos12 (talk) 03:37, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
 * People who campaign to right great wrongs are not welcome at Wikipedia. Even if the subject of a BLP were the worst person in the world, people would still not be permitted to drive by and add silly news-of-the-day (from 2008!) to the article. US courts allow people to say really nasty things about each other, but Wikipedia is not available to further their campaigns, nor is it our role to work out who is the good-guy, so we can amplify their attacks. Stick to encyclopedic information that is neutral, and do not cherrypick factoids from primary sources. The above commentary about the subject of this BLP should be removed. Johnuniq (talk) 04:01, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Above commentary removed. But that's just my point.  The information I am attempting to add is neutral.  It simply references what the RS report.  I don' have an "angle" or axe to grind, that's why I am confused that the info is continually redacted.  It simply doesn't make any sense.  I am not attempting to right any wrongs, or adding "silly news of the day".  It's not cherrypicking a factoid - it's the entire gist of the article.  But I will take a break - I've had enough admonishment for one day.  Every dog has a day when it's been kicked so much down in the gutter.   Marcos12 (talk) 04:08, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Having seen this discussion come up on RSN... I have blanked the above-mentioned userpage; it seems to violate the prescription that Wikipedia not be a soapbox for scandal or rumor-mongering. Wikipedia userpages are not intended to host polemic arguments about off-wiki disputes. The name in particular has no business here if it's not in widespread use in reliable sources. There is no particular reason to include it. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 04:55, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I see. An otherwise woolgathering, troublemaking editor of dubious distinction has endeavored to "pile on" and kick a man when he's down.  Very well. Marcos12 (talk) 05:38, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Please read WP:NPA before making further personal attacks. Have a nice day. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 06:26, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
 * The 2008 court action against Ben Burch is rightly mentioned in the article, but does not go into detail because some of it has WP:BLPPRIVACY and WP:BLPPRIMARY issues. The consensus of numerous discussions in the past is not to make unsupported claims about Ms Blue's birth name or date of birth.-- ♦Ian Ma c M♦  (talk to me) 06:56, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Sorry that I didn't comment earlier, but I was running between classes, and only really had time for a quick revert and run. Not the best approach, but it was that sort of day. Anyway, IanMacM is saying pretty much what I was going to - the problem is in regard to WP:BLPPRIVACY, where we generally respect the wishes of the subject in regard to privacy of non-public information. As she has expressed a clear wish to be referred to only as Violet Blue, which I gather is her legal name, we'd need a good argument to override this. That's not forthcoming, in that we don't have a case where a different name was "widely published by reliable sources". Getting around it by including an alleged name doesn't really solve the BLP problems. - Bilby (talk) 13:09, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

has been trying to add a claimed real name to this article since September 2011 (diff). I noticed that when reviewing the archives to find out what is going on—see archive 2 (and the section after that) which shows that Marcos12 was given a very clear explanation over three years ago. Johnuniq (talk) 09:51, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Cut the controversies section?
Controversy sections are discouraged as a general rule, and most of the controversies in this one seem particularly trivial -- is there any particular reason to retain them? None of them seem overwhelmingly relevant to the main things that make her notable; the vb.ly, Boing Boing, and dispute with Google+ over their name policy don't seem to serve any purpose, and even the litigation one doesn't have much to say. The purpose of an encyclopedia article is to document the things that make someone noteworthy, not to document every minor dispute they've ever been in. If some of these controversies are particularly noteworthy, they could be worked into the text of the article in the appropriate places, but I'm not really seeing any reason to cover most of them at all. --Aquillion (talk) 06:11, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
 * How do secondary reliable sources cover her? If they mainly focus on her drama than her writings then that's her notability. If you feel that she is notable for other things, support that by adding more content so it doesn't look like a coatrack. Morbidthoughts (talk) 07:39, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
 * A quick glance over her Wikipedia results turns up almost nothing related to any of these controversies, at least in the first few pages, which gives me the impression that they're not generally notable. --Aquillion (talk) 08:13, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia results? Can you clarify? Morbidthoughts (talk) 08:22, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Ack, I meant Google results! Relying on them isn't perfect, of course, but there seems to be relatively little mention of any of the controversies in her first few pages of results, which implies that they're not really significant. --Aquillion (talk) 01:49, 28 March 2015 (UTC)
 * A google news search reveals several controversies on the first page. If you disqualify the articles written by her (since they are not independent), the reliable coverage of her focus on the drama. Morbidthoughts (talk) 01:56, 28 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Where? I didn't do a news search before, but even in that search, I only see one article (from six years ago) specifically referencing any of the controversies we have here, and several quoting her for other things (eg. Google's censorship stance.) --Aquillion (talk) 04:30, 31 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I didn't check whether the "controversies" were in the article. The google article quotes her since her site is impacted negatively. The motherboard article talks about the feminist talk drama. The SF Weekly article talks about her drama with online foes. That's a lot of drama in terms of independent sources. Morbidthoughts (talk) 23:34, 31 March 2015 (UTC)


 * I'd like to propose that the subsections of the "controversies" section be promoted to full section status and the "controversies" section be removed. Stuartyeates (talk) 23:53, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Confirming the controversies (to cut or not)
It should be noted that one of the reasons why Violet Blue's work and conflicts don't show up in Google searches is itself another controversy. Specifically that her name was included on a blacklist used by a number of sites, including Shutterstock, and which has been used by Google for several years. Hence no name completion for her for a long time and many of the incidents she was involved in not appearing in Google searches.

The vb.ly thing, for example, was huge news because it dealt with matters of national sovereignty and which countries you could or couldn't trust when registering domain names. Especially when that domain was merely the first of a number which were seized at around the same time (basically Gaddafi finally realised there was cash to be made on the Internet and wanted all the two character domains back to sell off at a higher price, but then shot himself in the foot by diluting the brand with the domain seizures). Anyway, that tale aside, this is one situation where you cannot and, arguably, must not rely on the quantity or quality of Google search results to determine the value of the article content. You can't use Yahoo! either, their engine is provided by Google these days too.

Now you can all go and enjoy the fun of doing research in a way that allows finding sources of a good enough calibre for a living person's biography, but without trusting Google at all. I'd help, but these actions smack of censorship and they go back a long way, so I'm doing things with my political hat on in other websites (mainly Twitter), so it may be best to recuse myself from finding additional sources for you. Perhaps start with checking mailing list archives of tech fields which would have dealt with relevant related issues for the periods in question (e.g. NANOG, bugtraq, full-disclosure or equivalent lists when the .ly domain seizures were made). I don't recall which ones discussed the Libyan thing the most, but I do recall the incident in question (and knew the owner of ve.ly, but don't recall if he retained it). --BenM (talk) 20:19, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

New info
can someone with editing permissions add her patreon and a short description of it? https://www.patreon.com/violetblue

Thanks! EvocationNeeded (talk) 15:08, 30 September 2023 (UTC)


 * . Basically this web page is a begging bowl crowdfunding platform asking for money, and it doesn't contain any useful information about her, just social media posts. The Wikipedia article here gives her official website address which has a link to the Patreon site and this is enough. See also WP:ELMINOFFICIAL.-- ♦Ian Ma c M♦  (talk to me) 16:08, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

No Birth Year? Why?
I noticed that her birth year and age are not on here. I've never seen a person considered notable enough to have a Wikipedia article with a blank birth year/age. It seems to be a very notable omission. Why the exception in this case? 2601:280:C500:C970:45CD:54B4:7CD3:16AB (talk) 04:13, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
 * No idea, but it would probably be due to the lack of a reliable source that verifies the birth year. Johnuniq (talk) 04:32, 1 November 2023 (UTC)