Encyc talk:Biography policy

No one seems to care. I'm thinking that perhaps an actual policy was premature. Emperor 14:57, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

• Well, I think the site does need a policy, other than, maybe "let's let Alison deal with it all, since she's so good at mopping up shit", no? It's more than a little unfair. Having said that, there are plenty of dodgy biogs on here. Give me the nod and I'll certainly have at 'em - Alison ^❤ 10:51, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Want to write a policy? Emperor 17:04, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Well, frankly no. That's your job, Mr. Sole Flounder :) Here are some of my opinions, though, FWIW;

• Implement opt-out. Someone wants their biography deleted? Delete it.
• Implement a 'dead tree' standard. Are they in a conventional encyclopedia or have they been extensively written about? Fine, otherwise delete
• Bring in flagged revisions, to prevent shenanigans
• Insist on everything written in a BLP be referenced. If not, it's gone.
• No biographical nor personal info on children

- How about that lot? - Alison ^❤ 01:39, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, and sorry I didn't respond sooner. I just noticed this post.

1. Opt-out - fine by me
2. Dead tree - Good concept, but I anticipate endless arguments over where to draw the line. Also I dislike relying on conventional encyclopdias on principle.
3. Flagged revisions - Technically a pain in the neck, but I can look into it.
4. References - Again were do we draw the line? Also, I think part of the problem at Wikipedia is the overemphasis on things that have been written about.
5. No children - agreed.

On the one hand I'm tempted to exclude all living people entirely and just be done with it, but on the other there are obvious exceptions like presidents and prime ministers who should be in an encyclopedia. We'd also miss out on people like Edward Heffron. Actually this is a good example of a possible rule:

1. If someone has published an autobiography, we can summarize and link to it.

At least then we know that the person has wished to make this information public. Emperor 14:49, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

(Sorry for all the typos - keyboardfail) Emperor 14:52, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

No pseudonyms either?

Can't even have people under pseudonyms? --Gridlock 11:07, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

Confusion

I'm sorry for all the confusion. At some point I want to consolidate some of these policy pages.

It's time for a little history. At the time I wrote this Biography policy, Encyc was basically moribund. We were getting hundreds of visitors a day, but very few people were interested in writing. Two of our best administrators resigned, and we were left with a skeleton crew. I got the impression from some people that they'd rather not be associated with anyone else's grudge matches. I took the rather draconian step of writing this policy, and right away participation took off.

As for articles about aliases, I'm not sure. I do know that every time I show Encyc to my real life friends and they hit the random page button a few times and find an article about a "SlimVirgin" or an "Oldwindybear" they give me the old "WTF are you wasting your time with this stuff for". I think that this attitude has led to Encyc being written off by some people who otherwise might have come to write for us.

The cost of not having articles like this is very low (they are of extremely limited interest to anyone but Wikipedia hobbyists), but the benefit is that we get more people to participate and more content overall. Auggie 16:38, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

For pseudonym or alias i mean Snoop Dogg, Puff Daddy, Soulja Boy, Shivaxi, K-Tee, not some person nobody except paranoid wikipedios know about. It's material which is not self-referential in a wiki sense.

Of course even people using aliases can be tied to their real identity and the pages referencing them can be defaced with defaming content, and there's nothing that can prevent it from happening (except flagged revisions). Writing about people who use aliases is at least less potentially harming in principle than writing about them using their real names. And again, why should everything be centered about the wiki subculture?

As for wasting time, they're ones to talk. Bet they spend some time eating donuts on the couch. Gridlock 22:07, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

Why BLP is bad

See my notes on BLP. In theory, a good policy but in practice used in very bad ways on Wikipedia, and, it seems, on here. The truth changing on the Wikipedia Review article here, in particular, are appalling. Blissyu2 03:54, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Sorry Blissy. I no longer want to handle the responsibility of having BLPs on Encyc. I hope you understand. If you need a copy of the Jason article, I can undelete it for a while so you can take it to another website.

Please be assured that this decision was not taken lightly or because I don't think your content should have a home. I just am trying to reduce the heat on myself and the other administrators. We're here to create a welcoming, calm, and nonconfrontational environment. It's easier to do that if we just talk about things instead of people. Auggie 13:59, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Question from Wikademia

What if biographies were more like dictionary entries, rather than full articles? This I mean of BLP's. - unsigned comment by Wikademia 10/5/10

BLPs seem like a lot of work for very little reward. Do you want to deal with the first person who shows up and wants to add "antisemetic rant" to the dictionary definition of Mel Gibson? How would one even resolve that? Auggie 20:28, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

self-created BLP's

....

what if a famous musician or federal politician wanted to create a BLP here? could they? and then if for some reason if it went sour, could they have it deleted? Wikademia