Lori and George Schappell

Sometimes vandals come to Wikipedia to intentionally deadname or misgender transgender people in violation of our guidelines.

In such cases, you should revert the change as we treat it as a privacy interest and contact an administrator willing to handle the redaction of the deadname by revision deletions to redact it from the edit logs as a BLP violation. When reverting vandalism that misgenders or deadnames article subjects, do not mention this in your edit summary, otherwise it will also have to be redacted. Instead keep the edit summary generic such as "revert BLP vandalism".

If a particular BLP article gets repeatedly vandalized, requesting an increase of the page protections under the WP:GENSEX Arbitration Enforcement can be requested for the page in question.

Subjects notable only for one event

Further information: Wikipedia:Notability (people) § People notable for only one event, and Wikipedia:What BLP1E is not

Wikipedia is not news, or an indiscriminate collection of information. Being in the news does not in itself mean that someone should be the subject of a Wikipedia article. We generally should avoid having an article on a person when each of three conditions is met:

1. Reliable sources cover the person only in the context of a single event.
2. The person otherwise remains, and is likely to remain, a low-profile individual. Biographies in these cases can give undue weight to the event and conflict with neutral point of view. In such cases, it is usually better to merge the information and redirect the person's name to the event article.
3. The event is not significant or the individual's role was either not substantial or not well documented. John Hinckley Jr., for example, has a separate article because the single event he was associated with, the Reagan assassination attempt, was significant, and his role was both substantial and well documented.

The significance of an event or the individual's role is indicated by how persistent the coverage is in reliable sources. It is important for editors to understand two clear differentiations of the people notable for only one event guideline (WP:BIO1E) when compared with this policy (WP:BLP1E): WP:BLP1E should be applied only to biographies of living people, or those who have recently died, and to biographies of low-profile individuals.

In addition, some subject-specific notability guidelines, such as Wikipedia:Notability (sports), provide criteria that may support the notability of certain individuals who are known chiefly for one event.

People accused of crime

See also: Wikipedia:Notability (events) § Criminal acts, and Wikipedia:Notability (people) § Crime victims and perpetrators

A living person accused of a crime is presumed innocent until convicted by a court of law. Accusations, investigations, arrests and charges do not amount to a conviction. For individuals who are not public figures—that is, individuals not covered by § Public figures—editors must seriously consider not including material—in any article—that suggests the person has committed or is accused of having committed a crime, unless a conviction has been secured for that crime.

If different judicial proceedings result in seemingly contradictory outcomes that do not overrule each other, include sufficient explanatory information.

Use in continued disputes

Wikipedia articles concerning living persons may include material—where relevant, properly weighted, and reliably sourced—about controversies or disputes in which the article subject has been involved. Wikipedia is not a forum provided for parties to off-wiki disputes to continue their hostilities. Experience has shown that misusing Wikipedia to perpetuate legal, political, social, literary, scholarly, or other disputes is harmful to the subjects of biographical articles, to other parties in the dispute, and to Wikipedia itself.

Therefore, an editor who is involved in a significant controversy or dispute with another individual—whether on- or off-wiki—or who is an avowed rival of that individual, should not edit that person's biography or other material about that person, given the potential conflict of interest. More generally, editors who have a strongly negative or positive view of the subject of a biographical article should be especially careful to edit that article neutrally, if they choose to edit it at all.

Applicability

BLP applies to all material about living persons anywhere on Wikipedia, including talk pages, edit summaries, user pages, images, categories, lists, article titles and drafts.

Non-article space

Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced and not related to making content choices should be removed, deleted, or oversighted, as appropriate. When seeking advice about whether to publish something about a living person, be careful not to post so much information on the talk page that the inquiry becomes moot. For example, it would be appropriate to begin a discussion by stating The same principle applies to problematic images. Questionable claims already discussed can be removed with a reference to the previous discussion.

The BLP policy also applies to user and user talk pages. The single exception is that users may make any claim they wish about themselves in their user space, so long as they are not engaged in impersonation, and subject to what Wikipedia is not, though minors are discouraged from disclosing identifying personal information on their userpages; for more information, see here. Although this policy applies to posts about Wikipedians in project space, some leeway is permitted to allow the handling of administrative issues by the community, but administrators may delete such material if it rises to the level of defamation, or if it constitutes a violation of no personal attacks.

Usernames

See also: Wikipedia:Username policy § Usernames with libelous, contentious, or non-public information

Usernames that contain libelous, blatantly false, or contentious statements or material about living persons should be immediately blocked and suppressed from all revisions and logs. This includes usernames that disclose any kind of non-public, private, or personally identifiable information about living persons, regardless of the legitimacy of the information and whether or not the information is correct. Requests for removing such usernames from logs should be reported to the Oversight team for evaluation.

Images

Further information: Wikipedia:No original research § Original images

Images of living persons should not be used out of context to present a person in a false or disparaging light. This is particularly important for police booking photographs (mugshots), or situations where the subject did not expect to be photographed. Because a police booking photograph can imply that the person depicted was charged with or convicted of a specific crime, a top-quality reliable source with a widely acknowledged reputation for fact-checking and accuracy that links the photograph to the specific incident or crime in question must be cited.

Images of living persons that have been created by Wikipedians or others may be used only if they have been released under a copyright licence that is compatible with Wikipedia:Image use policy.

Categories, lists, and navigation templates

See also: Wikipedia:Categorizing articles about people and Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and navigation templates

Category names do not carry disclaimers or modifiers, so the case for each content category must be made clear by the article text and its verifiable reliable sources. Categories regarding religious beliefs (or lack of such) or sexual orientation should not be used unless the subject has publicly self-identified with the belief (or lack of such) or orientation in question, and the subject's beliefs or sexual orientation are relevant to their public life or notability, according to reliable published sources.

Caution should be used with content categories that suggest a person has a poor reputation (see false light). For example, Category:Criminals and its subcategories should be added only for an incident that is relevant to the person's notability; the incident was published by reliable third-party sources; the subject was convicted; and the conviction was not overturned on appeal. Do not categorize biographies of living people under such contentious topics as racism, sexism, extremism, and the like, since these have the effect of labeling a person as a racist, sexist, or extremist. (See also Wikipedia:Overcategorization § Subjective inclusion criteria and Wikipedia:Overcategorization § Opinion about a question or issue.)

These principles apply equally to lists, navigation templates, and {{Infobox}} statements (referring to living persons within any Wikipedia page) that are based on religious beliefs (or lack of such) or sexual orientation or suggest that any living person has a poor reputation. This policy does not limit the use of administrative categories for WikiProjects, article clean-up, or other normal editor activities.

Recently dead or probably dead

Anyone born within the past 115 years (on or after 29 November 1909 []) 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 subject that has implications for their living relatives and friends, such as in the case of a possible suicide or particularly gruesome crime. Even without 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. If the date of birth is unknown, editors should use reasonable judgement to infer—from dates of events noted in the article—if it is plausible that the person was born within the last 115 years and is therefore covered by this policy.

Legal persons and groups

This policy does not normally apply to material about corporations, companies, or other entities regarded as legal persons, though any such material must be written in accordance with other content policies. The extent to which the BLP 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 BLP problem 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. When in doubt, make sure you are using high-quality sources.

Maintenance

Importance

Report BLP incidents at the biographies of living persons noticeboard.

Wikipedia contains over a million articles about living persons. From both a legal and an ethical standpoint, it is essential that a determined effort be made to eliminate defamatory and other inappropriate material from these articles, but these concerns must be balanced against other concerns, such as allowing articles to show a bias in the subject's favor by removing appropriate material simply because the subject objects to it, or allowing articles about non-notable publicity-seekers to be retained. When in doubt about whether material in a BLP is appropriate, the article should be pared back to a policy-compliant version. Sometimes the use of administrative tools such as page protection and deletion is necessary for the enforcement of this policy, and in extreme cases action by Wikimedia Foundation staff is required.

Templates

{{BLP}} alerting readers to this policy may be added to the talk pages of BLPs and other articles that focus on living persons. {{Blpo}} is suitable for articles containing material on the deceased that also contains material about living persons. If a {{WikiProject Biography}} template is present, you can add |living=yes to the template parameters. If a {{WikiProject banner shell}} template is also present, add |blp=yes to it.

For articles, {{BLP dispute}} may be used on BLPs needing attention; {{BLP sources}} on BLPs needing better sourcing (an alternative is {{BLP primary sources}}); and {{BLP unsourced}} for those with no sources at all.

For editors violating this policy, the following can be used to warn them on their talk pages:

• {{uw-biog1}}
• {{uw-biog2}}
• {{uw-biog3}}
• {{uw-biog4}}
• {{uw-biog4im}}
• {{uw-bioblock}} for when a block is issued

The template {{BLP removal}} can be used on the talk page of an article to explain why material has been removed under this policy, and under what conditions the material may be replaced.

Relationship between the subject, the article, and Wikipedia

Dealing with edits by the subject of the article

Subjects sometimes become involved in editing material about themselves, either directly or through a representative. The Arbitration Committee has ruled in favor of showing leniency to BLP subjects who try to fix what they see as errors or unfair material. Editors should make every effort to act with kindness toward the subjects of biographical material when the subjects arrive to express concern.

Although Wikipedia discourages people from writing about themselves, removal of unsourced or poorly sourced material is acceptable. When a logged-out editor blanks all or part of a BLP, this might be the subject attempting to remove problematic material. Edits like these by subjects should not be treated as vandalism; instead, the subject should be invited to explain their concerns. The Arbitration Committee established the following principle in December 2005:

Wikipedia:Please do not bite the newcomers, a guideline, advises Wikipedia users to consider the obvious fact that new users of Wikipedia will do things wrong from time to time. For those who either have or might have an article about themselves, there is a temptation—especially if apparently wrong or strongly negative information is included in such an article—to become involved in questions regarding their own article. This can open the door to rather immature behavior and loss of dignity for the new user. It is a violation of don't bite the newbies to strongly criticize users who fall into this trap, rather than see this phenomenon as a new editor mistake.

Dealing with articles about yourself

Further information: Wikipedia:Autobiography § Problems in an article about you, and Wikipedia:FAQ/Article subjects

Wikipedia has editorial policies that will often help to resolve your concern, as well as many users willing to help and a wide range of escalation processes. Very obvious errors can be fixed quickly, including by yourself. But beyond that, post suggestions on the article talk page (see Help:Talk pages), or place {{help me}} on your user talk page. You may also post an explanation of your concern on the biographies of living persons noticeboard and ask that uninvolved editors evaluate the article to make sure it is fairly written and properly sourced.

If you are an article subject and you find the article about you contains your personal information or potentially libelous statements, contact the oversight team so that they can evaluate the issue and possibly remove it from the page history.

Please bear in mind that Wikipedia is almost entirely operated by volunteers; impolite or demanding behavior, even if entirely understandable, will often be less effective.

Legal issues

Subjects who have legal or other serious concerns about material they find about themselves on a Wikipedia page, whether in a BLP or elsewhere, may contact the Wikimedia Foundation's volunteer response team (known as VRT). Please e-mail info-en-qwikimedia.org with a link to the article and details of the problem; for more information on how to get an error corrected, see here. It is usually better to ask for help rather than trying to change the material yourself.

As noted above, individuals involved in a significant legal or other off-wiki dispute with the subject of a biographical article are strongly discouraged from editing that article.

How to contact the Wikimedia Foundation

Contact us

See also: Wikimedia Foundation

If you are not satisfied with the response of editors and admins to a concern about biographical material about living persons, you can contact the Wikimedia Foundation directly. See Contact us for details.

Wikimedia Foundation resolution

Further information: Foundation:Resolution:Biographies of living people

On April 9, 2009, the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees passed a resolution regarding Wikimedia's handling of material about living persons. It noted that there are problems with some BLPs being overly promotional in tone, being vandalized, and containing errors and smears. The Foundation urges that special attention be paid to neutrality and verifiability regarding living persons; that human dignity and personal privacy be taken into account, especially in articles of ephemeral or marginal interest; and that anyone who has a complaint about how they are described on the project's websites be treated with patience, kindness, and respect.

Role of administrators

Page protection and blocks

Administrators who suspect malicious or biased editing, or believe that inappropriate material may be added or restored, may protect pages. Administrators may enforce the removal of clear BLP violations with page protection or by blocking the violator(s), even if they have been editing the article themselves or are in some other way involved. In less clear cases, they should request the attention of an uninvolved administrator at Wikipedia:Administrators Noticeboard/Incidents.

See § Templates for appropriate templates to use when warning or blocking for BLP violations.

Contentious topics

"All living or recently deceased subjects of biographical content on Wikipedia articles" have been designated as a contentious topic by the Arbitration Committee. In this area, Wikipedia's norms and policies are more strictly enforced and Wikipedia administrators have additional authority to reduce disruption to the project.

Deletion

Summary deletion, creation prevention, and courtesy blanking

Further information: Wikipedia:Deletion policy § Deletion of biographies and BLPs

Biographical material about a living individual that is not compliant with this policy should be improved and rectified; if this is not possible, then it should be removed. If the entire page is substantially of poor quality, primarily containing contentious material that is unsourced or poorly sourced, then it may be necessary to delete the entire page as an initial step, followed by discussion if requested.

Page deletion is normally a last resort. If a dispute centers around a page's inclusion (e.g., because of questionable notability or where the subject has requested deletion), this is addressed via deletion discussions rather than by summary deletion. Summary deletion is appropriate when the page contains unsourced negative material or is written non-neutrally, and when this cannot readily be rewritten or restored to an earlier version of an acceptable standard. The deleting administrator should be prepared to explain the action to others, by e-mail if the material is sensitive. Those who object to the deletion should bear in mind that the deleting admin may be aware of issues that others are not. Disputes may be taken to deletion review, but protracted public discussion should be avoided for deletions involving sensitive personal material about living persons, particularly if it is negative. Such debates may be courtesy blanked upon conclusion. After the deletion, any administrator may choose to protect it against re-creation. Even if the page is not protected against re-creation, it should not be re-created unless a consensus has demonstrated support of re-creation that is consistent with our policies.

Relatively unknown subjects

Further information: Wikipedia:Deletion policy § Deletion of biographies and BLPs

Where the living subject of a biographical article has requested deletion, the deletion policy says: "Discussions concerning biographical articles of relatively unknown, non-public figures, where the subject has requested deletion and there is no rough consensus, may be closed as delete." In addition, it says: "Poorly sourced biographical articles of unknown, non-public figures, where the discussions have no editor opposing the deletion, may be deleted after discussions have been completed."

Restoration

To ensure that material about living people is written neutrally to a high standard, and based on high-quality reliable sources, the burden of proof is on those who wish to retain, restore, or undelete the disputed material. When material about living persons has been deleted on good-faith BLP objections, any editor wishing to add, restore, or undelete it must ensure it complies with Wikipedia's content policies. If it is to be restored without significant change, consensus must be obtained first. Material that has been repaired to address concerns should be judged on a case-by-case basis.

In the case of an administrator deleting a complete article, wherever possible such disputed deletions should be discussed first with the administrator who deleted the article.

Proposals

Further information: Wikipedia:Proposed deletion of biographies of living people

All BLPs must have at least one source that supports at least one statement made about the person in the article, or it may be proposed for deletion. The tag may not be removed until a reliable source is provided, and if none is forthcoming, the article may be deleted after seven days. This does not affect other deletion processes mentioned in BLP policy and elsewhere.

See also

Foundation policies and resolutions

• Wikimedia Foundation privacy policy
• Wikimedia Foundation resolution on biographies of living persons, amended November 2013.

Arbitration cases

• Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Badlydrawnjeff, July 2007.
• Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Editing of BLP § Biographies of living persons, June 2008.
• Arbitration Committee/Motion regarding BLP deletions, January 2010.
• Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Manipulation of BLPs, September 2011.

Policies

• Attack page
• Neutral point of view
• No original research
• Verifiability
• What Wikipedia is not

Guidelines

• Autobiography
• Conflict of interest
• Fringe theories § Treatment of living persons
• Manual of Style/Biography
• Notability (people)

Requests for comment

• Requests for comment/Biographies of living people—Phase I; Phase II

FAQs

• FAQ/Article subjects

Essays

See also: Category:User essays on BLP

• An article about yourself isn't necessarily a good thing
• Avoiding harm
• Coatrack articles
• Criticism
• Minors and persons judged incompetent
• Signatures of living persons
• Verifiable but not false

Discussion forums

• Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard
• WikiProject Deletion sorting/Living people

Related pages

• Wikipedia:Requested articles/Biography
• Wikipedia:Unreferenced BLP Rescue

Further reading

• Wikimedia Foundation Resolution: Biographies of living people (2009), Media about living people (2013)

Lori Schappell George Schappell
Born	(1961-09-18)September 18, 1961 West Reading, Pennsylvania, US
Died	April 7, 2024(2024-04-07) (aged 62) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US

Lori and George (formerly Dori) Schappell (September 18, 1961 – April 7, 2024) were American conjoined twins. George performed as a country singer. As of 2020, they were the oldest living conjoined twins in the world. Guinness World Records noted that George's gender transition made George and Lori the first set of conjoined twins to identify as different genders.

Early life, family and education

Lori and George Schappell were craniopagus conjoined twins joined at the head. Although they shared an area of scalp and blood vessels, their brains were distinct from each other. They had very different personalities and lived—insofar as possible—individual lives. George was unable to walk due to spina bifida.

They spent the first twenty-four years of their life in an institution for the mentally disabled. They lived without assistance in high-rise apartments for the elderly in Reading, Pennsylvania from 1988 until their death in 2024. As a mark of individuality and disliking the fact that their names rhymed, George, then known as Dori, first chose to go by the name Reba after his favorite singer Reba McEntire.

The twins graduated from a public high school and later attended college classes.

Careers

As a country music singer, George performed widely in the United States and visited Germany and Japan. In 1997, he won an L.A. Music Award for Best New Country Artist. He sang "Fear of Being Alone" over the credits of Stuck on You, a comedy feature film about a pair of fictitious conjoined twins.

Lori acted as George's facilitator. She worked in a hospital laundry, arranging her workload around George's singing commitments. She said that, as a fan of George, she paid to attend concerts just like all the other fans, simply making herself quiet and "invisible" while George was performing.

As conjoined twins, Lori and George appeared in a number of television documentaries and talk shows. They also acted in an episode of the television series Nip/Tuck in which they played conjoined twins, Rose and Raven Rosenberg.

On June 21, 2007, Lori and George took part in the grand opening of Ripley's Believe It Or Not! Odditorium in Times Square, Manhattan, New York City. This was the first time they were billed as Lori and George Schappell, instead of Lori and Dori Schappell, or Lori and Reba Schappel.

Personal lives and death

The Schappell twins lived in a two-bedroom apartment with each maintaining a distinct private space. They had several pets. Lori was a trophy-winning bowler. They respected each other's privacy in terms of work time, recreation and relationships. Lori had several boyfriends and was engaged but her fiancé died after a motor vehicle accident. They celebrated their 50th birthday with a trip to London.

By 2007, George came out as a trans man. Guinness World Records noted that gender transition made the Schappells the first set of conjoined twins of different gender identities.

Lori and George Schappell died at University of Pennsylvania Hospital on April 7, 2024, at the age of 62. The cause of death was not publicly disclosed.

Media

Lori and George appeared in the following programs or articles:

• 1993: The Maury Povich Show
• 1996: Jerry Springer
• September 8, 1997: Twins - The Divided Self (US Title: Body Doubles; The Twin Experience); Peabody Award winning documentary for ITV, HBO & CBC
• September 11, 1997: The Unexplained :"The Twin Connection", as Lori and Dori
• September 12, 1998: The Howard Stern Radio Show
• October 7, 1998: Howard Stern
• 1998: A&E documentary Face to Face: The Schappell Twins
• 2000: The Learning Channel documentary Separate Lives
• May 15, 2002: The Jerry Springer Show; George was billed as Reba Schappell
• August 17, 2004: American television show Nip/Tuck, in the episode "Rose and Raven Rosenberg"; Raven was played by George (billed as Reba) Schappell; Rose was played by Lori Schappell
• May 31, 2002: Howard Stern
• 2005 Television documentary: Medical Incredible. A documentary on Discovery Health Channel.
• 2005 Television documentary: Extraordinary People: Joined at the Head; George was billed as Dori Schappell
• September 24, 2007: The Greek reality show Aksizei na to deis (Worth Seeing – Αξιζει να το δεις)
• 2007: The romantic comedy film X's & O's
• 2007: Television documentary Inside Extraordinary Humans: Science of Conjoined Twins

External links

• George Schappell at IMDb
• Lori Schappell at IMDb