SlimVirgin makes sense:

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikie...rch/066962.html

Supported by Doc Glasgow (who further showed his hand at the last Brandt bio skuffle) and a few others with more than average experience, if not basic humanity.

Naturally, they are being shouted down by the hoi polloi, the penniless minions who have nothing to lose.

Jimbo, in the unlikely event you read this, it's time to start exploring what it means to be a leader. SV's analysis is dead on target, and her suggestions are simply the only reasonable action to take: the WMF will be destroyed by even a partial legal hit. The Foundation has collected large amounts of money, and likely will continue to do so .. at least until the day arrives when a substantial fraction of that begins to bleed off into legal fees instead of server hardware and connectivity your contributors intended.

Do the right thing.

I think this is a false dichotomy. Rather, people shouldn't be editing Wikipedia anonymously. Instead, Wikipedia should put the onus on the individual, who if they add incorrect information/slander can be held legally responsible for those actions by the subject or those affected. This is the way the world normally works, people are responsible for their actions. Wikipedia right now is in fucked up territory is allowing people to skirt what is normally considered to be the proper chain of personal responsibility.

The powers that be at Wikipedia, such as SlimVirgin, don't want to take responsibility for their actions, and thus instead argue for limiting Wikipedia unnecessarily. It's the wrong move. But since I favor Citizendium, I encourage Wikipedia to remove all biographies of living people, it will just speed the rise of Citizendium and the fall of Wikipedia.

Good theory, but poor practice: there is no point in suing someone who has no means to pay. Even with undeniable DNA sampling, voice-prints, RFID tags injected into their foreheads, and a satellite tracking bracelet worn by all Wikipedia editors, most of them have nothing to lose .. and it will only take one (1) to fuck it all to hell (and he'll be the one who has bamboozled his ID).

Even Citizendium will suffer from this problem, unless they have plans to institute some minimum wealth criteria, or, equivalently, demand their contributors provide evidence they are libel insured. (I kinda doubt it myself).



SV's proposal -- hardly unique! -- is in fact one of responsibility acceptance. Maybe not on her part, but certainly on the WMF's part. Indeed, if in fact Citizendium doesn't have a "delete by request" and/or "biographies only for those who have been externally biographed" policy, I find it difficult to distinguish the two projects in this particular instance.

Huh? I don't even see how it would limit them at all, to be honest. Think about it: Right now, the overwhelming emphasis is on keeping BLP articles at all costs. In order to do that, they're imposing rigid policies on that entire content class, requiring sources for nearly every assertion, and enforcing it with a group of "BLP patrollers" who are supposed to watch these articles like hawks, 24 hours a day. And for the most part, it works - there was a WikiEN-L posting noting that someone had tried to claim that actor Jason Priestly had hanged himself, and it was reverted within 2 minutes. But it only works because they're putting enormous amounts of manpower, time and effort into it.

Instead, they could have a fairly simple rule that if someone doesn't already have a biography published by a reputable publisher (easily validated), they can opt out of inclusion in WP by simply sending a letter to the Foundation, or even just a third-party group. The recipient of that letter can choose to verify the person's identity, or not, at their discretion. (Admittedly, this isn't quite a nice as "full" opt-out, but people who have already had books written about them are usually resigned to the idea of being public figures.)

There are some key points here that they can't seem to understand. They assume that a policy like this would mean mass deletion of biographies, which is absurd. It's true that I'm guessing these numbers, but of all those 150,000 BLP subjects, I'd say maybe 10 percent would prefer not to be included in WP at all. Of those 15,000 people, maybe 10 percent would go to the trouble of finding out what the process is for opting out, and of those 1,500 people, I doubt that more than half will actually write that letter and send it.

And when people complain? Just post a link to the Help page explaining how to opt out. Simple, painless, and drama-free! No more wasted time! No more divisive arguing! No more accusations of inhumanity and rampant asshole-ism from people at Wikipedia Review! (At least not over BLP's, anyway!)

And what are the "hidden" benefits? Besides the obvious one of being a tremendous moral and legal pressure-relief on both the Foundation and the community as a whole, such a policy would be vastly more effective at improving the existing BLP article base than almost any other solution - because it would introduce a deus ex machina means by which attack articles could be removed. As long as the anonymous author of such an article can depend on his or her network of WP allies (and the reactionary tendencies of the community as a whole) to support him, where's the disincentive to use WP as an attack platform? The BLP policy as it stands now certainly isn't much of a disincentive - all that really does is require people to dig up obscure and, in many cases, bogus sources for their claims. And people still get victimized.

The point isn't to "coddle" BLP subjects or let them "get away with it"; the point is to make WP less useful as an attack platform to maliciously-minded people. In the end, people looking for a handy attack platform will go elsewhere. And the people who have left WP over the last 2-3 years due to their objections to its use in that fashion will start to come back. And who knows, maybe the media will even start to like WP again...

It's win-win!

You might add that probably the majority of BLP subjects have no idea that they are on Wikipedia. I have found four articles about people I know personally (none of which I have edited) and none of them was aware of the article. Indeed, only one of them (the much-maligned Lady Symons) had even heard of Wikipedia!

Anyway, what constitutes a biography? A published book? A newspaper article? An article in a reliable source such as Encyclopaedia Britannica, Chambers' Biographical Dictionary or Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians? An entry in Who's Who? A sleeve note on a book they have published? A web page on a university or organisation with which they are associated?

Well, assuming it were me, Somey, making the rules on my own, they'd probably look something like this.

A published book? Yes
A newspaper article? No
An article in a reliable source such as Encyclopaedia Britannica, Chambers' Biographical Dictionary or Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians? Yes
An entry in Who's Who? Not by itself
A sleeve note on a book they have published? No
A web page on a university or organisation with which they are associated? No

And in addition to that:
A full chapter or more of biographical material in a book about something else? Yes
Less than a full chapter in such a book? No (n.b. - they could define "full chapter" as being roughly 5% of a book's content or, say, 30-40 pages - i.e., not a "mini-chapter")
A movie or factual TV documentary primarily about the person? Yes
A national TV news report about an incident in which the person was involved? No
Widespread internet meme-ization due to a physical deformity or other reason not deliberate on the part of the subject? No

I suspect some people object to this sort of applied criterion because a rich person could publish their own biography on a vanity press, and have it be indistinguishable from something published by a non-vanity publishing company. This might result in a few hundred article subjects disqualifying themselves for opt-out, but it would hardly require WP to have articles about such people. That's just another silly strawman argument.

Let's face it, there are two real reasons why the WP'ers object to this idea. First, they don't want that deus ex machina interfering with their ability to do whatever they want, damage to personal reputations be-damned. Second, it would mean the Brandt article would be deleted. In effect, Brandt would "win," at least in their estimation. Never mind that Brandt and many others, including myself, have spent enormous amounts of time researching and tracking this issue, or that he's been substantially damaged by having a WP attack article be the top Google hit on his name for tha last year-and-a-half. Oh noooo, that doesn't matter! "We can't give in to these trolls! If we delete the article, the terrorists will have won!" This is pure reactionary mentality, fueled by irrational hyperbole. There's just no other word(s) for it.

Simply put, the number of people who actually opt out under these rules would be miniscule, and I personally don't see any way this could result in people trying to "dictate" editorial content or policy. It really just amounts to a simple courtesy, but they can't even manage that, apparently.

Ok, Somey, lets hold your feet to the fire and ask if Walter Rauff (pretending he is still alive, and ignoring for the moment his infamous crimes) would deserve a biography given only this:

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/843805.html

(Not part of this test, but it's interesting to compare the above with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Rauff - the talk page has an interesting comment!)

Sure he would deserve one, there's no question about that, assuming this report is accurate. But first off, he obviously is dead, so it's hard to look at his situation objectively.

I'll try, though. Even if he weren't dead, there are still case-by-case considerations to be made. It's true that under this plan, this person would be allowed to opt out, given that this is the only source of info about him... But is someone like this really going to send a letter to anyone, much less someone on Wikipedia, with a verifiable phone number and/or street address, whom he doesn't absolutely trust? I doubt that!

This is all part of the plan, you see. Wikipedia doesn't want criminals (of various types, not just former SS men who worked in concentration camps) to opt out, and that's fine - but the natural tendency of criminals (and former SS men) is to avoid exposing themselves and their residences/hideouts anyway, and that should deter them. I suppose they could even make an exception for people currently serving prison terms for violent crimes, for example - most people wouldn't object to that, I suppose.

But instead of discussing reasonable exceptions, they've got people like User:Badlydrawnjeff freaking out at the very mention of the idea, acting like they're going to immediately go off and delete the articles on George W. Bush, or Ted Bundy, or Dennis Koslowski. Not gonna happen, even if cases of "marginal notability" are always decided in favor of the subject under this plan.

Remember that WP would still have the option of salting the article with a template explaining that the person contacted them and asked to opt out. It would be understood up-front that the person's contact info, while not to be published on WP, would be made available to law enforcement either on request or under warrant.

Whaddya think? I'm not saying I've thought of absolutely everything, but I did at least think of stuff like that.

I see that the subject is being discussed yet again at wikien-l, with none other than Fred Bauder sensibly weighing in in favour of an "opt out", and the usual gang of a-human nitwits bellowing about how "Daniel Brandt should not be allowed to dictate policy!"

But should a Court of Law? It's not their money, so they don't give a shit one way or the other. Bringing in other threads of late, one wonders if, when the lawsuit these people are almost begging to occur finally arrives, will the Court that hears it be deemed to be an "attack site", and all documents that are uttered from it banned from mention at WP?

The reason why I asked Somey that almost unfair question (sorry!) was to try and see if he would reduce his list to a simpler rule:

If the subject has been the target of a certain minimum amount of work by third parties (for whatever reason), he's in by default. Otherwise he's out. (And of course, let the subject finally choose switch the decision to "out" -- even notorious ones!)

Most of Somey's (and others) list meets this more general criteria. An entire book is not a trivial undertaking. Movies, television, ditto. Newspaper reportage, however, is debatable (one person-day, if that). Note that one doesn't need to look at why the subject is notable here, only that he is notable by this "work to publish" standard.

Looking at the example I gave, it's abundantly clear that a very large number of people are interested in this person. Many people have monitored him over decades of time, so he'll go in without a fuss. Wikien-l has even provided another similar example: Lee Harvey Oswald (again, pretend he is alive). Ignoring what he did, it's clear he fits this pattern that notability isn't what you have done, but how many people are interested enough to devote resources into documenting it. Interestingly, most other assassins, terrorists and such fall into this category.

Going the other way, this kind of criteria 'explains' why a "one day media wonder" should not go in by default. It also smoothly handles the more pernicious case of someone floating up to minor media mention every now and then only to return to relative invisibility (cf. Daniel Brandt, Seth Finkelstein, etc).

But perhaps best of all, it allows people to prioritize their work. Why waste hours of time digging up dirt on nobodies by google, when you can just go to a library and borrow a biography and summarize it? Compare WP's biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer to Daniel Brandt! This rule emphasizes quality before quantity.

The only real question is just what the cut off should be. How much 3rd party interest amounts to "notability"? I'd suggest that one person-year is a reasonable cut off, and would cover almost everyone that is notable enough to warrant a full book dedicated to their lives and accomplishments. For encyclopedic purposes, this set is all that matters, as there there is going to be a very large gap in this "work metric" between the "notable" and "non-notable" people (cf. the usual power laws in economics, social networking, and such).