Commons:Categories for discussion/2016/02/Category:Personal informants of secret services in Polish People's Republic

From Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This discussion of one or several categories is now closed. Please do not make any edits to this archive.

Category:Personal informants of secret services in Polish People's Republic[edit]

This category is potentially very libelous, as it includes many people whose contacts with the communist secret services were not proven in any scientifically or legally acceptable way. What's more, it includes people who have actively fought against such accusations in courts (for example, Lech Wałęsa). In many cases it's based only on rumour or some untrustworthy, far-right publications. In my view it should be deleted immediately, before it causes media uproar or legal action. Powerek38 (talk) 08:53, 7 February 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I have a double problem with this category. First is what Powerek mentioned above, lack of proof that the people listed in the category actually committed acts of informing to the secret services. Second, I definitely think this is not the idea of Wikimedia Commons to categorise images based on such criteria; it is rather the work of other projects, most notably Wikipedias, where such claims need to be backed up with definitely unquestionable sources. Wojciech Pędzich Talk 09:05, 7 February 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]
The choice of people include this category is founded by partial criteria. It have not nothing in common with historical facts and judgement. In my opinion Wikimedia Commons is not a place to investigation those rights. The category is unnecessary and advantages is doubtful. Rybulo7 (talk) 09:33, 7 February 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Not the category itself that is the problem. The problem is that there are people that shouldn't be there.Dreamcatcher25 (talk) 09:45, 7 February 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Yes, but as Wpedzich pointed out above - this issue is far too complex to be investigated and explained properly at Wikimedia Commons. Wikipedia has better tools and procedures to check each case individually. In my view the risks of keeping this category are far greater than possible benefits. Powerek38 (talk) 09:55, 7 February 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]

It's difficult to proove who sholud be in this category. There's no need to sort people by such unsafe criterium. Ludmiła Pilecka (talk) 11:11, 7 February 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I strongly support deletion, for reasons mentioned above. Pibwl (talk) 14:52, 7 February 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Pinging Maciej and Adrian for statements as this category is going to be deleted. --Achim (talk) 16:59, 7 February 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I think everything has already been said. This is beyond the scope of our project to judge who was and who was not a collaborator of communist secret police. This category should be deleted. Boston9 (talk) 19:12, 7 February 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Delete and pretend it was never there. Just to put this matter into some perspective for all non-Poles out there, think Category:Nazi sympathisers. Equally hard to prove, equally heavy accusation, Some people in such a category might indeed be sympathisers of the Nazi party, some might be wrongly accused of being Nazi, while most would probably be just a random collection of people thrown mud at. And there is no way to check who is who since we can't add references to categories in Commons. Halibutt (talk) 21:59, 7 February 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Cleared and deleted speedily per snowball consensus. --Achim (talk) 19:37, 9 February 2016 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Retrieved from "https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Commons:Categories_for_discussion/2016/02/Category:Personal_informants_of_secret_services_in_Polish_People%27s_Republic&oldid=187146124"