[Foundation-l] Biographies of Living People: a quick interim update

[David Goodman]

I exactly agree with Brigette on this one. This is the way to treat
all articles on their actual merits.  But in
many cases the subject himself will come to the afd and express an
opinion, and we can not prevent that.

On Tue, Mar 10, 2009 at 9:21 AM, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> --- On Mon, 3/9/09, Sue Gardner <sgardner at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
>> From: Sue Gardner <sgardner at wikimedia.org>
>> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Biographies of Living People: a quick interim update
>> To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
>> Date: Monday, March 9, 2009, 4:59 PM
>> 2009/3/8 Nathan <nawrich at gmail.com>:
>> > On Sun, Mar 8, 2009 at 5:12 PM, Sue Gardner <sgardner at wikimedia.org>
>> wrote:
>> >
>> >>
>> >> 1)  There is a big unresolved question around
>> whether, if
>> >> marginally-notable people ask to have their
>> articles deleted, that
>> >> request should be granted.  My sense -both from
>> the discussion here
>> >> and other discussions elsewhere- is that many
>> Wikipedians are very
>> >> strongly protective of their general right to
>> retain even very
>> >> marginal BLPs.  Presumably this is because
>> notability is hard to
>> >> define, and they are worried about stupid
>> across-the-board
>> >> interpretations that will result in massive
>> deletionism.  However,
>> >> other people strongly feel that the current
>> quantity of BLPs about
>> >> less-notable people diminish the overall quality
>> of the encyclopedia,
>> >> reduce our credibility, and run the risk of
>> hurting real people.
>> >> There seems to be little consensus here.
>> Roughly: some people seem
>> >> to strongly feel the bar for notability should be
>> set higher, and
>> >> deletion requests generally granted: others seem
>> to strongly feel the
>> >> current state is preferable.  I would welcome
>> discussion about how to
>> >> achieve better consensus on this issue.
>> >>
>> >>
>> > I would quibble with this statement a little bit.
>> There is a difference in
>> > my mind between raising the notability bar and
>> granting weight to subject
>> > requests for deletion. There seems to be a growing
>> agreement that marginally
>> > notable subjects make for bad biographies and greater
>> risk; there is very
>> > little appetite for beginning deletion discussions or
>> deleting articles upon
>> > subject request.
>> >
>> > So these two issues need to be separated, because
>> indeed they are quite
>> > separate.
>>
>> Totally agreed, yes - thanks Nathan. In future I will
>> separate these
>> two points.
>>
>>  One asks whether the subject of an article (be it a
>> person,
>> > corporation, or any other entity with living
>> representatives) should be
>> > afforded some control over encyclopedia content, even
>> as little as the
>> > ability to request a deletion nomination; most
>> Wikipedians would be against
>> > this, I believe.
>>
>> Hm. That's interesting.
>>
>> As a basic principle, that makes sense to me - that article
>> subjects
>> shouldn't have control over the content of the
>> encyclopedia.  But
>> -perhaps this is a little bit of hair-splitting- OTOH I
>> don't think we
>> should take deletion requests any _less_ seriously than
>> complaints
>> from disinterested observers. In other words - someone
>> saying "the
>> article about me is awful and shouldn't be in an
>> encyclopedia" should
>> be taken equally as seriously as someone saying "that
>> article about X
>> is awful and doesn't deserve to be in an encyclopedia." In
>> both
>> instances, the article needs be assessed on its own
>> merits.
>>
>> I say this because sometimes I think people may be tempted
>> to refuse
>> deletion requests _because_ they come from the article
>> subject. If
>> that indeed happens, I believe it's a mistake.
>
> That is why I think we should process deletion requests by the subject without any special notice if they have a chance being deleted. And if they are obvious cases where they will be kept, simply tell the person we don't delete on request.  Putting these articles at AfD with a note that the subject requested deletion is going to make things worse most of the time. It will attract people to the discussion who are interested in putting on a show for the announced audience and who would not show up at a basic AfD. I don't think listing an AfD as a subject request will change the overall result of the discussion, but just make the path to that result more difficult for the subject.
>
> Birgitte SB
>
>
>
>
>
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-- 
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG