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Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/blp

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Latest comment: 15 years ago386 comments144 people in discussion

I propose a new criteria for BLPs that have been in Category:Unreferenced_BLPs (current population 12916) for more than 3 months. As these articles fail both the spirit and the letter of the policy on biographies of living people, they should not be kept indefinitely. 3 months is ample time for authors to provide some sourcing. We currently do the exact same thing for images, albeit within a shorter time frame. I believe this criteria is:

  • Objective - any editor can determine whether an article has been unsourced for 3 months or not.
  • Uncontestable - the WP:BLP policy clearly does not intend completely unsourced BLPs to exist indefinitely.
  • Frequent - the category population has risen by 3000 in the 3 weeks I have been watching it.
  • Non-redundant - no other applicable criteria exist.

I think that tagging and deletion would initially need to be phased either by initial title letter, or oldest first so that after a few months we are down to tagging new unsourced articles, and giving that author 3 months to fix the sourcing. Kevin (talk) 01:47, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply

So would that be like "A10. An article on a living person with no reliable citations at all that has been tagged as such for at least a month"? ViperSnake151 02:09, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
Pretty much. A recent discussion at WP:AN suggested 3 months as the time frame. Personally, I'm in favor of a week, but I also think it is reasonable to allow more time for fixing. Kevin (talk) 02:17, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
I should note here that Category:Unreferenced BLPs is missing about 30,000 biographies by my estimate. (So a proposed new criterion certainly meets the frequency requirement.) The overall proposal looks good to me. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:50, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
I agree and think this proposal is a solid one. The status quo just isn't working and we need firmer measures to control the amount of crap building up in biographies. Removing unsourced ones is a good step. - Rjd0060 (talk) 02:54, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • I like this idea. There's a potential conflict with area-specific guidelines for "presumed notability" (WP:ATHLETE comes to mind as the type of thing where arguments would arise), but this is an obstacle that can certainly be overcome. BLP is important; this suggestion should advance. Townlake (talk) 03:01, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
We should not make any judgement about notability in applying this criteria. A source that meets WP:RS would be the only criteria. Kevin (talk) 03:04, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
I agree, I'm just trying to think through the practical rollout of this. In cases like this one, the argument will come up that since this gentleman was a player in the National Basketball Association, he's presumptively notable and therefore ought to have an entry even if no RSs are immediately added to the article... because that's the way WP:ATHLETE has worked for X amount of time. All I'm saying it this issue will come up and should be addressed proactively. Townlake (talk) 03:17, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
I think it is important to emphasise here that notability is a non-issue; we don't keep copyvios of articles on potentially notable people, for instance. So, just because that chap is notable, doesn't mean we keep an unreferenced BLP article around about him. Lankiveil (speak to me) 07:59, 1 April 2009 (UTC).Reply
This is an excellent suggestion. I should point out that the problem with "presumed notability" for certain kinds of BLP shouldn't be one: if no reliable sources whatsoever can be found on a person, then there should not be an article. If sources are found, then the article is not deleted by that criterion. — Coren (talk) 03:17, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply

(edit conflict)A couple of points launching from Vipersnakes151's proposed language above: Firstly, remember that G10 (attack pages) already exists, so we don't need to cover anything that would already be covered by it. Secondly, people will argue about what constitutes an article on a living person, so a BLP speedy criterion should restrict itself specifically to nomenclative articles like Jimmy Wales or Joseph Schmoe. If someone tries to game this by moving an article to, e.g., Odious sexual perversities of Joseph Schmoe, G10 and AfD will still exist to deal with it. Secondly, speedy deletion should not be used for articles with even one reliable source, and especially shouldn't ever be used to checkmate an edit war over the reliability of sources, so a BLP criterion needs to be fairly liberal about what sourcing is acceptable - remembering that AfD exists for anything remotely controversial. Thirdly, A BLP criterion should not be used as an IAR substitute for A7 (no indication of importance) or G11 (spam) either, so a time delay of some sort (X days without sourcing, where X is large) is vital. Having said all of that, I support the basic kernel of this proposal - the fact is that we do have too many BLPs that are unsourced or practically so, and there is more than one good reason to get rid of them. — Gavia immer (talk) 03:29, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply

  • I also support this idea. While this won't completely solve our BLP problem, it will let us prune away some of the more marginal articles so that we can better concentrate our efforts on others. I also agree with interpreting "sources" in the loosest possible context, and having a lengthy (3 months or 90 days) time limit to give editors some time to add sourcing to articles that can potentially be sourced. Lankiveil (speak to me) 08:01, 1 April 2009 (UTC).Reply
I've suggested this before, but, I never thought it would be acceptable. I still think you might have problems getting it through. So, I'd suggest the following sweeteners, which might help more inclusionist minded people to accept it:
  1. Any deletion under this criteria is also summarily reversible by any administrator if the administrator or another editor is immediately willing to reference the article to a WP:BLP compliant state.--Scott Mac (Doc) 08:14, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  2. Before there are any deletions, some bot should crawl through all the BLPs which are marked as totally unreferenced and lack any external links, and then place a warning on the creator's page to say "an BLP you created may be unreferenced, and could be deleted, please ensure the the article has basic references"
  3. We bring this in VERY gently. Actually, I'd advise initially against summary deletion - better that if an article is marked as unreferenced for three months, it is then tagged with {{unsourced deletion}} - which gives as further week for sourcing before deletion. Editors can remove the tag only if they source the article. (not so sure about this one)
  4. I'd echo, indeed I suggested already, that this be trialled with articles beginning A-C.
--Scott Mac (Doc) 08:14, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • I really like your third idea, but I would call it {{prodBLP}} and change it somewhat. ;-) It would be exactly the same as {{prod}}, except that in order to contest the prod notice or deltion via prod, it must provide references for all statements, or be stubified in such a way that all statements are sourced. -Atmoz (talk) 18:27, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • I support this as well, with the remark that there should be a grace period (say three months as well) between the acceptance of this rule (and the widespread communication of it), and the application of it, since we have a serious backlog of unsourced BLPs (going back to August 2006), which would mean that without grace period, we could immediately delete everything tagged before 2009, which is some 5,000 articles (most of them on soccer players). I also believe that once it is clear that the consensus here is in favour of the A10 category, this should be posted at the WP:VPP for more widespread discussion before implementation. Fram (talk) 08:17, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Reasonable plan, although I share Doc G's caveats. tfeSil (aktl) 08:40, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • This is the only way we can fix the unreferenced BLPs without flooding AfD. I think the current backlog should be fed through a bot that limits the number of taggings and as Doc suggested it could also notify the author. At a rate of 200/day it would take just over 2 months depending o to eliminate the backlog. BJTalk 09:27, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • I don't think this is a good idea. We already have mechanisms in place to deal with them. People see to forget that an article, that exists for 3 months, can easily be deleted via WP:PROD which allows possible rescue. There is no need for a new criterion because there is no problem it can fix, that cannot be fixed by the current deletion policy. Those articles can be separated (broadly speaking) in 3 categories:
    • Negative unsourced BLP => we got G10 for that
    • Neutral unsourced BLP without indication for notability => we got A7
    • Neutral unsourced BLP with indication of notability => PROD
    The proposal here does not explain why the current way cannot be applied to these articles as well, nor why it needs to be a speedy criterion. I'm suggesting we just PROD those articles instead, the effectiveness is the same, but it allows both rescuing and community input without having to go through AFD. Regards Why oh Why? 09:37, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
The problem with PROD is that the tag can be removed for any reason, and then cannot be replaced. I can imagine that many of the articles would then end up not being deleted and remaining unsourced, or having to be taken to AfD. Kevin (talk) 10:20, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
I don't see that as a problem, quite the opposite in fact. If someone removes the tag, then they are signaling that they are disagreeing with deletion and that wider community input is needed. But from all experiences, PRODs are left in place in the most of cases and if the creator has not worked on the article for 3 months, it's unlikely they will contest it. I'd say that would leave approximately 2-5% of those articles for AFD, which AFD can handle just fine. If there is need for discussion (which contesting a prod would indicate), then discussion should take place. But the harm of having that discussion is not greater than the harm of losing those potentially valuable articles. And I see no gain in speedy-deleting after 3 months which forces us to create such a criterion because if they really contain negative unsourced BLP, it's already covered anyway and that's the only kind of BLP that needs to be deleted quickly and without discussion. Regards SoWhy 10:39, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
Prod is no use, since people say "it's seems notable" and unprod, without sourcing. Afd is pointless, since the point is not whether the subject merits an article, but whether the current unsourced article should kept. It isn't that we want deletions here, it is that we want to say "unsourced BLPs are unacceptable - if it isn't sourced within three months, it is removed until someone is willing to source it".--Scott Mac (Doc) 11:27, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
Prod has no teeth and therefore lacks effectiveness. If the creator of an article removes the prod without actually addressing the issues we still need to resort to an AFD where the potential of an article is usually brought into the mix rather than its current state, which often makes articles linger for months or even years. I'd prefer a speedy deletion criterion that keeps out any unsourced material at all. - Mgm|(talk) 08:30, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • I support the proposal. PROD is not effective since anybody can remove a PROD without giving any reason, or making any fix. Regarding A7, it seems absurd that we permit unsourced articles simply because they make an unsubstantiated claim of notability. This proposal encourages BLP creators to go back and source the articles they already made, before they make more unsourced BLPs. It takes far less time for the person making an article to source it, than it does for somebody unfamiliar to come in, and find sources, with little to go on. --Rob (talk) 10:31, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
    • Then your point is to change A7 to "delete articles without unsourced claims"? Because else you are supporting creating a new criterion to circumvent an existing one. SoWhy 10:39, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Support per Doc. Hiding T 11:12, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose per SoWhy. We have PROD already, which works well, and should just be used in these cases - along with more people classifying and unprodding a new flood of BLP prods. Just because people could remove the prods from tons of BLPs, and not do anything to improve the articles, which then escape AfD does not mean this actually happens or would happen in a significant fraction of cases. Unprodders very frequently do some work on the articles and unsourced articles which survive AfDs are generally improved and sourced during the process. John Z (talk) 11:44, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
    • So, if I prod 5,000 articles this afternoon, that's OK? Indeed this proposal is much less than prod, since it proposes that users get 3 months to reference an article - if prod was used it would be 5 days.--Scott Mac (Doc) 11:49, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
      • Why wouldn't it? PROD has no taggings-per-day limit, has it? This proposal is more than prod because while there is a 3 month deadline, users are not notified about the deletion and other users will not see from an article if and when it will be deleted. With PROD, the creator is notified and everyone viewing the article knows they have 5 days to save it. Regards SoWhy 11:54, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
        • We could have a bot tag all BLPs marked as unreferenced for 2 months as liable to deletion, and the same bot could warn the creator - so that would do the same thing, and give far far more warning to everyone than prod.--Scott Mac (Doc) 12:04, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
        • The creator does not have to be notified when an article is prodded. It's a common courtesy, but it isn't a necessity, and point of fact, it's a common courtesy that the creator is notified when an article is tagged as a speedy, so I don't really understand your grounds of concern. I think if someone were to prod all of these articles in one go, the accusations of WP:POINT would be tremendous. Hiding T 12:14, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
        • And let us not forget that article creators are specifically told that "An article without references may quickly be deleted." when they create their article, so let's not act like there is no warning. Hiding T 12:16, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
          • Because with speedy deletions, by the time the creator reads the message, it might already be deleted. With PROD, this is unlikely. If one wants to create a PROD-like system for BLPs, i.e. tagging them for deletion for 2 months, that's fine with me, but then the discussion is wrong here. It's no speedy deletion if the creator has a fixed amount of time after tagging, it's a proposed deletion then. One of the essential points of speedy deletions is that the creator may not have the time to realize that the article is tagged before it's deleted and that admins can and will delete articles on sight that fit the criteria. Suggest a prod-like system where articles get tagged for deletion for say 3 months with a nice "this article will be deleted after 1 July 2009" on them and I'm all for it. But I'm against a speedy deletion criterion because it does not fit within the policy. Regards SoWhy 12:20, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
            • We already have a number of di- criteria where things get deleted only after some delay. This would be another, with a clearly defined criterion. --Amalthea :  Chat  12:25, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
              • Exactly. I'm not sure I understand the objections, or at least I'm thinking they've all been considered and met. Hiding T 12:36, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
              • But the other's fit well with the policy. Creating a criteria that effectively discards A7 and G11 is problematic. Instead I'd suggest a new PROD-like policy on this to clearly seperate it from the speedy deletions which have completely different objectives. SD is for cleaning up the mess, not for deleting on grounds of missing sources or suchlike, hence A7's wording. How about Wikipedia:BLP deletion instead (could be called BIODEL^^)? SoWhy 12:30, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
                • It doesn't discard anything and it fits in with what we already do here. SD is not for cleaning up the mess, it is for deleting items which do not need discussion. Unless you are suggested it needs to be discussed as to whether a BLP has references, I can't understand your objections or proposals. I doubt this criteria will throw up many more contentious deletions than current methods. Hiding T 12:39, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
                • (ec)I'd think it complements A7 & G11. They still "clean up the mess", and do so quickly. The less messy, but still highly problematic unsourced BLPs will get past them. The main difference between PROD and CSD I see is that PROD accepts any rationale that would be grounds for deletion at AfD, as long as the proponent thinks it's uncontroversial. CSD has narrowly defined criteria where, unless an article is changed, it will non-controversially deleted. With the case at hand, we have a very narrow criterion an article has to match. This fits in with CSD more than with PROD, in particular since we already have some delayed criteria.
                  Also, I imagine that this criterion will get a much reduced grace period (like 7 days) once the backlog is cleared in several months, so that it would fit even better with the other "di-" criteria we already have. I'm not sure if that's the plan though. --Amalthea :  Chat  12:43, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
                  • Funny how the two of you disagree whether SD is to clean up the mess or not. But the point is, all our current article criteria are for pages that cannot be salvaged into something worth keeping (or where it's illogical to assume it in cases of A7 and A9 which are very strict on the possibility of notability or where it's not needed in case of A2). But no criterion currently covers any pages that can be salvaged into pages worth keeping. I think adding such a new criterion does not fit with the others which explicitly targets only non-salvageable pages. On the other hand, PROD specifically is for pages which can be salvaged maybe but where noone is doing it, so the proposed criterion fits there much better than it would here. Hence my suggestion to create a separate process for this to avoid mixing elements that are not fitting together very well. Regards SoWhy 13:05, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
                    • G5 and G11 cover articles that could be salvaged. Hiding T 13:10, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
                      • I was talking about article criteria. And G11 does not cover those articles actually, because strictly speaking you can only G11 a page that is nothing but advertising, else you can easily remove the spam and leave a valid stub. Regards SoWhy 13:27, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
                        • G5 and G11 cover articles, so they are article criteria. And G11, by its own definition applies as I said, containing as it does the caveat "would need to be fundamentally rewritten". But I think we've been around this one enough. I think all your objections are met, you don't. There's not that much more to say. Hiding T 13:35, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • I'd like it if the page were visually tagged for deletion during the time anyway, so I think somethink like {{di-unsourced-blp}} "delete if it's been tagged for 3 months and is an unsourced BLP" would be best. This would categorize them neatly, tag them appropriately, and give all interested parties enough time to turn it into a WP:BLP compliant article or stub. The tagger should notify the author as with other db- and di- criteria. The tag would probably only be appropriate on "pure" biographies: if an article only contains some biographic material it should be dealt with differently.
    PROD and a time-delayed CSD aren't that different, as we've discussed here before. One of the main differences is that a CSD tag is not be removed if it clearly applies. "Sufficient references" would still of course be a judgement call, but it can't be removed from a BLP article with no sources at all.
    I very much agree with Scott that this needs to be brought live gently, to the point that only a certain number of unsourced BLPs from that category should be tagged each day (semi-automatically by some dedicated person or bot). --Amalthea :  Chat  12:22, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • I think (at least) initially, this should be applied only to brand new BLPs, so within a few days of creation it should be tagged as {{di-unsourced-blp}}, with a clear warning given on the article, and on the user's talk page. --Rob (talk) 12:52, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
      • The problem is with swamping those who would wish to fix rather than delete.--Scott Mac (Doc) 12:59, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
        • I don't fully follow. What would stop us automating a bot to also tag ten (for arguments sake) articles from the backlog per day? Would that swamp us? Or, to grant a six month exemption to the current backlog? Six months would be more than plenty time. Hiding T 13:06, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
          • Oh, I'd delete the lot tomorrow. However, you'll not get consensus for it when so many are involved. The first step is to stem the flow, so that the backlog does not increase. Then stage two is to try to work on the backlog. One step at a time, and you take more people with you.--Scott Mac (Doc) 13:43, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
    • Agreed, grandfathering this in, might be best. A policy that says if an unreferenced BLP is created, after a few hours it can be tagged as such - the tag will invite sourcing and warn that it will be deleted in in x days unless sourced, and the creator will also be invited to source it. The tags will add it to a category, so people can patrol that. Even after deletion, the article can be recreated or summarily undeleted, if someone offers to source it. (We can then, very very gently, deal with the backlog. Perhaps allowing many many months before any of the backlog is deleted - indeed ideally nothing here would be deleted for lack of sourcing.).--Scott Mac (Doc) 12:59, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • I agree with Scott Mac (Doc); having a kind of "it will be deleted in X days unless it is fixed" type of thing would probably be best. Regardless of how it is handled or what the time frame is, the pages should definitely be restored upon request to allow for sourcing. –Drilnoth (T • C) 13:32, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • I support this proposed criterion's creation. I was going to stress the importance of including a stipulation that such speedy deletions be reversed upon the request of a user who wishes to add reliable sources, but Scott MacDonald beat me to it. This, of course, should have a time limit attached (e.g. the article will be re-deleted if the sources aren't added within three days). —David Levy 13:55, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply

Concrete proposal

edit
A10:Any biography of a living person, created after 1st April 2009, which has no credible sources whatsoever, and has been tagged with {unreferenced BLP deletion} for at least 5 days. Administrators should check that the creator has been given adequate notice. (Note that any article deleted under this criterion may be summarily undeleted by any administrator if any editor indicates a willingness to source the article).
Template {unreferenced BLP deletion} should read: "This article on a living person lacks any sourcing. Please edit this article to provide sources. If this article is not sourced by [day-month-year] it may be subject to deletion. Do not remove this template unless sources have been provided.".

OK, how about it?

  • The deletion time is the same as prod, and the article is undeleted on request (the same as prod).
  • It is grandfathered in (we can think about the 30,000 backlogged unreferenced later - but let's stem the tide)
  • Creators and other are given well adequate time to provide sourcing
  • We are only asking for the most basic sourcing here.
  • The idea is not to delete things, but to create a new atmosphere where sourcing is required.
  • If any good article does get deleted, any admin can undelete without any process or discussion. He just needs to say "sourcing this"

--Scott Mac (Doc) 14:44, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply

  • Support. It might be worthwhile to have previously-tagged pages also deleted over time, as long as they are restored temporarily on request as you describe here to allow for sourcing but, as you said, this can be discussed after we see how the process works with new pages. –Drilnoth (T • C) 14:50, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Neutral: I could actually go either way, seeing Colonel Warden's comment below. Deleting good faith material just because it is unreferenced at the time isn't a good idea; prodding it would make more sense if deletion is warranted. –Drilnoth (T • C) 14:54, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
So source it.--Scott Mac (Doc) 14:56, 1 April 2009 (UTC) Indeed, I just did. Anyway, that article would not have been deleted - it would not be covered by this.--Scott Mac (Doc) 14:59, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
Did some more sourcing on John MacGregor, Baron MacGregor of Pulham Market, which kind of indicates to me why this proposal is a good thing. Hiding T 15:37, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
Nobody denies sourcing is a good thing. Butthis was better sourced than deleted,wasn't it? DGG (talk) 16:27, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
Yup, and it was this proposal that motivated someone to do it. If you've got a more effective way of ensuring we don't keep increasing the number of unsourced biographies, then I'm all ears. But saying that an individual case can be fixed, misses the structural problem.--Scott Mac (Doc) 16:35, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Support, this isn't redundant and per all the comments in the preceding section, would clearly improve the project. Hiding T 15:02, 1 April 2009 (UTC) Withdraw support. Based on people going out and prodding rather than sourcing, I do not believe this criteria would be utilised in the correct manner. My apologies, but I can no longer support this with good faith. When people are actively adding prod tags as opposed to adding easily found sources, there's something wrong. Hiding T 10:12, 3 April 2009 (UTC) Restore support. Hiding T 12:30, 3 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Support, even if it is redundant, it is a good idea. Blueboar (talk) 15:21, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose SoWhy explains it pretty much. We already have processes that cover this. This is a solution in search of a problem. -Djsasso (talk) 15:35, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • The way I read it, SoWhy is in agreement that we don't have processes to cover this. The user wants a different solution, using something more like prod. I don't see why we should reject this idea because it has the wrong name. Hiding T 15:39, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Weak support. This seems mostly redundant with the idea of just systematically PRODding unreferenced BLPs; but such systematic PRODding seems harder to actually get done; a new CSD criterion will be used. So a new CSD criterion, whilst redundant in principle, is thus not redundant in practice. It may not be pretty, but it's (probably) better than doing nothing. Rd232 talk 15:37, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Support would be a stronger support without the grandfathering, waiting period, and undelete on request. BLPs should be sourced or shot. But this is a step in the right direction. -Atmoz (talk) 15:43, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Comment - not sure. Like it in principle, but I'm unhappy about the grandfathering, if only because it creates two classes of BLP. Will ponder further Fritzpoll (talk) 15:49, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Support, though I'm not clear on the difference between this and PROD, given the five-day wait period. I'd much prefer it without that. Agree with Atmoz that BLPs should be reliably sourced or shot. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 15:51, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
The key difference is the tag can't be removed just because someone wants the article kept - to avoid deletion you have to source the article. Thus we establish the principle that unsourced BLPs must be sourced or deleted - without mass deleting the existing backlog (which, unfortunately, will not get consensus). --Scott Mac (Doc) 16:02, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
The biggest problem is how much sourcing is enough? Its a completely POV criteria. -Djsasso (talk) 16:10, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
Any legitimate sourcing is better than nothing at all. The proposal doesn't require a particular level of sourcing, just "more than none." Mr.Z-man 16:55, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Strong oppose. Most such bios are trivial to source the basic facts. At the very least they should go to prod or AfD where the community can see them and have a chance at them. Many editors come here once and never again, but do manage to add a good article. If we do this we shall be deleting a great deal of sourceable work. Perhaps we should add the criterion. "If the administrator has himself made a thorough effort to source them using appropriate resources for the type of article,and demonstrates that on the article talk page." I do not think that many admins would actually be willing to do that. The provision credible source will be interpreted much too broadly,as there is not really agreement on such things enough for a speedy procedure. A good proposal, if what you want to do is throw out the baby with the bathwater. Colonel Warden has it right. DGG (talk) 16:09, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
    • That argument is falsified by experience. We have a growing number of utterly unsourced BLPs - and simply saying to those concerned about this "go source them yourselves" is simply not working. It has never worked. Here the onus is reversed. If people want us to retain an ever-growing number of BLPs, then they need to start maintaining them in an acceptable manner.--Scott Mac (Doc) 16:14, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
I checked some of the older ones, and found some people who might not be notable, but no actually unsourced problematic article. The one possibly dubious one had sources, but the ed. forgot to add a "references" tag, so they were not displayed. We are dealing with an almost nonexistent problem. DGG (talk) 16:33, 1 April 2009 (UTC) I also checked three dozen from the last two months. I found a bumber who may not be notable, but no actual BLP problems otherwise. DGG (talk) 16:48, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • As long as care is taken to notify the creator, they can always ask for the material to be undeleted if necessary. We can't avoid choosing between Type I and Type II errors (deleting too much, keeping too much), but deletion is always temporary anyway, except in AFD cases where the subject itself is rejected for inclusion (even then there's Deletion Review). In BLP cases we should draw a different balance between deleting poor material (unreferenced is poor) and keeping it public for potential improvement, hence this criterion directed at unreferenced BLPs. Rd232 talk 16:20, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
deletion is not temporary for new editors who do not know our baroque procedure. Keeping is much morereversible than deletion, and thatsolves the problemof choosing between I and II. DGG (talk) 16:33, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
All it takes an appropriate user warning template for this criterion. There's no need for the procedure it should describe to be baroque at all - eg contacting the CSD nominator or deleting admin or if that fails posting at DRV. Really needn't be a big deal. Rd232 talk 16:39, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
If I told something like that to someone complaining about their bio on OTRS, I would expect to have my access revoked. Mr.Z-man 16:58, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Strong support - if sources exist, they can be added to the article. The point is that this proposal suggests a long enough timescale for sources to be found and added. Were this a standard speedy criterion of "tag it, wait for an admin, deleted" like most others, I would have reservations. I think there is also enough time for the standard of credibility to be assessed and debated if there is any doubt. This solves a long-standing problem Fritzpoll (talk) 16:20, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
I agree with you. Let the admin do so before deleting. DGG (talk) 16:34, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
I agree with you. Let the admin do so before deleting. We're supposed to at least passable content creators, right? DGG (talk) 16:34, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
Ridiculous. Admins are supposed to be, well, admins, not Last Line Of Defence Against Ever Deleting Anything. Rd232 talk 16:40, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
No, we are indeed the last line of defence against deletion. That's exactly what the mop is for. Deleting, after checking. Deleting problem articles is almost all I do with the admin buttons--just like you--check my log DGG (talk) 16:49, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
Let those who want to keep it, source it. Telling people who are concerned about BLP implications that the only way they get to avoid unreferenced BLPs is to go about sourcing them all, is quite unacceptable. That policy has totally failed to stem the rise in unreferenced BLPs. You are arguing for an idea that has demonstrably been falsified by 8 years of experience. Enough is enough.--Scott Mac (Doc) 16:55, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose. While I'm a "must be sourced fiend", I'm not comfortable with this solution. Ultimately, I think it punishes the reader by removing information just because a couple of editors (the person who wrote the article, the person who tagged it, and the person who deleted it) were too lazy to source it. If this goes through, I doubt I'll be deleting any of those speedies.--Fabrictramp | talk to me 16:52, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Support - We can't just say "Well, it doesn't look like an attack, so its probably fine." I've seen several cases where articles that looked fine contained false statements for very long periods of time until someone familiar with the subject noticed, or the subject complained. The current "notability-centric" system is entirely inadequate for this problem, and the amount of unsourced BLPs and other articles is increasing at an alarming rate. Mr.Z-man 16:55, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose per DGG. Jheald (talk) 16:58, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose. Unsourced BLPs are not actually a problem if it is all uncontroversial. An article that is 99% sourced and 1% libel is much worse. We do not get perfect articles by forbidding anything less than perfect. --Apoc2400 (talk) 17:00, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
    • "Uncontroversial" is a matter of opinion. What might be uncontroversial to the recent changes patroller looking over each diff for 5 seconds before moving on might be blatantly untrue and harm-causing to the subject. This proposal wouldn't preclude deletion of BLPs that do have sources or make it harder to delete libel, I don't quite understand your objection. Mr.Z-man 17:19, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
      • "Uncontentious" would be a better word. What I mean is that an unsourced BLP is not much more likely to hurt anyone than an article that has at least one source. --Apoc2400 (talk) 19:07, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Support This isn't a solution to the BLP problem, but it is a good and necessary idea. [[Sam Korn]] (smoddy) 17:01, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Support - as a representative of the inclusionist troll guild. ;) We'll probably need to quibble over the word "credible", but otherwise a template - wait - del format is perfectly reasonable, and if the template adds to a category of "blps that'll be deleted if not sourced", they can be easily fixed by those so inclined. WilyD 17:03, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Completely unsourced biographies of living people have no place on Wikipedia. If an article (a biography of a living person) goes three months without any sources, it should be deleted. If a legit article gets deleted, why is that the end of the world? Couldn't it just be recreated when someone could be arsed to find a fucking source? People! Our biographies of living people are probably our most "dangerous" articles. We must do something. Speedy deleting these articles does not mean there can never be an article on the subject. When sources are provided, it can have a shot. Until then, what positive benefit is there for having potenially troublesome biographies of living people in the encyclopedia. Delete hard with no prejudice towards recreation with sources in the future. Good first step. Mahalo. --Ali'i 17:06, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Support It helps convey the message that the project is serious about quality and verifiability. Given enough notice and a cat for concerned editors to find articles to rescue, I see no problem. It will only improve overall quality. -- Mufka (u) (t) (c) 17:08, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Although Hiding seems to think so, I'm not in support in general and certainly I oppose this suggestion of a new A10 to cover it. My proposal was a completely seperate process to CSD with much longer waiting periods before deletion. I might make a full proposal later today when I come home. My reasons for opposing this proposal are a.) does not fit CSD, b.) 5 days is too short and c.) this proposal aims for deletion of those articles rather than fixing them, which conflicts with WP:PRESERVE and WP:REMOVE. Our editing policy is towards keeping information and removing only what cannot be sourced. But there is no BLP I can think of that could not be cut down to a stub and not still be a valid article. If there are unsourced statements, they can be removed individually but never should a possibly verifiable article be deleted because of that. Because an article like "X is an American painter" can be a perfectly fine stub without having to be deleted for not having sources that specify that X exists.
    Yes, I understand that some articles might need to be deleted but I do not agree that it has to be done at a scale which needs a new criterion to cover it. There are good reasons we have WP:PROD and the proposed criteria is actually more strict than PROD; PROD can only be used when an article fails policy and guidelines, not only if it's unclear. Doc's suggestion would allow deletion for the simple possibility of not meeting those guidelines without any proof that they are in fact not verifiable. There is no reason to create a criteria that effectively is like PROD but without PROD's benefits and reasoning. On a side note, I don't think such a change that would replace PROD in large parts of target articles can be done with simple discussion here, it needs a much larger community input. Regards SoWhy 17:09, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Support. Good one - David Gerard (talk) 17:18, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Support Only one verifiable source is needed to prevent this from being applied. Is that too much to ask going forward? -- Avi (talk) 17:30, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Strong support - totally! - Alison ❤ 17:32, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Comment:I've already mentioned above that I support the basic idea, but this iteration still needs to define what "a biography of a living person" is for the sake (and avoidance) of the WikiLawyers. It shouldn't link to Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons, either, despite that being the obvious fix, because that makes for an external dependency that editors would in have to read (in theory; in practice they'd just go with thier memory or their perception of what's acceptable). I suggested above that this ought to apply only to nomenclative articles (that is, naming a particular person); I still think that's a better standard, even if in excludes a few things. — Gavia immer (talk) 17:43, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose per SoWhy. –Juliancolton | Talk 17:44, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Weak support I'd rather support an alternative that allows for a broader criteria for deleting BLP articles. This criteria prevent previous (prior April 2009) entries without sources from being speedy deleted if they do not contain sources. Since they have been on site the longest then they should go first. As well, I think that having a stub of a single fact that the person existed is not necessary for a comprehensive encyclopedia since the content can be presented elsewhere. Allowing a vast number of these BLP articles has the potential for harm since we do not have adequate number of volunteers to monitor the articles. My strong preference would be for all BLP entries without sourcing for the majority of the content to be deleted with the possibility to be recreated once adequate sourcing is found. FloNight♥♥♥ 17:46, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Support with caveats. I would prefer an addition: "created after 1st April 2009, or more than 90 days old,". It would be better to have a grace period than a full exemption for "grandfathered" articles. Additionally, this is probably better placed at WP:PROD than at WP:CSD. It is, in essence, a PROD with a stricter limitation for removing the template. (CSD is generally shoot on sight. PROD has the waiting period.) The first is important to me, but the latter is more a quibble. --Vassyana (talk) 17:58, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
I agree it isn't enough. But something that "isn't enough" for BLP concerned people, while is perhaps acceptable to some BLP inclusionists might gain consensus. My aim would be to generate an atmosphere of less tolerance for unsourced BLPs - hopefully that would encourage sourcing of articles rather than deletion, but it will certainly begin to focus minds.--Scott Mac (Doc) 18:01, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
I was planning to propose wording that got rid of existing articles that did not have any sources for most of the content and were tagged for a week. No special warning to the creator is needed to delete since this is well past the time period necessary for them to return to the article and add sources. This would let us clear out the vast number of old articles without out sources for the majority of the content, and stop the addition of new articles without content. The reality is that we do not have the manpower to identify and monitor all BLP articles now. I don't see that changing any time soon. I want to reduce the number of articles we need to watch by only keeping the ones that are referenced articles, not including unreferenced stubs (which add no value to the reader beyond what a redirect would do) or poorly referenced start length articles (which have the large potential to be inaccurate, and some potential to actually cause harm to the person). FloNight♥♥♥ 18:17, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Agree it could be better framed as a PROD, with removal of tag only if a source is provided. Also agree that complete grandfathering doesn't really make sense. Better to give a longer grace period after creation, but apply it to all BLPs, new and existing. I'd also challenge the inclusionists to come up with an upper limit on how long completely unsourced BLPs should be allowed - bearing in mind that unsourced BLPs existing for a long time are prima facie of low notability, and the unsourced WP article is probably relatively prominent on the internet. Rd232 talk 18:12, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Prod/speedy who cares what we call it, let's discuss the substance. I'm not at all proposed to dealing with the old BLPs - however I was looking for a starting point that might get consensus. Anything that involves tagging 30,000 articles and deleting a percentage of them will get a string of opposes. If you want to do that, can I ask you to propose a seperate supplemental/complementary idea later, so that you neither cause people to oppose this, nor split the support vote. (I personally will support any such proposal).--Scott Mac (Doc) 18:24, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Support. +sj + 18:16, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
    A general caveat, since I don't like the fact that deletion always deletes the catalog record that someone once tried to create an article : I'd really like to see a catalog, open to human organization unlike the deletion log, of pages of all sorts that have been deleted, with relevant categories. Certainly any page that could be described as "may be a good article some day, but isn't yet and we need to clean up"... the original materials is often quite good and useful for anyone coming along to add to it later -- and totally invisible to those future editors. My suggestion below about a delay for applying G8 to newly deleted (and newly created) articles cuts at the same problem. +sj +
  • Oppose. BLPs are not special. -- LondonStatto (talk) 18:18, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply

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  • Support - We'll finally stop the problem from growing. As long as people are creating verifiable BLPs, this proposal poses no threat, as they merely have to provide just one source for their information. The only good criticism I see far, is the proposal doesn't go far enough. But, that's not ground for rejection, only for a new proposal in the future. --Rob (talk) 18:26, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • oppose1)If you want to effectively prevent more casual editors from creating articles Citizendium is that way. 2)Once you've ajusted for effectively making it impossible for casual editors to create new articles can you show that sourcing actually helps at all? 3)Can you show that BLP issues in free articles is actually significant compared to edits to existing articles (remember you can't drive by create an article). Given the falling rate of new articles do you seriously think we can afford to put up more barriers to creation?Geni 18:30, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Imaginary problem There is no epidemic of unsourced BLPs. The huge number of ones in the most recent months category is due to the retrospective addition of tags to old articles. I checked a total of 50 from March. 48 of them were from 05 or 06. Almost all of them were either clearly notable athletes (including Olympians) and clearly notable politicians (including prime ministers). They were apparently added in batches and not sourced at the time. I checked about the same number of new bios from April 1 New Pages. 4 or 5 were abusive--and they had been already tagged for Speedy, and I deleted them accordingly. An equal number were unsourced and probably not notable, but routine careers, They should be checked and perhaps prodded, or dealt with as Spam and self-advertisement --but we already have speedy A7 and G11 to deal with that. But it does not seem urgent. There is a real problem, though: the addition of false information and abuse to existing sourced bios. Flagged revisions will do them, if it works. This proposal will have no effect on it whatsoever. I challenge the proposer to find me 5 articles from the last 5 days which are actually harmful and have not been caught. I challenge Flo in particular to find more than 1% of the unsourced articles from the backlist that are harmful (& where the harm was not from later additions) and have not been caught. (sourced but harmful articles that have not been caught , yes, those can be found. Neither this proposal nor her proposal addresses them at all.) DGG (talk) 18:35, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
To answer User:DGG, I looked at articles created March 9 (back of the NP log), and found 13 unsourced bios - User:Kevin/unsourced, not counting those that were moved or fell off the back of the log. Kevin (talk) 22:14, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Support. Obvious corrolary of "do no harm"... unsourced == not needed until it's sourceable and sourced, there is no rush... As for Sj's idea of a catalog, that has merit enough to kick around and see if it can be made to work. ++Lar: t/c 18:42, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply

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  • Support as a way of dealing with the BLP problem without the backlog that would ensue from flaggings. It's not a solution to the problem by any means, but its a good start. This extends from our policy on verification, since if an article isn't properly verified it should go. When a BLP isn't properly verified, it can do much more harm than the standard unsourced article. In the perfect Wiki, editors shouldn't be able to create articles without going through AfC (which would screen out the bad BLPs), but since we don't live in the perfect Wiki this is a suitable alternative. ThemFromSpace 18:50, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose as written - per WP:BITE, and in agreement somewhat with User:DGG's comments, espcially to add in "If the administrator has himself made a thorough effort to source them using appropriate resources for the type of article,and demonstrates that on the article talk page." I could go along with allowing a ProD, and if "credible source" were defined as "reliable source" and "verifiable". More discussion may be needed, but this is a good start. Bearian (talk) 19:15, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose per DGG and Apoc. Joe 19:34, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Strong Oppose - This is a non-speedy speedy, which makes no sense; and PROD serves this well enough now. I'm all for sources, but this seems to be burning down the village to save it. It's one thing to delete unsourced controversial material in a BLP article; quite another to delete entire articles, regardless of whether the unsourcedness has any whiff of controversy. TJRC (talk) 19:35, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
    • Why should our reference work give information that has no sources? It makes it completely unreliable. We need to stop pretending that we are giving our readers good content when we're not. Going back later and looking for sources to reference the content is entirely backwards. FloNight♥♥♥ 22:15, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
      • Most encyclopedias do not give sources for every article. Sources are great but it is perfectly possible that an unsourced article is great, while hundreds of sources can be sherrypicked and re-interpreted. --Apoc2400 (talk) 18:15, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose for two reasons.
1) As pointed out above we have a WP:PROD procedure that is designed for this sort of situation, i.e. where non-urgent deletion of articles can happen without discussion. In answer to the point made that anyone can remove a prod tag, is there any evidence that this prod tags get removed without explanation from unsourced BLPs frequently enough to satisfy criterion 3 at the top of this page? I don't see many AfDs created for that reason. If it does become a problem in the future we can deal with it then. Until that time we can give articles another five days if they have already been sitting here for three months.
2) Doing this, by treating all BLPs equally, would be a distraction from the primary purpose of WP:BLP, i.e. to protect people from harm. Today I noticed an article that the proposer of this criterion prodded for being an unsourced BLP for three months. Even if the article content was incorrect would having it on Wikipedia for an extra five days possibly do Mr Abbasov any harm? Would it damage him to say that he plays football and weighs 73kg? A simple Google search confirmed that the article was indeed incorrect, because it was out of date, but I was able to fix it with a source findable within seconds. Would the encyclopedia have been better if the article had been speedily deleted? Let's concentrate our efforts on the BLPs, or content about living people put into other articles, that have a potential to do harm, and can be handled by WP:CSD#G10, editing or oversight. As an example, I found an article few days ago about a 16-year-old that said she had performed in pornographic films, and an adminstrator (yes, an administrator) had put a prod tag on it for non-notability rather than delete it immediately. This proposed procedure will take away attention from such serious cases that need to be dealt with speedily. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:36, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
I PRODded about 50 articles to try and answer the question of whether PROD could be used to deal with this problem, or if the PROD would just end up being removed without sourced being added. I understand that adding a source is better, but lately the number of unsourced BLPs has been growing by 200 articles per day, more than I can source. These have been tagged for months, with no action whatsoever. Kevin (talk) 20:34, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
There are thousands of articles about people with false, outdated information. Having false, outdated, unverified information is harmful to both the reader and the person. I will no longer accept the lousy content that we are providing to our reader. Unless we remove it, it will be there giving us the false sense that we are doing a good job comprehensively providing information when we are not. My standards are higher than this and I'm not going to lower them. It is wrong to continue to pretend that we are doing a good job when we aren't.
I personally do not have the time, knowledge of the topic, or foreign language skills to search out content to fix these articles. I see no alternative to fix this problem except to delete them until a well sourced entry can be written. FloNight♥♥♥ 20:39, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
We got an edit policy that specifically tells us how to deal with those articles: Preserve as much information as possible and remove the parts which are unsourced. Could you please elaborate why this approach is inferior to deleting the article? I made an example edit, see here. It took me just a little bit longer than selecting "delete" but this way there is not all information lost and the article is not a BLP problem anymore. Regards SoWhy 20:51, 1 April 2009 (UTC
Actually it does cause problems to have a huge number of stub or pre-stubs. Because we do not have enough volunteers to review every edit in a timely manner some of these under watched articles are going to have unreverted vandalism, nonsense, and unsourced negative content added. We have no idea which article it will be, but we know that someones article is being changed to make it be unencyclopedic as we speak. If the content can be covered in another entry then there is absolutely no additional value to the reader for a stub over a redirect. FloNight♥♥♥ 20:57, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
This is not an argument in favor of the proposal so much as it's an argument in favor of not having any articles at all on living people. Just because someone adds a source doesn't mean that there is no vandalism, nonsense, or unsourced negative content in the article.--Fabrictramp | talk to me 21:05, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
Fabrictramp says it all. Every BLP can be vandalized in that way. After all, a BLP with 20 sources would not be covered by this criterion. We cannot go around deleting articles just because they are not watched by enough people. We would have to delete ~95% of all articles then. Yet the risk of someone just coming by and removing all those sources and adding some libel exists. Should we delete it preemptively? You need to explain why it's better to delete exactly and only those pages in Category:Unreferenced BLPs than to apply the editing policy to them and revert them to problem-free stubs or PROD them. Regards SoWhy 21:15, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
That articles can be vandalized is irrelevant. If this goes through, admins should obviously take care to check if a better version is in the article history as always. - Mgm|(talk) 08:42, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
Huh? The point is that this is doing something rather than nothing. What we're currently doing is not working because we aren't really doing anything. This isn't a complete fix and I don't believe anyone is advertising as one, but its at least a visible step in the right direction. Mr.Z-man 21:48, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
Unfortunately, humans have a common tendency to follow the "Something must be done. This is something. Therefore we must do it." line of reasoning. Unfortunately, if the "something" doesn't solve the problem, no progress is made. FWIW, I've worked on a number of BLPs today. Most were easily sourced. One was not, and prodded for lack of notability. 4 were copyvios and tagged for speedy. Yes, this proposal would have gotten rid of the bad ones, but it would have thrown out the good ones too, probably with more work than it took me to source them. I still wonder how many here took up my "fix five" challenge. I fear not many did.--Fabrictramp | talk to me 00:19, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
I fail to see how there cannot be a middle ground between "solving the problem" and "totally worthless." If we have 2 or 3 people each fixing 5 unsourced BLPs every day, we can basically break even at the current rate that they're being added, assuming that they're all properly tagged and categorized soon after creation. That still leaves the 30,000 from previous months and years. Mr.Z-man 16:33, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
Hmm, I initially wanted to dispute your numbers, but I just looked at the 36 articles in Category:Unreferenced BLPs from April 2009 and only 3 of them were created this year (1 2 3). The massive influx of the category in the recent 4 months apparently came from the tagging of the many old articles, which the current proposal wouldn't affect. --Amalthea 16:56, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
The numbers came from a database query, looking for pages created in the last 30 days (still in the recentchanges table) that were also in Category:All unreferenced BLPs or both Category:Living people and Category:All articles lacking sources. There are 346 pages that meet those criteria in the last 30 days, which averages to about 81 per week, and of course that only counts the unsourced BLPs that were properly categorized and tagged. Mr.Z-man 19:36, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
Why is it better to delete BLPs which are unreferenced for longer periods? Because unsourced BLPs existing for a long time are prima facie of low notability, and probably have few or no watchers; and the unsourced WP article is probably relatively prominent on the internet. Any harm done either by the creator or a drive-by editor may be (a) visible for a long time (b) unclear that it is harmful, since anybody happening by can't qickly check sources (c) high up in Google searches for that person, so any harm is very visible - unlike the same garbage being spewed on a no-name blog. WP:BLP exists for a reason and the logic behind it applies more strongly to people of low prominence, but sufficient notability for inclusion; and it's precisely these bios which are likely to be unreferenced. WP's desire to cover every living person of note needs to be weighed against the possible harm done to the subjects by giving platforms to people who dislike them. I've come across at least 2 bios, for example, which resulted in the subject being placed on a terrorist watchlist (Category:People placed on a terrorist watchlist as a result of false information on Wikipedia, anyone?). Should we place (a) 100% importance on this i.e. no BLPs at all; (b) 0%, let anybody libel anyone ("let God sort 'em out") or (c) strive to find an appropriate balance? Rd232 talk 22:14, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Support in principle, but oppose the use of the word "credible" in the phrase "no credible sources whatsoever". CSD is not the place to judge whether a source is "credible" (which I'm assuming means reliable). –Black Falcon (Talk) 19:53, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Strong support in the spirit of BLP. We need something like this in place. PeterSymonds :  Chat  20:19, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Support, obviously. I do think that the proposal needs to be able to address the huge backlog, as well as future articles. Kevin (talk) 20:23, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
    • CommentI'm kind of appalled that backlog is being used to justify wholesale and expedited deletion of entire articles with no controversial material. TJRC (talk) 21:08, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose. Immedatism may be the watchword for BLPs, but often it takes time to find good sources, and any way you look at it, a stub that says "John Doe is a painter" isn't going to hurt anyone. By all means remove controversial unsourced material, even if it's barely controversial at all, per BLP policy - but everybody has something noncontroversial you can say about them. Besides that, it's easy to circumvent this criterion by merely claiming that the person is dead (without sources, who would know?) I also object strongly to the inherently subjective nature of the term "credible." Dcoetzee 20:41, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Support. Great idea. Should have been implemented many moons ago. JBsupreme (talk) 20:45, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Comment: It's worth noting because of the grandfathering, this proposal will help us keep far more verifiable material than the current approach. It will get BLP-creators to fix the article, while it's still fresh in their mind (and they're still active with the project), and will encourage them to include sources in the future. Providing sources is easy if it's done at the time of creation, or shortly afterwards, by the creator, who should know where thy got their info. But, if we let that article sit around for months, or years, with no sources, and then re-visit it, the creator is probably gone, or forgot the article, lost interest, or just forgets where he found the information. At that point, it's often a huge burden for others to find sources. For some areas, it's very hard for somebody to find and evaluate good sources outside of the particular area of interest. So, the article gets PRODed and/or AFD'd, nobody is willing or able to fix it, and it gets deleted, losing all the work that went it to it. The editor who took a few weeks/months off Wikipedia, comes back, and finds their article gone. It seems opponents of this proposal make assume the only thing this proposal does is delete more articles, when in fact, it will fix more articles. --Rob (talk) 21:50, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
    • I agree that after the fact quick fixes like are done at Afd or when someone removes a PROD can be problematic especially for people with minor notability. We can end up with merged identities in an article. And the most quickly available content, that is added merely to keep the article, often will not give us a well balanced article. Getting it fixed soon after creation is key to improving the quality of content. FloNight♥♥♥ 22:05, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Comment: I see this proposal not as a way to delete unsourced BLPs (it does that, but for me that's secondary) but rather as a means to challenge the attitude that it is acceptable or appropriate for articles to be written that do not cite their sources. Doing so is poor practice from an encyclopedic perspective (see Wikipedia:Verifiability), a legal perspective (see Wikipedia:Copyrights and Wikipedia:Non-free content, both of which apply to use of copyrighted text), and from a professional perspective (the sources of information and ideas should be attributed). Experience has shown that adding {{unreferenced}} is simply not enough in too many cases. –Black Falcon (Talk) 22:09, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Strong Support, Wikipedia should not have any unsourced BLPs, whether the person is notable or not, and whether the article is potentially harmful to the subject or not. This proposal will not solve the problem, but it will go a long way towards making it more manageable. Lankiveil (speak to me) 22:14, 1 April 2009 (UTC).Reply
  • Neutral (leaning Weak Oppose) as written - per DGG and Colonel Warden and WP:BITE. PROD appears to be working, so I see no gain and plenty to lose by the proposal. I'd tend to go with consensus but I am not seeing it here. Casliber (talk · contribs) 22:16, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
    • How it is biting to ask people who wish to contribute an article to add one source - and to do so within 5 days? We are an encyclopedia - surely it properly conveys to a newcomer that we take our content, and its reliability, seriously --Scott Mac (Doc) 22:23, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
      • It is. If you can't see that for new users then I am not sure how I can explain it to you. Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:53, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
        • Then your powers of reasoning and expression are a deal lower than I assumed. "It is." it really quite a pitiful response, when we are dealing with such an important issue.--Scott Mac (Doc) 23:56, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
          • Let's not descend into personal attacks, please. I'll take a stab at explaining why it's bitey. User:NewEditor gets excited about being able to contribute something to an encyclopedia, and writes something about John Doe, a famous person in his town. He's always heard that John Doe did X, Y, and Z, so he adds it to the 'pedia. Like 99% of everyone out there, NewEditor has no clue that reliable, independent sources are needed for stuff "everyone knows". The next time he signs on, there's a new message, saying in effect "your stuff isn't good enough, you didn't do it right, and if you don't hop to it, we'll delete it, assuming we haven't deleted it already." NewEditor slinks away with his tail between his legs, having been slapped down by the Cabal.--Fabrictramp | talk to me 00:26, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
      • I do see plenty of users who create an article, play with it for a day or so*, and then don't come back for a fortnight. *(My new article patrolling is based on newartbot, which is 36-48 hours behind). Sometimes these people return to find nothing but a deletion log (they may not log in) and sometimes they simply re-upload the same article only to have it speedied within hours as {{db-repost}}. For articles which haven't had a project tag added, prod is almost a stealth method of deletion. Hence I'd like to see a slightly longer timeframe like 14 days. dramatic (talk) 04:10, 2 May 2009 (UTC)Reply
    • We have over 30,000 BLPs tagged as being completely unsourced, many for more than 2 years - about 1 in 11 BLPs is entirely without sources (almost twice as bad as the rate for all articles) - if this is what "working" looks like... Mr.Z-man 23:13, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose - This is another example of trying to substitute editorial judgement with blind rule following. This is easily gamed. A book can be listed as a source. How many admins are going to go to the library and read the book to verify the claims? Source references can be deleted and then the article tagged. There is no substitute for editorial judgement. A key point of our BLP policy is the deletion of unsourced problematic/controversial claims, not all unsourced claims. If you read a completely unsourced BLP and it has no claims that seem problematic, it should not be deleted. The biggest problem with admins editing articles is admins blindly applying rules to articles that they know nothing about. If you are ignorant of the subject of the article,you should not edit it. WAS 4.250 (talk) 22:22, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
    • An unsourced or poorly sourced article adds no value to the encyclopedia and potentially causes problems. People have the right to a well-written, well-balanced article based on verifiable reliable sources. Experience has taught us that if we accept less then the articles will remain. Taking another approach is needed to raise our standards to where they need to be in order to have a high quality reference work. FloNight♥♥♥ 22:29, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
      • The "adds no value" argument is misleading. Many articles with no sources can be sourced but merely haven't been yet. The value they add is that it's easier to add sources to an article than to rewrite a new one from scratch. This is the wiki process, sharing work. Dcoetzee 20:06, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
    • re "If you are ignorant of the subject of the article,you should not edit it." Most editors follow this advice. If an article is outside their area of expertise, they will simply leave it alone. So, unsourced articles on marginally (but sufficiently) notable people are left alone by Wikipedians who never heard of the bio subject. Unfortunately, we can't rely on experts for most articles, as there just aren't enough. Often, the only Wikipedian familiar with the bio subject, is the one person who wrote the article. We need independent reviewers of articles, who aren't necessarily familiar with the subject, to carefully review all BLPs, not just for obvious libel, but more subtle problems. Such reviewers need to know the sources used in writing the article, otherwise it's impractical to spend hours search blindly for sources, never being able to prove they don't exist. --Rob (talk) 00:24, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose as drafted (1) CSD is no place to make policy or define terms so talk of "credible sources" is inappropriate. Either refer to "reliable sources" or "sources". Given how WP:BLP is worded I suggest it should be "reliable sources" (2) This seems to me to be more about amending WP:PROD than amending WP:CSD; it doesn't really fit here; if it were listed there I might support it. (3) I've created a summary of existing deletion policy for BLPs at WP:DP-BLP so that I could find my way around the myriad policies. Hope that's useful. As others have pointed out, BLP articles that fail to assert notability qualify for CSD under A7 and negative unsourced BLPs under G10. Neutral BLPs which assert but do not prove notability only qualify under PROD. The issue about prods being removable by any editor seems to be a problem with prod rather than a problem with BLPs or CSD. AndrewRT(Talk) 22:30, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Support, except for the part about "credible" sources. That will just make it difficult for admins to enforce. A binary analysis of whether there are any sources provided or not is simple to understand and easy to implement. Regular processes can handle the corner cases. Undeletion is a straightforward solution for when sources are later found, or for when an author forgets or does not know to provide sources. --bainer (talk) 22:57, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Comment Any WikiProject for an article should be notified - they are the people most likely to have the resources and interest to provide reliable and relevant sources. Royalbroil 23:26, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose The criteria itself is controversial (in other words, there isn't widespread agreement that articles meeting the proposed criteria be deleted). The vast majority of pages which could be deleted by this would be harmless. And who are we kidding, really? Where are the leagues of editors and admins combing cat:BLP looking for credible sources who would be well served by this new deletion criteria? Are we just adding another backlog? This time with a reasonable downside risk to it? Protonk (talk) 23:39, 1 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose. Why delete good articles at speedy that may not be content violations simply because they lack citations? If the person is notable, then the article should stay. If there are content issues, tag it. If you really think there is a major concern, PROD it or take it to AfD. Vegaswikian (talk) 00:25, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose I fail to see, as DGG has said, why G10, PROD, and AFD do not cover all of this. More minor points: As AndrewRT has mentioned, the issue of PRODs can be fixed by forcing rejected prods to automatically be sent to AfD. Or maybe even by creating WP:AfD/Uncontroversial, where seeing what is tagged with prod and with what rationale can be more easily identified. Also, as Casilber has mentioned, I fear that this will lead to even more newbie-scaring off, and right now, we need to court newcomers more than we need to delete every single unsourced BLP. 01:40, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
    • Can you explain how tagging per this proposal would scare off a newbie *more* than PROD and/or AFD? --Rob (talk) 03:23, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
      • Sure thing. PROD rationales and AFD by their very nature are usually only used on non-notable or unverifiable articles. This "A10" rationale would be a bit more indiscriminate, and would end up hitting verifiable and notable people. For someone to create a article on a perfectly fine subject without an explicit source and have it be deleted a week later...well that would be more disheartening to me that if it had happened to me for writing about a non-notable subject. 05:50, 2 April 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.62.228.22 (talk)
  • Oppose. This is unneeded as we have systems in place that seem to work very well at deleting material. This looks to be a solution in search of a problem. We're here to create articles. Let's find ways to encourage sourcing and better writing instead. -- Banjeboi 02:10, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Support We can have articles on the subject when they are sourced. This is about academic responsibility. Considering it can be undeleted on request then if anyone really cares enough about the article then this won't effect them. It will just get rid of hundreds of abandoned unsourced articles about living people. Chillum 02:23, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
the proposal was not for dealing with the abandoned ones,but for new articles coming in. DGG (talk) 03:42, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
Perhaps when we no longer have to deal with 80 or more new unsourced BLPs a week, we can actually make some progress on the 30,000 abandoned ones. Mr.Z-man 04:29, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
If we disposed completely of those 80 with half the fuss we now do--it would save enough time that we could do the 30,000 in 15 years. I don't see that as a practical approach to the real problem. And it wouldnt be half the fuss, either, because the work needed to fix or remove them would be just the same as now. DGG (talk) 18:44, 9 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Support. It's not perfect, but on the whole this will do more good than bad. Yilloslime TC 03:03, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Comment This proposal reminds me of when "Free Use Content" got turned into "Non-free content" and then the deletions became rampant. Obviously, two different cases with different circumstances... but I think this shouldn't turn into a "Tag 30k articles in a week via bot" type of thing (which I'm not saying this will). No other comment except to say I think this is a step in the right direction. --Izno (talk) 04:37, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose. Any speedy criterion which opens up for the speedy deletion of articles like Lars Peder Brekk (the Norwegian minister for agriculture) is simply not acceptable. Sourced or not sourced, that BLP should never be deleted, let alone speedy deleted, no matter how many days or how long a grace period is given. Sjakkalle (Check!) 07:22, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
    • Neither is it acceptable to have BLPs without a single source. Kevin (talk) 07:53, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
    • In theory, that same article could already have been deleted with WP:PROD. In reality such deletion wouldn't occur with PROD or with this proposal, because somebody could easily prevent it, by adding one source (like the one there now). --Rob (talk) 07:56, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
      • No administrator worthy of the position should delete an article on the Norwegian minister of agriculture. If it is PROD-ed, and for some reason remains PROD-ed at the end of five days, the correct procedure for the admin is to remove the PROD tag. I strongly believe that if an article like Lars Peder Brekk were deleted from Wikipedia, it would bring Wikipedia into serious disrepute in the Norwegian press. Sjakkalle (Check!) 08:53, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
      • Regarding the reasons behind the proposal, I don't think it would achieve its aim if it were implemented, because the root cause of BLP violations is not that biographies are unsourced, but that our RC/Newpages patrol is not able to catch each and every edit made, and that bad edits sometimes slip through. There are without question too many cases of serious libel being added to BLPs which were caught up by the press before it was caught by our anti-vandalism mechanisms. For example, the bios of prime ministers Jens Stoltenberg and Torbjørn Jagland were both hit. I have at times (thankfully, very rarely) encountered vicious and obvious attack pages which remained online for over two weeks when I pulled the trigger on them. However, while an event like that is very serious (and I strongly favor stiff sanctions levied against people who do that kind of mischief), neither was fundamentally a result of people accepting unsourced articles or edits. It was a result of people not noticing the vandalism. Unsourced BLPs which are negative and disparaging are already being speedy deleted by criterion G10, and unsourced edits which are negative to a BLP subject are speedily reverted when they are noticed, as they should be. A speedy criterion which expands our mechanisms to correctly condemn bad-faith stuff to something which targets good-faith stuff as well is not going to improve the encyclopedia. Sjakkalle (Check!) 09:12, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • oppose DGG and APoc summarize issues with this well. It takes 30 seconds to prod something and another 30 seconds to AfD if there is a concern. AfD will actually get eyes on these articles whereas this will not. Unsourced, negative BLPs are deleted under G10 already so this wouldn't substantially help matters. JoshuaZ (talk) 20:16, 13 April 2009 (UTC)Reply

Random break 2

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(note: this is so it is easier to edit)

  • Oppose There is no deadline. Articles should be flagged to encourage edits (with the unref tag, for example) instead of deletion (unless, of course, they simply aren't notable). Deleting these articles will just unfill many hole that have been plugged with their initial creation. Editors who start unref'd articles (BLP or not), should be pointed to ways of adding refs and improving their creations. Lugnuts (talk) 07:44, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
There are currently about 14000 articles tagged as unsourced BLPs. Waiting for improvement has not worked up to now, so how do suggest we proceed? Kevin (talk) 07:53, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
In the time you would take to delete them with that new A10, you could easily apply WP:EP to them or WP:PROD them. The dilemma you create is a false one: As those deletions have to be made manually by admins, multiple admins would have to review each of those 14000 articles to avoid deleting articles where the sources exist but which are still tagged or where the sources were removed in acts of vandalism. Now if those admins instead of hitting "delete", just hit "prod" or, much better, just remove the unsourced content and leave a valid stub, would it take them more time? Not really I'd say. It's actually more time consuming because all users can PRESERVE/REMOVE those articles or PROD them but only admins could delete them. Regards SoWhy 09:00, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
If we remove all the unsourced content there is nothing left. We're not talking about poorly sourced articles, they are completely unsourced. Why are people so resistant to adding sources? Kevin (talk) 09:26, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
It's not about whether people are resistant to adding sources. It's about why you think admins have the time to delete those articles but they don't have the time to fix them which does not take more time. I pointed out an example above: It took me the same time to just cut it down to a stub as reviewing all revisions whether the sources were in the article before (and that's what admins would have to do!) would have taken me. And don't you think the result I achieved is preferable to deletion? Regards SoWhy 09:32, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
Yes I do. I also believe that an atmosphere where the creator of an article does the sourcing rather than having someone come behind them and fix things up is better. Look at it from my point of view: I strongly believe that every BLP should be sourced, and that there is no reason why any BLP should no be sourced. I do not have the time or resources myself to fix every unsourced BLP, so I must turn to another method. Tagging them has not worked, the growing backlog proves that. My objection to PROD is that it can be removed without addressing the problem. What is next? Kevin (talk) 09:44, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
The whole point of the wiki system is that the creator does not have to do everything but that every article is a collaboration of many editors. I understand your point of view, I share it in fact. But if you say that you don't have the time to fix them yourself, you won't have the time to delete them with this new A10. And my point is that if fixing and deleting take the same time, there is no reason I can see to prefer the latter. The main problem with those BLPs is not that we cannot delete them, most prods go uncontested after all. It's that noone is willing to go through that backlog to handle them. But a new criterion will not fix that, will it? Regards SoWhy 09:54, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
I'm sure I can make an informed decision and delete a whole lot faster than adding a decent source. Kevin (talk) 09:59, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
I challenge you to prove it. Let's take the random example I picked yesterday (and to which I alluded before): Richard Doherty (military historian). To make your informed decision, you will have to review all 40 revisions of this article to see whether there were sources in it at some point (because they can easily be removed by a vandal). Set a stopwatch and see how long it takes. Then, navigate to Google News and search for "Richard Doherty" "historian". Find a source and write a simple <ref>-tag citing that source. Set a stopwatch and time your progress. Then tell me which of those tasks took longer. Regards SoWhy 10:09, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
This is a completely bogus example. The warning tag would be placed shortly after a *new* article is made. All but the first edits to the article would be done with the warning about sources plainly visible. The admin would review the article around 5 days after. The example you gave was made in 2006. Using your own example, an admin would only have to review four versions by two editors. Most importantly, the creatore would have been given a warning, and been able to provide the source the used, preventing any admin from having to do anything, and this problem could have been fix in 2006, if we had this proposal earlier. Obviously, you manufactured the best example you could, and it actually disproves your point. --Rob (talk) 17:51, 2 April 2009 (UTC) Added: I should have also noted, the example article you gave actually was sourced from the very first version, and would *never* be deleted under this proposal, as it doesn't require complete and proper sources. --Rob (talk) 18:01, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • I'm not sure every admin would be as thourough as me by searching the history before deleting a page, but I'd like to point out that there is a tool that makes it a lot easier to search an article history than the manual labor methord. - Mgm|(talk) 10:13, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • If they are not, they are not following policy. Speedy deletion policy is that nothing should be deleted where there is a previous version to revert to that would not be speedy-deletable. But which tool is there to automatize that task? Searching for <ref>-tags? Well, most newbies don't know them and thus would not use them. I cannot think of a way to search for all ways someone might have referenced an article. But to speedy-delete a page, that is what admins would have to do. Regards SoWhy 10:32, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
It took me about 20 seconds to check the first edit, and the one before yours, both of which had a source, therefore the appropriate action is not deletion. I'm well aware of how long deletion takes from going through candidates for speedy deletion. It wasn't the best example perhaps, but my opinion stands. Kevin (talk) 10:20, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Support. Black Falcon (talk · contribs) and Thivierr (talk · contribs) (Rob) summed up my view best. The proposal needs some fine-tuning but the basics are there. If we protect the existing pages by grandfathering, we can improve Wikipedia by sourcing them, rather than wasting our time tagging incoming articles. Wikipedia is now of the size that we should encourage good editorial judgement over growing at all costs. Deleting articles that don't meet requirements immediately enforces the rules listed at the bottom of the edit window (verifiability is the only one of the rules listed there that is not being effectively enforced). As long as existing articles are left out of the proposal, I fully support it. - Mgm|(talk) 08:57, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Support. I'd be screaming blue murder if this was retrospective, but for new articles? We need a cultural change in this respect, and there's zero harm done by implementing this as a start. Rebecca (talk) 10:43, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose. This proposal creates a new deletion mechanism that works parallel to WP:PROD and has no advantages over it. It would create additional administrative workload, and would require those of use who regularly check proposed deletions to attempt to rescue article that should not be deleted to check in two places rather than just one. There is no reason that instead of changing CSD these articles cannot simply be dealt with by placing a {{prod}} tag on them instead of the currently-proposed new tag. I would suggest those who consider deleting these articles necessary should turn their attention to the existing mechanisms for dealing with these issues, rather than trying to create new ones. JulesH (talk) 12:16, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose - Per DGG. — neuro(talk)(review) 12:36, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Support - equivalent of preventing users from removing prods without fixing the problem, which should be policy anyway. PhilKnight (talk) 14:14, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Weak support—while I balk somewhat at the idea of deleting articles using such a crude method, given the seriousness of potential damage through biographies of living persons it is a reasonable measure. That being said, I agree with Protonk that this proposal is greatly weakened by its own controversy; most criteria for speedy deletion are those which the community as a group endorses as good reasons to delete a page without further discussion. {{Nihiltres|talk|log}} 16:24, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Weak support I already delete unsourced BLPs if any negative thing is said, per G10, and those without claims of notability per A7. Still, I think the trend is to raise the bar for BLPs, and rightly so. Jclemens (talk) 16:44, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Support. We shouldn't be creating unsourced articles about any topic.   Will Beback  talk  17:05, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Strong support - Anything to strengthen protection of BLPs is a step in the right direction. Policy dictates that sourcing is the burden of the author. It is not an administrative responsibility to source BLPs. It is our responsibility to protect the subjects and victims of BLPs. In cases where there are no sources, the article should not exist. Those wanting to save such articles will have five days to dig up sources. لennavecia 17:07, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Support. Verifiability has always been the cornerstone of our articles. This is an enhancement and another step forward to our BLP problem. - Mailer Diablo 17:11, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Support the principle, with a hope that that deadline will steadily move backwards in time as the backlog moves forward in time, until the problem is dealt with. Disagree, however, with the timeframe. We really should have a "Criteria for Quasi-speedy Deletion" between PROD and SPEEDY for images and A10. Sceptre (talk) 19:21, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Strong support: I went on a BLP-correction spree, removing unreferenced statements and tagging numerous articles for potential deletion or deletion. While doing so, approximately 10% of the BLP entries that I ran across contained unsourced, libelous information that if it were to be noted in the popular press, would cause scandals that could further damage what little reputation Wikipedia has as a reliable and verifiable source. We cannot take any chances with this, and 10% of the 300 that I checked is far too many. To note that this is a "nonexistant problem" is laughable. seicer | talk | contribs 20:13, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
But we can already fix articles with libellous information by speedily deleting them under WP:CSD#G10 or, if there is salvageable content, editing and oversighting the libellous edits. No new speedy deletion criterion is needed. This proposal would treat distract attention from the potentially harmful cases by making admins spend their time deleting articles that don't have any potential for harm. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:29, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
Unless the material is sourced or is unequivocally positive, we cannot assume that just because it looks harmless that it is. Its possible for untruths other than blatant libel to cause harm to a subject. Mr.Z-man 22:22, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose per Sjakkalle and DGG. I like the idea of having everything sourced (BLP and otherwise) but I think that's going to keep a lot of editors away. We aren't (yet? ever?) at the point we want to decrease the number of editors joining us, and this kind of thing will drive people away. 141.212.111.116 (talk) 20:43, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Strong support This is different than G10. G10 has a very narrow application. There needs to be an easier way to delete problematic BLPs than taking them to AfD each time. It's tiresome and I simply don't want to do it anymore. There are many thousands of unsourced that should be deleted and they would be covered by this. Enigmamsg 22:12, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Strong support As said, this will help stem the tide. Flopsy Mopsy and Cottonmouth (talk) 01:40, 3 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Strong support Protecting BLPs is more important than editing anonymously AND it's more important than allowing unsourced content about BLPs. Failing this, any BLP article lacking even a single source needs to be brought to AFD immediately. rootology (C)(T) 02:50, 3 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Support mostly per PhilKnight's sentiments, even though I'm not particularly convinced PROD and AfD can't handle these articles anyway. Nonetheless, it theoretically freezes the unsourced-BLP backlog to whatever existed before this month (since anything new will be either sourced or deleted), and I can't see how that's a bad thing. BryanG (talk) 06:08, 3 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Support, but oppose as a CSD. This seems much more PROD-like to me. I think this should be an extension of that, or something different altogether. —Anonymous DissidentTalk 07:17, 3 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
What difference do you see between this and the timed image deletion criteria? Kevin (talk) 07:29, 3 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
... e.g. {{Di-no license}}: delete, unless a specific problem is fixed within a given timeframe? --Amalthea 07:55, 3 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
Well, that mostly concerns the uploader while BLPs are rather a problem for the community at large. I'll try to offer a more complete opinion in a separate post.--Tikiwont (talk) 08:00, 3 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Strong oppose. I recognize that the seriousness and severity of BLP issues makes people think we need to put them in a special category; I agree. But that does not mean we need a separate deletion process for them. WP:PROD already serves this purpose. There is no need to complicate things by making yet another, totally separate, deletion process that people have to familiarize themselves with. --causa sui talk 13:55, 3 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • That argument doesn't even get started. PRODs get removed by vandals/the creators of the defamatory content in the first place. I sometimes PROD BLPs, but what's the use? They get removed, and many times it's by the author of the BLP disaster. Enigmamsg 16:18, 3 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • From my experience, many people at AFD don't care much at all about things like WP:V and WP:RS unless its a blatant hoax. If its marginally notable, it will likely be kept at AFD, regardless of how terrible the sourcing is. Mr.Z-man 16:56, 3 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Mr. Z-man is correct. As for evidence, I think I have 25 of my own BLP PRODs that were declined but are still unsourced, unwatched, and generally terrible. Should I bring them all to AfD at once? I will add that I don't really want to, because it's very difficult to get borderline BLPs deleted at AfD or anywhere else. It's difficult to prove a negative. Enigmamsg 17:12, 3 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Could you both (Mr.Z-man and Enigmaman) please give examples of what you mean? I did ask for evidence, not assumptions. And, Mr.Z-man, are you seriously saying that we should be speedily deleting articles because they might be kept at AfD? The whole point of speedy deletion is that it is for articles that wouldn't have a chance of being kept at AfD. If AfDs are getting the "wrong" result then the answer is to fix AfD, which is not a discussion for this talk page. Phil Bridger (talk) 17:38, 3 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • What, you want me to list all the BLPs I have added PROD tags to that got removed by others? Usually IPs, and the articles continue to remain as a blight on Wikipedia. Enigmamsg 20:19, 8 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • You don't have to list all of them, just give us five or ten representative examples so we can see what you are talking about. Shouldn't we be basing this discussion on evidence rather than unsourced assertions? Phil Bridger (talk) 22:44, 8 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • I'm sorry, but I don't have five hours to search my contributions. If you would like to, go ahead. What I said is factual, and I think I would know, as I was the one who added the tags and had them removed. Evidence is great, but it's not a simple task to do when my mainspace contributions number in the five digits. Enigmamsg 00:33, 10 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
If you think the content of the article is actually defamatory, then you should speedy delete it immediately, and not wait for a policy proposal to authorize you to do so. There is nothing stoping you from solving this problem right now. --causa sui talk 16:43, 5 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Support Skinny87 (talk) 15:46, 3 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Support Wikipedia:Articles for creation has for years now required that articles be sourced, with, as far as I can see, little objection on the grounds of WP:BITE or anything else. 86.44.20.2 (talk) 18:36, 3 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose, as it would likely be counter-productive in the long term. Articles with minimal notability would likely be recreated after deletion under those terms, and there's no guarantee they'll be sourced or in better shape than before (and the non-notable ones are deletable through other means). The problem should be fixed at the root, by improving sourcing and the detection and removal of blp violations. I know it takes time and backlogs are huge, but many possibilities are unfolding to improve this. Cenarium (talk) 01:49, 4 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose the issue of sourcing is independent (perhaps even in the mathematical sense) from the BLP issues we are trying to fix. Hobit (talk) 04:36, 4 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • support fixing mistakes will be ridiculously easy and its the start of fixing our blp problems. Spartaz Humbug! 13:51, 4 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Strong Support This is a great way to prevent long-term BLP violations. Reywas92Talk 15:47, 5 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose. "Administrators should check that the creator has been given adequate notice."? AND you're going to say that if an editor is willing to source it after it's been deleted, the admin should undelete? And what happened to the three months? This tag, even if you say it's only for articles that have been tagged as unsourced for more than 3 months, WILL be abused and tagged immediately after some articles are created. Worse yet, this makes it way too easy for editors be gone with unsourced articles and not make an attempt to include BLPs of people who actually are notable enough for inclusion. This is a disaster waiting to happen. --fuzzy510 (talk) 16:27, 5 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose -- We are able to save them with care, so do it. Pontiff Greg Bard (talk) 22:53, 5 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose this pernicious rule-creep.—S Marshall Talk/Cont 01:58, 6 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Support We've got a lot of crappy BLP articles here at Wikipedia and this would help winnow the weakest ones out. Not to mention it would be in line with BLP policy - if you can't source it, it shouldn't be here. --JaGatalk 06:48, 6 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Strong support (worth coming back out of hiding for this) - The measures proposed here could even be stronger, but given the near-glacial speed at which Wikipedia's true problems are addressed, a necessary step. - 52 Pickup (talk) 07:07, 6 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Strong oppose I created a list of undersourced BLPs a while ago. The vast majority of these articles can be sourced easily if someone takes the effort to try, and if there are no sources for the information concerned then the article can already be deleted under existing deletion processes (or if it is contentious it can be removed under the existing BLP policy). All that is required to solve this problem is for some editors to start adding references. Deleting the articles will remove a huge amount of encyclopedic material - there are articles on current Members of Parliament and Olympic medal winners that would get deleted under this. Furthermore if someone takes one of these articles to AfD it would probably be kept, so why on earth are we contemplating speedy deletion for these articles? --Hut 8.5 10:27, 6 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Support If a BLP has no sources whatsoever, it doesn't belong on WP. hmwithτ 17:19, 6 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Weak oppose The deletionist in me tells me that I ought to support such a proposal. However, WP:BLP already states that anyone may summarily remove contentious details not properly sourced from any biography; bios which do not assert notability can be speedied. Therefore, the only real issue, IMHO, is that the subject may fail WP:N through failing WP:V. For 'neglected' articles where nobody has been bothered to supply references/sources for three months, the prod or AfD will usually suffice. Ohconfucius (talk) 08:56, 7 April 2009 (UTC)Reply

Random break 3

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  • Oppose per DGG and others. Johnbod (talk) 19:53, 7 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Strong oppose The problem isn't that a BLP article is unreferenced, it's that it may contain libel. Requiring one reference per article will do absolutely nothing to root out libel. A user will just source the birthdate or occupation and be done with it. An article containing one reference is no less likely to contain libel than an article containing 0 references. Because this does virtually nothing to solve the actual BLP problem, and invites the deletion of hundreds or thousands of useful articles, I strongly oppose this proposal. Calliopejen1 (talk) 01:38, 8 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Strong oppose per Calliopejen1. An unsourced BLP without libel is no more problematic than an unsourced article of any other kind--unless it contains an overabundance of non-libellous but nonetheless sensational information, in which case it would be no more problematic than a BLP in which the information was sourced but nonetheless excessive. CSD is best reserved for bad-faith or blatantly unencyclopedic material, whereas the greyer areas should be examined on a case-by-case basis. I find it highly likely that the speedy deletion of good-faith, potentially encyclopedic, non-libellous articles stands a greater chance of offending editors (who are, we should hope, living people) than the retention or discussion of those articles would stand of offending their living subjects. Cosmic Latte (talk) 10:53, 8 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose. We already have mechanisms to deal with such situations. It has been argued that PROD is not reliable, since anyone can contest it, but the fact of the matter is, if PROD fails, then there is still AfD. As an aside, I would propose adding to the {{dated prod}} template a suggestion to the nominators to add the article to their watchlist, just in case they get deprodded. An unwatched BLP tag is just as easy to remove as a prod tag. -- Blanchardb -Me•MyEars•MyMouth- timed 14:57, 8 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Strong Oppose As others have pointed out, we already have PROD, etc, to deal with problematic articles. An article needing improvement is never an acceptable grounds for deletion, let a lone speedy deletion. This policy would overturn existing policies about stubs and there being no deadlines for improvement. For example, of the 6 BLP’s among March’s Featured articles 5 of them - Luc Bourdon, Harriet Tubman, Lazare Ponticelli, Peter Jones (missionary), Barthélemy Boganda – would have been speedy deleted if this policy was in effect. Edward321 (talk) 00:03, 9 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Fine idea. Support. Stifle (talk) 14:37, 9 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Strong oppose - If we had a system for sourcing these articles that was as fast as this system for deleting them, then it would be OK. Too many babies with the bathwather. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 00:50, 10 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Theoretical support, but is it necessary? We have G10 for attack, A7 for clearly non notable, and WP:BLPSE for those which are not quite either. The problem with enshrining BLPSE as a CSD is it takes the discretion element out of it. Some are better to be simply stubbed - for example, politicians. Orderinchaos 18:48, 10 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose, I agree with much of what DGG and Fabrictramp and WAS 4.250 and Calliopejen1 have said. In my opinion, the problem is living people being harmed by text in Wikipedia articles. But a BLP with one source and contentious material is far worse than a BLP with no sources and no contentious material. Is an unsourced BLP more likely to contain contentious material than a sourced BLP? Attack pages are already speediable. And unsourced contentious material in BLPs can already be removed per WP:BLP, and should be removed. The BLP policy itself says "Page deletion should be treated as a last resort." It seems to me this proposal seeks to delete articles about important or significant people. Is there any reason to believe that articles in Category:All unreferenced BLPs contain as much or more contentious material than articles with at least one source in Category:Living people?

    Instead of speedying every article in Category:All unreferenced BLPs, an editor's time would be better spent finding and removing contentious material in articles within Category:All unreferenced BLPs (or better yet, every article in Category:Living people). This criteria won't solve anything. If someone deleted every article in Category:All unreferenced BLPs right this second, how much contentious material would be deleted? How much valuable information would be lost? And there would still be contentious material in BLPs. The contentious material is the problem, whether the article has zero sources or a hundred. People complain about not having enough people to watch articles and then they propose new rules that will just turn off new editors. And the number of total editors will shrink even more as Wikipedia's bureaucracy grows and grows. In the time it takes to press delete, an admin can easily do a simple Google search. As for a "flood" of new BLPs, A7, G10, PROD, and AFD are still available. And people should be looking for sources before suggesting an article be deleted anyway. --Pixelface (talk) 06:07, 11 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose Per DGG and AnonDiss. — Jake Wartenberg 23:54, 12 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Support articles should have sources, for WP:V (particularly in BLPs, and not just contentious information, as that should be removed immediately if not verified by reliable sources). The suggestion that there is no deadline (and it's only an essay not a policy) refers to expanding and improving articles, not keeping unreferenced and possibly unverifiable content. If users are concerned that valid articles may be lost then they can save copies of articles for working on. Also an article nominated for deletion under this policy would be more likely to be noticed by other users than if it was just tagged with a notability or BLPunsourced template, so a deletion policy such as this could result in articles being improved. This is also the case with PRODs but it is too easy to remove the tag and not improve the article (something I have done occasionally but as far as I know not with unsourced BLPs). —Snigbrook 00:55, 12 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Support' We need this. fahadsadah (talk,contribs) 18:11, 13 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Support. If no one is able to add any references to an article for three months (!), AND the creator has been notified, it is very probably not notable, contains erroneous information, promotional, POV, OR, and/or a horrible mess. Shouldn't the readers of Wikipedia be able to expect that articles, especially BLPs, be verified and encyclopedic enough to at least not be pure fiction? -- Ssilvers (talk) 18:19, 13 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
    • What evidence do you have that three months is the time period within which unsourced articles have had a failed attempt at sourcing? I can show you articles which are still unsourced 2 years after being tagged which are notable, contain good information, not promotional, unbiased, contain non-original information and are not a mess at all. I imagine that the reason these non-problematic articles are still unsourced after two years is that no one has ever attempted to source them yet. I can't imagine all the new non-problematic articles will be sourced in merely three months as you suggest.--BirgitteSB 21:10, 13 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Strong oppose—would lead to the deletion of hundreds if not thousands of useful articles which no one had time to look at. The number of articles (and BLPs) on Wikipedia increases every day, while the number of active editors does not. Most unsourced BLPs are created by one-time editors who have little interest in Wikipedia, and many of them are good. If the BLP doesn't fall into A7 or G12 (or one of the other current criteria), I see absolutely no reason to delete them without at least an AfD. Moreover, the current BLP policy already allows to delete unsourced content, so if the person wishing to delete will do a simple Google search, he will likely at least find out the person's profession and nationality, which can be added as a source, already making it an article with a source. —Ynhockey (Talk) 18:48, 13 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose, btw. We don't need a new category to delete pages without thinking about them. We may chafe that our model doesn't present us will fully formed articles, but tough ducks. I refuse to support a proposal which would substitute a bright line decision for editorial judgment. Protonk (talk) 19:47, 13 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Support. something needs to be done, and this is an adequate starting point. -- Donald Albury 23:54, 13 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose - 5 days is too short. AFD was just increased to 7 days, and that should be the minimum amount of time. I'd prefer to see something similar to Prod used, but given a little more "tooth" to it (the part about not removing the notice unless references are added is perfectly logical). Also, notability can, and should, occasionally trump sources. For example, within a particular region, a person may be extremely notable and have been on television or other sources, but there is nothing convenient to use {{cite web}} or another citation template. That doesn't mean the person is not citable, but it might be something requiring more research than the average user is willing to put into it. It's been quite a while since I looked at the notability guidelines for BLP, but I can easily see where someone could be notable, but have few reliable sources available (at least the kind that are easy for the average contributor to cite). Thus, I would say that there should also be an exception to this that allows a person to challenge the removal in a normal AFD discussion with or without sources, based on notability or any other reason. That is more in line with the goals of Wikipedia rather than deleting something due to an absolute interpretation of a rule. --Willscrlt (→“¡¿Talk?!”) 08:46, 14 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose. Unnecessary and undesirable. BLP already recommends removal of MATERIAL that is unreferenced and offensive/defamatory/inappropriate, so any BLP article that would be deleted by this proposed rule already consists only of acceptable material. Further, an article that would otherwise be deleted will be kept if ANY iotem, possibly insignificant and irrelevant is referenced. This is attempting to replace reasoned editing with a foolish and somplistic mechanincal application. RJFJR (talk) 14:01, 14 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose Per DGG and several others.--Cube lurker (talk) 17:42, 14 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose. Something needs to be done, but this is not it. I generally agree with the points made by DGG, Fabrictramp and Calliopejen1. -- Avenue (talk) 18:00, 14 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • I Support the idea of referencing of or removing any un-sourced content. Thought there is currently a good set of tools to address most issues, WP:BLP in particular. Wikipedia:Unreferenced articles; you can help! Jeepday (talk) 22:23, 14 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose Wrong solution to the problem. We don't need yet another reason to delete things. We need more people looking for sources and doing actual research. If people were to spend as much time looking for sources and putting them in the articles, as they do looking for things to delete, we'd likely have the problem solved within a year. DHowell (talk) 04:09, 15 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose SoWhy and DGG provide the best explanations in line with my thinking on this. AfD is capable of dealing with the items that don't belong. A solution in search of a problem I think. — Ched :  ?  01:35, 16 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose per SoWhy and DGG. However, I'd support a proposal that encouraged a similar warning-the-creator system that a BLP without sources may be stubified (as opposed to deleted) after a certain period of time. That would resolve the potential problems of unsourced BLPs, but would not destroy all edit history; if a future editor wanted to salvage information from the history and provide proper sources for it, he or she would be able to do so. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 04:00, 16 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose This will not solve the problem of libel. Sure you can tag unsourced bios, but deleting them is a sure way to damage the encyclopedia. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 03:12, 17 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Strong Oppose: This is an insitutionalization of Somebody Else's Problem - the article creator doesn't source the BLP, the reviewer can't be bothered to fix the article and wants to speedy it, the admin isn't there to look for sources. Hey, let's create a Slowy deletion process, so it becomes nobody's problem. No thanks. Existing CSD criteriae cover the controversial stuff, I'd rather fix the PROD process so that it can no longer be contested without effort rather than having this strange beast of a slow special speedy. MLauba (talk) 22:44, 20 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Support as a reasonable way to stop flooding the backlog of old unsourced, but still valuable articles. We can expect an editor who creates a new BLP to be around for a short while, so that he can help provide a source for his material (and giving a source is really not hard). It gives opportunity for review of this limited number of articles, and the articles affected by this are going to be new enough so that looking through the revisions for a source that has been removed is still reasonable. It's the only way I see get on top of the unsourced BLP problem (which is a problem). The alternative of uncontrolled G10 tagging in blind activism is far worse, as shown below. --Amalthea 09:26, 21 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Support If it is unsourced, it is a BLP violation. Unsourced statements about living persons do not belong in an encyclopedia. They might be gossip or speculation. If someone knows enough about someone to create a bio article in an encyclopedia, where did they get their information? Cite the source, or see the article be deleted in 5 days. Many of these are about non-notable persons and are either vanity (often with conflict of interest) or attack articles. If we can find sources,, the creator can find sources. There are many times the number of random bio article creators than administrators. It is a very reasonable proposal, and would lessen the need to do an immediate A7 speedy deletion if no real claim of notability is made, while getting rid of bogus unsupported claims of notability like "Joe is the most famous tap dancer in Thailand". Edison (talk) 15:59, 29 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Support. I think 5 days with summary 'undeletion' on request is fair enough. It should be a requirement, not a courtesy though to inform the authour and major contributors. HJMitchell You rang? 15:19, 4 May 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Strong support as a way to rid Wikipedia of the numerous BLP violations it already constitutes. Frankly, I'm going to go as far as to say the three months limit shouldn't even be used; it doesn't take a fraction of that time to find reliable sources to verify an unsourced bio article's content. Above all, we should be taking law into account in this discussion; Wikipedia must not and cannot, for the sake of its own existence, play host to potentially libellous material just for the interests of itself. Its policies and guidelines cannot take precedence over law. Haipa Doragon (talk • contributions) 00:04, 7 May 2009 (UTC)Reply

Process similar to the Copyvio log?

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  • Support with caveats and suggestions - It makes sense to trigger a reversion of unsourced additions of content after some time, but it should be part of a process that aims at the systematic improvement with deletion as the last resort and that scales up smoothly with respect to older BLPs. While the underlying problem is different, one process I see parallels with is that for suspected copyvios. Moreover, the removal of BLPs that have the specific problem of being not yet sourced at all, makes more sense if its part of a larger policy regarding BLP quality and protection. In particular:
  1. It is not really like a CSD which addresses things where we all agree that they have to go, but amounts to a community backed editorial choice including the the agreement that we only apply it to new ones for the moment which is not the case for other CSDs.
  2. It is not really like Prod, because Prod is about ushering out unwanted stuff with prod patrol trying to catch the errors. Here the take is the opposite. Ideally we want to keep and source articles or at least allow for doing so, but we are willing to let them fall out, if nobody does it.
  3. Automatically sending to AfD is no help either since it isn't primarily for adding sources and noms are indeed advised to search for some first.
  4. It should be designed to rather involve BLP aware editors. A cat is not enough. It needs a very friendly tag that explains what to do to fix the problem. Moreover, as per above example of the copyvio log, the articles should be be listed in a log page. It may seem overly bureaucratic, but allows for keeping track of what has been tagged, what is done about it, what has been deleted and might be restored if sources can be added. Additionally, it would allow for later later expansion with respect to the backlog. In that sense the deletion reason would read Listed at the Unsourced BLP notice board for 5 / 7 days without improvement. What is eligible for listing can then slowly be opened up beyond new articles. If the community wants to implement it as speedy criterion now, it should later be merged into such a full scale process. While the underlying problem is different than a copyvio, the analogy also brings to mind a possible alternative for older articles on notable subjects, namely replacing the content with a template but leave it in article space, the latter just being an idea.
Sorry for the length and possible incoherence but I am effectively sitting on packed bags and wanted to take the opportunity to offer a more general take.--Tikiwont (talk) 09:15, 3 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
it does not make sense, when we have the extent of backlogs that we have, to worry to much about this, especially when we already have means to cope with the small number of articles involved, and do cope with them. about this--the bigger problem is incorrect poorly sourced content, which is much more damaging and much more pervasive. And then all there's the out of date content-- i doubt anyone realized adequately in the beginning that even correctly sourced material if unwatched would become obsolete in a few years. My guess is that of our 2.8 million articles we are paying adequate attention to perhaps 10% of them. Everything needs to trigger a rewrite every few years--just as with paper encyclopedias. This will take some fixing, and I have no immediate suggestion how to do it. the default way is to put it off wait until some better encyclopedia replaces Wikipedia. The only thing I know will help is recruiting new editors, and we need to do everything possible to not discourage them. We also , of course, do need to educate them. DGG (talk) 18:53, 9 April 2009 (UTC)Reply

WP:PROD in action

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I have provided sources today for six articles that had been prodded for being unsourced BLPs: Elzbieta Sikora, Renuka Menon, Hajji Alejandro, Ernani Aguiar, Atul Agnihotri, and Ada Marshania. We now have six sourced articles on clearly notable people that we wouldn't have if these articles had been speedily deleted under this proposal. Is Wikipedia a better encyclopedia with these articles or without them? Unless AfD gets overloaded with contested BLP prods that haven't had sources added then using prod rather than speedy deletion gets rid of the bad articles just as easily, but produces a better encyclopedia (which is what we are supposed to be here for) by giving editors the chance to rescue the sourceable articles. Phil Bridger (talk) 17:07, 3 April 2009 (UTC)Reply

The proposal concerns new articles. 86.44.20.2 (talk) 21:58, 3 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
And exactly the same could be said for new articles - if prod is used instead of speedy deletion it gives people a chance to actually build the encyclopedia rather than prevent it from being built. Yet again, let's have some evidence first that WP:PROD and WP:AFD can't handle the workload before making this a speedy deletion criterion. Phil Bridger (talk) 22:14, 3 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
A figure of 30,000 in need of rescue has been mentioned. You have dealt with six, and doubtless it was no small work. How many shall you do tomorrow? The figure is currently growing all the time. The idea is to require ppl to source BLP articles at creation if they wish them to remain. This is not unreasonable. 86.44.20.2 (talk) 23:02, 3 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
Phil Bridger, feel free to improve articles. The point is that no one has been doing it at a pace that is allowing us to keep up. If you can get some of them source that is great. But if no one is working on them we need to remove them at some point. FloNight♥♥♥ 23:36, 3 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
You misunderstood the proposal. It's not delete-on-site. Like with PROD, the article is tagged, and time is given to solve the problem, and remove the tag. The difference is: with PROD no fix is required, and with A10 a super simple fix is required. So, the A10 proposal wouldn't delete any of those articles, since sources were added in the alloted time of the tag. To be redundant: absolutely no verifiable article would ever have to be deleted under the A10 proposal. None. Zeroe. The creator, or you, or anybody, can simply add some sourcing in a reasonable amount of time, and the article is kept; and like PROD, if deleted, it can be restored any time in the future. --Rob (talk) 00:37, 4 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
If it's not an immediate deletion proposal, it doesn't belong as part of CSD, but should be a distinct process. CSD is for "speedy deletion", which doesn't mean something with an inbuilt delay. This would be more appropriate as a proposed change to PROD, rather than CSD. JulesH (talk) 21:46, 7 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
A few existing criteria, such as F4 and F5, already have delays of up to seven days before pages are deleted. —Snigbrook 00:55, 12 April 2009 (UTC)Reply

Proposed proposal modification

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Noting bite objections, hesitancy over the harshness of the concrete proposal’s solution, and the seriousness of the issue (unsourced articles detracting from Wikipedia’s reliablilty).

Instead of deleting after 5 days, move the article to some project space location (but never automatically to userspace), where if it remains without credible sources, after 90 days it may be deleted.

By moving the article out of mainspace, and breaking any incoming links, this somewhat mitigates the potential damage to a LP, considerably reduces the risk of the casual reader unwittingly reading misinformation, and gives the newcomer-author ample time to consider our sourcing requirements. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:06, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply

That proposal does not address most of the opposing reasons, especially not why deletion is to be preferable to cutting articles down to stub size by removing the unsourced content as per editing policy. The main problem is not that those articles exist but that noone feels obligated to do the simple work needed to preserve the information. And it does not explain why admins would be willing to go through thousands of articles to move them but not to prod them or remove the unsourced information - after all, there is no difference in the time it takes to do it. Regards SoWhy 09:06, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
I don’t think that wikipedia should host unsourced BLP stubs.
I don’t think I support WP:PRESERVE when it comes to unsourced information on living people.
I expect that, in practice, the admin will move, leaving no redirect and tag the unsourced BLP. If no one removes the tag, or moves the article to main space or userspace, then after 90 days it will be deleted by an automated process. I think the difference with PROD is that articles are prodded if it is believed that the article should be deleted. BLPs would be moved to the 90 day limbo zone out of a hope that the authors will provide sources. Yes, it sounds a lot like PROD, but much gentler for the newocomer author in that it has a long limbo time, and different in that the article is immediately moved out of mainspace. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 09:38, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
Aside from the fact that WP:PRESERVE is policy that cannot be overruled by creating a new criterion here, you fail to explain why admins would have the time to move those article and tag them and leave the author a note and delete the article after 90 days but won't have the time to WP:REMOVE the unsourced information or spend 2 minutes on a simple Google News search instead. If they have enough time to do the former, the surely have enough time to do the latter. If they don't have the time to do the former, then the problem is the unwillingness to do any work on those articles, not their existence and then it won't be solved with such a criterion. Regards SoWhy 09:48, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
I understood this was about BLPs completely lacking in credible sources. Removing the unsourced information means removing everything. Arguably, such articles are deletable due to WP:BLP, notwithstanding WP:EP. The admin actions are straightforward, even automatable. Improving articles is not straightforward. Google news reports are not a good basis for wikipedia articles. It is definitely not the role of admins to go around sourcing newcomers substandard BLPs. The question that seems to be dividing us is: “Should unsourced BLPs be allowed to stay?” --SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:30, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
No, it's not automatable. As sources can be removed by vandals, each article has to be checked for this before deletion. It's a time-consuming procedure anyway. Google News can be basis for WP articles because it allow finding reliable sources, which is what matter here. The question is not, whether unsourced BLPs should be allowed but whether deleting them is really the best way to deal with them given the alternatives (which already exist). Regards SoWhy 11:07, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
WP:CSD, WP:PROD, and WP:BLP are policy also. If there is a consensus to change the editing policy, it can be changed. With the exception of law-based policies like WP:COPYRIGHT, no policy is immutable. The "alternatives" consist of the few people who actually care about bringing BLPs up to standards within a decade sourcing every single BLP of every marginally notable person that gets created by themself. That's what we've been doing, that's what's led to the 30,000 page backlog we have now. If you have other alternatives that don't involve deletion of a large amount, or a few people doing massive amounts of work, please propose them. Mr.Z-man 17:10, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply

Alternative solution - use existing CSD, PROD, AFD

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If there are 14,000 unsourced BLP articles out there, why doesn't some just go through and tag them all with PROD? Or more realistically, tag the first 500 for now so that the PROD backlog doesn't get too much and you give content adders the opportunity to save as many as they can within a reasonable length of time. Set up a Wikipedia:Wikiproject Unsourced BLPs to manage teh workflow. In six months the problem will be over. This can already be done within existing policy and achieves the same - this debate becomes redundent. AndrewRT(Talk) 16:55, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply

PROD is for uncontroversial deletions only, and anyone can contest a proposed deletion at any time for any reason (the only exceptions being bad-faith requests and vandalism) even without immediately addressing the original reason for the proposed deletion. –Black Falcon (Talk) 20:24, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
This first bit isn't true. PROD only makes uncontraversial deletions, but you're free to prod whatever you like. A "run it up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes" mentality. WilyD 20:47, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
Well, I've PRODded all 20 articles in Category:Unreferenced BLPs from August 2006 - let's see how the experiment works. I would argue all of these are uncontroversial - in that WP:DP unambigously states the reasons for deletion include "Articles which breach Wikipedia's policy on biographies of living persons", which in turn requires that "Material about living persons must be sourced very carefully". I understand the tags can be removed - those that are I'll just list at AFD instead. See you in five days ;) AndrewRT(Talk) 21:33, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
Put your flameproof suit on Andrew, many were had already prodded or had survived AfD. Kevin (talk) 21:46, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for flagging up and apologies for my mistake - there were indeed a few that had already been prodded or AFD'd which I foolishly thought Twinkle would pick up automatically! Anyway, I've been through and either improved, redirected or AfD'd those that couldn't stay as prodded. AndrewRT(Talk) 22:34, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Your experiment is somewhat flawed, because I went through and sourced and removed all the articles I could from that particular category ten hours previous to your actions. I just mention this to prevent you from drawing the wrong conclusions. Hiding T 09:29, 3 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for pointing that out- I'll bear that in mind when drawing conclusions! Thanks also for your efforts in finding solutions to these unsourced articles. AndrewRT(Talk) 12:01, 3 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
Scott MacDonald needs to provide feedback on the PRODding effort, as he went on a spree of PRODding BLP articles recently. Casliber (talk · contribs) 22:49, 2 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
Prodding is not satisfactory if the problem is poorly sourced content. User do an online search, find a person with the same or similar name, and then remove the PROD tag with the claim that the person is notable. No meaningful work is done to improve the article beyond changes to it so it meets the notability criteria for inclusion. This approach is not moving us toward articles with high quality content. Our current approaches are not working. That is the reason that we have a vast number of lousy articles about living people. :-( FloNight♥♥♥ 14:31, 3 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
Exactly: the status quo isn't working. We can either try and find ways to raise our standards, or lower our expectations. If we go the latter way, perhaps we could put a big BETA tag on Wikipedia for the next decade or so. Maybe by then we'll have sorted out the backlog. Rd232 talk 14:38, 3 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
I agree, Jennavecia said it very well above: "Policy dictates that sourcing is the burden of the author. It is not an administrative responsibility to source BLPs." Requiring the people who want to enforce policy to do all of the work themselves is not a viable option. Mr.Z-man 17:01, 3 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
It would be a short-term vision to believe that deletion can be a solution to unsourced blps. The non-notable ones can be deleted through other means and the notable ones would likely be recreated. We could study recreated blps, but I'm pretty sure the quality would in general be inferior, especially when it had existed for a while (and edited by several users). Our efforts in improving the sourcing of BLPs are still recent, we should continue that way, as improvement possibilities are unfolding. There are still many blps to delete among non-notable ones. Cenarium (talk) 13:27, 4 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
If the problem is unsourced BLPs then anything that turns them into referenced BLPs is a good thing surely? If they remain small stubs, that's a different issue. I create plenty of in-depth articles myself on areas I have expertese in, but this is about addressing flawed articles on subject areas that are often totally new to me.
Mr. Z-Man and Jennavecia, I agree that policy requires editors adding content to source it. However, at the moment, it also required editors who nominate articles for deletion to have investigated potential sourced. One way forward - which could give us a way to clear the backlog - is to remove that requirement where unsourced BLPs are nominated for deletion. I've proposed that at here - hope you can add your comments there. AndrewRT(Talk) 22:53, 3 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
For interest of those who are following the debate, I've put a summary of my PRODs at User:AndrewRT/Unreferenced_BLPs. One caveat I'd add, several editors had been through and improved the articles in this category before I came along! AndrewRT(Talk) 23:26, 8 April 2009 (UTC)Reply

This would be my preference — the issue, for me, is that unsourced BLPs are often legitimate efforts (perhaps written by newbies who aren't familiar with sourcing rules, or stragglers written a long time ago before Wikipedia's referencing rules were even fractionally as developed as they are now, and not sufficiently updated since) which can be improved with legitimate sources because the person does meet our notability rules as written. For example, a duly elected member of a national, state or provincial legislature is entitled to an article on Wikipedia, and thus we'd be unnecessarily speedying an article that has an absolute and unequivocal right to be recreated — and making the process unnecessarily complicated, to boot, because recreating an article from scratch is always more difficult and time-consuming than adding extra sources to an article that already exists. As a consequence, the process needs to give interested parties time to upgrade the existing article, which speedying doesn't do. I'm not opposed to making unreferenced BLP a criterion for AFD, in order to provide the necessary notice and time, but it shouldn't be a speedy criterion unless the article doesn't even make a claim of notability in the first place, and there's already a speedy criterion in place for that. Bearcat (talk) 18:26, 27 May 2009 (UTC)Reply

Alternative solution: tighten WP:PROD

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One of the issues raised in this discussion is that PROD doesn't fulfil some of the purpose expected of it - and which prompts this CSD proposal - because it's too easy to remove PROD tags without anything constructive happening. So at WP:PROD#Tighten guidelines I've suggested marginally tightening the PROD tag removal guidelines. Namely (a) a PROD may be removed, but it is strongly recommended that you either fix the problem mentioned or if you don't, that you justify removal on the talk page; (b) if only one person has added substantial content to the article, that person may not remove the PROD tag unless they either fix the problem mentioned or justify removal on the talk page. For removals in contravention of (b), the PROD tag may be re-added, if the re-addition is explained on the Talk page. Basically, try and make PROD involve a bit more of the discussion process that AFD does, by not making removal of the tag quite so trivial. If PROD worked like that, it would be a better alternative to the proposed CD criterion. It could also be applied to the backlog fairly widely - but not all in one go, to enable some collaboration on fixing the PRODded articles. Rd232 talk 23:12, 3 April 2009 (UTC)Reply

What qualifies as a BLP?

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Obviously if the article's main subject is a living person, it counts. If R.J. Corman Railroad Group didn't have the reference, would it qualify? --NE2 00:49, 3 April 2009 (UTC)Reply

Alternative solution: Sourcing

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Here's an alternative. All the editors actively prodding articles actually look for sources first. That would go a long way to helping. Unless the problem being addressed here is not unsourced bios, but that we have too many bios to keep an eye on. That's a radically different issue that would lead to a radically different solution. But I'd rather work that out now than waste time sourcing articles people will eventually delete anyway. Hiding T 10:15, 3 April 2009 (UTC)Reply

That is exactly what the problem is. There are too many of them and too many of them are added to make sourcing effective in cleaning the backlog. I'd be happy to make an effort to source existing material if we can close the tap so nothing more floods in. - Mgm|(talk) 12:10, 3 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
I just suggested on Doc's talk page that we protect all blp's, turn off article creation and just get it done. I can do ten a day comfortably. Should take us all a day, two at most. Hiding T 12:33, 3 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
Protecting them doesn't really help anything, as that just locks in any problematic content. If you want to actually fix them, if you disable article creation first, 100 people doing 10 articles a day would be able to work through the current backlog in about a month. If we don't disable article creation, you'd need 1 or 2 more people to compensate for the 11 to 12 new unsourced BLPs we get on an average day. You would need 3,000 people to be able to do it all in a day. Mr.Z-man 18:36, 3 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
Nah, you'd need between 100 and 1000. Ten is comfortable in one day for me. That's three hours. I could easily do thirty in three hours, so I could do maybe 100 in one slog of a day. I stand by my estimation of a day or two, if everyone put their back to it, if all the articles were semi-protected and article creation was turned off. Yes, it is a lot of ifs and buts, but failure to dare is the easiest fence to fall at. Imagine if we only got half done. Wouldn't that be a thing? Hiding T 12:58, 5 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
Here's a practical suggestion to help this: could someone add a Google search link into the Template:BLP_unsourced? AndrewRT(Talk) 12:13, 3 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
Done. -- Banjeboi 18:05, 6 April 2009 (UTC)Reply

Counter proposal per WP:KISS

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This is a proposed speedy deletion criteria, i.e. it is supposed to be fast, and uncomplicated. There should be no 5 day waiting period, no prequalifying category, no potentials for backlogging, and no wiggle room for interpretation of what 'credible sources' means. If we actually need a CSD, it should look something like this:

  • A10. Any new article that contains material about a living person that does not contain or otherwise indicate the source of this material, and where that material cannot be verified with a cursory outside investigation by the deleting administrator, may be deleted immediately.

This allows a fast and efficient route for admins who want to, to be able to delete unsourced BLPs, but it leaves open the option of them being trout slapped for overly punishing new users for their lack of clue about WP:V or WP:BLP if the admins are not doing even the most cursory of checks.

Note: This is specifically worded such that material that is only sourced to offline sources cannot be CSD'd under A10, because that is of course not an unsourced article. (BEANS alert)

MickMacNee (talk) 17:56, 13 April 2009 (UTC)Reply

Maybe. I'm still concerned about WP:BITE. And I'd want the wording clarified to state that this should only be possible for BLP's in which none of the claims of notability can be verified; otherwise, the right thing to do is to remove the offending material but not delete the article. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:12, 13 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • That seems sensible. The criterion makes clear that the article must have no sources whatsoever, and that's a bright-line. Stifle (talk) 19:21, 13 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • No. That's just biting. Very often new people will make articles and it takes a few seconds to look for sources. And if there's a problem with the article we can almost certainly trigger an A7 or a G10 deletion anyways. JoshuaZ (talk) 20:19, 13 April 2009 (UTC)Reply

Taking this from the top

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This discussion has so many proposals and counter proposals, which often cover the same points in "supports" and "opposes", that I think i tmight be worth starting it again by looking at what we're trying to achieve. So I'll set out my thoughts on what we need to achieve, in subsections so it's easy to count "supports" and "opposes". Hopefully after a few days we'll have some consensus on objectives and priorities, and then we can look at means.

Feel free to add other possible objectives, but in the same format, so that we can all easily count "supports" and "opposes". --Philcha (talk) 10:48, 14 April 2009 (UTC)Reply

Objective: avoid biting new editors

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Support "avoid biting new editors"
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  1. Support Stats I've seen in other discussions indicate that the average editor stays active for 2-3 years (the mean). Considering there's a small % of much longer-term editors, the median is probably much shorter. Without new editors, WP will stagnate and die. --Philcha (talk) 10:48, 14 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  2. Sure. Stifle (talk) 08:49, 15 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  3. Of course — Ched :  ?  17:59, 16 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  4. Without question. No just new editors of course. I've been incorrectly CSDd before on an article I was in the middle of writing and I can see how that discourages people from editing. AndrewRT(Talk) 19:08, 16 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  5. Yes, but deleting a poorly written article then welcoming them and teaching them how to correctly write and source articles is better than letting a low quality poorly sourced article remain for fear of discouraging them. FloNight♥♥♥ 22:22, 16 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  6. Support. I've had articles that I was developing be CSDed and Prodded. It took me quite a while to learn how to write an article nearly completely offline, and use preview repeatedly, until I had basically the entire article written before posting it. That's really the only way to guarantee that a new article doesn't get prodded or CSDed during initial development. The English Wikipedia moves at far too fast of a pace. I collaborate on a lot of different wiki projects around here, and by far en.wiki is dizzying in its frenetic pace compared to the lackadaisical pace found on other sites. (I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but a big difference.) Combine that with the confusion newbies have on doing even the simplest edits (I tried to upload a promotional photo to three different places before finally having an admin practically hand-hold me through the process, and then had it deleted a few weeks later. Talk about frustrating!), and then if English is not your primary language, there's the additional slow-down while you figure out the meaning of everything on the screen. The only way I could support any CSD on an article is if it has been in existence for at least 30 days, flagged with some template that says (fully linked) something like: "reliable sources need to be cited in this biography within the next 7 days or it may be deleted without further warning" and the creator/major contributor(s) also notified via talk. Anything else is biting the newbie (and anyone else who is not up to the frenetic pace of en.wiki). --Willscrlt (→“¡¿Talk?!”) 06:47, 22 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  7. Absolutely support. I personally think WP:BITE should be policy. DHowell (talk) 07:35, 25 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  8. Support. When I was new I had some comments that seemed to be intended to drive me away. I reacted by having a stronger urge to stay, but some people will not react that way. A 30 day holding time for new articles seems about right to me. Steve Dufour (talk) 00:15, 29 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  9. Support. Though I think this part of the poll is meaningless, since even some of the most bitey editors I have seen believe they are helping Wikipedia, not biting newbies. Edward321 (talk) 14:31, 4 May 2009 (UTC)Reply
Oppose "avoid biting new editors"
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  • While I completely support the idea of not biting new editors, it's not part of the goal we're trying to achieve. New editors get ample warning on what is and isn't acceptable. The only way we could better signpost it, is to provide the warnings in flashing red messages. If they feel bitten after writing an unreferenced article, it's their own fault for not paying attention. - Mgm|(talk) 09:25, 7 May 2009 (UTC)Reply

Objective: Reduce creation of new unsourced articles

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Support "Reduce creation of new unsourced articles"
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  1. Support This is the most modest attempt to improve the average quality of WP and therefore IMO the most achievable. -Philcha (talk) 10:48, 14 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  2. Obvious. Stifle (talk) 08:49, 15 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  3. That would be a positive outcome, but not necessarily a priority where unsourced BLPs are of people who are probably notable, notability is asserted in the article and it contains no negative information. AndrewRT(Talk) 19:10, 16 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  4. Absolutely with a top priority being content about living people. Since Wikipedia articles are not written by experts, having reliable sources is a must to assure that the content is an accurate reflection of the topic. FloNight♥♥♥ 22:15, 16 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  5. Support Unverified information about living persons is unencyclopedic and a magnet for vanispam or attacks. Edison (talk) 16:08, 29 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  6. Support articles without sources are presumptively WP:OR. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 06:42, 1 May 2009 (UTC)Reply
  • Support That is exactly what we're trying to achieve. When unreferenced articles are deleted immediately, creating them will no longer provide any satisfaction to the creator, thus lowering the inflow of articles lacking any sources. - Mgm|(talk) 09:26, 7 May 2009 (UTC)Reply
Oppose "Reduce creation of new unsourced articles"
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  1. At least the way this is worded, it goes against the very nature of Wikipedia. It's supposed to be something that anyone can edit. Even if you can't write a perfect article immediately, just get down what you can and someone else will eventually make it better. That's the wiki way. Yes, there is a problem, but shutting down the expansion process is a slippery slope to overtightening the project to a clique made of people who are proficient in the rules and policies or who are good wikilawyering. --Willscrlt (→“¡¿Talk?!”) 06:51, 22 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  2. A better objective would be "Increase creation of new sourced articles". Or "Make it easier for new editors to cite their sources." DHowell (talk) 07:39, 25 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  3. The majority of articles start out as unsourced. We then build the articles. If there is a concern about an article the matter is raised and the article is improved - if it can't be improved, then it is deleted. But let's make that simple effort of trying to improve the article first! Today's Featured Article when it started out: John Frusciante, yesterday's Acid2, day before's Ælfheah of Canterbury, and the day before that Idlewild and Soak Zone. Under the above rule, all these articles would have deleted before they had a chance to grow. SilkTork *YES! 08:04, 2 May 2009 (UTC)Reply
  4. Oppose. Most featured articles started as completely unsourced. The goal should be to improve articles, not eliminate them before they can be improved.
Edward321 (talk) 14:44, 4 May 2009 (UTC)Reply
Neutral "Reduce creation of new unsourced articles"
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  1. I'd like to have a little more detail before I go one way or the other on this. I don't want to see any undue burden placed on either the new editors, or new articles which have a future. — Ched :  ?  18:03, 16 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  2. If attack articles are reduced that's a great thing. If informative articles are reduced that's bad.Steve Dufour (talk) 00:18, 29 April 2009 (UTC)Reply

Objective: Reduce backlog of older unsourced articles

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Support "Reduce backlog of older unsourced articles"
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  1. Support Probably much more difficult than "Reduce creation of new unsourced articles", but it's the problem that seems to have started this discussion and I don't think we can duck it. -Philcha (talk) 10:48, 14 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  2. Helps. Stifle (talk) 08:49, 15 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  3. I suppose, depending on how exactly you want to carry out this reduction. — Ched :  ?  18:05, 16 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  4. Again this would be a positive outcome and should be an objective. The backlog can be reduced through a mixture of CSD, PROD, AFD and, throughout the process, article improvement. AndrewRT(Talk) 19:11, 16 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  5. Loads of poorly sourced articles that have been around for years. Having these unsourced articles does not help the reader since there is no assurance that the information is accurate. FloNight♥♥♥ 22:18, 16 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  6. Sure. Great in concept. But I also wish that I had a million dollars, but without a plan to accomplish that, it's just a nice dream. Suggestions for getting there is what we need. --Willscrlt (→“¡¿Talk?!”) 06:52, 22 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  7. Of course, but not by any means necessary. Reducing the backlog should not mean just trashing the vast majority of them without any serious attempts to source those that can be sourced. DHowell (talk) 07:44, 25 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  8. Support. This would be a tool to speed up the process. Steve Dufour (talk) 00:19, 29 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  9. Support If it is unsourceable it is not information and is unencyclopedic. Edison (talk) 16:11, 29 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  10. Support without sources, WP is no more reliable than the blogosphere. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 06:43, 1 May 2009 (UTC)Reply
  11. This is meaningless. Everyone thinks this backlog should be reduced, but they differ radically over how this should be done. Edward321 (talk) 14:43, 4 May 2009 (UTC)Reply
  12. Support By stopping the flow of incoming articles without sources, we can turn our attention to fixing the existing backlog we have. - Mgm|(talk) 09:27, 7 May 2009 (UTC)Reply
Oppose "Reduce backlog of older unsourced articles"
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Objective: Reduce creation of new unsourced BLP articles

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Support "Reduce creation of new unsourced BLP articles"
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  1. That would be a positive outcome, but not necessarily a priority where unsourced BLPs are of people who are probably notable, notability is asserted in the article and it contains no negative information. AndrewRT(Talk) 19:12, 16 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  2. Should be a priority. If articles are not sourced it is impossible to know if the information is correct or even about the same person. While it may not be a big deal to some people if biographical materiel is garbled, it often matters quite a bit to the subject of the article. FloNight♥♥♥ 22:11, 16 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  3. Most new BLPs are of non-notable people, in my experience on random article patrol. Some are attacks, and others are conflict-of-interest vanity articles or mere resumés. rerifiability is an absolute requirement.Edison (talk) 16:13, 29 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  4. Support subset of the former issue, but with heightened urgency and policy - someone can live without a WP article on them just fine; someone with an unsourced libelous article is hurt by its presence. Without sources we can only make conjectures about what facts seem contentious to us which may not be comprehensive, or sensitivities of the subject's own or his/her culture. Most of the unreferenced blps fall into either nn people written by fans or foes, or notable people with one-liners. XXX plays <sport,instrument> for <team,band>. Axing unsourced one-liners does no harm to the project. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 06:47, 1 May 2009 (UTC)Reply
Oppose "Reduce creation of new unsourced BLP articles"
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  1. Oppose I think this is a totally separate problem - very important, but it's better to handle it in a separate discussion. For example a BLP might use only sources on one side of a controversy, or use them selectively to push a POV. BLPs need much tighter scrutiny, and the methods will rely on inspection by experienced editors rather on than any easily-defined rules and procedures. --Philcha (talk) 10:48, 14 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  2. Tentative Oppose Lot of double-negative speak in that section heading. I'm not in favor of letting any Tom, Dick, or Mary have a BLP, or even the reduction of notability guidelines, but I'm not in favor of hindering the creation process either. — Ched :  ?  18:12, 16 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  3. oppose unless clarified per Philcha's logic. Some of the most problematic BLPs are heavily sourced. And when a BLP has a problem it often has other sources in the article anyways. JoshuaZ (talk) 22:02, 16 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  4. Oppose for the same reason as above (At least the way this is worded, it goes against the very nature of Wikipedia. It's supposed to be something that anyone can edit. Even if you can't write a perfect article immediately, just get down what you can and someone else will eventually make it better. That's the wiki way. Yes, there is a problem, but shutting down the expansion process is a slippery slope to overtightening the project to a clique made of people who are proficient in the rules and policies or who are good wikilawyering.) It doesn't matter what the topic is. What matters is that we don't snuff out the very thing that improves Wikipedia the most--new good editors. Nobody is born a good wiki-editor. It takes time and experience to become one, and we don't want to frustrate too many of them upfront. Sure, it might clear the queue, but then we'd be upset that there are no new articles. --Willscrlt (→“¡¿Talk?!”) 06:56, 22 April 2009 (UTC)Reply
  5. Oppose. A better objective would be "Increase creation of new sourced BLPs". Or "Make it easier for new editors to cite their sources." Or "Encourage editors to source any BLPs they come across, and notify the original contributor of just how they should be doing that." DHowell (talk) 07:39, 25 April 2009 (UTC)
Neutral on "Reduce creation of new unsourced BLP articles"
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  1. Not getting into this. Stifle (talk) 08:49, 15 April 2009 (UTC)Reply

Action

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I have been going through the list of unsourced BLPs, Category:Unreferenced_BLPs, and have proded some and added sources to one. Some already had at least one source and shouldn't have been on the list. Steve Dufour (talk) 17:54, 30 April 2009 (UTC)Reply

I'm still working on this. Steve Dufour (talk) 15:31, 12 May 2009 (UTC)Reply
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