[Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

[Sue Gardner]

2009/3/4 Dominic <dmcdevit at cox.net>

> Sue Gardner wrote:
> > I am just clarifying - "default to delete unless consensus to keep" would
> be
> > a change from current state, right?
>
> In terms of policy, "default to delete" is the current state for BLPs.
> To be more exact, the important bit is: "If there is no rough consensus
> and the page is not a BLP describing a relatively unknown person, the
> page is kept and is again subject to normal editing, merging or
> redirecting as appropriate." However, that is at least somewhat new
> (several months old, I think), and I am not certain how universally
> administrators apply it at this point. The relevant policy is at
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:DP#Deletion_discussion>
>
>
I'm confused. Doesn't the current (English) policy say "if there's no
consensus ... the page is kept."  So, default to _keep_, rather than default
to delete...?

It's only the English policy, so I realize it's not necessarily
representative/reflective of any of the other language versions,
regardless.  But in general, my understanding is that "default to keep" is
more-or-less standard practice Wikipedia-wide (as much as all language
versions can be said to have a standard practice), and the English policy
seems to support that.

Recapping this piece of the thread: It seems to me that "default to delete"
is not widely considered satisfactory, if it is interpreted to mean an
automatic or near-automatic deletion upon request.  Human judgment needs to
be applied.

  Erik had proposed that articles which meet these three criteria be deleted
upon request: 1) they are not balanced and complete, 2) the subject is only
marginally notable, and 3) the subject wants the article deleted. This would
shift the bar towards a more deletionist stance for BLPs, but would preserve
articles which are either complete and balanced, _or_ which are about people
who are clearly self-evidently notable.

Assuming there is some consensus about what clearly self-evidently notable
means, or that some consensus could be created ..... does that proposal make
sense to people here?