Category talk:Living people

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the category above. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section of this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result was Kept through an edict from Jimbo. - Haukur 20:56, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Note from Jimbo: This category is desperately needed to deal with a growing problem. Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons is an attempt to deal with the problem, but in order for that policy to be effective, we need a convenient way for people who are interested in this topic to systematically go through vetting these articles. I am flexible on the title and structure of the category, of course, but I believe that CfD is not appropriate.--Jimbo Wales 15:36, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Second Note from Jimbo: Let me be clear about this. This category is desperately needed and is not optional. I am willing to impose it from top down if necessary. I am flexible as to the title and structure of this category, but CfD is not appropriate.--Jimbo Wales 20:01, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Third Note from Jimbo: This AfD is closed. Take it to the talk page.

(adding back the comments/wangi 20:54, 19 January 2006 (UTC))

• Delete L-O-L. Michael Jackson, Mustafa Sandal and Brian Curtin, who knew? --CDN99 15:03, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
• Comment Danny and Jimbo have created this category for the purpose of a project to improve and monitor biographies of living persons. Further information is to be provided on the mailing list; I will update the discussion with a link when I have it. Demi ^T/_C 15:10, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
  • An announcement has been made. Demi ^T/_C 15:24, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. It's a good idea. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 15:30, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
• Comment. This category will, if updated accordingly, contain tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of articles. Who will ever have the time to go through them? No vote. JIP | Talk 15:33, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
• Comment: What about implementing a Special page that lists all articles with a birth date category, but not a death date category? This would effectively be the same as a "Living People" category (after fixing articles that mistakenly omit a death category). Carbonite | Talk 15:35, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

  There really isn't a simple way to accomplish what you've requested. It would basically require some HUGE set operations (union of all years born - union of all years dead) and thus couldn't be made available via a special page. I can however perform this query offline, which will be good to tell people what to tag. --Gmaxwell 16:00, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

  Perhaps you could create a bot which finds articles which fulfill these criteria and adds them to Category:Living people. You can have it collect articles with a year of birth category for years higher than, say, 1890, and no year of death category. Somehow I think that using Category:Living people will be more maintainable in the long run but we can use the information we already have to jumpstart it. - Haukur 16:02, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

  I'm already on it, I'm halfway done, see here (caution 3mb list).. The problem is that all 64,000 must be checked by hand, because there are quite a few who look alive in their analysis because we don't know their year of death. If there weren't quite so many I'd make a semi-automated bot show me all the first paragraphs and let me say yes/no.. In any case, even if all these were added this would not be our largest category by a pretty reasonable margin. --Gmaxwell 16:46, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

  Wow! That was fast. And the page crashed my browser :) Now we just have to find out what we do with it. - Haukur 16:59, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

• Keep unless something better is suggested. There are a number of people whose year of birth is known but year of death unknown so I'm not quite sold on Carbonite's idea :) There are also a number of living people whose year of birth is not public information. - Haukur 15:44, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
  • If the year of death is unknown, let's create a "Year of death unknown" category. We could also have a "Year of birth unknown" category. The Special page would basically just select all articles where the person was born but hasn't died. This is a fairly simple SELECT query and the results could be cached to reduce server load. The majority of biographies are already tagged with birth and death categories, so it makes more sense to use the information we already have than to create a whole new category. Carbonite | Talk 15:50, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
    • Because of the great many articles involved the query is actually fairly time consuming (although it is simple as you say). It took 4 minutes to generate. You're right about the need for the unknown deaths ... Gonna fix some of them? --Gmaxwell 16:59, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
• Keep It is an administrative category such as cleanup or unsourced images, and a *very* useful one at that. JIP, this category will be used by recent changes tools to flag edits to these articles for review and by edit filtering bots. So even if the category becomes huge, it will still remain useful. --Gmaxwell 15:53, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
• Conditional delete: I like Carbonite's second idea about a special page, this seems unmaintainable in its current format. Don't delete until proof-of-concept exists for the auto-categorization scheme, though. -- nae'blis _(talk) 15:57, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
• Delete—Yet another patch created for the sole purpose of obscuring the truth: that bureaucratic manipulation of a supposedly open editing system doesn't work. This category was created to hide the fact that the few people controlling content at Wikipedia can't keep up with the workload. By shifting our attention to living people, the premise is that dead people won't care as much if their biography is incorrect. This patchwork of obfuscation is coming apart at the seams. Wikipedia will work when everyone has equal power to police each other. Editors come in here assuming good faith that their contributions will be judged on content, not Wikipedia politics and hierarchy. Category patches like "Living people" just delay the inevitable outcome of lying to these editors. *Peace Inside 16:27, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

  It's not just that dead people "don't care as much". It's also that living people are much more likely to have enemies and trolls inserting libel into their articles. - Haukur 16:41, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

"Enemies and trolls" make up a small percentage of the total Wikipedia membership and have a relatively small voice when editors have equal power to police each other. Against the few content controllers in the current system, however, "enemies and trolls" are overwhelming. Also, I'm sure most people would agree that Wikipedia bureaucracy creates "enemies and trolls." *Peace Inside 17:15, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

• Keep Very practical solution to an evolving problem. Useful for verifying categories and facts of BLP.--FloNight 16:44, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
• Speey Keep. Requested by Jimbo. If someone doesn't like the idea, think of another one and implement that as well. Both can work together. — ₀₉₁₈^BRIAN • 2006-01-19 17:01
• Delete, per Carbonite's reasoning above. If this a requirement then come up with a smart solution using the database and year born / year died dates. Speedy keep because Jimbo says so - oh please... Thanks/wangi 17:04, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

  Or even better: Wikipedia:Persondata. Thanks/wangi 17:18, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

• Delete It's just useless category clutter - useless because no one is going to monitor the contents effectively. If it becomes fully populated there will only be a known sensitive article on every other page or so, so they won't be easy to spot in a sea of unfamiliar names, unless you know which articles you are looking for, in which case you can use the search box. No-one has any significant knowledge about more than a fraction of the living people with articles, so clicking on names at random won't be very productive. I don't want to see a link that is such a waste of space on tens of thousands of articles (and it will be hundreds of thousands before long). If we want a useful tool for the stated purpose it should be called something like category:Previously vandalised biographies of living people. CalJW 17:10, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
• delete this seems like a real kludge, and its adoption for short-term convenience encourages long-term sloppiness and clutter. the main purpose of categories ought to be to provide further links for readers interested in a general topic. this category is useless in that regard. on the other hand, it is useful to wikipedia editors -- as a type of database entry. perhaps a more elegant & useful solution would be to allow "invisible" database tags on articles. i suppose it's just a matter of aesthetics, but seeing "living people" at the bottom of the page just looks stupid to me -- so do birth/death cats though. why not just keep a list (or lists) of these ... that's about as easy as adding a category tag. Derex 17:26, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

  See Wikipedia:Persondata for those "invisible database tags on articles"... Ta/wangi 17:27, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Perfect! adding that template should be no harder than adding a "living persons" category. it's also more generically useful. then, living persons is trivial per carbonite. double-delete this silly category. Derex 17:35, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

This would only be useful for offline analysis, not for flagging recent changes.. for example. --Gmaxwell 18:56, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

• Delete I just saw this on Dubya's article and I thought it was some little kid's prank. I've read all the stuff, and it still seems like some kind of prank. It just has to go. Golfcam 17:51, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
• Delete Much too broad and silly. -- MisterHand 17:56, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
• Delete, one of silliest categories I've seen. Pavel Vozenilek 19:00, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. To interprete Pavel's words in my way, "This category is a shit". - Darwinek 19:13, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
• Delete, this is a silly idea that won't even accomplish what it's intended to do, it'll just create a big pointless category. I have no clue why Jimbo is involving himself. To deal with vandalism, get more RC patrollers. Radiant_>|< 19:24, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
• Comment: I reverted the deletion of these comments by Jimbo Wales, thanks/wangi 20:34, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
• Keep - I'm very warry that this will turn out to be a Bad Idea, but am willing to give it a chance if Jimbo thinks it should be given a chance. - TexasAndroid 20:10, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
• Comment. Jimbo, Jimbo. Older you are getting, more like führer you act. - Darwinek 20:15, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
• Delete We should not defer to Jimbo when he has a bad idea. This vote is our opportunity to correct his mistake. We should start a vote of no confidence if he doesn't relent. His role as a founder doesn't make him perpetual dictator. Wikipedia is a registered foundation and there must be laws which allow people to be removed if they are not acting in the interests of the foundation. Choalbaton 20:21, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment. Yeah and btw. imagine for example all thousands of living young sportspeople or actors under this category. This is really silly category, like "Right-handed people". - Darwinek 20:28, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
• Delete I agree with the others - this is a terrible idea! WhiteNight ^{T | @ | C} 20:33, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
• Delete There may be a problem that needs to be addressed, but there is zero chance this will address it effectively. Instead of telling us you are willing to be flexible, how about demonstrating that you are willing to be flexible by actually engaging with the objections and alternatives raised? This is idea is such an obvious dud and will be a massive waste of your time as well as other peoples' time. There could be a million articles in this category in a few years time. It just isn't going to identity sensitive articles in a useful way.Carina22 20:42, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the category's talk page (if any). No further edits should be made to this page.