Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons

Proposed change to "People accused of crime"

It currently reads:

This section (WP:BLPCRIME) applies to individuals who are not public figures; that is, individuals not covered by § Public figures. For relatively unknown people, editors must seriously consider not including material—in any article—that suggests the person has committed, or is accused of having committed, a crime, unless a conviction has been secured. A living person accused of a crime is presumed innocent until convicted by a court of law. Accusations, investigations and arrests do not amount to a conviction.

I am unsure as to whether it's intentional or not, but it is ambiguous as to whether public figures are innocent until proven guilty. I would consider it bizarre if the innocent until proven guilty clause only applies to non-public figures, so I suggest the following reorganisation.

A living person accused of a crime is presumed innocent until convicted by a court of law. Accusations, investigations and arrests do not amount to a conviction. For individuals who are not public figures; that is, individuals not covered by § Public figures, editors must seriously consider not including material—in any article—that suggests the person has committed, or is accused of having committed, a crime, unless a conviction has been secured.

I would have no objection if anyone wants to retain the "relatively unkown" part, it seemed to largely duplicate the "not public figures" immediately before it. Equally I have no objection to many other changes people may consider, my main concern is to clarify that innocent until proven guilty applies to everyone not just non-public figures, assuming that is the case. FDW777 (talk) 17:29, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

I would agree: the "innocent until proven guilty" applies to all, and we only further stress that non-public figures that we should strongly consider if absolutely necessary to include that material if really necessary. Reversing the order of these statements seems to make sense. --Masem (t) 17:42, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Since there have been no objections raised, I have implemented the reorganisation. FDW777 (talk) 10:03, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

Golden State Killer move request discussion

Opinions are needed on the following matter: Talk:Golden State Killer#Requested move 30 June 2020. A permalink for it is here. Flyer22 Frozen (talk) 00:03, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

Determining whether a source is SPS in deciding whether BLPSPS applies

I've started a WP:RSN discussion (here: [1]) [edit: it has since been archived, and the link is [2]] that has implications for WP:BLP guidelines about WP:BLPSPS and for guidelines elsewhere about WP:SOURCE and WP:SPS. In a nutshell, I'm asking how we determine what constitutes a SPS for online fora when it’s unclear whether the author and publisher are the same, for example, when those fora are published by scholarly organizations and have editorial boards, but aren't run by news organizations and so don't qualify for the WP:NEWSBLOG allowance, or when the online forum employs editors and includes both work by an author-publisher and work by many authors who aren't publishers. My question is about articles that are not a biography but where one or more living persons are sometimes prominent in the article's content. The question is prompted by an article about a legal case that includes content about the living defendant and Judge, where some references are to online legal fora, and where I'm questioning whether those fora should really be considered personal/group blogs, regardless of whether they self-identify as a "blog." However, the question isn't limited to that specific article or even to articles about legal cases and citing legal "blogs." I wanted to give a heads-up here and invite people to contribute to the discussion. -- FactOrOpinion (talk) 14:21, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

There's now a related discussion (here: [3]) on the talk page for WP:Identifying and using self-published works, re: the misleading SPS definition there. -- FactOrOpinion (talk) 12:42, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

There's also a related discussion (here: [4]) on the talk page for WP:Verifiability. The definition of SPS has significant implications for WP statements that fall under BLP. As a simple example, if government publications are generally SPS, and if the Mueller Report is among them (in that the government is both the author and the publisher), then we cannot use the Mueller Report as a source for a statement about any of the people who were charged in the Special Counsel investigation, which strikes me as a well-intentioned policy having unintended bad side-effects and therefore in need of revision. -- FactOrOpinion (talk) 15:19, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

Create exception to BLPPRIMARY and BLPSPS for court docs and expert SPS in articles about court cases with public figures?

I propose that we make an exception to the WP:BLPPRIMARY and WP:BLPSPS restrictions for court documents or other expert SPS for notable court cases involving public figures, at least in cases “Where primary-source material has been discussed by a reliable secondary source.”

Background: WP:BLP applies “when adding information about living persons to any Wikipedia page.” Thus, in articles about court cases, material about living persons is subject to the BLP policy. However, BLP policies specifically reject court documents and expert legal commentary from SPS:

• WP:BLPPRIMARY: “… Do not use trial transcripts and other court records, or other public documents, to support assertions about a living person. …”
• WP:BLPSPS: “Never use self-published sources … as sources of material about a living person, unless written or published by the subject of the article.”

Many court cases involve living persons. Court records (motions, opinions, etc.) are central to court cases, but court records are both primary documents and self-published — by the government and/or someone’s lawyers — and so cannot be used, though a motion submitted by someone’s lawyers might sometimes fall under the exception for WP:BLPSELFPUB, if it meets the other characteristics (e.g., it doesn’t introduce claims about another party). Other government publications that are relevant to some court cases, such as the Mueller Report, may also be self-published (there’s actually a discussion right now about clarifying the meaning of “self-published,” here [5] and here [6]), in which case other relevant government publications couldn’t be cited for material about a living person either.

There is another statement in WP:BLPPRIMARY, “Where primary-source material has been discussed by a reliable secondary source, it may be acceptable to rely on [the primary source] to augment the secondary source, subject to the restrictions of this policy, no original research, and the other sourcing policies,” but both “the restrictions of [BLPPRIMARY]” and “other sourcing policies” (e.g., BLPSPS) still exclude court documents, other relevant government publications, and expert commentary in SPS.

And WP:BLPEL says that external links also have to meet these standards, so simply linking to a court docket might be disallowed for a court case involving a living person, since the court documents in the docket include a mix of statements about the person and other statements about the case.

I certainly understand that WP isn’t a tabloid, and court documents and self-published material can include all sorts of allegations, so there’s a reason to be wary about using them for sources of BLP material. I also recognize that for notable court cases, important statements in court documents and other government publications are often repeated in traditional news media, allowing us to cite those news sources instead. But I haven't seen evidence that that’s always the case. In addition, although op-eds from news media are allowed as BLP RSs (in the author’s voice), legal analysis from expert SPS (e.g., SCOTUSblog, the Volokh Conspiracy, Lawfare, Just Security) may be rejected as BLPSPS (pending resolution of whether they are/aren’t SPSs, per the discussion of SPSs noted above), and there’s definitely expert commentary from those sources that doesn’t appear in traditional news media.

WP:PRIMARY says “A primary source may be used on Wikipedia only to make straightforward, descriptive statements of facts that can be verified by any educated person with access to the primary source but without further, specialized knowledge.” Quotes are among the things that fall in this category, and the primary source is the most reliable source for confirming that “the wording of the quoted text … [is] faithfully reproduced” (MOS:PMC).

As an example, I’ve been working on United States v. Flynn, which grew out of the Special Counsel investigation. This page was created recently, split off from Michael Flynn, and as I’ve been checking some of the existing text, I’ve run into statements about a variety of living people (e.g., Flynn, the judge, prosecutors, Flynn’s former counsel) where text would need to be removed because of the BLP court document / SPS exclusion. But this issue isn’t limited to that one page. It arises in articles for a number of well-known court cases involving living persons, including Supreme Court cases.

I tried searching for previous discussions of this issue. I did find some discussions of the two policies in the BLP/N and BLP talk page archives ([7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12]), but I didn't find any discussion about modifying the policies for articles about court cases.

What do people think? -- FactOrOpinion (talk) 16:08, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

I think some specific examples would help. --Hipal/Ronz (talk) 17:01, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

Also remember different people have different views on the reliability of different court systems. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 17:02, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

• Oh hell no. Court documents don't and can't have a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. For one, they don't need to be truthful. People lie in court and in affidavits, which is why we have laws and rules against perjury and hearsay. But even in states with court systems considered to be just, lying may not be considered perjury and rules against hearsay have numerous exceptions. Then you have problems with documentation of conflicting eyewitness testimony, bad forensic science, circumstantial or misleading evidence, and so on. It's the court's job to sort through all of that and determine the truth. And the importance of a reliable source's editorial process in choosing what's important enough to publish can't be understated. Editors citing court documents or self-published experts' analysis of those documents would be sidestepping our core content policies. Woodroar (talk) 17:55, 19 July 2020 (UTC)
  • To help out, what I think FoF is looking here for is that we have a case already covered in RS (as to make it notable on its own) and the RSs are covering high level details that are being documented in the court's record. The RSes are covering some details of the case from a high level, but some details related to the case - which may or may not directly involve the BLP but are part of the court proceedings - are stuck in court documents/expert blogs. So this becomes: is the court case that a BLP is at the center automatically a "BLP article" across its entirety, or do we have to consider context and the like.
  • To give a related hypothetical example, if we had a BLP that had some notability for promoting a fad diet, where the RS do note the diet is fad but go into no details of why it is, enough for us to have included it on the BLP's page, and a known expert in a blog goes into details about the diet being a fad, but at no point mentions the BLP (directly or indirectly), is that source a BLPSPS violation? Clearly if the expert started to question the BLP's credentials, that would be a problem, but in such a case when the line is clearly drawn from any type of criticism that is directly against the BLP, as would be the same as court documents and experts' analysis, there would seem to be some reason for allowance. I don't know the answer but I feel the answer is more than a simple "never" here. --Masem (t) 18:19, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

    I think good points are raised on both sides, but I think perhaps this can be solved by reconsidering the broadness of the proposal. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 19:46, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

    Still a "never" from me, because we're discussing claims "about a living person" here at WT:BLP, and where those BLP claims intersect with self-publishing and the editorial process. Our policies say that a self-published subject matter expert on [topic] may be cited for claims about [topic], except for claims about a living person. (To my knowledge, we don't have a blanket ban on using court documents for claims not about a living person, though I'd argue that we should. But that's not relevant here.) It's the editorial process that determines what the RS can publish about a living person, but also which parts to cover. If details about living persons are "stuck in court documents/expert blogs", then clearly no RS is willing to publish them. Maybe they got blocked by fact-checkers or lawyers nervous about lawsuits. Or maybe the journalists and editors don't consider them very important to the story. It's not up to us to override RS and cherry-pick what we think should have been covered when the reputations of living people are involved. Whether or not we should cite fad diet or legal experts for claims not about living persons is irrelevant here at WT:BLP. Woodroar (talk) 20:19, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

@Woodroar: Re: you claim that "If details about living persons are 'stuck in court documents/expert blogs', then clearly no RS is willing to publish them," but you don't cite any evidence. My guess is that you think it self-evident, but it's just as possible that experts simply aren't caught up in how WP assesses RSs, and they may well choose to publish things in online forums that reach a broad audience focused on a specific topic rather than in the MSM. Here's a discussion of this issue: [13] It isn't that he's "stuck" on an expert blog and can't publish elsewhere; it's simply that a lot of expert discussion has moved away from traditional RSs, while still being edited and unlike what most people have in mind when they say "blog." -- FactOrOpinion (talk) 20:47, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

I'm sorry if I wasn't clear, but I was referring to reliable sources publishing the details, not the experts. Masem said that "RSes are covering some details of the case from a high level, but some details related to the case...are stuck in court documents/expert blogs". In other words, reliable sources are covering the story in general but court documents/expert blogs are going into specifics. My response is that if reliable sources won't publish those specifics, there's probably a reason why. As editors, we're here to "[b]ase articles on reliable, independent, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy" which necessarily means that some sources won't make the cut. Maybe they're newer media outlets and haven't made a reputation yet. Or maybe they're self-publishing on blogs or forums, which unfortunately means we won't use their claims for content about a living person. Look, I empathize that some experts might never get published in mainstream sources. Many of my own sources for news or education or entertainment will likely never get mentioned on Wikipedia, but we have very high standards for claims about living persons because there's a potential to do serious harm. Woodroar (talk) 22:48, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying and pointing me back to Masem's quote. I think that "RSes are covering some details of the case from a high level, but some details related to the case...are stuck in court documents/expert blogs" misrepresents the situation, because it suggests that the set {RSs} and the set {court/public documents and expert blogs} are disjoint sets, whereas my belief is that they have a non-empty intersection: a self-published article by a relevant expert can be a RS, a judicial opinion can be a RS, ... The issue isn't that they're categorically not RSs (they might or might not be, depending on details, including the WP claim that they're intended to support), but that they're excluded because they're a public document and/or SPS. -- FactOrOpinion (talk) 23:14, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

I suppose you could look at it that way, sure. But self-published sources are usually not reliable, so I think most editors tend to think of them that way. Like on WP:V, our policy explanation of self-published sources—the place that the shortcut WP:SPS sends you—is in the "Sources that are usually not reliable" section. It's really only self-published subject matter experts who are reliable, albeit not for claims about living persons. But yes, you can certainly look at it as SPS RS and...P(ublished) RS, maybe? I think it's also important to note that expert blogs aren't automatically reliable, either. It may take several discussions (or more) at WP:RSN to develop a consensus that they are. Likewise for evaluating court documents in various places. Woodroar (talk) 23:42, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, there are ongoing discussions on the WP:V and WP:USINGSPS talk pages re: whether any of the language should change to address inconsistencies across pages, to make definitions clearer, to reduce the likelihood of editors mistakenly overgeneralizing (e.g., rejecting SPS out of hand even if a specific self-published article by an expert is reliable for a given claim; treating an entire website as if it's either RS or not-RS, when the judgment should instead be made for a specific page or article in relation to a specific WP claim; treating all "blogs" as personal when some are edited). Not sure if you saw my exchange below with Eggishorn, but I'm pretty certain that judicial opinions are self-published by WP's standards, and I don't think they should be rejected as sources for info about a legal case. For some of this, it may come down to the definition of SPS; for ex., if an expert "blog" (like Lawfare, Just Security, and SCOTUSblog) has an editorial staff, sometimes rejects articles submitted for publication, then it's not as clear whether it's SPS even if it's called a "blog." -- FactOrOpinion (talk) 00:20, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

I did see the discussion about judicial opinions and was researching it. See my reply below. Woodroar (talk) 00:44, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

• Completely Opposed There is nothing positive in this proposal and it looks like nothing more than an excuse to camel-nose material that could have very negative legal effects on the project. To be clear, this exception could easily justify defamatory material that is otherwise prohibited and will either trigger huge problems or WP:OFFICE actions. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 20:20, 19 July 2020 (UTC)
  • It doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing decision. For example, it could be that judicial opinions are acceptable (despite being court documents and SPS), but some other kinds of court documents aren't, and we figure out which are acceptable and which aren't. @Woodroar: I don't think it's always clear that "self-published experts' analysis of those documents would be sidestepping our core content policies." WP:SPS says "Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established subject-matter expert, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications," but "Never use self-published sources as third-party sources about living people, even if the author is an expert...," but it's sometimes ambiguous whether an expert opinion about a legal case involving a living person is about the living person him/herself vs. a claim about some other aspect of the case, and it's sometimes ambiguous whether the source is/isn't self-published (see the example in my last paragraph below).
  • @Hipal: You asked for examples, so here are a few from the article that prompts my questions. In United States v. Flynn, the Court proceedings section ([14]) cites a number of sources for quotes. In the Plea bargain section, in footnote 98, it quotes a RS about one of Flynn's false statements; but the quote was taken from the charging document, which is both a court document and SPS. Also, the editor who introduced that text omitted another key false statement, and that RS doesn't refer to it. I can/will chase down a RS that quotes either the charging document or the statement of offense in order to introduce the other false statement, but since those sources are still going to be quoting from a SPS court doc, it also seems to me that we should be allowed to link to the primary source for the quotes. In the Delayed sentencing section, the third paragraph includes some quotes and other claims, and footnote 115 links to the sentencing transcript, which is again a SPS court doc; ditto for the quote from Gleeson's amicus brief in the motion to drop charges section.
  • There was also considerable discussion on Talk:Michael_Flynn re: adding text about whether the FBI interview was/wasn't a "perjury trap" or "false statements trap." I've considered citing a claim by Marty Lederman ([15]), who notes that "The new DOJ motion to dismiss the charge against Flynn insinuates that the FBI undertook the interview primarily as a perjury trap" (but he disagrees) and links to the relevant part of the motion to dismiss. Lederman meets WP's definition of "expert," and if I were to introduce this, I'd likely omit the quote but put the claim in his voice (not as a WP fact). But it's unclear to me whether his article is or isn't considered a SPS; on the one hand, Just Security has an editorial board, and on the other, Lederman is one of their editors, and Just Security doesn't say enough to let us assess whether an editor's article is subject to rejection by another editor. There are a lot of expert legal articles with very detailed discussions of the case where it's unclear whether the article is or isn't self-published, and as I noted above, there's a separate discussion at WP:USINGSPS about how to make the SPS definition clearer. I hope these examples help. -- FactOrOpinion (talk) 20:31, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

Published judicial opinions, such as United States Reports (USSC), or those in the National Reporter System (federal courts and appellate state courts) are already considered RS so they have no bearing on these exceptions. Unpublished decisions are by their very nature not acceptable and no carve-out in BLPPRIMARY should be made for those. Testimony and depositions are right out for the reasons stated by Woodroar. Taken together, this means that no change is necessary to support what is acceptable and that the only actual effect of a change would be to allow unacceptable material to be used. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 21:58, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

@Eggishorn: Re: published judicial opinions, even if they're otherwise considered RSs, if they're in a category that's excluded from being used to support BLP claims, then there's still a conflict. Published judicial opinions are both court documents and self-published documents (at least, I'm unaware of someone else editing the content or having the right to say "no, we're not going to publish this opinion" -- am I wrong about that?). Since court documents and self-published documents are specifically excluded, I don't understand why you've concluded that "Published judicial opinions ... have no bearing on these exceptions." -- FactOrOpinion (talk) 22:37, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

@FactOrOpinion:, you may want to read the links I left above or Non-publication of legal opinions in the United States, it may answer your questions. There's too much there to answer in such a limited space as this noticeboard. Short answer: I've never seen any editor calling published appellate court opinions or federal court opinions "self-published". Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 22:54, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

@Eggishorn: Thanks. WP doesn't interpret "published" in the same way as the legal profession does. For WP, "published" simply means "made available to the public in some form" (WP:PUBLISH). So opinions that are non-published using the legal definition are nonetheless published under WP's definition. (This is an instance of a word/phrase having different meanings in different linguistic registers. WP has it's own register.) It may well be that WP editors don't think of published court opinions as self-published. My guess is that WP editors don't think of most government publications as self-published. But WP's criterion for self-publication is whether the person(s) who created the content (or controlled the creation, if it's a situation where employees are creating content for bosses) have control over whether it's made available to the public. Since a judge who writes an opinion is the one who controls its release to the public, it's self-published by WP's standards, regardless of whether it's published in the legal sense. -- FactOrOpinion (talk) 23:41, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

I'm no expert on published law reports, but it does appear that United States Reports is edited and published by the Reporter of Decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States. The National Reporter System must have some sort of editing process as well, correct? But the question is, is this a true editorial process where there's discretion involved? Or are these law reports simply checked for typos and printed in the next available volume? If the latter, I'm surprised that editors haven't objected. When I see court opinions cited for claims about living persons—no matter which court—I've removed the claim or found a better source. Woodroar (talk) 00:44, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

@FactOrOpinion:, I have been working on legal decision articles on WP for 13 years and I've yet to see anyone who interprets SPS on published legal opinions the way you've defined above. Neither have I ever seen anyone call a published opinion in a recognized reporter self-published. To do so would be an overly-strict reading of the definition. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 00:46, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

I'm a "learner"-stage editor, and I appreciate everyone taking the time to help me understand all of this. I've been trying to figure out what the definition of SPS does/doesn't include, in part because I was trying to sort out whether the articles by experts on legal "blogs" like Lawfare and Just Security are or aren't SPS for the purpose of BLPSPS, or whether they sometimes are and sometimes aren't (depending on the individual article's author(s) / relationship to the editorial board). Are you familiar with those online publications? If so, what is your view? And what about the Mueller Report: do you consider that self-published or not? Thanks. Also, I realized that I misspoke earlier -- that I meant to say that judicial opinions that are published in the legal sense may not be WP:SPS, but that judicial opinions that aren't published in the legal sense are still published by WP's standards, and they're SPS. (I hope that's clearer.) On the US v Flynn page, there are references to other kinds of SPS court docs as well, like the order appointing Gleeson amicus, and the order from the Court of Appeals telling Judge Sullivan to reply re: the application for the writ of mandamus. But I should be able to find those discussed in MSM. One last question: should I remove the external links to the case dockets (US v. Flynn, and In re: Michael Flynn), since those both list SPS material? (I have to admit that I think it would be a shame, as the docket pages are useful for anyone interested in learning more about the cases. But I understand that I need to abide by WP's policies rather than my own preferences.) -- FactOrOpinion (talk) 01:38, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

@Eggishorn and Woodroar: In thinking further about your comments, I'm still uncertain why the published judicial opinions aren't considered "court documents" or "public documents." That is, even if they're not considered SPS, should they be rejected as WP:BLPPRIMARY? If BLPPRIMARY isn't intended to include published judicial rulings, I think it would be helpful to make that explicit in the BLPPRIMARY text.

Also, in all of this, there's still the question of how to distinguish when WP material about a case involving a living person is about a living person him/herself (plaintiff, defendant, prosecutor, judge, counsel, ...) vs. about some other element of the case. For example, on the page about Mary Trump's new book, there's material about a court case attempting to prevent the book's publication, and part of it quotes an affadavit filed by Mary Trump: "Mary filed a sworn affidavit alleging she was not bound by the NDA clause in the Settlement Agreement for numerous reasons, including that the asset 'valuations...in...the Settlement Agreement...were fraudulent,'" linking to the affidavit. Is this acceptable (because the quote doesn't name anyone else) or not (because it's quoting/linking to a court document that names other living people and includes allegations)? Or, going back to the example that I gave with the article by Marty Lederman, is the quote "The new DOJ motion to dismiss the charge against Flynn insinuates that the FBI undertook the interview primarily as a perjury trap" a statement about unnamed but living people at the FBI (and therefore possibly excluded as BLPSPS) or only about the DOJ motion (and acceptable)? I'm trying to abide by WP's rules, but the boundary for "information about living persons" isn't always clear enough to me. -- FactOrOpinion (talk) 15:13, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose. As I understand it, large parts of BLP are to avoid the repetition of unnecessary "personal" (and the multitudes that covers) information, where it's not necessary for getting the point across, or is just unnecessary in general. Court documents, because of their nature, will contain a lot of this sort of information, and this may lead to unnecessary information being added (I'm thinking any number of celebrity and political divorce cases). Red Fiona (talk) 23:02, 19 July 2020 (UTC)
• I've seen many times OR be done on court documents. They're very often misinterpreted. I can't see this ending well. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 01:38, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

Indicating notable relatives in “personal life” section of BLPs

Is there a reason that notable relatives should be removed from a “personal life” section of a BLP? NBA player Jarrod Uthoff is the son in law of US congressman Jim Jordan. I had noted this (with a source) several months back but for whatever reason there has been a lot of action removing it today. I was under the impression that notable relatives SHOULD be noted if sourced and not controversial. I have started a discussion at Talk:Jim Jordan (American politician)#Inclusion of son-in-law in “Personal life” section, but would love insight on this. Thanks. Rikster2 (talk) 19:38, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

If both are notable (both standalone articles), the relation confirmed in reliable sources, and it is a reasonable close relationship (not a Spaceballs "father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate" type thing), I see no reason why not to note it in a personal life section. Obviously if the two have had interactions that have played a role in one or the other's career (for example, Carl and Rob Reiner), that can be highlighted sooner even, but otherwise it should be seen not so much trivial but not to be elevated beyond personal life. --Masem (t) 19:47, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

Obviously some discretion is needed when it comes to prominent families, while you'd expected to have immediate relatives included I'd hate to see all the members of the Kennedy family detailed in each article. FDW777 (talk) 20:18, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

If they have a family article you can obviously link to that instead of listing them all out in every article for a family member. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 21:23, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

Is there any guideline that addresses the “personal life” sections of BLPs or inclusion of notable relatives? I can’t find them if they exist. Rikster2 (talk) 21:18, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

I don't know of any guideline, beyond the general guidance of WP:BLP, but I agree with the sentiments above that close notable relatives confirmed by reliable sources can reasonably be listed (and that all such listings need a reliable source). —David Eppstein (talk) 21:33, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

Another point that occurred to me later is that, especially for husband-wife pairs, the mention should be reciprocal: if we mention the marriage on one page we should mention it on both. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:27, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

• Of course, with regards to notable families we don't need to mention every relation. And not including distant relations unless it is somehow important in context. But I think a congressman having a basketball player as a son-in-law in important to mention. ~EDDY ^{(talk/contribs)}~ 20:49, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

Did Wikipedia cause a live person to change his name?

Well, that may be over-dramatizing the case, and I certainly hope it is; but I'm not so sure. Hungarian pianist ""Bence Péter" seems to have changed his name to Peter Bence, due to confusion about what his real name is outside of Hungary; i.e., which is the given name, and which is the surname. The fact that the usual order for a Hungarian name in Hungary is the reverse (e.g., "hu:Orbán Viktor") just exacerbates the confusion, as does the fact that this young man's surname, "Péter", looks like a western given name (and is also a common given name in Hungary), and that "Bence" ("Vincent") looks to non-Hungarian eyes like a surname. Long story short, it appears that the young man has given up rowing against the stream, and has changed his internet domain, his website, and his name (legally? who knows?) due to the amount of insistence that his name just has to be "Peter Bence" and not his real birthname of "Bence Peter".

I'm just hoping that Wikipedia didn't play a role in worsening the confusion, given that we're #7 or whatever on Alexa, and this young man, who now does have notability enough for an article, but didn't when he created bencepeter (talk · contribs) in 2008 at age 17, followed immediately by the article Bence Peter (now a redirect). The gory details are at Talk:Peter Bence#His name.

Is there some way we can monitor BLP page moves, or maybe moves accompanied by a near-simultaneous change of the bolded part of the WP:LEADSENTENCE, and send a notification about it? Or perhaps a BLP-name-change bot, or something, that scans BLPs and could flag the situation, or maybe even block or revert it, until it could be examined? Or maybe every BLP move needs to go through WP:RM#CM, and there should be no such thing as a unilateral page move for BLPs? I'm somewhat at a loss of how to deal with this, but I just have a sinking feeling about this case, and even if we weren't involved this time, I'm just wondering what we can do to prevent us from having a negative role in some future, similar case. Adding Largoplazo. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 04:27, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

Move request discussion: Title for the Suicide of Kurt Cobain article

Opinions are needed on the following: Talk:Suicide of Kurt Cobain#Requested move 27 July 2020. I figured that I might as well post on this talk page about it as well since how the family members feel is one thing being discussed. Flyer22 Frozen (talk) 03:19, 30 July 2020 (UTC)