On Sat, Mar 24, 2012 at 11:37 AM, geni <[email protected]> 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 _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
