Wikipedia talk:Proposed deletion of biographies of living people/Archive 6

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With the wording of Wikipedia:BLPPROD changed, I'm confused on when to add the tag

I'm totally confused on when to apply the BLPROD tag with the change made five days ago in the removal of the word "reliable" [1].

I had added the BLPPROD tag when the only source on an article was a blog and on another article when the source was a tweet. The tags were removed saying the refs didn't need to be reliable. I was going to show the person this page and the word reliable had been removed. I've read the above discussions and now I'm confused. What in the world is the standard I go by onto when to apply the BLPProd tag? Bgwhite (talk) 19:02, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

BLP prod should only apply when there are literally no references at all, just text without external references to books, websites, magazines, or anything else. If there are references, then those references need to be evaluated, and you should use AFD to allow people to evaluate the references before deciding to delete. --Jayron32 23:42, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Just like the instructions for WP:PROD state that it should only be used for " uncontroversially a deletion candidate", BLPPROD should be considered similar - only absolutely no references. Anything else, use AfD or PROD. BLPPROD is just one tool that we can use to keep improving Wikipedia, not the only tool. The-Pope (talk) 06:32, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

I just wanted to know to do as it says now or what it said 5 days ago. So, do as it says now. Bgwhite (talk) 07:12, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes, but also make sure the reference actually has something to do with the subject (I occasionally see this happen with actors, where the IMDb and/or article is clearly about someone else with the same name). The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 21:22, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

• I think it's improper to make statements like "BLP prod should only apply when..." as if it's semi-binding policy. Last time I checked, that change was still under discussion. Ironholds (talk) 15:19, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
  • In practice, it usually works just as well to use WP:PROD and given the reason as no reliable sources can be found (assuming, of course, you've looked for some at least to some extent, for the policy that deletion is a last resort applies to all deletion methods.) It is not all that often that such a prod will be removed without adding sources, especially if you actually explain things to the contributor. DGG ( talk ) 01:01, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

BLP PROD and recent deaths

Earlier today, on new page patrol, I came across an unreferenced article about a man who had died earlier this week and hasn't been buried yet. Although the issue of lack of references in this particular situation has been resolved in a matter of minutes, I'm wondering whether the BLP PROD policy should be applied to cases of recent deaths, and, if so, where do we draw the line as to how long ago a person must have died for the BLP PROD policy to apply. -- Blanchardb -^{Me•MyEars•MyMouth}- timed 16:12, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Whilst the WP:BLP policy does state that that policy can apply to recent deaths, I think the discussions about show that there is no concensus to make any changes to the BLPPROD system. Just like the CSD has very specific rules to qualify, so does BLPPROD. If the article falls short on any of the requirements, and you think it should be deleted, then nominate it for deletion under a standard WP:PROD or WP:AFD. If you think he may be notable, then tag it with {{unreferenced}} and any other applicable tags. BLPPROD was created in an attempt to allow us to concentrate on cleaning out the backlog, rather than have to deal with the new ones. Inconsistent or ambiguous wording has made it less effective than perfect, but it does a job, but it isn't the only job.The-Pope (talk) 16:57, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Interaction of BLPPROD and AfD

At this AfD discussion, X4n6 is advancing the position that an article surviving BLPPROD must meet WP:N ("If you cannot reach even that low bar (of having an article deleted under BLPPROD), the rest of your AfD is moot." (X4n6, 22:36, 8 March 2012 (UTC)). Anyone interested in weghing in on that point, or the AfD more generally, head to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Douglas Tait. I don't think this calls for any clarification to BLPPROD, but if others hold this view that survival of BLPPROD=survival at AfD, maybe it does. Novaseminary (talk) 19:27, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

X4n6 Someone is out to lunch. BLPPROD is a test of the usage of sources. It cares only that an article has a source or that it does not. It has nothing to do with the notability of the subject. So no, having a BLPPROD tag removed is not an indication of notability. Resolute 19:54, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks Resolute, you are exactly correct. Novaseminary has intentionally disguised his/her own argument by falsely stating it was mine. The WP:N at AfD is simply the latest by this editor, who has already failed a speedy delete request on the same BLP. What I actually said was " We have already discussed ad nauseum how your WP:BLPPROD fails because the article contains more than one reliable source. By your own admission "WP:BLPPROD is a special lower-bar deletion mechanism". If you cannot reach even that low bar, the rest of your AfD is moot." Obviously a very different response. The fact that Novaseminary would deliberately misquote me in an effort to attract support, as this editor continues to forum shop, is to me, a clear act of desperation in a losing cause. X4n6 (talk) 20:54, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Fair enough. I have no opinion on the specific deletion nomination, of course. Resolute 21:08, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

X4n6, wow. I never BLPPRODED the article in question. You brought BLPPROD into the AfD implying that, because the article would pass BLPPROD, it should survive AfD. My point is that just because an article is not ripe for deletion under BLPPROD, does not in any way inform the discussion at AfD. If you agree, we both read BLPPROD the same way. But then I am puzzled as to why you raised it in the first place, then. Novaseminary (talk) 21:56, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Once again you misstate my point. While you are correct that you never BLPPRODED the article, you have used multiple forums to try to get the BLP deleted and you did misquote what I said by interjecting your "explanation" into it. I never said anything close to your setup that "an article surviving BLPPROD must meet WP:N". But I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. Let's just say I was making a very different point than the one you understood. X4n6 (talk) 22:17, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Conflicts in various places and in the project page re: whether we require a "reliable source" or just a "source"

I made this edit earlier today, changing the language in the Nominating section from

"To place a BLPPROD tag, the process requires that the article contain no sources in any form (as references, external links, etc.)", to:

"To place a BLPPROD tag, the process requires that the article contain no putatively reliable sources in any form (as references, external links, etc.)".

I was reverted with a note that this had been discussed here and rejected or consensus not reached on the issue. I absolutely disagree with the conclusion of that discussion, above, and think it is terrible result, but I am not here to argue that. If it is to be revisited, let's do it focused elsewhere. What I am here about is conflicts of language describing this process as to that issue, seen in at least four places, as follows:

• The lead section says "...the BLP deletion template may be removed only after the biography contains a reliable source that supports...", in conflict with the body's statement.
• Likewise, in the objections section "this process requires the presence of at least one reliable source that supports at least one statement..."

The argument could be made that the above quotes refer to the addition of a reliable source after the prod tag is added and not to application of the tag initially, but that is highly confusing and doesn't make sense from the perspective of one of the chief arguments against requiring the source to be reliable in the prior discussion, which is that an assessment of reliability should not need to be made. That is, if an assessment needs to be made at any point, then we are dealing with that issue in the sticky prod process, either before or after. The two conflict below are unequivocal.

• In {{Prod blp/dated}}: "As of March 2010, all newly created biographies of living people must have at least one reference to a reliable source."
• In {{ProdwarningBLP}}: "... under Wikipedia policy, all newly created biographies of living persons must have at least one reference to a reliable source that directly supports material in the article."

I would like the policy changed, but until such time as that is done, we should not have such disaccord between parts of the policy itself and warning templates summarizing the policy's nature.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 17:14, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

There isn't any "disaccord". There is just a tighter rule for placing the tag than removing it. Rather than repeat the previous discussion, think about why are we accepting of very tight rules in CSDs ie CSD A7 not being applicable to fictional characters or books etc? Because that is just the way it is. The decision on what is or isn't a reliable source is easy at the two extremes, but is full of POV and opinion in the middle. Let's keep that out of a subset of the "uncontroversial deletion" process and if you want to debate quality or reliability of refs, use AFD instead. We also have to remember what caused this process to be implemented at all. >50,000 UBLPs were tagged and some, including some very high up, thought that SPEEDY deletion of some of them was OK. We came to a compromise of BLPPPROD to stop/reduce the number from growing, and over 18 months cleared out the >50,000 by traditional means. The total UBLPS has sat at about 200 since then, with about 100 at BLPPROD (until a recent surge in old articles being found to be unreferenced). So at any time, this process only applies to around 100 articles. Some are tagged to match this policy, some aren't, but I don't think we are being overrun with unreliably sourced articles that are avoiding this system. It isn't that big a deal to fix/reference/AFD/deal with them. And given the WMF's eagerness to "engage" new editors, making this process more "bitey" isn't a good idea (think like a new editor - just wrote your first article on your favourite writer/actor/musician/sportsman - get hit by a unreferenced tag, so you stick up a link to the borderline reliable profile from publisher's website/club website/etc, and then still get hit by a BLPPROD?). We have lots of very good informative tags such as {{BLP sources}},{{Primary sources}}, {{No footnotes}} (and we should have a {{BLP unreliable sources}}) etc that should be used to inform, not to threaten. The-Pope (talk) 00:55, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm with the Pope on this. BLPprod is a compromise, and yes the test for adding a BLPprod tag is different to the test for removing a valid tag. This has been reraised several times (three times by me), and most recently in the RFC Wikipedia talk:Proposed_deletion of_biographies_of_living_people#Nominating_articles with unreliable sources for BLPPROD. We are unlikely to agree a major shift in either direction, not least because the current compromise means that a bio of an Academic sourced from their webpage at a university website is not a legitimate target for BLPprod. Changing to requiring at least one reliable source would mean that to avoid the risk of libel we were deleting articles sourced to a professor's own biography..... This doesn't really fit with our objectives of getting the pedia taken more seriously and working more closely with Academia. ϢereSpielChequers 02:46, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Guys, please re-read my post. Simply put, your responses are in the main entirely non-responsive, addressed to a strawman. I am not here to re-debate the issue of whether we should or should not require the source to be assessed as reliable before BLP prod can be placed. I said I did not agree with it but I also said quite explicitly that I was not here to revisit that topic. The issue is that the policy's language does not set out the issue with any sort of clarity and I believe would leave most people reading it confused, and that the warning templates actually say or at least imply the opposite of the current policy. We are here not about a change but about clarification of language.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 06:19, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

The consensus was that whilst we agree that policy states that all articles, especially BLPs, should have a reliable reference, the BLPPROD tag should only be used when there are NO sources whatsoever. That is entirely consistent, because BLPPRODs are not the only arrows we have in our quivers - it is just ONE of options that we have to deal with poor quality articles - you can tag it, nominate it for AfD, improve it, redirect it, userfy it, lots of other options. Avoiding the "rule creep" of having nominated lists of "OK" or "Not OK" refs is a main reason to make it a "zero ref only" rule. And once the BLPPROD is placed, it only comes off if there is a reliable source added, to stop the placing off a facebook/myspace ref etc to get it off. There is no reason why the rule on must equal the rule off. Remember this was called "sticky prod" for a while, to differentiate it from a standard PROD that needs no reason to remove it. The-Pope (talk) 07:38, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

That would be your second response and the third response overall to my post, addressed to something other than what it concerned.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 13:39, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

And I've read your post 4 times now and I don't see how what I've said doesn't answer your question. Can you please elaborate where it is lacking? The-Pope (talk) 14:50, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Note that my edits here triggered the above RfC, which sustained them. The correct answer, I believe, is that the "reliable source" language is inappropriate in the removal language but was never corrected to comply with the RfC outcome. Jclemens (talk) 07:43, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

I think the RFC above was best summed up by Hobit's comment "prod only if no sources, remove only if reliable source". An inelegant compromise, but any attempt to move it in either direction has been contentious. But this does answer Fuhgettaboutit's query. Provided the tag was correctly added the template is correct - you need a reliable source to remove it. The complication is that there are two different tests and they need to be documented in several different places. Changing either to allow a BLPprod to be removed if an unreliable source is added or to use BLPprods if an editor has tried to source their article is unlikely to get consensus. ϢereSpielChequers 22:48, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

I wouldn't call it an inelegant compromise. It's more like a mistake that somehow stuck. There was little awareness that we were creating a double standard during the original RfCs, and the opposition to change to harmonize the standards seems to be mostly due to misunderstandings about the nature of the change requested. I was involved with the initial creation of this policy from the start, and I didn't even realize we had created a double standard until months later when WSC pointed it out. Gigs (talk) 13:54, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

This is absolutely idiotic, and it completely undermines the entire point of the blpprod. Why bother even having it in the first place if a link to a facebook or blogspot page means you can't use it?--Jac16888 ^Talk 16:22, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

I've floated a few trial balloons trying to get that changed, but haven't attempted a full RFC. I haven't gotten a sense that that's going to be easy to change, which is a pity, I'd like to see such a change made part of a coherent set of changes that assist and guide new article creators (in some manner, in ANY manner) towards honoring the theoretically absolute requirement that biographies towards living people be based on reliable sources. --joe decker^{talk to me} 18:37, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm honestly staggered by this, I guess I never read this page in detail because I never realised Blpprod had this caveat, and I would never in a million years have imagined that such a completely ludicrous policy would be enacted. I mean it's basically saying that whether or not a page can be deleted by blpprod depends purely on whether the creator bothered to put in a link to their facebook page before or after it was tagged. I genuinely cannot understand how it's possible that, as a supposedly intelligent community trying to create a method of making sure every blp was referenced, something so completely and utterly stupid was added--Jac16888 ^Talk 19:48, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

It does make some sense in the context of why BLP articles need a special process. We want to respect the privacy of non-public figures; consider the example above of a University Professor, about whom an article has been created, that links to his bio on the university website. Now that prof may or may not be notable, but the link shows that the professor is already at least to a very minimal extent a public person. A self published bio isn't a reliable source, but it certainly suggests that the subject wants their info out there, and that an article will be unlikely to violate their privacy. When dealing with non-discussion deletion processes, a bright line must be drawn somewhere, and consensus has drawn it here. As for why a source added after the BLPPROD must be reliable, the reliability requirement stops someone from placing content elsewhere, so that they can link to it, all in response to the rule here. Its not perfect, but compromises rarely are. Monty₈₄₅ 20:19, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

One step missing... which makes this policy clash with various WP guidelines.

I would like to suggest an amendment to this policy, which not only seems draconian but goes against several WP guidelines. Under the nomination process, five steps are listed for the period before nomination. I would like to see a sixth added - "6. Check to see whether a reference is easily available online, and if so, add it instead of proposing deletion." This will save the hassle of proposing the deletion of articles which are about subjects who are patently above the notability criteria, saving a lot of doubling-up of effort. It will also fall in line with the general principle that good material shouldn't be excised unless there is a reason for it - and not knowing whether or not it is good material is hardly an excellent reason. Grutness...wha? 05:25, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

But this process is completely unrelated to notability. It's special case. Like a WP:CSD#G12 - the copywrite one for example. This is a verifiability issue, not a notability one. It is understandable, because most of the PROD/AFD deletion cases hinge on a notability discusion, but this is different. If you agree with the "only to be used with absolutely no refs" idea too, then it makes sense that this is a specific, specialised case. I wish we'd pushed for it to be called BLPCSD or CSD#G13, rather than BLPPROD. We tend to accept strict restrictions on CSDs, and this is similar concept. In an ideal world, the person doing the "doubling-up of effort" should be the article creator, especially if most of the BLPPRODs are applied to new articles, not old ones. Finally, the BLPPPROD queue rarely gets over 100 articles, and the 0 and 1 day to go list is rarely more than 10, so this isn't a big deal at all. It isn't like it applies to thousands of articles. The-Pope (talk) 11:54, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi, Pope! I guess I'd only add two or three details to what you say. First, It was pretty clear to me (by the end of our run of adding sources to 53,000 articles) that BLPPROD was an essential part of what enabled us to finish that task at all, and *more* due to BLPPROD getting editors to add sources than actually deleting the problem away. (And deleting the problem away, via the threat of mass deletion of those 53,000 articles, is what started this whole process in the first place--that and the WMF mandate on the subject.) Second, I am genuinely sympathetic to the complaint (and DGG has made this point too, in his own kind way) that this or that references were easily available. BUT, as I expect the Pope will confirm, *most* unsourced BLPs are trivially sourced. Maybe not 95%, but certainly 75% are a few button-clicks from a source. Grutness, what you propose would, effectively, reduce BLPPRODs to a trickle and put us back into a state of net increase of unsourced BLPPRODs, cost us the assistance of it provides in getting editors to actually follow WP:BURDEN (which is also policy), and would, I believe, eventually bring us back to the state where this started--tens of thousands of unsourced BLPs, and even more draconian measures, the next time some kerfluffle kicks up BLP concerns. (I think there's still a risk of that happening, by the way.)

Alternatives: I would prefer a less draconian solution that could still successfully honor the WMF mandate that BLPs be based on reliable sources, if one could be found. BLPPROD, like all speedies, are BITEy. I believe that the ultimate solution to this is simple--identifying unsourced BLPs (or unsourced articles in general) needs to be a function of the article creation screen(s) and provide an error message at article creation time unless such a reference is provided. Much like it already does (with the settings I have) if I don't provide an edit summary. This is consistent with WP:BURDEN, and drastically changes the BITEy user experience of WP:BLPPROD or the "eventual deletion, 1 month to 8 years down the road" that we provided before BLPPROD. It'd be hugely helpful and would greatly help editor retention. Why is this not being done? --joe decker^{talk to me} 14:41, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Pope, whether the problem relates to notability or not, the situation remains the same. It is likely that many perfectly reasonable articles will simply get deleted from WP because a prod has been added without any check being made to see whether there is any validity in what has been written. Surely it is better to attempt to verify an article and, if unverifiable then remove it, than simply assume that the article is unverifiable. The current policy is very much "shoot first, ask questions later", and risks removing many articles which will only need to be rewritten later. It simply makes more work for everyone while removing potentially valuable articles. I'd be far more in favour of adding a dated warning message to the top of articles "unsourced since X" which puts articles into dated categories, and seeing effort go into creating a working group to find sources. Any which remain unsourced after they've passed through that working group, fine - prod them. But surely the main task is to have WP full of well-sourced articles, and the best way to achieve that is by sourcing not removal. Grutness...wha? 23:54, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

I think you are overstating the impact. Do we have any stats on how many articles get deleted each week on average by each method? AFD, Prod, Blpprod, CSD ? My guess would be many 100s for CSD and 50-100 for each of AFD and prod and less than 30 for BLPProd. And most truely potentially notable ones would be sourced during the 10 day waiting period - the ones that fall through to deletion are often extemely borderline on notability. Or do you have evidence otherwise?

I thought that someone (John Vandenberg?) was working on an edit filter style approach that would not allow articles to be created without refs. Obviously checking quality/reliability/relevance of refs can't be done automatically but I'd love to stop the completely unreferenced articles from even being created, whilst giving the article creator the notice whilst he is actively working on this site. If we could get that up and running BLPprod would almost be made redundant (in its curent form). The-Pope (talk) 01:28, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Probably about the right stats. hundreds would get deleted via AFD - once there has been discussion about whether the articles are notable or not. More than that via CSD, after being checked to make sure whether they're notable or not. And quite a number via prod, after someone's checked whether they're notable or not. So why not the same here? There seems to be no failsafe to make sure that articles deleted by this method have been vetted. And as long as BLPProd exists in its current state, that will continue to be the case. It's also a fairly new policy, so saying that it's currently not used on many articles is no guarantee that that will stay that way. All I'm suggesting is doing something similar to what is done with Prod - put the BLP prod articles into dated categories - with the one addition that a cleanup group could be set up to check out whether the articles are worth keeping. It's hardly rocket science, and - if it saves deleting unsourced but verifiable articles, I don't see why it shouldn't be done. It';s no different to many other cleanup projects around WP, and a lot simpler than others (you should have seen the work when we shifted about 100,000 stubs into subcategories a few years back!) Grutness...wha? 04:49, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

I still think you are overestimating the problem. Are you aware that there is a 10 day delay between TAGGING and DELETION? Are you aware that there is already a category Category:BLP articles proposed for deletion by days left that lets anyone see what may be deleted (and like I said above, the list of articles with only 0 or 1 day to go until deletion is normally under 10, or at most 20)? There are also a bunch of other lists at WP:URBLPR that are either generated on demand (WP:CATSCAN) or by a bot (User:DASHBot) that include all BLPPROD articles. Finally, an admin has to do the final deletion, and I don't think we have many trigger happy deletionist admins around who go around deleting obviously notable articles. It is really a non-issue. Would love to see some actual deletion method stats though. The-Pope (talk) 12:15, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Well, that is a little better than I though. I was thinking that the usual prod lag of four days was in force. I was also not aware of the categories. A task force to try to fix these up would still be very worthwhile however. The problem may be an overestimation at the moment, but from experience I know that Wikipedia tasks tend to grow in a seemingly exponential fashion. As to trigger-happy deletionist admins, there are quite a few who will delete a prod automatically assuming it's been checked and found wanting. If something's been a prod for a while without being fixed, then it's seen as a fair target for deletion. So this is a real problem, and one that is likely to continue growing. Not really a non-issue at all. Grutness...wha? 23:50, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

I have watched the blpprod cat since it was created and it is not growing, it has always been 100 to 200 articles long. Also, normal prods are 7 days not 4. The-Pope (talk) 00:11, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

That must have changed since it was set up - when User:Radiant! set WP:PROD up it was originally either four or five days. Mind you, a lot has changed here in the last few years, so it's not that much of a surprise. Mind you, whether the category is growing or not, and how long the articles are on BLPProd are both irrelevant. The important thing is that a check is made - and it is that which my suggestion is primarily addressing. It is still a reasonable idea, and saying that the current method is not much of a problem is not the same as saying that it is no problem at all. I just wanted to make what seemed (and still seems) like a logical, practical, and easily applied solution to what is clearly an existing problem (the size of the problem is neither here nor there. If you don't see the point of addressing that problem, then fair enough - let it remain a problem, let editors continue to have their work removed, and let Wikipedia continue to lose valid articles. Grutness...wha? 11:07, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

As you are an admin, please search through the last week's BLPPROD deleted articles and find one "valid article" that is clearly notable and easily referenced with an online search. I think you will struggle, but I am happy to be proven wrong if you have actual evidence, not just a feeling. The-Pope (talk) 15:09, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Well, Gianna Cutler for one appears to have been deleted via BLPPROD and then re-created with references... she's borderline notable, but if it had been taken to an AFD we'd have more of an idea about notability, I think. The deleted stub on Ken Scott (screenwriter) is also of someone worth having an article on - Scott won the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television award for best screenplay in 2012, after having been nominated on three other occasions (he is linked from the articles on each year's award). Ali Akbarian (deleted) played professional football in Iran's top football league, as did Abbas Mojdehi (deleted). Cory Mo would also appear to be notable, or if not very close to it, if this is anything to go by. That's from the last four days. Grutness...wha? 22:23, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm not an admin, so I can't see what state the deleted articles were when deleted, but I have ABSOLUTELY no issue with deleting any of these articles. We do get fake articles created too, remember. Those articles CLAIMED to be notable, but they didn't VERIFY it. Looking a bit closer, an article on an 8 year old (or any living minor) should be very well referenced immediately or deleted as quickly as possible in my opinion. The original author of Ken Scott (screenwriter) edited here daily during the notification period (and it seems it was tagged with BLPPROD for 14 days) and couldn't be bothered referencing his own article! Why should we bother if he didn't care enough to do so? And an example of the biggest problem with the forcing of WP:BEFORE on unreferenced articles is that I have no idea what a reliable source for Iranian football is. I can google people's names and find web sites, but I don't know if it's the Iranian equivalent of the NYT or the National Enquirer. Is "Keepittrill.com" a reliable source or some guy's blog? That is why I prefer to only tag the article, but ensure that it is also correctly categorised and added to relevant WikiProjects, so that someone who is interested and knowledgeable in that topic, and knows what are good sources (and in some cases can translate from another language) can do the actual sourcing. I am willing to give it a go myself for most sports, as the "brightline test" of playing at highest level is often easy to find, but I think the current system works very well - the only real improvement would be to prevent unreferenced articles from being created in the first place. The-Pope (talk) 01:30, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

And so we get round to exactly my original point. Why should we bother? Because we're creating an encyclopedia, that's why. And encyclopedias aren't created by deleting partly-formed articles on notable subjects, they're built by improving them. Deleting does not improve. Here we have several valid articles which have been deleted within a week because someone decided it was easier to delete them and have someone else go through the process of re-creating them, rather than taking a couple of minutes to search for references. Se Wikipedia suffers by not having anthe articles, the original creator suffers by having to recreate the article...and the person who deleted the article suffers because it would have been simpler to add references than to go through the BLP Prod process. None of that would have happened if there was a working group looking at the BLP prods to find references. You said you were happy to be proven wrong if I had the evidence. I have the evidence - why do you not seem happy to have been proven wrong? As far as the original editor not adding references to the Ken Scott article, BTW, please note that a "please translate from the fr.wiki" tag was placed on the article - and the French article has plenty of references. As such, it should never have been deleted. I've restored it (with some of the fr. article translated). Grutness...wha?

OK, I am very surprised that Joe deleted that scriptwriter one (I think the others were reasonable), because, although you might find this surprising, both Joe and myself are in no way deletionists - we spent most of the last two years referencing the 50,000 UBLP backlog and only deleting the worst of them. Maybe it's referencing fatigue for Joe or maybe he's sick of the real problem of people making unreferenced articles and not fixing them themselves. If I ran this site I would make an "article creation" userright and take it off people like User:NorthernThunder who are repeat offenders in creating unreferenced articles. Why make them, link them to the French wiki, but not reference them? I find that staggering, especially for a guy who's created almost 1400 articles. I can begrudgingly accept the WMF's desire to continue to allow new editors to create articles and I'll happily fix them up and advise them in a friendly way how to improve them, but this guy's been here for 6 years and creates a UBLP and then doesn't respond to a "you have 10 days to reference your article or it will be deleted" message. Yes, I'm all for collaborative editing, but when you make the decision to make an article, you almost certainly have some source in front of you (unless it is WP:OR) so there is no excuse for experienced editors not to reference.

So, back to your original issue - I am still adamant that we shouldn't have a WP:BEFORE requirement to BLPPPRODs. I have now seen that sometimes potentially notable articles get deleted, which surprised me, but we don't need any form of group or anything to fix it, just more people keeping an eye on Category:BLP articles proposed for deletion by days left. There are at least 10 days to reference them, and rarely anymore than 10 articles in the "1 day to go to deletion" pile. So it isn't that hard to have a penultimate check - which is often the 4th or 5th check: creator, (UBLP tagger optional) BLPPPRODer, Cat:BLPPROD watcher, then final admin choice of deletion or reference. It is by no means draconian - 10 days and 5-6 people involved. It is here to protect one of the site pillars, WP:V. It was devised as a compromise between the "delete them all" brigade and the "no deadline" brigade. It is, in the most part, working well and has prevented the number of UBLPs from climbing back into the thousands. The-Pope (talk) 09:15, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Fair enough - it's a pretty reasonable compromise overall. And when you think about it, the difference between my suggestion of having a small working group patrolling the prod category and your suggestion of having a few more people keeping an eye on the category is simply one of scale and organisation. I just wanted to bring the situation to people's attention - I didn't mean to get into a full-blown argument/discussion about it. And I agree that a lot of articles are being created without the necessary references (I've no doubt created articles myself of that type from time to time...then again, after a few thousand new articles, you can get pretty blase about such things (not that that's a good thing). The main question, as I see it, would be how to make sure that the articles are being more thoroughly checked. Grutness...wha? 11:51, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Relationship to other processes

In an 2010 discussion, there appeared to be some level of non-unanimous agreement that declined BLPPRODs did not preclude the placement of a PROD. [2]. That is, in my experience, the rule folks have been working to, but after some question on this point from another editor, I'd like to have consensus for putting that into the policy page (or, if folks prefer, putting changing it and putting that on the policy page.) In either case, the "relationship to other processes" section should provide a clear answer. So, to be clear, I am proposing adding some text clarifying that articles are still eligible for traditional PRODs after a BLPPROD is declined, and are in fact independent of the other deletion processes, and I'm calling the question. Thoughts? --joe decker^{talk to me} 17:56, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

I was going to be fully in the "completely independent systems, one doesn't preclude the other" but then I thought more about the basic premise of a prod- uncontroversial deletion. If someone (admittedly often the article creator) cares enough to supply a ref, then maybe it can't really be deemed uncontroversial. Having said that I removed a Blpprod for a footballer article with only a team list ref yesterday which was then proded by someone and I don't have any problems with that. Maybe we need to make the rule that there is no rule! Generally you can do both, but carefully consider if it is really is an uncontroversial deletion. The-Pope (talk) 00:09, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

What counts as a source?

I'm sorry if this is re-treading old ground. I searched the archives but I didn't find anything that helped me.

This article has three sources, all of which are the subject's defunct website. Since the website no longer exists and is the only claim to notability by the subject, I intend to put the article through the deletion process. While the website was running, it was clearly a source for the purposes of WP:BLPPROD. My question is this: now that the website no longer exists, does it still count as a source for these purposes? And, as a secondary question, mostly out of intellectual curiosity but not beyond the bounds of practical possibility, would <ref>lhflaksjdhfalksjf</ref> count as a source? Dricherby (talk) 11:45, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

I would think that common sense would be the best rule to follow. Everyone knows what a clearly reliable source is - BBC, peer reviewed paper, etc. We also all know what a completely unreliable source would be - "personal interview" is my favourite. We also know what isn't actually a valid ref - what you gave as an example and other wikis are the obvious examples - they can be removed without any issue. Likewise irrelevant refs - ie: "Bob Citizen is the best player for the New York Giants. The Giants play in the NFL.<ref>[www.nfl.com/teams/newyorkgiants/profile?team=NYG Giants website]</ref>" can simply be removed. The common sense for me, especially in relation to this deletion process, is: does the reference verify any of the personal info claimed in the article. So, a team squad list on a team website IS a ref. A university faculty website IS a ref. An IMDB listing IS a ref. Even if they aren't formated in <ref> tags, or listed under an External links section or in an infobox or in bare urls. If the ref is not that good, or is non-independent, or wrongly formatted, or possibly unreliable then we have lots of other templates that are more suited and better inform the other editors of the problem with the article than a BLPPROD tag. See {{BLP sources}}, {{Primary sources}}, {{no footnotes}}, {{citation style}}, {{unreliable sources}} and {{BLP IMDb refimprove}} for other examples.

In this case, the originating author is still edits (both here and on cs.wiki, fr.wiki and sk.wiki) and may have a WP:COI/personal relationship to the article subject (one of the edit summaries that removed a DOB states that it was on the article subject request), so you could ask them for better references. I don't read French and don't know anything about the topic so I don't have an opinion on the article's validity - but given it's an organisation website, even a small "self managed one", I would err on the caution side and label it with Primary and/or Unreliable Sources rather than unsourced. I would recommend that you avoid BLPPROD and use WP:AFD. Maybe we need this to be clearer on the page - If in doubt, don't use BLPPPROD, use PROD or AFD. The-Pope (talk) 13:05, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks — that all makes sense and it would be a useful addition o the main page.. Dricherby (talk) 14:19, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Maintenance catgory updating proposal

I think many of us who are involved in the BLPPROD process have noticed issues with the maintanence catergories. The "expired deletions" category never gets updated until the article is actually edited post-expiration, and ditto the "days left" sort key in ategory:BLP articles proposed for deletion by days left. I do notice that the latter category at least seems to include this..

I'm considering putting up a BRFA for a daily (at first, probably manually-triggered daily run) to run through each of the articles in the last category and perform a WP:NULLEDIT on it. Such an edit should not leave a mark on the history, just update the categories. I've discussed solutions here, and this seems best, but I figured I'd put it out here as well, any concerns? I think it's better if we can actually *see* how many days are left, I hope this would aid efforts by those wanting to double-check the appropriateness of proposed deletions, as things currently stand, the categories are actively misleading. Concerns? Comments? --joe decker^{talk to me} 19:53, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

You don't need to make a null edit to the article, merely access it with ?action=purge would do it. A better solution may be to switch to dated maintenance categories. Monty₈₄₅ 19:58, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

With respect to purges, as I noted in the link I provided above, purges don't work. If they did, I'd propose that instead. The text at WP:NULLEDIT points out why, where it says "If a transcluded template has added or removed a category since it was last transcluded, the purge function will not update the category page, but a null edit will."

We could switch to daily-dated maint. categories, but that won't solve the problem of getting articles to show up in the "expired" category, which is how most of the admins who process regular PRODs find out about BLPPRODs. This isn't an abstract issue, it's a pragmatic one. I stopped processing BLPPRODs a week ago as an experiment and they stopped getting deleted. I hand-made null edits to ten articles yesterday and most if not all were immediately deleted. There's still an invisible 7-8 day backlog on BLPPRODs, and it's there entirely because the existing solutions don't work.

Moreover, daily dated cats mean daily dated category maintanence, such as deletion of daily maint. cats, which will eventaully lead to another bot request, just one doing more work.

Can you explain what in particular bothers you about WP:NULLEDIT? I'd love to be able to address your concerns, but honestly, it doesn't appear that you've read what I'm proposing. --joe decker^{talk to me} 20:42, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

Having a bot go through and update them just seems like an inelligant solution, I don't oppose a bot doing it if there isn't a better way. How do regular prods avoid the issue? Monty₈₄₅ 20:54, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

It appears that they do do daily cats based on placement date. I have few qualms about that route but it's probably all solvable if you think it's really better. Here's some things that concern me about that route.

It's a bit of a mess to stick them into the same categories directly, because they're sorted by template placement date, and there's a three-day difference in their expiration times, something I would gladly fix if I had a magic wand. But one could make a whole separate set of categories pretty easily, and then figure out whose bot does category maintenance, and get whoever that is to improve their bot (I presume) to do that maint. too. The BLPPROD template would have to be modified to accomplish this, which is probably straightforward, just pull whatever the PROD template is doing and change 7 to 10. And we'd have to get some consensus from--I know there are folks (User:DGG comes to mind) who like to look through nearly-expired BLPPRODs for things so save, since it would change the sort of categorical "API" they use to do their work. Who knows, maybe expiration dates would be easier for those folks. I'll drop DGG a line and see if he'd like to comment. Your suggestion touches a lot more "API", but might in the long run simplify things. Worth discussing. --joe decker^{talk to me} 21:10, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

As a general comment first, there are very few of us who actually patrol PROD. This may be because patrolling even such an apparently straightforward thing as BLPPROD is not actually all that easy to do as carefully as it ought to be--it is considerably more difficult and less satisfying that removing the sometime laughably awful junk at CAT:CSD. At the beginning of BLP PROD, I made an effort to serious try to souce every one of them--I no longer do it for those in sports or entertainment, because the eventual yield of articles was simply too low, and I in practice finally agreed with the position I had earlier deprecated, that people adding such unsourced articles could only be discouraged by deletion. Proper handling of BLPPROD requires verifying that there are in fact no readily findable references that provide verification of at least some of the key claims in the article, and some patrollers in the past have simply removed everything that expires without actually checking. For BLP PROD when I delete, I usually try to give some other reason also, such as "and also no real likelihood of notability" == a reason that would support deletion in any case and will clarify the situation for anyone subsequently checking or complaining.

Of those who do patrol, we tend to patrol at different times--I will often patrol soon after placement, to get the ones that are actually speedy candidates--many inexperienced people at NPP under-tag--probably more frequently (and much less detectably) than they over-tag. Or I will patrol1 day before the deadline, hoping that most of the sourceable ones will be sourced, as checking for others that can be rescued. It's good that different ones of us use different patterns.

More specifically about this proposal, I however do not really see the problem of some prods going beyond the 10 days--they will get soon noticed ad dealt with. If the deletion were urgent, speedy should have been used, not prod. I use PRODSUM, and I find it reasonably accurate, except for ones where the prod reason gets changed or edited--and depending on how they are changed or edited, I doubt any automated method can cope accurately with the variations. I think the proposal is a complicated solution to a problem that really does not matter. What matters is that they get deleted at the end, and they do. It's just like the 10% of AfDs that run an extra day or two--no harm results from this DGG ( talk ) 05:01, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for weighing in. I pinged you out of concern that the "days left" sort in the other category, but it sounds like you're using PRODSUM, so this change wouldn't affect you, that's great. And I agree with you that there's no issue if BLPPRODs get left for an extra day or two, it's whether they get left for an extra week or two, or month or two, that strikes me as a potential problem. And yes, that really can happen, particularly since I'm weaning off doing all of this by hand. --joe decker^{talk to me} 05:45, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

It occurs to me, if we're not going to have a functional "Expired Proposed...." category, can we just get rid of it entirely?  ;-) --joe decker^{talk to me} 05:47, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

I never even knew that Category:Expired proposed deletions of unsourced BLPs existed. If it is unable to keep up, then CFD it. I generally use the Category:BLP articles proposed for deletion by days left. Even if that isn't perfectly accurate, it generally does put them in the right order, so whether it is listed a 0 days left, or 2 days left, the first ones will be the closest to deletion. I doubt many would exist more than 12 or 13 days. The-Pope (talk) 13:30, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

Actually, I just looked at the "days left" cat and I'm amazed at how "overtime" some of them are. Is there a basic wiki problem with the code in the template that needs some dev/mediawiki help? The-Pope (talk) 13:48, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, the MediaWiki code has known, "wont fix" problems with categories populated by templates. There are miscounted ones in the "days" left category, too, the "days left" goes again by what it was the last time the file was edited. It's not that the server is behind, I believe it's that it has no sense that an update is required at all.

What's changed (why is this bad *today?*) is that I've slowed my own hand null edits (in part to see what would happen), and i've been weaning off deleting BLPPRODs.

In theory I'd be open to deleting the Expired category, but it'd feel a bit pointy for me to do so, since it is my own view is that they could work quite well with 30 lines of PERL code and a BRFA. If i'm not going to be able to achieve consensus here for my "nulleditbot" or something like it, that might be the next best solution, though. Certainly having a category, that folks are plainly relying on, that doesn't work, is not a solution. --joe decker^{talk to me} 15:39, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

Lacking any further pushback or direct opposition, I'm going to try and go forward with the nulleditbot proposal for now. As near as I can ascertain, replacing the existing categories would have a far greater effect on "APIs" (that is, categories and how tools and editors who have't contributed here might use them), would require more bot work (maybe more similiar to existing bot work, but probably still a greater addition of code), and what I suggest in no way precludes a more elaborate refactoring of BLPPROD maint categories going forward. Thank you all for sharing your concerns. Best, --joe decker^{talk to me} 18:41, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

WP:STICKY redirect?

Not terribly significant, but could someone provide me some intuition on why WP:STICKY redirects here? Thanks, West.andrew.g (talk) 18:02, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

During the original discussion, this process was often referred to as a "sticky prod". Unlike normal prods, which may be removed for any reason, the prods described on this page can "stick" (i.e. be reverted back onto the page) until certain conditions (a reference being added) are satisfied. NW (Talk) 18:06, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Thank you, as the developer of WP:STiki, I was investigating redirects when I stumbled upon this page. Thanks, West.andrew.g (talk) 18:09, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

18th of March 2010

What is so special about this date? Looks quite arbitrary, and the policy page does not explain why it was chosen. Keφr (talk) 11:31, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

Hi Keφr. The sticky prod policy was adopted around this time and so the date functions as a form of Grandfather clause. Basically, it would be unfair to hold people's articles to a standard that did not exist at the time they were created, which was before the policy came into effect.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 12:09, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I guessed it's something like that. But all articles are held to the same WP:V policy anyway, aren't they? I would even argue that old articles should actually be put through more scrutiny, since they had time to improve in which they did not, which probably means something. But it's not really a big deal. Still, the page should probably explain the choice of this date, whatever the reason be. Keφr (talk) 16:02, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

All articles are held to the same standard, but just like some topics aren't eligible for WP:CSD#A7, some articles aren't eligible for BLP PROD. If you think old articles aren't notable or verifiable then by all means nominate them for deletion via a standard PROD or AFD. It actually is quicker, only 7 days, not 10 for this one.The-Pope (talk) 16:15, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

So be it. But can anyone point me to the discussion in which the date was chosen? Keφr (talk) 16:24, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

More or less here. Basically, the idea was to have it apply to new articles, not the backlog of (then) 60,000 unreferenced ones, or the tens of thousands more which preexisting, but not yet known/tagged. --j⚛e decker^talk 20:47, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I think we've cleared most of the "dark matter" backlog at this point. --j⚛e decker^talk 21:01, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Conflicting policies

This page and WP:BLP seem to conflict with each other Please see Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons#ProdwarningBLP for discussion. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:15, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Proposed expansion

I am considering proposing that this 7-day no source prod procedure be expanded to all new articles. Before I create a formal proposal, I would like to get some feedback on 1) whether people think it's a good idea and 2) what if any modifications to BLPPROD would need to be made for it to be effective on new articles. One of the central pillars of Wikipedia is verifiability, and while this is especially important for BLP articles, I think it is important on all articles. We routinely see articles created with no source and thus no way to verify that the subject even exists. Such a policy would encourage article creators to include references from the outset, prevent spam and copyright violation, avoid hoaxes, and encourage the addition of references to newly created articles by patrollers. As an example recent article, Līndəi is potentially interesting, but I would like some indication of whether it actually exists or not. AfD seems like the wrong process for that, particularly because AfD has a bias against new articles on the premise that they might be improved at some point in the future. Well, why not make the improvements happen now? If there can be no such sources added, then why is the article kept? -- Selket ^Talk 16:14, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

I would strongly oppose this. There is a longstanding principle that articles are only deleted because of problems which cannot be fixed by ordinary editing short of a complete rewrite. Thus if an article has some problems with non-neutral wording, we fix the problems rather than deleting the article, even though neutrality is important to us. We only bypass this principle in cases where the article is believed to be actively harmful. In the case of unreferenced BLPs the rationale for introducing BLP PROD is that editors believe that these articles are likely to contain information which could cause real-world harm to the subject. That rationale does not work for other types of article. If there are references on some topic then add them, but if there are no references to cite then the article can be deleted through the existing deletion processes. This proposal would not result in more article creators adding references (anyone who doesn't is already ignoring several warning messages) but rather it would bite them still more and would worsen our problems with editor retention. Hut 8.5 16:39, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

• Strongly oppose, largely for Hut 8.5's reasons. Ironholds (talk) 17:38, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

  • Indeed. --j⚛e decker^talk 07:05, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

Any source prevents a Prod

Earlier today, Bgwhite made this change while in a dispute about the application of {{prod blp}}. His claims that any source, regardless of if it was reliable or not, is enough to prevent an article from being tagged with {{prod blp}}. First of all, this is whole inapprirate to change a policy page to support your argument while in the middle of a dispute. Second, it doesn't seem consistent to require a reliable source to remove the {{prod blp}} while not requiring the same to prevent a {{prod blp}} from being added. The rule for sources should be consistent. —Farix (t | c) 21:30, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Farix accuses me of changing BLPPROD today to favor my argument. Please don't go around of accusing my of changing policy while in a dispute. I have not changed Wikipedia:BLPPROD#Nominating which states "To place a BLPPROD tag, the process requires that the article contain no sources in any form (as references, external links, etc.), which support any statements made about the person in the biography. Please note that this is a different criterion than is used for sources added after the placement of the tag." NO SOURCES is required for a BLPPROD based upon this statement.

I did copy a sentence yesterday from Wikipedia:BLPPROD#Nominating and placed it as the second sentence in the article. This was done based upon the discussion at User talk:Ironholds#Kostas Skoupras.

Past statements of Wikipedia talk:Proposed deletion of biographies of living people/Archive 6#With the wording of Wikipedia:BLPPROD changed, I'm confused on when to add the tag and Wikipedia talk:Proposed deletion of biographies of living people/Archive 6#Conflicts in various places and in the project page re: whether we require a "reliable source" or just a "source" shows the confusion of placing a BLPPROD and that no sources is required for a BLPPROD. Bgwhite (talk) 21:43, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

I was going to say the timing of the edit during the dispute was unfortunate, but on further reflection it makes sense to change the policy to emphasize a portion of the policy that editors are missing, and ending up in disputes, as a result of such a dispute. That is particularly true where the emphasis is just moving existing text to more prominent location. Seems entirely reasonable. Monty₈₄₅ 22:09, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Bgwhite did nothing wrong. They did not change any policy, just made a portion of the policy that is often missed more visible. It is a continuing problem that BLPPRODs are placed on articles that are not eligible for them according to the policy in effect. It is unfortunate that the criteria for placing a BLPPROD is different then the criteria for removing it but that is the policy. It has been discussed before and not changed. GB fan 22:28, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

What we need is a flowsheet that clearly shows that blp prod is only one deletion option, and just like some of the CSD tags, it is very restricted as to when it can be used. If an article doesn't fit exactly into the blp prod rules then you should use a normal prod, CSD or afd. Or maybe a nutshell box at the top simplifying the whole thing down to 4 lines. The-Pope (talk) 23:48, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Like below maybe? MBisanz ^talk 00:02, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Changed the above tag from "reliable sources" to "sources (reliable or unreliable)". Bgwhite (talk) 00:20, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Yes, any source, even an unreliable source, precludes a BLPPROD. Other deletion methods remain available as normal in such a case. Jclemens (talk) 01:02, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Can't we please just harmonize the addition and removal criteria? Hasn't this silliness gone on long enough? It was pretty much an accident that it happened this way in the first place. Gigs (talk) 03:44, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

There was a full RFC about a year ago regarding the addition critera, see Wikipedia_talk:Proposed_deletion_of_biographies_of_living_people/Archive_5#Archive_5#Nominating_articles_with_unreliable_sources_for_BLPPROD. Monty₈₄₅ 03:57, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

For everyone who wants BLP prod to be valid for "unreliable" reffed articles, there are the inclusionists/foundation/be nice to newbies who doubt that BLP prod is valid or useful at all. The main problem I have with changing it is that everyone defines reliable differently, and like I keep saying, THERE ARE LOTS OF OTHER DELETION OPTIONS IF BLP PROD DOESN'T FIT. The-Pope (talk) 04:15, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Pope, That's not a good reason for leaving this one broken. Monty, I know about the full RfC. We need an RfC that provides exactly two options, making it require a reliable source for both or any source for both. Leaving it ridiculous is not an option. Gigs (talk) 04:27, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

It should clearly be any source for both. Anything that's subject to G10 should never touch the BLPPROD process at all, which leaves it only for things with no exceptional or defamatory claims, since those should be blown out of the water on sight by any admin aware of such an article. Given that we're only talking about articles that appear to every reasonable editor to be benign but poorly sourced, asking for a reliable source is unnecessary. Besides, you can reliably source one thing in an article, and then load a whole bunch of untrue nonsense in it, creating the illusion that if there's a single RS we have some measure of quality; we do not. Jclemens (talk) 04:52, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Really, every BLP should have at least one reliable source tending to establish the notability of the subject. Part of the BLP Policy is about respecting the privacy of individuals not already in the public light. If a reliable source can be found to support anything about the individual, they are at least to some extent in the public eye, and so the concern that we are invading the person's privacy is at least diminished. Even if not the core purpose, the BLPProd is a great way to deal with articles about individuals that managed to pass the extremely low threshold required to avoid A7, but that are clearly not notable, and rarely start out with any source at all. Really the standard should be that any BLP without a reliable source that provides substantial coverage about, or even at least mentions the subject, should be subject to BLPProd, but I'm fine respecting the current compromise. Monty₈₄₅ 05:16, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

And I think both of those valid arguments. What we as a group need to do is agree that both arguments have merit, and then agree that it's more important to pick one way or the other than to prevail at this point in time, so that we can break the logjam and eliminate the confusing double standard. What we've done right now is let a fallacious argument to moderation create a status quo that's untenable. We are alienating new contributors, who don't have a chance in hell of understanding this, given that our own long time contributors often don't understand it. Gigs (talk) 13:37, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

BLPPROD has now effectively created a very small new category of articles that are allowed to persist for ten days before getting fixed or removed. I don't really see a downside in making it more strict, that is, fully consistent with the spirit of WP:BLP, by consistently requiring reliable sources. Either that, or WP:BLP needs to be toned down a bit.

Frankly, I've been perplexed by the argument against consistently requiring reliable sources. WP:BLP already grants a lot of lenience to the editor who perceives a BLP's sources as unreliable. If someone disagrees, they should start an argument on the article's talk page on whether a source is reliable. If we get a hundred new discussions about sources, so be it, it's still going to be a blip on the radar, it won't expand any backlog (instead it may reduce the backlog by putting more articles with lousy references up for deletion). --Joy [shallot] (talk) 14:35, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

I should mention that there is one part of that argument that appeals to me - that it's keeping things simple. Yet, the best way to keep things simple would be to be a bit more strict - remove the BLPPROD procedure and just put this in a speedy deletion category. Or make AfD easier to use (no, that 15-step procedure is not easy to use). --Joy [shallot] (talk) 14:40, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

The key factor there is it is a very small number of articles. It is normally under 200, often under 100. Is this a solution looking for a problem? Have a look at this set of numbers. BLP Prod is a huge part of keeping that number low. It is already a very simple system - only use it when there are no refs and only remove it when there is a reliable ref. The-Pope (talk) 14:57, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

I agree with you that BP is keeping that number low, but do we have reason to believe that moving that effect into a different deletion mechanism wouldn't be keeping that number low?

And while I'm at it, is that that number all we care about? It takes into account only Category:Unreferenced BLPs, whereas the Category:BLP articles lacking sources is at 61,317 now. So we can say that we basically accomplished a goal of having at least one source of some sort per biography of a living person, but does that goal do enough to resolve the actual concern of WP:BLP as a whole? It doesn't appear so. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 08:51, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

I wouldn't put too much stock into BLP refimpove numbers. There is not one article on here that couldn't use better sources. I doubt you'd get much consensus for making this a speedy deletion criteria either, since we haven't yet agreed to even harmonize the addition and removal criteria here. One thing at a time. Lets fix BLPPROD first. Gigs (talk) 14:55, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Dr. R. Daniel Shaw

Dan Shaw is a major figure, head of the doctoral program at Fuller School do Intercultural Studies, author of many books, constant world traveler, major figure in translation theory.

I can't figure why you don't have him.

Here is the link to his Fuller bio: www.samodan.com

I own this URL — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.122.116.199 (talk) 10:35, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion, but this is not the right page. You really want to post that at wp:Requested Articles, ideally with some links to reliable secondary sources that mention him. Thanks ϢereSpielChequers 13:39, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Reliable or not

Given the discussion above about whether a the source has to be reliable or not. Does anyone have an objection if I edit this project page and the BLPPROD template to remove "reliable source(s)" and replace it with either "source" or "source(s)(reliable or unreliable)"? Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 13:15, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

Exactly where are your removing it from?

The above discussion was about when to apply the tag and not when to remove the tag. A "reliable source" must be added to remove the BLPPROD tag and I would object if you were removing that. Plus no consensus has been reached about this, at least that I'm aware of. Bgwhite (talk) 17:31, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

Ok nevermind then, I read the above, and in previous expierences of BLPPROD, as the article had to have a reference for it be removed, not just a reliable source. Thanks for clearing that up. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 03:22, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

• I haven't followed any recent developments, but the rule had long been just a "source", not a reliable source, unless there's been a recent change?--Milowent • ^hasspoken 11:32, 21 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Somehow the rule became a "source" prevents application, but a "reliable source" is required for removal. Any attempt to harmonize this double standard brings opposition from one side or the other. Gigs (talk) 23:27, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
    • Indeed. --j⚛e decker^talk 23:43, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

A stab at change

I'm well aware of all the discussions before about the unequal thresholds for adding versus removing a BLPPROD; however, I think we could slightly modify this policy to reflect practice. I have never once removed or seen anyone remove a BLPPROD on the grounds that it was BLPPRODDed despite having a link to Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Youtube, or LinkedIn (the last of which should actively be removed per ELNO anyways), and given comments in the archives I don't foresee that ever being an issue. Previous proposals have been broader than this, so I figured focusing just on this issue would be worth a shot. I don't know if we want to keep it at just those 5 or if people would be good with generalizing it to equivalent social networking sites. I'm proposing this because right now the policy isn't in sync with the way things are actually done, so it should be changed. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 20:27, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Support. I've extended my support for a very similar suggestion before. (A note: I do actually decline BLPPRODs based on the what the written policy is, being perhaps too much of a precisionist in this case, but if general usage is shifting from that, that would be another reason to codify this change.) --j⚛e decker^talk 20:44, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure I've removed BLPPRODs before when the only links were to completely unreliable sources like the ones you mentioned, so it does happen. I don't really like the idea of making a list of specific sites that people need to remember when deciding to add BLPPRODs. It seems to me that it would make the policy unecessarily more compicated. Calathan (talk) 20:57, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

The reason I went with those is that they're all listed at WP:External links/Perennial websites (and of the other two there, we have a separate tag for IMDB and I seriously doubt Find a grave would have much use on BLPs), so there's very clear delineations on those specific websites. It wouldn't add much complexity to it, just reinforce what's generally current practice. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 00:04, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Like Calathan, I have removed them too. If BLPPROD is inapplicable, PROD can always be used, or AfD. Jclemens (talk) 04:23, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

I've tried a couple of times to make this specific change, ignoring "Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Youtube, and LinkedIn". In effect defining those specific four sites as not counting when you are considering a BLPprod. Opposition ranged from the very reasonable point that this makes a complex process more complex to people who assumed that this was a broader definition of this sort of site. Whilst I think that this would be a sensible reform, and one we might get consensus for if we ever had an incident where this made the difference, I wonder now if it is worth moving BLPprod in that direction. My preference if we were to change BLPprod would be to broaden it to people known to have been alive in this millennium. It always seemed incongruous to me that we exempted articles from this provision if you just add at the end "and he died in a car crash last year" ϢereSpielChequers 15:59, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Support - I would also support the inclusion of IMDB in the exempt links. Just by adding an IMDB link, the onus has flipped from the article creator to the new page patroller to prove the article should remain. IMDB is by no means a reliable source, especially so when it comes to obscure people. James086^Talk 17:11, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Support. I'm just going to repeat what I wrote earlier (in September 2011):

Generic external links to self-published websites simply do not count as a solution to WP:BLP issues and Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Biographies of living people (in June 2010) recognized this in pretty clear terms - there was a clear majority (28 : 16) support for the idea of explicitly disallowing all unreliable sources, even many of those people who disagreed and thought the idea of requiring WP:RS was too vague were pretty much amenable to disallowing self-published sources.

Replace "self-published sources" above with whatever more narrow definition of unreliable sources that matches the use case.

We keep coming back to the same problem. I don't think anyone honestly thinks that giving people a 10 day ultimatum to find a non-Facebook source is a genuine problem. We won't even force them to format that reference, cite it inline, etc. It's really a token effort. Finding and pasting a URL is likely less effort than having to create a mediawiki account. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 11:27, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Talk page notice?

Is there a talk page notice similar to Old prod full to use after a BLP prod is removed b/c a source was added? J04n(talk page) 15:24, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Not that I know of (but I've rarely/never used Old prod full either! You could use it with the optional parameters filled in...

{{Old prod full

| nom = Scott MacDonald

| nomreason= All biographies of living people created after March 18, 2010, must have references

| con= Ikin

| conreason= Added reference

}}

I guess we could create {{Old BLPProd full}} with the reasons prefilled, but I guess the difference is that you can't PROD an article twice, so a talk page notice is useful for that (if the article has a long edit history ), but you can BLPPROD an article multiple times if the refs aren't valid. The-Pope (talk) 15:45, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

I don't think the difference is really that you can use BLPPROD on an article multiple times, but that once a BLPPROD has been correctly removed, the article should be in a state where it couldn't be BLPPRODed again (i.e. at that point it should have a reference). The old prod full tag is useful since it may be hard to tell if an article ever had a regular prod, but a old blpprod full tag wouldn't be needed because any article that is still around after previously having a BLPPROD will presumably now have a reliable source and not even be considered for a new BLPPROD. Calathan (talk) 16:30, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

References do occasionally go missing, I've gotten bit by this at least once. I don't have a strong feeling one way or another as to whether the OldProdFull would help, though. --j⚛e decker^talk 16:45, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Discussion of PRODs of older unreferenced BLPs

There is a discussion ongoing at Wikipedia talk:Proposed deletion#Unreferenced BLPs from before March 2010 that may be of interest. --BDD (talk) 16:28, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Older un-sourced BLPs

How well has this policy performed in achieving what it set out to do? If it is generally seen as a success, is there a case to extend the application to all BLP articles, including those created prior to March 18, 2010? AndrewRT(Talk) 23:04, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

• Just to be clear, there are fewer than 700 articles tagged as unreferenced BLPs which aren't going through BLP PROD already, and all of them were only tagged as such within the last two months. There is no need for any additional measures to be taken to keep on top of it. Hut 8.5 23:50, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

• Since we're voting, disagree. The number of articles in the category is small (many of the articles in the category are not actually unreferenced), the size of the category is clearly being controlled, and even if that was not the case it would not be too difficult to start another drive to bring it down again. Mass deletions are unnecessary and undesirable, as we end up with less content. In any case the number of actual BLP violations that would be removed by the change is likely to be very small indeed. Hut 8.5 13:15, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

• Agree with the nominator, older pages weren't included to prevent mass taggings. The fact that there are only <700 now is a plus for expanding to all pages. J04n(talk page) 00:16, 11 May 2013 (UTC)
• Disagree aside from preventing mass taggings, notification & visability of old articles is another major issue. If someone discovers a batch of old unreferenced, but notable, articles & BLPprods them, will anyone know? Is the creator still around? Are they in WikiProjects? Are they on any watchlists? At least with AFDs there is a Delsort process. What we need is for the sorting tools like DASHbot to be restarted or all WikiProjects to pay attention to their Svick clean up lists. I hope the WP:LABS people are aware & paying attention.The-Pope (talk) 01:46, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

  Would anyone know? I suspect so. There are still a few of us who peek in on the queue of BLPPRODs, and will continue to do so whether or not this little policy wart gets shaved off. I can tell you, for example, that the number of such in the queue every week has actually decreased from a year or two back, more typically 70 in the queue at any one time rather than 100, and I can tell you that last week for some reason the number dropped quite low, perhaps to 45 or so, and that seemed to be coming from a decrease in the use of the tag. A large pile of BLPPRODs would show up on the radar of a number of tools as well, creating a backlog of expired BLPPRODS (remember, they're actually deleted by hand, not by bot), and would also be pretty visible at WP:PRODSUM. --j⚛e decker^talk 02:12, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

• Weakly Agree I'm certainly sympathetic to the idea that mass BLPPROD tagging would be bad, but I think that's a fear without basis. At this point I suspect the number of never-referenced pre-2010 BLPs is enormously tiny. Largely I feel that it'd make little difference, and be simpler, and that the simplicity is the more substantial of the two small effects. Since I think it's a small thing either way, I added "weakly". --j⚛e decker^talk 02:01, 11 May 2013 (UTC)
• Wait, didn't we have a project that eliminated 50k of them? Why not resurrect that project first if there has been a relapse? Jclemens (talk) 02:18, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

  In the end the project was a few of us doing one's in area's that appealed to us (ie J04n did a lot of musicians from memory, I did Aussies and sportspeople etc) and Joe Decker doing the rest (I'm not really forgetting about everyone else who helped)! A lot of the current 700 were bot changes from unreferenced to BLPunreferenced, without any check on whether it really is unreferenced, or removed if it's since been referenced - ie a Surendra Srivastava has a ref (and is marked with both BLPsources and BLPunreferenced which doesn't make any sense) & ones like Becky G has since been reffed, but the tag not removed/changed. Making changes to the rules is a solution looking for a problem. The-Pope (talk) 03:07, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

  I wanted to add that the majority of those 700 aren't eligible for BLPPROD, just sourced only to a social networking site or some other not-really-a-source source. Nearly everything that can be BLPPROD'd in that pile of 700 is already tagged, getting rid of the March 18 restriction would only add a couple more articles--generally old articles accumulate external links to social networking sites, etc., which often are left tagged with "BLP unsourced", but are not eligible for BLPPROD. --j⚛e decker^talk 06:28, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

• Disagree Noting that the number is small, and many may have been improperly tagged. If and only if an article has been human-verified to be unreferences should it then be put up for a prod at this point, IMO. I strongly suspect that many are so seldom viewed that this is not something for the "front burner." Collect (talk) 10:56, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

  I'm a bit confused by this response, it was my understanding that the proposal was only to lift the restriction that the tag only applied to articles created after March 18, 2010. I don't believe that there was any suggestion of automatic tagging with BLPPROD, but correct me if I'm wrong. -j⚛e decker^talk 06:31, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

• Disagree both because in my experience such articles need to be checked for vandalism. - If we simply allow people to remove deadlinks and then delete then ultimately the deletionists will get the whole of the pedia. But also because any extension of sticky prod should in my view be targeted at a worthwhile improvement to the pedia. The great waste of the UBLP cleanup was that it was a distraction from more useful work to cleaning up unsourced material that actually turned out to contain very few hoaxes or other problems (I found myself deleting far fewer G10s during that cleanup than before or since). Better in my view to target any expansion on a real problem area. For example we have a big and growing problem with spam. Requiring that every new article about a business had to have an independent reliable source such a newspaper article would go some way to combat our spam problem, and puts the burden of work on the people who contribute articles on businesses, some of whom I suspect are connected to those businesses or their PR agencies. ϢereSpielChequers 06:41, 12 May 2013 (UTC)
  • WSC, poorly sourced vanity articles are a sort of spam too. Gigs (talk) 18:01, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks all for the responses. It seems the consensus is in favour of keeping this distinction, for now at least. AndrewRT(Talk) 18:54, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

absolutely NOT -- this policy, such as it is, was passed with certain, very CLEAR conditions, & the cutoff date was one of them. if you want to change that, you need to do another rfc, discussion, & proper community-wide vote. Lx 121 (talk) 10:40, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

history

by the way, when exactly WAS this policy last voted on in a community-wide discussion, & what's been changed since then?

Lx 121 (talk) 10:43, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

It was a long series of RFCs in early 2010 - hence the cutoff date. I think most people involved are aware that we came up with a very messy compromise, but there has been no consensus based change to it since then. Though I suspect we could now get agreement to move from 10 to 7 days as that would bring it into line with prod and AFD, and I also suspect we have a lot of poorly soured articles sneaking through this system. We never quite got agreement to include "facebook sourced" articles in BLPprod but I suspect some go this way anyway. ϢereSpielChequers 12:28, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

You can all blame me for the 10-day idea. When the duration came up for discussion, there were so many different suggestions, there was no consensus for any of them so I simply worked out an average of all the suggestions which came to 10 days, and I fixed it at that. There were no objections. In hindsight I think 7 days as per the standard PROD would have been perfectly reasonable and may be ready for re-discussion.

The issue over the permitted /non-permitted sources was never resolved (unless I missed something more recent) and is still a bone of contention. I would like to see a list of disallowed sources rather than continuing to function on the premise that absolutely any linked source prohibits the sticky prod. That's one of the reasons I don't personally use the BLPPROD very often, choosing instead to go for a 7_day standard one. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 14:28, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

I'd be for changing it to 7 days. Gigs (talk) 18:02, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

I would actually be in favour of setting it at 7. A simple show of hands here would probably be sufficient. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:59, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

RfC: Change duration from 10 to 7 days

A discussion has been started to reduce the duration of BLPPROD from 10 to 7 days. Please see Wikipedia:Proposed deletion of biographies of living people/RfC: Change duration from 10 to 7 days. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:25, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Be bold tip

I suggest that we add in Before nominating heading following be bold advise:
"(8.) Instead of nominating, be bold, and consider finding reliable sources yourself."

Sometimes it could be useful, and in some cases it could shorten unnecessary procedure. Alex ^{discussion ★} 14:42, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

WP:BEFORE or what?

I do a lot of stub-sorting, and if I see problems with an article I'll tag it appropriately. I use Twinkle. Twinkle offers {{BLP unsourced}} but says "{{BLP unsourced}}: BLP article has no sources at all (use BLP PROD instead for new articles)". New Page Curation does not offer {{BLP unsourced}}: I've been told there that "WP:BLPPROD is what we use for unsourced BLPs these days - all must have reliable sources, and those that don't get deleted". I've today been criticised for not doing WP:BEFORE to look for sources on an unsourced BLP article which I PRODBLP'd.

So: if I see an unsourced BLP article, and I choose not to spend time sourcing it, should I:

• Leave it alone and hope that someone else does something about it?
• PRODBLP it without trying to source it?
• Manually add {{BLP unsourced}}, although Twinkle says I shouldn't?
• Just add {{Unreferenced}}?

I'd add that I do aim to check the history of an article before adding the PRODBLP or any other deletion template, in case its current unsourced state is the result of vandalism or other unconstructive edits.

I'd just like some clarification on this. Thanks. PamD 20:56, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

I am the one who did the criticising - if you tag an article for BLPPROD then you should check for sources/notability first. WP:BEFORE is very clear about that. GiantSnowman 21:03, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

While the BLPPROD instructions say to "consider finding reliable sources yourself", I don't think there is a requirement that you do so. Though that part of the instructions refers to WP:BEFORE, WP:BEFORE is primarily about AFD, and I don't think that section meant that a search for sources is required before adding a BLPPROD (otherwise it wouldn't use the word "consider"). I think in general BLPPROD is intended to alert the creator of the article that sources are needed, without an expectation that anyone else should first look for sources. So I would say that I disagree with GiantSnowman's opinion. However, if an unsourced article seems to be about someone clearly notable, then it is obviously better to source the article than delete it and have no article on that person. So I wouldn't say that you need to try to find a source before tagging an article with a BLPPROD, but you should consider doing so if the article seems to be about someone clearly notable and you think it would be easy to find a source yourself. Calathan (talk) 21:39, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

• WP:BLPPROD#Nominating says "Consider finding reliable sources yourself (See also WP:BEFORE)". So my reading is that it is encouraged, but not required. WP:BEFORE is a part of the AFD process, and although it's referenced here, I don't think it's intended to be a requirement. How aggressively you want to "encourage" it is, I suppose, left unspoken. --Floquenbeam (talk) 21:35, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

• One of the main ideas behind the creation of the BLPPROD was that it could be applied as soon as possible after creation of the article and fast enough to catch the creator while still on line and likely to see the message on their talk page. That kind of rules out an obligation for the patroller to do a 'BEFORE'. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:40, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

• template:BLPunsourced still exists, I can appreciate it not being in Twinkle as it shouldn't be needed at newpage patrol, but in theory we could still find some old unsourced BLPs that don't qualify for BLPprod. The compromise that resulted in BLPprod included making Before optional for it, so if an unsourced BLP grabs your interest you are certainly still welcome to source it, but unlike AFD there is little pressure to do so. Kudpung is correct that one of the arguments for rapid tagging of BLPprods was the theory that it was important to catch the creator whilst still online. However I'd say that counter experience is that as some of us predicted, tagging articles for deletion is a bitey way to greet newbies, and the quicker the tag the more bitey it is. ϢereSpielChequers 09:54, 11 January 2014 (UTC)
  • Was WP:BEFORE ever mandatory for anything? WP:BURDEN, to contrast, is policy. Keφr 12:57, 11 January 2014 (UTC)
    • Well before BLPprod we had a situation where articles might not qualify for A7 as there was a clear assertion of importance, be declined as prods and then not be deleted by AFD as there were sources easily found. Yet they could still be unsourced BLPs at the end of that. BLPprod has fixed that, but it was a hard won compromise. ϢereSpielChequers 15:13, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

• There are currently 860 articles in the Category:Unreferenced BLPs. That may not sound many as backlogs go, but it's 860 too many BLPs. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:39, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

• but how many of them are actually completely unreferenced? I just randomly choose 4 from July. 1 had an imdb link, 1 had a rambling long academic bibliography, 1 only had the subjects personal/band websites as ext links & 1 had a dead inline reference, but 2 refs were available on the linked es.wiki article. Even ignoring the March 2010 cut off, how many of these could/should be BLPprodded? The-Pope (talk) 00:15, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

• I've been looking through the category, and a majority seem to be inappropriately tagged, depending on your definition of sourced; some view any external link (besides spam, etc) as a reference, some only view content in <ref> tags to be sources. cf. WP:BOTREQ ~HueSatLum 03:04, 13 January 2014 (UTC)
• Looked at Category:Unreferenced BLPs from May 2013. Five had official websites as the only source, with an additional article that had a dead official website. One had a list books written by the subject that included ISBNs and one had photos for an external link. Of the five with official websites, three websites were added after the BLP tag. Out of 28 articles, only three were improperly tagged. Bgwhite (talk) 06:32, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Articles with links to foreign-langue Wiki's

I've noticed some people using WP:BLPPROD for articles that exist in another language, are shown on the left-hand side, and (the foreign language version) is well referenced. This seems to conflict with the requirement that the article contain no sources in any form (as references, external links, etc. Comments? Nfitz (talk) 19:03, 16 February 2014 (UTC)

Technically there shouldn't be any inter-wiki links, per WP:WIKIDATA; and even if there are links to referenced other versions, we are only concerned with the English-language entry, and whether that is referenced or not. However if more editors followed WP:BEFORE prior to tagging articles this would be a moot point. GiantSnowman 19:08, 16 February 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure I'm clear. Is it okay to WP:BLPPROD an article that has in inter-wiki link to a well referenced article. And also, if someone deletes the WP:BLPPROD noting that there is an inter-wiki link to a well referenced article, is it okay to reinstate the WP:BLPPROD? Nfitz (talk) 02:07, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

1. Yes. It is okay to tag an article with no references that only has an inter-wiki link.
2. No. It is not ok to to remove a BLPPROD and it is ok to reinstate.

There are no reference IN the article, "... the process requires that the article contain no sources in any form". English Wikipedia is like a bubble, only information inside English Wikipedia matters and any information outside the bubble doesn't count.

However, as GitantSnowman said with WP:BEFORE, while it is ok to tag the article with a BLPPROD, one should have looked at the inter-wiki links to see if any references could be moved over. The creating editor is being lazy and making you do the hard work. If you an unsure about the refs or know the refs are not valid, then tag it. Bgwhite (talk) 07:28, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

Expanding BLPPROD to "IMDB only"

I propose that it be legitimate to place a BLPPROD on articles that are sourced only to IMDB.

I suspect the arguments for or against are relatively well-understood, as is the unreliability of information within IMDB. I won't belabor that. However, I will make two specific points.

1. There are a goodly number of articles sourced only to IMDB. So much that we have an explicit maintenance tag for that case, around 2400 articles are so-marked, but an even larger number exist and are tagged "BLP unsourced", because that is the way that most knowledgable editors look at said articles. Putting all of these biographies through AfD would be prohibitive.
2. Having looked at the article history of many recent articles that fall into this category, I find a number of them bear similarities, but are created by different SPAs, in a way that leaves me suspicious that the IMDB loophole is being knowledgeably exploited for promotion. I may very well be wrong, but to me, something doesn't pass the smell test.

I'm open to limiting this to articles created going forward, but I won't be going and shoveling these particular stables without a bit more help from policy than I have now. --j⚛e decker^talk 00:09, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

The number is probably higher as the 2000 in the imdb only cats must be added to the 2400 in the imdb cat. However, this tag has also been used on film articles, so not all will be BLPs. But personally, I'd prefer to not expand blpprod, but just use normal prod or even just redirect, if there is only one semi notable role. If the articles were created by SPA editors they probably won't be around to protest a prod. Ideally I'd now like to see blpprod become CSDBLP, maybe with a 2 or 3 day minimum tag time before deletion. The-Pope (talk) 02:18, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

As an aside, what I would really like to see is our requirements being communicated to new editors before they start creating articles. Unfortunately, I feel like I've lost that fight. --j⚛e decker^talk 03:00, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

If there is an IMDB link present as an external link then the article is not techically unreferenced. If IMDB is deemed unsuitable as an EL, then that discussion needs to be held elsewhere. GiantSnowman 13:13, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

IMDB's unsuitability is already part of the record at WP:ELPEREN, which notes (as been has been noted on elsewhere) that the content is user-submitted. There's no need for discussion on that point. --j⚛e decker^talk 13:35, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

The big green tick next to IMDB's entry, saying it is suitable for use as an external link, would say otherwise... GiantSnowman 13:41, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, I must have misread your point above. I have no problem with IMDB as an EL. It's simply not usable as a reference. Apologies for the accidental derailing. --j⚛e decker^talk 13:44, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

But if it's present as an external link then to say the article is unreferenced is not correct. I currently decline BLPPRODs on this basis. GiantSnowman 13:45, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

And you are correct to do so under current policy. I was suggesting a change to existing policy. --j⚛e decker^talk 13:49, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

Hence my initial comment - as long as IMDB remains an acceptable external link, it seems unfair to exclude it as a source when it comes to BLPPRODs. GiantSnowman 13:53, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

Fair enough. I don't see it as a matter of fairness, I see it as a matter of WP:V. In any case, the proposal is withdrawn. --j⚛e decker^talk 13:57, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

If we were to extend BLPprod I would prefer that we did so to a group of high risk articles, for example articles making medical claims that lack a Medically reliable source. One of the frustrating things about the big UBLP cleanup was that the target of UBLPs was set off wiki and the articles involved didn't turn out to be particularly problematic. I found myself doing fewer G10 deletions when I was involved in the uBLP cleanup than when I was hunting out problematic stuff. ϢereSpielChequers 13:38, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

To be clear, I didn't think this was likely to get traction, but I figured it was worth a shot. I'm just less interested, frankly, in clearing up the mess without more assistance from policy. And to the extent that I think the hole here is being exploited, potentially for promotional gain, well, that's sad too. --j⚛e decker^talk 13:41, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

Anyway, at this point it's pretty clear that I'm not getting traction on the proposal, so there it is, I won't belabor the argument. Cheers, --j⚛e decker^talk 13:47, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

BLP PROD application outside of article space

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

There is consensus that WP:BLPPROD, in its current form, applies only to the article namespace. This is shown in the discussion below and here. It is noted that while BLPPROD currently only applies to articles, WP:BLP applies to all biographies of living persons, per the definitions therein. TP's opening statement regarding the current reading of BLPPROD and its application outside the article namespace is not without merit. It would almost certainly benefit the community to tighten the current wording of BLPPROD to more clearly reflect that it applies only to the article namespace. There is some support for the notion that BLPPROD should apply outside the article namespace, but this support is not so clear that any consensus can be determined from this RfC, and if this line of thinking is to be pursued then further discussion is needed within the confines of an RfC germane to that purpose. There is some discussion of other deletion methods including CSD criteria G10 (in respect of wholly negative unsourced BLPs) and G13 (in respect of AfC drafts that have been declined and unedited for more than 6 months); WP:MFD is mentioned as an alternative avenue to deletion for pages that do not fall within any other process. There is an implication that there are, or will be, BLP pages that do not fall within the explicit relevant CSD criteria, and for which the time delay involved with CSD#G13 or MFD would be too great. However, in the absence of further examples or evidence of such pages, no firmer conclusion can be drawn in this regard. Bellerophon _{talk to me} 12:55, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

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Does BLPPROD apply to all biographies or only biographies in article space?

• A recent discussion on the help desk has determined there are differing points of view over whether WP:BLPPROD applies only to articles or to all biographies. I would like to get the community's explicit consensus on the subject. Although the policy BLPPROD makes several references to articles, I believe it makes a clear effort to distinguish between articles and biographies. Indeed, this would be appropriate and in line with WP:BLP which states "BLP applies to all material about living persons anywhere on Wikipedia, including talk pages, edit summaries, user pages, images, categories, persondata, article titles and drafts." So it would stand to reason that some a distinction is important. These are a list of quotes where WP:BLP avoids the use of 'article' in favor of 'biographies' that I believe is relevant to this distinction:

• "Unsourced biographies of living people (BLP) created after March 18, 2010, can be proposed for deletion using a special proposed deletion process."
• "If the biography remains unsourced after seven days, the biography may be deleted."
• Scope: "Although our policy on biographies of living persons covers all types of biographical material, the use of this deletion procedure is intended to apply only to actual biographies of living people."
• Background: "All improperly sourced articles about living people may be subject to deletion per the standard deletion processes, but in addition, biographies created after March 18, 2010, that do not contain at least one source directly supporting the material may also be proposed for deletion under this new process." I believe this line specifically demonstrates how BLPPROD distinguishes between articles and biographies.

• "If you see a biography about a living person without references, you are strongly encouraged to either source or remove any contentious material and look for reliable sources that support the remainder of the biography's content."

• "This method of proposed deletion is an additional tool to be used in the interests of increasing the quality of BLP sourcing on Wikipedia."
• "{{prod blp}} tagged biographies remain eligible for speedy deletion nomination in the usual way."
• Most importantly: "Per this section of the BLP policy, badly written BLPs should be stubbified or deleted. Administrators may have to delete pages if the page's primary content is unsourced" Pages, not articles.

• User:Floquenbeam believes that I've selectively quoted. I believe, as the article history can demonstrate, that there were multiple authors with multiple writing styles but that the predominate policy, spirit, and intentions of the authors of BLPPROD was to distinguish these matters. Obviously some leeway is needed for drafts that have no been reviewed yet, I believe we are currently facing the largest AFC backlog we've ever faced. However, for AFC declined biographies after 7 days, I believe BLPPROD is appropriate.--v/r - TP 22:52, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

• Comment: Since I'm pinged/mentioned here: I'm agnostic on whether BLPPROD should be changed to apply to user space pages as well. I was only commenting that in its current wording (and the design of the {{BLPPROD}} template) it very clearly doesn't. If there's support for the change here, go for it. I'm not convinced it's needed, though (BLP policy should be enough). --Floquenbeam (talk) 22:59, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

• It does not now, but it should at least in part: The question here is specifically worded as "does", not "should", so to answer that: I was an engaged participant at the original discussions on many BLPPROD discussions, and my sense was that the application of BLPPROD to AfC submissions (which were in Wikipedia talk, and to a lesser extent, Wikipedia, User, and User talk spaces) was never considered. While I supported the process at the time, i don't believe that I personally considered the ramifications of extending the tag outside of article space.

That having been said, I would absolutely support such a change for declined drafts that have not been resubmitted, and I would consider further, and likely support, such a change for unsubmitted and/or drafts pending review. I am frankly tired of pretending that we can hand new editors with absolutely no introduction or education to Wikipedia a blank "make an article" form, and at the same time insist that we avoid the problems that come along with it, and at the third hand, that can insist that we're surprised and bothered when people create articles we feel the need to delete, and then leave the community. As a collective community, Foundation and editors together, we have our heads in the sand. So, why do I support the extension? I think it will bring additional established editors and sysops to work with the material at AfC, they will be emphasizing our basic reliance on sources, and I believe that that result, net, will be beneficial to the encyclopedia, even if only limited to BLPs.

In short, there are infrequent but real problems that result from permitting unsourced BLPs which are declined at AfC to sit around a further six months (per G13). A lightweight process for resolving this for unsourced BLPs is desirable. --j⚛e decker^talk 00:39, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

I ask "does" because I am currently using it as such and if I'm wrong then I'd like to know it. I read it as does, Floq reads it as does not. Should or should not are also good questions, though.--v/r - TP 02:57, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

I completely understand, thanks to both of you for coming here to figure it out. Perhaps other folks will have different recollections than I do, it's been a few years. Cheers, --j⚛e decker^talk 05:49, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

The policy as it stands only applies to article pages, as it clearly refers to articles, and it certainly isn't general practice to use it on other types of page (the template produces a red warning notice if you try). Interpretations of the words "biography" and "page" to imply otherwise seem rather strained, and if the policy was intended to apply outside article space it would say so. It is true that the BLP policy applies to drafts and user pages, but this page doesn't have the same scope as the BLP policy.

Should the policy apply to drafts and user pages? I don't think it's particularly necessary given that we have G13 to delete stale AfC drafts. I would strongly oppose a general application of BLP PROD to user space, which would mean that you couldn't write a brief biography of yourself on your user page without citing references for it. Hut 8.5 20:05, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

So you're saying that you support a six-month immunity to deletion for unsourced BLPs as long as they are in draft and userspace?--v/r - TP 20:48, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

No, I didn't say that. G13 isn't the only possible way of deleting userspace drafts. I should also point out that AfC drafts and tagged userspace drafts are NOINDEXed and aren't easily accessible through search, so the potential damage is low, and if a draft contains an actual BLP violation then all the usual rules apply. Hut 8.5 06:50, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

This is not quite true. AfC drafts are tagged noindex, but the mirrors of AfC drafts are not. And google, which is how many people search Wikipedia, finds those mirrors just fine, e.g., [3]. I do think there is still non-trivial exposure from serious problems in draft space, as a result. But yes, serious problems are generally solvable by G10/G11/G12. --j⚛e decker^talk 00:55, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

• I would say no, as very few people will be watching or opening up these pages. In article space the chance of harm is much higher, but also the chance of getting fixed is higher too. MFD should be used for this sort of thing. Once a track record of what deletion consensuses at MFD are, then we can have a non-controversial deletion method instigated. Of course any contentious material can be removed, as anyone can edit. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:24, 4 June 2014 (UTC)
• Support.  BLPPROD would be fine for draftspace and draft articles in userspace.  We either get a source, or we get an unsourced draft article out of public view.  This is what we want.  If the draft article is deleted and there is a later objection, the prod can be WP:REFUNDed.  The direct downsides seem to be hard to identify.  Perhaps there are editors who are both unfamiliar with our processes and unwilling to ask, who would abandon their work in the face of a BLPPROD.  A more likely problem is editors who place BLPPRODs without doing a minimal WP:BEFORE D1 search, but this wouldn't be a new problem.  On another issue, it is my understanding that userspace does not default to noindex.  Unscintillating (talk) 01:18, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

• This would certainly deter new editors. We have various guide pages encouraging them to create new articles in userspace first so they can be brought up to an acceptable standard before being moved into mainspace. Applying scary-looking deletion tags just because the page hasn't been developed enough yet is going to put people off and contradicts the whole point of having drafts in the first place. REFUND isn't much help here. Editors are entirely within their rights to add BLP PRODs to articles without making any attempt to search for sources or to add tags to articles which make it obvious that there are sources available, and it happens quite frequently. Userspace isn't NOINDEXed by default, no, but anything tagged with {{userspace draft}} is. Hut 8.5 14:45, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

• Does and should apply to article space only for the reasons of visibility, potential harm, and bitiness that others have expressed. BLP prod is just an extension of the generic WP:PROD procedure which is very explicitly for articles only, and there is no reason why BLPs should be any different. For something that is very obviously libellous, drafts can be edited and pages can already be speedy deleted per WP:CSD#G10 or revisions deleted under WP:REVDEL criteria 2 or 3. Anything that is not serious enough for that can be taken to MfD. Thryduulf (talk) 10:22, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
• Does and should apply to article space only , per Thryduulf. Of course BLP policy, in general, still applies.--cyclopia^speak! 10:26, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
• It does not now, but it should at least in part per Joe Decker. Chris Troutman (talk) 06:47, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
• It does not now, but a variation of it it should at least in part. I would recommend that outside of article space it should be used, but with a twist:

• If there is an ongoing good-faith effort to find sources when the BLPPROD clock expires, any editor can either add a source OR remove any BLP violations that exist then reset the clock. The editor should put a note on the appropriate talk page explaining any BLP-related removals.
• If there is not an ongoing good-faith effort to find sources when the clock expires, any editor can either add a source or {{courtesy blank}} the page, leaving any AFC-related headers if it is an AFC submission. Note that abandoned AFC submissions will go away in 6 months under WP:CSD#G13. The editor should leave a note on the talk page ur user's talk page as above.
• MfD and speedy-deletion (e.g. G13) should be used as deletion processes for non-article pages.

davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 15:13, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

• Per Thryduulf, at present this should only apply in article space and in the discussions that set up BLPprod it was only article space that we were considering. I'm not seeing any evidence that G3, G10 and MFD are insufficient to deal with problem cases elsewhere, but I can see the temptation for some sort of courtesy blanking unsourced BLP template to deal with the mirroring problem. Better still, give editors a choice about userspace drafts - if people could have draft pages that only they could see would we care what was in them? ϢereSpielChequers 06:29, 2 July 2014 (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.

Borderline case

Alexander Khoroshavin's birthdate is not the same in the article as it is in the one given source, his own website. The rest is iffy--the only statement that might count is "Head of Sakhalin Oblast". Could someone else look at it? Origamite^ⓣⓒ 23:35, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

BLPPROD of article with reference, by first removing reference

I've noticed a disturbing trend recently, where a couple of editors will remove the reference from an article, because they claim the reference is to an unreliable source, even though the information that is referenced is easily verifiable at other more reliable sources. And then the same editor will immediately proceed to BLPPROD the article, because it has no references. In my mind, when it would be very easy to simply replace the questionable reference, with a more reliable one, this is tantamount to vandalism. If the material that was referenced was actually not correct, or difficult to verify with another reference, I could see it, but not when the information appears correct, and is easily verifiable. Am I off base? Is this really acceptable editing? Nfitz (talk) 22:24, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

I would consider removing an unreliable source and then immediately placing a BLPPROD on an article to be inappropriate, as it clearly goes against the intent of the BLPPROD policy. If you see someone doing that, I would recommend that you inform them that BLPPROD can't be used in that way (and perhaps ask them to try adding reliable sources when removing unreliable sources). However, I wouldn't call it "tantamount to vandalism". Calathan (talk) 22:48, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

I'd pretty much agree with Calathan here. I've certainly declined BLPPRODs for that. --j⚛e decker^talk 22:57, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the input. I'll try and assume good faith then. Nfitz (talk) 02:30, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Assume it but not too much. Such behaviour is quite difficult to justify in good faith, and it is gaming the system. Give warnings to users who do that. --cyclopia^speak! 09:14, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Hi @Nfitz:, seeing as this discussion is about me (re: Alexandru Pascenco article) it would have been nice of you to notify me. I removed an unreliable source (following multiple discussions at WP:RSN) and then added a BLPPROD tag; I feel I was perfectly justified in doing so, as that allowed 7 days for somebody to find a RS (as has now happened). I couldn't add a source of my own at that time (I was editing at work on my lunch, sport sites are blocked) and I intended to do it later but genuinely forgot. But yes, thank you for WP:AGFing, and again thanks for notifying me about this discussion. GiantSnowman 09:30, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

GiantSnowman, it is of course perfectly fine to remove unreliable sources, and you aren't under any obligation to add a reliable source when doing so (though it would be helpful if you have time to find one). However, please don't add a BLPPROD in situations like that in the future. You say you feel you were "perfectly justified" in doing so, but I personally don't see any way to interpret the BLPPROD instructions that would make that seem to be a reasonable action. BLPPROD is only intended to be used when someone wrote about a living person without providing any sort of source for where the information came from, and just taking out the reference to the source from the current version of the article doesn't change the fact that the person provided a source. If you really think a BLP article should be deleted but there is an unreliable source, please consider using regular PROD instead of BLPPROD. Calathan (talk) 16:58, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

In such circumstances I would suggest moving the unreliable source from references to external links. Of course if the unreliable source doesn't mention the article subject then a BLPprod is legit. I would make an exception though for some of the banned external links, though in that case if the article was written sourced to some conspiracy site that outed people as reptilians I expect it would probably qualify as G10. ϢereSpielChequers 19:43, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

@Calathan: @WereSpielChequers: thanks guys, that's me suitably trouted, will bear in mind in future. GiantSnowman 09:50, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

Trout not required or justified. I reserve my trouts for people who put BLP tags on trams and similar nonsense edits. We have managed to wind up with an awkward compromise that has rough edges which catch people out. I apologise for my part in that but after several attempts I doubt if I will try and renegotiate the compromise, though thankfully we did get the change to 7 days so ossification is not yet total. ϢereSpielChequers 15:25, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

This. --j⚛e decker^talk 05:03, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

• @GiantSnowman: this discussion isn't about you. Your edit wasn't even the one that drove me here. I've seen more than one editor doing this. Should I summon every editor who I've seen doing this here, when I check to see if it's valid or not? Kind of a waste of everyone's time, if the response was "Oh that's fine ... that's normal procedure". Nfitz (talk) 02:20, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

• So you removing a BLPPROD from an article I had tagged after removing a non-RS, and then coming here to complain about editors who add tags after removing non-RS 90 minutes later is completely unrelated? GiantSnowman 09:50, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

• Not completely unrelated, but as I have already very clearly explained, I had spotted a couple of editors doing this. Had yours been the only edit like that I saw that day, I wouldn't have come here. Check the edit I made 23 minutes before coming here, not 90. Should I have notified that editor as well? Given that multiple editors were doing this, surely it was polite that I checked out whether they were indeed wrong before calling them out on it. Not sure what the issue is here ... Nfitz (talk) 04:50, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

(And I dunno, maybe expecting a person to itemize and notify all the people who have made particular kinds of edits we aren't sure we agree with kinda seems like placing a lot of burden on someone who just wants an answer to a question. If the question was regarding the act of a single editor, then maybe a notification could be viewed as a courtesy if still not a requirement or even a social mōs. On the other hand, there is the enormous indignation one can feel if believing one has caught and (ah ha!) surprised another "out" on such a courtesy. I guess we all just smack some trout around like respectable adults and call it a day! But still... I just... dunno! That's all: comment complete. Pls disregard. Thx! KDS4444^Talk 07:46, 18 October 2015 (UTC))

Sources vs. reliable sources

Are we really forcing BLPs solely-sourced to Facebook, Linkedin, personal blogs, etc., to go through AFD? I just had a BLPPROD removed with the reasoning that it had a link to the subject's blogspot site. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 00:54, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

I think you're getting confused between the placement requirement and the removal requirement. The placement requirement is no sources, not no reliable sources or no secondary sources. The removal requirement is a reliable source, if the placement was valid. I think this confuses a lot of people. But whether we should make BLPPROD's placement requirement no reliable secondary sources, hmm.... I'm not sure. Adam9007 (talk) 01:01, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

I'm not confused. I'm stating that as long as editors like yourself think "sources" <> "reliable sources" articles solely-sourced to Facebook, Linkedin, personal blogs, etc., will be forced to go through AFD. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 01:35, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

I'm well aware of the difference between an unreliable source and a reliable source. BLPPROD states the placement requirement is no sources in any form. Adam9007 (talk) 01:39, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

I see no reason to change the current consensus, which was established in this fairly extensive discussion. Reliable sources vs any source has been a contentious point from the entire history of BLPPROD (just search the archives and the history of this article, tons of edit warring and discussions about that historically), and the current version probably best reflects the consensus. Regardless, I would not expect this discussion to go anywhere in its current form, as it is a fairly major policy change and one that clearly is important to many editors. Appable (talk) 02:28, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

Consensus was hardly clear in that almost five year old discussion. I would be interested in a new RFC to see if opinions have changed. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 02:38, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

As someone who was there, my summation would be that the asynchronous requirements were to narrow the focus on the WORST offenders (no sources at all...) but force them to go above the previous cut line (at least one RS). If we've run out of BLPs with no sources whatsoever, I would support expanding the BLPPROD process to include those with only non-reliable sourcing. Since that's a more difficult judgment call, however, I think it's OK to keep the focus on completely unsourced BLPs as long as any significant number remain. Jclemens (talk) 06:07, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

@Jclemens: There are only 68 articles in the BLPPROD category. {{BLP unsourced}} does not seem to emit a useful category which is kind of surprising. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 06:49, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

It puts them in Category:All unreferenced BLPs. Jenks24 (talk) 06:54, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

@Jenks24: Thank you! Out of the ten articles I looked at, eight should not have had that template. Guess I'll be working on cleaning that up for a while. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 07:01, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

Not just Category:All unreferenced BLPs but also Category:Unreferenced BLPs from June 2016 or whatever was set by the |date= parameter. --Redrose64 (talk) 08:21, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

I clicked on a random ten articles from the All unreferenced BLPs category. Five were sports people who had refs, Four had external links (two tags were applied illegally) and one was unreferenced. Bgwhite (talk) 08:28, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

RfC

There is a discussion now taking pace at the village pump that may be related to the subject of this policy/guideline page. Interested editors are encouraged to join the discussion. -Ad Orientem (talk) 01:00, 24 July 2016 (UTC)

Roberta Angelica

Reliable Sources are now on Roberta Angelica page, thank you. FireStarterInc. (talk) 16:53, 8 November 2016 (UTC)

Ardit Toli

Hi everyone, the article about a football player Ardit Toli should be deleted because fails Wikipedia:GNG and Wikipedia:FPL, thank you. Eni.Sukthi.Durres (talk) 21:16, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

@Eni.Sukthi.Durres: This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Proposed deletion of biographies of living people page. You should probably start an WP:AFD but please read WP:DELETE first. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 00:11, 12 January 2017 (UTC)