[WikiEN-l] "Corporate Representatives for Ethical Wikipedia Engagement"

[Carcharoth]

On Wed, Apr 4, 2012 at 1:47 PM, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
> BLP is a good idea and we got it for good reasons.  These recent developments, however, forget that we are *an encyclopedia*. It's into barking mad territory.
>
> No. We will not go to removing bios on demand on my watch.

OK, but what do you call a "bio". Compare these two articles:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lester_Brain

[A random FA-level biographical article]

And any article from this category:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Finnish_winter_sports_biography_stubs

[Those are *not* encyclopedic articles, they are placeholders that
might one day become encyclopedic articles - is that standard
acceptable for BLPs?]

Or indeed any article from this category:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:People_stubs

We *should* have a category of BLP stubs, but I can't find it. Maybe
someone can cross-reference the BLP category and the "people stub"
category (and its sub-categories) and find out how many are BLPs.

The point being that some articles are *never* going to be more than
stubs. A stub is arguably not a biographical article, but only a
placeholder, waiting to see if any reliable source will ever bother
writing more about that person during the rest of their life. The
answer in most cases is "no" (nothing more gets written). Either that,
or it is a placeholder waiting for Wikipedians to get around to
expanding the article.

There is a good argument to be made that all BLPs should be kept out
of mainspace and kept as drafts until formally assessed at being
reasonably complete and reasonably well-written. At some point, merely
being "referenced" is not enough.

And then you have people trying (and failing, though they may not
realise they are failing) to write so-called biographical articles
about every example within a field. Mainly caused by overly lax
interpretation of the GNG (general notability guideline). To take a
specific example of radio (topical at the moment), have a look at
these halls of fame:

http://www.radioacademy.org/hall-of-fame/
http://www.radiohof.org/

It would be simple to incorporate something like that into a SNG
(specific notability guideline), but I doubt that will be possible in
the current climate.

Carcharoth