 | Closing comments
After User:The Wordsmith stepped forward to summarize and close this RfC, User:Coffee unclosed it on a procedural basis, and requested that the closure be performed by an uninvolved admin. I am willing to claim that I am sufficiently uninvolved to be that admin. Although I've made a handful of comments during both Phase I of the RfC and on this page, I have no emotional or intellectual investment in the outcome here. I am aware of the BLP debate and the concerns of many sides regarding it, but I have no commitment to any specific resolution. I note that User:Risker, who closed the first phase of this RfC, could not claim to be wholly uninvolved either, having endorsed as an arbitrator this motion, which expresses some pretty strong opinions about the conflict over BLPs which this RfC regards.
But Risker's closure was still a comprehensive and even-handed assessment of the community's position following Phase I, and I find The Wordsmith's closure here to be no less comprehensive and even-handed.
Ultimately, the closure of any RfC must be an accurate summary of the community's position as expressed during the course of an RfC, since the community will continue to act according to its intrinsic position, not according to how a particular admin "closes" the debate. During a closure, it is an admin's responsibility to identify areas of broad agreement (if there are any) and to identify means by which agreement can be potentially broadened further. This is fundamental to the consensus-building process, and I could not hope to improve upon the facilitation of further consensus-building that The Wordsmith has done here. I doubt any admin who could claim exactly zero involvement with either of these RfCs or the BLP issue in general could improve upon his closure either.
Therefore, I simply endorse The Wordsmith's closure, below.--Father Goose (talk) 08:14, 8 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Based on the comments here and on the associated Talk page, in addition to Phase I, I believe that consensus has been reached on the following issues:
- A new PROD-like process should be designed to handle new unsourced BLPs (those written after the final approval of the process). Modifying the current PROD for this purpose has been soundly rejected. The BLP PROD should, in general, not be removable without sufficient addition of sources. What "sufficient" constitutes must be determined by the community. In addition, there appears to be a
consensus significant minority who feel that the nominator should make a good faith effort to look for sources before nominating. The community will have to determine whether or not this is a valid part of the new process.
- Relevant policies and guidelines must be altered to include language to indicate that new unsourced BLPs are unacceptable and may be deleted using the PROD process, unless sources are added or it meets one of the CSD criteria.
- Efforts at recruitment of editors to help clean up the mess would be of great benefit to the project.
- Further mass deletions (such as the ones that resulted in this RFC) are strongly discouraged.
- Consensus is largely against any form of automated mass deletions of old BLPs, or speedy deletion of new ones, just because they are unsourced. All the current CSD criteria still apply.
- Many of the current members of CAT:BLP are not actually problematic, because a large number of them have been sourced since tagging (without the tag being removed) or have sources in a manner that bots don't recognize. Even many of them that actually are unsourced are factual and neutral, but overwhelming consensus is that BLPs have a higher expectation of sourcing, in the interest of preventing potential harm to living people. Sometimes libel may look innocuous, so having reliable sources is imperative.
- Concerns have been raised about biting newcomers. With this in mind, templates/boilerplate text and any procedures we come up with should make every effort to be friendly towards those who contribute unreferenced BLPs in good faith. Many of them don't know our rules, and we should attempt to be gentle in explaining them.
- There was a counter-proposal that was against adding additional bureaucracy. While some extra process is clearly necessary, I believe that the proposal for a strict timetable for cleanup of the currently existing unreferenced BLPs does not have consensus. However, it was also suggested that we hold off deciding this for three months, and I couldn't find any significant number of editors against this, though some felt that this was another veiled threat to resume deletions. To clarify: the proposal is not to have mass deletions begin in three months. Rather, at that time, another discussion will be held to determine whether progress is being made at an acceptable rate, and to determine if anything can be done to help. There will also be a review of the procedures we will have created, and any modifications that might need to be made can happen at that time. With any luck, the result of that will be that the community is doing an outstanding job on its own and additional layers of process are not necessary. It is my firm belief that this point offers a reasonable compromise between the widely agreed points of both Balloonman's compromise proposal and Ikip's anti-bureaucracy proposal.
Now, this is a good start, but it is nothing unless we use this momentum in a positive manner. Therefore, I strongly suggest that all of the following be done immediately:
- The finer points of a BLP PROD process must be hashed out and the exact details discussed with all deliberate speed. In the interest of getting it done as quickly as possible, an official proposal should be prepared in a maximum of two weeks from closure of this RFC.
- A thread should be made on WP:VPP to determine which policies and guidelines should be modified to reflect the changes made here, and how that language should be worded.
- Automated messages should be sent to every active WikiProject, as well as the Signpost and any relevant noticeboards, urging editors to participate in the cleanup.
- Any editor who is capable of doing so should attempt to find sources for articles in CAT:BLP.
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