User:ArthurPSmith/Draft Policy on Living Person Data

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See: Wikidata:Requests for comment/Verifiability and living persons

Information about living people deserves special consideration. We don't strive to provide all possible information about a living person but only information in which's veracity we have a high confidence and that doesn't violate the person's reasonable expectations of privacy. Statements that can reasonably be expected to be challenged should be supported by a reliable source.

Violations of this policy are taken seriously, and repeated or egregrious incidents by a user may lead to blocks. In other cases, page protection can be applied to pages, particularly items on living people, receiving many violations of this policy. If serious, page revisions in violation of this policy may be hidden as well.

Definition of living person[edit]

For this policy a person is considered living if the following three criteria apply:

Statements likely to be challenged[edit]

Almost any piece of data about a living person might be controversial; anything that's individually challenged or might be challenged should be supported by a reliable source or may be subject to removal. The following properties in particular (when applied to living people) should be supported by suitable references:

Statements that may violate privacy[edit]

Living individuals with records in wikidata are for the most part not famous or celebrities; their privacy should be maintained. In particular the following should generally not be supplied for living individuals unless they can be considered widespread public knowledge or openly supplied by the individual themselves in a forum (otherwise hidden supporting references are not sufficient):

Bot approval process for living people edits[edit]

Bots creating records for living people or adding statements on their items should be particularly carefully scrutinized. The Wikidata:Bots policy already requests sourcing for bot-entered information. In the case of a bot that will be editing living people records, the following should additionally be reviewed during the approval process:

  • If the bot is importing from a given language wikipedia, does that wikipedia have an adequate BLP policy? If not then some further steps to verify the data before import is warranted.
  • If the bot is pulling information from another source, is that source one that the community is happy with as a reliable source for this data?
  • In particular bots adding statements for any of the above-listed potentially controversial or privacy-infringing properties should use sources that would be considered reliable open information sources such as newspapers or other media outlets, not closed databases or books of limited circulation.

Non-item space[edit]

Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced and not related to making content choices should be removed, deleted, or oversighted, as appropriate. When seeking advice about whether to publish something about a living person, be careful not to post so much information on the talk page that the inquiry becomes moot. For example, it would be appropriate to begin a discussion by stating This link has serious allegations about subject; should we add information about it to the item? The same principle applies to problematic images. Questionable claims already discussed can be removed with a reference to the previous discussion.

This policy also applies to user and user talk pages. The exception is that users may make any claim they wish about themselves in their user space, so long as they are not engaged in impersonation, though minors are discouraged from disclosing identifying personal information on their userpages. Although this policy applies to posts about Wikimedians in project space, some leeway is permitted to allow the handling of administrative issues by the community. Administrators may delete such material if it rises to the level of defamation or it constitutes a violation of no personal attacks.

See also[edit]



Notes[edit]

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