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There is back and forth at Lana Rhoades, an American porn star, with issues of WP:BLPNAME and WP:BLPGOSSIP. The BLPNAME issue is whether the birth name should be published[1] while WP:BLPGOSSIP issue is whether she had a son with some undisclosed NBA player.[2][3] Morbidthoughts (talk) 07:54, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

I also removed, since it doesnt improve the article by stating the unnamed fathers profession, and cannot be proven. The cited source isn't a reliable source as far as I can tell, either.

As for the name, I am unsure how that one would work. I know her name has been released recently, but along with most adult performers, that doesn't mean much since every day sources release their public names as soon as they find them, and if ever there was a profession where someone values their privacy and tries to shield their private information from getting out, I would say it's the adult entertainment business.

Awshort (talk) 22:32, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

Why exactly is the magazine Semana not a reliable source? Decades old magazine, a known history of top level journalism, and a large number of awards over the years for its work. Silverseren^C 00:32, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

That article was deleted many times, never should have been allowed to come back from draftspace. Zaathras (talk) 23:52, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

There are a number of reliable sources covering her and her life over years. Just because you don't like the subject matter doesn't make her non-notable. Silverseren^C 00:29, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

• Is there any indication that the birth name is contentious? Is her birth name something she doesn't want known? Otherwise, why wouldn't it be included? As for her son, she's the one that made the statement herself openly about her son and his father. Why wouldn't the general statement of hers, as attributed to her, be included? Silverseren^C 00:29, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Her birth name is in the subtitle of the Playboy article. That's the one source that's been completed agreed upon being a RS. I don't understand why it's contentious either. Mbdfar (talk)

Playboy may be reliable for their serious "articles" but not the text that accompanies their layouts which tend to be promotional.[4] Morbidthoughts (talk) 02:23, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

I don't see the relevance of that linked discussion. What part of your statement does it support? Mbdfar (talk) 03:27, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

The bios that accompany the paid photoshoots are not independent or reliable. Several editors commented on that. Morbidthoughts (talk) 17:25, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

@Mbdfar: perhaps the linked discussion is not the best discussion to illustrate the issue. However, I would interpret that Playboy thing as a sub-headline which means it's not reliable per WP:HEADLINES i.e. part of WP:RS. It doesn't matter if it's Playboy or the New York Times; or if it's on a living person's real name or whether the sky is blue. Nil Einne (talk) 11:00, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

I remember reading a news article years ago (can't find it now) which was all about the fact that people adding the real names of pornographic actresses to Wikipedia (often poorly sourced) resulted in their real-life harassment. For that reason, there should be serious discretion regarding the inclusion of their real names unless they are very widely known. As for the father of the child allegedly being an NBA player, meh. It feels like trivia, but I wouldn't strongly object to its inclusion either. Hemiauchenia (talk) 00:51, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

I agree with these concerns Tristario (talk) 00:52, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

I've managed to find the article again, it was published in 2019 in Jezebel "Wikipedia Exposes Porn Performers to Stalking, Harassment—And Visits From CPS" . Hemiauchenia (talk) 00:54, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

WP:BLPNAME When the name of a private individual has not been widely disseminated or has been intentionally concealed, such as in certain court cases or occupations, it is often preferable to omit it, especially when doing so does not result in a significant loss of context. WP:BLPPRIVACY With identity theft a serious ongoing concern, many people regard their full names and dates of birth as private. Wikipedia includes full names and dates of birth that have been widely published by reliable sources, or by sources linked to the subject such that it may reasonably be inferred that the subject does not object to the details being made public.

Are these conditions met? Tristario (talk) 00:52, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Her real name is openly mentioned at the beginning of a number of reliable sources covering her going back years. Such as this, this, this, this, and this, to name a few. I also see no evidence of her concealing it or not wanting it known, so this doesn't appear to be a BLP issue on that front. Silverseren^C 01:00, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

From what I just looked up, the vast majority of sources that discuss her don't use her real name. There are a few here and there that use it (mostly unreliable). I think I would rather have some clear indication that she would not object to her real name being publicly well known Tristario (talk) 01:28, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Can you explain which of the sources I linked would be unreliable? They're all well known newspapers and magazines. Silverseren^C 01:34, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

I wasn't referring specifically to your sources, I was referring to the sources in my own review, although the WP:DAILYSTAR is unreliable. It's not just a question of if we have a reliable source, but whether the privacy considerations in the policy are met, which is a higher hurdle. I think we'd need it to either be clearly widely disseminated (which from my own review it doesn't appear to be) or to clearly be able to tell she wouldn't object to its inclusion. Tristario (talk) 01:46, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

I guess I'm still a little confused. So the majority of sources you looked at, which you describe as unreliable, didn't mention her real name. But the multiple reliable sources I presented did use her real name. Shouldn't the latter be more relevant than the former? Silverseren^C 01:50, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, I meant most of the sources I saw that did mention her real name were unreliable. Besides that, in english-language sources at least, it seemed the vast majority did not mention her real name. So I don't think it meets the standard of "widely disseminated" that we would want to have here. Tristario (talk) 01:56, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Can you give some examples of the reliable ones you were looking at? I've found that she's covered far more in Spanish language sources than English ones. And the article currently reflects that. Silverseren^C 02:00, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

If we're mainly basing the conclusion that an American person's (who speaks english) real name is widely disseminated on its inclusion in spanish language sources then I don't think that meets the standard of "widely disseminated" we're looking for. Most of the sources I saw were unreliable, I'd have to go through them and figure out which are or aren't reliable. Tristario (talk) 02:15, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Language of sources is irrelevant to practically any considerations we made in regards to articles. Non-English sources are the equivalent to English ones for anything involving policy, including BLPNAME. Silverseren^C 02:17, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

per WP:RSUE we do actually prefer english-language sources. We need to take these privacy considerations seriously. Her name is not widely disseminated as far as I can see. Obviously if it were we'd also expect to see that reflected in english lanuage sources. Tristario (talk) 02:29, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Going by WP:BLPNAME, does not including the name detract from the article? In my opinion, no.

Going a step further into WP:BLPPRIVACY, can it be infered that she doesn't object to her real name being public? In my opinion, no. She still goes by Lana Rhoades, and even after retiring from her previous profession, she is using that title. She doesn't refer to herself by her real name, that I could find, on her podcast or in interviews. Other than a casual mention in the Playboy article, I can find nothing showing that she wants it out there.

I also see no evidence of her concealing it or not wanting it known, so this doesn't appear to be a BLP issue on that front. The fact that she herself hasn't mentioned it, chosen to go by it in appearences or interviews, or went by her birth name as opposed to her 'professional name' should give some indication that she does not want it known.

Back to my original point - how can it be reasonably determined that she has no objections to her name being out there, and why should it be included in the article? Simply stating that it was in newspapers from different countries answers neither of those things. Regarding the question you asked about why shouldn't it be listed what her childs fathers profession is, I tend to go with WP:ONUS - While information must be verifiable for inclusion in an article, not all verifiable information must be included. Consensus may determine that certain information does not improve an article. Such information should be omitted or presented instead in a different article. It comes off as a tidbit of trivia which does absolutely nothing to improve the article in my eyes, since it wouldn't matter if the guy was an astronaut or a race car driver, since he is unknown and although it is stated by the source themself, it cannot be verified as being true/false on what job he has.

Awshort (talk) 10:02, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Per WP:RSUE, when they are available and of equal quality and relevance. As you've repeatedly pointed out, English language coverage of her is almost entirely unreliable sources, with Playboy being one of the few exceptions (and which does state her real name). Meanwhile, the reliable sources in Spanish use her real name rather widely in general. Silverseren^C 02:34, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Whether the sources are foreign matters to me in terms of assigning weight on a privacy issue to an American subject whose popularity/notability is derived from her American work. American RS do not tend to cover the subject of pornography because of its sensationalist nature, and it is inappropriate to use the more relaxed standards of media outside of the United States to uhh backdoor this content. Morbidthoughts (talk) 02:36, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

The fact that foreign language sources are more likely to be willing to cover subjects like pornography makes them have "relaxed standards", ie worse journalistic standards? Or what are you saying here? Because the fact that they cover porn actors doesn't make them worse in any way, nor less reliable, nor less journalistic in their coverage. Silverseren^C 02:38, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Sources foreign to the subject (with certain exceptions) should be given less WP:WEIGHT and is not a comment on whether the source is reliable in terms of its fact-checking.Morbidthoughts (talk) 02:59, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Where is that stated anywhere in policy? RSUE merely says that when sources of equal quality and relevance exist, we should prefer to use the English one as the reference so our readers can more easily read it. But that has absolutely nothing to do with WEIGHT or anything else. Silverseren^C 03:12, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

It's how I interpret weight with respect to BLPPRIVACY/BLPNAME. No, I don't believe these foreign sources are of equal relevance to the subject. For example, the La Semana[5] the foreign source that was used as the backdoor citation to the NBA player issue is a straight translation of a WP:NYPOST article without credit.[6] Meanwhile, this "El Universal" article[7] that was cited in the article is based off of the Daily Star.[8] This La Republica article cited[9] is based on another Daily Star article.[10] This "La Nacion" article cited[11] is based off of this Daily Star article[12]. This La Nacion cited article[13] is derived from this American article[14] Morbidthoughts (talk) 10:07, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

I would hesitate to cite any article, whether in English or not, that amounts to a rehash of a WP:DAILYSTAR article. The contents of such sources are probably WP:UNDUE and WP:EXCEPTIONAL, especially if we're using the equal quality and relevance standard. I've looked at a couple of the cited articles (La Nación and El Universal) and they don't seem to contain any new reporting or analysis; they're basically churnalism from a deprecated tabloid. I would definitely not include a subject's actual name based solely on such sources. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 15:17, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

So should content sourced to these rehashes be removed since they are not intellectually independent from the Daily Star? It feels like source washing to keep them in. Every foreign article here that is not attributed to an author is suspected to be derived, and I'm amazed that these supposedly reputable foreign sources would not properly attribute their articles. Morbidthoughts (talk) 05:32, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

I would rather not use articles that are just rehashed from unreliable sources. We want to have solid sourcing for BLPs. And this seems questionable Tristario (talk) 12:53, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

I'm a little surprised her birth name would be omitted from the article; she uses it in some public contexts: Here, here, here are mentions in a then boyfriend's YouTube vlog (in the last clip, she even expresses a preference to be introduced just as Amara Maple). There are other WP:SELFPUB sources available for things like her son's name and probably for (can't find right now) when he was born and the speculation about the father's identity (indirect reference here). Hameltion (talk | contribs) 21:18, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

Seeing no objections, added birth name and DOB – sourcing could still be improved but WP:SELFPUB works well enough here. Hameltion (talk | contribs) 18:59, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

I dont believe that multiple videos from a vlogger count as a reliable source, but I could be mistaken. Regardless, I think it is safe to assume that someone either currently dating, or who had previpusly dated, a professional of any sort who went by a stage name would refer to said person by their 'real name'. I can't honestly think Hulk Hogan walks around his house telling people to call him Hulk instead of Terry, or that rappers go by their performing name while in relationships, etc. With that being said, there has been nothing shown yet that she wants it out there, or has introduced herself as her real name.

The general consensus abkve has seemingly been to omit it. I agree with that, since nothing from her has shown she wants it out.

Awshort (talk) 19:49, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

@Awshort: The discussion above is mostly about the quality of various news sources. So yes, it is mistaken to dismiss the validity of the WP:ABOUTSELF/WP:BLPSPS sources in my edit. WP:BLPPRIVACY says: Wikipedia includes full names and dates of birth that have been ... published ... by sources linked to the subject such that it may reasonably be inferred that the subject does not object to the details being made public. Rewatch this clip for an example of that. Hameltion (talk | contribs) 21:08, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

WP:ABOUTSELF applies to material about the publisher of the self-published source, which is not Lana Rhoades for any of the YouTube clips. Nor can we reasonably infer that Rhoades does not object to the contents of Mike Majlak's channel. Please find better sources. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 16:40, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

That seems like nitpicking to me; she is clearly involved in the production of the vlogs she appears in. I encourage you to rewatch in particular the timestamped clip in my last comment. If that doesn't suit you, though coverage of her is limited in traditional media as noted above, a search finds a mention of her birth name in Grazia UK, which seems reliable. Hameltion (talk | contribs) 19:36, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

Is there a source actually published by herself where she indicates she's okay with people knowing her real name? Tristario (talk) 03:56, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

Why "published by herself" and not sources of her but published as a collaboration? Seems like an arbitrary distinction. Located some vlog content in which she talks about her name: here ("Am-uh-ruh or Uh-mar-uh? That's the same name"), here ("It's Am-uh-ruh"). And two more clearly OK introductions of her full name here, here. If she objected to use of her birth name, it presumably wouldn't appear in this quantity. Hameltion (talk | contribs) 07:02, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

@Hameltion: Why "published by herself" and not sources of her but published as a collaboration? @Sangdeboeuf: did a good job above of explaining the exact reasoning of why it seemingly fails WP:BLPPRIVACY and WP:ABOUTSELF, but from your comments above, you seem to be saying a primary source is the same as a self published source, which is incorrect. A vlog that she appears on, published by someone else, would fall under WP:PRIMARYSOURCE. Of major importance are two portions of that - First, # Do not analyze, evaluate, interpret, or synthesize material found in a primary source yourself; instead, refer to reliable secondary sources that do so. and secondly, Use extra caution when handling primary sources about living people; see WP:Biographies of living persons § Avoid misuse of primary sources, which is policy.

Basically, there needs to be something showing she doesn't object to her name being out there, from her. See the following regarding YouTube being used as a RS here. The Grazia article was a brief overview of her, but also casually threw her name out there, which cannot reasonably be seen as 'she was okay with it' when she had zero input on that article. I think the comment you made above sums it up rather well though coverage of her is limited in traditional media as noted above, that her real name is generally not made public and reinforces that is should be left out in accordance with WP:BLPNAME.

Awshort (talk) 09:38, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

I'm not even sure if that's her real name rather than just another alias. Morbidthoughts (talk) 17:46, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

Then a footnote would solve any problem. RodRabelo7 (talk) 20:18, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

I get what you mean, but I disagree that citing the vlog for her name violates any of these policies. A vlog in which she appears is not some random primary source; I would treat it as similar to (e.g.) a reality TV show (which it basically is), where participants are aware that everything recorded may be aired. Nothing at WP:RSPYT discourages citing this kind of (quasi) ABOUTSELF content. Hameltion (talk | contribs) 20:15, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

Most videos on YouTube are anonymous, self-published, and unverifiable, and should not be used at all. A vlog that is self-published by a third party (i.e. Majlak) is not like a reality TV show on a professional network. The idea that these videos are published as a collaboration seems entirely made up. A person talking in front of a camera doesn't necessarily have any role in publishing the resulting material. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 23:44, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

Self-publishing concerns aside, When the name of a private individual has not been widely disseminated or has been intentionally concealed, such as in certain court cases or occupations, it is often preferable to omit it. Rhoades is notable mainly as a porn actress under a pseudonym, not her real name, and the Grazia piece doesn't really amount to wide dissemination of the name in reliable sources. Omitting the name does not deprive readers of any meaningful information, and including it has dubious benefits at best. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 23:53, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

I agree that her name should be on the article. RodRabelo7 (talk) 05:04, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

Redirect

• It was brought to my attention that a redirect from her birth/real name was created during the course of this discussion; I am not particularly familiar with how the potential BLP policy issues may relate to this redirect, but I wanted to note that the redirect currently exists and may be a relevant consideration during or after the conclusion of this discussion. Thank you, Beccaynr (talk) 17:56, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

 You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Kenny Omega#LGBT paragraph in Omega's personal life section. CeltBrowne (talk) 11:34, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

The lead of Joey Gibson (political activist) was changed last month[15] from "right-wing activist" (based on Reuteurs description and which stood for at least two years) to "far-right provocateur" (based on OPB description). I changed the WP:LABEL back when I noticed it and was reverted by Beyond My Ken without an edit summary. What is the appropriate label here? Morbidthoughts (talk) 03:12, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Since BMK is still reverting without discussing I've reverted them. IMO if they do it again without comment they should be indefinitely blocked until they learn how Wikipedia and especially BLP works. That said, as the founder of an alt-right group which our article does acknowledge, it's IMO no big deal. Still we should be going by what most sources say not a select few. Nil Einne (talk) 07:33, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

BMK's edits on Gibson were previously discussed on BLPN.[16][17][18] They should be blocked from this article at least. You want to comment, Hipal? Morbidthoughts (talk) 07:59, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Although BMKs source isn't very good the Guardian twice describes him as far right [19] [20], Washington Post has ring wing extremist [21], the Independent has Right wing Activist in the title but leader of a Far Right group in the body [22]. There also appears to be no end of sources calling Patriot Pray far right, so I don't think it's a BLP issue to say the leader of a far right group is far right. bMK should stop trying to editwar and just use better sourcing. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 19:21, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Well our article already says he founded the "alt-right group Patriot Prayer" in the same sentence so I think the nature of Patriot Prayer is sufficiently described. I disagree on your point though. While it's not such a big deal in such a case, it's of course possible that the founder of a alt-right or far-right group is not themselves considered alt-right or far-right. So we do need sufficient sources which describe Gibson as far-right and not simply Patriot Prayer. If all we have are sources which describe the group they founded as far-right, then we can call the group they founded far-right but cannot describe the individual as far-right. The concerns are not as great as they are when there is no association, but they remain there since we're making a flawed WP:OR assumption. Nil Einne (talk) 19:39, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

But there are reliable sources calling him far right so my second point is only a matter of discussion. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 19:54, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Yes but you said "There also appears to be no end of sources calling Patriot Pray far right, so I don't think it's a BLP issue to say the leader of a far right group is far right." It is not a BLP issue to describe Joey Gibson as far right if there is sufficient sourcing which describe Joey Gibson as far right. But it is a BLP issue, a more minor one sure, but still a BLP issue, if we're calling him far right because sources describe a group he founded as far-right. This is BLPN so we need to be clear about when we can and cannot describe someone as X. We can describe someone as X when we have sufficient sourcing which say they are X. But we cannot do so simply because we have sources which describe Y which they founded/hosted/were a member of/supported/whatevered as X. An exception may be made for cases where being a member of Y is defining for X, e.g. of someone founded a Christian or Muslim sect or whatever it's perhaps okay to say they are Christian or Muslim. But this doesn't apply to things like wide political ideologies. Nil Einne (talk) 21:11, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

I agree with @ActivelyDisinterested that there is probably enough to label him "far-right." I mean, we have sources that call him far right and say he founded a far right group, that seems enough for the label. I also think activist is better than provocateur (better encyclopedic tone). TulsaPoliticsFan (talk) 19:46, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Maybe trimming the lead would get rid of the problem. Changing is an American right-wing activist[2] and the founder of the alt-right group Patriot Prayer to is the founder of the far right group Patriot Prayer. This removes the label while being easily referenced. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 19:59, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

That seems fine. Frankly I'm one of those who think we label people too much when it isn't necessary because the rest if the text is more meaningful, and our tendency to do this has gotten progressively worse. Nil Einne (talk) 21:27, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

I believe these are editor tendencies to WP:RGW for subjects they don't like. For example, in this article, Patriot Prayer, and Cider Riot, editors were quick to update the details of the criminal allegations against Gibson and his group from the May Day brawl,[23] but crickets chirped when Gibson was acquitted in July 2022 without an update for months which causes WP:BLPBALANCE issues.[24][25][26] Morbidthoughts (talk) 22:33, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

At this link you will see where an ip address inserted a lot of extremely negative statements that are not reflected in the sources. Per BLP policy, I'm going to revert it, but really I think this needs more eyes in case I miss something, so I thought I would mention it here. Jimbo Wales (talk) 11:39, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Last night I removed a date of birth that had been added to Gilmer McCormick along with the accompanying citation to "State of Kentucky. Kentucky, U.S., Birth Index, 1911-1999. Center for Health Statistics, California Department of Health Services, Kentucky, U.S." I posted an explanation on the article's talk page, quoting part of WP:BLPPRIMARY about not using public records to support assertions about a living person.

Tonight I found that my removal of the date and citation had been reverted and my post on the talk page had been removed. I have restored both changes, but I don't know how long they will remain.

The edit comes from an IP address, so I can't discuss the situation directly with the person. Does anyone have any thoughts about what to do in this situation? Eddie Blick (talk) 02:01, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

@Teblick While you can't ping them, it is possible to attempt discussion: User talk:99.245.174.5. It seems likely the IP discussing there is the same person, since that's also about DOB. Per the WP:TPO edit they obviously know you attempted to discuss, so if they continue, I'd ask for a block at WP:AIV. Ping @C.Fred if you wish to comment. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 10:46, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

@Gråbergs Gråa Sång Thanks for the mention. I've added the article to my watchlist, —C.Fred (talk) 13:18, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

Thank you, @Gråbergs Gråa Sång. I appreciate the feedback. And thanks, @C.Fred, for keeping an eye on the situation also. Eddie Blick (talk) 18:42, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

This is the ip of Cobretti1 who was perm blocked for constantly using birth indexes. Morbidthoughts (talk) 21:36, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

If that is so, block away. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:30, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Report at AIV went stale.[27] Morbidthoughts (talk) 20:04, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

The IP address is still at it.[28][29] Morbidthoughts (talk) 01:54, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Hyde is a comedian who appears to be a performance artist who uses shock humor for satirical purposes based on the sources cited. I asked on the talk page why the individual was categorized under Category:Alt-right based on clickbait articles lacking evidence proving that he or his comedy group Million Dollar Extreme are alt-right, and I still have yet to be pointed to concrete evidence proving that this individual or his group are alt-right. The allegations may originate from a BuzzFeed News article that did not prove it's allegations, or they may come from Hyde's fans who are known to prank mainstream news outlets by making it seem like Hyde is a mass shooter every time a mass killing occurs, with Bill O'Reilly once claiming on Twitter that a mass shooter was "white supremacist Sam Hyde", and it seems that no one investigated the claims further and simply repeated them. I asked someone to either provide concrete evidence of Hyde or MDE being alt-right or to explain that the categorization is for another reason that is not actually calling this individual or his group alt-right and no one would give a reasonable explanation. So I'd like more people to give input on this because it seems to be a potential BLP confliction. RockabillyRaccoon (talk) 16:34, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

Just a reminder that no one is required to provide "concrete evidence" of anything. All that is required is that the information is sufficiently supported by reliable secondary sources. Frankly I can't be bothered getting in to the category issue. However I see no reason to think that pranks surrounding Hyde being a mass shooter have anything to do with why he has been called alt-right. Instead it seems far more likely it relates to things like him appearing in blackface screaming at a woman, allegations coded racist messages had to be removed from the show and him donating money to Andrew Anglin than asking a journalist who asked him about it if they were Jewish. Note while the last may be after most of the controversy it re-enforces the fact that whether for the shock factor or other reasons, Hyde does stuff that associates him with the alt-right noting that even if it was just done for shock reasons, Anglin still received $5000 and a journalist still had their possible Jewishness used against them. (As for your suggestion it wasn't Hyde who donated the money, well if no source has raised this possibility not even Hyde himself then yes our article will treat it like he is the one.) Nil Einne (talk) 19:32, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

About the "screaming at a woman while wearing blackface" sketch, I think the writer was referring to this video, which, unless there's another video that I didn't see, I don't think this description is technically accurate, because on my video monitor, it did not look like he was wearing blackface in this sketch, and he wasn't screaming at the woman. The sketch was that this character was breaking up with this woman and he has a vaguely ethnic accent. RockabillyRaccoon (talk) 14:05, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

Also, for what it's worth, I have seen one stand-up performance where Hyde claimed to have Jewish ancestry, but I understand that this is probably a joke about people accusing him of being a Nazi and that stand-up performances aren't reliable sources. But I wasn't linking to any of these videos for sources, just to illustrate why I have doubts about the alt-right categorization. The same as my mentioning of how other comedians that are much more mainstream have made many of the same kinds of jokes as Hyde without being categorized as alt-right, such as Wonder Showzen or Eric Andre or Norm Macdonald. That doesn't have anything to do with sourcing, it's just how the balance of coverage is presented. RockabillyRaccoon (talk) 14:09, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

These BuzzFeed and Atlantic sources are adequate for the characterization, but for the article's lead itself you could say something like (just for an example, this is not polished) "Sam Hyde is a comedian [...]. He and his content have been characterized by BuzzFeed and The Atlantic as alt-right" if there is some dispute over this, like if he denies being alt-right. I'm not sure that this aspect of Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Words_to_watch has been firmly decided. From what I know about him, I don't think he would deny being alt-right, because part of his humor is that he doesn't usually confirm or deny when he is being serious. My personal opinion is that this is a completely accurate description of him (alt-right). I am not familiar with the standards for inclusion in categories. —DIYeditor (talk) 15:34, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

My personal opinion is that Hyde thinks that the media categorizing him as alt-right is funny because it reveals the absurdity of the people categorizing him as alt-right, because he probably thinks that people that people in the media do not understand comedy and that writers for these publications are out of touch with what most people see as comedy and that the writers for mainstream publications see performance art as being tantamount to white nationalism, and that such a categorization, to him, is a joke, because it reveals that people are willing to jump to such conclusions without evidence. Hyde mentioned in interviews that extreme racist content was used as punchlines in The Eric Andre Show and was widely understood to be ironic, and the underlying theme of part of Hyde's performance art may be left-wing people's biases against conservatives, similar to how Borat reveals other people's racist biases with Sacha Baron Cohen's ironic displays of anti-Semitism in character. Hyde even identified as being apolitical or disinterested in politics in one out of character interview. My concern is that categorizing him as alt-right might be fancruft because the perception of him as a white nationalist seems to me to be part of the joke, like the idea that if someone voted for Donald Trump and someone in the media proclaims that it makes them a neo-Nazi. I'm concerned this categorization is just contributing to the performance artist's joke about what he perceives as biases of organizations including Wikipedia, rather than what can actually be proven by evidence. Hyde might think it's hilarious that he would continue to be categorized as alt-right even after being featured in a multipart documentary on the Epic Meal Time YouTube channel where he trained a Jewish influencer, Harley Morenstein, for a boxing match, because his performance art plays heavily on people not getting the joke and reacting in a way that he considers to be proving his point. I'm thinking of Poe's law in regard to this categorization. RockabillyRaccoon (talk) 18:53, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

Thinking Poe's law might apply to Hyde indicates to me someone who hasn't seen much of his material or isn't familiar with human expression, to be honest. —DIYeditor (talk) 23:45, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

How would you describe irony being taken at face value without taking into consideration the possibility of satire, since it's pretty clear that Hyde's stand-up and sketches are sarcastic? RockabillyRaccoon (talk) 00:10, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

"Getting" Sam Hyde seems to me to entail recognizing that he is more or less serious, as far as someone who is mocking a lot of things is serious. It doesn't matter what you or I think though, we have two WP:RS that say he is alt-right - they also recognized that he is more or less being serious and using comedy as a veil, in an attempt to be funny while doing so. —DIYeditor (talk) 01:04, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Shane Gillis, a mainstream comedian, hosted Hyde on Gillis' podcast. It's pretty clear from watching this that Hyde is not being serious. Your assertion that he is being serious is pretty comical considering the considerable evidence that he isn't being serious. And if having a source claiming that he is alt-right is the same as being evidence, doesn't that make Sam Hyde the shooter in every mass shooting where he is reported as being the shooter? RockabillyRaccoon (talk) 03:28, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

I'm going to assume good faith here but what you are doing could be seen as Hyde-esque or "fancruft" as you termed it yourself. You could be seen as doing this "plausible" deniability joke yourself. He basically has this one joke, aside from the joke of being crude, abusive or insensitive. And certainly, sometimes he mocks himself. Sam Hyde knows, we know, the two RSs know, and his alt-right audience know who is primarily laughing at his jokes. He gives facial expressions meant to convey this which are not hard to "decipher" and not meant to be hard to decipher. I am dismayed that someone could honestly mistake that.

We also need to be aware of WP:FORUM and WP:OR. Analyzing a primary source (youtube video) for what you or I think is earnestness or sarcasm is totally irrelevant here. We go by reliable sources. If we look at the shooter hoaxes, we can find RS coverage stating they are hoaxes. End of story. —DIYeditor (talk) 04:02, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

I feel like you came into this discussion with a preexisting bias because you've been unable to explain how the sources cited prove that Sam Hyde is alt-right when there's literally no evidence that he is and plenty of evidence that he isn't? RockabillyRaccoon (talk) 04:37, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Not seeing a problem with this. We don't need to get into whether comedy that "punches down" or otherwise bullies the already bullied is actually bigoted or "just satirical/ironic" (it seems to get the same laughs from the same folks either way, after all) to see that multiple RS have used the term "alt-right" here. It's certainly a valid conversation as to how meaningful the term "alt-right" is in 2023, granted (it's kind of melted into steaming pools of "anti-woke comedy," "masculism," and various forms of "far-right" like white nationalism), but these labels were used at a time when it did have a clearer meaning (which isn't to say clear -- it was always a grab bag of racists, sexists, trolls, and chaos monkeys united by fondness for extremism, Trump, and owning libs for the lulz). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 03:00, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

You don't see a problem with the fact that there's no evidence that Hyde is alt-right? RockabillyRaccoon (talk) 03:30, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

When reliable sources directly contradict each other, it's worth getting into how to negotiate the perspectives. Once in a while when something in a publication we typically consider reliable is demonstrably false we might say the articles containing false claims cease to be RS. In this case, whether or not Hyde is truly "alt-right" is not the kind of thing that's falsifiable -- there's no objective measure. The question is whether we can verify that reliable sources call him that. Then, if there are sources which directly contradict it (not by failing to call him alt-right but debating whether he is) we can figure out the best way to present it (probably attributing both perspectives). This "there's no evidence" thing is just WP:OR though. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 14:24, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

I believe that if a reliable source says an uncontroversial statement like that Michael Jackson is a pop singer, it's sufficient enough to believe the claim, but I need more than someone's word to believe that someone is a white nationalist. RockabillyRaccoon (talk) 20:16, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Well, sure, we need multiple people's words, but the label is alt-right, not white nationalist. It does raise the interesting question of how to handle labels that were used in one context, before the meaning changed somewhat. I know our article says alt-right=white nationalist, but that wasn't actually true in the early days of "alt-right", which included e.g. Gamergaters, for whom race wasn't even in the conversation (except in some cases as an extension of what later became "anti-wokeness"). I don't know. The sources are good for the label at this time, but you may want to open a discussion somewhere about the broader issue. I don't know how much interest there will be for distinguishing shades of terrible, but who knows. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 14:46, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

I'm not seeing how Hyde's most controversial material differs from the most controversial material of Wonder Showzen, Norm Macdonald, Andrew Dice Clay or the misogynistic wrestler character that Andy Kaufman played where Kaufman intentionally used anti-women language and played a wrestling heel as part of a performance where the offended audience reaction was the source of humor. It seems to me that Hyde is using his performances to provoke reactions from very pretentious and humorless people so that the reactions he gets can serve as a source of humor. And there were multiple people like Harley Morenstein and the Hollywood Reporter journalist that interviewed him saying that based on their spending time with him, they came to the conclusion that he wasn't racist or anti-Semitic. I feel that the news sources describing him as alt-right are unintentionally making themselves part of the joke or prank, that they're proving his point about the people he's trying to satirize, that people will make claims without evidence and that others will believe them without seeking proof. RockabillyRaccoon (talk) 16:03, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

From Wikipedia's point of view, the difference is that reliable sources characterise Hyde as alt-right and don't characterise e.g. Andrew Dice Clay as alt-right. Unless you have evidence that either (a) the sources that characterise Hyde as alt-right are not reliable or (b) there are equally reliable sources which dispute this characterisation (neither of which you appear to have done so far) then there is no WP:BLP issue here that I can see. If you have questions about categorisation, I suggest you put a notice on a talkpage like WT:CAT pointing to this discussion or the one on Talk:Sam Hyde – people who watch that page will be better placed to weigh in on the question of whether putting Hyde in Category:Alt-right is in line with our general policies and practices on categorisation. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 19:34, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

My position is that the categorization of a person as alt-right, which is defined on Wikipedia as white nationalist, requires more than just someone's word, which is what I would call it if a reliable source published an article making such a claim without evidence, which is about the same as making a claim without a source. These articles present as proof, punchlines from sketches in a comedy sketch show which uses an anti-humor style, and an alleged donation to a lawyer in a defamation lawsuit defending a white nationalist (not the white nationalist himself, but a lawyer representing him) that Hyde never admitted to doing, that could have possibly been made by someone else in his name as a prank. The "evidence" presented in the articles published by otherwise reliable sources doesn't actually prove Hyde being alt-right. It's a strong allegation to make without doing research and backing up the claim. We have evidence that news publications have alleged that Hyde is alt-right, but not that he is alt-right. The sources prove that there are allegations against him, but they do not prove the allegations. RockabillyRaccoon (talk) 20:25, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

The fact that you don't agree with the conclusions drawn by the reliable sources has effectively no weight in discussions of how Wikipedia should write about Sam Hyde. Your going on about your interpretations of Hyde's performances and why they are more right than those of the sources at issue is not going to persuade anyone. Several people have now told you this; repeating the same talking points over and over without listening to what you are being told is a waste of everyone's time, including yours. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 21:20, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

How about the sources cited misrepresenting jokes made by Hyde? Justin Whang made a video pointing out that The Fader quoted Hyde out of context and made it seem like he joked about raping Lena Dunham in a podcast interview when Hyde was actually joking about provoking her so that he could hit her in self defense in the vein of the "he's coming right for us!" joke from South Park. RockabillyRaccoon (talk) 23:42, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

I can see no reason why a video by Justin Whang (who is, as best I can tell, just some YouTube person) would be considered a reliable source.

Even if he were reliable, a source saying that people have misinterpreted Hyde's jokes is not sufficient to support that he is not alt-right. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 05:45, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Well, I wasn't pointing it out for a source to be cited, I was just trying to prove a point. And regarding the YouTube videos point, unfortunately since Hyde is a YouTuber, most of the people talking about him are other YouTubers and reliable sources covering his activity are hard to come by. RockabillyRaccoon (talk) 14:08, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

You posted this same point the day before on the article talk page. The answer, that you should read WP:DUE and WP:RSUW hasn't changed. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 23:11, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

• Kim Darroch (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

A new editor added a long section to the article attacking Darroch (and at least one other well-known Brit, James Cleverly). The new user has 8 sources, one to the Spectator, one to YouTube, one to the Washington Examiner, one to the Telegraph, and the remaining to the Express, not what I'd call the best sources, but I'm not an expert in this area. There is already a very brief mention of part of what the user has added in the Personal life section.

I reverted twice, essentially criticizing the sourcing, the nature of the edits per WP:BLP, and suggesting that such a dramatic addition needs to be discussed on the article Talk page. Nonetheless, the user has reverted me both times and then left a bunch of comments/questions on their Talk page, which I have not responded to. I don't intend to revert again. Nor do I wish to get into a discussion with the user. Instead, I'm taking the lazy way out and dumping it here in case someone is interested.--Bbb23 (talk) 17:53, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

Note that The Sun (United Kingdom), who originally published the allegations, withdrew its story.[30] Morbidthoughts (talk) 18:18, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

The telegraph is reliable-ish, but it doesn't support the language they want to add. If the Sun has retracted the whole thing should be handle with care. The Sun isn't one to care about it's reputation, likely they retracted under legal pressure. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 18:29, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

The Sun also said an inquiry cleared Darroch.(Guardian article) This is WP:BLPGOSSIP territory and we need to consider WP:BLPCRIME Morbidthoughts (talk) 18:38, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

As recently reported in The Daily Telegraph and the Spectator, Kim Darroch was never cleared by anyone. As they reported, that false statement was made by The Sun under pressure from the Counter Terrorism Command Police. The Sun article was removed because the CNN journalist was not served a right to reply letter as Kim Darroch was. It was right that The Sun article was removed. CSPNPC (talk) 18:59, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

Do you approve the following?

===Allegations of Leaking US State Secrets to a Journalist===

It has been recently reported in the Daily Telegapgh, The Times, and The Spectator, that Kim Darroch gave US state secrets to a CNN journalist in exchange for sexual intercourse. The U.S. Government made a formal complaint to the U.K. Government about his crimes. Kim Darroch has never denied the allegations when repeatedly asked by the press. The CNN journalist had denied the allegations. His alleged crimes are now the subject of U.S. Congressional investigations and civil lawsuit at the High Court in London. It has also been reported in the press that British Civil Service and the British Foreign Secretary, James Cleverly, are attempting to use counterterrorism legislation to block the press and the public from the High Court claim, which they want held in secret in order to protect Kim Darroch.

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CSPNPC (talk) 19:06, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

The Times, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The Washington Examiner, and The Spectator have reported on this.

Do you approve of the following?

===Allegations of Leaking US State Secrets to a Journalist===

It has been recently reported in the Daily Telegapgh, The Times, and The Spectator, that Kim Darroch gave US state secrets to a CNN journalist in exchange for sexual intercourse. The U.S. Government made a formal complaint to the U.K. Government about his crimes. Kim Darroch has never denied the allegations when repeatedly asked by the press. The CNN journalist had denied the allegations. His alleged crimes are now the subject of U.S. Congressional investigations and civil lawsuit at the High Court in London. It has also been reported in the press that British Civil Service and the British Foreign Secretary, James Cleverly, are attempting to use counterterrorism legislation to block the press and the public from the High Court claim, which they want held in secret in order to protect Kim Darroch.

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CSPNPC (talk) 19:05, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

The above discussion made me think these are new allegations. But I see stuff in Michelle Kosinski with sources from 2020 which while not naming Darroch in our article, seem to clearly be referring to the same allegations and he's also named in some of the titles. The James Cleverly angle may be new, but that seems to be about it. As for the Cleverly angle, that seems to be complicated since the person making those allegations is the one accused of arrested for but then released without charge for leaking the cables. The cables had nothing to do with the allegations Darroch himself gave information to a journalist. Indeed it seems to widely accepted that was Darroch said in those cables was entirely appropriate and part of his job even if their leaking made his job somewhat untenable. And covering up information about such a leak especially details surrounding the investigation into the alleged leaker seems to be the sort of thing the UK government, for better or worse, normally try do to. Is there any RS reporting information about this who don't simply quote the alleged leaker but have independently alleged the government appears to be protecting or covering up Darroch's claimed wrongdoings instead of simply trying to cover up details about the leak of diplomatic cables? Nil Einne (talk) 14:23, 11 June 2023 (UTC) 07:03, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

No, you are mistaken. Serious crimes are levelled at Kim Darroch in a High Court claim of leaking US state secrets to a CNN journalist that endangered the lives of Americans on North Korea and US operatives in Russia. Numerous sources have reported on this in the UK over the past two weeks - especially court reporters. It has been a major press headline, but given that you reject most of the sources as unreliable, or behind a paywall in publications that you do not subscribe to, there is nothing more to discuss. I used Wikipedia years ago when it was a free forum, but it is now institutionally biased. I should also add that I vote for left of centre political parties, but I have always been fair and unbiased. James Cleverly is weaponizing counterterrorism legislation to block the press and public from the High Court claim and bring it into is secret court. That is totally unusual and unprecedented for a case such as this civil claim. That legislation has only ever been used in cases involving terrorism and this is not a terrorism case. This is new and current information and Kim Darroch has never responded to the allegations when asked, but given that Wikipedia declares most of the sources on the right of centre to be unreliable, there is nothing more to discuss. Wikipedia is institutionally biased as has been widely reported in the press and this information will never be reported her. Please do not respond with hostile profanity. I accept that this information will never be aired in this forum. I wish you all the best. This was a learning experience, and I withdraw from attempting any editing to Wikipedia. CSPNPC (talk) 14:42, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

@CSPNPC: WTF are you talking about? We do not reject sources behind a paywall. They are perfectly acceptable to use if they are otherwise RS. The Times is behind a paywall and is perfectly acceptable to use. You yourself seem to acknowledge this below so I'm not sure why you would make such a weird claim. Nil Einne (talk) 07:03, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

When I wrote the above, I was not aware that the unnamed civil servant who had been accused of being a leaker of the cables had been released without charge and apologise wholeheartedly for any false implications of this living person in my original statement. I have amended by statement above accordingly. However I don't think this significantly changes anything. The fact of the matter is the leak investigation seems to have been a perfectly normal investigation and the sort of things governments do all the time since it involved the leak of perfectly normal government communication that they nevertheless really to not want in the public domain. While it is understandable someone who was caught up in this investigation is pissed off about the effect on them, the government wanting to keep as much as they want about this investigation secret should surprise to anyone. There's zero reason to think it has anything to do with protecting Darroch, instead it's simply to do with the government protecting the government and their secrets. Again, I do not see how the claims about Darroch himself leaking stuff to journalists relate to this. If anything, the ferocity with which they investigated this leak sort of proves the opposite. If they had genuinely suspected Darroch had leaked stuff to a journalist, they would not have been anywhere this kind. They likely would have been equally ferocious in their investigation and Darroch might now be together with this other civil servant complaining about the government mistreating them. Nil Einne (talk) 07:03, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

@CSPNPC Well, I don't think your text summarizes those sources very accurately. Best I can tell, they reported that the civil servant who was wrongfully arrested is suing the two individuals in the gov't, and in his suit, claims they arrested him to distract from Darroch and the suit makes claims about Darroch. Although I did not find "in exchange for sexual intercourse" in any of the sources...where'd that come from? His alleged crimes are not "the subject of...civil lawsuit", the lawsuit is about the arrest. Closest I found to congressional investigation was "[U.S. government] launched an official investigation to find the source of the information". Investigating the leak is not investigating "his alleged crimes".

Your sources don't support your content. You are not summarizing them from a neutral point of view. So no, personally, I don't approve of your "following". Schazjmd (talk) 19:23, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

Hi Schazjmd, The claimant is suing for "misfeasance in public office" and has named Kim Darroch in the High Court claim. Did you read The Daily Telegraph Article behind the paywall? Did you read The Times article behind the paywall? Did you listen to the entire Spectator podcast, with the journalists? CSPNPC (talk) 20:06, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

Schazjmd, Do you approve of the following. I can also refer you to the public High Court documents, which are currently a matter for public record:

===Allegations of Leaking US State Secrets to a Journalist===

It has been recently reported in the Daily Telegapgh, The Times, and The Spectator, that Kim Darroch gave US state secrets to a CNN journalist in exchange for sexual intercourse as alleged in a current High Court Claim in London, UK. The Claimant is suing for “misfeasance in public office” and has named Kim Darroch in the claim. The U.S. Government made a formal complaint to the U.K. Government about his crimes. Kim Darroch has never denied the allegations when repeatedly asked by the press. The CNN journalist had denied the allegations. His alleged crimes are now the subject of U.S. Congressional investigations and civil lawsuit at the High Court in London. It has also been reported in the press that British Civil Service and the British Foreign Secretary, James Cleverly, are attempting to use counterterrorism legislation to block the press and the public from the High Court claim, which they want held in secret in order to protect Kim Darroch.

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CSPNPC (talk) 20:10, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

You sources don't support your words. It has not been reported that Darroch gave away secrets for sex. It's been reported that that is a claim made in a court case. The two are very different. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 20:17, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

Thank you. I will amend the text. CSPNPC (talk) 20:26, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

ActivelyDisinterested, Do you approve of the following amended text address your statement above:

===Allegations of Leaking US State Secrets to a Journalist===

It has been alleged in a High Court claim in London that Kim Darroch gave US state secrets to a CNN journalist in exchange for sexual intercourse as alleged in a current High Court Claim in London, UK. The Claimant is suing for “misfeasance in public office” and has named Kim Darroch in the claim. The U.S. Government made a formal complaint to the U.K. Government about his crimes. Kim Darroch has never denied the allegations when repeatedly asked by the press. The CNN journalist had denied the allegations. His alleged crimes are now the subject of U.S. Congressional investigations and civil lawsuit at the High Court in London. It has also been reported in the press that British Civil Service and the British Foreign Secretary, James Cleverly, are attempting to use counterterrorism legislation to block the press and the public from the High Court claim, which they want held in secret in order to protect Kim Darroch.

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CSPNPC (talk) 20:28, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

I can't see the Times article, and you should drop the Spectator and Washington Examiner (see WP:RSP for prior discussions on why). So going on the Guardian and the Telegraph, cutting everything they don't mention and condensing it gets. A court case in May 2023 alleged that Darroch had an affair with the CNN journalists Michelle Kosinski and that he leaked intelligence to her. Kosinski denies that they had an affair, or that she received classified or sensitive information from Darroch. The U.S. congress is also considering hearings into the claims. There's definitely no needs for all the legalese ("High Court" and "misfeasance in public office" etc) and anything that is not related to Darroch directly (for instance the UK government potential use of a closed defence). Even then others may object on WP:BLP grounds, I'm not the only one you would need to convince.

Also no need to keep posting the references. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 21:31, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

I agree. I seriously question if it's DUE for a BLP, considering we have only two sources and they're careful to state that the allegations come from the court case. In other words, they won't even go on record as stating that it's true. Woodroar (talk) 22:08, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

I just read the Wikipedia list of reliable and unreliable sources. It is clear that most publications on the left of centre are deemed reliable and those on the right of centre are deemed unreliable. This is clearly a partisan website governed by people on the left of centre with a clear bias against publications on the right of centre. Kim Darroch is on the left of the political spectrum and so he is protected from any critical information of any kind on this website. Indeed, I will probably be suspended and blocked for saying this. CSPNPC (talk) 13:05, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

You're mistaken. One of the sources you're trying to add it the Spectator. According to RSPS it's mostly opinions pieces. The link you're trying to add is this https://www.spectator.co.uk/podcast/has-kim-darroch-rocked-the-special-relationship/ . I showed the URL since the URL itself is enough to cause concern. Checking out the source, sure enough it says (emphasis added, grammatical error/typo from source) "Freddy Gray is joined by Steve Edginton, video comment editor at the Telegraph and host of the Off Script podcast to discuss curious case of Sir Kim Darroch.". This is clearly a podcast discussion piece. I don't give a fuck whether the source is left wing, right wing, or whatever wing. Such a source is totally unsuitable for a BLP. You need to learn this quickly if you're going to continue to edit BLPs. You're free to have whatever opinions you want about Wikipedia, I don't even care if you mention them occasionally. But editing BLPs inappropriately is not acceptable. I'd note that the Telegraph and the The Times are both somewhat right-wing, only the Guardian is on the left. Nil Einne (talk) 13:33, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

Please do not use profanity. There is no excuse for such hostile language. The Spectator is one of the oldest continuous journalist in the world founded in 1828 and it is highly respected. You are simply the Wikipedia systemic left-wing bias. As a published author who does research for a living, I can assure you that The Spectator is reliable. We will just have to agree to disagree, but there is no excuse for your use of profanity. CSPNPC (talk) 13:36, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

@CSPNPC: if you use Wikipedia to harm living persons then yes there is an excuse for profanity. That is completely unacceptable any editor who does so or tries to do so can fuck off. If they can't stand a little profanity but think it's acceptable to fucking harm living persons with their edits then all the more reason they can get the fuck out of Wikipedia. And again you're missing the point it does not matter how old The Spectator is nor their political leanings. What matters in this instance is do they fact check their claims and stand by them? They clearly do not since they are not presenting these claims in their own voice but simply as the opinions of the people writing or talking for them. That is not in any way reliable for Wikipedia. If the Spectator was willing to stand by their claims then sure, we could consider them but they aren't so we don't. For the same reason, while The Guardian, The Times, The Daily Telegraph, the BBC, Sky News are reliable sources (and only one of them can reasonably be considered left wing while 2 or maybe even 3 can be considered right wing, but I digress) we only use their actually articles and reporting. Opinion pieces, editorials, opeds etc even from these RS can only be used in limited circumstances per WP:RSOPINION which is almost never for a WP:BLP. Nil Einne (talk) 07:54, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

I have never used Wikipedia to harm a living person. I merely reported what has already been reported in the press and I have been researching the subject matter. It was my understanding that profanity was a violations of Wikipedia community standards. At least it used to be. I have already told you that I will not attempt to edit anything on Wikipedia again. I agree with Jimmy Wales when he publicly regretted what Wikipedia has turned into. It used to be a free forum, but it is no longer. CSPNPC (talk) 02:09, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

@CSPNPC: if you use Wikipedia to harm living persons then yes there is an excuse for profanity. That is completely unacceptable, and any editor who does so or tries to do so, can fuck off. If they think a little profanity is a big deal but don't care that they're harming living persons with their edits then all the more reason they can get the fuck out of Wikipedia.

And again you're missing the point. It does not matter how old The Spectator is nor their political leanings. What matters in this instance is do they fact check their claims and stand by them? They clearly do not, since they are not presenting these claims in their own voice but simply as the opinions of the people writing or talking who they've chosen to republish. While this involves some degree of legal responsibility and requirement for fact-checking, it's not in any way the same as that required and expected when a source is explicitly making a claim as part of their own reporting and journalism. So that is not sufficiently reliable for Wikipedia.

If the Spectator was willing to stand by their claims by carrying out their own reporting and journalism and writing article in their own voice of their reporting and journalism, then sure, we could consider them. But they apparently aren't and instead are content to publish opinions pieces, so we don't. And at the very least the source you are trying to use is a podcast of a discussion between two journalists rather than a piece of journalism or reporting by the Spectator, so even if there are some pieces of journalism from the Spectator that we can use, clearly this isn't one of them.

For the same reason, while The Guardian, The Times, The Daily Telegraph, the BBC, Sky News are reliable sources; we only use their actually articles and reporting/journalism. Opinion pieces, editorials, opeds etc even from these RS can only be used in limited circumstances per WP:RSOPINION which is almost never for a WP:BLP or for any statements of fact.

Despite your continued attempts to make this a left wing vs right wing issue, there is absolutely nothing stopping The Spectator carrying our their own reporting and journalism, as the two or arguably 3 right wing sources of the 5 I listed earlier reflect. (Noting also that only one of them is even left wing.) If you think it's left-wing to engage in journalism and reporting and publish content based on that; and right-wing to just publish opinions without bothering with all that tricky stuff, that sounds like a you problem not an us problem. Nil Einne (talk) 10:54, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

There is no excuse for profanity and it used to be a violation of Wikipedia community standards. I have not harmed a living person. I have simply reported what has already been reported in the press and in a court of law. I have been researching this matter for a long time. As I said, I will not attempt to edit anything on Wikipedia ever again. Please leave me alone and let it go. CSPNPC (talk) 02:18, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Darroch was hired by a right wing government, has spent most of his career working for a right wing government, was made a Lord by a right wing government, and is now being defended by a right wing giverment. I have literally no idea why you believe he is on the left wing, he's not and never has been. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 15:02, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

Darroch was not hired by a right wing government. The British Civil Service and Diplomatic Service is independent of the elected government. They are appointed and promoted internally within the Civil Service. The politicians have no right to interfere in that process. All of Darroch's diplomatic appointments were came from the Diplomatic Service selection process and there were no politicians engaged in that process. There are no political appointees to the Civil Servants and Diplomatic Service. Kim Darroch was diplomat when the Labour Party was in power before the Conservatives, but the Labour Party did not appoint him to those diplomatic roles either. You do not understand the British system.

More right of centre papers are reporting on this issues than left of centre papers. Wikipedia declares most left of centre publications to be unreliable and that has been widely reported in the press as evidence of systemic bias. Darroch has taken political position since retiring from the Diplomatic Service that are left of center. CSPNPC (talk) 15:27, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

I understand British politics quite well, and the civil service. Darroch is hardly left of centre, if you mean his comments on Trump then I'm afraid to tell you that many on the British right wing left the same way about him. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 15:52, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

I was not referring to Darroch's on Trump. My post was about his alleged criminal behaviour and nothing to do with his comments on Trump. I personally agree with his comments on Trump. Indeed, he has my totally sympathy until I read about the alleged criminal behaviour. To be clear, I am left of centre, but I am fair and I am well read. I do not believe in censorship from the left or right. This used to be a free forum and not one of systemic bias. Darroch has taken a number of left of center positions and since leaving office as as I do myself. That does not excuse censorship or not reporting on allegations of criminal behaviour which is the subject of a High Court claim. CSPNPC (talk) 16:09, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

So I did some checking and the best I can find is that he pro EU, hardly something confined to the left. Honestly I have no idea why you think he's left wing. As to the rest there is no censorship, well I guess you could say WP:BLP is a form of censorship as it limits what can be said about living people but that is applied to all article subjects. It doesn't matter who he is, allegations are nothing more than allegations and there inclusion in a Wikipedia article is always handled in a careful way. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 16:23, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

Clearly, I have been researching this subject mater longer than you have, and if you read his autobiography or any of his published works, you will see where he stands politically. He clearly and quite openly has supported Labour politicians. Regardless, I am now disinterested in Wikipedia. It is not the open and free forum it was. It has been occupied and locked down by people who label very reliable sources as unreliable and other sources reliable based on personal preference and political bias as has been widely reported in the press. CSPNPC (talk) 16:29, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

I'm sorry you feel that way all I can say is that tabloids aren't used in articles about living people, be that the Express, the Mirror, the Daily Mail or the Daily Star. That's something that applies in all cases regardless of the individual. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 16:41, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

I'm not an expert on British government or Government but would note that while it might be true that as part of the civil service, the Government does not generally get significantly involved in his career or decide which roles he has, I'm pretty sure this is simply not the case for his final role i.e. as an ambassador. Such an appointment would need at least the tactic approval of the Government. This was after all ultimately why he had to leave. While personally I don't see any way he could have survived long term once the cables leaked because while his communication was perfectly ordinary and reasonable, it's the sort of thing not intended to be public and especially not when it concerned the current president. Even more so since it concerned Trump who is notoriously thin skinned. One of the reasons the government and Government were so pissed about it leaking. So it leaking simply made his role impossible. But multiple RS and our article make it clear that ultimate what ended his career was not the leak itself but that Johnson did not support him. Nil Einne (talk) 07:17, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Here is The Times article. If you cannot see past the paywall. I can cut and paste the contents of the article here. I am a subscriber to The Times:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/terrorism-laws-misused-to-spare-diplomat-kim-darroch-hh8z50szp CSPNPC (talk) 13:07, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

See WP:SPECTATOR for how Wikipedia views it. Theroadislong (talk) 14:49, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I read that earlier. It is further evidence of systemic bias at Wikipedia against right of centre publications. CSPNPC (talk) 15:30, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

No, you cannot cut and paste the contents of an entire article here, as that would be violating copyright and thus against Wikipedia rules. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 16:10, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for reminding me of that. Well, I guess that most behind paywall articles that are referenced as sources here on Wikipedia, are not actually properly assessed by Wikipedia editors. Perhaps all pay for view subscription publications should be removed as sources? CSPNPC (talk) 16:13, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

Requiring sources to be free to access or even online at all would utterly gouge our sources, not only of periodicals, but especially of books. So that idea would seem to be a nonstarter. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 17:58, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

It's one of the perennial proposal that never gets anywhere, see WP:FUTON. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 18:21, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

Of course it's possible to abuse the use of paywall/offline sources, like with much else, WP is WP:USERG after all. But I have hope that those who sometimes use such refs, like myself, usually do it ok. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 19:17, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

The reality is large percentage of claims even when the sources they rely on are not behind a paywall, are not checked. This is why it is imperative editors accurately report what sources say. Any editor who persistently misrepresents sources is likely to be quickly blocked or banned for this reason. While the Times is behind a paywall it isn't that hard to obtain access so checking stuff sourced to the times isn't a big deal, it's far easier in fact that a a number of books and even older newspaper articles. While it is not acceptable to copy the whole article, it is often acceptable to provide certain limited parts of an article (like one or two sentences, maybe also a whole paragraph) in the talk page of an article, if there is some dispute or doubt over whether the our text accurately represents what the source says. It is going to be very rare that you need that much text to prove that the source supports the text in our article. If there is some fear that additional important context is being missed then yes that gets a little more difficult. It may be the editor questioning our use of the source does need to obtain the whole source, WP:WPRX is one option although if one editor already has access then potentially just privately exchanging it might be another. Or sometimes just asking for someone with access to confirm that the source does not say certain things is enough. Nil Einne (talk) 06:24, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

• I should note that this material is also present at Michelle Kosinski, although that article does not name Darroch. Hemiauchenia (talk) 19:27, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

  I mentioned that above already. Note that while Darroch is not named in the body, he is in the headline of at least one of the sources we cite i.e. you can work out it's referring to him simply from our article. It may have been mostly missed by editors except the OP, since while I intended to post it to the bottom, I made a mistake and posted it to the middle. The thread is a bit of a mess especially with the OP continually posting their proposal in various places. Nil Einne (talk) 06:09, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

• Thinking about this some more, it's even more nonsense than I originally considered. The claim is made "that false statement was made by The Sun under pressure from the Counter Terrorism Command Police" but I don't see how this makes any sense. I don't know that much about the British media, government and legal environment but I know enough to know that you do not need to do anything remotely like that.

  If The Sun asked the government about the allegations and the government told The Sun we investigated these claims and cleared the person, then The Sun would have little choice but to publish this statement. There is absolutely no reason why the Counter Terrorism Command Police or anything remotely like that would need to get involved. Their lawyers would tell them they need to publish these claims simply because it's something the government told them which provides important context to the story. Them failing to publish this, would likely put them at strong legal risk for defamation and while The Sun might not be the most careful of publications I'm fairly sure this is a case given the people involved etc, that they will take care to at least publish the claim. Even if they do fail to publish the claim, then all it takes is for Darroch or someone to get to their lawyers to write to The Sun warning them of an impending lawsuit due to their failure to publish the government saying that Darroch was cleared.

  Note that the government may be lying about Darroch being cleared, that is whatever and not particularly important. The point is if the government is willing to "use counterterrorism legislation" to get The Sun to publish a false statement, there is zero reason to think they wouldn't simply have gone the much easier route and lied to the Sun about an investigation i.e. forced The Sun to publish a false statement simply by making that statement in such a way that The Sun would have no choice but to publish it without getting the Counter Terrorism Command Police involved. (I mean the Sun could even say "we we informed by the government that they investigated these claims and cleared" the person involved or something similar and the Sun themselves wouldn't really have published anything false.)

  Yes the Sun could have asked for details of this investigation, but the government could simply have told them "for reasons of XYZ, we cannot provide details". Yes The Sun could have also published "the government refused to provide details of this investigation" but there's no reason to think anyone would particularly care if the Sun said this. And yes maybe The Sun could have tried to use the freedom of information act to obtain details, of this investigation but again there are lost of routes the government could use to stymie this attempt (perhaps including counterterrorism legislation) plus if the government does it's a very long process, so again why on earth would they force The Sun to publish something when there are far simpler routes they could use?

  And frankly even this lying route is a little too complicated. Far simpler for the government to do what they and governments all over the world do if they want something kept secret but need to placate the public. Set up an investigation, put people in charge who you know are not going to do a proper job, hint in various ways such as via the terms of reference they are not supposed to do a proper job or frankly just get someone to directly tell the investigators in private what you want the result to be and then get an investigation which did actually clear everyone and do not have to lie to anyone about anything. Frankly I'll be blunt, this sounds like a wacky conspiracy theory which makes no sense since like all such theories, it proposes an excessively complicated chain of events and ignores the way government really operate which achieve the same goals in a far simpler manner and without the need for any of the wackiness.

  Nil Einne (talk) 06:09, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

  P.S. I have to say some of the reporting on this is just silly. [31] Are we really supposed to be surprised that the police emptied everything when searching an apartment looking for evidence? Or that they didn't tell the target of an investigation they were being investigated and apparently lied about investigating something else so they could get permission to walk through the apartment? Or that they just after arrest, they wanted to watch the person in their apartment including while defecating presumably to make sure they weren't disposing of any evidence? While perhaps some of the other claims if true may be going to far, other ones just seem to be completely ordinary police tactics in a lot of countries including the UK and don't seem in any way surprisingly unless you're one of the people who believe weird stuff like the if you ask an undercover officer if they're the police, they have to tell you. Not pleasant sure, but not surprising and frankly people normally beating on about being 'tough on crime' should expect. Yeah I get human interest reporting and all that, but still some of this just seems silly when you consider normal and well known government and police behaviour. Nil Einne (talk) 11:22, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

  Your assessment is ill-informed and not accurate. I have already stated that I will not attempt to edit anything on Wikipedia ever again. I have been researching this subject matter for a long time and my research is not based on your Google searches. Please just let it go. CSPNPC (talk) 02:13, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

I need clarification for posting avtar singh khanda as terrorist and crminal in your post we sikh will sue you for posting wrong information for our sikh warriors misleading information may result in lawsuit against wikkipedia 2605:8D80:32E:7E17:4904:8BD4:5A4C:275C (talk) 06:13, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia does not have an article on Avatar Singh Khanda. He is mentioned in the article Amritpal Singh, but not described as a terrorist. Where are you seeing this description of Avatar Singh Khanda as a terrorist, IP? Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 06:59, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

They can't respond while being blocked for making legal threats. Morbidthoughts (talk) 22:50, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

I put up an AfD for a living person named Jess Nevins. It currently has absolutely no responses so I thought it'd be appropriate to put it here and see if anyone with an interest in comics, genre fiction or librarians wants to have a look and see if they can find reasonable grounds for notability that I missed. Simonm223 (talk) 14:36, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Please read the notice at the top of the page; pumping AfDs is not really what this page is for. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 00:05, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

Article appears to be written by the subject of the article, as such, it is very biased and not purely factual. — Preceding unsigned comment added by AdeleBBB (talk • contribs) 21:43, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Courtesy link: Scott Henshall. Looks like the worst of the promotional stuff has been dealt with but the article could still do with work if anyone is interested in contemporary fashion designers. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 14:39, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

Ben Roberts-Smith could do with some more eyes on it. The recent loss of a defamation case over media allegations that the subject committed war crimes is being aggrandized into the label of 'war criminal' in the first sentence of the lead - a phrasing that is not really used in most sources and seems like overreach/teetering on BLP vio territory. I can't even find a single biography on Wikipedia about a criminally convicted war criminal that has the label of 'war criminal' in the first sentence, so IMO this page has shot out the far side of undue. I tried to dial this back a bit, without diluting the substance of the defamation case/allegations in question, but the effort was shot down. Any further input welcome. Iskandar323 (talk) 06:49, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

This is interesting. WP:BLPCRIME would presumably require a conviction in a criminal court to be labeled a criminal. In this case, a civil defamation case against news media has failed and RS would be more emboldened afterwards to declare him a criminal without an actual criminal conviction. The burden of proof in Australian civil trials is different to (military) criminal trials. Should a dismissal of a defamation civil trial equate to criminal conviction? I think not. Morbidthoughts (talk) 07:26, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Justice Besanko wrote a lengthy judgement in which he not only found Ben had not been Defamed, but also that the allegations were substationally true. Besanko further found that Roberts-Smith committed murder and violated the rules of war, that is he is a war criminal which can be said without requiring a conviction as there is a legal judgement saying exactly that. I invite you to read the judgement and to perform a Google search using the following boolean: "Ben Roberts-Smith" and "war criminal" where upon one can find RS after RS that refers to Ben Roberts-Smith as a war criminal. AlanS^talk 07:48, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

BLPCRIME requires a conviction; whatever that means in Australian court. Is that satisfied here? I don't think so. Morbidthoughts (talk) 07:52, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

WP:BLPPUBLIC is unambiguous on this matter "In the case of public figures, there will be a multitude of reliable published sources, and BLPs should simply document what these sources say. If an allegation or incident is noteworthy, relevant, and well documented, it belongs in the article—even if it is negative and the subject dislikes all mention of it." AlanS^talk 09:21, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Except it's not [un-]ambiguous at all. Nowhere does it say it overrides WP:BLPCRIME. Iskandar323 (talk) 09:34, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Also, you're making a huge leap. "substantially true" is not "true". You are turning the balance of probabilities into a criminal conviction, which it is not. Just because a handful of over-eager media outlets have been sloppy with their language, does not alter the fundamental reality that "substantially true" is not "true". At best, from this judgement, you might be able to say that Ben Roberts-Smith is probably a war criminal, or better still, in the right words: that the claim that he is is substantially true. Iskandar323 (talk) 09:39, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Substantially true is true, hence having the word true in it. If it wasn't true it wouldn't have the word true in it and Justice Besanko wouldn't have handed down a judgment that the newspapers not only told the truth but that Ben Roberts Smith had committed murder and broke the moral and legal rules of military engagement.

Ps, I didn't write ambiguous, I wrote that WP:BLPPUBLIC is unambiguous. Its meaning is crystal clear. It could not get any clearer if it tried. AlanS^talk 10:01, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Obviously I meant not unambiguous. It was a typo. Iskandar323 (talk) 10:42, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Use any dictionary perhaps. Substantially = mostly [32]. It's the linguistic equivalent of more or less, and a far fucking cry from 100%. I sincerely hope the confusion is not over people not understanding this word. Iskandar323 (talk) 10:45, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

"substantial truth" is defined by the Defamation Act as meaning "true in substance or not materially different from the truth". Can I remind you to keep your discussions civil and not swear at other editors. AlanS^talk 08:06, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

I would also like to note concern with the use of the phrase "... and disgraced his country." in the lead. In my view, this is not a objective fact and seems to be conjecture, so should not be included. Would appreciate more thoughts on this.Carter00000 (talk) 08:00, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

This concerns me as well.

Additionally there are a number of actual criminal investigations ongoing into this case. If we call him a war criminal noew what do we do if he's subsequently charged and tried in a criminal court - we can't conviect him before a court does. 37.245.77.82 (talk) 08:07, 14 June 2023 (UTC) sockpuppetAlanS^talk 13:21, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

Can we please have an admin compare this IP to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Orchomen. AlanS^talk 09:25, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

WP:BLPPUBLIC is unambiguous on this matter "In the case of public figures, there will be a multitude of reliable published sources, and BLPs should simply document what these sources say. If an allegation or incident is noteworthy, relevant, and well documented, it belongs in the article—even if it is negative and the subject dislikes all mention of it." AlanS^talk 09:21, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

None of that says WP:BLPCRIME just goes totally out the window with unusual civil rulings. Iskandar323 (talk) 09:33, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

"disgraced his country" is incidentally just the opinion of the judge, not an actual judicial finding. Iskandar323 (talk) 09:31, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

"disgraced his country" is reported by reliable source after reliable source. Here's some sample sources here, here, here, here here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here. Google using the boolean "Ben Roberts-Smith" and "disgraced his country" and you can find those sources and many, many more.

Per WP:BLPPUBLIC, "In the case of public figures, there will be a multitude of reliable published sources, and BLPs should simply document what these sources say. If an allegation or incident is noteworthy, relevant, and well documented, it belongs in the article—even if it is negative and the subject dislikes all mention of it." AlanS^talk 10:07, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure what your point is. Yes, it's reliably reported that the judge said it. That doesn't mean it becomes some sort of fact. It's still a subjective opinion, in this case of the judge. Countries don't have objective states of honor or dishonor. It's also never going to be MOS:OPEN material. Even if you think it is worthy of inclusion in the lead, it's low priority. Iskandar323 (talk) 10:39, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Having checked several of those sources, I have not yet found one which says in its own voice that Roberts-Smith "disgraced his country"; they are quoting his claim in the lawsuit that Fairfax Media defamed him by portraying him as having disgraced his country, which is a completely different thing. Unless several reliable sources are reporting this as objective fact, we absolutely should not be putting it in Wikipedia's voice. The current state of the article, quoting the judge's summing up finding that Roberts-Smith "disgraced his country" in the body seems wholly appropriate. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 10:39, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

I'm not at all happy with the description of BRS as a war criminal in Wikipedia's voice in the first sentence. WP:MINREF is unambiguous: Contentious material, whether negative, positive, or neutral, about living persons must have an inline citation. WP:LEADCITE makes it explicit that this includes within the lead (Any statements about living persons that are challenged or likely to be challenged must have an inline citation every time they are mentioned, including within the lead). Currently there is no such citation – and our article doesn't even describe him as a war criminal in Wikipedia's voice in the body! Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 10:48, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Yes, it's also a breach of MOS:LEAD and WP:DUE at present, since nowhere in the actual body is the label of 'war criminal' actually substantiated, so there's nothing justifying it being presented as akin to a second occupation. It's a mess. Iskandar323 (talk) 10:59, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

I have tagged as citation needed, but even that's questionable: WP:BLPREMOVE and WP:BURDEN arguably mandate removal until a source is provided. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 11:08, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Well I did, but got reverted (again). I contemplated going straight to ANI to get some administrator eyes on it, but thought I'd tap up the noticeboards first, though at this rate, given the lack of common sense all around... Iskandar323 (talk) 11:14, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

The lead references quite a few sources that refer to him directly as a war criminal. performing a Google search with the boolean "Ben Roberts-Smith" and "war criminal" locates many more. AlanS^talk 11:21, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

It shouldn't be hard for you to add a reliable source as required by policy then. Per WP:BURDEN it is incumbent on people arguing for inclusion to provide sources supporting disputed statements, and per WP:BLPREMOVE unsourced or poorly sourced statements about BLPs should be removed immediately. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 11:29, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

There is a bunch of them that say exactly that the next sentence over. Certainly the idea of bundling citations would dictate that in order to keep things tidy we keep them as is especially when the citations cover two sentences? You wouldn't suggest duplicating a large portion of the citations from the next sentence would you? Another user has already put in a tag for excessive citations, if that's your position perhaps you might want to head to the talkpage and shift their position. There's already discussion in the talkpage on that very issue. You'd see quite a lot of activity. AlanS^talk 12:05, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Might I also point out that there is extremely active discussion on this in the pages talk and I find that the user who brought it here not mentioning this as almost an abuse of process. If anything this sort of thing is more of an RfC issue if they felt there was an impass. AlanS^talk 11:24, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Come on, bringing an article with potential BLP issues to the attention of the BLP noticeboard is clearly not an abuse of process. That's the whole point of the BLP noticeboard! Maybe Iskandar should have mentioned the talkpage discussion in their initial post, but if you thought it was so important you could equally have pointed to it in your first reply rather than your eighth. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 11:40, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

I thought I was clear on the point of not mentioning that there has been very active talkpage discussion, not bringing it here being the issue. obviously this noticeboard exists for a reason. But in general I think this could have been better handled by way of RfC if they really felt an impass had been arrived at and infact another user mentioned this.AlanS^talk 11:54, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

It is if they've first brought it to another noticeboard and only brought it here after not getting the response they wanted. That is forum shopping. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:38, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Noting that AlanS has opened an RFC relating to the issue discussed above on the article talk page. Carter00000 (talk) 13:14, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

Yes I have, I'm surprised others haven't opened up RfCs sooner on other topics. I'd point out that the RfC I've opened up is not on the topic of "war criminal" but on the topic of "disgraced his country" as attributed to Justice Besanko. AlanS^talk 13:50, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

There seems to be an assumption here that B R-S is a "public figure", but who would have heard of him if he had not been accused of crimes and had responded by suing his accusers? I can't find a clear statement of this anywhere, but there is not supposed to be a catch-22 where someone barely known to the public suddenly becomes a public figure by being the target of an accusation or even by being convicted of a crime. Otherwise BLPCRIME would assume that all high-profile trials turn the accused into a public figure, but it doesn't. Zero^talk 13:58, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

He had already quite a bit of profile in Australia prior to the accusations due to being Australia's most decorated soldier, being on a speaking circuit, father of the year, quickly becoming general manager of a TV station after leaving the army, etc. He was already a public figure, the civil trial and the accusations weren't what made him so. AlanS^talk 15:00, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

His wikipedia page was created in 2011, we didn't get the war crimes allegations until 2017. So yes, clearly a public figure. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:32, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

WP:NOTABLE != WP:PUBLICFIGURE. WP:LOWPROFILE has some handy examples. I don't know what the situation in this case is, but being notable has nothing to do with being a public figure. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 15:38, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

He was Australia's "Father of the Year" etc etc etc and has engaged in incessant self promotion... There actually aren't many figures more public than this one, he has gone above and beyond when it comes to seeking media attention. Note for example these one or more interviews in the capacity of a media personality [33][34][35] Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:39, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, certainly looks to be a public figure. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 17:27, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

• Note that this is a duplication of the question that Iskandar323 posted on the NPOV noticeboard yesterday Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/Noticeboard#Ben Roberts-Smith‎ and would appear to be WP:FORUMSHOPing. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:36, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

  There was simply no response, other than yourself, and you were already present on the article talk page. That's not a forum; that's a graveyard - unless you think you are a forum into yourself. I assumed that either that forum is not very active, or no one found the thread relevant. Unlike this forum, which in hindsight was probably the more applicable one in the first place. Iskandar323 (talk) 17:20, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

  You're supposed to give it a week or more to elicit responses, not 24 hours. How can you know that its a graveyard if you didn't wait to find out? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:22, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

  If you think a BLP violation is being committed, you should not really sit on it for a week. Avoiding potential BLP violations is policy, not the typical casual content dispute. Iskandar323 (talk) 17:56, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

  You didn't sit on it for a week, you were reverting before any of the discussions were even opened. That argument covers reverting, it does not cover forum shopping. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:24, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

Seems like a borderline abuse of process. Because consensus isn't going the way they like in Ben Roberts-Smith talkpage they're trying to game editors from elsewhere into piling on. Yet they haven't taken up the suggestion of an RfC? AlanS^talk 15:47, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

The view that "disgraced his country" is just an opinion of the judge and of no weight is incorrect. It is a finding of the judgement that the imputation was made by the reporting, and the Besanko J ruled, as a matter of law, that the news organisations successfully met their burden of proof to defend it as being substantially true to the civil standard. The phrase "substantial truth" is defined by the Defamation Act as meaning "true in substance or not materially different from the truth." This finding is a central part of the judgement, that numerous imputations were substantially true and thus the claims made were not defamatory. 172.195.96.244 (talk) 04:13, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

I notice that most of the writing and editing on this article has been done through unregistered IP's for which this article is their sole contribution. It raises questions in my mind of a possible COI. Just Another Cringy Username (talk) 04:03, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

I asked a question over at Talk:Roseanne Barr about why the infobox doesn't mention her being a Republican, even though she's categorized under Category:Utah Republicans and still haven't gotten an answer. RockabillyRaccoon (talk) 20:48, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

I don't generally edit politics, so I dont know for sure, but do we use that field for non-politicians? I just checked the infobox of a few musicians that I know the political affiliations of, and it wasn't listed on them either. Sergecross73 msg me 00:03, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Looking at the article, there is no statement there that she is Republican. Barring sourcing, the multiple "Republican" categories she's listed in should probably be removed. (She did endorse Trump, but one can do that without being a member of the party; when she ran for President, it was not as a Republican.) -- Nat Gertler (talk) 00:58, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Yes most definitely those cats don't belong on the current version of the article. WP:BLPCAT is quite clear that "Category names do not carry disclaimers or modifiers, so the case for each content category must be made clear by the article text and its reliable sources." which cannot be met if the article doesn't even mention she's a Republican. Nil Einne (talk) 04:48, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

For clarity, note that the infobox is unimportant to the categorisation. What it says or doesn't say about her political affiliations doesn't affect what categories she can be listed in. What matters is the text in the article body. (Like with categories, the infobox shouldn't say anything about her political affiliations not also in the body. Although since there could be sources in the infobox, if there is sufficient sourcing, a better solution might to be add a brief mention of the detail to the body rather than outright removal.) Nil Einne (talk) 05:50, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

This is all very true...but let's stay hypothetically there's ample sourcing to verify it. Would it be added to the infobox, or is it like I guessed above? Sergecross73 msg me 12:38, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

I intentionally avoided getting into that since IMO it's a much less important BLP issue than included her in categories (or the infobox) without sufficient sourcing or demonstrated relevance to her life. But briefly, I'll say it depends on the sourcing and what we actually say about her political affiliations. In particular I'd note that this case is complicated by the fact while not primary a politician, she was briefly one by her serious (per her words) candidacy for presidency no matter that it is itself very minor in her life. Given this candidacy, I think it's reasonable to mention her party affiliations while she was doing this in the infobox. This doesn't mean we need to mention any affiliations after or before. I can see arguments being made that assuming it's just a recognised identifier it's too minor to be included and so a BLP issue. OTOH, I can see arguments being made that mentioning the other affiliations even with dates but without mentioning her latest one is a BLP issue itself. So really IMO we have to be guided by how strong any current (or at least post candidacy) political affiliations are per RS. Nil Einne (talk) 18:03, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Swish means to move quickly. To move with hissing sound.Swish doesn't mean gay. Swish means a single shot in basketball that does touch the rings. Swish was a verb before it became a noun. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 102.70.0.36 (talk) 18:14, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Means to move quickly 102.70.0.36 (talk) 18:28, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Swish has several meanings and one of them actually is gay:

• https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/swish

Anyway, this noticeboard is for matters relating to biographies of living people. What does this have to do with a biography? Is somebody interpreting the word incorrectly in a biographical article? If so, which article? Are you sure that they really are mistaken? If you are asking about Swish (slang) then I've had a quick look at that and it seems to be correct. Maybe it would be good to add a note pointing to the basketball term to help anybody who finds that article by mistake but that is not a matter for this noticeboard. --DanielRigal (talk) 20:06, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

David Grusch UFO whistleblower claims‎‎ (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

This is an article about someone making a fringe claim who got it into the media. It's a bit WP:BLP1E.

My concern is some of the sourcing. We have one paragraph sourced to Michael Shermer in Quillette, which is noted on WP:RSP#Quillette as a Generally Unreliable source so not really usable on a BLP except in limited circumstances. The justification for the source's use here is that it's WP:DUE because Shermer is a noted skeptic (which he is), so it's an expert SPS.

I'm concerned that this is not sufficient for a BLP, or in its actual use in the article, which is to make characterisations of living persons. Shermer is a noted skeptic, but he's also chosen to publish in a questionable source. If he wrote a blog post on the subject, I'm not sure we'd include that either. I removed the statement from the article on grounds that it didn't pass BLP muster, but it was restored when the article was moved to a title that purported to be about the claims and not the people (even though the usage is characterisations of living persons).

We have long held that skeptical blog posts just aren't good enough for characterisations of living persons, even on fringe topics. This applies even if Shermer is 100% correct. Note that personally I think he is, and that Grusch is a crank and his enablers aren't much better - but I'd want much more than a blog-level source to say so in Wikipedia.

I raised the concern here that the talk page had reached a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS which didn't apply in the face of BLP policy. There was even discussion of adding a picture of Shermer as an expert - even though his entire involvement is writing a blog-level post.

Perhaps I'm wrong. So I'm asking BLPN for more eyes on the situation - David Gerard (talk) 17:15, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

The discussion was mainly, really only, about Nick Pope but I get what you are saying Marginataen (talk) 17:28, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

I agree. We require exceptional sources for claims about living persons—especially for controversial or negative claims—and that means not citing generally unreliable or self-published sources. Woodroar (talk) 17:32, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

here's the usage btw: Skeptic Michael Shermer writing for Quillette on June 8, dismissed Grush's claims as "the latest semi-annual 'the government is hiding alien spacecraft'" story, and speculated why it has failed to excite mainstream media attention, saying, "Could it be the lack of evidence or proof or documentation of any kind? Could it be that they have a long institutional history of being burned by stories like this one, which produce a lot of feverish chatter but absolutely nothing of substance?" Shermer criticized assumptions that Kean and Blumenthal were disinterested, objective journalists, characterizing Kean as "a UFOlogist who believes aliens have visited – or are visiting – Earth", and Blumenthal as a "sympathetic" biographer of Harvard psychiatrist John Mack, "who uncritically accepted alien-abduction stories as authentic accounts of actual contact with ETIs (extraterrestrial intelligence)".[50] So I'm asking if this is WP:DUE as something on expert opinion level - David Gerard (talk) 17:47, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

I think the general statement could remain, but I think we have better sources that should be used instead. The claims specifically about Kean and Blumenthal go into BLP territory where I would not use a problematic source even if the author is respectable. Also, I think that in general we should use sources considered unreliable only if we really, really have to, i.e. if there are no better sources that can serve the same purpose. The simple reason is to prevent "but it's used there" arguments and to prevent people from getting the impression that it is a reliable source. -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 19:26, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

The relevant wording at WP:SPS is Never use self-published sources as third-party sources about living people, even if the author is an expert, well-known professional researcher, or writer.(bolding in the original). Regardless of whether he is an expert or not the source can't be used to make claims about a living personal. The first half is on less shaky as it's only about the claims. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 20:48, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

I am one of the editors who argued for keeping this paragraph in the article. I double checked SPS and what ActivelyDisinterested said is accurate. I missed that the first time I read it. There is also WP:BLP itself which clearly states to [n]ever use self-published sources...as sources of material about living people per WP:BLPSPS. This was published in the context of a blog, so not acceptable in that context.

There was the assertion of DUE because the subject is FRINGE. But at this point there are a number of acceptable critiques in the article with out using this one. Therefore, I am no longer concerned that DUE is an issue because these other criticisms are providing the necessary context. I will say that I may have made a mistake by not looking closer at the relevant BLP related policy. I am open to other arguments if other editors care to make them. I removed the paragraph pending the outcome of this discussion [36]---Steve Quinn (talk) 21:12, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

As far as I can tell it is not self published. "Just" unreliable. Nevertheless it shouldn't be used when better sources are available. -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 21:46, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

The platform that Shermer used has been determined to be unreliable [37], not Shermer himself. The question of using this platform (Quillette) for a source takes into consideration that ...usage in articles will usually be a question of whether or not it is WP:DUE for an attributed opinion rather than whether it is reliable for a factual claim. So, I think it is self-published in the context of a blog post on a site without acceptable editorial oversight. Also, there was the question of DUE for his attributed opinion. But this is probably not useful for BLP concerns, but for other topics it may be useful. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 22:11, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

I was talking about the platform. I'm not sure I understand why you're considering Sherman's article self-published. Do you consider Quillette a blog? Or are you saying that while Quillette is an online magazine it is so bad that all content should be considered self-published because of issues of editorial oversight? Or that not all content should be considered self-published, but the contribution by Shermer should? Or something altogether different? -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 22:26, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

According to WP:RSP#Quillette Quillette is generally unreliable and primarily publishes opinion peices. Consider that we would give the source the same reliability as if they had published on a blog. In both cases it's only usable because the author is an expert. WP:EXPERTSOURCE is a redirect to same part of V as WP:SPS, because there is fundamentally no difference. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 23:45, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

That makes sense. Thanks for the clarification. -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 00:03, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

At Andrew Wakefield there are currently seven sources descring him as a consipracy theorist. There has also been an edit war over the addition of an eighth. [38] The eighth source is a Forbes Contributor piece, so it is self published. [39] If it is properly ascribed to the author instead of the publication, can we use this source? - Bilby (talk) 22:53, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Forbes.com contributor articles should never be used for third-party claims about living persons. Articles that have also been published in the print edition of Forbes are excluded, and are considered generally reliable. Check the byline to determine whether an article is written by "Forbes Staff" or a "Contributor", and check underneath the byline to see whether it was published in a print issue of Forbes. WP:FORBESCON So it comes down to whether it was published in a print issue. For some reason the article won't load properly for me, so I can't check. -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 00:15, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

According to my browser it appears to be the Print version and is written by a highly qualified contributor. Xxanthippe (talk) 00:22, 19 June 2023 (UTC).

How can you tell if it was in the print edition? I can only see it saying that it is a contributor article, but nothing about being printed. - Bilby (talk) 00:24, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

I've read the article in 3 different browsers, with and without adblock, and I see nothing about it appearing in the print version. There's a "print" button, but not the "appeared in the print version" text—as far as I can see. Woodroar (talk) 00:29, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

For example, this article says "This story appears in the October 21, 2012 issue of Forbes." between the author and the text of the article; this article says "This story appears in the October 21, 2012 issue of Forbes." in the same location. Now the source in question has no such message. Woodroar (talk) 00:37, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Unless this has appeared in the print version, it clearly doesn't belong IMO. Steven Salzberg may be an expert but that isn't enough for us to use his commentary on living people via self published sources. There's no doubt that Salzberg said that, but apparently no one else considered it important, perhaps because it's already well established that Wakefield is as conspiracy theorist. Nil Einne (talk) 01:36, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Why are we even arguing about an eighth citation per WP:OVERCITE? Morbidthoughts (talk) 07:57, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

It's not actually 8 citations as such. The article is saying that 8 sources are making this statement with a citation for each: Regarding his anti-vaccine advocacy, Wakefield has been described as a conspiracy theorist by ThinkProgress, The Washington Post, The Guardian, the Los Angeles Times, Wired, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health,Steven Salzberg,and Paul Offit. But that does seem to be overkill. I would have thought there's enough there to make a generalised statement. DeCausa (talk) 08:08, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Agreed. At this point why don't we just say Regarding his anti-vaccine advocacy, Wakefield has been described as a conspiracy theorist. and cite the best three or four sources (e.g. Washington Post, Guardian, and Johns Hopkins)? Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 08:57, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Or chuck 'em all into a single footnote? - David Gerard (talk) 09:07, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Personally, I'm perfectly ok with that. Leave out the SPS, and we have a pretty concrete description of Wakefield. - Bilby (talk) 10:06, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

There is a complaint from what appears to be Castro's attorney on the talk page. It looks like the source they have an issue with does have WP:verifiability problems. I don't have time to delve deeper and resolve the issue though so I thought I'd bring it to the attention of the noticeboard. TulsaPoliticsFan (talk) 16:56, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Matt_Gaetz&curid=38902978&action=history it's unclear what's going on but there have been two editors going back and forth with reversions and edits. Perhaps it's time to protect the page and let them sort it out on Talk? Kcmastrpc (talk) 16:17, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

Hi. As one of those two editors, you could have messaged either of us on our talk pages or the article's talk page before raising this here. I only saw this by chance. – Muboshgu (talk) 20:05, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

You're right, I was mostly interested in intervening to ensure as little disruption as possible. I noticed that things have calmed down so we can probably close this discussion. Kcmastrpc (talk) 20:48, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

It ended up more disruptive than I would have liked, but it looks like we were able to keep some of the other editor's changes and they indicated on their talk page that they'll use the article's talk page going forward. – Muboshgu (talk) 21:16, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

Public image of Narendra Modi#Criticism and controversies, Amit Shah#Criticism, Lalu Prasad Yadav#Criticism, Mamata Banerjee#Public profile and controversies, Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar#Controversies, Abhishek Banerjee (politician)#Controversies, T. Rajaiah#Controversies, Mulayam Singh Yadav#Controversies, Manohar Lal Khattar#Controversies, Pinarayi Vijayan#Controversies, Yogi Adityanath#Controversies, Himanta Biswa Sarma#Controversies. 

In the last sentence in the lead of the article Charles Murray (political scientist), the claim that IQ differences between races and ethnic groups are discredited by mainstream science is poorly sourced. Two sources are pieces of journalism and not primary sources, and the other source from an academic journal is not a study of IQ differences between groups. The same exact claim and sources are also given in the Research section. The topic is well sourced in the Political views section. The inadequately sourced claim should be removed from the lead and Research sections of the article, but the well sourced claim in the Political views section should remain. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.74.81.20 (talk) 16:47, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

The sourcing is fine; both articles are written by scholars who study these issues, not journalists. The third source begins: Many, perhaps even an overwhelming majority, of biological anthropologists and human geneticists tell us that race is not a genetic concept (Bliss, 2012; Foster & Sharp, 2004; Jorde & Wooding, 2004; Morning, 2011; Yudell, Roberts, DeSalle, & Tishkoff, 2016). Those cites are to publications by Science, Nature, and two books on the subject.

But, even if the sourcing were bad, that would be a reason to fix the sourcing, not delete the content. And, in any event, the consensus on Wikipedia is quite clear that linking race to IQ is a fringe view per this RfC.

N.B. Generally concerns about a particular article should occur on the talk page; come to the noticeboards when there's some sort of dispute. voorts (talk/contributions) 02:49, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

I didn't know about this location, so I posted the following question at the Teahouse yesterday, and was referred here:

I'm struggling a bit with The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann. This article is about the Netflix documentary, and correctly makes this quite clear in the first sentence. But it contains an episode list written in the style of a typical plot-summary ("Later, an allegation rocks Gerry and Kate McCann."). I worry (1) that by passing the story through the digestive system of Netflix, we're allowing the article to bypass all our normal concerns about BLPs when basically it's telling a BLP story (albeit second-hand); and (2) because the article's title differs from our "proper" article on the disappearance (Disappearance of Madeleine McCann) merely by omission of "The", it's pretty much random which article a reader will find. We ought to be awfully careful about mixing up the balanced Wikipedian view of a recent, highly controversial event that impacted the lives of a lot of living people, and one media view of those events. Is there any guidance on situations like this? Is a typical interest-grabbing plot-summary appropriate?

I'd be grateful for any thoughts. Elemimele (talk) 05:49, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean by "second-hand" - that's what we want: secondary sources. I don't see why we wouldn't apply BLP to this any less than any other account. I had a quick look at the article and I don't think the tone meets WP:BLPSTYLE. Maybe, the episodal "plot summary" presentation, in the style of a fictional drama, is inherently anti-BLPSTYLE. Other than that I'm not sure there's a BLP issue - is there anything in the dramatisation that is WP:UNDUE or doesn't accord with what other sources say? It could do with a Reception section that critiques the docu-drama's accuracy etc. DeCausa (talk) 07:08, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

DeCausa, WP articles about events are based on secondary sources about those events. But they're not primarily about those sources. I think what Elemimele means is that whatever are the sources for this article, the article won't purport to be (and shouldn't give the impression that it is) about the event (and its long-drawn-out aftermath); it is and should clearly be about Netflix's rendering thereof. Such a duality isn't unusual: as an example, we have the article Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition and also the article South (about a book about the ITAE) ... oh, and also, I now notice, the article Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage (about another book about it). -- Hoary (talk) 08:15, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

The article about the documentary is a poor, undersourced one. I don't think the series is particularly notable and it could be mentioned in a short paragraph at the main article; we certainly don't need those episode summaries. Black Kite (talk) 08:41, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

True, Black Kite. -- Hoary (talk) 10:46, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I meant that it should be very clear that this is an article about the Netflix series, not the event. Because of the similarity of names, I don't think it is clear. Maybe a move to "The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann (Netflix series)" would help? The two articles that @Hoary mentioned have more appropriate names.

And yes, it's the plot summary that bothers me. It looks too much like a factual time-line of the event, couched in a very inappropriate way for WP. It's reasonable for a TV series to have a plot summary, but this isn't a fictional plot, it's a series of real life events, so I'm not sure how to solve that dilemma. Personally I also think it's in slightly bad taste to write about recent and traumatic events using the style of the entertainment industry, but that's not a Wikipedia reason to remove it.

Yes, by "second hand" I didn't mean in the sense of correct use of secondary sources. I meant in the sense that we're no longer writing about the event, we're writing-about-writing-about-the-event. I wasn't sure if this distance allowed us to dispense with Wikipedia's neutral style in writing about BLPs. I have no particular view about the notability of the Netflix series, but it's certainly a lot less notable than the event itself, so in the interests of balance, the Netflix article should be very subservient to the main article. Elemimele (talk) 12:22, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

My personal details link is to a very distasteful website. Can that link be removed from my page, Please? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Stafford Carson (talk • contribs) 16:12, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

Done. Lard Almighty (talk) 16:15, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

Thank you lard. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:25, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

I want to head off an edit war by raising this issue here. For those outside the UK, Jolyon Maugham is a lawyer who has become a hate figure for many on the right wing of the UK's version of the "culture wars". He has opposed Brexit and supported human rights for transgender people and this has earned him a particularly vocal coterie of haters. This has translated into a long edit history of both registered and anonymous editors trying to add excessively negative content, some of it nothing more than Twitter drama, to the article. Normally that gets reverted and we move on. This time it is a bit different.

Maugham has written a book which has, predictably, been absolutely monstered by the UK's right wing press. Some coverage of this is, of course, acceptable. The fact that The Times denounced it in extremely vigorous terms is notable. The problem is that we have POV editing going on to include as much negative coverage of him and his book as possible by cherry-picking from sources, some of them quite minor publications, while ignoring the less lurid coverage in the majority of major mainstream publications. I believe that this goes far enough beyond neutral coverage of the situation to be a BLP issue and that is why I am raising it here.

Let's look at the key diffs: (Apologies if this is TL;DR.)

• It starts with User:192.76.8.75 adding very POV coverage of the book and its responses drawn exclusively from right wing publications. (diff.) This fails to even say what the book is about before declaring, without a source, that the book was "widely panned" and launching into set of lurid quotes from extremely negative reviews. It quotes from The Times (fair enough), UnHerd (a very minor publication known to be very hostile to transgender people) and then quotes the The Spectator in a frankly bizarre way which is almost incomprehensible. Apparently The Spectator had a big problem with the book's opening sentence. Are we told what the sentence is or why they disliked it? No. It provides no information to our readers at all. Then it dissolves into Twitter drama by roping in JK Rowling. I reverted this with the comment "That is an obviously skewed choice of sources. Maybe re-add it with a broad cross-section of papers and leave individuals out of it". It was anonymously restored and then reverted again by User:Rankersbo.
• Next User:Rankersbo adds very basic neutral coverage of the book.(diff) This gets anonymously reverted and the POV version is restored.(diff) User:Smartse takes out the most egregiously POV part (the unreferenced claim of "widely panned"), which helps, but it is still badly POV and so I revert to Rankersbo's more basic neutral version.
• Next User:Atchom joins the fray by restoring the anonymous user's POV version saying out that it is referenced (true) and that there is no reason to remove it (which I don't agree with).(diff)
• After that, I try to break the deadlock by combining parts of the basic/neutral and POV versions. I add back Rankersbo's description of what the book is actually about and remove the minor coverage, incoherence and drama while keeping the notable criticism from The Times in full.(diff) In my view this where this back and forth should have ended. The haters got their zinger quote from The Times in. They should be happy, right? Apparently not.
• The saga continues with User:Atchom adding back the Twitter drama with Rowling, but not the Spectator bit, and also adding in a piece of trivial criticism/opinion from a non-notable writer, Sarah Phillimore writing in The Critic, a barely notable right wing magazine known to be extremely hostile to transgender people.(diff) I reverted this as POV but Atchom reinstated it and I declined to get into an edit war over it by reverting again.

I feel that this coverage that I am pushing back on has a very "Hunter Biden feel" to it, if you know what I mean. It is seeking out minor issues and trying to blow them up into a big thing. I can't help thinking that this seems to be driven by animus. It is POV (and also maybe WP:SYNTH) and a BLP violation. My attempts to discuss this on the Talk page received agreement from Rankersbo but no other responses so far and did not prevent the content being restored again, so I feel that consensus, thinly based though it is, is more on my side here.

So, what do I want here? I'd like a clear steer to avoid shoehorning in excessively negative and trivial coverage from minor sources and to balance it with more coverage from major Reliable Sources reflecting the overall balance of mainstream coverage. Ideally, I'd like us to select this version as the best basis to move forward, adding a few additional book reviews from major publications like national newspapers and legal journals and maybe giving the book its own small section. --DanielRigal (talk) 02:28, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

There is a lot of special pleading here and a lot of political innuendo, but the matter is really simple. Maugham wrote a book which was panned. He then got into a fight with various people, including J K Rowling, which got the book even more coverage, including from reliable secondary sources. DanielRigal says he wants a more balanced coverage. We all do. But he hasn't added a single additional positive "book reviews from major publications like national newspapers and legal journals", preferring instead to edit warring.

As to the alleged lack of balance, here is every review (excluding blogs) I have found. There is one positive review in a small niche outlet and five negative ones in high-profile ones. If DanielRigal has others, he is free to add them. But he can't pretend that the summary of the reviews he reverted was not representative.

Zhu, Times (negative): https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/bringing-down-goliath-by-jolyon-maugham-review-2x2df8qcx

Lord Frost, Politics Home (negative): https://www.politicshome.com/thehouse/article/lord-frost-reviews-bringing-goliath

King, UnHerd (negative): https://unherd.com/2023/04/is-jolyon-maugham-the-new-alan-partridge/

Granet, The Critic (negative): https://thecritic.co.uk/taking-the-clown-seriously/

Roberts, The Spectator (negative): https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/jolyon-maughams-opening-sentence-might-be-the-worst-of-all-time/

Greenhalgh, BJGP (positive): https://bjgplife.com/bringing-down-goliath-by-jolyon-maugham-kc/

And for secondary coverage of Maugham's reaction to the book reviews:

Telegraph: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/04/22/jk-rowling-trans-row-jolyon-maugham-kc-book-review/

Sunday Times (you have to scroll past the paywall): https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/jolyon-maugham-the-fox-killing-lawyer-i-identify-with-gandhi-5l3ljp89k

Talk TV: https://talk.tv/news/12754/jk-rowlings-twitter-spat-with-lawyer-jolyon-maugham

I am going to revert the reversion. The section was NPOV and well-sourced. I am going to revert a separate addition I made about how he attacked the neutrality of a judge who ruled against him, which is rather Trumpian. But this complaint is nothing except special pleading with a dose of political innuendo. People on the political left can write bad books too.

~~~~ Atchom (talk) 03:03, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

Also, OP not only reverted the section on the reviews but he also deleted a section about Maugham's attack on a serving High Court judge who ruled against him in a high profile case. He has presented exactly no argument as to why that section should be deleted. Atchom (talk) 03:07, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I did: "also adding in a piece of trivial criticism/opinion from a non-notable writer, Sarah Phillimore writing in The Critic, a barely notable right wing magazine known to be extremely hostile to transgender people". It is an opinion piece. It is Phillimore herself doing the criticising, not her reporting on criticism. --DanielRigal (talk) 04:05, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

Your personal opinions about her and her views seem rather beside the point. Are you sure you can maintain the necessary NPOV to participate in this editorial process? Atchom (talk) 17:43, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

Please do not personalise discussions like this Atchom. Nothing DanielRigal said in his reply is inaccurate. Phillimore is non-notable as otherwise we would have an article about her, The Critic's notability is primarily due to its culture war content focus which includes hostility to transgender people and issues, and from the language alone the article pretty clearly consists of Phillimore's broader criticism of Maugham wrapped up in criticism of the book, and not just reporting on the criticism made by others.

If, and it's a big if, The Critic is a reliable source, then this particular article would pretty clearly subject to WP:RSOPINION and so unusable for the paragraph removed in this edit relating to Justice Lieven. Sideswipe9th (talk) 17:52, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

Can you find reliable third-party coverage of The Critic as transphobic? Atchom (talk) 17:59, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

Their transgender category is filled with transphobic opinion pieces masquerading as news articles. Note that it's entirely reasonable, commonplace, and (in most cases) necessary to make those sorts of editorial decisions ourselves. WP:NOR specifically states that [t]his policy does not apply to talk pages and other pages which evaluate article content and sources, such as deletion discussions or policy noticeboards. Woodroar (talk) 18:38, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

There are few sources about the publication itself. However, according to the publication's founding editor, the intent of the publication is to engage in culture war content.

The peer-reviewed paper An anatomy of the British war on woke, published in Race & Class discusses The Critics role, alongside other publications like Spiked, Quillette, Daily Mail, The Sun, The Daily Telegraph, and GB News in the proliferation of anti-woke culture war content.

The Battleground says of The Critic Of course, the magazine has a special place for all things anti-transgender – whether they be self-styled gender-critical feminists or anti-feminists. It’s no longer the ‘war on terror’, but the ‘war on woke’. and Whether we like it or not, The Critic is here to speak to the disaffected right and its obsessions with an alphabet soup of cancel culture, diversity and trans rights.. Sideswipe9th (talk) 18:45, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

"The Battleground" doesn't even provide information about who publishes it. Reliable? Atchom (talk) 13:31, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

I don't think the cherry picking claim makes sense. I had a quick look and couldn't see any other reviews other than the ones @Atchom lists. That said, does the bit about the Twitter spat with Rowling really add much to the article? It doesn't seem very notable or interesting to me other than in a gossipy sense. PieLover3141592654 (talk) 10:15, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

Twitter spats which receive mainstream coverage can be notable. We have whole articles about Internet controversies. We have a gigantic article about Social media use by Donald Trump. Atchom (talk) 17:44, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

• Comment Let's be realistic, though - these are not book reviews. They are attacks on Maugham by his ideological culture war and Brexit opponents dressed up as book reviews. Let's look - UnHerd - a right-wing opinion website. The Spectator - ditto. Politics Home - not quite as right-wing, but definitely conservative (and written by a right-wing politician who was formerly a Tory Minister negotiating Brexit). The Telegraph - right-wing newspaper with previous for supporting Rowling in the transphobia row. And so forth. To be honest, none of them should be quoted or used as sources outside this context; anything else could be construed as a BLP violation. Black Kite (talk) 12:55, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

  The Times, Telegraph, and Spectator, much as I disagree with their opinions on most issues, are at least major publications; UnHerd is basically a nonentity and has essentially no business in the article.

  More broadly, I am suspicious of the controversies section of the article, which per WP:CRITS should generally be avoided; at least three of those subsections can be incorporated into the involvement in politics section and do not need their own subsections. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 13:55, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

  Yes, agreed on both points. PieLover3141592654 (talk) 15:10, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

  We don't ban cites to the NY Times because its progressive editorial stance. Sources have biases - that's part of the nature of modern media. Atchom (talk) 17:46, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

  The NYT doesn't generally allow its writers to attack people it doesn't like under the pretence of a book review. Black Kite (talk) 18:41, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

  Can you show me the guideline which says we are not allowed to mention relevant information about a person (which has received secondary coverage as well) because it's mean? Atchom (talk) 13:29, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

• Comment The quote from the Times is so bad that it sounds like a smear/personal attack on the author. Obviously, the fact he wrote a book is notable. The fact that it's been panned and negatively reviewed is notable. But is a twitter spat notable? In 100 years from now, is that what should be written about this person? Denaar (talk) 14:56, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

  UK book reviewers tend to be harsher. See the article on Jacob Rees Mogg's book The Victorians (Rees-Mogg book) (for context, he is very right-wing). Atchom (talk) 17:47, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

  Harsher when critiquing the work perhaps, but rarely to the point of ad hominem attacks on the work's author. Using your example, if you compare The Time's review of Maugham's book against their review of Rees-Mogg's book, the criticisms in the Rees-Mogg review are focused almost entirely on the book, with the closest to criticisms of the author being the final paragraph where the reviewer is describing how his perceptions of Rees-Mogg have changed because of the book. Conversely for Maugham's book, the third, and fourth paragraphs are pretty clear attacks on Maugham the author, and not the book that should be the focus of the review. Sideswipe9th (talk) 19:02, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

  Wikipedia's job is not to tone police reliable third-party sources for what they print. Atchom (talk) 13:32, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

  Yes, I don't see anything wrong with the Times review. Yes, it's harsh, but maybe that's because it's a bad book. If I'm being picky it might be better to have a quote from the review itself rather than the headline. PieLover3141592654 (talk) 15:45, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

  Wait what? Why are we using a headline at all? Per WP:HEADLINES, a headline is not an RS. (While this refers to news, I don't see any reason to treat book review in news sites and similar any different. They have the same issues namely that they might come from some editor rather than the reviewer.) Nil Einne (talk) 17:13, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

  Note that the Times article was written by Yuan Yi Zhu, who on his own website states he also writes for Unherd amongst other publications.[40] There is certainly an issue that the same few people are responsible for the writing and viewpoints of a lot of right-of-centre news sources, meaning that when we use the Telegraph, the Spectator and Unherd, and increasingly the Times, we have to be careful we're not getting the same guy wearing four different hats, rather than four independent write-ups. Elemimele (talk) 16:32, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

Myself an another editor are disagreeing if this article subject should be called "right wing" and I am inviting others to add to the conversation on the talk page. CT55555(talk) 15:39, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

CT55555, at Talk:Tamara Lich#political affiliation, we read: This page is being discussed at the biographies of living persons noticeboard [...] Please discuss policy compliance issues there. Discussion there, discussion here, or one part there and one part here? -- Hoary (talk) 00:15, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

Sorry. I don't use this process much and I was not aware that the template there would direct people here. I appear to have created a paradox.

As the discussion is occurring there, I suggest it is logical to continue it there.

I'll avoid this dilemma if I have to do this again. CT55555(talk) 00:17, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

Update, I removed the tag (and its conflicting advice) and placed bold text there to avoid the paradox. Thanks for highlighting the issue. CT55555(talk) 00:25, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

The subject of an article, Dan Ariely, has created a Wikipedia userpage User:Dariely67. On his userpage he is requesting multiple changes to his article, which he claims to be inaccurate. Can someone who is more experienced in the realm of WP:BLPCOMPLAINT address the claims of inaccuracy so that the article quality can be improved?
@Dariely67: Can you please comment.--RightCowLeftCoast (Moo) 04:23, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

I have left a message for him and will see what I can do to help out, but please don't let that stop anyone else! Cheers. Dumuzid (talk) 04:31, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

Thank you @Dumuzid! DrMel (talk) 14:58, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

The page dedicated to Gary D. Rhodes is a mess and does not follow the formatting of the majority of biographical articles on Wikipedia. Furthermore, the usage of sources is very poor and the majority of them are merely book and movie reviews. The article is written like a promotional piece for Gary D. Rhodes, and constantly includes positive reviews and quotes of his books and films with little other information. Additionally, there is very little information regarding Rhodes' personal life and history, and the section dedicated to that topic has instances of promotion-like information in it. The sources are also incredibly unreliable and it is hard to find the majority of them as no links are given and I have been unable to turn up anything after a long time of searching. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Chaconut (talk • contribs)

My gut feeling is the subject is non-notable. The article really relies on primary sources. However, I'm not sure what to do with the non-internet resources, and how to verify any of those. I did remove a few extremely bad sources and added archives links to a few. Denaar (talk) 04:07, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

How should this be handled: [41]? Should it be reverted as possible vandalism? or brought to the Talk Page with the editor in question to discuss the COI and sourced content? Thanks. Maineartists (talk) 18:29, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

The Independent source is good, but it simply says he is gay and nothing more. The second source is questionable. I have edited accordingly, and also left the editor a note about COI. GiantSnowman 18:41, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. Maineartists (talk) 18:48, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

FWIW, Bagley's own website states that "Tim is proud of his work with the Los Angeles LGBT Center". Certainly no indication as to sexuality, but given that information I doubt the real Bagley would react so aggressively to being called gay... GiantSnowman 18:51, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

Groundling95 has re-removed even the limited information [42]. Despite the source I'm not going to re-revert them. An IP has replied to GiantSnowman's comment on Groundling95's talk page with this comment [43].

I would be very cautious about making assumptions whether this is or isn't Bagley based on the website thing. I've been involved in these sort of issues long enough to know the sentiments expressed by the IP aren't exactly uncommon even among gay men who are open about their sexuality. And while yes, there are plenty of people who disagree and feel that the info should be mentioned and not hidden, ultimately it's disagreement for which there is no simple resolution.

We should especially remember that although the info is out there, for a lot of subjects especially for people who are less known, their wikipedia article can often be one of the only things someone reads about them. It's a key reason why BLP exists and why we often get complaints even when we are simply summarising info that is already in reliable secondary sources. Wikipedia articles can have a reasonable effect on someones personal and professional life and it's not hard to imagine reasons why the latter in particular could come into play here.

While the Independent article does mention the detail, IMO considering it's simply in the context of explaining something silly at a award show, it's not a great reason to add it. It's definitely not enough IMO to establish grounds for WP:BLPCAT. And while this is not a categorisation dispute, similar issues on WP:DUE do arise. For that reason, especially if Groundling95 confirms their identity, I think we should just exclude it.

Nil Einne (talk) 04:42, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

I've replied on their talk page briefly explaining the dilemma we faced and told them it would help greatly if they verify their identity. Nil Einne (talk) 04:53, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

BTW, the IP geolocates to Wisconsin which seems a little strange since I'm pretty sure Bagley lives in LA. Although it doesn't seem that surprising an actor may be somewhat far from their home so it still doesn't say that much one way or the other. Nil Einne (talk) 05:30, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

Should mention the most recent post on their Bagley's verified Instagram identifies them him as LGBTQ+ [44] which is what I mentioned on Groundling95's talk page [45]. Nil Einne (talk) 06:54, 25 June 2023 (UTC) 13:13, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

As of this morning: [46]. I am leaning toward vandalism rather than the actual BLP. I cannot imagine that Tim Bagley would write: "Removed a homophobic slur" in regards to sexual orientation. Here is a podcast with EJ SCott from June 10, 2014 Ep. #30 [47] where Bagley talks about: "being gay and trying to convert to straight through classes and programs" and "losing his partner of 10 years to an HIV related illness". Maineartists (talk) 14:13, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

I think everyone is already in agreement, but liverampup.com looks like a Clickbait Celebrity Gossip site. Titles on front page "secret to an amazing married life!" "is he gay?" "post sparks dating rumor!" I'd not consider that reliable. Denaar (talk) 15:57, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

Please see recent additions to the talk page (I won't repeat the allegations here) but the IP goes way beyond talking about "allegations" and states the accusations are "literal truth". Does this edit on the talk page violate WP:BLP? GimliDotNet (talk) 18:45, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

The only freely licensed image of Ester Martin Bergsmark shows Bergsmark wearing cornrow braids. An IP editor has requested its removal as cultural appropriation which the director does not want to spread [48]. The photographer has nominated it for deletion on Commons as a courtesy to the subject. (A Google image search shows Bergsmark sporting a variety of other hairstyles, so it doesn't appear that cornrows are part of Bergsmark's typical look.) gnu57 15:01, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

We don't actually let subjects decide the content of their articles just because it makes them uncomfortable. If this really is the subject, they could trivially take and submit a selfie, and if it's judged a better image for the article, we'd replace it. (Well, I hope we'd replace it! See the second https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Ana_Ularu_on_HotNews_Romania.jpg) --GRuban (talk) 18:18, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

We don't let subjects decide, but there's WP:BLPKIND to consider. But I'm curious if [49] is the only basis for this, IMO it's a bit weak. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 21:03, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

I have edited this article -- Dorian Rhea Debussy -- for neutrality, based on the coi template that another user placed. (There was definitely puffery.) I thought it was solid to move forward, so I removed the template per WP:TEMPREMOVE, but the OP put it back on. I want to move to other projects in the AfD queue, but I'm hoping someone else can help with addressing the needs here. I also started a discussion on the coi tag area of this talk page. (I also posted on Wikipedians Looking For Help too.) Basically, can you help with further editing for coi and neutrality? Pumpkinspyce (talk) 01:36, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

Richard_Bellis No sources cited. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ezeva (talk • contribs) 01:32, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

According to Billboard, "Emmy-winning composer Richard Bellis, who had helmed the program for years, stepped down following last year’s 30th anniversary to devote more time to his other projects." That's all I had time to do tonight but subject seems notable if we can source it. Denaar (talk) 04:17, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

Someone recently vandalized this page Aaron Saidman, which was already reverted. They called him something I don't want to repeat here, but you can see the intro here, here, here and here. On behalf of my client I am reaching out to request the history be removed and expunged which contains this defamatory information and still accessible. I have disclosed my COI in my user page. I also request that you semi-protect the page so new users cannot vandalize it again. This person already tried twice and may be back again.Freezejunk (talk) 09:40, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

• I have revdeleted the information and semi-protected. You may wish to contact WP:OVERSIGHT to have the information removed more permanently. Black Kite (talk) 11:11, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

i find the other editor's discourse to be abrasive, so i am withdrawing, but i hope someone else can help maintain the encyclopedic nature of the article and keep it neutral. — Preceding unsigned comment added by BigMouthCommie (talk • contribs) 18:30, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

If you compare these two edits: [50], you'll find that two people are accused of a crime. There are three sources cited. Another source provided on the talk page, [51] but not added to the article.

In every news article I can find, the source of the two individuals belonging to Gays Against Groomers is the same source: A tweet. If you go to that tweet, the group Gays Against Groomers denies have any members in attendance at the protest, or even in the city, at the time of the crime. Another group has been implicated.

Since this is "XYZ accused of a crime" and the evidence is a tweet that's been refuted, no follow up evidence the group is involved, and news stories aren't following up on the case - wouldn't this be good example of "Contentious material about living persons (or, in some cases, recently deceased) that is unsourced or poorly sourced—whether the material is negative, positive, neutral, or just questionable—must be removed immediately and without waiting for discussion."?

Denaar (talk) 22:19, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

I see two issues here. First, should we write about the allegations against those two people? And second, should we refer to them as belonging to GAG and include it in the GAG article? If the only evidence for a connection is indeed a tweet we probably should not connect them to the group. The answer to the first question depends on the state of legal proceedings, i.e. have they been arrested, convicted, ...? My recommendation would be to remove it and only reinsert it if after careful consideration of the sources there is a consensus to do so. -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 22:35, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

I believe there were total of 5 people arrested, 3 at one place, 2 at another, so I think on top of the source issue, it's not really accurate and they are accusing these two people of crimes committed by 5 people who were arrested. Beyond the arrests, I haven't found any follow up. They are also mentioned on Guardians of Divinity article. Denaar (talk) 23:14, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

I have removed the name of the people given WP:BLPCRIME and added "allegedly" to what they are accused of doing or were arrested for. Reinstatement of their names should be by consensus. I also removed the unicorn riot source as it does not appear to be RS, but a group blog without editorial oversight. Morbidthoughts (talk) 23:16, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

I appreciate the edit, as well as some of the other feedback you've provided me. I have been reading multiple guildelines, and my understanding is that Per WP:BLPCRIME: "editors must seriously consider not including material—in any article—that suggests the person has committed or is accused of having committed a crime, unless a conviction has been secured." No news organizations have followed up on this event with the outcome, and it doesn't meet the notability guidelines of WP:CRIME. I'm not fully against removing the event from Erik Bottcher's webpage, but based on the Crime and Wikipedia news guidelines WP:NOTNP, since this event happened, flashed all over the news... but no news organizations are following up on it with continued reports, it seems like it should removed from all three pages it's currently on because it's not been notable in the long run. I've added notices to the other two pages to request comment here. So far, no one has defended keeping it so the consensus is remove, but I wanted to invite additional editors of the other pages a chance to provide feedback. Denaar (talk) 17:03, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Unicorn Riot is an investigative journalism outfit. They come up with important stuff, so they are worth taking notice of, but their structure might well mean that they are not RS. They probably count as a primary source. Normally their important stories are picked up by other orgs so that's where we get the secondary RS coverage. Anyway, I'm only here because I got notified on my talk page. My involvement in this is that I reverted the removal of the chunk in question which I interpreted as blanking because it removed plausibly relevant material which was referenced to multiple sources. If we have found a way to retain the content while dealing with any potential BLP issues then that sounds good to me. --DanielRigal (talk) 17:20, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

I didn't want to make any changes without your feedback since you reverted it - I want to collaborate; even if I'm strongly opinionated. This is my reasoning/thoughts on moving forward, I want to leave plenty of time for others to review and provide feedback as well.

I actually agree on the UR as a primary source, it's nice to read an account based on someone who had reporters onsite who is not just reporting on twitter accounts.

All the most reliable, least biased sources say the protest was associated with the group "Guardians of Divinity" - like the NY times: [52]

Pink News is considered reliable but they clearly attribute their source: "Erik Bottcher tweeted." [53]

Fox News is as biased as Pink News, just the opposite direction, and they also clearly attribute it "The councilman said". [54]

The articles with no attribution to the councilman's tweet are bottom-of-the-barrel sources.

Based on original reasearch, the reason the councilman made the tweet is due to a video where someone can be heard saying "Gays Against Groomers wouldn't approve of this".

It's complete heresay. We can't use OR to add something to an article, but I absolutely think we should be cautious with heresay about living people, especially when they are being accused of a crime. I figured this didn't even need debate.

This is the tweet from the councilman:[55]

This is the tweet from the group in response; "All of our members are in Phoenix right now." [56]

Which is even in the thread of the original tweet - so the most professional news sources didn't include that information in their articles.

The even itself is not important or notiable enough for any News source to follow up on the case, it's been 6 months will no follow up.

This is the PN follow up - they don't mention the previous event at all, or any of the groups responsible for the protest [57]

I'm not going to strongly argue removing all mention of it from Wikipedia, but I think we follow the NY Time's lead on how to report on it if we do, removed it from GAG, leave a stripped down version on the coucilman's page, maybe include the follow up protest documented by Pink News on the councilman's page as well.

Denaar (talk) 18:30, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

I think it makes sense to mention the vandalism and its connection to the drag reading in the article on Bottcher without making any statements about people or groups. In my opinion the vandalism is notable enough but the reporting (and possibly the whole incident) is insufficient to meet WP:BLPCRIME especially given that the people involved are not otherwise notable. I would remove it completely from the other articles. -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 22:23, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Hi, I'm trying to edit Blitz's Wiki to reflect his current creative focus (filmmaking) as oppposed to music and it's not letting me? Can someone please approve this change? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nadira.2154 (talk • contribs) 00:28, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

You removed a bunch of sourced text with the edit summary removed because he wants to be seen more as a filmmaker than a musician. As both editors who reverted you told you in their edit summaries, that's not how wikipedia works. We don't remove sourced content simply because the subject of the article would like us to. We write articles based on what the reliable sources say, not based on how the subject would like to be seen. If you have policy-based reasons for removing the content, I suggest you bring it up on Talk:Blitz the Ambassador and try to gain consensus there. If your only justification is "because that's what Blitz the Ambassador wants" then don't bother: that's not going to fly. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 19:56, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Also, given that all of your editing is apparently focused on making edits based on what Blitz the Ambassador wants: do you have any connection to him, and are you editing on his behalf? If you are connected to Blitz the Ambassador, you need to follow Wikipedia's rules on conflict-of-interest editing. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 20:03, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

In fact, on further looking at the article there was a bunch of non-neutral and unencylopedic language in it, and the sources don't all support the text that they're with. I've rewritten some of the worst text and marked some unsupported stuff with ((cn)) tags. That says, my point above stands: if you want to remove text which appears to be sourced, you need to engage with the things Wikipedia considers problems with it (sources don't support it; tone isn't encyclopedic) rather than things which wikipedia doesn't care about (subject would rather we focused on a different aspect of his career). Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 14:44, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

Artesia, New Mexico infanticide case: a dispute[58][59] about whether the name of the suspect, and "murder" categories, should be included or excluded from this article about a previously non-notable suspect charged (but not convicted) so far. I guess the article title should be part of the discussion as well. Fram (talk) 07:43, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

The question, is, is this case even notable? Cases of mothers murdering their newborns aren't particularly rare or unusual, there was a similar case in the UK recently [60]. It just seems like WP:NOTNEWS to me, unless this somehow ties into a broader narrative regarding the repeal of Roe v. Wade or something. Hemiauchenia (talk) 08:01, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

I agree, it's not notable as it stands. I've opened an AFD discussion for it. Neiltonks (talk) 10:47, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

I have given the article's creator a logged warning under WP:NEWBLPBAN for violating WP:BLPCRIME and WP:BLPRESTORE. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she|they|xe) 16:42, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

I recently removed "convicted felon" from the Jeffrey Skilling article's lead sentence. It was reverted by Premeditated Chaos. I personally don't have a problem with including the phrase in the opening line of a BLP, but I was following the advice given at this recent discussion, and wanted to get more input on the situation here. Wes sideman (talk) 12:33, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, it doesn't need to be in the opening sentence. the lede there covers the Enron scandal, so the fact that he is a felon from that should clearly be mentioned, but forcing that in the opening sentence sets a massive POV tone problem for the article. Masem (t) 12:35, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

As is abundantly clear from the article, the fact that he is a convicted criminal is by far the most notable thing we could possibly write about him. There's really nothing wrong with putting this term in the lead sentence. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 13:32, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

There is no requirement the lede sentence must identify why they are notable, but that should be include within the lede paragraph. On the other hand, we must write BLP on a neutral and dispassionate tone, and coming out of the gate with a strong emotive descriptor like "felon" is not aligned with establishing a neutral tone. Masem (t) 14:47, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

What isn't neutral about the word "felon" if the person has been convicted of a felony? Wes sideman (talk) 13:04, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

Previously discussed in an RfC on the David Duke talk page, at BLPN about Chris Brown, and at WT:BLP, among other places.

My main argument is here. Avoid, in favour of "pleaded guilty to X" or "was convicted of X", because "convicted felon" is too emotive, too essentializing, and often bad writing. Skilling was convicted because of what he did at Enron, so it's strange to mention the conviction before mentioning Enron. The lead would be far better if "convicted felon" was removed from the first sentence, since his conviction is mentioned non-emotively in the second sentence, after we give the context that he led Enron during the scandal. DFlhb (talk) 13:37, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

I agree with this. Per WP:Lead the lead should focus on who, what, where - and why the subject of the article is notable. It should be summary level, the more specific details should follow. The first sentence as it stands really lets me know who they were immediately.

Being convicted/found innocent is actually a detail of the story, and the second sentence is filling in t hat detail.

Look at the lead on Westboro Baptist Church. The first sentence is telling us how, what where. The next is explaining why they are... notorious.

Denaar (talk) 15:45, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

"Felon" is so vague that it is probably best avoided. It covers everything from mass murderers to people who were at a protest in the wrong country. (Plus, that first sentence is awkward in saying that he is known as the CEO, rather than simply stating that he was the CEO.) -- Nat Gertler (talk) 13:49, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

Yup. If someone is notable for a crime they committed, describe it in the lede. Being 'a felon' isn't notable. Being convicted for involvement with the Enron fraud is. AndyTheGrump (talk) 13:59, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

The lead is a bit of a trainwreck and I'd be in favor of heavily paring it down. It's largely a repeat of the details presented in the main body of the article and the excessive minutia is too much to be considered a summary of this individual.

In reference to convicted felon, I completely agree with @DFlhb and @NatGertler, it's way too vague of a statement and smells of lazy writing. Kcmastrpc (talk) 14:01, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

I think this would be resolved by a merger of the first two sentences. Something like: ..is a former CEO of Enron Corporation whose part the Enron scandal led to his 2006 conviction and imprisonment for fraud. That's what he's really known for. DeCausa (talk) 14:02, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

That would be fine; the specific wording "convicted felon" is all I object to. DFlhb (talk) 14:18, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

Nitpicking, I would say "...is an American businessperson. As the former CEO of Enron Corporation, his part in the Enron scandal led to his 2006 conviction and imprisonment for fraud".

This keeps the first sentence neutral and then immediately gets to his notable factor. Masem (t) 14:44, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

Why is describing his main source of notability somehow "non-neutral"? WP:NPOV isn't limited to the first sentence of the article: either we can describe why this guy is notable or we can't. Loki (talk) 00:31, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

(EC x2) I reverted because from the edit summary, Wes sideman's rationale appeared to be based on a misinterpretation of this BLPN discussion. That discussion does not place a flat prohibition on the phrase; in fact some arguments clearly support its use where appropriate. At best, it's no consensus either way. Personally, I agree with Nomoskedasticity - the criminal conviction essentially defines Skilling. It belongs up front and center. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 14:08, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

Apart from in very limited cases, I see no reason why we should be introducing people as "convicted felons" or "convicted criminals/participants" as if that's their identity.. policy requires that the lede sentence include all notable features of a person. WP:FIRSTBIO (on the MOS) warns against inclusion of non-career-type language, EVEN IF that's what they're most notable for currently. See David Duke and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:David_Duke#RFC_for_%22convicted_felon%22_phrase_in_opening_sentence for "convicted felon" phrase in opening sentence for how this often turns out when it goes to an RFC. 2605:59C8:25AF:C410:AD14:5353:2CD5:E3F8 (talk) 15:00, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

That's not a comparable case at all. The felony conviction is hardly what Duke was famous for, and there is clearly no flat prohibition on "non-career-type" language - the lead sentence of that article quite correctly introduces Duke as a "white supremacist, antisemitic conspiracy theorist". Those aren't careers, they're ideological stances.

Perhaps look instead at R. Kelly, who is introduced as a "convicted sex offender" - while he was once solely famous for his music, he is most certainly more famous now for being a sexual predator. Skilling may have been notable simply as a businessman in an alternate universe where Enron was legitimate, but his notability in this universe comes from his criminal participation in that scandal, making it fair game for the opening sentence. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 15:28, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

A few key points here:

• The first sentence does not include convicted felon.
• Despite him being most notable at this point for this fact, his sex offender conviction is last on the list in the opening sentence.
• Despite him being a convicted child predator that information isn't presented until the forth paragraph in the lead, despite it being what he is most notable for (further illustrating the point).

Do we account for these peculiarities on the R. Kelly page? Kcmastrpc (talk) 15:38, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

I don't understand how "convicted felon" is a problem, but "convicted sex offender" is fine. Feels like a difference without a distinction to me. I also don't particularly see how either order makes that much of a difference. When you lead with the conviction, you get it out of the way and move on to other things, effectively softening it. When you end with the conviction, it's not the first thing you see but it is the last thing you're left with. Both have their pros/cons in terms of presentation. I'm not sure that the details being left to the last paragraph illustrates any point considering we're not discussing including details, we're discussing the label "convicted felon/sex offender". ♠PMC♠ (talk) 16:19, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

To me this is a convincing argument, and has convinced me that I was incorrect in removing the phrase in the first place. You cannot, with a straight face, argue that "convicted sex offender" is okay on the R. Kelly article, but say that "convicted felon" is not okay for someone that committed a white-collar crime (or other violent crime, for that matter). I am with PMC♠ (talk) and Nomoskedasticity (talk) on this one - if someone's notability is significantly derived from their conviction of a felony, it's fine in the lead sentence. Wes sideman (talk) 17:51, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

How that is included in R. Kelly's lede is as much a problem as here, particularly as it stands out like a sore thumb after everything else R. Kelly did in a professional manner. It is POV writing which we shouldn't be doing in the lede sentence. Instead how and why he was convicted should be established in the lede since that is still a significant thing he was known.for. WP's goal on bios should not be to immediately call them out on any bad or good stuff they have done but to establish context for these. Masem (t) 18:24, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

Masem (t), you make good points here, and although I disagree with you, I'm happy to abide by whatever decision the community comes to, as long as we're consistent throughout Wikipedia. If we end up with the lead sentence of R. Kelly describing him as a "convicted sex offender" and Skilling without "convicted felon", I'd have a big problem with that, and I think the community at large would as well. Wes sideman (talk) 18:38, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

I'd say that "convicted sex criminal" is better than "convicted felon" not on the color of the collar, but on specificity. "Convicted fraudster", on the other hand, would be fairly equal to it. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 18:37, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

"Convicted sex offender" is way different than "convicted felon" - convicted felon is extremely vague, encompasses a wide range of offenses including murder, and is absolutely a contentious label. Convicted sex offender is much more specific and in some circles considered a badge of honor. 2605:59C8:25AF:C410:B91B:9193:C26:D940 (talk) 04:52, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

"Lead sentence vs not lead sentence" isn't the only choice. Someone's already proposed wording that would mention both in the first sentence, yet avoid saying he was convicted before mentioning who he worked for. DFlhb (talk) 05:20, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

I really wouldn't agree with statement that he most certainly more famous now for being a sexual predator. It certainly more covered nowadays than his music, but I still feel him being known as a musician is still what he is most famous for. While I can understand some people disagreeing from the recentism, I definitely don't think anyone can say most or certainty for either side of argument, and I agree with Masem in that it is same situation/problem as with Skilling. Mentioning in lead is obviously due for both, but lead sentence is questionable. WikiVirusC^(talk) 18:49, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

The core issue is that felon really isn't an occupation, there is a massive amount of difference between saying that someone is a criminal and a felon. One is an occupation and perfectly appropriate for the lead. In this specific case we would likely specify the white collar nature of the crime, remember the important part is that Skilling is a career white collar criminal... Not that he is a felon. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:48, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

That's an insane argument. Skilling's occupation was never "white collar criminal". He was a corporate executive. Wes sideman (talk) 17:51, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

You are aware that a person may hold one or more occupations are you not? I don't know what you call more than a decades worth of white collar crime if not a career. A hobby? A sideline? Please enlighten us. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:54, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

If you can find a reliable source that lists "white collar criminal" as Skilling's occupation, you might have at least a starting point here. You do not have that. You have only your own opinion, which I doubt is shared by reasonable people. Wes sideman (talk) 17:57, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

Please answer the question, if he was not a career criminal what was he? A hobbyist? An enthusiast? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:06, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

His occupation was "businessman", or "corporate executive", if you prefer. An additional characteristic of his, as described by reliable sources, is "convicted felon". Your attempts to frame his occupation as "career criminal" are ridiculous and I'm done with this particularly stupid foray into the weeds. WP:DEADHORSE Wes sideman (talk) 18:19, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

Its not an occupation, which is the only terms that should be used in the first sentence. Masem (t) 18:08, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

You're making things up. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 18:14, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

"an occupation ... is the only terms that should be used in the first sentence" ^{[citation needed]} Nomoskedasticity (talk) 18:17, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

WP:LEADBIO. Terms involving crimes even if they have been convicted of it remain subjective and contentious terms and thus should be avoided, until later in the lede where the crime can be put into context. Masem (t) 18:20, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

Where in WP:LEADBIO does it say that? Also note that if the subject has been convicted then it is not subjective and contentious. Its only subjective and contentious when there isn't a conviction. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:32, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

um #4 says exactly that. It is your opinion that it's not subjective and contentious after conviction - it absolutely is a contentious label EVEN WHEN convicted. It's actually very simple and clear in WP:LEADBIO "#4. One, or possibly more, noteworthy position.s, activities, or roles that the person held, avoiding subjective or contentious terms." Bottom line the conviction should never be mentioned first in the lead, Maybe in the 2nd sentence. 2605:59C8:25AF:C410:B91B:9193:C26:D940 (talk) 04:42, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

If there has been a conviction what is contentious about it? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 05:44, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

not every conviction is legit - sometimes a jury is influenced or biased or if you don't have a good lawyer you get convicted. No matter which way you slice it, "convicted felon" is a contentious label. 172.58.242.234 (talk) 17:08, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

Does anyone contend that this conviction was not legitimate? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:20, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

Do you mean that it is not the subject here's occupation or do you mean in general that it is not possible to be a criminal as an occupation (meaning that The Sims have lied to me all these years)? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:15, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

MOS:FIRSTBIO doesn't support that only occupations should be in the first sentence. Schazjmd (talk) 18:19, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

I agree with Schazjmd (talk), Nomoskedasticity, and Premeditated Chaos. MOS:FIRSTBIO says no such thing, and it's perfectly acceptable to have "convicted felon" in the lead IF that's what the subject is particularly notable for, and IF reliable sources have lasting coverage of the subject's crimes (once he's convicted). Wes sideman (talk) 18:22, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

We should follow the sources. When we look at WP:SIRS - do we not have significant, in depth coverage of this person outside of their criminal investigation? I'm doing a search prior to "1/1/2005" and he was interviewed by FRONTLINE interviewed one March 28, 2001. Was he otherwise notable before the scandal? [61]

Denaar (talk) 19:32, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

He was CEO of a Fortune 500 company, although only for 6 months. He was president and COO for longer periods of time prior. There are sources of him as expected when first announced and while CEO. [62] (page2). WikiVirusC^(talk) 19:55, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

I wholeheartedly disagree. Convicted Felon is a contentious label and has gained consensus as such over and over in multiple discussions. Except in very limited cases any negative legal status should not be mentioned first in any lead sentence. 172.58.242.234 (talk) 17:15, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

Diffs or it didn't happen. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:21, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

not sure about "diffs" but here's 2 discussions that clearly gained consensus:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:David_Duke#RFC_for_%22convicted_felon%22_phrase_in_opening_sentence

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard/Archive349#Klete_Keller

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Klete_Keller#Recent_change_to_first_sentence

2605:59C8:2041:DA10:B41D:434F:5A79:7D9B (talk) 01:31, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

I agree with those who say we should not use the term "convicted felon". It's not encyclopedic writing, it doesn't actually tell the reader much and, though true, can be seen as little more than a pejorative. Stating is was COO/CEO of Enron followed by a second sentence stating he was convicted of fraud related to Enron's fiscal collapse (not this specific phrasing) is far better. It factually says who he was and his position followed by what he did wrong at the company and what the legal consequences were. The information is still there but it is presented in a factual way rather than a way that has less factual content and more emotive content. Springee (talk) 14:33, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

Having gone through google and looking at articles "up to" various dates, without reading the Wikipedia article at all - he was CEO for only 6 months and then resigned, both were noticed and reported upon. But reading through - this person isn't notable for being convicted, but for the entire scandal, from a meeting where he was rude and described as "not CEO material", to when he resigned as CEO, to testifying in front of the government... all the way on as the scandal unraveled. So, the scandal is clearly his claim to fame, conviction is important to document in the article.

I don't understand why it's important to use the words "convicted felon" - it seems like something I would say when I'm mad at someone and want to tarnish their repuation in the eye of someone I was talking to. "Don't trust that guy, he's a convicted felon!". Denaar (talk) 14:43, 23 June 2023 (UTC}

We introduce people by what they're best known for, whether that be their career or something else like a crime they commited, which is why Ted Kaczynski and Timothy McVeigh are described as domestic terrorists in the first sentence. There's nothing contentious or POV about mentioning a crime that someone has been convicted of. It's a bit more complicated when someone is also notable for other reasons such as being a CEO or olympic athlete, but a criminal conviction should almost always be mentioned in the first few paragraphs and our BLP policy shouldn't be used as a reason to make it less prominent that would otherwise be appropriate under WP:WEIGHT.

That said, "convicted felon" isn't very informative and should usually be replaced by the specific crime. –dlthewave ☎ 12:35, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

If someone is notable for what they have been convicted of, we should be striving to put context to what that conviction was for. Flat out saying "convicted <whatever>" in the first sentence without establishing any context is not helpful either in information for our readers or in tone per NPOV. For example, McVeigh's article uses that first sentence properly to explain that directly. I think that Kaczynski's article could do with a rewrite to point out that he was the Unabomber and a domestic terrorist for his actions between 78 and 95 by the third sentence of the lede, or could be rewritten to put the relevant info in the first sentence. And in the case of Skrilling here, I provided a way to say how his executive actions Enron were part of the scandal and lede to his conviction. The key is that the WEIGHT issue has to be balanced with neutral writing per NPOV and BLP, whereas too many of these articles insist WEIGHT is the only factor. Masem (t) 13:14, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

@Masem: what specifically is the conflict between WEIGHT, NPOV, and BLP here? They appear to me to be in harmony. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 23:21, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Stating terms like "convicted felon" in the lede - particularly when the other terms used are typical occupations terms - is easily non-neutral, non-impartial writing that NPOV and BLP requires at all times; regardless of the truthfulness of "convicted felon", it is a term with major negative consequences and not objective, in contrast with typical listings of occupations. Instead, saving such terms for later in the lede alongside context for why the person is a felon is far more neutral and dispassionate writing while adhering to WEIGHT and the purposes of the lede to cover all notable facets of the person. Nearly every case where the lede sentence includes terms like "convicted felon" I can find ways to rewrite the lede para to address the felony in context in the second or latter sentences while neutrally introducing the subject, making the article's tone meet NPOV/BLP's requirements. Masem (t) 23:43, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Some comments argue that because the first sentence should describe his main source of notability, it should say: convicted felon. That doesn't make sense. So far, two options have been presented for the first sentence:

• is an American businessman and convicted felon (the current one)
• Or: is a former CEO of Enron Corporation whose part the Enron scandal led to his 2006 conviction and imprisonment for fraud

The second option is more informative, clearer, and better describes the source of his notability. DFlhb (talk) 17:18, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

This needs more help than I can give it right now. It's disorganized, and much of the sourcing is just really poor. I already removed a cite from Malkin, but there's archived primary material that's treated as secondary, there's excess detail, there's a whole bunch of stuff. Thanks. Drmies (talk) 19:02, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

I would like to add to my page the following:

Chauncey left Yale in 1981 and established a non-profit [501(c)(3)] organization, Science Park Development Corporation. It took over an 80 acre abandoned industrial site from the Olin Corporation in the Newhallville section of New Haven for the purpose of creating an entrepreneurial small business center which would provide employment for the area.

In 1988 Chauncey became the President and CEO of Gaylord Hospital, an acute rehabilitation hospital in Wallingford, Connecticut He left Gaylord in 1994 to start the Health Management Program in the Yale Schools of Public Health and Management. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:19E:4080:1E40:F0FF:D80D:1DF4:F2E9 (talk) 19:55, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

For context, this seems to be about Sam Chauncey. jlwoodwa (talk) 20:07, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

New content added to Wikipedia articles needs to be verified by references to reliable sources. Can you provide links to sources that verify these parts of Chauncey's career? Cullen328 (talk) 20:12, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

There is an ongoing discussion about Natalie Portman (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) and whether the inclusion of Portman's Erdős–Bacon number and its connection to one of Portman's works adhere to the BLP policy. Input from this noticeboard's watchers would be appreciated. Thank you. KyleJoan^talk 05:58, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

@Firekong1: recently added the category "French fascists" to both Jean-Marie Le Pen and Éric Zemmour, which I reverted as inappropriate. Firekong1 has since asked me about what the criteria is for categorizing modern politicians as fascist. My view is that unless they are very clearly facists, like members of neo-nazi parties and the like, the category should not be used, but I thought it would be better to get broader input here. Hemiauchenia (talk) 16:51, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, given that neither is described as a fascist in the article text (indeed the only use of the word "fascist" in the Zemmour article is saying he isn't!) we should not be categorising them as such. The bar for categorising a living person with a contentious label such as fascist should be set very high. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 17:42, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

I would say that as long as the person is not called a fascist in wikivoice within the article this is not acceptable. And obviously the bar for that is pretty high. There is a similar discussion here about adding Category:Nazis who committed suicide, and Category:Holocaust perpetrators to the Erwin Rommel article. We should never allow introduction of such things through the backdoor. The article has to support it. -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 18:16, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

The fact the term "facist" is not used a single time in the article text clearly demonstrates we should not be categorising them as such.  Spy-cicle💥  ^Talk? 22:54, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

One particular example that Firekong1 brought up was Björn Höcke, a German politican of the AfD party, who is currently categorised as facist. Apparently German courts have found that it not libellous to describe him as a fascist, but I still think categorising him as such is borderline. Hemiauchenia (talk) 19:30, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

After reading the text of the verdict (for those reading German: link to the text) I can say with confidence that it is absolutely not sufficient to justify using the category for the Höcke article. Ultimately the court found that the use of "fascist" was not a so called "de:Schmähkritik" which is a statement that is not just derogatory but does not touch on any issue but only the person. And therefore it falls under the constitutionally protected right of free speech. And the Landgericht Hamburg ruled that it is illegal to claim that a court declared Höcke a fascist.(German news report). -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 20:01, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. I've gone ahead and removed the category from the article. Hemiauchenia (talk) 20:26, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

It was brought to my attention that people monitoring BLPs for politicians interpret the current wording of WP:NPOL to mean that any member of a state legislator is automatically notable. This has staggering policy implications, if true, and I can't imagine that this was agreed to in any wide-ranging discussion. As I pointed out here, the implications of this are, conservatively, that Wikipedia would automatically include some 30,000 BLPs of people (my conservative estimate) whose only instance of notability would be having served in a state legislature in the US (not to mention those who are in similar-level elected bodies in the other 194 countries on the planet). Is this really what we think is best practice? For the vast majority of state legislators there are vanishingly few sources on which to write a biography and the implications for BLP protections strike me as rather overwhelming. Do we need to have a broader community discussion about this, or perhaps did I miss when this happened? jps (talk) 15:36, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

I saw a comment like that at Talk:List_of_Donald_Trump_2024_presidential_campaign_primary_endorsements#Redlinks, but I didn't dig into it at the time. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 16:38, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

How else would you interpret WP:NPOL? Politicians and judges who have held international, national, or (for countries with federal or similar systems of government) state/province–wide office, or have been members of legislative bodies at those levels. This also applies to people who have been elected to such offices but have not yet assumed them. State legislators are politicians who have been members of legislative bodies at the state/province level. They also aren't all WP:BLPs, state legislators do die, they aren't immortal. TulsaPoliticsFan (talk) 17:04, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

There is the all-including "People are likely to be notable if they meet any of the following standards. Failure to meet these criteria is not conclusive proof that a subject should not be included; conversely, meeting one or more does not guarantee that a subject should be included." If you read that as "You will likely found enough sources on the following" (with WP:NACADEMIC as a special case), it means that state legislators aren't automatically notable, and can still be deleted for not reaching WP:GNG. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 17:11, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

Right, we can still delete, but WP:NPOL tells us The following are presumed to be notable: and shifts the presumption in favor of notability unless there is a showing that WP:GNG cannot be reached. We have discretion to delete if it doesn't meet WP:GNG, but when deleting an WP:NPOL meeting politician the burden of proof is on the nominator and those advocating delete. They have to rebut the presumption of notability. TulsaPoliticsFan (talk) 17:28, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

That sounds scary but rebutting the presumption of notability is literally as easy as saying "I tried but I can't find enough coverage." The only time the presumption carries real weight is when the subject is likely to be primarily covered in non-english language sources and none of the editors present are fluent in that likely language. In that case none of the involved parties can competently declare that coverage doesn't appear to exist. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 02:24, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

I interpreted it to mean situations where there was federally-controlled state-level governments. For example, in situations where boards are appointed with considerable power. That's obviously not what was intended so it is my misinterpretation, I will grant you, but it is also something I am surprised to find is the standard for inclusion here. This isn't like WP:NSCHOOLS. There are individual people affected by such inclusion criteria. Sure, people die. But that's why I estimated the number of them still alive (an I am sure it is an underestimate). jps (talk) 17:21, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

To repeat my comment at that AfD: NPOL is not the automatic conferral of notability per se, moreso it is the presumption that coverage exists. Because politicians always generate coverage (in national, regional, and local media) through their actions, we thus assume they are notable even if the coverage is not presently evident in the article or on Google (because many of these sources may be offline/non-digitized; this is especially important in countries where Internet access may be limited at best). Curbon7 (talk) 18:36, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

Because politicians always generate coverage This is not the case! You think each and every one of the 400 NH State Legislators generates coverage?! jps (talk) 21:19, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

And I shoot back to you the link I shared in the AfD, where the late and great DGG stated: New Hampshire is indeed a special case--the proportion of legislators / inhabitants is unusually high, but it's one specific case only, and not representative. It would be wrong to change a widely accepted general rule to accommodate it, or even to make a special exemption. Curbon7 (talk) 21:21, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

C'mon. It's not a "special case"... most states are small and most state legislators are inconsequential. This is especially true if we move outside the US. jps (talk) 21:25, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

As someone who has written countless articles on "inconsequential" state legislators, both in the US and other countries, and who has gotten some of these articles to GA, I must disagree. Regarding your last point, it may also be of benefit to read WP:SYSTEMIC to see why the perception is that that is the case, when in reality it is not, and to get a sense of why that is a very Americo-centric viewpoint. Curbon7 (talk) 21:33, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

I think you are confused. My point is that subnational units in other countries are often much smaller in population than US states. This is especially true in countries with lower population than the US. And most countries have populations lower than the US. jps (talk) 02:15, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

I understand you, but what I'm trying to get at is that there is no easy "one-brushswipe-fixes-all" solution that does not include introducing caveat-after-caveat (an example of which was most recently rejected here a few months ago) or doing away with the whole guideline, which doesn't seem like it'd be well-received. Curbon7 (talk) 02:51, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

I think we'd go with the sources. If we can't currently find coverage of the representatives, then perhaps a "list of representatives" would be appropriate alternative. But that list, documenting who the representatives were, should count as notable even if we can't expand an article for everyone in it. So it makes sense as a policy as long as we take account the information should be sourced. 03:01, 29 June 2023 (UTC) Denaar (talk) 03:01, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

Yup, that is what WP:NOPAGE basically gets at. Curbon7 (talk) 03:07, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

• Reply to original post I think jps is being rather dramatic here. "Staggering policy implications"? Really? NPOL notability does not mean we ignore BLP policy protections. Jps also suggests this is a matter of how some editors are "interpreting" NPOL - this isn't an issue of interpretation. The policy is pretty unambiguous. Notability-wise I think it would be unusual to be unable to find sufficient sources to demonstrate notability of legislators and as an encyclopaedia I also think we should as a matter of routine provide coverage for elected officials on a state and above level. Nevertheless this is not the correct forum to debate the pros and cons of NPOL notability. AusLondonder (talk) 19:59, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
• I think this SNG should be gotten rid of. It is better to rely on GNG, BLP, and BIO. I think shortcuts like this SNG cause more problems than solve anything. This discussion and the 2015 discussion are cases that demonstrate that point. The problem is with people interpreting this SNG as an automatic pass even if the souring is poor (such as the subject of this current AfD). ---Steve Quinn (talk) 12:48, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
• There is absolutely no such thing, anywhere on earth, as a state or provincial legislator who somehow fails to pass WP:GNG. There is such a thing as Wikipedians not putting in the effort to locate and use all of the potential sourcing to make our article on a state or provincial legislator very substantive, but there is no such thing, anywhere on earth, as a state or provincial legislator for whom adequate sourcing fails to exist. That's why NPOL says what it says: because it's a level of office at which the sourcing needed to write a proper article always exists in the real world, regardless of whether Wikipedia's article has or hasn't yet become the most fully developed version we could possibly have written.
  That's an important thing to remember when editing Wikipedia: there is a very, very real difference between "person who fails GNG because valid sourcing doesn't exist at all" and "person who passes GNG because valid sourcing does exist, but their article doesn't look like it yet because nobody's gotten around to actually finding and using all of that sourcing yet". State and provincial legislators always fall on the latter side of that distinction. Bearcat (talk) 15:40, 1 July 2023 (UTC)
• I find Bearcat's assessment above remarkably optimistic not just regarding the state of media coverage in New Hampshire, but also in North Korea, Afghanistan, or the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to name a few. NPOL strikes me as a vestige of the early days when much of the community felt that verifiability ought to be the threshold for notability. With our current understanding of notability, I fail to see what NPOL actually accomplishes. If a politician passes GNG, great; they don't need the help of a policy saying "they probably pass GNG". If they don't pass GNG, then NPOL is no help to them. (And then there's the broader question of whether it's ever ethical to presume notability of a living person... although politicians are perhaps less sympathetic as "victims" in that regard than, say, athletes or academics.) -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she|they|xe) 16:06, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

I'm a Canadian with relatively limited access to archived American media coverage, and have still managed on more than one occasion to start half-decent and well-sourced articles about New Hampshire state legislators whom other people had deemed "unsourceable" solely because they couldn't find anything in the first page or two of a simple Google search and didn't even try any databases. So are New Hampshire state legislators unsourceable? Clearly not, because I've successfully sourced "unsourceable" New Hampshire state legislators numerous times even without any significant access to the best potential resources for New Hampshire media. Bearcat (talk) 16:12, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

I feel like the New Hampshire argument is a strawman because it is quite literally the most extreme case (that is, a small population with a huge proportion of legislators). Tamzin, in response to your point I fail to see what NPOL actually accomplishes, I respectfully point towards WP:SYSTEMIC: using your DRCongo example, only 1.7% of the population has access to the internet (likely all concentrated in Kinshasa), meaning that for the most part, news coverage will be in the form of native-language offline media like newspapers. This creates a huge gap in content, with non-westerners who are just as notable as their western counterparts being underrepresented in Wikipedia, thus furthering our website's systemic racism issue. Curbon7 (talk) 06:39, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

Having articles on living people who don't have significant coverage in reliable sources is just a recipe for BLP violations. Either they pass GNG, and should have articles, or they don't, and shouldn't. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she|they|xe) 06:49, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

Your perspective here is very much a minority. This reasoning gets brought up frequently in deletion discussions regarding highly cited academics that lack sigcov, and the end result is pretty much always that these articles are kept based on the citation counts metrics covered in WP:PROF alone. Hemiauchenia (talk) 06:57, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

Eh, the consensus has been slowly moving in my direction for the decade that I've been editing. I'm reasonably confident that in another 5 to 10 years we'll have finally gotten over the collective hallucination that was "presumed notability" of living people. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she|they|xe) 07:35, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

But that's presuming that the consensus surrounding all SNGs is built the same, which isn't accurate as that is overly broad. While consensus did move against NSPORTS for example, that does not necessarily translate to a consensus against all criteria. Curbon7 (talk) 07:44, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

Academics may be a bit of a special case, because well-cited ones tend to be exceptionally verifiable even when they don't meet sigcov. I don't think that really changes the analysis of whether it's okay to maintain biographies on them in the absence of RS coverage, but as a practical matter it does mean there's less community appetite to do anything about them. Politicians, though, I think are closer to athletes. Some politicians, just like some athletes, incur lots of media coverage through virtue of their jobs. Some don't. Holding a particular office, just like being in a particular sports league, does not create a presumption that that coverage will exist. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she|they|xe) 08:02, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

In the earlier discussion about this, The Drover's Wife argued that removing or tightening NPOL would mainly serve to burn out editors working on politics worldwide: ensuring that editors have to keep stopping what they're working on to fight off deletion discussions on people who will inevitably pass WP:GNG (and AfD) by the depth of coverage that inherently comes with their position anyway, but wasting editor time and pissing off good editors in the process. Avoiding that is what NPOL accomplishes, in my view. That is doubly the case for politicians from countries outside the West, where finding sources that Western editors accept as reliable – especially online sources – is much harder, making AfDs much more draining. In addition, finding coverage for those politicians often requires collaboration (different language skills, access to different paper libraries), and NPOL helps keep articles up for long enough that someone (maybe a wiki novice from the country in question) can come along and improve them. NPOL might mean that some sparsely sourced articles slip through the cracks, but surely that is an acceptable trade-off if we are actually committed to improving Wikipedia's global coverage? Jlalbion (talk) 10:21, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

• Its been my experience that most state legislators are notable, that being said the problem isn't with NPOL its with anyone who thinks there is any such thing as automatic notability. As other have pointed out something can pass GNG or on of the SNG and consensus can still be that it isn't notable. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 02:24, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

We should abandon all notions and mentions of "automatic notability" or "inherent notability" in deletion discussions because that is not the purpose of subject specific notability guidelines. Instead, these guidelines are tools for quickly determining that these topics are highly likely to be notable if some editor(s) would actually carry out a comprehensive search of both online and paper sources. I have delved deep a few times on the notability of 19th century American state legislators, and with well-crafted Google seaches, have been able to find coverage for every one I searched for. I am absolutely certain that if I had searched in the public libraries and newspaper archives of the applicable state capital and of the biggest towns of the legislative district, that I could have found much, much more. The bottom line is that it is a waste of valuable volunteer editor time to work to delete biographies of state and provincial legislators, unless the nominator can report that they have searched all the relevant paper libraries in that capital city and in the biggest cities and towns that legislative district and reached the extraordinary conclusion that a specific legislator was elected and served without receiving significant coverage in independent reliable sources. This deletionist attitude displays an deep ignorance of how legislators are actually elected and serve in the real world beyond Google, how politics has been covered for centuries in democratic countries, and the vast mass of old paper sources that have not been digitized or scanned or posted online. Cullen328 (talk) 08:46, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

Agreed, there is no such thing as "automatic notability" or "inherent notability." But that's also why Wikipedia:Notability (people) states "People are likely to be notable if they meet any of the following standards. Failure to meet these criteria is not conclusive proof that a subject should not be included; conversely, meeting one or more does not guarantee that a subject should be included." So our current guidelines say certain factors, such as being a state legislator, is a strong indicator of notability but not automatic notability. So I'm not seeing what the issue is with the current guidelines, which work pretty well as is.--SouthernNights (talk) 12:49, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

I have delved deep a few times on the notability of 19th century American state legislators, and with well-crafted Google seaches, have been able to find coverage for every one I searched for. Really? I've done in-depth searches (Google, Google Books, two books by J. M. Runk and two by J. T. Scharf, plus Newspapers.com and a book by H. C. Conrad) before on early Delaware legislators and have had a much lower success-rate. BeanieFan11 (talk) 14:06, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

This presumes the SIRS coverage state legislators receive in the US is reproduced everywhere else. What about countries where the media is heavily controlled by the government? Are we supposed to assume that the content the ruling party puts out through its state media apparatus is actually reliable and independent? Somehow I doubt a neutral biography can be written on a party-approved politician (or any party-disapproved opposition!) using exclusively state-controlled news articles. And who's to say a subnational legislative position outside the US is regarded with the same importance as it is in the US (which itself isn't much...)? JoelleJay (talk) 01:57, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

This article has explicitlx the request on improvement. I have been trying three times without registering and all my editorial work has been dicarded within minutes. Then I have registered and the result was that the article was classified as semi protected. I started a request via the talk portal and I got the information that I'm biased. I put my revisions into the talk portal and got no more response. In case this rather poor article in the english version should be updated and transferred into an acceptable form this rejective policy is odd. I would be happy if someone could have a look on my proposed revisions and you will immediately see that this is no vandalism or ill proposed revisions. Thanks a lot, I'm SciAuthor1. SciAuthor1 (talk) 07:47, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

According to your post on the talk page you have a conflict of interest (COI). Read through these: WP:COI, WP:Plain and simple conflict of interest guide and make sure to disclose your COI according to WP:Conflict_of_interest#howtodisclose. A second issue is that you have not provided references for your proposed changes. Notice that you need reliable, published and, for anything but trivial information, independent sources. Take a look at WP:Verifiability and WP:Reliable sources for more information. -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 16:51, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

This page contains contentious material about living persons that is poorly sourced and should be removed immediately. This pages link include viruses that have already infected my MAC with a Trojan horse. The Authors are clearly malicious and have malicious intent. Please assist, thank you. Feel free to contact me for additional info. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.187.153.81 (talk) 09:58, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

Could people with more time (and energy) take a look at Lois Banner? She appears to have said something bad, and that's been added to the article twice: once cited to someone tweeting about it and once, rather more usefully, to the Atlanta Black Star but with added personal commentary. I reverted both times. Perhaps something does need to go in there, but neutrally worded? — Trey Maturin™ 15:32, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

Yes, having fully half of the prose of the article be about her comments last weekend is surely WP:UNDUE. Even if it were due weight, using a source which says "A tweet from the Berkshire Conference’s official account stated that the organization’s officers 'do not condone or support the inappropriate remarks.' ... They promised a formal statement and a concrete action plan would be released soon." to support the claim "organizers have yet to release a statement, censor, nor condemn the comments" is ... bold. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 15:18, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

Part of the problem with being DUE here are the lack of other sources under use. Really, the only sourced being used are a non-independent bio and the Worldcat database. I imagine that the degree of being carried in so many libraries might carry her past some sort of notability discussion, but still, there ain't much there there. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 17:30, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

Agree, also WP:RECENT and WP:10YT, it's being covered by the gossip magazines but it's unlikely to be something people are writing about in six months. Denaar (talk) 16:33, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

• Soa Palelei (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
• Rock Machine Motorcycle Club (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

In January 2022, a now-blocked editor added the following claim to Soa Palelei:

In late 2009, Palelei was accused of being associated with the notorious Canadian outlaw motorcycle club, the Rock Machine which has chapters in Australia. Palelei adamantly denies these claims, stating that he was involved in teaching mixed martial arts to two individuals who may be members of the club.

This was sourced to a brief local news item which does not include any detailed accusation or accuser, just unspecified "claims" that Palelei denied. (A second source was added later, but only makes the existing source seem less reliable; read on.)

During the second half of this edit war, the page was reported to WP:RFPP twice, once declined by User:Daniel Quinlan and the second still open. 203 was reported to WP:AIV, declined by me. A related, smaller edit war occurred at Rock Machine Motorcycle Club, where Adakiko and 10mmsocket both restored a claim that Palelei was one of the club's "key people", despite no source in the article even mentioning his alleged affiliation. I've removed that too.

Let's get the obvious out of the way: Usher and/or 203 violated a number of policies here (for which I've warned them), and often used unhelpful edit summaries. For the purposes of assesing BLP compliance, though, there is no "the other guy is doing it wrong" exception to BLP. The highlights of this incident, to me, are:

• Not a single editor seems to have considered whether a single allegation from 2009 was DUE and satisfied BLPCRIME, nor whether a single local news article, which did not specify what the allegation was or who made it (and which, it appears from the link added at the very end, was in fact their own allegation) was a reliable source for such controversial claims.
• After quite a bit of trial and error, 203 did find the right words, voicing objections to the quality of the source used for BLP purposes. They were nonetheless reverted repeatedly in contravention of WP:BLPRESTORE; the only editor to acknowledge the BLP claim dismissed it.
• At no point did anyone discuss the matter on talk.
• The two restorations at the motorcycle club article are distinguished for having restored outright defamatory content.

I've thought for a long time that there's a dangerous disconnect between BLP compliance and anti-vandal efforts (CC Drmies, who wound up blocking several RCPers in a similar case a while back), and this really drives that home for me. If you're one of the people who reverted here, reading this because I pinged you, please understand I'm not trying to criticize each of you personally; while a few of these reverts were mind-bogglingly bad (and I really hope y'all know who you are), many fall closer to "honest mistake". But in aggregate this is a horrifically large number of experienced editors who were willing to edit-war vague insinuations of criminality back into an article, seemingly all very confident that they were on the right side of policy. Is there a solution? Some way to get people to bake BLP compliance into their analysis, rather than just seeing a red numbers and a ref tag and slamming "rollback"? I'm at a loss. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she|they|xe) 07:36, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

No issues with you reverting my reversion in the MC. I think you're completely right to raise this as there's very little hard evidence other than one newspaper allegation. The information has no place in either article. 10mmsocket (talk) 07:54, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Generally, if we've got an alleged allegation or crime, reported... and no follow up in the news, I think it's clearly non-notable. I've come across this before multiple times, an insistence on putting some un-clear allegation about someone... in fact I'm going to be BOLD and remove one I know of. Denaar (talk) 14:19, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Declining a WP:RFPP doesn't mean there aren't issues with the article or the edit history. This seems like it could have been resolved through coupling removal of the problematic material with a talk discussion, though. The talk page still lacks any discussion of this matter and using article talk pages early in the process is fundamental to resolving problems on Wikipedia. Daniel Quinlan (talk) 14:19, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping, Tamzin. I think experienced editors have a heavy bias towards the status quo, a consequence of our watchlist system, anti-vandalism structure and the fact that in most cases (of removal of referenced content) the status quo is right. I hope this is a productive discussion of how—acknowledging this bias—we can prevent reinstatement of status quo BLP violations.

On my involvement, I can think of two sensible courses of action. Had I decided that real life issues would prevent me investigating appropriately and following the situation as it developed, I should have raised the issue on COIN or BLPN without reverting the edit myself (but perhaps issuing the COI warning that I did to the user).

Had I decided to take action, I should have concluded that the content was unreliably sourced (The West Australian is a tabloid—I think I assumed it was a broadsheet), causing a BLP issue that supersedes the out-of-process manner in which the COI edit was made. I could have made a dummy edit to the article to claim responsibility for their removal of the content and follow up with any users who reverted (as if they had reverted an edit I made directly); I could have optionally searched for reliable sources for the claim (and if I'd found any I could re-add the content with those sources).

I welcome comments from other users—are these the right lessons for me to draw? Did I make other mistakes that I have not raised?

Were this content reliably sourced—say, to three broadsheets, I think the matter would be different. I'm still a bit fuzzy on this leap from "being associated with" the modern Rock Machine Motorcycle Club to accusation of crime, but let's say WP:BLPCRIME applies. It's a bit off-topic to raise all the disagreements I have with WP:BLPCRIME, but fundamentally it asks us to "seriously consider not including material" that was included here. What does that actually entail as the responsibility of an editor restoring (hypothetical) reliably sourced content? How are we to tell if an editor has "seriously consider[ed]" something and is it a BLP violation to add a reliably sourced claim, attributed in prose, that a living figure has been accused of a crime and denies it? — Bilorv (talk) 16:16, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

I wouldn't call The West Australian unreliable, even though it nominally uses a tabloid format in print. (On priors, I'd assume it has the same complex issues as other state papers in Australia, but be their 'newspapers of record' nonetheless; a quick check agrees with this.) This makes the issue more complex -- it's not so much a case of 'reliable and unreliable sources', as it is a case that sources (despite what Wikipedia often dearly wants to believe) are not categorically reliable or unreliable, and frequently a 'reliable source' can be absolutely wrong to use in a context or vice versa. BLPs are one of the areas where this issue comes up most markedly, politics another (political BLPs...I dunno, maybe we should delete them all and be done with it). Vaticidalprophet 16:39, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

There was nuance I didn't write down but this was a case of the source being unreliable for the fact provided. A rule I usually apply is to read (e.g.) "X has been accused of Y" as "the newspaper you are reading is accusing X of Y", unless further details are given about the nature of the accusations and sources. — Bilorv (talk) 16:45, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for rectifying my mistake Tamzin, I should have been more discerning instead of simply seeing a deleted reference and slamming rollback. — FenrisAureus ▼ (she/they) (talk) 23:22, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for pinging me, Tamzin, and reverting my reverts. As others have said, there is a major problem with editors seeing a reference deleted and slamming the undo button, and a bias towards the status quo. Grumpylawnchair (talk) 16:35, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Thanks Tamzin: such cases aren't easy to start since they are bound to ruffle feathers. I've dealt with similar situations--I don't know about blocks, but I do know the last time I jumped into such a conflict, the RCP did understand after I explained it to them. I read over Bilorv's first paragraph again and I couldn't agree more. There is an all-too common knee-jerk reaction ("hit rollback on an IP edit"), and it's often unhelpful. And the more the other party reverts, the more entrenched one gets. I really wish editors would look more carefully at what they restore--and that includes the ones who hit rollback on the usual LTAs with abusive usernames, which then have to be scrubbed from the history. Anyway, high up on the list of training points for rollback (I know, pipe dream) should be "think before you click". Drmies (talk) 17:01, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Continued issues at Rock Machine Motorcycle Club

Could an uninvolved admin please take a look at Special:PageHistory/Rock Machine Motorcycle Club? -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she|they|xe) 09:50, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

The acute issue was handled by Materialscientist, but there's content issues running very deep. I've just cut about 40kB of BLPvio, copyvio, unsourced/poorly sourced material, and—surprisingly!—fancruft from the RMMC article, and it still could use a deeper look than I've given it. I haven't even gotten started on Rock Machine MC criminal allegations and incidents yet, which seems like it has high potential to be a complete BLP nightmare. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she|they|xe) 18:59, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

Could we have eyes on Tenoch Huerta? There's an allegation of sexual shenanigans that has been made (sourced) but removed twice. Yeah, fine, normal for these things. And then we've just had an edit with a (sketchily) sourced counterclaim. I, and others, have reverted to the status quo, but while I know our sourcing policies and our living people policies, we've hit a nuance where it's A Bad Thing for one editor who knows nothing about this matter (me) to try to police it. This isn't a call for editors who know more about the person, just a call for more editors in general (and you people here are crash hot on BLP stuff, so that's you!). — Trey Maturin™ 19:15, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

Your edits are appropriate and Huerta's article should not be focusing the alleged misdeeds of the accuser unless it relates to Huerta himself.WP:COATRACK Morbidthoughts (talk) 00:10, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Would appreciate if anyone could confirm that the material I've repeatedly tried to remove is indeed a violation of our BLP guidelines. See the latest diff for example [63]. Something just feels very wrong! KINGofLETTUCE 👑 🥬 18:17, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

Agreed. They're not the strongest sources to confirm such exceptional claims. Morbidthoughts (talk) 09:09, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

Four (4) more sources from: Generation Iron, HITC (GRV Media), Gannikus DE and the Sports Grail are added to verify the information. The same information is also depicted in two more Wikipedia articles including that of the resource person: Luke Stoltman and 2022 World's Strongest Man (subsection: controversy) for the past 1 year and 1 month. Nir007H (talk) 11:37, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

• Debito Arudou (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
• User:Blofit (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Series of unsourced allegations about the subject on the talk page. I think a topic ban is warranted based on Blofit's most recent edit there alone. Notified at [64]. VQuakr (talk) 16:14, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, you seem to be personally concnered with the individual of this page, seeing your history of intervening whenever anyone proposes an edit. The focus of Wikipedia should be to determine whether Mr. Beamer retrieved his American citizenship. If so, it means that the entire noteworthiness of the subject is really dubious. (Someone who took Japanese citizenship, self-promoted while there, and then forfeited the citizenship.) Blofit (talk) 16:29, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Furthermore, you keep editing my responses on the Talk page for the subject. If an editor cannot post an edit on the main page, and then a person can't post about the proposed edit in the Talk page, then where does the discussion happen, VQuakr? Where? Do we wait for a third-party source to report the news? It's pretty clear that you have a vested interest in keeping Mr. Aldwinckle/Arudou/Beamer's story straight as whatever the Wiki Subject/promoter wants put out there. You're not helping Wikipedia when you don't allow it pointed out that there is some assumptions being put out there that when Mr. Aldwinckle quit America he did so permanently. Blofit (talk) 16:54, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

@Blofit: WP:BLP was already prominently linked on your user talk page. Violations of this policy are required to be removed on sight in all locations on Wikipedia including talk pages. VQuakr (talk) 16:58, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

BLP was improperly posted. As it has become clear in the last several weeks, Arudou/Beamer's appearance back in America over the last decade has made it clear that he no longer is a Japanese citizen by the laws of Japan. It is incorrect for any Wikipedia editor to insist upon third-party source reporting to confirm this. There are alternate ways, including contacting that county board of elections in California to confirm that a "Debito Beamer" is registered to vote in California. Blofit (talk) 17:04, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Further, it looks like you removed my discussion on a Talk page of a poster who made an accepted edit to the page. Your actions speak of someone who is trying to present a particular view of this relatively unimportant former Japan expat who went and got his American citizenship back. There should be a section on that main page that discusses whether Beamer is a Japanese or an American. Blofit (talk) 17:16, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

@Blofit You are in the wrong. You may not suggest that a living person committed a crime or libel a person. WP:BLP applies everywhere. Additionally, do not accuse fellow editors of conflicts of interest or other bad faith actions without clear cause (see WP:NPA and WP:ASPERSIONS). EvergreenFir (talk) 17:31, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

This editor's strange obsession with Arudou's supposed American citizenship has been going on for quite some time now. I've tried to explain WP:BLPPRIMARY to them on my talk page (see here), but clearly haven't gotten through to them. This WP:IDHT attitude on top of the baseless COI accusations they've been throwing around points to WP:NOTHERE and warrants a topic ban at minimum. Throast ^{((ping)) me!} (talk | contribs) 17:37, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

I'm close to a NOTHERE block, but I want to hear from Blofit first EvergreenFir (talk) 17:43, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

I would like to congratulate you on your generosity of spirit and on your self-control. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 18:54, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

My patience ran out. INDEF blocked as NOTHERE EvergreenFir (talk) 19:53, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Currenly an IP user is edit warring at David Latchman in order to add to the lead His tenure here has been characterised by multiple longstanding accusations of fraudulent misconduct. This is not completely unfounded and covered in the body, but I'm not sure this addition as the second sentence in the article is a due or accurate summary. Hemiauchenia (talk) 01:32, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

The entire paragraph about the alleged misconduct should be shortened in the spirit of BLPBALANCE. I'm not sure a count of his retractions using the retraction watch database query is appropriate here since it can be seen as OR or UNDUE. Morbidthoughts (talk) 01:39, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Overlooked the changes - I agree that this looks much more balanced coverage of the situation and covers what happened in a clearer way. Denaar (talk) 01:37, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

The IP is back adding this sentence to the lead, I assume there is a consensus against this here? Hemiauchenia (talk) 20:09, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

There is no consensus for that specific edit to the lead. From what I can tell, the alleged misconduct happened at UCL, and he had moved to Birkbeck afterwards. I think there are still BLPBALANCE issues given that there is no description of his actual research in context to the research misconduct of who he supervised. I wouldn't mind if the paragraph was chopped down further. Morbidthoughts (talk) 21:18, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Confusingly, I believe he has had simultaneous positions at Burbeck and UCL since 2003 (and retains both positions as of present). I think the current paragraph is adequate. Hemiauchenia (talk) 21:26, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

An anonymous IP tries to add negative spam about the person. First, they added the information with false statement (the last sentence was not confirmed), so I had to remove it and warned the IP politely inviting it to discuss the issue. Now they did it again with a smaller version of the text but still all negative on the disputed situation reflecting only one side of the picture. I believe the page needs additional protection and the IP needs to be restricted from editing or warned more seriously. They clearly don't know how to add information on the BLP-related pages. Here is the link to the page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ry_Armstrong

--Crystalcan2 (talk) 04:39, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

Just a note that negative material about a matter can be added in a BLP if RS only reports on that one side. However in this case, there is WP:UNDUE weight only sourced to a student newspaper. Morbidthoughts (talk) 09:14, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

Morbidthoughts I agree with you. However, the same IP first published this (please, check):

While there, Armstrong (under the name Ryan Anderson) served as President of the Associated Students of Central Washington University for one year. However their tenure was mired in controversy,[7] with fellow student board members holding a unanimous 5-0 vote of "no confidence" after months of apparent discontent with Armstrong's leadership, and called for Armstrong's resignation[8]. After initially agreeing to resign, Armstrong reversed course, prompting discussion of a formal recall, however after the school provost became involved the recall was called off and Armstrong retained their role.[9] They also pursued graduate studies in International Relations at American University.[10]

The sources 7, 8 and 9 were the same student newspaper which raised a big red flag for me that the IP tried to camouflage 1 source as 3. Furthermore, the information was heavily biased to one side of the picture. After that I didn't believe in "good faith editing" of the IP and left them a message on the Talk Page to discuss the issue first but they didn't listen. I did have doubts about the source too (and it is still just one newspaper while we need for at least 2 good sources here). Due to the circumstances. I'd suggest to watch the page closely. Crystalcan2 (talk) 18:41, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

Looking at the article a bit more in-depth, I noticed a few things. were the same student newspaper which raised a big red flag for me that the IP tried to camouflage 1 source as 3. Looking at the diff of the page, three separate links were used for 3 different things (The original issues with the students voting for a no confidence against them, the voting results and request for resignation, and ending with their decision to not resign). If multiple claims were being made, they required sources that discussed said claims; the IP address provided those.

After that I didn't believe in "good faith editing" of the IP and left them a message on the Talk Page to discuss the issue first but they didn't listen. Respectfully, your approach seemed to go against Wikipedia:Assume good faith, and I would point you to look at WP:AOBF by [posting] on their talk page Your edits on the page of Ry Armstrong indicate that they were not done in good faith.

On the same page, you posted Also the last sentence was not confirmed by the source and qualifies as "a false public statement about a living individual". This is incorrect; the page in question supported the claim (After a private meeting Monday with Interim Provost Stephen Hulbert and Executive Director of Public Affairs Linda Schactler, the Associated Students of CWU (ASCWU) Student Government members decided not to move ahead with their planned recall election of President Ryan Anderson. as well as a quote from Armstrong Anderson said that he only told the board he would resign because he “really wanted to the leave the room” and that he never “specified which Monday” he would resign.

“I had publicly stated I would not resign for reasons put in the letter, so I wanted to stick with that because that was my decision,” he said. “I didn’t think it was up for debate.”

I don't understand how you can consider this 'defamation' or the link in question 'spam', since they interviewed Armstrong for each of the articles and for a quote on each.

Awshort (talk) 10:39, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

Please gain consensus before reinstating per WP:BLPRESTORE.[65] I don't believe the disputed content meets WP:DUE given the source and WP:PUBLICFIGURE requires a multitude of sources discussing this. Morbidthoughts (talk) 23:26, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

I initially raised the same issue about the information and I concur with Morbidthoughts that content doesn't meet WP:DUE and there is a need for more sources to add this information. I might have exaggerated about "defamation" - it just seemed to me that the anonymous IP was violating BLP with adding poorly sourced (local student newspaper) information.Crystalcan2 (talk) 00:49, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

I wouldn't say it was a poor source; just very minor in the grand scheme considering the RSes that have reported on Armstrong since they became more notable. Morbidthoughts (talk) 01:29, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

I suppose I can see the IP's point: Saying he was student president - as the article does now - feels misleading in its implications when - for whatever reason - it was clearly a rough presidency. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8.5% of all FPs.} 12:07, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

I keep returning to this article. In comparing the meager references with the vast content, it would seem that information has been acquired by other means other than reliable sources. It was started by The Center for Writers and occasionally edited by Terrywaldo1. Looking over the lead, it reads very promotional and the knowledge for exact details of article content itself is questionable at best. Either the original editor(s) had far more references at hand and just did not include them, or there was assistance from a COI. A quick Google search does not render much in up-to-date coverage. In searching for references in regards to such content as: Playwrights Horizons production of Heliotrope Bouquet (directed by Joe Morton) it would seem that the statement: "His work in New York City theatre includes credits as music director for shows" is quite different from the source: "The evening's musicality is left in the hands of Terry Waldo, who plays a brief selection of Joplin rags on the piano, including "Maple Leaf Rag" and the title song. (credit: piano arrangements by Terry Waldo)" Is it fair to the BLP and the article to go in and remove WP:FLUFF content and unsourced non-notable bio-style content (ie: Early life "His neighbor, John Baker, owned a large collection of jazz recordings, piano rolls, and jazz films. Terry spent most of his free time absorbing all this great American music at Baker's. The jazz film collection was eventually acquired by the American Jazz Museum in Kansas City, Missouri, and is considered one of the most extensive in the world. As a child, Waldo listened to Spike Jones and Dixieland records, and became a record collector himself.") and find reliable sources for the notable content? It would obviously reduce the article substantially to only what the BLP is mainly notable for. Thanks. Maineartists (talk) 13:18, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

• Why is my post the only one that has not been addressed here? Maineartists (talk) 13:33, 8 July 2023 (UTC)