The change has to be cultural. If there is a fact about a prime minister of Senegal, it obviously came from somewhere, unless the author made it up. Where is that somewhere? People have to learn to cite their sources, and not just add information.

Perhaps it would be good to start off with a policy that all new information about BLPs should be sourced. Then we can begin looking things up to find where the unsourced materials come from.

As for high importance and low participation, yes--this is hard work. Let's face it, most of the low-hanging fruit is gone. Now is the time to roll up our sleeves and get to work on making this the most reliable source on the net, not just the biggest.

Danny

In a message dated 4/29/2007 11:46:03 AM Eastern Daylight Time, charlottethewebb@gmail.com writes:

On 4/27/07, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:

Now, yes, we obviously can find sources for articles on all the prime ministers of Senegal. That's not the issue. The issue is that there are very few editors working in this area - often not enough to handle a wave of PRODs on their articles. It's an area of high importance to the project and low participation. To add a rule that allows for deletion in this area makes it far too easy to overwhelm these vital areas with deletions and gut our coverage with no attention to whether or not the articles are actually erroneous.

I share concerns with Phil here, a form of systemic bias I think. If (an estimated 16,000?) articles are marked for deletion at the same time, yes we we will probably end up with a several hundred impeccably referenced articles about Foo-Idol contestants, state senators, professional sports people, porn stars, even webcartoonists... all of whose biographies would otherwise be in poorer shape.

That's all groovy, but not at the price of total loss of biographical coverage outside the English-speaking world, even for a few weeks. Realistically it will probably be much longer than that, with a limited number of people who would have the time and energy help facilitate the reconstruction.

And a limited number of admins willing to act as a liaison between the deleted content and the editors who care to improve it.

And a limited number of people who know where to find Senegal on a map or care what goes on there.

And a limited amount of time before these people quit the project in disgust.

BLPs and sourcing are a problem, but they need a far more subtle solution than this.

Userfy? Perhaps move to a designated area of project space specifically not indexed by Google? I've got some more ideas if this doesn't sound too outlandish yet.

Charlotte

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