Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard/Archive347

This page is an archive. Do not edit the contents of this page. Please direct any additional comments to the current main page.

Hello. It would be helpful to have more editors assist in the following discussion at Talk:Tom Willett. Ishnolead and I have been the only two editors recently discussing the possible inclusion of content relating to a case involving the BLP from 45 years ago. I think it would benefit the editor to have additional support in presenting their gathered information. I may not be the best one to be of guidance at this junction. Thanks in advance. Maineartists (talk) 00:22, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Just to make the context clear here, the allegation is about alleged child sexual abuse, which apparently can only be found in an offline version of the source. My question is here, can we know for sure that the article subject Tom Willett is the same one that is the supposed subject of the legal case? Given that we are essentially entirely leaning on the word of one Wikipedia contributor, I think that exclusion for now until better evidence is presented is the only reasonable solution. Hemiauchenia (talk) 00:32, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

1. The probability of two Tom Willetts, who were both musicians in Las Vegas Nevada during 1973-74, are slim to none.

2. With that aside, the page's subject (Tom Willett), was caught editing his own article to reflect himself positively. While Maineartists disputed the reliability of this, Willett has a history using the same username on online forums.

3. The deleted photo, while aged, fairly obviously matches existing online photos of Willett. There are even photos he has posted of himself during that time period sporting similar clothing and a mustache. Again, we have all of this information saved, but I strongly disagree with all of the rationale presented by other Wikipedia editors for suppressing this information. I will admit the information in its entirety is difficult to digest, both morally and practically, and requires a great deal of explanation. However, I stand by the veracity of all sources and I believe once explained in detail it will be impossible to refute.

4. As I stated in a prior discussion, I am not interested in making additional edits to this page. Myself and others will be pursuing more streamlined ways of communicating this to the general public. Ishnolead (talk) 01:16, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

I get where you're coming from, but unless WP:RS explicitly connect the two as the same person, then it shouldn't be included. WP:BLP articles are usually written conservatively for a reason, and I just don't think the sourcing in this case goes over this high bar. If you're able to get press coverage about the issue, then it could potentially be added, but otherwise it should remain excluded. Hemiauchenia (talk) 01:28, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

I think I need to weigh in here, considering there have been accusations above that are simply not true. I never disputed the reliability that Willett was editing his own page. In fact, I contacted the editor in question and left a message on their Talk Page [1] about COI, placed a COI Template on the article page, and even reverted edits by said editor due to insufficient sourcing. I then opened this discussion here to assist the above editor. I merely stated that it was impossible to prove that the BLP was editing his own page by simply linking IMDB. Anyone can create a username here on WP and edit. That is why WP has SP investigations. To continually claim that there is a conspiracy here at WP in suppressing a crime is not WP:AGF. Maineartists (talk) 02:06, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

1. The IMDB (https://www.imdb.com/user/ur2808701/?ref_=rw) is clearly him, or someone spending 20 years pretending to be him.

2. I believe bias is an issue here. Firstly, it is established that Tom Willett uses the same username elsewhere (despite objections). Secondly, Maineartists is the original author of the Tom Willett page. Given the subject matter, it would be mutually beneficial to avoid the publication of this material. This is not a scrupulous teenage arrest. Finally, all of my initial edits to the page were following the lead of other articles. I do not know if they followed the correct templates or formatting, but there has been no effort to remove their sources. For example, the article on John Scopes contains articles in the "Life After Trial" section which are only sourced by titles. Are we sure those articles reference the same John Scopes? Some of them do not even mention his name. Ishnolead (talk) 02:52, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

John T. Scopes is not a living person, so WP:BLP does not apply: even if everything sourced to the title-only references is entirely wrong or refers to a different person, the worst that would happen is Wikipedia's credibility taking another hit, and maybe some lazy journalists repeating the dubious information. No living person would be subject to reputational harm (or worse). That is not the case here. --Animalparty! (talk) 03:05, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

It doesn't particularly matter whether the IMDb page is him. It does not prove that someone with the same account here is him. I use my user name or very simply variations in many places. But unless my memory fails me I've never registered for IMDb. If you find an IMDb account with this account name now it's almost definitely not me. And I'm a no body, so no one would want to do that which isn't the case for the subject here. I also do not understand the relevance of any of this to the discussion. Even if the subject is editing their own article, the most that will happen is their account being block or banned. We do not punish people for editing inappropriately here with a CoI by allowing improperly sources material. Since the material you are trying to add lacks sufficient sourcing (comparing photos etc is definite WP:OR), it would not be added if he were not editing. So it's not going to be added just because he is editing. Nil Einne (talk) 13:35, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

I agree we need sourcing more solid than this to be including this. We also can't be using public documents as sources in a BLP per WP:BLPPRIMARY Tristario (talk) 02:17, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

I started a discussion on the talk page, but it is so infrequently edited, I wanted to raise this question here. This edit introduced material relating to an accusation/complaint against another person. The paragraph seems to be focused on the complaint and how it is being handled by two organizations, rather than much to do with Shahade's personal life. I also question whether the material crosses into WP:AVOIDVICTIM territory. 7d9CBWvAg8U4p3s8 (talk) 13:45, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the usual practice is for this situation, but I'm inclined to remove it unless we're completely sure that it is WP:DUE for her biography, especially if that's the only thing that'll be put in her personal life section. The content about the accusations at Alejandro Ramírez (chess player) should also be looked at to make sure it complies with WP:BLP since these are some serious accusations (and part of the accusations seems a bit indirect - "heard from other victims and seen evidence" - do we need something stronger than that to be including in someone's biography?) Tristario (talk) 03:15, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

The story has been picked up by a few news orgs, chess sites, and poker sites (Shahade is known in both). Most of them appear to be repeating information from the original chess.com article, though. Ramirez meets the public figure test, so WP:BLPCRIME isn't a deal-breaker as long as there are multiple publications. We seem to be in the gray area where there are valid arguments to remove and include, and the spirit of BLP is to exclude in such a gray area. Maybe wait for one more development in the story (an investigation, interview, etc.). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 14:06, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

I agree that Ramirez is a public figure but yeah we still need the sourcing. If there are general news organisations talking about this IMO it would help make the case for inclusion. I'd be reluctant to include such material if it's only been covered on speciality websites be it poker or chess ones no matter how prominent they are since even if the person is primarily notable via such speciality websites I don't think we should be covering simple accusations if that's the only place they're drawn attention. It does get more complicated when both the accuser and accused are notable, still as unfortunate as it may be for the victim, we should only cover the material if it's been widely covered enough. Nil Einne (talk) 09:18, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Why for Hans Niemann do we put the lawsuit but for Jen Shahade we don't put the accusation? Thewriter006 (talk) 17:33, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

I was opposed to including material about Niemann for longer than some others, but there's a huge amount of mainstream coverage about every aspect of the Niemann stuff now. We need more coverage here. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 17:38, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

• Alejandro Ramírez (chess player)

I agree that this shouldn't currently be mentioned on Jennifer Shahade's page, at least not unless or until this blows up into a much bigger thing. But I'm not sure I entirely agree with this edit by Tristario to Ramírez's page. Most of the discussion around Ramírez is not really just concerning alleged sexual misconduct towards Shahade, but the wider accusations regarding other people and particularly minors (see e.g. the cited article or Kotaku). I can get not wanting to populate the article with a huge amount of detail when this is early days and we don't have, like, NYT-tier sources weighing in on this, but what's written now seems to be implying that the accusations and subsequent investigation are just around alleged sexual misconduct towards Shahade, which I think is incorrect. Endwise (talk) 10:36, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

Those are very good points, I agree that the text as it stands is somewhat misleading in that regard. On the other hand, as I mentioned, I'm concerned about the indirect nature of these allegations (someone alleging things to have occurred to third parties), and on top of that, though the sourcing isn't that bad, it's not NYT-tier.

I don't think we actually know what he's under investigation for (besides what Shahade says). One option is to just be vague, and say that Shahade said she had heard other allegations and seen evidence. Alternatively, we could exclude this entirely and wait to see if there is further coverage. Or, we can just include it in detail. I would probably prefer the first or second option, but I'm open to any depending on people's reasoning Tristario (talk) 11:32, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

The 'Biography' section at Pablo Casado contains inaccuracies and omissions that bias the article against its subject (among other things).

There is currently a section titled 'Ongoing investigations on his degrees'. This investigation has not been 'ongoing' for some time … the section itself acknowledges that the Supreme Court investigation ended 5 years ago in 2018, concluding that there was no indication of error or irregularities.

Other sections, such as 'Early life' and 'Start of political career' similarly refer to these degrees without acknowledging that no fault was found and are worded to disparage the degree content. For example, the article states that Casado "reportedly took and passed [a Master’s degree] without ever attending classes, nor passing any test, as he publicly admitted." However, the section does not state that he submitted 4 written projects, or that the university had automatically exempted Casado from the vast majority of subjects as he already held a law degree from Madrid Complutense, omissions which change the perception somewhat. (I can provide sources to confirm this but that seems more like a Talk page sort of thing).

I would like to suggest this information be appropriately edited into a concise, accurate section that covers the facts and conclusion properly.

At the very least it should be reviewed for tone, because at present the article dedicates disproportionate space to how Casado completed various specialised educational courses. This is not of huge notability in the scope of his wider career, and the investigation concluded without finding any evidence of wrongdoing. There are also errors such as typos and using present tense instead of past. This extends to other parts of the article too, but to keep things focused I have started with this topic.

I will not make this change directly as I have a connection to Casado, however I would be very happy to help provide/translate sources and suggest wording to help make this article comply properly with the Biography of Living Persons policy. More coffee needed (talk) 16:08, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

More coffee needed, the talk page for that BLP has not been edited since January 2019. If you think the BLP misuses reliable sources, or uses unreliable sources, or omits relevant reliable sources, please do comment accordingly at the BLP talk page. Because you have connection to Casado, you should carefully review WP:COI, and declare your COI at the BLP talk page if you decide to comment there as I have suggested. In the mean time, I have made some article edits to hopefully make the article more neutral. Anythingyouwant (talk) 05:48, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

The Lead of the article has a line which states - "he wrote a two-part biography of Savarkar that was held to be an uncritical work by most critics". My problem with this statement is the usage of word "Most". It is not the correct summary of the article and not backed by reliable sources. Here is the discussion at the talk page - [2]. I tried to give the rationale that -

• We should change he wrote a two-part biography of Savarkar that was held to be an uncritical work by most critics -to- he wrote a two-part biography of Savarkar that received mixed reviews from critics.

• The statement that is was deemed uncritical by "most" critic is a blanket statement and not backed by any reliable source.
• In the current state, there is no reliable source which state this. There are numerous reviews of the book available and it ranges some praise to critical. Even the article mentions numerous critics who has praised the book.
• Even the assertion that the statement in the lead is just summary of the body is not true as in the main body there are 4 negative reviews and 3 positive reviews furthermore to imply that "most critics" deemed it uncritical, we need to have a reliable source which mentions that it is general consensus amongst the critics that the book is uncritical.
• In the current state. It is a blatant violation of WP:OR and WP:BLPRS.

My attempts to ask for Reliable sources and rationale behind the statement was met with stone walling attempts like - [3] , [4] even when one other editor asked for secondary source, the response was - [5] Razer(talk) 21:58, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

I have removed it because any attempt to summarise the weight of the criticism is WP:SYN without a RS actually acknowledging the weight of existing criticism. Morbidthoughts (talk) 23:11, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

MBlaze Lightning continues to edit war ignoring WP:BLPRESTORE without addressing the actual OR issue.[6][7] Morbidthoughts (talk) 10:19, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

BLP still asks editors to substantiate their concerns in ambiguous cases, and this was pretty much bordering on no case at all. Where did you do so? Sequestering others for blame also doesn't help, given you yourself went around invoking BLP to edit war and pussyfoot on the talk page.  OP should have kept everyone in the loop about the BLP noticeboard thread as the matter seemed to be a garden-variety disagreement that had tapered on its own; they didn't do so. SYNTH discourages conjectures drawn from multiple sources, it does not bar faithful recapitulation of content occuring in the body. If it did, many adverbs would disappear from usage overnight. A consensus amongst editors should still decide as to what constitutes a meaningful reflection of body, but that's what talk pages are for. Dympies (talk) 14:09, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

It's not ambiguous or garden variety to me at all. If it wasn't clear to you, a group of editors can not simply review previously selected positive and negative criticism that were inserted into the article and then extrapolate two of the selected criticism as the position of "most critics". That is OR. Is there a RS like a scholarly literature review or a news report that reviews the existing criticism about that book and confirms that is the position of "most critics"? Tristario's proposed edit addresses this concern. Morbidthoughts (talk) 20:22, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

You have been obdurate and yet you don't seem to have had any success in convincing the community about any of it. And that's precisely because your demurrers had been fallacious and misplaced since the beginning of it. Reliable sources are needed to undergird the information in the body; they aren't necessarily merited in the lead, because the latter stands for the former and provides an epitome of it. Tristario told you the same thing. And it would be wholly infructuous to belabour this point now that his proposed wording has been unanimously adopted. That is of course emblematic of how consensus is built on this encyclopedia. It is not solicited by arrogating to yourself the seeming authority of riding roughshod over others and enforcing your far-fetched constructions of BLP without making a solitary attempt to engage with others on the question. MBlaze Lightning (talk) 06:40, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

Whatever. You see your edits still in the article? The original complaint and OR has been addressed, and it wouldn't have happened if the OP had not engaged this noticeboard seeking uninvolved editors. Morbidthoughts (talk) 07:46, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

• Comment - In 2019 and 2021, he wrote a two-part biography of Savarkar that was held to be a meticulously detailed but an uncritical work by most critics is probably the fairest summary of this section. Also, see WP:SYNNOT. TrangaBellam (talk) 11:07, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

  The WP:LEDE is meant to summarize the body - I don't think summarizing the reviews given in the body of the article counts as WP:OR. However, I think the summary could be better written - I don't think saying something was "held to be an uncritical work" is very clear, I had to read the relevant section to understand what was actually meant by that, and saying "most critics" is a strong statement.

  I think a summary such as In 2019 and 2021, he wrote a two-part biography of Savarkar that received praise for its thorough detail, but also received criticism for its uncritical treatment of Savarkar (or something roughly like that) would be better Tristario (talk) 11:29, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

  I agree with your views and your proposed line appears to be an improvement. But the thrust ought be on the fact that a majority of critics — esp. those who have PhD in relevant disciplines like Bakhle and Pillai — lambasts Sampath. For a biographer, there is hardly a more significant denouncement than being held as uncritical. TrangaBellam (talk) 11:38, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

  Full agreement with Tristario, including their proposed rewording. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 12:01, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

  Implemented Tristario's wording. TrangaBellam (talk) 13:52, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

• Query - More generally, I would like to seek the input of this noticeboard regarding the repeated invocation of "WP:BLP" at Talk:Vikram Sampath, some 29 times! The subject is a scholar and writer, and such work gets critiqued and we summarise it fairly and proportionately. Repeated invocation of "WP:BLP" to counter these efforts seems to be an exercise of censorship and whitewashing. What say you? -- Kautilya3 (talk) 12:19, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

  You are again trying to misinterpret the issue. The issue is not about censorship but of a group of editors who think a WP:BLP is their play ground and they can make contentious changes and bypass core wiki policies by a crude local consensus.

  • [8] Here you think you can somehow critically analyse sources and have the liberty to somehow deduce what the sources are trying to infer but not clearly stating.
  • [9] and [10] When I tried to remove a contentious statement which was not backed by any reliable source , you suggested that I should add a citation needed tag and tried to shift the burden of prove on me. Completely ignoring that fact that in the main message, I clearly stated that WP:BLPRESTORE is clear on the issue. - the burden of proof is on those who wish to retain, restore, or undelete the disputed material. When material about living persons has been deleted on good-faith BLP objections, any editor wishing to add, restore, or undelete it must ensure it complies with Wikipedia's content policies.
  • [11] In this thread. You think that a WP:BLP talk page is water cooler of a print publication where editors can make snide comments, gossip around and make edits based on their judgement and original research. I quote some of your and Trangabellam replies - I am not buying Sampath's arguments but I do not attribute any malice either. This is an endemic problem to S. Asia - graduates from quite decent universities feel that they can copy lines off random books as long as they throw a proper citation in the bibliography , Your reply - Oh, please! I am from South Asia. I wouldn't claim that I never cheated, but I was clear in my own mind when I was cheating and when I wasn't. The idea that they don't know what is plagiarism is bull. They just think they can get away with it. Nobody will know
  • Even in this case, It took a WP:BLPN thread to convince you that you cant make a strong and blanket assertion like "Most critics " deemed the book uncritical without any reliable sources.
  • [12] this whole thread is a example of how you think you can ignore wiki policies and stone wall discussion
  • Even in this comment, You are trying to gain a clear pass and creative liberty from the general wiki community to bypass WP:BLP and WP:OR

  This case is eerie similar to the 'Years" article controversy on WP:ANI where a group of editors thought they can bypass core wiki policies by a crude local consensus Razer(talk) 07:22, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

Take me to ANI or AE for "gossiping on BLPs based on original research" and we will see how it goes. TrangaBellam (talk) 12:56, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

In 2017, this living person, a film director, got media attention for alleged sexual misconduct. Discussion on the article's Talk Page ("Undue Emphasis?" section) reached a resolution whereby the allegations were put in context in the article but lowered from a dominant position. February 9 and 10, 2023, an editor whose edit summary for the first of a series of changes begins with "This article is a terrible font of puffery and I am going to fix it," gave renewed prominence, even dominance, to the 2017 allegations. I saw that and created a new section on the Talk Page ("Article's Emphasis"), in which I wrote, "Of course, neither I nor any other editor has the "final say," but I intend over the next several days to try to restore what I think was a more defensible relative weighting of material." The February 9/10 editor replied quickly on the Talk Page, writing, "If you feel something needs better weight, bring it up here and we will discuss it before you begin a white-washing campaign." A few days after, I posted in reply my rationale for re-weighting. The Feb 9/10 editor has now replied to my reply, and it's clear that we strongly disagree. I hope other editors and/or administrators may now read the entire Talk Page exchange at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:James_Toback#Article's_emphasis and advise. Canhelp (talk) 18:47, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

You have to be specific about which material you wish to restore to start with. Jorm has made an extensive number of edits to the article for the article to arguably comply with WP:NPOV. Morbidthoughts (talk) 22:00, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

It surprised me that an editor reading my report would take it upon himself/herself to make significant edits to the article under discussion. I thought the intent of the Noticeboard is to promote discussion. As I have stated earlier, Jorm and I disagree regarding the relative weighting of material. Prior to Jorm's February 9/10 edits, disregarding the "early life" and "personal life" sections, the lede of the article was about 90% addressing Toback as filmmaker and 10% addressing Toback as alleged abuser of women. In the remainder of the article, the weighting was about 80% to 20%, and half the film content in the "critical reception" section was negative. Jorm correctly identified fluff in the lede and went after it with a strong hand. Following your edits today, here's the weighting: lede: 50% film, 50% allegations. Remaining content: 62% film (negative content retained) and 38% allegations.

I maintain that excessive reduction of film content from the lede and excessively detailed additions to the allegations section now over-weight allegations content in the article relative to film content.

Both Jorm's reply to my February 26 post on the James Toback Talk Page and your reply here sidestep what I see as a Wikipedia fairness guideline, that the allegations against Toback should be dealt with in a manner equivalent to how similar allegations are dealt with in articles about other film industry creatives.

And some of your edits and Jorm's edits puzzle me. I don't think it's customary in biographical articles to require a cited reference for someone's college degree and family facts, yet Jorm deleted Toback's magna cum laude degree from Harvard, and you deleted the 1992 date of his marriage to Stephanie Kempf and their parenting a son. Such facts, while easily documented from primary sources, are not typically reported in the secondary sources Wikipedia uses for cited references.

Canhelp (talk) 02:33, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

I don't think it's customary in biographical articles to require a cited reference for someone's college degree and family facts In biographies of living persons we need to keep the privacy of the person in mind and usually shouldn't be including personal information if there isn't a reliable source. Sometimes, subject to various considerations, self published sources can be used.

I did a quick search on google news, narrowing the search only to results prior to the accusations, and he did receive quite a bit of coverage in reliable sources for things relating to his film career (you could look up those sources and expand the article with them, then summarize that content in the lede per WP:LEDE). I agree his film career should be covered adequately in the article and summarized more in the lede, it seems WP:DUE to me. I also agree the lede prior to Jorm's edits contained puffery Tristario (talk) 03:28, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

Both founders of the site are known online exclusively through their pseudonymes (Marquis and Serge). Prominently displaying their full name in the infobox and exclusively referring to them as such adds makes no sense and adds nothing to the article other than harming their privacy and facilitating real-life harassment and worse of the two individuals. Trade (talk) 00:13, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

Their names are reported by the sources in the article so I'm not sure how much justification there is for removing their names. However one of the sources notes that they deny founding the site, so that denial should probably be included Tristario (talk) 23:33, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

Thanks @Tristario for adding the banner to the talk page. Two sources have independently identified Galante and Small by their full names (New York Times, Washington Post), and their names are also mentioned in various other sources cited in the article. Freedom4U (talk) 00:41, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

It's important to keep in mind WP:BLPNAME: It may be preferable to omit full names, even if appearing in reliable sources, when doing so does not result in a significant loss of context. When deciding whether to include a name, its publication in secondary sources other than news media, such as scholarly journals or the work of recognized experts, should be afforded greater weight than the brief appearance of names in news stories. See also WP:VNOTSUFF. Even though these two people are central to the website, if they can be adequately be referred to by their pseudonyms, that might be preferable. For comparison, not that the person central to the Wi Spa controversy has remained unnamed in the article, even though the person is named in several reliable news sources. --Animalparty! (talk) 01:43, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

They're also mentioned by name in CCDH's report on incel communities (link, see pages 11 and 13). As well, the Washington Post article and several other articles refer to them by name only, meaning only mentioning their pseudonyms could hurt reader understanding. Also, the person you mention as an example is named in the article? Quoting from the Incident section, "A cisgender woman going by the name "Cubana Angel" posted a video to her Instagram account on June 24, 2021..." Freedom4U (talk) 03:27, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

"Cubana Angel" is not the person who was arrested and charged with multiple felony counts of indecent exposure. And it's really not hard nor confusing to write "two people who go by the pseudonyms Marquis and Serge", and use the pseudonyms throughout, as Vice and BuzzfeedNews and other sources do. What would be the benefit of giving their full names? It's fine for investigative journalists to print full names, but Wikipedia isn't an investigative journalism outfit, and not all facts necessarily warrant inclusion. --Animalparty! (talk) 04:02, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure whether WP:BLPCRIME applies here. These aren't public figures, and by including their names we are connecting them to potential criminal activity (such as this, or this investigation). Perhaps we should be seriously considering omitting their names, it doesn't really add that much to the article (we could still make references to their real world identities, just without using their real names) Tristario (talk) 05:12, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

Sorry Animalparty, I was pretty sleep deprived when I read your message and misunderstood what you meant.

How I see it, the Vice and Buzzfeed News articles were both before their names got out, so they had to use the pseudonyms, but following the publication of the New York Times article, basically no source fails to mention their names. This report from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue mentions Small by name, and does not refer to any pseudonyms, writing "High-profile incels such as Lamarcus Small (aka ‘Master’, one of two owners of the largest extant incel forum incels.is)..." (emphasis my own).

The Washington Post omits any pseudonym for Small, while stating that Galante is known by the alternative pseudonym "Sergeant Incel" (which I assume Serge is the shortened form of), stating "The forum was founded in 2017 by Diego Joaquín Galante, known online as “Sergeant Incel” and Lamarcus Small as a response to Reddit banning the subreddit /r/incels."

The CCDH report also mentions Small by name only with no pseudonym, and refers to both by their names rather than their online pseudonyms throughout the report.

From what I can see, there is benefit in mentioning their names, given that recent articles and reports on the subject refer to them primarily by their names, and include their online pseudonyms (if they do at all) to aid reader understanding. Freedom4U (talk) 15:21, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

I get what you're saying, but I do concur with the others here that connecting two private individuals to potential criminal activity where no one has been charged can make Wikipedia liable, even if the names are just being quoted from the NYT article. Not only that, but adding their names adds little value to the article itself where pseudonyms that they used on all of their sites already connects the dots for the reader. I think we should err on the side of caution when naming people, especially private citizens that aren't public figures and I believe that Wikipedia guidelines address this well.

The sources are there with their names if they want to go to them for additional context, but putting their names in the article doesn't really add value. Kevinsanc (talk) 19:18, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

@Kevinsanc Wikipedia would not be liable (for multiple reasons) but that's not really what we should be concerned about here. If criminal charges arise out of the creation of the web site, that isn't anything to do with Wikipedia including names or not including names. There are no charges that anyone has mentioned. The owner of a knitting site may be sued if someone pokes themself in the eye while following a pattern. We should not exclude their name in case something might happen in the future. Round and rounder (talk) 20:56, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

That's not my point though. The policy leans towards not using full names and we should also be aware of WP:SENSATIONAL as well when it comes to this. If they went by pseudonyms on the website, then there's no reason why we shouldn't do that here, but adding their names does not aid in reader understanding, nor is there any good reason to include their full names in the article, especially if they're not public figures or even notable enough to have a separate Wikipedia page on themselves. Kevinsanc (talk) 21:02, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

@Kevinsanc I don't think that's what the policy says at all. This web site and its founders should be treated like any other web site and its founders. Round and rounder (talk) 21:14, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

The question to ask is if the founders are active trying to distance themselves from their real names, or have not shown any sign of issues when their real names were published. We favor privacy of individuals not yet guilty of any crime, and while running this forum is looked down upon, it remains legally operating. Just because papers have published the names without concern, our BLP is stronger than that. From what I can glean off mobile views (can't see all of nytimes articles for example), the founders do not seem to br actively seeking attention outside their forum (to contrast with the woman that runs Libs of TikTok) so using their online handles and avoiding names makes sense, but there may be more I can't see immediately. Masem (t) 19:29, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

I agree. I don't see much reason to refer to their real names if we have pseudonyms to work with. Even though their names are in multiple sources doesn't mean that they should be used. Privacy should be exercised, especially for those that haven't been found guilty of any crimes. I was accused of vandalizing the article when I made the edits when I first started editing on Wikipedia. I just was simply following the policy. Kevinsanc (talk) 19:07, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand the issue here. It would be customary to publish the names of site founders or owners in an article about a web site. The names of the site founders have been published in multiple reliable sources. They are not being accused of any crimes, so WP:BLPCRIME would not seem to apply. Would we put the names in if this was a knitting pattern web site? Yes. So we should put them in here as well. Round and rounder (talk) 20:35, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

I believe the problem is that the owners went by pseudonyms on the website, which would probably not be the case on a knitted pattern forum. It is different when you use your own name on your website vs. it being revealed in a investigative news story. The policy is to lean towards not using real names due to privacy reasons. Kevinsanc (talk) 20:44, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

@Kevinsanc If you mean WP:BLPNAME, I disagree. Wikipedia generally names people who are central to articles, like the founders of web sites in an article about a web site. If it was just one reliable source or if the sources were questionable, I might see your point, but there are multiple, very well-known reliable sources which name them. Round and rounder (talk) 20:49, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

Note that a criminal investigation has been opened into at least one of the founders [13] Tristario (talk) 22:20, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

Do you mean in Uruguay or in the US? Both countries are mentioned Trade (talk) 01:27, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

I assume he's speaking about the Uruguayan founder. I think there was an investigation opened by INTERPOL, but I haven't seen any stories confirming this, other than this article by a local news org: Interpol investiga a uruguayo que creó web que promociona el suicidio a través de Internet (montevideo.com.uy) Kevinsanc (talk) 01:39, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

Pretty sure INTERPOL doesn't investigate things, so they don't "open investigations" so it's impossible they opened an investigation on anyone. Nil Einne (talk) 05:18, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

Uruguay, it doesn't say an investigation has been opened in the US, just members of congress pushing for things Tristario (talk) 01:49, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

Just a note that Round and rounder has been blocked as an LTA sock so any of their comments can be safely ignored. Nil Einne (talk) 05:19, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

An Uruguay government investigation into SS is indeed reported on outside Twohey stories and WBUR, as this seems to be it (forgive the bad Google Translate of Spanish)

The 11th Prosecutor's Office opened an investigation. Specifically [the Uruguay government official] Cecilia Bonsignore for the case reported by the New York Times that links a young Uruguayan with a website that talks about different ways to take his own life. The site is called Sanctioned Suicide and is being watched by Interpol after the aforementioned US media reported the case. The young Uruguayan leads the organization from Montevideo. The young man is 29 years old and lives in the capital with his brothers and his parents. His partner was found in Huntsville, Alabama, United States. The Uruguayan, in addition to running the site, would be responsible for interacting with users through pseudonyms.

https://www.montevideo.com.uy/Noticias/Fiscalia-investigara-a-uruguayo-presuntamente-vinculado-a-web-que-promociona-el-suicidio-uc807881 108.44.212.160 (talk) 04:12, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

As for the owners attitude towards anonymity, he apparently engages in doublespeak about that, as he puts his company name (Vokl) in the whois, and the public Vokl LLC 2022 annual report shows him publicly listing his full name as the owner of Vokl. The links for that are in the talk page for SS 108.44.212.160 (talk) 04:23, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

As for the full names, they are in a front page NYTimes article by Pulitzer Prize winning journalists, multiple NYTimes print and digital followups, a NYTimes audio report, national PBS television, Gatopardo, WBUR, Washington Post, in a public letter of 7 Democratic congresspeople to the DOJ to call on the DOJ to prosecute the SS owners, ISDGlobal, and others. Not sure where else the full names could be found for the few obfuscating by falsely asserting they are barely in the media media. Only if they are in a a cable television cycle, billboards outside Reno? 108.44.212.160 (talk) 04:23, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

I would think of this as a Joshua Moon situation, given he also runs a predatory site reported on negatively. Did WP name Joshua Moon? Yes. Does it still? Ye. Did Joshua Moon want his full name constantly talked about? Doubtful, given he apparently changed his name. Epik banned SS for being too much for even them, but didn't ban Josh Moon's site. WP named Joshua Moon because there were, at the time, a similar amount of news articles on him listing his full birth name. And less reputable places than those reporting on SS named Josh Moon. 108.44.212.160 (talk) 04:34, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Also of note is that Small is publicly recruiting Moon's bully site to run interference for him (generally), as you've all been talking, so I'd keep that into account if new people pop in 108.44.212.160 (talk) 04:43, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

A few points. One is that per WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS, we have to be careful about letting some other decision, possibly a mistake, influence our decision here. Especially if there was no wide consensus on the matter.

Two is I'm not convinced the Joshua Moon situation is particularly comparable to here. If you look at Kiwifarms you see this image File:Joshua Conner Moon.png. It was uploaded by someone called JoshNull back in 2017 as their own work where it was identified as being Joshua Conner Moon [14]. I do not know for sure JoshNull on Wikipedia is Joshua Conner Moon but I sure hope so since this looks like a selfie or perhaps webcam image so is probably not the work of someone else.

In any case, the presence of this image whereever it came from also means someone must have gotten it calls into question how much Moon tried to preserve their anonymity initially. It may be that in later years Moon regretted his decision but it gets far more complicated when someone was initially fine with their name being public but then changed their mind. E.g. our policy talks about when a name has been intentionally concealed rather than when a name was revealed but then later intentionally concealed.

As for the business listing, that seems very typical carelessness or not thinking about such things properly or being aware of how public records work, or even perhaps simply not seeking competent legal advice on how to get around such legal requirements. For example, it is very common that those involved in adult entertainment business make the same mistake whether with business listings or trademark filings. There are forums dedicated to trying to unmask the real life identity of such people based on such things and others. We rightfully do not consider such things to have any bearing on whether a person wishes to remain anonymous.

(To be clear, in nearly all of these cases there are no decent RS either. My point is that even if there is RS, the argument that we should ignore a possible desire to remain anonymous or more accurately pseudonymous because the person wasn't consistent because of their carelessness in public records is a flawed argument. There was another case I recall, again without RS but where someone tried to argue a person wasn't consistent in their desire to remain anonymous or pseudonymous simply because they'd published sheet music under their real name which I also consider flawed.)

It might be a different case if the founder was regularly speaking under their real name on behalf of the company, or maybe even if they were listed as the CEO on the companies website or other publicity material. In other words if they were intentionally publicly associating themselves with the company. But a name on a business listing or annual report? Yeah nah.

The sources who have given the real names are much more relevant. But there are many, many times when we rightfully do not report what is mentioned in plenty of reliable sources. How widely dissemanated is one factor that matters. So the fact that a number of sources have recently published their names is something we should consider but the fact it's only happened recently i.e. we can't be sure it's sustained is something else to consider.

And names are one area where we have to take particular care. People have also gave other examples, e.g. Cubana Angel and indeed those accused of crimes is a common case where we may exclude names even when they occur in RS. Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard/Archive275#RfC: Should we name Paul Nungesser? is an interesting example there. We initially excluded the name of the person accused. The BLPN discussion ended up with consensus to include and while one of the factors was the large number of sources, the other one was that the accused had given a number of interviews (to be clear, I think these were full on sit down interviews probably published as interviews not simply comments to the media on a story they were working on) and was even involved in a settled lawsuit. (I don't believe there was serious consideration of not naming the alleged victim as one of the reasons we even had an article was because of her highly public performance art.)

Likewise in the Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard/Archive316#Slate Star Codex consensus was towards excluding the name even if it was published in the NYT albeit I don't think it was or anywhere else significant before the author stopped trying to keep their name private. Although an argument was made there that because the author had published an article in a journal under their real name which was linked to their blog and ?used to reply to emails with their real name, this meant they weren't be consistent enough in their desire for private.

In this case, as others have said there seems little reason to include the names. No significant context is lost by excluding them, knowing their names does not change anything about the site. There is some very limited material on their other activities which probably should be covered, but their names isn't required for that. And since all evidence presented thus far is that they've generally tried to conceal their identities there is good reason to do so no matter our disdain for their activities.

Note a key differences between this case and many of the other ones with the exception of Kiwifarms is that in all those cases the person was a key part of the website (or really it was their work as a blog) or controversy i.e. they are effectively a key focus of the article. This gives us added reason for why we should mention the name. Same too for Libs of TikTok.

Whereas in this case, we have two individuals who have apparently run a number of despicable websites and with some other related activities but as those websites seem to be places for user generated content, their involvement is mostly secondary to the focus of the article. The subject of the article is one of the despicable websites which they run and allow the activity of and I assume post on but which isn't their work. (Indeed as we know from the WMF-community disputes, running a website doesn't mean you get along well with the people who product most of the content.)

I think key considerations would be whether the names are still being mentioned in quality RS ~2 years from now or whether any of them is successfully prosecuted for a crime especially one related to the website or something else emerges which makes them much more of a focus of the article (or some other article). Neither of these have happened yet so IMO there is good reason to exclude the names.

Nil Einne (talk) 09:09, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

You are mispresenting what is publicly known about the reporting. It extends way beyond NYT, but even twohey and dance have said over and over in public it was a major part of their reporting, and a "yea duh of course NYT will name then" situation 108.44.212.160 (talk) 16:28, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

“Deciding that we were going to name these guys was the easiest decision in the story,” Dance said. Twohey concurred.

“The reason I say it was very exciting to call them is because Megan and I are in this for accountability,” he said. “Here, you have these two shady guys who’ve been running this website for three years, (linked to) we think hundreds of deaths including kids, and we’re excited to say you know, ‘Tell us why, tell us the reason you’re doing this.’”

Everything else in your comment is conjecture with no reasonable proof listed. Such as the suggestion Josh outed himself on Wikipedia, the only proof offered being a statement by an anonymous person. But their is proof on legal forms that Lamarcus outed himself. Lamarcus and Diego's full names been in RS for two years, and there is no reason to think they won't continue to be, given they still are and their sites are still high-profile. The administrator GorillaWarfare also (rightfully) republished their names twice after the SS article author here. They even went further and put their locations 108.44.212.160 (talk) 16:18, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

@Nil Einne Agree that 108's argument is on flimsy basis and that the inclusion of their names on primary sources should never be a reason to name them. It also looks like there have been academic sources regarding specifically Sanctioned Suicide that came out after the NYT article, three specifically, two don't name while one does name. However, a quip that I have is that Galante and Small aren't just notable for Sanctioned Suicide. They're notable for a number of incel sites which I think are highly notable and verifiable (if anything, more verifiable than SS) and worthy of their own articles.

Sources that Name (post-December 9 2021)

New York Times (December 9, 2021, December 12, 2021, February 2022, November 2022)

Poynter _{(Note: Really a response to the NYTimes article)} (December 2021)

CCDH (September 2022) and quoting from them: "To protect the identities of individuals investigated in this report, we have removed all references that can be used to identify members, including usernames. This does not include generic photos of influential personalities that have been widely adopted by members of the communities." Note how that didn't stop them from naming either of them.

Washington Post (September 2022), which itself is citing the CCDH

Here & Now _{(Note: run by WBUR and part of NPR)} (January 2022), KUOW (January 2022) , which themselves are citing the NYTimes reports

Institute for Strategic Dialogue (January 2023)

Gizmodo (February 2023_{Note: Re-print on Yahoo News}), which itself is citing the ISD

Sources that don't Name (post-December 9 2021)

“Life is about trying to find a better place to live”: Discourses of dwelling in a pro-recovery suicide forum (May 2022) published in obscure _{(Not trying to put it down, but could someone help me find any secondary information about this journal at all?)} but says is peer-reviewed journal

Chapter: Suicide as Scandal from "The Routledge Handbook of Victorian Scandals in Literature and Culture" (December 2022), though not directly on the topic, still mentions the forum substantially for a few pages

Other (not related to here, but just things that could be useful for the article)

Found Representing suicide: Giving voice to a desire to die? (September 2021)-- obviously before the names were out, but the article also doesn't mention SS by name. However, peer-reviewed, and honestly well written.

Also found quite a few medical journal articles talking about the sudden rise in sodium nitrite deaths. Freedom4U (talk) 19:04, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

It does look like their names have been too widely published for us to be excluding their names from the article (thanks for going through those sources). That being said, I'd be in favor of reducing the prominence of their names in the article ie. primarily referring to them by their pseudonyms, and just using real names where necessary/relevant. I also think that would make the article more accurate by conveying that they've largely operated and been known under pseudonyms (as it currently is a glance at the article could give the misleading impression they've been operating under their real names) Tristario (talk) 05:35, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

https://www.poynter.org/ethics-trust/2021/how-the-new-york-times-handled-life-or-death-ethical-issues-while-reporting-on-a-popular-suicide-website

An incels.me page is also something I advocated on SS talk because there are more sources on it. Lamarcus and Diego also clearly consider the incel site as their flagship forum (it was also the first they founded). The incel page is half a disjoined narrative of it, although with some good parts from Gorilla and others 108.44.212.160 (talk) 20:04, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Jezebel and 7 Democratic congresspeople also published the full names

• https://jezebel.com/study-incels-are-getting-more-predatory-radicalized-1849574213
• https://trahan.house.gov/uploadedfiles/doj_sanctioned_suicide_letter_final_dec21.pdf 108.44.212.160 (talk) 20:15, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

jezebel has quite low editorial standards so I would be iffy of including them here (and all they do in there is repeat what's already reported in the CCDH report anyways) -- the letter is a primary source, but its the subject of one of the NYTimes article Freedom4U (talk) 20:24, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

I'm just pointing out the volume of media that justifies publishing of the names, including your publishing of the names on a new article. If you include republishings of all the above, the number of re-publishings of top-tier sources like Nytimes, the number of media sources publishing their names reaches the hundreds or more. The person collecting the publishing also included a Yahoo republishing of Gizmodo, so it seems republishigs are relevant. 108.44.212.160 (talk) 20:33, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

I was the one who included the Yahoo republication? It's because the original Gizmodo article isn't online-- potentially they removed it for containing the names. Using Google Search results to claim number of media sources is useless. We need to see the practices of secondary sources from organizations that have a history of good editorial practices, as well as academic sources, particularly when it's regarding someone's names when they're accused of a crime. Most of the Google Search results aren't that. Freedom4U (talk) 20:41, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

You were the one who published the full names Diego Jaoquin Galante and Lamarcus Small on the SS article which you created. About academia, Diego is an author of published academia, which gorillawarfare sort of mentioned in the incel article. might as well include that alias with the full name you published, unless you want to change his alias to suit academic grifting off him. Thing is tho grifting in general through aliases is bad, because the SS article is a matter of life and death for the users and the volume of media which published their full names 108.44.212.160 (talk) 20:50, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Also KVPR published the full names

• https://www.kvpr.org/2022-01-18/disturbing-website-encourages-vulnerable-users-to-die-by-suicide-whats-being-done-about-it 108.44.212.160 (talk) 20:33, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

KVPR is a local radio station. Here & Now is an NPR program from WBUR station (Boston), KBUR is simply replaying it. Using it as evidence of an additional source is like citing a news aggregation site, rather than the original publication. Freedom4U (talk) 20:36, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

I think you are arguing for the sake of arguing. There are a limited number of top-tier sources in the United States, so the ones that aren't top-tier aren't top-tier. You are the one who published the names on a new article that sparked this discussion. You typed the full names and hit the publish button. You defended your choice above in a way that makes sense. I'm only trying to help you out in that respect. There's at least 6-7 top-tier publishings of the full names, numerous mid-tier ones, one arguably academic one, and hundreds if not thousands of republishings of the top-tier sources. 108.44.212.160 (talk) 20:38, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Yes, but I also have to be objective. In particular, I have to give greater weight to academic sources over news media organizations and well edited news organizations over those that publish anything. Using unreliable sources undermines my point, for the same reason I wouldn't use a Daily Mail article to write about a criminal (or anyone really). Freedom4U (talk) 20:45, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

As mentioned earlier, hundreds of sources that list the full names are news outlets. Academia mostly ran interference for Diego by seemingly initially giving Diego a new alias or circulating yet another obscure alias for him as an opportunity to further their careers, he's an author of academia which might be worth mentioning in your article. "Alexander Ash" aka Diego went on a CVE parade around all the CVE orgs tangential to Light Upon Light with the alias. Gorillawarfare sort of mentioned this whole arc in the incel article and criticizes ICSVE for doing so 108.44.212.160 (talk) 20:55, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Anne Speckhard who leads ICSVE later tweeted they were a source on the NYTimes article that names him in full, so seems they had misgivings about the whole alias situation WP is debating whether to emulate or not, including nixing a planned merger with the CVE org that was directly promoting Diego and his alias. 108.44.212.160 (talk) 21:09, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Also given the length of time their names have been on Wikipedia, removing them would be nothing other than running interference for them, SS has tens of thousands of extremely online members, no doubt many are Wikipedia editors. But running interference for what are possibly the largest figures in both the incel and suicide facilitation scene is pretty pathetic. 108.44.212.160 (talk) 16:31, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Please refrain from making personal attacks Trade (talk) 01:32, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Also they aren't going to be arrested, no one gives a crap about cults in the United States unless it's gone on for like a 20 years like NXVIM did. And the latter wasn't obfuscated by an army of extremely online people. Also of note is Lamarcus insisted his forum called him "Master" which was short for "Master of Ashes". The RS said he doesn't let people join for recovery. Clearly it's a death cult which has led to the death of numerous reported on children. Casually browsing archives one can easily see that a significant portion (up to quarter of the initial forum userbase) was teenage girls including a suicidal teenage girl that Lamarcus and Diego put on staff. Casually browsing also finds clear, forum and staff tolerated encouragement of self-identified minor girls to kill themselves. If Wikipedia finds that worthy of running interference for, that wouldn't be a surprise considering how badly it's handled other articles. The vestiges of alt.suicide.holiday (eg on Dalnet) honestly bans encouragement, pacts and method detailing. SS didn't honestly enforced smokescreen rules and had a serial killer worshipper faciliting their pact thread (Diego). Alt.suicide.holiday and SS are not equivalent 108.44.212.160 (talk) 17:01, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

As the name of the founders have been written on Incels i am including that article as part of the BLP incident. --Trade (talk) 20:44, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

Despite usually being one of the most "pro-WP:BLP" people around, I have zero issue with the founders being named, and disagree with some editors' interpretation of policy. WP:BLPCRIME states that we shouldn't suggest that a non-public figure may have committed a crime. Nowhere do we do this. These articles don't mention any alleged crimes. And by our standards, these people count as public figures. They've given interviews to media outlets, including the prominent NYTimes. WP:LOWPROFILE states that Persons who actively seek out media attention are not low-profile, regardless of whether or not they are notable.

WP:BLPNAME is also misapplied. It states:

• the name of a private individual has not been widely disseminated or has been intentionally concealed, such as in certain court cases or occupations, it is often preferable to omit it. That doesn't apply here. Their names have been widely disseminated and haven't been intentionally concealed.
• Consider whether the inclusion of names of living private individuals who are not directly involved in an article's topic adds significant value. These people are "directly involved" with the site, so this again doesn't apply.
• The presumption in favor of privacy is strong in the case of family members of articles' subjects and other loosely involved, otherwise low-profile persons These people aren't "loosely involved". Again doesn't apply.

I really see no policy basis for excluding their names. DFlhb (talk) 10:34, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

Not commenting on your overall conclusion, but not everything you just wrote is entirely correct. They haven't sought media attention, at least not under their real names, their NYTimes interview just consisted of them denying that they were the founders of the site after the NYTimes uncovered their identities and reached out to them. The way the article is written is slightly misleading, because in parts of it it's written as if the founders have said and done things under their real names, but if you check the sources they're actually doing it under their pseudonyms.

There also is a suggestion of criminal activity because we are including that one of them is under criminal investigation. And they are intentionally concealing their names (so their names are concealed in that regard at least) - they operate under their pseudonyms. Tristario (talk) 11:15, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

Fair enough about the NYT; their The Daily was described by another source as an "interview", but it turns out it's just NYT reporters briefly calling both on the phone, and being quickly hung up on. But it appears "Marquis" was indeed forthcoming with the media; see for example this Buzzfeed News piece (where "Marquis", among other things, said he and cofounder “Serge” run the S-S website). DFlhb (talk) 13:38, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

The page was created in May 2018. It concerns a living person, a young lawyer and academic, and a very exposed person in his country, due to his political engagements, which include working with Wikileaks and Julian Assange, defending yellow vests and many opponents to the government of his country, as well as his intellectual work and stance against corruption.

From May 2018 to february 20th 2020, around 20 participants contributed to the page, harmonized it and ensured it respected the Encyclopedia requirements. This was the status of the page on february 20th 2020. It respected the encyclopedia rules:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Juan_Branco&oldid=941967204

On February 2O 2020, [[15]] a former alumni's of Juan Branco alma mater (ENS Ulm), and an esteemed contributor to Wikipedia on the mathematical field, made his first edit on the page. The identity behind this user is Daniel Lazard, whom created his own WP page (which was deleted and after many efforts reestablished)[[16]].

A few days later, he created a first sock puppet, Xlnolanxl, which he then transformed into EdgarAllanFrost. A few months later, he created a last sock puppet, [[17]]. Those two accounts solely intervened on Juan Branco and Juan Branco related pages.

Using his refined knowledge of the encyclopedia rules, and the lack of access for most of English contributors to the content of the French sources he mobilized, Daniel Lazard transformed this page into a purely libellous one.

A consensual page, which had received sixty edits in two years, became a contentious one. These three users alltogether contributed more than a 150 times to both the talk and the main page, as well as debates related to the page, in less than three years.

They systematically withdrew secondary sources containing information which could shed a positive light on the person (his positions at Yale, Max Planck, foreign affairs ministry etc).

The page contains allegations which are unfounded and gravely libellous, including criminal allegations which have been been denied by court decisions. It distorts sources, sometimes invents them (re. his position at the ICC), distributes personal informations.

Recently, an administrator censored this contribution to the talk page, which enumerated the false informations, distorsions, invention of sources, and so forth: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Juan_Branco&diff=prev&oldid=1141233200

It is eloquent that contributions to a talk page are now being deleted by administrators which do not take the time to actually dig into the matter and verify the neutrality of the page, as well as the good use of the sources, and only rely on the formal respect of the rules of this platform.

It is therefore demanded to intervene. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A01:E34:ECB4:51B0:CD7A:FEE5:FA41:4C58 (talk) 10:27, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

Noting that an SPI was filed against EdgarAllanFrost under their old username, and found that the account was unrelated to D.Lazard – dudhhr ^talk _contribs (he/they) 18:45, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

This article was created as part of discrimination activities against Mr. Tamaz Somkhishvili, who has open court cases against City Assembly of Kiev. His connection with criminal groups and especially calling him "thieves in law" is absurd and is not supported by any sources of information and is a huge personal insult. He is a living person businessman, philanthrop with activities in Georgia , EU and Great Britain. He is a citizen of GB as well. In his 65 years he does not have any criminal records in any country. All the articles that supports he Wikipedia page is recently created (2022-2023 years) as mentioned before, for his personal discrimination.

Secondly, non of linked sources justifies his "connections" with Russian mafia bosses Aslan Usoya and Zakhary Kalashov!

Moreover, On December 23, 2019, the Commercial Court of Kyiv ruled to recover jointly and severally from the Department of Economics and Investments of the Kyiv City State Administration, directly the Kyiv City State Administration and the Kyiv City Council, funds in the amount of $24.46 million (671.56 million hryvnias at the time of filing the claim) in favor of Kyiv Terminal LLC ( case No. 910/17647/18). The ultimate beneficiary of Kyiv Terminal is Mr Tamaz Somkhisvili.^[1] — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bobo 1900 (talk • contribs) 07:29, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

We can't be saying someone has committed crime without a conviction per WP:BLPCRIME - and any suggestion of a connection to crime needs strong sources. Baker Pumpkin you need to be very careful when writing about these things Tristario (talk) 09:16, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

there are some parts left in the article hinting his connection with "russian mafia" and should be deleted, also 1 tv channel is not reliable source of information. Mr Tamaz does not have any connections with JSC Tbilaviamsheni, he has a stake in LTD Tbilisi Aviation manufacturing management company (TAM Management) , which does not have any connections with Russian ministry of defense or any company in Russia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TAM_Management Bobo 1900 (talk) 10:19, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

on the page of TAM management Tbilaviamsheni is mentioned as partner company not subsidary or any related https://tammanagement.com/about/partners/. Also there is no any Russian partner or affiliated company mentioned there Bobo 1900 (talk) 10:39, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

IP keeps adding unsourced content and changing sourced date of birth for Chip Cravaack.   –Skywatcher68 (talk) 15:59, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Regarding the birth date: Poorly sourced, that is. I have removed it for now; WP:BLPPRIMARY (to a lesser extent) and WP:BLPPRIVACY (to a greater extent) apply. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 20:08, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

A well meaning IP user came along back on 26 Oct 2021 and vastly expanded this article. Unfortunately the formatting is not up to Wiki standards, and none of the information is sourced. None of the info seems to be contentious though, which is why I'm asking for volunteer help to fix the formatting and sourcing issues. 192.77.12.11 (talk) 08:26, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

It's all unsourced and probably WP:UNDUE. I will probably just revert it Tristario (talk) 22:12, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Riaz Ahmed Gohar Shahi: It can be conclusively proven that this founder of a new religious movement has died, but COI editing has ensured that his status on enwiki remains limited to disappeared. This is a good started to read on this person. Also see, the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Religion/New religious movements work group#Riaz Ahmed Gohar Shahi.

While the case here does make it non-BLP, it is for now being treated as such on enwiki. Please help with how to proceed with this further. Gotitbro (talk) 19:30, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

@TheAafi, Hamza Ali Shah, Iskandar323, Owais Al Qarni, and M.Billoo2000: Inviting WikiProject Islam memebers for a comment on this. Thanks. Gotitbro (talk) 17:43, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

I’m trying to edit Kaitlyn Lawes Wikipedia page because there are errors I noticed on it. She is a curler and I know they are errors because I follow this sport very closely. I would like to make the changes but can’t because the site is protected. The changes I’m trying to make are the following: the current Curling Club is St. Vital CC, it should be Fort Rouge CC. This is the link to the incorrect info https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Vital_Curling_Club this is the link to the info i want the incorrect info replaced https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Rouge_Curling_Club and finally the link to the site the changes need to be made on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaitlyn_Lawes — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ian kerwin (talk • contribs) 04:29, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

@Ian kerwin: Hi there! As you were advised at Wikipedia:Teahouse#Kaitlyn Lawes page, the proper place to make the request is the article's talk page: Talk:Kaitlyn Lawes. If you prefer, you may find it easier to use the Wikipedia:Edit Request Wizard. Thanks, and happy editing! GoingBatty (talk) 04:38, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

I’m trying to edit Kaitlyn Lawes Wikipedia page because there are errors I noticed on it. She is a curler and I know they are errors because I follow this sport very closely. I would like to make the changes but can’t because the site is protected. The changes I’m trying to make are the following: the current Curling Club is St. Vital CC, it should be Fort Rouge CC.

This is the link to the incorrect info https://www.stvitalcurling.ca/

this is the link to the info i want the incorrect info replaced with https://curlfortrouge.ca/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ian kerwin (talk • contribs) 05:47, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

 Done Lard Almighty (talk) 06:20, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

There are some very odd, persistent edits going on with the Mako Komura article, particularly in regards to her marriage with Kei Komuro.

Her marriage to Kei Komuro was not popular in Japan, and a lot of people in Japan strongly dislike her husband: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/25/world/asia/japan-royal-wedding-princess-mako.html

I think someone with that perspective is editing her article, as there are a lot of extra additions to the Mako Komura: Marriage section that are stringing together outside information about happenings with her husband's school and former employers which are not relevant to the article, but taken together, appear to be trying to create impression of a vast conspiracy/web of favors.

A lot of this section of Mako's article feel like someone read a bunch of Japanese tabloids/gossip magazines, translated them into English, and pasted the conspiracy gossip into Mako's article while citing as proof ordinary articles that have absolutely no mention of her or her husband.

"In August 2019, he entered the Fordham law school's JD program for two years (official JD degree program is 3 years for full time students[40][41]) despite the school's policy does not permit any advance credits from LLM program.[42]" - this isn't even true, Fordham's own policy says: "For transfer students admitted from ABA accredited law schools, credit for classes in which the student has earned a “C” or better will be accepted." Fordham is going to take credits from their own law school, and the LLM is part of Fordham's School of Law.

https://www.fordham.edu/info/29784/transfer_and_visiting_programs

For another example, this entire section about a month ago was about how Kei Komura wasn't at his graduation - and another editor had to go in and add a lot of extraneous information about how Komura wasn't present, but was listed as a graduate. Then someone listed how the president of Fordham stepped down after Komura graduated? It's totally not relevant, but strung together, reads like a hit piece implying that the president resigned out of some disgrace/favor after Komura graduated?

"In 2021, the names of degree candidates of Fordham University School of Law were listed in the program for the school's virtual diploma ceremony on 23 May and he was named as a Juris Doctor degree recipient.[48][49] The lists that appear in the booklet were prepared by the registrar prior to 22 May 2021 and do not represent the final lists of graduates, except where stated as conferred.[50] His name is not listed on the recognition page of Commencement for the Class of 2021 at Fordham University.[51][52] On September 2, Joseph M. McShane announced his plan to step down as president of Fordham University after 19 years of serving in June 2022.[53]"

In this part:

"All Kei Komuro's living costs in New York were supported through the Okuno & Partners law firm, while he was studying. Also, his former work place, the largest bank in Japan, MUFG Bank Ltd., is listed as one of the donors and sponsors to Fordham University School of Law.[54] A month before his marriage, on 21 September, MUFG and MUFG Bank, a core banking subsidiary of MUFG, announced an agreement to sell all shares of MUFG Union Bank, N.A., MUFG’s subsidiary owned through MUFG Americas Holdings Corporation, to U.S. Bancorp.[55]"

There's absolutely no citation on Okuno & Partners law firm paying for Komura's the living costs. The former work place as a donation is true, but the sale of the core banking subsidiary - and connecting it to Mako and Komura's marriage - seems wildly out of place.

I think that there's a really strong effort here to create a narrative about backroom favors and corruption done on behalf of Mako's husband - probably ripped straight from Japanese gossip magazines - on this particular article, without citing any actual news articles.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Cyanealamarckii (talk • contribs) 22:11, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

I've cut down a lot of the WP:BLPGOSSIP detail.[18] It is an article about Mako rather than Kei. Others feel free to chop it down some more. Morbidthoughts (talk) 22:55, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

There's a current edit war with the ip address who inserted the previous extraneous detail. For some reason, they want to also remove cited material on the reason why the couple is moving to New York (his graduation from law school and job at a law firm in New York). Morbidthoughts (talk) 22:58, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

@Keivan.f: since you engaged with this ip range over multiple issues the past several weeks. Morbidthoughts (talk) 23:34, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

Surely the correct place to take this now is WP:RFPP? Semi-protection should solve this problem. Hemiauchenia (talk) 23:36, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

It's a specific ip range. Not sure if a semi-protection is appropriate. I have already reported them to EW3.[19] I am also at 3R without a clear BLP exception. Morbidthoughts (talk) 23:41, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

Morbidthoughts, I'm just glad you reported the incident on the administrator's noticeboard because there was no way I could personally handle the IP without violating 3R. Yes, it appears to be a specific IP range, but I can't say for sure if it's the same person. All I know is that the edits to Komuro's article were becoming less and less constructive and clear examples of WP:UNDUE. Keivan.f^Talk 07:37, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

Given the ip range points to Calgary, which I don't think is a hotbed of Japan royalphiles, I think it was the same person. The article has now been semi-protected a month and the ip range has been blocked for 3 months. Morbidthoughts (talk) 18:17, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

Per People Magazine, Heather Dubrow stated on social media her 12 year old child is transgender, previously known as Collette. Not sure how this should be handled given WP:BLPSELFPUB #2 so seeking input. S0091 (talk) 16:28, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

It should be handled by confining the content of Dubrow's biography to the actual subject matter: Dubrow herself, not a non-notable minor. As far as I can see there is no real reason why the biography even needs to name her children, never mind discuss them in any detail. AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:42, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

What Andy says - I don't see why we are naming any of her children in the article. Her husband is notable, so mentioning his name is fine, but it would be sufficient to say that they have four children and leave it at that. Girth Summit _(blether) 16:49, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

I agree, and I went ahead and removed the non-notable kids' names (diff). Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 16:58, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

Thanks all! S0091 (talk) S0091 (talk) 16:59, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

BLPNAME discourages the non notable child from being mentioned Iamreallygoodatcheckers ^talk 07:08, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

Article has a lot of self-sourcing and a major editor has just been block for a legal threat and COI at WP:ANI#Appeal of Wikipedia Image deletion which has a lot of detail about the article. The first two sentences of the lead are "Matthew Daniels is an American academic and human rights scholar.^[1] In the late 1990s through the 2000s, Daniels campaigned against the proposed recognition of same-sex marriage in the United States, which he viewed as a threat to the traditional family." It would be useful to see some independent reliable sources in this article backing up the human rights claims. Doug Weller talk 14:39, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

Doug Weller talk 14:39, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

The claim that is evidenced by footnote 70 is not accurate (I've read the 'interview' linked to in footnote 70) and, to my reading, is potentially libelous. Jeffrey Sachs does not 'evade' repeated questioning about the subject he is quoted as saying 'The scale of issues is very serious in this discussion on both sides.' — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.221.133.255 (talk) 17:46, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

The cited source, this Axios piece, says that Sachs "evaded questions about China's genocide against Uyghurs during an interview last month". Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 19:57, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

This report involves the article about Dan Wagner, a prominent member of the British internet world. Both Talk:Dan Wagner#Request Edits April 2022 and Talk:Dan Wagner#RfC for Dan Wagner Updates were closed due to opposition by User: Scope creep, who incorrectly informed editors the matters had previously been decided, Editors engaged in a discussion with him to show him this was not the case. Talk:Dan Wagner#Controversial closing of rfc Scope creep has now had a chance to closely review the three requests, one at a time, and has left comments on two of the three that these are valid requests, not previously discussed on Talk. See the three individual requests and responses in Talk:Dan Wagner#Controversial closing of rfc. These requests concern adding that Wagner was the CEO of two publicly-traded companies. It’s a rather important part of his biography.

Scope creep has not left a note about the third request, but it has been several weeks since they were given the opportunity to satisfy themselves that the request had not previously been decided and that it isn’t Promo. Perhaps they didn’t bother to leave a comment because it simply involves adding well-cited sentences to replace a sentence that currently has no citation.

As this matter has now been dragging on for 11 months, and it involves rather elaborate discussions across three different sections on Talk, I was wondering if an editor[s] here would review and implement the three now unopposed edits, if they are also satisfied?

As you might surmise by my use of the request edit process, I have a disclosed conflict of interest as a paid editor. Therefore, I am not going to make direct edits to the article myself. I could go through the request edit process again, but it does not seem typical to use this process to ask an editor to review three previous contentious Talk sections to explain why the same denied requests from 11 months ago are being reposted. The BLP noticeboard seems to me a more appropriate forum. I hope that is OK. Thanks. W12SW77 (talk) 18:25, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

I took a quick scan through the talk page, and found it all to be just as confusing as this post here. There is a lot of talk about whether consensus was previously achieved or not, but all that does is obscure whatever it is that this is all about. I'm guessing that the problem is that you want to add stuff like this: "In 2017, Wagner founded mobile commerce platform Rezolve. Under Wagner, Rezolve developed a tool that allowed smartphone users to scan items in print and TV ads and purchase them, or request more information. The Financial Times noted Rezolve’s function was similar to PowaTag, but Wagner told Business Insider he didn't use IP that didn’t belong to him. In 2021, Wagner took Rezolve public in a merger with Armada Acquisition Corporation, a financial technology SPAC, in a $2 billion deal."

Now there are several problems with that, with the most glaring being the promotional tone. Wikipedia is not a place to advertise a company's products, and this totally reads like an ad. It's very unencyclopedic in both tone, content, and formality. For example, encyclopedias are so formal that we don't use contractions. As Scope Creep said, it would probably be acceptable if you whittle out all the fluff and just list the basic facts, but, written like that, you will never gain consensus for its inclusion, and I'm guessing your other requests have similar problems.

That said, this is not the proper place to bring issues of this nature. This board is specifically to deal with BLP policy and violations, which is more geared toward protecting the rights of the people we write about. The proper way to deal with these situations is to discuss it on the talk page, and discuss, discuss, discuss. You shoot yourself in the foot by getting sidetracked onto all these irrelevant tangents, such as whether or not consensus was previously achieved. Consensus is not written in stone, and it can always change, so those points are moot and just obscuring what it is you really want (which I'm still unsure of). If discussions don't work, you can always ask for a third opinion, or do another RFC. If that doesn't work, then you can try WP:DRN for mediation, and if all else fails you can take it to arbitration as a last resort. But I recommend exhausting all other options before getting to ARBCOM, because that has a funny way of backfiring right in your face. But first, you have to have clear, coherent, and cogent discussions on the talk page so that outsiders (like me) will be able to read them and clearly understand what the dispute is all about, and that hasn't been done yet. There is too much to distract from the real issues there for an outsider to make sense of. I hope that helps, and good luck. Zaereth (talk) 20:50, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

I got a ping. What was the third edit request content. I can't see it. That last seemed ok, it was free of promo. scope_creep^Talk 21:43, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

Rachel Campos-Duffy was not from Wausau, Wisconsin; She was not born there nor was she educated there, nor did she have a career there. She lived in Wausau later in life with her husband. Please transfer this biography to her city of birth or childhood or career. Gloria Kannenberg

Source: Wikipedia article on Rachel Campos-Duffy. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2003:C3:9712:CF00:A9B5:5C0B:89A5:4A81 (talk) 09:27, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

The Wikipedia article on Rachel Campos-Duffy makes it clear where she was born etc so I don't see a problem there. If you're referring to Wausau, Wisconsin#Notable people, I have no comment on whether she belongs but there's no requirement that a person is born there to be listed. (Although that list is frankly a mess as lists often are since it lacks any sources.) The requirements are sort of explained at WP:SOURCELIST. As for the career claim, that doesn't seem accurate. From what I can tell, she still lives there now during what is arguably the most significant part of the career. [20] [21] [22] I assume the show she is co-hosting isn't filmed in Wausau or anywhere nearby so she is commuting long distance but this isn't that different from her husband Sean Duffy who would still reasonably be described as being from Wausau and not D.C. from 2013 during his congressional career. As shown by my sources at least one Wausau paper seems to agree that Rachel Campos-Duffy was from Wausau in 2021. Nil Einne (talk) 12:19, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

In the Talk:April Mullen tab of the person's biography, there are unfounded and inflammatory claims against the subject of the article April Mullen which have no reputable source. They should be taken down immediately. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jcp182 (talk • contribs)

I've removed it from the talk page. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 18:35, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

A paragraph in the article about Tim Parker does not follow the actual text of the source provided, creating an NPOV issue. I have listed the exact changes needed to address this on the article’s Talk page, along with sourcing to support these assertions Riffsvill (talk) 18:13, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

That's just sourced to a primary source, so that sentence should be removed outright (it could be included again with a secondary source and appropriate wording). And second, that section is primarily about Post Office Ltd, not Parker, so I think it should be moved to the career section (and could possibly be reduced in size) unless content can be added about how that scandal more directly relates to Parker Tristario (talk) 22:04, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Hello!

What else does this draft page need to be published?

draft - Joel Naukkarinen (Finnish rower)

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Draft:Joel_Naukkarinen&oldid=prev&diff=1142344306

Please let me know what can be improved and how it can be published.

Thank you! Khadiganour (talk) 21:22, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

This is not really what this noticeboard is for, so your best bet is to continue through the creation process and take the advice of those who are reviewing the draft. That said, I will however give you a few small pieces of advice. First, it doesn't read much like an encyclopedia article but more like a simple timeline of events. For comparison, check out some other articles on athletes, like Don Meredith, for example. Do you notice the differences, like how things are written out in paragraphs and it's not just a simple timeline? That's how an encyclopedia article should be written, and it's much easier for the reader to follow that way. Then, you may want to trim down some of the WP:PUFFERY. By that, I mean statements like, "Naukkarinen is Finland's most successful indoor rower." Reader's don't like to be told what they should think, so it's best to avoid such puffery. Instead of telling me he is the most successful, it's far better to just show me.

That leads to references. My goodness, you have way, way too many references for that one line! Too many citations raise a big red-flag for WP:SYNTHESIS. Nobody should need that many references for a single sentence, and it makes people wonder if those citations all support the sentence, or just a single word from each. One citation is usually enough. Maybe two or three for lines that are likely to be challenged, but any more is unnecessary at best.

Much of the article has that same problem. Way too many citations for some things and absolutely none for others. Finally, and this pertains to WP:BLP policy, you should really avoid naming people who are not notable enough to have their own articles. Try to respect the rights of people who are not public figures. I hope that helps, and good luck. Zaereth (talk) 22:14, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for taking the time to share all the tips and feedback. It's very much appreciated. It is the most solid feedback I've had for this draft. Thank you. Thank you. Khadiganour (talk) 14:53, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Hi there. There is an ongoing discussion on Talk:Asmongold whether publishing the subject's first & last name is a violation of WP:BLPPRIVACY. There a small numbers of reliable sources that publish his name, but there is contention of whether this qualifies as public information. Your input would be appreciated. Skipple ☎ 04:16, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

• @Skipple: I've moved this thread from WT:BLP to WP:BLPN. Levivich (talk) 03:28, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

This revision is pretty problematic. I've insta-reverted it, but it presents both libel and safety concerns. Feoffer (talk) 11:27, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Annie Machon (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

The article Annie Machon mentions her as a 9/11 truther, and refers to an article from The New Statesman, written by Brendan O'Neill in 2006, which in my opinion, is selectively quoting, as further down the source article O'Neill himself mentions Machon was 'uncomfortable' with some of Shayler's opinions regarding this topic.

The WP:BLP policy mentions: "Do not label people with contentious labels, loaded language, or terms that lack precision, unless a person is commonly described that way in reliable sources."

I feel that Machon being labelled as a '9/11 truther' based only on a single (heavily opinionised) article from 2006 (17 years ago!), as if that is the defining characteristic of her work, is contentious. After her MI5 period, she became a media commentator, author, and international public speaker. I also don't feel like she is 'commonly described' as a '9/11 truther' in reliable sources, which the WP:BLP policy seems to require.

The 9/11 mention might also violate WP:NPOV as encyclopaedia articles require a neutral point of view.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Aphotick (talk • contribs) 15:09, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

The article states

In a 2006 interview with New Statesman magazine, Machon and Shayler both discussed their roles in the 9/11 truth movement, and she was quoted as saying, "The Pentagon's anti-missile defence system would definitely have picked up and dealt with a commercial airliner. We can only assume that whatever hit the Pentagon was sending a friendly signal. A missile fired by a US military plane would have sent a friendly signal."

These are Machon's own words. If you can come up with a later source where she disavows that view, you can add it. Otherwise, I think the single mention of her involvement in the 9/11 Truth Movement (without actually calling her a Truther) is fair and balanced. Lard Almighty (talk) 15:18, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

This specific New Statesman article is WP:RSOPINION. Also see [23]. Is there stronger coverage out there to justify the label "vocal member of the 9/11 truth movement" in the lead? Morbidthoughts (talk) 18:22, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

It doesn't call her a member of the Truth Movement anywhere, vocal or otherwise. It talks about her involvement in the Truth Movement (once, not in the lead) and quotes her own words as reported in a WP:RS. It is not the author of the piece's opinion; it is Machon's own words being quoted. Lard Almighty (talk) 19:05, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

I'm talking about this line that the OP removed.[24] Morbidthoughts (talk) 21:26, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Hi! Yes, that's a good point, and probably the main issue I have with the source. Reading the New Statesman article it comes across as opinionised, and WP:RSOPINION.

Also, I've just added (with a source to an article by the Daily Mail) that in January 2007 (not too long after the New Statesman article was published), she and David Shayler split up, and in that article it's mentioned that they split apart and after that: "She said she supported some but not all of his views on that subject but quickly added that the missile theory was something "David has been researching"."

So to me it seems the missile theory was something David was researching, and that she didn't agree with all his views on the subject. Aphotick (talk) 11:30, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

The Daily Mail is not a reliable source so I have removed your addition. The rest of what you say is original research. She mentioned the missile theory, in her own words, in the NS article. Are you saying she didn't really believe it and was only parroting what Shayler told her to say? Again, that is original research. What is quoted, directly from her, is not the magazine's opinion; it's hers. Lard Almighty (talk) 11:40, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

If you read the article it's definitely the case that Shayler was way more extreme in his views on this. Also why did you place that sentence of 'vocal 9/11 truther' placed back in the lede? Other than this NS opinion piece, was she a 'vocal 9/11 truther'? I don't think we can claim that. What if we have it like it was before, with it removed from the lede paragraph, but keep it in further down? You mentioned yourself: 'Otherwise, I think the single mention of her involvement in the 9/11 Truth Movement (without actually calling her a Truther) is fair and balanced.' So let's keep it then at a single mention? Now there's 2 and that seems excessive. Aphotick (talk) 11:48, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Agree. I didn't realise I was readding it when I removed the DM reference. I have removed it again. Lard Almighty (talk) 13:04, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

No problem :) Can happen to all of us. Thanks. Aphotick (talk) 13:10, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

A biog based largely on his publisher's webpage serving only to promote the subject's book. I can see nothing that makes him notable. I will tag soon. Any comments welcome. Cheers. Thelisteninghand (talk) 16:41, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

I saw this article at WP:AFD. I've done a first pass, but I think there are tabloid, safety, privacy and crime related issues that could do with attention. More eyes on this article would be good.

WP:CANVASS rules almost prevented me from posting this, of course I don't wish to canvass AFD voters, but I think the safety/crime/privacy issues are more important than anyone thinking I'm canvassing. With that in mind, I am consciously trying to be neutral and avoid commentary here on notability. CT55555(talk) 17:10, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

The article reads like a collection of sensationalist stories. I'm not sure what approach to take here though, since it seems that's mainly the kind of thing she's received coverage for Tristario (talk) 22:42, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I was struggling with that issue. CT55555(talk) 23:06, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Hello,

Very odd situation. This morning, I added an edit to the Wikipedia entry for Fearne Cotton.

The article originally stated that she had been in a relationship with a male called Ian Watkins.

I added context - already evidenced in the cited sources - which stated that Ian Watkins was a convicted sex offender (child victims). Allegations in relation to this activity were made in 2008, and the year long relationship in question was 2005-2006.

Therefore in my opinion this addition was accurate, relevant and appropriately sourced.

Almost immediately, the amendment was removed, then over and over again, by different users.

I was advised to create a 'talk' page, which I did, but then another user removed the reference to the relationship entirely, and edit locked the page.

My issues are as follows -

1 - my additions were relevant, factual and of interest. They add insight into the personality and history of a fairly anodyne and bland UK c list celebrity.

2 - the speed in which the edits were removed and the page was locked indicates that the page was being 'monitored', and the subsequent actions taken - removing the entire section - indicate that the edits were made by individuals with a vested interest in removing the content - paid reputarion managers. This calls into question the validity of all edits made by these individuals.

I am at a loss, I wasn't particularly bothered before but now this strikes me as being both unfair and bad practice on a peer maintained site, and therefore request help from confirmed independent parties to resolve the issue. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wearethemissile (talk • contribs) 11:16, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

It should be noted that this editor has alleged that myself, the two other editors who reverted his/her additions, and the admin who semi-protected the article for BLP violations are guilty of a conflict of interest as we are being paid to manage Fearne Cotton's reputation. Hmmmm 10mmsocket (talk) 11:36, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

What should also be pointed out is that this editor put the same content into the article twice as an IP 2a04:4a43:550f:d18c::11fe:6096 (talk · contribs · WHOIS) before doing it twice as a newly registered account. I regularly monitor the activity of new users. It's very likely as they have previously edited the article, that one of the other editors has it on their watch list. So it's not unusual behaviour for edits to be spotted by multiple people and reverted. It's the way Wikipedia works, it's not a secret cabal of vested interests being paid to stomp on new users. 10mmsocket (talk) 11:44, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

@Wearethemissile Looking at the source you used, it does not support the assertion that Watkins had been convicted before Cotton began dating him. Given the context of the cited article, including that fact about Watkins would imply that Cotton was aware of his activities. I agree with the removal of the text, on the grounds that is inappropriate to mention in that fashion in any biography, but especially the biography of a living person. So, in the context of this BLPN report, I endorse semi-protection by Favonian to prevent insertion of undue material into a BLP.

As to the speed of the removal, not only is the Fearne Cotton article a high-profile, high-traffic article, so many experienced editors have it on their watchlists, but also many experienced editors monitor the activity of new users, as mentioned above. So, I agree with 10mmsocket that the reverts were routine, in order, and not indicative of a conflict of interest. An allegation of COI against another editor is serious and should be avoided unless you have more substantial evidence than that they reverted your edit; baid-faith allegations are treated as personal attacks. —C.Fred (talk) 11:56, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

fair enough, thank you. I think that rather than removing the reference to the relationship on its entirety, perhaps a more accurate sentence would be... 'Watkins was later convicted of X.'.

And I retract the implication of a paid Coi, having looked at 10mmsocket's profile, there is no indication of that. Apologies, although the 3 edits rule appears to have been circumvented.

I still believe the addition in relation to Watkins is valid, albeit with a rewrite, which is what I believe guidance advises. Wearethemissile (talk) 12:49, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

@10mmsocket With respect to Wearethemissile and the IP being the same editor, here is where Wearethemissile acknowledged that they made the IP edits. —C.Fred (talk) 12:01, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

I think the guidance in WP:GUILT supports this removal Tristario (talk) 12:22, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

If the crux of the dispute is this revert, then I endorse 10mmsocket's actions - material must not be added to an article when it only cites the Daily Mirror. Please read WP:BLPSOURCES very carefully, specifically "contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced should be removed immediately and without discussion" . The information was removed quickly because it is borderline libellous and opens up Wikipedia to the threat of legal action, which is an absolute no-no - specifically, we don't have any sources that explains why Ian Watkins' relationship with Fearne Cotton is important and significant for a global encyclopedia, nor do we have anything from a mainstream broadsheet source that explains how their relationship was significant for his later criminal convictions. Without these, the content cannot stand. I also endorse Favonian's protection of the article. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 13:27, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

The article on Ian Watkins already thoroughly explains the problems he had. If you @Wearethemissile: still think something is missing, you are welcome to add it there (with the relevant sources of course). Adding a note about Ian Watkins' crimes in an article about a person he dated three years before his conviction, and that nothing makes anybody think she was aware of, seems to me to be more of a risk to cast a dubious light on Fearne Cotton rather than a kind of whitewashing. To be clear, I am not implying that this was your intention, but this may be an unintended outcome. --DoebLoggs (talk) 13:31, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Thanks all.

@DoebLoggsIn response to your advice, I opened a talk page to discuss the issue and possible additions to the page. In response, a paragraph was deleted from the original article by @10mmsocket, and then a sarcastic 'whoopee' reply which didn't address any of my points was added to the talk page.

That is what has really rankled. My original edit to the article - which was entirely accurate - introduced an additional point of interest which others might not be aware of. However, thanks to @10mmsocket, Wikipedia no longer carries a current record of that relationship having occurred.

I will find an additional, acceptable source citing their relationship (not daily mirror, which is apparently unacceptable) and resubmit. Wearethemissile (talk) 13:50, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

I don't know if this the right place or if I should be doing this but can someone check the Mitch McConnell talk page. I'm trying to report a topic on there. The topic named "Corruption." I feel that it is violating the Wikipedia policy on the biographies of living persons. Cwater1 (talk) 06:14, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Is it properly sourced? Does WP:Public figure cover it? -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 06:29, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

It's just a misguided person. It's gone now. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 06:32, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

I saw it was from an IP address. I just thought I could report it since the topic didn't seem right. Cwater1 (talk) 06:46, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

You did nothing wrong. In the future, such comments that are just disruptive or violate WP:NOTFORUM can often be deleted on sight with an edit summary that explains the reason. If they are obviously disruptive, no edit summary is necessary. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 16:01, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

There is a discussion on the Tucker Carlson talk page related both the article length[25] an a proposal to split the article [26]. I'm concerned that the current article has a lot of poorly written sections and content that could be cut rather than justifying splitting the article into subtopics. I think the assessment of uninvolved editors would be helpful here. Springee (talk) 03:28, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

A problem with the desire to "cut" content is that it has usually involved what appears to be whitewashing, so that option should be viewed with a bit of skepticism. Not that some cutting doesn't need to be done occasionally, but spinning off huge topics that create an undue weight problem is standard procedure.

There are 193,000 bytes of content that can easily be spun off properly, and that would resolve the (bogus, IMHO) complaints about article size. It would then be easier to focus on improving what's left. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 03:36, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

I am confused as to how someone who is just an entertainer on television has their views covered so extensively and treated with such authority in both reliable sources and an encyclopedia. Surely not every vote he has cast in Presidential elections is DUE (nor are they verifiable, secret ballot and all that). Same with views, yes he said it and yeah someone felt the need to cover it but way too much recentism.

For someone with over 20 years on cable news, abortion is the one of the few issues that covers a period beyond Trump presidency. WP:10YEAR is good guidance and the more subjective parts of the article should be looked at for what was a one day newstory vs what has continuous coverage.

So yes, the article should be split but pruning should be a higher priority, so the content can be reviewed as a whole prior to splitting.

Also, what's with last sentence in lead? Either those issues are important enough to be spelled out or they aren't. Burying them behind others with five citations says they aren't.Slywriter (talk) 04:26, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

About the last sentence of the lede: perhaps it means there are actually too many false or misleading statements that have been made by Carlson to be spelled out in the lede, and are better expanded upon in the body. Cheers. 98.155.8.5 (talk) 04:38, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

I made my comment on the Carlson talk page, but what has been happening on pages like people like Carlson - where the press's opinion of these people is generally negative (so that would include people like Trump, MTG, Boebart, etc.), is that WP editors tend to want to include every negative element that can be reliably sourced to an RS. Instead, we should be focusing on the larger picture, not worry about tiny details that may get a burst of coverage, but the ones that remain part of the perception of the person over a long period of time. The current approach often leads to excessive and unnecessary quoting. This is not at all whitewashing as long as the article still includes these broader views on the person that have been widely shared among sources. Masem (t) 04:53, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

I tend to agree. The issue is it's pretty damn close to impossible to correct this. Iamreallygoodatcheckers ^talk 04:59, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

It is absolutely possible but 1) all editors involved need to be aware that its happened, and 2) that they all agree that trimming back on minor aspects and focusing on the ones widely shared among sources is not whitewashing or attempting to flip such an article, but instead all about working to keep the length appropriate as well as addressing neutrality and tone that apply to all BLP articles. We can 100% write about the amount of criticism that Tucker's gotten regarding his reporting style and he hanging-on to conspiracy theories, etc - maybe just not every single instance. Masem (t) 05:04, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

I think that starting from the premise that the press's opinion of these people is generally negative is a fairly dangerous thing to say. Our responsibility as an encyclopedia is to WP:STICKTOTHESOURCE; obviously, every editor has their own opinions about the topics we edit, but to say that coverage as a whole is "too negative" is to essentially assert your own opinion as fact - even if it's not intentional, it risks running afoul of WP:WGW, because the premise of your approach to the article is that most or all of the sources are biased and must be corrected somehow. When one source is biased, we can attribute and weigh for that bias; when there's a clearly-defined subsection of sources that are biased, we can be careful not to give that section too much weight. But when you assert that essentially all sources on a subject are biased (outside of those few unambiguously aligned with the article's subject), all you're really doing is asserting your own biases. At the end of the day our balance, perspective, and due weight have to come from the sources and not editors' personal opinions that a topic ought to be getting covered differently. --Aquillion (talk) 05:23, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Wow! I couldn't have said it better. You nailed why this thinking leads to subtle political POV whitewashing. It isn't a deliberate thing, but it's happening all the time whenever it's proposed that a lot of content should be cut because an article is supposedly too large. BS. We are "not paper."

Size is not a real issue. This building can expand infinitely. We can spin off excess content into new sub-articles. Follow WP:Preserve.

It is the sources that tell us what, why, and how much to cover a subject. We are to mirror them, biases and all, and we better not neuter or neutralize those biases. We'd better not fuck around and forget that NPOV is primarily about editors editing neutrally, not shaping content into their imagined "ideal article." If the reality painted by RS is crooked as hell, then the article should also be crooked as hell, just as crooked as the reporting from RS. The due balance leans that way, and we should show it by allowing the article to lean that way.

Our only redemption and safeguard from then driving off a cliff is that we only use reliable sources. They keep us in check so we remain a mainstream, not extreme left or right, encyclopedia. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 06:25, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Yes, very much in agreement on this. I prefer inclusionism over deletionism, and think it's fine and actually preferable to cover topics in-depth, then spin-off new related articles when necessary. Cheers. 98.155.8.5 (talk) 07:46, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

It is a legitimate concern. Compare how Reason covered the recent 6 Jan video releases vs others and how Reason was both critical of Carlson and sources who covered him. [27] Much of the media is clearly partisan. Outrage stories are often quick and easy to produce while getting those clicks that are important to advertisers. We need to avoid carrying that partisan tone and opinion over while holding on to the actual facts. Springee (talk) 11:41, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

I mean, as an editor whose priors (I'm going out on limb here) aligns more with Reason than the other sources you're talking about, naturally you'd feel Reason's coverage is more even-handed; but it's important not to let that sort of bias cloud our thinking. The alternative, which seems more reasonable to me given the weight of sources, is that at least large swaths of the rest of the media largely reported the facts as they stood, whereas Reason (as an outlet avowedly devoted to advocacy itself) put its finger on the scale and added whatever spin or additional weight to irrelevant aspects that it felt was necessary to produce something that aligned better with its goal of advancing its politics. Now, obviously I have my own priors just like you, so it's going to be a lot easier for me to dismiss Reason's coverage as an outlier - but that's why we rely on the preponderance of sources, because nobody (and no source) is completely free of bias. When editors start to say "ah, only Reason knows the truth, the rest of the media landscape is biased" I think that that risks making articles that are inordinately governed by editors' priors rather than what the sources as a whole actually say. --Aquillion (talk) 19:19, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

No matter what type of praise or criticism there is of a person from the press, our coverage must remain neutral, impartial, and disinterested, meaning we absolutely cannot take up the mantle that the press sets out about coverage. That doesn't mean we can't present negative information about a person which floods the press (that's meeting UNDUE), and in some cases, in Wikivoice, but the overall tone of the article cannot be demeaning, critical, or otherwise taking a stance in Wikivoice. I hate to keep bringing it up but we have articles of BLP that, when you compare them to our Wikipedia articles, are "worse than Hilter" based on tone and style. The Hilter articles is a strong example of how to incorporate the massive amount of negative information about him while still keeping a neutral, professional tone.

We need editors to think more from the 60,000ft level, and not in the weeds of all the current sources. Look for narrative trends instead of just every item that pops up. Understand the nature and relationship of the media to the people they are covering, and thus focus on topics that are routinely brought up by a diverse array of sources rather than tiny issued raised by one or two reporters. Think about what will be important 10 years down the road, since we're not a newspaper and shouldn't be covering these BLP to that extreme depth just based on news. This does mean that we have to write past the ideological bias that most mainstream sources have presently, even if that's the only tone they ever take with a BLP. Doesn't mean sources are no longer unreliable, simply that we should focus on clear objective facts in Wikivocie (eg "Tucker is a on-air personality at Fox News" vs anything else which needs to be incorporated carefully or with attribution such as saying "Most media sources describe Tucker as a liar", rather than "Tucker is a liar."

Editors that cannot or refuse to look from this 60,000ft are the ones that cause these articles to bloat out. They want to capture every tree, ignoring the forest around them. The inability to look at the bigger picture to do things like trimming instead of splitting here is what is harmful. Masem (t) 13:35, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Again, though, your interpretation of the sources is through the lens of your priors. In practice, whether you recognize it or not, the position you're taking here means that you're framing facts you disagree with as mere praise or criticism, and asserting that coverage is not impartial or disinterested based on nothing, as far as I can tell, beyond personal skepticism of what it's saying. Those are not things we can use to govern article content. I'm all for minimizing the use of labeled opinion pieces, or for leaving out things that have insufficient coverage, but if multiple high-quality sources say eg. "this commentator is a leading voice of the far-right", we have to treat that as the fact that they do, we can't omit it just because Masem disagrees and thinks the entire media is biased. You say you want the impartial 60,000 ft view, but that impartial view requires summarizing the sources as they currently exist - not the sources as you personally wish they existed. That means that when something appears repeatedly, in the article voice and with high intensity, across a wide range of high-quality sources, then yes, it belongs in the article. Maybe your implicit skepticism is correct and ten years down the road they will all change their tune, but WP:CRYSTALBALL means that we have to reflect the sources as they are today, not based on your speculation that they'll all retract the points you disagree with at some point in the future. (And while I wouldn't usually bring up old disputes... since you're essentially asserting that you're an expert at identifying broad bias across the entire media landscape, from sources who you assert will change their tune ten years down the line, I do have to point out that the first article you really brought this skepticism of the sources and confidence that they were all biased to bear on was the one once titled Gamergate controversy, which is conveniently nearing its ten-year anniversary itself. You only need to look at its current title to find out how the sourcing evolved in that case. When making sweeping claims that the entire media landscape is biased, you should keep Cromwell's rule in mind and at least consider the possibility that the bias is yours.) Regarding Hitler, since you praise that article so often: Naturally one of the highest-profile articles in the encyclopedia is going to be more polished, but the Holocaust is highlighted at the end of the first paragraph of the lead, the second paragraph describes him as a totalitarian dictator in the article voice, and the final paragraph unambiguously describes him as having a racist ideology in the article voice. The last two in particular are, to my eyes, the sorts of things you usually try to remove from current articles - is there any current politician who you would support describing as holding a racist ideology in the article voice of the lead? If you think noting the fact that a politician lies unusually often or that someone is a leader of the far-right or whatever is more negative than those (in contexts, of course, where sources support it being an uncontested fact and a significant part of their notability), then I don't know what to tell you. --Aquillion (talk) 19:19, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

The biggest factor that we lack direct policy about but really needs it is about recentism. When events regarding a topic are occurring in real time and there is still no clear picture, we should be wary of accepting a near universal viewpoint from the media as wikivoice. We can said "so and so is widely considered a racist" instead of "so and so is a racist", we still cover what is due but with the necessary dispassionate and impartional tone. Taking up the ten year mantle implies that once the event has been covered by the dust of the passage of time, we can then consider the equivalent claims from a large number of sources as fact than opinion. It might not take ten years ... the GG situation is an example that after it tailed off a few years after it started, there was firm widespread agreement it wasn't a movement. Or talking of Holter, we have 8 decades since anything happened with him, coupled with hundreds of academic works that have justified his place in history. But key on his article is the tone...building the kede from objective statements to more subjective ones, rather than starting with the subjective ones. That's a neutral, dispassionate tone that still leaves the reader understanding how "bad" he was.

Thats why articles like Tucker's are a problem because editors have ignored RECENTISM, which isn't policy but has to go hand in hand with NOTNEWS. If anything, we need DUE to reflect that we put more weight on sources and other points of inclusion years down the road than those written during the event.

Also it needs to said that YESPOV ecisrs...we are not beholden to accept what is published by a RS is necessary something we can repeat inwikivoice, and editors have the smarts and capability to know when N Rs piece is engaging in bias that we can't directly repeat. Masem (t) 20:22, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

We have a guideline for this: WP:Words to watch, and specifically WP:LABEL. You're definitely correct on WP:RECENTISM and WP:NOTNEWS, but that's a very broad problem that affects every aspect of the project. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 00:55, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

In any situation like this, I'm pretty much always in favor of removing all but the most prominent examples and replacing them with a general summary. For this article, take Tucker Carlson#Immigration and race for example. The first paragraph does what it needs to do. It provides the basics on his views, and it provides some of the commentary from reliable sources (I'd trim some of the quotes in favor of additional summarizing of the sources, but that's a separate issue). But then look at the rest of that subsection. There are twelve level four headings, some of which are only a few sentences. Nearly all of that can and should be replaced with a few paragraphs that summarize the gist of these controversies. Maybe separate level four headings could be retained for great replacement and for Islamophobia. This problem exists throughout the article, and I think it can be brought down to a reasonable size just by fixing this. I'd be glad to help fix it myself if there was a mandate to do so without causing an edit war. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 17:44, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

• Springee, have you raised this specific concern on the article talk page? The discussions you linked are about WP:LENGTH which is normally addressed by splitting into subarticles, and if something is "poorly written" then it should simply be rewritten. Could you list some of the passages you're concerned about and explain why they should be removed entirely? Uninvolved editors will be better able to provide feedback if you can clearly articulate what it is that you're proposing. –dlthewave ☎ 11:07, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

  Dlthewave, I think you are well aware of the talk page discussion. My concern is the article is stuffed with a laundry list of outrage of the week content and editors have consistently refused to trim things down or put it in a proper summary format. This matter is to get involved eyes on the topic rather than the same editors who feel every bit of content is obviously precious to the topic. I would be happy to try to trim it down but recent reverts have suggested no trimming will be acceptable. Springee (talk) 11:37, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

I agree with Masem here. Before you split an article of any time, you should be pretty damn sure there's no way to condense it down. The reality is we're not paper, yes, but human attention spans aren't superhuman, either, and conciseness is a virtue. A meandering Tucker Carlson article that spends paragraphs on whatever outrageous stuff he talked about last week is not actually helping readers, and beyond that editor discretion about what to spin off is invariably going to lead to POV issues, either in coatracks based on how the subarticle is phrased, or just splitting editor conflicts over content across more articles with less traffic. Focusing on the quality of the article itself is a much better idea. Here's some free suggestions:

• An appearance on Dancing with the Stars doesn't deserve 100 words.
• A handy way of seeing which controversies or actions merit inclusion is to see if the article actually gives any context for why it matters. The paragraph about Carlson republishing an old video of Obama around the election? The article doesn't tell me why that matters. If it can't be justified, it's probably just routine news that doesn't deserve mention.
• If a controversy didn't affect his show directly (say, advertisers pulled out or something got cancelled or similar) I think it makes more sense to mention it in his political views section, and have the media career section be a more general overview of the arc of his career before drilling down to its contents and his views.

Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 19:59, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

• Good gravy, that is one hard article to read. It reminds me of a draft recently brought to this page for review, Draft:Joel Naukkarinen (somewhere a few sections up). What you have here is an article which is basically a timeline of everything this guy has ever done or said, which is more boring and painful than trying to read the Federal Tax Code. A great example of "more is less". I'll give the same advice here as I did up there. Check out other articles on other people and subjects, like Don Meredith for example. That's how an encyclopedia article should be written, and a great example of "less is more". We don't list everything he's ever done or said. It's just a really good summary of this person's life and career, it's coherent, and flows like a dream. Whatever people are worried about being "whitewashed" from the article, if you look past the individual trees and see the forest, you may notice that whitewashing can be just as easily accomplished by making an article dull, monotonous and unreadable. (See: Obfuscation) All an encyclopedia needs is a summary. Zaereth (talk) 19:55, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

I included information on Kashim Shettima's page with a source verifying the information, but it was repeatedly removed by AbdulOlu for no reason. I suspect the user AbdulOlu is intimately related to the said politician. He or she should give a reason why the information was removed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Advacheck princess (talk • contribs) 18:35, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

The source you added in this edit does not make the claim you're listing; it merely reports that other news outlets had made that claim. That is not sufficient sourcing for a biography of a living person. --Nat Gertler (talk) 18:45, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

Did you read the article at all? "According to local news reports, Sokoto was arrested over the weekend along with a “serving military personnel” member at the official compound of the Borno State governor in Abuja.

Borno is the northeastern Nigerian state whose capital, Maiduguri, is the birthplace and spiritual home of the Boko Haram group.

Days after Sokoto’s arrest, Nigerian news reports raised questions over the controversies surrounding his apprehension, notably reports that Borno state governor, Kashim Shettima, was harbouring the suspected Boko Haram member at his official Abuja lodge."

It does make the claim. Advacheck princess (talk) 18:51, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I read that. Did you? When someone says "According to Baron Munchausen, the moon is made of cheese," the speaker is not claiming that the moon is made of cheese. They're just telling you that that is what the Baron said. The article does not make the claim that you cite, and anyone who removed it was properly editing. --Nat Gertler (talk) 19:03, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

How else were they supposed to report news that was not local news? They are a secondary news source. Are you kidding me? Are we seriously having this conversation? Info sources are not unreliable solely on account of being secondary. Did you even google to confirm the veracity of the claim or were you more concerned with issuing a rebuttal. In any case, I swapped the source to a local Nigerian one and your supercilious cohort still deleted the amendment. The information is true. It might be unpleasant, but it happened. Advacheck princess (talk) 19:20, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

You have now had this edit reverted by four different users, all of whom have made thousands of Wikipedia edits. When you are being repeatedly reverted by experienced users, you need to build consensus for your proposed edit on the article talkpage rather than keep trying to reintroduce it. The most recent reversion argued that your source is not reliable, so you should either find a more reliable source or demonstrate that the Nigerian Daily Post is in fact reliable. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 19:51, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

They are a reliable source for the statement they made, but the statement they made is not the statement you put forth. I am not kidding you. I am seriously having this conversation; I won't judge whether you are. I had zero need to verify the veracity of the claim, as that was not the matter you brought here -- you came here (to an inappropriate noticeboard) to cast aspersions on an editor (including via misinformation; your claim that he has "repeatedly removed" said information faces the fact that your account only exists since yesterday, and in all that time that editor has only done one edit to the article) and to complain about not having been given a reason for such an edit. You have now been given a reason, not just by me here, but by three editors who have reverted your additions, either in their edit summaries or in notices left on your talk page. I suggest that rather than acting indignant and engaging in personal attacks, you attempt discussion on the talk page of the article. --Nat Gertler (talk) 19:53, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

You're not really picking up what Nat is laying down. You want to say that this person was found hiding in the governor's home. The source doesn't say that he was. It does say "According to local news reports..." it happened that way, but when a major news outlet like France24 says it like that, they mean that they are not trusting the local news enough to take any responsibility for it themselves. It's more like, "Hey this is what someone else said, so don't blame us if it turns out to be wrong", better known as "covering our asses". You may notice that in the next paragraph that the government officials denied that any arrest took place at the governor's home, and France24 (very wisely) leaves plenty of room for doubt. I mean, the article even begins with them saying they're reporting on rumors. That doesn't cut it for a biography. You need better sources that actually say it --unequivocally-- and once you get past that hurdle there are several more, such as weight and balance to name a couple. But the source you have leaves a lot of room for doubt, and they did that for a reason. That's not good enough. Zaereth (talk) 20:11, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

Seems to be an edit war going on over Rocco Silano between inexperienced users and ip users. Needs outside input to tell whether any of the included/excluded content is due. I first came across this from a COIN post. Hemiauchenia (talk) 22:33, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

Please be kind enough to remove Wikipedia page about me. Sepala Ekanayaka Some people for the intentions of getting European citizenship have spread a fake story about Welikada.I have complained to the CID ad well. Please remove this page an unknown person has created. Thanks Sepala Ekanayaka — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sydsol (talk • contribs) 03:03, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

You can request that the article be deleted at WP:Articles for deletion. Click on that link and carefully follow the instructions on the page. I'll say this, though, I predict that it will probably pass AFD and not be deleted, but you are welcome to give it a try.

When it comes to the stuff about the prison massacre, that may be a different story. You can bring that up on the article's talk page. I see several problems with that. First, the source is an opinion/editorial column, and you can tell because the author freely admits to speculating. Those are usually not considered reliable sources. Second, the article doesn't really say what the source does. It doesn't confirm anything, nor does it pretend to. It simply says that some people who may or may not be reliable witnesses said they saw you do it, and others said that they didn't believe it, and since the prison was more interested in covering up the facts, no one really knows. That gives you some pretty good arguments for removing it entirely from the article, or at least telling both sides of the story. Zaereth (talk) 03:28, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

The sources attribute the allegations to a book, Sri Lanka: The Arrogance Of Power: Myths, Decadence & Murder [28]. One source was actually just an excerpt of that book. The problem is that the author of that book, Rajan Hoole, was also one of the founders of University Teachers for Human Rights, which published the book. This may not pass WP:BLPSPS. Morbidthoughts (talk) 08:10, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

The article in question appears to be actually titled Sepala Ekanayake though is see that Ekanayaka is used in some of the provided sources. I have no comment on the contents of the article at this time. Hemiauchenia (talk) 03:32, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

• Just noting that the OP is blocked for taking legal action("complained to CID"). This doesn't invalidate this issue, just that they can't participate here until their legal action is concluded. 331dot (talk) 01:54, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

by Waltzingmogumogupeach (talk · contribs) without sources for pseuodhistorian. The editor has then gone through articles mentioning him changing his description. Maybe he is, maybe he isn't, I don't see sources. Doug Weller talk 17:14, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

The current description of peter james in the main article mentions theories of real attempts to pinpoint atlantis, and alternative chronologies (published with David rohl who has unreliable credentials) not accepted by mainstream historians, which is enough evidence that he is indeed a figure in pseudoistory. Waltzingmogumogupeach (talk) 17:19, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

I saw the move so did a search to see how James is characterized in sources. Two newspaper articles refer to him as an archaeologist. Multiple journal reviews about his book don't characterize him by any profession. One rather scathing review (the others praised the explanation of the chronology problems but didn't agree with the proposed "solutions") simply lumped James in as a Velikovskian. I did not find sources calling him a pseudohistorian or his books pseudohistory. Schazjmd (talk) 17:32, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

Immanuel Velikovsky is known for his pseudohistorical interpretations of history as stated in his Wikipedia article.Direct quote from that article says "his work is considered canonical example of pseudoscience" If peter james is indeed described as a Velikovskian, that is saying Peter james is a pseudohistorian without saying it.Waltzingmogumogupeach (talk) 17:42, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

The bit in brackets is purely for disambiguation - it's not meant to be relaying information about the subject. Is there another Peter James who is a legitimate historian that this guy has to be disambiguated from? I assume not. If there is some objection to calling this guy an historian then the title should be something like Peter James (author). "Avoid judgmental and non-neutral words" says WP:NDESC. DeCausa (talk) 17:50, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

There's a better known Peter James (writer) who writes crime fiction. I don't think "author" would disambig from "writer". Schazjmd (talk) 17:54, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

Peter James (researcher) then. I'm sure there are other options. Unless it's a very commonly used label for the person it's just unencyclopedic to use such a opinionated term as part of a disambiguation. DeCausa (talk) 17:57, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

So do we all agree the article should move to Peter James (researcher)?Waltzingmogumogupeach (talk) 18:01, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

Horse Eye's Back just tagged the article for notability. Centuries of Darkness is a notable book, but like HEB, I'm not finding coverage to support notability of James. Schazjmd (talk) 17:48, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

Move and notability tag both reverted by StAnselm. Article is back at "historian" now. Schazjmd (talk) 17:59, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

Most people at Category:Pseudohistorians are disambiguated by "author". I removed the notability tag because there was a consensus at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Peter James (historian) that the subject is notable. StAnselm (talk) 18:03, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

It should be noted that Waltzingmogumogupeach's editing of links in articles now produces the POV popup statement "Peter James (Pseudohistorian)" when the link is mouse-over'ed. The redirect should be deleted per WP:RFD#DELETE #3. The user is also spamming "pseudohistorian" through Peter James related articles and DAB pages. Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 15:38, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

StAnselm that discussion was more than 10 years ago! 100.36.106.199 (talk) 12:09, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

If he was notable 10 years ago, then he's still notable today. StAnselm (talk) 17:49, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

An IP has three times changed this article to refer to the subject’s no-longer-used pronouns, and three times this has been reverted. I am happy to watch the page and treat the affair as BLP vandalism; but the talk page says “if material violating this guideline is repeatedly inserted” then please to post here. So now I have. Nick Levine (talk) 14:41, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

I have a question regarding Collin Raye's date of birth. Some sources including AllMusic give it as 1959, but others (Encyclopedia of Arkansas, the Joel Whitburn Hot Country Songs books, and his autobiography A Voice Undefeated) give it as 1960. Should the discrepancy be noted at all in the article, or should the autobiography be the source deferred to with Whitburn and Encyclopedia of Arkansas backing it up? Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 17:58, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

WP:DOB: "If multiple independent reliable sources state differing years or dates of birth in conflict, the consensus is to include all birth dates/years for which a reliable source exists, clearly noting discrepancies." Morbidthoughts (talk) 21:39, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

I got an email from Caraid O'Brien who would like us to update on her siblings; the only thing I had that was citable was from a 2005 newspaper article, and unsurprisingly all have moved on considerably in their careers in 18 years. I realize I can't cite her email that gives the updates; for all but one of them I could find fairly good citations online as to what their current jobs are, but of course cannot prove that these are the same people as her siblings (especially two sisters who have changed surnames, presumably because the got married). Details at Talk:Caraid_O'Brien#Siblings. Is there anything I can do with this? If there is some way I can update 18-year-old information, I'd really like to. - Jmabel | Talk 21:23, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

Is there any particular reason why we need to name or describe her siblings at all? None of them appear to meet Wikipedia notability criteria. AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:28, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

Concur. We have a sentence earlier that she has five siblings, which is fine. Of course they have names and do things, but unless they are notable or the things relate to what she does, there's little to gain there. --Nat Gertler (talk) 01:52, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

I agree: I've gone ahead and removed the information. Neiltonks (talk) 11:54, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

I would request editors take a look at the recently created page for Chloe Cole. This person appears to be a hot button topic as a teen who has detransitioned and is now speaking out on the subject. The article reads in a way that suggests doubt for her claims, a position that doesn't seem supported by the sources, and appears to use loading language and phrasing to create negative associations with the subject. Springee (talk) 11:42, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

This article reads as an attack page, and it does not appear to be verified by the sources it cites:

• name used by an... alleged detransitioner -- Sources cited state both of these things in their own voice
• known for appearing on far-right media -- Attached to this sentence is six sources, none of which say anything about "far-right media" or anything close to it
• According to her unverified testimony -- Nothing like "unverified testimony" is in that source
• Cole's parents [...] have not verified any of her testimony -- Again, all the source says is that they haven't spoken to the media, this framing is OR.

I don't think this is an acceptable article to have on Wikipedia. @TheTranarchist: ??? Endwise (talk) Endwise (talk) 12:23, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

It is touching that neither of you seem to have bothered reading the article's history or talk page...

For context for those watching, @Springee and I are currently debating the validity of a source at the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism. They have refused to once cite any wiki-policy relevant and have just kept insisting that the source should not be used (because they described it as "activist", which is not a description used by any RS discussing the organization) and refusing to acknowledge or even try to counter any of my points or references raised. Instead of responding with any relevant wiki-policy or references there, this morning they've claimed my "other articles" (this one) are impartial and biased in a section on the page devoted to spurious attacks on my editing by editors who've refused to discuss whether the sources are reliable or not. That comment was posted a few minutes before they filed this here.

At Talk:Chloe Cole, a 5 second read would have shown that I have opposed the pieces of text that issues have been raised about... I have explicitly objected to putting that skepticism in wikivoice, such as "alleged", "unverified testimony", and "have not verified any of her testimony" and said the sources do not warrant such language and asked for them to be reverted.

In terms of far-right media, reviewing the sources that's an admitted mistake on my part. Three sources refer to her connections to right-wing media. She also has appeared on far-right media and with far-right figures often to be fair, but the sources don't state that explicitly (that it's a notable pattern, individual instances are well-documented). TheTranarchist ⚧ Ⓐ (talk) 13:47, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

i'm genuinely concerned over the proliferation and what i believe is the dog whistle-esque use of "far-right" on wikipedia. while certain sources (we all know which ones) are more prone to claim "1st amendment" protection and use it without concern to slander and libel, i might argue that wikipedia editors should know better. we're supposed to be impartial and the arbiters of neutrality, not propagandists. BLPs on wikipedia are all but useless now because there are activists here that are eager to leverage this term without discernment or consideration towards neutrality. given that sources that often refute these claims aren't considered reliable only exacerbates this issue. i've observed on this article, and others, "unreliable" sources are often used to support the claims made by "reliable" sources, but when it comes to disputes -- well, we can't have that, that source is unreliable and must not be cited. there is no good solution here until the pendulum swings and people realize how damaging and harmful current "reliable" sources actually are (if ever). so i'll just lobby my observations here in hopes that editors will start to consider their actions will eventually have consequences. Kcmastrpc (talk) 14:52, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

I have removed "alleged", "unverified" and "unverified by parents" as her gender identity has been stated in multiple sources. Testimony can't be unverified. It was testified to or it wasn't. No one seems to question that she testified. Same with the parents, there's no "HS students words only have meaning if an adult validates them" policy. Slywriter (talk) 14:08, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

@Slywriter Thank you so much for clearing that up! I was trying to avoid an edit-war so started by trying to resolve the issue on the talk page but glad you cut through the red tape to fix it! And thank you for pointing out the ridiculous ageism, I may admittedly not be the biggest fan of Cole but claiming her parents need to corroborate her testimony was ridiculous - I'm no hypocrite, minors know themselves and don't need parental verification. I also went ahead and updated "far-right" media to "right-wing" media to keep with reliable sources. Though, a quick review of the sources does show more support than I'd remembered for the extent to which her testimony is spread by far-right politicians. TheTranarchist ⚧ Ⓐ (talk) 14:17, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

TheTranarchist, far-right vs right-wing may be worth more discussion. The rest is just bad word choice. There's definitely questions being asked by RS and we should (and do) cover them, but in descriptive prose. Far more useful to the reader and more in line with our BLP policy. And yes the ageism seems out of line with current thinking on gender identitySlywriter (talk) 14:45, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

In my view the article is currently including too much indiscriminate detail. I don't think we really need a blow by blow account of all the rallies and panels she attends (and in a number of the sources I've checked she's just mentioned in passing) Tristario (talk) 22:38, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

Just a note that Round and rounder was blocked as an LTA sock so I removed their comment which received no reply. Nil Einne (talk) 05:22, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

There is currently a discussion on whether the sourcing supports describing Cole as an "anti-trans activist". A review of the sources used for the label has been organized into a subsection of the discussion. TheTranarchist ⚧ Ⓐ (talk) 21:48, 27 February 2023 (UTC)TheTranarchist

Note: Moved from WP:NPOVN. Levivich (talk) 21:36, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

There is currently a discussion at Chloe Cole#LA Times lawsuit opinion on whether the LA Times, which provides both Cole and this specific lawsuit WP:SIGCOV is WP:DUE source for the following paragraph:

Los Angeles Times business columnist Michael Hiltzik described the lawsuit as "part of a concerted right-wing attack on LGBTQ rights, in which the health of transgender youth is exploited as a pretext for bans on gender-affirming care" and stated it "incorporates what seem to be misleading or inaccurate descriptions of developments in the gender dysphoria treatment field."^[1]

This was originally listed at WP:RSN#LA Times in Chloe Cole article in regards to the Kaiser lawsuit which concluded it was a question for here. TheTranarchist ⚧ Ⓐ (talk) 17:00, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

• honestly I think the entire article in its current state needs attention from uninvolved editors experienced with NPOV and FRINGE. I just looked through it and there's not a single reference to any criticisms this activist has had. I'm not going to repeat anything that has already been said, but in my assessment it's highly unlikely that a notable activist on such a highly controversial topic hasn't received a single criticism throughout her career, and I think that's a stronger sign that something is off here than any individual discussion I could point to. I'm mostly staying out of it because I'm even less experienced than the editor above me and honestly I don't need a 600 page ANI discussion in my life, but it's becoming a problem and shutting up about it is not the way to solve that problem. ----Licks-rocks (talk) 21:31, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Having briefly looked over the article, I'd say that the above line is undue, but that the article itself is scattershot and doesn't do a good job putting the subject in context. Considering the article as it was brought here in the previous section cast aspersions on the subject's existence, this is still an improvement. There has to be more than one business columnist talking about the lawsuit, and those opinions can be collated and summarized, rather than relying on single extensive quotes, which creates the DUE concerns. I'm not sure exactly why this is at BLPN though—is there an issue with the talk page discussion where editors are being disruptive? Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 21:50, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

It's at BLPN because levivich took the liberty of moving it from the NPOV noticeboard, which I have reverted there, because the concern I brought up above is an NPOV one. --Licks-rocks (talk) 22:14, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

This source^[1] has been the subject of dispute on Talk:Chloe_Cole#LA_Blade_Sourcing. The author of the article was the center of controversy in September for posting a banner on her Twitter profile that read, "I condone any/all violence", with a photo of Cole, Andy Ngo, and other controversial figures.^[2] Ennis quickly retracted this banner as most people did not understand the context and had attributed the quote directly to Ennis. She would later claim it was a misquote attributed to Cole.^[3][4]. In the talk page referenced above I've been accused of libel and violating BLP guidelines by calling attention to this event. These tweets, in conjunction with an article by WP:NATIONALREVIEW, negate the claim of WP:BLPRS per WP:BLPSELFPUB. I believe these actions call into question the integrity of Ennis with regards to Cole, and the piece itself has been called out for other issues such as WP:RSOPINION and WP:BIAS. In consideration of all these issues, claims of libel and BLP violations should be removed. Kcmastrpc (talk) 14:02, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

Since I raised the libel concerns, I want to delve into what I perceived them to be. My concern was the way that replies in talk incorrectly attributed the quote I condone any and all violence to Dawn Ennis, stating it was directed towards certain people. I feel this was a misunderstanding and had been brought up in good faith. I thought it was important to exercise caution as the individual is an industry professional and such a claim could result in tort damages to her career. These comments have since been removed and libel concerns resolved.

Ennis, in the initial publication of the article, included her subject had made a condone/condemn mistake that was cleared up upon reaching out for clarification. She was then subjected to online harassment, locked her Twitter, and included the quote from her article in her Twitter banner alongside relevant parties.

Dawn Ennis has four Emmies and a Writer's Guild Award. She was a producer for Today and Good Morning America. She additionally has experience as an editor for online and print media. Her expertise in journalism earned her a position as a professor at UHart without the need for an advanced degree. I feel these convey credibility and impact the severity of libel concerns. Filiforme1312 (talk) 00:12, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Even if that was a misquote, which is reasonable since they sound pretty similar, the act of making that quote your Twitter banner with a photo of the subject and several completely unrelated people is an inherently bizarre act. Frankly the explanation seems like the barest of fig leaves and doesn't actually explain anything at all. I can't come up with a single reason why that misquote along with that particular collection of people would be made into a Twitter banner by a journalist, except the obvious one. I also don't think that awards, past work or academic credentials are relevant; plenty of people highly regarded as experts in all fields have exhibited poor behavior and shown bias. The Wordsmith^{Talk to me} 16:48, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

My understanding is more Hanlon's razor or poor handling of internet harassment. Could you explain which one to you is the obvious one so as to be more clear?

Even if that was a misquote, which is reasonable

It is the original quote from the interview. Prior to publication, Ennis reached out to confirm the quote and Cole issued a correction. This was included in the RS.

My reason for including her qualifications here is others on talk found them useful as the article was written prior to what occurred on twitter. As a means of being helpful and including info people thought found useful. Filiforme1312 (talk) 02:08, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

The obvious conclusion most reasonable people would draw from a person prominently publishing an image with the text "I condone any/all violence" and a photos of specific people (at least one of which has been assaulted at several political events) is that the person condones violence against the people pictured. The explanation given for how that quote came about doesn't offer any alternative reason why Ennis chose to use the quote to create that image and post it so prominently. The Wordsmith^{Talk to me} 02:45, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

The post publication comments look as much like damage control as anything else. This isn't like a typo in the middle of an article. It takes clear effort to assemble the new banner image. If this writer can't understand how this could be read as Ennis's own view then perhaps this isn't an writer we should trust to give opinions/commentary on the subjects on which they are reporting. I think at a minimum we should avoid using any of Ennis's opinions/commentary. Incidentally, somewhere will looking into this I saw a Tweet from Cole stating that Ennis interviewed her then blocked her on Twitter about a week before the LA Blade article when live (I think on the 5th, the LAB article went live on the 11th and it appears this header went live on the 15th). Thus I don't think we can see this as just a reaction to the article. Rather Ennis was hostile to Cole before the LAB article was published. That again raises COI concerns with the source and suggests the source isn't clearly independent of the article subject. Springee (talk) 12:08, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

Is there WP:COI that covers sources and describes it in such a way? Filiforme1312 (talk) 12:34, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

COI refers to Wikipedia editors and their own COI with various topics (editing about your employer or an academic with whom you have a grudge). The guideline you'll want to whip up is WP:INDY. From the opening, "Reliance on independent sources ensures that an article can be written from a balanced, disinterested viewpoint rather than from the subject's own viewpoint or from the viewpoint of people with an ax to grind." Springee (talk) 12:52, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

There is also WP: COISOURCE in INDY that starts out with "Any publication put out by an organization is clearly not independent of any topic that organization has an interest in promoting." which raises WP: SELFPUB concerns if the review process is not independent. --Kyohyi (talk) 13:03, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

An independent source is a source that has no vested interest in a given Wikipedia topic ... Interest in a topic becomes vested when the source (the author, the publisher, etc.) develops any financial or legal relationship to the topic. -WP:INDY

I feel like WP:INDY and WP:COISOURCE are a different conversation as there are no financial or legal ties. Here Axe to grind refers to non independent sources. So in the Cole article, Kaiser would an example. Filiforme1312 (talk) 13:36, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

It's important to recognise three things here. 1) The banner appears to have only been live for a short period of time on 15 September, four days after the publishing of the LA Blade article. The banner that Ennis used at the time of publishing the article, and after the "condone" banner had been removed was the Progress Pride Flag. 2) At the time the banner went live, Ennis had been harassed and threatened for several days by followers of Cole, Libs of TikTok, and Andy Ngo. 3) People do strange things when they are under duress, as Ennis unquestionably was at the time.

Should Ennis have made/posted the banner? Absolutely not, it was a terrible idea. Does this make her have a bias against Cole that runs counter to WP:INDY from 15 September onwards? Yes, I don't think anyone could argue against that. But did Ennis have a bias against Cole that ran counter to WP:INDY, either when the article was being drafted, or at the time of it's posting on 11 September?

As far as I can tell, there is no evidence that Ennis acted improperly prior to her posting of the banner on 15 September. As much as Cole obviously disliked the article, disliking how she appeared or was portrayed in the press is not itself evidence of a source being non-independent from the article subject. Nor is calling out an author or publication for posting an article that Cole dislikes evidence of the source or author being non-independent from her at the time the article was published. So no, unless there's evidence that Cole and Ennis had some sort of prior connection, that would result in an article being authored by Ennis being considered non-independent, I don't think anyone can argue that this source, published four days prior the banner incident, can be considered to be "closely affiliated with the subject". Sideswipe9th (talk) 18:27, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

I think the question of whether or not the author was intending to attack someone on their Twitter banner is kind of irrelevant. The question is whether or not the Blade is a reliable source; and certainly for BLPs, I don't get the sense it is. The format is like a local periodical or community paper, not a broadsheet. It's only been around for a few years, and I don't see a ton of coverage or citation of its reporting in bonafide sources. I don't think it can inherit its RS status from the longstanding Blade as it has a completely different editorial team. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 17:14, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

James Gordon Meek is a former ABC news producer that recently got charged with child sexual abuse. His article looked like this before a fairly new editor added this content. My issue is with how much weight the editor has put on the charges. Also they are using the affidavit as the main source (up to 20 times) for writing out the very detailed crimes. I brought up my concerns on the talk page, but don't think many editors have it on their watchlist. More eyes on this is appreciated, because maybe I am misunderstanding WP:BLPPRIMARY. Mike Allen 22:42, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

I think those additions are definitely problematic. WP:BLPPRIMARY is pretty clear you should not use public documents to support assertions about a living person. And, he hasn't been convicted, which per WP:BLPCRIME means we should be very careful about how we're writing about this. It also seems like far too much detail, especially considering the lack of a conviction Tristario (talk) 23:20, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

As I have explained on the talk page, everything sourced to the affidavit is also sourced in mainstream media news; there has been strange pushback of "You can't say that because it's only in the affidavit and Daily Mail and publications that are considered suspect!", but it's obviously a prominent media story - the facts in the Daily Mail are obviously right out of the affidavit, the same facts are also in Fox News, ABC News, Rolling Stone, Daily Beast and elsewhere - the article is heavily sourced - and I have put just as much effort into collecting non-arrest related news about him, his major news stories, his places of employment, his family history, etc. The only claim that is only in a Court Filing (the reason for his divorce) and the Daily Mail without any other Third Party sources I've hidden in html so it's not viewable until I find a third source other than the Virginia Court itself and the Daily Mail. Yes he's a prominent journalist, yes he stands accused (on pretty damning evidence) of at least 8 years of child sex offences....the article is approximately 50% about the arrest, 50% about his career and family - the previous version just had a single throwaway sentence about the 8 years of child sex abuse and an FBI raid dubbed "The biggest news story of the year" by Tucker Carlson, Glenn Beck and other prominent third party journalists. I have offered (and asked an admin about) whether I should include the Affidavit beside a 3P citation to buttress it, or not mention the affidavit at all, I've invited the person complaining here to replace the affidavit as source and put in the media source himself instead but he's elected instead to come try to get the information entirely removed despite obviously the same details being in all the major media outlets. LauraIngallsEvenWilder (talk) 23:24, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

Well obviously if prominent third-party journalists like Tucker Carlson and Glenn Beck think it's the biggest news story of the year, why then we should be reporting it fer shur! EEng 19:26, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

If it's in reliable sources then just source it to reliable sources then. Otherwise, if it's just cited to a public document, it should be immediately removed. You should read WP:BLP, you need to be very careful when writing about living people, and especially so when it comes to contentious content and allegations of crime.

We are also meant to write biographies of living people conservatively, and wikipedia is not an indisciminate collection of information. I don't think that's currently being done in this article. Tristario (talk) 23:37, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

Way too much detail. The sources that LauraIngallsEvenWilder added are inappropriate. It's not an issue of being true or verified; it's a matter of what type of sources are WP:DUE. That is what type of detail are being covered by high quality sources rather than OXYGEN, the Daily Beast or Rolling Stone. (see WP:RSP) There is a complete WP:BLPBALANCE concern here. Morbidthoughts (talk) 23:44, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

Also, only the details reported by high quality RS should be used; not ones that only come from the affidavit or DOJ press releases. I would just remove those citations outright to prevent confusion. Morbidthoughts (talk) 23:57, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

Whoa...over half that article is about the prosecution, in a lot of detail He's not convicted. WP:UNDUE. DeCausa (talk) 09:03, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

The problem is that most independent RS about him is about the raid and prosecution. Otherwise, his life and works as a writer and producer have not been subject to much extensive RS review. Morbidthoughts (talk) 02:46, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

The amount of deals related to the arrest can still be cut down. There's lines in that that read POVish (like the line from Tucker Carlson, or the pleas at his bail hearing). Masem (t) 03:00, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

I made some edits based on your feedback. Morbidthoughts (talk) 22:40, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

This page contains a huge list of racial hoaxes that editors found interesting, most of directly stating or implying that specific named living individuals were guilty of deliberate hoaxes. There seems to be no set inclusion criteria beyond "an editor decided this had something to do with race, felt that it was a hoax, and thought it belonged in the list." There are probably broader issues here, but it seems to me that at a bare minimum we need reliable sourcing saying that they lied intentionally; several entries don't even pass that basic requirement, with the only usable sources stating things like "investigators found no evidence" and so on. I removed a few of the most egregious examples, but an IP (seemingly misunderstanding the core reason for removal) restored two of them. More likely, the list should require high-quality sources that directly use the term "hoax" while unambiguously connecting the hoax to race, which almost none of the entries seem to have. ("Racial hoax" would be even better but it's not a common term - though that might suggest that we shouldn't have a list at all. Alternatively we could limit ourselves to listing examples used in literature discussing the concept.) -- Aquillion (talk) 18:19, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

This list seems like a topic ripe for abuse and/or BLP violations. I 100% agree that if the topic remains the criteria need to be very clear and very restrictive. Springee (talk) 20:41, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

It's particularly concerning since the list isn't even consistent - some of the names on it reference the hoaxer (Susan Smith), while some reference the victims of a hoax (Emmett Till). BubbaJoe123456 (talk) 22:49, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

I'm posting this for two reasons (1) I would like to raise awareness of the RfC at Talk:Libs of TikTok about the inclusion of Category:Critics of Black Lives Matter and (2) I would like an uninvolved admin, user, or at least someone besides myself to determine if they think the category should be removed pending a result of the RfC, in accordance with WP:BLPREMOVE and WP:QUO. I removed it earlier, but I wanted to play it safe and not be accused of edit warring/tag teaming, so I self-reverted.

I hope the actual content dispute gets more discussed at the existing RfC rather than here; I'm creating this thread more to focus on the BLPREMOVE/QUO issue. The decision to determine if something should stay as the status quo or be removed pending a formal consensus decision is always a pesky problem on Wikipedia.

Lastly, I'm going to try and brief you on the history of this category inclusion: it appears to have been added on January 6, 2023 (I'm not aware of it ever being there before), it was removed on February 13, added back on Feb. 16 (first talk discussion begins on Feb. 16), removed on March 2, reinserted March 2 (second talk page discussion begins on March 2, RfC linked above begins on March 7) Clearly, there has been some long-term edit warring going on here. IMO, a fair application of BLPREMOVE and QUO should mean the category should be removed since it's been a contentious inclusion for much of its inclusion. Just because this category was able to hide under the radar between January 6 and February 13 doesn't mean it should seen as the status quo; this worries me because if it is considered the status quo and the RfC results in no consensus it's like those in favor of inclusion will de facto win, for lack of a better word. That would go against the spirit of WP:ONUS as well. I also hope this will allow us to discuss in more detail the standards around QUO and BLPREMOVE because it's a really big grey-area when it comes to content disputes, especially in contentious areas and BLP's. Thanks, Iamreallygoodatcheckers ^talk 04:39, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

I removed it to comply with our BLP policy, but it appears that editors are continuing to restore it, BLP policy be damned. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 15:15, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

WP:CRYBLP. Merely invoking those 3 letters doesn't grant automatic removal permissions, you have to support your argument. Simply being referred to as a critic of something is hardly a risible categorization. Zaathras (talk) 15:38, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

WP:BLPRESTORE also requires consensus. Do you see it in that RFC? Morbidthoughts (talk) 07:30, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

There's a long running series of talk page topics at talk:Divya Khosla Kumar about her year of birth and whether it is 1981 or 1987. The page currently says it is 1987. It is under pending changes and virtually every time there is a change made to alter the date to 1981 it is reverted or not accepted with a comment along the lines of "get consensus at the talk page". The problem, as I see it is that those seeking the change to 1981 are mostly inexperienced in wiki-etiquette and aren't getting putting the case right. There seem to be a lot of sources in favour of 1981 but as I have no experience of assessing the reliability of Indian news sources and what may or may not have changed, I think it needs eyes from people with more experience in this area. Nthep (talk) 20:44, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

WP:DOB is clear: "If multiple independent reliable sources state differing years or dates of birth in conflict, the consensus is to include all birth dates/years for which a reliable source exists, clearly noting discrepancies. In this situation, editors must not include only one date/year which they consider "most likely", or include merely a single date from one of two or more reliable sources. Original research must not be used to extrapolate the date of birth." Article talk page discussion should focus on whether the supporting sources are reliable and directly support the date. Morbidthoughts (talk) 22:30, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

Is this an acceptable source for DOB? There was an RFC on Sherdog here that determined, Overall, the consensus is that the source should be used with caution, on a case-by-case basis. I consider the news side to be generally reliable, but I dont think the stat side comes close to satisfying WP:BLPDOB. And I'm not seeing any evidence of Aspinall's DOB being widely published by reliable sources. Pinging @Cassiopeia: as she restored the dob. – ².O.^Boxing 11:47, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

I've found a source for his DOB, but I'd still appreciate some clarification on Sherdog. – ².O.^Boxing 11:50, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

Squared.Circle.Boxing All mma fighter DOB used as per sherdog. You can check. Cassiopeia talk 21:56, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

To answer the original question, WP:DOB allows for dates of birth that have been widely published by reliable sources. Sherdog, given its cautionary status and a niche website, is not enough. Morbidthoughts (talk) 23:14, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

In this page is written that Princess Anne was “Princess Royal from 1987 until her death in 2023…”!!!!, which obviously is not accurate. 2001:818:E28E:7600:F900:74CC:3091:ABF8 (talk) 06:57, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, it has been reverted by another editor [31]. Nil Einne (talk) 12:52, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

Hello, My addition of Dorian Yates as a holocaust denier was removed with the statement that the YouTube video was not a sufficient reference. The YouTube video cited is an interview with Dorian Yates in which Dorian makes the statements at approximately the 7:08 mark. ^[1] The interview is searchable for "holocaust." This is not a commentary on Dorian denying the holocaust, this is literally unedited video footage of Dorian denying the holocaust. It is not an unverifiable source, it is footage of Dorian saying it. There is no controversy about whether he said it, it is literally a video of him saying it. Here is the video again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rqc1Z9gjk5s Feel free to block me but I'm not going to stop. This is the truth, verifiable from his own mouth. If you choose to censor it then feel free to stand with the holocaust denier. But that is what he is. From his own mouth. Watch it yourself, it will take you less than five minutes. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Critterdun42 (talk • contribs) 01:40, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

It doesn't matter whether it is verifiable he has said it or not, if reliable sources haven't commented on it, then it isn't due for inclusion. Full stop. See also WP:RGW. Hemiauchenia (talk) 01:49, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

Hello to you. Your addition was subtracted because, indeed, youtube is not considered a reliable source. In particular, the youtube video you wish to use is a WP:Primary source, meaning it comes directly from the subject. Taking statements directly from the subject is WP:Original research, which is what WP:Secondary sources do. An encyclopedia is a WP:Tertiary source, which means we get our info secondhand. We want that secondhand commentary, because... well, let me ask you. Did he say in the video, "I am a holocaust denier"? Or are you taking what was said and inferring that he's a denier yourself? Even if it seems blatantly evident to you, that kind of judgment requires an "operation of the mind" to make the connection. We want secondary sources to make those kinds of inferences, not random people on Wikipedia, which is why we have a No Original Research policy. Zaereth (talk) 02:03, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

Given the (entirely justifiable) approbation opprobrium that comes with being labelled a "Holocaust denier," we need to be very careful that any such claim in Wikipedia has strong sourcing. I agree that his commentary in this video (like saying studies "prove that no gas was used" in the gas chambers at Auschwitz) make ME perfectly comfortable calling him a Holocaust denier, but that's in "BubbaJoe123456's voice." The standards for saying that in Wikivoice are higher. BubbaJoe123456 (talk) 13:36, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

Approbation?? I'm assuming that was some sort of typo. "Opprobrium" perhaps? DeCausa (talk) 13:49, 17 March 2023 (UTC)Approbation?

Wow. Yeah, that's quite a word swap on my part. I definitely meant opprobrium. Yowch. BubbaJoe123456 (talk) 16:22, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

John Thompson Parker Saying that I disapprove of the Russian "invasion" of Ukraine is absolutely false. Any reading of my eyewitness accounts to Ukraine written in the Black Agenda Report, Covert Action Magazine or Monthly Review would immediately make it clear about my position. This is slander plain and simple and I do not have time to go through your process of getting this slander taken down. I respectfully emailed your administrators asking for it to be taken down and was told that I have to go through some maze of requests, which, at 62 years old is a little difficult for me. However, it is much easier for me to call my lawyers. If you need verification of my identity simply message me on facebook and I'll provide my cell number. Please make this change as soon as possible. I will be running for public office again for U.S. Senate and this is detrimental to my campaign message. Thank you in advance. - jp Johnp9999 (talk) 21:33, 8 March 2023 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Johnp99999 (talk • contribs)

Mr. Parker, you linked to a nonexistent page. I'm assuming you're referring to John Parker (activist)? LilianaUwU ^{(talk / contributions)} 17:42, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

You should know that we have a policy that people may not use Wikipedia to threaten legal action. If you intend to pursue any sort of action, that is between your attorneys and the Wikimedia Foundation, but please do not discuss that on-wiki. LilianaUwU ^{(talk / contributions)} 17:46, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

In the spirit of WP:DOLT, I looked into this, and it wasn't sourced. I don't know what their exact position is, but it doesn't appear to be able to be distilled to what was in the article. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 17:52, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. Gotta say, I misread this post initially - gotta be the first time someone has come to BLPN to complain that they were being unfairly accused of opposing Putin. BubbaJoe123456 (talk) 22:35, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

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)

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)