Wikipedia talk:BLP Admin

This page was nominated for deletion on 6 February 2007. The result of the discussion was keep.

"Advocacy for subjects of articles." may present a conflict of interest. Navou ^banter / _{review me} 00:19, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

My initial wording while drafting it was "impartial arbitrator between subjects and editors over their article's contents." I will change it. CyberAnth 03:01, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Is it litigious if it is well sourced? Do we want to change the wording to "non-sourced litigious" Navou ^banter / _{review me} 00:20, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it could be litigious, via overall effect. The sum total of WP:BLP is not satisfied by simple adherence to WP:CITE, although it is is a very common misconception among Wikipedians that it does. Often, problematic issues can be more nuanced but problematic just the same. For example, say a biography (or more properly, something under the guise of a biography) contains numerous sentences explaining the person generally, but the rest of the article is little other than a slugfest of controversies and criticisms, placed in by primarily that person's critics. In this case, and even if each item is properly cited, WP:Undue weight is the concern - and an undue weight problem is a BLP problem. Another example is often found in the sections on the subject's viewpoints and beliefs. When a subject's views are expressed primarily from the perspective of his or her critics, even if properly cited, this violates WP:NPOV, and as such it too is a BLP problem. CyberAnth 00:54, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"Maturity and education." Can we prove this? Would this limit some good admins from holding BLP positions? Navou ^banter / _{review me} 00:23, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No, we cannot prove it. It is by simple affirmation. However, if push comes to shove and something ends up in court, could it be that the BLP Admin involved will be called to take the stand? It may prevent a few younger yet more mature BLP admins but I think the trade-off is worth it. CyberAnth 00:54, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Why the relatively redundant requirement of "twenty-five and a bachelor's degree"? A typical bachelor's graduate is around 22 to 23 years old; an extra two to three years of life experience won't harm them, certainly, but seems a little arbitrary. ColourBurst 04:07, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Otherwise, I like it. Navou ^banter / _{review me} 00:23, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting proposal. A few comments:

• Can you show any correlation between education and age, and maturity on wikipedia?
• Rather than have BLP Admin as parallel to Admin, why not have BLP Admin after standard adminship so BLP Admins are a subset of standard Admins?
• What exactly do you mean by "rapidly enforce his or her removal of potentially litigious content" that can't be done by admins now?

--Steve _(Slf67) ^talk 03:51, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This seems extremely infeasible to me. How would "BLP admins" be distinguished from regular admins in terms of user rights? In order to create a new user class, a developer would have to add it, and even if that did happen, they wouldn't have many more abilities than a regular user. Very few of the things in this proposal are anything a regular user can't do, actually, except for the enforcement of WP:BLP, "even against consensus". WP:BLP and OFFICE/OTRS are enough, this is excessive. --Coredesat 03:56, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Absolutely and completely unnecessary. There's no reason to privilege specific editors with powers and create additional stratification; anyone should be able to edit articles to comply with BLP on sight, and call on an admin or dispute resolution if someone's being disruptive or repeatedly violating policy. We already have WP:OFFICE and OTRS to handle people's issues with their biographies, and sensitive things like that should remain official. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 03:58, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I second this view. Between WP:OFFICE, OTRS, Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography and the work of countless admins and other editors, this proposal is unnecessary. Judging from the recent controversy over BLP deletions, I think attention should be focused more on clarifying the WP:BLP policies. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 04:14, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

As indicated in the proposal, "BLP Admins who find their focus changing should promptly resign from the position and/or seek installment as a general administrator." Should one fail to do this, "BLP Admins may be recalled from their position at anytime through a 75% supermajority of votes by general administrators and BLP administrators, collected over seven days." We have thousands upon thousands upon thousands upon thousands 9amyone know exactly how many?) BLPs. The status-quo is largely passive about them, leaving potentially litigious content remain. This proposal creates an active role. Part of the idea is to prevent OFFICE from having to get calls each day! CyberAnth 04:19, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Fragmentation of admins by "specialty" does not strike me as necessarily a good thing. All admins have responsibility to enforce all policies. This proposal would slice out WP:BLP-related decisions from a "regular" admin's responsibilities. It does so while giving the new "super-admins" no new powers or capabilities. This creates a false hierarchy that will not be healthy for Wikipedia.
  On the specifics of the proposal, I disagree with the underlying premise. I believe that all admins should have an "exceptional knowledge of the Wikipedia policy" and should demonstrate maturity. Neither of those are guaranteed by being the author of a biography, being older than 25 or holding a bachelors degree.
  This proposal also ignores the natural evolution of our volunteer editors to shift the focus of their activities as their interests and experiences shift. For our volunteers, this is a natural and usually gradual shift. It is unreasonable to expect that someone will volunteer with this kind of sole focus and then remember to tell you when they change their mind. We are volunteers. We are not paid and are under no obligations to continue editing in any role. This proposal assumes that the new BLP-admins will want to stay in that role for a significant period of time. I do not believe that assumption will prove true. Rossami (talk) 04:22, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• • Super-admins? These are less, not more. CyberAnth 04:23, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This seems like an absurd, convoluted, instruction creep-ish way to handle a serious issue. Creating a new class of users will not solve anything, and if anything, will only lead to issues with power abuse. Ral315 (talk) 04:11, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Seconded. This isn't the way to solve the BLP issue. Vigilant users keep an eye out for these kinds of violations, and they are doing a great job. PTO 04:17, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. If anything, I feel that this is a guise to get this editor in as an administrator to push an agenda. There is no reason for this policy to exist. :: Colin Keigher (Talk) 04:20, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Please be careful with accusations. Navou ^banter / _{review me} 09:53, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Vigillent users keep an eye out for this sort of thing about as often as Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard receives an entry. Anyone who has systematically gone through hundreds and hundreds of WP BLPs finds a very different story. CyberAnth 04:22, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wow! So if there is a content dispute, then we should just banish anybody who doesn't conform to your idea. Seriously, are you kidding? If there is a content dispute, then requesting a page lock with the material that is not offending is good enough. Admins are not perfect and there are some admins out there who are probably no more intelligent than some editors. Are you telling me that by having admins enforcing BLP that all of these problems you keep hooting and hollering about will disappear? :: Colin Keigher (Talk) 04:31, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Agree, it's absurd. —Doug Bell ^talk 04:48, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Seventhed. No reason why ordinary users can't help handle BLP issues when they see them... This solves nothing and would create several problems I can think of (mainly having to do with bureaucracy and power-tripping.) How about I appoint myself a BLP admin right now and go fix some articles? :-) Grandmasterka 05:12, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Its just like every other half assed attempt at a new policy wiki gets these days. More deviciveness, more policy hoops to jump through.  ALKIVAR™ ☢ 06:04, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There is no admin DNA that makes an admin smarter than any other user. Being an admin on Wikipedia is nothing more than a realization that someone can be trusted with a few extra buttons. There's no reason to create a position unless there are technical reasons to do so.

Any user can remove libel from an article. Anyone has the authority, right now, today, to enforce the removal of poorly sourced, negative information from an article. If you aren't an admin, you may not have the power to enforce it via a block or protect, but you do have the authority. Anyone has the authority, right now, to patrol articles about living people or WP:BLPN. Unfortunately, I've gotten away from going through it regularly, but for a while, I was one of a very few who were going through WP:BLPN and responding to issues. Anyone, right now, can discuss with a living person issues he or she is having with their article.

The whole thing about Wikipedia is that you can edit this page right now. With rare exception, anyone can help out in any way. All adminship is is reserving certain high-risk buttons for those who are trusted. But any user can and should be free to contribute in any way they can.

Because there are no special buttons for BLP Admins, there is no reason to create a special class for them. If you want to help out with BLP issues, just do it! --BigDT 04:21, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

One removal of BLP offending material by an editor must typically be defended for many, many, many, many hours - yes, days. And then two weeks later it all start again. Do that with just three or four articles and you are ready to forever end your career doing it. On the other hand, one removal by an admin and the matter is usually over. How is leaving this to editors a good idea? Plus we have a ga-zillion BLPs probably never even once evaluated for violations of WP:BLP, and an admin-to-BLP article ratio of, what, some minuscule decimal to ten thousand? CyberAnth 04:26, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Have you ever heard of using existing WP policies and then requesting that the page be protected? I guess not. :: Colin Keigher (Talk) 04:36, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That is the passive way, not the active way. CyberAnth 04:37, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

So you're stating that administrators should always be gung ho by taking shots first and asking questions later? Yeah. Good policy! :: Colin Keigher (Talk) 04:41, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It is called looking for problems rather than waiting for them to come find you. In the latter case, they and potentially litigious results existed just the same but were not seen. CyberAnth 04:48, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think this policy is more of a backdoor for people to become admins because somehow they're an 'expert.' The current policies are fine. :: Colin Keigher (Talk) 05:01, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

(Edit conflict * 3) Yes, but if the item is being re-added repeatedly, then either the person adding it needs to be blocked or, if multiple IPs, then the article s-protected. A non-admin doesn't have the tools to make that happen, but users who violate the BLP policy after being warned with {{blp2}} can be reported at WP:AIV and protection can be requested at WP:RFPP. Yes, I know that sometimes it's frustrating when something happens at an odd hour and you can't find an admin to administer the much-needed block. There was one night when the Atlanta Falcons message board was repeatedly vandalizing articles about their players and nobody was monitoring WP:RFPP ... but a BLP admin who is not also a regular admin would have the same problem. If articles are never getting examined, that's something for a WikiProject, not a special user class. We could have a bot generate a list of all articles in the living persons' category and then divide it up among those who are interested, checking off the articles as they are done. Believe me ... I've spent time with BLP issues. I've talked with individuals who are the subject of their articles. I know the frustrations that can be involved. But I just don't see any reason for a special user class ... really, I think the issue is just that more volunteers are needed for responding to WP:BLPN issues. --BigDT 04:42, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

And I think this proposal is the very best way to get those volunteers. That's the point! No one wants to spend 30 hours to take down one uncited statement that someone's mother was a cocaine addict. They will quit within weeks, at most. On the otherhand, empower responsible people to actually enforce what they do and you will lack no one to do the work. Just a quick glance at WP:BLPN and you can see how many, that is, how scant few are actually willing to do the work as editors only. BigDT, what I am saying here is the core of the intent of this proposal! CyberAnth 04:53, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There's a problem with that. We don't need a roving gang of admins who police one policy because there's the fear that Wikipedia will be sued for libelous content. This is a plain instruction creep and will lead to rules lawyering. If you want to be an admin, get someone to nom you (self noms are rarely successful). If you become an admin, you can continue to work with BLP reports, but Wikipedia does not need a new type of admin who will more than likely cause more bad than good within the community because he/she focuses solely on policing a single policy.—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 04:58, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Everywhere else in the world those people are called specialists and it is how humans divide labor to both increase expertise and to get more done. CyberAnth 05:01, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Okay. We do not need admins who specialize in one area. Look at CAT:CSD and tell me that we need an admin who specializes in one area.—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 05:04, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

On the contrary, look at WP:BLPN compared to the ratio of BLP articles and tell me why we do. CyberAnth 05:09, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly. Specialist admins. So get adminship first and use the tools to enforce BLP using standard processes. --Steve _(Slf67) ^talk 05:05, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The point is to widen the bottleneck to get more admins into a woefully neglected task that is the most important task on Wikipedia. CyberAnth 05:13, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is that we don't need a new policy to tell admins what to specialize in - they can specialize in the fields they want. The proposal effectively violates Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy by creating one. And as previously stated, all this will do is lead to wikilawyering. All that was needed was a post on WP:AN asking a few admins to go over to WP:BLPN to help out - again, this is excessive. --Coredesat 05:16, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Again, that is being passive. The point is to get 50 or 100 or so specialist admins to go not first to WP:BLPN but to Category:Living_people], with all its probably several hundred thousand articles that have never so much as once had admin eyes. CyberAnth 05:24, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That still does not require a policy proposal. Bring it up on the administrators' noticeboard, not here. --Coredesat 06:25, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This proposal is the perfect way to create further rift between ordinary editors and admins. There are already people that give BLPs special attention. But if you start giving a special policing status to certain users, the result will be confusion, appeals to authority and frustration. Pascal.Tesson 05:07, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

We already have that. Frise 05:19, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Everyone should be admin. You abuse it you lose it. Every editor to be admin less anonymity would be necessary. More than an IP, more than an individual registering. But a comprehensive way to verify every editor. Ways to verify; SS card, State DL, Credit Card...etc..etc --ⅮⅭⅭⅬⅩⅩⅤⅠⅠ 05:23, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

DCCC, I think that is called Scholarpedia. It is just down the road. CyberAnth 05:39, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Been there. Done it. Scholarpedia zzzz. Not as much fun as this wacky place. --ⅮⅭⅭⅬⅩⅩⅤⅠⅠ 05:47, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia is transparent, except when it comes to the anonymous editor. BLP Admin may or may not be right for Wikipedia, however I think its a start. Wikipedia is somewhat of a joke.[1][2] Many have suggested that Wikipedia was created with the hidden agenda of be nothing more than a bad joke. I dont believe this to be true. However no time in history has a group of nobodys (anonymous editors) wrote an authoritative text for society. For Wikipedia to ever be a true authority, less anonymity would be necessary. --ⅮⅭⅭⅬⅩⅩⅤⅠⅠ 05:04, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Firstly, adminship is no big deal, it just gives you a few extra buttons to press. Secondly, even if I didn't become a BLP admin, I almost certainly will be reverting violations of WP:BLP, even if consensus is against me. It's a nice idea, but I don't think its necessary. - Ta bu shi da yu 05:05, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure it's this, but something. The BLP noticeboard is bloated and largely ineffective. Regular editors who do try to enforce BLP are harassed, accused of disruption, threatened with blocks or just blocked. Jimbo and Danny can always step in, but there needs to be something in between. Frise 05:14, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Give people a chance to come round to the new way of thinking. A lot of editors are learning the rules of WP:BLP, but what we have seen so far from a few BLP-police is a steamroller approach, removing non-controversial statements, blanking non-controversial articles that people have worked a long time on, leaving abusive capitalised edit summaries, engaging in tit-for-tat deletions when their changes are reverted, changing interpretations of blankings, blanking of perfectly referenced information, and so on. Wikipedia is a huge community, just give it time to catch up. --Steve _(Slf67) ^talk 05:24, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That is the approach I've been taking. I've noticed that with each new "episode", more and more people are siding in favor of a more strict application of BLP, especially after Jimbo has weighed in a couple of times. The question is, is it happening fast enough? Frise 05:29, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wale's comment about Cyberanth's block being a bad decision was only made on 29th January. That was a wake up call for a lot of people, and look how far we have moved since then. --Steve _(Slf67) ^talk 05:34, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Completely agree, but we still have a long way to go. Frise 05:36, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I am telling you, this project is just not going to ever get the number of people it needs to do this task unless they are also empowered to enforce things. I challenge you: as an editor only, select 10 BLPs and remove content from them that violates WP:BLP. Then, be prepared to spend the rest of the next several weeks and most of the hours of your day pulling out your hair and being subjected to the worst of human nature to see the changes actually stick. Then, visit those pages again after three weeks. Rinse, repeat. You accomplished almost nothing. No one, no one will do it for long. On the other hand, actually empower responsible people to specialize in this policy and enforce things regarding it and you will find 100s and 100s of people lining up to do the task. Why only then? Because they can have real hope of actually being successful at accomplishing something. This is just part of Volunteerism 101. CyberAnth 05:46, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Run for adminship. Right now, BLP just needs more volunteers.—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 05:58, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Again, you don't need extra buttons to do stuff at BLP. If you need a page protected, contact an admin to do so. It's often faster than RFPP. If you need a block, report it to ANI. Right now, I only see a BLP admin as someone who will block for minor infractions because

1. Newbies don't know about BLP
2. Newbies are usually the ones that often violate BLP
3. Enforcing BLP with admin tools will scare away editors.

—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 06:00, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed; the people who go around enforcing BLP are almost exclusively the people I do not want to see with the ability to block. -Amark moo! 06:04, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Seconded.  ALKIVAR™ ☢ 06:07, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

And thirded. This solution will cause more problems than it will solve. Fram 09:50, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I see a number of problems with this proposal (apart from the obvious glaring one of age - what makes a person who is 25 and has a bachelor's degree any more mature? Maybe 27 or 28, maybe 40, but not 25. And a degree? Education either makes you feel you know everything, in which case it was a waste, or it teaches you that you know nothing, in which case there's nothing special about having a degree. In either case, having a degree does not make one more suitable for tasks like this - and I say that as a person with a PhD).

To begin with, anyone is free to intervene on BLP issues. If people aren't interested in BLP issues, there is only one way to change that - education. The only way to change the amount of attention the community gives to an issue is to convince people that they should care. Policing articles and getting into fights simply pisses people off. There is no way that any group of editors can police all the articles about living people. Either most people do it, or it's just a show.

Anyone is free to police articles about living people. Anyone is free to organise a WikiProject or some other grouping to focus on this issue. But there is no way that any group can really make a decent stab at tens of thousands of articles in any reasonable manner.

This provision is troubling: The BLP admin shall have power to remove and rapidly enforce his or her removal of potentially litigious content from BLPs, even when this may be contrary to page editors' consensus. For a project like this to work, we would need hundreds of "BLP admins" who not only understand the BLP policy, but also the NPOV policy. While this is about ideas and not personalities, my experience with CyberAnth has shown that s/he is willing to remove material "per BLP" which appear to be based on a mis-reading of the statements, and proposes changes which are not in keeping with NPOV. If a BLP admin were to have the power to enforce changes to the article, we would need to have a system in place in which ensured that people like that were weeded out. This is a lot more serious than adminship - admins don't have the power to enforce anything. It would, in fact, be closer to the power of arbitrators. Arbcomm candidates have their entire past sifted through for weeks. How could we do that with the hundreds of BLP admins needed? How would we find a big enough pool? Obviously, anyone qualified to be a "BLP admin" would have to be someone who the community already trusted enough to be an admin, but most existing admins have stepped on too many toes to get something like that through. It's worth looking at recent RFBs or things like DF's RFA for a bot. The community is uncomfortable with the idea of giving people special powers - I would be truly shocked if we could agree on a sufficiently large pool of trusted users to make this work.

Upon what is the assertion that BLP issue are primary to the survival of Wikipedia based? Looking around the internet, I would think that the issue of image copyrights is a far more dangerous. People make their living off images. Image copyright enforcement is growing. Wikipedia is a far bigger target on that regard, especially since we are based on a philosophy of open content, which puts us directly at odds with people who make their living selling content. Public figures cannot sue for libel. On the other hand, big companies which control huge banks of images could sue - and would win.

Fundamentally, the problem of BLP is something that can be solved through improved article quality and the development of approved versions. It is not something that can be fixed by giving a few extra people a few more powers. Guettarda 06:17, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Please - I thought this went without saying, maybe not - feel free to edit the proposal. Something needs to be done other than the status quo. CyberAnth 06:23, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. Something needs to be done. We need to garner consensus around the idea that people (either admins or regular users) using WP:BLP to remove truly contentious unreferenced claims are to be supported and those misusing BLP to edit war over claims which there is no logical reason to contest are to be blocked aggressively for abuse and disruption. We do that and any 'problems' with the current system are solved. --CBD 12:23, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease. Sure, BLP issues are a problem. Convincing people of the problem is important. Deleting material from articles just pisses people off, makes them hostile to the idea. In addition, simply deleting uncited potentially negative material can create major NPOV issues, especially Undue Weight problems. Unless a person is familiar with the subject matter, it can be difficult to tell whether a change improves the article or makes it worse. Creating super admins dedicated to BLP issues is likely to make the problem worse. Guettarda 13:38, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The section "this must be demonstrated by..." is definitely instruction creep. There's no reason why the criteria for BLP admins should be higher than for regular admins. >Radiant< 10:38, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Common sense is more important than a degree anyway. How hard can it be - unsourced negative informantion -> bin Agathoclea 11:00, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Try it for a while and get back to us. Frise 18:08, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Per Elara below, the criterion for age-and-degree is also instruction creep. If you want such confirmations, try Nupedia or Citizendium. >Radiant< 11:59, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I tried, but I honest cannot find a single good idea in this proposal.

1. Going against consensus : bad (opens up accusations of favoritism and cabalism).
2. So-called impartial arbitration : worse (opens up legal attack on Foundation, plus you get to deal with Daniel Brandt.
3. Not explicit about focus: are these people admins or not? If they are, limiting them to BLP is not going to work unless you magically modify the software. If they aren't, then what are they?
4. Stuffing "right of recall" into the proposal is a waste of time
5. "Primary authorship of at least two exemplary biographies of living person" -- WTF? I want to see a HISTORY OF FIXING ARTICLES, not that you can write a good biography about some person who probably wasn't problematic to begin with.
6. "affirm but not prove that they are at least twenty-five years of age and hold a bachelor's degree or higher" - I'm sorry, but this sounds basically like "Well, just say you are".

I'm sure that you are trying your best to find a way to help both the project and those people with poorly written or libelous biographies, but proposals should be balanced and realistic. --Elaragirl^Talk|Count 11:24, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Something is seriously wrong. I am agreeing with Elaragirl. Sjakkalle (Check!) 12:09, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Concur also with Elaragirl's comments. This is a non-solution. KillerChihuahua^?!? 13:29, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• This is such a radical change to the functioning of Wikipedia that it is an obvious non-starter. Though I suppose we could use it as flypaper of sorts - anyone who supports this is a person that obviously should not be an admin of any sort, because they really don't understand Wikipedia and how it works. GRBerry 14:56, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• ? I don't gather your meaning here. I initially supported this, however, I feel grounded in the projects policy. There is no fundamental harm in considering and discussing this. I would hope that this would not be a determining factor at a RfA. Navou ^banter / _{review me} 15:44, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• There is no harm in discussion, of course, but the people who think that there should be a class of admins who are allowed to ignore consensus AND use their powers in disputes they're involved in should not be admns. And that's what this does. -Amark moo! 15:53, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• How do you address this excerpt from WP:CON "Consensus decisions in a specific case is not expected to override consensus on a wider scale (such as content-related policies/guidelines like Wikipedia:Verifiability or Wikipedia:No Original Research), although such consensus might adjust their interpretation over time." Navou ^banter / _{review me} 15:59, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• When an admin is involved in a dispute and believe administrative action is needed, they should always get another admin's attention and let the uninvolved admin take appropriate action, whether or not the first admin has the support of policy. Most consensus decisions are about how to apply policies to a specific case, and it is quite possible to claim support from a policy but be wrong in the specific instance. A pattern of using admin powers to one's favor in a dispute is the pattern most likely to cause an an admin to lose their adminship. GRBerry 16:08, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• (reduce indent) We are in agreement that second pair of eyes is good business; however, I think the intent here was to protect WP:BLP and the subject of the article. Ultimately protecting the project. There are some conflicts here that need to be addressed. After reading some of the discussion here, I believe this is to large of a change for the community. Navou ^banter / _{review me} 16:18, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I notice a small-scale edit war over the {{rejected}} tag on this page. I should point out that by looking over this talk page, if a proposal gets that many negative reactions within a single day, it has the proverbial snowball's chance of actually getting consensual support. >Radiant< 12:01, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Whatever may be the problems with specifics, Wikipedia needs a way for people with good judgment and good understanding of the law to nip BLP problems in the bud, to settle BLP disputes in reasoned ways, and to keep them settled or nipped. "The editor or encyclopedia who represents himself in libel cases has a fool for a lawyer." Lou Sander 12:04, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I had little bad to say about the proposal until I hit this section. 1) Maturity and age are not synonymous. We don't have age-restrictions on regular admin duties. 2) Showing good work on relevant articles and displaying knowledge of policy should be enough. Education is not important when choosing any kind of admin. People without a degree can still be excellent admins. - Mgm|^(talk) 12:13, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

For example, not only is it allowed, but these people are explicitly given the ability to block, protect, or use any other admin power to win a dispute they're in. Furthermore, they don't even require any sort of consensus to do this; they are allowed to apply their powers against a consensus. And to ever recall this type of admin, you have to get a 75% majority that they should not have the powers, which is nearly impossible. In RfAs, if someone isn't patently terrible, I have never seen them to get less than 26% support. So, in the end, we have admins who are explicitly empowered to use their tools in content disputes, may ignore consensus, and are nearly impossible to remove. Baaaaad. -Amark moo! 14:47, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have marked this proposed policy as rejected here. I do not believe a few hours can determine consensus, some of us work jobs and can not participate in discussion after just a few hours after creation. I do believe now enough time has passed. Given the discussion here on this talk page, I believe applicable policy, guideline, and good practice to mark rejected is at WP:CON and WP:SNOW. If I am in error, I encourage discussion here before rming the rejected tag. I do appreciate constructive comments today, and please remind everyone that healthy discussion is good for the project. I do appreciate CyberAnth's boldness in authoring this proposition, it opens some matters that otherwise need to be addressed by the community, perhaps this is an eye-opener regarding surrounding policy for this project for all of us. Thanks, Navou ^banter / _{review me} 16:14, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I was in the process of composing my contribution to the talk page when you marked the proposal so I'm still going to add my contribution below. -- Jreferee 16:49, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Even in cases of WP:SNOW, for a new proposal like this I don't think 2 days is really reasonable to mark rejected. I'm not arguing with the decision, just the timing. I would have waited at least five days. 75.35.113.149 06:55, 8 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Admins address disputes among editors. At times, Admins get into disputes among themselves. Without directly saying it, the BLP Admins proposal seems to identify biography disputes between "regular" Admins as a problem that needs to be addressed. To better resolve these disputes, the proposal seeks to create a class of Admins (BLP Admins) who have authority over regular Admins when it comes to biographies. A problem with this is that there is little to keep the BLP Admins from engaging in similar biography disputes among themselves. The BLP Admins membership criteria - knowledge, maturity, education - may work to assure better actions by an individual BLP Admin but does not increase the ability for BLP Admins to get along among themselves. Even if the proposal were reworked, I do not see it accomplishing the objective of reducing biography disputes between Admins. Also, creating additional layers of Admins to address an issue would take away from improving the existing policy, guideline, and process to address that same issue. Since I do not see how the proposal could be reworked to accomplish the objective of reducing biography disputes between Admins, I believe the proposal should be rejected. -- Jreferee 16:50, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This proposal is simply not the way this place works. The problem is that its core idea is giving administrators extra power to enforce WP:BLP. However, editors are already empowered to enforce that policy by simply removing content. This is a solution seeking a problem (at best) or an attempt to redefine adminship to give an admin the power to use the tools to prevail in a content dispute, a canonically bad idea. JChap2007 17:44, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with JChap2007 and others above (and below). This isn't necessary and would be divisive. -Will Beback · † · 18:28, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Too many jumped up Wiki-Hitlers using WP:BLP as their personal spaff-tool as it is. Artw 17:55, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't understand your discussion, could you clarify? Navou ^banter / _{review me} 17:58, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion over, we seem to have hit Godwin's Law. JChap2007 18:03, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. I have never seen Godwin's Law used so effectively and ineffectively before. Good show, chap. :: Colin Keigher (Talk) 18:42, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

LOL. So we have. Wow- I'd never really believed in Godwin's Law until now... WJBscribe 18:11, 6 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Heh. Ok, I'll play along. I did not know about Godwin's law. Navou ^banter / _{review me}

An anon editor has questioned the rejection of this proposal and would possibly like to see more time for discussion according to this edit here. Any thoughts? Navou ^banter / _{review me} 16:39, 8 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No one stops him or anyone from discussing it here. A "rejected" tag is not necessary definitive, it's basically a means to show the current consensus. Consensus can change, although it would have to change very drastically to get from rejected to accepted. Fram 19:58, 8 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. Navou ^banter / _{review me} 23:54, 8 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I am an admin, I am active in the BLP noticeboard, and I have never seen this proposal. If editors want to make progress in such proposals, a notice at the Village pump and related talk pages would be helpful to gauge consensus. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 02:44, 17 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• I believe such notices were made, I"ll check. Navou ^banter / _contribs 02:51, 17 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Notices were made, as far as I know, and I'm pretty sure given the input on this talk page that this constitutes as rejection. Ral315 » 21:16, 18 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Agreed. The proposed policy tends to conflict the current policy, however, concerns need to be discussed. Perhaps elsewhere. Navou ^banter / _contribs 21:17, 18 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

See Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Badlydrawnjeff, and in particular Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Badlydrawnjeff/Proposed decision#Summary deletion of BLPs (a proposed principle that may or may not pass). This may possibly indicate that a revised version of this rejected policy (probably as a subset of the admin pages, rather than as its own page), might be worth some community discussion. Carcharoth 16:37, 18 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]