Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles

[Rob]

I've been skimming the arguments on this matter and I'm trying to get
a handle on it.  One thing I don't understand is why Mr. Hawkins feels
so aggrieved.  Everyone is talking in abstract principles but I
haven't seen where someone details what specific wrongs have been done
to Mr. Hawkins.  Not an abstract violation of an asserted right to not
have an article, but actual publishing of incorrect or defamatory
information. This is a case of someone we've done specific wrong using
Wikipedia: 
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/19/she-was-a-librarian-but-the-internet-said-otherwise/.
 Have we done something similar to Hawkins?

>From the AFD I read that one particular editor appears to have a
particular interest in Mr. Hawkins that allegedly crosses the bounds
of propriety.  I don't know if these allegations are true or not, so I
won't repeat them in detail here, but if they are true, and an editor
or editors violates policies and crosses lines in zealous pursuit of,
shall we say, overdocumenting a BLP, can't this matter be dealt with
by enforcing existing policies on article content and editor behavior?
 One allegation is that this editor wanted to file the UK equivalent
of a FOIA request to unearth records about Hawkins.  Isn't this simply
prohibited by OR?  Can't we just trout slap someone who suggests this
and be done with it?

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Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles

[Andreas Kolbe]

I've written an essay incorporating some of the ideas expressed here by
David, Carcharoth, Charles and myself.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:ADAM

I've also posted a link to the essay on WT:BLP, and suggested that it might
be helpful to get the "no eventualism" principle anchored more firmly in
BLP policy. Could we continue that part of the discussion there?

Andreas

On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 7:07 PM, Carcharoth wrote:

> On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 6:07 PM, Andreas Kolbe  wrote:
>
> > "No eventualism" is one principle that I would like to see spelled out in
> > BLP policy, in the Writing style section.
> >
> >
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons#Writing_style
> >
> > People do tend to treat biographies like a research pad for all the
> things
> > that an author might justifiably want to include in a five-volume,
> > 2,000-page biography.
> >
> > The problem is, the other 1,999 pages never turn up, leaving something –
> > often something trivial, titillating, or unflattering – that might be
> > worthy of mention on page 1,547 as the biography's main point.
>
> That's a good point. I recently edited a BLP to help clean it up, and
> was struck by two points:
>
> 1) It was difficult to know where to start and when to stop, as there
> is a need to not leave a BLP in a half-finished state, even if you are
> stubbing it down and slowly expanding, as even slow expansion can
> still leave it somewhat skewed and looking 'unfinished' (even if
> better than before). Those making subsequent additions need to bear
> that in mind as well.
>
> 2) If no-one else has written substantially about that person, it is a
> very uncomfortable feeling that you might be the first person to be
> doing that, and you start to wonder what right *anyone* has to write
> about a living person without working with that person to make sure it
> is accurate.
>
> This veers into the realm of discussing authorised and unauthorised
> biographies. Doing an unauthorised biography of a famous person and
> getting it published can make the author money, and most publishing
> firms will only publish if it is accurate and non-libellous. But doing
> short pages on non-notable or borderline notable people is something
> entirely different, and the motivations are often entirely different.
>
> Motivation is something that should be looked at as well. In my case,
> the articles are people working in science and that interests me. But
> is that enough of a reason? What about someone who wants to write
> about the leader of some small obscure country on the other side of
> the world? (And then you have the classic case of the motivation being
> to do a hatchet job on someone). Sure, the mantra is to use reliable
> sources and be faithful to the sources, but it is still very different
> (and difficult) writing about a living person who can (in theory) turn
> up and object to what has been written.
>
> Carcharoth
>
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Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles

[Carcharoth]

On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 6:07 PM, Andreas Kolbe  wrote:

> "No eventualism" is one principle that I would like to see spelled out in
> BLP policy, in the Writing style section.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons#Writing_style
>
> People do tend to treat biographies like a research pad for all the things
> that an author might justifiably want to include in a five-volume,
> 2,000-page biography.
>
> The problem is, the other 1,999 pages never turn up, leaving something –
> often something trivial, titillating, or unflattering – that might be
> worthy of mention on page 1,547 as the biography's main point.

That's a good point. I recently edited a BLP to help clean it up, and
was struck by two points:

1) It was difficult to know where to start and when to stop, as there
is a need to not leave a BLP in a half-finished state, even if you are
stubbing it down and slowly expanding, as even slow expansion can
still leave it somewhat skewed and looking 'unfinished' (even if
better than before). Those making subsequent additions need to bear
that in mind as well.

2) If no-one else has written substantially about that person, it is a
very uncomfortable feeling that you might be the first person to be
doing that, and you start to wonder what right *anyone* has to write
about a living person without working with that person to make sure it
is accurate.

This veers into the realm of discussing authorised and unauthorised
biographies. Doing an unauthorised biography of a famous person and
getting it published can make the author money, and most publishing
firms will only publish if it is accurate and non-libellous. But doing
short pages on non-notable or borderline notable people is something
entirely different, and the motivations are often entirely different.

Motivation is something that should be looked at as well. In my case,
the articles are people working in science and that interests me. But
is that enough of a reason? What about someone who wants to write
about the leader of some small obscure country on the other side of
the world? (And then you have the classic case of the motivation being
to do a hatchet job on someone). Sure, the mantra is to use reliable
sources and be faithful to the sources, but it is still very different
(and difficult) writing about a living person who can (in theory) turn
up and object to what has been written.

Carcharoth

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Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles

[Andreas Kolbe]

On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 6:00 PM, David Gerard  wrote:

> On 27 March 2012 17:20, Charles Matthews
>  wrote:
>
> > So you have been arguing that without the BLP policy, and without the
> > noticeboard set up to help compliance with the policy, just the same
> close
> > investigations of the actual reliability of sources that nominally fall
> > within "RS" would be going on?  I don't agree, and I wonder if anyone
> else
> > does. I'm not the biggest fan of noticeboards, qua unchartered processes;
> > but in this case it seems to be working, and having WP:BLP there fairly
> > clearly has something to do with it.
>
>
> The key point to remember about BLPs is: no eventualism. If an article
> about someone dead 200 years says something nasty and wrong, that's
> not great, but it's not urgent. If an article about a living person
> says something nasty and wrong, that is urgent, and we can't just
> assume the wiki process will on balance fix it in the fullness of
> time. It's the simplest possible way of doing it and it's a vast
> improvement over the previous situation. It's not perfection, but
> calling it a "failure" is hyperbolic.



"No eventualism" is one principle that I would like to see spelled out in
BLP policy, in the Writing style section.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons#Writing_style

People do tend to treat biographies like a research pad for all the things
that an author might justifiably want to include in a five-volume,
2,000-page biography.

The problem is, the other 1,999 pages never turn up, leaving something –
often something trivial, titillating, or unflattering – that might be
worthy of mention on page 1,547 as the biography's main point.

Andreas
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Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles

[Carcharoth]

On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 9:39 PM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
 wrote:

> My thinking is that a constructive and asymptotically approaching perfection
> (hopefully as rapidly as humanly possible) way of doing a good bit of easing
> of some of the tensions, would be to start compiling a list of criterions 
> which
> make someone absolutely 100% a chinch to need a wikipedia article about
> them, no matter what. Not a list of "articles every wikipedia should have" or
> anything like that, but a list of no-brainer wikipedia inclusion
> criteria



The problem with such lists is that other publications and other
websites don't do it like that (unless they are specialist ones
attempting to cover their entire field, and that is what some people
see Wikipedia as, a collection of specialist areas, but there aren't
really encyclopedias of modern radio presenters, are there?). What
would be easier is to look at the field of biographical writing as a
whole, and ask what criteria other publications use to compile their
entries. Encyclopedia Britannica has (online) entries on living
people. Where do they draw the line? And so on. The critical thing,
though, is to look at the *length* of the sources used in the
biographies. Some are book-length sources, some are only a paragraph
or two. The critical difference is between:

i) Summarising book-length sources to produce a Wikipedia article
shorter than a book
ii) Replicating article-length sources to produce a Wikipedia article
of about the same length
iii) Aggregating shorter sources to produce a Wikipedia article that
is longer than its sources

[Summarising, replicating and aggregating, are deliberate word choices there.]

Those three approaches are all, to some extent, valid, and all have
their problems and advantages and disadvantages, but it is crucial to
be aware of the breadth and depth of the available sources to have an
idea what sort of coverage Wikipedia should have and how to condense
and/or aggregate the sources. I should also mention here that some
topics (even biographical ones) produce more than one Wikipedia
article. Some biographies are split into sub-articles. Not very often,
but some people have made that approach (sort of) work.

The main problem with writing about *living* people, is that approach
(i) is rare. Those who are living and have published book-length
biographies are clearly already notable by anyone's measure. Those who
are living and only have article-length sources it is usually possible
to write about. Those who are living and have only scraps of
information floating around in various places are practically
impossible to write about, other than to produce poorly maintained
stubs.

That is the entire BLP problem in a nutshell. If the sources aren't
there, the articles are placeholders that will only be short and
stubby until someone out there writes more about that person, and if
that never happens, then is it ultimately worth maintaining such
articles?

Carcharoth

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Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles

[Thomas Dalton]

On 27 March 2012 21:39, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen  wrote:
> My thinking is that a constructive and asymptotically approaching perfection
> (hopefully as rapidly as humanly possible) way of doing a good bit of easing
> of some of the tensions, would be to start compiling a list of criterions 
> which
> make someone absolutely 100% a chinch to need a wikipedia article about
> them, no matter what.

What would the benefit of that list be? Surely no-one is contesting
any of the BLPs that fit that description. If something is being
contested, then that means it isn't 100% obvious that the article
should exist. There's no point trying to fix the articles that aren't
broken.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles

[Jussi-Ville Heiskanen]

If we have this in place, cool to have a link...

My thinking is that a constructive and asymptotically approaching perfection
(hopefully as rapidly as humanly possible) way of doing a good bit of easing
of some of the tensions, would be to start compiling a list of criterions which
make someone absolutely 100% a chinch to need a wikipedia article about
them, no matter what. Not a list of "articles every wikipedia should have" or
anything like that, but a list of no-brainer wikipedia inclusion
criteria, and add
to the list of criteria as fast as possible. If something is
blindingly obvious it is
often very easy to get consensus, and a great deal can be achieved in a very
short amount of time.  Once the low hanging fruit have been collected, the
experience of working on that part of the task, often makes for a much more
congenial atmosphere to hew out some modus operandi for the cases where
things are not so clear as to be universally agreed upon by the editorship.

Here are some I can think of:

* Heads of states of all countries which are official full members of the
United Nations, after they have been admitted.
* Actresses/Actors who have star billing in a movie released by
Universal, MGM, 20th/21th Century, Lucasfilm, (... purposefully
leaving this list short to be absolutely
ironclad not to step into any point of contention or cheap shots ...)
* Nobel Prize winners.
* Fields Medal winners.
* Medal winners in the Modern Olympics in those sports that currently are part
of the Olympic Games, in either winter or summer games.
* Military leaders of the armed forces in any conflict between two countries who
are currently official full members of the United Nations.
* All Popes the Holy Roman Catholic Church currently recognizes as
having been valid
popes.
* All winners of the Booker Prize.
* All winners of the Turner Prize.
* All presenters of the Royal Society Christmas Lecture.
* ...
* ...
* ...

You get the idea...?

-- 
--
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]

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Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles

[Charles Matthews]

On 27 March 2012 18:05, Ken Arromdee  wrote:

> On Tue, 27 Mar 2012, David Gerard wrote:
>
>> The key point to remember about BLPs is: no eventualism. If an article
>> about someone dead 200 years says something nasty and wrong, that's
>> not great, but it's not urgent. If an article about a living person
>> says something nasty and wrong, that is urgent, and we can't just
>> assume the wiki process will on balance fix it in the fullness of
>> time. It's the simplest possible way of doing it and it's a vast
>> improvement over the previous situation. It's not perfection, but
>> calling it a "failure" is hyperbolic.
>>
>
> Anything which is *different* between BLP and policies for other articles,
> such as a no-eventualism policy, could conceivably be a benefit.
>
> My complaint is about BLP rules that do not do this.
>
>
I'm reminded of a story told me by a friend who used to work in PC support,
back in the day. He was once called out by a guy who'd deleted all the
files whose purpose he didn't understand, and wondered why his machine
didn't work. Please don't try this at home.

Charles

>
>
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Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles

[David Gerard]

On 27 March 2012 18:05, Ken Arromdee  wrote:

> Anything which is *different* between BLP and policies for other articles,
> such as a no-eventualism policy, could conceivably be a benefit.
> My complaint is about BLP rules that do not do this.


"No sloppiness" applied with rigour is a quantitive difference that
makes a qualitative difference.

You seem to be arguing mathematical logic when the issue is how to
motivate humans to behave a particular way.


- d.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles

[Ken Arromdee]

On Tue, 27 Mar 2012, David Gerard wrote:

The key point to remember about BLPs is: no eventualism. If an article
about someone dead 200 years says something nasty and wrong, that's
not great, but it's not urgent. If an article about a living person
says something nasty and wrong, that is urgent, and we can't just
assume the wiki process will on balance fix it in the fullness of
time. It's the simplest possible way of doing it and it's a vast
improvement over the previous situation. It's not perfection, but
calling it a "failure" is hyperbolic.


Anything which is *different* between BLP and policies for other articles,
such as a no-eventualism policy, could conceivably be a benefit.

My complaint is about BLP rules that do not do this.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles

[David Gerard]

On 27 March 2012 17:20, Charles Matthews
 wrote:

> So you have been arguing that without the BLP policy, and without the
> noticeboard set up to help compliance with the policy, just the same close
> investigations of the actual reliability of sources that nominally fall
> within "RS" would be going on?  I don't agree, and I wonder if anyone else
> does. I'm not the biggest fan of noticeboards, qua unchartered processes;
> but in this case it seems to be working, and having WP:BLP there fairly
> clearly has something to do with it.


The key point to remember about BLPs is: no eventualism. If an article
about someone dead 200 years says something nasty and wrong, that's
not great, but it's not urgent. If an article about a living person
says something nasty and wrong, that is urgent, and we can't just
assume the wiki process will on balance fix it in the fullness of
time. It's the simplest possible way of doing it and it's a vast
improvement over the previous situation. It's not perfection, but
calling it a "failure" is hyperbolic.


- d.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles

[Charles Matthews]

On 27 March 2012 15:52, Ken Arromdee  wrote:

> On Tue, 27 Mar 2012, Charles Matthews wrote:
>
>> Reading what you have written above, and then
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/**Wikipedia:Biographies_of_**
>> living_persons/Noticeboard#**Chris
>> Butler_(private investigator)
>>
>> and other serious discussions on that page, I'm unconvinced that you
>> actually have a point here.
>>
>
> Why?
>
> I clarified what I didn't think worked: BLP rules which say "do what you
> are
> required to do anyway according to other rules, but try really hard this
> time".  How exactly can such a rule ever being a benefit, and how did it
> bring any benefits in this case?
>
>
> So you have been arguing that without the BLP policy, and without the
noticeboard set up to help compliance with the policy, just the same close
investigations of the actual reliability of sources that nominally fall
within "RS" would be going on?  I don't agree, and I wonder if anyone else
does. I'm not the biggest fan of noticeboards, qua unchartered processes;
but in this case it seems to be working, and having WP:BLP there fairly
clearly has something to do with it.

I note we had a silly onsite discussion on WP:COI recently, based on a
similar and quite fallacious style of argument that the COI guideline was
in effect vacuous. It isn't, and BLP policy isn't, and it seems to me that
to argue that these things make no odds at all fundamentally misunderstands
two things: (i) that pages that express a single and clear idea in the
policy area really are needed; and (ii) the way enforcement actually works
is by decentralisation. We have to do things in a way that scales, and
looking at (for example) NPOV in different places in different ways makes
sense. Or putting it another way, unpacking our ideas is worthwhile, and we
have gone a long way since saying "five pillars" was enough.

Charles
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Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles

[Ken Arromdee]

On Tue, 27 Mar 2012, Charles Matthews wrote:

Reading what you have written above, and then

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard#Chris
Butler_(private investigator)

and other serious discussions on that page, I'm unconvinced that you
actually have a point here.


Why?

I clarified what I didn't think worked: BLP rules which say "do what you are
required to do anyway according to other rules, but try really hard this
time".  How exactly can such a rule ever being a benefit, and how did it
bring any benefits in this case?

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Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles

[Charles Matthews]

On 26 March 2012 19:11, Ken Arromdee  wrote:

> On Mon, 26 Mar 2012, David Gerard wrote:
>
>> For some reason a lot of BLP policy is like that: "here we have the same
>>> policy we use for everything else, but we really mean it this time".
>>>  This
>>> never works, of course.
>>>
>> I think that's an overstatement - it sometimes doesn't work, which is
>> quite distinct from "never works".
>>
>
> "The policy doesn't work" doesn't mean that all BLPs are bad, it just means
> that they are *as* bad as they would have been without the policy.  The
> cases you refer to as it "working" are cases where other policies work and
> these polices provide no extra benefit.
>

Reading what you have written above, and then

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard#Chris
Butler_(private investigator)

and other serious discussions on that page, I'm unconvinced that you
actually have a point here.

Charles
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Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles

[Andreas Kolbe]

On Sat, Mar 24, 2012 at 9:22 AM, Charles Matthews <
charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com> wrote:

> I think a serious "position paper" on BLP is possible.  There are several
> aspects:
>
> * We are currently not very good at recognising when biographical
> information is "indiscriminate" (see
> [[WP:INDISCRIMINATE >]]).
> We could get better at that, as a way of addressing what Andreas is calling
> ADAM.
>
> *We can certainly look at special notability guidelines for classes of
> individuals (e.g. politicians, employees of the media, entertainers,
> sportspeople, reality TV stars). Some divide-and-conquer to understand the
> more problematic areas in their own terms would be good.
>
> *We are currently lousy at judging "ephemeral notability", and issues
> around it seem to be classic time-sinks. There is a bigger picture here,
> and digging around in older biographical dictionaries can help to explain
> what is going on.
>
> *Certainly extending control of revisions to all BLP pages is an option to
> consider; naturally this is a major step requiring wide community support,
> and that in turn probably requires a reasonable amount of preparation, not
> phrased in too much immoderate language.
>



There is currently another Pending Changes RfC underway at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Pending_changes/Request_for_Comment_2012

Andreas





> *Tools and techniques. I'm a fan of the idea of using "Related changes"  on
> chunks of BLP, so that patrolling say 1% at a time becomes easier. Hiving
> off BLP into its own community isn't a solution that is clearly going to
> work, let's say. Technical concentration on the material, on the other
> hand, might do quite a lot to highlight the difficult cases.
>
> Charles
> ___
>
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Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles

[Ken Arromdee]

On Mon, 26 Mar 2012, David Gerard wrote:

"The policy doesn't work" doesn't mean that all BLPs are bad, it just means
that they are *as* bad as they would have been without the policy.  The
cases you refer to as it "working" are cases where other policies work and
these polices provide no extra benefit.

You are ludicrously overstating the case.


I'm not claiming the entire BLP policy provides no benefit.  I'm claiming
that clauses which basically say "do what you're supposed to be doing all the
time anyway, but we really mean it here" bring no benefit.___
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Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles

[David Gerard]

On 26 March 2012 19:11, Ken Arromdee  wrote:

> "The policy doesn't work" doesn't mean that all BLPs are bad, it just means
> that they are *as* bad as they would have been without the policy.  The
> cases you refer to as it "working" are cases where other policies work and
> these polices provide no extra benefit.


You are ludicrously overstating the case.


- d.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles

[Ken Arromdee]

On Mon, 26 Mar 2012, David Gerard wrote:

For some reason a lot of BLP policy is like that: "here we have the same
policy we use for everything else, but we really mean it this time".  This
never works, of course.

I think that's an overstatement - it sometimes doesn't work, which is
quite distinct from "never works".


"The policy doesn't work" doesn't mean that all BLPs are bad, it just means
that they are *as* bad as they would have been without the policy.  The
cases you refer to as it "working" are cases where other policies work and
these polices provide no extra benefit.___
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Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles

[David Gerard]

On 26 March 2012 16:17, Ken Arromdee  wrote:

> For some reason a lot of BLP policy is like that: "here we have the same
> policy we use for everything else, but we really mean it this time".  This
> never works, of course.


I think that's an overstatement - it sometimes doesn't work, which is
quite distinct from "never works". If we'd tried putting in BLP rules
that *weren't* just our usual rules only without the eventualist
element, it would have failed to take with the people actually doing
the work, and resulted in lower quality articles.


- d.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles

[Charles Matthews]

On 26 March 2012 16:17, Ken Arromdee  wrote:

> On Sat, 24 Mar 2012, Andreas Kolbe wrote:
>
>> In almost all cases, a stub with the basic information is better than
>>> a loose aggregation of factoids. The problem is that well-meaning
>>> people (and sometime less well-meaning people) come along later and
>>> try and 'expand' what is there. I'd be in favour of locking down BLPs
>>> once they reach a certain stage of development and requiring a very
>>> high standard of sourcing for new additions.
>>>
>> These sound like sensible ideas.
>>
>
> Doesn't work.  Since we already require a high standard for sourcing for
> everything, this doesn't actually put any additional requirements on BLPs.
>
> For some reason a lot of BLP policy is like that: "here we have the same
> policy we use for everything else, but we really mean it this time".  This
> never works, of course.
>

That's an overstatement, of course. In several ways.

Anyone would think that we have no BLPs that are respectable. I know of
some that aren't - there are a couple of troublesome ones I have babysat
like that - but the issues there do seem to come from setting the bar too
low for sourcing (either of laundered gossip that is negative, or dubious
positive stuff, do come up).  If we set an "academic" type of standard,
rather than a "mainstream media", some of the problems would go away.

Of course a proportion of the BLPs would also go away also. So it's no good
pretending it's not a trade-off; and the community still decides whether
the bar should be raised.

Charles

>
>
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Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles

[Ken Arromdee]

On Sat, 24 Mar 2012, Andreas Kolbe wrote:

In almost all cases, a stub with the basic information is better than
a loose aggregation of factoids. The problem is that well-meaning
people (and sometime less well-meaning people) come along later and
try and 'expand' what is there. I'd be in favour of locking down BLPs
once they reach a certain stage of development and requiring a very
high standard of sourcing for new additions.

These sound like sensible ideas.


Doesn't work.  Since we already require a high standard for sourcing for
everything, this doesn't actually put any additional requirements on BLPs.

For some reason a lot of BLP policy is like that: "here we have the same
policy we use for everything else, but we really mean it this time".  This
never works, of course.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles

[Andreas Kolbe]

On Sat, Mar 24, 2012 at 1:52 PM, Carcharoth wrote:

> ii) Be respectful of the article subject and be prepared to work with
> them if they raise concerns, and don't needlessly antagonise them.
>


I wrote a couple of essays about this a while ago.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Hazing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notable_person_survival_kit

I got a pat on the back from Jimbo on my talk page, but other than that,
they never really caught on.

Of course, what's in those essays only goes as far as it does. The systemic
problem with notability and the accretion method is bigger than that.

Andreas
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Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles

[Andreas Kolbe]

On Sat, Mar 24, 2012 at 6:13 PM, Thomas Dalton wrote:

> On 24 March 2012 17:51, David Gerard  wrote:
> > You're not going to get that through for general events (natural
> > disasters or revolutions), because they've long been heralded as one
> > of en:wp's great strengths.
>
> But they *should* be one of Wikinews' greatest strengths, not
> Wikipedia's. I know it isn't likely to get adopted, which is why I
> never bother proposing it, but I still think it would be a good idea.



The Wikipedia coverage of Japan last year was indeed excellent. Wikinews
could transclude Wikipedia articles on developing news stories like that.

A.
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Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles

[Andreas Kolbe]

On Sat, Mar 24, 2012 at 1:52 PM, Carcharoth wrote:

> On Sat, Mar 24, 2012 at 11:37 AM, geni  wrote:
>
> > Zee problem with this standard is that it would preclude having an
> > article on the person currently running mali (admittedly the article
> > isn't up to much but I think it could be argued that we should at
> > least try).
>
> i) Have a *clear* way for the article subject to make contact and
> raise concerns. Currently, this is OTRS, but I suspect many people who
> are the subject of biographical articles are unaware of the articles.
>


Hawkins says he contacted Wikimedia (and the talk page does now contain an
OTRS reference) and never received a reply.

I am aware of another case where the subject had to wait a month for a
reply. On the other hand, an anonymous editor can get an exasperated
biography subject that types the word "libel" on Wikipedia blocked in five
minutes at AN/I.



> ii) Be respectful of the article subject and be prepared to work with
> them if they raise concerns, and don't needlessly antagonise them. For
> some editors, who chose to remain anonymous, this will be problematic,
> as some people (understandably) will want to work with a known person,
> not some anonymous screen name.
>
> iii) Use very high standards of sourcing and be aware that limited or
> restricted coverage in sources almost certainly results in errors.
> Better to keep the article short and precise, rather than write too
> much (your 'we should at least try') and run into problems.
>
> In almost all cases, a stub with the basic information is better than
> a loose aggregation of factoids. The problem is that well-meaning
> people (and sometime less well-meaning people) come along later and
> try and 'expand' what is there. I'd be in favour of locking down BLPs
> once they reach a certain stage of development and requiring a very
> high standard of sourcing for new additions.



These sound like sensible ideas.

Andreas
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Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles

[Andreas Kolbe]

On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 4:48 PM, David Gerard  wrote:

> On 23 March 2012 14:04, Carcharoth  wrote:
>
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Jim_Hawkins_%28radio_presenter%29
>
> This is a rather broad and (as I've noted) hideously vague proposed
> solution to a very specific problem, viz. someone who is apparently
> well within notability guidelines wanting an article deleted because
> he doesn't have control of it, and is abusive towards anyone who tries
> to help.



That's a bizarre statement – and quite untrue – as well as absolutely
appalling PR. I see someone linked to that comment of yours on Hawkins'
Facebook thread yesterday.

http://www.facebook.com/jimhawkinsltd/posts/303015339764646

(Not sure if that link will work for people who aren't on Facebook.)

As for notability, Carcharoth posted a salient analysis of the article's
sourcing:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AArticles_for_deletion%2FJim_Hawkins_%28radio_presenter%29&diff=483663317&oldid=483632586

Andreas
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Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles

[Charles Matthews]

On 24 March 2012 16:23, Thomas Dalton  wrote:

> I think it is important to remember why we're doing this. Our purpose
> isn't the judge people's notability. Our purpose is to provide useful
> information to people. It is clear from the page views they get that
> BLPs are useful to people. As long as there are sufficient reliable
> sources to write more than a stub about someone, then I don't see why
> we shouldn't have an article about them. That is basically what the
> General Notability Guideline says.
>
> One of the more obvious problems with WP:NOTE is that it has been fairly
unclear whether it is a necessary or a sufficient condition for notability.
As currently written it is phrased as a sufficient condition, which
somewhat surprises me.

(Not the confusion itself, which explains why a thread like this can
contain diametrically opposite opinions.)

But for reasons internal to what we think guidelines are there for.
Guidelines, after all, function best when they give editors a clear idea of
what Wikipedia expects of them, personally. Like it says ,"a generally
accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow".  Editors should
attempt only to create articles on notable topics, in other words.

Reading the guideline the other way round is obviously possible; and the
way the main text is phrased might suggest it. But, and here's the point of
the thread in fact, it is perfectly possible to argue that reading the GNG
as a sufficient condition for anything is flawed. Wikipedia is a wiki, and
wikis do give you permission to edit. Saying that verifiability from enough
reliable sources is a sufficient condition that an article can exist
carries its own assumptions.

In particular the "salience" condition for biographical facts gets lost. I
see that whatever we used to have written about this concept has become
hard to find onsite, which is troubling. Non-salient facts from dodgy
sources added to biographies is almost a definition of tabloid writing, so
I think we should be concerned.

Charles
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Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles

[Thomas Dalton]

On 24 March 2012 19:42, Carcharoth  wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 24, 2012 at 4:23 PM, Thomas Dalton  
> wrote:
>> I think it is important to remember why we're doing this. Our purpose
>> isn't the judge people's notability. Our purpose is to provide useful
>> information to people. It is clear from the page views they get that
>> BLPs are useful to people.
>
> For low-level BLPs, a large proportion of the views may be Wikipedia editors.

Wikipedia editors count as readers too.

>> As long as there are sufficient reliable
>> sources to write more than a stub about someone, then I don't see why
>> we shouldn't have an article about them. That is basically what the
>> General Notability Guideline says.
>
> But what if that is all the reliable sources there are? And there are
> no more and no more likely to be forthcoming? We are effectively
> bequeathing to future generations a large number of stubby articles
> that may never have any more sources written about them. Would you
> like the job of (in 50 years time) sorting through these articles and
> deciding which ones to try and ascertain year of death, and which ones
> to expand from obituaries (if any exist), and which ones to delete
> because they turned out to have sunk back into obscurity and only
> dedicated research in primary documents (mostly not allowed under
> WP:OR) will be of any use?

I did say there needs to be enough to write *more than* a stub.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles

[Carcharoth]

On Sat, Mar 24, 2012 at 4:23 PM, Thomas Dalton  wrote:
> I think it is important to remember why we're doing this. Our purpose
> isn't the judge people's notability. Our purpose is to provide useful
> information to people. It is clear from the page views they get that
> BLPs are useful to people.

For low-level BLPs, a large proportion of the views may be Wikipedia editors.

> As long as there are sufficient reliable
> sources to write more than a stub about someone, then I don't see why
> we shouldn't have an article about them. That is basically what the
> General Notability Guideline says.

But what if that is all the reliable sources there are? And there are
no more and no more likely to be forthcoming? We are effectively
bequeathing to future generations a large number of stubby articles
that may never have any more sources written about them. Would you
like the job of (in 50 years time) sorting through these articles and
deciding which ones to try and ascertain year of death, and which ones
to expand from obituaries (if any exist), and which ones to delete
because they turned out to have sunk back into obscurity and only
dedicated research in primary documents (mostly not allowed under
WP:OR) will be of any use?

> I do think we have a problem with writing about things too soon, but
> it isn't so extreme that we should wait until people are retired or
> dead to write about them.



It's not just writing about things too soon, but poor choices of what
to write on. There needs to be some judgement that goes something like
this: (1) The longest biographical coverage of the subject in sources
is of such-and-such a length. (2) Our article should not attempt to go
beyond that length until the next level of biographical coverage is
written. (3) If the subject has dropped out of the public eye and that
next level of biographical coverage is unlikely to be reached, then
delete.

If you don't follow something like those guidelines, you get people
pulling together different sources to create the next level of
biographical coverage, and being the first to do so. Wikipedia
shouldn't be in the business of attempting to write biographies of a
new type (aggregating existing sources) where nothing similar has been
done before.

Carcharoth

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Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles

[Thomas Dalton]

On 24 March 2012 18:18, David Gerard  wrote:
> Wikinews suffers sufficient gatekeepers that it doesn't attract a
> froth of contributors the way Wikipedia does. It could do with some
> statistical and experimental loving from the Foundation, if anyone
> feels up to putting a proposal together. But trying to channel
> volunteers in this manner strikes me as a way to kill motivation
> rather than channel it.

My hope with this proposal was to encourage contributions to Wikinews.
I think one of the main reasons Wikinews has never been particularly
successful is because it is competing with Wikipedia's current events
coverage.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles

[David Gerard]

On 24 March 2012 18:13, Thomas Dalton  wrote:
> On 24 March 2012 17:51, David Gerard  wrote:

>> You're not going to get that through for general events (natural
>> disasters or revolutions), because they've long been heralded as one
>> of en:wp's great strengths.

> But they *should* be one of Wikinews' greatest strengths, not
> Wikipedia's. I know it isn't likely to get adopted, which is why I
> never bother proposing it, but I still think it would be a good idea.


Wikinews suffers sufficient gatekeepers that it doesn't attract a
froth of contributors the way Wikipedia does. It could do with some
statistical and experimental loving from the Foundation, if anyone
feels up to putting a proposal together. But trying to channel
volunteers in this manner strikes me as a way to kill motivation
rather than channel it.


- d.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles

[Thomas Dalton]

On 24 March 2012 17:51, David Gerard  wrote:
> You're not going to get that through for general events (natural
> disasters or revolutions), because they've long been heralded as one
> of en:wp's great strengths.

But they *should* be one of Wikinews' greatest strengths, not
Wikipedia's. I know it isn't likely to get adopted, which is why I
never bother proposing it, but I still think it would be a good idea.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles

[David Gerard]

On 24 March 2012 16:23, Thomas Dalton  wrote:

> I do think we have a problem with writing about things too soon, but
> it isn't so extreme that we should wait until people are retired or
> dead to write about them. I did have a policy proposal prepared a few
> years ago that I never really proposed because I thought it was too
> unlikely to be successful. It was to set a limit on how recent
> something can be and still appear on Wikipedia. I can't remember what
> the limit I was going to propose was, but it was about a month - if
> something happened less than a month ago, don't write about it on
> Wikipedia. Write about it on Wikinews and either link to it from an
> existing Wikipedia article or create a redirect to it if the subject
> is new or newly notable. Then, after a month once everything has
> settled down, we can write a decent article (as opposed to one where
> every paragraph starts "As of").


You're not going to get that through for general events (natural
disasters or revolutions), because they've long been heralded as one
of en:wp's great strengths.

It *might* be swingable in the case of BLPs. The question then, of
course, is: in a quickly-written article about a disaster or a
revolution, are you allowed to name anyone who's alive? And you *know*
there are Wikipedia rules lawyers who will say "no" and try to enforce
it.


- d.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles

[Thomas Dalton]

I think it is important to remember why we're doing this. Our purpose
isn't the judge people's notability. Our purpose is to provide useful
information to people. It is clear from the page views they get that
BLPs are useful to people. As long as there are sufficient reliable
sources to write more than a stub about someone, then I don't see why
we shouldn't have an article about them. That is basically what the
General Notability Guideline says.

I do think we have a problem with writing about things too soon, but
it isn't so extreme that we should wait until people are retired or
dead to write about them. I did have a policy proposal prepared a few
years ago that I never really proposed because I thought it was too
unlikely to be successful. It was to set a limit on how recent
something can be and still appear on Wikipedia. I can't remember what
the limit I was going to propose was, but it was about a month - if
something happened less than a month ago, don't write about it on
Wikipedia. Write about it on Wikinews and either link to it from an
existing Wikipedia article or create a redirect to it if the subject
is new or newly notable. Then, after a month once everything has
settled down, we can write a decent article (as opposed to one where
every paragraph starts "As of").

I think that kind of policy would be useful for BLPs, particularly
1EVENT cases. It is often much easier to tell after a month whether
something is really notable for an encyclopaedia than it is straight
away (how many AFDs have we all seen where people are saying "This
will almost certainly be notable." - much better to wait and see
rather than try and predict notability).

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Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles

[WereSpielChequers]

The problem's with biographical information range from undue weight to
the accumulation of dirt from the tabloids. But some of the solutions
offered would fix the wrong problem and possibly make things worse.
Generally in my experience the bios of sportspeople rarely get hostile
edits, at least not unless they fall out with the fans of their team or
country. But these are some of our youngest retiring celebrities, so a
policy of only writing their bios after death would simply drive many
sportswriters off the pedia. Politicians tend to be older by the time they
are notable and would be less extremely effected by this, at least a large
proprtion would be still in the public eye when they died. But we would
still have the next unintended consequence, the good neutral editors would
have been driven off and we would have fewer editors around to take the
nasty BLP violations out of articles on films, companies, political events
and crimes.

In my view if we want to improve our BLPs we need to work with the
community not against it. That means coming up with better tools to
identify and check hostile phrases and other problematic edits. It also
means better anti-vandalism tools - I'm keen to see flagged revisions
introduced on EN wiki the way it is on DE, but I suspect that first we need
some convincing research to prove which method is more effective at
removing vandalism - the one that ensures every edit by a non-established
user is screened by an established user - or the en wiki system where most
edits are looked at by many but some slip through completely unchecked. If
the WMF were to commission such research, and the research established that
some wikis had a more effective anti-vandalism approach than others, then
if the difference is significant it would be reasonable for the WMF to tell
the communities using less effective anti vandalism methods to either
upgrade or stop hosting BLPs.

WSC
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Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles

[Sarah]

On Sat, Mar 24, 2012 at 11:03 AM, Carcharoth
 wrote:
> The famous people have lots of other stuff out there about them, so
> are not that worried about their Wikipedia article. The borderline
> notable people, though, have their Wikipedia article as they number
> one resource about them on the internet. That is the problem in a
> nutshell - which comes back again to running ahead of the sources. If
> there is not one single source out there of comparable length and
> type, then Wikipedia is 'getting there first' (by aggregating separate
> sources to create the next level up) and that is nearly always a bad
> thing.
>
> Carcharoth
>
I agree with Carcharoth, and I think we could fairly easily determine
who counts as notable enough so that an opt-out option wouldn't apply.

The moral issue is that people ought to have the right to say "I want
Wikipedia to leave me alone."

We're a group of anonymous or unknown people writing the number one
Google hits for people's names, with none of the training, editorial
oversight or legal responsibility that traditionally came with that
kind of influence.

We probably do come across as a bunch of stalkers to some of our BLP subjects.

Sarah

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Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles

[Carcharoth]

I should add that on re-reading, I see the irony in suggesting working
"with the article subject" when that person is someone who has just
taken over a country. Handling stuff like that is more difficult, I
admit. And some people are famous enough that the question of working
'with them' is silly (US President, the Pope, stuff like that).

The famous people have lots of other stuff out there about them, so
are not that worried about their Wikipedia article. The borderline
notable people, though, have their Wikipedia article as they number
one resource about them on the internet. That is the problem in a
nutshell - which comes back again to running ahead of the sources. If
there is not one single source out there of comparable length and
type, then Wikipedia is 'getting there first' (by aggregating separate
sources to create the next level up) and that is nearly always a bad
thing.

Carcharoth

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Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles

[Carcharoth]

On Sat, Mar 24, 2012 at 11:37 AM, geni  wrote:

> Zee problem with this standard is that it would preclude having an
> article on the person currently running mali (admittedly the article
> isn't up to much but I think it could be argued that we should at
> least try).

There is nothing wrong with having brief 'biographical notes' on the
person currently running Mali. The problem comes when people get the
idea that they need to turn such notes into fully fledged biographical
articles and start scraping around for material and 'running ahead of
the sources'. Sometimes this is done with the best of intentions (I'm
effectively doing this for the four examples I mentioned earlier). But
when this involves biographies of living people, the standard that
should apply is:

i) Have a *clear* way for the article subject to make contact and
raise concerns. Currently, this is OTRS, but I suspect many people who
are the subject of biographical articles are unaware of the articles.

ii) Be respectful of the article subject and be prepared to work with
them if they raise concerns, and don't needlessly antagonise them. For
some editors, who chose to remain anonymous, this will be problematic,
as some people (understandably) will want to work with a known person,
not some anonymous screen name.

iii) Use very high standards of sourcing and be aware that limited or
restricted coverage in sources almost certainly results in errors.
Better to keep the article short and precise, rather than write too
much (your 'we should at least try') and run into problems.

In almost all cases, a stub with the basic information is better than
a loose aggregation of factoids. The problem is that well-meaning
people (and sometime less well-meaning people) come along later and
try and 'expand' what is there. I'd be in favour of locking down BLPs
once they reach a certain stage of development and requiring a very
high standard of sourcing for new additions.

Carcharoth

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Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles

[Charles Matthews]

On 24 March 2012 11:37, geni  wrote:

> On 24 March 2012 11:25, Carcharoth  wrote:
>
> 

> > The point about Wikipedia (for BLPs) being ahead of the proper sources
> > to use is another excellent one. There is a natural progression to
> > biographical sources that (for obvious reasons) parallels the
> > subject's life. People record their own lives at first (diaries,
> > letters, CVs and the like), and then gradually others start to write
> > about that person and you get short descriptions such as author and
> > contributor biographies, and short news items. Then, as someone
> > becomes more prominent, you get more considered material, such as
> > interviews, feature articles, and so on. Very prominent people get
> > official and official biographers that document that person's life
> > (e.g. US Presidents and some other politicians). Towards the end of
> > someone's career, you may get tribute articles and the like. Then,
> > when the person dies, you get obituaries, and then (possibly) entries
> > in the histories relevant to that person. Very prominent people get
> > entire books written about them. Others get less.
> >
> > If Wikipedia jumps into that natural progression too early, and tries
> > to establish, or maintain, a biography before there are sources to
> > support one, the result can be a mess.
>



>
>
> Zee problem with this standard is that it would preclude having an
> article on the person currently running mali (admittedly the article
> isn't up to much but I think it could be argued that we should at
> least try).
>
>
Oh, there's definitely a knack to this business. Imagine that we wanted to
hive off the "Internet meme" etc. stuff from WP to some hypothetical sister
project (there is a genuine argument along the lines that "historians of
the future will be grateful to have at least some of this stuff on
record"); and leave the material of which it could be said "this guy is
just a footnote now ... but it's a footnote we should have". Now try to
translate what that means into the kind of language our policy documents
tend to use (all universals and epistemology). Doesn't work easily (cf. the
GNG).

We'd have to get a bit sophistimacated about our content, in terms at least
of current versus permanent interest.

Charles
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Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles

[geni]

On 24 March 2012 11:25, Carcharoth  wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 24, 2012 at 9:22 AM, Charles Matthews
>  wrote:
>
>> *We are currently lousy at judging "ephemeral notability", and issues
>> around it seem to be classic time-sinks. There is a bigger picture here,
>> and digging around in older biographical dictionaries can help to explain
>> what is going on.
>
> This is an excellent point (along with the rest of the posts from
> Charles and Andreas). I was thinking explicitly of the sense you get
> of what constitutes a 'proper' biography when reading how it was done
> in the past (especially the 19th-century Dictionary of National
> Biography and the 2004 update/expansion/revision of that, the ODNB).
> If you spend your time reading and looking at numerous biographies
> across a wide range of subjects (as I do, both on Wikipedia and
> elsewhere, and as Charles does), then you get a good sense of what
> sources are used for a genuine biography, and what sources are
> features of more ephemeral biographies.
>
> Other biographical sources I'm familiar with include the Australian
> and Canadian dictionaries of national biography, the Biographical
> Memoirs of the Fellows of the Royal Society journal, the similar
> publication in the USA, produced by (I think) the National Academy of
> Sciences for their members, and the Dictionary of Scientific
> Biography.
>
> The point about Wikipedia (for BLPs) being ahead of the proper sources
> to use is another excellent one. There is a natural progression to
> biographical sources that (for obvious reasons) parallels the
> subject's life. People record their own lives at first (diaries,
> letters, CVs and the like), and then gradually others start to write
> about that person and you get short descriptions such as author and
> contributor biographies, and short news items. Then, as someone
> becomes more prominent, you get more considered material, such as
> interviews, feature articles, and so on. Very prominent people get
> official and official biographers that document that person's life
> (e.g. US Presidents and some other politicians). Towards the end of
> someone's career, you may get tribute articles and the like. Then,
> when the person dies, you get obituaries, and then (possibly) entries
> in the histories relevant to that person. Very prominent people get
> entire books written about them. Others get less.
>
> If Wikipedia jumps into that natural progression too early, and tries
> to establish, or maintain, a biography before there are sources to
> support one, the result can be a mess. Even if done carefully, it can
> still be a problem. I mentioned the example of Robert E. M. Hedges,
> who's article I've just been updating. If I hadn't updated that
> article, it likely would have remained without an update until more
> material was published. In all four cases I've given as examples of
> BLPs that I've created or edited extensively, I've felt uncomfortable
> at times that I was doing what should, properly, be left until the
> right moment for those people's colleagues and peers to do - write
> that person's life story (in some ways, the difference between an
> authorised and unauthorised biography). That is why it is important to
> have the foundation of a proper biographical source to build on, not
> go too far, and to be clear that BLPs are always a work in progress,
> waiting for the definitive accounts to be written by others (and then
> summarised and incorporated into the Wikipedia article).
>
> There are other examples, but I'll leave those for another time.
>
> Carcharoth
>


Zee problem with this standard is that it would preclude having an
article on the person currently running mali (admittedly the article
isn't up to much but I think it could be argued that we should at
least try).

-- 
geni

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Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles

[Carcharoth]

On Sat, Mar 24, 2012 at 9:22 AM, Charles Matthews
 wrote:

> *We are currently lousy at judging "ephemeral notability", and issues
> around it seem to be classic time-sinks. There is a bigger picture here,
> and digging around in older biographical dictionaries can help to explain
> what is going on.

This is an excellent point (along with the rest of the posts from
Charles and Andreas). I was thinking explicitly of the sense you get
of what constitutes a 'proper' biography when reading how it was done
in the past (especially the 19th-century Dictionary of National
Biography and the 2004 update/expansion/revision of that, the ODNB).
If you spend your time reading and looking at numerous biographies
across a wide range of subjects (as I do, both on Wikipedia and
elsewhere, and as Charles does), then you get a good sense of what
sources are used for a genuine biography, and what sources are
features of more ephemeral biographies.

Other biographical sources I'm familiar with include the Australian
and Canadian dictionaries of national biography, the Biographical
Memoirs of the Fellows of the Royal Society journal, the similar
publication in the USA, produced by (I think) the National Academy of
Sciences for their members, and the Dictionary of Scientific
Biography.

The point about Wikipedia (for BLPs) being ahead of the proper sources
to use is another excellent one. There is a natural progression to
biographical sources that (for obvious reasons) parallels the
subject's life. People record their own lives at first (diaries,
letters, CVs and the like), and then gradually others start to write
about that person and you get short descriptions such as author and
contributor biographies, and short news items. Then, as someone
becomes more prominent, you get more considered material, such as
interviews, feature articles, and so on. Very prominent people get
official and official biographers that document that person's life
(e.g. US Presidents and some other politicians). Towards the end of
someone's career, you may get tribute articles and the like. Then,
when the person dies, you get obituaries, and then (possibly) entries
in the histories relevant to that person. Very prominent people get
entire books written about them. Others get less.

If Wikipedia jumps into that natural progression too early, and tries
to establish, or maintain, a biography before there are sources to
support one, the result can be a mess. Even if done carefully, it can
still be a problem. I mentioned the example of Robert E. M. Hedges,
who's article I've just been updating. If I hadn't updated that
article, it likely would have remained without an update until more
material was published. In all four cases I've given as examples of
BLPs that I've created or edited extensively, I've felt uncomfortable
at times that I was doing what should, properly, be left until the
right moment for those people's colleagues and peers to do - write
that person's life story (in some ways, the difference between an
authorised and unauthorised biography). That is why it is important to
have the foundation of a proper biographical source to build on, not
go too far, and to be clear that BLPs are always a work in progress,
waiting for the definitive accounts to be written by others (and then
summarised and incorporated into the Wikipedia article).

There are other examples, but I'll leave those for another time.

Carcharoth

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Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles

[Charles Matthews]

On 23 March 2012 15:06, Andreas Kolbe  wrote:




> - We need fewer biographies.
>
> - We need to give borderline-notable people (people like Hawkins; not MPs)
> an easy opt-out.
>
> - We could probably benefit from making real-life name registration
> mandatory for BLP editing, and hosting them on a different project, or at
> the very least introducing flagged revisions for BLPs, and making the right
> to approve BLP changes one that requires familiarity with BLP policy, and a
> commitment to uphold it.
>
> - We need to abandon ADAM and make sure, somehow, that biographies are fair
> and balanced. We can't do that with the amount of biographies we currently
> have.
>
>
I think a serious "position paper" on BLP is possible.  There are several
aspects:

* We are currently not very good at recognising when biographical
information is "indiscriminate" (see
[[WP:INDISCRIMINATE]]).
We could get better at that, as a way of addressing what Andreas is calling
ADAM.

*We can certainly look at special notability guidelines for classes of
individuals (e.g. politicians, employees of the media, entertainers,
sportspeople, reality TV stars). Some divide-and-conquer to understand the
more problematic areas in their own terms would be good.

*We are currently lousy at judging "ephemeral notability", and issues
around it seem to be classic time-sinks. There is a bigger picture here,
and digging around in older biographical dictionaries can help to explain
what is going on.

*Certainly extending control of revisions to all BLP pages is an option to
consider; naturally this is a major step requiring wide community support,
and that in turn probably requires a reasonable amount of preparation, not
phrased in too much immoderate language.

*Tools and techniques. I'm a fan of the idea of using "Related changes"  on
chunks of BLP, so that patrolling say 1% at a time becomes easier. Hiving
off BLP into its own community isn't a solution that is clearly going to
work, let's say. Technical concentration on the material, on the other
hand, might do quite a lot to highlight the difficult cases.

Charles
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Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles

[Andreas Kolbe]

I would second this. In addition, I believe we should allow
borderline-notable people to opt out of having a biography, to prevent the
sort of drama we are currently having with the Hawkins biography.

Otherwise, we are digging our own graves. As we all know, editor numbers
are stagnating, or positively diminishing, while the number of biographies
rises daily. We are already too stretched to look after biographies. Johann
Hari's slurs remained in the vandalised biographies for days and weeks on
end.

In addition, for little watched biographies, our biography writing process
is often little more than dirt accretion – anonymous people who have no
interest in producing  a balanced biography adding derogatory information,
or random stuff they read and found "interesting". The results are not
pretty:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Charles_M._Blow&oldid=482965680

More than half of a biography about an alleged religious slur? This stuff
is typical of the anonymous dirt accretion method (ADAM) of biography
writing. It's the sort of process that's resulted in a 1,500 word biography
about a US politician of which 1,250 words were about alleged complicity
with Scientology (because she had once looked at a Scientology drugs
rehabilitation programme), or a BLP of a UK member of parliament that was
50 per cent about expense investigations and cherry-picked to create the
false impression he had financially profited to the tune of over £10,000
from an error in his expense claims.

That's the sort of thing that will really endear Wikipedia to legislators.

- We need fewer biographies.

- We need to give borderline-notable people (people like Hawkins; not MPs)
an easy opt-out.

- We could probably benefit from making real-life name registration
mandatory for BLP editing, and hosting them on a different project, or at
the very least introducing flagged revisions for BLPs, and making the right
to approve BLP changes one that requires familiarity with BLP policy, and a
commitment to uphold it.

- We need to abandon ADAM and make sure, somehow, that biographies are fair
and balanced. We can't do that with the amount of biographies we currently
have.

Andreas


On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 2:04 PM, Carcharoth wrote:

> I'm posting here an argument I made in a recent AfD, explaining why I
> think more stringent notability requirements are needed for
> biographical articles:
>
> "The right point to assess someone's notability and write a definitive
> article about them is at that point (or sometimes when they retire).
> Any BLP is only a work in progress until that point is reached. [Some
> say] "Notability, once attained, does not diminish." That might seem
> true, but what is being assessed is not the subject's true notability,
> but a fluctuating 'notability during lifetime' that can wax and wane
> over time, with the true level of notability not being established
> until someone's career or life is over. Some people gain awards and
> recognitions and have long and diverse careers and have glowing
> obituaries written about them, and pass into the history of the field
> they worked in. Others have more pedestrian careers.
>
> The point is that it is rarely possible to make an accurate assessment
> until the right point is reached. What you end up with if you have low
> standards for allowing articles on BLPs is a huge number of borderline
> BLPs all across Wikipedia (heavily weighted towards contemporary
> coverage [...]), the vast majority of the subjects of which will not
> have prominent (or any) obituaries published about them, and in 50
> years time or so the articles will look a bit silly, cobbled together
> from various scraps and items published during the subject's lifetime,
> but with no proper, independent assessment of their place in history.
>
> It has been said before, but that is why specialist biographical
> dictionaries often have as one of their inclusion criteria that
> someone has to be dead before having an article. I'm not saying we
> should go that far, but there is a case for many BLPs of saying 'if
> there is no current published biography, wait until this career/life
> is over and make an assessment at that point', and until then either
> delete or have a bland stub."
>
> The above is why I rarely edit BLPs. It is far easier (and more
> satisfying) to edit about a topic once it is reasonably 'complete',
> not ongoing. The latter statements applies to more than BLPs
> (biographies of living people), for example it applies to any 'news'
> topic, but it does apply especially to BLPs as they are a minefield
> because they require careful maintenance.
>
> To give some examples of articles I've edited or created that are BLPs:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Mestel
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Lieberman
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_W._Moore
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_E._M._Hedges
>
> Those aren't very good examples. What I'm really looking for is a way
> to illustra

Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles

[Ken Arromdee]

On Fri, 23 Mar 2012, David Gerard wrote:

This is a rather broad and (as I've noted) hideously vague proposed
solution to a very specific problem, viz. someone who is apparently
well within notability guidelines wanting an article deleted because
he doesn't have control of it, and is abusive towards anyone who tries
to help.


He's not "well within notability guidelines", he falls under BLPs of
marginal notability.  Marginal notability BLPs are supposed to take the
wishes of the subject into account with respect to deletion.

Moreover, this BLP has been violating BLP policy for years.  It doesn't
matter how abusive he is off-Wiki; Wikipedia has failed here.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles

[David Gerard]

On 2.3 March 2012 18:45, Carcharoth  wrote:

> No, I'm not asking why those with Who's Who entries that lack
> Wikipedia articles lack Wikipedia articles. I'm asking why those who
> chose to opt out of Who's Who (by not sending in an entry) are not
> allowed to opt out of Wikipedia. Sometimes the reasons for not wanting
> to be publicly listed in a publication like Who's Who are the same as
> for not wanting to be listed in Wikipedia.


Because Who's Who is requested self-written entries, and the people it
covers are a large part of its market. Wikipedia is third-party
coverage for the benefit of third-party readers. That is, they're a
completely different species of thing. It's not clear to me how your
comparison of the two actually makes sense.


- d.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles

[Carcharoth]

On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 6:25 PM, David Gerard  wrote:
> On 23 March 2012 17:20, Carcharoth  wrote:
>> On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 5:16 PM, David Gerard  wrote:
>
>>> Who's Who might say "this guy is notable", but the actual content is
>>> completely self-sourced. It's effectively a sponsored blog entry.
>
>> You miss my point. What I'm saying is that if someone who *could* have
>> a Who's Who entry doesn't have one, then we should be asking why.
>
> Oh yes, it's definitely missing articles list stuff. Agreed.

No, I'm not asking why those with Who's Who entries that lack
Wikipedia articles lack Wikipedia articles. I'm asking why those who
chose to opt out of Who's Who (by not sending in an entry) are not
allowed to opt out of Wikipedia. Sometimes the reasons for not wanting
to be publicly listed in a publication like Who's Who are the same as
for not wanting to be listed in Wikipedia.

Carcharoth

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Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles

[David Gerard]

On 23 March 2012 17:20, Carcharoth  wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 5:16 PM, David Gerard  wrote:

>> Who's Who might say "this guy is notable", but the actual content is
>> completely self-sourced. It's effectively a sponsored blog entry.

> You miss my point. What I'm saying is that if someone who *could* have
> a Who's Who entry doesn't have one, then we should be asking why.


Oh yes, it's definitely missing articles list stuff. Agreed.


- d.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles

[Carcharoth]

On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 5:10 PM, Carcharoth  wrote:

> What I would say is that Wikipedia biographies should have at least one 
> source that

I knew I should have finished the draft before posting it... That
sentence was meant to say something like "should have at least one
source that is recognisably biographical". But really just delete that
unfinished sentence.

I also forgot to say that it would be simpler to just forbid the use
of news sources on BLPs that lack non-news sources. It is the
aggregation of factoids from various news sources to "make" a
biography that is really unprofessional. No reputable biographer would
do that. I'm trying to remember what I said in an earlier discussion
(years ago now): if no-one else has attempted to write a biography,
Wikipedia shouldn't be the one to attempt it first.

Carcharoth

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Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles

[Carcharoth]

On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 5:16 PM, David Gerard  wrote:
> On 23 March 2012 17:10, Carcharoth  wrote:
>
>> For Leon Mestel, the qualifying sources would be his entry in Who's
>> Who and in Debrett's People of Today. Those are UK-specific sources.
>> What would the equivalent be in the USA?
>
> Who's Who might say "this guy is notable", but the actual content is
> completely self-sourced. It's effectively a sponsored blog entry.

You miss my point. What I'm saying is that if someone who *could* have
a Who's Who entry doesn't have one, then we should be asking why.

Carcharoth

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Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles

[David Gerard]

On 23 March 2012 17:10, Carcharoth  wrote:

> For Leon Mestel, the qualifying sources would be his entry in Who's
> Who and in Debrett's People of Today. Those are UK-specific sources.
> What would the equivalent be in the USA?


Who's Who might say "this guy is notable", but the actual content is
completely self-sourced. It's effectively a sponsored blog entry.

This still looks way like you're saying "We must do something, this is
something, therefore we must do this." And that doesn't make a bad
idea (which this really strongly resembles) into a good one, at all.


- d.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles

[Carcharoth]

On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 2:18 PM, David Gerard  wrote:
> On 23 March 2012 14:04, Carcharoth  wrote:
>
>> It has been said before, but that is why specialist biographical
>> dictionaries often have as one of their inclusion criteria that
>> someone has to be dead before having an article. I'm not saying we
>> should go that far, but there is a case for many BLPs of saying 'if
>> there is no current published biography, wait until this career/life
>> is over and make an assessment at that point', and until then either
>> delete or have a bland stub."
>
> Define "published biography". Two paragraphs? A page on a notable
> website? A news media article? A detailed criticism with life story
> mixed in? A whole book on them?

I know that this is the critical point, and I never said it was
cut-and-dried. It would need discussion, but let's actually discuss it
(with examples) instead of dismissing it. What I would say is that
Wikipedia biographies should have at least one source that

1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Mestel

For Leon Mestel, the qualifying sources would be his entry in Who's
Who and in Debrett's People of Today. Those are UK-specific sources.
What would the equivalent be in the USA?

2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Lieberman

For Philip Lieberman, you have brief biographical paragraphs in lists
of the contributors for volumes he has contributed to, plus the pages
published by his university that summarise his career. I haven't been
able to find anything else, but this will be the situation for a lot
of academics. While they are still actively engaged in research, you
often won't find anything beyond their university pages and brief
biographical summaries for conferences they speak at as invited guests
and in publications they contribute to. Ironically, his son has an
entry in Encyclopedia Britannica, but he doesn't:

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1798503/Daniel-Lieberman

3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_W._Moore

For Norman W. Moore you have an entry in Who's Who, an entry in
Burke's Peerage and Baronetage, biographical information in books he
has published. The example of this in the article is now a dead link,
but it can be seen here:

http://www.nhbs.com/oaks_dragonflies_and_people_tefno_117959.html&tab_tag=bio

You also have the example of a festschrift (this is a form of tribute,
which would in most cases count as a solid biographical reference).

4) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_E._M._Hedges

The final example, Robert Hedges, is more difficult. There will likely
be suitable material out there, but I haven't been able to find
anything that would really satisfy me yet.

By the way, having some suitable level of biographical material
published doesn't mean someone is automatically notable in terms of
Wikipedia inclusion criteria. But what I'm saying is that if someone
*doesn't* have some level of biographical material published, then
that (and the type of material it is) should weigh heavily in whether
to keep an article, how to treat deletion requests from the subject of
an article, and how to edit articles that are kept.

Carcharoth

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Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles

[Carcharoth]

On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 4:48 PM, David Gerard  wrote:
> On 23 March 2012 14:04, Carcharoth  wrote:
>
>> I'm posting here an argument I made in a recent AfD, explaining why I
>> think more stringent notability requirements are needed for
>> biographical articles:
>
> And I see that the specific example you're talking about is:
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Jim_Hawkins_%28radio_presenter%29
>
> This is a rather broad and (as I've noted) hideously vague proposed
> solution to a very specific problem, viz. someone who is apparently
> well within notability guidelines wanting an article deleted because
> he doesn't have control of it, and is abusive towards anyone who tries
> to help.

I've written on this topic before, well before this AfD. If you want,
I can dig up the diffs, but I'm looking at the general case here, not
this specific one (I'll post a response to your previous post that I
had been drafting). I should have made it clearer that this is a
proposal intended for all BLPs, not any specific one (but I thought
that was obvious). And yes, I know any concrete proposal will have to
be proposed on-wiki. I just wanted to bounce ideas around here.

Carcharoth

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Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles

[David Gerard]

On 23 March 2012 14:04, Carcharoth  wrote:

> I'm posting here an argument I made in a recent AfD, explaining why I
> think more stringent notability requirements are needed for
> biographical articles:


And I see that the specific example you're talking about is:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Jim_Hawkins_%28radio_presenter%29

This is a rather broad and (as I've noted) hideously vague proposed
solution to a very specific problem, viz. someone who is apparently
well within notability guidelines wanting an article deleted because
he doesn't have control of it, and is abusive towards anyone who tries
to help.


- d.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles

[Fred Bauder]

> n Fri, 23 Mar 2012, Carcharoth wrote:
>> [Some say] "Notability, once attained, does not diminish."
>
> Unfortunately, WP:N says that too.  What you're saying makes sense, but
> it is
> contradicted by our policies.  If someone can meet the requirements for
> notability at one moment in time, they are notable according to our
> rules.
>
> Good luck changing the notability rules.

What we need is better procedures for changing rules. I've been bogged
down anytime I tried lately. One or two folks come along and the
situation is little better than one of these discussions. No close.

fred



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Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles

[Ken Arromdee]

n Fri, 23 Mar 2012, Carcharoth wrote:

[Some say] "Notability, once attained, does not diminish."


Unfortunately, WP:N says that too.  What you're saying makes sense, but it is
contradicted by our policies.  If someone can meet the requirements for
notability at one moment in time, they are notable according to our rules.

Good luck changing the notability rules.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles

[David Gerard]

On 23 March 2012 14:04, Carcharoth  wrote:

> It has been said before, but that is why specialist biographical
> dictionaries often have as one of their inclusion criteria that
> someone has to be dead before having an article. I'm not saying we
> should go that far, but there is a case for many BLPs of saying 'if
> there is no current published biography, wait until this career/life
> is over and make an assessment at that point', and until then either
> delete or have a bland stub."


Define "published biography". Two paragraphs? A page on a notable
website? A news media article? A detailed criticism with life story
mixed in? A whole book on them?

(Define "book".)

You've come up with a criterion that seems cut-and-dry to you, but is
actually horribly subjective and will be a matter for endless
irresolvable disputes. It's not like arbcom is in *need* of more work
...


- d.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles

[Fred Bauder]

> I'm posting here an argument I made in a recent AfD, explaining why I
> think more stringent notability requirements are needed for
> biographical articles:
>
> "The right point to assess someone's notability and write a definitive
> article about them is at that point (or sometimes when they retire).
> Any BLP is only a work in progress until that point is reached. [Some
> say] "Notability, once attained, does not diminish." That might seem
> true, but what is being assessed is not the subject's true notability,
> but a fluctuating 'notability during lifetime' that can wax and wane
> over time, with the true level of notability not being established
> until someone's career or life is over. Some people gain awards and
> recognitions and have long and diverse careers and have glowing
> obituaries written about them, and pass into the history of the field
> they worked in. Others have more pedestrian careers.
>
> The point is that it is rarely possible to make an accurate assessment
> until the right point is reached. What you end up with if you have low
> standards for allowing articles on BLPs is a huge number of borderline
> BLPs all across Wikipedia (heavily weighted towards contemporary
> coverage [...]), the vast majority of the subjects of which will not
> have prominent (or any) obituaries published about them, and in 50
> years time or so the articles will look a bit silly, cobbled together
> from various scraps and items published during the subject's lifetime,
> but with no proper, independent assessment of their place in history.
>
> It has been said before, but that is why specialist biographical
> dictionaries often have as one of their inclusion criteria that
> someone has to be dead before having an article. I'm not saying we
> should go that far, but there is a case for many BLPs of saying 'if
> there is no current published biography, wait until this career/life
> is over and make an assessment at that point', and until then either
> delete or have a bland stub."
>
> The above is why I rarely edit BLPs. It is far easier (and more
> satisfying) to edit about a topic once it is reasonably 'complete',
> not ongoing. The latter statements applies to more than BLPs
> (biographies of living people), for example it applies to any 'news'
> topic, but it does apply especially to BLPs as they are a minefield
> because they require careful maintenance.
>
> To give some examples of articles I've edited or created that are BLPs:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Mestel
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Lieberman
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_W._Moore
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_E._M._Hedges
>
> Those aren't very good examples. What I'm really looking for is a way
> to illustrate how some people become notable, and then fade into
> obscurity, while others maintain notability and accumulate coverage in
> reliable sources throughout their lives, rather than only briefly. The
> latter are good topics for encyclopedia articles, but the latter tend
> not to be. Is there a way to argue for more stringent notability
> requirements that won't get shot down? Essentially, what I'm saying
> Wikipedia needs to avoid is bequeathing a lot of stubby articles to
> future generations of editors who will get stuck trying to find out
> anything more about people who have faded back into obscurity and for
> whom it is often difficult to ascertain if they are still living.
>
> Carcharoth

We can delete articles whose subject had only ephemeral notability. In
such cases nearly the only notable event, viewed in perspective, is that
they once had a Wikipedia article.

That is no reason to not have an article while there is public interest
in them. We determine notability by information published in generally
reliable sources which is not that difficult to ascertain.

Fred


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[WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles

[Carcharoth]

I'm posting here an argument I made in a recent AfD, explaining why I
think more stringent notability requirements are needed for
biographical articles:

"The right point to assess someone's notability and write a definitive
article about them is at that point (or sometimes when they retire).
Any BLP is only a work in progress until that point is reached. [Some
say] "Notability, once attained, does not diminish." That might seem
true, but what is being assessed is not the subject's true notability,
but a fluctuating 'notability during lifetime' that can wax and wane
over time, with the true level of notability not being established
until someone's career or life is over. Some people gain awards and
recognitions and have long and diverse careers and have glowing
obituaries written about them, and pass into the history of the field
they worked in. Others have more pedestrian careers.

The point is that it is rarely possible to make an accurate assessment
until the right point is reached. What you end up with if you have low
standards for allowing articles on BLPs is a huge number of borderline
BLPs all across Wikipedia (heavily weighted towards contemporary
coverage [...]), the vast majority of the subjects of which will not
have prominent (or any) obituaries published about them, and in 50
years time or so the articles will look a bit silly, cobbled together
from various scraps and items published during the subject's lifetime,
but with no proper, independent assessment of their place in history.

It has been said before, but that is why specialist biographical
dictionaries often have as one of their inclusion criteria that
someone has to be dead before having an article. I'm not saying we
should go that far, but there is a case for many BLPs of saying 'if
there is no current published biography, wait until this career/life
is over and make an assessment at that point', and until then either
delete or have a bland stub."

The above is why I rarely edit BLPs. It is far easier (and more
satisfying) to edit about a topic once it is reasonably 'complete',
not ongoing. The latter statements applies to more than BLPs
(biographies of living people), for example it applies to any 'news'
topic, but it does apply especially to BLPs as they are a minefield
because they require careful maintenance.

To give some examples of articles I've edited or created that are BLPs:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Mestel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Lieberman
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_W._Moore
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_E._M._Hedges

Those aren't very good examples. What I'm really looking for is a way
to illustrate how some people become notable, and then fade into
obscurity, while others maintain notability and accumulate coverage in
reliable sources throughout their lives, rather than only briefly. The
latter are good topics for encyclopedia articles, but the latter tend
not to be. Is there a way to argue for more stringent notability
requirements that won't get shot down? Essentially, what I'm saying
Wikipedia needs to avoid is bequeathing a lot of stubby articles to
future generations of editors who will get stuck trying to find out
anything more about people who have faded back into obscurity and for
whom it is often difficult to ascertain if they are still living.

Carcharoth

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