User talk:Uncle G/Proposal to expand WP:CSD/Unsourced biographies

This should prod you into thinking along new lines. Uncle G 02:35, 2005 Jun 22 (UTC)

It is clearly desired by many editors to delete personal vanity articles, in particular the "student writing about xyrself/xyr friends/xyr loved ones just to get an article about xem into the encyclopaedia". However, it is unlikely that a suitable test can be contrived in order that just 2 editors can reliably determine what articles are vanity articles or articles about non-notable people. Therefore, it seems worthwhile to approach the problem from a different angle.

One factor that the persons that are the subjects of such articles have in common is that no-one else will have written about them, and that such articles will be unable to cite any sources for their content. Enforcing the guideline about citing sources as if it were a policy, for a particular class of biographical articles, thus approximates the desired effect (although it does not catch all of the articles where a unanimous consensus to delete arises — see the empirical data) without need for administrators to make subjective judgements about importance.

Articles that this criterion will allow to be speedily deleted:

• At 19 John Doe was the first man to walk on Mars. At 20 he invented the cure for cancer. He's currently studying at university.
• William D. Baker invented an egg-dropping device in a series of experiments with his friend Ryan.

Articles to which this criterion will not apply:

• At 22, Jane Doe won the state tennis championship. External links: pointer to news report — cites a source
• Britney Spears is 24 years old and sings. External links: official web site — cites a source
• Maria Sharapova plays tennis. The Times had an article about her on 2005-06-11. — cites a source
• Jim Beam, born 1953, is an assistant professor of media studies. — person is over 25 now
• Ronald Reagan was elected in 1966. — it can be deduced that the person is over 25 now by the minimum age xe that could have been in 1966

Summary

• 183 biographical articles in total
  • 94 articles would have qualified for speedy deletion under this criterion
    • 0 of which reached a "keep" consensus at VFD
    • 0 of which reached a "merge" consensus at VFD
    • 1 of which reached a "redirect" consensus (i.e. content to be discarded) at VFD
    • 86 of which reached a "delete" consensus at VFD
      • 80 of which were unanimous
    • 9 of which reached no consensus at VFD (and thus defaulted to keep)
      • 4 of which lacked any "keep" votes (and any "delete" votes other than the nominator, but were deleted anyway)
  • 89 articles would not have qualified for speedy deletion under this criterion
    • 55 of which reached a unanimous "delete" consensus at VFD
    • 19 of which reached a "keep" consensus at VFD

Thus 80 of the 135 unanimous deletes, 59%, would have qualified for speedy deletion under this criterion.

Methodology

The criterion was applied at its narrowest and most mechanical. Any external hyperlink qualified as "citing a source", as did all ISBN references. Similarly, where articles gave no date of death, the subject was assumed to be still alive.

Detail

In the following tables:

• true positives — articles where this criterion would have resulted in a speedy deletion where so far the actual VFD discussion has a consensus to delete, too, and thus the goal of reducing VFD load would have been met
• interesting negatives — articles that wouldn't qualify for speedy deletion under this criterion where the actual VFD discussion has a "no consensus" or "keep" decision so far
• false positives — articles where this criterion would have resulted in a speedy deletion where the actual VFD discussion has a "no consensus" or "keep" decision so far

2005-06-20

2005-06-21

2005-06-22

2005-06-23

2005-06-24

2005-06-25

2005-06-26

• In theory, I like this idea, Uncle G, but wouldn't it just encourage vanity purveyors to lie about their age, or just not mention an age or birthdate at all, while implying an age over 25, to get around the "age is not given and it cannot be inferred from the article that the subject is over 25" stipulation? AиDя01DTALKEMAIL 00:08, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC)
  • I think it wouldn't. The personal vanity articles that many editors wish to see made speedy deletable are generally not hoaxes, as an article with a false age would be, and the people who write them are not trying to game the system. Rather, more often than not it appears that they are trying to use Wikipedia as a quick and easy substitute for having web sites of their own, for their biographies and autobiographies. The simpler way to game the criterion, of course, is to do exactly that, and then cite the web page as a source. However, the end result of that is that the burden of VFD is made simpler, because people have to perform less searching for sources on the subject (a source having been pre-supplied), and (if the article is discussed and kept) the article ends up citing a source. If people game the criterion that way, the encyclopaedia actually wins. Uncle G 17:01, 2005 Jun 24 (UTC)
• I like this proposal, as it does what I had thought important: it targets the obvious vanity by some means other than vanity. This is important, because, of all the areas where we speedy delete, it's the one area where people have actually made mistakes. The austistic boy who features in Robert Wilson operas (Christopher Knowles), had a tiny article once, and it went to VfD. Well, Google was no help, and people thought it was a vanity article, since it claimed to be about someone who set the poetry world on its ear. I recognized the guy's name and was able to buff up the article and save it. I don't blame the voters: avant garde artists won't be attested by Google, and even a weak article on them will look like the general vanity article. Strength of claims and lack of Google results really can't guide us inerrantly. Generally, the folks who write the obvious vanity articles don't read our guidelines (or they'd know the policy against autobiography), so I don't think they'd get wise to this speedy criterion (Android's concerns), but I have a big problem with references to websites being validation. The most noxious vanity articles do link (as they're page rank boosters) to blogs or geocities vanity efforts or forums, and I'd hate to think the double vanity of writing about yourself and then linking to yourself isn't going to save one of these articles. Perhaps direct address, incomplete naming, and impossible claims should be part? No. I know that doesn't work any better. This proposal is a step in the right direction, though. Perhaps it would be better phrased as "any source not by the subject that confirms?" That way, we kick out the geocities links but keep a reference to even a weak 3rd party article. Geogre 01:21, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • people thought it was a vanity article — However, they wouldn't have thought it to be an "unsourced biography" (the not-strictly-accurate-but-short name that I have tentatively coined for this criterion to stress that it is not a "vanity" criterion). Christopher Knowles would have not qualified for speedy deletion by this criterion, on "if he was 19 in 1973, he must be older than 25 now" grounds. SimonP brought up a similar example of Pierre Maury. That, too, would not have qualified for speedy deletion by this criterion, on "1324 - 1282 > 25" grounds. I have a big problem with references to websites being validation — I don't think that it is the problem that you think it to be:
    • As above, the encyclopaedia wins (with easier VFD discussions and better end-result articles) if sources are cited, even if those sources are also autobiographical.
    • The data aready garnered indicate that it isn't a problem. I've applied the criterion at its most narrow and restrictive — any citation whatever, regardless of what it is citing or how, disqualifies an article for speedy deletion — for the purposes of this study, and yet the study shows (so far) that 75% (53 out of 70) of personal vanity articles that garner a unanimous consensus to delete would be speedily deleted under this criterion.
    • At the moment, editors would not be required to actually consult the cited sources to determine whether the article qualifies for speedy deletion according to the criterion, as they would be required to do if the criterion incorporated restrictions on the author of the source. Rather the rule is simple: Citing a source of any sort means that the criterion is not met and normal deletion (or another speedy deletion criterion) must be employed. I think that it is best to not complicate the decision tree for the criterion, by requiring editors to look at what the sources actually are, unless a need is demonstrated. Given the 75% hit rate, I don't think that it yet has been.
  • Also note that eliminating the citation of "sources by the subject" would have caused false positives for
    Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Eric Elfman (unanimous keep), both of which linked to their respective subjects' own web sites. Uncle G
    17:46, 2005 Jun 24 (UTC)
• I like this a lot. I interpret the criteria for speedy deletion pretty strictly, so when I'm trawling speedy candidates I end up adding a lot to VfD even though they're clearly just autobios/friend-bios of young people who haven't accomplished anything of note and will be deleted. Better to have a clear criterion that avoids the hassle. — Gwalla | Talk 05:00, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• I like it. It would get those unfunny "joke" bios/autobios all right, that don't strictly qualify for speedy (excepting the very short ones) but probably get speedied a lot anyway. (No, I don't, but I'd sure like to.) They never have any sources. Bishonen | talk 08:53, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• In general I agree with these criteria. However, in the examples given, any editor could have trivially determined that Chan Parker, Jeff Tunnell and Joe Gould are all over 25 years old. e.g. Chan Parker's article names her husband, whose entry on Wikipedia indicates that he died in 1955. Can we expect editors to do 30 seconds of research to find this out? Pburka 23:51, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • I think that it should be seen as an advantage for this criterion that in cases of a dispute occurring it is relatively simple to disqualify an article from speedy deletion with either of two simple modifications to the article: the citation of a source of some kind or the addition of a date of birth or other indication that the subject is over 25 (to articles that give no age). Uncle G June 29, 2005 15:57 (UTC)
• It's not clear how the criteria should be applied to dead people. e.g. is Henry Ford (jazz) a candidate for speedy deletion? (He shouldn't be). I think that the criteria should be reworded to only include living people under 25. Although Wikipedia is not a memorial, the simple fact that a person died before 25 implies that there may be some notability; such a biography deserves a VfD discussion. Pburka 00:12, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • The case of people aged 25 or under who were born more than 25 years ago is where the criterion needs some slight attention. However, the study turned up no nominations for such corner case articles. All of the dead people nominated during the week that the study ran either had sources or were over 25. Uncle G June 29, 2005 15:57 (UTC)
    • I've tightened the wording. Henry Ford (jazz) would not qualify, because although he was 21 when he died, had he not died he would be over 25 now. Uncle G June 29, 2005 16:34 (UTC)
      • My preference would be to exclude dead people from this speedy deletion criteria altogether. As you said, none of the articles in the sample group about dead people have met the proposed criteria for speedy deletion, so it won't significantly decrease the efficaciousness of the criteria. I think it would also be simpler. Instead of persons who now are (or now would be, were they still alive) aged 25 or under you could just specify living persons who are aged 25 or under. Pburka 1 July 2005 01:01 (UTC)
• First of all, I think this is a freshly original contribution to the clear and present problem of blatant vanity. I think it takes some steps in the necessary direction, but I think some slight extensions might merit consideration. Consider first that people who make vanity articles are usually shiny new to Wikipedia and didn't read much policy guidance first. So any article written as 'I/we/us/our' should also be a candidate whether the person is under a slightly-arbitrary 25yrs or not — a small instruction-creep that does no damage and provides a pretty strong indicator of whether it is probably vanity of the kind we seek to deal with. If they've put enough thought in to read the guidance, that's a bit different (some vanity articles are actually admiration-articles), but the rest of the criterion still applies. The criterion needs extending to companies under some age limit too e.g. 5-7 years along with the grammar-person extension. Finally, I think that it should be made explicit that the links must be external and not to include another Wiki. I think with some insertion of this kind of thing, this criterion would be good shot — until people realize the rules. -Splash 00:27, Jun 26, 2005 (UTC)
  • any article written as 'I/we/us/our — I suggest performing a study of that to see whether in fact it would provide a significant gain over the criterion as it currently stands. The criterion needs extending to companies under some age limit too — It is other approaches to other problems, such as corporate vanity and web site vanity, that this proposal is intended to provoke. I think that those two problems should be handled by criteria separate from this one, though. Uncle G June 29, 2005 15:57 (UTC)
• In the samples from June 25th, it seems that your criterion fails to catch about half of the vanity pages that nevertheless get unanimous vote to delete. It seems to me, then, that your earlier assumption of 75% is incorrect, and that a stricter proposal would be more useful. For instance, dropping the age restriction might help - especially as in several of the examples, the age is not listed but conjectured from other given facts. Radiant_>|< June 28, 2005 09:40 (UTC)
  • your earlier assumption — 75% wasn't an assumption at all. It was taken from the data as they stood partway through the study, where of the 70 articles that reached a "delete" consensus at VFD, 53 would have qualified for speedy deletion under this criterion. dropping the age restriction might help — Dropping the age restriction would make the proposal less strict, not more strict, and would have caused false positives for several cases. in several of the examples, the age is not listed but conjectured — In several cases such as
    Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Judith Alice Clark that was a good thing because, given the discussions that occurred, clearly those articles should go through normal deletion not speedy deletion. Uncle G
    June 29, 2005 15:57 (UTC)
  • Looking over your results above, I see only one person that was kept that would have been deleted under 'unsourced articles on a person regardless of age' - and he was kept because he's a principal, and that should have had a source in the first place to be verifiable (which is also fixed now). So, I'd definitely support a CSD for unsourced biographies, but the age limit sounds like minor instruction creep. Radiant_>|< June 28, 2005 14:44 (UTC)
    • That's a very significant miscount. The age limit is an important part of the criterion.
      Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Julia DeMato would all have been false positives under a "unsourced articles on a person regardless of age" criterion (The articles that have sources now didn't have sources at the time of nomination.), as would Christopher Knowles and Pierre Maury. Uncle G
      June 29, 2005 15:57 (UTC)
• Violates the KISS principle. It's easier to just put them up for VfD. Nathan256 29 June 2005 16:38 (UTC)
  • On the contrary, it's a quite straightforward criterion, and it is more difficult to put things through the normal deletion process than to put them through the speedy deletion process. Uncle G June 29, 2005 17:29 (UTC)

Friends of Avril Lavigne should not be allowed to write articles?

I have a query - let's take a hypothetical case, but one that is not only feasible, but fairly close to some biographical articles I've written. Say I was a friend of - for argument's sake - someone like Avril Lavigne, having gone to school with her and followed her career closely. She is now, at 20 years of age, a huge star, but rather than cite any sources, I simply write what I know about her from personal experience. We now have an unreferenced article of someone under the age of 25, yet with possibly more information than a standard website or biography of the person would have given. Under the proposed rules, this could be speedy deleted, right? Grutness...wha? 2 July 2005 12:20 (UTC)

• It depends from what you actually wrote.
  • One typically bad form of friend-of-Avril-Lavigne biography, where practically nothing would exist after the POV content was removed, would indeed qualify for speedy deletion under this hypothetical criterion:

    Avril Lavigne is the greatest pop star in the world. She is very sexy.

  • As would another, where practically nothing would exist after the unverifiable "from personal experience" content was removed (as it would be anyway, and which would probably garner a "if not completely rewritten, delete and let the redlinks stand" consensus at VFD):

    I grew up with Avril Lavigne. When she and I were little, we used to play together and sang in the same choir. She still hasn't given back to me the tie that I lent to her.

  • However, typically biographies about people where there wouldn't be a universal consensus to delete (or to junk the entire content of the article when cleaning up) at least attempt an encyclopaedic tone and style, and the criterion is deliberately easy to evade, even for people aged 25 or under, in the cases where an article would end up being kept at VFD. A mere mention of a local newspaper report would disqualify the article from speedy deletion under this hypothetical criterion:

    Avril Lavigne is a singer. On 2005-06-29 the Ottowa Citizen reported that she was getting married.

  • As would a link to a fan site:

    Avril Lavigne (born 1984-09-27) is a famous singer who used to have a penchant for ties. For pictures see this web page.

    Avril Lavigne (born 1984-09-27) is a Canadian singer. External links: my fan page.

  • Or a reference to a book:

    Avril Lavigne (born 1984-09-27) is a singer and songwriter. There's a book about her, ISBN 1852270497.

  • Or other, more unusual, sources, cited informally (and note here that the point is the citation of the source, not what the assertion made by the source is):

    Avril Lavigne is the 62nd sexiest woman in the world according to the

    FHM 100 Sexiest Women in the World 2004

    .

• The study conducted on this page considers actual, concrete, cases rather than hypothetical ones made up "for argument's sake". Doing the same here with some articles that you actually created reveals that the friend-of-Avril-Lavigne article doesn't seem to exist in practice in the first place:
  • Roberto Matta — well over 25 and cites a source
  • Ralph Hotere — well over 25 and cites a source
  • Gabriel Read — well over 25 even though it has no sources
  • Whina Cooper — well over 25 and cites a source
  • William Hutt — well over 25 even though it has no sources
  • Michael Niko Jones — well over 25 even though it has no sources
  • Chris Harris — well over 25 even though it has no sources
• Uncle G 2005-07-02 15:03:03 (UTC)

I know it's not open for voting yet, but if and when it is, I'll vote for it. JesseW 30 June 2005 22:19 (UTC)

• Unless Uncle G objects, I'd want to add this to Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal, which is going to be up for voting this weekend. Radiant_>|< July 1, 2005 08:04 (UTC)

I conducted a very brief survey on existing articles which appears to show that the majority of existing articles on under-25-year-olds started out (and generally kept going for a long time) as un-referenced works. Please see Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion/Proposal/2#Existing_articles_which_would_have_been_deleted_per_this_CSD. — Asbestos | Talk 6 July 2005 00:35 (UTC)