Further thought regarding the notability criteria for BLPs: Asaf made a
suggestion awhile ago, and unfortunately I can't remember exactly where I
heard about it, but I thought that it was a good idea. He suggested being
more context-specific when considering the bar for BLPs. I think that his
statement went something like this: in a culture where having information
about someone be published in newspapers is a rarity, the lack of being
published in a newspaper is not a good test for whether someone should be
considered notable. I think that Asaf's proposal was more nuanced than I'm
describing it, but in general I thought that it was worth seriously
considering.
If someone meets a revised notability bar for a BLP, there may still be a
problem with finding information that is verifiable and reliable. I don't
know of a good way to deal with that. I think that we have a problem with
believing (this is a bit of an exaggeration, but I think that you'll
understand my point) that if something is written in a book that is
published by a reputable publisher that therefore it must be reliable and
verifiable, while something is not reliable and verifiable if it is
communicated only orally in a culture where written communications are rare
or nonexistent. I don't know how to deal with that problem, but I do think
that it's a problem.
Pine
(
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
On Wed, Oct 3, 2018 at 6:06 AM Pine W <wiki.pine(a)gmail.com> wrote:
WSC,
I think that we'd need to be very careful about lowering the bar for BLPs
on ENWP, because there are innumerable non-notable professionals who seem
to pay people to add their biographies (and/or small organizations) to
Wikipedia, and I am more happy to keep them out of the world's encyclopedia
unless they've done something that's more significant than publishing an
occasional scholarly article, owning a small consultancy, and receiving a
few professional distinctions like "adjunct professor of cardiology at XYZ
University". I'm not saying that we can't lower the bar, but we'd want
to
be very careful about doing so in order to avoid giving marketers and PR
people a wider opening for using Wikipedia as a marketing and PR platform.
I'm very supportive of improving the user experience for aspiring
contributors who use mobile devices, but I am not optimistic that this will
lead to a substantial increase in the population of ENWP Wikipedians who
can become proficient with the details of our many policies, are willing to
persist through negative experiences with other contributors (including
vandals, overzealous patrollers, POV-pushers, etc.), and volunteer their
time for high profile roles like WikiProject coordinator or ENWP
administrator. Perhaps non-English Wikipedias do better with editor
retention; I'm also thinking that Commons might be a good place for new
contributors to start if and when mobile editing becomes more user-friendly.
I think that making reversions feel less hostile would be good for
diversity and good for editor retention in general, so I'd suggest that WMF
prioritize working on that point. I'm also hoping to improve user
onboarding with my video project and in collaboration with the WMF Growth
team. I generally appreciate how Kerry is thinking about these problems;
she and I have both given feedback to the WMF Growth team.
Regards,
Pine
(
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )