-----Original Message----- From: Fred Bauder [mailto:fredbaud@waterwiki.info] Sent: Sunday, April 8, 2007 01:19 PM To: 'Thomas Dalton' Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Opt Out for Not So Notable Biographies
-----Original Message----- From: Thomas Dalton [mailto:thomas.dalton@gmail.com] Sent: Sunday, April 8, 2007 01:15 PM To: fredbaud@waterwiki.info, 'English Wikipedia' Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Opt Out for Not So Notable Biographies
Define "Not so notable". If you can do that well, then this idea might have merit, but currently it is far too vague and will just result in arguments over notability, rather than over content. I'd much prefer to argue about the content and get a good article at the end than argue about the notability and end up with either a bad article or no article.
Not so notable is the rough dividing line between public figures and those who are not. George W. Bush is a public figure as as most of those who regularly appear in the media. Those whose doings are not ordinarily covered by the media are not public figures, although something interesting may have happened to them and there has been spot coverage.
Fred
Not so notable is the rough dividing line between public figures and those who are not. George W. Bush is a public figure as as most of those who regularly appear in the media. Those whose doings are not ordinarily covered by the media are not public figures, although something interesting may have happened to them and there has been spot coverage.
In your own words, that's a "rough" definition. We need a precise and objective one, otherwise this proposal will just result in more arguments.
On 4/8/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Not so notable is the rough dividing line between public figures and those who are not. George W. Bush is a public figure as as most of those who regularly appear in the media. Those whose doings are not ordinarily covered by the media are not public figures, although something interesting may have happened to them and there has been spot coverage.
In your own words, that's a "rough" definition. We need a precise and objective one, otherwise this proposal will just result in more arguments.
Well, what we're really trying to define here isn't "not so notable" per se, but rather "sufficiently notable that we'd rather go down fighting than delete the article if the subject insists on it". It's trivial to come up with a precise definition if we're willing to ignore some of the more borderline cases. We could, for example, say that anyone that's the subject of a substantial published biography (e.g. people with books or large articles about *them*, rather than people that appear incidentally in reporting on other topics) are so notable that we'll fight for our ability to have biographies of them.
Kirill
On Sun, 8 Apr 2007 20:32:18 +0100, "Thomas Dalton" thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
In your own words, that's a "rough" definition. We need a precise and objective one, otherwise this proposal will just result in more arguments.
That would be yet another attempt to legislate Clue.
Guy (JzG)
On 4/8/07, Fred Bauder fredbaud@waterwiki.info wrote:
Not so notable is the rough dividing line between public figures and those who are not. George W. Bush is a public figure as as most of those who regularly appear in the media. Those whose doings are not ordinarily covered by the media are not public figures, although something interesting may have happened to them and there has been spot coverage.
This is all very vague ("the media") and would IMHO lead to a loss of useful biographies of scientists, authors, inventors, and other individuals who are not celebrities, but whose work is continuous and relevant.
I think if one wants to institute such a policy, a good test would be whether the person's notability is the result of a _continuing_ record of activities (which are verifiable), rather than a singular event.
Incidentally, a person like Daniel Brandt (who has been covered throughout the years for his activism) meets that criterion, whereas someone like Brian Peppers (who is notable only because of an Internet phenomenon) does not.
We do not lose much if we give up articles about the occasional media sensation and Internet meme. We do lose an awful lot if we allow everyone who is not a media figure to delete themselves.
On 4/8/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 4/8/07, Fred Bauder fredbaud@waterwiki.info wrote:
Not so notable is the rough dividing line between public figures and those who are not. George W. Bush is a public figure as as most of those who regularly appear in the media. Those whose doings are not ordinarily covered by the media are not public figures, although something interesting may have happened to them and there has been spot coverage.
This is all very vague ("the media") and would IMHO lead to a loss of useful biographies of scientists, authors, inventors, and other individuals who are not celebrities, but whose work is continuous and relevant.
I think if one wants to institute such a policy, a good test would be whether the person's notability is the result of a _continuing_ record of activities (which are verifiable), rather than a singular event.
Incidentally, a person like Daniel Brandt (who has been covered throughout the years for his activism) meets that criterion, whereas someone like Brian Peppers (who is notable only because of an Internet phenomenon) does not.
We do not lose much if we give up articles about the occasional media sensation and Internet meme. We do lose an awful lot if we allow everyone who is not a media figure to delete themselves.
How much do we really lose, though? We have, at the moment, upward of 150,000 biographies of living individuals; as a class, they substantially outnumber any other area of Wikipedia. Now, how many of those are going to be (a) of borderline notability and (b) insistent on having their article removed? A thousand? Ten thousand? We could delete articles by the hundreds without making a substantial dent in our overall coverage.
Sure, we won't have as many biographies of obscure bloggers and whatnot; but is the benefit of not having to deal with legal threats, the harassment of editors, the scathing stories in the New York Times, and whatever else the subjects can throw at us not worth this? Do we really need those articles *that* badly?
Kirill
Erik Moeller schreef:
I think if one wants to institute such a policy, a good test would be whether the person's notability is the result of a _continuing_ record of activities (which are verifiable), rather than a singular event.
I'm looking forward to see your vote at [[Wikipedia:Articles for Deletion/Lee Harvey Oswald]].
Eugene
On 4/8/07, Eugene van der Pijll eugene@vanderpijll.nl wrote:
Erik Moeller schreef:
I think if one wants to institute such a policy, a good test would be whether the person's notability is the result of a _continuing_ record of activities (which are verifiable), rather than a singular event.
I'm looking forward to see your vote at [[Wikipedia:Articles for Deletion/Lee Harvey Oswald]].
Then add a clause like "singular event of limited historical significance".
Are history books likely to write about the event in the future? Is it a particularly relevant case study?
Again, I'm fine with a clause that allows 15 minute celebrities to get their articles removed (or at least strongly consider their wishes in an AfD). For anyone whose actions leave an indelible record of continuing media coverage (or historical analysis) I'd have reservations.
As for Michael's suggestion that such things can sometimes be done without much fanfare by OTRS volunteers and the like, IMHO, this is what {{prod}} is for -- it can be used by anyone to get articles deleted without the usual AfD spectacle, and still leaves a track record for future review.
On Mon, 9 Apr 2007 11:27:01 +0200, "Erik Moeller" erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
Then add a clause like "singular event of limited historical significance". Are history books likely to write about the event in the future? Is it a particularly relevant case study?
That is a good way of putting it.
Guy (JzG)
On 4/8/07, Fred Bauder fredbaud@waterwiki.info wrote:
From: Thomas Dalton [mailto:thomas.dalton@gmail.com] Define "Not so notable". If you can do that well, then this idea might have merit, but currently it is far too vague and will just result in arguments over notability, rather than over content.
Not so notable is the rough dividing line between public figures and those who are not. George W. Bush is a public figure as as most of those who regularly appear in the media. Those whose doings are not ordinarily covered by the media are not public figures, although something interesting may have happened to them and there has been spot coverage.
One way to determine notability sufficient to justify a Wikipedia biography is whether that person has already had a biography published by a reliable third-party source, either in a form of a newspaper article or a book. If we were to adopt a "no first biography" criterion, it would ensure not only that our subjects are truly notable, but would also help to ensure accuracy, because we'd have a published biography to base the Wikipedia article on.
Sarah
On 08/04/07, Slim Virgin slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
One way to determine notability sufficient to justify a Wikipedia biography is whether that person has already had a biography published by a reliable third-party source, either in a form of a newspaper article or a book. If we were to adopt a "no first biography" criterion, it would ensure not only that our subjects are truly notable, but would also help to ensure accuracy, because we'd have a published biography to base the Wikipedia article on.
Encourages systemic bias. Wikipedia suffers badly enough from that.
- d.
On 4/8/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 08/04/07, Slim Virgin slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
One way to determine notability sufficient to justify a Wikipedia biography is whether that person has already had a biography published by a reliable third-party source, either in a form of a newspaper article or a book. If we were to adopt a "no first biography" criterion, it would ensure not only that our subjects are truly notable, but would also help to ensure accuracy, because we'd have a published biography to base the Wikipedia article on.
Encourages systemic bias. Wikipedia suffers badly enough from that.
Would it do that any more than the current NPOV policy? The published biography could be in any language and from any type of publication regarded as reliable in the country of origin.
On 08/04/07, Slim Virgin slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
Would it do that any more than the current NPOV policy? The published biography could be in any language and from any type of publication regarded as reliable in the country of origin.
What about reliable in the field of origin? Most of the problem with WP:RS is its abuse by the ignorant as a bludgeon against content they don't like. I do see what makes the idea seem good, but entrenching that further strikes me as an absolutely awful idea.
In any case, newspaper articles typically take whatever the subject tells them and reprint it. They are essentially lightly-mediated autobiography. And if *anyone* here tries to tell me that newspaper bios are fact checked on any sort of routine basis, I will laugh at them.
- d.
On 4/8/07, Slim Virgin slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
Would it do that any more than the current NPOV policy? The published biography could be in any language and from any type of publication regarded as reliable in the country of origin.
how many bios of Mauritanian MPs exist? Even Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi was dificult to dig stuiff up on.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidi_Ould_Cheikh_Abdallahi
David Gerard wrote:
On 08/04/07, Slim Virgin slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
One way to determine notability sufficient to justify a Wikipedia biography is whether that person has already had a biography published by a reliable third-party source...
Encourages systemic bias. Wikipedia suffers badly enough from that.
But remember, this isn't about deciding which biographies to include. It's about which biographies not to allow opting out of. The bias is therefore considerably diluted.
A newspaper article usually goes into detail about a specific event. Biographies discusses a person's entire life. If you require someone to already have a published biography, it looks like you want to delete articles which can be written based on multiple newspaper sources rather than one biography. (Either that or we have some semantic issues again). Thing is, Wikipedia is often the only place that bothers to put all the biographical info about someone in one place. Just because no one collected the info before doesn't make them any less notable. The info is there. We need to judge notability one what someone did. If someone wrote about them, it provides the sources. But the way that was done has no bearing on their notability.
Mgm
On 4/9/07, Slim Virgin slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
On 4/8/07, Fred Bauder fredbaud@waterwiki.info wrote:
From: Thomas Dalton [mailto:thomas.dalton@gmail.com] Define "Not so notable". If you can do that well, then this idea might have merit, but currently it is far too vague and will just result in arguments over notability, rather than over content.
Not so notable is the rough dividing line between public figures and
those who are not. George W. Bush is a public figure as as most of those who regularly appear in the media. Those whose doings are not ordinarily covered by the media are not public figures, although something interesting may have happened to them and there has been spot coverage.
One way to determine notability sufficient to justify a Wikipedia biography is whether that person has already had a biography published by a reliable third-party source, either in a form of a newspaper article or a book. If we were to adopt a "no first biography" criterion, it would ensure not only that our subjects are truly notable, but would also help to ensure accuracy, because we'd have a published biography to base the Wikipedia article on.
Sarah
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On 4/8/07, Fred Bauder fredbaud@waterwiki.info wrote:
Not so notable is the rough dividing line between public figures and those who are not. George W. Bush is a public figure as as most of those who regularly appear in the media. Those whose doings are not ordinarily covered by the media are not public figures, although something interesting may have happened to them and there has been spot coverage.
By that definition, are there any people who have articles, have requested deletion, and are not ordinarily covered by the media? Checking Google news for DB and Angela I see both have been covered in the news this year. Brian Peppers doesn't have an article, and to my knowledge hasn't requested his article be deleted anyway (his name is also way more well known than those two, and we are more justified writing about him as he's a convicted child molester).
Isn't there a list somewhere of people who have requested that their article be deleted? I couldn't find it.
Anthony
I think the attempts to set the notability requirements for this in stone are misguided. Notability is a difficult enough concept to define as it is without attempting to define marginal notability as well. I find it quite unlikely that we'll receive enough requests that each request couldn't be dealt with as a separate matter, and editorial judgment applied to determine whether or not the request should be granted. The policy itself shouldn't need more than general guidelines.
On 4/8/07, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
Anthony wrote:
By that definition, are there any people who have articles, have requested deletion, and are not ordinarily covered by the media?
[[Seth Finkelstein]] springs immediately to mind.
Thanks. With that link I found the page I thought I remembered: [[Category:Biography_articles_of_living_people_who_have_requested_removal]]
Unfortunately, it seems to no longer be up to date.
Looking at the arguments made by Seth at [[Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Seth_Finkelstein]], I think that ethically, something should be done. Maybe it'd be enough to permanently protect articles like his. This wouldn't be a solution for DB or Angela though, as there is far too much potential for conflict of interest. Then again, maybe that's an article that Wikipedia shouldn't have articles on DB or Angela (or Jimmy Wales) at all, even if they don't request deletion, because there is too much potential for a conflict of interest.
But then, if you delete the article on Angela and Jimbo, people like Seth might complain about a double standard if his article merely gets protected.
Anthony