Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/Biographies of living people/Phase I/Archive 2

Extended discussion on Balloonman's opposition to NuclearWarfare's comment

 * 1) I have to Strongly oppose this based upon NW's comments at WP:BN today.  NW felt that a former admin should not have the bit restored because she had 35 unreferenced BLP's that she wrote that she has not even begun to fix.  I looked at the first ten items from an automated tool that were give to her a week ago.  Of those first ten unreferenced BLPs 4 of them did have in fact have references.  One of them her last edit was last year; 3 of them her last edit was in 2008 (2 in Feb of 08)---but on most of them her last edit to the article was in 2004/2005/2006---when our expectations were much different.  Heck, I think there was only one article where her last edit the article had been tagged as not having references!  Instituting this criteria on articles that one may have written and last edited four, five, or even six years ago is ridiculous.  If she hasn't edited the article in 4 years, she probably doesn't care about the article anymore (I've written ariticles that I don't care about.)  To say that she should be denied or stripped of her adminship over that is just dumb---especially as expectations were existing at the time.  Heck, to expect her to clean them up might be a stretch.  Most of those articles have been adopted by Wikiprojects, contact those wikiprojects and let them know about the problems, we'll probably have better luck.--- Balloonman  NO! I'm Spartacus! 23:47, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Last time I checked, we didn't normally do opposes in RFCs. Regardless, what does any of this have to do with his proposal? I think you're lost, B-man. Wrong venue and such. This isn't BN and it's not RFA and it's not Nuke's talk page. While I can appreciate you disagreeing with him on the matter of Rebecca's adminship (or lack thereof), opposing a view on an RFC because of that doesn't really do much to cast you in a positive (or reasonable) light. Perhaps you may considering reading his view and either endorsing it or not endorsing it. If you want to comment on specific points you disagree with, the talk page is that way. Lara  00:58, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I completely oppose the proposal because the proposal, as envisioned by NW, would have applied to Rebecca... I don't know Rebecca. But she would have retroactively become responsible for editing and maintaining articles that she hadn't edited in up to six years!  Her request and NW's desire to tie her to those articles provides the perfect reasoning as to why this is a flawed proposal.--- Balloonman  NO! I'm Spartacus! 01:40, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * What does it matter if she hasn't edited them in six years? That just means she has, for six years, neglected to reference biographies of living people that she wrote. This project is in serious need of cleaning up this BLP problem. We need admins who contribute to fixing the problem, not worsening it. If an admin can't be bothered to reference their own BLPs, how in the world are we to expect them to not only reference others, but do anything proactive wrt to BLPs? Clearly if they're letting their own creations sit for years unreferenced, they don't really care. Not what we need in admins. Lara  01:48, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Six years ago, the expectations were different. This proposal gives ownership responsibility to individuals.  A person can no longer write an article and move on, they would be responsible to ensuring that article is properly maintained and updated based upon the current expectations.  This proposal would make the creator responsible for the CURRENT content of an article. If somebody is responsible to ensuring that it meets current expectations, then that person had better have the right to say what goes into it!  In other words, they would own it.  They should also have the right to delete the article years down the road when they no longer interested in the subject, because it might be used against them.  This proposal goes entirely against a community built project and places responsibility on the creator, regardless of how long ago they wrote the aritlce.  Saying tha SHE neglected to refefence them is a false premise if she doesn't own the ariticles.--- Balloonman  NO! I'm Spartacus! 02:00, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * What? Give me a break. It's not giving anyone ownership over anything. It's requesting editors clean up their own messes. Expectations were different then, true... but so what? If you're still here and you're requested to add a reference to BLPs you created and you can't be bothered? What does that say about you? (Collective you.) If an admin cannot be bothered to source their own article creations, BLPs in particular, they clearly do not care about the BLP problem or, in my opinion, the project. There is nothing positive about unsourced biographies, and if an editor is too lazy to look up references for their own BLPs, deciding instead to leave it to someone else, they're just contributing to the backlogs and contributing to the problem. No one of that mind should be an admin. In my opinion, they should be booted off the project. Lara  02:15, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Except that this does miss a fundamental point: Most of these unsourced articles don't have any problems at all. It isn't an unreasonable course of action for someone to look over the article see that everything in it is clearly true and not harmful and then not bother. There's an assumption here that there's some deep moral problem with unsourced biographies. But the problem isn't in unsourced biographies. The problem is that some of the unsourced biographies might contain problematic material. And that's just a drop in the bucket to the serious BLP problem which this is really a distraction from. JoshuaZ (talk) 02:22, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * No, the missed fundamental point is that this is an encyclopedia which is, by definition, supposed to be written from existing sources. Unreferenced BLPs are not okay, Joshua. No article of an encyclopedia, including this one, should be unsourced. This is particularly important with BLPs. That said, what's the serious BLP problem, Josh? Because every push for anything BLP-related is met with a big ol' fight. Where should we be focusing? The BLP problem is vast. It's not one thing, it's countless things. No matter which one is the focus at any given time, there's always someone there to point out it's the wrong one. How about everyone stop complaining that it's the issue at hand and not some other issue, and just focus on the fact that it's a BLP issue and fix it. Then we can move on to the next, and the next, and so on until we get to the "serious BLP problem", whatever that is. Lara  02:37, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * You and people who live at WP:BLP may feel that way, but the rest of us are not so convinced. Having an unsourced BLP mean that the article was written in a vacuum, is researched, well written, or neutral.  It merely means that there are no sources.  Having sources is ideal, but not having them is not the end of the world.  But, I will agree, BLP's are special.  There is a stronger need to have sources, the problem is that not everybody agrees that unsourced BLP's should be blindly deleted en masse.  In fact, there is a fair amount of opposition to this notion.  A better idea would be to get help in cleaning them up and figuring out which articles are worth keeping and which ones should be deleted.  Thus my proposal below, why not get the various wikiprojects to help out?  Getting help from others would be much more desirable than mass deletions and will avoid the out cry that will come from mass deletions.--- Balloonman  NO! I'm Spartacus! 02:48, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * This proposal has nothing to do with deletion. We're talking about this specific proposal, Balloonman. It has to do with making editors responsible for their contributions. WP:V puts the burden on the editor who contributed the information. You want Wikiprojects to do the work, and you want to get help from others. Fantastic. The people who created the article should be willing to help out with it. If they can't be bothered to hit up Google and grab a source to do their part on their own creations, they should not only be denied adminship, they should be shown the door. Everyone has so much time and so many ideas to contribute on what could be done and how it could be done, but at the end of the day, look at how many of those people are actually working on BLPs. I'll give you a hint: It's not an impressive numbers. Lara  02:58, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * My point is that the only proposal I've seen from the BLP crew here is CSD/PROD. There are other proposals out ther... but people should not be obligated to own an article six years after they wrote it.  There may be other editors who are much more involved in the article and the articles development than the person who first started it.  As for "their own creations" that only matters if they OWN their creations.  Once they finish editing the article it is no longer theirs.  Now, if you were talking about a person who routinely wrote BLPs today without providing sources, I'd be in full agreement with you... but you are talking about holding a persons feet to the fire for actions taken YEARS ago.  You can ask them to do something, but they simply may not care enough about the subject, again you cannot attribute motivations for somebody failing to act in the way you want them to.--- Balloonman  NO! I'm Spartacus! 03:49, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * You miss my point. Yes, our end goal is to connect everything to reliable sources. But if there articles that are truthful and whose soul problem is a lack of sourcing in the articles then that fundamentally isn't a high priority issue. The rest of what you said is simply window dressing. To say that this is a substantial part of the BLP problem is seriously missing the forest for the trees. Simply put we have far more serious problems with POV pushing, vandalism and related issues. If you want to do something useful send a note to your favorite member of the Board harassing them about flagged revisions. Or add more articles to your watchlist. Or help figure out which BLPs are getting regular vandalism and still aren't protected. All of those are far more useful. Frankly, the problem here seems to be that much of the actual solutions (aside from getting flagged revisions) simply aren't glamorous. That's how life works. There's far more work to be done maintaining content than engaging in this sort of destructive drama. JoshuaZ (talk) 02:53, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm just going to assume that you neither read my response nor realize who you're talking to, because I know JoshuaZ did not just advise me on how to edit wrt to BLPs or what the problems are. Lara  03:01, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm pretty sure that JoshuaZ did exactly that. If however, you insist on personalizing this to somehow being about you and me (it really isn't, and personalizing things likely would make a matter which is already quite emotional for a lot of people even more so) Just wondering when was your last edit that actually got rid of a genuinely bad statement in a BLP? From your contributions it looks like it was in November. JoshuaZ (talk) 03:14, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I've done more than my fair share to fix this problem. Which one of the other signatures on this page is your sock account, used to keep BLPs that should be deleted... or do you not do that anymore? Lara  03:17, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for not answering the question. Of course, you know that I've repeatedly denied those accusations. Now why don't we try to actually focus on the issue at hand which is the complete lack of utility in these deletions. JoshuaZ (talk) 03:36, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * ecx2 That is the definition of ownership. If a specific individual is responsible for the article, despite not working on the article for years, then you are putting ownership responsibilities on them. According to this proposal, the creator of an article is still responsible for the article SIX YEARS AFTER creating it. Guess what if I fail to add a source to an article I wrote SIX YEARS ago, it does not say anything about my concern for BLP. It probably says more about my interest in the subject. Let me give you an example, I wrote an article that was taken to AFD. Did I fight for the article? No, I didn't bother to get involved in the debate because frankly I didn't care about the article anymore. I had written it 2+ years ago and moved on. You cannot make the generalization that a person is responisble for editing an article simply because they wrote it, by doing so, you are putting more responsibility on article creation than was EVER intended.--- Balloonman  NO! I'm Spartacus! 02:38, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * The verifiability policy, which ranks pretty high on the scale of importance, puts the burden on the editor who added the content. Your ownership argument remains ridiculous in my opinion. Lara  02:46, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Expecting an editor to clean up an article they wrote six years ago and making them responsible to do so under threat of desysopping is pretty ridiculous in my opinion.--- Balloonman  NO! I'm Spartacus! 02:52, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * The fact that you think admins would be that lazy and worthless is ridiculous to me. If you'd written a couple BLPs five years ago and I asked you to "Hey Balloonman, we're trying to get this backlog of 50 thousand unrefed BLPs down, can you do a couple Google searched and try to find a ref or two for these BLPs you created?", would you refuse? Lara  02:58, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * You are misconstruing doing the right thing and establishing bad policy---this is bad policy. As for your question:  Depends... probably I would, but if it was on a subject I no cared about, I might not.  Let's turn the issue around.  You wrote an article five years ago.  When you wrote it, it was a short stub and conformed to all of the guidelines at the time.  In the intermeaning five years, the article has grown and policies have changed.  Perhaps it was on a subject you didn't care about or perhaps the article took an editorial direction you disagreed with.  Perhaps you left the article because somebody who cared more about it took the lead on its development. Or perhaps you merely stopped caring about the subject. The article is still well written and neutral, perhaps better written than what you had, but as far as you are concerned it is no longer your article---you could care less if it was deleted or not.   The point is, that it is in no way shape or form the article you wrote and you haven't been involved with it for years.  Based upon this proposal you would still be responsible for the content and if you don't clean it up, then you may be desysopped.  If a person is going to have responsibility for ensuring that it conforms to guidelines in perpetuity merely because they wrote the first incarnation, then they need to have editorial powers.  The point is, that you cannot deduce motives in failing to act and you should not impose penalties for failing to do what somebody else wants.  We are ultimately volunteers here and you cannot force others to have the same set of priorities that you have.--- Balloonman  NO! I'm Spartacus! 03:23, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I would, without doubt, add a source. If I couldn't find one, I'd nom it for deletion myself. We are all volunteers, and you're right that we can't force people to have the same set of priorities. We also don't have to allow them to keep their adminship. People have been desysopped for less, after all. Lara  03:28, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I'd love to see the call for a desysop based upon the fact that somebody refuses to edit an article they haven't touched in six years. The only basis for trying to force them to would be because they own, I mean, wrote it.--- Balloonman  NO! I'm Spartacus! 03:44, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * You're surely stuck on that ownership thing, aren't you. Understanding the verifiability policy is hard. I know. But whatever. You're clearly the expert when it comes to who's acceptable for adminship, Ballloonman. I'll just rely on your expertise for basing my decision here. Lara  03:48, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * mmm... miss... i think you should know, you sarcasm and your barely concealed belittlement is showing. Ikip 19:08, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I fully understand verifiability. But do you realize that 6 years is a long time.  If a person hasn't edited an article in six years, perhaps there is a reason.  You want to make people responsible for articles that have been in the public domain for six years simply because they were the one to click the button that said "create this page."  Verifiability is good and fine... but if you want to force somebody to adhere to that policy do so within a reasonable time frame.  Years after the fact is not a reasonable time frame.  The only way that you can expect somebody to do something six years down the road is if you expect them to be responsible for it.--- Balloonman  NO! I'm Spartacus! 03:52, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't care if it was nine years ago. It's a Google search. Help fix the problem or go away. Lara  03:56, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I invite Jennavecia (who chooses to sign as "Lara") to consider WP:CIVIL
 * Just for the record---that was NOT me.--- Balloonman  NO! I'm Spartacus! 14:55, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * No it was me. I must have forgotten to sign: sorry. JamesBWatson (talk) 16:07, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
 * It doesn't matter who it was, user Jennavecia would be better not bringing this community wide discussion down to a personal level with thinly disguised insults and personal attacks. Weakopedia (talk) 12:14, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
 * If I may return to Balloonman's "Strongly oppose", a case in which NuclearWarfare made comments which Balloonman disagreed is irrelevant to whether we agree or disgree with what NuclearWarfare has said here. For the same reason all the above argument following from that is also irrelevant. The suggestion should be judged on its own merits, not on ad hominem arguments about something the same person said elsewhere. JamesBWatson (talk) 13:41, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * The problem is that this assigns responsibility to people who may not have been involved with articles since their inception. If the proposal were reworded to talk about an ongoing problem I could support that.  But to make a guideline that can be applied to articles that an author wrote years ago is dumb.  The next thing you know, we are going to try to instill a policy that if you edit an article, you are responsible for cleaning it up.--- Balloonman  NO! I'm Spartacus! 14:58, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) I am VERY glad that Balloonman brought up this issue here, because it is very relevant. I think it once again shows the extreme views which editors who support deleting the 49,000 BLP articles have.  Rebecca is one of the most veteran editors here on wikipedia, and she is such an incredible asset to this project, to say that she be barred from any adminship for her good faith contributions, shows the extreme views editors have who support these changes. This entire RFC began with editors who have "utter contempt" for consensus. Requests_for_comment/Biographies_of_living_people Since then Coffee is at arbitration a second time, and now extreme views are being voiced for punishing editors for their good faith contributions. These two arbcoms and Rebecca's case is all a precursor of the disruption and extreme drama which will happen when these extreme views are put into place.  We judge editors on their character and edit history to determine whether they would be good fits for adminiship, by the same token, I think it is  necessary to view a proposal by the character and history of the proposal, to see whether it would be a good fit for the community.  Ikip  19:08, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
 * if all the energy used in this discussion were used on BLP's, would there be a backlog? (awakening from dogmatic slumber for a moment) i can't tell you how many times i have written a BLP that was deleted, that had plenty of sources, and was notable, i've started pasting the deletion edits on the talk page. go ask the top editors to clear the backlog and see how long it takes. Pohick2 (talk) 16:52, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

PROD tag comment
I stuck this on the main page, but since my concerns may be already considered through Deletion of unreferenced BLPs, I figured that I'd move it here:


 * New PROD tag?


 * A more technical note I'd like to make is that WP:PROD is for "uncontroversial deletions", and "any person" may object to the tag. If it is decided that a new PROD criteria is formed, then I think that an entirely separate deletion process should be created; it could use PROD as an initial template, but would have the additional criteria determined by consensus (for example, some have suggested admin-only removal of the template). It is clear that deleting unreferenced BLPs is controversial; inserting new criteria into PROD (for example, "uncontroversial deletions except unreferenced BLPs" and "any person except for non-admins on unreferenced BLPs") would be unwieldy and confusing.


 * This problem would not happen with WP:SPEEDY; while PROD is used "to suggest deletions that no editor would disagree with", new speedy criteria can be added to comply with a change in BLP policy (as enforces WP:COPYVIO). -M.Nelson (talk) 19:23, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

-M.Nelson (talk) 19:28, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Incorrect tag cleanup mini-project
As Johnbod and others commented above, many articles tagged BLPUnreferenced actually do have solid refs for whatever reason and the tag is just incorrectly applied. I have been working on this myself but I can't do more than a few hundred per day. I have created a page to help coordinate this type of effort: Mistagged BLP cleanup. This was inspired by User:Betacommand's regex run to detect likely sourced BLPs with incorrect tags. Please come lend a hand, many articles can be reviewed in less than a minute. This project will help focus any efforts that come out of this RfC on BLPs that are actually unsourced. Gigs (talk) 23:22, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
 * That's a great idea - breaking into sections would make it easier to use though. The start count is 16,750, and the ones I sampled were correctly selected. Johnbod (talk) 23:55, 27 January 2010 (UTC)


 * This is excellent. Two comments: It is difficult (impossible?) to edit / remove entries from the list because it is so long. I assume that is what Johnbod means. And when I find an article like Kate Brenner I am stumped. There are a couple of links, Google has lots of hits, but is the subject notable? Aymatth2 (talk) 02:53, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
 * That's what I meant - also everyone will go for the 1,000 odd "A"s & "T"s will be left. I'd just prod Kate. Really notability, and possible "official" biog copyvio, is the actual problem you find going through these items, not claims they are in league with Queen Elizabeth to control world heroin traffic - unrefed articles like that get zapped on sight. Johnbod (talk) 03:09, 28 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Yes - Kate Brenner made me laugh, and there will be others like that. But before finding that one I found three that were valid and easy to fix. My guess is most of the articles in the list are reasonable can be fixed without much effort. Ideally though, to make the list workable, it would be broken into one page per letter of the alphabet, and each page would have one section per second letter of the alphabet - something like that. Plus a reasonably frequent full refresh. With that, it should be possible to reduce the size of the WUB (Wikipedia Unsourced Bio) problem by one third in a few weeks - real progress. Question to Gigs: how hard would it be to extract other bits of information about the unsourced bios, such as size and number of inbound mainspace links? I am thinking along the lines of focusing rescue efforts on articles where it seems most likely to be worthwhile. Aymatth2 (talk) 13:53, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I am working on a Perl script to parse the dump to reproduce the report (keeping in mind I wasn't who created it originally). I'm not great at Perl, but I should be able to get it going so we can do full refreshes.  I'm not sure on inbound links... for that I would have to do replication to a DB rather than just dump parsing.  We'll see... one step at a time. Gigs (talk) 15:40, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I wish my programming skills were better, and I had some time. I would love to have a full-blown database for indexing the articles from different viewpoints. Possible mis-tagging is one aspect. Number of pages views is another, which another editor has done. I am interested in size, age, number of editors, inbound links, anything else that indicates potential or lack of potential so reviewers can work in from both ends, removing the trivial ones and rescuing the good ones. Still, what you have done is very useful in providing a way to quickly clear up a lot of the articles. Aymatth2 (talk) 19:49, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

A reasonable rate
I think prodding 100 unreferenced BLP articles per day would be reasonable. If there are a few thousand, that will remove the backlog within a few months. Jehochman Brrr 16:53, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Actually determining the number of unreferenced BLPs would be useful, but there might be no way to do that without going through them all (and along the way we'd obviously do the cleanup, making the count moot). Apparently there are over 50,000 so tagged, but undoubtedly a significant number of those are not actually unsourced (the tags were added incorrectly, or sources were later added and the tags not removed). Still, 100 a day would probably be a reasonable starting point, and if we were handling that load we could quickly ramp it up. Even while this general RFC runs I really think we should figure out a means to deal with the unreferenced bunch just as a starting point for tackling the overall problem. Coming to agreement about prodding unreferenced BLPs (or this alternative, which is probably acceptable to more people), is something we need to do asap, particularly as ArbCom appears ready to validate a delete-on-sight approach. I don't have a problem with doing that if we can't come to another solution, but an organized effort that is logged centrally (as opposed to admins deleting at random without warning) is much preferred. Discussion should continue at Wikipedia talk:Deletion of unreferenced BLPs (and at WT:PROD though I think the former is a better route) since it's already well on its way. --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 17:08, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I've slowly started building a list of completely referenced biographies of living people. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:27, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Completely unreferenced, obviously (would be fun to debate what "completely referenced" means though!). That's great MZM, so are you saying that this list will weed out situations where the article should not be tagged as unreferenced to begin with (i.e. it does have sources but no one removed the tag), or is it basically just an easier to handle list of all of the stuff in the category for unreferenced BLPs? Also are you imagining that we would use this as a jumping off point for cleaning these up or deleting if clean up doesn't happen? --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 17:48, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Completely referenced? I'd say that would be where every statement in the article is supported by a reliable, third-party source, and is explicitly tied to that source.  Of course such an article could still violate NPOV and BLP.  Guettarda (talk) 21:29, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
 * But what if there were even better references than the ones already there? I was being largely tongue in cheek with the "completely referenced" reference, but the serious point to it would be that articles are never "complete" and references can basically always be improved, even if every statement is sourced. Anyhow it's an extremely tangential issue. --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 01:00, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * 100 per day means it would take a year and a half to go through all 50K. I don't think people are that patient.  Personally I'd be happy with a one-year schedule (150 per day?) but I think we might have to go to 500 or more to get everyone on board.  Plus, there is probably an even larger category of articles with only a single source, or with only poor sources.  I'll bet that's at least 100,000 articles.  We can't take 5 years to do that.  - Wikidemon (talk) 01:17, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Actually the rate should depend on day of week and holiday schedules.  I would, moreover, suggest that a bot be set up looking for "key words" apt to be found in negative unsourced articles, thus making the task more focussed on the problem articles than just a random shotgun. Words to look for should include  "felony", "convicted", "rape", "pornography", "drunk", "alleged"  and so on. I suspect that a very large percentage of the claimed negative articles will be sorted out expeditiously indeed.  Let's act reasopnably and work on those ones first.  Collect (talk) 01:24, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * We could start with the oldest ones first on theory that they really ought to be improved, or the newest on theory that they're the least likely to have been checked. Or work on both ends and the middle.  - Wikidemon (talk) 01:26, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * 100 per day is of the order new unsourced BLPS are being created. So it would have to be a lot more than this to make headway. Martin 4 5 1  (talk) 08:25, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * 100 per day seems like a big ask if we want to preserve a good proportion of the valuable information. In practice sourcing efforts would attract hostile scrutiny, which would soon begin to discourage folk from trying to preserve the data, so we might not have a large pool of volunteers for long. Last year there were scores of editors trying to save our bilateral relations articles, but when these were being AfD at a rate of more than 10 a day it was impossible to save them all. OK we might get more folk helping here but on the other hand the case against BLPs seem far stronger than for the BR articles. I suggest starting at a lower figure, say 10, and then ramp up slowly.
 * Martin451s point is important, and suggests we need to combine this plan with WereSpielChequers suggestion that new BLPs be treated differently – i.e. we can start deleting all new unsourced BLPs without prejudice (much as It pains me to say this.) Incorporating Collects suggestion might mean we'd deal with a good proportion of the genuinely problematic BLPs, some of which might turn out to be attack pages. FeydHuxtable (talk) 11:29, 22 January 2010 (UTC)


 * If we are getting 100 new unsourced BLP's a day, then it seems to me this a problem that is really too big for the community to handle, under current policies at least. I don't think we have the manpower to parse a couple of hundred BLP's a day for the next x number of years, do we? Gatoclass (talk) 09:09, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
 * 100 new articles a day. Where do you get that number from? I for one don't believe it. Most of the articles that are tagged today are many years old. That they were tagged in January 2010 does not mean that they were created now. Rettetast (talk) 12:43, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree that "100 unreferenced BLP articles per day would be reasonable".... We already deal with about 60 to 100 AfDs and 100 to 125 ProDs per day, of which a large majority of those are BLPs. I think the system can handle about 200 to 225 per day.  Much mroe than that, and it breaks down drastically. Bearian (talk) 20:43, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Unassessed articles
These kind of figures suggest to me that the community is getting bogged down:
 * "Unassessed biography articles": 113,282 total.
 * "Unassessed history articles": 6,767 total ....  Esowteric + Talk  20:47, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Another Query from Collect
IF anyone knows about any WP:CANVASS being done on or off Wiki on either side, might they please note it now? I suggest it is better to make it known now than to have it come out later, per WP:AGF. And I would suggest forums, mailing lists etc. fall into this category. Many thanks! Collect (talk) 11:44, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, I suspect there is Wikipedia Review, but for some strange reason that doesn't seem to count. Hobit (talk) 13:08, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I asked because of the relatively large number of "newbies" who have opined here -- some with as few as zero outside edits  From 0 to 50 - 6 editors, 51 to 150 - 8 editors, 151 to 300 anouther 14 editors. In addition, more than a dozen experienced editors who had made fewer than 10 edits on WP in the last month, made them here (most of them had been "gnomes" doing many minor edits) from their edit history).   I had not known about any "secret forum" but the pattern amounts to a fairly large percentage of total comments, and my opinion on such is fairly well-established (see WP:False consensus) Collect (talk) 14:31, 27 January 2010 (UTC)


 * 1) Support this proposal. Another off forum site, this time a "forum that was dedicated to tightening up BLP practices". which Casliber asked the arbitration committee to investigate in October. To my knowledge no formal statement by the arbitration committee has been issued. What did the RFC do about this secret mailing list? Ikip  13:13, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
 * None afaik. There was some passive mentioning elsewhere by Pcap although it wasn't canvassing for this issue (no links, etc.). He merely listed articles at wikiprojects that were vulnerable to deletion. This wouldn't have to do with SirFozzie's "Oppose votes are obstructionists" or the ~2.3:1 ratio of Oppose-Support votes of de facto BLP Unreferenced tag votes, would it? Cause newer editors (logically) have a propensity to vote in opposition to deletionism. Lastly, 28 editors out of the 200 editors with relatively low edits wouldn't skew the poll considerably. &eta;oian  &Dagger;orever &eta;ew &Dagger;rontiers  16:12, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
 * The number is disproportionate to the usual ratios for RfCs entirely. I did not seek to see how anyone "voted" in this at all. Additionally, more than a dozen others with low usage have opined, and more than a dozen older editors who had not made any significant number of edits in from 1 to 6 months or more dropped by.   Not 28 editors whom I am surprised to find - but well over fifty of them .  I am sure you can easily find if the "newbies" did disproportionately affect any single section, but doing such was not my goal. I just wanted people to know that such things have a way of eventually surfacing, and the sooner it does, the less damage will ensue. Collect (talk) 16:21, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
 * It seems possible, if not likley, if not certain that the newbies and other editors of limited activity are the result of ikip's canvasssing of every wikiproject he could find via bot and with a highly inflamatory message. Don't worry, though, there's clearly no obstruction here, officer. Hipocrite (talk) 16:54, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
 * [Joke] Okay, okay. Enough already I admit it: I am here at the behest of the Secret Chiefs (with 10k+ edits, though)  Esowteric + Talk  16:56, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
 * And now I've gotten some responses pointing me at MediaWiki:Watchlist-details Hipocrite (talk) 17:25, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't think it is usually counted as canvassing, but there has been an unusual amount of activity on the EN Wiki mailing list. That mailing list is precisely for this sort of discussion, anyone can sign up, and while I'm a couple of days worth of Emails behind, opinions seem to range from wp:Pure wiki deletion to support for the deletionists. But I suspect that might have prompted a few of the experienced editors who hadn't otherwise been that active of late.  Ϣere  Spiel  Chequers  23:55, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

As Hipocrite mentions, I requested a watchlist notification, so some of the newer editors who are commenting probably saw it at the top of their watchlist. It always brings in lots of people. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 00:02, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm one of the newbies. I have this message at the top of my watchlist page, "A major change in how biographies of living people are handled is being discussed. You are invited to join the discussion. [dismiss]". I see messages there on a regular basis and thought they were notifications everyone gets. A biography of a living person is one of the things I've been working on a bit at a time for about 4 weeks which is possibly why I looked into this. Also the message seems to be on a general interest topic not about something I presume I have no current interest in. I've commented because this discussion is something I have an interest in and I have a strong opinion about what I perceive as a call for a search and destroy mission (many others obviously perceive it very differently). The question about about newbie participation suggests so few people out of all the editors Wikipedia has have voiced opinions because it isn't a notification everyone gets. Whatever the reason I got the message or where it came from it's not biased or inflammatory. Perhaps I got it because someone noticed I'd come across a BLP that needed improvement and was doing something to improve it. Refrigerator Heaven (talk) 07:42, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Moving the query from the page for which it was relevant - specifically concerning the appearance of votes from newbies was an error as far as I can tell. This page is for discussing the main page, and placing queries which were properly on the main page over here makes precsious little sense. Collect (talk) 16:56, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
 * No the main page is for proposals related to the subject at hand, Unreferenced BLP's. This has nothing to do with unreferenced BLP's, but rather the possibility of canvassing going on, which may impact the neutrality of the that discussion.  This does not make a proposal or suggestion on how to proceed with unreferenced BLPs but rather provides information pertaining to the entirety of the RfC.  Thus, having it on the main page is clearly incorrect.--- Balloonman  NO! I'm Spartacus! 17:09, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
 * And comments by some very senior people which address editors and not the BLPs should then be moved here, right? Collect (talk) 21:33, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

The BLP offwiki forum dedicated to tightening up BLP practices
Caliber asked the arbitration committee to look into a BLP offwiki forum "dedicated to tightening up BLP practices" in October:
 * 1) What did the arbitration committee find and
 * 2) are any of the arbitration members on this list?

Casliber: "In October while I was told about this website as a place where concerned editors were discussing what to do about BLPs, and that the board was private and pseudonyms were being used, and that there were a number of people using it (24?). Rather than detail all the rumours I was told, I thought I'd throw it up here and see what folks thought. At the time, I told the arbitration committee and left it with them. However, upon thinking about it, I am not comfortable with the idea that there is another secret board which I have on idea about whether it is wound up or...what? How do folks feel? Discussing this may highlight to WMF how frustrated some folks are with the BLP issue. I was tempted to make an RfC but there was no dispute as such so....do other editors want the board made not-secret? or what?"

Durova: "Unresolving. The word on the street is that this was a forum that was dedicated to tightening up BLP practices and that its members were coordinating to affect the outcomes of AFD discussions. There was nothing visible there because threads were deleted as soon as a discussion was closed. I'm hearing things about who was a member there, but am not repeating any names without independent confirmation. It appears possible to test the veracity of this by writing a script to test for unusual clusters of recent participation at AFDs of BLP subjects. Would one of our coders look into that avenue, please? At the very least it would help to settle the concerns if this is untrue. And if it is true (or nearly so) I would for my own part suggest amnesty for anyone who steps forward and explains this to the community within the next 24 hours."

MZMcBride : "It looks like a forum to discuss biographies of living people. Forums have a number of benefits over using Wikipedia (far less visibility, no database dumps, greater anonymity, better software, etc.). I didn't vote-stack and I don't believe anyone else did, though all of the discussions seem to have been deleted by the person running the site, so I can't really say for sure (it had been months since I last logged in before I did so a few days ago). For all I know, there could have been a massive cabal, but I doubt it."

Casliber: "MZMcBride, it has been suggested that you were the "person running the site." Do you know why people would say that? If it was not you, could you tell us who it was? Feel free to email arbcom-l‐at‐lists.wikimedia.org. I, for one, would appreciate candor."

Ikip 05:48, 27 January 2010 (UTC)


 * I don't think this is very relevant to this RfC. Can we try to stay on topic please? There is however an ongoing RfAr for MczMcbride you could present relevant evidence there. JoshuaZ (talk) 06:04, 27 January 2010 (UTC)


 * I'd like to know more about this, since this RfC started out with a bunch of possible misuse of tools. I've seen a couple of things so far concerning this BLP case, where you have to go searching through wiki conversations to find out about weird secret stuff.  I'm not a fan of that.  We should keep everything above board. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 06:08, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I too would like to learn more about a possible conspiracy taking place off-site, specially when such is referred to as having the "benefit" of "far less visibility".  Schmidt,  MICHAEL Q. 06:15, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
 * JoshuaZ, if you have say, 20+ editors on secret mailing lists, who helped create this crisis, and engineer this RFC, how on gods green earth is that not applicable? Ikip 06:26, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
 * First of all it's not a "secret mailing list", it's a forum. Secondly this question has already been answered, but perhaps you didn't notice it on the last RFAR: . &mdash; Coffee //  have a cup  //  ark  // 06:45, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Coffee, should we take from your wording that you have been involved in this secret forum? Moreover, should we take from your choice of tense that this secret coordinating forum is still active? JoshuaZ (talk) 18:05, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

I would think it would be obvious by going to the site that it was back up. &mdash; Coffee //  have a cup  //  ark  // 20:15, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Fascinating. Going to the site confirms it is up. Moreover, apparently the forums aren't visible even after one registers if one isn't a special person. How this isn't the most blatant form of unacceptable off-wiki canvassing isn't at all clear to me. The incredible chutzpah is amazing. This looks absolutely no different than the recently closed case with the Eastern Europe mailing list. I seem to recall Piotrus losing his mop over that. I wonder if the same will happen to you. JoshuaZ (talk) 21:46, 27 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Don't remember confirming that I was a member anywhere... &mdash; Coffee //  have a cup  //  ark  // 23:28, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Grow up. Really. Let's rephrase what you've said: "oooh, look, I never explicitly said I was a member, I just know a lot about it and implied I was." Because somehow if you don't say it explicitly its still ok. Never mind that at the very same time you are trying to argue three paragraphs below this that somehow this is ok because it is hard to enforce despite the fact that the ArbCom has deadminned other people for just this. You remind of the old joke about the two people who go to small claims court. One of them says that the other dented the pot he borrowed. The second guy says "First, the pot was fine when I returned it. Second, it was already dented when I borrowed. And third, I never borrowed your stupid pot." JoshuaZ (talk) 23:40, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
 * You apparently haven't read how much this has been discussed on wiki already, as everything I've said is on wiki, I haven't said anything that would require me to actually be a member of the site. &mdash; Coffee //  have a cup  //  ark  // 23:49, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I've got an idea. Instead of continuing your pusillanimous, mealy-mouthed game playing why don't you just say explicitly if you are or are not a member? JoshuaZ (talk) 00:03, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I had to look up the word pusillanimous... any more long dictionary words from the peanut gallery? &mdash; Coffee //  have a cup  //  ark  // 00:15, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, I was thinking of something more alliterative like pusillanimous pussy-footing but I happen to like cats, and would rather not quote Spiro Agnew even when it was one of his better coinages. I do however note that you still haven't answered the question. JoshuaZ (talk) 00:22, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't remember Mr Agnew asking me anything! Since we're quoting, here's a line you might like; "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt". Perhaps you should do more of the former and less of the latter. &mdash; Coffee //  have a cup  //  ark  // 02:02, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Your refusal to answer the relevant question is noted. JoshuaZ (talk) 02:56, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I changed the title. You are quoting Lara, not anyone on the committee:
 * It would be nice if the committee could pull itself together and take part in some basic communication on its private mailing list. Considering the GodKing and various members of his court, both past and present, have been aware of sofixit.org since October 2009 and apparently, from my view, were comfortable enough with its purpose to let it go, if for no other reason than because it's out of Wikipedia's purview, it seems increasingly ridiculous that Roger Davies is being left to flap in the wind with his clueless comments. Between the group of you, not one could muster up the GAF to drop him a name of who to ask questions of to ease his aching mind?


 * More than a dozen editors/admins outed in the past month or so (including two children, as some here like to call them) as the BLP problem continues to spiral out. You guys keep them priorities set; it's working well so far. And for the sake of clarity, Durova, I resigned. Lara 20:11, 19 January 2010 (UTC)


 * You seem to know more about it than me, were you a member coffee? A member "dedicated to tightening up BLP practices" Ikip 13:00, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I clicked on it at the time it came up. It redirected to a picture of a guy gaping his asshole. I saw no evidence of an organization dedicated to improving wikipedia's treatment of living people in the asshole.Bali ultimate (talk) 13:26, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
 * There was certainly no evidence of "tightening up".  pablo hablo. 13:30, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Hilarious guys. really. I clicked on the link too, and thought it was some joke. Once the creator found out he/she was outed, they added that charming picture. Ikip 16:34, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Sounds like a Goatse.cx pic, often posted when a site is outed/discussed.--Milowent (talk) 17:22, 27 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Ikip my friend, we've been down this road before. There's nothing we can do about stuff that is happening off-wiki, especially if the contibutors are not using their on-wiki identities. And please don't start accusing me of being a member of this secret cabal because I'm not. I don't do anything wikipedia related outside of en-wiki, because I believe in transparency, and because I already spend more than enough of my time here without spending hours in some chat room discussing what happens here. But apparently there are some among us who would prefer to conspire in private. It's not anything new to be sure, but honestly, there's nothing to be done about it, we simply can't control other websites. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:46, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Beeblebrox, coffee and MZMcBride's modus operandi seem almost identical. Ironcally both have seperate arbcom cases filed and open right now too. I may not agree with you, but I sure am not going to say you are a member of a off wiki forum, making a broad assumption that I would is not fair. Dismissing former arbcoms Durova and Casliber evidence as a "secret cabal" is not fair to them either.  Ikip  21:29, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Um, if you recall, when this came up before at ANI, and I said essentially the same thing, you replied by asking if I was a member of this group or had been in contact with them. So it's not like I just pulled that out of thin air. Beeblebrox (talk) 10:03, 29 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Agreed, we haven't and won't be able to close a forum like Wikipedia Review, sofixit is no different. &mdash; <big style="color:#ffa439">Coffee //  have a cup  //  ark  // 21:04, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
 * We can require those who engage in significant off-site communication about Wikipedia to disclose such communications. If they ignore that requirement, at some point they will be caught and blocked/banned/de-admined or what have you. It doesn't need to be closed, but it does need to be visible. Hobit (talk) 21:06, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
 * How would you ever enforce something like that? When people are hidden behind aliases, there's no way to ever know who was part of a site. <small style="color:#999;white-space:nowrap;text-shadow:lightgrey 0.3em 0.3em 0.15em;">&mdash; <big style="color:#ffa439">Coffee //  have a cup  //  ark  // 21:15, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I listed all off-wiki cases, there have been several, let me see if I can find them.Ikip 21:29, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
 * We have the same problems with careful socks, banned users returning etc. If you want to cheat you can probably get away with it, but those that try sometimes get caught.  Hobit (talk) 22:15, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Amazing. You are aware that we just had an arbitration hearing that desyssoped an admin over precisely this sort of off wiki stuff? Thinking that the rules don't apply to you because you have right on your side? You are not a holy crusader. Your are not even one of the Blues Brothers. You are not defending Rome against the barbarian onslaught that is editors who disagree with you. Please get that into your head or give up your mop. JoshuaZ (talk) 22:19, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Blues Brothers? Does that make you the Illinois Nazi Party or the IRS? <small style="color:#999;white-space:nowrap;text-shadow:lightgrey 0.3em 0.3em 0.15em;">&mdash; <big style="color:#ffa439">Coffee //  have a cup  //  ark  // 23:28, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Godwin's law!! -M.Nelson (talk) 00:30, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

First...
I've been diligently disregarding this for, what is it... 7 days now? I have somewhat strong feelings about this, and there was obviously no way to stop it, so I've simply remained quiet about it. Seems the only sensible course of action to take, really. I'm especially hesitant to bring this up because I don't see "The Dramaz!" which may be involved as being especially worthwhile, especially since I personally have no desire to hear your bitching and moaning at me for bringing it up (which is why I'm posting this on the talk page, at least for now). Let me just get to the point: I think those who started us on our present course ought to at least give up "the bit", hopefully voluntarily. Farcical ArbCom "amnesties" aside, you know who you are, and you know what you did. You folks outright admitted that you expected to have the bit taken from you anyway. Unless and until that happens though, this editor at least does not wish to be any part of this. — V = I * R (talk to Ohms law) 10:08, 28 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Did you really expect a reply even? Their bits are going nowhere voluntarily, not now after all they have achieved thus far. You won't even get a single one of them to even brave a straight admin only recall poll is my guess. These are our trail blazing leaders remember, and what good can a leader accomplish without his trusty side-arm? MickMacNee (talk) 02:57, 29 January 2010 (UTC)


 * I saw someone say something along the lines of "this is the first time in my 2 years editing here that I've actually been outraged" on the current RFAR, which sums up my own feelings about this whole thing very nicely. Tznkai has been on point throughout, luckily for all of us. To answer the question directly though, no I don't really expect anything good from those that this is directed at. They've well proven their disdain for others opinions, and the community in general. That one of them is a Steward (and one of the few people here who I trusted and respected previously) is even more appalling. I tend to be hopeful to the last, however. — V = I * R (Talk&thinsp;&bull;&thinsp;Contribs) 11:52, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Alphabetize views
Would it make sense to alphabetize the views by username? I've never really liked the idea of chronological ordering, as I think it unfairly favors earlier views too much. --MZMcBride (talk) 16:16, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
 * May I change my username first?  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  17:41, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
 * WSC---you make the proposal to go in reverse alphabetical order.--- Balloonman  NO! I'm Spartacus! 21:50, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
 * The only way to make it fair would be to have them randomly ordered each time the page loads :-) Would be however a little confusing but would I think address MZ concerns. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 01:08, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Given the number of views that have been expressed, and the number of comments, it is probably a good idea to open a second round of comments later on, where proposals can be consolidated, refined, or withdrawn. The chronological order helps to see how the discussion has evolved, so in principle, I would be in favor of keeping that order. (Remark: As we have a specific policy on BLP, framing the current debate as an issue of BLP concerns versus policy and procedure seems unwarranted, in my view.) Cs32en   Talk to me  02:08, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I'd agree with this. I came rather late to the discussion, and while I've put my two cents' worth down in one place, there's so much material to wade through that I'm probably missing something else I'd agree with.  Once everything here is boiled down I think it would be helpful to have a second go at discussing it. --- Ser Amantio di Nicolao Che dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa.


 * I am strongly in favor of strict alphabetic order. I believe that Arthur Rubin would also support this change. Aymatth2 (talk) 17:40, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I would be in favour of alphabetisation.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 15:23, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Wouldn't that make it even harder to work out who said what last? There must be a way of grouping views more productively.  Esowteric + Talk  15:44, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Working on the hypothesis
That there is a mass deletion programme, can someone tell me whether or not BLPsources might be involved? WFCforLife (talk) 03:16, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * the original "kill list" is reported to be some 50,000 "unsourced" articles. These 50K are tagged as unsourced, although some say that a significant % of these are actually sourced, but carry the unsourced tags as remnants from the past.  However, the discussion here is broadening to question if there is a clear dividing line between "unsourced" and "shoddy"-sources, i.e. almost equivalent to "unsourced."  These are shades of grey, but the deletion scythe will be wielded based on tags and bots.  --Mdukas (talk) 08:01, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I think there is a lot of opposition to using bots and tags. There are several proposals explicitly calling for bots NOT to be used and to require human intervention explicitly because there are so many articles that are sourced which have been mistagged.--- Balloonman  NO! I'm Spartacus! 16:26, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * STOP THE BOTS! When wading through a whole heap of towns and villages in India, I came across a great many articles that only had one source: rainfall or geographical location, and more often than not these weren't listed under "Notes" or "References" but simply noted at the bottom of the page or in "External links". Quite often there are valuable references to be found in "External links" or "External links and sources" (and variations) as many older articles tend to use. Yet these articles deserve a place in an encyclopedia.  Esowteric + Talk  16:34, 29 January 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm currently working on books by a highly notable and influential historian and yet some of the books that he's published feature in just one academic journal (though they may be well cited according to google scholar and often referred to on .edu and .ac.uk web sites). Some of the links don't show up in google, but do in yahoo!. I'm prepared to "dig" long and hard to source an article and work on subjects "for Wikipedia", even if I don't have a particular interest in a subject, but I wouldn't expect others to go to that much trouble.  Esowteric + Talk  16:34, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

More time before pausing, please
I have some ideas that I think are quite different from the views that have already been given. Can we leave this open for another week before summarizing and narrowing the discussion? This is obviously a complex issue and I think leaving it open for a bit longer would maybe let some creative ideas in. It takes time to ponder complex issues, especially when you're trying to keep your Wikipedia time grounded in the mainspace. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 05:46, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Given that this has been open for some time, heavily publicized for at least a week, and that comments started declining rapidly after the first few days (at least that was my impression from peter cohen's data), I don't see much benefit. (Especially given that there's 100+ sections already - it seems like most ideas have been covered). I personally wouldn't be in favor of leaving this open for another week since I'd hate to see people get burned out and this loose momentum. (Besides, this doesn't close for a bit, so there's plenty of time to add your comments). -- B figura  (talk) 07:03, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Plus, once this is shifted to a topical style, I'm not sure why new entries couldn't be added. The main reason I originally proposed the reorganization is so that this could actually become parseable, and so that duplicate ideas could be combined/eliminated. -- B figura  (talk) 07:06, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
 * OK thanks. That takes the pressure off. I can imagine it must be hard to juggle the many opinions on how to manage the many opinions :) Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 07:12, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Query from Collect

 * Moved from the subject-space page. This is really a question for the WMF legal counsel, but this talk page is good enough, I guess. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:20, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

How many libel suits for unreferenced BLPs have ever been brought against WP or the WMF? Collect (talk) 12:52, 23 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Replies
 * Not relevant. We should take all steps to make sure our BLPs are libel-free and maintainable as such because: 1) our core WP:V and WP:NPOV demand it 2) it is the right thing to do ("do no harm"). Ask a different question: how many people are adversly or unfairly affected by our failure to keep our BLPs properly maintained? Any OTRS person will tell you there are many many legitimate complaints every week.--Scott Mac (Doc) 12:58, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
 * The ostensible reason given was that libel may be found there. Are we in the position of the man who went to a shrink -- the shrink asked "Why do you clap your hands every five minutes" Reply "To keep the elephants away"  "There are no elephants anywhere near here"  "See! It works!"   If no examples of libel suits are found, I ould suggest that clapping our hands will not do much <g>.   And I would ask how many OTRS complaints are due to unreferenced BLPs which are not deleted by OTRS?  In short - are we not using "libel" as a straw argument in such a case entirely?   Is not the real argument that all unreferenced articles of whatever ilk should be excised? Collect (talk) 13:51, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
 * The ostensible reason given by who? Certainly not anybody with what might fairly be characterized as a good grasp of the BLP problem. Steve Smith (talk) 13:53, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
 * One can have a libel without a lawsuit. If you are asking are some of these unreferenced BLPs libellous, the answer is yes.--Scott Mac (Doc) 14:09, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Save your breath, Scott - he's in no mood to let facts get in the way of a good analogy. Steve Smith (talk) 14:11, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Inasmuch as Scott was one specifically raised "libel" as a rallying cry, I regard his comments as answering your question as to "given by who?"  Clearly "libel" is an ostensible reason as given by one of the most active participants.   And I would respectfully ask that you respect your own position as a member of ArbCom  with regard to comments made about editors.  Thank you most kindly. Collect (talk) 15:38, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Libel, yes. Libel suits no.  As Scott noted, those are two different things.  The lack of libel suits has virtually no evidentiary value as to the existence of libel. Steve Smith (talk) 15:40, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Lack of elephants is surely evidence that elephants must be stopped by clapping <g>.  Scott only avers 1 or 2 percent as violating BLP ... seems that there are not all that many elephants to be found. Collect (talk) 16:07, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Back of the envelope estimates (necessarily very rough) for all BLPs (not distinguishing between sourced and unsourced) put ~0.2% of all BLPs having been problematic as a pessimistic value. -- Cycl o pia talk  14:35, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Rubbish. I've done OTRS, manned the BLPNB, and used various tools to identify more. I've no way of statistically analysing it, but I can regularly find a bio that violates BLP in 2-3 minutes. Sure the % is probably in low single figures - but that's hardly relevant if you are the subject of the bio.--Scott Mac (Doc) 14:41, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Agreed. 1% is 1 too many to host here, and it is a continuing shame that some here can't comprehend that.
 * It is relevant in understanding how the draconianness of measures vs the problem must be measured. Since you've done OTRS, and you claim to have different data that contradict these ones, it would help a lot if you can share them -say, take a sample of "weeks at OTRS" and figuring out how many independent complaints you received per week, how many of them referred to unsourced BLPs and how many to sourced ones, etc. -- Cycl o pia talk  00:35, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Given your statement here Cyclopia, I'm not sure why you even bother to keep asking for data, since it's quite obvious that no (realistic) number of complaints could ever convince you there is a problem. In the context of discussing 50,000+ unsourced articles, I asked how many of those would need to have BLP problems for you to be concerned to the point where we would need to go in and start the prod/source or delete process, and you replied, "I'd say that if there is overwhelming evidence of more than 10% such BLPs having actually harmed a subject, then there is a real problem." Which, to be clear, means that even if Scott or someone else said that there had been 5,000 BLP complaints at OTRS over the past few years, your first response would presumably be, "okay, but how many of those complainers were actually harmed, and is the evidence for that overwhelming?" Please don't bother bothering other people about data when you've made it clear that nothing can convince you that there is a problem with BLP. --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 07:48, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Don't personalize the issue. Measuring the extent of the problem is very important to figure out what the appropriate solution is, and I am flabbergasted that there doesn't seem to have been any serious attempts to do so. henrik  • talk  08:22, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm all for more information about the extent of the BLP problem (undoubtedly there could be issues with collecting it given privacy issues with OTRS), though the whole point of BLP as a policy is that we should be concerned even if just a few people are harmed by false or misleading information in our articles. My comment above to Cyclopia has nothing to do with personalizing the situation, it's a simple fact that that editor's apparent threshold for admitting that there is a "real problem" is if 10% out of 50,000 articles did "actual harm" to an article subject (I doubt you would agree with that number). There's no way we have 5,000 cases with "overwhelming evidence" of real world harm, and as such any data provided would not convince Cyclopia that there is a BLP problem. That's not to say that such information would not be useful, just that it's clearly not going to have any effect on Cyclopia's views on these questions. --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 09:19, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Oh, absolutely. 10% is obviously completely unacceptable, and had I thought it anywhere near that number I would have mashing my delete button like crazy speedily deleting the lot. But we can't expect complete perfection. We can strive towards it, and rapidly fix problems as they are pointed out to us, and help encourage people to reduce the risk with various means. But there will be cases where we have incorrect information, and there will be cases where someone uses that information in such a way that could cause harm. But if all we wanted to do was to prevent that, the solution is simple: close down the encyclopedia. We have to make a mature risk-benefit analysis if we're going to come up with a good solution. Even if Cyclopia's views wont be changed, us who haven't taken extreme stances will be helped by such data, and I definitely encourage Cyclopia to continue in his efforts. henrik  • talk  11:07, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I would like to clarify. I am not going to ask real-life proof of 5000 people, say, losing their job. Call me crazy, but not that crazy! To me > 5000 50.000 individual articles (~10% of the ~500.000 BLPs) generating independent and valid (e.g. related to actual defamation and not just "I don't like you write WP:WELLKNOWN stuff about me") OTRS complaints are enough to acknowledge that the problem is beyond control. Again, I wouldn't endorse tout court deletion, but I for sure would consider incubation/blanking/removal from search engines etc. But in this context what is mostly important is that unreferenced BLPs are indeed for some reason more problematic than referenced ones. I've seen there is now some more request for informations and I hope good statistics will be collected eventually. -- Cycl o pia talk  15:09, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Scott, you mentioned that "I've done OTRS, manned the BLPNB, and used various tools to identify more... I can regularly find a bio that violates BLP in 2-3 minutes." Can you elaborate on your methods for finding bios that violate BLP? Maybe if more people can use those methods we'd be more effective than picking random articles out of Category:Unreferenced BLPs. And to give us a comparison, how many minutes does it take you to find BLP violations by doing random checks in Category:Unreferenced BLPs? I apologize in advance if you've already answered these questions somewhere. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 07:44, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

What is "unsourced"?
Is Kate Brenner unsourced? I'd say no. But an experienced editor relabeled as unsourced after another experienced editor removed it, so I want to be sure we are all talking about the same thing. Basically do primary sources count (say the homepage of the person) count a source for this discussion/tag? Hobit (talk) 17:35, 28 January 2010 (UTC)


 * It has sources. These prods make me think this whole thing is really just an easy seeming way to delete articles. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 17:40, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
 * The article reads, in its entirety:"Kate Brenner is an American model, actress and radio personality." with her website and myspace page as "external links". The first question is - is she notable? Personally I have no problem with deleting articles like this with no assertion of notability, per whatever the policy is. If she is notable, the refs clearly have no claim to being independent or reliable. Johnbod (talk) 18:06, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Then does unsourced really mean lacking reliable, independent secondary sources? That's a reasonable standard for deletion via WP:Notability, but is it what we are discussing in this RfC on "unreferended BLP's"? (Apologies if this has been decided already.) / edg ☺ ☭ 18:29, 28 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Unsourced MySpace and an "official" site not only don't meet RS, they don't even meet V. Jclemens (talk) 18:45, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
 * To elaborate, there's no particularly good reason to assume that either of them are, in fact, self-published sources, unless they in turn link to reliable sources that authenticate the content. In those cases, we should just use those RS to meet V in lieu of forgeable sites. If you'll look back in the history, there are assertions (removed appropriately per BLP) that that subject appeared in Playboy. If we can find a cite for that, that establishes V for the contentious BLP material (a reasonable man who had not posed for Playboy could reasonably be expected to be hurt if such an assertion were falsely printed), it would be sufficient.  Once that's established, then we could talk about whether she's notable enough, and that should be a normal (non speedy, non PROD) deletion discussion. Jclemens (talk) 18:49, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
 * On her website bio she says she posed for Playboy frequently, FWIW. --Mdukas (talk) 18:57, 28 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Description of WP:V says: "All quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged must be attributed to a reliable, published source using an inline citation." But is it "likely to be challenged" if the person's own website asserts it?  (as opposed to some third party saying so and the subject denying it?).  --Mdukas (talk) 19:06, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
 * How, exactly, do you know that it's her website, hmm? Anyone can put up anything they want and call it an official website; this has been repeatedly discussed at WP:FAC--A self-published site's assertion that it is official is not credible enough for BLP issues. Jclemens (talk) 21:39, 28 January 2010 (UTC)


 * That template says "This biography of a living person does not cite any references or sources." I read "any" to mean "any," and thus I think its wrong.  the refimprove tag seems appropriate, i.e., "This article needs additional citations for verification."--Milowent (talk) 18:59, 28 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Its thrown to AfD already as we speak, fyi, Articles for deletion/Kate Brenner.--Milowent (talk) 19:09, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

I was the editor who added the unreferencedBLP template. Note that the template explicitly links the word cite to WP:CITE in "does not cite any references or sources". It may be useful to review WP:CITE, and likely also WP:EL, which distinguishes external links from citations several times. If the external links had been to reliable sources, however, I would not have added the template. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 20:04, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
 * They were reliable per WP:SPS. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 20:13, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Did you perhaps mean WP:SELFPUB instead of WP:SPS? Even if you did, they fail as references (see points 1, 4, & 5). I have no objection to them as external links. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 20:24, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
 * They fail as good references (though I disagree about point 4 and even 5 and 1 to an extent). But it is sourced.  The banner doesn't say "good" reference or sources.  Hobit (talk) 21:24, 28 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Since BLP is pretty clear on that, maybe we should just change the template text to make it crystal clear that non-RS aren't acceptable. Jclemens (talk) 21:41, 28 January 2010 (UTC)\
 * I've gone ahead and WP:BOLDly updated the template. It's fully protected, so if any non-administrator wants the change reverted, just drop me a note on my talk page, or get any other admin to revert for you. Cheers, Jclemens (talk) 21:52, 28 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Well, we need to figure out what we mean. I've been assuming unsourced means unsourced: that is no sources at all. A homepage is certainly a reasonable source for information about one's self and is commonly used in BLPs for things like date of birth and the like.  I'd say it was "sourced" at the time, though I do understand DC's thoughts. Hobit (talk) 20:55, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Pretty clearly was sourced. Per SELFPUB is a reliable source for information about the individual. Let's not confuse notability with explicit sourcing. JoshuaZ (talk) 21:22, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree. BLP is quite clear that a site or any other material published by a person is an acceptable reliable source for an article on that person. BLP.  Point 1 & 5 in WP:SELFPUB have to do with the article and the material in it, not the source used; it makes very little sense to connect them to a template about sourcing.  Point 4, "there is no reasonable doubt as to its authenticity" is something which uses editorial judgment.  In the overwhelming majority of cases, (claimed) official/personal sites are acceptable, reliable sources.  So I very strongly object to this change to Template:BLP unsourced, and request it be changed back.John Z (talk) 00:30, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I've reverted the change to unreferencedblp per your request. I'll start a separate section below to seek input on this specific question. Jclemens (talk) 00:59, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * What exactly makes these sites official? One is an anonymous domain registration apparently operated by modFX Network (not work safe), clearly an enterprise dedicated to making money, not publishing reliable biographical information. They will add to the "official" site whatever helps them achieve their goal. The other is myspace, and provides absolutely no biographical information at all. Kevin (talk) 00:43, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Here is what I read over at WP:SPS: (seems fairly clear)

Self-published and questionable sources as sources on themselves Policy shortcut: WP:SELFPUB

Self-published or questionable sources may be used as sources of information about themselves, especially in articles about themselves, without the requirement that they be published experts in the field, so long as:

the material is not unduly self-serving; it does not involve claims about third parties; it does not involve claims about events not directly related to the subject; there is no reasonable doubt as to its authenticity; the article is not based primarily on such sources.

--Mdukas (talk) 01:16, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * You miss my point - these sites are likely not controlled by the subject at all, but by someone interested in making money from her appearance. Kevin (talk) 01:26, 29 January 2010 (UTC)


 * You raise a good point. The problem is how these very complicated decisions are addressed in bot-like rapid PRODing.  You basically need an AfD - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 01:35, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * My thinking would be that we should not have biographies that are solely sourced to these kinds of sites. I dont see how a bot could distinguish a good from a bad site, so bot prodding articles with some kind of external link seems like a bad idea. You could possibly program it to ignore imdb and myspace when checking for sources I guess. Kevin (talk) 01:42, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * They do not fail WP:SELFPUB. A sources reliability is based on how its used.  Nothing is reliable or unreliable regardless of what it's sourcing.  What they don't help with is NOTE, which I think this whole thing is largely a proxy for.  Having a link to a persons official website, or to their IMDB page, actually stops an article from being unreferenced, which shows how silly this whole unrefed BLP thing is.  It has nothing to do with protecting the individual, it's just an arbitrary rule that some people feel an easy form of deletion should hinge on. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 01:23, 29 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Are we being over-theoretical here? The article has trivial content and fails WP:N and WP:V. Does the article make a significant contribution to the sum of human knowledge? If deleted, it can always be recreated if some editor feels the subject is notable and gives sources to prove it. Aymatth2 (talk) 03:41, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Maybe a bit. It's going to be deleted in its AfD, most likely.  It's a good example that having or lacking a source isn't a good criteria to judge it by, though. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 03:54, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I would say that the "unsourced" template should be used only for articles without any sources whatsoever. For poorly sourced articles, the "refimprove" template is more appropriate. That said, when no inline citations are given it's not immediately obvious whether sources in the "external links" section back up any or all of the information in the article, so I can understand the use of the "unsourced" template in those circumstances. The subject's notability and the reliability of sources (self-published or otherwise) are different issues: the "unsourced" template is not and should never be used to pass judgement on the quality of cited sources. Contains Mild Peril (talk) 06:11, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't understand the point of this discussion. Clearly there are arguments for both views, but the concern that BLPs are in danger of being summarily deleted if they are incorrectly tagged as unsourced seems to be hyperbole. Admins seem to be given the leeway to determine notability for speedy deletions without much fuss, why is it assumed they would not check for sources before deleting BLPs? Delicious carbuncle (talk) 14:20, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Because they didn't. Gigs (talk) 21:32, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Paused
I've paused the discussion so that uninvolved admins can summarize and sort the ideas discussed, and a call for closers has gone out to AN and ANI. (It's been suggested on ANI that it might take a few admins working together to get this done). As stated above in a few places, this isn't intended to halt the discussion, merely to summarize and sort it so that the community can arrive at a consensus. My best to whichever admin(s) want to chip in here. -- B figura  (talk) 03:46, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
 * here are the top ideas, to help admins get started: Requests for comment/Biographies of living people/Phase II. Ikip 04:55, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Is it worth archiving the page as it is now, and then refactoring into groups of similar ideas such as David Gerard's and Jehochman's, with a final section for clearly rejected ideas such as MZMcBride's? Even the deeply involved could possibly help with that part. Kevin (talk) 05:06, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I prefer the graph form as in the above link I made, note how I have a stance section already, which is sortable? This could be broken out into three or four distinct sections. Ikip  05:11, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
 * ...or the uninvolved admins could chose to not be led by the nose by an involved party... Jack Merridew 05:46, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, clearly I have nothing useful to add. Kevin (talk) 06:02, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Hi, I was not knocking you, at all; you've done great. Cheers, Jack Merridew 06:09, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah, Jack was once again "knocking" me. Note he adds no constructive ideas to this conversation.Ikip 06:13, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Ahh, Thanks. Stocktaking today, so my hair trigger is set finer that usual. Kevin (talk) 06:19, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
 * You're welcome. Carry on… Jack Merridew ;) 06:24, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
 * (ec and unindent) Yes, although I think "clearly rejected" can be softened a bit so as not to hurt anyone's feelings. I think of consensus building as an exercise in pareto-optimization.  If there is a given proposal lying at one extreme or another, and another one that will gain far more support by moving towards the center without alienating too many supporters of the first proposal, then the first may be stricken in favor of the second.  So we don't exactly have to say that "delete ad hoc on sight" has no support, but that "delete on a scheduled program after some kind of process" will gain more support.  - Wikidemon (talk) 05:17, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
 * (ec - to Ikip) Whoaaa...that's very useful. We can't directly apply the totals.  And I think we should discount Jimbo's "no" !votes by 50% before repeating that consensus and majority are two different things, because a lot of people are contrarians around here :)  - Wikidemon (talk) 05:17, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I will add several more editors to the list at Requests for comment/Biographies of living people/Phase II, I welcome other editors adding the support/oppose/neutral totals and the stance. Ikip 05:24, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

For what it's worth, you aren't going to hurt my feelings by calling my view "clearly rejected." I'm just glad we're finally having this discussion. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 05:26, 1 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Metacomments by Proofreader77 :-) 1. The (small) number of participants tells you most of what you need to know. 2. Only someone with, um, say, Proofreader77's gifts for rhetorical analysis/synthesis could possibly process that into a fair summary (slightly kidding, but only slightly &mdash; surely my reputation for humility precedes me;) 3. We would need polling functions in place, and an orchestrated discussion with intermediate votes for a meaningful (rather than mis-representational) "result. 4. But see #1. Then see what I said about "opt out" and legal exposure. (Hmmm, perhaps I have already reached an unwavering conclusion, and would not feel it worth my time to process the rest of the comments. LoL) -- Proofreader77 (interact)  05:39, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Clarification (as per request): As per request (elsewhere) for clarity (rarely as good an idea as one might think): (a) Most of the ideas expressed in the RfC are based on the myth of enough volunteers/time/energy to do what is proposed in some non-geologic time scale. (b) The world and Google will determine what Wikipedia must do about BLPs whatever the most vocal of the community believe . (c) ArbCom's motion (which many despise) was a reasonable response to the inability to the community to address the issue. (d) Implement opt-out, then do as you will. (e) As for the "Metacomments" above &mdash; they are to say that whatever we are doing right now is not an effective process of deliberation (no matter the fact that that is always the way it has been done). Wikipedia's current stature as a cultural institution will require changes in process to match the challenges created by that status. Change will come, or Wikipedia will crumble. Selah. Proofreader77 (interact)  06:48, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Small number? If you wish I'll move that you write a poem about this... - Wikidemon (talk) 07:32, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
 * The 300 Spartans ? Hmmm, I think that title's been taken. :-) Proofreader77 (interact) 07:39, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Interpreting & clarifying WP:SELFPUB sources
Per the discussion above, I see three basic options:


 * 1) SELFPUB sources are useful to back up any fact or assertion that doesn't run afoul of SELFPUB itself. After all, Wikipedia can't be held responsible for what someone else impersonating a particular person says.  Most "official sites" and social networking websites are, in fact, controlled by the person in question, and if there is an impostor site, it would be quickly dealt with.


 * Support


 * Oppose
 * Given the hoopla over BLPs, it just doesn't make sense that we're preparing to wage genocide (articleicide?) on unreferenced BLPs, yet let such usage stand. Jclemens (talk) 01:11, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Likely to hit the "can of worms" level too easily. Collect (talk) 11:42, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Discussion


 * 2) SELFPUB sources aren't acceptable sources at all for BLP material. Any asserted facts need to be confirmed through reliable sources. Note that this would effectively eliminate or severely constrain SELFPUB.


 * Support


 * Oppose
 * Too draconian for me. Jclemens (talk) 01:11, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Often the best basic data (birth date, early life, etc) comes from the individual on their own site, via press releases, or submission to niche publications. This stuff is rarely published in its entirety (guest bios for some people at SF&F cons can be pages long, needing edits.)  This kind of SELFPUB stuff is useful for ground work. --RavanAsteris (talk) 03:55, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Draconian says it all. I heartily oppose this.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 09:54, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * "Draconian" -- seems I know that word <g> Collect (talk) 11:42, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I can't agree with this. Hobit (talk) 14:19, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Discussion


 * 3) SELFPUB sources are not RS and as such may not be used for contentious material. SELFPUB-supported assertions are thus limited to innocuous and non-controversial facts.


 * Support
 * Most balanced approach in line with current practice, BLP concerns, and a pragmatic approach. Jclemens (talk) 01:11, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * You figure if they put it out, it probably isn't controversial. Sometimes their stuff is a little self-aggrandizing, but that's what editry is for. --RavanAsteris (talk) 03:55, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Reasonable - where I would also include non-contentious as date of birth, hometown, parents, general occupation and works, and all degrees short of Doctor (for which any alumni listing, though "primary" to some, should be allowed). Collect (talk) 11:42, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Agree. Sources like an academic/work homepage might even allow for certain kinds of contentious material...Hobit (talk) 14:19, 29 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Oppose


 * Discussion
 * I could only support this if it were reworded to say "SELFPUB sources are not RS for contentious material" The "reliability" of a source is contextual and it's wrong to declare a source reliable or unreliable overall.  I think this is what everyone else is saying as well judging by the voting pattern, but it's important to be clear about this. Gigs (talk) 21:17, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't have a problem with that. Jclemens (talk) 18:41, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

General discussion
I don't fully support any of the above. In the case of that porn star above that kinda started the discussion, an RS identified her MySpace page as really hers. You can't go by twitter/John_Smith and attribute it to John Smith, but there are ways to determine if self published sources are actually published by a person, in which case they will be reliable for some statements, and unreliable for others. If the BLPers have to go and rewrite a plethora of basic policy and guideline pages to finally get the OK to delete pages without searching anyone searching for sources on the subject, then they are bound to fail. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 01:28, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * How can you really know that she controls the page? Do we expect editors of varying investigative skill levels to go out and decide? Are we expecting BLPN to opine on controversial such usages of SELFPUB sources? Sure, things can vary on a case-by-case basis, but what you've said above provides little guidance. If you see a fourth option, by all means write it up. Jclemens (talk) 01:46, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * If a scientist has a personal web page at a university I am perfectly happy to accept that whatever opinions/facts are expressed there are attributable to that scientist, but an "official" site for a porn star is a very different thing. A blanket inclusion/exclusion will not work, so we have to use editorial discretion to figure out what is really self-published and what is not. Kevin (talk) 01:54, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Self-publication is not a binary thing. We have: ...etc. Different ones of these may be suitable for sourcing different kinds of information: for instance, a claim that someone has a certain job title would likely be more believable in something controlled by the employer than in something not. Let's try to use our intelligence when editing rather than tieing our hands with hard-and-fast rules. —David Eppstein (talk) 02:35, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * information on web sites controlled only by the subject
 * information on web sites controlled by the subject but served by the subject's employer
 * information on web sites controlled by the subject's employer
 * information in reliable print publications written by the subject
 * information in reliable print publications written by the subject's employer
 * I am confused, shouldn't this be on the BLP page? Not the RFC? Ikip 03:10, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * This is useful for determining what we will consider a reliable source for the purposes of any mass-prodding/deletion that may come out of this RFC. Kevin (talk) 04:38, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

OK, what constitutes a "Reliable publication"? How about a print publication also put out as a PDF on a website? The reason I ask is that I have biographical material for various SF&F authors and artists that I've accumulated over the years in SF&F convention program books. I'm not the only one - there are hundreds of these. Usually the data is submitted by the person or their agent. Also, what is the difference between a biographical subject telling an interviewer "I was born in 1961" and publishing "Born in 1961" on their personal website? --RavanAsteris (talk) 03:55, 29 January 2010 (UTC)


 * A lot of that is probably reliable, but it needs to be looked at on a case by case basis. WP:RSN can help with individual questions. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 04:05, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

In the case of porn performers, my assumption is that any genuine "official" site is controlled by the person with the rights to the images or videos. This may or may not be the performer themselves. In the case of celebrities (including porn performers) my assumption is that all "official" sites and social networking profiles (MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, etc) should be viewed with suspicion. I've seen more than a few cases of IPs substituting one "official" site for another in minor celebrity BLPs. These sites and profiles are money-making ventures and should be looked at with a critical eye. Just my opinion. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 14:34, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Case Study
In the autumn when Peter Brewis had helped me on a conferencing system with a query related to another article I was writing, I noticed that there wasn't an article about Peter on Wikipedia. I and a couple of other Wikipedians on cix agreed that this needed fixing and as the most active of the three I did some hunting around for sources. Unfortunately, he isn't mentioned in Oxford Music Online and the only reference I found to him in a newspaper article was a passing one here. I have therefore ended up using Peter's website as the source on which I based the article. There is some jokey material on the website (using a picture froma gothic movie to illustrate the Royal College of Music etc) but I have no reason to doubt the factual claims on Peter's site. Music of his claimed work is mentioned on IMDB, several Wikipedia articles already mentioned him by name etc. Earlier this week I found a page on the site of a musical theatre company that provides supporting evidence for one of the two Fringe First Awards he claims on his site.
 * I assert that, while this isn't the highest quality article I have created, it is still a truthful and useful article about someone whose musical contributions to a number of television shows and revues makes him notable. A hard line against self-published material would lose much of its contents.--Peter cohen (talk) 14:19, 29 January 2010 (UTC)


 * I don't know anything about Peter Brewis but I wanted to offer a couple of opinions.
 * Primary sources are not always a bad thing though they certainly should not be the central basis for an article. If an article is asserting things about a topic's opinions then using a primary source is sometimes reasonable provided the publication is somewhat formal (a blurb on a blog page is generally not a good source, but a serious essay is is more reasonable, preferably published in a neutral media source but the topic's website is sometimes ok depending).
 * If it is really that hard to find decent secondary sources on a topic then the notability should be questioned. Notability should not be a personal opinion. In other words if the argument for notability is "I know that this topic is important but nobody else seems to recognize that" then this is, by definition, original research.
 * --Mcorazao (talk) 15:59, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * WP:GHITS explicitly rejects the ease of finding sources as an argument. In this case I've been able to find secondary conformation to his claims to have been involved in an Olivier-nominated production, and of one of the two productions he was involved in that won Fringe First Awards did so. This Google Books search is a big plus in favour of his claim to have won the Cobbett Prize while a student at the Royal College of Music, but as the text isn't available, I can't confirm it. That's enough to establish notability never mind his work on so many British comedy shows.
 * Peter Cohen, if Peter Brewis had been involved in some material that a reasonable man might find negative (say, allegations that he had fathered a child out of wedlock) would a website that claimed to be his own be sufficient for that detail (assume for the sake of argument that it would be relevant)? What if there was some clearly inflammatory allegations (e.g., he was a convicted child molester)--would that be appropriate to source to an allegedly self-published website? Jclemens (talk) 16:57, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * That's a different matter. It's the controversial stuff that needs special attention.--Peter cohen (talk) 22:47, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Second related RfC
To address an issue on which people still disagree, I'm considering starting a second, related, RfC on the question of what to do about unsourced content in BLP articles. Obviously, the ideal is to source all content, everywhere, with good reliable sources. But in the meanwhile, what can and should an editor do when they find content in a BLP that, though unsourced, appears to be verifiable and uncontentious? There's an AN/I on that relating to mass edits to stubbify articles, which has some of the same issues as mass deletions of articles. I don't want to expand the scope of this already-long RfC, but I do think we need to address this in a hurry because whichever way the AN/I case goes it is likely to reach ArbCom, and ArbCom will be much happier if there is a community resolution in the works. So again, okay to start a new RfC? Thanks, - Wikidemon (talk) 22:16, 2 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Arbcom? Did you not see how the last one went, and removing content is on a whole different scale from wholesale deletions. Kevin (talk) 22:26, 2 February 2010 (UTC)
 * It's a potential subject for an RfC because there's a lot of difference of opinions about it - the edit warring and protection of the BLP page, one trip to AN/I and perhaps more, etc. I mentioned the AN/I and arbcom in the interest of full disclosure.  The two most likely outcomes of the AN/I both have a pretty good chance of ending up before ArbCom.  - Wikidemon (talk) 22:33, 2 February 2010 (UTC)
 * The verifiability policy says "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." So it isn't possible to have unsourced verifiable content, What scenario do you have in mind? - Pointillist (talk) 00:18, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I've gone ahead and created the RfC here:Requests for comment/Biographies of living people/Content. I'm referring to (uncontentious) content for which sources exist but their reliability is questioned or the sources have not been added to the article.  Wikidemon (talk) 00:23, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I understand your concern about established articles, but per WereSpielChequers, Newyorkbrad and Calliopejen1 I think that going forward there should be stricter rules for newly created BLPs. My view is here if you'd like to discuss. - Pointillist (talk) 02:15, 3 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Correct me if I'm wrong, but your case (i.e. significant unsourced content in articles that have some info sourced) falls under the big RFC. At least from the shoot-on-sight viewpoint. It appears to me that the discussion there assumed "substance over form" approach, and anything marked with "unsourced blp" (the infamous fifty thousand) is under fire. But take a closer look, many of the suspects are under-referenced. But what the heck, they must go. The policy does not work anymore, and "removing unsourced content" now means "delete all". Everyone accepts (I hope so) that one unsourced syllable in Obama's bio will not get it speedied, but it is only a matter of expected reaction. Lesser characters will burn for a single misplaced comma. NVO (talk) 09:14, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * That seems rather an exaggerated view, not borne out by experience. ++Lar: t/c 14:52, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Concern is the "Big potential of abuse"
 * Step 1: Contest the reliability of source on a BLP article
 * Step 2: Remove the content asserted by that source because it isn't verifiable anymore
 * Step 3: Return to Step 1 until the article is completely botched or empty enough to go to AFD
 * All this is within what permit policies and guidelines and there is no safe guard against that kind of scorched earth tactics
 * In contrary of PROD or AFD which have related projects informed and thus could put a full stop to abuse. Abuse of WP:V is way more subtle and stealthy. Until someone have a better safeguard against abuse than belief in Good faith, i will not support a strict reading of WP:V even if i wish to but that technically no possible currently. --KrebMarkt 16:12, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Why editors leave Wikipedia: preliminary results
As we decide what we should do with 17,500 contributor's articles:

There are now preliminary results of a study sent to 10,000 editors. "This data could change radically"

Question 5:

Why did you stop contributing to Wikipedia?
 * 1) I haven't stopped contributing. 36.11%
 * 2) I had other commitments (e.g. new job, new hobbies, started a family) 	33.77%
 * 3) Some editors made wikipedia a difficult place to work  25.07%

Number one is of no concern, number two is something we have no control of, so that leaves #3. Ikip 20:45, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
 * What is "difficult" is extremely subjective. Many Birthers have been driven off the project because they cannot get their pet conspiracy theory into most of the articles involving the president of the United States, for example.  Just because 1/4 of the respondents cried in a user survey should not impact the necessity of ridding the project of unsorted BLPs. Tarc (talk) 21:04, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Based on experiences in the past, new user retention is not a priority to certain editors, no matter what evidence is shown, this wasn't addressed to those editors. Ikip  21:32, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Doesn't matter who you were addressing or not, bud, I will still see fit to comment as I please. You're raising this "issue" as if it should be a reason to reconsider mass deletions, and I find that to be ridiculous, honestly. Tarc (talk) 21:44, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
 * No.3 is possibly true for all  editors who  leave, irrespective of topic or category - I only  need to think how often I  still get harrased and have nearly  left. Nevertheless, there should be a simple rule that  could be incorporated in the site php  that  no  new BLPs can be published to  article space witout  a minium of two (for example) sources already  in  a  . This could now be made a rule for BLPs under consideration  for deletion: 2 sources within  the next  xx days or deleted.--Kudpung (talk) 22:07, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I support some sort of rule like Kudpung suggest precisely because I believe the BLPers and others are driving away newbies at an alarming rate. A BLP article by a newbie is probably going to be deleted either way, and their talk page templated in a menacing manner, so we should make it clear to them what's about to happen.  I think that would take a lot of the sting out of it. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 23:39, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree the current article creation process is a newbie biting trainwreck, requiring sources would do much to resolve that. But we need to do more research on the 25.07% to find out where they had problems I think a new question in tranche two would help.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  23:56, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I've seen a lot of suggestions above as to how we might PROD BLP's along, perhaps removing the ability to unPROD it without a reference being in the article or something, going to mandatory deletion after some number of days (8-9?). I think something should be put on user's talk pages when this happens.  "But it's not our concern to make sure a person knows about changes that might happen to an article they created or substantially contributed to."  Well, it is if we want to keep those people around as editors in the long run.  Nothing is more frustrating than having life intervene, causing an absence of a year or longer, then returning only to find no trace of an article that you'd worked on before -- no redirect, nothing, it's just gone, deleted.  We need to come up with some measure that both solves the problem in a succinct timely manner and also supports/coddles these editors, many of whom "have been kept from the truth simply because they knew not where to find it."  "But," someone might respond, "then perhaps they should learn the rules before they attempt to make any further BLP's."  That's true, but we want to make this easy for them, we want to be perceived as helpful, friendly, willing to teach them and support them, so that they continue to return and edit and don't decry Wikipedia as a "closed tome" filled only with an in-clique of editors who apparently jealously guard the secrets of making Wikipedia edits and who are quick on the deletion button. Banaticus (talk) 00:44, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Good people leave for all sorts of reasons. For example, consider this example; it's the final edit of. I think he got tired of a particular user getting away with constantly badgering people, especially in AfD discussions. ++Lar: t/c 02:48, 31 January 2010 (UTC)


 * To anyone who  works regularly  on many aspects of the encyclopedia, it may  well  come across that it is populated by  a band of trigger-happy  deletionists and corrupt  sysops. I  prefer to  think (hope?) that  they are in the minority although  there are certainly  plenty who believe that high Twinkle counts are the best  recipe for passing  the RfA promotion  board,  and some adolescent  admins do mistake their tools for toys.  If making restrictive, software based rules rule for the creation of new BLPs were to  be too scary for newbs, at  least  a big  red warning  after pressing  the "save page" button on  a new creation,  such  as Remember you only  have x days to  provide at  least  x references, otherwise this article will  be deleted  will probably  take the sting  out as Peregrine Fisher suggests. IHMO, it's something that  could be dione across the board anyway - most  of the work  the janitors do  here is cleaning  up  after lazy  editors who don't/won't read at  least  the basic rules before contributing.  I'm  sure that  most  contriibutors never intend to  become regular Wikipedians; they  probably  just  do  a one-off edit in  reasonably  good faith because something  doesn't look right  or the article they  expected to  find was missing. But  I'm off topic wiuth  this - what  we need to know is what  to  do  with  the 1,000s of unsourced BLPs already  out there. What  the 36.11% I haven't stopped contributing stat  doesn't  show, is how long it  was since their last  edit. 12 months is maybe  enough to  consider someone as gone missing. I  work  a lot on  schools, a domain which  is particularly  prone to  IP-user pupils who think it's cool  to  quickly create  a joke bio about their buddies or their teachers.--Kudpung (talk) 03:18, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Joke bios about their buddies get speedy deleted. The unreferenced BLPs in question here are generally about notable people, or at least marginally notable ones.  If you haven't yet, you should go click on about 10 random BLPs out of the category so you can get an idea of what is actually being talked about here. Gigs (talk) 05:07, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't imagine the uninvolved admin (poor, poor soul) who has to summarize this thing will read this. But, one way to describe this whole deal is, "should we delete 10-30,000 notable articles."  Yikes. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 06:46, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I like the idea of looking forward to creating tools that will make this a non-issue for future articles in a way that is actually helpful to newer editors. However any flagging or warning or instruction that's given might not easily find its mark if you can't find a way to automatically identify a BLP article at the time of creation.  Do new editors use infoboxes?  Which ones?  Do they put in birth dates?  Do they do anything that would consistently identify new articles as BLPs?  I know it's easy enough to identify them after the fact via new page patrolling and such, but it's a lot more friendly to warn a new editor about deep waters before they stick a toe in, don't you think?--otherlleft 07:02, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
 * There's no way to tell. The notice would have to be there for every article's start. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 08:22, 31 January 2010 (UTC)


 * As the issue has been raised here, I'll mention that I've "left", in the sense that I no longer edit articles, though I still comment, as here, because WP has no effective procedure for resolving content disputes & enforcing content policy. I'm not sure why it has been raised here, though. It seems unlikely to me that a particularly large proportion of departures are connected to BLP. But I may be wrong. Peter jackson (talk) 11:58, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Let me give you a practical example of why people leave. One day, many moons ago, I happened to do a Wikipedia search for "shoop" and noticed that there was no reference to its extremely common use as slang for "digital photo-editing." I added the appropriate reference to the shoop disambiguation page and thought it was a minor task accomplished. Oh no. Not on Wikipedia. It seems someone had assigned himself the task of Guardian of the Shoop Disambiguation Page and reverted my edit without explanation. After a few rounds of edit warring, I was tartly informed that I could not add "shoop" without a reference. So I duly went and found a reference to shoop being used as a synonym for "digital photo-editing" (by a credible science journal no less, in reference to the growing problem of photo-editing being used to "cheat" in scientific papers). My addition was removed AGAIN -- this time because someone took exception to me having a citation on a disambiguation page! Having already wasted hours of my time on a minor and unimportant (but entirely factual) edit I hadn't really cared about to begin with, I said "fuck it" and left it as is. Once in a while, over the months, and out of a morbid and masochistic curiosity, I check back to see what's going on over at the disambiguation page for "shoop" and see the same obsessed Disambiguation Guardian defending the page against all comers. Since no one on EARTH is as obsessed with the word "shoop" as he is, it will likely never be corrected. Multiply my experience by 100 million and you have Wikipedia. And this is why normal people without OCD and/or Asperger's Syndrome flee Wikipedia and never come back. SmashTheState (talk) 18:34, 2 February 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm actually half-tempted to go award a barnstar for having the patience to deal with all that, honestly.  "Shoop" in this context is a low-grade /b/-tard meme, not even worth a mention at internet meme, despite Shoop da Woop being a redirect to there.  urbandictionary is user/fan-driven content, thus not considered a reliable source.  You never showed the slightest bit of evidence that the term has passed into common usage to refer to image manipulation.  So if this is the kid of editor we're losing, then hey, job well-done. Tarc (talk) 19:35, 2 February 2010 (UTC)


 * (golf clap) Congratulations on demonstrating the sort of sneering derision which drives normal people away from Wikipedia. SmashTheState (talk) 00:42, 3 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Users who edit war to insert unsourced or poorly-sourced material into articles as you did, long after it has been pointed out why such edits are wrong and run counter to policy, are not editing in good faith. You were being disruptive, and were dealt with accordingly. Tarc (talk) 04:33, 4 February 2010 (UTC)


 * SmashTheState said, "And this is why normal people without OCD and/or Asperger's Syndrome flee Wikipedia and never come back." I guess the fact that I have both OCD and Asperger's is why I stay. I know that probably sounds like I'm joking, but I am totally serious. I really do have both. I love to edit wikipedia, and I have a huge problem understanding the deletionists who remove well sourced material. I have been blocked and topic banned multiple times, but I still consider my additions to be beneficial to the encyclopedia. Perhaps this is quite common among us well meaning editors who often get accused of violating the rules - we are well meaning, but we view the world very differently than most people. Grundle2600 (talk) 07:50, 3 February 2010 (UTC)


 * A 2-for-1 trouting in order. First, for the section top for suggesting long-term editors are autistic or that those persons have an inherent need to sit around making a mockery of WP:OWN, but as a "oh, duh!" trout over a good faith edit. A tuna-size trouting to the reply for pointless trolling and baiting incivility. At least comment on the big picture-- ownership concerns-- and not over the example itself, please. If it were being pushed as its own article repeatedly that might be actions of a disruptive user but even then we'd try to talk to them before acting. ... I will sympathize with the top that some odd articles have odd people following them and that ownership seems to be taken seriously by some at mostly low-traffic articles. It's completely relevant to the BLP issue since its those low edit count users that are most easily shoved away and editors knowing enough about a specific topic or person are never a bad thing for quality.
 * This is solvable! In a case like that, say... 2 days in a row you run up to but not over 3RR and its reverted back each time. It's edit warring, so go report it and it'll solve the ownership issue and officially have it written down. It's some work, I know, but we don't have any other way without an "ownership incident board". ...But that's for experienced editors. New or casual users are very easily bullied away and any incivility enforcement is far too late to likely get them to return. ♪ daTheisen(talk) 11:12, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Please keep in mind that Asperger's is known as high functioning autism - people who have if often have exceptionally high I.Q.s, and are very interested in minute details. I don't consider this "condition" to be an insult - in fact there are some things about it that I like very much. On the other hand, I do hate having OCD, and I am in therapy and on medication for it. Grundle2600 (talk) 14:16, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Lol, I know, but this being why SmashTheState's trouting was procedural as AGF! Any broader topic hitting the high end of "most trolled articles" isn't so great. Ironically though, part of AS is often a fixation to summarize the logical and blow off other views so actually I'd think that would mean some resolution after a WP:OWN mention. OCD? I've had similar problems in the past and to keep it away from here I deliberately choose not to mass edit articles in the mainspace at risk of turning into said "owners". All the more reason to report for edit warring if a victim, as a sincere apology is widely accepted by all, or the user remains stubborn and could well need sanctions of some sort. Still, it doesn't help new users. Any way to get lists of article histories noted to have 4+ edits with "revert" in the edit summary hit with a tag for a quick evaluation? Could at least try to write bitten new users that way. ♪ daTheisen(talk) 05:35, 4 February 2010 (UTC)