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

A large portion of this original RFC, which editors are now discussing, was moved to Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Biographies of living people/Archive.

Phase I of Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Biographies of living people is now closed. This is Phase II of the WP:RFC on dealing with unsourced WP:BLPs.

Instructions in a nutshell

Please give your input at one of the closing proposals:

1. About declaring a consensus for stronger teeth against new unsourced biographies of living people -- Proposal Part 1 -- Agree -- Disagree -- Neutral -- Discussion
2. About declaring numeric goals to reduce the number of old unsourced biographies of living people -- Proposal Part 2
3. About not changing the relevant policies -- Alternate closing proposal

For more information, please see the Q&A on the talk page.

For related material, please see the /Archive, the #Table summary below or the talk page.

Table summary

submission	submission time	subject	Support (S)	Oppose (O)	Neutral (N)	%Support (%S)	Stance
MZMcBride	15:58, 21/01/2010	"Any biography that is poorly referenced or completely unreferenced should be deleted on-sight. If a user wishes to re-create the biography, they may request undeletion (or simply re-create the page) as long as they provide adequate sourcing."	55	157	1	25.94%	Stricter 0 days Delete immediately
Jehochman	16:14, 21/01/2010	Any article that satisfies the attack page criteria should be deleted on sight. Biographies of living persons (BLP) articles that are unreferenced should be proposed for deletion (prod). Prodding should proceed at a reasonable rate to allow interested editors the chance to add sources. The volume of proposed deletions should not be unreasonably large. Discussion can establish what is a reasonable pace. After five seven days, any article so tagged may be deleted, or moved to the Wikipedia:Article incubator if it shows promise. Prod notices should not be removed, nor should articles be undeleted, unless proper references are added. Anybody who engages in mass de-prodding or undeletion without adding references risks a block for disruption. All editors are invited to participate in this BLP cleanup campaign.	163	35	8	82.32%	Stricter 7 days
Jclemens	16:22, 21/01/2010	"The risk reduced--and let's be clear, there certainly will be some--is insufficient to justify the widespread deletion of accurate, useful, and innocuous information, sourced or not, and ultimately damages Wikipedia without helping BLP vandalism subjects."	83	14	1	85.57%	No change
Collect	16:16, 21/01/2010	"Existence of a person is not, however, controversial nor contentious. WP has policies for deleting articles lacking notability, and no Draconian policy of automatic article deletion should pre-empt the orderly functioning of processes already existing."	83	20	4	80.58%	No change
David Gerard	16:17, 21/01/2010	"I suggest a PROD-like template - call it BLP-PROD - which says "Find references for this article or it DIES." Five days seems too long, make it two days."	64	48	1	57.14%	Stricter 2 days
DGG	17:10, 21/01/2010	"For old articles, a procedure of summary deletion is particularly reckless."	66	6	5	91.67%	No change
Power.corrupts	18:12, 21/01/2010	"The real problem is unsourced contentious info, not unreferenced articles. The proposal will do nothing or little to the real problem, and at the same time incur tremendous costs."	48	15	0	76.19%	No change
Sandstein	19:25, 21/01/2010	"The arbcom motion is not to be understood as changing or superseding general deletion policy and process as applied to the biographies of living persons, and it should be considered void if and insofar as it might have been intended to have that effect. Instead, any policy change should be decided by community consensus, starting with this RfC."	75	6	3	92.59%	N/A
Jimbo Wales	15:14, 25/01/2010	"Starting with everything which has been unreferenced for more than 3 years, a three-month notice time starting February 1st, before they are deleted on May 1st. 2. Starting with everything which has been unreferenced for more than 2 years, a three-month notice time starting May 1st, before they are deleted on August 1st. 3. Starting with everything which has been unferenced for more than 1 year, a three-month notice time starting August first, before they are deleted on November 1st. In all cases, biographies deleted for being old and unreferenced should be put onto a list for those who wish to come behind and work on them further. After that, we can consider how long is a reasonable life span (I would say one week, but one month could be fine as well) for new biographies to exist in a sad state before they are deleted.	36	25	5	59.02%	Stricter 7 days to 30 days
Aymatth2	13:39, 24 January 2010	This proposal is to create a mechanically ranked list of all unsourced BLPs, so editors who want to remove inappropriate articles can work up from the bottom of the list, and editors who want to retain valuable content can work down from the top. Obvious ranking criteria would be: Positive: Number of inbound links, number of unique editors, size Negative: Number of days since creation, number of days since last edit The values would be given weightings in a ranking formula such as: (inboundlinks x 100) + (uniqueeditors x 150) + (sizekb x 50) - (agedays x 1) - (lasteditdays x 0.5)					Technical
Henrik	16:24, 21 January 2010	"A significant minority of editors are unwilling to let unsourced, but likely uncontentious biographies remain in the encyclopedia. Deleting content makes the text available to only a select few, and makes fixing the articles a significantly harder process. I suggest an alternative to tackle the backlog of the roughly 50k articles in question: We institute a process to hide the contents of unsourced biographies, using a template developed for the purpose. We provide clear instruction that sourcing must be instituted before the template is removed (easily checkable by automated means) Those articles which have remained in this hidden state for a reasonable, but fairly long, amount of time, but which have not been fixed are deleted. This allows us to work towards preserving the content of these articles, while maintaining respect for the potential harm unsourced biographies may cause."					Technical
WereSpielChequers	16:57, 21 January 2010	Earlier this month User:DASHBot started gently chiding the authors of unsourced BLPs. I think we should wait a couple of weeks to see what effect that has on Category:All unreferenced BLPs, or if people want to give DASHBot a hand, look for retired/inactive/blocked users who DASHBot has spoken to and help them fix or delete their unsourced contributions. ...can someone write a Bot to inform wikiprojects of unsourced BLPs in their remit in the same way that DASHBot has been informing authors?" ...introduce "delete new unsourced BLP" as a speedy criteria; provided that we very clearly inform article creators that from a particular date this is the new rule, and that articles created after that date with information about living people must be reliably sourced. ...proding the unreferenced residue in batches over a couple of months ...I agree with delete unsourced BLPs on sight as the policy we should be able to enact in say 6 months. But with the following provisos: An unsourced biography should at the very least have its history checked to see if reverting a bit of vandalism won't restore it to a referenced article. Good faith contributions should never be deleted without the author being informed and given an easy route to getting their article restored for their next editing session. We also need an exception for articles being restored and referenced - some sort of template such as prod that can be added to a restored article so that the person requesting its restoration has at least a few hours to do so. Any user should be able to request, and any admin permitted to restore an existing article deleted under this process, provided the requester is promising to reference the article ASAP.	31	9		77.50%	Stricter Technical
NJA	16:53, 21 January 2010	reduce the time from five days devise a special PROD template specific to BLP's so that it can have a specialized category for monitoring and tracking (using NOINDEX) set out to add an edit filter to track BLP PROD template removals, as is currently done for CSD template removals for easier admin tracking	10	19		34.48%	Stricter 5 days
The Anome	17:11, 21 January 2010	Any bot activity...will need to be intensively supervised by humans for some time to avoid serious loss of useful articles...numerous articles are currently tagged as unsourced BLPs when they have references	10	2		83.33%	Technical
Resolute	17:59, 21 January 2010	...Wikiprojects can help. User:WolterBot has a function that generates a cleanup listing by project. Using tools such as this allows the community to break the overwhelming scope of this issue down into manageable sizes. If we repurpose this function as a mandatory listing for all projects - either as a one time run or a quarterly listing - we can at least begin to tackle this problem.	35	7		83.33%	Technical
Themfromspace	19:03, 21 January 2010	"holding tank" for all uncited BLP articles. This could be a separate project space altogether, or the subpages of a WikiProject. Each uncited BLP would then be automatically moved out of the mainspace to this holding space where it would not be indexed by Google. Each of these articles would then be considered a work in progress (and could be tagged as such) until they were moved back into the mainspace.	6	10		37.50%	Technical
Arthur Rubin	19:16, 21 January 2010	Any deletion by an accelerated process...should, after deletion, restore a (locked, if needed) stub...The stub should not be deleted for 6 months, unless a non-accelerated deletion procedure is followed.	22	7		75.86%	technical
NuclearWarfare	19:53, 21 January 2010	I would submit that the community cannot fully trust administrators who violate the BLP policy.	18	27	1	40.00%	N/A
OrangeDog	20:00, 21 January 201	Unreferenced articles on notable living people that contain no contentious material (including, but not limited to a large number of stubs) should be treated the same as any other article, noting that they provide useful information and provide a mechanism for the encylopedia to grow...I do not see any reason to create new deletion processes to circumvent or abuse those that we already have. Especially not ones that involve automatic and unsupervised mass deletion.	26	7		78.79%	No change
Hut 8.5	21:46, 23 January 2010	"I propose that we set up a wikiproject to source unreferenced BLPs."	21	0		100.00%	Technical Unanimous support
User:MickMacNee and User:Ikip		Anger at history of RFC					N/A
User:HJ Mitchell		Generally similar to Jehochman, except: Mass drive-by prodding would be discouraged and attempts should be made to limit the number of "BLP prods" at any one time to ~1000 A log should be created where editors must record the removal of "BLP prods" after proper sourcing or report others who improperly remove the tag (similar to special enforcement)	12	1			Stricker
User:LeadSongDog		"immediately...wp:userfied to the creating editors space by a bot, much in the way of user:CorenSearchBot's handling of gross copyvios"	7	3			Technology Userfication
User:Looie496		"No articles should be deleted using automated tools."	37	1			Technology
User:Balloonman		"...create a tool that can notify these projects and key editors what unsourced BLP's exist under their purvue. "	28	0
User:Balloonman		"modify the template for unsource blp's so that they are not indexed"	6	8
User:Jake Wartenberg		unwatched BLPs should be indefinitely semi-protected.	13	1
User:Rd232		Unsourced BLPs should be incubated after a time (or in some cases userfied).	11	8
User:FT2		creation of a "Draft:" namespace	11	5
User:The-Pope echoed by User:Cenarium		Make it known that this is the site's current main priority...get Wolterbot to change the order of the cleanup list to highlight what are the real problem areas, and which ones are "nice-to-haves" (ie MOS type ones). Get ALL of the projects on board. Get a bot/code/something quicker and smarter than me to auto-generate the lists based on the intersection of Category:Unreferenced BLPs and Category:WikiProject XYZ articles It needs some smarts, cause the project cats are on the talk pages, but the unreferenced BLPs are on the main pages, but I can do it for a project at a time using WP:AWB, so it must be able to be done. Then create a Wikipedia:WikiProject Australia/Unreferenced BLPs page for EVERY project. Update the list daily. Hold a competition to see who can zero their list the quickest - winner gets money/fame/links on the main page for a month/etc. Create a hall of fame for most removed each week.	14	1			Technical
User:SirFozzie		Find something you can live with, and find it soon. Show that you can be part of a solution, and not just a part of a discussion of a problem. Sitting down and not accepting anything will mean that the situation will just go on without you.	14	17			N/A
User_talk:Mod_mmg	08:33, 21 February 2010 (UTC)	Any change to policy needs more consensus than this. Give editors a chance, they will all references in their own time, all BLPs are works-in-progress as long as it remains a biography of a living person and not a dead one.	3	2	?		Give the editors a chance to rectify any referencing issues before you charge on with the deletion proccess!
User:Johnbod		Why Unreferenced BLPs are NOT problematic	21	4

Summary of Phase I

Phase I closing summary

This has been one of the largest and most complex requests for comment within the community for some time, with 470 editors producing over 200,000 words of commentary. The majority of views and comments are clearly the result of thoughtful contemplation on the part of editors who have taken the time to inform themselves of the issues, and everyone should be applauded for considering this matter seriously. Those who have taken part have the best interests of the encyclopedia and the project at heart, and there is a good deal of merit, based on policy, practice and practicality, in each of the major positions put forward. It is also important to note that the majority of those who participated did so relatively early in the RfC, and are unlikely to have reviewed some of the later views and proposals; therefore, it is not possible to accurately assess consensus on these views. After reading this RfC, I can say categorically that Wikipedians are dedicated to the ongoing development of a comprehensive, accurate, and constantly improving encyclopedia; however, there are very diverse views on how this can best be achieved.

There appears to be a broad consensus that:

• Unreferenced BLPs are only a small segment of potentially or actually problematic BLPs.
• There are reasons to place additional emphasis on the sourcing of BLPs, and that this category of articles is more sensitive to inaccuracy than others (although opinions on the degree to which they are more sensitive was subject to a broader spectrum of opinion).
• Deletion decisions should be made with human input, and should not solely rely on technical methods.
• Article creators, wikiprojects dedicated to improvement of unsourced BLPs, and wikiprojects dedicated to various topics should all be alerted to the existence of said articles, and be encouraged (and supported) in sourcing them. Several views discussed methods in which this information could be disseminated, some of which have already been put into place, and there was no significant opposition to this position.
  • Related to this was some discussion of whether there should be a significant site-wide campaign to involve a larger segment of the editing community in a BLP-sourcing project, which also did not meet with significant opposition.
• A smaller number of individuals pointed out the difficulty of maintaining and improving the constantly-enlarging encyclopedia while the number of regularly active contributors has remained relatively static in recent years; this view, while not very widely discussed, did not meet with significant opposition.
  • In this same vein, others pointed out that quality expectations have changed significantly over the years, and that there was no simple method for editors to identify articles they had created and/or significantly edited which required referencing. Prolific editors who have remained active over several years are just now discovering the extent to which they are being asked to improve and reference unsourced BLPs, many of which were created some years ago.

The three major positions presented were:

1. Mass deletion of all articles identified as biographies of living people that had no reference sources, with varying views on how this would be accomplished. Most related views implied that all unsourced BLPs would be deleted over a very short period (days to weeks), with minimal or no attempt to improve the articles.
2. No change in current deletion practices and no special deletion practices for BLPs, with most related views supporting sourcing unreferenced BLPs or at a minimum reviewing them to ensure they were properly categorized
3. Special PROD processes for BLPs, with widely diverse opinions on duration that articles would remain prodded, criteria for de-prodding, and the number of articles being prodded at any given time.

Related to all three of these views were concerns about how to best manage the reviewing of unsourced BLPs to (a) ensure they were actually unsourced, (b) prevent overloading of the relevant processes, and (c) prioritize which (subgroups of) articles would be reviewed, with soft or hard deadlines for various checkpoints, and a clear objective for completion of the reviews.

Consensus

Of these three broad categories of views, there is a surprisingly clear consensus that some form of BLP-PROD is the preferred method of addressing unsourced BLPs. The majority of opposition to each of the views proposing a BLP-PROD variation related to the length of time an article would be prodded (which ranged from 2 days to over a month), or some other factor specific to that proposal. A notable but small minority opposed the basic concept.

There was also a robust consensus that a separate process should be developed to address newly-created unreferenced BLPs, in order to prevent further accumulation of unsourced BLPs; however, fewer editors commented specific to this point, which arose in several views.

Objectives for Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Biographies of living people/Phase II

• Develop consensus on the details of a BLP-PROD process, most critically on the duration of a BLP-PROD
• Develop a timeline with specific objectives to ensure that the current backlog of unsourced BLPs is reviewed and improved or otherwise addressed. Factors to consider include how to prioritize subgroups of articles within the process, development and centralisation of tools and resources for editors to identify and improve articles, and methods to involve the larger editing community.
• Develop consensus on standards for newly-created BLPs. Factors to consider include tools and processes to support new editors, integration of the process with new page patrol, and time frame for sourcing of new articles.

It is clear that our editing community has started to address the issues raised in this RfC, as several tools have been developed to assist editors in identifying and improving these articles; the number of unsourced BLPs has already been reduced by more than 10%. Continued effort to involve and support an even broader segment of the community should be considered an important priority; several communication tools have been discussed in the RfC.

Please address any questions or comments on this close to the adjacent talk page in order to centralise the discussion. This close is submitted under my own signature, independent of any other offices or permissions I hold. Risker (talk) 03:59, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't see any such consensus on further steps. This closure should be retracted and the idea of a new Prod postponed until it gains consensus. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:43, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Please note: Phase I was improperly closed, and only one position was advocated, which was against the agreed upon intentions of closing this RFC for phase II originally. Okip 12:54, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

• Stop beating the horse, as its dead already. Scottaka UnitAnode 13:02, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
  • WP:POT Okip 13:53, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
    • That doesn't even make any sense -- which probably shouldn't surprise me coming from you. I'm not the one who's been posting tl;dr screeds about this issue. As such, I'm not sure you understand what WP:POT even means. Scottaka UnitAnode 02:31, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Phase II

BLP PROD process drafting

Establish the details of a BLP PROD process. This should probably be based on Jehochman's view (the variation on that theme which had by far the most support) as a baseline for discussion. However a process of this type has already been drafted at Wikipedia:Deletion of unreferenced BLPs, and moving discussion there to develop that proposed process would save time and energy - as well leaving more space for discussion here in this RFC of the other issues. Rd232 ^talk 11:43, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Details from Phase 1

This is the detail of the proposal made by User:Jehochman.

1. Any article that satisfies the attack page criteria should be deleted on sight.
2. Biographies of living persons (BLP) articles that are unreferenced should be proposed for deletion (prod).
3. Prodding should proceed at a reasonable rate to allow interested editors the chance to add sources. The volume of proposed deletions should not be unreasonably large. Discussion can establish what is a reasonable pace.
4. After five seven days, any article so tagged may be deleted, or moved to the Wikipedia:Article incubator if it shows promise.
5. Prod notices should not be removed, nor should articles be undeleted, unless proper references are added present. Anybody who engages in mass de-prodding or undeletion without adding references being present risks a block for disruption.
6. All editors are invited to participate in this BLP cleanup campaign.

The major objections to this were:

• The WP:PROD process should not be altered, so some other name should be used
• It is open to abuse
• The timeline is not specified
• PRODding should not happen without an attempt to source the article
• Article editors need to be notified of a pending deletion
• Quality of references to be added is unclear
• Some editors disagree with deletion as a solution altogether

These objections will need to be addressed in order to create a broadly supported policy, and as Rd232 suggests, Wikipedia:Deletion of unreferenced BLPs is probably the best place for this to continue. Kevin (talk) 22:29, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

New vs. Existing PROD process.

I would favor using the existing PROD process, with the flexibility for any editor to remove one or several PRODs in good faith. Like the traditional PROD process, the next step is for the PROD nominator to see if the problem still exists, and send the article to AfD if it has not. If we have general consensus to use a PROD process, then mass-PROD-removal would be considered disruptive, just as it is today. Jclemens (talk) 04:34, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

WT:PROD got nearer rejection than acceptance of changing PROD in the necessary way (to prevent removal of tag without adding sources) as totally contrary to the spirit of PROD. I suggest the way forward would be to list Wikipedia:Deletion of unreferenced BLPs on WP:CENT and develop that process based on Phase I discussion (which it's very compatible with), leaving open the possibility that the process so developed can be merged as a special section of PROD. (I doubt that would be acceptable, but the point is it needn't be settled now.) Rd232 ^talk 16:59, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

The seven day period wait is ridiculously short, it is the same as zero. Editors who create unsourced BLPs *in good faith* are probably newbies who have not yet read the guidelines, cannot be expected to check their watchlists every day, will not quite understand what the prod means, and will not be able to respond to it in that time frame. So the handling of those BLPs will have to be done by experienced editors who are willing to take time from their personal wikiprojects to do community service. Source-or-die is basically a hostage situation: "either someone does what I want done, or I will kill the work of a random newbie". Since the tagger must at least read the article before tagging it, we can assume that attack pages have been speedily deleted and potentially problematic contents has been deelted. In that case, allowing the BLP to live for another month or another year will be a negligible risk, will avoid lots of bad feeelings, and will actually mean *less* work for everybody in the end. All the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 17:49, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Newbies who actually create an article tend to come back and see what happens, I think, on a short time scale of hours/days, when BLP-PROD tags would be applied. In any case it is not merely "source or delete" - articles may also get incubated, with the creator getting a notice. Articles will live at least a month in the incubator, and there's no reason we couldn't agree longer timespan for incubated BLP-PRODs. Rd232 ^talk 21:28, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Well if the asking rate is high, I think some people, including established editors will just put in fake sources, or add a ref at a end of one paragraph but it only covers the last part of the sentence. People try this all the time at FAR and hope that a reviewer will just see a cite at the end of the para and assume everything is accounted for, when it usually isn't. And it's enough to catch a lot of people. I wouldn't be surprised if heaps of people did it everywhere else either, especially if they then go and cite a non-English book that nobody could catch onto. Once I even saw someone reference an uncited FA by circularly referencing a copy of Wikipedia somewhere and sometimes even cutting and pasting a copyvio to solve the BLP unsourced. Unless people get down to basics, rules are pretty irrelevant, let's be frank, many rules on Wikipedia are just used selective to operate a caste system; eg one guy (admins) deleting sourced info that they don't like and citing BLP even though it was sourced to a newspaper, because the info didn't suit them, because undue weight or whatever, true or not, then they go and rv some guy who blanks uncited negative info, eg criminal behaviour by an opposition politician. People shouldn't be fooled by metrics as lots of people have and continue to make wiki-careers by gaming stats and making themselves look better. YellowMonkey (vote in the Southern Stars photo poll) 07:38, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Details from Phase 1: an alternative view

This should have been included weeks ago, when this RFC was improperly closed and only one position was advocated:

This is the comments made by User:DGG, which received the highest proportion of editors (91.67%):

For old articles, a procedure of summary deletion is particularly reckless. Of course we should we should work on them, at the pace at which we can manage it, with the special problem that the author is generally no longer be around to help. What I think is extremely dangerous is people nominating them or any article for deletion without first looking for sources, because it takes no more work to try for basic sourcing. We might even have a priority category for "I tried, but further help is needed." -- that's the sort of think I'd like to work on. What is even more dangerous is deletion without looking. As a related example, let me give the 40 prods of this nature I worked on in the last two days, about 10 were easily sourceable. About 5 were a real challenge--for some I too needed some help to do it right--and trying and not succeeding with them is not something anyone should be blamed for. The other half I decided could not be sourced in any reasonable way, or were so unlikely I at least wasn't going to bother, and I let them stand. But since they were prods, anyone else could look at them and try. Frequently I see ones I've given up on done easily by someone else. Some of the ones I found easily were ones where I can understand another person in perfect good faith might not think were likely enough to be worth the bother. That is the reason summary deletion is inappropriate--there are only a few special classes of things where one or two people can securely decide. Among the articles listed for deletion, and which could be deleted under the proposed ruling was one which was easily verifiable that the person was an ambassador, and one a member of a state legislature--things said on the face of the article. . In both cases, it took about a minute to source them. With respect to the arbitrary deletions we are concerned with, I note what Rebecca said above--deleting an article that is on its face probably notable without checking is about as destructive to the encyclopedia as one can get.

The offer to undelete on request in ludicrous as a solution--for most editors cannot see the articles to tell. For those of us who can, we would of course be able to check and see if we could source, and undelete if we could. I certainly would not undelete in this circumstance unless I could source, But relying on a few of us to check is only practical if the people deleting are more responsible than some of them so far have been.

Okip 13:05, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

The guidelines surrounding the creation of new articles should be modified

The guidelines surrounding the creation of new articles (WP:BLP,WP:YFA,etc) should be modified to reflect that sources are expected when writing articles about living individuals. That failure to provide sources in a reasonable amount of time (as dictated above) on new BLPs may result in the article's being deleted. The revisions should indicate that repeated failure after adequate warnings/notification to provide sources on NEW BLPs might be deemed as disruptive. (NOTE: The exact wording and parameters of the statement would be dependent upon consensus being reached elsewhere in this RfC.)

Support

• Support. All new articles need sources. Aymatth2 (talk) 13:24, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
• support as nom. I think having a BLP Prod for New Articles needs to be tied to a revision in applicable policies/guidelines. Failure to make this modification creates a disconnect between two different functions of the project and fails to provide notication of the new expectations.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 23:49, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
• Support as logical corollary of the proposed change to disallow new unreferenced BLPs, and of course only if that proposal does achieve consensus. However I would expect this to be preceded by a series of warnings, and in the first instance to be a very short duration block, and please no more jumping the gun and blocking creators of unreferenced BLPs until we finish the RFC and change the documentation on the article creation process. ϢereSpielChequers 23:58, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
• Support this for sure. Not only is it reflective of current thinking, it is The Right Thing To Do™ to tell inform people of current standards so as few people as possible are unpleasantly surprised when the unsourced BLP they created gets tagged for deletion. NW (Talk) 00:01, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
• Support per NW. Definitely a good idea to inform people of what they should be doing before they get it wrong instead of after. Alzarian16 (talk) 00:04, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
• Strong Susport - but even more: I would suggest making it technically impossible to submit a new article that has no references. (It can easilybe done).--Kudpung (talk) 00:09, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
• Support. Helping new editors has to be a good thing. Kevin (talk) 00:15, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
• Support. Good idea. Sceptre ^(talk) 00:52, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
• Support Would be willing to give a reasonable 5 day/1 week grace period time for this kind of thing SirFozzie (talk) 01:03, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
• Support, as basic common sense. Scottaka UnitAnode 01:07, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
• Support. Would be nice. Scieberking (talk) 02:51, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
• Sources should be expected for every article, but especially so for BLPs. Note that this does not say "properly formatted inline references" are expected, just sources. A bare URL or enough information to identify a print source are adequate. Mr.Z-man 02:55, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
• Support- not to do so would give the appearance of enforcing rules that don't exist. We need to be careful not to put newbies off creating BLPs and editors would do well to note the distinction between sources and nice, perfectly formatted references. HJ Mitchell | fancy a chat? 03:29, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
• Support policy should document practice of course, and it's pretty clear we need some level of sourcing on new BLPs. As has been noted elsewhere, any identifiable source should be accepted even if it's formatted wrong or provided as an EL without inline. My support would not extend to any policy change to allow systematic stubbing of unsourced content or any change that effectively nullifies the word "contentious" from BLP policy on content removal. Gigs (talk) 05:26, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
• Support Reflects the change in the reality. If you warned repeatedly an editor that he/she is screwing up and nothing change then you had to sanction unfortunately. I'm going as far as article creation blocked for the most extreme cases. When you had to clean up a trail of messy BLP articles left by a such editor, you lost much amenity toward that editor. --KrebMarkt 10:00, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
• Yes - give people every encouragement.--Scott Mac (Doc) 18:02, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
• Support - but, picking up from the idea from User:Kudpung's comment, perhaps a tool can be developed to make it easier to add references. For example, if an unreferenced article is submitted, have a popup request a reference, with a box where the reference text can be added (similar to an edit summary) that would automatically be added to the end of the article. I realize that would require programming, but the easier it is to add a reference, the more references would be added. Rlendog (talk) 21:06, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
  • Along those lines, I've often thought it would be nice if when starting a new page in article space, you'd get an empty skeleton with the standard sections like References followed by {{Reflist}} already inserted along with See also, etc. This would at least give people a hint about what a proper article looks like. Gigs (talk) 21:14, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
• Strong/wide/deep support. We must attract collaborative contributors and repel disruptive egotists. New editors who "get" the NPOV+RS+V model are amazingly valuable and in the guidelines we must make clear that any form of reliable, verifiable sourcing is acceptable, that articles can be userfied on request to allow more time for sourcing, and that help and advice are available from experienced editors. Personally I would prefer a model where (i) unsourced-living-person statements are progressively removed from an article as appropriate, (ii) user talk messages keep the original contributor(s) involved, and (iii) the article is only nominated for deletion if it is empty. This gives the original contributor(s) time to adapt to our way-of-working. Hopefully they will want to commit to Wikipedia on our terms, and our stricter rules will encourage them to take their work here more seriously. - Pointillist (talk) 00:53, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
• support not having guidelines that actively support the policies/pillars is silly. Active Banana (talk) 03:28, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
• This is just common sense. Support. PeterSymonds (talk) 20:23, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
• Support This is a nice basic overview of a good way to prevent incoming BLP-prone articles. ThemFromSpace 00:20, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
• Support - Reasonable, as sources are clearly expected now with the creation of BLPs given their sensitivity. Camaron · Christopher · talk 19:10, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
• Support. Fram (talk) 11:48, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
• Cla68 (talk) 22:46, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
• Support Obvious. Yilloslime ^T_C 00:18, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Oppose

• Oppose First, I have been working with a new editor, and the current way in which referencing works is hard for new users. This proposal assumes that unreferenced edits are bad edits. That is simply not the case. The majority of editors are good faith editors who get regularly bit by proposals such as this one. Okip 00:43, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

  Let me get this straight. You oppose letting new editors know that they are expected to add sources when they write a new article about living people? This is just about giving them information. Kevin (talk) 00:49, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

  It isn't hard to do <ref>Book</ref> or <ref>Url</ref>. That's really all we need; wiki pixie dust will sort the citations out. Sceptre ^(talk) 00:52, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

  • >> "The revisions should indicate that repeated failure after adequate warnings/notification to provide sources on NEW BLPs might be deemed as disruptive." << Questions ? Okip 01:49, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
    • Yes, why is failure to follow policy after multiple warnings not disruptive? Mr.Z-man 02:49, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
      • WP:BITE. In addition, this is not policy. Okip 02:59, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
        • How on Earth would this "bite" any newbie? All this would do be to change the policy and information pages like so. Or did I misinterpret you? Do you believe that sources for BLPs are wholly unnecessary? NW (Talk) 03:18, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
          • Reference this article with really complex tools which are hard to understand, or we delete the article you created. To help you understand more, would you like me to create an illustrated graph? Okip 11:35, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
        • Would that not apply to anything that we give warnings for: image copyright, speedy deletion, test edits, etc.? That sounds more like an argument to abandon warnings for new users altogether. The user being new does not make their actions less disruptive, it just means that we should treat them with more care - as in, giving plenty of warning before taking any sort of harsher action. This being a proposal, presumably it would be added into policy once there's consensus for it, and before it is applied. Mr.Z-man 03:31, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
          • This is a strawman argument. I am in no way saying we should abandon warnings for new users altogether. I think "harsher action" sums up this proposal nicely, instead of collaboratively working with new editors, we give them them threats of "harsher action". WP:LASTWORD go ahead...Okip 11:35, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
            • Huh? I'm not saying that you are advocating that, I'm saying that your argument is not specific with regard to unsourced BLPs. Why is ignoring requests to source BLPs so different ignoring warnings about uploading images with no license or ignoring warnings about creating articles with no assertions of notability? I'm trying to have a constructive discussion with you here and understand your position, I am truly offended by your implication that I'm just trying to get in "the last word." That was completely uncalled for. Mr.Z-man 00:44, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

  Correct me if I'm wrong, but did Ikip/Okip just declare that WP:BLP "is not policy"? Scottaka UnitAnode 03:23, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

  • "The revisions should indicate that repeated failure after adequate warnings/notification to provide sources on NEW BLPs might be deemed as disruptive" is not a policy. Okip 11:35, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

  There's nothing yet in WP:BLP that requires sources when adding information that has not been previously challenged as contentious. This proposal, I assume, would change that for new articles. Gigs (talk) 05:13, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

  Spirit, not letter. Also, there is: BLPs "must adhere strictly to all applicable laws in the United States and to all of our content policies, especially: NPOV; Verifiability; NOR." I failed to see how adding unsourced information is "strict adherence" to our verifiability policy. Sceptre ^(talk) 17:35, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

  Verifiability only requires sources for information that is challenged or likely to be challenged, and quotes. Unsourced is not unverifiable. Gigs (talk) 17:50, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

  Anything information in a BLP, by virtue of being a BLP, is "likely to be challenged". And while unsourced is not unverifiable, for biographies, we should remove unsourced information because, as we can't gauge the veracity of a statement without verification, we shouldn't use an unverified fact for ethical reasons. Sceptre ^(talk) 18:52, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

  Not true... and contrary to basic sourcing expectations. The fact that Tiger Woods is a professional golfer will not need a source. It is common knowledge and isn't controversial. The allegation that he has x number of affairs, would require a citation. While it may be common knowledge that he has had affairs, the details would be controversial/negative. But even with BLP's if a piece of info is common knowledge, the expectation for citations is less, unless it is negative information, in which point WP wants to bass the buck on the liability issue.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 18:59, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

  If Sceptre et al wants to change the policy to "all unsourced information should be removed" then they should establish consensus for that. So far such attempts have failed. In the mean time they should stop pretending that it's already policy. Gigs (talk) 19:08, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

  I encourage both Gigs and Ballonman to oppose this proposal. Okip 11:35, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

  I'm willing to accept a requirement for at least some minimal sourcing of new BLP articles, though. I think of it as "demonstrated notability". I don't think that view is inconsistent with the strong belief that editors should be free to add not-yet-sourced knowledge in general. So that is why I support this proposal, so long as it isn't the "camel's nose". Gigs (talk) 23:43, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Discussion

@ Kudpung, I don't see how we can implement that technically. Much better to allow references in any format at all and clean them up later. Kevin (talk) 00:15, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

I believe the German Wikipedia now has a box for you to put your source into, of course that wouldn't prevent some newbies putting en.wikipedia.org or the search engine of their choice. But it would be interesting to know how well that has worked. ϢereSpielChequers 00:21, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

• Conditional oppose If we are going to do these things, we should warn new editors about them. But we should not do these things; they are not consensus, they are not good policy, and they are not based on any actual evidence on how false statements appear in BLPs. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 06:24, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
  • How is expecting sources in an article "not good policy"? Mr.Z-man 22:19, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
  • These statements have been added recently to WP:BLP and WP:YFA, respectively: "Material about living persons must be sourced very carefully" and "Extra care should be taken to make sure that articles on living persons have sources". They might need to be more prominent but they seem to address the proposers concern. --Jubilee♫clipman 01:20, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Proposal to Close This RfC

Ok, based upon the comments on the talk page to my summary, I propose we close this RfC. I'm going to break my proposal to close into two parts. The first part deals with items where I feel that consensus has been reach. The second part deals with a compromise solution proposed on the talk page. For purposes of dates, I used March 1 as the end date for this RfC.

Part 1: Items where consensus seems to be clear

The first part being issues which I think the consensus is clearly defined. In supporting/opposing this, please do so based upon whether or not you agree/disagree that consensus supports the item in question---not whether you agree or disagree with it.

1. An acceptance of a "sticky" BLP-PROD for new unsourced BLP's written after the close of the RfC.
2. An acceptance of some sort of policy/guideline change to indicate that we expect new BLP's to have sources or they may be deleted. (I use "may" because somebody else may add a source or it may not be found.)
3. We want to recruit as many people/projects as possible to this clean up effort. This could include, but is not limited to, contacting projects directly, asking the Foundation to put a banner on the page, making announcements in Signpost, having a "clean-up" blitz, etc.
4. We do not want the clean up effort to be a haphazard mass deletion spree.
5. We want/need time to make this clean up a reality.
6. Many of the existing BLP tagged as "unsourced" are not problematic in that they actually do contain sources.
7. Many of the existing unsourced BLPs do not harm WP in that they are factual and neutral, but because they deal with living people the expectation is shifting related to sourcing.
8. Any proposal to speedy delete unsourced/poorly source BLP's has been rejected. This does not negate already existing criteria for CSD.
9. Any notion to automate deletions of old unsourced BLPs has been rejected.

Again, I am not asking if you agree/disagree with the above summary, but whether or not you agree/disagree that consensus seems to support the above.

Part 1 Agree

• Agree - good summary. Seems to be clear consensus. Aymatth2 (talk) 13:26, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
• Agree as nom---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 22:37, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
  • Balloonman per: Consensus is forming: an alternative view why didn't you include Bearcat's proposal which was the most popular proposal from phase II which can be summed up as:
    "I'm not entirely convinced that we actually need to create a whole new layer of bureaucracy and regulation here."
    Isn't many of your points simply a repeat of Jclemens proposal, which was soundly defeated by almost a two to one margin? There are many other questions I have about the validity of this consensus, which are on the talk page. (refactored out repetitive sentence)Okip 14:29, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
    • Simply because Bearcat's proposal had what 16 supports, when weighed against the 163 supports for Jehochman's proposal in phase 1 (which I strongly opposed) Bearcat's proposal comes up far short in overcoming that proposal.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 03:11, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
      • I addressed this before, then refactored it out.[1] Unlike the way in which yourself and Risker advocated only one position, both table summaries which I gave showed ALL positions. In the first round, Risker ignored Jclemens proposal, Collect's proposal, and DGG's proposal, which came after Jehochman's proposal. DGG's proposal had the most proportional support (91.67%), "deleting an article that is on its face probably notable without checking is about as destructive to the encyclopedia as one can get". If you take Jehochman's proposal (163), against either Jclemens (83) and Collects proposal (83), you get 66% support. Despite Risker advocating only one position, ignoring the intention of phase II, the highest proportional position was Bearcat's. It is a sad commentary on this proposal that editors have to go to such lengths to manufacture consensus.Okip 11:57, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
• Agree Mlpearc (talk) 23:02, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
• Agree; this much at least seems clear. NW (Talk) 23:03, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
•  —  Paine (Ellsworth's Climax)  23:06, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
• --KrebMarkt 23:17, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
• These all seem quite clear. Resolute 23:36, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
• yup--Scott Mac (Doc) 23:46, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
• - Philippe 23:57, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
• I can live with this. ϢereSpielChequers 00:06, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
• Fully agree. Jogurney (talk) 00:38, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
• Agree. THF (talk) 00:55, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
• That does appear to be the consensus --Jubilee♫clipman 01:25, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
• Agree J04n(talk page) 03:26, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
• agree and I think the onus is on anyone who signs saying they disagree, to show WHY they think consensus isn't clear on these points, not just claim that it's not. ++Lar: t/c 03:44, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
• Agree - Kevin (talk) 04:26, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
• Good job, RxS (talk) 04:51, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
• Agree though it's unfortunate that this is about where things were 2 weeks ago. I and many others much earlier put up almost identical summaries but were all drowned out. A few sizable concerns aren't addressed, but that doesn't change the fact that I endorse this summary as a proper review of consensus. Let's get on with it, people. ♪ daTheisen(talk) 05:29, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
• This resolves a good deal of the main issues. Mr.Z-man 06:06, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
• Agree. Pcap ping 06:27, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
• Agree, but very disappointed that the one thing that can happen now, #3 above, has still been left in the hands of a few users and projects. Wolterbot hasn't done a cleanup list since December (not his fault, relies on the database dump). NOT GOOD ENOUGH. WP:Aust had 1652 listed then. We have less than 600 today. There have probably been 10-20 editors working on this for the past month. It takes me 5-10 minutes to do an update, or 20-30 minutes to do a fresh generation of our working list. Time that could done by a bot, but the only botmaker who was interested in currently banned. Lists of unreferenced BLPs from June 2008 don't interest me. Lists of unreferenced Olympians, or Engineers, or Politicians might. We don't need an RFC to do this, just some proper emphasis to be applied from above. Or is it really not that important to those running the show?The-Pope (talk) 06:33, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
• Agree - This seems to be what we've agreed on. Let's move forward. <>Multi‑Xfer<> (talk) 07:45, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
• Agree - but only as long as the perspective: not asking if you agree/disagree with the above summary, but whether or not you agree/disagree that consensus seems to support the above, is not lost.
• Agree seems to be supported by most (if not fully be me!) Graeme Bartlett (talk) 09:52, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
• OK at least this helps us move in the right direction. Dougweller (talk) 14:33, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
• Wish that we could say more towards good sourcing, but of course, allowing anyone to edit Wikipedia will always let a few idiots in. Sceptre ^(talk) 14:43, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
• Agree, though I wish that #1 applied to existing articles as well as newly created ones. Deor (talk) 16:09, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
• Agree Looks about right. Some of it may not be so agreed upon yet though. Brambleclawx 18:19, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
• Agree with points 1-5 and 9 in part. The others are unnecessary commentary and could be dropped, but are harmless. For #5 it doesn't matter if many or few do flagged BLPs contain sources, the proposal will deal with it either way. It doesn't matter whether sourced BLPs are problematic or not, that is beyond the scope of this specific proposal. For #7, it doesn't matter whether an unsourced BLP is harmless or not, we'll source it either way. It doesn't matter whether expectations shifted, this is a decision going forward. For #8, I think we agree that some special action is needed for new unsourced BLPs, and consensus isn't clear yet on the specific process. For #9, if you mean bot-driven or unconditional, yes, in approving this proposal we're rejecting a completely automated deletion process... but it is "automatic" in the sense that if a BLP cannot be sourced, it will get deleted, period. I don't think it hurts anything to add these points, but I think we have consensus even if people disagree with them, because they don't change the outcome. - Wikidemon (talk) 18:25, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
• Agree. PeterSymonds (talk) 20:25, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
• Agree, wish that more could be done to have a timelined PROD, but consensus has not been for it. — Coffee // have a cup // ark // 21:55, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
• Agree   pablo_hablo. 08:53, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
• Agree as a alternative, because it is actually nothing more than a restatement of current policy. For point 1, the devil will be in the details, and I see "sticky" as not necessarily meaning more than the option which will always remain, to take a prod to AfD on the grounds of being contentious, and that's enough of a check on misinterpretation in either direction. For point 2, it is exactly statement of current policy, so I don't know why it was worded as a change. I don;t think any of this actually necessary, but nothing is in the above that would make things worse, or prevent the current improvement from continuing. DGG ( talk ) 16:12, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
• Agree - And share Coffee's opinion here. Jeffrey Mall (talk • contribs) - 19:09, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
• Agree - This throws some stuff out and some stuff in, seems to be a pretty fair compromise which I will sign-up to. Camaron · Christopher · talk 19:18, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
• Okay Jehochman ^Brrr 19:27, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
• Agree - primarily because using ordinary PROD has too low a visibility. I think that BLP PRODS should be included in deletion sorting (e.g. anything NZ related would then appear on my radar) and where possible, pages should be tagged with appropriate wikiprojects. I would see 7 days as a minimum, 14 preferable. dramatic (talk) 21:16, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
• Concur - not seeing any reason that this needs to stay open, and I agree with the read on consensus.-- Bfigura ^(talk) 21:27, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
• Agreed. Why not? Leave Message, Yellow Evan home
• Yes, it's a working solution. ThemFromSpace 23:12, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
• Agree Buckshot06 (talk) 23:28, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
• 'Agree with minor reservations about the "stickiness" of the new "BLP-PROD" category allowing that in some cases it may be improperly applied, and that in those cases it ought not be "sticky". Collect (talk) 23:33, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
• This seems to be accurate. Santa Claus of the Future (talk) 00:46, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
• Agree that these seem to be to be agreed upon, and that they are part of the proper way forward. — Gavia immer (talk) 01:29, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
• Agree especially with sensitivity to not deleting items in haste, while still supporting existing deletion critera. ejly (talk) 03:40, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
• Agree Sole Soul (talk) 10:33, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
• Agree in general. Fram (talk) 11:51, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
• Agree. JamieS93^❤ 14:28, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
• Aye. —ShinyG (talk) 19:25, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
• Agree that this seems to be an accurate reflection of consensus to this point. - Peripitus (Talk) 21:05, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
• Agree with DGG that mass deletion of old articles for lacking the current style of references is extremely reckless. I have been participating here for five and a half years. When I started we didn't use the more rigorous and robust references we use now. Articles then generally used naked inline references, or merely had an external links section. I started, or was an early contributor, to a number of biographical articles that would not be considered referenced by today's standards. And recently some of those articles last worked on four or more years ago -- articles on perfectly notable individuals -- were nominated for deletion. I think the over-hasty nominations of those articles is the kind of mistake DGG is warning against. In all of those instances converting or updating the references was, in fact, trivial. An article may not have been worked on for four years not because it was "abandoned", but rather because there have been no new developments to include. Geo Swan (talk) 22:32, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
• Cla68 (talk) 22:47, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
• Agree. Not entirely with all of these individually (depending on how implemented) but they are reasonably well supported. Sam Blacketer (talk) 00:16, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
• Agree. I don't necessarily agree with the everything, but this does seem to be the general consensus. Yilloslime ^T_C 00:23, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
• Agree this was my sense of what people were leaning to in the initial RFC, there were individual differences in each of these, sure, but overall, a desire for a longer timeframe, a warning on new pages, and something similar to BLP-PROD seemed to be the sway of the discussion. --Lyc. cooperi (talk) 00:31, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
• Agree I can accept this -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 00:40, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
• Agree There does see to be a concensus to the specific bullets mentioned. BLP seems to have clear value in Wikipedia, and the histories of BLP pages seems to support (for the most part) the nine bullet items listed. Alvincura (talk) 01:42, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
• Agree. Quantpole (talk) 09:16, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
• Agree as summarized. --Magicus69 10:02, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
• Agree --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 13:49, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
• Agree - However there currently exists no means to spot that newly created articles are BLP and no machine system could make this determination. Simply requiring that no account create a new article until a week after that account has made an edit that did not get rolled back would help a lot with this. Established users would be creating the BLPs and so have them on their watchlists for changes. Hcobb (talk) 16:27, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
• Concur with consensus, whether I not I believe all the terms are good for Wikipedia. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 16:41, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
• Agree - Ditto on Hcobb. rkairis (rkairis) 19:45, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
• Agree, taking all the pros and cons into consideration, it seems this compromise solution is acceptable to the majority of the community—to rectify a very serious concern without unduly burdening editors. It simply implements more effectively our core content policy of verifiability where it is most needed.  JGHowes  ^talk 22:26, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Part 1 Disagree

• Strongly Disagree with 1 and 2 only, for several reasons:

  First, Balloon's claim of consensus is simply not the case. Yesterday Ballonman posted a "consensus is forming" section on the talk page, which ignored some of the most popular proposals.

  Second, the harm some editors claim that unreferenced BLPs have is so out of proportion to the reality, that this unreferenced BLP danger promoted here could be called a hoax. There are much better, collaborative, less disruptive solutions to solving unreferenced BLPs, which editors have been working on, resulting in 10,000 less unreferenced BLPs.

  Third, Without any new bitey new rules and bureaucracy, the number of unreferenced BLPs has dropped, from 52,760 to 42,512, over 10,000 articles removed from the list. No new bitey rules are needed.

  Fourth how do we reconcile Balloonman's proposal, which at this writing, has 23 supports and does not mention the BEFORE requirement, with the WP:BEFORE proposal which has 19 supports above? I think there would be wider community support if a before requirement was put in, I may support such a proposal also. Also Bearcat's proposal, which has [2] the most popular proposal here? Okip 11:39, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

The WP:BEFORE proposal has 19 supports and 16 opposes, it would be a bit of a stretch say that "consensus is clearly defined" there. Mr.Z-man 19:52, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

• Disagree. Gosh, the same folks who've been pushing this think they see consensus they agree with. Shocking. I certainly hope we get a formal proposal out of this and have a site-wide discussion about that proposal. Wearing people down!=consensus. If you think it does, let's hold a formal vote. Hobit (talk) 18:03, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
  • Actually, if you look at my stances, particularly in round 1, I have been opposed to the careless CSD/BLP-PROD positions. The above summary is one of what is the forming consensus here at the RfC---not my stance. As for Okip's pointing to Bearcat's proposal... you cannot disregard about 200 people who supported the BLP-PROD proposal from the first part of this RfC. Those supporters far outwiegh the few who commented in round 2 that no change should be made. We can't ignore part 1, as part two had the objective of focusing on the issues identified in part 1, not to override it. I view it as a success that round 2 clarified that we don't want BLP-PROD to be widely accepted on old BLP's.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 08:11, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
    • This is simply not about BearCat's proposal. Unlike the way in which yourself and Risker advocated only one position, both table summaries which I gave showed ALL positions. In the first round, Risker page protected the page, and ignored Jclemens proposal, Collect's proposal, and DGG's proposal, which came after Jehochman's proposal. It is a sad commentary on this proposal that editors have to go to such lengths to manufacture consensus. Okip 12:00, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
      • Give the editors a chance.Mod mmg (talk) 08:00, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
• Disagree. I came here from a note of my talk page saying 60,000 articles are going to be deleted...  ! I see this as further evidence that the deletionist editors have further taken over wikipedia, one of the reasons why I edit wikipedia much less than I used to. What is the point of putting in the effort to improve articles when there is a substantial chance they'll just be deleted and all that work of yours and others goes straight down the drain? I'm generally against very large number of deletions in one fell swoop. We already have tools for that, via AfD etc... Mathmo ^Talk 11:01, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

  I'm confused by this comment, since you're disagreeing with the forming consensus which explicitly states any proposal or notion to speedy delete, or automate the deletion of, any articles has been rejected. Are you disagreeing with these statements (i.e., that you feel there is not a consensus to protect these articles from deletion), or is this a blanket disagreement for the entire RFC? I'm thinking it's the latter, and I'd suggest this is a poor way to get the point across. The RFC as a whole has moved past the point of "do we need this discussion?", and is much nearer completion. I think if you look closely, it's not as bad as you think - 60,000 articles are not at risk of summary execution, for example. --InkSplotch (talk) 15:08, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

  This part of the proposal only addresses NEW BLPs, it does not address the 60K articles that you were notified about. And then, it will only delete after a week with a BLP-PROD, which for a newly created BLP should be more than enough time to get sourced.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 17:31, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

  • Ooooooh it will only delete after one week. That's good? What is everybody's fascination with deleting articles? If you find the need to delete an article, any article, do it on the grounds we have already established. In other words, let it stand the test of notability. Run it through the already existing AfD. At least there, it will get some attention--a few people will actually google the name and find some information on a subject they don't know and understand. Most articles THERE get improved by nature. Don't set up a separate location to run your deleting process through in a separate super secret location that most people, even some people, might regularly check. Vocal as I have been, I've been having a hard time finding any of these consensus proposals to get behind because hidden under the surface, someone is still trying to invent new and devious ways to delete more articles. You do not seem to understand, most editors don't understand any of this stuff. They will never understand it. You can't MAKE THEM understand it. All they will see is the results of your destruction. And it will piss them off.Trackinfo (talk) 21:07, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
• Disagree. The introduction of new articles to the Wikipedia should not be difficult (reverted at the first step), living persons or not. If some of the articles do not follow requirements, administrator may be in a good position to spread the word among those (editors or groups) who can make it better. And, if several people who state some expertize in the field, have grounds to refuse and recommend deletion, then do it. After all, networking is what Wiki is (was?) about, no destruction. --Tar-ba-gan (talk) 10:13, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
  • Please see the instructions at the top of the section. This isn't about what individual users prefer, but what we have consensus on through the 2 parts of this RFC. Mr.Z-man 15:01, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Part 1 Neutral

At the moment, this page has consensus about what this page has consensus about. :)

But I'd like to suggest that this proposal to close remain open for a few days (such as through Monday).

Doing so would lessen any potential bias based on time. It would give more opportunity to hear from the self-proclaimed forgotten majority.

To some degree, we are ending where we should have started, with Balloonman's suggestion to align policy with deletion proposals (I recognize that we have some disagreement about interpretion of current policy).

But any tightening of standards should consider Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Biographies of living people/Content. Maurreen (talk) 12:21, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

I also support some of Okip's points in the Disagree section. I think I would accept Prods that required WP:BEFORE. Maurreen (talk) 12:25, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

The proposal has some merit. But I am unhappy that it is self-reinforcing (by asking, "Do you agree that other people have agreed?). Oh, well. Maurreen (talk) 21:05, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

• If I'm reading it right, the purpose of this page seems to be determine whether we have consensus that there's consensus. What's next: a page to determine if there's consensus that there's consensus that there's consensus? This thing has gotten way out of control, and just trying to follow the logic (?) of it requires a commitment of time and energy that imo would be better put into article-building and -improving. Whether there really is consensus here will likely be debated long and hard regardless of the immediate outcome of this RFC. Two things continue to bother me about the entire debate about unsourced BLPs:

1. It's clear that a sizable number of editors believe current policy to be woefully inadequate, although I'm unaware of any concerted effort having been made to address the problem within the confines of current policy.
2. The presumption is that the problem is urgent, although the gravity of the problem has never been adequately documented, afaik. Other than some high-profile screw-ups (e.g., the premature "death" of Ted Kennedy, where the current system worked quite well), is there any record of harm done and on what scale?

I keep encountering dire threats of Jimbo or the Foundation acting if we don't, to which I say: if the situation is half as dire as the general presumption goes, then they should act preemptively. In other words, if defamation of living persons is happening frequently and blatantly in Wikipedia articles, community consensus shouldn't be required to deal with it. If the defamation is already widespread here and hasn't been dealt with by the Foundation, then what the hell is the rush now? Rivertorch (talk) 19:44, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Point 1, I disagree with the fact that there is a consensus for BLP-PRODs, that was someone else's conclusion of a very confusing early process. That said, I'm willing to compromise my principles to accept that the oligarchy will get their enjoyment out of putting more of these defacements on legitimate articles they don't understand or don't want to take the time to improve. There should be a requirement that any editor placing such a prod must have made a reasonable effort to solve such a sourcing problem BEFORE placing such a PROD. We have plenty of discussion/consensus as to what those steps should be. What I find unacceptable is the unmentioned recourse if the PROD remains for any specific amount of time.Trackinfo (talk) 06:56, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Part 1 Discussion

• This is mostly a "fix" direction, and I'm worried about it lacking preventative measures. I know there's a "new unsourced 'may' be deleted" above, but even that isn't digging out the deepest roots: Educating needed at WP:NPP to keep the queue at zero, the need for more communication and less biting of new users, and closing loopholes within the article creation process. These gaps are what created the queue in the first place and we need to accept responsibility as the community as a whole to assure the pile ever stacks up higher again. It's fairly detailed and I admit it shouldn't be spelled out at length here, so could anyone suggest where I might seek further opinion on this? The pump? Separate RfC, as this could technically be considered a different problem? This aspect is at least low on drama and controversy. ♪ daTheisen(talk) 05:54, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Is this new "sticky" PROD tag going to be included in Twinkle? Any new prod tags definitely out to be included in all the pertinent automated tools because many, if not most, NPP folks make extensive use of them. This will ensure new, unreferenced BLPs will get the correct prod tag. I'm sure some will get through but nothing is perfect. <>Multi‑Xfer<> (talk) 07:52, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

That would be covered in the second bullet point---NPP could be one of the pages that is alerted to this change---particularly as it relates to BLP-PROD. As for preventive---I think that is what this proposal is tackling in earnest. An agreement to implement BLP-PROD and make changes to key pages to indicate that new BLP's need sources. While we may or may not live up to the goal of cleaning up the project, I hope that these changes will put a stop gap on the problem increasing.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 09:28, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Datheisen the community has had years to educate new editors, and make our referencing policy easier for new users, the community has failed. The pile will not get higher again if this proposal passes, instead, new editors will get bitey notifications that basically say: "source this article or else"

If biting new users is your concern, you should oppose this proposal, because this proposal will have a very negative effect on new users. Okip 17:47, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Whether it's bitey or not depends on how the tag is worded, and how the NPP people behave. If it's confusing, cold, and bureaucratic, yes, new users will be turned off, as they already are when their first article gets deleted. But if we welcome them and give them an encouraging message, and guide them through the process, it's actually a positive in terms of making new article creation less scary. - Wikidemon (talk) 18:28, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

As we all now from WP:NEWT this is not currently happening, which unfortunately is a failure of the community as a whole.

Could we guide them through the process without the threat of deletion, or, in the alternative, requiring editors follow rudimentary WP:BEFORE? Okip 18:36, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Sure, we can lie to them, but even without this, an article about a person with no sources is almost always under threat of deletion, WP:N generally requires sources as well. Mr.Z-man 03:29, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

• I support 3-9 but oppose 1-2, because Phase I proposals to allow uncontentious unsourced material were well reasoned (and had a high !vote count, for what it's worth). Is the change motivated by a belief that there is consensus, by genuine fear of imposed changes if we don't change ourselves, or by deletionists creating and playing on such a fear? ArbCom are judges rather than lawmakers. Jimmy Wales stated his position in Phase I, with no hint of "or else". I see no citations for threats of action by the Foundation. Maybe the bogeyman doesn't exist. Certes (talk) 20:38, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Part 2: Where consensus isn't quite as clear

It is clear that something has to be done with old unsourced BLP's. While it is debatable as to the amount of harm/damage that can be and is done by having an BLP unsourced, the tide is clear---the foundation and Jimbo want BLP's to have sources. If we don't address the situation on our own, then the Foundation/Wales may come down and make us comply. To this end, I've pulled some of the compromise suggestions raised on the talk page to make this closing proposal:

1. We as a community are committing ourselves to cleaning up the unsourced BLP's within a year.
2. There is a lot of discussion surrounding whether or not old unsourced BLP's should be deleted. There seems to be a growing acceptance that if the community doesn't act, then this proposal may become unavoidable, but at present there is not a mandate to do so. Those who oppose it are pushing for a "clean up" option instead.
3. Based upon Scott Mac's compromise proposal on the talk page we will hold off discussion concerning codifying the deletion of Old Unsourced BLP's for 3 months. If reasonable progress is not achieved in cleaning up the the old unsourced BLP's during that 3 month time period, another RfC may be opened to revisit this item. Those people who are opposed to a systematic deletion of old BLP's are thus behooved to ensure that this action is not required.
4. For purposes of judging whether or not the community is taking this proposal seriously, J04n proposed the following metric. Currently, there are 42,621 articles in the Category:All unreferenced BLPs. The community commits to reducing this number to 30,000 by June 1, 2010 (3 month); 20,000 by September 1 (6 months); 10,000 by December 1 (9 months); and no unsourced BLP's tagged as unsourced BLPs for more than one month by March 1, 2011 (1 year.) (NOTE: these goals recognize that roughly 1000 unidentified OLD BLP articles may be identified or retagged monthly. If this number increases, then the targets may need to be adjusted keeping in mind the 1 year goal. While 1,000 may be less than the average over the past six months, we will be addressing NEW BLP's with the BLP-PROD above.) EDIT: I made two minor edits (in italics) per WSC's observation that BLP articles may be tagged as "unsourced" right now but not tagged as unsourced BLPs.
5. BLP-PROD may be used sparingly as an alternative to AFD, but only in cases where an effort has been made to source the article themself and it is fairly obvious that the article would fail at AFD in its current form. This does not mean that the community supports, at this point, wide spread use of BLP-PROD on OLD unsourced BLPs, but rather a recognition that atlernatives may be necessary to avoid flooding AfD.
6. If the community fails to make significant progress towards these goals, another RfC may be opened to consider other options keeping in mind the original goal of clearing the backlog by March 1, 2011.
7. After the clean up period is complete, newly identified "old" BLPs would be tagged with the BLP-PROD tag.

Again, you may not agree with each of the points above, but the question I have is "can you live with this compromise?"

Yes

1. Yes As nom I can accept this compromise and see if the community can live up to its obligations. While not part of the proposal, I think that we should hold "BLP clean up drives" during the last two weeks of each phase.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 22:37, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
2. Yes Aymatth2 (talk) 13:28, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
3. Agree My concern is if future RfC's arise will the overall progress get "bogged" down again ? Mlpearc (talk) 23:42, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
4. Agree per below. NW (Talk) 23:46, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
5. I really don't like it. But it is a fair assessment of where we are at, and I don't think more is possible now. I, for one, am willing to refrain from speedy deletions on unsourced and see if the clear-up can work. But there are limits to a "wait and see" policy. Reluctantly, I'll go with this.--Scott Mac (Doc) 23:52, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

   I think it's important that we "freeze" the unreferenced BLP categories of Jan 2010 and earlier, so in future when people change {{unreferenced}} tags to {{unreferencedBLP}}s they change the date to the current month and year. Otherwise we will continue to get a false impression of the amount of work going on in fixing BLPs. Whilst I would support a 12 month project to resolve the 42,000 articles currently identified as unreferenced BLPs, we don't know how many more old unreferenced BLPs will be found in that 12 months and retagged into the 42,000. So this is too open ended to my mind. ϢereSpielChequers 00:17, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

6. Conditional support. My view is that there is no concensus to use BLP-PROD for old unreferenced BLPs. Accordingly, I'd like to see a moratorium on its use on old articles until the point that the "progress targets" described in point 4 are missed. Otherwise, I think this is something the community can live with. Jogurney (talk) 00:49, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
7. Support, but I must say that I am uneasy about point 5, but I will assume good faith in that the BLP-PROD will be used "only in cases where an effort has been made to source the article". BTW, kudos to Baloonman for attempting to move this along. J04n(talk page) 03:38, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
8. I don't especially like this, as I think the timeline is overly conservative, but I can live with it, and like Scott I am willing to hold off on mass deletions for now. Kevin (talk) 04:35, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
9. Looks okay in general, but I don't think we need a BLP-PROD, as opposed to just PROD for the old BLPs that look hopeless or uncontroversial (point 5). It would make the wording for a BLP-PROD policy more complicated than it needs to be. Pcap ping 06:32, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
10. This is workable. Mr.Z-man 06:43, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
11. Yes I agree with the statement regarding existing unsourced BLPs. Okip has a contest going on and perhaps people can help him expand it, ir hopefully get the foundation behind it on a much larger scale. The more BLPs are cleaned up and sourced, the better. Let's all do this wile we're fresh and excited. <>Multi‑Xfer<> (talk) 07:56, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
12. Yes - I can just about live with that. What i can't live with is a lot more procrastination and debate, and I'm already doing what my non-admin tools permit to do to get rid/clean up/improve them. It's a drop in the ocean because I don't know how to address 500 articles an hour like some of you, but what I'm doing is working.--Kudpung (talk) 08:21, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
13. Yes -- I think the numerical goals might be too ambitious, but other factors counter that. Maurreen (talk) 11:58, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
14. Yes I'm in agreement with Doc above, and athough this isn't what I'd like to see exactly, it's better than nothing and appears to be something we can agree on. Dougweller (talk) 14:39, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
15. Yes. PeterSymonds (talk) 21:16, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
16. Agree (that this is a good summary of points not yet decided). The specific deadlines vary, but most support or accept that there will be a deadline, and the longest ones proposed are a year. The final will be somewhere between 3 months and 1 year, likely 6 months to 1 year. Point 2 is an illusory question. If an article cannot be sourced it's unverifiable, so it is deletable under current policy. If it is sourceable but nobody has bothered to source it, that's not what we want - but the premise of the emerging consensus is that after some process, at some point if the BLP remains unsourced it gets deleted. I don't see why we need to hold off 3 months or start from scratch with a new BLP, we can just have a slow-acting proposal... but holding off before implementing does address Okip's objections currently at the bottom of the page that this could be fixed without any action. I'm confused about BLP-PROD - AfD is a slow, labor-intensive process. I think we should leave the exact deletion mechanism for both the backlog and new unsourced BLPs open for a later stage of the RfC. Let's agree to do it first, then we can deal with implementation. We wouldn't prod tens of thousands of articles at once with identical deadlines, but either PROD-BLP on a rolling schedule, or all at once with different due dates. - Wikidemon (talk) 18:39, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
17. Yes — Coffee // have a cup // ark // 21:59, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
18. Yes As long as its reasonable. Brambleclawx 00:43, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
19. Yes Meta-consensus. Yay. Gigs (talk) 04:13, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
20. Yes   pablo_hablo. 08:56, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
21. Okay Jehochman ^Brrr 19:29, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
22. Yes - we need to move in this direction, and yes, we need explicit metrics for our move in this direction. If DashBot gets us moving faster, that's great too. — Gavia immer (talk) 01:36, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
23. Just about yes Not really what I wanted but as close as we're likely to get unless Okip's proposal gains a lot of support quickly. Alzarian16 (talk) 10:36, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
24. Yes. JamieS93^❤ 14:47, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
25. Yes. Seems like a reasonable compromise position. —ShinyG (talk) 19:23, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
26. Yes. Strongly agree with 1,2 and 4 point... and the compromise is compromise!Aeymon (talk) 21:21, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
27. Yes. -- ArglebargleIV (talk) 21:51, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
28. Yes. Not quite unfuckwithable, but definitely livewithable. Yilloslime ^T_C 00:31, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
29. Yes I can live with this. -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 00:41, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
30. Not great, but I guess it'll have to do. Santa Claus of the Future (talk) 03:35, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
31. Suppose so. Seems to be somewhere in the middle. Quantpole (talk) 09:18, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
32. Yes, appears to be a compromise --Magicus69 10:08, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
33. Yes --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 13:51, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
34. Agree - Timeline is a bit conservative, but do-able which is the biggest obstacle. rkairis (rkairis) 19:50, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
35. Yes --Seems as sensible as it could beMajor Bloodnok (talk) 20:33, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

No

1. Strong no As unnecessary new bureaucracy. The community has already removed 10,000 unreferenced BLPs from the list, we are actively working to give editors more tools, such as User:DASHBot to clean up the mess even further. Okip 17:37, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
   • Then you should be supporting this! This proposal basically says that if the community can get its act together and clean up its mess, then we won't be adding any policies/guidelines related to old unsourced BLPs. This proposal is basically, a status quo one, but that acknowledges that we as a project have made a commitment to clean things up and if they don't get cleaned up, then we might have to revisit the notion of deleting old unsourced BLPs.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 04:20, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
     • No, I should not be supporting this, "we will hold off discussion concerning codifying the deletion of Old Unsourced BLP's for 3 months." this simply gives the community a short window of time, before we inevitably start deleting editors good faith contributions. The underlying foundation of this idea is that unsourced BLPs are a problem, when the reality is, that only a very small portion are. Maybe I would accept your proposals if your proposal did not ignore other proposals. Okip 12:06, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
       • Actually, with the exception of BLP-PROD in the first section, which had the most support and has now been designed for NEW Unscourced BLP's, this proposal does take those into account. If we, as a community, can get our act together and clean things up, then nothing happens to OLD Unsourced BLPs. We don't write new policy, we don't start mass deletions, the only significant difference this proposal makes is that if we (the fixers) don't get our shit in gear, then they (the deleters) will have a stronger case down the road. The compromise is one that basically says, have the fixers prove us wrong. If you and others can clean up the articles, then we won't have to make any changes in this arena.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 20:25, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
2. Disagree the consensus is definitely not the least clear about any particular time period. Including it here is just plain wrong and overspecific for this stage in the discussion. The consensus is also not clear about how to tag BLPs, and this overstates the degree of agreement very substantially. The consensus is also not clear about the relative use of AfD and Prod. And I think there is quite the opposite of a growing consensus that the mass deletion of old BLPs will ever be necessary--what I see is a growing consensus that such action should never be used for any sort of articles. I considered supporting, giving the exceptions, but these are too many and too basic. DGG ( talk ) 17:12, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
3. Disagree of course. Come on now, this is coming down to a war of attrition: who is paying enough attention to wait through all the Cr*p here. Plus I disagree with the overall reading (Part I and II) of this RfC. Hobit (talk) 17:29, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
   • This has to be resolved at some point. Are you suggesting that once a discussion passes some length+time threshold that it becomes null and void somehow? Mr.Z-man 18:31, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
4. I object per above. Leave Message, Yellow Evan home
5. Disagree Mathmo ^Talk 11:11, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
6. Disagree Moved from support. I think this is an unhelpful distraction from higher risk areas of the pedia such as unidentified unreferenced BLPs, Attack pages in userspace and falsely sourced BLPs; But I was prepared to go along with this as the current fad providing it was a discrete measurable and achievable task. However as we can't get agreement to limit this to the 42,000 currently tagged as unreferenced BLPs, we don't yet know the true size of the project - thousands of articles tagged as unreferenced form 2009 and before will turn out to be BLPs and if they are going to be retagged without the date being updated then they will be added to the 42,000...... ϢereSpielChequers 16:02, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
   • That is why I explicitly stated the expectation that there be about 1,000 newly identified OLD BLP's per month. That is a little below the average number identified over the past 6 months, but if we are dealing with new unsourced BLPs via BLP-PROD, then that number is (hopefully) higher than reality. I included that comment explicitly to avoid the issue of somebody wanting to push a deletionist view point through by tagging 5K articles a month. If we see that kind of shennanigans, then it will enable those of us who want to avoid wholesale deletions to cry foul.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 16:07, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
     • Thanks I did notice that sentence. But I don't see how an estimate puts any limit on the number of articles retagged as old unreferenced BLPs per month. There are over a quarter of a million unreferenced articles out there, if more people were looking though that particular backlog or someone went through removing unreferenced twentieth century dates of death, and then changing them to unreferenced BLPs we could easily see the backlog grow. I could accept a compromise whereby if in March 2010 someone finds an article tagged as unreferenced since march 08 and they spot that the person could still be living they change it to unreferenced BLP March 2010 - but without that I will oppose on the basis that it is too likely to end in tears or last minute rushed rescues. ϢereSpielChequers 16:23, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
     • Interesting scenario. IMO, if an article was tagged with just a standard unsourced tag, not an unsourced BLP tag, *I* would think that when they changed it to unsourced BLP tag that they would have to change it to the current date. But I think you are 100% right in that the people who are supporting this from the "do not delete" camp want are doing so based upon the assumption that we are talking about the 42K currently identified items.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 16:51, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
       • • I made two minor changes, which I believe are completely in spirit of the original proposal that should address your concern. The original proposal contained language intentionally intended to convey that the project is committed to cleaning up those 42K articles, while recognizing that roughly 1K more may be added to the count on a monthly basis---whatever the source. So I tweaked the wording to cover those items that might be identified as mistagged.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 17:03, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
           • About User:WereSpielChequers' concern -- I wonder whether it's feasible to address this from the opposite perspective. That is, by "taking care of* x number of articles per period, in contrast to setting the level at the number of outstanding articles. But the number of articles taken care of might be too hard to determine. Maurreen (talk) 17:29, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
             • Thanks Balloonman for those changes and Maureen for the suggestion of measuring articles fixed rather than number of articles still in that category. I'm not convinced that either could work, except perhaps by the messy approach of adding another list or category for the current 42,000 and measuring how that changes. I have requested that the Bot which is doing this be amended to fix the date as well, but if you read User talk:Mr.Z-man#A tweak to your Bot plz, there is also a case to leave the date unaltered when fixing the tag. If it wasn't for the concentration on dealing with this particular maintenance category I would agree with leaving such dates unaltered, but I don't think the current proposal would work as is - at some point it will all end in tears with one side saying they've fixed far more than the promised 42,000 and the other side saying there are still x thousand in that category. ϢereSpielChequers 18:09, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
7. Oppose per DGG, and WereSpellChecquers and mete-rfc issue below.--Peter cohen (talk) 16:55, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
8. Disagree with timing; the "fair use" problem, which was likely to lead to lawsuits, the Project was given one year from the Foundation decision to develop a policy, and a further year to clean things up. Here, we don't even have a consensus or mandate that this is the problem to be resolved. If timing is established by a clear consensus, some of the other provisions seem acceptable. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 17:00, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Discussion

Please, not another RfC. If reasonable progress (that in itself is in the eye of the beholder; it ought to be defined) isn't made in three months, just prod an equivalent number of articles to get to our pre-defined quota for that month. The rest seems acceptable as a reasonable compromise for all parties. NW (Talk) 23:07, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Put that in there as it was part of Scott's original compromise solution. I did, however, add a proposal to allow use of BLP-PROD with the caveat that the person applying it has to check for sources first. Eg if a person working the queue stumbles upon an article they can't source, go ahead and prod... but this shouldn't be deemed a license for mass prods of unsourced blps.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 23:28, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

As for reasonable progress, that's what bullet point 4 is about---defining what reasonable process is. I didn't want to leave it vague and in the eye of the beholder ;-)---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 23:31, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Well I agree with you in spirit, but I don't think we need another RfC. I don't understand why Alverstand's proposal didn't get more support since so many people seem to want to wait until the current progress levels off before doing forced deletions. I agree, lets wait. But we can decide now what to do when it stops dropping. Gigs (talk) 23:43, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

head→desk. The rest of it looks good to me. And Gigs, I think the answer to that this is the most reasonable compromise. If it were up to me, we wouldn't be waiting at all. But I recognize the rest of the community has different views that I do, and so I, like most others, are willing to compromise and accept what we wouldn't have accepted otherwise in the name of progress. NW (Talk) 23:46, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

How can this possibly be "the most reasonable compromise" when some of the most supported and popular proposals where never advocated? Okip 18:38, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

You mean like the 163 users who supported Jehochman's original proposal for a BLP-PROD, which is significantly more support than the 16 users who supported Bearcat's contrary position that you cite as being one of the most supported/popular positions? Or the one that you are citing as having 19-7 support, but can only reach the 7 if you discount the nine people who failed to write the word "oppose" in their oppose rationale?---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 09:47, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

This proposal is very confusing to me. Are people agreeing that consensus isn't clear on these points, or are they agreeing to the points themselves? Gigs (talk) 23:55, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

I think people are agreeing that consensus isn't clear on these points but we should follow them anyway, as a compromise we can agree with. NW (Talk) 03:18, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Heh, a sort of self-referential paradox. :) Well I'm on board with it anyway. Gigs (talk) 04:13, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

• Comment As for the foundation forcing us, has anyone looked at other Wikipedias? A spot check of BLPs at the German one showed 5 out of 10 unsourced entirely, and 3 of the others sourced only to web sites that we would not consider adequate. At the French Wikipedia out of 10, 2 were unsourced completely, and 7 of them only to borderline websites. It seems to be the routine practice at deWP in particular that if the sourcing would be obvious, not to bother specifying it. Not a single one of the 20 in both Wikipedias had inline citations at all. Additionally, they accept a link to the equivalent of WorldCat listings of books by and about the person --the catalog of the German Nationalbibliothek as a sufficient source. [sample DNB entry]. DGG ( talk ) 17:05, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
  • (Un)fortunately English wiki is the Flagship so for the better or worse a lot of editing quality "Steps Forward" are implemented here. --KrebMarkt 18:45, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
    • Actually, the one important step to drastically improve BLP (and other) content, sighted revisions, was implemented by the deWP; we have been promised it for half a year now. I do not see why you assume that English-speakers are more rational than everyone else. DGG ( talk ) 19:54, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
      • What's bitterly funny is we will likely double up effort dealing with unsourced BLPs and implementation of sighted revisions on BLPs at the same time. --KrebMarkt 23:05, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
• Agree - short dated deadlines are the best idea, and deletion of other BLPs that are not referenced after the closing date. Buckshot06 (talk) 23:31, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
• Each point has plenty of discussion to sort it out. At this point in time consensus not not been achieved on these items, and even the introduction is not proven. Some of the ideas are good, but that does not mean that they are in a final form. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:07, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
• People who tag articles for deletion should help with sourcing. This issue is not addressed. Sole Soul (talk) 10:48, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Oppose very notion of this meta-RFC

Best to leave it to one of those legendary uninvolved admins to gauge the consensus. Getting consensus on what there is consensus on (particularly with participation levels not much better than the actual RFC)...just seems plain backward. It seems to further the incorrect notion that these things are entirely vote-based. --Cybercobra (talk) 01:40, 20 February 2010 (UTC) (I withdraw support for my own statement on the strength of the rebuttals)

Support

• Strong support, as the history of this RFC shows, and which is shown again yesterday, when Balloonman declared that "consensus was almost reached" touting his proposal, and ignoring other editors proposals, be VERY wary of editors who claim consensus. Okip 16:45, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
• Strong support. My feeling is that people are responding to personal experiences with constructive ideas of their own manufacture. Having been a webmaster for large online knowledgebases? These subjective perceptions of problems and remedies that are not founded in statistics just promote confusion. People are trying to "get a feel" for the problem, when analysis, formal analysis is appropriate. We need statistical leverage here. My guess is that 80% of the unsourced bio articles are actually encyclopedic — they simply lack proper sourcing. Equally, nearly all of the Wikipedia articles that have the top daily readership have been compromised by marketing sources, so that they are flimsy reports of unencyclopedic romantic relationships, deep trivia about one-off performances and bewildering unexplained recitation of remixes. Having an article source or not is far from an acid test resolving unencyclopedic material. Regards, Alpha Ralpha Boulevard (talk) 04:22, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
• we seem to have lost the discussion on the other proposals from phase I The top 3 should have been discussed here as some ideas were pretty different to the summary of phase I. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 09:58, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
• Support. Mathmo ^Talk 11:05, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
• Support This whole thing is a mess with the introduction into the summary of previously not properly discussed points such as how we had better blow the house down ourselves before the big bad wolf does.--Peter cohen (talk) 16:47, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
• Support. The issue selection from RFC I to this phase was faulty, even if the summary were accurate; even if consensus were obtained on the issues here, implementation should be deferred until the real issues from RFC I are discussed. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 17:18, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Oppose

Discussion

I thoroughly agree with meta. I was gong to post more suggestions on the discussion but as it's completely lost it's track and has ended up chasing its many tails (endeminc most Wikipedia RfCs), yes: Best to leave it to one of those legendary uninvolved admins to gauge the consensus, especially as at a rough estimate, 90% of the comments have been made by about 5% of the contributors, and far to many of those were not about the topic title at all.--Kudpung (talk) 02:13, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

You only really need an "uninvolved admin" if there is no clear consensus that has formed... which is not the case here. In an ideal world, consensus will be clear and we can all agree as to what the body has determined... if we can't agree, then consensus has not truly been met and we can try to resolve the outstanding issues. Plus, this way we avoid rulings from on high by people may have a stake in the game, but have been quiet. Finally, by getting everybody to agree to what has been agreed to, you avoid people crying foul or playing games down the road.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 03:26, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Balloonman, the consensus that you espouse is as one sided as the administrator's false "consensus" who closed this RFC and espoused only one side. Okip 16:46, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Balloonman, if there's consensus that there's a consensus, then surely that means there's a consensus (2 actually). Given the huge amount of discussion, the number of articles involved, etc., its rather hard for someone to be both qualified to judge such a consensus and completely impartial. Mr.Z-man 06:05, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

I think you've summed that up perfectly Mr.Z-man. And that's the whole problem (as I hinted above) with all Wikipedia debates: everything needs a consensus for a consensus for a consensus ad nauseam... --Kudpung (talk) 08:14, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Not necessarily. Currently the above discussions are near-unanimous. If it stays the same, it wouldn't take a consensus to figure out the consensus there. Mr.Z-man 16:42, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Are you talking about Bearcat's proposal? Which was not addressed by Balloonman? And which has 16-1 in support? Okip 16:47, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

No, I'm not referring to that. Mr.Z-man 16:56, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

I'd say that so far, this meta-RfC is doing a great job to both identify and further consensus. Why on earth would you want to shut the meta-RfC down, in light of that?--Father Goose (talk) 08:44, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Maybe I'm naïve, but I still have a problem with this idea of a consensus. I've been editing Wikipedia for many years, and the closest I've seen "coming to a consensus" simply meant that seven editors said yes, two editors said no, and the two naysay editors were expected to "come around". It's still Majority rule and screw the minority, so let's not kid ourselves, okay?

 —  Paine (Ellsworth's Climax)  11:39, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

To paraphrase Forest Gump, consensus is as consensus does. If someone wants to summarize people's views, and people seem to sign on, that's helpful. I've looked at the attempted summary. It looks pretty good to me. - Wikidemon (talk) 18:41, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Alternate proposal to close this RFC: we don't need a whole new layer of bureaucracy

Thanks to User:DASHBot, in one short month, 10,000 unreferenced articles have been referenced or removed, and the community is actively removing more.

I propose that we support Bearcat's proposal, which actually had the most support here when Balloonman wrote his proposal. We don't "actually need to create a whole new layer of bureaucracy and regulation here."

Support

• As proposer. Okip 18:09, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
• This is fine. If the reduction of the unreferenced BLPs backlog continues apace, then when we review matters in three months, there will be (as you say) no need to do any more. We don't need to choose between the "do nothing" and the "do something", I think we've a consensus that we do nothing in terms of deletion with the backlog for three months, and then see. If you are correct that DASHbot and other initiatives will show a continuing significant reduction in the backlog then I'll be happy to agree with you in opposing anything further - it will simply be unnecessary. I don't, however, see how this is an "alternative" to the above.--Scott Mac (Doc) 18:23, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

• Thank you for your support. It is an alternative view that the existing framework can address unreferenced BLPs. I would be happy to support Balloonman proposal, if that proposal includes rudimentary WP:BEFORE requirements to help insure new users are not bitten. Okip 18:42, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

• Well, if the existing framework seems on track to eliminate the backlog within a reasonable period (I suggest 1 year) then that's fine. I'm probably more pessimistic than you are, but time will tell. There's really not a lot of point in arguing about it. If we look back in three months and see a really significant fall, then it will be obvious that enough is being done and the "stick" of threatened backlog deletions will have proven unnecessary. If not, we can discuss what alternatives are needed at that point. I'm happy to "wait and see" for three months wrt the backlog. As for biting new users, no one wants to do that. If new unreferenced BLPs are prodded, then the notice should be very nice. "Thanks for this, but we are looking for references for biographies - can you offer some? If you need help ask here". We should also encourage other users to help out with references as they are able and willing (remembering this is a volunteer project). If the article is unsourced at the end of the prod time, it gets deleted, but perhaps another nice message to the creator saying "sorry about that, if you'd like it restored all you need to do is have a reference available and ask [here], if you'd like help just ask". There's really no excuse for this to be "bitey".--Scott Mac (Doc) 18:54, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

• Support, clearly many editors are repelled by this muddling of one point after the next and are happy to help when given a reasonable chance to understand the issue without the drama and disruption. If there is strong support to make any changes then a specific effort to create a sticky prod - whatever that is - will likely still have strong support in a few months or whenever. I'm also unconvinced that rational ways of inviting people to solve the perceived backlog have been exhausted. Perhaps as part of this closing a concerted effort to point to the new efforts to address these concerns could be prominently placed and advertised so that those who aren't interested in the discussion(s) for whatever reasons may still be enticed to help the BLPs that need attention. -- Banjeboi 19:38, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
• Support We already have a clear policy which forbids the making of rules for their own sake. We already have numerous ways of dealing with unsatisfactory articles including speedy deletion, proposed deletion, AFD , RFC and ordinary editing. We don't need another one. See also Hard cases make bad law and Perfect is the enemy of good. Colonel Warden (talk) 13:29, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
• Support per Colonel Warden--Peter cohen (talk) 15:11, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
• Support because the problem is solving itself nicely. I think the point of the proposal has become moot. But if people wantt o support it that's a reasonable option also. DGG ( talk ) 16:04, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
• Support per DGG. Hobit (talk) 17:27, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
• Support because the problem is already resolving itself steadily with the existing editor-friendly approach. Certes (talk) 20:04, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
• Support in that we should be focusing more time and effort to article improvement rather than even more bureacracy. We should be a collection of articles for which discuss improvements on their talk pages. We have various wikiprojects that concern various kinds of people already in place as well. The way to deal with unsourced BLPs is to just source them or if they are hoaxes that cannot be sourced, then those should be deleted with no controversy. Specific libelous edits can be oversighted from the edit history, while keeping the good edits. Sincerely, --A Nobody^{My talk} 20:16, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
• Support With a review of progress in 3 month's time. --Plad2 (talk) 23:07, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
• Support per DGG. Assuming progress is made there is no real need to change things. Alzarian16 (talk) 09:20, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
• Support per all of above. Any new processes will take time to implement, understand and apply, whereas improving understanding and implementation of current guidelines will resolve this issue a lot faster, with less angst.--Mike Cline (talk) 13:05, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
• Support per my Phase I statement and DGG and Col.W. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 19:42, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
• conditional support as long as an effort is made to get out the word about the BLP sourcing problem as outlined in the general-consensus points above, so that this momentum can continue. -Lyc. cooperi (talk) 00:43, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
• Strong Support - How did this get lost in the shuffle? Above see all these proposals for deceptive ways to create new paths to ultimately delete articles. It is hard enough now for a conscientious person to try to protect our library of information here. If you want a path to destruction, use one that is already well worn and practiced. No new bureaucracy.Trackinfo (talk) 05:30, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
• Support Keep improving articles, rather than deleting them. Ntsimp (talk) 16:44, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Oppose

• No, we need to include something to deal with new unsourced BLPs. Letting projects deal with the backlog is fine, but at some point, projects are going to get tired of constantly having to maintain their BLPs. Additionally, if we can't keep up this pace of sourcing for a year, there needs to be some sort of procedure other than "start everything over again." I would point out that several people (including myself) who supported Bearcat's proposal did not do so in exclusion of everything else. Mr.Z-man 19:47, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose, Bearcat's proposal while it may have the most support in round 2, doesn't hold a flame to the amount of support for Jehochman's proposal in round 1. While I do not like and opposed the BLP PROD proposal, we cannot take round 2 in isolation of round 1. Round 1 gave a clear mandate, by a much larger segment of the community that something along the lines of BLP Prod is desired.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 07:51, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
• The current sourcing efforts are eventually going to peter out; that is just human nature. Bearcat's proposal is fine; it just doesn't go far enough. The Foundation and Jimbo have told us that the current situation is unacceptable. Leaving things at the status quo fails to deal with newly unsourced BLPs, fails to have a backup plan for dealing with old unsourced BLPs, fails to take into account the wider community consensus (those who only could follow this up through Round 1) and leaves things wide open for a fiat decision by Jimmy, the Foundation, or the Arbitration Committee. NW (Talk) 16:32, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose. Or we can just have an annual BLP Rfc Mlpearc (talk) 17:26, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose. The participation overall in this RfC series demonstrates clearly that something other than the pre-existing processes was neccesary. nb the sentence "Thanks to User:DASHBot, in one short month, 10,000 unreferenced articles have been referenced or removed, and the community is actively removing more." is flawed; yes people are actively working on this, but it is a huge leap of bad logic to say it's entirely "thanks to DASHBot."   pablo_hablo.20:47, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose this would seem to ignore the consensus from Phase I, that a blp-prod is needed. It seems somewhat illogical for us to try and negate that now. Also, I'm not sure I agree that creating a new tag somehow adds bureaucracy. -- Bfigura ^(talk) 21:33, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose While it is admirable that 10k BLPs have been cleaned up and sourced, this does not ensure we will deal with the issue going forward, which grows daily. As with all special projects, this one will fizzle out, or people will get bored and move on to other things, or DASHbot will break down, or someone will submit the whole thing to MfD and it will be closed down and archived (this has happened to a number of great and well-meaning projects). The end result of this RfC should be a permanent, ongoing solution to the problem of unsourced BLPs, not a temporary project to deal with the existing ones and then a "promise" to work on them going forward. We need policy and process, not promises and the status quo. <>Multi‑Xfer<> (talk) 05:27, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
• Opposed. I think that the position we are in now is ample evidence that something more is needed to ensure that the reduction in unsourced BLPs continues. Kevin (talk) 05:39, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose both because we need something to deal with new unsourced BLPs, and (if the current BLP cleanup effort doesn't continue) to deal with the backlog. The old situation didn't work (and the idea that the majority of the current cleanup is due to the Dashbot notifications, necessary as they were, is laughable), and only the threat of actual deletions got most people going on this. Going back to the old situation is not acceptable. Fram (talk) 11:56, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose. Not strong enough. In support of previous proposals. PeterSymonds (talk) 19:43, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
• I'll go even further and recommend that those editors who are opposing taking effective action about unsourced BLPs be banned. Cla68 (talk) 22:49, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm not aware of anyone here to whom this would apply. The most inclusionist person I recognize who has commented, elaborates in his statement on the need to use speedy deletion. DGG ( talk ) 01:07, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

How about just ignored? - Wikidemon (talk) 22:46, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose. We need to try something new, the existing tools aren't working well enough. Yilloslime ^T_C 00:30, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose. It's clear WP's existing policies have failed BLPs. Something new is needed. Firsfron of Ronchester 10:02, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose. Bearcat's proposal has a lot of merit but I think it's clear that there is consensus that there will be a process for running through the entire backlog of unsourced BLPs, and another for dealing with new ones that get added. We should be narrowing our focus now to decide what that process will be, not hitting the reset button on the whole thing to say we should do nothing. - Wikidemon (talk) 22:46, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Neutral

I agree with the proposal in and of itself and some of the rationale.

But timing has made things tricky. That is (and not just with this), it's hard, if not impossible, to gauge the difference between how much support any given proposal has among people participating at any given time, and whether any proposal is most representative of the community.

Further, as a compromise, I suggest giving something to the other side. One possibility is to agree to Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Biographies of living people#Part 2: Where consensus isn't quite as clear but not Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Biographies of living people# Part 1: Items where consensus seems to be clear. In three months, we could re-evaluate the situation. Maurreen (talk) 18:52, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

• Newly created unsourced BLP issue isn't resolved by this proposal. Having editors fixing articles on one side while others editors create unsourced articles on the other side is suicide game. --KrebMarkt 19:56, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

• I have no preference, as long as something is done. Brambleclawx 17:02, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Discussion

• I think the distinction between the closing proposals concerns new BLPs. User:Balloonman's proposal would change relevant policy pages to make stronger statements about sourcing, at least on BLPs. His proposal also provides for sticky WP:PRODs. User:Okip's proposal does not include these two provisions. Maurreen (talk) 18:52, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Isn't this a little out-of-process? A proposal to support another proposal? Why don't we just discuss this over at the section for Bearcat's proposal? I think there's a lot of good stuff Bearcat says, but it was an early proposal and people have added a number of good ideas since. I think we do need some additional resolve and procedural guidance instead of just saying we're going to continue as-is under existing policy, only enforce it this time. - Wikidemon (talk) 20:41, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Wikidemon, it looks like your question is addressed to me, but I don't understand why. My comments immediately above are only explanatory; they don't take a position. Maurreen (talk) 06:23, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Sorry if that wasn't clear. I was addressing Okip's proposal, which seems to be a proposal to accept Bearcat's proposal. - Wikidemon (talk) 08:45, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Maurreen (talk) 11:35, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Request to keep this RFC open until Monday night, 23:59 Wikipedia (UTC) time

Support

• As proposer. Okip 18:31, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
• Maurreen (talk) 20:09, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
• per nom. SpicyItalian (talk) 02:41, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
• I am in support of moving "ON". Mlpearc (talk) 23:44, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Oppose

• Oppose I do not think closing this at a set time is in the best interest of the project. There are still some issues that need to be resolved. While I think we could probably close the book on the first half of my proposal, I think the section dealing with OLD BLPs might need a little more tweaking to garner true conensus.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 20:04, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
  • "Open until" does not mean "close at". Maybe that could be made more clear by changing the hedder to "Request not to close before .." I doubt anyone would disagree. Maurreen (talk) 20:09, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
    • Actually, a couple of people below have read this to mean close this at midnite tonite. I think that is premature.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 20:15, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Discussion

Indefinitely? Certainly not. Further, this seems like a poll to assume bad faith. If an uninvolved admin isn't to close this, who should? Ikip what do you want? Someone who agrees with you? What are the "views" Risker embraces, which you find so obnoxious? Are only people who give the result you want to be trusted? Oh, and how many polls do you want to start?--Scott Mac (Doc) 18:39, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

[re-factored out comments] Okip 18:50, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

I know you never said "indefinitely" - I was asking how much longer you are proposing? As for bad faith, I'm assuming Risker acted in good faith and closed where she saw consensus falling, rather than imposing her views. I'm just not sure what you are driving at.--Scott Mac (Doc) 18:57, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

(re-factored) I changed it to Monday night, 23:59 Wikipedia (UTC) time, per Maurren's talk page proposal. Okip 19:28, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

It is certainly reasonable to allow the close to be delayed until Monday night to allow folks who don't edit on the weekend to chime in. J04n(talk page) 19:40, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

It would seem not unreasonable.--Scott Mac (Doc) 19:50, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

We are in no rush to close this... but I think we are all ready to reach some resolution and do so.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 07:45, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

I cannot but oppose this. While as Balloonman says attaining resolution is something we'd all like to reach, the fact remains this RfC hasn't stalled; it is ongoing. In the 48hrs previous to this section being added, many different participants added comments or viewpoints to the RfC page. With its being clearly active, closing at the suggested time is surely premature. –Whitehorse1 08:44, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Heck, if we close it when Okip wants to, then I think he'd be shooting his own position in the foot. A speedy close is likely to result in the trail balloon I floated becoming the final version. I'd think he'd want to keep it open longer!---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 09:43, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

My understanding is that no one has brought up a specific time for closing. "Open through" is different from "closing at." But I do expect that if consensus is clear at the end of Monday, that will be that. Maurreen (talk) 13:37, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

I really do not see the point of continuing beyond that time. I think Okip's proposal recognizes realistically that he apparently does not have consensus. DGG ( talk ) 15:59, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Agree with DGG, however I don't have any specific issue with leaving it open for another day. I seriously doubt consensus will change dramatically in a day. I say, close it on Monday at 23:59 Wikipedia time and not a second later. <>Multi‑Xfer<> (talk) 05:31, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't see any new arguments, but I also don't see any new consensus. For that matter, I don't really see a point in closing it or leaving it open; the issues brought up in RFC 1, but ignored here, seem more important than the issues carried over from RFC 1. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 17:14, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Technical disruption

The previous comments of this RFC should be restored.

User:Maurreen removed most of the comments on this page[3] (I am not sure where), breaking links to this discussion. I have never seen this done before in an RFC.

I restored these comments.[4]

Fram reverted this restoration twice, stating:

• "Okip, you are posting the same sections TWICE, please don't disrupt this RfC any further"[5]

I fixed the majority of the double post, then Hippocrite threatened me:

• "If you restore the unusable 700k page again, I will reopen the discussion to have you removed from this process - not because of what you are saying, which I haven't read and am not going to, but to prevent technical disruption of this page."[6]

Update, going through User:Maurreen edits, I found the archive: Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Biographies of living people/Archive Okip 13:14, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Support

1. Okip 13:04, 23 February 2010 (UTC) Has there ever, ever been a RFC in which editors delete/remove the comments that editors are supposed to be !voting on? The extreme precedents in this RFC continue. Never mind that Balloonman in his closing proposal ignored the most popular result of Phase II, Bearcat's proposal.

Oppose

The comments should be available through a link, as was done. Perhaps it could have been more prominent, but that's a minor matter. You could of course have asked Maurreen what she did with the removed comments, if that was unclear to you. To turn a 150K discussion page into a 750K discussion by reinserting archived discussions, some of them twice (and failing to check your edits on your own, or to clean this up completely even when asked) is disruptive, and you could have expected to have your actions reversed promptly by different editors. I like the irony though of an editor doing everything to reinstall sections he feels are necessary, even though they are archived and accessible, but who just as easily changes his three days old posts in discussions, even when people have already responded to them. Never mind that the same editor also today did a strike through of a section header (thereby invalidating all potential section links to it) and a strikethrough of an already refactored older comment.[7] Trying to follow what you posted and when you posted it gets very hard sometimes, even though it is one of the bases of our discussion model. Fram (talk) 14:54, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Discussion

• Going through my edits was not needed. You could have just checked the talk page. Maurreen (talk) 14:17, 23 February 2010 (UTC) Or you could have read the top of this page, where I wrote, "For related material, please see the /Archive. ..." Maurreen (talk) 14:38, 23 February 2010 (UTC) For that matter, when you discovered that I removed the material, you should have also seen my edit summary, where I wrote, "Archiving." Maurreen (talk) 18:04, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Every editor who participated in this RFC before should be contacted about this closing RFC

We have over 400 editors who participated in this RFC, and there would probably had been many more, if the RFC was not prematurely closed and protected.

Thus far only around 40 of those editors, 10%, have discussed the final phase.

If we are too truly get a sense of consensus, I suggest contacting editors with a neutral message such as this:

==Final discussion for [[Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Biographies of living people]] ==

Hello, I note that you have commented on the first phase of [[Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Biographies of living people]]

As this RFC closes, there are two proposals being considered:
# [[Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Biographies_of_living_people#Proposal_to_Close_This_RfC|Proposal to Close This RfC]]
#[[Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Biographies_of_living_people#Alternate_proposal_to_close_this_RFC:_we_don.27t_need_a_whole_new_layer_of_bureaucracy|Alternate proposal to close this RFC: we don't need a whole new layer of bureaucracy]]

Your opinion on this is welcome. ~~~~

As of yesterday, here is a list of all editors who have not participated in the final RFC, but participated in phase I of the RFC:
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Editors who have not responded to this RFC: User talk:The Evil IP address User talk:Markhurd User talk:Jpbowen User talk:Eastlaw User talk:Aarghdvaark User talk:SBmeier User talk:Alecmconroy User talk:Emperor User talk:Tango User talk:Atmoz User talk:SpikeToronto User talk:Lankiveil User talk:GameOn User talk:Fabrictramp User talk:CJLL Wright User talk:R. 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Support

1. The open sending of neutral messages to a non-partisan selection instantly scores 3/4 per WP:CANVASS. The only possible criticism is for mass posting. If there's an objective way to reduce the audience to 100 or so editors who have substantively edited or discussed an article related to the discussion (my emphasis), then that would be perfect; if not then I still think the exceptional importance of the subject justifies the mass posting under IAR. Certes (talk) 22:52, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Oppose

Discussion

Thoroughly disappointed

• When the {{unreferenced}} tag was developed, straw poll was held *among the editors who had designed it* about where it should be placed. There were about 30 votes cast (out of a universe of perhaps 10,000 regular editors). These comprised 9 votes for for "top of article page", 10 votes for "bottom of article page", and 13 votes for "talk page". Needless to say, the obvious fourth alternative "nowhere" was not even in the ballot.

So, if that tag is now showing at the top of hundred of thousands of articles, it is because nine editors wanted it there, twenty-three did *not* want it there, and 9,970 editors did not have a chance to give their opinion.

A similar story applies to the Wikipedia:Notability guidelines. I found a straw poll in the Notability talk page about a dozen or so specific questions. The questions were all in jargon (like "PROD" in this RfC) which I was unable to decipher, so presumably only the people who had been involved in the writing of the guidelines voted. There were less than 200 votes, and some of the items in the ballot passed with a tight majority — that is, less than 1% of the pool of active editors. Unfortunately I could not determine whether the final declared "consensus" honored these votes, or — as in the case of the {{unreferenced}} tag — the minority opinion prevailedanyway.

As for this RfC, I see that 400 editors took part in phase I, 40 took part in phase II. The honest thing to do would be to declare this RfC hopelessly bungled and start all all over, beginning with the basic questions — like "are unrefernced BLPs a real problem?". Instead, it seems that this RfC will follow the same path as the other straw polls: the proposers stubbornly insist with their thesis, ignoring all data and arguments to the contrary, until all oposers get tired and leave; and then they will declare the "consensus" to be whatever they like.

In the summary to Phase 1 it was stated that all participants were concenred with the welfare of WIkipedia. I beg to differ. People who really care about Wikipedia should want to know, first, whether the unsourced BLPs are a real problem, and second, whether the proposed solution will do more good than harm. I don't see this worry among the proposers of the RfC. Indeed, it seems that the surest way to end a thread in this discussion is to post concrete numbers and examples. Instead of debating that data and what it means, the proposers merely shift to other threads.

It is clear to me that the original purpose of this RfC was not to find the best way to deal with the "problem" (or to find out whether the "problem" was real), but merely to obtain some legitimacy for what was a predetermined decision, namely that unsourced BLPs are to be deleted. If there is one thing that is clear from this discussion, is that unsourced BLPs are harmless and deleting them solely for being unsourced is extremely harmful.

The only explanation that I can find for the persistent wish to delete unsourced BLPs is psychological, namely the "lust for power" of editors who are tired of being just "workers" and want to be "bosses". In academia, were I work, this sort of thing happens all the time: people get tired of being just ordinary professors or researchers, and try to move to a position where, insted of working, they direct and control the work of other people.

How can one rise to be a "boss" in Wikipedia? Certainly not by editing contents: even if you edit 10,000 articles over several years and create a handful of "featured" ones, you will be just a "worker" like any of the other 10,000 regular editors. The same applies to any work (such as sourcing) that requires reading each article and thinking about its contents: no one can do that on more that 50-100 articles per day, the same top rate as for contents editing. Moreover, in that sort of work you often have to justify your edits to other "workers", and that puts you in the same "social level" as them.

A "boss" must do something that affects hundreds of thousands of articles, and does not require interacting with "workers" at their same level. It must be something definitive that an ordinary "worker" cannot stop or undo. It must be something that clearly put the "boss" on a higher level than the "workers".

That is the only explanation I can find for why we got the editorial tags at the top of articles. Robot-assisted tagging does not require thinking, so one can easily tag 1000 articles a day. The tagger is clearly "boss" because the tags are not "work", but "comands": every editorial tag says "I want this to be done, so some worker had better do it". A tagger is clearly above ordinary editors, because (by definition) the only way these can remove a tag is by complying with the wish of the tagger. Article tags have also the "advantage" that they violate the basic rule, "all editorial comments must go in the talk page": that is an advantage because (as in real life) one's social status is measured by the rules one can violate impunely.

And that is also the only explanation I can think for this RfC and the way it was carried out. The real "problem" of the unsourced BLPs is that the "bosses, after sticking hundreds of thousands of {{unreferenced}} tags, realized that they had been largely ignored — that is, the "workers" did not rush out to comply to their commands. That was doubly frustrating: not only it negated the authority of the "bosses", but made them look silly for wasting all that tagging work for nothing.

Enter then the idea of deleting all unsourced BLPs. Like tagging, deleting is something that can be done very quickly en masse, without having to read the articles. Like tagging, deletinon cannot be undone by ordinary editors. Even if each deletion has to be voted in the AfD, the place and timing of the vote ensures that voters will be mostly "bosses", and the final decision is made by a "boss": if one or two "workers" happen to see the AfD all in time and cast their vote, they can be just ignored.

That explains why no one here seems interested in statistics that prove that unsourced BLPs are harmless, or in the damage that deleting them might do. That explains why the proposers adamantly refuse to allow an editor other than the tagger to remove a tag without complying with its command. That is why they adamantly refuse to extend the AfD voting period beyond 7 days: for, if more "workers" get a chance to vote, they may out-vote the "bosses". After all, a Master of a thousand Slaves is not a Master at all if he lets even one Slave disobey his commands, or lets Slaves vote on wether to obey them.

Five years ago, Wikipedia could be defined as "three milion encyclopedia articles which anyone can edit". I am afraid that today it has become "a decadent social networking site with 10,000 members who have three million articles to play with". One just has to look at the pages in the "User talk:", "Wikipedia talk:", and "Template talk:" to realize that most Wikipedia decisions are being made by a small minority of "bosses" who seem to derive more plasure out of social interaction (and, in particular, the sense of power that comes from "bossing" over other members) than on making real substantial contributions to Wikipedia.

At the root of the problem is that Wikipedia's decision-making mechanism is thoroughly broken. As we saw here, and in countless other cases, any clique of ten editors can write a rule or standard, vote it among themselves, and declare it "consensus". Almost every guideline in Wikipedia:* was decided in this way. No country could survive more than a few years with such a "randomcratic" government; and it seems that Wikipedia cannot either.

All the best (if still possible to hope), --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 22:43, 23 February 2010 (UTC)