Re: [Wikimedia-l] Resolution: Media about living people
Thanks for that link, Phoebe! I am concerned about the issue surrounding the comment the real BLP problems happen when heavyweight (in edit count terms) Wikipedia users swing their weight around Maybe such Wikipedians have a problem with the BLP person in real life, or is closely related to some person who has a problem with the BLP person, and maybe it is just some stubborn Wikipedian sticking to the WP guidelines and policies. In the words of Emerson, A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers. Whatever the reason, the result is always the same: the BLP person feels helpless and abandoned to the whims and fancies of the Wikipedian in question. Most times they don't even know enough to see that it is just one person behind their reverts, and see the problem as Wikipedia, a bad place to have a page on. The problem has accelerated since this discussion in 2010, however, because with all the cutbacks in journalism, Wikipedia has become the go-to place for information about such BLP's, unfortunately for them. 2013/12/14, phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com: On Thu, Dec 12, 2013 at 4:23 PM, Andy Mabbett a...@pigsonthewing.org.uk wrote: On 12 December 2013 19:40, phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com wrote: With a nod to Andy's comment, as a community I think we may want to review our progress in the last few years on the BLP issue, and have a broad community consultation about where we are still falling short and ideas for going forward, given our constraints and changing environment of readers and editors. I didn't make a comment; I requested information: Please also provide a link to the consultation you carried out with the community, before making this change. I seem to have missed it. Oddly, I seem to have missed the response, also. Well, with such a pointed comment, I assumed you were trying to make a point about the value of community consultations, so that's what I responded to. As Maria noted, this was prompted by a community request on the board noticeboard, which of course anyone is welcome to participate in. And as I noted, we saw a need to clarify what we intended in the earlier resolution -- not something that can really be determined by community consensus. So no, we didn't have a broad community consultation on this particular amendment, though I also don't think it was out of the blue; there have been many related discussions on Commons and Wikipedia over the years. I was recently reminded by someone that we *did* have a general community consultation on the BLP issue as part of the strategy project -- there's still good info (and some broad recommendations to the board) here, which are worth reviewing if the topic is of interest: https://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Task_force/Living_People best, Phoebe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Resolution: Media about living people
Hi Jane, I am concerned about the issue surrounding the comment the real BLP problems happen when heavyweight (in edit count terms) Wikipedia users swing their weight around I think the problem is that if you ask ten different people about the reason why we have BLP problems, you'll get ten different answers. All ten would probably have some truth in them, but any one in isolation would be inadequate. My own point of view is that our policies and procedures are actually pretty good on paper, but they're just very unevenly and inconsistently applied in the real world. The Tier 1 biographies, such as those of Messrs Obama, Cameron, and Abbott are pretty safe from BLP hijinx, but there is a massive underbelly of poorly defended BLPs on minor celebrities, local politicians, and the like, which are not watched consistently and where hagiography or defamation can take root. This is why, while things like the BoT's declaration are not unwelcome, I feel that they don't have any practical effect in fixing the problem. All it takes is for one negatively written bio to slip through the net to do real harm to someone in the real world. My preferred way of dealing with this on en.wp would be to massively tighten the notability criteria where they related to biographies of living or possibly living people, but this would no doubt be met with cries of deletionism!. Indeed, I don't think it's possible to adequately address the issue on large projects like en.wp or commons without a massive cultural shift and sweeping changes to policy that would cause immense disruption in the community; something the BoT is understandably reluctant to do. Cheers, Craig ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Resolution: Media about living people
On 14 December 2013 00:30, phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com wrote: I didn't make a comment; I requested information: Please also provide a link to the consultation you carried out with the community, before making this change. I seem to have missed it. Oddly, I seem to have missed the response, also. Well, with such a pointed comment, I assumed you were trying to make a point about the value of community consultations, so that's what I responded to. To reiterate, I didn't make a comment; I requested information. [...] So no, we didn't have a broad community consultation on this particular amendment Thank you for making that clear. there have been many related discussions on Commons and Wikipedia over the years. Indeed there have. But until a widely-advertised consultation is held (advertised in the manner of the recent discussion on logos and branding), we wont know the views of the community at large, rather than those who have an axe to grind. We won't know, for instance, whether the amendment goes too far, or not far enough, in reflecting the communities wishes. -- Andy Mabbett @pigsonthewing http://pigsonthewing.org.uk ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Resolution: Media about living people
Well I don't see any problem with starting off by taking a survey among OTRS users, or in trying to collect data to classify problems that are reported. Once we know what the popular problems are, can we better help stop the flow of unwanted trash-talking on BLP's. I think the underbelly that we all agree is problematic, could be a lot less problematic if we kept the BLP's in that underbelly to only mention the names of other living people if they are also on Wikipedia. Often the names and activities of non-notable living people such as former spouses, children, parents, and other related people slip in to those BLPs in an unnecessary way. Those people are not always thrilled to see their names on Wikipedia... 2013/12/14, Andy Mabbett a...@pigsonthewing.org.uk: On 14 December 2013 00:30, phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.com wrote: I didn't make a comment; I requested information: Please also provide a link to the consultation you carried out with the community, before making this change. I seem to have missed it. Oddly, I seem to have missed the response, also. Well, with such a pointed comment, I assumed you were trying to make a point about the value of community consultations, so that's what I responded to. To reiterate, I didn't make a comment; I requested information. [...] So no, we didn't have a broad community consultation on this particular amendment Thank you for making that clear. there have been many related discussions on Commons and Wikipedia over the years. Indeed there have. But until a widely-advertised consultation is held (advertised in the manner of the recent discussion on logos and branding), we wont know the views of the community at large, rather than those who have an axe to grind. We won't know, for instance, whether the amendment goes too far, or not far enough, in reflecting the communities wishes. -- Andy Mabbett @pigsonthewing http://pigsonthewing.org.uk ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Resolution: Media about living people
Andy Mabbett wrote: Indeed there have. But until a widely-advertised consultation is held (advertised in the manner of the recent discussion on logos and branding), we wont know the views of the community at large, rather than those who have an axe to grind. Your logic here is broken. There are certainly times to have widely advertised discussions, but doing so is not free: they often require creating and deploying banners (with an associated increased risk of banner blindness), related mailing list posts, time taken to draft and re-draft proposals, and, of course, the time taken by members of the community to discuss and re-discuss how best to move forward. Time is precious, especially volunteer time, so we should make every effort to ensure that when we ask people to donate theirs to a global discussion, we don't do so lightly. In this case, nobody has made a case that this small amendment to a previous resolution required a global discussion. Generally speaking, implementing common sense does not. We won't know, for instance, whether the amendment goes too far, or not far enough, in reflecting the communities wishes. I think what you're saying here is neither fair nor accurate. We know that the amendment doesn't go too far because we can read it and evaluate it. The underlying issue here is that Commons is plagued by a community that needs to get its house in order. I'm certainly not alone in this view. Passing the biographies of living persons resolution without explicitly mentioning media was probably a small oversight, in hindsight, though it's a bit disheartening that the spirit of the resolution couldn't carry the day and that the Board felt it necessary to explicitly dictate what common sense was already saying. It's perhaps ironic that Commons seems to hold common sense in such short supply. :-) As for these theoretical objections, if _you_ or anyone else objects to this amendment, I'd certainly be interested to read why. Positing that someone could have objected in the event of a global community discussion in an alternate universe, while an enjoyable weekend activity, isn't actually the same as objections actively being raised against this amendment. Resolutions, as this amendment itself explicitly demonstrates, can be modified, as necessary and appropriate. This is also not to be done lightly or carelessly, but nothing is permanently and indefinitely set in stone should there be legitimate reasons to modify a previous resolution. As it stands, this is operative global policy and Commons and every other project must respect it or exercise its right to fork. MZMcBride ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Resolution: Media about living people
On 14 December 2013 15:55, MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com wrote: Andy Mabbett wrote: until a widely-advertised consultation is held (advertised in the manner of the recent discussion on logos and branding), we wont know the views of the community at large, rather than those who have an axe to grind. Your logic here is broken. Charmed, I'm sure. [Snip opinion which in no way demonstrates broken logic] We won't know, for instance, whether the amendment goes too far, or not far enough, in reflecting the communities wishes. I think what you're saying here is neither fair nor accurate. In that I should have written community's, or arguably, communities', perhaps. But not otherwise. [Snip more opinion] -- Andy Mabbett @pigsonthewing http://pigsonthewing.org.uk ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Resolution: Media about living people
On Sat, Dec 14, 2013 at 6:08 PM, Craig Franklin cfrank...@halonetwork.net wrote: Hi Jane, I am concerned about the issue surrounding the comment the real BLP problems happen when heavyweight (in edit count terms) Wikipedia users swing their weight around I think the problem is that if you ask ten different people about the reason why we have BLP problems, you'll get ten different answers. All ten would probably have some truth in them, but any one in isolation would be inadequate. The list of problems becomes even longer for images. The 2009 resolution on biographies of living people was about identifiable people, given they were the subject of a biography. This new 'media about living people' resolution doesn't make any such distinction for media, which I guess will result in lots of confusion about whether the scope includes images of unidentifiable people. It should, but ... This resolution appears to be asking for verifiability regarding images of living people. We are going to need some clarity around what the board considers to be verifiability (how do we prove the photo was taken at a public event and it is real? etc), and whether that includes unidentifiable people. Ensuring that all projects in all languages that describe or show living people have policies in place calling for special attention to the principles of neutrality and verifiability in those articles;.. On English Wikipedia we have some guidance regarding photos of living people, but I can't find anything relating to verifiability or neutrality. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research#Original_images https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons#Images Wikimedia Commons has a policy which rejects 'neutrality', and it doesnt have a verifiability policy. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Project_scope/Neutral_point_of_view https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Photographs_of_identifiable_people Is there a discussion happening on Commons somewhere about the implications of this resolution? My own point of view is that our policies and procedures are actually pretty good on paper, but they're just very unevenly and inconsistently applied in the real world. The Tier 1 biographies, such as those of Messrs Obama, Cameron, and Abbott are pretty safe from BLP hijinx, but there is a massive underbelly of poorly defended BLPs on minor celebrities, local politicians, and the like, which are not watched consistently and where hagiography or defamation can take root. This is why, while things like the BoT's declaration are not unwelcome, I feel that they don't have any practical effect in fixing the problem. All it takes is for one negatively written bio to slip through the net to do real harm to someone in the real world. I agree with you Craig up to here .. My preferred way of dealing with this on en.wp would be to massively tighten the notability criteria where they related to biographies of living or possibly living people, but this would no doubt be met with cries of deletionism!. And agree your preferred approach could help. On English Wikipedia, I think we have an article/editor ratio problem, which is only getting worse as articles increase and editors leave, and is meaning watchlists are less useful to scan for problematic edits. The test for this is what is the average length of time between an edit of an old page (e.g. created in 2005) to the point in time that the edit a) appears on a watchlist, or b) is viewed as a diff, or c) is loaded as a page view, or d) leads to another edit. Then compare those averages with the averages from a year before, to determine whether edits are slipping past watchlists and recentchanges. I'm guessing that the length of time from edit to (a) or (b) is increasing, while (c) may be decreasing as Wikipedia readership increases. A smaller Wikipedia scope means there are less articles, with more editors watching and editing the pages the BLP problems appear on. I think it is necessary to add here that FlaggedRevs (Pending Changes) also helps, as any BLP problems are held in a queue. The 'volume of edits' can be a problem with FlaggedRevs in practise, but a) the 'size. Indeed, I don't think it's possible to adequately address the issue on large projects like en.wp or commons without a massive cultural shift and sweeping changes to policy that would cause immense disruption in the community; something the BoT is understandably reluctant to do. Another way the board can get serious about this problem is to mandate that each project write a BLP management strategy that needs to be approved by the WMF board, which would involve some type of periodic review of all content. The strategy would differ for each project based on their policies, scope and the size of the project. e.g. Wikisources would need to review only unpublished sources added each year; Wikipedias using FlaggedRevs could do spot
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Resolution: Media about living people
Is there a discussion happening on Commons somewhere about the implications of this resolution? - John Vandenberg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump#Resolution:Media_about_living_people Jee On Sat, Dec 14, 2013 at 10:24 PM, John Vandenberg jay...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Dec 14, 2013 at 6:08 PM, Craig Franklin cfrank...@halonetwork.net wrote: Hi Jane, I am concerned about the issue surrounding the comment the real BLP problems happen when heavyweight (in edit count terms) Wikipedia users swing their weight around I think the problem is that if you ask ten different people about the reason why we have BLP problems, you'll get ten different answers. All ten would probably have some truth in them, but any one in isolation would be inadequate. The list of problems becomes even longer for images. The 2009 resolution on biographies of living people was about identifiable people, given they were the subject of a biography. This new 'media about living people' resolution doesn't make any such distinction for media, which I guess will result in lots of confusion about whether the scope includes images of unidentifiable people. It should, but ... This resolution appears to be asking for verifiability regarding images of living people. We are going to need some clarity around what the board considers to be verifiability (how do we prove the photo was taken at a public event and it is real? etc), and whether that includes unidentifiable people. Ensuring that all projects in all languages that describe or show living people have policies in place calling for special attention to the principles of neutrality and verifiability in those articles;.. On English Wikipedia we have some guidance regarding photos of living people, but I can't find anything relating to verifiability or neutrality. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research#Original_images https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons#Images Wikimedia Commons has a policy which rejects 'neutrality', and it doesnt have a verifiability policy. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Project_scope/Neutral_point_of_view https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Photographs_of_identifiable_people Is there a discussion happening on Commons somewhere about the implications of this resolution? My own point of view is that our policies and procedures are actually pretty good on paper, but they're just very unevenly and inconsistently applied in the real world. The Tier 1 biographies, such as those of Messrs Obama, Cameron, and Abbott are pretty safe from BLP hijinx, but there is a massive underbelly of poorly defended BLPs on minor celebrities, local politicians, and the like, which are not watched consistently and where hagiography or defamation can take root. This is why, while things like the BoT's declaration are not unwelcome, I feel that they don't have any practical effect in fixing the problem. All it takes is for one negatively written bio to slip through the net to do real harm to someone in the real world. I agree with you Craig up to here .. My preferred way of dealing with this on en.wp would be to massively tighten the notability criteria where they related to biographies of living or possibly living people, but this would no doubt be met with cries of deletionism!. And agree your preferred approach could help. On English Wikipedia, I think we have an article/editor ratio problem, which is only getting worse as articles increase and editors leave, and is meaning watchlists are less useful to scan for problematic edits. The test for this is what is the average length of time between an edit of an old page (e.g. created in 2005) to the point in time that the edit a) appears on a watchlist, or b) is viewed as a diff, or c) is loaded as a page view, or d) leads to another edit. Then compare those averages with the averages from a year before, to determine whether edits are slipping past watchlists and recentchanges. I'm guessing that the length of time from edit to (a) or (b) is increasing, while (c) may be decreasing as Wikipedia readership increases. A smaller Wikipedia scope means there are less articles, with more editors watching and editing the pages the BLP problems appear on. I think it is necessary to add here that FlaggedRevs (Pending Changes) also helps, as any BLP problems are held in a queue. The 'volume of edits' can be a problem with FlaggedRevs in practise, but a) the 'size. Indeed, I don't think it's possible to adequately address the issue on large projects like en.wp or commons without a massive cultural shift and sweeping changes to policy that would cause immense disruption in the community; something the BoT is understandably reluctant to do. Another way the board can get serious about this problem is to mandate that each
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Resolution: Media about living people
And an application at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_talk:Contact_us/Problems#Suggested_change Jee On Sat, Dec 14, 2013 at 10:31 PM, Jeevan Jose jkadav...@gmail.com wrote: Is there a discussion happening on Commons somewhere about the implications of this resolution? - John Vandenberg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump#Resolution:Media_about_living_people Jee On Sat, Dec 14, 2013 at 10:24 PM, John Vandenberg jay...@gmail.comwrote: On Sat, Dec 14, 2013 at 6:08 PM, Craig Franklin cfrank...@halonetwork.net wrote: Hi Jane, I am concerned about the issue surrounding the comment the real BLP problems happen when heavyweight (in edit count terms) Wikipedia users swing their weight around I think the problem is that if you ask ten different people about the reason why we have BLP problems, you'll get ten different answers. All ten would probably have some truth in them, but any one in isolation would be inadequate. The list of problems becomes even longer for images. The 2009 resolution on biographies of living people was about identifiable people, given they were the subject of a biography. This new 'media about living people' resolution doesn't make any such distinction for media, which I guess will result in lots of confusion about whether the scope includes images of unidentifiable people. It should, but ... This resolution appears to be asking for verifiability regarding images of living people. We are going to need some clarity around what the board considers to be verifiability (how do we prove the photo was taken at a public event and it is real? etc), and whether that includes unidentifiable people. Ensuring that all projects in all languages that describe or show living people have policies in place calling for special attention to the principles of neutrality and verifiability in those articles;.. On English Wikipedia we have some guidance regarding photos of living people, but I can't find anything relating to verifiability or neutrality. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research#Original_images https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons#Images Wikimedia Commons has a policy which rejects 'neutrality', and it doesnt have a verifiability policy. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Project_scope/Neutral_point_of_view https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Photographs_of_identifiable_people Is there a discussion happening on Commons somewhere about the implications of this resolution? My own point of view is that our policies and procedures are actually pretty good on paper, but they're just very unevenly and inconsistently applied in the real world. The Tier 1 biographies, such as those of Messrs Obama, Cameron, and Abbott are pretty safe from BLP hijinx, but there is a massive underbelly of poorly defended BLPs on minor celebrities, local politicians, and the like, which are not watched consistently and where hagiography or defamation can take root. This is why, while things like the BoT's declaration are not unwelcome, I feel that they don't have any practical effect in fixing the problem. All it takes is for one negatively written bio to slip through the net to do real harm to someone in the real world. I agree with you Craig up to here .. My preferred way of dealing with this on en.wp would be to massively tighten the notability criteria where they related to biographies of living or possibly living people, but this would no doubt be met with cries of deletionism!. And agree your preferred approach could help. On English Wikipedia, I think we have an article/editor ratio problem, which is only getting worse as articles increase and editors leave, and is meaning watchlists are less useful to scan for problematic edits. The test for this is what is the average length of time between an edit of an old page (e.g. created in 2005) to the point in time that the edit a) appears on a watchlist, or b) is viewed as a diff, or c) is loaded as a page view, or d) leads to another edit. Then compare those averages with the averages from a year before, to determine whether edits are slipping past watchlists and recentchanges. I'm guessing that the length of time from edit to (a) or (b) is increasing, while (c) may be decreasing as Wikipedia readership increases. A smaller Wikipedia scope means there are less articles, with more editors watching and editing the pages the BLP problems appear on. I think it is necessary to add here that FlaggedRevs (Pending Changes) also helps, as any BLP problems are held in a queue. The 'volume of edits' can be a problem with FlaggedRevs in practise, but a) the 'size. Indeed, I don't think it's possible to adequately address the issue on large projects like en.wp or commons without a massive cultural shift and sweeping changes to policy
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Resolution: Media about living people
Thanks Jee for those links. It strikes me as odd that on a Commons:Contact us page there is no link to any explanation about how it all works. In my (limited!) experience of helping BLP subjects, it has helped them enormously just to talk about how Wikipedia works. Sometimes they are certain that some family member is making revenge edits, and just by showing them the user pages of the editors who made the problematic edits, they are often very relieved. Looking at history pages, discussion pages, and user pages is all very easy for Wikipedians, but most BLP subjects have no clue and go ballistic over something that might be trivial to fix. Instead of reducing our content-intake, we should try to help people to help themselves more by teaching them how to discover who made their page, who posted comments or pictures to that page, and how to contact those users either on their talk page or through the email this user feature. 2013/12/14, Jeevan Jose jkadav...@gmail.com: And an application at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_talk:Contact_us/Problems#Suggested_change Jee On Sat, Dec 14, 2013 at 10:31 PM, Jeevan Jose jkadav...@gmail.com wrote: Is there a discussion happening on Commons somewhere about the implications of this resolution? - John Vandenberg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump#Resolution:Media_about_living_people Jee On Sat, Dec 14, 2013 at 10:24 PM, John Vandenberg jay...@gmail.comwrote: On Sat, Dec 14, 2013 at 6:08 PM, Craig Franklin cfrank...@halonetwork.net wrote: Hi Jane, I am concerned about the issue surrounding the comment the real BLP problems happen when heavyweight (in edit count terms) Wikipedia users swing their weight around I think the problem is that if you ask ten different people about the reason why we have BLP problems, you'll get ten different answers. All ten would probably have some truth in them, but any one in isolation would be inadequate. The list of problems becomes even longer for images. The 2009 resolution on biographies of living people was about identifiable people, given they were the subject of a biography. This new 'media about living people' resolution doesn't make any such distinction for media, which I guess will result in lots of confusion about whether the scope includes images of unidentifiable people. It should, but ... This resolution appears to be asking for verifiability regarding images of living people. We are going to need some clarity around what the board considers to be verifiability (how do we prove the photo was taken at a public event and it is real? etc), and whether that includes unidentifiable people. Ensuring that all projects in all languages that describe or show living people have policies in place calling for special attention to the principles of neutrality and verifiability in those articles;.. On English Wikipedia we have some guidance regarding photos of living people, but I can't find anything relating to verifiability or neutrality. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research#Original_images https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons#Images Wikimedia Commons has a policy which rejects 'neutrality', and it doesnt have a verifiability policy. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Project_scope/Neutral_point_of_view https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Photographs_of_identifiable_people Is there a discussion happening on Commons somewhere about the implications of this resolution? My own point of view is that our policies and procedures are actually pretty good on paper, but they're just very unevenly and inconsistently applied in the real world. The Tier 1 biographies, such as those of Messrs Obama, Cameron, and Abbott are pretty safe from BLP hijinx, but there is a massive underbelly of poorly defended BLPs on minor celebrities, local politicians, and the like, which are not watched consistently and where hagiography or defamation can take root. This is why, while things like the BoT's declaration are not unwelcome, I feel that they don't have any practical effect in fixing the problem. All it takes is for one negatively written bio to slip through the net to do real harm to someone in the real world. I agree with you Craig up to here .. My preferred way of dealing with this on en.wp would be to massively tighten the notability criteria where they related to biographies of living or possibly living people, but this would no doubt be met with cries of deletionism!. And agree your preferred approach could help. On English Wikipedia, I think we have an article/editor ratio problem, which is only getting worse as articles increase and editors leave, and is meaning watchlists are less useful to scan for problematic edits. The test for this is what is the average length of time between an edit of an old page
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Resolution: Media about living people
On Sat, Dec 14, 2013 at 7:55 AM, MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com wrote: Your logic here is broken. There are certainly times to have widely advertised discussions, but doing so is not free: they often require creating and deploying banners (with an associated increased risk of banner blindness), related mailing list posts, time taken to draft and re-draft proposals, and, of course, the time taken by members of the community to discuss and re-discuss how best to move forward. Time is precious, especially volunteer time, so we should make every effort to ensure that when we ask people to donate theirs to a global discussion, we don't do so lightly. Yes, I agree. Our discussions are important, but they are not free in terms of our collective time. Let's take this particular thread as an example -- it's some 30 messages. Say it takes 15 minutes to read all of them, and 500 subscribers have done so. That's 125 person-hours reading this single thread alone -- or 15 people for an entire 8 hour workday. 15 very experienced Wikimedians spending a day can get a lot done :) I don't think this particularly resolution warranted community consultation; if I did, I would have pushed for it. The issue of how to go ahead with BLPs in general certainly does, though -- that's the point I was trying to make. As for these theoretical objections, if _you_ or anyone else objects to this amendment, I'd certainly be interested to read why. Seconded. cheers, Phoebe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Resolution: Media about living people
On Sat, Dec 14, 2013 at 8:54 AM, John Vandenberg jay...@gmail.com wrote: The 2009 resolution on biographies of living people was about identifiable people, given they were the subject of a biography. This new 'media about living people' resolution doesn't make any such distinction for media, which I guess will result in lots of confusion about whether the scope includes images of unidentifiable people. It should, but ... This resolution appears to be asking for verifiability regarding images of living people. We are going to need some clarity around what the board considers to be verifiability (how do we prove the photo was taken at a public event and it is real? etc), and whether that includes unidentifiable people. Ensuring that all projects in all languages that describe or show living people have policies in place calling for special attention to the principles of neutrality and verifiability in those articles;.. Hi John, I think this is an interesting point, but I'm not entirely sure I follow don't we always worry about verifiability for images? We certainly try to ensure that images are real and correctly identified and not in copyright, etc. If someone uploads a random photo of someone and says it's a picture of a celebrity, I feel like we [Commons editors] would check that out. Not so? -- phoebe ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Resolution: Media about living people
On 14.12.2013 21:28, phoebe ayers wrote: On Sat, Dec 14, 2013 at 8:54 AM, John Vandenberg jay...@gmail.com wrote: Hi John, I think this is an interesting point, but I'm not entirely sure I follow don't we always worry about verifiability for images? We certainly try to ensure that images are real and correctly identified and not in copyright, etc. If someone uploads a random photo of someone and says it's a picture of a celebrity, I feel like we [Commons editors] would check that out. Not so? -- phoebe Sure, but what if someone uploads a photo of a celebrity and an unidentified person (which happens a lot)? Cheers Yaroslav ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Resolution: Media about living people
On 15 December 2013 02:54, John Vandenberg jay...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Dec 14, 2013 at 6:08 PM, Craig Franklin cfrank...@halonetwork.net wrote: Hi Jane, I am concerned about the issue surrounding the comment the real BLP problems happen when heavyweight (in edit count terms) Wikipedia users swing their weight around I think the problem is that if you ask ten different people about the reason why we have BLP problems, you'll get ten different answers. All ten would probably have some truth in them, but any one in isolation would be inadequate. The list of problems becomes even longer for images. The 2009 resolution on biographies of living people was about identifiable people, given they were the subject of a biography. This new 'media about living people' resolution doesn't make any such distinction for media, which I guess will result in lots of confusion about whether the scope includes images of unidentifiable people. It should, but ... Part of the problem in my view is that there is no notability requirements for identifiable persons appearing in images. While in the great majority of cases this is not really a problem, it does lead to very problematic things like pictures of people in states of undress, engaging in sexual activity, or doing something else their employer, family or local community might not be okay with, without any evidence of ongoing consent for that image to remain available. The only mechanism for getting rid of these is effectively for the subject of the image to email a stranger, provide evidence that they're the person in the image, ask nicely for it to be taken down, and hope to hell that the person is reasonable and doesn't play the It's educational and under a free licence, sorry! card. This is an issue that needs to be addressed because the status quo is entirely unsatisfactory. Of course, the immediate reaction on Commons to this seems to be Wikilawyering as to whether the resolution applies to galleries or not. Given that the BoT's intent is clearly that this should apply to everything, everywhere on all Wikimedia projects, this doesn't fill me with a great deal of hope that the Commons community as a whole is capable of adequately dealing with this. Cheers, Craig ___ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
