[WikiEN-l] An example of a bad biography

[Philip Sandifer]

On Apr 29, 2008, at 2:14 PM, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> 1. Policies biased towards inclusionism mean that we have targets like
> this to start with, and people are afraid to delete them because they
> may get beaten up for being "overzealous" by people who think it is no
> big deal to call a private person names like this.

I really wish you'd stop making overly broad statements like this.  
There are tons of important inclusion/exclusion debates on Wikipedia,  
and the rules covering BLPs have effects elsewhere. It's a lot easier  
to say that we wouldn't lose much by not having a stub on Bob Kinnear.  
But the broader effects of what you're suggesting - that stub BLPs  
should be immediately treated as serious candidates for deletion - is  
going to have tremendous collateral damage because people *do*  
implement deletion policy overzealously. If you say that BLPs that  
can't be expanded beyond a stub are speedies you will get a huge swath  
of BLPs that simply are stubs deleted, and attempts to recreate stubs  
on them on the grounds that they can be expanded will be deleted as  
recreations.

That's a much larger price than you're treating it as, and given the  
impact you have when you make declarations like this I think it's  
irresponsible for you to make vague motions in this direction. If you  
want a change in practice or policy, propose one so it can be debated  
or implement one. This sort of drive-by "this article was a bad thing  
and I'm very disappointed in you all" is unhelpful.

> 2. Policies which make it harder than it should be to semi-protect  
> things.
>

You mean like the Foundation policy expressly protecting the right of  
anonymous editors to edit, and the view that protected pages are  
considered harmful?

We're going to have an error rate of either unnecessarily protecting  
pages or leaving pages open for vandalism. We have always, based on  
the early leadership of this project, opted for vandalism instead of  
over-protection. If you want to swing that pendulum the other way, OK  
- plenty of people have advocated for the semi-protection of all BLPs.  
They get shot down because of the fact that the right of anonymous IPs  
to edit is a Foundation issue. There's not much room to change things  
here unless you have a specific change to implement, in which case  
you're basically the person who can do so.

-Phil