Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Unreferenced Biographies of Living Persons/Archive 4

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ArticleAlertbot and project tagging

A bit of a tangential question: It seems to me that the project tagging we have been doing is only partially useful when it comes to articles which either have been (or will be) tagged for PROD or AfD. Even though they have now been tagged as being within the scope of one or more projects, the risk of imminent deletion may be invisible to the project without some automated flag such as the ArticleAlertBot. The ArticleAlertbot has been non-functioning for several months and yet many projects still show it on their main pages. Does anyone know whether it can be revived or whether an alternative can be provided to pick up PRODs and AfDs?--Plad2 (talk) 20:28, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

I've raised it at various places, but no one seems to care enough to actually revive it, or those that do are being blocked. Might mention it at the new BLPRFC, but I wouldn't hold your breath. The-Pope (talk) 11:56, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
I've posted a new request at Wikipedia:Bot requests--Plad2 (talk) 18:07, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
It seems that people are working on the problem. and User:Betacommand has also offered to help.--Plad2 (talk) 06:24, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Task breakdown

With the June 2010 number ballooning up as people are tagging older unreferenced BLPs, it seems that we've lost some momentum in pushing towards the September goal of reducing the backlog to 20,000 articles. Would it be helpful if we broke down the Unreferenced BLP drive into weekly goals? For example - there are only 358 articles remaining in the June/July/August 2007 backlog. This week's target could be to bring that number down to 0 (with only PROD and AfD articles remaining). If 10 people worked towards that weekly goal we would only have to source 35-36 articles each to meet our target for the week. I think it would be beneficial to see the backlog number dropping consistantly and achieving "mini goals" may help maintain momentum as the September date draws nearer. Thoughts? --Jezebel'sPonyoshhh 14:11, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Might be worth a go, but I still find the idea of trying to reference random articles from when they were tagged is unworkable. Yes, I can googlenews search as well as anyone, but I have no idea if the German/Russian/African/American reference is reliable or not. I have no idea is saying he's a member of XYZ Liberation group is defamatory or patriotic. Hence since I finished referencing most articles that I feel qualified to do back in Feb/March, I've been focusing on creating the lists so that those who do know where to find details on 1960s Canadian politicians can do so. If you want a similar "challenge", pick a WikiProject group with 20-100 articles listed and see if you can empty it in a week/month. There are lots to choose from. Once I get most of the almost 7000 UBLPs without any wikiprojects into the projects I will notify the projects again and hope for a burst of activity.
Another task that might interest some is that the Olympics project just tagged thousands of articles into their WP... and they now have almost 600 UBLP articles listed. With pretty good info available on most Olympians, it might be a fairly quick way to get the numbers down. Bottom line, though, is that we need to do 120 per day, and that means either some form of "shortcut" like the IMDB tag, or having 20-50 people heavily involved every day. At the moment from the diffs I see, I'd guess that 10-15 people are regularly referencing articles, but are currently being overwhelmed by the additions to the lists. The-Pope (talk) 15:54, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
I've been sourcing about 10 - 30 articles per day from the backlog, so it's not a lack of being able to find unsourced articles that concerns me. I actually like the mix that can be found in the backlog as opposed to sourcing specific Wikiproject BLPs. I thought that perhaps breaking down the September target into mini 'referencing drives' might spark the interest of people who's interest has flagged since meeting the May target number. --Jezebel'sPonyoshhh 16:57, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
Which task do we consider to be more important? Project tagging or trying to source UBLPs? With a limited amount of time, I can do one or the other (occasionally do a bit of both but I find it more effective to focus on one kind of task at a time). Previously, I had been trying to tackle the very long list of Journalism UBLPs but I sympathise with the Pope. Once one is working outside one's area of expertise, it becomes much harder to make the judgement calls on what should stay in and what counts as a verifiable source. I think we need a recruitment drive with the Projects. We need more people to take an interest within the projects as they are the people best able to judge what is worth keeping and what is not. Getting back on topic, to answer JP's question, I'm in favour of setting some smaller milestones along the way and am happy to lend a hand.--Plad2 (talk) 19:23, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
I suppose what I am envisaging is that the two attack methods (methodical sourcing vs. project tagging etc.) could work in conjunction with each other, that way we capture all interested editors. Some people are more goal oriented and lose interest when the goal seems too unattainable or distant - I'm trying to pull these editors back. This would be done alongside the excellent work that The Pope is doing with the project tagging and related methods. I'm not sure how to go about setting it up though. Perhaps a section on the project page that can be updated with the weekly goal? A note could be posted on all the project members talk pages advising them of the new mini-challenges? --Jezebel'sPonyoshhh 19:49, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

If the progress during June is anything to go by, then we will be done in just 44 more years. Jesting aside, there are many great efforts here, but I suspect that now that the easy ones have been dealt with, the remainder will be much harder and that completion by March 2011 is not realistic. Another way will need to be found. Kevin (talk) 23:50, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Well, thanks to some dedicated users, we now have a better picture of how many unreferenced BLPs there are. I'm also noticing that a large number of the newly tagged articles in June are "low-hanging fruit" (easily notable and sourced BLPs). Also, I've noticed that efforts to clear old tagged articles are picking up (if you ignore the June 2010 backlog, we're making great progress). There's certainly no need to panic, and while we will eventually get to the point that the backlog is difficult to source, we're not there yet. Jogurney (talk) 01:47, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
I've been involved for a couple months in the similarly massively problem of disambiguation pages which have links. There needs to be a steady pace of fixing to address its backlog, now down to 960,000 links to be fixed, from 1,350,000 in June 2009. That project uses a RussBot report, The Daily Disambig and a monthly contest, the DAB Challenge which measures individual editors' contributions to solving the problem, and provides many other good statistics. Early in the month it's easy to get on its leaderboard. It's sort of fun, and helps motivate a bunch of people to work collaboratively. How about building a similar monthly contest here, supported by a similar bot, addressing both parts of the problem here (Project tagging and sourcing of UBLPs)? The idea of a contest was suggested early in the life of this wikiproject, but was swamped by so much other chaos going on. The scoring/statistics reporting could have a WikiProject-specific component, too, building on the existing report we have here, but the emphasis should be on measuring individual editor contributions. I for one feel positively validated for seeing my dab-fix edits captured and tallied up, every 24 hours. I think i would be more encouraged to slog away at referencing, if a bot did nice tallies of my personal efforts, and if I could browse others' efforts and see how they were doing, too. The problem of UBLPs will always be with us; we just need to build a force that addresses them approximately as fast as they arrive. --doncram (talk) 17:29, 2 July 2010 (UTC)
It's mainly been one user who's been converting unreferenced tags to BLPunreferenced (I'm not implying that he's doing anything wrong... it's just the main source of the number increase). I occasionally save lists from Category:All unreferenced BLPs and I've just compared one I saved on June 9 to the current list. There were 28256 articles then, 29040 now. But only 26581 are on both lists, with 2459 pages being added to the list, but 1675 were removed. Not quite the 3000/month we need to get to 20,000, but a lot better than the 0 net result that appears.The-Pope (talk) 02:05, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Back of the backlog

I did some research, and came up with User:Joshua Scott/BLP#June 2007 tracking. This is a list of the 165 articles that were in the June 2007 unreferenced BLP category on June 6, 2010. A little more than a month later, all but 43 of those have been sourced. Breakdown:

  • 59 unsourced
    • 16 newly added since June 6 (oops!)
    • 43 still unsourced
  • 49 deleted/redirected
    • 2 pending AfD
    • 1 deleted via AfD
    • 38 deleted via PROD
    • 3 pending PROD
    • 5 redirected
  • 4 procedural fix
    • 3 already sourced - tags fixed
    • 1 IMDB tag
  • 67 fixed
    • 32 partially referenced (BLP sources tag)
    • 35 fully referenced (no tag)

Cheers  --Joshua Scott (formerly LiberalFascist) 02:55, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks that's useful. The 16 newly added doesn't surprise me, there is clearly a division within the community between those who regard the date as being when the article was first created, first identified as unreferenced and first identified as an unreferenced BLP. The idea of the backlog being some slow shifting undigested and unchanging group is presumably based on the assumption that the latter applies and that if an article is tagged as unreferenced June 2007 BLP it has sat as such for two years, rather than two weeks. ϢereSpielChequers 13:50, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

New Dashbot run

Some time ago we discussed a new Dashbot run to the authors of these uBLPs, but after what happened in January, Tim wanted somewhere else for the bot to refer correspondence to, and some people objected to it being this projects talkpage. Now that we know that many thousands of our 27,400 currently tagged uBLPs were not so tagged in January, I think this would be a really good exercise to repeat as for many it will be their first request and for the rest a reminder can't hurt. To avoid the logjam as to whether people are willing to have the correspondence target here or only on a subpage I've created Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced Biographies of Living Persons/Authors of uBLPs and will ask Tim to do a repeat run and give that pages talkpage as the link. Is anyone else willing to watchlist that page and deal with the occasional query? Based on last time it should be a dozen or so unless we get another out of process deletion spree as derailed the last run in January. ϢereSpielChequers 13:50, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Agree with re-running and I've already watch-listed it. J04n(talk page) 14:23, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
On my watchlist.--Plad2 (talk) 21:03, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
And mine, and thumbs up to another run. --j⚛e deckertalk 21:11, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
Great. Tim1357 is planning the run for the first half of August. So any time spent in identifying unidentified uBLPs, or removing incorrect tags from referenced or partially referenced BLPs would be appreciated as the Bot can only act where an article is tagged, and looks silly if the tag is wrong. ϢereSpielChequers 06:45, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Unreferenced BLP Rescue

Hello folks. I have moved the Unreferenced BLP Rescue Project to the above link for all those interested. We are now commencing on July 2007 BLPs. Please join and/or let me know your suggestions or comments.--Milowent • talkblp-r 21:21, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

Interwiki links

Hi, it just occurred to me that just as we've used interwiki links to build the report of People who may no longer be living - Wikipedia:Database reports/Living people on EN wiki who are dead on other wikis. It should be possible to use the same techniques to build a report of people who have an unreferenced BLP on EN Wiki and a referenced one elsewhere. Would anyone be interested in that and have the time to use it? If so I'll see if I can make it happen. Obviously the links will mainly not be in English, some of the Interwiki links will be in error and I doubt if we will be able to screen out matches where the reference in the other language wiki is reliable. But it could help us reference hundreds, perhaps thousands of articles. ϢereSpielChequers 18:33, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

I'd be interested in it, I've been very pleased with how much less painful (still challenging, but more fun, less hassle) it is to work with foreign-language references given Google Chrome's auto-translation offers. I've been downright tempted to start making a list of just how many languages I've dug up sources in, this might just get me to start!  ;) --j⚛e deckertalk 18:42, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
(edit conflict) I used that strategy just yesterday for Abdolvahaab Shahidi, an Iranian musician who I just couldn't find anything on. It seems worth it to me to have a list of these articles. J04n(talk page) 18:45, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
I've put a request in and have a programmer pondering it. It seems that doing it properly might be s little more complicated than I thought, but we could wind up with something very useful. ϢereSpielChequers 19:53, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Database reports/Living people on EN wiki who are dead on other wikis

I just stumbled across this, it could lead to us getting a few hundred off the backlog. J04n(talk page) 18:42, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Hi J04n, I'd prefer to keep them separate, you might consider that many of these articles should be tagged as either unreferenced or refimprove, but the truth is that often we have a referenced BLP and some other language has an error, or the wiki links are wrong. In any event since this weeks signpost article half the file has been cleared. What I have done that changes the numbers is put all the BLP prods into category uBLP - they will be most of the undated ones. That saves me the work of tagging them as uBLPs when I trawl through the BLP prodded articles. Now all they need are project tags for the relevant project to hear about them. ϢereSpielChequers 18:04, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Musical Groups

I occasionally come across "BLP"s which are actually musical groups. Does anyone know how to get a list of all the articles that are tagged as both uBLPs and also musical groups? ϢereSpielChequers 19:49, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure I've read somewhere in some guideline that this is correct - groups of people where some/most are still living are to be considered BLPs.The-Pope (talk) 01:30, 1 August 2010 (UTC)
I've run across a few of these too. I take the view that if the article is mainly about the group and its work, then it's not a BLP (otherwise pretty much every article about every modern band could qualify and that would drive us all insane). The existance of some biographical material in the article doesn't make it a bio (still got to be accurate of course). If the article content is chiefly bios of the group, then I guess it could/should qualify but (groan) where do you draw the line? For me a bio is about an individual.--Plad2 (talk) 08:59, 1 August 2010 (UTC)
ASAIK any mentions about living people whether in a stand-alone biography or as a biographical note in another article are subject to the same strict rules of inclusion: verifiability. I'd also be interested in the answer to WSC's question because when I see them, I usually pass.--Kudpung (talk) 09:25, 1 August 2010 (UTC)
WP:BLP (under Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons#Legal persons and groups) has this: The extent to which the BLP policy applies to edits about groups is complex and must be judged on a case-by-case basis.--Plad2 (talk) 06:28, 4 August 2010 (UTC)
The BLP policy applies to some of their content, as it does for many other articles. But that doesn't mean that articles on bands should be tagged as Biographies any more than schools or films should be. ϢereSpielChequers 13:19, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

True stats update

Comparing tonight's 27450 (seems to have jumped up again???) against Feb 7's 45528 articles in Category:All unreferenced BLPs we have the following breakdown: 6198 new articles. 21252 are present on both lists. 24276 gone from the list (referenced, renamed, retagged or removed in some other way). So the 20,000 target would have been easily achieved by Sept 1 if the "hidden iceberg" of old untagged or incorrectly tagged BLPs wasn't done. We did say in the original RFC that set the targets that this would "include" the addition of new BLPs... which we guessed at about 1000 per month. I think these are being dealt with, mainly through the BLPPROD system, but the quantity of newly tagged old articles and the conversion of unreferenced to BLPunreferenced was a bit of a surprise.

In other numerical news, the more than 10,000 UBLPs that we're in wikiprojects that are being tracked by the DASHbot system is now down to a few hundred. Outstanding effort by all who assisted - User:Epbr123 deserves special credit for an astounding amount of work over the past few weeks - both in the adding of BLPunreferenced tags (grrr!) and the allocation of them to WikiProjects. User:DASHBot is still cranking out 100-200 WikiProject lists (there are about 700 in total) each day from about 0500 UTC, and I hope that they are useful to many. I'll update Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced Biographies of Living Persons/WikiProjects later tonight.The-Pope (talk) 13:36, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for that analysis. I agree we've made enormous progress, but honestly, I don't think the plan was that newly tagged uBLPs counted towards the goal of getting the backlog down to 20,000 by September. We've clearly done more than 24,276 total articles since plenty of the uBLPs added since February 7 have also been referenced. Progress really hasn't slowed and there's no good reason to adopt more drastic measures at this time. Jogurney (talk) 21:59, 1 August 2010 (UTC)
The number of old untagged unreferenced BLPs found this year has not been a particular surprise to me, and I'm pretty sure there are many thousands more still to find. If we were approaching the BLP problem more logically then I would give finding and tagging them a higher priority than referencing the ones we already know about, if only because I'm assuming the taggers look at the articles and would have a chance of spotting serious problems, so the tagged ones are in a sense filtered...... However due to the January deletion spree we can't always prioritise things according to a logical priority based on dealing with high BLP risk areas ahead of medium or low risk areas. ϢereSpielChequers 13:35, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Projects reminder?

I think it might be worth doing a bot run to the projects that have uBLPs in their reports - we can safely exclude those where it is currently empty. There are quite a few that have been added to the template list in the last couple of months, and I'm not sure if those projects actually know about their reports. But also we could give them a reassurance/explanation that we have gone through the backlog of 10,000 uBLPs without project tags and that is why they may have seen a big increase in their report. ϢereSpielChequers 13:48, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea, I agree. J04n(talk page) 14:08, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
Definitivelly a good idea, but would it be possible to notify projects on {{prod blpprod blp}}? I found by pure accident the template on Louise Bourgoin and could sort that out, but I could very easily have missed it. --Anneyh (talk) 16:14, 6 August 2010 (UTC)
That would have to be run on a daily basis as new BLP-prods are added every day. Not sure if projects would want that many notifications, we would probably have to have an opt-in for the various projects. WP:PRODSUM lists all of the articles that have been prodded and is updated several times per day, you could monitor that to find articles but you will not know which project they belong to without opening each one up. J04n(talk page) 17:48, 6 August 2010 (UTC)
Opt in is a must... getting a notification each day sounds like a pretty bad idea... On the other hand, I feel pretty lonely on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject France these days and there are 588 BLP there (needle in the haystack but too many for me to do alone). Maybe the bot could list the persons with blpprod first or flag them without notification? I can also add the 588 BLP articles to my watchlist. --Anneyh (talk) 19:36, 6 August 2010 (UTC)
I like the idea of marking the BLPProdded ones on the list and will raise that with Tim. Also we may be able to help a bit with your 588 French people - there are a group of us who've been doing project tagging, and I'll see if we can get a list of those French uBLPs that haven't been tagged for any other wikiprojects and see what other projects might also be interested in them. ϢereSpielChequers 23:33, 13 August 2010 (UTC)
I shall have a look at WP:WikiProject France/Unreferenced BLPs when I have sorted out WP:WikiProject Spain/Unreferenced BLPs. It was 260, now down to just over 60. I find doing about five or six a day makes steady progress. Jezhotwells (talk) 02:43, 14 August 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for all these help proposals. I figured out that (current or former) MEP and EU MEP are pretty easy. But I'll be on holidays soon, and see how many are remaining in September! --Anneyh (talk) 20:35, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Living people

See the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Deletion sorting#Time to re-institute Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Living people. J04n(talk page) 15:20, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Second DASHBot Run (to creators) Done.

Just letting everyone here know that DASHBot finished the second run to creators of BLPs. About 8000 received messages, all of who were users who were not messaged before. Tim1357 talk 22:04, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

September 1 goal status

I notice there was a goal to bring uBLPs down to 20,000 by September 1. There was a big push to meet the June 1 goal of 30,000, which was met. Then afterwards I saw the number of uBLPs go up and down a lot. I understood the increases were likely as a function of some big editing drives to correctly classify many articles as uBLPs. I wonder, what possibility is there now of meeting the 20,000 flat goal for September 1? Either way, is it possible to explain here what has gone on, in terms of how many uBLPs have been added and how many fixed by references, etc., since June 1? --doncram (talk) 15:49, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

I had a look a couple of days ago, comparing my list of ~46,000 from Feb to the current list and we are under 20,000 remaining from that list. There have been over 6,000 added. I'll do a final comparison in a few days, and also compare the June 1 29,000(?) to now. By all means try to have a big weekend of referencing, but I think 25,000 would be a stretch target, 20,000 would be nearly impossible. The-Pope (talk) 16:09, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

A new helpful list?

User:Δ (betacommand) has provided a list of articles tagged as Unreferenced BLPs wherein there are actually links provided (there are nearly 1500 of them). I though it would be useful to post it here as it possibly could be used to drive the URBLP number down somewhat. Per his request here, please cross off or remove the articles that have been checked. --Jezebel'sPonyoshhh 13:45, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

There's a very similar list at Wikipedia:Mistagged BLP cleanup. Hut 8.5 13:57, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
I checked several and the list User:Δ/Sandbox_2 has been surprisingly good at identifying a number that are no long unsourced BLPs. I am unsure when changing the tag if the date should be removed or left like here, here, here, and here. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 15:25, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
Unles I go and source the whole article I do as you did and change the tag, this way we'll have something to do after we add sources to everything ;) J04n(talk page) 15:34, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Stalled again

It's been fairly consistently dropping about 30-50 articles per day for the past few weeks, except when someone goes on a mass Unref to BLPUnref bot run and it jumps up. So what can we do to wake people up? Are we all burnt out?

I'm on a mission to finish off the remaining Aussie ones by the end of October. Other "easy" ones to do are the Olympic ones, as no-ones complained to me about just putting in the sports-reference.com reference. But those two tasks are still less than 1000 articles. So what do we do. Another IMDB run on the actors? That's only about 1400 articles. A Prod/AFD run? I don't know. Is anyone still out there? Does anyone still care?

In better news, we've now got nearly full allocation of UBLP articles to the WikiProject lists - User:DASHBot is now also generating a "unwatched BLPs" list (unwatched by these UBLP lists, nothing to do with WP:Watchlists) each day that is now really only capturing the new articles that have just been tagged and haven't yet been listed by the bot.The-Pope (talk) 14:55, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

I care, and I am concerned about the stalling. Work has kept me from participating much in the last month or two but it's still an important task. Please don't use IMDB to source automatically, it tends to lose discussions at WP:RSN as unreliable, and thus doesn't really solve the problem. But I don't have a particularly constructive suggestion for addressing the problem right now, either, I expect this to likely generate another mass deletion proposal (or effort) at some point, and I'd prefer to find a way to avoid that. --j⚛e deckertalk 15:13, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

I also care and I'm concerned that we're exhausting the easy to reference uBLPs. The allocation of uBLPs to Wikiproject lists was very helpful in identifying more easy to reference articles, but many of the articles left seem to be related to people from countries where Internet use is less extensive and English language sources are hard to find. That said, a systematic approach where editors go through their areas of expertise can still work.

The frustrating thing is that after referencing thousands of these uBLPs, I can count on one hand the number that were potentially harmful. Accordingly, I have spent more time improving poor referenced BLPs (and helping clean up CCI-bot blankings) than referencing these uBLPs. I'm sure I'm not alone. Jogurney (talk) 17:12, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Though the percentage of potentially harmful articles in the category is low, it isn't very hard to find them if you go looking. I think we ought to spend a bit of time working on these. It would blunt any further attempts at mass deletion if we could show that we'd gone to some effort to get rid of the clear BLP violations. Hut 8.5 18:42, 7 October 2010 (UTC)
I've been working the Wikiproject:Football list for a few years now, and BLP violations are almost impossible to find. I would be surprised if there is even one BLP violation in the remaining ~1500 uBLPs in that Project's list. Jogurney (talk) 18:48, 7 October 2010 (UTC)
I've been working through older months with the BLP rescue squad. In the last thousand or so articles I've looked at, there've been 2-3 hoaxes, have a dozen copyright issues, and about one serious "oh my God I can't believe it says that without a source" BLP issue. Not to mention a whole bunch of promotional crap that really does make WP look bad. I believe that it is all worth sorting through, I only wish more folks felt the same way. --j⚛e deckertalk 18:54, 7 October 2010 (UTC)
I care too, but I only contributed on the limited scope of Wikiproject France and at a slow pace. There are quite a few actors and politician for whom sources are easy to find but are still BLP and also some good PROD candidates. For now I have most articles in my watchlist, just to be able to react on PROD that would not be adequate. --Anneyh (talk) 22:00, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

This is a list of all the unsourced BLPs that use the word "corruption". Whilst there are plenty of false positives on the list (poets talking about "corruption of the human soul", for instance) there are also quite a few BLP violations: [1], [2], [3], [4] etc. It wouldn't be that much effort for people to go through that list and others like it and remove or reference the problematic material, and it would clean up most of the problem. Hut 8.5 22:03, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Thank you, Hut 8.5. That is an excellent idea and I was able to easily find one blatant hoax in the list I'm working. I definitely think we should do searches of the uBLPs for keywords like drugs, murder, rape as cleaning those BLP violations will be a much better use of our time. Jogurney (talk) 03:55, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
Slow and steady isn't the worse thing in the world. I recently switched gears and stopped working on individual projects and, like Joe Decker, have been working on individual months. We recently finished off all the 1997 one and January 1998 is almost there. Hut 8.5 makes a good point at aiming for unsourced negative articles. This is going to take a bit longer than we predicted, but we will do it. Keep the faith, J04n(talk page) 00:35, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
Reassuring to read that there still is the "core team" out there... but it's still probably only 20 to maybe 50 people involved in this task. How do we expand the pool of users helping out? Or should we just be ignoring the headline "# to go" figure, and work to our own schedules, in our own ways, as we've had listed above?
Sorry to butt in here, but I think that's a great question, I do think it would be good to recruit some more folks. I'm terrible at it myself. but here's the project page: [5]. I don't think there's anything wrong with people going their own ways if they prefer, but I personally like having people I can bounce "hey, is this a hoax, really?" off of, trade ideas with. Going through one month we came across all sorts of Gaelic hurlers, and it was great to trade off tips on where to find good sources for them. You're totally invited.  :) --j⚛e deckertalk 05:51, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
I'd just like to add that I've been unable to help over the last month or so due to the need to concentrate on revision for forthcoming exams but I've been checking in from time to time and I fully intend to come back to working on the BLP Rescue Project as soon as the last exam is over.--Plad2 (talk) 07:21, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
I'm guilty of having strayed somewhat as well, although I've assuaged my guilt by creating a few more articles. I think what lead me to my 'referencing break' was working hard for months on referencing to find the total number of UBLPs jump by hundreds seemingly overnight. Knowing that there are others still dedicated to the task is helpful in re-energizing my interest. I will take a nice break over the (Canadian) Thanksgiving long weekend and jump back in refreshed on Tuesday. --Jezebel'sPonyobons mots 16:11, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm still in it too. I've been continuing the work at WP:Mistagged BLP cleanup, though I have started finding sources on some of them as well. I don't think anything is stalled. Gigs (talk) 17:04, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Problematic unreferenced BLPs

A list of potentially libellous BLPs has been posted to the BLP noticeboard. Any problematic material needs to be referenced or removed, so perhaps people from this project could help. Hut 8.5 16:20, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Well the first four in section 9 that I looked at appeared perfectly innocuous, so probably not worth wasting your time. Jezhotwells (talk) 18:20, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Project page overhaul

If anyone is wondering what I'm doing, I'm mercilessly trimming and reorganizing the project page in anticipation of greatly increasing the scope of the project through a sitenotice or something similar. We need something nice and tight so that editors that have never heard of the BLP controversies can come here, figure out what needs to be done, and jump in and help out. Toward that end, I'm removing a lot of the linkfarm/directory aspects and making it much sleeker. Gigs (talk) 00:45, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Unsourced deaths

We currently have thousands of biographies of 20th and 21st century people that aren't being treated as BLPs because they contain unsourced statements that the person has died. How should we deal with these? Would anyone object if I started a mass removal of these statements for anyone who would be under 123 years old now? Alternatively, the statements could be "fact" tagged and the article put in Category:Possibly living people. Epbr123 (talk) 07:46, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

How do you know the death statement is actually unsourced? Have you checked every ref/ext link that is in the article? The need to inline cite every statement hasn't been around as long as some of these articles. And to the chagrin of many, categories can't be tagged with a "fact" template, so how are we going to reconcile all of their existence in both "possibly living" people with "XXXX deaths" cats? I think that these just have to be taken on a case by case basis, and not done in bulk. Especially for the 80-123 year olds... the proportion that are actually dead would be pretty high - and if we get it wrong it is more likely to cause mirth and humour (reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated) than any libel or other issues. Other BLP related issues like keeping abuse or accusations out of the articles should be done just like in any other article... and given the backlog on the BLP-specific tags, I don't think you can claim that giving them BLP status is really going to elevate the number of watchers.The-Pope (talk) 08:52, 30 October 2010 (UTC)
I think it would be a big step in the wrong direction to remove all the unsourced death claims. The vast majority of them are going to be accurate, whether they are sourced or not. I think it's worthy to check up on them, but to remove them leaves us treating thousands of biographies of dead people with the same priority as biographies of living people. Gigs (talk) 19:27, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

A question from a new participant

Newbie to the unreferenced BLP project here, I have a question. How many sources are required for the BLP to be considered referenced? Is this fine? Thanks in advance, planning to help out!--hkr Laozi speak 08:59, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes, that's fine. If you have one reference it's no longer considered unreferenced and {{BLP unsourced}} can change to {{BLP sources}} if it looks like more sources are required or like your example removed the tag entirely. However, don't remove tags entirely if something contentious remains unreferenced. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 10:50, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
It really depends on the article and the reference. If the article makes lots of claims, in lots of different areas (ie about school, family, occupation, awards etc) and you find a single reference that only covers the occupation and the award, then BLP unsourced should be changed to BLP sources and you should consider if the other unreferenced sections should be marked with a {{fact}} tag or deleted completely. If, like the example you provided, the references found fully cover everything in the article, then removing them altogether is appropriate.The-Pope (talk) 11:46, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
To both helpful commentators: thanks for the advice. It was much appreciated, --hkr Laozi speak 01:33, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Search within unsourced BLPs

Does anyone know of a way (or is anyone able to create a way) of searching for specific terms within those articles in the unsourced BLP category only? There are a few areas where I have sufficient expertise (and sources) to deal fairly quickly with articles one way or another. If I could search for terms such as "reggae" within this category, it would be most helpful. I presume others would also find such a search facility helpful.--Michig (talk) 10:21, 31 October 2010 (UTC) A search by category within the unsourced BLP category would also be useful - excuse my ignorance if this already exists - it seems like an obvious thing to have. A general facility to search for articles that are in a specified set of categories would cater for this.--Michig (talk) 10:23, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Use Google with site:en.wikipedia.org "biography of a living person does not cite any references" "your word".
i.e http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en#sclient=psy&hl=en&q=site%3Aen.wikipedia.org+%22biography+of+a+living+person+does+not+cite+any+references%22+%22reggae%22. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 10:40, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
Excellent, thanks. A facility to do this within Wikipedia would still be nice and could make up for WolterBot not running.--Michig (talk) 10:42, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
If the subject has a WikiProject it will have a daily list, so for Reggae see >>Wikipedia:WikiProject Reggae/Unreferenced BLPs<<. A complete list of all WikiProjects monitored is found here. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 10:59, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
Thanks again - didn't realise this daily listing existed. I come across quite a few that are not associated with (sufficiently specific) WikiProjects, so the Google search will be very useful.--Michig (talk) 11:54, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
Let me know what topics you think aren't covered well enough by WikiProjects and we might be able to do a cat based list - we have some sports and other topics that use article categories instead of wikiProjects. You can also use WP:CATSCAN to make lists whenever you want - there is an example of the main project page. This method can also find articles that are well categorised but underallocated to WikiProjects.The-Pope (talk) 16:03, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
The Google method should keep me going for a while, but thanks for the offer, and if I think of any such lists that would be useful I'll let you know. If we could get a WikiProject to take on all the hurlers ([6]) and manga-associated people/topics ([7]) it would probably make a dent in the backlog. I keep coming across these but don't feel able to do a lot with them.--Michig (talk) 17:42, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
Dangit, I know we had a little cache of hurler sources over at the rescue squad, but I'm not seeing it. We had a month that was chock full of hurlers early on in the effort. I do know that lot of what we were able to source for hurling was done via HoganStand, which is relatively reliable. Some of the individual teams are reliable enough to establish who their players are, that can fill in sources for some details. --j⚛e deckertalk 18:35, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
Joe - I think this is what you're looking for? --Jezebel'sPonyobons mots 18:40, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
Bingo! Thanks, Ponyo! (Err, well, Hmm, that's part of it, but I also remember someone having some team-specfic resources, like a PDF of players from Cork, some ... I'll keep looking.) --j⚛e deckertalk 18:45, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
An awful lot of Japanese bios in the list too (getting on for 1,500 looking at this) - if these could be looked at by someone who can interpret/find Japanese sources it would make a huge difference.--Michig (talk) 20:14, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia:WikiProject Gaelic games/Unreferenced BLPs is the list of hurlers and other Irish games players (who have been marked as such). Here is the Carscan hurlers list: [8]The-Pope (talk) 23:33, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Tranches: a new way to patrol BLPs

Please visit the page below and consider adopting one of the 100 lists of 5000 BLPs by putting your signature at the end of the corresponding line.

The idea is to get every single edit to a known BLP patrolled, even the articles that are not otherwise watched.

To patrol recent changes to the articles, click on the "related changes" link for your chosen list. Diffs can be inspected in the usual way; it's not unlike a normal watchlist. Start at the bottom and work your way up.

The lists will be refreshed regularly to account for changes in the content of the living persons category.


--TS 00:25, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Did you know.... that referencing BLP articles might be eligible for did you know?

As part of this drive, I have suggested that currently unreferenced BLP articles that are fully referenced by editors and have an interesting hook should eligible for WP:DYK. It was discussed here and now again here, and seems to be getting a positive response. If editors here have opinions for or against, please free to weigh in there. --Slp1 (talk) 01:06, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

The Great Backlog Drive

PanydThe muffin is not subtle 23:00, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

What Can I Do to help?

What can I do to help? I have done people talkpages on Biographies. What would the administrators like to seen done with my help? Adamdaley (talk) 03:12, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

As per the instructions here, pick an article by any method that interests you (ie random, by topic, by month it was tagged or by region) and add some references. There is no need to track them, register, or anything formal, just do it! Thanks for offering to help out.The-Pope (talk) 06:45, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Probably outing myself as borderline dense, but I'm proceeding any way. I clicked the random article button and began searching for sources to cite. I found what appears to be a bona fide primary source for basic bio-facts but most of the balance were blogs or more useless link-link-link advert sites. The main obstacle seems to be that, while notable, the subject seems to have been inactive in their area of notability recently. That renders the more verifiable sources a bit "ancient" for Google news hits (my favorite as they easily pass the RS test). Are there other methods that I can follow that would reveal reliable sources? Any type of "news archive" search? As a follow-up; would adding one source that verifies some of the article content satisfy the aims that we're attempting to accomplish? Apologies if this has been covered previously and thanks for the patience of anyone that replies. Tiderolls 16:26, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

No such thing as silly questions. Whilst we'd love for you to totally reference every fact in an article, that often isn't possible, nor practicable for 20,000 articles. So a good, reliable, independent for a key fact in an article - especially if it is contentious, or makes a significant claim (ie won an award, first ever to do something etc) - is enough to remove the BLP unsourced tag. If you think there are significant things left to be sourced, then you can replace the unsourced/unreferenced tag with {{BLP sources}}, or stick a bunch of {{cn}} tags on the article. Are you aware of the Google news archives - not just Google news? See here for an example that goes back beyond the standard news search. And of course, the refs do not have to be online. If you have a book, magazine, journal etc, then as long as you quote the page and if possible the ISBN, then it is more than acceptable. Thanks for helping out. The-Pope (talk) 16:34, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
Thanks, The-Pope. Exactly the help I needed. Tiderolls 16:42, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

BLP mass blanking has begun

Dear all, earlier today, I figured out one article from my watchlist (that includes about 400 BLP) had been blanked. Some disussion is going on there : Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#BLP mass blanking has begun. What I did for today was find one reference for the person and editing the article. One article was very short, so I removed all that was not in the source, the other was longer and I kept the text though only the first sentence has a reference. I would just like to have more clarity of what to do and within what timeframe. --Anneyh (talk) 15:59, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

That discussion has since been moved here, which has a pointer to here. -- llywrch (talk) 02:04, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Announcement: the DYK project's contribution to reducing the number of unreferenced BLPs

Following recent discussions at WT:DYK, it has been agreed to change DYK rules to accept nominations for previously unsourced BLPs that have been thoroughly sourced inside the previous 5 to 8 days. DYK has until now required existing articles to be expanded five-fold in terms of readable content; however, in return for a thorough job sourcing an existing unsourced BLP, this expansion requirement is being relaxed to a two-fold expansion. All other DYK requirements remain the same. The minimum length remains 1500 readable characters. So, an existing unsourced BLP of 700 characters would have to be expanded to 1500 characters; an unsourced BLP of 900 characters would have to be expanded to 1800 characters. You can use DYKcheck to count characters and check for eligibility, but note that it has not been upated to check for two-fold recently-sourced BLP expansions.

Not all unreferenced BLPs will be suited to a two-fold expansion. Equally, not all will have an interesting fact suitable for a hook that also satisfies our requirement to avoid unduly negative hooks about individuals. However, if you have worked on sourcing an article which caught your interest, or you see one with an interesting fact that needs work, then please consider whether your contribution deserves the recognition of a DYKcredit and an appearance on the main page.

My thread announcing the implementation of the rule change is here. You might want to cite that if you have a nomination questioned about length, or to post in that thread if the new rules aren't being followed. (No doubt it will take some time for reviewers to get up to speed). For those of you unfamiliar with the project, you can read about DYK and look at the detailed rules and one page summary. Nominations go to T:TDYK. Please feel free to post this notice (or something like it) anywhere you feel is appropriate. Thanks. EdChem (talk) 05:34, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

For those who might be interested, I have nominated the following articles for DYK under this new rule:

EdChem (talk) 13:25, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

New Page Patrol

Whilst I think the BLPPROD system is basically working as it should, I'm concerned that our absolute first line of defence, the hardy folks at WP:NPP, don't seem to be on fully on board the anti-UBLP issue - or at least their documentation doesn't seem to be. The WP:NPP does not mention BLPPROD, BLP sources or even BLPs at all. I've posted a message at WT:NPP, but is that something that we need to implement fairly quickly? I've just WP:POINTily BLPPRODed two Australian politicians and copped some insults over doing so, but I wanted to send a message to the experienced editor that UBLP's are not acceptable anymore. But both articles were NPP'd without any tags being applied. I messged the patrollers, but then noticed that there is nothing on the NPP page to say that they should be on the lookout for UBLPs. Has this been tried before? I'm not saying that they should BLPPROD everything, but I think they need to be vigilant and should tag repeated violators at the least. The-Pope (talk) 14:07, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Special:NewPages does mention it. I'd say go ahead and make bold edits where you think they are needed. It's not a really a WP:POINT violation to do what you did... The editor in question only had 500 edits. BLPPROD is the approved, non-disruptive, way to make the point that we expect people to put in a little sourcing effort when creating BLPs. Gigs (talk) 20:01, 4 December 2010 (UTC)
This has been on my mind lately as well. We are making noticeable progress on the backlog, however I believe we need to combine this with the efforts of new page patrollers to be truly successful. If we have editors chipping away from all angles, we could make a serious play for 0 unsourced BLPs within a reasonable period of time. --Jezebel'sPonyobons mots 04:55, 5 December 2010 (UTC)
Problem is, the NPP project itself seems to be all but dead (let's not confuse the project with the hundreds of editors who are sporting NPP u-boxen on their user pages). A couple of editors are working on some possible solutions.--Kudpung (talk) 05:22, 5 December 2010 (UTC)
WP:NPP is not so much a project as an information page for learning the ropes of new page patrol. The advice above is correct: be bold and update it.--Chaser (away) - talk 22:15, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Question

Is there a listing of previously unreferenced BLPs that have recently been referenced, or those that have been removed from CAT:BLP? I am wondering because I'd like to go through and see what might be eligible for DYK (or close to it) and either make some nominations or advise editors whose efforts are close to the nomination threshhold where there appears to be a suitable hook. Articles referenced since about November 25 can probably still make it to DYK at this moment, and I am a strong believer in recognising valuable contributions. EdChem (talk) 04:42, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

I can generate a list of all articles that were in the category on Oct 27 but aren't in it now if you want. Hut 8.5 10:55, 5 December 2010 (UTC)
Is it possible for it to be those in the category on Nov 25 but not now? Alternatively, can it be ordered by when they were removed, or by when the edit removing the tag occurred? Anything older than November 25 is really too old for DYK, even with it's "Swahili" definition of five days. Thanks. EdChem (talk) 10:58, 5 December 2010 (UTC)
I can only give you this list because I saved the contents of the category on Oct 27, and I have a short program that can figure out what's in one list and not another. I can't sort by date removed or do arbitrary dates. I do have another copy of the category contents from Dec 1 if that would be more helpful. Hut 8.5 11:07, 5 December 2010 (UTC)
OK, I understand. The list of articles that were unreferenced BLPs on December 1 and have since been referenced would be very useful. Thanks very much. EdChem (talk) 11:20, 5 December 2010 (UTC)
User:Hut 8.5/Unreferenced BLPs/Removed/Dec 1. Hut 8.5 11:25, 5 December 2010 (UTC)
Thanks. EdChem (talk) 11:39, 5 December 2010 (UTC)
You could also use the compare history of this page as a guide - it isn't perfect but covers most of the UBLPs that have or do exist. This shows what's gone in the past 5 days.The-Pope (talk) 14:20, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Another question, if I may - is adding external links sufficient to justify removal of the unreferenced BLP tag? EdChem (talk) 11:39, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

This is debatable, normally in the other direction though - does the existence of external links mean that you should put {{BLP unsourced}} or should you use something like {{No footnotes}}. I lean towards looking at the quality of the links - if they are good, reliable, independent sources, then I'd remove the BLP unsourced and put the No footnotes tag on it. If they were questionable external links - ie not independent or possibly unreliable, I'd leave the BLP unsourced. To answer your direct question though - I wouldn't just add an external link if I wanted to remove a BLP unsourced, I'd either add it inline or find a better source.The-Pope (talk) 14:20, 5 December 2010 (UTC)
How about Adam Crosland, tag and Reflist removed with this diff – looked pretty dubious as far as referencing goes to me? EdChem (talk) 14:52, 5 December 2010 (UTC)
Or A. Wade Boykin with a naked URL as a sole external link? EdChem (talk) 15:01, 5 December 2010 (UTC)
They are perfect examples of really grey areas. The first one, three ext links, myspace you can ignore, the other two, I wouldn't make that call as I know nothing about art and whether they are reliable or just promotional - with the understanding that almost all modern art galleries are promotional in some way, so I don't know what the art world's opinion on gallery based profiles is. Asking at WT:WikiProject Visual arts might be able to answer. For the second one, ignore the poor formatting, it just indicates unfamiliarity with our systems, and again, I have no idea if it's a reliable source. That's why I like to stick to areas that I know and understand, and not the randomness of WP:URBLPR or the big red button. You can pick a topic from here if you'd also prefer to reference what you know about.The-Pope (talk) 15:30, 5 December 2010 (UTC)
FYI, the "poor formatting" that "just indicates unfamiliarity with our systems" is from an admin who is presently running for ArbCom. Those two examples are from the first 10 or so articles (alphabetically) that have been removed from the unreferenced BLP category since December 1. I just hope we aren't moving lots of articles from unsourced to almost unsourced. EdChem (talk) 15:39, 5 December 2010 (UTC)
Well, I'd expect better then. Didn't check that, did I! The bottom line is that we are kidding ourselves if we think cleaning up 50,000 UBLPs is going to significantly improve this place. We definitely have uncovered some hidden, lost BLPs, removed some vandalism and deleted some dodgy articles, but I think the wikiproject allocation and some other tasks that are happening to facilitate this task are more important than the actual backlog removal. Lessons learnt here can and should be used to reduce other backlogs and hopefully the new articles will be of a slightly higher standard.The-Pope (talk) 15:52, 5 December 2010 (UTC)
As for Adam Crosland, I made further searches and in the end made an AfD. I added more web links to A. Wade Boykin, but left tags unchanged. --Anneyh (talk) 20:57, 5 December 2010 (UTC)
If a decent source can be found and added to a BLP, the tag should be updated to BLP sources/refimprove, since its no longer completely unsourced. I would suggest that any committed editor on wikipedia should never leave a BLP alone without a reference if they come across one--even if only to add a bare url and scan it for "bad stuff"; complaining about uBLPs doesn't fix them. I try to add multiple sources when possible, but that's not always possible. Reviewing the content and fixing any problematic content, however, is invaluble by itself - its often clear that no real editor has looked at the content of some of these UBLPs in years. You see bot edits, categories added, tags added, and typo corrections, but absolutely no substantive oversight. For all the clamor about BLPs without references, its clear that the real problem (potential problem at least--almost all UBLPs have no defamatory material) is underwatched and underedited BLPs. You can find articles with 10 references and horrible slanders, and those with no references that are pretty darn good.--Milowent • talkblp-r 02:23, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
  • Adam Glogauer - do two external links to myspace count enough to remove from the unreferenced BLP category? EdChem (talk) 07:48, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
Uh...no, considering that Myspace links don't count as reliable sources anyways. SilverserenC 07:52, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
I have changed the tag back to make it an unreferenced BLP... which I felt strange doing, as I was undoing the edit of an admin presently running for ArbCom. EdChem (talk) 08:24, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
What can you do? *shrugs* Myspace links don't count as sources, regardless. They can be valid External links, as they are in that article, but they don't count as references, by far. SilverserenC 08:26, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
And i'm even iffy on having them as sources, really. Doesn't he have a website or something? SilverserenC 08:26, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
No clue. I've been going systematically through the list Hut made (see above) of articles removed from the unreferenced BLP category since December 1, looking for articles eligible for DYK nominations under the new rule. I'm actually pretty unimpressed by how little is being done to some of these articles, which motivated me to highlight a few here, to see whether my views were out of step with community expectations. EdChem (talk) 08:36, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
I'm trying to do well with mine. I put at least two formatted references before I take off the tag. I've been keeping a list here. :) I think this is the best one i've done so far. SilverserenC 08:43, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
Glad you are contributing high standards, I've been trying to do a good job too - my efforts are here. By the way, Belle du Berry is another example which was removed from the unsourced BLP category with only a myspace external link. EdChem (talk) 08:51, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
Yeah, Myspace is not good enough. The entire point of the unreferenced BLP issues is that there could be defamatory or contentious information in the articles, along with notability and all of our other policies. How does an external link to Myspace fix any of that? SilverserenC 09:13, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

I've put a longer list of these removed articles at User:Hut 8.5/Unreferenced BLPs/Removed/Oct 27. Hut 8.5 11:47, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

On the article Dave (singer), I just added a good tertiary source (Larousse, on of the French reference dictionary), should that kind of practice be avoided? I had another issue, some articles on professor are created because they are a reference in their domain, but there is nothing to be found for referencing their biographie, for example Alexandre Sheldon-Duplaix. What to do in such cases? --Anneyh (talk) 20:43, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

This kind of thing is a joke. An almost empty MySpace page and an online forum are apparently enough to not longer be unsourced. This kind of effort feels a lot like sweeping the issues under a rug to me. It should be relatively easy to draw a bright line for acceptable sourcing, with self-published web sites, MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn not counting as references, everything else makes for {{refimprove}}. Kevin (talk) 00:05, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

  • Perhaps it is a joke, and i wouldn't just add a myspace link myself, but i've seen that done in the past per the discussions i cited above and, as i understand it, its why {{BLP selfpublished}} was created.--Milowent • talkblp-r 03:07, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

More targeted fixing

The random unsourced BLP button led me to a lot of marginally notable footballers from the 1960s, so I started using google to target my time on articles that have unsourced negative information (example search). Any improvements on this to focus our efforts on those articles that are not just unreferenced, but have clear potential to actually do people reputational harm would be helpful.--Chaser (away) - talk 22:19, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

People have done these sorts of text searches before, with similiar results, you could argue that you should do it on all BLPs, rather than just UBLPs. As for the Footballers, they are a common target for the problems with Wikipedia's notability rules, but the WP:FOOTBALL project has done a fantastic job bringing their UBLPs down from almost 8000 in July 2009 to around 1000 today.The-Pope (talk) 23:19, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Backlog of unsourced BLPs that have not been prodded

This report should be empty. Help would be appreciated. Gigs (talk) 02:39, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

  • These are post March 18, 2010 BLPs that are subject to BLP-PROD, right?--Milowent • talkblp-r 02:59, 8 December 2010 (UTC)
    • Yes. Either the banner on these is wrong or they should be BLP PRODed. Or sourced if you are motivated, of course. Gigs (talk) 03:16, 8 December 2010 (UTC)
  • The problem, as seen above, on jclemens's talk page, on WSC's suggestion on the ANI page and probably elsewhere, is that everyone uses different minimum requirements for the application or removal of the BLP unsourced and BLPPROD tags. We have to sort that out before we can empty the list - and it's only 350 articles anyway, so it isn't that significant overall.The-Pope (talk) 03:37, 8 December 2010 (UTC)
  • That's a problem, but it's not the problem. Most of these are just mistagged. If it's not unsourced for the purposes of BLP PROD then it shouldn't be unsourced for the purposes of the banner. BTW - We have a bright line test for removing BLP prod, "one claim about the subject sourced to a reliable source for that claim". It's the addition standard that isn't defined. Gigs (talk) 04:16, 8 December 2010 (UTC)
  • Realistically, a source could be added to all of these in about an hour if a group of ten editors or so worked on it. SilverserenC 04:20, 8 December 2010 (UTC)
  • I don't know. I just did Ng Lok-wang and wound up taking it to AfD after searching for 10 minutes for sources and coming up empty. You might be able to do 30 easy ones in an hour, but it's the tough ones that take a while. Gigs (talk) 04:29, 8 December 2010 (UTC)
  • Is it appropriate to update tag to {{BLP IMDB refimprove}} when a reference to IMDB is already present? I saw a few with IMDB listed when I just looked.--Milowent • talkblp-r 05:08, 8 December 2010 (UTC)
yes. update the tags to what is appropriate. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 06:13, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Barnstar

It would be nice if we could see who are the most active backlog reducers, and reward them with a barnstar or such. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 15:02, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

We should have a special barnstar made for those working on unsourced BLPs (if there isn't one already). :o SilverserenC 04:24, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
At the Reward Board, user Reconsider the static posted under the title Unreferenced BLP drive offering barnstars for adding at least two references to 20 or more articles in backlog. Unfortunately, s/he has not posted since updating the reward on October 10 and user talk:Reconsider the static is now tagged with an inactive notice. I posted to his or her talk page with a listing of 20 articles to which I added a total of 92 references, so I admit I was interested in the recognition. I am posting here to suggest that maybe someone would like to take over the reward offer, or to offer an alternative one on different terms, because I think the idea of providing some recognition is fundamentally sound. As you may be aware, I pushed through the recognition of newly sourced and expanded BLPs through DYK (throwing in a gratuitous ad for an idea I support and where I would like to see more DYK nominations) so I have already made some efforts in this area. EdChem (talk) 06:43, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
Don't forget successful deletion nominations of unsourced BLPs :) Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Stephen Giannetti Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kameel Al-Wabary Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bruce Schwack.
On another note I just started sourcing Eddie Santiago. That looks like a possible DYK candidate to me. Polargeo (talk) 08:37, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Great Job Everyone

I just wanted to say that everyone (and all of Wikipedia) is doing a great job at reducing the backlog. I guess adding that line on all of our watchlists is helping out a bit. At this rate, we should be able to clear out the backlog in six months flat, if not less. SilverserenC 05:09, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

  • 18,850 right now, big advances made in the past few days. when did this notice go into effect? bravo!--Milowent • talkblp-r 14:59, 11 December 2010 (UTC)
The giant red 'random unsourced BLP' buttons prominently placed in some high profile venues helped as well. Who can resist pushing a giant red button? It's like rolling the dice in Vegas, you never know whether your going to walk away with all the chips, or leave destitute. --Jezebel'sPonyobons mots 17:43, 11 December 2010 (UTC)
  • 400 articles were sourced in two days. :o At this rate, it'll only be 90 some odd days to finish the backlog. SilverserenC 06:01, 13 December 2010 (UTC)
  • We're below 17,000 now. Geez, this is going amazingly well. SilverserenC 22:06, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Suggestion

I don't know if this is possible, but I am wondering if it would be a good idea to incorporate the search engines within Template:Find sources into Template:BLP unsourced. If possible, it might make the work of "referencing a random biography" a little bit easier for passersby. (I imagine that there is some technical issue preventing that.) Location (talk) 00:58, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

It seems like a great idea to me, but was rejected previously. Kevin (talk) 05:56, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
I was not aware of that. Thanks! Location (talk) 15:54, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Mistagged BLP Cleanup complete!

The Mistagged BLP cleanup project has completed its backlog. 2540 articles were checked. I estimate at least 60% of those were addressed through the mistagged BLP project, either through tag correction or source addition. The remainder were addressed outside the Mistagged BLP project. Tag accuracy should be much better at this point, and there should be a higher correlation between the BLP unsourced tag and the actual lack of sources. Gigs (talk) 21:41, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Low-hanging fruit

I was a bit surprised to see how many articles are still listed at Wikipedia:WikiProject National Football League/Unreferenced BLPs. It should be very easy to at least confirm the basic facts of any true NFL player's career. You can use NFL.com, pro-football-reference.com, or even books like Total Football. The only challenge is that adding those sources will get tedious after a while.

Anyway, I just thought I'd post a message here, in case someone was looking for a project. :) I'm sure some of those bios could make good DYK entries, so if you're the sort who's in to that stuff, take a look! Zagalejo^^^ 08:08, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, i'm currently working on the UBLPs over at the MILHIST Wikiproject. But i'd be glad to transfer over to this after those are cleared out. Only 83 more MILHIST BLPs to go anyways. SilverserenC 08:50, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
That's OK, keep on with what you're doing! I just wanted to throw the idea out there. Zagalejo^^^ 19:44, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
  • I saw this suggestion, so I've done a couple (not really into expanding for a DYK though). Anyway I realised after a few that the vast majority have links to their player profile at NFL.com in the infobox. If I saw an NFL.com link at the bottom of an article, (eg under an "external links" section) I'd usually be inclined to change the unreferencedBLP tag to a BLPrefimprove and a nofootnotes. So I'm wondering if that's ok if the external link is in the infobox? Jenks24 (talk) 20:59, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
I think a lot of people tagging the articles miss the NFL.com link in the infobox and tag the article as unsourced in error. As the link confirms at least the basic team stats, the tag should be update to 'BLP sources'. --Jezebel'sPonyobons mots 21:11, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for the quick reply. I'll do that from now on :) Jenks24 (talk) 21:16, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
I could move over to NFL and help there; baseball is just about done except for a slew of asian baseball stubs, which can be reffed once I find a stats site for them. Wizardman Operation Big Bear 02:33, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
Well, Wizardman has reverted all my changes to 'BLP sources' tags when there was an NFL.com link (or similar) in the infobox or external links sections. I've asked him about it here, but must say that I've become pretty discouraged and doubt I'll be reffing BLPs again for a while (maybe I'll create some BLPs instead, referenced ones I promise ;). Jenks24 (talk) 09:54, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
That seems like a very rude and mean action on Wizardman's part, considering his response above clearly shows he was aware of this section and your intentions. To revert your changes without first initiating discussion with you about them seems very wrong indeed and requires a definite response from him. SilverserenC 10:37, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
I've reverted them all back - you did nothing wrong Jenks24, Wizardman better have a good reason. People have to realise that BLP unsourced isn't the only cleanup tag out there.The-Pope (talk) 11:41, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
Another way to deal with the low-hanging BLP fruit is to check whether the subject is actually alive. That's how this subject moved out of the backlog, permanently. (So if a potential subject has been sentenced to death, but there is no easy way to determine if the subject has actually been executed, do we consider the subject dead or alive? That's what I'm facing with a number of former Derg members & officials of the former People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia.) -- llywrch (talk) 06:15, 28 December 2010 (UTC)
I think death row people are still alive until the sentence is carried out. We've tried doing comparisons on people who are listed as dead on other language wikis - search for "ALERT" on Wikipedia:WikiProject_Biography/DASHBot_unreferenced_BLPs or other similar "by-topic/project" pages, and I've done regular category checks using Catscan or WP:AWB. Bottom line is that there won't be that many of the left. The last few weeks have shown that the only real solution to the problem is to get more people involved by publicising it, which the watchlist item has done. Even the very effective WP:URBLPR is basically 10-15 people each doing on average 3-6 UBLPs per day. Without any stats, I reckon the recent jump from 50-70 per day to 150-300 per day isn't because we are all doing 3 times as many, but because there are 3-5 times as many people doing the same number per day. There may be some topical areas out there, like the NFL one, where sources are easy to find, but thats the only possible solution, before we all get left with the Eastern European pop stars and Japanese Manga artists. The-Pope (talk) 07:52, 28 December 2010 (UTC)
Actually, I was just being snarky for our "BLPs must be sourced" friends. Especially the ones who aren't interested in providing sources. (If I can find a source for a biographical subject being sentenced to death, I believe that provides a source for the article & solves the problem.) More important is the issue of what do we do when the project reaches the point where all that is left are the articles no one cares about, like East European Manga artists & Third World beauty queens? Can we all feel comfortable with saying that no one really cares about them, & standing back so the articles can be deleted? Not to insult people in either group, but with over 3.5 million articles does anyone doubt that there are at least a handful of unsourced biographical articles on living people that no one cares enough to work on? IMHO, the only sane solution in those cases is to acknowledge that they are cruft, let the articles vanish, & we all move on with our lives. -- llywrch (talk) 21:07, 28 December 2010 (UTC)
I think we'll take the obvious, policy-backed route at that point. Once we get down to the BLPs that we absolutely can't find sources for, we'll put them up at AfD and let the community decide what is to be done with them. If someone, over the course of the AfD, manages to find sources, then that will be a marked improvement and an accomplishment. But we've still got a ways to go before we get there. We can discuss this when we're down to the last 1000 or so. SilverserenC 21:36, 28 December 2010 (UTC)
I'm don't believe that it will come to that. The observable fact that we've "cleared" a year or more of unsourced BLPs (by month of tagging) demonstrates a priori that, in the end, we as a community are willing to "source or delete", there were articles on many third-world beauty pageant winners, such as Tyrilla Gouldson, who faced that very test in August of this year. I claim that the consistent ability of the process to clear back months is a demonstration that, in the end, we won't be stuck with a pile of articles we're neither willing to source nor delete. The better question is, in my view, are there enough editors who are willing to do that in comparison with the flow of newly created unsourced BLPs. I personally think the answer is "yes", now that BLPPROD has helped stem the tide of the latter, and as a result, I do think there's a reasonable chance we'll see a more-or-less cleared BLP sourcing backlog in my lifetime. --j⚛e deckertalk 21:50, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Proposal to make the unsourced BLP template more inline with that is actually considered an "unsourced BLP"

I'm dismayed to find that even after the completion of Mistagged BLP cleanup, some editors are still using "unsourced BLP" tags on article that are not completely unsourced. I have made a proposal to clarify the template's wording Gigs (talk) 20:19, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

A new Category Tracking Tool

Hey Guys. I'm working on a new category tracking tool to show the population of a category over time. I've been testing it using Category:All_unreferenced_BLPs. I know you have a similar graph that shows similar data, but this tool (will) update more often and is prettier (at least I think). Tell me what you think (and what I can add). The tool is here. Thanks! Tim1357 talk 07:24, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

I took the liberty of updating the link on the main project page. Revert if you want. Tim1357 talk 17:55, 30 December 2010 (UTC)
Looks good to me. Thanks.--Michig (talk) 18:11, 30 December 2010 (UTC)
Belated thanks! --j⚛e deckertalk 05:47, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Under 15,000!

We're at 14,872, kudos to all! J04n(talk page) 18:51, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Only 2 days later and now under 14,000! This almost seems too good to be true. --Michig (talk) 16:40, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
Yeah... what gives? Has someone found a new way to improve parsing articles, or have people been mass-deleting things? I haven't seen much on PROD recently. Jclemens-public (talk) 22:46, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
I think things like the section below and other realizations of mis-attributed tags may be having an effort on the numbers. By the way, is there a plan, once all of these are gone, to move onto the BLP's with a ref-improve tag? Or are we going to move onto the rest of the articles with a no reference tag on them that are not BLP's? SilverserenC 06:34, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Searching for information templates

I've been thinking of ways to cheat the system here, and I've been using this Category scan that looks for IMDB entries, and the results can quickly be moved to other cleanup categories and out of (completely) Unreferenced Biographies. There must be quite a few of these templates and quite a lot of low hanging fruit.

Just a thought.

JASpencer (talk) 23:12, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

IMDB is not considered a reliable source for many purposes due to its use of unverified user submissions. --j⚛e deckertalk 17:39, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
Yes, it's not. But an IMDB reference is a reference, such that the proper tag is refimprove, not unreferenced, in those cases. Jclemens-public (talk) 22:47, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
Indeed, agreed. --j⚛e deckertalk 22:53, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
Actually, Template:BLP IMDB refimprove is even more specific. --j⚛e deckertalk 23:00, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Details of templates aside, and having stepped back a bit to think about it, I guess I have to say that I don't believe that "cheating the system" in this way really helps the encyclopedia. I recognize that opinions will vary on this. Also, when I see a primary source given as an EL, I don't make the assumption that that's a valid reference and call it one. --j⚛e deckertalk 04:38, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
Jclemens, I am concerned that your view is missing the point... the idea is to make sure BLPs have decent reliable sources, not that there is something that can be maybe considered some sort of maybe-arguable reference is included as an external link. I have seen cases where you have replaced the unref'd tag where there is only an external link to a facebook page, and I don't understand how that is in any meaningful sense better than no reference at all. We may be able to reduce the backlog by changing such cases from unreferenced to refimprove, but all that does is move the backlog to a new category - it isn't actually dealing with the problem of BLPs without references for the statements that they contain. EdChem (talk) 06:55, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Agree very much with the sentiments of Joe Decker and EdChem above. While these tag removals may hold to the letter of the law they certainly don't hold to he law's spirit, nor IMO the spirit of this project. I don't see much of a difference between mass deleting of articles and mass deleting of tags. Mass deleting of articles deleted uncontentious material needlessly, mass deleting of tags misses opportunities to remove unsourced contentious material. A lot of good has been done over the past year, let's not throw it away. J04n(talk page) 08:08, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
Well, we do have this template for a reason. As long as this one is being put in the place of the no references tag, we should be okay. If not, then yes, that is indeed a problem. SilverserenC 08:15, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
Again, letter vs. spirit. When you remove tags as quickly as was done here there is no way that you are looking at the content of the article. There have been many instances, when looking at the articles in the backlog, that unsourced or unreliably sourced contentious material has been removed. Please don't ask me for examples. This cleanup effort has remained remarkably noncontroversial, this could jeopardize that. Lastly, don't fool yourself, the second the backlog reaches zero all BLPs that are not 100% sourced will come under attack. J04n(talk page) 08:25, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

OK, I've rolled back all the referenced articles that are not referenced by IMDB (but referenced by something like hancinema). If people wish I can go back through the IMDB referenced articles to (incorrectly) show that they are also unreferenced. However first there is not a "mass deletion" of tags, there was a mass amendment of tags - in most cases the tags were replaced with IMDBrefimprove and no footnotes. The tags were only completely removed if either there were other references that were inline or the article was a stub with the facts clearly shown in the IMDB reference. Secondly a great proportion of the BLPunreferenced tags are actually wrongly tagged. The references may need to be improved in many cases and they may also need to be done as citations rather than external links, but the articles are referenced. Totally unreferenced articles are a problem and poorly referenced articles are a problem, but they are not the same problem. JASpencer (talk) 08:54, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

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