On 10/26/07, joshua.zelinsky(a)yale.edu <joshua.zelinsky(a)yale.edu> wrote: You know I half-expected that to happen with [[Daniel Brandt]]. —C.W.

On 10/26/07, joshua.zelinsky(a)yale.edu <joshua.zelinsky(a)yale.edu> wrote: 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

joshua.zelinsky(a)yale.edu wrote: 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

joshua.zelinsky(a)yale.edu wrote: 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

joshua.zelinsky(a)yale.edu wrote: 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

joshua.zelinsky(a)yale.edu wrote: 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

Charlotte Webb wrote: 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, Charlotte Webb <charlottethewebb(a)gmail.com> wrote: 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 10/26/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> wrote: 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.

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. 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.

On 10/26/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> wrote: 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. 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". 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?

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...).