This is an essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints.

This is just some thoughts about a policy to handle contentious articles that have the tendency to cause drama repeatedly on Wikipedia. Please feel free to edit it ruthlessly, or to discuss it on its talk page.

Proposed Policy:BLP-LOCK:

This would cover the following articles about living people under the category of Biographies of Living People

A) If the subject qualifies under Wikipedia's Notability standards (Verifiable, Reliable Sources that assert notability), that do not get disqualified for being Famous for one event, but does not have an entry in an off-line encyclopedia (such as the Encyclopedia Brittanica, etcetera).

B) That has a possibility of causing real-world strife, or excessive Wikipedia edit-warring.

C) The article can be placed under BLP-LOCK by any uninvolved administrator. When an administrator places an article under this policy, they must either refer to an existing OTRS ticket, or submit one, and detail why such action is necessary in that OTRS ticket.

D) If an OTRS volunteer agrees that the article should be placed under BLP-LOCK, the article will be stubbed down to a bare-bones situation (just bare facts, no controversial information), and fully-protected for a period of six months).

E) During this BLP-LOCK status, the only edits that should be made are those via ((editprotected)) requests that have full-consensus on the talk page. Any information that not reliably sourced should not be added to the article, even with consensus. While a subject of the article does not get an automatic veto over information being added to the page, administrators who handle BLP-LOCK editprotected requests should be aware of the possible controversial nature of such edits and judge accordingly.

F) After the six month period has expired, the article should be watched closely, and if troublesome editing happens again (or is considered likely to cause the situation in B above), the article can be placed on BLP-LOCK again.

This would cover the following articles about living people:

Biographical articles that qualify for inclusion under Wikipedia's notability standards (multiple reliable sources that verify notability), that aren't famous for only one event, can be placed under BLP-LOCK by any uninvolved administrator. When an administrator places an article under this policy, they must either refer to an existing OTRS ticket, or submit one, and detail why such action is necessary in that OTRS ticket.

If an OTRS volunteer agrees that the article should be placed under BLP-LOCK, the article will be stubbed down to a bare-bones situation (just bare facts, no controversial information), and fully-protected for a period of a MININUM of six months.

During this BLP-LOCK status, the only edits that will occur will be made via the ((editprotected)) template, having received full consensus on the talk page. While a subject of the article does not get an automatic veto over information being added to the page, administrators who handle BLP-LOCK editprotected requests should be fully aware of the BLP policy and judge accordingly.