Template talk:BLP unverified

Overview
As the creator of the template, I pondered whether it would be better placed on the talk page of the stubbed article, or on the article itself. Ultimately I decided the talk page was best.

The general purpose of stubbing a BLP is to remove potentially incorrect information. (This is especially important regarding unsourced personal information -- even when seemingly innocent, it can be harmful just by virtue of being wrong: .) Actually sourcing all this information is probably going to take years, so stub-now-fix-later is a pragmagic compromise between the extremes of immediatism and eventualism.

So if one accepts that the point of stubbing an article is to remove potentially harmful information, it doesn't make a lot of sense to put a link at the top of the page that says "Click here to read all the removed stuff!" And if the template remains on the article page for months or years, editors will probably remove it for failing to actually move the information out of the public's sight.

Editors who want to source and restore these stubs should have no trouble finding them via the use of this template (and its associated category, All unverified BLPs). This is the reasoning that went into designing this as a talk page (not article page) template.--Father Goose (talk) 23:05, 3 February 2010 (UTC)


 * I have created Category:Unverified BLPs to suit this purpose. Airplaneman   ✈  23:58, 29 April 2010 (UTC)