Keith Old wrote:
We need to pay particular attention to the biographies of contemporarybiographies especially of controversial figures. In particular, we need to ensure that our articles are scrupulous in citing sources. We need to giveinstructions to recent changes patrollers to be on the lookout forbiographies making negative claims without proper sourcing.
Regards Keith Old
I agree. After the biography of David Hager was categorized as rapist in error, I began a _quick_ survey of crime related articles. I am looking for deliberate misclassification that might be called a hoax or grudge, as well as good faith misreads of the categorization criteria. I’ve given special attention to articles about living people and those with no obvious evidence of conviction. After about 14 days, I’ve surveyed Category:Rapists, Category:Incest, Category:Child sexual offenders, Category:Cannibalism, Category:Executed murderers, Category:Child killers.
On the whole, the quality of the crime articles are the same as other types of articles. Overall, I think it is reasonable to assume good faith. Some articles are part of projects and are above average. The biggest problem is lack of sources. I fixed some of the articles, but most I tagged as unreferenced. Some of the time, I put requests on User pages for sources, even stubs. So far, most of the tagged articles are still unverified. Nevertheless, I think this task is not futile because editors are responding to the tags and requests.
Still many more crime categories to go. And all these articles need to be fact checked.
Sydney