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This page is for discussion regarding policies, rules, procedure, guidelines, and the like. All users are welcome and asked to comment, including anonymous users. However, only registered users should create a new topic. Archived sections are surrounded by a thick blue border and should not be edited. If you wish to reopen an archived debate, please ask an active administrator to do so.

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Current discussions[]

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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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} (talklogscontribs) 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) PurpleSamurai5.0

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

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