Wikimedia Ethics/Change BLP policy

This page is for discussion of proposals for changing Wikipedia's Biographies of living persons policy.

Wikimedia Ethics Overview Introduction Social contract Ethical Code for Wikipedians The fundamentals of ethics List of questions Change BLP policy Suggested essays Ethics on Wikipedia and the Internet Response Testing on WMF projects

A flexible policy: variations according to a notability threshold for BLPs

Part 0. Encourage the community to use the Flagged revisions extension on all BLPs. This will be a logical part of the process of looking at -and sorting- all BLPs (Part 1, below).

Part 1. Distinguish between two types (categories) of biographies:
1) those for which there exists at least 100 pages of published biographical information in reputable sources (the published biographical information was subjected to editorial oversight and was not from a special-purpose POV publisher)
and
2) all others without a significant body of previously published biographical information.

Part 2. BLPs in category #1 (see above) will continue to allow edits from IP addresses. These are valid subjects for biographical articles in an encyclopedia and should have enough traffic so that disruptive editing will be seen and corrected. The previously-published reputable sources (subject to editorial oversight, not a special-purpose POV publisher) will be clearly identified for each BLP article. Any edits that cite sources not on that list of reputable sources can be removed to the talk page for discussion at any time.
Step 2a. Wikipedia is not Wikinews. No events less than one week old can be included in Wikipedia BLPs. For current events, make a link from Wikipedia to the relevant Wikinews article.

Part 3. Wikipedia will not allow edits of BLPs in category #2 (see above) by people editing as IP addresses (rather than from a user account). In order to edit category #2 articles, Wikipedians will have to edit from a user account. Editors of these articles will have to post a template-generated notice on their user page saying, "I have read and understand Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons." These users will be in a category called "Editors of low notability BLPs". Any edits made by users who have not posted this notice can be removed from category #2 BLPs at any time. BLPs being edited by registered users who are not in the "Editors of low notability BLPs" category will be automatically flagged and posted to a special "recent changes to BLPs" list, similar to the existing recent changes page.

Part 4. Many BLPs in category #2 should fall under a simple Biographical optout policy.

See Also

• Ethics and MediaWiki -- Privacy & BLP
• Wikipedia:Governance reform

External links

• Wikipedia May Restrict Public’s Ability to Change Entries by Noam Cohen.
• Why I am asking Flagged Revisions to be turned on now