Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Biographies of living people/Phase I

Users who endorse this summary

1. MZMcBride (talk) 15:58, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
2. Bali ultimate (with the caveat they don't need to nor should they request "undeletion." Unsourced means nothing worth working from. Just start from scratch with sources).Bali ultimate (talk) 16:13, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

   "Unsourced means nothing worth working from?" I guess you've never tried to source an unsourced article. Or did it never occur to you to use key words and quotes as search terms? Rd232 ^talk 17:15, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

   Comments against have been ruled inappropriate in RfC's in the past. Please reconsider, although I agree with the comment. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 18:45, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

   Questioning the wording or logic of an RfC !vote hasn't, though. :-) Rd232 didn't say Bali Ultimate was wrong to comment in favor of the BLP enforcement change, or malign B.U. in any way. If editors are immune from critique or question of their publicly stated views on a matter of ongoing community decision making, just because they happened to express them in an RfC bullet point instead of any of various other ways of formatting comments on a talk page, then WP is in big trouble, since what we'd have is a full-on voting system, not a consensus-forming system any longer. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 12:12, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

3. ▒ Wirεłεşş ▒ Fidεłitұ ▒ Ćłâşş ▒ Θnε ▒ _―Œ ^{♣Łεâvε Ξ мεşşâgε♣} 17:22, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
4. Sχeptomaniac^{χαιρετε} 17:41, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
5. — Coffee // have a cup // ark // 18:01, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
6. Lara 18:02, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
7. Only in principle, per WP:V. I'd support such a WP:CSD for new BLPs, but for the thousands of old BLPs, who are more likely to be correct by virtue of natural selection (having survived thousands of eyeballs for years), a prod-based system such as proposed below is vastly better than just pressing the "nuke" button.  Sandstein  18:09, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
8. Straightforward and to the point. Clean house, start any notable article again from scratch or from a copy provided to someone's userspace on request. There is no guarantee or certainty that "thousands of eyeballs" have seen some of this tripe. Tarc (talk) 18:38, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
9. Spartaz ^Humbug! 19:09, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
10. Endorse, unconditionally. JBsupreme (talk) 19:26, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
11. Endorse, but mainly for the "completely unreferenced should be deleted on-sight" part, as the former could be seen as a subjective evaluation and might need more discussion than summary deletion. Cirt (talk) 21:05, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
12. Particularly for new BLP. All BLPs need to have ref to support the claim of notability and core identifying information. Core WP policy has always required content to be sourced from reliable sources. Raising the standard by deleting unref content is the best way to increase the quality of new articles. FloNight♥♥♥♥ 21:23, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
13. Please. It's bad enough we practically give bad articles (OR/SYNTH plagued, sprawling unreferenced messes, and so on) a free pass and cheerfully smile on the preservation of bad and unsourced information with refrains of "but WP:PRESERVE". When it comes to the lives of real people, it is time for that game endlessly holding bad content in stasis to go out the window. Vassyana (talk) 21:43, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
14. Per above. Vyvyan Basterd (talk) 21:45, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
15. This is part of an admin's function; ethical admins should be using their access to perform this task as they have the time and inclination to work on the problem. Jack Merridew 21:47, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
16. Viridae^Talk 22:02, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
17. in my private capacity as an administrator, not as a representative of the Foundation - Philippe 22:16, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
18. GTD 22:27, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
19. Kevin (talk) 23:27, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
20. Cla68 (talk) 23:37, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

    — The Earwig @ 23:44, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

21. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 23:49, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
22. The same should apply to all articles, really, although we should be more relaxed in enforcing it for non-BLPs. You shouldn't be writing an article unless you have a source in front of you (nobody should write articles from their own memory), so there is really no significant extra work involved in writing down what that source is. It doesn't need to be done nicely with ref tags or anything, just a plain text URL or the title and author of a book would be fine. The great thing about a wiki is that other people can come along later and tidy it up. --Tango (talk) 00:25, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
23. agree with Vassyana. - Atmoz (talk) 00:26, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
24. Yes, I strongly agree with this, which follows trivially from the BLP. --TS 00:29, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
25. Nifboy (talk) 00:40, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
26. If the BLP is valid and notable, there should be references. Reywas92^Talk 00:54, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
27. Seraphim♥ 01:13, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
28. Deleted on-site, and anyone restoring them without references should be blocked as well. This is a defining issue for the project. UnitAnode 01:34, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
29. Makes sense to me - Alison ^❤ 03:43, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
30. Yes. Peripitus (Talk) 05:30, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
31. Support. Extend to all unsourced articles in the long run. Fram (talk) 07:39, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
32. Absolutely. Wikipedia is not a directory of randomly selected people. It is an encyclopedia of notable topics.--Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 09:48, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
33. Conditional support - if the delete button is issued to everyone. The so-called sysops already have the right to delete, so there's no need to state the obvious. NVO (talk) 11:54, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
34. Endorse - If a BLP hasn't been sourced in more than 6 months, what's the likelyhood it's ever going to be sourced? There may be no deadline, but there's also common sense with regard to comments about a living person that have no sourcing. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 15:13, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
35. Endorse - This sort of deletion spurs improvement. We don't need to delete all 50K all at once, and we need to not fool ourselves that this solves everything but we need to get ahead of the backlog, and we need to also do the other needful things that need doing to address the growing BLP problem. It is regrettable that a shock to the system was required. Those of you that have your heads in the sand about this: Lead, follow, or get out of the way. ++Lar: t/c 16:18, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
36. Endorse citations are an absolute requirement upheld by the community in many process(WP:FAC, WP:GAC), its a requiremnt for all articles BLP have greater potential for harm to our community as such we should take greater steps to protect ourselves. Gnangarra 16:22, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
37. Strong Endorse BIO's have to be held to an extremely high level of standards. Any unreferenced BIO should be deleted _{Naluboutes,Nalubotes}^{Aeria Gloris,Aeria Gloris} 17:46, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
38. Endorse. Putting up an article without a single reliable source (and in many cases, not even an unreliable one) is not acting responsibly. Throwing an article up without sources and expecting someone else to do the sourcing is just rude. If you can't meet the basic requirements, leave it in the sandbox. In any BLP, unreferenced material can be removed on sight. If none of it is referenced, then it can all be removed....hence it is deleted. Niteshift36 (talk) 22:12, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
39. Endorse, so long as MZMcBride's phrase "Any biography..." is limited to "any biography of a living person". We need a Draconian remedy for WP:BLPs. I want unsourced, unreliable and unverified stuff out too. But in a BLP, it should be dealt vigorously, on sight. David in DC (talk) 22:27, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
40. Endorse, it really is that simple. -- Collectonian (talk · contribs) 23:49, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
41. Endorse this would enforce what should be a bare minimum standard for BLPs –Megaboz (talk) 15:31, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
42. Endorse This is essentially what current policy implies, and if we actually start acting on it the situation will improve. Not only will we get rid of unsuitable biographies, but also once editors realise that is what they can expect we will get fewer unsourced biographies written in the first place. Many of the other suggestions are unworkable, because they involve a lengthy process of going through countless articles and giving time to each one, which is a job which in practice will never be completed. This one, though, is workable. It also means we never deliberately leave stuff which may be libellous on Wikipedia. JamesBWatson (talk) 15:50, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
43. Endorse This is the start of setting a standard for Wikipedia. Maybe then the 'administrators making accounts for themselves' circle-jerking phenomenon will at least slow down. Notability does not mean a caption with your name on it was in the paper. Cerealsman (talk) 04:05, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
44. Sceptre ^(talk) 19:08, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
45. Endorse, with the caveat that if there are "external links" or "further reading" sections, literature in there should be checked if it isn't actually a source. Reasons: (1) Redlinks have merit. If someone wants to have the subject covered, they are more likely attracted by redlinks, bluelinks give the impression that everything is alright. (2) In most cases, it is less time consuming to write an article from the scratch with sources at hand than to look for sources to match existing prose. Skäpperöd (talk) 11:39, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
46. Not my preferred solution, but this would be better than the status quo. Angus McLellan (Talk) 21:41, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
47. Support the essentials with the caveats mentioned elsewhere previously; 1) that editors who are interested in fixing individual articles are given a chance to do so, 2) that care is taken that articles which are mis-tagged rather than unsourced do not get deleted. I would also like to add that there's many more thousands of non-BLPs articles on Wikipedia that would be better off being deleted and started from scratch.radek (talk) 23:21, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
48. Support Harsh and far from perfect, but nonetheless an improvement over the status quo. I'm obliged to endorse. Yilloslime ^T_C 05:08, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
49. Support My thoughts were summed up by MZMcbride. Buggie111 (talk) 13:24, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
50. Strong Endorse I dislike the idea of a mass delete without consideration of an individual article. It doesn't help that there are so many. I like the part about being able to recreate the articles with refs.-- iBen^talk/_contribsIf you reply here, please place a talkback notification on my page. 03:08, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
51. Support - This is the gist of my suggestion over at CSD. Deletion is not permanent. If people genuinely care about these, then they can source them adequately, at least enough to establish notability. As usual, nobody cares about them until someone wants to delete it. If the status quo is retained, then the vast majority of these will simply remain unreferenced or poorly referenced for another 3 years. <>Multi‑Xfer<> (talk) 06:06, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
52. Support. Freikorp (talk) 07:03, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
53. Support. --M4gnum0n (talk) 16:03, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
54. Support - completely. Buckshot06 (talk) 21:18, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Oppose

1. Far too destructive and WP:BITEy. Likely to lead to the deletion of many valuable and easily-sourced articles. At the very least, a good-faith effort to find sources should be made prior to deletion per WP:BEFORE, but this proposal seems designed to discourage even that. And the "poorly referenced" wording is far too vague and open to interpretation. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:55, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

   • Well, that's not how the Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Ruling (BLP Deletions) looks at it. ▒ Wirεłεşş ▒ Fidεłitұ ▒ Ćłâşş ▒ Θnε ▒ _―Œ ^{♣Łεâvε Ξ мεşşâgε♣} 06:15, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   The ArbCom is who called for this RfC. The ArbCom doesn't make policy, even if in this case they arguably said too much about it such that their ruling is now being mis-cited. All their ruling, summarized at the link above, actually did was arbitrate on the user behavior issues (wihch is all ArbCom can do) - did the deletions-on-sight violate policy, did the blocks for the deletions violate policy, did the wheelwarring over the blocks violate policy. Their answer was no in all cases and a "general amnesty" for both sides on the issue for actions taken up to that point. One shouldn't read into it any more than that. There's a whole RfC section here about this now. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 12:13, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

2. Strong oppose. The fixation on unsourced but noncontentious BLPs is thoroughly misguided. Do I like unsourced BLPs? Absolutely not, I detest unsourced articles of any kind and BLPs in particular. But the essence of BLP policy is in quick removal of unsourced contentious and controversial information. The great majority of unsourced BLPs are entirely peaceful and non-controversial. Many of them are easily improvable and in fact are improved over time. I have seen no evidence that unsourced BLPs are causing significant complaints to WMF, OTRS etc. In as much as BLP articles cause real controversy, is where sources are in fact available and cited in the article, but the subject of the article is still unhappy with the situation. The urgency of the problem seems to me to be artificially manufactured here. I don't see any reason to abandon the existing deletion process in deleting with such BLPs. E.g. the users who are terribly distressed by their existence could send these unsourced BLP to AfD or PROD them and have them deleted through regular means. Why in the world not do that? One of the explanations I have seen is that, in theory, something contentious might be hiding behind outwardly benign language. This strikes me as rather theoretical: is there any evidence that this sort of thing is a significant problem? On the other hand, unilateral on-the-spot deletions of unsourced BLPs by particularly militantly-minded admins is fraught with all sorts of problems. It is far too easy to make a mistake and delete an article on a notable subject, there are no notification provisions, no discussion, no adequate opportunity for interested editors to improve the article. As D.E. mentioned, "poorly sourced" is too subjective and easy to misapply and abuse. If an article is PRODed or AfDed, often new sources are added and the article is improved and kept as a result. This happens because people follow various deletion sorting lists and are likely to see the article there even if they were not aware of it before. An unwatched BLP which is summarily deleted on the spot often simply does not have a chance to attract this kind of attention, which prodding or afd-ing it would bring. The argument about there being a chance that contentious info is hiding behind some benign language in an unwatched BLP and that is why we should summarily discard the regular deletion process (CSD, PROD, AFD etc) is based on an irrational panicky reaction and an exaggeration of the extent of the problem. This reaction rather reminds me of the arguments here, in the U.S., in the aftermath of 9-11, that suddenly we should throw out of the window a well established judicial process (you know, little things, like right to counsel, prohibition against indefinite detention without charge, and so on) and that we should just summarily lock away all suspected terrorists without trial and through away the key because, god forbid, the federal court system might make a mistake and let one of these bad guys go. In relation to unsourced BLPs, I see no reason at all why existing deletion mechanisms (like PROD and AfD) should not be used or are inadequate. You know, even for no content and pure vandalism articles we have a well defined set of procedures and criteria, namely WP:CSD. Even in those cases the process involves at least two sets of eyes: the person placing a CSD tag and the admin doing the deletion. Like I said, the entire urgency of the crisis seems to be artificially manufactured. People who are obsessed with the unsourced BLP problem should learn how to place a PROD tag instead. There is no reason to go back to the Wild West days of Wikipedia when admins pretty much did as they liked. The project has gotten too big and too complicated, with too many people involved in it, for those kinds of cowboy tactics to work. Nsk92 (talk) 00:45, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
3. Completly disgusted This RFC came about by the mass deletion of over 500 articles by Scott MacDonald (who self-blocked himself to avoid a block), Lar, and Rdm2376 (who was blocked three times).
   Ironically, we are rewarding the behavior of administrator Scott MacDonald who holds consensus in "utter contempt", with a Requests for comment to build consensus. We should not reward such disruption. Ikip 00:59, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
4. C.f. other Views later down explaining that unreferenced does not necessarily mean libelious. --Cybercobra (talk) 01:02, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
5. JohnWBarber (talk) 01:38, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
6. Oppose this will just damage the encyclopedia. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 01:52, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
7. Oppose. Timewasting and damaging proposal. Xxanthippe (talk) 03:18, 22 January 2010 (UTC).
8. No. No. No. — James Kalmar 03:20, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
9. Strongly oppose Many, IME experience most, outsourced BLPs are both accurate and non-contentious, and are sourcable, some with more work that others. Many were created by relative newcomers who did not know why or how to add sources, many were created before the sue of inline citations become common, when EL sourcing was normal. To delete these without a serious attempt at sourcing, or at least an individual review, is to discard good information, thereby harming the project, without any corresponding gain. Moreover to apply the same rules to newly created articles will simply WP:BITE, further restricting the influx of new editors ojn which the project ultimately depends. A very very bad idea. DES ^(talk) 04:12, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
10. Terrible idea - (I generally don't like to add "oppose" votes to an RfC but some are doing it) it goes against pretty much everything we have by way of deletion policy. We improve problems, we don't delete them. This does little to serve the purpose or letter of BLP, and much to waste time and encourage capricious administrative behavior. Wikidemon (talk) 04:18, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
11. Oppose. The subjective "poorly referenced" is not a suitable criterion for deletion on-sight. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:54, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
12. Oppose - I could support if (a) the subjective "poorly referenced" were removed, and (b) we had a search tool or some function/tally/record of all the BLPs removed, so that they could be located, sourced and readded when sourced. The primary purpose is the building of an encyclopedia. Casliber (talk · contribs) 05:16, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
13. Super-Duper Strong Oppose, as other state above, this will only damage the encyclopedia. The vast majority of BLPs are not the cause of any trouble. PROD, AfD, protect BLPs from IP edits if necessary across the board, but "shoot on sight" is a bad bad bad idea.--Milowent (talk) 05:40, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
14. Oppose. Even if you made an argument for deleting all unsourced biographies which is a really bad idea (as we've already seen how much gets lost in the shuffle when people try to do that), what constitutes poor sourcing is precisely the sort of thing that requires careful community discussion. JoshuaZ (talk) 05:44, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
15. Oppose. Just use some common sense. This type of blanket statement is what drives away authors from Wikipedia before articles can be fleshed out. A more reasoned approach is needed if we are going to save Wikipedia from what could become mass destruction of valuable information.--Modelmotion (talk) 05:50, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
16. This will get deleted thousands of valid articles that could fixed by editing, and that didn't have any contentious material. --Enric Naval (talk) 05:52, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
17. Ridiculous Conflating articles lacking proper references with BLP violations is silliness. One thing doesn't have anything to do with the other and this campaign is not constructive. It's far more likely that an article with references will be used to smear someone and our focus should remain on fixing the problem instead of deleting articles that need improvement but that were created in good faith. ChildofMidnight (talk) 06:18, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
18. Oppose Per David Eppstein and Nsk92. Even now, articles are often prodded when they already have decent references, and it is inevitable that "poorly referenced" will be interpreted as "not visibly in 3 seconds referenced according to my preferred scheme" even if every statement is derivable from references provided. If a fraction of the energy used for BLP drama were used in thinking of ways to deal with real blp problems and to support and realize ideas already proposed, serious BLP problems would already be a thing of the past.John Z (talk) 06:52, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
19. Much better to source them on sight if possible. Sjakkalle (Check!) 07:21, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
20. Strong Oppose Yet more BLP madness. For sanity's sake, the entire wiki's consensus on policy should not be controlled by a cabal, nor should the ArbCom have blatantly ignored policy and guidelines and offered amnesty to admins who had done so. The statement even states that policy was breached, and yet those breaking policy were rewarded. Poorly sourced articles occur outside of BLP too. Might as well just delete all articles on site, lets WP:BITE everyone. ηoian ‡orever ηew ‡rontiers 07:55, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
21. Oppose The latest version of Kill them all and let God sort them out --KrebMarkt 10:01, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
22. Oppose like cleaning one's house with a bulldozer. FeydHuxtable (talk) 10:28, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
23. Opppose - this "solution" distracts from actual efforts at sourcing, and prevents non-admins from helping. the wub "?!" 10:53, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
24. Oppose diametrically the wrong approach. Many of these are for truly notable people and without problems. Of the ones I have worked on, at least half are easily sourceable and probably notable. What we need is to get people to source in putting in new articles, and it will not help do this by throwing out improvable old ones. Certainly let us get rid of the old and non-notable added when standard were lower; certainly let us add sources to articles that need it, but this approach detracts from paying the proper attention. I echo what John Z says above that about 10% of the prodded articles did in fact have sources, though not necessarily a reference section. These were supposed to have been screened out of the unsourced BLP list in the first place, but if the bot didn't do it right, that is no excuse for humans to act equally unthinkingly. DGG ( talk ) 10:55, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
25. Oppose I would say no. This is not the right thing and the right place to do it. There should be some new standards or procedures on monitoring new biographical articles instead of deleting them. If articles were unsourced, then source them. Deletion wouldn't solve things up. It would only discourage people from editing. Arteyu ? _{Blame it on me !} 11:03, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
26. Oppose Speedy deleting poorly referenced or unreferenced BLPs is an OK idea in theory, but I don't trust all admins are able to make these unilateral decisions correctly. "Poorly referenced" is subjective, and I have seen several articles speedy deleted today that I believe had adequate sources. Epbr123 (talk) 11:38, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

    Agree. Suggest that Sysops be restricted of their power on deleting articles. Articles should be brought to attention first before it can be deleted. I've gone through some issues where some Sysop delete articles that has never been tagged with PROD or BLP templates, or never been brought to AfD. It is simply not the right thing to be done since users never get the chance to protest or to fix it. Arteyu ? _{Blame it on me !} 12:06, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

27. Oppose. No evidence that unsourced bio stubs and bios with one source are actually causing legal or other problems in such a large number that we should be this concerned. The fact that anons can, at all, is a far greater source of potential liability (this is not an argument for banning anon edits; I'm just pointing out that the feature has its risks). "Poorly sourced" is far too vague, otherwise WP:RS would be a policy not a guideline and no one would substantively edit it any more. The extant deletion procedures are sufficient. This all started because someone was deleting source-problematic BLPs that were abandoned for 6+ months. The odds of prods on them being responded to seem low. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 12:15, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
28. Oppose The Law of Unintended Consequences accompanies all such dicta. WP has current processes set up for deletions, and I have seen no reason to unilaterally destroy them. Collect (talk) 12:26, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
29. Oppose. I agree with the principle, but we have due process for a reason. It should be tagged with some yet-to-be created BLP PROD and deleted if that remains in place for one week. This way actually seems to discourage due diligence, rather than encourage it. HJMitchell You rang? 12:47, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
30. Oppose. We have policies to deal with this already: the CSD for contentious bios and attack pages, and the deletion process for the others. Side note: I'll never support a policy of speedy-deleting articles that are "poorly sourced" as it leaves far too much to discretion of the editor, and too much is at stake. Ivanvector (talk) 13:35, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
31. Oppose. Ruslik_Zero 13:41, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
32. Oppose per SMcCandlish and DGG, among others. --Cyclopia^talk 13:45, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
33. Oppose Poorly referenced or unreferenced bios that contain no potentially libellous statements are not our main problem, and - unless an editor states a specific reason to delete them (e.g. dubios date of birth or whatever) - these article should be tagged with an appropriate warning, but editors should be encouraged to find sources and to expand them. If a short survey indicates that a BLP is not notable, the article should be deleted. A much bigger problem, in my view, are sourced BLPs, when information from sources has been used in a selective and biased fashion. Also, we need more eyes on the bios of those people who are not held in high esteem by the mainstream of society. (For an example, see Mahathir bin Mohamad, former Prime Minister of Malaysia.)  Cs32en Talk to me  14:08, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
34. Oppose Needs to be discression used. No need to BITE when cites are easily available and the info is non-problematic.--Cube lurker (talk) 14:32, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
35. Oppose deleting unsourced BLP's on sight are going to create more problems than it solves. It will chase away users and destroy wikiprojects. First, it is overly bity as some people may have worked hard to write these BLP's, but simply failed to do so correctly. We need to educate not punish those editors. Second, when we do wholesale deletions, the projects and people who are interested in a subject may not know or realize that various articles have been deleted. This will create gaps in our coverage that nobody knows about---eg think of it this way, a wiki project took the time to write articles about all of the heads of state for a given country. They know that is done. What they didn't realize is that 2 of the articles were unsourced BLPs. Suddenly those articles are deleted without notice. The project may never realize this and when may have to start from scratch. We need to clean up the BLPs, not delete them blindly. I find it a little disappointing that seems to be the push of this RfC and the 5 or so other forums where this issue has been brought up.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 15:20, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
36. Oppose, but only for the reason that "should be deleted on-sight" is too imperative. It might be taken as grounds for admonishing an admin who viewed such an article and did anything else reasonable, e.g., prod. If it said "may be deleted...", I would weakly support: not the best solution, but one which in the long term would improve the project. In the short term it would create some problems. Baccyak4H (Yak!) 15:26, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
37. Oppose, BLP is too often overextended by over zealous people for a "delete on sight" approach. I would like to see a community review of an article before it is deleted. Chillum ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 15:33, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
38. Oppose - The current PROD and CSD processes work. The unreferenced BLP backlog is steadily decreasing. This is unnecessary and the wrong way to approach the problem. Jogurney (talk) 15:39, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
39. Oppose - People cannot be trusted to Prod these correctly. Something harsher would be worse. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 15:51, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
40. Oppose They'll start with these, then move on to all unsourced articles, as some have said they wanted to do already. Destroy 60,000 now, and hundreds of thousands later on. Too much mindless destruction on Wikipedia already. If you want something deleted, you use Google news and book search first, then if there is no reference found there, send it to AFD. Many times someone tries to delete something, others come in and say delete, and then someone takes the time to click on Google news search, and prove that the person is notable, and the article gets saved. Dream Focus 18:02, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
41. Oppose the majority of unsourced BLPs have references available if you're prepared to actually look. Deleting articles is not a substitute for doing actual work, and does incredible damage in the process. The minority of articles that might actually damage the subject can be fixed under current policy. This proposal is like cleaning streets with a thermonuclear weapon. Hut 8.5 20:03, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
42. Ridiculous. For all the previously stated reasons and evidence that regular editing and editing processes is all that is needed here. If Wikipedia was less of a battleground and more of an educational institution where we *gasp* actually encourage and welcome newbies and work with one another to improve articles rather than trying to see all issues as adversarial. -- Banjeboi 20:18, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
43. Oppose. There's CSD G10 for the contentious ones, and there's no reason to insta-delete something that is not clearly harmful. I've been chastised for using G10 on unsourced stub biographies that are not 100% negative, but only 25-50% so. I think that when an unsourced article has only a few sentences, and one makes a negative BLP claim it should be deleted as a precaution. Perhaps the language in G10 should be adjusted that way. Pcap ping 20:39, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
44. Horrible!. What's the point of crowd-sourcing an encyclopedia if we're going to delete everything that's not already perfect? If we adopt this, I say we delete the whole stupid Wikipedia and just go buy a perfectly-edited, perfectly-sourced Britannica. Isn't that where this is really headed? BenRussell (talk) 20:54, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
45. Oppose When I read this proposal, the phrase "throwing out the baby with the bathwater" comes to mind. -- llywrch (talk) 21:23, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
46. Oppose way to drastic the prod proposal makes much more sense. Ridernyc (talk) 21:26, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
47. Oppose If unsourced, remove any contentious material and slap a unreferenced tag or inline cite needed for the rest. Or, simply find the refs. The "cleaning the house with a bulldozer" comparison is perfect. --Omarcheeseboro (talk) 21:41, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
48. Oppose This is an encyclopedia that works because different people work together. Any unsourced BLP should be sourced and fixed, not deleted. We delete articles that fail to meet the notability guidelines, not articles that meet the guidelines but lack the sources for it. WP:BLP is founded on protecting living people from harm but it's also based on the editing policy, something people often seem to forget. Regards SoWhy 21:54, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
49. Oppose Attempt to source it first; if no sources exist online make a note to that effect. Wholesale deletion on sight solves nothing. Plenty of BLPs that fall under these restrictions could be salvaged with a little sourcing, and while the onus should fall primarily on the contributor to fill the gap, if he's not done it, or done it insufficiently well, an attempt should be made by the deleter to source before deletion. Failing that, I see no need to delete an innocuous article that establishes a few very basic and uncontentious facts. Deletion should be a last resort, and should only occur once all other avenues of resolution have been exhausted. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 22:04, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
50. Oppose Erm, I think the best solution here (as do a lot of other people) is to source them and possibly add more information. Deleting them would sort of ruin things (and if all articles are deleted that is just completely ridiculous). RoryReloaded 22:37, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
51. Oppose – I have two real issues with this proposal. First, Llywich's phrase rings true; for all the BLP violations mass deletions will remove, there will be much more collateral damage in terms of lost articles that are not controversial. Other proposals here would at least keep such damage to a minimum. Second, what is the intended definition of "adequate sourcing"? Is it one or two cites that establish notability? Or is it sourcing an entire article? The proposal is very unclear in this regard, and begs the question of why unsourced BLPs are that much worse than BLPs with very minimal sourcing. Uncited info is uncited info no matter the article, and the potential for libelous content is there either way. Also, David in DC's comment in the support column about misleading language regarding the scope is accurate. Giants2008 (27 and counting) 22:54, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
52. Oppose - completely unreferenced BLP's yes, though most are pretty innocuous. But "poorly referenced?" According to who? Almost every BLP contains one or more unreferenced statements, and these statements should be sourced or removed rather then deleting the entire article. Deleting articles because any one editor arbitrarily decides that it contains a single unsourced or "poorly referenced" sentence is a nonsense. As someone pointed out in an earlier discussion, the article on George W. Bush would fail this test. So would every other BLP that is not a current FA. I appreciate the proposer of this statement would intend that common sense be applied in exercising it, but as thuis debate has shown, what is or is not common sense is not always a universal understanding. What's wrong with - "When an unreferenced BLP is discovered, the first step should be to reference it, and remove any content that cannot be sourced. If there's no notable content that can be sourced, the article should be deleted." Euryalus (talk) 00:18, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
53. Oppose. Sole Soul (talk) 00:32, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
54. Oppose The vast majority of unsourced info in Wikipedi is useful and valuable and correct. Even if it's not correct, it's easier to confirm something you see here than something you research from scratch. It's ridiculous overkill to delete unsourced articles wholesale. Calliopejen1 (talk) 00:39, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
55. Strongly oppose - This is being too quickly, too much, and is overwhelming our system. BLPs should be eliminated one at a time, or 100 at a time, not 60,000 at a time. Bearian (talk) 00:45, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
56. Strongly oppose - tag/prod articles that are source-weak, don't wholesale delete. Too subjective as proposed - admin tools should not mean unilateral power in their hands. And what happened to flagged revisions for BLPs? Tvoz/talk 00:48, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
57. Oppose - as SilkTork writes below, fix it. This is an encyclopedia, not a game of whack-a-mole. --GRuban (talk) 01:06, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
58. No Ray^Talk 01:22, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
59. Oppose There are more proportionate solutions, like the one directly below. --Mkativerata (talk) 01:35, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
60. Strong Oppose - The potential problems with an unsourced BLP are exactly the same as with a sourced one. The presence of sources doesn't magically make something accurate. If a sneaky vandal (the thing we are scared with to begin) wanted to get this all they'd have to do is add any "source" (which wouldn't have to actually validate the statement). Mass deleting unsourced articles encourages sneakier fraud while discouraging inexperienced editors from contributing anything. --ThaddeusB (talk) 02:39, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
61. Strongest possible oppose, I don't think that a mob of fundamentalists should be setting our priorities. There are non-destructive ways to solve this problem. Blurpeace 03:13, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
62. Silktork's comment below is apt. Unsourced, accurate biographies are not harmful. Sourced, libelous ones are very harmful. The thing that matters is not an arbitrary sourcing requirement (especially not "poorly referenced", which could mean anything). — Carl (CBM · talk) 04:29, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
63. Oppose - reading the comments made after this week's bold action, I no longer trust the judgement of some admins to decide what is "poorly sourced". --NeilN ^{talk to me} 04:51, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
64. Strong Oppose Many stubs, BLP or otherwise, are unsourced. That does not mean they cannot be improved. If there is unsourced defamatory information, remove it. If the entire article is unsourced and defamatory, it qualifies for C:SD. No need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Throwaway85 (talk) 10:46, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
65. Oppose. Such articles should have unsourced contentious material removed and should be improved where possible.--Michig (talk) 11:35, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
66. Oppose Too broad I'm afraid. An article that is simply poorly referenced should be tagged for reference with a "citation needed" tag. It would make it even easier if the editor who added the unreferenced material could be notified by a bot, but this might be hard to accomplish (perhaps a tag for the addition of a completely new unreferenced paragraph on a BLP article would be a good place to start). If a BLP article is completely unreferenced, it is my understanding that that article should at least be nominated for deletion as failing WP:Notability. In my opinion it should be speedily deleted due to the real possibility it could be libelous. If it's a significant BLP it should not be hard to recreate with proper references. I will note that bots sometimes do incorrectly think that an article is unreferenced (see edit history of Henry Bramwell) and therefore oppose deletion by bots of articles that were tagged by bots as unreferenced.--Cdogsimmons (talk) 15:20, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
67. Vehement oppose Perhaps it is wrong that the backlog of unreferenced BLPs has been allowed to build for years, but most of these articles were created in good faith without controversial content and have existed peacefully for a long time without causing any specific harm - unlike summarily trashing thousands of articles which took a lot of time and effort to build and include a great deal of genuinely useful information. This is not only intolerably bitey but impedes progress: if we (the editors without mops) can't see what's broken, how can we hope to fix it? I also have grave concerns about decisions based on one person's interpretation of "poorly sourced": this is far too subjective, particularly if assessment of the situation is cursory. If an article which does not meet any existing CSD is to be considered for deletion because of questionable sourcing, we should use the old-fashioned methods of discussion and consensus. Contains Mild Peril (talk) 18:46, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
68. Oppose Such WP:POINTy would be disruptive of the task of building an encyclopedia. While there is a problem to be addressedm this is not the solution.--Peter cohen (talk) 23:14, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
69. Oppose - ...and this will help build an encyclopedia? Eagles 24/7 (C) 02:21, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
70. Oppose. Rather than deleting the article, delete any unsourced statements that appear to be problematic, and tag the article as needing sources. Instant deletion is not a good solution to the problem of an otherwise viable article that lacks sources. This proposal is fundamentally contrary to Wikipedia's nature.--Srleffler (talk) 05:33, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
71. Oppose. This isn't the way Wikipedia was built, and it's not the way Wikipedia will continue to grow (except perhaps at a snail's pace). It violates the spirit of AGF and penalizes various editors (e.g., newbies, editors who build articles incrementally, and editors who rely primarily on offline sources not close at hand when inspiration strikes to write an article). Is there any evidence beyond the anecdotal and the theoretical to justify such a drastic proposal? Rivertorch (talk) 06:46, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
72. Oppose. It's so simple - just delete the unreferenced parts of whatever bio. No one can really challenge that action, and you don't need a new policy to do it. Why bother deleting the whole page? All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 07:13, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
73. Davewild (talk) 08:36, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
74. Conditional Oppose (meaning that I will support the deletion of those articles which are not verifiable or sources can't be found or are of dubious notability but only after an assessment by the person viewing it via google search etc) Agreeing fully with what 2. User:Nsk92 said above I think the solution to just nuke every article without even looking for sources is overkill and dare I say it, the lazy option. Roberta Flack was a BLP vio yesterday until I found some sources, you think the encyclopedia is better off deleting all articles which are unsourced, even decent and clearly notable articles like Flack which could be quickly sourced? That in my view is more damaging to building an encyclopedia. Rather, I think the best option would be for everybody to chip and whittle down that 50,000 BLP list and look for sources for each article. Unsourced info within article can always be removed. I do sympathise with the idea of this, yes it would be nice to rid of this huge workload and get this long standing problem out of the way but with a bit of effort from everybody to quickly look for sources and source them I think we could salvage a lot of notable content. However I am well aware that we could do with deleting a few thousand non notable bios which are not verifiable or clearly not appropriate for wikipedia and I endorse the deletion of those, in fact I have speedied and voted delete on a few AFDs recently of BLPs not because they are unsourced, but because no sources exist online to expand them and are not verifiable. So I think each articles should undergo a quick assessment and if no sources can be found delete but if they can, add them, providing the subject is within our guidlines. I am happy to contribute to whittling down this big list as often as I can to get it down to zero. But this is gonna take work folks. And by no means is deleting them all going to prevent the possibility of recreated BLP vios by newbies and by no means does it means that existing sourced articles are not widely open to potentially libellous material. While I see this as a project priority right now to rid of all BLPs gradually I think the sense of urgency that we are about to be sued is a little exaggerated. The reality is that most of the these unsourced BLPs do no contain contentious material but just need backing up/expanding. But lets deal with this the sensible way and check each article first before nuking. Also their seems to be an (incorrect) assumption that all unreferenced BLPs contain false information. This is not true. Most I've found are accurate and fully correct but are just in need of sources. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 10:28, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
75. Strongest Possible Oppose. There are people who work very hard on articles. Deleting it in a swoosh is highly disrespectful to their efforts and is a, as somebody said up there, bad, bad, bad idea. Appropriate articles are not created overnight. They take a very long time with everybody building upon the previous version. Some references are hard to find. If the content is not potentially defamatory or insulting or something that not may be possibly challenged should be kept.  Hamza  ^{[ talk ]} 11:01, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
76. Oppose. There is a number of serious problems with this proposal, most of which have been already pointed out above. The net effect would - more likely than not - be harm to Wikipedia, instead of benefit. Finally, what's so special about unsourced, but otherwise uncontroversial BLPs? Why not extending this policy to all articles? GregorB (talk) 11:38, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
77. Oppose. I can see the general principle here, but, as phrased, I don't this is workable. Any Criteria for Speedy Deletion needs to be precisely phrased, so you would need a very specific definition of the meaning of "poorly referenced", leaving no reasonable doubt as to where the dividing line is, and this proposal doesn't provide one. Until that is fixed, I don't think we can even look at any other merits the proposal might have (and I'm far from convinced there). Anaxial (talk) 12:30, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
78. Oppose The fact that nobody had time or energy to source it doesn't make it false or unverifiable, so no reason to delete it. Debresser (talk) 13:40, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
79. Oppose NBeale (talk) 14:50, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
80. Oppose - Unreferenced perhaps, but if some effort has been made to provide sourcing it should be taken to AfD. -- Scjessey (talk) 15:08, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
81. Oppose Focus should be on finding sources, not deleting articles. Captain panda 18:02, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
82. Oppose I think it's silly to delete an article of non-contentious information just because it has no sources at the time of reading. All it needs is for the article to be brought to our attention so that a group of editors can make an effort to source the article. If the material canno be sourced, then deletion is a course of action that must be considered. A delete on sight party is far too heavy-handed to work in practice. TomBeasley (talk) 18:42, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
83. Oppose per so many before me. I would guess that often, in the time taken to tag and delete a BLP as such, a good reference could be found and sourced. Arbitrarily0 ^(talk) 15:12, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
84. Brambleclawx Those who have contributed to the page significantly should be informed first; they should be given a chance to reference it first. 16:22, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
85. Terrible Power.corrupts (talk) 16:55, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
86. Oppose Too extreme. Dabomb87 (talk) 17:03, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
87. Oppose. Too heavy-handed. SchuminWeb (Talk) 18:29, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
88. Oppose. I would have supported this except for the phrase "poorly referenced". The determination what constitutes poor referencing varies widely among admins. Binksternet (talk) 18:30, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
89. Oppose per MZMcBride being ridiculous. Prodego ^talk 18:50, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
90. We might as well get rid of WP:BITE. No. Tim Song (talk) 19:50, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
91. Oppose. I know of many old biography articles of Croatian people that contain information widely known locally as well as internationally that would inevitably be deleted with this kind of a policy in place, even though they actually exhibit no serious problem other than a lack of explicit references. There is little proof that this kind of a knee-jerk policy would actually deter vandals, whereas I'm pretty sure it would deter people from contributing useful content. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 19:54, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
92. Oppose. ARK (talk) 20:31, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
93. Worst Idea Imaginable. My comments appear later in this article.Trackinfo (talk) 21:15, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
94. Oppose: I am in favour of using common sense; withholding content until "cleared", and helping to find references. But against the madness of mass deletion of entire articles on sight. Esowteric+Talk 21:23, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
95. Oppose - at least for old articles. For new articles, it may be worth considering making a new speedy deletion criteria. Rami R 22:08, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
96. Oppose. — The Earwig @ 23:27, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
97. Oppose - There is no reason to completely delete older articles which perhaps have vital information. Perhaps we should, as editors, go through the said unreferenced articles and perhaps find sources to enhance their credibility? Ashwin N 03:50, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
98. Oppose - Draconian solutions are seldom good ideas. The goal should be to instigate improvement, not to eliminate content that in the majority of cases is perfectly OK. All too often, an unsourced article is unsourced for reasons that have nothing to do with the quality of the content. For example, sources get removed in undetected acts of vandalism, or because an eager and well-intentioned user found a dead URL and wiped out the entire reference citation related to that dead URL. --Orlady (talk) 05:48, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
99. Oppose I wholeheartedly endorse the opinions of Nsk92 at the top of this list. NtheP (talk) 08:32, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
100. Oppose, someone should be asked to improve it first. Geschichte (talk) 08:43, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
101. Oppose, articles usually go through the improvement cycle of going from poorly sourced to well referenced. --TheMandarin (talk) 08:50, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
102. Oppose. Too draconian as stated - better to add refs, improve quality, add ref tags, etc. -- Oscroft (talk) 12:45, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
103. Oppose As per many editors above. It's almost equivalent to conducting a purge on Wikipedia. _LDS (talk) 14:46, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
104. Strongly oppose: Tag and improve, don't purge, except, of course, in cases of unsourced, poorly sourced attack-only bios. CarolMooreDC (talk) 14:49, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
105. Oppose for now This isn't the way to cleanup the existing BLPs, although I would encourage this to be a speedy criterion in the future to prevent further abuse and to up our standards. ThemFromSpace 20:34, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
106. Strong Oppose - I am not sure what the positives are supposed to be here: in my experience, unsourced/poorly sourced yet uncontentious BLPs are often the most rewarding articles to work on. Obviously, copyvios, attacks, hoaxes etc are quite different as they are detremental to WP. However, where no such problems exist I cannot see any issue. Just tag the article as normal or source it yourself and move on. Or userfy or incubate as appropriate and notify concerned editors. This proposal just sounds like a lazy solution to the non-problem of a large number of unref'ed articles: why not just delete all unref'ed articles and be done with it (the precedent suggested by this proposal)? But that would be ridiculous, wouldn't it...? --Jubilee♫clipman 20:49, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
107. Oppose - This is way too severe. Editors should be given some time to add sources; most of the unsourced BLP articles can be fixed with two minutes of effort. MakeBelieveMonster (talk) 22:40, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
108. Holy &@%# bad idea - This is more deletionist madness. Uncontroversial content doesn't deserve removal for lack of immediately available sourcing. Unless it's libelous or likely to icite flame wars, leave it up. Let people get it in shape. TREKphiler ^{any time you're ready, Uhura} 23:05, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
109. Oppose Against the Wiki spirit. Tag or better still, research and source. RomaC (talk) 15:56, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
110. Oppose Why is this such a crisis right now? Tag, give a deadline to fix, then dlete if nothing happens. King Pickle (talk) 02:45, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
111. Oppose This is simply too extreme. This is what happens when "anyone can edit". That doesn't mean the articles are not worthy of keeping and fixing. Wildhartlivie (talk) 03:05, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
112. Per Nsk92 and others. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:20, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
113. Oppose Although tempted. Think there are better ways to handle this - and some other options on this page are closer to optimum. --Dweller (talk) 15:04, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
114. Oppose Per above (and below). decltype (talk) 06:39, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
115. Oppose. too harsh.--PinkBull 18:55, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
116. Oppose. Violates WP:AGF. --Dc987 (talk) 09:15, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
117. Oppose Too drastic. In many cases will just lead to even crapper bios being endlessly recreated by fans. Johnbod (talk) 09:27, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
118. Oppose. This view would turn into a categorical statement of policy, which someone would then implement mindlessly rather than operate by judging on the merits of the individual case. Right now, this view is deletionist. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 11:54, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
119. Oppose. Agree w/the overwhelming majority that this is a non-starter. This would lead to more problems than it would solve, resulting in a net negative for wikipedia.--Epeefleche (talk) 12:35, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
120. Oppose We need to distinguish between possibly useful content and crap more carefully. I prefer clean up. --Vejvančický (talk) 11:59, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
121. Oppose Destructive. Setreset (talk) 14:05, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
122. Oppose There is undoubtedly a problem and a pattern of abuse but this solution is over-broad. I can think of a multitude of notable and uncontroversial people worthy of a BLP which could be written more or less from memory (with sources added later) and would cause no harm. I doubt I’m alone in this regard and it is this dynamic capability to add contemporary content that so adds to the real-time nature of Wikipedia. To be fair, those on the polar extremes of society would be more challenging to write about in a neutral way. In any event, Wikipedia is well protected by U.S. law but British law (as it currently stands) is another question. That is a far more risky environment. At this point I’d say we do all that we can to reasonably police erroneous or defamatory content without automatically deleting the majority of BLP submissions that are useful and not a problem. user:SBmeier
123. Oppose I feel that this solution is too wide. Unsourced BLPs in themselves may not be a problem - it is if they contain material which would be negative. If there was an unsourced article which read "Aibee See is a politician for the Yellow Party who represents the WikiTown constituency" with no sourcing, under this suggestion it would be deleted on sight. If the proposed deleter were to look for a source, if this article was accurate then this could be found in seconds. WP:BLPDEL clearly says If the entire page is substantially of poor quality, primarily containing contentious material that is unsourced or poorly sourced, then it may be necessary to delete the entire page as an initial step, followed by discussion. Page deletion is normally a last resort. If a dispute centers around a page's inclusion (e.g., due to questionable notability or if the subject has requested deletion) then this is addressed via deletion discussions rather than by summary deletion. Summary deletion in part or whole is relevant when the page contains unsourced negative material or is written non-neutrally, and when this cannot readily be rewritten or restored to a version of an acceptable standard. (emphases mine) - this seems to show that if you want to delete an unsourced article, you should actually try to find some sources first. The argument "If people are too lazy to find sources, why should we do it" does not hold up - many people who submit these articles are newbies, who may not know anything about reliable sources, etc - after all, they come along to find information on someone, see there's no article about them, and then creates one (after all, they know that Wikipedia is the article that anyone can edit, right?). I feel that this is too BITEy to newbies. And the old hands will just add a reference that looks feasible - after all, if the deleting admin can't be bothered to find a reference themselves, they probably wouldn't be bothered to look up a current reference for accuracy, will they. In fact, reports have suggested this (see du Plessis, Deon. "South African Wikipedia: "half of facts are incorrect" report finds". Daily Sun. Cape Town, South Africa: Naspers.). Yes, the issues of BLPs needs to be addressed, but this isn't the way to do it. -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 15:42, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
124. Oppose any form of "deleting on sight" that isn't vandalism or illegal content, etc. An article should at least be given the chance to prove notability before it is deleted. And this suggestion seems to say that any poorly-sourced articles should be deleted on sight, not just ones with notability issues —Mr. MetalFlower · chat · what I done did do 16:14, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
125. Strongly oppose any form of "deleting on sight" that is not motivated by specific concerns, and does not take the merits of the article into account. A very non-constructive proposal that shows disrespect for projects and editors and that also would mean giving admins far too much leeway in going on individual rampages without inputs from other editors. Would probably mean deletion of a massive amount of articles that would never be able to reach consensus as PRODs or AfDs. Tomas e (talk) 17:43, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
126. Oppose An article should be allowed time to prove notability. Any such article should continue to be put to AfD. Andrewmc123 21:25, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
127. Oppose Unreferenced material is a useful first step to producing a good article. Keep it unless there is a good reason, such as likely libel, to discard it. Certes (talk) 22:10, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
128. Oppose If people could focus on addressing the issues that they have with articles rather than tagging or deleting, We'd have far more editors and an even better encyclopedia.Mighty Antar (talk) 22:48, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
129. Oppose. per above. May deter newbies especially. -FASTILY ^(TALK) 23:16, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
130. Oppose. --Kleinzach 23:36, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
131. Oppose: This is an incredibly destructive attitude to take. — Jonathan Bowen (talk) 00:02, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
132. Oppose: Well I have to give you credit for being straightforward, however, such an approach is far too excessive. Deleted on sight....out of curiosity, would you be consider notifying the editor after such a deletion?Smallman12q (talk) 00:26, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
133. Oppose: wholesale execution of entire categories of articles, without looking at them individually, considering their merits, or trying to fix them, seems CRAZY to me! (Especially since there are lots of alternative to this answer to the problem). --Mdukas (talk) 02:21, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
134. Oppose the deletion of articles with no problems other than being unreferenced. -M.Nelson (talk) 03:21, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
135. OPPOSE: 1) Too many articles are tagged with incorrect unreferenced tags. My quick survey of the category of unrefernced blps shows about 1/3 of tagged articles I looked at are actually sourced. Why? Drive by taggings? Perhaps the editors writing them are often such newbys that they don't know to change to a refimprove tag? 2) Define poorly sourced. 3) Wikipedia editing is a learned process and quick deletion protocols of any kind bite newcomers and drive them away from Wikipedia. I believe that anyone who requests depetion of any legitimate article by an editor with less than 1000 edits to their credit should be required to their own personal editing time available to help the newby editor bring it up to standards.Trilobitealive (talk) 04:19, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
136. Extremely Strong Oppose - Speedy delete already serves this purpose the only thing that this proposal does over that existing policies is bypass discussions. Without discussion deletion is clearly open to abuse and this proposal is a slap in the face to Wikipedia which supports an open community. Deleted articles just go missing with no discussion and there is no way to to retrieve the article without requesting for it. The current policy recommends deletion as the last possible measure which means that whenever we find a terrible/unsourced article should try to improve it by finding sources (which many don't do though I don't think editors should be obligated to do) and notifying/giving people a chance to improve/source an article through talk pages and/or an AfD (which is the very least that they should do). The article Kō Ōtani was an article that was a poorly sourced until very recently . --Sin Harvest (talk) 11:45, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
137. Strong Oppose a disproportionate proposal which would remove much useful information without disucssion or the opportunity to improve.--Smerus (talk) 15:10, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
138. Will do more harm than good. No room for discretion. Malinaccier P. (talk) 15:42, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
139. I normally wouldn't vote "oppose" on an RfC of this style, but since people are doing it, and I'm sure someone will try to use these numbers for something, here's my oppose. Gigs (talk) 16:30, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
140. oppose. Hobit (talk) 19:37, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
141. Oppose. If I understand correctly, this means that George Michael, Charles, Prince of Wales, and Oprah Winfrey, could all be deleted on sight because they do not have enough references (and could therefore be said to be "poorly referenced"). BelovedFreak 22:22, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
142. Oppose: Deletion of any article should go through a rigorous process which evaluates the article across a set of common criteria, offers opportunities for the article to be improved rather than be deleted, and allows enough time to pass so that slower-moving sentient beings can still be involved in the process. This proposal meets none of those requirements. Edward Vielmetti (talk) 03:06, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
143. Oppose: This proposal has good intentions, given the fact that libel lawsuits are probably going to be on the increase as people fall sway to shifty lawyers. But this proposal is too harsh because it makes no distinction between articles that are truly made up of lies and articles that just need to be improved. If someone finds a BLP article that is unsourced, perhaps the WP:RESCUE process is the way to go, or some sort of expedited AfD in which the need for references is given priority. DOOMSDAYER520 (Talk|Contribs) 23:33, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
144. Oppose: vehemently. Way too extreme without need. The articles just need a little bit of work, not deletion, and there is no time limit. Maedin\^talk 07:38, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
145. Absolutely oppose. Wikipedia already has far too many trigger-happy deletionists, who often tag articles for speedy deletion without bothering to read the contents, resulting in mass defections of good, valuable editors from the project. What is needed here is more collaboration; if there were more editors willing to add sources, expand text, upload free images, correct grammar, spelling, etc., we'd have fewer articles tagged for deletion and the quality of existing articles would improve dramatically.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 09:14, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
146. Oppose. There should be a reasonable period of time before deletion after an article is flagged so that any interested parties can take the time to fix it. Not every editor works every day/week/month. VernoWhitney (talk) 18:16, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
147. Oppose. The worst kind of bathwater-and-baby disposal, burning down a whole forest that includes beneficial wildlife and uninfected trees, just to kill off a pest... that also lives underground. It pisses on WP:AGF and it's incredibly WP:POINTy - Jason A. Quest (talk) 18:46, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
148. Oppose - Extreme. —La Pianista ^{♫ ♪ How's my driving?} 01:36, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
149. Oppose - Way too extreme and absolute. It's painful just thinking about how much damage this would cause both in the short and long term. It wouldn't solve the problem. Swarm^(Talk) 04:36, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
150. Oppose - This proposal will not solve any problem. It will only destroy other peoples work, drive away new editors, irritate old ones. --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 04:55, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
151. Oppose per above comments, particularly those of David Eppstein, Nsk92, and DGG. This proposal is a case of the cure being worse than the disease, and will likely create far more problems than it solves.--JayJasper (talk) 05:19, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
152. Oppose - People above have already said it well. In practice the benefits (less BLP issues) will not outweigh the drawbacks (lack of oversight on admins and the loss of valuable content). Camaron · Christopher · talk 22:24, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
153. Oppose- Oh, come on. Zenexp (talk) 01:06, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
154. Oppose - Some people are new to Wikipedia when the start articles and don't know the importance of sourcing. Some just forget. To allow this would just lose the encyclopedia knowledge and would damage it as a whole.Alex (talk) 02:02, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
155. Oppose. I've been editing here since 20042003 (yikes!) A significant number of articles that I've created are currently unreferenced, but it's not that I'm not following the current rules in my current editing — it's that I've been around for aeons and the rules around sourcing have evolved over time. Shameful as it may seem, there was once a time when it wasn't considered important to directly cite references in the article itself, as long as you could provide one if somebody challenged you on it later on. Then for a while, the primary method of sourcing an article was to provide a long list of web URLs in an article's external links section, and then there were different forms of "stick a web URL directly into running article text", and then eventually the current ref-tags standard was adopted. Yes, things change, I'm not taking issue with that. But this isn't an issue with a one-size-fits-all solution, either. Yes, some unreferenced articles include contentious claims. Those should obviously be removed. Some are about people who don't actually meet our notability standards as they now exist. Looking on it now, I would never have created Alana Kainz, for example, under our current notability or sourcing standards, and in fact I'll quite happily throw it onto the prod pile myself. Gary Malkowski, on the other hand, is an example of a person for whom all that needs to happen is the conversion of a couple of links that are already present in the article to current standards. There are other articles that consist of little more than a statement to the effect of "So-and-so is a politician who serves in the Legislative Assembly of Foo," and don't actually contain anything contentious — while they're certainly not as no-brainer notable as, say, Barack Obama, deleting them would be unduly disruptive to a coordinated project that impacts a sizeable number of articles. So yes, there are certainly some BLPs that should just go into the garbage disposal. But "delete all on sight" isn't the answer, because many are salvageable and do belong here — and we certainly would be worse off having to rewrite a large number of those from scratch. I would support immediate deletion of new unreferenced BLPs. I would support immediate deletion of old unreferenced BLPs which also violate one or more other policies or guidelines (such as current notability standards, contentious claims, etc.) But unreferenced BLPs which don't actually contain any problematic content, concerning people who do meet our notability guidelines, and which are quite easily salvageable, should not be subject to a "kill on sight" rule. Bearcat (talk) 03:37, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
156. Oppose - any policy that just unilatterally says "No source = Delete" is trying to drain the lake beause a few people cannot swin. Uncontentious material should not be deleted on sight, just use the processes already in place with PROD and AFD. Not a fan of giving Admins this draconian authority.  MPJ -DK  09:59, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
157. OpposePositivelyJordan (talk) 22:39, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Comment

1. Any biography that is poorly referenced or completely unreferenced should be sourced. It's more difficult, and it takes longer, but is a more positive attitude to take. Unsourced material is not in itself harmful to Wikipedia, either in terms of legal actions or of reputation for reliability, it is contentious material that is harmful - and if there is a cite doesn't mean that the cite is correct, it just means that people are less likely to challenge the statement. Contentious material which is not appropriately sourced should be removed. SilkTork *^YES! 20:12, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

1. An anon made this statement in support. It's not really a support. "Support - Following this approach will remind users that this encyclopedia is the domain of an ever-dwindled cabal of petty bureaucrats, and will thereby help prevent the misconception that the project is meant to be useful.71.203.125.108 (talk) 2:32 pm, Today (UTC−8)" - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 23:44, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Users who endorse this summary

1. Jehochman ^Brrr 16:14, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
2. David Gerard (talk) 16:18, 21 January 2010 (UTC) See below my suggestion of a rather more onerous BLP-PROD.
3. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 16:26, 21 January 2010 (UTC) - Adding: similar as below, keep the number of tagged articles low (~500 max), keep the time at 5 days, fill by bot if <100 left over, no bot-deletion, strictly by hand to see if there are mistaggings by the tagging-bot). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 16:34, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
4. Good enough. Hipocrite (talk) 16:29, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
5. This is a much more correct interpretation of the BLP policy. ···日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 16:29, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
6. This seems like a good way to satisfy both those who want to see process and those who want to eliminate the risk of unreferenced BLPs. keɪɑtɪk flʌfi (talk) 16:32, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
7. Okay, although this type of PROD would need to be distinguished from the other somehow, for the benefit of both processes. Christopher Parham (talk) 16:42, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
8. This compromise isn't bad. JamieS93 16:43, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
9. It's not about correct or incorrect interpretation of policy, but what works. Policy says absolutely no unreferenced BLPs, but we have a backlog and we have a certain amount of ongoing management of newbies to handle. A hundred a day, say? It needs to be of that order of magnitude to fix the problem before the heat death of the universe. Guy (Help!) 16:51, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
10. Generally accept, with slight modifications (see my view below). NJA (t/c) 16:53, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
11. Endorse, with emphasis that the timing really does need to be at least 5 days. Some otherwise productive editors (like me) don't log in on the weekends, or are gone for several days for RL issues.. Karanacs (talk) 16:54, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
12. Seems quite reasonable. Reach Out to the Truth 16:56, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
13. This is a good idea. ThemFromSpace 17:06, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
14. This is a reasonable compromise... The Thing _{Vandalize me} 17:14, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
15. This is the first reasonable proposal on the page, ergo it shall be the one to pass.... it's mostly details which separate it from several others, and the details can be hashed out at the next step. Question though: there was substantial opposition to using WP:PROD in this way; so wouldn't a separate BLP-PROD process modelled on it avoid that issue? Rd232 ^talk 17:20, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
16. Agreed. Though the details of the implementation of 5 should be discussed at WT:PROD or use another process and we should stress that in light of the reasonable rate clause (3), the prodding should be done in priority on articles 'needing to be dealt with most', for example those which remained unreferenced for a long time or are suspected to contain potentially harmful content; while prodding recently-created stubs such as those with only basic info is much less useful. Cenarium (talk) 17:23, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
17. Immediate and instant deletion on sight is irresponsible to say the least, as we lose the opportunity for interested persons to source the problem articles and chances are they won't be recreated. (Plus it's against policy, but that doesn't seem to matter these days.) This proposal is reasonable and would be effective. Tony Fox (arf!) 17:27, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
18. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 17:43, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
19. Sensible approach. Though I'd prefer it if it were clarified that in the event of any disagreement about whether the sourcing is adequate the article shall be referred to AfD for discussion.  Sandstein  17:58, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
20. Yes, with a nod that deletions on sight are technically allowed per the passed ArbCom motion (and yes it has passed with 9 in majority). Using common sense would apply here, as doing process for the sake of doing process doesn't always help. — Coffee // have a cup // ark // 18:01, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

    I do not support Jehochman's recent clarification that allows anyone to remove PRODs without improving the article. Any removal of a PROD template without adding sources is disruptive. — Coffee // have a cup // ark // 04:23, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

21. Along with the usage of various cleanup listing bots and the engagement of Wikiprojects, a suggestion such as this can mitigate or resolve the issue in a much more satisfactory manner than an indiscriminate nuke will. Resolute 18:02, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
22. Lara 18:04, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
23. Endorse if done properly. What is the point of 5 days (or fewer) rather than the usual 7? This is material that has mostly been here for months or years, without actually causing any critical problems--just hypothetical possibilities of them. The shorter the time, the less chance of sourcing. People who might be specialists need to have a chance to see the articles. We should also make it clear in deletion policy that we do not accept arb com's change of policy. They depend on community support, and I do not think they have it. DGG ( talk ) 18:10, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
24. An acceptable solution. Solid deadlines that can't be argued around are needed in this area. Sχeptomaniac^{χαιρετε} 18:13, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
25. An acceptable solution, although ArbComm should be censured and/or recalled (if they allowed that) for their motion as encouraging disruptive actions. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 18:46, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
26. I tried this weeks ago, but my prods were undone as "notable". I can gowith this if there is clearly a ban on removing without sourcing, and any such undoing can be reversed.--Scott Mac (Doc) 18:55, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

    Scott MacDonald after deleting hundreds of BLP articles, which prompted this RFC, wrote: "Community consensus" is something I have learned by bitter experience to hold in utter contempt. The ONLY way to change wikipedia is direct action. If you block me, then that will cause drama and disruption. That's your choice. But drama and disruption is far more likely to do some good here than more waffle with an irrepsponsible community." Why are participating in a process which you "hold in utter contempt"? Ikip ^{Frank Andersson (45 revisions restored):}_{an olympic medallist for f**k's sake} 23:50, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

27. This appears to be the most sound and sensible approach. --Jezebel'sPonyo^shhh 18:59, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
28. Can do some tweaking, but this is akin to what I proposed on WT:PROD so obviously I like it (I think it should be 7 instead of 5 days as the former is now standard for all deletion discussions). I also draw editors attention to Wikipedia:Deletion of unreferenced BLPs which is a variation on this proposal that would not require us to change PROD policy (I'm fine with either approach, but some who objected to the proposed change to WP:PROD might be happier with the latter). --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 19:13, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
29. With a nod to the idea of prod tags only being allowed to be removed if additional sources are provided. NW (Talk) 19:57, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
30. Seems like the best option I've seen thus far. I'd prefer to create a special "BLP prod" of some sort, but I hope it's something everyone can live with. Masses of grandfathered, unsourced content have been the skeleton in our closet for some time, which is an especially serious problem with BLPs. If these articles are really so important, what better path to veracity than recreation with sourcing? – Luna Santin (talk) 20:08, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
31. Perhaps we should not consider this "PROD" but a new mechanism, so as to avoid confusing the two, but wholly support the spirit and ramifications of this solution. --Shirik (Questions or Comments?) 21:01, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
32. Cirt (talk) 21:07, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
33. This seems more likely to get wide support than the proposal to speedy on sight, because there are a lot of editors who can and will find sources for unsourced BLPs, given the time. I have a pagescraper that checks the G10 (db-attack) cat every 5 minutes, and that experience tells me that you can't tell just from reading the words of a page whether it was meant to embarrass a living person or not. Sometimes "He's so cool!" is an insult. I'm very happy with the current enthusiastic push to delete unsourced BLP articles, but only if we prod them, and not more than roughly 1000 per week, to give everyone a reasonable chance to source them. - Dank (push to talk) 21:08, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
34. Someguy1221 (talk) 21:17, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
35. I supported this change in policy yesterday and do again here. No deletion discussion on WP English should end with the claim of notability and core identifying information remaining unreferenced. So, removal of a prod tag should not happen on an unref or poorly referenced article. FloNight♥♥♥♥ 21:28, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
36. Support — I'm in favor of expeditious approaches, and this is good approach to the Large Problem. Time should be *two* days, as the Backlog is Large. Jack Merridew 21:41, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
37. Seven days seems like a bit too long but as long as we get this show on the road we'll work out the details as we proceed. Vyvyan Basterd (talk) 21:47, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
38. Support - we had our old friends Artie and Wanda round for dinner this evening, my wife had made a lovely pie, and we were talking about the exciting developments in the BLP issue that have been going on. Both Artie and Wanda, as well as my wife, are big followers of what's been going on here, and I told them the different solutions that had been presented. Wanda used to be a bit more pro-inclusion a few months ago when we first discovered the wiki, and we talked around both the sides. I have to say, although MZMCBride's suggestion was just as good (me and Artie had a bit of a cut and thrust about that, I can tell you!), we all plumped for this one as a compromise to keep everyone happy. So, wishing you all the best with it! This is one of the best things that's happened on here for ages. See ya around! Hands of gorse, heart of steel (talk) 21:49, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

    What kind of pie? --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 21:52, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

39. Supporting only in the weakest fashion possible. The clause for a "reasonable rate", as expressed, begs for a long term struggle, arguments, and disruption ala the previous pushes for notability enforcement and non-free content tagging. Anyone who was around for those two previous site-wide conflicts ought to remember that even the arguments about what was a reasonable rate (not including appropriate to tag, sufficient sourcing/license info, etc) stretched over nearly the entirety of those disputes and produced sprawling megabytes of acrimonious argument. Expect a swift repeat of all that nonsense and disruption if this is implement "as is" on that clause. Also, I prefer five (or even three) instead of seven daysm though I understand views to the contrary. Otherwise, I think this is a reasonable approach and middle ground. Vassyana (talk) 21:50, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
40. Support. Because this you know, actually might make minimal sense. JoshuaZ (talk) 21:52, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
41. Support seven days for the current "backlog" as an extra few days doesn't matter, at a reasonable rate of 100-150/day; however, reduce it to two to five with a new BLP-PROD template for newly created BLPs. -SpacemanSpiff 21:53, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
42. If deleted you can always request them back to work on them. Viridae^Talk 22:02, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
43. I would suggest any BLP with any significant amount of unsourced negative content (so much that removing it would not leave an acceptable article) be deleted, but not so strongly that I wouldn't support this as is. Mr.Z-man 22:09, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

    I thought I had supported this already. I have no problem with some sort of prod system to delete articles, I do have a problem with wholesale speedy deletions. If the article existed for several months to years, a few more days won't hurt and will give people a chance to salvage the articles. RE Z-man's concerns. If the article has a significant amount of unsourced negative content, then it is already eligible for speedy deletion per BLP as an attack page.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 22:36, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

    CSD G10 requires that the entire article be negative an unsourced, not just most of it. Mr.Z-man 22:45, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

    If getting rid of the negative unsourced material leaves you with an article that fails A7, then it doesn't matter if there is somthing that isn't a negative.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 15:23, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

    I'm withdrawing my support as I fear that we will only be looking at numbers here... and I think the people who are pushing for this will take the numbers counter to the way many would like to see it. We need a systsem that offers people a realistic chance to salvage the articles... this means notifying the people who care and allowing adequate time to fix the articles. Slapping 50K prods on articles the day after this RfC is over and then deleting them next week is counter to what most people are thinking... but it is what the BLP'ers want.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 03:46, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

44. I worry about the quality and extent of the referencing that will be added to individual articles just to get rid of the prod tags (you can bet that some editors will just slap a URL somewhere and then delete the prod tag), but this is better than nothing. Deor (talk) 22:42, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
45. A reasonable compromise. Paul Erik ^{(talk)(contribs)} 23:14, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
46. Support, but with two caveats:
    • PROD is the wrong name. What's being suggested is in effect a delayed CSD, as used for images.
    • The default should be for most of the articles not fixed in a week to go into the incubator. I presume it would then need an admin to let them out again. They should be allowed to stay in the incubator for at least up to six months, because it may take some time for the right people to come along to fix them.

    I would also like to add that in my view the present hysteria about "unsourced" BLPs is hugely overdone -- from what I have seen, the unsourced BLPs are not typically any less reliable than most BLPs that do have some sources. Most of the material is entirely anodyne; much of it is in fact often directly verifiable from the subjects' own academic CVs, or the subjects' books / films / records that are already identified in the article. There is usually no material that could be construed as BLP-problematic. Generally, the fact that the article has existed untouched for so long is testament to how anodyne it is. So in my view there is no need for panic, and no need to be precipitate; we need to set a realistic timetable to work through and fix this material, because most of it is entirely non-problematic, and useful to our readers. Most of the articles are harmless; some are over-inflated; vanishingly few are libelous. Those that are potentially risky can be pretty well identified with filters (Betacommand already has filters); but even then, most hits are "false positives". Those which ping the filters are the ones we should start with, and if that means that others don't get got around to for some time, actually it almost certainly doesn't matter. Jheald (talk) 23:37, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

47. Second choice after MZM's above. Cla68 (talk) 23:37, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
48. Prod is the right way to allow time for watchers of old articles to notice the request for sources. In the absence of actual contentious unsourced material (which our policies already allow for the immediate removal of) I don't see the need for any quicker process, nor do I see a need for the instruction creep of a fourth deletion process on top of prod, csd, and afd. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:51, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
49. I'm endorsing this as a clear and reasonable process, but not necessarily the only process to be used, to deal with the problem of unsourced BLPs. It's long past time to deal appropriately with these dangerous pieces of unsourced material masquerading as articles. --TS 23:55, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
50. Gigs (talk) 00:09, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
51. Support as first choice. Happy with five days even. Adding bit about reference inclusion as prerequisite for removal of PROD tag is very rpudent. Casliber (talk · contribs) 00:26, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
52. Second choice over CSD above. Nifboy (talk) 00:42, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
53. Support as a well though out compromise. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:46, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
54. Much better than the overly hasty number 1. --99of9 (talk) 00:48, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
55. Good idea. Articles must be improved with refs when removing Prods. Reywas92^Talk 00:57, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
56. Good Idea. -- RP459 ^Talk/_{Contributions} 01:09, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
57. TotientDragooned (talk) 01:15, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
58. JohnWBarber (talk) 01:37, 22 January 2010 (UTC) -- First choice, and I agree with Alison's comment, below. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 04:05, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
59. This is my favourite solution. Much better than 1. Martin451 (talk) 02:06, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
60. A good solution: should help to get rid of this mass of greatly problematic articles without doing it so fast that they can't easily be sourced by those with access to good sources. Support Scott MacDonald's proposal that sources must be added for these articles to avoid being deleted. Nyttend (talk) 01:47, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
61. ⇌ Jake Wartenberg 01:58, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
62. A preferable system to deletion on-sight that ultimately achieves the same objectives. --Mkativerata (talk) 02:07, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
63. Works for me. Kevin (talk) 02:49, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
64. Acceptable, with preference for incubation over deletion in cases with no contentious or patently inappropriate material. — James Kalmar 03:25, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
65. It's a reasonable compromise, though I'd not like to see articles getting shunted to Incubator and then forgotten. They should also be tagged with a similar 'kill by' date - Alison ^❤ 03:45, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
66. Realistically, this is the most likely thing that will happen. MER-C 04:29, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
67. Support --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:55, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
68. Overall procedure looks good. Minor point: I prefer a deletion process separate from PROD like those proposed at WP:Deletion of unreferenced BLPs and #View by David Gerard. Flatscan (talk) 05:03, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

    I affirm my preference for a non-PROD process requiring sourcing. Flatscan (talk) 04:31, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

69. Looks good. We already do this for images (7 days with no source - goes to the bin) - Peripitus (Talk) 05:23, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
70. Reasonable and well thought out. LK (talk) 06:13, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
71. I can support this with the reservation that this should be a process separate from but essentially similar to WP:PROD as mentioned in the discussion below. (WP:BLP PROD). Also, I favor incubation rather than deletion when the BLP-PROD expires. Time limit should be at least 7 days because some people only edit on weekends or other specific days of the week, and they should not be precluded from sourcing after a prod is placed. if Incubation is not used, a 14-day period would be more appropriate. Notifications to creators and major contributors should be made when articles are BLP-PRODed. DES ^(talk) 06:53, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
72. Support, bus prefer (obviously) a separate but similar procedure, Wikipedia:Deletion of unreferenced BLPs (for which i stole the shortcut WP:DUB). Fram (talk) 07:54, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
73. Support SANITY! ηoian ‡orever ηew ‡rontiers 07:56, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
74. Support, either as an extension to PROD, or, as a new "BLPPROD" process. This is my first choice. Firsfron of Ronchester 08:21, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
75. Support This seems to be a sensible approach - would be good to ensure that article creators are notified of the prods (and the requirements for removing them) - I may well have created a few unreferenced BLPs earlier in my editing history and have no problem referencing them if I know what they are! пﮟოьεԻ 57 09:52, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
76. Support. Reasonable "hurry up slowly" proposal with the slight caveat that "proper references" needs to be defined. Sjakkalle (Check!) 10:11, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
77. Support A nicce balance of "let's get this done" and "let's not delete things that can be sourced in two seconds." Bradjamesbrown (talk) 10:25, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
78. Support , providing reasonable pace is defined as a max number of prods per day, Id suggest 10, and that if the number of prods exceeds the limit mass de-proding should be allowed with no risk of a block. FeydHuxtable (talk) 10:32, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
79. This seems like a fair compromise. the wub "?!" 10:56, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
80. Support Good compromise. --KrebMarkt 11:37, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
81. Support. However can I point out that this is already supported by current policy? I also noticed today that there is a bot notifying editors that pages they have worked on are tagged as unreferenced BLP's, and pointing them towards the BLP policy and the current backlog count. Ivanvector (talk) 13:44, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
82. Support, in light of the clarification provided by the proposal's author here. Really, I don't see why the current PROD system is not an adequate enough tool for proposing BLP deletions. But if it will help some people obsessed with the unreferenced BLP issue sleep better, Jehochman's proposal is a reasonable compromise. I would still like to see an option added to it, where a user contesting the PROD may request an automatic remand to an AfD. Nsk92 (talk) 14:01, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
83. Support in general. Point 5 should be considered point by point. There's a difference between just following someone around and removing all their prods, and a good faith prod removal where the intended sourcing doesn't happen. One may be dissruption, the other isn't.--Cube lurker (talk) 14:52, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
84. Strongly Support - This is a sensible solution to the issue. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 15:15, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
85. I can support the general idea of this. If people don't like it under the "PROD" label, it could just as well go under the system of timed CSD queues, like those we have for unsourced or non-free images. Same principle: safe prospect of deletion after grace period, not to be interrupted unless it gets fixed. Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:23, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
86. This seems like a very reasonable idea in line with the spirit of the project and of BLP. Per objections, the language about deprodding could be tightened; mentioning the importance of BLP in such language would be an improvement. Baccyak4H (Yak!) 15:33, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
87. Endorse. Good compromise. As long as we realize that PRODding something will lead to it being fixed or deleted. No other choices. Keeping unfixed is unacceptable. Removing notices without fixing should be blockable (perhaps a new sort of notice is needed). ++Lar: t/c 16:21, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
88. Endorse mostly -- sanity needs to rule. For example, I had a really hard time finding truly reliable sources to establish notability for Tom Smith (filker), but he's one of the most notable filkers out there. Filk isn't a topic that is hugely covered in RS, though. I like the idea of tagging with BLPPROD, rather than confusing the issue of whether you can remove a PROD tag or not.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 16:27, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
89. Good compromise. Cool Hand Luke 16:40, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
90. Allows users to fix articles in a timely amount of time, which IMO is a must to deal with unsourced BLPs. As for the brought up issue of not being able to remove the PROD template, I feel that we could make some sort of a "sibling" to the PROD template; it would work like the PROD, except that it cannot be removed without good reason (which in this case would be adding reliable sources), and could fall under another name to avoid confusion. ~SuperHamster Talk Contribs 16:43, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
91. Yes, this exactly the right idea. I think we need a specific BLP PROD template but this is the kind of path we need to be going down- due process an reasonable numbers so we can keep what is salvageable but clearing out the tens of thousands of articles in Category:Unreferenced BLPs, many of which have been there for years, attract no attention and may not even be notable. HJMitchell You rang? 16:44, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
92. This still gives people the chance to fix articles while providing a kick up the backside without which, realistically, not much would happen. And if some PRODs expire where the pages could have been fixed - well, it's only a website. Olaf Davis (talk) 17:16, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
93. Support. Like this one. Hal peridol (talk) 17:30, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
94. Strong support, excellent idea. Ironholds (talk) 17:37, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
95. Support a good compromise idea. (Although this would be my first choice). -- Bfigura ^(talk) 18:36, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
96. Support with the caveat that it should be called something other than PROD, to avoid confusion or at least use a different template that makes it clear which ones can and can't be removed. Other than that, its a good, solid compromise. I would also want to have the BLP PRODs that expire be logged somewhere by a bot, so that way we can see what is being deleted and maybe undelete later if we find sources. Also, as I understand it, Arbcom doesn't make policy, so this would seem to overrule that motion. The Wordsmith^Communicate 18:47, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
97. Support as a very sensible solution. But with the caveat that not ony the principle contributors but also the relevant projects are contacted. Not only are their members more likely to 'care', they often have access to specialist literature to help with the sourcing, and can provide language help with non-English sources. Voceditenore (talk) 19:07, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
98. Sounds like a reasonable way to go about fixing the problem. Ks0stm ^(T•C•G) 20:04, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
99. a good first step. Flagged Revisions would reduce this need. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 20:08, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
100. This sums up our current best practise. It is what considered consensus has arrived at over the years - a sensible, appropriate and helpful approach, which is what Wikipedia is about. If it is not working then we need to be examining intelligently why it is not rather than arbitrarily replacing it with a destructive approach that is going to cause disruption and conflict. SilkTork *^YES! 20:23, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
101. Support the most reasonable and easy way to deal with unsourced BLPs and will likely clear up the backlog quickly now that since we will finally have a process to deal with the issue. Ridernyc (talk) 20:52, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

     Very weak support. Sounds good in theory, but I suspect the devil is in the details (what is a reasonable pace), and the inviting people to reference random biographies seems unlikely to attract qualified editors. A more sensible approach is what User:CBM has done: provide WikiProjects, on request, with a list of unreferenced biographies that interest that particular WikiProject. See this or this list/thread. See also my comments to MZMcBride's proposal for a more proactive use of CSD G10. Pcap ping 21:09, 22 January 2010 (UTC) This RfC has already been abused to edit war over a fully protected WP:PROD policy to impose a WP:BOLD approach to mass deletion. I barely supported it before due its promise to clarify the details later, but those details have become abundantly clear now. Switching to oppose. Pcap ping 10:34, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

102. Endorse A sensible proposal that provides scope for salvaging worthwhile content, does not threaten to overwhelm volunteer resources, and at the same time bites the bullet on the serious problem of unreferenced biographies. I am concerned that in implementation it might be abused, but it is important enough that the principle be supported for that discussion to be left to a later date.  Skomorokh  22:08, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
103. Endorse This is the best way of handling things, I think, but I'd be inclined to suggest that the article creator be notified, so he can work on improvement himself if he so desires. Is it perfect? No, but I think it's the best way to go. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 22:16, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
104. Endorse. And introduce flagged revisions, so anything added by an IP only becomes a part of the article once it's been sighted by a Wikipedian. --JN466 23:03, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
105. Endorse, and I do think David Gerard's proposal below should be folded into this. Tabercil (talk) 23:20, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
106. Weak support While I doubt the sense of immediacy here, I can see this (as clarified) being acceptable if we kept BLP PRODs to no more than 100 per day--a reasonable uptick that can be handled without cratering the PROD balance of efficiency and administrator review. Note: as far as I know, I'm one of the more active admins in PROD handling over the past month or two. Jclemens (talk) 00:43, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
107. Weak support per DGG, Jclemens et al.. A quota of 100 or so must be placed on mass deletion of unreferenced BLPs per day, and a full 7-day waiting period, to avoid over-burdening the system of sorting out ProDs. Bearian (talk) 00:51, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
108. Weak support as an improvement over the previous proposal, but per DGG give people time to actually provide the sourcing. And what happened to flagged revisions? Tvoz/talk 01:01, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
109. SupportXinJeisan (talk) 02:45, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
110. Durova⁴⁰³ 03:39, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
111. Support - a sane solution --NeilN ^{talk to me} 04:57, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
112. Support as best option. Deals with the problem, but does so at a reasonable pace, and allows lots of "outs" in case an article is tagged for deletion that can be rescued. --Jayron32 06:42, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
113. Support Bravo Jehochman. Gonzonoir (talk) 09:11, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
114. Support as it clears the backlog but with a chance to save any article subject to it. ♪ daTheisen(talk) 11:06, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
115. Conditional support Per DGG, et al., this proposal needs further discussion. A per-day quota has to be included to avoid misuse by tagging far more articles than the community can handle and it should not be included in WP:PROD but into a separate process (like the WP:DUB proposed by Fram) because it's not really a PROD if there are conditions for when the tag can be removed. Regards SoWhy 11:30, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
116. Support seems reasonable and workable and addresses concerns on both sides. DuncanHill (talk) 15:26, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
117. Support – A much more common sense approach than immediate deletion of all uncited BLPs on sight, which will hopefully lead to the sourcing of all BLPs (a worthy goal no matter what side of the debate one is on). Giants2008 (27 and counting) 23:49, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
118. Support with the additional comment that I think BLPs should be, as a matter of course, semiprotected. I agree that misinformation can be a problem, which routine semiprotection should help with. Tigerhawkvok (talk) 00:16, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

     Support - seems like a reasonable approach. I would hope that both people adding prod notices and people removing them would use good sense, though. Robofish (talk) 03:03, 24 January 2010 (UTC) Given how this proposal has already been misused before this RFC is even over, I'm starting to think it will cause more trouble than it's worth. I'm withdrawing my support. Robofish (talk) 13:52, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

119. Endorse, I do agree though that you should be able to remove the notice, and that it shouldn't be called PROD or AfD. Maybe we could have something like a BLPD (BLP deletion) page for this purpose? Samwb123^{Please read} 03:37, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
120. Support - This is a great idea, Jehochman. Yes, we should PROD a violation of the BLP with out removing it. December21st2012Freak ^{Talk to me} at ≈ 06:28, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
121. Support Yes, this will do. Obviously there are some issues, as have been pointed out by the opposes, but nothing that can't be worked out once the framework is agreed to. With this in place, we move in the right direction and lower the drama level.--Wehwalt (talk) 08:02, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
122. Partial support - would be open to the idea that a prod tag should not be removed under some conditions, but do not see a need for a separate process to proposed deletion for biographies. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:24, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
123. Weak support. I would probably endorse this rather more strongly were the "clarifications" not confusing the issue so much. The idea seems a good one, but I'm no longer really clear on how it is intended to be implemented. Anaxial (talk) 12:39, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
124. Support. I prefer this idea. Regards, --—Cyclonenim | Chat  13:20, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
125. Weak Endorse - Would prefer the extra eyes of an AfD to just a PROD, but this is a considerable improvement over the initial suggestion. -- Scjessey (talk) 15:13, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
126. Brambleclawx You hve my full support. 16:24, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
127. Support as the best, most workable, and least draconian choice on the page so far, though many others also have merit. Antandrus (talk) 16:29, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
128. Support. This seems like a good compromise, and is the most reasonable solution proposed here.--Opus 113 (talk) 17:55, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
129. Support. Attack pages should certainly be deleted as soon as they are recognized as such. The rest of the proposal is measured and considered, a reasonable solution. Binksternet (talk) 18:34, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
130. Support This looks like the best way to move forward, certainly a good starting point for further discussion in any caseAjbpearce (talk) 18:39, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
131. A good starting point. Tim Song (talk) 19:52, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
132. Support Wikipedia needs to have a strong policy on Attack Pages. It takes more time and effort to clean up badly written BLP articles which have libel or unreferenced content than to start fresh with a clean article. I think its a very reasonable proposal and I strongly endorse it. Radiantenergy (talk) 20:42, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
133. Support I like what Editor:Bradjamesbrown says; "A nice balance". Also Editor:DDG's comments regarding ample time (7 days) for an editor "do-over".--Buster7 (talk) 20:57, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
134. Support - makes sense. If no one adds a source in 7 days, it's doubtful how notable the individual is to begin with. And even if it takes more than a week to find a source, the article can be trivially undeleted/recreated. Rami R 21:38, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
135. Not an ideal solution, but the best is the enemy of the good(-enough). Rather this than the status quo. Angus McLellan (Talk) 21:44, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
136. Support Seems reasonable and definitely an improvement over the status quo. Yilloslime ^T_C 05:07, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
137. Endorse as a sensible approach to addressing the situation. --Orlady (talk) 05:40, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
138. Support Unsourced BLPs aren't much help to anyone. Deleted articles can be begun anew with sources, by editors who care about them. Maybe the template and its name can be tweaked for this job, but BLPs must be sourced. Gwen Gale (talk) 12:25, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
139. Endorse - Jeffrey Mall (talk • contribs) - 14:34, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
140. Support - But with a specialized {{BLP Prod}} tag / category. MakeBelieveMonster (talk) 22:53, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
141. Support, using a BLP prod template, staged by year of article creation. Some stay of execution, maybe one month, for articles where assertions of notability that include reliable sources are posted. Novickas (talk) 23:18, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
142. Endorse Question of an adequate compromise on pacing remains though. TheGrappler (talk) 02:58, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
143. Support, given much effort is made to rescue the articles during the prodding discussion. The ARS should not have to be mobilized, as this would indicate that those otherwise participating are not making enough effort to validate the unsourced information. —Akrabbim^talk 03:46, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
144. Support Agree with MakeBelieveMonster that prodded BLPs should belong to a separate category. Dabomb87 (talk) 04:00, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
145. Support - Although I somewhat prefer #1, this one is good too and seems the most likely to gain traction. If people genuinely care about these BLPs then they can source them adequately, at least enough to establish notability. If the status quo is retained, then the vast majority of these will simply remain unreferenced or poorly referenced for another 3 years. <>Multi‑Xfer<> (talk) 06:08, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
146. support reasonable method for transitioning all BLPs to either deletion or sourcing, per policy. Pete.Hurd (talk) 06:11, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
147. Luke-warm support with only the misgiving of wikilawyering over "mass-deprodding". Would prefer any removal of a BLP PROD without adding sources (unless the article is already sourced) to be prohibited. Fritzpoll (talk) 07:52, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
148. Support — I believe there's a need for a stronger enforcement of WP:N also for people. Troelsfo (talk) 10:11, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
149. Support. Not perfect but it's a start, and appears to have support from a cross section of people. Quantpole (talk) 14:00, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
150. Support. Nathan ^T 15:14, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
151. Support This appears to be a more reasonable way of dealing with BLPs which are unsourced. I think a further step should be added though "1.5 Try to find some sources" -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 15:45, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
152. Support. With this as the baseline, future discussions as to adjustments to policy, or fine-tuning of process, might become more reasonable and practical. In combination with flagged thingies it might contribute to reducing the problem to something manageable in the longer term. The procedure is not infallible or anything like, but no one is offering a surgical solution as of right now. PRODs have the good property that they are not ratchet-like, and therefore this is the right place to push the envelope. Charles Matthews (talk) 16:15, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
153. Support. Sounds reasonable to me. We can adjust the process later if need be, but it's a good start. Kaldari (talk) 16:23, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
154. Support. Seems like a sensible approach that would allow focus to be put on problematic biographies without handing out complete discretion to admins. However, the balance between point 3 and 5 is important. Consider the perspective of biographies where sources in other languages may need to be used, and only a few active editors are available per language. Tomas e (talk) 20:21, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
155. Support. Isn't that similar to what we already do? -FASTILY ^(TALK) 23:18, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

     No. If you AfD or PROD an article that is simply unrefed the PROD is removed and the AfD gets very ugly. A great many people oppose forced cleanup by XfD (including me) and lack of sourcing is not a criterion for deletion (yet): in fact it is a reason to edit. --Jubilee♫clipman 02:22, 27 January 2010 (UTC) Addendum Just to clarify: where attempt to source have failed or the article cannot possibly be sourced (because it is a hoax etc) then deletion is an option. However, when the article is merely unreferenced, there are no grounds for deletion until sourcing has been attempted and has failed. The proposal ignores this fact. --Jubilee♫clipman 02:29, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

156. Support: yes. Sceptre ^(talk) 00:14, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
157. Support: I like the procedrual basis of this proposal. In addition to the Article Incubator, we could consider the WP: RESCUE process as well. This proposal would prevent the immediate deletion of articles that need help but are not necessarily contentious or libelous. Also, one could argue that the first two proposals on this page pretty much sum up the two basic options in this controversy, and most of the other proposals are variations with some new ideas on tweaking the basic process. DOOMSDAYER520 (Talk|Contribs) 23:43, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
158. Support on the whole - I think this is a reasonable solution to a big problem, but I would hope that articles that showed promise would indeed be moved to the article incubator to be worked on and not just deleted because nobody could be bothered to source them. (And articles moved to incubator or flagged for rescue should be given a limited time to improve). This proposal should be used in conjuction with strong encouragements to actively work on these articles. We also need to find better ways of eliminating unsourced contentious material in articles not tagged as being unsourced.--BelovedFreak 00:35, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
159. Weak Support. 1, 2, 5 and 6 sound good. 3 seems unworkable as tagging seems to get done whenever an article is found, we don't want editors to have to wait and forget about it just so the volume of prods is not unreasonably large. As far as 4 goes - there should be a reasonable period of time (say a month instead of a week?) before deletion after an article is flagged so that any interested parties can take the time to fix it. Not every editor works every day/week/month. VernoWhitney (talk) 18:24, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
160. Support -- Luk ^talk 13:44, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
161. Support, noting we'd have to call the proposed "prod" something else as it wouldn't really be a prod. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 17:03, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
162. Support - This is generally something I would support. A few suggestions however would be that it be a seperate process to prod, the time perhaps should be slightly longer (i.e. fourteen to a month), and the meaning of "proper references" needs to be made clearer to avoid conflicts and edit wars. Camaron · Christopher · talk 22:32, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
163. Strong support - 7 days are the correct time limit. Bearian (talk) 01:12, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Users who oppose this summary

1. A prod that cannot be removed is not a prod at all. If you want to implement this, go ahead and invent whatever tools and templates you need to do it. But don't co-opt, and break, a tool that was invented for some other purpose, and is meeting that purpose fairly well. Hesperian 06:05, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   I agree that this is PROD-like but not quite PROD, and should use a different name. DES ^(talk) 06:55, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   My thoughts exactly, see my comments on this on the talk page (here). It's really more akin to a hybrid AFD. NJA (t/c) 09:27, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   Oppose I would strongly support most of this proposal, but the idea that "Prod notices should not be removed ... unless proper references are added" is not acceptable. This would mean that an editor who believed that good sources were available, but could not immediately provide them, would not be able to indicate the fact, and have a chance of slowing the deletion process to allow for sources to be provided. In an AfD such an editor would be able to give a comment, but with a prod there is no facility to do so. (Of course it is possible to put a comment on the talk page, but that does not stop an uncontested prod from leading automatically to deletion.) We could, of course, change the definition of a prod to avoid this problem, but then we are in "sort of prod, but not actually prod" territory, so why not admit it. The version at Wikipedia:Deletion of unreferenced BLPs is more clearly thought out than this "prod that you are not allowed freely to remove" idea. JamesBWatson (talk) 11:40, 22 January 2010 (UTC) Withdrawn: I have changed my mind about this.

   Prods may still be contested as always, just not en mass. Things that are normally allowed, turn into abuse of process when done indiscriminately in order to make a point. Likewise, somebody who repeatedly proposes deletion of articles that are not eligible (such as those previous proposed or sent to AfD) could be sanctioned for abuse of process as well. Jehochman ^Brrr 16:12, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   I'm confused - the proposal says "Prod notices should not be removed, nor should articles be undeleted, unless proper references are added" - but your reply to James suggests that a PROD can be removed in the "I have sources but not quite yet" sort of situation he mentions, as long as it's not done en-masse. Could you clarify which you mean, Jehochman? Olaf Davis (talk) 16:55, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   Never mind, realised this is already clarified below the proposal itself. Olaf Davis (talk) 17:16, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   I was about about to support (after the deletion of the clarifications), but then I saw this. The idea that an unsourced BLP can be deprodded and sent to AFD contradicts the first sentence of point 5. There is already enough confusion from describing a not-quite-prod process as a prod. Kanguole 14:45, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

2. Oppose It was a great ideas until the part about not being allowed to remove a prod tag. Prod is not meant to be forced onto a page until certain criteria is met, it is meant to be put there to see if anyone objects. There is too much room for debate regarding what is a reliable source and if the source does cover the content of the article. Perhaps a new tag that is not prod would be better. Chillum ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 15:35, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
3. Oppose - Sounds good in theory, but the prodders have shown they can't be trusted, so all that's left is mass reversion. If they could be trusted, that would be another matter. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 15:55, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
4. Oppose. On the surface this sounds great except that Prod is just as abused as other avenues. If only articles that sources were extensively sought and not found were prodded this wouldn't be an issue. Unfortunately many many prodded articles are indeed exactly the ones Wikipedia should have. -- Banjeboi 20:21, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
5. Oppose, in response to Durova's comment above which implies this RfC is a "select only one option" choice. There have been a number of other thoughtful comments below which should be taken into consideration before any final action or decision is made. -- llywrch (talk) 07:09, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
6. Oppose. This RfC has already been abused to edit war over a fully protected WP:PROD policy to impose a WP:BOLD approach to mass deletion. I barely supported it before due its promise to clarify the details later, but those details have become abundantly clear now, so I'm opposing. Pcap ping 10:34, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
7. Oppose. I largely agree, but where a prod is clearly inappropriate I see no reason why it shouldn't be removed before sources are added. An edit summary indicating why the prod was removed should be sufficient. If no improvement has been made after a day or two it can go to AFD - there's no reason to make prod anything that it isn't already.--Michig (talk) 11:39, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
8. Oppose After expressing support for motherhood and apple pie, this proposal puts, as always, the devil in the details. No deprodding without adding "proper sources". And of course, prods are never put on already well-sourced articles. One can form an idea of some mass blp-deleters conception of "proper sources" from the diffs I posted here. Maybe out of 3 million articles there may be a few which have always fit these procrustean strictures. There can't be many which shouldn't have been deleted according to these amusing rules. This is an extreme? - well, as Pcap notes, there's already been an attempt to change the longstanding consensus at WP:PROD according to this proposal, and even an arbcom case beginning about it Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#WP:PROD_wheel_war. Finally, see Peregrine Fisher's comments above.John Z (talk) 12:15, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
9. Oppose There is quite a lot I agree with in there, but there are too many vague terms and it is not even handed. What is a reasonable rate to procede with prodding depends on the number of people doing the prodding and the number of articles in a project that are prodded at the same time. Mass prodding is as disruptive as mass-deprodding can be disruptive. If an editor wanting to fix the problem of unreffed blps is taking a WP:SOFIXIT route, trying to find sources and prodding those for which no sources are apparent, that is good faith conduct. But a pattern of prodding without accompanying fixing by the same edit is WP:POINTy.--Peter cohen (talk) 23:29, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
10. Oppose any proposal that doesn't include some sort of requirement for anyone who wants an article deleted to try and reference it. We currently have people happily deleting Olympic medallists, prime ministers and presidents. The last thing we need is a policy that endorses or condones such behaviour. Hut 8.5 00:17, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
11. Oppose PROD should be left alone - hijacking it for ideological purposes is simply not acceptable. I agree with several points above including Hut's. Orderinchaos 07:20, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
12. Oppose Davewild (talk) 08:40, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
13. Oppose No reason to remove a lot of true and potentially verifiable information. Debresser (talk) 13:36, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
14. Oppose mainly because indiscriminate and mindless mass-PRODs are not specifically discouraged (and made a blocking offense). Power.corrupts (talk) 18:11, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
15. I largely agree, except with the 5th point - I would rather have those who would delete the page be the ones sourcing it, not having them add a tag to force someone else to. Prodego ^talk 18:49, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
16. Oppose. Five or seven days reaction time is way too short for something that can be provoked with an automated process. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 19:58, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
17. Oppose per Debresser and Power.corrupts, mostly. Mass-prodding is a serious concern and I doubt any rate will help (even at the current rate many articles die unnecessarily by the PROD mechanism). --Cyclopia^talk 20:12, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
18. Oppose. (Mis?)use of prod makes this a lite version of the MZMcBride's view. I dislike the forced, gun-on-the-forehead nature of the cleanup process: provide references, or else. Like many similar suggestions, it does not even attempt to describe what actual problem it is supposed to solve. GregorB (talk) 00:21, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
19. Oppose, absolutely. One of the most bad faith proposals I have heard in 5 years on Wikipedia. Mostlyharmless (talk) 02:56, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
20. Oppose, I don't think that most supporters understand that this is a proposition to mass-prod, which I feel would be disastrous. It disrespects the good faith efforts of many, many Wikipedians. Unsourced content still has a source: the contributor. While not the most reliable or sources, I feel that it is wrong to unilaterally decide that unsourced BLP content "isn't good enough" for Wikipedia. Perhaps we should change the main page to say "Welcome to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone with a good source can edit"? ...but what do you think? ~BFizz 04:06, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
21. Partial Oppose I'm not against the idea, but I fear that implementing this will result in some automated prodding followed-up by a series of automated deletions or very casual deletions by people who are overly eager to delete what they don't like. Any proposal that doesn't incorporate a means to notify those interested in the subject (namely wikiprojects) needs to proceed with caution. The various Wikiprojects will undoubtably be the ones most outraged if their projects are deleted en masse with minimal or no notification and seven days may not be enough time to clean up the project's BLPs. This is an issue, but hasty actions will lead to more problems down the road.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 04:09, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
22. Oppose, too centralized, i.e. interested users may not be aware of what is happening. Geschichte (talk) 08:44, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
23. I have yet to see a convincing explanation of why BLPs with zero references are a bigger problem than BLPs with one reference. DGG's comment below, that time spent sourcing an unproblematic BLP is time that could be spent on a problematic BLP, is of relevance here. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 08:39, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

    What metric can we use to find problematic BLPs, so that we know which ones to source? Mr.Z-man 00:46, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

    I hope you don't mind me rephrasing your question as, "how can we find problematic BLPs?" One thing that I'm surprised to not see more emphasis on here is trying to improve the thoroughness of RC patrol. Another thing we should be doing is engaging the press to ask article subjects to either fix their articles or notify OTRS. Groan, can of worms, yes, but it would be effective. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 07:26, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

24. Oppose Suddenly we set a deadline?? NO. Wildhartlivie (talk) 03:11, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
25. Oppose in the strongest way possible if you want articles referenced, then use Google and add the damn references. Deleting the whole article is ridiculously unproductive.  Grue  10:14, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
26. Oppose - I totally disagree with User:Jehochman on this matter. To delete all unreferenced biographies of living people that lack references is absolute madness. --Kohoutek1138 (talk) 10:59, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
27. Oppose (switched from Support) - this isn't a bad idea as such, but other proposals on this page are better; that this proposal has already been misused convinces me that it's likely to cause too many problems. Robofish (talk) 13:59, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
28. Oppose the deletion of articles with no problems other than being unreferenced. -M.Nelson (talk) 00:50, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
29. Strong Oppose - PRODing (and XfDing, for that matter) to force cleanup is almost always frowned upon, in my experience. Anyway, the whole wording is far too wishywashy to be useful. Who is supposed to discuss the "reasonable pace"? Consensus? Among whom? Projects? Admins? Any interested party? How do we stop mass uBLP PRODing (as opposed to "de-prodding or undeletion") where the pace is unreasonable? Who decides whether an article goes to the incubator rather than the bin? Will there be a guideline to help with this decision? (I don't see one, so I guess "consensus" rules again (see above)?) My comment below (concerning colusion and subterfuge) has been revoked, BTW. The proposed policy I refer to there (Wikipedia:Deletion of unreferenced BLPs) is far more workable and detailed and I can't for the life of me understand why it isn't proposed for discussion here. I still oppose much of that too, BTW, but we should at least be discussing it, surely (unless I missed it somewhere)? Anyway, UBLPs with no other issues are not per se a bad thing: they are often very rewarding to work on and contain much invaluable information. Simply deleting them would be detrimental to the spirit of WP and frighten off far too many new editors if handled badly. --Jubilee♫clipman 02:12, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
30. Oppose-ish The terms and timeframes need to be clearly specified. For example "proper references" means what exactly? How many is too many? And I think a reasonable option should be to deprod but send to AfD. For example I found that the jp wiki had references for an article, but I couldn't read them. AfD seems like a good place to add eyes in (fairly rare) cases. Hobit (talk) 18:29, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
31. Oppose: Abuse of prod, easy to misunderstand the requirements, difficult to enforce the made-up rules, and still yet another unworkable, off-target "solution" (for a problem that doesn's exist). Maedin\^talk 13:24, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Users who are neutral about or partially endorse/oppose this summary

1. Oppose prod should be kept as it is now and not used as a non removable tag. On images we have sime di- notices that give a seven days. But in any case seven days is not enough time. An effort should be made to provide references, or to ask someone who will actually do the job before a time out to deletion is attached. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 04:24, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

• Conditional/partial support: Per the two first opposes above, and some discussion below, this a) should have a different name, and b) needs to either be deletable or have some other means of slowing process down because one wants to source the article or to argue that it is already adequately sourced. An "undeletable prod" would be problematic. Otherwise, this proposal has a lot of merit and is less extremist that deletion-on-sight. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 12:23, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose all but first line. Blatant attack pages should be deleted on sight per CSD G10, but the proposed deletion process is next to worthless. SchuminWeb (Talk) 18:31, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose. Seven days is a ridiculously short period, it is unlikely that the average editor will see the prod in that span. One year would be more reasonable. Moreover the person proposing the deletion must first do the following (a) do a quick search for a reliable source (eg. by google) that at least shows that the person exits, and (b) delete any text that is not supported by that source. Only if (a) fails, or (b) leaves an empty article, should the article be posted for deletion. --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 05:03, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Users who endorse this summary

1. Jclemens (talk) 16:22, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
2. Collect (talk) 16:30, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
3. Power.corrupts (talk) 18:05, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
4. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 18:47, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
5. Cyclopia^talk 18:49, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
6. Enric Naval (talk) 19:18, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
7. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 19:30, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
8. Hobit (talk) 20:18, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
9. Jim Miller ^{See me | Touch me} 20:23, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
10. Agreed, but the ratio is more like 95%/5%, and we ought to find an orderly way to improve the 95% and delete the other 5% rather than preserving the status quo. Wikidemon (talk) 20:58, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
11. DES ^(talk) 21:10, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
12. GRuban (talk) 21:19, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
13. llywrch (talk) 22:14, 21 January 2010 (UTC), as well as agreeing with Wikidemon's comment immediately above.
14. Agree 100%. A good portion of the unreferenced BLP's are still viable, neutral, informative articles. Being unreferenced does not mean it is bad.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 22:45, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
15. Jheald (talk) 23:41, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
16. -- Quiddity (talk) 23:48, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
17. Nsk92 (talk) 23:55, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
18. I have concerns here. Casliber (talk · contribs) 00:48, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
19. --Cybercobra (talk) 00:49, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
20. Ikip 01:01, 22 January 2010 (UTC) I could not say it better.
21. JohnWBarber (talk) 01:36, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
22. The case that the encyclopedia will suffer more for having the occasional contentious, unsourced content than for deleting all unsourced BLP content, regardless of whether it's contentious or not, has not been made in any convincing way. Some numbers would be useful. I can see how the Foundation and Jimbo are annoyed that they have to deal with reporters delighted to find that "OMG! Wikipedia was wrong on something!", but I don't see a direct link from the Foundation public relations argument to the encyclopedia quality argument. - BanyanTree 02:34, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
23. Obviously. Otherwise, many of our featured and good articles today would have been deleted when they were a stub. ηoian ‡orever ηew ‡rontiers 07:57, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
24. Vertebrate support.John Z (talk) 08:07, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
25. FeydHuxtable (talk) 10:34, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
26. Ruslik_Zero 14:34, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
27. Support - If the cost/benefits were wayed, this whole thing would fall apart. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 15:58, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
28. Hut 8.5 20:04, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
29. Gigs (talk) 20:05, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
30. -- Banjeboi 20:23, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
31. Generally support. There's CSD G10 for the contentious ones, and there's no reason to insta-delete something that is not clearly harmful. I've been chastised for using G10 on unsourced stub biographies that are not 100% negative, but only 25-50% so. I think that when an unsourced article has only a few sentences, and one makes a negative BLP claim it should be deleted as a precaution. Perhaps the language in G10 should be adjusted that way. Pcap ping 20:42, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
32. Amen. Calliopejen1 (talk) 00:41, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
33. Me too. Bearian (talk) 00:52, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
34. Ray^Talk 01:29, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
35. Good common sense summary. --ThaddeusB (talk) 02:40, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
36. We often use "sourced" as a proxy for "accurate". For BLPs, we need to do better than that. Ignore the proxy, and look at the actual article. — Carl (CBM · talk) 04:33, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
37. remove the contentious ones, improve the non-contentious ones. This is already happening. Give it a chance.--Michig (talk) 11:41, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
38. Because this doesn't fix the problemm. Most of these articles were created in good faith, without any intention of harming someone, they just didn't source it because it wasn't necessary. Where has assuming good faith gone? Few people at all write stuff here to harm other people. Secondly, unsourced isn't immediately a problem, inaccurate is the problem. By giving an article sources, the stuff in it doesn't magically become true. The sources can be wrong, or one can make claims of existing articles. My two cents about the unsourced BLPs: Get a bot which contacts all creators of unreferenced BLPs, telling them the problem which you have with unreferenced BLPs and ask them to fix it. Then, look on every article on a case by case base, find sources and if there are no, then do something about it. --The Evil IP address (talk) 14:26, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
39. I certainly agree with JClemens, and specifically with The Evil IP Address' comment that "unsourced isn't immediately a problem, inaccurate is the problem." If it's true, it belongs, even if a citeable source cannot be found. -- BRG (talk) 16:01, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
40. The long-standing status quo has not suddenly become an emergency overnight, nor does the politician's syllogism justify throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Contains Mild Peril (talk) 20:40, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
41. Support A well reasoned summary of the situation.--Peter cohen (talk) 23:32, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
42. Agreed. Most unreferenced BLPs are stubby but entirely uncontroversial articles, and there is no need to delete those en masse. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 01:53, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
43. Support -- not that we should ignore this problem, but that it is not our highest priority. i think some people have concentrated on it specifically because it is so much easier to fix this and pretend to be accomplishing something important than to find a way to deal with the actual priorities. DGG ( talk ) 01:59, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
44. I am concerned that excessive deletion of unreferenced BLPs will leave us worse off. Robofish (talk) 03:05, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
45. Support. This seems reasonable in the absence of compelling evidence that there's a crisis. Rivertorch (talk) 06:32, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
46. Davewild (talk) 08:41, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
47. Accurate enough. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:25, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
48. Support generally, but you've understated your case -- it's more like 5% of biographies are 95% of the problem, while the other 95% of biographies are 5% of the problem... AnonMoos (talk) 12:43, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
49. Hear, hear. --Pontificalibus (talk) 12:46, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
50. Agree There is nothing wrong with information being unsourced. As long as it is potentially verifiable and non-slanderous, of course. Just as present policy says. Debresser (talk) 13:39, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
51. Agree with Debresser and especially AnonMoos. The problem articles are few and far between; the deletion proposals not only remove what are largely beneficial articles, but focus editor time where it would better be spent elsewhere. And I say this as a deletionist! CRGreathouse (t | c) 17:34, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
52. Prodego ^talk 18:47, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
53. Agree As it says, it's a view, and does not specify what exactly should be done. All unsourced bios need to be tagged with a template informing the reader about the lack of reliability of the content.  Cs32en Talk to me  19:13, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
54. Support. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 20:01, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
55. TotientDragooned (talk) 22:17, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
56. Support – Giants2008 (27 and counting) 23:20, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
57. This one I support. — The Earwig @ 23:29, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
58. Support - Just threw some refs into a bio missing them and cleaned it up a bit. Would not have worked on if it had just been deleted. Motivate people, don't delete otherwise innocuous articles that just need some refs. CarolMooreDC (talk) 04:21, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
59. Strong, enthusiastic support. Do not throw out the baby with the bath water. If a BLP has negative unsourced statements, add sources, remove the negative stuff, or delete if nothing can be found. But deleting any unsourced BLP on sight is not only lazy, it harms the casual reader who is deprived of non-negative info. And to the opposes below, I agree that do nothing is not an option. But it's not like our only options are do nothing or delete. Get a grip.--Fabrictramp | talk to me 05:11, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
60. Endorse as a set of statements I agree with (it's not a proposed course of action). --Orlady (talk) 05:51, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
61. Tim Song (talk) 11:31, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
62. Timbouctou (talk) 19:13, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
63. Agree - A good summary of the situation. --Jubilee♫clipman 22:51, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
64. Strong support - This is taking a sledgehammer to a walnut, & isn't fixing the underlying problem. By far the majority of BLPs aren't problematic. TREKphiler ^{any time you're ready, Uhura} 23:31, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
65. Stong Support Agree with Trekphiler. I can't believe all the screaming for such a simple, commonsense approach. Ready, fire, aim is not a valid approach. King Pickle (talk) 02:49, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
66. Support. Unreferenced BLPs seem to have become a popular symbol of a problem. Fix the problem, not the symbol of the problem. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 02:56, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
67. Support. The importance of citing sources cannot be emphasized enough, but most of our unsourced BLPs are in fact innocuous and created in good faith. decltype (talk) 06:48, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
68. Support as far as it goes. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 07:48, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
69. Support Johnbod (talk) 09:29, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
70. Support Setreset (talk) 14:09, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
71. Support -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 15:48, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
72. Support--Doug (talk) 16:10, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
73. Support. The way I see it, unreferenced BLPs deletion policy might damage Wikipedia it at least three ways: 1) harm to content (loss of useful and uncontroversial articles), 2) harm to editors (this is one more wall against the newcomers, and I don't think many people here fully understand how dangerous this is for the future of Wikipedia), 3) harm to policy (so far, forced actions, such as speedy deletions for attack BLPs, were reasonable - in fact, necessary - solutions to acute, concrete problems with BLPs, whereas this purports to solve potential, abstract problems, and thus sets an unsettling precedent for the future). GregorB (talk) 19:18, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
74. Support On balance, most material does more good than harm, and we already have ample procedures for deleting the exceptions. Certes (talk) 22:16, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
75. Support. -FASTILY ^(TALK) 23:20, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
76. Support - I've taken a run through a few dozen of the nearly 400 articles that fall within the Comics Project remit and a few don't seem notable (so I flagged them up), quite a lot showed plenty of promise and a disturbing number where overwhelmingly notable (and important, including winners of prestigious awards). Just deleting the unreferenced BLPs where I saw none that could be classed as "attack articles" would cause far more problems than it fixes. They clearly need work (and often it is purely a matter of editors just not focusing on that angle) but we already have the tools to deal with such problems and it seems unwise to go around threatening the removal of swathes of articles, when the collateral damage is going to be so high. (Emperor (talk) 03:50, 27 January 2010 (UTC))
77. Here here! Well said. —Charles Edward ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 00:43, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
78. Agree. --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 05:04, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
79. Agree. See Od Mishehu below. JeffBurdges (talk) 16:28, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
80. Agree. Bearian (talk) 01:13, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
81. Support. I would note, for example, that the biggest BLP issue that I encounter in my day-to-day editing experience is not unsourced articles; it's that some determined vandals have noted that if they add anything that looks like a valid source it's less likely to be challenged even if it's fake. For example, the fact that sources are unequivocally required on List of gay, lesbian or bisexual people hasn't prevented inappropriate names from being added there — people frequently add names whose sources (a) don't exist, (b) don't support the claim that they're queer, or (c) are just copied and pasted from another name that's already included in the list, and don't mention the new person at all. And then somebody else glances at the edit, sees that it looks like it's in order, and lets it pass without checking the source. And that's not a problem that can be solved by this discussion. Bearcat (talk) 04:02, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
82. Support - It think it would be very unfortunate if BLP's were singled out for deletion because of poor sourcing, which is a problem among ALL varieties of articles on the wikipedia. David Straub (talk) 16:58, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Users who oppose this summary

1. This is the kind of milquetoast "oh, they're not hurting anything" approach that has led to the current mess. Spines have been found, backbones have been formed, time to get work done. Tarc (talk) 04:22, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
2. Things have been "status quo" for the past three years, just like the backlog at Category:Unreferenced BLPs. It's a quite pathetic state of affairs for something the Foundation goes out of its way to remind us to take care of on a regular basis. Nifboy (talk) 06:14, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
3. No, an unreferenced BLP left neglected for years is bad; adding references to it shows that someone is willing to make necessary improvements. BLPs left unreferenced for years cause headaches for WP and for the subjects of these articles. I agree, though, with the statement that deleting unsourced BLPs won't help incorrect sourced articles. That's another issue that should be addressed, though. Firsfron of Ronchester 08:33, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
4. Agree with Tarc. This is wishy-washy thinking. WP:BLP is pretty clear that this view is not supported by Wikipedia. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 09:42, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
5. Do nothing is not an option. It's a ticking time bomb and needs to be defused. Guy (Help!) 10:19, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
6. Oppose I assume that "we're cleaning up the 80% of them that are only 20% of the problem" is intended to mean something like "only 20% of them are a problem, we would be getting rid of teh other 80% as well": if not I should be grateful for clarification. Taking it in that sense, even if it is true (which needs justification) then that means there is a huge number of unacceptable biographies around. We have an obligation to avoid publishing libel: a moral objection as well as a legal one. We cannot sit back and allow the 20% of unacceptable ones to remain, whether or not this means the 80% suffer too. How do I know when I look at an article whether it is one of the 20% or one of the 80%? If we had a simple "no sources = no article" rule then the acceptable ones would become 100% instead of 80%. Unfortunately such a rule cannot, in practice, be quite as simplistic as that, so the question is "what modified rule, essentially based on no sources = no article, will work best?" The question "do we need such a rule at all?" is not appropriate. JamesBWatson (talk) 12:07, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   I would agree with a "no sources, no article" policy being enforced from now on (perhaps not as CSD, but this can be discussed). What I can't agree with is deleting what are the most probably good faith efforts of thousands of editors in the past, when rules/practice were much more relaxed, only to get rid of a few problematic articles; what I can't agree even more is this is indeed a solution to the so-called BLP problem, while the problem is bias, libel and vandalism, not sourcing per se. No one has still provided hair-thin evidence that unreferenced BLPs are more of a problem than referenced ones, nor has anyone provided evidence that deletion is better than semiprotection. All I see here is moral panic justified with handwaving or, in some cases, odd infantile cortical hyperostosis. --Cyclopia^talk 12:38, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

7. Oppose - Yes, poorly sourced BLPs are a problem. Saying that ignoring unsourced BLPs is a solution is baffling. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 15:19, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
8. Weak Oppose I concur that in many or perhaps even most cases there is no problem. I disagree with the prioritization that the other cases is less of a problem than starting from scratch. Baccyak4H (Yak!) 15:37, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
9. Oppose. Head in the sand view. Better safe than sorry where real people are involved. Lead, follow, or get out of the way. ++Lar: t/c 16:24, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   You can't live without repeating that quote every five minutes,isn't it? Well, I prefer to quote "Nothing is so unworthy of a civilised nation as allowing itself to be governed without opposition by an irresponsible clique that has yielded to base instinct." ,at cost of falling under our favourite lawyer's law.--Cyclopia^talk 16:28, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

10. While much of what Jclemens writes is true, adopting this stance does nothing to advance a solution. Saying "this problem is not as it seems" or "there are other worse problems" is not a compelling response to the very real problem here.  Skomorokh  22:12, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

    The point behind this proposal is to state that not everybody agrees with the notion that having unsourced BLP's is the end of wikipedia... many of the articles are decent quality articles that should be saved, not deleted on sight without thought as to how their deletions will affect projects and various users. The delete on sight mentatility will cause more problems than it solves.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 23:32, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

    An excellent summary of my position, Balloonman. Other editors should note that I've endorsed a number of other positions that speak to different solutions. By focusing on the problem's severity and the consequences of "solving" it in a draconian manner, I haven't put my head in the sand, or advocated anyone else doing so. Rather, I've looked while we're busy getting ready to leap. Jclemens (talk) 23:57, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

11. Oppose. I can sympathise with this view, but I don't feel that "do nothing" is likely to fix the issue, either. As such, I can't support the proposal as stated. Anaxial (talk) 12:44, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
12. Oppose - per Tarc. -- Scjessey (talk) 15:18, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
13. Oppose punting seems unwise. Let's try to move the ball down the field. Yilloslime ^T_C 05:14, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
14. Oppose Because anybody can write anything here, an article is only as useful as the references behind it. Because of this we should do something about the issue of having unsourced articles laying around in bulk, especially BLPs. ThemFromSpace 20:38, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
15. Oppose - Poor quality, unsourced articles in general do nothing to improve our standing with the world at large, poor quality and unreferenced (or poorly referenced) BLPs are downright damaging. If some moderately-known journalist goes to his or her article and reads a paragraph that someone inserted saying they love eating lemon drops and eat 20 boxes every day, and then they write an article about it or go on some talk show and bring it up, how does that make us look? One of our goals as an encyclopedia is to be factual, and proper referencing is a primary step in that direction. Just because something isn't a deliberate attack or libelous doesn't make it harmless. <>Multi‑Xfer<> (talk) 06:14, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
16. oppose per Nifboy & Guy. Pete.Hurd (talk) 06:15, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
17. I'm afraid that, whilst I understand the sentiment, this is essentially a statement in favour of the status quo - to paraphrase Jimbo, that ship has sailed. Fritzpoll (talk) 07:55, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
18. Oppose as it's the status quo. While I can understand a reluctance for mass deletions, totally ignoring the problem doesn't help. Some effort needs to be undertaken to at the very least prevent new unsourced blp's from accumulating. -- Bfigura ^(talk) 00:34, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
19. Oppose. A large backlog of unreferenced BLPs does cause harm, as Wikipedia should be the first place to look for notable people, but without references readers must wonder whether the people listed are actually notable, as well as fending for themselves should they wish to do further research. This is one of our main advantages over traditional encyclopedias--we can point you in the right direction to go next. VernoWhitney (talk) 18:38, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Users who endorse this summary

1. Collect (talk) 16:16, 21 January 2010 (UTC) (approving own message as seen above)
2. Jclemens (talk) 16:24, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
3. Endorse, and I think it would be appropriate to extend the definition of controversial or contentious material as it pertains to living people vs as it might pertain to a video game. I see no reason whatsoever to delete, for example, a BLP that states simply "Person X is a New York Times best-selling author." and then provides a list of books. This generally falls under the "common knowledge" exception of WP:V. Karanacs (talk) 16:57, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
4. Endorse, provided that references need not have {{cite}}s or <ref>s, or links to be real references. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 18:49, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
5. Enric Naval (talk) 19:18, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
6. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 19:30, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
7. Very wise. ChildofMidnight (talk) 20:12, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
8. Hobit (talk) 20:18, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
9. Jim Miller ^{See me | Touch me} 20:23, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
10. Agreed with same proviso as above. The key word is "draconian" - we should have an orderly, organized, agreed-to improvement-and-deletion campaign. - Wikidemon (talk) 21:00, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
11. As Per Arthur Rubin. DES ^(talk) 21:11, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
12. Per Arthur. JoshuaZ (talk) 21:51, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
13. And this is the problem with making deleting unreferenced BLP's a CSD criteria.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 22:46, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
14. Jheald (talk) 23:43, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
15. -- Quiddity (talk) 23:49, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
16. Nsk92 (talk) 23:56, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
17. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:56, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
18. --Cybercobra (talk) 00:50, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
19. Casliber (talk · contribs) 00:50, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
20. Per Arthur. I'm OK with content being wholly unreferenced AND contentious being deleted. - BanyanTree 02:37, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
21. Duh. If only the ArbCom listened to community consensus. ηoian ‡orever ηew ‡rontiers 07:58, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
22. Per Arthur Rubin.John Z (talk) 08:10, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
23. Ikip ^{Frank Andersson 45 revisions restored:}_{an olympic medallist for f**k's sake} 09:10, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
24. Cyclopia^talk 12:28, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
25. Colonel Warden (talk) 14:24, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
26. Good way of putting it. We can already remove unverified information on sight, why delete articles wholesale? Chillum ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 15:38, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
27. I can support this, but the word "Draconian" might have different scopes for different people, so my support here should not be taken to be inconsistent with my supporting more aggressive alternatives. Baccyak4H (Yak!) 15:41, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
28. This is the shortest and clearest explanation of how I feel. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 16:03, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
29. See, we agree sometimes. Gigs (talk) 17:25, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

    Actually I examined our intersections - our agreement rate is about 80% <g> Collect (talk) 17:43, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

30. per Karanacs Nancy ^talk 17:49, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
31. -- Banjeboi 20:25, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
32. SoWhy 21:59, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
33. Yes. The sophistic and blatant misinterpretation of the BLP policy used to retroactively justify blind deletions was farcical, and its proponents wear no clothes.  Skomorokh  22:15, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
34. Calliopejen1 (talk) 00:42, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
35. Strongly support per Chillum, Peregrine Fisher, Skomorokh, et al. Bearian (talk) 00:55, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
36. Ray^Talk 01:29, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
37. No evidence of current procedures being inadequate has been offered by detractors, just hysteria about hypothetical nightmeres. --ThaddeusB (talk) 02:44, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
38. Obviously controversial material should be removed. Material that is not actually controversial or likely to cause harm (for example, the school where someone went to college, in 99% or article) is a different matter. — Carl (CBM · talk) 04:34, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
39. Reasonable, sensible, constructive.--Michig (talk) 11:43, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
40. Common sense, expressed succinctly. I applaud. Contains Mild Peril (talk) 21:10, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
41. Support it isn't the lack of current process that's the problem. It's the lack of its use.--Peter cohen (talk) 23:35, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
42. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 01:55, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
43. Paul Erik ^{(talk)(contribs)} 02:14, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
44. Davewild (talk) 08:42, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
45. Endorse. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:28, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
46. Endorse Power.corrupts (talk) 18:01, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
47. Prodego ^talk 18:47, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
48. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 20:12, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
49. Endorse. A policy of blindly mass-deleting existing BLPs would seriously weaken the encyclopedia and would create a caste gap between administrators and non-administrators, as administrators would then be the only ones able to access a large amount of useful, non-controversial and factually accurate material hidden from non-privileged editors. Robert K S (talk) 20:25, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
50. TotientDragooned (talk) 22:18, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
51. Endorse with the provision that established deletion policy can be adjusted for BLPs, just not through a fait accompli. ThemFromSpace 04:29, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
52. "controversial or contentious material" is a good standard.--PinkBull 18:59, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
53. Support - This appears to be the policy we have now—controversial or contentious material is flagged or PRODed or AfDed or SPEEDYied etc anyway. We don't need more. --Jubilee♫clipman 22:56, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
54. Support – I review untold numbers of articles at FAC/FLC, and persons' names are rarely cited by themselves, unless there is some debate over them. Coming from places where strong referencing is a must. this tells me in itself that such information is generally not contentious. Giants2008 (27 and counting) 23:42, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
55. Support -- Status quo ante, seems to work OK in my experience. Pete Tillman (talk) 02:59, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
56. Support Wildhartlivie (talk) 03:17, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
57. Support Dabomb87 (talk) 04:02, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
58. Support — John Cardinal (talk) 05:22, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
59. Support - Ssilvers (talk) 06:10, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
60. Support decltype (talk) 06:52, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
61. Icewedge (talk) 07:39, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
62. Agree this is what one of the speedy delete criteria is, however, we could add that instead of deleting, supporting references could be added instead. Or negative material can be edited, however perhsp the bad revisions need deleting. Do we need a program to spot this sort of article sooner? Graeme Bartlett (talk) 07:54, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
63. Absolutely this bullshit has got to stop.  Grue  10:09, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
64. Support - I totally agree with User:Collect on this matter. To delete all unreferenced biographies of living people that lack references is absolute madness. --Kohoutek1138 (talk) 10:55, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
65. Support - strdst_grl (call me Stardust) 11:29, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
66. Suppport Setreset (talk) 14:11, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
67. Support I can't help thinking that if all the effort editors are spending on this discussion (either supporting or opposing the various viewpoints) were to be spent on finding some references for currently unsourced BLPs, a lot of those BLPs would no longer be unsourced! -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 15:51, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
68. Support --OpenFuture (talk) 18:05, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
69. Support I believe the Wikipedia community can reach the right consensus on what is "controversial or contentious", then remove the offending phrases without discarding valuable articles wholesale. Certes (talk) 22:21, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
70. Support A lot of effort is being expended on the question of all unsourced BLPs, most of which are stubs consisting of harmless text. We should only be worried about statements that would be defamatory if false. Ntsimp (talk) 22:40, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
71. Support. -FASTILY ^(TALK) 23:21, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
72. Support - let's restrict automatic, on-sight deletion to articles which deserve that fate due to the presence of controversial or libellous material. Equating slanderous attacks to neutrally-worded biographies (even if the referencing or factual accuracy leaves a lot to be desired) is ridiculous and sensationalist, and smacks of assuming bad faith. SuperMarioMan (talk) 05:13, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
73. Per Karanacs. Tim Song (talk) 10:40, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
74. Support We have NPP to catch new unreferenced/POV articles. Multiple articles including BLPs have references, just not inline. Attack articles are more likely to have faked, misinterpreted, or attack references. Articles with a remaining tag are not the problem, and forcing people to turn all their attention to trying to save them in large numbers undermines the entire collaborative basis of the encyclopedia to no good end. It also likely deletes good content that some actual user wanted to look up. This is bad for our reputation, not good, and is already driving away editors. It gives the strong impression the admin corps have forgotten they are janitors, not managers. Also the continuing failure to adequately advertise this issue and the initial sneaky action during Drama-Out leave me feeling extremely disrespected. I find myself disinclined to help this project right now, and I am sure I am far from the only one. Yngvadottir (talk) 18:15, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
75. Support Let's focus on real problems rather than unproblematic articles. WP:BOLD prodding (and, if needed, AfD) is still allowed if there is contention. But mass deletions aren't helping. CRGreathouse (t | c) 19:49, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
76. Support Some special measures may be needed for BLPs but not mass deletions without consideration. Johnbod (talk) 21:21, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
77. Support. "The real problem is unsourced contentious info, not unreferenced articles." -M.Nelson (talk) 22:16, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
78. Support - we should definitely be focusing on contentious material. A completely non-controversial but unreferenced stub about an actor which merely states what films they have been in is far less problematic than a long partly- (but inadequately) sourced article that goes into detail about someone's private life or criminal activities or political views or whatever. The former is not ideal, but can be verified by a reader fairly easily. I would like it to be widened to include not just contentious/controversial material, but any unsourced personal information about a person.--BelovedFreak 22:37, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
79. Agree. Bearian (talk) 01:14, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
80. Agreed. Bearcat (talk) 04:06, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
81. Support - Anything that is unsourced, even a date and place of birth, is potentially contentious, even if it turns out to be a typo made in good faith. --Kudpung (talk) 12:42, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
82. Support - Agree that "controversial or contentious material with no references should be deleted on sight", but do not automatically delete articles that are unsourced. Just excise the controversial parts, which is pretty much the policy now (or the general editing practice of most editors.)David Straub (talk) 17:03, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
83. Support - Yes that makes sense to me. Camaron · Christopher · talk 12:41, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Users who oppose this summary

1. Too subjective a viewpoint. Making a special case for "Controversial or contentious material" is practical, for who would decide what is or is not covered by this category? This is just another restatement of WP:IKNOWIT. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 09:46, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   Um -- what precisely do you find fault with? I cite the current policies and procedures, and state that using orderly process is good. Yet your argument deals with an argument for deletion discussions only? I note your opposition to almost everything under the sun on this page, and would be pleased to deal with any constructive criticism. Thanks! Collect (talk) 11:22, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   Comment It seems perfectly clear to me precisely what Gavin.collins finds fault with: the subjective nature of "Controversial or contentious". As for the ad hominem comments about Gavin.collins's objections elsewhere, they are completely irrelevant: what matters here is the value or lack of value of his comment here. JamesBWatson (talk) 12:14, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

2. Oppose What is "Controversial or contentious" is entirely subjective. I think particular material is controversial, so I delete it: you think it wasn't controversial. Not a workable proposition. JamesBWatson (talk) 12:14, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   Right -- if you, as an editor, feel that some material is controversial or contentious, then, by all means, delete it. The process is then that according to existing policy it is up to the person who wants it in to furnish appropriate referencing, and to discuss the matter on the article talk page. Just like any other editing dispute in a BLP. The issue here presented is, moreover, a short-circuiting of the extant processes. Rather like seeing a burnt-out bulb on the tenth floor of a building and deciding to cut all power lines to it. Collect (talk) 12:33, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

3. Oppose - An unsourced BLP is contentious. Without sourcing, we have no idea if any of it is accurate. And I'm surprised "he/she exists" is being put forward as an argument. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 15:22, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
4. Oppose. Per Hand that Feeds, et al. ++Lar: t/c 16:25, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
5. No. Unless you are God Almighty, it's not obvious whether statements are controversial without sourcing. Cool Hand Luke 16:51, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   Nor is it obvious that most statements in a BLP or elsewhere are true, even if sourced. And even when sourced, it isn't always easy to get to the source. And even a well-sourced statement can be libelous. This whole encyclopedia, to a great extent, floats on trusting anonymous strangers to be honest and upright, and nothing will ever get us around that. Deleting unsourced BLPs may be the way to go to solve some of the most egregious problems, but its a blunt instrument that removes a lot of good information with it. So it's better not to bring God into this. We've already had enough crusading and human sacrifices for one controversy. What to do about a problem like this is a judgment call, best made calmly. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 17:24, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   Actually, your statement would apply equally to almost every single article where there has been no dispute over contents - I have found a great many references which do not say what they have been claimed to say. Perhaps all articles should be subject to summary deletion on the basis that the references may be false? Interesting concept, that! But using the Raleigh solution is, I fear, worse than using existing processes. Collect (talk) 17:43, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   Yes, there are potential problems with any article and doubtless there are perfectly true BLPs without references. My point is that the gray area is wide, so let's think about where we're going to draw the line and what we do when we draw it. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 18:56, 22 January 2010 (UTC) What's a "Raleigh solution"?

   "A sharp remedy, but a sure one for all ills." Collect (talk) 19:08, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

6. I do think we need some kind of automatic deletion for BLPs with no sources, so I can't support this. It'd be better to give editors plenty of chances to identify BLPs in areas they're interested in so that they get a chance to save good material, but we should be doing something, more and I don't think this statement addresses that well enough. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 18:56, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
7. Oppose: Unsourced material can be removed on sight. No sources=no content that can be kept. Besides, who says they even exist? Are we going to start allowing what you or I "know" to be exempt from WP:V? Niteshift36 (talk) 22:22, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
8. Even something that looks positive can be potentially damaging if false. Existing processes have been failing here for years, we need something new. Mr.Z-man 23:46, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
9. This proposal conflicts with the verifiability policy. It's an encyclopedia. Don't put any old crap into it just because you kinda remember hearing about it somewhere. Go back, check your sources, then cite them. If you don't do that then you're not writing an encyclopedia, you're just inflicting your hobby on everybody, --TS 01:59, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
10. This is a ridiculous suggestion, as Cool Hand Luke said, there's no way of knowing unless you're God. — Coffee // have a cup // ark // 04:31, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
11. Oppose. This seems to be broadening the existing policy on attack pages without providing a clear definition of the proposed replacement. If a clear and unambiguous definition of "controversial" were proposed, we'd have something to look at. As it is, I think is too vaguely worded. Anaxial (talk) 12:48, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
12. Oppose based on wording. It's not always easy to define what is contentious or controversial. Existing policy with respect to attack pages seems to cover this ground sufficiently. -- Scjessey (talk) 15:25, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
13. Oppose While in complete accord with the basic tenets of "orderly functioning processes", it's the controversial and contentious part that is too ambiguous. Editors will still be in dissagreement. The last sentence is clear enough. I suggest you leave it at that (in which case I would support)--Buster7 (talk) 21:18, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
14. I agree wholeheartedly with Tony Sidaway. Angus McLellan (Talk) 21:52, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
15. Agree with the preamble, but not what follows. Isn't it painfully obvious now, if it was not before, that unsourced BLPs are controversial and contentious? Vassyana (talk) 05:59, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
16. oppose per Tony Sidaway. Pete.Hurd (talk) 06:13, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
17. Oppose, problematic content should be immediately removed, all other content should be sourced or removed after a reasonable time. It's better not to have a number of articles than to have them in such a poor state for years and years. Tagging them as unsourced and then letting the Wikipedia editing process work isn't really a solution, until the kickstart last week the backlog was only growing. We have no deadline that states when Wikipedia has to be complete, we lack hundreds of thousands of articles on notable subjects anyway: to have a few thousand extra lacking articles is not a major problem. Fram (talk) 08:38, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
18. Oppose. Runs completely contrary to the ethos of sourcing. We have something like 1000 new biographies every month without sources (I think). The existing processes aren't functioning in an orderly manner. Quantpole (talk) 20:28, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
19. Oppose. Hand That Feeds got it exactly right. Especially when it comes to BLP, it must be verifiable! VernoWhitney (talk) 18:44, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
20. Exactly the kind of thinking tha got us into this mess. --TS 17:15, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Comment

• Controversial or contentious material with no appropriate references should be sourced, but if that is not reasonably possible, then it should be removed. SilkTork *^YES! 20:31, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
• Support in theory, but "controversial" is rather in the eye of the beholder (until controversy arises, of course). Rivertorch (talk) 07:55, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

1. The notability requirement is absolutely not a consensus among editors, in spite of what the WP: pages say. It may well be the most contested "rule" in wikipedia. Every editor who has worked on an article that has been deleted by "non-notability" criteria alone is an emphatic vote against the notability requirement. Anyway the problem is not articles on non-notable people; it is defamatory material in biographies of *notable* people, which often have many refs.

Users who endorse this summary:

1. Aymatth2 (talk) 13:39, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

• Comment - As a sorting system I endorse the idea in principle. However, it's complex, so it should not consume years of debate over its possible implementation. page hit stats are a major consideration for the ranking.--Kudpung (talk) 12:52, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Users who oppose this summary:

1. Too complicated. Besides, I think each of them should be treated with equal preference. ThemFromSpace 20:40, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
2. The formula: "Negative: Number of days since creation, number of days since last edit" assumes that Wikipedia articles are never finished :) Aarghdvaark (talk) 12:16, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
3. I agree with Themfromspace - this is too complicated -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 15:56, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
4. Oppose. To complicated . But feel free to create a list on a user subpage for voluntary use by those looking for biographies to improve.
5. Oppose. Per above. Too complicated. BLPs can't be assessed like mathematical formulas. -FASTILY ^(TALK) 23:23, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
6. Oppose – Disagree that older articles should be considered less important to fix than newer ones. To provide one example, I recently added some cites to an article on a champion race car driver, whose page was created in January 2005 and tagged since December 2006. It also hadn't been edited in three months. Presumably the article would have finished well down on such a scale, when it was clearly on a notable subject and deserved sourcing efforts. Giants2008 (27 and counting) 00:49, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
7. Oppose. I think some variation on this formula sounds like a decent idea for a bot/script to use to rank things, but not for actually tagging them. VernoWhitney (talk) 18:49, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
8. Oppose. Number of edits and time since last edit have nothing to do with quality, correctness, importance, whatever. Besides robots often touch articles automatically. Ditto for number of incoming links. Anyway the problem is not "unsourced" articles, not articles about "non-notable" people, it is false information in biographies of *notable* people — which usually contain plenty of refs.
9. Strongly Oppose - I think that problem with this proposal is that at certain times there will be certain subjects that are more likely to edited than others. Specifically, when someone’s name makes it into the news or an event occurs. Therefore I think the main problem is that there will be editors who spend their time trolling through wikipedia looking for older articles to delete, but there is unlikely to be many editors seeking to update those articles. Wikipedia will then become a "what is relevant today" source, rather than a unique source that covers subjects over a broad period of time. Academia in general shares many of the same problems as wikipedia. There are certain subjects that are in vogue and people write about them and then they go out of vogue and hardly anyone touches them for decades. Also, the problem with wikipedia is that most of the sources are internet based. I maintained a website daily from 1996-2001 that was most link based and I can say from that experience that roughly 30% of all links went dead per year, even those to well sourced sites such as the BBC or NYtimes. Thus if we start deleting articles based upon how many links are dead then we are creating a near certain formula to delete most articles, except the most edited over time.David Straub (talk) 17:12, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Comment

• My proposal was obviously either not well-worded or was dumb. I did not mean a bot would make a decision, just that it would make an ordered list that could help editors focus on articles in the WUB (Wikipdia Unsourced Bio) pool with common characteristics. Presumably some of the articles are sort of trivial, will never meet standards and maybe should be weeded out. Others are perhaps not well sourced, but seem to have useful content, a lot of interest, and are worth an attempt at salvage. Two other editors have identified other criteria: how many time are the pages viewed, which indicates public interest, and which pages have links to external sources that indicate they may have been tagged incorrectly, or that they were improved after the tag was placed but the editor did not remove the tag. All articles need review. Mechanical sorting may speed up the process. The essence of the proposal is to develop mechanical tools the can assist editors in the clean-up process. Aymatth2 (talk) 03:12, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
• You don't need anybody's permission to make this list. Please feel free to do so. --TS 17:17, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Users who endorse this summary

1. David Gerard (talk) 16:17, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
2. I'd accept a special flavor of prod as part of my proposal above. Exact number of days is not critical. Also, include a {{NOINDEX}} magic word in that template. Jehochman ^Brrr 16:20, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
3. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 16:26, 21 January 2010 (UTC) - adding: 2 days is too short, 5 days, I would say that no more than 500 articles be tagged at one time, strictly by a bot. Prods be removed (for mistagging by bot or for resolved when sources added) or articles deleted (after the 5 days, by hand, not by bot, again to find mistaggings), if there are less than 100 left then (and only then) the bot should refill the cat to 500. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 16:31, 21 January 2010 (UTC) Adding more: I would also suggest that human tagging should be discouraged, and that hand mass-tagging should be treated as a form of disruption as well, just to keep the situation handleable. {{NOINDEX}} suggestion of Jehochman is indeed a good one, though for those 5 days not really necessary (in the very first 5 days, the majority of the other thousands will be indexed, so it does not make a difference). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 16:48, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
4. Good enough. Hipocrite (talk) 16:29, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
5. As with Jehochman's proposal, this seems like a good way to satisfy both those who want to see process and those who want to eliminate the risk of unreferenced BLPs. keɪɑtɪk flʌfi (talk) 16:33, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
6. Agreed, subject to Beetstra's suggestion that the period should be 5 days, and the bot's activity rate-throttled to something that humans can follow (perhaps a couple of hundred proposals/deletions per day?) Jehochman's idea of {{NOINDEX}} tagging is good too. -- The Anome (talk) 16:41, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
7. This works too, for the same reasons as Jehochman's proposal. The crucial factors are that any deleted article should not come back without sources and the PROD tag must not be deleted without sources being added. A separate template has merit due to the different conditions. Guy (Help!) 17:01, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
8. Setting a deadline is a good thing. Editors should no longer be able to camp on unsourced BLPs, doing nothing but preventing deletion. Sχeptomaniac^{χαιρετε} 17:44, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
9. Partial endorse, but the time spent will need to be much longer than 2 days. Not everyone works full time on Wikipedia. The current 7 days is appropriate. I can work very fast at sourcing, but I cannot work that fast. If they have been here for years, why the hurry? It's enough of an improvement that we do get to them promptly. Shortening the period is biasing against being able to source. And we need to remember that the authors of the older problematic articles are in most cases no longer active. DGG ( talk ) 17:45, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
10. Fine by me. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 17:53, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
11. Equal preference to Jehochman's proposal, also with the suggestion that any disagreement about the quality of the sourcing should lead to an AfD discussion.  Sandstein  17:59, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
12. I support this, but I think we need at least 5 days. Lots of editors (myself included) don't edit on weekends or for several days in a row if there are RL issues at play. I also think we have to work slowly through the list - nominating 50k at once for this special prod is not the right solution, because we won't be able to fix many in that timeframe. Karanacs (talk) 18:09, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
13. Works for me. Lara 18:12, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
14. Fine by me. I think 5 days would be reasonable. This system and template would work with Hochman's proposal, and/or NJA's clarification below. JamieS93 18:20, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
15. Endorse with the already stated caveat that two days is far too short. Especially if someone goes on a tagging run that creates a large backlog for an editor or project to handle. Resolute 18:21, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
16. Endorse variation on a good theme - but wait period should be 1 week, especially if failure to source means deletion rather than incubation. Better with incubation as an option than deletion - but hey. Rd232 ^talk 18:25, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
17. Agree with Rd232. All proposed deletions other than some (but not all) speedy's were recently (in the past few months, anyway) changed to be one week, to allow time for consideration. If the period were 5 days, addition of any legitimate source should stop the procedure for at least one additional week. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 18:53, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
18. I'd support this on the basis of confirming that unsourced BLPs can be deleted. Spartaz ^Humbug! 19:11, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
19. Two days is a bit too short for me, but overall I can agree with this. NW (Talk) 19:55, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
20. Two days is too long in my opinion, but I can still support this idea. JBsupreme (talk) 20:27, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
21. Agreed but no, 5-7 days for old articles and near-immediate/speedy for new unsourced articles, and article processing is done on a set schedule over the course of a few months in conjunction with a real effort to improve the articles or userfy / incubate them. - Wikidemon (talk) 21:02, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
22. Cirt (talk) 21:09, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
23. Endorse. Two days is being nice. If we limit this to a thousand a day, we could get done in a reasonable amount of time; i.e. two months. Jack Merridew 21:28, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
24. Support especially for new article because new editors need to be reached soon after they write the article so they don't repeat errors in sourcing. And it needs to be clear that the prod tag can not be removed. I like the red stop sign idea for during the time the article is on site and unsourced. FloNight♥♥♥♥ 21:35, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
25. Endorse. Two days is being nice but that's a minor detail as long as we get the ball rolling. Vyvyan Basterd (talk) 21:42, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
26. Absolutely. See my comments on MZMcBride's proposal. Vassyana (talk) 21:52, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
27. For the same reason Jhochman's proposal works. Viridae^Talk 22:04, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
28. Two days might be good for new articles, but for older ones where the creator is gone, 5-7 is better. Some of these have been sitting around unsourced for years, another couple of days won't be that bad. Mr.Z-man 22:12, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
29. per z-man---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 22:47, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
30. Kevin (talk) 23:30, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
31. This is a good idea, too. I endorse it. --TS 00:19, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
32. Can work well with Jehochman's proposal above. Casliber (talk · contribs) 00:53, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
33. -- RP459 ^Talk/_{Contributions} 01:29, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
34. Reasonable and sane - Alison ^❤ 03:48, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
35. Agree, reasonable and sane. Pigman☿/talk 03:55, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
36. Endorse, but unsure about exact time limit. Flatscan (talk) 05:03, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
37. A very good idea - Peripitus (Talk) 05:26, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
38. Another more sensible, yet still teethy, approach than deletion on sight. --Mkativerata (talk) 06:20, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
39. Good idea, I like that it does not corrupt the existing prod system. I would suggest more than 5 days, at least 7, perhaps 14(after all it is a time to look for sources). Chillum ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 15:39, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
40. I like this idea. I think 2 days is too short as well but that is not a deal breaker. Normally I would quote WP:BUREAU as a drawback, but in this case we have a serious problem which has come to a head, and if it takes a new solution to be a really good solution, so be it. Baccyak4H (Yak!) 15:47, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
41. Works for me. Any halfway sensible, halfway workable proposal is better than where we are now, I'm not fussy. This one isn't bad at all. ++Lar: t/c 16:28, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
42. I also support this, although it appears the 7-day option is more likely to find consensus. Well-thought out, David Gerard. Cool Hand Luke 16:50, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
43. I could go with this if done in conjunction with other ideas that would encourage editors to work on the article. If it can be identified as falling into an area covered by a wikiproject, it's more likely to find editors willing to try to save it, and maybe an animal shelter could be set up for the rest before they get put to sleep. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 17:40, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
44. Support as sensible. But... it's a good idea, essential really, to contact relevant projects too. Not only are their members more likely to 'care', they often have access to specialist literature to help with the sourcing, and can provide language help with non-English sources. Voceditenore (talk) 19:00, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
45. Support. If this happens, the tag should specify that reliable sources are needed.Bali ultimate (talk) 20:35, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
46. Support. I could live with this. 2 days is plenty of time, especially since many of these have had months, even years without anyone caring enough to add them. Why the big concern? If it was that important, where were you for the past year? Other things seemed more important you say?....yeah, that's kind of the point. Funny how an article can go years without a single source....throw a PROD or AfD tag on it and all of the sudden, someone cares about it.Niteshift36 (talk) 22:26, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
47. Support. At least it gives a chance for the article to be improved on. Instituting a "kill on sight" method I think would only cause more problems (due to public reaction) than it would fix. Tabercil (talk) 23:23, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
48. Support a special speedy prod could be an ideal way to deal with these -- Collectonian (talk · contribs) 23:51, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
49. Support. Bsimmons666 (talk) 02:37, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
50. Endorse the creation of the BLP-PROD template, but with the same rules as a regular prod. Otherwise, seems like a reasonable solution. --Jayron32 06:44, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
51. Endorse A good way of ensuring the article either improves or is removed –Megaboz (talk) 15:34, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
52. Sounds good, but I think 5 days would be more reasonable. Something along the lines of b:Template:Impending Doom, perhaps? --SB_Johnny | ^talk 23:57, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
53. Conditional Support - I endorse a BLP type PROD, but I strongly feel that 2 days is just simply not enough time for sources to be gathered, especially if 50,000 BLP's are all PROD'd within the space of a few days, we just won't have enough editors or time to gather sources and what was originally intended to be a rather large cleanup turns into a mass article extermination. 7 days is too long IMO so I'd say 5 days, so support the PROD idea but let's make it longer than 2 days please. Jeffrey Mall (talk • contribs) - 02:18, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
54. Brambleclawx support. However, I feel 5 days, and maybe even 10 days, would be a better time. 17:37, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
55. We can quibble about the amount of time to be allowed - I would favour rather more than a week, perhaps a fortnight - but the general principle seems to me to be the correct one. Angus McLellan (Talk) 21:53, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
56. Looks reasonable to me. Brambleclawx 01:10, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
57. Endorse A nice compromise between the proposals of MZMcBride and jehochman--the solution that goldilocks !voted for.Yilloslime ^T_C 05:11, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
58. This seems good, and would mean less biting in cases where it's impossible to tell between an A7-able mess and a good article where the author is going to add the other half after her lunchbreak. As others have said above, for an article that's not obviously negative in tone we might allow more time. Pseudomonas_(talk) 13:15, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
59. Conditional support, with 5 days rather than 2. I'd be happy with MZMcBride's original "deleted on sight" proposal, but there seems to be considerable demand for a slower approach, and this should allow some time for salvage on what few articles deserve it. The {{Impending Doom}} template suggested by SB_Johnny looks like a good model, but it should be specific to BLP articles so that this mode is not conflated with regular normal deletion procedure; ideally this should be considered a termporary procedure to get over the 50K article backlog, after which normal AfD process should return. / edg ☺ ☭ 15:35, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
60. --PinkBull 19:00, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
61. Support Two days is a bit too short, but that can be tweaked out later. The rest is a good idea. ThemFromSpace 20:42, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
62. Support, but would prefer a 5–7-day limit. It's worth noting that not all unsourced BLPs are created equal: one about a prominent speaker on a hot-button issue is more of a problem than one about an obscure (but notable) history professor at a tiny university in the middle of nowhere, and there shouldn't be as much urgency about the latter, assuming that those BLPs are accurate. I think that there are more non-contentious BLPs than people would believe.. Dabomb87 (talk) 04:09, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
63. Support, but agree with the editors above me that 2 days is too short, 5 days is fine. Freikorp (talk) 07:07, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
64. Something like this.--Scott Mac (Doc) 01:06, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Users who oppose this view

1. Strongly oppose Many, IME experience most, unsourced BLPs are both accurate and non-contentious, and are sourcable, some with more work than others. Many were created by relative newcomers who did not know why or how to add sources, many were created before the use of inline citations become common, when EL sourcing was normal. To delete these without a serious attempt at sourcing, or at least an individual review, is to discard good information, thereby harming the project, without any corresponding gain. Moreover to apply the same rules to newly created articles will simply WP:BITE, further restricting the influx of new editors on which the project ultimately depends. A very very bad idea. DES ^(talk) 04:16, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
2. Two days is way too short. Even with five days, this would remove any unsourced BLP regardless of merits. With no throttling, the PROD queue will fill with hundreds, even thousands, of unsourced BLPs. --Enric Naval (talk) 06:12, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
3. Wikipedia has no deadline. 2 days is too short. 5 days is fine. Think of it this way: if 2 days is short enough for it to have no large negative impact, what are the chances that someone would come by and NOTICE the article is up for deletion? Not high. ηoian ‡orever ηew ‡rontiers 08:00, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
4. Two days is a crazily short period - have supporters actually done such source finding work? It can take thought and time in hard cases. On the order of 1000 per day would completely overwhelm current resources and result in the deletion of vast quantities of our Long Tail of articles, our most valuable in toto.John Z (talk) 08:34, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
5. Sensible proposal, but is too case specific, as it assumes that content is not malicious or biased. To protect living persons, all unsource articles should to be deleted. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 09:59, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
6. Two days is too short. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 12:28, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
7. Two days is too short for any less active contributors. I hold fears of how bitey this might be. I would support if this were closer to 5 days. --Shirik (Questions or Comments?) 12:37, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
8. Per Zed-man. Happy with 7 days for existing articles, speedy deletion for new unsourced bios after the date when we inform new article writers that bios must have sources. ϢereSpielChequers 13:36, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
9. Oppose I like the idea of PRODing, however, two days is just too short for my liking, as said above. This would not be enough time, especially for the less active contributors, to fix up an article. ~SuperHamster Talk Contribs 15:51, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
10. Oppose - The would be good except for Wikipedia's slow death by loss of editors and editing. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 16:05, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
11. I like the principle but 2 days is far too short a time- it's entirely conceivable that anybody notified of this would not have time to make improvements, especially if they were templated at a weird time in their time zone. It also risks being very bitey, as mentioned above, of new editors, who may not know how to put references in. I also think there needs to be more consideration given to userfication or incubation of articles on notable, verifiable subjects which just lack sources. HJ Mitchell | fancy a chat? 17:50, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
12. Ridiculous. Inventing a new level of of prod is a step backwards and as pointed out is actually missing the real BLP problems which mostly are not unsourced BLPs but BLPs used disparagingly with sources. -- Banjeboi 20:28, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
13. Oppose. This is essentially the same statement as that of MZMcBride above. AfD runs for 7 days for a reason, so there's no reason to nuke from orbit non-contentious material. Having said that, CSD G10 is interpreted too literally by some admins, who refuse to delete and even restore the full text of un-sourced biographical stubs that are "only" 25-50% negative. A negative BLP statement in an unsourced stub should be red flag sufficient for a G10 deletion. Pcap ping 20:46, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
14. Most of the problematic BLPs cited in favor of deletions are from a time when WP:V was not enforced and references were not often used. The people who created them did not do so in bad faith but more to the point, they are mostly not active anymore. Sending someone, who created an article in 2007, a message now that the article has 2 days to live...how many articles do you think will be saved? 0.1%? Less? Those articles exist for years now, there is absolutely no reason to start rushing now instead of taking some time to fix them. Regards SoWhy 22:05, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
15. Partly oppose - I love the idea of a different BLP-ProD template, but I hate the 2-day waiting period before deletion by a single sysop. 7 days' minimum are needed to avoid a mass slaughter of perfectly good, but unreferenced BLPs. Bearian (talk) 00:58, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
16. Strong Oppose 2 days is nowhere near long enough. Ray^Talk 01:32, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
17. 2 days is WAY too short. Most people are not on Wikipedia every day. --ThaddeusB (talk) 02:46, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
18. Jehochman's approach is better. Getting BLPs right is not a synonym for deleting them, particularly when they can be recreated. — Carl (CBM · talk) 04:36, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
19. Ill thought-out and 2 days is nowhere near long enough for non-daily editors to notice.--Michig (talk) 11:44, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
20. Ruslik_Zero 13:26, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
21. Oppose A few days doesn't make that much difference. Why something that has been ignored for years has suddenly become something that needs special measures today is not explained.--Peter cohen (talk) 23:38, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
22. Oppose - seems too drastic to me. I'd rather give people longer to provide sources; this is rarely ever a problem that urgently needs to be solved. Robofish (talk) 03:07, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
23. Davewild (talk) 08:43, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
24. Can support elements of this proposal but 2 days is ridiculous. There is no deadline here. What harm will an extra 5 days do? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:31, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
25. OPPOSE: As others have said, two days is simply ridiculous. AnonMoos (talk) 12:40, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
26. Oppose. Fine in principle, but two days is too short. Anaxial (talk) 12:49, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
27. Oppose - better options on the table. -- Scjessey (talk) 15:27, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
28. A silly approach to a poorly identified problem. Prodego ^talk 18:46, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
29. Oppose as per above, you had me until two days Purplebackpack89 ^{(Notes Taken) (Locker)} 23:22, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
30. Oppose, difficult for people to know what is happening to articles that they care of. If they have the weekend off, lots of articles could be deleted in the meantime. Geschichte (talk) 08:46, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
31. Oppose Against the Wiki spirit. Too much urgency. RomaC (talk) 15:58, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
32. Strong Oppose - What's the rush? Why only 2 days? Far too impulsive and only just short of the original "blitz the lot proposal" by a tiny margin. Big Red Stop Sign on this proposal... --Jubilee♫clipman 23:04, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
33. Opposing all proposals to mass-delete unreferenced BLPs solely for being unreferenced. See my comments on FloNight's view for why I do not see unreferenced BLPs as being a good target. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 02:59, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
34. Oppose Unsourced BLPs are accurate most of the time. Assume good faith. --Dc987 (talk) 09:20, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
35. Although this would slow down the attrition of the encyclopedia by a few days or a week it does not really address the real problem with is libel included. In my experience more referenced articles get libel added than un-referenced ones, it depends more on the ratio or trouble makers to checkers, rather than whether the source was included. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:46, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
36. Oppose Concept of 2 days is something for which the unintended (I trust) consequences are likely to be quite ruinous to WP. Collect (talk) 11:37, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
37. Oppose - There are people who do not log regularly. Make it 2 weeks to one month and you got it right. Setreset (talk) 14:12, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
38. Oppose Two days is not enough time to allow an article's creator time to see the 'prod'. 5 days is nearer the mark, but in that case, why not just allow unsourced BLPs to go to AfD - if the closing admin can see that searches for sources have been unsuccessful, it can be deleted. If searches for sources have been successful, and they have been added to the article, then it can be kept (or just the few unsourced statements can be removed). -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 16:02, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
39. Oppose Even if you believe that unreferenced implies unacceptable, which I don't, two days is far too short a warning. Certes (talk) 22:26, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
40. Oppose. Good idea, but a bit harsh. -FASTILY ^(TALK) 23:24, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
41. Oppose Times too short, method too sharp. Hobit (talk) 21:00, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
42. Oppose – Not against the general idea of gradually prodding uncited BLPs, but this proposal offers no precautions against mass prodding at a given time. Also agree with the others that a two-day period before deletion is too short. Giants2008 (27 and counting) 00:19, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
43. Oppose. Nobody would bother to create new articles if such a proposal was implemented.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 10:23, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
44. Oppose. I like a BLT-PROD, but there has to be a reasonable period of time (like a month?) before deletion after an article is flagged so that any interested parties can take the time to fix it. Not every editor works every day, week, or even month. VernoWhitney (talk) 18:53, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
45. Strongly Oppose - The problem with this proposal is that the older articles are much less likely to generate positive edits and are more likely to generate the attention of those seeking to delete them. Wikipedia will then become a "what is relevant today" source, rather than a unique source that covers subjects over a broad period of time. I think the notability tags as they are now is sufficient and deleting unsourced controversial materials, rather than the entire article, is sufficient.David Straub (talk) 17:19, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
46. Oppose - Seven days is the minimum time period that I am willing to support, with fourteen days to a month being my optimum. If a page has been lying about for years the impact of giving a little bit longer will be negligible. Camaron · Christopher · talk 12:44, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Comment

• Jehochman's approach, above, is more considered. I understand the viewpoint behind this, though Jehochman covers more angles in more detail, and better reflects current procedures which have been developed through considered discussion and actual use over the years. What is needed is just a little more effort to pay attention to problem areas. We don't need to change our process, just advertise the issues and the solutions more vigorously. SilkTork *^YES! 20:38, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

1. Oppose five days is ridiculous, the editors who could care for that bio will never have a chance to see the prod. One year is more like it. Ayway the editor who wants to delete an unsourced BLP must first make a minimum effort to find a reliable source. If that succeeds, he can delete any material that is not supported by the source. He can list the article for deletion only if that attempt fails, or the entire aricle gets deleted. "Non-notability" is not a valid excuse to delete a BLP; that "rule" never was a consensus in any sense of the word.
2. Oppose - 7 days minimum. Bearian (talk) 01:15, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Users who endorse this summary

1. (There was an old copyvio template that worked like this, wasn't there?) henrik•talk 16:24, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
2. Maybe it doesn't even need to "hide" the contents, just warn the reader? Much like, you know, {{unreferencedblp}}. Jclemens (talk) 16:26, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
3. Good enough. Jclemens suggestion is not good enough. Hipocrite (talk) 16:29, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
4. That might work too. Is it possible to include something for noindexing in that template (which would be presumably a new version of {{unreferencedblp}})? And make it BRIGHT RED FOR DANGER? - David Gerard (talk) 16:31, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
5. (Partial endorse) Per my suggestion elsewhere - give a header saying "This article has not been reviewed for accuracy." Or thereabouts. Collect (talk) 16:33, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
6. Yes, hide the contents. This prevents potentially damaging information from being live on Wikipedia, while preserving existing text for future use. Ucucha 17:00, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
7. Endorse, but consideration must be given to what is a reasonable time for the large number of older articles, which could be many months. DGG ( talk ) 17:39, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
8. Endorse. I suggest setting a time limit of one month prior to deletion. Not everyone is around on Wikipedia every day or every week. I'd like to add that the introduction of bogus material, either unsourced, or based of sources that actually do not support the content of the article, seems to be a much bigger problem.  Cs32en Talk to me  18:23, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
9. Endorse hiding, noindexing, and penalties for removing the tag without adding sourcing, but without a rapid deadline. If it's good enough for potential copyvios (which could clearly cause damage to Wikimedia), it should be good enough for potentially potentially potentially (repetition intentional; there are about that many steps between unsourced and libelous here) libelous material. I think a month should be adequate if hidden, if no more than 1000-4000 articles are in the queue at a time. However, it should be clear that this does not exempt the article from deletion for being an attack page, or exempt it from conventional AfD discussion suggested by an editor who actually looks at the article and believes the person non-notable or that the potential notability is not from reliable sources. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 19:08, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
10. I support templating but we should have a deadline and a schedule, and also not hide articles in the meanwhile - that does temporary damage rather than permanent damage. Better yet, have a flag so that the template functions in two ways, keeping but flagging the good ones, and disappearing the stinkers. In fact, I'm going to go ahead and create a template as a trial balloon. These articles have been around for months and years. It won't kill anyone to keep them around for three more months while we improve them. - Wikidemon (talk) 21:06, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
    1. Done! - {{UBF}}. If you set the parameter "action=collapse" it makes a collapse box. With "action=hide" the text is completely hidden except when editing. See Ninety-nine (owarai) for an example of the new template in use. It still needs some work but what do you think? - Wikidemon (talk) 23:21, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
11. I see the potential for something like this being added for drafting of WP articles from articles on other language wikis. Sometimes the material is not ready for main space. But we can not let it be a long term solution or a place for attacks or contentions material to remain. FloNight♥♥♥♥ 21:42, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
12. Sorta; this is Flagged Revisions after a feature request: an article draft that is visible to editors but not to anonymous readers or Google. Jack Merridew 22:16, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
13. --99of9 (talk) 00:52, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
14. Support ηoian ‡orever ηew ‡rontiers 08:00, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
15. This is a sensible alternative to deletion, and a good back-up proposal in case the community rejects the PROD or BLPPROD proposals. This would not be my first choice, though. Firsfron of Ronchester 08:38, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
16. This is definitely a better answer than deletion. the wub "?!" 11:03, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
17. Sounds pretty good. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 16:07, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
18. A clever and reasonable compromise, and for sure better than deletion: it allows BLP concerns to be mitigated but does not remove information for improvement. I like it! --Cyclopia^talk 17:55, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
19. Support. This is essentially an implementation of "flagged first revision", and it's what we do for some copyvios. Pcap ping 20:55, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
20. Support Good sense. The time allotted must be long enough to ensure that competent editors have inspected and given up on the article, per DGG, many months will be sometimes appropriate.John Z (talk) 21:53, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
21. Weak support per DGG. I am against mass deletion all at once. This has to be done in a methodical fashion, not by eliminating 60,000 articles in two days. A feature to "hide away" or "no-index" such BLPs might work. Bearian (talk) 01:03, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
22. Weak support Has some merit, but needs work. Theres some good ideas here that need fleshing out, and should be carried through in any discussion of how to deal with the BLP problem, but not the only/best solution on the board. --Jayron32 06:46, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
23. Weak support Looking to presevre content rather than lose it is an important principle.--Peter cohen (talk) 23:40, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
24. A very sensible proposal, if the technicalities can be worked out. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:32, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
25. Weak support Really needs to be thought through how this would work in practice, but it seems an idea worth pursuing.Anaxial (talk) 12:53, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
26. Weak support as part of the overall strategy. -- Scjessey (talk) 15:30, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
27. Support By the time the things go through speedy, speedy is contested and declined, then through AfD, the content can be all over the mirror/clone sites. Hide until "cleared" would be great. Esowteric+Talk 18:18, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
28. Support Not sure how technically feasible this is, but I support the overall of hiding content until its verified. ThemFromSpace 20:44, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
29. Support I like this idea - but would need to have a fixed limit (perhaps a month) from when the template is added until it can be deleted if still unsourced. -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 16:08, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Oppose

1. See the draft statement by ArbCom for the reason I oppose any solution that does not enforce referencing of all biographies by a defined deadline. No ambiguity. What looks uncontentious may in fact be problematic, we cannot know without reliable sources. I ave handled OTRS tickets, I can think of several examples of text that looked quite innocuous but actually wasn't. Temporary history undeletion for referencing on request may well be a good idea, but I think we should be entirely unambiguous that the default outcome for any unreferenced biography - and ideally any unreferenced article, it's not like WP:V and WP:RS are new - is removal. Guy (Help!) 17:52, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

   Adding a deadline to any proposal that is adopted is a good idea. Providing a schedule, even better. If the BLP cleanup is a success we can repeat the experiment on a far broader scale with all articles. - Wikidemon (talk) 23:19, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

   The Arbcom has consistently failed to set reasonable deadlines for its own activities (remember the Agenda?) the wub "?!" 11:02, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

2. Putting these nonnotable unreferenced BLPs in a hidden state will not help them. Most of these potentially harmful BLPs have surely been sitting for years. How long is "fairly long"? Reywas92^Talk 01:02, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
3. An unsourced article is contentious. What is or is not contentious beyond this definition is a matter of WP:IKNOWIT, which is not a rational basis for inclusion. Henrik's proposal is sounds good in theory, but can of procedural worms in practise. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 10:04, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
4. Oppose Unfortunately "unsourced, but likely uncontentious" is totally inadequate. What do you mean by "likely uncontentious"? Whatever you mean the word "likely" indicates that you may be wrong, and out of hundreds of articles for some of them you will be wrong. It is not acceptable to allow libellous material to remain on the grounds that we do not know exactly which ones are libellous and which are not. The onus is on the writers of an article to demonstrate' that it is not libellous. If a libellous article about me appeared I would not regard it as a defence that "the article was hidden, which means a member of the public couldn't see it unless they clicked on a link marked history first", and neither would any judge. JamesBWatson (talk) 12:27, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
5. Weak Oppose This proposal has some merit but the language needs to be significantly tightened, as well as a firm deadline proposed. If we are going to build another process, let's make sure it is really good. Baccyak4H (Yak!) 15:53, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
6. weak oppose. Unworkable by itself. There may be some good ideas here worth further investigation after one of the more effective proposals gets put in place, though. ++Lar: t/c 16:30, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
7. Oppose. This is basically a deluxe incubation of sorts which in itself is a mass prodding. We do need to coordinate a clean-up as if that would actually appease that small minority but again these unsourced BLPs are generally not the zomg! alarming problem this entire dramatic episode has spelled it out to be. -- Banjeboi 20:31, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
8. Oppose - I don't think hiding unsourced articles from general readers is the answer, given that they're probably the group most likely to provide sources. Robofish (talk) 03:08, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
9. Davewild (talk) 08:44, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
10. You can tag, but you shouldn't hide. Prodego ^talk 18:45, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
11. If it were this or nothing I'd support this, but not otherwise. Angus McLellan (Talk) 21:57, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
12. Tagging with no fixed deadline for deletion and pretending to hide (or otherwise disclaim) content (e.g. collapsing, as does {{Unsourced BLP flagged}}) is simply another way to indefinitely postpone work on articles—more foot-dragging WP:BURO that solves nothing. Material in article space that is viewable to non-admin editors is viewable to all readers, and (as Gavin Collins says above) unsourced articles are automatically contentious.
    That said, NOINDEX would be a feature worth adding to the fixed deadline templates proposed above. / edg ☺ ☭ 03:09, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
13. Oppose...flagged revisions much? -FASTILY ^(TALK) 23:34, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
14. Oppose. I agree that there needs to be a reasonable period of time between when an article is flagged and deleted (if not fixed), but hiding the contents do noone good. If the editors are such that they didn't know how to reference the first time around they probably won't do well with hidden text-templates, and if they do know how to work Wikipedia then they can un-hide the hidden text anyways. VernoWhitney (talk) 18:59, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
15. Oppose I am not certain how "hiding" this will work, since anyone who visits the site could be a potential editor, thus who is it hidden from and how can they find it and know to edit it?David Straub (talk) 17:22, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Comment

1. I like this idea as it would preserve some good content (and yes, some of those unsourced BLPs are fairly extensive well written articles on quite notable people - just whoever wrote them was sloppy/didn't know about sourcing). But I cannot support it as written for the following reasons: 1)The copy vio template which hides article text is still around and occasionally used... and often misued (to essentially blank an article somebody doesn't like on the pretext that there is a line or two of copyvio text in it). I can anticipate that a similar template can become a POV pushing tool. As long as there's policy and awareness of this potential problem this should be ok. 2) The use of the copy vio template has not led to a significant improvement in the copy vio problem on Wikipedia (which is probably second only to the unsourced BLP problem) mostly due to understaffing. Fixing copyvios is hard, mundane, work and not that many editors have lined up to assist Moonriddengirl in this endeavor. Potentially same thing could happen with templedted BLPs - and the problem won't get fixed. To address this I think Henrik should specify a definitive time limit for how long an article can stay behind a template before it's deleted. 3) The scope of the problem is huge; 50000+ unsourced BLPs behind a black template means Wikipedia's gonna end up looking...very embarrassing. Wait, that may be a plus if it actually leads to improvement.radek (talk) 23:15, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
2. The only thing that stops me from wholeheartedly supporting this proposal is the idea behind WP:NODISCLAIMERS. We shouldn't need to hide the material, because every single page has a link to a disclaimer that says in big capital letters: "WIKIPEDIA MAKES NO GUARANTEE OF VALIDITY". ...but what do you think? ~BFizz 04:14, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
3. The idea is definitely better than deletion. However neither proposal addresses the problem, which is NOT "unsourced BLPs" or "BLPs of non-notable people". The problem is malicious statements in the biographies of *notable* people. Those articles usually have refs, and if they don't the prankster will simply add some. --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 05:39, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
4. "Hidden" depends on the behavior of the individual brower. The issue is whether we should permit unverifiable content to remain in articles, contrary to our policies. Obviously we shouldn't, even though (sadly) we have turned a blind eye for nearly a decade. --TS 17:21, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Users who endorse this summary

1. ϢereSpielChequers 16:57, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
2. This process seems much more fair. Standards were quite different 2 or 3 years ago. DashBot notified me recently that 2 of the very first articles I ever created (in 2006) were unreferenced BLPs, and I promptly fixed them. Let's at least give these types of methods a chance to work for older articles while tightening the noose for newer ones. Karanacs (talk) 17:01, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
3. Endorse except for the flaggedrevs bit, which I disagree on. All unsourced BLPs have equal weight and we should be progressing towards a speedy criterion to take care of incoming ones. ThemFromSpace 17:13, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
4. Endorse in principle, but we must take account of the fact that authors of the older articles are mostly no longer available, and it will be necessary to recruit sufficient people to work on them to process them properly. DGG ( talk ) 17:41, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
5. Endorse. The backlog has been declining steadily for some time now thanks in part to DASHBot and these efforts should be given time. There are probably a pile of unreferenced BLPs that no one will ever (be able to) source so deletion may be needed in the future. Jogurney (talk) 17:48, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
6. Mostly endorse. Apart from Flagged Revisions (which I'm undecided on), WereSpielChequers' summary is spot on. Unsourced BLP as a speedy criterion makes so much sense that it's almost amazing why it hasn't been suggested before. Hmm, after a bit of looking, the similar proposals Wikipedia:Speedy deletion criterion for unsourced articles (User:Dominic in October 2006) and Wikipedia:Proposed deletion process for unsourced articles ([[User:Seraphimblade in February 2007) were rejected, but I think that narrowing the scope to BLPs is likely to gain at least a rough consensus, especially in the curent climate. -- ArglebargleIV (talk) 17:51, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
7. Well stated, indeed. Jim Miller ^{See me | Touch me} 20:26, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
8. Endorse, except that I am neither in support of nor oppose flagged revisions at this time. DES ^(talk) 21:14, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
9. in my private capacity as an administrator, not as a representative of the Foundation - Philippe 22:18, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
10. --Kmhkmh (talk) 23:42, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
11. -- Quiddity (talk) 23:53, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
12. --Cybercobra (talk) 00:52, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
13. Right on. Resolute 00:55, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
14. Endorse the bit about the new speedy deletion criteria in particular. I worked on a bunch of bio articles on little known African rebel leaders five years ago or so and it seems draconian to have bio stubs that have been pretty much untouched, outside from bots, be mass speedy deleted because a citation system that wasn't invented when the articles were created isn't in use to solve a BLP concern that wasn't on anyone's mind at the time. No such excuse now. - BanyanTree 02:50, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
15. Seems the optimal approach except it may take longer than a few months to properly source all the worthy BLPs. FeydHuxtable (talk) 10:42, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
16. A responsible and thoughtful proposal. What is being obscured in much of the discussion over deletion is that the circumstances under which removing access to troublesome content from readers (i.e. deletion) are very different from those under which that access ought to be denied to editors.  Skomorokh  22:20, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
17. Support in concept per FeydHuxtable, Skomorokh, et al. Bearian (talk) 01:05, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
18. Very Weak support as with Henrik's ideas above. Theres some nuggets of wisdom here, but this is unworkable as a full solution. I like the idea of keeping these ideas on the table going forward, but this is not a complete solution to the problem. Some interesting stuff here.--Jayron32 06:48, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
19. A lot of common sense here. The BLP issues need to be fixed one way or another but they don't need to be fixed in a few days. More effort should go towards preventing new unsourced BLP articles from being created, while fixing the backlog, which is already underway, takes place. --Michig (talk) 11:49, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
20. Support Some good thoughts. And yes the proposal needs fleshing out, but if we accept the principle that what has been wrong for years can be fixed in months rather than needing to be fixed today, then we can spend a little time sorting the mechanism.--Peter cohen (talk) 23:44, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
21. Support concept - lots of good stuff here. -- Scjessey (talk) 15:33, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
22. I don't agree w/ everything being said, but it is a voice of reason in a sea of chaos. Rami R 21:48, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
23. Support: Whereas I share the concern that there is some crud on this wikipedia, I feel that the other proposals are two much of a hair trigger, this proposal resolves my concerns Purplebackpack89 ^{(Notes Taken) (Locker)} 23:18, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
24. Brambleclawx sounds logical. 15:10, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
25. Support concept per Michig; neutral regarding flagged revisions. cmadler (talk) 20:15, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
26. Support concept - Lots of sense. Setreset (talk) 14:16, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
27. Support -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 16:13, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
28. Strongly Agree"We also need to remember that Wikipedia is a very complex system, and one should always be cautious about making multiple simultaneous changes to complex systems as the interactions between different changes can be unpredictable."Zenexp (talk) 01:24, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
29. Agree. Bearian (talk) 01:16, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
30. Support - A sensible proposal. Camaron · Christopher · talk 12:48, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
31. Support sensible approach. Johnbod (talk) 12:57, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Users who oppose this summary

1. WereSpielChequers's proposal appears reasonable, but is too bureaucratic. Why invest so much time and effort in unsourced articles which are deletion candidates? Better to get rid of them in the quickest way possible, and focus on improving more marginal articles. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 10:12, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   If you spot an article that meets the speedy deletion criteria then tag it as {{A7}} or whatever deletion criteria it meets, this RFC is for tens of thousands of unsourced or poorly sourced articles that many editors don't think meet the deletion criteria. ϢereSpielChequers 13:23, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

2. I agree with much of what WereSpielChequers says, but I think the problems mentioned above of taking too much time and work and being bureaucratic are too serious. In fact I would go so far as to say that the amount of work would be so great that in practice the task would never get completed. Also, some of the articles in question are libellous. We do not know exactly which ones, which is why there is problem, but a proportion of them will be. Do we have the right to knowingly allow libel to remain for six months (an optimistic estimate, I think)? Also the onus is on writers to provide sources: if we make it clear that from now on failure to do so will result in quick deletion we will get less unsourced biographies written in future, whereas if we convey the message that such an article will be put through a long and very likely incomplete process that may eventually lead to deletion, then we will continue to get loads of them. JamesBWatson (talk)

   In less than a year as an admin I've done over 3,900 deletions, many of them of unsourced libels. If you spot an article that meets the criteria for {{G10}} tag it as such - I may even be the admin who deletes it. This proposal is not about changing the way we treat articles that already meet the A7 or G10 criteria. ϢereSpielChequers 13:23, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

3. weak oppose. Unworkable by itself. There may be some good ideas here worth further investigation after one of the more effective proposals gets put in place, though. In particular the older articles have been problems longer and shouldn't get passes. Do this for new articles while also doing something about older ones. ++Lar: t/c 16:33, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
4. This is much more holistic and realistic and thus likely to have some constructive ideas. Realistically however a new BLP bot misses the mark in that often we don't know if a new article is a BLP and even non-BLPs can easily contain BLP violations as they disparage people in context of the subject. In this light a basic new article bot - even if temporary - to place an unambiguous note about BLP issues including (i) BLPs that have no sources are likely to be deleted and (i) any statement about a living person that is seen as controversial or negative must be sourced reliably might be a good option. -- Banjeboi 20:38, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
5. Even in six months rather than now, I don't think instituting a speedy deletion criterion for unreferenced BLPs is the right answer. Robofish (talk) 03:11, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
6. Davewild (talk) 08:46, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
7. Weak Oppose. I like the idea of working backwards and at least slowing down the influx of new unsourced BLPS, but I don't think it would work with new editors. I also simply disagree with the delete on sight proposal. Maybe this is what you meant by proding in batches, but there needs to be an extended effort to get interested parties to clean up the older articles since not every editor works every day or week. VernoWhitney (talk) 19:38, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
8. Weak oppose Kudos for a very sensible and right-minded presentation. However I cannot endorse because I believe that this variant, like the original proposal, is barking at the wrong tree. An editor who finds an unsourced BLP must make a minimal effort to look for a source and then delete any test that is not supported by the source. Only if that effort fails, or all content gets deleted, should the article be listed for deletion. Deleting the article (speedily or through some process) without making this effort is counterproductive; it will be a bit less work for the deletor, but much more work for other editors. --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 05:57, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
9. Death to crap. The sooner the better. --TS 17:24, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Users who endorse this summary

1. NJA (t/c) 16:53, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
2. Sure, except that I'd rather stick to 5 days. JamieS93 18:13, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
3. Cirt (talk) 21:10, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
4. Support all three points. The latter two points are compatible with most any PROD/CSD style approach proposed here and are wise additions. Vassyana (talk) 21:55, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
5. Makes sense. Vyvyan Basterd (talk) 21:58, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
6. Feasible. Casliber (talk · contribs) 01:10, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
7. Well, I very nearly support this, but I don't agree with reducing the time limit. Wikipedia:Deletion of unreferenced BLPs has a version of the "special prod" idea which is thought out in more detail. JamesBWatson (talk) 12:42, 22 January 2010 (UTC) I have now read that proposal more carefully, and I think there are serious problems there. JamesBWatson (talk) 15:59, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
8. This seems similar to David Gerard's proposal above. This is a good idea. I note as well that the assertion about the acceptance of such a template is not obvious to me, although that does not affect my opinion of the proposal itself. Baccyak4H (Yak!) 15:58, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
9. I'm not fussy, this would be a fine set although there may be other sets that garner more support. ++Lar: t/c 16:36, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
10. Support, as I did with David Gerrard's proposal above. The {{Impending Doom}} template suggested by SB_Johnny looks like a good model, but it should be specific to BLP articles so that this mode is not conflated with regular normal deletion procedure; ideally this should be considered a termporary procedure to get over the 50K article backlog, after which normal AfD process should return. / edg ☺ ☭ 15:53, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Users who oppose this summary

1. This seems like kind of random commentary. It includes a false assertion "(Everyone seems to agree we need a new BLP PROD template" - in point of fact, many have disagreed with this, instead calling for deletion-on-sight), an incomplete proposition ("reduce the time from five days"... to what?), a repeat of common comments to Jehochman's proposal (that the new tags have their own name, categories, etc.), and a new (that I know of) edit filter idea that could simply have been added to Jehochman's or most other proposals here. I actually agree with that final idea, but it doesn't need to be proposed here since it's not a solution/approach to the overall issue under discussion, it's just a minor technical detail that can be fixed at the filters page. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 12:38, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
2. Some editors only edit at the weekends or on a particular day of the week. We have a longstanding tradition of running non-urgent things over 7 days to ensure we include such editors. A problem that has built up over years cannot be suddenly turned into something that has to be run in less than a week - and if it were then much of the response would be botched. Only when editors come across articles that genuinely meet the speedy deletion criteria should deletion take less than a week. ϢereSpielChequers 13:31, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
3. No, I would go with Jehochman, but expand it to 7 days, and place a limit of 100 or 200 per day for ProDs. 2 or 3 or 5 days is not enough time to find the vandalism, find the gems to rescue, cut the cruft, etc. That short time would overwhelm the system we have right now. I agree with the idea of a BLP-ProD template, but I am certain that this is not yet the consensus here - more discussion is needed. Bearian (talk) 01:09, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
4. per SMcCandlis and others --ThaddeusB (talk) 02:50, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
5. Oppose As long as ther problem is being addressed, there is no need to rush things. --Peter cohen (talk) 23:46, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
6. Reducing the time is both a bad idea and unnecessary, in my view. It shouldn't be any less than seven days, let alone five. Robofish (talk) 03:13, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
7. Davewild (talk) 08:47, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
8. No need to reduce the time. 7 days is already quick enough. — Martin MSGJ · talk) 09:36, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
9. Oppose. No, the time period proposed by Jehochman seems reasonable to me.Anaxial (talk) 12:57, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
10. Oppose because of abbreviated time period. -- Scjessey (talk) 15:35, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
11. Oppose due to the time constraints. ThemFromSpace 20:46, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
12. Oppose jehochman's proposal is too agressive, to shorten the notice period? No way.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 23:21, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
13. Opposing all proposals to mass-delete unreferenced BLPs solely for being unreferenced. See my comments on FloNight's view for why I do not see unreferenced BLPs as being a good target. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 03:18, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
14. Oppose - They need more time, especially those working in good faith and unsourcing because of lack of knowledge are likely to log in infrequently. 2 weeks to 1 month. Setreset (talk) 14:19, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
15. Oppose I think more time is requireed than proposed here. -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 16:16, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
16. Strong Oppose. As Setreset said, many of these articles are the children and interest of infrequent editors. There must be a longer time span available to notify and engage them in cleanup. VernoWhitney (talk) 19:42, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
17. Strong oppose. Five days is ridiculous, interested editors will hardly have a chance to see the prod. Anyway those articles are not the problem, deleting them will waste far more work by the Wikipedia editor community than fixing them. --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 06:04, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
18. Strongly Oppose I agree with VernoWhitney. There seems to be an army of deletionists on wikipedia who go after certain articles, while the editors who create articles are much less likely to visit the site and defend/improve the article. I've made several thousand edits since 2005 and created a fair number of articles, but because of my studies, I may not edit wikipedia for a few months. I just think this is a bad ideaDavid Straub (talk) 17:26, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
19. Oppose - Seven days is the minimum time I am willing to support. Camaron · Christopher · talk 12:51, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Users who endorse this summary

1. Cirt (talk) 21:10, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
2. Casliber (talk · contribs) 02:20, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
3. Yeah, the potential for bot and AWB damage here is enormous. Another related issue is that innumerable articles actually have multiple sources, just in the wrong place and not used inline with <ref>. See for example the vast majority of Category:Snooker biography stubs' articles. Almost all of them cite at least an official World Snooker bio page and often another one, but do so in the "External Links" section because the handful of authors who created most of these stubs (or copied other stubs's formatting in creating new ones) seem to have wrongly assumed that "References" have to be print publications and that online sources have to go in the EL section. I see this, of course, outside of snooker bios all the time, I just use that as an example because of the problem's prevalence in that category. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 12:42, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
4. I also like DG's proposal, and this commentary here goes without saying. Since it was said, I fully support it. ;) Baccyak4H (Yak!) 16:00, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
5. seems sensible Voceditenore (talk) 19:11, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
6. Evidently.  Sandstein  19:49, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
7. Strongly support. You rule, The Anome! Bearian (talk) 01:12, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
8. Agreeing with the part that many of the BLPs tagged as unsourced are not, actually, unsourced. Note that the existence of an external link causes an article not to be "unsourced". — Carl (CBM · talk) 04:38, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
9. Strongly agree with the comment that "numerous articles are currently tagged as unsourced BLPs when they have references." I was notified that several articles I worked on were "unsourced." When I went to edit them, I found only one that was truly unsourced (though I added a few references to some of them by way of emphasis). Carl's comment that "the existence of an external link causes an article not to be 'unsourced'" needs to be emphasized here; some of my articles had "External links" rather than "References" so I changed the section headers, but why should I have needed to? -- BRG (talk) 16:09, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
10. Support. Okay. / edg ☺ ☭ 15:54, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Users who oppose this summary

1. Oppose Agree in general that bots shoudl be supervised, but do not agree that a bot (or any other new mechanism) is necessary. Unsourced BLPs are not the problem, the problem is malicious statements in *sourced* bios of *notable* people. There is no easy cure for that, and proposals to speed up the deletion of "undesirable" BLPs will merely waste a lot of work, make wikipedia worse, drive newbies away, and irritate old edtors. --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 06:10, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
2. Oppose on the grounds that opposed David Gerard's proposal. I think the main problem is that there will be editors who spend their time trolling through wikipedia looking for older articles to delete, but there is unlikely to be many editors seeking to update those articles. Wikipedia will then become a "what is relevant today" source, rather than a unique source that covers subjects over a broad period of time. David Straub (talk) 17:30, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Users who endorse this summary

1. Enric Naval (talk) 19:27, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
2. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 19:34, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
3. Fully agree. DES ^(talk) 21:15, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
4. Agree. Sometimes the best & simplest solution is a lot more work than what appears at first glance. Which I've suspected has been the case with BLPs all along. -- llywrch (talk) 23:03, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
5. Jheald (talk) 23:48, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
6. Absolutely. Nsk92 (talk) 23:57, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
7. JoshuaZ (talk) 00:04, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
8. Resolute 00:57, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
9. Casliber (talk · contribs) 01:11, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
10. JohnWBarber (talk) 01:44, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
11. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 02:20, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
12. Jclemens (talk) 02:55, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
13. BanyanTree 03:06, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
14. Xxanthippe (talk) 03:16, 22 January 2010 (UTC).
15. --Cybercobra (talk) 06:03, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
16. I can't believe we're agreeing on a matter involving deletion policy, but here goes. :) Orderinchaos 06:30, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
17. John Z (talk) 07:02, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
18. It's just common sense. In spirit with llywrch above, we have a lot of answers already and it's hard to connect the dots when rushed to action like this. ♪ daTheisen(talk) 07:15, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
19. Agree with that the deletion en masse is a reckless solution. Better to "hurry up slowly". Sjakkalle (Check!) 07:18, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

    More reckless than unsourced biographies? I don't think so. Look at this week's breaching experiment for an idea of why reckless is not really the term to apply to deletion of unsourced biographies. Guy (Help!) 17:39, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

    I am not arguing for unsourced biographies. Sjakkalle (Check!) 10:12, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

20. FeydHuxtable (talk) 10:43, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
21. Well said. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 12:47, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
22. This is the best comment up to this point. Baby and bathwater. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 16:12, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
23. Nancy ^talk 17:53, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
24. Somewhat agreed. Nuking all the old unsourced BLPs without even looking at them would be vandalistic. But they do need to be looked at within a reasonable period of time and be either sourced or deleted. And speedy deleting new BLPs that are created unsourced in spite of a big flashing editnotice - no objections there.  Sandstein  19:48, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
25. This matches my experience as well, some articles i can readily find sourcing for - others not so much but someone else could. This is how Wikipedia works, we each bring to the table different skills, knowledge and experience and generally improve articles effectively. Meanwhile I had to report to the BLP board just yesterday a very sourced BLP that was again highjacked for soapboxing. Clearly old ignored BLPs is not the biggest or main BLP issue by a longshot. -- Banjeboi 20:43, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
26. Well put - agreed on all counts. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 22:34, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
27. DGG, you are my hero. Ikip ^{Frank Andersson (45 revisions restored):}_{an olympic medallist for f**k's sake} 23:13, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
28. Sole Soul (talk) 23:56, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
29. Strongly support per SMcCandish, Peregrine Fisher, Benjiboi, Ikip, et al. Nicely worded, DGG. Bearian (talk) 01:17, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
30. Ray^Talk 01:33, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
31. Exactly. Hobit (talk) 01:53, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
32. Strongly endorse - my thoughts exactly --ThaddeusB (talk) 02:54, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
33. Agree entirely.--Michig (talk) 11:51, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
34. Didn't I already support? --Cyclopia^talk 14:15, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
35. Yes. While many of these articles will be unsourced because they are non notable and thus unsourceable', PRODding without even trying to look for sources is reckless. I came across Nadine Garner yesterday which had been unsourced for three years. 20 minutes later, I'd found enough coverage from the Google News archives to verify most of what was in the article. HJ Mitchell | fancy a chat? 14:27, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
36. Strong support Power.corrupts (talk) 20:23, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
37. Support As long as serious efforts are being made to largely fix the problem by the end of the year, there is no need to take precipitous action this month.--Peter cohen (talk) 23:50, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
38. Aye. Chubbles (talk) 03:00, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
39. I don't disagree on any particular point. Robofish (talk) 03:16, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
40. Yes. Summary deletion or drive-by PRODding without taking a few moments to try and source something is lazy to say the least. Tony Fox (arf!) 03:47, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
41. Davewild (talk) 08:49, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
42. NBeale (talk) 14:48, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
43. No doubt -Arbitrarily0 ^(talk) 15:17, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
44. Prodego ^talk 18:44, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
45. Agree A specific warning template for unsourced bios would be useful, however.  Cs32en Talk to me  19:19, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
46. See Emil Constantinescu. Pcap ping 19:21, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
47. Exactly. --cjllw ʘ TALK 08:06, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
48. Agree - clearly we should work on articles rather than delete them summarily --Jubilee♫clipman 23:14, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
49. 'Agree. - campaigns of mass deletion are reckless. They are a high cost / low benefit method of accomplishing this important work, maintaining the integrity of BLPs, in terms of their effect on the community.Bryan Hopping ^T 06:08, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
50. Having an automated process for deleting these sorts of articles means that one person with little motivation to source can do a lot of harm to the project, even if they are following procedure in good faith. Whilst unsourced and untrue biographies are harmful, permanently losing unsourced but correct ones is not much better. WFCforLife (talk), Help wikipedia. Make the pledge. 06:50, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
51. Support. decltype (talk) 06:59, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
52. Agree - DGG's view appears to me overall the most sensible one. Love dance of scorpions (talk) 07:08, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
53. Support --Vejvančický (talk) 12:26, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
54. Agree -- Seems the most sensible approach. And of those who have voted on the various proposals, this one appears to have the closest to overwhelming support of any proposal. I'll add, the number of prods and AfDs where the nom has apparently failed to spend five minutes checking for sources on google suggests that that is serious problem. Not an issue to be tackled here, but at some point -- perhaps those noms with the worst record in this regard should have their ability to nom articles for AfD tempered.--Epeefleche (talk) 12:33, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
55. Support - Setreset (talk) 14:22, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
56. Support -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 16:43, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
57. Support - Tomas e (talk) 21:00, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
58. Support Best summary so far, though I've several more yet to read. Thank you for recognising that most Wikipedia users are not admins or even regular editors. Certes (talk) 00:05, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
59. Support Well said, DGG.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 10:23, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
60. Support There's no point in mass-deleting notable (and often uncontroversial) articles when sources can be found. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 02:09, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
61. Support A very sensible approach that encourages greater cooperation and participation among editors. I also agree with Cs32en that a specific warning template for unsourced bios could be a useful tool.--JayJasper (talk) 05:40, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
62. Support Very well said. Deleting an article (or proposing it for deletion) must be the last resort, and before using it the proposer must have tried to source it and/or clean it up. Any proposal that streamlines deletion without requiring this prior work will harm wikipedia, drive new editors away, irritate old editors, and in the end waste far more time by everybody than the work saved by the editor who triggered the deletion. --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 06:21, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

    Support, though similar to other views it is realistic regarding editor involvement and offers comparison to existing PRODs. ♪ daTheisen(talk) 11:07, 30 January 2010 (UTC) ...Been so long I apparently forgot I already supported this above, 18. ♪ daTheisen(talk) 11:12, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

63. Support Hut 8.5 16:34, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
64. Endorse FlowerpotmaN·(t) 02:56, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
65. Support - I agree that summary deletion by admins is best avoided. Camaron · Christopher · talk 12:55, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Users who disagree with this summary

1. I agree with Guy. If an article can't even verify that the person exists in the first palce, that is is reckless to assume it can be sourced at all. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 10:24, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
2. I don't agree that "For old articles,a procedure of summary deletion is particularly reckless". The older the article the more chance there has been to find sources, and so the less likely that the article is notable. Also I think the time and work required to check everything would be excessive, and in practice the job would not get done. Unfortunately, despite the collateral damage to good but unsourced articles, the only realistic solution is the Gordian one of deletion by default. If anyone can quickly produce sources, then good, but if not, we cannot hang on forever. In many cases the retentionists have had years to find sources, and now that they see a real threat of deletion they start asking for more time. Yes, a summary deletion process will lead to loss of some good but unsourced articles, but the alternative of putting in the vast amount of work to check every one of them is, unfortunately, not feasible. JamesBWatson (talk) 12:53, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
3. Strongest oppose. 1) Quality review of articles is a necessary part of maintaining Wikipedia. Once articles have been tagged as needing significant clean up then deletion may be a reasonable outcome for a subset of them if no improvements are made. 2) Quality review and improvement processes on Wikipedia are too time consuming and ineffective resulting in a significant number of poor quality articles. 3) Most people do not spend a significant amount of time working on improving articles of low interest. This lack of attention has left a large back log that needs to be addressed. 5) Many of the poor quality articles of low interest were written in no more than a couple of minutes by one person with few improvements over years time on site, so a deletion discussion that take hours of many editors time to complete does not make sense. 6) Improvements in the deletion process to make them more efficient and effective in managing poor quality articles is needed now. This could include speedy deletion for a subset of articles. 7. Speedy deletion, prod, and Afd needed to be improved so they enhance and not hinder content improvement. FloNight♥♥♥♥ 16:49, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

   Are you suggesting that all articles which are tagged as unsourced should be deleted? That also appears to be the logical extension of deleting all unsourced BLPs - how do we know that the articles 10th Tactical Squadron, 12th Archeological Congress, Aphnaeus schistacea are accurate, with facts that are verifiable? (They are just 3 I randomly chose from Category:All articles lacking sources). Should they be deleted too? -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 16:34, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

4. we should we should work on them, at the pace at which we can manage it - At the pace we can manage it, without significant deletion (or at least the threat of deletion to get people to work on articles they might have an interest in), we'll catch up with the backlog in about ... never. Mr.Z-man 21:48, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
5. Oppose - this is status quo. I agree that it would be nice to source all the current unsourced BLP's, but wishing doesn't make it so. (And I'm not convinced we have enough editors interested in sourcing old articles to prevent the backlog from increasing, much less shrink it). --Bfigura ^(talk) 00:27, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
6. Oppose - basically, DGG and his supporters simply want to keep things the way they are. Whatever the outcome of this time-wasting RFC, the status quo will change. UnitAnode 16:41, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

I hardly want to keep the status quo: I want to change what we do very radically. i want people to take responsibility for their actions, by having some basis for them. That will be an enormous change for some people. DGG ( talk ) 18:47, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Users who are neutral about this summary

1. I agree that there are drawbacks arising from any proposed summary mass deletions, although one may or may not think it "reckless". That said, in the long run the project would still be better off, although less harsh options exist which are significantly better. Baccyak4H (Yak!) 16:04, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
2. Support the bit about proper deletion habits, oppose the lack of any timetable mentioned. We need to get on this quickly, and the problem is beyond the scope of our current deletion procedures. ThemFromSpace 20:50, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
3. Death to crap. --TS 17:26, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Comment

• If the sum of what DGG is saying is that we should make the effort to first source something before deleting it, then Jehochman's view, above, encapsulates that, and the appropriate process (which we already have in place) for handling the situation. I support any thinking that is about dealing appropriately with contentious and problematic material, which is to first of all make a reasonable attempt to ensure that the material has appropriate sources. SilkTork *^YES! 20:53, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
• I agree with SilkTork that Jehochman's proposal takes care of this (mostly), but (as I indicated above) I think a longer time scale (a month or more) is required in order to actually see the community as a whole work on these articles as opposed to just the editors who are here every day. VernoWhitney (talk) 19:52, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Users who endorse this summary

1. Resolute 17:59, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
2. Yes, but there does need to be a system that results in more or less speedy deletion if a BLP is not fixed within a reasonable time. We slowly seem to come around to the consensus that eventualism is not an entirely adequate approach to the problem.  Sandstein  18:04, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
3. I think many editors are overwhelmed by the scope of the problem. I'd be much more likely to work on articles in the topics that I already have some knowledge of - I just don't always have a good way of figuring out which articles those are. This would be a good first step, and, as Sandstein says, should be for a predetermined amount of time (2 months?). Karanacs (talk) 18:06, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
4. Ucucha 18:12, 21 January 2010 (UTC) Yes, and ideas like this are why it is a bad idea to continue deleting those articles now. We've probably achieved a consensus that unsourced BLPs have to go in some form or another, but we're still getting ideas as to what would be the most efficient way to achieve that.
5. Endorse (though I feel you're failing to recognise that an unsourced BLP is an affront against God, and that any attempt to institute a process to tackle them is WP:CREEPy process wonkery. Flamethrowers are go!). Bah. Rd232 ^talk 18:22, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
6. Yes. henrik•talk 18:54, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
7. Enric Naval (talk) 19:24, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
8. Endorse. This will work (Wikipedia:FOOTY/unreferenced BLP is an example). Jogurney (talk) 20:54, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
9. Fully endorse DES ^(talk) 21:18, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
10. Endorse. I believe Resolute's statement touches on a tension which has existed in the Wikipedia community for some time -- at least as long as the Userbox wars back in 2005/2006. On one side are those who consider themselves "clued", & consider anyone who disagrees with them insufficiently informed about Wikipedia & treat them with a lack of respect. On the other are those acting in good faith yet have a disagreement based on information or experience that the first group lacks, but aren't being listened to. Things -- & Wikipedia -- change. Except for one example (that one on Siegenthaler), I am unfamiliar with another biographical article about a living person which is unduly problematic. Yes, there are errors -- in some case serious errors -- in this group of articles, but are they any worse or more common than the errors in other groups of articles? Making a single solution fit all cases will only harm the content of Wikipedia in the long run as well as discourage the contributions of new volunteers -- another problem which we do not need to worsen. -- llywrch (talk) 22:50, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

    I missed the userbox wars. Were they anything like the nonfree image wars and the trivia/in popular culture wars? - Wikidemon (talk) 23:16, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

    Similar in some ways, but the most important difference was that, in the case of nonfree images, trivia/in popular culture, & this instance, the anti-party did have a point whereas the presence of userboxes posed no serious threat in any way to Wikipedia. They're still around, Wikipedia is still around, but there are long term project members who think userboxes was the Beginning of the End. Some of whom are participating in this RfC. -- llywrch (talk) 04:22, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

    Oh, I thought the beginning of the end was the penning of WP:POKEMON. - Wikidemon (talk) 04:47, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

    No, the actual beginning of the end for Wikipedia was when the PTB allowed me to create an account. ;-) llywrch (talk) 21:40, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

11. Jheald (talk) 23:51, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
12. --Cybercobra (talk) 00:54, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
13. Support The proposals that call for deletion are only one step of the process. We need to find a way to figure out which articles are worth keeping and which should be deleted. Mass deletions out of the blue is not the proper course of action.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 02:58, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
14. Seems like a good idea. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 03:18, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
15. Indeed - good faith way of moving forward. Agreed with Balloonman's comment in this section also. Orderinchaos 06:29, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
16. Especially agree with what's Resolute's said below as well as above in this section. Having a useless list around isn't going to solve the problem. The vast majority of editors willing to work on cleanup are either only willing to do it for specific topics, or they're already doing it as part of some other process like new pages patrolling. Projects exist for a reason. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 13:01, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
17. Qualified Support I do not agree with some of the characterizations and commentary, but if someone wants to build such a tool I can see it being helpful if done well. I reemphasize a very important point made in passing: this solution need not be mutually exclusive to some other proposals. Baccyak4H (Yak!) 16:09, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
18. Support - This does remind me of Betacommand. What a fiasco that was. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 16:15, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
19. Per Balloonman Nancy ^talk 17:56, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
20. exactly, I suggest however that a heads-up unsourced BLP bot run every 10 days with the 10-20 oldest listed or something similar to keep the work chugging along and yet not overwhelm. -- Banjeboi 20:47, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
21. Sole Soul (talk) 23:58, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
22. Jclemens (talk) 00:47, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
23. Bearian (talk) 01:18, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
24. Well put. --ThaddeusB (talk) 02:57, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
25. — Carl (CBM · talk) 04:39, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
26. Ruslik_Zero 09:13, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
27. Agree. There's a lot of heat around with editors stating that nothing has been done about the problem for years, but I am only recently seeing meaningful attempts to inform editors and projects of unsourced BLPs that need attention. Let's have a few months of trying to find a constructive solution before just zapping these articles. Notifying all projects of articles would be a good start. --Michig (talk) 11:56, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
28. Support There is nothing wring in fixing something that has been wrong for years over several months rather than acting recklessly now just to be seen to be doing something.--Peter cohen (talk) 23:53, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
29. Yes. Paul Erik ^{(talk)(contribs)} 02:21, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
30. Prodego ^talk 18:43, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
31. Rami R 21:55, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
32. Support -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 16:46, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
33. Wow this is a great proposal, nice job! 22:09, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
34. Support. This sounds perfect (in conjunction with some additional changes). I mostly work vandal patrol and come across recent changes where I'm unsure about where I just ignore them because I have no interest in the topic to check whether it's a legitimate change or not. VernoWhitney (talk) 19:58, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
35. Mostly support. Sensible and right-minded words. I only disagree with the assumption that the original proposal was trying to solve a real problem. But unsourced BLPs are harmless. BLPs of non-notable people are harmless. One thing that harms wikipedia is malicious statements in *sourced* bios of *notable* people; but I don't believe that any change in procedures will help us with that. Another thing that harms wikipedia is deletion of valid contents, whether sourced or not: it makes wikipedia poorer, it drives new editors away, it irritates old editors, and in the end it wastes far more work by everybody than it would have taken to clean up those articles. --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 06:34, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Oppose

1. There is no false dichotomy here: unreferenced biographies are a violation of policy and have been for years. I will support triage, working groups, limits of x hundred per day, WP:PROD, all sorts of compromises around implementation, but if we have learned nothing else in the last three and a half years since WP:BLP was made policy it's that any solution that requires people to bring shrubberies before allowing deletion of unreferenced BLPs is functionally indistinguishable from mandating that nothing is done. There are too many. There have been lists of unreferenced BLPs around for literally years, the inclusionists have always had the option of fixing them, they didn't. If the policy had been on display in a locked filing cabinet in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "beware of the leopard" I might have some sympathy, but that's not the case. Drama? Shame. It was time. Fair use is different, it is ambiguous and subject to judgement. Sourcing is binary: either sources are cited or they aren't. This process does not cover poorly-referenced biographies, that is for AFD. Guy (Help!) 20:35, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

   "unreferenced biographies are a violation of policy and have been for years." this is simply inaccurate. It may be that they are about to becoeme agaisnt policy, but lets not rewrite history here. DES ^(talk) 21:18, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

   Amen. Hobit (talk) 21:34, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

   Unreferenced contentious biographies are a violation of policy, not simply unreferenced biographies. That said, the false dichtonomy I refer to is the either/or of "we have to live with it" or "we have to delete everything". I am not proposing the former, but rather looking for a way to avoid the latter. Ultimately, I expect that a large majority of such articles will be deleted. But answer me this: are we harming Wikipedia by giving projects the chance to clean up the mess? Like FU images a couple years ago, this issue is coming to a head. But, we've existed in this situation for three years. What harm is there in giving editors the opportunity, even if under the gun, of fixing at least some of the mess? If we save only a small percentage of BLPs by giving each project a manageable listing of problem articles under their bailiwick, then we have done this project a far greater service than the indiscriminate deletion of all problem BLPs would constitute. I am not proposing that we ignore the problem any longer. We cant ignore it any longer. I am proposing that we give editors the tools to find a solution that does not involve summary execution. Resolute 21:50, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

   WP:BLP,WP:V,WP:RS. Guy (Help!) 21:53, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

   No shit. Don't play the rube, Guy, I already know you aren't very good at it. You know full well I am talking about ways to clean up the mess. But yes, anyone who's seen you on AN and ANI knows that your favoured solution is destruction. Frankly, in the case of a lot of these BLPs, that is very likely to be the answer. But it isn't the answer for every problem article, and your attempts to stand in the way of rescuing those are worth rescue is counterproductive. Resolute 22:12, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

   And to pointedly respond to your one argument: Yes, lists of unsourced articles have existed for years. Great. Category:Unreferenced BLPs is utterly useless to me, as 99.9% of that category tree involves articles I don't have the knowledge or resources to deal with and offers me no way to sort out articles I can deal with. Unfortunately, we haven't yet gotten one of WolterBot's cleanup listings for the hockey project, while WP:Canada doesn't appear to even be signed up for it. So at present, I do not have a functional list with a scope that lies within my areas of expertise. Give me that, and I can take more direct action on the problem rather than randomly picking articles as I have in the past. Make the creation of that cleanup listing mandatory for all projects (excepting WP:Biography, obviously), and all groups will then have a much better place to start. Couple that with the message that it either gets fixed, or it burns, and we will be much farther on our way to fixing this mess. Resolute 23:37, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

2. Agree with Guy - sooner or later we have to enforce policy. Keeping older unsourced articles on the grounds that enforcing policy will put off new editors ignores the fact that policy exists to empower new editors to create articles in the first place. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 10:33, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
3. I agree with the above comments. We cannot realistically check every article, with or without bots creating further lists. JamesBWatson (talk) 12:57, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   "Too big, don't bother" is the attitude of a defeatist. The simple fact is, we *have* to check every article regardless. Any admin who summarily deletes an article because he sees a template but does not check the article itself needs to be desysopped in a hurry. Destruction through laziness is not a good solution by any stretch of the imagination. Giving projects and concerned individuals the ability to check and fix the few hundred articles within their baliwick spreads the workload and helps reduce the size of the backlog that requires checking and, if necessary, deletion. Resolute 15:16, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

4. Agree with Guy. If not now, when? ++Lar: t/c 16:39, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   You and Guy are representative of the attitude I mentioned in my initial comment: The "all or nothing" view of cleaning up the BLP mess. Outright destruction may be your preference, but I maintain that it is the lazy solution. I have little doubt that a very large majority of these articles will be deleted, and others have proposed methods by which to organize that aspect of the cleanup. However, as should be obvious to you by now, "delete it all and let god sort it out" has no community support whatsoever. The only thing you accomplish by stubbornly hanging onto that argument is to obstruct progress towards a real solution. The community has recognized that deletion is the ultimate result for articles that are not cleaned up and improved, but your knee-jerk opposition to proposals designed to help coordinate efforts to save articles worth saving are counterproductive. Resolute 18:12, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   I suspect you are confused. Review my talk page and then come back. Characterizing my efforts as "knee jerk" shows a profound lack of understanding. There's a problem with BLPs. Deleting unsourced ones won't solve the whole problem. But it's a start. If you're not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. And that's precipitated this action. ++Lar: t/c 20:11, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   The problem with your with-me-or-against-me stance is that you fail to recognize that there are multiple solutions to the issue that can be enacted concurrently. The need to prune low-value, unsourced articles on marginally or non-notable BLPs does not preclude the need to source high-value articles on clearly notable individuals. If your opposition is not knee-jerk, then by all means, please tell me on what grounds you oppose the suggestion that we seek to engage groups that are most likely to help source, and keep sourced, Wikipedia's BLP articles. Resolute 21:53, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

5. Oppose as the false analogy to the Betacommand issue is worse than the false dichotomy noted. The Betacommand issue was never about enforcement of the Fair Use policy, that was a red herring thrown about to mask the real problem, which was refusal to communicate civily and effectively. I too dislike false dichotomies, but this proposal started off on a bad foot by bring up the wrong issue from the start. --Jayron32 06:52, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
6. At least 110% of what Jayron32 said. Angus McLellan (Talk) 22:16, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
7. Death to crap. Four years is enough time for pussyfooting. --TS 17:28, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Comment

• We can start asking WikiProjects and individuals to look over the unreferenced BLPs in their areas of interest right now. I've called for volunteers to spend a few weeks on this here -- JohnWBarber (talk) 22:43, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Users who endorse this summary

1. Power.corrupts (talk) 18:12, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
2. Guettarda (talk) 18:29, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
3. Cyclopia^talk 18:49, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
4. Clearly accurate, but not really helpful. Perhaps we should just delete all articles with unsourced information, including this one. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 18:58, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
5. Enric Naval (talk) 19:20, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
6. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 19:36, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
7. DES ^(talk) 21:19, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
8. yeah. 21:33, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
9. While there is overlap, the problem is throwing out the good with the bad. Unsourced BLP's are not, in and of themselves bad, the challenge is separating the wheat from the chaft. The proposals from the BLP regulars (and now ArbCOM) is that we should throw everything out at one. This is, IMO, not optimal as I suspect that we are going to end up creating more confusion/problems in the long run.---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 22:55, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
10. An article being sourced or not has no bearing on its likelihood to contain or attract libel. Those who are claiming it does are making an exceptional claim without any evidence to back it up. Gigs (talk) 22:59, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
11. --Kmhkmh (talk) 23:39, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
12. Baby + bathwater. -- Quiddity (talk) 23:40, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
13. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:48, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
14. Jheald (talk) 23:55, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
15. Nsk92 (talk) 23:59, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
16. I don't know if there's zero overlap but it is clear that the overlap is very tiny. JoshuaZ (talk) 00:06, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
17. --Cybercobra (talk) 00:55, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
18. Casliber (talk · contribs) 01:14, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
19. I think there is probably a pretty good amount of bathwater being tossed with the babies, so I wouldn't put the matter as strongly as Power.corrupts, but I mildly support the statement. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 01:47, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
20. Jclemens (talk) 02:57, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
21. John Z (talk) 09:11, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
22. Support - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 16:20, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
23. Agreed. There is a certain element of this debate who seem to feel that the best way to clear dead branches is to burn the entire forest down. While that is the simple way to clean up this one problem, it will create namny more. The indiscriminate deleters are looking for the lazy way to "fix" the problem. Their desires are no better than ignoring the problem is. Resolute 15:57, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

    Are you sure you replied in the right section? Baccyak4H (Yak!) 16:13, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

    I did indeed. Thank you for noticing this Resolute 19:43, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

24. Support. This matches my experience with BLPs and BLP issues. -- Banjeboi 20:48, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
25. Sole Soul (talk) 00:00, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
26. Unsourced does not mean contentious every time; just as existence does not mean notability in most cases. Bearian (talk) 01:20, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
27. "The real problem is unsourced contentious info, not unreferenced articles" - Indeed. The proposed "solution" does almost nothing to address the problem. --ThaddeusB (talk) 02:59, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
28. Agree with ThaddeusB. — Carl (CBM · talk) 04:41, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
29. Absolutely - I've seen unsourced BLPs tagged as such, prodded, but the one line of unsourced derogatory material left in, and there are undoubtedly plenty of sourced BLPs that have content that shouldn't be there. The point is being missed.--Michig (talk) 11:58, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
30. Strongly support -- The idea that "sourcing" mitigates "contentiousness" is hard to fathom. One can find sources for the most malicious slanders, while it is hard to find sources for some articles that do no harm to anyone. -- BRG (talk) 16:15, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
31. Tremendously strong support - Quoting Balloonman: "The problem is throwing out the good with the bad". Precisely. What makes it more difficult is that there's so much that passes for "good" at this point. Any wholesale mass deletion must needs destroy an incredible amount of worthwhile information that could be saved merely by adding a source to it. Or is that no longer enough? Will we begin nuking things that have no inline citations, even if there's a source or two at the bottom of the page? There are ways to deal with this problem, yes - wholesale deletion is not among them. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 21:09, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
32. Support Libellous statements as well as stuff that is just plain wrong and harmless to the subject can be found in apparently sourced articles as well as in unsourced ones. It is good that projects are being encouraged to look over their stock of articles, but this campaign doesn't fix the real problem. When are we going to at least move part of the way that de.wikipedia has on managing new problematic content? If we made serious efforts to stop the mess getting bigger, then projects can be encouraged to steadily work through all that is there already and we would be solvign most of the problem for good rather than indulging in gesture politics.--Peter cohen (talk) 00:04, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
33. Broadly agreed, though I wouldn't say there are no problems with unsourced BLPs either. Robofish (talk) 03:21, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
34. Ray^Talk 03:56, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
35. Davewild (talk) 08:51, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
36. Prodego ^talk 18:42, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
37. This is another ploy to give people excuses to delete valuable information from the database. You are dead on, it is the contentious material that we should worry about, not merely referencing.Trackinfo (talk) 18:58, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
38. I don't fully agree with this, but ThaddeusB above puts it right. I did find some contentious statements in unsourced biographies; see my talk page for the kerfuffle when I tried to G10-blank them, and an admin restored in full! But clean-up to a decent article was possible in 2/4 cases. I found far more rubbish in sourced biographies in Wikipedia experience though. It's way easy for someone to transform blah blah blah blah blah blah>ref< to blah blah blah mypov blah blah blah>ref<. Unless you are intimately aware with the reference, or at least have immediate access to it, and you are watching the article, it easily goes undetected. Pcap ping 19:42, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
39. Strong support Hear, hear. TotientDragooned (talk) 22:04, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
40. Agree - The problem is not that they are unverifiable but that they are unverified. Where they remain unverifiable after reasonable attempts, they become AfD candidates anyway. --Jubilee♫clipman 23:20, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
41. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 03:21, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
42. decltype (talk) 07:07, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
43. Support - Well put and the examples provide a good illustration that should be eye-opening. Tomas e (talk) 21:10, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
44. Support Thank you for daring to suggest that this information is useful and should be kept. Certes (talk) 00:16, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
45. Strong support: "The real problem is unsourced contentious info, not unreferenced articles." -M.Nelson (talk) 00:54, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
46. Agreed: as Quiddity, JoshuaZ, and ThaddeusB. Maedin\^talk 07:45, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
47. Strong support and kudos for clear thinking. --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 06:38, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
48. Yup Yup Yup, "The real problem is unsourced contentious info, not unreferenced articles." In other words, Saddam Hussein wasn't the cause of 9-11.--Milowent (talk) 06:02, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Oppose

1. There's no overlap whatsoever between unsourced BLPs and ones with contentious unsourced statements? Given the sheer quantity of unsourced ones, I highly doubt that. Mr.Z-man 22:17, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

   Do you have any evidence? Have prior problems with actual BLP violations had any relation to the article being unreferenced? Can anybody point to a list of prior BLP problem cases, could be interesting to examine. Power.corrupts (talk) 23:35, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

   I didn't say there was a direct relation, just that a total lack of overlap, as you claim based on a non-random sample of 0.04% of unsourced BLPs, was incredibly unlikely. You're claiming that while there's 50,000 unsourced BLPs, not a single one of them has any contentious content. Based on your experiment, I took a random sample of the January 2010 pages (there are over 1200, so I couldn't check all of them), assuming that older articles that had truly defamatory claims were more likely to have been weeded out by now and found a couple questionable ones. Cilia Flores is an article that makes unsourced claims about someone's political views as well as containing unsourced criticism of those views. Mr. criminal, besides being terribly written, claims that he was arrested and convicted several times (though to be fair, it did have a link to a myspace page in it at one point). Mr.Z-man 00:29, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   I would also point out that problematic content is not always obvious. I recall one email to OTRS from a CEO of a company in the UK, who claimed that our article made false statements about him that he was concerned could be damaging to his image. The statements were unsourced (the article itself may have been partially sourced), but unless someone was really familiar with that person or had read the email, it would have looked entirely innocuous (see also JzG's related statements elsewhere on this page and the current ArbCom motion). Mr.Z-man 00:39, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

2. Unrefered content makes a joke of Wikipedia and breaks numerous policies. It is a problem in and off itself and needs to be addressed.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:05, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
3. There is no "alledged 'BLP problem'"; only a BLP problem. I cannot agree with the statement that it's ok to have unsourced bios "because the articles hold no contentious info". They may or they may not, and the best way to find out is by finding sources for the material. Firsfron of Ronchester 08:51, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
4. Unsourced biographies are contentious. What is contentious beyond this is just a matter of degree. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 10:38, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
5. An unsourced anonymous contribution is not an article, at least not in an encyclopedia. And yes, there really is a BLP problem. Kanguole 12:12, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
6. I find the statement "If the articles are deleted there is no gain on the alledged BLP problem, because the articles hold no contentious info" quite astonishing. Are we expected to believe that none of these articles contain unacceptable material? That I do not believe: some of them do. The problem, unfortunately, is that we do not know which ones do: requiring sources is Wikipedia's method of telling which do and which don't. Also "alleged BLP problem"? There is a problem, and we need to discuss the best solution to the problem: denying that there is a problem is not helpful at all. JamesBWatson (talk) 13:04, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
7. I admit there would be losses but completely disagree that there would be no gains, at least in the long term. Baccyak4H (Yak!) 16:13, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
8. the issue is unsourced BLP's what ever the content a pov article is a pov article positive or negative Gnangarra 16:18, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
9. Oppose. This user is confused. ++Lar: t/c 16:47, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   Avoid personal attacks and explain, Lar. --Cyclopia^talk 17:52, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   What were you having trouble understanding this time? ++Lar: t/c 20:13, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   Wow, 3rd grade taunts. He raises a vaild point. Hobit (talk) 01:59, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

10. an unsourced BLP is a contentious BLP. Jack Merridew 23:27, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

    If I claim I find any unsourced statement in any BLP contentious do I get to delete them all? Claiming that someone won a golf tournament is pretty hard to reasonably label as contentious. Hobit (talk) 01:59, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

11. Oppose on the grounds that it is impossible to know what may be contentious or not without sources. As noted by Coren in the arbcom decision, even something as boring as "place of birth" or "birthdate" could be contentious. There are LOTS of ways to damage someone's reputation, and to be an unwitting partner to that is unexcuable just so some private individual with a tenuous claim to notability can have an article maintained about them; especially where we have no assurances that anything in that article is even "right". --Jayron32 06:56, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
12. Strong oppose. The premise of Wikipedia is that non academics can write an encyclopedia because the content is based on verifiable reliable sources. The material in an article without sources is completely unreliable and should either be promptly backed up with sources or removed. The problem with having false, stale, or poor quality content is intensified because Wikipedia is usually a top search result for internet search engines, and the content is often mirrored on other web sites. So there is urgency in verifying the material and removing unsourced or poorly sourced content. FloNight♥♥♥♥ 20:51, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
13. We shouldn't allow unreferenced material anywhere on Wikipedia, even if it is "true". Also, per FloNight. ThemFromSpace 20:54, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

    Does that mean you would support the deletion of the approximately 9% of all articles which are unsourced? -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 16:53, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

14. Oppose. While unsourced contentious info is a worse problem than unreferenced articles, without references how is one to even begin to judge what may be contentious info? VernoWhitney (talk) 20:04, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
15. Death to crap. --TS 17:30, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Users who endorse this summary

1. ThemFromSpace 19:03, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
2. In effect a separate instance of the Incubator. DES ^(talk) 21:20, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

   Quite. To what end? I approve the logic entirely, up to the point of ignoring the existing Incubator. Rd232 ^talk 22:34, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

   Hmm, I figured this was out of the incubator's scope but they can go there if appropriate. My main point is that I would like them all to go someplace away from the public's eye at once and then be let back on a case by case basis. ThemFromSpace 22:50, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

   The incubator is currently for articles where a specific editor has indicated and intention to improve the article, as I understand it. That function might be overwhelmed by this proposal, so keeping them separate but parallel might be a good idea. DES ^(talk) 03:03, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

3. I see some merit in this too. Casliber (talk · contribs) 01:15, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
4. If we must remove them from public sight, then let them be sent to a holding area such as this, so that others beyond the (shrinking and overworked) administrator corps can help resolve them. Jclemens (talk) 03:01, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
5. The fundamental problem is unsourced, unverified claims about living people written by anonymous and unaccountable people on the intertubes and advertised as being factual, accurate and fair entries in an encyclopedia. Automatic move to the holding pen is not a bad idea.Bali ultimate (talk) 13:24, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
6. Strong support, I already started to do this in cooperation with the WP:Article Incubator and the WP:Wikiproject Australia

Users who disagree with this summary

1. Sounds like a proposal to create a entirely new level of bureacracy akin to Purgatory. Maybe we could ask the Jesuits to handle this, so as not to burden our administrators. Giving the last rites before deletion would be an extra benefit. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 10:54, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
2. (1)I agree that this would be an entirely new level of bureacracy. (2) The amount of work entailed in checking every article one by one would be so great that the job wold never get done. I have seen other well-meaning projects to clean up particular classes of articles. Lists have been made, and for a while an group of enthusiastic editors have beavered their way through the lists. The lists are still around, years later, with a small percentage of the work done, and no active work being continued. (3) "Once we have the whole lot protected from sight, editors would then be able to take their time looking for sources" is nonsense. If an editor can see the article to edit it then any member of the public can see it. Maybe it isn't listed on Google, but that doesn't mean that the information isn't public. If a libellous article about me ever appears on Wikipedia and is not deleted as quickly as is reasonably possible I will not accept as a defence "ah, but members of the public had to click on a link labelled WikiProject unsourced BLPs, otherwise they couldn't see it. Nor would any judge. Even if access were restricted to registered Wikipedia users, would I accept "ah, but only about eleven and a half million members of the public could read the libellous material", and other people would have to do something called "registering" before they could see it? Of course not. JamesBWatson (talk) 13:16, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
3. Weak oppose on WP:BURO grounds. However there may be some workable ideas in conjunction with other proposals. ++Lar: t/c 16:49, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
4. Too complicated.  Sandstein  19:41, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
5. Oppose. This is just another form of deletion/prod/incubation, et al. -- Banjeboi 20:49, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
6. Oppose per Lar, Sandstein, and Benjiboi. I agree with Gavin Collins, but not with the tone. Also, we are humans, not bots. Bearian (talk) 01:23, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
7. Oppose - I think this supposed compromise is really the worst of all worlds. It keeps the bad articles around, but in a place where they're unlikely to get enough attention to fix them. Robofish (talk) 03:22, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

• Weak oppose. Seems like a good idea—I'd suggest using Wikipedia:Article Incubator for this—but attempts to move articles to such a space would be met with footdragging drama (just another form of deletion/prod/incubation), so this solves nothing and adds complexity. Anyway, 50K articles moved to such a space would mostly be ignored, not fixed. / edg ☺ ☭ 16:12, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

1. Oppose. Per Robofish. VernoWhitney (talk) 20:14, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
2. Oppose. Good try, but unsourced BLPs are not the problem. While not as damaging as the original proposal, this one still has a significant cost (waste of editor's time) and no benefit. --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 06:41, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Users who are neutral with this policy

1. Such a proposal has significant merit, but the complexity and consequences would be problematic. As there are other proposals adding procedures but which are significantly better, I cannot support. Baccyak4H (Yak!) 16:16, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Users who endorse this summary

1. (me) — Arthur Rubin (talk) 19:16, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
2. If mass deletion does win a consensus, the deleted articles should give clear instructions as to what can be done to restore them. (More than a short blurb in wikispeak). ThemFromSpace 19:26, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

   I was just suggesting that any and all articles deleted in a process with limited review be deleted and stubbed. The details shouldn't have been in my proposal. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 20:34, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

3. Endorse. I don't think we need to encourage editors to use deletion review, so I would leave this part out. People who don't have an account and never have edited the encyclopedia before would probably need a much simpler template: "You may ask for the text of this page at [[appropriate page|this page]]." Also, new editors need to know that they can simply replace the entire template with sourced text. Many would probably hesitate to edit on such pages, so we need to (a) encourage new editors to edit on such pages (b) provide the relevant links to WP:RS, WP:BLP and WP:V.  Cs32en Talk to me  19:47, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
4. Up to a point. I think we should amend the UI text around the deleted article to make the restoration procedure explicit, and we should have a separate subpage of WP:DRV with a template or wizard that allows you to identify the article and the sources which you intend to use to support it. Guy (Help!) 20:37, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
5. Cirt (talk) 21:12, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
6. Agreeing with Cs32en's points. Vassyana (talk) 22:01, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
7. in my private capacity as an administrator, not as a representative of the Foundation - Philippe 22:20, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
8. Also, if (as would be preferable) an article gets moved to the incubator, there should be a note as to where to find it. Jheald (talk) 23:59, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
9. --Cybercobra (talk) 00:56, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
10. Yes, this is a good way of tracking some notable articles which will likely get deleted. An admin can always restore the article for an interested editor on hte proviso of future addition of sources. Casliber (talk · contribs) 01:17, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
11. Agree here. Also I would prefere usification to more experienced editors. Martin451 (talk) 01:26, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
12. Support in principle, although I share the notion with other endorsers that some of the details can be revisited and fleshed out thoroughly. Baccyak4H (Yak!) 16:21, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
13. At least worthy of further consideration, in conjunction with whatever else gets adopted. ++Lar: t/c 16:50, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
14. Can't see the downside.  Sandstein  19:40, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
15. But only as a rescue anchor if consensus really emerges in favor if mass deletion (I really hope it doesn't). And in this case I see no reason to delete those messages ever. It would be like WP:RA on those articles, informing editors that previous content exists that could be restored if they are willing to work on it, which will probably make it more interesting for some editors to create them again. But again, supporting this proposal does not mean I support deletion itself. Regards SoWhy 22:15, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
16. Endorse while opposing mass deletion. --ThaddeusB (talk) 03:02, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
17. Moreover, as with any other deletion that does not involve a discuss, any admin could undelete individual articles upon request. — Carl (CBM · talk) 04:42, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
18. Since it looks like a special procedure for dealing with unsourced BLPs will come out of this RfC, I support this proposal as a reasonable compromise between WP:PRESERVE and the assumption that anything un-sourced is contentions, which is held by ArbCom, Jimbo, and about a third of the voters in MZMcBride's proposal. Pcap ping 13:27, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
19. Support Seems a reasonable safety net, should some of the other proposals be enacted, and assuming that it is technically feasible.Anaxial (talk) 13:01, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
20. Support while it does have the problem that people don't know whetehr the old article is worth seeing until they see it, having something which makes it easier for people to know how to access deleted information is useful.--Peter cohen (talk) 15:10, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
21. Brambleclawx I support this, but personally, I think we're gonna need some more Wikipedians in order to handle this insane onslaught of work. 21:57, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
22. Support Seems like a good idea, it gives a little bit of time for people to try and fix a problem in the "less than a week" period. Might be a problem though if you have 1000+ articles to go through though. --Sin Harvest (talk) 12:08, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Opposed:

1. Opposed. This is still mass deleting and doing several processes that are likely unneeded in the first place. The energy required should instead be applied to simply adding sources and using our already established processes to fix, redirect, prod and delete articles accordingly. -- Banjeboi 20:52, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
2. Unworkable. Bearian (talk) 01:24, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
3. This will not work, any more than mass deletion will. Prodego ^talk 18:41, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
4. Oppose. Per Peter cohen above, article stubs don't show up as redlinks, which makes the need for improvement harder to notice. A re-creation warning message already exists for deleted articles; perhaps this can be tweaked to make the undeletion and userfication options more clear. / edg ☺ ☭ 16:25, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
5. Oppose as locked stubs sounds like a class of mainspace page that does not serve Wikipedia content policies directly. Once a failed article has been deleted, it should stay deleted, not rise again in Zombie form, or persist like a tombstone.--Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 16:01, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
6. Oppose. Edgarde and Gavin.collins said it well. I think the articles need to remain readable and editable (and without an accelerated deletion process) but once deleted (if deleted) stay gone. VernoWhitney (talk) 20:20, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
7. Oppose. This proposal is not as damaging as the original one, but it still has a significant cost (lots more editor work) and no benefits. As many have pointed out, unsourced BLPs are not the problem, the problem is malicious statements in *sourced* bios of *notable* people. --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 06:46, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Users who endorse this summary

1.  Sandstein  19:25, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
2. Yes. Although ArbCom has its power to issue statements, these statements only reflect consensus and consensus can change. ThemFromSpace 19:29, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
3. ARB says it: the community have to sort this out. Power.corrupts (talk) 19:57, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
4. Indeed. Some people seem to have forgotten this. Hut 8.5 20:06, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
5. Absolutely. How to proceed must be worked out here, not by unilateral actions. henrik•talk 20:17, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
6. Endorse.  Cs32en Talk to me  20:30, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
7. Endorse. The ArbCom (a body appointed by supreme fiat, although based upon the results of a non-binding poll) has no authority to put forth decisions that do not comply with our guidelines and WP:5P. Consensus can always overturn any ArbCom decision, and it would be far more approriate to allow the multiple discussions to be completed before issuing any decision. No policy, guideline, or principal allows for the deletion of non-contentious material. Jim Miller ^{See me | Touch me} 20:36, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
8. As usual, Sandstein is full of clue; I'm honestly confuzzled by the number of comments suggesting that the Motion is anything other than an acknowledgement that editors with good intentions got over zealous and the community should sort things. Shell ^babelfish 20:44, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
9. Cirt (talk) 21:13, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
10. It looks like Arbcom is claiming they can overrule a wider consensus, but they shouldn't be. Hobit (talk) 21:32, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
11. Rd232 ^talk 22:32, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
12. Gigs (talk) 23:03, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
13. Guettarda (talk) 23:28, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
14. This seems to be consistent with the comment by Shell (and concurring comments by Hersfold and KnightLago) on the motion. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:59, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
15. Nsk92 (talk) 00:00, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
16. Jheald (talk) 00:02, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
17. Kind of a meta-view, but absolutely endorse. Nothing should get in the way of consensus. --Cyclopia^talk 00:49, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
18. JoshuaZ (talk) 00:50, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
19. 99of9 (talk) 00:53, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
20. --Cybercobra (talk) 00:57, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
21. Agree. Martin451 (talk) 01:28, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
22. Agreed -- RP459 ^Talk/_{Contributions} 01:31, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
23. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 02:24, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
24. Jclemens (talk) 03:04, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
25. Sjakkalle (Check!) 07:19, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
26. John Z (talk) 09:14, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
27. Spot on. --Mkativerata (talk) 10:03, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
28. The only valid source for editorial policy change rests with the editors according to precedent. If we truly believe that we are competent to write encyclopedia articles, we ought similarly be competent enough to determine which articles on a case-by-case basis ought to be deleted as a matter of policy. CSD currently allows for gross violations of BLP to be deleted quickly, but the current ArbCom position vis-a-vis endorsing deliberate violation of set processes was ill-advised, and ArbCom should forthwith state that the authority to set policy rests with the editors. Collect (talk) 12:42, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
29. Ruslik_Zero 14:26, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
30. This is how much i trust ArbCom in this matter. We have to find our own comprise and not let ourselves be imposed a sort of decree from god. --KrebMarkt 14:51, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
31. Forgot to sign. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 15:02, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
32. ArbCOM rushed to a verdict and the resolution actually does not represent the views of all the members. A number of people who supported the resolution actually indicated that the mass deletions were not the best thought out path---but they still supported the statement that praised the action?---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 15:10, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
33. Support - Arbcom didn't do to hot this time. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 16:20, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
34. Support Without endorsing or condemning the statement, if S's proposal means that statement applied there and need not apply (or not apply) in any future case, but any future case will have to be made in the context of the result of this RfC and any ensuing consensus policy changes and implementations, I fully agree. Baccyak4H (Yak!) 16:28, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
35. ArbCom does not dictate policy. Period. Anyone or anything claiming otherwise and acting upon it could be seen as just short of a Wikipedia Coup d'état, overthrowing the community and basic concept of consensus, and is indeed in opposition to the deepest roots within WMF:Values that we are a community-lead collaborative project. ♪ daTheisen(talk) 19:33, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
36. Support as a minimum view. Right reserved to support even stronger comment.--Cube lurker (talk) 20:03, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
37. Resolute 20:05, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
38. SoWhy 21:49, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
39. It is deplorable that this even needs to be said.  Skomorokh  22:25, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
40. With an inverted paraphrase of Lar's comment, anyone on the Arbitration Committee who thinks the community hasn't sent a clear signal here is fooling themselves. At their peril. Durova⁴⁰³ 23:14, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
41. Sole Soul (talk) 00:02, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
42. Ray^Talk 01:12, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
43. Support per Skomorokh. Bearian (talk) 01:26, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
44. Support I agree with the main statement and various views expressed here. Orderinchaos 03:14, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
45. Strong support, absolutely. Blurpeace 03:22, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
46. Of course. However, the issue is that those in favor of deletions are intentionally misreading the current policy. — Carl (CBM · talk) 04:43, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
47. not that it matters. Could we get a list of the arbs who commended/praised this disruption? It seems to be hard to find the motion now. . .R. Baley (talk) 05:09, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
48. While my hasty statement at the RFAR late last night was misinformed, as I somehow completely overlooked the fact that arbcom had in effect handed this issue back to the community to resolve via this RFC, for the record I still endorse this motion. The community makes policy decisions, not arbcom, and any attempt to read arbcom's motion last night as carte blanche for ignoring community consensus would I believe be misconceived. Gatoclass (talk) 08:31, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
49. Michig (talk) 12:00, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
50. Agreed. Pcap ping 13:28, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
51. Endorse, shouldn't need saying but clearly does. DuncanHill (talk) 15:29, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
52. per above. — James Kalmar 20:09, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
53. Support Absolutely.--Peter cohen (talk) 00:08, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
54. Paul Erik ^{(talk)(contribs)} 02:26, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
55. Davewild (talk) 08:55, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
56. Quite true. Arbcom's actions have not been optimal in this case and I believe they have gone beyond their remit to put the views of some of their members before the view of the community. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:45, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
57. --GRuban (talk) 15:12, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
58. Endorse - glad someone said it. -- Scjessey (talk) 15:38, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
59. Yes. As I said at RFAR, the committee has a power on individual users but it has no power on the community. They wanted to give themselves 'good conscience', or for petty political reasons, being seen as 'acting' on the BLP issue, but it is not in their capacity; only the community can. In doing so, they overstepped their boundaries, lost their objectivity, and alienated a huge number of users, even the most faithful to ArbCom and several ex-arbitrators, subcommittees' members, and maybe, even current arbitrators. Cenarium (talk) 17:17, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

    Further: In some later, calmer times, the community should review the actions taken by this committee and take appropriate measures to address the issue. I expect the next big RFC will be upon ArbCom. Cenarium (talk) 18:18, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

60. Arbcom resolves disputes, and resolves disputes only. Prodego ^talk 18:40, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
61. Tim Song (talk) 11:28, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
62. Arbcom should limit itself to solving disputes, like it's supposed to do. Enric Naval (talk) 16:32, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
63. TotientDragooned (talk) 17:43, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
64. Pretty obvious stuff --Jubilee♫clipman 23:23, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
65. Completely agree. The motion was a knee-jerk over-reaction that gave cover to some, aggrevated many, and resolved nothing. King Pickle (talk) 02:57, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
66. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 03:23, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
67. "ARBCOM" not "GOVCOM". WFCforLife (talk), Help wikipedia. Make the pledge. 05:53, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
68. This goes without saying... Right? decltype (talk) 07:19, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
69. M4gnum0n (talk) 16:33, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
70. Support and how could it be otherwise? Tomas e (talk) 20:10, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
71. SUPPORT — SpikeToronto 05:31, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
72. Support. VernoWhitney (talk) 20:25, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
73. M.Nelson (talk) 05:28, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
74. Support - I have long held view that ArbCom interprets rather than writes policy. Camaron · Christopher · talk 13:00, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
75. Support Calliopejen1 (talk) 17:40, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Users who disagree with this summary

1. On the face of it an uncontroversial of the correct policy situation. However, making this statement has the tendency, and perhaps the intention, to reduce the authority of the decision. I have read the Arbitration Committee's decision carefully, and I do not see anything in it which could reasonably be interpreted as a change in policy. However I do see much which is a reaffirmation of existing policies which recently a good many editors have been denying, minimising, or trying to explain away. The ArbCom decision's reaffirmation of the existing policy is an important answer to those editors who have followed that line, and a statement seeking to reduce the impact or authority of that decision is unhelpful, even if the actual wording of the statement is technically correct. JamesBWatson (talk) 13:29, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   It looks as if it were a clear indication that ArbComm believes the word "contentious" in WP:BLP is (or should be) meaningless. That seems clearly false as an interpretation of policy, and (effectively) removing it is a change of policy. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 15:01, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   For one thing the inclusion of the word "contentious" is being debated. For another, any content to which someone objects could be regarded as contentious. Otherwise who decisdes what is contentious? Contention is purely a matter of what people contend, and therefore entirely dependent on subjective judgement. If I disagreee with something you agree with then there is contention. Thus I do not see ArbCom's decision as implying that "contentious" is meaningless. JamesBWatson (talk) 16:07, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

2. I think anyone who thinks that ArbCom hasn't sent a clear signal here is fooling themselves. At their peril. ++Lar: t/c 16:56, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   Their views are noted but since Wikipedia is not an oligarchy, their views carry no more weight in this discussion than yours or mine. Resolute 18:26, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   You might want to try that out. Go do something blockable, or even something worth losing your bit over, then after the block (or arbcom case), see if you don't get blocked (or debitted), and then tell me again how the views of those we elected to make these decisions carry no more weight than yours. Disregarding policy is fundamentally a behavioral failing, and it's exactly what ArbCom has a mandate to address. ++Lar: t/c 20:06, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   I am suprised to hear such threats from a steward. Are you imaging youself a (deputy) king of this project? Your arrogant behavior is unbecoming for a steward. Ruslik_Zero 20:57, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   I don't mean this as any offense to you, but the fact that you are surprised only means you havent been paying attention, at least to certain things.--Cube lurker (talk) 21:51, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   ArbCom's function is dispute resolution, in particular interpersonal disputes. It has no mandate to force changes in policy. If the members of the committee wish to participate in these discussions, they should do so wearing the hat of an editor. Using their position as arbitrators to try and influence or overrule the community's will is cowardly. Resolute 20:25, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

   As I said already, ArbCom has a (limited) power on users, but it has no power on the community, and has no way to force the community to align on their views. I definitely can't see to which 'peril' we are exposed to here. True, they could start to arbitrarily sanction people with diverging political views, yeah, but how long would they keep this up ? Anyway, it's hopefully not going to happen. Cenarium (talk) 18:18, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

   Like the message they sent with BLPSE ? It had no positive noticeable effect, whatsoever, on the BLP issue. They wanted to 'act' on the issue for giving themselves good conscience or political reasons, but they just showed they had no way to really act on it. Oh yes, it generates major controversy and so, but nothing useful gets done with this; it's time to realize that only consensual solutions can be effective in this domain. Cenarium (talk) 18:18, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

3. I disagree. the arbitration committee sets policies regarding a number of contentious issues all the time. Any policy can be changed. Often they ask for policy to be discussed and decided without their participation. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 20:02, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
4. per Lar; anyone missing this needs to wake up and smell teh coffee. Jack Merridew 23:40, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
5. per Lar, BLP stems from a foundation resolution folks, you know, the guys that run the servers. If you want to maintain thousands of potentially libellous and hurtful BLPs feel free to transwiki them somewhere else and take your own legal risk but until such time the landlords get to set some rules and the BLP situation is way overdue resolution. Spartaz ^Humbug! 05:51, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

   See MickMacNee's comment below. Also, the community elects the Board. — James Kalmar 20:09, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

   Given neither Mike Godwin nor the Foundation itself have come out and said "delete these or else" your strawman is without merit. Resolute 01:23, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

6. Mealy-mouthed tripe. Arbcom in settling disputes necessarily makes news policy, and always has done. --TS 17:33, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Comment

• My reading is that the motion called for this RfC, and that ArbCom have not taken upon themselves any authority to make policy - rather, that they are commenting on policy, and the implementation of it. I'm not sure I see anything deeply troubling in the motion, though "unsourced biographies of living people may contain seemingly innocuous statements which are actually damaging, but there is no way to determine whether they do without providing sources" is a statement worth examining closely - I'm not entirely sure of the deeper implications of what it is saying. I would welcome an open discussion on that statement. SilkTork *^YES! 21:23, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

• I don't see how anyone thinks they can tell the ArbCom where to stuff it and continue violating this clearly-worded statement. Do admins plan on ignoring ArbCom and continue to edit war to restore deleted BLPs? Woogee (talk) 22:23, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Unpopular ArbCom decisions may have ramifications in future ArbCom elections. I, for one, applaud SirFozzie's rational and principled oppose to the motion. Jclemens (talk) 00:51, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

• The Foundation has Section 230 immunity. All this talk of lawsuits is tedious b.s., the phantom lawsuit that will bring down Wikipedia if Something Is Not Done has been 'around the corner' ever since I've been here. It is activist propoganda, nothing more, nothing less. The reason the policy actualy exists, is one of ethics, not law. There is a difference. Namely, what you might think is ethical, others might not. As for arbcom making policy, what are people smoking if they genuinely believed before this motion that it was either community or indeed admin consensus that the simple existence of material, whatever it said, was 'contentious' as regards the BLP policy, or that under any previously imaginable interpretation of IAR/admin discretion/aggressive enforcement, this brief episode of Total War of the cabal against the community, was justified, let alone excusable. The wording of the motion is a pure retcon of the actual events. Go and read the evidence if anyone doubts it. MickMacNee (talk) 06:25, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Users who endorse this summary

1. NW (Talk) 19:53, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
2. If they've obviously neglected to address problematic articles they created, they should be respectfully asked to resign. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 21:04, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
3. Of course. Huge, festering problem.Bali ultimate (talk) 21:05, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
4. The Wordsmith^Communicate 21:11, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
5. Cirt (talk) 21:14, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
6. Agree completely. Admins who are irresponsible with BLPs should not be admins. Lara 21:23, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
7. Well said. Vyvyan Basterd (talk) 21:38, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
8. All admins should clean-up any unsourced BLPs they've in their create log; quickly. Jack Merridew 21:58, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
9. Definitely. Mr.Z-man 22:20, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
10. Yes, however I would also fully support the notion that such an admin can redeem himself and this cloud be considered lifted after a time period of contributions without issues. MLauba (talk) 10:46, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
11. The issue of problematic BLPs is the largest problem facing the project, and will remain so going forward. Any admin on the wrong side of the issue shouldn't be an admin, and any prospective administrator should have to demonstrate a grasp of why this is such a large problem before being granted the bit. In short, this idea is a good first step. UnitAnode 12:33, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
12. I am willing to block any regular editor (as a last resort and after patient explanation and due warning) who persists in adding unreferenced material on living people.--Scott Mac (Doc) 12:55, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

    That is the problem with this proposal. If this proposal were what you said, then I would support it. The problem is that this proposal is intended to work retroactively on articles that people may have written YEARS ago. It places responsibility on them to clean up articles that they may not have touched in 4-5 years, and if they don't clean up the articles that they haven't worked on, then they may be desysoped!---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 15:07, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

13. Absolutely correct in every respect. Nobody who willfully or recklessly violates core Wikipedia policy should be an administrator. JamesBWatson (talk) 13:41, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
14. Adminship is not a permanent gift. If circumstances change, and an admin acts in ways contrary to current policy, eventually, after sufficient discussion, warnings, and milder remedies, loss of adminship is entirely appropriate. This view of NW's is not a new idea, it's merely a restatement of existing principle and policy. ++Lar: t/c 16:58, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
15. I agree with this description of the simple implication that administrators are editors who can demonstrate they can be trusted. I point out that there is a continuous spectrum of this kind of distrust and my support of this statement should not be taken as a support of some codification of a deadminning policy. Baccyak4H (Yak!) 18:43, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
16. Definitely. Woogee (talk) 22:24, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
17. ⇌ Jake Wartenberg 05:10, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
18. Support I don't know to which admins this refers, and I'm not certain this should mean immediate resignation, but yes, of course this is incompatible with adminship. Per Jack Merridew, admins who create unsourced BLPs should be accountable for some clean-up. / edg ☺ ☭ 16:34, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

    Again, this proposal is not referencing articles recently, but articles that were written five plus years ago and were written in full compliance with standards in place at the time! This places an ownership burden on the article creator and has a chilling effect on Wikipedia. You can no longer write an article and walk away from it. If this were to pass, it would place an obligation on article creators to forever maintain the articles they created to ensure that the articles complied with BLP and any other expectations that may come down the pike. The next step is to place the same obligation on anybody who has made significant edits articles!---Balloonman ^{NO! I'm Spartacus!} 15:10, 29 January 2010 (UTC)