2009/2/24 Delirium delirium@hackish.org:
David Gerard wrote:
There was some coverage of this matter in WP:BLP - that only noteworthy details of a noteworthy person should be included. (The hypothetical example given is the subject having had a messy divorce - for a minorly notable physicist it's probably not relevant, for a politician it may have been a widely reported scandal.)
I this more than by subject area, it varies especially by fame of the person. For famous people, all aspects of their professional and personal lives are interesting to historians, who attempt to construct a full picture of their lives, tease out possible influences and motivations, and so on. You would be hard-pressed to find a book-length biography of a physicist or mathematician that fails to discuss their personal lives, for example. For less-famous people, it's not notable because frankly nobody really cares about them: since nobody is interested in teasing out possible influences and motivations, we don't need to know any of that info.
It has to be applied on a case-by-case basis. e.g. [[Mitchell Baker]] - her hobby is trapeze. Is this relevant to mention? Well, it may not be for most people, but quite a few biographical articles on her mention it because it's an interesting thing about her.
Similarly, a biographical article not listing the subject's family would seem odd where that's uncontroversial public information. OTOH, there have been cases like one I dealt with where someone put this apparently uncontroversial info into an article, but it was actually something unsourced the subject worked hard to keep out of the public eye and had to be removed and the revs deleted unless and until a good public source came up.
- d.