Seth Finkelstein wrote:
James Farrar I suppose you could call the belief that any policy must be fairly enforceable "pure dogma", but I don't think it helps.
I call the belief that Wikipedia couldn't figure out a policy on this topic a laughably absurd excuse that doesn't deserve a moment of being taken seriously. It is the essence of the difference between "can't" and "doesn't want to" (with "put critics on the defensive" in the mix).
Well, of course we already DO have a policy on this: WP:BLP.
Arguments that suggest that any change is equivalent to "might as well shut Wikipedia down" are useless and will of course be sensibly ignored by the community.
"Delete any bio if the subject objects" is pretty clearly too simplistic a policy.
But I think it is entirely possible to strengthen our policies in a way that is consistent with our values and traditions, and broadly acceptable within the community.
One possibility that someone mentioned the other day would be to have a shift in policy that looks something like this:
Whenever the subject of a biography objects on the grounds of being non-notable, the subsequent AFD has a shifted "default"... instead of needing a "consensus to delete" we would have a "consensus to keep".
Another version would say this for ALL bios of living people:
For biographies of living persons, there must be a "consensus to keep" rather than a "consensus to delete".
Another version would say this for ALL bios of living people:
For biographies of living persons, a "majority to delete (taking into account sock puppets, and taking into account the number of edits of those participating in the discussion" shall be sufficient to delete.
Another version... another version. The point is, it would not be difficult or the death of Wikipedia to lean a little bit more in the direction of structural deletionism than we have done in the past. Standards of inclusion shift all the time, and can and will shift again.
We can think creatively about that, rather than engaging in rhetoric about shutting Wikipedia down. :)
--Jimbo