On 4/21/07, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
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.
Those all seem like creative and possibly acceptable solutions, at least so long as "consensus" in "consensus to keep" is treated more like the "supermajority" that is currently the de facto standard.
I think the problem with a bio on Brandt goes beyond the usual, though. [[Wikipedia:Conflict of interest]] seems to apply to that biography for pretty much all active editors, which suggests that all of us should at least exercise great caution when editing the page. I'm not sure a neutral bio can possibly be written about Brandt by Wikipedians.
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.
Well said.
We can think creatively about that, rather than engaging in rhetoric about shutting Wikipedia down. :)
--Jimbo