Originally proposed atWikidata:Property proposal/Person
Currently the only way to link a perpetrator to a crime is P8031. However since the name (and description) indicates that the person is indeed guilty this have the potential to cause BLP issues for people who have yet to receive any conviction. Therefore i think it's best for Wikidata if we split the property into two--Trade (talk)15:39, 10 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Edit: As others have pointed out there was a previous discussion about this atWikidata:Property proposal/Accused of. As this happened long before i started to use this particular subpage of Property proposal i had no awareness about the existence of the previous proposal when i made this
Well certainly not if someone has been acquitted of the crime. And if the case is still pending then the issue of recording living people looms large. Given that we can't remove WD history, even the deletion of an accusation still leaves a trace in our system. Clearly newspapers handle this, but they operate inside the legal framework of their country, and its not clear what jurisdiction WD operates under. A can of worms, so
Oppose. Haven't we seen this proposal in the past, what was said that time?Vicarage (talk)17:04, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
- found a proposal from 2 months that was roundly rejected.https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Property_proposal/Accused_ofVicarage (talk)17:48, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
- Oppose with the same reasons as in December.Samoasambia✎18:40, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
- Do you have any evidence for the whole of Wikidata being in some mysterious legal gray area? Because that's a pretty wild claim to make. As for the previous proposal i have no awarenss of because it was made before i started to visit this particular proposal pageTrade (talk)23:15, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Are you going to add statements to say "George Floyd is accused of using fake bills", "Breonna Taylor is accused of drug trade"? They are not living people, but still, big Oppose for me.Midleading (talk)17:41, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
- It would be very difficult for me to add statements for items which doesnt exist and aren't notable in the first placeTrade (talk)23:16, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
- Notability requirement doesn’t exclude prejudice, everyone knows Joe Biden is accused of electoral fraud by Donald Trump in 2020, and there are lawsuits filed by Donald Trump, Wikipedia articles about the claim as well, but that’s nothing more than a baseless claim. False accusations can also be made by law enforcement, and the false accusations by law enforcement are mentioned in Wikipedia articles, likeGeorge Floyd(Q95677819),Breonna Taylor(Q96075512) and so on. However these statements should only be made in appropriate context ofpolice brutality in the United States(Q17164849). Wikidata statement is an oversimplification of the actual event. It’s impossible to describe the event in neutral point of view using just a tuple A-accused-B. Better to leave that for Wikipedia articles, especially for such statement that is highly controversial.Midleading (talk)03:47, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose With the same arguments as inWikidata:Property proposal/Accused of.Ainali (talk)18:42, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Listing people who have not been convicted of serious crimes is ethically dubious to begin with. Giving this its own property is whitewashing the practice of literally prejudging people. Before you know it Wikidata becomes not a collection of documentable claims, but a collection of libelous hearsay. It's not an oversight that this property doesn't exist, it's intentional. The question of guilt is a binary one, you can't go point at someone and say "Oh, but look at their crooked pawnbroker nose, surely they look guilty!".Infrastruktur (talk)21:10, 17 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
- I'm gonna try to respond one-by-one
- ethically dubious
- Agreed it is if none of the statements are supported by reliable sources. But since that's not the case this would not conflict with BLP. BLP exists for two purposes. To protect the (reasonable) privacy of subjects and to prevent potentially harmful statements that are not of public interest and that are unsourced or otherwise not backed by reliable sources. It is not however a carte blanche to remove, silence or censor any statements that might make a person or organization look bad for the sake of damage control or public relation efforts.
- the practice of literally prejudging people
- The state is the one who presses criminal charges on people, not editors. This is simply stating such a fact and have little to do with the question of guilt or innocence (which is already widely covered on Wikidata). If a reader decides to harbor negative thoughts towards a subject because of what happened that is outside of our control
- It's not an oversight that this property doesn't exist, it's intentional.
- Crimes and related have been covered on Wikidata and Wikimedia projects as a whole ever since it's start in 2003. Regardless what name you call it or what statement you use it doesn't change the fact that it is covered on Wikidata and realistically still will for the foreseeable future. We can either choose to deal with it in a proper way or bury our head in the sand and pretend none of this have ever been covered or described anywhere. I much prefer the former
- The question of guilt is a binary one, you can't go point at someone and say "Oh, but look at their crooked pawnbroker nose, surely they look guilty!".
- The only way this would be possible would be if i were (unconsciously) a prosecutor with jurisdiction across the entire earth and i had a prejudice towards crooked noses listed on Wikidata. So, not likely at all
- Trade (talk)00:06, 18 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
- No sign of consensus emerging, closing as
Not done. RegardsKirilloparma (talk)01:40, 13 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]- I would like to reopen discussions to include cases where an institutions is accused of a crime base on strong evidences like it the case here :https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=Q12411149&oldid=2428732774. In this case we have solid proofs but there is no trial. It doesn't mean they did the crime willingly or that they have been convicted of the crime. But there is still solid proof and it's still an important matter to be raised in the related wikidata objects (as a user I want to know when a institution is accused of a crime, based on solid evidence even if the trial did not yet ruled). Maybe "accused" is not accurate enough, maybe something like "Subject of credible findings of" or "Credibly accused of". This could also be usefull for important trials with investigations that can that takes years. It allows to have a wikidata reference of the event before thr tribunal ruled.
- I believe this would avoid most of the concerns raised hereHaymillefolium (talk)18:47, 12 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
- But you have just addedconvicted of(P1399) to the item having said here they had no trial. Still Oppose because the property would be open to problems like this.Vicarage (talk)19:55, 12 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
- If a property like "Credibly accused of" existed I could have used it instead of "convicted of" and it would have been well sourced without place to doubt do i don't understand which problem you're referring to ?Haymillefolium (talk)18:49, 15 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
