Some principles that i didn't submit to ArbCom, since it became obvious that ArbCom would not consider content issues. (originally written around June 25, but put up today (Jul 21) since it seems to be relevant).
- BLP, despite the name, is a general policy, it applies equally to "regular" articles as it does to biographical ones.
- In general it can be said that if a paragraph in a "regular" article, wouldn't raise BLP concerns, then the same paragraph shouldn't do so in a biography, and vice versa.
- This of course a gray zone, and will be subject to contextual differences. For instance where a section is leading a viewpoint, the paragraphs meaning can be subtly changed, despite the same literal meaning.
- Biographical articles sometimes contain material that isn't biographical in nature.
- Non-biographical material appearing in a biography is subject to "regular" requirements for sourcing, and not the more strict BLP requirements.
- Critique of a literary work by a living person, is per default not considered BLP material.
- There has been a tendency to use a "BLP hammer", where everything associated with a living person, such as published papers. Where the critique gets personalized we may enter a grey-zone though.
- Tiny minority of fringe views may not have received attention in formal literature.
- Fairly obvious. The further a view is from the mainstream, the more it will be ignored by the mainstream.
- Tiny minority or fringe viewpoints that are explained in biographical articles, is subject to normal requirements for presenting such view in an NPOV way. That means that such views have to be presented in a way so that the reader isn't in doubt that this is a minority/fringe view.
- Such views are often presented in biographies of people who hold minority or fringe viewpoints, since the material often doesn't reach a point where it is acceptable by weight in "regular" articles.
- Articles and biographies are independent entities, and weight is determined by the prepondence and relative import of the literature concerning the article topic.
- Should be obvious. You cannot put a "template" over a given topic area, and state that for instance a tiny minority/fringe view must have the same textual weighting between critique/praise as a similar mainstream one. It all depends on the material available.
- References are not created equal. Their reliability and weight are defined by the medium they appear in, the writer of them and the context where they are used within the text. No source can ever be considered as being completely reliable, and very few sources can be considered completely unreliable for everything.
- This should be fairly standard - if not obvious. This is the reason that we haven't got whitelists and blacklists of reliable sources.