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Use of mugshots

Several times now I have seen debates erupt about the use of mugshots in articles about living people. Recent examples include Sultaana Freeman and Al Gore III. Would it be reasonable for us to state in the BLP guidelines, that for non-public figures, it is generally not appropriate to include police mugshots in their Misplaced Pages articles? This may seem obvious, but it seems that every time this comes up there has to be a debate before the image is removed. For public figures I think there is some wiggle room, but for non-public figures I think this is a pretty safe rule to go by. Obviously, very few people are going to be happy about having mugshots of themselves in their Misplaced Pages article, especially if they are not well known enough to be able to define their own public image. In many of these cases it seems editors are resorting to mugshots simply because they can't find any other images, or worse, to smear the person in question. Enacting a rule about this would help ensure respect for people's privacy and may even prevent a lawsuit or two. After all, Misplaced Pages is an encyclopedia, not a tabloid. Kaldari 02:25, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

  • If they're known as criminals or for their arrest, it's definitely appropriate to include them. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 04:43, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
  • I'm not sure what "this may seem obvious" is based on. We're not writing articles in order to make the people in them happy, we're writing articles in order to document the way the world views these people. If the world views them through mugshots, that's what we put in our articles. AnonEMouse 14:25, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
    • Using a mugshot nearly always lends undue weight to the arrest. It seems obvious to me that persons booked for summary offenses (including most drunk driving and simple possession cases) or pursuant to an act of civil disobedience should not be identified by their mugshots. In fact, unless the person is a notorious convicted criminal, it seems reasonable to me that they should not be so identified, and even then I would hesitate unless the mugshot illustrates the section on arrest or is the only image available. Robert A.West (Talk) 15:29, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Not just mugshots but photos in general

I've always been planning to query this. Per above, I would actually go further since I'm of the opinion any photos should be used with caution. People have a right to privacy and if people aren't public figures, I would suggest we shouldn't include their photo unless there is a good reason why we would should be showing it. For example, I removed another photo from the Sultaana Freeman in agreement with some discussion on the talk page since I don't feel there is any good reason why we should be showing a photo of her and she clearly doesn't want her face to be seen by the general public. (The photo didn't have copyright information specified and given it was from a yearbook, I doubt it would come under a suitable copyright anyway). Given her specific case, the drivers license photo can perhaps say but everything else IMHO is unnecessary at the current time. (Obviously depending on how notable and publicly identifiable she becomes this may change)

Similarly, another case I'm familiar with is Amir Massoud Tofangsazan. This article had an image with uncertain copyright status for a while. While this has been removed a while back, I'm of the opinion even if we do get a suitably licensed photo we shouldn't include it. Although this guy's photo has been splashed all over the internet, he still IMHO is entitled to a resonable degree of privacy and given his limited noteability, I don't see any reason to include a photo of him.

We don't currently have a specific policy in BLP on photos but IMHO we should. (We do cover privacy in general of course). What do others think? Nil Einne 15:43, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Strongly support. I agree with pretty much everything you've said. The bottom line is that non-public figures are entitled to a degree of respect for their privacy. People justify including these images by saying "Yeah, but they were published on smokinggun.com or CNN or whatever, so their privacy is already compromised, the images are already public, etc." The reality is, however, having an image included in your Misplaced Pages biography has far more impact on it's public exposure than it would being on pretty much any other website. If you have a biography on Misplaced Pages, it is almost guaranteed that that is the first match for your name in a Google search. Thus it pretty much defines you to the rest of the world (if you are not a public figure). This is a huge responsibility! We're talking about actually affecting people's abilities to get employment, date other people, live normal lives, etc. The fact that we even allow articles about non-public figures is somewhat amazing given the potential for harm that is possible. Just because someone was arrested for pot possession (Al Gore III for example), does not mean that they should live the rest of their lives being primarily identified by a mugshot or some other embarrassing image. I'm amazed at the lack of sensitivity to this issue displayed by most Misplaced Pages editors. I guarantee, however, that they would feel a lot differently if it was their own Misplaced Pages biographies that were being discussed. For non-public figures we usually have very little information available anyway to write a balanced article, so any image we include has huge potential to throw off the balance of the content. I think we need to err on the side of caution, respect, and civility, and stop letting tabloid-style editors control these articles. Kaldari 00:05, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Birthdates

I was going through the archives and noticed someone said that we shouldn't worry about the privacy of birthdates because in California and some other US states, you can get anyone's birthday for a $75 subscription to some websites. As soon as I read this I thought it was a silly argument and I just wanted to raise this issue again to point this out. Really I don't think it matters if people's right to privacy is not respected in the US. It is in many other countries, often in law. Of course, if someone's birthdate is available from a reliable source, then obviously it isn't just about whether the information is already publicly available but whether we should respect people's right to privacy when they have limited notability Nil Einne 15:55, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

"Biographies of living persons for deletion" (BLPfD) policy proposal

I want to explore introducing a process for deleting BLPs and their talk pages if the subject of the bio requests it, so long as the subject isn't an important public figure. We're all aware of cases where Misplaced Pages bios allegedly caused problems for subjects who weren't really public figures. Yet subjects have very little recourse, and we have no formal mechanism for dealing with them and no consistent policy to apply.

The BLPfD policy would have to include a way of deciding which bios it's in the genuine public interest to retain (i.e. in the interests of the public, rather than something the public is simply interested in).

Once a complaint is received from the subject, there would be a presumption in favor of deletion. The process would be something like this:

  1. A living bio subject applies for deletion by contacting any admin, who tags the page for deletion; the tag places the page in a "BLP for deletion" (BLPfD) category for those who want to keep an eye on the issue;
  2. It's speedy deleted after 72 hours if there are no objections on the talk page;
  3. Any objection would have to be on particular grounds, which our policy would spell out, but which would basically boil down to "this is an important public figure, according to reliable published sources."
  4. Those objecting would file a BLPfD, but there would have to be 75 per cent in favor of retention. Those voting to retain would have to argue that the subject is an important public figure in a particular country. Their public importance would have to be nationwide.
  5. A BLPfD could only be triggered by a complaint from the subject of the bio. It would be left to admins to determine whether they were really were dealing with the subject.
  6. If the BLPfD is in favor of deletion, then the bio, its talk pages, and the BLPfD discussion itself would all be deleted.
  7. The BLP could only be recreated by going through deletion review. If it failed, the deletion review would be deleted too.

I'm posting this here to test the climate. Is this the kind of thing that editors could support in principle? SlimVirgin 19:18, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

  • I could never support this. Giving subjects any sort of veto power is not any idea I can get behind. Furhtermore, even if this was palatable, part 7 (where the reviews were deleted) is a poison pill of sorts. So-called "courtesy blanking" is bad enough. --badlydrawnjeff talk 19:53, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
    • It wouldn't be a veto, Jeff. But it gives us a consistent mechanism for dealing with deletion requests, which we currently don't have. Some BLPs do end up being courtesy deleted, and others not, and it's not clear what the criteria are for saying yes to some and no to others. This would be an attempt to introduce consistency. SlimVirgin 20:02, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
      • So what isn't be handled by our current AfD processes that require this? Could we use some consistency on courtesy blanking of some AfD/DRV/Talk discussions? Absolutely, but this seems to take things way too far in a direction that opens up a Pandora's Box of issues. The Wikidrama alone would go off the charts in no time, not to mention the already widening divide between the uber-"privacy" advocates and the rest of us. --badlydrawnjeff talk 20:05, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose per bdj. I have several times supported the deletion of a borderline notable article on AfD, but codifying it this way is a bad idea for all sorts of reasons. In addition to what Jeff writes, BLP is already here to ensure that any controversial information about a living person be very well sourced, and any admin who would be willing to delete such an article would certainly already be willing to delete the specific information. Therefore, we must be talking about deleting very well sourced articles. Deleting very well sourced articles should happen quite rarely. For occasions as rare as that, we have WP:OFFICE. Not to mention that we would be trusting any one of over 1000 people, many of them not particularly Internet-knowledgeable, many of them teenagers, with determining that, yes, this is really the highly controversial person we are writing about? AnonEMouse 20:07, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
    • AnonEMouse, some of the scenarios I've dealt with have involved borderline notable people who've done something stupid in their lives, which some reporters ended up writing about. Some Wikipedians possibly with a grudge either create the bio in order to keep that stupid thing in the public eye, or the subject creates a vanity article not thinking that the 20-year-old stupid thing will be resurrected, but it is. At that point, Misplaced Pages becomes the only thing keeping that incident alive, given that the newspaper stories were largely forgotten. Living bio subjects who have experienced this have talked about suffering clinical depression as a result; physical illness; losing or failing to get jobs, or living in fear of it; having to sit down and explain to current family and friends about the ancient stupid thing; obsessively checking their bio to make sure it hasn't gotten even worse; losing their peace of mind.

      I feel it's arrogant of us to presume that Misplaced Pages has the right to do that to anyone. Would you want us to do it to you? Imagine you were now, as a young man, to go on a shoplifting spree, triggered by a clinical depression, and a few reporters pick up on it because you're actively involved in some local charities, so you scrape through their, and hence our, notability criteria. Would you really want to fail to get a good job over that in 20 years time because your employer saw the Misplaced Pages article? The court recognized you were depressed at the time, and gave you a telling off so you could put it behind you, but Misplaced Pages in its wisdom decides it knows better, and that in fact you must never be allowed to put it behind you.

      These cases are really happening. Surely you can see the unfairness of it.

      As for how to determine we're really dealing with someone, that's a minor issue and easy to organize. If you know someone works at Smith&Co, and you get an e-mail from X@smithandco.com, that's good enough. SlimVirgin 20:26, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

      • Slim, I'm afraid that's exactly what I was worried about. You're an extremely experienced, even legendary, Misplaced Pages administrator, but I'm afraid you are now in the class of not very Internet knowledgeable people that I was writing about. (I'm just guessing that you're not a teenager.) The "from" address on an email is not reliable. Send me your email address and I can send you an email from george_bush@whitehouse.gov. To quote from our very own article on Email: "It is very easy to fake the "From" field and let a message seem to be from any mail address." And that's just one of the tricks, I can't list them all, heck, I don't know them all. AnonEMouse 20:45, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
        • These are details that can easily be worked out, and don't touch on the question of whether such a policy is needed. If I were the admin, I'd pick up the phone and speak to the person who had e-mailed me from X@smithandco.com, and I'd be sure to phone them at work. Any policy could offer advice on how to identify someone. Admins have to do this all the time already when dealing with people suspected of sockpuppetry who say they're not. In the event that we later found out the subject hadn't really complained, everything could be undeleted within seconds, so it's not an issue. SlimVirgin 20:51, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
          • I appreciate your well written concerns, and agree that a well written and balanced policy is needed. I don't agree that this is that policy. While the concerns are well written, the proposed policy is not. It is bending way too far in presumption of deletion, and pooh-poohing many very real and serious issues that immediately come up. Anyway, I thought you wanted to test the climate, and not start an argument. I would say the climate has been tested. If you want to continue by working together and crafting a more reasonable proposal, I would be amenable. If you want to have an argument, I recommend room 12A.AnonEMouse 21:12, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
      • Imagine you were now, as a young man, to go on a shoplifting spree, triggered by a clinical depression, and a few reporters pick up on it because you're actively involved in some local charities, so you scrape through their, and hence our, notability criteria. Would you really want to fail to get a good job over that in 20 years time because your employer saw the Misplaced Pages article? The court recognized you were depressed at the time, and gave you a telling off so you could put it behind you, but Misplaced Pages in its wisdom decides it knows better, and that in fact you must never be allowed to put it behind you

        "Actively involved in some local charities" is not a sufficient mark of notability, and any such article could be removed regardless of whether or not the information was damaging. As I've said before, we already have the mechanisms to remove articles about genuinely non-notable subjects. CJCurrie 20:34, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

        • That was just an example, so make up your own. The point is the notability was sufficient to trigger some newspaper stories, which Misplaced Pages could then use as reliable sources. SlimVirgin 20:44, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
          • ... and which can be located and read by the potential employer just as easily as any Misplaced Pages article can be located and read. (After all, Misplaced Pages editors often find sources using Google. The potential employer's own Google search will turn up all the same stuff.) So the problem that the subject has is with the sources, not with the encyclopaedia, and should be addressed to the sources, not to the encyclopaedia. Misplaced Pages is not the tool for solving the problems that you describe. Thinking that it is is an error. Uncle G 05:08, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
            • Actually, a simple search engine search would not return up everything that some Misplaced Pages articles contain. Last time I checked Google does not include the NY Times archive in their search results. The point that a Misplaced Pages entry also comes up way above many other things does have some merit and shouldn't be simply disregarded. If someone wants to dig up dirt on someone, they likely can, should we make it extremely easy to dig up dirt, that is the question -- Tawker 06:31, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
              • That doesn't change the argument. The potential employer can still read the New York Times article, just as readily as xe can read a Misplaced Pages article. Nothing that Misplaced Pages can do will affect this. Once again: Misplaced Pages is not the tool for solving the problems that you describe. Thinking that it is is an error. Uncle G 16:10, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
                  • On the contary, it does. I'm pretty sure the chances of someone finding and reading a 30 year old NY Times article is much lower than the chances of someone finding the said information on Misplaced Pages. To read the NY Times article one would have to go to their archives, pay to access the article. I'm not sure if all NY Times archives are even accessble in a searchable database now. In any case, it is a lot easier for someone to type the name into google, find Misplaced Pages as the first result. We do make information a lot more readily accessible and do have some moral issues with making such information so readily acccessable -- Tawker 03:57, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Support. Some of the more controversial items (e.g. proposal 7) might or might not fly, and this needs to be approached with caution. However, in general, we seem to have an imbalance on Misplaced Pages; almost anyone who is powerful or threatening or savvy enough can get their biography deleted (or severely stubbed), but the rest need to basically put up with whatever others want to say about them, which can often be quite negative, as long as someone somewhere is able to find a newspaper article that references them. The proposal is quite restricted in scope, so it's extremely unlikely (basically impossible) that articles about anyone who was actually important enough to warrant an encyclopedia article would be deleted, and is a necessary counterbalance to the power of Misplaced Pages over the lives of essentially non-notable individuals who sometimes get caught up in it. Jayjg 20:15, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
  • I think a new policy is unneeded but addition to the existing BLP policy to clarify the issue would be useful. BLP should be clear that its basis is common human decency moreso than law even though laws such as on libel and privacy are relevent; that semi-public persons are not to be given undue prominence (like a category named after them or their bio article spammed across many other articles) or undue coverage of nonpublic things in their lives; that self-promotion, public appearances, advertizing, web pages under their real name, and press statements all make a person more public, less private and less able to claim privacy as an excuse for controlling their public image; that deletion of their bio on wikipedia is a delicate balancing question and deletion is not to be misused as either a tool by wikipedians for any personal reasons (example: not deleting or deleting based on the subjects behavior on wikipedia) or misused by the bio subject to simply gain control of their public image. WAS 4.250 20:28, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose There are already mechanisms in place for the removal of articles about genuinely non-notable figures, whether BLP has been violated or not. I'm concerned that this proposal could be used to remove information that certain public figures might consider to be inconvenient or unflattering. I'm also a bit concerned about the qualifications in SlimVirgin's proposal (ie. "important public figures" instead of "public figures", and "in the interests of the public, rather than something the public is simply interested in"), as it is my understanding that we don't normally use such qualifications in determining whether or not articles should be retained. CJCurrie 20:31, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
    • The wording would be worked out by the policy proposal. This is just to see whether editors support the idea in principle, then would come the hard work of coming up with appropriate wording. SlimVirgin 20:46, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
    • By way of an example to demonstrate my concerns, I would point readers in the direction of the Rachel Marsden page. Marsden is unquestionably a notable figure: she's journalist of international repute, and her article has survived three afds (the result each time was "speedy keep"). She was also involved in two notable controversies before she became a journalist, both of which received a fair degree of attention in the Canadian national media.
      • International repute? That's absolute nonsense. She's someone you think we should have an article on because you don't like her politics. Anyway, please be responsible and don't discuss individual cases here. SlimVirgin 21:01, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
        • Considering that the person writes an weekly column for a newspaper with a paid daily circulation of 200,000 in one country, and is a regular commentator on Fox News which is based in another country, it is not absolute nonsense. It is a debatable point. Kla'quot 23:46, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
    • There was recently an arbitration case concerning the question of how Marsden's controversies should be presented on her biography page. The ArbComm ruled that a previous version of the article was unfair to the subject, but did not take any particular position as to how the matter should be resolved. In response to a Request for Clarification, one ArbComm member made the following statement: Our ultimate goal is an NPOV article on Masden and her controversies. This could be achieved by deleting the existing content and starting work on a new version, or it could be done by refining the existing pages. The ArbCom made no firm assertion of what path is the better one. ()
    • Despite this, some editors have attempted to remove Marsden's page in its entirety, while making questionable assertions that their actions were justified under BLP, the ArbComm ruling, and a request from Marsden (please review the current talk page and second archive for details). I'm concerned that a policy change of this sort would encourage such questionable deletions, and perhaps set in place a double-standard which allows certain controversies to be buried without due cause. CJCurrie 20:56, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
      • It would do the opposite. It would make sure any such cases were dealt with consistently and with more transparency than is currently the case, where some are deleted quietly and without fuss, and some have to go through multiple RfCs and ArbCom cases, and there's no telling in advance which ones will be dealt with which way. SlimVirgin 21:01, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Test cases

I started the above list. Please add to it. WAS 4.250 20:54, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
WAS, I don't want to add the cases I know about, because it'll give some people an excuse to discuss the details. I want to keep this on the level of general principles. SlimVirgin 21:03, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
Applying general principles to specific test cases is a useful way to debug the verbalization of those general principles. Rachel Marsden is a perfect test case. WAS 4.250 21:16, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
I agree with you in principle, but there are unresolved or sensitive issues in all the real cases, including Marsden's. SlimVirgin 21:48, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

BLPfd Comments section 2

  • Comment I don't have enough history with, interest in, or support for this project to lend any credibility to a vote I might make here, but I can share a comment. My comment relates more to the narrative task of writing bios than to the administrative obligations related to publishing biographies, but evidence of insufficient substance to produce useful narrative might be relevant to a policy discussion. Looking at the complete message, my comment is a bit of an essay, but I hope it is useful. In short, some of the "BLPs" on little known figures aren't bios at all; they are collections of facts that have strayed into the public arena.
Misplaced Pages follows two standards that make production of bios on little-known living persons exceptionally difficult, if not impossible. One is the rejection of "original research". The other is similar; it requires citations from reputable publications. A biography is not simply an account of a person's public life. A biography is a well-rounded account of a person’s life that hopefully lends some insight into the influences behind a person's public activities, or reveals profound meanings from their personal activities. A news story about Ted Bundy, for example, (fair subject because he's a public figure and deceased) might start with his murders and end with his execution. A biography of Bundy would tell us what childhood influences might relate to his adult activities, or at least reveal a stark contrast.
In the absence of interviews with the subject, or with acquaintances of a subject, we can never produce well-rounded bios. Public figures have usually been the subject of numerous biographical interviews. Less "notable" private persons, who might be quasi-public figures in specific news topics, often or usually have not been exposed in personal interviews. The result, as I stated in my premise, is not a biography, but a collection of published facts.
Misplaced Pages doesn't systematically call these articles biographies. The articles seem to become "BLPs" in discussion, but in the main space, they are just articles. Their content sometimes tends to expand from a collection of published facts into what appears to be a biography. The result is a false impression about that person's life -- an apparent biography that is instead a collection of summarized news clips under a heading that seems to indicate a bio. The difference in that and the actual news clippings is the clippings are archived in a context that indicates they were the news of the time, but not that they are the predominate facts of a person's life. If a person searches "John Doe" in an online news archive, they can know all the results with old dates are old news, not in the context of either current events and usually not in the context of the person's entire life history. We can discern from the narrative of the articles whether they were intended to explain particular events or whether they were composed as a personality profile. In the original context, discernment is possible. Compiled out of context, a collection of summarized news clips can appear to be a biography.
From the numerous biographical articles of little-known persons I've read in this collection, I've found no compelling reason (aside from general, widespread and overwhelming concerns about the efficacy of such exceptionally loose editorial management as Misplaced Pages seems to advocate) to reject publication of these articles except that the no-original-research bans exactly what any responsible biographer, nay, any responsible writer would do. Contrary to ethical guidelines of most biographical publishers, subjects of Misplaced Pages articles aren't routinely contacted about contents of articles that claim to describe their activities. I find nothing in Misplaced Pages guidelines or policies that prohibits such contact, but a general arms-length attitude toward subjects and sources implied by no-original-research suggests a Misplaced Pages bio need not be believable to its subject if it can be documented with other published sources. That doesn't fly with me, but that's not my point. If people want to write poor narrative and no one says they are personally hurt, our critique would usually be toward the general quality of the narrative, and not about the negative impact on the subject. My point, in the context of responding to the above proposal, is that when subjects of biographical articles contact Misplaced Pages to complain about a bio, they might not be prepared to expose the differences between an actual biography and a user-generated collection of news accounts, but they can be negatively impacted all the same. Their ire might or might not be well articulated.
The least Misplaced Pages can do is to recognize that these collections of news items about little known persons are not biographies. As such the introductory sentence "John Doe is..." often has little comprehensive meaning and can easily misinform people who John Doe is. John Doe might in fact be the man who streaked naked through a televised college football game, but that one fact about John doesn't tell us much. It's certainly not the story of his life. If John contacts someone from Misplaced Pages and says "look, off the record, I was recently divorced and running with some old buddies from my alma mater, but that was 15 years ago. Now I'm the candidate for CFO at a major firm. Could you please at least remove that fact from an article under my name and place it in an article about "streaking" or "Streaking at College Football Games"?
There is no reason other than stubbornness I can imagine to deny John's request. There might or might not be legal reasons to honor his request. The reasons offered in the policy trial balloon above primarily consider the impact on the subject of the bio, but the impact on public appreciation of narrative is also worth considering. If as some suggest, Misplaced Pages can serve as an alternative text book, degradation of standards in Misplaced Pages could have a cumulative effect if collections of news items became widely considered tantamount to biographies written by professionals trained to expose the psychological, social and cultural influences that shaped a person. It seems the core question is whether Misplaced Pages wants to campaign for a cause, which would be the right or privilege to publish anything that can be remotely construed as factual regardless its value to any meaningful narrative, or whether Misplaced Pages wants to produce meaningful narrative. In summary, there are humane reasons to heed the advice of little-known subjects when publishing biographies, there might be legal reasons not to misrepresent narrow slices of their lives as comprehensive accounts and there are definitely reasons related to the integrity of knowledge.Jill Hemphill 21:38, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
Addendum to comment: Thinking more about the example of John Doe streaking, if Mr. Doe were to run for governor, his streaking might be germaine to a bio, but we would then probably have more information about him than just his streaking. We would have published interviews.
Maybe a better example refers to the widely distributed "Girls Gone Wild" productions. Thousands of young women have been recruited to participate in these commercial porn videos. The productions definately have a reputation, and are definately published. Eventually, many of these young women will grow up and appear in other published contexts. It may be easy to document that they appeared in a porn series that exploits intoxication to recruit volunteer actors, and it may be easy to document that they appeared in a notable news story. But if the subject says the news story and the GGW appearance are not sufficient to comprise an article about her, the person in the news story could be named in an article about that topic of the news item(for example, "Organized Protests against Yellow Snow", or something). In the case of a figure whose only public role outside their professional profile relates to controversies with which they are involved, I would find it much easier to write an accurate article with the controversy as the topic rather than the person.
On the matter of things the public is interested in, some of the public is interested in my personal banking information, but it is not in the public interest to distribute such information. One traditional social organizing role of media has been to serve as a gatekeeper to let the public share dialogue that is of public interest, while excluding public dialogue where prurient interests or simple curiosity infringe on privacy of individuals. Since those traditions govern most of the sources Misplaced Pages relies on for information, respect for values embedded in those traditions will more likely help than hurt a project such as this. Jill Hemphill 22:00, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
Excellent comments, Jill. You've given us a lot to think about. Thank you. Kla'quot 23:48, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Support. My views have been extensively expressed. In short, "You've achieved a few things over the years, and as a reward, here's your very own troll magnet to monitor and defend for the rest of your life.". I've made arguments akin to the above proposal, but am cognizant that I don't have the status within the Misplaced Pages community to push them as a policy revision. I cannot endorse it more strongly. -- Seth Finkelstein 00:03, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
  • The idea of having a policy to delete bios on compassionate grounds definitely has merit. I'm not sure if WP:OFFICE can't handle these cases though. My main concerns about this proposal are with the definition of "important public figure" and with making this a criterion for speedy deletion as opposed to AfD. The higher the bar for "important public figure," the less comfortable I am with the proposal, and "nationwide importance" is way too high a bar. I would consider nationally syndicated journalists to be public figures, but SlimVirgin doesn't. What I really dislike about this proposal though is the assumption that given good policies, the community wouldn't come to consensus to delete an article that should be deleted on compassionate grounds. The community is not a heartless mob. Finally, we keep deletion discussions for good reasons, and I don't understand why courtesy-blanking would not suffice. Kla'quot 00:08, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
Kla'quot, the definition of "important public figure," and any other terms, would be worked out in the policy proposal. Same with courtesy blanking v deleting AfDs. These are details that can easily be tweaked; this is just to see whether there would be support in principle for such a proposal. SlimVirgin 00:17, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
I agree with what you're trying to do here, in starting a healthy discussion about what is obviously an important issue. At this point, I think it's too early to explore a single solution in detail. I'd like to get some clearer articulation of the problem and then consider a variety of solutions: First of all, isn't the Foundation Office taking care of the compassionate-delete cases? Does the Office want our help with these decisions? I'll give a radically different possible solution just to illustrate the range of possiblities: Perhaps these cases should be handled by a Jimbo-appointed ethics committee that discusses mostly in private. Kla'quot 02:53, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
Just to clarify my comment, the only thing I support in this proposal is the good-hearted intentions behind it. As they seven points in the proposal are currently written, I disagree with all seven of them. Kla'quot 06:13, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
I think that it is worth exploring. Let's work on a draft for BLPdD and see were we get to. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 01:45, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
Okay, we can put something up and start on it. I like Kla-quot's suggestion too about the ethics committee. SlimVirgin 03:14, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
I'd like to participate in that discussion. I also like the idea of a select committee - clearly this should be handled with care and respect. A committee of individuals that can deal with the unique aspects of each case is better than a popular vote by whoever happens to be passing by at the moment. Finally,I also agree with the motivation and disagree with the specifics. OK, that's it, I'm letting Klaquot write my statements from now on, to save time. AnonEMouse 14:12, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose specifics While I agree that we need stricter standards, I see this less as an issue of compassion than of Misplaced Pages's integrity. Further, I don't see why this couldn't (and shouldn't first) be handled via simple changes to the current process and policies. Misplaced Pages:Deletion guidelines for administrators already instructs administrators not to count votes, especially where the reason for deletion is that the subject is unverifiable, and to ignore WP:ILIKEIT arguments. We could simply raise the (currently very low) bar for establishing notability for a living person, especially when the article contains negative material. In addition, we could establish a current relevance and context requirement for negative material. Thus, editor Jill Hemphill raised the very legitimate concern that Misplaced Pages could become the means of immortalizing some long past and largely irrelevant misdeed, and thereby becoming an actor rather than a reporter. In fact, I have argued that NPOV (and especially the need to avoid undue weight) already demands that we avoid biographical articles about living persons unless there is sufficient information to write a complete and balanced one, and we avoid negative information about a living person unless the information appears in current sources, or is otherwise obviously relevant and important in context. For a serial killer, the context and relevance is obvious. For a living person who appeared once in a sex video, we may have no idea whether this will be a blip or the defining moment. For the dead, we generally have more perspective. Robert A.West (Talk) 12:54, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
I like the above post a lot. I note that there is enormous financially motivated pressure to keep the bar of entry low, from people who want free publicity to help them sell sell crap, and there are many philosophical inclusionists who for whatever reason are willing to let this happen. 67.117.130.181 17:20, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment ... Misplaced Pages:Articles_for_deletion/Theo_Clarke suggests that there is acceptance of the notion that the subject's request is at least A factor to consider. Which strikes me as a good thing. ++Lar: t/c 19:53, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Support. I haven't read all the discussions above, but it seems that there needs to be a well-thought-out way for people who want their biographies deleted to get a hearing, and to have a reasonable process for making the decision about deletion. I like the idea of a special committee of responsible people to handle the requests, or at least to make preliminary determinations. Lou Sander 19:55, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Support. We need some kind of process in place to handle this. I agree the wording on the specific points above probably needs some work, but I agree with the principle ideas. Maybe we can agree on a more simplified version and then tweak it from there. Kaldari 00:12, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose provisions (5), (6) and (7). I am also strongly uncomfortable with the idea of writing articles on living people looking for the subject's approval, which this will tend to encourage. We have too many puff pieces now. If one of the things someone is notable for is a scandal, this will tend not merely to ensure that it is covered accurately, verifiably, neutrally, and without undue weight; but that it is omitted entirely.

    As for (6) and (7) I oppose deleting the discussion (as opposed to editing it and deleting some of the page history; what we would do for a personal attack or a revelation of personal information on an editor.) Consensus can change, and discussions make mistakes; but how can a decison to delete an article on these grounds ever going to be reconsidered? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:28, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

    • A constructive suggestion would be to have, in some readily visible place, a page for comments of the form "This page is about me, and I don't care for it." We could even have an admin running it, and screen fake messages. The editors there could speedy attack pages, and nominate for AfD, as we do now (and there have been several AfD's resolving that embarasseing articles on living people, mostly former porn stars, be deleted and salted). Why do they need more powers? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:28, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose as I feel WP:OFFICE, AFD, and our current level of compassion and skill make this redundant, if not outright harmful to the stated goal. I have no doubt of SlimVirgin's intentions being honorable in this, but I don't think this is the way to do it. When the OFFICE folks come to us because they can no longer handle the load, then it may be time to expand the processes, but right now we trust AFD for most of these. As someone above said, AFD does take requests from borderline-notable people into consideration on many occasions, for those who can't decipher the intricacies of requesting article deletion formally. -- nae'blis 04:53, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
    • But here's the thing, given that we are talking about living people here, (who are probably aggreived,) shouldn't we have a formal, simple way to deal with this rather then just hoping it always works, and saying tough to those poor individuals who happen to fall through the cracks? Don't you want wikipedia to develop a reputation as dealing nicely with all invidiuals who have concerns about wikipedia articles about them rather then leaving it to the luck of the draw and expecting them to negotiate the rough and tumble of wikipedia? (I'm not saying that we are that bad, but I think a user who has concerns about an article about them is quite different from a user who is asking a question about how wikipedia works or about some fact or says something on wikipedia is wrong and I think we should deal very carefully, politely and nicely with these inviduals and I don't think our existing policies or behaviour always goes far enough. I seem to recall at least one instance I came across where a person claimed to be the person the article was about and express concern about something in the article and people were simply making fun of the person!) Nil Einne 17:04, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
      • If the concern is valid — i.e. it is that the information in the article is unsourced, then those editors are at fault. Creating new deletion procedures won't do anything towards fixing their behaviour. If the concern is not valid — i.e. it is a dispute with a robustly and copiously sourced piece of information, then the person is at fault, in that xe is arguing with the encyclopaedia when xe should be arguing with the sources. Creating new deletion procedures won't fix something that isn't within Misplaced Pages at all. Uncle G 05:08, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Support - per my own User:Tawker/BLPD - we do need something to this extent -- Tawker 06:20, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose, because it will give too much power to criticized figures to silence legitimate negative information (an article on a known scam artist who doesn't want it included, for example). I really don't see enough instances to justify creating a process that subjects these kinds of questions to the whims of the community anyway. They can already send a complaint to the office if there's an issue with an article about them, or put it up for regular or speedy deletion if they aren't a sufficiently public figure to merit an article to begin with. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 09:54, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Conditional support. I am generally strongly supportive of the right to privacy of non-noteable people and think this may go part way to achieving that. However although I agree with the idea in theory, I have some concern of the potential negative outcome. Mostly, I wonder whether it might be a problem given the resources and experience of admins to accurately determine if the person is who they claim they are and properly handle the matter whatever the case. I'm not saying that all admins won't be able to handle this, but I'm concerned that some admins won't and they might not realise that they don't. This could go two ways. It may mean they are fooled or waste a big amount of time on people who pretend to be someone they're not. It may also mean that they offend and cause unnecessary friction with someone who is making a legitimate request because they falsely believe this person isn't actually who they say they are. However perhaps I underestimate our admins. My other concern is whether this may reduce vigalance on our part. The problem here is that we risk creating a situation where rather then being vigilant in removing shoddy articles and ones abount non-noteable people, we end up in the situation where we mostly wait for complaints. In any case, I don't agree with the idea WP:OFFICE and our existing policies is enough. IMHO, WP:OFFICE mostly deals with fairly serious stuff, generally when users are extremely agrieved. IMHO, it's not a good thing that people have to get to this level before we take serious action. Rather, I think it would be good if people have a less-formal but simple channel they can go through when they have some concerns but are not on the level where they are screaming down the phone. Expecting people to have to understand how wikipedia works before they can get articles about them removed IMHO is a bad thing. In many cases, they will be frustrated and get annoyed and will end up screaming down the phone. What should hopefully happen if this succeeds IMHO is instead, if someone comes across an article on them and they think it should be deleted, they make a simple request. If the article was such a poor job or the person was not noteable, it's deleted because no one can adequetly defend it. If the person was sufficiently noteable and the article was good or at least savagable, editors improve it as necessary and explain why it should remain in the deletion request. The decision is made to keep and the person who made the complaint is able to see the hopefully improved article and what people have said. Hopefully they will agree with what's been said and even if not, hopefully they will at least see that people have properly considered the matter and have come to reasoned conclusions and let it be. Perhaps they don't and may end up yelling down the phone which is unfortunate but unavoidable. However we will hopefully avoid many instances of this. Because the alternative is that a person wants an article deleted and they ask about it. Some tells them well this is what you have to do, try reading this and this and then do this. The person may get marginally annoyed here. But perhaps they will do so and successfully nominate it for deletion. However as is easily the case, the deletion debate may not attract sufficient attention and no consensus is reached and/or users don't really bother to consider the matter properly so the article isn't deleted even tho it should be. The person who the article is about is obviously going to start to get annoyed here when users haven't adequately explained why the article should be kept or there was no consensus and they have to go through another debate. (Remember the article is about them.) Alternatively, it could even be a time thing. Perhaps a decision to delete the article would have been made eventually, but the lack of action on the debate means that the person who the article is about is yelling down the phone after a week because of a lack of action. It's important to remember the "do no harm" part of our BLP. Leaving an article about a non-noteable person when said person doesn't want it clearly IS doing harm and it's something we should avoid. And we currently presume in favour of retention so this means the harm will remain until the debate attracts enough people to actually look into the issues and realise that the article should be deleted. Another thing to consider is that this should hopefully help us deal more fairly with people from a diverse number of countries. Clearly calling someone in the US is not going to be something people in a number of countries are likely to consider. While I presume OTRS will end up in WP:OFFICE eventually, clearly phoning is one options less open, especially to those in less developed countries. Furthermore, different cultures etc means that in some countries, people are more used to deferring to authority and less experience with sticking up for themselves and what is right. They also have less experience with things like the right to privacy and issues like libel. It's therefore incredibly unfair IMHO, that we're far less likely to delete an article on a person who doesn't want it when it shouldn't even be on wikipedia just because the person doesn't fight hard enough for it. By presuming in favour of deletion, and making a clear & simple policy; articles about these people will be deleted when they should be, rather then kept as is IMHO likely to happen at the current time. N.B. I purposely didn't name any countries. I'm also not saying that people in certain countries are incapable or fighting for their rights, simply that for a variety of reasons they're less likely to do so. Nil Einne 16:42, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
    • The alternative as I see it is that we should instead direct ALL requests to WP:OFFICE when this issue arises (in a simple manner, perhaps tell them they should either e-mail this address or phone this number), unless a user voluntarily expresses a desire to deal with this via the other channels. We should also make clear to WP:OFFICE that we expect them to deal with all individuals and consider whether the article adequetly establishes noteability per wikipedia standards. And this should happen regardless of whether the user is sufficiently angry or the issue of libel arises. Nil Einne 17:04, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
    • The office has failed to respond to my letters and faxes and emails, in which I've raised issues of libel and invasion of privacy concerning my own bio. It is naive to assume that the office wants to get involved. It has a vested interest in pretending that the Foundation is separate from the editing process on Misplaced Pages, because Jimmy and Brad plan to argue that the Foundation is legally immune as a "service provider" instead of a "publisher." Brad Patrick's publicly stated position is that the editors themselves are responsible for Misplaced Pages. It is not only appropriate, but somewhat urgent for the editors themselves to establish a policy to better deal with situations such as mine. The office would be delighted with such a policy. It will help resolve some issues, and enable the office to better maintain its pretense of immunity for a while longer. The alternative is that issues raised by living persons who don't want a bio will not get addressed on Misplaced Pages. But sooner or later, this problem will have to be addressed. Here's the question: As Misplaced Pages editors, do you want it resolved in court, or is it better to resolve it internally? By the way, I cannot sign this because I'm banned. And all my websites are on the spam blacklist. So much for your comment that "we expect them to deal with all individuals and consider whether the article adequetly establishes noteability per wikipedia standards." Your notion of how Misplaced Pages works is a hallucination. Jimmy has a much more realistic impression: Jimmy Wales speaking at Wikimania, August 4, 2006: "What happens is we have very minor celebrities and sort of controversial people, they read their article on Misplaced Pages, and if it isn't good, then they complain, they get upset. There's a sort of typical pattern where I've seen this happen over and over and over... somebody goes to an article, and they see something they don't like in it, so they blank the article. So somebody warns them. And then they blank again, and they get blocked. And then they make a legal threat, and then they really get blocked. And it's just like a totally bad experience for that person, when in fact, they may have been right in the first place. Or maybe they weren't right, maybe they just didn't like what we wrote about them, but still, we didn't handle it well." And also, Jimmy Wales describes what can happen to biographies, WikiEN-l mailing list, December 14, 2006: "Perhaps young and excitable Misplaced Pages contributors think that the point of the exercise is to SHOW PEOPLE that you CAN'T PUSH WIKIPEDIA AROUND, and go out to try to dig up well-cited dirt on the person, creating an even more horribly bad and biased article than we started with, forcing us to start all over again." 68.90.179.196 21:26, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
      • Daniel Brandt's entirely correct in his above statements. Further the issue is not even deleting material from Misplaced Pages; as Brandt had in the past agreed to a compromise in which the content would be moved to other articles in Misplaced Pages. I'm hoping this effort by SlimVirgin will result in an improvement in the situation for numerous semi-public persons. Just because privacy is dying doesn't mean we have to take it off life support just yet. The main sticking point for me is the issue of a semi-public person's misusing our compassion to gain control over their public image - in other words if they assert they have the right to release public statements that define who they are in the public eye while asking us not to and that's not right either. Brandt releases public statements both to news media and on the web but I could argue on both sides of the issue of the extent his efforts do or don't constitute trying to create or control a public image for himself so I'm on the fence with regard to what to do with our article on Brandt. We should embrace the middle-ground on semi-public persons, it seems to me. The world is not black and white. Maybe we could define a range of options:
        1. no article
        2. redirect
        3. a stub that points to other articles
        4. a minimum article sometimes without images or real name depending on circumstances - (written to clearly convey it is not a rounded biography but is simply an article about a few noteable events in a semi-public person's life - maybe a template to say so?)
        5. a full biographical article but for a semi-public person so takes privacy especially into account
        6. a BLP for a public person WAS 4.250 23:51, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
      • Thats's the main sticking point for me too, and I like the range of options. It's just occured to me that for people known mostly for their role in scandals, our well-meaning attempts to balance and round-out the articles may actually make them worse. Infoboxes, photographs (even good ones), and chronological flow all signal "this is a biography," when the article can never be a biography because we do not know enough about the person. Sometimes it is suggested that netural background information such as "so-and-so was born in Hong Kong, went to Gladstone Elementary School, married John Doe in 2001 and has a dog named Fluffy" be added to balance out the negative information. This is well-intended (I've made some of these suggestions myself) and may not violate privacy, but including the material adds strongly to the impression that the article is a biography. Kla'quot 20:23, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
  • This proposal is unnecessary, ill-conceived, and a bad idea.

    It is unnecessary because enough mechanisms already exist to handle such cases. A living person only warrants a biography if xe satisfies the WP:BIO criteria. If xe satisfies the primary notability criterion, then xe will be the subject of multiple non-trivial published works from independent sources. As such, there will be be plenty of source material for a biography, and all of the handwringing above about narrative becomes entirely moot.

    If xe doesn't satisfy the PNC, then (failing the applicability of any secondary criteria) we shouldn't have a biographical article, and again the above handwringing is moot. The John Doe streaker example is a good example of a person who does not satisfy the PNC. Whilst the single sentence may be verifiable, giving it a whole article to itself, with John Doe as the subject, is the wrong way of including it in Misplaced Pages. See Misplaced Pages:Notability#Dealing with non-notable topics. Notability is, in part, about including verifiable information in the right way. The right way to include the verifiable sentence is to mention it within an article with a wider context. For this, the sources are the guides. If the act of John Doe streaking is only mentioned in the sources in the context of discussions of the game itself, then the verifiable sentence should be included in Misplaced Pages in like manner: in an article on the game itself, and not in a biographical article.

    For deciding whether the WP:BIO criteria are satisfied, we have AFD. Biographical articles that fail the WP:BIO criteria are regularly either merged or deleted having gone through AFD. Whether the person xyrself objects to having a biographical article is irrelevant. If the PNC is properly applied, any biographical article that passes muster will have copious sources for it to be based entirely upon; and thus any complaints by the subject will be a matter to be taken up with the sources themselves, not with the encyclopaedia at all. Thus the proper focus is not to consider the opinions of the subject; it is to apply the PNC properly. Concentrating upon the opinions of the article subject actually detracts from this. It takes the focus away from looking to see whether the PNC is satisfied.

    The opinion of the article's subject is not and should not be a criterion, either for inclusion or exclusion. We don't include articles simply because people want to have themselves included in the encyclopaedia, and we don't exclude articles simply because people want to have themselves excluded. The criteria are WP:BIO, and should be applied uniformly and dispassionately. AFD is the tool of long-standing for this.

    The proposal is ill-conceived and a bad idea for several reasons. The most obvious is that it is trivially easy to game. Consider Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Sophie Ellis-Bextor, for example. There is no way for an administrator, or any other Misplaced Pages editor for that matter, to know that it actually is the subject of the article that is complaining, as opposed to an imposter or a simple anonymous troublemaker. Another reason is the idea of "nationwide importance" that the proposal incorporates. That is a badly flawed metric, incorporating as it does both problems of systemic bias and problems of subjective judgements on the parts of Misplaced Pages editors.

    Time spent on this proposal would be better spent encouraging editors to use the existing mechanisms properly and fully: to mercilessly apply the sword of verifiability to all biographical article content, and to ensure that deletion discussions concentrate upon citing sources to show that the PNC is satisfied rather than veering off into irrelevant tangents. Uncle G 05:08, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

BLPfd Comments section 3

    • I'm not yet sure whether I like this proposal and I agree that the current wording could be too easy to game but I do think that you've missed a key point in the argument. Several times in this debate, you've said that this can be resolved through rigorous application of our sourcing and verifiability requirements. That misses the principle of undue weight. An encyclopedia article should be a biography - a summation of the person's entire life - not merely a news story. Yet because of where and how we typically find our sources, we can get a preponderance of negative information that misrepresents the person's life. A single negative fact can often be reliably sourced from a news article. All the positive facts of the non-notable person's life, on the other hand, are more likely to be functionally impossible to independently source - they're just not newsworthy. Do we really want biographies of non-notable people to be limited to what showed up in the police blotter twenty years ago?
      Now, if we could convince editors to stop mistaking Misplaced Pages for Wikinews, the "sourcing fixes it" argument might hold up better. But frankly if we could fix that problem, we wouldn't even be having this argument... Rossami (talk) 07:43, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
      • I didn't miss it. I directly addressed it. See what I wrote about the John Doe streaking hypothetical. I repeat: If a biographical article can only be a single-fact article, then the PNC (obviously) isn't satisfied and having a biographical article is the wrong way to include the verifiable fact in Misplaced Pages. Misplaced Pages:Notability#Dealing with non-notable topics directly addresses this.

        Moreover, your question "Do we really want biographies of non-notable people to be limited to what showed up in the police blotter twenty years ago?" is unanswerable, having as it does a premise that is simply false. We don't actually want biographical articles for non-notable people. Therefore asking what we want them to comprise is unanswerable. I repeat what I wrote before, with emphasis on the part being missed: Whilst the single sentence may be verifiable, giving it a whole article to itself, with John Doe as the subject, is the wrong way of including it in Misplaced Pages.

        The sources do "fix it". Misplaced Pages should reflect both what the sources say and how they say it. As such, if the single verifiable fact is part of a discussion of a larger topic in the sources, then it should be included in Misplaced Pages in the same way. See the big coloured box at User:Uncle G/On notability#Dealing with non-notable things.

        If there's something that we should be convincing editors of, it is that not everything needs its own individual article. Not every name in a list of people associated with some overall topic should be a link, for example. Uncle G 02:06, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

        • Uncle G, your suggestion of dealing with this by following Misplaced Pages:Notability#Dealing with non-notable topics sounds nice in theory but doesn't match what actually happens here on Misplaced Pages. See for example Dave Gilbert (game designer), a basically promotional biography based on exactly one newsworthy accomplishment of the guy (he wrote a computer game, and there's already a separate Misplaced Pages article about his game). That particular biography has been AfD'd three times without being deleted, with the third apparently now approaching a strong consensus to keep (ok, it looks like the article has now added mention of a couple other games that he worked on, and there's a new Misplaced Pages article to go with one of the other games despite its dubious notability). There are similar examples I won't name where the article contents were quite invasive and the subject wanted the stuff removed and were refused despite total failure of the inclusionists to show notability of the contested content (the factual correctness of the content was not disputed, just the appropriateness of including it). There just doesn't seem to be a way to beat back the inclusionist mobs who think that Misplaced Pages biographies are supposed to be advertisements and/or dossiers. 67.117.130.181 05:26, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
  • An excellent idea. "Thus the proper focus is not to consider the opinions of the subject" is pure arrogance. It does not hurt the encyclopaedia one bit to remove articles about almost nobodies who pass some hurdle that a couple of people once debated on a page somewhere. We are supposed to be kind! That includes being kind to the people we write about as well as to each other. I didn't actually see, in that long screed from Uncle G, any argument whatsoever why we should not allow people to be excluded if they wish it! Neither is it "trivially easy to game". Sophie Ellis-Bextor has a press officer. We're all making out we're researchers here. A researcher would ring up Ellis-Bextor's press. Anyway, she is famous. This proposal is clearly aimed at biographies of people who are not. If someone writes to us saying they are "John Smith", barely known outside his village, does it really matter whether it's really John Smith or someone else from their village masquerading as him to have his bio pulled? Would we actually miss the bio of someone who we couldn't readily discern was who they claimed they were anyway? Grace Note 05:58, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
    • That is rubbish and borderline uncivil. Arrogance has nothing to do with focusing upon what encyclopaedists should be focussing upon, which are the sources, and not focussing upon personal wishes, which detract from the proper study of encyclopaedists. The argument, which was right there in front of you, is that we don't include articles simply because people want to have themselves included in the encyclopaedia, and we don't exclude articles simply because people want to have themselves excluded. We include and exclude things based upon sources. Uncle G 02:06, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
      • I generally consider that an editor who reaches for "uncivil" feels himself worsted, Uncle G. Which you are. Your comment doesn't address anything I said. It simply repeats the arrogance and lack of compassion I noted. The "proper study of encyclopaedists" is in any case whatever the encyclopaedists consider it to be. If they consider it proper to allow decency to overrule their desire to be ruled by process, then it is proper. If they consider it no great loss not to have an article on a guy practically no one has ever heard of, or to carry only the briefest mention of him (for instance, "Daniel Brandt is a researcher" or "Rachel Marsden is a journalist". Why, actually, must we say more? Your argument seems to be "because there are other people who say more". Uncle G, I urge you to have a good think about that because it's not terribly compelling. I have sources who say I'm an arsehole but I don't post it on my userpage), that too is proper.

        Now the thing we are discussing, Uncle G, is whether we might exclude biographies of almost nobodies if they ask us too. You say you presented an argument. Here it is, if I might quote you: "The argument... is that.. we don't exclude articles simply because people want to have themselves excluded." I am planning to try that one on Mrs Note tonight: "I am not doing the washing up, Mrs Note, because I do not do the washing up." I'll tell her Uncle G sent me. Grace Note 04:31, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

        • Misplaced Pages:Consensus can change - "Since the Wiki grows and develops, consensus can change at a later date." -- Seth Finkelstein 05:41, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
          • Yes, indeed, Mr Finkelstein. I guess what I am urging is a shift in our understanding that we should just put up whatever we like about whoever we like and ignore their opinion to one in which we accept that upsetting people who really are not very well known is not a good thing. I do understand Uncle G's POV. It's certainly less complex to approach things his way, and less complexity is often a good thing. But so is being decent. Grace Note 06:47, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
            • You've used the propaganda technique of labelling above. Putting forward the argument that "we should just put up whatever we like about whoever we like" in order to then counter it is what is known as a straw man. No-one has suggested doing that, apart from you yourself. Uncle G 16:10, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
        • Wrong in about five different ways, and inching yet closer to the borderline of incivility by unapologetically repeating the borderline incivility of your previous comment, and even augmenting it. The proper study of encyclopaedists is not "whatever the encyclopaedists consider it to be". (A lot of encyclopaedists, after all, consider it to be writing vanity articles about themselves.) The proper study of encyclopaedists is looking for, reading, citing, evaluating, and using sources. Basing the argument upon a claim to a moral high ground of "It's decent." is to assume that writing neutral articles based upon sources is somehow indecent, something that is clearly false. The repeated wholly unfounded assertions that this unnecessary, ill-conceived, and wrong proposal is "the decent thing" is an example of a propaganda technique known as "name calling" or "labelling". The answer to the question "Why, actually, must we say more?" is, of course, that we are writing an encyclopaedia here. If you find the idea of writing an encyclopaedia "not terribly compelling", then Misplaced Pages is not for you.

          As for your quote: I suggest going back to what I actually wrote — which is conveniently right there in front of you twice, now — and reading the next sentence. Uncle G 16:10, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

          • I refuse to discuss this any further with you for two reasons: first, the implicit threat of your first sentence is something I won't tolerate (and I don't find it enjoyable anyway to discuss anything with the kind of Wikipedian who brandishes the word "civility" because he is not getting it his own way; there is almost nothing in this community less civil than those of our fellows who use that policy and others like it as weapons aimed at obfuscation and destruction of others' viewpoints, rather than the safeguards of decent interchange that they are intended to be) and second, you have not actually put forward anything new, except to make veiled attacks against me personally. "Writing neutral articles based upon sources..." can be indecent, in ways that have been explained on this page. That you cannot grasp the explanation is unfortunate, but I do not suggest you should leave the project on account of it. Grace Note 07:55, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment We do something a little like this at WikiFur, the furry fandom encyclopedia. That said, we don't have notability critera for inclusion other than involvement with the fandom, so just about anyone can have an article created about them. Often, people are known mainly for things that already have articles, so on request we may move the specific information about their involvement into those articles and then blank the original with a notice. Some rather popular individuals have had the articles about themselves blanked in this way - but that is because the purpose of our encyclopedia is to serve our community, and each individual in the furry fandom is a far larger part of that community than Misplaced Pages's community, which is the entire world. There is a saying: "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few". Misplaced Pages has many, indeed, and its notabiliy standards are much higher to match that. I think the current policies work well enough for now, though a person should really be able to defend themselves by making some kind of a statement. This could most easily and appropriately be done by having them argue with the statements of others, and recording that on the page. In the specific case of criminal convictions? They happen, and they should be recorded, and if it's 20 years ago then people should weigh that in their consideration when reading about that person. GreenReaper 02:47, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Support Meeting the conditions of WP:BIO (e.g. being the subject of a couple of obscure newspaper articles related to some arcane topic) certainly does not turn a person into a public figure. Misplaced Pages is an encyclopedia, not a total information awareness program. Wikiproject Novels currently has assessment criteria for both the quality and importance of a novel-related article (importance to the encyclopedia is rated in terms of literary significance etc. of the novel that the article is about). Wikiproject Biography apparently only assesses article quality right now but rating importance at some course-grained level seems feasible enough. At least from viewing AfD's, we have a heck of a lot of biographies that might arguably cross the line into "notability" per WP:BIO but are definitely low in actual importance.

    BLP articles with a low importance assessment (and I'm expecting this would be at least 75% of them) should be generally be deleted if the subject requests it (some authentication should be required if there is doubt) unless there's a good reason to do otherwise (obviously there will occasionally be debates about someone's importance). In fact most low-importance BLP's should be deleted regardless (since they are full of COI and publicity seeking, and the BLP policy is inherently in conflict with NPOV, so we should only create a BLP article if it's important enough to justify a lot of careful editing to preserve the encyclopedia's neutrality) but that's a different topic. 67.117.130.181 15:16, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

    • "being the subject of a couple of obscure newspaper articles related to some arcane topic" is no different to "being the subject of a couple of obscure scientific journal articles about some arcane topic". We don't exclude subjects that are obscure or arcane. This is not an encyclopaedia of only famous things. That is a point that has been made time and again, by many editors, including at Misplaced Pages talk:Notability/Historical/Fame and importance. What counts as far as the PNC is concerned is that the published works documenting the subject be non-trivial.

      As for "In fact most low-importance BLP's should be deleted regardless": I suggest doing some New Page Patrol and seeing what actually occurs from day to day. Most biographies of living people are deleted, inasmuch as they are usually people submitting unsourced autobiographies, or unsourced biographies of their friends and relatives. Consulting Special:Log/delete, I see that three such biographies were deleted in just the 20 minutes prior to my typing these words. (They were Brandon Di Puma, Brian Russell-Simpson, and Chanroeun Saron.) Uncle G 16:10, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

      • Clarification: I don't claim that being notable only for an arcane topic makes someone unsuitable for a biography--it just doesn't make them a public figure. Public figure (as linked there) has a specific meaning--please check the linked article if you're not sure what it means. BLP policy should treat public figures and perhaps celebrities differently from non-public figures who happen to be biography subjects. 67.117.130.181 15:03, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Additional comment Generally, my concerns are being considered here and my lengthy original message thoroughly explained my concerns. I offer here a response to a couple of comments above, which seem not to grasp the scope of deliberations familiar to most professional biographers, at least as I expounded upon that scope. I respond to the comment that "If xe satisfies the primary notability criterion, then xe will be the subject of multiple non-trivial published works from independent sources. As such, there will be be plenty of source material for a biography, and all of the handwringing above about narrative becomes entirely moot." Typical hand posture of most professional biographers I've observed during editorial deliberation is either one of relaxed placement of the fingers on the keyboard, or otherwise resting on a lap, on a table, on the arm of a chair or taking notes on a pad of paper. I've seen very little, if any, handwringing in editorial discussions among professional biographers or among scholars I've observed discussing the scope of useful narrative.

    More importantly, "multiple non-trivial published works from independent sources" does not necessarily comprise "plenty of source material for a biography". I reiterate points I made above, but they seem worthy of consideration if someone has yet to recognize the measure. In most professional biographical publishing houses, the threshold of "plenty" when assessing source material for a biography necessarily includes original biographical interviews with the subject. Except in the most unusual circumstances, at least a pre-publication review of a draft in consultation with the subject is expected before any major biographical document about a public figure goes to press. Unless a publisher is unconcerned about repeating other publishers' errors, one benefit of such consultation is that the subject often offers the last best chance of challenging the veracity of "multiple non-trivial published accounts." Exceptions abound -- but even in significant exceptions, such as the case of an internationally-known political fugitive, earlier biographical interviews are available. However, a collection of "multiple non-trivial published works from independent sources" might not include a single biographical interview. As I explained earlier, these published works might be about isolated events in the subject's life, but they might not come close to offering biographical insight. We are left with a collection of "multiple non-trivial published works from independent sources" paraphrased and placed under a person's name to appear as if, and indeed intended as (according to the intentions of some expressed here) a biography. Quite simply, paraphrased narrative based on a collection of press accounts about a person’s life is not necessarily a biography. To represent it as such can erode trust in a source that claims otherwise, especially among readers astute enough to recognize the difference. Jill Hemphill 20:19, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

BLPfd Comments section 4

    • More importantly, "multiple non-trivial published works from independent sources" does not necessarily comprise "plenty of source material for a biography". — Yes, it does. Every word in that formulation is important, as Misplaced Pages:Notability explains, including "non-trivial".

      As for your reiteration, you are missing the fact that this is an encyclopaedia. The lengthy handwringing about "original biographical interviews" and "consulting the subject" is completely ignoring our Misplaced Pages:No original research policy. Misplaced Pages is an encyclopaedia, a tertiary source. That means that the journalists and biographers who have performed interviews and consulted the subjects are our sources. Handwringing about a need to interview the subjects to check facts is missing the point. It has always been the principle here that Misplaced Pages is not set up to perform fact checking. Therefore we write, and only write, based upon sources where that fact checking (e.g. interviewing any necessary people) has already been done. For further explanation, see User:Uncle G/On sources and content and Misplaced Pages:Reliable sources.

      As I have already written once above, all of the handwringing about narrative and interviews is moot. If someone satisfies the PNC, there will be enough source material for a full article. If someone does not satisfy the PNC, then we shouldn't have a biographical article in the first place, so any arguments based upon the premise of such articles being comprised of a sparse few facts pinned together are completely irrelevant. In such cases, giving the subject its own article is the wrong way for Misplaced Pages to be presenting what information there is on the subject.

      So the proper course of action is to do some AFD Patrol and ensure that the PNC is properly applied at AFD, not to waste time and effort inventing additional deletion processes. It isn't a lack of deletion processes that is the problem.

      To see the problem, note that not a single editor in any of the three AFD discussions of Rachel Marsden actually challenged it (or, indeed, defended it) on the depths and the provenances of the published works that cover the subject. None of the editors who are here pushing for a new deletion process have actually applied our existing processes. Uncle G 16:10, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

    • From looking at AfD it's evident that "multiple nontrivial published sources" very often means the person's name was simply mentioned in the newspaper a couple times in connection with something. 67.117.130.181 04:00, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
      • No, it does not. Misplaced Pages:Notability explicitly points out that the works must be non-trivial. Mere mention in connection with a main subject in the sources only justifies mention in connection with a main subject in Misplaced Pages, and does not justify a biographical article. So if you see someone arguing that, then challenge them! Point out that the sources only mention the person in passing, and are not non-trivial. Evaluation of sources is part of the proper study of encyclopaedists. So do it! Uncle G 16:10, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
        • I have done it. Look at the third AfD and the first deletion review for Dave Gilbert (game designer) and tell me what I should have done differently. 67.117.130.181 12:50, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
        • SlimVirgin on 2005-01-06: "He's not a credible source, not a journalist, and seems to write only for his own website i.e. he's a blogger. It's not appropriate to use someone's personal website as a source... My main concern about Brandt is that he self-publishes. The few things I believe he published in the 80s were in outlets with little, if any, editorial oversight... I know he's been quoted a bit regarding Google Watch, but it's not clear it's taken seriously. We can't use information from people who only self-publish on their websites, otherwise any of us could start up a website today then quote ourselves in Misplaced Pages." Ten months after expressing this opinion, SlimVirgin starts a stub on this trivial person. Over the next 14 months, trivia is piled on top of trivia, going back 39 years in this person's life, and the article, which is quite long now, has so far survived 11 AfD attempts. There are 142,766 biographies of living people on Misplaced Pages. How many of these are trivial? The problem with Misplaced Pages is that the editors don't have to live with their judgements about what's appropriate in a biography, or whether a biography is appropriate at all, but the subjects of trivial, poorly-balanced biographies do have to live with them, every day of the week. They end up at the top of the search engine results, and stay there forever. I'd prefer that my trivial biography appear in Who's Who in America, where no one would read it. But do you know something? WWA wouldn't be caught dead producing such trivial junk. And if I ever became non-trivial, they'd ask me first, and invite me to write my own. 68.92.158.200 17:07, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
          • Please read more carefully. 67.117.130.181 and I were discussing the case where the published works were trivial, not the biographical articles. Applying the PNC involves considering whether the published works are non-trivial. Most of your argument is, because it is wholly confused on that point, irrelevant to the discussion. In addition, your final sentence is simply misguided and not thought through. Having people write their autobiographies is not a good thing. Far from it. There is plenty of evidence, appearing on a daily basis, that it is not. It does not lead to a neutral and verifiable encyclopaedia, as any editor who has done New Page Patrol and looked at the many self-promotional autobiographies that are continually submitted will attest. (From the last 15 minutes' deletion log: TONY SCHILLING, Thunderpickachu, Si traynor, Kevin chiarot) See Misplaced Pages:Autobiography#The problem with autobiographies. Uncle G 02:50, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Oppose per CJCurrie, and because existing mechanisms like WP:OFFICE and policies like WP:BLP are enough. The subjects don't own articles just because they are about themselves. --GunnarRene 03:02, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
    • I don't want to get myself too deeply into this thread, because I really don't have the time for it, but there's a set of Frequently Asserted Points that the debate really would benefit from a listing WITH THE REBUTTALS. For "don't own article", the rebuttal is that that policy applies to editing an existing article. However, not wanting to have an article about oneself at all is in a sense the inverse of "ownership", being a desire to be removed the process entirely. Thus, it does not fall under the policy about article ownership, since it's a dispute at a different policy level. Even if one disagrees, it should be acknowledged that this has been asked and answered -- Seth Finkelstein 03:13, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
      • In practice, giving subjects a say in deletion would give them a say in content. You can easily imagine the subject of an article showing up on a Talk page and saying, "If you re-insert the following well-sourced fact, I will ask for the article to be deleted." You probably wouldn't do this, but the likelihood that others will is enough to compromise our editorial integrity. Seth, since you are mostly concerned with vandals and trolls, would it address your concerns if enough people put your article on their watchlists? We could, for example, have a noticeboard for asking editors to watchlist BLPs that are prone to vandalism. Kla'quot 03:31, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
        • Could someone try to leverage an "opt-out" threat into micromanagement? Yes. But they run the risk that they'll then end-up micromanaging no entry at all. Moreover, if someone feels a particular fact is so harmful to them that they'd rather have the entire article deleted, I'd be very inclined in the case of living marginally-notable people, to err on the side of their wishes, as they are the ones with the most to lose. My main point is that no-ownership is not a policy trump card here. To assert it is, begs the question. Regarding a prone-to-vandalism list, well, I can only speak for myself, but "whack-a-mole" playing just doesn't sound reassuring. It's telling people that first they have to build a case against vandals and trolls, then hope some patrol is efficient enough to catch any repeat offenders. I know this is the wrong audience to say the following, but please try to understand, if you've been burned by the process before, or even seen other people get burned, more of the same isn't appealing. -- Seth Finkelstein 04:15, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
          • Seth, I am interested in having more than two choices (deleted or not deleted) with regard to articles about semi-public living persons or semi-noteable living persons (not the same thing). Above, I list a few in-between choices. My question for you is specifically, what can we do to help you be comfortable with our article on you short of deleting it? What one sentence most doesn't belong in an encyclopedia and why? Would it help to delete the photo? Would it help to add a fact (provide a source)? How about if it were permanately locked from editing by anyone except an administrator? You are an important example of a borderline case we can and should get right with regard to balancing the public's right to a free flow of information and privacy rights. (So important as an example, you could go down in Misplaced Pages history for your role in the creation of a Misplaced Pages policy - we might even have to create an article on that ... just kidding.) WAS 4.250 05:42, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
            • Hmm ... that's a tough question, though I suppose it's fair. Well, after thinking about it a little, this is not going to be a popular answer, but I suppose I would not be completely comfortable without some sort of personal pre-review of edits. Which is I know is arguably unreasonable, but it is the honest reply. Before someone jumps on me for "ownership", note my reason there is NOT micro-management. It's that I just don't trust overworked, volunteer, administrators to do a good job against a dedicated troll. The problem is less the "l33t d00d" vandals, than that Misplaced Pages acts too much as an "asymmetric warfare" platform - a clever attacker loses almost nothing for trying and failing, but if they succeed in getting some smear into a biography, it gets made prominent and scraped all over the web. Right now, the article about me isn't terrible. It's not great, but I can live with it (ironically, I've made such an issue of it that I now couldn't get away with basically writing my own biography by using a sockpuppet, as others have :-) ). But it's been used for attacks a few times already, so my viewpoint is that it's a proven overall negative to me. I'd rather not play games and chase after hit-and-runs. Oh, it's too late to delete the photo - it already got grabbed by one my attackers, so that horse is out of the barn. -- Seth Finkelstein 07:12, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
              • How about if it were permanately locked from editing by anyone except an administrator? Like Misplaced Pages's Main Page. Go there. See the "view source" instead of "edit"? Like that. WAS 4.250 12:46, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
                • Let's say there's levels - the more protection against use of the article as a weapon against me, the happier I am. But fundamentally, I view it as of basically zero benefit to me, and so I can only lose from it. That is, the outcome for me is at best zero, and at worst very negative, as a huge megaphone for people who want to attack me. So it's "expected value" for my life is negative. What you're discussing is reducing the probability of the negative, which is an understandable approach. However, the "expected value" remains negative. Of course the smaller the negative, the better. But zero seems unfortunately best. -- Seth Finkelstein 03:33, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
                • Uh, I thought this was supposed to be the 💕 that anyone can edit, not the 💕 with tens of thousands of semi-obscure and generally quiescent biographies that only admins can edit. It's different that that we sometimes temporarily protect articles that are the target of heavy vandalism, as we're supposed to unprotect them when the vandalism slows down. There are very few permanently protected articles, most of which (such as the main page) would otherwise be nonstop vandal magnets. Anyway, even if we protected Seth's biography we'd still want to shield its talk page from search engines (see my "talk page" rant in another section of this page). I've heard that the whole editing model may change when 1.0 gets close to release, so that users will no longer directly edit the "live version" of any page, but I haven't looked into this yet. 67.117.130.181 15:30, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
  • The bottom line for me is that one of Misplaced Pages's most talented (though biased) administrators was not professional enough, nor experienced enough, to realize that she should not have started that stub on me. After that, dozens of drive-by editors and administrators were incompetent to determine which facts are important in a well-balanced biography, as opposed to which facts are insignificant, and which facts are trivial but harmful to me decades after the referenced events occurred. And through 11 AfDs, more drive-by editors were oblivious about the history behind the article, but hang out on AfD just to offer stupid catch-22 wikilawyering pot-shots and vote to KEEP. Misplaced Pages doesn't know when I was born, they don't know what I look like, there's nothing about my education in the article, and my most significant achievement and life's work is barely mentioned. That's because it's not a biography that was written the way that most biographies are written -- which is to say, with the permission of the subject (in the case of semi-notable persons). I didn't want the damn article to begin with, and I've been trying to get it deleted for almost 15 months now. No one assumes any accountability for what I've been through on Misplaced Pages. Here's the blunt truth: Misplaced Pages is insufficiently competent to deal professionally and responsibly with biographies of living persons. When a semi-notable subject of a biography requests a take-down, then it should come down. If I can't convince Misplaced Pages, then I plan to convince a jury of my peers. Yes, that's a legal threat. Delete this post, ban me for a third time, note it on WP:ANI, unblock my talk page long enough to scold me again. It hardly matters at this point. It's time for me to start playing on friendlier turf. -- Daniel Brandt 68.90.165.175 06:02, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
      • Daniel, leaving aside the shocking hypocrisy of complaining that you have your bio here when you publish fabrications about others elsewhere, you have about zero hope of convincing a jury of anything. Still, when they laugh you out of court, perhaps you can then hunt down their exes and ask whether they have any dirty laundry that you can use to try to persuade them to change their minds? In any case, can you not see that some here do agree that your article, and those of other nobodies, should be removed? And also that there is some understanding that close-to-unknowns who have made the news only for negatives will tend to have articles that tend to negative as an outcome of the demand to include only sourced material? A more positive dialogue might bring about needed change here and also achieve what you want for yourself. And before you suggest that you have tried that: you haven't. Dialogues can rarely begin from demands, nor from blackmail. Grace Note 05:03, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
        • "...publish fabrications about others elsewhere..." "...blackmail..." Grace Note, please be more specific when libeling me, and please use your real name when libeling me. Otherwise I cannot even get you into court, which means that you won't be able to watch them "laugh me out of court." Your little post is a perfect summary of everything I've been talking about when it comes to the lack of accountability on Misplaced Pages. You drive by, you shoot, someone bleeds, and no one can catch you. Is this fun for you? Is this what Misplaced Pages is all about? -- Daniel Brandt 68.91.89.150 15:21, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
        • I've chosen to take the high road - no legal threats, attempting civility, stay in good standing, be a part of the process, etc. Sadly, I can't see that it's been all that much more effective. Look, you're right that there's people who are sympathetic. But the nature of Misplaced Pages is that it's driven by giving volunteers an illusion of power, and that's incompatible with a community decision of letting "subjects" go. There's just too many people who have a stake in feeling important by such minor exercises of power over marginally notable people. The only way such a change will be made is by "Jimbomancy", as I think it's called. Otherwise, the same discussion will happen repeatedly, and come to the same contentious gridlock. I just don't see much evidence that dialog has meaningful effects here. I'd hate to see anybody sue over this issue, for a lot of reasons - but I'd understand why they did it. I really have no idea how it's all going to turn out. -- Seth Finkelstein 05:38, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
          • Seth, I don't say that these things happen fast, if they happen at all. I just doubt that they can ever happen by blackmail, threats and conflict. I agree that there is a problem with power-tripping here, which is obviously unlikely to be addressed because those in power are, erm, doing the tripping! It's quite possible that "Jimbomancy" might be required because the arrogance that you are describing is very much a feature of Misplaced Pages. I think Jimbo is on the whole sympathetic to cases such as yours though and I think that it's quite likely that more Wikipedians than is first apparent are sympathetic to the idea that upsetting our subjects is not actually a goal of ours. Grace Note 07:41, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
    • Would it help to have the article begin with a sentence or two from you? I don't know how we should introduce what are clearly not well rounded biographies but something is clearly needed. Like this maybe:

There's nothing about my education in the article, and my most significant achievement and life's work is barely mentioned. This Misplaced Pages article is an incompetent biography. -- Daniel Brandt - January 2, 2007

WAS 4.250 12:46, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Category:Lists of people with disabilities and Category:Lists of people by medical condition

What is the best thing to do for the unsourced lists in Category:Lists of people with disabilities and Category:Lists of people by medical condition? They are almost all unsourced and many have a lot of (or all of them) living people entries. I sourced a few of them like list of HIV-positive people and List of autistic people, but it's a lot of work. I also put some on prod or AFD (which is usually contested). Or I removed the person section, like on Quadriplegia which was also contested. Other examples are list of stutterers, List of physically disabled politicians and List of people with visual disabilities. Garion96 (talk) 16:23, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Get rid of the category - it's POV by nature. I thoroughly and completely sourced Sociological and cultural aspects of Tourette syndrome, but categorizing Tourette syndrome as a disability is extremely offensive and POV, particularly since the diagnostic criteria for TS do *not* require disability, distress, or impairment in functioning. Read the article. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:32, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
I just removed TS from the category: there are guidelines for referencing notables with medical conditions at WP:MEDMOS, using Sociological and cultural aspects of Tourette syndrome and List of people with epilepsy as examples. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:35, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
I just reviewed more of those lists - they're awful. Some of them are pure speculation. IMO, *any* unsourced addition should be aggressively deleted, for living persons as well as dead. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:38, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
That's what I thought. But that would mean for a bunch of them just blanking the whole page. Since prod most likely would be contested and AFD might fail. Garion96 (talk) 16:41, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure AfD would fail - how about attack page? I know medical authors who will help out. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:43, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
Afd might work yes. I put one up and thought it failed. But it might turn out to be deleted after all. See Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/List of people who became famous through being terminally ill. Garion96 (talk) 16:52, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
Assuming one doesn't fix the list oneself… talking to the major contributors (if any) and removing the unsourced entries should be done prior to AfD (which shouldn't be used as a means to improve an article that isn't fundamentally flawed). The authors should be given a chance to improve the article before subjecting it to the sort of unhelpful WP:IDONTLIKEIT comments that tend to appear on AfD. Discuss (perhaps on the talk page) how the entry criteria may need adjusting. However, some of these lists are just misguided in their scope (too general, impossible to verify or lack enough verifiable notable cases to be worth having). As Garion96 says, finding reliable sources is a lot of work – too much for someone to do for a big list whilst on Afd.
Wrt to the Category:Lists of people with disabilities, I do think it is problematic since the word "disability" can be offensive to some: Not all medical conditions are viewed as being entirely disadvantageous by those who have them. Colin° 21:05, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Please remember the fundamental rule of categories: if an article is in a category, it must be obvious to a reader of the article why it is there, on first coming from the category description. First decat all the entries where this isn't so, and you will have left either quite reasonable cats, or empty ones. In the first case the problem is solved, and in the second case the TfD (if you explain what you've done) should be a piece of cake. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:03, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Here's another good one: Category:People by medical or psychological condition. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:13, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
Hi, I'm the editor who started List of notable brain tumor patients, which was the fist rare-medical-condition featured list. How about the following approach to these problems?
  • Delete unsourced references to living people ruthlessly. For politeness, leave a note about the deletions on the list's talk page.
  • For deceased persons, leave a note on the talk page in advance of deletion. Then wait a reasonable period before acting.
  • For lists that get depopulated by this approach, either take the time to source them or nominate them for AFD. Cite this discussion if necessary or drop me a note.
Regarding lists that may be too general or large for Misplaced Pages, the best I can offer is some background regarding what type of list does work here. Before I compiled the first edition of the brain tumor list (a few years before I discovered Misplaced Pages) the most comprehensive information of its type on the Internet was this essay by Michael Finley that names about two dozen people. So when I compiled a referenced list of over a hundred names and distributed it through a brain tumor e-mail list the positive responses were really surprising: a major brain tumor charity even contacted me and asked for a copy and distributed parts of it in press releases.
Brain tumors are a rare and usually fatal family of conditions that disproportionately affect children and young adults. Anything that raises awareness in a positive and respectful manner is welcome in that community, partly for the hope of raising research funding and partly to reassure affected patients. The wiki process has done wonders for this information: contributions from other editors have expanded it to more than twice the number of entries I located. So the next time the parents of a twelve-year-old look for ways to soften some terrible medical news they can come to Misplaced Pages and find out who had a similar condition in their child's favorite areas of interest. I wish we could give them a miracle cure, but what can do is give those parents a moment to smile when they tell their daughter You've got something in common with Elizabeth Taylor and she's getting through this pretty well. So if another list has similar potential for a different condition, let's give it our best effort. Durova 16:17, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

This problem arises everyone now and then. Nearly all lists of people are problematic. For example, we have lists of gay people. I'm pretty sure if you look through the archives both here and the noticeboard you'll find this issue of lists has been raised before. Generally speaking, the consensus AFAIK is to ruthlessly delete people from the list unless the claim is supported by a reliable source Nil Einne 08:37, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

talk pages

I stopped by because of a situation in the Sathya Sai Baba arb case. Take a look at Talk:Sathya Sai Baba/Comments. Basically I think the restrictions on talk-page content are way too onerous, especially for articles about public figures. They make collaborative editing extremely difficult. The point of talk pages is to be able to assess claims and citations, chase down better sourcing for material that appears to be correct but you don't have completely solid cites for, ask people if they have access to works cited in bibliographies, etc. The link above shows someone hassling me over an arb restriction , for posting a link to a carefully researched bibliography that was written by a former Sai adherent who subsequently left the movement. Keeping such discussion off of talk pages stops the articles from improving. You end up getting groups of editors collaborating secretly off-wiki instead of openly on the talk page. That is not in the wiki spirit, in my view.

The BLP policy in general should distinguish public figures from not-so-public ones. At least for public figures, the rule for talk pages should be similar to the arb ruling in Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Francis Schuckardt, which said don't remove stuff from talk pages unless it's actually libelous, rather than the current extremist practice which destroys the thoroughness and NPOV of articles. If necessary, protect talk pages from Google indexing using a robots.txt tag, or even have restricted subpages that can't be viewed except by established users (initially let's say that means those who can create new articles, i.e. account is a few days old and they've made a few edits) that can be used for more open discussion. That should totally stop search engines and slow down random snooping. More serious snoopers will use Google and find everything on other sites anyway.

Weirdly about the Sai Baba article, it extensively discusses very serious allegations about sex abuses that are not all that convincing, because those were the ones sensational enough to get attention from TV networks and big newspapers and so they're considered well-sourced. This is about a guy who claims to materialize gold jewelry from thin air, a much easier claim to refute in scientific terms than allegations that someone did or didn't commit lurid sex crimes. But those easy and straightforward refutations from Indian skeptics' journals are excluded from the article because of wikilawyering over circulation figures etc, and pointing out the obvious non-miraculous explanations of these materializations was not sensational enough to get made into TV shows.

67.117.130.181 19:25, 31 December 2006 (UTC)