This is an archive of past discussions about Template:BLP editnotice. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
Not done - libellous is correct according to my dictionary. I don't think this is even a case of WP:ENGVAR, as it doesn't give libelous as an alternative spelling. — Tivedshambo (t/c) 08:01, 14 February 2009 (UTC)
I would like to replace libellous with libelous in the interest of consistent usage throughout Wikimedia projects, see for example the spelling of wikt:libelous on Wikitionary, and more relevantly, the fact that Jimmy Wales's article warning about avoidance of defamatory and libelous content in Wikipedia articles, particularly BLPs, uses the spelling libelous, not libellous (see here for spelling throughout as libelous not libellous). We should be consistent. I would like to do this myself, but I see that I need to be granted permission as a Template Editor before being able to do so. For now, I will pursue that objective, then return here, if and when I am granted such authority.--FeralOink (talk) 06:56, 27 August 2016 (UTC)
Background
Could we consider an other background that would make the template stand out when editing? I'm thinking something yellowish. -- lucasbfrtalk12:28, 24 April 2009 (UTC)
For consistency with all the other editnotices, I decided to change it back to the standard {{editnotice}} layout. If you would like any edit notice, not just this one, to stand out and be read, it is probably better to have this discussion over there. Cheers. Zzyzx11 (talk) 14:21, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
All editnotices don't need to be red, but this one, in trying to reduce the massive amount of libel on Wikipedia, should be. -- Jeandré, 2009-05-09t14:48z
On "fair use"
Surely this template should mention that non-free images of living people are permitted only under exceptional circumstances. — CharlotteWebb11:14, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
This template is over the top. Please remove the scary warning icon and "Attention!" line. It doesn't need to be any different to its equivalent on talk pages, that has been there for years:
This article must adhere to the biographies of living persons (BLP) policy, even if it is not a biography, because it contains material about living persons. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourcedmust be removed immediately from the article and its talk page, especially if potentially libellous. If such material is repeatedly inserted, or if you have other concerns, please report the issue to this noticeboard.If you are a subject of this article, or acting on behalf of one, and you need help, please see this help page.
That discussion is about whether or not it should have a coloured background, not whether it should have warning icons and "Attention" text. We shouldn't be using warning icons except to actually warn people about stuff. Otherwise, they just learn to ignore all the bloated crap in the interface (I know I have) and so don't pay attention to things that are worth worrying about. The edit screen is a good example of this. Gurch (talk) 00:10, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
Alright, what ever works the best is fine for me (although the determined vandal will ignore anything anyway...). Zzyzx11 (talk) 00:14, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
Exactly. People don't seem to realise that no matter how many in your face warning messages they put up, things will still happen. It's a wiki, get used to it. Gurch (talk) 02:53, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
No, because this template is used as an editintro, and even categories and interwiki links in noinclude tags will be shown on the editpage there. Check for example the categories and interwiki when you press this link to edit this page, and you'll see a lot of clutter from the noinclude part of User:Amalthea/test15. Amalthea13:12, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
{{editprotected}}
Hello, can you please add the following line: {{Editintro documentation|page=Template:BLP editintro}}. This template will then add a documentation on this page, which will however not be displayed when seeing the editintro itself. Thank you. --The Evil IP address (talk) 15:50, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
Not done for now:Template:Editintro documentation would probably need protecting before it can be used on a protected template. Before that, however, I would like to see some discussion/consensus that this is the best approach to displaying documentation on editintros. (I don't doubt you're right, but it never hurts to notify and discuss first ;) Regards, — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:47, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
Seems sensible to me. Full protection is of course a must. That won't work with page preloads, right? It should work with editnotices though, but I don't see a reason why we'd want to document, categorize, or interwiki those. Amalthea20:50, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
Done. WikiProject Templates is wrong though, a template transcluded onto highly visible pages needs to be protected even if it's not supposed to output anything: A vandal might be inclined to change the nothingness into a huge penis. Amalthea00:08, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
Proposed small expansion
I made this edit to the template, and then immediately self-reverted. What do you guys think about it, and do you have any other suggestions? NW(Talk)22:00, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
1) Why? 2) It could use a grammar overhaul. :) 3) Generally, the longer such messages are, the less they are read. If anything I'd think the last two sentences should be shortened. Cheers, Amalthea22:08, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
1) As a roundabout way to tell people "you're responsible for the edits you make" without frightening them away. 2) Most definitely. :) 3) Indeed, that is the case. Perhaps we could change it to "If you find libellous material in an biography of a living person, or you have other concerns about the article, please see this page."? NW(Talk)22:16, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
(edit conflict)I'd agree that there are issues with that particular wording, but I think it's a good idea. It might be worth removing "and not the WMF" as that could confuse newer editors and those wishing to seek redress for their concerns. It directs them to the noticeboard, anyway. As for the above, this appears at the top of the edit box on every BLP if memory serves. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 22:24, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
Hey all! So, as you may be aware if you use the Vector skin, Vibha Bamba, myself and a couple of devs have been poking and prodding at the edit interface recently to try and simplify it. We've made a lot of changes to the actual software, but haven't touched things like this template - we wanted to give it a more considered look, and we certainly didn't want to change anything without getting feedback from the community :).
We've made a redesign of the template, as transcluded here.
This article must adhere to the biographies of living persons policy. Unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material must be removed immediately. If you have concerns about the article, please report them to this noticeboard. If you are connected to the subject of the article and need help, please see this page.
The priorities/thinking behind it:
Reduce text. The shorter something is the more likely people are to actually read it - while the current notice does a good job of covering every possible permutation of concern, the downside is it makes it rather complex (it contains what not to do, what to do if someone else has done what you shouldn't do, what to do if someone has done what you should not do multiple times, what to do if you're connected to the subject and don't want to do what you're not meant to do but do want to do something. It's somewhat overkill-y ;p). The priority for this template is to tell new people what they should do - existing editors are (or should be) aware of the policies surrounding BLPs. And what they should do is only add stuff with reliable sources: that's pretty much it.
Reduce linking. The current template has a pile of links, which is great for keeping people informed but increases the chances they'll end up wandering down a "6 degrees of Wikipedia" rabbit hole. The new template has one link and one link only: a link to a help page that explains how to add reliable sources and what they are. This is what we want the user to do, and so it should be the place they're sent if they notice the template and make the judgment call to follow it.
Hi Oliver, I wouldn't support the text you propose. First, it's not informative enough; editors and the subjects of BLP need those links to tell them what to do (remove material immediately, go to the noticeboard, etc), and we need that information on BLP talk pages to be able to point editors to it easily. Second, it suggests that this particular BLP is sensitive for a particular reason that we're not mentioning ("this biography ... is sensitive"). Third, what matters is that the article adhere to the BLP policy, not only the sourcing policies: material may be sourced but still inappropriate.
For clarity, the current text reads:
This article must adhere to the biographies of living persons policy. Unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libellous. If such material is repeatedly inserted, or if there are other concerns, please report the issue to this noticeboard. If you are connected to the subject of this article and need help, please see this page.
I would strongly agree with SlimVirgin. The new template is more like a standard RS "sources needed" template - we've decided to treat BLP pages much more carefully than that. In particular the note about contentious material needing to be "removed immediately" needs to remain in the text. --PhilosopherLet us reason together.01:19, 3 November 2012 (UTC)
So how about "This is a Biography of a Living Person, and so must adhere to [link|the BLP policy]. Please only add content that has [link|reliable sources], and remove any that lacks them. If you have concerns about this article, please report them to [link|this noticeboard]". That's 240 characters, which is a bit long (and I hope people can think of ways to cut it down!) but it seems to address all of the elements. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 00:48, 4 November 2012 (UTC)
The "unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material" and "must be removed immediately" are important (they are part of the point of the template) -- rather than forcing people to read the policy. "This article is a BLP" doesn't work because it's sometimes added to non-BLPs. We could tighten it to this without losing any information:
This article must adhere to the biographies of living persons policy. Unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material must be removed immediately. If you have concerns about the article, please report them to this noticeboard. If you are connected to the subject of the article and need help, please see this page.
That works better, I think. Are you guys comfortable with that? And, if so, what do you think of the simplified template design? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:49, 4 November 2012 (UTC)
I'm fine with it. And I like the new design. It would be nicer, I think, with a line around the purple to stop the squiggly effect (technical term). :) SlimVirgin(talk)02:19, 5 November 2012 (UTC)
Also, can I suggest we remove "unsourced or poorly..." and replace it with the "please only add material that is cited to a reliable source" message? So, realistically, this message is hitting new users (experienced editors gloss over it, and/or already know the policies). New users are likely to be editing with the intention of adding, rather than removing, stuff, which makes the adding advice marginally more useful, and crucially I don't know about you but I've seen people have terrible experiences when new/anonymous editors remove content. The default assumption tends to be that it was wrong of them to do so :S. Thoughts? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:32, 5 November 2012 (UTC)
I think we need to keep "must be removed immediately" in bold. And "unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material" is from the policy -- that's the material that must be removed immediately. New users add and remove; the point of the template is to make sure everyone knows that they both may and must remove anything dodgy about a living person without hesitation.
Again, having a reliable source is not the only issue when it comes to living people; that's an issue for every article. This template points to what is different about living-person edits.
Now I look again at Template:BLP, I see there is information that we need to retain here too -- that it applies to non-BLPs too, and to talk pages, and the issue of libel is probably worth retaining. If you want to add something about the need to use sources, we could say:
This article must adhere to the biographies of living persons policy, even if it is not a biography, because it contains material about living persons. Please make sure that anything you add is reliably sourced. Unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material about living persons must be removed immediately from the article and its talk page, especially if potentially libellous. If such material is repeatedly inserted, or if you have other concerns, please report the issue to this noticeboard. If you are connected to one of the subjects of this article and need help, see this page.
Yeah. The objective is ultimately to cut text :S. We're giving them five or six different options, most of which won't apply, some of which are contraindicative, because of the edge cases where they are useful. I'm not really sure of the solution to this. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 08:23, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
I take your point about length, but what's needed is something succinct, without being so short that we leave out key information. I edit BLPs a lot -- and other articles containing material about living persons -- and the same issues come up time and again, especially from new editors. They are (a) why are you saying BLP applies to this when it's not a BLP? (b) I have a reliable source for this, so what's the problem? (c) Why do you keep removing the information even from the talk page? (d) Where can I get other opinions about this?
Directing those editors to the BLP template puts them straight, gives them the links they need, shows them that having a source isn't enough. It's either have it on a template, or expect editors to have to explain it over and over and over on talk pages. SlimVirgin(talk)19:54, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
There's an option C: could we not have a simple template that says "this must follow the BLP policy, yada yada, it is imperative it follows it, for information on what this entails, go to [special simplified help page']"? The problem at the moment is that we have a template containing a lot of information and a lot of links. This is imperative for some of our editors - others might not be adding information pertaining to a living person at all, or might already know the policy. If we can direct people to a specific place, we have the opportunity to give them what they need without bulking up the edit window. Just a random idea; may be silly ;p. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 09:42, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
Hi Oliver, sorry, I didn't notice your response. I'm not keen on sending people to yet another page, not least because we'd have to write it, or fix an existing one. I really can't see a problem with the way the template is currently written. It links to the policy, and repeats the key points because 99.9 percent of the time people are not going to read the policy. SlimVirgin(talk)00:00, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
I don't think that it is necessary to have a synchronisation between this template and the BLP talk page template, both serve different purposes. This editnotice should definitely not be too long, for example mentioning removing inappropriate content from the talk page is superflous, and that it may not be a biography as well. Cenarium (talk) 23:29, 3 November 2013 (UTC)
Template-protected edit request on 18 November 2016
Hey man, shouldn't "See [[Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons|more information on sources]]." be "See [[Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons#Reliable sources|more information on sources]]."?
This template links to the article tabloid journalism. The article is poorly sourced, lacks a worldwide view on the subject and seems outdated in 2017, when we find much of the tabloid journalism and other poorly sourced journalism in online publications. It's ironic that a template which deals with poor sources has a link to an article with poor sources. The link should be removed unless the article improves dramatically. Floyd (talk) 14:03, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
What do you think about the changes I made there? I made the COI part more visible and add more links, but I don't know where I can get consensus to make these changes (This will likely turn into a stale discussion).
67.21.154.193 (talk) 13:23, 20 May 2022 (UTC)
