[WikiEN-l] In development--BLP task force

[Phil Nash]

Bod Notbod wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 12:22 AM, Phil
> Nash<pn007a2145 at blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
>
>>>> I guess it would also be feasible and helpful if BLPs were
>>>> highlighted
>>>> on the usual Watchlist interface too? (Turn on and off-able in
>>>> preferences, perhaps?)
>>
>> That would not be feasible, because any edit to any article can have
>> [[WP:BLP]] consequences; consider, for example, an addition to
>> [[Watermelon]] that said "<name of schoolmate> of <smalltown,
>> Kansas> is allergic to melons because they turn him into a
>> pedophile";
>
> Ha ha, I like the way you think :o)
>
> However, we do have [[Category:Living people]], so if we had those
> highlighted on Watchlists and in editing tools, that would surely help
> the cause, no? And it could be a choice in prefs or in the tool
> whether you want that function?
>
> It can't catch all BLP problems as you've so wonderfully illustrated.
> But it can show us a worthwhile subset, don't you reckon?

That would be one way forward; we now have abuse filters which detect and 
revert the more gross edits, but as far as I know, there is no feasible way 
of monitoring articles within a category wholesale, so we are no further 
forward. Certainly, major targets of BLP vandalism tend to be already 
well-known and they are usually caught quite quickly; beyond that, it 
depends on monitoring [[Special:RecentChanges]], which some editors already 
do; however, given the volume of incoming edits, some slip through that net 
too. There was a proposal what seems like a long time ago for "Flagged 
Revisions", which was somewhat controversial but was intended to be 
introduced as a test, at least for a while; that would have meant that BLP 
violations could have been filtered, but nothing seems to have happened 
practically- however, Cary Bass has recently proposed a working party on 
BLPs and I look forward to the outcome of that. Meanwhile, we are stuck with 
pure human  (and some semi-automated),  and therefore error-prone 
intervention. Not perfect, perhaps, but better than nothing.

Cheers

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