Category talk:Sexual misconduct allegations

RFC: Should this category contain biographies of individual persons?

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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This category currently includes articles about allegations and controversies such as Bill Clinton sexual assault and misconduct allegations and BBC sexual abuse cases. It also includes several biographies that discuss allegations in the article, such as Dustin Hoffman and Corey Feldman, as well as redirects such as T.J. Miller sexual misconduct allegations and Herman Cain sexual misconduct allegations. Inclusion of biographies may potentially violate WP:BLPCAT, WP:COPDEF, MOS:LABEL, and *WP:OPINIONCAT. Should individual biographies of living or dead people be placed in this category? I believe this can be broken down into 3 choices, below. --Animalparty! (talk) 19:14, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

• Option A: This category may include individual biographies and redirects to biographies (status quo)
• Option B: This category should not include individual biographies, but redirects to sections about allegations may be included
• Option C: This category should not include individual biographies or redirects to biographies

Survey

• C - an allegation is by its nature unproven and thus represents a matter of opinion, so OPINIONCAT applies here. Korny O'Near (talk) 14:45, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

So by that logic the category, which contains the word "allegation" in its title, should not even exist? PraiseVivec (talk) 12:29, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

No, I think it still makes sense for articles specifically about allegations, like Roy Moore sexual misconduct allegations or USA Gymnastics sex abuse scandal. With those articles, it's not a matter of opinion whether the category applies. Korny O'Near (talk) 13:48, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

• C -the allegation or scandal should be notable in and of itself. Skyerise (talk) 04:46, 3 September 2021 (UTC)
• C. BLPs in this category fail WP:OPINIONCAT – Avoid categorizing people by their personal opinions, even if a reliable source can be found for the opinions. This includes [...] allegations about the person by other people (e.g. "alleged criminals"). It does not sit in particularly good standing with WP:BLPCAT either. ‑‑Volteer1 (talk) 07:41, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
• C - Richard Dreyfuss and Corey Feldman are articles about people. Jimmy Savile sexual abuse scandal and Rick Butler sexual abuse allegations are articles that detail allegations of sexual misconduct.LM2000 (talk) 08:26, 5 September 2021 (UTC)
• C also per WP:OPINIONCAT. Such categories should be used when when it is no longer is a matter of opinion. Sea Ane (talk) 13:33, 22 September 2021 (UTC)
• B WP:OPINIONCAT is about categorization of people, not redirects. Something like Kevin Spacey sexual misconduct allegations is basically a mini-article that happens to be contained inside a larger article about a person. It seems that no-one disagrees that, if the section targeted by that redirect were cut and pasted into a separate article, say because of WP:SIZESPLIT considerations, the resulting article would belong in this category. I don't see why the presence or absence of a split should be the deciding factor here. Categories primarily exist to aid navigation. From the point of view of a user navigating this category, I imagine that Kevin Spacey sexual misconduct allegations would be relevant to their search, whether the content exists in a standalone article or a section within another article. Colin M (talk) 22:15, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
• C. WP:DEFINING and WP:COPDEF preclude individual people, dead or living (people are people, not allegations, crimes, or controversies with which they may be associated). And if redirects were to be included, and diligently populated, this category becomes little more more than a bulletin board of any verifiable sexual misconduct allegations, period. Redirects are cheap, and can violate NPOV or other policies, as well as clog categories with redundant trivia: for compairison, almost every substantial biography has or should have an "Early life" section for which someone could create a redirect, yet Category:Early lives by individual only contains 55 elements, with only 1 redirect (apparently someone feels Early life of Basshunter is more noteworthy than early life of Albert Einstein). A redirect could be made to almost any section in any article, regardless of notability of the target. It would be quite easy for a Wikipedian with an agenda to create and categorize trivial redirects to unduly emphasize scandalous, positive, or mundane aspects of a subject. Wikipedia:Redirect#Categorizing redirect pages states: Most redirect pages are not placed in article categories. Wikipedia:Categorizing redirects explains at the top: Redirects are not articles and most should not be sorted into mainspace content categories. It continues: Redirects are not usually sorted to article categories; however, there are exceptions, as described below. WP:INCOMPATIBLE explains some of the limited exceptions. I don't think this category is a compelling exception to categorize redirects. --Animalparty! (talk) 23:11, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

I would think the more relevant exception would be WP:SUBTOPICCAT rather than WP:INCOMPATIBLE. I regard this as being pretty similar to the Prohibition in Finland example. I agree that your hypothetical of mass creation and categorization of "Early life" section redirects would not be productive. But the reason is that, as you say, almost every biography has such a section, so such a categorization scheme is not adding much entropy. This problem does not apply to sexual misconduct allegations, since only a very small proportion of biographical articles have such a section. Having them funnelled into one small, focused category opens up a useful new avenue of navigation. Colin M (talk) 03:10, 3 December 2021 (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.