Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons/Archive 34

Race/Ethnicity - Self Identification

Regarding the line :

Categories regarding religious beliefs or 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 public life or notability, according to reliable published sources.

I believe this initially read "religious beliefs, sexual orientation, race or ethnicity", is there a reason that race/ethnicity were removed? Can I put it back? It seems these two attributes are subject to similar difficulties that religious beliefs and sexual orientation are. NickCT (talk) 00:22, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Add "nationality" to catch a few more problems then <g>.

Categories about a person's beliefs or orientation of any sort should rely specifically on self-identification by the person, and not on surmise by any other source, and then only if such beliefs or orientation are relevant to the person' notability.

Trying to make it even less susceptible to wiki-cavilling. Collect (talk) 01:26, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

There was extensive discussion about it, Nick. The consensus was that religious beliefs and sexual orientation were different from race and ethnicity. Approximately, it is not appropriate for me to describe Stevie Wonder as a bisexual Hindu, since he has never indicated that he is either of those things. But I do not need a quote from him saying "I am black" in order suggest that he might be. --FormerIP (talk) 01:53, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Stevie Wonder, in fact, does self-identify as "black." This requirement is not a horrible hurdle for Wikipedia to handle - and those cases where the person does not self-identify as (say) Croatian are where this would actually be properly enforced. Collect (talk) 01:58, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Does he identify as black? I suppose it is probable, but a citation may be required. But the reason we do not require evidence of his self-identification, whereas we do where his sexuality or religion are concerned, ought to be obvious. --FormerIP (talk) 02:09, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Issues about nationality, etc. litter the BLP/N board - thus should be included. The more we are strict about contentious claims, the fewer the problems we shall see in the future. Collect (talk) 03:15, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

@FormerIP - re "There was extensive discussion about it" - I took a look at this. I presume this was the most recent discussion on this topic. Funny, I'd actually participated in this discussion and completely forgot. I'm really surprised RL0919 closed this RfC as he did. I did a quick tally and counted 21 for including ethnicity and 13 against. It seemed like consensus was reasonably strong for the measure. Admittedly though there were some canvassing allegations I didn't read too deeply into.

@Collect re "Add "nationality"" - Agreed.

It seems so obvious to me that things like religion, sexual persuasion, ethnicity, race, and nationality are fundamentally similar, in that they all contain an element of subjectivity. There is no agreed upon yardstick by which any of these things can be measured. NickCT (talk) 13:22, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

A requirement for "self-identification" for "ethnicity" is probably uncalled for. Reliable sources can probably tell us what someone's "ethnicity" is. Ditto for "nationality". In fact ditto for "race". The two core attributes of identity that lend themselves well to requirements for "self-identification are "religion" and "sexual orientation", and I do not think that those two attributes should be considered together (although they already are). Separate discussions should be held for "religion" and "sexual orientation". Bundling the two together only muddles the reasoning put forth by the various editors participating, making the comparison of arguments unnecessarily complex, and the one-size-fits-all solutions that we come up with in policy language actually fit none of these attributes as well as they could. Living subjects of biographies do not necessarily enunciate statements of "self-identification". This should not always prevent us from Categorizing in ways that seem appropriate in keeping with that which is suggested by good quality sources and concerning attributes that involve less sensitivity than others. But again I think the bundling together of a multitude of attributes for consideration as a group is not a good idea. I object to the suggestion, immediately above, that we include "ethnicity" and "race" in an already too-diverse group of qualities considered together. Separate discussions can be initiated for these attributes if editors feel that these qualities need further scrutiny vis-a-vis our policies. But lumping them together with relatively unrelated attributes/qualities is I think a way to come up with policy that is not appropriate for any of the included considerations. In my opinion the black-and-white requirement for self-identification probably needs to be adjusted to allow for a multitude of good-quality reliable sources to suffice to substitute for "self-identification", especially as concerns less sensitive considerations. Subjects of biographies do not necessarily enunciate "self-identification" and we should not necessarily require it. Bus stop (talk) 14:49, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

@Bus stop - re "self-identification probably needs to be adjusted to allow for a multitude of good-quality reliable sources to suffice to substitute for "self-identification" - Well I can agree with that at least. If you can give a reasonable number of good quality sources saying "Joe is African-American", and there are no credible sources, which oppose the statement, and no real debate about the issue, I don't think you actually need to show Joe has "self-identified" in order to support saying that "Joe is African-American".

re "Bundling the two together only muddles the reasoning" & "one-size-fits-all solutions that we come up with in policy language actually fit none of these attributes as well" - I couldn't disagree more. The reasoning for bundling is that all these attributes are inherently linked in that they are all inherently subjective. That's why they should all be put together.

Finally Bus, it might be worth noting that you are pretty heavily involved in doing ethnic classifications on WP. You might want to recuse yourself from a conversation about whether what you are doing is right. Obviously someone heavily involved in a particular practice, is unlikely to support a policy which restricts that practice. NickCT (talk) 15:23, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

I see this as trickier and more nuanced than others. In the UK, where the topic is probably a lot less sensitive than in some places, the clear rule is that ethnic self-identification is the 'official' way it is done. There are a number of reasons for this, one being of course that external appearance is not sufficient in itself, another that people's ethnic backgrounds are often very mixed. But we should not underestimate the sensitivity that can surround somebody's parentage, for example. The guiding rule in WP that we regard such things as private unless the subject chooses to make it otherwise has to be right. For example, a comedian might choose to base some of her jokes around the fact that she has an Iranian background. But we should be very cautious about what may be a journalist's careless assumptions based on skin colour or known background, so unless it is clear that the ethnicity is as described by the subject or at least that they are comfortable with the description, it really should not be in. Self-identification should be implicit in practice and the idea that we can 'objectively' classify others on external information is wrong. --AJHingston (talk) 18:12, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

I don't believe that nationality should be treated like religion. Nationality is purely a matter of law. For example, all American citizens are American nationals whether they like it or not. It is not actually possible to be an American citizen without being an American national. (It's possible to be an American national without being an American citizen, but not the other way around.) We don't really need someone to say "I see myself as being an American national": either the person is, or s/he isn't, and what determines the person's nationality is the applicable laws, not anything the person says about it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:59, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

(od) Unfortunately, nationality is not just a "matter of law" - if you read the various noticeboards (especially BLP/N), the issue as to what nationality should be given in a biography is often complicated - especially where the boundaries of nations are altered over time - for instance is a person who was born in Germany when Germany included part of what is now Poland, Polish or German? Is a person who was born in the Palestine Mandate now Israeli or Jordanian depending on where the current lines are? Or Palestinian? In short, "nationality" is frequently not just a simple matter of law, and denizens of the BLP board know it. Cheers. Collect (talk) 04:19, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it is sometimes complicated. Which is precisely why a blanket rule about it would be daft. --FormerIP (talk) 04:24, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

180 degrees wrong - the purpose of rules is to prevent future disputes - and such a rule would do so. Saying that a rule is bad because it will prevent disputes is strange logic at best. Cheers. Collect (talk) 04:50, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

No, it is a matter of law. It's sometimes a matter of extremely complicated law, and you shouldn't just guess (e.g., "he was born in Germany, so I say he's a German national"), but it's a matter of law, not of self-identification. A person can repeat "I'm a national of ____" until he turns blue in the face, but that does not actually make him be a national of that country—nor does saying "I'm not a national of ____" make him quit being a national of that country (to the occasional distress of tax evaders and draft dodgers).

By contrast, saying "I follow <name of religion>" does make him have that religion, and "I do not believe in <name of religion>" makes him not have that religion. That's why we want self-identification for religion. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:33, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

I suspect that views on this will skewed if the editor is from the US, because things there are often atypical. It is generally helpful to mentally keep citizenship and nationality in separate compartments. Citizenship is a legal status which can be objectively determined by the law of a state. A person may hold citizenship of several countries (though that may not be recognised by all of them), or none, and although it can often be assumed or inferred, RS may well be necessary and actually the best and most reliable source in cases of doubt is likely to be the subject even though we may be relying on a secondary source to relay it. But national identification may not be the same at all. It may be narrower - for example, UK citizens would not normally describe themselves in that way except to foreigners and indeed we do not even have a word for it; we may say British (though it is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the two are not synonymous) but might legitimately give Scottish or Iranian whatever as nationality, even if not living there, nor would we think that identification necessarily attached to place of birth (which is simply the place your mother happened to be at the time). But nationality may also be wider than citizenship. As for trying to explain the traditional French approach to the question, or the question of what it means to be German (even today let alone historically) or from the Balkans, and indeed very many parts of the world is not something I can go into here. And because nationality and ethnicity may be connected the question of birth parentage may feature. In most cases, the descriptor for a person will be straightforward and not contentious, but we cannot necessarily know that. Even if the use of original sources were allowed, to say simply, I know the right answer because I have seen your birth certificate / knew your mother at the time / etc might not be enough. It comes back to my point above, that in practice we generally lack reliable evidence without self-identification. --AJHingston (talk) 10:09, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

I think that 'A German national' always means a German citizen, although 'of German nationality' might be debatable. But I agree that we need to extend our policy to include race and ethnicity. Dougweller (talk) 11:14, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

I think AJHingston has inadvertently found the problem: Nationality and national identification are not the same things. If you want to make a statement about the BLP's national identification, you should be looking for a self-identifying statement, e.g., "I consider myself to be Scottish".

For nationality, which is a completely separate thing, what matters is what the court of law says, e.g., you are an Danish national and you are therefore subject to their laws whether you like it or not. If you are legally a Danish national, then saying "I consider myself to be Scottish" does not make the smallest difference in matters like whether you are subject to military conscription under their laws. Actually being a Scottish national would exempt you, but self-identifying as Scottish does not. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:47, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

It is complicated, as the nationality article acknowledges. These things vary with place and time, and in UK law British citizenship and British nationality are not the same thing. Usages vary. To take a simple example, of somebody born in the USA who settles in London. In the course of time she might qualify for, and take out, UK citizenship. She might (because UK law has no problem with that), retain her US citizenship as well. Whether she has dual citizenship or not she might then continue to call herself American, or British, or even English. In another country, especially where dual citizenship is not permitted, things might be different. Historically in Europe, and in some cases today, national identification, which might be legally recognised, is not necessarily the same as citizenship at all. Nationality may be clear, unambiguous, and easily attested from sources. The problem comes about where it is not, and editors make assumptions or insist on imposing their own label in conflict with what the subject might prefer. Use of uncontentious labels such as 'citizen' if supported by RS are one thing. It is quite another to attach lables of nationality if the person is living in Gibralter, or Northern Ireland or Kosovo, and full of ambiguity elsewhere, without knowing how the subject considers themself. --AJHingston (talk) 13:50, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

No, you've conflated nationality with national identification again. Nationality is a matter of law. You either are a Danish national, or you aren't. What you "call yourself" or "consider yourself" has nothing to do with it.

I agree that figuring out someone's legal nationality can be messy. Citizenship, BTW, can be equally messy: just ask the ethnic Russians living in Latvia and Estonia. We should not be guessing at people's nationality or their citizenship or their national self-identification. We should be following the reliable sources, not assuming that a person living in Glasgow is Scottish.

But we also shouldn't be requiring the very high bar of self-identification for purely legal matters. If a court of law says that you're a Danish national, then you are, and a press conference on the courthouse steps to say that you consider yourself to be Scottish instead doesn't change anything. In that instance, the article should report your nationality as Danish (whether you like it or not) and your national self-identification as Scottish (whether the court likes it or not).

This is, BTW, exactly parallel to how we handle another contentious legal matter: if the court says that you're a duly convicted murderer, then we report that you are, indeed, a convicted murderer, no matter how many press releases you send out saying that you feel you're innocent. Criminal convictions, like nationality and citizenship, are matters of law, not matters of self-identification. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:50, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

The proposal is an example of instruction creep. Furthermore there is in fact no benefit to considering more than one attribute simultaneously—each attribute should be considered separately. The bundling of attributes merely hobbles the utility of any resulting language in policy that might be arrived at. Editors should reach conclusions based on discussion of the single attribute under consideration. In fact sexual orientation should be decoupled from religion to reach more fine-tuned policy language to which disputants might refer. This proposal is suggesting that more attributes concerning identity be bundled together under the same heading that is unfortunately already doing double-duty. This is to the detriment of future disputes. We have to be cognizant of the double-edged sword that policy is. Poorly written policy hobbles article writing. If we are contemplating and arguing about wording in policy relevant to a given attribute of identity, we should be discussing that attribute only. It may be that self-identity may be deemed very important as concerns one attribute but that concerning another attribute it may be felt by a variety of editors that good quality reliable sources are sufficient. Our wording matters as disputants are going to look to that wording. But we can't get the wording right if we are discussing disparate attributes at once. Bus stop (talk) 15:45, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes, the argument above demonstrates the problems in having a set of rules when interpretation can vary so much anyway. It's clearly difficult to convey the idiocy of having edit wars over whether someone can validly be described as Scottish or Basque for example. Or in saying that these labels can be allowed under ethnicity or race but not nationality. From the US that must be difficult to grasp, but Europe is different. The point made above that self identification would normally be necessary in order to verify these things must be the key, and where secondary sources conflict with what the subject themselves say the subject is normally more reliable (because secondary sources are not usually in a position to know). Trying to make universal rules does not help, any more than it would be satisfactory to say that the mother's skin colour or the subject's place of birth is an objective test that overrides what the subject says about him or herself. --AJHingston (talk) 22:43, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

As I understand it, you cannot actually be a Basque national at this time. You can only be a person who wishes to be a Basque national, were the Basque Country ever to become an actual nation at some point in the future. Consequently, no living people should be identified as having Basque nationality. They may have Basque ethnicity, and they may be a member of the Basque nationalism movement, and they may live in the Basque Country, but they cannot actually be Basque nationals, even if they say "We're Basque nationals" until they're all blue in the face. The Basque nation does not actually exist, so they cannot be subject to its laws. WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:58, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

Really, please do not try to take WP down this line, because it will get the community into endless POV squabbles. To go back to the UK, which is an area I feel most comfortable debating, the complexities are illustrated by a BBC feedback questionnaire I filled in last week which asked me to give my nationality (along with age and sex). It offered British, English, Scottish, Welsh amongst others. We are not comfortable with the idea that these are ethnic identities (because of our mixed heritage) and have learnt to regard and describe the parts of the United Kingdom as constituent nations even though not everyone likes the idea (and without prejudice as to whether they should be self governing or separate sovereign states). I understand why that seems strange or wrong to some (just as it is very difficult to explain to many French people the particular status of the Channel Islands for example) but it is the way it is. There are so many and varied situations around the world that for WP to try to make rules about these things just could not work. --AJHingston (talk) 16:55, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

All of this is OR anyway. All of the above. This is really simple: follow what the sources say. If they conflict, then report both of them (or a multitude of them). There's nothing that's actually new here. As for self identification itself: again, there's nothing new here. Report what the person says about themselves (if reliable), and what others say about them (if reliable), and allow the reader to decide. Why you folks want to continually reinvent the wheel is beyond me.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 22:21, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

Quite. But the fact that this keeps coming up demonstrates the difficulties that it seems to pose in practice. Most of the time the only reliable source will be the individual, not least because there is rarely an objective test. I am not sure that talk of OR is always helpful because the information will usually be drawn from secondary sources, and the danger lies in editors using that in a way that assigns the person to a category automatically. What some newspaper journalist says is not really an RS if it disagrees with the subject unless there is some explanation at least. But sometimes the information will be implicit, sourced and otherwise uncontroversial and is important to the biography, so making a rule that it can only ever be included if the individual concerned can be proved to have made a positive statement on the matter seems unnecessary. Let's just avoid letting editors say that self-identification is invalid because they know better, or assigning these things on the basis of skin colour, place of birth or whatever because of a set of rules that are actually subjective. If there is a difference in the sources, common sense should cover it - it would be silly to insist that if the subject calls themselves Welsh and other RS British the second label must appear as well, but it might be appropriate to mention that they had lived in England for many years, or had a Scottish mother etc. --AJHingston (talk) 23:16, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons#Crime_perpetrators

Since an accused is not guilty, I'll suggest rename this section to "Persons accused of crime", because "Crime perpetrators" suggest they are perpetrators of crime. --SupernovaExplosion ^Talk 04:09, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

• Extremely sensible suggestion. Done. Wifione ^Message 14:50, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

BLP deletions

I've been looking around at the history of discussions about defaulting to delete in BLP AfDs. See User:SlimVirgin/BLP deletion. In the course of writing that up, I saw that an important section about this was removed from BLP in May 2008, and I can't find any discussion about it. It said:

AFD based deletion

When closing an AfD about living persons whose notability is ambiguous, the closing administrator should take into account whether the subject of the article being deleted has asked that it be deleted. The degree of weight given to such a request is left to their discretion.

Removed here on 7 May 2008 by Kotniski, referencing the talk page. Discussion should be in Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons/Archive 19, but I can't find it.

Does anyone know the history of this removal? And would there be objections to me restoring it (with some tweaking)? It is de facto policy that admins take the subject's wishes into account, though there is no consensus regarding the weight they should place on those wishes. It seems odd not to mention this in the written policy. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 18:38, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

Looks like the original discussion was archived to a non-standard archive page. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 19:06, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for finding that. Specifically, the discussion on that page is here, but it doesn't show any consensus to remove that section, which had been in the policy for some time. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 19:24, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

WP:BIODEL goes far enough, in my view. I don't think we can adopt a passage that has been absent for four years without consensus to do so. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 18:50, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

A lot of editors disagree but I would have no problem with that provided that it's only applied to marginally notable "shmoes" (perhaps this should be called "shmoetability") and not the "supernotable" (ie "A list celebrities"). it should also be under the condition that the BLP subject identifies himself through OTRS to prevent pranksters and trolls from impersonating a BLP subject to get an article deleted. Alternatively, if a BLP subject's wishes are known through, lets say a "blog" previously known to be his then that can be taken into account. --Ron Ritzman (talk) 18:58, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

(ec) WP:BIODEL (part of the deletion policy) actually goes further. It says:

Discussions concerning biographical articles of relatively unknown, non-public figures, where the subject has requested deletion and there is no rough consensus may be closed as delete.

So that reverts the "no consensus = keep" default at AfDs to "no consensus = delete," where the person is relatively unknown, but notable enough for a bio. There's no reason to have text about that in the deletion policy, but have it removed from the BLP policy without discussion. So I think we do need to restore something here. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 18:59, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

I would suggest: "Where a BLP subject of borderline notability requests deletion, the AfD may be closed as delete, unless there is consensus to keep. That is, where there is no consensus, the default position is to delete."

If it has been deleted without discussion, and is supported by existing policy, clearly it should be restored - or preferably updated to match what WP:BIODEL says. If we are going to amend this, we'll need to discuss this further. I'd caution against doing this in the middle of a contentious AfD, where this policy is very much involved though - this is likely to confuse the issue further. AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:10, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

We can wait until this AfD is closed, but someone should make sure the closing admin knows this is already policy. Changing to "borderline notability" is just using the more common term. "Relatively unknown" isn't used as much, and "non-public figure" risks making people think we're referring to the U.S. legal use of the term. Most Wikipedians know where the parameters of "borderline notability" tend to lie. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 19:15, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

I would be happy to see this default-delete approach. Actually, perhaps because I've spent too much time with WP:COIN on my watchlist, I'd be happy to see default-delete or default-merge for any living person for whom there is no consensus that the person is notable (=qualifies for a separate, stand-alone article). WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:40, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

• I disagree with default delete, because if we're doing BLP articles right (NPOV, RS, etc.), then there is no harm to keeping a BLP. On the other hand, if there's a 1E issue, then the proper outcome isn't delete anyways--it's redirection, and if we're afraid of leaving content in history, then it should have been suppressed or revdel'ed regardless of whether the article is kept or deleted. Please don't think I'm being "soft on BLP" here--quite the opposite, I think that we need to take a more aggressive approach at the content level, not the article level. Jclemens (talk) 02:34, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

• I don't like "default delete" either. An AFD that closes as "no consensus" should default to "keep", BLP or not. However, deletion should be an option in "no consensus" cases where the subject is only of marginal notability and is requesting deletion. I will also go as far as to say that a closing admin in such cases should give the most weight to "keep" and "delete" !votes that address the issue of "notability" (or BLP1E or other inclusion guideline) and very little weight to !votes that only address the subject's deletion request ie "delete because the subject is requesting it so let's do the right thing" or "keep because the subject is a whiny bitch who objects to sourced but embarrassing facts posted about him/her". --Ron Ritzman (talk) 03:29, 25 March 2012 (UTC)
  • The difficulty of positively identifying a subject on the Internet has always made me leery of the idea of assigning any weight whatsoever to a supposed subject's request for deletion. Everything we do on OTRS is essentially AGF'ing that the subject is who they claim to be, and working to address as many of their concerns as are legitimate policy issues. The testimony of an anonymous internet account that an article should or should not be part of Wikipedia is inconsistent with our normal sourcing expectations. Really--why do we even need or want the testimony of article subjects (or their dopplegangers...) about whether they should have an article or not? Jclemens (talk) 01:05, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
    • I've been involved in several such cases, and it's honestly never been a problem. (In one case, an editor wrote to the subject's university e-mail as given on her university webpage to verify it was them.) We have this in deletion policy, and it should be in here as well to tie in with that. The text proposed by SlimVirgin above works for me. --JN466 08:44, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
      • My point is that it should not be in deletion policy. The proper response to an error is to correct it, not propagate it. Jclemens (talk) 13:48, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
        • Our BLPs can and often necessarily do "harm". Not to rehash that old argument, but yes even if we are doing our job right, we might be publishing negative information that may harm people. Gigs (talk) 14:14, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
        • Why not? It seems perfectly compatible with the presumption in favour of privacy, which is one of the fundamental tenets of BLP policy. JN466 20:02, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
          • "x is compatible with y" is a weak argument for x. "x necessarily follows from y" is stronger. But it's hardly the case that "no consensus defaults to delete" necessarily follows from "presumption of privacy", particularly when presumption of privacy is rebuttable. Allowing LPs to dictate whether there is an article is too close to allowing LPs to dictate the content of an article (and in practice the one often bleeds into the other); another fundamental tenet here is NPOV. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 21:49, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

• The problem is that we insist on being viewed as an encyclopaedia, not a social-networking site or search engine that gathers information about people without their consent, or after they have withdrawn their consent. (How would you feel if Facebook were to erect a page in your honour, without your knowledge, complete with lists of your friends and family and any other published snippet they could find about you, then refuse to take it down on the grounds that you have no right to dictate content?)

  We say no, this analogy does not apply to us, because we are an encyclopaedia that must safeguard its objectivity and neutrality. Fine. But then we ought to behave like one, and not publish tabloidesque lists of random factoids about people who are basically unknown outside their local area, or who were catapulted into the public eye because of one event. The whole BLP problem is that we want to have it both ways. We want the power without the responsibility.

  It is a very minor safeguard to say that (a) if a BLP subject is borderline notable, and (b) if they request deletion, and (c) if there is no consensus to keep, then (d) the closing admin should default to delete. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 22:39, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

I agree with adding information to this page concordant with WP:BIODEL, though I don't believe that it should go so far as to say "defaults to delete". Rather, any wording here should match the other wording, which is that on borderline-notable BLP articles, an admin has discretion ("may") close non-consensus debates as delete, not that they have to. As always, it would be up to the admin to weigh how much those requests had to balance out the relative level of notability. Qwyrxian (talk) 02:33, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

I created the BIODEL section (nee shortcut) separately, and wrote part of that policy primarily to ensure that the deletion policy on such borderline or non-notable BLPs was noticed by our administrators handling AfDs. I'll be more than pleased to see the policy replicated in some manner or the other here to ensure higher visibility. I'll clearly prefer the default-delete option than the default-keep or may or may not delete option. Wifione ^Message 18:39, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

Agree with SlimVirgin above. JN466 10:39, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Till then, I've added the direct link to WP:BIODEL in this policy. Wifione ^Message 07:36, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

I've added the words from the deletion policy, and created a separate section for BLP deletions. [1] If we want to change or expand on those words in this policy (and I think we ought to discuss the difficulty of using the American idea of a "public figure"), we can think about that after the current deletion review. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 01:47, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

• I completely disagree with this proposal. We should only very marginally take into account the opinions of the subject. If we did more than that, then it would jeopardize our ability to write a neutral encyclopedia. If the issue is that people are adding in negative information and it doesn't have strong sourcing, then the response is to block the people doing that and to remove the information, not to delete the article. I do agree that notability based on negative information requires far stronger sourcing than positive information does and we have to make sure not to fall foul of WP:1E. However, if the information in the article is positive or otherwise neutral and the subject is asking for deletion, I do not believe we should follow that request at all, because I do not believe harm can come from this info, unless a very strong case is made by the subject. If it's just that the subject doesn't want info on them in control by others, then i'm afraid that is out of their hands, because the info we use is things already in news circulation, so has little to do with us and more to do with the info they already released to others. Silverseren^C 17:33, 30 March 2012 (UTC)
  • As I said above, if we're doing BLPs right, the subject's wishes should not matter. If we're using high-quality secondary sources, they don't ever vanish from reality, so the social networking comparison made above is particularly inapt. We should be collecting data using RS to meet V, sufficient RS assure N, and that's about the extent of it: no preferences from the subject needed or wanted. Jclemens (talk) 02:55, 3 April 2012 (UTC)
• SV, note that your reversion of my edits has the perverse effect of making it easier for people who have marginal yet extant notability but no involvement in a major event to be deleted than flash-in-the-pan BLP1Es. That can't be right: people who have labored to become famous without great success should have less presumption of privacy than non-public figures thrust into the spotlight with one single event. Jclemens (talk) 02:55, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

• Hi, I think the issue of whether to avoid the term public person is one we should discuss in detail, but after this deletion review has closed. I think we should avoid it, because it means that a minor academic, say, who gets involved in some local public issue (opposing the building of a pub), risks being classified as a public person by Wikipedia because he has, in some sense, sought out the limelight. In my view, we should think only in terms of WP's concepts of notability and borderline notability, which are fuzzy, but at least we have a sense of where the parameters lie. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 03:28, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

WP:BIODELETE

Nikkimaria, can you explain your reverts? [2]

WP:BIODELETE has been policy since Nov 2008 (in the deletion policy), and also here (removed without discussion and no one noticed). Wifione added a link to BIODELETE a few days ago, and I've just added the words from the deletion policy without changing them - which you've now removed twice.

If you want BIODELETE not to be policy, you would have to argue that. But given that it is policy, can you say why want to stop it from being added here, given that it's about BLPs? SlimVirgin ^(talk) 03:45, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Because before we start adding things to this policy, we should reach an agreement on certain details (like the issue raised by Jclemens, above). I would actually suggest waiting until the whole issue currently at DRV has settled down before trying to make reactive edits to policies, but that's neither here nor there. Nikkimaria (talk) 04:14, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

That's a separate issue of policy development. For now, we are just telling people in here what the deletion policy has said since 2008 about BLP deletions, and we are quoting, not changing anything. This is instead of just linking to it. Once this deletion review is over, there are several issues of policy development to discuss (i.e. do we want to say something different from the deletion policy; for example by not using the term "public figure," a change I hope we make). But in the meantime, it's important to tell readers of this policy, especially BLP subjects, what the policy already is.

I have never known an editor to want to remove from one policy what another policy says, where it's directly relevant. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 05:02, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Really? That's surprising. I think in this case linking is adequate. Nikkimaria (talk) 05:34, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Why would you prefer to link, rather than quote one sentence? [3] BIODELETE is about BLP deletions; this is the BLP policy; and the section of the BLP policy under discussion is about deleting BLPs. So it couldn't be more relevant, and I can't think of a reason to want to avoid quoting long-established policy.

It's important to remember that this page is intended not only to help Wikipedians, but also to help BLP subjects who are being forced to learn the policies. So we have to help them out with that. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 05:44, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Because quoting one sentence from that policy is an oversimplification and likely to lead to more consternation, not less. Really though, there should be a different page for BLP subjects. If one does not already exist, that might be something else to discuss. 13:05, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Articles where few reliable secondary sources exist

I've noticed recently that in BLP articles the standards of WP:DUE appear to be non-existent, especially with regard to primary sources, and that apparently this is standard [4]. Is it the case that in BLP articles it is acceptable to base a significant (if not effectively all) amount of the article content to be based off WP:PRIMARY and WP:SPS sources? It seems that beyond a basic self description sources WP:PRIMARY sources should not be used by themselves.IRWolfie- (talk) 17:10, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

This isn't just related to one article, I have seen WP:PRIMARY text justified in many BLP articles as being standard. IRWolfie- (talk) 17:33, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

No eventualism

I have created a new essay at WP:ADAM. (Eyes welcome.) Based on a current discussion thread on the WikiEN-l mailing list (titled "More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles"), my essay tries to argue a point that David Gerard and several other contributors made on the list, i.e. that WP:Eventualism does not apply to biographies, which have to be rounded and fair at all times. I believe that this is a point that needs to be made more strongly in this policy, and propose we add a couple of sentences in the Writing style section at the beginning of the policy. If editors think this is a useful idea, we can sit down and draft something. JN466 10:38, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

The BLP page needs a comprehensive rewrite, as much for clarity and sense as anything else. It is not surprising that nobody has stepped up to do this. I entirely agree that the principles reflected there should be the cornerstone. Sooner or later I believe that WP will need to trumpet something equivalent to the UK's Advertising Standards Authority famous slogan Legal, decent, honest and truthful at least in relation to BLPs. The fundamentals of policy are already in place, but there is still a way to go in stressing to editors that unless they can meet the standards WP demands they should refrain from making a contribution. And if users and subjects were reasssured that they were entitled to object if those standards were not met it could be largely self-reinforcing. --AJHingston (talk) 11:31, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Also see comments at Wikipedia_talk:ADAM#I.27d_always_thought_this_was_already_the_case. JN466 11:57, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

My essay at Wikipedia:TWOPRONGS may also be relevant to the current discussion, but approaching it from a different angle. Gigs (talk) 22:34, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Indeed; it's complementary. --JN466 13:49, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

Edit

I've made a bold edit: [5].

Discuss. --JN466 13:49, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

Everything but the last sentence is OK with me. I don't think our biographies should focus on what they are most notable for. Our biographies should be biographies, which includes plenty of things not relevant to their notability. For an example, check out this encyclopedia article on Lincoln. It's a biography, which includes many things not relevant to his notable activities. Gigs (talk) 15:43, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

Yes, but does it include information on his favorite pizza topping, or his third grade girlfriend's cat's name? One still needs to be able to make editorial decisions; just being true and verifiable doesn't mean it is appropriate. --Jayron32 02:10, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

I agree, but that's more of a general concept of WP:Editorial discretion. Those kind of details shouldn't be something we legislate from above, especially not in a policy that should be pretty ironclad like this one. I already see many of our BLPs devolving into something more like news summaries than actual biographies. Adding further encouragement to cut material not central to their "claim to fame", would only encourage making this problem even worse. We need to encourage more comprehensive biographies, not less comprehensive ones. Real biographies encourage balance and neutrality, instead of just focusing on salacious events. Gigs (talk) 14:07, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm with Jayron32 here. I think it is important that we focus on what is notable and already in the public domain. Otherwise we enter stalking territory. So even if the name of his third-grade girlfriend's cat is mentioned in a RS, we should probably eschew mentioning it (unless, of course, he wrote a million-selling song about it). I understand what you mean by your reference to Lincoln, and I agree that news-summary biographies are deplorable, but the thing with Lincoln is that there are multiple book-length biographies taking in these details. So in that sense, these details are part of an established scholarly corpus of information, in a way that does not apply when the source is an interview in an obscure blog. For people who are relatively unknown, and don't have a corpus of biographical scholarship attached to their names, we should be wary of just adding detail after detail. A pile of legs and wings does not make a fly. --JN466 14:24, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

Residence of prison inmates

Not sure where to ask. Is there a standard written anywhere, as to how to identify the residence of a person living in prison? In Conrad Black, I tried changing it to the place of incarceration, and that was reverted. Ultimately, the residence field in the infobox was just removed, which is not a final solution. Not just for this case, there should be some rules on what to use in various situations of incarceration. --Rob (talk) 04:08, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

{{Infobox criminal}} seems to omit it; perhaps that's the right answer. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:47, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

BLP protection for dead persons intentionally killed by a living person who is protected by BLP policy

Do you feel it would be acceptable to add in time-limited exception to the BLP policy that encompasses people who are killed, specifically within articles that also include the living person who killed them?

I ask specifically because of the Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman article. Many editors will claim that Zimmerman, who is still living, is governed by a higher standard of biographical protection simply because he is still alive, versus Martin who died because of Zimmerman's actions. By the way, let me say, I am not interested in a bias toward either person, but in a equal treatment of both subjects. It seems to be a rather unfair way to write an article to say that one side of it has a subject who can be attacked at almost any length because he cannot sue for defamation, while the other half of the article is protected from defamation by the BLP policy. So my suggestion is that for a limited (and perhaps flexible) period of time, persons who are dead, but share an article with their killer should be covered by the same standard as the living person who killed them. Thoughts? -- Avanu (talk) 01:05, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

I think you are pointing out an inherent problem with WP:BLP policy. All people, living or not living, should be treated with sensitivity and concern, in my opinion. I have misgivings about WP:BLP policy on a very general level, and I think you are alluding to the problems or contradictions inherent in WP:BLP policy, even if you are only doing so inadvertently. I fail to understand why less sensitivity would be extended to the dead. Bus stop (talk) 01:29, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Because BLP stems mainly from a concern about being sued. All the same, yes it is ridiculous that our policies give greater consideration to killers than to the people they kill. FormerIP (talk) 01:33, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

But WP:BLP doesn't stem from a concern over lawsuits. The policy's requirements go far beyond the minimum required to avoid a defamation lawsuit. The policy is supposed to represent an ethical duty to both living subjects and to the relatives of the recently deceased. MastCell ^Talk 02:25, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

FomerIP, why is it ridiculous? Some "killers" are not guilty of anything. Some victims are. In the legal context, although many people vigorously complain about the "rights" of victims, generally the rights of the accused must be protected, or we regress to lynching.--Bbb23 (talk) 20:23, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

What are you talking about lynching for? Who is it that doesn't want to protect the rights of the accused? Why put quotes around the "rights" of victims?

Some "killers" are indeed not guilty of anything, which should give pause to WP editors. But some victims are also not guilty of anything. Why should this not give pause? And, surely, we are breaching an obligation to the reader to write with balance if we are willing to include information in an article pointing to an accused person's innocence but we are less willing to include information pointing the other way? FormerIP (talk) 20:38, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

This is a side issue, so I won't dwell too long on it. I thought the wording of your original post was overly broad and slanted toward victims' rights, and it struck a nerve. Similar to a court of law, we have to be extra careful when writing about BLPs who have been accused of crimes but not convicted, and we shouldn't be sidetracked simply because we have sympathy for victims.--Bbb23 (talk) 21:05, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Avanu, with respect to Martin/Zimmerman, does WP:BDP need to be strengthened? --joe decker^{talk to me} 02:55, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

BLP extends to the relatives of the recently dead, so the spirit of BDP is that we have to tread cautiously when discussing the recently deceased. We could add to WP:BDP: (new words in bold): "Questionable material that affects living persons, and by implication the recently deceased, should be removed promptly." SlimVirgin ^(talk) 03:01, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

One of the main purposes of BLP is to protect the privacy of people who otherwise not attract such attention. In this specific case, national and international headlines have been splashed all over the place. The idea that - if Wikipedia would only limit its coverage, no one would find out about it - is fanciful. I would also caution editors that nobody knows for sure what happened that night, so the idea that a definitive person is guilty and a definitive person is a victim cannot be applied in this case (at least not as of yet). A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 03:09, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

The terms "guilty" and "victim" are not my concern here. The concern is more that we have a person who killed another person, yet our policies are not currently balanced to provide the same protections to both individuals. While I agree and recognize the rationale for protecting a living person's reputation for a myriad of reasons, the idea that you can remove most editor oversight by simply killing a person is ridiculous -- especially in articles where BOTH the killer and the killed are within the same article. -- Avanu (talk) 04:52, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

But that's simply not true. There seems to be a common misconception amoung Wikipedia editors that WP:BLP radically alters the way we write articles. That's not the case. In fact, BLP adds very little beyond what WP:NPOV, WP:OR and WP:V already state. The few extra conditions that BLP adds - such as not putting a living person in a category for sexual orientation unless they self-indentify - don't apply to this article (or haven't been violated). A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 13:00, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

What *is* happening is that people make the argument that editoral oversight of material is less important because the person is dead. So while we are agressive in defending against BLP violations, if the person is dead, many editors simply say, 'well, it doesn't matter since they're dead now.' The problem with that thinking is that it allows for a very slanted article that some say is *theoretically* in line with policy. -- Avanu (talk) 13:56, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Agree with SlimVirgin. Any objection to adding what she proposed? --JN466 14:53, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

JN—I object. I think the wisdom of standard policy is that it does not make any distinction between the living and the deceased. No editor should be arguing that lower policy standards apply in the case of the individual that is deceased. Such an argument I think is in violation of standard policy. I think that standard policy should be applied stringently. I think the suggested added wording provided by SlimVirgin is an example of instruction creep. I think Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman should be treated absolutely identically in the article Shooting of Trayvon Martin as this is in accordance with standard policy. Bus stop (talk) 14:52, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

I would argue that the BLP provisions about "contentious claims" should apply to all biographies where the claim in any way impacts specific "living people." I think that such an expansion of BLP makes sense, and would prevent people editing the bio of, say, the father of major politician "Gregory Gnarph" to say the father was a "well-known murderer" or the like without exceedingly strong sourcing, and not using the opinions of others. Collect (talk) 10:26, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Would that protect Trayvon Martin's parents? Your son was killed; we don't know for sure what happened, but we're going to print all of his dirty secrets here because he's dead. It affects the parents emotionally, but does that count in terms of the current policy, or do you need to show that it affects them materially? I don't want to see us end up with endless arguments about the nuanced definition of how much someone is affected by negative statements, and I don't want to encourage censorship of legitimate material that should be included. -- Avanu (talk) 11:00, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

My suggestion would specifically protect parents etc. The idea is that "opinions" are of little value where biographies of this ilk are concerned, and all "contentious claims" should need the same strong sourcing as for a "living person". Cheers. Collect (talk) 12:51, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Are orphans fair game then?

Talking about protection for living relatives as if that will do (it's not a rule that frequently has an effect on articles anyway) misses the point. We have a guideline that, if applied, gives protection to people accused of a crime from insinuations that they are guilty. But it doesn't guard against insinuations that they are innocent, that the victim deserved it etc. So we've got a selective, biased censorship thing going on. FormerIP (talk) 13:28, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Nope - unless they manage to have no living relatives at all, and no living persons are mentioned in the biography. Can you give a real example? <g>. And insinuations of any kind in any biography I find to be offensive. I personally think some of the "travon/george" edits are remarkably premature, and smack of using Wikipedia as a sort of tabloid at best, and as a polemicist site at worst. Collect (talk) 13:49, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

General terms like NPOV or encyclopedic are the only arguments I have been able to somewhat successfully make in the Trayvon/George article, but people act as if BLP can't apply to Trayvon Martin because he's dead and it is really not a reasonable approach to say that the person who kills you gets to continue to recieve additonal editoral oversight while the killed person is fair game. My recommendation is that there is a specific and clear policy exclusion for situations like this one, not forever, but at least to give additional teeth to the argument of a reasonable and fair treatment of the material in the article. -- Avanu (talk) 13:54, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Some of us are very unhappy about attempts to have articles in WP that are about matters that might yet go to trial (see section above) and this sort of thing demonstrates why. But it is difficult to avoid altogether, just as it may be difficult to completely avoid havings things said about a dead person that could be hurtful to others who are still alive. So we do have to rely on general principles, and if editors ar using the fact that a person is dead to circumvent the obligation to be balanced, accurate, fair etc then they should not be and I doubt that adding more rules will help much, though there is always room for improvement. --AJHingston (talk) 14:08, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't think you can make a rule for such a special case. There'll be to many cases that fall outside of it. But, we could and should, simply extend BLP coverage to everyone who has died in the last X years. If somebody writes about speculation about a long dead historical figures reputation, it's not that terribly harmful if we don't fix a problem right away. But, if somebody died yesterday, such speculation can be hugely harmful. Nobody has ever explained why it's ok to bash somebody the day after they die. Also, let's not pretend for a second BLP, as written now can somehow extend to Trayvon Martin, because he is survived by family that is living. Every topic in Wikipedia relates to living people. Writing about high crime in a local town affects living people, but we don't call it a BLP violation if you included uncited stats on crime in the article. Clearly BLP has a major hole, and it needs to be filled in. Only an extension of BLP can work, because it has actual teeth, so that you can remove violations immediately, without being deemed disruptive. --Rob (talk) 14:43, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Is BLP an exception to or an application of WP:NPOV?

I'm fairly confused about where this policy stands, and there are some parts where I am quite worried about. Specifically, it is the part which states that "if a borderline notable person requests deletion of his/her article, his/her wishes are generally followed." This part worries me because it seems to show some sort of bias. If Wikipedia is supposed to be a neutral encyclopedia, then why should we follow the request of deletion, especially if the person is notable enough for inclusion? After all, borderline notability is still notability. Why should we follow his/her requests if he/she is notable enough for inclusion, even if only borderline? His/her wishes should have only been granted if consensus has determined through deletion discussions that he/she was not notable enough for a Wikipedia article in the first place. Deleting an article because the subject requested it is like a newspaper removing an article reporting on McDonald's because McDonald's requested it. However, at least NPOV is strictly implemented for all BLP articles, and everything is sourced. If only that amount of neutrality and sourcing was implemented on all articles. But still the question remains - is the BLP policy supposed to be an exception to the Neutral point of view policy, an application of it, or somewhere in between? 112.208.81.178 (talk) 02:36, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

112.208.81.178, the policy doesn't actually say "if a borderline notable person requests deletion of his/her article, his/her wishes are generally followed". Formerip (talk) 02:41, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

I was actually referring to this part:

"Discussions concerning biographical articles of relatively unknown, non-public figures, where the subject has requested deletion and there is no rough consensus, may be closed as delete."

112.208.81.178 (talk) 03:06, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

The answer is, where there is no consensus one way or the other to include a person, that is if Wikipedians cannot agree on whether a person is notable enough for an article, we default to "no article" if the person has clearly expressed a wish in that direction. That only applies in a few rare cases. Obviously, if Barack Obama came and asked for his article to be deleted, that wouldn't happen. If you don't like this policy, which was previously agreed to by a discussion of many Wikipedians, you are free to start a new discussion to change it. --Jayron32 03:11, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

The presumption is that an individual has privacy rights. If they aren't really notable, then we don't have a standalone biographical article on them, especially if they ask us to remove it. It isn't really an application of neutrality. It is simply personal privacy. -- Avanu (talk) 03:16, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

WP:NPOV is about article content. This sentence is about whether the article itself should exist. It's basically saying that in bordline notability cases where there is no concensus and the living person requests it be deleted, we can close the discussion as delete instead of no concensus. No concensus means that the article is kept.

So, to answer your question literally, it is neither an exception to nor an application of WP:NPOV; they cover different issues. But I guess if one applies the spirit of NPOV to notability, it can be argued that it's an exception. So, if you're in the relatively rare situation where there is no concensus to the notability of a living person and the subject has requested deletion, the closing admin may close it as delete instead of no concensus. In my 2-3 years of editing Wikipedia, I've never encountered this situation in any of the articles I work on. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 03:37, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

I've seen it happen a few times, but it is rare. I've certainly never seen it happen more than 3-4 times since the principle has become enshrined in policy (probably 2-3 years ago). --Jayron32 03:55, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

An accusation per se is not enough to make a person "well-known"

Seems pretty obvious, no? The goal is not to have Wikipedia in any way be judge or jury for any accusations - there is no deadline on finishing articles, and harm can be caused if we err in making the accusations equivalent to conviction of a crime. Collect (talk) 14:23, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

An accusation can be enough to make a person well-known. We judge "well-known" (or public figure status) by the extent of high-quality secondary coverage. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 16:12, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Greg, the footnote you're removing was agreed here, and it makes sense. If someone is arrested over a high-profile, serious issue and there are multiple high-quality sources (with the stress on high-quality), we have to be able to reflect those sources in their bio. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 17:17, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

That looks like an agreement between two editors, Wifione and Bbb23. For what it's worth, count me in and SV of course, so that makes four. - Wikidemon (talk) 17:28, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

WP:BLPCRIME

WP:BLPCRIME has recently been changed to say that it only applies to "individuals who are relatively unknown" and there is a new note that emphasises that the policy applies "not to well known individuals". I must ask, why not? Surely, notable individuals are just as in need of the presumption of innocence as lesser known people. Once a conviction or acquittal has been given, it deserves a mention in the article (detailed in the case of a conviction, brief in the case of an acquittal). Until that has happened, reporting the details of the allegations and the ongoing case are both legally dangerous and in violation of Wikipedia policy to keep things in a historical perspective. It would be safer to keep all ongoing court cases out of BLPs until a verdict has been given, so I propose that these new changes to the policy be removed. There was a talk page discussion on these changes between two editors who agreed, but I don't think the changes are based on consensus in the wider community. Gregcaletta (talk) 19:13, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi Greg, see the discussion directly above. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 19:28, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

I think the idea is that if Barely Notable Betty gets picked up for DUI, then nobody much cares, and we can easily afford to wait a couple of months until it's settled one way or the other, and if she's acquitted, then we've saved an innocent person the trauma of having a false accusation (or a true accusation that wasn't deemed important enough to prosecute) from having this minor event trumpeted all over the Internet and (not unimportantly) repeated in the many Wikipedia WP:MIRRORS, some of which might never be updated with the outcome.

But if Famous Fred gets picked up for the same charge, the charge is going to be splattered all over the national newspapers anyway, so Wikipedia's contribution to making these charges known is insignificant, so it's not worth worrying about.

As a passing comment, I believe that a guilty plea is not technically a conviction, and >90% of US criminal cases end with a guilty plea rather than a conviction. I don't know whether it's actually going to confuse anyone, though. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:30, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

This issue for me is that what we usually call "reliable sources" cannot be called such for documentation for crime BEFORE the trial, since hte court is the only authority. Otherwise, it's called trial by media (which we would be participating in, whether the person or notable or not). The court is the authority on matters of crime, so there authority overrides that of the NYT etc. and thus only the judgements of of judicial authorities (although it will necessarily be mediated through a secondary source) can be our reliable source for such material. Gregcaletta (talk) 21:04, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

This has me thinking, is WP becoming nothing but a gossip column? If it's important enough to be encyclopedic, surely we can wait awhile. It'll still be true, & still of encyclopedic value, in a month or 6. TREKphiler ^{any time you're ready, Uhura} 03:17, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

I agree. WP:There is no deadline, especially for putting potentially damaging false information into an article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:43, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

I also completely agree with the sentiments here. We often breach journalistic integrity and allow articles to become biased in favor of presumption of guilt because "it's just what's in the sources!" On the issue of whether someone committed a crime, the result of a fair trial -- where the defendant had the right to legal representation, a jury, to confront the accusers etc -- is the authority, and it is the only reliable source. --causa sui (talk) 20:49, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Balance / Criticism

The section on "Balance" says "Criticism and praise should be included if they can be sourced to reliable secondary sources..." Yes, but... If a well-known journalist writing in a reputable paper says "Putin/Sarkozy/Gandhi is an instinctive autocrat/chauvinist/populist", should that be cited? I think not. Somehow the point should be made that criticism should only be included if it helps the reader understand the subject. Criticism that has affected the subject is relevant. Otherwise, critics should only be cited if they are recognized authorities on the subject. Maybe "reliable sources" implies that, but I feel it should be spelled out further. Comments? Aymatth2 (talk) 17:06, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Policies can't be viewed isolation. Wikipedia's main content policies are "Verifiability" and "No original research" and Neutral point of view. Editors should familiarize themselves with all three. Your concern is addressed by WP:NPOV and specifically WP:WEIGHT. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 03:16, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't think WP:WEIGHT covers the issue. How about "Einstein said Picasso's work looked like that of a child", taken from a biography of Einstein. That is probably a widely shared opinion and the source is reliable, but Einstein is not an authority on Picasso. It may belong in the article on Einstein, but does not belong in the one on Picasso. If an authority on twentieth century art said the same thing, it would belong in the article on Picasso. Aymatth2 (talk) 11:47, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Sometimes biographies turn into battlegrounds over the subject's views. To me, a biography should present the subject's opinions in a neutral manner but there is no need to "balance" the article by describing opposing views at great length. The article on Alfred Rosenberg gives his theories but does not report much criticism. Ditto Karl Marx. The reader can decide. That said, an expert critique of the work of a creative person is relevant, and an attack on a person that affected their career is also relevant. Other forms of criticism do not seem relevant. Looking for some policy wording to clarify what should be allowed, what should not. Aymatth2 (talk) 20:04, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

BLP diacritics background

Removal of foreign language source in BLP, and then anglicization of name

Sorry, the issue, yet again (not again, no..) is another barely-notable tennis stub Talk:Błażej Koniusz. Unfortunately in this case the edit is potentially more serious in that the source giving the correct name appears to have been deleted to justify the edit. I do not know if there are other BLPs where this is the case. I would like others who are better informed to comment on how BLP sourcing guidelines view the use of non-English language sources for a non-English-speaking living person's name in this or any instance. In ictu oculi (talk) 14:21, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

FOLLOW UP: A subsequent look around suggests that this was the only BLP where a local-language source was actually deleted. Deletion relates to (i) move to anglicized name, (ii) "professionally known as" lede per WP:STAGENAME argument. In ictu oculi (talk) 00:37, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Diacritics battles have been going on since the beginning of wikipedia. Tennis has used the common English name in articles for years per wiki policy and guidelines and tennis project guidelines and usage. Tennis is a bit different than many sports since the English alphabet is a requirement in the governing body of tennis since the 1920s. Wiki requires the lead to have all major versions of the name listed. I had done so in the form example of common name/Polish name... Paul Kolodziejczyk (Polish: Paul Kołódziejczyk), to make sure we followed protocol and included all major spellings. Yes since this is a an English wikipedia I want the common English name as the article title and heading up the lead while IIO does not. He has quite recently begun systematically moving all English tennis pages to the foreign spelling. Some make it through move requests and some don't. It depends on the closer really, but we all know (if we've edited any length of time at all) that's a 50/50 result. Most he doesn't even request. That's the wiki process and I'm cool with that. I have been told by many administrators that we take these things one at a time. However he is also removing all traces of the English common name. The common name used by virtually all English sources, the ITF (International Tennis Federation), ATP (Association of Tennis Professionals), WTA (Women's tennis Association). The ITF is the governing body of tennis and all player are required to register an anglicized (English alphabet) name of their choice. Such as Novak Đoković did with Novak Djokovic and why he's been sitting for years in this place on wikipedia. Notice afterwards that Djokovic has his Czech spelling in parenths. Djokovic had a long series of move request dialog (which you can easily check) before it was settled at the ITF/English/common name version.

I have followed the English sources since then to make sure all articles I create and edit use these major organizations plus the grand slams, plus books and the press. Even Encyclopedia Britannica uses Novak Djokovic and Ilie Nastase spellings. My first thought when a page did happen to be moved to a foreign diacritic spelling was to keep the common name in the front of the lead. IIO said no. Since this is an English wikipedia I tried with the diacritic name first but with Paul Kołódziejczyk, common name Paul Kolodziejczyk... and asked an administrator his opinion (he said it looked good to him). IIO said no. I mentioned alternate name instead of common name...IIO said no. I finally settled on "professionally known as:"... IIO said no. He has bent absolutely zero on this issue since his tennis editing and disruptions started. He seems to think I have some sort of bias against Europeans... I hope not since I'm Polish/Austrian myself with a family name that uses diacritics (but not in English). For awhile everytime he removed all traces of the English name I added it back in the lead, but I told him from now on if he removes it I will revert his entire addition as it was getting really old to keep re-adding it. Check to see how much disruption was going on before IIO stirred up the hornets nest a few months ago. It was occasional but now it's getting ridiculous and bothersome. Doesn't the tennis project have some little say in how we choose our <article> names? It seems we are being reasonable through the years. Heck, baseball project throws out all wiki naming conventions and uses whatever name is placed on the players baseball card as it's only source for article names. At least we demand use of the preponderance of English sources, ITF, ATP, WTA, Davis Cup, English newspapers and tv. The equivalent for tennis would be to use what the governing body of tennis uses, which would be the ITF source. But IIO says no. Fyunck(click) (talk) 23:17, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Doesn't the tennis project have some little say in how we choose our name?

Of course the WikiProject gets some say in how it chooses its name. It seems to have chosen WikiProject Tennis for its name so far, but if it wants, it can change it to something else.

What it doesn't get is any special say in what WP:Article title will be used in the main namespace for articles. A WikiProject is merely a group of editors. That group of editors gets no special say compared to any other group of editors, i.e., the people actually editing any given article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:23, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

Your kidding aside, I'm not talking about actual editing in "little say" but in the guidelines that represent it. Baseball and hockey project have naming guidelines that are against wiki policy... Tennis guidelines are not against policy. Is there a double standard here in not allowing them to be carried out? And even if they are not allowed to be followed, to have all traces of the common tennis name systematically removed seems very wrong and not in our reader's interest. Fyunck(click) (talk) 00:43, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

This is possibly more than an "English language" issue, it might also be symptomatic od a UK/US language issue. I noticed an artcile about the German footballer (now manager) Gerd Müller, which uses the letter "ü" in his name - something that is quite normal in the UK. (The word "über" is a slang word that is used occasionally in the UK to mean "Large"). In contrast, in the NW orner of Frankfurt am Main are two roadsigns within a few metres of each other - one erected by the German authorities giving the direction to "Rödelheim" and the other, erected by the US military authorities pointing to their depot at "Roedelheim". Which is coirrect? The Wikipeia article lists the locality as "Rödelheim (Frankfurt am Main)". Anther instance is the mathematician Paul Erdős. My view is that teh prevelant spelling in English language sources should be used as the prime reference, but if both the Anglicised variant of the name and the native variant of tgeh name are both in common use, then out of courtesy to the individual concerned, the native variant should be used. Thus a top Czech tennis player who is only notable on account of tennis woudl have an anglicised version of their name, but if they became notable in other aspects of public life, ther Czech version of their name woudl be used. Martinvl (talk) 07:46, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

[Side point: Americans use über, too, to mean "large" or "major" or (naturally) "super". Have for at least 30 years.] — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 21:20, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

I think that Martinv has it right here. Although things were different in the past, in the UK we increasingly tend to regard the foreign spelling as the 'correct' one, and would therefore expect to see it in an encyclopedia, even if we use an anglicised version in practice. That is at least partly because we are very likely to meet the name spoken rather than read, and we learn that L and Ł, for example, are not the same. Although we might conveniently write the name Lodz (as in Google maps) we will not recognise it when pronounced unless we have seen it written correctly. Try this in WP, by the way. It is often a source of innocent amusement on this side of the Atlantic to hear US broadcasters mangling foreign names, but it would be thought a sign of discourtesy to use that version to their face. Simple rules do not work because each case is different - and the person may have chosen an anglicised version for themself. --AJHingston (talk) 08:39, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

This is not a WP:ENGVAR issue, since the name of a German or Estonian or Guatemalan has nothing to do with "close national ties" to the UK or the US. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 21:20, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

So let me make sure I'm on the same page here... according to Martinvl... if a person is pretty much only notable for playing tennis, and the English sources/tennis establishment spell his name using the English alphabet only (diacritic free), then we expect to see his name listed here in this English wikipedia diacritic free. Obviously with his diacritic name also in the lead sentence somewhere to show the foreign spelling. But if this tennis player is also notable for say... being a composer or a general in the military, then we would need to look at those aspects as well and the person would likely need to be listed with diacritics. Is that what we are talking about? Like Novak Djokovic is handled here at wikipedia? I know most of the time the UK televisions and newspapers handle tennis players with NO diacritics. I don't know if they do that because the bylaws of tennis require it or because that's just the way they do things in the UK. My own family only uses the diacritic in our name (which happens to be an "Ł") when we travel abroad in our native country and drop it when in the UK or US. Fyunck(click) (talk) 10:26, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

Which is why it is difficult to make rules. In the UK broadcasters are normally expected to pronounce a name the way the owner chooses, but journalists generally confine themselves to a 26 letter alphabet with no diactritics and TV captions tend to do the same - the reasons for that are easy to understand if one thinks back to traditional typewriters and metal printing type. If Fyunck pronounces his or her name with a Ł I would expect that to be the encyclopedic spelling unless he or she has chosen the anglicisation, as often happens. Where I do have a problem is where editors insist that the subject is 'wrong'. There needs to be a very clear reason for over-riding that as there may be for tennis players, rather than some arbitrary rule which may simply be a localisation inappropriate in an international encyclopedia. --AJHingston (talk) 14:12, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

Of course Wikipedians can't insist that the subjects themselves are wrong if they choose an anglicization. We certainly {em|can}} conclude that random journalists, sports organizations, etc., are wrong when we have other reliable sources that properly spell the subject's name with diacritics, and we absolutely cannot side with the lazy sources when we have reliable evidence that the subject uses the diacritics. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 21:20, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

I am very grateful to those editors who have taken time to give guidance above. Since I had "first word" here in referring this I will restrict myself to 3 comments (as short as I can make them):

• (i) re. the argument "Diacritics battles have been going on since the beginning of wikipedia" - I do not know whether this is true or not, but from my observation (a) Wikipedia doesn't benefit from battles, and (b) Fyunck appears to be all but the only person still fighting the battle, and tennis BLPs the only battlefield. [I only recently stood up and did something, but have been watching for months]
• (ii) re. the argument "Like Novak Djokovic is handled here at wikipedia?" it probably should be noted that User:Fyunck has been asked more than once by more than one editor to please not cite category:Serbian male tennis players such as Новак Ђоковић as examples of diacritic-stripped Latin alphabet names, since Новак Ђоковић is not a Latin alphabet name, and WP:UE and WP:DIACRITIC clearly specify that cyrillic names be wikt:transliterated, but allow wikt:diacritics in Latin alphabet names to be retained.
• (iii) The phrase User:Fyunck has now inserted to 104x BLPs per example Błażej Koniusz (born February 22, 1988), known professionally as Blazej Koniusz.... " etc. appears in all cases not BLP-accurate, as evidenced here where the restored Polish language source shows the player playing in Poland professionally under his name, not under the online ITF diacritic-stripped registration card.

Thank you again. In ictu oculi (talk) 14:56, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm still reading all of this, but the "battle" is certainly more widespread than tennis articles, and Fyunckis far from the only participant (or even one of the major participants).
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 19:27, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

I'd accept that others know better about that than I - as I said I was only peripherally aware of this ongoing saga until attention canvassed by what I would consider egregious edits (no need to go into details) recently. But the "Á professionally known as A" lede edits appear to be new/unique to tennis BLPs. In ictu oculi (talk) 00:42, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

the thing is, from what I'm seeing above, the "Á professionally known as A" construct is a reaction to your own actions in reverting Fyunck. It seems to me that Fyunck is trying to work with you on this... a little consideration from your direction would only help. Running to a policy talk page rather than attempting to address the issue with the other user directly or on the affected article's talk page only serves to politicize the issue as well.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 01:07, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Absolutely, and the reversion was wrong to begin with. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 21:20, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

If anyone thinks this is limited to tennis, or that Fyunck and In ictu oculi are engaging in a trivial argument, you're completely backwards on this. Every single time this sort of issue is raised broadly, e.g. at MOS, at VP, at AT, which is a large number of times, over many years, the idea that WP should categorically misspell people's names by dropping their proper diacritics just because the sloppiest of American and British journalists, sports organizations, etc., often do so, is shot down in flames. It's jingoistic garbage, and most of us know that. Those who won't get this through their heads and stop campaigning to limit Wikipedia to the 26 bare, unadorned letters of the English alphabet need to read WP:NOT#SOAPBOX and get with the program, or frankly go away per WP:5THWHEEL. >;-) It's just downright ignorant. The only person who would possibly support such an idea is the person who live in some totally Anglo-dominated area with virtually no admixture of people from anywhere else in the world. Anyone from any real city, or any non-urban but diverse place recognizes the idea as farcical, somewhere between insensitive and intentionally offensive, and borderline insane. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 21:20, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Baseball and hockey project have naming guidelines that are against wiki policy... No, they don't. WP:NC-BASE belongs to the entire community, not to WikiProject Baseball. Pages like Wikipedia:WikiProject Pakistan/Naming conventions belong to the WikiProjects hosting them, and they have just as much force as a page that I write in my own userspace. NC-BASE does not: it is a regular community guideline.

Also, you may be familiar with the community's usual level of respect for WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS arguments. Even if your facts were correct, it would still be an incredibly weak argument. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:26, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

That's a load of crap. The loudest and pretending-to-be-in-charge tendentious editors in the baseball and ice hockey projects (and tennis to a lesser extent) have no regard for the site-wide naming conventions or any other consensus. WP:LOCALCONSENSUS was specifically written to curtail insular "our project will do whatever the hell it wants" nonsense like this, and several WP:ARBCOM cases have come down hard on such behavior but the "ringleaders" of various projects still ignore it all anyway. There are probably no more WP:OWNy projects on the entire system, with numerous of attack-dog WP:GANG editors. If you try to bring their "naming conventions" into line with the actual Wikipedia naming policies and guidelines you will be dog-piled and hounded into the ground. I know this from multiple direct experiences. Their disruptive and aggressive behavior is a good argument against our current WikiProject system. I say that as the founder of and a major ongoing participant in several WikiProjects including a sports one, and the principal author of a sports WikiProject naming convention and style guide, by the way. See WP:SPECIALSTYLE for what the underlying issue is. It's just as prevalent in biology and music and other topical projects. They all think they're "special" and that their topic is magically different and has to have special rules. It's petulant, self-important nonsense.

Further more, subpages under Wikiproject pages do not belong to the WikiProject. No one, as a matter of clear-cut policy, owns or controls any page on Wikipedia. You don't even own your userpage. If you do not already understand this deeply, you frankly have no business advancing tumid arguments on policy talk pages. PS: It's a silly argument anyway. If a project falsely asserted that they own a project subpage, just add your name as a project participant and edit away. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 20:39, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Wait a minute... lets look at "The title of an article for a baseball player should reflect the name they most commonly went by during their career. Informally, the name that appeared on a player's baseball cards should serve as the article's title." That is not kosher with the multitudes of wiki policies and guidelines that are being cited with regularity by IIO and others. Now, I'm fine with the baseball guidelines being that way since baseball is different than the general guidelines that wikipedia sets out. wiki guidelines aren't a perfect fit with baseball so those more knowledgeable about the sport tweaked them so they made sense. Just as tennis tries to do. Our guidelines aren't as restrictive as baseball in naming since we look at multiple English sources and governing bodies before arriving at a name. Fyunck(click) (talk) 05:57, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

It doesn't matter. This is the community's official guideline. The whole community—not WikiProject Baseball—decided that they want to handle this differently from other things. The community is allowed to make exceptions to its own rules. A couple of folks off at a WikiProject aren't, but the whole community is (and did, at NC-BASE). WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:10, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi Ohms law,

Thanks for your comment. I accept that other editors know more about BLP policies than I do so I will accept all advice, but two things you've mentioned might benefit from clarification:

(1) I would think myself and a dozen other editors discussing with Fyunck for over a month before bringing to WT:BLP is erring on the side of slowness rather than haste and doesn't qualify as "running." And this is a BLP issue after all, isn't it? Is it wrong to bring it to WT:BLP for advice?

(2) As regards reverting Fyunck's edits and discussion, (2.1) you are correct that I just restored the tag "known professionally " which another editor had placed and Fyunck had deleted, but I'm sorry I make no apology for restoring a deleted tag since the other editor clearly indicated by the tag that it was designed to encourage discussion. (2.2) Likewise, the subject of my appeal here, restoring the deleted Polish source giving the BLP's name seems correct per BLP ACCURACY concerns by my understanding, which could be wrong which is why I am asking. (2.3) I have not reverted the 104x edits with the "Á professionally known as A" insert, on the contrary, although several editors have attempted discussion with Fyunck on this phrase, his edits stand, in all 104x BLPs as far as I know. And only 1 or the 104x is tagged "known professionally " which is the tag I restored. In ictu oculi (talk) 02:23, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

You should use {{Under discussion-inline}} rather than {{dubious}} on project pages. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:30, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing, I'm fairly certain that In ictu oculi was talking about article content above, so his quoting the use of {{dubious}} seems perfectly fine, here. Unless I'm missing something?

Re 1) I'm not privy to the past discussions. I wouldn't mind looking them over, if you can provide a link? Was something going wrong with those discussions?

Re 2) Its good that discussion is taking place, rather that reversions and edit warring. I guess that this is (now) the discussion on reverting those 104 edits, or at least a part of them? I'd like to point out though that the intent of this talk page is to discuss the actual policy page that it belongs to, not to discuss individual incidents of the policy's application. I don't think that this is a good venue for dispute resolution, at all.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 02:46, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi WhatamIdoing, yes as Ohms law says I was illustrating the tag from the article. Hi Ohms law, unfortunately discussion has been scattered (splattered?) across several recent RMs as well, but the most pertinent discussion on tennis BLP sources is largely concentrated on Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Tennis/Tennis_names particularly in a RfC started by User SMcCandlish. The specific issue of (i) removal of foreign language sources (which I now am happy to consider was probably a simple mistake on User Fyunck's part since it hasn't happened with other moves and he hasn't attempted to justify it) so I don't believe is discussed elsewhere, while (ii) this phrase on the 104x BLPs is elsewhere on perhaps 20x of the 104x BLPs, and has taken back seat to discussion on what constitutes WP:RS for BLP names. In ictu oculi (talk) 03:12, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

I just took a look at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Tennis/Tennis_names, and I guess that I'd recommend starting another discussion about this on the main Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject Tennis page, or starting up a dedicated RfC over it. My question here is really this: are you proposing a change to the BLP policy page? Because if not, you're really in the wrong place.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 03:37, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi Ohms law.

No, at this point I'm simply asking the question I asked about BLP policy at the beginning of this section. If this is the wrong place to ask questions about BLP policy, where is the correct place? Cheers. In ictu oculi (talk) 10:47, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Yes, that dialog was mostly ignored because it was pertaining to a personal essay. Take a look at the 4 move requests for number one player Novak Djokovic to see full input from everyone and why it was kept at Djokovics English name. Fyunck(click) (talk) 06:00, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Now... if people want to change Wikipedia and BLP rules that's a different story. If the majority of editors want to eliminate all common names, all stage names, all pseudonyms, names used on baseball cards, names used by tennis governing bodies, etc... and specifically say that wikipedia personal and place names always use the spelling found in their native languages and only names found on birth certificates... then that's what I'll do. I would be against it, but I would follow the RfC result to the letter (even a diacritic letter:-). Right now many editors read into the multiple policies and guidelines and spew out only what they feel helps their side. Very ambiguous. Projects like tennis, with it's few editors, gets ripped while projects like baseball go along their merry way with their own guidelines. But if something is chiseled in stone as to what language/alphabet this encyclopedia should use for sources, article titles, and prose... then maybe we'd be able to concentrate on more rewarding editing. Fyunck(click) (talk) 06:23, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Novak Djokovic is possibly not the best exemple as Serbian language actually uses two alphabets, cyrillic and latin. The cyrillic and latin Serbian alphabets match all letters (meaning, all 30 letters have its corresponding letters in both alphabets), and the letter Ђ is the only one which is ambiguos as it has two accepted versions in Serbian latin scrypt, which can be either Đ or Dj. Now, English and other latin-scrypt non-Serbian languages have in the vast majority of cases opted for using Dj as a way to avoid using a letter with diacritic and beside being more proximate to the phonetic to a reader not familiarised with the language. But, in Novak Djokovic case the issue is polemical because of the following: it has made a correct transliteration of the Ђ/Đ to Dj, however has failed to correctly transliterate the ć which in this case has just been limited to the removal of the diacritic, completelly ignoring the fact that c and ć are not the same letter or sound... But the logic behind has been the number of Google hits and reliable sources, although tennis websites are hardly specialised in linguistics... FkpCascais (talk) 01:45, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

• Where the primary version of the name is not in Latin, we have a difficulty, but the answer will almost invariably be to create redirect from alternative versions and to put any common alternative transliterations in the lede. I am setting out below a suggested guideline. PLease add suggestions and comments below it. Peterkingiron (talk) 16:16, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Suggested Guideline

The name in an article title should have the correct diacriticals according to the ethnicity or nationality of the subject, where the language is normally written in Latin script. Any alternative common spellings should exist as redirects. This would include speelings used in sports programmes, where the subject plays sport. All alternative versions of the name should appear in the lede of the article. Where the language is not normally written in Latin script, it may be transliterated according to any accepted system. If two alternatives are available, the article should reflect common usage in countries using Latin script, but redirects should exist from any alternatives. The form of the name in Cyrillic, Greek, Chinese or other script should also (if possible) appear in the lede. Peterkingiron (talk) 16:16, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Note: I thought this was the end of the discussion but now see there is more below! Peterkingiron (talk) 16:19, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

• I support this suggestion. It is what in practice has been followed by the vast majority of editors generally on WP (with some exeptions, of course). FkpCascais (talk) 04:40, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Unsourced BLPs

Hi. User Doma W is creating masses of unsourced BLPs with just an external link. I warned him about it abd to add inline citations but he continues to ignore me.♦ Dr. Blofeld 10:27, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

He seems to be adding inline citations now, but the fact that he is able to create such masses of BLPs with poor sourcing goes back yet again to the broken notability standards for sports people. When will we say enough is enough? Gigs (talk) 16:46, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't even bother nominating sports figures for deletion. It's not worth the grief.--Bbb23 (talk) 03:55, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

I've proposed or nominated several hundred BLPs on sports figures for deletion over the years - substantially all of which have been deleted. I've only experienced "grief" on one or two occasions (e.g., editors recreating articles deleted through AfD several times). In short, I'm not sure what you're complaining about. Jogurney (talk) 22:58, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

If the external link is a source, then it's not unsourced, even if inline citations are not used. Still doesn't mean it's a good idea, of course. Jclemens (talk) 21:45, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Wow, Franz Hofer (footballer) has exactly two sources, and both are only tables of statistics. Yes , they are both official websites of notable football clubs. But, how do you build an encyclopedic article from only that information? --Enric Naval (talk) 22:06, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

I would think that a significant proportion of the BLPs here are based on similar sources. Kevin (talk) 03:51, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

This user's editing patterns strikes me as similar to a former serial-copyvio editor: Special:Contributions/Darius_Dhlomo. The main difference is that these new articles generally contain so little information that they cannot be considered copyvios. Jogurney (talk) 01:02, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Speedy them. causa sui (talk) 18:22, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

I don't think it makes sense to speedy delete BLPs about former Olympic Games competitors, which can be easily verified, simply because the article doesn't contain inline citations. I doubt such an article is really a candidate for proposed deletion either. Jogurney (talk) 19:46, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

I think it can. It's a form of fait accompli to create many dozens of articles and then leave it to other people to figure out the mess. Any such speedy deletion would be done without prejudice to recreation with more meat and better sources to establish notability. Gigs (talk) 17:32, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

On the contrary, as long as they meet the criteria for notablity, they should be left where they are - at least this provides an anchor for references for some fo them from other articles. U had one instance where I linked a short artcile about a South African cricketer who played one first-class match in the late 1960's to a red link showing him as a high court judge some 35 year later. I made a short article of it. Martinvl (talk) 18:34, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

WP:KITTENS.—S Marshall T/C 22:51, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

non-admin suggestion - RfC on change to BLP policy

I have duplicated this at ANI - this follows Ohms law request to make a specific suggestion

I mainly edit on BDPs (i.e. dead people) so am no expert on BLP policy. However I was asked yesterday what improvement should be made to BLP policy, and it occurs to me that a significant amount of grief (like seeing two very good admins in an unfortunate situation like this) could be saved all across en.wp by making it a simple BLP rule that BLPs should be at the spelling as if on the BLP's current nationality passport for Latin alphabet names. That would be it. Have a RfC that adopts this as a rule to BLP and the remaining 30-40 Czech ice hockey players and 20-30 tennis players who are out of synch with the 10,000s of other BLPs on en.wp fall into line (painlessly, according to WP:RS already in the egregious less than 100 BLPs footnotes) and this issue effectively disappears with no more damage to admins or en.wp. Finish, end, no more fighting. (or almost none since few fight over BDPs). In ictu oculi (talk) 01:48, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Question. How do you propose to get hold of Novak Djokovic's passport? Formerip (talk) 13:05, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Is this a serious question? In ictu oculi (talk) 03:40, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Semi-serious. Formerip (talk) 03:57, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

This is an artificial problem created by terrible subject notability standards that allow us to have articles on non-notable sports players. Fix the broken notability standards and this problem goes away. Gigs (talk) 19:28, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi Gigs, yes it's probably 9/10ths that, however given that the recent occasion of fighting over Nico Hülkenberg and the current RM on Ilie Năstase it may well be that there are other factors (e.g. perhaps also an element of dislocate between those who regard sports sources as reliable on BLP names as those who don't) that wouldn't be solved simply by mass deletions of Czech ice-hockey stubs, and that therefore opportunities for fighting/timewasting over even notable sports BLP diacritics will continue without clearer guidance on consistency. In ictu oculi (talk) 03:40, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Pretty much, yea. In addition, I don't think that most articles about athletes are really biographies per se, anyway. The interest in athletes is primarily in what they do as athletes rather than in them as people (usually, at least). There is tabloid type coverage of some athletes of course, which is actually a good reason to keep them within the BLP "sphere", but for most athletes their article here shouldn't ever really be a biography (unless and until they do something outside of sports, of course...).
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 22:33, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

You really think it would go away with players like Djokovic? Even if you made it players that competed at the 4 Slam events the spelling would come into question. Hockey is even more lax than tennis in what it allows here at this English Wikipedia. I've always been for compacting the amount of notable tennis players but I've been crushed when I've brought it up. Baseball allows an awful lot of people into biographies also... play one game in your life in the Chinese baseball league and you are notable. See "baseball notability". My question would be if they are notable but not really a biography, then what are they? Do we just create it but leave off off the Sports Biography tag on the talk page? And then not follow any BLP rules since it's not a biography? It seems like that might create even more problems. Fyunck(click) (talk) 00:39, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't think that the problem with diacritics would go away, but the potential for them being an issue be much lessened, I'm certain. I guess that I wasn't really clear in my comments above, though. I'm certainly not proposing removing "Sports biography", or pulling articles about athletes out of the BLP categories (quite the opposite, really). What I'm trying to get across is the point that the sport which professional athletes play does not define their lives, even if it does define our views of their lives. They have lives outside of their professional life, but in the vast majority of cases we're not particularly interested in that part of their lives. Indeed, for most of them, we should be actively discouraging widening their articles on Wikipedia to include details of their lives outside of their professional life (unless there's a reason, of course). Athletes are primarily performers, and for the most part their articles should be limited to their performances. If that's true then the "real name" of most athletes who come from non-English speaking cultures and who are receiving English language coverage is essentially irrelevant (although their name with diacritics, in Kanji, or whatever, should be mentioned in the lead at least). After all, I don't really care about "Petr Sýkora", some 35 year old guy from Plzeň, Czechoslovakia. I do very much care about "Peter Sykora", who's a hockey player that has managed to make a somewhat remarkable comeback this season with my favorite team, the New Jersey Devils, however. There's a distinct difference between the two, which I hope would be apparent to most people (although you've gotta wonder sometimes, given the popularity of tabloids...).
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 01:14, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

ok... that does help clarify things. Most of the super-celeb tennis players like Federer or Evert, get a passing paragraph on their lives but the article is 99% on the tennis. A recent variable being Margaret Court who was in the news a lot at the recent Australian Open because of gay rights protests and has been in the news for the same type thing in the past as well. But again that's only an added sentence or two. Good luck with your NJ Devils kicking those panthers into the sea... I'm a huge Kings fan myself. Fyunck(click) (talk) 01:28, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Right, I kinda skipped over the part about superstars. It's fairly normal there for an article to expand to include much more than their professional life. There are also otherwise average athletes who go on to become politicians, actors, or any number of other things, which could easily expand an article about them. There are also instances where things from their real lives impact their professional life, and therefore receive significant coverage (unfortunately). Anyway, yea, I'm kinda pullin' for the Kings to kick some ass against the Canucks too, actually. The Kings are one of my favorites out west.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 01:36, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Formerip may have only been "semi-serious," but I'm completely serious: how are we supposed to verify the spelling on someone's passport? — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 12:26, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

By all means, let's take a real BLP example: Rudiger Haas (sic). Evidently for BLPs of marginal notability sourcing is a problem, in the case the lede currently says:

Rüdiger Haas (born 15 December 1969), known professionally as Rudiger Haas, is a former professional tennis player from Germany.[1 footnote gives source in German Press indicating name is "Rüdiger Haas"]

We have then the combination of WP:RS for (i) current nationality, (ii) spelling in that nationality, in most cases the combination of these 2x WP:RS will lead to a WP:COMMONSENSE outcome that also works with better sourced BLPs such as Martina Navratilova. Excepting of courses exceptions, such as WP:STAGENAME and so on. In ictu oculi (talk) 07:17, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

???That's not a passport. Shall we add a bunch of English press footnotes too? Fyunck(click) (talk) 07:35, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

And remember, if we follow IIO's BLP revision we would not have articles at Cary Grant, Reese Witherspoon, Julie Andrews, Stevie Wonder, etc... we would have to use their birth names/passport names here at wiki. I'm not sure the BLP editors would go for that but it would simplify everything. Many wiki policies and guidelines would have to be rewritten and there could be no exceptions for stage names, tennis names, common names, etc... No matter what someone or something is called in British or American English we automatically use the spelling version found in the country of origin or birth records. If we rewrite and stick to that, the number of arguments will dwindle away. This won't be an English wikipedia anymore but it will allow editors to concentrate on the prose and meat of articles rather than squabbling over the titles. I will say I would be shocked if you could get it through consensus. Fyunck(click) (talk) 06:36, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Fyunck, your essay at WP:TENNIS and e.g. your argument that because a family gave up their Polish diacritic when becoming British therefore Polish tennis players give up their diacritic when playing tennis is WP:OR. Quite evidently reliable WP:RS such as the Encylopedia of Tennis 1974 regard these BLPs to still be Living People with their real names, and WP:STAGENAME is not any more applicable to BLP Sophie Lefèvre as a tennis player than it is to François Mitterrand, the example used in WP:MOS guidelines. In ictu oculi (talk) 07:09, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

What essay? Are you confusing me with someone else? And I only said when in English speaking countries we use no diacritics and when in Poland we do. You're the one who said to use passports... no stage names, common names or pro tennis names for you. That will be tough to get through wiki consensus imho. And you are wrong on pseudonym usage. Fyunck(click) (talk) 07:35, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

I mean the WP:TENNISNAMES essay (which I am not sure why it is where it is following the recent RfC, I thought this was supposed to be moved to your sandbox?). When I said "on the BLP's current nationality passport for Latin alphabet names" the emphasis was on current nationality, the word passport is actually redundant so I have struck it through to prevent distraction. In ictu oculi (talk) 07:47, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

That's not my essay. I always thought that should be on a personal sandbox too. And passport is not redundant at all and striking it changes the whole meaning of your post and those that later replied to it. Fyunck(click) (talk) 08:04, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Yea... this is getting even more odd than it was to begin with. The extremists over the issue of diacritics (there are both people who want them everywhere and people who want them all gone) makes dealing with the whole thing rationally rather difficult too, unfortunately. And again... what does all of this have to do with the BLP policy itself?
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 18:39, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi Ohms law,

• (1) first my answer. What have BLP diacritics got to do with BLP policy? Well, at the moment, that isn't clear. But I suggest that among other things (i) BLP accuracy, and also (ii) generic WP concerns such as WP:CONSISTENCY so we don't have two French Frédéric Vitoux BLPs, one without diacritics because of the ITF online application form, and ledes like: For the writer see Frédéric Vitoux. "Frédéric Vitoux (born 30 October 1970) and known professionally as Frederic Vitoux, is a former professional tennis player..".
• (2) second, my question; can I ask how do you define "the extremists on the side of diacritics" - for example do you define those in favour of Petr Sýkora retaining his Czech name on en.wp even when playing for the New Jersey Devils as "extremists"? For most folk worldwide (who have never heard of the New Jersey Devils) this BLP, if notable in an encyclopedia, is notable more for Olympic appearances for the Czech national team. I wouldn't consider Petr Sýkora retaining his Czech name as being something for "extremists," but simply "accurate" and "encyclopedic" per Chicago Manual of Style and other encyclopedic standards. Or, for example, are you referring to non-Latin alphabet letters like Icelandic thorn and German esszet as "extremist"? In ictu oculi (talk) 03:35, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

The sentence "For most folk worldwide (who have never heard of the New Jersey Devils) this BLP, if notable in an encyclopedia, is notable more for Olympic appearances for the Czech national team." is just insane (in all fairness, I think that you're a tennis fan, and not at all a hockey fan [obviously, based on this comment], so it's not that big of a deal).

I certainly wouldn't label everyone who opposed a move to Peter Sykora as an extremist, but it's easy to see who are the extremists. It's rather inappropriate to start naming names though, especially here. Regardless, this discussion is primarily about diacritics, and I think that it should really be taking place elsewhere. This is not a discussion related to the BLP policy itself.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 04:06, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi, well no, sorry it's not easy to see who extremists are. 99% of the BLP discussions, are less controversial than Peter Sykora, since he does at least have a green card. As I said, I can sort of understand you stripping out all the diacritics on that article, though I don't agree. But can you please give an example of what you mean by an "extreme" edit?? In ictu oculi (talk) 05:09, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

LOL Fyunck(click) (talk) 05:31, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

"known professionally as"

Just a note that I have added tags to the statement "known professionally as" in Stéphane Huet and the other 5 French tennis BLPs up for WP:RM, since the sources show that these BLPs are still working professionally in France under French names. For example Frédéric Vitoux (tennis) is plentifully documented as Frédéric Vitoux as (i) a coach, (ii) official of the Fédération française de tennis FFT and (iii) member of the Union nationale des joueurs professionnels de tennis (UNJPT). To include the claim Frédéric Vitoux (born 30 October 1970) and known professionally as Frederic Vitoux, is a former professional tennis player." is WP:OR. In ictu oculi (talk) 05:07, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

What a shock that you would do this. Your ridiculous "OR" postings do get tiresome with your extreme no-compromising view. Fyunck(click) (talk) 05:29, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't follow all of I.i.o.'s postings, so I can't comment on your generalization about them, but he's right on this one. It's absolutely, blatant OR, and clearly forbidden by policy. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 21:49, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't think this is OR, but I do think it's silly. "Petr, known as Peter" is useful as a search engine aid. "Sacha, known as Alexander" is useful as an educational statement. "Frédéric, known as Frederic" is not useful for anything. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:22, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

How do you let readers know that in tennis, the only thing a person is notable for, his name/spelling is completely different? We use Frederick (German: Frédéric) for the same reasons. We could use Frédéric (English: Frederic), Frédéric (Pro Tennis: Frederic) alternate spelling Frederic, alternate name Frederic, professional name Frederic. This is the name he chose to register with to even be able to play tennis so it's important for readers to know that. Fyunck(click) (talk) 19:44, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

How do I let readers know that in tennis Frederic's name/spelling is completely different? I don't, because it isn't. English speakers do not treat most accented letters as being materially different from their non-accented counterparts. That's why women marry their fiances, why job applicants send in their resumes, and search engines automatically give results for both Frédéric and Frederic, no matter which version you type into the search box. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:41, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

Fyunck, FYI it was your repeated claims of "chose to register" which moved me from observing this tennis RM activity to actively joining the 80 or 90 editors (It may only be 60) who have asked you to desist. You need when editing as a WP User to be able to distinguish from your parents "choosing" to lose their accent when emigrating to UK and a French tennis player who has no choice when doing an online registration with the diacritic-banned ITF website. Please read WP:NOR, particularly WP:SYNTH more carefully, and then remove the "Frédéric professionally known Frederic" from the 100+ tennis BLPs into which you have inserted the line. (and btw, the English of Frédéric is Frederick with a 'k'). In ictu oculi (talk) 23:38, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Ok. 80,90 or 60 asking me personally to desist?. There is a big difference between taking a vote and asking to desist. And most of the polling is on the wording of the article title not the fact the player has a professional tennis name. You might also notice that most say nothing unless egged on by you. And above, you made statements that I countered and you never took them back. So you were lying there too. With that type of attitude, with your untruthfulness, and the fact you are counting my edits like an umpire at a baseball game I'm really beginning to wonder what kind of person we might be dealing with. I have tried to compromise with you over and over with no luck and I'm about at the end of my patience on compromise. It's simply a fact that every junior and pro player registers with the ITF and chooses an anglicized name. It is also a fact that almost all the English press sources, the ATP, Davis Cup, Wimbledon, US Open, Australian Open, French Open, Fed Cup, etc... all use an English alphabet name for players. It's what everyone in the USA/UK/Australia/Canada knows these players by. You can call it a professional name/ alternate name/ pro Tennis name, pseudonym, or what ever. Sure diacritics are contentious on wikipedia, I don't think that's a secret and Ohms law has said as much. But to remove all traces of a player's sourced pro tennis name from every wiki article (as you are doing or trying to do) is a disservice to our readers and to wikpedia. It's one thing to change a title of a BLP article, it's totally different to eliminate the existence of the only name that 400 million+ people have ever seen. Fyunck(click) (talk) 08:08, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Here's the thing though: for every "80 or 90" people who want to use diacritics, there are "80 or 90" who want to remove them. The appeals to submit to a non-existant majority are not helping the debate at all. Another issue is that we're talking about just the title here, not the article content itself. The name using diacritics can and should be in the opening of the lead, at least. Incidentally, half of the reason that there is resistance to diacritics is because they are completely meaningless for monolingual people. Actually, they are worse than meaningless... the main thing with names should be pronunciation, which diacritics do absolutely nothing to help with (and actually do more to impede the understanding of proper pronunciation than anything else). Besides, it's pretty WP:POINTY to take this dispute out on article content by mangling this article's lead with doubious tags. Anyway; again, this has nothing at all to do with the BLP policy. I don't know why we can't be having a discussion about this in a more appropriate place.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 01:42, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi Ohms law, couple of things:

(i) again, if you say there are "extremists" - then please provide an example. Your removal of diacritics from interwiki links here were corrected by a bot, was the bot an extremist?

(ii) you've already said twice that WT:BLP isn't the appropriate place to discuss names of BLPs, and I've already asked twice what is the place? So I ask the third time, where do you think BLP names should be discussed?

(iii) as far as a majority goes, if you don't believe me then please do the math for yourself, do a Google search to find the 100+ BLPs to which Fyunck has added "Frédéric professionally known Frederic" etc. and then look at the Talk pages to add up all those who have disagreed. I count at least 60 and presumably there are others I haven't seen. And those in favour = zero. (Do you yourself agree with this insert?)

In ictu oculi (talk) 06:32, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Actual draft proposal

Propose that the following being added (probably under BLPSTYLE or BLPSOURCES):

BLP names diacritics guideline proposal
The names of living persons should be represented accurately, according to their nationality, with diacritics if Latin alphabet names, even when the majority of popular English language sources, for example sports sources, do not use diacritics.

(then maybe footnote:)

Note that other WP guidelines already cover diacritics, but in the case of BLPs the requirement for accuracy is higher:

• per WP:Manual of Style/Proper names#Diacritics "Wikipedia normally retains these special characters, except where there is a well-established English spelling that replaces them."
• per WP:COMMONNAME: "Ambiguous or inaccurate names for the article subject as determined by reliable sources, are often avoided even though they may be more frequently used by reliable sources", i.e. the higher standard of accuracy for BLPs will often mean that representing the correct name of a living person trumps inaccurate (or anglicized) spellings that may be found in popular sources.
• per Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English) (shortcut WP:EN) in the case of a lack of reliable sources which are reliable for spelling of foreign names: "If this happens, follow the conventions of the language in which this entity is most often talked about (German for German politicians,..."
• per Wikipedia:Article titles (shortcut WP:UE) generally on non-BLP articles diacritics can be used for Latin alphabet languages with diacritics, but for BLPs since the level of accuracy required is higher, where the living person's name is in a Latin alphabet language with diacritics then generally it not just can but should be used.
• per WP:Manual of Style/Biographies (shortcut WP:OPENPARA) the full name should be used (example Lech Wałęsa), followed by a IPA prounciation box if needed.
• Exceptions may include:
  • where a living person has changed nationality, (example Martina Navratilova), but living, working, playing or performing, in an English-speaking country without acquiring nationality does not usually require anglicization of a BLP's name (example Category:Major League Baseball players from the Dominican Republic).
  • where Latin alphabet diacritics are not clearly established. A major example is the romanization of Serbian names, since Serbian names are usually written in cyrillic and consistent use of Gaj's Latin alphabet is not as clearly in evidence in Serbia as Croatia or Bosnia.
  • generic exceptions, WP:STAGENAME such as the singer Fréhel (born Marguerite Boulc'h).

This is a draft, it will not be the final form - change is invited. But perhaps rather than comment on details first, please comment on the bigger question principle of whether a person's real name generally being their real BLP name should be a default guideline or not before getting into details. There is no point discussing what popular sports sources do, we all know that popular sports sources don't use diacritics and will continue not to do so. The whole point of the proposal is tighten BLPs above the existing non-BLP guidance, which is already not to follow popular sources for name diacritics. If the guideline is accepted it would mean submitting a RM to move the remaining 40-60 BLP titles which have had diacritics removed or blocked by a redirect (out of how many BLPs total?) so titles agree with existing spelling in lede and footnoted sources. In ictu oculi (talk) 10:54, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

BLP diacritics guideline proposal discussion

Having drafted the above I sent out about 100+ invitations (I've probably missed some) to those who had expressed views in the Nico Hülkenberg RM and various Tennis stubs RMs.

Invitation to diacritics guideline discussion at WT:BLP

Hi, you were one of 100+ Users who has commented on a living person Requested Move featuring diacritics (e.g. the é in Beyoncé Knowles) in the last 30 days. Following closure of Talk:Stephane Huet RM, a tightening of BLP guidelines is proposed. Your contribution is invited to WT:BLP to discuss drafting a proposal for tightening BLP accuracy guidelines for names. In ictu oculi (talk) 00:04, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Comments here please:

• Biased: This is slanted to favor the usage of diacritics, which something like this need to be written by someone neutral or by two editors on opposited sides of the issue.HotHat (talk) 03:28, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
• I prefer use of whatever diacritics are apt in the native language. (Actually, I'd rather we use the native name order, too, but that's another can of worms. ;p ) That there are (perhaps very many) sources which don't use them IMO is of no moment; we should adopt the highest standard, not the lowest. TREKphiler ^{any time you're ready, Uhura} 03:30, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
• I tend to agree with HotHat. The proposal is fine, but if the goal is "to discuss drafting a proposal for tightening BLP accuracy guidelines for names", or "to discuss drafting a proposal for some other alternative plan on treatment of spelling and styling of non-English person names", then I'd hope to see someone make at least one counter-proposal, to get us thinking. Hopefully we'll see something like that start, but if would be good if it were more explicitly invited. Dicklyon (talk) 04:18, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
• I totally agree that we need to improve our rules somehow. Day after day we get new disputes over diacritics, and at each one people turn up with different !votes yet !votes on both sides are backed, to some extent, by policies and guidelines. That contradiction should be resolved. I think it's very important to frame the RfC in terms of "What should our policy say?" because if people respond to an RfC by simply citing the same interpretations of existing guidelines &c that we've been getting at individual naming disputes, the RfC will just get stuck in the same swamp. We need a clean start, to get a clear solution. bobrayner (talk) 06:43, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
• This is a perennial problem. Go to the ice hockey project and see it come up every month. Go to the tennis project and see the same (in fact, hasn't there been an RFC recently?). My attitude on this is clear: Wikipedia strives to be accurate, often going into greater detail on certain things than would be strictly necessary or allowed in other media. If someone spells their name in a particular way *normally*, then that spelling should be used as the article title. If someone spells their name in a particular way *for marketing purposes* then we have to fall on the side of COMMONNAME and take it from there. I don't think we could possibly rake over these coals any more doktorb _words^deeds 06:49, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
• This issue parallels the same one in geographical names (roughly categorized below in order of more to less anglicization): 1) There are English exonyms for some toponyms (e.g., Vienna for Wien) and also for some living people (e.g., Pope Benedict XVI for Benedictus PP. XVI); 2) There are established respelled forms for some toponyms (e.g., Cracow for Kraków) and also for some living people (e.g., Yana Yanezic for Jana Janežič); 3) There are established diacritic-stripped forms for some toponyms (e.g., Zurich for Zürich) and also for some living people (e.g., Rajko Dodic for Rajko Dodič); 4) There are toponyms represented as spelled natively (e.g., Łódź) and living people's names spelled natively (e.g., Gérard Dériot); this is essentially non-anglicization and encompasses most toponyms and BLPs in Wikipedia.

Some of these names may slide around from category to category (e.g., see the discussion at Kraków, which ranges from category 2 to category 4), but it's a good starting point for deciding what we're dealing with. As far as BLPs go, the issue at hand appears to be when use category 3 instead of category 4. I would only support category 3 (diacritic stripping) for BLPs when the person himself has chosen to create an identity for himself without the diacritics.

Many English sources (and some encyclopedias) will drop diacritics as a spelling of convenience. Often they do so selectively, keeping "easy" diacritics (as French, Spanish, etc.), but dropping "difficult" diacritics (as Polish, Czech, etc.); if so, this is a matter of technical limitations, rather than a scholarly editorial choice. For me, such representations of a name are not good evidence of the person establishing a diacritic-free identity. One of the most cogent arguments I've seen on WP for retaining diacritics is that names like Łódź are simply "read through"; that is, an English speaker reads it as Lodz no matter whether the diacritics are included or not. Thus retaining the diacritics satisfies scholarly accuracy without impeding the reader's understanding. Doremo (talk) 07:37, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

• I agree with the above. Orczar (talk) 15:44, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

• When I saw that template on my talk page I just read it as "come join us in hell". I made my stance on this clear enough last time. It's difficult to write a guideline on this, because it's been in dispute for so long and Wikipedia guidelines should reflect practice; how can we do this when there is none, and never has been? - filelakeshoe 08:30, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

I agree with you on the first point - this discussion could well be an invitation to hell - but not on a later point. Our rules must explain what we want articles to look like; they should be prescriptive rather than descriptive. If it so happens that earlier editing patterns have made it clear what people think is best for the encyclopædia then we can go ahead and say "There's a longstanding consensus that..." but this shouldn't open the door to further descriptivism. Otherwise we'd have a guideline saying that "It is preferable to have 92453948 one-sentence stubs covering every village in the world" or "Every article should have the word "boner" added to it by an anonymous editor at least once per year". If the status quo is a mess, we're not going to solve the problem by writing a policy which merely tries to document the status quo, nor are we going to solve it by using descriptivism as a reason to shy away from a clean start. How did WP:BLP get here in the first place? bobrayner (talk) 09:30, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

There should be as few Wikipedia guidelines and policies as possible. Only when something is in dispute, or crucial to the encyclopedia's integrity e.g. not writing libellious material, which I believe is why BLP exists. Those things you mentioned are not in dispute. It doesn't matter what the guideline is changed to, no one will follow it. I forced myself to give up on this discussion because it's such a pointless waste of time, as long as the name with diacritics is in the lede, which I hope no one is denying it should be, who cares. - filelakeshoe 13:13, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

• FWIW, I think the proposal is good, and I'd like to see that become the status quo. - filelakeshoe 13:13, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose as written -I see a problem with two basic assumptions in the proposal - nationality and latin alphabets. One, what is defined by nationality? Does it mean that a child born in Canada to Serbian parents must be listed under the last name of the parents, contrary to common usage? Even if that person has never been involved with the birth parents' country? (This is an actual case - Milan Lucic) Secondly, if you look at countries that use latin characters you will see that there are dozens of countries that use latin alphabets as their basis, and then add all sorts of diacritics, etc. This goes well beyond what can be reasonably expected of English readers. It is not a technical difficulty, no country trains its persons on all alphabets and languages of the world. I have suggested in the past that we use the New York Times style guide - that of English spellings plus some diacritics of countries that are reasonably expected of English readers (eg. France, Spain) - but we could make some reasonable definition. For persons of no English references, which seem to have been brought into the English Wikipedia, we need to think carefully about whether those even belong in the English wikipedia, irregardless of their notability in their home countries. Is it original research to bring them into the English wikipedia? Etc. So, I would impose that we require some sort of English source to be even considered. It makes no sense to have to make naming judgements without English sources. ʘ alaney2k ʘ (talk) 15:02, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

• One argument that I think should be considered dead is the "English doesn't use diacritics" line that some will come up with. I used to favour that viewpoint, but we are seeing that more and more sources are using them, showing that the reason for dropping them is technical only. Cases in point: Mission Impossible 4 uses diacritics in the credits (where the earlier movies did not), the International Ice Hockey Federation's printed publications for the last world junior championship used diacritics for most (except, lazily, Latvia and the Czech Republic). Note the lead image at Sven Bärtschi. The Sports Network's text crawl on sports news uses them for Latin American and some European names. Metro International's papers in Calgary used Norweigian diacritics on its recent stories on the Oslo terror trial. And these examples are just off the top of my head. It is becoming obvious that for the names of people, more and more English media sources are starting to retain most diacritics. It is still inconsistent, however, so expect our own problems with "to use or not to use" to continue for some time as there are still 10 sources that wont use them for each one that does. Resolute 17:17, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

  I would characterize it more like "English is more accepting/tolerant" of diacritics in lend words or proper names than it once was. But we are just tacking on symbols that are not of much use to the larger population in English countries. By and large, it's spelled "cafe", not "café." They are basically ignored. We learn pronunciation, we still don't use symbols in English to designate pronunciation. And English is by and large, one big language of contradictions anyway, so we just learn a word or acronym. Since we are talking about names that are foreign to English, it's not really an issue. What I do see is an issue to me, is when someone has no notability in their own nation, comes to North America, where it is likely that their name is spelled without diacritics, and then someone claims that we should use their birth name as the article title, when there is zero or no English sources of their birth name. This is addressed in the proposal, but it needs to be clear. ʘ alaney2k ʘ (talk) 01:13, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

  I'm pretty upset at being called (even if indirectly) stupid and lazy by several of the participants in this discussion, but I know from past experience that I can at least talk to both of you. The main reason that I wanted to comment here was simply to underscore the point behind "cafe" and "café." Spelling and language is symbolic, and it's one goal is to communicate information between people. The word for what someone might describe as a "ka-fey" may or may not be spelled with an "é", but it's pronunciation is the same regardless (once people learn it, at least). alaney2k already mentioned that "we still don't use symbols in English to designate pronunciation", which makes this whole thing over diacritics seem... odd, to be charitable, to many who only speak English. There are a lot of other languages that do use symbols for pronunciation, and when you take some people who have only a passing knowledge of English speaking culture and ask them to work collaboratively with mostly monolingual native English speakers you're almost inevitably going to get... well, this kind of thing (which has been ongoing for the larger part of a decade now). The bottom line is this: all of these diacritics do harm to understanding, rather then helping anything. There's a damn good reason that the proper spelling has become "cafe" over the past century or so. It's not as though the English Wikipedia has outlawed the use of diacritics or anything, either. The only other thing that I'd point out is that trying to force editors to use the diacritics will only lead to people making things up in a misguided attempt to "make their name correct", if the rules aren't outright ignored completely (which is extremely likely).
  — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 02:34, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

  You haven't been called "stupid" or "lazy" by anyone. In the case of the problematic hockey and tennis BLPs the issue of "stupid" or "lazy" doesn't come up, since redirects from the Living Person's name to an anglicized version were made. Likewise the issue of "making things up" doesn't arise because WP:OWNER means that articles do not belong to the creator, and adding a "WikiProject Croatia" tag on the biography of a Croatia national team sportsman will ensure a Croatian-equipped editor will be along in a week to make sure the BLP is accurate. In ictu oculi (talk) 00:27, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

  You obviously haven't read the other "support" statements then; which isn't very important, however. The one thing that I wanted to reply to is the "adding a "WikiProject Croatia" tag" bit. I'd like to have a constructive discussion about this, but the idea that tagging an article would bring about expert assistance is (sorry) ridiculous. I'd question whether it would bring any assistance at all, and then I'd question the expertise of anyone who did show up. Wikipedia editors are not, and cannot be, experts in anything (by definition). Which, incidentally, is a huge part of the reason that the BLP policy itself exists.
  — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 00:40, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

On what basis do you say the above? I created a stub on a singer I mistook as Croatian only 2 days ago. I tagged it, and a WPCroatia editor (Joy) was there in 24 hours and had made corrections and retagged it with WikiProject Montenegro. Evidently the East Europe and Scandinavia projects in particular are always ready to help with BLP accuracy. In ictu oculi (talk) 00:55, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

• Support. In my opinion, the rules should be universal and applicable to every biography, independently of the language. It is not acceptable that, for example, we allow the usage of diacritics for French and Spanish names ("countries that are reasonably expected of English readers"), but we don't allow them for other nations, such as Polish, Vietnamese, etc. Also note that English Wikipedia is not only written for native English speakers. The rule should be general, applicable to all biographies (dead or alive). I also agree with those who think that the English sources which usually drop the diacritics are primarily do so based on technical limitations (or laziness). Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and it should be as precise as possible. Deforming the names just because it is easier to read for some users is not acceptable. Based on such an argument, we could simplify lot of other things, as well, and for example drop some complicated assumptions from articles about mathematical theorems, just because they are hard to read for some. This is in line with the current guidelines of biographies which suggests that even the middle names should be given in the lead (even if the person does/did not use them). The only name-deformation that I could accept is the usage of the Western-style name order (first name, last name), since it makes unambiguous which name is which. Many article titles about famous (but already dead) people use diacritics (e.g., Albrecht Dürer, Søren Kierkegaard, Kurt Gödel, Paul Erdős, Émile Borel, Erwin Schrödinger, etc.), this should be followed for living persons, as well. Therefore, I fully support the usage of diacritics in article names. KœrteFa {ταλκ} 07:15, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

I am sure that there are words or names for which the diacritics would be of no use or obscure even to you. If we are to extend support of wording or names, then we must also then consider supporting the reader, something not addressed at all in this proposal. Wikipedia is limited even today. Computers are limited even today. I regularly run across articles with the substitute "numbers in a box" characters. I have a Windows 7 64-bit machine, not some Windows 95 machine, so never mind those a few gens earlier, like XP. I say that we cannot extend the proposal to your ideal. We must limit it to some reasonable, defendable, doable compromise or come up with some technical solution. While Europeans reading the English wikipedia might be well served, the rest of us will not be. Encyclopedias, almost by definition, stay behind the technical curve for the sake of working everywhere and being comprehensible everywhere. We should not forget that. I don't know what the solution is when writing about some Xese person who is notable in X country whose characters are not generally carried in the English media, but is based somewhat on the Latin alphabet. If there is no English-language source to guide us, we must either develop a standard of transliterating or leave out that person. ʘ alaney2k ʘ (talk) 19:40, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

I do not live in Europe and I use a standard English Windows 7 (64 bit) and Linux (Ubuntu, 64 bit) operating systems. I never had a problem with displaying diacritics on Latin characters (and note that I do not use any special tool that would help it either). I do not see any major technical problem with that (for example, Unicode is already invented and in use). Moreover, since English is the most widely used language in the world (and the most commonly used second language), English Wikipedia is not only for native English speakers. If, for example, a Vietnamese person is famous in Asia and there are 100 million people who know her/him, but is less known, e.g., in the US, UK, (s)he still deserves an English Wikipedia article. KœrteFa {ταλκ} 09:23, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

• My view is that the article title should normally have its correct diacriticals, but where there is any commonly used English version of the name without the correct diacriticals, a redirect should be created from that version of the name to the "correct" version. This will mean that editors will not need to type letters with diacriticals, which is not convenient on a standard English keyboard. I would not limit this to BLP: it should be a general principle, though at more remote historical periods, it is probably less necessary, as orthography was less fixed. Where the primary name is in a language not written in Latin script, any commonly used transliteration system should be acceptable. If the person is in practice resident in a Latin-script country, a commonly used version of the name will eb acceptable. Peterkingiron (talk) 16:31, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
  • Redirects are cheap; I think we can take it as read that any article with diacritics in the title can have a redirect from a diacritic-less one, and vice versa. bobrayner (talk) 18:53, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

• Support - It's simply good practice to spell people's names correctly. I find HotHat's objection especially baffling: it is not 'biased' to propose, or to adopt, a typographical policy. It's what we, the editors of the encyclopedia, do when an issue needs to be addressed. I'd remind people that WP:IAR will apply to this rule as to any other; if it's better practice for some specific reason (such as a person whose nationality has changed, or whose home nation changes its orthography) to use a different form the name, we can. But I agree with Bobrayner: redirects are cheap. Let's use the best, most accurate titles we can, and use redirects to clear up any and all reasonable ambiguity. AlexTiefling (talk) 20:14, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

So common names, stage names, pseudonyms, etc... are to be done away with now as article titles, or are you talking the first name in the lead sentence? The correct spelling of a Russian is to use the Russian alphabet, but we change that to the English alphabet. So obviously there are exceptions. Before you start supporting things we would need this conversation expanded to let baseball project know they can't go by baseball card names anymore. In fact we wouldn't want this to contradict what is also written in other wikipedia policies and guidelines so they would need to be changed as well. Everyone needs to be brought in on this because of the widespread rules already in place. Fyunck(click) (talk) 20:27, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Don't put words (or diacritics) in my mouth. I'm most strongly arguing that we shouldn't be anglicising names unnecessarily. This is plainly about the Latin alphabet, not the Cyrillic one. But it's neither fair nor helpful to conflate 'Latin' with 'English' as you have done. I believe we should not miss acute accents from French names, or circumflexes (even over w) from Welsh ones; we should not conflate the various Scandinavian letters with English ones that look similar (which can make a complete nonsense of the words affected); and we should use redirects to make sure search works as expected. AlexTiefling (talk) 22:55, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Hence the reason for a question mark. Title, first name in lead, or both? And I'm not conflating Latin and English alphabets... I'm the one separating them as two entities. As far as redirects being cheap, that I have no idea. Storage space must be cheap but what of the bandwidth on wikipedia for redirecting 99% of the keyboard entries to a foreign title? I've never checked that. If a common name or pseudonym is usually without diacritics in the English world then I would think that's where we should put it here. Just like we have it Bill Clinton instead of William Jefferson Clinton, or Novak Djokovic instead of Novak Đoković. And especially in tennis where all players register with the governing body with a chosen "non-diacritic" name. Showing their foreign spelled name in the lead is one thing but having it as the article title is another. And not showing readers the English/registration name at all (as though it doesn't exist) seems completely contrary to what this wikipedia is about. We tell readers a player's racket string brand but can have no mention of the name hundreds of millions of people know them by and is used by multitudes of English sources? Even Encyclopedia Britannica occasionally uses non-diacritics when it comes to tennis entities. There is no perfect one-size-fits-all here. Fyunck(click) (talk) 23:28, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Alex, if you're interested you can read Fyunck's argument based on ITF rules against diacritics at WP:TENNISNAMES and Talk thereof. In ictu oculi (talk) 09:16, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

He can read something there but he won't be reading anything I wrote. Some of what's there is true but most has changed from the original author's first writing of the essay. Fyunck(click) (talk) 09:34, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

• Greatly and Strongly Opposed: I am greatly opposed to this proposal and greatly bothered by the utter biased nature in it, and see fit to cast this vote! According to UE it says we should use the English sources variant of the name only, which means if we in the majority of English speaking countries use it in reliable sourcing not academic publications or journals like you all seem to want to keep highlighting. We must look at newspapers and magazines use the name because that would be the most reliable way to recognize someone’s name not how a academic journal i.e. encyclopedia mentions the name. So, we need to look how countries like the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, and Australia are calling a person, and not go by your nativist mentality to want to usurp the English language with putting in diacritic if we in those few English dominate speaking countries don't flat out use them in the majority of reliable sourcing.HotHat (talk) 04:27, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

• Comment Excuse me? Nativist mentality? For your information, an encyclopedia is not an academic journal. You can't effectively criticise someone's honest opinion on the grounds of it being 'biased' - this is not a matter of reportage, it's a matter of policy-making. What you're arguing for is for some fuzzily defined 'Englishness' at the expense of accuracy. Your pompous grandstanding doesn't in any way persuade me. I am biased in favour of my own opinions - how shocking! Do you therefore think that we should omit diacritics from words like Beyoncé, François, Hard Rock Café, fiancé(e), and so on? AlexTiefling (talk) 22:29, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
• Addendum - Your last sentence, in full: "So, we need to look how countries like the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, and Australia are calling a person, and not go by your nativist mentality to want to usurp the English language with putting in diacritic if we in those few English dominate speaking countries don't flat out use them in the majority of reliable sourcing." - On the strength of that, I'm disinclined ever to take your advice on any issue of English usage. If I were teaching you English, here in the UK, that paragraph would get you a failing grade. So forgive me, and others, if we ignore you. AlexTiefling (talk) 22:36, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

• Well oh Well, I guess we are on the opposite sides of the pond. I say favor not favour, I guess just our bastardization of the English-language. I guess we better start inventing our own! Hey, why not ask Wikipedia to split up the English encyclopedia to be usen (United State English), uken (United Kingdom English), caen (Canadian English), auen (Australian English), and so on and so forth. Guess what, Google even does this on their search engines. So, I might go even higher than keep this garbage of a mismatched encyclopedia together with tatters of duct tape. I guess we beat your hind end in the Revolutionary War, no that is what we American's call it now isn’t it, but to you it was The War of Rebellion. By the way, forgive me if I ignore your un-alphabetical mess you want to create since you said "If I were teaching you English, here in the UK, that paragraph would get you a failing grade. So forgive me, and others, if we ignore you."HotHat (talk) 04:17, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

• Support We are an encyplopedia not a tabloid. As BLPs are involved we have have to even strive to higher accuracy than with any other subject. Prioritizing sources that are genarally accepted as being flawed when it comes to spelling to support an agenda to stop the "usupation of the English language" is equally a political point of view not a encylopedic one. We should respect people not butcher their names. Obviously COMMONNAME still applies which has nothing to do with diacritics but with the way names are used. Bill Clinton is a good example of that. We tend to only use one first name even if the person has more than one as the person is known by one. True translation of names has long gone out of fashion when modern times have arrived. Back then a Wilhelm was translated to William or a Heinrich was translated to Henry. When people went to university they where known by their Latin names. That practise is a century out of date now and today any serious source will refer to people by their correctly written names. They even attempt to pronounce them these days (with varied sucess). Agathoclea (talk) 11:04, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

• Admin perspective I am personally neutral on whether we should defer to diacritic usage or English/Anglicized usage. But I am not neutral on the application of Consistency to article titles. Whether or not this discussion should be here in BLP or at a higher level is a legitimate question, but there is no doubt we have a consistency issue with regards diacritics in titles. There is inconsistency in naming conventions, inconsistency with regards Commonname and Use English, and there is inconsistency in the application of WP:RS. Editors in favor of diacritics in titles will cite one set of guidelines/MOS and discount any that oppose them (including challenging the reliability of sources that don’t support their position). The same holds true for those that don’t favor diacritics. They’ll cite a complete different set of guidelines/MOS to make their point. The result of these inconsistencies in guidelines/MOS/naming conventions is tension within the community and inconsistency application of policy. As a admin who routinely closes RM discussions, I see both sides all the time. Both sides are right, both sides are wrong. Regardless of the close decision, one of the sides is disappointed and they believe their policy based arguments were ignored. This can only get worse as we move toward ~4-5M articles in the next few years. A great majority of the new articles will be on non-English subjects. I vote for consistency and believe Naming conventions are the place to spell that out. --Mike Cline (talk) 13:54, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

Mike, since I mooted this following your close (or freeze if understand your attitude on reopening RMs correctly) of Talk:Stephane Huet, let me state why prioritise BLPs: (1) because the level of accuracy for BLPs should be higher. (2) because 90% of grief reoccurs in BLP space (3) because BLPs are simpler; we all know that Stephane Huet (Directeur Technique de l'Académie Player's)'s name is spelled wrong on WP currently, if the ITF online registration allowed French names his name wouldn't be wrong in the first place. Compare the simplicity of getting a BLP name right with the protracted historical issues over Alexander John Cuza (1820-1873).

As to inconsistency in application of WP:RS, is it really that WP:RS is open to ambiguity on what constitutes a reliable source and for what? Or is it being misread? Take Frédéric Vitoux (writer) and Frederic Vitoux (tennis): exactly the same name, exactly the same "WP:RS" guidelines being quoted, but one is an intellectual heavyweight, member of the Académie française (and main topic in a real encyclopedia) and the other is notable for having reached male player No.144 in 1996. Is it really the case that WP:RS is ambiguous here? ....At this point I was going to comment on WP:MOSPN#Diacritics but find this has happened.... What the??

The underlying cause tension/grief centres on BLPs where i. "English sports sources" coincide with ii., for want of a better word, insular culture. It's evident looking at the soccer BLP stubs on WP that equally bad English-language tabloid sources on soccer don't translate into constant RM tension between mispelling "foreigners" names - why? one can only assume that soccer is a more cosmopolitan sport. Wheras ice-hockey is where Canuks and Slovaks collide (diacritically as well as on the ice), and ITF would de-accent Miss B. G. Knowles even though she isn't French. We can't get over this with a guideline. There needs to be a rule - spell Latin alphabet BLP names correctly. We know what correctness is. The chase after bad sources and perfect guidelines doesn't change an incorrect spelling of a BLP name. In ictu oculi (talk) 15:46, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

• I don't believe that this policy should address this issue at all. This is a topic for WP:Article titles or perhaps WP:Use English. There's no potential for a libel case if you choose "Frederic" rather than "Frédéric". To be candid, the fact that it's not being pursued at the usual place makes me wonder if this was rejected at the proper forum. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:50, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

  There was an extensive RfC Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English)/Diacritics RfC 8 months ago on whether to use diacritics in bios (not just BLPs, but 90% are BLPs) which got 60 vs 47 for spelling foreign Latin alphabet names correctly, it fell down because of WP:COMMONNAME which is basically a bad policy to apply to living people - if the majority of sources are tabloid (which they will be, particularly in sports) then follow tabloid sources. The only way I can see of resolving Frédéric Vitoux (writer) and Frederic Vitoux (tennis) WP:CONSISTENCY problem, and of capping the disruption from diacritics RMs, is to have a rule which says "BLP accuracy trumps popular sources, spell living people's names accurately". If BLP has a "community" of some sort (does a WP MOS page have a community?) I would hope that that community would not be concerned solely with libel but also with non-libel accuracy. And doesn't spelling a person's name correctly come under non-libel accuracy? That's a question, you tell me. In ictu oculi (talk) 23:10, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

  The reason that BLP is special is the potential for libel problems. We want everything to be accurate. We have special rules for accuracy related to living people because inaccuracy there means that the WMF could get sued. There is no potential for someone suing the WMF because his name was spelled without the accents that he (properly) uses in his real life. Consequently, there is no BLP-level problem here; there's just an everyday, every-subject problem that applies every bit as much to a place name or a book title as it does to a person. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:17, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

WhatamIdoing, you are right of course, what makes BLP special is the potential for libel problems. If there was a separate WT:BLP(non libel related) I'd be raising this there. Nevertheless the lede seems to cover more than libel:

We must get the article right. Be very firm about the use of high quality sources. All quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged must be explicitly attributed to a reliable, published source, which is usually done with an inline citation. Contentious material about living persons (or recently deceased) 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.[2] Users who persistently or egregiously violate this policy may be blocked from editing.

Now compare that with "Roberto Argüello (born 12 May 1963) and known professionally as Roberto Arguello, is a former professional tennis player from Argentina.[1]" or the other 100x BLPs with this formula. This evidently is not libel, but it is silly, and not getting the article right nor anything else in the BLP lede box above. You say that the issue applies to dead people and places as well, yes and no. Dead people and places may well have anglicized names, they almost certainly in order to get onto WP will have WP:RS. A lot of the 899,000 BLPs on en.wp evidently don't have WP:RS, particularly sports stubs which proliferate non-notable BLPs to fill match listings and team rostas. And yet sports stubs BLPs are still living persons. Is it really asking too much for somewhere on WP to have a guideline that says "take more care with spelling living person's names than dead ones"? Why is this a bad guideline to have? In ictu oculi (talk) 00:45, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

It is a bad wording to include in this policy because it encourages original research. Let us suppose that someone uses a couple of books that list the runners and riders from a classic horse race run in 1989. In the case above the person's name should follow the usage the sources of the article. Let us suppose that one of the horses that ran at that race had a French name where the cedilla had been removed. An editor corrects it because it is a spelling mistake in French. It is reverted with the comment this is how it is spelt in two reliable sources used to make up the list. WP:PROVEIT is on the side of the restorer not the person insisting on the truth. The same applies for the names of the Jockeys. What you are proposing goes against Verifiability "Verifiability and not truth, is one of the fundamental requirements for inclusion in Wikipedia; truth, of itself, is not a substitute for meeting the verifiability requirement". -- PBS (talk) 17:17, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

OTOH the meta-discussion on the verifiability and not truth subject has pointed out that verifiability is not an excuse for including untruth. Agathoclea (talk) 08:48, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

How does it encourage "original research" it evidently encourages "diacritic enabled research." Just because a source uses Chicago MOS does not make a source original research. In the example you give we have two sources, Dick Francis - a Jockey's Life and The Sun Big Book of Great Horse Races which mention a race in which Gérald Mossé fell at the first turn. Neither of these books are NYTimes/Economist MOS so render him "Gerald Mosse." A search in NYTimes/Economist MOS sources (which allow French names, not Czech) reveals 1000s of sources for Gérald and 100x for two different Mossé, not the jockey, but a French female historian of Ancient Greece and a male French journalist. This creates a problem? Which is verifiable? Dick Francis - a Jockey's Life and The Sun Big Book of Great Horse Races which are written in a diacritic-disabled MOS, or NYTimes/Economist? This is a typical example? A quick check with Le Parisien reveals that the jockey is the same surname as the two other French Mossé. Very typical, see Talk:Stephane Huet where exactly this problem arises. Now which is original research, to follow the diacritic-disabled sources as guide to spelling, or to follow academic mentions of someone with the same name. Try this methodology on Petr Obdržálek or Zdeněk Skořepa which I have today moved to correct spelling following this methodology, and tell me if this is "OR"? or just good editing following WP:IRS? In ictu oculi (talk) 00:09, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

• Support Let's get WP right. I am not against widening the policy to other topics, including place names, or moving this debate elsewhere, but there are special considerations to BLPs that have nothing to do with libel. I have seen arguments in BLPs claiming that what the subject says or does is irrelevant. Clearly not, and they are the ones who decide how they pronounce their name. I have seen editors argue that because the largest single source of articles is from the US, WP should follow US style and practice - no, because WP is international. Nothing is lost by adopting the policy, because redirects will deal with searches, and diacritics aid the user rather than confuse. --AJHingston (talk) 23:19, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
• Mike Cline's comment makes sense. There should be one rule on use of diacritics in the titles of articles whether they are about living or dead people, places, concepts, whatever. Wikipedia:Article titles should define the rule and should say clearly that "this overrides all other policies or guidelines". I myself do not think consistency is important and would have no problem with a rule saying a title may or may not include diacritics, whatever seems most natural. But Wikipedia:Article titles is the place to set the rule, not here. Aymatth2 (talk) 23:51, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

  It's funny that you mention this, since that's exactly what the "rule" is!
  — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 02:45, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Ohms law the link you gave says nothing about BLP names, personal names are discussed at WP:MOSPN. This underlines what Mike Cline said, there are all these vague guidelines, over half a dozen MOS pages, and nothing clearly saying - "don't deliberately spell a Living Person's name wrong because he appears in tabloids". One sentence this simple could remove 90% of the constant hassle from tennis and hockey stubs, even though it won't resolve more meaningful issues about Iceland's prime minister. In ictu oculi (talk) 04:22, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

• Support - In ictu oculi draft proposal, per all the reasons he provided, and because it is what in practice has been followed by the vast majority of editors generally on WP. The suggested guideline of Peterkingiron is also going in same direction and also very much acceptable. Just as minor remark, Serbian language actually uses Gaj's Latin alphabet so no need to make it an exeption. Both Cyrillic and Latin are officially in use, so it can be considered as Latin scrypt language, as it actually is. FkpCascais (talk) 04:51, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
  • Now, I´ll drop a question here that might be interesting and it is related to this discussion: Serbo-Croatian has been replaced by Serbian and Croatian since the break-up of Yugoslavia, but ever during the time it was one language there were a few major differences between. One of them was one issue which can be interesting in this debate, and that one is the form how foreign names were written. Now, in Croatia, foreign names are written same as original, including foreign diacritics and all. But, in Serbia foreign names are written "as they sound", by a specific language-by-language transliteration with specific directions about how should they be transcribed wanting by this to give preference in correct pronounciation, over the correct spelling. Now, as you can see, despute having been the same language, Serbian and Croatian have, and always had, different rules about foreign name spellings (exemple: Croatian - George Washington ; Serbian - Džordž Vašington). My question is: is there any official rule in English language about the foreign name spellings, and is there any difference between British and American practices? FkpCascais (talk) 05:13, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi FkpCascais, You'll find an expert survey at User:Prolog/Diacritical marks. It sounds from your comments that the romanization of Serbian article might need a little fine-tuning :) In ictu oculi (talk) 11:02, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Which, not coincidentally, highlights the humongous problem with Wikipedia adopting a proposal such as this. Inserting your own version of reality into Wikipedia, based on some methodology which you happen to favor, isn't going to be widely accepted (what are we going to do, block anyone who doesn't follow the exact procedure?). Besides that, I can't fathom a methodology for transliterating from one alphabet to another (which is exactly what you're proposing) which will always work, always be the same, and that will stand the test of time. This whole exercise is rather futile, in the long run. I don't worry about it too much, because the diacritics will disappear over time (or some may be added to the English alphabet); the only thing that I worry about is being blocked because you and others don't like the fact that the Star-Ledger (largely because of the NHL) chooses to say "Peter Sykora" instead of using some other favored combination of transliterated Czech. Watching this all play out again has been somewhat amusing though. The taunting on my talk page is rather annoying, but I'll live.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 21:34, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

• Principle oppose Wrong venue for this. It should be discussed for all article names. --Dweller (talk) 12:06, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Then someone else would have to propose it, since I for one don't support diacritics for all biographies of dead people, let alone all articles. In ictu oculi (talk) 12:15, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Functionality: If we implement a policy of diacritics we have a massive issue with functionality.HotHat (talk) 23:00, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

• No.1: English-language keyboards do not use the characters, which makes it massively hard to edit.HotHat (talk) 23:00, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
• No.2: Article titles look horrid and not in English, with respect to the url such as Radek_%C5%A0t%C4%9Bp%C3%A1nek for Štěpánek.HotHat (talk) 23:00, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
• No.3: Navboxes become harder to utilize with diacritics.HotHat (talk) 23:00, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
• No.4: Linking becomes a harder issue than even the navbox issue.HotHat (talk) 23:00, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
• No.5: Until we address the top four, I won't go onto the others.HotHat (talk) 23:00, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

  All of which are taken care of by redirects and/or saying "who cares" (what does it really matter what a url looks like, after all?). Maintaining a focus on the actual issues here would help. Besides, this tangent has even less to do with BLP than the original proposal.
  — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 23:07, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

  • No.6: A Redirect mismatched diabolical encyclopedia is what your advocating for! NOT ME!HotHat (talk) 23:12, 23 April 2012 (UTC[

[random break for length]

• Oppose this proposal for several reasons:
  • (i) It makes no distinction between article titles covered by WP:AT and the three content policies (and their guidelines such as the WP:MOS). Broadly AT says look at all relevant reliable sources while the content policies say look at the reliable sources cited in the article.
  • (ii) It is myopic for example how does it cover the names of people such as those who change name such as Muhammad Ali and Prince (musician)?
  • (iii) "Accurately" is in this context a weasel word.
  • (iv) What is "their nationality"? Is nationality defined as membership of an ethnic group or a nation state? Is someone from Northern Ireland Irish or British? If a person plays cricket for England are the English or are they British? What is the national language of Britain? What if a nation state has more than one language which on is the appropriate one? In a nation state such as Britain (unlike Germany) one does not have to be constrained by the national languages for ones name, so in such cases this suggestion is constrictive. All these issues over the concept of nation is a potential OR minefield that can be ignored if we follow the simple rule of using the name that appears in reliable English language sources.
  • (v) "for example sports sources". This sentence ignores the verifiability policy. If there is a report in The Sun because the Sun is a red top it is usually not considered to be a reliable source, but a report in The Times is a reliable source even if in the sports pages. Therefore dismissing "sports sources" out of hand is contrary to policy. -- PBS (talk) 18:42, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi PBS, thanks for your comments, the first question we should be asking is do we want European Living Person's names to be spelled accurately (meaning accurately, nothing more involved than that) in this encyclopedia? i.e. In your view: Is this a good objective, or is it a bad objective?

As regards the specific points, [I've inserted latin numerals (i)-(v) before your points so they can be addressed more easily]

(i) No, true, it doesn't, but it easily can do, if you wish it can easily link to WP:AT "If there are too few reliable English-language sources to constitute an established usage, follow the conventions of the language appropriate to the subject (German for German politicians...)" :::(ii). actually it does, please see WP:STAGENAME note above.

(iii) I'm open to suggestions for better words than "accurately", but it isn't a weasel word in this context any more than "accuracy" is a weasel word in WP:SOURCES.

(iv) no problem, we can add "current" before "wikt:nationality" which should resolve that loophole. Nationality is in any case easier to establish for a Croatian tennis player than finding an article in the Sun's sport pages that is a guide to Croatian orthography.

(v) The London Times and Telegraph are not consistent, we have seen already that both have François Mitterrand in the front pages, and Francois Jauffret in the sports pages. The NY Times (accents on Dominican baseball players), Guardian and Wall Street Journal however do try to enforce an MOS on their sports journalists. But I'm not sure of the relevance of this. Wikipedia isn't a newspaper, broadsheet or tabloid: we have François for both French prime ministers and French sports BLPs, or indeed French pastry chef BLPs, François Payard. In ictu oculi (talk) 00:04, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

It would be easier if you interlace your points.

• I. do not see why this policy needs to mention something that is covered by the AT policy and the content policies. Particularly when you have not demonstrated that those policies if followed will not adequately meet your concerns. Putting wording in here is going to just give yet another set of wording that people will use as a club to beat their opponents with.
• II Sorry where in the text you presented is mention of stage name and what has that got to do with Muhammad Ali? Also what about articles like Tony Benn where accuracy and POV go hand in hand?
• III "accurately" is being used in a weasel way because the sentence says "The names of living persons should be represented accurately ... even when the majority of popular English language sources ... do not use diacritics." because no policy or guideline suggests using "popular English language sources" what they say is use "reliable English language sources" which may or may not be popular. The use of "accurately" here implies that there is an accuracy over and above that in reliable sources.
• IV "Current" makes no difference to the problem with the word nationality, besides it is not the nationality of the person that determines their name but the usage in reliable English language sources for the article title, (and the sources in the article for names not the subject of the article) or the or are you saying that we should ignore usage in reliable sources? "Nationality is in any case easier to establish for a Croatian tennis player" I think you are being myopic, the devil is in the detail. How about for example a Bosnian tennis player or an Irish tennis player or a Kiwi tennis player? It is simpler to follow the usage in reliable sources and not try to write rules to emulate the usage in those sources. To extend the quote "Nationality is in any case easier to establish for a Croatian tennis player than finding an article in the Sun's sport pages that is a guide to Croatian orthography." No one is suggesting the Sun is a reliable source. I suggest that you try to get it clear in you mind why the policy is called "article titles" see Wikipedia talk:Article titles/Archive 21#RFC on proposed rename, because at the moment you do not seem to be able to distinguish between and article title and a subject's name.
• V you have not acknowledged my point about "sports sources" and reliable sources. I look forward to you specifically addressing that point. Instead you wrote "we have seen already that both have François Mitterrand in the front pages, and Francois Jauffret in the sports pages" So what? As you were told by BlueBoar at Wikipedia_talk:Verifiability#Sources only reliable in their area "The English language is notoriously inconsistent... this is especially true when it comes to spelling non-English names. English language sources often leave out accent marks that are included in non-English language sources... this isn't 'wrong' or 'incorrect', it's just a different spelling standard." and you agreed "Okay, sorry please forget names my bad - I realise that English speakers are notoriously inconsistent;". So lets get back to addressing my point V.

-- PBS (talk) 15:25, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

i. If AT and MOSFOREIGN cover this, then why has there been 12 months of disruption on WP (which I admit escaped my attention in my music/religion corner until last month) over some ice-hockey and tennis editors refusing to accept East Europe editors correction of mispellings in their BLP creations? My view is that AT and MOSFOREIGN do not cover accurate spelling of European living people names.

ii. WP:STAGENAME is noted above as an exception. Muhammed Ali and Tony Benn do not have diacritics and are not European names in the sense we are discussing here.

iii. accurately means accurately, there is no debate that the hockey and tennis "anglicized names" are accurate for BLPs. We've, most of us, already gone beyond this part of the discussion long ago, see recent RM at Talk:Ilie Năstase. But you are correct - no policy or guideline suggests using "popular English language sources" what they say is use "reliable English language sources" but the problem is there is not clear guidance as to "reliable for what?" which may or may not be reliable on the spelling of European BLP names (NB including Irish as European names). Exactly. This is why a tightening of BLP guidance is needed.

iv. current makes a significant difference. Please go check on a BLP category, take category:Czech male tennis players for example - you'll see those with Americanized or Germanized spellings have changed nationality (and probably are in the wrong category).

v. No, I do not acknowledge your point about sports sources and reliable sources, a report in a British or American newspaper with its own MOS (or lack of one) is a not reliable source on spelling of European BLP names. And no, it is evidently not simpler to follow the spelling of French and Czech names in sports sources than to simply tighten guidance to ask for accuracy in spelling European living names. Why would anyone think that using sports sources for spelling of French and Czech names is easier than simply asking for correct spelling? Yes I saw BlueBoar's comment, but the fact that Shakespeare spelled his name a dozen ways does not help resolve the BLP problems where Frederic Vitoux (tennis) ("per sports sources English") and Frédéric Vitoux (writer) fails both accuracy and consistency for an encyclopedia.

I'm all for improving AT and MOS. This is what this about. But if you think that AT and MOS prevent Frederic Vitoux (tennis) ("per sports sources English") and Frédéric Vitoux (writer) occuring the fact that it has occured (frequently) is evidence that you are unfortunately mistaken. Please show where AT and MOS already cover this? In ictu oculi (talk) 23:57, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

"Tony Benn do not have diacritics and are not European names" ?! Britain is within Europe, QED it follows that Tony Benn is a European name. He was christened "Anthony Neil Wedgwood" which is I suppose by your definition his "correct name". The choice of article name is covered by WP:AT by "The following are examples of common names that Wikipedia uses as article titles instead of more elaborate, formal, or scientific alternatives". We use article titles [[Tony Benn] for article titles because they are the ones used in reliable English language sources, we do not use the formal name unless it is common used in reliable sources. Or are you saying that we shoudl use one standard for British the article titles about British (and presumably Irish) people and another standard for continental articel titles about other Europans? Are you also suggesting that as soon as a continental person dies then we should use a different standard to decide on the article title? Is is not simpler and just as accurate to base our policy on reliable English language sources for all articles? -- PBS (talk) 16:48, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Tony Benn is not a European language name. Philip, the whole point of this discussion is what to do when there are no European language-name enabled sources. If your point is that WP would be easier with a The Mirror MOS and delete all foreign names, then yes it would. But since this is an encyclopedia that's not going to happen. In ictu oculi (talk) 00:18, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

• I support the proposed wording, but I would also accept more general and less strict guidance on the issue, such as something like this:

When spelling a living person's name, editors should use high-quality sources that are reliable on the relevant orthography, take into account the subject's preference (if known) and maintain encyclopedic style. Proper spelling often requires the use of diacritical marks that are not commonly used in the English-language media.

It is long overdue for us to have a line or two about spelling here. Even The Chicago Manual of Style, which is also very pro-diacritic, includes some "BLP" advice: "The name of a living person should, wherever possible, correspond to that person’s own usage." Prolog (talk) 21:08, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

And what if the subject's own "usage" changes depending on if they are using it in an English speaking country or context? Fyunck(click) (talk) 21:56, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

If a person chooses to use a different name or spelling in English, that form should normally be fine for us as well. If a person is forced to use a certain spelling due to some technical limitations or similar issues, it's a different matter. Prolog (talk) 16:40, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Since this is an English encyclopedia I presume "relevant orthography" means the English one? --Wolbo (talk) 23:05, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi Wolbo, please see proposal above. In ictu oculi (talk) 23:32, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

In that case I oppose the proposal and Prologs guidance suggestion as they are circular in reasoning if they state that we need to "use high-quality sources that are reliable on the relevant orthography" and subsequently "reliable on the relevant orthography" is defined or interpreted as meaning those sources that use diacritics.--Wolbo (talk) 00:15, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Wolbo, the objective of the proposal is to have Latin-alphabet name BLPs spelled accurately, so if we define diacritic-disabled sources like The Sun, or sports websites as reliable on European orthography that rather defeats the purpose of the proposal. Can I clarify please, is your objection along the lines of those who are either not bothered by, or even in favour of, inconsistency for François Mitterrand (quality sources) Francois Jauffret (sports sources)? Or do you have a alternative/better way to promote e.g. French names for French BLPs ? In ictu oculi (talk) 00:34, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

I answered this in good faith. If I had checked my own edit history I would have seen that immediately prior to writing the above you followed me (I'm flattered!) to Lukas Danecek, Filip Svaricek, Vojtech Kubincak, Martin Ruzicka, Stepan Jenik, Tomas Karpov, Tomas Sykora, Tomas Zohorna, Martin Záhorovský, Peter Jansky and Lukas Mensator and deleted correct Czech diacritics from these living persons' names - despite the fact that they don't even play tennis. The only newspaper sources in these articles are Czech ones, which naturally spell the names correctly. The English "source" was a player ranking website http://www.eliteprospects.com/player.php?player=22772&lang=en which is diacritic disabled. There's not much else I can say is there. This really sums up eloquently what the European living person's names issue is about. In ictu oculi (talk) 09:32, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi Prolog, Chicago MOS "The name of a living person should, wherever possible, correspond to that person’s own usage." would also be fine. The important thing now is having got an overwhelming consensus in favour of spelling Latin alphabet BLP names correctly, and minimising future Frédéric Vitoux (writer) vs. Frederic Vitoux (tennis) type "sports-source spelling" inconsistency is to fix this guideline somewhere and then work on detailing the theoretical nth degree on related Talk and notes. As it stands we've only now got 40 Czech and Slovak ice hockey BLPs which are deliberately misspelled (and 20 Spanish tennis players whose maternal names are hyphenated), these are the immediate target of the guideline, plus preventative medicine to minimise future RM disruption. In ictu oculi (talk) 23:32, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

• Strongly Oppose this proposal as its formulation is unbalanced and one-sided and makes no allowance for established English-usage of e.g. tennis players names. This is still an English language Wikipedia and when the vast majority of high-quality, reputable English-language sources spell a players name as Novak Djokovic and not Novak Đoković then as a user of this encyclopedia I fully expect Wikipedia to follow as it constitutes an established usage in English-language sources per WP:UE. The Djokovic article is a good example of how to handle this issue, as besides being faithful to the established English usage of Djokovic it also displays prominently the diacritic version Đoković in both the lead as well as the infobox. That's a perfectly sensible and balanced approach to this issue.--Wolbo (talk) 10:26, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

• Djokovic is a very rare example due to the Đ/Dj issue and the fact that this is one of the few living people featured even in Britannica without diacritics. Prolog (talk) 16:40, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Wasn't aware of Djokovic being a 'very rare example'. Simply picked him because A) he's the most well-known Serbian (diacritic) tennis player and B) I thought the way this issue is handled on his page is a sensible one that can perhaps be used as a guidance. Can you inform me what is the Đ/Dj issue? Also note that Britannica uses the 'c' instead of the 'ć' for Djokovic. And that Britannica does not use the 'ć' for Ana Ivanovic. So what does this mean for Britannica as a high-quality, reputable source on this issue? Does it cease to be one or is just considered high-quality and reputable for those articles/persons where it uses diacritics? Finally, what specifically does the proposal as phrased by In ictu oculi and rephrased by Prolog mean for the handling of Novak Djokovic/Novak Đoković and Ana Ivanovic/Ana Ivanović? --Wolbo (talk) 17:31, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

You could bet on more boldness in removing all English with Novak Djokovic and Ana Ivanovic, even as we see today at Talk:Jelena Janković... a player who has at least two personal websites where she chooses the English alphabetic form "Jelana Jankovic." Her signature in English also. The English spelling will go the way of the dodo bird with the above proposal or as In ictu oculi says "unless/until she emigrates this is the correct, accurate, and verifiable spelling". We have to be very careful about intentions here and I simply don't trust them a bit. Fyunck(click) (talk) 07:01, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

I would assume rare just because of all the thousands of tennis players, very few make it into Encyclopedia Britannica. Ilie Nastase (also spelled Năstase) made it. For one that didn't make it into EB how about fairly well know Jelena Jankovic. Was ranked number 1 and won the US Open. She is listed as "Jelena Jankovic" at WTA, ITF, Fed Cup, movie database, magazines, wimbledon, etc... Then we also have a couple personal pages for her. She has her own facebook page (which allows diacritics) in which she lists herself as Jelena Jankovic. She also has her own official website where again it's Jelena Jankovic (even with a signature). Yet this article sits at a silly "Jelena Janković" here at wikipedia. I'm sure in Serbia it's spelled with a "ć" in Latin or Јелена Јанковић in Crylic, but this is an English wikipedia. What should happen to her with this new proposal or if we find a French player with the same situation? Fyunck(click) (talk) 18:40, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

The issue with Serbian diacritics was explained by FkpCascais above. Britannica's inconsistency with tennis players is known (three biographies with diacritics, one without and one with both spellings), but it is still one of the best sources on spelling foreign names. As for Ivanovic, she has lived in Switzerland since her early teens and may well have stopped using the accent mark herself. As a counter-example, Zlatan Ibrahimović, a Sweden-born Swede, is well known to retain his Bosnian diacritic. A subject's preference can be easy or impossible to tell. No written rule or guidance can solve every dispute. Prolog (talk) 19:11, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Wolbo,

To reply to "Finally, what specifically does the proposal as phrased by In ictu oculi and rephrased by Prolog mean for the handling of Novak Djokovic/Novak Đoković and Ana Ivanovic/Ana Ivanović? --Wolbo (talk) 17:31, 25 April 2012 (UTC) ... in respect to my own proposal, or Prolog's or Peterkingiron's suggestion it will mean nothing since as has been said 3x above Serbian is primarily a cyrillic alphabet language. FWIW I would expect that despite "Novak Đoković" on Djokovic's website and WP:CONSISTENCY with Ivanović the two would remain in wikt:transliteration rather than wikt:romanization. This proposal is not designed to catch exceptions, it is only designed to prevent the sort of editing you did today when you removed diacritics from the lede of Jakub Kolar/Jakub Kolář. Why did you do that? In ictu oculi (talk) 06:27, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

IIO, now you confuse me. If I understand you correctly you state above that it should be (or remain) Novak Djokovic and Ana Ivanovic on the grounds that "Serbian is primarily a cyrillic alphabet language.". Yet you oppose moving Jelena Janković to Jelena Jankovic stating that "Like it or not the name of this Serbian citizen is as much Janković as any other Serbian Janković on WP and unless/until she emigrates this is the correct, accurate, and verifiable spelling of Serbian citizens called Janković." Can you clarify the difference between Ivanovic and Janković? You mention that it's "Novak Đoković" on his website (true), yet if you change it to the English version, like this Wikipedia intended for a world-wide English speaking audience, it becomes "Novak Djokovic".

Regarding Jakub Kolar/Jakub Kolář please note that the page history (since creation in June 2011) shows it was always Jakub Kolar until you changed it yesterday to Jakub Kolář (while we are having this discussion on how to handle diacritics). As to why I changed it please note that, unlike you, I left an edit summary explaining my change. --Wolbo (talk) 11:35, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Wolbo, of course it was "always Jakub Kolar [in lede] until I changed it," that's the whole point. It's one of Dolovis' 700 poorly sourced cut and paste Czech BLPs from a hockey website that have caused so much aggravation on WP. Dolovis is now blocked partly as a result of WP:OWNER issues and not letting "his" BLPs be made more accurate. And? What exactly are you contributing? You followed me, saw me adding Czech sources giving these living persons' correct names, and then in each case deleted it. Please go back to Lukas Danecek, Filip Svaricek, Vojtech Kubincak, Martin Ruzicka, Stepan Jenik, Tomas Karpov, Tomas Sykora, Tomas Zohorna, Martin Záhorovský, Peter Jansky and Lukas Mensator and restore the correct names in lede. In ictu oculi (talk) 15:05, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

I was hoping you would solve my confusion by clarifying your view on the "Ivanovic" vs. "Janković" difference as I requested but unfortunately you instead deflect and obfuscate by bringing on the scene some user who is totally unknown to me and with whom I have had no interaction whatsoever. I don't see how this is relevant or constructive to helping this discussion along but hope you will return to give a reply to the actual point I raised.--Wolbo (talk) 15:40, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

IIO, I'm still waiting for an answer as to why you indicate that under your proposal Novak Djokovic would not become Novak Đoković and Ana Ivanovic would not become Ana Ivanović stating that "Serbian is primarily a cyrillic alphabet language" yet you oppose the move from Jelena Janković to Jelena Jankovic. Can you please clarify? --Wolbo (talk) 09:53, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

[random break for length]

• Comment. I support the spirit of the proposed wording, but like Mike Cline, I believe it's not exactly a BLP matter. The subject of diacritics is already dealt with confusingly at two locations: WP:DIACRITICS and WP:AT. We really don't need another location where this comes into play, when the "BLP risk" is negligible.

  On the pronunciation issue, English is notoriously idiosyncratic in that a word is quite often not pronounced as it's written (e.g. 'enough'). 'Cafe' is easily enough to pronounce for someone who has already come across it or who speaks a Latin-based language – my kid would pronounce it "KAIFE". But luckily neither the spelling nor pronunciation are ambiguous. Pronunciation-wise, it's important to correctly reproduce diacritics for bios and place names because 'Ł' isn't pronounced the same as 'L', and 'Ř' isn't pronounced the same as 'R'. Using diacritics would therefore not aggravate the idiosyncrasies of English. Not using diacritics would perpetuate ignorance: Jiří Němec would continue to be pronounced "Jirry Nemek" according to 'standard English pronunciation'; and nobody will look further to know that "Jerry", as it's pronounced, isn't the same as "George". --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 07:54, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi Ohconfucius, welcome, you probably know more about this issue than anyone. It seems that myself and AJHingston are the only two who really think that it is more important to get BLP real names right than all articles right. Which surprises me, but am quite happy to accept it. I feel considerably more uncomfortable having a wrong spelling of some young Czech lad whose Facebook and Twitter comes up as well than Talk:Gideon Sundbäck (1880–1954). It still seems that 90% of the disruption is caused by removing diacritics BLP, and going back as far Max Decugis or Décugis it seems people were less consistent thant today. But at this point the majority need to settle on a page and wording and finally fix this. In ictu oculi (talk) 09:53, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

ictu oculi you write "get BLP real names right than all articles right". We get the name right by following usage in reliable sources within an article or if it is an article title by following common usage in reliable English language sources. In ictu oculi if following usage in reliable sources is not how we get it right, then how do you suggest it is done? -- PBS (talk) 17:03, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi PBS, Sorry, can I ask again: what is your solution to the Frédéric Vitoux (writer) vs Frederic Vitoux (tennis) problem?
Secondly, do you agree with Wolbo's removal of diacritics from the lede sentence of Vladimir Hartinger, Lukas Danecek, Filip Svaricek, Vojtech Kubincak, Martin Ruzicka, Stepan Jenik?
In answer to your question: what I/Prolog/OhConfucius/Peterkingiron propose is that in establishing the spelling of Latin alphabet foreign names WP give guidance to follow sources which are reliable on spelling of Latin alphabet foreign names, which would be (1) English sources which are reliable on Latin alphabet foreign names (2) original Latin alphabet foreign sources where those aren't available. In ictu oculi (talk) 23:09, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

• Ah, all those above articles were created by User:Dolovis in a deliberate attempt to fight the progression of diacritics on WP. There are plenty more like that. Of course, all those articles ought to have their 'normal' spellings, with diacritics in the articles, to coexist with names without the diacritics. I'm a bit curious as to why Wolbo changed the names (by removing some diacritics but not all). Now, there's neither the "fully correct" name ( I mean per native diacritics), nor the name stripped of them as may appear in some EL text. I was always under the strong impression everyone agreed with the two forms coexisting in the lead, but merely disagreed on how to implement it (as per your objection to "professionally known as"). --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 04:45, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

One correction, User:In ictu oculi doesn't believe any form of the name should be in the article at all except the foreign version. He has made that very clear multiple times. Fyunck(click) (talk) 04:53, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Even if it was true, there is nothing about that in the proposed guideline (and we are talking about the guideline here). Therefore, there would be no problem with also providing the diacritics-free version of the name (e.g., as "professionally known as"). Problem solved. :-) KœrteFa {ταλκ} 05:36, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

You say problem solved but IIO keeps removing them at will and he has attached/linked both items at numerous RM's. He links them and claims I am alone at wiki in keeping any sort of the English version at all. That is unacceptable in my book. If it were me I'd have the common English name (from English sources) as the title, the non-English birth-name listed first in the lead sentence, and the English/tennis name listed second. It hasn't always been "professionally known as" even though the bodies that regulate tennis consider the non-diacritic version the correct one. It has been "alternate name:John Doe", "English name:John Doe", even simply "or John Doe", etc... each one has been rejected by IIO. No compromise. It's simply eliminate all English spelling variations from the article from what I've seen, as though they don't exist. And even if a player has their name spelled on their own personal website without diacritics, and with a non-diacritic signature, it won't matter. It's not allowed to lead the article or be listed. This is what I have been dealing with for a couple months now. Fyunck(click) (talk) 06:05, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

OK. Would you accept the guideline if it had a part about that? For example, a point which explicitly states that diacritics-free versions can also be mentioned in the lead, and they should be mentioned if the person uses that in her/his professional life. I would have no problem with including such a statement, as long as the correct name (with diacritics) is used throughout the article. What do you think? KœrteFa {ταλκ} 06:25, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Not sure about the usage throughout the article but I could agree with the rest of the first line. I had been arguing originally that the first line should be common name, (foreign name). If it speeds things along I would support to always use Foreign name, (English name). But if you do away with the common English title usage you would run into problems like Bill Clinton. His birth name is not used throughout the article, his common English name is... as is his common English name the article title. If we are simply talking about the lead sentence and what name goes first, and should it be spelled with diacritics, I can live with your suggestion. This would require a change in the Novak Djokovic article you understand. Instead of Novak Djokovic (Serbian: Novak Đoković) it would have to be written something like Novak Đoković (English spelling Novak Djokovic) or something to that effect. To require the article title to change or to use Đoković throughout seems kind of odd. Wiki would almost need a RfC that no articles can be listed at a pseudonym, stage name, common name, English name if foreign spelling exists, etc... so that would leave us with article titles "Archibald Alexander Leach" instead of Cary Grant, "James Scott Connors" instead of Jimmy Connors. Their alternate names, stage names, nicknames would be mentioned second but nowhere else in the article. That would certainly tighten up rules and make things more straightforward, but I'm not sure that's what we want. I'm not sure how to work the inline prose names best and it might just depend on the person. When we have people like Jelena Jankovic with her personal facebook page using English spelling and her personal webpage using English spelling (along with all the tennis organizations), with this being an English wikipedia why wouldn't we have the article page titled in English, first name in the lead with diacritics, alternate name without diacritics, and prose without diacritics? It would seem to make sense. Fyunck(click) (talk) 07:22, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

We can be open on this.

Yana Yanezic is a stagename, Ana Ivanovic is someone who lives in Switzerland, Jelena Janković could go either way. The proposal doesn't really cover any of them. The proposal only urges accurate spelling where there's no doubt like the two Frédéric Vitouxs.

There is room for inclusion of an anglicization in cases where someone has acquired notability abroad or changed nationality. Fyunck's approach is evidently better than Wolbo's deletions. the only problem is that WP:Manual of Style/Biographies gives Latin alphabet lede examples along the lines of "François Maurice Adrien Marie Mitterrand (26 October 1916 – 8 January 1996) was the fourth President of France", there is nothing of the "Paul Féret (1901-?), known professionally as Paul Feret" The reason I have tagged 20 of 100 or so "known professionally as [diacritic removed]" ledes is that they seem to be known professionally in France etc. by their French names. We already do that dual language for American citizens who were Czech born, or genuinely have different names abroad, and it is normal practice for those who've acquired notability abroad:

Martina Navratilova (Czech: Martina Navrátilová; born Martina Šubertová; October 18, 1956) is a retired Czech American tennis player and a former World No. 1.

In ictu oculi (talk) 07:56, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

So we could do Roberto Argüello (English: Roberto Arguello) for the lead sentence? Fyunck(click) (talk) 08:19, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Just a stylistic remark: for me, using bold text inside brackets looks strange, viz., the brackets tell us that the info is not that important, but boldface fonts indicate that it is. KœrteFa {ταλκ} 08:41, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

I think you're right. Heck if it was Roberto Argüello (English: Roberto Arguello) or Roberto Argüello alternate English spelling Roberto Arguello that would be ok too. I'm not that picky, just so the info is there in the lead sentence really. Fyunck(click) (talk) 08:50, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Both versions are fine with me, too. KœrteFa {ταλκ} 08:39, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

PBS, regarding your relevant comment/question "We get the name right by following usage in reliable sources within an article or if it is an article title by following common usage in reliable English language sources. In ictu oculi if following usage in reliable sources is not how we get it right, then how do you suggest it is done?" it should now be clearly understood that according to this BLP proposal 'reliable English language sources' are defined as only those sources that use diacritics. All other English language sources, no matter how reputable, knowledgeable and high quality, are to be dismissed if they don't use diacritics. Even if combined these sources constitute the overwhelming majority usage of that name within the English speaking environment. However, if these sources that are considered non-reliable switch to using diacritics they instantly become a reliable source that should be used to determine spelling of names in BLPs. This is a self serving circular argument: "I am in favor of using diacritics in BLPs" >> "Usage of diacritics in BLPs should be based on reliable English language sources" >> "Reliable English-language sources are only those sources that use diacritics". It is one of the reasons why I don't consider this proposal, as it is currently phrased, sufficiently balanced and sensible. --Wolbo (talk) 10:49, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Next step?

• Okay, so based on the overall weight of comments there's evidently a majority supporting some kind of guidance somewhere to spell European living persons' names accurately. So (a) what, do we put (b) where? In ictu oculi (talk) 11:55, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

IMHO there is no consensus that "majority supporting some kind of guidance somewhere to spell European living persons' names accurately" over and above that given in WP:AT, and the content policies and the main MOS guideline. Oh and BTW Ireland and Britain are within Europe! -- PBS (talk) 14:13, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

PBS, based on the overall weight of comments here and in a dozen RMs there's evidently an overwhelming majority among editors supporting some kind of guidance somewhere to spell European living persons' names accurately, even if they only appear in tabloid sources. If you're against spelling European living persons' names (including sportsmen) accurately, then sorry you're in the minority.

As to whether WP:AT (title) and WP:MOS (content) already cover this, then please, I genuinely cannot see it, please show me where. If there is guidance in WP:AT (title) and WP:MOS which prevents WP:CONSISTENCY problems with Frédéric Vitoux (writer) vs Frederic Vitoux (tennis) diacritics then why isn't it working? The only clear guideline to avoid these kinds of problems was in WP:MOSPN diacritics section which you and Kauffner removed a couple of days ago (and I restored). In ictu oculi (talk) 22:45, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

WP:DIACRITICS was reaffirmed in an RfC nine months ago that had far more participation than this discussion. The proposal above contains no exception for well-established Anglicized forms, although this is stipulated in the August RfC consensus. I don't see a mandate for a "next step", certainly not one that overturns this provision. The above proposal also claims that English-language spellings are "inaccurate", which goes beyond the RfC proposal that was turned down. This claim turns "use English" on its head, and UE has always been a core policy. Kauffner (talk) 04:45, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi Kauffner,

You're a good man, I appreciate that you are mutually respectful on this. Our different perspectives on when to stop relying on English-only sources doesn't detract from my respect for you as an editor.

There's not much I can say about UE, I agree with it, but it is a misnamed shortcut, and we both know that every time someone miscites it as license to mispell names, someone else will quickly point out that the only Latin alphabet human name example it gives is Søren Kierkegaard, which is Chicago MOS not NYTimes MOS.

As regards the non-BLP diacritics RfC I'm not sure how 60 for diacritics and 47 against diacritics is "reaffirmed"? I wonder if I myself would have supported it to be honest, I feel considerably less strongly about the names of fjords in Norway than the principle of living French pastry chefs names being as important as names of dead French presidents. As Prolog and Bobrayner have pointed out, the scope of that RfC discussion was far wider than BLP names, it included dead people, places, other terms, ...and nevertheless, still the majority was 60 for and 47 against. This compares, as I said, when sending out the Beyoncé Knowles invitation to the 100 who had voted in RM's in the last 30 days, 90 were for accurate BLP names, only 10, the same 10 repeatedly, were for anglicizing the names of European sports people who had failed to make it into Britannia. Of those 10, at least 1, yourself, was only objecting to titles, not ledes. What this BLP proposal is about in my mind is Martin Záhorovský of Havířov. Who? A local Czech Extraliga hokejista and he won't be in Britannica any time soon. Amusingly (if you're easily amused) yesterday I added in a Czech newspaper source and moved the article - don't worry it has a clean history, and would be a normal instance of following what the first paragraph of BLP says under normal circumstances - today I see our colleague Wolbo, who is a new name to me, has re-anglicized as "Martin Zahorovsky" but left his town of birth with diacritics as "Havířov." Generally as fellow human beings it's more important to get a fellow living person's name right than get a town right, but in WP's current blurry guidelines given that the town does appear in Lonely Planet with diacritics, whereas Martin Záhorovský isn't a town and therefore won't be getting into Lonely Planet, he's condemned to "UE - use English sports websites" for BLP life. This is the immediate issue we're dealing with here. It's about deliberate editing of inaccurate names back into biographies of living people because they are unfortunate enough to play sports rather than design dresses, play the cello or be pastry chefs. I don't think that you would say that the 47 who voted against the diacritics RfC have "reaffirmed" mispelling of Mr. Záhorovský of Havířov's name in the lede, but in effect, this refusal to have a BLP guideline "please spell BLPs' names right, even if they are East Europeans" is what the East European sports BLP disruption boils down to. I think Fyunck (and now Wolbo's) edits demonstrate that unless there is a guideline asking editors, politely, kindly, please, to not anglicize East European BLP names then this will continue on as 2011. We'll still be having this in 2013. Is that what anyone (apart from those doing it) wants? In ictu oculi (talk) 08:53, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

• Alternatively we could AfD all these non-notable hockey and tennis player BLPs. That would be another way of restoring WP:CONSISTENCY. After Wolbo's edits my yetzer hara is tugging the sleeve to go the AfD route on both hockey and tennis BLPs... hopefully a good gulasch will fix that. :) In ictu oculi (talk) 10:30, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Well, I would certainly be in favor of AfD'ing a number of completely non-notable tennis BLPs who, despite their non-notability, have articles a mile long describing just about every single ball they ever hit while simultaneously legends of the game with multiple grand slams to their name don't have a page or don't get past the 'stub' stage. But that painful inequality is a topic for another discussion and not a solution for this one. And it's 'goulash' , not 'gulasch' but I note with interest you didn't go for 'gulyás'. :) --Wolbo (talk) 10:59, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Why did you anglicize these Czech people's surnames? In ictu oculi (talk) 14:32, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

• WP:LAME My first and last comment on this topic. My view is that the people who have been waging this ridiculous war for more than a year now should consider how little impact it has on the vast, vast, VAST majority of our readers. This issue has something to do with writing an informative, comprehensive, and balanced encyclopedia, but not much. If you want to end this dispute, you should disentangle yourself from it. Everyone will be better off, yourself most of all. causa sui (talk) 17:46, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

• Wow, what? In ictu oculi had to restore the line refering to diacritics at WP:MOSPN and now that he has come here to solve this once and for all, you causa sui accuse him of WP:LAME and ridiculousmess? This "war" (in your own words) has been waged for "more than a year" (again your own words), so isn´t then time to solve it once and for all? Isn´t that also a sign how it is not at all ridiculous to discuss this? Isn´t also tendentious on your behalve to call for a user to "disentangle" only because you obviously disagree with him? Hmmm, bad comment without any valid or positive contribution to this discussion. FkpCascais (talk) 20:14, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

  My comment was not directed at anyone in particular. I make no response to any of your other points. causa sui (talk) 20:45, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Causa sui - I have no bone in this. I am not a tennis or hockey editor, my interest is religious history and classical music. I was ignorant of this ongoing fight - both Dolovis in hockey and Fyunck in tennis until I saw 40 days ago, in passing, a particularly egregious RM on a barely notable Hungarian tennis player. This ongoing nonsense is debilitating and disruptive, and detrimental to WP. As another BLP editor above has said, most of these hockey and tennis players should never be on WP in the first place. But if they are, then "language in which this entity is most often talked about (German for German politicians, ..)" should be extended "French for French tennis players, Czech for Czech ice hockey players,". What this WT:BLP RfC is about is advice by Mike Cline (evidently a very competent and neutral admin) to have a further discussion. This is it. You've just seen above Wolbo from tennis project unapologetically strip the accents off 7 Czech ice-hockey BLPs, counter to sources in the article footnotes. 90 of 100 Users in recent RMs are against this, Kauffner (who supports anglicized titles) is against it in ledes. I think the only 2 Users who are for anglicized names in European living people ledes are Wolbo and Fyunck. And you're telling everyone, "don't ask them to stop". Well frankly, some of us do want to ask them to stop, and would like WP MOS or BLP to put it in writing. In my case so I can go back to classical music, the delay on stopping this at this point is objections like your own. Do you want Wolbo and Fyunck to continue, or do you want it to stop? In ictu oculi (talk) 01:08, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Taking the native spelling of anyone's name, alive or dead, latin or non-latin script, out of the lede of the article is vandalism, just like removing any other sourced and relevant information. This shouldn't be tolerated. - filelakeshoe 17:28, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't think Wolbo agrees that editing a living person's name counter to BLP footnoted sources counts as vandalism.

This is why we need accurate living person names written into MOS, somewhere. Evidently for many editors "removing foreign accents" from a foreigner's name is not vandalism, just something tabloids and popular sources do every day. And even NYTimes/Economist/Times do for names like Petr Obdržálek, and Zdeněk Skořepa, which I mentioned above as examples to PBS - since these are real life BLP cases on WP. There is no question that Obdržálek and Zdeněk and Skořepa are spelled as they are spelled - reliable sources on the surnames as a standalone will verify that. But faulty searches of a string "Petr + Obdržálek", and "Zdeněk + Skořepa" in diacritic disabled sources will produce, no surprise, a diacritic disabled result. What guideline/where do we put in MOS to promote accurate BLP names for East Europeans? The more we talk the less likely it is we will fix this. In ictu oculi (talk) 00:27, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Would you believe it, speak of the devil, see Talk:Josef Skorepa. It's clearly not a coincidence, I created Skořepa with yesterday as an example to use here, evidently another editor saw it before I could use it. In ictu oculi (talk) 01:27, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

In ictu oculi you wrote "Tony Benn is not a European language name." Do you believe that English not a European language? -- PBS (talk) 09:29, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

It is, but to quote My Fair Lady: "In America they have not spoken it for years" :-) Agathoclea (talk) 10:12, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm glad it was Agathoclea who said that. Philip, I'm really not interested in arguing for the sake of it, I came here to make a proposal that would promote that the Latin alphabet names of living persons be spelled correctly in their bios, if you're against that so be it. You saw above that what I said was "Muhammed Ali and Tony Benn do not have diacritics and are not European names in the sense we are discussing here." In ictu oculi (talk) 13:53, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Tony Benn is a European. English is a European language. As for these two examples both those names are relevant, because both were chosen as article titles through common usage in reliable sources. Neither man was christened with the name used in the article title, or was initially known by that name. We use those names in the article titles because they are commonly used in reliable English language sources. Using that formula has huge benefits because it ties into the content policies and it means that we as editors do not have to make an editorial decision on names that have connotations which means the selection implies an editorial point of view (In the case of "Tony Benn" as with "Tony Blair" they were both from privileged backgrounds and though that "Tony" carries a different class connotation from "Anthony"). I do not see any difference between these examples and "I came here to make a proposal that would promote that the Latin alphabet names of living persons be spelled correctly in their bios" surly in that case you would want these three articles moved as well? If not what is the difference between "Tony Benn" as a title of a bio article and that of other Europeans who's biograph is under an article title determined by reliable English language sources? -- PBS (talk) 16:03, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

[random break for ease of editing]

a young guy who has never played in North America but still had his name anglicized...

Hi again Philip,

Fyunck, Resolute, aleney2k all used the word "European" before I did, and I have now said three times that when we say "not European names in the sense we are discussing here." it refers to "not European names in the sense we are discussing here." You can ask Fyunck, Resolute, aleney2k why they also were distinguishing English-speaking and European-languages if you wish.

Tony is a diminutive form of Anthony. Yes. Žiga is a Slovenian short form of Sigismund. all Žigas on WP are at their Slovenian spelling

• Žiga Karničar (b.1985) Slovenian ski mountaineer
• Žiga Jeglič (b.1988) Slovenian ice hockey player
• Žiga Kariž (b.1973) Slovenian painter
• Žiga Pavlin (b.1985) Slovenian ice hockey player
• Žiga Hirschler (1894-1941) Croatian composer

except one

• Ziga Pance (b.1989) Slovenian ice hockey player

Why because blocked user Dolovis and an IP somehow outvoted 4 Eastern Europe editors in a RM for "Z" per a diacritic-disabled hockey website as a source.

I honestly think this young guy Žiga Pance is more relevant to a discussion on BLP names than Tony Benn.

What do you think should happen to Žiga's BLP here now? In ictu oculi (talk) 20:24, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Be careful here... I'm not sure I use the term European. I tend to use Foreign alphabet vs English alphabet (because listing all the national linguistic varieties is too cumbersome) and I do so because almost all the English sources I find for tennis articles use the English alphabet. And in pro tennis of course they all must register with the governing bodies using the English alphabet. As I have always said, I follow the English sources when creating articles... that usually gives me the way a name is commonly spelled in English for a title. Fyunck(click) (talk) 21:11, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Per WP:UE that is the prescribed way, and also the logical way given our target audience. Yet when Kauffner does a search on the common English language spelling of "Jelena Jankovic/Jelena Janković" (via post-1990 English-language Google Book hits) and the result shows 270 sources using "Jelena Jankovic" vs 2 sources for "Jelena Janković", the creator of this BLP proposal sees in that a confirmation that "Jelena Janković" is the correct spelling to be used. It's simply baffling. --Wolbo (talk) 21:37, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Wolbo, have you restored yet the lede names of the 7 Czech citizen BLPs you anglicised counter to sources in footnotes?

This refers to the current RM to move Jelena Janković to an anglicized name. Yet when Kauffner did a search on string "Jelena+Janković" in diacritic-enabled sources 100% of them (i.e. 2 out of 2) supported the string "Jelena+Janković" having the same results as searching on any other Janković in WP:IRS. In ictu oculi (talk) 02:52, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

first, why are you yelling? Second, is "100% of them (i.e. 2 out of 2)" a joke?
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 03:03, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Because Wolbo may have missed the question the first 2 times. And no 2 out of 2 isn't a joke. This is the whole issue. Would you search for a the colour of a rose in a botany book with black and white photos? (You should answer this question). In ictu oculi (talk) 09:58, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

If you have a technical problem preventing you from editing I'm sure WP has a helpdesk for that somewhere. If not, you should know it's not required to ask someone to restore an edit if you don't agree with the changes made. You perfectly allowed to re-edit it yourself. Hope that helps. --Wolbo (talk) 23:17, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

• Comment - Just found an invitation to comment here. While the intention may be good (AGF), this proposal is not a good idea. It is going to open a new can of worms if you try to base naming policies on things like "nationality". Nationality is not always clear cut and dry. First of all, there are stateless persons and there are plenty people with dual nationality (and we may not always know they have dual nationality). How are you going to deal with such cases? And some people are a-national (just like there are atheists), they may still have a passport but they do not really want to be connected with anything "nation" anymore. Are you going to insist that their article be kept at a spelling of their name based on nationality? Still others have moved abroad decades ago and stopped using the native spelling of their name, but they never bothered to change their nationality. You are going to push the diacritics back in because a person has not changed his nationality? Then in some countries you have ethnic minorities who insist on spelling their names based on their own language/culture/spelling and not according to some national spelling rules. How are you going to handle that?

Still others may not want to have their "full", "official", "legal" or "complete" name to be on public display because they are concerned about identity theft. Have you thought about that?

If this proposal is accepted then we will basically be forced to conduct original research just to find out what spelling we have to use for some article title. Good luck figuring out the national and ethnic backgrounds for every BLP.

If this proposal is accepted then WP will also be abandoning its fundamental NPOV policy. Because right now WP is neutral towards different spellings (or spelling conventions) that may exist in English language usage, WP is neutral towards diacritics or no-diacritics. WP uses the spelling that our sources use. If we accept your proposal then WP makes a move to the pro-native spelling side. It will take more than a discussion on the BLP talk page to pass something like that. MakeSense64 (talk) 12:02, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

It's just a proposal to spell names correctly. I have no idea what "pro-native" means. In ictu oculi (talk) 13:53, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

"pro native spelling" means using the native spelling even when there is a more common English-language spelling. Do you also have answers to my questions? Or do you already agree that basing the spelling of names on something as murky as nationality is not going to be very practical, is difficult to apply objectively, and will thus open a new can of worms? MakeSense64 (talk) 15:22, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

The problem with the idea of spelling names 'correctly' is that people do not agree on what 'correctly' means. It's not an objective discussion. It is not a science. You yourself have seen that certain editors wanted to take over Milan Lucic. I am certain that they think they were being 'correct'. The proposal should be to name articles consistently. On those terms, it can be an objective debate. That is what NPOV means. Try to be objective. It will be a never-ending debate if we are forced to be 'accurate'. ʘ alaney2k ʘ (talk) 14:54, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi Alaney2k. I agree. Milan Lucic is a Canadian, and the proposal gives general guidance against Serbianizing Canadians in Canada just as much as it does guidance against Canadianizing Serbians in Serbia. This is why it would be helpful if people would stop looking for a perfect proposal and simply put in place that guides against the most disruptive, flawed-sourced and inconsistent behaviours. Most of us want this to stop. I've only been exposed to 6 weeks. A lot of these editors have seen this nonsense continuing for 18 months. Do you want the disruption to continue or reduce? What do you wish to see refined in the proposal (or Peterkingiron, OhConfucius or Prolog's proposals) to join with those who want the "tennis names"/"hockey names" problem to stop? In ictu oculi (talk) 03:02, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

18 months? This has been going on for 8 years and everyone wants it to stop. We just completely disagree on which side of the tracks it should stop. Fyunck(click) (talk) 07:58, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Fyunck, I am not sure if you have been asked this before: (Q) How many BLPs on WP use diacritics, and how many that could don't? An estimate is fine. In ictu oculi (talk) 10:05, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

exactly.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 17:45, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

That's why the proposal had:

BLP names diacritics guideline proposal
The names of living persons should be represented accurately, according to their nationality, with diacritics if Latin alphabet names, even when the majority of popular English language sources, for example sports sources, do not use diacritics.

There is no mistaking what that means in all but exceptional cases, it means spelling Lech Wałęsa as Lech Wałęsa and Frédéric Vitoux as Frédéric Vitoux - which is why 90 of the editors in the RMs of the last month were in favour, and also why 10 were against. You say "The proposal should be to name articles consistently" well it is, under the proposal Frédéric Vitoux (writer) and Frederic Vitoux (tennis) would both be Frédérics, but I was under the impression from your earlier post you were one of the voices against consistency of this sort, on the contrary it seemed that you were in favour of French and Czech sportsmen being anglicized (even if they had only played tennis in Paris or only played hockey in Brno). My apologies if I have you confused. Genuinely. But seriously that is what I understood from your earlier input. Perhaps before going further, are you in general for the anglicization of most European sports bios, or against? Because this is 90% of the issue here. In ictu oculi (talk) 15:41, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

@In ictu oculi: You don't see it. You have the word 'accurately' in the wording, but you don't see it. The use of the word 'accurately' is contentious. No, I would not agree to 'force' non-diacritical spellings on those who only play in their own countries. Unless we had some sort of transliteration mechanism that was consistent and objective or there are established external standards. (I basically suggest that a lot of the issue is having to name persons who are only newly notable, and would not necessarily have been notable to other encyclopedias in the past, so we are having to name articles "in real time") I basically try to agree with whatever is the most common name of a person, diacritical or non-diacritical. I have no problem with the hockey policy of using diacritics in player article titles, yet omitting them in North American articles. The vast majority of players that have come to North America to play, accept the spellings as given, and have not objected to those spellings. The idea of forcing diacritic usage is not coming from the article subjects (at least by and large), but is coming from editors such as yourself. I contend that the vast majority of these athletes are quite used to various spellings of their names and tolerate them openly. As I mentioned before, we learn the pronunciation of the player's name, yet we don't bother with the diacritic marks. Whether they are, or are not technically, we basically consider them as pronunciation marks such as are present in dictionaries. ʘ alaney2k ʘ (talk) 16:14, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi alaney2k, thanks for your answer. FWIW I think the reason I don't see accurate as contentious is because we all know what the real spellings are in each case from the Czech etc. sources in the BLPs, but if it's contentious as Joe Decker says below, then "accurate" is gone. You use the verb "force", e.g. to "force" editors to accept Czech names on a Czech hockey stub they created. But WP guidelines "guide" not force, per Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English) "If this happens, follow the conventions of the language in which this entity is most often talked about (German for German politicians,..)" that doesn't "force" all editors of German politician BLPs to use German names, it just happens because the guideline happens to build on the consensus of us, the Users. If there was one editor who was busy de-umlauting German politician BLP names, what would happen, we'd give him a barnstar?? But moving on: if you are happy to allow Czech spellings on those who only play in Czech Republic etc., good that's 70% of the BLPs already. But how would feel about someone who has played one or two seasons in NHL to return to a Czech name on return to his home? Some editors seem to think that once you've played one game in an English speaking country you're anglicized for life. This is why the proposal says "according to their nationality." Is that phrase okay? In ictu oculi (talk) 19:57, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

That's the root of the problem. Some editors are contending that certain spellings of names found in our sources are "inaccurate", but where does that contention come from? Who or what decides that a certain rendering of a name in English-language sources is not "accurate"? If we find an unusual or different spelling in just one (or few) sources out of many, then we can say it is probably a typo or error. But if a name is spelled in a certain way in a significant portion of our sources then it is a common "alternative spelling" not an "inaccurate name", and if that alternative spelling is found in most of our English-language sources then it is a proper title for the article per WP:UE. MakeSense64 (talk) 15:16, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

First, simply removing the clause about accuracy from the proposal would avoid conflict over the fairness of the term accuracy, without loss of meaning.

As a practical matter, I support, more or less, the idea in this proposal, that, in general, names of individuals should include diacritics and other marks, where verifiable, even when English-language sources tend to omit them. In particular, anything else opens up an enormous can of worms for most editors with regard to what is and isn't a diacritic. Such as the Spanish ñ, which isn't (doesn't have a) diacritic, and the case of ö, where you actually need to know something about the language the name came from to answer the question of whether it's ö-the-letter or o-with-a-mark. In my view, it's simple enough to say: just include "all the marks", (presuming WP:V, likely all the marks that the living person themselves would use when fully writing their name. --joe decker^{talk to me} 18:08, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Well said, to both yourself and alaney2k. This is why I haven't been posting here that much, because there are plenty of excellent points being made by everyone else that I agree with.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 18:42, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Joe Decker, thanks for that advice, accurate is struck, now can we implement it? I just did a search on Google for [site:en.wikipedia.org Frédéric] and [site:en.wikipedia.org Tomáš]. It's clear from that that WP accepts not just NYTimes/Economist MOS (French, German, Spanish) for bios but also Chicago MOS (Polish, Czech, Swedish, Croatian). Is there anyone here who feels that (French, German, Spanish) is okay but (Polish, Czech, Swedish, Croatian) is going too far? In ictu oculi (talk) 19:28, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

No you can not implement it. There is no way you have built a consents for this and as it is a change in a policy that would override a policy with a arbcom restriction on changes without consensus, you would need widespread support in an RFC to make such a change.

The whole point of using reliable English language sources is that it reflects usage in such things as the Economist without having to implement our own rule, other than following usage in reliable English language sources. As you point out it is often more common for French, German and Spanish names to be spelt using the same accent marks in English language sources than it is for Polish language accent marks. By following usage in reliable sources Wikipedia automatically follows the usage as found in English language sources.

Take the second phrase "according to their nationality" how does one decide on the nationality of the person and why is that relevant in an Encyclopaedia with is based on usage in reliable sources? "even when the majority of popular English language sources" What do you mean by "popular English language sources" as we do not rely on "popular sources" but on "reliable sources". Do you really mean: "The names of living persons should be represented, according to the predominant language used by the state in which they are domiciled, even when reliable English language sources spell the name in a different way"? If not then what is this sentence mean to mean? -- PBS (talk) 20:15, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi again Philip,

Well apart from yourself and 3 or 4 others who is actually dead set against e.g. French names for French BLPs etc? You saw the long list of support at the head of this. As for nationality, it's already in the BLPs, and BLPs nationality is already accurate, so that problem doesn't exist. As for your rewording, yes you could say like this:

"The names of living persons should generally be represented, according to the language used by the state or region in which they are citizens, even when diacritic-disabled English sources do not use those accents"

What is so terrible about that? Is WP going to fall apart if editors are encouraged to spell a French living person "François" not "Francois"? You make it sound as though it's an assault on the five pillars of Wikipedia, when all it is as asking a tiny minority of editors not to deliberately disrupt consistency between articles according to the first paragraph of WP:MOS by blocking Czech etc. editors from editing BLP pages with "WikiProject Czech Republic" etc. banners on the Talk pages. In ictu oculi (talk) 20:49, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

I think you will find that a lot more than three or four people think that we should base our article title policy on usage in reliable sources. -- PBS (talk) 08:42, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

I do not think that just because some "reliable" English media remove the diacritics from names it should be the standard on Wikipedia. Wikipedia should be an encyclopedia, so as precise as possible. KœrteFa {ταλκ} 09:24, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

What is the state language of the UK, Spain, and Belgium? How does one define a region? What does citizen mean do you mean domiciled or resident? What happens if there is no reliable source to tell one that? What about someone like Björn Borg who was (is?) probably a "citizen" of Monaco. When he was/is a citizen of Monaco do we use accent marks from the Swedish or French alphabet? Does this mean that someone born the the USA who has a Spanish name has to have it spelt using the English alphabet? What happens with a politician who's name is spelt consistently one way in reliable English sources? It seems to me that it is far simpler and more elegant for article names to follow the usage in English language sources, where all these questions disappear. -- PBS (talk) 08:42, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

We can take a look at, for example, their passports or even their own signatures. Do they use diacritics? Then, the Wikipedia article should use this, as well, no matter how many ignorant sources misspell the name. KœrteFa {ταλκ} 09:24, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks Koertefa, actually I already answered Philip on that one - I said that nationality was already in the BLPs, he may have missed the answer in all this text :) In ictu oculi (talk) 10:03, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

What do you man "nationality was already in the BLPs?" What the nationality of James Murdoch? How do you decide on the nationality of a Bosnian?-- PBS (talk) 14:22, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

I have explained elsewhere why consistency used this way is a very bad idea. Would you like me to repeat them here? But to turn your idea on its head one could say for consistency just use the English alphabet. I am sure that you would object to that, much better to follow the usage in reliable source. -- PBS (talk) 08:42, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Could you explain it here, as well? Or at least, please, link the argument. KœrteFa {ταλκ} 09:24, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

See here (19 Apri)and here ( 27 April) -- PBS (talk) 14:22, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

The trouble is Philip your examples and arguments are red herrings unrelated to BLPs. If you spoke from real BLPs it would be easier. The idea that one Slovenian BLP with given name Žiga should be spelled with a Z because of an English sports website ignoring Slovene-language newspapers is more "reliable" than a Slovenian newspaper is the issue we're dealing with. It's not an issue of naming plants where some have folk names and some have only scientific names, this is about BLPs, not plants. This is about BLP names like Žiga, not about ducal titles. In any case consistency is only a secondary issue, the primary issue is believing that tabloids which anglicize European latin-alphabet names Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English) "If this happens, follow the conventions of the language in which this entity is most often talked about (German for German politicians, Turkish for Turkish rivers, ...)" the consistency reminder wouldn't be needed if this read "(German for German politicians, Czech for Czech Extraliga players, Turkish for Turkish rivers, ...)". Raising English plant names and ducal titles here isn't helping. In ictu oculi (talk) 02:37, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

You wrote above "Tony is a diminutive form of Anthony. Yes. Žiga is a Slovenian short form of Sigismund." So why are the articles at "Žigas ..." and not at the "Slovenian spelling of Sigmund ...."? How does one decide whether to us Sigy or Sigmund? Is that rule based or do you base it on reliable sources? -- PBS (talk) 08:42, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

The sources in the Slovenian Žiga BLPs are all reliable, as with the 400-500 French Frédéric BLPs. The question you have been asked is why is one French Žiga at Ziga and one French Frédéric at Frederic? The only answer you have given so far is basically the same as Kauffner, Fyunck, Makesense64, Wolbo, Ohms law and (before being blocked) Dolovis - because they have been mentioned in the American or British sports press. Do you have a better answer? In ictu oculi (talk) 09:54, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Titles of articles (and BLPs) are decided on a case by case basis, not in package deals based on having the same first name or same family name or same nationality. So, using a typical example from outside sports, you have Celine Dion and Céline Bonnier. It is not because they were given the same first name at birth that we should use the same spelling in the title of both BLP articles. The "title" of an article does not depend on the native spelling of their name, but on what name is used more commonly for them in English-language sources. Wikipedia is based on what we find in our sources. So spelling of names is not based on certain editors' rigid ideas about how names "should be spelled or not", but on how the names "are spelled" in reliable sources for the given article. It is rooted in NPOV. What is it you don't understand about that? MakeSense64 (talk) 13:42, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

MakeSense, of course as you know the whole point of guidelines is to decide on a case by case basis. Celine Dion and Céline Bonnier are Canadians. But your argument is to rename all the French and Belgian sportswomen under Céline as "Celine" because popular English-language sports sources don't have "é". What you say above is plain wrong. When English sources are unreliable the "title" of an article does in fact depend on the native spelling of their name, "German for German politicians" remember. This is an existing WP guideline, like it or not. The proposal only encourages people to apply the existing guideline. In ictu oculi (talk) 00:25, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

There is nothing in your proposal to use foreign sources to determine spelling, this seems to be counter intuitive and goes directly against WP:V and WP:AT both of which say user reliable English language sources rather than foreign ones. How can foreign language sources be used to determine common usage in English? Further your proposal has nothing to say about using any reliable sources to determine the name (and for example we have Koertefa writing "their passports or even their own signatures ..." who does not seem to realise that primary sources can not be used unless they have been published in a reliable source. So you need to add reliable sources to your proposed wording.

There are a series of war crimes trials at the Hague are you suggesting that the English reporting of the trials (and the trial transcripts) should be ignored for the names of Bosnians from ethnic groups other than the Serbs but used for the Serbs because Serbians use the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet? What about south Africa were there are 12 official languages? If a person comes from one of the minority language groups you are proposing that their name be in that language even if they are never referred to that way in English Afrikaans or Zulu. It seems to me that you are concentrating on a very small area and trying to generalize a fix which is unnecessary (and therefore undesirable) and will cause many more problems than if solves. Particularly as we already reject sources that are not reliable and your objection does not seem to be with what you consider to be reliable English language sources but unreliable ones. -- PBS (talk) 14:22, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Philip,

A question: Have you ever contributed a diacritic Latin-alphabet European name BLP to Wikipedia?

As it happens the last two new articles I created were biographies for dead Frenchmen Alphonse de Créquy and Renée Caroline de Roullay Créquy, Marquise de Créquy (both created on 16 April 2012‎), both article titles were based on the reliable sources used in the articles. -- PBS (talk) 22:47, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

As to the theoretical examples, rather than inventing "what if" scenarios, the purpose of the proposal was demonstrated to you by real examples with the Žiga and François problems. If you aren't going to address real examples, why should others address theoretical examples you have thought up but don't exist. The purpose is to fix disruption caused by a tiny minority of editors who e.g. create unsourced BLPs for 100s of Czech citizens and then have WP:Owner issues when a Czech-speaking editor comes along and corrects the spelling. This is 90% of the problem here. All the proposal does is encourage editors to allow misspelled (usually sports) BLPs into line with the 1000s of BLPs on politicians, artists, scientists. I understand you are very much against this.

Existing WP guidelines already state to use original foreign sources where English sources are unreliable "German for German politicians," likewise existing WP guidelines already state to use Søren Kierkegaard and Tchaikovsky. In ictu oculi (talk) 00:14, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Dear Philip, of course, we can also use primary sources, read this (evidently, we still need a reliable source for them), but we should be careful not to draw far reaching conclusions from primary sources (as it would be "original research"). But, this cannot happen in this very special case, i.e., for names, since the only way we want to use them is to check the correct form of the names. In my opinion, the guideline should address the *default* case that is applicable to the *majority* of cases, but it should also leave a way for case-by-case considerations (e.g., Bosnians or Zulus). Note that it is quite rare that sources *introduce* diacritics, they usually just *remove* them. So, by default, we should go for the variant with the most diacritics. There could be many reliable sources to check this, for example, official governmental websites, official websites of national sport organizations, etc. Regarding your question: "How can foreign language sources be used to determine common usage in English?" would be a good question if we talked about something else than names. But names of persons are special, they should not be translated. Would you mind if an Italian editor called you "Filippo", just because this name is more familiar to him? I guess you would say that no matter what the Italian, Russian, etc., equivalent of "Philip" is, your name is still "Philip" and nothing else. The problem with removing diacritics is similar. KœrteFa {ταλκ} 02:01, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Two points the first is that "correct" is your bias, and it does not help when you use such language, because it implies that usage in reliable English language sources are incorrect if do not use the spelling used in another country. As for WP:PSTS I presume you have missed the sentence that reads "Policy: Unless restricted by another policy, primary sources that have been reliably published may be used in Wikipedia, ..." (my italic emphasise). -- PBS (talk) 22:47, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi Philip, thanks for your ideas. First: I did not miss the sentence you cited, since I also wrote above about primary sources that "evidently, we still need a reliable source for them". About the "bias": I also think that stating that a word on a certain language is the "true"/"correct" word for something is foolish (or biased); however, names (of persons) are not simple words. In this very special case, in my opinion, we can talk about the correct form, namely, the way the person himself (herself) writes his (her) name is the correct form (per definition). Nevertheless, I can also see that there could be complicated cases and I can understand the point you and other editors made. In general, I agree that we should use the most common variant of words which can be found in reliable English sources, but I think that names are exceptions and precisely that is why they should have different guidelines. KœrteFa {ταλκ} 09:35, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Also if ever I was notable to have an article on the Italian Wikiepdia, I would hope that the Italian Wikipedia editors would follow the usage that is used in Italian reliable sources and title it accordingly, (but I have no idea if Italian editors follow such a policy for all I know they may use native spellings for all their article titles). Looking at the article Pope Benedict XVI it does seem that different languages (EG Italian, German and English) spell the name Benedict in different ways. I presume based on the spellings in reliable sources in the three languages. -- PBS (talk) 23:05, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

I think that Pope Benedict XVI is not the best example, since "Benedict" is his (chosen) pontifical name, his real name is "Joseph Ratzinger", which is usually not translated to other languages (unlike "Benedict"). KœrteFa {ταλκ} 09:35, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

No matter how we look at it, to verify what is the most commonly used spelling for a certain word or name is something that can be done objectively and fairly easily in most cases. And we are looking in reliable sources for our articles anyway. To check out national and ethnic backgrounds and immigration history of a certain person is not something that can always be done easily, in fact often we will find few or even no reliable sources about it. And what we find about it may be out of date by several years. Basing it on residence is going to be equally problematic. So this proposal is not an improvement.

The idea behind it seems to be that English language sources are not reliable for spelling of people's names. Where does that pov come from? Based on somebody's ideas of how spelling (or rules of spelling) should be? One thing is forgotten here: spelling is not something rigid and fixed, it is alive and evolving. Good dictionaries are constantly adapting to spelling changes "on the ground". What is considered a "wrong" spelling today may become a "right" spelling tomorrow, it depends on the usage. Wikipedia does the same, it checks the common usage of words and names in the given language. MakeSense64 (talk) 15:07, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

The argument that you have presented is valid for most words, but not for names, which are special. If everybody on Wikipedia started to call you DoesNotMakeSense64, then would it change your name? I do not think so, since you could always point to your registration and say: "Look, I registered under this user-name and no matter how many of you misspell it, it does not change my user-name.". What do you think? KœrteFa {ταλκ} 01:34, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Wait a minute, are you saying that it's impossible to translate (or transliterate) proper names?
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 03:12, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

No, I just said that we should be very careful with such things. Of course, I can accept writing "Aristotle" instead of "Ἀριστοτέλης". However, in my opinion, we should not translate (or transliterate) names written with Latin characters even if they have some diacritics. KœrteFa {ταλκ} 09:42, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

@Koertefa. The example of usernames is not all that relevant. And even in that case we find examples where people display a name that differs from their "accurate" username (e.g. "PBS") and may get addressed by others with yet another name (e.g. "Philip" in the case of PBS). That's also what happens in real life. A nickname or an alternative spelling of a name may become more commonly used in a given language zone than somebody's full "real name" in native spelling. In fact, most people's "full accurate real name" is rarely used in real life (except for things like paying taxes and getting married), so shorter and simplified forms or spellings are very common when it comes to names. Wikipedia simply reflects what is commonly "in use" out there, because that's what most people will search for if they try to look up a certain person. That's why we may use nicknames, pseudonyms, stagenames, professional names and so on.., depending on what we find most commonly in sources. And it is not our job to "improve on our sources". The idea to base spellings of names on nationality shows a nationalistic pov, puts undue weight on nationality, and reflects the pov that English should adopt foreign spellings and not alter them. That's not a neutral pov and would turn WP in a "maker of spelling" rather than a "follower of spelling". MakeSense64 (talk) 08:06, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Saying that "English should not adopt foreign spellings, but alter the names instead" sounds equally POV to me. :-) Please note, I did not talk about nicknames, stage names, etc. They are different stories (and, of course, if everybody knows a person by his stage name, then probably that's the best title of his article). My main point is that, if it is possible, we should use the name the person himself/herself uses in his/her life. KœrteFa {ταλκ} 09:55, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

• Strong Oppose. There should be no wording here or anywhere else regarding spelling that is specific to BLPs. We should be trying to simply and clarify our guidelines and policies, not adding supplementary special cases that are potentially if not initially contradictory. (I'm not sure if this is the best place to put this !vote comment - if there is a better place in this long and meandering proposal discussion... I have no objection to it being moved there.) --Born2cycle (talk) 16:33, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

  If I understand you correctly, you do not oppose the usage of diacritics, but you do not want to have more rules. So I guess you oppose all new proposals then? KœrteFa {ταλκ} 01:34, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

  Please don't take arguments to absurdities. It does nothing to foster understanding or work towards consensus. One of the main points that many of us are making is that Wikipedia editors should not be making things up on their own (WP:OR). When there is confusion or dispute over a name, what outside reliable sources say is what should govern Wikipedia's content (and preferably English sources, if available). The main thing that B2C is saying here is that all of this is already covered by existing policy (as I've linked to above, at least partially), and so making new policies and guidelines to cover the same ground should be avoided where possible (and I have yet to see anything new here, let alone anything that would require additional documentation).
  — V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 03:18, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

One thing is certain in reading all the chatter is that the rules/guidelines/policies on article names and how to handle persons names in the lead sentences is ambiguous. Arguments are buried in so many [[WP:thisrule&thatrule]] where each side feels his case is made. I do watch a lot of sports and I can't imagine 5 umpires pulling out their rulebooks and arguing endlessly amongst themselves on whether an infraction has occurred. I look at some of these wiki policies and it seems like they go out of their way to be flexible yet as vague as possible. Maybe that's the nature of the beast (as in politics) where every new rule and patch we add simply springs a new leak like the "Three Stooges" fixing a water pipe. Sure it would be easy if one extreme or the other was simply chiseled in stone and every other opposing rule was excised. We'd either have every famous Russian listed using the Russian alphabet or we'd have Antonín Dvořák listed with no diacritics even though every English album and English classical music site I see spells it with those foreign marks. We'd have no arguing mind you if the original creator of wikipedia had simply set those rules in stone right from the get-go. We wouldn't be quoting words like "use English" or "accuracy" to make our points. But those rules weren't laid down and compromise seems to be elusive. It feels like the UK Parliament or the US Congress in here at times. I wish I knew what the correct way to move forward is but it will certainly require ALL the guideline and policies to work hand in hand as a well oiled machine, and not taken piecemeal where they'll never agree. Looking back it seems this argument has been going on since inception. Is it even possible to compromise where both sides get half of what they want for the betterment of wikipedia? I know it would take a multiple policy/guideline rewrite but is such an incredibly massive wiki-moot even feasible? Fyunck(click) (talk) 07:13, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Following the usage in reliable sources was a compromise initially introduced into WP:UE between those who only wanted native spellings and those who only wanted to use ASCII for article names. This was later adopted for all article titles (which lead to the gradual dismantling of many of the rules which used to populate a lot of the naming convention guidelines (as a work around to simulate usage in reliable sources in those areas when all sources used to be used to decide on the name). See for example the lead in WP:NCROY today "It is generally advisable to use the most common form of the name used in reliable sources in English..." compared to May 2008 (before usage in reliable sources) "Most general rule overall: use the most common form of the name used in English if none of the rules below cover a specific problem". -- PBS (talk) 22:47, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Being a newbie to this, I didn't realise how long the two of you and a few others have been opposing an "international" Wikipedia. In ictu oculi (talk) 06:51, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

This is not "an 'international' Wikipedia", lets get that straight and for sure In ictu oculi before we go any further on this matter. This Wikipedia is the English-language one, no more no less. This means we should use the spellings of names most recognizable and relatable to the English-language user and the one used in the English-language reliable sources. So, this does not diminish your take on accuracy! I see the way we can implement under current policy the accuracy you want, but you won't be to happy with what I suggest, which here goes any way. I think we need to use COMMONNAME, STAGENAME, and UE to determine with the most reliable name in English-language sources, and this will include not just your Scholarly but Layman publications like magazines, newspapers and reputable websites. For the accuracy part we would implement a policy to include the official name as a secondary one in the infobox and in the opening paragraph on the article, if that name is not deemed to be the most widely used in English-langauage reliable sources.HotHat (talk) 16:34, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

This is an international wikipedia - there are even many versions of English. Respecting peoples names is something that is also spreading in the English language. Translation of names stopped about 100 years ago. Striping diacritics is not creating an "English version of a name" and the whole WP:Stagename idea applied to tennis is just crasping at straws. Agathoclea (talk) 17:15, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Yes. For me and I suspect for many others here those points are fundamental. I honestly, and clearly naively, believed that the policy that this is the international version of Wikipedia was understood and accepted. It could have been, and in the beginning might have become, the US version but that was not the path it took, and it is why simply accepting US style guides, or US journalistic practices, will not do even if the largest number of English language sources for an article come from there. To discover that in the course of this debate we have simply been talking at cross purposes leaves me very frustrated. --AJHingston (talk) 18:54, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Wait...There is a big difference between "International" and "English" wikipedia. No one said it was a US version, it's an English version. That is not really international as if it were the olympics... 99% of sourcing will be from UK, Australia, US and Canada. That's pretty much what it was built on and why there are dozens of other language versions of wikipedia out there. Fyunck(click) (talk) 19:14, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

I never explicitly said we have to use sources that are based out of one nation. This encyclopedia is no more international than say the Spanish, Latin, or French encyclopedia's just to name a few. I said we must use English-language sources only because we are the English encyclopedia, when it comes to language utilization, so we should use the names in common practice in the English-lanugage reliable sources, not the official or native name some are advocating for. If the native or official name is used in the majority (50.1%) of English-language reliable sources i.e. newspapers, magazines, other encyclopedia or such, we should use that here. Accuracy can mean may things to many people, see I see accuracy as being use the most common name for the title, yet put all the others in the infoboxes and the opening sentence like is done in the case of Novak Djokovic.HotHat (talk) 19:08, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

[next random break for ease of editing]

To see what kind of problems you will get with nationality based criteria it may be useful to read this discussion Talk:Jelena_Dokić#Nationality on the Jelena Dokic page. Talk about a Serbian father and a Croatian(?) mother mixed with Australian nationality (dual nationality), and some trouble to back it all up with reliable sources. At some point she changed nationality to Yugoslavian and then back to Australian. Born in Croatia and she resides in Monaco. Anyway, her article should be moved to non-diacritics title too, because virtually all sources spell her as Jelena Dokic and that's also how she spells it on her own website (some nice photos there, by the way;-). MakeSense64 (talk) 11:48, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Unusual cases don't invalidate a useful general rule. That said (and I'm not convinced it's the most useful general rule, only that MakeSense64's objection isn't a good one), this isn't a BLP issue, it's a general WP:NCP issue and should be discussed there. You don't magically lose the respect accorded by Wikipedians to spell your name correctly just because you died last night. Frankly, about 90% of the objections raised to the general gist of the proposal – to spell people's names correctly – are ridiculous. The "majority of English-language sources" one is particularly weak. Wikipedia DGAFs whether English-language journalists or sports statistics organization bother to get it right. We have higher standards. It only takes one highly reliable source to trump with verifiable facts an error reported in 10,000 seemingly reliable sources that turn out to be incorrect. (If not, all science would stop, forever, right this instant, since science means and entirely consists of testing hypotheses and reporting results that contradict or confirm previously published work, resetting what we think the facts are). But anyway, this just isn't the place for such a proposal, because it has nothing to do with "aliveness". — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 22:10, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

People with dual nationality and mixed backgrounds are not at all unusual. Questions how such issues are going to be resolved under this proposal were not answered. Questions what is going to be done with nationalities that have several official languages (South-Africa, Belgium, Switzerland,..) were also not answered. If this are not good objections then it should have been fairly simply to answer these concerns.

Wikipedia does not have "higher standards". As far as spelling goes WP uses the same standards that our sources use. If the sources for an article use Chicago manual of style, then WP will use it too. If the sources for an article do not use Chicago manual of style, then WP does not use it either. That is based in NPOV. We do not decide on what is "correct" spelling, we let our sources do that. The idea of using "higher standards" than e.g. sports journalists would turn WP into a vehicle that advocates/promotes higher spelling standards. That goes against WP basic concepts. We do not "make" spelling just like we do not "make" news, we just follow spelling and follow news. MakeSense64 (talk) 10:40, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

If you have just arrived, please be aware that we have several long-established guidelines relevant to this issue. For example:

• WP:DIACRITICS: "follow the general usage in reliable sources that are written in the English language"
• WP:UE: "The choice between anglicized and local spellings should follow English-language usage";
• WP:EN: "The title of an article should generally use the version of the name of the subject which is most common in the English language, as you would find it in reliable sources (for example other encyclopedias and reference works, scholarly journals and major news sources).
• MOS:FOREIGN: "adopt the spellings most commonly used in English-language references for the article" Kauffner (talk) 23:25, 29 April 2012 (UTC)
• Comment  What happened to the Village Pump proposal to allow multiple names for articles?  Unscintillating (talk) 03:47, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Yes, and we can also mention a long standing essay that explains in more detail why we not always use the "official name":

• WP:ON: "Official names used only in other languages often have no relevance at all. English usage overrides usage in other languages,.." MakeSense64 (talk) 05:31, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

SMcCandlish

Hi. I think we've noted above that only myself and one BLP editor think that this should be applied more tightly to BLPs than BDPs. I personally do not greatly care if someone in the 19th C has their name misspelled because of bad sources.

But perhaps this would be a better proposal:

BLP accuracy requirements do not extend to spelling French, German, and Spanish etc. names as their owners would spell them. French, German, and Spanish etc. living people's names should be spelled according to how they appear in English sources which do not allow diacritics for French, German, Spanish etc. names, and not according to how their given name and family name appear in Google Scholar

Not taking this too seriously. It would have been nice if there had been more support but there wasn't, fair enough. In ictu oculi (talk) 06:36, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Sum up

Might as well close with a head count
Support or expand to all names

• In ictu oculi
• TREKphiler 03:30, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
• Dicklyon (talk) 04:18, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
• bobrayner (talk) 06:43, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
• doktorb 06:49, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
• Doremo (talk) 07:37, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
• Orczar (talk) 15:44, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
• filelakeshoe 08:30, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
• Resolute 17:17, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
• KœrteFa {ταλκ} 07:15, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
• Peterkingiron (talk) 16:31, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
• AlexTiefling (talk) 20:14, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
• Agathoclea (talk) 11:04, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
• AJHingston (talk) 23:19, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
• FkpCascais (talk) 04:51, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
• expand to all names - SMcCandlish
• expand to all names - OhConfucius

Oppose

• alaney2k 15:02, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
• Ohm's law V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 02:34, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
• Fyunck(click) (talk) 20:27, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
• HotHat (talk) 04:27, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
• PBS (talk) 17:17, 26 April 2012 (UTC)
• Makesense64
• Wolbo
• Kauffner (talk) 23:25, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Comment

• Mike Cline (talk) 13:54, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
• not proper forum. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:50, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
• Wrong venue for this. Dweller (talk) 12:06, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
• lame - cause sui
• multiple names for articles? Unscintillating (talk) 03:47, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

I may have missed some either way, anyone can add in above. Most of those supporting diacritics in the RMs of the last month, 90 out of 100, didn't respond to the invitation. In ictu oculi (talk) 22:54, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

FYI, next time you make a proposal I would suggest you are more careful in notifying other editors. Notifying 100 editors, knowing that 90 of them have voted in favor of diacritics in recent RM, might be seen as canvassing. And that would immediately ditch your proposal. Please read WP:CANVASS for what is proper notification or not. MakeSense64 (talk) 11:26, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

There were certainly some good discussions and I learned a bit more about diacritics usage and about a couple of relevant WP guidelines and policies (of which there appear to be a million). I'm rather disappointed in IIO's handling of this proposal and feel it could and should have been done in a more open and honest way. But I'd like to thank him for the effort. Languages are never static and that includes the usage of (eastern European) diacritics. I personally believe it is likely that the usage of these diacritics in reliable English-speaking sources will increase in the future and at some point that will result in an update of the relevant WP guidelines and policies. --Wolbo (talk) 13:24, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

MakeSense64

This may well be my last look here, so if you have further comment you may wish to make on my Talk page. Sorry, but I think you misunderstand. I was scrupulously careful. I did find out later I had missed two editors, but both of them were pro existing MOSPN guidance. I notified all who had taken part in RMs, for or against. I was expecting it to be 70/30 but was surprised in the process to discover it was 90/10. Meaning that a broad selection of editors on various RMs (the 90) had supported the use of diacritic-enabled sources over diacritic-disabled sources in regard to biographies, and that the same 10 had "voted" against, repeatedly, on RM after RM. It was a completely honest and open and fair invitation. The fact that most of the 90 didn't want to come here I can understand. I received a couple of Talk messages explaining why. 8 of the 10 against did, very strongly. The invitations were careful, fair and honest. In ictu oculi (talk) 15:48, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

I think that the proposal made a perfect sense, and the process was fair and honest. I thank In ictu oculi for taking time to write the proposal, send 100+ invitations and organize this excellent discussion. I myself have learned a lot about the diverse points of view on this matter, but still hope that using names with diacritics will be someday standard practice on Wikipedia. All the best, KœrteFa {ταλκ} 08:08, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

This authoritative British reference has a simple rule: "Section 2.2.2 Conventions - Diacritics should be reproduced as accurately as the system of recording allows." That document does not support the anglicisation of names, but does support transliteration. Martinvl (talk) 07:59, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

But that's for usage in the National Archives. It uses the name as verified in standard English-language works of reference. There'd be no Bill Clinton, no Cary Grant, no Madonna either. Fyunck(click) (talk) 08:41, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

The discussion at User talk:Andrewa#Use of sports ranking websites as "reliable sources" is of interest here I would think. It goes over some of what is raised above, but there are also some new angles. Andrewa (talk) 15:54, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

BLP is not optional

User:WhatAmIDoing recently performed some edits to this policy one of which asserted that it is essentially ok to insert allegations if they are published by major news media (that is only 1/3 of the RS requirement), and also asserted that it is OK to have an articlereport with 'temporary' BLP problems.

Both of these assertions are not in line with the goal of WP:V or WP:NPOV, which are two of the pillars of Wikipedia. WP:BLP forms from a dependence on these two policies and with a particular concern for an individual's reputation and privacy. In addition, there are often legal concerns about which we must be mindful. To simply say, we know it is wrong, but its ok for the moment, is strictly against policy.

Our reliable source standard is based on secondary sources, with source meaning not just the publisher (aka major news company), but the author, AND finally the specific article itself. All three can affect reliability, and it is improper to suggest that just because a lot of the major media talk about something that it automatically passes the reliable source test. -- Avanu (talk) 05:37, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

BLP does allow reporting what the mainstream media say about someone without passing judgement on the veracity of what they say: "According to Newspaper A, News radio B and News Web C, John Doe is under investigation as a suspect in the investigation of the missing cookies.<ref>Newspaper A - Doe under suspicion</ref><ref>News radio B - J Doe may be the cookie thief</ref><ref>News Web C - Cookie case, John Doe questioned by police</ref>" Roger (talk) 06:48, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Actually, Dodger, that's not necessarily true. Or, to be more accurate, WP:NPOV, and specifically the section WP:DUE also comes into play, along with the principles behind WP:BLP. We can include very important, widely reported accusations, but only if the sources are very good, the accusation is credible, it's important to the person's overall (lifelong) biography, its not gossip, etc., etc. I could come up with all sorts of examples, but ultimately it would come down to the particular issue. However, per the general principles in WP:BLP, if there is a dispute, the issue must remain out until consensus determines it belongs in.

On Avanu's original question, though, Avanu is absolutely correct that articles may never have temporary BLP problems. BLP is an exception to normal editing practices, where we can have information temporarily unsourced, or poorly sourced, if there's reason to believe a source may be produced. In all questionable BLP cases, the information should remain out of Wikipedia until such time as it is well-sourced, WP:DUE, etc. Avanu, is there any chance that you could tell us which article the concern comes from? Qwyrxian (talk) 07:34, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Typed too quickly above and left out the key part. User:WhatAmIDoing was editing the BLP policy page. You can review the recent history to see the specific changes. -- Avanu (talk) 07:59, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Distant ancestors

Does a section on distant ancestors in an article about a living person come under BLP policy? In particular, a dispute has arisen about the quality of the sources being used for certain distant ancestors of Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge who died over 200 years ago. I understand that BLP policy applies equally to all material and to all articles, whether they are BLP articles or not. Thus the treatment of distant ancestors should be handled in the same way as any historic figure.

Commnets? Martinvl (talk) 15:05, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

Yes, if the article is about a living person, all content is covered by BLP. If there's a question about the quality of sources, feel free to post something at the Reliable sources noticeboard. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 15:13, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

I feel like AQFK's reply is a little misleading. To put it more simply, information about living people is covered, no matter if the article is "a BLP" or not. Information about dead people is not covered, even if it occurs in "a BLP". There is no global article status that determines whether BLP applies or not; BLP applies to information about living people. Gigs (talk) 15:51, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

Actually a bit more stringent ...

John Gnarph's great-grandfather carried a dominant Alzheimer's genetic mutation.

could easily be seen as a "contentious claim" about a living person - even though the grandfather is dead. The issue is whether the inference made by the claim has a direct impact on the living person, not just whether the claim refers to a dead person. Collect (talk) 21:04, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

My answer was just fine as long you take into account the context in which it was asked. The OP asked about whether information about distant ancestors of a living person (Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge) is covered under WP:BLP. The answer is yes since it relates to a living person (Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge). A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 01:38, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

On reading the policy, I saw the text "However, material about dead people that has implications for their living relatives and friends, particularly in the case of recent deaths, is covered by this policy". I do not believe that there are any implications to the Duchess (or anybody else for that matter) of possible inaccuracies regarding her distant ancestry - I therefore think that User talk:A Quest For Knowledge is overplaying things - the implications must be demonstrable in order for WP:BLP to be applied. Martinvl (talk) 18:34, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

I have to side with the idea that AQFK's answer needed clarification.  :-) — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 11:49, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

Perfection

This addition from last month asserts—unintentionally, I suspect—that every single version of a BLP page must be perfect ("biographies must be balanced and fair to their subjects at all times").

This isn't even remotely realistic.

I generally agree that WP:There is a deadline for BLPs, and that it's not good to have unfairly critical biographies hanging out for months at a time, but I don't think that we want to say that we require continuous perfection. It normally takes multiple efforts to achieve even near-perfection. Eventually certainly needs to arrive sooner rather than later (at least when the BLP is unfairly critical, rather than unfairly flattering), but we need to accommodate reality in our advice, or we'll look silly and the policy will gain a reputation for being something that even good editors must WP:Ignore on a regular basis. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:59, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

Unless someone is prepared to explain why he (or she) believes that perfection, rather than stepwise improvement, is realistic on a wiki, or someone wants to try to improve it, I plan to remove this text again. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:25, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Rather, change "must" to "are expected to". JJB 02:53, 16 May 2012 (UTC) The insertion as amended is acceptable if it is understood that a "lopsided" tag is appropriate "temporary balance" IMHO. JJB 02:56, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Agreed with JJB. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 11:51, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

Masturbatory focus on nude scenes

Where's the most appropriate place, do we collectively think, to add to a policy or guideline a mention that we should not add notes like "Appears nude" or "Contains nude scene" to entries in actor biographies' filmography sections? It's not strictly a BLP issue, but seems a bit more important than a discussion at WT:BIOGRAPHY that no one will read, and on a blatant disrespect and objectification and "let's make influential and popular people get angry with WP" level is more important as a WP:BLP issue than a BDP one, I would think. I've had to remove childish, prurient crap like this from articles more than once, most recently at Judy Greer. Unless there was something independently and especially noteworthy about a particular nude scene, as demonstrated by reliable sources, it's a blatant violation of WP:UNDUE and WP:NOT#INDISCRIMINATE to catalog fanwanky trivia like this in WP articles. Even in such a case, it's something for the main article prose, with context, not a "nude/nonude" checklist in a filmography table. I note, in this context, that even the article Kevin Bacon has no mention at all of Bacon's full-frontal reveal in Wild Things, which actually generated a fair amount of entertainment industry press coverage back in the day (i.e. multiple, reliable independent sources that the event was noteworthy in some sense, probably a sense only easily-shocked, double-standard Americans even have). There's no excuse at all for random "nudie" annotations about misc. character actors. Virtually everyone in Hollywood does a nude scene here or there, and nudity has been a part of theatre since at least Ancient Greece (Elizabethan through Victorian England notwithstanding). The entire concept isn't any more intrinsically noteworthy than "people sneezing on TV" or "appearances of bald men in movies". By way of an "article content encyclopedic relevance" analogy to WP:OVERCAT's underlying logic about categorization, "actor" + "no clothes" + "film, TV or stage production" = blatantly trivial intersection. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 11:30, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

Couldn't agree more with what you've said, but I'm not sure what the answer is. I agree that BLP is probably the wrong place, as it applies equally to dead actors as to living ones. MOS:FILM and MOS:BIO spring to mind. I would recommend raising the issue at the WP:ACTOR wikiproject if you haven't already, as the editors there may have some bright ideas. waggers (talk) 11:21, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

This does not need another mention in policy. What we don't need is to fall prey to "It's really important that everyone does this, so I'm going to duplicate it in every policy on Wikipedia." If you're certain that it's a "blatant violation" of WP:UNDUE, then cite WP:UNDUE when wikilawyering about it. causa sui (talk) 23:05, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

Categories, lists and navigation templates - Ethnicity?

Hey All,

I thought a long time ago we decided on adding "ethnicity" to the BLPCAT section. Any ideas on why the result of that RfC never got implemented? Did it fall of the radar? NickCT (talk) 17:34, 30 May 2012 (UTC)erson a big enough catalyst? Or do they h

That summary doesn't support a claim that the issue was "decided" - The summary is No Consensus, While the closing admin notes that there "appears to [be] consensus" for ethnicity he doesn't sum this specific point up to establish whether there actually is or isn't consensus (and doing so individually would have been outwith the RFC scope). I would suggest you might like to consider another RFC but the consensus from the recent Mark Zuckerberg debates appeared to hold that self-identification was not required for ethnicity. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 18:37, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Hmmmm.... It strikes me that " The one element that appears to have consensus support is the addition of 'ethnicity' to the language" is pretty clear. There was consensus for adding "ethnicity". Why wasn't it added? NickCT (talk) 19:21, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

If it was clear the close would say "The one element that clearly has support" it doesn't it says there is an appearance - since the close does not weigh up the variations of opinion that underpin the appearance of consensus, another RFC should be undertaken on this question. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 21:22, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

I gave up on the endless, contentious Zuckerberg discussion on ethnicity, but I disagree with Stuart that there was a consensus that self-identification was not required for ethnicity generally. If anything, some editors were saying BLPCAT did not apply to ethnicity, which, as it's currently worded, is true.--Bbb23 (talk) 19:24, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Why do these questions of ethnicity always seem to revolve around the mushy and complex question of whether someone is a True Jew™?

C'mon, folks: Latino is an ethnicity. Do you really want to require that we have self-identification to say that the President of Mexico is Latino? Do you really need a direct statement that Senator Daniel Kahikina Akaka said "I am a Native Hawaiian" if 100% of reliable sources say that he is, indeed, the first Native Hawaiian elected to the US Senate?

Ethnicity should be treated with some common sense. Uncontested and unsurprising claims can be supported by any source. Exceptional claims should be supported by exceptional sources. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:34, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

This really is a multi-layered problem having to do with categories and the intersection of categories with BLPs. Categories are supposed to be obvious. Thus, the Latino example you gave is not a problem because it's fairly obvious and less controversial. The Jewish categories are not so obvious because of the fact that it's both a religion and an ethnicity, and, yet, the categories don't make clear which they are. So, if we are using the category to indicate religion, then BLPCAT applies, whereas if we are using it to indicate ethnicity, then BLPCAT doesn't apply. This is further complicated by the debate as to what ethnicity means in a particular context. As the discussion about Zuckerberg revealed, some think that if you're born to Jewish parents, you are automatically Jewish by ethnicity. Others disagree, that just as you choose whether to believe in a Jewish god, you also choose whether to believe and subscribe to the Jewish culture, i.e., that you identify with being Jewish. Of course, none of this would matter if Wikipedia were not so obsessed by categorizing people generally. And the endless debates will continue.--Bbb23 (talk) 00:07, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

"whether to believe in a Jewish god" I think that's the profound misunderstanding that leads to these arguments - None of the Jewish editors I've seen involved in these debates has ever supported a position that "belief" has any part to play in whether a person is Jewish. You can choose to follow or not follow the tenets of Judaism but that appears to be irrelevant to whether you are considered a Jew. Indeed there are prominent examples of individuals who have followed the tenets of Judaism and publicly identified that they followed those tenets, yet have not culturally become part of the Jewish community and are not considered Jews. The ideal solution is to have a second category like "Observers of Judaism" but generally it becomes redundant - Some of the "List of Jewish x" articles had a column for this purpose but generally it wasn't used and ended up getting removed. In those cases Readers and Editors didn't care whether the person is religiously observant when they looked at the list they could get that information from the article but it was more relevant for them that they could quickly find the person they were looking for by virtue of their ethnic grouping. I also think you're a little quick to dismiss some of WhatamIdoing's points. We don't have this issue in any indigenous tribe category where religious tenets may be similarly inter-wound through the tribes ethnic grouping drawing some sort of line between whether the individual practises the religious elements of the ethnic group or not, this argument solely arises for the Jews and certain extreme viewpoints that appear in these debates give a hint as to why that is.Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 12:25, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing - Largely agree with your sentiments. Agree that it shouldn't be an issue calling President of Mexico a Latino. I think the issue is that there is a grey area between "Uncontested and unsurprising claims" and "Exceptional claims".

@User:Bbb23 - re "some think that if you're born to Jewish parents, you are automatically Jewish by ethnicity. Others disagree, that just as you choose whether to believe in a Jewish god" - I think that's an astute observation, that touches on the crux of the problem.

@User:Stuart.Jamieson - re "None of the Jewish editors I've seen involved in these debates has ever supported a position that "belief" has any part to play in whether a person is Jewish" - You know, I don't think it's up to Jewish editors to decide what "Jewish" means, any more than it's up to Catholic editors to decide what "Catholic" means or up to African American editors to decide what "African American" means.

re "We don't have this issue in any indigenous tribe category" - Maybe not religion/ethinicity, but I'm engaged in an argument right now at Talk:List_of_Native_American_women_of_the_United_States#Criteria_for_inclusion about whether "Native American" is an ethnicity or a national identity. This same issue gets rehashed again and again in different forms. Anyway, going back to point, does anyone here besides Stuart feel the RfC offered at the link above does not support the inclusion of "ethnicity" into the current BLPCAT policy? NickCT (talk) 12:51, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

I do. The discussion was over a year ago. If it wasn't quite clearly agreed to then it seems extremely retroactive now. (p.s. once again, I'm not a huge fan of this idea where a debate somewhere else leads people to come over here and try to change policy so they'll automatically be "right" elsewhere. This time it's List of Native American women of the United States and Elizabeth Warren. Seriously? If she doesn't have an iota of [documented] Native American ancestry she shouldn't be listed as Native American. Especially since this has become a campaign issue and saying that she is Native American without proof could be seen as POV. But again, that's a discussion for somewhere else and that's how it should stay, a case-by-case basis. For the record, I would have never guessed that Warren of all people would inspire this). All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 13:52, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Warren is 1/32nd Native American. If she wants to call herself "Native American", why not?

re " I'm not a huge fan of this idea where a debate somewhere else" - The problem is this debate is not occurring "somewhere" else. It is occurring "everywhere" else. It occurs again and again and again and that's why we need to adjust policy. NickCT (talk) 14:07, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Did I misunderstand the situation? As I was aware, no Native American ancestry has actually been documented for Elizabeth Warren. She thought she had some (she still does), but genealogists could not conclusively find that she did. Have they confirmed the 1/32 yet? Aside from that, you're forgetting about the "relevance to notability" part, which screws everyhing up because someone could constantly "self-identify" and they still wouldn't be listed as this or that because someone would say it's not part of why they're famous. A discussion like the one on Warren is perfectly healthy and we shouldn't stifle it with added rules and regulations (call it small-government Wikipedia). Aside from that, the Warren situation really is once-in-a-lifetime - certainly I can't recall another political campaign where this was an issue. Plus, like I said, the old discussion over this was over a year ago. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 14:23, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Do we need to require "self-identification" for most attributes that reliable sources establish as applicable? I think the core applicability of self-identification is to issues of sexual identity. Commonly people are disparaged by labels along the line of "homosexual" when that has not been established at all. But I would submit to you that this is far less common as pertains to most other attributes. I don't find people mislabeled as concerns for instance religion and/or ethnicity. Notice that I am calling into question even the established (at Wikipedia) requirement for self-identification as regards religion. Sources can suffice in this. A big question, in my opinion, is if you have sources at variance with one another—what to do under that circumstance? But when all sources agree that an attribute (other than sexual orientation) is applicable, I just don't see the value in requiring "self-identification" additionally. A requirement for self-identification can be held in abeyance for deployment in those situations where reliable sources are found to be in conflict, but I think that situation will arise infrequently, and I don't think that should necessitate ironclad policy. Bus stop (talk) 14:28, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

@All Hallow's Wraith - re "Have they confirmed the 1/32 yet?" - Hmmmm... I didn't actually realize that was a matter for debate. I thought the heritage thing was accepted. Regardless, I'm for letting people arbitrarily self-identify as whatever ethnicity they like. There are no good definitions or reliable sources for ethnicity as there are no good definitions or reliable sources for what makes someone gay.

re "you're forgetting about the "relevance to notability"" - Yeah. I guess that's true. This isn't really relevant to her notability. Ironically though, one could argue that she may become notable for having made this claim, and hence her ethnicity would become relevant to her notability.

re "the Warren situation really is once-in-a-lifetime" - Sure. That particular situation might be, but again this same discussion keeps getting rehashed in different contexts.

@Bus stop re "Do we need to require "self-identification" for most attributes" - When those attributes are objective, no we don't. NickCT (talk) 15:13, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

NickCT, I think the Elizabeth Warren situation may be a perfect example of why we should not have self-identification for ethnicity. Warren self-identifies as Native American (or does she? Does she only self-identify as having Native American ancestry? There is a difference. But never mind). However, her self-identification is disputed by genealogists, by the Cherokee Nation (I think - she is certainly not enrolled), as well as by the Scott Brown campaign, and, apparently, the media in Massachusetts. Therefore if we were to call her Native American we would be taking a POV side in a political campaign issue. That's why it should be a case-by-case basis. In this case, self-identification is part of a larger web of issues. And adding in "relevant to notability", far from preventing these discussions you don't seem to like, would actually contribute to the creation of many more discussions about whether a person satisfies that criterion even after they've self-identified. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 15:32, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

I think I'd like to avoid discussing Warren because she muddies the water a little for a couple reasons.1) There's you're point re "having Native American ancestry". Looking back over this, I'm not sure she's really claiming to be native american at all, as much she's claiming to have native american heritage. So perhaps the entire debate is moot. 2) The question of whether she's "Native American" or "Cherokee" would also seem to muddy the water.

re "we would be taking a POV side in a political campaign issue" - Ummmm... Well, a lot of WP policies might arguably force us to take a POV side in a political debate. The real question here is : if we agree that ethnicity can be ambiguous in the same way that religion and sexual persuasion can be (which I think we do agree on), than why not have it be subject to the same rules? NickCT (talk) 15:58, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Well, I don't really agree on that. BTW, I do think that Warren is relevant, since 1) she brought you here to re-start this and 2) situations like hers and others would presumably be effected somewhat by a change in policy. It's like I said at first - these should be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. As I say below, the "relevance to notability" part (I think) caused Bbb23 to start a discussion about whether an actress who was born to two Jewish parents, practices no faith other than Judaism, and has self-identified as Jewish on national television, should be categorized as Jewish (I am quite sure that the only reason he started the debate was because of the current BLPcat, not because of a personal objection). Do you really think that adding more of this policy and expanding its reach will cause less debates about ethnicity, or more? Considering the example I just gave you, I would say it would be considerably more debates all over the place. The fact is, the Warren situation is such that it would be contentious and debateable under any circumstance or set of policies. Adding more policies would just confuse it more. Like I said, I'm a small-government Wikipedian. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 16:05, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

(od) The Warren "ethnicity" is questioned by the NYT - there is no credible evidence other than her recollection of family lore that even 1/32 is "Native American." [6]. (A genealogist who initially said he had discovered that she might be one thirty-second Cherokee subsequently said he could not locate the original documents.). Thus as she has not publically claimed such status, Wikipedia ought not categorise her as "Native American." And I iterate my prior comments about categorization - that it is to be deprecated in any case where self-identification has not occurred, with regard to nationality, ethnicity, religion, etc. Collect (talk) 15:35, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Warren said just recently that her Native American ancestry is part of who she is and that she is proud of it. Does that count as self-identification? See, that's another problem. Anyone who thinks adding more of this policy will cause less debate instead of more is wrong. We are then going to start debating what counts as self-identification and whether it is relevant. Based on what is in the policy right now, Bbb23 even started a debate about whether an actress who was born to two Jewish parents and who had repeatedly self-identified as Jewish (including on national television) should be categorized as Jewish (her Jewishness had not been disputed by anyone in the media or elsewhere - Scott Brown did not challenge it). So all these policies do is cause debate where it otherwise would not exist. If a simple case like the one I mentioned with the actress turns into an issue where it otherwise would not have been, then the Warren case wouldn't be made any simpler. Far from it. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 15:48, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

See whatamIdoing's comments above. I think there has to be a "Uncontested and unsurprising claims" provision. Currently the policy basically says "there must be self-identification and it must be relevant to notibility". I would change it to read "In cases where there is ambiguity or lack of consensus over categorization there must be self-identification and it must be relevant to notibility". That would deal with your actress. NickCT (talk) 16:06, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

re "Warren said just recently that her Native American ancestry .... self-identification?" - No. Saying "I am of African-American decent" or "I have African American heritage" seems distinctly different than saying "I am African American". NickCT (talk) 16:13, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

I'd generally agree with you about whether that is self-identification, but someone else may disagree. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 16:17, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Maybe. We could work that into policy as well. Just a quick one line proviso saying "Heritage and decent are not the same as ethnicity". NickCT (talk) 16:22, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

I have no strong problem with this wording - "In cases where there is ambiguity or lack of consensus over categorization there must be self-identification and it must be relevant to notibility". However, I am unsure of what "ambiguity" may mean? One problem with this wording is that it is too... how should I put it... ambiguous. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 16:11, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

re "how should I put it... ambiguous." - (chuckle) Indeed. Well look, I'm just throwing around suggestions. Not wedded to that wording. I think you get the gist of what I'm saying. I think anytime that one or more editors get up and say "Hey, does this person really belong in this ethnic category?" it by definition means there is ambiguity/lack of consensus around the categorization. Folks generally don't argue over stuff that is unambiguous (though, given that this is wikipedia, I might want to be careful when I say that). NickCT (talk) 16:22, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Look, I'm not particularly opposed to this last bit. But I would want to note that it will probably start discussions over whether this person or that is ambigiously of this ethnicity or not. Someone could even claim that since Warren states that she has Native American ancestry, she is unambigiously to be categorized as "Category:American people of Native American descent" (whether "people of X descent" categories would be effected by this... is yet another issue). All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 16:27, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

BTW, here's another question. If someone has self-identified, does that make it unambigious? All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 17:03, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Non-Native people have self-identified as Native American people for over a century, famous examples include Grey Owl, Forrest Carter, Ward Churchill, Jamake Highwater, and Yeffe Kimball. As Cheyenne-Muscogee Creek writer Suzan Shown Harjo points out in Indian Country Today, Cherokee is the most popular tribal affiliation claimed by non-Natives. There are approximately 300,000 enrolled Cherokee people in three federally recognized tribes, while over 800,000 people self-identified as "Cherokee" on the 2010 census, so about 500,000 people claim "Cherokee" as an identity while not being legal members of the three Cherokee tribes (Cherokee Phoenix). Because this phenomenon is so commonplace, the List of people of self-identified Cherokee ancestry and Category:People of Cherokee descent were created. -Uyvsdi (talk) 18:13, 31 May 2012 (UTC)Uyvsdi

@All Hallow's Wraith - re " Someone could even claim that since Warren states that she has Native American ancestry, she is unambigiously to be categorized" - As I mentioned above, I think "People of X descent" is a separate question. It strikes me that most arguments arise over "Person Y is of X ethnicity" categories, and not "Person Y is of X heritage" or "Person Y is of X descent". Our policy might make that distinction (i.e. it could explicitly say heritage and descent aren't ethnicity).

re "If someone has self-identified, does that make it unambiguous?" - I don't think so. Tiger Woods might say he considers himself solely Asian. I don't think that would make his race unambiguous in most peoples' minds. But the point is really to say "If it's not clear what ethnicity a subject should belong to, then we either don't categorize them or we let the subject decide". NickCT (talk) 18:21, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Let's say Tiger Woods was 50% Asian and identified as Asian (regardless of what the actual case is). Would this be "unambigious" and therefore he could be listed as an Asian-American sportsman? Or would we have to have the self-identification and then also fulfill criteria of relevance to notabiltiy (let's assume that him being Asian-American was generally speaking not notable to his relevance in this case). All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 18:28, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Ok, so let's lay out a flow chart here for making the decision -

Question 1 - Is subject Y's belonging to ethnic category X obvious/unambiguous/uncontested? (e.g. Does no one doubt that Woods is Asian American?) - If yes, then apply category X (e.g. Woods is Asian American). If no, move to question 2.

Question 2 - Can the subject be shown be shown to have openly self-identified with category X? (e.g. Has Woods said "I consider myself to be Asian American") - If yes, then move to question 3. If no, then don't apply category X.

Question 3 - If the subject's belonging to category X in anyway relevant to their notability? - If yes, then apply category X. If no then don't apply category X. NickCT (talk) 19:56, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Collect, just how far are you willing to take your desire for self-identification? To the point of absurdity, which is what we'd get with an absolute requirement?

For example: Pope Benedict is currently listed in Category:Roman Catholic writers. Would you require explicit self-identification from the current pope of the Roman Catholic Church to place that BLP in that religion-based category? Or do you think that occasionally, say, in determining the religion of ordained clergy members, that we need not always rely on explicit published statements of self-identification? I think Wikipedians could probably figure out whether the Pope is Catholic even without him making a statement to the press that says "I am a Catholic Christian". What do you think? WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:35, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

(NickCT) This is starting to remind me of tax loopholes. My economic Wikipedia theory is that the more clauses, rules, and regulations there are, the more discussions, arguments, and conflicts can arise from them, rather than less (presumably this chart would have to be in the policy page?) When you say "Does no one doubt that Woods is Asian American" - who is "no one"? Would it have to be someone in the mainstream media? Or just one editor who comes onto the page and says it? Do they have to be a registered editor or an anonymous will do? You can find one person who will believe, challenge, question, or bring up just about any opinion, topic, or dispute. Is this one person a big enough catalyst? Or do they have to have a good reason behind them? All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 20:38, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

@All Hallow's Wraith - I know what you mean. But "consensus" is quite a common term here on Wikipedia, right? Obviously the idea of consensus is a little vague, but the idea is basically that if an overwhelming majority supports something it consensus. So basically, "no one" means no significant portion of editors. In the final wording you could try to include the word "consensus", so that people get the idea. NickCT (talk) 23:38, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Hmmm, right, I forgot about the no consensus part, or missed it the first time. That sounds more okay. But of course, that's another loophole, isn't it? It means a discussion would continue for some time, and then if there's no consensus, it goes to these other criteria, and then there's a discussion about those. :-) (perhaps it should be ambigiuous and no consensus, so if consensus is reached that it is unambigious, it can stay).

BTW, are you saying this wording would apply to religion and sexual orientation? I certainly don't mind if it does, but I don't know about others. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 00:44, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

re "ambigiuous and no consensus" - Well I'd certainly be amenable to language that included both those words; however, I would have imagined if a something was unable to attain consensus it would necessarily be ambiguous. Per my logic above, unambiguous stuff (e.g. there are 12 inches in a foot), generally doesn't lack consensus.

re "religion and sexual orientation" - Yes. Frankly, I'd like to make these rules cover a large number of categorizations. If I had my druthers these rules would cover race, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity, national identity, and possibly even gender (that last one might seem a little silly, but I think it might be relevant in cases like Caster Semenya). The same principle underlies all these attributes. They can be ambiguous, and there is no universally accepted authority for who is the ultimate authority on defining them.

Realistically, my list of attributes might be a little too radical though. At the moment I really on want to push for ethnicity, religion and sexual orientation. They strike me as the most potentially ambiguous. NickCT (talk) 01:23, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

Well, I just thought that if there is consensus, someone could still say, it's ambigious, therefore it falls under that provision, wheres if it is ambigiuous "and" there's no consensus then both would have to go through before we get to the other criteria. Anyway, I don't know, like I said, I don't have a huge problem with these types of criteria, but I don't know about other people in this discussion. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 02:05, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

re "if there is consensus, someone could still say, it's ambigious" - That comment sorta confuses me. I think of consensus in "un-ambiguity" as the same thing. In other words, if I have 10 folks in a room, and I ask "What color are the walls in this room?" and there is consensus on the wall color (i.e. essentially everyone in the room agrees what color the walls are), then the color of walls is by definition, not ambiguous. To be "ambiguous" is to be subject to different interpretation. If everyone agrees or interprets something the same way (i.e. everyone agrees Tiger Woods is Asian) then it's not ambiguous. NickCT (talk) 02:50, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

Does everyone agree that Tiger Woods should be listed as an Asian-American athlete? Well, maybe that's a good litmus test. I probably would say yes. What is he, almost half? I guess the one Dutch great-grandparent there on the mother's side. Certainly it's more than 1/32. Anyway, like I said, I don't have a huge problem with most of this. I don't know who else is participating in this, though. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 03:03, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

Nice case as TW does not call himself "Asian-American." I believe he used "cablinasian" at one point - but he has stated he does not want to be categorised by race. Try "polyethnic" I suppose. Collect (talk) 11:22, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

re Tiger Woods - I think the rules I'd like to establish would argue that we not categorize TW, because 1) his ethnicity is fairly ambiguous & 2) he hasn't self-identified with a common category (I'm not sure we have any categories for "cablinasian". If we did, and TW had definitely self-identified, then I'd say, sure, categorize him).

re "I don't know who else is participating in this, though." - Consensus starts by building support for something among just a few editors. I'm going to work on some draft language and see if I can get the few people here who have chimed in to support it. NickCT (talk) 13:54, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

(od) Iteating my suggestion of 28 Feb:

Categories about a person's beliefs or orientation of any sort should rely specifically on self-identification by the person, and not on surmise by any other source, and then only if such beliefs or orientation are relevant to the person' notability.

Collect (talk) 14:11, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

Is this supposed to include ethnicity? If so, then of course I would oppose such a thing, because, even outside of self-identification, there is that relevance to notability thing which makes no sense to me at all. At least NickCT's proposal brought up the reasonable criteria of unambiguity and consensus. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 20:15, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

I've produced a rough draft at User:NickCT/sandbox. Take a look. If you feel you can improve it, be bold and do so. If you want to add a different suggested wording, feel free to put it in at the bottom of the page. NickCT (talk) 16:30, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

I would separate 1 and 2+3 more clearly. The "or" is there of course, but it's not as visible as it could be. In fact, I would take "unless the following conditions are met" out of the opening paragraph and simply replace it with 1. And following the explanation of 1, I would put in "if this is not the case, then the following criteria should be met" (followed by 2 and 3). I also think the examples are a little too clearcut. Maybe replace Martin Luther King, Jr. with, say, Will Smith? (since there is no ambiguity that he is an African-American actor). All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 20:24, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

BTW, I don't know if this makes me a radical, but do we need "relevance to notability" at all? I have never seen its useful purpose. If someone self-identifies as something, how could it possibly be a BLP violation to categorize them as that? It seems like an added timewaster that was snuck in here in 2006 when no one was looking. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 20:27, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

John Gnarph a climate researcher told an interviewer for Gay World (magazine) in 1985 that he was gay. He is now in the news for discovering that Vanillin seeding in clouds will cause rain. Should his BLP state that he is gay? Collect (talk) 20:33, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the question is? There was a discussion about this over Luke Evans, wherein Evans self-identified as gay in the early 2000s. The difference between Evans and Gnarph is that bits of evidence had come about that Evans was either "back in the closet" or that he was straight now, or bisexual. Evans' situation is explained in his article (in a manner I agree with). He is categorized as an LGBT actor today. (btw, part of the point is that what may be true of sexual orientiation would almost certainly not apply to ethnicity). All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 20:40, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

I can't help thinking that the question arises from someone's notion that being gay is "contentious". I don't get that. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 20:49, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

I think the Luke Evans example shows that it can be "complicated". That said, Luke Evans is categorized as a "Gay actor", something I don't necessarily support given the "recent developments". None of this has to do with notability, though. It is an issue of change of time and circumstance, something the policy does not even address. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 20:52, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

A big problem with most of what is being discussed is that it is instruction creep. Self-identification should be required before categorization by sexual-orientation. That is based on a rational reason: there is a strong history of calling people homosexual in the absence of self-identification. Sexual-orientation is commonly abused. Therefore we should not categorize by sexual-orientation in the absence of self-identification. But other attributes—religion, ethnicity, national identity are not commonly abused to nearly the extent of "sexual-orientation". There is no net benefit to requiring "self-identification" for religion, ethnicity, and national identity. These requirements hobble our categorization system. In most cases we know from reliable sources the attributes of religion, ethnicity, and national identity. The only problem is when reliable sources disagree with one another concerning religion, ethnicity, and national identity. Only when reliable sources are at odds with one another concerning these attributes should we turn to "self-identification". In such cases, if self-identification is not available, we should refrain from categorizing at all for the attributes of religion, ethnicity, and national identity. And of course we should not categorize for sexual-orientation in the absence of self-identification—ever.

Another thing that makes no sense to me is to require relevance to notability. That stifles the encyclopedic nature of the article. We the editors do not know what will be useful to a reader. We are not all-knowing and omnipotent. Readers will use this encyclopedia in ways that cannot be anticipated by us. There is an enormous amount of hubris, it seems to me, to think that we have impeccable knowledge of what is "relevant". Only when something clearly does not belong should the editorial decision be made to leave it out. The "instruction creep" of requiring "relevance" prior to categorization seems particularly wrongheaded. Bus stop (talk) 21:16, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

wiki tabloid

I have noticed that some editors would like to turn wikipedia into a tabloid. They want to include information about BLPs that isn't really needed in the articles and has nothing to do with their notability. I have seen pages and pages of heated discussion of whether to include the information or not. I think we should just leave out trivial things that don't relate to the notablity of the BLP. I doubt any readers look at wikipedia articles to find their sexual preference/religion/ethinicity etc, etc. I have seen edit wars, categories created and voted for deletion, etc, etc. If readers want tabloid information on a BLP then they should go to a tabloid site, not wikipedia. If there is debatable information we should err on the side of caution and just remove it. We could also create a new process to decide what is included and what is not. Pages of BS repeating the same points seems like a good waste of editing time. Any thoughts?--Canoe1967 (talk) 23:39, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

Canoe1967—I think we should compile information that not only is of obvious relevancy but also of potential relevancy. Bus stop (talk) 11:33, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

Masturbatory focus on nude scenes

Where's the most appropriate place, do we collectively think, to add to a policy or guideline a mention that we should not add notes like "Appears nude" or "Contains nude scene" to entries in actor biographies' filmography sections? It's not strictly a BLP issue, but seems a bit more important than a discussion at WT:BIOGRAPHY that no one will read, and on a blatant disrespect and objectification and "let's make influential and popular people get angry with WP" level is more important as a WP:BLP issue than a BDP one, I would think. I've had to remove childish, prurient crap like this from articles more than once, most recently at Judy Greer. Unless there was something independently and especially noteworthy about a particular nude scene, as demonstrated by reliable sources, it's a blatant violation of WP:UNDUE and WP:NOT#INDISCRIMINATE to catalog fanwanky trivia like this in WP articles. Even in such a case, it's something for the main article prose, with context, not a "nude/nonude" checklist in a filmography table. I note, in this context, that even the article Kevin Bacon has no mention at all of Bacon's full-frontal reveal in Wild Things, which actually generated a fair amount of entertainment industry press coverage back in the day (i.e. multiple, reliable independent sources that the event was noteworthy in some sense, probably a sense only easily-shocked, double-standard Americans even have). There's no excuse at all for random "nudie" annotations about misc. character actors. Virtually everyone in Hollywood does a nude scene here or there, and nudity has been a part of theatre since at least Ancient Greece (Elizabethan through Victorian England notwithstanding). The entire concept isn't any more intrinsically noteworthy than "people sneezing on TV" or "appearances of bald men in movies". By way of an "article content encyclopedic relevance" analogy to WP:OVERCAT's underlying logic about categorization, "actor" + "no clothes" + "film, TV or stage production" = blatantly trivial intersection. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 11:30, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

Couldn't agree more with what you've said, but I'm not sure what the answer is. I agree that BLP is probably the wrong place, as it applies equally to dead actors as to living ones. MOS:FILM and MOS:BIO spring to mind. I would recommend raising the issue at the WP:ACTOR wikiproject if you haven't already, as the editors there may have some bright ideas. waggers (talk) 11:21, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

This does not need another mention in policy. What we don't need is to fall prey to "It's really important that everyone does this, so I'm going to duplicate it in every policy on Wikipedia." If you're certain that it's a "blatant violation" of WP:UNDUE, then cite WP:UNDUE when wikilawyering about it. causa sui (talk) 23:05, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

Categories, lists and navigation templates - Ethnicity?

Hey All,

I thought a long time ago we decided on adding "ethnicity" to the BLPCAT section. Any ideas on why the result of that RfC never got implemented? Did it fall of the radar? NickCT (talk) 17:34, 30 May 2012 (UTC)erson a big enough catalyst? Or do they h

That summary doesn't support a claim that the issue was "decided" - The summary is No Consensus, While the closing admin notes that there "appears to [be] consensus" for ethnicity he doesn't sum this specific point up to establish whether there actually is or isn't consensus (and doing so individually would have been outwith the RFC scope). I would suggest you might like to consider another RFC but the consensus from the recent Mark Zuckerberg debates appeared to hold that self-identification was not required for ethnicity. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 18:37, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Hmmmm.... It strikes me that " The one element that appears to have consensus support is the addition of 'ethnicity' to the language" is pretty clear. There was consensus for adding "ethnicity". Why wasn't it added? NickCT (talk) 19:21, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

If it was clear the close would say "The one element that clearly has support" it doesn't it says there is an appearance - since the close does not weigh up the variations of opinion that underpin the appearance of consensus, another RFC should be undertaken on this question. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 21:22, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

I gave up on the endless, contentious Zuckerberg discussion on ethnicity, but I disagree with Stuart that there was a consensus that self-identification was not required for ethnicity generally. If anything, some editors were saying BLPCAT did not apply to ethnicity, which, as it's currently worded, is true.--Bbb23 (talk) 19:24, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Why do these questions of ethnicity always seem to revolve around the mushy and complex question of whether someone is a True Jew™?

C'mon, folks: Latino is an ethnicity. Do you really want to require that we have self-identification to say that the President of Mexico is Latino? Do you really need a direct statement that Senator Daniel Kahikina Akaka said "I am a Native Hawaiian" if 100% of reliable sources say that he is, indeed, the first Native Hawaiian elected to the US Senate?

Ethnicity should be treated with some common sense. Uncontested and unsurprising claims can be supported by any source. Exceptional claims should be supported by exceptional sources. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:34, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

This really is a multi-layered problem having to do with categories and the intersection of categories with BLPs. Categories are supposed to be obvious. Thus, the Latino example you gave is not a problem because it's fairly obvious and less controversial. The Jewish categories are not so obvious because of the fact that it's both a religion and an ethnicity, and, yet, the categories don't make clear which they are. So, if we are using the category to indicate religion, then BLPCAT applies, whereas if we are using it to indicate ethnicity, then BLPCAT doesn't apply. This is further complicated by the debate as to what ethnicity means in a particular context. As the discussion about Zuckerberg revealed, some think that if you're born to Jewish parents, you are automatically Jewish by ethnicity. Others disagree, that just as you choose whether to believe in a Jewish god, you also choose whether to believe and subscribe to the Jewish culture, i.e., that you identify with being Jewish. Of course, none of this would matter if Wikipedia were not so obsessed by categorizing people generally. And the endless debates will continue.--Bbb23 (talk) 00:07, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

"whether to believe in a Jewish god" I think that's the profound misunderstanding that leads to these arguments - None of the Jewish editors I've seen involved in these debates has ever supported a position that "belief" has any part to play in whether a person is Jewish. You can choose to follow or not follow the tenets of Judaism but that appears to be irrelevant to whether you are considered a Jew. Indeed there are prominent examples of individuals who have followed the tenets of Judaism and publicly identified that they followed those tenets, yet have not culturally become part of the Jewish community and are not considered Jews. The ideal solution is to have a second category like "Observers of Judaism" but generally it becomes redundant - Some of the "List of Jewish x" articles had a column for this purpose but generally it wasn't used and ended up getting removed. In those cases Readers and Editors didn't care whether the person is religiously observant when they looked at the list they could get that information from the article but it was more relevant for them that they could quickly find the person they were looking for by virtue of their ethnic grouping. I also think you're a little quick to dismiss some of WhatamIdoing's points. We don't have this issue in any indigenous tribe category where religious tenets may be similarly inter-wound through the tribes ethnic grouping drawing some sort of line between whether the individual practises the religious elements of the ethnic group or not, this argument solely arises for the Jews and certain extreme viewpoints that appear in these debates give a hint as to why that is.Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 12:25, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing - Largely agree with your sentiments. Agree that it shouldn't be an issue calling President of Mexico a Latino. I think the issue is that there is a grey area between "Uncontested and unsurprising claims" and "Exceptional claims".

@User:Bbb23 - re "some think that if you're born to Jewish parents, you are automatically Jewish by ethnicity. Others disagree, that just as you choose whether to believe in a Jewish god" - I think that's an astute observation, that touches on the crux of the problem.

@User:Stuart.Jamieson - re "None of the Jewish editors I've seen involved in these debates has ever supported a position that "belief" has any part to play in whether a person is Jewish" - You know, I don't think it's up to Jewish editors to decide what "Jewish" means, any more than it's up to Catholic editors to decide what "Catholic" means or up to African American editors to decide what "African American" means.

re "We don't have this issue in any indigenous tribe category" - Maybe not religion/ethinicity, but I'm engaged in an argument right now at Talk:List_of_Native_American_women_of_the_United_States#Criteria_for_inclusion about whether "Native American" is an ethnicity or a national identity. This same issue gets rehashed again and again in different forms. Anyway, going back to point, does anyone here besides Stuart feel the RfC offered at the link above does not support the inclusion of "ethnicity" into the current BLPCAT policy? NickCT (talk) 12:51, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

I do. The discussion was over a year ago. If it wasn't quite clearly agreed to then it seems extremely retroactive now. (p.s. once again, I'm not a huge fan of this idea where a debate somewhere else leads people to come over here and try to change policy so they'll automatically be "right" elsewhere. This time it's List of Native American women of the United States and Elizabeth Warren. Seriously? If she doesn't have an iota of [documented] Native American ancestry she shouldn't be listed as Native American. Especially since this has become a campaign issue and saying that she is Native American without proof could be seen as POV. But again, that's a discussion for somewhere else and that's how it should stay, a case-by-case basis. For the record, I would have never guessed that Warren of all people would inspire this). All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 13:52, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Warren is 1/32nd Native American. If she wants to call herself "Native American", why not?

re " I'm not a huge fan of this idea where a debate somewhere else" - The problem is this debate is not occurring "somewhere" else. It is occurring "everywhere" else. It occurs again and again and again and that's why we need to adjust policy. NickCT (talk) 14:07, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Did I misunderstand the situation? As I was aware, no Native American ancestry has actually been documented for Elizabeth Warren. She thought she had some (she still does), but genealogists could not conclusively find that she did. Have they confirmed the 1/32 yet? Aside from that, you're forgetting about the "relevance to notability" part, which screws everyhing up because someone could constantly "self-identify" and they still wouldn't be listed as this or that because someone would say it's not part of why they're famous. A discussion like the one on Warren is perfectly healthy and we shouldn't stifle it with added rules and regulations (call it small-government Wikipedia). Aside from that, the Warren situation really is once-in-a-lifetime - certainly I can't recall another political campaign where this was an issue. Plus, like I said, the old discussion over this was over a year ago. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 14:23, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Do we need to require "self-identification" for most attributes that reliable sources establish as applicable? I think the core applicability of self-identification is to issues of sexual identity. Commonly people are disparaged by labels along the line of "homosexual" when that has not been established at all. But I would submit to you that this is far less common as pertains to most other attributes. I don't find people mislabeled as concerns for instance religion and/or ethnicity. Notice that I am calling into question even the established (at Wikipedia) requirement for self-identification as regards religion. Sources can suffice in this. A big question, in my opinion, is if you have sources at variance with one another—what to do under that circumstance? But when all sources agree that an attribute (other than sexual orientation) is applicable, I just don't see the value in requiring "self-identification" additionally. A requirement for self-identification can be held in abeyance for deployment in those situations where reliable sources are found to be in conflict, but I think that situation will arise infrequently, and I don't think that should necessitate ironclad policy. Bus stop (talk) 14:28, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

@All Hallow's Wraith - re "Have they confirmed the 1/32 yet?" - Hmmmm... I didn't actually realize that was a matter for debate. I thought the heritage thing was accepted. Regardless, I'm for letting people arbitrarily self-identify as whatever ethnicity they like. There are no good definitions or reliable sources for ethnicity as there are no good definitions or reliable sources for what makes someone gay.

re "you're forgetting about the "relevance to notability"" - Yeah. I guess that's true. This isn't really relevant to her notability. Ironically though, one could argue that she may become notable for having made this claim, and hence her ethnicity would become relevant to her notability.

re "the Warren situation really is once-in-a-lifetime" - Sure. That particular situation might be, but again this same discussion keeps getting rehashed in different contexts.

@Bus stop re "Do we need to require "self-identification" for most attributes" - When those attributes are objective, no we don't. NickCT (talk) 15:13, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

NickCT, I think the Elizabeth Warren situation may be a perfect example of why we should not have self-identification for ethnicity. Warren self-identifies as Native American (or does she? Does she only self-identify as having Native American ancestry? There is a difference. But never mind). However, her self-identification is disputed by genealogists, by the Cherokee Nation (I think - she is certainly not enrolled), as well as by the Scott Brown campaign, and, apparently, the media in Massachusetts. Therefore if we were to call her Native American we would be taking a POV side in a political campaign issue. That's why it should be a case-by-case basis. In this case, self-identification is part of a larger web of issues. And adding in "relevant to notability", far from preventing these discussions you don't seem to like, would actually contribute to the creation of many more discussions about whether a person satisfies that criterion even after they've self-identified. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 15:32, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

I think I'd like to avoid discussing Warren because she muddies the water a little for a couple reasons.1) There's you're point re "having Native American ancestry". Looking back over this, I'm not sure she's really claiming to be native american at all, as much she's claiming to have native american heritage. So perhaps the entire debate is moot. 2) The question of whether she's "Native American" or "Cherokee" would also seem to muddy the water.

re "we would be taking a POV side in a political campaign issue" - Ummmm... Well, a lot of WP policies might arguably force us to take a POV side in a political debate. The real question here is : if we agree that ethnicity can be ambiguous in the same way that religion and sexual persuasion can be (which I think we do agree on), than why not have it be subject to the same rules? NickCT (talk) 15:58, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Well, I don't really agree on that. BTW, I do think that Warren is relevant, since 1) she brought you here to re-start this and 2) situations like hers and others would presumably be effected somewhat by a change in policy. It's like I said at first - these should be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. As I say below, the "relevance to notability" part (I think) caused Bbb23 to start a discussion about whether an actress who was born to two Jewish parents, practices no faith other than Judaism, and has self-identified as Jewish on national television, should be categorized as Jewish (I am quite sure that the only reason he started the debate was because of the current BLPcat, not because of a personal objection). Do you really think that adding more of this policy and expanding its reach will cause less debates about ethnicity, or more? Considering the example I just gave you, I would say it would be considerably more debates all over the place. The fact is, the Warren situation is such that it would be contentious and debateable under any circumstance or set of policies. Adding more policies would just confuse it more. Like I said, I'm a small-government Wikipedian. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 16:05, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

(od) The Warren "ethnicity" is questioned by the NYT - there is no credible evidence other than her recollection of family lore that even 1/32 is "Native American." [7]. (A genealogist who initially said he had discovered that she might be one thirty-second Cherokee subsequently said he could not locate the original documents.). Thus as she has not publically claimed such status, Wikipedia ought not categorise her as "Native American." And I iterate my prior comments about categorization - that it is to be deprecated in any case where self-identification has not occurred, with regard to nationality, ethnicity, religion, etc. Collect (talk) 15:35, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Warren said just recently that her Native American ancestry is part of who she is and that she is proud of it. Does that count as self-identification? See, that's another problem. Anyone who thinks adding more of this policy will cause less debate instead of more is wrong. We are then going to start debating what counts as self-identification and whether it is relevant. Based on what is in the policy right now, Bbb23 even started a debate about whether an actress who was born to two Jewish parents and who had repeatedly self-identified as Jewish (including on national television) should be categorized as Jewish (her Jewishness had not been disputed by anyone in the media or elsewhere - Scott Brown did not challenge it). So all these policies do is cause debate where it otherwise would not exist. If a simple case like the one I mentioned with the actress turns into an issue where it otherwise would not have been, then the Warren case wouldn't be made any simpler. Far from it. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 15:48, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

See whatamIdoing's comments above. I think there has to be a "Uncontested and unsurprising claims" provision. Currently the policy basically says "there must be self-identification and it must be relevant to notibility". I would change it to read "In cases where there is ambiguity or lack of consensus over categorization there must be self-identification and it must be relevant to notibility". That would deal with your actress. NickCT (talk) 16:06, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

re "Warren said just recently that her Native American ancestry .... self-identification?" - No. Saying "I am of African-American decent" or "I have African American heritage" seems distinctly different than saying "I am African American". NickCT (talk) 16:13, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

I'd generally agree with you about whether that is self-identification, but someone else may disagree. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 16:17, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Maybe. We could work that into policy as well. Just a quick one line proviso saying "Heritage and decent are not the same as ethnicity". NickCT (talk) 16:22, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

I have no strong problem with this wording - "In cases where there is ambiguity or lack of consensus over categorization there must be self-identification and it must be relevant to notibility". However, I am unsure of what "ambiguity" may mean? One problem with this wording is that it is too... how should I put it... ambiguous. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 16:11, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

re "how should I put it... ambiguous." - (chuckle) Indeed. Well look, I'm just throwing around suggestions. Not wedded to that wording. I think you get the gist of what I'm saying. I think anytime that one or more editors get up and say "Hey, does this person really belong in this ethnic category?" it by definition means there is ambiguity/lack of consensus around the categorization. Folks generally don't argue over stuff that is unambiguous (though, given that this is wikipedia, I might want to be careful when I say that). NickCT (talk) 16:22, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Look, I'm not particularly opposed to this last bit. But I would want to note that it will probably start discussions over whether this person or that is ambigiously of this ethnicity or not. Someone could even claim that since Warren states that she has Native American ancestry, she is unambigiously to be categorized as "Category:American people of Native American descent" (whether "people of X descent" categories would be effected by this... is yet another issue). All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 16:27, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

BTW, here's another question. If someone has self-identified, does that make it unambigious? All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 17:03, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Non-Native people have self-identified as Native American people for over a century, famous examples include Grey Owl, Forrest Carter, Ward Churchill, Jamake Highwater, and Yeffe Kimball. As Cheyenne-Muscogee Creek writer Suzan Shown Harjo points out in Indian Country Today, Cherokee is the most popular tribal affiliation claimed by non-Natives. There are approximately 300,000 enrolled Cherokee people in three federally recognized tribes, while over 800,000 people self-identified as "Cherokee" on the 2010 census, so about 500,000 people claim "Cherokee" as an identity while not being legal members of the three Cherokee tribes (Cherokee Phoenix). Because this phenomenon is so commonplace, the List of people of self-identified Cherokee ancestry and Category:People of Cherokee descent were created. -Uyvsdi (talk) 18:13, 31 May 2012 (UTC)Uyvsdi

@All Hallow's Wraith - re " Someone could even claim that since Warren states that she has Native American ancestry, she is unambigiously to be categorized" - As I mentioned above, I think "People of X descent" is a separate question. It strikes me that most arguments arise over "Person Y is of X ethnicity" categories, and not "Person Y is of X heritage" or "Person Y is of X descent". Our policy might make that distinction (i.e. it could explicitly say heritage and descent aren't ethnicity).

re "If someone has self-identified, does that make it unambiguous?" - I don't think so. Tiger Woods might say he considers himself solely Asian. I don't think that would make his race unambiguous in most peoples' minds. But the point is really to say "If it's not clear what ethnicity a subject should belong to, then we either don't categorize them or we let the subject decide". NickCT (talk) 18:21, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Let's say Tiger Woods was 50% Asian and identified as Asian (regardless of what the actual case is). Would this be "unambigious" and therefore he could be listed as an Asian-American sportsman? Or would we have to have the self-identification and then also fulfill criteria of relevance to notabiltiy (let's assume that him being Asian-American was generally speaking not notable to his relevance in this case). All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 18:28, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Ok, so let's lay out a flow chart here for making the decision -

Question 1 - Is subject Y's belonging to ethnic category X obvious/unambiguous/uncontested? (e.g. Does no one doubt that Woods is Asian American?) - If yes, then apply category X (e.g. Woods is Asian American). If no, move to question 2.

Question 2 - Can the subject be shown be shown to have openly self-identified with category X? (e.g. Has Woods said "I consider myself to be Asian American") - If yes, then move to question 3. If no, then don't apply category X.

Question 3 - If the subject's belonging to category X in anyway relevant to their notability? - If yes, then apply category X. If no then don't apply category X. NickCT (talk) 19:56, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Collect, just how far are you willing to take your desire for self-identification? To the point of absurdity, which is what we'd get with an absolute requirement?

For example: Pope Benedict is currently listed in Category:Roman Catholic writers. Would you require explicit self-identification from the current pope of the Roman Catholic Church to place that BLP in that religion-based category? Or do you think that occasionally, say, in determining the religion of ordained clergy members, that we need not always rely on explicit published statements of self-identification? I think Wikipedians could probably figure out whether the Pope is Catholic even without him making a statement to the press that says "I am a Catholic Christian". What do you think? WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:35, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

(NickCT) This is starting to remind me of tax loopholes. My economic Wikipedia theory is that the more clauses, rules, and regulations there are, the more discussions, arguments, and conflicts can arise from them, rather than less (presumably this chart would have to be in the policy page?) When you say "Does no one doubt that Woods is Asian American" - who is "no one"? Would it have to be someone in the mainstream media? Or just one editor who comes onto the page and says it? Do they have to be a registered editor or an anonymous will do? You can find one person who will believe, challenge, question, or bring up just about any opinion, topic, or dispute. Is this one person a big enough catalyst? Or do they have to have a good reason behind them? All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 20:38, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

@All Hallow's Wraith - I know what you mean. But "consensus" is quite a common term here on Wikipedia, right? Obviously the idea of consensus is a little vague, but the idea is basically that if an overwhelming majority supports something it consensus. So basically, "no one" means no significant portion of editors. In the final wording you could try to include the word "consensus", so that people get the idea. NickCT (talk) 23:38, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Hmmm, right, I forgot about the no consensus part, or missed it the first time. That sounds more okay. But of course, that's another loophole, isn't it? It means a discussion would continue for some time, and then if there's no consensus, it goes to these other criteria, and then there's a discussion about those. :-) (perhaps it should be ambigiuous and no consensus, so if consensus is reached that it is unambigious, it can stay).

BTW, are you saying this wording would apply to religion and sexual orientation? I certainly don't mind if it does, but I don't know about others. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 00:44, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

re "ambigiuous and no consensus" - Well I'd certainly be amenable to language that included both those words; however, I would have imagined if a something was unable to attain consensus it would necessarily be ambiguous. Per my logic above, unambiguous stuff (e.g. there are 12 inches in a foot), generally doesn't lack consensus.

re "religion and sexual orientation" - Yes. Frankly, I'd like to make these rules cover a large number of categorizations. If I had my druthers these rules would cover race, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity, national identity, and possibly even gender (that last one might seem a little silly, but I think it might be relevant in cases like Caster Semenya). The same principle underlies all these attributes. They can be ambiguous, and there is no universally accepted authority for who is the ultimate authority on defining them.

Realistically, my list of attributes might be a little too radical though. At the moment I really on want to push for ethnicity, religion and sexual orientation. They strike me as the most potentially ambiguous. NickCT (talk) 01:23, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

Well, I just thought that if there is consensus, someone could still say, it's ambigious, therefore it falls under that provision, wheres if it is ambigiuous "and" there's no consensus then both would have to go through before we get to the other criteria. Anyway, I don't know, like I said, I don't have a huge problem with these types of criteria, but I don't know about other people in this discussion. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 02:05, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

re "if there is consensus, someone could still say, it's ambigious" - That comment sorta confuses me. I think of consensus in "un-ambiguity" as the same thing. In other words, if I have 10 folks in a room, and I ask "What color are the walls in this room?" and there is consensus on the wall color (i.e. essentially everyone in the room agrees what color the walls are), then the color of walls is by definition, not ambiguous. To be "ambiguous" is to be subject to different interpretation. If everyone agrees or interprets something the same way (i.e. everyone agrees Tiger Woods is Asian) then it's not ambiguous. NickCT (talk) 02:50, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

Does everyone agree that Tiger Woods should be listed as an Asian-American athlete? Well, maybe that's a good litmus test. I probably would say yes. What is he, almost half? I guess the one Dutch great-grandparent there on the mother's side. Certainly it's more than 1/32. Anyway, like I said, I don't have a huge problem with most of this. I don't know who else is participating in this, though. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 03:03, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

Nice case as TW does not call himself "Asian-American." I believe he used "cablinasian" at one point - but he has stated he does not want to be categorised by race. Try "polyethnic" I suppose. Collect (talk) 11:22, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

re Tiger Woods - I think the rules I'd like to establish would argue that we not categorize TW, because 1) his ethnicity is fairly ambiguous & 2) he hasn't self-identified with a common category (I'm not sure we have any categories for "cablinasian". If we did, and TW had definitely self-identified, then I'd say, sure, categorize him).

re "I don't know who else is participating in this, though." - Consensus starts by building support for something among just a few editors. I'm going to work on some draft language and see if I can get the few people here who have chimed in to support it. NickCT (talk) 13:54, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

(od) Iteating my suggestion of 28 Feb:

Categories about a person's beliefs or orientation of any sort should rely specifically on self-identification by the person, and not on surmise by any other source, and then only if such beliefs or orientation are relevant to the person' notability.

Collect (talk) 14:11, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

Is this supposed to include ethnicity? If so, then of course I would oppose such a thing, because, even outside of self-identification, there is that relevance to notability thing which makes no sense to me at all. At least NickCT's proposal brought up the reasonable criteria of unambiguity and consensus. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 20:15, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

I've produced a rough draft at User:NickCT/sandbox. Take a look. If you feel you can improve it, be bold and do so. If you want to add a different suggested wording, feel free to put it in at the bottom of the page. NickCT (talk) 16:30, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

I would separate 1 and 2+3 more clearly. The "or" is there of course, but it's not as visible as it could be. In fact, I would take "unless the following conditions are met" out of the opening paragraph and simply replace it with 1. And following the explanation of 1, I would put in "if this is not the case, then the following criteria should be met" (followed by 2 and 3). I also think the examples are a little too clearcut. Maybe replace Martin Luther King, Jr. with, say, Will Smith? (since there is no ambiguity that he is an African-American actor). All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 20:24, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

BTW, I don't know if this makes me a radical, but do we need "relevance to notability" at all? I have never seen its useful purpose. If someone self-identifies as something, how could it possibly be a BLP violation to categorize them as that? It seems like an added timewaster that was snuck in here in 2006 when no one was looking. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 20:27, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

John Gnarph a climate researcher told an interviewer for Gay World (magazine) in 1985 that he was gay. He is now in the news for discovering that Vanillin seeding in clouds will cause rain. Should his BLP state that he is gay? Collect (talk) 20:33, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the question is? There was a discussion about this over Luke Evans, wherein Evans self-identified as gay in the early 2000s. The difference between Evans and Gnarph is that bits of evidence had come about that Evans was either "back in the closet" or that he was straight now, or bisexual. Evans' situation is explained in his article (in a manner I agree with). He is categorized as an LGBT actor today. (btw, part of the point is that what may be true of sexual orientiation would almost certainly not apply to ethnicity). All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 20:40, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

I can't help thinking that the question arises from someone's notion that being gay is "contentious". I don't get that. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 20:49, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

I think the Luke Evans example shows that it can be "complicated". That said, Luke Evans is categorized as a "Gay actor", something I don't necessarily support given the "recent developments". None of this has to do with notability, though. It is an issue of change of time and circumstance, something the policy does not even address. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 20:52, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

A big problem with most of what is being discussed is that it is instruction creep. Self-identification should be required before categorization by sexual-orientation. That is based on a rational reason: there is a strong history of calling people homosexual in the absence of self-identification. Sexual-orientation is commonly abused. Therefore we should not categorize by sexual-orientation in the absence of self-identification. But other attributes—religion, ethnicity, national identity are not commonly abused to nearly the extent of "sexual-orientation". There is no net benefit to requiring "self-identification" for religion, ethnicity, and national identity. These requirements hobble our categorization system. In most cases we know from reliable sources the attributes of religion, ethnicity, and national identity. The only problem is when reliable sources disagree with one another concerning religion, ethnicity, and national identity. Only when reliable sources are at odds with one another concerning these attributes should we turn to "self-identification". In such cases, if self-identification is not available, we should refrain from categorizing at all for the attributes of religion, ethnicity, and national identity. And of course we should not categorize for sexual-orientation in the absence of self-identification—ever.

Another thing that makes no sense to me is to require relevance to notability. That stifles the encyclopedic nature of the article. We the editors do not know what will be useful to a reader. We are not all-knowing and omnipotent. Readers will use this encyclopedia in ways that cannot be anticipated by us. There is an enormous amount of hubris, it seems to me, to think that we have impeccable knowledge of what is "relevant". Only when something clearly does not belong should the editorial decision be made to leave it out. The "instruction creep" of requiring "relevance" prior to categorization seems particularly wrongheaded. Bus stop (talk) 21:16, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

wiki tabloid

I have noticed that some editors would like to turn wikipedia into a tabloid. They want to include information about BLPs that isn't really needed in the articles and has nothing to do with their notability. I have seen pages and pages of heated discussion of whether to include the information or not. I think we should just leave out trivial things that don't relate to the notablity of the BLP. I doubt any readers look at wikipedia articles to find their sexual preference/religion/ethinicity etc, etc. I have seen edit wars, categories created and voted for deletion, etc, etc. If readers want tabloid information on a BLP then they should go to a tabloid site, not wikipedia. If there is debatable information we should err on the side of caution and just remove it. We could also create a new process to decide what is included and what is not. Pages of BS repeating the same points seems like a good waste of editing time. Any thoughts?--Canoe1967 (talk) 23:39, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

Canoe1967—I think we should compile information that not only is of obvious relevancy but also of potential relevancy. Bus stop (talk) 11:33, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

Possibly relevant RfC

Please see Talk:Bob Dylan#Request for comment. The point of contention is the question as to how we should describe and categorize a subject who had converted from Judaism to Christianity in the past, and has most recently taken part again in Jewish religious services. His most recent comments regarding his current religious beliefs are very noncomittal, and that has led to the question of how to describe and categorize him. I am not myself clearly sure that this policy as it is written makes any clear statements regarding how to proceed in this matter, and would welcome the informed opinions of those who frequent this page. Thank you for your attention. John Carter (talk) 18:58, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

BLP Backlog

Currently: 935. We need to keep an eye on this, it's ticking up a little again mostly from old unref bios being identified. Can't let it get out of hand again. Gigs (talk) 13:43, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

"If an allegation or incident is notable"

Is the word notable intended here in the wikipedia sense of notability? If not, can this be rephrased somehow? Or is it that only if an incident is notable should it definitely have a mention? IRWolfie- (talk)

No, it doesn't mean Wikipedia notability at all. I have long advocated for the elimination of the word notability/notable from this policy. Gigs (talk) 18:44, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Should we change it to "relevent and verifiable" instead? That wording would be better, and better capture the meaning without confusing the definition of "notable" as it relates to WP:N. --Jayron32 18:55, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

The mention of "notable" here protects us from E! Hollywood Gossip type material. Celebrity X getting a tooth recapped, being seen at a restaurant with Celebrity Y, or being seen in the stands at a sporting event might be both relevant and verifiable (E! and company really do report such things) but wouldn't be notable. It's important that BLP establishes that we can't include every single trivial fact about someone's life, even if it can be verified. This is especially important because the section in which "notable" appears refers specifically to negative information about public figures. It's important to tread carefully there. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 19:14, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

"Relevant and non-trivial", or "relevant and significant". Notable isn't a good word there.—S Marshall T/C 19:21, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Some of us dodge the notablity conundrum by using the word "noteworthy", which, at least, is not a Wikipedian term of art.--Bbb23 (talk) 19:22, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

I went through and changed "notable" to "noteworthy" when we don't really mean notability (when referring to individual claims, sources, or facts), and linked the instances when we really did mean Wikipedia notability to the notability guideline. It's borderline overlinking, but I think it's a worthy trade off to remove the ambiguity. Gigs (talk) 14:15, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

old Request for Comment BLP

A couple years ago, "Request for comment on Biographies of living people" was posted on many talk pages, perhaps specifically the main WikiProject talk pages. Should it remain at the top of those talk pages? --i suppose, as a reminder deemed always relevant. Alternatively, does it remain there by accident, where there was no reply --i suppose, because it was posted without any timestamp and archiving relies on one date.

Example: Wikipedia talk: WikiProject Children's literature, a page on which i made related comment yesterday. --P64 (talk) 17:44, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Old news, I see no reason why the notices can't be manually archived. J04n(talk page) 17:54, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Opinions about people stated as "fact"?

Should WP:BLP explicitly make clear that where a source is an editorial, blog or op-ed piece that any opinions stated therein about any living persons should be explicitly labeled as opinion, and that such sources should not be used as source for any remotely contentious "fact"? Recently several cases have been discussed where a person has said that "facts" given in an editorial, blog or op-ed piece should be accepted as "fact" even where they are not sourced (or even sourceable) to any other source. Collect (talk) 14:01, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

I think this is a judgment call, but op-ed pieces from reliable sources often have a mixture of opinion and fact. For example, so-and-so is conservative because he voted for x bill. The vote for x bill is a fact, whereas the conclusion is an opinion. We can cite the source for the fact, but need to tread more carefully regarding the opinion (depends on context, etc., as to whether it's worthy of being added to the article and how).--Bbb23 (talk) 14:19, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

If they "voted for a bill" then that should be reasonably establishable using a non-opinion source. This came up where Walter Mondale, in an op-ed piece, stated as a "fact" that the Kochs created ALEC and that they live in Florida. In fact, opinion pieces are generally not fact-checked, meaning using them for "facts" is a mockery of WP:RS. Cheers. Collect (talk)

I'm not sure why you think opinion pieces of otherwise reliable sources are not fact-checked.--Bbb23 (talk) 16:41, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

Generally, the relevant rules for citing such blog, op-ed pieces and similar pieces is Wikipedia:Verifiability#Newspaper and magazine blogs. This includes the rule that, when citing such pieces, you should attribute the statement to the writer and do not assume that what he or she says is 100% fact. Not sure how you'd like to incorporate it here on WP:BLP. Zzyzx11 (talk) 15:57, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

Depends on the blog.--Bbb23 (talk) 16:41, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

Collect, you're right. In case the claim is exceptional or contentious, one should avoid using editorials, blogs or op-ed pieces, even if the said editorial etc places the exceptional claim as a fact. Editorials, blogs, op-ed pieces do not qualify as exceptional sources. I had added some critical additions to our Exceptional policy some time back. This included ensuring that multiple sources are used for exceptional claims and that challenged claims that are based purely on primary sources or those with a conflict of interest are considered red flags. Wifione ^Message 03:46, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

• http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/sylvester_stallone_son_found_dead_cVP2gGx7BBzgeNax2Dm3JL is a fine example. I don't know how credible the site is but they cover their ass by saying 'sources say'. This was actually used as a source in an article. The article has seen 250+ edits since the 13th and has correct information now after who knows how many crap entries. What we should do is add a policy that only allows edits sourced from credible sources. Anyone can search for crap information on other sites and add it to articles. If it isn't reported by a 'major' source it should be deleted. If the major sources don't consider it notable then neither should we. Also see my statements in the two sections lower on this page.--Canoe1967 (talk) 02:37, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure whether scare-quoting "facts" covers false information about clear matter of fact, or poor judgment and pure bluster in treating something as matter of fact. U.S. illustration follows.

[Afterthought. This is like an essay but ends when the writer tired, having shifted to the question which facts are relevant in a particular biography.]

I suppose that George Will's staff checks facts and genuinely discovers facts about baseball history. They make mistakes but so do obituaries published by the most reliable newspapers that carry his columns.

If Will calls Doe, the subject of our biography, "the best catcher of his generation" (baseball) or "the most important woman in the Republican party" (politics), that is notable and may adequately be handled by naming and linking George Will in the biography. If Will merely labels the politician Doe "conservative", I think that is adequately handled by naming and linking him in the reference. When is it useful to discuss in the biography body or footnotes the factual status of these matters? That is one issue. I think the answer must be almost never.

A second issue is how to resolve disputes in talk space, by coaching each other re conservativism, George Will, and so on, until we agree that the easy-going approach is adequate or we decide that it isn't adequate in this case. (I have no experience.)

3. When is it notable regarding Doe that Will called him a "good catcher"? Maybe that's never notable. Or labeled her "conservative"? If she is a judge, or capitalist, or novelist rather than a politician, that may not be notable unless Will has identified some context.

Offhand I suppose we do and will include such observations in biographies and remove them when "anyone" objects (or almost anyone strongly objects) that conservativism is irrelevant here without context. It's a losing game to coach the readers of the biography on such matters, even if one can do it without Original Research (write a succinct, sourced footnote treatment of the argument that conservativism is crucial in judges at this level, or that novelists are important teachers of political ideology, etc).

... --P64 (talk) 17:59, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

P.S. Do we have any guidance about the use of qualifiers in references? For example, "Title" (obituary). Author. ...; or "Title" (cartoon), (catalog record), (column), (directory), (editorial), (home page), and so on. --P64 (talk) 17:59, 19 July 2012 (UTC)