Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Biographies of living people/Content

This RFC is now closed.

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This is a request for comment regarding unsourced content about living people.

All content that is about living people is governed by the WP:BLP policy, against a background of WP:V, WP:NPOV, and other policies and guidelines that affect article content generally.

The current text of policy, which has been in place since about 2007, echoes Jimbo Wales' instruction to "remove immediately and without waiting for discussion" the following:


 * Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced

Removals of such content have been considered exempt from the policy against edit warring and the three-revert rule.

Recently some disagreement has arisen over what "contentious" means, whether to retain that word at all, and how to resolve differences among editors as to whether a given piece of information is contentious or adequately sourced.

This RfC is an attempt to assess community consensus on the question in light of recent unresolved disputes on the matter.

View by Pointillist
''' This view relates specifically to new/infant articles and does not apply to unsourced BLPs more than two weeks old. '''

Novice editors should be welcomed and supported. However, all contributors are responsible for understanding the Verifiability policy ("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"), and mastering the basic technique for citing reliable sources when adding statements to articles. Editors who ignore these principles do not add value to the project, so it is important to inculcate them in new members of Wikipedia as soon as possible—to encourage newcomers to search for sources before writing articles, rather than vice versa. Newborn and infant articles about living people are a particular concern because in some domains errors in apparently uncontentious statements (e.g. the subject's birthday, birth place, nationality, educational or work history) may have severe consequences before the article can be made safe by experienced neutral editors.

Therefore any editor should feel free to delete unsourced (or unreliably-sourced) statements about living persons in new articles, without feeling responsible for finding reliable sources. If the article is empty once all the unsourced statements have been deleted, it may technically be a candidate for CSD, but it is better to PROD it to give the original author(s) an opportunity to improve it. A new article typically ceases to be "infant" once it has been edited by several contributors over a week, or a single contributor over two weeks, because of the stabilizing effects of NPP, RCP and watchlisting, but the exact definition will probably emerge by consensus.

When deleting unsourced contributions by novice editors, it is important to explain the reason and help the contributor understand how to improve the article (e.g. how to review the article history, user-fy deleted text, find and cite sources), how collaboration works on Wikipedia, and where to find editors who will help. New templates and help may be needed to give novices support.


 * Users who endorse this summary
 * 1) Yes. There are many good ideas here for how to make the initial experience better. We want to be friendly and welcoming while at the same time encouraging high standards and good behavior. ++Lar: t/c 05:12, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 2) Agreed. Cirt (talk) 05:19, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 3) No problems with this, though I more strongly support Kevin's view below.  Unit  Anode  14:55, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 4) Yes. Realistic and sensible. Niteshift36 (talk) 17:04, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 5) Agreed, in individual cases. The point I am trying to make in my view below is that editors should not systematically delete content just to make a point.  Sandstein   17:09, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 6) Something like this should be discussed further in more detail (Requests for comment/Biographies of living people may be discussing this too?), for new BLPs - being as gentle as possible with new contributors whilst educating them. Making sourcing requirements strong at the point of creation is by far the most practical and sensible - and entirely distinct from the approaches suitable for longstanding unsourced content. Making it clear that new unsourced content will be removed (ideally with some prior sourcing effort, but not necessarily) is needed to give such requirements strength. See also BLP unverified for noting removed content on talk pages. Rd232 talk 19:04, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 7) Agreed, with the distinction rd232 makes above. If we can get things right from the start with new editors, new articles, and new content as it is added then at least the existing mess of low quality articles will not grow. - Wikidemon (talk) 19:13, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Per pointillist's clarification, I think I would apply it to new content of any sort, even in an old BLP. Although not ideal (it would be better to go ahead and source it) I see no problem with reverting a new content addition by saying "please find a reliable source for this new material", particularly if one is extra friendly to novice editors.  - Wikidemon (talk) 02:13, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) Sounds sensible to me. SlimVirgin  TALK  contribs 20:56, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 2) good  Bramble  claw  x   22:50, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 3) Sure, for new articles this works. This should be accompanied with an explanation to the article's creator as to why the material was removed and what the writer can do to get it back.  Them From  Space  22:58, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 4) Agreed, per Sandstein's rationale. Jclemens (talk) 23:02, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 5) This is good, but the one by Kevin below is slightly better. Andrew Lenahan -  St ar bli nd  23:30, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 6) Sounds pretty good. If we can encourage newbies to source their own articles, the backlog won't grow at least. NW ( Talk ) 23:56, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 7) We should prevent the emergence of a situation similar to what happened recently. --Vejvančický (talk) 13:06, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 8) Agree, especially as to "without feeling responsible for finding reliable sources" element, but disagree as to the limitation to new and 2–week articles (the rest being essentially identical to Kevin's view, below). —  T RANSPORTER M AN  ( TALK ) 15:13, 19 February 2010 (UTC) (Clarified. 19:44, 19 February 2010 (UTC))

View by Kevin
The WP:BLP policy statement that


 * Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced—whether the material is negative, positive, neutral, or just questionable—should be removed immediately and without waiting for discussion

does not mean that there must be evidence of contention before removal, indeed the policy is clarified in several places:


 * "We must get the article right. Be very firm about the use of high quality references."
 * "Biographical material must therefore be written with great care and strict adherence to our content policies."
 * "badly written biographies of living persons should be stubbed or deleted"
 * "Material about living persons must be sourced very carefully"
 * "Remove any unsourced material to which an editor objects in good faith"

This last quote suggests that so long as editors are acting in good faith, removal of unsourced material is explicitly supported by this policy. Any editor who is working to decrease the amount of unsourced biographical content by either adding sources or by removing the content is acting in good faith, and therefore is also supported by this policy.


 * Users who endorse this summary


 * 1) (as proposer) Kevin (talk) 02:01, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 2) Support - Pointillist (talk) 02:07, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 3) Obviously. Unit  Anode  02:09, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 4) -- Jayron  32  03:58, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 5) Yes. ++Lar: t/c 05:09, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 6) Certainly. Thanks for pointing this out. Cirt (talk) 05:20, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 7) Of course.  The fact that somebody is removing is prima facie evidence that the material is contentious.  Woogee (talk) 05:39, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * That is absurd, as pointed out in some of the other views below. — Arthur Rubin  (talk) 18:57, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) Exactly.   JBsupreme  ( talk ) 06:21, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 2) A proposal that actually gets it, unlike some of the others below. Tarc (talk) 13:08, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 3) Did some actually start this seeking to prevent the removal of unsourced content from BLPS?Bali ultimate (talk) 13:11, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 4) Should be clear to anyone who regularly edits, and made clear to new folks in polite terms. &mdash;  The Hand That Feeds You :Bite 15:29, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 5) Epbr123 (talk) 15:38, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 6) --Dirk Beetstra T  C 16:40, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 7) seems good: better than the others for sure. —innotata (Talk • Contribs) 19:37, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 8) Freikorp (talk) 22:42, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 9) Sounds good to me. Andrew Lenahan -  St ar bli nd  23:31, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 10) Prefer this much more strongly than anything else. We simply cannot know what will cause someone real world harm, and so we should default to excluding the content unless we can either cite it or there is a good reason that applies to that particular case. NW ( Talk ) 23:38, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 11) Brilliant thinking.  Bramble  claw  x   01:29, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 12) – Juliancolton  &#124; Talk 18:11, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 13) Nifboy (talk) 23:31, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 14) M4gnum0n (talk) 11:26, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 15) Absolutely. I believed this to be the policy all along. Xymmax So let it be written   So let it be done  18:57, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 16) Deor (talk) 05:54, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 17) Agree, objection by a user makes the objection contentious; but I think that the text of the policy should be clarified to say that explicitly and to explicitly say that the objecting editor can also be the removing editor. Also, I believe that the "good faith" standard should be clarified to make clear that Assume Good Faith applies to such removals, for reasons I will express below at View by Rd232. The net result is unsourced or poorly sourced information should be immediately removed and the removal should be presumed to be in good faith unless expressly proven to be otherwise.  T RANSPORTER M AN   ( TALK ) 15:51, 16 February 2010 (UTC) (Strikeout added —  T RANSPORTER M AN   ( TALK ) 21:54, 16 February 2010 (UTC)) Changed to "Disagree" While I continue to agree that this is the way the policy ought to be (and I still agree with KieferSkunk, below, and others on that "should be" basis), after further research I cannot support the position that "Remove any unsourced material to which an editor objects in good faith" currently means that objection means consensus. See View #2 of TransporterMan, below, for my reasoning. —  T RANSPORTER M AN   ( TALK ) 21:20, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 18) Agree - If an editor in good faith removes unsourced or poorly sourced material on BLP grounds it is by definition contentious. To interpret this rule otherwise is to invite local active editors to form consensus to ignore policy. JPatterson (talk) 21:49, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 19) Agree policy is already in place to back up removing material if necessary. Steve Quinn (formerly Ti-30X) (talk) 06:57, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

View by Sandstein
A dictionary definition of the word "contentious" reads: "1. tending to argument or strife; quarrelsome: a contentious crew. 2. causing, involving, or characterized by argument or controversy: contentious issues. 3. Law. pertaining to causes between contending parties."

Any content, therefore, is "contentious" as long as editors disagree about its text or inclusion. If content is deleted for whatever reason (excepting perhaps page-blanking vandalism and such), this makes it "contentious", and accordingly it may not be re-added without sources, per WP:BLP.

However, if the content was not already contentious before the initial deletion, that initial deletion can not be justified with the WP:BLP instruction that "contentious material ... should be removed immediately". If there is no other policy-based justification for the deletion, it may constitute disruption.

While there is a policy-based justification for deleting individual content that fails to comply with WP:BLP for lack of sourcing, that justification becomes more tenuous if deletions occur on a mass scale without regard to the individual merits or the sourceability of the content, and such mass deletions may constitute disruption including in the light of WP:POINT.  Sandstein  06:44, 3 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Users who endorse this summary


 * 1) Precisely put. Probably too precisely for the people who most need to understand the point. Rd232 talk 08:43, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 2) Well put.John Z (talk) 09:43, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 3) Well written. The trust isn't there anymore to "assume good faith" in BLP content removal. --KrebMarkt 10:29, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 4) Agree, absolutely. -- Cycl o pia  talk  11:24, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 5) Absolutely. Well said. I also agree with KrebMarkt. Contains Mild Peril (talk) 16:03, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 6) Bang on.  Resolute 17:13, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 7) We knew what contentious was perfectly well before this abuse of admin tools. Just use that again.  The bot-like removal is what's contentious and should stop. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 18:49, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Agree, absolutely. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 18:54, 3 February 2010 (UTC) See my agreement to the next view, below.  I cannot agree that the deletion for being contentious makes it contentious.  — Arthur Rubin  (talk) 19:01, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) Agreed. We don't need people with torches in hand descending on every sentence that doesn't have a footnote after it.  Ray  Talk 19:30, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 2) Agree absolutely.--Pawnkingthree (talk) 20:09, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 3) You can't decide if you disagree with something unless you have looked at and properly understood it first. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 20:25, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 4) Noting also that saying that because something has no source that it as "contentious" is a misuse of this standard.  Collect (talk) 20:43, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 5) Mass deletions based on a subjective policy will always be more disruptive than helpful. &mdash; KieferSkunk (talk) &mdash; 20:44, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 6) Agreed.  Oreo Priest  talk 21:04, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 7) Support. Without regard to the overall decision on un[der]sourced BLPs, such material that is contentious by this definition should be removed. CRGreathouse (t | c) 21:30, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 8) Support -- as long as the deletions specified are deletions in bulk  Sifaka   talk  21:42, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 9) This has merit, but so does the below position. Jclemens (talk) 22:53, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 10) Agreed. And, I'm not yet convinced that unsourced BLPs are any more of a problem than any other BLP. I think it is the most popular ones that are actually the most dangerous. Icewedge (talk) 01:20, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 11) Agreed. -- Klein  zach  03:28, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 12) —Кузьма討論 07:27, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 13) Agreed: material that is merely unsourced is not necessarily contentious, it is just unverified.  --Jubilee♫ clipman  07:42, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 14) GRuban (talk) 19:14, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 15) Absolutely.   Wiki works because we incrementally improve on what is here.  People who are working systematically destroy content are being disruptive. Gigs (talk) 15:31, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 16) Agree with the spirit. Maurreen (talk) 16:38, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 17) &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 21:47, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 18) Spot on. -- ArglebargleIV (talk) 17:48, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 19) Right. --  Wikid as&#169; 09:32, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 20) Agreed.--Peter cohen (talk) 10:37, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

View by Rd232
Contentiousness arises from a specific reason to remove specific content. It does not arise from a blanket reason to remove a broad class of content arising from a highly disputed interpretation of policy. Removing content for a disputed blanket reason does not create contention, it creates disruption. Interpreting WP:V to justify a deletion of unsourced content solely for being unsourced goes beyond the policy's intent, which is to ensure that where any unsourced claims are contested for a specific reason, sourcing is required and "I think / I know" is not a valid reason for retention. The fact that content is unsourced makes it weak and easily challenged on any specific grounds; those grounds must exist. Showing that a reasonable effort to source the content failed would be enough to make it contentious. There is a world of difference between "unverified" and "unverifiable", and making some effort to check whether content falls into the latter category is enough to make it contentious, if the effort fails. (So is any reasonably plausible claim of possible real-world harm, for instance.) Rd232 talk 09:05, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Addendum: this RFC relates to the mass removal of longstanding unsourced content without attempt to either source it or argue that it is contentious beyond being unsourced. The issue of creating procedures to systematically review unsourced BLP content is, I think, separate, well worth doing, and being discussed in more detail at the other BLP RFC. This RFC is on the issue of whether unsourced content can/should be removed from BLPs en masse without review (i.e. attempt to source or argue contention beyond "unsourced"). Rd232 talk 15:46, 3 February 2010 (UTC)


 * 1) Support.-- Cycl o pia  talk  11:25, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 2) Sounds good. = Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 18:47, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 3) Quite.  — Arthur Rubin  (talk) 18:50, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 4) Davewild (talk) 20:05, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 5) Agreed. This does not suggest that other un[der]sourced material should be kept, but rather that its removal should be done more cautiously. The sledgehammer of immediate removal (without discussion, notification, attempted sourcing, or consensus) should be applied with great care. CRGreathouse (t | c) 21:32, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 6) Support.  Sifaka   talk  21:44, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 7) Support. Hut 8.5 21:48, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 8) Support.  CRGreathouse says it well too.John Z (talk) 21:51, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 9) Support 'There is a world of difference between "unverified" and "unverifiable"'. Many new editors contribute in good faith without any knowledge of BLP or verifiability policies. I've seen too many highly factual articles excised or gutted over "BLP"/"verifiablity" concerns, when all the editor had to do was go to a library, pick up a fucking book, and cite the article.  dissolve  talk  22:23, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 10) Agreed. Contains Mild Peril (talk) 22:33, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 11) Agreed. Contentiousness is the touchstone. Shadowjams (talk) 22:46, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 12) Contentious in the policy in question modifies unsourced. If the policy intended that any unsourced material should be immediately deleted, that word wouldn't be there. Jclemens (talk) 22:56, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 13) Yes. Material is not contentious just because it is argued about on Wikipedia. It creates a contentious situation even if the material is mundane. Date delinking is a contentious situation on Wikipedia, but no BLP in the world would be affected by whether or not the dates in their articles are linked.   Them  From  Space  23:02, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 14) Agreed. RossPatterson (talk) 23:09, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 15) Very well put.  Ray  Talk 23:37, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 16) Icewedge (talk) 01:22, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 17) Agreed. -- Klein  zach  03:26, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 18) —Кузьма討論 07:27, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 19) Agreed: material that is merely unsourced is indeed unverified but not necessarily unverifiable.  Once it is becomes the latter, then it becomes contentious.  --Jubilee♫ clipman  07:47, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 20) Sole Soul (talk) 23:50, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 21) GRuban (talk) 19:15, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 22) Michig (talk) 11:36, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 23) —David Eppstein (talk) 01:32, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 24) I agree fully. --Apoc2400 (talk) 22:21, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 25) Agreed.  Systematic human review is different from systematic and blind destruction of everything without a footnote. Gigs (talk) 15:32, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 26) Agree. Maurreen (talk) 16:40, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 27) &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 21:48, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 28) --Cyber cobra  (talk) 23:19, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 29) It's silly to say that a statement like " is an actor" is contentious solely because there's no inline citation after the sentence.  "Currently lacking an inline citation" is not the same as "contentious", just like "unverified" is not the same as "unverifiable".   WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:52, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 30) Agreed.--Peter cohen (talk) 10:38, 4 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Discussion
 * 1) Disagree — How do we enforce, "Showing that a reasonable effort to source the content failed would be enough to make it contentious." Just require the removing editor to make that boilerplate claim on the talk page and assume good faith? Require the editor to itemize the places that have been searched without finding anything? Both are wholly impractical and subject to gross manipulation. —  T RANSPORTER M AN   ( TALK ) 16:13, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
 * It's a fair point for an individual case, but less relevant for mass deletion. It takes a certain amount of time to put in a reasonable effort, and it should be possible to see from a mass deleter's contributions whether they (a) have allowed enough time for the claimed search and (b) the time allowed varies appropriately, or is very systematic and perhaps indicative of gaming. Ultimately it relies on good faith; but if challenged, people should be willing and able to explain what "reasonable effort" they concretely made. Rd232 talk 17:17, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Disagree It only sounds rational, but there is no way to actually justify acts neutraly. Wikid as&#169; 09:35, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

View by KieferSkunk
The fundamental problem with the word "contentious" is that it is subject to interpretation, as are "objectionable" and "subjective". While the community consensus may decide on a particular interpretation of the word, we will be constantly battling people who disagree and who will invariably decide to interpret the word differently, and thus use their own interpretation as justification for handling the policy differently. In other words, referring to the content as "contentious" does not make for an indisputable, objective policy, and we must rely on people to apply common sense (something that, I'm afraid, can be sorely lacking in many disputes).

I believe that we should not use this word at all in terms of the policy, but instead use a stricter policy as a whole: If the content cannot be verified, it should be removed, period. As has been stated, the bar for content on WP is verifiability, not truth, and in conformance with WP:NPOV, verifiable data should be permissible even if it might be considered "contentious" by some (including the subject). As with the verifiability and neutrality of articles on commercial products and historical events, BLPs should be subject to the same bar of content quality.

I realize that the problem comes when a factual error or a potentially slanderous comment is inserted into a BLP. That situation should be dealt with immediately. I don't disagree with this at all, but I think that using subjective terms such as "contentious" will result in a lot more difficulty over time as people will fail to understand, ignore or dispute the consensus. It will be much less difficult and more productive overall for the policy to be clear and objective, without regard for personal opinions. &mdash; KieferSkunk (talk) &mdash; 20:29, 3 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Adding a thought: "If the content cannot be verified, it should be removed, period." I realize this is the standard for all WP content as it is, but what I mean here is that a person who reviews a BLP and discovers a piece of info that "doesn't look right" or needs verification, they should either immediately remove it or add a reliable source for it, such that the info can be verified. &mdash; KieferSkunk (talk) &mdash; 20:35, 3 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Users endorsing this view:
 * 1) (As proposer) &mdash; KieferSkunk (talk) &mdash; 20:29, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 2) I was actually about to make my own comment to the same effect.  Though we can find dictionary definitions of the term contentious, it does not make it a useful term in providing any guidance towards applying this policy.  As such, though it has meaning (as any word does), it is a useless term in helping resolve conflict, and so should have no bearing on the application of policy.  -- Jayron  32  20:31, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 3) Epbr123 (talk) 20:37, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 4) I agree, except for the part about removing "contentious".  There has to be a dividing line somewhere, and "contentious" is not too hard of a word to figure out.  The verifiability requirement is a reiteration of WP:V and good advice for all.  There is no reason or excuse for an experienced productive editor to add unsourced material to the encyclopedia.  But what if we encounter an unsourced statement in an old article that looks right and can be verified?  For example, year of birth, nationality, gender.  It's probably right but hypothetically it could be wrong.  Ten seconds on google can verify the fact, and in another minute or two one can add the source.  May it be deleted because the editor would rather delete things than verify them?  Can an editor engage in large-scale edits to delete information on this basis even though it is verifiable?  Should we have a requirement, or at least a suggestion, that people try to source things WP:BEFORE they delete them?  - Wikidemon (talk) 21:01, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * That's part of the "common sense" issue I mentioned. We would like to think that someone would apply common sense in this scenario and either leave the content there, or improve it if they're willing, but that they wouldn't delete the content just because they feel like it or they're interpreting the policy 100% literally.  But in my experience, policies that leave room for interpretation tend to be abused and misinterpreted more often than we'd like, while policies that are very clear and objective tend to work better.  (Policies where one can basically go "You'd have to either be a complete idiot or be deliberately trying to be disruptive to misunderstand this policy" are the kind that WP should be based on.) &mdash; KieferSkunk (talk) &mdash; 21:30, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) Strongly agree. Cirt (talk) 02:28, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 2) M4gnum0n (talk) 11:29, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 3) Agree, as clarified by KieferSkunk at 20:35 & 21:30 3 February 2010. —  T RANSPORTER M AN  ( TALK ) 21:59, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

View of Jc3s5h
Perhaps "contentious" is not the best word for the material I have in mind, but I think unsourced/poorly sourced material that could cause harm or unfair advantage should be removed immediately. A non-exhaustive list of tests would be:
 * If the material contradicted what the article subject wrote in a resume, would the potential new boss care?
 * If the article subject were competing for a position (employment, election, appointment) would the material make the subject seem superior or inferior to another candidate? --Jc3s5h (talk) 20:38, 3 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Users who endorse this view
 * 1) Yes. It's important to differentiate between material that really shouldn't be here and that which lacks inline citations but does not appear to present any specific problems. Contains Mild Peril (talk) 22:29, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 2) This is a good point, see my support for ThemFromSpace's position, below. Jclemens (talk) 23:00, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 3) Agree. This is the overall point. Maurreen (talk) 16:41, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

View by Jayron32
WP:BURDEN has been part of the Verifiability policy since some time in 2006, possibly earlier. "The burden of evidence lies with the editors who have made an edit or wish an edit to remain". That wording, or some very similar, has been consensus policy for years. If editors wish information to remain in an article, they should provide sources for that information.


 * Users endorsing this view:
 * 1) As proposer.  -- Jayron  32  20:40, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 2) Already evident and policy. Cirt (talk) 02:28, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 3) Yes.   JBsupreme  ( talk ) 07:48, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 4) M4gnum0n (talk) 11:33, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 5) Deor (talk) 05:56, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 6) Strongly agree. The editor who creates the article or adds content should provide sources for that information. This is very clear cut and simple, and a policy that is already in place. Steve Quinn (formerly Ti-30X) (talk) 07:07, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

View by SoWhy
No policy on Wikipedia exists by itself. They all interact and need to be considered together in order to achieve our main goal, i.e. building a free encyclopedia that includes the sum of humanity's knowledge. As such, while applying WP:V can by itself be interpreted as a reason to remove all unsourced content from an article (as Pointillist says in their view), it's not why WP:V was created in the first place. Neither this policy nor the specific sentence in question from WP:BLP were created to sanction the blanket removal of otherwise valid information. We have two policies designed to be applied in such cases after all - the editing and the deletion policy. Both policies clearly say that we should improve content that does not meet the policies and guidelines in its current state and only remove it if improvement is impossible.

(emphasis added)

The sentence in question in WP:BLP is thus only a reflection of those policies. Both support the removal of questionable or "contentious" (as WP:BLP puts it) but make it clear that it does not mean that we can or even should delete just anything that is unsourced - BLP or not. The view by Pointillist above conflicts completely with those policies and with the founding principle #3, i.e. that this is a wiki, where not one author bears the burden to create a perfect article immediately but where many people work together in improving what one person was unable to do. Many of our articles were started incomplete or imperfect for one reason or another. But if we come across an article like that, we should not delete it on sight. We should help the author and improve the article. We are here to build an encyclopedia that contains the sum of the world's knowledge and sometimes it simply requires you to fire up Google News and to spend five minutes searching for sources. If you can't find any, you can still delete it. But not before. Regards  So Why  20:41, 3 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Users endorsing this view:
 * 1) Well said. Davewild (talk) 20:47, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 2) Agreed, well said.  A problem I have with the existing wording is that it essentially asks all users to judge what is acceptable and what is not. &mdash; KieferSkunk (talk) &mdash; 20:50, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 3) Yes. I would add that if the policy was created to sanction the deletion of all unsourced content in BLPs the word "contentious" would not even be there. Hut 8.5 21:04, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 4) Well said! —  James F Kalmar  21:20, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 5) Agreed. A needful reiteration of fundamentals and the fact that no rule should be understood in isolation from the others.John Z (talk) 22:05, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 6) Agreed. Wikipedia improves by retaining information. Editors should attempt to find sources for negative statements, and delete only as a last resort if a source cannot be found. Rpvdk (talk) 22:56, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 7) Exactly. This is the problem with mass deletion, it doesn't look for sources first. --TorriTorri(Talk to me!) 01:02, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 8) Yes. That's a balanced approach. -- Klein  zach  03:21, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 9) —Кузьма討論 07:27, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 10) Agree - "We are here to build an encyclopedia" not delete it all because it isn't yet perfect!  --Jubilee♫ clipman  07:54, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 11) GRuban (talk) 19:16, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 12) Michig (talk) 11:38, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 13) Yes very well said. Camaron ·  Christopher · talk 20:50, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 14) --Apoc2400 (talk) 22:25, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 15) Maurreen (talk) 17:55, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 16) Yes. If people have no faith in the wiki process, I'm not sure why those people are here. Gigs (talk) 15:40, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 17) Fully endorse. Jogurney (talk) 17:13, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 18) Yep. Hobit (talk) 04:28, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
 * 19) Support.--Peter cohen (talk) 10:41, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Discussion:
 * Disagree — The fact of the matter is that there are simply some areas — copyright, office actions, arbitration, privacy, defamation, and pronouncements by Jimmy Wales — where collaboration and the wiki ideal have to yield to other considerations for either legal or moral reasons. This is one of those areas, as pronounced by Jimbo at Wikimania 2006 and as set out in the lede of this RfC. In Jimbo's comments he directly addresses the view of SoWhy:
 * (Emphasis added.) It's also worth noting that he didn't say "a really strong stance against contentious unsourced claims," though I suppose he may have said that somewhere else. —  T RANSPORTER M AN  ( TALK ) 19:06, 19 February 2010 (UTC) (typo correction 19:08, 19 February 2010 (UTC)) (2nd typo correction 19:15, 19 February 2010 (UTC)) (3rd typo correction 19:17, 19 February 2010 (UTC))


 * My view is only a reflection of current policy as it is. No one claims that there are no special rules for BLPs, there even is a special policy just for them. But the point is that even that policy does not sanction blanket removal of content without trying to improve it where possible. Regards  So Why  19:25, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

View by Themfromspace
I'll go off of the same definition that Sandstein used. The issue of contention in BLPs is a real world issue and not a Wikipedia issue. I don't agree that content is contentious for BLP matters because editors on Wikipedia disagree about it; the issue is whether people in the outside world quarrel over it. Religion, abortion, homosexuality, etc. are all contentious issues in BLP articles because they are contentious in the real world. The degree of contention corresponds to the degree of strife and animosity that the issue brings up in the real world. This is why it is less contentious for a biography to call one a Christian than a homosexual. Regardless of whatever editors personally think about material such as this, it must be recognized that the more that material is likely to cause real-world issues for the subject, the more thoroughly it should be sourced.  Them From  Space  22:48, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Users endorsing this view:
 * 1) My take on this is that a contentious piece of information is anything that a reasonable man would find offensive if inaccurately published in Wikipedia--Themfromspace's listing is correct, though incomplete. Jclemens (talk) 22:59, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 2) The issue is what arm would there be if the information is wrong. If the subject of the article just applied to teach at a Jewish school, saying he is a Christian might be a problem. --Jc3s5h (talk) 23:36, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, I agree. This is just as a Christian teaching at a Jewish school would likely be contentious in the real world.  Them From  Space  00:50, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Imagine we had an article on a person with a traditionally Islamic name, but the subject was actually Jewish. If the person applied for a professorship at a Jewish college and our Wikipedia article prevented them from getting the job, that wouldn't be good at all. But per your statement, religion is something that wouldn't have to be sourced, because it isn't contentious. The issue is not that something is contentious or not, but that we cannot possibly know if something false will have real world negative effects on someone. If we do not know, it should not be included. NW ( Talk ) 02:49, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Ok, point taken. I've struck that sentence, and actually I had already mentioned that religion was a contentious topic earlier in my statement.  Them  From  Space  02:53, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) Good description of what contentious is. We should use it. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 01:17, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 2) That more useful setting a semblance of Metric to measure how much "contentious" is a fact. --KrebMarkt 06:58, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 3) Well put. Maurreen (talk) 16:42, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 4) Yes, it is more important to measure how contentious a statement could be outside Wikipedia, rather than simply between Wikipedia editors. Camaron ·  Christopher · talk 20:53, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 5) I disagree with your implication that Wikipedia is not "real". It is just as real as any other written work. I agree with you that 'contentious' does not refer to whether Wikipedians disagree over something, but whether it is negative, controversial or such in general. --Apoc2400 (talk) 22:27, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 6) Content is contentious if it could be reasonably expected to harm the subject's reputation and is not backed up with a reliable source.  --Cyber cobra  (talk) 22:56, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 7) Absolutely. Karanacs (talk) 15:58, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

View by Ntsimp
Although we don't want Wikipedia to say anything false on any subject, in practice we have to have a lower standard. Since we especially don't want anyone hurt by something false said about them on Wikipedia, the BLP standard is especially strict. But it still shouldn't be excessively strict; I don't think saying "there's no source" should be sufficient cause by itself for immediate removal of material. A more moderate view is better for the gradual improvement of the encyclopedia. Therefore, my definition of "contentious material" is "material that would likely be defamatory if false." I recognize that this is still not an objective standard, but there are many harmless unsourced statements that should pass the test and stay, hopefully becoming sourced in the natural course of article improvement. Ntsimp (talk) 00:28, 4 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Users endorsing this view:


 * 1) Agreed. I think you put it very well and concisely, too. Openskye (talk) 01:56, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 2) Not too different from what has been said before, but correct. Jclemens (talk) 04:07, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 3) More than half of rhe Jimbo Wales article is unsourced or improperly sourced. Anyone care to see how it would look under "strict construction" policies?  My position on the prior RfC still stands, to be sure. Collect (talk) 11:19, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 4) Agree, but unsourced and unlikely positive claims are equally contentious.--Michig (talk) 11:39, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 5) Agree with Michig; unsourced and unlikely positive claims should also not appear in Wikipedia. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 16:29, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 6) There will always be accuracy issues in Wikipedia articles, even in BLP ones, and even if everything had a source of some kind. It is better to focus on what would be contentious, and is unsourced or poorly sourced. Camaron ·  Christopher · talk 20:56, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 7) Exactly. Maurreen (talk) 16:44, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 8) Almost exactly what I came up with myself before seeing this View. --Cyber</b> cobra  (talk) 23:01, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 9) A reasonable rule of thumb for removing unsourced material. Not the only one, as indicated by Arthur Rubin. While it's impossible to agree on perfectly objective standard, bear in mind that reliable sources do not necessarily 100% endorse something they report either. Have a look at Harry Stack Sullivan for instance, which was edited by a (now) banned user. Compare the degree of certainty in this edit with how the source describes it. (This isn't a living person, so I didn't just remove the material because it would be a lot harder to fix if it were just removed.) Pcap  ping  13:47, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 10) WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:59, 11 February 2010 (UTC), so long as "There's no source" means "There's no source already named in the article", rather than "There's no source anywhere in the world about this".
 * 11) Agreed. I had an issue where someone did a blanket deletion on an article I contributed to. Most of the information deleted was simply how the subject had begun performing and acting at very early age, and some of this information was actually sourced, albeit from an obscure source. When I tried to fix it, the other editor reverted it and then put a verifiability warning template on my talk page. I did not confront the editor because their user page made comments in general that they didn't care if someone could produce the obscure or questioned source, and wasn't open to any discussion. I hope this will prevent other such occurrences. Subwayatrain (talk) 06:23, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 12) Support.--Peter cohen (talk) 10:43, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

View by Jubileeclipman
Why not just hide unsourced material with the cn template like this: (look at the edit and see this for an edit I made recently)? It would at least be a temporary solution until the material is either sourced or proven unverifiable. I presume it would hide the material from public searches too? --Jubilee♫ clipman 09:44, 4 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Users endorsing this view:

I like your innovative thinking, though I don't think this method is suitable for universal application, at least not with the standard tag, since this is usually assumed to refer to the information immediately preceding it. Perhaps someone could design a similar new template especially for this purpose? I think this is basically a good idea if applied with common sense to suit individual circumstances. Contains Mild Peril (talk) 05:41, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Discussion
 * A new template would actually be a good idea: something like [material hidden] or whatever might make sense. I take your point about the existing tag though: you can't actually see the material that has been tagged unless you edit the page so a casual reader would be not a little confused!  (I am assuming Kleinzach is endorsing the new template idea proposed by Contains Mild Peril rather my original idea, BTW?) --Jubilee♫ clipman  20:14, 5 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Yes, this could give us a new option, but see also Template:Unsourced BLP flagged. -- Klein zach  07:30, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I forgot about that BLP flag template: that answers that basic need very well. A more universal one could be useful too, mind, in non-BLP articles with unsourced material.  --Jubilee♫ clipman  20:21, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) New template to hide text while also making it clear that the hidden text is still available for editing would indeed be better than my original idea. --Jubilee♫ clipman 20:14, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 2) If material is contentious enough that it should be hidden, it's contentious enough to remove. Relegating it to the revision history is a form of hiding it, after all.  In all I must oppose this kind of hidden text as a general recommendation.  People can and do use HTML comments to hide text and that's sometimes appropriate, but I don't think it should be a regular practice. Gigs (talk) 15:44, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

View by Contains Mild Peril
Our focus should be on sourcing or removing real-world contentious material: this will have a slightly wider definition than merely the potentially defamatory, whose legal definition may vary somewhat in different jurisdictions anyhow. Wikipedia is a work in progress, and constructive solutions should be sought where possible. Indiscriminate removal of unsourced material is counterproductive for a number of reasons:
 * Loss of information which may be accurate, valuable to the reader and easily sourceable, but which is far less likely to be sourced if it's already been removed
 * Potentially a deletion back-door shortcut: if an editor removes most of the information from an article, another might find a short stub lacking information as to why the subject is notable and tag it db-a7, and an admin might delete it without properly checking the article history. This scenario is possible with all our hypothetical editors acting in good faith independently of each other.
 * Effective trivialisation of issues regarding genuinely problematic material if all unsourced biographical content is treated equally
 * Possible difficulties and disagreements in the definition of "unsourced": as mentioned in the other RfC, many articles may lack inline citations but include external links to much of the relevant information, and editors may disagree about the validity of questionable sources
 * Editors who see their good faith contributions trashed may be discouraged from further constructive contributions
 * Potential for neutrality to be compromised, e.g. if a subject has been involved in some controversy which is well referenced within the article but the more mundane details of their career are largely unreferenced, removal of unsourced material could result in an imbalanced article
 * Some editors may feel deterred from tagging articles for improvement for fear that doing so may invite an overzealous editor to pounce with a sledgehammer to crack a nut
 * Readers (and potential new editors) may turn to outdated versions on mirror sites if the articles on Wikipedia itself contain less information

A one-size-fits-all approach will not do: policies should be applied with good judgement on a case-by-case basis. A couple of examples:

James Genn: this edit, completely unsourced, was made in July 2007 and remained in the article until Johnbod removed it in January 2010 (and mentioned it in the other RfC). During that time, the article was edited several times and the dubious statement itself was even copy-edited, but didn't attract so much as a cn tag. Is the claim true? I don't know, but my guess would be no. Verifiable? I doubt it: the only Ghits are Wikipedia mirrors. Defamatory? Probably not in any legal sense: for one thing, unless the subject has exactly one cousin there's no allegation involving a specific person. It is however contentious, and should have been removed by the next editor who saw it.

Russell Brown is my local MP, and I believe his Wikipedia biography is accurate. Most of it (probably all - I haven't checked thoroughly) can be sourced via the external links given. However, it is almost entirely devoid of specific citations. If one were to remove every claim without an inline citation, all that would be left would the section on Football, which would obviously be ridiculous: he is notable as a politician rather than a football supporter. I will also confess that I did something naughty to this article (an experiment I should point out I have no plans to repeat): I committed a minor act of vandalism to test how long it stay there. It was | corrected within an hour. Russell Brown may be improved with inline citations but the current version is acceptable.

What I'm basically saying is that we need to exercise some good old-fashioned common sense. Contains Mild Peril (talk) 19:36, 4 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Users who endorse this view


 * 1) Surprisingly well written and a wise and well-thoughtout call for moderation, common sense, and a good middle ground between the two camps fighting here, which could bring better quality articles to the whole encyclopedia if people followed these principles. WHich is why no one on either side of this battle will endorse this view... too bad really.  This is a wonderful solution to our problems.  -- Jayron  32  20:17, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 2) This sort of nuance is what's been missing from these silly disputes. Yes, BLP content that is actually wrong and embarrassing needs to be removed ASAP, but that is not the same as taking a flame-thrower to any sentence that lacks a footnote. Remember that we have a General disclaimer, too.  Sandstein   21:34, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
 * No, Jayron32, this is what I've been saying all along. Jclemens (talk) 21:39, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) Yes indeed. I agree with all of that. -- Klein zach  22:12, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, though vandalising BLPs as an experiment isn't a good idea. <b style="color:#FF0000;">Hut 8.5</b> 23:24, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) —Кузьма討論 07:40, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 2) Very important points. Focuses on the real problems. Gradual, slow-motion deletion does happen. The presence and quality of sources should be considered thoughtfully, not mechanically. Deeming the sourcing of a stub with a couple of ELs materially inferior to that of a stub with a couple of inline cites is absurd.John Z (talk) 08:22, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 3) Good points to be borne in mind in this debate. Rd232 talk 10:58, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 4) Close to my personal position. In doubt content can be moved into talk as quarantine area.  --KrebMarkt 14:28, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I have actually moved material to talk pages for further discussion several times—entire 45 line paragraphs complete with images in some cases. It works well. --Jubilee♫ clipman  20:45, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) Good thoughts, well reasoned. Unfortunately very hard to apply. CRGreathouse (t | c) 20:07, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 2) If only all WP editors followed your type of common sense we would be swimming free of the sharks (and piranhas!) that seem to infest the waters at present in no time.  Lacking inline citations does not make an article unsourced, it makes it poorly referenced.  That is minor compared with a total lack of sources.  Official sites and fansites are not technically sources however, so a list of these only (even if they are cited inline) would still qualify the article for the BLP unsourced tag, IMO.  --Jubilee♫ clipman  20:45, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 3) Agree, but common sense doesn't appear all that common, sometimes.--Michig (talk) 11:41, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 4) —David Eppstein (talk) 01:35, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 5) Well said, I agree that the issue is a lot more complicated than it has been made out to be sometimes. Camaron ·  Christopher · talk 21:00, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 6) Good points. -- Avenue (talk) 23:50, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 7) Maurreen (talk) 16:45, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 8) The goal is to remove bad content; "bad" is almost completely independent of "unsourced". &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 21:50, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 9) I agree with almost every item in that list. I should also add that much of the unsourced material was added before Wikipedia even supported inline references. Have a look at Emil Constantinescu and Sandu Florea for instance. These articles were largely written by the same editor, User:Dahn. Why do they look so different citation-wise? The main difference is the year when they were written. Pcap  ping  13:32, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 10) WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:02, 11 February 2010 (UTC)  It's always pleasant to see someone assuming that fellow editors are capable of using good judgment and acting in good faith, even to the extent of rejecting mindlessness and WP:CREEPy rules.  Thanks.
 * 11) Agree, but unfortunately it's easier to check for lack of sourcing than to check for potentially dubious information. Karanacs (talk) 15:56, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 12) Couldn't have said it better myself.  Fences  &amp;  Windows  17:09, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 13) Support.--Peter cohen (talk) 10:45, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

View by Maurreen

 * Innocuous material is no less innocuous whether it is sourced or not sourced. (Update -- It is less verified, but otherwise the same. Maurreen (talk) 17:21, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Innocuous material is no less innocuous whether it is in a BLP or any other article.
 * If any article indicates one or more sources, it doesn't necessarily follow that any libelous or otherwise problematic material that might be in the article is properly sourced and attributed.

Conclusion -- The current concerns about BLP sourcing are not properly placed. Especially, mass deletion of unsourced BLPs would get rid of much material for insufficient cause. That time and attention could be better spent working on inherently contentious material, or gradually adding sources in general. Maurreen (talk) 16:55, 8 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Updating -- "Contentious" material includes that which:


 * Can reasonably be expected to be disputed, have been disputed, or are disputed, all for a reason other than sourcing.
 * Is disparaging or can reasonably be seen to be disparaging.
 * Invasion of privacy (This point probably needs more fleshing out.)

Examples of contentious material, in no particular order:
 * Allegations of criminal behavior or charges
 * Allegations of homosexuality or sexual deviance
 * That the subject has or is linked to a specific political point of view
 * Allegations of dishonesty or immoral or unethical behavior (recognizing that there are different views about this, and that if the behavior is contentious, so is the allegation)
 * Images that are revealing, such as those that would not be published by general-interest newspaper
 * Maurreen (talk) 17:37, 8 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Users who endorse this view
 * 1) Without getting into too many specifics, I support the idea of developing a guideline, essay, or examples of what types of things are contentious and what is not.  I think that if something is "innocuous" with respect to a person (meaning it does not tend to disparage or elevate a person), it may still be contentious if it is disputed in the real world, dubious, or unverifiable.  Also, facts have the potential to hurt people for reasons we may not know - that's a premise of BLP. - Wikidemon (talk) 17:56, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
 * You are right. "Innocuous" might be imprecise. I was trying to sum up too concisely, trying to draw a contrast with "contentious." Maurreen (talk) 18:19, 8 February 2010 (UTC)


 * 1) I've had this on my user page for a while: "A challenge to unsourced statements should be based on good-faith doubts about the verifiability of a statement." I don't think we should try to define what contentious is or not. We already have a standard, verifiability, the ability to be verified. Gigs (talk) 20:31, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 2) I support this general approach, though it should also apply to statements about living people even in articles that are not specifically bios of them. Articles grow gradually as sources are added. Obviously anything can be harmful, but we need to deal with the general run of things. Personally, even for most negative material that is possibly sourceable by what I can quickly do, I take a few minutes to try to  source it, though if I  can understand if someone prefers  to just remove it.  I am not sure of all the details of the proposal,  because if someone is clearly of a political orientation from the general trend of the article,  it does not harm to say so.  And I do not see how images are relevant, if they are known to be of the person.    DGG ( talk ) 03:29, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 3) I agree that having a source - any source - in an article does not mean that contentious material is properly sourced, and I think that is something being overlooked in the current BLP sourcing frenzy (although any new sourcing is an improvement, more care must be taken to ensure proper sourcing). Karanacs (talk) 15:54, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

View by Sceptre
People are looking at the wrong part of the clause. If just one person agrees that a statement is poorly/unsourced, it's by definition contentious, and the burden of proof is, as always, on those wanting to include the content. I'd prefer if the word was removed. Sceptre (talk) 07:43, 10 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Users who endorse this view
 * 1) Cirt (talk) 22:54, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 2) Endorse though this view is basically redundant with KieferSkunk and Jayron32.--M4gnum0n (talk) 12:04, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 3) Agree —  T RANSPORTER M AN  ( TALK ) 17:12, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Um, no. If a user says it's unsourced, it's unsourced. WP:BURDEN then applies. It must be both unsourced and contentious in order for an editor to invoke BLP-exceptions to 3RR and administrative fiat to keep it deleted. Unsourced means unsourced, contentious means contentious, and both prongs must be met before the "nuclear options" become legitimate. Jclemens (talk) 21:50, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Discussion

Statement by Collect
Wikipedia has an ability to do great harm to people if false material is contained in any biography, even of dead people. For that reason, I consider "contentious" to apply specifically to any material which, if false, damages a person in any way, even where the connection is to a dead person (yes, this is an extension to how some currently narrowly interpret WP:BLP but it is clearly a reasonable interpretation of the current policy).

Thus I support the excision of any unsourced or insufficiently sourced material which, if false, could conceivably be harmful to a person, or "contentious material." I would note also that the biography of, for example, Jimbo relies heavily on sources which do not pass WP:V at all - a test edit showed it would lose more than 80% of its content under strict construction of WP:BLP.

I would also note that most "popular figures" have generally not had books written about them with such details as DOB and the like, which means, since it is highly unlikely that such material could harm people, such material either should have a different standard for verification, or be exempt from it.

Lastly, I would suggest that WP actually have a BLP-content oversight committee, so that the massive attacks on political figures and the like during the upcoming campaign season can be prevented (since we do not have Flagged Revisions).

None of this alters my original position which appears now archived. Collect (talk) 12:14, 10 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Comments
 * 1) Agree with the spirit. But, one thing, why not apply the same standard to articles not about people? Also,  ...with "... support the excision of any material which, if false, could conceivably be harmful," did you mean "... excision of any unsourced material ..."? Maurreen (talk) 15:32, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Note emending above <g>. Articles about, say, cities, are unlikely to require quite the care, but yes - this would be applicable to all articles. Thanks! Collect (talk) 16:54, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) I agree with this view, but think we would need care to define what would be harmful. Someone tried to excise properly sourced information from an article on a deceased author because the fact that she smoked cigarettes (and that those likely contributed to her death from lung cancer) could be harmful to her reputation. Karanacs (talk) 15:52, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Maurreen's view #2

 * No article should be deleted for the sole reason of lacking any source unless a valid attempt has been made to find and add the source.
 * No mass deletion program based on the sole reason of lack of sourcing should take place unless a valid attempt has been made to address more-substantive problems.

Rationale: Whether an article lists a source has no direct bearing on whether it is libelous or otherwise problematic. This worry about sources confuses priorities. Maurreen (talk) 16:20, 11 February 2010 (UTC)


 * I welcome any comments here on how this might be seen as a bad idea. Maurreen (talk) 16:22, 11 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Comments


 * 1) Clearly makes sense.  Current procedures are sufficient to handle non-mass deletions. Collect (talk) 16:55, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 2) Wikipedia's long-standing policies have required material to be verifi able, not already verifi ed .  While I'd probably support a change to the notability rules that seriously raised the bar so that we had far fewer BLPs in the first place (goodbye, all you spammy stubs about plastic surgeons), Wikipedia does not benefit from mass-deleting thousands of articles simply because there's no properly formatted citation already on the page. Plausible statements like "John Smith is a plastic surgeon in Alaska" is not contentious, and if you're going to delete it, you should invest a responsible level of effort in justifying it, like checking the online database of licensed physicians in Alaska for his name.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:12, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 3) Agree. --GRuban (talk) 20:40, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 4) Exactly. Hobit (talk) 06:43, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Statement by YellowMonkey
Irrespective of the tightness of the criteria on sourcing, it doesn't make any difference unless it's enforced, whether that means negative information, suspicious stuff is added, whether it is simply a bad number saying that a person performed poorly in a sports match or a piece of information accusing them of crimes, bad character etc. At the end of the day, many olden-day unsourced articles come to FAR and sometimes someone just adds the odd ref to the end of the para. A lot of people will just assume it covers the whole para and will give it a nod, even though it is probably not, and even if the ref only covers the last sentence, or doesn't match up properly. Secondly, most smart POV-pushers, sometimes admins, especially on nationalist POV-pushing attractive articles, usually on controversial politicians, will cite a non-English source and maybe an obscure fringe book that no mainstream person takes seriously. Secondly, the outsider can't inspect it properly. Once there was even a guy who deliberately misquoted a scholar who said "I have no problem accepting this as nonsense " and cut off the last two words to fraudulently claim that the other guy endorsed them. This stuff is quite common on Wikipedia, and unless people are going to bother about any sourcing, BLP or BDP, or anything else, people will continue carrying on and it will just be another windowdressing metric. Most vandalism by drivebys is quickly reverted. POV pushing and source faking, seletive hatcheting by entrenched warriors including admins is not  YellowMonkey  ( vote in the Southern Stars photo poll )  07:49, 12 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Users who endorse this view
 * 1) While I think that sourcing is necessary, I agree with YM that it can often mask problems. Unless articles are being actively watched - by editors who understand the topic enough to recognize what is inaccurate - then even an article that looks properly sourced may be a huge BLP problem. Karanacs (talk) 15:49, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 2) Maurreen (talk) 09:56, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 3) Epbr123 (talk) 17:19, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
 * 4) Agree in spirit.  The only thing that keeps Wikipedia accurate is editors, not sources.  Gigs (talk) 04:46, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

View by Od Mishehu
Content should be considered "contentious" if it falls into any of the following categories:
 * 1) Something which the average adult in a modern democracy would be likely to consider negative.
 * 2) Something which would be considered negative by the community where the person belongs to.
 * 3) Something which would potentially get the person in legal trouble.
 * 4) Something which the person had objected to being included. This doesn't give the person veto power over the content of the article - sourced contentious material can obviously be present in articles.


 * Users endorsing this view:


 * Discussion
 * I agree that these are examples. But if we're going to define "contentious," I think this might be too narrow. For instance, it doesn't account for privacy concerns. Maurreen (talk) 10:00, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
 * The policy says that we should "do no harm", and what might cause an article subject harm I would think is much broader than what is listed here. Kevin (talk) 22:23, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
 * "Do no harm" was specifically rejected as a policy. The policy is to "consider harm". Gigs (talk) 20:18, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

View by TransporterMan
Withdrawn -  T RANSPORTER M AN  ( TALK ) 21:08, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Withdrawn view:  I basically agree with Kevin, above, but would like to make some additional comments. Anything less than Kevin's position, above, may not start to protect thinly–funded Wikipedia from being financially shut down by a defamation suit. One way we begin to protect Wikipedia from such a suit is to:
 * piggyback
 * through rigorous sourcing onto
 * fact–checking
 * driven by the fear of liability
 * of organizations with something to lose
 * who operate in jurisdictions in which the risk of liability is a genuine, everyday, and vital concern.

If that kind of piggybacking is not clearly established about an assertion in a BLP article, the assertion needs to be removed, immediately, and WP needs to have a very clearly-defined and actively–enforced policy saying not only that it may go or should go, but must go, in order to show good faith. Trying to guess what the LP subject of an article may think is sufficiently defamatory to go out and hire a lawyer, or trying to guess what a court might conclude about that assertion is not merely dancing on thin ice, but pogoing on thin ice. The question is not just whether Wikipedia can win a defamation suit, the question is whether it can survive the expense of a defamation suit even if it wins. It is not at all unusual for the cost of simple state court lawsuits in the United States involving commercial issues to now exceed half a million US dollars. Even if Wikipedia should win they may not be able to recover their expenses either because the law of the jurisdiction where the case was brought does not allow it (which is common in defamation cases) or simply because the plaintiff does not have the money to pay the award.

I would, therefore, recommend:
 * that the contentiousness requirement be eliminated (or at the very least be as defined as noted by Kevin and my comment there, above),
 * that it be made clear that any unsourced or non-high-quality-sourced (not poor-quality, but non-high-quality) information can be immediately removed by any editor,
 * clearly define, by both definitions and individual source evaluations, what high-quality sources are, based on the fear criteria discussed above,
 * create a plainly-stated standard that for BLP purposes any source which is not indisputably high–quality is to be regarded as non-high-quality until proven otherwise, and
 * maintain the current standard that assertions in BLP's about private persons require multiple high-quality sources.

The issues discussed here could easily affect the continued existence of Wikipedia and those survival considerations should, in my opinion, trump any considerations of the existence or quality of any individual BLP article. (And the position I set out here is only one piece in the puzzle of protecting Wikipedia from a defamation suit; I am only addressing this particular piece and I do not contend or assert that it will alone, or indeed will at all, with or without other measures, protect Wikipedia from such a suit.)

Nothing in this statement is, should be considered to be, or should be relied upon as professional legal advice by Wikipedia or by any other person whomsoever. Regards,  T RANSPORTER M AN  ( TALK ) 17:09, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
 * We do not let "fear" drive our policy making. The WMF already employs and has access to the leading expert lawyers in Internet law.  This is the relevant WMF resolution.  Which must be considered in light of the founding principles.  As an aside, this proposal would result in the deletion of about half of Wikipedia, and is entirely unreasonable. Gigs (talk) 19:30, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
 * On further consideration, I have changed my mind and believe that the level of legal concern I expressed above should be a subject, if at all, for office action or board decision, not for decision by consensus. Since they have not chosen to act, then the position I expressed above is, I now feel, specious. While I still support Kevin's position, as modified by my comments there, I have come to believe that my reasoning here is misguided.  T RANSPORTER M AN  ( TALK ) 21:08, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Quotes from Jimmy Wales
Since this debate is driven by Jimmy Wales' admonition to get it right as to BLP's, I think it only fair to set out what Jimbo has had to say on this matter. If others find relevant quotes, please feel free to add them in this section. —  T RANSPORTER M AN  ( TALK ) 20:35, 19 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Observations:

Regards,  T RANSPORTER M AN  ( TALK ) 20:54, 19 February 2010 (UTC) (Revised 21:13, 19 February 2010 (UTC)) (typo corrected 21:17, 19 February 2010 (UTC)) (typo corrected 21:31, 19 February 2010 (UTC)) (Supplemented 22:32, 19 February 2010 (UTC))
 * Though Jimmy starts by talking about immediate deletion of "negative information about living persons" in the remaining quotes from May, 2006, he only refers to "an unsourced statement that would be libel if false" and "unsourced claims about living people which would be libel if false." He then returns to "potentially hurtful" in November, 2006.
 * He also agrees "precisely" with someone's statement that we cannot be exact ("algorithmic") about the dividing line.
 * He does say that if you remove an unsourced statement which might be libelous that you should, "Please just remove the statement and ask a question on the talk page."
 * He makes it clear that it is acceptable to lose "100 articles a day, just on the grounds of being BAD in the sense we are discussing (having unsourced claims about living people which would be libel if false)".
 * Though he has strong feelings about this matter, the November 12, 2006, quote suggests that he is willing to bow to consensus about it.

View #2 and Proposal of TransporterMan
As noted above in View of Kevin, while I believe that the policy should be that unsourced BLP information can be immediately removed by any editor in good faith without being contentious (or because the action or objection of the removing editor causes it to be contentious), I can no longer support Kevin's position that the BLP policy currently allows such deletions merely because the first sentence of WP:GRAPEVINE says "Remove any unsourced material to which an editor objects in good faith" instead of "Remove any contentious unsourced material to which an editor objects in good faith".

Prior to this talk page discussion. and, six minutes later,, all in June, 2009, the phrase upon which Kevin's argument relies did, in fact, have the word contentious in it. (It read, "Remove any contentious material about living persons that is unsourced...") Prior to those edits it would have been impossible to make the argument that the policy is as Kevin interprets it to be. The first edit, however, did in fact introduce the concept of objection–equals–contention into the policy, and did so without objection even though it had been raised on the policy talk page. The edit summary of the second edit makes it clear that the second edit was only intended to be a stylistic change incorporating the first change into the article. However, because the title of WP:GRAPEVINE is, "Remove unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material," the second edit obfuscated the meaning of the first edit. (I presume in good faith that the second edit was not intended to have that effect, but it did.) The discussion on the policy talk page regarding these edits attracted only the proposing editor and one other editor and were there only two days before the changes were made. Because of the limited number of editors involved, I believe that it cannot be reasonably denied that WP:CONLIMITED would hold that consensus was not reached on the first edit, especially once the second edit unintentionally masked the effect of the first one and made it appear that the objection–equals–contention addition had never been made in the policy.

Even if one presumes for the sake of argument that the first June, 2009, edit did reflect consensus, there were two subsequent attempts to remove the word "contentious" from the lede of the article, and, both of which resulted a huge amount of vigorous discussion on the talk page and elsewhere among multiple editors, and resulted in the consensus that the word ought to be restored in the lede. It was so restored with the edit summary "it is contentious material that must be removed without discussion, obviously, or else every single unsourced sentence would have to go, no matter how inocuous" and  with the edit summary "restore 'contentious' per discussion on talk and to harmonize summary with the rest of the policy". Both of those directly addressed the question of whether information must be contentious to be immediately deleted and concluded that it must, thus reversing any consensus which could be argued to support the first June, 2009, edit. The only argument which might be made in opposition to that conclusion is that the arguments about the word in the lede did not (as far as I know, but the discussion could be buried there somewher and I missed it) specifically address the question of whether an editor's objection could itself constitute contentiousness. That argument is, in my opinion, specious since the practical effect of good–faith–objection–equals–contention is to remove the contentiousness requirement from the policy except in those cases in which the objection is made in bad faith (and since we must presume good faith, virtually every such objection would have to be deemed to be in good faith). Moreover, the tenor of the discussions about the lede and, especially, the edit summary which said that the replacement of the word "contentious" was to "harmonize summary with the rest of the policy" clearly indicate that the consensus was on those occasions to not allow objection–equals–contention. This entire line of reasoning, however, is almost certainly neither here nor there since WP:CONLIMITED would seem to unquestionably kill the June, 2009, edits.

Since it seems apparent that the June, 2009, edits were not supported by consensus, I would propose that the first phrase of WP:GRAPEVINE be reverted to read "Remove any contentious unsourced material to which an editor objects in good faith" unless the discussion in this RfC creates consensus for the View of KieferSkunk, or one ot the other objection–equals–contention views, which at this juncture appears (alas, for my own beliefs) to be very unlikely. —  T RANSPORTER M AN  ( TALK ) 22:31, 25 February 2010 (UTC) (Typo correction —  T RANSPORTER M AN   ( TALK ) 22:40, 25 February 2010 (UTC)) (Minor qualification added. —  T RANSPORTER M AN   ( TALK ) 22:43, 25 February 2010 (UTC))


 * I withdraw from this RfC the reversion proposal I made in the 4th paragraph of this section. I will remake it on the policy talk page, where it probably ought to have been in the first place. (This withdrawal does not, however, affect the view I expressed in the first 3 paragraphs of this section.) —  T RANSPORTER M AN   ( TALK ) 20:43, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Proposal to Close
Discussion has entirely died away here. Except for my View #2, just above, there hasn't been any substantive activity here since February 22, and precious little before that. I therefore propose:

1. That the various proposals to interpret or change the WP:BLP policy to allow immediate removal of unsourced or poorly sourced BLP information merely upon the good faith objection of any editor be closed with a finding of "no consensus."

2. That the various proposals to define the term "contentious" in one way or another be closed with a finding of "no consensus."

Any discussion of this proposal should be on the talk page, not here.

Best regards,  T RANSPORTER M AN  ( TALK ) 20:43, 3 March 2010 (UTC)