Hello,
Let's face it: BLPs pose a problem. I want to suggest a few ideas that could resolve some of the issues we face. 1. BLPs should be of sufficiently notable people that they appear in at least one external encyclopedic source, preferably print. This would include other encyclopedias, "Who's Who," or other biographical indices. 2. In the event that the person attained fame because of sudden circumstances, they must be covered in at least three distinct newspapers that can be cited. 3. All facts added to articles about living people should have at least two distinct and independent sources. 4. In the event that an LP or and LP's representative complains via OTRS or by calling the office, the article will be soft protected until the matter can be investigated. If an edit war ensues, the article will be protected immediately until the matter can be investigated. 5. All BLP articles will contain information, prominently displayed on the Talk Page (or perhaps even on the article itself), of how the person or her representatives might express formal reservations to the WMF about the content. This will be in the form of a banner with a link to a special OTRS email address created specifically for these types of problems. 6. All complainants will be encouraged to list their problems and suggest means of correcting them. These are just some ideas. Feel free to consider some or all of them, as you see fit. Yes, BLPs are a problem, but there are ways that they can be handled effectively and to the satisfaction of everyone. The first step is to back away from posturing and show a willingness to compromise. It will not solve all the problems, but it will show our goodwill. Danny
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daniwo59@aol.com writes:
Hello,
Let's face it: BLPs pose a problem. I want to suggest a few
ideas that could
resolve some of the issues we face.
- BLPs should be of sufficiently notable people that they
appear in at
least one external encyclopedic source, preferably print. This
would include
other encyclopedias, "Who's Who," or other biographical indices. 2. In the event that the person attained fame because of sudden circumstances, they must be covered in at least three distinct
newspapers that can be
cited.
....
These are just some ideas. Feel free to consider some or all of
them, as you
see fit. Yes, BLPs are a problem, but there are ways that they
can be
handled effectively and to the satisfaction of everyone. The
first step is to back
away from posturing and show a willingness to compromise. It
will not solve
all the problems, but it will show our goodwill. Danny
Would #2 require independent, differing articles, or would reprints (of stuff over the AP, say) count towards this? This would be a relevant questions for at least one BLP I remember being discussed here recently.
On 4/20/07, Gwern Branwen gwern0@gmail.com wrote:
daniwo59@aol.com writes:
Hello,
Let's face it: BLPs pose a problem. I want to suggest a few
ideas that could
resolve some of the issues we face.
- BLPs should be of sufficiently notable people that they
appear in at
least one external encyclopedic source, preferably print. This
would include
other encyclopedias, "Who's Who," or other biographical indices. 2. In the event that the person attained fame because of sudden circumstances, they must be covered in at least three distinct
newspapers that can be
cited.
....
These are just some ideas. Feel free to consider some or all of
them, as you
see fit. Yes, BLPs are a problem, but there are ways that they
can be
handled effectively and to the satisfaction of everyone. The
first step is to back
away from posturing and show a willingness to compromise. It
will not solve
all the problems, but it will show our goodwill. Danny
Would #2 require independent, differing articles, or would reprints (of stuff over the AP, say) count towards this? This would be a relevant questions for at least one BLP I remember being discussed here recently.
-- Gwern
Reprints pretty clearly don't make for a distinct source. In the case of the AP article, it's the same content reprinted in lots of newspapers. The point of having distinct sources would to have more than one set of editors fact-check and review sources; that doesn't happen when you reprint content. So I'd say: different titles, different authors.
I especially like Danny's suggestion #5. We'd just have to figure out what to do with the emails..
-- phoebe
I like 4,5 and 6.
I think 3 is too restrictive - I imagine there are plenty of important facts that there is only really one source for. Any other source for that information would be getting it from that one source anyway, so citing 2 sources would be meaningless.
I think 1 and 2 would encourage systematic bias. Requiring people to appear in encyclopedias or Who's Who would cause a pro-western bias, I expect. Requiring people to appear in newspapers causes a bias against fields that don't get much news coverage (to be honest, I can't think of an example of such a field at the moment, but I think that's just lack of imagination on my part).
On 21/04/07, daniwo59@aol.com daniwo59@aol.com wrote:
- All BLP articles will contain information, prominently displayed on the
Talk Page (or perhaps even on the article itself), of how the person or her representatives might express formal reservations to the WMF about the content. This will be in the form of a banner with a link to a special OTRS email address created specifically for these types of problems. 6. All complainants will be encouraged to list their problems and suggest means of correcting them. These are just some ideas. Feel free to consider some or all of them, as you see fit. Yes, BLPs are a problem, but there are ways that they can be handled effectively and to the satisfaction of everyone. The first step is to back away from posturing and show a willingness to compromise. It will not solve all the problems, but it will show our goodwill.
I think 5 and 6 are going in a very good direction. They say, clearly - yes, you are the subject of the article, and we want you to engage with us about it. we want to know what you think, we want to know if there are problems with it. It is *the right thing to do*.
Indeed, having an obvious method for contacting us about the article may even help discourage "self-editing", people writing about themselves, because it gives them a simple and obvious route to follow.
This can only improve matters; as it is, we have this vague feeling that the subject wanting any input into the article is somehow iffy, and that's nonsense - the subject having editorial control is iffy, but they should always be able to advise us on content. Right now, dealing with complaints from the subject is a minefield of tact; we never know how far is appropriate to disclose that we're doing this after being contacted, how we can explain that [some odd action] is perfectly reasonable without breaking an implicit confidence.
We don't need to resign editorial control over articles, and we don't need to "surrender" anything, but we can make good, sensible, appropriate steps to making the subject part of the loop in writing about them, able to flag up any problems in a timely, efficient, and well-understood manner. Yes, there will be frivolous complaints, but we can ignore them or fob them off; in the long run doing something like this will help us a lot more than it hinders us.
The best bit is, most of the infrastructure is already there :-) We just need to expand the template spawned by the "living people" tag, and we'll have rolled this out to 90% of biographies at a stroke...
daniwo59@aol.com wrote:
Let's face it: BLPs pose a problem. I want to suggest a few ideas that could resolve some of the issues we face.
- BLPs should be of sufficiently notable people that they appear in at
least one external encyclopedic source, preferably print. This would include other encyclopedias, "Who's Who," or other biographical indices.
The problem with these sources is that they are slow to react.
- In the event that the person attained fame because of sudden
circumstances, they must be covered in at least three distinct newspapers that can be cited.
This can lead to big city bias. A large city can very well have three newspapers all of which will send a reporter. This is not the case with a one newspaper town. Also city newspapers are likely to give greater coverage to what happens in the city itself than to similar events in the suburbs.
...
- All BLP articles will contain information, prominently displayed on the
Talk Page (or perhaps even on the article itself), of how the person or her representatives might express formal reservations to the WMF about the content. This will be in the form of a banner with a link to a special OTRS email address created specifically for these types of problems. 6. All complainants will be encouraged to list their problems and suggest means of correcting them.
Yes. I think that when the subject of an article differs about the contents, he needs to have a place to publicly put his side of the story without needing external sources. It would be perfectly clear that the comments are from him. He should still be prevented from saying anything that would disparage others. He would be able to say "I didn't do it." He would not be able to say, "George did it." A lot of the people who complain about their articles might not complain as much if they could vent their side of the story in public.
These are just some ideas. Feel free to consider some or all of them, as you see fit. Yes, BLPs are a problem, but there are ways that they can be handled effectively and to the satisfaction of everyone. The first step is to back away from posturing and show a willingness to compromise. It will not solve all the problems, but it will show our goodwill.
Sure.
Ec
On Sun, 22 Apr 2007, Ray Saintonge wrote:
- In the event that the person attained fame because of sudden
circumstances, they must be covered in at least three distinct newspapers that can be cited.
This can lead to big city bias. A large city can very well have three newspapers all of which will send a reporter. This is not the case with a one newspaper town.
A big city has more newspapers than a small town because it has more people and more people can support more newspapers. So ultimately, someone who gets three articles because he's in a big city with lots of newspapers really got three articles because there is a bigger audience for news about him--i.e., he really is more notable than someone in a small city.
Uhnm... there's a huge flaw in that theory. There are also more potentially notable people IN that city.
I think the big city/small town folks pretty much are equal... if anything, I think the small town folks may have a slight advantage (speaking as a non-notable who has several small-town newspaper articles written about him).
Philippe ----- Original Message ----- From: Ken Arromdee To: English Wikipedia Sent: Sunday, April 22, 2007 11:07 PM Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] BLPs--some ideas
On Sun, 22 Apr 2007, Ray Saintonge wrote:
- In the event that the person attained fame because of sudden
circumstances, they must be covered in at least three distinct newspapers that can be cited.
This can lead to big city bias. A large city can very well have three newspapers all of which will send a reporter. This is not the case with a one newspaper town.
A big city has more newspapers than a small town because it has more people and more people can support more newspapers. So ultimately, someone who gets three articles because he's in a big city with lots of newspapers really got three articles because there is a bigger audience for news about him--i.e., he really is more notable than someone in a small city.
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