On 24 March 2012 16:23, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)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.