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

[Andreas Kolbe]

I've written an essay incorporating some of the ideas expressed here by
David, Carcharoth, Charles and myself.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:ADAM

I've also posted a link to the essay on WT:BLP, and suggested that it might
be helpful to get the "no eventualism" principle anchored more firmly in
BLP policy. Could we continue that part of the discussion there?

Andreas

On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 7:07 PM, Carcharoth <carcharothwp at googlemail.com>wrote:

> On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 6:07 PM, Andreas Kolbe <jayen466 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > "No eventualism" is one principle that I would like to see spelled out in
> > BLP policy, in the Writing style section.
> >
> >
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons#Writing_style
> >
> > People do tend to treat biographies like a research pad for all the
> things
> > that an author might justifiably want to include in a five-volume,
> > 2,000-page biography.
> >
> > The problem is, the other 1,999 pages never turn up, leaving something –
> > often something trivial, titillating, or unflattering – that might be
> > worthy of mention on page 1,547 as the biography's main point.
>
> That's a good point. I recently edited a BLP to help clean it up, and
> was struck by two points:
>
> 1) It was difficult to know where to start and when to stop, as there
> is a need to not leave a BLP in a half-finished state, even if you are
> stubbing it down and slowly expanding, as even slow expansion can
> still leave it somewhat skewed and looking 'unfinished' (even if
> better than before). Those making subsequent additions need to bear
> that in mind as well.
>
> 2) If no-one else has written substantially about that person, it is a
> very uncomfortable feeling that you might be the first person to be
> doing that, and you start to wonder what right *anyone* has to write
> about a living person without working with that person to make sure it
> is accurate.
>
> This veers into the realm of discussing authorised and unauthorised
> biographies. Doing an unauthorised biography of a famous person and
> getting it published can make the author money, and most publishing
> firms will only publish if it is accurate and non-libellous. But doing
> short pages on non-notable or borderline notable people is something
> entirely different, and the motivations are often entirely different.
>
> Motivation is something that should be looked at as well. In my case,
> the articles are people working in science and that interests me. But
> is that enough of a reason? What about someone who wants to write
> about the leader of some small obscure country on the other side of
> the world? (And then you have the classic case of the motivation being
> to do a hatchet job on someone). Sure, the mantra is to use reliable
> sources and be faithful to the sources, but it is still very different
> (and difficult) writing about a living person who can (in theory) turn
> up and object to what has been written.
>
> Carcharoth
>
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