Wikipedia talk:Anonymous dirt accretion method of biography writing

I'd always thought this was already the case
I wrote large chunks of the original version of the BLP policy, and this idea that we didn't have the luxury of taking our sweet time getting things right was always implicit in that. Did it really never say anything about this?

We also have to consider the extent to which you can legislate stupidity or malice out of existence (spoiler: you can't). Adding a rule doesn't magically change (sincere) behaviour, even though Wikipedians consistently seem to think it does. (Just because I agree with it doesn't make it a good idea as a new rule, if it wasn't one for the last six years.) What are the examples, with diffs, of people thinking eventualism applies to BLPs? - David Gerard (talk) 10:52, 29 March 2012 (UTC)


 * BTW, I'll note that I do actually completely agree. If we do need to add this as a rule, just the sentence "Eventualism is not appropriate for BLPs" in WP:BLP should be enough (if it doesn't work, nothing longer will either) - David Gerard (talk) 11:29, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
 * What you do get is people feeling they have an inalienable right to have anything sourced in a biography, without any sense that it's inappropriate to spend half the words of a biography on a blow-by-blow account of some minor controversy. I think that's a legacy of our eventualism. The idea was always that the other stuff would be brought to the same level of detail eventually, and things would balance out. Except they don't, or it takes five years.  J  N  466  11:52, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I started a discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Biographies_of_living_persons. -- J N  466  11:55, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Slightly different take
I've had a one-line rant on my user page for a while that says something like "Our notability guidelines are forcing us to have articles on low profile people that amount to little more than bullet-pointed rap sheets". I think that if a person isn't notable enough for us to have a complete biography about their entire life, we shouldn't have an article on them in the first place. Standards like the sports standards that qualify even bench-sitting professional sports players for articles, and academic standards that force us to keep articles on every tenured professor at every university are the primary things that I'm looking at. The GNG needs to take precedent in every case over these bright-line "level of achievement" notability standards, that have become far too permissive. Biographies need to be biographies, and the only way that can happen is if someone is notable enough that their entire life is worth writing about (and generally, has already been written about). Gigs (talk) 22:20, 30 March 2012 (UTC)
 * See also WP:TWOPRONGS, a somewhat unfinished essay I've written in a more general sense about this. Gigs (talk) 22:30, 30 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Agree. There must be a decent number of sources, enough to fulfill GNG. -- J N  466  13:30, 1 April 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't necessarily agree that we should restrict ourselves to people whose entire lives are worthy of detailed coverage. A typical example would be a relatively minor sports person, where 99% of the interest in them is related to their sporting achievements. I think it's fine to have an article detailing those achievements, even though light on other biographical information. The important thing is to avoid articles that are dominated by (often negative) trivia, or individual incidents blown wildly out of proportion. A sports person's sporting achievements, for example, are not trivia, and it is not out of proportion for their article to be dominated by that information. Of course, for major sports figures of wider notability, we would expect a fuller biography. 86.160.217.111 (talk) 21:19, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
 * You make a good point. -- J N  466  19:15, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Endorse
I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiments expressed in this essay. 86.160.217.111 (talk) 20:59, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Thank you. :) -- J N  466  19:15, 3 May 2012 (UTC)