Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons

Year of Birth

Many years ago, circa 2006, we discussed eliminating the full birth date, and concluded that year of birth should be included for most people, but not month and day.

Recently, I've had private communication that asked to remove the year that she became active in her field, and also not include her year of birth. Perhaps she's being overly sensitive, but in the entertainment field, I understand sometimes there's rampant discrimination as women approach 40.

Actually, her month and day of birth are well known on various public social media. But she's done quite a bit to try to obscure her year of birth (that I've determined).

She's had an article for almost 4 years, with a notability tag (removed last August), and recently has been performing in front of tens of thousands (and televised before millions). The usual Category:Year of birth missing (living people) was added to the page some 14 months ago.

What to do? Leave the category, but add a bang comment in the source indicating that she's asked her age not be revealed? What about those folks running around with automated scripts?
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 23:27, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Currently:

If the subject complains about the inclusion of the date of birth, or the person is borderline notable, err on the side of caution and simply list the year.

Proposed:

If the subject complains about inclusion of the date of birth, or the person is borderline notable, err on the side of caution and omit the date. Add a comment in place of the date, such as:

<!-- subject requested birth date removal --> A similar comment must be added next to a related maintenance category:

[[:Category:Year of birth missing (living people)]]<!-- subject requested birth year removal -->

--William Allen Simpson (talk) 22:07, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Relevancy for ethnicity, gender, religion and sexuality (WP:EGRS)

Further information: Wikipedia talk:Categorization/Ethnicity, gender, religion and sexuality § Relevance revisited

A contentious editor, All Hallow's Wraith (talk · contribs), has been trying to remove without discussion the long-standing requirement that all Wikipedia:Categorization of people#By gender, religion, race or ethnicity, and sexuality requires (at Wikipedia:Categorization/Ethnicity, gender, religion and sexuality#General):

4. Inclusion must be specifically relevant to at least one of the subject's notable activities and an essential part of that activity, but is not required to be an exclusive interest. Moreover, inclusion is not transitive to any other activity. (For example: a notable LGBT activist is not automatically included in a corresponding LGBT musician category, unless also notable for one or more LGBT-related music compositions or performances.)

Note that Wikipedia:Categorization#What categories should be created explicitly requires:

They should be based on essential, "defining" features of article subjects, such as nationality or notable profession (in the case of people), type of location or region (in the case of places), etc. Do not create categories based on incidental or subjective features. Examples of types of categories which should not be created can be found at Wikipedia:Overcategorization.

See also Wikipedia:Overcategorization#Non-notable intersections by ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation:

Likewise, people should only be categorized by ethnicity or religion if this has significant bearing on their career. For instance, in sports, a Roman Catholic athlete is not treated differently from a Lutheran or Methodist. Similarly, in criminology, a person's actions are more important than their race or sexual orientation. While "LGBT literature" is a specific genre and useful categorisation, "LGBT quantum physics" is not.

For many years (since 2006?), Wikipedia:Category_names#Heritage has specified:

• People are sometimes categorized by notable ancestry, culture, or ethnicity.

Again, "notable".

Also, Wikipedia:Categorization of people applies to ALL people, living and dead.

As time progressed, it appears that the real underlying reason for removal is that it is frequently cited in WP:CFD decisions about ethnicity categories. S/he now claims that discussion here removed a notability requirement for Ethnicity in December, 2010. Could folks here please point to such discussion?
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 14:34, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

wouldn't it make more sense to ask All Hallow's Wraith to point to the discussion - if he/she says it occurred, he/she should be able to find it. AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:20, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

I did, twice. S/he hasn't replied.
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 21:46, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

• Now, I've spent even more time re-reading the recent archives. What I've found is a proposal to remove the "relevant" clause for everything, but that was soundly rejected!
  --William Allen Simpson (talk) 00:10, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

• Also, I've compared the current text with the section that I transcluded in June 2009, and it is nearly word for word the same! (The whole section has been moved to later in the page.) This lays to rest the notion that anything has changed: both relevancy and notability are required.
  --William Allen Simpson (talk) 00:24, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Include "ethnicity, gender," to match all other guidelines

See also: § Relevancy for ethnicity, gender, religion and sexuality (WP:EGRS)

To reduce quibbling about different wording in different guidelines, existing wording should be inserted here to match WP:EGRS.

Also, change the redundant wording "belief or orientation" to "information" in two places; this will shorten and simplify the sentence structure.

Category names do not carry disclaimers or modifiers, so the case for each category must be made clear by the article text and its reliable sources. Categories regarding ethnicity, gender, religious beliefs, and sexual orientation should not be used unless the subject has publicly self-identified with the information in question; and this information is relevant to their notable activities or public life, according to reliable published sources.
...
These principles apply equally to lists, navigation templates, and/or {{infobox}} statements that are based on ethnicity, gender, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, or suggest that persons have a poor reputation.

Ethnicity, Gender, day 1

• Support -- as proposer --William Allen Simpson (talk) 01:06, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

  Note Bene: some comments here seem to be related to re-arguing very recent polls on relevance, and notability, and lists, and templates. Those have already been decided! This is solely about adding two words from the WP:EGRS guideline criteria to this policy language to avoid wiki-lawyering disputes. Hopefully, the closer will disregard those irrelevant comments.
  --William Allen Simpson (talk) 15:02, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

The WP:EGRS guideline applies only to Categories. Your proposal above extends that guideline to Lists. Yet Lists are vastly different that categories because List articles can (and often do, especially in contentious areas) supply context, footnotes, sources, and nuances. You may want to consider re-submitting this proposal but limit it to Ethnicity (not Gender) and limit it to Categories (not Lists). --Noleander (talk) 16:43, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

No, that has already been decided. In fact, this should reduce conflicts, because Lists and Templates are annotated with "context, footnotes, sources, and nuances." I'm sorry you don't like it.
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 16:51, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

What was already decided? My prior comment had several sentences in it. --Noleander (talk) 17:06, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

It should be pointed out that "already decided" in relation to WP:EGRS is quite a bit misleading. This text was added into that guideline in July 2009 by... William Allen Simpson. It was added there after being brought up on the talk page by... William Allen Simpson. No one else wrote in in support at the time. When I tried to remove it from the page, citing lack of consensus, I was reverted by... William Allen Simpson. So to keep citing that "policy" as having "been decided" is quite a bit misleading. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 18:48, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Certainly, many guidelines were drafted and committed by me over the past half dozen years, as was an earlier version of this policy section. That does not make them any less valid. Decisions about policy and guidelines are often decided elsewhere than the talk page, while we often use the talk page to store the draft. Wraith's deletion of a valid 18+ months old guideline (without anything like proper notification) was ruled invalid after review by a neutral administrator. Wraith's wiki-lawyering is the reason we are here today. Could we stop wasting time talking about process, and concentrate on whether to add two words here to match WP:EGRS, and 5 other guidelines? You might notice the two words match "E" and "G"!
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 04:54, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Doesn't matter how many guidelines you drafted. But citing a guideline that you wrote, discussed with yourself, added, and then reverted back, all without the help of a single other editor, is disingenuous. The neutral administrator you're talking about, after discussion with me on my talk page, ended up unsure as to who was right on the matter. I also love the fact that you're complaining about me deleting your guideline without "proper notification". I left a note on the talk page, just like you did. No one objected, so I deleted it - just like when you left a note on the talk page, no one objected, so you added it to the article in the first place. We both followed literally the same process to add and then delete that bit from the guideline. Why you think it has any validity whatsoever is beyond me. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 05:14, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

I must concur with All Hallow on this point. This proposal seems like a one-man crusade, and is at odds with the wider consensus that has been established throughout WP in literally hundreds of Categories and Lists. It is frightening to contemplate the prospect that a few editors could push-through a policy change that would - overnight - cause the deletions of thousands of entries in Categories and Lists. --Noleander (talk) 05:20, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

• Support - for ethnicity. 'Gender' however is a little difficult - taken literally this might be read as not being able to state whether a BLP was about a man, or a woman. I'm sure this wasn't the intent, but I think this needs clarification, or possibly further discussion as a separate rewording. AndyTheGrump (talk) 01:19, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
  • It would only be a problem with transgender people, and I would support self-identification in that case. --JN466 01:44, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Agree with Jayen466. This is only about creating and including folks in categories. There's no reason to bother, unless it is relevant to their activities. The recent testing of the South American athlete comes to mind, although I don't remember the name. But we shouldn't exclude or include somebody, just because genetic testing says their self-identification is somehow "incorrect".
    --William Allen Simpson (talk) 01:59, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

• Support. --JN466 01:44, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose - ridiculous. I use Jason Derülo as an example once again. As the son of Haitian immigrants, he's obviously of Haitian descent. It's absurd to require that this fact be "notable to his public life" in order to be listed under Category:American people of Haitian descent. Why would we want to do that? It doesn't make any sense. Nor does requiring that his being "African American" be notable to his music in order to be listed under Category:African American musicians. Obviously, he's an African-American musician. What logical sense does it make not to categorize him as such? All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 02:02, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

  Bzzzt, thank you for playing. That is not the question. The only issue before us is whether BLP should be different than all other pages. All categories are required to be both notable and relevant. Do not create categories based on incidental or subjective features.
  --William Allen Simpson (talk) 06:07, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

  Thank you for bringing this error to our attention. The Jason Derülo article does not give any verified sources indicating African descent, and he does not self-identify as African American. In cited sources, he's of French and Haitian descent. Removed! We do not subscribe to the racist one drop rule, nor do we add folks to African American categories based merely on appearance as "not white".
  --William Allen Simpson (talk) 06:23, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

  What are you talking about? Who is this "our"? Under your proposal, Jason Derulo couldn't be listed under "American people of Haitian descent" unless this was notable to his music? Does that make any sense? No, it doesn't. And yes, obviously he's African-American, see here and here. Whether or not he self-identifies as African-American or Haitian-American wouldn't get him listed as an "African-American musician" or an "American of Haitian descent" anyway under your proposal, because some poor editor would apparently have to "demonstrate" that this is notable to his songs? Is this proposal for real? All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 07:06, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

• Support the addition of "ethnicity". On gender, I doubt t hat restricting categorization by gender is plausible. How would we determine if a singer's gender was important enough to his/her notability to determine whether they go into something like "French female singers" vs. "French singers"? Would that mean that female sports players would automatically keep their "Women's..." categories, because most sports are segregated by gender? Unless we're actually prepared to eliminate all gender based categories, I doubt we could make the distinction usefully. Qwyrxian (talk) 06:46, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
  • Qwyrxian, are you saying that Jason Derülo, the son of Haitian immigrants, shouldn't be listed under Category:American people of Haitian descent unless his Haitian ancestry was relevant to his music? That's what you're saying by supporting this proposal. Because that's what the wording of it mandates. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 07:06, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

    Please stop raising these Strawman arguments. They disrupt discussion. The only issue before us is whether BLP should be different than all other pages. All categories are required to be both notable and relevant.
    --William Allen Simpson (talk) 07:46, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

    I thought we weren't supposed to canvas, were we, WAS? I refer only to this this and this. And no, it's not a strawman. It's quite a legitimate question. You're free to answer it yourself. Why shouldn't Jason Derulo be listed under "American people of Haitian descent"? All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 08:07, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

If the fact that he is Haitian is notable, then it may be mentioned in a category. But if only the fact that he is a musician is notable, then it may not. That seems logical to me. There is no requirement that Haitian descent must be related to his musical activities. Debresser (talk) 18:11, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

According to this proposal, his Haitian ancestry should be "relevant to [his] notable activities or public life". Since Derülo's activities consist pretty much entirely out of his music career, that would mean his Haitian ancestry would have to be related to that to be listed under "American people of Haitian descent". Which doesn't sound like a good idea to me. If I'm a student doing a project on famous Americans of Haitian descent, it would be immensely helpful to me if he was listed in that category. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 18:49, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

• Support -for ethnicity not for Gender - would be most likely impossible to implement and enforcer in a civil manner.Moxy (talk) 08:42, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

  This is required to document the result of many WP:CFD Gender decisions, such as double and triple intersections Buddhist women, Clothing for women, American Muslim women, Iranian women fashion designers, etc. Is there a reason we should allow such Gender categories for living persons? We already require deletion for dead, undead, or wraiths! Easier to enforce and implement consistently.
  --William Allen Simpson (talk) 13:52, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

• Support Dougweller (talk) 14:24, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
• Support in spirit. I would like to see some wording that recognizes that these categories are usually uncontroversial, especially gender, but leads to removal of unsourced categories if there is any controversy over them. Gigs (talk) 14:42, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

  That's an excellent suggestion! (I remember you've made it before.) Let's do that after this certification process is complete. Always best to complete one thing at a time.
  --William Allen Simpson (talk) 15:47, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

  • The uncontroversial/controversial issue is a totally separate one. This policy mandates the removal of all categories, whether controversial or not. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 18:49, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose I see no reason given for the change, unless one is accepting of "to reduce quibbling" as a reason for the change. I feel the opposite is the case. Simplification is not called for here, necessarily. These attributes are different in fundamental ways from one another. In some instances some of these attributes of personal identity should be included in the article only if accompanied by self-identification; in other instances this is not called for at all. Ditto as concerns notability: in some instances it might be arguable that the relation between an attribute of identity and the person's reason for notability is so tenuous that inclusion is gratuitous and perhaps even contrived. Yet in other instances inclusion of attributes of identity may be warranted even if not related to notability—that is simply because the reader is understood to be interested in all relevant material. The simplification seen here in the interest of reducing quibbling is also going to be used by editors in their incessant arguments to keep material out of articles and to block categorization as concerns individuals. It is not unheard of for editors to have some very personally motivated reasons for mounting arguments to keep well-sourced and perfectly innocuous material out of articles and categories. I see no reason to enshrine in policy that all attributes need both self-identification and a relationship to notability. This gives more tools for censorship to those already inclined to exclude material from biographies that is not in violation of the spirit of WP:BLP. This is an abuse of WP:BLP. It encroaches on normal article-writing, including the categorization that facilitates the research aspects of the project that makes Wikipedia useful to readers. Bus stop (talk) 16:19, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

  Again, that is not the question. The only issue before us is whether BLP should be different than all other pages. Do we permit these two methods of categorization for living people, and then delete them as they die? That seems very difficult to enforce and implement consistently. The folks at WP:CFD are overworked enough already.
  --William Allen Simpson (talk) 16:31, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

William Allen Simpson—WP:BLP involves sensitivity. This is a collaborative project—"quibbling" is what this project is about. You are suggesting substituting simplicity for sensitivity. I find the following language:"Editors must take particular care when adding information about living persons to any Wikipedia page. Such material requires a high degree of sensitivity..." There is not any one applicable rule as to whether or not any attribute of personal identity should or should not be included in an article or in a category. This is for individual Talk pages of separate articles. We should not be providing language in policy for editors to exclude material based on reasons unrelated to the special sensitivities that should be accorded the biographies of living people. This is suggestive of an abuse of WP:BLP as you are not providing a reason for the suggested change. Reducing quibbling is not a reason. This is a collaborative project, where quibbling is intrinsic. Bus stop (talk) 16:43, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

• I don't entirely understand this - especially the bit about deleting categories when people die - but if we are going to categorize people by gender or ethnicity (and most of the time I'd prefer it if we didn't), I wouldn't have thought self-identification would be the criterion (it should be what reliable sources say, as with most things, plus a dollop of common sense).--Kotniski (talk) 17:23, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
  • I generally agree, but self-identification isn't that bad. The real problem is "related to notable activities or public life, according to reliable published sources". That means we couldn't list the son of Haitian immigrants as an "American person of Haitian descent" unless this was related to his profession? (even if he repeatedly self-identified) That doesn't make any sense. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 18:49, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

• Support because the qualifier: "unless the subject has publicly self-identified with the information in question; and this information is relevant to their notable activities or public life, according to reliable published sources" is good all around! IZAK (talk) 17:58, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

• Big but wait a second. at Wikipedia_talk:Categorization/Ethnicity,_gender,_religion_and_sexuality we were talking about "descent" categories. Is that part of "ethnicity"? Debresser (talk) 18:08, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
• I was under the impression it was. If they're not part of that, that should certainly be stated explicitly in any proposal. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 18:49, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose - Because it is being applied to Lists as well as Categories. Lists (as has been discussed above in this Talk page) should not be lumped in with Categories in BLPCAT because Lists do permit "disclaimers and limitations" and other contextual information that Categories do no support. I have no objection to applying this proposal to Categories, but sweeping Lists along with the Categories is ill-considered. --Noleander (talk) 18:29, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

  Again, that is not the question. The only issue before us is whether BLP should be different than all other pages. Language about "Lists along with the Categories" was added months ago. That bus has left the garage.
  --William Allen Simpson (talk) 19:00, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

The proposal above adds words both into the Category text and into the List text. This proposal could just focus on the Category text. By choosing to add words to the List text, the proposer is deliberately continuing the (erroneous) treatment of Lists as the same as Categories. The proposal could easily be split into two parts. The proposer did not choose to do so, and so my Oppose vote remains. --Noleander (talk) 19:42, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

• Note It should probably be pointed that out that William Allen Simpson just keeps on Canvassing. He has successfully brought IZAK and Gigs and Jayen466 over here. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 18:56, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

  Notifying folks that proposed earlier versions of this text is required.

  • On the talk pages of concerned editors. Examples include editors who have participated in previous discussions on the same topic (or closely related topics), who are known for expertise in the field, or who have asked to be kept informed.

  Indeed, I've not had time to complete all my notifications. I'll be working on that over the next few days, little by little.
  --William Allen Simpson (talk) 19:08, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

  • • "However canvassing which is done with the intention of influencing the outcome of a discussion in a particular way is considered inappropriate". All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 19:11, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

• Question - Im not too familiar with the BLPCAT policy history, but hasnt there been substantial discussion aboutList of Jewish Nobel laureates and how that list (based on ethnicity) was entirely valid (even though the ethnicity was immaterial to inclusion in the list)? I guess I'm asking for some habitue of this Talk page to re-cap the history of that topic. Would adopting this policy cause most (living) persons to be removed from that list article? If so, this policy absolutely should not be adopted. --Noleander (talk) 19:52, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

As some here know, the existence of precisely such lists is extremely controversial. Feketekave (talk) 11:44, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

• Support pending further discussion. Although I think it may be useful to separate categories from lists and gender from ethnicities to gauge community support if there is no clear consensus forming here. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 19:55, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
• oppose Has the problem already brought up of fairly obvious cases where they haven't even bothered saying they fall into the category because it is so obvious. In general is unnecessary rule creep. We can rely on reliable sources just as much as we can rely on self-identification unless there's an obvious cause of controversy. JoshuaZ (talk) 20:14, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

• Question for -William Allen Simpson - WAS: I've read your comments above, and most of your comments are directed at how the BLPCAT policy could guide a decision on whether to delete a given Category (e.g. you cite CFD, etc). Yet most editors, I believe, treat the BLPCAT as primarily guiding whether a given individual can be inlcuded in an existing (valid) Category. That is a huge difference. I think the wording of BLPCAT shows it is aimed more at the latter than the former, so you might want to re-cast your comments. --Noleander (talk) 20:29, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

  Which comes first, the chicken or the egg? We've long has this restriction in creating and naming categories. Simply following the criteria of Categorization, they should not exist. But they keep getting added to articles, and thus re-created, and WP:CFD has to clean them up (over and over again). The lack of prescriptivism in this policy is only the current wikilawyering rationale for adding ethnic or gender categories to articles.
  --William Allen Simpson (talk) 13:54, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I cannot understand your logic. You did not respond to the points I raised. Of course WP should, and does have many ethnicity-based Categories. There is no policy prohibiting them, and they are very useful to readers. The proposal you are making above is to change the rule on which living individuals may be included in a given ethnicity-based category. Your proposed rule would cause many key persons to be deleted from many Categories, such as List of Jewish Nobel laureates. That is not sensible and is not going to happen. --Noleander (talk) 17:54, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

• Support having BLP match other guidelines and vise versa. Blueboar (talk) 20:55, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose. Rule creep, foolish consistency. --Avenue (talk) 21:44, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

  While "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds", we apparently need the consistency because of the little minds.
  --William Allen Simpson (talk) 13:54, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

• (ec) We do not need the excessive consistency proposed above. Why should a properly sourced list, with appropriate notes and caveats, be subject to the same membership restrictions as a category that cannot include such caveats? This proposal is also a clear case of rule creep. It stretches a rule that deals with unobservable and often highly sensitive personal characteristics (sexual orientation and belief) and tries to force typically observable and much less sensitive characteristics (gender and ethnicity) into the same mold. If you were instead trying to extend the rule to something similar in nature (e.g. transgender or ambiguously sexed people, such as the South African runner Caster Semenya), I would be much more likely to support it (although I think requiring self-identification in the latter case would probably be too big a stretch as well). --Avenue (talk) 16:39, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

I concur with Avenue's comment: "Why should a properly sourced list, with appropriate notes and caveats, be subject to the same membership restrictions as a category that cannot include such caveats?". This is a very important issue that needs to be addressed. Not only does it justify rejection of the current proposal, but it even justifies revising the current WP:BLPCAT policy, because that policy treats Lists and Categories identically. BLPCAT started off as a decent rule for Categories, and an overzealous desire for uniformity caused Lists to get dragged in about a year ago. On two occasions, a proposal was made to distinguish Lists from Categories in BLPCAT, but it failed because of the simple fact that it is virtually impossible to get consensus for change in WP policies (due to the "there will always be 20% oppose, not matter how sensible the proposal" principle). --Noleander (talk) 20:37, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Ethnicity, Gender, day 2

• Have to oppose this for now, as it doesn't seem to have been properly thought through. I share Noleander's concern above: there seems to be confusion between the questions of which categories should exist, and which articles should be placed in a category once it does exist. BLP is dealing with the second question; and on that question I think the criterion should be what information can be reliably sourced, nothing more, otherwise we'll end up with incomplete categories. Though generally speaking I'd be in favour of a move to limit the number of categories of these types that exist in the first place.--Kotniski (talk) 10:18, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

  Again, that is not the question. Unfortunately, as you well know, wikipedia editing doesn't actually work that way. In any case, that's not the argument made: that this policy trumps category creation and naming guidelines. This brings this policy into line with existing guidelines, so there is no perceived conflict or nuance.
  --William Allen Simpson (talk) 13:54, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

  I don't see any contradiction between the policy and guidelines (except in that the guidelines aren't worded particularly well), though I may do if you can point one out to me. As I see it, the guidelines (if you mean Overcategorization) are about what categories should(n't) exist; the policy (BLP) is about how we decide (in certain specific cases) whether to put a given article into a given existing category. Once we've decided that, say, the category "LGBT golfers" should exist because we think sexual orientation is a notable characteristic of golfers, then we can populate it without worrying for each individual whether their orientation is notable for their golf-playing. The issue addressed by BLP is that in the case of living persons we need to be especially wary of the danger of defamation when putting a living person into some category. (OK, I see that's not actually what the policy says; the whole thing needs tidying up, certainly, but I don't see that the solution is to extend to another two classes of categories the same somewhat muddle-headed thinking that's been applied to religion and orientation.)--Kotniski (talk) 16:01, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

  Ramble. Yes, I think what I don't like is that this section of BLP is getting outside of its scope. BLP should be about protecting living people from potentially defamatory or privacy-breaching labels, not about preserving the usability of Wikipedia's category system, which is the job of other policies and guidelines that, most importantly, don't cease to apply when the subject dies. I can accept that sexual orientation and (perhaps to some extent) religion are potential BLP issues in that sense, but I don't think that gender or ethnicity normally are. If we want to control overcategorization based on these features, then we want to do it mainly because it overloads and overcomplicates the category system, with respect to both living and dead people, and so BLP is the wrong place to be doing this.--Kotniski (talk) 16:13, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

  About this "policies trump guidelines" thing: It's not actually true. See Wikipedia:The difference between policies, guidelines and essays. For example, an immediately relevant guideline can 'trump' a vague policy. For another example, we never delete interlanguage links (a mere informational page) even if they (currently) violate WP:LINKVIO (a major policy). WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:19, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

  I agree, and certainly that was the long-term consensus. Guidelines are simply more detailed than policy, usually with more examples and explanation. Unfortunately, a bit of recent wikilawyering brought this into question regarding WP:EGRS. Simplest to make this policy exactly match the existing WP:EGRS guidelines.
  --William Allen Simpson (talk) 14:35, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

• Support. Per proposer's rationale. Categorizing people by ethnicity, gender, etc. is only informational when the category is meaningful to the person's notable activities. On a related note, I'm firmly against the use of Wikipedia to promote the various social groups that some Wikipedians belong to. While there are certainly people opposed to this rules change who are so for principled (and not political) reasons, I've seen way too many of the recent BLP identification controversies not to note the fact that these usually stem from pride based identity politics (nationalistic, ethnic, religious, etc.). To those of us who do not belong to a certain group the categorizations become trivial at best, and to those who do belong they become badges of pride, or worse at times to some who do not belong they can be badges of hate, ridicule, scorn, etc. Let's leave the identity politics to the blogosphere and spend our time writing an encyclopedia. Cheers.Griswaldo (talk) 14:02, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Comment/question: Why should notability be tied to categorization by attribute of identity? I should think that categorizing people by well-sourced attributes of identity is an unalloyed good, or at least unless a reason can be given for why an individual should not be categorized by an attribute. Is there a reason that categories of identity should be related to the individual's reason for notability? Isn't this a project for bringing information to people? The principles of WP:BLP do not seem to me to be applicable to the proposed alteration to policy. WP:BLP emphasizes the "sensitivity" with which we must approach article-writing concerning living people. I find: "Editors must take particular care when adding information about living persons to any Wikipedia page. Such material requires a high degree of sensitivity..." How would that translate into creating rules in policy that prohibit categorizing people by well-sourced attributes of identity unless those attributes are related to notability? By what rationale would well-sourced and in many cases 100% innocuous information be blocked from inclusion in the categorization function of the project? I think that the default position should be for the inclusion of information. The proposed change in policy is to a default position of exclusion of information. How is that consistent with a project that ostensibly assembles sourced information? Special sensitivities apply to biographies of living people. In fact sensitivities should extend to those no longer living as well, in my opinion. But why should we enshrine in our policy language that the standard fare in information concerning personal attributes of identity should be excluded unless it can be demonstrated that these attributes have a strong connection to an individual's notability? Bus stop (talk) 14:50, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose. I'm sure this must be the third time recently I've opposed this. Kudos for not giving up, though. The purpose of the guidance on sexuality and religion is to protect a legitimate right to privacy and act against the genuine problem of categorisation ultimately based on rumour. The same issues don't arise for ethnicity and gender, however (or, the cases where they might are not common enough to justify the application of a blanket rule). There seems to be a rationale here that (per Griswaldo, above) "Categorizing people by ethnicity, gender, etc. is only informational when the category is meaningful to the person's notable activities". That's just not true in the first place. It's just as informational as the year in which someone was born, their nationality, the fact that they are a living person, their alma mater etc etc. There doesn't seem to be any specific logic being put forward as to why ethnicity and gender should be special cases. --FormerIP (talk) 17:02, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

• Ethnicity isn't 'information' - it is opinion. AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:30, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Why is ethnicity "opinion"? Reliable sources are up to the task of supplying us with the ethnicity for a person. If the source isn't "reliable" then an argument can be made that indeed we do not know the person's ethnicity. Another situation is not inconceivable in which two sources contradict one another in this regard. In such a case an editorial decision might be reached on an article Talk page that we do not know with assuredness that we know the individual's ethnicity. But in a case where sources clearly indicate what a person's ethnicity is—is it still opinion? Editors at individual articles need the latitude to make decisions of this sort. They should not be hobbled by overly simplistic policy. Bus stop (talk) 02:52, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Bus Stop, do you not understand that ethnicity is a social construct? It is something that can only be 'true' in as much as people believe it to be so. This is all that needs to be said on the matter, and your endless going on about 'reliable sources' is of no consequence whatsoever - it is impossible to 'know' someone's ethnicity in any sense other than as an assertion that you know that someone says that the person is of this or that ethnicity: opinion. Frankly, I find your obsession with 'sources' for the plainly unsourcable tiresome and probably indicative of some deep insecurity about the issue - but this is of no relevance to the discussion. AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:11, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Why would ethnicity be "plainly unsourcable"? Sources all the time tell us about such aspects of a person's identity. Are you saying that under no circumstances can we rely on sources when they tell us what a person's ethnicity is? Bus stop (talk) 05:05, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

For the record, I simply must say that Category:2011 births is opinion, too. Not everybody agrees on what year it is now. Same thing for geography. Almost every method of categorization and labeling is based on a normalized opinion. Most are universally accepted in the Western world, of course. But still... All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 03:07, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, ethnicity is a "real" property just as much as all the other things we categorize people by. Is there really a clear physical divide between writers and non-writers, kings and non-kings, towns and non-towns? No, everything is fuzzy (like everything we write in articles is potentially fuzzy), but in determining what's true we defer to what reliable sources say (which is also a fuzzy matter, of course). --Kotniski (talk) 08:55, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Except not. Ethnicity is a construct with strong ideological pressumptions. What these are depends exactly on what is meant by ethnicity; in the worst of cases, the usage of "ethnicity" in Wikipedia comes across as racial classification or attempts at group conscription that are out of place in an encyclopaedia. Feketekave (talk) 11:43, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Feketekave—you say "Ethnicity is a construct with strong ideological presumptions." Sources determine ethnicity. We are not presumed to have expertise in these areas. Reliable sources tell us what a person's ethnicity might be, if applicable. And if reliable sources are found to be in contradiction with one another then we may have an unresolvable problem. But standard procedure should be to see what sources say and then to follow their lead. You say, "in the worst of cases, the usage of "ethnicity" in Wikipedia comes across as racial classification or attempts at group conscription that are out of place in an encyclopedia." I don't think we should be saying what is "out of place in an encyclopedia." Wikipedia is not censored. My perception is that many people are very interested in knowing the ethnicity of others. In many cases this is wholesome and innocuous. But I don't think we need to be imposing rules on the construction of this project with the purpose of creating a better world. Ethnicity is an attribute of identity. In biographies it is exceedingly common to find references to an individual's ethnicity, as well as to a variety of other personal attributes. I think editors should have free rein to reach decisions in this regard by discussion at article Talk pages or at the Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard. Bus stop (talk) 02:10, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

We go by what sources say on matters of fact. There is a basic philosophical difference here. What is at issue is not whether, say, a table is brown, but whether a certain kind of classification is meaningful and acceptable. There is so much leeway on this issue that there is barely any kind of fact, actual of false, here: rather, what is at issue is the exercise of the power of groups to conscript individuals or to classify other individuals according to blood.

Very many sources - and just about any serious, non-sectarian, general print encyclopaedia - will never indulge in such classification. Applying rules intended for matters of fact to this issue results in an enormous bias towards classification: it is enough for one source to classify, for whatever reason, and this will outweigh 99 sources that refuse to classify. Feketekave (talk) 09:16, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Incidentally, you are showing your colours clearly with your "wholesome" comment. Feketekave (talk) 09:18, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Feketekave—you say, "you are showing your colours clearly with your 'wholesome' comment." What are my "colours" and how am I showing those "colours" by my using the word "wholesome"? (My whole sentence was, "In many cases this is wholesome and innocuous.") Bus stop (talk) 14:18, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Ethnicity, Gender, day 3

• Oppose While editors should use discretion, and err on the side of caution in those rare instances where the correct category is disputed, they should not be prohibited from proving required to prove that, for example, a monarch's gender is "notable" before placing the ruler in either Category:Kings or Category:Queens. Identifying the person's gender or ethnicity is not an invasion of privacy. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:24, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
  1. I think you might have an extra not in there, otherwise you are agreeing with me! Nobody in this proposal is "prohibited from proving" notability. On the contrary, other guidelines already require it!!!
  2. While an "invasion of privacy" argument may seem easy with a Straw man like highly public officials named Kings and Queens, it certainly wouldn't apply to sportspersons, etc.
     --William Allen Simpson (talk) 14:46, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

You really think it's an invasion of privacy to identify a sportsperson as a man or a woman?!?--Kotniski (talk) 14:50, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

I repeat: as is required to document the result of many WP:CFD Gender decisions. Many of those are sportsperson categories.
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 16:38, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

You again seem to be confusing the question of whether categories should exist (which is what your link refers to) with that of whether to put an article in a given category (which is what this guideline refers to). Until we can get that distinction clear in all our minds, I don't see any point in further discussion. NickCT's comment below seems to sum up the "thinking" behind all the support for this proposal: "I'll support any policy wording that [makes] ethnic categorization more difficult". Never mind whether the resulting policy wording makes any logical sense. This still seems to me like a knee-jerk, improperly-thought-through reaction against what is widely perceived (quite reasonably) as excessive categorization and listing by ethnicity. We really need to ask the right questions, clearly, if we are to get meaningful answers.--Kotniski (talk) 17:14, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

• Support - for ethnicity Ethnicity is a highly subjective category. In current discourse, it depends partly on self-identification; when others - as often happens here - assign an ethnicity to an individual irrespective of this fact, many readers will reasonably assume that the individual identifies with the ethnicity in question. Moreover - ethnicity, if understood culturally, is a multiple and non-binary matter; if understood racially, it is a category that should most definitely not be used in Wikipedia.
  
  I would moreover be wary of having an instance or two of self-identification be taken in and of themselves as a sufficient criterion for ethnic labelling: the instances may be rhetorical, they may be a response to provocation, etc. Feketekave (talk) 11:43, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Are you suggesting that living African-American musicians cannot be included in the Category Category:African American musicians unless they publicly say "I am African American"? Or that living Jews cannot be included in List of Jewish Nobel laureates unless they say "I am Jewish"? That is not sensible, and - as a practical matter - will never be followed. Mind you, I have no objection to requiring that there be a Reliable Source that asserts the ethnicity, but the requirement for self-identification is not reasonable. --Noleander (talk) 15:01, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

I would suggest that both the category and (certainly) the list you mention have no place in an encyclopaedia. Feketekave (talk) 19:01, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, in fact, those two things already require self-identification via the guidelines. Certainly after death, we require a consensus of sources. But more importantly, self-identification rarely comes up, because it's not both notable and relevant.
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 16:31, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Hey Noleander, as someone who's conversed with you in the past and generally been impressed by your reasoning, I'm disappointed we fall on different sides of this issue. I think the basic problem here is that there exist editors on WP, who finds out that "Black Times Weekly" notes that John Doe's great granddad was african american, and so they want to apply Category:African American musicians to John Doe. We need some kind of policy that explicitly prevents this kind of practice. Could I beg you to reconsider your position? NickCT (talk) 16:35, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

NickCT: Thanks for the insight about the "Black Times Weekly" situation you are citing ... I've never really seen that situation before, but I can see how it might happen. My experiences have been pretty straightforward: the editor must supply an excellent reliable source that squarely puts the individual within the category (ethnicity, religion, etc). Cant there be some middle ground between "self identification" (which would eliminate much valuable and accurate info from the encyclopedia) and "any old source" (which is your Weekly example)? Every editing decision in WP comes down to judgement and consensus. I think the best middle-ground guideline is: "Ethnicity must be determined by reliable sources" and let editors work it out on the Talk pages. --Noleander (talk) 17:23, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

That example isn't a problem. A statement in a source that John Doe's granddad was African American isn't the same as a statement that John Doe is African American, so it doesn't cut it in the first place as far as categorisation goes. What if John Doe is quoted as saying: "My granddad was African American"? And why the need for a rule to address a non-problem when it produces the bizarre side-effect that even if Stevie Wonder's own mother is quoted in the back page of the Bible as saying that he is African American, the category has to go until he says it himself? --FormerIP (talk) 16:47, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

@FormerIP - Ok, so what if the source is an article on "notable black musicians", and it mentions John Doe's grand dad is African American in a way that might infer that John Doe himself could be considered African American. I promise you there are editors who would take this as sufficient grounds to categorize John Doe. re Stevie Wonder, I take your point. Really, I'm mostly worried about places where race/ethnicity is an open question. I think when there is a huge slew of RS noting an individual as being African American (as is probably the case with Wonder) with no RS arguing to the contrary, it's probably OK to categorize Wonder as such. At the moment though, I'm more concerned with over-zealous ethnic categorization, rather than over-cautious ethnic categorization; hence, I support the rewording. NickCT (talk) 17:06, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Well, if you think "when there is a huge slew of RS noting an individual as being African American ... with no RS arguing to the contrary, it's probably OK", then I think you ought to oppose this proposal. That's not to say there isn't an issue, just that this isn't the right solution. In cases where there are contradicting sources etc we already have policies (chiefly WP:V and WP:NPOV) that should work. If they are not working, I agree that's a problem. But a proposal that will prevent as much good editing as it will bad is not the answer.--FormerIP (talk) 17:29, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Well, the thing is, I'm more concerned that ambiguous cases are inappropriately labelled, than that obvious cases aren't labelled. If we can't have some really clear and consistently followed policy on ethnic categorization, than it's best to be as conservative as possible when categorizing; however, I would support some additional wording to the policy that says something like "when there is a huge slew of RS ... it's probably OK". As sort of a thought experiment, I've mocked something up here. NickCT (talk) 17:54, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, this is an excellent idea. It aims for a good middle ground between draconian exclusion and the wishy-washy inclusion. It attempts to codify what is really happening in the Categories & Lists, so it reflects a broader consensus. I'll take a stab at tweaking your sandbox wording (just revert if you want to manage it yourself). --Noleander (talk) 18:36, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Tweak away. The correct way to deal with this might be to have several interested just to brainstorm language. NickCT (talk) 18:59, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Okay, I've refined the text to make it as crystal-clear as possible. I removed some duplication, consolidated similar things, made explicit was what implicit, and added a few examples. Other editors are free to continue refining. The draft text is in Nicks sandbox here. --Noleander (talk) 19:40, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Self-identification may or may not be a valid criteria. But what about "relevance to notability"? Somebody could presumably repeatedly self-identify, yet still be removed from the category because somebody says it's not relevant to their career. That's the most inexplicable part of this proposal to me. And one no one seems to be talking about. NickCT, in your sandbox proposal, if "B" is true, why do you need "A"? All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 18:58, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Precisely - the text of the article should mention these matters only when relevant, and these lists and categories are extremely controversial in part because, by their own rationale, they run against any sensible policy of the kind that is being proposed. If these matters can be left to the text of the article, then a non-mention that X is supposedly Fooish, Fayish or X-Y will in no way imply that X is not Fooish, not Fayish or not X-Yian. Lists and especially categories force these complicated matters in one way or the other. Feketekave (talk) 19:06, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Yeah. I partially agree. We should include some kind of provision for explicit self-identification. NickCT (talk) 18:59, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

You're saying a provision that says explicit self-identification is enough to list them in the category, regardless of whether someone things it's relevant or not? All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 19:04, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

• Support - for ethnicity - I've made arguments on this topic in several forums, which I don't care to repeat. Needless to say, people ought to be categorized by ethnicity very cautiously. I'll support any policy wording that ethnic categorization more difficult. NickCT (talk) 16:28, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
• Strongly oppose regarding ethnicity as unencyclopedic, POV, and WP:CREEP regarding the relevance of personal identity as a valid categorization of people in the world. It's also very naive, as self identification is but one of a number of factors pertaining to individual identity, others including social construction, external perception, and legal classification. This would basically do away with a range of knowledge (ethnic studies, concerns of ancestry and heritage, etc) that has deep cultural and scholarly relevance. I would also dispute that we can legislate this kind of WP:CREEP from the top down on a page like this. There is obviously consensus on Wikipedia for inclusion of categories like Jewish-American X, or X of Irish descent, because those categories, lists, and articles are duly sourced and have long been a part of the encyclopedia, but just as obviously there are editors who have sought to do away with all of these, many based on the stated opinion, biased and offensive to some, that ethnicity doesn't mean anything. You are six-feet-two, or from Minnesota, or of Irish descent, whether or not you identify as such, and whether or not it is a significant part of your notability. If a person suffers from Parkinson's disease, we can put them in a category of sufferers from Parkinson's disease even though with few exceptions that's not what they're notable. From whence the opinion that being of Jewish descent is something to purge from the encyclopedia? I have not contemplated gender, and wonder what that arises from. - Wikidemon (talk) 21:19, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

• It's also very naive, as self identification is but one of a number of factors pertaining to individual identity, others including social construction, external perception, and legal classification. That's exactly why identifying people by ethnicity is problematic to begin with. There is no uniform understanding of ethnicity and when identity politics are involved the situation becomes even muddier. I'm not sure it's the support arguments that are naive on those grounds. Just the opposite.Griswaldo (talk) 21:45, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Griswaldo—you say "There is no uniform understanding of ethnicity…" Reliable sources, for our purposes, determine ethnicity. We need not have expertise in this area. We need not personally grasp all that there is to know about ethnicity. It is your assumption that there is no "uniform understanding of ethnicity" but in point of fact reliable sources use the term all the time. It is only rarely that sources are in conflict about what an individual's ethnicity might be. In those instances that sources adequately identify an ethnicity for a subject, I think that becomes usable information just as any other well-sourced information. Bus stop (talk) 02:25, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

If I humor your claim for a second can you tell me how often reliable sources say something like "John Doe is ethnically Lilliputian"? I can answer that for you, they rarely ever do. Instead they say, "John Doe is Lilliputian". For some so called ethnicities, this isn't a big problem. "African-American" fits that bill for instance, but for most it is highly problematic. If your source says "John Doe is Serbian," how do I know it doesn't just mean he is a citizen of the Republic of Serbia, which is a nationality and not a so called ethnicity? If your source says, "John Doe is Chinese," which of the many ethnic groups in China does that mean he belongs to? If your source says "John Doe is Jewish", does it mean he is "ethnically" Jewish even if he's descendant of converts? The truth is that sources rarely ever make emphatic categorizations of ethnicity, instead they ambiguously identify people with identifiers that may or may not really be ethnic (as opposed to national, religious, etc.). So yes we rely on sources, but if you really wanted to rely on sources that clearly identify ethnicities good luck.Griswaldo (talk) 03:03, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

We go by what reliable sources say. Don't forget the reader is exposed to the same sources that the editors are exposed to. The reader inhabits the same world that we editors inhabit. We share in common the available sources. The only difference is that the reader is presumed to be ignorant of the ethnicity of the person being researched, and we have to see to it that we determine what reliable sources have to say in regard to the ethnicity of the person that a biography is written about. If nothing serves to identify the person as regards ethnicity then obviously we report nothing for ethnicity. But the default position should not be that we report nothing as concerns ethnicity. An encyclopedia is a meeting of minds between reader and writer. The mediator between reader and writer (or editor) is the reliable source. Reliable sources are also writing for readers. Our job is to compile information. If our sources are indicating an ethnicity for a person then there is a good likelihood that will suffice for the reader's purposes. Yes, it is true that sometimes this is more clear than in other cases. But that is still not a reason to fail to report on an attribute of identity that is in demand by readers and that is being supplied by reliable sources. Bus stop (talk) 03:26, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia of all things, including social constructs like ethnicity, race, and gender identity. It's naive to think that self-identification is either a necessary or sufficient basis for determining ethnicity, even if we were in a position to decide that. But we aren't in that position, the sources are. Nor are we free to do away with ethnicity as a sourced attribute of people just because it's complicated. Ethnicity, or gender identity, is not necessarily a contentious or negative thing, which is where the POV comes in. Some people just don't like ethnicity or consider it valid, and some of the comments here reflect that. Other people derive great meaning from it, as fuzzy as the boundaries are, and would as I said be offended to be told that it does not matter. Yet others are chauvinistic. Some resent being categorized, and many people ignore it. Anyone who's watched the subject of identity politics knows that there are strong feelings on many sides of this. Deciding that ethnicity is not a valid way to categorize people, or that self-identification is the only valid means, is taking one side of a contentious issue. - Wikidemon (talk) 23:23, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Other people derive great meaning from it. So what? We are not a social network for people who are interested in reaffirming their own personal sentiments of national or ethnic belonging. As I said in my response to Bus Stop, the sources are rarely clear about whether or not an identification they make is properly understood as "ethnic" in the first place. A source might say, "John Doe is a German," but it will rarely if ever say, "John Doe is an ethnic German," or "John Doe's ethnicity is German." What does being a German mean? Depending on the context, "being German" might actually mean any number of things, but it does not unequivocally mean being of German "ethnicity," that's for damn sure. My own perspective has nothing to do with any strong feelings about ethnic identification. What I would like to do is to keep everyone's strong feelings about ethnicity out of the encyclopedia as much as possible. Now I don't think that we do this at the expense of losing quality information either. These types of identifications are only meaningful if the context in which they are being utilized is fully explained -- who is making the claim, what group are they referring to, what does it mean to them to be a member of that group, etc. The idea that a category label, or a list of people can ever provide this context is simply absurd. So no, we don't lose anything even remotely informative by being stricter with our ethnic categories. Cheers.Griswaldo (talk) 03:21, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Griswaldo—you say, "We are not a social network for people who are interested in reaffirming their own personal sentiments of national or ethnic belonging." Nor are we trying to be. We go by what sources say. Our aim as editors should be to adhere as closely to what sources say as possible. You say, "These types of identifications are only meaningful if the context in which they are being utilized is fully explained -- who is making the claim, what group are they referring to, what does it mean to them to be a member of that group, etc." That is not always 100% correct. We exercise judgement in matters of an editorial nature all the time. True—if we are confronted with a situation in which actual ethnicity is frustratingly unclear—we may have no alternative but to fail to address that dimension of a person's identity. But sources commonly try to address questions that concern an individual's relation to a group. This is exceedingly common in biographies. Biographers often try to flesh out the derivation of the individual from an originating group. If this is complex—then more than one category may be necessary. You are expressing your personal opinion when you say, "The idea that a category label, or a list of people can ever provide this context is simply absurd." In fact sometimes this is quite straightforward. But no matter what the case may be—if reliable sources can be found going to pains to explain what group of people this individual derives from or belongs to—that is usable information. The reader should be presumed to be interested in that information. And the reverse is operational as well: a reader may be able to only recall the ethnicity of a person whose name they are ignorant of or have forgotten. The purpose of editorship, or at least one of the purposes of editorship, is bringing together the pieces of information in a workable project. Categorizing by ethnicity facilitates research. Bus stop (talk) 03:54, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Ethnicity, Gender, day 4

• Support for ethnicity only. This is not something that is provable/falsifiable/scientific like gender. Donama (talk) 06:15, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

First off I have to point out that it seems obvious that Donama was summoned by William Allen Simpson and that was by using language that is not completely neutral: "Trying to remove an end-around of WP:EGRS that's being exploited."

In response to Donama—not everything has to be "provable" or "scientific". At WP:VERIFY we find: "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth; that is, whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true." Ethnicity need not be scientifically provable or true. Incidental sources as well as more focussed biographies address such questions, and that establishes fact regarding these issues. Bus stop (talk) 15:44, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose BLPCAT and EGRS have been the centre of substantial instruction creep particularly over the last 18months - previously on this page there has been discussion about removing/repairing the policy with little progress. Without resolving issues such as verifiable, relevant identification which is not "self-identified" as well as the fact that Lists and Infoboxes can contain caveats yet are included in a section that exists because categories cannot have caveats, we should not allow further instructions to creep in. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 06:52, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

• No consensus - Clearly there is no consensus here. Rather than wasting more time with alternating Support and Oppose !votes, the issues need to be broken down into smaller chunks. Specifically: (1) gender vs ethnicity: several editors above explained they would support one but not the other; and (2) category vs list: several editors indicated they would support one but not the other. For instance, a proposal to add Ethnicity (but not gender) for categories (not lists) would, perhaps, garner more support. --Noleander (talk) 05:09, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

In any case, if some consensus could be reached, there might be exceptions. Especially regarding people who are trying to hide some ethnic/gender characteristics that might be relevant to their activity that has been widely commented upon by WP:RS, especially should they be trying to cover up some questionable, bigoted, criminal, etc. behavior. CarolMooreDC (talk) 05:43, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

• Support for ethnicity. Gender is somewhat tricky when it comes to BLP and lists.--Therexbanner (talk) 14:43, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

• Support per nom. Middayexpress (talk) 19:36, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

You should disclose that you were blatantly canvassed by the proposer here. --Noleander (talk) 21:31, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, the dude spent the whole day canvassing. I know life isn't "fair", but someone should take this into consideration. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 04:57, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure if that qualifies as canvassing since I was part of a similar discussion on this same talk page over a related issue not too long ago. My two cents. Middayexpress (talk) 18:29, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

• Canvassing? - The originator of this proposal has invited several individuals to comment (see contrib history here for March 9th). The invitations explicitly state that the proposer is "trying to remove an end-around of WP:EGRS that's being exploited." If we are going to invite people, the invitations should be made to Projects, and the invitations should remain silent on the POV of the inviter. --Noleander (talk) 05:39, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

He's already canvassed quite a few times during this process. We can add Donama to the list of those successfully canvassed. Not too shabby. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 06:21, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

I've also been canvassed but openly my POV is opposed to the nomination so in my case at least it may be seen as neutral canvassing Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 06:32, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

I disagree with the canvassing accusation. Wikipedia rules allow individuals to be contacted if they have been involved in a particular discussion previously. (I have been contacted, as I have been discussing this particular issue a couple of months ago, and in several articles.) But, I do think that this applies only when people with differing opinions are approached equally. Otherwise, it could be considered canvassing.--Therexbanner (talk) 14:43, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

You seem to miss the point that the notification was not neutrally worded. That makes it seem a clear case of canvassing to me. --Avenue (talk) 16:10, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

The notifications that Noleander points to were indeed not neutrally worded, and as such would constitute a breach of the guidelines on such notifications. However, the earlier notifications All Hallow's Wraith points to were different, and in my view neutral. I received one of those earlier notifications myself. Now, that said I think people are making more of this than needs to be. If he contacted individuals who are opposed to his perspective, and did so with a non-neutral message, that non-neutral message is going to have an adverse effect on his desired outcome. The real problem with canvassing is not the tone of the message but who gets it. Its clear that he did not discriminate in that sense. Now someone warn him or take him to AN/I about this if you want more satisfaction, but please don't use it as a means to poison the well here. If you think the discussion is too tainted to continue then propose a way to fix it, but again don't just taint it more with talk about someone's conspiracy to manipulate the result. Thanks.Griswaldo (talk) 16:42, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

For what it is worth, I would not mind being contacted on the issue in the future. Feketekave (talk) 16:56, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Well, WP:CANVASS does say "However canvassing which is done with the intention of influencing the outcome of a discussion in a particular way is considered inappropriate". This would appear to have been the goal of the initial canvassing as well. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 22:09, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

• Comment. I was asked to comment here. The restriction on religion and sexual orientation exists because those are generally considered to be subjective personal matters which only the subject can truly designate. OTOH, gender and ethnicity can be determined objectively. There are good arguments that we should not routinely categorize people by their ethnicity and gender, but I think there are better arguments for using those categories where they help the reader find articles of interest, which is the purpose of categories.   Will Beback  talk  22:25, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Ethnicity, Gender, day 5

• Support for ethnicity, not gender. Someone was kind enough to inform me of this discussion on a topic about which I've had a strong interest for many years, and it's clear to me that this specific inconsistency needs to be explicitly addressed, particularly as there are on-going and often nearly intractable WP:BLP issues with the current wording. Jayjg ^(talk) 02:36, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

• support for ethnicity. I think gender requires special rules as it is generally non-controversial, except in certain cases where it becomes an important blp-issue, I think this needs to be thought through very thoroughly.·Maunus·ƛ· 22:17, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

• I have no idea why WAS thought I might have something to contribute to this discussion. I haven't participated on this talk page since June 2009, and it was on a topic entirely unrelated to ethnicity, gender, religion, or sexuality. Nor is this proposal explained well enough for a layman to be able to express any useful opinion on it. All I can say, as an uninvolved editor, is that something seems fishy in the way WAS is going about this. Powers ^T 13:26, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

  Because the rules require that everybody who participated in the relevant section is supposed to be notified, regardless of position. You do have to read the links (in the section above) to understand this topic. Sorry you weren't interested, but thanks for your help.
  --William Allen Simpson (talk) 21:43, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

  What relevant section is that? Powers ^T 03:52, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

  Several sections of Wikipedia talk:Categorization/Ethnicity, gender, religion and sexuality/Archive 5
  --William Allen Simpson (talk) 05:12, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

• As with LtPowers, I am confused as to why I received a notification on my talk page indicating an unacceptably high level of WP:Wikilawyering is occurring within this discussion. Based upon the comments I have read, I wonder if the problem is WP:Canvassing instead of Wikilawyering. --Allen3 ^talk 21:51, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

  Sorry that you are no longer interested in the topic. "Unfortunately this means cleaning up articles after the periodic appearance of someone obsessed with ethnicity/religion/nationality/blood type/anatomical measurements of porn stars feels the need to add (usually unsourced speculation about) such characteristics."
  --William Allen Simpson (talk) 05:12, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

• I was also just canvassed by WAS.. but anyway, I oppose his proposal. Ethnicity and gender are things reliable sources can decide, even when the subject hasn't "publically self-identified" with them. If reliable sources say Jason Derülo is of Haitian descent, then I think we should include it, regardless of whether or not he's said anything about it publically. After all, Charlie Sheen publically self-identified as being from Mars - should we change his ethnicity to "Martian"? (sorry, I couldn't resist. :D ) Mlm42 (talk) 21:53, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I misunderstood; I didn't realise we were talking about inclusion in categories. Mlm42 (talk) 21:58, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Upon further reflection, the problem seems to be whether articles like List of Haitian Americans (and therefore Category:American people of Haitian descent) meet the general notability guideline. They don't obviously satisfy this guideline.. and there doesn't seem to be consensus about how to resolve this. Mlm42 (talk) 01:04, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Despite leading the opposition to this nonsense, I wouldn't even necessarily vote to keep these categories. While we do have the category American people of Haitian descent, however, it should be accurate and not bound by inexplicable rules that someone made up and added to EGRS without the help of a single other editor. It's not even about self-identification. Derülo could repeatedly self-identify as Haitian-American, and apparently he could still be de-listed if someone thinks it's not "notable" to his career (and I would say it's not). All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 01:12, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

My point was that without a reliable source which talks about "American people of Haitian descent" as a group or set, then it fails the notability guideline. If no such source exists, then should we have a list / category on it? That's the fundamental question.. and the community appears to be divided on it (as mentioned in WP:N). Mlm42 (talk) 02:16, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Right, but that's to do with the existence of the category itself. Like I said, I wouldn't necessarily vote to keep these categories. I was saying that while they exist, why wouldn't Derülo be in it? And what does the BLP policy have to do with him being in it? If reliable sources agree that he's of Haitian descent, what possible harm or damage can it do to include him in it? All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 02:57, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

I see; yes, you're right. The proposal that started this thread is not the way this problem should be fixed. The problem is the existence of the lists/categories in the first place. Mlm42 (talk) 03:10, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

• Simpson spent the day canvassing. I will give him credit for being so persistent, I suppose. But this is ridiculous. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 00:51, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

  Not exactly "the day" — looks like about 15 minutes today (21:22–21:36). But perhaps you could explain your WP:STALKING my contributions, yet again!?!? Of course, bringing a topic to the attention of interested groups of editors is a requirement; see the quotation I've already posted several days ago. It's always best to do no more than a dozen at a time, as recommended by the policy process. PLEASE STOP asserting "bad faith", over and over and over again.
  --William Allen Simpson (talk) 05:12, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Following edits that are directly related to what we're doing here (like, oh, asking over 30 people to come over here using non-neutral language) is not considered wiki-stalking. How else are we supposed to know someone is canvassing? Guess? You asked 15 people to come over here just today using loaded language. Yes, that is relevant to this conversation, without question. BTW, speaking of your "quotation" from WP:CANVASS, maybe you should read the rest of the page. Like the parts about what's considered inappropriate: "Spamming: Posting an excessive number of messages to individual users, or to users with no significant connection to the topic at hand"; "Campaigning: Posting a notification of discussion that presents the topic in a non-neutral manner."; "Vote-stacking: Posting messages to users selected based on their known opinions (which may be made known by a userbox, user category, or prior statement"). All of the above is true of what you've been doing, so yes, it does need to be mentioned. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 07:47, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Ethnicity, Gender, day 6

• Support. Persons, living or dead, do not usually need to be categorized by ethnicity or gender, unless there's a clear reason to do so, but if there is such a clear reason, then it's fine. This is what WP:EGRS already says. The issue here is that WP:BLP's wording implies that EGRS only applies to dead people (and non-people), and BLP's wording trumps that of EGRS because the former is a policy and the latter a guideline. They should be in agreement, to avoid confusion and nonsense. And to avoid blathery week-long flamewars like this one. Existence of a category (and its survival at WP:CFD) is generally "a clear reason" for these purposes. There is no reason at all to create Category:Gay Afro-Canadian female pool players, but there is (for better or worse) a general consensus that Category:Female pool players is useful, and that anyone who qualifies for this category should have their article so categorized, or there would be no point to having the category. So, "oppose" !votes above that complain that categories won't be properly populated are silly. I.e., this entire "debate" is mostly not a rational discussion, but a bunch of miscommunication. No proposal to change actual practice or redefine common sense is before us, only a proposal to make two WP guidance documents agree with one another so that common sense is actually more likely to prevail. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 07:48, 12 March 2011 (UTC) @Mlm42: Yes, reliable sources can be used, carefully, to categorize someone in ways that the subject has not public[al]ly spoken about, or even to contradict the subject. You also beg the question, though. If Charlie Sheen does in fact self-identify as a Martian, and can be reliably sourced as doing so, this is possibly notable information for his article. Not that WP would say he is a Martian, but that he says he is a Martian. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 07:51, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
  • • WP:EGRS says this because William Allen Simpson added it to that page after no discussion with other parties whatsoever and no agreement to add it. I never said (and no one else did either) that because BLP didn't say it, it doesn't count. I said it doesn't count because there was no agreement to add it and only one person had brought it up/added it/reverted it back into the article. And you're here because he canvassed you over today. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 07:59, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

• Please don't make assumptions about my motivations and rationales. I'm here because I was notified of the discussion and it interested me. W.A.S.'s opinion on the matter pro or con had nothing to do with it. If you check my record at CfD and elsewhere, you'll find I've been plenty active in discussions about proper categorization of people, overcategorization, handling of living people, etc. While I agree that the tone of the notification I received was biased, that has nothing whatsoever to do with the merits of either side of the debate. If WP:EGRS's wording were disputed any any significant number of people, a discussion like this would be taking place at its talk page instead, and the entire thread here would be marked {{Resolved|1=Moot; language at WP:EGRS under consideration for inclusion in BLP is disputed at EGRS.}} — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 18:56, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

• Support for ethnicity. The gender issue should be argued separately, hopefully not by wikilawyers. I believe I have said this before... having oddball ethnicity categories is just a problem waiting to happen. For example, if a famous person's article were to be stealth-vandalized by including them into some oddball ethnic category, a type of electronic graffiti, they could place that person in the electronic ghetto of mind-numbing ethnic categorization. I know it happens all the time, especially when some celebrity makes a publicized racist comment, they often get put into every category imaginable, from Category:Primates and Category:Mental retardation to Category:Infectious diseases. Adding a BLP to an ethnic category requires no proof, no sources, and leads to both mistakes and vandalism. Let's prefer not to do that without good sources. The gender category would be less likely to offend, as a person's gender is rarely controversial and therefore it would seem unlikely to cause significant problems. (Any examples?) I like to saw logs! (talk) 08:19, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
  • For the record, Uruiamme was Canvassed using loaded language. P.S. - the requirement being added here isn't "good sources" (I hope we can all agree that's required already). It's self-identification, which isn't so bad, and "notability to career", which is inexplicable and impossible to define. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 08:23, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
    • For the record, haven't you over-worked that angle? I immediately thought I was indeed canvassed, (knee jerk) but I realized that I had indeed commented on this elsewhere and that we refer to it differently. (I needed to assume good faith.) Why do you take up other people's offenses for them? Are you a lawyer? Could I not have defended myself against canvassing without your cries of foul?
    • By good sources, I mean sources of notability to a person's career. Like a footballer of a particular ethnicity -- not related to a person's career but sports sources may spin it into a topic. My view is that a footballer's career is not going to be related to their ethnicity without some good sources. Their gender, well, I think is different. It would be very instructive to consider why Tiger Woods' ethnicity and religion are apparently notable, while Venus Williams' ethnicity and sex are categorized, but Scottie Pippen is notable for neither his race, his gender, nor religion. Now, certainly not all of those categories would be changed in this proposal, but I wanted to throw out some big names to see if anyone else can spot some potential problems and extrapolate them to rank-and-file BLP articles. I like to saw logs! (talk) 09:02, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
      • I don't think I "over-worked" it. Easily half the support votes here have come from people William Allen Simpson has personally canvassed, and with a loaded message, to boot. That's an issue. He canvassed 15 people just today. That's an issue. I don't really understand what you're saying re notability, and indeed, it seems everyone has their own take on what it means. That's part of the problem. Are you saying that if multiple sources have given someone's ethnicity coverage, it's notable enough for a category? How would that be decided? (and it doesn't quite say so in the proposal). Aside from that, how does one decide "multiple"? All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 10:13, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
        • I do not see the language used as notably non-neutral, and, at any rate, that would have been something that can work both ways. It is clear that Mr. Simpson contacted interested parties on both sides of the issue. For the record, I was not contacted. Let us stick to the issues. Feketekave (talk) 11:52, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Comment - All Hallow's Wraith please stop poisoning well. Enough is enough. If you think William Allen Simpson has acted improperly then take the matter to one of the many venues in which editor behavior is scrutinized. You have made your point here already over, and over, and over, and over. Few people seem to agree with it btw, but that's not the point. The point is that this venue is for discussing the proposal being made and not for complaining about canvassing. If you continue to do so I will have no choice but to assume bad faith -- that, ironically, you are trying to manipulate the result here through well poisoning. Cheers.Griswaldo (talk) 16:28, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Indeed. W.A.S. did obviously canvas, but that's an issue for his talk page or, if someone's going to have a real fit about it, for WP:ANI. Has nothing to do with the issues raised. A.H.W., please read WP:TE. I say that as someone who has made the mistake of over-repeating arguments in debates like this, so it's not a slap, just a "learn from my mistakes" word of advice. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 18:56, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Ethnicity, Gender, day 7

• Reminder: links to the excellent compilation of prior WP:CFD decisions about suitable categorization of:
  1. Ethnicity
  2. Gender

  The vast majority of these categories were deleted. Of those kept, some have a restriction on their notability, relevance, and self-identification. While these results were frequently codified in the category naming and EGRS pages, this discussion is about adding these two words (and only these words) to this policy, to better reflect prior decisions and conform to all other guidelines.
  --William Allen Simpson (talk) 04:06, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

  • I don't necessarily support the existence of some of these categories, but the fact that they exist and who is categorized in them are two very different issues. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 04:34, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
    • That's not a meaningful analysis. Suppose the majority of new articles about high school athletes are deleted for lack of notability. That doesn't mean the community has decided Wikipedia should not cover high school athletes. - Wikidemon (talk) 07:28, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
      • That's not a meaningful objection. This is not about articles, this is about categories/lists/templates/etc. When these categories have been agreed upon, the agreement almost always discusses or restricts the membership. Therefore, these are not separate issues.
        --William Allen Simpson (talk) 14:52, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
        • Again, not a meaningful conclusion. It's a pretty simple logical fallacy. Nearly all rocks are judged to be small. Therefore, we ignore boulders. The meaningful categories on notable subjects are rarely deleted, only when a closing admin legislates policy (the ones I've seen have been overturned on review) or when something sneaks by without anyone noticing. It's a straw man argument to pose things like Swedish-American knitters, point out that category or others like it have been deleted, and use as an argument for a categorical exclusion of ethnicity that people are supposedly promoting trivia. - Wikidemon (talk) 18:10, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
• Comment. I was asked to comment here, but it's a lot to read. Is the proposal saying that we may not describe or categorize someone as Welsh—even if she was born and raised in Wales to Welsh parents and has never lived anywhere else—unless she has actually said of herself: "I am Welsh"? SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 07:34, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

• 1. We'd already categorize your example by nationality in Wikipedia:Category names#Occupation, or Wikipedia:Category names#Residence as some variant of People from Wales, so I'm not sure that's a good example.
  2. However, for somebody who has never lived in Wales and is merely Welsh by descent: yes, plus an independent third party has said, "Her acting skills draw upon that Welsh background, as her best work has been playing Welsh characters." Otherwise, it's not relevant or notable — no better than categorizing by eye color or blood type.
  3. Moreover, that is not the question. A preponderance of guidelines already require notability, relevance, and self-identification (see #Relevancy for ethnicity, gender, religion and sexuality (WP:EGRS) above, and late November's Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons/Archive 30#BLPCAT change proposal to remove 'relevant to their notable activities or public life'.)
  4. We are only discussing whether to explicitly add two words ("ethnicity, gender,") to this policy to bring it into conformance with all other guidelines.
  5. So far, nobody has given any rationale for making BLP an exception to the general rule. Do you know any reason we would categorize/listify/etc. a living person as Welsh, then delete them from the category/list/etc. after they died?
     --William Allen Simpson (talk) 14:40, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

William Allen Simpson—you say, immediately above: "4. We are only discussing whether to explicitly add two words ("ethnicity, gender,") to this policy to bring it into conformance with all other guidelines"

And you also say, immediately above: "5. So far, nobody has given any rationale for making BLP an exception to the general rule. Do you know any reason we would categorize/listify/etc. a living person as Welsh, then delete them from the category/list/etc. after they died?"

But so far you have not given any reason why we should add "ethnicity" and "gender" to this policy.

You imply immediately above that the reason might be "to bring it into conformance with all other guidelines." And you also imply at the top of this discussion that the reason might be "To reduce quibbling…" Is that the extent of the reasons that you have for the change that you are proposing? Again, the only two reasons that I am aware of that you have given for your proposed change is:

1. "to bring it into conformance with all other guidelines"

and

2. "to reduce quibbling"

Have you offered any other reasons? Bus stop (talk) 16:40, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

• Hi William, the proposal says: "Categories regarding ethnicity, gender, religious beliefs, and sexual orientation should not be used unless the subject has publicly self-identified with the information in question ..." That means someone would have to say "I am Welsh," or similar, before we could categorize them as Welsh, no matter how obvious it was. Comparing gender and ethnicity to religious beliefs and sexual orientation doesn't quite work, because it's not obvious what a person's religion is unless they have self-identified in some way; the same is usually true of sexual orientation. But with ethnicity it's often obvious, and there would usually be no reason for a person to say "I am Welsh," or "I am a man." So we would sometimes end up not being allowed to state what was demonstrably true.

  Personally, I don't think this matters much, because we categorize living people too much anyway, so trying to reduce that is a good thing. But it would be so counter-intuitive not to be allowed to say of an English male writer that he was an English male writer that enforcement would be impossible, so I fear this is a proposal that wouldn't work in practice even if it's accepted on this page. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 17:25, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose. I definitely oppose this proposal when it comes to gender, and less strongly oppose it for ethnicity as well. Both are generally objective enough that we can assign them based on descriptions in reliable sources, without having to wait for the subject to identify themselves. (Obviously, if they have identified themselves as a particular ethnicity, that should take precedence over what the sources say.) As for the suggestion that 'our current approach means treating BLPs differently' - I don't see how. We should adopt exactly the same approach for biographies of dead people: self-identity should not be required in order to categorise them into a gender or ethnicity-based category. Robofish (talk) 16:20, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

  As an afterthought: wouldn't this proposal mean we would be unable to categorise someone as 'French', 'Russian', 'Japanese' or 'Korean', unless they have actually stated 'I am French/Russian/Japanese/Korean/whatever'? If that's right, it seems like a complete non-starter to me; since the vast majority of citizens of those countries are of those ethnicities, most of them probably don't see any need to explicitly state it. Robofish (talk) 17:02, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose, per reasons explained extensively in the section below. --Cyclopia^talk 19:27, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

The questions

Since there seems to be a lot of confusion, partly caused by the muddled wording of the policy and guidelines as they stand, and as they would still stand if this proposal were implemented, it might be more profitable to consider the relevant questions separately:

1. When is it desirable to have categories (of people) based on (a) gender (b) sexual orientation (c) ethnicity (d) religion?
2. When deciding whether to place a person's article into an existing category based on (a) gender (b) sexual orientation (c) ethnicity (d) religion, what additional criteria need to be considered over and above those that are normally considered when placing articles in categories? Do these extra criteria (if any) apply to all people or only to living people?

If we could get clear answers to these questions, it would be easy to word the relevant policies and guidelines to match.--Kotniski (talk) 17:35, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Oh, and the same questions with regard to lists in place of categories.--Kotniski (talk) 17:41, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

These are always, or almost always, intersection categories. We don't have lists or categories of females, lists of bisexuals, Christians, etc. We have lists or categories (say) of African-American poets, or gay German playwrights, etc. It is desirable to have a list if: (a) the subject is notable in its own right, e.g. there are scholarly works, major reportage, etc., on the topic of African-American poets; and (b) there is a sufficient but reasonably limited number such that we can construct a useful list with sensible inclusion criteria. The fact that ethnicity is a social construct is neither here nor there. So is being a poet, and almost every other piece of humanistic knowledge. Once we've decided that there should be such a list or category, the next question is the inclusion criteria. In general it's up to the editors on a given page to decide on the criteria, and it's dangerous to legislate that from above. One problem is that ethnicity is different than gener, or sexual orientation, and also one ethnicity has different bounds than another. One is Native American in a very different way than one can be Hispanic, or African American, or First Nations in Canada, and one can be all at the same time. But at a minimum, I would say that there has to be strong enough reliable sourcing from a single source that a person fits all the categories. If one source says a person is African-American, and another says he is a poet, I don't think we can necessarily call him an African-American poet. You would have to find a source that calls him that. The question of a list's notability is fairly rooted in policy; the inclusion criteria is more of a discretionary thing about how we want to build an encyclopedia. - Wikidemon (talk) 21:35, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Wikidemon: Look again: there is Lists of Christians and Lists of Jews and several other broad lists. They serve a valuable purpose in the encyclopedia: indexing and searching. --Noleander (talk) 21:49, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Okay, as super-lists and super-categories. If we have a list of Christians, and a list of writers, and a list of athletes, and a list of Norwegians, what's the big deal with intersections anyway? Is there a technical means where the reader can make their own intersections if they wish? If I want a list of all the Norwegian Christian writer-athletes, something that doesn't seem likely to stand around here, is there any kind of query I can run for that? I know people are talking about making Wikipedia content more database / semantic web friendly like that. That could make all this discussion moot. Just do away with all intersections in favor of a tool, and then header articles about the intersection as a subject. - Wikidemon (talk) 23:29, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

That's exactly right. And until WP has some decent database query capability, we have to rely on the tools we do have now: Lists and Categories. And we should endeavor to make them as supportive of indexing & searching as possible. --Noleander (talk) 04:09, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Excuse me - how on earth, and for what legitimate means, would you want to classify biographies - especially those of living people - in this fashion? It has already been made abundantly clear that there is no way to construct these categories here in a way that is scientifically valid. Feketekave (talk) 09:27, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

How on earth? Sources. I'm not sure what science has to do with anything here. There are plenty of subjects, most really, that fall outside the scope of science. - Wikidemon (talk) 14:10, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

I completely agree with Wikidemon's above response. Wikipedia follows the world of information—not the other way around. When sources say something is so—it is so. This project should not be about creating a new body of information that has been altered in ways that make it better fit our personal beliefs. Reliable sources dictate our content—not the other way around. WP:VERIFY says, "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth; that is, whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true." That does not mean that we are including untruth. It means we are including the real world—and yes—with all its blemishes. There is an alternative to this, but the alternative is worse. It is compiling the encyclopedia in accordance with "original research". I think standard policy frowns on "original research". Bus stop (talk) 14:36, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Again: this is not about factual information. This is about how living individuals are classified and used. Feketekave (talk) 16:51, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

- and this is why we already have other BLP guidelines stating what we may and may not do. Feketekave (talk) 17:14, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Feketekave—you say, "This is about how living individuals are classified and used." Can you please explain to me how individuals are being "used"?

On a similar note in a previous post you say: "There is so much leeway on this issue that there is barely any kind of fact, actual of false, here: rather, what is at issue is the exercise of the power of groups to conscript individuals or to classify other individuals according to blood." How are individuals being conscripted? I don't think that we are using individuals and I don't think that we are conscripting individuals. All that we are doing is following a lead set by reliable sources as concerns ethnicity, and we are doing so for the purposes of categorization.

I also find you saying at another post: "Ethnicity is a construct with strong ideological pressumptions. What these are depends exactly on what is meant by ethnicity; in the worst of cases, the usage of "ethnicity" in Wikipedia comes across as racial classification or attempts at group conscription that are out of place in an encyclopedia." Can you please tell me how categorization by ethnicity can be construed as "group conscription"? Bus stop (talk) 17:23, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

That ethnicity is not a "fact" is a perfectly reasonable personal viewpoint. It is an opinion, which is the problem. Purging ethnicity from the encyclopedia because one doesn't believe in ethnicity is an extreme exercise, and not one reflective of the current state of human knowledge. Most major American universities, for example, have ethnic studies departments, concentrations, scholarship, etc.[1][2][3][4][5] It's quite a stretch to say that otherwise reliable sources - scholars, newspapers, books, government records, and so on - become opinion pieces when they describe someone's ethnicity. - Wikidemon (talk) 02:48, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Pardon the sarcasm in advance ... because I'm sure those ethnic studies programs are training a slew of young scholars in the discipline of creating and maintaining lists of Armenian race car drivers. There is zero correspondence between the academic understanding of ethnicity and the nationalistic back patting going on when editors who self-identify as this or that decide to list everyone else who is notable and can possibly also be called this or that. Sorry, but I find this argument bordering on offensive to all the scholars who take ethnic studies seriously. Cheers.Griswaldo (talk) 03:29, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Griswaldo—you refer to "…the nationalistic back patting going on when editors who self-identify as this or that decide to list everyone else who is notable and can possibly also be called this or that." Can you give an example of this? Bus stop (talk) 05:33, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Sure, but it goes beyond "nationalism" strictly speaking. I meant the comment more generally to include other group identities like ethnic and religious ones, for instance. I used only "nationalistic" out of convenience. Here are some recent prominent examples: Andre Geim and List of Jewish Nobel laureates (as well as the relevant category) and Ed Miliband and List of atheists in politics and law (as well as the relevant category). Cheers.Griswaldo (talk) 13:03, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Griswaldo—how do you see "nationalistic back patting" manifesting itself in the examples that you have given? You mentioned: "Andre Geim and List of Jewish Nobel laureates (as well as the relevant category) and Ed Miliband and List of atheists in politics and law (as well as the relevant category)." Can you please tell me what would lead you to believe that "nationalistic back patting" was taking place? Bus stop (talk) 14:13, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

In those cases we're talking about ethnic and religious back patting, though Geim also had Category:Russian Nobel laureates (which is nationalistic) slapped on the entry as well before I removed it. I'm not sure what you don't understand about these examples? Individuals who identify with the groups in question argued and even edit warred to keep Geim labeled as a member of their group despite rather obviously not meeting our criteria. Why? Because he's a Nobel laureate and people want the pride of that fact associated with their group. That's what I mean by "back patting". "Good job guys, another one of us is awesome!" The same issue was going on with Miliband and his supposed "atheism". These two examples were also seminal in getting the wider discussion going about this aspect of our BLP policy. Cheers.Griswaldo (talk) 15:40, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

No one here has suggested that we erase "ethnicity" from the encyclopedia altogether. Not in the least. Sorry, but that's just plainly inaccurate.Griswaldo (talk) 03:31, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

I do find the effort to get rid of ethnicity on Wikipedia borderline offensive. That's the clear subtext, and often the overt text - it gets stated again and again in these arguments that ethnicity is nonsense so we shouldn't cover it even though the sources do. The relation between scholarly conceptions of ethnicity and including ethnicity in the encyclopedia is precisely the relation between scholarly conceptions of any topic and including it in the encyclopedia. It's a part of the corpus of human thought, it gets written about, and we compile it for the encyclopedia. If you want to dismiss the editors who care about this as engaging in nationalistic back-slapping, well, maybe that's where the sarcasm begins. I have no opinion or knowledge about Armenian race car drivers, but recent weeks have seen failed campaigns to get rid of Jewish-American entertainers, Irish Americans in sports, Italian-American architects, and plenty of other significant topics. This has been going on for months, perhaps years. There's an ongoing campaign to change the nature of Wikipedia's coverage of ethnicity. - Wikidemon (talk) 03:53, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Again I don't see any arguments in this discussion about removing ethnicity from the encyclopedia. Scholars don't compose lists of Swedish-American knitting champions, by the way. I don't think anyone has a problem with well sourced entries on meaningful intersections that have significant coverage in reliable sources, and yes I mean even those dealing with ethnicity. That's simply not the same thing however, as claiming that any intersection with ethnicity in it is inherently meaningful. Especially when it is sourced via sources that have no inherent expertise in ethnic studies (newspapers, etc.). My point is that you're trivializing the work done on ethnicity in the academy by suggesting that these things are comparable. The sources used to categorize people by ethnicity in the encyclopedia are going to be 99% non-expert sources. Given that fact alone, I wonder why there is such an uproar over being more careful when it comes to living people. Cheers.Griswaldo (talk) 05:07, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Last time I checked newspapers were reliable sources. Some people do have trouble with meaningful intersections. I don't see anyone here advocating that all ethnicity intersections are worthy, or for Swedish-American knitters in particular (although you never know what may receive serious coverage). What I do see on this page is advocacy that ethnic categories should be removed despite the sourcing, and some opinionated statements on the nature of ethnicity. I had mentioned American Jewish entertainers, Irish-Americans in sports, and Italian-American architects, all amply sourced. Scholars generally don't compose lists of any sort, but they do write on various topics, ethnicity included. The scholarship establishes the noteworthiness of the subject, the news accounts establish the verifiability of the list items. Am I trivializing the scholarship of jazz music by saying we can use newspapers to source who is a jazz violinist? - Wikidemon (talk) 05:53, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

The scholarship establishes the noteworthiness of the subject, but it does not establish the noteworthiness of the list of X people based on labels thrown around in a popular news media. Your argument suggests a connection there that simply does not exist. Regarding jazz violinists, I have no expectation that the category is populated in a manner that respects the scholarly understandings of jazz. And why would I? Regarding ethnicity, I don't have that expectation either, but that is exactly the point. That's why we need stricter criteria for things like ethnicity, religion, and sexual preference, because unlike being called a jazz violinist, being categorized as, for example, Croatian, an atheist or a homosexual can be quite contentious, even at times, dangerous. I should also add that the music example is particularly poor here, since the popular media industry involved in labeling musicians has much more expertise in the subject than the general news media has on ethnicity. But I don't want to sidetrack the main point. These types of lists, when they exist, will always be populated in a way that has no direct connection to the scholarship not he subject, and that is absolutely to be expected. Given that fact, we need to figure out how to deal with them most appropriately, and to do so with each specific context in mind. Cheers.Griswaldo (talk) 12:54, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

You can't call someone a Jew because being Jewish is more contentious than being a saxophonist? That in itself is a contentious position, and reflects the POV I am concerned about - some people are uncomfortable about ethnicity so they want to deny it. Populating a list of Jewish American entertainers because there is a nexus between Jews in America and being an entertainer is no different than populating a list of anything else. You establish through the sources that the topic is worthy, you find sourceable examples, and you list the examples. Incidentally, I cannot grant that scholars are a better source than journalists at noting a person's ethnicity. - Wikidemon (talk) 07:37, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Who said you can't call someone Jewish? Did I miss something? Here I thought that we were discussing a stricter policy when it comes to categorizing someone as X ethnicity and not a proposal to do away with all ethnic labels across the project. That you constantly require a straw man to argue against is rather telling here, and indicative of why its pointless for me to continue. You're not disagreeing with your interlocutors, you're disagreeing with an caricature of their arguments. Yes Wikidemon, it is a fact that it is more contentious to call someone a Jew (on average) than it is to call someone a saxophonist. It follows that we should be more cautious when we do so -- and that is what is actually being proposed here. I'm sorry that I can't live up the black and white farce of an argument you are trying to pin on me, but I'm just more comfortable with arguments I actually believe in than those you want to put in my mouth. Cheers.Griswaldo (talk) 20:22, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Exactly. Ethnicity as a social construct is a valid topic for academic study. To study it, you need to recognise what it is - a social construct. The fact that some editors cannot progress beyond their own obsession with vacuous ethno-tagging in order to actually understand the phenomenon is no reason to surrender to their obsessions. I 'believe' in ethnicity in the sense that I believe (actually, I know) that it is a typical part of social discourse in many (if not most) societies. I do however believe (actually, again, I know) that there is nothing 'real' to ethnicity beyond the constructs of those who consider it significant. Furthermore, all the evidence suggests that even in the minds of those who see it as 'real', it is a fluid, amorphous and contextual concept, rather than a fixed 'attribute'. Or to put it another way, an opinion. Nobody is suggesting that ethnicity as a subject shouldn't be discussed on Wikipedia - all that is required is that we discuss it for what it is, not as some form of barcode. AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:53, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

AndyTheGrump—reliable sources determine what material gets included in Wikipedia. I find at WP:SOURCE that "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth; that is, whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true." You say, "I do however believe (actually, again, I know) that there is nothing 'real' to ethnicity beyond the constructs of those who consider it significant." If reliable sources support unequivocally an ethnicity for a person, then that ethnicity becomes "real", for our purposes. You may feel strongly that "…there is nothing 'real' to ethnicity beyond the constructs of those who consider it significant" but I don't think the encyclopedia has to follow your beliefs. Wikipedia's principles concern themselves with the presenting in a neutral way what sources say—on all topics. When a reliable source supports an ethnicity for an individual that is mentioned in an article, that ethnic identity becomes potentially usable material for the project. Bus stop (talk) 05:41, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Bus Stop, I am no longer interested in debating with you what you think is 'real' or reliable'. If you wish to ignore the research of sociology, anthropology, psychology, historiography, and almost every other relevant discipline of academic research, and assert that ethnicity has a 'reality' beyond being a social construct, there is little point in arguing. You are wrong. Fact. AndyTheGrump (talk) 05:53, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

AndyTheGrump—I am not "assert[ing] that ethnicity has a 'reality' beyond being a social construct". I have not said that. Reliable sources determine, for the purposes of the Wikipedia project, what a person's ethnicity is, as well as if indeed they have an ethnicity at all. We go by sources. You should not think that because you believe that ethnicity is merely a social construct that it is not material that is reportable in an encyclopedia. Sources determine inclusion/exclusion. Editorial consensus does too. This is standard operating procedure—applicable to ethnicity as to myriad other types of information. Bus stop (talk) 06:22, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Social constructs aren't encyclopedic subjects? That would mean deleting 99% of the encyclopedia. - Wikidemon (talk) 05:57, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

So if you don't approve of a topic, the editors who do are obsessing? I think I understand Jewishness as well as the next guy, and it is a very real thing, thank you. The notion that qualities that are fluid and multivariate are not attributes seems a little simplistic, epistemologically. Human knowledge is not a relational database. - Wikidemon (talk) 04:03, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

"Human knowledge is not a relational database". Precisely. So why should we pretend it is, and have a Boolean 'Jew'/'not Jew' field in our Wikipedia BLPs? Of course 'Jewishness is' real (as is Irishness', or 'South Londoner' or...), but we need to recognise the sense in which it is real, and the limitations this puts on the extent to which it has meaning. And no, I've seen nobody object to ethnicity as a topic. What is being objected to is the arbitrary way it is applied by POV-pushing editors and ethnic train-spotters. AndyTheGrump (talk) 04:13, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

AndyTheGrump—you say, "…we need to recognise the sense in which it is real, and the limitations this puts on the extent to which it has meaning." No, we do not. Sources do that for us. We do not have to "recognise the sense in which it is real". Sources, if they are reliable and authoritative and reputable, determine whether something is real or not. You are perfectly justified in wondering if an ethnic identity "has meaning." But your doubts should not keep sourced material out of an article. Bus stop (talk) 05:44, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Bus Stop, will you please stop spamming this thread with repeated postings of exactly the same simplistic argument - other contributors have moved beyond this, and are actually trying to discuss the issue in a constructive manner. Your complete refusal to answer the point that others make, and endless repetition of the words 'reliable sources' suggests to me that your only objective is to side-track rational debate. Wikipedia has never been a repository for random 'facts' dragged from sources, reliable or otherwise. It is an encyclopaedia, and as such has always relied on editorial judgement regarding the relevance of sourced data. Furthermore, where such data is frequently ambiguous, as 'ethnicity' is, it has long been the policy to avoid stating as fact things which are better attributed to the words of those claiming them, when such claims are included at all. If you think that Wikiopedia should change its policy in this regard, and simply include any 'fact' found in any 'reliable source' with no discussion as to reliability, meaning, or relevance, you are arguing in the wrong place. If you have nothing constructive to add to this discussion I suggest you find some other forum or topic instead. AndyTheGrump (talk) 14:27, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

AndyTheGrump—I agree with you that "editorial judgement" is called for. I thought I made myself clear that only when sources are of good quality and make their assertions without ambiguity do we follow their lead. We would also exercise a great deal of caution if various sources contradicted one another. Just as anything can be included in Wikipedia, so can anything be excluded. The sort of material we are discussing is only potential material for inclusion. "Editorial judgement" is always available as a counterbalance to those attempting to add junk to biographies: even if an ethnic attribute is reliably sourced, an editorial decision can be made to leave it out. The place for making this sort of decision should be the article Talk page. Editors at articles are more than capable of weighing the applicable factors in order to reach conservative decisions, and we also have the Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard which is well-used and seems entirely capable of resolving these sorts of questions on a case-by-case basis while bringing to bear the input of a large number of editors. In my opinion we should build flexibility into our processes. I'm opposed to limiting the options available to editors. I'm also opposed to limiting the number of editors involved in day-to-day decisions.

I don't take the negative view that there is a great deal of self-promotion going on here vis-a-vis "tagging" notable individuals on the basis of shared-membership in an ethnic group. In one post you have said, "…that some editors cannot progress beyond their own obsession with vacuous ethno-tagging in order to actually understand the phenomenon is no reason to surrender to their obsessions". And in a subsequent post you have said, "What is being objected to is the arbitrary way it is applied by POV-pushing editors and ethnic train-spotters."

I don't think what you are describing is widely practiced. And I am not sure that even if it is practiced that it is necessarily all that harmful. The success of Wikipedia I think has something to do with the enormous number of editors providing input to it. That implies that any ethnic group that may be represented by editors is small in relation to all editors. In short I think you are "making a mountain out of a molehill" and you are in support of a policy change that will further reduce the autonomy of the multitudinous editors that are probably a key ingredient in this project's success. I'm opposed to limiting the flexibility of editors and I am opposed to limiting the number of editors involved in these decision-making processes. Bus stop (talk) 17:24, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Question: What does the issue of ethnicity being a social construct have to do with BLPs? BLP exists for a reason. That reason is not to push through any policy or sub-policy you like simply because you can't think of another place to put it. If you don't like the ethnicity categories and want to curb them, this desire and opinion has nothing to do with why BLP was created. At least not in the way it's being argued by AndyTheGrump and a few of the others. It's the equivalent of putting in what should and should not be in the opening paragraph of an article into the BLP rules instead of into WP:MOSBIO - could be useful or not useful, but totally unrelated to what this page is here for. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 04:46, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

All Hallow's Wraith makes a good point.

Why are some of you arguing about "nationalistic back patting", and "ethno-tagging", and "POV-pushing editors and ethnic train-spotters"?

At WP:BLP I read the page in a nutshell: "Material about living persons must be written with the greatest care and attention to verifiability, neutrality, and avoiding original research."

I agree with All Hallow's Wraith that the complaints that some of you are making are out of place at WP:BLP. Bus stop (talk) 05:18, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

We aren't 'arguing'. We are pointing out that ethnic categorisation is neither 'verifiable', or 'neutral' in any fundamentally objective sense, and has no place in a neutral encyclopaedia, unless given proper context - which WP lists and categories singularly fail to do. Hence the debate. AndyTheGrump (talk) 05:28, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Excellently put. Feketekave (talk) 09:54, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Really? So I see that Barack Obama is listed in Category:African American lawyers. Do you actually believe that Obama's membership in the ethnic group "African-American"—widely reported, relevant to his notability, self-identified, etc.—is "unverifiable" and "non-neutral"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:12, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

What we have here is plainly a case of confusion between "verifiability as the standard of truth" as a policy and as some sort of guiding principle. If taken as a principle, it is clear that it does not apply here; the statements we are discussing are not statements of fact, and it is extremely important not to use the principle to magically make them into statements of fact. There are, needless to say, other principles that are at least as important and do apply here: namely, scholarly seriousness and, of course, respect for the autonomy of living individuals. (This last point is why this discussion arose as a discussion of BLP guidelines.)

It is my humble opinion that, if taken as a policy, verifiability does not apply here either: on top of the arguments given before, there is also a slew of practical issues (a source that classifies a living individual in a simplistic way will defeat 99 sources that do not do so, simply because a mention defeats absence). Nevertheless, for the sake of clarity, we need explicit guidelines that overrides a naive or willful understanding of verifiability as a policy. BLP already provides some; we are arguing for an additional guideline that is at least as justified as all the other ones. Feketekave (talk) 09:52, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

My answers to the questions brought by Kotniski are:

1. Whenever there is an agreement of sources on the issue.
2. No other criteria; perhaps defaulting to not cataloguing if sources indicate a controversy but nothing more.

Wikipedia is based around WP:V and around WP:RS. If verifiable reliable sources agree on ethnicity, religion or whatever else, we have not only the right, but the duty towards our readers to properly catalogue such information to help our readers find information. To cut it short:

• Ethnicity may be a social construct (this is an opinion, not a fact: as a molecular biologist, I can say that genetics would beg to -partially- differ), but this is entirely irrelevant. "Singer", "poet" or "politician" are social constructs as well. A socially constructed belonging is no less real than a material one, given that society and its network of constructs is a very real thing.
• In any case, we follow sources, we do not bend WP to our own philosophical views. So, if sources regularly use, even if only for the sake of brevity, ethnicity as a meaningful category (and they do), then we follow that, because it means it is considered a meaningful way to categorize the subject by sources.
• If there is a substantial controversy or disagreement between sources, I agree that a clear-cut categorization cannot be made, and so we should refrain from use such labels. This I agree, to respect WP:NPOV. Otherwise, we're creating a problem where there is none. --Cyclopia^talk 12:15, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Perfect. Can that be our policy please? --FormerIP (talk) 12:21, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

No. For one thing, we have the right to select how to present our material; this is why we have policies to begin with. For another, "ethnicity" (a relatively recent invention as a popular concept, as somebody else pointed out) is a subjective construct in a much deeper sense than, say, "politician" - and it is so in ways that are related to the basic issues underlying BLP policy. People choose to be politicians. As for the networks (plural!) of belonging that people construct for themselves, the networks that are built for them by others, and what third parties project onto them, they are three entirely different things. The drive to ethnicise English Wikipedia (compare to fr.wikipedia.org or de.wikipedia.org!) is extremely unlikely to result from some sort of pure fundamentalism regarding the way that Wikipedia should reflect other material; rather, it is an attempt in itself to gain a space for the construction of ethnicity. (I was about to type "ethnic nationalism", but that may be the case only for a part of all participants considering one side of the issue.)

We can and should have articles on ethnicity, just like we do and should have articles on theology. Shall we categorise all biographical subjects into Saved and Damned whenever any source deemed to be reliable gives information towards the same? Feketekave (talk) 12:31, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

• we have the right to select how to present our material : Yes, of course. This doesn't mean that, as serious reliable editors, we should take our philosophical/political/whatever whims and happily use them to remove or add whatever we enjoy. As a matter of principle and as a matter of fact, we follow WP:NPOV, WP:V and WP:RS. Even WP:BLP after all doesn't do anything different than calling to apply slightly stricter standards and being a bit more cautious on these principles. We may have a right to decide (not select) how to present stuff, but we shouldn't have the right to ignore what sources say due to our philosophical inclinations. This would fly in the face of NPOV for a start. We may not like that sources talk about ethnicity of people, but they do with impressive regularity, and we should follow them.
• ethnicity" [...] is a subjective construct in a much deeper sense than, say, "politician" - To be fair, it's the opposite. I can analyze your mitochondrial DNA and guess, with a reasonable confidence, if your mother is of relatively recent African or European or Native American descendence, for example. See haplogroup for discussion. I am fully aware this doesn't fulfill the meaning of "ethnicity" as it is understood culturally, but there is an objective basis to at least part of it: it's in your DNA, in your very molecules building your body here and now. Now, of course I am aware that most sources don't do DNA testing of their subjects and merely report descendence and/or apparent ethnicity, and are fine with that. But again: if they do so (and they do), the same we do.

Note: I am fine with putting something like "People considered to be X" rather than a simple "People of ethnicity X", to make clear that it's a classification that sources do and that may or may be not 100% objective. Yet if sources consider people to be X (whatever X is), then why should we self-censor to avoid reporting that?

• As for the networks (plural!) of belonging that people construct for themselves, the networks that are built for them by others, and what third parties project onto them, they are three entirely different things. : Different why, in what meaning, and how is this relevant?
• rather, it is an attempt in itself to gain a space for the construction of ethnicity. : This is a very serious WP:AGF violation and I ask you to retract. I don't care if it's ethnicity, religion or "People who are considered to like Kermit the Frog". I personally care about a thorough encyclopedia and I care about not letting our personal philosophical opinions remove what other readers could consider useful or otherwise interesting reliably sourced information (or a useful/interesting criterion to search within WP). We should remember we're doing this for the readers. It's not a game that we play to be politically correct: it's a service we provide to reorganize, sum up and put information in the most useful and complete way to the readership.
• Shall we categorise all biographical subjects into Saved and Damned whenever any source deemed to be reliable gives information towards the same? : I am not aware of it being used as a meaningful categorization by many sources but in case it is so, why not? --Cyclopia^talk 17:02, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

• Support. I see no reason to have such categories. --Bookworm857158367 (talk) 15:14, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Bias Categories and BLPs

FYI, per Recent Categories for discussion, individuals and organizations should no longer be added to the various "bias" categories (racism, sexism, homophobia, antisemitism, anti-Islam sentiment, etc. I don't know if anybody will be running a bot through such lists to remove BLPs and organizations or if it will happen haphazardly as people feel motivated. The admin who made the decision did put a template on the top of the talk page of each category. I also don’t know if this point needs to be added to the category section of this article. CarolMooreDC (talk) 05:48, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Carol: you ask "if this point [bias] needs to be added to the category section of this article". I was thinking the same thing. The bias categories (I would call them bigotry categories) arguably fall under the WP:BLPCAT policy already, because it covers "categories that suggest a person has a poor reputation (see false light)." In fact, user NickCT started a draft update to WP:BLPCAT at User:NickCT/sandbox. With Nick's permission, I made some modifications, and you'll see I explicitly listed the bias/bigotry categories as examples of the "poor reputation" policy. (at least, that is how it is until someone else modifies it :-) --Noleander (talk) 06:15, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

BLP1E: is it really part of policy?

I've been involved in a couple of AfD's and similar discussions where this section has been invoked and it isn't proving particularly convincing. Policy is usually more or less the established consensus of the community. If the consensus is that "famous for a day" human interest stories where there are abundant sources (i.e. WP:V is satisfied) even when the person's long term notability is dubious or depends on what happens next should, per the AFD, have an article in spite of WP:BLP1E, should we re-evaluate the presence of that section in this policy? BLP is a little more complicated in that more than the community's consensus goes into writing policy, of course, but this appears to be a WP:N issue rather than the types of issues that make BLPs have special interest. At the very least, this section needs to be rewritten so that it isn't negated on a regular basis. SDY (talk) 23:45, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

If BLP1E is negated on a regular basis then that sounds like there is an issue (of course, it is fine for editors to make rational decisions that it doesn't apply). Are you able to provide any examples? --FormerIP (talk) 00:13, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Well, the one I'm stuck with now is WP:Articles for deletion/Daniel Hernandez Jr., which appears to be a fairly obvious case of "one eventism" but the deletion discussions have been anything but obvious. There are a couple of others referenced in that discussion (e.g. Sullenberger, can't remember his whole name, but that airline pilot with the "successful" crash), Nadya Suleman (aka "Octomom" which has two articles), and there are likely others. The reality is that in this age of 24-hour news, finding reliable sources on these people isn't really all that hard when they take their fifteen minutes of fame before disappearing into obscurity again. SDY (talk) 12:36, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, SDY, but I don't think those examples illustrate your point very well. Daniel Hernandez Jr is a current AfD, and looks to be leaning towards being merged. Chesley Sullenberger appears to have independent notability as an author and air safety expert (I know nothing about him, but if he does then he does). I can't for the life of me see why we need separate articles for Nadya Suleman and Suleman octuplets, but I'm not sure this is a great example of a breach of BLP1E. Per the wording of the guideline, I'd say that Suleman's involvement in her own pregnancy is "substantial and well-documented". Should an article for Sixth pregnancy of Nadya Suleman be created instead?

Overall, it looks to me that these are examples of borderline cases where you have an opinion, rather than evidence of widespread disregard for the guideline. --FormerIP (talk) 13:46, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

I don't dispute that these are cases where I have an opinion (well, other than Sullenberger, which I was never invovled with). The Hernandez case shows, though, that for policy BLP1E isn't very authoritative in that it was no less obvious a 1E case at the first AFD and yet the first AFD closed as no consensus. Given the very loose nature of 1E, wouldn't it be better classified as a guideline? SDY (talk) 14:33, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

IMO, the first AfD was wrongly decided, but that's going to happen from time to time and it isn't evidence of a crisis. I don't think 1E is loose. It does sometimes go against what people instinctively feel, but the same can be said for any policy and it just shows why we need written rules, at the end of the day. --FormerIP (talk) 14:55, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

The minority report

Here it is: The whole idea of WP's BLP is intrinsically evil, from the get-go. And yes, that includes BLPs of George W. Bush and Barach Obama, on down to the BLP of your local soccer/football goalie. The idea of assisting in making any site in the internet a central repository about personal information about living people, with strangers deciding what goes into their information "file" or not, is a very bad idea. The fact that other sites (newspapers, blogs, what-have-you) do some of this, just amounts to the argument that OTHEREVILEXISTS, and thus it's okay for us to be evil too, because standards are falling everywhere. Wrong. The fact that other websites do evil doesn't mean WP needs to help. If WP's 400,000 BLPs had been crowd-source compiled on-line by a site that ended with ".gov," everybody would be having a fit, right now. Instead, we permit it on WP-- in fact it drives some of the interest in WP, because BLP is a constant 12% of WP's articles (a fact that never seems to change much).

This whole sub-categorization mess with ethnicity and gender is a side-effect of a larger issue that everybody refuses to address.

WHY do they refuse to address it? Because BLP is gossip, and it's fun. The defects of dead people don't generate much drama. And most of the people who participate on WP don't think it will ever apply to them, because they don't even have a BLP. Indeed, many are anonymous, because they prize their privacy-- how hypocritical is that? They tell themselves lies, such as all BLP victims are public figures who chose to promote themselves, even when that's not true (or is undecidable), and that they DESERVE to have BLPs (wrong, nobody deserves a BLP unless possibly the matter is decided by judge and jury and appeal). People who control Wikipedia, and who should know better, divert the issue by simply controlling their own BLPs, and by controlling their friends and lovers' BLPs, or having them deleted entirely (you'll never see a BLP of WMF's criminal COO who went to prison, since she embarasses WMF). So the board of WMF and those who make money from it, have no personal reason to care.

In case some of you have forgotten how to tell that something is immoral, unethical, or (that unpopular word) evil, and have no help from your rabbi or pastor or priest or parents, allow me to remind you of something that you know already, unless you're a sociopath. Don't do anything to somebody else unwillingly, that you'd be unhappy if they did to YOU. That's called the "golden rule" for a reason, because it serves for all ethical systems, in all capacities. There is no WP:GOLDENRULE policy, and I think there's a reason for that, also. WP couldn't abide it. Even though WP:GOLDENRULE should be the ONE pillar that controls the other five. Actually, as you see by its fundamental hypocrisy when it comes to BLPs, Wikpedia is seriously morally deficient.

I realize that these words have a WP:SNOWBALL's chance of making any difference in the present debate. But they still need saying. Many of you reading are uncomfortably aware that I'm right, but still you do nothing.

Well, shame on you. SBHarris 18:57, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

WP:NOTAFORUM. I'm 100% for having a well defined BLP policy that is restrictive enough to protect living people, hence my support of the proposal above, but what exactly are you proposing? NO BLPs on Wikipedia ever again? If you really want to start and RFC or other community discussion about that be my guest, but I'm not sure ranting like this is the solution, especially not when you are insinuating that people who don't share your ethical principles would have to be sociopaths. Cheers.Griswaldo (talk) 19:08, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

It's as likely to be a start to the solution as anything else. All change starts from somebody in the streets of Tunisia, or in Boston Harbor, saying: "This is wrong!" NOTAFORUM simply translates to "somebody said something on a TALK page, and WP:IDONTLIKEIT." Also, NOTAFORUM doesn't apply to advocating for or against WP's own policies; it's meant against using WP as a soapbox about the world. Yes, people who don't get the Golden Rule are sociopaths. How you reconcile BLP with your own understanding of the Goldern Rule is your own business. I observe that you've very private about your own life, though. Is your BLP up on Wikipedia anywhere? Which one is it? SBHarris 19:19, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm not going to quibble over the definition of sociopathy and what is meant by "getting the Golden Rule" because that was not my point. Your rant suggests that if people don't agree with you they are either completely self-serving because they "get the Golden Rule" but don't apply it, or sociopaths. That perspective is self-righteous and demeaning. Cheers.Griswaldo (talk) 12:27, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

I don't think this is a WP:NOTFORUM issue, it's just so WP:SNOWBALL that it's not worth discussing. WP:NOTFORUM is for talk page discussions unrelated to actually writing an encyclopedia, and this discussion is about writing the encyclopedia... albeit one that is so ridiculous that I think the proper reference is WP:FACEPALM. SDY (talk) 02:12, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

NOTAFORUM, because Sbharris is not actually suggesting any changes to be made to the policy, but instead is opining in a very general (though extreme0 manner on the very existence of BLP articles at Wikipedia. Cheers.Griswaldo (talk) 12:13, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

So we're arrived to the point that talking about living people on the Internet is unethical. Thank you for your outstanding contribution to our daily Facepalm dose, SBHarris. Now you can leave this place of sin and let us continue our job of documenting notable subjects (which include, incredibly enough for humans, other notable living humans). --Cyclopia^talk 12:43, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

You have enough scientific publications to have crossed WP's notability-threshhold yourself, Cyclopia. So take the plunge and start a BLP on yourself. At least use your name and a picture on your userpage. It's immediately obvious from published sources who you are, so all this is referenceable. I even find on the internet a photo of you in clown makeup (hilarious! Did you do that?), though that might not be verifiable, so I presume would not be includable (we must follow the BLP rules). The internet forgets nothing. You appear to be (like other some editors here) an example of a person who wants to do unto others what they would be most displeased to see done unto themselves. Why is that, do you think? Is there something about the prospect of needing to check your BLP every day to see if it's been vandalized, that makes having one, a bit unappetizing? As a scientist, why do you have so much difficulty generalizing a hypothesis from a good specific case, plus many other reports? You are too modest, perhaps? SBHarris 18:10, 13 March 2011 (UTC)