[WikiEN-l] Unsourced biographies

[Phil Sandifer]

A similar proposal to this was floated earlier - it's still a very  
damaging idea.

Consider [[Category:Senegalese politicians]]. All very notable,  
important sorts of people. About half of the articles are unsourced,  
generally stubs.

Now, yes, we obviously can find sources for articles on all the prime  
ministers of Senegal. That's not the issue. The issue is that there  
are very few editors working in this area - often not enough to  
handle a wave of PRODs on their articles. It's an area of high  
importance to the project and low participation. To add a rule that  
allows for deletion in this area makes it far too easy to overwhelm  
these vital areas with deletions and gut our coverage with no  
attention to whether or not the articles are actually erroneous.

BLPs and sourcing are a problem, but they need a far more subtle  
solution than this.

Best,
Phil Sandifer
sandifer at english.ufl.edu

You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a  
boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.

 >


On Apr 26, 2007, at 2:49 AM, 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.
>
> 	If you can improve the article by sourcing it, please edit
> 	this page and do so. You may remove this message if you add
> 	reliable independent sources. This template should not be
> 	removed without first sourcing the article.
>
> 	The article may be deleted if this message remains in place
> 	for 14 days. (This template was added: 26 April 2007.)
>
> 	If you created the article, please don't take offense.
> 	Instead, please improve the article so that it is acceptable
> 	according to the policy on biographies of living individuals.
>
> 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.
>
> There's also a debate at [[WP:AN]] about this.
>
> Guy (JzG)
> -- 
> http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
>
>
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