Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons

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Resolving DOB discrepancy between reliable sources

How should this be approached for BLP? https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Debbi_Morgan&diff=1336533453&oldid=1336464949 Graywalls (talk) 09:31, 4 February 2026 (UTC)

Well, assuming the sources in that note are WP:BLP-good, I guess the note is a tolerable solution. Perhaps a wording like "Sources vary on Morgan's year of birth." is a little better. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 06:35, 5 February 2026 (UTC)
[yes I know I'm late to the discussion] I somewhat agree here. If you have equal-quality sources, just give both dates and add a note explaining the conflict, as has been done here. However, I think we ought to go with 1956; Bloomsbury is a solid academic publisher, unlike the other sources, which are just news sources, not scholarly publishers with truly solid reputations. Bloomsbury really outweighs all of them in quality, to the point that it's better to ignore them. Nyttend (talk) 09:52, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

WP:BLPRESTORE: removal vs. administrative deletions

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
There is clear consensus that BLPRESTORE should use the word removed, meaning that any removal of BLP content content triggers the requirements that any editor wishing to add, restore, or undelete it must ensure it complies with Wikipedia's content policies. If it is to be restored without significant change, consensus must be obtained first. Best, HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 16:20, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

I have misinterpreted WP:BLPRESTORE's prohibitions on restoring content deleted on good-faith BLP objections all the time as encompassing the mere removal of text, which – as it turns out – it can't actually mean (Special:Permalink/1338717034#Arbitrary_break_of_sorts newer permalink) and, as described with a link to a 2018 discussion here at the policy's talk page, was even intentionally not changed from "deleted" to "removed" because this is really only about admin (tool) deletions. Perhaps I'm the only person who ever misinterpreted this but I guess I'm not, so this needs clarification. I guess Special:Diff/1338720959 does the job but perhaps someone has a better idea. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 21:32, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

Honestly I wouldn't have though it necessary given how the structure is laid out, but I don't see it as harmful either. I do wonder about a narrower addition further up the page that documents best practices for stuff that does not cross the deletion line. It's tempting to say the sourcing requirement already covers any such circumstance, but I'm not 100% convinced. ~2025-41540-19 (talk) 21:52, 16 February 2026 (UTC)
The sourcing requirement doesn't cover deletions of verifiable content justified by WP:UNDUE + "Verifiability does not guarantee inclusion". ~ ToBeFree (talk) 22:03, 16 February 2026 (UTC)
Yes, but I think that is way too loose. Airbrushing UPEs are already way too slick sophisticated and knowledgeable without making their job even easier. Ground level day-to-day RCP practice is to summarily revert removals of unflattering material that is sourced to high-quality RS; we do not want to upset this.
Honestly I don't know how I would word it and I'm over a half-hour past when I was supposed to start a wikibreak. Maybe it's better to just let this be governed by fuzzy norms, but I know there's been a long-term change away from the old school use judgement, and ask for outside input when unsure, and toward executing a set of rules like automata, so that probably won't find consensus.
All I can ask of others to try and think through the consequences. Most will be familiar with an infamous case of airbrushing that has been in the news recently, but honestly that was low barely over scam quality UPE and it still got past us, even marginal ones tend to know which policies to cite now.
Admittedly the sad truth is that it's been an eroding situation for some time now not just BLPs, spam overall. Far too many people think that because most of the UPE caught is obvious that they all must be, but that's selection bias. Some of it has gotten incredible sophisticated, they know policy, they know how new users act, and they won't be caught by CU even with the new features. ~2025-41540-19 (talk) 00:22, 17 February 2026 (UTC)
UPEs also have a new parallel situation with AI-generated content (though they obviously overlap), which makes things even murkier because the text usually appears to be fully cited but in reality may or may not be verified by the source. Following our current (non-binding) AI cleanup guidance to the letter means reverting any of it in BLP articles then and there, no questions asked. This isn't what usually is done because it would mean a lot of reverting, just an untenable amount. Gnomingstuff (talk) 05:59, 18 February 2026 (UTC)

I've always read it as administrative enforcement, in line and supporting the wording of the lede section. (Reading the background discussions). --Hipal (talk) 22:50, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

I see that ToBeFree added "administratively" before "delete", and Hipal reverted that. I oppose re-insertion, thinking it could encourage anyone who in the last eight years has been tempted to add contentious material but been held back by WP:BLPUNDEL. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 23:05, 16 February 2026 (UTC)
Looking through the policy history and relevant ArbCom decisions, I think "administratively" undercuts the long-standing intent of what's been in the lede and policy body from 2006. While the lede has been made clearer over time, the policy body content has been scattered (WP:BLPRS, WP:BLPREMOVE, Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons#Importance), with WP:BURDEN only being mentioned in the lede and in WP:BLPUNDEL. WP:ONUS, sadly, is not included in this policy.
@JzG: re --Hipal (talk) 00:21, 17 February 2026 (UTC)
Struck my comment about ONUS above per Wikipedia_talk:Biographies_of_living_persons#Discussion below.
ONUS is appears to be too high a bar and controversial. "The burden of evidence" should not link to BURDEN, rather needs to be clarified. --Hipal (talk) 22:31, 17 February 2026 (UTC)

RfC: BLPRESTORE

The biographies of living persons policy, section "Restoration", says:
When material about living persons has been deleted on good-faith BLP objections, any editor wishing to add, restore, or undelete it must ensure it complies with Wikipedia's content policies. If it is to be restored without significant change, consensus must be obtained first.
Should the word "deleted" be replaced by "removed" (removed by any user) or by "administratively deleted" (deleted with admin tools such as revision deletion and page deletion)?
09:46, 17 February 2026 (UTC)

  • Removed. The status quo is confusing. A discussion at AN led me to the discovery that the current wording of the policy comes from a history of being about admin actions only and a 2018 discussion here rejecting the word "removed". The AN discussion may really be worth a careful reading because it changed my mind after years of telling users otherwise. Anyway, I think that the word should be "removed", not just referring to administrative deletions. Whether that was the original point of the section or not, it protects living people and allows any well-intentioned user to voice an actual concern that must then be properly discussed rather than thrown away. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 09:46, 17 February 2026 (UTC)
  • Removed, per ToBeFree. It aligns with WP:ONUS and our stronger caution in general regarding claims about living people. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 11:38, 17 February 2026 (UTC)
  • Unsure. ToBeFree's reasoning makes sense to me, though I think the WP:GAMING concerns people brought up in that 2018 discussion are worth considering as well. Suppose a claim is well-sourced and has implicit consensus (or maybe even explicit consensus), but then a random person removes it, saying they have BLP concerns. (The objection might not be a good-faith one, but if it's not totally clear, other editors would need to assume it is.) Would this wording change require that those wishing to restore it need to establish a new, explicit consensus?

    Regardless of what's decided here, I think the section needs to be clarified. If it's changed to "removed," the section should be moved out of the "Role of administrators" section. If it isn't changed, then it needs to be made clearer that "deleted" means "administratively deleted." A third option might be to leave the section in the "Role of administrators" section (and clarify it), then add a new section elsewhere that uses the word "removed." Cadddr (talk) 16:48, 17 February 2026 (UTC)

    Perhaps… “administratively removed”? Blueboar (talk) 17:35, 17 February 2026 (UTC)
    If there's already explicit consensus, then it can be restored without significant change. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 23:56, 17 February 2026 (UTC)
  • Removed but strike the second sentence; otherwise deleted. I share the GAMING concerns above but believe they would be resolved by removing the second sentence requiring editors to always gain consensus to re-add removed information. I think the common understanding of this line is "removed" and we should change this to fit unless it would be clearly suboptimal... but I also think adding such an easy way to game the system would be clearly suboptimal enough that I'd rather force it back to the original meaning if it came to that. Or maybe swap to removed by an administrator instead as a third option per Blueboar. Loki (talk) 19:16, 17 February 2026 (UTC)
    Strong oppose "removed by an administrator", as administrators do not (and should not) have more decision power than regular editors over article content, and edits by an administrator representing content disagreement are not administrative actions. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 10:10, 18 February 2026 (UTC)
    +1 Toadspike [Talk] 10:50, 18 February 2026 (UTC)
  • Change wording to "Removed under good-faith WP:BLPREMOVE objections". This is how I have always interpreted it - the "red line" of BLP, which invokes its more drastic restrictions, falls under the relatively rigid and clear-cut line of BLPREMOVE. Lesser concerns are of course worth considering but do not get the same red-line protections; BLP is a spectrum, and acknowledging that is necessary to avoid situations where WP:CRYBLP drags editing to a standstill. Imposing mandatory consensus-required restrictions on every single thing that touches on a BLP in any way, even if nobody disputes the sourcing (which is what some interpretations here would do) goes wildly beyond anything in the rest of BLP, let alone ONUS or BURDEN. And as far as that goes, I also strenuously oppose any reference to ONUS here or any any other policy page; its wording, interpretation, and applicability is highly-controversial, and it lacks a stable consensus as to its meaning, so it should never be used as the basis for anything else. WP:BURDEN is fine but its restrictions are much more cautious and clear-cut - and are mostly in line with having this only apply to WP:BLPREMOVE objections, ie. it is about red-line issues with sourcing, not more subtle and complex concerns over tone and due weight. Those are still serious BLP concerns, but not sufficiently clear-cut for us to take the draconian step of applying a consensus-required restriction to them wiki-wide the moment someone invokes BLP in any context. --Aquillion (talk) 19:28, 17 February 2026 (UTC)
  • Removed. All content needs consensus to be in an article. Usually that's WP:SILENCE, but the moment a good faith objection is raised, there's no consensus to include or retain the content and talk page consensus needs to be reached for its restoration. Allowing the restoration of content with good faith BLP objections is a terrible, terrible idea. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 23:55, 17 February 2026 (UTC)
  • Removed by an administrator per LokiTheLiar. The passage is a subsection of the section Role of administrators. If the de jure scope of this phrase is changed to mean removal by any user as opposed to by administratorsadministrative actions, it should be moved to a different section of the BLP policy. (Note to closer: If consensus is for removed, my preference is to move the passage to the subsection WP:GRAPEVINE.) mdm.bla 01:05, 18 February 2026 (UTC)
Removed and moved to WP:GRAPEVINE per my previous rationale and Chaotic Enby's concerns in reply to Loki. Removed as an administrator action or similar and leaving the passage in its current location would then be my second choice. mdm.bla 14:38, 18 February 2026 (UTC)
  • "Removed", which is how I've always interpreted this. A risk of gaming by sophisticated bad actors is worth the price of better protections for all of our BLP subjects, who deserve to be treated with the utmost care. Failure to consistently uphold our policies and guidelines here can have serious (legal) consequences for the project. Toadspike [Talk] 10:52, 18 February 2026 (UTC)
  • Removed and move it so it's clearer it doesn't apply only to admin actions. I do not believe we should give admins special powers to decide whether something should be removed. And as I said in the thread which started this off, IMO this has been the normal interpretation at BLPN for quite a while. I can't recall anyone even claiming it was restricted to rev-deletions, or even admin actions over the past few years although I don't claim to have seen even most discussions at BLP. (But I have seen quite a few where BLPUNDEL has come up.) Deleted meaning rev-deletion doesn't make any sense to me. If something is rev-deleted, then unrevdeleting it will generally be wheel warring. You'd at least need the permission of the rev-deleting admin or as an alternative consensus needs to be achieved. Adding it back without unrevdeleting makes no sense. And while technically we're still in compliance with our licences, it's unfair to the original contributors if people cannot see they're the ones who originally introduced the text because the revisions have been hidden to hide text which has now been added back. (If there's some other reason for revdeletion then fine, a necessary evil but it's different when we're just hiding what is now in the article.) As for ordinary editors, if they know the content was rev-deleted than adding it back is always likely to be a serious violation even outside of BLP. If the editor disagrees rev-deletion was justified, they should be trying to overturn the rev-deletion and not simply adding the content back. If they don't know it was rev-deleted and that's inherently a problem when there is rev-deletion, we're not going to punish them just because it was rev-deleted. Now if what they're adding is a serious enough BLP violation then they might be sanctioned but the fact it happened to be rev-deleted is irrelevant. If the content is modified, it does get more complicated but I feel this isn't necessary to spell out. BTW, I'd also support Aquillion's wording. From my experience at BLPN, even those of us who have been interpreting it to mean any editor can remove content and it requires consensus to add it back, it's not something we feel is invoked everytime someone deleted something under BLP grounds. To avoid disruption and prevent fears of CRYBLP or gaming, generally we treat it as something which can be invoked, but isn't always. When we feel the BLP concerns are minor enough, we generally just let it be and continue discussion if content is added back. And I sort of got at this in the original AN thread, you're expected to discuss & explain your position. You can't just treat it as, I raised an objection and offered a brief explanation of my BLP concerns. You now have to seek consensus and I don't have to do anything more. Nil Einne (talk) 17:55, 18 February 2026 (UTC)
    If I may nitpick, wheel warring starts in the moment a reversed admin action is reinstated, so un-revdeleting wouldn't be a WHEEL problem by itself. It's incompatible with Wikipedia:Revision deletion § Appeal and discussion of actions though (reversal upon clear, wider consensus). ~ ToBeFree (talk) 19:40, 18 February 2026 (UTC)
  • Removed. (Summoned by bot). To be honest, I don't think that "deleted" was likely to cause significant confusion, but the question of which wording is more apt having been raised, I believe the more general "removed" is also more accurate to the point of community consensus that this policy language is meant to relate. SnowRise let's rap 09:58, 19 February 2026 (UTC)
  • Removed/Deleted doesn't make a difference to me. In fact, I look to this discussion to really understand the difference here. I read the comments above and am not seeing a true delineation. Please advise.
But I strongly oppose making consensus finding/edit war policing solely the role of administration. Gaining consensus on BLPs is a necessary check-and-balance structure that calls out edit warring and ensures high-quality information adds and reliable sources. This is not the role of administration; it's the role of editors. And an ability to do so is one of our 5 pillars WP:5P4. Pushing towards admin is in violation of WP:BEBOLD and puts too much responsibility and work on the admin. We have a dispute resolution system for a reason. Editors should use it when consensus cannot be reached. pickalittletalkalittle🐤🐤🐤talk a lot pick a little more 14:56, 24 February 2026 (UTC)
"Removed" means taking out the content through regular editing of a page, while "deleted" means revision deletion or page deletion. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 15:11, 24 February 2026 (UTC)
See also Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines#Content, which tells editors writing policies such as this one to "maintain the distinction between an admin deleting a page and ordinary editors removing or blanking some or all of its contents". WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:08, 2 March 2026 (UTC)
  • Removed. Always thought it was removal and that's how I've applied it. It's generally a good rule to follow for BLPs. Revision deletion is too rare otherwise. This probably should be moved to a more general area. ---- Patar knight - chat/contributions 04:46, 3 March 2026 (UTC)
  • Removed - This makes it more concise and helps define exact parameters incase people are confused by the difference of "remove and delete".
MaximusEditor (talk) 20:32, 4 March 2026 (UTC)
  • Removed which is how the policy has been interpreted and aligns with contemporary standards of BLP. Traumnovelle (talk) 20:05, 18 March 2026 (UTC)

Discussion

As far as clarification is concerned, I think WP:ONUS should be incorporated into this policy, and the use of WP:BURDEN the mention of "burden of evidence" in the lede should be clearly supported as widely as applicable, but at least for Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons#Reliable_sources and Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons#Importance. --Hipal (talk) 17:37, 17 February 2026 (UTC)

Absolutely not. Look at the talk page discussions for WP:ONUS; it does not enjoy any sort of stable consensus as to its meaning, applicability, or intent. It is not a policy that should be cited anywhere until that is settled, but certainly not on other policy pages. My opinion on it has only hardened since the last round of discussions - it is a poorly-worded and poorly-considered bit of text that was added with no discussion, has faced challenges every time it has been discussed, and generally poisons any discussion where it comes up. We should not be directing people to it as though it somehow enjoys actual consensus as to its meaning, or as if it can provide any sort of useful guidance for conduct or for resolving disputes. --Aquillion (talk) 19:30, 17 February 2026 (UTC)
Thanks for your perspective, here and above. I didn't realize the disputes over ONUS, despite it being policy. I've struck out my suggestion regarding it.
Without any inclusion of ONUS, it needs to be much clearer where BURDEN applies. --Hipal (talk) 19:55, 17 February 2026 (UTC)
Despite the similarity of the words used as a short cut, ONUS and BURDEN are talking about very different things.
BURDEN has a narrow scope… it talks about who has to supply sources to demonstrate that a fact or statement is Verifiable.
ONUS has a much broader scope… it talks about who has to demonstrate consensus for inclusion when the issue isn’t just simple Verifiability.
The Burden to supply sources is fairly easy to meet. The Onus to demonstrate consensus is much harder. This is why ONUS is controversial but BURDEN is not. Blueboar (talk) 20:56, 17 February 2026 (UTC)
Good point. BURDEN is far too low a bar for BLP issues. I've struck out BURDEN from my initial comment above, as it's misleading. I think it should be unlinked from the policy in both locations. BLP requires NPOV, V, and OR to be strictly followed, and it's the phrase "the burden of evidence" that needs clarification. --Hipal (talk) 22:25, 17 February 2026 (UTC)

@official__suraj__shah ~2026-10905-43 (talk) 12:47, 18 February 2026 (UTC)

Hi! This is not the place to contact a biography subject or ask for a biography to be created. May I recommend you Wikipedia:Article wizard and Wikipedia:Your first article for the latter, if that is your intention? Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 12:53, 18 February 2026 (UTC)
  • So, my main point of curiosity here is how exactly this works with the classic situation where the subject is a fraud/criminal of some kind, and this is evidenced in sustained, high-quality coverage, and the subject repeatedly tries to delete that fact from the page. Do we just say "these are not good-faith deletions", or is an explicit consensus in favour required, and not just multiple editors reverting the deletions as vandalism? FOARP (talk) 13:40, 23 February 2026 (UTC)
    Hopefully we won't use the word "deletion" at all, because the options here are that it's not actually WP:Deletion, or that the subject is going to lose his admin bit forthwith. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:09, 2 March 2026 (UTC)
  • Removed per Thebiguglyalien the Doug hole (a crew 4 life) 18:15, 5 March 2026 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The names of the accused when that name is highly reported

I made this edit: and waited for the R of WP:BRD to kick in, which it duly did. Now I'm discussing it.

In my opinion, it is very silly for Wikipedia to have a policy that advises "strongly considering" omitting the name of someone when that name is widely reported in reliable sources. I understand the idea is to protect the accused--who is presumed to be innocent, to be sure--from unnecessary damage to his or her reputation. I do indeed understand that. Suppose Bob Smith is accused of murdering the celebrity Suzy Senna and then later he's acquitted--we wouldn't want his reputation to be damaged when he's been absolved by a jury of his peers.

However, let's think for just one moment. If CNN, CBS, the New York Times, the Guardian, Fox News, and the CBC all have already named Bob Smith as the accused murderer, his reputation is already ruined far beyond what little Wikipedia can do. We cannot reasonably pretend that we are doing Bob even the smallest favor by obscuring his name.

Meanwhile, if we are obscuring his already widely-reported name, we run the risk of violating WP:NPOV by appearing that we're coming down on the side of the accused. Why else would we obscure the well-reported name? Why else would Wikipedia be the one website on the planet that doesn't tell you the name of the guy they arrested for Suzy's murder?

The caveat that I introduced in the policy, therefore, is a necessary safeguard to stop Wikipedians from wasting time "Strongly considering" something that is painfully obvious. If reliable sources are already widely reporting the name of an accused, Wikipedia should name the accused, period, no discussion required. Red Slash 18:58, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

Maybe if it's relevant to understanding the murder investigation and legal proceedings? --Hipal (talk) 19:50, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

If CNN, CBS, the New York Times, the Guardian, Fox News, and the CBC all have already named Bob Smith as the accused murderer, his reputation is already ruined far beyond what little Wikipedia can do. We cannot reasonably pretend that we are doing Bob even the smallest favor by obscuring his name.

Yes we can? Wikipedia is one of the largest sites on the internet, and our page on Bob Smith will be viewed long after the incident has left the news cycle.

Meanwhile, if we are obscuring his already widely-reported name, we run the risk of violating WP:NPOV by appearing that we're coming down on the side of the accused.

NPOV is not about appearance of neutrality, it's about balancing sources. It may be the worst-named policy on this site because the misconception that it has anything to do with the view-from-nowhere is so common.

Why else would we obscure the well-reported name? Why else would Wikipedia be the one website on the planet that doesn't tell you the name of the guy they arrested for Suzy's murder?

Oh, because Wikipedia is WP:NOTNEWS and not everything that ordinary news sources report is suitable for inclusion in an encyclopedia article. Loki (talk) 21:15, 24 February 2026 (UTC)
Accused by the media, or by a court of law?
When someone is actually indicted by a court, I think we can note that fact… but if it is just the media trying to sell papers and gain clicks by spreading rumor, hell no. Blueboar (talk) 21:51, 24 February 2026 (UTC)
Re: "trying to sell papers and gain clicks by spreading rumor": The argument that the OP ought to be making is if the guideline's wording could crack the door open a bit more if gold-standard, sober-minded, grounded, and international/national outlets like the NYT, WSJ, CBC, BBC, etc. are reporting a name. To nod to the other side of that coin, the guideline could also perhaps close that door if outlets at that level are not giving the name. The RfC last month did not dive far enough into that question. Ed [talk] [OMT] 23:19, 24 February 2026 (UTC)
I reverted the edit because it amounted to telling contributors that they weren't allowed to exercise editorial judgement if a name was "widely reported in reliable sources". Why exactly shouldn't they be? And since when has it been policy it insist that particular content more generally must be included in articles? Even ignoring that though, all it would really achieve would to be to move editorial judgement one step further, to argue what 'widely reported' means. Spammed out as nothing more than a name by multiple media outlets over the first few hours of a developing story (where such names are very frequently wrong), or discussed in depth after careful research a month or two later. Both might be described as 'widely reported' but they are very different. We need editorial judgement, not do as you are told count-the-sources instruction. AndyTheGrump (talk) 23:44, 24 February 2026 (UTC)
Every article on a building in Wikipedia tells you where that building is located. Every article on a war tells you which countries fought in that war. Every article about a person tells you their name... Yes, every article about a crime should tell you who the accused is (if such a fact is known and widely reported). This is basic, fundamental information about the crime! If Wikipedia does not include the name of the man who is accused (when this is known and widely reported), Wikipedia is failing to be an encyclopedia. That's what encyclopedias do: they list the major, widely reported and fundamental facts of a subject.
The current "strongly considering" text is a solution in search of a problem. We win nothing at all by hiding that information from our readers... other than lowering their trust in Wikipedia. Red Slash 04:47, 26 February 2026 (UTC)
The close of the RfC (Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons/Archive 65 § RFC: Amount of coverage in reliable primary news sources) says The community was seemingly not compelled by the WP:NOTNEWS argument(s); Again, mere mention of a (sourced) name does not suddenly transform Wikipedia into a news aggregator. (emphasis mine). I think the wording of BLPCRIME is fine as is; footnote "f" in BLPCRIME links to that RfC and says The amount of coverage in reliable primary news sources is a valid consideration, among others. Some1 (talk) 23:53, 24 February 2026 (UTC)
Loki, that's definitely not true. Our page on "Bob Smith", unlike virtually every RS that mentions him, will be updated to show that he was acquitted. CNN will always have the article naming him as the accused murderer. Wikipedia will say "Bob Smith was originally accused of the murder but was acquitted by a jury of his peers".
And yes, NPOV requires a balance of sources. Like, if every single source names him, it's imbalanced on its face to not name him.
And of course, not everything from a news article about a crime should go into the Wiki article on that crime. But, uhh, the name of the accused is hardly trivia. Red Slash 04:43, 26 February 2026 (UTC)
Another response to your point on NPOV: I disagree with Loki that that argument shows a misunderstanding of what NPOV is. You're right: BLP is fundamentally at odds with NPOV. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, I'm saying it's by design. Take the beginning of BLPCRIME, for example—not stating in wikivoice that someone committed a crime unless they've been convicted of it is specifically a protection we extend to living people. If historians unanimously agree that someone from 1865 committed a crime they were found innocent of in court, we would absolutely say in wikivoice that they committed the crime.
When we wrote BLP, we chose to sacrifice tiny bits of NPOV to protect people, specifically so we have the choice in scenarios like this to not perpetuate the potential damage caused by sources. Snowmanonahoe (talk · contribs · typos) 18:14, 1 March 2026 (UTC)
Again, who is making the accusation? IF a person is formally accused (ie indicted) in a court of law, we can note this as fact (and note that a trial is pending or ongoing). But IF it is the media making the accusation, we should refrain.
We report fact… we do not spread speculation or rumor… even speculation or rumor that is reported on by normally reliable sources. Blueboar (talk) 21:21, 1 March 2026 (UTC)
Yes, I completely agree with you that an accusation or an indictment should be sufficient justification in and of itself for naming the person. Red Slash 02:20, 2 March 2026 (UTC)
No… Anyone can make an accusation. An indictment is more formal. Blueboar (talk) 02:06, 3 March 2026 (UTC)
I agree with you, but NPOV is one of our pillars, and BLP is not. Red Slash 02:21, 2 March 2026 (UTC)
BLP is mandated by the WMF Board. Wikipedia:Five pillars, you might recall, is just a pretty page written by some guy on the internet. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:10, 2 March 2026 (UTC)
Neither the text prior to my edits nor the text after my edits runs afoul of the WMF page in the slightest, though Red Slash 01:33, 3 March 2026 (UTC)
Having a BLP policy is mandated by the board, the specific shape that it takes is much less so. Katzrockso (talk) 04:06, 3 March 2026 (UTC)
I've seen the high-profile US kidnapping case in my news feed. It seems that more than one person has been compelled to spend time with the police so far, but none of them seem to by guilty of anything. So I wonder: if any of these names are "widely reported" in editors' opinions, and then a couple of days later, the police say they exonerated them, have we actually helped educate anyone in the world? (NB that I don't count satisfying the curiosity of gossips and busybodies as 'helping educate'.)
Because of this, I think "multiple reliable sources have already published" is the wrong standard. The minute a name is discovered, it will be copied by multiple news agencies. For a high-profile case, we'll have one source name a person at 8:00 a.m., and it will be in a dozen sources a few hours later.
Since news serves a different purpose – in particular, it serves the purpose of letting people know who has been accused, so that one of them can say "Hey, he couldn't have done it, because we were together when the crime was committed! I gotta call the police and set them straight" – this can be a reasonable thing to do and a benefit to society.
But Wikipedia doesn't serve that purpose. Our job is to provide general education. Getting the name in on the very day it is "already published" by "multiple reliable sources" that all copied each other is not Wikipedia's purpose. In fact, the name per se is frequently not the point at all. People don't want "the name" so much as they want an explanation. Given a choice between "a 20-year-old drug addict" and "Bob Smith, about whom nothing at all is known", people actually find the name less informative than the nameless description.
I suggest that there's a fuzzy hierarchy that runs along these lines:
  • The police are talking to someone, or have arrested someone, but they've not been charged: Don't name the person today; don't name them later, either, unless they are notable or there is some significant circumstance (e.g., a law was passed to protect accused people as a result of their experience; they became a well-known fundraiser for falsely accused people).
  • The police have charged someone: Don't name the person today, because the charges might get dismissed tomorrow. But once the legal process is well underway, consider naming the person.
  • The accused is standing trial: It's reasonable to name the person by the first day of the real trial (i.e., not necessarily during various pre-trial hearings and other preliminary proceedings).
But note these important caveats:
  • I'm assuming that the crime itself is notable. The right answer for a high-profile murder is not the right answer for a porch pirate stealing a package from a pop star's doorway.
  • I'm assuming that we're talking about an industrialized democracy with low corruption. If (e.g.) the leading opposition candidate gets arrested on the eve of an election, or if the police have a reputation for arresting innocent people, then the ordinary rules don't apply.
  • I'm assuming that there is no significant skepticism in the press about whether the accused is guilty.
  • I'm assuming that there is no significant risk of harm to being wrongly suspected. For example, there might be reputational harm if a person was identified as being present at the scene of a crime but absolutely innocent, if the scene of the murder is a place others would make negative assumptions about (e.g., a brothel, a methadone clinic, an abortion clinic...), then it might be unfair and harmful to name them.
When we tell editors to "seriously consider" not naming a suspect, or even a convicted perpetrator, we are thinking about the golden rule, or some version of don't be evil. So imagine that you were falsely arrested for a crime at the age of 20, and you were 100% totally innocent. You were released soon after the arrest, no charges were filed, and you left the jail perhaps a little shaken but thinking that you had a good story to tell for years to come.
In the meantime, your full name and description got reported in the news, and some Wikipedia editor decided to put that in an article. Ten years later, the article still says "_____ was arrested on 1 May 2016 in connection with this murder, though he was released the next morning without charges", and every time someone – a potential employer? new neighbor? the person you have a crush on? – does a web search for your name, the Wikipedia article comes up. Sure, you're thinking, but so will those original news sources, so it doesn't matter! The problem is that those original sources have since rearranged their websites, gone out of business, or fallen to the bottom of the search rankings (which usually deprioritize webpages that haven't been updated for a long time). As a result, in a few years, it may well be that the only link that draws attention to that experience is the Wikipedia article. Is that what you would want for yourself? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:46, 2 March 2026 (UTC)
I 100% agree with WhatamIdoing and couldn't have said it better myself.
I'm very skeptical of weakening WP:BLPCRIME, because the benefits are fairly small but the harms are potentially very large. If news sources at the time report a name, it's very easy for the reader to check the underlying sources and see the name if they really want. But there's a huge difference for some private citizen (or even a minor celebrity) between having your name connected to a crime in some ancient local news archive and having it connected to a crime on Wikipedia.
I have a Google News alert for my IRL name (mostly for fun). When it pings, it's often for someone who shares my name being arrested for a minor crime. These never show up when you directly Google my name because there are a few minor celebrities who share my name whose personal websites alone dwarf the traffic to some local news story. But if one of these random people accused of crimes had a crime they were accused of added to Wikipedia, then their name would come up connected with a crime when Googled. Which means that my name, and the names of the minor celebrities, would also come up connected with a crime when Googled despite none of us having anything to do with the situation at all.
And so could yours by the way, you are not immune just because you don't know this is happening. BLP stuff, especially when it deals with private citizens and major accusations, is a huge deal we can't take lightly. Loki (talk) 22:20, 2 March 2026 (UTC)
I think there's a fundamental misunderstanding regarding the visualizing of this issue. I'm going to ping @WhatamIdoing and @LokiTheLiar and @GoodDay.
The police are talking to someone, or have arrested someone, but they've not been charged: Don't name the person today; don't name them later, either, unless they are notable or there is some significant circumstance (e.g., a law was passed to protect accused people as a result of their experience; they became a well-known fundraiser for falsely accused people). Sure.
The police have charged someone: Don't name the person today, because the charges might get dismissed tomorrow. But once the legal process is well underway, consider naming the person. (first, let me be pedantic--in America at least, police don't charge anyone.) I disagree with this: if the charges are dismissed, delete the information from Wikipedia. But until then, no, if it's widely reported, it'll be notable.
The accused is standing trial: It's reasonable to name the person by the first day of the real trial (i.e., not necessarily during various pre-trial hearings and other preliminary proceedings). - see above
I'm assuming that the crime itself is notable. The right answer for a high-profile murder is not the right answer for a porch pirate stealing a package from a pop star's doorway. - obviously!
I'm assuming that we're talking about an industrialized democracy with low corruption. If (e.g.) the leading opposition candidate gets arrested on the eve of an election, or if the police have a reputation for arresting innocent people, then the ordinary rules don't apply. Hard disagree. If some dictator arrests his main rival over corruption charges on the eve of an election, that's unbelievably notable', like, off-the-charts notable. Why in the world would we avoid naming the person charged??
I'm assuming that there is no significant skepticism in the press about whether the accused is guilty. Why? If the name is widely reported in reliable sources, say it, and show the skepticism, too!
I'm assuming that there is no significant risk of harm to being wrongly suspected. For example, there might be reputational harm if a person was identified as being present at the scene of a crime but absolutely innocent, if the scene of the murder is a place others would make negative assumptions about (e.g., a brothel, a methadone clinic, an abortion clinic...), then it might be unfair and harmful to name them. This is the core of what I think you guys are missing. If CNN runs an article that says "Four women murdered in broad daylight on NYC bus", and we deem that to pass WP:GNG, and in that CNN article (and a FOX News article, and a BBC article, and a CBS article, etc...) they say "Police have named Michael Stokesman as their main suspect"...
Bro, Michael Stokesman will always have his named tied to that, whether Wikipedia names him or not!! Do you really think that your date will search up "Michael Stokesman" on Google, scroll RIGHT PAST the CNN and Fox News and BBC and CBS articles associating you with the murder, and say "GASP! Wikipedia lists him as having been a suspect at one point for a murder!" Do you think the employer who wants to hire you will be worried about the Wikipedia article (that's been updated to clear you of any involvement in the case) instead of, idk, the Wall Street Journal article that directly implicates you and was never updated?
We gain nothing from hiding widely reported information from our readers--absolutely nothing. Red Slash 01:45, 3 March 2026 (UTC)
  1. I disagree with this: if the charges are dismissed, delete the information from Wikipedia. But until then, no, if it's widely reported, it'll be notable. I assume you actually mean "worth putting into an article", which probably means WP:BALASP or WP:DUE, rather than WP:Notable. And at one level, arguing about "the name" is silly, because no source actually cares what the name of the suspect is per se. That is, there are no sources that will be saying "Wow, it was someone named Bob? I mean, I'd have expected a John or a Jacob or even a Jason, but the suspect was actually named Bob? Nobody named Bob ever does anything like this..." Instead, what the sources typically care about is the person, i.e., the "20-year-old drug addict living in Smallville" part, rather than the "his first name is Bob" part. I would encourage you to focus more on the part that matters and less on the name itself.
  2. If (e.g.) the leading opposition candidate gets arrested on the eve of an election...then the ordinary rules don't apply. Hard disagree. If some dictator arrests his main rival over corruption charges on the eve of an election, that's unbelievably notable, like, off-the-charts notable. Why in the world would we avoid naming the person charged?? – We wouldn't, and I didn't say that we would. I'm giving you an example of an exception to "the ordinary rules". If "the ordinary rules" say not to name suspects the day they're arrested, then something extraordinary like arresting political rivals should not follow "the ordinary rules".
  3. significant risk of harm to being wrongly suspected... If...we deem that to pass WP:GNG, and in that CNN article (and a FOX News article, and a BBC article, and a CBS article, etc...) they say "Police have named Michael Stokesman as their main suspect"...
    Bro, Michael Stokesman will always have his named tied to that, whether Wikipedia names him or not!! Do you really think that your date will search up "Michael Stokesman" on Google, scroll RIGHT PAST the CNN and Fox News and BBC and CBS articles associating you with the murder     – Yes. Because in a few years, those news articles won't be at the top of the search results, but the Wikipedia article probably will be. Also, I'm "ma'am", not "bro", and this is my segue into saying that I'm old enough to have known a lot of people over the years, including someone who was murdered by a total stranger. If you put the victim's name in Google, or the name of the main suspect, the first page does not have any news reports from the time of her death. Just because a news source is at the top of the list today doesn't tell you that it will be at the top of the list next year, much less in WP:10YEARS. You won't have to scroll RIGHT PAST the CNN and Fox News and BBC and CBS articles associating you with the murder because those articles won't be in the search results any longer.
  4. We gain nothing from hiding widely reported information – Nothing except our reputation for being level-headed and responsible instead of chasing page views with the latest up-to-the-second claim.
WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:58, 3 March 2026 (UTC)
1. Yes, of course, I mean WP:DUE not WP:GNG or anything like that. Listen, nobody really cares about the address of the Empire State Building, but if you look up the Wiki article for Empire State Building and it doesn't have the address, that would be weird, right? Nobody really cares if the attempted assassin of Trump in Florida is named Tom or Harry or whatever, but if Attempted assassination of Donald Trump in Florida didn't have the guy's name, that would be weird. FYI, it was less than 24 hours after the article was created that we were already naming Ryan.
2. wow, I completely got that paragraph reversed. Of course you're right, my bad!
3. My apologies, ma'am. I'm very sorry for your loss. I would say that Wikipedia is far, far easier to wipe than any news article; if someone's charges are dismissed then their name should be wiped from the articles in question, and BLP really oughtta reflect that.
4. It's not a question of chasing pageviews, not at all. It's a question of appearing impartial. Hiding the accused's name (when there is an accused person who has been arrested, whom half the freaking world is reporting as being the alleged perp) is taking the side of the accused and not giving the WP:DUE weight to the many, many, many news reports that have decided that his name is in fact worth printing. If CNN and Fox and NBC and CBS and the BBC and ABC and CBC and el Pais and Le Progress and the Times and the Guardian and the Times of India and everything else have all decided that, yes, it's quite important to name the suspect... it is undue for us to hide that name. Red Slash 07:00, 3 March 2026 (UTC)
1. There's plenty of buildings whose address is public that we do not list for BLP purposes. (So for instance, the address of the mansion that was the center of the Streisand Effect controversy is known, but we don't list it.)
3. As other people have pointed out there are lots of Wikipedia mirrors, plus the article history, plus most importantly not every page is terribly active years after it was originally newsworthy.
4. That you're framing this as "taking the side of the accused" is even more reason why I don't trust you to make this change at all. We're taking the side of not harming ordinary people. (Also: the sources do not make editorial decisions for us, and the inclusion of some information in a source or even many sources never mandates us to include it, especially in a case like this where it would be against our policies.) Loki (talk) 17:33, 3 March 2026 (UTC)
  1. Right: "Nobody really cares if the attempted assassin of Trump in Florida is named Tom or Harry or whatever", so – particularly in the early days – I think we should focus on giving them what they do care about, which is non-name information. On very high-profile cases, we're going to have more editors, and therefore a greater likelihood of someone saying that "hiding" the person's name just doesn't meet their expectations (also many, many more sources), but on the ordinary "Murder of" article, I think we're better off providing a description than a name.
  2. No worries. It's easy to get turned around in long conversations. I've done it (and worse) myself.
  3. If we didn't put the name there in the first place – or at least not for the first few days, when the unexpected exoneration is most likely to happen – then we wouldn't have to worry about removing it later. BTW, this policy was created in part because of the difficulties we had over the Kobe Bryant sexual assault case. He had sex with a housecleaner at a hotel. She claimed it was nonconsensual. He claimed it was merely adulterous. The woman's name is probably still visible in the page history. Did her name matter? No. Is putting the name of a 19-year-old alleged rape victim in one of the top-read articles on one of the top-read websites a decent thing to do? Also no. But we did, and even when we agreed to take it out, we still had people saying "But we need her naaaaaame..."
  4. Not including something is not "hiding" it.
WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:19, 4 March 2026 (UTC)
Thank you so much for that clarification, especially regarding #3. It's really helpful to me because it lets me understand better where you and others are coming from.
I'm not concerned about making it easier for readers to find the names of victims. I'm thinking more of Killing of Iryna Zarutska, where Wikipedia was roundly mocked for not including the very well-publicized name of the guy who allegedly killed her. The name was put in probably dozens of times and summarily redacted dozens of times, with the removers citing BLP. We had to have a huge ugly discussion just to validate the incredibly obvious take that yes, it's okay to tell people who the accused murderer is for a murder that has made international headlines where several newspapers of record in several countries have already named him.
The fact that it took that much time didn't just waste editors' time; it made us an object of ridicule—and honestly, not without merit. We can't let guidelines like this, which are so ludicrously subjective yet backed by the full power of WP policy, stand.
@SmokeyJoe made a suggestion: put a 72-hour universal pause on naming the alleged perpetrator, and then always name the alleged perpetrator (as alleged, obviously) after the 72 hours expire, so long as the name is found in multiple reliable sources. I do not really like this--I think that us declining to name the killer of Renée Good for three full days would've been silly--but if we have a universal red-line policy, that's better than nothing.
And more to the point, I just really want to focus in on that I'm not talking about bystanders or victims, just people accused of heinous crimes. Red Slash 23:02, 6 March 2026 (UTC)
I don't actually care if we're "ridiculed" by a website that describes itself as "Questioning the consensus and exposing the destructive nature of "woke" activism, OutKick is the antidote to the mainstream sports media that often serves an elite, left-leaning minority instead of the American sports fan". One might wonder why a sports website is covering Wikipedia's approach to a political event in the first place, but it's not unusual for social media, and even journalists, to not understand that Wikipedia isn't here for 'the scoop' or up-to-the-second information. (Also: Did you notice that Outkick didn't include the suspect's name either, while complaining that we didn't? Funny that they complain about our editorial decision to not name the suspect, while they are themselves making exactly the same editorial decision.)
I wonder if you have thought any more about the innocent people who are falsely accused of heinous crimes. Looking at it with the benefit of hindsight, do you wish that the names of the first two innocent suspects in the Charlie Kirk case had been named in Wikipedia as suspects? WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:01, 7 March 2026 (UTC)
Yeah, you're certainly right that that would've been bad. I think the 72-hour rule that @SmokeyJoe suggested solves that problem. I put my proposed text a bit below; let me know what you think. Red Slash 07:53, 8 March 2026 (UTC)
I'm okay with being the object of ridicule of Outkick. Frankly I'd be fine with being the object of ridicule of the NYT over WP:BLP. And I think that if you want to override WP:BLP you should have to spend a lot of editor time and effort on it.
I think WhatamIdoing's focus on the name of a rape victim is somewhat deceptive here. Since we're talking about WP:BLPCRIME, she wouldn't have been named either way. The actual point here is that anyone accused of a crime is innocent until proven guilty and we simply should not name them, because regardless of what they're accused of they're a private citizen. In this context I'm more concerned about protecting people like Sunil Tripathi. Loki (talk) 00:02, 7 March 2026 (UTC)
Right, I think I agree with you generally. However, the idea that we can't name anyone accused of a crime until they're proven guilty becomes absurd very quickly--especially for, say, mass shootings where the suspect is subdued. I really don't think we're going to have a misnaming when they've got the guy who was actively shooting.
Let's take this proposed wording:
"A living person accused of a crime is presumed innocent until convicted by a court of law. Accusations, investigations, arrests and charges do not amount to a conviction. For individuals who are not public figures—that is, individuals not covered by § Public figures—[a] do not mention in any article that suggests the person has committed, is suspected of, is a person of interest in, or is accused of having committed a crime until 72 hours have passed since the crime was committed. After 72 hours, suspects should be named (as "alleged", etc.) if and only if they have been named in multiple independent reliable sources. [b] Names or files of individuals identified as persons of interest should not be included in the article."
Whatcha think? Red Slash 07:51, 8 March 2026 (UTC)
I need time to think about the 72-hour idea.
Unrelated to that, I think we need to consider differentiating between a notable crime and a more ordinary thing. If someone pickpockets a celebrity, or backs into their car in a parking lot, then of course there's going to be a huge amount of media coverage (briefly, at least). But we probably don't ever need that person's name to be in Wikipedia. At the opposite end of the scale, for something like the bigger attempts at assassinating Donald Trump, it's obvious that the name(s) will go in the article; the only question is when. WhatamIdoing (talk) 08:03, 8 March 2026 (UTC)
Would it be ok to assume that none of the WP:GREL sources (currently 157 of them) don’t name suspects of non-notable crimes? SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:09, 8 March 2026 (UTC)
No. Just pick up any newspaper in your area, flip to the police blotter, and see how many people's names are listed. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:36, 8 March 2026 (UTC)
I think you’re thinking of the local paper, or small town newspapers. I regularly read two NGREL newspapers, and they do not have such a section. SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:06, 8 March 2026 (UTC)
What is WP:NGREL (assuming it's not a typo)? WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:12, 9 March 2026 (UTC)
NGREL is like WP:GREL for someone affected by an obsession with notability shortcuts. I like to use GREL sources, highlighted by a script for checking evidence of notability by starting with these sources, especially in cases of reference bombing. SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:29, 9 March 2026 (UTC)
Looking through some GREL newspapers, they name a lot of people who have been charged for crimes not covered by Wikipedia. Once named in one GREL newspaper, the story gets repeated in others. Clearly, “named in three GREL newspapers” is not a threshold for Wikipedia-notability. But I think it is sufficient cover for Wikipedia to defend itself as not an original publisher of accusations against individuals. SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:33, 9 March 2026 (UTC)
I agree that most crimes, including most crimes with a named suspect, don't qualify for a separate, stand-alone article on Wikipedia.
I don't think that not being "an original publisher of accusations against individuals" is the point. I think the main point is that the name of a suspect per se has no enduring encyclopedic significance, especially for lesser crimes. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:29, 9 March 2026 (UTC)
Thanks Red Slash. It’s the nature of compromise that you don’t really like the limitation of an improvement.
I oppose the criteria being “heinous”, or the rationale being to avoid “ridicule”. These are emotive, and Wikipedia should not be making emotional judgement. Instead, follow the best sources. If three WP:GREL sources name the person, directly, without retraction or amendment, for three days, then Wikipedia may cautiously summarise what the GREL sources have already written. SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:17, 7 March 2026 (UTC)
Let me give another example. A friend of mine got a criminal charge over 15 years ago. I couldn't find it in search results until I searched with specific keywords that she told me. Katzrockso (talk) 04:17, 12 March 2026 (UTC)
“if the charges are dismissed, delete the information from Wikipedia”. No. That locks in the old information into mirrors and web archives. Instead, change to the correct information. “Bob Smith was charged with … by … on <date>, but these charges were dropped … on <date>.” Leave that information live for longer than the information it replaced, for the mirrors and webarchives to update with, and later, if it is uninteresting to the final picture, cut it without deletion. SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:15, 3 March 2026 (UTC)
Of course, if we didn't put Bob's name in the Wikipedia article the same day that the information became available, then we wouldn't have to worry about what got copied to mirrors and forks when Bob was declared innocent in a day or two. My position isn't "no, never"; it's just "maybe wait a little bit". WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:36, 4 March 2026 (UTC)
I very much agree. Wait a little bit. I like objective numbers, having noticed that a high proportion of editors look for the number and stop reading when they’ve found one. I suggest “When at least three WP:GREL sources have named someone, without retraction or major amendment, for three days, then Wikipedia may cautiously include the person’s name”.
Of course it’s not about guilty or innocent, that takes years. The killer of Charlie Kirk was the third person of interest, apprehended on the first day, and wasn’t charged until the sixth. I think three days feels about right. SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:17, 4 March 2026 (UTC)
I think that's fine. A red line of 72 hours is a decent compromise and, importantly, is easy to point to as a defense against detractors. ("No, we're not 'keeping his name secret' because we're scared, or because we think people of his demographic shouldn't be labeled as criminals, etc., it's just policy to not name anyone accused for 72 hours.") That would make some articles like Killing of Renée Good a little weird to read at first, but only for a few days. Red Slash 22:47, 6 March 2026 (UTC)
I think my position is "no, never", actually. I don't think a time limit helps because the question we're dealing with is "did this person actually commit a crime or were they only accused of one?" That question doesn't go away after 72 hours and might not be clearly resolved for years after the crime is committed.
If we have a clear confession from the suspect I think it's fine to list their name. Also, obviously, if we have a conviction it's also fine. But in the absence of either of those two things I think we should err extremely on the side of caution, especially in cases where the accused was not well known before the crime. I think if there is any evidence-based reason to doubt the suspect may have committed the crime we should not include their name, and the similarity of this approach to the standard used in criminal trials is not a coincidence.
(As for "a defense against detractors", I just don't care at all about that. That's not a factor we should be considering.) Loki (talk) 18:57, 9 March 2026 (UTC)
the similarity of this approach to the standard used in criminal trials is not a coincidence. So when discussing the inclusion/exclusion of a suspect's name, Wikipedia editors are the ones deciding whether there is any evidence-based reason to doubt the suspect may have committed the crime then? That doesn't seem like a good idea. With this new rule, readers might think: "Oh, this Wikipedia article includes the suspect's name, so Wikipedia must think there's enough evidence-based reason to not doubt the suspect may have committed the crime", and vice versa. Some1 (talk) 20:05, 9 March 2026 (UTC)
@Red Slash:, you may be looking for a solution, where there's none. GoodDay (talk) 22:29, 2 March 2026 (UTC)
I support the edit. Where “multiple reliable sources have already published the accused's name in connection with the crime”, I trust Wikipedia to be responsible and balanced-cautious in supplying the facts properly worded. A suspect has been named in reliable sources. Wikipedia should summarise what others have already said, responsibly. If the name is already in the public domain, I would prefer to have a responsible statement in Wikipedia to excited innuendo that can be read from media eager to publish first. SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:10, 3 March 2026 (UTC)
Couldn't agree more. Red Slash 22:42, 6 March 2026 (UTC)
  • Fundamentally oppose this change, since it throws innocent until proven guilty to the dogs. FDW777 (talk) 15:30, 3 March 2026 (UTC)
    I still maintain that Wikipedia should hold itself to a higher standard than the media. We should WAIT until the alleged suspect is actually (formally) indicted before mentioning the name. Blueboar (talk) 20:51, 8 March 2026 (UTC)
    I agree here. Editors on WP are way too aggressive in adding breaking news, against NOTNEWS, and this creates far too many BLP problems. Masem (t) 22:17, 8 March 2026 (UTC)
    The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann article includes a suspect's name, even though he hasn't been formally charged yet. I'm assuming you think the name should be removed, despite that article having a large section about him here: German investigations in 2020 and 2025? Some1 (talk) 23:22, 8 March 2026 (UTC)
    The suspect there is named in several NGREL sources that are references to the article. Including his name would meet my test. Interestingly, German privacy laws prevent the use of his full name. SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:24, 9 March 2026 (UTC)
    Yes, I would remove the name. We can (and should) note that German authorities have named a suspect, and mention that this suspect has yet to be charged (and why)… but I would not mention that suspect’s name until there is a formal indictment (or whatever the German equivalent is). Until then, he can be referred to as “the suspect”. Blueboar (talk) 01:13, 9 March 2026 (UTC)
    I would prefer to adopt the German authority styling, first surname-initial. The reader can quickly work out which suspect is being talked about.
    I do not support the removal of quality sources that name the suspect, even if the suspect name is part of the url. SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:03, 9 March 2026 (UTC)
    The article currently says "In 2020, German authorities declared Christian Brückner their prime suspect...". I think it would be more informative to write something like "In 2020, German authorities declared a man who has been convicted of multiple unrelated crimes, including rape, their prime suspect..." The name isn't as important as the fact that he's a sex offender. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:10, 9 March 2026 (UTC)
    I might fully support that. For people who like drilling down rabbit holes, the sources are available to do that. Is WP:Don’t name non-notable living persons a missing essay notability? SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:44, 9 March 2026 (UTC)
    There are those who will argue that any suspect named in multiple reliable sources is (de facto) notable. And I would say we should refrain from mentioning unindicted suspects even if they ARE notable. Blueboar (talk) 14:18, 9 March 2026 (UTC)
    +1 Valereee (talk) 20:34, 9 March 2026 (UTC)
  • Re:his reputation is already ruined far beyond what little Wikipedia can do is not a reason to perpetuate that ruination. There's zero value in reporting a name of someone non-notable. What does "Henry Robinson" tell a reader that "a suspect" does not? Unless you know Henry IRL, the name tells you nothing. And if you do know Henry IRL, naming him almost certainly harms him, and just because there are sources doing so doesn't mean WP should jump on board. Valereee (talk) 20:34, 9 March 2026 (UTC)
  • Oppose mentioning the name of someone accused of a crime who has not been indicted. This is an encyclopedia, not a news source. Patience. O3000, Ret. (talk) 21:02, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

Possible essay

I think it's more complicated than that. Maybe we do need an essay. How's this as an overall approach?

More information Notable crime, High-profile crime ...
Naming the accused
Notable crime High-profile crime Non-notable crime
Major public figure Of course Donald Trump's name will be in People of New York v. Trump and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor will be named in Relationship of Prince Andrew and Jeffrey Epstein#Arrest; this cannot be avoided. Getting arrested for drunk driving doesn't need a separate article, but it should be mentioned, e.g., in Mel Gibson#Controversies.

This category could also include politically motivated false arrests, e.g., if there is a section in an election article about arresting an opponent.

 This is usually worth a brief mention in the BLP's article, e.g., "Chris Celebrity was arrested at the anti-war protest yesterday".
Minor public figure The accused's name should probably be mentioned after formal charges have been laid. For example, in an article about the 2026 Little City embezzlement, with the local mayor as the prime suspect, write "Police have arrested an elected official" before indictment, and upon indictment, change it to "Mayor Minor has been indicted on 47 counts of embezzlement, with the trial expected next summer." If Wikipedia already had an article about the minor public figure, and the event is being described in that BLP article, then the name is unavoidable. For example, Dennis Dutko was arrested for drunk driving multiple times, and it affected his political career.

If the allegations are described elsewhere, then the name should be excluded until at least after formal charges are laid, and possibly until after the trial has begun.

 Normally mention only after conviction: "In 2026, Mayor Money pleaded guilty to jaywalking and paid a fine of $200" or "After the release of this album, Di Disco was convicted of stealing the guitar she played in the fourth track."

However, mention earlier if the accusation itself affects the reason for notability (e.g., being ousted from the position that made them notable).

Non-public figure Prefer describing, rather than naming, the person until a conviction has been secured, or at least until the trial has begun: "Authorities, who describe it as a burglary gone wrong, have charged a 22-year-old man with a history of drug addiction with murder". For example, various accusations of sexual abuse by school teachers or religious figures. If it is described in the article about the organization, then a description is better, e.g., "A former student accused the English department head, who taught there from 1988 to 1991, of improper behavior. Authorities are investigating". This category covers the ordinary car wreck or crime with a celebrity victim. The accused should not be named at all, even after conviction. Write "Alex Athlete's home was robbed while he played the big game" instead of "Unknown Nobody robbed Alex Athlete's home during a game".
Close

A few thoughts (numbered for convenience):

  1. If it is impossible to bring charges due to the death of the accused, then provide a description first ("The suspect, a former student at the school, was pronounced dead at the scene"), and the name later in the article (usually not in the lead).
  2. Don't include the name of non-notable people, such as an arresting law enforcement officer, a family member, a murder victim's school teacher, a perpetrator's neighbor, etc. "We were completely shocked. He seemed like a nice person" is for newspapers, not for encyclopedias.
  3. If there are many non-notable people being accused, such that it's not possible to keep the story straight from simple descriptions (e.g., man/woman for criminal couples), then at least some of them may have to be named for purely practical reasons. Editors should not make up names like "John Doe #4" to avoid naming a non-notable person.
  4. In the 9th category (non-public person + non-notable crime), I think that editors might identify the general concept as either being related to Wikipedia:Don't be evil (maybe they'll turn their life around, and we don't want this hanging over their head for decades to come) or conversely as Wikipedia:Deny recognition (don't try to get Wikipedia-famous by committing a minor crime against a celebrity).

What do you think of this overall concept? Do you think that an explanation/essay along these lines would be helpful to editors? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:37, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

IMO, I think it's best just to handle these suspect naming disputes on a case-by-case basis and start article-specific RfCs if needed (this is the status quo). Every case is different with their own unique set of circumstances. I dislike these one-size-fits-all sort of essays because editors will just refer to them as if they're policies/guidelines that must be followed or use them for wikilawyering. But I can't stop you or anyone from starting an essay about this whole thing though. Some1 (talk) 22:52, 9 March 2026 (UTC)
I think this is gesturing in the correct direction, but I have some issues with it, namely:
  1. I think the lower-right box should be empty. A crime committed against a celebrity is a high-profile crime. Non-notable crimes committed by non-notable people have no reason to be mentioned by us at all.
  2. Related to that, the notability of the perpetrator and the notability of the crime aren't independent. Would the prosecution of Donald Trump in New York be notable if the defendant wasn't Donald Trump? I suspect not.
  3. I think nine boxes is too many. A lot of these have similar options or very subtle distinctions that I don't think would actually be respected when we actually try to apply this.
As such I'd prefer something more like this:
More information (Independently) Notable crime, Non-notable crime (or crime only notable because of the perpetrator) ...
Naming the accused before a conviction, confession, or indisputable evidence of guilt
(Independently) Notable crime Non-notable crime (or crime only notable because of the perpetrator)
(Independently) Notable person This inevitably impacts the notability of both the person in question and the event in such a way there's no way we get out of including the name here. Don't create a separate article. Include in the article of the public figure only if the accusation itself significantly impacts their notability.
Non-notable person (or person only notable for committing this crime) Describe the perpetrator, but do not name them. If you think you're here, you're probably mistaken. If you really are, don't name even after a conviction.
Close
Loki (talk) 01:06, 10 March 2026 (UTC)
So per your table, Luigi Mangione would not be named at all in the Killing of Brian Thompson article? Some1 (talk) 01:16, 10 March 2026 (UTC)
"Don't create a separate article" for crimes "only notable because of the perpetrator" might include the Clinton–Lewinsky scandal. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:34, 10 March 2026 (UTC)
Hmm, that's fair actually. I'll strike that. Loki (talk) 04:36, 10 March 2026 (UTC)
Though on second thought, a sex scandal involving the president would be notable no matter who the president was. Loki (talk) 04:38, 10 March 2026 (UTC)
Well, yes: it would be notable only because he's the president. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:48, 10 March 2026 (UTC)
Right, but not because he's Bill Clinton specifically.
For comparison, the Martha Stewart stock trading case was notable only because the defendant was Martha Stewart. Even another businesswoman committing insider trading would not have been notable. Loki (talk) 05:22, 10 March 2026 (UTC)
Yes. I'm a bit conflicted about that because he is now very well known for being accused of this crime, but I can't think of a systematic way to say we should publish his name but not, say, the person of interest in the Wi Spa controversy.
I might be convinced to add an extra bit for people who are so well known for being accused of a crime that the average person would know their name anyway. But honestly I'm not 100% sure I don't want to just bite the bullet here and say we shouldn't name him. We're not the news. Actually I think Kyle Rittenhouse is a harder case here, because he was actually acquitted of the crime he was accused of but is also clearly now a public figure because of it. Loki (talk) 04:35, 10 March 2026 (UTC)
We're both using the same axes:
  • More likely for a notable person vs less likely for a non-notable person
  • More likely for a notable crime vs less likely for a non-notable crime
Maybe a display similar to WP:INAPPNOTE would work? WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:36, 10 March 2026 (UTC)
Yeah, that sounds reasonable. Loki (talk) 04:40, 10 March 2026 (UTC)
There are non-public but notable figures, such as many college professors, business people, visual and musicians that would not be celebrities, etc. They absolutely need to be handled differently. Masem (t) 23:53, 11 March 2026 (UTC)
So the problem I see with not naming the criminal before a trial has begun is that, for instance, we wouldn't be naming the terrorists involved in the 2026_New_York_City_bombing_attempt until, what, June? Despite the fact that they're on camera caught having launched bombs, they're arrested, and hundreds of international news outlets have published their names. Even if somehow they're innocent, what do we gain from not publishing those names? @LokiTheLiar and @WhatamIdoing, with great respect, how would you address that?
Then the Kyle Rittenhouse example you gave, Loki, is great. He was acquitted! What, should we not mention his name in the Kenosha protest article? How would that improve the encyclopedia? Red Slash 10:10, 10 March 2026 (UTC)
Red Slash… could you explain why you think having to wait until there is an indictment or other formal charges to name a suspect is a bad thing? Why does Wikipedia need to give the names of unindicted suspects? Blueboar (talk) 11:45, 10 March 2026 (UTC)
I'd strongly prefer to not name the bombers there at this point. In general I'd prefer to lean way way way on the side of caution. The thing I am worried about is cases like naming the person accused in the Wi Spa controversy, which I think is a much better prototype than any of the high profile cases, and any change that might in any way reduce the protection of people in situations like that I am against no matter if it makes us seem skittish in the case of high profile crimes. Real world harm to living people trumps any other consideration. Loki (talk) 18:28, 10 March 2026 (UTC)
I think @WhatamIdoing's essay is great.
While I agree with @Some1 that this generally can be handled on a case-by-case basis in discussion at a particular article (particularly in cases where a crime is so high-profile that it causes a person who has been arrested to become notable, although see Richard Jewell and consider whether you'd be proud to have been one of those arguing to name him) but what essays are GREAT at is explaining your point of view without having to write an essay every time.
We see this problem a lot in articles about crimes with non-notable suspects, even when the crime isn't particularly high-profile. There are often editors who want to name those suspects. There are editors who want to name persons of interest before they've been arrested. There are editors who want to name anyone mentioned by media in relation to a crime even if they were never named as a person of interest. Crime just seems to attract this kind of editing. Valereee (talk) 11:41, 10 March 2026 (UTC)
what essays are GREAT at is explaining your point of view Per Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines#Essays, Essays the author does not want others to edit, or that overtly contradict consensus, belong in the user namespace. As long as these suspect naming essays are in the user namespace, I see no problem with them. Some1 (talk) 12:53, 10 March 2026 (UTC)
Nothing proposed in this discussion overtly contradicts community consensus. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:00, 10 March 2026 (UTC)
I'm sorry if I'm being obtuse, @Some1, but I'm not sure what you're saying. If WaId creates this essay, I assume they'd move it to WP space and be completely happy with others editing it as long as those edits didn't, say, completely reverse the entire point of the essay. I've moved any number of essays to WP space and been very happy that others filled in nuance, tweaked, added caveats, etc. Valereee (talk) 20:01, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

I would rather try the following:

More information Notable crime (would have its own article regardless of the perp's identity), High-profile crime (only merits an article due to the perp's identity) ...
Naming the accused, Red Slash
Notable crime (would have its own article regardless of the perp's identity) High-profile crime (only merits an article due to the perp's identity) Non-notable crime (cannot satisfy WP:GNG on its own)
Any public figure (we can define it as anyone who, even if he would never have been associated with this crime, would be notable enough to satisfy WP:GNG). Of course Donald Trump's name will be in People of New York v. Trump and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor will be named in Relationship of Prince Andrew and Jeffrey Epstein#Arrest; this cannot be avoided. Getting arrested for drunk driving doesn't need a separate article, but it should be mentioned, e.g., in Mel Gibson#Controversies.

This category could also include politically motivated false arrests, e.g., if there is a section in an election article about arresting an opponent.

 This is usually worth a brief mention in the BLP's article, e.g., "Chris Celebrity was arrested at the anti-war protest yesterday".
Non-public figure The accused's name should be mentioned as soon as a plethora of independent, reliable sources name him. Think school shooters, terrorists, serial killers, etc. (Of course, named only as "accused" or something similar.) This applies regardless of whether or not the accused ultimately gets his own article (Luigi Mangione gets treated the same as Decarlos Brown Jr, neither one getting named until RS's do so). Not applicable; any event with its own wikipedia page (i.e. that satisfies WP:GNG) independent of the perp is already a notable crime. For any other, see the next box This is the most interesting one. I see the arguments for discretion here; does it really improve Bob Actor's article to include the name of the dude who mugged him in 2002, even if the guy was convicted? Probably not; I do think less is more in these circumstances and we can avoid naming him.
Close

Thoughts? Red Slash 11:00, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

Of the tables provided, this is the best one (so far). I do think the "High Profile crime" and "Public Figure" cell needs some work, as the first example provided is to not have a separate article. - Enos733 (talk) 15:29, 10 March 2026 (UTC)
I think a crime can be high-profile because of the victim's identity (not just the perpetrator's). WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:59, 10 March 2026 (UTC)
Yes, of course. I arranged the graph so that those crimes (like, say, Attempted assassination of Donald Trump in Florida) would go in the far-left column. They're notable without taking the accused perpetrator's identity into account at all. Red Slash 23:47, 11 March 2026 (UTC)
I would not support the naming of non-notable accused until there is discussion somewhere -- at the article talk and/or BLPN -- that results in consensus to do so. Valereee (talk) 20:08, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

Here is my attempt (combining several of the ideas above):

More information Notable crime (would have its own article regardless of the perp's identity), High-profile crime (only merits an article due to the perp's identity) ...
Naming the accused, Enos733
Notable crime (would have its own article regardless of the perp's identity) High-profile crime (only merits an article due to the perp's identity) Non-notable crime (cannot satisfy WP:GNG on its own)
Any public figure (we can define it as anyone who, even if he would never have been associated with this crime, would be notable enough to satisfy WP:GNG). President Nixon's involvement in the Watergate scandal.

The involvement of a public figure inevitably impacts the notability of both the person in question and the event.

 Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor's arrest for his involvement with Jeffrey Epstein.

The involvement of a public figure inevitably makes the crime a notable event that will have a stand-alone page.

Editors should determine whether a stand-alone page about the crime is warranted, and if not, the crime should be mentioned in the article about the subject, e.g., in Mel Gibson#Controversies.

 This is usually worth a brief mention in the BLP's article, e.g., "Chris Celebrity was arrested at the anti-war protest yesterday".
Non-public figure The accused's name may be mentioned as soon as a plethora of independent, reliable sources name the accused. Think school shooters, terrorists, serial killers, etc. (Of course, named only as "accused" or something similar.)

This applies regardless of whether or not the accused ultimately gets his own article (Luigi Mangione gets treated the same as Decarlos Brown Jr, neither one getting named until RS's do so).

 Prefer describing, rather than naming, the person until a conviction has been secured, or at least until the trial has begun: "Authorities, who describe it as a burglary gone wrong, have charged a 22-year-old man with a history of drug addiction with murder".

If it is described in the article about the organization, then a description is better, e.g., "A former student accused the English department head, who taught there from 1988 to 1991, of improper behavior. Authorities are investigating".

 This category covers the ordinary car wreck or crime with a celebrity victim. The accused should not be named at all, even after conviction. Write "Alex Athlete's home was robbed while he played the big game" instead of "Unknown Nobody robbed Alex Athlete's home during a game".
Close

Enos733 15:52, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

I would not support the naming of non-notable accused until there is discussion somewhere -- at the article talk and/or BLPN -- that results in consensus to do so. Valereee (talk) 20:09, 10 March 2026 (UTC)
Agreed. Loki (talk) 20:26, 10 March 2026 (UTC)
This could become a simple, actionable "rule": Just like WP:RESTORATION specifies a 24-hour waiting period, we could say not to name non-notable accused/suspects/persons of interest until there has been a discussion somewhere (BLPN might be best) that has been open for at least 24 hours and that resulted in a consensus ("clear consensus"?) to include the name. (I mention 24 hours only because it's the shortest I'm aware of for any other policy/process; I don't actually care how long it is.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:39, 10 March 2026 (UTC)
I jumped for three days because because I’ve seen newspapers make errors and fix them. Also, three is a magic number. SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:49, 11 March 2026 (UTC)
We could also go with The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two.  :-)
At least 48 hours should usually give us time for a proper correction. But again, I don't really care what the number is. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:38, 11 March 2026 (UTC)
@LokiTheLiar, In an ideal world, I would agree, we should be very cautious and reluctant about identifying an person accused of a crime. That said, when there are a plethora of stories in sources meeting GNG that name a subject, I've come to the conclusion that, in this project, omitting the name in an event that is clearly notable (to me these are the most noteworthy crimes) can be a disservice to readers and difficult to enforce. I do like what WhatamIdoing's proposal that we should have a discussion whether to include a name before it is included, but again, eager editors will still ignore recommendations. But all of this should be an essay and not on this page. - Enos733 (talk) 20:48, 10 March 2026 (UTC)
How is omitting the name of a suspect a disservice to readers?
A while back, I cleaned up an article about a notable mass murder. (Looking at it now, it needs to be re-written again.) At the time, which was about six months after the events, the identity of the perpetrator was certain; the only thing that wasn't certain is whether the courts would declare him to be mentally incompetent and therefore not guilty in the eyes of the law.
IMO the thing readers needed to know at that time (post-arrest, pre-pleading guilty) was this: a man with a lengthy history of mental illness and drug addiction killed his parents and their close friends, then went on a random shooting spree, and now he's in jail.
"BTW, his name is ____" isn't even in the top 10 of what people really needed to know at that point in time. So how could omitting that name be a disservice to the reader? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:26, 10 March 2026 (UTC)
Disservice may have been too strong a term, but I do agree with many of the editors who have suggested that if a name is published over and over in reliable publications, the additional repetitional harm to the accused by attaching the name to an event is minimal (recognizing there are some editors who do want to attach a name). I also believe that we can, and we return to event-type articles six months, a year, and five years later to restructure and revise for a more encyclopedic form. - Enos733 (talk) 15:36, 11 March 2026 (UTC)
We can, and we should, but AFAICT mostly we don't. This is as true for crimes as it is for COVID-19 articles. The fifth year of the pandemic lockdowns came and went last year – next week is the six-year anniversary here in California – and I'd estimate that 90% of the "COVID-19 in country" articles are now five years out of date.
The problem isn't "the additional repetitional harm". The problem is "the permanent harm", because Wikipedia is permanent in a way that yesterday's newsletter is not. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:42, 11 March 2026 (UTC)
I do agree we benefit from using descriptors rather than naming a person. I sympathize with the argument that an accused name can last on this site longer than a news organization's page. That said, as there are many editors who do strongly believe that a suspect's name should be included (see this discussion), I think that some guidance for exceptional crimes is warranted - and if an essay gains traction, it may help to suggest under what circumstances, rather than never. (and I admit, my draft above is just one attempt and I already see challenges with it). - Enos733 (talk) 21:50, 11 March 2026 (UTC)
I also think that it would be useful to differentiate between an exceptional crime and an ordinary one. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:39, 11 March 2026 (UTC)
Yeah, it's certainly not a need-to-know thing, but then, most anything is not really need-to-know. You don't need to know the name of the guy who killed Renée Good, sure, but you also don't need to know the year of the Battle of Hastings. You don't need to know the day George Washington died. But at some point, Wikipedia:Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and this is just the sort of information that encyclopedias include. Red Slash 23:52, 11 March 2026 (UTC)
At some point is the crucial consideration. GW died. At the time, did anyone need to know it was Dec 14 or Dec 15 of 1799? 225 years later, historians want to know. There is zero need for an encyclopedia to include this info in real time. Valereee (talk) 01:03, 12 March 2026 (UTC)
We cannot use notability to measure someone being a public figure, because being notable is not equivalent to be a public figure. Masem (t) 23:55, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

"Perp"

I'm really, really troubled by the proposed essays that refer to the accused as the perpetrators. This is exactly the problem we see in crime articles, and it carries over into real life and hurts real people: Being accused is equated with being the perp. Valereee (talk) 20:16, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

Anyone who thinks that it is ever appropriate to describe an unconvicted living accused person as a 'perpetrator' has no business writing essays on the subject. Or editing this type of topic at all. It is a clear, unambiguous, and gross violation of core WP:BLP policy.
I'd also caution against over-use of 'the accused', particularly in early stages of an investigation. It is not uncommon, in such circumstances, for law enforcement to be following multiple leads, into into multiple suspects, and as we should be well aware by now, the first suspect to be named not infrequently turns out to be entirely uninvolved. 'A suspect' is the appropriate terminology until charges have been made. Not 'the suspect', 'a suspect', assuming that there is anything to justify even that - which needs more than a single source making vague statements that the authorities want to question someone etc.
With the appropriate terminology, it should be less necessary to splatter 'alleged' all over an article. 'A suspect' (who frequently needn't be named at all, but if it is really justified, described thus) is preferable to 'the alleged perpetrator', or the nonsensical 'alleged accused' which I've seen once or twice. Generally try to use 'alleged' when describing the allegations, rather than labelling the individual, and tell the reader who has made the accusations. Assuming that the primary source for the allegations actually has any credibility when discussing the subject. If they don't, we aren't interested. AndyTheGrump (talk) 00:25, 12 March 2026 (UTC)
Consider John Hinckley Jr., who was never technically convicted of the Attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan. There's never been any question who did it; the only question was whether he was sane enough to know that it was wrong.
Consider Karmelo Anthony, who has admitted to the Killing of Austin Metcalf. There's never been any question who did it; the only question is whether Texas law allows people to stab someone who is attacking you.
In both cases, we know who did it, aka who perpetrated it, and therefore we know who the do-er, or perpetrator, of the action was. Why shouldn't we refer to such people as perpetrators? WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:43, 12 March 2026 (UTC)
If RS are, we can. If they aren't, we don't. But assuming is problematic, and these essays seem to assume all accused are perps. And really are the best RS calling the average recently-accused a perp? Yeesh. Valereee (talk) 00:48, 12 March 2026 (UTC)
Loki's essay above describes "Naming the accused before a conviction, confession, or indisputable evidence of guilt", and yet refers to "the perpetrator". Red Slash's essay does essentially the same thing. As does Enos733's Do that about a living individual, and you violate WP:BLP, without question. (And incidentally, a confession isn't necessarily evidence of guilt). The essays are inviting WP:BLP violations. I suggest that all three look up the word 'perpetrator' in a dictionary. AndyTheGrump (talk) 01:06, 12 March 2026 (UTC)
I should have worded the table more carefully. I do think there are distinctions between an event that is notable (independently of any individual actor) and other events that are notable because of the actors involved. - Enos733 (talk) 03:13, 12 March 2026 (UTC)
You're totally right; I should have put "alleged perpetrator" there. Loki (talk) 06:34, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

Real-life example

Let's look at an example:

On September 15, 2024, a man attempted to assassinate Donald Trump. At 1:31, he was shot and fled the scene; by 2:22, he was arrested as a "person of interest" (and was described as such in the freshly created Wikipedia article). At 4:30, the police held a press conference and named Ryan Routh as the accused attempted assassin. Within minutes, hundreds of WP:RS were publishing his name (referring to Ryan as "the accused", generally). Routh immediately became world famous, his name forever and indelibly marked to this event; even if (somehow) he'd been mistakenly arrested and named, he would always be tied to this story no matter what Wikipedia did.

By about 9 PM that night, Wikipedia's article was using Ryan's name as the accused of the crime. In February 2026, Ryan was sentenced to life in prison.

So, my question to all of you:

When exactly should Wikipedia have joined the hundreds of reliable sources in naming Ryan Routh as the accused in the article on the assassination attempt? That evening? By the afternoon of the 16th? The 17th? The 18th? Should we have waited a year and a half for the legal process to play out?

Would love to hear your perspectives. Red Slash 00:10, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

I would say this is one of those cases where, when we're dealing with a non-notable accused, discussion at the talk finds consensus eventually. I don't see any particular need to name the accused -- not by the 16th, 17th, 18th, or any date. At some point, there will be consensus to name, but we have no deadline. I don't see any rush. This is an encyclopedia, not a news site. What value is there to a reader in knowing the accused's name one day early or one day late? It's just a name. It gives zero info to anyone who doesn't know that person. But it does unimaginable harm to the person. Valereee (talk) 00:44, 12 March 2026 (UTC)
How in the world does it do harm to the person? Every news organization on the planet had already named him. Suppose for the sake of argument that he was innocent; where, do you think, being named in Wikipedia would rank on his list of concerns? Somewhere between the Miami Herald and the Malaysia Sun? Red Slash 02:52, 12 March 2026 (UTC)
Asked and answered. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:45, 12 March 2026 (UTC)
We'd almost certainly be near the top of the list of search results for his name or the crime, so something like 2nd or 3rd.
Also, you don't really need to "suppose for the sake of argument" that he was innocent, because legally speaking he was innocent until February 2026. That's kinda the whole point. Loki (talk) 06:33, 12 March 2026 (UTC)
"legally speaking he was innocent until February 2026. That's kinda the whole point."
Right, so this may have revealed the issue here. Let's say Ricardo Kennedy (a distant relative of JFK, certainly nowhere near notable enough for GNG!) walks up to one of the top five most famous people in the world... IDK, Taylor Swift. He's got a gun. He kills Taylor Swift, plus Beyonce, Celine Dion and Meg White, who were just in the middle of an epic performance of "Yellow Submarine" at the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame. Ricardo is seen killing them by millions of folks watching the show. He's literally wearing a T-shirt with his face on it saying "Hi, I'm Ricardo Kennedy".
He's immediately arrested and news around the world is reporting about what he did. He's instantly famous from Namibia to Norway. Everyone knows his name within a day of the killings. But Ricardo's connected to the Kennedy family and has tons of lawyers, so after he pleads not guilty, it's over two years before the jury lays down its verdict.
Should the wikipedia articles on the killings and the four celebrities murdered not name Ricardo until he's found guilty?
Also, psych, the prosecutors, while trying to interrogate him on the stand, accidentally trip over their words and confess to the killings themselves. While they're able to get it stricken from the record, the jurors never forget, and Ricardo actually is acquitted. So despite every media outlet in the world having named him as the alleged killer, despite him being world-famous specifically for committing that crime, despite it mattering 0% with regard to his reputation...
should Wikipedia not mention his name? Red Slash 02:58, 15 March 2026 (UTC)
I suspect in such a case editors at the article talk -- which always trumps an essay -- will pretty quickly come to consensus to decide to name him, so hypothetical problem solved. Valereee (talk) 12:52, 15 March 2026 (UTC)
What Valereee said, but also I think it would be totally reasonable to not name him until he's convicted. I think we actively should not name him until he's at least formally charged with a crime.
You keep on trying to formulate scenarios where you think it will seem absurd to not name people. I will simply not budge on any of them and will bite every bullet you throw at me because I just don't think it's ever a bad idea to err on the side of caution where real world harm is concerned. We are not the news, nor are we the arbiters of public opinion. We are an encyclopedia and we should include information that would be useful in an encyclopedia, not a newspaper. Loki (talk) 18:04, 15 March 2026 (UTC)
As a starting point, >99.9% of crimes are never going to be mentioned in Wikipedia, not even as a single sentence in a larger article. There are about 500K homicides each year, not to mention all the other types of crimes. I'd be willing to grant a "most sensational crime of the decade" exception, if the pro-naming editors would in return grant all the others. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:57, 15 March 2026 (UTC)
Then do we need an RfC on whether a crime is the most sensational of the decade? Valereee (talk) Valereee (talk) 00:33, 16 March 2026 (UTC)
Probably, especially if we have a rule that there really can be only one such exemption per 10 years. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:41, 16 March 2026 (UTC)
  • How in the world does it do harm to the person? I wrote an entire essay about this here. I wouldn't say that every point of it enjoys consensus, but I think that the gist of it applies either way. Note especially this paragraph, which I think answers your question:
Major news orgs, with the resources to polish and vet every iteration of their articles that go to press, have no need to be so cautious; they're not going to accidentally defame someone. But when drawing the red lines and easy at-a-glance policies that allow BLP to scale up to Wikipedia's scope, we need to weigh that risk; for non-public figures who fall under WP:BLP1E, it often makes more sense of us to err on the side of caution even if major news sources aren't doing so.
Wikipedia's nature, as both an encyclopedia and an encyclopedia that anyone can edit, requires that we be more cautious than news sources sometimes are. And I think you do, in fact, understand this; as one of the largest websites in the world, our decision whether to name someone as a suspect (let alone a perpetrator!) carries weight even when lots of news sources are already doing so. If you didn't understand that, you wouldn't care whether we did or not, right? By using a name we're making the statement that it is encyclopedic fact that XYZ is true, which has the potential to do harm even if the name has already been published in other high-profile sources. Now, sometimes we just can't avoid using the name (and for public figures the risk of harm is lower, so our standard isn't so high.) But it's a valid reason for us to be cautious in other situations; we're not only worried about whether the name is already out there. --Aquillion (talk) 02:03, 23 March 2026 (UTC)
I agree with Valereee: It's not usually important from an encyclopedia perspective. One expects to see, say, John Wilkes Booth assassinated Abraham Lincoln. Britannica names the perpetrators of the Attempted assassination of Donald Trump in Pennsylvania and Assassination of Charlie Kirk , so it is sometimes appropriately encyclopedic even for living people. But one does not necessarily expect to see, e.g., Nix Nobody named for swiping Chris Celebrity's cell phone, or Nigel Nonnotable named for getting into a car wreck. Consider Death of Diana, Princess of Wales#The crash, where a variety of people remain unnamed, even though the event is notable. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:44, 12 March 2026 (UTC)
  • This is another great example of why Wikipedia should leave breaking news to news sources, and delay even starting its own article for week at least. That way, out editors don't waste their time sorting through the flood of crap that appears in the wake of dramatic developments, and in particular we don't have to deal with questions like this one. EEng 04:40, 12 March 2026 (UTC)
    I think a week is too long.
    I think it is good for Wikipedia, in many ways, to be considered a reliable source of information on breaking news. But this doesn’t mean we should name individuals before the reliability of information has settled SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:01, 12 March 2026 (UTC)
    I would love to see this. But people really love to write about current events. Literally we have to ask people not to update scores in real time for sporting events. I can remember at least one time having to deal with an argument that Wikipedia was "getting scooped". Valereee (talk) 17:41, 12 March 2026 (UTC)
    This is a red herring for this discussion and should probably be hatted before it gets too long/derails us from the main topic. However, I need to call out that it's just not a good idea even if you could get consensus for it, which I doubt. A centrally imposed delay would remove a primary motivation for a not-insignificant number of editors, as well as make us far less useful and relevant to readers. Just look at the sort of things that are read the most each year: pop culture (especially movies/TV) and current events. Ed [talk] [OMT] 17:54, 12 March 2026 (UTC)
    I was a bit chagrinned but not shocked to learn the most-read article I'd ever created was Murdaugh family lol. Valereee (talk) 18:02, 12 March 2026 (UTC)
I still like 3 days after 3 WP:GREL sources have been reporting the name. I think one day is probably sufficient for a good newspaper to check the facts on its hastily posted news, but 3 days gives a lot of confidence that there’s been time for checking. Even then, Wikipedia should be cautious with what it publishes.
I think it is satisfying to find the facts of the breaking story minus speculation on otherwise previously non notable individuals. SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:06, 12 March 2026 (UTC)
The precise answer is "whenever Wikipedians on the talk page agreed to name him". I think there is a reasonable and probably even a good case for waiting to name him until February 2026 when he was actually convicted, and that we should not under any circumstances try to name him on a breaking-news timescale. Loki (talk) 06:30, 12 March 2026 (UTC)
@LokiTheLiar, how long is a breaking-news timescale? Editors have variously mentioned 24, 48, 72 and 168 hours. I'd put actual Breaking news at a maximum of maybe 12 hours and usually less than that (i.e., until the next scheduled news broadcast). WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:14, 12 March 2026 (UTC)
It's hard to say in exact times. The basis is something like "if the accused had some obvious airtight alibi or reason they could not possibly have committed the crime, the maximum amount of time for the news to find and publish that alibi" (or in other words, enough time to establish that this person really is "the accused" rather than just "a suspect") but I have no idea what that time would be concretely if there even is a concrete time to be put on it.
Maybe "until they are formally charged with a crime"? I think that makes more sense than any specific timescale. Loki (talk) 19:38, 12 March 2026 (UTC)
Re: When exactly should Wikipedia have joined the hundreds of reliable sources in naming Ryan Routh as the accused in the article on the assassination attempt? When editors at that article talk or at BLPN come to consensus that the accused should be named. Valereee (talk) 17:30, 12 March 2026 (UTC)
I agree, and I think there should be an explicit minimum length of time for those discussions, so that two or three editors can't just agree with each other, declare victory, and cut the opportunity for deliberation to a few minutes. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:45, 12 March 2026 (UTC)
Yeah, I'd go with 24 hours at BLPN. At the article talk, unless there's been notification to BLPN, probably longer. Maybe 24 hours after notification at BLPN? Valereee (talk) 19:43, 12 March 2026 (UTC)
There is no reasonable answer for a question like this. What we can say is that in a "normal" shooting, the perp should not be named until something significant happens (a conviction, or maybe "John Citizen was arrested ..."). A shooting involving the world's most famous person is different and no guidelines can cover such events. The solution is what happened: argue about it on talk and add the name when a clear consensus for suitable wording exists. Johnuniq (talk) 02:18, 23 March 2026 (UTC)
  • Include the name once they are formally arraigned (charged) with the crime. Blueboar (talk) 15:30, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

Proposal to expand BLPCRIME

I have several ideas about how to provide more guidance to editors. Here are three approaches.

Approach 1: Add procedural steps

−
A living person accused of a crime is [[Presumption of innocence|presumed innocent]] until convicted by a court of law. Accusations, investigations, arrests and charges do not amount to a conviction. For individuals who are [[WP:NOTPUBLICFIGURE|not public figures]]—that is, individuals not covered by [[Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons#Public figures|§ Public figures]]—editors must seriously consider '''not''' including material in any article that suggests the person has committed, is suspected of, is a person of interest in, or is accused of having committed a crime, unless a conviction has been secured for that crime. Names or files of individuals identified as [[persons of interest]] should not be included in the article.
+
A living person accused of a crime is [[Presumption of innocence|presumed innocent]] until convicted by a court of law. Accusations, investigations, arrests and charges do not amount to a conviction. Names or files of individuals identified as [[persons of interest]] should not be included in the article. For individuals who are [[WP:NOTPUBLICFIGURE|not public figures]]—that is, individuals not covered by [[Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons#Public figures|§ Public figures]]—editors must seriously consider '''not''' including material in any article that suggests the person has committed, is suspected of, is a person of interest in, or is accused of having committed a crime, unless and until a conviction has been secured for that crime. If there is a dispute about whether to include a person's name, start a discussion at the [[Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard]], or notify that noticeboard of an existing discussion on the article's talk page. Do not add the name until at least 24 hours after posting on the noticeboard, and then add it only if a positive consensus has been reached to add the person's name.

Approach 2: Add common outcomes

More information Type of person, Situation ...
Typical outcomes
Type of person Situation Normal rule
🟢 Accused was already a notable public figure (e.g., a major politician) Notable crime Add to the article about the person and the article about the event when it can be well-sourced. Provide a courtesy notification to WP:BLPN.

Intended situation: Olly Opposition, whose opposition party was polling well, was arrested on the eve of the election by the ruling party. Chris Celebrity was arrested during a protest whose main purpose was apparently to get media attention by causing the arrest.

🟢 Accused was already a notable public figure (e.g., a major politician) Non-notable crime Add the event to the article about the person with 24 hours prior notice to WP:BLPN and consensus to include. Do not add to other articles (e.g., lists of criminals) until the legal process is concluded.

Intended situation: Cat Stevens was wrongly suspected of being a terrorist. Patrick J. Kennedy wrecked a car while under the influence of prescription drugs.

⚠️ Accused was already notable but not a public figure (e.g., a professor) Notable crime Add to the article about the person when it can be well-sourced, no sooner than 24 hours after notification at WP:BLPN and discussion indicates a consensus to include. Add the person's name to the article about the event after formal arraignment (not just an arrest) with 24 hours prior notice to WP:BLPN and consensus to include.

Intended situation: Professor I.M. Portant has been accused of stealing ancient artifacts.

⚠️ Accused is non-notable but a public figure (e.g., a minor politician) Notable crime Add the person's name after formal arraignment (not just an arrest) with 24 hours prior notice to WP:BLPN and consensus to include.

Intended situation: Mayor Money has been accused of large-scale embezzlement, resulting in the town being bankrupt.

⚠️ Accused is non-notable but a public figure (e.g., a minor politician) Non-notable crime Add the person's name to Wikipedia no sooner than formal arraignment (not just an arrest) and preferably not until after the legal proceedings are concluded. Before conclusion of the legal proceedings, 24 hours prior notice to WP:BLPN and consensus to include are both required.

Intended situation: Mayor Money has been accused of sexual misconduct.

⚠️ Accused was already notable but not a public figure (e.g., a professor) Non-notable crime Add the accusation to the article about the person no sooner than formal arraignment (not just an arrest) and preferably not until after the legal proceedings are concluded. Before conclusion of the legal proceedings, 24 hours prior notice to WP:BLPN and consensus to include are both required.

Intended situation: Professor I.M. Portant has been accused of sexual misconduct.

⛔️ Accused is non-notable and not a public figure (e.g., an ordinary person) Notable crime Do not add the person's name to the article about the event until at least a public trial (not just pre-trial hearings) has started, or preferably until after the conclusion of the legal proceedings. Adding the name requires 24 hours prior notice to WP:BLPN and consensus to include. Before then, give a description of the person instead of their name.

Intended situation: A mail room employee is accused of large-scale embezzlement, resulting in the town being bankrupt. Richard Jewell was falsely accused of planting a bomb.

⛔️ Accused is non-notable and not a public figure (e.g., an ordinary person) Non-notable crime Do not add the person's name to Wikipedia, even after the legal proceedings have been concluded. If the crime is mentioned at all, provide a brief description of the person instead of their name.

Intended situation: A drunk driver crashed into Joe Film's car.

Close

Approach 3: Add qualities

There is a complex spectrum of qualities that editors should consider:

  • 🟢 Notable person ↔ ⛔️ non-notable person: Avoid naming non-notable people who have been accused of crimes.
  • 🟢 Notable crime ↔ ⛔️ non-notable crime: Avoid naming people who have been accused of non-notable crimes.
  • 🟢 Long-term secondary sources ↔ ⛔️ recent or breaking news: Avoid naming people whose names appear in recent news
  • 🟢 In-depth sourcing ↔ ⛔️ passing mentions: Avoid naming people who are mentioned only briefly or incidentally.

Do any of these appeal more/less than the others? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:37, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

Discussion (proposals)

There's a list at Feeding_Our_Future#Defendants. I'm not sure what to think about it. The crime is notable, those convicted not. They're listed in multiple recent news stories, but only briefly, part of a list, but those listed have been convicted. Is this something we should be discussing, or is it better to discuss at that particular article talk? Valereee (talk) 22:55, 23 March 2026 (UTC)
It's definitely relevant, and I also think it's wildly inappropriate to name so many people even after conviction. We probably shouldn't directly be deciding whether or not to keep it up over there, though. Loki (talk) 23:19, 23 March 2026 (UTC)
I think you're saying we shouldn't be trying to decide here whether to keep it over there, and that that discussion should be had there? Valereee (talk) 23:38, 23 March 2026 (UTC)
Yes. Loki (talk) 01:47, 24 March 2026 (UTC)
I appreciate your taking the time to create these proposals, but I truly believe the status quo (article-specific discussions/RfCs) is already the best approach to these suspect naming disputes. If no one disputes adding the suspect's name, which IIRC is what happened at the Killing of Brian Thompson article, then that's that. If editors dispute the addition of the name, then by default, the name gets excluded until there's talk page consensus, which usually happens in the form of an RfC. The RfC could "act like" a "waiting period", so to speak, and could either run short (2025 Bondi Beach shooting naming RfC took a week) or long (Killing of Austin Metcalf naming RfC took two months). Let editors at each specific article/talk page work out the disputes themselves, without having all the extra instruction creep in BLPCRIME. Some1 (talk) 23:05, 23 March 2026 (UTC)
I hate to say it but I don't think I like any of the proposed options or the status quo:
  • The status quo and Version 1 don't account for the case Valereee mentioned above. Per the status quo wording it's totally fine to name tons of people convicted of a notable crime.
  • Version 2 does account for that but I'm not convinced of the table approach. I think it's overly complex and I don't really think the idea of tons of bright lines is going to work out in most instances. What we think the archetypal example of a given category is probably isn't that reflective of a lot of cases and so a lot of the time future editors will ignore the rule, which weakens this whole section.
  • Version 3 partially accounts for Valereee's case but has kind of the opposite problem to version 2, in that it doesn't give any clear guidance in almost any situation.
I think my favorite of the current approaches is Version 1 but it needs some work. I could also see a significantly pared-down table working since my problem with Version 2 is more about the complexity actually working against us rather than for us. Loki (talk) 23:30, 23 March 2026 (UTC)
I appreciate the example from @Valereee. We could add something like:
  • 🟢 One or two defendants ↔ ⛔️ Many defendants: Avoid long lists of names, even after conviction.
or equivalent words to the policy text, possibly along the lines of Just like an article about a mass casualty event should normally not have a lengthy list of all victims, articles about a crime should not normally have a lengthy list of all convicted people.
I think the only realistic future for the table approach is to put it in an essay. I liked having room for archetypes/examples, because I think that communicates the concept better to some people than the description, and it does the job of helping people think about what they should consider. But overall, it takes up too much space and it's subject to Wikipedia:Too long; didn't read. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:05, 24 March 2026 (UTC)
And I apologize for throwing yet another wrench into the works. I think an essay is definitely the right way to go. Valereee (talk) 00:21, 24 March 2026 (UTC)

BLPIMAGE and low quality

Hello everyone. Has there been a discussion before about whether WP:BLPIMAGE should give a minimum standard of quality for images of living people? I haven't found one in the archives, but perhaps I'm using the wrong search terms. A few examples:

  • I came across Charlayne Woodard today via a Reddit thread and removed the image. It's so small and so low quality (look at the blurriness, and that's after someone sharpened the image!) that it feels functionally unusable for our purposes. I'm curious if it fits the idea behind "disparagement" in BLPIMAGE, as having that bad of an image on top of your Wikipedia article certainly doesn't benefit us or them.
  • I also came across Neil Breen today via that same Reddit thread, which featured a photo of him blinking. I don't know that I'd call that "disparagement," the word currently used in BLPIMAGE, but this talk page conversation kinda sums up the living person NPOV problem: "the current photo in its utter ugliness and amateurishness captures the essence of Mr. Breen perfectly." (Edit: I've since been reverted based on that talk page conversation.)
  • Many years ago now, I removed this photo from Jared Lorenzen because it was blurry and not a decent portrayal of the subject.

Those examples are for discussion. Really, I could see people thinking that this is indeed a BLPIMAGE problem, that the quality question is really for WP:IUP, that it should be handled on an article-by-article basis, that one/all of these are not actually a problem we're concerned with, or more. Ed [talk] [OMT] 19:39, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

I'm not sure if you've seen Wikipedia:Unusual biographical images, but I think poor-quality lead photos are handled on a case-by-case/article-by-article basis. Some1 (talk) 19:50, 28 February 2026 (UTC)
@Some1: I actually unsuccessfully nominated that for deletion when it was named "funny biographical images," and in that discussion I said we should really think about images and BLP at some point. But no one, including me, ever actually started that discussion. Ed [talk] [OMT] 21:44, 28 February 2026 (UTC)
IMO there's no amount of blurriness that counts as "a false or disparaging light" for WP:BLPIMAGE. If a very blurry image is our only option we should take it, because a blurry image is still useful to the reader and doesn't do real-world harm to the article subject.
However the subject being in a funny or strange pose usually would be false or disparaging, and even if that sort of photo is our only option we shouldn't use it because it could cause real-world harm to the article subject.
My instinct here would be to leave up the images at Charlayne Woodard and Jared Lorenzen but remove the image at Neil Breen, exactly the opposite of what actually happened. :P Loki (talk) 19:27, 4 March 2026 (UTC)
Small blurry photo of man walking away from photographer
Peter Goddard (physicist) Photo no longer in article after being recently commented on at an unmentionable forum.
Landscape, with man in distance, walking away
Earlier photo upload of Goddard, from which the other photo seems to have been cropped. Is this better?
One obvious discussion point regarding photos is whether they actually enable anyone to identify the subject: see the photos that have previously graced the Peter Goddard (physicist) article. I could point to quite a few that have the same issue: most commonly football players and the like, cropped from large images, facing the wrong way, or with their head obscured by helmets (American Football) or other obstructions. In my opinion, if you can't see someone's face in a photo, it shouldn't be the only image in a biography of a living person, unless there are very exceptional circumstances. And 'we haven't got a better photo' isn't one of them. It's disrespectful. AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:30, 12 March 2026 (UTC)
Wow. Well, I suppose you've found the image that I should have led this section with. I do agree with the idea that a person's face needs to be visible, and perhaps that's some low-hanging fruit that we can all agree on adding to BLPIMAGE as part of this discussion. Ed [talk] [OMT] 18:16, 12 March 2026 (UTC)
Actually, to turn that into an actual proposal. How about adding a sentence to BLPIMAGE that reads: "When a photo is used in the lead of an article about a living person, such as in an infobox, that person's face should be [clearly shown/fully visible/some other phrase]." @AndyTheGrump, LokiTheLiar, and Some1: Ed [talk] [OMT] 18:22, 12 March 2026 (UTC)
'Clearly visible, other than in exceptional circumstances' Which might possibly include the one in the Lord Buckethead article, as an example? We need to make it clear though that a 'no face visible' photo can't be justified purely on the basis that we don't have anything else. AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:48, 12 March 2026 (UTC)
Very fair point. "When a photo is used in the lead of an article about a living person, such as in an infobox, that person's face should be clearly shown other than in exceptional circumstances. For examples, Lord Buckethead, The Stig, and Mil Máscaras use photos that hide their faces because their costumes form the foundation of their identity, but we would not use the obscured face of a helmeted American football player." Ed [talk] [OMT] 19:12, 12 March 2026 (UTC)
I'd prefer to make the exception more concrete. How about:
When a photo is used in the lead of an article about a living person, such as in an infobox, that person's face should be clearly shown unless the subject is known for deliberately hiding their face. For examples, Lord Buckethead and The Stig use photos that hide their faces because their costumes form the foundation of their identity, and Yoko Taro uses a photo that hides his face because he is well-known for wearing a mask in interviews, but we would not use the obscured face of a helmeted American football player even if no better photos exist.
(Quick note about the Yoko Taro photo: that's not just a one-off, he wears that mask in almost every interview and public appearance. I added him because I think we should include at least one example of someone who is not a costumed character.) Loki (talk) 19:59, 12 March 2026 (UTC)
Yup, I was thinking on the same lines: an individual who intentionally masks their face in public is a clear exception, though I'm not sure it would be the only one, and we probably need to leave a little leeway for editorial judgement. AndyTheGrump (talk) 20:09, 12 March 2026 (UTC)
  • I don't think image quality automatically connects to BLP in a way that would make sense at a policy level. Certainly some images might look so ugly that they could qualify as disparaging; but in other contexts blurriness might be expected, or at least not something that would raise BLP concerns, so it's sufficiently covered by existing text (ie. you can't just automatically say "this image is blurry therefore it's a BLP violation", you have to make the argument that its blurriness disparages the subject somehow, which must be made on an individual basis.) --Aquillion (talk) 01:55, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

Timeline template at Evanescence

Lapadite is in an editing dispute with multiple editors, myself the most, regarding the timeline on this article. It uses a completely different structure than is typical protocol for rock bands, which they insist is the only neutral way to present this as it is chronologically-focused, and that any editor is free to interpret whatever order they want to make a timeline as long as it is "neutral". They bitterly fight for this version, no matter how many people try to show them their chronology defies a long-followed standard which makes sense to everyone except apparently them, but ironically they unilaterally changed it back in December 2022 and repeatedly revert editors for saying this isn't protocol. Just look at the edit history since; it's been happening for years but I'm the only one who's bothered to debate the issue.

I adamantly insist that this is wrong and have attempted to explain on their talk page, in depth, that this de facto standard exists which dictates that roles are grouped by instrument chronology (specifically, usually vocals, guitar, bass, drums, keys) instead of one based on strictly time, but this has been consistently rejected as "arbitrary". So what if it's arbitrary? People look for how a role has evolved over time, seeing who does what, not just who is in the band. If it's just who is in the band that we're focusing on, it is significantly more difficult to follow with who did what, considering the different colored bars are scattered across the plot, creating distraction. But no, apparently according to Lapadite, people don't look for that in a timeline, and I have no idea what I'm talking about. There was nothing broken with the first timeline and it should not have been changed.

Someone tell me I'm not crazy for thinking there's an accepted, unwritten standard for rock bands across Wikipedia that everyone uses except apparently Evanescence. mftp dan oops 20:54, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

I'll crosspost this at WT:MUSICIAN as well. mftp dan oops 17:56, 18 March 2026 (UTC)
Moved to Talk:Evanescence § Timeline
 – Will connect with you & others over there! WidgetKid Converse 18:58, 18 March 2026 (UTC)

Addition of YouTube to BLPSPS

I reverted the recent addition of YouTube as a WP:BLPSPS as there have been ongoing discussions as of recent that haven't led to a consensus either in favor or against YouTube being a BLPSPS. The addition of it into policy minutes after directly pointing to it seems rather questionable without a clear consensus. This is almost identical to how podcasts was added into the same policy section minutes after being referenced in a removal. Awshort (talk) 06:52, 17 March 2026 (UTC) Awshort (talk)

list of works that is self-published and opinionated

At Savo Štrbac#Works, I noticed that the entire list is self-published. The titles of some of these works already involve claims about third parties and about events not directly related to the subject. Is this acceptable per WP:BLPSELFPUB, should we be carrying that in a biography? --Joy (talk) 14:10, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

  1. [a]
  2. [b]
    The amount of coverage in reliable primary news sources is a valid consideration, among others. See: Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons/Archive 65 § RFC: Amount of coverage in reliable primary news sources.

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