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

[Carcharoth]

On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 2:18 PM, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 23 March 2012 14:04, Carcharoth <carcharothwp at googlemail.com> wrote:
>
>> 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."
>
> Define "published biography". Two paragraphs? A page on a notable
> website? A news media article? A detailed criticism with life story
> mixed in? A whole book on them?

I know that this is the critical point, and I never said it was
cut-and-dried. It would need discussion, but let's actually discuss it
(with examples) instead of dismissing it. What I would say is that
Wikipedia biographies should have at least one source that

1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Mestel

For Leon Mestel, the qualifying sources would be his entry in Who's
Who and in Debrett's People of Today. Those are UK-specific sources.
What would the equivalent be in the USA?

2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Lieberman

For Philip Lieberman, you have brief biographical paragraphs in lists
of the contributors for volumes he has contributed to, plus the pages
published by his university that summarise his career. I haven't been
able to find anything else, but this will be the situation for a lot
of academics. While they are still actively engaged in research, you
often won't find anything beyond their university pages and brief
biographical summaries for conferences they speak at as invited guests
and in publications they contribute to. Ironically, his son has an
entry in Encyclopedia Britannica, but he doesn't:

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1798503/Daniel-Lieberman

3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_W._Moore

For Norman W. Moore you have an entry in Who's Who, an entry in
Burke's Peerage and Baronetage, biographical information in books he
has published. The example of this in the article is now a dead link,
but it can be seen here:

http://www.nhbs.com/oaks_dragonflies_and_people_tefno_117959.html&tab_tag=bio

You also have the example of a festschrift (this is a form of tribute,
which would in most cases count as a solid biographical reference).

4) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_E._M._Hedges

The final example, Robert Hedges, is more difficult. There will likely
be suitable material out there, but I haven't been able to find
anything that would really satisfy me yet.

By the way, having some suitable level of biographical material
published doesn't mean someone is automatically notable in terms of
Wikipedia inclusion criteria. But what I'm saying is that if someone
*doesn't* have some level of biographical material published, then
that (and the type of material it is) should weigh heavily in whether
to keep an article, how to treat deletion requests from the subject of
an article, and how to edit articles that are kept.

Carcharoth