Category talk:Living people/Archive 1

This is the appropriate page for discussion of exactly how this category should be named and organized. The existence or non-existence of this category is not optional.--Jimbo Wales 20:49, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

THIS IS NOT A VOTE - this is not a continuation of the vote. THIS IS A NEW DISCUSSION.

To make this a bit more clear, I have blanked the votes. They are in the history if you want to read them. A rational discussion is not a vote. Voting is evil, remember?

Please discuss. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jimbo Wales (talk • contribs)

Above(edit conflict) In the old vote page Sumahoy expressed concern that someone could just remove the category and vandalize. Actually, removing it is the best thing we could possibly hope for... We already have content filtering IRC bots that alert on the addition or removal of speedy delete tags. It would be trivial to make something sound the alarm whenever that tag is removed. With only, I'd guess no more than 70,000 living people in Wikipedia the rate of legitimate deaths would be low enough to keep a close watch on that. --Gmaxwell 21:34, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

I admire the sentiment here to keep the articles of living persons clean; I really do. But Categorization by fiat seems an untenable way to go about this. Dozens, if not hundreds, of bio articles are added every day, aren't they? What was so wrong with the suggestions about using metadata (missing death date, etc)? It seems easier to create a system which automatically updates itself, than relying on individual editors to enforce something which is (presumably) aimed at protecting us from lawsuit. -- nae'blis _(talk) 22:01, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

See this is the problem with votes.. I explained why very carefully, but no one read it. None of the other proposed ideas allow for automated use of the tagging. For example we can't anywhere near as easily make RecentChanges flag things based on birth and death categories. I've already produced a report based on the birth and death categories (available here)... it takes over 4 minutes of computation on the Wikipedia databases, which is completely unacceptable for a special page. --Gmaxwell 22:37, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Moving forward

Ok. Jimbo has said it will exist. It has been stated, so it shall be. If people want to create another subtopic for continuing to argue why that's a bad idea, so be it. But I would like to start looking at what needs to be done to actually make this thing work. First off, I think we need a much better idea of exactly what the specific goals are for this thing. What is hoped to be accomplished with it? I know it's intended to be a part of Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons, but exactly how is it envisioned that a category like this, however named, will help? If we can get a better idea of what is desired, then we can work together to make a best effort towards actually making this work. - TexasAndroid 21:59, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

There are at least 57,000 articles about living people. As the policy proposal you link to indicates, these are particularly sensitive articles which cause a great deal of administrative hassle. There are a million ways for us to use categorization to have specialized procedures for watching/cleaning these articles. Should it be subcategorized? Absolutely. Should we have a discussion of how to use it? Absolutely. Let's do that now. --Jimbo Wales 23:05, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

How is a category with what will have 200,000 entries going to help anyone? Its not, this is, as most people agree on the page that I can't link to because I will get reverted by jimbo or danny, a bad idea. Martin 22:06, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia is heading straight to hell. :( - Darwinek 22:20, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Relax just a notch or two, ok? Comparing me to Hitler and talking about Hell isn't 'particularly' helpful, although of course your sentiments are most warmly welcomed and I will try to make as much positive use of them as I can. :-) --Jimbo Wales 23:05, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Mark me down as another one who doesn't see how this category can really help. We already consider categories to be problematic if they get to 400 entries without some subcategorization to reduce their size; this one's going to dwarf that by orders of magnitude.

So, if it's mandatory and has to stay, here are a few suggestions for making it more manageable.

1. Subcategorize by first letter of the surname, e.g. Category:Living persons - A, Category:Living persons - B, etc.
2. Subcategorize by nationality, e.g. Category:Living Americans, Category:Living Canadians, Category:Living Britons, etc.

This simply isn't going to work as currently constituted, however. It'll be simply too large to be of any meaningful benefit to anyone. Bearcat 22:31, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Subcategorization? I'm all for it. That's why I was so adamant that CfD was a huge mistake here. "This category needs subcategories" is not the same thing as "This category is stupid and should be deleted." --Jimbo Wales 23:05, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

As I've said below, subcategorisation makes this more intrusive. it will also make it harder to follow and therefore even less effective. But if there are to be subcategories it should be done by subdividing the existing categories, or we will get a huge messy duplicate of the existing structure. And it probably won't match. Just to adapt one of the examples above, Category:Britons does not exist. If you start subcategorisising category:living people (as opposed to the alternative of dividing the existing categories between the living and the dead), it won't stop and some people will end up in a dozen "living x" categories on top of a dozen standard categories. The category clutter will be hideous. Osomec 00:21, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

200,000? .. Based on birth and death data it doesn't look like there is more than 70,000 articles right now. We already have categories with far more than that in them. --Gmaxwell 22:42, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Yeah I just scanned the database, its actually only 57,000. Martin 22:45, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

I', willing to bet that most biogs don't actually include the xxx births category... wangi 00:25, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Discussion

I suggest moving the discussion and debate to here. I can guarantee that Jimmy will be following it. Danny 22:26, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

I was first to post on there, and only one other person has done so (and that not in reply to my comments), while far more have posted here, so I suggest people who want a reply carry on posting on this page. Osomec 00:25, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Examples why this category doesn't work

Richey_James_Edwards: guitar player for the Manic Street Preachers. Disappeared in 1995, hasn't been seen since. Probably dead, but nobody can say for sure. Does he go in this category or not? Who makes the call?

Basically, what happens with people whose "living" status is under dispute? Natalee Holloway has been missing for months, but there's no physical evidence that she's dead. Isn't this just going to encourage edit wars among people who disagree about a person's status?

I only minutes ago learned about this Category after one of the articles I worked on was added to it, and I find this unfathomable. I would very much like to see a detailed explanation as to why this category is necessary. I understand that Jimbo is the one pushing it, but I still would like to hear it out. It doesn't make ANY sense to me. -- ChrisB 22:32, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Philosophically speaking, I don't find this argument particularly persuasive. Don't all categories have borderline cases where inclusion or exclusion can be somewhat problematic? Should we not have Category:Planets for example?--Jimbo Wales 23:39, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

But it's bigger than that. There's a certain moral issue here. I mean, if someone disappears, they suddenly have their "living" status revoked? And, if the issue of this category is to oversee potential libel/vandalism, how does that help? Are people's articles less likely to be libelled if they disappear or die? In fairness, the most libelled/vandalized biography I work on is Kurt Cobain (died in 1994), and second place isn't even close. It seems more worthwhile to monitor all biographies, not just those of living people. If we're worried about people suing, then we'll also need a Category: Dead people whose estates are likely to sue if their article includes libellous material. I know, that's kind of harsh, but if that's the reason this category exists, then why not?

At the same time, isn't this going to mar the accuracy of the untold number of biographies that aren't regularly monitored? What if someone's death goes unnoticed, and "Living people" remains as a category? Is that any better or worse than what we have now? -- ChrisB 23:58, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Create a new category for people who could be alive or dead, obviously. That took me way less time than it took you to write your post. *thunk* *thunk* silsor 22:33, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

So... We're to have Category:Living people, Category:Dead people and Category:Neither living nor dead people?!? I awaint the rise of the undead :) Thanks/wangi 22:35, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Well it only took me about 4 minutes to scan the XML dump, there are over 57,000 people with a birth cat and no death cat. Stop what you're doing, and get categorising! Martin 22:38, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

I put up a list above for people to use generated from the live database.. I'll probably set a cron job to update it to help with this process. --Gmaxwell 23:31, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

I suggest Category:People who are in the same state as Schrödinger's cat. Talrias (t | e | c) 22:37, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Simple answer: Category:Missing Persons (not the band ;-)) --malber 22:39, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Wouldn't Category:Missing persons be the correct capitalization? And why don't we have this yet? (goes to check something)... apparently we have Category:Disappeared people instead. -- nae'blis _(talk) 23:09, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Wow, if that name isn't awkward. --malber 23:34, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

• Just as an aside, I can't wait for the POV war someday to erupt over how to categorize Elvis Presley. ;-) All jokes aside, why not just say, "Living people" in the cases where a person is specifically known not to be dead. "Dead people" is redundant if there is a "1958 deaths" category. And for cases where we don't know if they are alive and have good reason to question it... why not just leave it uncategorized? I don't see the harm. --Fastfission 00:07, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Comments and 2 suggestions

I have started over a hundred biographies of living golfers. Let's say that someone adds a line to one of them saying that he was arrested for possession of child porn at college, but released without charge. Let's also say that all 200,000 or whatever articles have been placed in this category (and it will soon be 2 million). How is this category going to help? Are we expected to believe that there will be enough people monitoring it, and clicking on all the articles regularly, including the most obscure ones, to significantly improve the chances of libels being removed promptly compared to what they are now? These monitor hits will only be a tiny fraction of total hits, and unless the monitors only click on people they have heard of they will know nothing whatsoever about most of the people they have clicked on, so they will have to research every seriously negative comment. It just isn't going to happen.
Another point to take into account is that there are plenty of places to libel someone apart from their biographical article. For example next time I update a golf tournament article with this year's winner's name, I could state that he won despite having spent the Tuesday of tournament helping police with their investigations into a child pornography ring, but was let off without charge. Two alternative suggestions, they aren't very good, but then Jimbo isn't putting forward alternatives to this dud, so someone else will have to try:

1) create Category:Controversial biographies. It will miss some people, but then so will the existing category. Put all American lawyers, journalists and politicians in it as a start.

2) acknowledge the reality that there is no way that all bad edits out of a current rate of around a million edits a week (soon to be ten million no doubt) will be caught. Not only a slim chance; zero chance. If legal issues make this intolerable, instead of making a pointless and annoying gesture, do something concrete and move the servers to an offshore jurisdiction, as PartyGaming operates from Gibraltar due to the dubious legal status of online poker in the U.S.

Osomec 22:43, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

There are far less than 200,000 articles we are talking about. And we will have automated tools helping us, the administrative category Living persons is required and instrumental for those improvements. --Gmaxwell 23:00, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Additionally, "this isn't perfect" is not an argument for "this is useless". Yes, of course, not everything can possibly be caught, but we don't throw up our hands and give up on the entire project. We accept ambiguity and imperfection and we move forward to try for improvements. There are at first count 57,000 articles which fit in this category, but of course this automated first pass misses a lot of them. And then we are also supposed to talking here about how to meaningfully subcategorize so that we have a hope of systmatically working our way through these.--Jimbo Wales 23:44, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

But it is more than imperfect. It will do so little as to be useless. Only the minutest fraction is likely to be caught and it will take up a great deal of time and be highly intrusive. "It might do a minute amount of good" is no reason to go ahead with a major project. Especially when you are yet to disclose the reasons for it. You really should have guessed the response this would get on categories for deletion as it is just the obverse of the classic example of a useless category Category:dead people and there was no explanation as to why it wasn't merely that. When the predicatable objections came there was still no explanation, just an order. Then more objections and again no explanation, just an order. Then the same a third time. Anyway, I have not thrown up my hands, I have made two well meaning suggestions, both of which have been ignored. Osomec 00:07, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

It won't be far less than 200,000 for long. There are a lot of articles without birth dates, and they are less likely to be found in the articles about obscure people that are more likely to cause a problem. But even if the category contains every article, that doesn't mean it will achieve anything. I just don't believe people are going to look at masses of articles about people they have no interest in on the offchance they might uncover a libel. Osomec 23:08, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Who says people will browse the category? We can use the category to identify the articles so they are flagged with bright colors by the RecentChanges screen and the IRC bots. We can also activate more agressive bad content detection for these articles. Etc. There are a lot of technical reasons why this is a fairly good solution for now. Categories are what we use with the automated tools to tag and ultimately delete unlicensed images... and thats worked to move tens of thousands of images through a complex multistage process. In any case, I don't understand why people who say it can't be done are insisting on standing in the way of the people who are doing it. Would you like a userscript which will make the category invisible to you? That could be easily created. --Gmaxwell 23:27, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

The problem you are experiencing is that the vast majority of people think its a bad idea. Bold text won't change their minds. Martin 23:33, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

No, but it might get them to see my words! :) At least I finally got someone to actually discuss my comments after I used it! --Gmaxwell 23:53, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

We don't want to see people wasting their time on a project that just won't achieve its presumed goals (they still haven't actually been disclosed), when there are so many other things that need to be done. Most people would never find out about such a script, and the category will look silly to millions I should think. Osomec 23:47, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

I think it is absolutely not true that a vast majority of people think its a bad idea. An extreme minority of people who have not heard the arguments or taken time to discuss or think about it have been noisily agitating for instant transport to the cesspool of AfD, but that's hardly evidence for what a mass majority of people think. Since the arguments in favor of it are strong, and since the arguments against it are being thought about and favorable suggestions being offered, I think it's safer to say that the vast majority of people are likely to welcome this category as we work forward on making it appropriately useful. A handful of AfD regulars does not a consensus make.--Jimbo Wales 23:44, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

I take no part in afd or tfd or whatever for the reasons you give. But I really don't see how this is beneficial at all, I also can't find it explained rationaly why this is good; what are we expecting people to do with such a vast category? Why couldnt we just flag articles that have birth categories? Why cant we use the NPOV tag? Why can't it be added to the Wikipedia:Persondata tag?. In summary; good great idea, terrible execution, terrible implementation, terrible PR. Martin 23:55, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Explain why you can't just flag articles that have the birth category, it would also have the major advantage that a lot of articles already have it, and that people don't hate it. Martin 23:36, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

There is no 'the birth category' ... there are over a thousand birth categories and over a thousand death categories. Plus there are people who are not in any of them (because we don't know when they were born or died). The test "is this article in X" is O(n log n)ish while the test "does it exist in these N and is it equal to any of these X" is a higher order problem which requires reading a lot of the categorylinks table in the case where the person is alive. Basically we can't do the use the birth and death solutions for anything on the wiki in real time. The category plan is *exactly* what categories are made for. We have thousands of nearly-nonsense categories and this one isn't it.. Why all the furvor about this one? --Gmaxwell 23:49, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

The furvor is because most people are of the opinion that the categorization system is primarily, if not totally, a navigation system. That it is a system for the use of the general user and, if a category serves no useful purpose to the general user, then it's not a useful category and is a waste of time and resources. This was my opinion as well until I started seeing your comments here about the automated tools. I'm not sure we've ever had a category quite like this. This is something new, something that hasn't been done before, and something that was not well explained before it popped into existance. So in the end, while you say this is "exactly what the categories are for", it really does fly in the face of what many of us who work to maintain categories here consider the normal uses of categories. So new, non-standard use + lack of explanations == opposition. IMHO that's why things have fallen out like they have. - TexasAndroid 00:02, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

We have lots of categories which are not primarily aimed at readers. This one is not special in that regard.--Jimbo Wales 01:21, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, no attempt at proper presentation or persuasion was made at all. Osomec 00:28, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

You're more right than you realize, Osomec. However the "no attempt at proper presentation or persuasion" applies to the CfD in the first place. That's why I put a stop to it. You don't have a discussion about something with a vote to delete. That's preposterous anti-community behavior.--Jimbo Wales 01:19, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

I can understand the confusion that results from thinking categories are only for navigation... But the use of non-navigational categories is nothing new. A category is only navigational if it can be reached via the root categories on the main page (mathematics, science, history, etc). All of our navigational cats are reachable from there and none of the administrative ones are (well, except when someone does something foolish, but I usually fix that pretty quickly). Our largest categories are all currently administrative and not navigational, for example: Category:GFDL_images with almost 80,000 members, Category:Disambiguation with over 40,000 members, Category:Public_domain_images with over 30,000 members, Category:Redirects from US postal abbreviations with about 40,000 entries. These categories, and the many other administrative categories, are critical to the operation of many behind-the-scenes processes on Wikipedia. Category:Living people will be no different, even if it does end up somewhat larger. --Gmaxwell 01:31, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Error rate

As a point of comparison for the error rate of automated querying, here is a auto-generated list of people who are marked as having died, but never been born (the "unborn", as it were). It currently lists 5205 people, which is ~8% of the size of gmaxwell's "undead" list. --Interiot 23:40, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Right, never claimed the list was accurate. It's a good starting point for making and accurate category. --Gmaxwell 23:43, 19 January 2006 (UTC) :)

Such a large category is always going to have a lot of errors in anycase, I think that's one thing we can all agree on. T/wangi 23:46, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Subcategorization

Subcategorization is mentioned above as one possible way to help with this thing, and Jimbo liked the possibility. IMHO this is important, so I'm giving it it's own topic area.

Okay. If we are going to subcategorize, IMHO we should do so Soon. Very Soon. Before too long someone with a bot is going to start dumping articles in here by the thousands. If we decide to sub-categorize them, IMHO we should do so before the mass categorization begins.

I just wanted to make a quick comment about assumptions about how this project works. A bot will not start dumping articles in here by the thousands, because this is not a mobocracy, this is not a democracy, this is Wikipedia. If someone starts doing that without first going through a real process of dialogue about why it would be a bad idea, the bot will be blocked, the edits rolled back, end of story. --Jimbo Wales 23:47, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Subcategorization by last name, alphabetically, would work well enough. And it would be a lot easier to do then by nationality, IMHO. Nationality is asking for conflicts, multiple categorization, and other similar problems. The vast majority of people have no dispute going about their name. If we went 2-3 levels deep with the subcategorization, we could actually get things near brousable in this thing. I know from Gmaxwell's comments that this is not intended as a set of brousable cateogies, but ones for use more-so by automated tools, but if we can make them even remotely browsable, then IMHO it's all for the better.

So I'm thinking along the lines of Living people - A, [[Living people - Aa], Living people - Aaa, Living people - Aab, etc. Maybe create out the first two levels initially, and only create out the third level if there are names to fit into it. - TexasAndroid 23:40, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Please don't bother. The subcategory names will take up more space in the category links so they will be even more annoying. Osomec 23:43, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure what subcats will help.. it will make building tools to work with the category somewhat more complex.. --Gmaxwell 23:44, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

I think we can agree that for readers this category is completely useless, so there is little point in cutting it down to make it easier for a pointless category to be browsed by users. Keep it as one stonking big category so it's the most useful, and easiest to use, with automated tools. Could we even add a frig in the code / default style sheet to hide the category for readers? Thanks/wangi 23:48, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Should we also hide the stub cats, the cleanup cats, the copyright related cats, and all the other cats which are pretty much useless to average Joe reader? I don't really have a view there... it would require a low impact change in the database schema to create a reader hidden flag and it might be of some use, I think it's worth discussion but we shouldn't do it just for this one category. --Gmaxwell 23:51, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, hide this thing & any others like it that aren't navigation aids. No, don't use sub-categories. Part of my opposition is that it looks stupid. The other part is that it's useless as a browsing tool because it's enormous. Subcats won't help that. Anyone who wants to have a go at something this big will be using automated tools or database dumps anyway. Derex 01:28, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

This is exactly why I gave it it's own section, to get it attention, pro or con, quickly. I had no intention of actually creating these myself unless I got several "Good Idea" type responses. Instead, I quickly get several good reasons why it's not the best of ideas. So don't worry about me going out and creating a buch of subcats for now. I'll let the idea percolate a bit longer. And if the idea flops, so be it. - TexasAndroid 23:52, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Just as a note, couldn't we choose to categorise by multiple criteria? Set a Category:Living people by country, Category:Living people by occupation etc, underneath which we have a set of [[:Category:Living people in <country>]] and [[:Category:Living <occupation>]]? If we tag the categories properly so that the subcategories make sense, it seems to me that we could put in multiple sorting schemas in place, and all one would need to do is pick the relevant subcategory tag. Admittedly, getting it all set up would be a royal pain, but I don't think the maintenance would be too horrific, even at this massive scale, and has the benefit that cross-referencing would allow browsing on multiple criteria (I don't remember his country, but I do know he's an academic!). Also, don't categories already set up by alphabetical? -- Kirby1024 23:59, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

That would cut across or duplicate all the other categories. If you're going to do that, better to subdivide the existing categories into living and dead people, rather than recreate the whole people categorisation system. But I don't want subcategories at all as one subcategory will be less annoying. And looking at it from the point of view of those who think this might work, it can't be a good idea to move people into categories by nationality the amount of attention the nationalities would be given would likely be very uneven. Osomec 00:16, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure that's a valid argument. It's true that certain nationalities won't have nearly as many entries as we like, but that's not the fault of the categorisation system, the system will simply bring it into sharp relief. If such a thing happens, perhaps it will be easier to identify the areas where others can improve wikipedia's coverage, and give people the impetus to do so. -- Kirby1024 00:44, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Not a list and/or template?

Why is a category the only solution here? Why not a list for example, maybe in conjuction with an {{alive}} template so it can be automatically generated and updated? Kappa 00:08, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Better still, wouldn't adding it to the Wikipedia:Persondata tag have all the benefits and non of the negatives? Martin 00:10, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

• I think a list would indeed be better, because that way one can watch the list and see if articles are wrongly removed from it. It is (to my knowledge) not presently possible to detect when articles are removed from a category. Radiant_>|< 01:16, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

I would be happy to explore options about how Wikipedia:Persondata might help. --Jimbo Wales 01:17, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Can we not have a vote anyway?

Can we not have the vote anyway? My view is that this doesn't meet the end it's aimed at. Categories are good means of navigation but not so good for meta tasks. So you've got a page with everyone who's alive on it. I'm not entirely clear how that prevents vandalism.

Wouldn't a big watchlist do the same thing without disfiguring the pages? It could be a public watchlist, couldn't it? Then not only have you gathered together all the living people (and you don't have to worry about its being enormously accurate, because it's a watchlist not a cat) but you can see when they're edited -- in particular, when they're edited by anons or less trusted users.

Am I missing something? Is there some other compelling reason for this category? If someone else has made this suggestion, I apologise. I couldn't see it on a scan through the page. Grace Note 00:08, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

That sounds like a better idea. Osomec 00:12, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

I think another "vote" would be a really bad idea. --John^DO|^{Speak your mind} I doubt it 00:17, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Voting is evil. We do not have votes at Wikipedia. We sometimes have polls, but the purpose of a poll is solely to explore community consensus.--Jimbo Wales 01:13, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

I completely agree. I rather meant couldn't we have the discussion on whether it was a good idea. We quite often have votes actually, and their purpose is more often than not to thwart any attempt at creating accord. More's the pity. -- Grace Note (sorry, have become logged out for some reason).

• Okay, let's vote on whether we should have a vote :) Radiant_>|< 01:22, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Category:Year of death missing

This category and this list give us a chance to do something good whether or not you like this category. People who are born before 1875 are dead... and if we don't know when we died we can at least have a marker that categorizes them as dead. My point? Look on the bright side and let's be friends. Personally, I don't particularly care whether we have this or not. gren グレン ^? 01:11, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

How would this work exactly?

If I understand correctly this is to prevent complaints from living people about the articles about themselves in Wikipedia? I fail to see how having a (very large) category of living people would make those articles "NPOV and properly sourced" (as it says on the cat page). Sure, you can use a bot to check for source sections, and throw the articles that don't have any in Category:Unsourced biographies. That category will have ~10000 articles (at a guesstimate), and a dedicated squad of editors can probably clear that in a couple of months, like Category:Stubs was cleared. But making it NPOV is considerably more trouble than that. Radiant_>|< 01:21, 20 January 2006 (UTC)