A Serious Solution to the BLP Problem Options

[John Limey]

Well the final and long-awaited part of On Wikipedia's series "Who's On Wikipedia" is out (written, unlike the first 5 parts by yours truly). In it we present the results of a survey of BLP subjects, and provide what we think is one of the most common sense solutions to the BLP problem. Please do take a look.

[Milton Roe]

Well the final and long-awaited part of On Wikipedia's series "Who's On Wikipedia" is out (written, unlike the first 5 parts by yours truly). In it we present the results of a survey of BLP subjects, and provide what we think is one of the most common sense solutions to the BLP problem. Please do take a look.

Almost all of the people we contacted were extremely happy to talk to us about their biographies. Most of them asked for our help in correcting problems with their biographies and several wanted to know about contributing to Wikipedia. In general, however, despite the high self-awarded marks for familiarity with Wikipedia, the subjects were clueless about how Wikipedia works, who to talk to about errors, etc.

(IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/biggrin.gif) Well, at least we know how WP could improve without pissing off the public. And amazing thing is that the pubic is not more pissed.

The idea of a "contact us if you're the BLP subject and you don't like it" tab, was floated by yours truly, here on WR, some time ago. I'm glad you thought of it independently, Limey. It is an obvious "fix." Provided the person on the other end doesn't screw it up by saying "prove it." Which, of course, they will.

[Sarcasticidealist]

The second recommendation is good as far as it goes, but trying to implement it is only going to expose the BLP problem's root: there are far more BLPs than Wikipedia's intelligent, ethical, and process-aware editors can maintain. It would indeed be a very good thing if all BLP subjects were aware of their articles and had the contact information of one of the aforementioned intelligent, ethical, etc. editors with whom they could raise any problems, but I don't think implementing that project-wide is viable for the same reason that individually checking every one of Wikipedia's BLPs isn't viable: there are too damned many.

For this reason, the first recommendation seems more helpful. In point of fact, something like that recommendation already exists: the BLP talk page banner includes a note reading "If you are connected to the subject of this article and need help with issues related to it, please see this page." The problems are that the notice is somewhere that most subjects aren't going to notice it, and that the page is unhelpful in the sense of being long, convoluted, and, incredibly, does not actually contain the OTRS e-mail address (it does contain a link to this page, which does mention the e-mail address, at the very bottom).

[Jon Awbrey]

The second recommendation is good as far as it goes, but trying to implement it is only going to expose the BLP problem's root: there are far more BLPs than Wikipedia's intelligent, ethical, and process-aware editors can maintain.

Also Known As — We Who Are About To Be Banned (If Not Already)

I'll leave it to Peter to work up the Latin …

Jon (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/tongue.gif)

[GlassBeadGame]

Well the final and long-awaited part of On Wikipedia's series "Who's On Wikipedia" is out (written, unlike the first 5 parts by yours truly). In it we present the results of a survey of BLP subjects, and provide what we think is one of the most common sense solutions to the BLP problem. Please do take a look.

Almost all of the people we contacted were extremely happy to talk to us about their biographies. Most of them asked for our help in correcting problems with their biographies and several wanted to know about contributing to Wikipedia. In general, however, despite the high self-awarded marks for familiarity with Wikipedia, the subjects were clueless about how Wikipedia works, who to talk to about errors, etc.

(IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/biggrin.gif) Well, at least we know how WP could improve without pissing off the public. And amazing thing is that the pubic is not more pissed.

The idea of a "contact us if you're the BLP subject and you don't like it" tab, was floated by yours truly, here on WR, some time ago. I'm glad you thought of it independently, Limey. It is an obvious "fix." Provided the person on the other end doesn't screw it up by saying "prove it." Which, of course, they will.

Won't work. You underestimate the extent that Wkipedia is a revenge engine. Engaging the Wikipedians with ther own internal process will only result in 15 year old's telling the already aggrieved BLP subject that they "deserve"coverage, like it or not. If they persist they might even be pursued off wiki in ther jobs, etc. As always you got to separate the editorial decision away from unilateral Wikipedian control or it is just more wack-a-mole problem moving. This could be done with independent outside dispute resolution made available to concerned BLP subjects. Otherwise people will regret even trying to engage the Wikipedians "constructively."

[Milton Roe]

For this reason, the first recommendation seems more helpful. In point of fact, something like that recommendation already exists: the BLP talk page banner includes a note reading "If you are connected to the subject of this article and need help with issues related to it, please see this page." The problems are that the notice is somewhere that most subjects aren't going to notice it, and that the page is unhelpful in the sense of being long, convoluted, and, incredibly, does not actually contain the OTRS e-mail address (it does contain a link to this page, which does mention the e-mail address, at the very bottom).

Sounds like a great scavenger hunt!

Nevermind-- all projects left to be done by programmers alone, come out looking like that. Nested little puzzles with easter egg surprises far down the tree. It's how THEY think.

Engineers, too, sometimes.

===============

Where's the OFF switch??

Down on the lower far back corner, under the flange. Reach back and you can feel it.

WHY?

So you don't turn it off accidently.

But WHAT IF I *&%ING WANT TO TURN IT OFF ON PURPOSE?!

Well, you should have read the manual. It's here on page 34, section on Normal Operations, first paragraph on Deactivation, right there.

(IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/pinch.gif) (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/tearinghairout.gif)

[Sarcasticidealist]

Won't work. You underestimate the extent that Wkipedia is a revenge engine. Engaging the Wikipedians with ther own internal process will only result in 15 year old's telling the already aggrieved BLP subject that they "deserve"coverage, like it or not. If they persist they might even be pursued off wiki in ther jobs, etc. As always you got to separate the editorial decision away from unilateral Wikipedian control or it is just more wack-a-mole problem moving. This could be done with independent outside dispute resolution made available to concerned BLP subjects. Otherwise people will regret even trying to engage the Wikipedians "constructively."

The treatment of BLP subjects who complain to OTRS is, in my experience, a couple orders of magnitude better than those who don't. Making it easier for aggrieved subjects to contact OTRS won't resolve the systemic problems, obviously, but I think it will do a lot of good in individual cases.

Plus, who knows - if it increases BLP complaints to OTRS by a large enough volume, Somebody might do something about some of the systemic problems, too - that's probably just mindless optimism rearing its head, though.

[John Limey]

The idea of a "contact us if you're the BLP subject and you don't like it" tab, was floated by yours truly, here on WR, some time ago. I'm glad you thought of it independently, Limey. It is an obvious "fix." Provided the person on the other end doesn't screw it up by saying "prove it." Which, of course, they will.

Great minds think alike indeed.

The second recommendation is good as far as it goes, but trying to implement it is only going to expose the BLP problem's root: there are far more BLPs than Wikipedia's intelligent, ethical, and process-aware editors can maintain. It would indeed be a very good thing if all BLP subjects were aware of their articles and had the contact information of one of the aforementioned intelligent, ethical, etc. editors with whom they could raise any problems, but I don't think implementing that project-wide is viable for the same reason that individually checking every one of Wikipedia's BLPs isn't viable: there are too damned many.

I generally respect you, but I must say that this is absolutely the sort of rhetoric that leads to absolutely nothing getting done on Wikipedia ever. "There are too damned many" BLPs, so don't try to fix any of them? Contacting even just one BLP subject makes the problem better for everyone. Contact 10,000, and you've started to do something significant. Sadly, the rhetoric of Wikipedia often seems to go: "Oh that solution's not perfect, therefore we will not attempt it" even when the status quo is completely intolerable. Wikipedia needs to do something, and mounting a grand campaign like the one I have suggested will do a lot of good, even if it eventually runs out of steam.

Perhaps, you were going more in the direction of "there are too damned many" BLPs so we have to delete a sizable chunk of them. If so, I won't disagree with you, but I think we all know that mass deletion of BLPs won't happen any time soon. I think the real beauty of contacting all the BLP subjects is that it's a solution even a radical inclusionist could love.

[Sarcasticidealist]

Perhaps, you were going more in the direction of "there are too damned many" BLPs so we have to delete a sizable chunk of them. If so, I won't disagree with you, but I think we all know that mass deletion of BLPs won't happen any time soon. I think the real beauty of contacting all the BLP subjects is that it's a solution even a radical inclusionist could love.

That interpretation is the correct one. I'm all for contacting as many BLP subjects as is feasible, I'm just saying that as long as the number of BLPs remains where it is, "as many BLP subjects as is feasible" < "a significant proportion of BLP subjects".

Let me illustrate what I mean: if somebody wants to design some kind of tracking system so we know who's already been contacted, I will contact 100 BLP subjects. It will take me quite a while, but I'm a student with a fair amount of free time and god knows I'm unhesitant to waste some of it on Wikipedia. Now all you need is, what, 8,000 more like me? You can say that if Wikipedia has the manpower to *write* all those BLPs, it should have the manpower to contact its subjects, and you'd be right, but "should" doesn't really enter into things, as a practical consideration.

Incidentally, back when I used to create BLPs, I always used to contact the subject, so I agree with your general thrust; it's just that it amounts to treatment of symptoms.

This post has been edited by Sarcasticidealist:

[John Limey]

Let me illustrate what I mean: if somebody wants to design some kind of tracking system so we know who's already been contacted, I will contact 100 BLP subjects. It will take me quite a while, but I'm a student with a fair amount of free time and god knows I'm unhesitant to waste some of it on Wikipedia. Now all you need is, what, 8,000 more like me? You can say that if Wikipedia has the manpower to *write* all those BLPs, it should have the manpower to contact its subjects, and you'd be right, but "should" doesn't really enter into things, as a practical consideration.

Incidentally, back when I used to create BLPs, I always used to contact the subject, so I agree with your general thrust; it's just that it amounts to treatment of symptoms.

You'd be surprised at how quickly this goes. Generally, you find that very quickly (on a personal webpage, university website, business site, etc.) or not at all. Looking back at my email outbox it took me about 5-7 minutes for each contact I made (I didn't formally track how many people I couldn't find contact info for, though, but I'd guess I found information for about 1 in 4). So, back of the envelope. Take the 460,000 BLPs on Wikipedia. For the sake of prioritizing throw out all of them that don't come from English-speaking countries (if the drive goes well, you can go back and hit those). You're left with 230,000 BLPs. You'll be able to get in touch with about 50,000 of them. On average, that'll take you six minutes each = 5000 man hours of work. Out of those, you'll get responses from 60% = 30,000 responses. Now, it's harder to say how much time it takes to deal with the responses, so we'll leave that out for now and bring it back in later.

So, the 5000 hours needed to contact the subjects. There's no reason that it has to all happen immediately, so let's say you plan to space it out over 30 days. Now you need 167 man hours per day, which is essentially nothing. That's like asking each active admin to give you 15 minutes a day for a month (or we'll say 18, 3 contacts per day each). What about dealing with all the responses, the real answer is I don't know, but let's just imagine that 10 minutes is reasonable. That then comes out to another 5,000 man hours. So, we're asking 800 Wikipedians for half an hour a day for a month. Is that really so hard?

[BelovedFox]

Well, as a statistics buff I'm glad you discuss the limitations of your sampling methods and possible bias issues. I'd be interested in knowing what the breakdown of careers/occupations were.

On your proposal to email all the BLP subjects; difficult to do, especially given the numbers, but not impossible and it would certainly be helpful to people less likely to know they have an article. Personally, I haven't had much luck with contacting BLP subjects. The only BLPs I edit and maintain are for media industry professionals. I've sent multiple notes through emails and PMs where possible, but I've only ever gotten a response from one, who basically said "technically the source you quoted is incorrect, as I don't have that job title. Otherwise it was "remarkably accurate". And then something about a simple man trying to make his way in the galaxy. I'm frankly surprised you got such a high response rate. What email address were you using? I don't think my Gmail and university accounts hold much sway (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/smile.gif)

[Sarcasticidealist]

So, we're asking 800 Wikipedians for half an hour a day for a month. Is that really so hard?

The first obstacle is finding 800 Wikipedians you trust to interact with article subjects upset with their articles.

Anyway, I note that you've gone from "every BLP subject" to "the approximately 50,000 BLP subjects in English-speaking countries whose contact information is fairly readily available" (I'm not accusing you of changing your position, just pointing out that your clarification of it changes matters). That does make things somewhat easier, but I think you're overestimating most Wikipedians' willingness to devote time to things that don't serve their pet interests, whatever those happen to be.

[John Limey]

So, we're asking 800 Wikipedians for half an hour a day for a month. Is that really so hard?

The first obstacle is finding 800 Wikipedians you trust to interact with article subjects upset with their articles.

Anyway, I note that you've gone from "every BLP subject" to "the approximately 50,000 BLP subjects in English-speaking countries whose contact information is fairly readily available" (I'm not accusing you of changing your position, just pointing out that your clarification of it changes matters). That does make things somewhat easier, but I think you're overestimating most Wikipedians' willingness to devote time to things that don't serve their pet interests, whatever those happen to be.

Well, I think we must acknowledge that it's basically impossible to contact every single BLP subject (if nothing else, a certain percentage of them are almost certainly imagined). I'm not suggesting that we be strictly limited to 50,000 BLP subjects, but rather that the project start with this low-hanging fruit. If it's successful, then continue it to the more difficult ones. If it proves impossible even to contact these folks, then there's nothing to do but let it drop.

I'm open to the idea that I'm "overestimating most Wikipedians' willingness to devote time to things that don't serve their pet interests" but I'm not sure it's true. There are a great number of Wikipedians who spend a great amount of time at AfD, CSD, etc. I have trouble believing any of them are genuinely interested in those areas as such.

[John Limey]

Well, as a statistics buff I'm glad you discuss the limitations of your sampling methods and possible bias issues. I'd be interested in knowing what the breakdown of careers/occupations were.

On your proposal to email all the BLP subjects; difficult to do, especially given the numbers, but not impossible and it would certainly be helpful to people less likely to know they have an article. Personally, I haven't had much luck with contacting BLP subjects. The only BLPs I edit and maintain are for media industry professionals. I've sent multiple notes through emails and PMs where possible, but I've only ever gotten a response from one, who basically said "technically the source you quoted is incorrect, as I don't have that job title. Otherwise it was "remarkably accurate". And then something about a simple man trying to make his way in the galaxy. I'm frankly surprised you got such a high response rate. What email address were you using? I don't think my Gmail and university accounts hold much sway (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/smile.gif)

Interesting to hear how your experience has differed. As per your request here is the rough breakdown by occupation. University Faculty: 3 (+2 from other categories who happen to serve as adjunct faculty members), 1 Musician, 3 Novelists, 1 Government Official, 1 Actress, 1 Actor/Comedian, 1 Elected Politician, 1 Lawyer, 3 Businessmen.

[Sarcasticidealist]

Interesting to hear how your experience has differed. As per your request here is the rough breakdown by occupation. University Faculty: 3 (+2 from other categories who happen to serve as adjunct faculty members), 1 Musician, 3 Novelists, 1 Government Official, 1 Actress, 1 Actor/Comedian, 1 Elected Politician, 1 Lawyer, 3 Businessmen.

As long as you're providing additional data, any chance you'd summarize things in a table of some kind? One column for the type of person (as above) and one for each of your questions? I'd be interested in seeing correlations between them (as statistically unsound as they may be). Alternatively, would you report on any interesting correlations?

[John Limey]

Interesting to hear how your experience has differed. As per your request here is the rough breakdown by occupation. University Faculty: 3 (+2 from other categories who happen to serve as adjunct faculty members), 1 Musician, 3 Novelists, 1 Government Official, 1 Actress, 1 Actor/Comedian, 1 Elected Politician, 1 Lawyer, 3 Businessmen.

As long as you're providing additional data, any chance you'd summarize things in a table of some kind? One column for the type of person (as above) and one for each of your questions? I'd be interested in seeing correlations between them (as statistically unsound as they may be). Alternatively, would you report on any interesting correlations?

We made certain promises to the people we talked with about confidentiality, so I don't want to put forward anything that might let you identify someone individually, but I don't really see a problem with this. As for correlations, I really think that anything based on occupation would be ridiculous (since most of those are N=1). So far as correlations go, we were wondering about a correlation between familiarity with Wikipedia and opinions, but found nothing in this regard.

We did find a few things, but again I caution about small sample size. In general, people who did not previously know about their biographies are less likely to find them "fair and accurate". Really, though, I'm loathe to provide such speculative information.

We are still planning to complete the full study, and once we've compiled a larger sample, Fact Man will be writing something up that probes the correlations and such. It's also our plan to eventually launch a website that will sit alongside the On Wikipedia blog. We'll use the website to do things like host our raw data sets, but I can't promise you that will happen any time soon as we both have other priorities right now.

[CharlotteWebb]

Interesting to hear how your experience has differed. As per your request here is the rough breakdown by occupation. University Faculty: 3 (+2 from other categories who happen to serve as adjunct faculty members), 1 Musician, 3 Novelists, 1 Government Official, 1 Actress, 1 Actor/Comedian, 1 Elected Politician, 1 Lawyer, 3 Businessmen.

That's a more varied and less boring result than my own BLP cross-section sample, which represents all persons born on exactly the same day (except those where data was missing or used a non-standard date format):

http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?act=findpost&pid=196469

Hey, one of them is a trick cyclist. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/tongue.gif)

I did not attempt to contact any of them. If somebody does try doing so please make note of the response rate in that thread.

*           *           *

However I think if this is going to work WP would need some centralized way to track progress.

Repeated correspondence to one subject eventually will annoy the hell out him or her: "So if I say 'delete it', will you fuckers stop calling me?" (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/dry.gif)

It also would waste what time could be spent contacting other subjects sooner. On the other hand we do not want participants to skip some names because they are lazy or careless, or lie about the results to further some agenda, or exaggerate individual progress while satisfying their new-found coldcallcountitis (?).

Some redundancy would provide a reasonable safe-guard against incidental failure, but I don't know what the best middle-ground would be.

This post has been edited by CharlotteWebb:

[John Limey]

However I think if this is going to work WP would need some centralized way to track progress.

Repeated correspondence to one subject eventually will annoy the hell out him or her: "So if I say 'delete it', will you fuckers stop calling me?" (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/dry.gif)

It also would waste what time could be spent contacting other subjects sooner. On the other hand we do not want participants to skip some names because they or lazy or careless, or lie about the results to further some agenda, or exaggerate individual progress while satisfying their new-found coldcallcountitis (?).

Some redundancy would provide a reasonable safe-guard against incidental failure, but I don't know what the best middle-ground would be.

I tend to think that tracking everyone so that contact is made only once is the best way to go. As pointed out, the workload would be significant, so it wouldn't make sense to duplicate until the whole list was done. Yes, some people will probably lie and exaggerate, but there are ways of dealing with it. If I was organizing things, I would set up a system whereby all emails involved are CCed to a central account for record-keeping purposes and then put into a database to which certain trusted users have access. (In general I think emailing people is a much better idea than having hordes of Wikipedians try to get in touch with BLP subjects by phone).

Now, it's quite possible that some users would try to claim that they had sent out more emails than they had, but assuming the central account is always CCed, that would require a more involved act of duplicity than just saying "Oh yeah ... I emailed 60 people this morning". Hopefully, the central database system would also check fraud about the nature of responses; there might well be some people who for whatever reason would want to misrepresent that content. This is not to deny that there would be implementation difficulties in a massive BLP-contact drive, but they're not particularly large obstacles.

[dogbiscuit]

I tend to think that tracking everyone so that contact is made only once is the best way to go.

Oh dear. The trouble is that you contact them once when their BLP says they are a nice chap, then the following week, someone suggests that they have a massive cock, as I believe the saying goes, or some other minor edit, and all of a sudden your signoff is invalid.

In the real world you would not have this issue. You would privately evolve the changes for a new edition and once a year, if there were something controversial and/or inappropriate that needed checking, the editor would hopefully ensure that the sources were super-reliable or that a representative of the subjects interests could confirm the details.

Also there is the problem that they are unlikely to realise in signing off their biog there, they have unwittingly contributed to an article that can be taken by someone else and grossly distorted unless you are very clear on educating subjects to the vagaries of CC licensing.

[Milton Roe]

Now, it's quite possible that some users would try to claim that they had sent out more emails than they had, but assuming the central account is always CCed, that would require a more involved act of duplicity than just saying "Oh yeah ... I emailed 60 people this morning". Hopefully, the central database system would also check fraud about the nature of responses; there might well be some people who for whatever reason would want to misrepresent that content. This is not to deny that there would be implementation difficulties in a massive BLP-contact drive, but they're not particularly large obstacles.

(IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/laugh.gif) (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/laugh.gif) (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/laugh.gif)

A new joke every day here.