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I propose the following text be added to WP:SUSPECT:
Given the legal presumption of innocence, criminal proceedings including those against prominent public persons, should not be mentioned on the main page of the encyclopdia until the cases are resolved either by conviction or acquittal. Any appellate proceedings shall have no bearing on whether or not to post the initial findings of a duly constituted court of law."
Support Wikipedia is not a news blotter and we have no need to be first to cover a story. Anything we can do to protect the presumption of innocence for BLPs is a good thing. Furthermore a clear and unambiguous policy regarding how to handle suspects of crime would avoid tedious debates about who constitutes a public person. Simonm223 (talk) 17:58, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
One small question though: by the main page do you mean a BLP's article-space or do you mean the en dot wikipedia dot com landing page? Simonm223 (talk) 18:09, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I see. I'd still support it but somewhat less enthusiastically. I would like us to stop reporting on in-process criminal proceedings altogether as inappropriate to the scope of an encyclopedia. Don't suppose you'd be willing to expand the proposed policy revision accordingly? Simonm223 (talk) 18:14, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think that if somebody is actually convicted and it's major news, posting it at ITN is fine. I supported posting Donald Trump's conviction in the New York case. My objection is to putting unresolved allegations on the main page. There is a huge difference between mentioning widely reported criminal charges in somebody's BLP article and putting them on the front page of one of the world's most heavily trafficked websites. But if you have a specific change in mind feel free to suggest it. -Ad Orientem (talk) 18:23, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Here's my pitch: replace the current text of WP:SUSPECT with, A living person accused of a crime is presumed innocent until convicted by a court of law. Accusations, investigations, arrests and charges do not amount to a conviction. Given the legal presumption of innocence, criminal proceedings including those against prominent public persons, should not be mentioned until the cases are resolved either by conviction or acquittal.
Any appellate proceedings shall have no bearing on whether or not to post the initial findings of a duly constituted court of law. If different judicial proceedings result in seemingly contradictory outcomes that do not overrule each other, include sufficient explanatory information.Simonm223 (talk) 18:27, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Rather than having dueling RFCs could we suggest your text as an option 1 and mine as an option 2? That way, in cases like mine where I would support either but have a preference it's all in one place. Simonm223 (talk) Simonm223 (talk) 18:34, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
We already have several comments so I would be reluctant to materially alter the RfC. But I will add your suggestion below this. for discussion in its own right. -Ad Orientem (talk) 18:36, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The notion of appellate proceedings not having any bearing on the proceedings below is on its face contradictory. Also there are a variety of types of appellate proceedings, levels of appeal, and legal systems in which all these things play out, some of which of course don't even presume innocence or otherwise derogate from the general presumption.
Oppose Such allegations are going to be included in the BLP article in any such case where the conditions are in line with BLPCRIME. It makes no sense to then say that we should hide that from the main page if they are in the news, as long as the blurb is clear that they are only allegations or charges and not convictions. It does make sense to avoid including news items around such allegations when they are less news and more a due to the spectical around it (eg some of the jadedness editors have around Trump rings true here), but that's something that current ITN guidelines should handle, not a special exemption on BLP. — Masem (t) 18:11, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - we can presume innocence while mirroring the reliable sources that choose to cover a story (or do not choose). Editors of main page processes currently have appropriate leeway to decide whether a legal case is prominent enough to be mentioned. Ed[talk][OMT]18:15, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Criminal allegations and proceedings are normally major points in an individual's life and they should be covered, whether on the MP or not. As long as the wording is appropriate (ie provides context and makes clear it's an allegation or part of a proceeding), and not giving any indication of guilt or innocence, there is no reason not to have information on the MP. - SchroCat (talk) 18:27, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, though this is without prejudice to the policy in WP:NPF that we should tread very carefully when publishing negative information about non-public figures. Major public figures, however, should not have that protection: where newsworthy allegations have been made against them, they should be reported objectively and as accusations, following WP:V. UndercoverClassicistT·C18:50, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support (invited by the bot) Since everything "in the news" violates wp:not news, there's no strong argument for inclusion of anything and IMO so no argument agains setting a bit higher bar. Criminal charges vary from meaningless to meaningful depending on the particulars (such as who is making the charge, the nature of the charge) and there's nothing wrong with setting a bit higher bar for the front page of Wikipedia. North8000 (talk) 19:01, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Very, very weak oppose, though I support the spirit of this proposal. There are absolutely circumstances in which unresolved proceedings are quite notable, though. @Ad Orientem, I don't too much follow ITNC, might I ask which specific instances of BPPCRIME on the main page have conflagrated? Changed to support, and thanks to whomever signed my post (the reply tool has spoiled me). — Preceding unsigned comment added by JayCubby (talk • contribs) 19:36, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There have been a number over the years. The most recent would be Jair Bolsonaro's indictment in Brazil. That discussion is still open and currently looks pretty deadlocked. In the past each of Donald Trump's indictments were nominated. At least two and possibly three of them were separately posted. I am pretty sure the last one was turned down. We posted his actual conviction in New York, which I supported. It's also worth noting that all of the Federal charges have since been withdrawn, albeit for purely legal reasons. In theory he could be reindicted when he leaves office. A proposal to post the withdrawal of those charges was going nowhere the last I looked. -Ad Orientem (talk) 19:57, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This is an argument against the change. Convictions can easily be obtained in such cases. Similarly, cronies of the leader in many jurisdictions may be protected from convictions for crimes they very clearly have committed. The result is really that legal decisions should not as a rule trump wikipedia's own processes for handling verification. We should be exceedingly careful, but convictions/acquittal should not be a bright shining line. Fangz (talk) 11:10, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Doesn't the brightness of the line here completely depend on the system in which the charging and/or conviction has been made? It's for sure a bright shining light to most rational people in the real world in well functioning democracies. Djpmccann (talk) 22:38, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose the blanket prohibition, as there still may be limited circumstances where an arrest made or formal charges against a very prominent person cannot be ignored (I am thinking OJ-level celebrities, or current or former heads of state), that grab the international consciousness that ITN is designed to capture. --Enos733 (talk) 01:51, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. If someone has been accused of a crime and we properly state such has occurred, I fail to see the issue. It is factually correct. I'd like to believe our readers are smart enough to believe and trust us to "report" (or what you wish to call it) on these things properly. DarkSide830 (talk) 05:43, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
A (1) charging addressed to a court, in a decently thoughtful legal system, by a properly-acting prosecutor (think: Jack Smith) is more significant and important to readers than (2) a mere accusation by eg a private individual (think jilted ex-lover). Reporting (1) as such (not as guilt, but as a charging), is quite proper, indeed the open, non-arbitrary nature of justice proceedings (a value in many rule of law systems) relies upon the public nature of that information broadly. Reporting (2) is usually just third hand defamatory distraction. Djpmccann (talk) 22:34, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose This proposal would create a prohibition that goes far beyond breaking news. Criminal proceedings can take years and sometimes even over a decade. – notwally (talk) 18:39, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Comment It's not clear what the "contentious point" is that the proposal is seeking to resolve. Saying that someone is indicted ≠ guilty.—Bagumba (talk) 05:36, 30 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Strongly oppose - The proposal is misguided and arbitrary. It would prohibit mentioning the cases of Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, Slobodan Milošević, Roman Polanski, Bill Cosby, the Guantanamo Bay detainees, and any criminal charges that do not result in either a conviction or acquittal. The proposal wrongly supposes that the publication of criminal charges would be harmful to the accused and the legal presumption of innocence. Public scrutiny ensures that the rights of the accused are protected against abuses of judicial and prosecutorial power. Suppressing that can shield those in power from accountability and create an environment where malicious prosecutions are more likely to occur. The proposal would suppress well-written and reliably-sourced articles that are deemed to be of wide interest to readers and editors. There is a high bar for publishing on the main page. Events published on WP:ITN are reviewed case-by-case. This proposal aims to preempt that review. It leaves no room for context and nuance. Buffalkill (talk) 21:34, 30 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think the proposal as worded is only for the “proceedings”, which would not prohibit mentioning the publication of criminal charges. That wording only speaks to court cases while they are in progress. It would seem to me that excludes only intermediate events within the courts which would be the WP:CRYSTALBALL guessing or gossiping about a specific days sensationalist testimony and those seem worth excluding. Personally, I think the restraint specified is little and limited but that some restraint is necessary. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 09:31, 3 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If the goal is to avoid gossip and minutiae on the main page that should be addressed through policies against that. There's no need for a special policy on criminal cases. We don't want to be in a perverse situation where it's easier to have a ITN about someone being accused of having an affair than being accused of murder. Fangz (talk) 12:05, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Not an issue -- again, as worded it would allow mention of the start of trial for either murder or an affair, it only says to exclude the "proceedings" of day-by-day trial (or divorce) coverage. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 05:41, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well, we individually posted at least two, and possibly three (memory fails) of Donald Trump's indictments. The fourth one I do recall we decided not to post. Trump's sole conviction was posted, quite properly. The Federal charges have now been dismissed. In theory they could be revived, though for obvious reasons (he will be in control of the DoJ for the next four years, and he could attempt to pardon himself) this is exceedingly unlikely. So we repeatedly posted unproven charges against a very prominent and controversial person, followed by a single conviction. As for the the Federal indictments, the community pointedly declined to address their dismissal in the same way we posted them when issued. It goes w/o saying that this sort of thing gives ammunition to those who claim that Wikipedia has a leftwing bias where the subject touches on politics and/or culture. But it goes beyond that. We are also posting unproven charges against non-Trump figures, on the main page of one of the world's most heavily trafficked websites. And yeah, I think that is deeply problematic, and I say that as someone who detests Trump. -Ad Orientem (talk) 01:36, 1 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There is a bright line between unfounded accusations, as can happen in the case of sexual misconduct accusations, and charges that have been made by an official law enforcement agency after a lengthy investigation. The former, that is the type of stuff we should even be careful of posting in the BLP's own article, public figure or not, and only really include that info should there be significant coverage in high-quality, non-tabloid sources. The latter, particularly with those that are or were sitting world leaders, those charges are not being thrown around without the agencies understanding the weight of said charges, and would know there would be heck to pay if they were filing those without any chance of prosecution. Add in the weight that we get from long-term enduring coverage of such charges (not just for Trump, but now Putin and Netanyahu and Bolsanano), and these are far beyond the line where we'd normally take caution with those accusations. Masem (t) 02:26, 1 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If charges are filed without any chance of prosecution, I think Buffalkill's point about potential prosecutorial misconduct is a good reason for why this type of blanket prohibition could actually benefit those who bring those types of charges. – notwally (talk)
Support with edits The guidance for restraint is generally a good idea, but the issue here should not be limited by ‘Given the legal presumption of innocence’, as that is not the only reason or desirable limit on the guidance about star coverage. Yes, Wikipedia is not a news blotter and we have no need to be first to cover a story - and that is to be reputable and avoid WP:GOSSIP, WP:SENSATION or WP:TABLOID rather than only the legal concerns for libel or affecting a case during prosecution. For ITN, the restraint would be to avoid posting something that is simply accusations as it seems simply rumors about sports or entertainment figures is ubiquitous and not actually deserving a headline mention unless it escalates beyond that. Similarly, it is not just the ‘presumption of innocence’ or just the initial accusation — ITN should avoid covering every single daily step of a trial for a star even if the daily press covered it - it would just seem obviously gossiping over trivia at some point. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 11:05, 2 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Question since the proposal would prohibit even mentioning allegations absent a criminal conviction or acquittal, would it prohibit mentioning the September 11 attacks, since the charges against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed haven't been adjudicated? How would the proposal have applied to cases like Richard Nixon, who was not criminally charged but was given an unconditional pardon? How would it apply to Hunter Biden, who also was given an unconditional pardon for any federal crimes he might have committed during the past decade? Buffalkill (talk) 20:50, 2 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. This would mean that even the warrants against Netanyahu c.s. couldn't be posted on ITN. As long as we have ITN, such worldwide news about clearly notable people should be postable. Fram (talk) 11:28, 3 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Strongly oppose Presumption of innocence is a judicial standard, not a journalistic or academic one. Harm mitigation and legal responsibilities to avoid slander are appropriate considerations but writing someone probably did a bad thing is simply not the same as sending them to jail for it. Thus presumption of innocence simply does not apply from a philosophical viewpoint. Fangz (talk) 11:52, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Furthermore this is unworkable and unethical considering the diversity of legal systems and criminal codes. For example this grants a high level of protection to powerful individuals in corrupt jurisdictions who can control their legal system, and no protection at all to persecuted individuals. Precisely the opposite of what we want. Fangz (talk) 11:55, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, per Fangz, Masem, and Buffalkill. For example, if WP had been around during the Nuremberg trials, it would have prevented mention of those truly significant trials. FactOrOpinion (talk) 17:14, 10 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose -
blanket prohibition unwise;
the presumption of innocence is not applicable in all countries or all systems or all cases;
chargings are often important for Wikipedia readers to know about;
good high standards journalists and publications routinely report on chargings, but they do it as such;
complete prohibition on mentioning will delay or prevent relevant information getting to wikipedia readers, and articles will thus be misleading by incompleteness;
confidence in legal and political systems is founded on transparency, and transparency and information is a value of wikipedia;
open justice requires some knowledge of what the actual system is doing, people knowing that certain people are being brought, and certain litigants/defendants need that openness to win their legal/broader case. Djpmccann (talk) 22:44, 15 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, absolutely not. Trials can go on for years, sometimes decades, and can often be central to the subject; by this standard we wouldn't have been able to, for instance, mention the OJ Simpson trial anywhere on his article while it was in progress. We are not a news channel but we have an obligation to write an up-to-date encyclopedia. And this isn't even practical - how would we cover long-running cases against politicians, when they become massively relevant politically? Netanyahu's legal troubles are central to writing about Israel politics; major events going back years would make no sense at all if we tried to write around them. What happens if an accusation is central to someone's bio for a long time, with extensive WP:SUSTAINED academic coverage, and we write the article around it, only for it later to go to court - would we suddenly remove it? But on a more basic level this is saying that we could ignore coverage and write an article that ignores sourcing (no matter how strong and overwhelming) based on the gut feelings of a few editors that ongoing trials are never encyclopedic. That is not how we write articles - we reflect sourcing and coverage. If you want to try and demand higher sourcing for recent events, sure, that's something we can argue; but an absolute ban like this goes against core policy (which is not subject to consensus) and is therefore not something that can be considered. --Aquillion (talk) 15:38, 24 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per Buffalkill, Aquillion, and others. BLP is already sufficient to guide editors in whether or not something should be featured on the front page. Gamaliel (talk) 21:31, 24 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, we have to balance privacy vs censorship and this seems too far into the area of censorship. Our current way of doing things already greatly favors privacy when it comes to living people, I see no pressing need for the proposed addition. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 23:15, 24 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
A living person accused of a crime is presumed innocent until convicted by a court of law. Accusations, investigations, arrests and charges do not amount to a conviction. Given the legal presumption of innocence, criminal proceedings including those against prominent public persons, should not be mentioned until the cases are resolved either by conviction or acquittal.
Any appellate proceedings shall have no bearing on whether or not to post the initial findings of a duly constituted court of law. If different judicial proceedings result in seemingly contradictory outcomes that do not overrule each other, include sufficient explanatory information.
Support as proposer. I think this would not only eliminate the question of crime reporting on marginally public people but would also, generally, be a great service toward supporting WP:NOTNEWS. Our website isn't for breaking news and we should consider the balance of public good between extreme inclusionism and respect for presumption of innocence. Yes, that should be applied by Wikipedia even for distasteful politicians.Simonm223 (talk) 18:46, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose as long as the person is a public figure and the documentation of any allegations are from reputable reliable sources, there is zero reason to not include them. For example, taking this to heart, it would mean that we'd have to scrub out all of the convictions Trump faced for J6, which is in a lot of articles, including the SCOTUS case (he wasn't convicted or acquitted). We just need editors to keep their writing impartial and neutral, and work in writing summaries of legal proceedings rather than write to the level of detail the news gives (Wikinews can be used for that) — Masem (t) 18:51, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
A key part of my contention here is that Wikipedia has really strayed from the spirit of WP:NOTNEWS in that a vast array of the articles on the website are just news aggregation. I'm honestly not of the opinion that we need to be talking about the indiscretions of contemporary American politicians unless they turn out to be historically significant. Simonm223 (talk) 18:56, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I am 110% behind you on the NOTNEWS issue, but it affects more than just accusations and trials of BLP. It is a far larger problem that needs to be addressed at a much large venue, one that I have been brewing how to start in the back of my mind. The over details coverage of news absolutely impacts BLP negatively, but changing just BLP isn't the way to resolve it. — Masem (t) 18:59, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This is touched upon at the guideline WP:LASTING: It may take weeks or months to determine whether or not an event has a lasting effect. This does not, however, mean recent events with unproven lasting effect are automatically non-notable. —Bagumba (talk) 02:31, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately, if you ever try to get some BLP errata revolving around a crime on the basis that it has not been demonstrated to have a lasting impact the response will be that it definitely will and should not be removed because it is so very important. Simonm223 (talk) 12:27, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, it's easier to trim (or even AfD) once the topic has died down. I've yet to see a realistic solution on how to manage the excitement before then. —Bagumba (talk) 00:38, 28 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I feel like "strayed" implies we were ever doing anything else. If it was written one way it was clearly never obeyed, and trawling through old talk page archives I find we have actually gotten far more strict about NOTNEWS than we used to be (which is probably for the best, but I take issue with "strayed") PARAKANYAA (talk) 02:40, 29 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Wikinews is dead and dysfunctional and should have never been started. Quite frankly the wiki format does not gel with news. Propose what you want to deal with the NOTNEWS issue but any proposal that says "go to wikinews" is a no. PARAKANYAA (talk) 02:39, 29 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - absolutely not. As I said for the other proposal above, we can presume innocence while mirroring the reliable sources that choose to cover a story (or do not choose). This is not a solution to the larger problem alleged by the proposer. Ed[talk][OMT]19:47, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose for the same reasons as above. Criminal proceedings against public figures are often WP:DUE and should be covered. Additionally, the presumption that all proceedings end in conviction or acquittal seems misguided; cases are often settled without advancing to those stages but may nevertheless be DUE. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:07, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose as explained by David Eppstein. If there are problems with "In the News" blurbs, perhaps this issue should be discussed there (perhaps with a discouragement to accept blurbs that are about an early part of a criminal proceeding, recognizing that this could not be a hard and fast rule). --Enos733 (talk) 21:17, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Comment If the subject of a bio was removed from a public role over an allegation before criminal proceedings completed, or perhaps even started, the proposed change would prohibit any substantive NPOV explanation from being given in the bio.—Bagumba (talk) 02:11, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose This proposal would create a prohibition that goes far beyond breaking news. Criminal proceedings can take years and sometimes even over a decade. – notwally (talk) 18:39, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, no matter how hysterically funny I think it would be to have to retroactively remove all the Trump trial stuff from this site. Also doesn't make any logical sense - "or acquittal"? Given the principle this proposal operates on, innocent until proven guilty, for consistency if someone gets acquitted we should simply never mention it. Which obviously doesn't square with a lot of notable topics - plenty of politicians can be highly notable for being involved in alleged things which they were never found guilty of, see Matt Gaetz. Newsy events have an awkward tension with encyclopedic-ism, but unless we want to restrict article content and creation to a point twenty years in the past (the only real way to solve the NOTNEWS issue) there is no way to put this into policy without severely, severely hampering our coverage of encyclopedic topics. We're always going to be dealing with news sources and new things happening, unless we ban current events entirely - which I don't think would serve us or the readers. If we're talking about ITN/the front page, I'm less bothered by that proposal because it does make some sense to be stricter for the front page, but that also won't work too well in practice. PARAKANYAA (talk) 02:49, 29 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, imagine how confused readers would feel with a Jeffrey Epstein article only covering him as an investor who was friends with many famous people. He died before his most notable cases could be "resolved either by conviction or acquittal". Rjjiii (talk) 03:55, 30 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Clarification@Simonm223: The difference between the original proposal, and the alternative proposal, is (a) the addition of: "A living person accused of a crime is presumed innocent until convicted by a court of law. Accusations, investigations, arrests and charges do not amount to a conviction", and (b) the removal of: "on the main page of the encyclopdia". The former is simply an affirmation of the legal doctrine of the presumption of innocence, and the latter affirms the proposed prohibition on mentioning unadjudicated criminal charges on the main page, and extends it to all of Wikipedia. Is that correct? Thanks. Buffalkill (talk) 00:43, 1 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
So, is it correct that your proposal would forbid us from saying on Jamal Khashoggi that he "was assassinated at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on 2 October 2018 by agents of the Saudi government at the behest of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman" (currently in the lead) because bin Salman is alive and has never been taken to justice? Given that the assassination happened in Turkey, despite being at a Saudi embassy, I assume this would be considered a crime under Turkish law. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:30, 2 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Not to mention cases where individuals are being tortured, held incommunicado or driven into exile for alleged "crimes" like "insulting the president" or "promoting homosexuality" or whatever. Fangz (talk) 15:16, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose as less clear than the earlier proposal whether it is for ITN or all WP. I also have view that there is a sharp separation between what is accusations and what has become official charges. Accusations and investigations often turn out frivolous or fleeting with no impact, but legal cases are a notable point where it becomes official with enduring and significant impacts. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 11:27, 2 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Sometimes accusations and investigations are a notable point with enduring and significant impacts, and sometimes legal cases are not. There is too much variation in individual circumstances for either of these blanket prohibitations to be useful. – notwally (talk) 18:57, 2 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Accusations *often* turn out frivolous or fleeting, and only if it turns into something enduring - such as the sharp distinction of when it becomes actual official charges which are *not* frivolous - would it be mentioned. An accusation that creates enduring impact has an enduring impact worth mention, but it is the enduring impact that deserves a mention - the accusation alone never would be. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 06:45, 3 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per Rjjiii. We (sadly) have a whole bunch of people like Epstein and Jimmy Savile who escaped trial for their crimes by dying before they could be tried in court. There are also perpetrators of suicide attacks, and school killers who kill themselves rather than face trial. This is well-intentioned, but it would cause far more trouble than it would solve. John (talk) 19:05, 2 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Neither Epstein nor Savile are BLPs even when considering the "recently deceased" note. As such statements about living people would not affect them. Simonm223 (talk) 19:11, 2 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Epstein was a BLP when the accusations came out and Saville was recently deceased. Everyone will eventually become a non-BLP. Turning the issue into "how long should we wait after they die" doesn't seem helpful. – notwally (talk) 19:16, 2 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Worse than the first proposal. It would make a mockery of e.g. the Mohammed Deif article, if all crimes he was accused of but not convicted for would have to be removed completely. Fram (talk) 11:28, 3 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. That doesn't mean that half an article about a person has to be taken up by a minor DUI charge, but imagine the Sean Combs article without any mention of his current legal trouble. In that case, it is well-sourced and it is clearly significant to writing a biographical article about him, even though the charges have not yet reached disposition. We just need to be very clear in the article that the individual has been accused, indicted, whatever have you, but not convicted. SeraphimbladeTalk to me14:48, 3 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Strongly oppose As this is much broader, it's even worse than the original proposal. There are significant criminal cases where there is neither conviction nor acquittal, including those where the person dies while awaiting trial and it suddenly becomes possible to discuss the case only after death (as notwally notes), those where the person is pardoned (as with the legally significant case against Michael Flynn, where it would prevent discussing the reason for the pardon, since he is still alive), and those where crimes are alleged but never charged because the person is too powerful (as David Eppstein notes). It's also unclear about the implications for civil suits (like the huge opioid case involving the Sackler family), since those result in liability rather than conviction/acquittal. FactOrOpinion (talk) 17:47, 10 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose This is a well-intended proposal, but it has not been fully thought through. There are (at least) two problems. First, it follows that if material were excluded from any part of wikipedia on the basis that a person has not yet been convicted of an offence, then it could never be included if the person were in due course found not guilty. Yet it would plainly be unacceptable to censor all mention of charges followed by not-guilty verdicts since sometimes these events will have significant consequences and be notable of themselves. Imagine a politician is charged with a specific financial offence and resigns as a finance minister, then markets collapse and social cataclysms follow. There could be no mention of the alleged specific offence for the years it might take to come to court? Then, following a not-guilty verdict, there could never be mention of the specific detail which led to the social cataclysm. "In 2025, something happened in Xanadu which resulted in the temporary collapse of the financial system there, causing riots, mass deprivation and large scale refugee movement"? Second, it would be unwise for Wikipedia to validate verdicts in places like Iran and North Korea, whether guilty or innocent. Such a validation would be the consequence of treating verdicts differently for the purposes of inclusion at Wikipedia, even if only limited to the landing page. I appreciate the sentiment behind the proposal, and that's a decent one, but the response to bad actors putting in bad content is to apply present policies, frustrating as that might sound to the proposer. Emmentalist (talk) 16:40, 11 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose in strongest possible terms. This solves none of the problems with the mess of a suggestion above. Sometimes accusations are central to a biography, or even to related articles; sometimes the legal process can go on for years or even decades without a resolution. Our obligation, per WP:NPOV and WP:V, is to follow the sources, and to cover things that are treated as significant in them; we are not permitted to ignore some of them based on poorly-considered gut instincts. I have some sympathy for suggestions that we shouldn't rely on breaking news sources (though I disagree with them); but this suggestion, I have zero sympathy for at all - it is deeply foolish and short-sighted, and I hope the proposer will take the sharply negative reaction to heart and WP:DROPTHESTICK on anything resembling it, here or elsewhere. As mentioned above, by completely ignoring sourcing and making no exception for coverage of any degree or quality, this proposal would contravene core policy and is therefore not implementable by consensus. --Aquillion (talk) 15:38, 24 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah I'm happy to withdraw the proposal. I will say that I remain frustrated with the breaking news mentality we see on BLPs but I will agree that this approach was half-baked and wouldn't solve the problems that really concern me. Simonm223 (talk) 15:58, 24 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Alternative proposal 2
This is actually going the complete opposite direction of the proposal.
Reword to
A living person accused of a crime is legally presumed innocent until convicted by a court of law. Wikipedia is not a court or a legal system, so an article about a person accused of a crime does not have to be written as if they are innocent, absent a conviction, if the consensus of reliable sources is overwhelmingly otherwise. However, with the aim of minimising harm or slander, especially to individuals who are not public figures—that is, individuals not covered by § Public figures—editors must seriously consider not including material—in any article—that suggests such persons have committed or is accused of having committed a crime, unless a conviction has been secured for that crime. Accusations, investigations, arrests and charges do not amount to a conviction.
While Wikipedia must comply with United States law, as a project the content on Wikipedia is independent of any local national government and does not represent an official or judicial mouthpiece.(WP:NOTCENSORED) While the decisions of local courts should have a strong weight in writing an article, depending on the circumstances other reliable sources should also be included even if they contradict the official verdict, as per WP:DUE.
Support as proposer. This I think is an important clarification. Presumption of innocence is a thing in legal systems. It's not a thing in encyclopedias, academic works, and so on. It's reasonable that we should be more careful, but it should not 100% trump wikipedia's usual processes. If a guy shoots up a school and there's 100% incontrovertible video of him doing it and every reasonable source says he did it, but the guy escaped from prison before his trial, it would be perverse to write in the consideration that he is innocent of both the shooting and the prison escape until a conviction is obtained. It's okay to say "avoid using words the express an excessive certainty that they did it", so "alleged suspect" is often better. (Though in the case of the prison escape, would we really expect any editor to write "he allegedly escaped prison"?) But referring simply to the legal principle creates a false expectation. The standard of proof on wikipedia, even in BLP, is quite different from that in a court of law. Fangz (talk) 11:02, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
A corollary is that we should also not encourage editors to write as if an individual is guilty simply because a conviction was obtained. You can write that factually, the guy was convicted, but e.g. human rights groups say it's total rubbish etc. Fangz (talk) 11:37, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This does not overrule those other policies. Rather the opposite: the point is that those policies apply and should not be overruled by "the X government says this guy is guilty/innocent". The current text gives the appearance that criminal charges (criminal where? According to whom) are an overly special case. Attack pages should be prevented by rules against attack pages. If you think individuals should get attack pages dependent on whether their local government (which, lest you forget, includes anywhere from North Korea to ISIS) handed them a guilty verdict or not, that's a ridiculous state of affairs. By what metric or logic should we handle differently writing about someone's bigamy allegations vs them having an extramarital affair? Fangz (talk) 13:44, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Put it this way, in a legal context the reasoning for a presumption of innocence is easy to understand. The State must refrain from applying harm (punishment) undeservingly. In a Wikipedia content, the harm is reputational damage, but the thing is, reputational damage is essentially unrelated to the criminal nature of accusations. When a "crime" could depending on jurisdiction be anything between a major crime against humanity to smoking some weed or being a homosexual, while non-criminal allegations could include child rape and again major crimes against humanity... if you just want to avoid recentism and attack pages etc, it's a meaningless distinction to make. Fangz (talk) 14:17, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - I think revision of that section is worth discussing, and I agree with the overall sentiment, but am not sure how I feel about the proposed wording. It's clear that WP articles do not always treat criminal allegations as if the person is innocent absent conviction. For example, the article on Jamal Khashoggi says that he "was assassinated at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on 2 October 2018 by agents of the Saudi government at the behest of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman," even though the agents haven't been convicted (and won't be, as Saudi Arabia refused to extradite them to face the charges), and bin Salman will never be charged. For that matter, WP can discuss the possibility of wrongful conviction even if a conviction hasn't (yet) been overturned, as in appeals brought by the Innocence Project. I'm not convinced that the section needs to be modified, and if it is modified, I also wonder whether it should be revised to apply to significant civil suits as well as criminal ones. And US law is not the only legal system that is relevant. FactOrOpinion (talk) 18:38, 10 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support For the reasons I give at the end of the first alternative proposal (NB: I accidentally put that comment here until alerted by FactOrOpinion
Support. This is the way. We must follow the sources wherever they lead; we can urge caution, we can set criteria for what good sources are, which are well spelled-out in policy and referenced here, but ultimately it is not up to editors to second-guess the sources or to create their own byzantine rules about when we can report what the best sources say. If an accusation is central to a biography, and there is clear and unequivocal agreement among the sources, then as an encyclopedia, the encyclopedic thing to do is to reflect that; likewise, if there is clear and unequivocal agreement among the sources as to guilt, we have to reflect that in our article regardless of legal processes (though of course the legal processes would, I'd expect, be covered in the sources and therefore mentioned.) The legal process is important but is not the be-all-and-end-all or the final word when it comes to writing an encyclopedia; we must summarize all coverage, with weight according to its significance - giving legal processes (which are, in many countries, highly politicized) final say is inappropriate. If the legal process is worth so much deference, then the highest-quality sources will defer to it; in cases where they do not, we should not, either. Beyond that this proposal would put a well-deserved stake in the heart of the awful suggestions above and would block people from trying to present them on talk, which is badly-needed given how damaging they would be to Wikipedia's mission if not totally shut down. --Aquillion (talk) 15:45, 24 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Oppose - this is factually wrong and morally improper. If a person has not been convicted, it is simply wrong to use of legal language that means someone who is convicted, a distortion of facts. You can mention video evidence and such, or say they died before there was a trial, or whatever the actual events are -- but the simple fact is if they were not convicted, they are not convicted and so it is incorrect to use language as if they were or to include such incorrect statements from third parties based on "reliable sources should also be included even if they contradict the official verdict, as per WP:DUE."
It's also morally wrong to invite a libelous judgement based on casual volunteers and limited information. This is not going to be about incontrovertible evidence and some well-defined metric of "consensus" in RS -- it is going to wind up in situations of partial knowledge from media coverage and limited volunteer looking time and arguing over whether this is "enough" or whether I have 10 sources versus you have 9 contrary ones so that's a "consensus". I don't even see it as wise editorial policy to go something that would lead to more disputes. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 06:19, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Markbassett, what is your opinion about the lead in the article on Jamal Khashoggi? The first paragraph says that he "was assassinated at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on 2 October 2018 by agents of the Saudi government at the behest of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman," even though the agents haven't been convicted (and won't be, as Saudi Arabia refused to extradite them to face the charges), and bin Salman will never be charged. It doesn't mention conviction, but it's implying that they're guilty (though not using that word). I think that's what's meant by an article about a person accused of a crime does not have to be written as if they are innocent, absent a conviction, if the consensus of reliable sources is overwhelmingly otherwise. FactOrOpinion (talk) 22:16, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
User:FactOrOpinion - Uh, I think you missed that there were convictions? And that article isn't an article about a person accused of a crime, which in this case would be Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ? Otherwise -- my immediate impression of that lead is that it does a very poor job of summarizing the article and his life, as if he had never lived or done anything. It does somewhat summarize USA coverage limited to October thru December 2018, excluding later events and his prior life. Kind of an example of an issue with WP:WEIGHT and when a story drops off the mainstream, although the sensation did lead to expanding the article content from what it was before (here). Otherwise, the language seems a bit unsupported where it was phrasing things as if certain and proven fact, when the articles did not, and missed simply reporting what the coverage is instead of declaring a judgement using wikivoice. Wikipedia declaiming Truth and Guilt instead of just reporting positions and coverage is the two ways I said this proposal is factually wrong and morally improper. The articles on the Prince and on the Assassination do a better job of things, for what that's worth. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 04:36, 29 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You're right, I was thinking about the criminal charges in Turkey and had forgotten the criminal convictions in Saudi Arabia in secret proceedings, and I was thinking about all BLP statements regardless of whether the accused person is the subject of the article. The article about bin Salman certainly includes suggestions that he's guilty of ordering Khashoggi's murder, though it doesn't use the word "guilty" itself. FactOrOpinion (talk) 14:37, 29 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support with caveats. To avoid defamation issues, the deciding factor should be whether or not the defendant disputes the charges. The presumption of innocence does not negate facts, and it is possible to say someone did something without saying they committed a crime. "Alice killed Bob" is not the same as "Alice murdered Bob" because a homicide only becomes a murder after it's ruled as such in a trial. The verdict does not change the fact that they killed — or didn't kill — someone. This is often true in self-defense cases as the question is whether or not the use of deadly force was justified (as opposed to "whodunit"). I don't see an issue with naming someone if it's obvious they are the perpetuator.
On the flip side, if a person is convicted of something but continues to maintain their innocence, then we should only mention the conviction without actually stating they committed the crime. Wrongful convictions do happen from time to time. Ixfd64 (talk) 19:27, 5 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
As a rule, homicide defendants always dispute the charge by pleading not guilty. That is true in every major criminal case now in the news, including the person accused in the insurance executive killing. On the flip side of this, it is common for convicted murderers to insist upon their innocence. Coretheapple (talk) 13:57, 13 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Wikipedia is not a court or a legal system, so an article about a person accused of a crime does not have to be written as if they are innocent, absent a conviction, if the consensus of reliable sources is overwhelmingly otherwise is simply horrendous language. We need only think back to the case of Richard Jewell to realize that sometimes reliable sources can be horribly wrong. Coretheapple (talk) 20:18, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe WP:DOB should also mention that the year of birth might not always be an acceptable alternative? I think the spirit of the BLP policy is to limit harm to living people, so maybe a sentence like "in some cases, editors may come to a consensus to omit the subject's age?". What prompted me to think of this was a discussion at Talk:Taylor Lorenz#Birthday. Nothing has been conclusively decided yet but the concerns about harrassment and privacy are definitely important to the concept of how we treat BLPs more generally. Clovermoss🍀(talk)06:18, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Never use self-published sources—including but not limited to books, zines, websites, blogs, podcasts, and social network posts—as sources of material about a living person, unless written or published by the subject of the article.
I think this needs to be modified because WP:BLP applies to statements about living persons on all WP pages, regardless of whether the person is the subject of the article, and I also think that "self-published sources" should link to WP:SPS rather than WP:USINGSPS. As a first pass, I propose that the first sentence be changed to something like:
Never use self-published sources—including but not limited to books, zines, websites, blogs, podcasts, and social network posts—as sources of material about a living person, unless written or published by the person themself.
I'm also wondering whether it should somehow address other people/organizations that are not third-party to the living person, in which case it might be reworded to say something like:
Never use self-published sources—including but not limited to books, zines, websites, blogs, podcasts, and social network posts—as third-party sources of material about living people, even if the author is an expert, well-known professional researcher, or writer. A self-published source that is not a third-party source may be used if it is written or published by the person themself or it is only used as a source for uncontroversial information (such as a reputable organisation publishing material about whom it employs or to whom and why it grants awards).
That is, that first sentence would more closely parallel the last sentence of WP:SPS, and the next sentence would incorporate the current third sentence and the end of the current first sentence (but changed to "the person themself" to accommodate the fact that the text might appear in an article about something else).
Support at least the change to "the person themself", since I've seen editors try to game at the bounds of SPSBLP. SPSBLP needs to apply everywhere. Not sure if we need the added language in the second revision, as that begs more questions and may need more thought. --Masem (t) 17:53, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Consider the following: Mr X posts something about Ms Y in an SPS. The media hears about it and reports on his post … and so it (at least potentially) becomes something worth mentioning (ie DUE) in our article on Mr X. (Not our article on Ms Y).
Ok, we could cite the media source… but… suppose it turns out that the media misquotes what Mr X actually posted (it happens). In order to verify what X actually posted, the single most reliable source possible is the original… ie X’s SPS itself. It is ridiculous to argue that we can not cite the most reliable source possible.
It is ridiculous to argue that we can not cite the most reliable source possible. Good thing I didn't make that argument. Do you have a problem with what I did write?
Re: your example, whether or not Mr. X's claim about Ms. Y can be used under BLPSELFPUB depends on whether or not Ms. Y is a third party to Mr. X (assuming the other SELFPUB conditions are satisfied). If she is, you can't use Mr. X's SPS, even if the media misquoted Mr. X (though hopefully they'd post a correction).
Also, the info may be due in an article that's not about Mr. X. The scenario I linked to is such a case: the article is about a band, and one member of the band said something about another band member in an interview published by a music magazine; the interviewer owns the magazine, so some consider the interview to be self-published by the interviewer. The statement wasn't self-serving or controversial; as best I know, the second band member has never contested it. Is the interviewee the subject of the WP article? Maybe, maybe not; the band is a group and the interviewee is a member, but she has her own article. The second band-member is not a third party to the interviewee, so if the interviewee had written it on her blog instead, the statement would be OK under BLPSELFPUB. FactOrOpinion (talk) 18:56, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm wondering if there are exceptions to BLPSPS similar to what Blueboar is suggesting. I saw WAID also talking about employers talking about an employee, or other similar scenarios. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 04:06, 13 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
BLPSPS says "It does not refer to a reputable organisation publishing material about who it employs or to whom and why it grants awards, for example." WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:39, 13 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
My concern could probably be resolved by adding an exemption for citing direct quotes from an SPS (as a primary source for the quote) when including such quotes are deemed DUE. That isn’t going to happen often, but when it does happen we should be able to cite the original SPS directly. Blueboar (talk) 14:25, 13 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think in this scenario, we might want a pair of citations: one to a non-self-published source to show other editors that this should be in the article at all, and another to the original, so we can get the quotation right. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:48, 13 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes… but people are arguing that we can’t cite the original due to BLP in SPS. So we can not verify the actual quote with the most reliable source that would do so. Blueboar (talk) 03:05, 14 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I realize now that I misunderstood the reason for your earlier comment, so my reply was not very responsive. Sorry about that.
If the media outlet misquoted Mr. X, then it's not a reliable source for Mr. X having said what they reported. Most of the time, wouldn't it be best not to cite that mistaken source at all? (It's not a reliable source except in an ABOUTSELF way.) In that case there's also no need to cite Mr. X. The only situation where I can see citing the media article is if the misquote has some significant impact on Mr. X or Ms. Y. We'd only know that if some source comments on the impact. If it's a non-SPS media source, we can use that. If it's only Mr. X and/or Ms. Y, then it would be more complicated. FactOrOpinion (talk) 00:40, 14 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Sometimes a misquote is minor in nature, which doesn't necessarily make the source unreliable for it. In such a case, we want to cite The Daily News to show that it's DUE but the original to get it right.
I saw a source once discussing a Black professional athlete who had been quoted. He used some slang (or profanity? I've forgotten) and different outlets had different styles for quoting him. Do you quote his wording precisely, and risk making him look less educated? Do you 'translate' his dialect, and thus whitewash his words? If a quote contains profanity, do you print "f---" or '(expletive deleted)" or just silently omit it? WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:52, 14 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Since you're talking about changing WP:BLPSPS, that discussion ought to happen at WT:BLP instead of here at WT:V.
I think the "first pass" is an improvement. Another (not necessarily better) way to say that is "by the person the statement is about".
The difficulty is that we actually allow more than just "Alice says ___ about Alice". We also allow "Alice's employer says ___ about Alice" or "Industry Award says they gave their award to Alice", neither of which are Alice talking about herself. The main thread is that we often allow self-published sources when "I" am talking about what "we" do.
So you might want to expand it: "unless written or published by the person themselfor a person or entity connected to both the person and the subject that the statement is about".
If clarity is wanted (and it probably is), that could be expanded to say something like (e.g., an organization announcing that they have given an award to the BLP or parents announcing the birth of their child).
We could additionally write a new/clear limit to using such sources: Any such uses must be relevant to the context of the relationship. For example, editors may, if necessary, use a self-published source from an employer to say that the BLP was hired or fired but not for information about the BLP's marriage, and they may use a self-published source from the BLP's spouse to say that the BLP is getting married or divorced, but not for information about their job.
You're right. I got caught up in the discussion above, and I didn't think about where I was posting my own topic. (The discussion above probably should have been at WT:BLP as well.) I haven't ever moved a discussion before. I just searched for relevant templates and found Moved to / Moved from, but I didn't see info about whether I also need to include the kind of edit summary and notice that gets included when you copy/move text from one article to another. FactOrOpinion (talk) 02:57, 13 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Comments are already attributed because of the signatures. You don't have to do anything except let people know that you did it (which, if you post it + add a short comment in the same edit, they'll all get pinged automatically, so you won't really need to do anything else). WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:01, 13 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Your addition of the clause "or a person or entity connected to both the person and the subject that the statement is about" helps provide more clarity to the single-sentence revision (second green text block), but I think the phrasing "or a person or entity affiliated with the subject" would be more concise. This more concise version would require replacing "person" with "subject" to improve the sentence flow, resulting in: "unless written or published by the subject themself or a person or entity affiliated with the subject". — Newslingertalk08:51, 13 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
"A person affiliated with the subject" is too loose. We don't want to accept all social media posts from family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, bosses, and even exes. I think that the common theme is that we accept statements that are, in some fashion, also about the speaker. We want to accept "Fan Fiancée says they're getting married next year" or "Eve Ex says she and Joe Film decided not to have children", but not "Joe Film's brother says Joe and Eve are getting divorced" or "Joe's mother says she thinks his latest film is his best".
While we're here, one of the common misunderstandings has been that you can't cite a self-published source by Joe Film, for an ABOUTSELF statement in a Wikipedia article, if the source also mentions some other person. In this story, if you have a tweet that says "My birthday is 32 Octember 1999. For my birthday, I'd love to be in a film directed by Dave Director. Dave's work is crisp and sensitive, even if Dave himself is pretty ugly", then you can't cite the tweet in the |birth_date= line of the infobox in Joe Film, for fear that a reader might click the link and read Joe talking about Dave Director. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:46, 13 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Your first point makes sense to me.
Re: your second point, I think ABOUTSELF can be improved with a few small changes to the text. For example, I assume that points 1-3 are constraints on the WP text, so in point 1, "The material" refers to the material added to the WP article rather than the self-published source material, and similarly for "It" in points 2 and 3. But then in point 4, the intended referent of "its" is the SPS. So the referents of "The material," "It," and "its" should be clarified, but that should be fairly straightforward. I assume that the "self" in "self-serving" is the person/entity discussed in the WP material; "self-serving" is a bit odd there, since the subject of the sentence is the WP text and not the person/entity. Perhaps "unduly self-serving" could change to "puffery."
There was some discussion of merging WP:SELFSOURCE and WP:BLPSELFPUB to WP:ABOUTSELF, started by SMcCandlish. I think he'd eventually like to act on that, but until that happens, corresponding changes should be made in SELFSOURCE and BLPSELFPUB. The latter texts vary a bit from ABOUTSELF (whence the merge discussion). In SELFSOURCE, point 2 suggests that "people, organizations, or other entities" are always third parties, so that should be fixed. In BLPSELFPUB, the "It" in points 1-3 all refer to the SPS ("Such material may be used as a source only if: 1. It ..."). Unless I've truly misunderstood the intent, that needs to be reworded so that "It" refers to the material added to WP. The footnote for point 2 suggests that my interpretation is correct.
Perhaps the archived discussion I linked to above should be reopened (or a new one started) to deal with all of these, but if not, then I guess we'd need to start parallel discussions about these changes on the 3 Talk pages. FactOrOpinion (talk) 00:20, 14 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I certainly agree that exes can be unreliable sources of information about the people they separated from. How about this phrasing: "unless written or published by the person themself or by an author affiliated with both the person and the subject of the claims in question"? The word "author" is a simpler way to phrase "person or entity". The term "affiliated with", which refers to being non-independent, is stricter than "connected to". — Newslingertalk05:03, 15 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
(I'm so glad that someone finally complained about Eve Ex.)
"Author" leads to the question of corporate authorship. "Person or entity" is clearer that organizations/companies/political campaigns can self-publish content. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:07, 15 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The single-sentence revision (second green text block) is a simple and straightforward improvement over the current first sentence of WP:BLPSPS, and I support it. I also see the multi-sentence revision (third green text block) as a major improvement over the vague "for example" phrasing currently used in WP:BLPSPS, but I would make one change: the phrase "may be used" should be replaced with "may only be used" to clarify that a claim that passes the requirements of WP:BLPSPS is still subject to other policies and guidelines.As WhatamIdoing noted, since this discussion is a proposal to change WP:BLPSPS, it should be located at WT:BLP (or WP:VPP, a broader venue). To move this discussion, copy and paste it to the new location, add the {{Moved discussion from}} template directly under the heading at the new location, then replace all of the contents of the discussion at the old location (excluding the heading) with the {{Moved discussion to}} template. — Newslingertalk08:41, 13 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think the proposal misses something important. While restricting SPS material about third parties is important, it is also important to restrict which article it can be used in.
Consider the following: Arthur says something about Betty in his personal blog, and mentions that this inspired him to write a book. When used in the article about Arthur (or the article about the book) this is likely to be used in an ABOUTSELF context… we are probably mentioning it with a focus on Arthur and why he wrote his book.
However, in the article about Betty, it is likely being used to support a statement with a focus on Betty. This is the situation we want to prevent.
This shift in focus depending on which article we are using the source in… the shift in context… is why the last line mentions the article. Blueboar (talk) 00:59, 14 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, somehow I'm not sure what "the last line mentions the article" refers to. Would you clarify? (For ex., are you referring to point 5 of BLPSELFPUB rather than something in BLPSPS?) Thanks. Re: Bob and Alice, do they have a third-party relationship or a non-third-party relationship? (Your scenario doesn't specify.) If they have a third-party relationship, then in Alice's article or in an article about the book, her blog can be used as a source, but the WP text about the motivation for the book cannot mention Bob himself (though it could refer to an unnamed person), per BLPSELFPUB point 2. And in Bob's article, Alice's blog cannot be used as a source at all, per BLPSPS. If they have a non-third-party relationship, you could name Bob in Alice's article (using BLPSELFPUB for Alice's blog: he can now be named because he's no longer a third party). In this case, you could also use Alice's blog as a source for something in Bob's article (using BLPSPS, but only assuming that we rewrite BLPSPS to make clear that non-third-party sources can sometimes be used). And yes, you might end up adding different WP content in the two articles. FactOrOpinion (talk) 01:30, 14 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I am referring to the article as it appears in the highlighted text in the first green box (the current text). These are the words that the proposal wants to change.
The sentence is referring to the subject of a WP article. And the point is to note that an SPS by Arthur can be appropriately used in a WP article about Arthur (if used in an ABOUTSELF context)… even though his SPS also happens to mention Betty. however it would not be appropriate in the WP article about Betty. Blueboar (talk) 03:35, 14 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I guess I had my page open before you modified the names in your scenario and added "This is the situation we want to prevent," so my previous response used the wrong names. My response did speak to the sentence you added, even though I hadn't seen it: If they have a third-party relationship, then Arthur's blog cannot be used as a source for anything about Betty, regardless of whether it's on the article about Arthur, the article about the book, or the article about Betty. On the other hand, if they have a non-third-party relationship, his blog might be used as a source for content about Betty in any of those three articles, depending on the particulars (e.g., do we have any reason to think that Arthur isn't a reliable source of info? is the content DUE?). WhatamIdoing suggested another constraint. As I understand her suggestion: if A and B have a non-third-party relationship, and A mentions B in his SPS, then his SPS can only serve as a source for a statement where their relationship plays a central role in the statement itself. (Hopefully WaId will correct me if I've misunderstood.) You didn't specify in your scenario whether they do or don't have a third-party relationship. If they do, your desire to prevent the blog's use on Betty's article is achieved. But if they don't, and Arthur is reliable, and the content is DUE, then it's not clear why you'd still want to prevent it being used on Betty's article.
Thanks for clarifying which line you meant. The ending phrase is "unless written or published by the subject of the article." In your scenario, you note that one article might be about the book. In that case, Arthur is not the subject of the article. Nonetheless, Arthur's blog could reasonably be used as a citation for a statement about Arthur in the article about the book. That's why I suggested the change from "by the subject of the article" to "by the person themself." Note that the wording of my first pass ("Never use self-published sources ... as sources of material about a living person, unless written or published by the person themself") rules out using Arthur's blog for content about Betty anywhere, even if they have a non-third-party relationship. On the other hand, WP:SPS says "Never use self-published sources—including but not limited to books, zines, websites, blogs, podcasts, and social network posts—as third-party sources of material about living people..." (emphasis added), and so would allow Arthur's blog to be used as a source for content about Betty as long as it satisfies the constraints in ABOUTSELF. FactOrOpinion (talk) 05:06, 14 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Blueboar, I don't think you'll be happy with your article-specific rule, which says that if the Motion Picture Academy tweets that Joe Film won an Oscar, then it's okay to put "Joe Film won Best Actor" in an article about the Oscars but not to put the same sentence in the article about Joe Film. Editors won't stand for that (and would hopefully replace both citations with a news article the next morning anyway). Consider also WP:NPROF articles: Do you really want to say that the Learned Society's self-published website can be used in List of winners of the Learned Society Award but woe betide the person who copies that same sourced sentence into Alice Expert? WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:07, 14 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I would say we should not use Twitter posts at all, so I don’t really care if we can’t use it to support “Joe Film won an Oscar”. That is an instance where I would say “find a better source”.
I also do not consider organizational websites to be
We can go round and round with examples… they just show that using/not using SPS requires nuance.
My point is simply that we can use SPS sources in an ABOUTSELF situation. However, this can be tricky when the SPS talks aboutself… but also mentions a third party.
In this (rare) situation, we have to look beyond the source and examine the context of how it is being used (what WP article? What specific statement in that article is it verifying?). Are we using it to verify a statement about the author of the SPS (ie as ABOUTSELF) or to verify a statement about someone else (call it “ABOUTOTHER”)? Blueboar (talk) 14:01, 14 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
1) I introduced this Talk section to discuss changes to BLPSPS, but it seems that you're more focused on the application of ABOUTSELF/SELFSOURCE/BLPSELFPUB. Ultimately, we need to improve the text of both BLPSPS and ABOUTSELF/SELFSOURCE/BLPSELFPUB, and there's an interaction between the two.
a) BLPSPS needs to make clear that it does not include the following situations: (i) the author of an SPS has written about themself, (ii) the author of an SPS has written about both themself and some other person/entity, where the relationship between the two is not third-party. In those situations, it might or might not be appropriate to add WP content sourced to the SPS, but those situations fall under ABOUTSELF/SELFSOURCE/BLPSELFPUB, and people should look to the latter for guidance.
b) ABOUTSELF/SELFSOURCE/BLPSELFPUB is pretty clear about situation (i) above, but needs to be clearer about situation (ii). (I'll call the latter situation ABOUTBOTH rather than ABOUTOTHER because it seems to me that any WP text would necessarily mention both the SPS author and the other person/entity.) The SPS could conceivably be used for ABOUTBOTH content, but whether it can be used in practice depends on the specifics, both in the sense you highlighted ("we have to look beyond the source and examine the context of how it is being used"), and in the sense that WAID highlighted above.
2) I think that the wording of ABOUTSELF, SELFSOURCE, and BLPSELFPUB needs to be clarified a bit regardless, as I discussed above. I'm guessing that I should take that to WP:VPP, and perhaps that discussion would also address the concern you've been talking about.
3) I'm confused by "this can be tricky when the SPS talks aboutself… but also mentions a third party." If an SPS author writes something about someone with whom they have a third-party relationship, then the SPS cannot be used to make a WP claim about that third party, per ABOUTSELF/SELFSOURCE/BLPSELFPUB point 2. (Or were you using "third party" here to just mean "another person/entity"?) FactOrOpinion (talk) 15:37, 14 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I am talking mostly about ABOUTSELF. In the context of my example, I don’t think the relationship between Arthur and Betty matters … because what we are verifying is “what inspired Arthur” not “Betty did X”. Arthur was inspired whether he knew Betty or not.
WAID made a good point earlier… Suppose we omit mentioning Betty completely: “Arthur said he was inspired by 'someone’ doing X”… would you say that Arthur’s SPS (which does mention Betty) reliably verifies that statement? I would. Does it matter whether he works with (or even knows) the person who inspired him? no… he was still inspired.
I think the point of BLPSPS is to strongly restrict using an SPS to verify an unattributed statement of fact (in wiki-voice) about other people: “Betty did X (cite Arthur)”. I do agree that this is not reliable… and it is Especially not reliable in the article about Betty.
I might allow it as verification for the statement: “Arthur believes that Betty did X”, but I would be skeptical about DUE WEIGHT (this is where their relationship and Arthur’s expertise on X might matter).
I suppose my real issue in this entire discussion is that both reliability and appropriateness can change depending on how we (Wikipedians) phrase the the material in question, and which article we are placing that phrasing in. BLPSPS only addresses the source, and neglects to address the nuance of what specific statement we are we verifyingwhen we cite that source. Blueboar (talk) 18:43, 14 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that in your specific example, it doesn't really matter whether the relationship between Arthur and Betty is or isn't a third-party relationship, since it can be handled as WAID suggested. But there are situations where it does matter whether the relationship between one person and another person/entity is or isn't a third-party relationship. And of course all of this also depends on how one interprets what is/isn't self-published. You said above "I also do not consider organizational websites to be SPS. They are GROUP published, not SELF published." But some people (like WAID) do consider most organizational websites to be SPS. We need to come to better agreement about what is/isn't self-published. I'm planning to open an RfC about the explanation in WP:SPS, but want to work a bit more on the text. FactOrOpinion (talk) 22:13, 14 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I am wondering whether "reliability" is the right way to address this. To get something into an article, it must have multiple qualities, e.g.,:
be verifiable in source that is reliable for that claim (WP:V + NOR),
be appropriate for the article (e.g., DUE, NOT, etc.),
not be illegal or otherwise inappropriate (e.g., COPYVIO), and
(more generally) have editors accept it (WP:CON).
Sometimes, a website is reliable but we don't want to cite it because of WP:COPYLINK problems. Or because the website was previously spammed.
It's entirely possible that a BLPSPS-violating source would be deemed technically "reliable" for a given statement, but that we don't want to use SPS for statements about BLPs, including SPS that would be considered reliable for that statement. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:27, 15 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Minor point: BLPSPS says ""Self-published blogs" in this context refers to personal and group blogs." Therefore "GROUP published" sources are included (or at least some of them). WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:10, 15 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Would you say that the posts on a group blog are published by the group? I'm inclined to say that each post is published by the individual author (it's possible for people to co-author a post, but I seldom see it), and what makes it a group blog is that these people have chosen to author next to each other, sometimes around a common theme, and perhaps they build off of things that their co-bloggers have posted. FactOrOpinion (talk) 02:17, 15 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Given our discussions around WP:SBM and Quackwatch, it's possible that the answer is "it depends". You could run a group blog with a single individual as the person who decides what gets published when (AIUI https://diff.wikimedia.org/ basically works that way), or you could run it as a collective group (e.g., Monday morning, we all sit down and decide whose posts get published), or you could run it as a free-for-all (I post my stuff, you post your stuff, he posts his stuff...). None of this would necessarily be visible to the group blog's readers. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:04, 15 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think "uncontroversial information" would be too broad of an exemption to the current policy and would ignore the reasons why BLPSPS was made as a separate policy for SPS on BLPs. Changing "by the subject of the article" to "by the person themselves" (or "by the person or organization themselves" to include non-people) appears helpful as that change may help clarify that BLPSPS applies to any content about a living person regardless of which article it is in (i.e. if something is not appropriate to include in a living person's biographical article because of inadequate sourcing, then it would not be appropriate in any other article either). – notwally (talk) 20:34, 14 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think that the "uncontroversial information" actually is a broad exemption to the current policy; if anything, it's a narrowing.
ABOUTSELF says Self-published and questionable sources may be used as sources of information about themselves ... so long as: ... It [i.e., the WP text sourced to the entity] does not involve claims about third parties. If "about themselves" refers to an organization's statement about itself, and that organization has a non-third-party relationship with someone (e.g., the organization employs the person, the organization gave an award or grant to someone), then ABOUTSELF allows us to use material self-published by the organization as a source for content about the person, as long as it meets the other constraints of ABOUTSELF, and as long as it's only used for WP content addressing the situation in which they have a non-third-party relationship. For example, if Mr. M works for Organization O, we can use O's website as a source for WP text saying that Mr. M works for O, but we can't use O's website as a source for a statement that Mr. M likes to go dancing on weekends. (Now, you may say that O's website is not a self-published source in the first place. People disagree about whether publications from organizations are always/sometimes/never self-published, and if it's sometimes, what features determine whether it is/isn't.)
Put differently, WP:SPS says Never use self-published sources as third-party sources about living people, even if the author is an expert, well-known professional researcher, or writer, but in the situation above, the organization is not a third-party source. Similarly, BLPSPS says "It does not refer to a reputable organisation publishing material about who it employs or to whom and why it grants awards, for example."
BLPSELFPUB has similar text to ABOUTSELF, though there's some inconsistency between the two, which I discussed above. If "about themselves" refers to a person's statement about themself (let's continue with Mr. M), and that person has a non-third-party relationship with someone else (let's say, Ms. N, who is Mr. M's lawyer), then there's an analogous case: we can use Mr. M's personal website as a source for WP text saying that Mr. M's lawyer is Ms. N, but we can't use Mr. M's website as a source for a statement that Ms. N won an award. FactOrOpinion (talk) 22:04, 14 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If the "uncontroversial information" change suggested in your original post is not intended to expand WP:BLPSPS, then I think the wording would need to be changed. If the issue is using organization's information about their employees but being prohibited by BLPSPS, then there may be a more simple way to put that specific exemption into policy. I worry that a term like "third-party source" is too ambiguous in this context. Even our linked article for "third-party sources" in the policy actually goes to WP:INDY about "independent sources", which is slightly different. For example, a person who sues me is not a third-party to that lawsuit and probably should not be considered independent at least in the context of the details of that lawsuit. As another example, an employer is a "third-party" to an employee in some contexts but not in others depending on the issue. If we can spell out the substance of the policy without relying on these types of terms, then I think the policy would be more likely to be understood and followed. – notwally (talk) 23:23, 14 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Absolutely, if you can propose a better way to word what I was trying to get at, please do. It may be that "third-party source" is too ambiguous, but it's already in the policies; for example, the WP:SPS text I quoted above links to WP:IS, and the same text/link is present in WP:RS/SPS. I understand your point, though, and that means that these other things should likely be revised as well. One thing at a time. Re: it being OK to use an organization to confirm that someone works for them, that carve-out was added to BLPSPS not that long ago. It says "It does not refer to a reputable organisation publishing material about who it employs or to whom and why it grants awards, for example." FactOrOpinion (talk) 00:04, 15 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's trying to be clearer about the potential for non-third-party sources who have written something about the person. The carve out gives a couple of examples, but doesn't identify the reason it's acceptable, which is that these entities are not third-party sources for these bits of information. More importantly, the carve out doesn't address statements made by non-third-party people rather than organizations. I gave an example above, which was introduced by 3family6, who encountered it while assessing an article for GA. The article is about a band. One member of the band said something about another band member in an interview published by a music magazine. The two band members have a non-third-party relationship by virtue of being in the same band. The interviewer owns the magazine, so some consider the interview to be self-published by the interviewer. (You might or might not agree.) The statement was related to the band, and it wasn't self-serving or controversial; the second band member didn't object to it. 3family6 believes that the sentence about this, sourced to the interview, is due in the article about the band. There is no other known source. But if we use the second block of text that's set off (which is my first suggestion, the first text that's set off is just a quote of the current text), then the WP sentence must be omitted, as the only source is self-published, and the statement wasn't made by the second band member about himself. I feel that it should be allowable, as it would have been allowable had the first band member instead published it on her blog. FactOrOpinion (talk) 21:40, 15 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for your thoughtful explanation. I don't think it would be beneficial to expand the exemption to include self-published statements by individuals about other living people. An employer or awarding entity seems acceptable (not just because they are not a "third party"), but allowing any person or entity that is not considered "third-party" is far too broad (and ambiguous) in my opinion. – notwally (talk) 23:02, 15 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
But that exemption already exists to a large extent: point 2 of BLPSELFPUB allows editors to use a self-published statement by person A about person B, as long as A and B have a non-third-party relationship, and assuming that the statement also meets the other conditions in that policy (e.g., it's not unduly self-serving). Ditto for point 2 of ABOUTSELF, which also allows for statements from organizations that have a non-third-party relationship with someone. Do you think that point 2 of ABOUTSELF/SELFSOURCE/BLPSELFPUB should be removed or narrowed? Or do the other limitations of that policy (e.g., it's not unduly self-serving, it does not involve claims about events not directly related to the source) address your concerns well enough? What other factors influenced you to say that it's OK for an employer or awarding entity? FactOrOpinion (talk) 23:42, 15 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
"point 2 of BLPSELFPUB allows editors to use a self-published statement by person A about person B, as long as A and B have a non-third-party relationship" is not true. That policy only allows for content regarding "living persons who publish material about themselves". There is no exemption for other people. I don't even know what "a non-third-party relationship" with another person would actually mean in that context. I can understand the confusion, but this is exactly why I think a term like "third party" is not helpful. – notwally (talk) 00:29, 16 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
First, on rereading what you just quoted, I see that what I wrote is broader than what I meant. What I meant was "as long as A and B have a non-third-party relationship, and the statement involves both of them and the context that creates their non-third-party relationship" (and assuming that the statement also meets the other conditions in that policy). WhatamIdoing addressed this earlier by suggesting that we add something along the lines of: "Any such uses must be relevant to the context of the relationship. For example, editors may, if necessary, use a self-published source from an employer to say that the BLP was hired or fired but not for information about the BLP's marriage, and they may use a self-published source from the BLP's spouse to say that the BLP is getting married or divorced, but not for information about their job."
How are you interpreting "It does not involve claims about third parties"? (This implies to me that it can involve claims about non-third parties, but you're clearly interpreting it in a different way.) For example, in the scenario above, if the first band member had written about the second band member on her blog instead of making the statement in an interview, would you say that that info couldn't be added to the band's WP article? (If you need the specifics of the statement to judge this, the singer said that she met the band's new drummer for the first time 2 days before a big tour, so this statement meets the constraint that WAID proposed.) FactOrOpinion (talk) 00:58, 16 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
A "non-third party" is a "first party", i.e. the person themselves. Hence why the entire list is only for information by "living persons who publish material about themselves". – notwally (talk) 01:04, 16 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
But "first party" isn't limited to the person themself. For example, in the case of the band, both the singer and the drummer are first parties to their having met for the first time 2 days before the tour started. A university and a professor are both first parties in the university's employment of the professor. A buyer and a seller are both first parties to the sale. FactOrOpinion (talk) 01:18, 16 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In terms of the WP:BLPSPS policy, yes, it is necessarily limited to the person themselves. It is literally in the policy: "living persons who publish material about themselves" (emphasis in the policy). In all of your examples, none of those people are first-parties to each other. This is exactly why I said a term like "third-party" is not useful because it can be too confusing. – notwally (talk) 01:23, 16 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
But if the singer is writing about when she first met the drummer, she is publishing material about herself. If the university publishes its faculty directory, it is writing about itself. Why do you say that "none of those people are first-parties to each other"? WAID, for example, doesn't interpret it as you do (here are some examples she gave today in a discussion at WT:V), and she's a very experienced editor. If you're correct though, then the text needs to be revised to eliminate (or at least reduce) the possibility of misinterpretation. FactOrOpinion (talk) 01:37, 16 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
A person who says when they are born is making a third-party claim about their mother, too, just like the bandmates. The same for someone who says they went to a certain school, etc. I don't think our policies can provide the nuance to apply to every situation. For the bandmate situation, is there absolutely no independent editorial control? Was the other bandmate there during the interview so it can be assumed what was applies to both of them? If there are no other considerations such as these, then I think the question comes down to why it is so important to include this type of information about when they met on Wikipedia if there are no other better sources. – notwally (talk) 02:29, 16 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
At least after your birth, you certainly are. You are two separate people. No one refers to what their mother does using the word "I" to describe her actions. – notwally (talk) 02:40, 16 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia:Independent sources unambiguously defines third-party sources as a synonym (alternative name) of independent sources. On Wikipedia, a source is an independent source in a particular context if and only if that source is a third-party source for that same context, with only one exception relating to finances. In your example, because a lawsuit constitutes a major conflict of interest, the person who sues you would be a non-independent source (and, by the same definition, a non–third-party source) for information about you. I would also prefer to standardize policy text by using the more common term independent sources instead of the less common term third-party sources, which would eliminate any misunderstanding about these terms being identical in most cases on Wikipedia. — Newslingertalk04:32, 16 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Newslinger, the current wording of point 2 in ABOUTSELF/SELFSOURCE/BLPSELFPUB refers to a third party rather than a third-party source. Would you use the phrase independent party, or would you rephrase that part in some other way?
notwally, I'm still puzzling over your view. Earlier, you wrote For example, a person who sues me is not a third-party to that lawsuit and probably should not be considered independent at least in the context of the details of that lawsuit. As another example, an employer is a "third-party" to an employee in some contexts but not in others depending on the issue. But you've also said A "non-third party" is a "first party", i.e. the person themselves. Are you saying that the person who sues you is not a third party to the lawsuit but is a third party to you (even when limited to the context of the lawsuit)? What are examples of contexts where you'd say that an employer is not third party to an employee? Why do you think it's sometimes possible for an organization to not be a third party to a person, but it's never possible for one person to not be a third party to another person? FactOrOpinion (talk) 17:47, 16 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia:Independent sources does not "unambiguously define third-party sources as a synonym (alternative name) of independent sources" but in fact has a whole section titled "Third-party versus independent" that explains these terms are different but says they are generally used interchangeably on Wikipedia. The problem is when situations arise that are relevant to that distinction, which is the case here. The use of "third party" in WP:BLPSPS is referring to any person or entity that is not the person themselves, and has nothing to do with "independence". Also, while I think WP:INDY is an important page, it is also important to note that it is an essay, not a policy or guideline.
FactOrOpinion: "Are you saying that the person who sues you is not a third party to the lawsuit but is a third party to you?" Yes, that is how it works. "Why do you think it's sometimes possible for an organization to not be a third party to a person, but it's never possible for one person to not be a third party to another person?" A person and an organization can overlap. Two people are always separate people. This is just how the terms "first person" and "third person" work. It is the difference between "I" and "he", "she", "they", or "it". If you are all confused about the term "third person" this much, then we should not be expanding its use in our policies. – notwally (talk) 22:19, 16 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
No, it's not how it works. If someone sues you, then they're the plaintiff (the first party) and you're the defendant (the second party). They are not a third party to you in the context of the civil suit.
When you say "A person and an organization can overlap," do you mean that if one thinks of the person and the organization as sets, then the person and the organization can have a non-empty intersection (e.g., if the person is an employee or a board member)? If not, then I don't understand what you mean by "A person and an organization can overlap." So when you say "Two people are always separate people," do you mean that considered as sets, their intersection is empty, and you're contrasting an empty intersection with a potentially non-empty intersection?
"This is just how the terms 'first person' and 'third person' work." Would you mind linking to the source that you've gotten this from? Because when I look at dictionary definitions, for example, they don't agree that "it's never possible for one person to not be a third party to another person." They regularly contrast people who are third parties (e.g., people who are incidentally involved, if involved at all) with people who aren't third parties (e.g., a seller and buyer). I'm open to being convinced that you're right, but right now, I think it's just as likely that you're the one who's confused about this. FactOrOpinion (talk) 01:00, 17 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for pointing out that "This is just how the terms 'first person' and 'third person' work." is about first/third person rather than first/third party. When I quoted that sentence, I wasn't paying attention to the fact that Notwally had shifted from party to person and so wasn't relevant, except to illuminate why we were disagreeing. FactOrOpinion (talk) 13:20, 17 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
But point 2 of BLPSELFPUB allows editors to use a self-published statement by person A about person B, as long as A and B have a non-third-party relationship, and assuming that the statement also meets the other conditions in that policy (e.g., it's not unduly self-serving) and the statement is about the context in which they have the non-third-party relationship. Ditto for point 2 of ABOUTSELF, which allows self-published statements by organizations that have a non-third-party relationship with someone (assuming that you think an organization's publications can be self-published). Are you suggesting that point 2 of ABOUTSELF/SELFSOURCE/BLPSELFPUB should be rewritten to exclude these possibilities? FactOrOpinion (talk) 13:44, 17 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I could be wrong, but after reading through this discussion, I believe you're the only editor who has has this understanding of "third party". Persons A, B, C, etc. are all third parties to each other, because they are different people. BLPSELFPUB point 2 could just as well be written "it does not involve claims about persons other than the one publishing the source". BLPN regularly sees issues with people tweeting about their children or parents, their spouses, and so on—with the result that SPS can't be used to support claims about other living persons, even if there's likely a relationship there. Woodroar (talk) 14:09, 17 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Dictionaries don't agree with you that persons A, B, and C are always third parties to each other. I don't think I'm the only person interpreting the text of the policies in this way. For example, see this comment from WhatamIdoing. As I understand it, the intent is to allow some kinds of content involving more than one person to be sourced to SPS, as long as the WP text meets the other conditions of BLPSELFPUB and as long as the text is specifically about the non-third-party relationship itself rather than about something else (e.g., you could source "Harry is married to Wendy" to a tweet from Harry noting that they're married, but you could not source "Harry and Wendy both attended Local College" or "Wendy likes ice cream" to a tweet from Harry, even if they're married). Similarly, the intent is to allow some kinds of content about a person to be sourced to SPS from an organization, again as long as the WP text meets the other conditions of ABOUTSELF and as long as the text is specifically about the non-third-party relationship itself rather than about something else (e.g., you could source "Harry works for Named Corporation" to the corporation's website, but you could not source "Harry is married to Wendy" to the corporation, even if there's a photo on the corporation's website captioned "Harry and his wife Wendy"). So the issue isn't only whether a non-third-party relationship exists, but whether the WP text is about the non-third-party relationship itself. FactOrOpinion (talk) 15:18, 17 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
As long as I can remember, every significant discussion at BLPN has ended with the consensus that you could source "Harry is married to Wendy" to a tweet from Harry noting that they're married is not a correct application of policy, as Wendy is a third party to Harry. Some editors have felt that a simple statement like "Harry is married" might be acceptable, as it doesn't mention Wendy by name—but most editors have found that "is married" still involves a third party, so such a claim isn't allowed at all.
Sure, it's true that multiple people could be members of a party—in a lawsuit or an editorial team, I suppose. But if we're talking one person's social media account, then they're automatically a party of one. Allowing someone to automatically get third-party consent by insinuating "we" would turn our BLP sourcing policies on its head. Woodroar (talk) 16:29, 17 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
So… my take… there are three scenarios to examine -
1) a strict application of the policy would allow: “Harry says he is married to Wendy (cite Harry)”… as that is a statement about Harry (verifying Harry’s opinion).
2) It is debatable for: “Harry is married to Wendy (cite Harry)” … because this is a statement of fact involving Wendy.
3) It is not allowable for “Wendy is married to Harry (cite Harry)”… as that is a statement about Wendy.
"Harry says he is married to Wendy" is not allowed because this statement still makes a claim about a third-party. Something being an opinion does not negate that. Maybe changing the policy to "it does not involve claims about persons other than the one publishing the source" would make the policy easier to understand? – notwally (talk) 17:36, 17 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don’t think “Harry says…” does make a claim about a third party. Harry may be mistaken in his opinion that he is married to Wendy… but it is still his opinion. Perhaps… “Harry believes…” would be a better wording. Blueboar (talk) 17:44, 17 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Woodroar, can you provide a dictionary definition that agrees with you? If so, I'll stand corrected. If not, then I see two possibilities: (a) the term "third party" is meant in its dictionary sense and lots of people are misinterpreting the meaning, or (b) this is a case of wikijargon, and the relevant WP policies should be clear about what WP actually means by "third party." I am not in any way suggesting that WP "Allow[] someone to automatically get third-party consent by insinuating 'we.'" I am talking about clear-cut cases of non-third party relationships per standard dictionary definitions (e.g., A and B are married, A is employed by B). I haven't been able to find it just now, but I read what I think is a helpful question to ask in determining whether person A and person B (or a person A and organization B) have a non-third-party relationship: if person A were a potential juror for a trial about person/organization B, would a lawyer be able to strike A from the jury pool for cause due to their relationship? If the answer is "yes," then A and B have a non-third-party relationship in a particular context. It's pretty clear that if A and B are married, or one is the child of the other, or A is employed by B, then A could be stricken for cause. (See, for example, this California code.) FactOrOpinion (talk) 17:21, 17 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Dictionaries are really awful evidence for something like this, simply because there can be specialized or jargon definitions, terms of art, etc. In fact, all of the primary definitions I'm seeing relate to the law or insurance. See Merriam-Webster's first definition for the noun "third party", "a person other than the principals", with two legal examples. (Though I would argue that it still gets at the underlying meaning as applied to sourcing: the "principal" would be whoever is publishing the source, whether it's a single person or an editorial team. Anyone else would be a "third party".)
In any case, it's entirely possible that my understanding is based on a Wikipedia-specific interpretation. I'll try to dig into the writing of this part of policy as time allows. Cheers! Woodroar (talk) 18:06, 17 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks! If it matters, the "third parties" change was added to WP:BLP in May 2007. The edit summary references consistency with WP:V; the "third parties" change there happened in May 2006. I skimmed the Talk pages around those edits, and most discussions of "third parties" were about the "third-party sources" as mentioned at WP:SPS. That link goes to the essay Wikipedia:Independent sources, which links to another essay, Wikipedia:Party and person. In those discussions/essays, "third parties" tends to be used in the way that I understand it, "some other person or people who isn't the subject"—but it does get muddied by going into independent vs. non-independent third-party sources. It's a bit of a mess, really. Woodroar (talk) 19:30, 17 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Seems to me that both essays focus on the meaning in "third-party sources," and neither is trying to articulate third party relationships between people (or between a person and an entity like the person's employer). WhatamIdoing is the creator of Wikipedia:Party and person, and she's said that two people need not be third party to each other. But the bottom line here seems to be: if the policy is supposed to rule out SPS statements about any person unless the person himself wrote it (e.g., excluding an SPS statement by an employer confirming the person's employment, or an SPS statement by one person about being married to another person), then point 2 of ABOUTSELF/SELFSOURCE/BLPSELFPUB should be rewritten to make that clear, and the phrase "third parties" should be deleted to avoid confusion. If that's the case, I'm curious why people seem comfortable with the carve out about "a reputable organisation publishing material about whom it employs or to whom and why it grants awards." FactOrOpinion (talk) 21:53, 17 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
(outdenting and breaking, because this is getting long)
It is a bit of a mess, which is why I think we should be talking about what we want to permit, instead of what the language of the current policy text indicates.
For example: We probably don't think that it would improve Wikipedia if we ban using self-published sources for uncontentious, non-derogatory ABOUTBOTH statements:
"Fan and I got married today" → "Chris Celebrity married Fan Fiancée on <date>."
"Please welcome my new daughter, Eva Example, to the world. Fan and baby are doing well. As a first-time parent, I am amazed at the miracle of life." → "Chris and Fan Celebrity had their first child in <year>." ("Year" because of WP:DOB.)
"It is with great sorrow that the family announces the death of Ancient Actor on Monday. Ancient was beloved by his children and grandchildren. The cause of death was old age." → "Ancient Actor died on <date>."
"We welcome Bob Business as our new CEO. We hope he will build on past success blah blah blah" → "Bob Business became the CEO of Big Business, Inc. in <year>."
"Abbess Snout Professor of Expertise Alice Expert and her research team here at the Big University uncovered the meaning of life in a ground-breaking study of expertise, published today in the Journal of Important Research" → "Alice Expert published a research paper on expertise" or "Alice Expert holds the Abbess Snout chair."
We probably do mean to prevent some "ABOUTOTHERS" things:
Politicians, political campaigns, political parties, and political action committees posting about other people (candidates, elected officials, government employees, or really anyone except themselves).
Advocacy groups talking about politicians or people related to their cause (except those which the community explicitly accepts, e.g., if the community decides that the Southern Poverty Law Center, or WP:SBM or Quackwatch is both self-published and still acceptable for BLP purposes under specified circumstances)
Non-independent people and entities who are, or who might be supposed to be, in conflict (e.g., parties to a lawsuit, exes [of any type: ex-spouses, ex-employers, etc.]) or having divided loyalties
People and entities that are really unconnected with the BLP being spoken about (e.g., "I saw Chris Celebrity at the coffee shop today" or "Chris Celebrity posted on social media that Joe Film is 'an amazing actor'").
Several of those examples are not self-published content. Others are already covered by the current exemptions. I have not seen any convincing arguments for changing the current policy. – notwally (talk) 00:35, 18 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
WhatamIdoing, I appreciate your choice to approach this in a different way, and personally, I think it makes sense for WP's policy to be written in a way that enables the former and excludes the latter. Arguably many of the latter would already be excluded as UNDUE or not RS anyway, but probably better to just exclude them from the get-go as unallowed SPS. In making your argument, I think it makes sense to also include examples of ABOUTBOTH that don't satisfy "uncontentious, non-derogatory," so it's clearer that "exclude" isn't limited to ABOUTOTHERS. That said, I don't have nearly the experience with this as others do, and I might feel differently if I'd seen things that looked like "uncontentious, non-derogatory" ABOUTBOTH but actually turned out to be pranks, or if I were convinced that "uncontentious" is an empty set. (Off-topic, but the Abbess Snout Professor of Expertise made me think of The Snouters. For me, the original book illustrations are more fun than the models in WP's article; an image search on the title will pull up some of those illustrations.)
notwally, if the first three are tweets or personal blog posts (for example), they are self-published and, according to you, do not fall under BLPSELFPUB, nor under the exemption for employers and awarders. The question is whether the project is improved by allowing them to be used. I'm also puzzled why you think it's OK to create a carve out for some kinds of statements from organizational SPS but not OK to have a carve out for some kinds of statements from personal SPS (though it's possible that you don't think organizations self-publish; people disagree about that). FactOrOpinion (talk) 02:32, 18 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I, for one, do think it would improve Wikipedia if we explicitly banned self-published "ABOUTBOTH" statements. And from discussions at BLPN, I believe we do already, even if the wording is perhaps questionable. As I mentioned above, permitting such sources would turn current BLP policy on its head, by allowing prank tweets to be cited for weddings, deaths, births, and so on. I mean, just like DOB, all of that can be contentious. And that's why WP:ABOUTSELF is ABOUTSELF and WP:BLPSELFPUB is BLPSELFPUB, it limits the possibility of harm to, at most, the person or organization publishing the source. Woodroar (talk) 02:11, 18 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think it would improve Wikipedia's behind-the-scenes processes if we all agreed on what's acceptable, and wrote it down in plain, unambiguous language.
Accepting only the narrowest range means we would exclude a lot of information. Some subject areas would be affected more than others (e.g., basic information about academics, artists, and co-authors often comes from a self-published source in which Co-Author #1 says something about what "we" thought or did). Accepting the very broadest range – which I don't think anyone wants to do – means we would have more disputes over what WP:BALASP requires for basic information (e.g., Does it matter if they're getting divorced?) and what's fair and DUE (e.g., politicians complaining about their opponents, activists stoking outrage about whoever is connected to their cause today...).
Here is a scenario to think about. Imagine that we have (separate) articles on two people, who happen to be married to each other. We find a self-published source from only one of them, that says they are regretfully getting divorced. Do we want to declare that the Wikipedia articles can only say that "she" is getting divorced and not that "he" is also getting divorced, even though obviously it's impossible for one spouse to get divorced while the other remains married? WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:04, 18 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Personally, I'm fine with excluding a lot of information, especially when it comes to content about living persons.
I vaguely recall the scenario you mentioned coming up at BLPN before. Or, say, when reliable sources cover a wedding but not a divorce. The kindest solution, and one that doesn't sacrifice accuracy, is to simply remove the content about marriage and a spouse. After all, we don't have to cover that aspect of a subject's personal life. Woodroar (talk) 04:44, 18 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Do you think of things published by an organization — such as a university faculty listing or a learned society newsletter/website announcement — as self-published? (Some people do, other people don't, some say that it depends on the content.) If you do think of it as SPS, do you think we need to remove the language in BLPSPS that says "It does not refer to a reputable organisation publishing material about who it employs or to whom and why it grants awards, for example"? FactOrOpinion (talk) 12:56, 18 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I lean towards agreeing with it (or what I think it's saying), but I think that sentence could be reworked to make it stronger. The use of "reputable" suggests to me that it means WP:REPUTABLE, as in, the organization has a clear editorial process in place and a reputation for accuracy. To me, that editorial process is what makes it not self-published, hence the exception. Now, if we don't know anything about the editorial structure, or the author/employer/faculty-member/award-granter is the same person publishing the source, then we'd have to assume that it's self-published and shouldn't qualify for any exception.
All that being said, if we did take a conservative approach and remove that sentence (and any ambiguity) entirely, I wouldn't mind at all. Woodroar (talk) 15:47, 18 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think there are huge gray areas where we don't know much, if anything, about organizations' editorial structures. Some WP editors assume that such an editorial structure exists for any organization. Some editors think that it must be demonstrated in some explicit way. Some think that it can be assumed if they have a reputation for accuracy. As best I can tell, there is no agreement among editors about whether the examples I gave are or aren't SPS. I personally believe that the current explanation for what is/isn't self-published is a seriously flawed explanation. I'm inclined to say that neither of those sources are SPS, and the actual issue is whether they're RSs (which is where the reputation for accuracy comes in). Blueboar's comment reminded me that ABOUTGROUP might also be relevant in these cases, in which case a university faculty listing is fine, and a learned society newsletter/website announcement about someone is fine if the person is a member of the society — but not otherwise absent that carve out, unless the "third parties" remains in ABOUTSELF, as the awardee is not a third party for the award — as long as the material otherwise satisfies the conditions of ABOUTSELF. There are several moving parts here.
Blueboar, I generally agree that context matters, but if person A writes something about person B (with whom A has a third party relationship), I don't think that writing "A believes that B ___" or "A's opinion is that B ___" makes it acceptable. I also agree that there are times when IAR comes into play, but that has to be resolved on a case by case basis. FactOrOpinion (talk) 17:03, 18 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You and I disagree somewhat on attributed statements of opinion/belief. My feeling is that the appropriateness of including such statements in the first place can be debated (I think these can and should be limited per relevance and DUE WEIGHT) but… if there is consensus that an article should mention Person A’s opinion concerning Person B, the original source where Person A stated their belief/opinion is the MOST reliable source possible for verifying our statement as to what that opinion/belief actually is, and what Person A actually said. The relationship between A and B is completely irrelevant to verifying what A stated.
I think the current restrictions on using SPS sources in BLPs were intended as (legitimate) limits for verifying statements of unattributed fact in WPs voice (B is ___), and that no one thought about statements of opinion (A believes that B is ___) when we crafted that restriction. Blueboar (talk) 17:42, 18 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Blueboar, I agree that A's statement is the most reliable source for what A said, and it's true that "The relationship between A and B is completely irrelevant to verifying what A stated," verification alone doesn't tell us whether info can (per most of WP's policies) or should (per IAR) be added to an article. This discussion has raised multiple questions, such as what do the current policies mean, or should we not be focusing right now on what they mean and instead by asking what we think the policies should be? (For example, is the statement about "third parties" in point 2 of ABOUTSELF/SELFSOURCE/BLPSELFPUB meant to allow statements by the author of the SPS about a person who is not third party to the author? Either way, what do we think that policy should allow or not?) As for unattributed fact vs. attributed opinion, I would think that that's already covered by WP:RSOPINION, which currently excludes SPS "about a living person, unless written or published by the subject of the biographical material." If I'm understanding right, you're saying that A is a RS for A's opinion; I agree. But that doesn't imply that A is the only subject of "A believes B is ___."
Woodroar, thanks for the example. Am I understanding right that you're in favor of removing "third parties" from point 2, but possibly allowing very limited exceptions under a carve out in BLPSPS, as edge cases? FWIW, I think these carve out cases arise quite a bit for NPROFs, and their Talk pages may be entirely empty or go years in between a comment and a response, so referring people to a talk page won't always work for assessing IAR in these edge cases. I guess people can take the issue to BLPN in that case. FactOrOpinion (talk) 18:42, 18 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'll be honest, my knee-jerk response is that we should use "never" and let editors seeking an exception to come to BLPN. However, I'm interested in what kinds of carveouts everyone thinks are appropriate. Can I get some examples? (If they've already been given, I apologize.) Woodroar (talk) 19:33, 18 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Well, this brings us back to the question of what is/isn't a self-published source; if a source isn't self-published, there's no need for the carve out. For the sake of argument, let's assume that the kinds of sources to which the carve out refers are SPS. Consider Lee Shulman, an NPROF whose page I tried to improve. Most of the sources I found are covered under the carve out, and if it were removed, a lot of that info would need to be removed along with it. (Or perhaps there's some non-SPS that has this info, and I just didn't find it.) There's no question that he's notable per the NPROF criteria: very widely cited work, past president of 2 notable learned societies, past president of a notable educational foundation, fellow of several learned societies where that's an honor, recipient of multiple significant awards from learned societies, ... These are all very reputable entities. The carve out wording only explains its intent via examples, and I decided that it was also meant to include things like confirmation from a learned society that he had served as past president and/or was a fellow. Would you say that almost all of that info should be removed if I can't find a non-SPS to confirm it, or that I'd need to go to the BLPN (where I'm guessing it would be OKed, though I can't know for certain). FactOrOpinion (talk) 20:10, 18 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This is an interesting one. I wouldn't consider most of these to be self-published, no, especially the magazines. I'd bet they even have staff mastheads, like the University of Chicago Magazine. (The others may not be available in the online versions.) That clearly indicates an editorial process to me.
Now, I wouldn't use them to support anything controversial. But to support the subject being a professor, a member of a learned society, his educational background, I think that kind of carveout would be fine. Woodroar (talk) 20:40, 18 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that the U of Chicago Magazine isn't self-published, and I did source some of the info to that source, and I could use it as a source for a couple of other bits of info if needed. Some other sources clearly aren't SPS either. A fair amount of it might also be sourced to BLPSELFPUB (his website has a lot of this info), depending on whether people think it is/isn't "unduly self-serving." However, some of the info is sourced to sources that at least some people do consider SPS and fall under the carve out. Out of curiosity, since you're OK with a limited carve out: is that because you believe that these kinds of institutions are reputable and thus reliable for this non-controversial information? FactOrOpinion (talk) 21:40, 18 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's not only the institutions (major, respected universities), but factors like a staff masthead and a print publication are all strong signifiers of an editorial process—and that (usually) means it falls outside our definition of "self-published". I wouldn't have the same faith, say, in an e-zine run by a couple of journalism students at a community college.
I wrote "usually" above because there are exceptions. Some publications have a "letter from the editor" column that's, by definition, written by the editor. They can often write about whatever they want—they're the editor, after all—so we'd have to be careful about such columns. Woodroar (talk) 22:39, 18 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I guess I wasn't clear enough. I wasn't asking about material that "falls outside our definition of 'self-published,'" since material that isn't self-published doesn't fall under BLPSPS in the first place. I'm wondering about material that you think is self-published but where the carve out says it's OK anyway, and where you agree; this webpage from the American Educational Research Association confirming that Shulman was past president of the AERA might be an example. So, if you think this is an SPS and also think it's OK to use this source for that info, I'm wondering what makes it OK. FactOrOpinion (talk) 00:00, 19 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Ohhh, sorry! I would consider that list at AERA an SPS, yes. And no, I would not consider it okay to use it.
I'm still on the fence about this, but I've been considering possible carveouts and I may support using SPS for basic biographical details that are relevant to notability. For a professor like Shulman, maybe undergraduate and graduate schools and degrees or where they've taught, if sourced to the universities. For a journalist, the publications they've written for, if sourced to those publications. But nobody needs to know that a professor was a president of an association, especially if reliable, secondary, independent sources haven't written about it. Woodroar (talk) 02:22, 19 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Criterion #6 that qualifies someone as an NPROF is "The person has held a highest-level elected or appointed administrative post at a major academic institution or major academic society," so it is relevant to notability. In Shulman's case, it's not essential to qualifying him as an NPROF, because he meets several criteria. But even for him, it was a significant role within the profession. It might be mentioned in a non-SPS for him, but often these things are only mentioned in sources that you might consider SPS, such as a university department's website or the learned society's website. Same thing for prestigious academic awards, which is NPROF Criterion #2. FactOrOpinion (talk) 03:05, 19 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I just have to wonder, what is so important to an encyclopedia article that we need to include it based on, let's face it, a lower tier of sources? Very basic biographical details about the subject? Maybe, I could see that. We trust any random person on Flickr for photos of our subjects, and I'd say I agree with that. But awards or higher positions they've held? Ehhh. Unless it's covered in reliable, secondary, independent sources, I don't think we need to include it. (I would also make an argument that it's UNDUE.) I understand that NPROF includes some of them as criteria, but they should still be cited to RS in my opinion. Woodroar (talk) 15:27, 19 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
They are cited to RS. RS sufficient for the information, that's the NPROF consensus and the general consensus. For example, when you have an article about an a person recognized by a governmental body like the NIH, or a learned society, or the University of Chicago, or the Macarthur fellowship. then is only makes sense encyclopedically to cite what the NIH or Leaned society or university or foundation puts out about them. Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:47, 19 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't consider them lower tier. As long as the organization is reputable, they are absolutely RSs for this kind of content. (Who knows better than the learned society itself whether Person X is a past president? If a reporter were to report on it, the reporter would rely on the reputable learned society's statement about it.) Whether it's DUE is a separate question, but I'd say that info related to the NPROF criteria is always DUE, as it's generally this kind of info that makes that academic wiki-notable (few academics get the kind of secondary independent coverage that you'd prefer). FactOrOpinion (talk) 17:03, 19 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The frustration I am having with this conversation (and with the policy) is that it neglects to discuss context (the policy focuses on the self-published nature of the source, but neglects to discuss the nature of the WP content we are trying to verify when we cite it). The same SPS might be highly appropriate to use in one context (such as a statement with INLINE attribution outlining the beliefs or opinion of the self publisher) and yet completely inappropriate in a different context (such as a statement of fact about another living person written in Wikipedia’s voice). ABOUTGROUP (group sources writing about members of the group) are yet a different context. And there are many others.
Blanket “never use” statements are always problematic, because there are always rare exceptions that we didn’t think about when we crafted the policy. I agree that there are lots and lots of situations where an SPS source shouldn’t be used, but there ARE (rare) situations where an SPS source is highly appropriate.
Ultimately, we have to ask: does this source appropriately verify the specific statement we have written in a specific WP article? If yes, it should be allowed… if not, either find another source or rewrite the statement. Blueboar (talk) 16:22, 18 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think people definitely thought of self-published statements of opinion when BLPSPS was developed, and I don't think anyone is neglecting the context. Allowing self-published opinions by one person about other living people would have serious negative consequences. – notwally (talk) 18:38, 18 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
But again… I don’t think the statement “Joe Notable believes that Trump is a Nazi” (or whatever) actually is a statement about Trump … it is a statement about Joe (what Joe believes).
Sure, there are many reasons why we might omit mentioning Joe’s opinion (even if not self-published)… but as long as there are a few reasons why we might include it, it’s not a “never” situation. It’s a “rarely” situation. Blueboar (talk) 23:24, 18 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It is clearly a statement about both. No offense, but claiming the statement is not about Trump is nonsense. And for me, it's clearly a never situation if these statements are self-published. – notwally (talk) 17:36, 19 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Briefly returning to Take 1 of my original proposal:
The current wording says "Never use self-published sources—including but not limited to books, zines, websites, blogs, podcasts, and social network posts—as sources of material about a living person, unless written or published by the subject of the article."
I'd proposed changing the bolded phrase to "person themself."
WhatamIdoing suggested "person the statement is about."
And I subsequently noticed that WP:RSOPINION says "subject of the biographical material."
My sense is that there's consensus to change the bolded text to an alternative that makes it clearer that this applies even in articles that are not about the person in question. Does anyone have a preference among the three alternatives? I'm now inclined to go with the RSOPINION text, but any of these three works for me. If we can agree on this, I'd like to make this change while discussion continues about non-third-parties/ABOUTBOTH/ABOUTOTHERS/"Joe Notable believes ..." statements. FactOrOpinion (talk) 17:39, 19 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I would support changing to "person themselves" or "subject of the biographical material" as I prefer the grammar in those options, but I am fine with any of the other suggestions and think they improve the current "subject of the article", which does not make it clear that BLP policies apply to BLP material regardless of which article the material is in. – notwally (talk) 19:05, 19 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I prefer "person themself" or "person the statement is about" about equally, then "subject of the biographical material". But all are an improvement and I wouldn't be opposed to any of them. Woodroar (talk) 20:38, 19 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't want to bring this up, because I dislike giving this person attention, but here's an example of why I believe a strict interpretation of this policy is necessary. There is a serial hoaxer, scammer, or perhaps someone with issues, who I'll call B. She has written at least two articles about herself using multiple sock accounts, claims to be a former music executive, claims to be working on a television series with a streaming service, claims to be the daughter of a notable musician, etc. At first glance, some of this is believable. B has a checkmarked account on Twitter with about 80k followers, was listed on IMDb with a variety of credits, has songs on streaming services (all songs by other artists), and even ran a website with fake articles about herself. I just searched and found one real website with an article about her "upcoming series", clearly based on a press release. Thanks to those self-published sources, we actually mentioned B in that notable musician's Wikipedia article—which was then used as a source in a real news piece, and then cited as a secondary source back here on Wiki. Thankfully, the musician tweeted that she doesn't know B and I was able to remove the mention. A record label also tweeted that she was not appearing on one of their band's tours, as B claimed.
In the five years or so that she was disrupting Wikipedia, B made all kinds of claims about people other than her. Very few of them ended up on Wikipedia, but none of them should have as they were all SPS. And I'd like to think that this is an extreme example, but WP:LTA is filled with serial hoaxers. I understand that there may be edge cases where SPS sources might be fine, but that's what IAR is for. Those discussions should start on the article's Talk page. Outside of that, a strict interpretation of policy should stop cases like this from happening in the first place. Woodroar (talk) 18:01, 18 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
A policy can be helpful in dealing with one situation yet harmful when applied to a different situation. You found that a rock can work when you want to hit a nail and don’t have a hammer… but a rock does not work as well when you want to drive a screw. Nails and screws may look a lot alike… but they are different. Blueboar (talk) 23:43, 18 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Woodroar, this is a super important example, and I appreciate you sharing it.
Wrt the "all kinds of claims about people other than her", were some of these like "I met Mel Musician at the ____ Festival, where we talked about the lyrics for that song. I suggested the <famous element>, which I guess they liked, because it ended up in the final song", which we might cite after a sentence like "B helped Mel Musician write the lyrics to this song"?
A strict interpretation means:
No university websites being used to say that Prof. I.M. Portant is a professor.
No corporate press releases being used to say that they've hired Bob Business as their CEO.
No WP:ELOFFICIAL websites being used to say which actors are in the film.
No social media posts from labor unions, professional associations, or others saying that they have endorsed Paul Politician during his campaign.
If Chris Celebrity says he married Fan Fiancée, you can write that he got married, but you can't write that he married Fan.
These are all common uses of self-published sources. Do you want to officially ban those, so that they are only possible if an editor can successfully defend them as a case of IAR? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:14, 20 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The tweets were more like "Excited to go on tour with [famous band] and [another famous band] this summer! #[tour name]" or "Look for my new drama, [title], starring [actor] this fall #[streaming service]" or "Was so happy to see my mother, [famous musician], in [TV movie] last night". The kind of stuff you might see from any other musician, except if you search for the tour names or the television series, they either don't exist or B isn't listed anywhere. Or, like I mentioned, the personal relationship doesn't exist and has been disavowed by the famous musician.
And funnily enough, I just found some more mentions on Wikipedia, at least one of which made it into another news piece. I'll be cleaning that up later.
Okay, those are some good examples and I can see the rationale behind some of them—at least the first three. We do have some phrasing about "reasonable doubt" in policy but I'm wondering if we should add something about official websites or official accounts? Just a thought. The politician endorsement example strikes me as promotional, which I'd lump into self-serving and puffery. (Yes, the message is about someone else, but it also makes them look good.) As for the marriage example, I still dislike citing tweets from individuals but think I could support it as long as the other person isn't named. Woodroar (talk) 22:28, 20 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I understand that such content exists, but I don't think that it should. Call me a curmudgeon, but I think that nearly all of our content should be based on WP:REPUTABLE, WP:NOTNEWS, WP:NOTTRIVIA, and so on. We don't have to include a lot of content that we currently do. Woodroar (talk) 23:26, 20 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
They're not my favorite group of articles, but if editors thought those were impossibly bad sources, they wouldn't have used them, and they wouldn't have let other editors use them. The 'parent' List of Kamala Harris 2024 presidential campaign endorsements was edited by well over 500 editors. Surely someone would have noticed the sourcing problem – if they actually considered using self-published sources to be a problem in this context. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:24, 21 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That article could be fine, or nobody has cared enough to look into it, or nobody has enough spoons to bother, or there's ownership by a group of local editors. Articles/situations like that come up at noticeboards from time to time.
I think we'll need more than one RFC. The next one has a chance at settling the question of whether an organization posting something on the internet is self-published or not. So perhaps editors will simply declare "self-publishing" to not apply if it's by "an organization" (of a certain size?) instead of "individual humans". WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:59, 21 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Well, it's complicated, if you look at it from the POV of consequences. If you declare "organizations", or even "organizations of at least 20 people", then political campaigns are organizations, and most political campaigns would no longer be restricted by BLPSPS or the BLPSELFPUB rules (e.g., about "unduly self-serving"). (We could also add a new set of rules for such 'semi-self-published' sources.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:26, 21 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hi @Notwally, you have reverted with the edit summary This information is not repeated in the linked MOS guideline, which actually refers back to this section of the BLP policy. The reason you'll not find the previous text repeated at MOS:GENDERID is because the previous text was a misleading paraphrase of the MOS page: it did not mention that the MOS:GENDERID guideline specifically covers only pre-notability former names. The extra information on how to deal with vandalism is off-topic for this policy page. Additionally, MOS:GENDERID does not point back to this section, it points back to the preceding section. The previous text was a recent addition, that had the effect of significantly expanding a prohibition found in a guideline and promoting the expansion to a policy. If this was a simple misunderstanding, I invite you to self-revert. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 20:41, 22 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Your edit summary when you removed that information was "one short sentence linking to the relevant guideline instead of a paragraph attempting to reproduce it here" [1]. Now you are claiming that wasn't true and that the real reason is that it is misleading? I am not sure how that is a valid argument, considering that the text says "Sometimes vandals come to Wikipedia to intentionally deadname transgender people in violation of our guidelines." So it not only links to the WP:DEADNAME guideline, but also explicitly limits itself to deadnaming in violation of our guidelines. Are you claiming that deadnaming people in violations of our policies should not be reverted? – notwally (talk) 22:09, 22 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
1) No, "attempting" was indicative that the attempt failed to reproduce the guideline. I am clarifying here that it instead introduced text that is misleading.
2) The previous text is ambiguous and could easily be read as stating that use of former names violates our guidelines.
3) The previous text is mostly advice on procedures for dealing with vandalism, which applies far more generally (even more generally than this whole policy page).
It would be fine to revert to the status quo before this section was introduced, but since the MOS guideline is relevant to the topic of privacy of names, I thought a pared down summary would be appropriate:
If a living person was not notable under a former name, there is likely to be a privacy interest against using that former name on any page (see, for example, guidelines on gender identity).
It does not appear that the text in this policy was attempting to reproduce the guideline at all. It is about reverting edits that violate the WP:DEADNAME policy. What parts of it do you think are contained in the MOS guideline? I also disagree that the text, which both links to the DEADNAME guideline and explicitly says "in violation of our guidelines", is ambiguous. I believe your suggested content is far more likely to be misleading because the DEADNAME guidelines are not about a "likely privacy interest" about "a former name", they are about a definite privacy interest creating an absolute prohibition on using the non-notable deadnames for transgender and non-binary people. Are there other discussions that prohibit the use of former names outside of the context of WP:DEADNAME in the manner that your suggested text implies? – notwally (talk)
Polygnotus, the edit does have consensus, as I noted when I reverted your revert (my edit summary for that revert has a list of editors / comment timestamps who approved the change; I actually forgot to include one editor in that list). Several people who participated in the discussion said that the first change I proposed would be an improvement, no one objected to it, and after an experienced editor (WhatamIdoing) said "FOO, would you please make that change? Nobody likes the existing wording," I made the edit. I do understand BLP, and I don't understand why you're bringing links to the AfD discussion here, as they're irrelevant to whether I got consensus for the change before I actually edited the policy. FactOrOpinion (talk) 02:51, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@FactOrOpinion: You used the term person themself in the comment on the AfD six hours after you inserted that same wording into BLP policy. Are you concerned that this could give the appearance that you were trying to gain an upper hand in a dispute with another editor? jps (talk) 02:59, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
ජපස, I introduced two potential changes on January 12. There was no opposition to the first of my proposals, but the discussion quickly focused on the second, about which there was more disagreement, including disagreement about what some phrases in the existing policies mean and other wording problems in existing policies. The AfD discussion wasn't opened until Jan. 16. Do you think I made my Jan. 12 proposal in anticipation that I'd want to use it in an as-yet-nonexistent discussion? One person supported my first proposed change on Jan. 12, then we were all caught up in the broader discussion, and on Jan. 19 I again asked people about my first proposal, since I hadn't seen anyone object to it, and since a few possible wordings had been proposed. A couple of editors agreed with the change, I was waiting to see if anyone else wanted to say something, when a very experienced editor asked me to make the change. So I changed it. She asked me at 20:37 on 20 January, and I made the change at 21:24, 20 January. My edit summary said "making it clearer that this applies even if the person isn't the subject of the article, per Talk page agreement in 'Modifying the first sentence of BLPSPS'" So no, I'm not concerned that it gives the appearance that I was "trying to gain an upper hand in a dispute with another editor," because anyone who looks at all of the relevant evidence can see that that's not what happened. FactOrOpinion (talk) 03:49, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That you refuse to admit that the sequence of events has the appearance of impropriety makes me very uncomfortable. People have been banned for less. jps (talk) 04:15, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You didn't ask me if whether I agreed that it could give that appearance (of course it could give that appearance to someone who didn't understand the timeline). You asked "Are you concerned that this could give the appearance that you were trying to gain an upper hand in a dispute with another editor?" (emphasis on "concerned" added). And I said no, I'm not concerned about that. Maybe I should be concerned, but right now, I'm not. If you think I should be banned over this, then you should take it up on an appropriate Noticeboard. But expect me to point out the actual timeline, and expect me to point out the many denigrating comments about Kedar in that AfD discussion. Because that context is very relevant to my choices here. FactOrOpinion (talk) 04:26, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Do you think it is okay to change policy and then quote that very same policy with the changes you implemented in a dispute just because you think you are right in that dispute? jps (talk) 04:50, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Again: I changed the wording of the policy because there was consensus right here on WT:BLP that the wording/intention of BLPSPS would be clearer if "the subject of the article" were replaced by "person themself." Can you accept that it was a consensus change? As for my use in the AfD discussion, I couldn't possibly have known when I made that consensus edit to the BLPSPS wording (21:24, 20 January), over a day later the same policy would become relevant in an exchange elsewhere (03:42, 22 January).
Re: your first question, I'm not sure what behavior you're referring to by "behaving this way." I'd appreciate your clarifying that, thanks. But whatever you're referring to, I doubt that my reasoning is about what I "feel justified" in doing, much less that it would be about "mak[ing] sure that what you think are denigrating comments are addressed in the way you want them addressed." If I were trying to do the latter, I never would have sought guidance from other editors about how to deal with denigrating comments in that discussion. And if you think that the only comment I was concerned about there was the one where I asked another editor to delete a link, you're mistaken, and if you think that the sole change I would have wished for was the deletion of a link, you're mistaken about that too. Do you really think that simply asking someone to make a change is the way I'd go about it if my aim were to "make sure" that denigrating comments are addressed as I wish? I quoted a policy, noted that it applies, and asked someone to make a change. I consider that a reasonable way to respond when another editor does something that concerns me.
As for your second question, I think it's OK to change the wording of a policy after getting consensus that the change makes the policy clearer, and I think it's OK to quote a policy when the policy is relevant. FactOrOpinion (talk) 05:35, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
BTW, I hope that the actual timestamps of my two relevant edits makes clear that your initial claim "You used the term person themself in the comment on the AfD six hours after you inserted that same wording into BLP policy" is mistaken; it was about 30 hours later. FactOrOpinion (talk) 06:03, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@FactOrOpinion: Changing a policy and then quoting it soon after looks bad. Real bad. I do understand BLP If that would be the case then you would be intentionally misrepresenting it. So I prefer to believe that you do not understand BLP, and that seems far far more likely based on your behaviour. According to you I made a BLP violation here so please report me to WP:AN. Or stop bothering me and retract your false claims. Polygnotus (talk) 03:05, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If that would be the case then you would be intentionally misrepresenting it. How so?
I haven't ever reported anyone to WP:AN. I'm not sure why you'd propose that I do that instead of simply working it out. I certainly prefer to work it out.
Or stop bothering me and retract your false claims. I don't even know what false claims you're referring to. If you think I've made a false claim, please quote it, and explain why it's false. If you're right, I'll gladly retract it. But I might disagree that it's false. Either way, we're not going to be able to resolve that unless you make clear what claims of mine you're referring to. FactOrOpinion (talk) 03:55, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
(If you reported that to AN, then they'd tell you that you were on the wrong page. Problems like that, if believed to be behavioral in nature, get reported to WP:ANI, not to WP:AN. Perhaps this should be taken as evidence that all of us make innocent mistakes, and therefore should respond with grace when someone else does?) WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:20, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, you believe that because you have not seen their behaviour elsewhere. And of course sources were provided. making a factual claim about a living person (even in project space) that is not verifiable to a reliable source is a violation. That is not true. Barack Obama invented the letter B. Jimbo Wales can travel through time, but only forwards. Taylor Swift has sneezed multiple times in a row. Polygnotus (talk) 03:17, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If you stated "Barack Obama invented the letter B" in a serious manner, and not as an example as can be seen in the context of your comment, then it would be a WP:BLP violation, as WP:BLP extends the verifiability policy to non-article space for claims about living people. I doubt anyone would petition to have it removed since it is not a negative claim, but it is a violation. — Newslingertalk03:29, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Based on the context of the discussion, you are clearly saying that as a example. Even if you were serious, that kind of WP:BLP violation would not be something I would normally bother to respond to. — Newslingertalk03:34, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Statements that are potentially defamatory might be ripe for consideration as BLP violations. But otherwise, this stuff seems silly. Shouldn't defamatory be in the standard? jps (talk) 03:41, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Not all WP:BLP violations in talk page comments need to be removed. Comments that meet the WP:RD2 criterion ("Grossly insulting, degrading, or offensive material") and other defamatory content about living people should certainly be removed. On the other hand, minor WP:BLP violations can simply be replied to by any interested editor. — Newslingertalk03:48, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Newslinger: But goodfaith Wikipedians have a lot of leeway in discussions when talking about sources and BLP subjects... right? Because if you don't add that part people with a very incomplete and strict and rigid interpretation of the rules can object to thousands of comments and falsely claim all those people somehow did something bad when they did not. Right? If I discuss a conman on a talkpage, or a grifter or worse, a politician then I should be able to speak freely and openly, within normal parameters (you know, no 4 letter words and all that). It is very important that goodfaith Wikipedians have the ability to mention when someone is lying, misrepresenting the facts, or when a form of pseudoscience is bullshit. I do not have a reliable source that states that dowsing is bullshit. But dowsing is bullshit, and I am and should be allowed to say that. And that should be mentioned in the rules, because otherwise people will abuse/misuse them. Polygnotus (talk) 03:58, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Of course WP:BLP violations have different levels of severity, and minor violations in talk page comments generally do not warrant any kind of action other than a rebuttal from interested editors. A report for "thousands" of minor WP:BLP infractions that do not convincingly establish a pattern of misconduct would be expected to be dismissed as vexatious. The claim "dowsing is bullshit" does not concern a living person, so it is not relevant to WP:BLP. — Newslingertalk04:08, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Polygnotus, if you edit your comment after someone has already responded to it (e.g. Special:Diff/1271240020), please indicate in the comment that you have edited it, per WP:TALK#REVISE. Otherwise, the discussion becomes more difficult to follow. WP:BLP does apply to living people who practice dowsing and other forms of pseudoscience, just as it applies to all other living people. I would need a clearer example if you want a clearer answer. — Newslingertalk04:33, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think it makes sense to discuss this in the abstract when I was responding in a very specific context. That context is a very contentious AfD discussion. Another editor opened a thread at the BLPN because of their concerns about degrading comments made in the AfD discussion. (Several of us have expressed concerns about BLPVIOs in that BLPN discussion; Polygnotus is the only editor who participated in the discussion and said that there were none.) The self-published YouTube video that I objected to is contentious. The WP claims based on that video were contentious. FactOrOpinion (talk) 04:16, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If this is how you interpret BLP policy, it is absolutely ripe for WP:POINTygaming. How do you decide if it is a serious manner or not? If I demand that you remove the comment, would you do it as an admin action? And if Polygnotus then asked for a review at WP:AN, do you think the consensus would be in support of you? jps (talk) 03:31, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
you have not seen their behaviour elsewhere You know, I invited you earlier to take your concerns about my behavior to my talk page. You didn't take me up on it, instead responding "Can I please go back to ignoring you now?" But instead of ignoring me, you started this whole to-do here. Your choices in all of this baffle me. FactOrOpinion (talk) 04:08, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
making a factual claim about a living person (even in project space) that is not verifiable to a reliable source is a violation. If I say that my friend grew up in California, that is a factual claim about a living person that is not verifiable to a reliable source. Is that therefore a BLP violation? jps (talk) 03:27, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Since you are not independent of your friend, your claim about your friend would not be prohibited by the "Never use self-published sources as third-party sources about living people" clause in WP:SPS. Assuming that WP:BLPSPS and WP:SPS are consistent, which is something we are trying to work out in these policy discussions, your claim would not be a WP:BLPSPS violation. If your friend is non-notable, other editors would most likely give you the benefit of the doubt and consider you a reliable source for this particular claim about your friend outside of article space. — Newslingertalk06:14, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm surprised that the statement that "making a factual claim...that is not verifiable to a reliable source is a violation" has drawn such responses. In the mainspace, this would be an indisputable violation of of Wikipedia:Verifiability. It is disheartening to have editors react to statements like this as if having facts come from sources instead of editors' own speculations were some extraordinary thing that they can't reasonably be expected to do under normal circumstances. Sticking to what's verifiable is something experienced editors should do by default, without needing to be reminded. Y'all are better than that. I know you are better than that. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:36, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The edit seems to clearly have consensus. All the personal attacks need to stop. This whole conversation needs to be brought to ANI if it continues in the same manner as above. – notwally (talk) 05:07, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I would say the edit had support… but when only 4 or 5 editors are involved in discussing a change to an important policy like BLP, I am not sure we have enough support to claim a consensus. Blueboar (talk) 13:07, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Several editors said that they thought the change was an improvement, no one expressed any concerns about it, and @WhatamIdoing, who is way more experienced than I am, asked me to make the change. I don't understand what I did wrong here. Was I supposed to have sought out input from editors elsewhere before making the change? FactOrOpinion (talk) 13:32, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
A handful of editors is not enough for such an important change to policy. WhatamIdoing shouldn't have asked that. See WP:RFC. Note that creating a neutral RFC is not easy. Polygnotus (talk) 13:40, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
So here is my take as someone who was involved in the discussion: The change DID have support (indeed, I was the only editor in the discussion who expressed any concern about it, and I didn’t strongly object.)
Given that discussion, I think it was appropriate to do a WP:BOLD edit. This is allowed, even in policy.
However, while there was discussion and support, I don’t think support of 4 or 5 people is enough to claim that it had consensus. At most it had a very weak consensus.
So … it is also appropriate to challenge the BOLD change and ask for a broader RFC… which will help determine if there is a broader consensus. Blueboar (talk) 14:14, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It sounds like you're saying that consensus can't occur unless there are a large enough number of participants, or that in the absence of a large number, it can only be a weak consensus at best. Am I understanding right? If so, that's never been my understanding of consensus. I've always interpreted consensus in relation to the people who've chosen to participate in the discussion (e.g., if 5 out of 5 people agree, there's consensus, even though 5 is not a huge number).
I certainly didn't understand you to have expressed concern about simply changing "subject of the article" to "person themself." (My understanding of your context concern was that it also existed about the previous wording.) I wish you'd said something when I double-checked with people here. FactOrOpinion (talk) 14:43, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
When anyone clicks on "edit source" for a policy page, there's a huge notice at the top that says "While you may be bold in making minor changes to this page, consider discussing any substantive changes first on the page's talk page." We did discuss it on the talk page first. Neither that notice nor the WP:PGCHANGE explanation to which it links suggest that RfCs are necessary before substantive changes. Not a single person in the discussion suggested a need for an RfC, and several very experienced editors participated in the discussion. If substantive changes generally require RfCs, there are many editors in breach of that, as can be seen by looking at all of the substantive changes made to the wording in the absence of an RfC. Your comment about the challenge of creating a neutral RfC made me laugh, as I've invested a huge amount of time in trying to craft a good RfC about the explanation of "self-published" in WP:SPS, seeking out input in order to improve it before I post it.
That said, if you have an objection to the change in the BLPSPS wording, the discussion about it above is still open, and I invite you to say what your objection is. If you think an RfC is necessary, you're free to open one. (I'm not going to, as I'm more focused on getting my WP:SPS RfC in shape to open.) FactOrOpinion (talk) 14:25, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Bit offtopic but... Your comment about the challenge of creating a neutral RfC made me laugh, as I've invested a huge amount of time in trying to craft a good RfC about the explanation of "self-published" in WP:SPS, seeking out input in order to improve it before I post it. What, if anything, do you think can be improved on the WP:RFC page? Personally I feel that it explains the technical side of creating an RFC well enough, but not the pitfalls and dangers. I think it sets (some) people up for failure because they see an easy 7-step procedure and then they get suprised by loads of negative feedback. Polygnotus (talk) 15:40, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The problems FOO's been dealing with have everything to do with asking a neutral question that will produce a useful response, which is not what WP:RFC is about.
See (and join, if you want) this discussion for evidence that not everyone agrees with you about RFCs involve "an easy 7-step procedure".
Project space works a little bit differently: linking to a self-published YouTube video to discuss it is not a WP:BLP violation, but making a factual claim about a living person (even in project space) that is not verifiable to a reliable source is a violation.
Newslinger, I'd appreciate more guidance. Wouldn't the issue of whether the use of a self-published YouTube video is/isn't a BLP violation depend on the content of the video and the content of the editor's statement(s) about it? In this particular case, I'd say that both the video content and the editor's statements are contentious. Both addressed 2 identified living persons, one of whom is the subject of the AfD discussion, and the other of whom is his mother. Some editors would likely disagree with me about whether the video and editor's statements are contentious, but for argument's sake, let's say that both are. Even if the video were considered a reliable source, wouldn't BLPSPS preclude its use for contentious content even outside of mainspace? Or perhaps my question is: can a self-published source be a reliable source for contentious BLP statements, given the BLPSPS constraint?
BLP says "Editors must take particular care when adding information about living persons to any Wikipedia page, including but not limited to articles, talk pages, project pages, and drafts" and that "Contentious material about living persons ... that is unsourced or poorly sourced ... must be removed immediately and without waiting for discussion." That text links to a couple of ArbCom decisions, one of which says in part "The policy on biographies of living persons requires that editors act with a high degree of sensitivity and consider the possibility of harm to the subject when adding information about a living person to any Wikipedia page. This requirement is consistent with the Wikimedia Foundation's guidance that human dignity be taken into account when adding information about living persons to Wikimedia projects," and "All living people who are subjects of Wikipedia content are entitled to the protections of the biographies of living persons policy." I think a lot of the editors in that AfD discussion weren't taking the possibility of harm seriously enough. If I've misunderstood, and more leeway is allowed in using SPSs for contentious statements outside of mainspace, I sure wish the policy would make that clear. Because as a not-that-experienced (though clearly not new) editor, everything in the current policy makes it sound like it's not OK. FactOrOpinion (talk) 16:51, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Your problem is that reality is fuzzy and your interpretation of the rules is black and white. So you can never map one onto the other. BLPSPS would preclude using it as sources of material in the article, but not for use on a talkpage.
Never use self-published sources—including but not limited to books, zines, websites, blogs, podcasts, and social network posts—as sources of material about a living person, unless written or published by the person themself. (emphasis mine)
Your claim "your interpretation of the rules is black and white" is false. You've now made false claims about me on more than one page. Please stop. It's tiresome to deal with, and it's counterproductive.
I'm uncertain how to interpret what you just said. A few possibilities:
1) In WP:BLP, the word "material" is only used to describe content added to mainspace, and if someone makes an edit anywhere else, the content of the edit is not "material."
2) The word "material" means different things in different places in WP:BLP, but in the BLPSPS section, it only refers to content added to mainspace.
3) Something else.
If it's 1 or 2, please specify which. If it's 3, please clarify what you mean.
If it's 1, that's clearly a misinterpretation, just look at the uses/meanings of the word "material" throughout the policy (e.g., "Material about living persons added to any Wikipedia page ...," "Editors must take particular care when adding information about living persons to any Wikipedia page, including but not limited to articles, talk pages, project pages, and drafts. Such material requires a high degree of sensitivity...").
If it's 2, maybe you're right or maybe you're wrong. Given that the use of "material" clearly isn't limited to that in the policy as a whole, then whether your'e right or wrong, someone is misinterpreting the intent, and it would be good to make the wording clearer.
It is weird, the answer to your comment is the thing you respond to, which you object to. So out of those options I guess its 4?
Trying to plug loopholes in policy isn't the solution to our problems. Heck, one could argue its a rather pointless distraction. Words on a policy page will never fully be able to capture reality as a whole. While we can make improvements to policy, people will never understand it if they focus on the exact meaning of every word. I have told a religious friend his focus on exact quotes and his attempts to exactly live as the book tells him to means he is missing the forest for the trees. I hope I am making sense to you. PaGs are not mathematical formulas, they are living breathing documents, written in blood, and every PaG I've read is imperfect and incomplete, and if I spend 10 minutes I can find all sorts of loopholes. We aren't here to write PaGs. The goal is to write an encyclopedia. Am I making sense to you? Polygnotus (talk) 18:36, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If you understand what I am saying, and join me in this new reality where PaGs are window dressing then we can use common sense to decide what the rules are and should be. Can you explain why you think that people are not allowed to say that they believe that a person is incapable of writing a book, without referring to PaGs? For example, do you think someone in that persons family will read it and feel unhappy? (this is my best guess, please correct me if I am wrong.) Or do you think it is an insult to say that someone is not able to write a book? People who are unable to write a book are not lesser than those who can, right? Polygnotus (talk) 18:54, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You would appear to be casting aspersion of ableism... And continuing to bludgeon this topic beyond all reason. Stop or this is going to end up at ANI with you in the docket. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 19:06, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Horse Eye's Back: That is a very creative interpretation, and clearly incorrect. I was trying to understand FOO, and help them, but that is called "bludgeoning" (despite WP:BLUDGEON disagreeing), and if I ignore them because I don't like the way they act I get accused that I haven't really engaged with what they say. OK, it is your problem now. You fix it. Good luck! Polygnotus (talk) 19:13, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If you don't understand that "People who are unable to write a book are not lesser than those who can, right?" is casting an aspersion of ableism then we probably need to have a competence discussion... If you're telling the truth then in good faith you should not be making edits on topics connected to disability and I would expect you to cease doing so. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 19:21, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
(Preface: I wrote a response that turned out to be really long, so I'm splitting it in two parts. This part is more general; the second part addresses your questions.)
Polygnotus, it was initially frustrating to me that you answered 4, when I was actively trying to understand what you meant. I've reread our exchange, I've looked again at the BLP policy, and I think your actual view is 2 and it should have been obvious enough that I didn't need to ask. If I've understood right, I can see how you'd interpret it in way 2, especially given the previous wording, "the subject of the article."
I accept that you think "Trying to plug loopholes in policy isn't the solution to our problems," and may be "a rather pointless distraction," but I see it as a partial solution (definitely not a complete solution), perhaps because I'm a less experienced editor (so the process of learning what the policies are and what they mean is fresher in my mind, and I'm sensitive to the fact that other new editors are in a similar position), and because I am sensitive to the amount of time and energy that can be taken up in discussions when people disagree about what a policy means. I think it can be worth investing energy in making policies clearer. I do recognize that policies cannot be perfect (for varied reasons, including the one you mentioned earlier, that reality is fuzzy, but also including things like words often have more than one meaning, in which case we're faced with the task of figuring out which meaning is intended when). But they can be improved. I'm also personally interested the how humans go about making sense of language / communicating effectively, so the wording of policies interests me for that reason too.
In this specific case, I think the intended meaning of the word "material" is ambiguous. You're interpreting it as "material in the article," and I'm interpreting it as "material in any page." I'm not sure if you're interpreting it as you do primarily because of the previous wording about "the subject of the article," and/or if there's some other reason (e.g., this is what you think consensus practice is). I'm interpreting it the way I do because in parts of the policy, "material" explicitly refers to content about living persons added to any Wikipedia page. I think it would be good to clarify this, and at some point I'll probably try to find out from people what meaning is intended and then try to improve the wording. FactOrOpinion (talk) 19:41, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Re: "Can you explain why you think that people are not allowed to say that they believe that a person is incapable of writing a book, without referring to PaGs?", people can certainly say this without referring to PaGs, but that doesn't mean that I can't object to it, or that I won't refer to a PaG in explaining my objection. As I noted above, I'm interpreting "material" in the broad sense. WP:BLP says "Editors must take particular care when adding information about living persons to anyWikipedia page, including but not limited to articles, talk pages, project pages, and drafts. Such material requires a high degree of sensitivity, and must adhere strictly to all applicable laws in the United States, to this policy, and to Wikipedia's three core content policies ..." In the case of this particular AfD, the article's subject is vulnerable to being characterized in a degrading way, and in a way that may not correspond to reality, and where the writings attributed to him are entirely dismissed. And because of that, I cited policy because I felt like it was the strongest tool I had for trying to counter what I saw as hurtful statements from other editors.
A couple of main possibilities:
1) It's impossible for him to communicate. Nothing that appears under his name was actually written by him; it's all the result of being cued by a facilitator, who is actually the author. Attributing that material to him pretends that someone else's voice is his. In some sense that takes away who he actually is and that he should be valued for who he is.
2) It's possible for him to communicate, and for quite a while he's communicated a lot that's really meaningful and impacts others. He is the author of the works that appear under his name. Although someone else is present in videos of him (e.g., because it helps him focus, or calms him when being videotaped), that person is not the author of his writing. Attributing his writing to someone else takes away his voice, and it takes away who he actually is and that he should be valued for who he is.
Because he's non-speaking and uses a tablet, and because there's a history with FC of the facilitator cuing (whether intentionally or not), in this specific case it's hard to know whether it's situation 1 vs. 2. Several editors in the AfD took view 1. They insisted that this was the only possibility, literally saying it's "impossible" for it to be view 2, comparing view 2 to fringe belief in things like communicating with the dead, and therefore the article "violates WP:FRINGE." They generally weren't arguing the last sentence of 1, looking out for this vulnerable person's well-being. They were focused on the first three sentences. I found that really degrading, and I believe it to be a real BLP violation. I think that insisting on view 1 is different from saying "we don't whether it's 1 vs. 2." I think it's different than saying "it's important to look out for this person in our discussion." Because I believed it to be a serious BLP violation, I cited that policy in some of my responses.
"do you think someone in that persons family will read it and feel unhappy?" Maybe, and "unhappy" isn't the only possible negative feeling. Or maybe some other autistic person will read it and feel frustrated/angry/distressed/...
"do you think it is an insult to say that someone is not able to write a book?" Not necessarily. Lots of people can't write books. But I found it insulting for people to insist that it was "impossible" in this case.
"People who are unable to write a book are not lesser than those who can, right?" Right.
Yes, if an editor links a self-published YouTube video to make claims about another living person who is unaffiliated with the video's creator, that would be a WP:BLP violation, even if the claims were not contentious. In contrast, outside of article space, it is generally acceptable to link to a self-published YouTube video to reference information within the video that is unrelated to living people, to provide details about the video's creator, or to make claims about living people who are affiliated with the video's creator – even if the video does contain other claims that would be WP:BLP violations. It is also usually acceptable to link to a YouTube video to inquire about its reliability or suitability in a article, even if that video ends up being unacceptable. None of the examples cited in this entire discussion would grant an editor permission to edit disruptively; my comments here are made in the context of WP:BLP as a content policy applied to all of Wikipedia generally. — Newslingertalk09:20, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It isn't the main topic of this discussion, but I'd like to know what the basis is for including claims about living people who are affiliated with the video's creator, and parallels in other media, as a potentially acceptable use of a self-published source. Personally, the use of self-published sources to provide unoriginal adulation for those "affiliated" with the author/creator is a source of consistent annoyance to me in Talk page discussions. Do people really find grounds in policy why this should be acceptable? Newimpartial (talk) 14:40, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I believe your answer can be found in the part of the policy that talks about a reputable organisation publishing material about who it employs or to whom and why it grants awards, for example. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:51, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I find this answer intriguing but also puzzling. When I read that passage, I take the key phrase to be "reputable organization", and I find the examples comforting. But I don't see any reference in Newslinger's comment that would lead me to expect that the YouTube video in question was posted by a "reputable organization", nor are authors of the kind of SPS I had in mind in my earlier comment "reputable" in the domain of fawning commentary that I find irritating. Newimpartial (talk) 19:17, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. Yes, this case involved a YouTube video self-published by a researcher, where the entire video consisted of the researcher discussing the WP article's subject and his mother (using embedded video clips of them), both of whom are living and neither of whom are affiliated with the researcher. An editor linked to the video in the AfD discussion and made claims about the mother and son using the video as evidence. I believed that to be a BLPSPS violation and said so, but both ජපස and Polygnotus told me that I was wrong, it wasn't a BLP violation. I did already understand the rest of your response (e.g., it can be OK to use a video for info about the video's creator, as that falls under BLPSELFPUB). The heart of my question is whether the BLPSPS policy applies outside of mainspace, as Polygnotus seems to think that it only applies in mainspace (e.g., they said "BLPSPS would preclude using it as sources of material in the article, but not for use on a talkpage"). I'm not sure how ජපස is thinking about this / what led him to tell me I was wrong. FactOrOpinion (talk) 14:57, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Concerns re recent change to BLPSPS
So, while they don’t rise to the level of objection, I do have concerns about the recent change. The old language said: “Never use … unless written or published by the subject of the article”… which implied that there was a restriction not only on what BLPSPS material we can use, but also on where we could use that BLPSPS material (ie only in the article about that self-publisher).
The change to “Never use… unless written or published by the person themself” keeps the what restriction - but removes that where restriction (implying that we could use BLPSPS material in any article).
For example… X says something about Y… The old language implied we could only mention it in the article about X himself. Now, we can state it in the article about Y (or even in an article about Z). Is that the intent? If so, I am not at all sure I agree. Blueboar (talk) 16:37, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yup, we already have a problem with people sourcing the opinions of people to selfpublished sources on articles about subjects those people have an opinion on. If the decision to include that opinion is valid, then another source would probably have reported on it. If not, its just the opinion of some random. Polygnotus (talk) 16:52, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
No, Blueboar, that's not the intent, and "implying that we could use BLPSPS material in any article" is a misinterpretation. I don't think of BLPSPS as an adjective that can be used to modify material, but as a shorthand for a a constraint. The constraint is: a third-party self-published source cannot be used as a source for content about a living person, period. (There's a disagreement above about non-third-party SPSs, but let's ignore that for the time being, as there is no agreement about that situation.) On the other hand, a self-published source might be used as a source for content about the source's author, as long as it meets the conditions in BLPSELFPUB. Because in that situation, it's "written or published by the person themself."
The BLP policy says "Editors must take particular care when adding information about living persons to any Wikipedia page, including but not limited to articles, talk pages, project pages, and drafts." In other words, it applies no matter where the statement about the living person is made. But the previous BLPSPS wording, "Never use self-published sources … unless written or published by the subject of the article," made it sound like it was OK to use third-party self-published material as a source about person A as long as person A wasn't the subject of the article (e.g., it would be OK on an article whose subject is a corporation, it would be OK on an article whose subject is person B, it would be OK in non-mainspace). The sole intent of the change was to make it clear that unless the use of a self-published source falls under BLPSELFPUB, that SPS simply can't be used as a source for content about a living person, no matter where that content appears. FactOrOpinion (talk) 17:27, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
made it sound like it was OK to use third-party self-published material as a source about person A as long as person A wasn't the subject of the article That is not how people interpret that. Polygnotus (talk) 17:31, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
No offense, but "people" do not all interpret things in the same way. The goal was to make the text clearer for the diverse people who read it and cite it. For example, as Masem noted in his response: "Support at least the change to "the person themself", since I've seen editors try to game at the bounds of SPSBLP. SPSBLP needs to apply everywhere." Of course many editors already understood that, including all of us participating in the discussion above. But multiple experienced editors wouldn't agree to change the wording if they didn't think that the change was an improvement. FactOrOpinion (talk) 18:33, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If the intent is to say “don’t use them. ever. period, end of discussion” - then we should say THAT.
I interpreted the change as allowing more use rather than less use (and if I can misinterpret the intent behind the change, others will too). Blueboar (talk) 19:25, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If you look back at the first sentence of my second proposal, it does what you're asking: "Never use self-published sources—including but not limited to books, zines, websites, blogs, podcasts, and social network posts—as third-party sources of material about living people, even if the author is an expert, well-known professional researcher, or writer." If you think that's better, changing it to that is totally fine with me. But I know that some people dislike the use of "third-party" or at least have concerns about whether/how it's undestood (see notwally's comments and WhatamIdoing's request here). FactOrOpinion (talk) 20:38, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Poly, that might not be how people interpret that, but it is what it literally said. The phrase "unless written or published by the subject of the article" literally means that you can use a self-published source written by Bob Blogger in the article Bob Blogger, but not in any other article at all (e.g., if the article is Big Business, Inc., where Bob works, because then the subject of the article is the company rather than Bob).
Also, this implies that in the article Bob Blogger, you could add anything self-published by Bob, including things self-published by Bob about other BLPs, which we don't want. Bob's blog post on "50 people I dislike" is "written and published by the subject of the article" and therefore permitted here.
While I had felt that I understood the intention of this provision previously, I clearly didn't understand its plain sense. To me, the status quo (ante) language can be interpreted as saying that self-published statmements by a living person (X) about another living person (Y) can be included in the article about X but nowhere else. My understanding had always been that self-published statements by X about Y could never be included anywhere (unless repeated in independent RS), but statements by X about themselves could appear - perhaps those are the ones that should only appear in the article about X? But that doesn't seem to be what the status quo text actually says? Newimpartial (talk) 19:41, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
And my understanding — which seems to be the understanding of editors who are much more experienced than I am — is that if person X self-publishes a statement about person Y, and if X and Y have a third-party relationship, then X's self-published statement cannot be used period, not on X's article and not anywhere else. So I was aiming for language that would make that clearer. There is a disagreement about situation where X and Y do have a non-third-party relationship. One editor says that it's impossible for two people to have a non-third-party relationship. A few editors say that it's possible (e.g., X and Y are married), and in that case X's self-published statement about Y can be used if it's about the nature of the non-third-party relationship (e.g., it's about the marriage and about the two of them, such as "Y and I celebrated our 10th anniversary last Sunday"). There's also a situation where an entity that isn't a natural person, such as a corporation, self-publishes a statement about a person with whom they have a non-third-party relationship, such as a corporation noting on its website that it just hired Z as its new director. So in the discussion about all of this, WhatamIdoing introduced the idea of ABOUTUS (us = the married couple, or us = the corporation and its new director) versus ABOUTOTHERS (which is not allowed). But these non-third-party situations are still being discussed above. FactOrOpinion (talk) 21:33, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
BLPSPS does not say “never use” it says “Never use… unless”.
My reading of the change is that the “unless” is now broader in scope than it was. That may not be the intent, but it is how I interpret it. Blueboar (talk) 21:35, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Both WP:SPS and WP:RS/SPS say:
"Never use self-published sources as third-party sources about living people, even if the author is an expert, well-known professional researcher, or writer."
BLPSPS currently says:
"Never use self-published sources—including but not limited to books, zines, websites, blogs, podcasts, and social network posts—as sources of material about a living person, unless written or published by the person themself," and until a few days ago, it said "subject of the article" instead of "person themself".
Notice that BLPSPS removed the phrase "third-party" that's in WP:SPS and WP:RS/SPS. Instead, it says "unless written or published by the person themself [previously:subject of the article]." But the constraints are supposed to be identical in all three policies. The intent of the change was not to broaden or narrow the scope of the policy, but simply to make the intended scope clearer. But whether Ellen Editor interprets the new wording as broadening vs. not changing vs. narrowing the previous scope depends on what Ellen's interpretation of the previous wording was, and what her interpretation of the new wording is. The intent was not to change the scope, but you say that you interpret it as broadening the scope. That means that either the wording of the previous policy wasn't clear enough (so you thought it was narrower than it was actually intended to be) or the wording of the current policy isn't clear enough (so you think it's broader than it's actually intended to be) or both. But the goal is to come up with wording that makes the policy as clear as possible. If you have suggestions for better wording, I encourage you to say. FactOrOpinion (talk) 21:54, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that the policy is not clear (and that this was the case in both the “status quo” version and the new version). Fixing it will take more than a tweak to language… it will probably require a complete re-write of the entire section… to lay out what is (and isn’t) appropriate in different situations and to do so in an organized structure. There is a lot of nuance to using SPS… in any situation, but especially in BLPs. I like the idea of breaking it into the subsections: ABOUTSELF, ABOUTGROUP/ABOUTUS, and ABOUTOTHERS.
But rather than jump right to proposing language, I would start by creating an outline of the structure and key points of the re-write… do an RFC on that (to see if the community agrees with this structure and points - and to find out if it has other points to add)… then we can move to crafting language for each subsection (with RFCs to approve that language).
This won’t be a quick process … but the end result will be a much clearer policy that has broad consensus no one can question for a while. Blueboar (talk) 01:47, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Here's how it works in practice.
Imagine that Bob blogs that he works for Big Business, Inc., and has a co-worker, Sue, who is a lawyer. An editor wants to write two sentences:
As of 2025, Bob works for Big Business, Inc.[Bob's blog]
Sue is a lawyer.[Bob's blog]
Comparison of rules
Claim about Bob
Claim about Sue
In the article about Bob
Y old + new
This sentence about Bob is both "published by the subject of the article [Bob]" and "published by the person themself [Bob]", so it can be used under both old and new wording.
Y old + N new
This sentence about Sue is "published by the subject of the article [Bob]" but not "published by the person themself [Sue]", so it could be put into the article about Bob under the old wording but not under the new wording.
This sentence about Bob is not "published by the subject of the article [which is widgets]", but it is "published by the person themself [Bob]", so it can't be used under the old rules but could be used under the new wording (assuming editors thought it was relevant, etc. to mention Bob in that article).
N old + new
This sentence about Sue is not "published by the subject of the article [which is widgets]" and also not "published by the person themself [Sue]", so it can't be used under either wording.
If you dislike this wording, please articulate a specific objection. Specific objections likely sound something like one of these two:
No, I think we should be able to use Bob's personal blog post to talk about Sue in the article Bob.
Actually, I don't want editors to have the option of citing Bob's blog post in any article except Bob itself, no matter how relevant and appropriate it might actually seem.
If your response is more like "Ugh, no personal blog posts from Bob to talk about Sue in any article, thank you very much", then you support this change. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:17, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
WAID… Could you do a similar breakdown for an attributed statement… say we want to write: “According to Bob, the Chairman of Big Widget, Sue is his company’s lawyer”. Blueboar (talk) 02:42, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Newslinger is correct: It is exactly the same. It's possible that we would like to have a difference, but we don't have any such difference at this time.
I assume in this scenario that Bob is not the CEO (though it's a fair assumption, since he usually is the CEO in my examples) and that this is not any sort of official statement from the business. It's just one employee saying something like "Hey, it's my first day at my new job at Big Business, Inc! I met Sue Solicitor, who's one of the lawyers. She really helped me...".
According to the "a reputable organisation publishing material about who it employs" line, we could use a [corporate] self-published statement to say either "Sue works for Big Business, Inc.[their website]" or "According to Big Business, Inc., Sue works for them[their website]". WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:00, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This is where things get complex. Bob has self-published an account of their time working with Alice. In it they have made a clear statement about Alice. Alice has also self-published a description of her time working with Bob.
"Alice is xxxx" (sourced to Bob) - clear BLPVIO. SPS used to source a statement about Alice, who is not the author of the SPS.
"Alice is xxx" (sourced to Alice) - clearly ok, if not overly self-serving.
"Bob belives that Alice is XXX" (sourced to Alice) - clear BLPVIO, as this is Alice making a claim about Bob's beliefs in a SPS not written by Bob.
"Bob belives that Alice is XXX" (sourced to Bob) - not so clear. This is Bob describing his own beliefs about Alice in an SPS that Bob wrote. Bob is allowed to ascribe beliefs to themself. I have never been able to figure out if the community supports this or not, but it is extensively used in practise.
Some see the last option as a problem, but it has been used heavily in BLPs, especially in regard to fringe subjects, as a means of incoporating criticism from self published sites. - Bilby (talk) 09:04, 25 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Bilby, a question re: the last one being heavily used in BLPs: is this in the context of your example, where Bob and Alice know each other and have each written about the other? Or is it more the following situation:
Bob and Alice don't know each other. Alice advocates fringe theory F. Alice has not written about Bob. Bob has a self-published blog, and he wrote a post about Alice's belief in F and also about why F is a fringe theory.
a) "Alice is a fringe-theorist" (sourced to Bob) - clear BLPVIO. SPS used to source a statement about Alice, who is not the author of the SPS.
b) "Bob says that Alice is a fringe-theorist" (sourced to Bob, text appears in Bob's article)
c) "Bob says that Alice is a fringe-theorist" (sourced to Bob, text appears in Alice's article)
d) "Bob says that F is a fringe theory" (sourced to Bob, text appears in Bob's article) - clearly OK
e) "Bob says that F is a fringe theory" (sourced to Bob, text appears in Alice's article)
I'd say that (b) and (c) are BLPVIOs. Even though it's a statement about Bob's beliefs, it's contrary to point 2 of BLPSELFPUB, "it does not involve claims about third parties." On the other hand, Blueboar thinks (b) is sometimes OK, since it's in Bob's article, but that one has to consider other things, such as whether the content is DUE. If consensus practice is that (b) and/or (c) is OK, then I think the wording of the policy should be adjusted to reflect that. But that may involve an RfC to check whether that really is the consensus.
On the other hand, I think (e) is probably OK, or at least that it's a gray area rather than clear-cut. It's not a statement about Alice, even though the reason it's appearing in Alice's article is because she advocates F. FactOrOpinion (talk) 13:55, 25 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
RfC: Should the explanation of “self-published” in WP:SPS be revised?
