Wikipedia:Requests for permissions/Autopatrolled

Autopatrolled

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User:Dionysodorus

• Dionysodorus (t · th · c · del · cross-wiki · SUL · edit counter · pages created (xtools · sigma · from redirect) · non-automated edits · BLP edits · undos · manual reverts · rollbacks · logs ^{(blocks · rights · moves)} · rfar · spi · cci) (assign permissions)^(notify)

I have created a range of articles in the past (mostly short biographies of scholars and clergy, along with a few conversions from the National Dictionary of Biography). These have not given rise to any substantial issues, and it occurs to me that it is probably not a good use of patrollers' time to have to review any articles I may write in future, given the backlog. I am a longstanding editor, and as a reasonably experienced NPP reviewer I am thoroughly familiar with the BLP and notability policies. Dionysodorus (talk | contribs) 22:21, 4 October 2026 (UTC)

Hey Dionysodorus, thanks for applying! I think there are a few things you could work on before you're ready for autopatrolled. I found a few uses of unreliable sources, which I've since removed or tagged, in Andrew Braddock (priest) and Lee Batson (you might find a citation highlighter useful for catching these ahead of time). And while Christopher Collard almost certainly meets the notability criteria for academics, the article is far too reliant on primary sources. Particularly in a BLP, these need to be treated with more care; for example, the claim "Collard is also known for his collaborations with Martin Cropp", cited to two books published by the pair, borders on original research in the way it overstates this fact. I'm going to call this  not done for now — please let me know if you have any questions! —⁠TechnoSquirrel69 (talk) 05:06, 5 October 2026 (UTC)

@TechnoSquirrel69: I think some of that is debatable. As it says at WP:WHOSWHO, Who's Who is treated as a self-published source, which means that it's not reliable in general, but it's still reliable for information about the subject themself under WP:ABOUTSELF. I would like to put that back in to the articles on Batson and Braddock, because taking it out just leaves appropriately self-sourced information appearing to be without a reliable source when this is not actually the case, since Who's Who is reliable for this purpose under our guidelines.

As for Collard, he's clearly notable under WP:AUTHOR (multiple books with multiple reviews, which don't have to be cited in the article to contribute towards notability...) as well as WP:ACADEMIC. Almost all biographies about academics who aren't dead yet are based on primary sources to a large extent: after all, the whole premise of WP:ACADEMIC is that – as it says in the note at the top of the page – "Many scientists, researchers, philosophers, and other scholars (collectively referred to as "academics" for convenience) are notably influential in the world of ideas without their biographies being the subject of secondary sources". I agree that it would have been better to have said "have collaborated" rather than "are known for their collaborations", but it seems rather debatable whether it's actually OR to say that two scholars are known for their collaborations when they have published four widely reviewed volumes together in well-established series and when these volumes represent a large portion of both scholars' work.

Therefore, although I can see why you have formed the views that you express above, I still think that these articles are in the spirit of our policies and are appropriately sourced, and would not be a good use of an NPP reviewer's time, which ought rather to be spent looking for substantively unsourced BLPs, promo, AI use, and so forth. Dionysodorus (talk | contribs) 12:09, 5 October 2026 (UTC)

The standards for autopatrolled are somewhat higher than just the bar for clearing NPP. As Wikipedia:Autopatrolled states, the permission is for "prolific creators of clean articles" — as an administrator, I need to be confident that your creations are going to be in line with all of our core content policies (i.e. "clean"), including things like neutrality and reliable sourcing, which aren't strictly within NPP's purview. As I mentioned, I think you're on your way there, but the issues I brought up give me enough pause to hold off for the time being. I would encourage you to read the RfCs linked at the Who's Who RSP listing; I don't think the ABOUTSELF argument works here, since the source has been known to publish verifiably incorrect information, so they would run into the fourth and fifth caveats listed in that policy. With Collard, I was not questioning his notability, but the excessive reliance on primary sources in a BLP, and some of the knock-on effects of that decision. I would encourage you to take another look at your creations with this feedback in mind and reapply in a few months when you have new work to show that you've made improvements in these areas. —⁠TechnoSquirrel69 (talk) 17:42, 5 October 2026 (UTC)

@TechnoSquirrel69: As far as I can see, the discussions listed at WP:WHOSWHO broadly say that it should be treated as a self-published source that is no more or less accurate than the quality of the information that is provided by the person in question: that view is correctly reflected in the perennial sources table. The objections are to the fact that Who's Who doesn't check the information, and therefore reproduces inaccurate information when the information provided to them is inaccurate; there's nothing at all to suggest that they misrepresent the information provided, or that they are less reliable than other SPS. There's also nothing in the discussions that excludes using Who's Who entries for uncontroversial information under WP:ABOUTSELF, and some commenters in those discussions specifically allow for that. The same is implied by WP:GUNREL, which explicitly says that generally unreliable sources can often be used for uncontroversial self-descriptions.

Also, surely it's not helpful to remove the actual sources from which material is drawn and replace them with citation needed tags. I've never understood why people do this, since if the info is to be included the source must also be included, or the information is effectively plagiarised. If you really think that these Who's Who entries cannot be relied upon and the accuracy of the information is therefore in doubt, I think you should remove the information as well; if not, I don't see how it makes sense to remove the source.

I am not sure what you expect people to do with subjects such as Collard, short of not writing the article in the first place.

The idea that I should improve my approach to sourcing and come back in a few months presupposes that I agree with you that the sourcing practices that I adopted in these articles are inadequate. But in my view this isn't really the position: rather, we have both read and thought about the guidelines in question, and have reached reasonable but different interpretations of them. Of course that doesn't mean that you have to grant me the flag, and I respect your right as an admin taking on the task of monitoring this page to proceed as you think best. Dionysodorus (talk | contribs) 22:04, 5 October 2026 (UTC)