[WikiEN-l] Analysis of BLP issues (Jimmy Wales should reconsider)

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David Gerard wrote:
> OK. What seems a practical first move?
> 
> Deleting all living bios is not going to fly. It just won't be accepted.
> 
> The layer of barely-notable bios could be vanquished with little
> trouble. The tricky part is "what is notable?" It's not going to be
> possible to come up with a hardline definition that doesn't result in
> gross systemic bias, editors deleting like deranged robots or both.
> 
> Is a new deletion rule on living bios worth trying? It's the most
> politically viable idea I've heard so far.
> 
> 
> - d.
> 
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Our current notability threshold is "what will survive afd on the 
average day" - all attempts to codify it as x number of sources have 
failed. And actually deserve to fail.

If we lower the threshold for an admin to close an afd as 'delete' (only 
for biographies of living people, mind), then over time, the afd 
inclusion threshold will rise in this area.

The advantage of this is we decrease the number of low-notability bios, 
and yet allow the community to decide what stays and what goes, if a 
case can be made, then we can keep it. Much better than legislating for 
the number or quantity of sources which will just end up in arbitrary 
rules and wikilawyering.

The other thing we might consider is a process of 'fix or die' for 
biographies. Low notability bios with critical content might be listed 
and unless properly sourced and neutrally re-written after x days they 
get deleted. This would remove the culture of people voting "this needs 
clean-up not deletion" and then walking away. (Yes, I realise there are 
problems with this - but perhaps we could chew on it).

(For the record I don't want to delete all, or even most, of our 
biographies - and if I've given that impression I apologize. I just 
think we need to find some strong solutions to reduce our collateral 
damage to low-notability individuals whom we give a very rough ride.)

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