[WikiEN-l] Unsourced biographies

[Todd Allen]

Seems to me you're describing why we -should- prune those back, not
why we -shouldn't-. If there are very few people involved in the area,
and a ton of unsourced and largely unwatched articles, we're just
asking for trouble. No one's saying this process would bar recreation
if someone can find a source.

Seraphimblade

On 4/27/07, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> A similar proposal to this was floated earlier - it's still a very
> damaging idea.
>
> Consider [[Category:Senegalese politicians]]. All very notable,
> important sorts of people. About half of the articles are unsourced,
> generally stubs.
>
> Now, yes, we obviously can find sources for articles on all the prime
> ministers of Senegal. That's not the issue. The issue is that there
> are very few editors working in this area - often not enough to
> handle a wave of PRODs on their articles. It's an area of high
> importance to the project and low participation. To add a rule that
> allows for deletion in this area makes it far too easy to overwhelm
> these vital areas with deletions and gut our coverage with no
> attention to whether or not the articles are actually erroneous.
>
> BLPs and sourcing are a problem, but they need a far more subtle
> solution than this.
>
> Best,
> Phil Sandifer
> sandifer at english.ufl.edu
>
> You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a
> boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.
>
>  >
>
>
> On Apr 26, 2007, at 2:49 AM, Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
>
> > I started a discussion at [[WT:BLP]] on the proposal that we implement
> > a variant of proposed deletion as follows:
> >
> >       It is proposed that this article be deleted as a biography of
> >       a living individual which does not cite its references or
> >       sources.
> >
> >       If you can improve the article by sourcing it, please edit
> >       this page and do so. You may remove this message if you add
> >       reliable independent sources. This template should not be
> >       removed without first sourcing the article.
> >
> >       The article may be deleted if this message remains in place
> >       for 14 days. (This template was added: 26 April 2007.)
> >
> >       If you created the article, please don't take offense.
> >       Instead, please improve the article so that it is acceptable
> >       according to the policy on biographies of living individuals.
> >
> > The idea would be to give a bureaucracy-free route to removing
> > *unsourced* biographies.  The unsourced condition may be the result of
> > removal of questionable sources for negative statements, that should
> > not make a difference.
> >
> > There's also a debate at [[WP:AN]] about this.
> >
> > Guy (JzG)
> > --
> > http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
> >
> >
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