Further thought regarding the notability criteria for BLPs: Asaf made a suggestion awhile ago, and unfortunately I can't remember exactly where I heard about it, but I thought that it was a good idea. He suggested being more context-specific when considering the bar for BLPs. I think that his statement went something like this: in a culture where having information about someone be published in newspapers is a rarity, the lack of being published in a newspaper is not a good test for whether someone should be considered notable. I think that Asaf's proposal was more nuanced than I'm describing it, but in general I thought that it was worth seriously considering.
If someone meets a revised notability bar for a BLP, there may still be a problem with finding information that is verifiable and reliable. I don't know of a good way to deal with that. I think that we have a problem with believing (this is a bit of an exaggeration, but I think that you'll understand my point) that if something is written in a book that is published by a reputable publisher that therefore it must be reliable and verifiable, while something is not reliable and verifiable if it is communicated only orally in a culture where written communications are rare or nonexistent. I don't know how to deal with that problem, but I do think that it's a problem. Pine ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine ) On Wed, Oct 3, 2018 at 6:06 AM Pine W <wiki.p...@gmail.com> wrote: > WSC, > > I think that we'd need to be very careful about lowering the bar for BLPs > on ENWP, because there are innumerable non-notable professionals who seem > to pay people to add their biographies (and/or small organizations) to > Wikipedia, and I am more happy to keep them out of the world's encyclopedia > unless they've done something that's more significant than publishing an > occasional scholarly article, owning a small consultancy, and receiving a > few professional distinctions like "adjunct professor of cardiology at XYZ > University". I'm not saying that we can't lower the bar, but we'd want to > be very careful about doing so in order to avoid giving marketers and PR > people a wider opening for using Wikipedia as a marketing and PR platform. > > I'm very supportive of improving the user experience for aspiring > contributors who use mobile devices, but I am not optimistic that this will > lead to a substantial increase in the population of ENWP Wikipedians who > can become proficient with the details of our many policies, are willing to > persist through negative experiences with other contributors (including > vandals, overzealous patrollers, POV-pushers, etc.), and volunteer their > time for high profile roles like WikiProject coordinator or ENWP > administrator. Perhaps non-English Wikipedias do better with editor > retention; I'm also thinking that Commons might be a good place for new > contributors to start if and when mobile editing becomes more user-friendly. > > I think that making reversions feel less hostile would be good for > diversity and good for editor retention in general, so I'd suggest that WMF > prioritize working on that point. I'm also hoping to improve user > onboarding with my video project and in collaboration with the WMF Growth > team. I generally appreciate how Kerry is thinking about these problems; > she and I have both given feedback to the WMF Growth team. > > Regards, > > Pine > ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine ) > > > _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
