Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 04:32, 22 January 2010

Let's try to keep it civil and succinct, eh?

Alphabetize views

Would it make sense to alphabetize the views by username? I've never really liked the idea of chronological ordering, as I think it unfairly favors earlier views too much. --MZMcBride (talk) 16:16, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

May I change my username first? ϢereSpielChequers 17:41, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

WSC---you make the proposal to go in reverse alphabetical order.---Balloonman 21:50, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

The only way to make it fair would be to have them randomly ordered each time the page loads :-) Would be however a little confusing but would I think address MZ concerns.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:08, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Given the number of views that have been expressed, and the number of comments, it is probably a good idea to open a second round of comments later on, where proposals can be consolidated, refined, or withdrawn. The chronological order helps to see how the discussion has evolved, so in principle, I would be in favor of keeping that order. (Remark: As we have a specific policy on BLP, framing the current debate as an issue of BLP concerns versus policy and procedure seems unwarranted, in my view.)  Cs32en Talk to me  02:08, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Collaborative views

Could we have a go at establishing some collaboratively edited views? I can see the volume of individual, partially overlapping, partially contradicting views spiralling into WP:TLDR extremely quickly. Perhaps this could be in a separate section at the bottom. Rd232 16:44, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes please! I was away for inly a few hours, and this is already overwhelming. --Apoc2400 (talk) 00:09, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

NOINDEX

Unfortunately NOINDEX is disabled in article space. That can't be done without some fairly serious changes and risks. Jehochman 16:50, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

but everything in the WP:Incubator is noindexed! yay! Rd232 17:25, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

A reasonable rate

I think prodding 100 unreferenced BLP articles per day would be reasonable. If there are a few thousand, that will remove the backlog within a few months. Jehochman 16:53, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Actually determining the number of unreferenced BLPs would be useful, but there might be no way to do that without going through them all (and along the way we'd obviously do the cleanup, making the count moot). Apparently there are over 50,000 so tagged, but undoubtedly a significant number of those are not actually unsourced (the tags were added incorrectly, or sources were later added and the tags not removed). Still, 100 a day would probably be a reasonable starting point, and if we were handling that load we could quickly ramp it up. Even while this general RFC runs I really think we should figure out a means to deal with the unreferenced bunch just as a starting point for tackling the overall problem. Coming to agreement about prodding unreferenced BLPs (or this alternative, which is probably acceptable to more people), is something we need to do asap, particularly as ArbCom appears ready to validate a delete-on-sight approach. I don't have a problem with doing that if we can't come to another solution, but an organized effort that is logged centrally (as opposed to admins deleting at random without warning) is much preferred. Discussion should continue at Misplaced Pages talk:Deletion of unreferenced BLPs (and at WT:PROD though I think the former is a better route) since it's already well on its way. --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 17:08, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I've slowly started building a list of completely referenced biographies of living people. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:27, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Completely unreferenced, obviously (would be fun to debate what "completely referenced" means though!). That's great MZM, so are you saying that this list will weed out situations where the article should not be tagged as unreferenced to begin with (i.e. it does have sources but no one removed the tag), or is it basically just an easier to handle list of all of the stuff in the category for unreferenced BLPs? Also are you imagining that we would use this as a jumping off point for cleaning these up or deleting if clean up doesn't happen? --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 17:48, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Completely referenced? I'd say that would be where every statement in the article is supported by a reliable, third-party source, and is explicitly tied to that source. Of course such an article could still violate NPOV and BLP. Guettarda (talk) 21:29, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

But what if there were even better references than the ones already there? I was being largely tongue in cheek with the "completely referenced" reference, but the serious point to it would be that articles are never "complete" and references can basically always be improved, even if every statement is sourced. Anyhow it's an extremely tangential issue. --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 01:00, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

100 per day means it would take a year and a half to go through all 50K. I don't think people are that patient. Personally I'd be happy with a one-year schedule (150 per day?) but I think we might have to go to 500 or more to get everyone on board. Plus, there is probably an even larger category of articles with only a single source, or with only poor sources. I'll bet that's at least 100,000 articles. We can't take 5 years to do that. - Wikidemon (talk) 01:17, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Actually the rate should depend on day of week and holiday schedules. I would, moreover, suggest that a bot be set up looking for "key words" apt to be found in negative unsourced articles, thus making the task more focussed on the problem articles than just a random shotgun. Words to look for should include "felony", "convicted", "rape", "pornography", "drunk" , "alleged" and so on. I suspect that a very large percentage of the claimed negative articles will be sorted out expeditiously indeed. Let's act reasopnably and work on those ones first. Collect (talk) 01:24, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

We could start with the oldest ones first on theory that they really ought to be improved, or the newest on theory that they're the least likely to have been checked. Or work on both ends and the middle. - Wikidemon (talk) 01:26, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Change to PROD overall

Note that all of these proposals generally discourage removal of the yet to be devised BLP PROD template. Of course, current PROD policy is that the template can be removed, by anyone, even the creator. Personally I've always had issue with this, as it's almost always inevitably removed, thus forcing it to AFD. Thus I wonder how the differences in BLP PROD and normal PRODS will be reconciled on the guidance article, so as to not add too much confusion? Is it time to consider making it so that PROD's generally shouldn't be removed by the article's creator, unless they do one of two things (or both): 1) edit the article to address at least one of the concerns noted in the PROD template; 2) note on the article's talk page why they removed the PROD template, either by addressing the concerns in the template, or why they think the template was added in error. I don't think it's too much to ask of the editor to either attempt to address the concerns, or at least make one edit on the talk page before allowing removal of the template. NJA (t/c) 17:24, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Your proposal has been rejected many times; and the logic which rejects it was part of the rejection of the "BLP don't removed PROD unless sourced" proposal at WT:PROD. Not saying I agree with the logic, but there are arguments on both sides, and one side has always prevailed pretty strongly in the past. Rd232 17:29, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

"Almost always" isn't my experience. I'd like to see some stats on: prods removed with no other change v prods salvaged v prods expiring and deleted. I suspect the proportion of deleted prods is far higher than you think. I'm certainly aware of enough deleted prods to disprove the Almost always charge. ϢereSpielChequers 17:49, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Okay, let's ignore what I felt to be a rational idea of requiring people to at least attempt to address the concerns in the PROD tag (or explain why they disagreed and removed it). Let's focus on how the treatment of BLP PROD's (if implemented) will be reconciled with the general PROD procedure to make a coherent guidance document that normal editors marking articles for deletion can understand. One will continue to allow removal by anyone for whatever reason or attempts to do anything really, whilst the other will not allow this unless the unreferenced BLP issue is resolved. NJA (t/c) 17:59, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Regardless of the outcome, we should ignore the results of this RFC

As Scott MacDonald and Tarc espouse, should we hold the results of this RFC in "utter contempt" and "ignore" it? Ikip 21:58, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion#Add_new_criteria_to_CSD

I just closed a discussion at CSD related to this topic and directed them here in an effort to centralize discussion.---Balloonman 22:23, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Deletion of unreferenced BLPs

Similarly, I've notified the people discussing this issue at Misplaced Pages:Deletion of unreferenced BLPs of this discussion... we should not concurrent discussions going on all over the place. Personally, I was about to cry "Forum Shopping" until I saw that the RfC was instigated at the request of ArbCOM. This is being discussed in too many places.---Balloonman 22:28, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I also notified the people at WP:PROD---Balloonman 22:42, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Meta-view by Kotniski

Moved from the subject-space page. --MZMcBride (talk) 23:11, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

This is just the same discussion that is already taking place in at least two other places. Can we stop this forking?

Users who endorse this summary

1. Collect (talk) 16:15, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
2. Yes, but an RfC is finally the RIGHT place to discuss this, so let's close all the others in favor of this, shall we? Jclemens (talk) 16:27, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

   Agree, and add links from those places to here, and move this Meta-view to the talk page, which is where meta things and threaded conversations belong. Jehochman 16:29, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

3. Cirt (talk) 21:08, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

NOTE: I've closed the discussions down at WP:CSD and WP:PROD, linking this RfC. I also notified the people discussing a proposed new policy about this RfC. See this pages talk page for links.---Balloonman 22:44, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

PROD fails utterly

See Power.corrupts (talk · contribs)'s edits. Mindless removals of PRODs. The PROD process is obviously not the way this is going to be resolved. Woogee (talk) 23:42, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

It will if it cannot be removed if the article is not fixed. If thats the way we go, his behaviour is blockable. Viridae 23:43, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I'd endorse that if it comes to it, but as I say in my comment, it's better to clog up AfD than it is to throw the baby out with the bathwater with prods. Prodders can always watchlist the article and open an AfD if the tag is taken off without fixing the issue. HJMitchell You rang? 23:58, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Once a prod is placed it is visible in the history even after removal. Removing the tag doesn't significantly hamper identification of unsourced BLPS. --TS 00:02, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Power.corrupts is also putting oldprodfull tags into the Talk pages of all of the articles he's removing the PRODs from. Is this an appropriate action? Woogee (talk) 00:07, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it makes the problematic articles even easier to identify. --TS 00:09, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

OK, thanks. Woogee (talk) 00:17, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Oppose sections

I thought Requests for comments generally avoided oppose sections? Where is the RFC dictator? --MZMcBride (talk) 23:59, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Just remove it and put a hidden comment there reminding editors that these types of RfCs don't use oppose sections. Cla68 (talk) 00:00, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

I thought we were an autonomous collective. --Cybercobra (talk) 01:23, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

In the past that has been the standard, but there are a lot of oppose sections this time around... I personally think this is a contentious enough issue that it might be better to have the support and oppose sections together having them separated is going to make this much more difficult to read/follow.---Balloonman 03:37, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

RFCs are supposed to have views and endorsements. Discussion should take place on this page. Lara 03:39, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, the votes are pointless. We need that mythical uninvolved person to come an do clerk duties. Kevin (talk) 03:46, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Seriously. The oppose sections should either be moved to this page or one added to every proposal, which is not standard for RFCs and will just make it a bigger clusterfuck. Lara 04:15, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Hey, well, when in Rome... til someone decides to move them all here, it's open season. Tarc (talk) 04:24, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

• Can't you guys see that people want an area in which to bitch about the proposals from those people actually trying to (gasp!) solve the damn problem? UnitAnode 04:32, 22 January 2010 (UTC)