[WikiEN-l] Autobiograpies

Fri Jan 2 00:19:29 UTC 2004

Fred-
> May I suggest you are all being too hard on folks. Here's a suggested rule
> of thumb: If someone generates 100 or more google hits and their
> autobiography is reasonably brief then let it go, especially if they are a
> regular wikipedia contributor. I think you are needlessly hassling folks.

Problem is verifiability, and highly idiosyncratic/POV stuff. These  
policies are really non-negotiable, and because self-written biographies  
are, from my experience, highly likely to be in violation, it's a good  
idea to recommend against starting them in the first place. But I see no  
problem with people contributing to their biographies -- we should extend  
a modicum of trust, but remove irrelevant stuff ("learned swimming at age  
3") and ask for documentation on key facts.

I do agree that people have been somewhat unreasonably hassled. I blame  
that on a certain contingent of Wikipedians who seem to be OK with every  
article as long as it is written in correct English. This makes it  
difficult to agree on clear policies, which in turn leads to aggressive,  
prolonged disputes.

To be fair, there is another contingent that has very high standards as to  
what kind of material should be included, which are often in conflict with  
a totally open project like ours. IMHO it would be good for Jimbo to make  
some of the criteria for inclusion more definitive. We should always look  
at "worst case" scenarios. Do we want a million auto-generated articles  
from public records, for example?

Regards,

Erik