On 4/20/07, Kirill Lokshin <kirill.lokshin(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Our notability guidelines -- overly simplistic nature
and
permissiveness towards the utterly trivial aside --were never meant to
be a suicide pact. The question to ask is not whether Brandt "meets
the criteria for inclusion" or whatever the wording of the day is.
It's whether having an article on him actually *benefits* anyone, and
whether any benefit outweighs the frankly horrific cost we're having
to pay to keep it around.
No. If we take our role as an encyclopedia seriously, then these
externalities are irrelevant. I would be deeply concerned about the
kind of precedent where a sufficient amount of noise alone guarantees
the removal of information. Now it may be Daniel Brandt, tomorrow,
some strange religious group nobody has ever heard of, then some
litigious video game lawyer .. this is the wrong way to look at the
problem and could seriously damage our usefulness. And if you think
that you can actually close this issue by deleting Brandt's article,
you've apparently not followed the debate after the last speedy
deletion attempt.
I'm already concerned that we have a thin skin when it comes to legal
threats. I want us to develop a legal strategy where we have the
confidence to stand up against bullies and kooks, rather than folding
as soon as we get a nasty letter. But that also means that we have to
take more responsibility to ensure that all our BLP processes are
working -- including stable version tagging, and so on.
I can understand the notion of an "opt-out" for borderline notability,
but I've come to the conclusion that this cannot be implemented in a
reasonable fashion. The only thing that I see viable is that the
subject's wishes are, by policy, one factor to be taken into account
in an AfD. That doesn't mean they necessarily outweigh the interests
of the encyclopedia, but that the people debating the issue ought to
make a judgment call about it. Then let the chips fall where they may.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik
DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.
"An old, rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open,
free and exciting is waking up." -- Ming the Mechanic