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

[WereSpielChequers]

The problem's with biographical information range from undue weight to
the accumulation of dirt from the tabloids. But some of the solutions
offered would fix the wrong problem and possibly make things worse.
Generally in my experience the bios of sportspeople rarely get hostile
edits, at least not unless they fall out with the fans of their team or
country. But these are some of our youngest retiring celebrities, so a
policy of only writing their bios after death would simply drive many
sportswriters off the pedia. Politicians tend to be older by the time they
are notable and would be less extremely effected by this, at least a large
proprtion would be still in the public eye when they died. But we would
still have the next unintended consequence, the good neutral editors would
have been driven off and we would have fewer editors around to take the
nasty BLP violations out of articles on films, companies, political events
and crimes.

In my view if we want to improve our BLPs we need to work with the
community not against it. That means coming up with better tools to
identify and check hostile phrases and other problematic edits. It also
means better anti-vandalism tools - I'm keen to see flagged revisions
introduced on EN wiki the way it is on DE, but I suspect that first we need
some convincing research to prove which method is more effective at
removing vandalism - the one that ensures every edit by a non-established
user is screened by an established user - or the en wiki system where most
edits are looked at by many but some slip through completely unchecked. If
the WMF were to commission such research, and the research established that
some wikis had a more effective anti-vandalism approach than others, then
if the difference is significant it would be reasonable for the WMF to tell
the communities using less effective anti vandalism methods to either
upgrade or stop hosting BLPs.

WSC