[WikiEN-l] Unsourced biographies

[Andrew Gray]

On 26/04/07, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> > I started a discussion at [[WT:BLP]] on the proposal that we implement
> > a variant of proposed deletion as follows:
> >
> >       It is proposed that this article be deleted as a biography of
> >       a living individual which does not cite its references or
> >       sources.
>
> Based on what I saw when going through some of that
> {{unreferenced}}-containing BLP list, the rate of false positives could
> be in the range of 90% or so. Having deletion be the default result of
> such a tag could result in losing a lot of useful stuff.

Are we planning to tag these automatically from the list generated
earlier? I don't think that's the best way to go about it, due to the
false positives, but if you do, some suggestions to make it work more
smoothly:

* Aim to tag [a fraction] of the unreferenced living bios each week -
perhaps one in six? That'll mean the whole set has hit the 14-day
limit after two months, a reasonable timeframe for a long cleanup, and
avoids completely swamping people in one go.

* Ensure the tag populates an "unsourced biographies marked for
deletion" category, which will give people wanting to clean it up a
good position to start on and an easy way of seeing the response rate.

* Widely publicise that this is going to happen, so people can help work on it.

* Keep a list of articles tagged and then later detagged, to run a
check on later to see how well it worked.

> > The idea would be to give a bureaucracy-free route to removing
> > *unsourced* biographies.  The unsourced condition may be the result of
> > removal of questionable sources for negative statements, that should
> > not make a difference.
>
> Why not use {{prod}}?

I did a little test on this a while back, taking the worst kind of
unsourced biographies - the kind that are absolute libel if they
transpire to be untrue - and marking them for prodding unless sourced.
The usual response was to source and remove the tag, but a couple of
times it ended up being removed with no sourcing and brisk comments
about "notable topic, take to afd".

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk