Wikivoyage talk:Living persons

Drafting discussion

Discussion moved from Meta:

Here's my draft. How does this look? --Peter ^Talk 20:47, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

Good enough for me. LtPowers 01:14, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Looks good to me, too. Ikan Kekek 01:16, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Just to note: the one actual change in practice that would result by adopting this policy as I currently have it written is that we would need to add hard references to the talk page for biographical information about well-known living persons. --Peter ^Talk 18:41, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

I noticed that, but I didn't say anything about it because it's such a rare case. Do you think it's necessary, though? LtPowers 22:35, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Looks good, although like LtPowers, do you think it's necessary to reference BLP info? The only other thing I could think of is whether the policy should reference "Be fair" generally instead of the Political disputes part. Your example is political but I was wondering if there were other instances where referencing how to deal with Political disputes would be too narrow? (although, I haven't thought of any yet) -Shaund 05:41, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Why not suggest a link to WP for information on notable people whenever possible? Thats where it belongs. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 14:31, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

I think the relevant part of the WMF resolution [1] is: Ensuring that projects in all languages that describe living people have policies in place calling for special attention to the principles of neutrality and verifiability in those articles.

The relevant part of the more explicit guidance at Meta [2] is this: Projects are also encouraged to put into place local standards paying special attention to the principles of neutrality and verifiability of facts when writing about living people. Any inaccuracies presented as proven fact about a living person which cannot be verified must quickly be corrected or immediately removed unless a suitably identified and reliable source can be found. Suitability for the purpose of this policy is judged according to each project's local standards.

Verifiability is really our issue in the understand sections, since we have no such mechanism in place. I'm all for linking WP BLP articles on the talk page, while preserving our no in-line WP links policy, since we like to direct POV warriors over there to sort out reality anyway. Nabbing references from WP should also be really easy, but the problem would be tracking down whatever information we already have on living persons, in order to add talk page references. One way of resolving that problem might be encouraging new editors from WP to do that work, since they are more familiar and enthusiastic about that type of stuff ;)

All that said, if we don't want to bother with the references, we should modify the draft policy. Simply linking on the talk page to the BLP on WP might be sufficient. I'll defer to what others think here. --Peter ^Talk 15:53, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Why don't we want links within the article itself? I think it's simplest to make exceptions for living persons and link to their Wikipedia articles within the travel article, rather than from the talk page. Ikan Kekek 16:14, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

To preserve our (important) policy against secondary source linking [3], the rationale being that such links encourage laziness among writers—if you can just link to WP, no need to actually contribute original writing here! But that wouldn't serve travelers with 3rd world internet connections, or those who need to use our guides offline. I think it would be a slippery slope. --Peter ^Talk 16:18, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

I think it might be sufficient to say that "biographical information for living persons that might be controversial or challenged should be supported by references located on the talk page", though it's probably easier to just do it for everything. LtPowers 18:08, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

I have been thinking about the policy against secondary source linking. It has some problems: We are constrained to write articles on travel topics within a fairly narrow band which specifically excluded "attractions". Some attractions are sufficiently complex to justify a major encyclopaedic article on WP, but still do not qualify for a travel guide article. It is a disservice to the traveller not to link to the encyclopaedic article if we can not provide the information in the travel guide. It would not make sense to me to basically rewrite several wikipedia articles inside a single destination article, or fail to provide the information on a technicality. I will write this up on the new policies page in a new section. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 07:34, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

I support you on this and will eagerly await your writeup. Ikan Kekek 07:52, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

OK I read through the proposed policy now. I agree with the first section, but I have some issues with the second. Consider this true story: Prominent hotel, right next to the Mumbai airport. A traveler there was raped, the owners have been implicated, but they are out on bail and are still running the hotel. The policy as proposed will require us to drop the hotel entirely from our listings, even though we'd be doing a disservice to travelers and even though we have good secondary sources that will help us avoid the libel charge. Perhaps we should modify it to say that for reviews, we prefer to avoid negative reviews, but if the hotel/restaurant is too prominent for us to drop coverage, we should include it only if we have have references, which should be added to the talk page. Ravikiran Rao 04:50, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

A good example of where a link to a Wikipedia article would avoid the problems. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 05:49, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Or a reputable news source, if Wikipedia doesn't mention it. Ravikiran Rao 07:02, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

I added a bit at the end to address Ravikiran's concerns. Does that work? I don't think secondary source references would be appropriate in this type of situation, though—it really should only be highly reputable news sources. I think this would be an exceedingly rare thing, though. --Peter ^Talk 01:03, 29 September 2012 (UTC)