[WikiEN-l] Deletion of unreferenced living person biographies

[Andrew Turvey]

----- "Charles Matthews" <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote: 
> 
> Andrew Turvey wrote: 
> > However, many editors think that neutral unreferenced articles shouldn't be PRODed or AFDed unless the proposer has first made an effort to find sources themselves (see guideline [[WP:BEFORE]]). 
> But PROD is good for this. 

Indeed, PROD is good. The two main problems are: 

a) PROD is not allowed for any article that has already been PRODed or AFDed, which means you have to go through the history first - making a 5 second job a 10 second job (an issue if you plan to do 50,000 articles by hand) and pushing you down a different route for 

b) If you PROD an article it can be de-PRODed by anyone, without having to give a reason, which means you have to take it to AFD. This is particularly a case if a dedicated inclusionist starts to follow your actions for whatever reason. 

To answer Tom's point: what's the problem with neutral unreferenced BLP articles? I would say: 

a) Clearly attack articles (or negative information in unreferenced BLPs) is a more serious issue 

b) Misinformation in BLP articles generally has a greater potential to cause that in other articles because they affect peoples' lives more directly, and hence we should take more care over them 

c) Even apparantly neutral misinformation has the potential to cause annoyance, irritation or harm - for instance: "Andrew Turvey is Jewish, Andrew Turvey was born in Iran, Andrew Turvey went to Yale University". This is why WP:BLP states "We must get the article right. Be very firm about the use of high quality references"

Andrew