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Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography#RFC "Bias categories" and whether we can categorize people, groups, organizations, and media under them

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This is the oldest discussion at WP:ANRFC, asking for an independent, experienced editor to close. I am independent (haven't participated in this argument, or related ones), experienced (15 years at WP) editor, specifically experienced in closing RfCs (maybe 100? Here are some but not all), which I haven't done for a while, but am interested in getting back in. Since I'm likely to be rusty, I'm going to write too much rather than risk writing too little - please forgive me.

Opening questions

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No, I'm afraid it really isn't the right place. From its definition, a "WikiProject is a group of contributors ...", while this RfC is clearly an attempt to either overturn or confirm a rule that will be binding on all Wikipedia, not just the members of that group. You'll notice the original discussion Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2011 February 9#Bias categories was held at WP:CFD, which is a deletion discussion. The usual place to re-evaluate deletion discussions is Wikipedia:Deletion review. Since this is a 10 year old discussion, and WP:DRV is usually for more recent ones, another possibility could have been the talk page of the most related rule, either WP:CAT or WP:BLP. So if this decision were going to be something groundshaking, for example to overrule the earlier discussion or to delete many categories entirely, as several in this discussion have suggested, someone would have grounds to challenge it. Fortunately, it's not going to do either of that, and, since another of our rules is Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy, and this was publicized through the WP:RFC mechanism, didn't seem to be intended to target just a limited audience, and did get the attention and active participation of 17 editors, including an administrator and fairly recent arbitrator who can be expected to know our rules rather well, and didn't say anything about the venue, so rather than stand on formality and make everyone wait another 30 or 64(!) days for the result, I'm going to close it here anyway.

  • "This is an RFC to re-evaluate consensus from 2011 which forbids categorizing “people, groups, organizations and media” under so-called “bias categories” (and similar categories) and all sub-categories."

Er ... not quite. It doesn't actually do that, even though most participants in this discussion seem to think it does. The result from that RfC was: "Consensus for a unified approach to these categories; most support to ban individuals & organisations." which is a bit unclear. Surely it actually means to ban individuals and organizations accused of the bias in question, and not just all individuals and organizations, including those clearly dedicated to that bias. Or we'd end up with having to remove Americans for a Society Free from Age Restrictions from Category:Ageism, Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women and National Organization for Men Against Sexism from Category:Sexism, and the Institute for the Study of Academic Racism from Category:Racism, which I hope everyone agrees is not what was intended? And would this judgment would require removing the Reich Central Office for the Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion from Category:Homophobia, Away from Rome! from Category:Anti-Catholic organizations, and the Spanish Inquisition from Category:Anti-Protestantism and Category:Anti-Judaism?(I know, I know, you weren't expecting the Spanish Inquisition!) Fortunately (see a few sections below) we have the closer's (User:Timrollpickering's) exact words that he put in to a dozen or so categories immediately after performing the closing, namely "[Bias categories] must not include articles about individuals, groups or media that are allegedly [so biased]." That is evidence of his intent.

  • "Either outcome will have at least somewhat far-reaching consequences: either a number of categories will need to be emptied and deleted, or a great number of categories will be allowed to be filled."

I think this is an overstatement - most categories will remain, just with a few fewer entries. Just looking at the top level of the first one listed, Category:Ageism, I can see maybe five entries about persons or groups accused of ageism. The remaining... fifty? ... are about non-person or group subjects, or about groups dedicated to combating ageism, not accused of ageism.

Counting voices

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RfCs, like most of our processes, are not merely about counting votes, but about evaluating what was said, and how it conforms to our rules. However, our editors are no less knowledgeable of our rules than I am, so how many editors believe a particular question falls under our rules is a valuable data point.

Close, but no clear consensus to overturn, which would usually be required to change a previously established decision.

What was said

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  • "better less info than false info. (That goes triple for WP:BLPs)"
  • "WP:BLP does not mean we cannot have factual material about living people if it is "negative"." "We should have high standard for applying such categories. But that does not mean we should not."
  • "this guideline, which must be one of the most ignored guidelines on WP."
  • "Categories give no room for nuance"
  • "precise refs with quotes or something like that, e.g "[[Category:Islamophobes]] <--per [particulars of ref], 'I hate Islam'-->".
  • "Critics of" categories (such as Category:Critics_of_Ahmadiyya mentioned above) might be kept or evaluated on a case-by-case though.
  • "it's just not good categorization and is a slippery slope to name-calling by subjective whim"
  • "It's very obvious where this ends up: wing-nuts edit-warring by adding every left-winger to the "anti-American" category and every right winger to the "racist, homophobic" category based on their interpretation of what their views actually entail."
  • "Putting an individual in such a category is a broad negative judgement that WP should not be making. Categories give no room for nuance--if we use them we will have difficulty distinguishing between someone who once used a slur that got into the newspaper from someone who has made a career of bigotry. Categories need to be unambiguous in order to avoid endless disputes about where to draw the line."
  • "Rather than litigating every close case, it makes more sense and is more inline with the general spirit of BLP to simply ban these kinds of categories from being used in BLPs."
  • "if someone is notable for being opposed to something, than categories that reflect this should be in said article. To remove these categories from the article would be damaging to Wikipedia's ability to function as a proper encyclopedia."

"While a rather weak argument, WP:EDITCONSENSUS also has to be evoked if very few editors can be bothered to follow the 2011 consensus, than it evidently wasn't much of a consensus after all.

  • "Adding to a category is equivalent to asserting, in Wiki's voice, that the name of the category is an attribute of the subject of the article, and if WP:VOICE would stop us doing that in the article text, then we shouldn't be doing it with a category."
    "Yes, but this is already policy. (the old RFC doesn't change anything in your example). BUT the old RFC forbids the reverse. If (per VOICE) we are allowed to add the attribute to the article, then the old RFC nevertheless forbids adding the category... Do you intend that?"
  • "The actual number of cases where reliable sources will classify people uncontroversially by an opinion that lines up exactly with a category that we have on Wikipedia is exactly zero."
  • "opinion categories are being widely used to heap praise/criticism on people that the references cited in the articles do not support and it's much better to simply ban opinion cats for at least BLP and probably bio articles in general."
  • "I will grant that it's possible that there might be an "Activist" category as defining, but that should be a separate category - e.g. Anti-Catholic activisim, for when this is a major focus of the person's life, and not merely having "usual" anti-Catholic views for the time and place. These categories are a BLP minefield if not treated very carefully, and should not have specific people in them unless, again, they're an outright activist about it. Categories should not be used if there's any doubt about their applicability"
  • "I don't buy the argument that categories cannot be policed. Every change is clearly marked in the history, it's pretty easy for anyone with a page watched to see categories being added or removed. And for the sake of argument, even if I accept that it is difficult to police this, this policy does nothing. Because if it's difficult to police, then with this policy it's STILL difficult to remove."
  • "The trouble only appears when there is strong, uncontroversial, third party reliable citations regarding the anti-whatever position. It does our encyclopedia disservice to not have the categorization for those."

So there is a wide range of opinions here, from banning bias categories in general (User:Herostratus, for example), to those who are primarily against them for living people (mlb96) to the "pragmatists" like Marcocapelle or FOARP who note that these categories are usually misused, and the "pragmatists" on the other side of the fence that use the same fact that these categories are misused to argue that this means this is how they should be used.

What our guidelines say

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  • WP:CATDEF and WP:NONDEF: "A central concept used in categorizing articles is that of the defining characteristics of a subject of the article. A defining characteristic is one that reliable sources commonly and consistently define the subject as having..."
  • WP:OPINIONCAT "Avoid categorizing people by their personal opinions, even if a reliable source can be found for the opinions. This includes supporters or critics of an issue, personal preferences (such as liking or disliking green beans), and opinions or allegations about the person by other people (e.g. "alleged criminals"). Please note, however, the distinction between holding an opinion and being an activist, the latter of which may be a defining characteristic."

What the categories say

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Conclusion

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Upheld and clarified: Per the majority of voices, and WP:OPINIONCAT, WP:CATDEF and WP:NONDEF, and the original RfC closer's (User:Timrollpickering's) words "[Bias categories] must not include articles about individuals, groups or media that are allegedly [so biased]."

Unlike the "pragmatic" arguments made by people (on both sides of the issue!) that these categories are often misused, so should be deleted, or are often misused, so should continue to be misused this way, we don't follow either of those. If we followed either to the logical extreme, we would either delete Wikipedia entirely, since it is often vandalized, or we would remove all rules against vandalizing articles, since, again, they are often vandalized. We do have rules we try to follow, even if they sometimes are not followed. These rules are written down. Here is what seems to be the most directly applicable one:

  • WP:OPINIONCAT "Avoid categorizing people by their personal opinions, even if a reliable source can be found for the opinions. This includes supporters or critics of an issue, personal preferences (such as liking or disliking green beans), and opinions or allegations about the person by other people (e.g. "alleged criminals"). Please note, however, the distinction between holding an opinion and being an activist, the latter of which may be a defining characteristic."
  • WP:CATDEF and WP:NONDEF: "A defining characteristic is one that reliable sources commonly and consistently define the subject as having..."

(This is all basically what User:SnowFire said.) That does not, however, mean these categories should be deleted entirely, since the key point (again SnowFire's wording) is "Categories should not be used if there's any doubt about their applicability", and there are cases where these bias categories have no reasonable doubt about their applicability: for example the ones I listed in Opening questions. (I'm throwing in "reasonable" because we do have trolls here on Wikipedia; I remember one fine gentleman who read the WP:BLP statement "All quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged must be supported by an inline citation" and declared something like "I hereby challenge every uncited BLP statement". ) We have the original closer's (User:Timrollpickering's) exact words that he put into a dozen or so categories immediately after performing the closing, namely "[Bias categories] must not include articles about individuals, groups or media that are allegedly [so biased]." Note allegedly - I have little doubt this is related to "opinions or allegations about the person by other people" in WP:OPINIONCAT. If the reason a person or organization is in a bias category is a debatable allegation by other sources, even if these are reliable sources, we keep those people out of the category. We keep only those persons or organizations in the categories about whom there is no reasonable debate. And there are those. Unlike Herostratus's comment for people "we usually can't verifiably say these things. Most people don't say "yup, I'm a homophobe"" - quite a few organizations, like Reich Central Office for the Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion and the other ones listed, say these things right in their names or their charters, or (for mostly historical organizations, not modern day ones; again, the Spanish Inquisition), there is no reasonable doubt or debate that they were. And per WP:OPINIONCAT people who are activists, may be so categorized. But Herostratus is right that living people admitting to such bias will be rare.

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