→Do nothing: Agree. |
|||
Line 980: | Line 980: | ||
:[[User:Mr.Z-man]] said, "If content is referenced to a reliable source and meets NPOV, etc., then any complaint from the subject is not going to result in a change because we know that the content is both factually correct and encyclopedic. If the content is unsourced, then a complaint means that it might be untrue and libelous." |
:[[User:Mr.Z-man]] said, "If content is referenced to a reliable source and meets NPOV, etc., then any complaint from the subject is not going to result in a change because we know that the content is both factually correct and encyclopedic. If the content is unsourced, then a complaint means that it might be untrue and libelous." |
||
:One point is that there is a difference between 1) whether the article lists a source and 2) whether a source is listed for any and all problematic statements in the article. [[User:Maurreen|Maurreen]] ([[User talk:Maurreen|talk]]) 08:01, 14 February 2010 (UTC) |
:One point is that there is a difference between 1) whether the article lists a source and 2) whether a source is listed for any and all problematic statements in the article. [[User:Maurreen|Maurreen]] ([[User talk:Maurreen|talk]]) 08:01, 14 February 2010 (UTC) |
||
;NuclearWarfare and Mr.Z-man defense of MZMcBride and breaching experiments |
|||
This is very important to point out, the editor who started this RFC, MZMcBride, is now a desopyed administrator. He had a "secret mailing list" and recruited a banned editor to conduct "breaching experiments", MZMcBride "gave this list to [a banned user] knowing that...the introduction of inaccurate information into these articles—even if done by K. inconspicuously and without malice—could have unpredictable real life consequences" |
|||
Both NuclearWarfare and Mr.Z-man have defended these breaching experiments and MZMcBride: |
|||
# Mr.Z-man to Okip: "The banned user's vandalism was minor, limited, and I believe in most cases was self-reverted."" |
|||
# NuclearWarfare to Okip: "Your constant posts about how MZMcBride manufactured this BLP crisis and is now trying to deceive the entire community into doing something or another is bordering on harassment." |
|||
If NuclearWarfare and Mr.Z-man are concerned about the libelous effects of unreferenced BLP's why are they vigorously defending a desopyed administrator who intentionally supported [introducing] "inaccurate information into [unreferenced living person] articles"? |
|||
In addition, Mr.Z-man repeatedly acknowledges, "I agreed that phase 2 only covered one aspect". |
|||
For full details see: [[Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_comment/Biographies_of_living_people#Proposal:_Close_this_manufactured_RFC_immediately|Proposal: Close this manufactured RFC immediately]] |
|||
;Support |
;Support |
Revision as of 08:15, 15 February 2010
Phase I of Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Biographies of living people is now closed. This is Phase II of the WP:RFC on dealing with unsourced WP:BLPs.
Table summary
submission | submission time | subject | Support (S) |
Oppose (O) |
Neutral (N) |
%Support (%S) |
Stance |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
MZMcBride | 15:58, 21/01/2010 | "Any biography that is poorly referenced or completely unreferenced should be deleted on-sight. If a user wishes to re-create the biography, they may request undeletion (or simply re-create the page) as long as they provide adequate sourcing." | 55 | 157 | 1 | 25.94% | Stricter 0 days Delete immediately |
Jehochman | 16:14, 21/01/2010 |
|
163 | 35 | 8 | 82.32% | Stricter 7 days |
Jclemens | 16:22, 21/01/2010 | "The risk reduced--and let's be clear, there certainly will be some--is insufficient to justify the widespread deletion of accurate, useful, and innocuous information, sourced or not, and ultimately damages Wikipedia without helping BLP vandalism subjects." | 83 | 14 | 1 | 85.57% | No change |
Collect | 16:16, 21/01/2010 | "Existence of a person is not, however, controversial nor contentious. WP has policies for deleting articles lacking notability, and no Draconian policy of automatic article deletion should pre-empt the orderly functioning of processes already existing." | 83 | 20 | 4 | 80.58% | No change |
David Gerard | 16:17, 21/01/2010 | "I suggest a PROD-like template - call it BLP-PROD - which says "Find references for this article or it DIES." Five days seems too long, make it two days." | 64 | 48 | 1 | 57.14% | Stricter 2 days |
DGG | 17:10, 21/01/2010 | "For old articles, a procedure of summary deletion is particularly reckless." | 66 | 6 | 5 | 91.67% | No change |
Power.corrupts | 18:12, 21/01/2010 | "The real problem is unsourced contentious info, not unreferenced articles. The proposal will do nothing or little to the real problem, and at the same time incur tremendous costs." | 48 | 15 | 0 | 76.19% | No change |
Sandstein | 19:25, 21/01/2010 | "The arbcom motion is not to be understood as changing or superseding general deletion policy and process as applied to the biographies of living persons, and it should be considered void if and insofar as it might have been intended to have that effect. Instead, any policy change should be decided by community consensus, starting with this RfC." | 75 | 6 | 3 | 92.59% | N/A |
Jimbo Wales | 15:14, 25/01/2010 | "Starting with everything which has been unreferenced for more than 3 years, a three-month notice time starting February 1st, before they are deleted on May 1st. 2. Starting with everything which has been unreferenced for more than 2 years, a three-month notice time starting May 1st, before they are deleted on August 1st. 3. Starting with everything which has been unferenced for more than 1 year, a three-month notice time starting August first, before they are deleted on November 1st.
In all cases, biographies deleted for being old and unreferenced should be put onto a list for those who wish to come behind and work on them further. After that, we can consider how long is a reasonable life span (I would say one week, but one month could be fine as well) for new biographies to exist in a sad state before they are deleted. |
36 | 25 | 5 | 59.02% | Stricter 7 days to 30 days |
Aymatth2 | 13:39, 24 January 2010 | This proposal is to create a mechanically ranked list of all unsourced BLPs, so editors who want to remove inappropriate articles can work up from the bottom of the list, and editors who want to retain valuable content can work down from the top. Obvious ranking criteria would be:
The values would be given weightings in a ranking formula such as: (inboundlinks x 100) + (uniqueeditors x 150) + (sizekb x 50) - (agedays x 1) - (lasteditdays x 0.5) |
Technical | ||||
Henrik | 16:24, 21 January 2010 | "A significant minority of editors are unwilling to let unsourced, but likely uncontentious biographies remain in the encyclopedia. Deleting content makes the text available to only a select few, and makes fixing the articles a significantly harder process. I suggest an alternative to tackle the backlog of the roughly 50k articles in question:
This allows us to work towards preserving the content of these articles, while maintaining respect for the potential harm unsourced biographies may cause." |
Technical | ||||
WereSpielChequers | 16:57, 21 January 2010 | Earlier this month User:DASHBot started gently chiding the authors of unsourced BLPs. I think we should wait a couple of weeks to see what effect that has on Category:All unreferenced BLPs, or if people want to give DASHBot a hand, look for retired/inactive/blocked users who DASHBot has spoken to and help them fix or delete their unsourced contributions.
...can someone write a Bot to inform wikiprojects of unsourced BLPs in their remit in the same way that DASHBot has been informing authors?" ...introduce "delete new unsourced BLP" as a speedy criteria; provided that we very clearly inform article creators that from a particular date this is the new rule, and that articles created after that date with information about living people must be reliably sourced. ...proding the unreferenced residue in batches over a couple of months ...I agree with delete unsourced BLPs on sight as the policy we should be able to enact in say 6 months. But with the following provisos:
|
31 | 9 | 77.50% | Stricter Technical | |
NJA | 16:53, 21 January 2010 |
|
10 | 19 | 34.48% | Stricter 5 days | |
The Anome | 17:11, 21 January 2010 | Any bot activity...will need to be intensively supervised by humans for some time to avoid serious loss of useful articles...numerous articles are currently tagged as unsourced BLPs when they have references | 10 | 2 | 83.33% | Technical | |
Resolute | 17:59, 21 January 2010 | ...Wikiprojects can help. User:WolterBot has a function that generates a cleanup listing by project. Using tools such as this allows the community to break the overwhelming scope of this issue down into manageable sizes. If we repurpose this function as a mandatory listing for all projects - either as a one time run or a quarterly listing - we can at least begin to tackle this problem. | 35 | 7 | 83.33% | Technical | |
Themfromspace | 19:03, 21 January 2010 | "holding tank" for all uncited BLP articles. This could be a separate project space altogether, or the subpages of a WikiProject. Each uncited BLP would then be automatically moved out of the mainspace to this holding space where it would not be indexed by Google. Each of these articles would then be considered a work in progress (and could be tagged as such) until they were moved back into the mainspace. | 6 | 10 | 37.50% | Technical | |
Arthur Rubin | 19:16, 21 January 2010 | Any deletion by an accelerated process...should, after deletion, restore a (locked, if needed) stub...The stub should not be deleted for 6 months, unless a non-accelerated deletion procedure is followed. | 22 | 7 | 75.86% | technical | |
NuclearWarfare | 19:53, 21 January 2010 | I would submit that the community cannot fully trust administrators who violate the BLP policy. | 18 | 27 | 1 | 40.00% | N/A |
OrangeDog | 20:00, 21 January 201 | Unreferenced articles on notable living people that contain no contentious material (including, but not limited to a large number of stubs) should be treated the same as any other article, noting that they provide useful information and provide a mechanism for the encylopedia to grow...I do not see any reason to create new deletion processes to circumvent or abuse those that we already have. Especially not ones that involve automatic and unsupervised mass deletion. | 26 | 7 | 78.79% | No change | |
Hut 8.5 | 21:46, 23 January 2010 | "I propose that we set up a wikiproject to source unreferenced BLPs." | 21 | 0 | 100.00% | Technical Unanimous support | |
User:MickMacNee and User:Ikip | Anger at history of RFC | N/A | |||||
User:HJ Mitchell | Generally similar to Jehochman, except:
|
12 | 1 | Stricker | |||
User:LeadSongDog | "immediately...wp:userfied to the creating editors space by a bot, much in the way of user:CorenSearchBot's handling of gross copyvios" | 7 | 3 | Technology Userfication | |||
User:Looie496 | "No articles should be deleted using automated tools." | 37 | 1 | Technology | |||
User:Balloonman | "...create a tool that can notify these projects and key editors what unsourced BLP's exist under their purvue. " | 28 | 0 | ||||
User:Balloonman | "modify the template for unsource blp's so that they are not indexed" | 6 | 8 | ||||
User:Jake Wartenberg | unwatched BLPs should be indefinitely semi-protected. | 13 | 1 | ||||
User:Rd232 | Unsourced BLPs should be incubated after a time (or in some cases userfied). | 11 | 8 | ||||
User:FT2 | creation of a "Draft:" namespace | 11 | 5 | ||||
User:The-Pope echoed by User:Cenarium | Make it known that this is the site's current main priority...get Wolterbot to change the order of the cleanup list to highlight what are the real problem areas, and which ones are "nice-to-haves" (ie MOS type ones).
Get ALL of the projects on board. Get a bot/code/something quicker and smarter than me to auto-generate the lists based on the intersection of Category:Unreferenced BLPs and Category:WikiProject XYZ articles It needs some smarts, cause the project cats are on the talk pages, but the unreferenced BLPs are on the main pages, but I can do it for a project at a time using WP:AWB, so it must be able to be done. Then create a Wikipedia:WikiProject Australia/Unreferenced BLPs page for EVERY project. Update the list daily. Hold a competition to see who can zero their list the quickest - winner gets money/fame/links on the main page for a month/etc. Create a hall of fame for most removed each week. |
14 | 1 | Technical | |||
User:SirFozzie | Find something you can live with, and find it soon. Show that you can be part of a solution, and not just a part of a discussion of a problem. Sitting down and not accepting anything will mean that the situation will just go on without you. | 14 | 17 | N/A | |||
User:Johnbod | Why Unreferenced BLPs are NOT problematic | 21 | 4 | ||||
User:Stijn Calle | "The existence of a person is not, however, controversial nor contentious. WP has policies for deleting articles lacking notability, and no Draconian policy of automatic article deletion should pre-empt the orderly functioning of processes already existing." | ||||||
Summary of Phase I
Phase I closing summary
This has been one of the largest and most complex requests for comment within the community for some time, with 470 editors producing over 200,000 words of commentary. The majority of views and comments are clearly the result of thoughtful contemplation on the part of editors who have taken the time to inform themselves of the issues, and everyone should be applauded for considering this matter seriously. Those who have taken part have the best interests of the encyclopedia and the project at heart, and there is a good deal of merit, based on policy, practice and practicality, in each of the major positions put forward. It is also important to note that the majority of those who participated did so relatively early in the RfC, and are unlikely to have reviewed some of the later views and proposals; therefore, it is not possible to accurately assess consensus on these views. After reading this RfC, I can say categorically that Wikipedians are dedicated to the ongoing development of a comprehensive, accurate, and constantly improving encyclopedia; however, there are very diverse views on how this can best be achieved.
There appears to be a broad consensus that:
- Unreferenced BLPs are only a small segment of potentially or actually problematic BLPs.
- There are reasons to place additional emphasis on the sourcing of BLPs, and that this category of articles is more sensitive to inaccuracy than others (although opinions on the degree to which they are more sensitive was subject to a broader spectrum of opinion).
- Deletion decisions should be made with human input, and should not solely rely on technical methods.
- Article creators, wikiprojects dedicated to improvement of unsourced BLPs, and wikiprojects dedicated to various topics should all be alerted to the existence of said articles, and be encouraged (and supported) in sourcing them. Several views discussed methods in which this information could be disseminated, some of which have already been put into place, and there was no significant opposition to this position.
- Related to this was some discussion of whether there should be a significant site-wide campaign to involve a larger segment of the editing community in a BLP-sourcing project, which also did not meet with significant opposition.
- A smaller number of individuals pointed out the difficulty of maintaining and improving the constantly-enlarging encyclopedia while the number of regularly active contributors has remained relatively static in recent years; this view, while not very widely discussed, did not meet with significant opposition.
- In this same vein, others pointed out that quality expectations have changed significantly over the years, and that there was no simple method for editors to identify articles they had created and/or significantly edited which required referencing. Prolific editors who have remained active over several years are just now discovering the extent to which they are being asked to improve and reference unsourced BLPs, many of which were created some years ago.
The three major positions presented were:
- Mass deletion of all articles identified as biographies of living people that had no reference sources, with varying views on how this would be accomplished. Most related views implied that all unsourced BLPs would be deleted over a very short period (days to weeks), with minimal or no attempt to improve the articles.
- No change in current deletion practices and no special deletion practices for BLPs, with most related views supporting sourcing unreferenced BLPs or at a minimum reviewing them to ensure they were properly categorized
- Special PROD processes for BLPs, with widely diverse opinions on duration that articles would remain prodded, criteria for de-prodding, and the number of articles being prodded at any given time.
Related to all three of these views were concerns about how to best manage the reviewing of unsourced BLPs to (a) ensure they were actually unsourced, (b) prevent overloading of the relevant processes, and (c) prioritize which (subgroups of) articles would be reviewed, with soft or hard deadlines for various checkpoints, and a clear objective for completion of the reviews.
Consensus
Of these three broad categories of views, there is a surprisingly clear consensus that some form of BLP-PROD is the preferred method of addressing unsourced BLPs. The majority of opposition to each of the views proposing a BLP-PROD variation related to the length of time an article would be prodded (which ranged from 2 days to over a month), or some other factor specific to that proposal. A notable but small minority opposed the basic concept.
There was also a robust consensus that a separate process should be developed to address newly-created unreferenced BLPs, in order to prevent further accumulation of unsourced BLPs; however, fewer editors commented specific to this point, which arose in several views.
Objectives for Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Biographies of living people/Phase II
- Develop consensus on the details of a BLP-PROD process, most critically on the duration of a BLP-PROD
- Develop a timeline with specific objectives to ensure that the current backlog of unsourced BLPs is reviewed and improved or otherwise addressed. Factors to consider include how to prioritize subgroups of articles within the process, development and centralisation of tools and resources for editors to identify and improve articles, and methods to involve the larger editing community.
- Develop consensus on standards for newly-created BLPs. Factors to consider include tools and processes to support new editors, integration of the process with new page patrol, and time frame for sourcing of new articles.
It is clear that our editing community has started to address the issues raised in this RfC, as several tools have been developed to assist editors in identifying and improving these articles; the number of unsourced BLPs has already been reduced by more than 10%. Continued effort to involve and support an even broader segment of the community should be considered an important priority; several communication tools have been discussed in the RfC.
Please address any questions or comments on this close to the adjacent talk page in order to centralise the discussion. This close is submitted under my own signature, independent of any other offices or permissions I hold. Risker (talk) 03:59, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
Phase II
BLP PROD process drafting
Establish the details of a BLP PROD process. This should probably be based on Jehochman's view (the variation on that theme which had by far the most support) as a baseline for discussion. However a process of this type has already been drafted at Wikipedia:Deletion of unreferenced BLPs, and moving discussion there to develop that proposed process would save time and energy - as well leaving more space for discussion here in this RFC of the other issues. Rd232 talk 11:43, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
Details from Phase 1
This is the detail of the proposal made by User:Jehochman.
- Any article that satisfies the attack page criteria should be deleted on sight.
- Biographies of living persons (BLP) articles that are unreferenced should be proposed for deletion (prod).
- Prodding should proceed at a reasonable rate to allow interested editors the chance to add sources. The volume of proposed deletions should not be unreasonably large. Discussion can establish what is a reasonable pace.
- After
fiveseven days, any article so tagged may be deleted, or moved to the Wikipedia:Article incubator if it shows promise. - Prod notices should not be removed, nor should articles be undeleted, unless proper references are
addedpresent. Anybody who engages in mass de-prodding or undeletion withoutaddingreferences being present risks a block for disruption. - All editors are invited to participate in this BLP cleanup campaign.
The major objections to this were:
- The WP:PROD process should not be altered, so some other name should be used
- It is open to abuse
- The timeline is not specified
- PRODding should not happen without an attempt to source the article
- Article editors need to be notified of a pending deletion
- Quality of references to be added is unclear
- Some editors disagree with deletion as a solution altogether
These objections will need to be addressed in order to create a broadly supported policy, and as Rd232 suggests, Wikipedia:Deletion of unreferenced BLPs is probably the best place for this to continue. Kevin (talk) 22:29, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
- New vs. Existing PROD process.
I would favor using the existing PROD process, with the flexibility for any editor to remove one or several PRODs in good faith. Like the traditional PROD process, the next step is for the PROD nominator to see if the problem still exists, and send the article to AfD if it has not. If we have general consensus to use a PROD process, then mass-PROD-removal would be considered disruptive, just as it is today. Jclemens (talk) 04:34, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- WT:PROD got nearer rejection than acceptance of changing PROD in the necessary way (to prevent removal of tag without adding sources) as totally contrary to the spirit of PROD. I suggest the way forward would be to list Wikipedia:Deletion of unreferenced BLPs on WP:CENT and develop that process based on Phase I discussion (which it's very compatible with), leaving open the possibility that the process so developed can be merged as a special section of PROD. (I doubt that would be acceptable, but the point is it needn't be settled now.) Rd232 talk 16:59, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- The seven day period wait is ridiculously short, it is the same as zero. Editors who create unsourced BLPs *in good faith* are probably newbies who have not yet read the guidelines, cannot be expected to check their watchlists every day, will not quite understand what the prod means, and will not be able to respond to it in that time frame. So the handling of those BLPs will have to be done by experienced editors who are willing to take time from their personal wikiprojects to do community service. Source-or-die is basically a hostage situation: "either someone does what I want done, or I will kill the work of a random newbie". Since the tagger must at least read the article before tagging it, we can assume that attack pages have been speedily deleted and potentially problematic contents has been deelted. In that case, allowing the BLP to live for another month or another year will be a negligible risk, will avoid lots of bad feeelings, and will actually mean *less* work for everybody in the end. All the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 17:49, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Newbies who actually create an article tend to come back and see what happens, I think, on a short time scale of hours/days, when BLP-PROD tags would be applied. In any case it is not merely "source or delete" - articles may also get incubated, with the creator getting a notice. Articles will live at least a month in the incubator, and there's no reason we couldn't agree longer timespan for incubated BLP-PRODs. Rd232 talk 21:28, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- The seven day period wait is ridiculously short, it is the same as zero. Editors who create unsourced BLPs *in good faith* are probably newbies who have not yet read the guidelines, cannot be expected to check their watchlists every day, will not quite understand what the prod means, and will not be able to respond to it in that time frame. So the handling of those BLPs will have to be done by experienced editors who are willing to take time from their personal wikiprojects to do community service. Source-or-die is basically a hostage situation: "either someone does what I want done, or I will kill the work of a random newbie". Since the tagger must at least read the article before tagging it, we can assume that attack pages have been speedily deleted and potentially problematic contents has been deelted. In that case, allowing the BLP to live for another month or another year will be a negligible risk, will avoid lots of bad feeelings, and will actually mean *less* work for everybody in the end. All the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 17:49, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- WT:PROD got nearer rejection than acceptance of changing PROD in the necessary way (to prevent removal of tag without adding sources) as totally contrary to the spirit of PROD. I suggest the way forward would be to list Wikipedia:Deletion of unreferenced BLPs on WP:CENT and develop that process based on Phase I discussion (which it's very compatible with), leaving open the possibility that the process so developed can be merged as a special section of PROD. (I doubt that would be acceptable, but the point is it needn't be settled now.) Rd232 talk 16:59, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
Well if the asking rate is high, I think some people, including established editors will just put in fake sources, or add a ref at a end of one paragraph but it only covers the last part of the sentence. People try this all the time at FAR and hope that a reviewer will just see a cite at the end of the para and assume everything is accounted for, when it usually isn't. And it's enough to catch a lot of people. I wouldn't be surprised if heaps of people did it everywhere else either, especially if they then go and cite a non-English book that nobody could catch onto. Once I even saw someone reference an uncited FA by circularly referencing a copy of Wikipedia somewhere and sometimes even cutting and pasting a copyvio to solve the BLP unsourced. Unless people get down to basics, rules are pretty irrelevant, let's be frank, many rules on Wikipedia are just used selective to operate a caste system; eg one guy (admins) deleting sourced info that they don't like and citing BLP even though it was sourced to a newspaper, because the info didn't suit them, because undue weight or whatever, true or not, then they go and rv some guy who blanks uncited negative info, eg criminal behaviour by an opposition politician. People shouldn't be fooled by metrics as lots of people have and continue to make wiki-careers by gaming stats and making themselves look better. YellowMonkey (vote in the Southern Stars photo poll) 07:38, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
Needed modification: Already sourced
A huge percentage of the tagged "unsourced" BLPs actually have a reliable third party source or sources and were just tagged wrong. Taking Jehochman's proposal literally would allow someone to be blocked for deprodding already sourced articles. We need to reword to take into account articles that already had at least one reliable third party source. I have started a mini-wikiproject to help purge the unsourced BLP list of these improperly tagged articles Wikipedia:Mistagged BLP cleanup. We are helping to reduce the scope of this problem, but you can see our list is huge. We have well over 10,000 potentially mis-tagged articles left to go through. On that note, any help is appreciated. Gigs (talk) 16:26, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Your conclusion here is ridiculous. No-one is going to be blocked for de-prodding sourced articles. Any process involving deletion of unsourced BLPs is going to include a human check before deletion, so no sourced articles should end up being deleted. Kevin (talk) 21:47, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Why not fix the flawed assumption that's built into the proposal? I might have been more inclined to believe that no one would take "ridiculous" actions based on overly literal interpretations if it weren't for the events that lead to this in the first place. Gigs (talk) 22:28, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- It's not hard to fix... "unless proper references are
addedpresent. Anybody who engages in mass de-prodding or undeletion withoutaddingreferences present risks a block". I think the spirit of the proposal remains the same. Gigs (talk) 22:36, 8 February 2010 (UTC)- Agreed. This is the way I read the proposal. Kevin (talk) 23:22, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Done as specified above. --RoyGoldsmith (talk) 20:14, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
- Agreed. This is the way I read the proposal. Kevin (talk) 23:22, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
Possibility to cap the number of BLP prods
There is a possibility to technically cap the total or daily number of active BLP prods, using an expression check on the number of pages in the respective categories; if the specified number is exceeded, then the template won't work. This provides a way to control the volume of proposed deletions to make it manageable (e.g. no jump to 1000 in a day which would submerge the whole process) and steadier. As a note, we can also do this with standard prods. Cenarium (talk) 18:13, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
- No. This is not the sort of situation where such arbitrary limits should be imposed by technical means. Gurch (talk) 03:22, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
- Maybe. I just say it's possible, not necessarily supporting it. A rate for BLP PRODS was brought up at Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/Biographies of living people#A reasonable rate, but it's meaningless if there's no way to enforce that rate; though a technical way would be the most radical of approaches, at least we're sure that it'll work. Cenarium (talk) 16:43, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
Why not have a three state outcome?
When I sort out old stuff to file, I create three piles: file, junk and "need to think about". The third usually gets left on the heap for my next sort out cycle N moths later. Why? because the cost of making up my mind on this "grey" stuff is greater than the cost / benefit of trying to force it into black or white. An analogy, but let me map it into this process:
- There is some process, some variant of the above, where unreferenced BLPs are tagged BLP_PROD.
- Any editor can "adopt" an article by replacing the BLP_PROD tag with a BLP_NOREF tag where the editor names him or herself (through a mandatory parameter) as a facilitator for coordinating efforts to reference the BLP from the adoption date.
- Any editor can replace a BLP_PROD or BLP_NOREF article by BLP_REF if the article is adequately referenced. (This last doesn't transinclude visual text in the viewed article).
- A bot polices the BLP_PROD -> BLP_NOREF -> BLP_REF, and reverts to last if modified.
- The BLP_PROD articles are sentenced as suggested.
- The BLP_NOREF flags are cleared by a bot after a fixed period -- say 3 months, and the article is them eligible for the next unreference BLP sweep. BLP_REFs are cleared if there are no references.
So why do I suggest this?
- The fact that an editor need to know that one can only replace BLP_PROD tags with BLP_NOREF or BLP_REF means that he or she has gone to the bother to read (and hopefully to understand the process).
- Some editor has to be willing to put his name an article to keep it grey. If no one does then its probably not a notable BLP anyway.
- With any process there will always be a 20% or whatever grey zone. Wikipedia will benefit far more if we focus editors on the 80% or whatever and sentence that properly, than getting into heated arguments about the 20%.
This isn't about making Wikipedia perfect in one go, its about a sensible minimum cost, minimum controversy step improvement. -- TerryE (talk) 20:03, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
Backlog handling
Develop a timeline with specific objectives to ensure that the current backlog of unsourced BLPs is reviewed and improved or otherwise addressed. Factors to consider include how to prioritize subgroups of articles within the process, development and centralisation of tools and resources for editors to identify and improve articles, and methods to involve the larger editing community.
I would like to see the backlog cleared within 9 months at most. Before we have a discussion on theis, it would be useful to know roughly what percentage of articles tagged as unsourced are actually unsourced. I had a look at 50 random samples from 2009, and found that 80% were unsourced. If that sample is representative, then today we have 36000 articles to either source or delete, and 9000 to fix the tagging. In the past 3 weeks we have reduced the backlog by about 6000, so a target of 6000/month, or 6 months, seems achievable. Kevin (talk) 01:04, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- I stand by my suggestion that 100/day be PROD'ed. That may only be 3,000 a month, but it's a number that's more sustainable over the long haul. Furthermore, I'd be in favor of some method of PRODding unsourced BLPs that emphasized ones with "target words", are unwatched or have the fewest watchers, and are higher traffic. A combination of these criteria should help us fix or eliminate the "worst" offenders first. Jclemens (talk) 04:13, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- I tend to agree with the priority on PROD'ing the most likely to be problematic based on "target words", low watch weight and high traffic. Selecting on these, then adding human review, should help to pinpoint our worst quality problems. But without the human review, and I don't mean a quick skim over, we deletion mania. -- RavanAsteris (talk) 04:31, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- We need to deal with a certain number of these articles per day in order to work through the backlog in a reasonable timescale, but proposing articles for deletion is not the only solution. While the backlog is being reduced by editing and improvement, there's no justification for additional indiscriminate prodding - if anything it will divert editors away from sourcing the articles that they are individually best able to source.--Michig (talk) 19:38, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
- I agree there. Editors know best about where they can be the most effective. Forcing people to work on random articles should be a phase that happens after the "organic" improvement has stalled out or at least slowed down. See Alverstrand's proposal below as well. Gigs (talk) 20:18, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
- Regarding timescales, 9 months should be reasonable I believe - if the backlog continues to reduce at anywhere near the rate that it has done in the last few weeks, the backlog should be cleared well within this timescale. I would suggest that progress be reviewed on a monthly basis, and that any sort of mass-prodding only be considered if it becomes clear that sourcing/manual reviewing and prodding isn't likely to clear the backlog.--Michig (talk) 19:46, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
- I am a new user to Wikipedia in term of editing so forgive me for my ignorance, if any. I think, that mass deletion should not be an option. I would also suggest that a template be developed warning user AND prospective editors that such and such article is un-sourced. Also I would suggest making a WikiPrject for PROD articles so that they can be reviewed by editors devoted to sourcing of material in Wikipedia articles. --Harsh Mujhse baat kijiye(Talk) 04:36, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
Proposal by Alvestrand: Edit first, with prod backup
NOTE: In the below, I ONLY speak of the backlog as it is today - that is, any article tagged after January 2010 (date debatable) should belong to some other process.
Let's set a timeline for the backlog, and start two processes to compete with each other to complete the timeline.
There's Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced Biographies of Living Persons which attempts to encourage editors to do the sourcing work. And there's the deletion process. this process is manual, and its speed will depend on the number and energy of the editors who do it. So there needs to be a backup plan.
I suggest that we aim for a linear reduction of the backlog to zero on Jan 1, 2011, or (extrapolating between 50.000 at the beginning of this year and zero a year later) a reduction by around 140 entries per day.
I suggest that every 10 days, a script counts the size of the backlog. If the backlog fails to drop to the target amount for that day, the excess number of random articles from the backlog are PRODed. (The reason for random is that some people work on specific places, others work on specific types. Random hits them all equally.)
The PROD process should be done 7-8 days later, reducing the backlog to the target number + any editor work done, and the cycle can start over. If the editors manage to handle 140 articles per day or more, no PROD will happen.
My thought. --Alvestrand (talk) 05:51, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- support
- Great idea. It tackles the problem in a systematic way, and it pushes editors to take care of the problem. nice! Okip (formerly Ikip) 06:28, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Strong support the backlog is falling, and falling fast. It was over 54,000 when we started, now it's at 45,402. If and when it flattens out, then we can take more extreme measures like mass tagging for deletion. Let editors prioritize the backlog, not a mechanical process of tagging. Once we get down to the "hard ones" we can start making ultimatums. Gigs (talk) 18:38, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Kind of support. (I'd prefer no prods at all, but this so far is my favorite of the prod proposals.) I like this idea that there's an enforced pace, but editors can source the ones they want. It's nice that if we are making good progress, PRODs don't happen. This is good for morale. I also like that the tagging is random and by bot. This avoids drama and makes it so people don't get mad at taggers in some sort of twisted shoot the messenger way. Calliopejen1 (talk) 23:13, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- discussion
- I think it would be useful to get some measure of the rate at which the community is currently dealing with the backlog without any changes to policy being made, which currently appears to be a rate that's very encouraging. Editors judging each article on its merits, adding sources where possible, PRODding or taking to AFD if appropriate, is far prefereable to some automated mass PRODding regime. A log of how the backlog is reducing would be useful to measure progress, but unless it starts to look like the existing efforts are not working, I'm not in favour of this change. There is now a WikiProject looking at this issue, and I would encourage more editors to get involved. The project needs, I think, to decide on a systematic approach to dealing with the backlog, and the de facto strategy appears to be to start with those tagged earliest. Several months of tagged articles have already been processed, and there are now no articles that have been tagged as unsourced BLPs for more than 3 years - I believe that a couple of weeks ago, we had a substantial number from as far back as October 2006. --Michig (talk) 10:15, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- I suspect that if someone kept the stats, you would see a logarithmic decline in the sourcing rate on that backlog for two reasons: 1. people lose interest after a brief burst. 2. Once the low hanging fruit is picked off, the challenge increases. Ultimately, I do believe this change is necessary, especially when you consider that this 50k backlog we began with was only the unsourced BLP's that have actually been tagged. That said, the 10% reduction in the known backlog is incredibly significant, and something I hope the indiscriminate deletors will take notice of. Resolute 15:18, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Someone is keeping stats, so we'll see if you're right (and you very well may be). To my mind, having the hard cases go to PROD is a reasonable outcome; they're hard because they're marginal. --Alvestrand (talk) 15:46, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- The random prodding sounds a bit ugly to me. But the idea of feedback to encourage faster work is a good idea. If we can find a way to advertise, alert notices on peoples talk pages, we may be able to get renewed action when people lose interest. We probably also need to recognize those difficult fields that DGG has mentioned. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 12:35, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
Proposal by Coffee; a means to an end
Taking notes from the previous RFC, probably the best way to solve this would be to somehow appease both sides. Why I agree with the gist of Jclemens' proposal, I don't see it going anywhere. So instead we should lay it out as follows:
- Phase I
- All unsourced BLPs will be tagged at one time with a form of PROD, that is extended per where it falls in the category in divisions of 1,749 (45,489 / 26 [an arbitrary number per the number of letters in the alphabet, therefore providing the same allotted time while keeping the backlog evenly distributed]), this PROD tag cannot be removed until there are substantial sources added. Timeline is as follows:
- Starting at March 1, 2010:
- Articles between Aamani - Jensen Atwood will have until March 15, 2010 to be sourced.
- Articles between Donna Atwood - Nabin Bhattarai Will have until April 1, 2010.
- Articles between Aqueel Bhatti - Graham Burnett Will have until April 15, 2010.
- Articles between Mikey Burnett - Agnieszka Chylińska Will have until May 1, 2010.
- (etc.)
- Starting at March 1, 2010:
Option to Stubify:
- While waiting for sources to be added (which according to the timeline will take up to April of 2011) any article can be reduced to an easily sourced stub.
"Unsourced" Caveat:
- Any BLP that does not have reliable third party sources, is also considered to be unsourced and will be added to the timeline.
- Phase II
- After March 1, 2010, any new unsourced BLP, or newly found unsourced BLP, will be incubated immediately (preferably by a bot if possible), therefore removing it from the Google results while allowing it time to be sourced and wikified; these articles will have no more than 2 weeks to be fixed, and will be deletable after the time expires.
- Any WikiProject which the article might fall under may be notified of the article, to publicize the article's need for sources.
- These articles would be at one easy to track location: WP:URBLP/Incubation.
- CSD policy still applies, of course, and therefore attack articles may still be deleted on sight.
The timeline provides for 124 articles to be sourced every day, which is a good average to work with. This type of timeline gives the editors more than plenty of time to source the articles that can be sourced, and at the same time assures that if they aren't sourced that they will be deleted without prejudice. — Coffee // have a cup // ark // 07:33, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Support
- Support - As author. — Coffee // have a cup // ark // 09:20, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
Support I appreciate Coffee's good faith efforts to amicably resolve this issue, where the entire community can work together. Okip 08:51, 8 February 2010 (UTC)Per my work in BLPs, as I wrote here. I still support moving BLPs to non-index project space, but with no time limit for deletion. Okip (the new and improved Ikip) 12:48, 10 February 2010 (UTC)- Support I can find no fault. --Cybercobra (talk) 11:22, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Support - an excellent compromise with a firm basis is the opinions of all at the RfC Fritzpoll (talk) 11:35, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Support - Sets hard deadlines with milestones for when this problem needs to be addressed, which is of vital importance to any successful solution. One controversial point may be that we have to review the dates as they approach so that if something is being done, but we won't hit the deadline, we could move the date so that we don't prematurely delete articles. The dates seem a little fast to me right now, but that's a knee-jerk reaction. --Shirik (Questions or Comments?) 17:50, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
- Support the general concept, although I would suggest a couple modifications. I disagree (but not enough to oppose, as some below have) with using a simple alpha sort to set dates for blocks of articles, sorting by date created seems far more sensible. I've also seen suggestions that a bot could prioritize articles by "problem potential" (higher traffic, fewer watchers, keywords etc.); I think this would be best if it could be implemented. I think two weeks per block is reasonable, but instead of setting blocks of ~1700 articles every 2 weeks, why not set blocks of ~125 every day? Each block of 125 will still have 2 weeks; once we're two weeks into implementation, 125 PRODs will expire every day. This seems more manageable than having a possible mad rush around the 15th and 30th of every month when 1700 PRODs expire all at once. I hope at least some of that made sense. Wine Guy~Talk 09:00, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
- Support It sounds well planned out to me. Very systematic. Brambleclawx 01:39, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose
- Staging them by the date of creation, as Jimbo proposed, is far more sensible. Also, Jimbo proposed a far more realistic schedule, with 3 months notice for every year-worth of articles. Pcap ping 13:41, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- I support this in principle, but going alphabetically would mean poor Zebediah Zwicke would have his BLP unsourced for another year. I'm perfectly fine, however, with this proposal if we can randomly set a date for sourcing upon prodding. If we can randomly set a date for when the article must be sourced between two weeks and a year, that'd be better; we'd have a manageable and approximately uniform distribution of BLPs to sort out every fortnight. Sceptre (talk) 13:55, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- I can completely see where you're coming from on this, Sceptre. The problem is really that any dividing up of the BLP backlog into chunks is going to be relatively arbitrary. None of these biographies should be left unsorted for any longer than necessary, but someone's always has to be done last and any proposal can be opposed on that basis. You're free to disagree, of course and say that a different division is less arbitrary - but I genuinely think that this is the closest thing to consensus that we will get and if it is chucked out, we may have no process and no deadline. If you can live with the proposal in general, I ask that you reconsider your opposition. Best wishes, Fritzpoll (talk) 15:26, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- I like Jimbo's proposal more. It's more realistic since thousands of articles are in play and finding references is preferable to deletion; it's less demoralizing to the community and more productive. If every regular contributor tackles one article a day (which is not gonna happen) the task would still be enormous. We need more time and need to take in consieration the fact that this situation has arisen because the policy has evolved, not because of vandals or people who disprespect the project; thus this should not be a punitive process. I definitely think all unreferenced BLPs can be pulled from Google search with a bot immediately.--Esprit15d • talk • contribs 21:46, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
- I can completely see where you're coming from on this, Sceptre. The problem is really that any dividing up of the BLP backlog into chunks is going to be relatively arbitrary. None of these biographies should be left unsorted for any longer than necessary, but someone's always has to be done last and any proposal can be opposed on that basis. You're free to disagree, of course and say that a different division is less arbitrary - but I genuinely think that this is the closest thing to consensus that we will get and if it is chucked out, we may have no process and no deadline. If you can live with the proposal in general, I ask that you reconsider your opposition. Best wishes, Fritzpoll (talk) 15:26, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Strongest possible oppose unless modified This will only work if equal stress is laid on sourcing articles as deleting them. The simplest way of keeping this in proportion is that for each article placed on prod , the prodder must work on one article someone else has placed there, and make a good faith effort to source it with appropriate resources and say what they have tried. Alternatively, the person who places it on prod must place on the talk page a statement that they themselves have tried all reasonable sources, and indicate where and how they have looked. In either case the time proposed will be accomplished only if the people who have been nominating articles actually try to fix them too, and many more people also: that is highly desirable. Any article coming off prod without having been worked on a a statement than someone has properly looked will be considered reason to slow down the system, so this will give great encouragement to people willing to improve articles.
additionally, this can't apply to presently poorly sourced articles, because my experience is that about half the existing bios have inadequate sourcing on significant points, at least by my standard. Every BLP is always problematic, for new material may develop, either in their life or in the writings about them. We should certainly improve the situation, but it will probably be an unending process. Normally, the person who adds an article cannot fully source everything necessary, and the articles take time to develoo. That can be checked by looking at featured BLPs: for the first one I looked , compare Elaine Paige with the version two full years after it was created: [hhttp://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Elaine_Paige&oldid= 28728547], or Jarome Iginla with the two-year old [1]. The net effect of that part of the proposal will be to limit biographies to famous people. The proposal for new articles will similarly prevent most from being started, and discourage many new editors. I know there are editors who think we should have many fewer bios, and this may be the means to accomplish that end. DGG ( talk ) 16:18, 8 February 2010 (UTC)- Are you honestly trying to say that 124 articles a day is too much to handle? That would only take 13 people adding sources to 10 articles a day, which is insanely easy. Another thing, there won't be random people adding these PROD tags to articles, a bot will do all of that work, therefore there won't be any of that "if you add a PROD tag, you have to remove a PROD tag" bullcrap. I seriously don't see how you can claim that 124 articles a day is too much to handle, especially with all the people at WP:ARS who love to save articles. — Coffee // have a cup // ark // 17:35, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- 124 a day is actually quite a few. For comparison there are 576 articles currently proposed for deletion as I write this, which equates to only about 80 a day, and that number would probably have been less before the unsourced BLP controversy got going. Hut 8.5 17:56, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- You have to try to compromise; I have gone to extreme levels to make this as much of a compromise as possible, and even at that rate it's still going to take over a year to resolve just this one issue with BLPs. Postponing it any longer would be insane, if we waited longer we might as well sit on our hands and do nothing about the problem at all, which was the way we seemed to handle things for the past few years. As I said above and below 13 people sourcing 10 articles a day is not something worth complaining about. — Coffee // have a cup // ark // 18:16, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- 124 a day is actually quite a few. For comparison there are 576 articles currently proposed for deletion as I write this, which equates to only about 80 a day, and that number would probably have been less before the unsourced BLP controversy got going. Hut 8.5 17:56, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Argue about changing the number / time period, sure, but I would caution that if no process whatsoever comes out of the RfC process, there is a nontrivial possibility/probability of IAR/out-of-process deletions, now implicitly ArbCom-endorsed, resuming and I think no one except the most hardline of BLPers wants that. I vote for this as a moderate compromise to avoid said far worse outcome. --Cybercobra (talk) 18:02, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Are you honestly trying to say that 124 articles a day is too much to handle? That would only take 13 people adding sources to 10 articles a day, which is insanely easy. Another thing, there won't be random people adding these PROD tags to articles, a bot will do all of that work, therefore there won't be any of that "if you add a PROD tag, you have to remove a PROD tag" bullcrap. I seriously don't see how you can claim that 124 articles a day is too much to handle, especially with all the people at WP:ARS who love to save articles. — Coffee // have a cup // ark // 17:35, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Comments
- Given that letter frequency distribution is not uniform, this will cause some fortnights to have significantly many more articles threatened with deletion than others. --Cybercobra (talk) 07:46, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Aye, which is why it's smart to tag them all at once, therefore allowing fluctuation per the editor's discretion. — Coffee // have a cup // ark // 07:51, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- I don't see the advantage of over just getting a bot to do the math and determine the deadlines based on the number of articles. e.g. "The X number of unreferenced BLPs, Adam Adam-Ahmid Ahmid will have a deadline of Y. The next X number of unref BLPs Aijim Aijim-Aziz Aziz will have a deadline of Y + 1 fortnight. etc..." --Cybercobra (talk) 08:00, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Note taken, I'm getting results now. — Coffee // have a cup // ark // 08:17, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Last comment tonight, I like Cybercobra's idea, which builds on your excellent idea Coffee. I think Cybercobra is on the cusp of supporting your idea, as I am. Okip 08:24, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- To clarify (it seems I might not have explained clearly enough), I had intended X to equal some number agreed upon beforehand as a "manageable" number of BLP-prods per time-unit, rather than just an arbitrary division by 26. Not that 1,749/fortnight is patently unreasonable, it just wasn't arrived at via the method I had meant. --Cybercobra (talk) 09:28, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- 124 articles per day seems a fairly reasonable amount to me, which is what the currently proposed system allots. Do you agree? — Coffee // have a cup // ark // 09:30, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Note taken, I'm getting results now. — Coffee // have a cup // ark // 08:17, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- I don't see the advantage of over just getting a bot to do the math and determine the deadlines based on the number of articles. e.g. "The X number of unreferenced BLPs, Adam Adam-Ahmid Ahmid will have a deadline of Y. The next X number of unref BLPs Aijim Aijim-Aziz Aziz will have a deadline of Y + 1 fortnight. etc..." --Cybercobra (talk) 08:00, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Aye, which is why it's smart to tag them all at once, therefore allowing fluctuation per the editor's discretion. — Coffee // have a cup // ark // 07:51, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- (dedent) No idea personally; I do conjecture that determining that number will probably be contentious and involve haggling. Now my only concern is the potential abuse of the "Separate Tagging for Possibly Problematic BLPs" provision; since there's the "Option to Stubify", I don't think it's necessary. Such pages can either be stubbified or probably fall under an existing CSD. --Cybercobra (talk) 09:42, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose, in its current form. There are many problems with this proposal. First, what exactly constitutes "unsourced" is not specified and subject to abuse. The vast majority of BLPs have no contentious or controversial material. A great many of them have, in the External link section, a link to the subject's homepage, that can usually be used to verify noncontroversial basic info (education employment, current position etc). This is an allowable form of using a slelf-published source per WP:V and such articles should not be considered unsourced, even if the link in question is listed in the External links rather than in the References section. There also needs to be a provision for dealing with abuse of BLP-prods, in cases where such prods are placed obviously incorrectly. Finally, there needs to be a provision for an automatic remand to an AfD if someone wants to contest a prod but does not have time or resources to look for sources. In an AfD such issues can be discussed in detail and with a more substantive participation of other users. Cutting of an AfD route by disallowing a prod removal without adding sources is bad because it artificially prevents a substantive discussion about the article from taking place. Also, the cases of incorrect BLP-prod placement could be dealt with in an AfD. Finally, I find the basic idea of mass indiscriminate prodding, based purely on the date of creation and "unsourced" status, problematic, as it will likely lead to deletion of a large number of easily sourceable and improvable articles on notable subjects. Those desiring clean-up should invest their energy in a more constructive clean-up endeavor. E.g. go through the list of unsourced BLPs (possibly even arranged by date). When you see one, do a few quick google searches. If it looks like the subject is notable, add a few sources yourself or add it to a clean-up list for an appropriate wikiproject page (many wikiprojects have. If the subject is not notable, prod the article, or BLP-prod it (whatever). But indiscriminately prodding a ton of articles without looking at them more carefully would result in too many unnecessary deletions, something that would do more harm than good to the project. Nsk92 (talk) 17:33, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- You're trying to argue something that would have been appropriate for the last RFC. There's no question that there are going to be tens of thousands of articles put up for deletion, the question now is how to go about doing that. IMO having 1,749 articles up for deletion every two weeks, is plenty of time for people to source the articles; it also provides motivation for the problem to get fixed, instead of just saying, "We'll get to it eventually after we do some google searches in few years.", which does nothing to solve the problem, it's instead only a way to try to postpone it. Can you honestly tell me to my face that having 10 or more people source 13 or so articles a day is too much work? — Coffee // have a cup // ark // 17:53, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- I did argue this point in the RfC, but the RfC itself was something of a circus, and a free-for-all, with too much flag-waving and too little in terms of rational arguments. I am not at all sure that the RfC has actually resulted in any meaningful consensus on what to do and how to do it. Although I think that the idea of a BLP-prod is largely redundant, I would support implementing a BLP prod, provided it is properly designed. Even if one takes for granted that hundreds or thousands of articles will need to be BLP-prodded and deleted, there is still a question of how to do it in a sane manner, without too much notable and improvable material being lost and without too many editors driven away from the project. My point is that prodding an article without looking at it more closely and trying to do at least a cursory notability check is pretty dangerous and irresponsible, and not something that should be done indiscriminately and en masse. It is like playing with fire: you are hoping that someone else will have the time to check if the sources exist and add them; but people are busy, things could easily fall through the cracks and an easily improvable article on a notable subject may be deleted. If this happens on a large scale, this will cause way more harm than it does good. I think that a person placing a prod has the responsibility to do at least a quick notability check himself/herself. Often that takes just a few seconds. If you find that an article is unsourced but you see that the subject is notable, the correct thing to do is either add a few sources yourself or add it to a clean-up list for an appropriate wikiproject, but certainly not prod it. My other comment concerns how a BLP-prod is supposed to work. My point is that a user contesting such a prod should have two options: add sources and remove a prod, or remove a prod and list an article for an AfD. This will allow for a more substantive discussion, with a larger number of users involved, in complicated and non-transparent cases. Another point, which needs to be addressed under any version of a BLP-prod proposal, is the definition of "unreferenced"/"unsourced". This point needs to be clarified explicitly in any BLP-prod proposal if it is to have a chance of working. Nsk92 (talk) 18:24, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- I can pretty much say for anyone on the BLP protection side of the debate, that this is as low as we're going to stoop for a compromise; so either this idea gets accepted, or back to the IAR way of mass deletions we go. We aren't waiting for people to randomly add sources to these articles, instead we're looking for a way to motivate people to actually get the job done not just more complaining about the fact that there will be a timeline. A bot or script will tag these articles, so your idea that a quick Google search be done is not sensible for quite a few factors; one of them being that it's going to take over a year per even this proposal, and meticulously looking over each article before even adding a PROD tag to it would stretch the timeline out so far it wouldn't be fixing the problem at all. Make a compromise, or don't expect us to listen at all. — Coffee // have a cup // ark // 18:36, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Speaking in the "royal we" now? Gigs (talk) 20:01, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- The royal we would be a style of speech employed by the King of Bigdealistan to make sure that everyone knows he is an important fellow who wears fancy pants. Coffee was clearly not talking about himself, but rather says he is probably speaking "for anyone on the BLP protection side of the debate," thus he is using "we" not in the "royal" sense but rather the traditional "me and some other people" sense. --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 20:38, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Speaking in the "royal we" now? Gigs (talk) 20:01, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- I can pretty much say for anyone on the BLP protection side of the debate, that this is as low as we're going to stoop for a compromise; so either this idea gets accepted, or back to the IAR way of mass deletions we go. We aren't waiting for people to randomly add sources to these articles, instead we're looking for a way to motivate people to actually get the job done not just more complaining about the fact that there will be a timeline. A bot or script will tag these articles, so your idea that a quick Google search be done is not sensible for quite a few factors; one of them being that it's going to take over a year per even this proposal, and meticulously looking over each article before even adding a PROD tag to it would stretch the timeline out so far it wouldn't be fixing the problem at all. Make a compromise, or don't expect us to listen at all. — Coffee // have a cup // ark // 18:36, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- I did argue this point in the RfC, but the RfC itself was something of a circus, and a free-for-all, with too much flag-waving and too little in terms of rational arguments. I am not at all sure that the RfC has actually resulted in any meaningful consensus on what to do and how to do it. Although I think that the idea of a BLP-prod is largely redundant, I would support implementing a BLP prod, provided it is properly designed. Even if one takes for granted that hundreds or thousands of articles will need to be BLP-prodded and deleted, there is still a question of how to do it in a sane manner, without too much notable and improvable material being lost and without too many editors driven away from the project. My point is that prodding an article without looking at it more closely and trying to do at least a cursory notability check is pretty dangerous and irresponsible, and not something that should be done indiscriminately and en masse. It is like playing with fire: you are hoping that someone else will have the time to check if the sources exist and add them; but people are busy, things could easily fall through the cracks and an easily improvable article on a notable subject may be deleted. If this happens on a large scale, this will cause way more harm than it does good. I think that a person placing a prod has the responsibility to do at least a quick notability check himself/herself. Often that takes just a few seconds. If you find that an article is unsourced but you see that the subject is notable, the correct thing to do is either add a few sources yourself or add it to a clean-up list for an appropriate wikiproject, but certainly not prod it. My other comment concerns how a BLP-prod is supposed to work. My point is that a user contesting such a prod should have two options: add sources and remove a prod, or remove a prod and list an article for an AfD. This will allow for a more substantive discussion, with a larger number of users involved, in complicated and non-transparent cases. Another point, which needs to be addressed under any version of a BLP-prod proposal, is the definition of "unreferenced"/"unsourced". This point needs to be clarified explicitly in any BLP-prod proposal if it is to have a chance of working. Nsk92 (talk) 18:24, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- You're trying to argue something that would have been appropriate for the last RFC. There's no question that there are going to be tens of thousands of articles put up for deletion, the question now is how to go about doing that. IMO having 1,749 articles up for deletion every two weeks, is plenty of time for people to source the articles; it also provides motivation for the problem to get fixed, instead of just saying, "We'll get to it eventually after we do some google searches in few years.", which does nothing to solve the problem, it's instead only a way to try to postpone it. Can you honestly tell me to my face that having 10 or more people source 13 or so articles a day is too much work? — Coffee // have a cup // ark // 17:53, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- This is the same rfc not a different one. It was repeatedly pointed out at the time that the rfc was paused that the pause was to allow information to be organised and allow people to have a better idea of the key themes without having to read through the mountains of text. Attempts to claim victory for one side or the other based on half an rfc are an abuse of the process.--Peter cohen (talk) 22:04, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Please, lets put aside coffee's take it or leave comments, which don't help further things at all. Keep in mind that I have consistently been the editor who advertised the disruptive actions of the parties probably more than any one editor. So why do I support Coffee's proposal?
- Lets take Coffee's ideas at face value. Keep in mind that Coffee's idea here were not created in a vacuum. Coffee integrated many ideas which myself, Themfromspace, niteshift36, admin Hobit, and many other editors from all aspects have suggested in the past, too many editors to recognize here. Coffee's proposal builds on the work of arbcom Fritzpoll and ThaddeusB, who created WP:Article Incubator. It is a comprimise which will solve the backlog in a systematic non-disruptive way.
- When this arbcom started at 21 January 2010, we were at 52,000 unreferenced BLPs, today we are at 45,000. That is 7,000 articles we as a community have referenced in 17 days, and the pace will only increase as more wikiprojects get involved. I can reference 40 articles in a day, 1/3 of the 124 proposed, this is very doable folks. Okip (the new and improved Ikip) 22:12, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose Mass prod tagging will lead to random passers-by untagging articles of clearly notable people without understanding what we are doing here. When people see that the leading person in their field is "proposed for deletion" they aren't going to understand the 100 pages of discussion that lead us to this seemingly irrational conclusion of proposing a clearly notable person for deletion. We should minimize the amount of time that any prod tags are on articles, so that the outside world doesn't freak out and unknowingly sabotage us. Gigs (talk) 18:31, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- A bot can easily place the tags back and warn the person if they remove the tags without adding at least some sort of reference. — Coffee // have a cup // ark // 18:36, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- A bot can't determine whether an article is referenced or not. If one could then we wouldn't be working through the 10,000-15,000 potentially mistagged "unreferenced" BLPs by hand. Besides, can you imagine all the drama when drive-by editors get into edit wars with the bot? I can see the dozens of news stories now "Wikipedia thinks <prominent obviously notable> person shouldn't have an article! This proves their socialist/fascist/conservative bias!". You really want a lot of news stories like that? Gigs (talk) 18:44, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- To be clear, I'm not opposing the rate of 124 a day, or anything in that ball park. I oppose tagging them all up front. It will cause a lot of problems. If your proposal was to actually tag 124 per day, that would be fine with me. I still support waiting until the natural reduction of the backlog levels off before prodding anything. Gigs (talk) 20:26, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- A tag to delete something a year from now is actually beneficial. It puts everyone on notice. This will actually help editors sourcing faster. Okip (the new and improved Ikip) 22:25, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Gigs, we can word the tag in such a way that it is very newbie friendly. This hasn't really been done before, but with editors such as yourself adding input to the tag we could make it very helpful, even linking to wikiprojects to help editors. Okip (the new and improved Ikip) 22:35, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- To be clear, I'm not opposing the rate of 124 a day, or anything in that ball park. I oppose tagging them all up front. It will cause a lot of problems. If your proposal was to actually tag 124 per day, that would be fine with me. I still support waiting until the natural reduction of the backlog levels off before prodding anything. Gigs (talk) 20:26, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- A bot can't determine whether an article is referenced or not. If one could then we wouldn't be working through the 10,000-15,000 potentially mistagged "unreferenced" BLPs by hand. Besides, can you imagine all the drama when drive-by editors get into edit wars with the bot? I can see the dozens of news stories now "Wikipedia thinks <prominent obviously notable> person shouldn't have an article! This proves their socialist/fascist/conservative bias!". You really want a lot of news stories like that? Gigs (talk) 18:44, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- A bot can easily place the tags back and warn the person if they remove the tags without adding at least some sort of reference. — Coffee // have a cup // ark // 18:36, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
I may just be a stickler for keeping things tidy, but shouldn't "Phase I" be a separate proposal under the "backlog" subheading, and "Phase II" be a proposal under this heading? I'll leave it to the proposer to make the move. --Alvestrand (talk) 15:44, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- The third party sourcing issue needs clarifying. On one of the articles I have managed to source some important facts to third party sources, but some depend on the subjects personal website. More could eventually be sourced independently, but some good information may only be sourceable to the subject. If there is enough out there to establish notability, then material that is not puffery should still be acceptable from non-third party sources.--Peter cohen (talk) 21:59, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Coffee has proposed a good time scale. But I would contest that one person can source 10 articles per day. I have been doing some, and to do it properly, sourcing every statement takes far longer. I would also be unhappy with turning articles into stubs without a banner to announce that has happened. When sourcing such an article we really want to source the whole article, not just a basic stub. I also prefer Jimbo's method of breaking up the job by time rather than alphabetically. But we will also find that the job is broken down by project, and the problem will be the unclaimed articles. I would also suggest that the BLP unsourced banner has some buttons to click to say whether attempts have been made to source, and it now in the difficult basket, or the too hard basket. Also it could have a tick to say if it has been assigned to a project with BLP no source rectification taskforce. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 12:29, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
Oppose - I don't support any mass PRODing effort like this one. The backlog is declining steadily through the use of existing processes, and any new process should help facilitate the reduction of the backlog in a meaningful way. Any new BLP-PRODs should be properly listed at DELSORT so interested Wikiprojects and editors can track articles in their field of expertise. An arbitrary tagging through the alphabet is the wrong way to go. Jogurney (talk) 23:06, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose. I'd have to agree that if there were some form of mass staging, it would need to go by some criterion other than simply what letter of the alphabet it happens to fall under — because it's really quite arbitrary to decide that an unreferenced BLP of someone whose name begins with Z has six months more time than someone whose name begins with A, just because her name begins with Z instead of A. Bearcat (talk) 07:03, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
- Who cares? At least it would solve the current problems within a year. Sitting around complaining over the specific method that's used to clear the backlog, is just a way to try to tie up this RFC to no consensus. — Coffee // have a cup // ark // 10:53, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
- Nonsense. Please read WP:AGF and consider that the backlog has decreased steadily since November 2009, and that much of the growth during 2009 was simply down to an organized effort to tag the unreferenced BLPs. People are making the backlog since insummountable when it is so clearly not. We need tools to facilitate the clearing of the backlog with existing deletion processes (which work perfectly well). Jogurney (talk) 12:26, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
- Well if you think that one year is too short to fix the problems, you're contradicting yourself. What happens after the RFC closes and nothing has changed? The usual shit of course, with people saying "we'll get around to it eventually"; that is a prospect I'm not willing to accept. — Coffee // have a cup // ark // 13:05, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
- I think you misunderstand me. I believe the first RfC has been very constructive and certainly drew more attention to the backlog (while thousands of artlces were removed from the backlog during 2009, the pace has picked up substantially since the first RfC). I understand that several editors have been working on tools to help Wikiprojects tackle the backlog. That is the kind of approach that is needed, not arbitrary deadlines and summary deletion. It's really silly to suggest that the usual stuff will happen if these RfCs result in no new mass-deletion process. Jogurney (talk) 13:39, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
- (edit conflict) I find the ultimatumist rhetoric used by some parties in these RfCs rather concerning; I still see your proposal as the moderate compromise one, but such comments do not help reinforce that perception. --Cybercobra (talk) 13:43, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
- Well if you think that one year is too short to fix the problems, you're contradicting yourself. What happens after the RFC closes and nothing has changed? The usual shit of course, with people saying "we'll get around to it eventually"; that is a prospect I'm not willing to accept. — Coffee // have a cup // ark // 13:05, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
- Nonsense. Please read WP:AGF and consider that the backlog has decreased steadily since November 2009, and that much of the growth during 2009 was simply down to an organized effort to tag the unreferenced BLPs. People are making the backlog since insummountable when it is so clearly not. We need tools to facilitate the clearing of the backlog with existing deletion processes (which work perfectly well). Jogurney (talk) 12:26, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
- Who cares? At least it would solve the current problems within a year. Sitting around complaining over the specific method that's used to clear the backlog, is just a way to try to tie up this RFC to no consensus. — Coffee // have a cup // ark // 10:53, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose any sort of mass-prodding, especially by a bot. Too many mistakes have already happened, including by me. Bearian (talk) 15:36, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose Far too many of the BLPs tagged as {{unsourcedBLP}} are actually incorrectly tagged and should have been tagged as {{RefimproveBLP}}. So rather than a bot it needs to be a human checking if the article really is totally unsourced, and also checking that the article hasn't simply been vandalised... I'm also concerned with the granularity of this, it isn't as bad as Jimbo's suggestion but I fear that every fortnight there would be a frenetic last minute salvage operation that could lead to last minute rushed and poor quality salvaging. I would be somewhat mollified if the prodding was Y articles prodded per day rather than 14xY prodded per fortnight. ϢereSpielChequers 12:00, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
- oppose: I don't believe in mass prodding efforts like this and I also don't believe in one group of editors setting up ultimative deadlines for other editors to follow - thats not what the wikipedia I know and like is about. Coffee says that sourcing 124 articles in two weeks is easy - but somehow I don't have a feeling that he will be chipping many hours in himself towards that workload. The proposal then, is simply being generous with other peoples time. To me the issue boils down to that - we need to respect volunteers time if we want this encyclopedia to work: mass deletions and issuing ultimatums to editors is not the right way of going about that. Then comes the problems with doing it alphabetically instead of by creation date which is just arbitrary and not based on any reasoning.·Maunus·ƛ· 19:44, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
Proposed amendment to Coffee's proposal by Phantomsteve
I would propose that instead of having the order being decided by the surname of the subject, that it is based on date.
Here is my rough working out:
- Starting at March 1, 2010:
- Articles tagged as unreferenced in Feb-Aug 2007 will have until March 15, 2010 to be sourced. (2084 articles = 139 per day)
- Articles tagged as unreferenced in Sep 2007-Jan 2008 will have until April 1, 2010 to be sourced. (2398 articles = 160 per day)
- Articles tagged as unreferenced in Feb-Apr 2008 will have until April 15, 2010 to be sourced. (2100 articles = 140 per day)
- Articles tagged as unreferenced in May-Aug 2008 will have until May 1, 2010 to be sourced. (2386 articles = 160 per day)
- Articles tagged as unreferenced in Sep-Nov 2008 will have until May 15, 2010 to be sourced. (1880 articles = 126 per day)
- Articles tagged as unreferenced in Dec 2008 will have until June 1, 2010 to be sourced. (1308 articles = 88 per day)
- Articles tagged as unreferenced in Jan 2009 will have until June 15, 2010 to be sourced. (2112 articles = 140 per day)
- Articles tagged as unreferenced in Feb 2009 will have until July 1, 2010 to be sourced. (1724 articles = 114 per day)
- Articles tagged as unreferenced in Mar-May 2009 will have until August 1, 2010 to be sourced (1 month). (5754 articles = 192 per day)
- Articles tagged as unreferenced in June 2009 will have until September 1, 2010 to be sourced (1 month). (5591 articles = 186 per day)
- Articles tagged as unreferenced in July 2009 will have until September 15, 2010 to be sourced. (2764 articles = 185 per day)
- Articles tagged as unreferenced in August 2009 will have until October 15, 2010 to be sourced (1 month). (5417 articles = 181 per day)
- Articles tagged as unreferenced in September 2009 will have until November 1, 2010 to be sourced. (2383 articles = 159 per day)
- Articles tagged as unreferenced in October 2009 will have until November 15, 2010 to be sourced. (2023 articles = 135 per day)
- Articles tagged as unreferenced in November - December 2009 will have until November 15, 2010 to be sourced. (1875 articles = 125 per day)
Obviously, the precise figures/dates can be debated (because of the varying numbers of tags per month, the figures above mean having to deal with between 88 and 192 articles per day!)
The above timetable would mean that
- all of the articles tagged in 2007 would be cleared by the end of April 2010
- all of the articles tagged in 2008 would be cleared by the end of June 2010
- all of the articles tagged in 2009 would be cleared by the end of November 2010.
Assuming 2000 tags per month (which will probably be lower most months), and assuming we can source 4000 per months (i.e. 133 articles per day), we would be up-to-date by November 2011 (i.e. in November 2011, there will only be articles tagged in November 2011 which will be unsourced BLPs) -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 12:09, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
- Support
- As proposer -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 12:09, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
- While not as evenly distributed as my proposal, this one is also an option. — Coffee // have a cup // ark // 19:26, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
- for me, the distribution here seems a tad more comfortable than Cofee's above. Buggie111 (talk) 20:41, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose
- Comments
- If this is going to be done, I think a better rate would be 100 per day, to the degree feasible. Maurreen (talk) 21:31, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
Proposal by WFCforLife: Counter-prod if we dip below the current rate
I propose that we set a target rate, based on the rate the backlog has been reduced until now. If we continue sourcing at or above that level, we do not prod any articles on that day. If the rate dips on a given day, we prod as many articles as the shortfall. For simplicity, I'm going to pretend that the backlog has been reduced at 400 a day until now, and that this proposal is introduced today. If we source 500 today, no articles from the backlog get prodded. If however we only manage 300, 100 will be prodded, starting from the beginning of the alphabet.
This would allow editors to continue sourcing based on their strengths and interests, rather than worry about the arbitrary date it was tagged on. It motivates individual projects to stay ahead of the rest of the encyclopaedia, knowing that if they do so, their articles will not be up for the chop. It also attempts to draw a reasonable balance between those fearing that this process will stall if the backlog is not dealt with quickly enough, and those worried that the proposal will be too severe. WFCforLife (talk) 10:31, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
- Support as author. WFCforLife (talk) 10:34, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose. Rather than trying to 'motivate' those who are constructively trying to improve these articles by threatening to delete articles, it would be better for other editors to lend a hand. The current rate may not be sustainable, so a lower target rate for next few months would be reasonable, but a target should be based on a realistic timescale, as discussed above. --Michig (talk) 12:30, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
Support But isn't this the same as alverstrand's proposal? Gigs (talk) 21:35, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
- Similar, but with an expected rate that's virtually guaranteed to see a lot of potentially good, encyclopedic articles deleted.--Michig (talk) 17:02, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
- 500 a day isn't unreasonable for the next few weeks, but the further in we get, the harder that will be to sustain because all the low hanging fruit (thousands that are already sourced and easily sourced in english using web sources) will be gone. Striking comment. Gigs (talk) 20:01, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
- The contentious thing about this proposal would be in setting the rate at which the the backlog has been reducing. We have recently seen a huge amount of BLP improvement as a result of DASHBot and other initiatives. I doubt if the recent rate of improvement is sustainable and fear that if we set too fast a rate we will lose out both by having good but unsourced articles deleted, and also by rushed rescue jobs by editors for whom suddenly there is a deadline. However if the proposal was not overly hasty I think this sort of approach could be viable. There were 52,000 articles at the beginning of the year, if we set a formula of 1,000 a week then I could accept a proposal that if the remainder of the 52,000 still tagged as unsourced BLPs from 2009 or before drops below 1,000 times the number of weeks left in 2010; Then until the numbers drop back below 1,000 times the remaining weeks, those who wish to may start prodding thee articles for deletion without first trying to source them. ϢereSpielChequers 16:08, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
Reinventing the wheel?
I'm not entirely convinced that we actually need to create a whole new layer of bureaucracy and regulation here. In many cases, in fact, we already have the policies and procedures that we need to deal with a large portion of the backlog — we simply need to actually apply them and/or give them sharper teeth.
Just as an example that I come across frequently, WP:MUSIC already specifies that a musician who doesn't actually have independent notability for activity outside of one specific band should get a redirect to that band, rather than an independent article. Thus, we don't need a whole new complicated process to deal with an unreferenced BLP that reads Jack Bupkis is the current bass guitarist for the band Kiss My Grits — we already have a procedure in place to deal with it: redirect it to Kiss My Grits. We simply need somebody to actually do it.
Similarly, we already have the ability to prod or speedy articles which don't make credible notability claims. We simply need people to actually do it. And we already have the ability to speedy delete attack pages. We simply need people to actually do it.
I still stand by the position I spelled out in Phase I; the two principal problems with the existing process for dealing with unreferenced BLPs have been that (a) there hasn't been a way for editors to easily identify articles in their areas of expertise which were in need of referencing, and (b) there hasn't ever actually been a hard deadline in place for actually doing anything about it, so editors have been able to simply ignore the problem and appeal to eventualism.
DashBot's recent "listing articles by creator", while a good start, doesn't completely solve Problem A — there are undoubtedly a large number of articles that we can source up, and which do belong in an encyclopedia, that will fall through the cracks because the original creator isn't here anymore. And while I am making a good faith effort to work on my own backlog, unfortunately I can't devote all my time to that alone, as there are other tasks I have to devote attention to as well (e.g. keeping an eye on the Adam Giambrone situation; just because there are references present in that article doesn't mean there isn't still an extremely sensitive BLP problem, and an extremely determined set of vandals who aren't terribly familiar with and/or don't care about the niceties of BLP, to watch for right now.) So I can't be the only person with responsibility for the list that was posted to my talk page, either — the lists need to be made available to WikiProjects as a whole, not just to one individual editor each.
What's needed is a solution that's oriented toward the community, rather than placing all responsibility solely on the original editor. The first thing we need is improved tools which will allow people to identify unreferenced BLPs that fall within their areas of interest regardless of whether they were the article's original creator or not, such as a bot that will compile a list of "all unreferenced BLPs that are listed as being part of WikiProject Topic". The bot can of course also make educated guesses if there aren't any WikiProject tags, in much the same way as AlexNewArtBot already does. Then give the project a reasonable amount of time to work on that list as a group — with the understanding that once that deadline has passed, the article will then become eligible for the existing prod process if it still hasn't been sourced up. But that's not a matter of creating a complicated new process; it's just a matter of adding some teeth to a process we already have, and creating the tools that will enable the community to deal with it more effectively than any tools we currently have.
We really don't need to reinvent the wheel here; we just need to rebalance the wheel we already have so that it runs better. We do need a better notification tool, and we do need to impose some stricter deadlines on the current process — but we don't actually need to create any complex new policy that doesn't already exist. Bearcat (talk) 07:43, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
- Support
- You've said it better than I ever could. The community should be working on tools that help enforce existing policies, not summarily deleting articles so we don't need to develop tools. Jogurney (talk) 16:34, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
- Strong support a handful of extreme editors feel that the only solution is a harsh one: threaten to delete 17,500 editors contributions. This is short sighted and dangerous to the future of the project. The reason that Wikipedia is so popular today is its collaborative roots. Building on the User:The-Pope's ideas from Phase I, I have suggested both a BLP referencing contest, and am working with others to build a bot which updates a list of unreferenced BLP's for projects daily. I warmly encourage Coffee and all editors to join and support these efforts.
See also my comments on how the suggested "solution" is ineffective, about a nearly nonexistent threat.Okip (formerly Ikip) 17:04, 12 February 2010 (UTC) - Generally support. The problem we have is that we have an imbalance between the numbers of editors who add or create unsourced content, the editors who help to source this content, and the editors who are only interested in deleting content. If more of the latter group worked to improve articles rather than delete them, and more of the first group put more effort into citing sources, then we could have a much better encyclopedia, and would attract and retain better editors. We do, however, need better communication so that editors who are prepared to help out are made aware of where perceived problem areas are (and the proposed BLP-PROD process would, I believe, help - if implemented with the aim of encouraging sourcing rather than deletion), and we do need greater efforts to make sure that new editors (and some older ones) appreciate the need/benefit of citing reliable sources. Mass deletions risk driving editors away from this project, potentially making the problem a lot worse. The fact that we have editors here who seem desperate to delete articles despite the fact that the perceived problem of unsourced-BLPs is being dealt with constructively, is not at all encouraging.--Michig (talk) 17:18, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
- Support You've convinced me that this is the way forward even if it is a high-maintenance solution. We should be enforcing the existing rules properly before we try to create new ones or remove large amounts of content which deserves to be kept. Alzarian16 (talk) 19:18, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
- Support in so far as "the way we've always done things" has already changed. I'm specifically not opposed to deadlines, but I'd prefer the deadlines to exist as a last resort, not as the driving force behind the effort. Gigs (talk) 20:05, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
- Support This is a volunteer community and it works best when we try to collaborate to solve problems rather than have some central direction. Bringing articles to the attentions of projects is a great way to get extra collaboration. I've recently gone through the articles categorised as living people and year of birth but with no other categories, and most of them I've been able to add at least an occupational category. Looking at those articles afterwards some of them have since been prodded and some improved, many will be coming to the attention of projects and editors who care about those categories. We should be looking for more collaborative solutions to our problems. ϢereSpielChequers 12:12, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
- Support - I agree to the extent that getting WikiProjects involved in a collaborative effort to solve this problem is a good way to go. While I am not entirely against a new PROD process, arbitrary deadlines are best avoided. Camaron · Christopher · talk 20:21, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
- Agree with the spirit, not the deadline. But if there's going to be a deadline, this could help a lot. Maurreen (talk) 21:35, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
- I support the idea, as an addition to other methods. Mr.Z-man 06:51, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose
- The Way We've Always Done Things™ has not worked, and won't work to resolve this issue. — Coffee // have a cup // ark // 10:50, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
- Comments
This is a good idea. It hits at the important points. The issue is, the status quo is unacceptable. All I see here is much of the same, with just a more focused "engage the community". I would have no problem with trying to source articles at a rapid rate, but if efforts start to dip off and the backlogs begin to grow or stagnate, then a new process must be established. We cannot just let things stagnate again. NW (Talk) 17:50, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
- That's precisely why I'm proposing, for example, that we impose a hard deadline on the process. Until now, people have been able to just ignore the problem and leave things stagnating in the queue — so I am proposing that we add a serious "if this article hasn't been sourced up and removed from the backlog in X amount of time, it will then be deleted" cap to the current process. The current procedure is the metaphorical equivalent of the comedy sketch about the British cop who demands "Stop or I'll ask you to stop again!", because there's no recourse or consequence to failing to do anything about it. I'm proposing that we start letting the cop shoot to kill if he or she has to. Bearcat (talk) 18:13, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
- So those people who are not prepared to help source these articles but just want to delete them are 'cops' and those of us that are trying to preserve content by sourcing it are what? Criminals? Seriously, we need to support the people who are making an effort to source these articles, rather than shooting at their feet to force them to dance. --Michig (talk) 18:25, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
- That's not what I said, or what I meant. I'm talking about the articles that don't get improved. Bearcat (talk) 18:27, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
- If we are allowed to work through the backlog then all of the articles will eventually get either improved or deleted, and the more people contribute to this the quicker it will get done. If there's a deadline that we can't achieve, then we won't get a chance to improve a lot of these articles, and if it looks like an impossible task, I can see a lot of people giving up. Those people complaining about the unsourced BLP problem but just sitting there expecting someone else to fix these articles need to find something more constructive to do. The only articles that I see falling through the net and not getting improved are those that have a consensus to be kept at AFD but remain unsourced, but there are likely to only be a small number of these. Several months of tagged unsourced-BLP articles have now either been sourced or deleted - none from those dates have remained in mainspace without being improved.--Michig (talk) 18:38, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
- The backlog has existed for an extremely long time now without getting worked through to anything like the degree that was actually necessary, and a process that isn't working isn't going to magically start working 1000 per cent better just because we wish it so, if we leave everything the same and don't adjust the process somehow. But conversely, the very fact that putting a hard deadline on the process might seem unduly punitive if we impose it without ensuring that we make it easier for people to deal with the affected articles is precisely why I also proposed that we create improved tools to ensure that people have better access to a list of the articles they're most likely to be able to help with. Bearcat (talk) 18:48, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
- If we are allowed to work through the backlog then all of the articles will eventually get either improved or deleted, and the more people contribute to this the quicker it will get done. If there's a deadline that we can't achieve, then we won't get a chance to improve a lot of these articles, and if it looks like an impossible task, I can see a lot of people giving up. Those people complaining about the unsourced BLP problem but just sitting there expecting someone else to fix these articles need to find something more constructive to do. The only articles that I see falling through the net and not getting improved are those that have a consensus to be kept at AFD but remain unsourced, but there are likely to only be a small number of these. Several months of tagged unsourced-BLP articles have now either been sourced or deleted - none from those dates have remained in mainspace without being improved.--Michig (talk) 18:38, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
- That's not what I said, or what I meant. I'm talking about the articles that don't get improved. Bearcat (talk) 18:27, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
- So those people who are not prepared to help source these articles but just want to delete them are 'cops' and those of us that are trying to preserve content by sourcing it are what? Criminals? Seriously, we need to support the people who are making an effort to source these articles, rather than shooting at their feet to force them to dance. --Michig (talk) 18:25, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
New unsourced BLP handling
Develop consensus on standards for newly-created BLPs. Factors to consider include tools and processes to support new editors, integration of the process with new page patrol, and time frame for sourcing of new articles. The View by Pointillist at Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Biographies_of_living_people/Content may be a relevant reference point for discussion. Rd232 talk 11:43, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
new CSD criterion for newly-created unsourced BLP
Given that my stance in the first phase of the RfC was placed into the "no change" category, my position may find different supporters here, but I fundamentally believe that in order to make progress on the backlog of unsourced BLPs, Wikipedia cannot effectively handle both the backlog and the influx of new, unsourced BLPs. Thus I propose a new speedy deletion criterion be added, allowing for any editor to tag and any administrator to delete any newly created (<24h old created since the implementation date of this new criterion) unsourced BLP.
- This should not actually be necessary in too many instances. In my experience with new page patrolling, I have seen most newly-created mainspace biographies fail an existing speedy deletion criteria--A7 (no assertion of notability), G11 (promotional), G10 (attack), or G12 (copyvio), in roughly that order. Thus, the new criterion would only apply to non-promotional, non-attack, non-copyvio, BLPs which asserted some notability and are unsourced.
- Because of its limited applicability, it will not unduly increase the difficulty new editors have in creating useful and retained Wikipedia articles.
- Wikipedia already has biographies for many, probably most, persons who actually meet our notability standards. The value lost by imposing stricter creation criteria will thus be minimal: if the BLP subject was really that important, odds are that some other editor will have already created an article for them.
- New page patrollers, who make rapid recommendations on the applicability of new content, generally differ in areas of interest from those who maintain existing articles. While there are certainly overlaps between any two groups of Wikipedians, this allows NPP'ers to slow or stop the spread of the problem without having to change their preferred editing habits.
- Support
- As author. Jclemens (talk) 21:57, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
- Support with the suggestion of adding a template for the author as discussed; perhaps it can link to WP:ARS or other place they can seek assistance from other editors.--otherlleft 23:38, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
Support with the first 2 addendums of Kevin and that of otherleft/myself. --Cybercobra (talk) 00:05, 8 February 2010 (UTC)(back to Neutral)- Support As a reasoned compromise aimed at handling legitimate concerns. Collect (talk) 01:17, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Support per nom. <>Multi‑Xfer<> (talk) 02:03, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Support. Kevin (talk) 02:55, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Support — Coffee // have a cup // ark // 07:08, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Support. May seem a little WP:BITEy, but I see no alternative. We're not going to make significant progress otherwise. Unlike the speedy deletion of ancient articles, inherited from a time when Wikipedia had vastly different standards, and even technical capabilities, this proposal has the advantage that the creator of the new article is almost certainly still around, and the sources he used fresh in his mind. It's not too much to ask that he add them to the article as a basic form of WP:V education. Pcap ping 13:28, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Support: as Pcap said, protecting people is more important than worrying about being a little bit mean to newbies. Sceptre (talk) 13:46, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Protecting people from what? If it is an attack page, then it can be deleted as such already. The fact that it doesn't have a source, does not mean that it is wrong or innacurate---heck, having sources does not protect people. Speedy deleting an article simply because the first draft doesn't have a source is not the right path to follow.---Balloonman NO! I'm Spartacus! 20:00, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Is there any particular reason why this viewpoint always has to rely on false dilemmas? Resolute 01:16, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
- Support, but my second choice I guess. I'd be fine with this, but it clearly is unpopular, and I think simply using a new "BLP-prod" instead of creating a new speedy criteria would be fine. The article would hang around a bit longer (a week instead of a day), but if we have a big tag at the top saying "this is a problem!" I'm not too worried about that. We need to go with solutions that work and that gain a decent sized consensus, and I think BLP-prodding new unsourced BLPs will get the job done and be palatable to most people. --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 03:03, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
- Support. Sceptre (talk) 08:17, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
- Support as a second option. I would prefer a less-speedy approach like a PROD process, but something has to be done to get rid of these pages as they come in so this problem does not recur. --Shirik (Questions or Comments?) 17:47, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
Support - I cannot see why this is so controversial. We do this for images many times each day. Images with no source are tagged for "speedy deletion" after 7 days and biographical articles can be the same. I have always regarded that speedy-delete refers to the decision process, not the timeframe. Peripitus (Talk) 20:56, 10 February 2010 (UTC)- This is not proposing the seven day period you are describing with images. I have no problem with a PROD on new unsourced BLPs, this proposal is to make it a speedily deletable criteria. EG the article is written, it lacks sources, and voila it is deleted---no wait period is required.---Balloonman NO! I'm Spartacus! 17:40, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
- Did it get changed or did I read this wrong ?. I had though that this proposed a WP:CSD#F4 style imposed delay - without such a delay this is probably going have too many issues. New editors will not know about sources and perhaps summarily and immediately deleting their article is one of the worst ways to teach them. Much as I support nuking of long-term unsourced articles, this will not result in a good experience for the new editor - Peripitus (Talk) 20:48, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
- No, it did not. There was discussion of that, but the time-delay to source, else delete a la F4 is currently being considered as a "BLP PROD" process, which does indeed seem to have greater community support than an outright delete-without-waiting as I proposed. Jclemens (talk) 21:00, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
- Did it get changed or did I read this wrong ?. I had though that this proposed a WP:CSD#F4 style imposed delay - without such a delay this is probably going have too many issues. New editors will not know about sources and perhaps summarily and immediately deleting their article is one of the worst ways to teach them. Much as I support nuking of long-term unsourced articles, this will not result in a good experience for the new editor - Peripitus (Talk) 20:48, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
- Support. Seems a good way to nip the problem in the bud for new articles, which may pass all the other various speedy criteria that BLPs fall under, but still are nonetheless unsourced. SchuminWeb (Talk) 03:03, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
- Support.--Fox1942 (talk) 14:58, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
- Support Brambleclawx 22:15, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose
- Strong Oppose. Overwhelming consensus is against speedy deletion of non offensive BLPs - we just did this, something like 80% said so. The comment "Wikipedia already has biographies for many, probably most, persons who actually meet our notability standards" sounds a lot like the apocryphal patent office clerk saying "Everything that can be invented has been invented". :-) There are an endless number of notable people we have not covered yet, especially due to the issues noted by Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias. Source them, don't speedy delete them. --GRuban (talk) 00:51, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose I think here a BLP-PROD tag should be applied, either the same as the general one, or a different kind. it's better for new contributors to have a stern warning on their article than to have their article just disappear. This also works better for articles that get built in several stages. Calliopejen1 (talk) 01:09, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Strong oppose the largest support was for 7 days, speedy deletion would reduce it to 24 hours. This is not an effective solution, not supported by the community in any significant numbers, and many notable articles would be deleted. Note the articles which were already deleted out of process, administrators will delete articles just as notable if there is no deletion discussion. Okip (formerly Ikip) 04:02, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- You put such little trust in us. What is notable can only be decided by what is sourced, if it isn't sourced then how do we know? (and don't say Google search) — Coffee // have a cup // ark // 07:08, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
***Not putting words in Okips mouth, but I don't trust you Coffee. The comment you just made could be useful in justifying 2 prods a day, or 2000. Why don't you inspire trust, and say what you mean. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 07:45, 8 February 2010 (UTC) Strike. Crappy thing to say. Seriously sorry abou lack of good faith. I'm gonna take this off my watchlist, I'm not doing myself of the project any good with comments like that. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 18:18, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- I just did below, take a look. Maybeh I can haz trust now? — Coffee // have a cup // ark // 07:53, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose - there appeared to be some consensus for a BLP-PROD process from the first round of discussion, with a 7-day timeline having most support. Speedying, other than by our existing criteria, was a non-starter, and it seems pointless to raise it again here.--Michig (talk) 10:19, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose Neither the first phase of this RFC nor any number of similar suggestions at WT:CSD have gained community consensus and there is a good reason for it. The community has expressed that a special PROD-like system for dealing with any unsourced BLPs (not only new ones) is preferable and as such we should discuss this. Speedy deletion was never meant for those purposes and should not be changed to do. So far no one has explained why speedy deletion is really necessary when a PROD-like process could be used which would allow people some time to fix articles. New users often don't read all information and some of them will continue to create such articles without sources because they simply don't know and who would be more than willing to fix it if one tells them about it. But they usually will feel bitten if we simply deleted the articles without giving them time to fix it. No reasons mentioned in favor of the proposal explain why we should BITE new users and can't wait a few days instead. A7 and G11 cover most articles like this already. The rest are good-faith creations about possibly notable subjects and should be treated differently than all the spam- and MySpace-kind of articles. Regards SoWhy 13:48, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose As already noted, speedy deletion has already been rejected by the community. It should already be obvious that a PROD type solution has community endorsement instead. We should focus our efforts on the accepted solution format rather than re-start discussion on rejected methods. Resolute 15:21, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose If it fits A7 or A10, fine delete it. If it doesn't have a source, contact the creator and let them know that it needs one. Speedy deletion of quality good faith articles should be avoided at all costs. Use the opportunity to educate a new user about our expectations, don't create bad will and chase off new editors.---Balloonman NO! I'm Spartacus! 16:40, 8 February 2010 (UTC) EDIT: This proposal would be a complete reversal of the current policy surrounding A7, The criterion does not apply to any article that makes any credible claim of significance or importance even if the claim is not supported by a reliable source. The threshold to avoid A7 deletions is explicitly lower because we want to give authors the chance to source and improve the articles to show that the individual is worthy of an article.---Balloonman NO! I'm Spartacus! 22:42, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose, if an article doesn't fail the existing CSD, we quite likely do want an article on the subject. Immediate deletion doesn't do anything to encourage the primary goal of improving the reference quality. Christopher Parham (talk) 18:16, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose, too heavy-handed and easily subject to abuse and misuse. Even an unsourced BLP should be given a chance (even if not a very long one) to be sourced and improved. Lass drastic deletion tools should be sufficient here. As noted above, we already do have CSD A7 and A10, that should take care of particularly clear-cut cases. Nsk92 (talk) 18:33, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose There is no need for speedy deletion if there is prima facie evidence of notability. The editor who wishes the article should be deleted shoudl go through a process of searching for sources and only then prod the article on the grounds that the claim of notability is unsupported by search of news, academic and book sources.--Peter cohen (talk) 22:11, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose This will not allow enough time for the newby creator to find sources. Already for images we have templates like {{Di-no source}}, after the expiry time this will show up for administrator action, and also appear in a category for those that want to fix the situation. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 11:45, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose any speedy process for non-problematic articles. There are plenty of existing criteria to delete articles that have problems (hoaxes, blatant attacks, promotional, etc.) and they should be used. If an article doesn't meet one of those criteria, then the normal processes are still fine. Jim Miller See me | Touch me 14:05, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose. Current speedy criteria will still apply to remove problem articles. If the only problem is lack of sourcing, a new BLP PROD will be sufficient. Wine Guy~Talk 10:50, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose too strong and some admins will just delete any old thing. Secondly I bet people will only check on new users when tons of policy violations of all sorts including fake sources etc etc are done by old hands YellowMonkey (vote in the Southern Stars photo poll) 07:30, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose Why change CSD to make it fit this specific usage when BLP PROD would work at least as well? Alzarian16 (talk) 17:20, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose Though I included this as part of my proposal in the first round, and arguably that proposal had consensus level support; I now accept that with the flaws in the current speedy deletion process we need to give 7 days rather than 7 minutes for people to add a source to their new article. So I will oppose this provided we go with a "sticky prod" that can only be removed if someone adds a source or makes it clear that the article subject is actually dead, fictional or nonhuman. If there were to be consensus to go ahead with speedy deletion of new unsourced BLPs, then I would be somewhat mollified if this was added to the A1 and A3 categories as something that shouldn't be tagged in the first minutes of an articles creation, but only after it had been up for an hour. Not that that stops many articles from being tagged and deleted before the editor has a chance to save their second sentence but it does save some newbies from being bitten. ϢereSpielChequers 11:39, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose - A modified PROD process would be a much better way of dealing with unsourced BLPs, many of which are easily fixable. To give such articles a change, a seven day waiting period before deletion is the absolute minimum I will support. I also don't see why a new unsourced BLP should be treated any more harshly than an old one. If they had to be treated differently, I would say do the opposite, delete the old ones since they have been around much longer, with more time to fix them. Camaron · Christopher · talk 20:31, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose -- Prod, maybe; speedy, no. Maurreen (talk) 21:37, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose Speedy deletion is the wrong way. ·Maunus·ƛ· 08:07, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
- Discussion
- There ought to be a provision to require leaving an explanation template on the author's talkpage as they are likely to be newbies and not understand what happened and why. --Cybercobra (talk) 22:31, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
- Another idea along these lines--the CSD template could specify that {{hangon}} (or some specific variant) should be used by the author to indicate that he or she had read the CSD notice, and was in the process of researching/adding sources. Admins can then treat that like any other hangon tag--cut the editor a credible amount of slack to allow them to do what they committed to, and delete it when good faith expires. Jclemens (talk) 00:19, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- The problem with CSD is that often times they occur faster than people can edit them, there is nothing worse than working on a legit article to have some over eager admin delete it within minutes of creation. Hangon only works if you happen to catch it in time.---Balloonman NO! I'm Spartacus! 16:42, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Again, this isn't a particularly new problem--existing BLPs are deleted as A7 or G11 all the time before authors have a chance to rectify. It's a definite downside to the speedy process as a whole, but I genuinely don't think this makes the existing problem that much worse. Jclemens (talk) 18:02, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- then you're being foolish. A good faith effort from an author should not be summarily deleted because the author failed to include a reference. Making this a CSD criteria WILL create problems and will become bity. Sorry, I can't see how you can make the assertation that this wouldn't make the issue existing "problem that much worse." There is a reason why the CSD criteria explitictly states that it only takes a claim of significance to avoid CSD. This proposal would throw that policy completely out the door. No longer would the mere claim to significance be sufficeint, it would have to have a source. This is a complete reversal of existing CSD policy and would be a disaster.---Balloonman NO! I'm Spartacus! 22:39, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- A disaster? Funny, that's what some of the partisans on the other side are saying as well. The conversation is probably not well served by such hyperbole. You seem to be placing a higher value on newbie editors feelings than the overall quality and integrity of the encyclopedia. The world won't end if we decide "no source? No BLP" and enforce it on new articles. It would absolutely be a change from the "assertion of notability" standard; it's supposed to be. Jclemens (talk) 22:51, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Can't we have both editor retention and a high quality encyclopedia? It doesn't necessarily have to be either/or. Don't the two go hand in hand anyway? 23:03, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Agree... there is no need to rush to the automatic position that an unsourced BLP is bad and contains misinformation, which is what this proposal is all about. It is not the case. An article which does not contain a source, does not equal wrong and motions to that affect received quite a bit of support in phase one as did the opposition to summarily speedy deleting unreferenced BLPs. An article which does not contain copy vios or attacks do not need to be deleted within minutes of creation---the fact that we've had thousands of unsourced BLP's for years is proof that we won't break the project if we leave one on here for a few days. At the same time, years of experience and hurt feels have gone into the crafting of our current CSD criteria. Years of knowing that often times these articles can be improved and the assumption of good faith on the articles creator. Based upon phase 1, I think it is clear that the camp which advocates speedy deletion of unsourced BLPs is clearly in the minority (MzM's proposal being shot down 3:1, Collect's comment passing 4:1, your own passing 4:1, Power.Corrupt's passing 3:1, Johnbod passing 5:1).---Balloonman NO! I'm Spartacus! 01:07, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
- I think you're overplaying the "is bad" part of "speedy deletion". Unsourced BLPs are no worse than your typical garage band, yet we delete those out of hand all the time. Something needn't be outright harmful to a person to be sufficiently impermissible to be deleted speedily. If you want to save people's feelings, get rid of {{db-band}}: it's used far more often than this would ever be. Jclemens (talk) 01:36, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
- You are 100% correct, "Unsourced BLPs are no worse than your typical garage band" in fact they are often a lot better than your typical garage band... Lyle Berman was an unsourced BLP and he is clearly notable... as are any number of other unsourced BLPs of notable individuals that are reasonably well written. But you have missed a key part of the problem with this proposal. A7 has a very low threshold to keep---it only needs to make a claim to significance/importance. The claim does not have to be true or sourced, it just has to be a reasonable claim of significance. This proposal increases the expectation and requirements to the point where sources have to be provided. This is a complete departure from years of developing the CSD criteria. The criteria are currently written so that articles on people whom are clearly notable, ala Cyndy Violette, will not be speedily delete at the whim of a single individual, but will be prodded or sent to AFD where hopefully somebody will make an effort to salvage the article. CSD is the option of last resort, wherein the article is so bad that it's mere presence on the project does immediate harm and wherein the deletion of the article would be uncontroversial---that is a key factor in the . The fact that Johnny Chan (poker player) doesn't have inline citations does not make the this a clear case for deletion. Remember there are expectations to new proposals for CSD, Uncontestable: it must be the case that almost all articles that could be deleted using the rule, should be deleted, according to consensus. CSD criteria should cover only situations where there is a strong precedent for deletion. Remember that a rule may be used in a way you don't expect, unless you word it carefully. This proposal has absolutely zero consensus---oh wait, 25% supported MZM's proposal. As this proposal has essential zero support we are wasting our time discussing it.---Balloonman NO! I'm Spartacus! 09:42, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
- Actually, if you look carefully, this proposal is hovering around 50% support, which is far more than MZM's proposal got. Why? Because there's a difference between throwing content out and keeping content out. You've made zero arguments that don't also apply equally well to {{db-band}}. If you'll look at my comments on sourcing, the proposed CSD criterion is to be drawn so narrowly as to be uncontestable: no sourcing of any kind. The only thing in contention, then, is whether or not the community expects new BLPs to be sourced in order to remain. Granted that this proposal finds split support and opposition--but the strength of support demonstrates that the concept isn't as easily dismissed as you imply. Jclemens (talk) 17:45, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
- Then you don't know db-band that well. An article can easily be written that can easily pass db-band, but would fail this criteria simply because it was deemed an unrefrenced biography.---Balloonman NO! I'm Spartacus! 17:38, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
- Actually, if you look carefully, this proposal is hovering around 50% support, which is far more than MZM's proposal got. Why? Because there's a difference between throwing content out and keeping content out. You've made zero arguments that don't also apply equally well to {{db-band}}. If you'll look at my comments on sourcing, the proposed CSD criterion is to be drawn so narrowly as to be uncontestable: no sourcing of any kind. The only thing in contention, then, is whether or not the community expects new BLPs to be sourced in order to remain. Granted that this proposal finds split support and opposition--but the strength of support demonstrates that the concept isn't as easily dismissed as you imply. Jclemens (talk) 17:45, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
- Agree... there is no need to rush to the automatic position that an unsourced BLP is bad and contains misinformation, which is what this proposal is all about. It is not the case. An article which does not contain a source, does not equal wrong and motions to that affect received quite a bit of support in phase one as did the opposition to summarily speedy deleting unreferenced BLPs. An article which does not contain copy vios or attacks do not need to be deleted within minutes of creation---the fact that we've had thousands of unsourced BLP's for years is proof that we won't break the project if we leave one on here for a few days. At the same time, years of experience and hurt feels have gone into the crafting of our current CSD criteria. Years of knowing that often times these articles can be improved and the assumption of good faith on the articles creator. Based upon phase 1, I think it is clear that the camp which advocates speedy deletion of unsourced BLPs is clearly in the minority (MzM's proposal being shot down 3:1, Collect's comment passing 4:1, your own passing 4:1, Power.Corrupt's passing 3:1, Johnbod passing 5:1).---Balloonman NO! I'm Spartacus! 01:07, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
- Can't we have both editor retention and a high quality encyclopedia? It doesn't necessarily have to be either/or. Don't the two go hand in hand anyway? 23:03, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- A disaster? Funny, that's what some of the partisans on the other side are saying as well. The conversation is probably not well served by such hyperbole. You seem to be placing a higher value on newbie editors feelings than the overall quality and integrity of the encyclopedia. The world won't end if we decide "no source? No BLP" and enforce it on new articles. It would absolutely be a change from the "assertion of notability" standard; it's supposed to be. Jclemens (talk) 22:51, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- then you're being foolish. A good faith effort from an author should not be summarily deleted because the author failed to include a reference. Making this a CSD criteria WILL create problems and will become bity. Sorry, I can't see how you can make the assertation that this wouldn't make the issue existing "problem that much worse." There is a reason why the CSD criteria explitictly states that it only takes a claim of significance to avoid CSD. This proposal would throw that policy completely out the door. No longer would the mere claim to significance be sufficeint, it would have to have a source. This is a complete reversal of existing CSD policy and would be a disaster.---Balloonman NO! I'm Spartacus! 22:39, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Again, this isn't a particularly new problem--existing BLPs are deleted as A7 or G11 all the time before authors have a chance to rectify. It's a definite downside to the speedy process as a whole, but I genuinely don't think this makes the existing problem that much worse. Jclemens (talk) 18:02, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- The problem with CSD is that often times they occur faster than people can edit them, there is nothing worse than working on a legit article to have some over eager admin delete it within minutes of creation. Hangon only works if you happen to catch it in time.---Balloonman NO! I'm Spartacus! 16:42, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- The tags should be designed to emphasize adding sources rather than deletion, so as to appear less unfriendly.
- We do not restrict tagging to articles younger than 24h, but that were created after this becomes policy. This will eventually render whatever policy is dealing with the backlog moot.
- The deletion be after a period of time, in line with some of the image CSD tags.
- So if it has any reference, no matter how unreliable, it must be deleted by some other process?--otherlleft 23:25, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
- That would be the implication, yes. Discussion of alternatives welcome. Jclemens (talk) 23:30, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
- If there's a debate about a source's reliability, we might as well cut to the chase and debate the article's existence. --Cybercobra (talk) 00:02, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- I think that there needs to some minumum quality of references to prevent deletion. I would say that at least one reference must not be one of: official/personal web site; blog not directly associated with a newspaper; IMDB; other user-submitted web site. There seems little point taking an article sourced only to a Myspace or similar page through AfD. Kevin (talk) 00:32, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- I asked to see if anyone would suggest such a standard. If that's what the community wants, I don't believe it falls properly into CSD criteria. You might consider suggesting a different proposal to detail your PROD-style suggestion.--otherlleft 02:33, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Please bear in mind that many newspapers (seen by some as the only reliable sources) are either going away entirely or being hidden behind paywalls. It shouldn't cost money to be an editor. This will be more and more of an issue in the future. Coupled with the increasing trend away from pure news into slanted news, NPOV is getting hard to find even in what were presumed to be high quality sources. --04:48, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- I think that there needs to some minumum quality of references to prevent deletion. I would say that at least one reference must not be one of: official/personal web site; blog not directly associated with a newspaper; IMDB; other user-submitted web site. There seems little point taking an article sourced only to a Myspace or similar page through AfD. Kevin (talk) 00:32, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- If there's a debate about a source's reliability, we might as well cut to the chase and debate the article's existence. --Cybercobra (talk) 00:02, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- That would be the implication, yes. Discussion of alternatives welcome. Jclemens (talk) 23:30, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
- Re GRuban's oppose:
- Yes, the consensus against speedily deleting existing BLPs is pretty large, and I'm a part of it. Thus it follows that if I think there's a difference between speedily deleting existing unsourced BLPs and new unsourced BLPs, others might as well.
- If I came across as saying that there's no one left worth adding as a BLP, that's my misstatement. Rather: people who have articles newly written about them can and should be sourced immediately. There's no emergency to adding such people to Wikipedia sufficient to ignore sourcing concerns. Jclemens (talk) 01:10, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- There was no consensus for speedy deleting new BLPs. The proposal which had the most support was PRODs for 7 days, followed by no change. This is no "reasoned compromise aimed at handling legitimate concerns" this is a proposal far to one side.
- A comprimise would be a proposal between
- 7 days (supported by 150+ editors) and
- no change (supported by 80+ editors, including your proposal Jclemens).
- The closest proposal to this proposal, the "deleted on site" idea by editor User:MZMcBride was nearly 3 to 1 against (55/157). Okip (formerly Ikip) 04:16, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Ikip, there's a fundamental difference between trashing existing content and keeping new content out. I favor the 7-day PROD process for existing content, but there's just no good reason to keep unsourced new content. I challenge you to go do some new page patrolling and find out how many articles per hour would actually be deleted by this new CSD criterion--and then let's take a look at them and see what the encyclopedia would really be losing. My bet? Nothing worthwhile, unless someone creates an intentionally unsourced BLP to make a point. Jclemens (talk) 04:21, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- I have done new page patrol, and I have done unreferenced BLPs. The existing Criteria for deletion rules are enough.
- RE: "unless someone creates an intentionally unsourced BLP to make a point." This is completely not the case. The problem is that to newcomers, our system of sourcing is not intuitive, which means more newcomers are going to be bit. Newcomers already get badly treated a lot anyway. This will only make retention worse.
- In addition, as I mentioned above, this is not a comprimise, this is an extreme position, which was never supported by phase I. Okip (formerly Ikip) 04:35, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Given that newcomers are already getting bit, do you think this actually makes it appreciably worse? I don't. Fact is, there's very little probability a new article from a new editor is ready for mainspace--this doesn't appreciably change that. Note that I never said this was a compromise; my support for the 7-day PROD process is a compromise, this is my honest belief on how to best deal with new unsourced BLP's. Jclemens (talk) 04:53, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- "Given that newcomers are already getting bit" LOL. thanks Jclemens. :) Disappointed and surprised :( Okip (formerly Ikip) 05:05, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- "Given that newcomers are already getting bit" that has to be one of the worst arguments I've ever seen... plus, you are ignoring the fact that there were numerous motions that garnered traction in round 1 that showed that your contention that no sources = bad was not held by the majority. Do we need to do something about unsourced BLP's? Yes. Do we have to push the panic button? No, one thing that was clear from round one is that most people do not see unsourced well written BLP's as a crisis that has to be fixed yesterday. This proposal clearly fails the 'uncontroversial' aspect of a new CSD criteria.---Balloonman NO! I'm Spartacus! 17:45, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
- Allow me to repeat myself a bit, for those whose intransigence is bordering on "I didn't hear that":
- New unsourced BLP articles.
- New unsourced BLP articles.
- New unsourced BLP articles.
- Nothing in the proposal reeks of panic, except perhaps the hyperbolic objections to drawing a line in the sand and saying "from this day forward, no more." Nothing in this proposed solution ignores the consensus that existing unsourced BLPs are not universally perceived as problematic. Do I need to repeat that a few times too? I sure hope not. Jclemens (talk) 19:59, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
- Allow me to repeat myself a bit, for those whose intransigence is bordering on "I didn't hear that":
- Given that newcomers are already getting bit, do you think this actually makes it appreciably worse? I don't. Fact is, there's very little probability a new article from a new editor is ready for mainspace--this doesn't appreciably change that. Note that I never said this was a compromise; my support for the 7-day PROD process is a compromise, this is my honest belief on how to best deal with new unsourced BLP's. Jclemens (talk) 04:53, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Ikip, there's a fundamental difference between trashing existing content and keeping new content out. I favor the 7-day PROD process for existing content, but there's just no good reason to keep unsourced new content. I challenge you to go do some new page patrolling and find out how many articles per hour would actually be deleted by this new CSD criterion--and then let's take a look at them and see what the encyclopedia would really be losing. My bet? Nothing worthwhile, unless someone creates an intentionally unsourced BLP to make a point. Jclemens (talk) 04:21, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
Standard BLP-PROD for unsourced new BLPs
Proposal: a BLP-PROD process is (hopefully?) being developed to handle the backlog (see "BLP PROD process drafting" above). Simply use the same process, with perhaps slightly different criteria, for new unsourced BLPs. For example, all new unsourced BLPs (created in 2010 or later) may be BLP-PRODded on sight if they're more than 24 hours old. The same basic principle of only removing the PROD tag with sufficient sourcing would apply. The process should give enough time (1 week? To Be Decided) for a reasonable minimal sourcing effort - perhaps involving Article Rescue Squadron or other technical/organisational means to ensure the requirement isn't solely placed on the creator - and the creator of the BLP will probably still be around to help out. The related template messages should be as friendly, helpful and explanatory as possible. As in the BLP-PROD process discussed elsewhere, the idea is that deletion still requires a human decision, that alternatives such as incubation or AFD are available by discretion, and that the process ensures at least minimal sourcing of new BLPs. Keeping one process for both the backlog and the new BLPs has obvious simplicity attraction. Rd232 talk 10:36, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- I agree. I just made a suggestion here of "tag new unsourced BLPs with a BLP-PROD tag. At any time before 7 days is up, the article can be userfied (at the Author's request, for a period of no more than 2 weeks, after which it gets deleted if it hasn't been sourced and moved into mainspace), or incubated (at the discretion of any user who genuinely believes the article can be sourced adequately). After 7 days if it is still in mainspace and unsourced, it gets deleted.", which is basically using existing procedures, except 'unsourced BLP' becomes a valid reason for the special BLP-PROD process. I would favour using this only for articles tagged as unsourced BLPs after this RFC reaches an outcome - the earlier ones can be considered part of the backlog. The 7 day timescale for the prod to stand before deletion appears to have most support from the first round of discussion. The 2 week limit on userspace is open to debate of course, but we do want to encourage new editors to create new sourced articles, and we need to be careful not to drive them away.--Michig (talk) 10:54, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- This seems to be describing our currently policies already with User:Jehochman 7 day idea, #Details from Phase 1, if this is the case, maybe this should be moved to the discussion section of #Details from Phase 1? Okip (the new and improved Ikip) 11:01, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Again, this will only work if people actually try to source. (and in fact, our current procedures will only work properly if people actually try to source). A good way to do this is to require people placing a tag to try to source one others have placed. It's perfectly practical: I follow this rule myself. I speedy delete about 10 articles a day, & prod or AfD 2 or 3, and in the other direction I add at least one decent source to at least 10 or 15. There are about 20 people here taking the lead in stringent proposals to delete articles. Let them do the same, and perhaps the same number of those who want less stringent proposals, and we'll finish in 2 or 3 months, assuming an equal number can and cannot be sourced. I challenge the makers of each proposal to show that they are willing to improve articles as well as delete them. DGG ( talk ) 16:34, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- ? this seems to be confusing the backlog issue with the "new unsourced BLP" issue. The threat of deletion is intended to ensure that creators do the minimal required work of sourcing. Text is rarely created out of thin air; so just asking the creator to provide the source(s) relied upon and making it clear the article will be deleted without will achieve much for little effort. Where creators are unavailable, there is time for others to provide minimal sourcing; and potentially valuable unsourced articles can be incubated or AFD'd instead of deleted. Rd232 talk 16:49, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Agree, this is different from dealing with the backlog, and I don't think DGG should have the same concerns. We just cannot ask new page patrollers to source (or try to) every unsourced BLP they come across—that's just not realistic when we are putting a priority on identifying and tagging new unsourced BLPs so they can be dealt with, and relying NPPers to do that. It also isn't necessary, since we should be catching these right away and saying (very nicely) to the person who created the article, "hey, thanks for the new article, we just need to you to add some sources in the next few days so we can keep this in the encyclopedia, let us know if you need help." A lot of them will do that (indeed this is the kind of followup that will likely allow us to bring more editors into active editing, since most new folks don't get a message explaining about sources and the like), and for those who don't we'd still have a queue of newly BLP-prodded articles sitting around for a week, and anyone could stop by and take care of the sourcing. It should be pretty easy to deal with (again realizing we're talking about new articles and not the backlog), and I don't think we need to make the "tagger" of a BLP-prod check for sources first in order for this to work, though of course it's great if they do. --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 03:30, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
- "The threat of deletion is intended to ensure that creators do the minimal required work of sourcing." This statement is premised on the fact that it is: 1, easy to source articles on Wikipedia for new editors, and 2, that the danger of unsourced BLPs outweighs the deletion of several thousand good faith articles which have accurate information, which will further lower our editor retention rate.
Lord, you truly know who is truly framing the tone of the debate when moderate editors such as Jclemens and yourself Rd232, echo and endorse Jehochman's extreme changes. I understand though, I was actually advocating a one week incubation time on articles, then they would be deleted last week, until I really started to clean up these "sewer" "crud" "crap" articles, and realized the entire underlying argument is a hoax, a fraud. The vast majority of these unreferenced articles, there only deficiency is they are unreferenced, most of the facts are correctly add by good faith editors. Please consider this Rd232. Okip (formerly Ikip) 23:41, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
- ? this seems to be confusing the backlog issue with the "new unsourced BLP" issue. The threat of deletion is intended to ensure that creators do the minimal required work of sourcing. Text is rarely created out of thin air; so just asking the creator to provide the source(s) relied upon and making it clear the article will be deleted without will achieve much for little effort. Where creators are unavailable, there is time for others to provide minimal sourcing; and potentially valuable unsourced articles can be incubated or AFD'd instead of deleted. Rd232 talk 16:49, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Doesn't this increase the number of unsourced BLPs we have to deal with per day as the new PRODs would have virtually identical deadlines to the ones for existing articles? One way to avoid this would be to extend Jimbo's proposal and base the whole process on article creation dates. Alzarian16 (talk) 21:49, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
- Support
- I support this option as the last fallback, if the adoption of the other, more proactive measures for stemming the creation of unsourced BLPs fails. Pcap ping 17:48, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Yes, per Pcap. Jclemens (talk) 18:07, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Support. Same basic idea as a new speedy criteria, except editors have a week to source the article. Much more likely to gain consensus so this would be my first choice, plus we probably only have to create one new process to clear the backlog and deal with newly created unsourced BLPs (I'm guessing we would maybe need a special "backlog" tag otherwise there could be some confusion as to whether an article was recently created or part of the backlog). --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 03:30, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
- Support, but I don't think we need to wait 24 hours to apply the tag. The sooner the editor knows the threat the better IMO , because they're likely to see it right away and get to work sourcing. Calliopejen1 (talk) 19:13, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
- Support per my comments above. I agree that the articles should be tagged asap, but the text in the tag must be friendly, informative, and as encouraging as possible to new editors. This is, I think, a very reasonable compromise considering the input to phase I of the discussion.--Michig (talk) 19:31, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
- Support best option put forth so far. --Cybercobra (talk) 22:51, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
- Support - I see this as largely the same as the CSD option as neither option necessitates immediate deletion. Per Calliopejen1 I think that the tagged should be added as soon as the article is seen to make sure that the editor knows straight away that there is an issue. The text of the notice and tag are most important to avoid driving new editors away. - Peripitus (Talk) 00:18, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
- Support in principle. We can hammer out the details later. Gigs (talk) 17:55, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
- Support, though it might be wise to move the new and unsourced articles to the incubator so they don't get indexed by search engines until they become more complete and stable. For new contributors, this would convey a nurturing attitude instead of an attacking one. -kslays (talk • contribs) 23:15, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
- Support Brambleclawx 01:46, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
- From this day, no more. That's a good way to think about it. The details can be worked out later. NW (Talk) 17:55, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
- Support — Coffee // have a cup // ark // 19:24, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
- I think speedy deletion is somewhat too harsh; we should at least give users a chance to add some sources. Mr.Z-man 06:48, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose
- Strong oppose Because the underlying idea is not new, (Jerochman proposed nearly the same thing in phase I) and the underlying premise is that a good portion of unreferenced BLPs are potentially libelous, and detrimental to wikipedia, which is a complete and total hoax, peddled by extreme editors who label unreferenced "BLPs" sewers, crap, crud, etc. The reality is that an infinitesimally small percentage of BLPs are libelous, and most are done by good faith editors. Okip (formerly Ikip) 23:29, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
Automatic userification of unsourced new BLPs
Given that a CSD criteria has been opposed by some on WP:BITE grounds, I'm proposing as an alternative that such articles be simply moved to the creator's userspace. This doesn't even require administrator rights, any new page patroller can do it (except for the deletion of the remaining redirect), and the article's author can still work on it. This policy should apply only to new articles, created after the date this proposal is adopted. The leftover redirect might have to be tagged with G6/R2.
Amendment: Gigs' concern about indexing is valid. {{Userspace draft}} would have to be added to the article as well, which transcludes {{NOINDEX}}. Given this issue, I agree that good Twinkle/AWB support will be needed for this to be a practical solution. But it does not seem excessively complex; Twinkle already handles more complex tasks, e.g. AfD nominations.
- Support
- As initiator. Pcap ping 16:43, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- I'll support this one as well, with the caveat that I wouldn't do it this way unless there was a good scripted way to do this simply. Jclemens (talk) 17:58, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- So long as it can be written into Twinkle, this seems like a good plan. SchuminWeb (Talk) 03:08, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose
- Speedy deletion by any other name is still speedy deletion. Not to mention that the problem isn't resolved, simply shifted into different project space. Resolute 17:35, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- User space is indexed in google, this accomplishes nothing. Gigs (talk) 17:56, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- per Reso.--Peter cohen (talk) 22:13, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose because this only shifts the problem and doesn't solve it, confuses the editor ("where'd my page go?"), and makes it so other interested parties that could help fix the article don't see it. Calliopejen1 (talk) 23:09, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Userfication usually only has a good outcome if the author agrees to it. Few understand it, so they will have probably lost their article when it is userfied. On the other hand I do userfy some autobiographies where the topic was non notable. Autobiographies that are notable could also be userfied. But that is as far as I support this idea: with agreement of creator, or for autobiographies. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 12:02, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
- The redirect will still be there won't it? YellowMonkey (vote in the Southern Stars photo poll) 07:25, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
- Fundamentally a good idea, and in good spirit, but unfortunately I think this will just end up with a lot of unsourced BLPs in userspace that will never be touched again. --Shirik (Questions or Comments?) 17:42, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose Per Resolute. --GRuban (talk) 21:03, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose per Resolute. Putting the problem out of view doesn't help. --Cybercobra (talk) 22:44, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose per Calliopejen1 and Graeme Bartlett (also Michig - see below). Userfication can be a useful tool for dealing with autobiographies or when the article's creator requests it in order to have time to improve the article. Automatic userfication, however, would only serve to transfer the problem from mainspace to another, less-patrolled, namespace. -- Black Falcon (talk) 07:08, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose, though I would probably support automatic incubation of unsourced BLPs, with notification to primary authors. That way if they sit around without being touched again they'll eventually get re-examined and deleted (unlike userspace, where they could sit untouched forever). -kslays (talk • contribs) 23:08, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose this is a collaboratively edited website one of whose great strengths is the ability to link and categorise articles. Moving draft articles to userspace would undermine that concept to no great benefit. I would support {{noindex}} for new articles, and I often userfy newbies articles as their userpage, but I don't think we should userfy pages that will be returning to article space. ϢereSpielChequers 20:42, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
- Userspace is poorly patrolled, and moving them to userspace drastically decreases the number of editors who will potentially work on the articles. Mr.Z-man 06:46, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
- Discussion
Previous discussion regarding Twinkle: WT:Twinkle/Archive 17#Adding userfication to Twinkle. Flatscan (talk) 05:06, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
- Also WP:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 53#Easier/better userfication, which became WP:Requests for comment/userfication. Flatscan (talk) 04:45, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose automatic userification, but per my comment above, I support userification at the request of the article's creator to allow more (but not unlimited) time for the article to be improved.--Michig (talk) 19:27, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
AfD/MfD style forum for unsourced BLPs
Once the backlog is eliminated through whatever means, I propose that new, and newly discovered (previously untagged) unsourced BLPs be placed in a new AfD style forum, where they will have a listing for 7 days. Unlike PROD, which will give us only a category, this will allow centralized discussion about sourcing issues, and will give interested editors a centralized place to systematically work through these, unlike a category where efforts are much more ad hoc and harder to collaborate on. As well, this gives a more visible profile to the problem, instead of being hidden in tags and categories. It will allow editors to get more credit for their sourcing work, as the collaboration will be in a more visible place. Twinkle can get support for this for ease of listing. Depending on the eventual quantity, it could either be "all one page" MfD style, or by day AfD style. Administrators will close listings after 7 days as "remains unsourced - delete" or "sufficiently sourced - keep". Gigs (talk) 21:15, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
- Support
- I would support this for the backlog also. Maurreen (talk) 21:24, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
- As long as the discussion hinges on reference quality rather than notability. I've seen far too many bad articles kept at AFD because the subject was notable and "someone will fix it eventually." The worst part is when people dig up references to establish notability, but don't even bother trying to use them to source the content. Mr.Z-man 06:44, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
- No, the worse thing is when the nominator doesn't bother to look for sources, and when they are found in an AFD discussion, they then expect someone else to go and use them to improve the article. Anyone taking an article to a deletion forum should be prepared to fix it themselves when sources are found. Better to treat these newly discovered old BLPs as backlog part II in my view.--Michig (talk) 07:42, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose
- For newly discovered but not new unsourced BLPs, I don't see this being necessary as long as the will is still there to work through and process these as is being done with the current backlog. One the current backlog is cleared we can start on this new set of articles. PROD and AFD will still be available if an editor looks at an article and decides that they think deletion is the approrpiate course of action.--Michig (talk) 07:42, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
- Discussion
- For new unsourced BLPs, some combination of PROD and AFD type processing would seem sensible based on the merits of individual articles. If we're going to insist on articles being sourced within 7 days, then a discussion which decides that they should be kept and sourced perhaps isn't going to achieve much. I think we would need to see how effective the BLP-PROD is in getting sources added to these articles first - AFD-type discussions can be very time-consuming, without sometimes achieving very much.--Michig (talk) 07:42, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
Poorly Sourced BLPs
Proposal by WereSpielChequers
We currently have over 17,000 BLPs in Category:BLP articles lacking sources, and I suspect most of the supposedly unreferenced BLPs should have been tagged with this as they contain some references. If we also tot up articles categorised as living people and also tagged with {{morefootnotes}}, {{nofootnotes}}, {{primarysources}}, {{self-published}} or {{one source}} this will rise by hundreds if not thousands more, many no better referenced than much of the backlog we are currently working on. Though I hope that because these tags are more informative and accurate they are more likely to get newbie editors responding by improving the referencing, as opposed to poorly referenced articles being tagged as unreferenced, which I suspect just leaves the editors assuming the tag was wrong. But in any event these articles need to be reviewed and if the tag is correct, improved or deleted. However I think it would be highly disruptive to start a major deletion drive on these within months of the recent kerfuffle, so I propose that we schedule an RFC on "Poorly sourced BLPs" for February of next year, with a moratorium on out of process deletion drives in the meantime. That does not in anyway stop those who who want to improve these articles from doing so, or exempt these articles from our normal deletion processes. But it would give the community a decent interval between this BLP kerfuffle and the next one.
Proposal {{RefimproveBLP}} backlog to be discussed in February 2011, but no out of process deletion drives on these articles before then.
- Support
- As Author ϢereSpielChequers 14:39, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
- Having listened to this idea in person from WereSpielChequers, it makes sense to me to focus on one thing at a time. Camaron · Christopher · talk 15:37, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
- Oppose
- Oppose. And then what? Every article about a band with living members? Every TV article that has actors that are still alive? Nearly every article on here has some biographical material about someone who is still alive. I will not accept this as a backdoor effort to change our general policy from "verifiability" to "verified", and delete every sentence that doesn't have an inline citation after it. Gigs (talk) 20:58, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
- Gigs, please reread his proposal, I maybe wrong, but he is suggesting a one year moratorium. Hopefully in one year we show how much we have cleaned up unreferenced BLPs, and no new rules are needed. Okip BLP Contest 18:16, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
- Okip has said it more clearly than I did. A 12 month moratorium does not schedule a further wave of deletionism for twelve months time, it schedules a minimum 12 month gap before the community even discusses such a further step. Much can happen in 12 months, we anticipate somewhere in the region of 80 million edits in that time, so as Okip pointed out the quality of these articles may be very different by then. More likely in my view, the focus of the community may well have changed to one of the bigger problems on the pedia. But without this moratorium there would be nothing to stop those who started the current kerfuffle moving straight onto Category:BLP articles lacking sources as soon as the unsourcedBLPs are resolved. ϢereSpielChequers 22:45, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
- "But in any event these articles need to be reviewed and if the tag is correct, improved or deleted" -- I don't agree with this, not 12 months from now, not ever. Gigs (talk) 03:16, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
- To expand on my last comment: This proposal doesn't make any sense. We don't delete sourced material because it happens to share an article with some unsourced material. This proposal is an extremist proposal that goes farther than even the strongest proposal on the "Content" RfC which proposes to redefine "contentious" to mean nothing. I don't know if you intended it to be that way, but the way you have written it, it is. Gigs (talk) 03:27, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
- Gigs, why not argue this in 12 months? You are letting your admirable firm principles cloud your commonsense, and I say that as a friend. One of the most beneficial and rare qualities on wikipedia and online is a person who changes their mind. Too often wikipedians do not change their position, they do not step back and reconsider. My position throughout this has changed, and will continue to evolve, that is not a weakness, that is an incredible strength. Okip BLP Contest 03:37, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
- Okip has said it more clearly than I did. A 12 month moratorium does not schedule a further wave of deletionism for twelve months time, it schedules a minimum 12 month gap before the community even discusses such a further step. Much can happen in 12 months, we anticipate somewhere in the region of 80 million edits in that time, so as Okip pointed out the quality of these articles may be very different by then. More likely in my view, the focus of the community may well have changed to one of the bigger problems on the pedia. But without this moratorium there would be nothing to stop those who started the current kerfuffle moving straight onto Category:BLP articles lacking sources as soon as the unsourcedBLPs are resolved. ϢereSpielChequers 22:45, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
- Gigs, please reread his proposal, I maybe wrong, but he is suggesting a one year moratorium. Hopefully in one year we show how much we have cleaned up unreferenced BLPs, and no new rules are needed. Okip BLP Contest 18:16, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
- Discussion
A categorical solution
I would propose adding all unsourced blps with a special category which would somehow render them invisible to google and other search machines. The unsourced blps then would only be possible to visit via wikilinks. This would take some of the urgency off the issue and make the current processes of PRODding, AFDing, discussing and sourcing sufficiently efficient to continue. With the added awareness that this discussion has engendered and the creation of PROD/sourcing teams I think we'll get a long way towards solving the problem.·Maunus·ƛ· 19:49, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
- Support
Newly Found Old Unsourced BLPs
Proposal by WereSpielChequers
As well as the articles already tagged as {{unsourcedBLP}}s, and newly created unsourced BLPs there is a third group, unsourced BLPs that we have not yet identified. No one knows how many are out there still to be found, but I've tracked down several in the last fortnight, so they definitely still exist. If we decide to deal with both the other groups it would be anomalous not to deal with these as well.
Proposal We continue to find and tag unsourced BLPs, and when we've cleared the existing backlog we deal with the backlog of these in a similar unrushed fashion. When the backlog is cleared then anyone can prod new found unreferenced BLPS as follows:
- Check that the article is genuinely unsourced as opposed to poorly sourced.
- Check the history to see if the article was previously referenced and revert if appropriate.
- (optional step) Try to reference the article.
- Prod for deletion as unreferenced BLP
- Inform the author and any major contributors.
- Support
- Oppose
- Discussion
Definition of "unsourced"
Whichever BLP-prod format is ultimately adopted, I think it is necessary to clarify (and include in the whatever BLP-prod configuration is adopted) what exactly is meant by an "unsourced"/"unreferenced" BLP. The term is sometimes understood to mean an article with an absent/empty "References" section. However, many BLPs contain an "External link" section with a link to the subject's homepage. Such a link can be used to source some basic non-controversial and non-contentious facts about the subject (such as education, employment and current position). This is in fact an allowable form of sourcing per WP:SELFPUB. While it generally cannot be used to prove notability, it can be used to source some basic non-controversial factual info in an article. IMO, an article containing such an external link should not be considered "unsourced"/"unreferenced" and thus should not be subject to BLP-prodding (although an ordinary prod or an AfD listing may, of course, still be used in such cases). This is my own opinion, but I'd like to have a discussion of this point, since it will be relevant to any BLP-prod format. Nsk92 (talk) 18:47, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- An admin has already been prodding articles as you describe, even when the external link qualified as a WP:RS, e.g. player profile pages at ATP (see [2] for a sample page) or other similar sports organizations. Such articles are sourced per WP:CITE#General reference. Of course, verifying that the material matches the citation is an issue with any article, but perhaps more so when general refs are used. But articles should not be BLP-prodded just because they lack inline references. Pcap ping 20:17, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Agreed but it should be clear without any clarifications. An article is "unsourced" if it does not have sources. If sources exist - no matter where, what kind or which formatting they use - it's not unsourced. Even a primary source is a source after all - it may not be a source that establishes notability or satisfies WP:RS but it is a source, isn't it? Regards SoWhy 20:27, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Agreed. Jclemens (talk) 21:38, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- No, if you think about it we have to have some minimal sourcing standards here, and really no one should have a problem with that. I agree that if the only source is a person's bio on their own web site, that would count as "sourced" (albeit horribly). But we absolutely cannot say "any source is a source." If we have an article on an actor named Suzie Jones, and the only "source" is Jack Nicholson's IMDB page (i.e. a fake source) or a link that has gone dead or was never live in the first place, that clearly does not count. Obviously "fake" sources and deadlinks are stuck into articles with some frequency, and surely we can all agree those don't "count" in the terms we are discussing. There could also be other times where the source provided is ridiculously unreliable, e.g. a comment made on a blog saying such and such is a great actor, singer, whatever, though even that might be debatable. As has been suggested in the past, I think the standard for "is the source good enough to avoid a BLP-prod" (assuming we are not talking about phony sources or dead links) should simply be whether there is any controversy over it. If there is, we go to AfD, period. If a BLP is "sourced" with a comment from a blog and someone says, "no way, that doesn't count" and no one objects, then the BLP-prod can proceed. This should be easy to codify but preserves a degree of flexibility by allowing us to handle these on a case by case basis, while also not putting us in the absurd situation of a BLP-prod "failing" because someone used an article in The Onion as a source. --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 02:55, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
- Allow me to clarify--if we're talking a speedy deletion process, then the threshold should be no sources, references, SPS's, etc. If we're talking a PROD process, then anything can be PRODed as unsourced--if the tag is incorrect, it should be removed, but there's far less that's black-and-white about PRODing. Jclemens (talk) 03:13, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
- Well if we allow that (anything prod) we should have a process to check that the prod is a good one, and a way to warn those who add prods without checking that references were provided. It would be unfair to just leave all the work to the deleting admin to check. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 12:14, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
- Allow me to clarify--if we're talking a speedy deletion process, then the threshold should be no sources, references, SPS's, etc. If we're talking a PROD process, then anything can be PRODed as unsourced--if the tag is incorrect, it should be removed, but there's far less that's black-and-white about PRODing. Jclemens (talk) 03:13, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
- No, if you think about it we have to have some minimal sourcing standards here, and really no one should have a problem with that. I agree that if the only source is a person's bio on their own web site, that would count as "sourced" (albeit horribly). But we absolutely cannot say "any source is a source." If we have an article on an actor named Suzie Jones, and the only "source" is Jack Nicholson's IMDB page (i.e. a fake source) or a link that has gone dead or was never live in the first place, that clearly does not count. Obviously "fake" sources and deadlinks are stuck into articles with some frequency, and surely we can all agree those don't "count" in the terms we are discussing. There could also be other times where the source provided is ridiculously unreliable, e.g. a comment made on a blog saying such and such is a great actor, singer, whatever, though even that might be debatable. As has been suggested in the past, I think the standard for "is the source good enough to avoid a BLP-prod" (assuming we are not talking about phony sources or dead links) should simply be whether there is any controversy over it. If there is, we go to AfD, period. If a BLP is "sourced" with a comment from a blog and someone says, "no way, that doesn't count" and no one objects, then the BLP-prod can proceed. This should be easy to codify but preserves a degree of flexibility by allowing us to handle these on a case by case basis, while also not putting us in the absurd situation of a BLP-prod "failing" because someone used an article in The Onion as a source. --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 02:55, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
- Agreed. Jclemens (talk) 21:38, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Agreed but it should be clear without any clarifications. An article is "unsourced" if it does not have sources. If sources exist - no matter where, what kind or which formatting they use - it's not unsourced. Even a primary source is a source after all - it may not be a source that establishes notability or satisfies WP:RS but it is a source, isn't it? Regards SoWhy 20:27, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
- Unsourced means no references and no external links and no notes. Bearian (talk) 15:37, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
- and no "according to <specific source>"-style in-prose attributions. Unfortunately, you do have to actually read the content to see if it is unsourced. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 16:25, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
- I'm not sure the threshold should be that absolute... but the arguments here do highlight why it is impossible for a bot to determine the sourcing status of an article. Gigs (talk) 17:21, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
- Yet we have many, possibly a majority of, BLPs tagged as unreferenced by a BOT that never is able to actually read the article. There are lots of pages of discussion on this issue, I keep trying to find where to write to try to stop this deletion oriented insanity. Before you delete, STEP 1: Open and read the article. STEP 2: If it is indeed unreferenced, use google--see if it checks out. STEP 3: If it is legit--Add the references. Case closed, another article rescued. If it still doesn't check out, if the person is not notable or a potential hoax, then we have AFD procedures in place. If its libelous, we have editing tools in place. IF YOU DON'T KNOW THE SUBJECT, don't decide on your own, forward the article to the attention of somebody who does understand--start with the portal manager of the subject in question. These are all individual articles and must be treated as such.Trackinfo (talk) 07:34, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
- I had been of a mind not to blame the Bots, but rather to blame the taggers. My understanding was that the Bots simply tagged articles that humans had categorised as living people and as {{unreferenced}}, and retagged them as {{unreferencedBLP}}s. But Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/Erik9bot_6 is a little vague, and the bot operator has subsequently been banned. So I guess we should accept the possibility that some of the bot based tagging of BLPs is suspect. There is also the issue that inexperienced editors may not be happy removing tags or changing categories even if they have added a reference, or indeed a date of death. ϢereSpielChequers 19:06, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
- Yet we have many, possibly a majority of, BLPs tagged as unreferenced by a BOT that never is able to actually read the article. There are lots of pages of discussion on this issue, I keep trying to find where to write to try to stop this deletion oriented insanity. Before you delete, STEP 1: Open and read the article. STEP 2: If it is indeed unreferenced, use google--see if it checks out. STEP 3: If it is legit--Add the references. Case closed, another article rescued. If it still doesn't check out, if the person is not notable or a potential hoax, then we have AFD procedures in place. If its libelous, we have editing tools in place. IF YOU DON'T KNOW THE SUBJECT, don't decide on your own, forward the article to the attention of somebody who does understand--start with the portal manager of the subject in question. These are all individual articles and must be treated as such.Trackinfo (talk) 07:34, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
- I'm not sure the threshold should be that absolute... but the arguments here do highlight why it is impossible for a bot to determine the sourcing status of an article. Gigs (talk) 17:21, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
- and no "according to <specific source>"-style in-prose attributions. Unfortunately, you do have to actually read the content to see if it is unsourced. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 16:25, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
Definition of "contentious"
I am wanting to know what - precisely - is meant by the word "contentious" in the BLP policies. Some editors seem to think that it means any material which refers to controversies or anything deemed "negative" or potentially damaging to a person's reputation. My understanding of the word, however, is that it refers to comments that are open to debate or interpretation regarding actual facts of a situation. If, however, it is a publicly known fact that a person has been charged with an offence - and this fact is simply stated in an article - should this necessarily be considered "contentious" and require verification or immediate deletion without it? I agree that facts about controversies *should* be verified, but my reading of the policies doesn't indicate that such facts are necessarily "contentious". Thanks. Anglicanus (talk) 15:49, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
- There is a whole RFC on this at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Biographies of living people/Content. Cenarium (talk) 17:51, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
Contentious arises from the references supplied. If the reference source is from reliable publications, it is ok. Otherwise one has to argue the contents to verify if you fail to get another source to verify. The contents may be good or bad. Eventually they become contentious. Also how they are worded in the source makes it contentious.--kaeiou (talk) 19:49, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
- No, you're referring to reliable sourcing. Contentiousness stems from the obvious possibility of real-world harm befalling a BLP subject if such material is incorrect. Jclemens (talk) 00:32, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
Do nothing
I think the results above clearly show only one thing: that we should not change anything. Each such opinion received around or over 80% of the votes. Why is it that whoever drew up this page didn't close the discussion yet, but instead pushes new proposals? Debresser (talk) 17:41, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
- The status quo is unacceptable. Period, The End. Also, if you notice, Jehochman's proposal was most widely accepted (it received double the support of everyone else), which is actually how RfCs generally run – level of support, not percentage of support. NW (Talk) 18:00, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
- What status quo are you referring to? The one where Wikiprojects and interested editors were largely unaware of the backlog (back in November 2009 or earlier)? Or the current status quo where the backlag has decreased by more than 10,000 articles since November 2009 (thanks to the first RfC and helpful editors rolling out tools and notices to interested editors who have tackled the problem)? I agree with Debresser because the current status quo is tackling the problem in a constructive and effective manner. Jogurney (talk) 18:12, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
- I am referring to the former status quo. I think it is wonderful that Wikiprojects and editors have been helping out with the backlog. However, let's face it, the pace we have been moving at is not sustainable. If it turns out that it is, I'll gladly eat my words. But I would prefer not to wait until things stagnate again to come up with a plan. NW (Talk) 19:01, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
- Category:Articles needing cleanup or Category:Articles with topics of unclear notability, just to mention two that come to mind, are also coping with large backlogs. So? Debresser (talk) 21:05, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
- Those don't actively harm the encyclopedia. This has a much greater potential to do so. But if I have to argue with people that unsourced BLPs are bad for the encyclopedia, then there is no point in trying to gather "consensus" anymore. That ship sailed a long time ago. NW (Talk) 02:32, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
- All maintenance categories point to something bad. Unsourced BLP's do not necessarily harm Wikipedia more than other articles. As you say yourself, they have the potential to be harmful. That is a point that has been made in the discussion as well. Debresser (talk) 02:42, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
- I don't think anyone is arguing that sourcing unreferenced BLPs or deleting non-notable and/or unverifiable unreferenced BLPs is a bad idea. The difference of opinion relates to those who want to manually source and/or delete the backlog of unreferenced BLPs and those who want to nuke them all without checking to see what's being removed. Given the amount of progress being made, I think the case for nuking is getter weaker by the day. Jogurney (talk) 03:15, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
- All maintenance categories point to something bad. Unsourced BLP's do not necessarily harm Wikipedia more than other articles. As you say yourself, they have the potential to be harmful. That is a point that has been made in the discussion as well. Debresser (talk) 02:42, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
- Those don't actively harm the encyclopedia. This has a much greater potential to do so. But if I have to argue with people that unsourced BLPs are bad for the encyclopedia, then there is no point in trying to gather "consensus" anymore. That ship sailed a long time ago. NW (Talk) 02:32, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
- Category:Articles needing cleanup or Category:Articles with topics of unclear notability, just to mention two that come to mind, are also coping with large backlogs. So? Debresser (talk) 21:05, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
- I am referring to the former status quo. I think it is wonderful that Wikiprojects and editors have been helping out with the backlog. However, let's face it, the pace we have been moving at is not sustainable. If it turns out that it is, I'll gladly eat my words. But I would prefer not to wait until things stagnate again to come up with a plan. NW (Talk) 19:01, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
A couple of points:
- Given that the backlog is steadily diminishing, it would be reasonable to hold off any major changes for at least a few months and then re-evaluate the situation.
- I have seen no evidence that an unsourced BLP is more problematic than any other article. If subjects of BLPs complain, they're not going to complain about whether sources are listed. They are going to complain about what the articles say.
- A perfect BLP, with perfectly attributed sources, on one day, could just as easily be libelous and otherwise atrocious the next day -- and still have sources listed. Maurreen (talk) 06:29, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
The problem with this is that any time we have a big discussion about this, people are going to start working on it, since its the topic of the month™. If it stagnates again in a few months and the backlog grows bigger, we'll start a new discussion, and the same thing will likely happen. We're never going to have a situation where its both stagnant or worsening and being actively discussed. I would also disagree with your second point. If content is referenced to a reliable source and meets NPOV, etc., then any complaint from the subject is not going to result in a change because we know that the content is both factually correct and encyclopedic. If the content is unsourced, then a complaint means that it might be untrue and libelous. The 2 complaints are not the same. Mr.Z-man 06:40, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
- User:Mr.Z-man said, "If content is referenced to a reliable source and meets NPOV, etc., then any complaint from the subject is not going to result in a change because we know that the content is both factually correct and encyclopedic. If the content is unsourced, then a complaint means that it might be untrue and libelous."
- One point is that there is a difference between 1) whether the article lists a source and 2) whether a source is listed for any and all problematic statements in the article. Maurreen (talk) 08:01, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
- NuclearWarfare and Mr.Z-man defense of MZMcBride and breaching experiments
This is very important to point out, the editor who started this RFC, MZMcBride, is now a desopyed administrator. He had a "secret mailing list" and recruited a banned editor to conduct "breaching experiments", MZMcBride "gave this list to [a banned user] knowing that...the introduction of inaccurate information into these articles—even if done by K. inconspicuously and without malice—could have unpredictable real life consequences"
Both NuclearWarfare and Mr.Z-man have defended these breaching experiments and MZMcBride:
- Mr.Z-man to Okip: "The banned user's vandalism was minor, limited, and I believe in most cases was self-reverted.""
- NuclearWarfare to Okip: "Your constant posts about how MZMcBride manufactured this BLP crisis and is now trying to deceive the entire community into doing something or another is bordering on harassment."
If NuclearWarfare and Mr.Z-man are concerned about the libelous effects of unreferenced BLP's why are they vigorously defending a desopyed administrator who intentionally supported [introducing] "inaccurate information into [unreferenced living person] articles"?
In addition, Mr.Z-man repeatedly acknowledges, "I agreed that phase 2 only covered one aspect".
For full details see: Proposal: Close this manufactured RFC immediately
- Support
Incubate
Unsourced BLPs would be moved to Wikipedia:Article Incubator. Any moved en masse or systematically would have a year to come up to snuff. New and newly discovered such articles would fall under the normal incubator practices. Maurreen (talk) 23:51, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
- Support
- Oppose
- Neutral
Page organization
This would be better organized by sections focusing on specific elements, instead of more-fleshed-out proposals. For instance, it might have sections on automization, pace, defining "unsourced," general support or objections, etc. Maurreen (talk) 18:15, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
- Absolutely. Kevin (talk) 23:17, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
- Are you referring to the above three objectives for discussion, or the 6 details for the BLP PROD process? If you see a better way to more concisely summarize and structure the discussion, try it below. The elements I can see which need discussion are: article age/date (ones after a certain date, or ones a certain number of hours old) - and backlog vs. new articles, automatization/bot directions, backlog pace, actions to take (deletion, userification, incubation), delay for that action (though it looks like for new articles 7 days is agreed), and others? But I think the structure of 1. backlog, 2. policy for new BLPs is pretty good. -kslays (talk • contribs) 00:17, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
for those who actually want to solve the problem
Those who want to help solve the problem, instead of discussing how other people should solve it, should go and work on some of the articles. Using myself as the most convenient example, I found I had a choice: I could either enter extensively into this and all the related discussions, or actually work on sourcing articles. At first I tried to combine both, but I decided I could do more real good by actually working on the articles. We have quite enough people giving opinions, and far from enough improving the present status. I do not call this doing nothing. I call this doing the only thing that will actually accomplish anything. I've been specializing in working on articles other people fail to source and put up for deletion as I se them on PROD or elsewhere; I find I can source half of the ones I work on, but I only work on the ones that seem likely to be notable and possibly sourceable. I'm by no means alone in this, and it's the others working on this whose example keeps me active. It will be more productive to just work under the current system, than figuring out how to improve it. If 200 people worked each on 3 articles a day, about two months would solve what has been put forth as the immediate problem. We've been arguing about that long about what to do. By now, we could have done it. DGG ( talk ) 01:45, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
- DGG, I respect your comments so much, and I agree 100%.
- The way consensus is usually formed, is a handful of veteran editors have an idea, they write the idea, they vote on the idea, then they impose the idea on everyone else. Our rules are set up to enforce this system.
- The 17,500 editors, the vast majority who are good faith editors, will have no voice in this discussion.
- The editors proposing radical change, many, including Mr. Wales support the editors who have "utter contempt" for "community consensus" (to quote Scott MacDonald) an offwiki mailing list was set up by the creator of this RFC to change BLP policy, MZMcBride.
- Quietly fixing articles and setting a good example, while noble, is simply not enough in the face of such "utter contempt" for our rules. Okip (formerly Ikip) 03:31, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
"Problems" by topic?
Is there a listing, or is it feasible to get a list, of these "problem" articles by topic? For instance, entertainers, athletes, different nationalities, etc.? Maurreen (talk) 03:40, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
- Such lists can be generated via CatScan. The process could also be done via bots. --Cybercobra (talk) 06:05, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
- Examples, or links to examples, would help. I cross-matched the Fellows of the Royal Geographical Society and unsourced BLP categories for instance (that was four - doing it for "Fellows of learned societies of the United Kingdom", got 115!). But the problem is that some perfectly fine (and some atrocious) BLPs don't have enough categories to do this, so some effort also needs to be directed towards unsourced BLPs with only 3-4 categories, and I would also suggest the unsourced BLPs without birth years are a good general category to work with (again, not all of them are marked with the relevant category for lack of birth year, though many are). Carcharoth (talk) 22:06, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
Delete unsourced statements on sight
For what it's worth, after reading over the various solutions and arguments it seems like cracking a nut with a shotgun. There's no reason to ever delete a NPOV sourced statement; there's no reason to ever keep an unsourced statement of any kind that an editor objects to in good faith. Simply codify the rule that deleting unsourced statements (not entire pages) on sight is appropriate behaviour in BLPs, and that the onus is on editors adding material to source it at the time they add it. There's no reason ever to be adding material that you "think" is right or that "you think there's a source for" to the main article rather than the talk page; ergo there's no reason for unsourced statements to stand on a BLP page. If you're worried about it hitting a whole bunch of existing, unsourced BLPs, declare a one month state of grace before enforcing it to allow concerned editors to bring their articles up to the standard they should already be achieving. (The distinction between "statements" and "pages" is that undoing page deletes is much harder and more bothersome than statements and doesn't allow for constructive improvement during the delete time. It also forces editors to assess on a line by line basis rather than deleting a whole page without giving it thorough scrutiny.) - DustFormsWords (talk) 23:12, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
- Why not apply this to the whole pedia, and delete 95 percent of our content? - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 23:14, 14 February 2010 (UTC)