User:Tznkai/desk/BLPconcern

Removal of substandard biographies of living people or BLPconcern is a proposed procedure to address poorly written biographies of living people ([[WP:BLP|BLPs]) that threaten to do harm. Substandard BLPs that are tagged as problematic, and left unfixed will removed from public view in article space and placed inside Wikipedia space and improved until they can be restored as an article.

Rationale

The English language Wikipedia is one of the major sources of information in the world. The Wikipedia article or its mirrors tops the Google search results for any particular subject. As a result, the contents of our articles are being read, digested, and in many cases, trusted by readers around the world without further issue. Erroneous or defamatory information placed in a person's article can dramatically and disproportionately effect their lives. It is our responsibility as fellow people to minimize unnecessary damage to living persons, above and beyond our desire for every article to be complete, accurate, reliable, and neutral.

This is a huge responsibility, and a difficult one to address. As of 21:55, 3 December 2009 (UTC), there are over 418,000 articles tagged as biographies of living people, and over 53,000 of those articles have been tagged unreferenced. This process is a form of triage - addressing the the worst biographies, most likley to do harm, and least likley to improve without dedicated assistance. The process simultaneously: warns the reader that the information may not be trustworthy to reduce harm to living people, motivates invested editors to improve the article, raises the amount of scrutiny such an article will receive, and allows a dedicated cadre of volunteers to address the concerns.

Substandard biographies of living people can threaten the reputation and livelihood of the subject, and as a result threatens the reputation, integrity, stability, and financial security of Wikipedia a whole. Both from the common decency in doing no harm as well as our own self interest, we must obscure substandard biographies of living people, improve them, and then - but only then - include them within the encyclopedia.

Process

Overview

The removal of substandard biographies of living people process works in several stages. First, biographies of living people that are likley to do harm if they remain in article space are identified, improved if able, and if necessary removed from article space. These biographies are then incubated in project space, where all editors are invited to improve the article by adding high quality reference material. After the article has been improved in project space is it restored to the main article space.

Criteria for removal

A BLP is substandard when it is likley to do damage to the reputations or livelihoods of living persons due to being poorly written. Characteristics of substandard BLPs include:

• Any amount of unsourced controversial material
• A complete lack of references in the article.
• Controversial or negative material that is sourced but out of context
• Material, negative or positive that is focused on disproportionately to its overall importance.

BLPs are stubs that have low activity (often unwatched as well) are also at high risk, and should be removed at the discretion of the reviewing administrator.

Removal procedure

1. Any editor, upon discovering a BLP article that is likley to do harm can improve it, if they are able.
2. If the article is still likley to do harm, that editor should nominate the article for removal by adding the {{/templates/BLPC}} template.
3. If the removal is disputed, the article should be tagged {{/templates/hangonBLP}}
4. After 14 days an administrator should review the tagged article to see it has been improved, or if the article instead meets the removal criteria. Overall, the reviewing administrator should weigh:
   • If the article is salvageable with a little more time;
   • The availability of sources and volunteers;
   • Whether any editors have volunteered to continue to look over the article;
   • The likelihood of any problematic edit being added undetected and doing harm.
5. If the article no longer meets the removal criteria, remove the tags and stop. Otherwise, move the article to WP:Biographies of living persons/removed/Article name along with its talk page.
6. Tag WP:Biographies of living persons/removed/Article name with {{/templates/BLPincubate}}
7. Replace the redirect with {{/templates/BLPredirect}}
8. Full protect the former redirect indefinitely
9. Add a notification to the BLP noticeboard

Appendix

• /templates
• An alternative written a while back that inspired this in part:/Stub and protect BLPs