Wikipedia talk:Protecting BLP articles feeler survey

watchlist
Based on the suggestion from EconomicsGuy, I posted on AN asking that this be added to the Watchlist to ensure that a true cross-section of all valid people who have a say--that is, everyone--has a chance to weigh in. This is a good idea, since no small group of people get to make this decision, no matter who they are or how loud they are, in the end. :) rootology ( C )( T ) 16:56, 21 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, but asking masses of people to come here just invites voters on a growing page where few will read the arguments. Can we not close this poll and start again with a list of pros and cons, that people coming here can reflect on before !voting.--Scott Mac (Doc) 16:59, 21 December 2008 (UTC)
 * It was a good move, that I stand by. I think that would be a bad idea as it would invalidate everything that people have already weighed in, and the point of this was to even see if there was support for flagging or semi at all, and it's so far clear there is consensus absolutely for a trial of flagged on some subset... FAs, or some of the BLPs. And I stand by my comments that any format that breaks the ability of any one user or some small group of users to gank, filibuster, or dominate a decision making process is not just a good thing, but a wonderful, spectacular thing, in particular. This is just to get a top level view, and the specifics can be hashed out later. In a perfect world (which I of course will not get to decide, neither will you) I'd love to see this run a monthish, and based on that we can hash out what to flag for a trial, and then once that's decided the tech-nerd nitty gritty can be sorted out by the people that care: expiration? What method to grant Reviewer or whatever it's called, etc. rootology ( C )( T ) 17:03, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

And besides, if the consensus sticks like it so far (who knows if it even will) what do we honestly lose if we end up flag testing FAs or letter Z BLPs for a month, beside the effort? Nothing. rootology ( C )( T ) 17:05, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Comments on polling is evil and dogma

 * Let's just get on with the discussion. No need to bring Wiki dogma in here; I for one think this to be a splendid poll/discussion. :-) AGK 16:30, 21 December 2008 (UTC)
 * No, it isn't dogma, it's true. The poll is really unhelpful. The problem with polls is that people don't discuss they just come in with their preconceptions and use them as their reason for voting. No one is encouraged to reflect and change their minds. There is no assessment of the pros and cons of the case. All we judge is currently views - some of which will be ridiculously uninformed. I'd rather see as set down a list of pros and cons, and then assess the strength and weakness of those. Then perhaps a poll of all those who have engaged in the discussion, or at least considered the merits of the other side. It is because of this that polls usually are indeed evil - and certainly for complex discussions like this.--Scott Mac (Doc) 16:42, 21 December 2008 (UTC)
 * The pro/con thing is a good idea, and some polls are evil, but this isn't a poll, and people are never obligated to change their views. A firm fixed view is absolutely valid, and all users on Wikipedia are stakeholders in this kinda thing. Your suggestion that only those that discussed the issue should poll is invalid and actually outright dangerous, as it implies only those who are willing to sit and chew over the issue to some degree are entitled to a say. That's utterly, absolutely wrong, as it implies that only the wiki-loiter crowd (which includes both of us) have a voice. A drive-by AFD comment, DRV comment, RFA comment, etc. is all absolutely valid, and this is not the sort of decision that any senior/in-crowd or any such thing gets to decide. Its a decision in the end for everyone. And besides, how else do you propose we get a wide cross-section of users to engage in this? Do you honestly believe a rambling and rolling discussion with hundreds of people will be of any value to actually see what people think overall--and a discussion that is NOT dominated by a handful or subset of old-timers, admins, and the wiki-loiterers like us? Show me three such discussions (if they even exist) that accomplished anything. rootology ( C )( T ) 16:51, 21 December 2008 (UTC)
 * In a complex and finally balanced decision only those who are willing to sit and chew over the issue to some degree are entitled to a say.--Scott Mac (Doc) 20:40, 21 December 2008 (UTC)
 * But that is not our way. Anything to disenfranchise casual users--the editors who have no time to sit and talk on Wikipedia space--is flat-out evil, in a regard, since it creates the idea that there is some elite crowd with more value here than others. Totally unacceptable, and unsupported by any policy. Do you honestly believe that a lone voice is of no value if that voice only leaves a comment? By this token, you must be totally against our AC election process, our RFA process, our AFD process, our DRV process, and anything else that even looks like a poll or survey. Are you? If you don't want to answer that, just tell me this: do you honestly and truly believe that the typical nonsensical and rambling AN or ANI style discussion truly scales to let 200 or 300 people have their voices all carry equal weight? If so, please also give me one example of such a thing working out right, in a non-evil way. I'd seriously love to be proven wrong on that, because it would give me hope, but I honestly believe that the old ways simply do not and cannot outright scale for a honest, fair, and representative site-wide decision where all users are expected and entitled to even standing and an even say. rootology ( C )( T ) 20:48, 21 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Decisions are made by those interested in having a discussion about the subject. The poll may be a good starting point, but it is no way to make a decision. I think the results of the poll will narrow down the topic of discussion to something more manageable, but the discussion is required. The poll is informative about consensus, not formative. Chillum  16:42, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
 * "Decisions are made by those interested in having a discussion about the subject"
 * With the caveat of course that a decision with wide implications has little standing if made by a small group in a little-trafficked location if challenged by a wider group once known, of course. Small self appointed groups aren't in charge of a single thing here if any push even vaguely comes to shove. ;) rootology ( C )( T ) 17:29, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
 * That is a lot of ifs. Chillum  20:25, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Some thoughts on all of this
I have been thinking about some of the issues raised by this page for a long time, and have discussed them with various people. My thanks to Rootology for helping to bring the discussion to the fore. I have been working on an essay on some of these issues for months, but "the perfect is the enemy of the good" and I haven't gotten it done. Hence, I will outline some of my current thinking here.

Let's see if we can start by identifying some common ground. Here are some basic statements that I think most, if not all, of us could agree with:
 * Wikipedia is designed as "the encyclopedia that anybody can edit." There are people who think that this model cannot, by definition, produce a high-quality encyclopedia, but by participating in the project, we are trying to prove them wrong.
 * There are some circumstances when we need to step away from the "anyone can edit" model. I don't think anyone opposes the availability of page protection or semiprotection as a matter of principle. It's a matter of deciding when these tools are needed, on which articles, and for how long.
 * As the English Wikipedia has developed to become the most popular interactive website in the world, our impact on the subjects of our articles has increased proportionately. At this point, an article about a living person on the English Wikipedia will typically become the number-one search engine result for a search on that person's name. The impact of inappropriate article content on a BLP subject can therefore be extremely serious. This includes various types of inappropriate content, ranging from libel and defamation, to rumormongering, to unwarranted disclosure of private facts, to drive-by vandalism.
 * The community has largely rejected the idea that BLP violations consist only of false or unsourced content, and has accepted that undue weight to negative aspects of a subject's life or unwarranted disclosure of private facts can also constitute a derogation from what we want Wikipedia to be. (I can think of several horrifying examples, but would prefer not to publicize them further.) Where to draw the line, of course, remains disputed in many instances.
 * All of us edit Wikipedia for one or both of two reasons: (1) we are contributing and compile redistributable free knowledge to the world, and (2) we are having fun in doing so. We do not want our hobby to damage other people's lives.
 * The loss of privacy associated with the Internet is not unique to Wikipedia, but a much more widespread problem, and is indeed the major negative social externality of the information revolution. Even what at first blush would seem a 100% positive development in direction of greater access to information&mdash;say, the publication on the Internet of the full text of old newspapers&mdash;can seriously damage privacy (e.g., no one will ever again outlive a youthful indiscretion that happened to make the New York Times). All of us now live in the goldfish bowl: It is not always a happy place to be.
 * Despite the fact that Wikipedia is not the only place where false rumors or privacy violations can be created on the Internet, our unique prominence gives us an especial responsibility for using best practices to mitigate these problems.
 * Although a high proportion of IP edits are vandalism or otherwise problematic, we continue to allow unregistered IP editing both for philosophical reasons, and also because experience (e.g. mine) teaches that many established contributors got their start as editors by making a few edits on a whim, who likely would not have done so if they had had to register first.
 * There have been several reports of serious incidents in which article subjects have been victimized and suffered serious, adverse real-world consequences (including arrest or the loss of their jobs) as a result of content in their BLPs. We can argue that this is a result of the authorities or decision-makers (immigration officers, potential employers, etc.) using Wikipedia for purposes for which it was not designed; but that is little consolation to the people affected.
 * Some BLP subjects state that waking up every day and worrying what nastiness might have crept into their Wikipedia article overnight has a detrimental effect on their quality of life.
 * The OTRS system, the Office, and the noticeboards receive complaints on a daily basis from BLP subjects seeking the removal or revision of their articles. Some of these complaints have more merit than others, but a significant number require some action. This is not a situation that was anticipated when the wiki editing model and system software were designed. No one would have predicted when Wikipedia started that along with its unprecedented success would come the need for several hundred volunteers to participate in the equivalent of a complaint department.
 * Some BLPs are higher-risk than others. Lumping all BLPs together as a group may (or may not) be overinclusive categorization.
 * Some BLP subjects do not mind being included in Wikipedia, some do not mind so long as their coverage is accurate, a few object vehemently to inclusion, and there is also the related phenomenon of subjects determined to be non-notable and deleted who object to that conclusion and want their articles back in.
 * Any system reliant on volunteers to patrol articles is only as reliable as the flow of volunteers.
 * We collectively spend an enormous amount of volunteer time refining and policing our notability guidelines in areas where the negative impact of retaining a "borderline notable" article is slight, relative to the time we collectively spend dealing with articles where problems may damage people's lives and reputations.
 * There is little reliable statistical evidence on what percentage of edits to BLPs or other articles constitute vandalism or BLP violations. It is demonstrable and generally agreed, though, that this percentage is far higher for IP edits than for those of registered accounts.
 * Steps that would reduce vandalism in general (e.g., reducing the usual sequence of "test" warnings before a block is imposed from four warnings to three, which I think would be a desirable step) would reduce problems on BLP pages along with everywhere else.
 * Changes limited to "BLP pages" will address many of the most serious problems with BLP content, but not all of them, as references to living persons may appear in one form or another in almost any article at all.
 * The ability to use the "NOINDEX" parameter or its equivalent in mainspace in connection with problematic content has not been seriously evaluated to date.
 * Although BLP problems may affect an article on any living person (cf. the Sarah Palin wheel-war arbitration case), they will often be most serious on articles concerning less-well-known persons.
 * The importance of nipping BLP violations in the bud increases in light of the number of Wikipedia mirrors which will grab whatever version of a page exists at the moment they scrape the site (and will miss the fact that an inappropriate edit might be reverted 5 minutes later) as well as by the creation of sites like Deletionpedia which are designed expressly to pick up and feature content (including BLP content) that we might eventually delete.

Unless someone convinces me I'm wrong in one or more particulars, which is certainly possible, in formulating and refining my own views on the issues raised by this page, I am going to operate from the assumption that these premises are generally accurate. If anyone disagrees with these statements I'd appreciate knowing why and perhaps we can try to gather some evidence.

Based on the foregoing, general conclusion that I have reached is that it we need to move forward with reasonable steps to reduce the extent of BLP problems with our article content. My preliminary answer is to support some form of semiprotection or flagged revisions for either all BLPs or at least the higher-risk ones. There are some good points made on the project page which I want to think through to ensure that we come to the best-informed decision we can as to what steps to take. I am convinced, however, that some action must be taken in the reasonably near term. Newyorkbrad (talk) 22:04, 21 December 2008 (UTC)
 * "Some BLPs are higher-risk than others. Lumping all BLPs together as a group may (or may not) be overinclusive categorization." Well said. The idea that we should semi-protect all BLPs is simply ludicrous. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:13, 21 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, but it may be more straightforward to try to protect all of them than try to draw the line. The example of "low-risk" BLPs that occurred to me, for example, was professional athletes (why stop an IP from adding that someone hit the game-winning home run in last night's world series game?), but then I remembered that one of our most publicized BLP incidents leading to a lawsuit was on Fuzzy Zoeller. This is complicated stuff. Newyorkbrad (talk) 22:19, 21 December 2008 (UTC)
 * If you had to guess what's vulnerable and what's not, maybe you could to some reasonable degree. I don't think we could do across the board cuts (which would probably be of the form edits/day, number of authors or whatnot, rather than "Porn stars" & "Mathematicians"), but allowing selective enabling/disabling (with either flagging on by default, or flagging must be turned on).  Some discussion of more limited trials might favour this, and certainly I've seen an attitude (no idea how widespread) that high-visibility/high-traffic pages don't need/deserve as much protection. Wily D  12:58, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Broadly speaking I agree with much of what you have said above which is why I support flagged revisions, particularly on BLPs. I am one of those editors who had a good experience editing as an ip editor a few months before coming back and starting editing on a more regular basis. Your point about the flow of volunteers is very important here as I doubt I would have come back if my first experience had not been a good one (One article I edited then as an ip, and have not edited since, has seen only minor edits since then back in 2005). If we go with semi-protection on what is a substantial proportion of our articles, which would stop both ip editors and importantly newly registered editors from editing BLPs, I seriously think we would lose many potential new editors. I believe (and hope!) that flagged revisions would not cause as much of a problem. There are some other points that I have some doubts about part of, but that I think that keeping new editors arriving is very important. Davewild (talk) 23:03, 21 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I supported protect all BLPs because a) I couldn't figure out how flagging worked from the descriptions, but whatever it was it didn't sound too effective and b) it was before it occurred to me another option is automatically protect any article where there is any request at all to protect it, preferably with a link that that was a possibility at the top of every article. Just a thought, but behind on reading main page, so don't know if it's redundant to someone elses'. CarolMooreDC (talk) 04:49, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
 * My interim feeling (with the materials at hand and not requiring a change in policy as such) is to be (a) a lot more liberal in semi-protecting pages (by tweaking guidelines), and (b) stir up efforts for referencing these articles (via the signpost). Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 05:09, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
 * "There is little reliable statistical evidence on what percentage of edits to BLPs or other articles constitute vandalism or BLP violations. It is demonstrable and generally agreed, though, that this percentage is far higher for IP edits than for those of registered accounts." - For plain vandalism I'd have to agree, but for non-vandalism BLP violations, I'm not so sure. From my experience, registered accounts are just as, or more, likely to add the subtle false information and character assassination that angers people a lot more than the "John Doe is a douchebag"-type juvenile vandalism. AFAIK, there has never been any study done on these types of BLP violations. Mr.Z-man 21:05, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

I've seen both
I've dealt both with vandalism and insertion of malicious material by IPs or new registered users, as well as axe-grinding by registered users. It seems to me that semi-protection only deals with the first while flagged revs deals with both types. As to whether flagged revs will be too much work, can we technically put flagged revs only on BLPs to start with? Or does the software not allow that? Thatcher 21:40, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
 * It allows it for apparently any small subset, so we could conceivably trial flagged on say, "All BLPs that start with Q", or something like that. Or just FAs. Or apparently a lot of other combos that the MediaWiki tech nerds can graciously sort out for us. :) rootology ( C )( T ) 22:01, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Flagged revisions on all BLPs
Forgive me if I missed this somewhere, but how exactly would flagged revisions be implemented on all BLP pages, considering there are 1000s? Or would they automatically be implemented on all pages?  jj137  ( talk )  00:42, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
 * This is just a poll to see how people feel about the issue. The detailed mechanics will be worked out if there is anything people favour. Wily D  02:36, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
 * It can be done by a bot. Ruslik (talk) 21:09, 26 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Bots can't make changes to the system...   jj137   (talk)  02:38, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
 * No, but we can set to "flag specific articles only", and have a bot implement it on the articles in Category:Living people or a subsection thereof.
 * Oh, I think I see. Maybe I'm confused... for flagged revisions to be enabled, wouldn't that require some sort of change to the system though?   jj137   (talk)  05:13, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, what do you mean by change? Physically turning on of the ability to flag revisions requires this (it exists now with options, but is not implemented on English Wikipedia).  But we can ask the developers to turn on flagged revisions to pages designated by revision flaggers, say, and make a revision flagging bot (purely an example).  Alternatively, we might only turn on flagging for pages where flaggers believe it's worthwhile.  Or other options. Wily D  15:13, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Ah, I understand now. Thanks for explaining.   jj137   (talk)  01:31, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
 * A bot doing it would defeat the purpose entirely. The point of FlaggedRevs is to present a version to readers in which we indicate "yes, someone has deemed this revision OK." If we mix human-reviewed revisions in with thousands of bot-flagged revisions, its basically meaningless. Mr.Z-man 05:17, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I think he meant bots would just tag the pages so that only those pages would have the Flagged Revisions enabled. Er, well... *is confused again*   jj137   (talk)  05:23, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
 * All BLPs are already in Category:Living people. Mr.Z-man 07:00, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

An argument I can't follow
I think I might be in favour of FR, please punch me up here; but I've got to admit I just don't know how they'll go unless I see it. The best argument against FR that I can see is the fear of introducing a superior "sighter-class" and essentially copying standard publication processes which rely on restricting "the final say" to an "expert-class". Yes, if that's what it becomes, we'd be in trouble, the sighters might never let us reverse the system that "empowers" them.

However, I'm not convinced that this is what would happen at all. What I can't follow is how vandalism and other patrols are any different to a form of revision flagging now anyway, if anything they are more drastic—something might go live immediately, but it can be reverted just as immediately. My guess is that FR would probably simply work to recruit more editors into participating in the patrol side of things: sharing the load and diffusing the "power", simply bypassing the need for reversions.

There's a lot more to be said about the vital "inverted heirarchy" of admin/beauro slave roles, but I'll stick to asking for help. Please, someone, explain how sighters are different to the patrols we have already. Alastair Haines (talk) 17:52, 31 December 2008 (UTC)


 * The main difference is that in cases of vandalism, readers aren't exposed to the vandalism before it gets reverted. So false accusations inserted into articles by untrusted editors aren't spewed across the internet before they're reverted, preventing any serious harm to their reputation or whatnot. This is also true for more childish vandalism, but that's usually not as big a deal, unless you're opening enormous pictures of penises at work or something (which I've done - fortunately, nobody was looking over my shoulder.)  Wily D  21:18, 1 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks for graphic illustation, and the answer. Your description of things fits precisely with why I think FR could be a good thing (especially, but not necessarily restricted to, BLP). However, I'm asking the question because I think the "other side" might have a case if the people who decide what is, and what is not, a positive incremental improvement end up being a de facto expert class—i.e. editors whose individual contributions are weighed more heavily on the grounds of their appointment to the sighting role (who they are) rather than on the strength of their argument (what they say).
 * Will everyone be a sighter? In other words, is the FR thingy just about changing things so only text that is "seconded" gets to be tabled at Wiki. That's a great concept, very well documented in scholastic discussion about parliamentary procedure. But is it something else? Will IPs be able to be sighters too? If they can be, that might address a lot of opposition to the FR proposals.
 * It seems to me the fundamental concept of Wikipedia is that expertise lies with sources and editorial discretion lies with consensus (which likewise views no editor or number of editors as having greater weight in addressing an issue). So what I am saying is that although I personally am open to FR as a way of improving reliability, I think the opponents of this proposal have a weighty point when questioning a particular matter of principle related to "anyone can edit". To put it more precisely, one editor's call (the "sighter") will be deemed more substantial than another editor's call (the "originator"). Opponents have a very good case indeed to suggest that this situation essentially divides contributors into two classes—those who initiate and those who review—reviewers have a priveleged status—nothing goes "live" unless reviewers "authorise" it. But that's how regular publication works, it's not a Wiki if we do it that way, and we put ourselves at grave risk, because it only works in regular publication since such reviewers and authorisers are professionals: trained, experienced and accountable for the quality of their decisions, which are measured both by accepted public standards, and by market forces.
 * Perhaps I'm fuddled, but I thought the Wiki idea is that everyone is someone, and no-one is anyone. (When I put it like that, I guess people might not be surprised I'm fuddled. :)
 * Please help me again. How can people be comforted that sighters would not become "somebodies"? Alastair Haines (talk) 04:59, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Straw poll on 'trial' implementation of FlaggedRevisions
The discussion on the implementation of a 'trial' configuration of FlaggedRevisions on en.wiki has now reached the 'straw poll' stage. All editors are invited to read the proposal and discussion and to participate in the straw poll. Happy‑melon 17:56, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Why only living persons?
Why not all persons, at least in recent history, especially in living memory or with recent living relatives ?

See for example Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive483.

Peet Ern (talk) 01:41, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

anyone at the wheel? :-)
There's so much input on this page at this stage, that I wonder who might stick their hand up for the Sisyphean task of daring to do a bit of analysis on it. It would be wonderful to try and get some value out of the many voices and ideas presented herein, and maybe we should try and nominate some acknowledged smart folk to try and figure something out? I think we need to start to think about shifting focus from encouraging individual inputs to analysing the overall position.... anyone got any ideas about how? :-) Privatemusings (talk) 22:17, 8 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree, I think we have enough input by now, and the longer we prolong this, the harder it will be to evaluate all the input. I'm not sure what the original author(s) of this survey had in mind, but it seems like the next stage would be to objectively analyze all of the comments and put forth a single, specific proposal to be rejected or approved by the entire Wikipedia community (including IPs). This proposal should be whatever is judged to have the most support based on this survey; whoever writes it up will have to put aside their personal opinions and go with what is most widely supported. Unfortunately, they will also have to be pretty detailed in their proposal, so they'd have to make sure the details are also generally supported by the community.
 * As this survey says, though, it is not a poll to change anything today, it's just to gauge general opinions. So I don't think a final decision should be made on the basis of this survey. Instead, we should come up with a formal proposal based on it, to be put to the community. -kotra (talk) 23:24, 8 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I think maybe the current straw poll for a limited flagged revisions test may have evolved out of this. If it is, and this "feeler survey" here is no longer needed, the conductors of this survey should probably close/archive it. -kotra (talk) 06:10, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Guidelines for the Biographicon
Editors of Wikipedia biographies of living persons may be interested in examining Guidelines - The Biographicon. -- Wavelength (talk) 05:07, 9 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Checking the bio there of "Mark Twain" I find an older edit of the WP article. In fact on the "archive" link one finds the attribution to WP (which does not make the main article page for some odd reason).  Collect (talk) 12:16, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

News report about this?
I'm sure I've read somewhere summaries of the ongoing polls with # of people pro/cons. Can anyone please provide a link to such a report (I'd appreciate it in my talk, as these pages are too long for me to load)? I've been searching for these infos for hours now. Thank you, --Elitre (talk) 01:03, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

sub-paged
I 'sub paged' the lot of this, because it was kinda out of hand! - all comments most welcome. Privatemusings (talk) 00:38, 3 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Thank you for being bold. I think people are just repeating themselves now, and this survey should be formally closed and we should move on to the next step (a single, detailed proposal we can !vote on). But I seem to be the only one suggesting that... -kotra (talk) 01:01, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm hoping now that it's subpaged, it might still be able to be useful - it's still in the 'watchlist' notice after all, and I see someone has commented at one of the subpages since I made them.... otoh, the level of effort now needed to sift and analyse etc. seems great, and it's unclear to me who exactly might be up for that? I dunno..... Privatemusings (talk) 03:05, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Subpaging was appropriate. Two concerns, however. First, "General discussion about leaving BLPs exactly as they are" isn't a good title for that page, which has numbered entries like the other pages identified as straw polls. Second, the placement of "All BLPs should be removed from Wikipedia and stay on social networking sites where they belong until the LP has been dead for awhile" on that page makes no sense; it's its own proposal, and whether one reads it as radical/serious or absurd/humorous, it detracts from the meaningful comments above it. Rivertorch (talk) 23:59, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree with your concerns, River - and feel a bit guilty that I simply haven't the time atm to do much about it. I've created a 'drowning, not waving' template for this page, because it's showing signs that I've seen elsewhere (and per the 'anyone at the wheel' section above) of not really being manageable or particularly usefully led at the mo, in my book.... cheers, Privatemusings (talk) 02:39, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I can't agree with the 'drowning not waiving template. The page was set up as "... a simple survey to see if there is any support for, and what people think of, the ideas of enhancing the protection of Biographies of living persons (BLP) articles on Wikipedia, the articles about living people." I think this has been achieved. It was never supposed to lead to a clear path forward: I quote "THIS IS NOT A POLL TO CHANGE ANYTHING TODAY. Rather, it is just a survey to get a general idea of what people think, and feel, of the ideas to address the outstanding problems with biographical information on living people." Thehalfone (talk) 08:59, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Closing
As it's no longer edited and largely superseded by other discussions, it's time to definitively close this. I'll do it tomorrow or in a few days if no one objects or does it before. Cenarium (talk) 19:48, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I closed it. As I said above, nothing were coming out of those discussions and participation was minimal since early February. Independently, we have agreed on Flagged protection and patrolled revisions, that is in the process of being deployed for a trial. Cenarium (talk) 16:49, 2 June 2009 (UTC)