Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-01-25/BLP madness
BLP deletions cause uproar
The issue of unsourced biographies of living people (BLPs) came to a head this week after
Jimbo's response
I haven't reviewed the specifics of your recent article deletions, so I can't vouch for each and every one of them of course, but I wanted to fully endorse the principles that, as I understand it, you have used in your deletions: unsourced BLPs that have been around for several years are an easy and obvious first target, and your deletions, while unconventional and a bit exciting for some, were carefully considered and I consider this a valid application of
WP:BOLD. You have my support. —Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:58, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
Jimbo Wales was notified of developments. In response, he wrote to Scott MacDonald that he supported what Scott was doing; Scott MacDonald was deleting BLPs which had been unreferenced for three years or longer.
New proposals to deal with BLPs
During the discussion at ANI, two proposals were offered and were moved from ANI to the more appropriate talk pages of relevant policies,
Enforcement via proposed deletion process
Bigtimepeace proposed an amendment to the PROD policy: that "prods of unreferenced BLPs cannot be removed until the article is adequately referenced." Further, he proposed that once this amendment was enacted, 5,000 unreferenced BLPs—selected from
Adding a new criterion for speedy deletion
Adjusting the planned flagged revisions feature
Separate deletion process
1. An article is nominated when the {{dub}} tag is added.
2. If any person adds one or more relevant reliable sources to the article and then removes the {{dub}} tag, the BLP deletion is aborted and may not be renominated. The article may still be nominated for a regular deletion discussion of course.
3. The article is first checked and then manually deleted by an administrator 7 days after nomination. It may be incubated.
Discussion on the talk page is ongoing, and as of publication it has neither been marked as a policy nor received significant levels of formal support or opposition.
Wikipedia:Unreferenced biographies of living people was created and proposed by Scott MacDonald. This proposal incorporates the suggestion referenced above by employing a PROD system. New unreferenced BLPs would be tagged with {{Prod blp}} immediately; the page will exist for seven days during which time the tag may be removed only if adequate sourcing is provided. After seven days without sourcing the article would be deleted. Existing articles would be treated slightly differently; a bot would be used to provide a list to Wikiprojects of unsourced BLPs within their purview, and so allow interested editors to find and fix problem BLPs. Aside from this, all BLPs unreferenced for two years or more would be tagged for deletion, and a month would be provided to fix them, after which time they will be deleted. After these articles are addressed, all BLPs unreferenced for 18 months would be tagged and given the same month to be fixed; subsequent taggings would occur in similar iterations based on time tagged as being unreferenced. All articles deleted under this proposal would be undeleted and userfied upon request. This proposal also makes a specific note about deletions of non-attack page BLPs outside of already-established procedures: Notwithstanding ArbCom's recent motion, if this policy is adopted, it shall explicitly be considered against policy and disruptive if any BLP is speedy deleted merely for being unsourced. (See below for explanation of the motion referenced.) Discussion on the talk page is ongoing, and as of publication it has not been marked as a policy nor has it received significant levels of formal support or opposition.
Arbitration Committee grants amnesty, recommends centralized discussion
The Committee has determined that:
- The deletions carried out by Rdm2376, Scott MacDonald, and various other administrators are a reasonable exercise of administrative discretion to enforce the policy on biographies of living people.
- The administrators who carried out these actions are commended for their efforts to enforce policy and uphold the quality of the encyclopedia, but are urged to conduct future activities in a less chaotic manner.
- The administrators who interfered with these actions are reminded that the enforcement of the policy on biographies of living people takes precedence over mere procedural concerns.
The Committee hereby proclaims an amnesty for all editors who may have overstepped the bounds of policy in this matter. Everyone is asked to continue working together to improve and uphold the goals of our project. The Committee recommends, in particular, that a request for comments be opened to centralize discussion on the most efficient way to proceed with the effective enforcement of the policy on biographies of living people.
Motion passed (9/4/3/0)
In response to Rdm2376's deletions,
Later, another case was brought by
The RfC is actively ongoing; it is likely that any resolution will form from there. A summary of the discussion as of midday 24 January was drafted by Risker.
Discuss this story
RFC again: Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Biographies of living people
A graph of current opinion can be found here:
Ikip 04:05, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
2 opposes = solid opposition?
Misleading account of events
This account of events is inaccurate. The deletion spree was started by Gregory Kohs, a banned editor, who coordinated off-line with at least one administrator to do a "test" introducing vandalism to unwatched and unreferenced biographies. I believe there was also something about the purchase of an admin account (user:Cool3?). The conspiracy was exposed and blocks issued, but deletions followed with support from the Wikipedia Review crowd where Kohs is active, until a consensus of Wikipedia editors objected (see voting results on proposal that unreferenced biographies can be speedy deleted). How do we get this misleading depiction fixed? ChildofMidnight (talk) 17:28, 26 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Does this have anything to do with Casliber's claims.[1]
Are you talking about this: The BLP offwiki forum dedicated to tightening up BLP practices any bets how quick this will be deleted?[2] Ikip 05:54, 27 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I would argue the lack of references on BLPs (and all articles, in general) is partially a result of Mediawiki's unfriendly editing interface. We need to make it easier for new users to add references when there's a "Citation needed" at the end of a sentence or a big unreferenced tag on the article. How about a series a screenshots or even a short video clip? We need to teach these same users to add references instead of having a very limited number of experienced editors fixing it for them. MahangaTalk 19:52, 27 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Way back when...the 'External links' section was used for references for the entire article. Obviously that wasn't the best idea in the world, and it became the common practice to provide separate citations for each statement. I can understand putting these older articles into some sort of 'purgatory' where they can be fixed up, but I certainly can't agree to deleting non-controversial articles about various elected congresspeople, including those no longer in office (which means the Project Vote Smart et al material is no longer available, which means it would be difficult to re-create the article from scratch). I'm sure there are similar stories in other areas. If there are specific problems with specific articles, fine. I just don't believe that one size fits all. (And yes, those who can't figure out how to copy and paste a ref from another article to use as a template of sorts are at a disadvantage with new articles. However, I think many are just too lazy to bother doing anything at all with refs.) Flatterworld (talk) 22:48, 28 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]