[Foundation-l] Interesting legal action

FT2 ft2.wiki at gmail.com
Sun May 22 15:51:24 UTC 2011


"Dead wood" has been suggested, but I strongly disagree with it. While there
are issues and it needs careful work (nobody's denying that) I'm not seeing
hard evidence that so many BLPs - even minor BLPs - are the train wreck that
some represent nor as hard to manage as some portray.

What I wouldn't mind seeing is one of three easy ways to improve BLPs:

   - *Creation limited to editors with some kind of non-trivial track record
   * (and a suggestion/request mechanism so IP users and newer editors
   lacking that record can contribute suggestions)
   - *Creation of BLPs always in some kind of [[Draft:]] namespace or BLP
   incubator* that's NOINDEXed and not allowed into mainspace until of a
   reasonable quality of sourcing and balance, with [[Draft:]] articles removed
   or blanked after 10 or 14 days of inactivity.
   - *Community support for the principle behind notability*, rather than
   the lazy version. Too many users still assume that verifiability + coverage
   = notability. Notability is a *proxy measure* for enduring or lasting
   significance -- not just brief coverage, promotional coverage, minor or
   transient coverage, coverage that doesn't speak to lasting human cultural
   significance. More emphasis on questioning whether a subject really has true
   historic significance as a reference item, and less reliance on a mention
   here or there, would probably help.

We're in a world of changing data and information. We need to be responsive
as well as high quality, and we do that best in the same way that the whole
project was created - by innovating ways to achieve it. If BLP's are not
satisfactory then we develop and learn how to do BLP's well. Not by merely
refusing to host biographies under the same content standards as other
content. Not really inclined to endorse defeatism.

FT2



On Sat, May 21, 2011 at 10:08 PM, Sarah <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:

> We could solve that by hosting only BLPs that have already had
> encyclopedic or extensive treatment elsewhere, i.e. have already been
> the subject of (a) an encyclopedia article; or (b) a book or book
> chapter from a reliable publisher; or (c) a profile or in-depth piece
> in a high-quality newspaper (one about the person, not about events
> the person was involved in).
>
> I know this has been suggested before, but it's coming time to
> consider it seriously.
>
>


More information about the foundation-l mailing list