Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Unreferenced Biographies of Living Persons/Archive 2

Unreferenced living person contest
User:The-Pope had some really incredible ideas on how to motivate the project to fix these unreferenced living persons. One was a contest. I have been talking to editors doing the Wikipedia_talk:WikiCup and I am creating WikiProject Unreferenced Biographies of Living Persons/Contest. Wikicup is the benchmark for contests, I would love to see as quality of contest here, as the wikicup has. But I really need everyone's help doing this please. See you on the page! Okip (formerly Ikip) 08:19, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
 * first of all, we need a better name "biocup" sounds weird :) Okip (formerly Ikip) 08:29, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Nice idea.--Father Goose (talk) 09:33, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Sounds like fun - for anyone who can plan to take serious time off during the final rounds! WRT name - what about calling it the "Biography Citation Cup" - shortform BCC? At least that makes it clear it's not biology... --Alvestrand (talk) 08:08, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I like "BCC." Maurreen (talk) 01:58, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I take it the idea of this got dropped? Regards, SunCreator (talk) 20:39, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
 * There were 16 people signed up for the contest in March. And there were $20 + $10 of paypal dollars pledged up for prize money!  And then some other proposal at the Talk page.  Could someone update us here about it?  I haven't participated in a contest before, not sure how this would work.  Do you tag the articles you fix up, or keep a scorepage, or what?  Maybe there could be a new contest period ending two weeks before the June 1(?) deadline, say. --doncram (talk) 22:22, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Prioritizing?
I wonder whether it's feasible to get some type of ranking of these articles, in case we run out of time. If there was a way that would give a rough indication of the subject's notability or the amount of work put into the article, such as by by length or number of revisions, that might help save the ones that are *more* worth saving. Maurreen (talk) 20:03, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Is there some sort of deadline or some cut off then? If so when. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 20:20, 9 April 2010 (UTC)


 * A proposal in the RFC included a goal of taking care of all of these (or at least the ones that were known at the time) within a year, and a review after three months. Maurreen (talk) 08:11, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

WP:WPBLP
I noticed there is an existing WikiProject dealing with BLPs WP:WPBLP. I wonder if these two group want a closer integration or even merging. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 14:34, 10 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I think not. This effort is more focused in purpose and possibly time. Maurreen (talk) 15:31, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

IMDB-sourced ones
I saw it mentioned elsewhere that a drive added IMDB-only sourced BLPs to the BLP unsourced category a while back. I have been coming across some of these and removing from the BLP unsourced category, because they have a source, whether people like IMDB or not. I wonder if there should be a specific treatment, perhaps an IMDB-specific tag and/or category to be added to these. I think an AWB-based sweep through the BLP unsourced category would allow us to eliminate hundreds, perhaps thousands, of miscategorized articles. It could be done either combatively (simply removing the BLP unsourced tag with an argumentative edit summary). Or perhaps it could be done with more sympathy for IMDB detractors. I'm indifferent, myself. :) But these should probably all be addressed as a group, consistently. --doncram (talk) 15:16, 10 April 2010 (UTC)


 * IMDB is in somewhat of a gray area. I thought that I had earlier found a page that clarified that it was reliable for credits, but I can't find it now. Maurreen (talk) 15:29, 10 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I put some links to previous discussions at User:LiberalFascist/IMDb —Joshua Scott (LiberalFascist) 17:28, 10 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks, I browsed through several of those discussions just now, including the 17 November 2008 one: Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_24. Is it worth making an IMDB-specific template tag, to give a summary statement about what the consensus is, and call for improvement to an article?  Like, to say "This article relies wholly/partially/somewhat on IMDB as a source.  In previous discussions IMDB is held to be generally reliable for screen credits, MPAA ratings of films, and ____, but not for other matters.  Please improve this article to remove undue reliance upon IMDB."  (with "wholly / partially / somewhat" selected by an option.  I would be willing to replace "BLP unsourced" by such an IMDB-specific tag, rather than just deleting the "BLP unsourced", if that would be preferred. --doncram (talk) 19:49, 10 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks both. Sounds good to me. Maurreen (talk) 20:13, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Beware making assertions like that about IMDB consensus. Citing_IMDb said basically the same thing and was not promoted due to lack of consensus.  Things may have evolved since then and I wouldn't disagree with that assessment of consensus, but a few people might.... strongly. Gigs (talk) 18:13, 12 April 2010 (UTC)


 * If the tag needs to be tweaked, maybe change "... IMDB is held to be generally reliable ..." to "... IMDB is generally/usually/often held to be reliable ..."?
 * Just FYI, a few weeks ago, I started a discussion to try to clarify and establish the status (any status) about IMDB. It's here archived here (as of 27 April). Maurreen (talk) 18:38, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Goal statement
Previous/current: Remove the backlog of tagged and unreferenced BLPs at Category:Unreferenced BLPs.

People have suggested mass deletion of these pages, using an expedited process to get rid of the massive backlog. This Wikiproject is intended to make these measures unneccessary, by properly referencing the articles.

Perhaps: Ensure there are no unreferenced BLPs, and none incorrectly identified as being that, by multiple means:
 * adding proper references
 * proposing deletions
 * put burden on new BLP creators to provide references, or see their articles promptly deleted
 * encourage editors and WikiProjects to take ownership over articles in their topic areas, viewed broadly
 * clean out all old miscategorizations
 * reduce new miscategorizations

Is that too long? Does it miss too much? --doncram (talk) 16:27, 10 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm open to addition. But I think the emphasis needs to be kept with the original goal, which has due dates. Also, there is a rough divide between people more interested in deleting and people more interested in fixing. This project is more about fixing, when appropriate, than deleting. Maurreen (talk) 16:33, 10 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I agree. What are the goals and due dates?  One goal was to reduce the number of known BLP unreferenced articles to 30,000 by June 1, right?  Or was it just to reduce the 52,000 ones identified back in January, down to 30,000, which is different. --doncram (talk) 22:12, 10 April 2010 (UTC)


 * From the most relevant part of the RFC -- "Currently, there are 42,621 articles in the Category:All unreferenced BLPs. The community commits to reducing this number to 30,000 by June 1, 2010 (3 month); 20,000 by September 1 (6 months); 10,000 by December 1 (9 months); and no unsourced BLP's tagged as unsourced BLPs for more than one month by March 1, 2011 (1 year.) (NOTE: these goals recognize that roughly 1000 unidentified OLD BLP articles may be identified or retagged monthly. If this number increases, then the targets may need to be adjusted keeping in mind the 1 year goal. While 1,000 may be less than the average over the past six months, we will be addressing NEW BLP's with the BLP-PROD above.) EDIT: I made two minor edits (in italics) per WSC's observation that BLP articles may be tagged as 'unsourced' right now but not tagged as unsourced BLPs." Maurreen (talk) 22:23, 10 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks. How's this:

Eliminate the backlog of tagged and unreferenced BLPs at Category:Unreferenced BLPs. Specifically meet RFC goals to reduce from 54,000 in January, 2010, to 30,000 by June 1, to 20,000 by September 1, to 10,000 by December 1, and to have no unsourced BLP's tagged as unsourced BLPs for more than one month by March 1, 2011.

This Wikiproject is intended to address the problem primarily by properly referencing the articles. Other tactics include:
 * putting burden on new BLP creators to provide references, or see their articles promptly deleted
 * cleaning out miscategorizations into this category and reducing new miscategorizations
 * encouraging editors and WikiProjects to take ownership over articles in their topic areas, viewed broadly
 * --doncram (talk) 15:43, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

That's good. Thanks. Maurreen (talk) 16:11, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I revised slightly further to give January 4, 2010 precise number and to encourage "responsibility" rather than "ownership", and put into "Mission" section of main page of wikiproject.  Improvements welcome. Now it seems the next section, "Methods" could bear revising, too. --doncram (talk) 19:11, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

blame Canada
Hey, about one percent (373 / 38,000) of the BLP unsourced problem is articles tagged by WikiProject Canada. I don't want to unduly Blame Canada, but I'm trying to call attention to it and ask the Wikiproject for help, at Wikipedia talk:Canadian Wikipedians' notice board. I wonder if others' comments there might be successful in generating some actual discussion and movement? Note there was some willingness to help expressed at Wikipedia talk:Canadian Wikipedians' notice board further above on their Talk page, but lack of knowledge of how to help. The effect of the first effort, if i follow through, is there may be first an increase in the number (by my adding Wikiproject Canada tag to some thousands of politician articles, some of which have BLP unsourced already). You can't force any group of editors to do anything, but what would seem to be helpful? --doncram (talk) 19:23, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
 * We might want to ping all the wikiprojects again before the "review deadline" Gigs (talk) 13:39, 13 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes! I'm not aware of how the wikiprojects have been pinged before, but how about a message out to all, now or on May 1, and then two weeks later (to be added to same discussion section).  Say like this (draft):


 * Unreferenced BLPs notice: It's xx days until a community-wide deadline (link here), June 1, to bring the number of unreferenced Biographies of Living Persons (BLP) articles down to 30,000.  Great progress has been made, we're at 37,8xx, down from 52,xxx in January, and we need to reduce by xx% to reach our June 1 goal.  This wikiproject can help!  This wikiproject currently has 355 currently unreferenced BLP articles, the first 5 of which are:
 * Adriane Carr
 * Al Bowers
 * Alan Ford (Canadian football)
 * Alan de Jardin
 * Allan Fotheringham
 * Your share of the current goal would be provide references in xxx articles. More info (link here) and (link here) and (link here)
 * Please help! Thanks.  --On behalf of WikiProject Unreferenced BLPs, --(signature)
 * Unreferenced BLPs update: It's now xx days until...
 * How about a pair of messages, something like that? --doncram (talk) 17:47, 14 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I think we can do better than 30,000. How much consensus did that 30,000 number have?  Some people are going to be upset if we are only at 30,000 and demand more prompt measures, I can see that coming now. Gigs (talk) 17:53, 14 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I disagree. The consensus was to reduce BLPs already tagged as unreferenced at 3/1/2010 to 30,000 by 6/1/2010. We know that several articles were added to this total by changing unreferenced tags to unreferenced BLPs, so we already have more to do than expected (although not by much). Jogurney (talk) 18:02, 14 April 2010 (UTC)
 * [ec]I seem to remember that no one disagreed with 10,000 every 4 3 months with the first milestone beeing at 30,000 by June 1. We're only getting about 100 a day so it's going to be close as it is. J04n(talk page) 18:04, 14 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I think that if 10,000 every three months turns out to be overly ambitious but the direction is clear; Then it would be unwise to change the system especially if the focus has shifted to making sticky prods work and other projects. Remember one thing we've learned from the deletion spree and its aftermath is that if our priority is improving BLP compliance, then old BLPs tagged as unreferenced are a long way from being the most problematic BLP area on the pedia. There are other things we can do that resolve far more BLP issues per hour than addressing this particular backlog.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  14:08, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
 * [ec]I seem to remember that no one disagreed with 10,000 every 4 3 months with the first milestone beeing at 30,000 by June 1. We're only getting about 100 a day so it's going to be close as it is. J04n(talk page) 18:04, 14 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I think that if 10,000 every three months turns out to be overly ambitious but the direction is clear; Then it would be unwise to change the system especially if the focus has shifted to making sticky prods work and other projects. Remember one thing we've learned from the deletion spree and its aftermath is that if our priority is improving BLP compliance, then old BLPs tagged as unreferenced are a long way from being the most problematic BLP area on the pedia. There are other things we can do that resolve far more BLP issues per hour than addressing this particular backlog.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  14:08, 16 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Whether it fundamentally is most important to clear the older ones in the backlog or not, it is a measurable, prominent, symbolically important total number. So clearing old ones is just as important, has just as much effect upon the total number.  The June 1 number will be widely cited, whatever it is, as evidence that Wikipedia is failing or is succeeding in addressing its problem with BLPs.  If the 30,000 target is not met, we can complain all we want that it was unfair, that other articles got tagged and added to the category.  But there are 6 weeks left.  Why not plan to meet and exceed the target by a good margin?
 * Any comment on the draft message to wikiprojects? In the draft, note that the approach is customized to each wikiproject and would require some effort and open up continuing contact perhaps.  Perhaps that is good, but it may be timeconsuming in an administrative way.  I would think it worthwhile if a few dozen or hundreds of editors might end up getting more involved in addressing BLP issues in their topic areas, but i don't know if others here agree.  It is dicey in how to successfully ask other editors to take on stuff;  we are all volunteers.  I don't want to take on administrative burden that is not likely to be helpful either, would really like to hear other views.
 * If it is okay/good to proceed that way, how now organize the work of contacting the wikiprojects? Should a worklist of wikiproject contacts be set up and used, at, say, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Unreferenced Biographies of Living Persons/BlameWikiprojects?  I would be willing to do some of the contacting / liaison-type work, but only if others are, too. --doncram (talk) 15:47, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Well I've put quite a lot of time recently into Category:uncategorised and Database reports/Uncategorized and unreferenced biographies of living people, but there are still backlogs on both. There's not much chance of projects picking up on unreferenced BLPs if they are uncategorised.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  21:35, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Mistagged BLP cleanup status report
The mistagged cleanup subproject was solicited for a status report:


 * 16750 initial list of unsourced tagged BLPs with possible sources
 * 2139 purged from external efforts during last update
 * 10865 remain to be checked

Gigs (talk) 17:51, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

what's up
I posted elsewhere about whether there exists a project page about working on the backlog of unsourced BLPs, and am happy to have been directed to here. I thot that issues for something like this Wikiproject would include:
 * Estimates of actual status (currently 38,000 identified specifically, estimate where there are more?)
 * Estimates of additions and of resolutions by deletion or improvement or tag removal
 * Systematic removal/revision of BLP unsourced tag, where sources are present as ELs or otherwise
 * Dealing with those tagging inappropriately, encouraging those properly tagging
 * Coordinating with wikiprojects to tag, take ownership over BLPs in their topic areas
 * How dates are being used (for when article was created, or when tagged)
 * Three month review coming up
 * Who is actually working on reducing the backlog, and tactics for doing so

Maybe people could post to share about what they are working on?

Me, i have gotten some other historic sites people to address all stub architect articles (there were just 20 in BLP unsourced), and i've kept browsing and addressing random BLP articles. It seems to me that miscategorization of articles which have sources is one big problem worth focusing upon. Often i am just removing the BLP unsourced tag, sometimes replacing it by BLP refimprove. --doncram (talk) 19:49, 9 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I believe we are "on track" for the three-month review. There are about 36,000 unreferenced BLPs remaining which were tagged before 3/1/2010. We wanted to get that down to 30,000 by 6/1/2010, which isn't likely, but I would expect we can trim it to 33,000 or so. Stickyprod is being used now, so I'm hopeful that we won't see a dramatic increase in the backlog from newly tagged unreferenced BLPs (they will be referenced or deleted). I also agree that several editors are mistagging BLPs are unreferenced even when there are several ELs that support the article's content. Jogurney (talk) 19:58, 9 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm perhaps one for those mistaggers as I don't count a link until it's filed in the reference section as most are not reliable sources. Would you for example count any of the four ELs on this bio as references? Regards, SunCreator (talk) 20:12, 9 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I know it's not always easy to determine whether a source meets WP:RS, so I would use BLPrefimprove if there are some sources as ELs. Jogurney (talk) 20:26, 9 April 2010 (UTC)


 * is the template I use. Okay, just noticed it's the same as . Regards, SunCreator (talk) 20:46, 9 April 2010 (UTC)


 * About meeting 30,000 goal by 6/1/2010, that's a long time from now. Why not sort out a process here and get a lot more editors involved helping, and plan to meet the goal?  And, is it priority to work on older ones or newer ones?  I wonder, also, about the estimate of 36,000 articles tagged before 3/1/2010.  Is that a fixed set, or are more being added still, with the date being used to convey when the article was created, rather than when tagged.  There were new items popping into emptied-out months' categories before.  Who says what the date is supposed to mean.  Shouldn't that be clarified somewhere/everywhere. --doncram (talk) 20:42, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Apparently, there were several unreferenced BLPs that were simply missing the "living people" category which prevented bots from tagging them with unreferencedBLP. I think all of those have been moved to unreferencedBLP now, but it expanded the backlog because the date of the unreferenced tags carried over when they were moved to unreferencedBLP tags.
 * I think we should plan on meeting the goal of 30,000 old unreferenced BLPs remaining by 6/1, and the biggest help in my view has been DashBot's automated notices to a number of Wikiprojects. I work on WP:FOOTY articles, and we're finally under 2,400 tagged unreferenced BLPs now (it was closer to 8,000 a few months ago). That said, there are plenty of untagged unreferenced BLPs which get added to the backlog occasionally.  I'm not sure of a good way of finding and tagging them other than manually searching for them. Jogurney (talk) 20:52, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I think it's possible that a bot could be done to locate more unreferenced BLP. I hesitate to suggest this option because it could cause the number of unreferenced BLP to skyrocket. We can't have a bot find references, so increasing the figure is likely to increase editor workload. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 20:56, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I prefer to know the magnitude of the problem. I run into untagged unreferenced BLPs pretty often, so there has to be a lot of them. I think the real problem is designing a bot that is reliable enough to do the job - several have been created over the past months, but it's really difficult to get them right. Jogurney (talk) 21:01, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Okay, then way forward it to have bot to create a lists i.e WikiProject Unreferenced Biographies of Living Persons/Likely unreferenced BLPs of likely Unreferenced BLP, rather then have the bot actually tag any articles. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 21:13, 9 April 2010 (UTC)


 * All of the above reports are updated on a regular basis and are of great help in finding BLPs, sourced or unsourced. Rettetast (talk) 08:34, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks Rettetast, missed your post here somehow before. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 13:46, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
 * All of the above reports are updated on a regular basis and are of great help in finding BLPs, sourced or unsourced. Rettetast (talk) 08:34, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks Rettetast, missed your post here somehow before. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 13:46, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
 * All of the above reports are updated on a regular basis and are of great help in finding BLPs, sourced or unsourced. Rettetast (talk) 08:34, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks Rettetast, missed your post here somehow before. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 13:46, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks Rettetast, missed your post here somehow before. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 13:46, 20 April 2010 (UTC)


 * (ec)Some will work on the oldest, some on the newest, some work across based on WikiProject subject lists. Which one you work on matters little really as long as they are being worked on. The date in the tagging is the date(month) it gets tagged. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 20:53, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

I and others had proposed during the RFC that we run a watchlist notice to 'recruit' more users to source and improve the sourcing of BLPs. We'd need a central page to link, explaining the issue and providing an organization of articles by topics so that it appeals more to editors (some have been made for wikprojects). Cenarium (talk) 21:25, 9 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I don't know if the contest has been mentioned lately.
 * And I think User:The-Pope had some good ideas earlier, listed somewhere in the RFC. Maurreen (talk) 07:44, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Couple more ideas --
 * 1) Link to this page in relevant edit summaries.
 * 2) Periodic updates on progress. Given here, they could help keep momentum. Posted elsewhere, they might recruit more help. Maurreen (talk) 08:19, 10 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I think that the initial start with three weeks of backlog to clear means we need to see this running for a few weeks before we can start judging it. I would hope that by mid May we should be able to get an idea as to whether newpage patrol is successfully identifying and tagging all new unreferenced BLPs. Though I suspect we will need to remove some Autoreviewer flags, also have we communicated this change to newpage patrollers? Perhaps we should use a bot to send a message explaining the new process to anyone who marks articles as patrolled.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  08:28, 10 April 2010 (UTC)


 * User:WereSpielChequers, did you mean to post your note to Wikipedia talk:Proposed deletion of biographies of living people? This page is about providing refs for "old" BLPs, not for deleting new ones. Maurreen (talk) 08:33, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
 * It did seem like a non sequitor, but this wikiproject can address the deletion of new ones. From the mainpage here, I know the stated goal for this wikiproject was to head off the BLP deletion drive back in January.  But the name of the WikiProject, as "WikiProject Unreferenced Biographies of Living Persons", is broad enough to cover addressing the new ones.  No need for a separate Wikiproject for that, right?  Can we update the goal statements?  Good ideas expressed above, too. --doncram (talk) 15:10, 10 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Don, I'm open. What do you have in mind for a new goal statement? Maurreen (talk) 15:33, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Technical Want list
Here's some stuff that would really be nice:

Insert reference section
A button in the edit toolbar that inserts ==References==

At the current cursor location.
 * Hi, in Template:Dated prod blp there is a footers section that add to the bottom of the article, I am planning to modify so that it add above the iw and cat links. I need to make a regular expression that matches the double square bracketed stuff at the end. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 13:19, 16 April 2010 (UTC)


 * This text in a template adds references on to the end: [ +references]
 * Graeme Bartlett (talk) 13:26, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Is it possible to add that to the edit bar? I'm not sure how to go about writing the javascript necessary. Gigs (talk) 14:17, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I've already got a quick link to Reflist & references, but not the heading, in the "Wiki markup" text shortcuts below the editbox. Not sure if it's default or I've done something to turn it on.The-Pope (talk) 14:52, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Ah, interesting, thanks. Gigs (talk) 18:32, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I dont understand the full context here, but the correct thing to put into articles is

==References==


 * I was told that multiple times, long ago. The "reflist" template is where many improvements are implemented and using that handles spacing and other issues, while simple "references/" apparently does not. --doncram (talk) 15:33, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I prefer the way the raw tag looks. Neither one is correct or incorrect. Gigs (talk) 18:31, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Firefox add on - "copy link as a reference"
A firefox add-on that allows you to right click on any link and submit it in the background to (with those options turned on), and copy the result to the clipboard, all without navigating from the current page. Alternatively it could implement the same functionality as the diberri site, and fetch the title and such and build the ref itself. It would basically be "copy link as Wikipedia reference".

As an example of the functionality, right clicking on should generate -- it loads the URL and parses off the title, and generates a unique ref name and fills the title field automatically.

Anyone who either knows where to get this kind of functionality or can create it, please let me know. Gigs (talk) 12:39, 16 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I would like this too, and maybe will get around to it! It could also try to pluck a date off the page, and an author, or even ISBN. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 08:50, 17 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I had no idea such a thing could be done. Anyway, yes, as a Firefox-using editor I'd be most interested. BTW, are there currently other such time-saving Firefox add-ons for Wikipedia editing I should know about? Shawn in Montreal (talk) 15:59, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

additions going on
Could we perhaps identify here which editors are adding more to the BLP unreferenced category, perhaps towards influencing them? Also towards better quantifying our rates of addition and rates of removal from the BLP unsourced category. I don't want to be working at cross-purposes, a few weeks or months later, to any editors now possibly adding to the appearance of size of the BLP unsourced problem, when perhaps direct communication and discussion of alternative tags available might head off miscategorizing now. If the adds are all legitimate that is fine, but we'd still like to know how many being added to measure our own rate of subtraction. I don't know who the adders are, or how to find them, but the total has gone up during recent hours. --doncram (talk) 19:11, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
 * You are talking about taggers, not creators of articles? Gigs (talk) 19:21, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes that's who i meant. I am imagining there are relatively few who are adding the most, while there are more subtractors, but subtraction is slower.  Some adders presumably present here.  Could you possibly share what you're working on, what numbers possibly involved? --doncram (talk) 19:27, 12 April 2010 (UTC)


 * One recently prolific tagger's contributions are here. I reverted about a dozen inappropriate BLP unsourced tag applications, and opened conversation here.  Others' help would be appreciated.  I don't have time now to go through all the editor's recent contributions, but maybe there are a few hundred which could be reverted or revised, taking that many out of the BLP unsourced problem. --doncram (talk) 16:05, 19 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm sorry, but I think you're completely off base here with regard to my tagging. The template involved is quite specific, and states that no references or sources are cited.  As WP:EL states. items identified as external links are not those cited as "sources supporting article content." Your approach does not enjoy consensus support; aside from the specific language of the template, I spotchecked the first two dozen or so of the many templated pages listed here : for the valid listings, more than 90% would fail your standard, since they include external links sections, but no actual citations. I've used the same standards in tagging and reviewing hundreds/thousands of BLP for more than a yeat, and saw absolutely no objections to this approach until yours today, presumably because I assessed the in=practice consensus before tagging. I'm sure my tagging isn't perfect, but I think my error rate has been pretty low.
 * I'd also note that several of your "corrections" to my tagging are dead wrong: here, here, here, and here, you removed the refimprove tag from BLPs with substantial unsourced/unreferenced content. That's a pretty high error rate in a batch of no more than a dozen "corrections."
 * Your approach just papers over the problem of BLPs lacking proper referencing. We could "solve" the unreferenced BLP problem, by your standard, simply by including Google search links to the name subject's name in the external links section of every BLP, but that would do nothing to improve Wikipedia. There's a big difference between including a list of links which might be usable as references and actually referencing an article. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 20:30, 19 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I don't think inline citations are always necessary to move tags from BLPunreferenced to BLPsources, because even WP:CITE indicates that general citations (as opposed to inline citations) are sufficient in many cases. Plenty of articles with one paragraph or less of content are supported entirely by general reference(s), and such articles should not be considered entirely unreferenced simply because the general reference(s) is located in an "external links" section. Jogurney (talk) 20:55, 19 April 2010 (UTC)


 * To Hullaballoo Wolfowitz, I do appreciate your finding your way here and commenting. I appreciate that you are working to see to real improvements of the articles.  Where i am coming from is, indeed, a focus on reducing the number of articles in the BLP unsourced category, which is different focus than actually improving the articles.  It is important too, if only for sake of wikipedia's reputation, that the number of completely unsourced BLP articles be brought down under 30,000 by June 1.  If there are articles having sources, including external links, which can fairly be removed from the BLP unsourced category, that is what I and some others do want to do, remove them by relabelling them.  It does indeed shift the problem of those articles to the "BLP refimprove" area, and that is a serious problem area too, but it just is not my focus.


 * Here, however, it is my understanding that relevant external links are general sources and do count, so BLP unsourced does not apply to articles having them. The ones in question all or nearly all have a specific IMDB page on the person as an external link, and since the articles are covering films that an actress it is in i am pretty sure that IMDB was the actual source used in creating the article.  The source is there, and BLP unsourced tag is wrong.  Perhaps BLP refimprove is needed, and what is the tag that calls for adding inline citations?  Perhaps those 2 tags should be added.  It's another matter if you want to question reliability of IMDB, which could use a different tag, but that is not BLP unsourced either.  Thanks Jogurney for commenting, too, and hopefully others will comment also. --doncram (talk) 03:37, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

The first 2 dozen articles in what links to Template:BLP unsourced, currently, are: I am confident enough about 5 out of first 10 to remove them from the BLP unsourced category, will apply BLP refimprove in each case instead. If this were a representative sample, then it would seem the BLP unsourced problem could be immediately halved. Would others treat these differently? What about the myspace / self-sourced / seemingly promotional musician ones. Should all be PRODed for deletion? --doncram (talk) 14:28, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) Arne Kaijser only source is own webpage
 * 2) Photek multiple EL sources including IMDB, one footnote.  Doncram removing BLP unsourced now.
 * 3) Trevor Jones (composer), film score composer, with IMDB EL.  Doncram removing BLP unsourced now.
 * 4) Godfrey Reggio, a filmographer, multiple ELs including IMDB.  Doncram removing BLP unsourced now.
 * 5) Jan Kjærstad, author with multiple prizes, appears notable, no sources.
 * 6) Pat Mastelotto, a drummer, notability not clear, myspace sources + Mastica(?) + an interview.
 * 7) Dave Mattacks, a drummer, only source is personal website.
 * 8) John Wozniak, guitarist and singer, only source is personal myspace.
 * 9) Michael Graves, architect, ELs include own firm's page and Archinform profile.  Doncram removing BLP unsourced.
 * 10) Hanni Wenzel, ski racer has won races.  Multiple footnotes.  Doncram removing BLP unsourced.
 * 11) Kathryn H. Kidd, author, only source is wikipedia-like Internet Speculative Fiction Database
 * 12) Jamshied Sharifi, musician, only source is an AllMusic bio.
 * 13) John Linnell
 * 14) Timothy Freke
 * 15) Claudia Roth
 * 16) Walter Mercado
 * 17) Juan Laporte
 * 18) Edgardo Díaz
 * 19) Amber Rose (singer)
 * 20) Miha Remec
 * 21) Cate Tiernan
 * 22) Andy Müller-Maguhn
 * 23) Steve Caton
 * 24) Richard Morel
 * Personally if they had poor references (For me Myspace/Imdb and WP:SPS are all poor) then I'd look for references myself before prodding. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 14:58, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

one continuing case
I find to my surprise that i am at an impasse with User:Hullaballoo Wolfowitz, an editor with more experience tagging than me certainly, but who is proceeding with tagging that is not compliant with the meaning of BLPunreferenced. Notwithstanding dislike by many of IMDB as a source, and questions on notability on playboy magazine models, it seems obvious that having IMDB and/or other general sources in an article means that it is not unsourced. Noting new tagging by Hullaballoo, i posted again at User talk:Hullaballoo Wolfowitz including asking Hullaballoo to participate again here. Could other editors consider what Hullaballoo posted there and above, and help? I see that Hullaballoo is currently embattled in AFDs on similar articles, so maybe this is not the best time, but it also seems important to reduce the BLPunreferenced category to only unreferenced articles. Suggestions? --doncram (talk) 02:15, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

DYKs
As a measure to encourage sourcing of unsourced BLPs, what would we think of proposing a change to the DYK criteria to allow DYK entries for newly sourced BLPs? Just a random thought I had after I sourced an article that might meet the 1500 character test. --Mkativerata (talk) 21:24, 23 April 2010 (UTC)


 * It's worth a try. Maurreen (talk) 23:22, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Project Tagging

 * Based on the lists generated by User:DASHBot from User:DASHBot/Wikiprojects andUser:DASHBot/Wikiprojects/Templates (see here for the outputs) I estimate that about half of the outstanding uBLPs are not in any WikiProject, (some don't even have a talk page) or just in the WP:Biography project. Of those in the WP:Bio project, over half don't have a workgroup, so yes, my idea from the start of "get the wikiprojects involved" may be about to hit a wall.The-Pope (talk) 01:00, 17 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Sometimes you need to understand a problem in order to resolve it. If one major barrier to getting Wikiprojects involved is that we have thousands of uncategorised or under categorised articles that no project is concerned about, then the solution is to identify and categorise those articles. perhaps we could get Dashbot to list unreferenced BLPs that don't "belong" to any project other than this one.  Ϣere  Spiel  Chequers  02:00, 17 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, I should point out that the "untagged" wall I talked about is still about 18000 articles away! I agree that we try to get a bot to the listing, but after seeing the results of previous bot driven allocation of articles to projects - it needs manual checking and intervention to avoid a lot of misallocation.The-Pope (talk) 05:09, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

The 100 a day figure above is not enough to reach the 30,000 figure by June 1. There has to be a considerable speeding up for that figure to reached in time. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 13:59, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
 * After much further delving, and with the uncategorised backlog now greatly reduced, I'm beginning to think that simply categorising these articles is less of a solution than I once thought. Perhaps what we really need to be doing is project tagging the talkpages of unsourced BLPs so the relevant projects can decide to save or tag for deletion. Is there a project tagging equivalent of hotcat, and if not do we need one?  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  13:21, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes please. We are going to need technical tools to help us with this effort in any way possible.  See also what I posted below if you haven't yet. Gigs (talk) 18:49, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
 * OK I've just gone through part of Category:Unreferenced BLPs from October 2009 and tagged quite a few for various hopefully logical projects. I have a sneaky suspicion that neither Biography nor Football will do much good as they both had lots of articles already tagged. In a few days I'll look back over my deleted contributions and maybe that category and see if there is a discernible effect (As of this moment there are 1,576 articles in Oct 09 as opposed to 1678 for Sept and 638 for November). If it looks like that might make a difference it could be a good basis for a newsletter to the article rescue squadron, it would also help if we could identify the projects that are struggling with unreferenced BLPs as we could give them a plug in such a newsletter - or maybe even a signpost article.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  19:19, 23 April 2010 (UTC)


 * If you track the numbers from the dashbot lists, football is actually doing pretty well at cleaning out their backlog. A partially useful tool is the KingBot plugin for WP:AWB, but I think it works best when you have lists to be allocated to a single project, not a list that you want to allocate to various projects.  I'll see if I can make up a list of uBLPs that are not in any WikiProjects in the next few days.The-Pope (talk) 06:53, 24 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Having gone through the As and Bs of October 2009 I'm reassured if wikiproject football is active in this because I think they had by far the biggest task there. Of the sports, I tagged one each to basketball and Tennis and a couple to American Football, but there were loads of Footballers, many already project tagged. Is there an easy way to identfy which dashbot lists are moving most and least slowly? If so I think there could be the germ of a signpost article, and that might summon support for whichever projects have the most daunting tasks.
 * Re AWB, I'm that rarest of users, a Linux user who doesn't really understand Linux, so I'm reluctant to try and get such Windows based software running on it. I do have a netbook with windows where I could load AWB, but it not great for either keyboard or screen. Also I think there is a big difference between a project tagging routine that is designed to look at all articles in a particular category and assess their quality and importance for a relevant project, and what I've been doing of going through articles without a project and adding appropriate project tags. But it would be nice if we could at least partially automate this, for example if a project like NASCAR is actively dealing with unreferenced BLPs in their area, if we could get a list of all unreferenced BLPs that include the words wrestler or wrestling and are not project tagged for wrestling. I'm pretty sure that User:Kingpin13 could project tag such a list once it had been manually reviewed.
 * In lieu of that, a list of unreferenced BLPs with redlinked talkpages would be useful.  Ϣere  Spiel  Chequers  12:57, 24 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I haven(t been paying much  attention since the PROD template went  live, so I don'gt  know if this has already  been mentioned yet, but  a lot of unsourced BLPs about  band members (mostly  non notable) in the various genres of Music - appear not  have been tagged yet  by their respective projects.--Kudpung (talk) 14:02, 24 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Regarding the kingbotk, that does work better if you have a list of articles to be tagged with one particular project banner, one option would be for users to categorise/somehow sort the unreffed BLPs by project, and then a bot to run through the list and tag, but I'm not sure how much time that would actually save. Alternatively, someone (myself) could write up a program designed specifically for this, I know there are some scripts for speeding up WikiProject tagging. You may also be interested in, not yet properly active, since I've not had much time recently to spend on documenting and adding the finally touches to it. - Kingpin13 (talk) 18:13, 24 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Hi KingPin, thanks for coming by. I'm sort of thinking along the lines of Hotcat blended with Friendly. If you are in a category such as unreferenced BLPs, or at the back of the unpatrolled queue, hit one key and have it suggest a bunch of project tags based on the categories in the article. Unselect them, or hit another key to agree them, and then the talkpage is created/updated. What do you think?  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  18:24, 24 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm not aware of a way to check on the progress against DASHBot's wikiproject lists, other than to say that the Football project lists was at 3,021 on February 21 and it's at 2,007 today (more than 33% reduction). My hope is that we can get it down to 1,000 by June 1, but it's going to be difficult. Jogurney (talk) 20:14, 24 April 2010 (UTC)
 * By searching User:DASHBot's contributions in wikipedia namespace, you can find history lists like this that you can use to track how things are going. Bottom line is though, that DASHBot's lists only about half of the total uBLPs.  The idea of a list of uBLPs with a redlinked talk page is a great idea. Not sure how to do it though!The-Pope (talk) 00:35, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
 * User:MZMcBride has created Database reports/Untagged and unreferenced biographies of living people - a list of 1,885 uBLPs with redlinked talk pages. and I've nibbled it at both ends. Its a bit big for me to do in time for it to percolate to projects by the end of May, so if someone wants to join me, feel free to put section headers in and allocate yourself a chunk in the middle.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  11:43, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
 * That report is really useful. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 11:58, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

Archive?
Do we have an archive? I don't see it. This page was started on 6 February. But the everything before 14 February seems to have disappeared. Maurreen (talk) 06:44, 30 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I've found Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Unreferenced Biographies of Living Persons/Archive 2 and tried to get the archiving sorted out at the top, but I'm not familar with autoarchiving and may have made a pigs ear of it.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  11:28, 30 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Now moved to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Unreferenced Biographies of Living Persons/Archive 1 as that seems to make the bot work.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  11:34, 30 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks. Maurreen (talk) 13:08, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

I changed the frequency of the archive bot, to archive inactive threads at 14 days instead of 21. But I've never done that before, so someone might want to check it. Thanks. Maurreen (talk) 06:43, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

IMDB TFD
Our recently created IMDB templates were nominated for deletion here. Maurreen (talk) 05:38, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Falling short


We have been making steady progress, but we are falling short of par. Our current linear pace needs to increase if we are to make the quota of 30,000 by June 1. Current linear interpolation puts us 3800 above where we should be. We need to work almost exactly double our current speed in order to make the target... Our pace needs to be 200 per day instead of 100. Gigs (talk) 15:09, 23 April 2010 (UTC)


 * While I agree that the pace needs to pick up, I'm not sure why people are tracking the articles tagged in March and April 2010 with the ones that were tagged before then. We have less than 35,000 articles remaining which were within the group we wanted to reduce.  The newer ones should be handled through BLPPROD, and don't need to count towards the 30,000 by June 1 goal. Jogurney (talk) 15:24, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Tagged in March or April doesn't necessarily mean that it's eligible for BLPPROD. Gigs (talk) 15:27, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Agreed. The number of old articles that have been tagged since February 2010 is much more than I expected - I've cleared dozens of them and there are still nearly 2,000 remaining. I don't think anyone expected so many when we were talking about clearing the already tagged articles to 30,000. Jogurney (talk) 21:59, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
 * As one of those who has been finding and tagging old unreferenced BLPs I'm not particularly phased by the number still turning up. Sticky Prods don't apply to articles created before the 18th March, so it won't be until we are at least ten days into May before we know how many April ones are of old articles newly found to be BLPs, though of course that will exclude ones referenced or deleted by then. I think this information would have been of more use during the RFC, I'm sure in retrospect some of the underlying gulf between the two sides was between those who saw the 40,000 as a static backlog that the community had allowed to fester for years, and those who saw it as a temporary holding pen with thousands added and removed each month. I still think that the old BLPs that have yet to be identified and tagged as unreferencedBLPs are more likely to be problematic than the ones that have been found, looked at and tagged - if only because taggers like myself are liable to speedy delete the attack pages etc. So in my view it is a positive thing that we find the old unreferenced BLPs, but at some point I fear we will get calls from the deletionists to prioritise that group above other more important BLP tasks.  Ϣere  Spiel  Chequers  13:20, 24 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Jogurney states twice that the goal is to reduce the backlog of already-tagged-by-some-date articles to 30,000 by June 1. That's not my understanding.  The goal as stated in the mission for this wikiproject (which i revised, see other discussion section above), is "Specifically meet RFC goals to reduce from 52,760 on January 4, 2010, to 30,000 by June 1".  I recall, not very specifically, language about 1000 or however many being added each month, but it is my (perhaps imperfect) understanding that the 30,000 is the goal set taking that into account.  Like if there weren't 1000 being added, the RFC goal would have been 25,000 instead.  If the goal for the RFC is different than i understand, then we should revise the Wikiproject mission statement.  And, in my view, the very oldest and very newest unreferenced BLPs are the most important to address.  The oldest are important for sake of reducing damaging statements about Wikipedia having X number BLPs older than X months.  The newest are important for sake of identifying and working with taggers to ensure accurate categorization, and economizing our efforts.  Avoiding a new BLP unsourced tag is just as important in meeting the absolute goal of 30,000 by June 1. --doncram (talk) 06:27, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
 * The thing about new ones is (at least since March 18) any new ones will be tagged with the BLPPROD tag and either referenced or deleted in 10 days, so worrying about the semantics of what the target is isn't very useful.The-Pope (talk) 06:47, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
 * This isn't just semantics, we are still finding unreferenced BLPs that were created before March the 18th, sometimes long before. As we don't know how many are still out there to find it would be rather odd to set a perverse target for them - that's why the target for reducing articles tagged as unreferenced BLPs was for the backlog at the time of the RFC. I don't know about the others who find and tag old unreferenced BLPs, but I like to think that what I'm doing is useful and that the more of the old unreferenced BLPs that we find and tag the better.  Ϣere  Spiel  Chequers  15:55, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

on track?
Hey, maybe we're back on track! :) I'm zapping IMDB ones fast, have done 406 yesterday and today, helping to bring total under 36,000, to 35,995 just now (tho i see it creeping back up a little). This is using "BLP IMDB-only refimprove" and "BLP IMDB refimprove" tags just developed, thanks to Maurreen for starting/supporting renewed discussion and to Josiah / LiberalFascist for developing.  Projecting it looks like i and others using AWB similiarly (can anyone else help, please? ) will take care of 3,000 more. So that leaves 3,000 to be done by other/better means, which, if proceeding at 100 per day through the month of May, gets it done!  We can do this! --doncram (talk) 04:46, 30 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks, that's great! I love teamwork. :) Maurreen (talk) 05:16, 30 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Seems not on track, going backwards. I dunno if it is SunCreator's effort mentioned further below, but the counts in the pre-May categories has gone up.  The total is about 36,075 now, while i think it was in the 35,700 - 35,800 range before, with only 45 being in May.  I thot/hoped SunCreator's efforts would add only to the May category.  There are large numbers of additions going on which we don't know about, can't account for, and which negate our gains.  Does anyone know what is going on?


 * Also, the IMDB zapping that i have been doing may yield less than 3,000 in total. I was estimating approximately 13% percentage of IMDB-associated ones from several test runs of complete or partial months of data, but did not realize that the early-in-the-alphabet names in a given month have higher IMDB-percentage (the big August 2009 month had only around 5% when completed).  So, downrate what i can do with that.  I am keeping a tally at User:Doncram/IMDBzap.


 * We need for additions to get identified and quelched or postponed, or to come up with some ideas for big amounts of subtractions to make. --doncram (talk) 04:42, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
 * SunCreator's tagging probably accounts for much of the 426 undated ones, a bot will come by soon and add a May 2010 date to them, so they are not part of the pre RFC backlog which is I think still falling slowly. However there are taggers out there who are adding articles into the backlog rather than tagging them as newly identified BLPs.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  09:32, 2 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I think a lot of those are caused by dated unreferenced tags being changed to unreferencedBLP, without a change in date. — Joshua Scott (LiberalFascist) 17:46, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Friendly tagging
In this edit of an article the BLP unreferenced tag was added, incorrectly in my opinion, by use of "Friendly". I don't use Friendly. I wonder if anyone who does could evaluate whether Friendly works properly for tagging, with respect to providing BLP refimprove and/or Nofootnotes at least equally as conveniently as BLP unsourced? Perhaps this and other automated systems should suggest BLP refimprove and Nofootnotes MORE conveniently. We are shooting ourselves in the foot with respect to reaching our goal, if taggers apply BLP unreferenced indiscriminately. I see the current months article count has gone up by several hundred. :( --doncram (talk) 23:57, 25 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Actually, i opened discussion and the tagger explained here: User talk:5 albert square. I think that Friendly must offer "BLP unreferenced" as an option, which is ambiguous.  It suggests you would use the tag when an article lacks references, i.e. lacks in-line references / footnotes.  Could the Friendly tag be changed to make the user choose between "BLP unsourced" and other options?  I don't exactly know how it works, but the possibility that others will be misled by ambiguous "BLP unreferenced" tag is bothersome. --doncram (talk) 00:04, 26 April 2010 (UTC)


 * That user is not aware BLP unreferenced is a redirect to BLP unsourced. Also, what displays at BLP unsourced is itself possibly ambiguous (text only, without links): "This biography of a living person does not cite any references or sources. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living people that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately."  Would it be at all possible to get the BLP unsourced tag changed to ""This biography of a living person does not cite any sources, neither by inline references (preferred) nor other means....".  That would lead to less errors of this type. --doncram (talk) 00:09, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
 * In that specific example would definitely be marking that as whether by a semi-automatic bot or done manually, it has no WP:V and all the sources are in the external link section anyhow. External links do not support the articles content. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 00:20, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
 * While our guidelines may state that (although I can't find a specific prohibition off hand) keep in mind that many articles are created by people who are not familiar with those guidelines, so to mark an article as unsourced when the author was making a good faith effort to provide sources seems rather WP:POINTy. In this specific case, I think it is appropriate to have BLP unsourced, given that the ELs are not backing up anything significant in the article. —Joshua Scott (LiberalFascist) 05:07, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Friendly doesn't mistag, people mistag. It has two BLP related options (amongst the 30-40 total tagging options) - UnreferencedBLP or RefimproveBLP - as well as all of the other main tags, including nofootnotes. The issue is that many people believe that UnreferencedBLP should apply if there are only external links, with the IMDB link being the most common.  Many other people believe that an article with only an IMDB link should be marked as RefimproveBLP, as it is a reference, just not a really good one.  I'm still not sure which is the correct thing to do - so I generally try to find at least one non-IMDB ref. The-Pope (talk) 07:18, 26 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Someone else stated that External links are acceptable for general sources according to some policy/guideline like wp:CITE, but i don't recall which one. Looking at wp:CITE now, it is clear that inline citations are needed "for any material challenged or likely to be challenged, and for all quotations", which implies to me that inline citations are not needed for everything.  It talks about how to add External links.  And that general sources are acceptable, in Citing sources.  Putting those together, it seems to advise that general sources in the form of external links are acceptable sources.  For almost all the IMDB-based articles that i have seen, the IMDB external link supports SOME of the information in the articles.


 * Could the Friendly option be changed from displaying "UnreferencedBLP" to show "UnsourcedBLP" or "BLPunsourced", instead? The name of the template is BLP unsourced, which i presume was for a reason?  UnreferencedBLP is a redirect to that.  How would one go about asking for Friendly to be reprogrammed on this point, if anyone else agrees that unsourced is less ambiguous than unreferenced?


 * I am removing BLP unsourced / unreferenced tags from IMDB articles that i come across, though i have yet to do that systematically (i was planning to fire up AWB, but i don't use it very often). But also i feel obligated to contact the tagger who added an incorrect tag, and you can't do that easily in conjunction with an AWB session.  It seems best to try to head off incorrect tagging than to set up lots of work for URBLPers. --doncram (talk) 20:22, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
 * If your going to remove them based on IMDB being the only source I'm likely to re-add them and mark the IMDB link as . On what basis do you believe IMDB is a reliable source? IMDB accepts user-submitted content that is not reviewed by an editorial staff. On that basis you can create a hoax and use it as a source on wikipedia. Please take a look at the discussion on IMDB again/IMDB as a source and let me know your reasoning for believing IMDB on Bio's is a reliable source.. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 22:07, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Your adding a reliability tag to each one would be fine. I just did about 10 more, too.  I think a more specific IMDB-focused tag putting them all into some useful category would be more helpful, and I would be happy to add some IMDB-specific reliability question tag to these articles as i do them, myself.  Please see  discussion section above.  I offered to help create such a tag, but i am not willing to be the one characterizing previous debate and doing this all on my own.  Let me know if you want to start an IMDB-specific tag.  But, IMDB is a source.  It is just not correct to say an article has no sources, when it obviously has one.  And that inflates the big public relations problem for Wikipedia, that it is said we have 35,000 completely unreferenced BLP articles. --doncram (talk) 19:38, 27 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Also, is there a better term which could be used to call for inline citations, other than "Nofootnotes"? Nofootnotes has never seemed very helpful to me, because it seems it immediately does not apply once one lousy inline citation is added.  Then what?  I would rather have one tag which is robust and applies until all the potentially controversial assertions and quotations have been supported.  If there isn't a good tag for that already, could we create "NeedsInlineReferences" and have that put into Friendly, to replace or supplement "Nofootnotes"?  Maybe this whole brouhaha about unreferenced BLPs could have been avoided, if we had just set up more clear labels for the tags, earlier.... :) --doncram (talk) 20:42, 26 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I have no problem with sometimes using Nofootnotes, even if there are one or two inline citations. Citations missing is for completely uncited articles.  On the other hand, BLP sources already asks to improve the references, so Nofootnotes is redundant in most of those cases.  I would normally use it if there are several external links that back up most or all of the article, but inline citations are insufficient. —Joshua Scott (LiberalFascist) 22:12, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Friendly has "morefootnotes: article has some references, but insufficient in-text citations" as an option for articles that don't qualify for Nofootnotes because they have one or more inline citations but still need more. IMHO saying an article has no footnotes when it does have some is incorrect and almost as confusing to newbies as describing a poorly sourced article as unsourced.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  11:31, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I'm not sure how I missed that template, but that makes much more sense. —Joshua Scott (LiberalFascist) 11:56, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

Educating on incorrect tagging?
I don't know how much incorrect tagging is going on. But maybe an education effort would help, one that would be aimed more broadly than at individual efforts? Maurreen (talk) 15:06, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I've been suggesting the possibility of incorrect tagging going on, but so far the individual instances have led to more specific discussions/efforts. I've really only found one editor recently tagging BLP unsourced when i think BLP refimprove (or new BLP IMDB refimprove or BLP IMDB-only refimprove) is better.  Also i found and reported one instance of one misstagging using Friendly.  Also i found one case where WikiProject Canada project tag should have been on a URBLP article, and I have since been working with the WikiProject to start through its lists of many thousands of past House of Commons members and tag them all with the Wikiproject.  First batch suggests 40% are missing WikiProject Canada tags (had either no wikiproject or just had WikiProject Biography).  I don't see need for any really broad education campaign, unless it is for ourselves and others we might recruit to act as grassroots campaigners or coaches, working with individual editors and with wikiprojects on unreferenced and under-referenced BLPs.  For example, i am sort of now prodding WikiProject Canada along, by listing its first 10 URBLPs at the project Talk page and starting conversation about the specific persons (e.g., comment that so and so "was a Roughriders player and is now an executive, can anyone provide sources?").  The editors there have nicely gone along with me, chiming in and fixing up some of those, and in the process some learning about tags available, etc., has happened.  I am learning/struggling too:  i don't know what to do with several of the 10 still outstanding.  I don't want to take over their Talk page but i think they will go along with me posting an additional batch of 10 occasionally.  It will be a long slow process for them to address their URBLPs, currently about 370 in number.  Maybe there is some education that could be provided to me, like what are the basic tagging tools, what should i know about Friendly and what tools are useful for what purposes.  It happens i know enough about AWB to use it myself, and i may try to educate the "client" wikiproject about their using it to tag their own articles.   Perhaps there are other AWB uses, or Bot requests, that could be suggested.  A table of what tools are useful for what subpurpose, within a wikproject's expanding its management of URBLPs and under-referenced BLPs in its area, could be helpful.  Perhaps with examples of their having been used with some wikiproject.  So the grassroots organizer could be conversant about those, while working with a given wikiproject, keeping in mind that we are all volunteers.  Does this make any sense? --doncram (talk) 16:12, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Good to hear that, I'm currently working through the 1885 UBLPs with redlinked talkpages tagging them for assorted projects, and quite a few are Canadians. I would suggest trying to subdivide them by some sort of topic - you are bound to have Canadian editors who are keener to work on some topics than others - so you could try putting sportspeople business people, politicians, actors, musicians and others in separate lists.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  06:36, 30 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, yes, exactly, the Canadians are educating me about their ways of further tagging to their policians vs. sports vs. other task forces. If you are adding WikiProject Canada you can further add ppap=yes switch to put into their Politicians task force and/or sports=yes for their athletes.  If i am acting as liaison from this group to that WikiProject, that's the stuff i get to learn from them.  What i don't know anything about is Twinkle and Friendly and, well, i don't know what else i don't know.  I'd be willing to help in developing a handbook/FAQ for the grassroots organizer, IF there were others willing to develop a FAQ, and IF there were other grassroots organizers / liaisons being signed up for other WikiProjects like sports and actors and others that have URBLP problems. --doncram (talk) 16:32, 30 April 2010 (UTC)
 * OK just done my first Canadian sports tag, though it seems it has to be sport=yes not sports=yes. I'm assembling a growing collection on User:WereSpielChequers/Templates as a crib sheet, I've also done tags for dozens of individual sports annd countries. Confusingly some African countries exist as redirects to Africa and others didn't exist, so I've now created Kenya and Somalia.
 * If you are talking to the projects it might be worth asking if they could lift the work groups from the Biography template? If so a bot could probably do that.
 * Also MZMcBride has put the UBLPs with redlinked talkpages onto a regular refresh, the latest version is already down over 300 to 1576.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  18:06, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

unreferenced tag applying to just one section of an article
I've come across some articles where an unreferenced tag was placed in one section of an article that is otherwise sourced. That puts the article into the category of unreferenced articles which is incorrect. Is there some way to revise those tags to refer to the section only? In this edit i completely removed such a tag, while I wish i knew what section-specific tag would be appropriate instead (and leave the article out of the completely unsourced categories). --doncram (talk) 04:23, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
 * If this was on a contentious section I would suggest removing the data, otherwise this looks like a case for a refimproveBLP tag.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  07:20, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Applied that to this one.  Also i see unresolved discussion about a section=yes modifier at Template talk:BLP sources.  Seems like there is some call for such a section-specfic tag but then it may be confusing if/when it should be a subtag of BLP unreferenced vs. of BLP refimprove. --doncram (talk) 16:23, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Done and to do?
We've had some good ideas, here and elsewhere, about ways to spread the work. Maybe we should start listing these on the project page, along with their status. Maurreen (talk) 10:18, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Translated UBLPs
I've always thought other WikiPedia's are not a valid reference, but I noticed many BLP have only / on and so am beginning to wonder.
 * Dominique Raimbourg, Christian Bataille, Alfred Trassy-Paillogues, Yves Vandewalle, Thierry Carcenac, Philippe Briand, Michel Buillard, Marie-Louise Fort, Jeanny Marc, Jean-Marie Rolland, Jean-Luc Pérat, Jean-Louis Idiart, André Chassaigne, Armand Jung, Geneviève Colot, Petra Kandarr, Bärbel Struppert, Waltraud Dietsch, Marian Krzaklewski, Ludwig Baumann etc. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 16:16, 2 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I would say: Those have references. The references are not reliable. If the articles on the other WPs have references, it would be relatively easy to copy those over. Maurreen (talk) 16:20, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
 * And if the other language Wiki does not? Waltraud Dietsch. Checking another Wiki before it's tagged as unsourced seems odd. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 16:43, 2 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Well, if it doesn't, it doesn't.
 * I didn't say what anyone should do, I just said what I think would not be hard to do. Looking for a source before tagging as unsourced is not odd to me. I rarely use "fix it" tags at all. But each to their own. Maurreen (talk) 16:57, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Wikiproject contest?
I wonder whether it would be worthwhile to have a contest for Wikiprojects. It might be based on total number of unref BLPs, number of reduction, or percentage of reduction, or some combination. Maurreen (talk) 16:40, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Sounds like a possibly more fun/productive excuse for contacting the subject-specific wikiprojects. Also to recognize absolute or percentage increase of wikiprojects' tagging of BLPs, unreferenced or not, for their project.  Is there some way to tell how many articles are tagged with the WikiProject Biography's BLP indicator, that are also tagged by, say WikiProject Baseball? --doncram (talk) 16:46, 2 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I have no idea about how to find or figure these counts. I got lost in the related discussions above. Maurreen (talk) 16:51, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

500 articles found
Have managed to locate about 500 articles that have no or very poor references(i.e. myspace), in the process of tagging them now. Hope that it is okay with everyone. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 21:03, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
 * One reaction is: could you save that effort until after June 1?
 * Or, at a minimum, can you tally how many you do? I think when we reach June 1 that some specific accounting could work in explaining that we came close to the 30,000 target, adjusting for fact that more than 1,000 articles were added each month to the BLP unreferenced problem.  Note all the work I and some others did during April to reduce the number of April net additions, which totalled around 830 net, hardly counts (it was helpful in other ways, though).  In April far more than 1000 were added, I believe, but there is no way to document that.  So in fact it could be argued the 30,000 target should be adjusted to be 170 higher, because "only 830 were added" during April, when 1,000 were expected.  (I will argue that i reduced 106 from April, so the adjustment should be less, but that may not be understood/accepted.)  If you document what you add, that probably helps in our justifying adjustment of the 30,000 target.  Note, I am tallying how many IMDB-related subtractions I am implementing, using what AWB reports in each editing session, at User:Doncram/IMDBzap, which is part of such accounting. --doncram (talk) 02:55, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Hi SunCreator, nice work, keep it up. This is a great example of why we need to keep the target on the "backlog" as it was, rather than include newly identified unreferenced BLPs retrospectively into the target. That said its worth looking at the history of unreferenced BLPs, if they were created after the 18th March they can be sticky prodded and if they were created before there is a good chance that someone has either removed references, or removed a previous unreferenced tag. No need to keep a tally of the ones you tag as they will appear in the April and May 2010 subtotals.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  08:37, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I'm not keeping track but it's 400 so far and more to come. One can check the 30000 target figure by looking at and removing, April 2010, May 2010, June 2010 and Undated articles figures. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 12:10, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I thot the 30,000 target included 1,000 expected for each month, and i am not sure when the target was set. So the target is at least 2,000 further away than SunCreator states.  The current total in unreferenced BLPs right now is 35,826 with 793, 75, and 424 in April, May and Undated.  Assuming 501 more will be added still in May (reaching a total of 1,000 for the month), we are 35,826 + 501 - 30,000 = 6,327 away from the 30,000 target.  Any more than 501 added in May should not increase the task remaining, but time spent adding more to the category is obviously time not spent reducing items in the category.  And, it currently looks like we are not going to meet the target now.  I'm expecting to zap about 1,500 to 2,000 IMDB-related ones, and with other reductions no longer running at previous 100 per day rate (not adequate anyhow), we are going to fall several thousand short, unless we get some more help somehow.  Could a signpost appeal for help, help? --doncram (talk) 12:36, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Each one, do one?
According to Administrators of Wikimedia projects/Wikipedias, WP has 12,136,562 editors. (I have no idea how many of those are active.)

But according to this, we have about 35,750 articles outstanding.

If one out of every 340 editors would each take care of one article, we'd be done!

But that's probably wishful thinking. Maurreen (talk) 14:09, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Don't know about admins, but I saw some pledge lists many moons ago. Here is one. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 14:16, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Well that was the idea about mobilising the projects, and also raising this in Signpost. Many hands make light work. Even with something as big as football there are going to be lots of those articles that are also tagged for various geographic projects.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  21:48, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Tracking page done
I've created a tracking page at WikiProject Unreferenced Biographies of Living Persons/WikiProjects. I've got a lot more data (ie the daily stuff), but I was struggling to fit that much onto the page as it is. If anyone has any suggestions, or wants to help expand the intro/formatting, then feel free, but I'll try to update the data at least weekly. The-Pope (talk) 17:50, 6 May 2010 (UTC)
 * You have provided a link that is a redirect to this talk page. I think instead you meant to post WikiProject Unreferenced Biographies of Living Persons/WikiProjects ;) Regards, SunCreator (talk) 18:25, 6 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I noticed after I posted it, fixed the link above too... but it made me think, should this project have a talk page banner that we stick on all of these tracking pages, so we can keep track of them!The-Pope (talk) 19:09, 6 May 2010 (UTC)
 * That's great! Thanks so much!  It is nicely sortable by any column.  It shows that at least 15 WikiProjects have had their unreferenced BLPs completely eliminated.  It shows, surprisingly, that every wikiproject has decreased or kept the same, in number of unreferenced BLPs;  not one shows an increase from their maximum... oh, hmm, duh, if they had an increase then their maximum would have gone up...:( --doncram (talk) 18:42, 6 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I think it looks great and is useful, thanks for putting the time and energy into creating it. J04n(talk page) 19:44, 6 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, that's great, thanks. Maurreen (talk) 22:24, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Related pages?
Are there any related pages that are not now listed at WikiProject Unreferenced Biographies of Living Persons but should be? Maurreen (talk) 07:22, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

IMDB tag?
Per, suggesting a tag for articles sourced only to IMDB -- here's some wording to start a discussion:
 * "Information in this article is attributed only to IMDB. Please add more or better sources." Maurreen (talk) 19:55, 27 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Here's a (much) stronger version I'll throw out, more along the lines of primary sources - "This article relies primarily on IMDB, which may not be a reliable source for biographical information. Please add additional sources for verification."
 * We really need an IMDB guideline somewhere to back this tag up, or we'll have edit wars over adding and removing the template. Any thoughts on what we call the template?  I was thinking "IMDB based" or "IMDB sources". —Joshua Scott (LiberalFascist) 01:07, 28 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Here's some data: I just finally ran AWB through a subcategory of BLPunreferenced (August 2009 subset, for no reason), looking for IMDB-sourced ones.  Of the first 1,252 items in the category, there were 44 cases where IMDB info was present.  Simply projecting that over 36,500 total BLPunreferenced now, that suggests 1,272 IMDB-sourced ones will be removed from BLPunreferenced by similar AWB work.  (In this, I changed the tag for those 44 from BLPunreferenced to BLPrefimprove, starting with this diff in my history;  I'll be happy to go back and tag those ones with an IMDB-specific tag if one is devised promptly, too.)  This is worth some effort to improve upon the IMDB-labelling, but not too much for our purposes here in wp:URBLP. --doncram (talk) 03:34, 28 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I basically like the stronger version of tag. How about "BLP IMDB refimprove" for the template name, easily edited to/from "BLP refimprove" as article status changes?  Also, maybe the wording "relies primarily on" should be avoided.  That's a difficult judgment to make, perhaps, as an article might be truly based on some source not given, but only show an IMDB reference, where the IMDB source has little of the information.  It would take a lot of study to figure out that the IMDB source could not possibly be the primary source.  Could the wording focus on more objective/obvious criteria, like IMDB being the only source, or one of few sources, in a given article?  So perhaps:   "This article relies heavily on IMDB, the only source or one of few sources cited, which may not be a reliable source for biographical information.  Please add additional sources and inline citations for verification." ?  Maybe getting too wordy? --doncram (talk) 15:54, 28 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Maybe they can be combined, like this: "Information in this article is attributed only to IMDB, which may not be a reliable source for biographical information. Please add additional sources and inline citations for verification." Maurreen (talk) 16:01, 28 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Okay, how about "BLP IMDB-only refimprove" to give that message. And redirect variations of spelling like "BLP IMDB only refimprove", etc., to same.
 * And, have BLP IMDB refimprove which is to apply still when citation of IMDB seems to be BLP relevant, even if there is some other source added so that IMDB-only does not strictly apply. Easy for an editor to remove the "only" from within the tag.  Message for this to be, say, ""Information in this article is attributed to IMDB, which may not be a reliable source for biographical information. Please add additional sources and inline citations for verification."
 * Hmm, but does this capture everything in the regular BLP refimprove message? The regular message (text omitting links) is "This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful."
 * So, should BLP IMDB-only refimprove and BLP IMDB refimprove messages be expanded to include most or all of that?
 * And, then, logically we also might need IMDB refimprove for cases found where IMDB issues present but it turns out the subject is no longer living. --doncram (talk) 22:54, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I think we need to keep the "Contentious material" clause from BLP refimprove. I've created BLP IMDB refimprove so we can see what it looks like.  Is it too wordy? —Joshua Scott (LiberalFascist) 02:26, 29 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks! The text-only version of that is:

"This biographical article is attributed to IMDB, which may not be a reliable source for biographical information. Please help by adding additional sources for verification. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful."
 * Adding the last sentence helps for sure. Your version's middle sentence goes back to asking just for "additional sources" rather than the expanded "additional sources and inline citations" that i was sort of proposing and Maureen was keeping in.  If the "and inline citations" is added to these it should also apply to the main BLP refimprove tag.  So call that a possible future improvement/change for all versions, to be discussed separately/later, and let me say i accept your dropping it for here.  But actually i like staying even closer to the main BLP unreferenced message at the beginning, too.  Why not have the IMDB-specific material be just one additional sentence inserted in the middle, as in, for BLP IMDB refimprove:

This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. It includes attribution to IMDB, which may not be a reliable source for biographical information. Please help by adding additional, reliable sources for verification. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful."
 * and for BLP IMDB-only refimprove vary that sentence:

This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Its only attribution is to IMDB, which may not be a reliable source for biographical information. Please help by adding additional, reliable sources for verification. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful."
 * I would be happy to use templates like these right away, because when to apply them would be quite clear. The messages in the templates can be refined later, and possibly include links to past discussions about IMDB, or not, without changing the appropriateness of the tag in use.  Also there could be future improvements programming-wise, perhaps, implementing a merger behind the scenes of what can start as, and forever appear to be, two separate/similar templates.  Hmm, maybe these are a bit repetitive, tho i like that these are deliberately mostly the same as the main BLP refimprove tag. --doncram (talk) 02:59, 29 April 2010 (UTC)


 * P.S. In just a few minutes I just now applied new "BLP IMDB refimprove" to clear 10 items from the 155 in May 2007 (oldest) BLP problem category. That was in this edit and preceding.  This is easy!  For five of these, I could have applied a stronger "BLP IMDB-only refimprove" message. --doncram (talk) 04:25, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
 * P.P.S. I set up a temporary redirect from BLP IMDB-only refimprove to "BLP IMDB refimprove" so that i can tag articles starting now.  And went back and changed those 5 so they'll be more strongly tagged, once a template is in place. --doncram (talk) 04:36, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

I've created & modified the templates to use your wording. It's a bit larger than most templates, but I still think it's OK. I'm happy to adjust the wording as we see fit. I'll get around to working on the non-BLP one at some point, but I don't think it's much use right now. —Joshua Scott (LiberalFascist) 05:33, 29 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks so much! They both look great. Not sure if the categories are working correctly yet.  For example Will Vazquez is a "BLP IMDB-only refimprove"-tagged article showing hidden categories Category:BLP articles lacking sources and Category:Articles lacking reliable references from June 2007, which don't seem right.  But, the months' totals seems to have permanently dropped by those that i tagged (from both May and June 2007 now), so i am not sure.  And it looks to me that the 2 new template pages themselves could get two categories, one regular and one hidden, that apply for BLP refimprove ).  Thanks again! --doncram (talk) 07:24, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
 * The categories for Will Vazquez look like they are right i guess. Also, though, it would also help to have a categories for all the items tagged by either of these.  Not sure if you can get a count at all by "what links here" to the template page. --doncram (talk) 08:37, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
 * P.S. Using those, just zapped 106 out of the current, April 2010, category! It's looking difficult for the taggers to get to 1,000 for this month. :) --doncram (talk) 08:37, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

Then what? Liaison to Actors Wikiproject?
IMDB-specific tags in place, being added to what will be 3,500 or so URBLP articles, combined of the IMDB-only vs. IMDB+other types. Then what? Most of these really are in bad shape. There are many, many years-old ones that were created just from IMDB info, and which have lain dormant or have been adopted/built only by the actor/filmmaker subject or friends. These are all hugely UNDER-referenced. There is much which can productively be done. For example, someone, one of us or perhaps someone from the Actors wikiproject, should use AWB to run thru all the articles that now link to Template:BLP IMDB refimprove and add the Wikiproject tag to the Talk pages. I think we should be trying to pass responsibility on, responsibly, to editors who would be interested in helping. Bottom-line: would any other editor be willing to serve as a liaison to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Actors and Filmmakers, about this kind of stuff? --doncram (talk) 15:14, 30 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Especially given the deadlines, I'm more concerned with fulfilling the basics than taking them to the next level. But that's me. Maurreen (talk) 00:47, 1 May 2010 (UTC)


 * If not now, when we can explain a simple and important deadline that a wikiproject can be part of addressing, then when? --doncram (talk) 19:24, 1 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Maybe I should have just said it's not something that I'm interested in doing. Maurreen (talk) 22:32, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
 * The first advantage of this tag is that hopefully people will see the tag and improve the article. Saying an IMDBsourced article was unsourced just made Wikipedia tagging look inaccurate or insular and jargon driven. A tag that says that IMDB is a problematic source and asks people to improve the article will hopefully help wean people off using IMDB for bio info. Though I think the tag needs to be clearer as to what parts of IMDB data are kosher and what parts are unverified.
 * The second advantage of the IMDB tags is that, subject to bot approval, we will be able to do a bot message to the authors who use IMDB, explaining that IMDB can only be used to source screen credit data, and that its other Bio data is unverified user generated data and needs to be replaced with better sources.
 * If you agree that IMDB sourcing is problematic, then what alternative is there to tagging the relevant articles and communicating with the editors?  Ϣere  Spiel  Chequers  09:00, 2 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure whether we're all understanding each other or whether WereSpielChequers' question is directed at me. My point was that I don't plan to put my energy into further improving correctly tagged IMDB articles.
 * I am not opposed to anyone else doing such work.
 * My involvement in all of this is based on my belief that any article deletion should be done with deliberation and reflection about the specific article and not en masse or based on a dividing line that has little meaning, in my view.
 * Once we are done clearing the backlog, I plan to return to my previously scheduled programming, which has little to do with BLPs. Maurreen (talk) 09:24, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
 * By "dividing line", I mean the line that spurred all of this. I believe that any deletion based solely on whether a BLP has a source is at best an ineffective way to prevent or resolve any problems. Maurreen (talk) 09:29, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
 * My comments were more focussed on answering Doncram's question that started this thread, and I too am spending more time than I'd like editing uncontentious pop-culture articles. I have prodded or hoax tagged a few articles in my recent trawl, but am keen to spend more of my wiki time on areas which are more problematic in BLP terms.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  09:49, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Establishing IMDB rule?
I think at some point, the community should establish consensus about the reliability or not of IMDB.

I realize that shouldn't be done on this page, and I'm not sure it's feasible now. But it's inefficient that the question comes up as much as it does. Maurreen (talk) 09:37, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

List of BLPs Referenced Only by IMDB
Hey Wikiproject UBLP, I made a list of BLPS referenced only by IMDB. I am sorry to say that it is a lot bigger then the acclaimed 3,500. The list (here) is 10,000+ articles long. Hopefully this list will be helpful to you. (Note: Some browsers may have trouble with the unicode in the list. The best way to view the list is by right-clicking on the link and saving.) Tim  1357  talk  02:08, 7 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Thank you. Maurreen (talk) 07:00, 7 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Yes, thanks, that's helpful. I think it must include many that are not currently tagged as BLP unreferenced (and since they have one source, IMDB, they should not be put into BLP unreferenced).  The 3,500 estimate i think was my estimate of how many articles in BLP unreferenced do in fact have an IMDB tag.  I am continuing using AWB to go through BLP unreferenced's monthly categories and change "BLP unreferenced" to BLP IMDB-only refimprove or BLP IMDB refimprove.  Tracking of this AWB-based effort, by me and one other editor so far, is at User:Doncram/IMDBzap.  It will then also be a good thing to go through Tim's new list, to add the BLP IMDB-only refimprove tag to all or most of those.  The tag puts them into Category:Articles sourced only by IMDB, which currently has 142 members.  Thanks! --doncram (talk) 14:09, 8 May 2010 (UTC)