We should take it as seriously as we would any other statement from
someone with Conflict of interest--seriously, but with great caution.
It does not have the usual presumption of encyclopedic purpose.
On Mon, Mar 9, 2009 at 5:59 PM, Sue Gardner <sgardner(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
2009/3/8 Nathan <nawrich(a)gmail.com>om>:
On Sun, Mar 8, 2009 at 5:12 PM, Sue Gardner
<sgardner(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
1) There is a big unresolved question around whether, if
marginally-notable people ask to have their articles deleted, that
request should be granted. My sense -both from the discussion here
and other discussions elsewhere- is that many Wikipedians are very
strongly protective of their general right to retain even very
marginal BLPs. Presumably this is because notability is hard to
define, and they are worried about stupid across-the-board
interpretations that will result in massive deletionism. However,
other people strongly feel that the current quantity of BLPs about
less-notable people diminish the overall quality of the encyclopedia,
reduce our credibility, and run the risk of hurting real people.
There seems to be little consensus here. Roughly: some people seem
to strongly feel the bar for notability should be set higher, and
deletion requests generally granted: others seem to strongly feel the
current state is preferable. I would welcome discussion about how to
achieve better consensus on this issue.
I would quibble with this statement a little bit. There is a difference in
my mind between raising the notability bar and granting weight to subject
requests for deletion. There seems to be a growing agreement that marginally
notable subjects make for bad biographies and greater risk; there is very
little appetite for beginning deletion discussions or deleting articles upon
subject request.
So these two issues need to be separated, because indeed they are quite
separate.
Totally agreed, yes - thanks Nathan. In future I will separate these
two points.
One asks whether the subject of an article (be it a person,
corporation, or any other entity with living
representatives) should be
afforded some control over encyclopedia content, even as little as the
ability to request a deletion nomination; most Wikipedians would be against
this, I believe.
Hm. That's interesting.
As a basic principle, that makes sense to me - that article subjects
shouldn't have control over the content of the encyclopedia. But
-perhaps this is a little bit of hair-splitting- OTOH I don't think we
should take deletion requests any _less_ seriously than complaints
from disinterested observers. In other words - someone saying "the
article about me is awful and shouldn't be in an encyclopedia" should
be taken equally as seriously as someone saying "that article about X
is awful and doesn't deserve to be in an encyclopedia." In both
instances, the article needs be assessed on its own merits.
I say this because sometimes I think people may be tempted to refuse
deletion requests _because_ they come from the article subject. If
that indeed happens, I believe it's a mistake.
The other issue, of marginal notability and the
risk it poses to Wikipedia,
is much more relevant for this discussion.
Yes. I would love to see it discussed more here :-)
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