Wikitroid:Requests for Comment/Notability criteria for living persons

This RfC was closed on 21:26, August 7, 2024 (UTC) by Bearborg_[ADMIN] (talk). Final resolution of adopting Wikitroid:Biographies of Living Persons as policy going forward. Please do not modify it.

Notability criteria for living persons[]

Wikitroid presently features articles on the various living persons (i.e., people who exist in real life and who are alive today) who have worked on or contributed to the Metroid series, such as employees of Nintendo or Retro Studios. While it's great to ensure that they get the credit they deserve, there are also real privacy implications of this, as recently demonstrated when such a person contacted Fandom to request some information removed from their article here that they felt invasive to their privacy (specifically including a photo of the person and links to their personal social media profiles). To be clear, the request was granted and we (the admins via our Fandom representative) are working with the individual to make sure that the changes are satisfactory.

As far as I know, this is not something we have had a discussion as a community about and this is also not the first time something like this has happened, so let's have that discussion, with the goal of producing a binding policy on articles about living persons.

I'll save my opinions for the actual discussion, but some factors to consider based on some pre-discussion that has happened on Discord and other background:

It's generally accepted to be a good thing to ensure that the people who worked on the Metroid series get credited, especially when Nintendo sometimes doesn't do a great job of this themselves.
On the other hand, people have a legal and moral right to privacy which needs to be respected.
Balancing these two is a Very Hard Problem™ even for professional journalists.
- Fandom's policy is to remove information when requested by the living person if they're not notable, with the example of someone like Shigeru Miyamoto as a notable person.
- Wikipedia goes into incredible depth, bureaucracy, and controversy on this topic, which I think it's fair to assert as a non-opinion that we don't want or need this here. More it's a demonstration of how difficult this problem is, but also why it's important to address in a fair and balanced way.
- A couple notable policies from Wikipedia that may be worth reading and considering as part of this discussion: "People who are relatively unknown" and "Deletion of Biographies of Living Persons"
The level of complexity we choose for our approach is up to us. The simplest thing of course is to say that we do not allow any articles about living persons at all, but that's likely generally undesirable. There is a middle ground, but middle grounds can be extremely hard to define (see above).
We should consider what notability means to us; a non-managerial employee of Nintendo is simply not as notable as an executive, for example, and likewise a non-managerial employee likely has a higher expectation of privacy than a public figure like a CEO.
There are some proxies we can use to make guesses about how amenable a given living individual would be to being discussed at length, such as whether they've given fan interviews about their work on Metroid (e.g., on a site like Shinesparkers).
We are a fan-made reference work for a videogame series, not an investigative journalism outlet.
We must be civil and empathetic not just to each other as editors, but also to the subjects and people we cover.

To be clear, not at question here is whether non-notable living persons should be able to request that we remove information or articles about them (and we are further obliged to do this by Fandom policy). Rather, this is a pretty open-ended RfC to discuss policy and/or guidelines we want to proactively apply to our current and future articles about living persons, notable and non-notable. --FastLizard4 (talk) 07:35, 6 May 2023 (UTC)

Discussion[]

I'm not too knowledgeable about how stuff like this is handled on this particular wiki, but I'd say, yeah, you only really need an image of the person if they're in a particularly notable managerial position. And even then, I don't think it's needed for most games' Art Directors, Audio Directors, Animation, etc. Even in the oldest of Metroid games (if I remember correctly), you got a LOT of nobodies working on the team, who don't go on to do much and thus don't need that much representation, especially images if their name is only 1 google search away.

All that being said, I do think "list basic things until told not to" is still a good strategy for the wiki ("basic things" being Name; Face; Games They Worked On; and Social Media). I think those are reasonable, and that complaint about an image and socials being too much was an outlier. -Jabersson (User:Jabersson, 07:55, 6 May 2023‎ UTC)

This has been discussed off and on for a little while after a small number of incidents. I feel obligated to speak here because I am the one who's written nearly all of these developer articles. I did so because there was a gap in our coverage of them, with many going unrecognized. The omission of people from the credits in Dread, and the Remastered credits not including the original credits, makes me feel as though I was right. While it's certainly not definitive, I feel as though my system for making dev pages works - a brief summary of who they are, which Metroid game or thing they contributed to, information about their work on it if it's available, and where they have been/are now.

In making these pages, I've set myself a few principles, which may have been obvious to some of you. If not, I'll spell them out here. I stay out of their personal lives as much as possible. Sometimes I have come across information about peoples' families or personal friends, albeit not on purpose. I never mention their families unless they're relevant somehow. An example of this is Jack Mathews, whose wife runs a food blog, which he does the photography for, and who he's mentioned in his interviews with Shinesparkers and Kiwi Talkz. I avoid Facebook, which many people use in their personal lives, unless they have a page for their work. LinkedIn, ArtStation (for artists) and MobyGames are the go-to databases for me, and I think they're fair to include seeing as their purpose is for professional outreach.

I don't object to a biographical article policy, providing it still allows for fair coverage, and doesn't approach Wikipedia in terms of strictness. Although we can refer to their policies in forming our own, I oppose implementing the same ones verbatim. We're a niche wiki, we allow original research provided it can be backed up, and that shouldn't change. Nor can we have an opt-out policy that allows for unflattering, yet proven or credible information to be removed from articles if the person is doing image rehab. For example, Jeff Spangenberg, whose article has been edited twice in the past to remove such information, I suspect by Spangenberg himself. Or Melvin Forrest, were he to request the section about the sexual harassment allegations against him removed. Or, if we had an article for Hellena Taylor, and she requested that we remove information not supporting her initial story of a $4,000 payment for all of Bayonetta 3. There might be more examples, but you get the point.

Here are my ideas for a policy:

A template at the top of developer pages explaining this page concerns a real person, and any false or unprovable info must be removed, with a link to the policy. It can also include a notice of something like "If you are the subject of this article and you wish to request the removal of certain information, see here." That would link to an opt-out section on the policy explaining how they can do that.
To that end, an email is set up, and run by the admins, to which developers can come with any requests for removal or even clarifications, and these can be mediated on a case-by-case basis.
Images of the developer can be used when available, unless and until they request its removal. If an image is not available, or the person has requested its removal, we replace it with a screenshot of their name in whichever game they were credited. This is what I've been doing anyway.
A prohibition on linking to Facebook or clearly personal, non-professional social media accounts, with the criteria for this decided in our discussion here. For example, if they don't post about something they've done to Facebook, yet they do on Instagram, and their Instagram is clearly meant to showcase their work, then Instagram is fine, not Facebook.

More ideas might come to me as we talk this through. I welcome the discussion. RoyboyX(complaints/records) 04:54, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

No matter what policy we implement, it is inevitable that someone will again request (or take action themselves) to remove something they feel uncomfortable having on their biography. To help alleviate future incidents, I think we can create a "level of publicity" hierarchy that can be referenced for policy governing article content and creation. As an example for basis:

Public figures - Staff who make consistent appearances through public channels; such as Nintendo's own outlets, third party interviews, or large-scale share of work on social media. Miyamoto and Sakamoto are prominent examples. Photos of them, extensive biographies, and links to their public social media on their article can be assumed as acceptable.
Executive staff - Staff who have managerial positions but seldom, if ever, make appearances on public channels. Photos of them and restrictive biographies can be assumed as acceptable on their article. Avoid social media links and biography content that details private life.
Private employees and contractors - Staff who never make appearances in public channels. Photos, biographies, and links to social media can be assumed as unacceptable, making a separate article a potential breach of privacy.

Exceptions can of course occur, such as the uncredited or staff who have social media that are explicitly not for private connections. Use best judgment and respect for privacy, but articles that cover these exceptions will be the most likely susceptible to issues with their persons.

In general, I think we need to avoid making articles for people who aren't trying to be public with their work. Even if they have a social media account that mentions they're employed by a Nintendo/Metroid development studio, that's still a private account unless they are explicitly using it as a public-facing staff profile. I'd rather link to a database like MobyGames which is built for cataloging and crediting all games. Since we're just concerned with the Metroid franchise and relations to it, if all we need is the name in the credit list then that's all we should worry about providing. Digging into personal life or even career may likely make things uncomfortable for them. --Madax the Shadow _{ADMIN} (talk • logs • contribs) 17:55, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

It sounds like you're proposing the removal of a large number of dev pages already created. I don't support that, nor should unwritten dev articles be prohibited from creation. A hierarchy like what you've mentioned makes sense in terms of judging how much coverage to add, yet it's better imo to have an opt out policy where the dev can request their info be removed. Also, if pages for low profile devs are something to avoid, why are you only taking issue now? Out of hundreds of devs, one has recently requested the entire removal of her page (versus only their picture in 1-2 other instances), and these pages have been created and existing for years without issue.

A policy should also prohibit or discourage devs from removing info themselves. I mentioned not wanting us to have Wikipedia's policies, which I don't, though one of them makes sense. Some people have been caught editing their Wikipedia pages in the past to remove unflattering, yet true information. This should not be allowed here either. A day ago, an anonymous user removed cited tweets about Ashley Rochelle's work from her article without explanation. Anonymous users no longer have talk pages, which means it's impossible to ask the person why they did this. My presumption is that they were removed by Ashley herself. She has been quite vocal about what parts of MPR she made on Twitter, her displeasure with how she was credited (which is why I added them to her page) and game development practices generally. Those tweets have not been deleted (I checked), and they've been posted on a Twitter profile that has also been used to showcase and describe her work, even if she also uses it on a personal level.

You mention "Staff who never make appearances in public channels", which describes Jack Mathews, Kynan Pearson, Clark Wen and a number of other Retro Studios, Next Level Games and other studios' staff who were not allowed to speak while at Nintendo, but have done so since leaving. Forbidding articles for low-profile devs ignores the possibility that some of them might one day attain a higher position or work on a higher profile game, and thus gain enough notoriety to qualify for "public figure" status. They might also be interviewed by Kiwi Talkz, IGN, GameXplain, or even Shinesparkers. Would their article(s), if deleted, be restored in such an instance?

Lastly, I will point out that this is information that people have posted publicly. In fact, any developer info that I have put on these pages has been public. Nothing is definitively private unless the social media page itself is locked, in which case info obtained from there has been done so illegally (and shouldn't be allowed).

TL;DR, we should allow devs to request the removal of information, but not their page entirely. Nor should we restrict pages from being created in the first place. RoyboyX(complaints/records) 02:04, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

I agree with Royboy. I think other than implementing an article template and/or a system to better organize requests for removing or altering information, the system we have works pretty well. I have always found the articles here on people to be adequately sufficient in being informative while at the same time not being intrusive or tangential. I fear that a "hierarchy" system could potentially lead to frequent debates over who is what level and what exceptions are made, which I feel would be harmful overall to our current efficiency and relative uniformity. 04:25, 12 May 2023 (UTC) Purple Samurai 5.0

Bump. RoyboyX(complaints/records) 03:51, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

We're now getting almost daily edits from anonymous IPs to blank these pages or remove information. I have to agree with Madax; I think there are different expectations of privacy depending on how public-facing an employee's role is, and the repeated destructive edits from (presumably) the subjects of these articles are evidence that we're not meeting that expectation.

For that reason, I would support deleting many of the existing articles we have. If a clear-cut definition of notability is what's needed, I would suggest that we consider an employee notable only if they are directly named in a reputable primary source (e.g. a published magazine article). I do appreciate the value of preserving unique development content from artist's portfolios, etc., but I think this media could be moved to the pages for the relevant games/subjects without any significant loss. Bearborg_[ADMIN] (talk) 21:48, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

Why did this RfC go dormant for nearly an entire year, despite the urgency with which we apparently needed to have it? I welcomed the discussion, not knowing it would start and then not carry on until the situation that prompted it repeated itself.

Again, all of the information on these articles was shared in public, voluntarily, by the subjects. No personal information has or should be included. In the case of Dread and Remastered devs, many have spoken about their work on the games on LinkedIn, a professional site that emphasizes networking and showing your work. This has in turn provided material for their articles. Therefore, there cannot be an expectation of privacy on LinkedIn as compared to other sites. We are not the only site that does this either. YouTube "insiders" such as Supermetaldave84, or NeoGAF/ResetEra users have discovered many of the same things. There was a thread on the latter about the discovery that Megan Fausti was writing for Prime 4 and expressed support in the past for the notion of Samus being transgender. Although she later deleted that tweet, it was already out there. Are we not to cover that?

We also need to clearly define what constitutes a "reputable primary source" with regards to developer notability: those who've given interviews, been named in news articles (like the uncredited developers in Dread), and devs who've died (i.e. Mark Haigh-Hutchinson, Andy O'Neil and Gunpei Yokoi)? What about those who've shared their development renders, regardless of whether or not they regret doing so later? What if a developer is not public-facing now, and becomes so in the future? Does their article, if it existed before, get restored then? Why aren't we stopping the deprecation of these articles and asking those who did it why they're doing so?

I still think a template at the top that says something to the effect of the following is the best course of action to resolve any disputes: "This article covers a living person. [...] If you are the subject of this article, and you object to certain content, please do not remove it yourself. Instead, make a post on the talk page/contact an admin at [a private means of communication that we can set up, either an email or Discord username] and we will work to resolve the matter." (obviously, it would be worded better than this) The developer can tell us what they object to and we can get to the bottom of that. Audrey Peterson clarified on her article that she didn't voice Samus, and then emailed Madax a more detailed explanation, which we then used to correct the record. That's a better way to resolve any problems than making a blanket assumption that most developers are uncomfortable with their articles, and therefore culling them. RoyboyX(complaints/records) 00:59, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

In the interest of transparency, Martha Valdes and Luis Cruz contacted me privately today to ask that the renders be deleted. They appreciated my recognition of them, but explained that the images belong to CGBot and they could face legal repercussions for sharing them. I had Bear remove them as such a few minutes ago. I didn't see the message until tonight when I saw that I had two message requests on Twitter. RoyboyX(complaints/records) 02:47, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

I just wanted to quickly say "well done!" to Royboy for finishing the Metroid Prime Remastered developer articles two days ago. Now, with that out of the way, I'm not sure where I stand as far as what "notability criteria" should be factored into whether a developer warrants an article. Perhaps a bunch of shorter individual articles could be consolidated into a single longer article (e.g. "List of environmental designers for Metroid Prime"), a la the resolution to the earlier "room debate".

But as far as incidents where anonymous IP editors remove info from developer articles without providing any reasons (or add vandalism and/or inside jokes that don't belong on a professional wiki), I think Royboy's suggestion of a disclaimer template makes sense. While not foolproof, that would help us distinguish people who sincerely want their info removed for personal reasons from the random IP editors who may just be vandals. Other than that, as long as these articles only present information that is made publicly available by the developer, stick to their professional works, and leave out their personal lives, then we aren't invading their privacy any more than, say, an IMDb page that lists someone's credits and filmography.

While we don't have an exact count of developer articles, I'll also note that we have almost 2.5K "real life" articles, most of which appear to be these developer articles. Out of that big number, there's been maybe ten or twenty articles targeted by IP editors. While there was definitely a recent uptick a couple weeks ago, it doesn't seem to be such a frequent or widespread problem to warrant a widespread cull. --PeabodySam (talk) 01:01, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

Thank you Peabody. It's nice to know my efforts are appreciated. As you say, the number of incidents where developers object to content on their articles is too minimal to warrant a widespread gutting of our content. The one incident from a few weeks ago was quickly handled, and no harm was ultimately done. In the coming days I will draft a proposal for a disclaimer template and policy setting in stone the norms with which I and other editors have been writing developer articles. Then we can come to a consensus on it. RoyboyX(complaints/records) 04:17, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

By coming days, I mean over a month. We are volunteers, after all. Anyway, here is my draft of a BLP policy. Discuss. RoyboyX(complaints/records) 20:46, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

I think the draft would be a good governance for how we write content, but I am still of the opinion that we can remove a lot of uncertainty by reducing how many we write for. I still think the groups I outlined above, being public figures (e.g., Sakamoto and Jack Matthews) and executive staff, should be the only ones we create full articles for. At the end of the day, the rest are just people making a paycheck for themselves and their families and we should respect that. We don't need to write biographies for everyone and shouldn't in my opinion. --Madax the Shadow _{ADMIN} (talk • logs • contribs) 05:45, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

I read over Royboy's draft and I think it looks good to me. It has my support.

I still do not believe that the developer articles are a pressing issue that requires a major cull, and there is no harm in keeping them. As it currently stands, "writing biographies" is already largely limited to just the public figures and executive staff, while the majority of other developers are focused specifically on their professional work. Developers like Matt Manchester, Amanda Rotella, and Odín Fernández who publicly share portfolios and openly discuss their Metroid work also warrant more detailed articles. But again, I would not be opposed to consolidating shorter articles (e.g. the ones that are just a photo, a paragraph, and external links) into lists, but only if all the info is kept and nothing is lost in the transition; I'd hate to see literal years of Royboy's work go to waste. --PeabodySam (talk) 18:08, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

I've finally read Roy's draft and I endorse it fully. I don't want a mass deletion of pages either, but I do think that we should have a system where if a statement or image comes solely from LinkedIn or other social media, it should be removed if the person in question objects to us showing it. If it comes from a high-profile reliable source though, such an opt-out should be harder since it may skew our coverage in an overly positive direction.

I think our current BLPs rely too much on social media in general (LinkedIn isn't famous for its accuracy), but deleting hundreds just for that feels like throwing out the baby with the bathwater. We can consider a deletion if validly requested removals would leave articles with no content besides "Example served as a contract animator for Metroid Prime 4: Beyond" though, as that would make them redundant to our credits lists.

I see that the definition of "reliable source" is still somewhat up in the air though. Wikitroid isn't Wikipedia but the latter's definition works well even here: "independent, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy". CortexCPU242 (talk) 18:31, 30 June 2024 (UTC)

I'd like to second this - Wikipedia's definition is clear and concise. I've taken the time to read over Roy's proposal and support it whole-heartedly. Cortex also makes a good point above in that this new policy does not need to lead to a mass-deletion of pages, but can serve as the guidline for new writing while edits and take-down requests gradually take care of the existing BLPs DavTheGreat (talk) 21:22, 11 July 2024 (CEST)

Thank you for your support, Peabody, Cortex and DavTheGreat. It appears that the consensus is for enacting my policy. It will allow these articles to remain on Wikitroid while codifying rules to protect developer privacy. RoyboyX(complaints/records) 16:26, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

I know I'm late, but I'm of the same opinion as last year. Keeping information up until being told not to still seems to be the best strategy in working towards the being the ultimate source for Metroid information. After all, pretty much all information used in articles is publicly available to begin with, so assuming people are okay with it being up by default is the most reasonable course of action. 21:39, 19 July 2024 (UTC) Purple Samurai 5.0