User:ErrantX/Essays/Current events and BLP

Wikipedia suffers from a systematic bias of "recentism", whereby current events reported in the media tend to get a lot of focus and coverage from editors. This is understandable, it is hard to take what is going on right now in the context of history. If written 100 or more years ago would Wikipedia have the same content about that period as we do now? Or would we have a lot more content? I suspect the latter.

On the one hand this is not a bad situation to be in; for the first time we are able to freely collect, record and disseminate massive swathes of human knowledge. Ours will be the best documented period of history so far, with the unique ability of documenting perspectives and views as they happen. On the other hand Wikipedia becomes, for those with views on a topic, a target to present those views as the truth. Misunderstanding that the aim is to neutrally document facts, and discuss the views of various significant factions (in fact, we probably all lose sight of this at some point).

Articles about recent events, particularly those that are controversial, tend to follow a similar pattern of development and face the same ongoing issues. This essay focuses on my area of interest - those articles featuring biographical (sometimes of living people) content. I argue for a short moratorium on creating an article about recent events and discuss possible solutions to the perennial problems faced by such content.

More and more readers are turning to Wikipedia as a good, neutral and comprehensive source of current events. That's great, of course, but it means we have to work even harder to make sure the content is accurate, properly constructed and does not fall afoul of the same carefree attitude adopted by a lot of the media.

Article life cycle
We desperately need a moratorium on creating content in mainspace soon after a story breaks Articles about recent events start almost as soon as the story breaks. Such stories can change quickly, with misinformation that only gets corrected to fact weeks or days later. Sometimes it can take years for the full details needed to write an article to take shape. While there is no reason to stop development during that period, we should stress the need to proceed cautiously.

Even then, current event articles could benefit from a short delay before coming into existence. We desperately need a moratorium on creating content in mainspace soon after a story breaks, till the point where at least some factual information becomes "historical" and can be recorded properly.

The Biography
Very little time after an event finds its way onto Wikipedia, the significant/related living people will usually get some form of a biography. Sometimes the event even starts out as a biography (particularly common for deaths or murders).

Such content usually fails the "one event" policy, where an individual only has notability for a single event in their life. Biographies bring in extra detail about an individual's life, often material that is unfair and irrelevant to an encyclopaedia. The media have a tendency to pry into the private lives of individuals and expose it to the world, a practice Wikipedia should not be adopting.

The "one event" policy is often misunderstood as being intended to make sure articles focus on events rather than people. This is true but the core reason behind BLP1E is to avoid the situation where an individual's biography is largely made up of that single event (a related problem is "A day in their life"). For obvious reasons this can cast them in an unfair light and does not give a balanced overview of their entire life. These kinds of problems are particularly apparent when a biography is forked from an event article (see "FORKing biographies!" below).

The AFD
The next step in the life-cycle of such articles is being taken to AFD. This can occur anywhere from a few hours to a few days after the article is started, a period when it is very likely to be poor quality, and does not do a good job of establishing historical significance of the event. Ultimately many of the articles are kept.

This ties into my previous point about a moratorium on article creation; because we are in a rush to get down the details of stuff that happened yesterday, people with opinions (good and bad) about that event will crowd in and try to spin it, delete it, etc. It is unsurprising that dodgy content gets taken to AFD fairly quickly. The articles are usually kept because it is hard, at that stage, to establish whether the content has enough historical significance to pass the notability criteria.

So we have this weird catch-22; barely enough material exists to write an article, so people want to delete it. But because little time has passed it is hard to judge whether it should be deleted!

Delete the Bio!
Biographies usually go quickly to AFD. Particularly if they are created instead of an article about the event. Almost always, the outcome at such an early stage is to:
 * Rename the article to be about the event
 * Merge the content into the event article

This all relates to the above problem regarding a lack of material, with the added problem that a biography will end up laying out the individual's personal life for all to see.

This ain't Wikinews
Once the teething stages of article creation and AFD are out of the way, we next have to contend with the developing news story. This can be a pain, dragging in POV editing from SPA's and anonymous/new editors. Many are acting in good faith and simply do not understand the guidelines and principles of the Wiki. Others see this as content they can edit and wish to try and make it represent their viewpoint.

Maintaining neutrality and due weight of material during this period can be very difficult - reverting, edit wars, disagreements and page protection are common. Very often the same set of editors come to the page to help and older disputes over the best way to present the material resurface.

During this time the content often reads like a news article more than an encyclopedic summary. In fact a lot of people do treat Wikipedia as a good source of current event background/news. That is great - but must be taken with a pinch of salt. Because things can change quickly we may end up with a summary that is incorrect but, unlike a news article, undated. It would be great for Wikinews to take a much more prominent role at this stage, because a series of news articles with the Wiki-levels of neutrality and verifiability are far superior to the rest of the media and anything Wikipedia can put together. Ideally WP would have the normal up-to-date dispassionate summary and point readers to Wikinews for the detail!

As the event progresses the section or article tends to grow and grow, often out of control. It can devolve into a "he said, she said" narration of the story; where the material is constructed of pro/anti comments or views from involved parties presented one after the other ("she said X, but Y's lawyer argued..."). Minutiae predominates (see "A day in their life") and the content has a tendency to ramble. The result is a hodgepodge of unfocused content that fails to cover the important details.

Ancient history
The final, and usually lengthy, stage of any current event article (or section) is the aftermath as the event becomes historical.

After some time editors may come to view the event in a more historical light. This is where content can dramatically improve; sections can be pared back, trivial detail can be dropped and forks can be re-merged.

Editorial problems
In practice one really really good source should be enough - that it requires numerous citations rings warning bells There are a number of issues that crop up with some degree of frequency in recent event articles. They tend to be born from a) recentism, b) focus on too much detail and c) POV pushing, although just as often they spawn disagreements out of good faith amongst experienced editors.

Source churn
One of the key problems to watch out for is a phenomena called "source churn". Because a lot of edits happen very quickly sources tend to get mixed up, and the article ends up in a state where none of the sentences or paragraphs are adequately sourced. A related symptom here is the situation where a paragraph or sentence ends up with 5 or more very general citations, all stacked up on top of each other, which don't quite cover the material in a comprehensive fashion.

The obvious fix here is to periodically run through and double check the sources. This is a lot easier if you adopt the practice of naming sources and placing them within the Reflist at the end of the article (using the syntax). This clears up the page text dramatically when editing and makes chopping/changing sources a lot easier. Detailed information on citing sources can be found at WP:CITE and WP:NOTES.

Usually non-contentious material requires just one or two citations per paragraph (apart from quotes and contentious material which must be cited inline). So do not worry about removing sources if they duplicate material. Aim for a mix of scholarly, news and "other" types of sourcing.

Source stack
A semi-related problem is the source stack. This is where a word or phrasing is contentious and so editors stack a large number of sources onto it to "prove" the point. Source stacking is messy and can be distracting to the reader. In practice one really, really good source should be enough - that it requires numerous citations rings warning bells in the first place - but if you really must stack sources place them inside a single citation tag as bullet points.

In general, source stacking is bad practice because it suggests a lack of confidence in the reliability of the sources.

POVFORK


Current events are a magnet for editors with a minimal understanding of the Wikipedia process, the result is that articles end up with one or two strongly opinionated factions who wish to present material in a way that seems accurate to their point of view.

As content grows, or points of view don't quite get the paragraph space editors want there is a growing risk of the event being forked as a separate article. This sort of action is pretty much standard for biographies undergoing a common event. In most cases the fork will be quickly merged back or deleted for reasons of notability.

There are a number of reason editors end up forking content - from the good faith to the point-y:


 * The section is growing too large; this is usually a good faith attempt to solve the undue weight problem (see "A day in their life"). In fact the better approach it to look at what minutae can be cut from the base article - forking the content will only lead to more minutae to fill up the space.


 * Because the current content doesn't represent a certain view; this is the bad faith version of the above, usually employed by editors who have met large-scale resistance to material (usually bad) that they think needs to be included. This is the original, and proper, meaning of "POVFORK".


 * Because it is notable; this is almost always not going to be the case. The reason it seems so significant is that it is happening right now. Think carefully; do you remember the big news stories from last week? The last month? The last three months? How much coverage does it have today? The media will milk a story as much and as loudly as they can, right up to the point that something else comes along for them to squeeze dry.

Forks become a problem because it spreads content out and makes it harder to manage. Editors working hard to keep material correct, well written and neutral may suddenly end up with a double work load.

Generally speaking the time to fork content is some substantial time after the event, when all of the sources can be collected and a rational decision made as to whether enough non-trivial content exists to warrant a new article.

FORKing biographies!
The opposite problem to the POVFORK of events in biographies... are biographies forked from event articles. This is a common method used to try and present a subject in a new light (i.e. to make them look more positive or negative). This is the point where "one event" comes into play, because in most cases the forked biography will have no other claim to notability.

Strong interpretation of policy in this area is a good idea. If you are writing a biography where more than around 40% relates to just one event in their life then there is probably a significant issue. If the main focus of the biography is that event and the rest is trivia - that is probably an issue too.

There is a balance; certainly some events in an individual's life are so significant that they pale into comparison to others. The Wright Brothers were smart and successful individuals with a number of minor achievements throughout their lives - but obviously they are best known for one crucial event. As a rule of thumb; unless there is at least one other independent and publicly significant event in their life then there is no need for a biography.

Related problems
A couple of days of someone's life can become half of their biography There are a number of other issues involving biographical material and current events. Here are some of the highlights.

A day in their life
When a notable person gets into trouble very publicly, it tends to get splashed across the world media (a side effect of modern communication being so effective). The favourites are sex scandals and crimes - both together can be like catnip to a certain type of editor. There are a number of problems introduced here; but the major concern is that of undue weight. A 5 to 10 paragraph article can end up with 4 or 5 new paragraphs of content on a single event. Or to put it another way: a couple of days of someone's life becomes half of their biography.

The important thing to remember in these cases is that we must take the long view. The event might be spread across all the media in minute detail - but that is how newspapers sell their stories! They scrape every detail and then try to make sub-stories out of the trivia. The ones with the best angles sell the most. This is basically the opposite to Wikipedia's aims, which is to summarise the story for posterity.

When writing about a current event on a biography, ask yourself if all of the details are important to the reader's understanding of the story. Is every time crucial? Every spoken word? Every movement? Compare your work to the rest of the biography to check whether it matches the same summary style.

There is an argument that events happening now simply have more detail than events in the past. For distant history this might be true (although it is worth pointing out that, for example, our article on the Wright Brothers is of hardly any length compared to one of the many books written about their life). For more recent history this is an unlikely scenario; dig into other sources on the article and you will find that they probably have a lot of richer and more varied detail, editorial opinion and general conjecture that is not covered in our article. See the problem?

Oh, and another thing
A related problem is that BLPs undergoing a current event get a lot of editors crowding in, many of whom look at the rest of the article for content to add or sections to improve. Generally this is a beneficial process but, as is often for the case for people who are controversial, can create issues:


 * Editors with a positive/negative view adding disproportionate content that fits with their view. This is especially a problem when newspapers start to drag up parts of an individual's past to support their story. "Look, there was a sex scandal some years ago too!" Sometimes this material is worth having. Often it is not.


 * Editors using current editorials concerning a subject's past actions. This is related to bullet #1, where stuff that happened in the past is commented on again by contemporary news reports. This can lead to spin, conjecture or unfair editorialising within the context of the current event ("well at the time it looked innocent enough.. but now, who knows!"). Unless there are solid reasons to bring in analysis associated with another event it is better to wait for a much, much later retrospective that can put both incidents into context.