subject:"\[Foundation\-l\] Request for your input\: biographies of living people"

2009/3/4 Andrew Gray andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk:
 2009/3/2 David Gerard dger...@gmail.com:

 (My usual answer: Email info at wikimedia dot org, that's wikimedia
 with an M. It'll get funneled to the right place. All other ways of
 contacting us end up there anyway. This seems to work a bit.)

 Ha. Tie this into Thomas's suggestion...
 ...print up a sheaf of business cards, with Got a problem? info @
 wikimedia.org in nice clear bold lettering, the puzzle-globe at one
 edge; the other side just WIKIPEDIA writ large. Distribute them to
 everyone who does PRish stuff...


Best. Idea. Ever.


- d.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009-03-04 Thread philippe



On Mar 4, 2009, at 7:17 AM, Andrew Gray wrote:

 Ha. Tie this into Thomas's suggestion...

 ...print up a sheaf of business cards, with Got a problem? info @
 wikimedia.org in nice clear bold lettering, the puzzle-globe at one
 edge; the other side just WIKIPEDIA writ large. Distribute them to
 everyone who does PRish stuff...


Great idea.  But also, we simply must change the culture of those who  
see these things on wiki.  For instance, today I declined a page  
protection request from an editor who saw a BLP subject making changes  
to their own biography.  Amazing!  A BLP subject sees factual errors  
in their biography, tries to change it, and rather than helping them  
through the changes or referring them to OTRS or anywhere, we're asked  
to protect the page from the changes since the subject's version  
was... wait for it... INACCURATE?!  I know there may be COI issues,  
but it seems to me that for whatever reason there's this adversarial  
us vs the subject relationship that's been built up... it's so  
dangerous and potentially damaging.

sigh

/rant


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[[en:User:Philippe]]

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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009-03-04 Thread Andrew Gray

2009/3/2 David Gerard dger...@gmail.com:

 As far as I can make out, the present situation on en:wp is: a
 proposal was put which got 59% support. That's not a sufficiently
 convincing support level. So Jimbo is currently putting together a
 better proposal, with the aim of at least 2/3 support and hoping for
 80% - it'll be more robust. Timeframe, er, I just asked him as well.

Bleh. Well, at least it's *something*.

I did a headcount the other week of all the OTRS simple vandalism and
uncomplicated BLP tickets I handled - ie, all the ones not needing
digging and arguing with people and so on. 80-90% of them would have
been avoided by flagged revisions.

This leaves lots of BLP stuff (the systematic POV problems, etc) that
it wouldn't address, certainly, but I reckon at a stroke it would
pre-empt a good *third* of our email load. It'd probably prevent even
more by proportion if we turned on a report this function, since
that'd heavily be skewed towards vandalism.

Enabling both, together, would be excellent. But I think making it
something for after we get the thrice-blesséd FlaggedRevs might be the
most efficient approach.

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk

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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009/3/4 Andrew Gray andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk:

 I did a headcount the other week of all the OTRS simple vandalism and
 uncomplicated BLP tickets I handled - ie, all the ones not needing
 digging and arguing with people and so on. 80-90% of them would have
 been avoided by flagged revisions.


Please say this REALLY LOUD to the objectors this time around.


- d.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009-03-04 Thread geni

2009/3/4 David Gerard dger...@gmail.com:
 2009/3/4 Andrew Gray andrew.g...@dunelm.org.uk:

 I did a headcount the other week of all the OTRS simple vandalism and
 uncomplicated BLP tickets I handled - ie, all the ones not needing
 digging and arguing with people and so on. 80-90% of them would have
 been avoided by flagged revisions.


 Please say this REALLY LOUD to the objectors this time around.


 - d.

Won't work. So of us objectors have overlarge watchlists see so we
also know about the cases where long standing issues have been picked
up and fixed by IPs.



-- 
geni

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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

Sue,

As far as default to delete goes... There was a high profile proposal
about it awhile back, written by Doc_glasgow (now en:User:Scott_MacDonald),
which got significant support but appeared to fall short of a consensus.

Nonetheless the deletion of articles on marginally notable living people
became more common shortly afterward - not necessarily as a default to
delete, I think the increased awareness of the danger that marginally
notable BLPs present convinced more people to argue for deletion at AfD.

I'm surprised to see that a version of default to delete made it into the
deletion policy - supports the notion that policy follows practice, I
suppose. However, the policy and the proposal behind it didn't mention or
account for the wishes of the subject (that I recall);  in deletion
discussions those have largely been seen as not relevant.

Nathan
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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009-03-04 Thread quiddity

http://www.onelook.com/?w=encomium a formal expression of praise
http://www.onelook.com/?w=hagiography a biography that idealizes or
idolizes the person (especially a person who is a saint)
http://www.onelook.com/?w=saccharine overly sweet


On Wed, Mar 4, 2009 at 4:19 AM, Gerard Meijssen
gerard.meijs...@gmail.com wrote:
 Hoi,
 What is:
 * encomium
 * hagiographical
 * saccharine sentiment

 PS You lost me.
 Thanks,
      GerardM

 2009/3/3 Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonav...@gmail.com


 While I find it impossible to disagree with your characterization
 of the current situation in any depth, and for sentimental reasons
 don't wish to engage teh view expressed by Jimmy Wales above
 your reply; I am bound to note that this state of affairs does
 present a certain historical irony, in that Criticism and controversy
 sections did not originate as a way of starting a biasing against
 a person whom the article was about, but as a way of keeping the
 main body of the biographical wholly hagiographical, and all the
 seamy sides being able to be rebutted in the controversy section,
 with none of the encomiums and even the worst saccharine
 sentiments in the hagiographical portion challenged at all
 by even the gentlest critical glance. Yes, we won't be removing
 that sourced information, just moving it out of the way of the main
 flow of our sweet article about this wonderful person.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009/3/4 quiddity pandiculat...@gmail.com:

 http://www.onelook.com/?w=encomium a formal expression of praise
 http://www.onelook.com/?w=hagiography a biography that idealizes or
 idolizes the person (especially a person who is a saint)
 http://www.onelook.com/?w=saccharine overly sweet


*cough* you mean, of course:

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/encomium
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hagiography
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/saccharine


- d.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009-03-04 Thread P. Birken

2009/3/4 Sue Gardner sgard...@wikimedia.org:
 2009/3/3 Michael Snow wikipe...@verizon.net

 But someone making a request is a sign that the article really needs a
 hard look, and quite possibly should be removed for not meeting our
 standards. So the reversed presumption of default to delete, unless
 consensus to keep is a good idea for living subjects. I would add that
 when this is in question, arguments that make excuses for the current
 state of the article are not valid reasons to keep it.


 I am just clarifying - default to delete unless consensus to keep would be
 a change from current state, right?

 I ask because I got a call the other day from someone asking to have the BLP
 about her deleted. The article centred around a single incident in her
 life.  I handed it off to a longtime English Wikipedian (doesn't matter
 who), who told me the subject was notable and therefore the article would be
 kept.

 That experience was consistent with my general understanding - that it has
 been extremely difficult for even marginally notable people to get the BLP
 about them deleted.

 So -again, just to clarify- if Wikipedia adopted a practice of defaulting to
 delete unless there's consensus to keep, that would be change from how BLPs
 are handled today - yes?

As for the german Wikipedia, that would be a change of policy, The
policy mentioned on the en-WP fro BLP is not present on de-WP.

Best,

Philipp

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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009-03-04 Thread quiddity

On Wed, Mar 4, 2009 at 12:27 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote:
 2009/3/4 quiddity pandiculat...@gmail.com:

 http://www.onelook.com/?w=encomium a formal expression of praise
 http://www.onelook.com/?w=hagiography a biography that idealizes or
 idolizes the person (especially a person who is a saint)
 http://www.onelook.com/?w=saccharine overly sweet


 *cough* you mean, of course:

 http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/encomium
 http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hagiography
 http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/saccharine



*hums innocently*
but no, not until we implement wikidata will Wiktionary not make me
cringe slightly...
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikidata
I might have linked to omegawiki.org too, if any of those words existed there...
Are these two still at all likely to merge?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:OmegaWiki
or have the ... copying and pasting these lists from one language
Wiktionary to another was inefficient and error-prone ... problems
been solved since I last read up on this?

q

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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

On Wed, Mar 4, 2009 at 5:34 PM, Sue Gardner sgard...@wikimedia.org wrote:

 I'm confused. Doesn't the current (English) policy say if there's no
 consensus ... the page is kept.  So, default to _keep_, rather than
 default
 to delete...?

 It's only the English policy, so I realize it's not necessarily
 representative/reflective of any of the other language versions,
 regardless.  But in general, my understanding is that default to keep is
 more-or-less standard practice Wikipedia-wide (as much as all language
 versions can be said to have a standard practice), and the English policy
 seems to support that.

 Recapping this piece of the thread: It seems to me that default to delete
 is not widely considered satisfactory, if it is interpreted to mean an
 automatic or near-automatic deletion upon request.  Human judgment needs to
 be applied.

  Erik had proposed that articles which meet these three criteria be deleted
 upon request: 1) they are not balanced and complete, 2) the subject is only
 marginally notable, and 3) the subject wants the article deleted. This
 would
 shift the bar towards a more deletionist stance for BLPs, but would
 preserve
 articles which are either complete and balanced, _or_ which are about
 people
 who are clearly self-evidently notable.

 Assuming there is some consensus about what clearly self-evidently notable
 means, or that some consensus could be created . does that proposal
 make
 sense to people here?


According to Dominic's quote, it says default to delete if the article is
*not* a marginally notable BLP. Not a very elegant way of changing the
policy, but perhaps it was intended to slip past wide notice. While deleting
marginally notable BLPs has become more common, even where no consensus to
delete exists, the proposal did fail.

As far as granting significant weight to the wishes of a subject? Subject
request has consistently been rejected as a basis for deleting an article,
and many comments in the deletion discussions I've read have even rejected
lending weight to these requests in any way.

Nathan
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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

On Wed, Mar 4, 2009 at 5:41 PM, Nathan nawr...@gmail.com wrote:



 According to Dominic's quote, it says default to delete if the article is
 *not* a marginally notable BLP. Not a very elegant way of changing the
 policy, but perhaps it was intended to slip past wide notice. While deleting
 marginally notable BLPs has become more common, even where no consensus to
 delete exists, the proposal did fail.

 As far as granting significant weight to the wishes of a subject? Subject
 request has consistently been rejected as a basis for deleting an article,
 and many comments in the deletion discussions I've read have even rejected
 lending weight to these requests in any way.

 Nathan



I'm sorry - the quote is default to *keep* if the article is not a
marginally notable BLP - which, through negatives, means default to delete
for marginally notable BLPs.



-- 
Your donations keep Wikipedia running! Support the Wikimedia Foundation
today: http://www.wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009-03-04 Thread Fred Bauder

 2009/3/4 Dominic dmcde...@cox.net

 Sue Gardner wrote:
  I am just clarifying - default to delete unless consensus to keep
 would
 be
  a change from current state, right?

 In terms of policy, default to delete is the current state for BLPs.
 To be more exact, the important bit is: If there is no rough consensus
 and the page is not a BLP describing a relatively unknown person, the
 page is kept and is again subject to normal editing, merging or
 redirecting as appropriate. However, that is at least somewhat new
 (several months old, I think), and I am not certain how universally
 administrators apply it at this point. The relevant policy is at
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:DP#Deletion_discussion


 I'm confused. Doesn't the current (English) policy say if there's no
 consensus ... the page is kept.  So, default to _keep_, rather than
 default
 to delete...?

 It's only the English policy, so I realize it's not necessarily
 representative/reflective of any of the other language versions,
 regardless.  But in general, my understanding is that default to keep
 is
 more-or-less standard practice Wikipedia-wide (as much as all language
 versions can be said to have a standard practice), and the English policy
 seems to support that.

 Recapping this piece of the thread: It seems to me that default to
 delete
 is not widely considered satisfactory, if it is interpreted to mean an
 automatic or near-automatic deletion upon request.  Human judgment needs
 to
 be applied.

   Erik had proposed that articles which meet these three criteria be
 deleted
 upon request: 1) they are not balanced and complete, 2) the subject is
 only
 marginally notable, and 3) the subject wants the article deleted. This
 would
 shift the bar towards a more deletionist stance for BLPs, but would
 preserve
 articles which are either complete and balanced, _or_ which are about
 people
 who are clearly self-evidently notable.

 Assuming there is some consensus about what clearly self-evidently
 notable
 means, or that some consensus could be created . does that proposal
 make
 sense to people here?

Yes, however, the key words are Human judgment needs to be applied.

Fred



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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009/3/4 KillerChihuahua pu...@killerchihuahua.com:

 I cannot stress enough how strongly I agree with this assessment. If
 NPOV, V, and RS were followed - as they should be by normally
 intelligent adults wishing to write good articles - BLP isn't even
 needed at all. I support BLP existing, although I've seen it misused a
 good bit - but IMO it wouldn't hurt a bit if someone IAR'd and gutted a
 lot of the other policies that have grown up like weeds over the last
 couple of years. More will only make matters worse.


Not quite - the important difference with BLPs is that we cannot be
eventualist (start with an awful article and let it improve with time)
- we do not have the luxury of eventualism. With BLPs, we must be
immediatist - we must not have a live version that violates the
content rules.


- d.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009-03-04 Thread Sue Gardner

2009/3/4 Nathan nawr...@gmail.com

 On Wed, Mar 4, 2009 at 5:41 PM, Nathan nawr...@gmail.com wrote:

  As far as granting significant weight to the wishes of a subject? Subject
  request has consistently been rejected as a basis for deleting an
 article,
  and many comments in the deletion discussions I've read have even
 rejected
  lending weight to these requests in any way.



I understand  appreciate the desire to proceed solely on the basis of 'what
makes a good encyclopedia,' without incorporating any considerations outside
that. Seriously, that makes a lot of sense to me.

But having said that, there doesn't seem to be a really clear consensus on
'what makes a good encyclopedia' when it comes to BLPs - witness for
example, all the discussions about what constitutes notability.  Since no
clear consensus has emerged, and nobody seems to be arguing that retaining
biographies of marginally-notable living people is an obvious and important
good thing to do ... then why _not_ shift the bias towards deleting the
marginally notable upon request?

I don't think that would lead to hagiographies Wikipedia-wide. You could
just as easily argue it would improve quality by eliminating some mediocre
articles that nobody cares about much .. while also, as a lucky side effect,
reducing unhappiness among the subjects of those articles.  Perhaps our
stance could shift to _thanking_ subjects of bad BLPs for helping to police
quality :-)


I'm sorry - the quote is default to *keep* if the article is not a
 marginally notable BLP - which, through negatives, means default to delete
 for marginally notable BLPs.


I get it now, thank you :-)
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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009-03-04 Thread Tomasz Ganicz

2009/3/4 Sue Gardner sgard...@wikimedia.org:

  Erik had proposed that articles which meet these three criteria be deleted
 upon request: 1) they are not balanced and complete, 2) the subject is only
 marginally notable, and 3) the subject wants the article deleted. This would
 shift the bar towards a more deletionist stance for BLPs, but would preserve
 articles which are either complete and balanced, _or_ which are about people
 who are clearly self-evidently notable.


The main problem with this proposal might be the definition of
self-evidently notability.
How do you want to evaluate it?


-- 
Tomek Polimerek Ganicz
http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Polimerek
http://www.ganicz.pl/poli/
http://www.ptchem.lodz.pl/en/TomaszGanicz.html

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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

There are a couple of reasons I can think of why shifting to
delete-on-request for marginally notable BLPs would be problematic.

(1) As Tomasz notes, the idea of marginal notability is one that doesn't
play well to non-Wikipedians and isn't well defined in any case.

(2) We'd still have to have a deletion discussion, and if the default to
delete in the absence of a consensus policy change continues to stick then
having an additional default to deletion in the absence of consensus
situation is duplicative.

(3) If the idea is to skip deletion discussions entirely, then we would be
leaving the determination of marginal notability up to the admin reviewing
the request. I can't think this would go over well - speedy deletion (i.e.
deletions requiring the opinion of only one or two people) is a sensitive
subject, and the criteria are intended to be strictly interpreted.

(4) How many requests do we actually get from article subjects to delete the
article about them? I would think most would be happier with an article that
speaks well of them and/or is simply factually correct. If we were to adopt
this particular approach (and if it were not redundant, perhaps because the
existing approach failed to take root permanently) would it have much
practical impact?

We should keep in mind that deleting marginal BLPs is not a solution for the
BLP problem. The process requires that someone who is aware of the policy
comes upon a page that could stand deletion and takes the correct steps to
see it deleted. Marginal BLPs, by their nature, are often poorly linked or
orphaned and not well monitored by people versed in deletion policy; if they
were, then we would have no problem with them.

Maybe by giving subjects a more obvious and easy way to complain we can get
past this hurdle, making OTRS respondents responsible for starting AfDs. But
we still have a whole constantly expanding host of articles and potential
articles on living people who are too notable to delete; a deletion default
doesn't help with those.

Nathan
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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009-03-04 Thread Alex

Chad wrote:
 
 While working with OTRS, I actually sent several articles through AfD. And I
 typically didn't announce that it was an OTRS thing, so as to let the 
 community
 judge the article on its own merits. This would actually be a decent policy to
 follow: encourage OTRS respondents to send the marginally notable through
 the normal AfD process (like any other) and allow those in the community
 more equipped to deal with deletion/BLP issues handle it.
 

This assumes that both of those groups are the same. Many people
involved in the deletion processes are rather unconcerned with BLP
issues (or things like sourcing and NPOV, as long as its notable), and
many people concerned about BLPs don't involve themselves in the
deletion process.

-- 
Alex (wikipedia:en:User:Mr.Z-man)

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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009-03-04 Thread Chad

On Wed, Mar 4, 2009 at 10:18 PM, Alex mrzmanw...@gmail.com wrote:
 Chad wrote:

 While working with OTRS, I actually sent several articles through AfD. And I
 typically didn't announce that it was an OTRS thing, so as to let the 
 community
 judge the article on its own merits. This would actually be a decent policy 
 to
 follow: encourage OTRS respondents to send the marginally notable through
 the normal AfD process (like any other) and allow those in the community
 more equipped to deal with deletion/BLP issues handle it.


 This assumes that both of those groups are the same. Many people
 involved in the deletion processes are rather unconcerned with BLP
 issues (or things like sourcing and NPOV, as long as its notable), and
 many people concerned about BLPs don't involve themselves in the
 deletion process.

 --
 Alex (wikipedia:en:User:Mr.Z-man)

Those that involve themselves in BLP matters should perhaps frequent
AFD more often. Provided that is still how we delete articles that aren't
speedyable.

-Chad

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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009-03-03 Thread Sue Gardner

2009/3/2 philippe philippe.w...@gmail.com



 On Mar 2, 2009, at 5:48 PM, private musings wrote:

  basically there's a sensible three stage plan to follow to help drive
  quality and minimise 'BLP' harm;
 
  1) Semi-protext all 'BLP' material
  2) Allow an 'opt-out' for some subjects (eg. non public figures, or
  those
  not covered in 'dead tree sources' for example) - note this is more
  inclusive than a simple higher threshold for notability
  3) 'Default to delete' in discussions about BLP material - if we can't
  positively say that it improves the project, it's sensible and
  responsible
  to remove the material in my view.


 As a general rule, I think pm has given us a common-sense place to
 begin discussions about how to cleanup existing BLPs.  There will
 always be situations that don't fit within this, but as a starting
 point for guidelines, I support these.


It seems obvious to me from the conversation on this thread that part of the
reason the German Wikipedia seems better able to manage its BLPs (assuming
that is true - but it seems true) is because there is a smaller number of
them. Presumably a smaller number of BLPs = fewer to maintain and
problem-solve = a higher quality level overall. (And possibly also, OTRS
volunteers who are less stressed out, resulting in a higher level of
patience and kindness when complaints do get made.)

Assuming that's true, allowing BLP subjects to opt-out seems like it would
have a direct positive increase on the quality of remaining BLPs, in
addition to eliminating some BLPs entirely.  Clearly, there would still be a
notability threshold above which people would never be allowed to opt out -
there will always be articles about people such as Hillary Clinton and J.K.
Rowling and Penelope Cruz. But a decision to significantly raise that
threshold, as well as default to deletion upon request, seems like it would
have a positive effect on quality.

Can I ask: does anyone reading this thread 1) think raising the notability
threshold is a bad idea, 2) believe defaulting to deletion upon request is a
bad idea, or 3) disagree with the notion that other Wikipedias should shift
closer to the German Wikipedia's generally-less-permissive policies and
practices, particularly WRT BLPs?
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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009-03-03 Thread Aude

On Tue, Mar 3, 2009 at 3:17 AM, Sue Gardner sgard...@wikimedia.org wrote:


 It seems obvious to me from the conversation on this thread that part of
 the
 reason the German Wikipedia seems better able to manage its BLPs (assuming
 that is true - but it seems true) is because there is a smaller number of
 them. Presumably a smaller number of BLPs = fewer to maintain and
 problem-solve = a higher quality level overall. (And possibly also, OTRS
 volunteers who are less stressed out, resulting in a higher level of
 patience and kindness when complaints do get made.)

 Assuming that's true, allowing BLP subjects to opt-out seems like it would
 have a direct positive increase on the quality of remaining BLPs, in
 addition to eliminating some BLPs entirely.  Clearly, there would still be
 a
 notability threshold above which people would never be allowed to opt out -
 there will always be articles about people such as Hillary Clinton and J.K.
 Rowling and Penelope Cruz. But a decision to significantly raise that
 threshold, as well as default to deletion upon request, seems like it would
 have a positive effect on quality.

 Can I ask: does anyone reading this thread 1) think raising the notability
 threshold is a bad idea, 2) believe defaulting to deletion upon request is
 a
 bad idea, or 3) disagree with the notion that other Wikipedias should shift
 closer to the German Wikipedia's generally-less-permissive policies and
 practices, particularly WRT BLPs?


I think raising the notability threshold would certainly help, and would be
okay with allowing deletion upon request.  I have by far experienced the
most problems with BLPs for those of lesser notability.  Right now, BLPs on
those with lesser notability have more limited sources to build a proper
biography, and often the sources that do exist tend to emphasize controversy
about the person and thus the Wikipedia bio skews that way.

-Aude



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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009-03-03 Thread Aude

On Tue, Mar 3, 2009 at 2:25 AM, Ting Chen wing.phil...@gmx.de wrote:

Back to BLP. Personally I think that the policies we have related to
BLPs are enough, but maybe we should be put more resource in the
inforcement of these policies. The meetings Philipp mentioned in Germany
are a very good start point. Perhaps the foundation can help organize
such OTRS-training-meetings in the US (because the lack of a US chapter)
and other countries, just as a beginning. Later we maybe we can see how
we can expand this to more regions and countries. We should also
encourage more people to work and help on OTRS and give them due support.

Ting

Regarding putting more resources into enforcement of BLP policies, what
resources are you talking about? I have seen problems reported to the BLP
and other noticeboards, with no response or inadequate responses from admins
and editors.

My own wiki time is a very limited resource nowadays, so I can personally do
only so much to help. I would love to have all the time in the world to
help on Wikipedia, but that's not realistic. Resouces are our volunteers
and I see the number of former admins growing along with others editing more
infrequently.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AFormer_administratorsdiff=272252709oldid=261057788

Making the inclusion criteria more stringent for BLPs may make things more
managable for our volunteers (our resources) to handle in a satisfactory
way.

-Aude

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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009/3/3 Ting Chen wing.phil...@gmx.de:

 yes I think the english and the german wikipedias are two models and
 examples that are often used for the other language versions. I remember
 the talk from Harel in Taipei about the Hebrew Wikipedia and had the
 impression that they orient themselves more on the german model.
 Personally I believe that if German is more bigger language it this
 model would be used more often.


I have spoken to a few editors who speak both German and English, and
they say the German Wikipedia is better ... but they actually use the
English one more. Because it covers so much more. So German may be
better per an internal ideal, but English is actually more useful in
any practical sense.

(This is of course anecdotal. If anyone wants to compile a list and do
a survey of editors who contribute to both en:wp and de:wp ...)


- d.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009/3/3 Michael Snow wikipe...@verizon.net:

 I've made this observation before, but I think it bears repeating. At
 least on the English Wikipedia, a frequent practice is to start a
 section called Criticism and controversy or some variation thereof.
 This indicates to me an utter failure to write an actual biographical
 article. If we can't figure out how to integrate something into the
 overall picture of someone's life, then we're definitely failing to
 provide the context to actually understand the controversy, probably
 giving it distorted emphasis, and possibly lacking the material to treat
 the person as the subject of an independent article. Quite often, of
 course, the back-and-forth in that section ends up overwhelming any
 other content instead.


If bad writing were curable by guidelines and policies, English
Wikipedia would be brilliant prose from end to end. It isn't - there's
a discernible Wikipedia style which is flat, grey and neutralised.
Useful for spotting plagiarism of it. Good writers are thin on the
ground - most editors are more skilled at researching and referencing,
and can write a decipherable sentence.


- d.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009/3/3 Sue Gardner sgard...@wikimedia.org:

 Can I ask: does anyone reading this thread 1) think raising the notability
 threshold is a bad idea, 2) believe defaulting to deletion upon request is a
 bad idea, or 3) disagree with the notion that other Wikipedias should shift
 closer to the German Wikipedia's generally-less-permissive policies and
 practices, particularly WRT BLPs?


Deletion upon request is a terrible idea. It will lead to only
hagiographies - violations of NPOV - being kept. (This has been
discussed at length on wikien-l, fwiw.)

Raise the threshold in a manner that does not violate fundamental
content policies. Any BLP policy that violates fundamental content
policies will be unworkable. Think of it as unconstitutional.


- d.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009/3/3 Sue Gardner sgard...@wikimedia.org:

 Can I ask: does anyone reading this thread 1) think raising the notability
 threshold is a bad idea, 2) believe defaulting to deletion upon request is a
 bad idea, or 3) disagree with the notion that other Wikipedias should shift
 closer to the German Wikipedia's generally-less-permissive policies and
 practices, particularly WRT BLPs?


And yes, I think 3. is a very bad idea - en:wp's greatest strength is
its breadth of coverage. As I noted, de:wp seems to fit people's
ideals of an encyclopedia more, but en:wp is actually more useful in
any practical sense.

1. is an idea to be approached with profound caution - far too many
BLP policy proposals get a bit close to throwing out neutrality, i.e.
violating Wikipedia's greatest innovation in the encyclopedia space.

This thread has a bit of an air of something must be done, this is
something, therefore we must do this. That is a logical fallacy.


- d.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009/3/2 Mike Godwin mnemo...@gmail.com:

 I'm unclear as to how it seems inconsistent to you. Can you explain what you
 think is unreconciled? I assume you recognize that NPOV has been adopted by
 the Wikipedia community and is enforced by it (and not by the Foundation).


That statement is actually false - Wikipedias have been shut down by
the Foundation for being grossly negligent of NPOV (Siberian,
Moldovan).


- d.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009-03-03 Thread Aude

On Tue, Mar 3, 2009 at 4:35 AM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote:

 2009/3/3 Aude audeviv...@gmail.com:

  Inclusion criteria, such as the one news event is helpful.  If we could
  make the inclusion criteria for BLP more stringent in other such ways to
  weed out some of the garbage or tabloidy BLPs, that would be welcome in
 my
  opinion.
 
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:NOT#Wikipedia_is_not_an_indiscriminate_collection_of_information


 That's *not* what indiscriminate collection of information means.
 That you cite it to support your point shows you don't understand the
 term.


I suggest you actually read that section of WP:NOT.

-Aude






 - d.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009-03-03 Thread Ting Chen

Aude schrieb:
 On Tue, Mar 3, 2009 at 2:25 AM, Ting Chen wing.phil...@gmx.de wrote:

 
 Back to BLP. Personally I think that the policies we have related to
 BLPs are enough, but maybe we should be put more resource in the
 inforcement of these policies. The meetings Philipp mentioned in Germany
 are a very good start point. Perhaps the foundation can help organize
 such OTRS-training-meetings in the US (because the lack of a US chapter)
 and other countries, just as a beginning. Later we maybe we can see how
 we can expand this to more regions and countries. We should also
 encourage more people to work and help on OTRS and give them due support.

 Ting
   
 

 Regarding putting more resources into enforcement of BLP policies, what
 resources are you talking about?  I have seen problems reported to the BLP
 and other noticeboards, with no response or inadequate responses from admins
 and editors.
   
Regarding more resource I think here at first point to encourage more 
people to work for OTRS, other possibility is hire more people dedicated 
for such and similar tasks from the foundation, if our financial 
situation allows us to do that. There could also be still other 
possibilities, from local communities for example. Naturally for all of 
us (except the foundation employees) this is a hobby and the real life 
has priority.

Ting

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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009-03-03 Thread Mike Godwin

I probably should have used the word implement rather than enforce.

I agree that in some sense the death penalty qualifies as enforcement, but
it doesn't actually make any particular article adhere to NPOV.   It's the
community, not the Foundation, that is trusted with ensuring that individual
articles adhere to the NPOV standard.


--Mike



On Tue, Mar 3, 2009 at 1:36 AM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote:

 2009/3/2 Mike Godwin mnemo...@gmail.com:

  I'm unclear as to how it seems inconsistent to you. Can you explain what
 you
  think is unreconciled? I assume you recognize that NPOV has been adopted
 by
  the Wikipedia community and is enforced by it (and not by the
 Foundation).


 That statement is actually false - Wikipedias have been shut down by
 the Foundation for being grossly negligent of NPOV (Siberian,
 Moldovan).


 - d.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009-03-03 Thread P. Birken

2009/3/2 Sue Gardner sgard...@wikimedia.org:

 So, two questions strike me:
 2) When it comes to the German Wikipedia and other language versions which
 put an unusually high priority on quality . I am curious to know what
 quality-supportive measures (be they technical, social/cultural, or
 policy-level) those Wikipedia have in place.  Philipp says a high threshold
 for notability is one in the German Wikipedia. Are there others?

I'm afraid I should have been more precise. When I said: When in
doubt about notability, delete BLPs. Do not make low notability
criterias for living persons., that was not a description of what is
happening on de-WP, but my opinion on how things should be done.
Factually, notability criterias are noticably more strict on de-WP
than on en, but not all over the place actually lower regarding
scientists.

Policy-wise, we have adopted WP:BLP from en with when in doubt,
respect privacy.

There are two factors where things are different from en as far as I
can see. The first is the community. There are dozens of Stammtische
in almost all major german towns, where wikipedians meet on a regular
basis. This helps spreading awareness about the problem and that is a
key thing in my eyes: the issue about BLP is always the conflict
between privacy and freedom of the press. I have the impression that
Wikipedians tend to take the stance that We are wikipedia, we are
good, it is our duty to tell the public the truth, while ignoring the
detrimental effects this can have on living persons. Raising awareness
about the problems of BLP is important. Rub peoples nose in the effect
wikipedia articles have on the described persons live, make them
imagining how that person might feel and that even little things may
be an invasion of privacy. We all became experts on copyright, we
should all become experts on personality rights and ethics as well.

The second factor is freedom of the press. This is less strong in
Germany than in the UK and the US. Even things that are true may not
be written, for example people who have served their time in jail have
the right of not being named in the press. This makes discussion on
the wiki very streamlined. The difficult cases are where it is not
forbidden by law to write something, but only not useful, not
encyclopedic or even unethical.

Best,

Philipp

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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009-03-03 Thread Fred Bauder



 Can I ask: does anyone reading this thread 1) think raising the
 notability
 threshold is a bad idea, 2) believe defaulting to deletion upon request
 is a
 bad idea, or 3) disagree with the notion that other Wikipedias should
 shift
 closer to the German Wikipedia's generally-less-permissive policies and
 practices, particularly WRT BLPs?

With respect to biographies of living persons, unless there is sufficient
reliable published information about a person to flesh out a well
balanced article we shouldn't have one.

Having said that I am left with remorse regarding people involved in
interesting incidents. In such cases, the article should be about the
incident. That results in their name being mentioned, but not in the
context of a flawed biography. The key is discipline regarding creating
red links regarding persons about whom little reliable information is
available.

Fred



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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009/3/3 Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net:

 With respect to biographies of living persons, unless there is sufficient
 reliable published information about a person to flesh out a well
 balanced article we shouldn't have one.


The question them becomes reliable. Reliable sources usually print
whatever the subject tells them, even if it's a damn lie. (See the
Polish example earlier in this thread.)


- d.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009-03-03 Thread Fred Bauder

 2009/3/3 Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net:

 With respect to biographies of living persons, unless there is
 sufficient
 reliable published information about a person to flesh out a well
 balanced article we shouldn't have one.


 The question them becomes reliable. Reliable sources usually print
 whatever the subject tells them, even if it's a damn lie. (See the
 Polish example earlier in this thread.)


 - d.


Well, that is the fact laundering phenomenon I've explored in the past.
Information is no better than its actual source. And if the actual source
is gossip, rumor, or self dealing, no amount of publishing in The Times
(or other reliable source) changes its essential nature.

Fred



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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009-03-03 Thread Michael Snow

Andrew Gray wrote:
 2009/3/3 David Gerard dger...@gmail.com:
   
 2009/3/3 Sue Gardner sgard...@wikimedia.org:
 
 Can I ask: does anyone reading this thread 1) think raising the notability
 threshold is a bad idea, 2) believe defaulting to deletion upon request is a
 bad idea, or 3) disagree with the notion that other Wikipedias should shift
 closer to the German Wikipedia's generally-less-permissive policies and
 practices, particularly WRT BLPs?
   
 Deletion upon request is a terrible idea. It will lead to only
 hagiographies - violations of NPOV - being kept. (This has been
 discussed at length on wikien-l, fwiw.)
 
 That said, reacting the other way and *prohibiting* deletion on
 request is also counterproductive - we've skirted close to this on
 enwp in the past, where people have interpreted subject has asked us
 to delete it as being an automatic cast-iron reason to keep it in
 place. I mean, I've seen cases where someone's stood up and said this
 article is atrocious, subject wants it deleted and it's been kept
 (with a variety of snide comments), whereas had they just said this
 article is atrocious, it'd have been killed with no objections.
   
I agree with all of this. Fundamentally, our work as a community is to 
exercise editorial judgment, and we have a responsibility not to 
abdicate it. That gives me a dislike of default deletion upon request. 
But someone making a request is a sign that the article really needs a 
hard look, and quite possibly should be removed for not meeting our 
standards. So the reversed presumption of default to delete, unless 
consensus to keep is a good idea for living subjects. I would add that 
when this is in question, arguments that make excuses for the current 
state of the article are not valid reasons to keep it.

--Michael Snow

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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009-03-03 Thread Birgitte SB

--- On Tue, 3/3/09, Sue Gardner sgard...@wikimedia.org wrote:

 From: Sue Gardner sgard...@wikimedia.org
 Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living 
 people
 To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
 Date: Tuesday, March 3, 2009, 2:17 AM
 2009/3/2 philippe philippe.w...@gmail.com

  On Mar 2, 2009, at 5:48 PM, private musings wrote:

   basically there's a sensible three stage plan
 to follow to help drive
   quality and minimise 'BLP' harm;

   1) Semi-protext all 'BLP' material
   2) Allow an 'opt-out' for some subjects
 (eg. non public figures, or
   those
   not covered in 'dead tree sources' for
 example) - note this is more
   inclusive than a simple higher threshold for
 notability
   3) 'Default to delete' in discussions
 about BLP material - if we can't
   positively say that it improves the project,
 it's sensible and
   responsible
   to remove the material in my view.

  As a general rule, I think pm has given us a
 common-sense place to
  begin discussions about how to cleanup existing BLPs. 
 There will
  always be situations that don't fit within this,
 but as a starting
  point for guidelines, I support these.

 It seems obvious to me from the conversation on this thread
 that part of the
 reason the German Wikipedia seems better able to manage its
 BLPs (assuming
 that is true - but it seems true) is because there is a
 smaller number of
 them. Presumably a smaller number of BLPs = fewer to
 maintain and
 problem-solve = a higher quality level overall. (And
 possibly also, OTRS
 volunteers who are less stressed out, resulting in a higher
 level of
 patience and kindness when complaints do get made.)

 Assuming that's true, allowing BLP subjects to opt-out
 seems like it would
 have a direct positive increase on the quality of remaining
 BLPs, in
 addition to eliminating some BLPs entirely.  Clearly, there
 would still be a
 notability threshold above which people would never be
 allowed to opt out -
 there will always be articles about people such as Hillary
 Clinton and J.K.
 Rowling and Penelope Cruz. But a decision to significantly
 raise that
 threshold, as well as default to deletion upon request,
 seems like it would
 have a positive effect on quality.

 Can I ask: does anyone reading this thread 1) think raising
 the notability
 threshold is a bad idea, 2) believe defaulting to deletion
 upon request is a
 bad idea, or 3) disagree with the notion that other
 Wikipedias should shift
 closer to the German Wikipedia's
 generally-less-permissive policies and
 practices, particularly WRT BLPs?

1) Raising the notability threshold is not an intrinsically bad idea, but it is 
hard to agree without knowing the new threshold. 

2) Defaulting to delete should be for all BLPs or none.  I disagree that it  be 
any different because it was requested. It will only lead to false hopes and 
greater disappointment if we have a special rule for per request. Personally 
I support defaulting to delete on all BLPs

3) I disagree with the notion that other Wikipedias should shift to follow 
anyone's policy or practices.  They need to work out what will work best in the 
culture of their own community. Although the goal of protecting living people 
from being harmed by Wikipedia needs to be universal, I don't that it should be 
put in terms of de-style or en-style.

Birgitte SB

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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009-03-03 Thread Birgitte SB

--- On Tue, 3/3/09, Aude audeviv...@gmail.com wrote:

 From: Aude audeviv...@gmail.com
 Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living 
 people
 To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
 Date: Tuesday, March 3, 2009, 2:52 AM

  On Tue, Mar 3, 2009 at 2:25 AM, Ting Chen
 wing.phil...@gmx.de wrote:

  Back to BLP. Personally I think that the policies
 we have related to
  BLPs are enough, but maybe we should be put more
 resource in the
  inforcement of these policies. The meetings
 Philipp mentioned in Germany
  are a very good start point. Perhaps the
 foundation can help organize
  such OTRS-training-meetings in the US (because the
 lack of a US chapter)
  and other countries, just as a beginning. Later we
 maybe we can see how
  we can expand this to more regions and countries.
 We should also
  encourage more people to work and help on OTRS and
 give them due support.

  Ting

 Regarding putting more resources into enforcement of BLP
 policies, what
 resources are you talking about?  I have seen problems
 reported to the BLP
 and other noticeboards, with no response or inadequate
 responses from admins
 and editors.

One problem I encountered is that the BLP noticeboard on en.WP is regularly 
archived by date, whether or not a thread has been resolved.  I frankly don't 
do much work in this area, but I occasionally stumble across something and 
report it there.  The lack of feedback about whether the issue I reported was 
significant is discouraging. I imagine casual reporters who do not see the 
issues they report resolved nor get feedback on why the issues is not a concern 
simply stop making reports there. 

Birgitte SB

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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009-03-03 Thread Cary Bass

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

Ray Saintonge wrote:

 The English Wikipedia is probably the worst offender.  Until that
 is sorted out a Wikipedia wide policy is premature.  The
 qualities at the beginning of you paragraph are important, but a
 level of common sense also needs to be applied.  In unbalanced
 criticism any individual comment may be perfectly valid when
 viewed in isolation.  The problem is with the effect of restating
 details, or the injudicious use of adjectives in places where
 they don't enlighten.
I would venture to say that some of our smaller Wikipedias in the
range of 1000 to 1 articles may be worse offenders, on a
per-biography basis, than the English Wikipedia; given that the
community standards of inclusion are highly varied.  The complaints I
used to receive about the Yiddish Wikipedia, to just cite one example,
were varied, and always involved biographies of people who would fail
inclusion rather well on the English, and most other larger Wikipedias.

Cary
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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009-03-03 Thread Erik Moeller

2009/3/3 Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net:
 With respect to biographies of living persons, unless there is sufficient
 reliable published information about a person to flesh out a well
 balanced article we shouldn't have one.

This is an important principle, I think. Not necessarily in this form
- but IMO the discussion has suffered a bit from a one-dimensional
focus on notability. Let's say there's a three-step test:

1) The article is not a balanced and complete biography of a person's
life an work;
2) The person is marginally notable;
3) The person wants the article deleted.

If all those three tests are met, the article would be deleted. If
only 1) and 2) are met, at the very least, the article would be
templated for improvement, with a clear note saying that if you're the
subject and you want it deleted, you can request that through a simple
process.

Essentially, we've often said that an article which only consists of
An apple is a fruit can become a masterpiece overtime, but I think
when it comes to one-sided biographies, we need to take into account
that our happy little article workshop is also used by nearly 300
million people as a one stop reference. What's the justification for
publishing poor quality biographies of marginally notable people, even
against the subject's wishes?
-- 
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation

Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009/3/3 Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonav...@gmail.com:

 Sure, the persons themselves can not be harmed, but our
 deep understanding of the forces of history, and what force
 personality, heredity, cultural context and up-bringing play
 within it, is immeasurably impoverished by getting a view that
 is faulty.


In which case it's an important issue, but it's not *this* important
issue. At all. Even a bit.


- d.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009-03-03 Thread Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

David Gerard wrote:
 2009/3/3 Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonav...@gmail.com:

   
 Sure, the persons themselves can not be harmed, but our
 deep understanding of the forces of history, and what force
 personality, heredity, cultural context and up-bringing play
 within it, is immeasurably impoverished by getting a view that
 is faulty.
 


 In which case it's an important issue, but it's not *this* important
 issue. At all. Even a bit.


   

Bear with me. I started with that, because that is something
at the periphery, easily overlooked. I will focus on the meat
of the issue in due time.


Yours,

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen



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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009/3/3 Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonav...@gmail.com:

 Bear with me. I started with that, because that is something
 at the periphery, easily overlooked. I will focus on the meat
 of the issue in due time.


Then I ask you to get to the point and stay on it, because this needs
to be a thread focused on this specific issue, not one susceptible to
being hijacked for other causes. Whether that's your intention or not.


- d.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009-03-03 Thread Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

Michael Snow wrote:
 Jimmy Wales wrote:
   
 Let me repeat that in a different way, for emphasis: I think that a 
 great number of our biographies, and bad in a particular way.  Minor 
 controversies are exploded into central stories of people's lives in a 
 way that is abusive and unfair, and games players have learned how to 
 properly cite things and good people have a hard time battling against 
 violations of WP:UNDUE.
   
 
 I've made this observation before, but I think it bears repeating. At 
 least on the English Wikipedia, a frequent practice is to start a 
 section called Criticism and controversy or some variation thereof. 
 This indicates to me an utter failure to write an actual biographical 
 article. If we can't figure out how to integrate something into the 
 overall picture of someone's life, then we're definitely failing to 
 provide the context to actually understand the controversy, probably 
 giving it distorted emphasis, and possibly lacking the material to treat 
 the person as the subject of an independent article. Quite often, of 
 course, the back-and-forth in that section ends up overwhelming any 
 other content instead.
   

While I find it impossible to disagree with your characterization
of the current situation in any depth, and for sentimental reasons
don't wish to engage teh view expressed by Jimmy Wales above
your reply; I am bound to note that this state of affairs does
present a certain historical irony, in that Criticism and controversy
sections did not originate as a way of starting a biasing against
a person whom the article was about, but as a way of keeping the
main body of the biographical wholly hagiographical, and all the
seamy sides being able to be rebutted in the controversy section,
with none of the encomiums and even the worst saccharine
sentiments in the hagiographical portion challenged at all
by even the gentlest critical glance. Yes, we won't be removing
that sourced information, just moving it out of the way of the main
flow of our sweet article about this wonderful person.


Yours,

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen


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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009-03-03 Thread Matthew Brown

On Tue, Mar 3, 2009 at 2:39 PM, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net wrote:
 That would not preclude an article about the movie, if notable, although
 only a few films spring to mind. And the name of the actor can be
 mentioned but ought not be a redlink, unless the person's private life is
 notable and the subject of substantial information published in reliable
 sources.

I see no reason why having an article on someone need include
information not published in reliable sources.  If they're well-known
for something in the public eye but details of their life elsewhere
are not prevalent, then that's how our article should be as well.

-Matt

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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009/3/3 Matthew Brown mor...@gmail.com:

 I see no reason why having an article on someone need include
 information not published in reliable sources.  If they're well-known
 for something in the public eye but details of their life elsewhere
 are not prevalent, then that's how our article should be as well.


This will promptly become a your source is great/no yours sucks
mine rules battle. When we started requiring references, that became
the target of the querulous. And everyone is convinced the term
reliable sources is actually (a) objectively definable (b) invariant
for all topics.

And never mind that people who know about the construction of ontology
and how it works usually have a degree or two in the subject, I'm sure
a bunch of people who've been on a wiki for a few months can make up
something that passes all muster, and if it doesn't then reality is
wrong. And the New York Times is gospel, but anything in the subject's
own blog must be first assumed to be a tissue of lies, and the subject
themselves buried in initialisms.


- d.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009-03-03 Thread Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

Ray Saintonge wrote:
 I'm making a point of replying to this before I read any of the other 
 responses to avoid being tainted by them.

 Sue Gardner wrote:
   
 * The editors I've spoken with about BLPs are pretty serious about them –
 they are generally conservative, restrained, privacy-conscious, etc. But I
 wonder if that general attitude is widely-shared. If Wikipedia believes (as
 is said in -for example- the English BLP policy) that it has a
 responsibility to take great care with BLPs, should there be a
 Wikipedia-wide BLP policy, or a projects-wide statement of some kind?
   
 
 The English Wikipedia is probably the worst offender.  Until that is 
 sorted out a Wikipedia wide policy is premature.  The qualities at the 
 beginning of you paragraph are important, but a level of common sense 
 also needs to be applied.  In unbalanced criticism any individual 
 comment may be perfectly valid when viewed in isolation.  The problem is 
 with the effect of restating details, or the injudicious use of 
 adjectives in places where they don't enlighten.

   

I doubt your statement The English Wikipedia is probably the
worst offender. has genuine statistical evidence behind it. But
no doubt it can't be far behind from the worst.

I do think your instinct about policies not being panaceas is
likely accurate though. It isn't policy change (or regime change :)
wikipedia projects need. It is contributor culture change. And
that is hardest to bring about.


Yours,

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen


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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009-03-03 Thread Delirium

David Gerard wrote:
 2009/3/3 Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonav...@gmail.com:

   
 Sure, the persons themselves can not be harmed, but our
 deep understanding of the forces of history, and what force
 personality, heredity, cultural context and up-bringing play
 within it, is immeasurably impoverished by getting a view that
 is faulty.
 


 In which case it's an important issue, but it's not *this* important
 issue. At all. Even a bit.
   
I'd argue that they're actually pretty closely interwtined issues--- 
incorrect information in a Wikipedia article harming actual, currently 
living people. There are some areas where this is very unlikely, and 
other areas where it's more likely, and I agree with many that we ought 
to have better policies on the areas where it's more likely. But I think 
we do somewhat a disservice to the overall mission by splitting off BLPs 
into separate policies and treat them as if they're some unique category 
unto themselves. Rather, I'd gather together negative information about 
living people, inflammatory information about ongoing conflicts, 
poorly source information relating to current elections, and similar 
categories into a tier of information that has particularly stringent 
application of the verification and NPOV policies.

-Mark


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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009-03-03 Thread Fred Bauder

 2009/3/3 Matthew Brown mor...@gmail.com:

 I see no reason why having an article on someone need include
 information not published in reliable sources. Â If they're well-known
 for something in the public eye but details of their life elsewhere
 are not prevalent, then that's how our article should be as well.


 This will promptly become a your source is great/no yours sucks
 mine rules battle. When we started requiring references, that became
 the target of the querulous. And everyone is convinced the term
 reliable sources is actually (a) objectively definable (b) invariant
 for all topics.

 And never mind that people who know about the construction of ontology
 and how it works usually have a degree or two in the subject, I'm sure
 a bunch of people who've been on a wiki for a few months can make up
 something that passes all muster, and if it doesn't then reality is
 wrong. And the New York Times is gospel, but anything in the subject's
 own blog must be first assumed to be a tissue of lies, and the subject
 themselves buried in initialisms.


 - d.

How about something a little more helpful?

Fred



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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009/3/4 Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.net:

 How about something a little more helpful?


Uh, I think pointing out obvious problems counts, particularly when
the solution offered is to do the same things that are already
problematic twice as hard.

The hard part is to lead the community to a standard of living bio
that is suitable.

* What makes a valid research source is not something teenagers on a
website can make up off the top of their heads and expect to get
right, but that's what WP:RS is. See the talk page if you don't
believe me. Hubris and enthusiasm don't make competence,
unfortunately.
* No guideline or policy will protect against stupidity or malice, and
those that try to will be a millstone for good faith editors. But time
and time again, the community reaction has been to add more policies
and guidelines in the hope these will protect against stupidity or
malice, and blame the good faith editors for not following the bad
guidelines hard enough. See the current arbitration case on the
matter.


- d.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009-03-02 Thread Thomas Dalton

2009/3/2 Sue Gardner sgard...@wikimedia.org:
 So what can we do? Here are the things I am thinking about. I would love
 your input:

 * Do we think the current complaints resolution systems are working?  Is it
 easy enough for article subjects to report problems?  Are we courteous and
 serious in our handling of complaints?  Do the people handling complaints
 need training/support/resources to help them resolve the problem (if there
 is one)?  Are there intractable problems, and if so, what can we do to solve
 them?  Some Wikimedia chapters have pioneered more systematic training of
 volunteers to handle OTRS responses; should we try to scale up those or
 similar practices?

From what I can tell, a lot of subjects of BLPs that have problems
with their articles don't complain at all. The accounts I've heard
(or, at least, my interpretation thereof) of Wikimedians being
approached at events by people with bad articles have all been along
the lines of my article is rubbish, how do I get it fixed? not my
article is rubbish and I've been trying to get it fixed but nobody is
listening to me. That suggests that those subjects that don't happen
to meet a Wikipedian never actually complain. There are two possible
explanations for that that I can see: 1) They don't really care all
that much and the complaints we get are just opportunistic moaning or
2) they have no idea where to even start with complaining. While there
may be some cases of (1), I'm sure (2) is a significant factor.

I've just looked at a BLP and nowhere can I see an guidance on how to
complain. I suggest a Report a problem with this article link to
added to the sidebar of all articles as a mailto link to the
appropriate OTRS address.

 * Are there technical tools we could implement, that would support greater
 quality in BLPs?  For example – easy problem reporting systems,
 particular configurations of Flagged Revs, etc.

Flagged Revs is an excellent way of dealing with vandalism to BLPs,
technical solutions to more subtle problems are a little trickier.
Flagged Revs could be used with addition levels - a free of
vandalism level and a well balanced, fact-checked and free of
anything remotely libellous level. Two separate levels are necessary
since the 2nd takes far too long to be a practical vandal fighting
tool - I'm not sure which level would be shown by default to whom,
that needs to be worked out.

 * Wikimedians have developed lots of tools for preventing/fixing vandalism
 and errors of fact. Where less progress has been made, I think, is on the
 question of disproportionate criticism. It seems to me that the solution may
 include the development of systems designed to expose particularly biased
 articles to a greater number of people who can help fix them. But this is a
 pretty tough problem and I would welcome people's suggestions for resolving
 it

Tagging with templates is our usual method, but it isn't particularly
effective. Perhaps we need to be a little more demanding about getting
things fixed. An addition to the multiple flags suggestion above could
work here - introduce a new deletion procedure by which any BLP (but,
in theory, BLPs with problems) can be tagged for deletion in 1 month
if a recent version of it hasn't been flagged as fact checked, etc. by
that time. (The No article is better than a bad article theory.) I
suspect we may end up with every BLP being so tagged so it would
basically be a policy of never having a backlog of much more than 1
month on fact checking - a nice idea, but I'm not sure if we could
keep up with it without deleting most of our BLPs.

 * The editors I've spoken with about BLPs are pretty serious about them –
 they are generally conservative, restrained, privacy-conscious, etc. But I
 wonder if that general attitude is widely-shared. If Wikipedia believes (as
 is said in -for example- the English BLP policy) that it has a
 responsibility to take great care with BLPs, should there be a
 Wikipedia-wide BLP policy, or a projects-wide statement of some kind?

There isn't really any such thing as Wikipedia-wide, that's why
wikipedia-l is pretty much dead. Decisions of the entire Wikimedia
community are pretty difficult to achieve. They have to be done by
vote, nothing else is practical, and discussion to put together a
proposal to vote on is tricky because only people that speak English
can really be involved. I think, if we want any kind of statement like
that, it has to come from the WMF.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009-03-02 Thread Tomasz Ganicz

2009/3/2 Sue Gardner sgard...@wikimedia.org:
 Hi folks,

 I've been increasingly concerned lately about Wikimedia's coverage of living
 people, both within biographies of living people (BLPs) on Wikipedia, and in
 coverage of living people in non-BLP text.  I've asked the board to put this
 issue on the agenda for the April meeting in Berlin, and I'm hoping there to
 figure out some concrete next steps to support quality in this area.  In
 advance of that, I want to ask for input from you.


I think that:
*There should be official Foundation's policy about handling legal
problems with biographies of living persons, which should have similar
status like privacy policy. It should be legal document saying what to
do if... not just a set of advices for editors. Moreover it should
clearly state whom to contact on Foundation level, who is responsible
for content etc. it should be written by lawyer.
*BLP policy on Wikipedia-en (and probably on many others) is rather
internal policy for editors describing not the legal issues but rather
editing rules - they might be different on different project, moreover
they use to change over the time.
*These two things of course overlap - but they are two different
issues in fact.
*It should be made clear that the offical Foundation policy regarding
legal issues with BLPs is more important than local BLP's policies and
always comes first.

In particular the legal BLP Foundation policy should give an answer for:
*what to do if a person want to remove enitre biography from Wikipedia
- especially in cases when a person is not formally a public person
but he/she is somehow famous
*what to do if a person claims that a given information hurts him/her
life but it is well proved by sources - and what sources are
acceptable and what not.
*what to do if a person says his/her biography is wrong but rejects to
provide proves or sources of their claims
*what kind of information should never be put on biography because it
is personal even if someone found public sources for them (like E-mail
and real address, phone number, illnesses,  etc.)

Two recent examples from Polish Wikipedia:
*A sportsmen had anitdoping case around 5 years ago, when he was 18.
There is good source of this information (his own interwiev in sport's
magazine in which he appologises for taking an illegal drug). Now the
guy is saing that it was all forgotten by mainstream media, he was
already punished for this (6 months break)  but he is now trying to
get new contract and Wikipedia entry on him may destroy the deal.
Therefore he ask for removing this info or his entire bio...
*A pop singer manager wants to remove the birthday of his starllet,
because she is (probably) around 30 but her current image show her as
almost teenager. The birhtday is sourced by Who is Who in Poland,
paper eddtion - but it was removed from electronic version, and they
also manged to remove it from all other web-pages.


-- 
Tomek Polimerek Ganicz
http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Polimerek
http://www.ganicz.pl/poli/
http://www.ptchem.lodz.pl/en/TomaszGanicz.html

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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009/3/2 Tomasz Ganicz polime...@gmail.com:


 Two recent examples from Polish Wikipedia:
 *A sportsmen had anitdoping case around 5 years ago, when he was 18.
 There is good source of this information (his own interwiev in sport's
 magazine in which he appologises for taking an illegal drug). Now the
 guy is saing that it was all forgotten by mainstream media, he was
 already punished for this (6 months break)  but he is now trying to
 get new contract and Wikipedia entry on him may destroy the deal.
 Therefore he ask for removing this info or his entire bio...
 *A pop singer manager wants to remove the birthday of his starllet,
 because she is (probably) around 30 but her current image show her as
 almost teenager. The birhtday is sourced by Who is Who in Poland,
 paper eddtion - but it was removed from electronic version, and they
 also manged to remove it from all other web-pages.


If those were answered any way other than no, go away (however
politely phrased), then that's just wrong.


- d.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009-03-02 Thread Thomas Dalton

2009/3/2 David Gerard dger...@gmail.com:
 I would guess it's mostly (2), in my experience. People have no idea
 who to contact. The Contact Wikipedia link on en:wp's sidebar
 doesn't seem to catch their eye - though it gets you to the right
 answer in three further clicks. Perhaps it should be on the page you
 hit immediately.

It certainly didn't catch my eye when I was looking for such a link. I
think an explicit report a problem link is required. It would go
straight to the info-en queue (or equivalent). If possible, it should
include the critical information (article title and revision id, at
least) in the email automatically, although I'm not sure mailto links
can do that...

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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009-03-02 Thread Nathan

This is the most prominent problem facing the English Wikipedia today in my
view. BLPs are easy to write and easy to get wrong, and there are always
newly famous people to write about - so this issue is only going to become
more important and more visible with time. Sue's point about the type of
people who are subjects of BLPs is important from a public relations
perspective; if we tick off people with megaphones, everyone is going to
hear about it.

A report a problem link (prominently displayed on BLPs in particular) was
my first thought as well, and seems like a straightforward way to improve
handling of complaints. I agree with Thomas that the article and revision
being reported should be included if possible in the e-mail automatically,
and I think we should have an OTRS queue specifically for BLPs to handle
these reports. I would also like to see the pool of OTRS respondents
expanded - some advertising on the need for queue minders, and maybe an
expansion of the potential pool (for instance, not being an administrator on
any project I wouldn't be eligible).

I would like to see Mike's opinion, though, on how deeply the Foundation can
be involved in establishing Wikimedia-wide policies on content like BLPs. It
would seem to challenge the notion that the Foundation itself hosts but does
not control project content. Tomasz' suggestion would be an especially
serious departure from past practice.

Nathan
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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009-03-02 Thread Gerard Meijssen

Hoi
For the English Wikipedia there is an awareness and there are procedures in
place to deal with BLP problems.These procedures may get an update with an
implementation of Flagged Revisions. In her question, Sue did not limit BLP
issues to English Wikipedia only.

It seems to me that BLP issues in languages other then English are in a way
more problematic  because of a lack of understanding of the language and of
the cultural and legal issues for the jurisdictions where a language is
spoken. Given that from a traffic point of view the other half is in
languages other then English, I would appreciate to learn more how BLP
issues are dealt with in other languages. I can imagine that English
Wikipedia is effectively more then half of the cases that are dealt with at
the office.
Thanks,
   GerardM

2009/3/2 Nathan nawr...@gmail.com

 This is the most prominent problem facing the English Wikipedia today in my
 view. BLPs are easy to write and easy to get wrong, and there are always
 newly famous people to write about - so this issue is only going to become
 more important and more visible with time. Sue's point about the type of
 people who are subjects of BLPs is important from a public relations
 perspective; if we tick off people with megaphones, everyone is going to
 hear about it.

 A report a problem link (prominently displayed on BLPs in particular) was
 my first thought as well, and seems like a straightforward way to improve
 handling of complaints. I agree with Thomas that the article and revision
 being reported should be included if possible in the e-mail automatically,
 and I think we should have an OTRS queue specifically for BLPs to handle
 these reports. I would also like to see the pool of OTRS respondents
 expanded - some advertising on the need for queue minders, and maybe an
 expansion of the potential pool (for instance, not being an administrator
 on
 any project I wouldn't be eligible).

 I would like to see Mike's opinion, though, on how deeply the Foundation
 can
 be involved in establishing Wikimedia-wide policies on content like BLPs.
 It
 would seem to challenge the notion that the Foundation itself hosts but
 does
 not control project content. Tomasz' suggestion would be an especially
 serious departure from past practice.

 Nathan
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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009-03-02 Thread jayjg

On Mon, Mar 2, 2009 at 6:38 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.comwrote:

 2009/3/2 Sue Gardner sgard...@wikimedia.org:

  * Are there technical tools we could implement, that would support
 greater
  quality in BLPs?  For example – easy problem reporting systems,
  particular configurations of Flagged Revs, etc.

 Flagged Revs is an excellent way of dealing with vandalism to BLPs,
 technical solutions to more subtle problems are a little trickier.
 Flagged Revs could be used with addition levels - a free of
 vandalism level and a well balanced, fact-checked and free of
 anything remotely libellous level. Two separate levels are necessary
 since the 2nd takes far too long to be a practical vandal fighting
 tool - I'm not sure which level would be shown by default to whom,
 that needs to be worked out.


That might help for actual biographies, but it doesn't help much when
BLP-violations happen in other places, particularly article Talk: pages. In
my experience that's all to common.
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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009-03-02 Thread Mike Godwin

Nathan writes:


 I would like to see Mike's opinion, though, on how deeply the Foundation
 can
 be involved in establishing Wikimedia-wide policies on content like BLPs.
 It
 would seem to challenge the notion that the Foundation itself hosts but
 does
 not control project content.


My strong belief is that the Foundation can make *suggestions* to the
community about what content policy should be, but that *it must remain up
to the community whether to adopt such policies and how to enforce them*.
The available cases (mostly US cases, but some foreign ones) suggest that
any top-down initiative from the Foundation to control the development or
maintenance of content (including BLPs) runs the risk of being interpreted
by courts and/or legislatures as general editorial control, which would
undercut the legal principles we rely on to protect the Foundation.

In order for the Foundation to function with the least possible risk of
legal action that might threaten the projects' operation (or even
existence), we have to lower the expectation that the Foundation plays any
editorial role beyond the minimum one required by law (such as DMCA
takedowns). The Foundation is best situated when it's perceived as something
like a phone company -- a platform for other people to produce content on.


--Mike
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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009-03-02 Thread Lars Aronsson

Tomasz Ganicz wrote:

 least in Poland at some legal risk. In Poland there is a law 
 that a person can always ask for removing his/her personal data 
 from any electronic database (except govermental ones).

There is a similar law in Sweden (Personuppgiftslagen, PUL), but 
it has an exception for the freedom of the press and similar 
journalistic purposes (det journalistiska undantaget), and this 
exception is always referred to for websites similar to Wikipedia.

The Norwegian law apparently has a similar exception, that also 
covers opinion pieces (opinionsdannende). The Danish law 
apparently refers directly to article 10 (freedom of expression) 
of the European Convention on Human Rights.

What you could do is to ask Polish journalists how they operate 
newspaper websites under this law, and how they (as guardians of 
the freedom of the press) would react if the Polish Wikipedia was 
censored in this way.  Perhaps they should write a newspaper 
article about how this musical artist tries to hide her real age.

This doesn't necessarily bring an answer to the question, but 
establishing a good link with journalists is always useful.


-- 
  Lars Aronsson (l...@aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se

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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

They have no recourse. We are not subject to Polish law.

From: Tomasz Ganicz polime...@gmail.com
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Sent: Monday, March 2, 2009 6:24:09 AM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009/3/2 David Gerard dger...@gmail.com:
 2009/3/2 Tomasz Ganicz polime...@gmail.com:

 Two recent examples from Polish Wikipedia:
 *A sportsmen had anitdoping case around 5 years ago, when he was 18.
 There is good source of this information (his own interwiev in sport's
 magazine in which he appologises for taking an illegal drug). Now the
 guy is saing that it was all forgotten by mainstream media, he was
 already punished for this (6 months break)  but he is now trying to
 get new contract and Wikipedia entry on him may destroy the deal.
 Therefore he ask for removing this info or his entire bio...
 *A pop singer manager wants to remove the birthday of his starllet,
 because she is (probably) around 30 but her current image show her as
 almost teenager. The birhtday is sourced by Who is Who in Poland,
 paper eddtion - but it was removed from electronic version, and they
 also manged to remove it from all other web-pages.

 If those were answered any way other than no, go away (however
 politely phrased), then that's just wrong.

Yes. They were answered in such a way. Bu it does not solve the
problem from legal POV, and when you make such an answer you are - at
least in Poland at some legal risk. In Poland there is a law that a
person can always ask for removing his/her personal data from any
electronic database (except govermental ones). In the second case the
info about drugs is not personal data but in the first one is
(birthday). In the first case we have just recieived a formal request
from the starllet's solicitor to remove her birthday based on the
personal data law. Although Wikipedia servers are fortunetally not
in Poland, the database operator which in this case may mean the
editor who added this birthday should remove this birthday or he/she
is commiting a kind of minor crime. This is just a practical example
how legal POV might be in some cases different than general BLP policy
writen and voted by local project's communities.

-- 
Tomek Polimerek Ganicz
http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Polimerek
http://www.ganicz.pl/poli/
http://www.ptchem.lodz.pl/en/TomaszGanicz.html

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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009/3/2 Lars Aronsson l...@aronsson.se:

 What you could do is to ask Polish journalists how they operate
 newspaper websites under this law, and how they (as guardians of
 the freedom of the press) would react if the Polish Wikipedia was
 censored in this way.  Perhaps they should write a newspaper
 article about how this musical artist tries to hide her real age.


Yes. It's the sort of issue custom-crafted to backfire really badly.


- d.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009-03-02 Thread Sebastian Moleski

On Mon, Mar 2, 2009 at 5:38 PM, Geoffrey Plourde geo.p...@yahoo.com wrote:
 They have no recourse. We are not subject to Polish law.

How do you know? And who is we?

Sebastian

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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009-03-02 Thread Aude

I normally spend my wikitime on writing articles, and generally avoid
wikidrama.  When I run into a BLP problem, if I'm uninvolved enough then I
can deal with it myself.  Sometimes, I am sufficiently involved and cannot
be directly involved in resolving BLP problems and take admin actions
myself.  That said, I've been around Wikipedia for a long while, and know
where to go to report a BLP problem and request assistance.

For many many months, I was observing blatant BLP violations and other
serious issues with the William Rodriguez article, but was not in a position
to take admin actions nor cleanup the article myself.  The article was
reported numerous times on ANI, checkuser/sockpuppets pages, the BLP
noticeboard, and arbcom enforcement, only for the reports to be mostly
ignored until last week when more drastic attention grabbing steps were
taken.   Contacting arbcom via e-mail was also not helpful.  The article is
still in serious need of cleanup, to bring it in compliance with the BLP
policy.

Why are reports about BLP and other serious problems being ignored?  Is this
commonly the case that BLP reports and other serious problems are
disregarded? I do see a fair bit of noise and drama on the admin
noticeboards, but the number of admins effectively dealing with problems
seems insufficient.   My experience with OTRS is that they insufficiently
deal with problems, perhaps also due to lack of manpower on the queues and
shortage of people willing to take on tough cases.

Dealing with BLP and other such serious problems can be very time consuming,
yet is a thankless task.  It's a task that I'm not well-suited for, nor have
the time available to help with.  I'm not sure how to get more admins and
editors involved in dealing with BLP reports?  Also, the Wikipedia community
and the foundation needs to be more supportive of those admins/editors who
do step up and do a good job in handling these problems.

Anyway, the inaction of my BLP reports really frustrated me to the point
where I was thinking of giving up on Wikipedia.  I still don't have interest
in doing much Wikipedia editing right now, though maybe after a few weeks
(or maybe a month or two) of wikibreak, I will be back to editing more.

-Aude

-- 
Aude
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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

Would Polish police really expend the time to round up and charge every single 
Polish editor? I don't think so. The Foundation would most likely reject any 
demands for information, barring the successful prosecution of quite a few 
Polish editors. Also, convincing a judge not to throw the cases out would be 
problematic. When you add in all the bad publicity, it is highly unlikely that 
the Polish police will bother with this matter.





From: Michael Bimmler mbimm...@gmail.com
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Sent: Monday, March 2, 2009 8:46:53 AM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

On Mon, Mar 2, 2009 at 5:38 PM, Geoffrey Plourde geo.p...@yahoo.com wrote:
 They have no recourse. We are not subject to Polish law.


Individual Polish editors are, however, likely to be and they might
apparentely be in danger of prosecution.

Michael
-- 
Michael Bimmler
mbimm...@gmail.com

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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

I have some experience with customer service and was willing to serve as OTRS 
volunteer, but was rejected. The number of rejections I have witnessed is 
really shooting OTRS in the foot.

From: Aude audeviv...@gmail.com
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Sent: Monday, March 2, 2009 8:57:14 AM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

I normally spend my wikitime on writing articles, and generally avoid
wikidrama.  When I run into a BLP problem, if I'm uninvolved enough then I
can deal with it myself.  Sometimes, I am sufficiently involved and cannot
be directly involved in resolving BLP problems and take admin actions
myself.  That said, I've been around Wikipedia for a long while, and know
where to go to report a BLP problem and request assistance.

For many many months, I was observing blatant BLP violations and other
serious issues with the William Rodriguez article, but was not in a position
to take admin actions nor cleanup the article myself.  The article was
reported numerous times on ANI, checkuser/sockpuppets pages, the BLP
noticeboard, and arbcom enforcement, only for the reports to be mostly
ignored until last week when more drastic attention grabbing steps were
taken.   Contacting arbcom via e-mail was also not helpful.  The article is
still in serious need of cleanup, to bring it in compliance with the BLP
policy.

Why are reports about BLP and other serious problems being ignored?  Is this
commonly the case that BLP reports and other serious problems are
disregarded? I do see a fair bit of noise and drama on the admin
noticeboards, but the number of admins effectively dealing with problems
seems insufficient.   My experience with OTRS is that they insufficiently
deal with problems, perhaps also due to lack of manpower on the queues and
shortage of people willing to take on tough cases.

Dealing with BLP and other such serious problems can be very time consuming,
yet is a thankless task.  It's a task that I'm not well-suited for, nor have
the time available to help with.  I'm not sure how to get more admins and
editors involved in dealing with BLP reports?  Also, the Wikipedia community
and the foundation needs to be more supportive of those admins/editors who
do step up and do a good job in handling these problems.

Anyway, the inaction of my BLP reports really frustrated me to the point
where I was thinking of giving up on Wikipedia.  I still don't have interest
in doing much Wikipedia editing right now, though maybe after a few weeks
(or maybe a month or two) of wikibreak, I will be back to editing more.

-Aude

-- 
Aude
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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009-03-02 Thread Guillaume Paumier

Hello,

On Mon, Mar 2, 2009 at 6:01 PM, Geoffrey Plourde geo.p...@yahoo.com wrote:
 I have some experience with customer service and was willing to serve as OTRS 
 volunteer, but was rejected. The number of rejections I have witnessed is 
 really shooting OTRS in the foot.

I can understand your bitterness, but I think it leads you to the
wrong conclusion. I'd rather say that our high standards are one of
the strengths of our response team.

-- 
Guillaume Paumier
[[m:User:guillom]]

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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

I care not about my application being killed. I am pointing out that it appears 
that you kill most of the applications, which may be the reason for a lack of 
manpower. Have you considered using IRC for interviews as part of the 
application package? 





From: Guillaume Paumier guillom@gmail.com
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Sent: Monday, March 2, 2009 9:05:58 AM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

Hello,

On Mon, Mar 2, 2009 at 6:01 PM, Geoffrey Plourde geo.p...@yahoo.com wrote:
 I have some experience with customer service and was willing to serve as OTRS 
 volunteer, but was rejected. The number of rejections I have witnessed is 
 really shooting OTRS in the foot.

I can understand your bitterness, but I think it leads you to the
wrong conclusion. I'd rather say that our high standards are one of
the strengths of our response team.

-- 
Guillaume Paumier
[[m:User:guillom]]

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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009/3/2 David Gerard dger...@gmail.com:

 I don't say that lightly, but I can't see any other way things could
 be. I have a pile of special superpowers on en:wp, but if I were being
 legally required to exercise them for reasons other than the good of
 the encyclopedia, I'd be fervently hoping someone would take them away
 without me actually asking them to.


BTW, this is why, when concerns are raised with a BLP on a UK citizen,
I tend *not* to edit the article, but to forward the concern to
someone not UK-based. UK libel law is *insane*.


- d.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009-03-02 Thread Michael Bimmler

On Mon, Mar 2, 2009 at 6:14 PM, Geoffrey Plourde geo.p...@yahoo.com wrote:
 I care not about my application being killed. I am pointing out that it 
 appears that you kill most of the applications, which may be the reason for 
 a lack of manpower.

Access to OTRS implies a high trust into the user from the part of the
foundation.

The main backlog is currently with permissions emails, where less
stringent access standards (should) apply, because the information
there is mostly not very sensitive.

The second largest backlog is in the Quality subqueue of info-en, and
this is the issue here...because access to info-en::Quality is a
fairly high level access in the general OTRS system (I'm making this
sound much more bureaucratic than it actually is) -- obviously,
because there you'll find the high priority cases with a possibly high
PR impact, so we need to make sure that we trust people who handle
them. I've seen people attach copies of their ID or copies of their
Criminal Records File in emails to that queue...so I hope you
understand that I support being quite strict in giving access there.

Have you considered using IRC for interviews as part of the application 
package?

That would require a high amount of time for the OTRS admins. Mind
you, it's not the foundation's HR department that does this but
individual volunteers.

Michael

-- 
Michael Bimmler
mbimm...@gmail.com

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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009-03-02 Thread Thomas Dalton

2009/3/2 Anthony wikim...@inbox.org:
 Flagged Revs is an excellent way of dealing with vandalism to BLPs,
  technical solutions to more subtle problems are a little trickier.
 Flagged Revs could be used with addition levels - a free of
 vandalism level and a well balanced, fact-checked and free of
 anything remotely libellous level. Two separate levels are necessary
 since the 2nd takes far too long to be a practical vandal fighting
 tool - I'm not sure which level would be shown by default to whom,
 that needs to be worked out.


 Another good idea, but how would an article be accepted as well balanced?
 You just can't write about a topic which has any level of controversy and
 come up with an article which everyone will agree is well balanced.  No
 matter what you write, someone is going to have a problem with it, so
 marking an article as well balanced is more likely to increase the
 complaints rather than reduce them.  I think Citizendium's approved
 articles is about the best you can do in this type of situation, and their
 articles certainly aren't well balanced.

Of course, the terms need to be well defined, I was being
intentionally vague about that part because it requires significant
discussion and debate that I don't think we want to get into now.
Citizendium's approved articles are the equivalent of (not exactly
the same as, though) our featured articles - we don't want to
require all BLPs to be featured, that would never work!

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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009-03-02 Thread Jimmy Wales

Anthony wrote:
 Sounds good, but how good is OTRS at handling these issues?  Are there any
 statistics available as to what percentage of OTRS complainers are satisfied
 with the resolution?  Does OTRS provide any escalation for people who aren't
 satisfied with their initial results?

In general, I think that OTRS does an excellent job, and they do provide 
escalation (to me sometimes, or to Mike Godwin).  I'm unaware of anyone 
making it through the OTRS process and not being (more or less) 
satisfied, with only one exception - a biography that I learned of 
recently (prefer not to say which one out of risk of accidentally 
causing a news headline) where OTRS had appropriately fixed the article 
but over time (2, maybe 3 years) the errors had crept back in.

(I put errors in scare quotes not to suggest that they were not 
falsehoods, but rather to emphasize that what was going on, in my 
opinion, was not innocent error, but maliciousness.)

 Another good idea, but how would an article be accepted as well balanced?
 You just can't write about a topic which has any level of controversy and
 come up with an article which everyone will agree is well balanced.  No
 matter what you write, someone is going to have a problem with it, so
 marking an article as well balanced is more likely to increase the
 complaints rather than reduce them. 

This is contrary to all my experience.  Even controversial topics can be 
well balanced.

Just as a side note - in my experience, virtually no BLP complaints that 
I have heard in person were invalid.  Even highly controversial people 
(or perhaps, *especially* highly controversial people) aren't worried 
about the controversies being accurately reported.  They are concerned 
that they be reported fairly and in reasonable proportion to their 
overall history.  In my opinion, we fail miserably at that in far too 
many cases, and just because no one has complained yet, this does not 
mean that we are doing a good job.

Let me repeat that in a different way, for emphasis: I think that a 
great number of our biographies, and bad in a particular way.  Minor 
controversies are exploded into central stories of people's lives in a 
way that is abusive and unfair, and games players have learned how to 
properly cite things and good people have a hard time battling against 
violations of WP:UNDUE.

This is true even in cases where the subjects haven't complained, and it 
is a problem not just in terms of our ethical responsibilities to 
subjects of biographies, but also in terms of our ethical 
responsibilities to our readers, who depend on us for neutrality.







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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

Not necessarily. You do them in bulk at a certain time each week or every two 
weeks. 

From: Michael Bimmler mbimm...@gmail.com
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
Sent: Monday, March 2, 2009 9:22:19 AM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

On Mon, Mar 2, 2009 at 6:14 PM, Geoffrey Plourde geo.p...@yahoo.com wrote:
 I care not about my application being killed. I am pointing out that it 
 appears that you kill most of the applications, which may be the reason for 
 a lack of manpower.

Access to OTRS implies a high trust into the user from the part of the
foundation.

The main backlog is currently with permissions emails, where less
stringent access standards (should) apply, because the information
there is mostly not very sensitive.

The second largest backlog is in the Quality subqueue of info-en, and
this is the issue here...because access to info-en::Quality is a
fairly high level access in the general OTRS system (I'm making this
sound much more bureaucratic than it actually is) -- obviously,
because there you'll find the high priority cases with a possibly high
PR impact, so we need to make sure that we trust people who handle
them. I've seen people attach copies of their ID or copies of their
Criminal Records File in emails to that queue...so I hope you
understand that I support being quite strict in giving access there.

Have you considered using IRC for interviews as part of the application 
package?

That would require a high amount of time for the OTRS admins. Mind
you, it's not the foundation's HR department that does this but
individual volunteers.

Michael

-- 
Michael Bimmler
mbimm...@gmail.com

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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009-03-02 Thread Michael Bimmler

On Mon, Mar 2, 2009 at 6:38 PM, Geoffrey Plourde geo.p...@yahoo.com wrote:
 Not necessarily. You do them in bulk at a certain time each week or every two 
 weeks.

And of course all applicants will be available at the same time,
because they all live in the same timezones and have the same
work/life schedule. And I thought coordinating a meeting with a few
students in Zurich was difficult

-- 
Michael Bimmler
mbimm...@gmail.com

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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

On Mon, Mar 2, 2009 at 12:35 PM, Jimmy Wales jwa...@wikia-inc.com wrote:

 Anthony wrote:
  Sounds good, but how good is OTRS at handling these issues?  Are there
 any
  statistics available as to what percentage of OTRS complainers are
 satisfied
  with the resolution?  Does OTRS provide any escalation for people who
 aren't
  satisfied with their initial results?

 In general, I think that OTRS does an excellent job, and they do provide
 escalation (to me sometimes, or to Mike Godwin).  I'm unaware of anyone
 making it through the OTRS process and not being (more or less)
 satisfied, with only one exception - a biography that I learned of
 recently (prefer not to say which one out of risk of accidentally
 causing a news headline) where OTRS had appropriately fixed the article
 but over time (2, maybe 3 years) the errors had crept back in.


What is the current OTRS process?  When I contacted them a couple years
ago I was referred to arb com, and didn't hear from them again.  I certainly
wasn't satisfied.

My problem wasn't in regard to a biography, but it was a BLP issue under
Sue's expanded definition (it was in regard to some things written about me
in the Wikipedia namespace).

I'm sure the process has changed in the years since, though.  Does the
current process ask people if they're satisfied?

(I put errors in scare quotes not to suggest that they were not
 falsehoods, but rather to emphasize that what was going on, in my
 opinion, was not innocent error, but maliciousness.)

  Another good idea, but how would an article be accepted as well
 balanced?
  You just can't write about a topic which has any level of controversy and
  come up with an article which everyone will agree is well balanced.  No
  matter what you write, someone is going to have a problem with it, so
  marking an article as well balanced is more likely to increase the
  complaints rather than reduce them.

 This is contrary to all my experience.  Even controversial topics can be
 well balanced.


I completely agree that every article can be well balanced.  In fact, I'd
say any rational person upon proper consideration would be required to
accept that a well balanced article is always possible.  However, what I
said was that you can't write about a topic which has any level of
controversy, and come up with an article which everyone will agree is well
balanced.  My idea of what is well balanced in any particular situation
is probably not the same as yours, and it's certainly not the same everyone
(or every Wikipedian, which is sufficiently broad as to be basically
equivalent to everyone).

For example, consider the article now titled [[Bill Ayers presidential
election controversy]].  In my opinion, such an article is not well
balanced unless it discusses such things as the fact that, according to ABC
News, Ayers admitted planting bombs at a number of government installations
in the 1960s, that he has said I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we
didn't do enough., and that his wife was once on the FBI's Top 10 Most
Wanted List for inciting to riot.  Yet these very facts were taken *out* of
the article in an attempt to make the article better balanced and compliant
with BLP policy.

Or take the Citizendium article on [[homeopathy]].  In its attempt to follow
a policy of neutrality, it comes up with such nonsense as it is possible
that mainstream scientists and physicians have it wrong; perhaps homeopathy
is indeed effective, and, if so, there is something important to be studied
and Scientists in almost any area expect that, what today is the consensus
understanding will, in some tomorrow, by a mere curiosity in the history of
science.  I hope you would agree that this irrational skepticism does not
make for a well balanced article, but according to the article's
maintainers, such language is necessary to maintain balance.

So yes, a well balanced article can exist, but not everyone is going to
agree on what it looks like.  Maybe your comment that This is contrary to
all my experience was to imply that you believe Wikipedia can develop a
process which achieves this well balanced article?  If so, I'd love to
hear you outline it.  (Or, if you think the current process already does
this, I'd like to see some evidence for this, because in my experience
Wikipedia articles tend to be horribly out of balance.)

Just as a side note - in my experience, virtually no BLP complaints that
 I have heard in person were invalid.  Even highly controversial people
 (or perhaps, *especially* highly controversial people) aren't worried
 about the controversies being accurately reported.  They are concerned
 that they be reported fairly and in reasonable proportion to their
 overall history.  In my opinion, we fail miserably at that in far too
 many cases, and just because no one has complained yet, this does not
 mean that we are doing a good job.


Let me repeat that in a different way, for emphasis: I think that a
 great number of our biographies,

Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009-03-02 Thread Sue Gardner

There is lots I want to reply to here; this mail is just a start...

2009/3/2 Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com

From what I can tell, a lot of subjects of BLPs that have problems
 with their articles don't complain at all. The accounts I've heard
 (or, at least, my interpretation thereof) of Wikimedians being
 approached at events by people with bad articles have all been along
 the lines of my article is rubbish, how do I get it fixed? not my
 article is rubbish and I've been trying to get it fixed but nobody is
 listening to me. That suggests that those subjects that don't happen
 to meet a Wikipedian never actually complain. There are two possible
 explanations for that that I can see: 1) They don't really care all
 that much and the complaints we get are just opportunistic moaning or
 2) they have no idea where to even start with complaining. While there
 may be some cases of (1), I'm sure (2) is a significant factor.

 I've just looked at a BLP and nowhere can I see an guidance on how to
 complain. I suggest a Report a problem with this article link to
 added to the sidebar of all articles as a mailto link to the
 appropriate OTRS address.


I agree with this - I think report a problem would be a very helpful
starting point.

FWIW I'll tell you that when people complain to me, they often say they
tried to find a proper avenue for complaints, but couldn't. I realize there
is a school of thought that people who can't find the correct avenue for
complaints don't deserve to have their complaints heard, but that's not my
view.

I assume that people are looking for a specific biography complaints
channel, and probably also looking for assurances that it is
secure/confidential. (Bearing in mind that inaccuracies or distortions in
their BLP would feel highly sensitive to most people.)

So - we can create a channel for BLP complaints, and we can label it
appropriately so people have accurate expectations of confidentiality. But
in order for it to be successful, I believe we would need a cadre of
highly-trained and well-supported volunteers who have pledged to investigate
seriously, communicate tactfully, and maintain appropriate confidentiality.
Do we think we can we do that, and if so, what would it take?

...


 * The editors I've spoken with about BLPs are pretty serious about them –
  they are generally conservative, restrained, privacy-conscious, etc. But
 I
  wonder if that general attitude is widely-shared. If Wikipedia believes
 (as
  is said in -for example- the English BLP policy) that it has a
  responsibility to take great care with BLPs, should there be a
  Wikipedia-wide BLP policy, or a projects-wide statement of some kind?

 There isn't really any such thing as Wikipedia-wide, that's why
 wikipedia-l is pretty much dead. Decisions of the entire Wikimedia
 community are pretty difficult to achieve. They have to be done by
 vote, nothing else is practical, and discussion to put together a
 proposal to vote on is tricky because only people that speak English
 can really be involved. I think, if we want any kind of statement like
 that, it has to come from the WMF.



To me, this starts shading into the civility issue that has been discussed
here before.  Do we agree that we want the Wikimedia projects to be
serious-minded, conscientious, approachable and friendly?  (I do.)  If many
-but not all- of us agree, how can we best work towards a consensus, then
reinforce and support it?
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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

On Mon, Mar 2, 2009 at 12:29 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.comwrote:

 2009/3/2 Anthony wikim...@inbox.org:
  Flagged Revs is an excellent way of dealing with vandalism to BLPs,
   technical solutions to more subtle problems are a little trickier.
  Flagged Revs could be used with addition levels - a free of
  vandalism level and a well balanced, fact-checked and free of
  anything remotely libellous level. Two separate levels are necessary
  since the 2nd takes far too long to be a practical vandal fighting
  tool - I'm not sure which level would be shown by default to whom,
  that needs to be worked out.
 
 
  Another good idea, but how would an article be accepted as well
 balanced?
  You just can't write about a topic which has any level of controversy and
  come up with an article which everyone will agree is well balanced.  No
  matter what you write, someone is going to have a problem with it, so
  marking an article as well balanced is more likely to increase the
  complaints rather than reduce them.  I think Citizendium's approved
  articles is about the best you can do in this type of situation, and
 their
  articles certainly aren't well balanced.

 Of course, the terms need to be well defined, I was being
 intentionally vague about that part because it requires significant
 discussion and debate that I don't think we want to get into now.
 Citizendium's approved articles are the equivalent of (not exactly
 the same as, though) our featured articles - we don't want to
 require all BLPs to be featured, that would never work!


Citizendium's approved articles is similar in goal to Wikipedia's
featured articles, but the process is very very different.  If adopted by
Wikipedia (and I highly doubt it would be), it would be *much* more scalable
than the current featured articles system.  That said, I didn't think your
proposal was to require all BLPs to be [flagged as well balanced].

As for your vagueness, well, I think the implementation is the key to
flagged revisions.
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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009/3/2 Anthony wikim...@inbox.org:

 What is the current OTRS process?  When I contacted them a couple years
 ago I was referred to arb com, and didn't hear from them again.  I certainly
 wasn't satisfied.


Pray tell, what was the actual substance of your dispute?

(Note that this is speaking of a project on which you say you no
longer contribute and on which you claim to have withdrawn rights to
all your contributions by emailing foundation-l saying so.)


- d.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

On Mon, Mar 2, 2009 at 1:50 PM, Michael Bimmler mbimm...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Mon, Mar 2, 2009 at 7:33 PM, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote:
  My problem wasn't in regard to a biography, but it was a BLP issue
 under
  Sue's expanded definition (it was in regard to some things written about
 me
  in the Wikipedia namespace).
 

 Was this part of a larger dispute that was already being considered by
 the ArbCom?


No.  In fact, a member of ArbCom had referred me to OTRS.  However, I don't
want to get into the specifics of this on a public mailing list.

 I'm sure the process has changed in the years since, though.  Does the
  current process ask people if they're satisfied?
 

 If you mean ask as in, do we work like Microsoft which puts a If
 this response was helpful, click here, if not, please click here to
 send an email to my manager (or along these lines) at the end of each
 support email, then no.


Yeah, that was my question.

However, we assume that people who are not satisfied will follow up by
 way of response and then, see above...

 The Microsoft option is rather impractical, as there is no hierarchy
 in OTRS, we don't have supervisors or managers to whom emails
 could be referred.


It'd be nice for statistical purposes, in order to gauge how well you're
doing, though.  Ultimately it'd probably lead to a system with supervisors
or managers, since that's a much better way of doing things.

But again, each email includes a footer that says that this response
 comes from a group of volunteers and that formal follow-up would need
 to be done in a certified letter to the foundation.


Ah, so not only do you not ask for feedback, but you actively discourage it.
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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009-03-02 Thread Michael Bimmler

On Mon, Mar 2, 2009 at 8:02 PM, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote:


 Ah, so not only do you not ask for feedback, but you actively discourage it.


I think this is slightly misrepresenting what I said. For reference
purposes here the current footer, as attached to each outgoing
message:

---
Disclaimer: all mail to this address is answered by volunteers, and
responses are
not to be considered an official statement of the Wikimedia Foundation. For
official correspondence, please contact the Wikimedia Foundation by
certified mail
at the address listed on http://www.wikimediafoundation.org


From past experience, I can clearly state that this has seldom
discouraged anyone from following-up... It is just intended to show
that sending I disagree with your opinion that allegation xyz in the
article about me is properly sourced and therefore I'll sue you soon
in every response won't get you anywhere -- once the informal
resolution through the Support Team failed, there is no alternative to
formally contacting the WMF:

Michael

-- 
Michael Bimmler
mbimm...@gmail.com

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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009/3/2 Anthony wikim...@inbox.org:

 No.  In fact, a member of ArbCom had referred me to OTRS.  However, I don't
 want to get into the specifics of this on a public mailing list.


As a general rule: if you've been formally penalised on a wiki for
your behaviour thereon, and want that concealed, then that's really
not in the same class as *anything* this thread is talking about. Just
saying.


- d.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

On Mon, Mar 2, 2009 at 2:16 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote:

 2009/3/2 Anthony wikim...@inbox.org:

  No.  In fact, a member of ArbCom had referred me to OTRS.  However, I
 don't
  want to get into the specifics of this on a public mailing list.

 As a general rule: if you've been formally penalised on a wiki for
 your behaviour thereon, and want that concealed, then that's really
 not in the same class as *anything* this thread is talking about. Just
 saying.


Thanks for the comment, David, but bringing up off-topic hypotheticals in
order to say that they're off-topic is not appropriate.
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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people

2009/3/2 Anthony wikim...@inbox.org:
 On Mon, Mar 2, 2009 at 2:16 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote:

 As a general rule: if you've been formally penalised on a wiki for
 your behaviour thereon, and want that concealed, then that's really
 not in the same class as *anything* this thread is talking about. Just
 saying.

 Thanks for the comment, David, but bringing up off-topic hypotheticals in
 order to say that they're off-topic is not appropriate.


So that quite definitely isn't what you're talking about as the matter
concerning you? Good to know. I'm still interested to know what it
actually was, then.


- d.

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Re: [Foundation-l] Request for your input: biographies of living people