[WikiEN-l] Delete Daniel Brandt

Mon Jun 12 20:35:29 UTC 2006

On 11/06/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/11/06, Sarah <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > We have already deleted or blanked pages that the subjects haven't
> > wanted,
>
> Which cases are you thinking about? I'm aware of the [[Brian Peppers]]
> case, which was a Jimbo Wales decision and which concerned basic
> matters of human dignity. Other cases of actual articles being deleted
> because of the subject's complaints would be interesting to document,
> so we can try to establish reasonable and consistent policy in those
> matters.

I will not name names (mainly since I can't remember any), but a
number of "articles" have been deleted after the subject wrote to us
and asked - I've done a couple. But they weren't deleted just because
they asked - they were deleted because our policies said we probably
ought to.

Pages created solely to disparage the subject are common - and,
remember, there's no notability test there; if [[George W. Bush]] was
created with one revision saying "he's a fascist!" we could speedy it.
Articles which aren't disparaging but are about someone who themself
freely claims to be insignificant - they're not important, they're not
a public figure, why argue the toss just to keep an article no-one
will ever read?

It's just a lot easier to do this when someone's been so kind as to
point the article out for us, when it slipped past new-pages
patrollers, rather than wait for someone else to stumble across it and
suggest deletion. The community does have - not in this case,
particularly, but generally speaking - an overly "censorship! no!"
reaction to "could you please get rid of this trivial article?", even
in cases where the request is honest, well-meant, and polite. We
should really work on that.

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk