[WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles

[Carcharoth]

I'm posting here an argument I made in a recent AfD, explaining why I
think more stringent notability requirements are needed for
biographical articles:

"The right point to assess someone's notability and write a definitive
article about them is at that point (or sometimes when they retire).
Any BLP is only a work in progress until that point is reached. [Some
say] "Notability, once attained, does not diminish." That might seem
true, but what is being assessed is not the subject's true notability,
but a fluctuating 'notability during lifetime' that can wax and wane
over time, with the true level of notability not being established
until someone's career or life is over. Some people gain awards and
recognitions and have long and diverse careers and have glowing
obituaries written about them, and pass into the history of the field
they worked in. Others have more pedestrian careers.

The point is that it is rarely possible to make an accurate assessment
until the right point is reached. What you end up with if you have low
standards for allowing articles on BLPs is a huge number of borderline
BLPs all across Wikipedia (heavily weighted towards contemporary
coverage [...]), the vast majority of the subjects of which will not
have prominent (or any) obituaries published about them, and in 50
years time or so the articles will look a bit silly, cobbled together
from various scraps and items published during the subject's lifetime,
but with no proper, independent assessment of their place in history.

It has been said before, but that is why specialist biographical
dictionaries often have as one of their inclusion criteria that
someone has to be dead before having an article. I'm not saying we
should go that far, but there is a case for many BLPs of saying 'if
there is no current published biography, wait until this career/life
is over and make an assessment at that point', and until then either
delete or have a bland stub."

The above is why I rarely edit BLPs. It is far easier (and more
satisfying) to edit about a topic once it is reasonably 'complete',
not ongoing. The latter statements applies to more than BLPs
(biographies of living people), for example it applies to any 'news'
topic, but it does apply especially to BLPs as they are a minefield
because they require careful maintenance.

To give some examples of articles I've edited or created that are BLPs:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Mestel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Lieberman
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_W._Moore
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_E._M._Hedges

Those aren't very good examples. What I'm really looking for is a way
to illustrate how some people become notable, and then fade into
obscurity, while others maintain notability and accumulate coverage in
reliable sources throughout their lives, rather than only briefly. The
latter are good topics for encyclopedia articles, but the latter tend
not to be. Is there a way to argue for more stringent notability
requirements that won't get shot down? Essentially, what I'm saying
Wikipedia needs to avoid is bequeathing a lot of stubby articles to
future generations of editors who will get stuck trying to find out
anything more about people who have faded back into obscurity and for
whom it is often difficult to ascertain if they are still living.

Carcharoth