How does living bio patrol actually work? - WikiEN-l

10 Sep 2006

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From wikipedia talk @ WP:BLPP
State of BLP Patrol: Week ending Sep 9th
Done:
- Consensus reached that group will only focus on BLP articles, Group
   Renamed to BLP Patrol.
- Critical Mass reached. Consensus reached simply that this group
   should exist.
- Consensus seems to be to leave NPOV:Undue Weight issues up to local
   editor consensus?
To Do:
- Devs are at work on software assistance and monitoring tools.
- Alter IRC Bots and/or irc channels for active monitoring.
- Develop templates in support of BLPP.
- (Low)Develop userbox/category for BLPP wikipedians.
- (High)Agree on what specific Libel patrol will target. Current
   proposal is to focus on USA definition of Defamation per se.
- (High)WP:LIBEL </wiki/WP:LIBEL> is way to short to be an effective
   policy.
- Agree on methods to minimize resulting edit wars.
- Agree on methods for dealing with editors who insist on violating
   BLP and Libel policies.
- (Low)Elect a Project Manager. I, User:Electrawn</wiki/User:Electrawn>,
   offer myself to manage as the original creator. If anyone else feels they
   are better qualified, I will bow to someone more experienced.
I may have missed somethings for the todo or done, add below.
Electrawn</wiki/User:Electrawn>05:13, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
"Managing the project" can be re-termed "herding particularly stroppy
cats" ;-) The main reason Wikipedia is so keen on consensus is that it's
less headaches. If we can agree on obvious things that will help immediately
(simple checking of as many living bio edits as possible), then more
difficult things can wait for consensus to shake them out. - David
Gerard</wiki/User:David_Gerard>12:59, 9 September 2006 (UTC)  Yup,
I'm herding them in from Wiki-en. There are many different directions
various folks are taking from technical to process to policy to active
patrollers. I am a big fan of Divide and Conquer. :)
Electrawn</wiki/User:Electrawn>20:59, 9 September 2006 (UTC)  -Jason
"Electrawn" Potkanski
I get asked this by the press a lot. So I thought I'd come here and
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ask how it actually works.

What is the actual process?
How are new living bios spotted?
Who watches edits in them, on what sort of schedule?

And 4. the big one:
Is there anything that can be done to make the living bio patrolling
volunteers' work easier and more efficient? What magical software
features would you like? Is there anything that some as-yet-unwritten
bot software could do to assist?
I'd love to be able to answer "we have a volunteer patrol who look out
for any rubbish going in living biographies. We're not perfect but I
think we do pretty well" and be able to give more detail if they ask
;-)

d.