Eugene van der Pijll wrote:
>doc schreef:
>
>
>>Courtesy of Messed rocker, we now have a list of biographies of living
>>people that are marked as lacking citations. There are over 8,300 of
>>them - and that's just the ones marked as unreferenced.
>>
>>To those that say the system roughly works, and we shouldn't contemplate
>> changing our inclusionism, I say, fix this. No more saying 'it can be
>>done', if it can, do it.
>>
>>
>I guess the list shows that {{unreferenced}} is overused. Most of the
>articles on the list are not in the least problematic.
>
>
That may be true, in the sense that not every unreferenced article
raises major ethical concerns. Though it's undeniable that we have
seriously flawed articles, and if that includes so much as one out of a
hundred of these, it's far too many. Maybe we should delete most of our
overused templates and encourage people to actually work on articles
instead of playing with tags.
--Michael Snow
Hello,
Let's face it: BLPs pose a problem. I want to suggest a few ideas that could
resolve some of the issues we face.
1. BLPs should be of sufficiently notable people that they appear in at
least one external encyclopedic source, preferably print. This would include
other encyclopedias, "Who's Who," or other biographical indices.
2. In the event that the person attained fame because of sudden
circumstances, they must be covered in at least three distinct newspapers that can be
cited.
3. All facts added to articles about living people should have at least two
distinct and independent sources.
4. In the event that an LP or and LP's representative complains via OTRS or
by calling the office, the article will be soft protected until the matter
can be investigated. If an edit war ensues, the article will be protected
immediately until the matter can be investigated.
5. All BLP articles will contain information, prominently displayed on the
Talk Page (or perhaps even on the article itself), of how the person or her
representatives might express formal reservations to the WMF about the content.
This will be in the form of a banner with a link to a special OTRS email
address created specifically for these types of problems.
6. All complainants will be encouraged to list their problems and suggest
means of correcting them.
These are just some ideas. Feel free to consider some or all of them, as you
see fit. Yes, BLPs are a problem, but there are ways that they can be
handled effectively and to the satisfaction of everyone. The first step is to back
away from posturing and show a willingness to compromise. It will not solve
all the problems, but it will show our goodwill.
Danny
************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com.
daniwo59(a)aol.com wrote:
>Let's face it: BLPs pose a problem. I want to suggest a few ideas that could
>resolve some of the issues we face.
>1. BLPs should be of sufficiently notable people that they appear in at
>least one external encyclopedic source, preferably print. This would include
>other encyclopedias, "Who's Who," or other biographical indices.
>2. In the event that the person attained fame because of sudden
>circumstances, they must be covered in at least three distinct newspapers that can be
>cited.
>
>
Is #2 supposed to be an alternative to #1? In other words, would an
article be justified by satisfying either one?
It sort of seems that way, but I don't know if that was intended or not.
For example, to take a case that was much debated in online venues other
than ours, I don't think Kathy Sierra or Chris Locke would meet #1, but
by now they certainly have tripped the wire on #2. Which goes to the
point of Wikipedia's oft-cited ability to respond quickly to topics of
current interest.
Whether that means we should have articles about them specifically, or
about the incident instead, is another issue, but I'm partial to
editorial judgments to merge problematic topics into more suitable
locations anyway.
--Michael Snow
I'm completely stunned by this thread:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_notic…
Looking at the whole situation I'm not too concerned about Martinp23's
block, which would have been reasonable if the information leading to it had
been true (but it wasn't). The anonymous User:84.211.71.5 was not running a
bot and was not removing legitimately "fair use" images either. The images
he was removing failed the first fair use criterion "no free image could
serve the same purpose" and thus were copyvios, mostly pictures of Japanese
pop musicians.
I logged onto freenode and spoke to some administrators about this, but
nobody really seemed to care. One of them said I should take it to the
mailing list, so here I am.
That we have users who are clueless or apathetic about copyright is not a
nothing new, I realize, but it concerns me how many of them are
administrators.
> (ec) Should we rollback their changes? Looks like (almost) all those Fair
> Use images are legit right now - Alison☺ 23:29, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
They are? All these people are alive and still performing. The only ones I
didn't tag for deletion (out of roughly 75 images removed by 84.211.71.5)
were one or two photos of bands which have broken up, as the certainty that
they can be replaced is less absolute.
> Yeah, I'm going to roll them back. Veinor (talk to me) 23:31, 20 April
> 2007 (UTC)
"Oh noes, vandalbot that is removing all our pretty pictures"
> Looking through the edits, it seems that he was iterating through various
> categories (or some other system) of Japanese musicians and bands, filling
> in the infobox with the "no image" placeholder (see [1]), seemingly
> regardless of whether something was there already or not. Mass rollback is
> probably appropriate here, as long as the images are checked after
> restoration (those that I've looked at seem to be valid uses). Thanks,
> Martinp23 23:34, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
But if you'd checked any ten of them, you would have found at least eight
copyvios.
I've been advised to stop commenting at WP:AN/I lest I be labeled a troll,
but I would like some idea of how to address a community that handles image
policy issues like this so poorly.
And what can be done about this fork of Template:Promophoto?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:HelloProject-Photo
If you read the fine print you'll see it implies that WP:NFCC#1 is being
waived for J-Pop, which can't possibly be true... I think.
Charlotte
--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/J-Pop-and-the-art-of-fair-use-abuse-tf3622903.html#a1…
Sent from the English Wikipedia mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
In a message dated 4/22/2007 2:49:37 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
morven(a)gmail.com writes:
I agree. Just as police officers have a distorted view of society
through dealing with its worst elements constantly, OTRS volunteers
are constantly subjected to the worst, most problematic articles on
Wikipedia. It's easy to start thinking these are representative,
rather than outliers.
I agree with Shimgray's response. What more, when someone feels libeled, we
cannot defend ourselves by saying, "Well, at least our other stuff is
accurate."
Danny
************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com.
On 22 Apr 2007 at 16:33:50 -0400, "Jeff Raymond"
<jeff.raymond(a)internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:
> An entire biographical article on Michael Richards balanced too far on the
> n-word incident, or the Alec Baldwin thing from this week, yeah, there's
> an issue. What about the astronaut who went cross country in an alleged
> attempt to murder her jilted lover? Guess what - her biography's going to
> be based on that one incident, no matter what the eventual outcome. This
> isn't a bad thing, either - it's simply reality.
And those examples are actually ones that are more favorably disposed
towards having relatively balanced bios, given that they (Richards,
Baldwin, and whatzhername the astronaut) actually did have bios
before their respective incidents due to their general notability in
their professions. People who were completely unknown until an
incident erupts around them have even less shot at balance, and it
would make more sense to title the article after the incident rather
than the person (assuming the incident is notable enough for an
article at all).
--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/
Gwern asked:
>Would #2 require independent, differing articles, or would
>reprints (of stuff over the AP, say) count towards this? This
>would be a relevant questions for at least one BLP I remember
>being discussed here recently.
I debated that with myself before posting. The truth is that I am not sure.
What do other people think?
Danny
************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com.
Let's make one thing clear. While bios can cause problems if they're
inaccurate or even libellous, that doesn't mean they're more important.
Every articles should be accurate and vandalism-free -- which is why I hope
Stable Versions will roll out very soon.
With all this talk about biographies of living people I thought I'd take
another angle. To see where we're failing we have to take a look at how
living bios are patrolled for vandalism and other problems. Are they
randomly checked on recent changes, are they checking by people that
watchlist the article? How many people are involved and can they do the job
without spending all their time on it (in other words: is it scaleable?)
I'm asking you guys to brainstorm on things we can do to make the job of
keeping bios clean without going through radical steps.
(I'm talking about articles that could happily exist without a focus on
negative material. You can't focus on something positive with articles on
convincted murderers or scammers, but that doesn't affect their encyclopedic
qualities.)
Here's my ideas on how to improve living bio patrol which nicely tie in with
[[WP:IRE]]. I'm going the technical route, but perhaps someone else can come
up with other ideas. In all cases we need to make sure the checks are done
by people who know their job. I appreciate newbies, but if they don't know
how to source material or what constitutes a reliable source, they won't be
able to help effectively.
* Stable Versions
* Put User:HumanBot and have it cycle through every living bio so people can
check everything since the list check.
* Have a special external program do the same. Perhaps give the vandal tools
a built in functionality that focuses on bios
* Until SV is up, have some bot list articles somewhere that haven't been
checked but should've been. (Vandalism that gets through is usually material
that doesn't get noticed on RC patrol)
*How is WikiProject Biography doing on article patrol?
Mgm
On 22 Apr 2007 at 15:27:00 +0100, doc <doc.wikipedia(a)ntlworld.com>
wrote:
> We're not talking about Brandt and mildly critical stuff on a
> well-written and highly monitored article. We are not talking about
> people trying to cover up neutral reports of the truth. That's a straw-man.
So, basically, what you're saying is that there's a category of bios
that should perhaps be deleted because they're too little-watched and
little-maintained to be certain of being free from vandalism,
malicious POV, etc. which could harm their subjects... but that
Daniel Brandt's article is *not* in that category, thanks to all the
agitating he has done and the resulting heavy attention paid to his
article?
If that's the case, and if a policy is ultimately enacted that
reflects it, then it would be interesting to see how Brandt reacts to
it, if some other bios get deleted under this standard but not his
own. If his goal is purely public-spirited, to get some rights on
the part of bio subjects who are at high risk of harm under the
current system, then he should consider it a victory. If his goal is
more self-centered, about wanting to suppress his own bio and not
giving a damn about anybody else's except where it helps his own
case, then he'll keep fighting.
But where it comes to his legal threats, his potential case has
continually weakened. First it was "Wikipedia is libeling me now!"
Then it was "Even if they're not libeling me now, their system
inherently means that they're likely to be libeling me in the
future." Then, once his article got so heavily watched that it was
unlikely to have any kind of persistent libel in it, it retreated to
"Their system inherently means that they're likely to be libeling
*somebody else* in the future, and thus having me in that system at
all is an assault on me, even if nothing libelous about me
specifically is likely to be there." And even that argument would
likely go away if a policy like the one you propose were enacted.
Hence, the potential harm of his threats have retreated from
"Wikipedia will probably win, but it might drag on a while in the
courts and cost some legal bills to defend" to "It's likely to be
tossed out of court very quickly, and might even result in the
plaintiff being ordered to pay the defendant's legal bills."
--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/