On 8-Sep-06, at 9:34 AM, David Gerard wrote:
I agree, this is a major problem when working with press and also constitutes a large percentage of large-issue communications with the Foundation Office and with OTRS.
The [[WP:BLPP]] addresses many of the concerns, and is a great idea. However, this treats the symptoms of two fundamental issue which en.wp is not addressing: Who is noteworthy enough for inclusion in an encyclopedia, and what/how much should be said regarding living persons. These two issues cannot be resolved by a technical solution.
The Patrol is a reasonable stop-gap measure which will address the problems we have now, but it is unlikely to scale well, nor is it a solution for all wikipedias. I would encourage the en.wp community to create a few objective measures akin to the USA State of Florida judicial "Public Persons" test. It seems to me that any encyclopedic living persons biography must be about a person who is, at the very least, a public person (that is, someone reasonably well-known or in a position where they are likely to be addressing a general public audience, such as politicians for public office, newspaper editors, actors, radio announcers, clergy members, corporate spokespersons, &c.)
It is not reasonable to have large, in-depth biographies about living persons. Too much information makes is included, often with such detail that make an en.wp article a considerable risk to the subject's privacy and security (such as identity theft, among other things.) Deep articles are prone to bias, either showing the subject unfavourably or too favourably, and often give undue weight to some minor element of their life to push a point of view (a classic example are US Congressional members, whose articles almost universally contain extensive coverage of the most recent few years of public service - particularly perceived scandals - and may completely lack any mention of previous public positions or private careers.) Subjects can and do dramatically alter their lives and goals, and en.wp articles are not able to be relevant to these changes.
For these and other reasons, en.wp should develop policy limiting living persons articles to primary career facts and academic achievements, current positions held or endeavors, and minimal personal facts. By presenting a minimal set of biographic facts the community can circumvent a large number of internal and external conflicts, whilst avoiding maintenance issues and keeping the articles relevant until such time as the subjects may be viewed in historical context.
</rant>
Amgine