Hi Jane, I am concerned about the issue surrounding the comment "the real BLP > problems happen when heavyweight (in edit count terms) Wikipedia users > swing their weight around" >
I think the problem is that if you ask ten different people about the reason why we have BLP problems, you'll get ten different answers. All ten would probably have some truth in them, but any one in isolation would be inadequate. My own point of view is that our policies and procedures are actually pretty good on paper, but they're just very unevenly and inconsistently applied in the real world. The "Tier 1" biographies, such as those of Messrs Obama, Cameron, and Abbott are pretty safe from BLP hijinx, but there is a massive underbelly of poorly defended BLPs on minor celebrities, local politicians, and the like, which are not watched consistently and where hagiography or defamation can take root. This is why, while things like the BoT's declaration are not unwelcome, I feel that they don't have any practical effect in fixing the problem. All it takes is for one negatively written bio to slip through the net to do real harm to someone in the real world. My preferred way of dealing with this on en.wp would be to massively tighten the notability criteria where they related to biographies of living or possibly living people, but this would no doubt be met with cries of "deletionism!". Indeed, I don't think it's possible to adequately address the issue on large projects like en.wp or commons without a massive cultural shift and sweeping changes to policy that would cause immense disruption in the community; something the BoT is understandably reluctant to do. Cheers, Craig _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>