http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071022/wr_nm/wikipedia_people_dc_1
NEW YORK (Reuters) - They say if you can make it in New York you can make it anywhere. But these days, it seems you haven't really made it unless you have that most prized of status symbols -- your very own page on Wikipedia.
(...)
Unlike popular networking sites MySpace and Facebook, Wikipedia doesn't allow people to post profiles of themselves. Instead, Wikipedia entries are earned.
"If someone is notable or successful in their field, they'll end up in Wikipedia," Jim Wales, the 41-year-old who founded Wikipedia in January 2001, said in an interview.
(...)
"What's on there about me is highly accurate," said Knight. "I don't want to be taken down. Who does? I hope the people who loved me before Wikipedia will still love me if I am taken off."
[You have to love that closing line]
So the next question is whether this article is enough to DRV [[Chelsea Kate Isaacs]]. I'd say no, but it would be an interesting position to be in where someone's article getting deleted led to enough noise in the press that it could be then recreated (I suppose there is a serious [[WP:BEANS]] here).
Quoting Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071022/wr_nm/wikipedia_people_dc_1
NEW YORK (Reuters) - They say if you can make it in New York you can make it anywhere. But these days, it seems you haven't really made it unless you have that most prized of status symbols -- your very own page on Wikipedia.
(...)
Unlike popular networking sites MySpace and Facebook, Wikipedia doesn't allow people to post profiles of themselves. Instead, Wikipedia entries are earned.
"If someone is notable or successful in their field, they'll end up in Wikipedia," Jim Wales, the 41-year-old who founded Wikipedia in January 2001, said in an interview.
(...)
"What's on there about me is highly accurate," said Knight. "I don't want to be taken down. Who does? I hope the people who loved me before Wikipedia will still love me if I am taken off."
[You have to love that closing line]
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk
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On 10/26/07, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
So the next question is whether this article is enough to DRV [[Chelsea Kate Isaacs]]. I'd say no, but it would be an interesting position to be in where someone's article getting deleted led to enough noise in the press that it could be then recreated (I suppose there is a serious [[WP:BEANS]] here).
You know I half-expected that to happen with [[Daniel Brandt]].
—C.W.
Quoting Charlotte Webb charlottethewebb@gmail.com:
On 10/26/07, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
So the next question is whether this article is enough to DRV [[Chelsea Kate Isaacs]]. I'd say no, but it would be an interesting position to be in where someone's article getting deleted led to enough noise in the press that it could be then recreated (I suppose there is a serious [[WP:BEANS]] here).
You know I half-expected that to happen with [[Daniel Brandt]].
Well, as I've pointed out before, if we judge how other less prominent AfDs with BLP issues are going, his article would have been kept were he not who he is. I'm keeping track of additional reliable sources about him that may be relevant if we ever get a substantial minority deciding that we should DRV him. He produces additional reliable sources at about once a month.
On 10/26/07, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
...it would be an interesting position to be in where someone's article getting deleted led to enough noise in the press that it could be then recreated (I suppose there is a serious [[WP:BEANS]] here).
It could be something for us to take into account, no? If the deletion of an article on grounds of notability draws widespread and/or mainstream media attention, it seems worth taking a second look. There's still questions of maintainability (if all we can reliably source about a person is "media got pissed off when Wikipedia deleted their article," BLP is still a pretty dire concern, say).
Just a quick thought.
-Luna
Quoting Luna lunasantin@gmail.com:
On 10/26/07, joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
...it would be an interesting position to be in where someone's article getting deleted led to enough noise in the press that it could be then recreated (I suppose there is a serious [[WP:BEANS]] here).
It could be something for us to take into account, no? If the deletion of an article on grounds of notability draws widespread and/or mainstream media attention, it seems worth taking a second look. There's still questions of maintainability (if all we can reliably source about a person is "media got pissed off when Wikipedia deleted their article," BLP is still a pretty dire concern, say).
Just a quick thought.
-Luna
As I've attempted to explain before, BLP as a privacy concern doesn't make sense if the person wants an article. There are exceptional cases like the Archimedes Plutonium example- Archie wanted an article as far as people could tell but he's also likely has a serious mental problem. However, it doesn't make sense in general to make such a BLP claim when the person wanted an article. Furthermore, I suspect that if this sort of situation did end up occurring a likely side effect would be additional material getting included in the reliable sources since no one is going to write an article of the form "Random No Name X had their Wikipedia article deleted. And we aren't going to tell you anything aboutX at all."
joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
Quoting Luna lunasantin@gmail.com:
It could be something for us to take into account, no? If the deletion of an article on grounds of notability draws widespread and/or mainstream media attention, it seems worth taking a second look. There's still questions of maintainability (if all we can reliably source about a person is "media got pissed off when Wikipedia deleted their article," BLP is still a pretty dire concern, say).
As I've attempted to explain before, BLP as a privacy concern doesn't make sense if the person wants an article. There are exceptional cases like the Archimedes Plutonium example- Archie wanted an article as far as people could tell but he's also likely has a serious mental problem. However, it doesn't make sense in general to make such a BLP claim when the person wanted an article. Furthermore, I suspect that if this sort of situation did end up occurring a likely side effect would be additional material getting included in the reliable sources since no one is going to write an article of the form "Random No Name X had their Wikipedia article deleted. And we aren't going to tell you anything aboutX at all."
BLP's privacy component isn't at all what would be the problem in that kind of case. Instead, I'd think we'd run into more problems with the "source it or don't say it" component of BLP.
If the only reliable sources cover the subject in reference to a controversy about the article itself, then per BLP, that would be the only thing possible to discuss in detail in the article. Yes, the sources discussing the article controversy will mention some *very basic* facts about the subject; but we wouldn't really have enough to write a truly comprehensive encyclopedic article.
--Darkwind
Quoting RLS evendell@gmail.com:
joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
Quoting Luna lunasantin@gmail.com:
It could be something for us to take into account, no? If the deletion of an article on grounds of notability draws widespread and/or mainstream media attention, it seems worth taking a second look. There's still questions of maintainability (if all we can reliably source about a person is "media got pissed off when Wikipedia deleted their article," BLP is still a pretty dire concern, say).
As I've attempted to explain before, BLP as a privacy concern doesn't make sense if the person wants an article. There are exceptional cases like the Archimedes Plutonium example- Archie wanted an article as far as people could tell but he's also likely has a serious mental problem. However, it doesn't make sense in general to make such a BLP claim when the person wanted an article. Furthermore, I suspect that if this sort of situation did end up occurring a likely side effect would be additional material getting included in the reliable sources since no one is going to write an article of the form "Random No Name X had their Wikipedia article deleted. And we aren't going to tell you anything aboutX at all."
BLP's privacy component isn't at all what would be the problem in that kind of case. Instead, I'd think we'd run into more problems with the "source it or don't say it" component of BLP.
If the only reliable sources cover the subject in reference to a controversy about the article itself, then per BLP, that would be the only thing possible to discuss in detail in the article. Yes, the sources discussing the article controversy will mention some *very basic* facts about the subject; but we wouldn't really have enough to write a truly comprehensive encyclopedic article.
--Darkwind
Yes, but that's true for many articles and isn't a reason not to have an article . We need to accept the fact that for many people, even fairly prominent people, we will not have much beyond basic biographical sketches for the material that is tangential to what makes them notable.
joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
Yes, but that's true for many articles and isn't a reason not to have an article . We need to accept the fact that for many people, even fairly prominent people, we will not have much beyond basic biographical sketches for the material that is tangential to what makes them notable.
It's not a matter of "acceptance." See [[WP:BLP1E]]. If someone is only notable because of one event, then there should be an article about the event but not a biography that we can't source.
If they're notable for, say, significant contributions to one subject area, that's different; but there should already be material we could source from to create a BLP-compliant biography article, and it wouldn't have been deleted in the first place.
--Darkwind
Quoting RLS evendell@gmail.com:
joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
Yes, but that's true for many articles and isn't a reason not to have an article . We need to accept the fact that for many people, even fairly prominent people, we will not have much beyond basic biographical sketches for the material that is tangential to what makes them notable.
It's not a matter of "acceptance." See [[WP:BLP1E]]. If someone is only notable because of one event, then there should be an article about the event but not a biography that we can't source.
If they're notable for, say, significant contributions to one subject area, that's different; but there should already be material we could source from to create a BLP-compliant biography article, and it wouldn't have been deleted in the first place.
--Darkwind
Up to a point. If someone almost but not quite met notability for one thing and then made a lot of noise about the matter and so got notability for the noisemaking, as an editorial decision it would make more sense to simply make an article under the person's title. Furthermore, in certain cases, a person is notable for a single event, but the notability is so high that we keep them anyways. To use an extreme example, we have an article on [[John Wilkes Booth]] and a separate article on [[Abraham Lincoln assassination]]. Even if Booth were alive today we wouldn't merge his article with the main assassination article.
joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
Quoting RLS evendell@gmail.com:
It's not a matter of "acceptance." See [[WP:BLP1E]]. If someone is only notable because of one event, then there should be an article about the event but not a biography that we can't source.
If they're notable for, say, significant contributions to one subject area, that's different; but there should already be material we could source from to create a BLP-compliant biography article, and it wouldn't have been deleted in the first place.
--Darkwind
Up to a point. If someone almost but not quite met notability for one thing and then made a lot of noise about the matter and so got notability for the noisemaking, as an editorial decision it would make more sense to simply make an article under the person's title. Furthermore, in certain cases, a person is notable for a single event, but the notability is so high that we keep them anyways. To use an extreme example, we have an article on [[John Wilkes Booth]] and a separate article on [[Abraham Lincoln assassination]]. Even if Booth were alive today we wouldn't merge his article with the main assassination article.
No, we probably wouldn't merge Booth's article with the assassination article, in the same way we haven't merged [[Mehmet Ali Ağca]], who is a living person, with [[1981 Pope John Paul II assassination attempt]]. However, I also don't really think an assassination attempt on a world leader to be the type of event BLP1E addresses. In my opinion, I take BLP1E to refer more to the type of fame generated by Internet drama, YouTube popularity, possibly 15 minutes of Reality TV fame, etc.
The fact that someone is only truly notable because of press drama regarding their article being deleted still falls under BLP1E if they don't meet any other criteria for notability.
--Darkwind
Quoting RLS evendell@gmail.com:
joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
Quoting RLS evendell@gmail.com:
It's not a matter of "acceptance." See [[WP:BLP1E]]. If someone is only notable because of one event, then there should be an article about the event but not a biography that we can't source.
If they're notable for, say, significant contributions to one subject area, that's different; but there should already be material we could source from to create a BLP-compliant biography article, and it wouldn't have been deleted in the first place.
--Darkwind
Up to a point. If someone almost but not quite met notability for one thing and then made a lot of noise about the matter and so got notability for the noisemaking, as an editorial decision it would make more sense to simply make an article under the person's title. Furthermore, in certain cases, a person is notable for a single event, but the notability is so high that we keep them anyways. To use an extreme example, we have an article on [[John Wilkes Booth]] and a separate article on [[Abraham Lincoln assassination]]. Even if Booth were alive today we wouldn't merge his article with the main assassination article.
No, we probably wouldn't merge Booth's article with the assassination article, in the same way we haven't merged [[Mehmet Ali Ağca]], who is a living person, with [[1981 Pope John Paul II assassination attempt]]. However, I also don't really think an assassination attempt on a world leader to be the type of event BLP1E addresses. In my opinion, I take BLP1E to refer more to the type of fame generated by Internet drama, YouTube popularity, possibly 15 minutes of Reality TV fame, etc.
The fact that someone is only truly notable because of press drama regarding their article being deleted still falls under BLP1E if they don't meet any other criteria for notability.
It might fall under it. I'd rather do a case-by-case analysis and see what the community consensus is than make any blanket decisions.
joshua.zelinsky@yale.edu wrote:
Quoting RLS evendell@gmail.com:
The fact that someone is only truly notable because of press drama regarding their article being deleted still falls under BLP1E if they don't meet any other criteria for notability.
It might fall under it. I'd rather do a case-by-case analysis and see what the community consensus is than make any blanket decisions.
Well, of course. Nothing discussed on this list automatically becomes any kind of policy anyway; I'm just discussing my usual interpretation of the policies involved.
--Darkwind
On 10/26/07, RLS evendell@gmail.com wrote:
...the "source it or don't say it" component of BLP...
Pffffffffft. This is a "component" of basic verifiability policy. Being about a particular warm body does not make an article special in this regard. The same basic deficiency (of sources) is no more grave an editorial error than if the topic were pokemon. In either case, the problem should be corrected, either by finding a source, or by removing the disputed and/or dubious information. Ideally, the only difference for a "BLP" article is that the "grace period", for allowing the author (of the disputed portions) to cite sources, is much closer to zero.
—C.W.
Charlotte Webb wrote:
On 10/26/07, RLS evendell@gmail.com wrote:
...the "source it or don't say it" component of BLP...
Pffffffffft. This is a "component" of basic verifiability policy. Being about a particular warm body does not make an article special in this regard. The same basic deficiency (of sources) is no more grave an editorial error than if the topic were pokemon. In either case, the problem should be corrected, either by finding a source, or by removing the disputed and/or dubious information. Ideally, the only difference for a "BLP" article is that the "grace period", for allowing the author (of the disputed portions) to cite sources, is much closer to zero.
I'm aware that sourcing is required for all articles, and that it is a basic part of [[WP:V]]. Yes, ideally, we are sourcing or removing unsourced statements from all articles after a "grace period," which is shorter for BLPs than other types of articles.
By a quick informal count, there are just over 1400 articles in [[Category:Articles needing sources from June 2006]], the oldest dated category for the {{unreferenced}} tag. That certainly indicates to me that there is effectively no enforcement in sourcing or removing unsourced statements from articles not covered by BLP.
Whether or not "source it or don't say it" is a /de jure/ part of the policies that cover every article, it's only enforced /de facto/ for BLP articles in any regular fashion. That's why I phrased my original statement the way I did.
(My count above is probably thrown off somewhat because people will add {{unreferenced}} to an article with no sources even if all of the facts in the article are of a "The sky is blue." nature. I wouldn't be surprised to see "The sky is blue.{{fact}}" one day.)
--Darkwind
On 10/27/07, RLS evendell@gmail.com wrote:
(My count above is probably thrown off somewhat because people will add {{unreferenced}} to an article with no sources even if all of the facts in the article are of a "The sky is blue." nature. I wouldn't be surprised to see "The sky is blue.{{fact}}" one day.)
I suspect that there are probably quite a few articles which are tagged with "{{unreferenced}}", on the grounds that they have "{{fact}}" tags, but are not completely devoid of sources. For these, "{{refimprove}}" (a.k.a. "{{moresources}}") would be a better fit.
—C.W.
On 10/27/07, Charlotte Webb charlottethewebb@gmail.com wrote:
I suspect that there are probably quite a few articles which are tagged with "{{unreferenced}}", on the grounds that they have "{{fact}}" tags, but are not completely devoid of sources. For these, "{{refimprove}}" (a.k.a. "{{moresources}}") would be a better fit.
Because at some point someone broke the definition of {{unreferenced}} to say 'Article or section'. David, I and a few others fixed many of these but I'm sure the error has crept back.
-Matt
On 26/10/2007, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071022/wr_nm/wikipedia_people_dc_1
Wow! An accurate an well written article about Wikipedia. Now I really have seen everything! ;)
The only minor thing I would disagree with is that 1,300 admins (or whatever it is now) isn't really a "small group", and it does make it sound like it's admins making the deletion decisions rather than the community. Other than that, it's a great article.
On 10/26/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
On 26/10/2007, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071022/wr_nm/wikipedia_people_dc_1
Wow! An accurate an well written article about Wikipedia. Now I really have seen everything! ;)
The only minor thing I would disagree with is that 1,300 admins (or whatever it is now) isn't really a "small group", and it does make it sound like it's admins making the deletion decisions rather than the community.
Admins do make the deletion decisions, they just do so after "the community" comments.
I think the more serious error in that paragraph is that it says that this situation is a change stemming from "a series of incidents". Adminship is nothing new, nor is deletion or page protection. Even deletion based on alleged lack of notability isn't all that new. It's been around at least since the deletion of the 9/11 victims.
On 10/26/07, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
Admins do make the deletion decisions, they just do so after "the community" comments.
Correction: they *sometimes* do so after "the community" comments.
Admins do make the deletion decisions, they just do so after "the community" comments.
Admins make determinations, not decisions. They determine is there is a consensus to delete, or if an article fits a CSD. Those aren't decisions, since there is no choice. With a decision, you can choose anything you like, with a determination, there is a right answer which you have to try and find.
I think the more serious error in that paragraph is that it says that this situation is a change stemming from "a series of incidents". Adminship is nothing new, nor is deletion or page protection. Even deletion based on alleged lack of notability isn't all that new. It's been around at least since the deletion of the 9/11 victims.
Adminship hasn't been around since the beginning, though. It was introduced to deal with the increasing number of issues requiring Jimbo (and a couple of developers) to intervene. The article is correct, just rather out of date.
Quoting Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com:
Admins do make the deletion decisions, they just do so after "the community" comments.
Admins make determinations, not decisions. They determine is there is a consensus to delete, or if an article fits a CSD. Those aren't decisions, since there is no choice. With a decision, you can choose anything you like, with a determination, there is a right answer which you have to try and find.
While that might be true in principle, in practice many admins make decisions that often have little basis in policy or such. One just needs to keep a careful track of DRV to get even a sampling of this.
On 10/26/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Admins do make the deletion decisions, they just do so after "the community" comments.
Admins make determinations, not decisions. They determine is there is a consensus to delete, or if an article fits a CSD.
I find it hard to believe that you can really say that with a straight face. Neither "consensus to delete" nor "fits a CSD" is anywhere near well-defined enough to say that admins do anything of the sort. The fact is that "consensus to delete" and "fits a CSD" aren't treated consistently. Admins determine whether or not there is a "consensus to delete", but they also determine what constitutes a "consensus to delete", and they are perfectly free to redefine what determines a "consensus to delete" every single time they do so. Likewise, with what "fits a CSD", there are CSD criteria which get redefined for every situation, and there are plenty of deletions which don't even fit under the CSD criteria at all.
Those aren't decisions, since there is no choice. With a decision, you can choose anything you like, with a determination, there is a right answer which you have to try and find.
In the case of admin deletion, the "determination" is almost never a matter of fact, but a matter of opinion. There quite clearly is a choice in a large portion of deletion "determinations".
I think the more serious error in that paragraph is that it says that this situation is a change stemming from "a series of incidents". Adminship is nothing new, nor is deletion or page protection. Even deletion based on alleged lack of notability isn't all that new. It's been around at least since the deletion of the 9/11 victims.
Adminship hasn't been around since the beginning, though. It was introduced to deal with the increasing number of issues requiring Jimbo (and a couple of developers) to intervene. The article is correct, just rather out of date.
It's only correct in some twisted wikilawyer sense of the term. It doesn't seem to me like "a series of incidents" was talking about something that happened in 2001.
And if that was what the article was talking about, then it *was* a small group of admins that were appointed by Jimbo.
Actually, considering the article says Jimbo appointed that small group of admins, maybe that was what the author was talking about. Who did appoint the first admins, Jimbo or Larry?
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On 26/10/2007, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
On 26/10/2007, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071022/wr_nm/wikipedia_people_dc_1
Wow! An accurate an well written article about Wikipedia. Now I really have seen everything! ;)
Agreed :)
The only minor thing I would disagree with is that 1,300 admins (or
whatever it is now) isn't really a "small group", and it does make it sound like it's admins making the deletion decisions rather than the community. Other than that, it's a great article.
They probably looked at Special:Statistics, saw that there are, what, 3 million user accounts, and 1,300 admins, which is comparatively tiny.
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They probably looked at Special:Statistics, saw that there are, what, 3 million user accounts, and 1,300 admins, which is comparatively tiny.
It doesn't take an expert to realise that they aren't all used. A quick look at the user list would tell you that (are there really that many people editing with a name made out of a series of exclamation marks? I think not...).
On 10/26/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
and it does make it sound like it's admins making the deletion decisions rather than the community.
True, in a way. I've several deletion decisions, vicariously. Once upon a time, I had a reputation for something other than witchcraft, and a request like "{{db|because i said so [see XfD]}}" would usually be fulfilled. Of course, non-deletion decisions are often more rewarding, especially those that require thought or creativity, such as merging (even if nobody else suggested that), or fixing whatever the original problem was (particularly if nobody else even gave it a try).
—C.W.