Since this is a great analysis of the issue at hand, I thought I'd make it the start of a new thread. George Herbert took the following quote by heart and made the analysis.
Why is it that folk on this list always simply point out the problems with any change rather then engage constructively in finding working solutions?
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com Date: Apr 21, 2007 3:48 AM Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Jimmy Wales should reconsider To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Stable versions is certainly a change which is technical based, has major effects, and could help significantly on a bunch of different fronts. Nobody has had much of anything negative to say about that (a few gripes, but it's very very popular). It's just not live yet.
Structural changes of the "just remove all bios" or "remove any biography that the subject objects to" are counter to the project's core goal of making an encyclopedia.
Someone who has a WP article about them that they percieve negatively may be upset, but it's one thing to say that we sympathize with them being upset, and quite another to suggest that we shouldn't have an article about them, or about large classes of people including them.
The idea that people have a right to not be covered in media reports, encyclopedias, websites, blogs, etc. are not unique to criticisms of Wikipedia's operations, but are rather odd overall. There is generally little to no legal basis for these ideas, and little social basis for these ideas.
Individuals are upset for one or more of three reasons: 1) They think they aren't notable, and don't want to be. 2) They think they're covered inaccurately. 3) They think the coverage presents them negatively.
We have normal processes to deal with truly non-notable subject articles. They go away, relatively reliably. A lot of people who don't want to be notable are by other reasonable standards. People may not like that, but they may not like being covered in a local newspaper or someone's blog or website, etc. The problem is not unique to Wikipedia, and we aren't breaking social or legal norms to cover people who meet some minimum standards of notability. Notability is something they can challenge, but not something they can arbitrarily reset standards on.
If they're covered inaccurately then that's a problem, and we can and should do something about that. BLP says we need to, everyone agrees with BLP, and people are if anything overly vigorous about enforcing it.
If coverage is seen as negative, it's for one or both of the following reasons: The coverage is slanted, or the sourced and accurate facts behind the article are, or tend to be, interpreted in a negative manner. If the article is biased, not-neutral, then BLP applies and other policies apply and we fix it. If the facts don't show a positive light on someone's life or activities, then that's their problem, not ours.
People have a right to be upset about a lot of what gets put up about them in Wikipedia. But the same applies to MySpace, Usenet, IRC, and a zillion Blogs and homepages. Those don't have any sort of editorial policy, charter to be accurate and neutral and have sources, and people who have the power and responsibility to fix things going around dealing with the things that are done wrong here. Wikipedia does not offer a unique technical or social opportunity for internet damage to people's reputations or lives. We are, all things considered, probably uniquely the most reliable non-commercial source on the Internet. We are clearly and unequivocally imperfect, but that's a fact of life to some degree.
We could make a WarmFuzzyPedia. But it would not be accurate, useful, or something that a lot of people would be interested in building and maintaining. It would, in my humble opinion, be the end of Wikipedia to change into a WarmFuzzyPedia, and I will resist you to the last if you insist on going that direction.
-- -george william herbert george.herbert@gmail.com
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MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
Since this is a great analysis of the issue at hand, I thought I'd make it the start of a new thread. George Herbert took the following quote by heart and made the analysis.
Why is it that folk on this list always simply point out the problems with any change rather then engage constructively in finding working solutions?
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com Date: Apr 21, 2007 3:48 AM Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Jimmy Wales should reconsider To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Stable versions is certainly a change which is technical based, has major effects, and could help significantly on a bunch of different fronts. Nobody has had much of anything negative to say about that (a few gripes, but it's very very popular). It's just not live yet.
Structural changes of the "just remove all bios" or "remove any biography that the subject objects to" are counter to the project's core goal of making an encyclopedia.
Someone who has a WP article about them that they percieve negatively may be upset, but it's one thing to say that we sympathize with them being upset, and quite another to suggest that we shouldn't have an article about them, or about large classes of people including them.
The idea that people have a right to not be covered in media reports, encyclopedias, websites, blogs, etc. are not unique to criticisms of Wikipedia's operations, but are rather odd overall. There is generally little to no legal basis for these ideas, and little social basis for these ideas.
Individuals are upset for one or more of three reasons:
- They think they aren't notable, and don't want to be.
- They think they're covered inaccurately.
- They think the coverage presents them negatively.
We have normal processes to deal with truly non-notable subject articles. They go away, relatively reliably. A lot of people who don't want to be notable are by other reasonable standards. People may not like that, but they may not like being covered in a local newspaper or someone's blog or website, etc. The problem is not unique to Wikipedia, and we aren't breaking social or legal norms to cover people who meet some minimum standards of notability. Notability is something they can challenge, but not something they can arbitrarily reset standards on.
If they're covered inaccurately then that's a problem, and we can and should do something about that. BLP says we need to, everyone agrees with BLP, and people are if anything overly vigorous about enforcing it.
If coverage is seen as negative, it's for one or both of the following reasons: The coverage is slanted, or the sourced and accurate facts behind the article are, or tend to be, interpreted in a negative manner. If the article is biased, not-neutral, then BLP applies and other policies apply and we fix it. If the facts don't show a positive light on someone's life or activities, then that's their problem, not ours.
People have a right to be upset about a lot of what gets put up about them in Wikipedia. But the same applies to MySpace, Usenet, IRC, and a zillion Blogs and homepages. Those don't have any sort of editorial policy, charter to be accurate and neutral and have sources, and people who have the power and responsibility to fix things going around dealing with the things that are done wrong here. Wikipedia does not offer a unique technical or social opportunity for internet damage to people's reputations or lives. We are, all things considered, probably uniquely the most reliable non-commercial source on the Internet. We are clearly and unequivocally imperfect, but that's a fact of life to some degree.
We could make a WarmFuzzyPedia. But it would not be accurate, useful, or something that a lot of people would be interested in building and maintaining. It would, in my humble opinion, be the end of Wikipedia to change into a WarmFuzzyPedia, and I will resist you to the last if you insist on going that direction.
-- -george william herbert george.herbert@gmail.com
Since I think this is a terrible analysis of the issue let me repeat my response:
We're not talking about Brandt and mildly critical stuff on a well-written and highly monitored article. We are not talking about people trying to cover up neutral reports of the truth. That's a straw-man.
We are talking about downright libels, negative spinning, and outrageous lies. We are talking about biographies that have pulled together every detail of a minor small-town scandal, and ignored any positive information whatsoever. People have a moral right not to be subjected to that "WarmFuzzyPedia" or not.
We insist on neutrality, verifiability and 'due weight', but we are hosting thousands of biographies that do not comply with these policies and we have structures that have manifestly proven inadequate in dealing with them.
If we host bios - we have a moral duty of care to the subject. We are clearly in breach of that duty.
Yes, people don't get 'take down rights' in the real media - but real media is produced by writers with real names and by publishers who take legal responsibility, not written by ten year olds or clever anonymous people with a malicious grudge and then published by non-responsible foundation.
People have a absolute moral right not to have their name googled and find that the highest ranking site (or perhaps only internet information on them) has been written by a silly slanderous schoolkid, their ex-husband's angry girlfriend, or a disgruntled ex-employee or rival out to trash them. And often these subtle attacks are on the face reading well-referenced and seemingly factual. Never spotted as simple vandalism.
People have a moral right not have to check their own biography for hatchet jobs, and if they they do check it, and there is one, they have an moral right to expect us to have a means of making sure it never happens again.
If Wikipedia can't reasonable insure that people don't have these moral rights infringed, then it has no business hosting their low-notability biographies in the first place.
Comparisons with other internet user-contribution sites, and the claim that we are better than them, are misleading. They don't claim to be 'encyclopedias' and they don't usually form the number one hit when a private individual's name gets googled.
If I put a sheet of paper up in the local youth club, and some malicious person writes the untruth 'John Smith was arrested for child-abuse', then I can reasonably claim that the responsibility lies solely with the writer and not with me. But if I put a ten foot billboard above John Smith's house, with the invitation "come and write the encyclopedic truth about John', and leave the paint lying about, I need to bear some responsibility when the anonymous libeler places his giant statement.
This IS our ethical problem, and we need to do more to solve it.
Doc
On 4/22/07, doc doc.wikipedia@ntlworld.com wrote:
Since I think this is a terrible analysis of the issue let me repeat my response:
We're not talking about Brandt and mildly critical stuff on a well-written and highly monitored article. We are not talking about people trying to cover up neutral reports of the truth. That's a straw-man.
We are talking about downright libels, negative spinning, and outrageous lies. We are talking about biographies that have pulled together every detail of a minor small-town scandal, and ignored any positive information whatsoever. People have a moral right not to be subjected to that "WarmFuzzyPedia" or not.
We insist on neutrality, verifiability and 'due weight', but we are hosting thousands of biographies that do not comply with these policies and we have structures that have manifestly proven inadequate in dealing with them.
If we host bios - we have a moral duty of care to the subject. We are clearly in breach of that duty.
Yes, people don't get 'take down rights' in the real media - but real media is produced by writers with real names and by publishers who take legal responsibility, not written by ten year olds or clever anonymous people with a malicious grudge and then published by non-responsible foundation.
People have a absolute moral right not to have their name googled and find that the highest ranking site (or perhaps only internet information on them) has been written by a silly slanderous schoolkid, their ex-husband's angry girlfriend, or a disgruntled ex-employee or rival out to trash them. And often these subtle attacks are on the face reading well-referenced and seemingly factual. Never spotted as simple vandalism.
People have a moral right not have to check their own biography for hatchet jobs, and if they they do check it, and there is one, they have an moral right to expect us to have a means of making sure it never happens again.
If Wikipedia can't reasonable insure that people don't have these moral rights infringed, then it has no business hosting their low-notability biographies in the first place.
Comparisons with other internet user-contribution sites, and the claim that we are better than them, are misleading. They don't claim to be 'encyclopedias' and they don't usually form the number one hit when a private individual's name gets googled.
If I put a sheet of paper up in the local youth club, and some malicious person writes the untruth 'John Smith was arrested for child-abuse', then I can reasonably claim that the responsibility lies solely with the writer and not with me. But if I put a ten foot billboard above John Smith's house, with the invitation "come and write the encyclopedic truth about John', and leave the paint lying about, I need to bear some responsibility when the anonymous libeler places his giant statement.
This IS our ethical problem, and we need to do more to solve it.
Doc
Calling in more people to actually deal with the problems and develop technical solutions to keep on top of possibly problematic changes are things we could do to solve issues.
The thing is, we can't completely get rid of the people who post such material in the first place without restricting access and that's not going to happen.
The sort of entries you are describing would be down the drain in my book, I'm talking about keeping the articles we want to have neutral and accurate.
Mgm
OK. What seems a practical first move?
Deleting all living bios is not going to fly. It just won't be accepted.
The layer of barely-notable bios could be vanquished with little trouble. The tricky part is "what is notable?" It's not going to be possible to come up with a hardline definition that doesn't result in gross systemic bias, editors deleting like deranged robots or both.
Is a new deletion rule on living bios worth trying? It's the most politically viable idea I've heard so far.
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
OK. What seems a practical first move?
Deleting all living bios is not going to fly. It just won't be accepted.
The layer of barely-notable bios could be vanquished with little trouble. The tricky part is "what is notable?" It's not going to be possible to come up with a hardline definition that doesn't result in gross systemic bias, editors deleting like deranged robots or both.
Is a new deletion rule on living bios worth trying? It's the most politically viable idea I've heard so far.
- d.
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Our current notability threshold is "what will survive afd on the average day" - all attempts to codify it as x number of sources have failed. And actually deserve to fail.
If we lower the threshold for an admin to close an afd as 'delete' (only for biographies of living people, mind), then over time, the afd inclusion threshold will rise in this area.
The advantage of this is we decrease the number of low-notability bios, and yet allow the community to decide what stays and what goes, if a case can be made, then we can keep it. Much better than legislating for the number or quantity of sources which will just end up in arbitrary rules and wikilawyering.
The other thing we might consider is a process of 'fix or die' for biographies. Low notability bios with critical content might be listed and unless properly sourced and neutrally re-written after x days they get deleted. This would remove the culture of people voting "this needs clean-up not deletion" and then walking away. (Yes, I realise there are problems with this - but perhaps we could chew on it).
(For the record I don't want to delete all, or even most, of our biographies - and if I've given that impression I apologize. I just think we need to find some strong solutions to reduce our collateral damage to low-notability individuals whom we give a very rough ride.)
Doc
On 4/22/07, doc doc.wikipedia@ntlworld.com wrote:
If we lower the threshold for an admin to close an afd as 'delete' (only for biographies of living people, mind), then over time, the afd inclusion threshold will rise in this area.
Or you will get biowatch and you will be back to square one only with an organised opposition.
On 22/04/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 4/22/07, doc doc.wikipedia@ntlworld.com wrote:
If we lower the threshold for an admin to close an afd as 'delete' (only for biographies of living people, mind), then over time, the afd inclusion threshold will rise in this area.
Or you will get biowatch and you will be back to square one only with an organised opposition.
Then they can do the damn work before the article is deleted and salted!
- d.
On 4/22/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Then they can do the damn work before the article is deleted and salted!
Experience with schools suggests that doesn't happen.
On 22/04/07, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 4/22/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Then they can do the damn work before the article is deleted and salted!
Experience with schools suggests that doesn't happen.
The origin of Schoolwatch was organised querulous mass-AFDs of schools for being schools. Living bios are somewhat more important.
And if AFD can't be used to solve the problem, then something else will.
- d.
On Sun, 22 Apr 2007 16:36:55 +0100, "David Gerard" dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
The origin of Schoolwatch was organised querulous mass-AFDs of schools for being schools. Living bios are somewhat more important. And if AFD can't be used to solve the problem, then something else will.
Yup. You'll not find anything like the same polarisation, I think. The Schoolwatch folks hold as an article of faith that all schools are notable. It is far less likely that you would find any meaningful group of editors to assert that all *people* are inherently notable. It is self-evidently absurd. All schools will have a series of articles in the local paper and a few inspection reports online. Schools inclusionists choose to interpret this as multiple non-trivial sources. The same does not apply to all people .
Guy (JzG)
On 4/22/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
OK. What seems a practical first move?
Deleting all living bios is not going to fly. It just won't be accepted.
The layer of barely-notable bios could be vanquished with little trouble. The tricky part is "what is notable?" It's not going to be possible to come up with a hardline definition that doesn't result in gross systemic bias, editors deleting like deranged robots or both.
Is a new deletion rule on living bios worth trying? It's the most politically viable idea I've heard so far.
- d.
Notable has nothing to do with the problem. You could remove bios, but that doesn't do anything to get rid off libellous statements. Before we start deleting anything we should try options that do not involve deletion. Like going through MessedRocker's BLP lists and referencing every dubious statement in those articles and making sure they're balanced and neutral.
We might consider deleting bios someone considers consistently libellous, but it's pointless to delete articles that otherwise don't pose a problem.
Mgm
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
On 4/22/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
OK. What seems a practical first move?
We might consider deleting bios someone considers consistently libellous, but it's pointless to delete articles that otherwise don't pose a problem.
I mean, we could simply stub the unsourced articles with a note on the talk page and force a fresh start. That would placate both sides of the coin - no actual subject content is lost, but we lose the worry of the unsourced statements for now.
-Jeff
On 4/22/07, Jeff Raymond jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
On 4/22/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
OK. What seems a practical first move?
We might consider deleting bios someone considers consistently
libellous,
but it's pointless to delete articles that otherwise don't pose a
problem.
I mean, we could simply stub the unsourced articles with a note on the talk page and force a fresh start. That would placate both sides of the coin - no actual subject content is lost, but we lose the worry of the unsourced statements for now.
-Jeff
Isn't removing unsourced material already allowed through BLP rules? The problem is returning vandals. How is patrolling of those bios organized?
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
Isn't removing unsourced material already allowed through BLP rules?
Certainly. But this is the first large-scale effort at identifying the problem bios.
The problem is returning vandals. How is patrolling of those bios organized?
Well, I have "add to watchlist" on default...
-Jeff
On 4/22/07, Jeff Raymond jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
Isn't removing unsourced material already allowed through BLP rules?
Certainly. But this is the first large-scale effort at identifying the problem bios.
So let's identify problem bios.
I don't think notability has any bearing on how susceptible an article for BLP issues. Some random thoughts: 1. How much negative material does it contain? 2. How much of that material is posted by one person? 3. Is it balanced with basic biographical information? 4. Is it based on one negative incident? All that brings me too is that problem articles have tone and POV issues. If 4 is the case, it probably won't survive AFD (Barbara Bauer didn't despite valiant sourcing). We could address POV in an article RFC. Any other ideas?
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
Some random thoughts:
- How much negative material does it contain?
How much is too much? There's no objective answer for this.
- How much of that material is posted by one person?
Why should this matter? I'm the primary author of two (almost three) featured articles - if one was a bio negative in tone, does it matter if it's sourced well?
- Is it balanced with basic biographical information?
This is where the problem lies - we don't want it imbalanced per BLP, but we don't want it balanced per NPOV in some cases. One of the major faults of BLP, as it encourages imbalanced "reporting" of these things.
Let's take the Virginia Tech shooter from this week - imagine if he were still alive. "Basic biographical information," while likely to exist, are not going to "balance" out the amount of crazy stuff that has come out. These issues are not objective.
- Is it based on one negative incident?
An entire biographical article on Michael Richards balanced too far on the n-word incident, or the Alec Baldwin thing from this week, yeah, there's an issue. What about the astronaut who went cross country in an alleged attempt to murder her jilted lover? Guess what - her biography's going to be based on that one incident, no matter what the eventual outcome. This isn't a bad thing, either - it's simply reality.
All that brings me too is that problem articles have tone and POV issues. If 4 is the case, it probably won't survive AFD (Barbara Bauer didn't despite valiant sourcing). We could address POV in an article RFC. Any other ideas?
The Bauer article is a very poor example - talk about a bad result comnbined with an atypical situation. If 4 is the case, under normal circumstances (i.e. the subject isn't in the midst of suing Wikipedia), the article would likely be kept.
-Jeff
On 4/22/07, Jeff Raymond jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
- How much of that material is posted by one person?
Why should this matter? I'm the primary author of two (almost three) featured articles - if one was a bio negative in tone, does it matter if it's sourced well?
If all the negative material is written by a single person, it's more likely they have an axe to grind with the article subject.
- Is it based on one negative incident?
An entire biographical article on Michael Richards balanced too far on the n-word incident, or the Alec Baldwin thing from this week, yeah, there's an issue. What about the astronaut who went cross country in an alleged attempt to murder her jilted lover? Guess what - her biography's going to be based on that one incident, no matter what the eventual outcome. This isn't a bad thing, either - it's simply reality.
That would be a bad thing. You could write a perfectly fine article about an astronaut that doesn't have its focus on the alledged murder plot. There's other reasons why he should be noted and those should be given more weight.
The Bauer article is a very poor example - talk about a bad result
comnbined with an atypical situation. If 4 is the case, under normal circumstances (i.e. the subject isn't in the midst of suing Wikipedia), the article would likely be kept.
-Jeff
Have you heard of the case going to court? I certainly haven't. Bauer has a history of frivolous legal threats and she's never followed through on any of them. Anyone with even a smidge of knowledge about the literary world would've known enough to see it could've been kept without any problems (someone even tried to balance it). The thing is, if you are mainly known for something negative, that's going to be the focus of the bio. The Viriginia Tech shooter would have the shooting feature heavily in his article. That doesn't mean anything negative is automatically a BLP issue. But it appears lawsuits scare people enough to give up on the spot.
On Mon, 23 Apr 2007, MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
The thing is, if you are mainly known for something negative, that's going to be the focus of the bio.
If you shoplifted something 20 years ago and are known for that, and are not known for anything else, you're only known for something negative--but it's still balanced. Because the negative and the positive are still pretty close. The positive is not known at all, and the negative is only known a tiny bit, and "nothing" is close to "a tiny bit".
By creating an article about the shoplifting incident, Wikipedia magnifies the difference. Now the negatives and positives are no longer close.
Jeff Raymond wrote:
- Is it based on one negative incident?
What about the astronaut who went cross country in an alleged
attempt to murder her jilted lover? Guess what - her biography's going to be based on that one incident, no matter what the eventual outcome. This isn't a bad thing, either - it's simply reality.
Which raises the question: if all we have is information about one incident, why the subject of our article isn't the incident itself rather than the person as a distinct individual?
Biography means a writing about someone's *life*.
If we don't have material for a biography, then we shouldn't have a biography!
Doc
doc wrote:
Which raises the question: if all we have is information about one incident, why the subject of our article isn't the incident itself rather than the person as a distinct individual?
Biography means a writing about someone's *life*.
If we don't have material for a biography, then we shouldn't have a biography!
Well, technically, we should have them on both. I'm wondering if calling the articles biographies are part of the problem.
-Jeff
Jeff Raymond wrote:
doc wrote:
Which raises the question: if all we have is information about one incident, why the subject of our article isn't the incident itself rather than the person as a distinct individual?
Biography means a writing about someone's *life*.
If we don't have material for a biography, then we shouldn't have a biography!
Well, technically, we should have them on both. I'm wondering if calling the articles biographies are part of the problem.
-Jeff
Why on earth would we want a record of the incident twice?
Doc
doc wrote:
Why on earth would we want a record of the incident twice?
Well, we wouldn't. But the point is more that people may want to attempt to get information on the people involved instead of information on the event itself. Eventualism, etc.
-Jeff
Jeff Raymond wrote:
doc wrote:
Why on earth would we want a record of the incident twice?
Well, we wouldn't. But the point is more that people may want to attempt to get information on the people involved instead of information on the event itself. Eventualism, etc.
-Jeff
Eh? But if the only thing encyclopedic about the individual is one incident in their lives that the media has recorded, then we have nothing else to record than the incident. At best, all we should have at the individual's name is a redirect to the article on the incident.
Eventualism is not excuse for creating articles for which we have currently no need. If the individual's life story enters the public domain then we can 'eventually' have an article.
If we haven't the material for a biography, then we shouldn't have a biography.
Jeff was arguing that we can't delete a biography which only contains negative material as "What about the astronaut who went cross country in an alleged
attempt to murder her jilted lover? Guess what - her biography's going to be based on that one incident, no matter what the eventual outcome. This isn't a bad thing, either - it's simply reality.
Now, that's a fair point. There may only be one incident that's newsworthy - and there may be no reason to exclude us reporting it.
But biography is by definition a record of someone life, not an incident. If the incident is encyclopedic and verifiable then we should have an article on the incident, and the individuals involved in it, but disallow a biography, since we have inadequate material for such.
If we don't have appropriate information for a biography, we shouldn't have a biography. And if all the information relates to the one incident, we should simply have an article on that.
Further, as has just been pointed out to me:
"The biggest argument in favor of relegating an incident involving a person to a non-bio page, is that a bio page features the name of the person in the title of the article. This causes the bio to rank *much* higher in the search engine rankings when searching for that person's name. By the time all the internal linking to that bio is carried out inside of Wikipedia, you also have the weight of anchor-text content added to its ranking. Presto! Number one in a search for that name."
And that is where the problems begin
Doc
On Mon, 23 Apr 2007 22:05:01 +0100, doc doc.wikipedia@ntlworld.com wrote:
biography is by definition a record of someone life, not an incident. If the incident is encyclopedic and verifiable then we should have an article on the incident, and the individuals involved in it, but disallow a biography, since we have inadequate material for such. If we don't have appropriate information for a biography, we shouldn't have a biography. And if all the information relates to the one incident, we should simply have an article on that.
Unsurprisingly, I agree with Doc on this. A biography based on a single incident is almost certain to violate the "undue weight" clause, and in many cases all you get is two articles on the same subject.
Guy (JzG)
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
On Mon, 23 Apr 2007 22:05:01 +0100, doc doc.wikipedia@ntlworld.com wrote:
biography is by definition a record of someone life, not an incident. If the incident is encyclopedic and verifiable then we should have an article on the incident, and the individuals involved in it, but disallow a biography, since we have inadequate material for such. If we don't have appropriate information for a biography, we shouldn't have a biography. And if all the information relates to the one incident, we should simply have an article on that.
Unsurprisingly, I agree with Doc on this. A biography based on a single incident is almost certain to violate the "undue weight" clause, and in many cases all you get is two articles on the same subject.
To me it depends on the case and how much else is known about the person. As Danny pointed out, there are some almost-unquestionable cases of single-incident individuals who deserve biographies, like [[Lee Harvey Oswald]]. If there's almost nothing known about the person except the incident, then sure, redirect to an article about the incident. In many case, though, there was a lot written after the fact about the person's earlier life, their possible motivations, etc., that makes it sensible to split off the biography to its own article---it would make little sense to merge all the information in [[Lee Harvey Oswald]] into [[John F. Kennedy assassination]].
-Mark
On Mon, 23 Apr 2007 18:21:11 -0400, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
To me it depends on the case and how much else is known about the person. As Danny pointed out, there are some almost-unquestionable cases of single-incident individuals who deserve biographies, like [[Lee Harvey Oswald]].
Sure, but in Oswald's case there are published biographies, or at least books wit substantial biographical sections. What we're talking about here is articles on homicide victims, murderers with a single but somewhat famous victim, that kind of thing.
Guy (JzG)
On 23/04/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
Sure, but in Oswald's case there are published biographies, or at least books wit substantial biographical sections. What we're talking about here is articles on homicide victims, murderers with a single but somewhat famous victim, that kind of thing.
#REDIRECT [[Actual famous incident]]
This saves going anywhere near AFD.
- d.