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

Let's try to keep it civil and succinct, eh?

Alphabetize views

Would it make sense to alphabetize the views by username? I've never really liked the idea of chronological ordering, as I think it unfairly favors earlier views too much. --MZMcBride (talk) 16:16, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

May I change my username first? ϢereSpielChequers 17:41, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

WSC---you make the proposal to go in reverse alphabetical order.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 21:50, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

The only way to make it fair would be to have them randomly ordered each time the page loads :-) Would be however a little confusing but would I think address MZ concerns.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:08, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Given the number of views that have been expressed, and the number of comments, it is probably a good idea to open a second round of comments later on, where proposals can be consolidated, refined, or withdrawn. The chronological order helps to see how the discussion has evolved, so in principle, I would be in favor of keeping that order. (Remark: As we have a specific policy on BLP, framing the current debate as an issue of BLP concerns versus policy and procedure seems unwarranted, in my view.)  Cs32en Talk to me  02:08, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

I'd agree with this. I came rather late to the discussion, and while I've put my two cents' worth down in one place, there's so much material to wade through that I'm probably missing something else I'd agree with. Once everything here is boiled down I think it would be helpful to have a second go at discussing it. ---Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.}

• I am strongly in favor of strict alphabetic order. I believe that Arthur Rubin would also support this change. Aymatth2 (talk) 17:40, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Collaborative views

Could we have a go at establishing some collaboratively edited views? I can see the volume of individual, partially overlapping, partially contradicting views spiralling into WP:TLDR extremely quickly. Perhaps this could be in a separate section at the bottom. Rd232 ^talk 16:44, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes please! I was away for inly a few hours, and this is already overwhelming. --Apoc2400 (talk) 00:09, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

NOINDEX

Unfortunately NOINDEX is disabled in article space. That can't be done without some fairly serious changes and risks. Jehochman ^Brrr 16:50, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

but everything in the WP:Incubator is noindexed! yay! Rd232 ^talk 17:25, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Template:NOINDEX/doc explains this. Flatscan (talk) 04:31, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

A reasonable rate

I think prodding 100 unreferenced BLP articles per day would be reasonable. If there are a few thousand, that will remove the backlog within a few months. Jehochman ^Brrr 16:53, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Actually determining the number of unreferenced BLPs would be useful, but there might be no way to do that without going through them all (and along the way we'd obviously do the cleanup, making the count moot). Apparently there are over 50,000 so tagged, but undoubtedly a significant number of those are not actually unsourced (the tags were added incorrectly, or sources were later added and the tags not removed). Still, 100 a day would probably be a reasonable starting point, and if we were handling that load we could quickly ramp it up. Even while this general RFC runs I really think we should figure out a means to deal with the unreferenced bunch just as a starting point for tackling the overall problem. Coming to agreement about prodding unreferenced BLPs (or this alternative, which is probably acceptable to more people), is something we need to do asap, particularly as ArbCom appears ready to validate a delete-on-sight approach. I don't have a problem with doing that if we can't come to another solution, but an organized effort that is logged centrally (as opposed to admins deleting at random without warning) is much preferred. Discussion should continue at Wikipedia talk:Deletion of unreferenced BLPs (and at WT:PROD though I think the former is a better route) since it's already well on its way. --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 17:08, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I've slowly started building a list of completely referenced biographies of living people. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:27, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Completely unreferenced, obviously (would be fun to debate what "completely referenced" means though!). That's great MZM, so are you saying that this list will weed out situations where the article should not be tagged as unreferenced to begin with (i.e. it does have sources but no one removed the tag), or is it basically just an easier to handle list of all of the stuff in the category for unreferenced BLPs? Also are you imagining that we would use this as a jumping off point for cleaning these up or deleting if clean up doesn't happen? --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 17:48, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Completely referenced? I'd say that would be where every statement in the article is supported by a reliable, third-party source, and is explicitly tied to that source. Of course such an article could still violate NPOV and BLP. Guettarda (talk) 21:29, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

But what if there were even better references than the ones already there? I was being largely tongue in cheek with the "completely referenced" reference, but the serious point to it would be that articles are never "complete" and references can basically always be improved, even if every statement is sourced. Anyhow it's an extremely tangential issue. --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 01:00, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

100 per day means it would take a year and a half to go through all 50K. I don't think people are that patient. Personally I'd be happy with a one-year schedule (150 per day?) but I think we might have to go to 500 or more to get everyone on board. Plus, there is probably an even larger category of articles with only a single source, or with only poor sources. I'll bet that's at least 100,000 articles. We can't take 5 years to do that. - Wikidemon (talk) 01:17, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Actually the rate should depend on day of week and holiday schedules. I would, moreover, suggest that a bot be set up looking for "key words" apt to be found in negative unsourced articles, thus making the task more focussed on the problem articles than just a random shotgun. Words to look for should include "felony", "convicted", "rape", "pornography", "drunk" , "alleged" and so on. I suspect that a very large percentage of the claimed negative articles will be sorted out expeditiously indeed. Let's act reasopnably and work on those ones first. Collect (talk) 01:24, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

We could start with the oldest ones first on theory that they really ought to be improved, or the newest on theory that they're the least likely to have been checked. Or work on both ends and the middle. - Wikidemon (talk) 01:26, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

100 per day is of the order new unsourced BLPS are being created. So it would have to be a lot more than this to make headway. Martin451 (talk) 08:25, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

100 per day seems like a big ask if we want to preserve a good proportion of the valuable information. In practice sourcing efforts would attract hostile scrutiny, which would soon begin to discourage folk from trying to preserve the data, so we might not have a large pool of volunteers for long. Last year there were scores of editors trying to save our bilateral relations articles, but when these were being AfD at a rate of more than 10 a day it was impossible to save them all. OK we might get more folk helping here but on the other hand the case against BLPs seem far stronger than for the BR articles. I suggest starting at a lower figure, say 10, and then ramp up slowly.

Martin451s point is important, and suggests we need to combine this plan with WereSpielChequers suggestion that new BLPs be treated differently – i.e. we can start deleting all new unsourced BLPs without prejudice (much as It pains me to say this.) Incorporating Collects suggestion might mean we'd deal with a good proportion of the genuinely problematic BLPs , some of which might turn out to be attack pages. FeydHuxtable (talk) 11:29, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

If we are getting 100 new unsourced BLP's a day, then it seems to me this a problem that is really too big for the community to handle, under current policies at least. I don't think we have the manpower to parse a couple of hundred BLP's a day for the next x number of years, do we? Gatoclass (talk) 09:09, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

100 new articles a day. Where do you get that number from? I for one don't believe it. Most of the articles that are tagged today are many years old. That they were tagged in January 2010 does not mean that they were created now. Rettetast (talk) 12:43, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Change to PROD overall

Note that all of these proposals generally discourage removal of the yet to be devised BLP PROD template. Of course, current PROD policy is that the template can be removed, by anyone, even the creator. Personally I've always had issue with this, as it's almost always inevitably removed, thus forcing it to AFD. Thus I wonder how the differences in BLP PROD and normal PRODS will be reconciled on the guidance article, so as to not add too much confusion? Is it time to consider making it so that PROD's generally shouldn't be removed by the article's creator, unless they do one of two things (or both): 1) edit the article to address at least one of the concerns noted in the PROD template; 2) note on the article's talk page why they removed the PROD template, either by addressing the concerns in the template, or why they think the template was added in error. I don't think it's too much to ask of the editor to either attempt to address the concerns, or at least make one edit on the talk page before allowing removal of the template. NJA (t/c) 17:24, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Your proposal has been rejected many times; and the logic which rejects it was part of the rejection of the "BLP don't removed PROD unless sourced" proposal at WT:PROD. Not saying I agree with the logic, but there are arguments on both sides, and one side has always prevailed pretty strongly in the past. Rd232 ^talk 17:29, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

"Almost always" isn't my experience. I'd like to see some stats on: prods removed with no other change v prods salvaged v prods expiring and deleted. I suspect the proportion of deleted prods is far higher than you think. I'm certainly aware of enough deleted prods to disprove the Almost always charge. ϢereSpielChequers 17:49, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Okay, let's ignore what I felt to be a rational idea of requiring people to at least attempt to address the concerns in the PROD tag (or explain why they disagreed and removed it). Let's focus on how the treatment of BLP PROD's (if implemented) will be reconciled with the general PROD procedure to make a coherent guidance document that normal editors marking articles for deletion can understand. One will continue to allow removal by anyone for whatever reason or attempts to do anything really, whilst the other will not allow this unless the unreferenced BLP issue is resolved. NJA (t/c) 17:59, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I would agree with a modified prod system for these whereby the prod can be removed if the article is sourced, but you are not allowed to decline a prod if an article continues to be an unsourced BLP. I think prod policy should be left as is for sourced BLPs and non BLP articles. ϢereSpielChequers 18:02, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Regardless of the outcome, we should ignore the results of this RFC

As Scott MacDonald and Tarc espouse, should we hold the results of this RFC in "utter contempt" and "ignore" it?[1][2] Ikip 21:58, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion#Add_new_criteria_to_CSD

I just closed a discussion at CSD related to this topic and directed them here in an effort to centralize discussion.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 22:23, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Deletion of unreferenced BLPs

Similarly, I've notified the people discussing this issue at Wikipedia:Deletion of unreferenced BLPs of this discussion... we should not concurrent discussions going on all over the place. Personally, I was about to cry "Forum Shopping" until I saw that the RfC was instigated at the request of ArbCOM. This is being discussed in too many places.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 22:28, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I also notified the people at WP:PROD---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 22:42, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Meta-view by Kotniski

Moved from the subject-space page. --MZMcBride (talk) 23:11, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

This is just the same discussion that is already taking place in at least two other places. Can we stop this forking?

Users who endorse this summary

1. Collect (talk) 16:15, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
2. Yes, but an RfC is finally the RIGHT place to discuss this, so let's close all the others in favor of this, shall we? Jclemens (talk) 16:27, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

   Agree, and add links from those places to here, and move this Meta-view to the talk page, which is where meta things and threaded conversations belong. Jehochman ^Brrr 16:29, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

3. Cirt (talk) 21:08, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

NOTE: I've closed the discussions down at WP:CSD and WP:PROD, linking this RfC. I also notified the people discussing a proposed new policy about this RfC. See this pages talk page for links.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 22:44, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

PROD fails utterly

See Power.corrupts (talk · contribs)'s edits. Mindless removals of PRODs. The PROD process is obviously not the way this is going to be resolved. Woogee (talk) 23:42, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

It will if it cannot be removed if the article is not fixed. If thats the way we go, his behaviour is blockable. Viridae^Talk 23:43, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I'd endorse that if it comes to it, but as I say in my comment, it's better to clog up AfD than it is to throw the baby out with the bathwater with prods. Prodders can always watchlist the article and open an AfD if the tag is taken off without fixing the issue. HJMitchell You rang? 23:58, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Once a prod is placed it is visible in the history even after removal. Removing the tag doesn't significantly hamper identification of unsourced BLPS. --TS 00:02, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Power.corrupts is also putting oldprodfull tags into the Talk pages of all of the articles he's removing the PRODs from. Is this an appropriate action? Woogee (talk) 00:07, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it makes the problematic articles even easier to identify. --TS 00:09, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

OK, thanks. Woogee (talk) 00:17, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Prod without the "Proposed"

I agree with Woogee here actually, although I endorsed David Gerard's view, none of these views or opinions will work if they involve a BLP Prod that can be removed by anyone, what's needed is probably a deletion tag with Prod elements i.e a tag with a 5, 7 or maybe even more, day countdown but without the ability to be removed if the BLP in question is totally unsourced, that being said it would probably have to be a totally different deletion tag to any that we have at the moment as the BLP's it'll be placed on aren't being considered for deletion but will in fact be deleted inevitably if they remain unsourced. Jeffrey Mall (talk • contribs) - 14:19, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Oppose sections

I thought Requests for comments generally avoided oppose sections? Where is the RFC dictator? --MZMcBride (talk) 23:59, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Just remove it and put a hidden comment there reminding editors that these types of RfCs don't use oppose sections. Cla68 (talk) 00:00, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

I thought we were an autonomous collective. --Cybercobra (talk) 01:23, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

In the past that has been the standard, but there are a lot of oppose sections this time around... I personally think this is a contentious enough issue that it might be better to have the support and oppose sections together having them separated is going to make this much more difficult to read/follow.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 03:37, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

RFCs are supposed to have views and endorsements. Discussion should take place on this page. Lara 03:39, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, the votes are pointless. We need that mythical uninvolved person to come an do clerk duties. Kevin (talk) 03:46, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Seriously. The oppose sections should either be moved to this page or one added to every proposal, which is not standard for RFCs and will just make it a bigger clusterfuck. Lara 04:15, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Hey, well, when in Rome... til someone decides to move them all here, it's open season. Tarc (talk) 04:24, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

(nice to finally see you on the opposite side of an issue, Tarc :) Well, they're good for venting. But they're not a good gauge of consensus because some or most people are not going to weigh in on the "oppose sections". It's like counting the number of dogs howling at the moon at any given time. Only a few are doing it but you know they all want to. Anyway, I think this RfC is turning into more of a brainstorm session and talk board than anything else. Some very good ideas have come out of it, and I think there's a good chance of finding a constructive solution this way that will please most people. - Wikidemon (talk) 04:51, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

• Can't you guys see that people want an area in which to bitch about the proposals from those people actually trying to (gasp!) solve the damn problem? UnitAnode 04:32, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

(ec)This whole RFC exists because some people decided that procedural rules were unimportant, given the larger goal of solving a problem... Funny how, all of a sudden, people who said "screw procedure" have sudden fallen back in love with it. Guettarda (talk) 04:35, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't care what the hell you do here. It's more funny to me how quickly you're willing to discard protocol, when it suits you. And it's not just "the larger goal of solving a problem", Gut, it's the larger goal of solving the single biggest problem the project currently faces. If process gets in the way of that, process should be ignored. UnitAnode 04:42, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

WP:Ignore all processes? Might as well, everything else is being ignored by a certain group. Resolute 05:47, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

BLPs are a bigger problem than the possibly declining active editor count? --Cybercobra (talk) 05:57, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Possibly, but they certainly aren't a bigger problem than vandalism, though some feel they contain a disproportionate part of that problem. I'd agree that vandalism, including vandalism in unsourced BLPs is up there with spam and POV disputes as one of our three main problems; but I'd hesitate to put them in order of priority. As for our possibly declining active editor count, I'm concerned about the health of our community, and I think some aspects of this current kerfuffle haven't helped this - we need lots of volunteers to write and maintain wikipedia and wikiwars are not good for community cohesion. ϢereSpielChequers 18:52, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Technical question

How difficult would it be to make a separate stream of recent changes of edits to unwatched, unreferenced biographies? JoshuaZ (talk) 06:44, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

How does the existence of references protect an unwatched BLP from vandals? Unwatched BLPs, regardless of their references, are a problem. —David Eppstein (talk) 08:16, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm trying to understand what the limits are if we add additional streams to recent changes. Unwatched would possibly be an additional stream. But the discussion so far has focused on BLPs that are unreferenced. I'm wondering in particular if such a stream might not be helpful in that it would aperiodically bring such BLPs to people's attention. Moreover, if a biography is watched but has no references it is much more likely to be ok. (Given that the vast majority of BLPs with no references are also fine, it might be better to say that such biographies are even less likely to be a problem). The question was sort of in the brainstorming mode. JoshuaZ (talk) 17:26, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Framing issues

Request for comments like this are useless because most people read the first few views and support one from those, and then ignore the rest (i.e. there is a bias towards the people that start the RfC). What is needed to truly gauge opinion is to discuss the views first, get the major viewpoints established and documented by collaborative editing, and only then to start polling. As a minor and pedantic point, the first view omits the qualifier "living" (this is usually done when writing in haste to get one's view as the first one on the page). Carcharoth (talk) 08:11, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Views one and two are very different approaches. The second outpolling the first is good evidence of consensus. As the author of the second, I was not involved in starting this RfC. I was perceptive to spot the RfC early, and prepared with a proposal I'd thought through in advance. Framing will always be a challenge. Let's not allow perfect to be enemy of good. Jehochman ^Brrr 12:24, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Carcharoth makes a good point. I think we need an RFC on RFCs, because the current process clearly doesn't work very well for large numbers of responses. Rd232 ^talk 13:16, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

What's even the goal of this RfC? It's going in so many different ways with so much voter fatigue that pulling a consensus out of here is impossible. --Explodicle (T/C) 13:38, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

This RFC was mentioned in the WP:WikiProject Article Rescue Squadron/Newsletter/20091001

The newsletter was sent to 330 editors. As the creator of both newsletters, it was my decision mention this RFC. Ikip ^{Frank Andersson 45 revisions restored:}_{an olympic medallist for f**k's sake} 09:30, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

A link to it might be good.  Roger Davies ^talk 09:42, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Thank you again Mr. Davies. See you soon.... Ikip ^{Frank Andersson (45 revisions restored):}_{an olympic medallist for f**k's sake} 09:46, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Good, I think the more people who know about his, the better...

Proposal to refocus

There appear to be three major proposals on the table - summary deletion, prodwithteeth, and do nothing. I suggest we refoucus the RFC on those three proposals - allow their significant authors space to repropose/clarify/incorporate, and see if there's real consensus. As an alternative, we could see if there's any real objection to prod-with-teeth, which is "Prod can't be removed without sourcing." Hipocrite (talk) 13:48, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree with your overview of three classes of proposals (there is a fourth: commentary on the fiasco leading to this, but this category is far less constructive). I also concur with refocusing, although perhaps might wait another day or so. I am not sure what a good format would be, but I am confident the various authors will work something out. Baccyak4H (Yak!) 17:25, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

A truce! A minute to take fingers off both the delete and panic buttons and go through a normal process. Also a good time to end the righteous indignation of IAR flying everywhere.

I also endorse those as the core 3 directions, but how about a play toward realism to cover the large philosophical gap between "Delete on sight" and "PROD-like"? How about "delete systematically" as defined by some kind of time table per date of template added? Something over a set length of time blanketed to all articles that would be more binding, straight and strict than a PROD adaptation and its associated process. Takes a little more time but the queue will forcefully get to zero with minimum anarchy. Really, community health is a reasonable concern and also one more IAR rationale we can evade if smart. Oh, though I can't imagine many in favor of doing nothing, for simplicity saying "nothing" (in regards to any kind of default to delete under any policy) is understandable. ♪ daTheisen(talk) 17:36, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. I think we can throw out the "delete on sight" and "do nothing" as outliers - even if each has some support there are proposals closer to the midpoint that have more. The middle ground is some kind of deletion mechanism without all the bells and whistles of an AfD (nobody is proposing to use AfD). The question of structure and timing is important but orthogonal to the means. Still, it's very early in the RfC. A lot of useful ideas are being aired just by talking it through. I wouldn't give it a month but perhaps a week and then we can circle back and build a single proposal out of this. - Wikidemon (talk) 20:50, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

What is the point?

While I fully agree that we need a centralized place to discuss the issues here, I don't see how this RfC format is going to result in a consensus. We should be talking and exchanging ideas, not just making a position statement and then getting people to indicate support. Are we just going to go with whoever has the most votes? This is not how we form consensus. -208.97.245.241 (talk) 17:25, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Though a lot of that end up accidentally sounding contradictory, I think I get the concern. Obviously, no !vote totals mean anything. The only place they specifically do is ArbCom. What's the difference between a "policy statement" and associated replies and "talking and exchanging ideas", though? Honestly, I think the above section is already aiming for a really fast way through an RfC since it defines starting points instead of asking for a list of them. As its given above, it's not even for specific consensus to take any action now (I really hope), but a sounding board for where we start from as if this debacle started in discussions in the first place. Trying to be productive in the face of the past 36 hours at least sounds a lot easier if it's written up this way-- Do we want to delete all offenders as quickly as possible? Through a slightly modified process that will take some time but eventually catch everything? ...Or avoid the d-word completely right now? Those are nice broad areas that I think almost any user could comfortably rest in even 2 of without a need to get pitchforks for whatever's next.

If nothing more, it's an attempted call to civility and at least one central place for talk, so it reduces the number of forked disaster areas spread about already. ♪ daTheisen(talk) 17:52, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

I view this as a first step. From the endorsements on various statements, it seems obvious that a BLP-Prod type solution is favoured. This RfC is effectively the information gathering stage of the debate. Policy proposal comes next. Resolute 18:33, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

I share the 208.x.x.x's concerns. By obvious "law of wiki RfCs", there are several problems here:

• there are many overlapping statements, with minor differences
• only the top few statements will receive enough attention
• the only proposal that seems to have overwhelming support, that of Jehochman, is deferring the essential detail: the speed with which deletion should proceed.

Pcap ping 21:32, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Brilliant Idea!

The use of collapse boxes on this RfC was truly a brilliant idea. They make the positions easier to read, and help limit the unnoticed quality of the lower entries. This should be the standard on all RfC's that generate significant amounts of support/oppose/discussion. — James Kalmar 06:09, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree that the collapse boxes improve the format of the RFC, especially since it probably allows entries near the bottom of the page to be read more. However, as mentioned above, the overlap of the suggestions is still a major flaw in this particular system. But again, I applaud MZMcBride and Juliancolton for their work in tidying up the page. Killiondude (talk) 08:01, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Ditto!---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 01:13, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Discussion size and time concerns

At time of my writing this, we're nearing 450k for the full list and !votes. This is also a (apparently) time-sensitive matter where some users feel a need to rush and act on certain views instead of a comment length of longer than 2 days and without any official changes to discuss after. It's not good to see a wheel warring case filed at ArbCom but I admit it's incredible to have not happened in the past few days.

It's not the number of views to read over that is bad (it's great!), but the sheer bulk of text. From an accessibility and sanity standpoint it can't just continue to grow indefinitely. Even for several mpbs+ range we're hitting frustrating load times, especially on top of existing Wikipedia traffic. I feel bad for anyone that might get an edit conflict. I just don't want anyone to be driven away on load frustrations akin to when I remember how much I loved my 33.6 modem in the mid-90s, or dissuaded from participation in any way directly or indirectly related to the article size. Forget about any mobile broadband. Has this come up before to this kind of extreme? If so, what was done? Yes, we're not responsible for connection specifications and limitations, but I really dislike the idea of even one opinion getting lost or abandoned in attempts to post.

Even a rushed RfC close and refinement I would say needs to be Monday at earliest to allow for heavier weekend visitors, but am I right to think nothing can or should be done for at least some more days? ♪ daTheisen(talk) 11:48, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

As far as I'm concerned, as long as there is some progress and some hope of a mechanism that deals with this being agreed, the moritorium on speedy deletions stands. I'm not putting a hard time limit on that - ideally this will be a few days, but a few weeks we can live with. What we can't have is a "stall" where discussion goes stale and cold and nothing happens. It isn't that the matter is urgent, so much as we've stalled for 4 years and it isn't acceptable to revert to stalled mode. I suspect that in a day or two we will want to stop examining "what happened" and look at some concrete proposals that will not allow unreferenced BLPs to linger for long, and will set some (longer) deadlines for dealing with the backlog. Failing that..... well, I suspect BOLD admin action will be the only way - which would be regrettable.--Scott Mac (Doc) 11:56, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Prohibit removing prod tag unless referenced

The removal of prod tags from unref articles can not be permitted unless references are added for the notable claim and identifying information or we end up in the same situation with unref material in remaining in article space. See Richard McLean (Australia) for an example. This article was started in 2005, prodded twice, default keep at Afd in Sept. 2009 with one person commenting, and I found it unsourced with stale inaccurate information in Jan 2009. Our current deletion processes fail to prevent this loop. So requiring prod tags to stay on until the article is adequately sourced is a must. FloNight♥♥♥♥ 14:31, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Absolutely not. Prod tags are for uncontroversial deletions. If the deletion is opposed the prod tag goes, and the nominator is free to nominate the article for deletion under the usual procedure. This should not and cannot be a backdoor to creating a new policy on whether unsourced BLP articles should be deleted as such, or a process fork for dealing with these articles if we collectively agree on a program to fix them. - Wikidemon (talk) 15:40, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Agreed--If you want it irremovable, it's not PROD and calling it that just mucks up things. Better would be a process that automagically sends any closed failed deletion process (PROD, CSD, AfD) where the end product is an unreferenced BLP article, straight to AfD. Yes, that would result in an immediate re-AfD'ing in the unlikely event that an unreferenced BLP was kept at AfD, and looping if the process was repeated. That's not so bad, I think, as completely rearchitecting PROD for this purpose. Jclemens (talk) 18:53, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

I think that it is very poor practice for AfDs to be closed when there are no references (in the article). I've have this happen to me a few times in the past months. People opine 'keep there are lots of sources' and the article exits the debate with none. Peripitus (Talk) 21:32, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

I would be concerned if there are none in the article or the discussion, but if anyone wants to take issue with the a keep close where sources were listed but not edited into the article, that editor can feel free to add the sources from the discussion to the article. Jclemens (talk) 23:22, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

For the record, I support this unconditionally. Tarc (talk) 23:36, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose - But, if someone feels better, automatic "if PROD removed, then send to AfD" is OK, because at least it involves proactively community discussion and helps chances to rescue the article. --Cyclopia^talk 00:37, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Did anyone look at Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Richard_McLean_(Australia)? Plenty of references were given there, but nobody added them to the article. This happens sometimes at AfD. But you, FloNight, also did nothing about the article, even though you say you know something is inaccurate in it. Pcap ping 13:47, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

The removal of PROD tags in accordance with WP:PROD is entirely legitimate. Articles with contested PRODs can be sent to AfD. Alternatively we can develop a new BLP-PROD or similar, with different rules to the existing PROD. What we've got to stop doing is abandoning successive sets of rules and guidelines in the dash to address one issue. There's more to Wikipedia than BLPs (heresy!), and the PROD rules apply to these non-BLP articles as well.

I should add that I agree with Peripitus that its irritating that AfD's close as keep on unreferenced articles, especially where the AfD itself generated useful sources which no one bothers to add. And in passing, we should thank editors like User:Graeme Bartlett who actually added the references to Richard McLean (Australia) while all of us were here pontificating. Euryalus (talk) 08:18, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Query from Collect

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

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

Replies

Not relevant. We should take all steps to make sure our BLPs are libel-free and maintainable as such because: 1) our core WP:V and WP:NPOV demand it 2) it is the right thing to do ("do no harm"). Ask a different question: how many people are adversly or unfairly affected by our failure to keep our BLPs properly maintained? Any OTRS person will tell you there are many many legitimate complaints every week.--Scott Mac (Doc) 12:58, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

The ostensible reason given was that libel may be found there. Are we in the position of the man who went to a shrink -- the shrink asked "Why do you clap your hands every five minutes" Reply "To keep the elephants away" "There are no elephants anywhere near here" "See! It works!" If no examples of libel suits are found, I ould suggest that clapping our hands will not do much <g>. And I would ask how many OTRS complaints are due to unreferenced BLPs which are not deleted by OTRS? In short - are we not using "libel" as a straw argument in such a case entirely? Is not the real argument that all unreferenced articles of whatever ilk should be excised? Collect (talk) 13:51, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

The ostensible reason given by who? Certainly not anybody with what might fairly be characterized as a good grasp of the BLP problem. Steve Smith (talk) 13:53, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

One can have a libel without a lawsuit. If you are asking are some of these unreferenced BLPs libellous, the answer is yes.--Scott Mac (Doc) 14:09, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Save your breath, Scott - he's in no mood to let facts get in the way of a good analogy. Steve Smith (talk) 14:11, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Inasmuch as Scott was one specifically raised "libel" as a rallying cry, I regard his comments as answering your question as to "given by who?" Clearly "libel" is an ostensible reason as given by one of the most active participants. And I would respectfully ask that you respect your own position as a member of ArbCom with regard to comments made about editors. Thank you most kindly. Collect (talk) 15:38, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Libel, yes. Libel suits no. As Scott noted, those are two different things. The lack of libel suits has virtually no evidentiary value as to the existence of libel. Steve Smith (talk) 15:40, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Lack of elephants is surely evidence that elephants must be stopped by clapping <g>. Scott only avers 1 or 2 percent as violating BLP ... seems that there are not all that many elephants to be found. Collect (talk) 16:07, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Back of the envelope estimates (necessarily very rough) for all BLPs (not distinguishing between sourced and unsourced) put ~0.2% of all BLPs having been problematic as a pessimistic value. --Cyclopia^talk 14:35, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Rubbish. I've done OTRS, manned the BLPNB, and used various tools to identify more. I've no way of statistically analysing it, but I can regularly find a bio that violates BLP in 2-3 minutes. Sure the % is probably in low single figures - but that's hardly relevant if you are the subject of the bio.--Scott Mac (Doc) 14:41, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. 1% is 1 too many to host here, and it is a continuing shame that some here can't comprehend that.

It is relevant in understanding how the draconianness of measures vs the problem must be measured. Since you've done OTRS, and you claim to have different data that contradict these ones, it would help a lot if you can share them -say, take a sample of "weeks at OTRS" and figuring out how many independent complaints you received per week, how many of them referred to unsourced BLPs and how many to sourced ones, etc. --Cyclopia^talk 00:35, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Given your statement here Cyclopia, I'm not sure why you even bother to keep asking for data, since it's quite obvious that no (realistic) number of complaints could ever convince you there is a problem. In the context of discussing 50,000+ unsourced articles, I asked how many of those would need to have BLP problems for you to be concerned to the point where we would need to go in and start the prod/source or delete process, and you replied, "I'd say that if there is overwhelming evidence of more than 10% such BLPs having actually harmed a subject, then there is a real problem." Which, to be clear, means that even if Scott or someone else said that there had been 5,000 BLP complaints at OTRS over the past few years, your first response would presumably be, "okay, but how many of those complainers were actually harmed, and is the evidence for that overwhelming?" Please don't bother bothering other people about data when you've made it clear that nothing can convince you that there is a problem with BLP. --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 07:48, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Don't personalize the issue. Measuring the extent of the problem is very important to figure out what the appropriate solution is, and I am flabbergasted that there doesn't seem to have been any serious attempts to do so. henrik•talk 08:22, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm all for more information about the extent of the BLP problem (undoubtedly there could be issues with collecting it given privacy issues with OTRS), though the whole point of BLP as a policy is that we should be concerned even if just a few people are harmed by false or misleading information in our articles. My comment above to Cyclopia has nothing to do with personalizing the situation, it's a simple fact that that editor's apparent threshold for admitting that there is a "real problem" is if 10% out of 50,000 articles did "actual harm" to an article subject (I doubt you would agree with that number). There's no way we have 5,000 cases with "overwhelming evidence" of real world harm, and as such any data provided would not convince Cyclopia that there is a BLP problem. That's not to say that such information would not be useful, just that it's clearly not going to have any effect on Cyclopia's views on these questions. --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 09:19, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Oh, absolutely. 10% is obviously completely unacceptable, and had I thought it anywhere near that number I would have mashing my delete button like crazy speedily deleting the lot. But we can't expect complete perfection. We can strive towards it, and rapidly fix problems as they are pointed out to us, and help encourage people to reduce the risk with various means. But there will be cases where we have incorrect information, and there will be cases where someone uses that information in such a way that could cause harm. But if all we wanted to do was to prevent that, the solution is simple: close down the encyclopedia. We have to make a mature risk-benefit analysis if we're going to come up with a good solution. Even if Cyclopia's views wont be changed, us who haven't taken extreme stances will be helped by such data, and I definitely encourage Cyclopia to continue in his efforts. henrik•talk 11:07, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

I would like to clarify. I am not going to ask real-life proof of 5000 people, say, losing their job. Call me crazy, but not that crazy! To me >5000 50.000 individual articles (~10% of the ~500.000 BLPs) generating independent and valid (e.g. related to actual defamation and not just "I don't like you write WP:WELLKNOWN stuff about me") OTRS complaints are enough to acknowledge that the problem is beyond control. Again, I wouldn't endorse tout court deletion, but I for sure would consider incubation/blanking/removal from search engines etc. But in this context what is mostly important is that unreferenced BLPs are indeed for some reason more problematic than referenced ones. I've seen there is now some more request for informations and I hope good statistics will be collected eventually. --Cyclopia^talk 15:09, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Unreferenced biographies of living people

As a follow on to this RfC, I have started a policy proposal at Wikipedia:Unreferenced biographies of living people.--Scott Mac (Doc) 17:29, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Eep. Can you slow down a bit? We've finally got centralized discussion here.... --MZMcBride (talk) 17:37, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Momentum is good. Inertia is the problem. Anyway, there's already too many words to make this page much of a discussion - it is really just an expression of multiple views, with more people endorsing them. There's not progress anywhere. I read them over, and tried to formulate a policy that seemed to reflect consensus. I doubt much more will happen in this RfC.--Scott Mac (Doc) 18:22, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

At this point, your "momentum" is looking curiously like forum shopping, as in, "moving with high speed to successive fora where opposition is not yet great enough to slow you down." Ray^Talk 20:58, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

What happened to AGF? I opened a policy proposal, and notified people here (supporters and opposers0. While some may feel that premature, it is hardly "moving with high speed to successive fora".--Scott Mac (Doc) 21:03, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Mr. MacDonald, you have absolutely no creditability when it comes to quoting policy, since you have "utter contempt" for consensus.[3] Blocked yourself to avoid being blocked like the R... who was blocked three times. And intentionally created "drama and disruption". If there was in WP:equality on this site, you would be in the process of rightly losing your administrator status. As his actions clearly show, consensus only matter to Mr. MacDonald if it support his viewpoint, otherwise he will commit any and every amount of "drama and disruption" to push for his viewpoint. Ikip ^{Frank Andersson (45 revisions restored):}_{an olympic medallist for f**k's sake} 21:30, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

That's a little harsh. We're a herd of cats around here and we need a WP:BOLD cat herder to keep the herd moving. I think if we abandon further comments on this page and start again somewhere else we'll have a good next iteration because the discussion to date has identified two or three broad types of approaches. There are a lot of different opinions, particularly about what should have happened in the past, but what most commentators here have in common is that they will agree to create a process for cleaning out all the old unreferenced BLPs, and a process for making sure new ones don't get added. Maybe we can develop one or all of the proposals at this point and then see which one(s) look best. - Wikidemon (talk) 02:47, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

• And we have a similar prposal at Wikipedia:Deletion of unreferenced BLPs look like its going take a while to come to a resolution and that we need to be careful of not creating different consensus for the same system on different pages. Gnangarra 09:28, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Comment on the emotional context of deletion

I still see a great deal of anger in this RfC over the methods that Kevin, Doc, and Larry used to jumpstart this discussion. Though I think those methods were indeed somewhat abrasive, the backlash against them has been excessive. There are a couple things about this that need to be pointed out, I think. One important one is that from an admin's point of view, deletion just looks very different from an ordinary editor's view. We can see deleted articles, and we can undelete them with exactly the same number of mouseclicks it took to delete them; what's more, when we click on a redlink for a deleted article we get a link to the "view and restore deleted pages" page. To a non-admin, deletion is a wiping away of an article: it is as if it never existed, and they are naturally more upset than an admin would be if the removed article was on a notable subject. Both groups, I think, need to think about the other's perspective. I would remind non-admins that deletion of BLPs as unsourced will always be considered provisional, to be reversed without fuss the moment sources are provided (this unfussy undeletion, I believe, has worked fairly well with the PROD system--at least, when they've come to DRV they've been speedily and civilly dealt with); it should not have the same implications as an AfD closed as delete, but really be a separate category with lower stakes. I would remind admins that general offers to userfy deleted articles are not enough; we need to be as transparent as possible about these deletions and as helpful as possible to those who wish to source them, and we need to remember that deletion is experienced differently by those who don't have the undelete button available. Chick Bowen 21:50, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, thanks. A stubbified article, by contrast, has an older version that is available to any interested editor, although if people start working on the newly stubbed version the old information becomes harder to integrate. Another emotional thing that happens is a bit of defensive anxiety when people who have the power to freeze your account talk about their intentions in a boastful, belittling, officious, threatening, or otherwise indecorous way. - Wikidemon (talk) 02:39, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Chick, you present an interesting perspective. However, it seems to me that what it actually creates, and especially in light of this movement to mass-delete uncontroversial material, is a caste system amongst editors in Wikipedia--those who might have access to useful material deleted only because it was unsourced, and those who do not. I see this access/no access distinction as fundamentally different from the tools-empowered/unempowered distinction. In the latter, admins merely have additional functionality for performing administrative tasks. In the former, administrators are actually granted access to a much larger Wikipedia and have available to them a much larger amount of information than regular editors. Robert K S (talk) 09:23, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

show/hide

Personally I think that while the use of show/hide feature helps in condensing the page it also removing from sight thoughts and discussions that are an important part of the FRFC process. Much of the discussion is being stiffled by the hiding of responses/comments as editor are being focused only on the primary views not the ensuing discussions. Suggest some other limitations to size the page that enable ensures discussion on views Gnangarra 09:19, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

I'd like to see everything instead of having to click show each time, is there a way to get that behavior on this page but not globally? If not, I think we might want to rethink use of this. ++Lar: t/c 05:01, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

We could set all of the {{collapse top}}s to be expanded by default. There's no URL parameter or anything to make them all expand (though there really should be). There are benefits and detriments to hiding the content. If you really hate them, though, just remove them. --MZMcBride (talk) 07:57, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

I'd prefer to understand why they were added in the first place, first. If everyone else likes them, up and removing them because I don't doesn't seem a good approach to me. Is this a new norm for RfCs or is this the first(ish?) place it's been tried? ++Lar: t/c 11:09, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

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

1. I have to Strongly oppose this based upon NW's comments at WP:BN today. NW felt that a former admin should not have the bit restored because she had 35 unreferenced BLP's that she wrote that she has not even begun to fix. I looked at the first ten items from an automated tool that were give to her a week ago. Of those first ten unreferenced BLPs 4 of them did have in fact have references. One of them her last edit was last year; 3 of them her last edit was in 2008 (2 in Feb of 08)---but on most of them her last edit to the article was in 2004/2005/2006---when our expectations were much different. Heck, I think there was only one article where her last edit the article had been tagged as not having references! Instituting this criteria on articles that one may have written and last edited four, five, or even six years ago is ridiculous. If she hasn't edited the article in 4 years, she probably doesn't care about the article anymore (I've written ariticles that I don't care about.) To say that she should be denied or stripped of her adminship over that is just dumb---especially as expectations were existing at the time. Heck, to expect her to clean them up might be a stretch. Most of those articles have been adopted by Wikiprojects, contact those wikiprojects and let them know about the problems, we'll probably have better luck.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 23:47, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

   Last time I checked, we didn't normally do opposes in RFCs. Regardless, what does any of this have to do with his proposal? I think you're lost, B-man. Wrong venue and such. This isn't BN and it's not RFA and it's not Nuke's talk page. While I can appreciate you disagreeing with him on the matter of Rebecca's adminship (or lack thereof), opposing a view on an RFC because of that doesn't really do much to cast you in a positive (or reasonable) light. Perhaps you may considering reading his view and either endorsing it or not endorsing it. If you want to comment on specific points you disagree with, the talk page is that way. Lara 00:58, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   I completely oppose the proposal because the proposal, as envisioned by NW, would have applied to Rebecca... I don't know Rebecca. But she would have retroactively become responsible for editing and maintaining articles that she hadn't edited in up to six years! Her request and NW's desire to tie her to those articles provides the perfect reasoning as to why this is a flawed proposal.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 01:40, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   What does it matter if she hasn't edited them in six years? That just means she has, for six years, neglected to reference biographies of living people that she wrote. This project is in serious need of cleaning up this BLP problem. We need admins who contribute to fixing the problem, not worsening it. If an admin can't be bothered to reference their own BLPs, how in the world are we to expect them to not only reference others, but do anything proactive wrt to BLPs? Clearly if they're letting their own creations sit for years unreferenced, they don't really care. Not what we need in admins. Lara 01:48, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   Six years ago, the expectations were different. This proposal gives ownership responsibility to individuals. A person can no longer write an article and move on, they would be responsible to ensuring that article is properly maintained and updated based upon the current expectations. This proposal would make the creator responsible for the CURRENT content of an article. If somebody is responsible to ensuring that it meets current expectations, then that person had better have the right to say what goes into it! In other words, they would own it. They should also have the right to delete the article years down the road when they no longer interested in the subject, because it might be used against them. This proposal goes entirely against a community built project and places responsibility on the creator, regardless of how long ago they wrote the aritlce. Saying tha SHE neglected to refefence them is a false premise if she doesn't own the ariticles.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 02:00, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   What? Give me a break. It's not giving anyone ownership over anything. It's requesting editors clean up their own messes. Expectations were different then, true... but so what? If you're still here and you're requested to add a reference to BLPs you created and you can't be bothered? What does that say about you? (Collective you.) If an admin cannot be bothered to source their own article creations, BLPs in particular, they clearly do not care about the BLP problem or, in my opinion, the project. There is nothing positive about unsourced biographies, and if an editor is too lazy to look up references for their own BLPs, deciding instead to leave it to someone else, they're just contributing to the backlogs and contributing to the problem. No one of that mind should be an admin. In my opinion, they should be booted off the project. Lara 02:15, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   Except that this does miss a fundamental point: Most of these unsourced articles don't have any problems at all. It isn't an unreasonable course of action for someone to look over the article see that everything in it is clearly true and not harmful and then not bother. There's an assumption here that there's some deep moral problem with unsourced biographies. But the problem isn't in unsourced biographies. The problem is that some of the unsourced biographies might contain problematic material. And that's just a drop in the bucket to the serious BLP problem which this is really a distraction from. JoshuaZ (talk) 02:22, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   No, the missed fundamental point is that this is an encyclopedia which is, by definition, supposed to be written from existing sources. Unreferenced BLPs are not okay, Joshua. No article of an encyclopedia, including this one, should be unsourced. This is particularly important with BLPs. That said, what's the serious BLP problem, Josh? Because every push for anything BLP-related is met with a big ol' fight. Where should we be focusing? The BLP problem is vast. It's not one thing, it's countless things. No matter which one is the focus at any given time, there's always someone there to point out it's the wrong one. How about everyone stop complaining that it's the issue at hand and not some other issue, and just focus on the fact that it's a BLP issue and fix it. Then we can move on to the next, and the next, and so on until we get to the "serious BLP problem", whatever that is. Lara 02:37, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   You and people who live at WP:BLP may feel that way, but the rest of us are not so convinced. Having an unsourced BLP mean that the article was written in a vacuum, is researched, well written, or neutral. It merely means that there are no sources. Having sources is ideal, but not having them is not the end of the world. But, I will agree, BLP's are special. There is a stronger need to have sources, the problem is that not everybody agrees that unsourced BLP's should be blindly deleted en masse. In fact, there is a fair amount of opposition to this notion. A better idea would be to get help in cleaning them up and figuring out which articles are worth keeping and which ones should be deleted. Thus my proposal below, why not get the various wikiprojects to help out? Getting help from others would be much more desirable than mass deletions and will avoid the out cry that will come from mass deletions.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 02:48, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   This proposal has nothing to do with deletion. We're talking about this specific proposal, Balloonman. It has to do with making editors responsible for their contributions. WP:V puts the burden on the editor who contributed the information. You want Wikiprojects to do the work, and you want to get help from others. Fantastic. The people who created the article should be willing to help out with it. If they can't be bothered to hit up Google and grab a source to do their part on their own creations, they should not only be denied adminship, they should be shown the door. Everyone has so much time and so many ideas to contribute on what could be done and how it could be done, but at the end of the day, look at how many of those people are actually working on BLPs. I'll give you a hint: It's not an impressive numbers. Lara 02:58, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   My point is that the only proposal I've seen from the BLP crew here is CSD/PROD. There are other proposals out ther... but people should not be obligated to own an article six years after they wrote it. There may be other editors who are much more involved in the article and the articles development than the person who first started it. As for "their own creations" that only matters if they OWN their creations. Once they finish editing the article it is no longer theirs. Now, if you were talking about a person who routinely wrote BLPs today without providing sources, I'd be in full agreement with you... but you are talking about holding a persons feet to the fire for actions taken YEARS ago. You can ask them to do something, but they simply may not care enough about the subject, again you cannot attribute motivations for somebody failing to act in the way you want them to.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 03:49, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   You miss my point. Yes, our end goal is to connect everything to reliable sources. But if there articles that are truthful and whose soul problem is a lack of sourcing in the articles then that fundamentally isn't a high priority issue. The rest of what you said is simply window dressing. To say that this is a substantial part of the BLP problem is seriously missing the forest for the trees. Simply put we have far more serious problems with POV pushing, vandalism and related issues. If you want to do something useful send a note to your favorite member of the Board harassing them about flagged revisions. Or add more articles to your watchlist. Or help figure out which BLPs are getting regular vandalism and still aren't protected. All of those are far more useful. Frankly, the problem here seems to be that much of the actual solutions (aside from getting flagged revisions) simply aren't glamorous. That's how life works. There's far more work to be done maintaining content than engaging in this sort of destructive drama. JoshuaZ (talk) 02:53, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   I'm just going to assume that you neither read my response nor realize who you're talking to, because I know JoshuaZ did not just advise me on how to edit wrt to BLPs or what the problems are. Lara 03:01, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   I'm pretty sure that JoshuaZ did exactly that. If however, you insist on personalizing this to somehow being about you and me (it really isn't, and personalizing things likely would make a matter which is already quite emotional for a lot of people even more so) Just wondering when was your last edit that actually got rid of a genuinely bad statement in a BLP? From your contributions it looks like it was in November. JoshuaZ (talk) 03:14, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   I've done more than my fair share to fix this problem. Which one of the other signatures on this page is your sock account, used to keep BLPs that should be deleted... or do you not do that anymore? Lara 03:17, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   Thanks for not answering the question. Of course, you know that I've repeatedly denied those accusations. Now why don't we try to actually focus on the issue at hand which is the complete lack of utility in these deletions. JoshuaZ (talk) 03:36, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   ecx2 That is the definition of ownership. If a specific individual is responsible for the article, despite not working on the article for years, then you are putting ownership responsibilities on them. According to this proposal, the creator of an article is still responsible for the article SIX YEARS AFTER creating it. Guess what if I fail to add a source to an article I wrote SIX YEARS ago, it does not say anything about my concern for BLP. It probably says more about my interest in the subject. Let me give you an example, I wrote an article that was taken to AFD. Did I fight for the article? No, I didn't bother to get involved in the debate because frankly I didn't care about the article anymore. I had written it 2+ years ago and moved on. You cannot make the generalization that a person is responisble for editing an article simply because they wrote it, by doing so, you are putting more responsibility on article creation than was EVER intended.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 02:38, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   The verifiability policy, which ranks pretty high on the scale of importance, puts the burden on the editor who added the content. Your ownership argument remains ridiculous in my opinion. Lara 02:46, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   Expecting an editor to clean up an article they wrote six years ago and making them responsible to do so under threat of desysopping is pretty ridiculous in my opinion.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 02:52, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   The fact that you think admins would be that lazy and worthless is ridiculous to me. If you'd written a couple BLPs five years ago and I asked you to "Hey Balloonman, we're trying to get this backlog of 50 thousand unrefed BLPs down, can you do a couple Google searched and try to find a ref or two for these BLPs you created?", would you refuse? Lara 02:58, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   You are misconstruing doing the right thing and establishing bad policy---this is bad policy. As for your question: Depends... probably I would, but if it was on a subject I no cared about, I might not. Let's turn the issue around. You wrote an article five years ago. When you wrote it, it was a short stub and conformed to all of the guidelines at the time. In the intermeaning five years, the article has grown and policies have changed. Perhaps it was on a subject you didn't care about or perhaps the article took an editorial direction you disagreed with. Perhaps you left the article because somebody who cared more about it took the lead on its development. Or perhaps you merely stopped caring about the subject. The article is still well written and neutral, perhaps better written than what you had, but as far as you are concerned it is no longer your article---you could care less if it was deleted or not. The point is, that it is in no way shape or form the article you wrote and you haven't been involved with it for years. Based upon this proposal you would still be responsible for the content and if you don't clean it up, then you may be desysopped. If a person is going to have responsibility for ensuring that it conforms to guidelines in perpetuity merely because they wrote the first incarnation, then they need to have editorial powers. The point is, that you cannot deduce motives in failing to act and you should not impose penalties for failing to do what somebody else wants. We are ultimately volunteers here and you cannot force others to have the same set of priorities that you have.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 03:23, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   I would, without doubt, add a source. If I couldn't find one, I'd nom it for deletion myself. We are all volunteers, and you're right that we can't force people to have the same set of priorities. We also don't have to allow them to keep their adminship. People have been desysopped for less, after all. Lara 03:28, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   I'd love to see the call for a desysop based upon the fact that somebody refuses to edit an article they haven't touched in six years. The only basis for trying to force them to would be because they own, I mean, wrote it.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 03:44, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   You're surely stuck on that ownership thing, aren't you. Understanding the verifiability policy is hard. I know. But whatever. You're clearly the expert when it comes to who's acceptable for adminship, Ballloonman. I'll just rely on your expertise for basing my decision here. Lara 03:48, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   mmm... miss... i think you should know, you sarcasm and your barely concealed belittlement is showing. Ikip 19:08, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

   I fully understand verifiability. But do you realize that 6 years is a long time. If a person hasn't edited an article in six years, perhaps there is a reason. You want to make people responsible for articles that have been in the public domain for six years simply because they were the one to click the button that said "create this page." Verifiability is good and fine... but if you want to force somebody to adhere to that policy do so within a reasonable time frame. Years after the fact is not a reasonable time frame. The only way that you can expect somebody to do something six years down the road is if you expect them to be responsible for it.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 03:52, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   I don't care if it was nine years ago. It's a Google search. Help fix the problem or go away. Lara 03:56, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   I invite Jennavecia (who chooses to sign as "Lara") to consider WP:CIVIL

   Just for the record---that was NOT me.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 14:55, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   No it was me. I must have forgotten to sign: sorry. JamesBWatson (talk) 16:07, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

   It doesn't matter who it was, user Jennavecia would be better not bringing this community wide discussion down to a personal level with thinly disguised insults and personal attacks. Weakopedia (talk) 12:14, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

   If I may return to Balloonman's "Strongly oppose", a case in which NuclearWarfare made comments which Balloonman disagreed is irrelevant to whether we agree or disgree with what NuclearWarfare has said here. For the same reason all the above argument following from that is also irrelevant. The suggestion should be judged on its own merits, not on ad hominem arguments about something the same person said elsewhere. JamesBWatson (talk) 13:41, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   The problem is that this assigns responsibility to people who may not have been involved with articles since their inception. If the proposal were reworded to talk about an ongoing problem I could support that. But to make a guideline that can be applied to articles that an author wrote years ago is dumb. The next thing you know, we are going to try to instill a policy that if you edit an article, you are responsible for cleaning it up.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 14:58, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

2. I am VERY glad that Balloonman brought up this issue here, because it is very relevant. I think it once again shows the extreme views which editors who support deleting the 49,000 BLP articles have. Rebecca is one of the most veteran editors here on wikipedia, and she is such an incredible asset to this project, to say that she be barred from any adminship for her good faith contributions, shows the extreme views editors have who support these changes. This entire RFC began with editors who have "utter contempt" for consensus. Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Biographies_of_living_people#View_by_Ikip Since then Coffee is at arbitration a second time, and now extreme views are being voiced for punishing editors for their good faith contributions. These two arbcoms and Rebecca's case is all a precursor of the disruption and extreme drama which will happen when these extreme views are put into place. We judge editors on their character and edit history to determine whether they would be good fits for adminiship, by the same token, I think it is necessary to view a proposal by the character and history of the proposal, to see whether it would be a good fit for the community. Ikip 19:08, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Interim summary of the RFC - 24 January 2010 at 09:56 UTC

It is exceptionally good to see this large a segment of the community participating in this brainstorming session for a critical issue, and many good ideas and valid points have been raised. I do encourage people to take the time to read the full text of several of the views on the main page here, but there is a lot of information, so I will attempt to summarise some of the thoughts that seem to have taken hold, and point to ideas that can be acted upon, many with fairly little effort.

What we agree on

• It seems broadly agreed that BLPs are sensitive content that always has the potential to cause harm, particularly when poorly sourced or written in a way that is noncompliant with core editorial policies (NPOV, verifiability, NOR and BLP)
• Unsourced BLPs are only one aspect of the larger issue of problematic content in BLPs
• There is a lot of work to be done
• Straight deletion of unsourced BLPs is supported by a sizeable minority of those participating, but is not the favoured process for addressing unsourced BLP articles
• Removal of contentious unsourced information should be immediate when identified, including use of CSD criteria where applicable

What we haven't come to a conclusion about

• The extent to which the level of notability of an article subject plays in determining risk for harm
• The degree or extent of discussion required before a deletion decision is made
• The impact on the encyclopedia of deleting articles versus retention of unsourced material
• Whether lack of sourcing/undersourcing is as critical a priority for other article types as it is for BLPs
• Deletion decisions need human input and should not be done automatically by bots or other tools

Proposal with the strongest support

• View by Jehochman, a variation of PROD which would result in unimproved articles being deleted or, in select cases, being sent to the article incubator; PROD tags should not be removed. All are encouraged to participate in the review process.

Readily implemented ideas

Many of these ideas can be put into place immediately, regardless of the outcome of this RFC and/or to supplement the processes that are favoured through this RFC, but are not overall solutions

• Logs identifying articles in which BLP violations have occurred (Bigtimepeace)
• Development of a timeline under which to carry out review of all unsourced BLPs, with set deadlines based on age (or other criteria) (Scott MacDonald)
• Engaging editors site-wide to actively participate in sourcing unsourced and undersourced BLPs (Cenarium)
• Development of a "BLP Brigade" with structure and recognition processes (Wikidemon, Hut 8.5)
• Tool/Bot to notify relevant wikiprojects of unsourced BLPs with strong urging to improve these articles (several editors, bot request made by Nuclear Warfare, a retasking of WolterBot suggested by Resolute)
• Edit filter to track removal of PROD templates (or whatever other template is used) from BLP articles (NJA)

Ideas that could be developed

Some other ideas that may work effectively as adjuncts to the processes selected through this RFC

• Templates identifying that an article has been stubbed/deleted to remove unverified material (Father Goose, Arthur Rubin, henrik)
• Every editor is to review and improve one unsourced BLP per comment in the RFC (Sjakkalle)
• "Draft" article space (FT2) and/or article incubator (Rd232 and others)
• Semi-protection for unwatched BLPs (Jake Wartenberg)
• Userfication of new unsourced BLPs with established time limit for minimal sourcing (Lead Song Dog)
• Specialised deletion process for BLPs that is similar but stricter than PROD, with set timelines (HJ Mitchell, David Gerard)

This is intended only to be an interim summary of the discussion; other readers might have selected or arranged this information differently. Risker (talk) 09:56, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Discussion

RE: "It seems broadly agreed that BLPs are sensitive content that always has the potential to cause harm, particularly when poorly sourced or written in a way that is noncompliant with core editorial policies (NPOV, verifiability, NOR and BLP)"

With all due respect, this Request for comment has only been open for 3 days the average RFC stays open for 30 days. I think a summary of what everyone thinks is incredibly immature at this point.

The two contrasting views which I see, which have the most signatures is Jehochman, with 124 signatures, and Collect, with 45 signatures.

If this were a Request for Adminiship, Jehochman's idea would be in possibly fail category: 73% support. 124+45= 169, 124/169 = 73% [4]

It is incredibly telling what Risker does not mention Collects ideas, which have 45 signatures, but Risker does mention:

Bigtimepeace: 2 signatures.

Father Goose: 0 signatures.

Jake Wartenberg: 12 signatures.

Sjakkalle: 5 signatures.

Keeping the status quo, is an viable popular option Risker, ignoring it does not change the fact that 45 editors support this position.

I encourage editors such as DGG, Casliber, or Father Goose, who support Collects view to write up a summary as Risker has. Editors who write up summaries often shape the debate. Ikip 12:37, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Hi Ikip, I haven't ignored Collect's position, because his view and others similar to it have been captured under the heading "What we haven't come to a conclusion about". His view itself is focused on notability, and that is the first entry there; other views about notability have also been expressed. The same is true of the part of his view that focuses on the "how", which falls into the general category of "requires human eyes" because that is the current process.

The purpose of the summary was to pull out some of the ideas that are either (a) able to be implemented whether or not there is any change in practice, so that work can be done on them now, or (b) ideas that are probably not implementable immediately but can benefit from more eyes to determine if they are viable. This is the largest and most complex RFC we have had for a long time, and it's important to tease out good ideas early. We do not need to wait 30 days, for example, for someone to set up a bot that brings these articles to the attention of various projects, in the hopes that they will review them, improve and reference them, and we wind up with superior content without deletion. The lack of signatures behind a view does not speak to its viability, particularly in an RFC that has collected +500K bytes of discussion in its first 72 hours. I'm trying to make sure these ideas don't get lost in the ocean of words, and that a reader new to this process can quickly identify the key themes. Risker (talk) 18:28, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for this effort. I think that's a good summary but I do have a few qualms. Obviously consensus is more than just a !vote, but particularly here you cannot measure consensus by finding the seemingly best accepted among a few dozen largely redundant proposals. Further, as noted this is more of a brainstorming session than a conventional RfC. Summarizing now is useful but I think we need to hash this through to narrow things down rather than trying to find a single answer. The solution is going to involve several different things in tandem, not a single solution that edges out all others. And it will probably be the best proposal for getting the job done, not necessarily the one that reflects the most common gut reaction among commentators here. I don't see agreement that unsourced BLPs are in fact a huge problem, just agreement that if some editors wish to make the issue a priority other editors are willing to help. There is a big distinction made in many proposals between dealing with the 50,000+ article backlog, and ongoing maintenance or new article patrol - any summary that conflates the two potentially confuses this issue. I see very little support for an ad-hoc PROD process, or for the contention that PROD tags placed in the normal course cannot be removed by way of challenging the deletability of an article. However, if we do have a comprehensive way of dealing with the backlog, then either adding or removing articles from the queue out of process would be a problem. Hope that helps. - Wikidemon (talk) 13:49, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Wikidemon, I agree with you that it is unlikely that a single solution will result from all of this. Risker (talk) 18:28, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Pretty much struck my whole section, after I wrote it, my little voice inside told me to reedit it, but ignored it at my peril. Risker, thank you for your comments and clarifications. If Wikidemon agrees, you could remove all of our comments here.

I apologize. I guess that is why you are a arbitrator, as a bridge builder and diplomat, you know how to work together with everyone to build a comprimise which most people we be satisfied with. Nice job on the overview. My apologizes again. Ikip 18:41, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Clarifications by Jehochman

I moved this content here to avoid confusing the proposal, per suggestions from several editors below. Jehochman ^Brrr 13:51, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Clarifications

• I changed from five to seven days to be consistent with existing deletion processes.
• Any user can remove a prod. We are not concerned with the occasional removal of a prod without fixing the article. Those few can go to articles for deletion. We are concerned about mass removals without cause and without attempting to make improvements. Such action would be tantamount to disrupting Wikipedia to make a point, and would risk a block. Existing policy is sufficient to prevent that if a few admins with cojones are willing to provide enforcement. Jehochman ^Brrr 13:46, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Jehochman, please don't change the key points about your proposal after significant voting. Removal of a prod tag and putting it back into main space unsourced is not an acceptable outcome. Many people will not support this change because it defeats the purpose that we are trying to achieve. The occasional prod removal IS a problem because those can fall through the cracks and end up remaining unsourced. FloNight♥♥♥♥ 11:35, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
    • Agree with FloNight, the majority of the supports below were to the fact that the PROD template cannot be removed at all unless the article is sourced. Please strike out that clarification, as it only serves to confuse and make a false look of consensus towards it. — Coffee // have a cup // ark // 22:17, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
      • Disagree. The irremovability of the prod is not something clearly consistent with the nature of a wiki, was a preliminary idea, and not fundamental to the proposal (which is essentially to affirm current mechanisms). --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:56, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
    • Also agree with FloNight: I hadn't supported yet (but was going to), but if the clarification means that the "prods" can be removed without adding references, I'm not at all clear whether this proposal actually achieves anything. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 01:25, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I am moving this threaded discussion to talk. My proposal means exactly what it says. The spirit of the proposal is that somebody who removes one or two prods should be warned not to do that. Mass de-prodding should result in a block. A small number of de-prods is not a problem because those articles can go to AfD. It is best practice if somebody raises specific objections to a proposed deletion to discuss the matter, not to bite them. The problem is when somebody has a blanket objection to enforcing WP:BLP and seeks to disrupt the cleanup campaign by removing all prods, regardless of the merits. That sort of behavior even on non-BLP articles would be disruptive, and blockable. Jehochman ^Brrr 13:27, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

You don't understand the issue. This has been a long term problem unrelated to this mass deletion tagging. The changes to policy must address how we handle these article on a longterm basis. But you're addressing this as an editor behavior problem when the issue is a quality improvement problem. We know that articles currently have prod tag removed, go to Afd and get kept and leave the deletion process without sources. We can not have these articles go through the deletion discussions and remain on site without anyone improving. Your proposal allows that to happen. So your proposal does not adequately address the problem. FloNight♥♥♥♥ 14:16, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

No, I think I understand the issue very well, and if you are going to say I don't, I'm going to follow Mark Twain's advice and stop discussing it with you. If prods are placed and dealt with in good faith, the issue will be cleaned up. At any point you can blank unreferenced content from a BLP. Anybody who repeatedly restores unreferenced content can then be warned and blocked. What you shouldn't do is summarily delete an article, thereby hiding its edit history from those who might want to go looking for sources. Jehochman ^Brrr 14:44, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

The current deletion processes do not address the problem of poorly referenced articles. It was not designed to address it and won't unless it is changed to explicitly include it as a criteria for deletion. And again, you are discussing editor conduct when the issue is a process that does not adequately address removing unreferenced material from Wikipedia. Currently the processes are much too labor intensive and have inadequate volunteer involvement. One person may spend a couple of minutes writing a low quality article but in order for us to delete the article for lack of verification of the content, multiple people need to spend double or triple the time (at a minimum). This method of quality improvement does not scale, so we need to build in ways to make quality improvement more effective and efficient. Requiring someone to spend time improving the article by adding references for the key identifying information and the reason for notability needs to be the minimum requirement for okaying the article staying on Wikipedia at end of a deletion discussion. Any process that does not include this minimum standard is inadequate and needs to be improved to explicitly include this criteria. FloNight♥♥♥♥ 15:44, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

How nasty does the Jerochman's proposal sound when the shoe is on the other foot? "Anyone who repeatedly adds PROD tags to content should be warned and blocked." Yeah, completely unreasonable. And quite offensive, really. PROD tag users in my experience are not interested in doing even the most minimal work to find a source that would mean an article on a notable subject would be referenced in some way. It takes seconds to place a tag, and minutes to find a source. What this proposal simply says is - we would rather not do the work of finding sources, and believe wholesale deletion of a great fraction of Wikipedia's biographies is a better solution. Mostlyharmless (talk) 01:26, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Question: There is no policy requirement in PROD to check for sources before adding the tag. Policy (specifically, neutral point of view and verifiability) require sources. How can notability, which is only a guideline be reliably established without sources? What is the best way to move this forward so that the requirements of policy are swiftly met without process being trumped by a guideline? (As an aside, I'm curious by the suggestion that it takes minutes to add sources: I've just sourced two BLPs on the French wikipedia by way of an exercise and with the associated copy-editing/expansion etc they took more than half an hour each.)  Roger Davies ^talk 08:27, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Run real proposals separately

Since this RFC is so large, and people support the views the like rather than voting support/oppose on each view, I suggest that any actual proposal for policy change is made into a separate page, advertised here and all the normal channels, and then a vote/discussion is held. It is just not reasonable to take the support/oppose ratio for a view here to show any kind of consensus. --Apoc2400 (talk) 18:42, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

that sounds wonderful. Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Biographies of living people/final decision after this RFC closes normally? Ikip 18:45, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. This is a thorny issue, and it's far better to whittle it down bit by bit rather than try and do a whole lot at once. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 22:24, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. The "community desysop" RFC made that mistake. Rd232 ^talk 13:18, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Something useful, uncontroversial and parallel to any policy change: Enlist wikiprojects & editors

If we were to get many editors looking over unreferenced BLPs, much of the tension and disagreement on the RfC page would be reduced: The concern about losing acceptable articles and the concerns about libel, poor quality and worthless articles would both be ameliorated.

Several threads in the RfC address this problem with essentially the same suggestion: involve Wikiprojects in evaluating unreferenced BLPs. Just look at the threads started by:

• Resolute [5]
• Balloonman [6]
• The-Pope [7]
• Pohta ce-am potit [8].

There is no technical problem in identifying unreferenced BLPs by subject area (the discussions have links to already-existing programs that do this -- for instance, see The-Pope's discussion). Individual editors can identify unreferenced BLPs by cross-referencing with categories in their areas of interest.

So, I propose:

1. Setting up some organization to promote the idea that Wikiprojects that aren't already monitoring unreferenced BLPs start doing so. We shouldn't insist on any kind of regimented activity: Just contact the Wikiprojects and let them address the issue in their own way.
2. Publicizing the problem among editors at large -- perhaps with one of those big, annoying banners, something we do for Very Important Things All Editors Should Be Bothered With (VITAESBBW), and informing editors with a description of the problem and links to already existing tools that would lead them to unreferenced BLPs in articles of interest to them. All we have to do with editors is inform them on what they can do. If editors know about the problem, they'll be interested in working on articles in their area of interest, and nothing more need be done to help them.

Personally, I don't know enough about the technical aspects of programs like this, how best to inform and appeal to Wikiprojects and how to get a VITAESBBW strung up. Can we get some volunteers together, and will someone with some savvy in these things volunteer to coordinate? I can put some time into it, but I'm better with grunt work (I don't even know what to call some of these cross-referencing search engines -- are they all "bots"?). This should take maybe a few weeks to set up, and then we fold our tent and go our separate ways (although a page should be set up where individual editors can get information on how to help). You don't have to come down on one side or the other of any policy proposal to work on this collectively and constructively.

-- JohnWBarber (talk) 22:22, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Volunteers, please

1. JohnWBarber (talk) 22:22, 24 January 2010 (UTC) -- can do boring grunt work.
2. I'll definitely help draw the attention of Wikiprojects to the BLP issues. I'm not knowledgeable about the technical aspects how to create tools to do it, but will help out it other ways. For several weeks now, I've been pondering about how do a cross wiki project to work on international BLPs in many languages. I suggested this idea on the Wikimedia Strategic Planning wiki. I've also talked on that wiki about better using Wikiprojects as a way to collaborate. Many of the Wikiprojects have interested editors but they die because of problems with leadership. FloNight♥♥♥♥ 22:51, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Comments, suggestions?

• Don't overcomplicate this. As I suggested in View by WereSpielChequers "can someone write a Bot to inform wikiprojects of unsourced BLPs in their remit in the same way that DASHBot has been informing authors?" ϢereSpielChequers 22:43, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Left a note for DASHBot's owner, Tim1357, here. Let's see if he could give us a hand. NW (Talk) 22:54, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Interesting idea, but (1) The wikiprojects themselves are better at identifying the parameters of what categories to look at; (2) There are several options for what programs a wikiproject may want to use and how they may want to use them, and I'm hoping a group of volunteers can help wikiproject editors who have questions about this, and perhaps have questions about the impending deletions; I think a human touch is better to deal with these concerns; (3) I'm looking to publicize this among the majority of editors who don't concern themselves with project-space controversies -- a banner, coverage in the Signpost, for instance -- it requires more than a bot program. Thanks for the link to your suggestion, sorry I missed it. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 22:57, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

The way I envisage the Bot working is that projects would be notified of any unsourced BLP with their project marked on the talkpage. But they could also volunteer to be informed of any unsourced BLP in certain categories. That could still leave some BLPs for which a wikiproject doesn't exist, but I may be able to persuade the Article Rescue Squadron to take a look at them. I'm sure there will also be some moribund wikiprojects that can't or won't do much about this, but then many of the 17,400 editors who DASHBot is informing will be long retired, blocked, or in the case of IPs simply reassigned. On the plus side some BLPs will be of interest to multiple wikiprojects. I agree with the signpost article and so forth, but I think that a Bot that highlighted relevant articles to wikiprojects would break this into manageable chunks that are relevant to particular editors. ϢereSpielChequers 23:26, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Personally any proposal that does not include notifying the wikiprojects is destined to be problematic. If we notify them and they fail to act, then it is their problem. If we don't notify them and the BLP CSD'ers get their way, there will be problems. As for dead projects... if they are dead, then it is unlikely that they would have raised the ruckus I fear.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 00:46, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

User:Tim1357 has responded and offered to look into updating DASHBot, I've also asked him if he wouldn't mind restarting the process of DASHBot chiding the authors. Quite understandably some of the people who got a note from DASHbot closely followed by their article being deleted were complaining to him. So it seems that the first "achievement" of the summary deletion without notification process was to stop DASHbot after it had only requested that 14,400 of the 17,400 authors of our unreferenced BLPs go back and reference their creations. ϢereSpielChequers 01:39, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

I think notifying authors is of limited value---most have quit or moved on. The wikiprojects are the ones that maintain the ongoing interest. Take me for example, I've worked on a number of Brewery related articles, but the subject doesn't interest me. I just got a bug to work on some of them over a weekend and created two or three articles on Colorado MicroBreweries. If somebody came back and asked me to work on them, it would depend on what they needed, but in all honesty, its a subject that doesn't interest me. That being said, those articles are of interest to several wikiprojects that might try to rectify them.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 03:38, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

I notified WP:METAL and had a list created (Wikipedia:WikiProject Metal/Unreferenced BLPs) of unreferenced BLPs within the project. Haven't received much of a response yet but have a fairly manageable list to work on. J04n(talk page) 03:52, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

A Bot already exists to inform projects

User:WolterBot already generates a set of reports for subscribing projects that includes a list of unreferenced BLPs. Projects that want to subscribe to this just need to add {{User:WolterBot/Cleanup listing subscription|banner="insert your project banner here"}} to their project page (more details on User:B. Wolterding/Cleanup listings). It is an opt in service for projects and only works on articles that have been tagged for that project. So I still think there is room for a DashBot style listing and also a system for projects to request information on articles within particular categories. But if anyone is concerned about saving articles of interest to their project I'd suggest you try and persuade your project to sign up to Wolterbot. ϢereSpielChequers 00:12, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Indeed it does include a report of unreferenced BLP for a project. See Wikiproject Equine list of unreferneced BLPs for an example. So we know that we have the tool to alert people, we just need to make sure that they are aware of the significance that reviewing them will have on retaining them on site. FloNight♥♥♥♥ 01:06, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps someone could write up a draft -- a short, factual statement outlining the situation, telling projects that articles in their purview may be deleted, and that they can use that bot to figure out which articles are at risk (and maybe other bots). If that's written up, I'll put it on the talk pages of all the Wikiprojects. It would be better still if someone with technical savvy would just confirm that the other bots are also fine for this, but if we have one (and it's commonly used already), we have what we need. We might wait for the next edition of Signposts and link to the article about this. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 01:30, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

I think that WolterBot is only a partial tool as projects have to request it. Also it seems to rely on articles being tagged for that project as opposed to being in relevant categories. I'm hoping that we can get a DASHbot style note that every project gets whether they like it or not - perhaps some projects will be reinvigorated by the process. But I will drop a note asking if the author is OK with a number of extra projects joining, and if he can put extra emphasis on the Unreferenced BLP bit of his report. ϢereSpielChequers 01:45, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

The bot is fairly inadequate. Compare this catscan list with the one produced by the bot (same as the link of FloNight above). Further information on the method I used here. Pcap ping 08:06, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

I already notified several of the projects about BLP issues. As we all discussed. I created more or less a full list of all projects yesterday 72 in all, I would be happy to post this 72 anywhere you wish. Ikip 02:29, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Does a list exist of all BLP related wikiprojects?

Thank you. Ikip 02:09, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

While some would have more than others, almost every type of wikiproject could have a BLP related article because they are broad in the way that they cover topics. Who would have thought that Equine would have that many unref BLP articles. FloNight♥♥♥♥ 02:21, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Here's a thought...

Instead of spending so much time bickering here, why don't people click over to Category:Unreferenced BLPs. There's even a "random article in this category" button. In just over an hour, I've managed to reduce the population of said category by half a dozen articles. This is not a huge number, but imagine if 200 editors took half a dozen each and sourced them or prodded what couldn't be sourced... Keep going- more editors, more time, within a few days we can have an empty category and a redundant RfC. Surely that makes more sense than arguing over the minutiae of this proposal or that proposal????? HJ Mitchell | fancy a chat? 02:17, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Hopefully people are both working on BLP articles since their awareness was raised and commenting in the discussion. We need for people to do both. FloNight♥♥♥♥ 02:25, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

This is how Scott MacDonald, who helped start this RFC, by deleting several dozen articles, works on BLPs: [9] by deleting referenced sections and stubifying them. Same pattern as Bali Ultimate, who was a subject of an ANI recently.

It is impossible to work with such editors when they continue to show "utter contempt" for consensus which built our rules.

It will only get worse, much worse, the two arbcoms, the bickering, the planned "disruption" and "drama" which was planning by Scott MacDonald and friends. A precursor of how these new policies will play out.

We can all talk diplomatically about unity, working together and playing by the rules, but that requires a genuine effort by all interests. Ikip 02:39, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Be that as it may, my point is that people could do a lot more good by just picking a few BLPs at random and trying to source them rather than making rhetorical comments here. HJ Mitchell | fancy a chat? 02:48, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

I am tempted to say that many of the editors who contribute to these discussions ... I am more interested in adding (sourced) BLPs for the redlinks in List of all Nigerian state governors, which are all clearly highly notable. Nigeria is half as big as the USA by population and growing fast, major oil supplier, big political problems. Plenty of sources, all in English. Let's push to add quality content. Forget this stuff. Aymatth2 (talk) 02:52, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

There are many projects that are already doing this and have project work groups tackling this (Cricket, India, Australia etc etc). Of course a good chunk of the unreferenced BLP tags are legitimate, but there are a lot that are frivolous, I've had to remove an unsourced BLP tag from one with 15 sources, another from one that was fully sourced and not even a BLP, and many others with sources and/or dead people. Add to that PRODs for Presidents and Prime Ministers and it starts to become annoying. I'm not asking for people to not add the unref tags or PRODs, but is it too much to ask that they spend a few minutes evaluating the article before doing all this? For god's sake, we're here to build an encyclopaedia, not do enactments of Don Quixote. –SpacemanSpiff 02:59, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Because working BLP and random articles only appeals to those people who want to work random articles and BLP. Most people who are volunteers work in areas that interest them---and that does not include for most people, [[Nigerian governors. People who want to work CSD will focus there, AFD will focus there, Poker will focus there, etc. In the real world, we have to take the BLP issue to where people want to work and recruit them to help out. A person who is interested in TV shows will not care one iota about Nigerian Governors, but may work diligently on unsourced TV Actors. This is why getting the WIkiprojects is important... it is a realistic solution to the problem. We will not get the people to work on all 50K BLPs. Even if everybody who commented on this RfC worked 50 articles, we would would still be short by an order of magnatude... and many of the people may not be sufficeintly knowledgable on all of the subjects to adequately assess the subjects importance.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 03:35, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

It is an excellent suggestion to try and fix these articles ourselves, but there is one problem: our own bias when it comes to removing articles. Perhaps we should come up with a certain criteria for what makes an un-referenced BLP removable. Perhaps a new talk page on this idea is required? Ashwin N 03:59, 25 January 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by ANarayan (talk • contribs)

That's simple, if you don't reference it, then it should be deletable. I am in no way advocating giving the projects the right or power to say, "This article is important, despite the lack of references." If the article is notable and worth saving, then find references per our other policies/guidelines. My main concerns with the CSD/PROD proposals coming out of the BLP community is that they want to simply delete everything and gut the system. I have no problem getting rid of the articles, but we need to do so in a controlled rationale manner. If WP:POKER doesn't want to salvage it's articles, then it can't get upset when they are deleted en masse for not having references.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 16:42, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

My comment above was a bit off-topic. I find it hard to feel passionately that old unsourced bios have to be purged or that they have to be retained. Most of them are harmless enough. But it would take a huge amount of effort to clean them all up, some do not belong and others are presumably of marginal importance or they would have been sourced long ago. If they are deleted, it is not a disaster. They can always be recreated. I see more value in putting effort into adding well-sourced articles on notable subjects that are missing from Wikipedia, whether they are Nigerian Governors, TV Actors, Cricketers, whatever, than in struggling to patch up articles on relatively obscure subjects that nobody seems particularly interested in. Maybe a view that is not really relevant to this discussion. Aymatth2 (talk) 16:37, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

That's why we let the wikiprojects handle that. Governors of Nigeria may be important/notable, but not everybody is going to realize that or put the effort into saving those articles... now people interested in Nigeria or other possible wikiprojects may make the effort to salvage those articles. If they don't, then they can't get upset when they are deleted. Again, I am not opposed to getting rid of thousands of articles, but I am opposed to blindly doing so without consideration or forethought.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 16:42, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

How about Jennifer Holland? I have the feeling there are a lot like this. Possibly notable, if anyone is interested in fixing it up. But no great loss of content if it is deleted for now - it can always be recreated. There has to be some level of triviality where there is no need for extended process. Aymatth2 (talk) 21:53, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

How many articles?

I see some wildly different numbers being thrown around. Category:All unreferenced BLPs was right around 50,000 when I checked it sometime in the last two days, and it's 49,096 now. Flatscan (talk) 04:32, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree that the decrease in article count is probably a good thing. I was wondering specifically about the 60,000 number. Flatscan (talk) 05:18, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

There were 51,000 articles in the unsourced BLP category, and another 14,000 articles in the category "living people"" are tagged as "unsourced" instead opf "unsourced BLP". So that made some 65,000 articles about living people tagged as unsourced. On the other hand, a significant number of those are actually badly sourced instead of unsourced, a small number are not about living people (e.g. articles about bands), and a fair numbers of BLPs are unsourced but untagged. Fram (talk) 08:16, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the breakdown. Flatscan (talk) 04:28, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

While we try to broke a definite compromise here, others editors are anticipating the call and started their "project-brew" unsourced BLP sourcing drive or so. --KrebMarkt 07:04, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Ban them! How dare they? Where's the fun for admins if this cat is empty a month from now when this RfC ends? Pcap ping 07:52, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

That is an unhelpful remark. Surely you knew that already? Surely you know better? ++Lar: t/c 11:11, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

When the current kerfuffle started User:DASHBot was in the process of gently chiding the 17,400 authors of circa 50,000 articles, so we should expect to see a drop in the number of unreferenced BLPs in Jan/Feb this year regardless of the RFC and related dramatics. Its just very unfortunate timing that this all blew up in the middle of a major and uncontentious project to reference our unreferenced BLPs. ϢereSpielChequers 11:22, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm still wondering what we're going to do about all the new unreferenced BLP's, according to one user, 100 a day are added to the encyclopedia now. Don't we need to figure out a way to handle these before we start talking about dealing with the backlog? There isn't much point dealing with a backlog if more articles than are being dealt with there are being added every day. Gatoclass (talk) 11:28, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

If we had time to do our normal new page patrolling and vandal fighting, we'd referencing/tagging/csd/prod/AFDing them as per normal. Unfortunately we're all flat out referencing the 50000 old ones now. Come back in a month or so and we'll be able to do whatever Arbcom, Jimbo, Scott, Kev, Lar et al want us to focus on next. Regards, your humble serf, The-Pope (talk) 12:15, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

I want to see a source for the claim that 100 new unreferenced BLPs are created a day. As the person who maintains the output at Wikipedia:Database reports/Recently created unreferenced biographies of living people I usually see a number between three and ten. Of course this excludes the one that are not categorized in Category:Living people, but I have a hard time believing that over 100 is created a day. I have once seen more than 100 unreferenced BLPs created in a single day and that was one editor who went on a creation spree. After he was told that the articles needed references, he added sources. Rettetast (talk) 12:38, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

A quick look at special:NewPages should be all thats needed to confirm the 100+ figure - from my observations its an underestimate. However we are clearly talking about two very different things. The three to ten number is not how many new unreferenced BLPs are created every day, its the number of new unreferenced BLPs that wind up in that category as opposed to being referenced or speedy deleted. Hundreds of new articles get created and almost immediately speedy deleted every day, and as I said in my proposal changing the article creation process so that all new BLPs are required to have sources is a much more logical start than dealing with the old ones. As we found during wp:NEWT the current system of new article writers thinking that its acceptable that their first edit edit to a new article might not include either the references or the reason why the subject is notable, whilst some speedy deleters consider it acceptable to tag and even delete new articles in the first minutes after creation is just an unending train crash. Making it clear in the article creation process that new BLPs must be sourced at the time of the first save or they are liable to be deleted would save an awful lot of good faith newbies from being bitten. ϢereSpielChequers 13:00, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Full agreement with WereSpielChequers on every point above. 1 There are easily hundreds of unsouced BLPs every day. Do some NPP and it's immediately obvious. 2 A strong admonishment that all new BLPs need references would be a huge forward step and avoid much of the acrimony that accompanies CSD (and by extension AfD). 3 NPP needs help stemming the tide; the recent efforts to clear the backlog were enormously successful but it's crept back, sits at about 1600 right now unpatrolled (estimate). That doesn't include unreferenced BLPs that are simply tagged, often for notability. 4 Dashbot is a great idea and a great project. I don't believe it will be as effective perhaps as some others have, but I see no downside to it. Shadowjams (talk) 07:03, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree. On the Strategic Planning wiki the Community Health task force has identified the problems that new users have adding references because of the technical obstacles involved. Developing minimum standards for sourcing articles, education new contributors, AND developing easier ways to add references is needed to fully fix the problem. FloNight♥♥♥♥ 15:45, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Monitoring !voting trends

I've started compiling a table at User:Peter_cohen/sandbox4 to record voting statistics and how the pattern has changed from when the rfc was first opened.

At the moment I've just entered data for the first two proposals. I'm pausing so that people here can comment on my idea, suggest any twiddles before I go too far, put any objections in principle, point out that someone else has already produced a table etc.

So, should I continue?--Peter cohen (talk) 14:05, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Absolutely continue, please: cool! Thanks! --Cyclopia^talk 14:14, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I think it's a good idea to illustrate how supports/opposes vary once more proposals were added to the page, e.g. whether people started opposing a proposal once a new one was added that they thought better, whether a proposal that garnered much support early on was influenced by a certain group of people rushing to !vote on it before the community became aware of it. For example MZM's proposal started with almost 50% support but dropped to 30% now while Jehochman's started at 96% and is at 85% now: The former started with a lot of people advocating a harsh solution of the problem supporting and dropped significantly when the RFC became widely advertised to the community and the latter started as a compromise that could be accepted by many on both sides but which later turned out to be less good as people thought before (as they think it requires a separate process, etc.).

I think your statistics should also include the percentage and S/O/C in different columns although I admit that it's more wikimarkup. Later someone (or you) can use that data to create some graphs maybe. It would be interesting to see how the rate of support (i.e. S/O per day) for a proposal changed once a similar proposal was submitted (for example Jehochman's proposal suffered opposes because of DGG's view etc.) Regards SoWhy 14:30, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree - these are turning out to be interesting numbers already. Please do continue. :-) --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 15:08, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

How does this account for changes in supports/opposes. For example, I initially supported Jehochman's proposal, but after deciding that it would probably lead to mass prod deletions, changed to oppose.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 16:36, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

My table is based on what is visible in this version of the page. Therefore I don't think I took your original vote into account. I don't think one change of vote makes too much difference.--Peter cohen (talk) 17:44, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Following positive comments, I have completed the table to include all views that have garnered 50 or more !votes. It is now available for examination at User:Peter_cohen/BLP_RFC_stats. I think the drawing of any conclusions might be relevant to this talk page while the pointing out of any mistakes on my part, suggestions on improvements and dicussions on whether and how often to update the table are probably best kept in the talk page for the table itself.--Peter cohen (talk) 17:44, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Take home conclusion from that table: Even at its most popular point, MZMcBride's proposal never garnered more than half the people commenting and for the most part has had far less than that (at this point it has around 30% support rate). The other remarks propose a variety of different solutions, with Jehochman's being far and away the most popular. This may be due to it being the second listed opinion (there's a fair bit of evidence that options higher up are more likely to be selected in many circumstances. This is an issue in political elections that has been extensively studied). For comparison, Jehochman's proposal has more total supports than MZM's and fewer total opposes. If it were a normal policy proposal it would have clear consensus for adoption at this point (heck if it were the numbers for a 'crat election they might even be high enough). The other views that have more than 50 comments that are directly relevant to deletion issues and not a meta-issue (in particular leaving out Sandstein) all take views that are strongly opposed to mass delete on sight. It is overwhelmingly clear that the community does not favor that at all.

Let's look at the major views other than the top two, again leaving out Sanstein Of those views, David Gerard's has around a 2/3rds acceptance rate for a proposal similar to Jehochman's but more deletionist in approach. Oddly, DGG's proposal which emphasizes fixing articles rather than deleting has although fewer supports than Jehochman's, a higher percentage of supports (since this isn't a direct bullet election it may be that many people simply haven't scrolled down that far and so totals for the later views are naturally lower). At some level, there's very little real conflict between what DGG wants and Jehochman wants. The opinion by Power.corrupts emphasizing the problem is genuinely contentious material also has a lot of support. This is possibly the view most opposed to Jehochman's portraying this focus on unreferenced BLPs as close to a waste of time. Jclemens view that emphasizes the high value of unreferenced BLPs also has high support. Like, DGG's remark, it isn't intrinsically opposed to a proposal like Jehochman's. The consensus seems pretty clear and seems extremely unlikely to change before the conclusion of this RfC given that the rough percentages of each view have no changed much (aside from the continuing drop in support for MZMcBride's viewpoint) . JoshuaZ (talk) 05:01, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Page has become unmanageable

We need to address the size of this page. Does anyone have reasonable suggestions for dealing with the excessive page length? --MZMcBride (talk) 19:33, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

People could stop arguing and actually spend time to edit the BLPs? I guess that could work... Lugnuts (talk) 19:42, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Pigs could fly. :~) Aymatth2 (talk) 19:56, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

• Maybe close down this discussion and open two new ones: BLP policy changes and BLP clean-up approach. In each of the two new ones, put three main headings: "What is wrong with the status quo", "What is right with the status quo" and "What could be changed". Encourage contributors to copy/paste their ideas to one or the other of the new discussions. Start each discussion with an intro to each saying in balanced, neutral terms what the goal is, how long the discussion will run, ground rules, what the next steps will be after the discussion is closed. Also, encourage editors to add sub-pages to work out specific aspects. Might work, don't know. Aymatth2 (talk) 19:56, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

135K is nowhere near the size of many other talk pages. A rabbit's warren of sub-pages would wondrously confuse anyone wading in. Collect (talk) 20:45, 25 January 2010 (UTC) Well 680K for the main article is still far from a record. Does using transclusion for the "votes" reduce the effective size of the page? Collect (talk) 21:05, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

I hope that my table will help people identify where most of the action is and help people identify key places to look. That and they should check near the bottom for anything recent of interest.--Peter cohen (talk) 20:56, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

You could look at distilling out the proposals that seem to have obvious support and start discussing those - a process of elimination if you will - no point cluttering up the pages with proposals or idea that clearly won't be accepted. Fritzpoll (talk) 11:25, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Full disclosure

There are a couple of proposals that have "Oppose" !votes in "Neutral" sections. When I've noticed them, I've asked the user if the comment was intended to be an oppose or neutral. I have only made this request if the comment indicates that it is an oppose. (similarly, I would contact the user if they put Support in a neutral.)---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 23:18, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Just finished reviewing the whole RfC, there were 3 people I contacted: Dweller, RomaC, and PinkBull. All three indicated an Oppose to MzM's proposal, but did so in the Neutral area. I asked them if they meant to oppose or be neutral. There were no other comments in the RfC that appear to be in the wrong area.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 23:30, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

You read the whole page thoroughly? I am impressed. It makes my head hurt. Well done! Contains Mild Peril (talk) 00:54, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Nice work again Balloon. Ikip 08:40, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

No, I went through looking for the key words "Oppose", "Support", or "Neutral" (or something similar) under the wrong heading and looked to see if they actually read as an Opposer/Support/Neutral or was the person being 'clever.' There are several people whose comments read as something other than what the header indicates, but I only contacted those who explicitly stated something other than the header.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 15:02, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

How do unsourced BLPs look like?

Are the vast majority of unsourced or poorly sourced biographies stubs of people who are of limited notability, or are there a substantial number of longer, possibly well-written unsourced or poorly sourced biographies? One example for a BLP that has substantial content, but is completely unsourced, is this article about Andrea Ypsilanti, a German politician.  Cs32en Talk to me  05:24, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

There was a bit of analysis on the WP:PROD page. One article was about a former head of state of in Eastern Europe. It's probably 25-50% obviously notable bios, and the rest are hard to research or don't meet NOTE. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 05:38, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

See Category:Unreferenced BLPs for all of them. Ikip 05:53, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

My experience is that there are many I'd consider marginally notable (I especially can't figure out why "pro" wrestlers should be notable), and several for which thousands of web pages exist (so the person obviously exists, the info in the stub is most likely correct, and the presumption of a desire for privacy can be assumed to be false), but few/none of them up to WP:RS reference quality. The last category irritates me, since I can't add the sources for WP:RS reasons, but it's obviously not an article to which it's reasonable to say that the WP:BLP guidelines were intended to force a deletion. --Alvestrand (talk) 08:25, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I'd hazard a guess that in quite a few cases, substantive unsourced content on non-English persons derives from a translation of a foreign WP article, which may itself have sources. Certainly the German version of Andrea Ypsilanti has quite a few sources. Rd232 ^talk 09:26, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Make deleted material easier to reach

The major concerns of those defending the need to keep unreferenced BLPs is that, despite not being referenced, at least someone has gotten started. Deleting the material effectively hides it to all but sysops, which makes it hard to build upon the groundwork laid by others.

What if, instead of hiding deleted material from practically everyone, we allowed logged-in editors to view it? There would be much greater support to "delete" the unreferenced articles, hiding them from the vast amounts of anonymous users, but still preserving the groundwork for those with an account: the group of people most likely to improve upon such articles at some point in the future.

Debating whether or not we should take some form of mass-prod action is getting our community nowhere. The real issue that prevents it from going through is the desire to preserve potentially valuable, though unreferenced, contributions. Fixing the mechanics of deletion could be a wise solution that allows us to reach consensus. ...but what do you think? ~BFizz 07:16, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I think the "incubator" proposal is intended to achieve this goal. General viewability for deleted articles would be a non-starter, given the many reasons for deletion (attack, copyvio...). --Alvestrand (talk) 08:27, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I love the idea, similar proposals have been made. (Check the WT:Articles for Deletion) But keep in mind B Fizz, we are a group that is, "closed to new ideas" according to the New Scientist based on a study.

Aldhous, Peter (January 03, 2009). "Psychologist finds Wikipedians grumpy and closed-minded". NewScientist. Retrieved 2009-05-08. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help) Source: "Personality Characteristics of Wikipedia Members" CyberPsychology & Behavior (DOI: 10.1089/cpb.2007.0225)

Ikip 09:37, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Regarding the copyvio issue, perhaps we should consider providing different forms of deletion (I suppose you could consider the incubator to be such a "lesser deletion") so that we don't dump copyvios and unreferenced BLPs into the same black hole (see also on the rfc: my would-be proposal of BLPs innocent until proven guilty). Regarding the fact that WP has become a close-minded society...I for one find this very tragic and I am willing to fight for new ideas. ...but what do you think? ~BFizz

The actual restriction to administrators is, I believe, a result of legal advice from Mike Godwin of the WMF. The community can't overrule the WMF, so you'd have to change their minds. Fritzpoll (talk) 11:21, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps we could consider a view-deletion permission given to users that apply, though the idea of opting in or being voted into being able to view deleted content is very restrictive. ...but what do you think? ~BFizz 17:09, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Not going to happen, and in any case not worth pursuing in relation to the present issue since anything along those lines would take 6 months+ to implement. Rd232 ^talk 17:20, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Well Mr Wales himself has suggested a process which would take several months. I think this is a brilliant idea and it shouldn't just be discounted. There must be some way of implementing this kind of thing for trusted editors (not every logged in editor but a select few) without having to go through a gruelling RfA. As for the legal concerns, anything defamatory or that nobody should see should probably be oversighted anyway. I agree that it's not really a solution to this problem, but it's still a good idea. HJ Mitchell | fancy a chat? 17:41, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

[outdent] Sure, mass delete as per Jimbo Wales if that's the only solution and content isn't restricted to sysops only -- but where it makes sense, allow access to trusted Wikipedians to use the articles as first drafts to work on. Then release back into mainspace when "cleared". Think "hide" maybe, not "delete". Esowteric+Talk 18:09, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Well editors can request admins to check and undelete articles for them, perhaps for userfication. However doing this for tens of thousands of articles is a big burden. See Category:Wikipedia administrators who will provide copies of deleted articles. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:47, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

There are a few methods for hiding questionable or unvetted content:

• NOINDEX – will not work in article space, see Template:NOINDEX/doc
• Reduce article to stub or blank completely
• Move out of article space
  • WP:Userfication
  • Relevant WikiProject
  • WP:Article Incubator
  • New holding area for BLPs
• Delete – maybe open up view-delete user right

Flatscan (talk) 04:28, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

How d'you tell

whether a person is living (or indeed real) if there are no sources? They might have died recently. Or someone might create an article about someone who was vaguely famous for something 50 years ago & wrongly assume they're dead. Peter jackson (talk) 11:34, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

The traditional rule of thumb has been to assume that they are still living if they were born after 1890, unless there is proof otherwise. Obviously, this poses a problem to people like Olympic contributors from the early 1900s, but I would say that applying more stringent standards unnecessarily is better than the alternative. NW (Talk) 11:43, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Can we break this out somehow?

This is ridiculous. These proposals are of great importance, and yet they are hidden on various "show discussions" on the project page. There are a fair number of "Show discussion", and behind a few of them are these important proposals. Is this consensus building or whack the mole? I suggest that if a proposal receives ten or more support !votes, that it be broken out to its own page and a clear link left at the top of the page. Perhaps a summary box can be inserted with more or less up to date !votes, such as what is done for RfA's, but it isn't essential.--Wehwalt (talk) 19:45, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree that this is getting tl;dr, but perhaps the approach is to wait another day or two until this has been open for a week, then ask someone to close this and post a summary detailing the major points that seem to have most of the support. Then this could be closed, and we could have a more focused discussion of the top 'x' choices. (Unless someone finds that a clear consensus can be taken from this RfC alone, which might be possible). All that said though, if someone wanted to come along and summarize this now, I'd be fine with that. -- Bfigura ^(talk) 19:58, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree. let's declare (with a note at the top of the page) that the RFC as it currently is will close at 15.55 on 28 Jan (one week after opening). Someone will need to summarise and break out the main proposals (taking particular care with overlaps); ideally no more than 3 or 4 proposals should be listed in Part II of the RFC. Proposals should be flexible, by theme or type of idea, rather than Person X's proposal, Person Y's proposal etc; and Part II should focus on choosing a type of proposal, rather than choosing between fully fledged ready-to-implement proposals. Once a core proposal is chosen, it'll still need details hashing out in a Part III. Cumbersome, yes; but with this number of people involved in the discussion, I see no other way to make this at all practical. At least, with so many people and lots of interest, a week may be enough on each part. Rd232 ^talk 20:28, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

such as this? Feel free to make any suggestions/changes. If there aren't any comments after a while, I may copy this over to the project page:

Added. -- Bfigura ^(talk) 20:45, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Agree we should close this off and get some brave volunteer to summarise and organize as a start for round two. I would not try to restrict it to just three or four proposals, and would not ignore views expressed in the less active sections. There are many ideas that may be useful. Some policy or process changes could be implemented independently. It will be harder to get consensus if they are packaged together and presented as alternatives. Ditto some proposals about how to deal with the backlog. Then there are the extremes like “keep them all” or “delete them all” which are unlikely to get consensus, but may as well be carried forward to let off steam. Let’s see what the summary process turns up, and not limit it. Aymatth2 (talk) 21:29, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I think it should be left open a little bit longer than a week. It should at least be open for a week after it was advertised per watchlist notice because it was not well known to most experienced editors before this. I suggest a closing date of 31 January 2010 23:59 UTC, i.e. end of the month. Regards SoWhy 21:35, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I like this - I think it's better to detail all the main points from all ends of the spectrum, rather than attempt to only go for the ones with the most support. From looking at this, I imagine the summary would look something like a spectrum + a bit mentioning that people seem to be raising a few general ideas (such as the importance of not getting bogged down, etc). That said, I'm thankful I'm not an admin, I wouldn't want to be the one to try and close this. Finding someone "uninvolved" might be tough. Still, I'm sure someone will be up to the task. Also, I agree that a few more days would be good. I'll change it now if someone hasn't beat me to it. -- Bfigura ^(talk) 21:37, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I see it as multi-dimensional, not a pure spectrum. A policy statement like "if you find unsourced assertions that may be libelous or damaging, remove them at once" is probably broadly acceptable (I think!) and could be presented for stand-alone discussion. Whether the article itself should be deleted or kept, and if deleted how, is more controversial. Agree with the new date. Aymatth2 (talk) 21:55, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I changed it to 30 Jan 23:59, which is almost exactly 1 week after it was added to the watchlist notice. (It seemed more elegant than the end of the month, but I won't argue if you want to give it an extra day. -- Bfigura ^(talk) 21:42, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

The normal running time for an RFC is a month. Posting a closure notice way short of that with very few people in support seems to yield to the false panic being felt over this. If an early closure is insisted on, how about 7 Feb? Two weeks is not too long to let proposals gain adherents and comments. DES ^(talk) 22:36, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

(edit clash) There's still a fair amount of traffic. The second issue of my table of the most active discussions User:Peter_cohen/BLP_RFC_stats suggests that the number of !votes are still increasing by about 10% a day. I know that in the last 24 hours User:Ikiphas put a notice out in the Wiki signpost and did a round of the projects alerting them to the rfc. Your proposed end time is early Saturday afternoon in the Western States. I think we need to give time for weekend editors to react and see at what rate comments are being generated before confusing things by moving the discussion.--Peter cohen (talk) 22:43, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict)This will be open for about a month (see above about the 3 phases thing), however, what people are proposing is to solve the tl;dr problem. The current RFC is getting hard to parse and comment on (see this thread above, and one further up). I'm not sure how leaving it in the current form will add much, when it appears most of the positions have been enumerated. That said, I don't mind adding another day or two, but a month seems far longer than necessary for this particular proposed phase. -- Bfigura ^(talk) 22:46, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Sunday is a busy day. Maybe Monday? But first, is there anyone who wants to take on the job of sorting out all the views and proposals and creating a framework for action-oriented discussions on resolving the different aspects of the issue? Is there anyone out there who wants to take on the job? Hello... Aymatth2 (talk)

I'm not sure it matters much: the closure and summarization don't have to be on the same day. Perhaps the day before it closes we should post to ANI/AN/Pumps/etc to let people know it's closing that that there will be a need for a closer to summarize the issues? -- Bfigura ^(talk) 01:42, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

I removed the closed RFC tag. RFC's tend to remain open for 30 days.

"RfCs that are listed by the RfC bot are also automatically ended by the RfC bot after thirty days. If consensus has been reached before then, the RfC nominator(s) can remove the RfC tag, and the bot will remove the discussion from the list on its next run." Thanks.

This page is remaining on the top of my talk page all day everyday since it opened. 5 new editors just created new sections today. Interest in this subject has not died down, in fact it is has only grown. Ikip 06:10, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Closing the RfC entirely is not being suggested, Ikip - simply that it is already at a length where consensus-building will not advance - the best thing is to shut down this one and condense the current ideas that are not simply status quo into a new page to discuss. Otherwise, there will be no consensus reached at all - the very nature of the continued additions to this page that you highlight is what will cause us to only have the Arbcom motion to rely on Fritzpoll (talk) 12:37, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

I think it is important that everyone decide to close this, not just a couple of editors, there are a lot of people who should have the right to say their minds, otherwise they will feel left out of this process. Standard practice is to keep a RFC open 30 days, and with a RFC this important, which will effect so many editors, we should. Ikip 13:03, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

The BLP offwiki forum dedicated to tightening up BLP practices

Caliber asked the arbitration committee to look into a BLP offwiki forum "dedicated to tightening up BLP practices" in October:

1. What did the arbitration committee find and
2. are any of the arbitration members on this list?[10]

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

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

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

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

Ikip 05:48, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

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

I'd like to know more about this, since this RfC started out with a bunch of possible misuse of tools. I've seen a couple of things so far concerning this BLP case, where you have to go searching through wiki conversations to find out about weird secret stuff. I'm not a fan of that. We should keep everything above board. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 06:08, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

I too would like to learn more about a possible conspiracy taking place off-site, specially when such is referred to as having the "benefit" of "far less visibility". Schmidt, ^{MICHAEL Q.} 06:15, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

JoshuaZ, if you have say, 20+ editors on secret mailing lists, who helped create this crisis, and engineer this RFC, how on gods green earth is that not applicable? Ikip 06:26, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

First of all it's not a "secret mailing list", it's a forum. Secondly this question has already been answered, but perhaps you didn't notice it on the last RFAR: [11]. — Coffee // have a cup // ark // 06:45, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

I changed the title. You are quoting Lara, not anyone on the committee:

It would be nice if the committee could pull itself together and take part in some basic communication on its private mailing list. Considering the GodKing and various members of his court, both past and present, have been aware of sofixit.org since October 2009 and apparently, from my view, were comfortable enough with its purpose to let it go, if for no other reason than because it's out of Wikipedia's purview, it seems increasingly ridiculous that Roger Davies is being left to flap in the wind with his clueless comments. Between the group of you, not one could muster up the GAF to drop him a name of who to ask questions of to ease his aching mind?

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

You seem to know more about it than me, were you a member coffee? A member "dedicated to tightening up BLP practices" Ikip 13:00, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Someone seems to have broken the syntax of the project page

My comments show up in the page source, but after "View of Brambleclawx" everything is invisible when you view the page. - Jmabel | Talk 06:12, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Ikip just removed the uncollapse boxes. I suspect that the page length is now creating some issue with your browser. JoshuaZ (talk) 06:14, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

No, some of the collapse boxes are still there. Kevin (talk) 06:16, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm fixing it (step by step). People added {{collapse top}} without adding {{collapse bottom}}. - Jmabel | Talk 06:17, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

I restored it per JoshuaZ. Even at 1:24 EST people are editing here. Truly international. Sorry for any problems. Let me know if I can help. I restored Jmabel too. Ikip 06:25, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

WOW---working on the Poker List

Wow... I'm working on the list of poker players... and if some of these people had been deleted, it would have been a travesty. First, I'm working on my third article right now. Two of the three that I've done are marked as unreferenced, but have references! One of the three is for Lyle Berman a three time WSOP winner, Poker Hall of Famer, former CEO of Rainforest Cafe, Chairman of the World Poker Tour. One of them is for ten time bracelet winner, Johnny Chan---whose WSOP Main Event victory played a major role in the movie Rounders (1998 film). TV commentator Ali Nejad. Another is for the desperately needing help Mason Malmuth---but the founder of Two Plus Two Publishing and a recognized poker authority. Poker Hall of Famer Corky McCorquodale and Cindy Violette. Spot checking another 5 indicates that at least roughly half the poker articles are incorrectly tagged. The articles may need more references, but they are not unreferenced.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 07:12, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

I understand we need better coverage of articles. But something like Mason Malmuth is probably A7 speedable in its current form. This doesn't mean he isn't worthy of an article, just that the content provided thus far doesn't create one. There are probably a billion topics out there deserving an article, we just have the first 3 million or so created. MBisanz ^talk 07:24, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Being the owner of 2+2 is a claim to significance as is his being a poker author---but the article needs to be expanded and referenced. But the point of mentioning this, is to point out what would be lost if the BLP-CSD'ers had their way and blindly started deleting everything with the unreferenced tag. Some definitely notable individuals a number of which have references would have been lost.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 08:00, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Quite possibly, so this RfC needs to come to a consensus on a better way of handling it - the status quo is obviously unacceptable, and summary deletion seems to be going the same way. A compromise is needed, quickly Fritzpoll (talk) 08:37, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

All articles tagged with {{BLP unreferenced}} in order of popularity

I have, with help from MZMcBride, created a list of all roughly 50 000 articles which has been tagged as unreferenced BLPs ordered by popularity (number of views in December 2009). The first one, Laz Alonso, which was minimally fixed was one of our 1000 most popular articles during the month.

Here are the first 20:

1. Laz Alonso 182894
2. Kris Jenner 131527
3. Rob Kardashian 124270
4. William Shatner 123250
5. Donald Faison 79443
6. Michael Teutul 77601
7. Wendy Williams (media personality) 77337
8. Josh Klinghoffer 72391
9. Tony Shalhoub 62814
10. Emile Hirsch 61012
11. Pleasure P 58020
12. HaLo 56883
13. Mike Epps 54783
14. Leland Chapman 52470
15. Nicola Peltz 50725
16. Tia Carrere 47322
17. Ben Savage 45938
18. Tyler James Williams 45094
19. Glenn Howerton 44454
20. Paul Teutul, Jr. 44294

You can get the rest at this url (warning, large page). The list doesn't reflect the changes that has been made in the last few days, so some articles may already have been improved. henrik•talk 12:16, 27 January 2010 (UTC)