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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 Wikipedia 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 Wikipedia 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, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a tabloid. Kaldari 02:25, 26 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• 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)[reply]
• 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 ^(squeak) 14:25, 26 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • 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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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 Wikipedia 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 Wikipedia, 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 Wikipedia editors. I guarantee, however, that they would feel a lot differently if it was their own Wikipedia 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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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 Wikipedia 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 ^(talk) 19:18, 27 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• 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)[reply]
  • 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 ^(talk) 20:02, 27 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • 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)[reply]
      • The current AfD process has a presumption in favor of retention. A BLPfD would have a presumption in favor of deletion, so long as the subject wasn't an important public figure. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 20:30, 27 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
        • And "presumption in favor of retention" is a problem why? --badlydrawnjeff talk 20:46, 27 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
          • See below for several reasons why I believe presumtion in favour of retention is a bad thing for articles about living people (remember "do no harm") Nil Einne 16:49, 29 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• 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 ^(squeak) 20:07, 27 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • 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, Wikipedia 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 Wikipedia 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 Wikipedia article? The court recognized you were depressed at the time, and gave you a telling off so you could put it behind you, but Wikipedia 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 ^(talk) 20:26, 27 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

    • Slim, I'm afraid that's exactly what I was worried about. You're an extremely experienced, even legendary, Wikipedia 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 ^(squeak) 20:45, 27 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • 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 ^(talk) 20:51, 27 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
        • 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 ^(squeak) 21:12, 27 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • 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 Wikipedia article? The court recognized you were depressed at the time, and gave you a telling off so you could put it behind you, but Wikipedia 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)[reply]

      • That was just an example, so make up your own. The point is the notability was sufficient to trigger some newspaper stories, which Wikipedia could then use as reliable sources. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 20:44, 27 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
        • ... and which can be located and read by the potential employer just as easily as any Wikipedia article can be located and read. (After all, Wikipedia 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. Wikipedia 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)[reply]
          • • • Actually, a simple search engine search would not return up everything that some Wikipedia articles contain. Last time I checked Google does not include the NY Times archive in their search results. The point that a Wikipedia 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)[reply]
• 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 Wikipedia; 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 Wikipedia over the lives of essentially non-notable individuals who sometimes get caught up in it. Jayjg ^(talk) 20:15, 27 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• 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)[reply]
• 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)[reply]
  • 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 ^(talk) 20:46, 27 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • 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 ^(talk) 21:01, 27 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • 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)[reply]
  • 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. ([1])
  • 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)[reply]
    • 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 ^(talk) 21:01, 27 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• List here the kind of bios we are talking about: Rachel Marsden, Daniel Brandt, Seth Finkelstein, Brian Peppers (deleted), Brian Chase (deleted), Gregory Lauder-Frost (deleted)
  • Other bios that are not controversial (yet) but are also good test cases: Stan & Frank Koebel, Michael D. Brown, Kevin Federline, Jayson Blair, Monica Lewinsky
  • From WP:BLP: Christopher Michael Langan, Jeff Gannon, Sollog,

I started the above list. Please add to it. WAS 4.250 20:54, 27 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

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 ^(talk) 21:03, 27 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

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)[reply]

I agree with you in principle, but there are unresolved or sensitive issues in all the real cases, including Marsden's. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 21:48, 27 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• 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.

Wikipedia 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.

Wikipedia 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 Wikipedia 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 Wikipedia articles aren't routinely contacted about contents of articles that claim to describe their activities. I find nothing in Wikipedia guidelines or policies that prohibits such contact, but a general arms-length attitude toward subjects and sources implied by no-original-research suggests a Wikipedia 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 Wikipedia 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 Wikipedia 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 Wikipedia 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, Wikipedia can serve as an alternative text book, degradation of standards in Wikipedia 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 Wikipedia 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 Wikipedia 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)[reply]

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 Wikipedia 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)[reply]

Excellent comments, Jill. You've given us a lot to think about. Thank you. Kla'quot 23:48, 27 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• 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 Wikipedia community to push them as a policy revision. I cannot endorse it more strongly. -- Seth Finkelstein 00:03, 28 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thinking that one has been presented with an article that one owns and has to "monitor and defend" is an error. Please read Wikipedia:Ownership of articles. Uncle G 05:08, 30 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• 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)[reply]

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 ^(talk) 00:17, 28 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

Okay, we can put something up and start on it. I like Kla-quot's suggestion too about the ethics committee. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 03:14, 28 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

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 ^(squeak) 14:12, 28 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose specifics While I agree that we need stricter standards, I see this less as an issue of compassion than of Wikipedia'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. Wikipedia: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 Wikipedia 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)[reply]

• Comment ... Wikipedia: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)[reply]
• 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)[reply]
  • There is a way for such biographies to get a hearing. It's called Wikipedia:Articles for deletion. Uncle G 05:08, 30 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• 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)[reply]
• 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)[reply]

  • 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)[reply]
• 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)[reply]
  • 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)[reply]
    • 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 Wikipedia at all. Uncle G 05:08, 30 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Support - per my own User:Tawker/BLPD - we do need something to this extent -- Tawker 06:20, 29 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• 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)[reply]
• 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)[reply]
  • 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)[reply]
  • 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 Wikipedia, 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 Wikipedia. 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 Wikipedia. But sooner or later, this problem will have to be addressed. Here's the question: As Wikipedia 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 Wikipedia 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 Wikipedia, 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 Wikipedia 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)[reply]
    • Daniel Brandt's entirely correct in his above statements. Further the issue is not even deleting material from Wikipedia; as Brandt had in the past agreed to a compromise in which the content would be moved to other articles in Wikipedia. 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)[reply]

• 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 Wikipedia. See Wikipedia: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 Wikipedia 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 Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sophie Ellis-Bextor, for example. There is no way for an administrator, or any other Wikipedia 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 Wikipedia 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)[reply]

  • 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 Wikipedia 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)[reply]
    • 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 Wikipedia. Wikipedia: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 Wikipedia.

      The sources do "fix it". Wikipedia 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 Wikipedia 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)[reply]

• 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)[reply]
  • 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)[reply]
    • 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)[reply]
      • Wikipedia:Consensus can change - "Since the Wiki grows and develops, consensus can change at a later date." -- Seth Finkelstein 05:41, 31 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• 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 Wikipedia's community, which is the entire world. There is a saying: "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few". Wikipedia 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)[reply]

• 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. Wikipedia 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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

Afd might work yes. I put one up and thought it failed. But it might turn out to be deleted after all. See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of people who became famous through being terminally ill. Garion96 (talk) 16:52, 30 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

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°^Talk 21:05, 30 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

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)[reply]

Here's another good one: Category:People by medical or psychological condition. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:13, 31 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

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 Wikipedia, 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 Wikipedia) the most comprehensive information of its type on the Internet was this essay by Michael Finley that names about two dozen people.[2] 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 Wikipedia 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^Charge! 16:17, 31 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

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 [3], 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.

Weirdly about the Sai Baba article, it extensively discusses 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.

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 Wikipedia: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. 67.117.130.181 19:25, 31 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]