The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Should red links for persons be allowed on Wikipedia? If no, why not? If yes, what conditions, if any, should be considered? WP:REDNOT's fourth paragraph says, "A red link to a person's name should be avoided," but WP:REDLINK's nutshell template and lead section, as well as WP:LINK#Red links, do not mention this exception. While there have been past discussions, differing interpretations (e.g., the exception being conditional or unconditional) warrant a formal determination. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 16:40, 14 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Survey

• Allow redlinks This does not "warrant a formal determination"; I prefer to leave the current wording status quo ante so application can differ page to page. Please handle your dispute on the page in question. Chris Troutman (talk) 16:57, 14 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Allow redlinks I also prefer the less restrictive ambiguity expressed above. Many situations where a red link occurs is as a place holder for a notable subject (in this case, people), which will be an arguable situation. The red link in an appropriate situation serves as an invitation for an article to be created, possibly by someone with the appropriate knowledge. It then automatically links to the correct spelling, disambiguation format etc etc in potentially multiple appropriate articles. Trackinfo (talk) 17:08, 14 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Disallow redlinks If the person is not notable, a redlink is misleading as it implies that an article should be created. If a person is notable, creating a stub article takes almost no effort, and it ensures that an article about a different person isn't created under that name potentially creating BLP issues (as described at WP:REDNOT). --Ahecht (TALK
  PAGE) 17:20, 14 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Disallow redlinks As Ahecht states above, if a person is notable a page can be created easily enough. The redlink in a page for a notable person is likely to open up Pandora's box/POV forks for the often fierce debates about whether a person is notable. Arnoutf (talk) 17:33, 14 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  I don't see how this isn't applicable to all red links, so I take these comments with a grain of salt. Stubs, regardless of their actual notability, are deleted on "undemonstrated" notability grounds all the time. The point of this guideline is to encourage articles where they should be created but someone is unwilling to do the basic (and good work) of finding and subsequently using reliable sources. --Izno (talk) 18:06, 14 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Allow red links. Perhaps there should be a soft suggestion to "avoid" them while also a second suggestion to "pre-emptively disambiguate these red links", but certainly there shouldn't be either a blanket ban nor a strong "thou should not use these". The "pre-emptive disambiguate" can avoid the issue of murderers crossing streams with politicians. --Izno (talk) 18:06, 14 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Disallow redlinks - In times past when wikipedia was small, indeed redlinks as an invitation was a good idea, because there was so many articles missing. Now other issues come into play. In particular, I agree that for a deserving person the article will be created anyway, whereas redlinked nonnotables is a headache. One might say let's allow redlinks for notables, but then we run into notability quarrels about redlinks which actually better be handled at AfDs rather than about hypothetical possibilities. Staszek Lem (talk) 19:06, 14 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Allow redlinks While redlinks should generally be avoided, there are many pages where a redlink remains an invitation to create an article. This is especially true with lists of people who may be notable (based on a SNG), but have not seen an article correctly. In some lists, the recommendation is to only list those members who are notable, so the redlink can be a bridge. (A specific example are the lists of members of a legislative assembly, where some, but not all, members have pages, but others do not). --Enos733 (talk) 19:39, 14 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: The example above is for me a reason to support disallow. Per WP:NPOL not all legislative assembly members of all kinds of assemblies automatically qualify. That, in a given list, some have a page may be due to these people meeting general notability rather than this specific notability guideline. Allowing to redlink the non-notable member of such an assembly would in my view raise exactly the problems I warned about before. Arnoutf (talk) 20:33, 14 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I don't quite understand this. What kind of legislative assembly members are not covered by NPOL? They would have to be sub-sub-national, and I don't know of many of those. Frickeg (talk) 23:11, 14 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Here is an example of a template, which, I believe, is an appropriate use of redlinks - Template:Oklahoma_State_Senators. The current community consensus is that all members of a sub-national legislature receive the presumption of notability. Within the Oklahoma State Senate, community members have only created articles about 16 of the 44 members. A redlink helps in the creation of articles and provides a way to connect articles together. --Enos733 (talk) 05:09, 15 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Allow redlinks in article prose, disallow in lists (including in-article lists). This seems to come closest to describing current practice. I am fully confident that WP:NPP can keep WP free of BLP articles that should not be part of the encyclopedia. UnitedStatesian (talk) 21:39, 14 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Allow redlinks. There are plenty of cases where someone is notable but an article is not yet created, and it is frankly better to encourage people to create an actual article rather than someone putting together a fairly useless stub. Redlinks are also one of the best ways of encouraging new editors to contribute - I know I was first prompted to create an article by encountering a redlink, and I strongly suspect I am not alone. Additionally, people above mention that creating a stub takes "almost no effort". Creating one stub might be fairly simple, but for some lists, where a SNG guarantees notability, it may be a matter of creating dozens or even hundreds of stubs. I do not see a problem here that needs addressing - if people are not notable they should not be linked at all, and if they are a redlink is encouraging article creation. Frickeg (talk) 23:11, 14 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Allow redlinks. This is one of the most singly catastrophic proposals I've seen on this project: the marker that an article on a notable person needs creation is absolutely critical for content development, especially in any form of underrepresented area. If we wreck this because a couple of people don't like the look of redlinks, we may as well give up on expanding our content relating to people and go home. We know from long experience that they are not just "created anyway" - this proposal would directly and actively discourage the creation of articles on unequivocally notable topics. The Drover's Wife (talk) 23:26, 14 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Allow redlinks: The stupidest proposal I've seen in a while, quite frankly. We don't need to go overboard with them, sure (if someone's obviously NN, having a redlink is pointless), but to ban them misses the forest for the trees, to be nice. Wizardman 23:43, 14 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Allow redlinks. The problem described (that they may refer to multiple people by the same name and that a newly created article may end up having bad incoming links) is better fixed by, when you create a new article, checking the incoming links to make sure they're not bad. Doesn't everyone already do that? Maybe checking this should be part of NPP. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:24, 15 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Allow redlinks. Wizardman (talk · contribs) and The Drover's Wife (talk · contribs) say it quite well. Furthermore, having redlinked names makes it far, far easier to integrate new articles into the encyclopedia once they have been created. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 00:39, 15 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Allow redlinks This is a foundational piece of WP. It identifies that a subject does not have an article, and encourages editors to create it. Not every redlink is going to be notable when properly examined, but that is in the nature of WP. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 02:23, 15 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Allow redlinks Unless and until the page Wikipedia shows when a reader clicks on a redlink for "John Smith" is changed to invite the reader to search Google for people named "John Smith"—in which case a redlink for a person would create a potential BLP problem—I don't see what the problem is. Why would we treat redlinks for people differently than we do redlinks for any other subject? — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 03:28, 15 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Disallow redlinks For the same reasons as given above; I've nothing to add to them. -- Alex^TW 03:39, 15 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Allow redlinks for all the reasons given above but also to highlight the need to write articles about notable people who already have biographies in other language versions of Wikipedia.--Ipigott (talk) 07:48, 15 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Allow redlinks (a) where the person linked may plausibly be the subject of a future article within a reasonable time; (b) where there's more than one article linking to that person (see MOS:DABRED). Remove single red links to persons with no prospect of notability. — Stanning (talk) 08:31, 15 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Allow redlinks When one is creating an article, typically one comes across multiple other persons who are indeed also notable. Not only do redlinks allow for interconnections and integration within the encyclopedia they provide context for the person and associates being written about. It is absolutely a time sink to have to search for each person who might have been involved with a subject and link them when a new article is created. Far better to insert a redlink at the time of creation to other notables, so that when an article is written, links become active. As for the complaint that the redlink might point to the wrong person, if one styles the name properly when a redlink is created, that is unlikely to happen. I cannot speak for any one else, but when writing an article, I verify the names of others to see if they already have an article or not. If they do not, a quick Google search will advise what is the most likely title, the same way one would search to name any other article. SusunW (talk) 19:37, 15 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Allow redlinks per @SusunW and Ipigott:. This has my strongest support. --Rosiestep (talk) 20:09, 15 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Allow redlinks as an article creator, I often uncover multiple notable people during my writing. Adding redlinks to these articles is an invitation to others to work on these notable people or it allows active links to exist immediately after I work on their articles. I agree wholeheartedly with SusunW. Megalibrarygirl (talk) 20:44, 15 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Allow redlinks per all of the reasons above. The existing guidelines for redlinks (essentially, can potentially become an article) are more than adequate. This is an article by article process. Montanabw^(talk) 04:26, 16 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Allow redlinks - The question seems to be whether there should be an exception to standard operating procedure for names of people. Honestly, I hadn't even come across this exception before. The objection that most people seem to have is an objection to redlinks in general, it seems. I wouldn't oppose tweaking the rules for all redlinks (not outright forbidding them, of course), but at this point I see no reason to treat names differently. Of course, guidelines like LISTPEOPLE/ALUMNI still apply -- there are many, many instances when a linked name should be supported by sources if there's no article. But that's besides the point. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 13:14, 16 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Allow redlinks. The section WP:REDNOT has been very poorly thought out to the point of being irrational. How long has it been in this state? I came here to explain why redlinks can be positively beneficial when multiple people exist with the same name, only to find SusunW got here before me. Thincat (talk) 13:18, 16 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Allow redlinks. The WP:REDNOT 4th paragraph dates to a 2011 insertion. One lone individual decided to put that in, with a talk page notification that it had been done. There does not seem to have been a pre-insertion consensus. Perhaps it's time to use the consensus here to either remove that completely, or reword it conditionally. Whatever reason the editor had for inserting it, we are now 6 years beyond that. Redlinks on individual names are very helpful, especially in situations where projects are trying to improve coverage on a given demographic. The other thing is ... does anybody really believe that nobody, especially drive-by IPs, is inserting redlinks for persons? Is there some bot intended to make a massive regular sweep through Wikipedia to remove redlinks for persons? Projects depends on those redlinks. — Maile (talk) 14:05, 16 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Allow redlinks for persons as well as for any other subject. Remove the phrase A red link to a person's name should be avoided from WP:REDNO as it contradicts this. Perhaps replace it with something like Add red links to the name of a living person only with care, when it will not imply an unsourced negative conclusion, or be likely to lead to confusion if the article is created. But this blanket ban is simply unjustified. Nor does it follow actual practice. Red links can lead to creation of valid articles on people as on any other subject, and in most cases carry no implication contrary to WP:BLP or any othe p[olicy or guideline. DES ^(talk)_{DESiegel Contribs} 20:57, 18 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Allow redlinks, for all the good reasons above. Modify WP:LISTPEOPLE, and particularly {{Editnotice for lists of people}} (which takes a guideline and turns it into law), accordingly. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 22:25, 18 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Allow redlinks. This strikes me as a particularly silly example of instruction creep and the examples cited as reasons why are unconvincing. I'd rather have less restrictive guidance and allow editors to use their judgement. That's why we have humans working on this project. I admit I'm here because someone reverted me citing that section of REDNOT and I was startled by its existence. --Spike Wilbury (talk) 19:21, 26 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Disallow redlinks. I could see changing it to something like, "Persons should not be redlinked unless there is a reasonable expectation that the subject is independently notable..." But the problem is that is open to interpretation, and we'll have a bunch of IP editors that will go back to redlinking every name of every person who's ever appeared in even one episode of a TV series sometime, etc. At the least, the onus should be on the editor who adds the redlink to justify why a redlink should remain – otherwise this will be "open season" to create a "sea of red" in many articles... --IJBall (contribs • talk) 14:23, 27 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • It has been common practice for the entire history of the project to red link notable biographical subjects without articles, and yet we don't have a problem with IP editors redlinking every name of every person who's ever appeared in even one episode of a TV series sometime (at least without them uncontroversially being reverted). It goes without saying that - as for every other redlinked subject, in all the millions of redlinks (including biographical subjects) - it does need to be a notable subject. I find it really strange that some "disallow" voters are talking about this as if it's a hypothetical which might trigger off tsunamis of non-notable redlinks instead of...what is already done virtually everywhere on the project without serious issue (and certainly without any of these issues). The Drover's Wife (talk) 21:44, 27 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • Really? Try watching one of the Disney Channel or Nickelodeon TV series articles sometime, and you'll see how fast IP editors will start adding redlinks for subjects that are currently below the notability guidelines (i.e. child actors in the first roles), or who are even just non-notable guest actors... --IJBall (contribs • talk) 00:35, 28 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
      • And this happens because IPs, understandably, don't understand our notability standards, something which won't change regardless of this discussion. You're just as free to remove them now (because they're non-notable!) as you would be if redlinks were disallowed - and you wouldn't have the absolutely catastrophic damage to content development on nearly every other topic of coverage that would occur in that case. The Drover's Wife (talk) 02:13, 28 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Allow redlinks Others have made the case eloquently. Edwardx (talk) 12:10, 2 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Allow redlinks for notable individuals. I can see the need to be careful around potential BLP issues, but that hardly seems to be a problem unique to the issue of redlinks. I see no compelling reason to have different guidelines for people than for any other topic. Josh Milburn (talk) 00:05, 8 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

This matter came up for me because Dunkirk (2017 film) had three actors among those billed that did not have Wikipedia articles, including the one playing the protagonist, Fionn Whitehead. Based on the goal of the red-link guideline, their names were red-linked since simple search engine tests showed secondary sources, especially for Whitehead. However, these were de-linked without WP:REDNOT being cited, so it seemed more for aesthetic reasons. I recently went ahead and created an article, but I was surprised to hear the claim that red links for persons were not permitted. Until very recently, WP:REDYES mentioned people and WP:BIO until it was removed. So before this removal, this passage and the WP:REDNOT passage seemed to conflict. It would help to establish how Wikipedia should approach red links for persons and to also ensure that the exception is indicated on a high level and not be tucked away. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 16:54, 14 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Chris troutman, this guideline was referenced to remove red links from Dunkirk in their entirety, despite search engine tests showing that articles can be created. This guideline's lack of clarity has led to potential abuse, and it needs to be clearer to all of us in what cases red links are permitted and what they are not. I suggest a more conditional section similar to WP:ELMAYBE where conditions for red-linking a person can be explained. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 17:00, 14 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Ahecht, Arnoutf, isn't the so-called ease of creating a stub a reason not to have red links at all? And why should the BLP concern make for an unconditional ban? In the case of Fionn Whitehead, the argument seems to be that he should never have been red-linked even though there was ample coverage (which was eventually used by me) and no confusion with anyone else? I can understand applying conditions, but a complete ban seems unwarranted. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 17:39, 14 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Ideally you are right. But that would assume saintly editors all around. There are simply a lot of editors out there looking for reasons and allies to create articles on "my daddy" who is the most notable person in the world (to me). That is why notability of persons and BLP are among the strictest policies we have. That is why so much discussion about notability of people is ongoing. Anything to support inclusion of non-notable persons would interfere with the way these debates are formed, and allowing redlinked people (even non notable) in articles would invite editors (including novice editors) to patch together a stub on these non-notable people. That would put even more pressure on editors tracking non-notable stubs. In short it is mainly for pragmatic reasons I support to disallow these links as allowing them would create many many more debates on notability of people. That is, in my view disallowing these red-links is the lesser of the two evils Arnoutf (talk) 18:21, 14 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The ease of creating articles and the urge to turn a list of red links blue is at the core of what resulted in the massive User:Aymatth2/SvG clean-up. One editor created thousands of articles, which I thought was a positive step in the right direction. But his work was so sloppy, others disagreed. The net result was thousands of man hours spent reviewing his work and ultimately, irresponsibly, ~16,000 articles were deleted. From my sampling of the articles, the subjects were notable (many Olympic non-medalists and world class athletes) and the stubs were valid. Others disagreed. Now future editors will meet with a notice that the article has previously been deleted. How many will get scared off? We have taken an additional step to HINDER the creation of articles, turned thousands of blue links red all because one editor tried too hard to create these simple stubs you refer to.Trackinfo (talk) 01:35, 15 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I must say, I'm noting not much discussion and a lot of WP:VOTING... -- Alex^TW 04:33, 16 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Everyone arguing that this is a terrible proposal has outlined a vast range of reasons why this is. You stated "For the same reasons as given above; I've nothing to add to them" - the single most contentless vote in the entire discussion. Funny man. The Drover's Wife (talk) 04:51, 16 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Aw, thanks. Just for you, us Aussies clearly have a sense of humour. -- Alex^TW 04:59, 16 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Don't see that there is much to discuss. I have been working on a collaborative GA this month in which there have been added redlinks and interlanguage links to other WP pages for ten other notables. As we are still working on the article, there may be more before we are done. The point is, five of those redlinks have now converted to C class articles and one of them is a start class article. It isn't remotely "easy" to create well-documented, comprehensive articles. Single lines stubs are not helpful in providing much information, and a Google search would supply that. On the other hand, a comprehensive article gives context. Far easier to integrate other notables into the encyclopedia from an "anchor" article, which has already evaluated during its creation which associates are likely to also be notable. I see no net gain at all from prohibiting redlinks and a lot of detrimental hindrance for creation and integration. SusunW (talk) 12:50, 16 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Suggestion Yes, there can be a problem when a red link turns blue when the "wrong" article is created - a redlink for an actor in a film cast list, an article created for a dead politician of the same name, etc. Rather than avoiding redlinks for personal names (as suggested at WP:REDNOT), let's look at a different approach - a bot or similar.

It would be useful if editors creating articles or redirects which are already red links got a talk page message on the lines of: "Thank you for creating the article Xxx. It has been linked to by what were previously red links in the articles listed below, helping readers to use the encyclopedia. [And that list would preferably distinguish those cases where the link was in a template, rather than an individual link in the article]. If any of these do not seem to be intended to link to this article, please amend the incoming links - for more info on how to do this please click "HELP". If you cannot resolve these yourself please click "HERE" to add this to a list of articles needing attention."

And then have a maintenance template and category for "Articles with possibly incorrect incoming links", which a species of WikiGnome will then delight in sorting out by disambiguating incoming links, or perhaps moving the new article to a disambiguated title, as appropriate. A page at "HELP" would give advice on how to do this for willing but inexperienced editors.

The idea being that a new or lazy editor could click "HERE" to mark the article as needing help from someone else, while other editors could skim the list, notice the links which were from unlikely subject areas, and go and fix them. It wouldn't catch every instance, but it would reduce the number of links to completely wrong people. PamD 23:24, 7 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]