User:JoshuaZ/Thoughts on BLP

A few thoughts on WP:BLP with little attempt at good organization.

Currently, Wikipedia is experiencing the deletion of articles and removal of content based on the general ethical and moral notions behind BLP. There has now been an RfAr over this issue here. Few editors disagree that there are cases where this should occur even when content is reliably sourced. The issue that seems to be of the most concern is that these deletions are occurring out of process and individuals are being blocked for them. Additionally, admins involved in editing the articles are using their admin tools to block users with whom they disagree.

To be more explicit here are some definitions: A simple BLP violation issue is a violation of BLP that involves unsourced or poorly sourced potentially negative content. A penumbra BLP issue is one in which there is some question based on the general ethics of BLP whether we should include the information.

Observations:

1. Simple BLP violations are clear cut. None of the recent discussion and disagreement has been about simple BLP observations, but about penumbra issues.
2. Penumbra issues are inherently subjective. There appears to be a continuum with Kent Hovind (notable but almost everything notable is extremely negative), Daniel Brandt, Star wars kid, Seth Finkelstein, and others such as Allison Stokke. Indeed, it isn't even clear who goes in what order on the continuum.
3. The current status is that admins can delete without regards to process if they believe there is a penumbra BLP issue and this makes no distinction between penumbra and simple BLP issues. This gives admins much more authority than they originally had where admins are supposed to be merely glorified janitor who act according to community consensus.
4. Lack of distinction between penumbra BLP and simple BLP issues can make people take simple BLP issues less seriously than they should.

Conclusions from the above: When dealing with penumbra issues, process should be followed so that we can reach a genuine consensus in the community about whether someone's notability overrides the possible negative nature of their notability, and whether privacy concerns trump various WP policies and guidelines.

Arguments for and against the penumbra

Arguments for penumbra-based content removal and deletions

1. Wikipedia should not be in the business of furthering invasions of individuals privacy just because the popular media has.
2. Such articles are much more likely to be targets of vandalism and trolling.

Arguments against penumbra-based content removal and deletions

1. There is a slippery slope from deleting the more internet meme based articles to deleting articles about people that are genuinely notable simply because the vast majority of the information about them is negative. (See for example Kent Hovind).
2. Wikipedia loses credibility with the general public if we are not giving information about certain topics based on vague ethical concerns. Since Wikipedia has in general very little credibility we must be careful about how much we have and how what we do alters that.

   This argument has two rebuttals 1) Wikipedia shouldn't sell its soul for credibility 2) Arguably not having such articles will increase Wikipedia's credibility rather than decrease it.

3. Wikipedia is not censored and it is not clear how this is not censorship any less than if we decided to remove the pictures of Mohammed or the Bahá'u'lláh. We simply have more emotional sympathy for individual living people than the deep-seated religious convictions of multitudes.
4. For many of these topics, people will likely either go to Wikipedia to search for information or will use Google or another search engine. For many of these topics, Wikipedia will be the first returned result or very near the top if we have an article whereas most of the other sources will be slanted and very likely defamatory and hurtful. Therefore by having well-written, reliably sourced, neutral Wikipedia articles on the topics we are in fact overall helping the publicity situation.

   However, a neutral description of an invasion of privacy or grotesquely negative information can still be hurtful and add to the general problem.

5. There is a lack of clear definition of what constitutes an unfit article. Good contributors may be discouraged from working on worthy articles about controversial or tragic events or individuals if they know this work may be later destroyed.

Various approaches to constructing guidelines for penumbra BLP deletions

1. No penumbra BLP deletions. This used to be the standard but there appears to be a consensus against such an approach and BLP as currently written allows for some penumbra deletions although it is not clear what the standards are. Certain cases such Allison Stokke indicate that there is a strong community consensus for some form of penumbra BLP deletions.

2. The status quo- there is no clear rule what deletions are acceptable. Admins delete if they have a problem and the matter is then thrown to DRV. This leads to inconsistency (for example, Angela Beesley clearly has far fewer sources and over a shorter period of time than Daniel Brandt but one was kept and the other was not).

3. No articles if there is no other online biography of the person and the person has asked for the article to be deleted.^[1] This standard would be possibly workable and is unambiguous. However, almost all BLPs that have been deleted based on penumbra issues would be kept.

4. No articles if the person would not be likely to appear in some form of paper encyclopedia and the person asks for deletion.^[2] This standard would be close to current practice but suffers from a variety of problems.

Durova pointed out that this standard would make almost anyone who has ever acted on Star Trek be automatically outside the acceptable range of penumbra BLPs. So the standard leads to some results that people might find counterintuitive. Moreover, it is clear from the repeated strong keep results of the Don Murphy article that the general inclusion level desired by the community is is more inclusive than this standard would allow. Furthermore, as paper encyclopedias become less common this standard becomes stricter. A standard that changes over time based due to the partial obsolescence of a specific technology is not a standard that has any strong philosophical grounding.

5. No penumbra BLP deletions for willing public figures. This is the standard that I favor for a variety of reasons: First, the logic of someone being a public figure is that the public then has a direct interest in commentary and criticism of the person. Second, if someone has willingly become a public figure then they should not be able to then pick and choose who writes about them and it is a bit ridiculous that they can claim special privacy rights when they have interjected themselves into the public sphere. Third, if someone is a public figure we owe it to our readers to write an accurate, neutral article about the person.

This standard does suffer from a variety of problems: First, it isn't completely clear what is meant by a person being a "willing" public figure. For example, are Olympic athletes willing public figures? Many of such athletes would likely be just as happy to compete without the publicity. This would mean that anyone towards the top of their field would be unable to request deletion of their Wikipedia biography simply by virtue of their success. And what about someone like Chelsea Clinton? Second, and related to the above remark about Chelsea Clinton, what if Paris Hilton came along and claimed that her being a public figure was unwilling? She's have a good claim to make with much of her publicity being due to her last name rather than her own actions. And if we reject Hilton's claim, what about Allison Stokke who had initially unwilling publicity but was then willing to be interviewed by various newspapers about her situation? And what is sufficient evidence in terms of self-promotion? Running a small blog or a personal website is clearly not enough but would a major blog or a major website devoted to oneself be enough? The line here isn't clear. The line here is less fuzzy than the current application but fuzzier than that of standard 3 above.

How much deletion are we talking about?

As far as I can tell in terms of how many articles would be deleted due to penumbra issues we would have 1 deleting the fewest articles (obviously, since none get deleted), the status quo seems at first glance to delete the most but note that standard 3 would delete Angela Beesley whereas the status quo does not. Of those deleting articles, 2 deletes the least of all although it is logically possible(but unlikely) for an article to be deletable under 2 but not 3. Standard 4 would delete fewer than the status quo, and would sometimes be stricter than 2 and sometimes stricter than 3, but not always. I suspect that standards 3 and 4 would both be close to the status quo in terms of how much is deleted.

References and Notes

See Also

• User:Doc glasgow/The BLP problem