Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons/Archive 30

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AP:BLP1E

Latest comment: 13 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

I propose this change or that this point be made clearer in some other way. I believe this is already the intent of the policy, but I think it needs to be made clearer. Gregcaletta (talk) 06:47, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Mass blanking

Latest comment: 13 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#BLP_mass_blanking_has_begun Gigs (talk) 14:53, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Proposed watchlist notice

Latest comment: 13 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Your comment is requested on my proposed watchlist notice Gigs (talk) 20:24, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Ethno-religious categories

Latest comment: 13 years ago180 comments34 people in discussion

We have categories such as Category:American Jews, Category:British Sikhs, etc., where it is difficult for the reader to tell whether the category is ethnic, cultural, or religious in character. Categories of religion require self-identification; categories of ethnicity do not. This can cause interesting quirks and, sometimes, bitter disputes:

Madeleine Albright, for example, is categorised as an American Jew in Wikipedia, despite the fact that she was raised Catholic, is now an Episcopalian, and never identified as Jewish (she did not know about her parents' Jewish ethnicity until she was 60 years old).
BLP subjects may state that they are not and have never been practitioners of Judaism or Sikhism, and have been raised with no ethnic identity whatsoever, even though their ethnic descent is known, and a Jews or Sikhs category is applied to their BLP. (Again, this has been a major source of dispute at Ed Miliband.)

Do editors think this is a problem? If it is, how can it be solved? --JN 466 01:09, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Discussion

Yes, it's a problem - oversimplification in sensitive areas always is. Perhaps adding "ethnic" or "background" into the category name would help? eg Category:British people who are ethnically Sikh, Category:British people of Sikh background. Rd232 ^talk 01:30, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Ethnicity should generally be self identified the same as religion. IIRC this is already close to current practice since I see often people doing things like removing "mexican-american" and changing it to just "american" when it occurs unsourced. Ethnicity and religion overlap by a large measure in most parts of the world. If we need to broaden the text in the policy to ethnicity, then lets do it. Seems like a no-brainer to me and well within the spirit of our current intentions. Gigs (talk) 02:16, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
- Yes, it might be a good idea to include ethnicity. On the other hand, it won't solve all problems. The issue with Miliband was that he said various things, which seemed to acknowledge ethnic, but not religious identity. Here are some of the most important statements from him; the first one is from an interview with Jeremy Paxman, a British newscaster:
  Paxman: Are you a Jew?
  
  Miliband: Yes, I'm Jewish, but I don't consider ...
  
  Paxman (interrupts): A practising Jew?
  
  Miliband: I'm not a practising Jew, no.
  
  Paxman: Why not?
  
  Miliband: I think it's partly because it wasn't the tradition in which I was brought up. My parents were part of a Left tradition, a sort of Left community if you like, not so much a Jewish tradition. And so, you know, I feel very kind of Jewish in terms of my family history, as I talked about yesterday [he had talked about his parents, both of Polish-Jewish heritage, coming to Britain as refugees in 1940, escaping the Nazis, and of how much he loved Britain for having welcomed them and given them a new life], but not ... I'm not a person, I don't consider myself a person of religious faith.
  
  Paxman: So you don't believe in God?
  
  Miliband: I don't believe in God, no. I have great respect for those people who do, um, and I think in a way it some... 'cause ... it might make life on earth easier if you ... if you do, but I'm not someone who believes in God.
- He has also been quoted as saying, "Obviously I'm Jewish, it is part of my identity, but not in a religious sense. I don't wish I had had a more religious upbringing but I have Jewish friends who were part of the Jewish community growing up, going to Jewish youth clubs and other things. I think I felt slightly jealous. My parents' community was the Left community."
- He has also been quoted as saying: “My Jewish identity was such a substantial part of my upbringing that it informs what I am. I visited Israel as I was growing up because my grandmother was living there. I visited for the first time when I was seven, so I was always very aware of my Jewish relatives living in Israel.”
- I present this material here only for illustration of the basic problem; this particular case has been argued to death at the article talk page. --JN 466 02:37, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Rd232's suggestion – having categories like "American ethnic Jews", "British ethnic Sikhs" – would solve this. Of course, we already have Category:British people of Jewish descent etc., but that category seems more commonly used for people of partly Jewish descent. --JN 466 02:40, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

We can't possibly cover every contingency in policy. In a case like Miliband, it might be best to avoid oversimplified categorization and just have a discussion on the material you present here in the text of the article. After all, it's no great loss if we don't categorize someone by ethnicity or religion or if we put the equivalent of "it's complicated" in their infobox. If a situation is subtle, we shouldn't try to force it into the bins we've created, or try to make better bins. Just forget the bins completely. Gigs (talk) 02:50, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

I wish it were so easy. The Miliband discussion is one of the most protracted and passionately fought I've ever seen on Wikipedia (present outcome is that Miliband's BLP has Category:British Jews and Category:British people of Jewish descent). These disputes seem unavoidable if we have categories that can be interpreted as both religious and ethnic categories. There will be people who identify with it one way, but not the other, and we have no idea whether the reader will interpret it religiously or ethnically. --JN 466 03:06, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

The only reason the issue has been "one of the most protracted and passionately fought" is because, to be honest, people have been ignoring WP:NOR, WP:BLP and WP:COMMON, and instead creating their personal definitions for "Jews", with the intent of leaving Miliband outside of them. Miliband is the son and grandson of Jewish Holocaust survivors! Both his parents are Jews! He's publicly declared on several occasions that he is Jewish! And yet, astoundingly, for weeks people insisted that Wikipedia couldn't state he was Jewish. As for the WP:NOR category "British ethnic Jews", that's a complete no-go of course, because, again, of WP:NOR and WP:BLP. To begin with, ethnoreligious identities like "Jewish" aren't so easily teased apart into their separate "ethnic" "religious" and "cultural" components. In addition, almost no individuals publicly identify themselves as "ethnic Jews". Miliband certainly hasn't. Jayjg ^(talk) 04:35, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

JN466—it is sources which matter, not your own personal opinions or interpretations or original research. Sources simply depict Miliband as Jewish. Sources do not characterize him in any of the ways that you and your supporters suggest. No source is saying anything about ethnicity, cultural identity, or heritage. That is your own invention—it is not supported by sources. Miliband asserts that he is Jewish and every other source asserts that Miliband is Jewish. From where are you deriving that Miliband's religion is "None" as you have suggested should be listed in the Infobox? And how is it that you are concluding that Miliband does not deserve inclusion in Category:British Jews? Sources confirm only that Miliband is Jewish—sources can not be found engaging in any of the breaking-down of Jewish identity into the various components that you and your supporters have been indulging in. Sources don't ever address the issues you and several other editors are incessantly advancing: ethnicity, cultural identity, heritage. Sources stick to the subject and they are succinct: they say forthrightly that Miliband is Jewish. What I think you need to do to bolster your case is to find a source that asserts that Miliband's Jewishness is somehow deficient. I think the assertion that a nonreligious Jew is not quite Jewish is a ludicrous stance to take. Such an assertion I do not think is likely to be supported by responsible sources, and in fact is not supported in this instance—no source suggests that Miliband might not be Jewish—in every sense. I think it is sources that matter. I don't think your interpretations or opinions really apply. Bus stop (talk) 05:13, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Two editors—Scott MacDonald and Jayen466 express that my above post is problematic in some ways. Rather than get into a protracted argument on a point-by-point basis, and conceding that I am hardly infallible, I will strike my above post out. I will try to gather my thoughts and present them differently. But I have to say that the underlying issue remains: according to all reliable sources Ed Miliband is Jewish. No source that I've seen thus far says that Miliband is only "ethnically" Jewish. This issue must be resolved by recourse to sources. I hope my striking of the above satisfies the complaints lodged by others. Bus stop (talk) 21:31, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Bus stop. Please stop with the WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT approach. You have presented your argument. Many others have disagreed, also on the basis of policy. (I'm not going to rehearse the arguments yet again). We have an intractable, and (I presume) good faith impasse. I understand that's frustrating, particularly with those who've a lot invested in ensuring Wikipedia's Jewish coverage is comprehensive. However, simply repeating your argument, and effectively saying "but I'm right", isn't helping. It would probably be better either to work with those who disagree to find a compromise, or to seek at least to agree a mechanism for finding one. It may be that you'll not get this your own way, and you'll end up thinking Wikipedia has got it wrong - or you may be able to convince a consensus - but when two solid immovable positions are colliding it is time to look for a third way, it is not a time to keep repeating yourselves. If you've posted your arguments on Milliband once, you've posted them twenty times, and to what avail?--Scott Mac 13:25, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Borderline cases are always a means of testing a scheme of categorization in real life, let alone in Wikipedia, but their existence does not affect the need for, and continued existence of, such category structures. Barack Obama and Halle Berry are both described as African American, not because of any sort of one drop rule, but because they are described and describe themselves as such in reliable and verifiable sources. A look at any library or bookstore, maybe even an online search at Amazon.com or Google Books, will show that the real world categorizes Jews (or African Americans) as athletes, comedians, politicians and astronauts, and that's why we have corresponding categories in Wikipedia that don't exist for Catholics or Caucasians. The issue of how to handle possible questionable cases needs to be handled in the same way that we handle everything in Wikipedia, based on how an individual is described in reliable and verifiable sources. Alansohn (talk) 23:09, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

I have long opposed lists and categories that demarcate and identify Jews in a cavalier way on Wikipedia without regard to deeper causes and consequences of such categories and lists of Jews, even ones who never have and do not wish to be classified as such. See User:IZAK/Deleting lists and categories of Jews. In addition, see Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information; Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not for things made up one day; problem of Wikipedia:Libel is a strong possibility in instances when subjects deny, hide, dislike or oppose any mention, in spite of verified information, of themselves as being "Jews" or "Jewish" or having any connections with Judaism in any way, in ways that such people were opposed to the Nuremberg Laws that were applied even to mischlings. This is a highly sensitive topic that is unfortunately not treated seriously enough. Finally, Wikipedia is NOT Jew Watch. Sincerely, IZAK (talk) 02:50, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Better late than never I'd like to point out that there is an article called Ethnoreligious_group. Though it seems to me that it includes too many groups which have more than one religion among members of that ethnic group. So for consistency sake that article should be looked at. CarolMooreDC (talk) 14:15, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Disallowing CATs by ethnicity

Just out of curiosity, what would the room think about maybe not having categories for ethnicity (including intersections by ethnicity)? First, we're dealing with BLP's (and other people now deceased) here, and categorisation by ethnicity is typically contentious and can be largely misinterpreted in some cases, "Jew" being a classic example, as Jayjg notes. there's also the issue that (these days, for whatever various reasons) identifying/being indentified as having multiple ethnicities is becoming more and more the standard and not the exception.

So I don't know if having such a classification in categories - where, due to technical constraints, neither references for the information, nor clarification about each individual's inclusion, are possible in the category - is such a good idea.

I realise that this has the potential for contentiousness. But I ask this sincerely in the hope that "something" can be figured out. Even if it's some better guidance on clarity and prudence in category creation, naming, and inclusion criteria. Because right now, I think that the BLP issues alone should qualify these for deletion. - jc37 20:57, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

I don't think we should throw the baby out with the bathwater, but as I alluded to above, if a category is contentious, I think the default should be to just leave the person uncategorized and discuss the subtleties in the text of the article. If we could come up with some wording for this to put into the policy I'd support it. It would have to be drafted carefully, to avoid frivolous removal of categories when the person has clearly identified themselves as a thing. It wouldn't settle all the arguments, but it might help. Gigs (talk) 22:57, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

I don't know if there is any "baby" in the bathwater to be concerned about here.

I think, per WP:CLN, this information is probably better handled as lists. That way the applicability (or not) of "self-identifying label" which the individual may select may be described in fuller context. With categories it's really a binary thing: either you are or you're not.

And I don't think that ethnicity is something that can be generally quantified in such terms. - jc37 14:28, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

As with religious or non-religious categories, I think we should not have categories about attributes which can't be rigourously defined and understood. Ethnicity or race is a tricky one because it's not clear how many generations we can go back or whether it can be diluted by "mixed ethnic" parentage or not. Like religion it's just something someone chooses to identify with (or not) as they please and can change over a lifetime -- an example is an Australian who's Caucasian in appearance who discovers 1/16 Aboriginal parentage choosing to define themselves as Aboriginal or of some joint ethnic combination. Same goes for religion which I have mentioned in the section above. One's religion is only ever self-identified. Just because parents are Catholic or Jewish does not make the kid so. Religion is a cultural not a genetic construct and thus not heritable. My feeling about this is to remove categories about ethnicity altogether but maintain a category for each citizenship a person has ever held. Donama (talk) 02:27, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Donama—sources decide these things for us. You say, "I think we should not have categories about attributes which can't be rigourously defined and understood." We can try to rigorously define and understand all attributes pertaining to categories. But I think in the final analysis it is not absolutely necessary that we possess this expertise. That is where sources come in. We chose the most high quality sources we can find. And we only follow those that use language that describes closely enough the attribute that we are looking for. By adhering closely enough to sources we are assured of presenting reasonably accurate material that is likely in conformance with what the reader would find if they did their own research. They can check our sources because we will provide citations. They can thereby decide for themselves if our conclusions coincide with the conclusions they would reach. Bus stop (talk) 02:56, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

That sounds like an argument for avoiding tricky categorisation, and covering the issue in body text, where appropriate qualification and footnotes can be provided. You can't put footnotes in categories. Rd232 ^talk 09:23, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Rd232—characterizing something as "tricky" is an argument against categorization in that instance—is it not? I think that in all instances support for categories should be found in the body of the article. It is in the body of the article that expanded coverage of the subject can be provided. Footnotes can be provided there too. Bus stop (talk) 11:29, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Jc37, if there was an AfD on all ethnic categories, I'd certainly support their deletion. Jayjg ^(talk) 22:26, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

I wouldn't. I'd rather replacing our current guidance on sexuality and religion with general guidance that if a categorization is controversial, then we should default to not placing someone in that category. This problem is larger than just ethnicity. Should we delete all categories for living people? Gigs (talk) 22:56, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Regardless of whether we decide at some point to delete ethnic categories or not (I have a good mind to support such an AfD), I would support Gigs' proposal to include a corresponding sentence in policy. --JN 466 00:36, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

To clarify, Jayjg, am I correct in assuming that when you are talking about ethnic categories, you mean categories like "British people of Indian descent", "Italian Americans", and the like, and that this does not concern nationality-based categories, such as "French writers", "British politicians" and such? --JN 466 00:40, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Gigs, that wording needs to be changed and this was part of the reasons for my earlier discussions on the subject. Whilst deletion of some ethnic categories will be justified - particularly where ethnicity is difficult to disentangle from religion, culture or nationality and religion, culture or nationality are directly tied into the reason these groups of people are notable; it would be wrong to consider deletion. The majority of categories I see as possibly being kept would be things like religous leaders, politicians, and those involved in the arts. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 08:02, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

And that subjective application (deemed appropriate for some, but not all) is, in this case, I think, another reason that these should be lists. - jc37 09:47, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

per WP:CAT Categories should be useful for readers to find and navigate sets of related articles. They should be the categories under which readers would most likely look if they were not sure of where to find an article on a given subject. lists are not. I constantly get mixed up with Rodney Dangerfield and Jackie Mason not because they look similar or sound similar, partly it's because the both did different caddyshack films and partly because they have a similar style of humour. I know that if I end up on the wrong one by accident, I can navigate to the other via Category:Jewish comedians even if I can't remember the other name - it's at the bottom of the first comedian's page. That is the purpose of a category; to make it easier to find these articles - not to define who does or does not fit into that label. In fact there may be an argument for keeping people in categories that they only have a small claim to fit under, because readers will find it easier to navigate to the articles they are looking for - an example would be Robert DeNiro who has only 1/4 Italian heritage but is commonly referred to as being as being an Italian American actor. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 10:39, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

I absolutely agree that the main purpose of categories is navigation for our readers.

However, a link to the list page would do equally well in your example. And better, because it would present the information in context. And we would avoid miscategorising and subjectively categorizing. - jc37 10:45, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

In principal I agree, but I have a few comments about technical limitations:

Long lists can be a nightmare to navigate, when I first started editing List of Jewish actors my first act was to change it into a sortable wikitable which improved some navigation - but it really needs to be searchable as categories already are. This can be achieved with the use of sub-pages as archives are (however subpages are currently banned in the mainspace though working in some places like OS/2) or we need to ask the Mediawiki developers to make wikitables searchable.
Ideally these lists should be presented in place of the category rather than as a separate link. While a re-direct from the category to the list would fix that, ideally we should have a bot running to add new category entries to the list -flagging them so that further contextual information can be added by patrolling editors.

Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 13:42, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Welcome to technical limitations 101 : )

But basically, there was a time where the encyclopedia got along without having a category system at all. And really, nothing content-related to should ever rely on categories to present that information. Categories should not be juist "bottom of the page notices". For that just add the content to the page in question.

And I doubt a bot would ever be confirmed to add articles to a list arbitrarily. But I suppose I could be wrong.

I think the main issue is finding constructive ways in which to display list pages related to the subject in an article.- jc37 19:46, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

My sense is that this (ostensible?) problem started, as far as I'm aware, in relation to use of categories like "British Jew" (as in Ed Miliband) and "American Jew". Throughout the entire discussion, I have failed to understand exactly what the problem is. One particularly disadvantaged editor thought that referring to Miliband as a Jew was some sort of attack on him. Others simply thought that it was confusing, but I never saw any real clarity on what sort of confusion this was, or why it might matter. In short, I'm not convinced that there is a problem -- apart from the fact that some editors don't really have a good understanding of what being Jewish means. Categories don't seem terribly consequential to me, and if they were to disappear I wouldn't lose any sleep. But I assume that they were adopted for a reason, and if in fact they're useful then I don't think we should be terribly worried by the difficulties that sometimes arise -- especially if those difficulties arise from editors' own limited knowledge. This might end up being a situation where an "improvement" is really more of a loss. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 19:26, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

"apart from the fact that some editors don't really have a good understanding of what being Jewish means" - Which could indicate that neither would all of our readers (as editors are, by definition, readers as well.) - jc37 19:46, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Okay -- but what is the nature of the misimpression that might arise, and why might it matter? This is what editors at the Miliband talk page could never seem to make clear. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 19:58, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

@JN466 - yes, that's correct, when I talk about getting rid of all ethnic categories, I mean categories like "British people of Indian descent", "Italian Americans", and the like, and that this does not concern nationality-based categories, such as "French writers", "British politicians" and such. Jayjg ^(talk) 01:24, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. --JN 466 02:02, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Similar discussions in the past relating to lists

Previously at Wikipedia talk:Centralized discussion/Lists by religion-ethnicity and profession talk page:

Thank you, IZAK (talk) 02:33, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Proposed new text for BLPCAT

Summary of changes:

Leaves the door open for other "potentially contentious" categorization above and beyond sexual orientation and religion
Adds a specific nod to ethnicity, but now applies to any potentially contentious categorization
Adds a "default to no category" when a categorization is "contentious and challenged by other editors"
Removes the explicit requirement that sexual orientation and religion be "relevant to the person's notability", I don't think this reflected actual practice, and I think we are addressing the problem this clause was meant to address with the "default to not categorizing" language.
Retained all the language on false light or disparaging categories, including the requirement for relevance to notability there.

I realize this exact language might not be perfect, we can always tweak it slightly later. I'm more interested in comments on the spirit behind the changes. I will notify the talk page at the categorization of people guideline. Gigs (talk) 14:41, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

RE: If categorization of a particular person is contentious and challenged by other editors, then avoid using it entirely. Obviously, as I've brought up previously, some categories do infer negativity about some people, including mistakenly. (Like anti-racist being categorized under "Racism" being seen as a racist by lazy people who don't follow to article.) So does this make it easier to remove people under categories like Racism, Antisemitism, Sexism, etc. who may be accused by some - or even many, actually - sources as being bigoted? CarolMooreDC (talk) 16:40, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

The short answer is, yes, it would, and it's not a bad thing. The problem with categories is that they don't allow for context or subtlety. If a group of people believe in good faith that a certain person is not racist (regardless of truth), then that's probably something that should be discussed in the article, instead of putting a label on that person. Let the reader come to their own conclusions from the material presented. To do otherwise borders on synthesis and is definitely a BLP issue in many cases. Gigs (talk) 16:53, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Oppose this rewriting of BLPCAT -- it creates far too much veto power, and I really think that power will be misused. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 19:28, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Frankly, I think there should be a great deal of veto power. When religion/ethnicity/sexual preference are ambiguous you get all sorts of edit wars going which center around how many questions like "If you have an African American grandpa, are you African American?". This questions are silly and subjective, and wikipedia should avoid them all together.

Oppose wording and spirit. I have to agree with Nomoskedasticity - this gives veto power to anyone biased against a certain representation of someone, regardless of it being factual or not. --Born2cycle (talk) 20:27, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

I Support the proposal, having recently participated in a (rather lengthy) related debate. I believe that clear and sourced self-identification should be the basis for categorization. In case the sourced information is conflicting, it only makes sense to skip categorizing the living person, until he or she self-identifies.--Therexbanner (talk) 20:26, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
- Self-identification is already required. That is not the point of this change. The real "action" behind this change is that any "contention" results in omitting the category -- again, veto power. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 20:28, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
  - Well, if the contention is sourced (from multiple reliable sources), then there would be 2 sides. If you take one side, that's POV. If you take both sides into the article, then the quality of the encyclopedia suffers (it confuses the readers). What you are calling veto, I would call neutrality (ignoring the conflicting viewpoints.) Now, if there are no reliable sources, it would be a whole different story.--Therexbanner (talk) 20:51, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
    - My point is that a single editor can create "contention". As things stand, an edit to include a category requires "consensus". What I'm saying is that the proposed wording shifts this balance in an unhelpful way. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 21:24, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
Strong Support - It's not for us, or for reliable sources to dictate to individuals what their sexual preference, religion or ethnicity is. We've really needed a wording change like this for a long time. There have been so many misguided "Who's a Jew" conversations at various biographies. This policy would eliminate those debates. NickCT (talk) 21:13, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

~~Qualified support~~. I like most of it, but there's a tension:

I like requiring self-identification. But the proposal says self-identification is a necessary but not sufficient condition—in addition to it, we need no objections from editors. That places the views of editors above the views of the subject and the reliable sources. I can see it leading to trouble. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 21:55, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

I think trying to extrapolate whether someone is or isn't a thing, even when they've made statements about it, leads to trouble. People rarely make unqualified and direct claims about themselves. Take Freddie Mercury for instance. Should be easy right? "I am as gay as a daffodil, dear", yet, "Mercury often referred to himself as “bisexual” [1] Even in what you'd think was a clear case of someone openly self-identifying, you have conflicting information that forces editors to choose a label. Gigs (talk) 22:18, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Such a long discussion for a very minor issue recycled here time and again. First, the OP used the former secretary of state Madeleine Albright to instance the problematic nature of identify people by their ethnicity, and for some bad reason almost every time ethnic categories are discussed it's the Jewish one, with editors projecting their own very subjective interpretations, to say the least, to point out why these cats are "bad". As for Albright, her parents converted to Christianity to escape persecution which is by itself part of the Jewish history and present identity but nevertheless, Albright story is very different from these of the very most Jewish people that have articles in wikipedia and it can't serve as an example. The criteria of people identify themselves as Jews (and please be honest the discussion is in effect, again, about Jews and not about ethnic categories in general really) to be listed in these cats is already applied. The idea of not having editors objecting is pretty much refutable and following the same logic I can say that enough with one editor want to include someone in this category for him/her to be included in it. Also, keep in mind that Wikipedia is to pretend to be about facts. --Gilisa (talk) 22:35, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Oppose. Changing to oppose on second thoughts, because Gigs is right, making self-identification a necessary condition is problematic. It would mean we couldn't categorize someone as an English novelist unless they came out and said, "I am English." SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 12:51, 17 November 2010 (UTC)
- Heh, well, I tried. Gigs (talk) 13:59, 17 November 2010 (UTC)
Oppose The proposed wording places too stringent a requirement for identifying a person as belonging to a category, when the use of descriptions in reliable and verifiable sources is more than adequate for the purpose. Alansohn (talk) 23:15, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
Opposed People should only be categorised by Religion, or Sexuality if they are notable because of it, the fact that it isn't applied/enforced this way does not change the fact that it should be - part of the problem is often that editors have differing views on how/if the categorisation should be applied. Extending this, If someone is notable for Religion, or Sexuality then it probably isn't important that they self-identify and its not controversial to categorise them as such; however it is extremely important we have a consensus of reliable sources that show they fit that category. I had a look through Pope Benedict XVIfor instance and don't see any sources that show he has ever self-identified as "Roman Catholic" yet he is rightly categorised in a number of "Roman Catholic" categories.

Also this new wording allows a small number of editors to overturn relatively uncontroversial categorisations on the basis that the individual has never self-identified or that some source implies the individual has expressed some other religious affiliation for some part of their life. There are sources which claim that the late Pope John Paul II was Jewish because Emilia Kaczorowska his mother was. When he was a BLP it would not have been appropriate to remove all "Roman Catholic" religious categorisations on the basis that some editors controversially wished to promote "Judaism" religious categorisations instead.

I'm not against rewording BLPCAT, in fact I've recently suggested it myself - but the rewording needs to favour categorisations made in good faith and with consensus. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 23:16, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Comment Unwilling to vote because it doesn't address the issue. If we are going to have anyone categorised by sexuality/religion/ethnicity then I want that category to be relatively complete, not subject to the whim of a user who just doesn't like it. On the other hand I would support a full an total ban on those three kinds of categories. They're just not encyclopaedic, even if they are useful for day-to-day news outlets or gossip mags. An encyclopaedia should look even at current events from a historical context. Thus Ayaan Hirsi Ali has been both a Muslim and atheist at different points in her life and (of course this is not practically possible) but theoretically could convert to Christianity later. Thus she should have all 3 categories or just the one that's currently relevant? I'd prefer none. And what about her ethnicity or citizenship. Should she be Dutch, Somali, American or all three? In her case this has changed through her lifetime, but nothing can alter the fact that she was once a "Dutch politician" and so should stay in that category. I think such an example should inform our approach to non-rigourous categories like ethnicity, sexuality and religion/belief. Donama (talk) 01:42, 17 November 2010 (UTC)
- I think you make some good points. The idea behind rewriting BLPCAT is to avoid the outcome of removing those kinds of categories entirely, which I see as a distinct possibility if editors are unwilling to yield. I think that a lot of people do find them useful. I might give it another go. Gigs (talk) 01:48, 17 November 2010 (UTC)
Support these long overdue proposals per (1) Overcategorization: Non-notable intersections by ethnicity, religion, or sexual preference, (2) Overcategorization: Opinion about a question or issue. (3) WP:NOTDIRECTORY. The sooner this proposal can become Wikipedia policy, and applied to LISTS as well, per WP:LISTCRUFT, the better Wikipedia will become at avoiding yellow journalism-type random information being splashed around and attaining an even higher-order WP:NPOV encyclopedia status. Thank you, IZAK (talk) 02:40, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Another proposal for BLPCAT

Restored "relevance to notability" requirement for "potentially contentious" categories, in addition to self-identification
Changed the challenge verbiage. Challenges must be in good faith, and the categorization must be "not clearly supported" by reliable sources. This is to attempt to address concerns that anyone could challenge and remove any cat, no matter how well sourced it was, while still setting the bar high so that controversial categorization will default to removing.

This is not going to make everyone happy, but consider whether you'd consider this an improvement over current policy or not, rather than if this is the absolute best way to go. Gigs (talk) 01:59, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Support these long overdue proposals per (1) Overcategorization: Non-notable intersections by ethnicity, religion, or sexual preference, (2) Overcategorization: Opinion about a question or issue. (3) WP:NOTDIRECTORY. The sooner this proposal can become Wikipedia policy, and applied to LISTS as well, per WP:LISTCRUFT, the better Wikipedia will become at avoiding yellow journalism-type random information being splashed around and attaining an even higher-order WP:NPOV encyclopedia status. Thank you, IZAK (talk) 02:43, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Support - The general principles Gigs is pushing here are good sense. I'll support whatever rewrite he proposes provided the general gist is the same. NickCT (talk) 03:32, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Oppose - Fails the "Pope test" - if he is not documented in reliable sources to have self-identified as being Roman Catholic, per this proposed wording we can't categorize even the Pope as being Roman Catholic. --Born2cycle (talk) 04:40, 17 November 2010 (UTC)
- Becoming a Roman Catholic priest = self identifying as a Roman Catholic. There are plenty of articles in reliable sources describing when and where he became a priest and so on. The proposed wording would easily allow us to include the Pope and every Roman Catholic priest or nun into categories related to Roman Catholicism, assuming that their religion was important for their notability (which is certainly the case for all popes and bishops). Being a self-chosen member of some public grouping that is strictly reserved for people from one "category", whether it is religion, nationality, ..., is publicly self identifying as belonging to that category. Fram (talk) 13:00, 17 November 2010 (UTC)
  - comment - Becoming a Roman Catholic Priest is not the same as self identifying, it is a process one may go through whether or not one truly believes in the principals. Taking that as a statement of self-identification is OR because we don't know why the person chose to go through that process, nor what their true thoughts are. There are Priests who have actually self-identified as Atheist or other denominations, the ordination did not represent their religious beliefs at all. A true self identification and what BLPCAT looks for is explicit statement covered by reliable sources where the subject of the BLP has said "I am a Roman Catholic" or "I practise Judaism" or "I follow a Buddhist philosophy." etc. Let me ask you this question, if a notable person becomes ordained as a minister of the Universal Life Church do we similarly take that as a self-identification of faith, or do we accept that most of their 18million clergy have joined for some other purpose (most commonly so they can officiate at the marriage ceremony of a friend or family member)? Whilst the ratio may not be as large we have to accept that some proportion of Priests may not self-identify with the religion of the Catholic church (whatever their reasons) and for us to claim that they do would be a serious BLP error.

That said, I still take the position that it is acceptable to categorise the person by the religion which they are notable for representing as long as it is clear in the article that the categorisation is made based on a consensus of reliable sources, is a categorisation the person is notable for and is not refuted by a separate self-identification by the person. I would propose a change of

to something like

Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 13:43, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

It is not more OR than assuming that someone who self identifies as e.g. a Roman Catholic truly is one, and believes this. One can never know the true thoughts of anyone. Every time a priest celebrates mass, he uters a myriad of phrases like "I believe in" followed by a series of purely religious statements. I have no idea if he truly believes what he proclaims, but for all our purposes, he has publicly self-identified as being a member of his religion. There is no BLPerror involved in this. Fram (talk) 14:04, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

You seem to be redefining self-identification; my point is that a self-identification requires that the individual expresses some view on their own identity it cannot just be taken from observation of their actions. Currently it stands the priest, or Rabbi, or lama or whatever may not have made any expression on their own identity but they should still be categorised by their religion which is why the wording should not require self-identification for all cases. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 14:27, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Indeed, redefining "self-identification" is required in order for the proposed wording to pass the pope test.

I find Stuart's rewording to be intriguing and would probably support this proposal if the wording reflected this change. --Born2cycle (talk) 22:30, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

comment It should be made clear that this discussion at this location can only be applicable to living persons. Another discussion elsewhere would be needed by those who want to change categorization for dead persons. Hmains (talk) 06:48, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Support this or anything similar that maintains the need for self identifying, and the need for relevance towards the notability. Fram (talk) 13:00, 17 November 2010 (UTC)
- What about the pope test? You're okay with not being able to categorize a pope as being Catholic if reliable sources don't indicate he has self-identified as such? --Born2cycle (talk) 22:32, 17 November 2010 (UTC)
  - I replied to you, long before this post by you, that I don't agree that it fails the pope test at all. Your question to me is therefor utterly pointless. Entering priesthood = self identifying as a Roman Catholic. Fram (talk) 15:09, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Support this version as it is more precise and balanced. I think the quality of Wikipedia should be our #1 concern, and this definitely improves it.--Therexbanner (talk) 13:14, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Oppose requiring self-identification both for philosophical and practical reasons. Philosophical because the whole point of having strict source requirements for BLPs is that we do not want to include false information about people, but definitely do want to include true information, whether the article subject likes it or not. Requiring self-identification would give the subjects veto power over whether they are identified with a certain group, which creates COI and censorship problems and is against Wikipedia's NPOV principles; and Practical, because most article subjects are not notable enough to have dozens of published interviews where they have a change to publicize all their affiliations. Regardless, there is usually enough WP:RS evidence that they belong to certain groups, and often this is not contentious at all. Finally, I don't think we need a change to the current wording of the policy, except a possible clarification that religious and ethnic affiliations require the same sourcing standards as other facts in BLPs. —Ynhockey ^(Talk) 21:36, 17 November 2010 (UTC)
- If Rush Limbaugh starts calling himself a liberal and rejects the conservative label, we don't have to categorize him that way. But we should stop categorizing him as a conservative using categories. We can still have extensive discussion on his conservative views in the article, and even a small section on his newfound rejection of the label. The point is that if someone doesn't self-identify as something they clearly are, then that warrants a discussion in the article, rather than a declarative label in the form of a category or infobox label. Gigs (talk) 14:55, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Support Once we start having articles like Beck with sentences like "Beck's paternal grandfather was a Presbyterian minister, while his matrilineal great-grandmother was Jewish" - I think it's time for a change. Bulldog123 22:04, 17 November 2010 (UTC)
- comment - Beck is neither categorised as Presbyterian or Jewish so this is not an argument for altering the text on categorisations of living persons. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 22:23, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

You weren't around for the time that he was categorized as such - and further when he was listified as such. But still, this is just one example of hundreds. Don't pretend like you don't know that. Bulldog123 03:37, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Oppose catagorization for these issues that relies primarily on self-identification. Why stop hear? Why not just let subject of the article write his own Wikiautobiography!!! Davshul (talk) 22:59, 17 November 2010 (UTC)
Support Gigs has done a good job. We should perhaps make clear that ethnicity is not the same as nationality. And we could say "clearly and unequivocally supported" rather than just "clearly supported". --JN 466 01:48, 18 November 2010 (UTC)
Oppose Many ethnicities do not have as much potential for contentiousness as Jewish seems to. We would ruling out a lot of relatively unproblematic material with this change, and it seems like overkill to me. Self-identification is also too stringent in some cases, per Stuart.Jamieson. --Avenue (talk) 12:28, 27 November 2010 (UTC)
Oppose everything that relies on self-identification. It is one of the dumbest ideas I've seen on WP, one that throws WP:NPOV out of the window, for starting, and that solves no BLP need. We don't need people to self-identify; we need RS to identify. Self-identification is neither necessary (we don't need a self-identification as a Catholic to identify the Pope as a Catholic) nor sufficient (hypothetical example: if Mr. John Doe proclamates everywhere to belong and to be loyal to the Duckists but is discovered and confirmed by multiple RS to be a cardmember of the Geesers, to contribute to the Geese Party with money and to write propaganda for the Geese Party, then we categorize Doe as a Geeser, not a Duckist). --Cyclopia ^talk 02:40, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Yet another proposal for BLPCAT

Used Stuart's suggestion above to add notion that strong consensus of reliable sources can be sufficient to categorize as such, even if self-identification is not present. --Born2cycle (talk) 04:01, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

This caveat takes care of my concern and why I opposed the previous versions. Passes the "Pope test" (can a Pope be categorized as being Catholic?). --Born2cycle (talk) 04:01, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Support as the best alternative so far and better than the original even though it doesn't completely satisfy me. Donama (talk) 04:43, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Support I don't like the idea of WP editors declaring a consensus of disparate sources, it seems to border on requiring WP:OR, but I think the spirit of the message is workable, and it's an improvement from what we have now. Gigs (talk) 15:00, 18 November 2010 (UTC)
Support - Seems to maintain the basic point that Gigs was trying to get through, while satisfying Born2cycle's reasonable "Pope Test" concern. NickCT (talk) 18:02, 18 November 2010 (UTC)
Comment I should point out that this version still includes the "challenged in good faith by other editors, then avoid using it entirely" veto wording, but I think it's sufficiently mitigated with the preceding "is not clearly supported by reliable sources and ..." qualifier, as well as the "good faith" requirement, that it protects against abuse well enough. --Born2cycle (talk) 18:29, 18 November 2010 (UTC)
Weak oppose—while the main issue from the previous proposal has been addressed, there is still one major problem with the proposal, which I didn't bring up last time because it was less important. The issue is that if you only include categories for people who are notable for belonging to a certain ethnicity, it will create a distorted category tree which will make it practically useless for navigation (for ethnic categories anyway). For example, if someone is a Polish American (random example), but this has nothing to do with their notability, avoiding placing such a category will imply that they are not a Polish American, or that this fact is contested—which usually it won't be. In addition, people wishing to list all notable Polish Americans will get a very short list of people notable for being Polish Americans, which is completely distorted. While I support the new wording for the previous issue (about self-identification), overall I do not see a good reason to change the current policy. —Ynhockey ^(Talk) 20:10, 18 November 2010 (UTC)
- It's not a distortion if it is clear that ethnic categories are only used for living people notable for being that thing. Suitable wording could be placed at the top of the category. Gigs (talk) 20:33, 18 November 2010 (UTC)
  - Even if it is a distortion, how significant is it? Can anyone find a category that regularly gets more than a few dozen hits a month? --Born2cycle (talk) 20:38, 18 November 2010 (UTC)
    - That is my feeling as well, that the lack of categorization is no big deal. People only notice that categories are at the bottom of articles, usually not when they are missing. Gigs (talk) 20:47, 18 November 2010 (UTC)
      - Re-reading this I wonder why we have "the categorization is relevant to their notability, and" in there. If we have a RS that says "Joe Q said "I am Polish American"", that should be sufficient to categorize Joe Q as Polish American regardless of whether it's relevant to his notability. I was really hoping the gist of this policy shift would be "in the case of contentious categories, defer to self-identification". Now it seems to be "avoid contentious categories unless they're relevant". I'm not sure that's right. I mean, if everyone agrees that Joe Q is Polish American (including Joe Q), why the heck shouldn't WP categorize him as such? NickCT (talk) 21:08, 18 November 2010 (UTC)
        Everyone agrees that Joe Q is a man, but we don't categorize him as such either, because it is not a category for which he is a noted. Joe Q has a wife and two kids, but we don't have categories for that either. We don't categorize every aspect of a person, no matter how verifiable it is. Fram (talk) 22:01, 18 November 2010 (UTC)
        In that case, very few of these categories should exist, nor should countless others like it. Is the inclusion of anyone in, say, Category:American people of Irish descent, relevant to his or her notability? I think the assumption is that a categorized characteristic is notable in and of itself, regardless of whether any particular subject to whom that characteristic applies is notable for that characteristic. "People with a wife and two kids" is not a "notable characteristic", which is why we don't have a category for it. But if we did have that category for some presumably good reason, then it would be appropriate to add to it anyone to whom it applies. --Born2cycle (talk) 22:09, 18 November 2010 (UTC)
        Agree strongly w/ Born2cycle. I'm on the verge of dropping my support for this b/c, as Born2 says, very few categories would exist if these rules were enacted. NickCT (talk) 00:28, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Support. But, notability of category (ethnic, religious, orientation, etc.) to subject must be established. In case it isn't, categorization and listing should be ignored as non-relevant trivia. This is an encyclopedia and not a collection of random information. Considering that many people in the world have mixed/multiple ethnicities, and unclear religion & orientation, putting them in categories (that are irrelevant to their main notability) may only confuse readers. The main reason those categories exist is not for ease of navigation, but rather for boasting about a group. Example, how does listing Tchaikovsky under the LGBT category help someone find him? It doesn't, it's just there to say oh look he's LGBT.(Which has nothing to do with his notability as a composer). And there are thousands of cases like that throughout Wiki.--Therexbanner (talk) 22:13, 18 November 2010 (UTC)
- Additional comment: I'm not saying this information should be completely ignored. If it is relevant enough, and well-sourced in may go into the biography section.(Maybe)--Therexbanner (talk) 22:15, 18 November 2010 (UTC)
Comment The more I think about it, the more I realize... regardless of what the consensus here among a dozen or so editors might be, there clearly is no consensus in the Wikipedia community at large for the idea that inclusion in a category requires that inclusion itself to be notable to the subject in question. I really think that part of the proposed wording needs to be stricken, because there is little to no basis for it in the history of Wikipedia. --Born2cycle (talk) 22:28, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Agree with Born2cycle. I think the whole "relevant to their notability" thing is getting us off on the wrong track. I might argue for unless the categorization is supported by the subject self-identifying as a member of that category, or it is undisputed that the appropriateness of the category can be verified through multiple, high quality reliable sources among which there is no ambiguity or discrepancy. NickCT (talk) 00:39, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Strong oppose; you can find any number of sources claiming that Kevin Spacey is gay, and that this is important to who he is; any number of right-wing newspapers calling Ed Miliband an atheist, even though he has never said so; etc. --JN 466 01:45, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
- The pope test is nonsense. Quite apart from the fact that the pope has self-identified as a Catholic in his theological writings, the question whether the pope can be categorised as a Catholic is a proverbial non-problem. --JN 466 02:01, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
  - Not sure what you mean to show with that google search. The point is, per the previously proposed wording, you would have to find self-identification in such writing in order to categorize the pope as being Catholic, and while that might be possible for the pope, it is not for many others about whom the relevant characteristics are just as well established in reliable sources. That is, a requirement for self-identification is unreasonable. What's next? Do we need to find a quote from Reagan asserting he is a Republican before we can categorize him as such? --Born2cycle (talk) 03:13, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
    - It's just not a realistic problem that requires a solution. --JN 466 06:46, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, it's not a problem now because wording that requires self-identification for categorization has not been adopted. If we adopt it then we will require a solution for the problem of countless pointless categories. Let's not abuse WP:NOTCRYSTAL to inhibit editors from considering inevitable consequences of certain policy decisions. --Born2cycle (talk) 07:04, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
- I beg your pardon? Requiring self-identification for religious/sexual categorization has been part of WP:BLP ever since it was promoted to policy in 2006. --JN 466 07:26, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Comment. Born2 -- kudos for doing what only the very best editors do in these talkpage conversations. Making a thoughtful point, with humor, brevity, and completely addresssing an over-long string where POVs are perhaps hidden (by some, sure not all) in the cloaks of wikilawyering.

"what's next? Reagan can't be categorized as being Republican because he never said or wrote, "I am a Republican"?" Classic. And priceless.--Epeefleche (talk) 03:47, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

1) Political orientation isn't ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation - 2) I think there would definately be a "strong consensus of reliable sources identifying that category [i.e. republican] as significant to the subject's [i.e. Regean's] notability" NickCT (talk) 20:03, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Support anything that cuts down on over-categorization by sexual preference, ethnicity and religion that just breeds mountains of trivia, per: (1) Overcategorization: Non-notable intersections by ethnicity, religion, or sexual preference; (2) Overcategorization: Opinion about a question or issue; (3) WP:NOTDIRECTORY. IZAK (talk) 08:05, 21 November 2010 (UTC)
Strong oppose. If a category exists, it must surely be able to include any person who falls within such category. Inclusion should not rely on, as indicated in the proposal, self identification or the category being relevent or significant to the subject's notability (whatever that means in practice). Davshul (talk) 10:27, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Proposal for BLPCAT that supports current usage

In light of the problem identified with the wording in the previous proposal with respect to disallowing much of current categorization, I submit this proposal with the troublesome words stricken out.

Sorry I missed that before, I hope this meets with everyone's approval. --Born2cycle (talk) 00:45, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Oppose Reliable sources should not override the subject's self-identification when it comes to matters of religion and sexuality. --JN 466 01:53, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
- This objection fails the Pope test. Per this objection, we can't identify the Pope as being Catholic unless there are reliable sources to cite his self-identification as a Catholic. That's unhelpful. --Born2cycle (talk) 02:32, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
  - This argument is completely unpersuasive to me. It's like saying that WP:V fails the blue sky test. Unless we can find a reliable source that says that the sky is blue then any editor can challenge it. Gigs (talk) 02:59, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
    - Except we can find reliable sources for the sky being blue, but it might be very difficult if not impossible to find reliable sources that source popes self-identifying as Catholics. --Born2cycle (talk) 03:03, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
      - Agree completely with Born2.--Epeefleche (talk) 07:09, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
Comment -- I think this is still too narrow. Coverage in RSs should IMHO be the key. It is the foundation of notability for everything else on wp.

In addition, this has the strange effect of making the standard more stringent for someone being identified as Jewish -- even if listed in a book of Jewish x'ers -- than for a person having any of the elements that are the original elements of libel and slander. Why have a higher level of sourcing for a person being religion x, than for them having a venereal disease, which they spread? Why have a higher level of sourcing for someone being gay, than for them having committed a gory illegal act on an animal? Why have a higher level of sourcing for a person being ethnicity y, than for them being a pedophile? Nonsensical, IMHO.

As to challenges being "in good faith", how are we going to measure that? What do we do about the editor who focuses all of his challenges on ethnicity or religion x, but never ever on similarly situated religions? I know that most readers of this page will be frightfully surprised, but this behavior does on occasion take place. Will that now be considered ipso facto bad faith? And if not, isn't that language toothless?

And, btw, I note that it is not always clear what a poor reputation is. Is it a poor rep to be an Islamist, a Nazi, or a member of the Taliban? Not to others in those groups.

I think the best way to avoid the POV that could otherwise affect this area is to stick with our bread and butter -- coverage in RSs. Otherwise, you allow the system-gamers, those who are more concerned about not allowing a list of people from religion x who won nobel prizes to exist -- to delete those articles, while they care not a whit about lists of people who have done what are generally considered to be heinous acts. No doubt those people have no interests in those religion lists, but if there are books written about the intersection, which is often the case, we have to step out of the business of determining what is notable by looking to our own prejudices, and start looking to the RSs to perform that function for us.--Epeefleche (talk) 07:23, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

The problem is, as soon as someone wins a Nobel Prize, everyone claims he's "one of us". Or as Einstein put it, “If relativity is proved right, the Germans will call me a German, the Swiss will call me Swiss and the French will call me a world citizen. If relativity is proved wrong, the French will call me Swiss, the Swiss will call me German and the Germans will call me a Jew.” --JN 466 07:31, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Support - This version makes self-identification primal. @Epeefleche - Re "Why have a higher level of sourcing for a person being religion x, than for them having a venereal disease, which they spread? " - The basic point of this debate is that religion/ethnicity/sexual preference are inherently subjective issues. There is no reliable source for determining exactly what "African American" means or exactly what views a person has to have before they are "Catholic". Whether someone had a venereal disease is objective. NickCT (talk) 14:45, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Ethnicity is not a subjective issue, a person may choose to subjectively represent a particular ethnicity when their ethnicity is mixed which is why I agree with allowing self-identification of it, but it is by definition an objective criteria and reliable sources can be found in the work of any ethnologist (or the wider anthropological field.) It is also a reason why we have to be careful that context is clear in any self-identification, particularly if the individual is bonding or distancing themselves from another individual or group of individuals of a more distinct ethnicity. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 20:26, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Generally when ethnicity is discussed on WP, it's not talked about in the sense that ethnologists/anthropologists discuss it in. NickCT (talk) 01:04, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

A typical case in point is Walter Francis White. He identified as African American, was a leading civil rights activist and long-time leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; yet he was blond, blue-eyed, and according to his own statements had 27 white and 5 black great-great-great-grandparents. We have no right in the world to remove such a man's self-identification. --JN 466 01:53, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Oppose. I believe that this is no improvement on previous proposal and still prevents a person who clearly falls within a particular category from being listed in it because it is claimed that such category is not "significant" to his or her notability and that he or she has not gone on record to identify with it. Davshul (talk) 22:30, 21 November 2010 (UTC)
- This isn't the way that our guidance on categories for humans is written. Categories are allowed to contain a sampling of the examples. Lists might aim for completeness but categories do not. Gigs (talk) 17:49, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

And another proposal

This follows the wording of Born2cycle's version, but replaces an "or" with an "and" (highlighted). --JN 466 21:41, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

oppose self identification can be errant if either rhetorical or said in jest but then taken out of context for manipulative reasons, or even falsely or mis- attributed. If combined with negative propoganda sources (which may otherwise be reliable) it could give a contentious identification. Retaining the option can allow truly reliable sources to outweigh the errant self-identification. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 22:20, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

oppose Per Stuart.Jamieson and the pope test. Apparently the or/and distinction is key! --Born2cycle (talk) 23:42, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

oppose, This solves none of the concerns mentioned earlier. Davshul (talk) 22:32, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

BLPCAT change proposal to remove 'relevant to their notable activities or public life'

I propose to change the BLPCAT policy as follows:

"Categories regarding religious beliefs and sexual orientation should not be used unless the subject has publicly self-identified with the belief or orientation in question ~~; and the subject's beliefs or sexual orientation are relevant to their notable activities or public life,~~ according to reliable published sources."

There a few problems with the that "relevancy" requirement (1) it is vague (what is relevant is hard to say); (2) it would omit important people from categories and lists; and (3) the same rule should be used to including a person in a list/category as for including the fact in an article about a person. In other words, in an article about person P, their religion can be identified even if the religion is not "relevant" to the persons notable activities. It seems sensible of person P can be identified as Baptist in the article about P, then that person should automatically qualify as a candidate for inclusion in the List of Baptists. Why should inclusion in a list have the additional requirement of "relevant to notable activities"? (4) the current religion & LGBT lists in WP are mostly comprised of people whose religious/LGBT status is not relevant to their notable activities, so this "relevancy" requirement is not being followed and is not likely to be followed. (By the way, I was prompted to propose this change based on the List of atheists article, which includes people such as Adam Savage who would be - illogically - removed under the BLPCAT policy as it stands now). --Noleander (talk) 02:42, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Where AndytheGrump wrote (sorry to beat you to it, Andy) "It has to be seen in the broader context of a world where data-gathering is used for all sorts of purposes other than the one originally intended by the person compiling it. Many of these uses have the potential to be harmful to the individual about whom the data is gathered. I'd assume that it should not be Wikipedias job to make such data-gathering easier. Individuals, even notable ones, have a right to privacy where their beliefs, sexual orientation and other personal issues have no consequence to outsiders. BLPCAT seems to be based on this assumption, and enforces (not 'recommends') it." I agree with this. The fact that part of our BLP policy has been ignored is not a reason to remove it. Dougweller (talk) 08:31, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

I disagree. The privacy issue is addressed by the requirement "the subject has publicly self-identified" which the proposal leaves intact. And your point about "The fact that part of our BLP policy has been ignored " is precisely my point: the religion/LGBT lists have been compiled by hundreds of editors over many years, and have arrived at a certain level of consensus. That consensus, embodied in the lists, is contrary to the 16 words in the WP:BLPCAT that are proposed for deletion: those 16 words were inserted by one editor, after discussion with (I'm guessing here) 10 or 20 editors on this Talk page (and, BTW, based on this Talk page above, there appears to be tremendous disagreement on the BLPCAT policy, so it is not accurate to suggest that BLPCAT is a rock-solid policy with unanimous consensus). Which consensus is more meaningful? I suggest that the status of the scores of lists, compiled by hundreds of editors should be our guide, and the BLPCAT policy should be changed to conform to that consensus. --Noleander (talk) 13:47, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Support. Also because there is little to suggest that this makes more sense being applied to these categories than to birthday, city of birth, citizenship, and many others.--Epeefleche (talk) 08:49, 24 November 2010 (UTC)
- comment As I said above, I think this is included as a specific case of [[WP:OC], the person can be a notable son of whatever town or country but isn't necessarily notable for their religion or sexuality so why categorise them by it. Take two actors for example Mel Gibson and Colin Farrell both are Roman Catholic. Colin rarely mentions it, it hasn't affected his work or personal life in a notable way and we don't categorise him by it. Mel notably proselytizes, notably built a chapel in his garden, notably directed The Passion of the Christ, and it is a notable aspect of his life so we do categorise him by it. Given that the purpose of categories is to form a navigation system; is it likely that anyone would try to navigate from Mel Gibson to Colin Farrell through the fact that they are both Roman Catholics or are they going to do it through the relevant category that they are both Actors? On the other hand someone may wish to navigate from Mel to some other person who is notable for their Roman Catholic beliefs in which case the Roman Catholic category is relevant. Stuart.Jamieson(talk) 17:42, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Why isn't this part of the discussion above about related changes - Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons#Ethno-religious categories? Dougweller (talk) 09:59, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

I read that discussion and it was so lengthy, with so many digressions, that I concluded a focused, narrow, proposal in a new section might actual result in some progress. --Noleander (talk) 13:52, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Support., but why are ethnic categories not included? The proponents of List of Jewish Nobel laureates claim that none of the BLPCAT restrictions apply to them because Judaism is not ONLY a religion. It seems to me that self-identification should be required before declaring that a living person is Jewish, Polish, Chinese, or anything else. Otherwise you end up with ridiculous situations like their identifying Andre Geim as Jewish because one googlable article in a computer journal described him as Jewish in 2006 and a very few others have followed suit, when what Geim says is his mother has a Jewish grandmother and he suffered from antisemitism because his name sounds Jewish. Of course, the list-zealots point out that he did not explicitly state that his other 7 great-grandparents weren't Jewish and no WP:RS has said "Geim is not Jewish." Of course, if they persist long enough there will be lots of WP:RS calling Geim Jewish because they will get that information from Wikipedia.betsythedevine (talk) 03:36, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Betsy: I chose not to include the "ethnicity" issue because it would complicate matters, and the proposed improvement would be more likely to fail. I think if the various pieces are considered one at a time, the discussions will be easier to follow, and we will have a better chance of reaching consensus. I am not opposed to including ethnicity, but that should be discussed independently. --Noleander (talk) 15:17, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

support Maybe we are to the point in WP (and outside) where ethnic/racial background is not a thing of shame, hiding and argument. Not so many people are being killed over it. Hmains (talk) 04:00, 25 November 2010 (UTC)
Weak oppose the removal Categories are not required to be complete. As WP:Categorization of people says, sensitive categories need not contain every example. It's true that the word "relevant" is very much up for debate. That should probably be decided on a case by case basis on article talk pages. Gigs (talk) 04:49, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Gigs: The purpose of the proposal is to remove a 16-word clause that has never been followed. Virtually every religion/LGBT list contains numerous persons for whom the religion/orientation is not relevant to their "notable public activities". Hundreds of editors working on the religion/LGBT lists have, by consensus, determined that the "relevant" clause is not a sensible requirement. To be clear: I am not suggesting any change to the more important BLPCAT policies (such as the requirement for reliable sources; or the requirement that the identification be from the subject, etc). Can you add some detail to your response in light of this additional information? --Noleander (talk) 15:11, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Until earlier this year we had many, many articles violating our BLP policy. There's been an effort to clear this up, but we certainly still have many, probably thousands. It's probable that most of the editors adding names to those lits and cats had never read our policy. Bad articles are not a reason to make this change. Dougweller (talk) 16:23, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

I hear what you are saying, but could you address two points: (1) Why the "relevant" policy is good? What benefits does it provide? Most importantly: If person A is a self-identified Baptist (but the religion is not especially relevant to their activities), then why is it okay to include the religion in the article about A; yet A cannot be presented in the List of Baptists? (2) These lists have been edited by hundreds of editors over several years, with very widespread consensus. Yet the 16 words of the BLPCAT "relevant" clause has been scrutinized by, Im guessing, only a dozen or two cognoscenti that dwell in the BLP talk page. The consensus of that larger group is as, if not more, important, no? --Noleander (talk) 16:55, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Noleander, it's all about context. Lets say someone was Methodist and then turned Baptist but then someone else says they aren't really a Baptist but just saying they are... This stuff gets sticky pretty fast. Categories don't allow for context. They are an explicit and standalone assertion of a label. Reality doesn't always easily fit labels. Instead of people wasting time arguing whether or not someone is or isn't a certain label, it's better to just discuss the subtleties in the article and avoid sticking that label on someone. So there's several practical benefits to reducing the amount of unnecessary categorization of people, especially if it's a sensitive and often controversial topic such as religion or sexuality. From the BLP standpoint, we really don't want to get the label wrong because of some talk page consensus which might be made up of partisan editors. The relevancy clause is about reducing this risk, and reducing the amount of unnecessary arguing over categorizations that weren't really central to a person in the first place. I do supports expanding BLPCAT to be more inclusive of any controversial categorization, but as you can see on this page, it's extremely difficult to make everyone happy with a wording that people are confident won't allow unnecessary gaming. Gigs (talk) 17:02, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Fair enough. But then what wording word you propose for the "relevant" clause that would bring it in line with the reality that hundreds of non-contentious persons are being (and will continue to be) in these lists? Can you propose some wording such as "if the idenfiication is self-identified, well-sourced, and is the subject of NO controversy whatseover then ... " or similar? My point is: if a policy is not being followed, and won't be followed, the policy needs to be refined (not necessarily eliminated) to reflect the broader consensus that is happening across WP. --Noleander (talk) 17:12, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

I suggest you take a look at the other sections on this page. I proposed 2 different versions to attempt to add a "contentiousness" clause to BLPCAT, and to broaden it so that it doesn't single out only religion and sexuality. You can see people's responses, which were mixed. Gigs (talk) 17:14, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I read the above proposals in detail, and I like one of the two you proposed, because it eliminated the "relevant" clause. The obstacle I see is that the proposals (which all look well thought-out) each include several changes to the existing BLPCAT policy (e.g. (1) add ethnicity; (2) add "contentious" test; (3) remove "relevant" test; etc). That almost guarantees that each proposal will draw several Oppose !votes. For example, I like one of your two proposals, but it already has several Oppose !votes, so it is sorta stalled. If consensus is ever achieved on one proposal, it may be more due to fatigue than merit :-) Wouldn't it be better to list the various decisions separately:

Should self-identification be required or not?
Do actions (rather than words) qualify as self-identification?
If self-identification is absent: is inclusion okay if there is no controversy and abundant RS?
Should ethnicity be included as well as religion?
Should religion/orientation be expanded to include all "contentious" categories?
Should "relevant to notable activities" requirement be eliminated?
What if the person's inclusion is subject to no controversy whatsoever, should that lessen the requirements?
Should absence of good faith challenges lessen the requirements?
Explicitly include Lists, Categories, and Navboxes?

Maybe if each item were considered one at a time, consensus could be achieved? Or, at least, put the decisions in a table for easy reference, with pros/cons for each choice? --Noleander (talk) 18:24, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Maybe! Here's the torch. It's only slightly used but it started flickering. :) Gigs (talk) 18:43, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Agree. And for reference, oppose; I would prefer to keep the wording "relevant to their notable activities or public life". We are overcategorising as it is; some editors are doing it like stamp-collecting. --JN 466 23:40, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Oppose in the context of BLPCAT as it stands, on the grounds of people's right to privacy for "invisible" but sensitive attributes such as religion and sexual orientation. However if BLPCAT is extended to cover lists by ethnicity, I do not think relevance to notability should be required. This makes little sense on privacy grounds when ethnicity is often plainly visible. --Avenue (talk) 11:02, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
Oppose Privacy issues, over-categorisation, pov misuse, etc. I disagree that 'ethnicity is often plainly visible', not only is that wrong if it means something like country/region of origin, ethnicity is more than that. Dougweller (talk) 07:34, 27 November 2010 (UTC)
Absolutely, Irrevocably, Oppose. If someone is for example a notable chemical engineer, their membership of a paticular church is of absolutely zero relevance - unless he manufactured the Sarin for Aum Shinrikyo. The same argument applies to sexual orientation, being lesbian has absolutely nothing to do with being a noted architect. Unless the person's religion or sexual orientation is demonstrably relevant to their notability it must be left out. Deleting this clause serves only the interests of bigots. Roger (talk) 10:47, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Agree. And take a look at Category:Christians of Jewish descent. Why in the world do we have this? It includes Richard Nibley, presumably because " Richard Nibley's great-grandfather Alexander Neibaur was the first Jewish person to join the LDS Church." He's in Category:People of Jewish descent and Category:American people of Jewish descent. He doesn't self-identify in the article, and nothing suggests that his great-grandfather being Jewish has had a notable effect on his life, or indeed any effect. I'm told my great-grandfather was a French-Canadian Jewish lumberjack, imagine how I could be categorised! Dougweller (talk) 16:30, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Strong support. Categories are not meant to be only about what is "relevant" (and how do you define "relevant" anyway?), categories are meant, er, to categorize. If RS say a person is of ethnicity X or religion Y or whatever, it should only be obvious that we should categorize the person as such. We are here to give a service to the readers, and we're not here to decide what our readers will find "relevant" or not about the subject: we're here to report and structure the information covered by RS. --Cyclopia ^talk 17:00, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

In other words, we just ignore Feynman's request? We don't care about our living subjects? Anything goes if we can find an RS? Dougweller (talk) 17:07, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

1)I just popped in the discussion and I don't know what is Feynman's request; perhaps you may enlighten me on the subject.

2)We must care about living subjects, obviously. But -and I can't stress this enough- we should care first and foremost about our readers. We don't hide reliably sourced information just because living subjects don't like it -this is entrenched in BLP policy, too, because respecting people means avoiding to libel them or to release false information on them, not whitewashing their biographies. And in this case we don't even talk about problematic stuff, we simply talk about relevance of categorization. There is not even a BLP issue here and I find it weird it is discussed here.

3)In general yes, of course, that's what an encyclopedia is all about: taking sources' knowledge and collecting, condensing,restructuring it. It's our duty not to hide what RS say (of course with a bit of judgement: if a source is lonely, dubious or clearly wrong because denied by other sources, we choose not to use it). --Cyclopia ^talk 17:23, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

In answer to (1) above: Richard Feynman wrote a letter in 1967 asking not to be included in a book on "Jewish Nobel laureates". AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:40, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Oppose - The idea that these categories should only be used when aspects of a living person's persona are notable is very much inline with Wikipedia:Overcategorization as well as WP:BLP.Griswaldo (talk) 18:41, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Oppose Dougweller has already cited my position regarding issues of privacy. There are also broader issues regarding implicit assumptions about the universal validity of categorisation itself, but these are better addressed elsewhere. AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:04, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Good Faith Challenges

Similar to B2C's last improvement but replaces the challenge as a vito to a temporary removal until the article is improved per BRD. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 22:54, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

I suggest that If any categorization of a particular person is not clearly supported by reliable sources and is challenged in good faith by other editors, then avoid using it until improved sourcing can be found to justify its inclusion.. is an open invitation to Wikilawyering - easier to just keep such categorization out of articles entirely. Collect (talk) 22:57, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

I believe the previous wording limits any future opening up of evidence, if an out of context statement is made by a BLP about sexuality and used to categorise them; then challenged in good faith then yes tje category should be removed. However if 6 months later the BLP makes their sexuality explicit then the category should be reinserted not become an open invitation for Wikilawyering against the reinsertion. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 02:12, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

The best source for a person's sexuality or religion is always the person himself (or herself). I am unsure that any categorization made on the basis of claims by others is ever a good idea in that area. Collect (talk) 08:07, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Support - Seems self evident. Suggest "until" -> "unless". NickCT (talk) 01:06, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Oppose Nope. Reliable sources should not override the subject's self-identification when it comes to matters of religion and sexuality. This has been a principle for as long as this policy has existed. --JN 466 01:38, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

I don't think anyone is suggesting they would, my suggestion to you above would probably balance out to no category rather than wrong category. It would however allow listing with caveats which thr current wording does not take into account. The wording is designed to catch all individuals who are notable for their religion but who have not explicitly self identified as such or such a self identification has not been identified by reliable secondary sources. You dismiss the Pope example, but it equally applies to lower clerics and theologians where the question is not a proverb. You all state the pope has self-identified in his theological writings but no mention of this self identification is made in his article (a criteria for inclusion in those categories) nor do you state whether this self-identification is as a Theist, Christian, Roman Catholic, or Priest these slight nuances also affect which category he can be put under. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 02:12, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

If you take a job as a Roman Catholic priest, or indeed as an official in any religion, you have self-identified as a member of that religion. I have honestly never observed a single case in Wikipedia where this has been a problem, but if you like we can add a corresponding sentence to BLPCAT: "Officials and dignitaries of a religion, including priests, imams etc., may be taken to have self-identified as members of that religion." --JN 466 02:42, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

O.K. one reply for for both Collect and JN, firstly I agree that the best source for a person's sexuality or religion is always the person himself (or herself) I don't have any doubt about that; however often the person has made no explicit self identification - they may have made associative statements (such as Roman Catholic theological statements made by Mel Gibson), or they may be in a position that automatically associates them (for example being a Rabbi, or Elton John's Husband) these are not self-identifications even if some editors have been using them this way they are third party analysis of that person's actions, job, or relationship.

Even when the person has made an explicit self-identification the majority of cases that identification is filtered through secondary sources and context may be altered or lost. If context is removed then the source is unreliable and can be deliberately used to represent a position that is opposed to the individual's true self identification - these statements need to be weighed up against reliable sources to see if the category is applicable or not.

Even if the secondary source doesn't misrepresent the identification can be constructed from a category 1 statement "X claims he is Y, saying 'my wife isn't Y and it makes life difficult for the kids'" again in context these should be treated as third party identifications and not represented as a self-identification.

Some secondary sources do represent the self-identification accurately and these along with autobiographical works or unedited interviews can fit the current requirement of a self-identification however I believe this will only be a minority of articles where categories are applied and these sources exist within the article.

I believe a balanced approach is required, and one that doesn't require stretching or altering the definition of a self-identification because if we say something is a self-identification when it's really a third party identification we misrepresent that person and how the information was obtained. In article space this is easy because we can make it clear where the source came from, BLPCAT should equally identify that the categorisation was based on the source in the article not that the source was based on a "self-identification" which it may not have been. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 09:55, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Just wanted to add an interesting point (not an argument, but something worth noting). It may seem simple but, if a man (ex.Elton John) is married to another man (his husband), you would say that's enough to categorize him as homosexual?

This is the complex part: the husband/Elton could be bisexual (which is completely different from gay), or they could also be in it for something else (ex. the Portia de Rossi case).

Portia de Rossi was married for several years to a man to get her green card, and came out (and said she's a lesbian) a few years ago. Prior to that event, would you have categoried her as straight based on her marriage?

Another example, a person seen attending a synagogue might be automatically construed to mean he/she is Jewish, but in reality there are tons of reasons why that may not be the case. (He/she may be there for a friend's or relative's bar(bat)-mitzvah, or because he/she may be married to a person of Jewish faith.)

This is why I agree that self-identification must definitely take precedence over any RS. In fact, not doing that may considered libel/slander. Anyways, that's just something worth considering.--Therexbanner (talk) 10:54, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

That's why the wording says a strong consensus of reliable sources identifies that category as significant to the subject's notability. being a "Straight Actress" was not significant to Portia de Rossi's notability so sources to that effect should be ignored she is however notable as being the wife of Ellen DeGeneres and as an LGBT actress so even without a specific statement from her outing herself; substantial secondary source coverage of her marriage to Ellen should be enough to allow categorisation. Note that LGBT categorisation would answer your bisexual/gay quandary unless there was significant sourcing to suggest that Gay was more appropriate than the wider LGBT category.

I agree also with the synagogue example and again the above rule applies. If however the individual is well known for being a Jewish Comedian for his cultural Jewish Humor perhaps jokes in Yiddish and so on, or well known Jewish cultural singer performing traditional Jewish music, or a well known Jewish actor regularly playing Jewish Roles then the synagogue source could be used (amongst a consensus of other sources) to identify the individual in Jewish categories and lists (though not actually making a specific claim that the individual practises the Jewish faith which would require stronger sources)

Self identification should take preference, but there will be cases where self-identification is errant or missing but the genuine label as an important part of the person's notability and needs to be represented. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 11:56, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Good points, the examples you listed would work. My concern is directed more towards the editors who insist in categorizing subjects when their religion, ethnicity, and orientation are not relevant to their notability in any way. --Therexbanner (talk) 12:58, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

And you're right to be concerned about it, but these editors already insist on categorising like that without any sources so I'm not sure that it would be an increased problem. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 16:15, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Comment I think some people are overlooking a very important part of the problem here, especially with ethnic identification. There can be a significant number of reliable sources calling someone X, without their own public self-identification, for very politicized reasons. This cuts both ways. 1) As Jayen points out Millband has never called himself an atheist, but I'm told he has expressed disbelief in god(s). Groups of people who wish to use the atheist label for negative political purposes constantly label him with an atheist because of those comments, despite his own lack of doing so. 2) Barak Obama has never once, to my knowledge, referred to himself as Kenyan, but in Kenya people call him Kenyan all the time. And no, not in the citizenship conspiracy sense, but out of ethno-nationalist pride -- because of the Kenyan part of his heritage. I'm sure examples of this can be found in "reliable" Kenyan publications too btw. In this case we have people who feel that identifying a famous person with their group is a benefit to them. In both cases we have public individuals who have chosen not to self-identify in a manner that other groups would like to identify them. We cannot promote this kind of activity here. Famous individuals who wish to be identified with certain groups make this identification publicly. Those who don't identify with certain groups, or simply don't really care, do not make such identifications publicly. In such cases we cannot utilize reliable sources because they may be actively supporting the political aims of other groups, or are parroting those claims uncritically. I strongly urge the addition of "ethnicity" to the category because celebratory POV pushing by people with strong ethno-nationalist feelings is a known problem here at Wikipedia. In fact I also urge others to invite those who deal with ethno-nationalism related problems here to this discussion. Their input would be invaluable.Griswaldo (talk) 14:52, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Re Griswaldo - Thoughtfully written. A couple replies to your points;

1)"I strongly urge the addition of "ethnicity" to the category" - Little confused by this statement. The current proposed wording (i.e. "Potentially contentious categorizations, such as religious beliefs, sexual orientation or ethnicity") includes ethnicity.

2)"We cannot promote this kind of activity here" - Disagree! You are essentially saying that if I haven't publicly said "I am Irish", but a prolific amount of mainstream of RS has said "He is Irish", WP shouldn't call me Irish. I can't see how that's helpful. I appreciate your "ethno-nationalist pride" point and I absolutely agree with your "eople with strong ethno-nationalist feelings" comment, but I feel that if we raise the verifiability bar high enough, we can circumvent these issues. If we have multiple, mainstream RSs all unambiguously identifying me as Irish, it would seem that excluding that information from my article (if I were notable enough to have one) might constitute censorship. NickCT (talk) 14:57, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Further to Nick CT's points and addressing your specific examples. 1) Today people misuse the terms Agnostic and Atheist. Atheist root meaning a person who has disbelief in the existence of God, Agnostic root meaning a person who does not know (about anything beyond the material realm) - I had to check my chambers dictionary given some of the quotes about these words used further up this page, but the definitions still remain the same. An agnostic is not specifically a non-theist; Agnostics may believe in a god or higher state of being but have no pre-conceptions of the nature of any of that. Generally a far larger part of the population is truly agnostic but take on the label of their childhood religion rather than self-identifying as agnostic. Because people misuse the terms Agnostic and Atheist and have pre-conceived ideas of those labels it makes sense for Millband to set out a clear atheological statement. There is no negative connotation associated with the label but he chooses to be specific and clear rather than define himself by a label that may be misconceived. Just as reliable sources identify him as an Atheist and give specific reasoning why he fits that label, we as an encyclopaedia can do the same and provided we are neutral about it it does no harm to either the person or the encyclopaedia to do so. 2)Barack has made similar claims on occasion and they have fuelled the citizenship conspiracy, prior to making those statements most citizenship conspiracy was based on a mistaken belief that Hawaii was not a state when Barack was born and his mother was not old enough for him to inherit citizenship if he was born outside of the 49 states. In fact Hawaii had been a state for 2 years so his mother's age was never a consideration. When he made the statements in a combination of rhetoric and facetiousness I believe one went something similar to no-one ever believe that someone called Barack Hussein Obama and born in Kenya could ever become president of the United states this wasn't specifically referencing himself but a hypothetical other "Barack Hussein Obama" who if he had actually been born in Kenya could not have become president of the United states. It did not stop a lot of right wing activists claiming that it proved he was not a citizen, and this is exactly the sort of self-identification we need to allow reliable secondary sources to outweigh proving that he was born in Hawaii and has full citizenship. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 16:25, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

@NickCT. 1) I meant that in support of the addition of ethnicity proposed here. The policy does not yet have this. 2) I think here that you might be mistaking ethnicity for nationality. If someone is a citizen of a certain nation-state they do not have to self-proclaim that fact for us to call them Irish, or Polish, or Croatian. However, when it comes to ethnicity as an identity, let's say you are a US citizen with Irish roots, I do think we need to air on the side of caution here. If you are proud of your heritage or think it is important to your public persona you will mention it. If not, the only people who will mention it are others who are either using it as a matter of pride or as a negative label. Please note that there is a big difference between reporting facts like, so and so's grandparents emigrated from Ireland, and putting an ethnic label on someone like, so and so is an Irish-American. The former is fine as long as we we have reliable sources, the latter is not.

@Stuart.Jamieson. 1) I was not under the impression that that Miliband calls himself either an atheist or an agnostic. Did I miss something there? He has simply stated that he does not believe in God. As Jayen has pointed out the use of "atheist" as a label for him has clear political ties. Only publications that align with his opposition party call him an atheist. I'm well aware of the differences between different kinds of unbelievers, trust me on this. Miliband may not like the atheist label for a variety of reasons, or he may simply choose not to use in it in public for a variety of reasons but either way, BLP demands that we respect his choice not to use it, as opposed to the choice of his political opposition to use it. I am unsure how there is any room for argument on that point. 2) I'm quite confused about your angle on Obama, since my comment has nothing to do with citizenship conspiracy theories, and I tried very hard to go out of my way to make that clear. Kenyans claim Obama as their own out of national pride. It has nothing to do with where he was born, or his citizenship status. They don't claim he's not an American citizen. My point is that we do not accept Kenyan sources, however reliable, if they claim him as a Kenyan - ethnically or otherwise. We let him tell us what he considers himself to be ethnically or culturally. In terms of nationality he is an American citizen. See my comment above to Nick. Cheers.Griswaldo (talk) 20:17, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

@Griswaldo 1)Miliband has specifically claimed that he believes there is no God this was a specific claim that falls within the category of Atheist and not within the category of Agnostic. Jayen is wrong the BBC, the New York Times, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and other neutral news outlets have described him as atheist based on his comments. Also not all of the newspapers in the UK support the tories the Guardian, the Observer, and The Independent all support the Liberal Democrats. Notably the Guardian wrongly identified Nick Clegg the Lib Dem Leader as Atheist because he said God didn't exist, despite having conducted their own interview with him where he self-identified as agnostic. Since they made that identification as a positive identification to the individual they supported it can't be taken as a negative attribution in the case of Miliband. simply because they don't support him. The identification of Nick Clegg was purely accidental as he was given a yes/no question on the existence of God and answered "no" when he really felt he didn't know, by contrast Miliband's statement was clearly reasoned and very specific declaration of no-belief.

2)See my reply to Therexbanner we categorise based on what that person is most notable for being - even if Obama had not self-identified as "African American" there was independently a significant amount of secondary sourcing identifying him as "African American" almost 2,000 times (based on google counts) more than those identifying him as "Kenyan American" and 4 times and identification of simply "Kenyan" so the majority definition would have weighed against any specifically Kenyan definition. Had Obama himself chosen to clearly identify as Kenyan things may have been different but it was not the case. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 22:44, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

"Miliband has specifically claimed that he believes there is no God". That is not what he said. All he has said, as far as I am aware, is "I don't believe in God." And in the end, I don't care which news organisations describe him as an atheist, or whether the Guardian's motivations are the same as the Telegraph's. We know what Miliband said in those interviews: he said "I don't believe in God." And we know that only about one-third of people who say that identify as atheist. (And to date, I am aware of no Labour paper that has called him an atheist. Yet even if there were one, it wouldn't change the basic point at issue: it is not up to any journalist to decide what someone's belief system or sexuality is, nor is it up to any Wikipedian.) --JN 466 23:33, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes if you believe Greeley study to be the be all and end all - However Greeley is a Catholic Priest whose sole purpose is to show how Godless society is becoming his figures are decidedly unconvincing. Right next to your quote of Greeley is the work of Steve Bruce the sociologist who claims correctly that 8% identify as Atheist, 10% identify as Agnostic and the remainder simply identify as "Not Religious". The other studies Norris and Ingleheart, BBC, Froese, and Gallup make no differentiation between Agnostic, Atheist, and "Not Religious" but give a figure comparable to the total Greeley claims "Do not believe in God". Other than Froese and Bruce these figures ignore agnosticism altogether, either the respondents follow a religion (based on the UK census of the same time) or they don't believe in God. That's statistically unlikely as at least a small percentage should be "Undecided" but questions have to be asked about how the polls were conducted, Nick Clegg was equally mis-categorised as not believing in God simply because he was given a yes/no answer and because he did not believe in a specific God he answered no when he was actually undecided. Ed Miliband has made a clear position that he does not believe in God this is different from being asked a yes no question and choosing the closest one to your belief. Of course no Labour allied papers have called Miliband Atheist because there are no Labour supporting papers, the left wing ones changes support to the Lib Dems and the others changed support to the tories. - unless you know something I don't and some paper has turned back to labour? Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 00:11, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

I believe among the UK national dailies, at least the Daily Mirror is still Labour. Not sure where the Independent stands; perhaps it really is independent. :) At any rate, neither seem to have called him an atheist to date. And are all the Scottish papers Tory or LibDem now? Surely not. Generally, Agnostics don't believe in God. That is why the combined figures of agnostics, atheists and people uninterested in religion in the various surveys match those reported as saying they don't believe in God. Statistics in Encyclopædia Britannica list nonbelievers and agnostics together, rather than listing nonbelievers as atheists, according to those statistics too there are far fewer atheists than nonbelievers/agnostics. Self-identification in matters of religion and sexuality is policy, it always has been policy, and it means self-identification, not interpretation/labelling by journalists or Wikipedians who have their own fish to fry. --JN 466 01:02, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Again the Mirror didn't use either term for Clegg either, There are three Scottish papers of note The Scotsman (Would be Tory, Usually supports Liberal, Currently Claims Neutral), The Herald (Usually supports Labour, Currently Claims Neutral), and the Daily Record (Supports Labour). None of these papers (including the Mirror, and the Independent) use any label for Clegg, David Miliband (who has self-identified), or Ed Miliband, in fact in general they only use the term for Atheists who Proselytize such as Richard Dawkins. This is combined with the fact that Pro liberal papers such as the guardian equally apply the term to Clegg and Miliband suggests that your political bias argument is stretched at best. You also continue to stretch definitions to suit your position the EB reference *does* join agnostics with unbelievers but doesn't explain what they don't believe. You choose to define this unbelief as unbelief in a god, but it could equally mean unbelief in religion, unbelief in any specific god (but still the feel of some higher power), and these all fit the definition of Agnostic without being specifically Atheist. As for your other 3 links, I will say read the merriam webster one again; "one who is not committed to believing in either the existence or the nonexistence of God or a god" by definition an Agnostic will not express a disbelief in the existence of a God where an atheist will and Miliband expressed a disbelief so he is definably an Atheist. Your other sources define Agnostics as non-believers but make no mention of an individual who overtly expresses disbelief, though I still believe that for their own reasons they are simplifying belief in relation to agnosticism. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 23:52, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Comment- I just realized that this is already covered at WP:EGRS. Specifically: "General categorization by ethnicity, gender, religion, or sexuality is permitted, with the following considerations: 4) Inclusion must be specifically relevant to at least one of the subject's notable activities and an essential part of that activity, but is not required to be an exclusive interest. Moreover, inclusion is not transitive to any other activity. (For example: a notable LGBT activist is not automatically included in a corresponding LGBT musician category, unless also notable for one or more LGBT-related music compositions or performances.)" Basically, unless the person's activities have something to do with the ethnicity/religion/orientation, they shouldn't be used. To me that makes perfect sense, as this would remove ethnic/religious/orientation vanity categories that are mainly used for bragging. In other words (example), if a musician is known for (amongst other things) Chinese music, he/she could be categorized as a Chinese musician. A musician whos only relation to China is ethnicity or nationality, should be left out of that category. Naturally, this would apply to all sides.--Therexbanner (talk) 22:45, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Comment. Whew! Can someone close out some of the proposals above by blue coloring or something so we know what is still being proposed and what the original proposer has given up on? Thanks. Student7 (talk) 13:46, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

relatives of people in the public domain

Latest comment: 13 years ago8 comments5 people in discussion

I've had a quick look and couldn't find anything about this point, but how much detail of the private families of people in the public domain should be included in articles about them? This occurred to me when looking at Stacey Solomon, which includes "Stacey has two brothers, Matthew and Joshua; one older sister, Jemma, two stepbrothers and one stepsister. She is a single mother to son Zach." Okay, so Zach is mentioned in the reference to this, but I didn't notice the other names, and I'm not sure how relevent the other facts and names are to the article. Would anyone care to comment/advise? regards, Lynbarn (talk) 13:17, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Her siblings appear not to be referenced anywhere, as you say. I'm reluctant to delete this though, as it will leave the following sentence dangling somewhat: "She is a single mother to son Zach", which to my mind would look a little odd, if not negative. I'll tag it as needing a cite for now. I'm not exactly sure about policy here. Should we delete the reference to Zach?

Since Zach is referenced, he should stay. I see no justification for including the sibs when they are not referenced. --Orange Mike | Talk 13:37, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

I've found a reference to the siblings in the Daily Mail here. I've not added the cite though as I'm still unsure about the more general question: do we need to name them at all? I'm still a newbie, and unsure of policy? AndyTheGrump (talk) 13:53, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

It's public record; it's no more pointless and irrelevant to humankind than anything else about meaningless pop "celebrities" like this; I'd say we include it. --Orange Mike | Talk 13:58, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Fair enough. I don't suppose you (or someone else) can add the cite? I'm not quite sure how to do this - an online newspaper article ref. AndyTheGrump (talk) 14:13, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Similar yet related question, working on the article of the lateBilly Butlin the personal Life section covers his Children and his Grand Children (some are LP's others are deceased). There's a notable reference to his Granddaughter Laura Emily Butlin in that her inheritance from Billy's Estate was challenged in court; but an IP address has also added a sibling of Laura Emily - George Butlin (The IP showed a family familiarity suggesting it could be George Butlin). First addition I reverted along with a message to the IP asking them to cite a reference but when it was re-added I found that Laura Emily was on Facebook and did indeed know George Butlin (though she list friends as siblings instead of any real siblings). This seems problematic, if a grandchild exists it seems wrong to leave them out for a lack of sources when I've cited all their siblings and cousins, at the same time without reliable sourcing (and facebook is not a reliable source) it's wrong to allow the entry to remain. Thoughts suggestions advice? Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 18:36, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

If this is the family Solomon lives with, it can be inventoried," x stepsiblings, y brothers, or whatever. They are not notable. No names. Not a place to garnish fame or infamy. Okay to name her son. In really bios of really notable people, a person is listed as the 5th child and 2nd son of John and Mildred Brown. No list of siblings by name. A bit different with someone with notable close relatives.

When did we change the standard of not including the names of minor children unless they are notable in their own right? Zach certainly does not pass the notability test. JimCubb (talk) 01:23, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Oops, I forgot I was working on fixing this one. If that is right, then it simplifies things. Delete the lot: siblings and son... AndyTheGrump (talk) 01:28, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Contact by spouse of notable musician

Latest comment: 13 years ago7 comments6 people in discussion

I've been contacted (off-Wiki) by the spouse of a fairly prominent living musician with a well-established article, who is anxious to correct misinformation in that person's article. The errors apparently (and I've no reason to doubt the correctness of my information) date from mis-reporting of events of 40 to 50 years ago, which were reported in the music press at that time and have later been repeated in many (otherwise reliable) sources, or which derive from the (apparently) exaggerated or simply erroneous reminiscences of other musicians involved at the time. The information in the article is not libellous in any way - but it is to some extent embarrassing, and, simply, inaccurate. However, it has been reported in reliable sources, and the "correct" story has not. One simple solution might be to remove the erroneous information - but, if the "gaps" were not explained, other editors might seek to re-insert the deleted (and referenced) material. Any general advice on this? Ghmyrtle (talk) 10:50, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

I'd say we go with the sources. She can do a press release and become a source, but still only a minor one. That's the music biz for you. Couch on his Head and Smiling (talk) 19:28, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
- Press releases are not reliable sources. If she or he held a press conference and was interviewed stating that "these things were misreported years ago, and the truth never caught up with the misunderstandings", and that press conference was covered in the legit press, then we'd have something substantial to go on. Otherwise: the subject of an article is often the least reliable source of information. --Orange Mike | Talk 19:36, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

I understand the problem. The issues are too trivial to go to the press about, but it's slightly embarrassing for them that they can't be corrected and will probably remain accepted wisdom in perpetuity. Ghmyrtle (talk) 22:05, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Another approach might be to consider whether WP:UNDUE applies, and remove material on that basis. You might consider a report at WP:BLPN, although if the material is salacious or part of folk lore you are unlikely to get a helpful response. If the person is of interest to a journalist in the field, it may be achievable to have journalist write a rebuttal somewhere. The musician can also try contacting WP:OTRS, but as stated, DUE and sourced material can't just be deleted on request. Johnuniq (talk) 22:53, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

A press release might not be a reliable source for an extraordinary claim, but self published sources are acceptable per WP:SELFPUB and depending on the nature of the claims, could justify some text in the article. I would still urge them to publish a rebuttal if they really care. Gigs (talk) 22:54, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

If the musician has a web site they could always work it into a bio, clarifying any other misunderstandings as well. Or they could call up some friendly publication and do an interview. Obviously it's not just wikipedia that is a problem. CarolMooreDC (talk) 23:16, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Do we need a WP:BILP policy?

Latest comment: 13 years ago21 comments10 people in discussion

Here's the deal: We have articles that are technically within the limits of WP:BLP, but giving irrelevant and excessive info about someone else, not the subject of the article itself. This is a bad idea and a lawsuit-waiting-to-happen, and an endless source of unverified and unverifiable information; all the same problems as with WP:BLP. Proceeding from least controversial to most controversial:

1. Where to find children

Ex: "Their son Marion is now attending Somecity Rainbow Elementary School, in Somecity, Whateverstate, USA."

Delete instantly. Haven't seen too many of these, thankfully.

2. Children's exact birthdate

3. Children's exact birthplace

Creepy. How is that useful information?

4. Children's general whereabouts

Ex: "He's now living with his wife and children in Wherevertown, Somestate, Aust."

Also delete.

5. Unreferenced potential slander against anyone

Ex: "Now in rehab for drinking<ref>http://www.example.com/2010-rehab-story.html</ref>, because his father was abusive when he was a boy."

Delete the part about his father. Delete now, find references and restore later. We have some pretty hot stuff with {{citation needed|date=January 2009}} still on it.

6a. Where to find an adult, for trivia

Ex: "Here's where I play every Thursday night"

Goes on WikiNews, if anywhere.

Ex: "He's now waiting tables at Blahblah Eatery..."

Goes nowhere at all.

7a. Adult's general whereabouts, for trivia

Ex:"...; his ex-wife has since moved to Someplace, Aprovince, Canada."

Delete.

8. All 20 of their kid's middle names

Ex: "Anne Matilda Sue Georgina, her brother Luke Francis Mario Tomas..."

Do we need that? Let them tell their classmates what their middle name is, not a WP page.

9. Anything beyond age of children

Do we need their names?

10. Anything beyond number of children

I understand musicians, actors, etc are the new royalty, but the kids deserve a chance to grow up and seek fame or not.

11. Finally, Delete the worst violations from the histories

Do admins have this tool already? I think this is done with some extreme cases already?

The proposed policy would not cover:

6b. Where to find someone, when relevant

Ex: "...changed his testimony suddenly in Blahblah's favor, and immediately got a job at Blahblah Auto Care."

Keep it.

7b. General whereabouts, when relevant

Ex: "Rick grew up seeing the world because his mother ran Mommy's Tour Service, in fact it's still going with her at the helm <ref>http://www.MommysTourService.com/</ref>"

Keep it.

Anything relevant

Keep it.

Couch on his Head and Smiling (talk) 05:46, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Comments

Sounds like an extremely subjective policy to me. Example: Barack Obama. It is common knowledge which school his girls go to, why not state it? It is relevant (in my opinion) and significantly sourced. The fact that you bring up "the proposed policy would not cover "Anything relevant" worries me a lot. How to define what is relevant from the things you brought up as problems? I think it's a case by case matter, to be discussed on article's talk page. My temporary 2 cents until more users come by to comment. [CharlieEchoTango] 06:59, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

His girls go to school with armed men sworn to die for them. <( User:Couch on his Head and Smiling (talk) )> 07:38, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, they do, but this is an irrelevant argument (heck, it doesn't even address the issue I raised. The subjective policy proposal is the relevant matter here, not the example. [CharlieEchoTango] 08:02, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
All of this is already policy. If it's published, we can use it. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 08:14, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

No, that is 100% wrong. If it is published and relevent we can use it. Being published is not a club with which we can force statements into articles which degrade their quality. Being published in a reliable source is a necessary but not sufficient criteria for including a fact about something. It also needs to be relevent to the understanding of the subject and it needs to work within the prose of the article. Editorial decisions should be made on the overall quality of the article, not solely on what random facts we can find written down somewhere else. --Jayron32 16:27, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Jayron, that is true, but wasn't my point (darn, you're so literal, so here goes...).

There is a difference between deciding what is relevant in each specific case (as is, one would hope, usually done), and writing a policy. My point was about writing a policy; policies have the tricky nature that one can bang others over the head with it. What I see above seems to be a (sort of creepy) long list of set-in-stone do's and don'ts that we should all learn by heart, and if I don't (or screw up on it) then somebody else will wikilaywer me into "yeah, but according to section 5, subsection 10, paragraph X8a...". Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 22:47, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't agree with every or perhaps even most examples above (for example the place where Woody Allen regularly plays or played the clarinet has been widely reported and has been part of his notability), but there is a genuine privacy issue with the vast majority of BLP subjects who are only barely notable. It is one thing to have your place of residence mentioned once in a local paper; it's another thing altogether to have it included forever in a top-5 website that is the first google hit for your name, especially when your BLP can be edited by anyone in the world who has an axe to grind with you. --JN 466 10:03, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
I should point out for those who haven't been here long that we've never been able to even approach a universal consensus on relevance. (See the page history of that page for various proposals that didn't happen) Gigs (talk) 16:39, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

My personal rule for trying to ascertain relevance is simple: I ask myself, "if I started a conversation with someone else about it, would they care (fans of the subject excluded)?"bwmcmaste (talk) 21:55, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

If it's sourced and it is relevant to the main article, why shouldn't it be included? The biggest issue I've found on Wikipedia is the satisfaction of the former premise, rather than the latter. bwmcmaste (talk) 21:41, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

The question isn't about things that are relevant. The question is about things that aren't. If person X is notable, they are notable for a reason. Unless their children are a reason why they are notable, the children aren't notable, so we don't need to give any information at all beyond possibly 'X has two sons and a daughter'. This is established Wikipedia policy anyway I thought: notability isn't transferable. AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:04, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

I like that, Notablility isn't transferable. <( User:Couch on his Head and Smiling (talk) )> 23:03, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Someone please tell that to the Kardashians! (Sorry, Andy, I couldn't resist...) — DennisDallas (talk) 23:35, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Cardassians?! Set phasers to CAPSLOCK and prepare to repel boarders! <( User:Couch on his Head and Smiling (talk) )> 00:09, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Couch. bwmcmaste (talk) 23:11, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Actually, the relevant policy regarding children seems to be WP:BLPNAME. Most of the rest is just trivia: i.e. not notable. AndyTheGrump (talk) 23:16, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

No need for it - I fear instruction creep, and I believe that exeunt policies are sufficient, assuming (perhaps optimistically) that people apply common sense. The BLP policies are not only germane to actual articles about living people. Of course, complications arise in specific cases, and that's why we have consensus, and indeed WP:IAR. Frankly, I believe that whilst it is utterly imperative to protect individuals, the current climate of BLP concerns addresses this within all reason, and once you start trying to nail down the specifics, you run into more danger than you avoid. More common sense, less rules. Huzzah. Chzz ► 23:37, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

General feeling seems to be, We already cover this in BLP. Maybe we do, I thought we did, but here's what just happened (Chzz will remember): I was "indefinitely" banned, then quickly reinstated. There were complications (ALL CAPS STAR TREK JOKES IN EDIT SUMMARIES MADE ME LOOK LIKE A BAD PERSON HERE TO CAUSE HARM), but the basic charge was "vandalism and disruptive editing," for removing irrelevant and non-notable information. Maybe there really is consensus that WP:BLP already applies in the cases I address here. <( User:Couch on his Head and Smiling (talk) )> 00:33, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

BLP is not the best place to discuss a block, despite your being - I hope - a lp. My *opinion* - and, of course that is all it is - is that too many specific rules make for a poor wiki, because the more you try to tie it down, the more it slips away in myriad politicking. Chzz ► 02:58, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Wasn't trying to reopen anything. <( User:Couch on his Head and Smiling (talk) )> 04:33, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Biographies of living people under 18

Latest comment: 13 years ago76 comments36 people in discussion

Is it appropriate that any special provisions apply to articles about children?

Black Kite's closure of this AfD was listed at DRV here. During that discussion there was a rough consensus that an RfC would be a good idea, and so I have started this one.—S Marshall T/C 22:52, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Might be best to discuss this at WT:BLP, as the (important and timely) question is broader than just deletion. Skomorokh 23:02, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Please feel free to move it to wherever you think is most appropriate.—S Marshall T/C 23:04, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Have done so, cheers. Skomorokh 23:09, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes

I think that, as with all BLPs, articles about living children should indeed be rigorously monitored so they are free from libel, vandalism, and other unverified and/or negative content. However, I think the AfD and the resulting DRV are more about whether child athletes are notable—and this is a completely different topic, for a separate RfC regarding WP:ATHLETE. (I personally agree with the deletion of that article and don't think winning in the Youth Olympics constitutes notability.) But on the issue of all BLPs of minors (which I am defining as anyone under 18, although each country has its own laws dealing with the age of majority), we should certainly take extra precautions—but I'm not advocating pending changes- or semi-protecting them all just yet. Obviously, bad content should be removed, but we need to value their privacy—generally, we should not post non-essential private info about children in their articles, I would say. So yes, we should have special provisions, but not overkill. /ƒETCH COMMS / 23:54, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
Special provisions are appropriate in cases like the Star Wars Kid, where we don't give the kid's name, even though it has been reported in some reliable sources, or in the case of children of celebrities; e.g., we should not carry content about which school they go to etc., even if a reliable source can be found that mentions it. --JN 466 01:43, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, things like school and such should be left out unless it would make up a major part of the article and isn't potentially harmful to the subject (i.e, when they personally publicize such details elsewhere). /ƒETCH COMMS / 02:10, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

The school of teh child of a celebity in pretty noon-encylopedic. Rich Farmbrough, 15:07, 21 November 2010 (UTC).

As a young editor, their current school should not be included because it could lead to stalkers off wiki and might put their safety at risk, such as JonBenét Ramsey for example. Sophie ^(Talk) 18:50, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Athletes aren't the only minors who have WP articles. There are articles on all sorts of teenage musicians, actors and other minors who have become or are becoming popular culture icons. It's these kinds of articles that need protection, because the fame and the young age can (I assume, not being famous, thankfully) be a difficult combination and because of the kind of vandalism (both routine and disgusting) that they attract. So yes, I do think some kind of special measures and certainly extra care are required when handling such articles. To give just one example, I've been watching Miley Cyrus for some time and her fame and young age (although she's approaching her 18th birthday, she became famous at 15 or 16) have attracted some of the most obscene vandalism I've seen (and I've seen quite a bit), along with all the other crap that most popular culture BLPs get. I'm not sure what measures we could take, but we could start with more liberal use of semi-protection, RevDel, perhaps deletion of unsourced BLPs on the very young and deletion of articles on under-18s where notability is marginal (even if some guideline or other is just about met). Perhaps a sub-category of category:living people for minors might help in keeping track of such articles? HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 03:30, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Again, semi-prot would be worthwhile on any article attracting over-much vandalism. Rich Farmbrough, 15:07, 21 November 2010 (UTC).

Yes. I have no objection in principle to additional safeguards when dealing with minors. I'm not sure what they would be, but for example an increased notability requirement for minor athletes, or perhaps for minors in general, would be reasonable in my opinion. I'm not sure if adding even more stringent requirements to WP:BLP when dealing with minors would be in order, but it would be reasonable to consider it. Herostratus (talk) 07:19, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
- I don't get this. Suppose the notability requirement for association football players is to have played for a division 3 or higher club. To then change that to "divison 2 or higher for 17 year-olds and premier division for 16 year-olds" would seem ludicrous, anyone that young would be more notable not less. Rich Farmbrough, 15:07, 21 November 2010 (UTC).
Yes. There is a small, but significant, risk of harm to a child. Classmates or members of the child's peer group may be tempted to edit the child's article and we can't expect good judgement from them in terms of what it is appropriate to include. Information they add may be quickly reverted, but still visible in the article's history. The risk of harm to a child outweighs the desire for completeness in an online encyclopaedia. Articles about children should have pending changes enabled by default.—S Marshall T/C 13:45, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
- Agree about Pending Changes for all minors. Collect (talk) 14:01, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
- I also agree. Pending changes protection for all minors sounds reasonable enough. Guoguo12 --Talk-- 22:31, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
  - Does Pending changes obscure history if it's disallowed? I don't think it does, so this seems un-useful from that point of view. Rich Farmbrough, 15:07, 21 November 2010 (UTC).

It's not clear to me what you mean. Rd232 ^talk 18:09, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Rich means that even if Pending Changes is enabled, any nonsense edits will still be visible and retrievable in the article history. The OP seemed to imply that Pending Changes would make a difference in that regard; it doesn't. --JN 466 02:52, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

It may not obscure page histories, but then again, the whole concept behind page protection is prevention. By not allowing the nonsense edits to occur in the first place, the article history will remain clean. Guoguo12 --Talk-- 03:26, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Pending Changes does not affect the History, only the visible version. It is an output filter, not an input filter, and the History records 'every edit' of the input--some of it doesn't make it to a public version, that's all. In order to get the kind of prevention you're discussing you'd need semi or full page protection, or maybe a small deterrent effect from Pending Changes edits not posting 'live', which isn't really advertised much (at least not yet). Ocaasi (talk) 06:35, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes A much higher bar for historical notability should be required. In many cases people associate "there are sources" as meaning "encyclopedic. That's not so (WP:NOT#NEWS for example). But it's not a major issue. I submit that for children we should not host an article on the basis of a matter (or including coverage of a matter), unless there is evidence the matter is of enduring significance (WP:NOT) - a significantly higher bar.
What this means is, we don't make the assumption "lots of sources == notable" for children or "lots of sources == mention this in their bio", unless there is good evidence it is of enduring significance as well. That way we keep BLPs where there is real need, but we don't keep BLPs on children who do stupid or weird things, where the attention will drop off and there is no real long term value. Nor would we include transient non-enduring matters in their BLPs. If we are conservative (small "c") with BLPs, then more so with children. I'd like to see discussion of the principle that everything in a child's BLP, and the child's BLP itself, must justify itself as having enduring significance. I cannot immediately be sure if that works or not, but I'd like to see discussion as a principle. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 02:44, 23 November 2010 (UTC)
More or less. I think that child/teen atheletes, science fair winners etc are simply not notable, so I would like see such article deleted. But I don't think a special ChildBLP policy/guideline need be developed; maybe just add a caveat in the current BLP policy. Abductive (reasoning) 00:46, 24 November 2010 (UTC)
Yes, there should be special policies for articles about children. Most especially, Wikipedia could do without erotic childhood pictures of living people. We also ought to follow reliable sources that generally do not name minors convicted of crimes.Anythingyouwant (talk) 04:44, 24 November 2010 (UTC)
Perhaps we can give greater powers to minors to delete their articles, especially if they're negative. And I can see people being sympathetic if negative material is removed about minors, whether formally put in policy or not. I don't see any distinct "special provisions" being implemented, just a matter of degree. Christopher Connor (talk) 23:24, 24 November 2010 (UTC)
Yes, but that doesn't mean exclusion. Shirley Temple was a notable nine-year-old, and in similar circumstances today we should report fully on her. Personally, I'm most concerned about giving current location (city or school), and about any characterizations that are shameful. If we rely on the best sources, rather than the flimsy promotional or scandal rags, then it'll work out. Will Beback talk 13:02, 25 November 2010 (UTC)
Yes, but with the proviso that anything that appears in the "Quality Press" or on an official website under the control of the child's parents or guardians can be reproduced - for example the British papers carried stories of Prince William's first day at each school that he attended. Martinvl (talk) 09:03, 28 November 2010 (UTC)
Yes because if you were someone and looked at your own wikipedia page (who hasnt googled their own name?) and saw something on your wikipedia page on the lines of "your ugly/fat/etc" you would get upset and lower your self asteem - Sophie ^(Talk) 18:54, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
Yes The internet, and particularly Wikipedia, lasts forever. I think that the notability standard for kids should be higher as well as the sourcing standards. For example, I can see articles about a royal family member or the Dali Lama, but not child athletes or the children of politicans. There are too many tabloid-like sources in the world today. Racepacket (talk) 12:09, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

No

The real problem here is WP:ATH which allows an extremely low bar for notability. If we only had articles on truly notable athletes then we wouldn't even be having this discussion. I see absolutely no need to carve out a special case for children, when we could just address the root cause, all these articles on non-notable athletes that don't have the kind of secondary source coverage to pass WP:GNG Gigs (talk) 02:15, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
- I agree that there is a problem with the notability bar of WP:ATH. --JN 466 02:38, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
  - And as well, I agree that we should be extra careful publishing information on low profile children. My position though is that we should address the root cause, rather than a symptom. Gigs (talk) 03:27, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
- There might be problems with aspects of WP:ATHLETE, but given many sport projects have determined their own notability bar that this guideline contains, it is improper to paint the entire guideline with so broad a brush. Reso lute 02:53, 21 November 2010 (UTC)
I don't see any arguments being put forward about why articles about children should be subject to special BLP rules or what these special rules should be. Until such arguments are put on the table, I see no reason to believe that our current BLP rules are not just as appropriate for children as they are for adults. Sandstein 07:49, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
- The problem is that the very young are less able, emotionally and psychologically, to deal with the kind of crap that is, despite our best efforts, inevitably added to articles. An adult might be able to deal with being called, say, a "fucking whore" or a "silly twat" or whatever. I'm sure we're all thick-skinned enough to laugh it off, but would, say, a 14-year-old unused to that kind of attention be as thick-skinned as seasoned WP editors and admins? HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 18:05, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
  - Neither adults nor children should be called a "fucking whore" or a "silly twat"on Wikipedia, and WP:BLP already says so. I can't immediately think of anything specific that current BLP policy allows but that should be forbidden with respect to children. Do you have a specific situation in mind? Sandstein 12:42, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
Current BLP rules already state that BLPs should be written conservatively - if that is followed, no special rules for minors are needed. Clearly I disapprove of scurrilous material in any BLP at all. WP is not a tabloid, and should not traffic in promoting rumour or allegation. Collect (talk) 08:11, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
I think that current rules are sufficient. If we pay attention to RS number and quality such that we meet notability, there's no real issue. Jclemens (talk) 17:15, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
Per Sandstein and Collect, no special rules or provisions are needed. The AFD should have focused on notability issues, and the spin-off RFC should have been at WP:ATH. Rami R 18:49, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
Per Sandstein. No special rules are necessary, the current ones have not been shown insufficient. Feature creep is not desirable. Reso lute 02:53, 21 November 2010 (UTC)
Reviewing the arguments, and adding a few of my own, I have to go for "no" - moreover I rather think this is a "perennial debate"? Rich Farmbrough, 15:09, 21 November 2010 (UTC).
As mentioned above, a properly-written BLP should be no more of a threat to a child than an adult. If it's not properly-written, it's subject to deletion like any other BLP. After all, we'd look pretty ridiculous if we didn't have an article on Abigail Breslin, wouldn't we?--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 14:07, 23 November 2010 (UTC)
Per Sandstein, I'm inclined to say no, but am willing to read what the specific rules would be. If they were put forth, they should treat Justin Bieber very different from the 14 year old boy who gets 15 minutes of fame through no fault of his own.--Wehwalt (talk) 14:28, 23 November 2010 (UTC)
No. Adequate guidelines exist for children, including conservative writing style and a high bar set for BLPs. Binksternet (talk) 19:00, 25 November 2010 (UTC)
we should have strict rules, and we already do. And we need to remember more to go by the principle of "do no harm" than any more exact wording. There is no possible harm in accurate non-sensitive information about a child in a career seeking publicity. If one thinks such publicity harmful to the child, the harm was already done by the parents, and we do not add to it. DGG ( talk ) 14:31, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
I think DGG is rightly getting at the distinction between children who just happen to get some media attention versus public figures who just happen to be children. If someone has a publicist, an agent, a tour bus, etc. they can be treated more or less the same, though perhaps with an extra-keen eye to keeping out sensationalist rumors or 'private life' details (which are generally limited already). We already have good BLP guidelines on Notability, NotNews, 1E, and Avoiding Victimization which keep the focus of BLP articles on enduring, substantial, relevant, and non-harmful attention. I could see summarizing the effect of these on children, but I don't think a new subset of requirements is particularly needed. All BLP articles are already sensitive and putting special attention on children almost sanctions lesser scrutiny for living adults. Legislating a higher bar for articles about children is a partial (as well as redundant and probably ineffective) way to try and solve through policy proscriptions what probably has to be solved through better enforcement or more robust technological screening. Ocaasi (talk) 06:54, 28 November 2010 (UTC)
I can't conceive of any positive changes to WP:BLP that would be specific to minors. Any policies, such as "more stringent" monitoring of BLP's certainly shouldn't be specific to articles covering children. The specific person an article covers is mostly irrelevant when dealing with vandalism or controversial unreferenced claims. --§Pumpmeup 03:48, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Discussion

I don't have an immediate opinion as to what to do, but the thought occurs that under-18 BLPs may be more vulnerable to peers (people who know the subject, personally or otherwise) mucking about than the average adult BLP. Rd232 ^talk 01:45, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

I was just having a conversation regarding the special notability standards overriding the GNG on Jimbo's talk, so I left a link from there to here. Gigs (talk) 02:25, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
I don't think we should be discussing WP:ATHLETE here; that needs its own RfC. (But I do agree that child athletes are generally non-notable, Youth Olympics or not.) The issue here is clear guidance on BLPs of minors, and while this was started in connection to the AfD/DRV, it should be independent of that situation and be applicable to non-athlete BLPs as well. /ƒETCH COMMS / 02:55, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
- I don't see how it's possible not to. These articles probably wouldn't have been created if the bar were higher in the first place, or at a minimum the AfD would have been a solid delete due to lack of secondary source coverage. You note this yourself. I don't think we should craft a cure for a symptom when we have the ability to cure the root cause. There was a recent RfC on WP:ATH, where the absolute joke of a closure was that a 23 support vs 18 opposed outcome was somehow enough to promote the current sports notability guideline to replace the old WP:ATH. There was another RfC more recently that focused on footballer notability, but it failed to narrow the criteria as well. Gigs (talk) 03:24, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
  - If you want to fight another battle over WP:ATH, then do so with an open and transparent argument. Don't hide behind a "Won't somebody please think of the children?" argument to try push for changes to a guideline who's topic area has a only a small minority of minors under its scope. Resolute 02:58, 21 November 2010 (UTC)
    - This is just one symptom of a heavily flawed guideline. I don't think anyone could accuse me of being anything other than transparent in my overall dislike of subject notability guidelines that let us have articles on people without sufficient secondary source coverage. Gigs (talk) 17:51, 21 November 2010 (UTC)
I think the cases of children deserve special consideration. We should be more hesitant to include information just because it exists. I am not certain at this point if we need a special policy for BLMinors. As to Rd232's point, I would point people to the history of the article on Daeg Faerch. LadyofShalott 02:58, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
Comment: a starting point would be to identify minors as a class of BLPs. {{WP Biography}} has a "living=yes" parameter; it could similarly have a "minor=yes" parameter. Where birth years are given in the article, a bot can do it automatically (and also remove automatically when no longer the case). Rd232 ^talk 16:46, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

I agree with everything Rd232 says immediately above. When that information is easily available, we should make use of it. I keep pointing though to the Daeg Faerch article where multiple birth years have been asserted at various times, never with a reliable source. There was speculation that some of the silliness being perpetrated there may have been by the subject himself. On the basis of verifiability (the lack thereof) I have insisted that none of those dates stay unless and until someone produces the WP:RS for one of them, something which has not occurred as of yet. LadyofShalott 03:16, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

This is like the old joke "Father is it OK to smoke when I'm praying?" "No what a terrible idea." the smoker, dissatisfied with the answer, finds a second priest "Father is it OK to pray when I'm smoking?" "Of course my son it is always good to pray." In the same way we are all drawn to support "Children are especially vulnerable, lets give them extra protection." but not so much "On your eighteenth birthday you are fair game." And this begs the question - what is the special protection? If we don't list their DOB how do we know when they are 18? Do we intend to have a higher hurdle for RS for contentious issues? What is it that we will disallow on a young person's article, that would be perfectly OK on an adults? Rich Farmbrough, 14:58, 21 November 2010 (UTC).

You don't need to frame the issue in that way. You can (i) identify BLP articles of minors, and try to give them more attention, eg by creating lists or categories of such articles that have not had recent experienced editor attention (ii) semi-protect or apply pending changes (iii) apply higher notability standards (iv) apply higher sourcing standards, eg anything unsourced in them is deletable purely because it's unsourced (whereas for BLPs, it's supposed to be contentious to be deleted). PS We don't need a DOB to classify as "minor" in the talk page template, it's often clear from the text. Rd232 ^talk 18:07, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Most of those are special treatment or attention as opposed to special rules. I think that's probably a superior approach: editors who are willing to expend extra effort to police BLPs of clearly notable minors are absolutely welcome to do so, using the full force of BLP to keep 'em cleaned up. Jclemens (talk) 08:20, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

It's certainly a start. And it should help collect evidence/experience on whether special rules are really necessary. Rd232 ^talk 10:48, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Editors interested in this discussion may also want to read this column by the Public Editor of The New York Times, addressing a similar issue that journalists are increasingly confronting now that newspapers are posted on the Internet and articles within them are permanently Google searchable. Newyorkbrad (talk) 00:52, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Moving on

I've read the discussion above and I believe that there is insufficient consensus to support any new rules about child BLPs. However, I believe there is broad support (even in the "no" camp above), when dealing with children, for a particularly rigorous and strict application of the rules we already have. In practice this would probably translate into extra latitude for administrators when deciding whether to fully-protect articles that relate to children, and extra latitude in closing AfDs.

I would now like to propose the creation of Category:Living children, which should consist anyone who's in Category:Living people with a year of birth that indicates they're under the age of (say) 16 or 18, in order to facilitate finding (and watchlisting) articles about children.

I would also like to propose that we discuss ways that the wording of our existing policies and guidelines could, or should, mention children.—S Marshall T/C 00:27, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

I support the idea of a living children category as well as someone's suggestion above of adding a "|minor (child, whatever)=yes" parameter to the WPBiography talk page template. LadyofShalott 05:36, 25 November 2010 (UTC)
- Seems a reasonable approach for now, though I suspect with our increasing emphasis on BLP policy we will be revisiting this issue with in the next year or two. The Resident Anthropologist (talk) 02:45, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
  - I agree with respect to consensus and do not object to tagging articles about children as such. But I'm not sure what is meant by a "particularly rigorous and strict application" of WP:BLP to children. We should apply WP:BLP strictly and rigorously to everyone. Our BLP rules are based on our intention to protect human dignity, neutrality and verifiability; and neither of these three elements applies to children in a different manner than to adults. Sandstein 15:44, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
    - I think there are ethical considerations, Sandstein. These are in areas where there's administrative discretion. For example, an administrator might refuse to delete a BLP on an adult who'd been convicted of a notable crime. I think that depending on the crime and its notability, there should be more of a presumption to delete such a BLP if the perpetrator was a child. (There's a defence of infancy below certain ages, currently 10 in US federal law and the law of England and Wales, below which the perpetrator would not be convicted, but I'm talking about BLPs on, say, 10-16 year olds.) Certainly no pornbios of actors under 18 (even though they exist). That kind of thing.—S Marshall T/C 19:54, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
      - I don't think it would be appropriate to have a public category named 'living children', its encyclopedic relevance is debatable, it would be hard to maintain and it would be odd to see it on 17 year-old persons, or as likely would happen due to lack of maintenance, 18+ yo persons. A talk page maintenance category, added through a parameter as suggested above, could be useful. But it's also easy to directly review the birth categories (e.g. Category:2000 births) of the latest 18 years. Cenarium (talk) 21:57, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
        Yes, I think using the birth categories for any children-related purpose would be better. S Marshall, I agree that there are serious ethical arguments in favor of what you propose, but it goes beyond a strict application of existing BLP policy. What you propose (delete all underage pornbios, default to delete certain children BLPs) are nontrivial changes to deletion policy; they would need to be explicitly proposed and find community consensus. Sandstein 22:22, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
        Well, those were meant as examples rather than specific proposals, Sandstein. I made them in response to your question about whether, when dealing with a BLP, it's necessary to consider children in a different light to adults, and I intended to provide you with examples of where there are ethical grounds to think differently about children.
        The actual proposal I've made is that we should allow administrators wider latitude to delete, fully-protect, or enable pending changes on, any material concerning a living child in cases where the administrator feels there are ethical grounds to do so. I don't wish to propose several new rules about it because the consensus above is that I should not. I would prefer to propose one or two new phrases in our existing BLP wording if other editors agree that there's something to my concerns.—S Marshall T/C 22:46, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
Short version: I don't think we're looking to create cast iron rules about specific cases. I think we're looking for a form of words that prompts people to think about the subject and use good judgment.—S Marshall T/C 22:56, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
Two separate issues it seems, one is the Category:Living Children, the other is guidelines for what to do with that information. It's pretty hard to justify not having a measly category--if it helps, great, and if it doesn't, it's just a category. Given the importance of this issue it would be hard to rule out a 'slightly' non-encyclopedic Cat if it could lead to better oversight. However, what to do with that oversight, whether changing the deletion, notability, sourcing, or other guidelines would have to handled separately. Probably better to get support for the category first and then have a discussion about whether it should get special treatment rather than juts special attention.

As for the age issue, I think I'd support cutting the age at 16/17: to avoid maintenance issues; because we're not dealing with purely legal (age of majority) issues; because 17 and 18 year olds are relatively more capable of handling bad publicity than younger teens and children, etc. That's a marginal issue, though, and the slight confusion over having some 17 year olds 'not' tagged as children would have to be balanced with the confusion of having some 18 year olds 'still' tagged as them. Either way, I suppose, depending on the concern. Ocaasi (talk) 07:09, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

My thought is that administrators have and will continue to act vigorously to protect children where there is a need, and that a one size fits all policy is likely to be problematical, because my experience is that one size fits all usually fits everybody, badly. Let's trust our admins to do the right thing when necessary and to know when to sit on their hands.--Wehwalt (talk) 11:42, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

What specific special consideration should we be giving to articles on children above and beyond WP:BLP? BLP is pretty strong as it is - and I'm not clear what extra wording one could add to statements such as "Editors must take particular care when adding information about living persons..." and "Be very firm about the use of high quality sources". Unless there is a specific extra consideration, then there is no need for an extra category. SilkTork *^YES! 18:30, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
Suggestion It might be worthwhile to create a list of child BLPs, and a list of editors who will volunteer to watchlist them and check them regularly for unsourced statements. Heck, if I thought the editor workforce could sustain it, we could try to do it for BLPs in general. Ray^Talk 19:29, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
Well, children first. Let's walk before we run. :) Could a bot be programmed to add the necessary parameter to {{WPBiography}} and compile the list?—S Marshall T/C 22:03, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
Comment. As to the "slightly non-encyclopedic" categories, I would hope to avoid them. I have been trying to change several highly non-encyclopedic categories for some time, unsuccessfully. I would hope, without sidetracking this discussion, that the same high standards editors have for articles, would pertain to categories as well. Student7 (talk) 14:25, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Template:Notcontact

Latest comment: 13 years ago11 comments6 people in discussion

The template Notcontact should be included on all BLP talk pages, to advice users NOT to try to conctact the subject of the article directly. MikeNicho231 (talk) 14:19, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Is this actually something that occurs often? AndyTheGrump (talk) 15:09, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

There are actually people who believe Wikipedia is a place where people, especially scientists, politicians and others post information about themselves. Therefore, some people try to make contact with the article's subject on the talk page. MikeNicho231 (talk) 15:39, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

I dare say it happens, but does it happen very often? Perhaps you could provide a diff or two? Personally, I think talk pages are often over-cluttered with templates as it is, and the sort of people that do this aren't that likely to read them anyway. AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:02, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

I would think this should only be used on talk pages where there have been multiple attempts to contact the subject. Using it on all BLP talk pages seems unnecessary and would indeed add to talk page clutter. --RL0919 (talk) 17:00, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Have to agree with AndyTheGrump, I'm already ignoring plenty of templates at the tops of pages... <( User:Couch on his Head and Smiling (talk) )> 17:25, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

[2]. A classic example is that of a person that is the corporate associate of the article's subject. MikeNicho231 (talk) 20:42, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

I agree with everyone else. BLPs already have too many templates, and this problem isn't nearly common enough for universal inclusion. Gigs (talk) 21:07, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Agree with Gigs and would say I've seen attempts to contact fictional characters this same way and they're not covered by BLP.

However if it Transcluded in the text from Template:BLP and was used as a replacement for that only on articles where this was a common occurrence then it might be useful - Though since most of these articles fall under Wikiproject Biography there would have to be changes made to Template:WikiProject Biography to allow it's use in those rare circumstances. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 23:34, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Hello Mister Rambo! I can't believe I'm talking to THE Rambo here on your personal Internet Talk Page. This is a great way to connect with the fans, no calling the movie studio and getting laughed at while they pretend you aren't even alive. I'll get right to it: Do you practice your trigger pull technique like most firearms experts do? I have a theory you're a specialist expert, specializing in the kind of marksmanship that doesn't require a steady trigger pull, am I right? You don't even have to practice that stuff! Thanks for your time, and is Wikipedia your middle name? Stage name? Family pet name? <( User:Couch on his Head and Smiling (talk) )> 20:37, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

this was on the article for the fictional Michael Scofield from the TV series Prison Break. There was another one there asking him not to remove his tattoo as well, all very strange... Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 20:48, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

BLPCAT proposal

Latest comment: 13 years ago164 comments29 people in discussion

Propose to include ethnicity in BLPCAT. Added words in bold:

Category names do not carry disclaimers or modifiers, so the case for each category must be made clear by the article text and its reliable sources. Categories regarding ethnicity, religious beliefs and sexual orientation should not be used unless the subject has publicly self-identified with the ethnicity, belief or orientation in question; and the subject's ethnicity, beliefs or sexual orientation are relevant to their notable activities or public life, according to reliable published sources. Caution should be used with categories that suggest a person has a poor reputation (see false light). For example, Category:Criminals and its subcategories should only be added for an incident that is relevant to the person's notability; the incident was published by reliable third-party sources; the subject was convicted; and the conviction was not overturned on appeal. These principles apply equally to infobox statements, and to lists and navigation templates that are based on ethnicity, religious beliefs and sexual orientation, or which suggest that the persons included in the list or template have a poor reputation.

Views? --JN 466 18:24, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Note that this policy paragraph only relates to categorisation, infobox statements, navigation templates and inclusion of living persons in list articles (such as "List of Mexican American writers"). It does not affect BLP content.

Support inclusion of "ethnicity" ... this is long overdue.Griswaldo (talk) 18:31, 28 November 2010 (UTC)
Support with a caveat - This makes sense if only that the existing guideline: Wikipedia:Categorization/Ethnicity, gender, religion and sexuality includes all three (plus gender). But I think the big issue is the intersection by ethnicity, rather than just categorising by ethnicity, and would still like to see that resolved. - jc37 18:48, 28 November 2010 (UTC)
Support This is a bare minimum requirement in the context of privacy considerations. However, I intend to argue at some point that 'ethnicity' is a social construct, and on that basis may not be a legitimate universally-applicable category at all. Since this will clearly put several cats amongst even more pigeons, I'll have to consider this in more detail. AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:16, 28 November 2010 (UTC)
Support this as a half-measure. I would like to see this generalized to every contentious category instead of having a call out list. There's nothing inherently special about this list of attributes, except that they are often the most contentious. Gigs (talk) 00:07, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
Support with the same caveats as Gigs and JC37, also would like to see self-identification hand in hand with self-identification (The Pope Test above). i.e; If every reliable source in the world had identified Barack Obama as the first African American President of the United States is his self-identification still needed? Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 00:19, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
Support As Griswaldo says, long overdue. I agree that it should probably be extended, but let's at least start here. Dougweller (talk) 14:10, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
Oppose - some ethnicities are rarely contentious, and lists based on them are harmless. For instance, I can't see anything wrong with including Kiri Te Kanawa and Michael Campbell in our list of Māori people, even though their notability has nothing to do with their ethnicity. I'd support a proposal that was sensibly limited to contentious ethnicities or intersections. --Avenue (talk) 14:15, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
- Comment - Did you actually look at list of Māori people, Avenue? I'd say that is an AfD candidate itself. The first thing that struck me was it's reference to the Māori as a 'race' - making the list a direct contravention of WP:EGRS (I've edited this out). I'd say at absolute minimum this would need a major cleanup to check validity of entries. On a more general point, I'd say that to suggest that Māori ethnicity is uncontentious is just plain wrong, and an indication of why this revision is necessary. AndyTheGrump (talk) 14:36, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
  - Yes, I did, and while I didn't click through on every link, I saw nothing overtly objectionable there (besides a complete lack of sources, which unfortunately is the case for many of our lists). "Race" did seem a bit dated, true. Was there anything else you thought was contentious? --Avenue (talk) 14:55, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
    - "Race" isn't just "a bit dated", the article was a direct contravention of WP:EGRS: "the intersection of subcategories of Category:Race are never applied to subcategories of Category:People". And as for you seeing nothing objectionable in the list, that is utterly irrelevant - the question is would involved people (those on the list, and those omitted obviously, for a start) find it objectionable? ~~I'd suggest you need to learn a little about the context before making sweeping statements based on what 'you see'. You could read the Māori article for a start.~~ AndyTheGrump (talk) 15:08, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
      - Hmmm, I don't think I'm the one making sweeping statements here. Even if that part of WP:EGRS wasn't disputed, where do Māori show up in Category:Race? What relevance does a single word in the lead section have to that anyway? Again, what specifically do you find objectionable about the list, now that the word "race" is gone? Who do you think is in the list who would object to being there, and who do you think would object to currently being omitted? And not that it matters, but given that I've made 62 edits to the Māori article over the last three or four years, I have probably read it at least once or twice. --Avenue (talk) 16:52, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
        Apologies for suggesting you need to read the article, Avenue. Clearly you have, and are familiar with it's content. I find it difficult to see how you could thus argue that Māori ethnicity is uncontentious though, given the inequalities evident in their situation within NZ society. Do you not at least accept that an erroneous attribution of 'ethnicity' could have negative consequences? AndyTheGrump (talk) 23:39, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
        Thank you for apologising, Andy. I'd certainly agree that there are many ethnic inequalities in NZ, that Māori have faced many disadvantages and injustices, and that some NZers are still openly racist (though more often against new immigrants than Māori, in my experience). But while many Māori issues are contentious, I think that being Māori is not. Perhaps I am just showing my ignorance, but I have trouble imagining situations where being erroneously described as Māori in Wikipedia would have negative consequences. --Avenue (talk) 00:28, 30 November 2010 (UTC)
        Well, I'd think that if there is still the potential for racism against Māoris in NZ, a misattribution might have negative effects. Or even a 'correct' attribution if the person in question preferred not to be identified as Māori. I note that the article reads "There has been considerable intermarriage with later immigrants, but people with any Māori ancestry may consider themselves to be Māori". I think the operative word there is may. While racism exists, it should not be Wikipedia's role to facilitate it with lists possibly containing errors of fact, based on uncertain categorisations. AndyTheGrump (talk) 00:44, 30 November 2010 (UTC)
        A more direct way to avoid harm, with less over-reach, would be DGG's suggestion of omitting people from lists and categories where they have expressed a wish not to be so listed, instead of the current rule. I would support this for ethnicity, religion and sexual orientation - or even a broader rule, where we omit people if they have specifically denied being Māori/Catholic/gay/etc. --Avenue (talk) 07:42, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Question: does anyone object to relevant WikiProjects being notified about this discussion (e.g. WikiProject Ethnic groups and its descendant WikiProjects)? --Avenue (talk) 14:55, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
- YES - I object most strongly - This could possibly be seen as an attempt to secure !votes from those most concerned with maintaining the status quo - these lists. Though involvement of the wider community in this debate is clearly necessary, a neutral way of attracting attention needs to be found. AndyTheGrump (talk) 15:13, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
  - I would also oppose this per WP:CANVASS. Thank you for asking before doing it.Griswaldo (talk) 15:19, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
    - You're welcome. How do you think we should try to attract wider input? --Avenue (talk) 16:52, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
      - I've rfc tagged it. That should get a few more people in. Gigs (talk) 22:47, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
        As someone who despises canvassing, I can guarentee that notifying Wikiprojects is not canvassing -they exist to coordinate editors for these very things. Thinking such projects as necessarily biased is a direct violation of WP:AGF. I am going to notify them. --Cyclopia ^talk 00:24, 30 November 2010 (UTC)
        Please try to be a bit less combative. There is often a fuzzy line between canvassing and the proper use of Wikiprojects. It is canvassing anytime someone notifies people who they know share their POV about an AfD or RfC related to that shared POV - wikiproject or no wikiproject that's the essential point of WP:CANVASS. Cheers.Griswaldo (talk) 02:40, 30 November 2010 (UTC)
- NO - The question is why the relevant projects were not included 21 hours before this question was asked.

To discuss the inclusion or exclusion of ethnicity without actively seeking comment from the relevant WikiProjects is beyond rude.
To decide anything about ethnicity without the input of those who are specifically involved in the subject is condescending.

Let's not isolate ourselves in our ivory towers. JimCubb (talk) 18:28, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Oppose If somebody is very well documented as being of Irish and Italian descent (or has said so themselves, etc.), then how would the addition of "Category:American people of Irish descent" be a BLP issue at all? It's just a documented fact. Is the category relevant or irrelevant in that particular case? That's a different question, and one that has nothing to do with the BLP policy. It seems like an overreach of BLP (and BLPcat) into governing over what's relevant or irrelevant rather than what is contentious - the latter is BLP's purpose, not the former. I suspect BLPcat was originally written because the categorization of people as gay or a Scientologist was contentious, so self-identification was required (the "relevant to notability" part is a joke, or at least unnecessary - I doubt that there are any articles of openly gay people on Wikipedia that are not tagged with an LGBT category - and the same is true for Scientologists - so "relevant to notability" may as well be removed). This whole discussion seems to have started because of the argument over Ed Miliband, and that's precisely the kind of issue that's best resolved on that page, by those editors, and not with policy changes that aren't going to resolve it anyway. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 00:49, 30 November 2010 (UTC)
- It's a twofold issue. Completeness of categories like this isn't an important goal, and we already have guidance at WP:Categorization of people that recognizes this. The other part is that ethnicity is often contentious. When the value is low and the risk is high, as it might be with BLPs, then it can be best to err on the side of caution. Gigs (talk) 02:06, 30 November 2010 (UTC)
  - BLP already says "Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced—whether the material is negative, positive, neutral, or just questionable—should be removed immediately and without waiting for discussion". So that covers any cases where the ethnicity may be contentious. In about 99% of the other cases (on a case-by-case basis), ethnicity's not contentious, so I don't see what BLP has to do with it (beyond the usual standards that apply to everything else in those articles). Again, it's just an overreach of the BLP policy into areas that it doesn't have much to do with. Wikipedia needs less rules, regulations, and beaurocracy, not more. The few basic policies like WP:V and WP:NOR are rock-solid and work perfectly well if strictly enforced. That applies to categories, too. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 02:20, 30 November 2010 (UTC)
  - "*This whole discussion seems to have started because of the argument over Ed Miliband". Not for me it didn't. Since I don't wish to engage in canvassing, I won't link the heap of junk that first brought this issue to my attention. The problem is endemic. AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:10, 30 November 2010 (UTC)
    - - All Hallow's Wraith, if only 1% of categorisations by ethnicity on Wikipedia are contentious (and I'd dispute that figure), that is a heck of a lot of people. As for this not having much to do with BLP, I think you've misunderstood policy: anything you say about a living person is covered by WP:BLP, and categorisation/listing is a special case in that it is explicitly covered by more strict rules. AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:30, 30 November 2010 (UTC)
        1% may be a lot, but the same 1% figure can be given for contentiousness in other categories - i.e. ones involving nationality (citizenship), birthdate, birthplace, alma matter, etc. (and let's not get into categories like "American pornographic actors"). A lot of categories are contentious, but that's why BLP itself exists in the first place, to give instruction in a situation when something is contentious. That doesn't mean different rules should apply in situations when something is sourced and isn't contested by anybody. Yes, I know anything about a living person is covered by BLP - but that doesn't mean (new) rules should be created to cover certain areas - i.e. rules that aren't already part of the general BLP policy itself. If that was the case, BLPcat would theoretically apply to every single category. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 02:47, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Query: From this comment, it seems that at least one of the supporters sees the distinction between ethnicity and ethnic origin as being vital here. I admit I overlooked the distinction when I first read this proposal, and from All Hallow's Wraith's comments, I think this was unclear to them too. Is the intent of this proposal that it only applies to ethnicity, not ethnic origin, or is it meant to apply to both? Either way, would it be worth modifying the proposed text to briefly clarify the intent here? --Avenue (talk) 01:10, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

"Ethnic origin" is a dubious category under any circumstances, as far as I can see, at least when applied to individuals. How far do you want to go back? We all share common ancestry if you go back far enough. The phrase can be used to sneak a racist outlook in by the back door too: best avoided entirely. AndyTheGrump (talk) 01:39, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Just to be clear I do not support categorizing anyone by "ethnic origin". My point was that there is nothing controversial about discussing the facts surrounding familial roots like the fact that someone's parents emigrated from Albania. There is likewise nothing controversial about discussing someone's national citizenship. On the other hand, asserting that someone is of such and such ethnicity should require self-identification.Griswaldo (talk) 02:35, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Okay, neither of you support categorisation by ethnic origin. But we do have many such categories and lists already (e.g. List of people of Korean descent, Category:People of Indian descent, List of Canadians of Polish descent, etc), and I think it is important to be clear whether the proposed change would affect them. A literal reading clearly does not include these lists and categories, so I think that interpretation should govern unless someone wants to propose a change to the proposal. --Avenue (talk) 08:01, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Oppose - Oppose everything that relies on self-identification. It is one of the dumbest ideas I've seen on WP, one that throws WP:NPOV out of the window, for starting, and that solves no BLP need. We don't need people to self-identify; we need RS to identify. Self-identification is neither necessary (we don't need a self-identification as a Catholic to identify the Pope as a Catholic) nor sufficient (hypothetical example: if Mr. John Doe proclamates everywhere to belong and to be loyal to the Duckists but is discovered and confirmed by multiple RS to be a cardmember of the Geesers, to contribute to the Geese Party with money and to write propaganda for the Geese Party, then we categorize Doe as a Geeser, not a Duckist). --Cyclopia ^talk 02:35, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

I agree with much of what you say: but this proposal is simply extending BLPCAT to ethnicity. The issues you raise are independent, and are valid with or without this proposal. In other words, you could support this proposal, and also (consistently) propose modification of the self-identification requirement. --Noleander (talk) 02:40, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

While I do not agree with Cyclopia, I would like to second Noleander's point about the oppose not being relevant to the current proposal. Self-identification is already part of BLPCAT, this proposal isn't about changing that aspect in anyway, but simply about putting ethnicity on the same level as religion and sexual orientation.Griswaldo (talk) 02:45, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

I think it is relevant. If the policy had already been changed to remove the self-ID requirement, maybe Cyclopia would !vote differently, but that is not the case. They are instead faced with a proposal that would in fact increase the range of lists and categories where self-identification is required, and their reason for opposing it is coherent and relevant. --Avenue (talk) 08:01, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

A response to Cyclopia: There is no such thing as RS for ethnicity - it is a social construct, which is to say it only 'exists' at all because people act as if it does, and any 'ethnicity' applied to another person can only be 'an opinion'. This opinion may possibly conform with a lot of other people's opinion, but it isn't a 'reliable' representation of anything other than opinion. AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:51, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

I'd say your relativization has a point only in cases like Walter Francis White; where relying on self-identification may have a point. Otherwise, social construct as it may be, it can be nevertheless widely and uniformly recognized without question by RS. Being an Earl is a social construct as well but we have Category:Earls in the Peerage of Scotland (yes, yes, WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS, but let's get the point). Do we need Obama to raise his hand and say "Oh, by the way, I am African-American" to know that he is unanimously considered so? If really needed, we can rename the categories from "People of ethnicity X" to "People considered of ethnicity X" and perhaps even add "People self-identified of ethnicity X", to cover both cases, but removing the cat seems just a pointless exercise in protecting people from the obvious. Alansohn above said it well: "Borderline cases are always a means of testing a scheme of categorization in real life, let alone in Wikipedia, but their existence does not affect the need for, and continued existence of, such category structures. Barack Obama and Halle Berry are both described as African American, not because of any sort of one drop rule, but because they are described and describe themselves as such in reliable and verifiable sources. A look at any library or bookstore, maybe even an online search at Amazon.com or Google Books, will show that the real world categorizes Jews (or African Americans) as athletes, comedians, politicians and astronauts, and that's why we have corresponding categories in Wikipedia that don't exist for Catholics or Caucasians. The issue of how to handle possible questionable cases needs to be handled in the same way that we handle everything in Wikipedia, based on how an individual is described in reliable and verifiable sources. Alansohn (talk) 23:09, 16 November 2010 (UTC)" --Cyclopia ^talk 08:43, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Cyclopia, there are books listing athletes, politicians and astronauts by "ethnicity" because there is a market for trivia. We don't put everything there is a market for into an encyclopedia, certainly not trivia. There are no serious non-fiction books that actually explore these types of intersections by either popular authors or scholars (certainly not the latter). WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS doesn't all of a sudden turn on its head if it exists in popular culture. Nothing about this proposal would prevent anyone from describing Halle Berry or Barack Obama as African Americans. That's a serious red herring. As far as their inclusions in various categories related to their identity as African Americans one would have to look at them on a case by case basis. However, for the most part, with those two, there is also notability for being African Americans. This means that if they self-identify (which they do) and if they are so notable, for being members of that group, there is no problem. A change in this policy has no effect on the existence of ethnic based lists and categories, it merely enforces stricter rules on them. I fail to understand how Alansohn's argument is at all persuasive.Griswaldo (talk) 14:24, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

And here we go again with the old "trivia" canard, that is, translated for our readers, "let's get WP:IDONTLIKEIT in from the backdoor by giving it respectability". Nice try, but we collect and condense and structure what sources say - we don't cherry-pick out what you don't like because you magically call it "trivia". That clarified, there is a huge academic literature (just two random examples of intersections Gbooks searches, of course not all results are germane but lots are) on such intersections. And yes, I am fully aware it enforces stricter rules: but it enforces nonsensical rules. For example: why is self-identification singled out as a criteria? It seems extremly weak as a criteria. I could scream day and night that I am an Australian aboriginal, perhaps for solidarity with their causes, but fact is I am not, and it would be ridicolous to list me as such because I self-declare as one. What counts is what secondary independent sources say, that's one of our essential verifiability criteria that helps us maintain a neutral point of view. Relying on self-identification means not only enforcing stricter rules without any good reason to do so, but also to have stricter rules that go against our basic pillars. --Cyclopia ^talk 19:26, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Can you please try to tone it down with stuff like calling other people's arguments "the old ... canard"? Thanks. You're looking at this from an odd angle I think. This does not allow anyone to declare their own ethnicity willy, nilly. First of all I highly doubt your hypothetical situation has ever come up, or ever will but if it did we would clearly not slap an Australian aboriginal category on John Doe's entry, or add him to a pertinent list just because he declared himself to be one despite other sources claiming he wasn't. We wouldn't do so now and we wouldn't do so if this proposal passes. Perhaps you forgot that there are two requirements - 1) self-identification and 2) notability. The second requirement ensures that reliable third party sources are required to confirm the ethnicity, since if they did not exist there would be no evidence of notability. You cannot declare that you are notable for something yourself and existing sourcing policies handle that issue with ease. So are you still worried about this? I just don't see it. Yes, it will be harder to categorize people by ethnicity based on third party sources, but it certainly wont be any easier to do so based on an absurd self-declaration.Griswaldo (talk) 22:49, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Sorry for the tone, sincerely. It's that when I hear arguments amounting to unencyclopedicity I go into "

Facepalm mode" , because we enter the muddy realm of subjective "I believe this is encyclopedic while that is not", while the only way to maintain a collaborative project between people of different backgrounds is having a general, inclusive and overall objective common ground (that is, RS).

That said, I wasn't clear on that I disagree with the "notability" requirement of the categorization, too (I expressed this in some thread above). But even if I agreed with that, the gist of the argument doesn't change. After all you may be notable for, say, rejecting your alleged ethnicity/religion/sexual orientation. Example: Imagine that compelling sources proving that John Doe is Jewish -where John Doe was originally notable for something else- arise and the news spread out on newspapers etc. for some reason. For some reason, Doe doesn't like it at all, and begins to sue people etc. because he doesn't want to be called a Jewish. Yet there is lots of reliable sources that agree on Doe being Jewish with good proof. The controversy becomes notable -so much that he is now more notable for the controversy than for his job. What do we do? Do we accept what John Doe says, or the sources? (See also the "Jimbo example" below). --Cyclopia ^talk 23:56, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

John Doe specifically claims he's not Jewish and several sources say he is in fact Jewish. As I understand BLP policy right now it would be against this policy to add a Jewish category to his entry, or to include him on a list of Jewish people. If the controversy is notable it would be covered in the entry content on John Doe, but we are not discussing how to deal with entry content, but with list and category inclusions. See the situations with Gaim and Miliband, for live examples of this. We do not "follow the sources" in these situations already. What this policy change is trying to do is to make this more obvious, and to hedge our bets to safer ground in more borderline cases -- where for instance the living individual has not denied being a member of the group explicitly. The reason I mentioned trivia several places in this thread relates to this. The possible gain, by not hedging our bets in this direction, is the inclusion of trivial information. The loss, on the other hand, may be BLP violations. That's a pretty easy choice if you ask me, and it is indeed important to weigh costs and benefits when making choices about BLP policy changes. As I understand it that's exactly how such choices have been made in the past.Griswaldo (talk) 03:02, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

As I understand BLP policy right now it would be against this policy to add a Jewish category to his entry, or to include him on a list of Jewish people. : And you don't see what's wrong with that?

We do not "follow the sources" in these situations already. : So we're already wrong. Great.

The loss, on the other hand, may be BLP violations. : You can't violate BLP by reporting what sources say (unless you put explicit rules against that, but that's what we're discussing now). If multiple sources agree on a controversial statement, the statement stays in. Why this is ruled out for religion or ethnicity? --Cyclopia ^talk 11:30, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

What result would this change have on the pages of Andre Geim, Ed Miliband - or Jimmy Wales, for that matter? As far as I can tell, it wouldn't change anything from what it is right now (and if it would, that's a bad idea, because the results of the debates on those pages look very good to me - the system worked). On the other hand, imposing yet another set of regulations would confuse that other 99% of pages I was talking about. The non-controversial 99% trumps the controversial 1% that's already resolved or being resolved based on basic Wikipedia policy and common sense. If we were worried about the 1% so much, we'd permanently lock all Wikipedia pages and only allow additions through talk page discussion. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 03:19, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

The problem is that according to the present system, editors only need one cherry-picked source to apply a category. Let's assume that we lifted the self-identification requirement for sexual preference. Imagine a notable heterosexual person saying in an interview that they had a homosexual experience in boarding school. One or two minor reliable sources with a line in social entrepreneurship pick up on this, and describe the notable person as a self-confessed bisexual. An editor here argues that it's clear as day: if you have had sexual partners of both sexes, then you are bisexual. So the editor goes ahead – notable person X is added to the bisexual category, gets "Sexuality: bisexual" slapped into their infobox, and is added to some list such as "List of bisexual authors". All the while, they are married, have four children, and identify as heterosexual, their homosexual experience in boarding school at age 14 notwithstanding. Are those who argue against self-identification comfortable with this scenario? --JN 466 11:18, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

I see your point. I am not uncomfortable with the scenario: after all, if multiple RS declare the person as bisexual, and if he declared a bisexual experience, there is a strong case for such identification. Again, it simply all boil down to 1)WP:UNDUE 2)reliability of sources. We don't need new policy to do that: if the source is stuff like the Daily Star, we throw away the thing as unreliable gossip, but if it's official interviews, or multiple reliable newspapers relaying the news, I can't see the problem with that. --Cyclopia ^talk 19:32, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Theory and practice, Cyclopia. If we could trust everyone editing here, we wouldn't need policies at all. --JN 466 22:22, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

I don't understand what you mean. What has "trust" to do with all this? --Cyclopia ^talk 22:26, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

A similar scenario is that someone wins a Nobel Prize, and even though their family has lived in Russia for five generations, suddenly German publiations discover that the person is ethnically German, Jewish publications discover that the person had a Jewish great-grandmother and is therefore Jewish, and so forth. Now the person is added to "List of German Nobel Prize winners", "List of Jewish Nobel Prize winners", and they are categorised and labelled as Jewish and German, even though they themselves state that they find the whole malarkey about ethnicity offensive, resent being claimed by all sorts of social entrepreneurs, and if anything identify as Russian. Richard Feynman once wrote a very nifty letter about this sort of unwelcome attention, when someone wanted to include him in a book of Jewish Nobel Prize winners even though he did not identify as Jewish. --JN 466 11:33, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

The Andre Geim situation you're talking about was handled pretty well by the editors on that page, within existing Wikipedia rules. That's how these situations should be resolved, through editorial common sense rather than disruptive and confusing policy. No one who hasn't self-identified as gay or bisexual should or is listed as such on Wikipedia. All of these things take care of themselves if WP:V, WP:NOR, and indeed WP:BLP itself are followed (and I doubt anyone who opposes this addition would support the removal of self-identification for sexual orientation categories). A problem bigger than self-identification is the relevance issue, such as it is, because a requirement of relevance to notability would empty about 99% of Category:American people of Finnish descent. Aside from that, requiring that someone's Finnish ancestry should be relevant to their notability in order to be listed in that category has nothing to do with the BLP policy. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 11:41, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

I frankly have little sympathy for someone who thinks that being called "German" or "Jewish" is offensive. But that's not the point: the point is if neutral RS say that, well, he can feel offended as he wants, but our duty is to report what sources say, not to hide them under the carpet to make people a favour (Now I don't know the specific case you seem to refer, but in general, again, the problem is following sources and their reliability/due weight, nothing more). If I can be permitted a more general digression: People could think that I am a robot that doesn't give BLP a shit. Wrong, very wrong. BLP requires us attention and caution, and I am the first to think so (I am a firm proposer of semiprotection on all BLPs, for example): but we are more and more at risk to throw away our encyclopedic service in the rubbish to comply with what could possibly displease BLP subjects. This is an example: an insane effort in neutering categories because -if I understand correctly- someone may be offended in being called an African American or a Jew (!). I am appalled I seem to be one of the few to see the grotesqueness of this. --Cyclopia ^talk 19:45, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

I find it more grotesque for an encyclopedia that's a person's top google hit to label that person as a homo- or bisexual, Scientologist, believer or nonbeliever in Y, or indeed Irish-American, just because some "reliable source" opined that they were those things. There is a reliable source that says Jimbo is Jewish. He isn't, so why would it be encyclopedic to write that in his biography. According to you, the fact that some source wrote that about him is more important than the fact that he isn't. Again, if we could trust every source out there to characterise people accurately, we wouldn't need this policy. --JN 466 22:44, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

"He isn't". And, how can you know that? Let's use this as a theoretical example. These are the possible scenarios, where I split what third-party sources say with what Jimbo says:

(a) "Consensus of other RS/more reliable/subsequent sources tell that he is / Jimbo said he isn't."

(b) "Consensus of other RS/more reliable/subsequent sources tell that he isn't / Jimbo said he isn't"

(c) "Consensus of other RS/more reliable/subsequent sources tell that he isn't / Jimbo said he is"

(d) "Consensus of other RS/more reliable/subsequent sources tell that he is / Jimbo said he is."

We can exclude case (d) since we start from the assumption that he isn't Jewish. Case (b) is easy: both self-identification and consensus of RS agree, so we can safely conclude that, to our knowledge, he isn't Jewish.

This leaves us with (a) and (c). I personally think that, apart from (b), the only other safe scenario for us to conclude that Jimbo isn't Jewish is (c). What Jimbo says ("I am Jewish") is here irrelevant, because the consensus of reliable sources is that he is not Jewish. He is a lonely and primary source apart: one could be tempted to argue that "he knows best", but if this is the principle, well, why don't we leave people write their own bios here? After all, "they know best". Hint: WP:V, WP:NPOV, WP:RS. So we can conclude that we don't state Jimbo as Jewish.

In case (a) it is the reverse: sources tell us that he is, indeed, Jewish. Jimbo denies that. Again: does he know best? Maybe, but again: WP:V, WP:NPOV, WP:RS. We don't host autobiographical material. So we follow the sources: if they are wrong, the subject should take it with them, not with us. It's the sources fault to have fooled us.

Now, I fully understand concerns about sources not always been trustworthy. This requires us to evaluate the sources, to see if there are conflicting sources etc. I could agree with you that a single lonely source mentioning in passing is dubious, especially if rebuked by the subject him/herself, and that we should err firmly on the side of caution in this case. But let's imagine there is a multiplicity of independent sources claiming with good proof that Jimbo is, indeed, Jewish, despite what he says. What should we do in your opinion?

The point is simple but very philosophically deep: if we don't trust sources for this, we don't trust sources for nothing and we throw WP in the bin. It is an axiom of this project that we use RS as a start and end point -of course with judgement, understanding etc. but secondary RS are our fundamental basic starting material. We assume that when a source is deemed reliable, we can use it to reference informations, unless there is good reason not to believe the source in that instance. So, yes, we have to trust sources if we want to create an encyclopedia. --Cyclopia ^talk 23:05, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

You do realise we are talking here exclusively about categories, lists and infobox statements, not about BLP content, do you? Inclusion in a list only requires one source, and that is exactly what many editors are doing: they find one, or even two sources saying X is Y, and add X to List of Y, and thereafter argue "verifiability, not truth". That is not an acceptable standard of duty of care for BLPs. --JN 466 14:18, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

And you do realise you have just agreed with me, don't you? The problem is the sourcing requirement, not a stupid "self-declaration" criteria. I would fully agree that inclusion in a list/category should require more than a lonely wacky source in the case of BLPs (and perhaps others). But this only means that you acknowledge that the problem is proper sourcing and not self-identification. --Cyclopia ^talk 15:42, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

The "lonely wacky" source, plus another three that copied it, may be the only one to have ever commented on the living person's religion, sexuality or ethnicity. You should become famous, Cyclopia, and then you'd see how much nonsense is written about you. The thing is that self-identification gives us a good chance to get the category, infobox and lists – where such things are baldly declared as facts and no context is given – right. --JN 466 20:32, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

It will come as a surprise to you, but I am sympathetic with your point of view. But the problem is that such a noble concept can't have space on WP unless you turn the philosophy of it on its head. Again: either reliable sources are reliable, or they aren't. If we consider sources reliable, we assume it is not nonsense until proven as such, and so the problem does not exist. If we instead consider sources unreliable by default, and your end is getting the thing right no matter what, then our job is not more that of people who collect existing data but our job becomes more similar to investigative journalism. The point is the old "verifiability not truth", that can sound weird at first, but it's the core of the project, and for good reasons. So, let's decide, what do we want? To compile an encyclopedia or to find The Truth? --Cyclopia ^talk 21:49, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

It's not black and white, Cyclopia, and in BLPs the bar is higher. The very lead of the BLP policy says, "We must get the article right. Be very firm about the use of high quality sources." For an editorial decision that, without qualification, summarily assigns a living person to a BLP category, list, nav template or infobox category related to their sexuality, religion or, under this proposal, their ethnicity, the high-quality source we should be looking for is a reliable source quoting the person's own statement on their religion, sexuality, or ethnicity. If we don't have that, then we shouldn't assign them to a category, list, infobox category or navigation template, but simply cover such content in the body text. --JN 466 22:15, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

I wouldn't necessarily take that Tablet Magazine article as a reliable source - it's just an opinion piece by a writer, not a biography, and opinion pieces aren't decidedly reliable (aside from that, since no other source says it, it's an exceptional claim by a not-that-great source, therefore it would fail WP:V and WP:BLP [rather than specifically the WP:BLPcat provisions] anyway). The Wales examples, or Geim, or Ed Miliband, are all theoretical (and actual) situations that are best resolved on their own Wikipedia pages by the editors there. Like I said, the Geim and Miliband cases seem to have been satisfactorily handled by all involved, even if it did take a lot of discussion to do so. These additional proposals and restrictions do nothing except for actually complicating the situation, while adding more regulation and beaurocracy in areas where local editors have been doing a fine job handling matters already, just based on WP:V and WP:NOR. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 23:12, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Someone above said that we should distinguish between ethnic identity and ethnic descent; perhaps that's something we could look at. On the other hand, looking at your example, I am not sure how useful it is for Mike Kinnunen e.g. to be listed in Category:American people of Finnish descent. The category is unsourced; I can't find a single independent source referring to his being Finnish; and there is nothing in his BLP about it, except the category. Now I know, Kinnunen is a Finnish surname, but the assertion that he is of Finnish descent is unsourced as it stands, and, judging by the lack of comment in RS, not important even if correct. --JN 466 12:10, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

The example you just used (Kinnunen) is one that can easily be handled outside of BLP. If it's not sourced that Kinnunen is of Finnish ancestry, the category can be removed immediately per WP:V. It's as easy as that. You don't even need WP:BLP to do it, much less additional burdensome policy like WP:BLPcat. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 18:37, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Categories like that are way out of control, and exist only for either the vanity of or socio-political gain of other "group" members. Have a look at another "American of Finnish descent", Matt Damon. Nearly half of the cats on his entry are to various "descents" of his. Of the rest several link him to his hometown and state of origin, not to mention his political affiliation. None of that is of encyclopedic value. It merely makes Cambridgeans, Finish Americans, and Democrats who are vain happy. What is the gain of having these categories? I think ideally that question should not be discussed here, but if people are going to argue against stricter rules they ought to have a good reason for it. Keep in mind that overcategorization is a problem.Griswaldo (talk) 14:09, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

All the arguments you just made have nothing to do with WP:BLP, or with justifying this addition to the page. They're the kind of arguments you would make in nominating that category for deletion in a CFD. What you should do is exactly that, and you may even get me to join you in voting "Delete". But creating additional regulations in a policy that has nothing to do with them isn't the answer. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 18:37, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

You'd really rather delete all the ethnic categories than to accept this compromise? Gigs (talk) 01:51, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes. And this isn't supposed to be a "compromise", it's supposed to be a workable, effective and relevant BLP policy. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 02:48, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Support - This is a step in the right direction. The BLPCAT needs a lot of work that is not addressed by this proposal, but this is a start. --Noleander (talk) 02:38, 30 November 2010 (UTC)
oppose "Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced—whether the material is negative, positive, neutral, or just questionable—should be removed immediately and without waiting for discussion". No one has made any case that ethnicity is 'contentious' or contentious by whom? Whatever is an article, list or category may be right or wrong; if wrong, it needs to be identified and fixed on a one-by-one basis (as with all other WP content), not on a basis of wholesale deletion of articles, lists or categories--which is the stated objective of some editors. Hmains (talk) 04:01, 30 November 2010 (UTC)
Support I've seen BLP's where editors went out of their way to add categories that the BLP's subject did not apply to themselves. For instance, people who research the genealogy of a famous person, then start to add categories of that subject's ancestor's even though that subject never thought of themselves like that. (I.E. a person who see themselves as primarily African American, identifies as AA, but one or two of their ancestor's were Irish. So an editor decides to add the Irish category to that subject's BLP even though the subject does not and has not identified themselves as being Irish per reliable sources.) Plus, this also would cover BLP subjects that are of mixed heritage, yet identifies as one heritage over the other. (I.E. The most obvious: One parent was African and the other parent was white, but the subject identifies as African American over being called mixed race per reliable sources. This can also apply the same of Asian/European, Native American/European, etc, etc.) Brothejr (talk) 11:52, 30 November 2010 (UTC)
Comment It worries me that some voters here appear to have a very confused idea of what is actually being proposed and what result it will have if it goes through. For instance Hmains writes: "Whatever is an article, list or category may be right or wrong; if wrong, it needs to be identified and fixed on a one-by-one basis (as with all other WP content), not on a basis of wholesale deletion of articles, lists or categories--which is the stated objective of some editors." No one is discussing the wholesale deletion of articles. We are discussing strengthening a policy in a way that would restrict the content of articles and categories. If anything the enforcement of stricter BLP guidelines on lists and categories will make "wholesale deletion" less likely, because it will root out the kinds of problems that lead people to put these articles up for AfD and to vote delete.Griswaldo (talk) 14:29, 30 November 2010 (UTC)
Support - I've long called for the inclusion of ethnicity in this policy. NickCT (talk) 23:36, 30 November 2010 (UTC)
Oppose and , in fact , remove the restrictions altogether , and replace by a rule that we do not place living people in categories to which we know they object. This is one place where WP:RSX can yield to individual rights of self-identification. The point of BLP is to do no harm, and that is enough to do no harm. I see no evidence that the present rule has ever harmed anyone. The direction I would move is to permit and encourage such cross-categorization, with the general interpretation that we use rather broad ethnic categories, and deliberately not try to distinguish between nationality, ethnicity, descent,and, when relevant, religion--rather like we do with places, "Notable people associated with...", not limiting the list to specific types of association.

Additionally, I point out that all BLP considerations apply only to the living, and most lists of this sort contain mainly those who are no longer in that group. The rules for BLP apply only to BLP, and should not be extended. It's follow to treat everything as if every item in a list was acutely sensitive, or we'd have no content. It was asked above what purpose these lists and categories serve: they serve the purposes of identification, reference, and browsing--alll three of them good purposes of an encyclopedia. the basic thing we are is an encyclopedia, and the purpose of being one is to provide a work of referenece people can use for their own purposes, not to express our ideas of how topics should be distinguished. The proof that people care is the literary warrant--that for most of these categories, there are multiple sources and listings. We don't determine importance, but reflect it. DGG ( talk ) 04:07, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Saying that we will remove people from categories and lists if and when we learn that they object to their inclusion is not good enough. We have a duty of care to get things right before people complain, and therefore shouldn't list someone in a category unless they have confirmed that they do belong in that precise category. Multiple policies and guidelines tell us that we should only list and categorise people who are notable for belonging to a given category, and people who are notable for such a thing will have talked about it. --JN 466 14:25, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

That people complain or not is not the problem we should we concerned. We should be concerned about giving reliable information from reliable sources to our readers. Subject complaining may be a symptom but it's not what we should worry about: as long as what we report is backed up firmly by sources, they can complain all they want but we shouldn't move a millimeter. Their confirmation is not a reliable source on which category they belong: it's primary and it's biased. Multiple secondary RS are needed for that, no less, no more. --Cyclopia ^talk 16:55, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

You can give the information to the reader, in the body of the biography. That is the whole point: You can say, "According to the Topeka Times and the Alabama Bugle, X's song lyrics reflect the fact that he is an adherent of satanism." But we should have something more substantial to go on before endorsing such press statements by categorising, infoboxing, and listing X as a satanist, and people's religion, sexuality or ethnicity (where it differs from nationality) in general, because the press get stuff like this wrong with alarming regularity. --JN 466 20:18, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Strong Oppose. Moves in precisely the wrong direction. The DNA of the project is reliance upon RSs. That is what we should stick with.

In addition, the notion that we would require such RS-reported self-statements is non-sensical unless we believe that people in the class generally make such statements and have them reported in the RS press. We have no reason to believe that. Just the opposite -- check your old-style encyclopedia. I doubt very much you could find the statement "I am Catholic" made by the majority of the Popes and Cardinals. So why should we have them for other people, as to religion or as to ethnicity. The effect of such a requirement is to deprive wikipedia of knowledge. We are in the opposite business.

Furthermore, why in the world would ethnicity -- of all characteristics (the same goes for religion) -- be held to such an ultra high standard, over other characteristics? So ... we could rely on an RS's report alone to report that person x had sex with a goat, or has a venereal disease (the core to libel and slander laws), or raped his three-year-old daughter. But when it comes to reporting that he is religion X, or ethnicity Y -- Oh No, then we need a higher standard? That's funny. But wholly non-sensical.--Epeefleche (talk) 06:33, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

You don't need a higher standard to report in their BLP that someone described them as such; you can always do that. You just need a higher burden of proof to categorise/infobox them as such, or include them in a list. There is a difference. --JN 466 15:08, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Oppose. Goes far beyond common sense. Requiring self-identification for ethnicity and religious affiliation is not reasonable - often there are solid reliable sources for this sort of thing and the information is entirely noncontroversial and relevant to the person's biography. Moreover, in many cases the distinction between ethnicity and nationality is rather blurred. Nsk92 (talk) 06:50, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

You realize we are not talking about writing "the person's biography"? We're talking about the application of categories and inclusion on lists. This part of the policy only regulates those activities.Griswaldo (talk) 13:05, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Per WP:LISTPEOPLE, we should only include people in a list if they are notable for belonging to that category. Someone who is notable for being an Italian American, a Scientologist, or homosexual, etc., will have talked about it, and we should source list inclusion to such statements by the person concerned. We have to bear in mind that people are regularly mis-classified in reliable sources. For example, I can think of a half dozen celebrities off the top of my head (incl. Will Smith, Jada Pinkett-Smith, Chaka Khan etc.) who are not Scientologists but are described, in some sources, as Scientologists because they once did a Scientology course, or were linked in some other way to Scientology. We had all of those listed in List of Scientologists, along with their sourced and, in my view, quite credible denials. That's the glorification of gossip, rather than responsible encyclopedia writing. --JN 466 14:51, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

WP:LISTPEOPLE specifically exempts nationality/ethnicity from that notability relevance requirement. --Avenue (talk) 15:51, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

That is true; it exempts notability/ethnicity from "relevant to their notability" requirement, although it does require that the person identify as an Albanian (in the example given) if they are not of Albanian nationality. We could redraft the proposal accordingly, having self-identification apply to ethnicity (where it differs from nationality), and dropping the relevance requirement from ethnicity. Would that address your concern? --JN 466 20:04, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Any reasonable interpretation of what WP:LISTPEOPLE says can only be that the specific exception it allows is to allow a particular unqualified class of lists e.g. 'List of Albanians'. To extend this to suggest it also allows 'List of Albanians notable for X' is an unwarrented conclusion. As I've said elsewhere, a 'List of Albanians' can contain all Albanians, subject only to the normal requirements of notability. It isn't an intersection. 'List of Albanians notable for X' is and thus needs to meet the requirements of an intersection: i.e. that the intersection itself is notable, not just its members. AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:04, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Claiming your interpretation is the only reasonable one doesn't seem entirely civil, but I guess you are just trying to express your view forcefully. I think the guideline was unclear, and I am not the only one; there seems to be an effort underway to clarify it. --Avenue (talk) 02:16, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Revised BLPCAT proposal

This is a revised proposal, taking on board some of the concerns expressed above. Compared to the first proposal, this retains the requirement of self-identification for applying ethnicity-based categories and infobox statements to living persons' biographies, as well as the inclusion of living persons in ethnicity-based lists and navigation templates. However, unlike the previous proposal, it does not insist that inclusion in ethnicity-based lists and so forth should be limited to cases where membership is particularly relevant to a person's notability. The proposed changes to present policy are marked in bold:

Category names do not carry disclaimers or modifiers, so the case for each category must be made clear by the article text and its reliable sources. Categories regarding ethnicity, religious beliefs and sexual orientation should not be used unless the subject has publicly self-identified in a reliable source with the ethnicity, belief or orientation in question. In addition, categories regarding religious beliefs or sexual orientation should only be used if they are relevant to the person's notable activities or public life, according to reliable published sources. Caution should be used with categories that suggest a person has a poor reputation (see false light). For example, Category:Criminals and its subcategories should only be added for an incident that is relevant to the person's notability; the incident was published by reliable third-party sources; the subject was convicted; and the conviction was not overturned on appeal. These principles apply equally to infobox statements, and to lists and navigation templates that are based on ethnicity, religious beliefs and sexual orientation, or which suggest that the persons included in the list or template have a poor reputation.

One rationale for this proposed change is the following: BLP policy tells us that we have to get our biographies right, and should insist on high-quality sources. Many editors feel that when it comes to the application of ethnicity-based categories (incl. infobox categories) to BLPs, and to the inclusion of living persons in ethnicity-based lists and navigation templates, the only source that is of a sufficiently high quality is a statement by the individual, in a reliable source, confirming that they consider themselves a member of said category. That is the same criterion that has applied to categories of sexual preference and religious belief for as long as the BLP policy has existed.

A single source, or even several sources, calling a living person Jewish, Mexican American, Irish American, Albanian, etc., is not sufficient high-quality evidence to justify categorising that person and including them in lists for that ethnicity, because we are then stating something about them as a categorical fact, in the true and literal sense of that expression. Whereas, if the person herself or himself has said so, we can be reasonably certain that by stating something like this categorically, we are not misrepresenting them by applying an ethnic category to their biography, and including them in lists for that ethnicity. (This also parallels census practice, by the way; census data on ethnicity are based on individuals' self-identification.)

It should be noted that the proposed change in no way forbids the discussion of reliably sourced ethnicity-related claims in the biography of a living person -- it only prevents Wikipedia's converting such claims into categorical assertions of fact.

Support as proposer. --JN 466 11:33, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
Support although it does fail the "Ida Amin" test. Amin regularly claimed to be Scottish, indeed he claimed to be the rightful King of Scotland - when in fact he was an insane sociopath. Does he get on the List of Scottish sociopaths or not? --Scott Mac 11:39, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
- Good point, although I think if there is universal dispute of a person's self-identification, then their claim would not be considered a reliable source for the veracity of that statement. The proposal does not state that when a person self-identifies as X, they must be categorised, infoboxed and listed as X. --JN 466 12:00, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
No offense intended to those who work on these categories, but it's my experience that some of those who are eager to apply ethnic categories do so with little regard for sources or self-identification. While this may seem drastic, something like this is a sensible step. Nationality is relatively easy to determine but ethnicity is much more complicated. As for Amin's claim, I think it qualifies as a fringe claim, albeit a noteworthy one. Will Beback talk 11:55, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
The problem is that nothing on WP is stated as a categorical fact. All there is (and should be) on WP is what sources report, and that's in a good day. Categorical facts are out of our scope. We even have a disclaimer about that. We are not custodes of the truth. --Cyclopia ^talk 12:31, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
Support. This is still long overdue.Griswaldo (talk) 13:21, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
Support, and note that this change does not preclude more detailed discussion in somebody's bio of ethnicity, it is purely a restriction on the currently unrestrained power of lists to slap a one-word ethnic description on living people whether or not those people want to be labeled. I also like it that this change does NOT require that a person's ethnicity be relevant to fame--just that is should be relevant to the person being described. I think that requirement is excessive even for religion and sexuality, and I do not want to see it extended further. betsythedevine (talk) 13:45, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
Support, though I'd add that in regard to 'ethnicity' and 'religious beliefs' any categorisation that might reasonably be understood as being ambiguous as to which is intended must be qualified (i.e. 'ethnically X' vs 'of X faith'), to make the intention clear. AndyTheGrump (talk) 14:15, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
Oppose again, this singles-out self-identification and therefore it goes in the face of WP:NPOV, WP:V etc. Self-identification is no more reliable than any other source: people have at least as many reasons to lie or nuance their identification as third-party source. The failing of the "Idi Amin test" is in this context particularly laughable. I wait for him to be included in our List of Scottish people. We are about verifiability, not truth and as such we care about secondary sources, not self statements. Allowing self-statements to override sources is allowing WP:COI and WP:AUTOBIO by proxy: after all, if a subject is the best source on him/herself, why don't we let people write their own autobiographies directly? --Cyclopia ^talk 16:10, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

"Self-identification is no more reliable than any other source". But have you got any evidence that it is less reliable? The Amin example is just plain silly, nobody will simply include him in a List of Scottish people since it is so clearly questionable. The proposal is not that anyone who self-identifies must be included in a category, but instead that anyone who doesn't, cannot be. The default is simply 'no categorisation where it is unclear'. It is not Wikipedia's business to insist that everyone fits into neat little boxes. Incidentally, suggesting that people may 'lie' in relation to such issues could well look like an assertion that they are lying if we put somebody into a category to which they have stated they do not belong. Do you really think that is wise?

The Amin example is extreme, yet less extreme cases can arise easily. Is Miliband atheist? Sources say so, he even said he doesn't believe in God but apparently we can't categorize him as such because he didn't publicly declare he was specifically an atheist. And no, I am not saying it is less reliable at all. The point is that declarations of the subject are a primary source like any other primary source, and we usually use them with caution preferring to rely on secondary ones. We should judge sources, not single out one kind of source arbitrarily. I understand perfectly that "anyone who doesn't cannot be" and that's what I am opposing: given your proposal, we cannot put a (living: he's actually dead) Idi Amin in a list of Ugandan people because he never self-identified as such, and he self-identified as Scottish, despite abundant sources on his ethnic descendence. --Cyclopia ^talk 19:29, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

'Ugandan' is a nationality, not an ethnicity. Of course he can be put on a list of people of Ugandan nationality on the basis of sources other than himself. As for Idi Amin's ethnicity, I'll note that the article on him actually gives the ethnicity of his parents, but leaves unresolved his own (if he considered himself to have one).

Regarding the Miliband case (which Miliband?), the fact that someone identifies himself as 'not believing in God' rather than 'atheist' sounds like a good reason for not having the category 'atheist' in the first place - if a significant number of those categorised by others as 'atheist' consider the term inaccurate, a more neutral one needs to be found. Or even better, none at all, given that the idea that everyone must have a specific religious belief system (or a well-defined rejection of such) is a fairly obvious POV position in itself. AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:48, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Oppose - like I said, all the "relevant to public life" criteria should be removed. I have never seen an openly LGBT person's article on Wikipedia that isn't under an LGBT category. Same for Scientologists. One could even argue that if someone is openly LGBT, it's always relevant to their public life. So what is the point of having this in the policy? It's totally ineffective when it comes to sexual orientation, and completely baseless when it comes to religion (if someone has self-identified as a Methodist, then why are we making it a BLP violation to categorize them as such?). Otherwise, not bad, but Cyclopia's proposal is better. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 20:59, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
- The "relevant to public life" criteria are not part of this proposal. Please comment on the substance of the proposed changes, not on your disagreement with present policy, which already contains the passage you object to. --JN 466 23:39, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
  - I prefer Cyclopia's proposal (or my own), which is why I voted oppose. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 03:03, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
Weak support for categories and templates, oppose for lists. This is a step in the right direction, but I don't believe that self-identification should be an absolute requirement for lists, even in these often contentious areas. (I do think that denials issued by the person should be given veto power, but that is not the same thing.) The reasoning at the start of BLPCAT, that category names do not carry disclaimers or modifiers, doesn't apply equally to lists, which can include explanatory notes and citations in the lead section and for each entry. Also, given that we have many ancestry-based categories and lists, I think a policy that places stringent requirements on ethnicity but does not even mention ancestry could be confusing to many. I am still uncomfortable with the current policy's relevance requirement, although I accept that this proposal exempts ethnicity and so doesn't take things any further in that direction. --Avenue (talk) 12:30, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
- Comment On Avenue's point above. I can see some merit in the argument that lists could be considered separately from categories in themselves. The problem is that when referred to in a link from another article (e.g. in an article on X, a link is given in "see also" to List of ethnicity Y Z's, the inference taken will be that X is definitely a Y). This sort of "mis-categorisation by link" is indeed occurring in Wikipedia articles at present, and needs to be addressed. On that basis, I cannot see any way that lists can be treated differently to categories. AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:43, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
  - I don't think that the rules on who can be included in lists should be designed for their indirect effect on "mis-categorisation by link". Perhaps a sentence should be added to address the practice directly. Is the problem limited to links to "List of XX people", or are there other sorts of links that can cast the subject in an inappropriate light? --Avenue (talk) 23:51, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
    - I'm not sure how you can avoid the problem with 'a sentence', it is just too easy to add a link to a contentious or ambiguous category. This issue came up specifically in relation to List of Jewish Nobel laureates, as you might be aware. Unfortunately, as I see it, Wikipedia BLP policy has to be made with the intent to minimise confusion over such issues, and the restrictions it will involve in this case are just something we'll need to live with. Part of the problem is that lists and categories are sometimes seen as mutually exclusive, whereas they may not be. With current category criteria for example, it would theoretically be possible to be simultaneously a 'Jewish Nobel laureate', an 'atheist' and a 'ethnic Chinese Nobel laureate'. If you understand the criteria, it makes sense, but to the average reader it looks nonsensical. We can assume a reasonable level of sense in readers, but to expect them to follow every link to discover what a particular criteria are applied for inclusion in a particular category or list is asking too much in my opinion. AndyTheGrump (talk) 00:35, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
      - I'm not sure how non-exclusiveness is relevant. Let me try to clarify what I meant. The "See also" section serves a similar purpose to navigational templates; it collates links to related topics that hopefully are useful to readers, and presents them in a section divorced from other content. They typically do not include footnotes or disclaimers. It seems to me that this raises similar concerns to those about categories, navigational templates, etc that BLPCAT is intended to address. Would it be appropriate to add a link to atheist to Ed Miliband's See also section, for instance? This seems to involve just as much "misclassification by link" as adding list of atheists would do, but it is not addressed even indirectly by BLPCAT. We could add a final sentence such as "Similarly, links relating to ethnicity, religious beliefs and sexual orientation should not be added to See also sections unless the subject has publicly self-identified with the ethnicity, belief or orientation in question." --Avenue (talk) 02:51, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
        It is precisely because a "See also" section doesn't include footnotes or disclaimers that the problem arises. The difficulty need just not arise in "see also" sections in any case. WikiLinks can appear anywhere in article text, and are often added with little thought by over-enthusiastic editors. Your suggested added sentence would not address this. It seems to me that no link in Wikipedia that comes within the remit of BLP should be ambiguous if this can reasonably be avoided. If a list is being used, rather than a category, it is presumably done in order to clarify any ambiguities. Why else is the requirement that lists explicitly state their criteria for inclusion made in the first place? Regarding the Ed Miliband example, of course adding a link to atheist is wrong - it makes an assertion that isn't backed up to the standards required by WP:BLP in general and is already covered by it. I fail to see how this is even relevant. AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:18, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
        It seems very relevant to your argument that lists should be included in this revision to BLPCAT to combat the "mis-categorisation by link" problem. If you say that adding that link to atheist is covered by BLP already, then why is adding list of atheists not similarly covered? --Avenue (talk) 11:37, 4 December 2010
        It is. If Ed Miliband isn't in list of atheists the link shouldn't be in an article about him. But this is hypothetical. Let's instead consider a concrete example. the List of Jewish Nobel laureates currently contains several members that are only 'Jewish' by partial descent, and have not self-identified with either Judaism nor Jewish ethnicity. It is clearly wrong to put an unqualified link to any of these people in an article about them, but the list article doesn't make clear the grounds for declaring individuals 'Jewish' (actually, as it stands at present it doesn't make the criteria for inclusion clear at all, but that is another issue). Given this situation, there is no reasonable way to determine whether a link to an individual on this list is valid or not according to the strict criteria required for a BLP, without either (a) doing further research oneself, or (b) taking Wikipedia's statement that X is Jewish at face value: effectively self-referencing Wikipedia in a manner that evades verification according to the standards required by WP:BLP. Having inconsistent standards for criteria for articles, lists and categories is a recipe for confusion and endless debate. It is also illogical. If you can't state that X is Y in a BLP, then why the heck should you be allowed to put X in a 'list of Ys' in the first place? You can't do this with categories themselves (put X in category Y), but somehow a list goes from being 'a list of people who meet the criteria for inclusion in category Y' to 'a list of people that may not actually meet the strict criteria required for inclusion in category Y, but instead meet the looser criteria defined in the list article itself'. Now where in the disclaimers regarding Wikipedia do you suggest that we put the disclaimer that inclusion of somebody in list Y doesn't actually mean they necessarily are Y? AndyTheGrump (talk) 13:35, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
        The list's lead section would be a sensible place. The Jewish Nobel laureates list does now make its inclusion criteria reasonably clear in the lead paragraph; in particular, it states that the list includes people who are "at least partly of Jewish descent" but who have not self-identified as being Jewish. Whether the list should include people who are Jewish only by descent is a question for the list's talk page, and is not affected by this proposed change in BLPCAT. --Avenue (talk) 18:03, 5 December 2010 (UTC)
        No, the list's lead section isn't any use, as you'd need to follow the link to see the disclaimer. As for whether the 'Jewish Nobel laureates list' makes it's inclusion criteria 'reasonably clear' I'd disagree, though it is a bit clearer now I've added that part than it was with no criteria stated at all (see history). It is totally unreasonable to expect people who see someone included in a list of 'Jewish Nobel laureates' to have to follow the link to discover the person isn't Jewish by faith, doesn't consider him or herself Jewish (or if they do, don't consider it relevant to their Nobel Laureate, per Feynman) or is only of minority Jewish descent. People should have a reasonable expectation that when they read something in Wikipedia, the words should mean what they expect them to. AndyTheGrump (talk) 23:52, 8 December 2010 (UTC)
        I completely disagree with your argument. It seems to boil down to the idea that a list's title must cover every shade of meaning that the list allows, because some article might link to it, and that other article's readers might be confused. Apply the same argument to links to articles, and we would probably have to either restrict articles to covering only the primary meaning of their title, or disallow wikilinks from BLPs completely.
        
        The authors of a list are responsible for ensuring that the list is clear about what it includes and does not include. They are not responsible for every link to the list. If an article links to a list, the authors of that article are the ones responsible for ensuring that the link is not misleading - not the authors of the list. They can remove it, or the link can be piped to display a title tailored for that context. We certainly should not remove items from a list simply because some article might link to it. The article can do so anyway, regardless of whether the items are included in the list. But I have expressed much the same ideas earlier in this discussion, with no effect, and you have ignored my suggestion of an extra sentence addressing your concern directly. So perhaps we will have to agree to disagree. --Avenue (talk) 21:20, 9 December 2010 (UTC)
Support. As for the Idi Amin test, for cases where the self-assertion is clearly wrong, we can WP:IAR. Prefer this to the counter proposal below mostly because it is simpler. Kevin (talk) 00:15, 8 December 2010 (UTC)
Oppose. Per Cyclopia - "self-identification is no more reliable than any other source". I don't understand how people are ignoring the Pope Argument. Don King is black whether or not he has ever so described himself. It makes no sense at all. If the root of this is Ed Milliband, then we need a policy specifically about what makes someone an atheist. This whole discussion seems misdirected to me. --FormerIP (talk) 03:27, 9 December 2010 (UTC)
- This really has nothing to do with atheist categories; the proposal only concerns whether we should require self-identification for ethnicity in contentious cases. --JN 466 13:07, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

*Almost support - Per others, "self-identification only" doesn't work. How does this look?:

If no reliable source: No categorization.

If reliable source(s):
If no (RS) self-identification: Go with the other RS(s).

If RS self-identification:
If subject is (RS) crazy or (RS) lying: Mention it but treat as unRS otherwise. (Minding that Idi Amin example.)

If subject might be lying and/or crazy: Throw it into the mix. Treat as just another RS for a contentious BLP fact.

If subject is credible: Then and only then is their self-id necessary and sufficient and exclusive for categorization.

<( User:Couch on his Head and Smiling (talk) )> 23:40, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

On second glance I'm just adding to the proposal-mess we have here. <( User:Couch on his Head and Smiling (talk) )> 00:32, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Counter-proposal

Category names do not carry disclaimers or modifiers, so the case for each category must be made clear by the article text and its reliable sources. Categories regarding ethnicity, religious beliefs and sexual orientation should not be used unless multiple secondary, high-quality, reliable sources consistently and uncontroversially agree on the ethnicity, belief or orientation in question. When a subject has self-identified, in addition to reliable sources, such self-identification should be given priority unless there is a massive consensus of reliable sources against the self-identification.. In addition, categories regarding religious beliefs or sexual orientation should only be used if they are relevant to the person's notable activities or public life, according to reliable published sources. Caution should be used with categories that suggest a person has a poor reputation (see false light). For example, Category:Criminals and its subcategories should only be added for an incident that is relevant to the person's notability; the incident was published by reliable third-party sources; the subject was convicted; and the conviction was not overturned on appeal. These principles apply equally to infobox statements, and to lists and navigation templates that are based on ethnicity, religious beliefs and sexual orientation, or which suggest that the persons included in the list or template have a poor reputation.

Apologies if my language is quite poor, but I hope that the gist of it is clear. The point is harmonizing the policy so that we do not fail the Pope nor the Idi Amin test (correctly pointed above by Scott Mac). That is, we avoid to rely on self-identification alone but we require a firm consensus between multiple reliable sources (Pope test), and we explicitly back away to the safe no-cat option in case of a controversy. A compromise I suggest is giving priority to self-identification when RS disagree or are uncertain, unless there is a massive consensus of sources against such self-identification (Idi Amin test).

The point of the proposal is that WP relies on secondary, reliable sources. If we agree that sources are reliable, there is no problem in using them for categorization. If we agree that sources are not reliable, then we shouldn't use them at all. So the problem is simply: do we have enough sources to come to a conclusion?

Support as proposer. --Cyclopia ^talk 12:28, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
Oppose. This perspective treats categories, and list inclusions as if they are article content. The problem with doing so is that within article space controversies and contentious labels can be discussed with nuance, while they absolutely cannot with categories and list inclusions. Particularly problematic is the language " ... such self-identification should be given priority unless there is a massive consensus of reliable sources against the self-identification." This implies that if I vehemently claim not to be Rastafarian, but the only third party sources publishing on the matter are calling me Rastafarian we would be correct to slap any number of Rastafarian categories on my entry, and/or to add me to various Rastafarian lists. The whole point of BLP guidelines is to air on the side of caution. In the hypothetical situation I describe, what we ought to do is not to label the entry, but to discuss the controversy of my Rastafarianism in the entry itself, where nuanced exposition is possible.Griswaldo (talk) 13:28, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

That's exactly the point. There is nothing nuanced here. If you vehemently claim not to be Rastafarian but a lot of sources consistently and unambiguously say so, sorry, but you ought to be included into Rastafarian lists etc. For two reasons: 1)We rely on WP:RS to write articles, not on self-proclamations 2)To single out self-identification among all else is WP:AUTOBIO and WP:COI by proxy. People don't write their own bios on WP. We don't make it look like it's so. In the article then we make clear that you vehemently oppose, but in categories and lists the default option should be what, in a first approximation, the majority of sources say. --Cyclopia ^talk 15:56, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

No. In categories and lists the default option should be not to include individuals at all. It is for the person wishing to add someone to a list or category to provide evidence that this meets the required criteria. If there is ambiguity or doubt, they should not be included per WP:DONOHARM. AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:12, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Ehm, please read the proposal better. The default is in fact not including anyone at all. What I am proposing is that the criteria must rely on the consensus between a strong majority of sources, not on mere self-identification. And thanks for the essay, for it says: This principle was ultimately rejected: while avoiding harm remains an important consideration within our living persons policy, doing no harm has been found to be incompatible with our obligation to maintain a neutral point of view when writing about all subjects, including living people.. That's exactly the point. We must reduce harm as much as possible, but not at the expense of WP:NPOV and WP:V. --Cyclopia ^talk 16:18, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, except that "writing about" allows a nuanced discussion of the topic, whereas unqualified categorisation doesn't. An NPOV will be to not make sweeping assertions in contentious cases. If somebody wants to find out the religious beliefs say of a notable person using Wikipedia, they can look at the person's bio. This may say that "Though X is an ordained Church of England vicar, and conducts church services on a weekly basis, he/she nevertheless claims to be a Rastafarian"(with WP:RS for both of course). To merely place him/her in the category "Church of England" is to miss entirely a significant fact relevant to the very point which the categorical assignment is supposed to clarify. NPOV will require that when you can't fit someone unambiguously into a category, you don't categorise them at all. AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:27, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Cyclopia, the ability to slap a category on someone's entry has nothing to do with WP:NPOV. The ability to add someone to a list also has nothing to do with maintaining NPOV. As I stated in my oppose I see you making arguments, as if we were discussing policy changes to BLP content in the main part of an entry and not discussing list inclusion and category tagging. I'm all for including verifiable information in the main entry, and for representing controversies in a neutral manner, but that has nothing to do with this discussion.Griswaldo (talk) 18:24, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

It has a lot with maintaining NPOV. If list or category content is selected by POV criteria, then NPOV is violated on the list or the category. We may be not talking of BLP content, but we are for sure talking of the list/category content. Lists or cats are not exempt from NPOV, as far as I understand. --Cyclopia ^talk 18:30, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

...And a NPOV can only be maintained in ambiguous cases by not categorising at all. You may be talking about list contents, I prefer to think it is people we are talking about. AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:52, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Would you kindly stop the red herring of "ambiguous cases" and crying "it's people!" and instead reading actually what I proposed above? I state clearly that unless there is a strong,clear consensus of multiple sources, we don't categorize. This means that we shouldn't categorize even if we have self-identification, if it's not backed up by further sources. I am only saying to shift from relying on self-identification to relying on sources, which is what we usually and safely do. --Cyclopia ^talk 19:22, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Oppose per Griswaldo. To give one example, Ed Miliband was consistently described in UK dailies opposed to the Labour party as an "atheist", even a "self-confessed atheist", even though what he had actually said was, "I don't believe in God". See [3]. --JN 466 13:35, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

See above. Sources, sources, sources. Verifiability, not truth. --Cyclopia ^talk 15:56, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Also: nice link, but to state that he is not atheist when sources say so mean that you are making WP:OR based on your crossing of the book statistics with a statement. I very much hope you're not proposing to include OR in our biographical articles. --Cyclopia ^talk 16:05, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Oppose I don't see the benefit to Wikipedia of this change; instead I see a huge opportunity for POV-pushing via lists and categories. The person's bio can discuss those WP:RS claims in detail--that's where they belong.betsythedevine (talk) 13:49, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

The benefit to WP is that we avoid singling out a single, primary source (self-identification) among all others and we get an objective categorization based on the consensus of reliable sources. I don't see how POV-pushing is possible: it explicitly states that sources must be in agreement, and that if there's controversy, then we refrain from categorization. My point is that singling out self-identification is against our RS and NPOV pillars. --Cyclopia ^talk 16:03, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Oppose If someone has explicitly stated him or herself to be of a particular ethnicity, religious belief or sexual orientation, stating otherwise cannot by definition be uncontroversial. The person concerned will find it so (And so do I for that matter, but then I'm a notorious believer that shoving people into boxes for encyclopaedic convenience is wrong "per Feynman"). The wording is so vague and contradictory that as it stands all it would achieve is to bring more of the confused and inconclusive debates on whether a particular list or category is within policy. AndyTheGrump (talk) 14:03, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
Comment Self identification trumps all other sources, that in never negotiable. Nobody, not even WP, has the right to contradict any person's explicitly professed beliefs or declaration of sexual orientation. I am absolutely and immovably committed to this principle. Giving up even a single atom of this principle is the thin edge that inevitably leads to the slippery slope to the ultimate destruction of WP's credibility. I agree that "no category" should always be the default, but self identification plus specific, proven, relevance to notability is the only acceptable reason to deviate from this default position. Roger (talk) 19:35, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Support, generally. Not sure about "hidden" ethnicity/religion, but generally categories should be germane (relevant) to the article. This is really a good suggestion, since categories have often gotten completely out of hand. Most editors have focused on article content and pretty much ignored categories which are often the sloppy stepchild, acknowledged with embarrassment, of Wikipedia. Student7 (talk) 20:30, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand this support. The current BLPCAT already includes such language. Indeed it is clearer on the notion than this proposal is. Jayen's proposal above is also much clearer on something needing to be germane to the notability of the person who's article is being tagged.Griswaldo (talk) 21:11, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Support gets the gist of it. This wording allows situations like Andre Geim or Ed Miliband to be resolved by the editors involved (as they have been successfully), instead of by a broad policy that may not be relevant to the particular situation. The combination of high-quality sources and editorial common sense are what is best about Wikipedia, and this wording doesn't stunt that. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 21:04, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Third proposal

Thought I'd take a crack at this - basically, this combined my concerns about "relevance to notability" with some of the ideas above. I know many here don't agree about the "relevance to notability" part, but think of the practical effect: pretty much every single openly LGBT person is categorized as such on Wikipedia. If there are exceptions, I haven't seen them. Most self-identified members of would-be "controversial" religions (like possibly Scientology) are categorized as such. In fact, one could argue that if someone is openly LGBT, then it's always notable to their public life. So that means that our current "relevancy" policy has no effect on actual sexual orientation categories, and a baseless effect on religion categories (if someone has self-identified themselves as a Methodist, then why are we making it a BLP offense to categorize them as such?).

Since many editors were concerned about what would happen if the subject of an article explicitly rejects a label, that's addressed here too. And the standards for including ethnicity are increased by the wording. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 21:28, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Oppose You have merely rephrased Cyclopia's proposal. If you aren't going to propose a new angle I don't think we need more clutter on the talk page.Griswaldo (talk) 21:29, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
- I didn't paraphrase it. I removed the parts about "relevance to notability", which Cyclopia did not. Aside from that, I made it clear that if the subject of the article rejects the label, the category should not be used. That is opposite to what Cyclopia's proposal states. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 21:31, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
Oppose Ethnic labeling by a list or category should be opt-in, not opt-out, for living people. The bio can make it clear what evidence exists in WP:RS. A category, or a list that can potentially be used to tag bios with ethnic claims, should require self-identification. betsythedevine (talk) 23:26, 2 December 2010 (UTC) p.s. But I do support your removal of the notability requirement. betsythedevine (talk) 02:20, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
Support removal of notability requirement - I actually also want to get rid of the nonsensical "relevant to notability" bit; if I didn't include it in the previous proposal was to make things one by one and to focus on the self-identification bit. But thanks for raising the issue. The "relevant to notability" thing serves no conceivable BLP purpose and removes remarkable entries from categories, for no reason. Example: As far as I know, Miles Davis is not notable for being African-American but his music: as such, he is rightfully within Category:African American musicians. Now, he is dead, so no problem: but if he was still alive, would you imagine such a category without him? --Cyclopia^talk 00:22, 3 December 2010 (UTC) - Oppose subject rejection of label as a sufficient condition for removing subject from cat/list: of course such a rejection has to be strongly considered but it would make us fail the last king of Scotland again. --Cyclopia^talk 00:25, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
- I would say it doesn't fail the Scotland test. After all, if person X self-identifies as Scottish but is most assuredly not, we're not obligated to actually list them as Scottish - nothing in my proposal says we're obligated to categorize based on every self-identification the person has ever made - just that we can't categorize someone if they explicitly said they aren't something. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 01:34, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
  - just that we can't categorize someone if they explicitly said they aren't something. - I understand it perfectly, and that's exactly what I object. Any criteria that makes impossible for us to categorize correctly Amin's ethnicity, provided that multiple sources exist about it (I don't know -let's assume so for the sake of argument)- is a wrong criteria. Subject self-identification is just one highly important, unique primary source, but it is neither a necessary nor sufficient primary source. --Cyclopia^talk 01:40, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
    - "Any criteria that makes impossible for us to categorize correctly Amin's ethnicity, provided that multiple sources exist about it (I don't know -let's assume so for the sake of argument)- is a wrong criteria." No it isn't. If Amin says he's Scottish, and other's say he's from another ethnic group (which one? I've not seen any evidence yet of him belonging to any ethnic group, as opposed to nationality), the correct thing is not to assign him to any group at all. But then that's what we appear to be doing at the moment, since we have no real evidence about his ethnicity. (one could make a guess about his 'race', but we are specifically told not to do this for living persons, and doing it for the dead seems unnecessary even if it isn't against policy). AndyTheGrump (talk) 01:58, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
Comment We will never get anywhere if we don't take a stepwise approach to this, making one change at a time. Editors want to lose the "relevant to their notability requirement" for sexuality and religion -- let them make a proposal using the current BLP wording, changing just this one point, and see whether that proposal gains support. Try making two or three changes at the same time, and no proposal will ever get off the ground. --JN 466 01:25, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
Comment Would a backwards approach be helpful? What I mean is could be question be stated as "What harm is done to the quality of the article if a category is omitted? To use the last example given by the proposer, if the suject of the article is self-identified as a Methodist and there are reliable sources that make that identification, does it hurt the article to omit Category:Methodists? In most cases I believe it would not. The same is probably true of Scientologists. JimCubb (talk) 01:51, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
- It wouldn't hurt to omit them from Category:People from Massachusetts, either, or Category:Massachusetts Democrats (and I'm not talking about an actual politician in that category). I just don't understand the existence of this "relevance" line, since it has no actual effect whatsoever on sexual orientation categories (and it would be very hard to argue, as I said, that someone being openly LGBT has no relevance to their profession), and seems to have no useful purpose when it comes to self-identified members of various religions. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 02:35, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
  - It doesn't harm the article almost at all, but it enormously harms the category. A category which lacks obvious entries because of self-declaration restrictions is a category which miserably fails NPOV.--Cyclopia ^talk 23:26, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
it would be very hard to argue, as I said, that someone being openly LGBT has no relevance to their profession is an interesting generalization. Is it your position that everyone's sexual orientation has an impact on his or her profession or just LGBT? JimCubb (talk) 00:47, 5 December 2010 (UTC)
- In today's world, this generalization is almost always true - that's probably why these BLP restrictions were put up regarding sexual orientation in the first place. My point is that there isn't a single openly LGBT person on Wikipedia who isn't in an LGBT category (and if there are any, they're one of a handful of exceptions), therefore putting in a "relevant to notability" provision is pointless (and maybe you misunderstood what I'm saying: it isn't that being LGBT effects how someone will do their job, it's that if someone is LGBT the media always reports on it and makes a big deal out of it; if famous person X "came out" as gay, there'd be a significant amount of media attention on it; if famous person X "came out" as a practicing Methodist, you're not going to find much of anybody reporting on it). All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 03:37, 5 December 2010 (UTC)
  - "My point is that there isn't a single openly LGBT person on Wikipedia who isn't in an LGBT category" -- I think it would be sad if that were true. While it probably is true in such areas as politics and popular culture, I don't believe it necessarily holds true for other areas such as business or academia, and to the extent that it is true, it reflects the zeal of LGBT taggers as much as the fact that any departure from heterosexuality generates prominent coverage. --JN 466 13:04, 5 December 2010 (UTC)
    - Can you find an article of an openly LGBT person who isn't categorized as such? Maybe you can, but it would be one of a few minor exceptions. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 22:35, 5 December 2010 (UTC)
Oppose this is moving from contentious categories to uncontentious ones. As categorising an article is one way to bring it to the attention of people interested in that subject, it would be bad for the pedia to require a reliable source for each category. Ϣere SpielChequers 13:24, 5 December 2010 (UTC)
- If you oppose moving to uncontentious categories, you should probably also oppose Biographies_of_living_persons#Revised_BLPCAT_proposal. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 22:35, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

A different proposal

I can live with the self-declaration prerequisite provided that:

We decide to entirely remove every living person from the current ethnicity/religion/etc. Category:X categories.
We create two types of categories Category:Living persons self-declared as X and Category:Living persons alleged X, and we
This passes the "Pope test" (the Pope would correctly enter Category:Living persons alleged to be Catholics -which is perhaps mildly funny but better than having a Category:Catholics without the Pope)
This passes the "Idi Amin test" (he would correctly enter Category:Living persons self-declared as Scottish, regardless of what his actual etnicity was).

The point is that in this way 1)the categories' names do not mislead about their contents and 2)we can still have useful navigational aids that from the title however avoid to declare belonging to an ethinicity/religion/etc. as fact. While a Category:Living atheists containing only self-declared atheists is biased (and conversely one containing non-self-declared atheists seems to be controversial) , a Category:Living persons self-declared as atheists is honest upfront about what is there and what not, being therefore honest with our readers. TL;DR: we do not put a blunt "you are X" cat but a more nuanced and precise "you self declared X" and/or "sources consider you X" What do you think about? --Cyclopia ^talk 13:19, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Comment The "pope test", positing a scenario where editors are unable to categorise the pope as a Catholic because they can't find a source where the Pope has explicitly said, "I am a Roman Catholic", is a red herring. I honestly cannot understand why a couple of editors keep bringing it up, because it isn't a practical problem requiring a solution. If a solution were required, we could simply add a footnote to BLPCAT stating that "Any holder of a religious office in an organised religion may be assumed to have self-identified as a member of that religion." I think that would be entirely uncontroversial, and in fact so uncontroversial as to represent an unnecessary inflation of the policy's word count.

I don't see the Idi Amin test as much more of a realistic problem either. Cases like Ward Churchill are tougher. But there again, present policy is perfectly equipped to handle such a case. Policy as it stands says that self-identification is a necessary requirement to apply a religious/sexual preference category, but it does not state that a person self-identifying as X must automatically be added to category X – and where reasonable and widely publicised doubts exist whether an individual's self-identification is factually incorrect, or even fraudulent, our editors simply don't apply the category. There is no reason to change anything in BLPCAT for that to continue; not applying a category does not infringe BLPCAT in any way.

Maintaining two parallel categories for everything, as proposed here, is not practicable. I could see some small potential merit in extending self-identification to dead people, to prevent people being "claimed" by interest groups after their deaths, but this policy is obviously not the right place for that. --JN 466 17:28, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Comment The "pope test" is not a Red Herring, and you cannot assume "Any holder of a religious office in an organised religion may be assumed to have self-identified as a member of that religion." For instance Paul Newman was ordained as a minister in the Universal Life Church (As are several other celebrities of other religions)[4] yet he self identified as Jewish (And was probably actually Agnostic). It also applies to other categories an musical artist can write songs with strong and overt LGBT themes yet by BLPCAT cannot be categorised as an LGBT musician without self-identification which may not exist. Even in religion someone could be notable for being a member of a religion without being clergy and without self-identifying, for instance Peter Tobin is an infamous Roman Catholic but I'm not sure if we have any reliable self-identification of that fact, however it is part of his notability and he should be categorised by it. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 18:06, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

If Newman became a minister of the ULC, and that was a notable part of his life, I don't see why he can't be categorised as such. If he self-identified as (ethnically) Jewish, he can be categorised for that, too. And if he said he was an agnostic, he can be categorised for that as well; it is not incompatible with ULC membership. I don't see the problem. I see what you're saying with Tobin, though. --JN 466 19:45, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

In any case, Jayen, please make an effort to assume we are not a bunch of morons: the "tests" are obviously tongue-in-cheek shortcuts to indicate two types of problems (one where identification is well sourced but there's no easy self-identification; the other where identification is well sourced as well but there's contrasting self-identification). And these are practical problems we can face. Now, why isn't it practicable? It seems to me simply the clearest thing. A reader expects to find all Catholics in Category:Catholics, not only "self-identified" ones. As such the category is misleading and biased. If we really need such a requirement, let's be honest with the reader: Category:Self-identified Catholics. --Cyclopia ^talk 18:49, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

For example, such a categorization would have avoided the "Feynman problem" , and made the Miliband one much easier. It makes things easy. --Cyclopia ^talk 18:51, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Well, I don't think having Categories titled "Living persons alleged to be X" is going to fly here. --JN 466 19:45, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

...and the reason is? --Cyclopia ^talk 20:29, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

You will be hard put to find a reliable source that explicitly says that a person is alive, yet we infer that such is the case because we have reliable source for a person's date of birth and evidence (original research?) of a person's being ambulatory and communicative. The same inferential method should be used to categorize a person who denies believing in any deity as an Atheist and the Pope as a Catholic. JimCubb (talk) 20:41, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

"The same inferential method should be used to categorize a person who denies believing in any deity as an Atheist...". Wrong. Just wrong. Firstly, it isn't a question of 'denial'. An atheist isn't somebody who denies anything. I don't believe in flying saucers, does that mean I am a 'flying-saucer-denier'? More to the point, one can only have an opinion on the existence or otherwise of deities if one recognises the concept as valid in the first place. Since it would be difficult to argue that a new-born baby could believe in a god or gods, should we categorise newborn babies as atheist? Religion is something you learn about, and until you hear of the concept you cannot be categorised on the basis that you don't believe in it. AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:01, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

I would oppose the proposal at the top of the page and support the proposals by All Hallow's Wraith and Cyclopia. Specifically, I would Oppose any hard requirement for self-identification issue, although in other respects I think ethnicity belongs under BLPCAT. Apart from the Idi Amins of this world, I think there are likely to be plenty of cases where the ethnicity is obvious or verifiable in reliable independent sources &c and is relevant, but the subject of the article themselves has hade few or no recorded comments on the subject. Sure, if you're writing an article about a politician you'll have no trouble sourcing some comments on self-identification to the extent that it's relevant; but not all BLPs are about politicians. I'm thinking particularly in terms of people caught up in issues of racism or discrimination but who didn't talk themselves into that position. Sportspeople spring to mind; somebody of an ethnic minority who breaks into a white-dominated sport (in the USA or UK, say) - or even a white basketball player - might be relatively notable in that respect - and third parties may have commented on the issue - but sportspeople's actions are recorded, rather than their many speeches. Alternatively, consider controversial issues around the intersection of race, ethnicity, and family life which may a plentiful source of media coverage and hence notability - not every member of a family in this context (perhaps a child) will have gone on record explicitly identifying with a particular group even if, say, a relative has been quoted in some RS, or maybe there's even a court case or some official who goes on record refusing to allow an interethnic adoption or transplant, or what-have-you... I'd rather see the policy require solid verification of ethnicity, but not necessarily self-identification. bobrayner (talk) 18:14, 17 December 2010 (UTC)