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

[Carcharoth]

On Sat, Mar 24, 2012 at 11:37 AM, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

> Zee problem with this standard is that it would preclude having an
> article on the person currently running mali (admittedly the article
> isn't up to much but I think it could be argued that we should at
> least try).

There is nothing wrong with having brief 'biographical notes' on the
person currently running Mali. The problem comes when people get the
idea that they need to turn such notes into fully fledged biographical
articles and start scraping around for material and 'running ahead of
the sources'. Sometimes this is done with the best of intentions (I'm
effectively doing this for the four examples I mentioned earlier). But
when this involves biographies of living people, the standard that
should apply is:

i) Have a *clear* way for the article subject to make contact and
raise concerns. Currently, this is OTRS, but I suspect many people who
are the subject of biographical articles are unaware of the articles.

ii) Be respectful of the article subject and be prepared to work with
them if they raise concerns, and don't needlessly antagonise them. For
some editors, who chose to remain anonymous, this will be problematic,
as some people (understandably) will want to work with a known person,
not some anonymous screen name.

iii) Use very high standards of sourcing and be aware that limited or
restricted coverage in sources almost certainly results in errors.
Better to keep the article short and precise, rather than write too
much (your 'we should at least try') and run into problems.

In almost all cases, a stub with the basic information is better than
a loose aggregation of factoids. The problem is that well-meaning
people (and sometime less well-meaning people) come along later and
try and 'expand' what is there. I'd be in favour of locking down BLPs
once they reach a certain stage of development and requiring a very
high standard of sourcing for new additions.

Carcharoth