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

[David Gerard]

On 24 March 2012 16:23, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:

> I do think we have a problem with writing about things too soon, but
> it isn't so extreme that we should wait until people are retired or
> dead to write about them. I did have a policy proposal prepared a few
> years ago that I never really proposed because I thought it was too
> unlikely to be successful. It was to set a limit on how recent
> something can be and still appear on Wikipedia. I can't remember what
> the limit I was going to propose was, but it was about a month - if
> something happened less than a month ago, don't write about it on
> Wikipedia. Write about it on Wikinews and either link to it from an
> existing Wikipedia article or create a redirect to it if the subject
> is new or newly notable. Then, after a month once everything has
> settled down, we can write a decent article (as opposed to one where
> every paragraph starts "As of").


You're not going to get that through for general events (natural
disasters or revolutions), because they've long been heralded as one
of en:wp's great strengths.

It *might* be swingable in the case of BLPs. The question then, of
course, is: in a quickly-written article about a disaster or a
revolution, are you allowed to name anyone who's alive? And you *know*
there are Wikipedia rules lawyers who will say "no" and try to enforce
it.


- d.