Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-04-21/BLPs

In the midst of a controversial deletion request regarding the article Giovanni di Stefano, SlimVirgin "re-proposed" a change to Wikipedia's deletion policy. If enacted, deletion discussions of biographies of living persons would result in the deletion of the article if no consensus regarding the issue was established. Currently, such a no-consensus result would, by default, result in the article being kept.

The proposal has been made in various forms for at least a year. In the wake of a discussion over whether Daniel Brandt should be deleted (see archived story), the suggestion was mentioned in an e-mail by Jimmy Wales in April 2007, and formally put forth for discussion soon afterward by SlimVirgin. This discussion came to no consensus, and was not implemented.

The proposal came up again last Saturday, April 19, when Doc glasgow created the essay Borderline biographies, advocating a guideline to be applied only as necessary:

The proposal, as re-submitted by SlimVirgin, would trigger the deletion of any BLP in the absence of consensus to keep it:

The suggestion triggered a flurry of comments (over 300 in the course of 48 hours) regarding the issue. As of press time, about 70% of the comments supported such a change in the policy, with about 30% opposing.

In support, Kat Walsh argued that "It's a small thing, changing a default, and doesn't hurt the ability to keep any article if there is consensus to keep it. The Wikipedia project isn't meant to affect what is known about a person or how prominent they are, only to make encyclopedic note of it. I am generally in favor of being broadly inclusive of information on all sorts of topics—but in the case of people, especially those who are only barely public, we need to be mindful of what we are doing and what effect we have."

JoshuaZ noted, however, that "If the community consensus taking into account a BLP-penumbra issue doesn't call for its deletion then we shouldn't delete. We already have admins able to close no consensus as delete if they think the strength of the arguments is strong enough. There's no reason to make this any stricter. ... The fact that this would result in many deletions where there are no actual concerns for the individuals in question makes it particularly jarring."

Just as discussion over the article on Daniel Brandt triggered the first major discussion on this change in 2007, discussion over the article Giovanni di Stefano seemed to trigger this discussion, at least in part.

Giovanni di Stefano is an Italian European lawyer, who has served on the defence team on many high-profile cases, including the trial of Saddam Hussein and that of Jeremy Bamber. His involvement on these cases and in other cases has made di Stefano a controversial figure, whose Wikipedia article has been the source of concern in the past. The article was deleted by Wales on April 24, 2007, but a deletion review ruled that the article could be re-created, with full sourcing. Fred Bauder deleted and stubbed the article twice, once each in November and December 2007.

The article was nominated for deletion on April 19, by Lawrence Cohen. Cohen cited BLP concerns, and a threat of legal proceedings by di Stefano, in his nomination:

Aecis disagreed, arguing, "All the information in the article is sourced to extremely reliable sources. If the subject disagrees with the information contained in those sources, he should take it up with the people behind those sources. We've bent over backwards for the subject, as we should with any possible BLP violation. But that's all that can be expected of us. If the subject has valid concerns, they should be addressed in the article. But 'the subject doesn't want to have an article about him' is never a ground for deletion."

Seraphimblade noted that:

Consensus was clear on the AFD, with about 85% of those commenting supporting keeping the article. Interestingly, the proposal made by SlimVirgin would not apply to di Stefano's article, because a consensus stands to keep the article.

Discussions on SlimVirgin's proposal, and on the article on di Stefano, are continuing.