Getting off Hivemind

If you're on Hivemind (the site, not the Hivemind OS software) and you want to get off, all you have to do is publish your real name on your Wikipedia page... simple right?

Except my real name's been there all along. Very first edit to the page, in fact.

But I got added to Hivemind recently. No. I'm not giving you the link to Hivemind, it gets enough inbound links as it is. Trying to ask Brandt why gets zero reply.

Maybe it's more like you have to also not annoy Daniel Brandt by calling him a weenie (or worse, see this blog post). Or maybe you have to get behind whatever his latest hobby horse is... delete whatever he is hot about, sign whatever petition he is keen on, etc. Or maybe ??? Who knows?

Point is, if you want to be seen as acting on principle, as Brandt claims to be doing, you have to actually act on principle, and not act based on personal grudges.

That's what I try to stick to, and "acting on principle" is precisely what I was arguing in defending the redirect deletions... the principle of deleting them was correct even if Daniel Brandt himself was not a nice person.

Else, if you consistently don't act on principle, you're just a bully. As Moulton pointed out, Brandt's actions fit the description.

Kato justified Brandt's tactics here. I suspect that there is some validity to the claim that you have to fight unfairly if you have been treated unfairly. But on the other hand, is attacking those who most want to help the most reasonable way to effect change?

I don't think so. Do you?

More on the BLP policy

A biography, although
not of a living person :)
Image via Wikimedia CommonsYes, this is the 4th time I've written about the topic of Biographies of Living Persons (or BLP for short) , and unfortunately, I expect it won't be the last. (here are screeds one, two, and three)

Wikipedia user Doc Glasgow has written an excellent summation of the problem on a user subpage The_BLP_problem. It also includes analysis of several of the possible solutions that have been offered in various places lately. Those who say there is no problem really really need to read this page, it's very well done.

Wikipedia Review folk thought so highly of it that they reproduced it, verbatim (as of when it was copied) as one of their editorials. This topic is now getting more and more attention so I'm hopeful that some progress will be made. As I've said before, the stakes are too high, and the injuries possible to those affected by BLP too risky, not to do something.

To see the magnitude of the problem, take a look at the Some Statistics section in the WR editorial (reproduced from somewhere else I can't find at the moment):

Maintenance category	Articles	Percent
Total BLP articles (Category:Living people)	259210	100.00%
Cat:Articles lacking sources	13908	5.37%
Cat:Articles with unsourced statements	13740	5.30%
Cat:Articles needing additional references	5475	2.11%
Cat:Orphaned articles	3157	1.22%
Cat:Articles to be expanded	2511	0.97%
Cat:Articles with topics of unclear notability	1971	0.76%
Cat:Articles lacking reliable references	1918	0.74%
Cat:Articles with trivia sections	1510	0.58%
Cat:Wikipedia articles needing style editing	1420	0.55%
Cat:Articles lacking in-text citations	860	0.33%

Data from March 12 2008

5% lacking sources, 5% unsourced statements, 2% needing references (some overlap there to be sure)... that doesn't even track the articles that are coatracks or hatchet jobs. 5% isn't bad, you say??? except that is 13 THOUSAND articles that may well have problems.

There have been a fair few proposals to address this recently... semi-protection, BLP-Lock, (by SirFozzie, et al) Opt Out (by PrivateMusings, et al) AfD rejiggering (by Doc Glasgow) , dead tree standard, (by many folk) and some I've forgotten.

Some ideas are more radical than others of course... perhaps one of the more interesting offers related to this was Daniel Brandt wagering Hivemind. Probably nothing will come of it. (I made Hivemind myself recently, but that's probably the topic for another posting)

So what do you think? Has the tide turned and we are going to see change in this area at last? Or do you think there's no problem at all?

Losing my temper.

Well, this edit in the Daniel Brandt redirect deletion review was not my finest hour, It actually got me a No Personal Attacks warning from FT2... I stand behind what I said, and I said so... I think FT2 and I are square now. More or less anyway. I surprised myself at my vehemence. I hardly ever swear on Wikipedia.

Subsequently Daniel himself opined I'm a bad person. ... well, so's your old man.

I'd give you a link to our article on Daniel Brandt, but we don't have one. :)

Like I said, not my finest hour, I can't recall the last time I was warned like that.

So, over the top or justified? What do you think?