Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard

Welcome to the biographies of living persons noticeboard
This page is for reporting issues regarding biographies of living persons. Generally this means cases where editors are repeatedly adding defamatory or libelous material to articles about living people over an extended period. This page is not for simple vandalism or material which can easily be removed without argument. If you can, simply remove the offending material. Familiarize yourself with the biographies of living persons policy before reporting issues here. Important: Do not copy and paste any defamatory or libelous information to this noticeboard. Link to a diff showing the dispute, but do not paste the information here. Sections older than 7 days are archived by Lowercase sigmabot III. Search this noticeboard & archives Additional notes: Note that edits by the subject of an article may be welcome in some cases. Place the {{BLP noticeboard}} template on the talk page of articles that are being discussed here, and remove it when the discussion is resolved. For general content disputes regarding biographical articles, consider using Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Biographies instead. All editors are encouraged to assist fellow editors regarding the reports below. Administrators should review enforcement instructions.
To start a new request, enter the name of the relevant article below:

Florida Parental Rights in Education Act

Florida Parental Rights in Education Act (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) I have strong concerns that the Support section of this article, and potentially other section, could very well be too libelous and too non-neutral in its phrasing.

I am particularly concerned about @PoliticalPoint's additions to the article regarding Donald Trump; while I originally added Trump's comments mentioning them as brief, as he only made not too much more than a single sentence comment when it comes to the act, PoliticalPoint added various context for Trump which highlighted his history of making these comments towards other people. These comments certainly would belong on Political positions of Donald Trump and articles directly related to Trump on LGBT populations, though the elaboration of his comments on this article seems to unduly emphasize libelous information about Trump and seeks to potentially jeopardize the neutrality of Wikipedia. My initial addition of Trump's opinion on the act added it after a sentence on the most prominent GOP opposition. Trump's comments on the bill were very brief per the source cited; in an interview with the Washington Post, it is explicitly mentioned he declined to comment further than "it was a good move". PoliticalPoint, however, elaborated further on Trump's opinion in an inappropriate manner, including talk about Trump's opposition to the Equality Act, his actions during his presidency, his federal judge appointments, and his other actions. While true, they are not appropriate, and by inclusion paint a potentially libelous portrait of Trump by using a mostly unrelated article to scrutinize the former president's other unrelated activities. This to me is a BLP violation, as these articles per BLP are to be written conservatively (as in limited, not politically conservatively) on the subject. WP:BLP further states that BLPs should be written responsibly, cautiously, and in a dispassionate tone, avoiding both understatement and overstatement; the edits here are an overstatement relative to the article. If anything, limit these comments to articles directly about Trump, not this one.

@AEagleLionThing (Diffs 1), have raised concerns that the neutrality of the article is also suboptimal in its writing, and despite PoliticalPoint citing WP:FALSEBALANCE, since Trump's views have been very brief on the Parental Rights in Education Act, they should not be necessarily elaborated in this particular article. PoliticalPoint also has frequently cited WP:FRINGE on the talk page for the Act's article; he/she/they seem to overlook that WP:FRINGE states in its lead that all majority and significant-minority views published in reliable sources should be represented fairly and proportionately. It does not seem like that PoliticalPoint's additions to Trump is proportionate, and that the potential for libel and personal views inappropriately entering the article is too high.

While not directly related to the above BLP issues, I believe it is further worth bringing up that previous revisions by PoliticalPoint have resulted in potentially biased edits removing the actual text of the bill and inserting additional content on the opposition. See this edit which removed the actual text of the Act per "due weight" instead of maybe moving it further into the article, this edit which added a gallery tagging every politician who advanced the bill as "A Republican" (which I know is a bit out there, but I am concerned seems to non-neutrally emphasize the Republican Party almost like a wall of shame despite the factual accuracy; this was later removed), noted a harmless phrasing change by an IP as "Vandalism", and the present RFC and content dispute over the lead which we are in. InvadingInvader (userpage, talk) 08:55, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

This looks like a dispute which is better suited for WP:NPOVN. The content in question is well-supported and nobody seems to be disputing the truth of it; I don't see how accurately describing the official actions Donald Trump took while president can possibly be a BLP issue. Whether the content is due weight for the article on Florida Parental Rights in Education Act or not doesn't seem to be a BLP issue to me. And your repeated allusions to potential for libel strike me as unhelpful at best. If you really believe that article content is potentially libelous, follow the instructions on WP:LIBEL. Otherwise repeatedly gesturing at "potential" libel without any further explanation looks like an attempt to shut down debate in the vein of WP:CRYBLP to me. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 09:19, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

No this is definitely a BLP issue although I agree bringing up libel is in unhelpful. Nil Einne (talk) 09:22, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

Got it; thanks for the feedback. InvadingInvader (userpage, talk) 09:23, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

Guilt by association (often a problem on such pages) is botha BLP and a NPOV issue, so that needs resolvinf. Masem (t) 23:04, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

IMO both the Trump and Gabbard paragraphs have way too much content on stuff that is of no direct relevance to the bill. While I'm not saying we saying we should have no additional context, 1 short sentence should be enough. Nil Einne (talk) 09:20, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

Not seeing this as a BLP issue, except insofar as any dispute where living people are involved could be called a BLP issue. For example, InvadingInvader removed this gallery as "potentially libelous". It's.... a gallery of people involved with the bill. Putting a picture alongside information already in an article is not a BLP problem (nevermind "libelous"). With that, and with some of the other elements of this dispute, II seems to be saying that saying someone supported the bill or other related bills casts them in a bad light. That's only true for someone who sees it as a negative. The people we're actually talking about, and their supporters, are probably more likely to see such a gallery as unusually promotional for a neutral article. The people involved with passing the bill are involved because they think the bill is a good thing and want to be associated with it. Now, does that mean I think the gallery should be in the article? No, it takes up too much space. But not because it's libelous. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 13:27, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

Firstly, as pointed out to @InvadingInvader in this reply here when @InvadingInvader made the false claim here in an edit summary that "this a slander^(sic)-fest here no matter how true it is", which is an oxymoron, given that slander is, by definition, a statement that is false, when all of the content provided for contextualization with citations that @InvadingInvader removed here are true statements of verifiable facts, the same allegation here that the article or a section thereof "could very well be too libelous and too non-neutral in its phrasing" is incorrect in the first instance because for a statement to constitute libel it must be false and all of the content provided for contextualization with citations are true statements of verifiable facts; and incorrect in the second instance because the content that @InvadingInvader objects to is in accordance with the WP:NPOV subpolicy of WP:FALSEBALANCE.

Secondly, the false claim by @InvadingInvader that content provided for contextualization "elaborated further on Trump's opinion in an inappropriate manner" is incorrect in the first instance as it did not elaborate further on the comment by Trump at all, but rather provided contextualization; and incorrect in the second instance because it is perfectly appropriate to contextualize the comment.

Thirdly, the false claim by @InvadingInvader that "While true, they are not appropriate, and by inclusion paint a potentially libelous portrait of Trump" is, again, an oxymoron, as a statement that is true cannot be libel, which is, by definition, a statement that is false. Again, all of the content provided for contextualization with citations are true statements of verifiable facts.

Fourthly, this is clearly not a WP:BLP issue, as correctly pointed out by @Caeciliusinhorto-public or @Caeciliusinhorto and @Rhododendrites; and certainly not a "BLP violation", as falsely claimed by @InvadingInvader.

Fifthly, the allegation by @InvadingInvader of "potentially biased edits" is manifestly false. This revert was explained at length here. The concern with the gallery, which @InvadingInvader recently removed with the false claim that "it is potentially libelous" which is an oxymoron, given that libel is, by definition, a statement that is false and @InvadingInvader admitted to the "factual accuracy" of the content in the opening comment here, is absurd as correctly pointed out by @Caeciliusinhorto-public or @Caeciliusinhorto and @Rhododendrites. This revert should be taken in the context of a series of reverts (see here, here, and here) that reverted vandalism by an IP vandal (see here, here, and here) that removed the templates for the short description and the redirect and removed the common names of the act, as explained to @InvadingInvader at length here.

Finally, it should be noted that these various disputes over the article began when @InvadingInvader suddenly began removing enormous portions of the article, both citations and prose (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, etc) and was initially reverted by @Viriditas (see here and here) because, as correctly noted by @Viriditas, the "Edit summary and massive deletions don’t align" and "edit summaries and edits not aligning" in reference to the edits by @InvadingInvader. Ever since then @InvadingInvader has been on an odd crusade of sorts in an attempt to induce a false balance in the article in violation of WP:FALSEBALANCE by sanitizing the sponsors and supporters of the act, sanitizing the false claims of the sponsors and supporters of the act, minimizing the authority of the scientific evidence refuting the false claims of the sponsors and supporters of the act, minimizing the authority of the opponents (who are experts, pediatricians, psychologists, the United Nations, etc), and constantly falsely alleging libel and slander, contrary to the definitions of those terms, for content that contextualizes the claims and comments of the sponsors and supporters of the act or even for something as simple as a gallery of the sponsors of the act, as seen above. --PoliticalPoint (talk) 01:58, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

Ever since then @InvadingInvader has been on an odd crusade of sorts in an attempt to induce a false balancein the article in violation of WP:FALSEBALANCEby sanitizing the sponsors and supporters of the act, sanitizing the false claims of the sponsors and supporters of the act, minimizing the authority of the scientific evidence refuting the false claims of the sponsors and supporters of the act, minimizing the authority of the opponents (who are experts, pediatricians, psychologists, the United Nations, etc), and constantly falsely alleging libel and slander, contrary to the definitions of those terms, for content that contextualizes the claims and comments of the sponsors and supporters of the act or even for something as simple as a gallery of the sponsors of the act, as seen above. I’m not sure if I should take this as a personal attack in the way that this comment about me is phrased. This is the first time I’ve been on this noticeboard. So failing to take into account I’ve actually written Got it, thanks for the feedback above. If anything, it’s becoming slander and libel of me. InvadingInvader (userpage, talk) 04:03, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

With every invocation of the s-word and the l-word, you dip a toe into WP:NLT territory. Should really, y'know, stop that. Zaathras (talk) 22:50, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

+1 to Zaathras above. And I have two oft-repeated pleas: (1) stop using legal-sounding language; and (2) if you must use legal language, say "defamation" since slander is almost certainly irrelevant and gets tossed around the most. Cheers. Dumuzid (talk) 22:56, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

Or, at the very least, if people are going to use legal terms, for the love of Odin find out what they mean. It can't be both slander and libel. Slander is oral whereas libel is written. I must admit, I haven't really read much of this section, because when people start tossing around emotionally charged words like "crusade", "sanitizing", "libel", and "slander", and especially linking them at every use as a point of emphasis, my eyes just glaze over and I think, "This sounds like a job for ANI". (I will say, however, that it never ceases to amaze me how popular Trump is with the left; a million times more popular that he ever was with people on the right. I mean, they're still talking about him!) Zaereth (talk) 00:35, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

One, I think this has fallen out of the biographies of living people area, and is now about POV. Maybe we should continue the discussion at WP:NPOV/Noticeboard?

Two, I think @PoliticalPoint is implying an assumption of bad faith. @InvadingInvader had previously apologized for calling others' edits slanderous and libelous. I believe that everyone (that includes InvadingInvader too!) should move on and get back to the issue at hand.

AEagleLionThing (talk) 01:43, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

FWIW, I continue to believe that the Trump and Gabbard stuff are BLP issues that could reasonably be discussed on this board. But I don't really care enough to comment further myself and I think the chance of anyone else caring is also gone. As I mentioned early on, the invocations of defamation are unhelpful. BLP intentionally goes way beyond defamation, so whether something is defamation is rarely a necessary point of discussion. And if you're going to bring up defamation, people expect some major problem, the sort of think that may require suppression or at least revdeletion. If all they see is the stuff mentioned here, you've likely lost their interest since they no longer trust you even if we put aside the WP:NLT aspect completely. Beyond that, focus would also help. There may be wider issues with the article, but probably many of them are not really the sort of thing of interest here. Notably, the question of inclusion of photos of people who were actually involved in passing or signing the bill is IMO too minor of a potential BLPvio to be worth mentioning here. If these were random photos of Trump or Gabbard sure, but not of Ron DeSantis etc. Nil Einne (talk) 16:58, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

William MacAskill

A new editor has deleted the controversy section for William MacAskill. His work in the Effective Altruism movement and his ties to Sam Bankman-Fried have come under major scrutiny. In my opinion, there is even more to add. Any insight would be appreciated. I think it is an important article to watch as there seems to be new news stories out every other week. Thriley (talk) 20:08, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

There may be more to add, but WP:CRITS and WP:STRUCTURE are salient. Wikipedians love tending their "Controversy" sections, but they are often poorly handled and out of place. Notable controversial actions should simply be explained along with notable non-controversial acts, giving each their due weight, not shunted to a salacious section devoted to scandal. --Animalparty! (talk) 21:40, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

I agree entirely. Thriley (talk) 21:47, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

I generally agree that more content needs to be included about his association with Bankman-Fried. I added a section on MacAskill's talk page about this as well. It looks like his association with Bankman-Fried is the most notable thing about him and contributed significantly to his prominence as an academic and philosopher. It is misleading and, in effect, promotional of MacAskill to talk about him as an academic and philosopher divorced from his association with Bankman-Fried, FTX, and Alameda Research. I agree that putting the discussion of his association with FTX in a separate controversies section would probably not be best and that it should simply be worked into the rest of the article. --Nogburt (talk) 13:09, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

[Disclaimer: I have a conflict of interest.]

This is not true: "It looks like his association with Bankman-Fried is the most notable thing about him and contributed significantly to his prominence as an academic and philosopher."

(Also see the top of this page: "Important: Do not copy and paste any defamatory or libelous information to this noticeboard. Link to a diff showing the dispute, but do not paste the information here.")

As I say on the talk page, MacAskill has had a Wikipedia page since 2013 vs Bankman-Fried's being created in 2021. All of the following happened before anyone had heard of Bankman-Fried: MacAskill co-founded a social movement, he became the youngest associate professor of philosophy in the world, he gave a TED talk, he published a book reviewed by the heads of LinkedIn and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Even as recently as last August, TIME Magazine featured a story about him and his movement on their front cover and only gave Bankman-Fried a brief mention (in fact the same amount of space they gave to Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz). Schweet (talk) 13:52, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

As someone with no preexisting familiarity with MacAskill or effective altruism, having nothing for or against him, I find very little is available on him without digging into relatively obscure sources other than his association with FTX. For better or worse, that's what he's known for and should be a top focus of an article about him. Nogburt (talk) 15:39, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

That's what more recent sources might focus on about him. A brief search on my part seemed to indicate that's not what he's mainly known for. eg. this article and this article Tristario (talk) 23:18, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

Patrick Stübing

Patrick Stübing is currently at AFD (submitted by me) as I believe it's a WP:BLP1E. The discussion was relisted and would be nice to get more people familiar with the BLP policy to look in at it. Maybe I am wrong about it. - Who is John Galt? ✉ 16:13, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

AfD ended, BLP kept, renaming remains a possibility. Anythingyouwant (talk) 12:16, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Michael Pocalyko and Eden Knight

• Michael Pocalyko (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
• Suicide of Eden Knight (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Could some experienced editors take a look at the above two articles, please? There are a few inter-related issues. A young Saudi trans woman named Eden Knight posted what has been taken as a suicide note on social media. In her posting, she named Michael Pocalyko and one of his associates as having been involved in her return to Saudi Arabia from the US, where she had been living. Based on my reading of WP:BLPCRIME, I'm not sure that these allegations should be included in Pocalyko's article. I tried discussing this on the talk page, but other editors insist that Pocalyko is a "public figure" which seems to be clearly incorrect based on the definitions in public figure.

As far as the Eden Knight article goes, I have two concerns. One is that while many media outlets are being careful by using phrases such as "feared dead" or "alleged suicide", Suicide of Eden Knight unequivocally states that she is dead. It even says "c. March 12, 2023". This appears to be a story pieced together in the media from social media posts and speculation. My second concern is that while this is a tragic event, is this alleged suicide historically significant? Sadly, tens of thousands of Americans die by suicide annually. I understand that this case has momentarily garnered some attention because Knight was trans, but I don't see it having lasting impact. I'm sorry if that sounds heartless. It isn't meant to be.

I would appreciate input from those with more experience in these areas. Thank you. ☰ Hamburger Menu (talk) 16:54, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

Hi all, as a recent contributor to both pages I thought I'd put in my two cents. The events of the past week have received significant reliable source coverage from both sides of the Atlantic Ocean (including multiple sources which detail the alleged involvement of Mr. Pocalyko). I don't think WP:BLPCRIME would apply since no criminal action is being specifically alleged in the article -- not to comment on the moral implications of those actions attributed to Mr. Pocalyko, but regardless it should be clear that the allegations are, indeed, allegations as reported by properly cited sources. The question about whether or not he is a public figure is a bit of a sideshow but I'd like to note that a prominent businessman, political candidate, and successful novelist would likely be a "public figure" for any one of those three circumstances. I think there was a misunderstanding on that point during the previous discussion.

On the subject of death date, some sources are more cautiously worded than others, but it has been reported that Eden Knight was dead no later than March 13 (when her family posted a memorial tweet). When I created Suicide of Eden Knight I wrote it as "c. 2000 - March 12, 2023" because that was the most accurate I could figure and I noted that she died "on or about" March 12 (since the suicide note may have been pre-scheduled, and the family's tweet was on the 13th, there's theoretically a bit of wiggle room but I'm pretty sure most sources are in agreement it was March 12). Yes, some journalists have written things like "feared dead" but others have gone ahead and said it -- they do the legwork in gathering information, whether it's posted publicly on social media or shared with them by parties with first-hand knowledge.

But the most important issue mentioned is the idea that Eden Knight's death was not "historically significant," by which I think you question the article's notability. WP:NOTTEMPORARY states as follows: "Notability is not temporary; once a topic has been the subject of 'significant coverage' in accordance with the general notability guideline, it does not need to have ongoing coverage." That's about all I have to say about that. RexSueciae (talk) 19:08, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

I have not looked into the sources but a reminder that if is a dispute between sources, we need to "fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources" per WP:DUE. This would generally mean if there are sufficient quality reliable sources which treat her death as unconfirmed and which continue to do so even after any new evidence has emerged which may have caused other sources to treat it as confirmed, we should not treat her death as confirmed in wiki voice. Instead we should reflect in the article that her death isn't universally accepted among RS. While it's generally not our place to debate why sources have did what they did, it seems fairly reasonable given the nature of this case and secrecy and lack of media freedom in Saudi Arabia and also lack of respect for human rights that lead to her situation in the first place, that sources are not willing to trust reports from there, the statements from her family or a pre-scheduled suicide note as sufficient to establish whether she has unfortunately passed. While the circumstances of this case may be fairly rare, it's far from the only time a death has remained disputed, so they may provide some guidance to how best to cover this while also giving due consideration to WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. Nil Einne (talk) 11:40, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

So I've looked at some similar wiki articles for guidance -- obviously a lot of them aren't exactly on point, since the circumstances of death are indeed unusual -- but probably the closest parallel is the article on Sarah Hegazi, who died on June 14 and whose death (by suicide) was confirmed the following day by her attorney (which is similar to Eden's death on March 12 and confirmation from her family on March 13). In fact, Eden's death has been directly compared to Sarah's by L'Orient-Le Jour (please note the article is behind a paywall, though I found a kind editor who shared the full text). But I should point out that the question of death date does not rise to the level of a situation where editors are repeatedly adding defamatory or libelous material to articles about living people over an extended period, as the guidelines for the BLP Noticeboard describe. RexSueciae (talk) 17:50, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

I don't think the situation with Sarah Hegazi is particularly comparable in terms of the issues relevant to BLP concerns over their reported deaths. For starters, it doesn't seem any sources dispute Hegazi's death as the OP alleges is the case of Eden Knight. There are probably good reasons for this as Hegazi's lawyer is likely a trustworthy source on her death, but Knight's family may not be for her death. (The date of death issues may be slightly similar although I'd note if we have a source sources trust on her death and who was willing to share some limited details, this source may have shared the date so even there it may not be comparable. Also you'd need to look back to earlier discussions anyway, since if there's no dispute over Hegazi's death and it's been over 2 years, it's not even a BLP issue anymore. But also date of death uncertainty can simply be handle by something like circa or similar so frankly it's not a big issue.) A more similar example might be Chhota Shakeel where I've been told some sources treat his death as confirmed (although I've never looked into these alleged sources myself). While death rumours would be the wrong word to use here, the article would still need to reflect the fact the death is disputed if that is the case in sources as claimed by the OP. There are probably stronger examples where someone's death is treated as confirmed by many sources but still disputed by enough other reliable sources that it should not be treated as definite which would be better guidance. I have no idea why you bring up the last point. This is definitely something suitable to discuss on BLPN as it concerns BLP issues. If you don't agree then please refrain from any article where BLP applies including the article on Eden Knight. Nil Einne (talk) 21:42, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

@Nil Einne It's a BLP issue, maybe, but it's a relatively minor one and the only fragment of the original "issues" to have survived. First there was the question of whether any of this should be mentioned on Pocalyko's article, which appears dead in the water (and nobody has chimed in to give feedback on the question, so I think there's clear consensus that mentioning his alleged involvement is indeed allowed). Third, there was the question of whether her death is "historically significant" or will have "lasting impact," a question that I think I answered with WP:NOTTEMPORARY (and nobody has contributed there, either, so I assume my interpretation was correct). There remains only the question of whether she died on March 12, as she declared her intent to do, and while this declaration was widely reported by journalists there has been no reporting that death occurred on any other date. Not every outlet saw fit to say that she died on March 12, but some did, and the ones that did not explicitly list a date of death described her suicide note and its date. Drawing the conclusion that she died on March 12 isn't original research, it's something closer to a routine calculation or to not citing the color of the blue sky. And -- just so we're clear -- we are talking specifically about whether the parenthetical birth-and-death dates in the article's lede are an accurate reflection of the rest of the article, not about the rest of the article, which adequately sources every detail about March 12 and the events that took place on that date. RexSueciae (talk) 22:31, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

Another user has brought up a related issue on the talk page of Suicide of Eden Knight. The article currently says Eli Erlick publicly criticized Michael Pocalyko's involvement in the case, stating that multiple trans sex workers in the D.C. area had privately contacted her to say that Pocalyko had been a client of theirs in the past. Someone said this on Twitter and now it is on Wikipedia as fact. More eyes are required here. Thanks. ☰ Hamburger Menu (talk) 19:40, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

This one has been resolved (the specific allegation was reported in a single reliable source). RexSueciae (talk) 22:55, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

I dont think this is true, the DC trans sex working community is super tight knit and are connected thru several orgs that keep bad date lists. If there was more truth to this, these orgs + people in this community would be way more forthcoming. - a DC Trans sex worker. 2600:8806:3105:E500:35E2:6360:70C4:C000 (talk) 23:56, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

Hey, uh. I just noticed that the OP of this thread was indeffed three days ago for sockpuppetry. So...I think there's not much left to discuss? There appears to be a consensus among good-faith editors as to the contents of the page, all that's left is reverting vandalism if and when it appears (and we had a spate the other day). Can't think of anything else to say. Ping me if there's something I've forgotten. RexSueciae (talk) 00:08, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

Jake Flores

Jake Flores (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) Some input would be appreciated on if their performance in a pornographic film sourced to the Daily Dot and tweets is WP:DUE. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 21:24, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

That's probably the wrong question to ask since the article includes multiple citations to random podcasts, and Daily Dot is no less WP:DUE than them; more so even. However, the coverage is really over the public conflict between two podcasters. Whether that should be considered BLPGOSSIP? Probably since there's no other RS covering it to satisfy WP:PUBLICFIGURE either. Morbidthoughts (talk) 23:08, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, the whole article is the usual borderline notable podcaster cruft. I mentioned the BLPGOSSIP issue on the talk page. I haven't had any time to do a before check, or scour the whole article yet. Just removed the obvious contentious crap. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 23:16, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

The citation is focusing more on them being in the adult performance. No attention is supposed to go to the feud or criticism between the podcasters or the people that bullied him for being a sex worker. The article was used as a citation showing that Jake Flores has made contributions to that community and is not supposed to be citing the random podcaster gossip included. I only bring citation because most of the other articles cited on his page have the same level or quality of information buried in internet news tabloids that have the same amount of crud. JeremiahSalvacion2 (talk) 23:37, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

The more contentious the information the higher the standard of source is required. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 00:13, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

How is the information contentious? Jake Flores has admitted himself that he is a sex worker and has participated in the profession. I would understand if there was debate on whether or not he was involved in the field, however the person that the article is about has directly stated their pride and consent in being involved. Please specify what aspects are contentious or how they are contentious. JeremiahSalvacion2 (talk) 00:34, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

Tristario just did an excellent job of explaining this on the talk page. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 00:38, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

I appreciate the input they had, and also appreciate you linking to it. I just replied to them as well citing the fact that the leak aspect is regarding the right wing bullies that targeted the act and took advantage. The adult performance that he actually did and what I was trying to include is information that Jake Flores is open and up-front about. Hence myself citing his own words. If possible, are there any samples or documents that would demonstrate what needs to be presented? Admittedly I have never had issues with other pages or persons documenting their sex-positivity or pride so I am quite surprised that there is much hesitation for the addition of this info for this page, especially when the information is directly from the performer. JeremiahSalvacion2 (talk) 00:42, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

I also want to add, regarding the term "contentious" that one of the first lines of information on his page is already contentious and cites information that is not a high standard. The line "Flores identifies himself as politically left" is debatable and the cited information does not even include that detail. Flores frequently identifies as far left, meanwhile his opponents call him communist or "dirt-bag left" which is seen as a right leaning term. The podcasts cited have no detail at all that says this. Meanwhile the information I presented, stating that he has been involved in adult performance and takes pride in this fact, is directly correlated to the cited info, along with being less contentious since it is objective fact contrary to a vague statement claiming their alignment in the political spectrum. JeremiahSalvacion2 (talk) 00:49, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

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

This article is highly biased against Swami Vishwananda especially in the tone of the language used as compared to other biographies of famous people. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:8003:22C9:9900:DDD6:9127:D923:9A5E (talk) 01:16, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

Actually we do need some eyes on this one. It looks like this article went through the AfC process. I think, in an order to avoid being too promotional, a number of allegations that offend BLP were included in the article, and more have been added over time. I am largely unfamiliar with the Hindu faith. I think, but am not certain, that the subject is notable. From where I sit now though, I'd guess there's only a handful of reliable sources in this article, and I doubt they support all the contentious claims here - from the lede the subject is called a godman, and there is a controversies section with allegations including theft of Christian relics, "disturbing the peace of the dead", sexual misconduct, and more. All of this is referenced, but many of the links are German, a language I do not know. I don't like to rely on machine translations, so it would be great a German competent editor could help evaluate the sources so we can decide what stays. Xymmax ^{So let it be written} _{So let it be done} 02:00, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

Sam Weller (journalist)

The subject of the article, a college professor, was accused of sexual misconduct by a former colleague and subsequently fired by his employer. Several WP:SPA accounts have been created to remove material regarding the allegations, most recently to remove the word "rape," which is explicitly mentioned in the NBC source. I believe that the article in it's current state adheres to WP:BLP, but I wanted to bring it here to solicit additional input given the nature of the allegations and events. OhNoitsJamie ^Talk 01:53, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

Per WP:RSSM, the Columbia Chronicle refs may not be the best in the BLP-crime context. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 07:20, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

Given that this was an on-campus event, and given that the school put out an official statement, I think it's a decent source for this purpose. BubbaJoe123456 (talk) 11:29, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

I agree with Gråbergs Gråa Sång. There should be stronger sources for WP:BLPCRIME and by extension WP:PUBLICFIGURE if he is one. What other sources are out there? Morbidthoughts (talk) 20:48, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

The NBC source is the only one I've found so far that details the victim's allegations. I was initially concerned with what appeared to be conceted whitewashing efforts, but on the other hand I'd prefer err on the conservative side of WP:BLPCRIME; perhaps a few sentences summarizing the dismissal along with the reasons but keeping it brief. OhNoitsJamie ^Talk 21:16, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

The problem with the NBC citation is that it purposely did not name him. I have shortened the paragraph per BLPBALANCE and added a Smithsonian Magazine citation.[1] However, I am still concerned whether the mention of the sexual assault allegations satisfies WP:BLPCRIME since the Smithsonian citation only mentions he was terminated for violating the college's sexual harassment policies. Morbidthoughts (talk) 21:18, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

Ah, good point; I missed that in the NBC citation. OhNoitsJamie ^Talk 21:57, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

If I may reluctantly join in (full disclosure, I knew Weller quite a few years ago, and, well, best to keep it at that). Keeping the word "rape" in the article seems undue, as it would affect anyone's life and livelihood without being applied and adjudicated in court. As a BLP accusation, even if there was personal hurt and evidence behind it, such a blanket statement stands out on the page as if it were a proven fact with a conviction. Randy Kryn (talk) 22:24, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

I endorse Morbidthoughts's treatment of the material here - a brief mention of the complaint, the investigation, and the results are all that are warranted. While I don't think it hurts anything, I don't find the one line mention in the Smithsonian article to be helpful. Xymmax ^{So let it be written} _{So let it be done} 01:22, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

Draft:Obaid Al-Ketbi

This AfC article is completly made by PradeepLogik (talk · contribs) who imo is an WP:SPA as their only contribution was creating and editing the AfC. There is potentially some WP:COI considering that the article is full of fluffery and the user had the name of their advertising business as their username and was asked to change it. The article barely uses any sources and is full of grammar mistakes. The user account doesn't exsist anymore, so I couldn't talk to the user about the issues. COuld you please look into this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Vyvagaba (talk • contribs) 11:08, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

You can attempt to communicate with the editor at User talk:PradeepLogik. Cullen328 (talk) 18:14, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

Iga Świątek

Iga Świątek

In the "Iga Świątek" Wikipedia biography, under the "2023: Twelfth title, 50th consecutive week at No. 1" subheading within the "Professional Career" section, there is a statement that reads "Later it emerged that Świątek had launched into a 5 minute 34 second profanity laden rant at start of tournament an off-record conversation that had been captured on tape and leaked onto social media in which Świątek complained about excessively negative coverage of her, the rant included at least 88 obscenities according to the Las Vegas Sun. Swiatek said that she used "wholly inappropriate language" to describe the media coverage of her and she said she was sorry for her choice of words, yet stands by the content of her message."

This statement appears to be entirely false, and internet research of content mentioned in the statement yields no results. The sourced article following the statement from Tennis.com includes no mention of any "profanity-laden rant captured on tape and leaked onto social media." It appears this statement was falsely included, either intentionally or accidentally, possibly because the writer of the statement found a tabloid journalism source that included these damaging comments. I have removed this statement from the "Iga Świątek" biography page, as it appears to be false and may fall within the category of libel. — Preceding unsigned comment added by PolskaGola8 (talk • contribs) 18:22, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

Looks like this has been taken care of, and the user who added the info has been blocked. A quick check of that user's contributions seem to warrant some deeper scrutiny of their edits, however, if anyone has the time. Zaereth (talk) 19:34, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

Properly paraphrasing source for Jo Boaler

An editor has raised concerns about whether or not a particular parsing does or does not raise BLP issues in the article Jo Boaler. The specific source is here and the relevant portion of the article being summarized is:

Conrad said he spent spring break reading not only the framework but also many of the citations from which the authors justified their recommendations. “To my astonishment, in essentially all cases, the papers were seriously misrepresented” and in some cases “even had conclusions opposite to what was said” in the framework. The misrepresentations of the neuroscience of math comprehension, de-tracking in favor of heterogeneous student grouping, the use of assessments and acceleration call into question the recommendations. Writers, he said, “should not be citing papers they do not understand to justify their public policy recommendations” fitting their perspectives.

The content cited to that source was:

Conrad highlighted many cases where he said the authors of the framework had misinterpreted cited sources, presenting conclusions contrary to the underlying research.

The editor Generalrelative has taken issue with the use of the word many in this content and removed that word twice.

Questions: Does inclusion of the word many raise any BLP issues in the article? Is there a better way to summarize the content of the article that is more in line with BLP policy? Thank you. TheMissingMuse (talk) 06:04, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

Just to clarify: I am happy with the sentence: Conrad highlighted cases where he said the authors of the framework had misinterpreted cited sources, presenting conclusions contrary to the underlying research.

For a bit of background, it may be worth noting that over the past couple months TheMissingMuse has been re-adding content to this BLP that they had originally added while editing as an IP, and which Primefac had removed as BLP violations before semi-protecting the page. I've been trying to apply a scalpel rather than a sledgehammer here, since I see that there is legitimate controversy among the mathematics community over Boaler's work, but I fear that TheMissingMuse may be overshooting the mark in terms of tone, due balance, and accurately representing cited sources. More eyes on the situation would indeed be helpful. Generalrelative (talk) 06:33, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

I think it will do you well to WP:AGF. Please speak to any specific BLP issues that you have with the article. If you have any BLP issues with any edit that I've made, either under my account or under the previous IP edits, please address them directly. TheMissingMuse (talk) 06:37, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

I've stated my case at Talk:Jo Boaler#Conrad's criticism. Now let's let others weigh in. Generalrelative (talk) 06:45, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure how this secondary reporting of the criticism is WP:DUE given this is not a peer-reviewed academic journal nor even a newspaper article. Instead, this is a niche education article written by an editor of edsource.org. Not only that, Conrad does not explicitly criticise Boaler. Morbidthoughts (talk) 07:52, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure peer reviewed academic journals are the minimum bar for BLPs. That said, I don't have a strong send of Ed Source and it's use for BLP. Ed Source is certainly used as a source for other articles and BLPs on wikipedia. But maybe a better source is appropriate for this article. There is plenty of coverage of Boaler from more mainstream sources. For example: The New Yorker also discusses Boaler's role in the development of the CAMF as well as Conrad's critique. Boaler has been working on this for the last 5+ years and there are plenty of references that speak to her role in developing the framework. Likewise there are plenty of sources that cover reception of the framework. One difficult aspect with this article is that editors affiliated with Boaler (and possibly Boaler herself) have been active on the page. TheMissingMuse (talk) 15:30, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

It should be no surprise to expect the WP:WEIGHT of academic criticism to be sourced to peer-reviewed academic publications (WP:SOURCETYPES). Strive for better sources. Use those sources that focus on Boaler and her works. Morbidthoughts (talk) 20:02, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

On the contrary, this goes against policy. WP:PRIMARY clearly indicates that primary sources, are not good sources for BLP articles. Rather secondary sources from mainstream publications are preferred. The WP:SOURCETYPES clearly says when available academic sources are preferred. The California Math Framework is not a scholarly work, and as such there is little expectation that it would be covered in a peer reviewed journal. TheMissingMuse (talk) 20:20, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

Criticism of Boaler (not by Boaler) published or acknowledged in peer-reviewed academic journals are not primary materials! You say she has been at this for 5+ years and there's no coverage of this in academic journals? Even those that cover K-12 education? Morbidthoughts (talk) 20:45, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

Seriously? [2] Morbidthoughts (talk) 20:48, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

It looks like you are making the same mistake with respect to primary sources. If someone writes something critical of Boaler, that person is the primary source for the criticism. Here is a better search that removes the non-relevant articles: 2019 and after, for "California mathematics framework". You can see four articles linked, none of which are peer reviewed. TheMissingMuse (talk) 20:54, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

You should read WP:SECONDARY, the part about "It contains analysis, evaluation, interpretation, or synthesis of the facts, evidence, concepts, and ideas taken from primary sources.". Why limit the search to 2019 when you say she's been at this for 5+ years. [3] Morbidthoughts (talk) 20:58, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I've read WP:SECONDARY many times over the years. The situation remains that if there is criticism of a source, the author of the criticism is the primary source for that criticism. Regardless, peer reviewed journal publications are by no means the only sources that an be used for BLP articles. TheMissingMuse (talk) 21:33, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

Critical articles published in peer-reviewed journals are still secondary sources for the purposes of this discussion because they are an analysis and evaluation of Boaler's works; the primary source being the Boaler's writings or the Framework itself. Morbidthoughts (talk) 21:44, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, I have to concur with Morbidthoughts there. If a scientist does a medical study, that's the primary source and we can't use it to support the claims. When a peer-review journal does a critique of that study, that's twice removed, which makes it a secondary source. That's what we want for an encyclopedia, is those peer reviews. Now, it may be that they're opinion/editorials in the strictest sense of the word, but it's the type of opinions we want. Another example would be a movie, which is a primary source. We want movie reviews, which are secondary. Opinions though they may be, they are good sources for those opinions by trusted people in the field. Zaereth (talk) 23:00, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

I think we are far afield from the topic at hand. No one has offered up any peer reviewed source here for consideration. The sources discussed so far are from EdSource and The New Yorker. I think we are all agreed that the EdSource citation is a bit niche for a BLP, and that has been removed from the article. Is there any feedback on The New Yorker cite? TheMissingMuse (talk) 23:06, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

That's just a response to what you said above, which I found to be a flawed argument. If we couldn't print opinions because they are somehow primary sources for those opinions, we wouldn't be able to print opinions at all. An opinion about a subject is not a primary source for that subject. Secondary sources give analyses and interpretations of subjects, which is exactly what we want. That said, I haven't been following this too closely, but maybe I'll give a deeper look in the New Yorker when I have a bit more time. Zaereth (talk) 23:21, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

The New Yorker cite is fine if the controversy is recent and ongoing, which would deter journal coverage. From what I understand the framework is still under revision and has not been adopted yet. Does anyone have access to this article which came out today?[4] Morbidthoughts (talk) 23:51, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

You can get access by signing up and creating an account. TheMissingMuse (talk) 00:16, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

[Stupid edit conflict.} I had to unindent this because it's going right off the edge of my screen. Ok, I tried the New Yorker link, and all I got was a page that said, "Surely, this isn't the page you were looking for". So that link didn't work for me. Maybe some kind of 404 error? To be perfectly frank, I have no idea what this is all really about, which is why I haven't been following it. The reliability of a source depends a great deal on the specific information that source is providing. By reading this discussion, I am unclear on what specific information (if any) is in dispute, and how that relates to the source(s) in question. Is this all about the word "many"? If so, do the sources use the word "many" (or one of its many synonyms)? Or do they give many examples? Do they in any way say or imply that "many" is a good word to use? These are things I need to know before I can even begin to evaluate a source. Plus I need working links to that source, and preferably diffs I can go check.

It's a common problem when people come here that they don't often explain the dispute too well. It's hard, when you understand what's going on in your own mind, to explain it to others so that they will understand, and the article is a good example of that. For example, we talk a lot about this "framework" without ever once explaining to the reader what the word "framework" even means in this context, so it's no wonder that the article is hard to follow. (Writing is hard work, and I think the biggest problem in math education, having lived through it myself, is that math teachers just don't know how to explain it in plain English; a problem shared by many academics, and Wikipedia articles are often a reflection of that. I was in my 20s before I finally leaned where pi came from, and after months of wading through incomprehensible math books trying to learn trigonometry, I finally got all the info I needed from a single paragraph --in a dictionary-- of all places. Math is a language in and of itself; an alien language that few can translate into English.) Normally, I would just go to the history to see the dispute in action, but even that is full of way too many little edits to wade through, so I really have no idea what this is all about nor how it's relevant to this noticeboard. Zaereth (talk) 00:28, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

Sorry about the link to The New Yorker. It must have been a weird edit fail. I think I've fixed the URL. TheMissingMuse (talk) 00:43, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

As for the dispute, yes it's primarily about the use of the word many. However, I think the feedback that edsource.org is not a sufficiently high quality source is good feedback. I've removed that source from the article, preferring The Chronicle of Higher Education and The New Yorker articles. TheMissingMuse (talk) 00:46, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

Ok, so I assume in the source you're referring to this line to support the word "many"? "I encountered a lot of assertions that were hard to believe and were justified via citations to other papers. So I read those other papers..." The phrase "a lot" is a synonym for "many", so on the surface it does seem to support that word. But words are meaningless without context, and in this source he says he saw a lot of things in the document that seemed unbelievable, and read the citations concluding they had been misrepresented, but that's all he says. He doesn't actually highlight any of those cases anywhere in the source. So, while I think the word "many" is a perfectly good synonym for "a lot", we really need to rephrase that to better match what the source actually says. Zaereth (talk) 01:04, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

This was my original point (here), though Zaereth has stated it more clearly than I did. Generalrelative (talk) 01:14, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

The exact quote from the article is above in the original message, excerpted here for clarity: "Conrad said he spent spring break reading not only the framework but also many of the citations from which the authors justified their recommendations." Regardless, this is a WP:DEADHORSE at this point. I've already removed that source and associated content from the article. TheMissingMuse (talk) 02:03, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

Awesome, thanks for being amenable to compromise. Your recent changes look good to me, btw. Generalrelative (talk) 02:11, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

Yeah. Exactly. He doesn't actually highlight any of the cases there, does he. I would love it if he did, because then I could go look at them myself, but he doesn't. So saying he highlighted them is not correct. He also doesn't present any conclusion to contradict any of the research, he merely says the sources contradict the document, so that's not altogether true either. It a misrepresentation of the source, ironically enough. I'm not saying that the whole thing needs to be removed from the article. To the contrary, it seems like a simple matter of rephrasing it to match what the source actually says. Perhaps, "Conrad said the authors of the framework had misinterpreted many cited sources." There. Now it says what the source does and no more, plus you get the word "many" in there. Zaereth (talk) 02:23, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

The primary source does exactly what you suggest. It's a report from Brian Conrad a Stanford professor. TheMissingMuse (talk) 02:37, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

You mean, the primary source says, "Conrad said the authors of the framework had misinterpreted many cited sources." Well, then that would be plagiarism i suppose, except I've never read this primary source of which you speak. We'd probably have to rephrase it. That was the only suggestion I made. Or, are you referring to my observation that he doesn't highlight anything or make any conclusions? (See? You know what you mean, so the words make sense to you, but to communicate that to others you have to see it from the reader's point of view. See: theory of mind.) If he has a blog or his own personal website, then that's a self-published source. Those are only good for a very limited type of info. In writing an encyclopedia article, we also have to consider due weight and balance, which is determined by a preponderance of reliable, secondary sources. Without that rule, Wikipedia articles would be a dumping ground for every cherry-picked fact and opinion people could find to support their own conscious and unconscious biases. We rely on secondary sources to do any cherry picking for us. We just use what the secondary sources give us. Zaereth (talk) 02:54, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

I checked the source and it does indeed appear to be self-published. That can be fine in other cases if the author is a subject-matter expert (as Conrad is), but not for a BLP. In any case, TheMissingMuse has removed the content in question and agreed to back away from the dead horse, so it really does look like our work is done here. Let's end this on an amicable note and be glad that we've managed to improve the article, yeah? Generalrelative (talk) 03:05, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

David Hundeyin

There seems to be a concerted effort, encouraged by the subject himself (see twitter https://twitter.com/DavidHundeyin/status/1638308184094900224?s=20), to remove an embarrassing piece of biographical information relevant to the subject. These have resulted in repeated vandalism on the page by those intent on keeping the page hagiographical rather than factual and neutral. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.46.113.112 (talk) 07:15, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

Can you explain this edit of yours[5] that was not directly supported by the citation and was reverted? Do you have a connection to these people, accusations, or events? Morbidthoughts (talk) 08:14, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

I have no direct connection to the people or event -- except as an observer. I'm a Nigerian, but the subject -- a prominent online personality -- appears intent on editing his own biography to fit a certain narrative that goes against Wikipedia's rules, hence my interest. The edit is supported by the citation. 98.46.113.112 (talk) 08:24, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

No, it doesn't. Reread the cited article again: "The James Currey Fellowship in Oxford was actually offered to another writer before being given to Mitterand Okorie." Morbidthoughts (talk) 18:20, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

Academics bickering on the internet? Shocking and unprecedented. But not really worthy of this noticeboard. Cullen328 (talk) 08:26, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

I have no knowledge of this person but it seems there are two sides that both want to add/remove content irrespective of the sources. I'm particularly concerned about edits such as this one [6]. I think it would be good if more people could keep half an eye on it. Cakelot1 (talk) 10:19, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

He is a polarising journalist that's pissed off a lot of people in that country so no surprise there. Thanks for keeping an eye on it. One of them has been blocked. Morbidthoughts (talk) 18:54, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

I have been expanding the article with sources that I could find so that his biography remains WP:BLPBALANCEd, and not just about his controversy at Cambridge. Morbidthoughts (talk) 23:13, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

Jon Moss (formerly of Culture Club)

This musician is in the news today, following the settlement of a court case.

Sources 2,3,4 and 5 of his BLP, which cover the first half of the section of our article related to his early life, are either not reliable, or dead. Other material in there appears to be uncited.

Is blanking of those lines appropriate? --Dweller (talk) Old fashioned is the new thing! 14:16, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

I believe so, yes. This is already cited, so we can probably continue to use anything from there for uncontroversial statements of fact that aren't self-serving. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 14:20, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

Done, thanks --Dweller (talk) Old fashioned is the new thing! 20:20, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

Chloe Cole has an RFC

Chloe Cole has an RFC for possible consensus. A discussion is taking place. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments on the discussion page. Thank you.

Question of whether the full lawsuit title, published by a reliable source and inclusive of legal name, should be included in the article. Slywriter (talk) 20:44, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

Ulla Jones

Please see my entry today on the talk page re: recently added details of her divorce settlement which seem to be derogatory toward her ex-husband Quincy Jones - similar info has been added at least once before! User who added it again should be warned. --SergeWoodzing (talk) 21:36, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

I have restored your edits and notified the user about this discussion. The sourcing that supported their edits are not reliable sources; one was even circular. Morbidthoughts (talk) 02:10, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

To answer the other question that you posted on the talk page, her autobiography was published by Bra böcker, a reputable Swedish publisher that presumably does its fact checking. The main issue is whether we can actually verify the extensive details since the book is not easily accessible as say Quincy's autobiography and the detail could be seen as WP:BLPGOSSIP. Most English RS I could find focus on Quincy and really only mention Ulla as his second wife and the mother of two of his children. Morbidthoughts (talk) 04:24, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

Thank you! --SergeWoodzing (talk) 11:10, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

BLPs created by User:Davidcannon (un-archived)

Note that I have manually unarchived this thread. See also WP:ANI#Davidcannon's_BLPs. El_C 04:58, 23 March 2023 (UTC)>

For some background, reading this conversation is useful context. Davidcannon is an adminstrator that has created 600+ articles, many of them which are BLPs. From a brief spotcheck, I'm not sure going to ANI is the best course of action (and honestly the idea terrifies me when it's not really something I've tried to do before). Two of the articles they've created have recently been deleted: Laisa Digitaki and Samuela Matakibau. However, the brief spotcheck has somewhat convinced me that not all of their biographies are like this. There does seem to be issues every once and awhile in regards to controversial unsourced information [7]. 600+ articles is a lot of articles to check and I thought that maybe here would be the better place to fix any problems that may be identified. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 23:52, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

Upon further inspection, some articles that could likely use a second set of eyes include:

1. Ben Padarath
2. Angie Heffernan - done
3. Sakiusa Tuisolia - done
4. Viliame Naupoto
5. Willem Ouweneel
6. Jimi Koroi - done
7. Pita Driti - done
8. Ballu Khan
9. Peter Ridgeway - links added
10. Imraz Iqbal - done
11. Richard Naidu
12. Meli Bainimarama
13. Litia Qionibaravi - done
14. Viliame Seruvakula
15. Vyas Deo Sharma
16. Akuila Yabaki - links added
17. Saula Telawa
18. Jone Baledrokadroka
19. Naomi Matanitobua - links added
20. Jale Baba
21. Sakeasi Butadroka
22. Kolinio Rokotuinaceva
23. Lagamu Vuiyasawa
24. Asesela Ravuvu
25. Asenaca Caucau
26. Simione Kaitani
27. Kenneth Zinck
28. Ofa Swann - done
29. Injimo Managreve
30. Kaliopate Tavola
31. Ateca Ganilau
32. Petero Mataca
33. Rakuita Vakalalabure
34. Daniel Fatiaki
35. James Ah Koy

There may be more. I'm going to be taking a break for now. As I previously stated, more eyes and input is welcome. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 01:10, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

I'm also pinging The Wordsmith because of the aforementioned discussion that started this thread. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 03:40, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Davidcannon's speciality on Wikipedia was Fiji and its unstable politics. As far as I am aware, he created well-sourced articles (but with embedded external links rather than references), but the links were mostly to Fijian news sites, and many years later, the links no longer worked and Davidcannon deleted them. Some of these links could be restored using web archives. For example, looking at the just-deleted article Laisa Digitaki, the references to fijitimes.com are recoverable, but references to fijivillage.com and fijilive.com appear not to be. I know there's a bot which can recover dead links, but for it to run, we would have to first restore the dead links preferably without removing subsequent improvements to the article, and we would end up with an article which has not been substantially updated for many years with some unrecoverable links and dubious notability. I certainly do not have the interest in Fijian politics to want to tackle this myself. Two editors currently active in that area are @IdiotSavant: and @Thiscouldbeauser:, would you have any interest in working on such articles? As you're not administrators and can't see the deleted article we're discussing, perhaps we could move it to draft space and blank it if you're sufficiently interested to assess it. (I am aware that User:Everyking was desysopped for offering to restore a deleted edit (but he did not actually do so upon reviewing the edit), so I want to make it clear I have no intention of undeleting this article without a clear consensus to do so.)-gadfium 00:51, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

I'd suggest raising it with Wikipedia:WikiProject Fiji, which does have some active users (people who did bios of MPs elected in the 2022 Fijian general election would be a good start). I'm currently doing a bit of cleanup for that project, and focusing on BLPs at the moment. I'd noticed that lots were created by Davidcannon, but not the removal of dead sources. I'll start checking for them, and see what I can do to restore them. Though there is an underlying issue with source availability for that period of Fijian history - major media outlets don't have archives going back that far (some having scrubbed them to avoid trouble with the military regime), and we've also lost the East-West Centre's Pacific Islands Report mirror of news coverage. Some of the latter is archived, but its very haphazard.

WRT the specific article, there appear to be sources available on RNZ. -- IdiotSavant (talk) 02:06, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Given the similarity of content, references for Laisa Digitaki should be available on Angie Heffernan.-- IdiotSavant (talk) 03:38, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

So you mean articles about Fijian politicians? Sure, I can create a few of them in the coming weeks if I find enough good info. I haven't created articles about people themselves before though. A quick Google search for Laisa Digitaki comes up with a deleted Wikipedia page, a LinkedIn profile, social media accounts (Facebook and Instagram) and articles about her from generally unreliable sites (i.e FijiLeaks and Fiji News Wars, the latter is a blog hosted on Blogspot which I only found out about today and the former being a site is often critical of Frank Bainimarama and claims to be like WikiLeaks), as well as other random stuff, e.g an e-book on Google Books about her and several other coup-era Fijian politicians and two random TikTok videos. Thiscouldbeauser (talk) 05:21, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Its more a case of trawling existing articles, checking whether links have been deleted, restoring them, and adding other references as required (oh, and adding them to appropriate WikiProjects, because not everything seems to be appropriately tagged). Required skills: using the wayback machine and reference templates, and searching appropriate news sources (Fiji Sun, Fiji Times, Fiji Village, RNZ).-- IdiotSavant (talk) 06:37, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

I think it's a bit more complicated than that. There was still this content that I removed after you striked as Angie Heffernan "done" [8]. At least from what I've seen, I'm concerned that some of these articles wouldn't follow WP:BLPCRIME. An example is Ben Padarath – he was never elected as a politician (WP:NPOL) and there's a whole section with mostly unreferenced content detailing his alleged crimes. It's been like that since creation [9]. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 07:37, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

There's definitely a problem there with undue focus (I assume because of when it was written), but the article may also need expansion - there's stuff he has been convicted of (see here and here), but its not in the article. OTOH, that's not especially notable, and honestly barring the sedition charge, he's not someone I'd remotely consider creating an article for if there wasn't one already (so maybe he's a candidate for AfD?). Regarding sedition, where there doesn't seem to be a conviction yet, is there a guideline for political crimes? Because for a lot of Fijian political figures there's a history of oppression by the military regime, sedition or equivalent charges brought and later dropped, and not including them would be leaving out something very significant.-- IdiotSavant (talk) 12:01, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Gadfium "I am aware that User:Everyking was desysopped for offering to restore a deleted edit". This is well before I started serious wiki-editing. However, a more recent counter-example is Micaela Schäfer, which I deleted per WP:G10 / WP:BLPDELETE and was subsequently restored by SoWhy who cleaned it up and fixed all the BLP violations. There was a thread at AN running at the time, where I explicitly stated I had no issue with SoWhy doing this. So I think that's your answer - ask if The Wordsmith is okay with you restoring the article for the purposes of fixing the BLP issues, and if they are, then just do it.

A further point that's worth mentioning is that WP:BLPPROD originally only applied for articles created after the policy was introduced in 2010. Then, in 2017, this grandfather clause was removed by consensus. So at the time Davidcannon removed the dead news links, he might have reasonably assumed BLPPROD didn't apply because the article was verified at one point. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 10:36, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

We used to have a grandfather clause? Are there any others that are still in effect? It seems bizzare to me that we could ever decide anything by consensus and then go "but it doesn't apply to any articles created before now". I'm interested in the rationales that were used at the time. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 11:39, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

See Wikipedia talk:Proposed deletion of biographies of living people/Archive 7#RfC: Remove the grandfather clause? for further reading. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 11:49, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Just to briefly clarify that, it was a very unusual situation that led to the grandfather clause being created. The BLPPROD process was created because we had an absurd nightmare of something like 80K completely unreferenced BLPs, and one camp was mass summary deleting them while the other thought we should try sourcing them all instead of deleting. As part of the compromise for dealing with them, the grandfather clause was established to prevent people from just tagging them all at once while the effort to source them was underway. The Wordsmith^{Talk to me} 16:09, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

@Ritchie333 and Gadfium: I do object to restoring the history of those two articles either in mainspace or anywhere else, since the contents of them are bad enough that they'd be a gross BLP vio in any namespace. Pretty much all they covered was allegations of crimes committed and being investigated. What I can do is email the deleted versions (and the sources used, if you like) to any editor interested in rewriting. I have no issue with a bio (or even a stub) for those subjects being recreated if it can comply with our policies, just not the history of those two. The Wordsmith^{Talk to me} 16:29, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

I've gone through 2004 Pitcairn Islands sexual assault trial, largely written by David, and the amount of unsourced depictions of underage sexual activity are beyond the pale, and if a new editor did that, I'd revert and redact it. And to make it abundantly clear, my issue here is adherence to WP:BLPSOURCES and our longstanding policy is that unsourced claims involving living persons should be removed - I have no opinion on the content. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 14:27, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

It seems like his contributions were mostly in 2004.[10] Were the inline sourcing requirements different then? Was he an administrator then? Wikipedia policies and BLP (if it existed) enforcement may have been more lax then. Morbidthoughts (talk) 07:32, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

No. BLP was first started in 2005 by Slim Virgin, who was probably one of the greatest Wikipedians to ever exist and someone I very much admired and looked up to, and even then it took many years to build and refine this policy into what it has become today. Rules were definitely much more lax then (it was basically the Wild West in those days) and not many people gave much thought to the real-world repercussions of the things we do here. Wikipedia has grown up a lot since those days, but there is still a lot from back then that needs to be cleaned up. Thank god we had someone with the knowledge and foresight of Slim Virgin. She has been sorely missed. Zaereth (talk) 08:42, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

I had quite a few arguments with SlimVirgin back in the day, but BLP was one of her greatest contributions. I do know it wasn't taken as seriously as it is today at first. We had Rachel Marsden in 2006, Badlydrawnjeff in 2007, and Footnoted quotes in 2008 which especially strengthened it by creating BLP Special Enforcement. Even until late 2009/early 2010 there was a strong minority who felt that completely unsourced BLPs weren't a problem and it led to that mass deletion and the establishment of WP:BLPPROD. Yes, Slim will be missed but she helped get us where we are today. I probably wouldn't go bringing Davidcannon's articles up at the dramaboards since it was absolutely a different time with looser standards, but we do need to clean up the mess now by making them conform to Wikipedia's current BLP standards or summarily deleting them. The Wordsmith^{Talk to me} 17:02, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

Maybe pin this to keep it from archiving again until the list has a chance to be seen by more people? Valereee (talk) 17:17, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

Absolutely. I had my own disagreements with some of Wikipedia's policies when I first started, in particular the whole "Verifiability not truth" phrase (which I still think is very poorly worded) but I had a great discussion with Sarah in which she explained the reasoning behind this seemingly contradictory statement, and in her reasoning I agreed entirely. I actually never had much interaction with her aside from that, but over the years you get to know people even if you don't interact. The first article I worked on was the flashtube article, which was mostly just a bunch of really plausible-sounding bunk that people made up because it sounded good in their heads. Same with the tempering (metallurgy) article, or the basic fighter maneuvers article. They were dreadful, but most Wikipedia articles started out that way. It was new territory and people were creating articles by the thousands each day. It was a very different time. I wouldn't waste a lot of energy assigning blame or shame. Like anything, we just have to tackle these things as we find them and move on to the next. Zaereth (talk) 17:48, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

She sounds amazing. I don't think I ever personally interacted with her, but I'm familiar with the username. I had no idea that she was instrumental in starting WP:BLP, we really should have a "history of Wikipedia" outlining the major changes we've experienced throughout time. I've noticed some stuff has changed since I started editing in 2018, I can only imagine the scale at which other who have been here for longer experience that. I agree that tackling this and moving on is the best course of action. If I had known that I could've just unarchived the thread, I don't think I would've started the ANI one. I just wanted to make sure these issues didn't disappear into a void and then someone else a decade later would be here to say something. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 17:58, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

She did some great things, but she could be absolutely infuriating to argue with. She also had a flair for the dramatic and a habit of unnecessary escalation, sandbagging discussions she didn't like and even wheel warring; there's a reason she has at least 3 or 4 Arbcom cases named after her personally. The Wordsmith^{Talk to me} 18:20, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

Looks like RfA was in June 2004. And yes, sourcing requirements were far different then. Valereee (talk) 11:12, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

• Note that I've used Template:DNAU at the top of this thread to prevent archiving; once the thread is concluded anybody can just remove that line to allow the bots to archive it as normal. The Wordsmith^{Talk to me} 18:23, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

The Reason I Jump

In the article The Reason I Jump: Poorly sourced and defamatory language regarding Naoki Higashida, the author of the book The Reason I Jump. Calls the book, written in first person, a "biography" rather than "autobiography" without conclusive evidence that the author in fact did not write it. Says the book is "attributed to" him rather than written by him, without conclusive evidence. Cites one critical research source but does not cite many existing opposing research sources.

I tried to correct this language but was immediately reverted by user Nordog. I reverted to my version and received a warning message from Nordog that I was violating the NPOV policy. I added discussion showing how the original violated NPOV policy and I was bringing it up to standards. Nordog did not reply to this point and did not make any changes in the "attribution" language to remove biased point of view. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bodhipup (talk • contribs) 19:12, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

"Autobiography" is a subcategory of "biography", so it is not false to call it a biography whether the subject wrote it or not. Given that the authorship of the book has been challenged, we should not be putting it in Wikipedia's voice that NH is the author, but barring further revelation, should also not be put in our voice that he is not. It looks as if Nordog is navigating that appropriately. --Nat Gertler (talk) 19:20, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

I'm concerned about the text in the article which reads Since Higashida lacks a genuine ability to use either written or verbal language, researchers dismiss all claims that Higashida actually wrote the book himself. That doesn't appear to be found in the cited source attached to the statement. What that source actually says is:

For example, if certain skeptics are to be believed, Japan’s second most widely read author, might not be an “author” in the way that word is commonly defined... But not all readers found Higashida’s accounts entirely persuasive. In a review for In-Mind magazine, psychologist Jens Hellman describes his suspicions...

The source says that some people are skeptical, and cites one such psychologist, but we say in wikivoice that "researchers dismiss all claims that Higashida actually wrote the book himself"? Endwise (talk) 11:21, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

Russell targ

http://espresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/letter-russell-targ-to-wikipedia-about-remote-viewing.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Targ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.213.218.221 (talk) 17:59, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

And? AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:17, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

Putting is a convicted hacker in the first sentence when there is a current case

There is a dispute at Talk:Julian_Assange#Is_a_hacker_in_lead, the lead sentence says he is a hacker when he currently faces major charges on that count. It is true he was convicted of hacking when young but I think good context is needed as per WP:BLPCRIME. NadVolum (talk) 12:47, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

correction because good context is needed, he only has one conspiracy charge thats hacking related and its the most minor charge he has

Julian Assange#Hacking, programming, and early activism In his twenties he plead guilty to 24 hacking charges, the case made him one of the most famous hackers in Australia in the 1990s according to RSes and Wikileaks Softlemonades (talk) 20:41, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

Far-right vs. far-left

So, recently an IP removed "far-right" from Kristina Karamo, with an edit summary: Removed far right, slanted view point. Never see far left. And frankly in the US at least, it's extremely true. Like by a factor of 100 20. (Note I haven't counted how many of these are not living people.)

• Category:Far-right politicians in the United States
• Category:Far-left politicians in the United States

Even if most of the far-right ones are dead and it's only a factor of 10, to me this feels like a problem w/re BLP policy. Valereee (talk) 13:48, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

I agree, it's also extremely time consuming from an editorial standpoint as literal books-length discussions have been promulgated across multiple BLP talk pages disputing the use of the "far-right" label. FWIW, it's over-use in modern media has diluted the term to meaning almost nothing at this point. RE: "Opposes abortion" == "far-right". However, we can't control how the media spins and we want to be really careful here re: censorship or policy making for something that is, at face value, a trend that will likely boomerang at some point. Kcmastrpc (talk) 13:57, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

Those two categories are inherently problemic, as there are no global nor stable definitions of 'left' and 'right'. This keeps being a problem across a lot of Wikipedia articles. --Soman (talk) 14:57, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

I don't think we should censor. I do think we might want to think about which RS we're using for that term. If right-of-center RS aren't calling a politician "far-right", maybe we should give it more thought.

The categories are just a symptom here, I think. They're just what I thought of as a way to take a look at what we're calling people. Valereee (talk) 15:00, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

Anyone written about should have their views clearly and unambiguously delineated, good or bad. Shortcut labels should be banned from the Wikipedia lexicon. Slywriter (talk) 15:21, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

I think you need a sufficiency of sourcing for the label. I added the label in Wikivoice to Itamar Ben-Gvir recently as there are plenty sources using it. Still got diluted to "His political position has been described as far-right". If there is no agreement on someone like that being right wing, then one can't expect agreement for anyone. Selfstudier (talk) 15:35, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

The difference is that "far-right" is a measurable, identifiable political continuum. While, at least in American politics, "far-left" is largely a pejorative. The two are not comparable, and if someone is running around deleting comment on the basis of "Never see far left", then that is disruptive and open for sanction. Zaathras (talk) 15:31, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

There actually more of a defined gap between the left and the far left (given that there is so little of what is the far left), compared to the blurry line that still exists between right and far-right. Kcmastrpc has a good example where any politician that may be opposed to abortion, or that supports gun rights, is categorially thrown to a "far-right" pot by some media sources.

To call someone far-right (or far-left) in Wikivoice, which includes being in these categories, we need 1) a lot of time to have passed so that the general opinion over time keeps that person in far-right (eg David Duke), and 2) a near plurality of sources over time to use the label. Unfortunately, more often than not, we see one publication throw out the term "far-right" and the article suddenly frames the person as far-right in Wikivoice. We simply cannot do that. We need that agreement, and after several years, to be able to establish that. Masem (t) 15:40, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

Oxford dictionary and Google Scholar disagree with the assessment of no definition of far-left. And what authoritative source provides a measurement of far-right while also claiming far-left does not exist? Slywriter (talk) 15:41, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

There's no reason, besides a sort of belief that the world is inherently symmetrical, to think that there should be equivalent numbers of notable far-right and far-left politicians in the United States. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 15:55, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

Of course not, but this is pretty lopsided. Valereee (talk) 15:59, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

fun fact: searches for "far-left", "far-left politics" and "far-left United States" generate more returns than their far-right equivalent, albeit only slightly. (see below for more accurate on-wiki search)

So think the question is whether the categories accurately reflect the content on Wikipedia. Suspect need to use Quarry to dig further down and see if those stats hold for BLPs Slywriter (talk) 16:11, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

fun fact: WP:GHITS is a meaningless measure. Zaathras (talk) 16:22, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

I'm betting Sly was doing a Wikipedia search. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 16:25, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

correct, which is why Quarry and accuracy of categories mentioned since drilling a search down to BLP isn't easy. Though I will be amending as lack of " " distorted. "Far-right" use is 2 to 1 over "Far-left" and adding born to either to approximate biographies shows 3 to 1 usage of far-right to far-left. So the categories may be underpopulated but disparity will exist Slywriter (talk) 16:31, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

I think the usage of these terms is lopsided because, in current times in the US, the existence of openly extremist media is lopsided. There are a large number of far-right radio stations. There are far fewer far-left stations. The same can be said for social media. Presumably this is due to popularity. It may be that there are fewer folks on the far-left, or that they just don’t like listening to conspiracy theories or ridiculously unbalanced content. There certainly seem to be fewer far-left politicians as they can’t get elected. Of course Google searches are useless as the far-right sources call someone far-left if they think a six-year-old shouldn’t be able to buy a grenade launcher. In any case, we should avoid creation of a WP:FALSEBALANCE to cure a problem that may not exist. O3000, Ret. (talk) 16:30, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

It's lopsided compared to a parity that doesn't necessarily exist. If someone published a paper tomorrow saying that the far right is 20x more influential than the far left in American politics, I'd be unsurprised. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 16:27, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

Oh, that's an interesting thought. Valereee (talk) 16:28, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

Why were you assuming that there were equal numbers of far right and far left figures in the United States? In my own state we have close to a dozen members of the far right in our legislature and not a single member of the far left, the far right is just so much bigger than the far left here that any NPOV coverage is going to give you an overwhelming focus on the far right. I assume for other countries those numbers are different, in some contexts it might be appropriate to spend 90% of the time talking about the far left because thats what they have. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:20, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

I wasn't assuming equal, just that 3:69 sounded like maybe we should be discussing. Valereee (talk) 19:48, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

It's not like the US has an actual far-left movement (i.e., a communist movement) EvergreenFir (talk) 18:29, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Given that these can be seen as contentious WP:LABELs, there should be some sort of standard as to when they should be applied, especially when used in the MOS:LEADSENTENCE or as categories. Why does "far-right" appear in the lead sentence of Alex Jones and Steve King but not Steve Bannon and David Duke? Why does "far-left" appear in the lead sentence of Cathlyn Platt Wilkerson and Sara Jane Olson but not Angela Davis or Bill Ayers? And that's just the United States: there are a few hundred other countries that also have far-left and far-right figures. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 16:59, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

I bet there are better examples but in the case of Davis it would appear redundant as we say she's a Marxist in the first sentence and link the Communist Party USA in the second. In the case of Ayers we run into the issue that while they were at one point a violent leftist their views appear to have been moderated over the years and I'm not seeing contemporary sources calling him far left. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:25, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

I do think the core problem involves loose compliance with MOS:LABEL, and, more loosely, emotive writing. I very much like Bill Ayers, Angela Davis, Steve Bannon, and David Duke (the articles, not the people!), and quite dislike Alex Jones. These articles are proof, IMO, that our main problem is not ideological bias, but the writing being too "overt" and two-dimensional, making it non-encyclopedic. The exact same point of view can be stated in a neutral, encyclopedic manner, or stated in an excessively emotive way. This older comment of mine, IMO, quite neatly addresses the distinction. DFlhb (talk) 14:12, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Found a great, apolitical example: there are countless reputable sources that say Steve Jobs "revolutionized the computer industry". And that's what he's known for, right? So it should go in his lead sentence! In wikivoice! But it shouldn't, because it's emotive and non-encyclopedic. Instead, the lead should describe specifics. We should strengthen MOS:LABEL, because many editors incorrectly believe that MOS:LABEL conflicts with WP:FALSEBALANCE. DFlhb (talk) 23:19, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

• My two cents has always been that we should almost never include "far-left politician" or "far-right politician" modifiers in the first sentence of the lede; I think it is much more tact to expand upon how they are far-right or far-left further in the lede, as is done at Roy Moore and Wendy Rogers. I think our single worst article in this regard is Josh Mandel; the lede doesn't expand upon the extraordinary claim of being a far-right politician and so it comes off as being very shoehorned. I also must note that this is nearly exclusively being used against modern/currently serving American politicians, and not the plethora of extreme politicians that once served both in America and across the world. My statement does not apply to, for example, George Lincoln Rockwell or Marjorie Taylor Greene, where the far-right modifier is supporting a different statement (political activist, conspiracy theorist). Curbon7 (talk) 17:31, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

• Interesting. I just thought all left was far left. The line between right and left seems to be drawn at the far left, and anyone who is not far left is deemed "right" or "far right", therefore the term "far left" seems rather redundant. The far right scares the crap out of me, and the left is all a bunch of haters who like to label anyone who even slightly disagrees with them, and they scare the holy crap out of me. I don't think it's a simple continuum that has a line drawn right in the middle of something. Zaereth (talk) 18:15, 26 March 2023 (UTC)
• Take care to not conflate left-right politically when it involves an organized group or violence. e.g. Boogaloo movement where it was a constant argument of not "far-right" politically when any organization or violence is smack dab far right. fiveby(zero) 18:22, 26 March 2023 (UTC)
• Part of the problem is defining left and right. These terms are very different from country to country. Someone who is on the left from the perspective of one country might be on the right from the perspective of another. Far better to avoid labels, and instead focus on actions and stances. Blueboar (talk) 18:30, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

• Ok, I'll bite. The problem is mainly in the US, which is asymmetrically polarized at the moment (books like Network Propaganda do a good job of providing a huge amount of evidence for this asymmetric polarization [of the news, in that case]). We have more people in politics and political media who support ideas that have traditionally been associated with the far-right now such that a ton has been written about them (and that phenomenon). So there are more sources to cite about the far-right in the US. Those on the right have tried to characterize the increased distance between the center of gravity on the right from everyone else as more symmetric than it actually is, but uses the term "far-left" in wildly inconsistent ways. It's tricky because (and this is also a perennial challenge for the left come election time) there's a larger variety of priorities on the left such that the number of people who support the fringe on any one of those issues aren't so numerous, and short of promoting communism (which has almost no foothold in politics/media) none of the "far-left" applications have really stuck (criticism of police? anti-racism? talking about lgbtq people in school? increasing taxes? more regulation on business? saying slavery had lasting effects? these are all "far-left" in one usage or another). On the other hand, while "far-right" can mean an awful lot of things, too, there are a few, pretty well-defined areas that will lead to being called far-right in the US: nativism, authoritarianism, fascism, theocracy, certain types of militant opposition to the federal government, and extreme stances on race or civil liberties. They aren't two sides of the same coin. We don't have neat spectra with lines down the middle such that we can calculate extremity with statistics. All of this is to say, the far-right in the US is better defined and more prominent. Because nobody thinks of themselves as "far"-anything, that also means there are more people to see the term and object to it. If we follow the sourcing, and only use the terms when there's strong support among the sources that it applies, we're going to wind up using "far-right" more than "far-left" because they're only counterparts in the abstract, not in practice. I hope that changes soon, but it is what it is. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 18:33, 26 March 2023 (UTC)
• I'm unconvinced this is a Wikipedia problem. First, while both these terms are relative, and so in theory should be used equally frequently by all types of commentators, political commentators aren't necessarily following that sort of logic, and are choosing the terms they feel fit best (or will get them the best ratings). Second, even if the terms could be applied to similar numbers of people, that doesn't necessarily mean that notable people are equally likely to be "far left" as "far right". Third, and most importantly, we're not in the business of balancing these categories; we should be applying the terms when reliable sources use them, and if there's an imbalance in their use, that's not necessarily our problem. If I had my way, I'd dispense with these terms altogether, as they become quite meaningless to anyone who has a certain familiarity with politics in multiple countries. But that's neither here nor there. Vanamonde (Talk) 18:38, 26 March 2023 (UTC)
  • In the case of the left in the US, there is the problem of where on the continuum the left becomes the far-left. In my thinking, Marxist-Leninist, Stalinist, Maoist and revolutionary anarchist politics are clearly far-left, but should any elected official who is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America automatically be categorized as "far left"? I think not but others may disagree. Also a factor is the definition of "politician", which in most contexts we reserve for elected officials or candidates for office. Bill Ayers and H. Bruce Franklin were far left activists half a century ago, but neither ran for office and both have had long careers in academia. We have 84 articles in Category: Members of the Black Panther Party but only a handful of these people ever ran for political office. Notability on the American far left often results from militant activism outside the realm of electoral politics. Cullen328 (talk) 18:58, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

    The issue of classification of "far-left" is that what defines far-left varies. The DSA is solidly on the left, as a post-capitalist ideology, and as such is "far-left" when compared to US ideologies, but would not be considered "far-left" in most countries not called the US, UK, or Canada; as such, we should rightfully not state it is a far-left organization. I would also like to bring up that Nepal's ruling democratically-elected government is a coalition between Marxist, Marxist-Leninist, and Maoist parties; should we thus turn on WP:AWB and run down all of them inserting "[name] is a Nepali far-left politician..."? Obviously not! Curbon7 (talk) 19:44, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

    • Having been working with sources that address this exact question recently, this is pretty much the conclusion that they agree on. Revolutionary politics (such as Marxism and anarchism) are "far-left" while reformist politics (such as social democracy and modern liberalism) are "center-left". And then democratic socialism is really the only one where they don't have a broad agreement on whether it's center-left or far-left. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 22:29, 26 March 2023 (UTC)
      • There is no widely recognized clear-cut distinction between social democracy and democratic socialism. Cullen328 (talk) 22:36, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

        Sounds like agnostic atheist and atheistic agnostic (hah, I was right, both links turned blue!). Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:51, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

• This comes up regularly, mostly by drive-by editors complaining about some article. (Generally not the categories but the lead description.) I admit I used to think it was nonsense. While it may be trust there's a difference in how many US politicians are described as far right vs far left, this seems to be reflective of the difference in how common theya are in the real world, since despite what those complainers like to say, even from the US let alone an international context, neither Sanders nor Ocasio-Cortez are far left. One time I intended to reply to one of them pointing out it was nonsense so I check out Jean-Luc Mélenchon which I assumed would definitely say he's far left and found it didn't and gave up. I'm not saying we definitely have a problem, my knowledge of French politics is limited. Nevertheless, I very often hear of Mélenchon described in the RSes I read or watch as the far left counterpart to Le Pen so I do wonder. Nil Einne (talk) 11:57, 27 March 2023 (UTC)
• Categories for "Far-right politicians" and "Far-left politicians" seem highly questionable in general. Practically nobody self-describes themselves as "far"-anything, and it is essentially same as calling someone "extremist". Seems like an obvious case of WP:BLPRACIST: Do not categorize biographies of living people under such contentious topics as racism, sexism, extremism, and the like, since these have the effect of labeling a person as a racist, sexist, or extremist..--Staberinde (talk) 13:52, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

• Here’s my take I guess. First I would like to make a couple observation. (1) There is a double standard in the perception of these political labels when being used under politicians (e.g. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Josh Mandel, Wendy Rogers) than when being used for media personalities (e.g. Ben Shapiro, Alex Jones, Rachel Maddow). (2) With regards to media personalities, we also tend to include a broader range of spectrums than politicians, including the less extreme conservative and liberal. With politicians we only include the descriptor if it’s far- something, typically far-right. You never see [Insert name] is a conservative/right-wing politician… or [Insert name] is a liberal/left-wing politician. The usual justification for this disparity offered byproponents of such labels is that these radical politicians are primarily known for being radical more than anything else they’ve, assumingly even more than the office they hold. Therefore, we should use the label for the extreme one’s and not the mainstream ones. At least that’s what I’ve seen from my experience. I find this a hard argument to make but also a hard argument to rebut. Like, how can you as Wikipedia gage that someone whose serving in public office is primarily known for their extreme views rather than anything else they’ve done to the point that it needs to be shoved in the lead sentence, when such a label typically shouldn’t? And how do you determine the contrary? What this means in practice, from what I’ve seen, is that once about 3-5 RS newspapers have used the label (even in passing) it will be introduced into the first sentence since it’s considered to the “widespread or extensive coverage.”

Now to my opinion on all of this. I don’t mind these labels being in the first sentence when it’s comes to BLP’s of media personalities; I think the reason I have this opinion is because of the greater tendency to include the whole spectrum of ideologies for these people, rather than just the extreme ones. But, the disparity when it comes to politicians is just odd to me, and that’s why I oppose the practice generally. If were not gonna call Mitt Romney a conservative politician in the first sentence,I don’t think we need to label Josh Mandel far-right in the first sentence either. There also the MOS:LABEL concern, which I find quite valid, and the argument that these views should be described in greater detail later in the lead seems like a very reasonable and worthy compromise on this issue. Iamreallygoodatcheckers ^talk 15:37, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

If we are talking about a clear neutral, impartial, disinterested tone, even for a run-of-the-mill person, including their political leanings in the very first lede sentence is a problem. We're supposed to write from the most objective and central facts about the person first, and then introduce other more subjective factors as appropriate. For example Maria Cantwell establishes in the lede she is Washington State's junion senator in the first sentence, and then explains her political alignment. That means from a tone standpoint we aren't calling out her political leanings. But when we push these into the lede sentence and without establishing context, such as what's done at Marjorie Taylor Greene, the tone of the article immediately shifts into something that is hostile (in MTG's case) since we have now prioritized her far-right leanings. In the case of MTG, it would be far better to explain what her ideology is in something like the second paragraph as to give room to give it context (what's her motivation for it, what impact has that had). Its not something to be whitewashed away, obviously, but providing in better order helps to make the tone far more neutral and less problematic than it is now. Masem (t) 15:53, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

With MTG, the article isn't stating that she's a far-right politician, it's stating she's a far-right conspiracy theorist, so there is a distinction when compared to other cases mentioned above. Curbon7 (talk) 18:27, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

• My opinion - this is not a BLP issue as framed because there is not symmetry in the US political arena. The US does not have any significant far-left movements or actors. American Left is not the far-left. Within our Overton window, it may seem Bernie Sanders is "far-left" but on the full spectrum he is not; no one in Congress is left of social democracy. The closest we've come in recent history is the Occupy Wall Street movement. ([11]) We do, however, have a far-right movement in the US (e.g., Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Christian nationalism#United States). This reminds me of the gender symmetry argument. EvergreenFir (talk) 18:39, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

  Antifa (United States) is certainly far-left, and at least some prominent figures in the Black Lives Matter movement are openly Marxist and revolutionary in their politics. Further, there is no shortage of far-left figures in American academia. I do however agree that at least at the national level of politics, hard-core leftists are pretty hard to find. Bernie Sanders was an avowed Leninist in his youth and has never fully repudiated a lot of that. But I haven't seen anything from him since being elected to office that I could fairly describe as far left. -Ad Orientem (talk) 21:47, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

  @Ad Orientem I agree with the Antifa part but honestly they haven't been in the news as much recently. This might be just my perception, but it seems to be going the way of Occupy Wall Street. But you're correct it should have been mentioned. EvergreenFir (talk) 22:32, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

• Comment I am inclined to agree that it is problematic. The terms far left and right are being tossed around almost indiscriminately with little thought to actual definitions, which is a gray area in itself. Adding to the problem is that the terms are routinely used as pejoratives by people in the political class and pundits as a descriptor for anyone whose politics they find disagreeable. There certainly are people who are far right and left, including in the US. But coming up with a fair way to categorize them would be a challenge that might be beyond easy reach. I am reminded of the former US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart who when dealing with a case involving obscenity, famously said of hard-core pornography that while he would not attempt to define it, "I know it when I see it." Unfortunately, that doesn't really work here. Unless we can define these terms in some reasonable way, I would support deletion of these categories should someone care to send them to WP:CfD. -Ad Orientem (talk) 21:38, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Related problems

I don't think Wikipedia has a left-wing bias, but I do think we suffer from two relevant problems:

• Poor writing quality on some contentious articles, for example with overly-emotional framing or word choice. This is something machine learning can help with: if implemented, it could detect potential biased or emotive language at scale, tag it, and, if we determine it was correctly tagged, we can fix it. I do hope that gets implemented. This isn't even always POV-pushing; it could simply be poor copyediting skill, where people fail to preserve the intricacies present in sources. Another machine learning solution would be to check for text-source mismatches (this give false positives, but is still useful if editors treat it as a tool rather than an Oracle).
• The numerous studies on Wikipedia's political bias all conclude that the more contributions, the more neutral the articles; but with WP:ECP and WP:CTOP, we've partly neutralized that feedback mechanism. This is a nuanced issue: first, it seems to have fully driven away good-faith IP editors, since most of the IP complaints we get on contentious article talk pages are non-constructive and get easily dismissed outright rather than steelmanned. Second, even many established users deliberately stay far away from WP:CTOPs, so these articles end up edited by a small clique of users (among which POV-pushing is more prevalent than we'd like). Third, that's forced us to make our moderation extremely blunt, with a whole bunch of bureaucracy, further compounding the issue. And our moderation tools are just as blunt, due to MediaWiki's primitiveness: if you're topic banned, why can't the software take care of it with nuanced access controls, and just prevent you from editing those articles? We give people rope to hang themselves, and lose a lot of editors that way. Fourth, many editors we indef for behavioral problems (e.g. bludgeoning, battleground) or personal biases (under "NOTHERE", maybe our most loosely applied essay) are still an integral part of the social mechanism that leads to good articles through compromise, even if their suggestions/edits, taken alone, would make our articles worse (I write this with the current ArbCom case in mind). Take a psychology metaphor: attempts to prevent or repress conflicts inherently lead to dysfunction. Conflicts, even really messy conflicts, are good and inherently constructive, as long as they're resolved effectively. We've focused on removing and repressing conflict, rather than making our conflict-resolution more robust, and have ended up with the inevitable dysfunction that always follows from that approach.

DFlhb (talk) 13:45, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Jamie Margolin

Jamie Margolin (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

I have a feeling a few additional eyes on this article can't hurt. There is a discussion about the recent content dispute at Talk:Jamie Margolin. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 23:24, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

Yes, we disagree on this one. Seems like there is a war going. Looks like what constitutes public figure will be dispositive. But here are the sources:

https://www.yahoo.com/video/aapi-activist-climate-activist-accuse-230055269.html

https://nyunews.com/news/2021/10/20/jamie-margolin-emma-tang-sexual-assault-allegations/

https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/nyscef/ViewDocument?docIndex=kkKx9zgobOECUysUF5dmfA== ReidLark1n (talk) 23:27, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

No. WP:PUBLICFIGURE requires multiple RS. NextShark, a clickbait site, is not one of them and the NYU student paper is not adequate enough for it to be well documented. Morbidthoughts (talk) 01:09, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

And the DOB was not at all supported - removed. Toddst1 (talk) 17:45, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

That is interesting indeed. WP:PUBLICFIGURE "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. If you cannot find multiple reliable third-party sources...delete it." This almost seems to be journalistic elitism that allows lower level public figures to evade otherwise accurate, extensive reporting from primary sources and secondary sources that fall short of a level of notoriety of New York Times, etc. Legally a public figure is not defamed when the information is a legitimate matter of public concern or related to their status as a public figure. Moreover, who is to say that a student newspaper which cites a plethora of primary sources is not WP:SOURCE? ReidLark1n (talk) 19:35, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

The sourcing is insufficient to support inclusion, as stated above. There was no follow up after 2021 in reliable sources and no public information on the outcome of the suit and countersuit. Fences&Windows 20:20, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Given your single purpose contribution history, ReidLark1n, do you have any connection to Tang? Morbidthoughts (talk) 21:53, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

No. Frankly, friend, I would ask why this content was so quickly and summarily deleted if not for someone manicuring a biography for legitimate purposes. I think frankly the people who are deleting the comments so quickly have a connection to the topic of the article, if anything. Was thinking a self proclaimed wikilawyer would know better than to accuse someone and dance around ad hominem attacks. I can understand the technicalities of why it was deleted, but the real reason is because someone is clearly manicuring the article. ReidLark1n (talk) 22:46, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

And yet uninvolved editors who do not care about the topic agree that the sources cited are insufficient. So perhaps, tone down the accusations Slywriter (talk) 23:15, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Drew Afualo - WP:DOB

The date of birth for Drew Afualo is supported by a reference that is an instagram post. The post doesn't say that it refers to the poster as it refers to a "Baba Yaga" that isn't mentioned anywhere in the article. I've removed the DOB once as {{failed verification}}, but an editor (who has a history of WP:SYN related to dates of birth) has restored it asserting that this vague instagram post is sufficient.

A WP:DOB of a living person requires a higher standard for inclusion than mere existence of a reliable source and I can't see how this reference in any way cuts it. Additional eyes requested. Thanks. Toddst1 (talk) 17:33, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

I'll admit that I read this thinking "there's no way this passes BLP"—but I'm not so sure. The context of the Instagram post ("Thank y’all so much for the birthday wishes", "thank u...for making today so special") suggests she's talking about herself. She calls herself "Baba Yaga" on her Tiktok profile, which both Daily Dot and Bloomberg mention. Is that synth? I guess? Woodroar (talk) 17:53, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

I think that is textbook WP:SYNTH. Toddst1 (talk) 19:40, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Technically yes, but in this particular case, I think it's good enough. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 19:08, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

The problem I see there is that we're assuming that everybody celebrates their birthday on the actual day. I don't, and I know many other people who don't. I celebrate it on the nearest weekend that I have off work. I might take an extra day or two off and make it a long weekend, but it's never the same from year to year and never on the actual day, and if I left such an Instagram post it would in no way indicate my real birthdate. Just the day of the celebration. Zaereth (talk) 19:09, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

"Baba Yaga turned 26 today", I don't see any ambiguity. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 19:21, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Oh, well, I didn't see that anywhere in Woodroar's statement. I can't access Instagram, Tiktok, or other such sites from my location. 19:34, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Here is the full text:

Baba Yaga turned 26 today & she don’t know how to act 🤓✨ Thank y’all so much for the birthday wishes, I’m so overwhelmed w love my heart could literally burst 😭❤️ & thank u sm to my family & Billy for making today so special … only we could try a horror escape room, and not only laugh the whole time but not even make it out lmfaooooo I love you all so much. 1 more year around the sun, means 1 more year of making men miserable .. & that’s on mf period hahahaha #Oldiestagram Edited · 79w SEPTEMBER 18, 2021

Toddst1 (talk) 19:48, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Hi, this is an incredibly narrow and, to my mind, inappropriate invocation of SYNTH. Even without the context that she refers to herself as Baba Yaga (or, for that matter, the fact that Baba Yaga is a fictional folklore figure who doesn't have a birthday), anyone reading in good faith past the first five words can clearly tell that she's talking about her own birthday. This very clearly fulfills DOB guidelines , which I already explained in this edit summary, so the fact that this has even been brought to a noticeboard is pretty ridiculous. Invisiboy42293 (talk) 22:15, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Heather Rae

Heather Rae (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) I reverted and redacted an unsourced edit about her ethnicity, but it needs attention as it has been raised in reliable sources. Rae self-identities as part Cherokee, but not Cherokee Nation.[12][13] Now, her Cherokee descent has been questioned.[14][15] - however, both these seemingly reliable sources refer to reporting from the New York Post [16] based on claims by an activist group and a blog, which aren't reliable. Earlier edits to the bio removed reference to her being Cherokee. Fences&Windows 19:39, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

If the Guardian is giving notice to the controversy, it is likely DUE even if it was the NYP that first published it. Native heritage is not based on self-identification; it is based on some history of tribal membership. Morbidthoughts (talk) 22:03, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Morbidthoughts, while I agree with you basically entirely on substance, just want to note that the question of "Native heritage" or "Native identity" is a complex and debated one. Not everyone would agree that it is simple as official registration. See, e.g., this New York Times article. Cheers. Dumuzid (talk) 22:12, 27 March 2023 (UTC)