Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons/Archive 14

message: [This section and the next few ones are being moved to Archive 14.  Thank you.  --NYScholar 22:00, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reality TV star noteability guidelines 

message: Let's try a few test cases, just to see how people believe the "obscure newspapers" clause should apply.
# Haley Barbour#Barbour vs. The Partnership - article about a governor with a lot of controversies, one sentence each, cited by one local newspaper each. I think it's fair to say that these papers don't have a lot of subscribers in Lima, London, or even Los Angeles. Are they obscure? Should these sentences be stricken until each sentence is cited by two local newspapers each? It's highly unlikely we'll find sources for all of them in national or international papers.
# Bagram torture and prisoner abuse#Ongoing investigations and prosecutions - Clearly controversial article, section that is highly derogatory to 15 living people named therein, cited mostly to one local newspaper. Strike until cited to two newspapers?
# Stephen Ambrose#Plagiarism and inaccuracies - This reference is in the article text. Is the following acceptable, or do we need a reference that is either a different or a non-local newspaper? 
Reported by Matthew Barrows in the January 1, 2001, edition of The Sacramento Bee, they listed some 50 text pages and six photo captions in which Ambrose "erred, misstated the facts or used quotes that cannot be substantiated with facts". According to Barrows, Ambrose cited his son Hugh as the primary research assistant for the book and chose not to respond.
  --AnonEMouse (squeak) 19:00, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Sacramento Bee isn't an obscure paper despite the quaint name.  It's the main print newspaper for California's state capital city, does lots of original reporting, wins awards, breaks scoops, gets cited, etc.  But you'll find plenty of examples of obscure newspapers if you look for accounts of locally notable people in small town newspapers, mentions of businesses and happenings in the local free weeklies, etc.  Do people consider the so-called alternative free weeklies "obscure?"  On the one hand the editorial quality is quite inconsistent.  On the other they are invaluable sources of information on all kinds of subjects, controversial or not, and often get closer to more of the truth than mainstream media.  I'm looking at an article here, [], that I just included as a reference because it is spot on and the best easily accessible summary I have seen on the subject.  The person they tar and feather in the article (who deserved it) is dead but some living people like Bruce Babbit and Stewart Udall, and the individual's son, come off in a somewhat harsh light.  This isn't fluff either, it is as the article says one of the most important events in the 1,000+ year history of the two Indian tribes Wikidemo 21:10, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Thanks, you make a fine argument, but since you're of those who want to get rid of the words "obscure newspaper" from the policy altogether, it's sort of preaching to the choir. Do the people who want to keep the words "obscure newspapers" agree that a local city newspaper isn't "obscure"? What about a trade paper? An academic journal? What does "obscure" mean for purposes of this sentence? --AnonEMouse (squeak) 19:15, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  To expand a little on my comment below, in response to your question, while a trade paper or academic journal may cater to a narrow audience, they do contain useful and reliable information, and have editorial oversight staff. Not obscure. Local papers also have professional editors, and are often owned and managed (at least as far as hiring the managing editor) by large news corporations. Not obscure. - Crockspot 20:32, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  The bay area is a hotbed of little papers.  There are papers papers for nearly every little city and neighborhood including downtown, industry-specific papers (law, hospitality, food, etc), papers of different ethnicities (remember Asian Week?, a couple Japanese language papers and some in Chinese, papers for different varieties of gay people, one for dog owners, a new age and spiritual paper full of new age massage adverts, another put out by the port commission for people who commute by the ferry, several entertainment papers, papers for different building complexes and cultural institutions like Fort Mason and Yerba Buena Center, arts papers, literary papers, and the Onion.  Don't laugh about the Onion, BTW.  They have serious, earnest interviews and coverage of music and the arts amidst their fake news stories.  Hundreds of papers probably, and an equal number of small independent magazines.  Sorting out the obscure from the non-obscure would be a big project and it might miss the point.  Some of the larger circulation papers have traditionally been run out of the hip pocket of partisans or wealthy benefactors who are using them for vanity purposes to push their personal agendas.  The San Francisco Examiner, for example, whether you're talking 1857 or 2007.  If "obscure" is just a stand-in for unreliable under the circumstances, we could just say that.  Wikidemo 23:39, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  The two I mentioned above were being used as sources on WP. The main factor in determining reliability is going to be editorial oversight and editorial staffing. Many of the more obscure examples you mention are run by one or two people out of a small office. "Unreliable under the circumstances" is an interesting concept. But that would need to be well defined, and probably not in this policy, but in WP:V or WP:RS. - Crockspot 04:55, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Test cases 

message: [For contexts of this discussion, please see the talk archive pages 11 and 12.  Thank you. --NYScholar 21:46, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: "Obscure" is meaningless

message: was protected by an administrator who is not active due to a death in the family (see updated user page, though he has edited since updating it).  Too many disputes about language and policy have led to changes in this page since August 13, when he protected it.  I think it needs to be reverted back to the protected version (SV's version).  I do not think changes made since that version are improvements and some are quite confusing. --NYScholar 20:33, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Agree. Reverted. I did not make the change indicated below, however. - Crockspot 20:48, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

text: The only one that appears to be an improvement is "The [Editors'?] writing style should be neutral and factual[,] avoiding both understatement and overstatement."  The comma is necessary. "Editors'" is better, I think, than "The" (vague).  --NYScholar 20:35, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Even better: "Editors should make only well-sourced neutral factual statements and avoid both understatement and overstatement." --NYScholar 20:37, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

text: Which part of my edits on the 18th are you going to disagree with.Geni 20:40, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Please re-read my previous comments.  Already answered. --NYScholar 20:43, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I reverted to Slim Virgin's version, to avoid the protection template. Don't have time for further tweaking now, just wanted to nip this incremental weakening of the policy in the bud. - Crockspot 20:54, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: See also: 151494114.  Thanks.  --NYScholar 21:10, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Please note also that since the only 2 edits that I have made to the project page (one a typographical corr. of the other) since August 12, 2007--150866314--I have made no edits to the project page; I have confined my comments to the talk page of this project page and WP:EL (related guideline page), and I have not participated in any way in edit warring or reversions that occurred after August 12 to the project page.  My edits include typographical corrections to language in my own comments; refactoring was done by other editor who requested that I add subsections for my subsequent comments, which I complied and did.  I do not see the changes made to this page since August 12 as "progress"; I see them as problematic.  The only stability has come from the fact that other editors respected the call for not reverting some editors' changing of the project page and participated in discussion rather than reversions (or else they simply were away or otherwise inactive).  The editing history of the project page is clear.  --NYScholar 21:18, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

text: Please avoid personalizing the dispute. As a matter of fact, quite a few very active BLP patrollers, like myself, have been very busy the past couple of weeks on other things, and that might explain the lack of pushback on some of these changes. - Crockspot 20:59, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I am not personalizing the dispute.  I am giving a warning to an editor who has disrupted this page before and appears to be doing so again.  Wikidemo 21:15, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I do see someone being disruptive, but it isn't NYScholar. - Crockspot 21:17, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: *Ahem*, I do not appreciate that characterization.  It is not appropriate, and I would suggest you take a little time to familiarize yourself with what happened and is happening before you reach conclusions like that.Wikidemo 21:19, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Current edit warring on this policy project page 

message: I have protected the page for 48 hours. There have been 8 reverts in the past 5 hours, including five in the past hour. Please work out any disagreements on the talk page. — Black Falcon (Talk) 21:28, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Protected for 48 hours

message: *Edit warring, protection, unprotection, non-consensus changes, edit warring, protection by administrator involved in previously editing this project page.  For contexts of problems affecting the protected current version of this section of the project policy page, please see Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons [this page] (and archives).  Thank you. --NYScholar 00:11, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: [[WP:BLP#Reliable sources]] policy section itself

message: As I point out in earlier comments, the current protected version of WP:BLP#Reliable sources (a policy) is now inconsistent with a guideline version of it (the pre-protection, pre-August 12, 2007 version) that appears in WP:Reliable sources#Biographies of living persons (a guideline, which is supposed to be an exact quotation of policy from WP:BLP#Reliable sources).  This discrepancy may lead to confusions for editors, especially new editors, of Wikipedia.  I suggest (again) that one revert to the quoted version of the policy as it currently appears in WP:Reliable sources#Biographies of living persons.  Then, if "wide consensus" is reached to make changes to the version of both WP:BLP#Reliable sources and WP:Reliable sources#Biographies of living persons, the version and the quotation of the version need to match (as they do not match now).  It is inconsistent for the currently protected version to differ from what is supposed to be an exact quotation of it.  --NYScholar 02:15, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It seems that the protected status has expired [expires at 21:23, August 30, 2007 (UTC)].  The inconsistencies in Wikipedia policy and guideline quoting it need resolution.  --NYScholar 02:31, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

text: I do not think that there is a need to escalate things. In Wikipedia we assume the good faith of contributors. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 03:49, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

text: Sometimes leaving the discussion for a few days, taking the page of the watchlist, and focusing for a while on other tasks is the best way forward.... ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 03:52, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Jossi: When you edited the project page, you used language that does not have "wide consensus" (acc. to Wikidemo and others).  I did not intend for the sentence that I had added on August 12 (in my only 2 edits to the page, one of which was a typographical corr. removing the word "such") to be put back into the policy page.  The language in the guideline WP:Reliable sources#Biographies of living persons is SV's version from before people edit warred over her phrase "including as an external link" (before August 12); on Aug. 12/13, the sentence that I had added was also added back by SV following a revert by others:  here is the paragraph that appears in the guideline based on quoting the earlier version of WP:BLP#Reliable sources (from pre-August 12, 2007):
Material available solely on partisan websites or in obscure newspapers should be handled with caution, and, if derogatory, should not be used at all. Material from self-published books, zines, websites, and blogs should never be used as a source about a living person, including as an external link, unless written or published by the subject of the article (see below).
I have questioned sentence one.  I approve of keeping "including as an external link"; or, if that is removed, then restoring the sentence that I had added (or Jossi's current version).  But the point that I was making in this section comment that I added is just that the two appearances of the paragraph in both WP:BLP#Reliable sources and WP:Reliable sources#Biographies of living persons need to match, as the latter is supposed to be a quotaiton of the former.  I do not recommend changing the language that SV had reverted to pre-August 12 or on August 12/13 unless there is "wide consensus" for doing so, which I do not see so far.  I have cross-posted notice of this dilemma in other policy pages.  (I do object strongly to these continual faulty assumptions about my intentions in posting my comments by Wikidemo or anyone else.  I suggest strongly that such comments need to stop.  They are unnecessary and not at all helpful.)  WP:AGF.)  --NYScholar 04:44, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

text: Please be constructive and avoid edit wars.  I am not questioning anybody's intentions, only the specifics of the contributions made to this talk page and the policy page.  For one, I am pointing out that the above misrepresents the status quo state of the policy page.  I am free to do so, and these fake complaints and warnings by those choosing to restart the edit war rather than discuss the merits are rather uncivil.  Wikidemo 07:00, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I would argue that it is you that is edit warring. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 15:11, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unprotection (immediate edit) request