Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard/Archive362

Derek Blasberg

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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• Derek Blasberg (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

There's been some edit warring in this article over whether an incident earlier this month where Blasberg had an explosive bowel movement in Gwyneth Paltrow's cottage should be mentioned in the article. I think there's reasonable reason to exclude per WP:GOSSIP, even though the incident has been covered by reliable sources like Variety, but @FeralOink: has been insistent on including it. I thought I would make a post here for wider input. Hemiauchenia (talk) 19:12, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

The Variety source is a gossip article, which sources the identification to the Daily Mail. I've accordingly removed its other use from the article. The incident appears to fall afoul of BLP sourcing requirements in addition to being trivial gossip content. Yngvadottir (talk) 21:18, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

Hemiauchenia, I have not been insistent on including the bowel movement portion in the BLP of Derek Blasberg. Let's refer to it as the "incident" for brevity here. As one can see from the first of two discussions on the talk page, on 4 July, I inquired of other editors whether it was appropriate to include. Three editors discussed and the four of us decided that it was; no one objected. An IP editor provided a link to an article appearing in a trade journal (Variety) for the fashion and beauty industry (which meets criteria for WP:RS and WP:NPOV) that was lengthy and entirely devoted to the incident. ELLE magazine and Yahoo! Entertainment reported on the incident too. Further sources for the BLP subject's personal life were suggested by one of the three editors in the incident discussion, see this later subsection of the talk page, also on 6 July, including New York magazine and Women's Wear Daily, legitimate sources for the fashion industry; both provided extensive, specific coverage. I cleaned up the entire article, added updated and encyclopedic content, and sources throughout. I began my work on 9 July and completed it by adding a new section about the incident on July 11.

This morning, 23 July, I noticed that most of my edits, both the incident and my article updates, had been reverted. On 22 July, the IP editor who removed non-incident related content with edit summaries that it was not factual (despite being WP:NPOV and WP:RS sourced); IP editor provided no explanation on the talk page. Willthacheerleader18 made her edits on 16 July, removing 11 July incident content. I restored both today, 23 July, after leaving a message for Will on her talk page, in which I linked to the talk page section with editors concurring on inclusion of the incident. Will made no comments there.

This is hardly edit warring:

• First a discussion on 4 July to 6 July, then edits on 9 July and completed on 11 July;
• removal of incident content by Will on 16 July;
• reverts by IP editor on 22 July of non-incident content;
• restoration by me on 23 July,
• then the following surprises today on 23 July.
• Merely an hour and 30 minutes after my restorations, first Carrite removed the incident content & sources AND 30 minutes later, Yngvadottir removed/ truncated informative sourced content unrelated to the incident.
• I have not made any further changes to the article. It remains as Carrite and Yngvadottir changed it, having reverted me.

Note that a COI, single purpose account, DBassistant (Derek Blasberg assistant?) made numerous contributions to the article in the past, so I was especially alert to IP edits with sus edit summaries.

Also, I was taken aback by edit summaries with this dismissive and unfriendly tone, when Carrite reverted me this morning: Personal life: Removes. Trivia on the one hand, BLP issue on the other. Feral Oink: stop edit warring to preserve this nor of judgements about what is gossip in the fashion and beauty industry, Yngvadottir: Removed earlier ref to Variety gossip column, the main part of which goes back to Daily Mail and social media posts; per BLPSOURCES. Friendship w/ Gwyneth Paltrow has already been reinstated w/ a different source. This edit is not an endorsement of the WMF.. Neither broached their changes on the talk page. The Variety article was a lengthy profile and analysis of Blasberg's career, of which the incident was a few paragraphs. It was not a "gossip column", and should not have been summarily removed.--FeralOink (talk) 23:21, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

FeralOink, here's that Variety link again: [1]. Yes, Variety is generally reliable for showbiz news, but that article is totally and openly gossip, and gives full credit to its sources; in particular, it traces the identification to the Daily Mail, which should be avoided when possible. This is a BLP. And as I noted in my edit summary, his being a friend of Paltrow was already in the article, with a different reference (you restored it). So despite being an extended treatment of the article subject, the Variety article that is primarily about the defecation incident is not needed to reference anything in the article, and its use cannot be defended. Yngvadottir (talk) 23:42, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

Is the argument here really about whether a biography of a living person should go off at length about how he allegedly took a really bad dump once? In the primary document that appears when his name is searched on the Internet? I mean, this is really just a thing with absolutely zero encyclopedic interest at all, but beyond that, on a very basic common sense level: have we, at long last, no decency? How utterly embarrassing -- for us. jp×g🗯️ 01:13, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

Hi FeralOink (talk · contribs), I am a woman and my pronouns are she/her (Will is short for Wilhelmina). I removed the edits on the Blasberg article, as I explained in my edit description, because it did not seem encyclopedic at best. Wikipedia is not a gossip column. -- Willthacheerleader18 (talk) 14:41, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

JPxG you are grossly mischaracterizing the incident. The BLP subject did not "take a really bad dump". There were three sentences about the incident in the article, which is not "at length". This is the removed content: "On 6 July 2024, Variety reported that Blasberg had "an unseemly incident in (Paltrow's) guest cottage, involving an intense bowel movement which wrecked the place". Blasberg departed immediately, leaving some cash for Paltrow's housekeeping staff, rather than making any attempt to clean up after himself. The extent of the mishap was not limited to the bed, but rather (as detailed by Yahoo! Entertainment) fouled the walls, ceiling, and floor of the guest room as well." I agree, that the third sentence can be omitted. Also, notice that the article has received over 48,000 page views in the past 30 days so it clearly is of interest to some people. Finally, when one does a Google search on the BLP subject's name, three of the four "Top Stories" reference the incident. That is not due to the Wikipedia BLP as all three pre-date the changes I made on 12 July.--FeralOink (talk) 15:27, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

I so very much apologize Willthacheerleader18 (talk · contribs)!!! I'm a woman too. I should have noticed that you were, and especially since you have "cheerleader" in your user name. (Yes, there are male cheerleaders, but still...!) I made several typos in what I wrote above. Yngvadottir is making a subjective judgement on what constitutes a "gossip column". Again, I will reiterate that there is a talk page discussion and that this should have been broached there first, rather than summarily reverting me and bringing it before a Noticeboard. I am particularly aggrieved at the lack of WP:Good faith by the initial Noticeboard entry by Hemiauchenia that characterizes me as "insisting" and then "edit warring"! I was merely restoring content that had been agreed to on the talk page. I even made inquiries myself about whether it was appropriate to include initially, per the talk page.

I am surprised that editors would use their personal judgement to determine which content from a WP:RS source is "gossip" and which is not. Perhaps that belongs at the sources noticeboard rather than BLP.--FeralOink (talk) 15:27, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

I am surprised that editors would use their personal judgement to determine which content from a WP:RS source is "gossip" and which is not. Deciding what should be included in an article is a fundamental part of what we do here. Accepting for the sake of argument that nobody disputes the reliability of Variety as a source here, the fact that something is verified by a reliable source does not mean that we have to include it. This is supported by policy: see e.g. WP:ONUS and WP:NOTEVERYTHING. In particular, our BLP policy says that Editors must take particular care when adding information about living persons to any Wikipedia page, and the lead of that policy explicitly mentions exercising editorial judgment.

At any rate, regardless of what policy says: how can including this possibly be a good idea? What encyclopedic virtue does it have? Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 16:16, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

Okay, so I will disregard Wikipedia_Wonderful_698-D, GramercyGreats, and 98.248.161.240 on Talk:Derek Blasberg. My initial enquiry there was "This is all over the news although it hasn't made it to Page Six/NY Post... yet. Paltrow told Oprah what Blasberg did at her home. I added two sentences without mentioning the ghastly "incident" but sourced his close friendship with Paltrow using two WP:RS, WP:NPOV references that cover what happened. I have no idea whether something like this belongs in a BLP of a socialite or not." Responses by other editors included "It does." and "The story has been picked up by international outlets including Variety and the Daily Mail. I believe it does belong on the page." Just now, I checked the edit history of those users. They are scant, and in one case, has a disclaimer that they only edit occasionally. I apologize for my error in judgement about trusting the advice of the three editors on the talk page without further investigation. I was naive. I am unaccustomed to editing BLPs about people in the popular media. You were correct to revert me. JPxG, there is NO need to say I "have no decency"! If I had no decency, I wouldn't work on this project.--FeralOink (talk) 09:28, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

WP:NOTNEWS. Something being "all over the news" does not mean it is appropriate for an encyclopedic biography. I do not see any attempt to provide an argument for the long-term significance or noteworthiness of the content. – notwally (talk) 16:11, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

Y'all gotta be shitting me that this is anything but WP:BLPGOSSIP. Morbidthoughts (talk) 19:44, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

Very much WP:GOSSIP, is not encyclopedic unless if it leads to something else. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 19:51, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I realize this now. The article does not include any content about the subject's incident at Paltrow's. Can we close this already? I don't think we need any more editors saying the same thing when it was already agreed upon unanimously by SIX editors to not include anything about the incident.--FeralOink (talk) 01:33, 27 July 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.