Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons/Contest

"Tagged as such"

We don't tag unreferenced stuff from BLPs. We remove it. Isn't this competition just encouraging people to leave crap in articles? --TS 14:59, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Either I misunderstand you, or you misunderstand what's written here. Not sure which. --Dweller (talk) 15:08, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Did you think Casliber is suggesting we tag the article, hang about 4 weeks and then return in a blaze of glory? Not how I read it - I read it as fixing an article someone else has tagged in the past. --Dweller (talk) 15:09, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Well they shouldn't have done so, and the first thing to do if you encounter such an item is to remove it, not treat it as the starting point for a competition. --TS 15:18, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Well, I'd argue that not everything that's unreferenced in a BLP should be removed on sight. That would have reduced this to two lines, about the man's school and his wife, making it speediable, given it had no notability claim. Second, thousands of such tags already exist. And third, it's obviously far better for such material to be referenced than removed. --Dweller (talk) 15:26, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure how I feel about competitions about something as important as this. I'm tending to think I agree with Tony here... ++Lar: t/c 15:21, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Does it do any harm? Does it do any good? --Dweller (talk) 15:26, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

If it encourages someone to leave something needful undone they otherwise would have done, it does harm. If it encourages someone to do something needful they otherwise would have left undone, it does good. I'm not convinced it completely incents the correct behaviour. But I'm far from certain. ++Lar: t/c 16:33, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm truly perplexed why you and Tony would think that an idea that's about fixing things might encourage people to leave things? --Dweller (talk) 22:44, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

OK, the point is there are times I have read material which I know or suspect is true but I don't have a reference handy. This is about improving such cases and not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Not for all cases obviously. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 22:54, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

PS: I think about 70% of the pedia is still unreferenced, so adhering strictly to Tony's ideal above would result in some rather drastic pruning. MAybe I need to find some examples. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:11, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

PPS: Part of this is about influencing editor behaviour with positive rather than negative reinforcement. Given that it is apparently a given that a proportion of WPers have issues with authority, dictating what to do to them may not be as effective as something like this. (psychology 101...) Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:17, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Sorry I dropped the ball here, too much LEGO for christmas! I'm not opposed to positive reinforcement per se. In general it's better than punitive. My concern here, and maybe I've not articulated it well is that it moves us in the "reward/trinket seeking" direction a bit more than I care for. I think we have some more of that than we should already. I'll have to dig up the ref to something I saw about this that was rather concerning. But if this competition ONLY will encourage good things, and no gaming, then yes, lets. ++Lar: t/c 04:04, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

I can see where you are coming from and was planning to see how it pans out; I am intrigued - if you can find the ref I would be keen to see. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 04:43, 30 December 2008 (UTC)