On 22/04/2008, Charlotte Webb <charlottethewebb(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 4/22/08, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
> Charlotte Webb wrote:
> > Regardless, it would be trivial for a bot to
generate a list of
> > articles belonging to both [[Category:Living people]] and
> > [[Category:Articles for deletion]], and list them on some prominent
> Something like that.
Unfortunately I can't tell whether this is
agreement or dismissal.
Agreement :-) The mechanism IMO isn't as important as doing it,
though. BLPs are special because we're stupidly popular with a
stupidly high Google pagerank, so a Wikipedia article on - or naming -
someone is usually the top hit for their name. So bad info about
living people can cause actual harm.
If we end up with grey and skimpy living bios, then that's how things
are and we can wait for high-quality sources. We've got years to get
it all lovely. We're not a source of up-to-the-minute investigative
journalism or dirt-digging, after all. While taking care not to slip
into doing puff-pieces, either.
(IMO this isn't even about legal issues at all, really.)
Regardless of anything else that might be said about
it, creating one
comprehensive list of BLPs currently on AFD would at least allow
people to get a better, broader idea of which pages would be affected
by the current proposal. This would be more helpful in personally
deciding how good of an idea it really is, much more-so than examples
hand-picked to support an already formed opinion.
I am also skeptical of a "trial period" for the current proposal as I
doubt enough people will be aware of the "reverse default outcome"
soon enough to get meaningful results. A live list would also be
helpful in measuring this awareness (and to some extent, obedience)
during the "trial period" if there is one, or forever and ever amen
otherwise.
Personally I think we should just do it. But anyway.
Also it would be useful in identifying and correcting
"collateral
damage" and determining the overall level of it.
Mostly terrible public relations I suspect.
If somebody here is good with bots and interested in
helping me with
this idea, please let me know, publicly, privately, I don't care, but
soon.
Over on wikitech-l they're working very hard on making fast category
intersections work :-)
- d.