Wikidata:Living people

We take violations of this policy seriously. Repeated or egregious incidents by a user may lead to blocks. Page protection can be applied to pages that receive violations of this policy. If serious, page revisions in violation of this policy may be hidden as well. Items about living people which are not notable can be deleted.

If the subject of an item is unhappy with specific information in the item about themselves, they can request the removal of specific information via the Administrators' noticeboard or by emailing privacywikidata.org. When the information isn't of public interest, an administrator may revision delete it. Information that's revision deleted is not visible for normal users who visit the history of an item but only visible for our administrators. In special cases where information is particularly sensitive, an oversighter may be contacted to oversight the information, so that even our administrators can't access the information from the history.

When a user sends an email to privacywikidata.org it will be forwarded to privacywikimedia.org which is a mailbox handled by the Wikimedia Foundation's Legal / Privacy team.

This policy applies to all items about living people. In addition, this policy also applies to statements not on items about living people but that concern living people.

Anyone born within the past 115 years is covered by this policy unless a reliable source has confirmed their death. Generally, this policy does not apply to material concerning people who are confirmed dead by reliable sources. The only exception would be for people who have recently died, in which case the policy can extend for an indeterminate period beyond the date of death—six months, one year, two years at the outside. Such extensions would apply particularly to contentious or questionable material about the dead that has implications for their living relatives and friends, such as in the case of a possible suicide or a particularly gruesome crime. Even absent confirmation of death, for the purposes of this policy anyone born more than 115 years ago is presumed dead unless reliable sources confirm the person to have been living within the past two years.

This policy does not normally apply to material about corporations, companies, or other entities regarded as a legal person (Q3778211), though any such material must be written in accordance with other content policies. The extent to which this policy applies to edits about groups is complex and must be judged on a case-by-case basis. A harmful statement about a small group or organization comes closer to being a problem under this policy than a similar statement about a larger group; and when the group is very small, it may be impossible to draw a distinction between the group and the individuals that make up the group.

Labels, descriptions and aliases need to be neutral and well-sourced (ideally based on referenced statements on the item) and particular care should be taken in editing these for items about living people. Derogatory names, even when used in reliable public sources, should not be added as aliases. Descriptions should focus on facts, not opinions.

Almost any piece of data about a living person might be controversial; anything that's individually challenged or might be challenged should be supported by a reliable public source or may be subject to removal. In particular properties that are living people protection class (P8274) property likely to be challenged (Q44597997) should be supported by suitable references when applied to living people. In the case of a dispute, the burden of evidence rests with the editor who adds or restores material.

The automatically updated list of properties likely to be challenged can be found at WikiProject Properties. In individual cases, information that's likely to be challenged might also be added to other properties and users who add information to the items of living people should always think about the privacy implications of the data that they are adding.

Living individuals with records in Wikidata are for the most part not famous or celebrities; their privacy should be respected. Values for living individuals should generally not be supplied unless they can be considered widespread public knowledge or are openly supplied by the individual themselves (otherwise hidden supporting references are not sufficient). As an example, the fact that someone's address is accessible by looking at a domain name registration doesn't imply that it's considered widespread public knowledge for the sake of this policy.

There is also a list of properties that may violate privacy at WikiProject Properties; as above in individual cases it's also valuable to be mindful when using other properties.

While it's okay to add the living people protection class (P8274) property likely to be challenged (Q44597997) or property that may violate privacy (Q44601380) statements to additional Wikidata properties without seeking consensus beforehand, such statements must not be removed from existing properties without consensus.

If a Wikidata property had it for fewer than 7 days, the statement can be preemptively removed but the person who removes it should open a new discussion on the talk page of the property and include the {{Ping project|Properties}}-template to discuss whether the property should have the statement.

To request the removal of the class from a Wikidata property that had it longer than one week, you must open a new discussion on the talk page that includes the {{Ping project|Properties}}-template. The removal of the class must only be done by an admin or property creator and only if least 7 days have passed since the request for removing the class was started and there is a consensus for removing the class.

It's also possible to request replacing property likely to be challenged (Q44597997) with property that may violate privacy (Q44601380) or vice-versa on a property through the same process.

Given that bots will rely on the data it's recommended to semi-protect the properties that subclass property likely to be challenged (Q44597997) or property that may violate privacy (Q44601380).

Bots that create or add statements about living people or that edit their descriptions or aliases should be particularly carefully scrutinized. The Wikidata:Bots policy already requests sourcing for bot-entered information. For bots that will be editing items about living people, it's recommended to explicitly address the following concerns during the bot approval process:

1. If the bot will add information to items about living people that contains statements that use properties that subclass property likely to be challenged (Q44597997) and property that may violate privacy (Q44601380) the bot approval discussion must explicitly address the issue of why it's in this case okay to add the information. Such bots should not copy data from closed databases or books of limited circulation for this purpose.
2. If the bot is importing from a Wikimedia project, does that Wikimedia project have an adequate policy for biographies of living people? If not, further steps to verify the data before import are warranted.
3. If the bot is pulling information from another source, is that source a reliable source for this data? Note that this is also important when adding statements with properties that don't subclass property likely to be challenged (Q44597997) or property that may violate privacy (Q44601380).