A10:Any biography of a living person, created after 1st April 2009, which has no credible sources whatsoever, and has been tagged with {unreferenced BLP deletion} for at least 5 days. Administrators should check that the creator has been given adequate notice. (Note that any article deleted under this criterion may be summarily undeleted by any administrator if any editor indicates a willingness to source the article).

Template {unreferenced BLP deletion} should read: "This article on a living person lacks any sourcing. Please edit this article to provide sources. If this article is not sourced by [day-month-year] it may be subject to deletion. Do not remove this template unless sources have been provided.".

A10:Any biography of a living person, created after 1st April 2009, which has no credible sources whatsoever, and has been tagged with {unreferenced BLP deletion} for at least 5 days.

It would allow it to be deleted after 5 days? Hardly speedy deletion...in effect it's no different from an expired 'prod where the article's been prodded for having no sources. If speedy deletion of BLPs is to be extended beyond the usual (hoax, no assertion of notability, etc.) then why not have a carte-blanche approach whereby any BLP created post April 1 '09 with no credible sources can be deleted there and then?

It would allow it to be deleted after 5 days? Hardly speedy deletion...in effect it's no different from an expired 'prod where the article's been prodded for having no sources. If speedy deletion of BLPs is to be extended beyond the usual (hoax, no assertion of notability, etc.) then why not have a carte-blanche approach whereby any BLP created post April 1 '09 with no credible sources can be deleted there and then?

I understand a new BLP might be easier to identify, but why grandfather in older unsourced BLPs? If someone goes to the trouble of finding and tagging older unsourced BLPs those article subjects deserve at least the same treatment.

The writer of an article can remove a PROD tag, the writer of an article cannot remove a speedy deletion nomination tag.

...the writer of an article cannot remove a speedy deletion nomination tag.

Fighting for change with BLPs has been just that, a fight. We need to usher in whatever changes we can. If we have to start small, then we start small. That's how I see it now, anyway.

It makes it a lot more palatable to those who want the bios fixed, rather than deleted, to say "There won't be a backlog of 10K to be fixed tommorow if you approve this.

In practice this happens quite frequently when the tag is obviously invalid, like where the tagger shows up two minutes after the first edit (to argue with a straight face) that being the First Lady is not an assertion of notability if her old man is only the leader of a "minor country" which doesn't speak English, for example.

Flagged is not a panacea, and may be a white elephant

Flagged revisions is not going to solve much more than obvious vandalism. If we flag a good proportion of article, then we will need lots of reviewers, and the level will be set at sysop of lower - the job will be tedious and done by the lazy with an eye on edit count. The problem is that subtle attempt to insert credible untruths, half-truths, or facts spun to create an imbalanced biased picture of a person will almost certainly walk through this.

Only what is obvious to the average lazy reviewer will be prevented - but what is obvious to the reviewer is not harmful, because it is also obvious to the reader. Hence, general flagging will not solve the BLP problem, it will not really even help.

Maintainability

We won't dent this until we start to take maintainability into consideration as well as verifiability. Sure, any individual BLPs /can/ be written in good way, but, taken together, our wiki-structure /will not/ maintain this level of BLPs without an unacceptable level of harmful articles. Eventualism does not work here - because shitty biased BLPS in the meantime are not acceptable.

We have two choices:

1. delete a large proportion of our lower notability (=less watched by knowledgeable people) BLPs. OR

2. tweek the structures so that those motivated to be doing the quality control (and that includes clued readers) are able to maintain more articles.

The second option means looking at:

1. Spot banning anyone pushing negative POVs on a BLP. We should not waste resources arguing with such people.
2. Permanently semi-protecting any article where there's been a previous harmful BLP violation that's not been reverted within a few hours. These are the articles that our open editing has failed once - the subject should not be open to it again.
3. Insisting on sourcing Yes, the patroler /could/ google and check the verifiability of the thing for himself. But we simply DO NOT have enough clued patroler to do this. We must put the onus on the editor giving the information to "show his working" - so that the partoler (or the casual reader) will be quicker to see any problems where the sourcing does not support the text.

Why should unsourced BLPs not be tolerated? Because we cannot maintain any level of quality control as long as we keep making the checker do all the work. You want it in? You source it - otherwise NO.

I'm rather disgusted at this point.

What a silly thing to do. You are much better off to let one of the C:CSDing admins show up and hope they decide to take their frustration with newpage patrollers who're all teeth and no brains out on that moron.

The problem with the proposal is that a tiny minority of the supporters of more strict rules for BLPs are so often so totally unsavory that it's hard to accept their concerns as valid. Not that I disagree with their concerns (though I don't see the problem as nearly as large as you do), but that a very small number of your allies, to put it mildly, are the worst people in the world.

2. Permanently semi-protecting any article where there's been a previous harmful BLP violation that's not been reverted within a few hours. These are the articles that our open editing has failed once - the subject should not be open to it again.

Let's call this one WP:BLACKOUTBINGO.

I'm rather disgusted at this point.

I proposed this CSD, which I regard as pitifuly weak, in the hope that it might get consensus, and at very lest establish the principle that unreferenced BLPs hanging about for months is not only "not good" but utterly unacceptable.

However, it appears that our ostrich tendency would rather put the onus on the concerned person to demonstrate that the article is unverifiable, than risk biting the user who thinks it is OK to publish stuff on people without providing a source.

The troubling thing here is that we have at least one arbiter who obviously fails to understand this at all.

I'd give it about a 50% chance of being deleted without scrolling past the over-sized pink box. Of course if a serious edit war did break out most of the new-school admins would blindly lock-out/tag-out the article with some bullshit like "please discuss changes on the talk page" then disappear into the sunset. I haven't visited DRV lately but I can only imagine it's gotten worse too.

Let's call this one WP:BLACKOUTBINGO.

Cite specific examples.

I don't like everybody who takes a tough line on BLPs, but all of those people are, at least, showing concern for others. That makes them pretty much automatically not the worst people on Wikipedia, let alone the world.

I prefer not to get myself embroiled anymore with the individuals who are VERY VERY ANGRY about BLP. They seem to have a mean streak a mile wide, and far too much free time/money. If you really can't think of a single example of one of these people, you know, the kind who really uses whatever leverage they have in this world to make random people's lives much much worse, I think you need to spend just a little bit more time looking around. If you anger these kind of people too much, they hunt you down and they post your personal details on the internet and call your boss and try to get you fired. They aren't attackable in the same way because they are all either retired, self-employed, known crazies or just plain rich.

If only the "protect BLP" movement was able to distance itself from it's bad apples, I suspect people who really just respond negatively to anything those bad apples want would bugger off and stop opposing all the protect BLP proposals. A lot of people see the world as "with me or against me." It's very hard to stand with a whole bunch of vindictive assholes.

So as I understand it, you're saying that Doc Glasgow is basically working hand in hand with Daniel Brandt and Don Murphy. I suspect that this would come as a great surprise to all concerned.

So as I understand it, you're saying that Doc Glasgow is basically working hand in hand with Daniel Brandt and Don Murphy. I suspect that this would come as a great surprise to all concerned.

Damn, yes. I am on a sekrit cabal mailing list with Danny B, Alison, Lar and Slim Virgin.

It all goes back to when we shared a flat in Nottinghill......

Seriously, hypocrite, even obnoxious trolls can be right sometimes.

I'm saying the fact that bad evil people (not commenting on DB and DM, who I am certain are angelic sources of light and good) are aligned with Doc Glasgow, and that shortsighted disintersted people say "Wow, if bad evil people like it, I hate it!"

No, because you are wrong.

If people can't see past their reaction to one or two people to read and assess the argument, then that's really a sign of their own foolishness and close-mindedness not of the arguement or of those that are making it.

Even if a large group of those who are concerned about BLPs were trolls (and there is sod all evidence of that particular prejudice) what on earth would you have me do about it?

Frankly, you are distracting the issue into some foolish personality war. I don't care whether wikipedians hate Brandt or not. Can we deal with the issues?

If you want to win, I can count, right now, in the !voting, at least 6 opposes who wouldn't be involved at all if it weren't for the fact that very evil people agree with you. Perhaps they could stop being so damned evil for a few months and see how things go, and if it turns out that that lets you get a lot of BLP issues resolved, perhaps they could stop being evil, generally.

Let's pretend for a moment that you are talking about DB and DM, just for the sake of illustration; what should the "pro-Wikipedia" BLP-types do to further distance themselves? Add the caveat "...except for articles about DB and DM" to every proposal they make to protect BLPs? Because it seems to me they've already done everything short of that.

Step one would be to make it very clear that you think that whatever hypothetical evil people out there are doing is wrong, unjustifiable and counterproductive. Step two would be to focus on real BLP problems that don't have evil people fucking up the picture that your proposal would solve.

Sorry, but you are an idiot.

I have not idea what evil people you are on about, and unlike you I'm uninterested in petty personality politics.

I am focusing on real BLP problems. Are you suggesting that I should focus on secret ones that your hate-figures don't know about? Or that I block all these demons of your imagination from the internet before I comment on BLP.

Please go away and rant incoherently elsewhere.

You seem to think that I agree with the people who are torpedoing your proposal because they dislike evil people. You are wrong.

I prefer not to get myself embroiled anymore with the individuals who are VERY VERY ANGRY about BLP. They seem to have a mean streak a mile wide

No he isn't; you're obviously an evil person. Get used to the idea and learn to take advantage of your innate tendencies - you'll make more money once you graduate.

Oh, I'm aware I'm deeply evil, and I certainly monetize it. I don't agree with the idiots torpedoing his proposal though, and I also don't agree with the evil people they dislike.

Oh, I'm aware I'm deeply evil, and I certainly monetize it. I don't agree with the idiots torpedoing his proposal though, and I also don't agree with the evil people they dislike.

Back on topic then...

Ok Scott, some homework - some background on the PRODding would have been a good starting point to show people in the first place.

i.e. did this fail?

Cas

Oppose per Sjakkalle and DGG. I like the idea of having everything sourced (BLP and otherwise) but I think that's going to keep a lot of editors away. We aren't (yet? ever?) at the point we want to decrease the number of editors joining us, and this kind of thing will drive people away. 141.212.111.116 (talk) 20:43, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

My prodding is not strictly relevant, since I've not been prodding solely on the grounds of "unreferenced"

I've been working through the articles that are both marked as unreferenced AND as orphans (thus less likely to be notable). There are over 3,000 of these in the cross category - I've only reviewed 400 so far.

I've been prodding the ones among these that seem to fail the notability criteria (which is a fairly high proportion - about 1 in 4-5 - indeed a number were clearly speedies). Of those I've prodded about 80-85% seem to go to deletion - which means that those reviewing prod category agree that they are not notable (those reviewers include DGG).

I've had few "creator removes tag" - but then, these are mainly older articles and the creators are often long gone.

Sometimes the tag has been removed and the article fixed up (which is fine) other times not, and I've gone with some to AfD.

I've also found a couple of dozen horrific articles, which I fed to other admins to speedy. (The speedies would have been uncontroversial. (Unfortunately since I did this via IRC there's no record of what I found -which is in hindsight unfortunate.) Some of these articles were years old. One was a badly referenced attack since 2003!

What I'd note is that, even with our fairly low notability requirements, we seem to have a lot of BLP articles that clearly fail them, yet hang around because no one takes action. That's not good. Because these articles are often unverifiable and thus if harmful few will notice.

I'd also not that we seem to have far too few eyes doing the type of thing I'm doing now. And remember I've only looked at 400 of a class set of 30,000 unreferenced - and I can't even say I've looked closely at most of that 400. I threw many back as too boring to read.

Well, from what you report, it sounds like it is going quite well. What is wrong with this process you have adopted thus far? it is completely relevant as it shows there is ample scope in existing guidelines to accomplish this.

Well, from what you report, it sounds like it is going quite well. What is wrong with this process you have adopted thus far? it is completely relevant as it shows there is ample scope in existing guidelines to accomplish this.

Yes, you always need to come up with a positive-sounding name for whatever your position is, like "pro-life" or "pro-choice", and a negative-sounding name for the opposing position, like "anti-life" or "anti-choice". That way you can win the battle before it even starts.

Are you suggesting we PROD all 30000 articles? And if you are, what is the difference between doing that, and the proposed process, aside from the creator not being able to untag? An advantage I can see is that the tag could clearly explain what is needed, rather than the sometimes cryptic explanations on a PROD tag.

Umm...huh? Sorry, you lost me on that one - which name does this refer to?

Sorry... it was regarding Somey's "...for rhetorical reasons it's necessary for us to refer to them as the "anti-humanity" forces, and ourselves as the "pro-humanity" forces. It's just part of the standard ideological-campaign playbook." I should have quoted it.

Usually it is pretty obvious what the PROD is about, i.e. a short unreferenced article, and therefore spellign it out isn't as necessary, and contested PROD --> AfD (straightforward)

Em, nope.

AfD is NOT about content, and it is not for cleanup - it is about having a debate concerning "is this subject worthy of an article?" We only go to afd when someone is arguing that no article should exist here - and we expect the nominator to have done their homework. The onus is on the nominator to make their case.

An unreferenced BLP may or may not be worthy of an article, but when I suggest unreferenced BLPs should be deleted what I am saying is "we should not have an article in this state - so unless someone is willing to reference it now/soon, it should be deleted without prejudice to re-creation or later or even undeletion when someone will source".

There is no need for afd, since we don't need a debate on the article itself.

Either we say:
*we keep all unreferenced BLPs, unless someone researches them and sources them or find them to be unverifiable or non notable (however long that may take). In which case the reviewer needs to argue for deletion on grounds other than unreferenced.
OR
*we delete all unreferenced BLPs (after a period), until/unless someone researches them and sources them.

The first option puts all the onus on the reviewer - and we already have too few active reviewers with too many articles to maintain. The second says to the person giving or wishing to retain a particular article that they have to help by doing a little work.

(1) There are plenty of afd nominations where the nominator has not been exhaustive in the searhc for references.

(2) If an article is entirely unreferenced, then its notability is indeed in question (and hence AfD is appropriate). If it has some references then the unreferenced material can be removed as per existing policy - and note that as a greater proportaion of articles have inline referencing, unreferenced material is more and more obvious and easier to remove.

Trying to push the point with blanket proposals is not going to work when existing processes (as you have shown yourself) can work.

And they are consistently criticised for it.




Ok, so do I understand that you are suggesting that I and others take the 30,000 unreferenced articles and prod them all using AWB (over a period of say 30 weeks)

If people remove the prod and reference the article, fine. However if the prod is removed, we simply AfD the article with "this article is unreferenced - please discuss its notability and reference it or delete it"

I am really willing to adopt that policy, but I'd look forward to my ass being hauled before you on arbcom.

Just google and find reliable sources (if there are any.) Add them- problem solved.

If there aren't, delete as non-notable; that's within existing policy on WP and doesn't need a new one.