Wikipedia:WikiProject Living people/Implementation strategy

In order to effectively begin to resolve some of the issues surrounding biographies of living people, an implementation strategy is needed. This document contains a broad overview of what needs to be done. It also includes a degree of technical detail regarding implementation of some of the ideas.


 * Find and properly categorize most biographies
 * Rationale: Until we have a clear understanding of the scope of the undertaking and a means to effectively monitor biographies of living people (a specific unified category), no solution or set of solutions can be truly effective.
 * Method: Uncategorized biographies of living people
 * List generation
 * Database queries
 * Articles in ____ births categories that are not in ____ deaths categories
 * Articles that have |living=yes on their talk page
 * Articles that use or  but don't use a corresponding death date template
 * Better filtering system for already-checked entries (save separate files, etc.)


 * Mark all unreferenced biographies as unreferenced
 * Rationale: Marking the biographies as unreferenced provides a means to (a) effectively target them for improvement or deletion; (b) pay closer attention to sourcing issues (especially as a lack of sources is a fairly good indicator of a lack of broad interest in the subject, generally speaking).
 * Method: new project page
 * List generation
 * Bios using only en.wikipedia.org external links
 * Bios with 0 external links


 * Create and implement a tool to review biographies effectively (Sisyphus)
 * Rationale: We need a tool to be able to scan for specific words or phrases and find negative unsourced statements easily.
 * Method: Alleviate negative unsourced statements
 * bjweeks?


 * Implement a global biographies of living people policy
 * Rationale: It makes sense to project people on non-English projects, too
 * Method: Biographies of living people


 * Re-examine and refine current notability guidelines
 * Rationale: Certain guidelines are ineffective and harmful
 * Method: A starting point is to look at the guidelines surrounding porn stars and criminals