Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons

BLP protection for dead persons intentionally killed by a living person who is protected by BLP policy

Do you feel it would be acceptable to add in time-limited exception to the BLP policy that encompasses people who are killed, specifically within articles that also include the living person who killed them?

I ask specifically because of the Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman article. Many editors will claim that Zimmerman, who is still living, is governed by a higher standard of biographical protection simply because he is still alive, versus Martin who died because of Zimmerman's actions. By the way, let me say, I am not interested in a bias toward either person, but in a equal treatment of both subjects. It seems to be a rather unfair way to write an article to say that one side of it has a subject who can be attacked at almost any length because he cannot sue for defamation, while the other half of the article is protected from defamation by the BLP policy. So my suggestion is that for a limited (and perhaps flexible) period of time, persons who are dead, but share an article with their killer should be covered by the same standard as the living person who killed them. Thoughts? -- Avanu (talk) 01:05, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

I think you are pointing out an inherent problem with WP:BLP policy. All people, living or not living, should be treated with sensitivity and concern, in my opinion. I have misgivings about WP:BLP policy on a very general level, and I think you are alluding to the problems or contradictions inherent in WP:BLP policy, even if you are only doing so inadvertently. I fail to understand why less sensitivity would be extended to the dead. Bus stop (talk) 01:29, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Because BLP stems mainly from a concern about being sued. All the same, yes it is ridiculous that our policies give greater consideration to killers than to the people they kill. FormerIP (talk) 01:33, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

But WP:BLP doesn't stem from a concern over lawsuits. The policy's requirements go far beyond the minimum required to avoid a defamation lawsuit. The policy is supposed to represent an ethical duty to both living subjects and to the relatives of the recently deceased. MastCell ^Talk 02:25, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

FomerIP, why is it ridiculous? Some "killers" are not guilty of anything. Some victims are. In the legal context, although many people vigorously complain about the "rights" of victims, generally the rights of the accused must be protected, or we regress to lynching.--Bbb23 (talk) 20:23, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

What are you talking about lynching for? Who is it that doesn't want to protect the rights of the accused? Why put quotes around the "rights" of victims?

Some "killers" are indeed not guilty of anything, which should give pause to WP editors. But some victims are also not guilty of anything. Why should this not give pause? And, surely, we are breaching an obligation to the reader to write with balance if we are willing to include information in an article pointing to an accused person's innocence but we are less willing to include information pointing the other way? FormerIP (talk) 20:38, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

This is a side issue, so I won't dwell too long on it. I thought the wording of your original post was overly broad and slanted toward victims' rights, and it struck a nerve. Similar to a court of law, we have to be extra careful when writing about BLPs who have been accused of crimes but not convicted, and we shouldn't be sidetracked simply because we have sympathy for victims.--Bbb23 (talk) 21:05, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Avanu, with respect to Martin/Zimmerman, does WP:BDP need to be strengthened? --joe decker^{talk to me} 02:55, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

BLP extends to the relatives of the recently dead, so the spirit of BDP is that we have to tread cautiously when discussing the recently deceased. We could add to WP:BDP: (new words in bold): "Questionable material that affects living persons, and by implication the recently deceased, should be removed promptly." SlimVirgin ^(talk) 03:01, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

One of the main purposes of BLP is to protect the privacy of people who otherwise not attract such attention. In this specific case, national and international headlines have been splashed all over the place. The idea that - if Wikipedia would only limit its coverage, no one would find out about it - is fanciful. I would also caution editors that nobody knows for sure what happened that night, so the idea that a definitive person is guilty and a definitive person is a victim cannot be applied in this case (at least not as of yet). A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 03:09, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

The terms "guilty" and "victim" are not my concern here. The concern is more that we have a person who killed another person, yet our policies are not currently balanced to provide the same protections to both individuals. While I agree and recognize the rationale for protecting a living person's reputation for a myriad of reasons, the idea that you can remove most editor oversight by simply killing a person is ridiculous -- especially in articles where BOTH the killer and the killed are within the same article. -- Avanu (talk) 04:52, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

But that's simply not true. There seems to be a common misconception amoung Wikipedia editors that WP:BLP radically alters the way we write articles. That's not the case. In fact, BLP adds very little beyond what WP:NPOV, WP:OR and WP:V already state. The few extra conditions that BLP adds - such as not putting a living person in a category for sexual orientation unless they self-indentify - don't apply to this article (or haven't been violated). A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 13:00, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

What *is* happening is that people make the argument that editoral oversight of material is less important because the person is dead. So while we are agressive in defending against BLP violations, if the person is dead, many editors simply say, 'well, it doesn't matter since they're dead now.' The problem with that thinking is that it allows for a very slanted article that some say is *theoretically* in line with policy. -- Avanu (talk) 13:56, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Agree with SlimVirgin. Any objection to adding what she proposed? --JN466 14:53, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

JN—I object. I think the wisdom of standard policy is that it does not make any distinction between the living and the deceased. No editor should be arguing that lower policy standards apply in the case of the individual that is deceased. Such an argument I think is in violation of standard policy. I think that standard policy should be applied stringently. I think the suggested added wording provided by SlimVirgin is an example of instruction creep. I think Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman should be treated absolutely identically in the article Shooting of Trayvon Martin as this is in accordance with standard policy. Bus stop (talk) 14:52, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

I would argue that the BLP provisions about "contentious claims" should apply to all biographies where the claim in any way impacts specific "living people." I think that such an expansion of BLP makes sense, and would prevent people editing the bio of, say, the father of major politician "Gregory Gnarph" to say the father was a "well-known murderer" or the like without exceedingly strong sourcing, and not using the opinions of others. Collect (talk) 10:26, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Would that protect Trayvon Martin's parents? Your son was killed; we don't know for sure what happened, but we're going to print all of his dirty secrets here because he's dead. It affects the parents emotionally, but does that count in terms of the current policy, or do you need to show that it affects them materially? I don't want to see us end up with endless arguments about the nuanced definition of how much someone is affected by negative statements, and I don't want to encourage censorship of legitimate material that should be included. -- Avanu (talk) 11:00, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

My suggestion would specifically protect parents etc. The idea is that "opinions" are of little value where biographies of this ilk are concerned, and all "contentious claims" should need the same strong sourcing as for a "living person". Cheers. Collect (talk) 12:51, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Are orphans fair game then?

Talking about protection for living relatives as if that will do (it's not a rule that frequently has an effect on articles anyway) misses the point. We have a guideline that, if applied, gives protection to people accused of a crime from insinuations that they are guilty. But it doesn't guard against insinuations that they are innocent, that the victim deserved it etc. So we've got a selective, biased censorship thing going on. FormerIP (talk) 13:28, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Nope - unless they manage to have no living relatives at all, and no living persons are mentioned in the biography. Can you give a real example? <g>. And insinuations of any kind in any biography I find to be offensive. I personally think some of the "travon/george" edits are remarkably premature, and smack of using Wikipedia as a sort of tabloid at best, and as a polemicist site at worst. Collect (talk) 13:49, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

General terms like NPOV or encyclopedic are the only arguments I have been able to somewhat successfully make in the Trayvon/George article, but people act as if BLP can't apply to Trayvon Martin because he's dead and it is really not a reasonable approach to say that the person who kills you gets to continue to recieve additonal editoral oversight while the killed person is fair game. My recommendation is that there is a specific and clear policy exclusion for situations like this one, not forever, but at least to give additional teeth to the argument of a reasonable and fair treatment of the material in the article. -- Avanu (talk) 13:54, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Some of us are very unhappy about attempts to have articles in WP that are about matters that might yet go to trial (see section above) and this sort of thing demonstrates why. But it is difficult to avoid altogether, just as it may be difficult to completely avoid havings things said about a dead person that could be hurtful to others who are still alive. So we do have to rely on general principles, and if editors ar using the fact that a person is dead to circumvent the obligation to be balanced, accurate, fair etc then they should not be and I doubt that adding more rules will help much, though there is always room for improvement. --AJHingston (talk) 14:08, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't think you can make a rule for such a special case. There'll be to many cases that fall outside of it. But, we could and should, simply extend BLP coverage to everyone who has died in the last X years. If somebody writes about speculation about a long dead historical figures reputation, it's not that terribly harmful if we don't fix a problem right away. But, if somebody died yesterday, such speculation can be hugely harmful. Nobody has ever explained why it's ok to bash somebody the day after they die. Also, let's not pretend for a second BLP, as written now can somehow extend to Trayvon Martin, because he is survived by family that is living. Every topic in Wikipedia relates to living people. Writing about high crime in a local town affects living people, but we don't call it a BLP violation if you included uncited stats on crime in the article. Clearly BLP has a major hole, and it needs to be filled in. Only an extension of BLP can work, because it has actual teeth, so that you can remove violations immediately, without being deemed disruptive. --Rob (talk) 14:43, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

BLP diacritics background

Removal of foreign language source in BLP, and then anglicization of name

Sorry, the issue, yet again (not again, no..) is another barely-notable tennis stub Talk:Błażej Koniusz. Unfortunately in this case the edit is potentially more serious in that the source giving the correct name appears to have been deleted to justify the edit. I do not know if there are other BLPs where this is the case. I would like others who are better informed to comment on how BLP sourcing guidelines view the use of non-English language sources for a non-English-speaking living person's name in this or any instance. In ictu oculi (talk) 14:21, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

FOLLOW UP: A subsequent look around suggests that this was the only BLP where a local-language source was actually deleted. Deletion relates to (i) move to anglicized name, (ii) "professionally known as" lede per WP:STAGENAME argument. In ictu oculi (talk) 00:37, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Diacritics battles have been going on since the beginning of wikipedia. Tennis has used the common English name in articles for years per wiki policy and guidelines and tennis project guidelines and usage. Tennis is a bit different than many sports since the English alphabet is a requirement in the governing body of tennis since the 1920s. Wiki requires the lead to have all major versions of the name listed. I had done so in the form example of common name/Polish name... Paul Kolodziejczyk (Polish: Paul Kołódziejczyk), to make sure we followed protocol and included all major spellings. Yes since this is a an English wikipedia I want the common English name as the article title and heading up the lead while IIO does not. He has quite recently begun systematically moving all English tennis pages to the foreign spelling. Some make it through move requests and some don't. It depends on the closer really, but we all know (if we've edited any length of time at all) that's a 50/50 result. Most he doesn't even request. That's the wiki process and I'm cool with that. I have been told by many administrators that we take these things one at a time. However he is also removing all traces of the English common name. The common name used by virtually all English sources, the ITF (International Tennis Federation), ATP (Association of Tennis Professionals), WTA (Women's tennis Association). The ITF is the governing body of tennis and all player are required to register an anglicized (English alphabet) name of their choice. Such as Novak Đoković did with Novak Djokovic and why he's been sitting for years in this place on wikipedia. Notice afterwards that Djokovic has his Czech spelling in parenths. Djokovic had a long series of move request dialog (which you can easily check) before it was settled at the ITF/English/common name version.

I have followed the English sources since then to make sure all articles I create and edit use these major organizations plus the grand slams, plus books and the press. Even Encyclopedia Britannica uses Novak Djokovic and Ilie Nastase spellings. My first thought when a page did happen to be moved to a foreign diacritic spelling was to keep the common name in the front of the lead. IIO said no. Since this is an English wikipedia I tried with the diacritic name first but with Paul Kołódziejczyk, common name Paul Kolodziejczyk... and asked an administrator his opinion (he said it looked good to him). IIO said no. I mentioned alternate name instead of common name...IIO said no. I finally settled on "professionally known as:"... IIO said no. He has bent absolutely zero on this issue since his tennis editing and disruptions started. He seems to think I have some sort of bias against Europeans... I hope not since I'm Polish/Austrian myself with a family name that uses diacritics (but not in English). For awhile everytime he removed all traces of the English name I added it back in the lead, but I told him from now on if he removes it I will revert his entire addition as it was getting really old to keep re-adding it. Check to see how much disruption was going on before IIO stirred up the hornets nest a few months ago. It was occasional but now it's getting ridiculous and bothersome. Doesn't the tennis project have some little say in how we choose our <article> names? It seems we are being reasonable through the years. Heck, baseball project throws out all wiki naming conventions and uses whatever name is placed on the players baseball card as it's only source for article names. At least we demand use of the preponderance of English sources, ITF, ATP, WTA, Davis Cup, English newspapers and tv. The equivalent for tennis would be to use what the governing body of tennis uses, which would be the ITF source. But IIO says no. Fyunck(click) (talk) 23:17, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Doesn't the tennis project have some little say in how we choose our name?

Of course the WikiProject gets some say in how it chooses its name. It seems to have chosen WikiProject Tennis for its name so far, but if it wants, it can change it to something else.

What it doesn't get is any special say in what WP:Article title will be used in the main namespace for articles. A WikiProject is merely a group of editors. That group of editors gets no special say compared to any other group of editors, i.e., the people actually editing any given article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:23, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

Your kidding aside, I'm not talking about actual editing in "little say" but in the guidelines that represent it. Baseball and hockey project have naming guidelines that are against wiki policy... Tennis guidelines are not against policy. Is there a double standard here in not allowing them to be carried out? And even if they are not allowed to be followed, to have all traces of the common tennis name systematically removed seems very wrong and not in our reader's interest. Fyunck(click) (talk) 00:43, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

This is possibly more than an "English language" issue, it might also be symptomatic od a UK/US language issue. I noticed an artcile about the German footballer (now manager) Gerd Müller, which uses the letter "ü" in his name - something that is quite normal in the UK. (The word "über" is a slang word that is used occasionally in the UK to mean "Large"). In contrast, in the NW orner of Frankfurt an Main are two roadsigns within a few metres of each other - one erected by the German authorities giving the direction to "Rödelheim" and the other, erected by the US military authorities pointing to their depot at "Roedelheim". Which is coirrect? The Wikipeia article lists the locality as "[[Rödelheim (Frankfurt am Main)". Anther instance is the mathematician Paul Erdős. My view is that teh prevelant spelling in English language sources should be used as the prime reference, but if both the Anglicised variant of the name and the native variant of tgeh name are both in common use, then out of courtesy to the individual concerned, the native variant should be used. Thus a top Czech tennis player who is only notable on account of tennis woudl have an anglicised version of their name, but if they became notable in other aspects of public life, ther Czech version of their name woudl be used. Martinvl (talk) 07:46, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

I think that Martinv has it right here. Although things were different in the past, in the UK we increasingly tend to regard the foreign spelling as the 'correct' one, and would therefore expect to see it in an encyclopedia, even if we use an anglicised version in practice. That is at least partly because we are very likely to meet the name spoken rather than read, and we learn that L and Ł, for example, are not the same. Although we might conveniently write the name Lodz (as in Google maps) we will not recognise it when pronounced unless we have seen it written correctly. Try this in WP, by the way. It is often a source of innocent amusement on this side of the Atlantic to hear US broadcasters mangling foreign names, but it would be thought a sign of discourtesy to use that version to their face. Simple rules do not work because each case is different - and the person may have chosen an anglicised version for themself. --AJHingston (talk) 08:39, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

So let me make sure I'm on the same page here... according to Martinvl... if a person is pretty much only notable for playing tennis, and the English sources/tennis establishment spell his name using the English alphabet only (diacritic free), then we expect to see his name listed here in this English wikipedia diacritic free. Obviously with his diacritic name also in the lead sentence somewhere to show the foreign spelling. But if this tennis player is also notable for say... being a composer or a general in the military, then we would need to look at those aspects as well and the person would likely need to be listed with diacritics. Is that what we are talking about? Like Novak Djokovic is handled here at wikipedia? I know most of the time the UK televisions and newspapers handle tennis players with NO diacritics. I don't know if they do that because the bylaws of tennis require it or because that's just the way they do things in the UK. My own family only uses the diacritic in our name (which happens to be an "Ł") when we travel abroad in our native country and drop it when in the UK or US. Fyunck(click) (talk) 10:26, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

Which is why it is difficult to make rules. In the UK broadcasters are normally expected to pronounce a name the way the owner chooses, but journalists generally confine themselves to a 26 letter alphabet with no diactritics and TV captions tend to do the same - the reasons for that are easy to understand if one thinks back to traditional typewriters and metal printing type. If Fyunck pronounces his or her name with a Ł I would expect that to be the encyclopedic spelling unless he or she has chosen the anglicisation, as often happens. Where I do have a problem is where editors insist that the subject is 'wrong'. There needs to be a very clear reason for over-riding that as there may be for tennis players, rather than some arbitrary rule which may simply be a localisation inappropriate in an international encyclopedia. --AJHingston (talk) 14:12, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

I am very grateful to those editors who have taken time to give guidance above. Since I had "first word" here in referring this I will restrict myself to 3 comments (as short as I can make them):

• (i) re. the argument "Diacritics battles have been going on since the beginning of wikipedia" - I do not know whether this is true or not, but from my observation (a) Wikipedia doesn't benefit from battles, and (b) Fyunck appears to be all but the only person still fighting the battle, and tennis BLPs the only battlefield. [I only recently stood up and did something, but have been watching for months]
• (ii) re. the argument "Like Novak Djokovic is handled here at wikipedia?" it probably should be noted that User:Fyunck has been asked more than once by more than one editor to please not cite category:Serbian male tennis players such as Новак Ђоковић as examples of diacritic-stripped Latin alphabet names, since Новак Ђоковић is not a Latin alphabet name, and WP:UE and WP:DIACRITIC clearly specify that cyrillic names be wikt:transliterated, but allow wikt:diacritics in Latin alphabet names to be retained.
• (iii) The phrase User:Fyunck has now inserted to 104x BLPs per example Błażej Koniusz (born February 22, 1988), known professionally as Blazej Koniusz.... " etc. appears in all cases not BLP-accurate, as evidenced here where the restored Polish language source shows the player playing in Poland professionally under his name, not under the online ITF diacritic-stripped registration card.

Thank you again. In ictu oculi (talk) 14:56, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm still reading all of this, but the "battle" is certainly more widespread than tennis articles, and Fyunckis far from the only participant (or even one of the major participants).
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 19:27, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

I'd accept that others know better about that than I - as I said I was only peripherally aware of this ongoing saga until attention canvassed by what I would consider egregious edits (no need to go into details) recently. But the "Á professionally known as A" lede edits appear to be new/unique to tennis BLPs. In ictu oculi (talk) 00:42, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

the thing is, from what I'm seeing above, the "Á professionally known as A" construct is a reaction to your own actions in reverting Fyunck. It seems to me that Fyunck is trying to work with you on this... a little consideration from your direction would only help. Running to a policy talk page rather than attempting to address the issue with the other user directly or on the affected article's talk page only serves to politicize the issue as well.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 01:07, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Baseball and hockey project have naming guidelines that are against wiki policy... No, they don't. WP:NC-BASE belongs to the entire community, not to WikiProject Baseball. Pages like Wikipedia:WikiProject Pakistan/Naming conventions belong to the WikiProjects hosting them, and they have just as much force as a page that I write in my own userspace. NC-BASE does not: it is a regular community guideline.

Also, you may be familiar with the community's usual level of respect for WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS arguments. Even if your facts were correct, it would still be an incredibly weak argument. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:26, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Wait a minute... lets look at "The title of an article for a baseball player should reflect the name they most commonly went by during their career. Informally, the name that appeared on a player's baseball cards should serve as the article's title." That is not kosher with the multitudes of wiki policies and guidelines that are being cited with regularity by IIO and others. Now, I'm fine with the baseball guidelines being that way since baseball is different than the general guidelines that wikipedia sets out. wiki guidelines aren't a perfect fit with baseball so those more knowledgeable about the sport tweaked them so they made sense. Just as tennis tries to do. Our guidelines aren't as restrictive as baseball in naming since we look at multiple English sources and governing bodies before arriving at a name. Fyunck(click) (talk) 05:57, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

It doesn't matter. This is the community's official guideline. The whole community—not WikiProject Baseball—decided that they want to handle this differently from other things. The community is allowed to make exceptions to its own rules. A couple of folks off at a WikiProject aren't, but the whole community is (and did, at NC-BASE). WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:10, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi Ohms law,

Thanks for your comment. I accept that other editors know more about BLP policies than I do so I will accept all advice, but two things you've mentioned might benefit from clarification:

(1) I would think myself and a dozen other editors discussing with Fyunck for over a month before bringing to WT:BLP is erring on the side of slowness rather than haste and doesn't qualify as "running." And this is a BLP issue after all, isn't it? Is it wrong to bring it to WT:BLP for advice?

(2) As regards reverting Fyunck's edits and discussion, (2.1) you are correct that I just restored the tag "known professionally " which another editor had placed and Fyunck had deleted, but I'm sorry I make no apology for restoring a deleted tag since the other editor clearly indicated by the tag that it was designed to encourage discussion. (2.2) Likewise, the subject of my appeal here, restoring the deleted Polish source giving the BLP's name seems correct per BLP ACCURACY concerns by my understanding, which could be wrong which is why I am asking. (2.3) I have not reverted the 104x edits with the "Á professionally known as A" insert, on the contrary, although several editors have attempted discussion with Fyunck on this phrase, his edits stand, in all 104x BLPs as far as I know. And only 1 or the 104x is tagged "known professionally " which is the tag I restored. In ictu oculi (talk) 02:23, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

You should use {{Under discussion-inline}} rather than {{dubious}} on project pages. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:30, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing, I'm fairly certain that In ictu oculi was talking about article content above, so his quoting the use of {{dubious}} seems perfectly fine, here. Unless I'm missing something?

Re 1) I'm not privy to the past discussions. I wouldn't mind looking them over, if you can provide a link? Was something going wrong with those discussions?

Re 2) Its good that discussion is taking place, rather that reversions and edit warring. I guess that this is (now) the discussion on reverting those 104 edits, or at least a part of them? I'd like to point out though that the intent of this talk page is to discuss the actual policy page that it belongs to, not to discuss individual incidents of the policy's application. I don't think that this is a good venue for dispute resolution, at all.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 02:46, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi WhatamIdoing, yes as Ohms law says I was illustrating the tag from the article. Hi Ohms law, unfortunately discussion has been scattered (splattered?) across several recent RMs as well, but the most pertinent discussion on tennis BLP sources is largely concentrated on Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Tennis/Tennis_names particularly in a RfC started by User SMcCandlish. The specific issue of (i) removal of foreign language sources (which I now am happy to consider was probably a simple mistake on User Fyunck's part since it hasn't happened with other moves and he hasn't attempted to justify it) so I don't believe is discussed elsewhere, while (ii) this phrase on the 104x BLPs is elsewhere on perhaps 20x of the 104x BLPs, and has taken back seat to discussion on what constitutes WP:RS for BLP names. In ictu oculi (talk) 03:12, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

I just took a look at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Tennis/Tennis_names, and I guess that I'd recommend starting another discussion about this on the main Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject Tennis page, or starting up a dedicated RfC over it. My question here is really this: are you proposing a change to the BLP policy page? Because if not, you're really in the wrong place.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 03:37, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi Ohms law.

No, at this point I'm simply asking the question I asked about BLP policy at the beginning of this section. If this is the wrong place to ask questions about BLP policy, where is the correct place? Cheers. In ictu oculi (talk) 10:47, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Yes, that dialog was mostly ignored because it was pertaining to a personal essay. Take a look at the 4 move requests for number one player Novak Djokovic to see full input from everyone and why it was kept at Djokovics English name. Fyunck(click) (talk) 06:00, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Now... if people want to change Wikipedia and BLP rules that's a different story. If the majority of editors want to eliminate all common names, all stage names, all pseudonyms, names used on baseball cards, names used by tennis governing bodies, etc... and specifically say that wikipedia personal and place names always use the spelling found in their native languages and only names found on birth certificates... then that's what I'll do. I would be against it, but I would follow the RfC result to the letter (even a diacritic letter:-). Right now many editors read into the multiple policies and guidelines and spew out only what they feel helps their side. Very ambiguous. Projects like tennis, with it's few editors, gets ripped while projects like baseball go along their merry way with their own guidelines. But if something is chiseled in stone as to what language/alphabet this encyclopedia should use for sources, article titles, and prose... then maybe we'd be able to concentrate on more rewarding editing. Fyunck(click) (talk) 06:23, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Novak Djokovic is possibly not the best exemple as Serbian language actually uses two alphabets, cyrillic and latin. The cyrillic and latin Serbian alphabets match all letters (meaning, all 30 letters have its corresponding letters in both alphabets), and the letter Ђ is the only one which is ambiguos as it has two accepted versions in Serbian latin scrypt, which can be either Đ or Dj. Now, English and other latin-scrypt non-Serbian languages have in the vast majority of cases opted for using Dj as a way to avoid using a letter with diacritic and beside being more proximate to the phonetic to a reader not familiarised with the language. But, in Novak Djokovic case the issue is polemical because of the following: it has made a correct transliteration of the Ђ/Đ to Dj, however has failed to correctly transliterate the ć which in this case has just been limited to the removal of the diacritic, completelly ignoring the fact that c and ć are not the same letter or sound... But the logic behind has been the number of Google hits and reliable sources, although tennis websites are hardly specialised in linguistics... FkpCascais (talk) 01:45, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

• Where the primary version of the name is not in Latin, we have a difficulty, but the answer will almost invariably be to create redirect from alternative versions and to put any common alternative transliterations in the lede. I am setting out below a suggested guideline. PLease add suggestions and comments below it. Peterkingiron (talk) 16:16, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Suggested Guideline

The name in an article title should have the correct diacriticals according to the ethnicity or nationality of the subject, where the language is normally written in Latin script. Any alternative common spellings should exist as redirects. This would include speelings used in sports programmes, where the subject plays sport. All alternative versions of the name should appear in the lede of the article. Where the language is not normally written in Latin script, it may be transliterated according to any accepted system. If two alternatives are available, the article should reflect common usage in countries using Latin script, but redirects should exist from any alternatives. The form of the name in Cyrillic, Greek, Chinese or other script should also (if possible) appear in the lede. Peterkingiron (talk) 16:16, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Note: I thought this was the end of the discussion but now see there is more below! Peterkingiron (talk) 16:19, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

non-admin suggestion - RfC on change to BLP policy

I have duplicated this at ANI - this follows Ohms law request to make a specific suggestion

I mainly edit on BDPs (i.e. dead people) so am no expert on BLP policy. However I was asked yesterday what improvement should be made to BLP policy, and it occurs to me that a significant amount of grief (like seeing two very good admins in an unfortunate situation like this) could be saved all across en.wp by making it a simple BLP rule that BLPs should be at the spelling as if on the BLP's current nationality passport for Latin alphabet names. That would be it. Have a RfC that adopts this as a rule to BLP and the remaining 30-40 Czech ice hockey players and 20-30 tennis players who are out of synch with the 10,000s of other BLPs on en.wp fall into line (painlessly, according to WP:RS already in the egregious less than 100 BLPs footnotes) and this issue effectively disappears with no more damage to admins or en.wp. Finish, end, no more fighting. (or almost none since few fight over BDPs). In ictu oculi (talk) 01:48, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Question. How do you propose to get hold of Novak Djokovic's passport? Formerip (talk) 13:05, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Is this a serious question? In ictu oculi (talk) 03:40, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Semi-serious. Formerip (talk) 03:57, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

This is an artificial problem created by terrible subject notability standards that allow us to have articles on non-notable sports players. Fix the broken notability standards and this problem goes away. Gigs (talk) 19:28, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi Gigs, yes it's probably 9/10ths that, however given that the recent occasion of fighting over Nico Hülkenberg and the current RM on Ilie Năstase it may well be that there are other factors (e.g. perhaps also an element of dislocate between those who regard sports sources as reliable on BLP names as those who don't) that wouldn't be solved simply by mass deletions of Czech ice-hockey stubs, and that therefore opportunities for fighting/timewasting over even notable sports BLP diacritics will continue without clearer guidance on consistency. In ictu oculi (talk) 03:40, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Pretty much, yea. In addition, I don't think that most articles about athletes are really biographies per se, anyway. The interest in athletes is primarily in what they do as athletes rather than in them as people (usually, at least). There is tabloid type coverage of some athletes of course, which is actually a good reason to keep them within the BLP "sphere", but for most athletes their article here shouldn't ever really be a biography (unless and until they do something outside of sports, of course...).
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 22:33, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

You really think it would go away with players like Djokovic? Even if you made it players that competed at the 4 Slam events the spelling would come into question. Hockey is even more lax than tennis in what it allows here at this English Wikipedia. I've always been for compacting the amount of notable tennis players but I've been crushed when I've brought it up. Baseball allows an awful lot of people into biographies also... play one game in your life in the Chinese baseball league and you are notable. See "baseball notability". My question would be if they are notable but not really a biography, then what are they? Do we just create it but leave off off the Sports Biography tag on the talk page? And then not follow any BLP rules since it's not a biography? It seems like that might create even more problems. Fyunck(click) (talk) 00:39, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't think that the problem with diacritics would go away, but the potential for them being an issue be much lessened, I'm certain. I guess that I wasn't really clear in my comments above, though. I'm certainly not proposing removing "Sports biography", or pulling articles about athletes out of the BLP categories (quite the opposite, really). What I'm trying to get across is the point that the sport which professional athletes play does not define their lives, even if it does define our views of their lives. They have lives outside of their professional life, but in the vast majority of cases we're not particularly interested in that part of their lives. Indeed, for most of them, we should be actively discouraging widening their articles on Wikipedia to include details of their lives outside of their professional life (unless there's a reason, of course). Athletes are primarily performers, and for the most part their articles should be limited to their performances. If that's true then the "real name" of most athletes who come from non-English speaking cultures and who are receiving English language coverage is essentially irrelevant (although their name with diacritics, in Kanji, or whatever, should be mentioned in the lead at least). After all, I don't really care about "Petr Sýkora", some 35 year old guy from Plzeň, Czechoslovakia. I do very much care about "Peter Sykora", who's a hockey player that has managed to make a somewhat remarkable comeback this season with my favorite team, the New Jersey Devils, however. There's a distinct difference between the two, which I hope would be apparent to most people (although you've gotta wonder sometimes, given the popularity of tabloids...).
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 01:14, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

ok... that does help clarify things. Most of the super-celeb tennis players like Federer or Evert, get a passing paragraph on their lives but the article is 99% on the tennis. A recent variable being Margaret Court who was in the news a lot at the recent Australian Open because of gay rights protests and has been in the news for the same type thing in the past as well. But again that's only an added sentence or two. Good luck with your NJ Devils kicking those panthers into the sea... I'm a huge Kings fan myself. Fyunck(click) (talk) 01:28, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Right, I kinda skipped over the part about superstars. It's fairly normal there for an article to expand to include much more than their professional life. There are also otherwise average athletes who go on to become politicians, actors, or any number of other things, which could easily expand an article about them. There are also instances where things from their real lives impact their professional life, and therefore receive significant coverage (unfortunately). Anyway, yea, I'm kinda pullin' for the Kings to kick some ass against the Canucks too, actually. The Kings are one of my favorites out west.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 01:36, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Formerip may have only been "semi-serious," but I'm completely serious: how are we supposed to verify the spelling on someone's passport? — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 12:26, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

By all means, let's take a real BLP example: Rudiger Haas (sic). Evidently for BLPs of marginal notability sourcing is a problem, in the case the lede currently says:

Rüdiger Haas (born 15 December 1969), known professionally as Rudiger Haas, is a former professional tennis player from Germany.[1 footnote gives source in German Press indicating name is "Rüdiger Haas"]

We have then the combination of WP:RS for (i) current nationality, (ii) spelling in that nationality, in most cases the combination of these 2x WP:RS will lead to a WP:COMMONSENSE outcome that also works with better sourced BLPs such as Martina Navratilova. Excepting of courses exceptions, such as WP:STAGENAME and so on. In ictu oculi (talk) 07:17, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

???That's not a passport. Shall we add a bunch of English press footnotes too? Fyunck(click) (talk) 07:35, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

And remember, if we follow IIO's BLP revision we would not have articles at Cary Grant, Reese Witherspoon, Julie Andrews, Stevie Wonder, etc... we would have to use their birth names/passport names here at wiki. I'm not sure the BLP editors would go for that but it would simplify everything. Many wiki policies and guidelines would have to be rewritten and there could be no exceptions for stage names, tennis names, common names, etc... No matter what someone or something is called in British or American English we automatically use the spelling version found in the country of origin or birth records. If we rewrite and stick to that, the number of arguments will dwindle away. This won't be an English wikipedia anymore but it will allow editors to concentrate on the prose and meat of articles rather than squabbling over the titles. I will say I would be shocked if you could get it through consensus. Fyunck(click) (talk) 06:36, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Fyunck, your essay at WP:TENNIS and e.g. your argument that because a family gave up their Polish diacritic when becoming British therefore Polish tennis players give up their diacritic when playing tennis is WP:OR. Quite evidently reliable WP:RS such as the Encylopedia of Tennis 1974 regard these BLPs to still be Living People with their real names, and WP:STAGENAME is not any more applicable to BLP Sophie Lefèvre as a tennis player than it is to François Mitterrand, the example used in WP:MOS guidelines. In ictu oculi (talk) 07:09, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

What essay? Are you confusing me with someone else? And I only said when in English speaking countries we use no diacritics and when in Poland we do. You're the one who said to use passports... no stage names, common names or pro tennis names for you. That will be tough to get through wiki consensus imho. And you are wrong on pseudonym usage. Fyunck(click) (talk) 07:35, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

I mean the WP:TENNISNAMES essay (which I am not sure why it is where it is following the recent RfC, I thought this was supposed to be moved to your sandbox?). When I said "on the BLP's current nationality passport for Latin alphabet names" the emphasis was on current nationality, the word passport is actually redundant so I have struck it through to prevent distraction. In ictu oculi (talk) 07:47, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

That's not my essay. I always thought that should be on a personal sandbox too. And passport is not redundant at all and striking it changes the whole meaning of your post and those that later replied to it. Fyunck(click) (talk) 08:04, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Yea... this is getting even more odd than it was to begin with. The extremists over the issue of diacritics (there are both people who want them everywhere and people who want them all gone) makes dealing with the whole thing rationally rather difficult too, unfortunately. And again... what does all of this have to do with the BLP policy itself?
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 18:39, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi Ohms law,

• (1) first my answer. What have BLP diacritics got to do with BLP policy? Well, at the moment, that isn't clear. But I suggest that among other things (i) BLP accuracy, and also (ii) generic WP concerns such as WP:CONSISTENCY so we don't have two French Frédéric Vitoux BLPs, one without diacritics because of the ITF online application form, and ledes like: For the writer see Frédéric Vitoux. "Frédéric Vitoux (born 30 October 1970) and known professionally as Frederic Vitoux, is a former professional tennis player..".
• (2) second, my question; can I ask how do you define "the extremists on the side of diacritics" - for example do you define those in favour of Petr Sýkora retaining his Czech name on en.wp even when playing for the New Jersey Devils as "extremists"? For most folk worldwide (who have never heard of the New Jersey Devils) this BLP, if notable in an encyclopedia, is notable more for Olympic appearances for the Czech national team. I wouldn't consider Petr Sýkora retaining his Czech name as being something for "extremists," but simply "accurate" and "encyclopedic" per Chicago Manual of Style and other encyclopedic standards. Or, for example, are you referring to non-Latin alphabet letters like Icelandic thorn and German esszet as "extremist"? In ictu oculi (talk) 03:35, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

The sentence "For most folk worldwide (who have never heard of the New Jersey Devils) this BLP, if notable in an encyclopedia, is notable more for Olympic appearances for the Czech national team." is just insane (in all fairness, I think that you're a tennis fan, and not at all a hockey fan [obviously, based on this comment], so it's not that big of a deal).

I certainly wouldn't label everyone who opposed a move to Peter Sykora as an extremist, but it's easy to see who are the extremists. It's rather inappropriate to start naming names though, especially here. Regardless, this discussion is primarily about diacritics, and I think that it should really be taking place elsewhere. This is not a discussion related to the BLP policy itself.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 04:06, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi, well no, sorry it's not easy to see who extremists are. 99% of the BLP discussions, are less controversial than Peter Sykora, since he does at least have a green card. As I said, I can sort of understand you stripping out all the diacritics on that article, though I don't agree. But can you please give an example of what you mean by an "extreme" edit?? In ictu oculi (talk) 05:09, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

LOL Fyunck(click) (talk) 05:31, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

"known professionally as"

Just a note that I have added tags to the statement "known professionally as" in Stéphane Huet and the other 5 French tennis BLPs up for WP:RM, since the sources show that these BLPs are still working professionally in France under French names. For example Frédéric Vitoux (tennis) is plentifully documented as Frédéric Vitoux as (i) a coach, (ii) official of the Fédération française de tennis FFT and (iii) member of the Union nationale des joueurs professionnels de tennis (UNJPT). To include the claim Frédéric Vitoux (born 30 October 1970) and known professionally as Frederic Vitoux, is a former professional tennis player." is WP:OR. In ictu oculi (talk) 05:07, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

What a shock that you would do this. Your ridiculous "OR" postings do get tiresome with your extreme no-compromising view. Fyunck(click) (talk) 05:29, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't think this is OR, but I do think it's silly. "Petr, known as Peter" is useful as a search engine aid. "Sacha, known as Alexander" is useful as an educational statement. "Frédéric, known as Frederic" is not useful for anything. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:22, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

How do you let readers know that in tennis, the only thing a person is notable for, his name/spelling is completely different? We use Frederick (German: Frédéric) for the same reasons. We could use Frédéric (English: Frederic), Frédéric (Pro Tennis: Frederic) alternate spelling Frederic, alternate name Frederic, professional name Frederic. This is the name he chose to register with to even be able to play tennis so it's important for readers to know that. Fyunck(click) (talk) 19:44, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Fyunck, FYI it was your repeated claims of "chose to register" which moved me from observing this tennis RM activity to actively joining the 80 or 90 editors (It may only be 60) who have asked you to desist. You need when editing as a WP User to be able to distinguish from your parents "choosing" to lose their accent when emigrating to UK and a French tennis player who has no choice when doing an online registration with the diacritic-banned ITF website. Please read WP:NOR, particularly WP:SYNTH more carefully, and then remove the "Frédéric professionally known Frederic" from the 100+ tennis BLPs into which you have inserted the line. (and btw, the English of Frédéric is Frederick with a 'k'). In ictu oculi (talk) 23:38, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Ok. 80,90 or 60 asking me personally to desist?. There is a big difference between taking a vote and asking to desist. And most of the polling is on the wording of the article title not the fact the player has a professional tennis name. You might also notice that most say nothing unless egged on by you. And above, you made statements that I countered and you never took them back. So you were lying there too. With that type of attitude, with your untruthfulness, and the fact you are counting my edits like an umpire at a baseball game I'm really beginning to wonder what kind of person we might be dealing with. I have tried to compromise with you over and over with no luck and I'm about at the end of my patience on compromise. It's simply a fact that every junior and pro player registers with the ITF and chooses an anglicized name. It is also a fact that almost all the English press sources, the ATP, Davis Cup, Wimbledon, US Open, Australian Open, French Open, Fed Cup, etc... all use an English alphabet name for players. It's what everyone in the USA/UK/Australia/Canada knows these players by. You can call it a professional name/ alternate name/ pro Tennis name, pseudonym, or what ever. Sure diacritics are contentious on wikipedia, I don't think that's a secret and Ohms law has said as much. But to remove all traces of a player's sourced pro tennis name from every wiki article (as you are doing or trying to do) is a disservice to our readers and to wikpedia. It's one thing to change a title of a BLP article, it's totally different to eliminate the existence of the only name that 400 million+ people have ever seen. Fyunck(click) (talk) 08:08, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Here's the thing though: for every "80 or 90" people who want to use diacritics, there are "80 or 90" who want to remove them. The appeals to submit to a non-existant majority are not helping the debate at all. Another issue is that we're talking about just the title here, not the article content itself. The name using diacritics can and should be in the opening of the lead, at least. Incidentally, half of the reason that there is resistance to diacritics is because they are completely meaningless for monolingual people. Actually, they are worse than meaningless... the main thing with names should be pronunciation, which diacritics do absolutely nothing to help with (and actually do more to impede the understanding of proper pronunciation than anything else). Besides, it's pretty WP:POINTY to take this dispute out on article content by mangling this article's lead with doubious tags. Anyway; again, this has nothing at all to do with the BLP policy. I don't know why we can't be having a discussion about this in a more appropriate place.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 01:42, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi Ohms law, couple of things:

(i) again, if you say there are "extremists" - then please provide an example. Your removal of diacritics from interwiki links here were corrected by a bot, was the bot an extremist?

(ii) you've already said twice that WT:BLP isn't the appropriate place to discuss names of BLPs, and I've already asked twice what is the place? So I ask the third time, where do you think BLP names should be discussed?

(iii) as far as a majority goes, if you don't believe me then please do the math for yourself, do a Google search to find the 100+ BLPs to which Fyunck has added "Frédéric professionally known Frederic" etc. and then look at the Talk pages to add up all those who have disagreed. I count at least 60 and presumably there are others I haven't seen. And those in favour = zero. (Do you yourself agree with this insert?)

In ictu oculi (talk) 06:32, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Actual draft proposal

Propose that the following being added (probably under BLPSTYLE or BLPSOURCES):

BLP names diacritics guideline proposal
The names of living persons should be represented accurately, according to their nationality, with diacritics if Latin alphabet names, even when the majority of popular English language sources, for example sports sources, do not use diacritics.

(then maybe footnote:)

Note that other WP guidelines already cover diacritics, but in the case of BLPs the requirement for accuracy is higher:

• per WP:Manual of Style/Proper names#Diacritics "Wikipedia normally retains these special characters, except where there is a well-established English spelling that replaces them."
• per WP:COMMONNAME: "Ambiguous or inaccurate names for the article subject as determined by reliable sources, are often avoided even though they may be more frequently used by reliable sources", i.e. the higher standard of accuracy for BLPs will often mean that representing the correct name of a living person trumps inaccurate (or anglicized) spellings that may be found in popular sources.
• per Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English) (shortcut WP:EN) in the case of a lack of reliable sources which are reliable for spelling of foreign names: "If this happens, follow the conventions of the language in which this entity is most often talked about (German for German politicians,..."
• per Wikipedia:Article titles (shortcut WP:UE) generally on non-BLP articles diacritics can be used for Latin alphabet languages with diacritics, but for BLPs since the level of accuracy required is higher, where the living person's name is in a Latin alphabet language with diacritics then generally it not just can but should be used.
• per WP:Manual of Style/Biographies (shortcut WP:OPENPARA) the full name should be used (example Lech Wałęsa), followed by a IPA prounciation box if needed.
• Exceptions may include:
  • where a living person has changed nationality, (example Martina Navratilova), but living, working, playing or performing, in an English-speaking country without acquiring nationality does not usually require anglicization of a BLP's name (example Category:Major League Baseball players from the Dominican Republic).
  • where Latin alphabet diacritics are not clearly established. A major example is the romanization of Serbian names, since Serbian names are usually written in cyrillic and consistent use of Gaj's Latin alphabet is not as clearly in evidence in Serbia as Croatia or Bosnia.
  • generic exceptions, WP:STAGENAME such as the singer Fréhel (born Marguerite Boulc'h).

This is a draft, it will not be the final form - change is invited. But perhaps rather than comment on details first, please comment on the bigger question principle of whether a person's real name generally being their real BLP name should be a default guideline or not before getting into details. There is no point discussing what popular sports sources do, we all know that popular sports sources don't use diacritics and will continue not to do so. The whole point of the proposal is tighten BLPs above the existing non-BLP guidance, which is already not to follow popular sources for name diacritics. If the guideline is accepted it would mean submitting a RM to move the remaining 40-60 BLP titles which have had diacritics removed or blocked by a redirect (out of how many BLPs total?) so titles agree with existing spelling in lede and footnoted sources. In ictu oculi (talk) 10:54, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

BLP diacritics guideline proposal discussion

Having drafted the above I sent out about 100+ invitations (I've probably missed some) to those who had expressed views in the Nico Hülkenberg RM and various Tennis stubs RMs.

Invitation to diacritics guideline discussion at WT:BLP

Hi, you were one of 100+ Users who has commented on a living person Requested Move featuring diacritics (e.g. the é in Beyoncé Knowles) in the last 30 days. Following closure of Talk:Stephane Huet RM, a tightening of BLP guidelines is proposed. Your contribution is invited to WT:BLP to discuss drafting a proposal for tightening BLP accuracy guidelines for names. In ictu oculi (talk) 00:04, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Comments here please:

• Biased: This is slanted to favor the usage of diacritics, which something like this need to be written by someone neutral or by two editors on opposited sides of the issue.HotHat (talk) 03:28, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
• I prefer use of whatever diacritics are apt in the native language. (Actually, I'd rather we use the native name order, too, but that's another can of worms. ;p ) That there are (perhaps very many) sources which don't use them IMO is of no moment; we should adopt the highest standard, not the lowest. TREKphiler ^{any time you're ready, Uhura} 03:30, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
• I tend to agree with HotHat. The proposal is fine, but if the goal is "to discuss drafting a proposal for tightening BLP accuracy guidelines for names", or "to discuss drafting a proposal for some other alternative plan on treatment of spelling and styling of non-English person names", then I'd hope to see someone make at least one counter-proposal, to get us thinking. Hopefully we'll see something like that start, but if would be good if it were more explicitly invited. Dicklyon (talk) 04:18, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
• I totally agree that we need to improve our rules somehow. Day after day we get new disputes over diacritics, and at each one people turn up with different !votes yet !votes on both sides are backed, to some extent, by policies and guidelines. That contradiction should be resolved. I think it's very important to frame the RfC in terms of "What should our policy say?" because if people respond to an RfC by simply citing the same interpretations of existing guidelines &c that we've been getting at individual naming disputes, the RfC will just get stuck in the same swamp. We need a clean start, to get a clear solution. bobrayner (talk) 06:43, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
• This is a perennial problem. Go to the ice hockey project and see it come up every month. Go to the tennis project and see the same (in fact, hasn't there been an RFC recently?). My attitude on this is clear: Wikipedia strives to be accurate, often going into greater detail on certain things than would be strictly necessary or allowed in other media. If someone spells their name in a particular way *normally*, then that spelling should be used as the article title. If someone spells their name in a particular way *for marketing purposes* then we have to fall on the side of COMMONNAME and take it from there. I don't think we could possibly rake over these coals any more doktorb _words^deeds 06:49, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
• This issue parallels the same one in geographical names (roughly categorized below in order of more to less anglicization): 1) There are English exonyms for some toponyms (e.g., Vienna for Wien) and also for some living people (e.g., Pope Benedict XVI for Benedictus PP. XVI); 2) There are established respelled forms for some toponyms (e.g., Cracow for Kraków) and also for some living people (e.g., Yana Yanezic for Jana Janežič); 3) There are established diacritic-stripped forms for some toponyms (e.g., Zurich for Zürich) and also for some living people (e.g., Rajko Dodic for Rajko Dodič); 4) There are toponyms represented as spelled natively (e.g., Łódź) and living people's names spelled natively (e.g., Gérard Dériot); this is essentially non-anglicization and encompasses most toponyms and BLPs in Wikipedia.

Some of these names may slide around from category to category (e.g., see the discussion at Kraków, which ranges from category 2 to category 4), but it's a good starting point for deciding what we're dealing with. As far as BLPs go, the issue at hand appears to be when use category 3 instead of category 4. I would only support category 3 (diacritic stripping) for BLPs when the person himself has chosen to create an identity for himself without the diacritics.

Many English sources (and some encyclopedias) will drop diacritics as a spelling of convenience. Often they do so selectively, keeping "easy" diacritics (as French, Spanish, etc.), but dropping "difficult" diacritics (as Polish, Czech, etc.); if so, this is a matter of technical limitations, rather than a scholarly editorial choice. For me, such representations of a name are not good evidence of the person establishing a diacritic-free identity. One of the most cogent arguments I've seen on WP for retaining diacritics is that names like Łódź are simply "read through"; that is, an English speaker reads it as Lodz no matter whether the diacritics are included or not. Thus retaining the diacritics satisfies scholarly accuracy without impeding the reader's understanding. Doremo (talk) 07:37, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

• I agree with the above. Orczar (talk) 15:44, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

• When I saw that template on my talk page I just read it as "come join us in hell". I made my stance on this clear enough last time. It's difficult to write a guideline on this, because it's been in dispute for so long and Wikipedia guidelines should reflect practice; how can we do this when there is none, and never has been? - filelakeshoe 08:30, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

I agree with you on the first point - this discussion could well be an invitation to hell - but not on a later point. Our rules must explain what we want articles to look like; they should be prescriptive rather than descriptive. If it so happens that earlier editing patterns have made it clear what people think is best for the encyclopædia then we can go ahead and say "There's a longstanding consensus that..." but this shouldn't open the door to further descriptivism. Otherwise we'd have a guideline saying that "It is preferable to have 92453948 one-sentence stubs covering every village in the world" or "Every article should have the word "boner" added to it by an anonymous editor at least once per year". If the status quo is a mess, we're not going to solve the problem by writing a policy which merely tries to document the status quo, nor are we going to solve it by using descriptivism as a reason to shy away from a clean start. How did WP:BLP get here in the first place? bobrayner (talk) 09:30, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

There should be as few Wikipedia guidelines and policies as possible. Only when something is in dispute, or crucial to the encyclopedia's integrity e.g. not writing libellious material, which I believe is why BLP exists. Those things you mentioned are not in dispute. It doesn't matter what the guideline is changed to, no one will follow it. I forced myself to give up on this discussion because it's such a pointless waste of time, as long as the name with diacritics is in the lede, which I hope no one is denying it should be, who cares. - filelakeshoe 13:13, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

• FWIW, I think the proposal is good, and I'd like to see that become the status quo. - filelakeshoe 13:13, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

• I see a problem with two basic assumptions in the proposal - nationality and latin alphabets. One, what is defined by nationality? Does it mean that a child born in Canada to Serbian parents must be listed under the last name of the parents, contrary to common usage? Even if that person has never been involved with the birth parents' country? (This is an actual case - Milan Lucic) Secondly, if you look at countries that use latin characters you will see that there are dozens of countries that use latin alphabets as their basis, and then add all sorts of diacritics, etc. This goes well beyond what can be reasonably expected of English readers. It is not a technical difficulty, no country trains its persons on all alphabets and languages of the world. I have suggested in the past that we use the New York Times style guide - that of English spellings plus some diacritics of countries that are reasonably expected of English readers (eg. France, Spain) - but we could make some reasonable definition. For persons of no English references, which seem to have been brought into the English Wikipedia, we need to think carefully about whether those even belong in the English wikipedia, irregardless of their notability in their home countries. Is it original research to bring them into the English wikipedia? Etc. So, I would impose that we require some sort of English source to be even considered. It makes no sense to have to make naming judgements without English sources. ʘ alaney2k ʘ (talk) 15:02, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

• One argument that I think should be considered dead is the "English doesn't use diacritics" line that some will come up with. I used to favour that viewpoint, but we are seeing that more and more sources are using them, showing that the reason for dropping them is technical only. Cases in point: Mission Impossible 4 uses diacritics in the credits (where the earlier movies did not), the International Ice Hockey Federation's printed publications for the last world junior championship used diacritics for most (except, lazily, Latvia and the Czech Republic). Note the lead image at Sven Bärtschi. The Sports Network's text crawl on sports news uses them for Latin American and some European names. Metro International's papers in Calgary used Norweigian diacritics on its recent stories on the Oslo terror trial. And these examples are just off the top of my head. It is becoming obvious that for the names of people, more and more English media sources are starting to retain most diacritics. It is still inconsistent, however, so expect our own problems with "to use or not to use" to continue for some time as there are still 10 sources that wont use them for each one that does. Resolute 17:17, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
• In my opinion, the rules should be universal and applicable to every biography, independently of the language. It is not acceptable that, for example, we allow the usage of diacritics for French and Spanish names ("countries that are reasonably expected of English readers"), but we don't allow them for other nations, such as Polish, Vietnamese, etc. Also note that English Wikipedia is not only written for native English speakers. The rule should be general, applicable to all biographies (dead or alive). I also agree with those who think that the English sources which usually drop the diacritics are primarily do so based on technical limitations (or laziness). Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and it should be as precise as possible. Deforming the names just because it is easier to read for some users is not acceptable. Based on such an argument, we could simplify lot of other things, as well, and for example drop some complicated assumptions from articles about mathematical theorems, just because they are hard to read for some. This is in line with the current guidelines of biographies which suggests that even the middle names should be given in the lead (even if the person does/did not use them). The only name-deformation that I could accept is the usage of the Western-style name order (first name, last name), since it makes unambiguous which name is which. Many article titles about famous (but already dead) people use diacritics (e.g., Albrecht Dürer, Søren Kierkegaard, Kurt Gödel, Paul Erdős, Émile Borel, Erwin Schrödinger, etc.), this should be followed for living persons, as well. Therefore, I fully support the usage of diacritics in article names. KœrteFa {ταλκ} 07:15, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
• My view is that the article title should normally have its correct diacriticals, but where there is any commonly used English version of the name without the correct diacriticals, a redirect should be created from that version of the name to the "correct" version. This will mean that editors will not need to type letters with diacriticals, which is not convenient on a standard English keyboard. I would not limit this to BLP: it should be a general principle, though at more remote historical periods, it is probably less necessary, as orthography was less fixed. Where the primary name is in a language not written in Latin script, any commonly used transliteration system should be acceptable. If the person is in practice resident in a Latin-script country, a commonly used version of the name will eb acceptable. Peterkingiron (talk) 16:31, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
  • Redirects are cheap; I think we can take it as read that any article with diacritics in the title can have a redirect from a diacritic-less one, and vice versa. bobrayner (talk) 18:53, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

• Support - It's simply good practice to spell people's names correctly. I find HotHat's objection especially baffling: it is not 'biased' to propose, or to adopt, a typographical policy. It's what we, the editors of the encyclopedia, do when an issue needs to be addressed. I'd remind people that WP:IAR will apply to this rule as to any other; if it's better practice for some specific reason (such as a person whose nationality has changed, or whose home nation changes its orthography) to use a different form the name, we can. But I agree with Bobrayner: redirects are cheap. Let's use the best, most accurate titles we can, and use redirects to clear up any and all reasonable ambiguity. AlexTiefling (talk) 20:14, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

So common names, stage names, pseudonyms, etc... are to be done away with now as article titles, or are you talking the first name in the lead sentence? The correct spelling of a Russian is to use the Russian alphabet, but we change that to the English alphabet. So obviously there are exceptions. Before you start supporting things we would need this conversation expanded to let baseball project know they can't go by baseball card names anymore. In fact we wouldn't want this to contradict what is also written in other wikipedia policies and guidelines so they would need to be changed as well. Everyone needs to be brought in on this because of the widespread rules already in place. Fyunck(click) (talk) 20:27, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Don't put words (or diacritics) in my mouth. I'm most strongly arguing that we shouldn't be anglicising names unnecessarily. This is plainly about the Latin alphabet, not the Cyrillic one. But it's neither fair nor helpful to conflate 'Latin' with 'English' as you have done. I believe we should not miss acute accents from French names, or circumflexes (even over w) from Welsh ones; we should not conflate the various Scandinavian letters with English ones that look similar (which can make a complete nonsense of the words affected); and we should use redirects to make sure search works as expected. AlexTiefling (talk) 22:55, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Hence the reason for a question mark. Title, first name in lead, or both? And I'm not conflating Latin and English alphabets... I'm the one separating them as two entities. As far as redirects being cheap, that I have no idea. Storage space must be cheap but what of the bandwidth on wikipedia for redirecting 99% of the keyboard entries to a foreign title? I've never checked that. If a common name or pseudonym is usually without diacritics in the English world then I would think that's where we should put it here. Just like we have it Bill Clinton instead of William Jefferson Clinton, or Novak Djokovic instead of Novak Đoković. And especially in tennis where all players register with the governing body with a chosen "non-diacritic" name. Showing their foreign spelled name in the lead is one thing but having it as the article title is another. And not showing readers the English/registration name at all (as though it doesn't exist) seems completely contrary to what this wikipedia is about. We tell readers a player's racket string brand but can have no mention of the name hundreds of millions of people know them by and is used by multitudes of English sources? Even Encyclopedia Britannica occasionally uses non-diacritics when it comes to tennis entities. There is no perfect one-size-fits-all here. Fyunck(click) (talk) 23:28, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Alex, if you're interested you can read Fyunck's argument based on ITF rules against diacritics at WP:TENNISNAMES and Talk thereof. In ictu oculi (talk) 09:16, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

He can read something there but he won't be reading anything I wrote. Some of what's there is true but most has changed from the original author's first writing of the essay. Fyunck(click) (talk) 09:34, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

• Greatly and Strongly Opposed: I am greatly opposed to this proposal and greatly bothered by the utter biased nature in it, and see fit to cast this vote! According to UE it says we should use the English sources variant of the name only, which means if we in the majority of English speaking countries use it in reliable sourcing not academic publications or journals like you all seem to want to keep highlighting. We must look at newspapers and magazines use the name because that would be the most reliable way to recognize someone’s name not how a academic journal i.e. encyclopedia mentions the name. So, we need to look how countries like the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, and Australia are calling a person, and not go by your nativist mentality to want to usurp the English language with putting in diacritic if we in those few English dominate speaking countries don't flat out use them in the majority of reliable sourcing.HotHat (talk) 04:27, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
• Support We are an encyplopedia not a tabloid. As BLPs are involved we have have to even strive to higher accuracy than with any other subject. Prioritizing sources that are genarally accepted as being flawed when it comes to spelling to support an agenda to stop the "usupation of the English language" is equally a political point of view not a encylopedic one. We should respect people not butcher their names. Obviously COMMONNAME still applies which has nothing to do with diacritics but with the way names are used. Bill Clinton is a good example of that. We tend to only use one first name even if the person has more than one as the person is known by one. True translation of names has long gone out of fashion when modern times have arrived. Back then a Wilhelm was translated to William or a Heinrich was translated to Henry. When people went to university they where known by their Latin names. That practise is a century out of date now and today any serious source will refer to people by their correctly written names. They even attempt to pronounce them these days (with varied sucess). Agathoclea (talk) 11:04, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

• Admin perspective I am personally neutral on whether we should defer to diacritic usage or English/Anglicized usage. But I am not neutral on the application of Consistency to article titles. Whether or not this discussion should be here in BLP or at a higher level is a legitimate question, but there is no doubt we have a consistency issue with regards diacritics in titles. There is inconsistency in naming conventions, inconsistency with regards Commonname and Use English, and there is inconsistency in the application of WP:RS. Editors in favor of diacritics in titles will cite one set of guidelines/MOS and discount any that oppose them (including challenging the reliability of sources that don’t support their position). The same holds true for those that don’t favor diacritics. They’ll cite a complete different set of guidelines/MOS to make their point. The result of these inconsistencies in guidelines/MOS/naming conventions is tension within the community and inconsistency application of policy. As a admin who routinely closes RM discussions, I see both sides all the time. Both sides are right, both sides are wrong. Regardless of the close decision, one of the sides is disappointed and they believe their policy based arguments were ignored. This can only get worse as we move toward ~4-5M articles in the next few years. A great majority of the new articles will be on non-English subjects. I vote for consistency and believe Naming conventions are the place to spell that out. --Mike Cline (talk) 13:54, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

An accusation per se is not enough to make a person "well-known"

Seems pretty obvious, no? The goal is not to have Wikipedia in any way be judge or jury for any accusations - there is no deadline on finishing articles, and harm can be caused if we err in making the accusations equivalent to conviction of a crime. Collect (talk) 14:23, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

An accusation can be enough to make a person well-known. We judge "well-known" (or public figure status) by the extent of high-quality secondary coverage. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 16:12, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Greg, the footnote you're removing was agreed here, and it makes sense. If someone is arrested over a high-profile, serious issue and there are multiple high-quality sources (with the stress on high-quality), we have to be able to reflect those sources in their bio. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 17:17, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

That looks like an agreement between two editors, Wifione and Bbb23. For what it's worth, count me in and SV of course, so that makes four. - Wikidemon (talk) 17:28, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

WP:BLPCRIME

WP:BLPCRIME has recently been changed to say that it only applies to "individuals who are relatively unknown" and there is a new note that emphasises that the policy applies "not to well known individuals". I must ask, why not? Surely, notable individuals are just as in need of the presumption of innocence as lesser known people. Once a conviction or acquittal has been given, it deserves a mention in the article (detailed in the case of a conviction, brief in the case of an acquittal). Until that has happened, reporting the details of the allegations and the ongoing case are both legally dangerous and in violation of Wikipedia policy to keep things in a historical perspective. It would be safer to keep all ongoing court cases out of BLPs until a verdict has been given, so I propose that these new changes to the policy be removed. There was a talk page discussion on these changes between two editors who agreed, but I don't think the changes are based on consensus in the wider community. Gregcaletta (talk) 19:13, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi Greg, see the discussion directly above. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 19:28, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

I think the idea is that if Barely Notable Betty gets picked up for DUI, then nobody much cares, and we can easily afford to wait a couple of months until it's settled one way or the other, and if she's acquitted, then we've saved an innocent person the trauma of having a false accusation (or a true accusation that wasn't deemed important enough to prosecute) from having this minor event trumpeted all over the Internet and (not unimportantly) repeated in the many Wikipedia WP:MIRRORS, some of which might never be updated with the outcome.

But if Famous Fred gets picked up for the same charge, the charge is going to be splattered all over the national newspapers anyway, so Wikipedia's contribution to making these charges known is insignificant, so it's not worth worrying about.

As a passing comment, I believe that a guilty plea is not technically a conviction, and >90% of US criminal cases end with a guilty plea rather than a conviction. I don't know whether it's actually going to confuse anyone, though. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:30, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

This issue for me is that what we usually call "reliable sources" cannot be called such for documentation for crime BEFORE the trial, since hte court is the only authority. Otherwise, it's called trial by media (which we would be participating in, whether the person or notable or not). The court is the authority on matters of crime, so there authority overrides that of the NYT etc. and thus only the judgements of of judicial authorities (although it will necessarily be mediated through a secondary source) can be our reliable source for such material. Gregcaletta (talk) 21:04, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

This has me thinking, is WP becoming nothing but a gossip column? If it's important enough to be encyclopedic, surely we can wait awhile. It'll still be true, & still of encyclopedic value, in a month or 6. TREKphiler ^{any time you're ready, Uhura} 03:17, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Criticism

The section on "Balance" says "Criticism and praise should be included if they can be sourced to reliable secondary sources..." Yes, but... If a well-known journalist writing in a reputable paper says "Putin/Sarkozy/Gandhi is an instinctive autocrat/chauvinist/populist", should that be cited? I think not. Somehow the point should be made that criticism should only be included if it helps the reader understand the subject. Criticism that has affected the subject is relevant. Otherwise, critics should only be cited if they are recognized authorities on the subject. Maybe "reliable sources" implies that, but I feel it should be spelled out further. Comments? Aymatth2 (talk) 17:06, 21 April 2012 (UTC)