Daniel Brandt is a notable public figure. By all rights, he should
have an article in Wikipedia. And the article we have on him is a
good one.
We should also, after contacting Brandt, delete it.
I don't know if you all caught what Brandt and the folks at Wikipedia
Review did to me last month. If you didn't, here: http://
www.boingboing.net/2006/05/22/u_florida_cops_ask_f.html Basically,
someone on Wikipedia Review contacted my University to express
concern that I was a murderer, and I got to deal with a week of being
the subject of a police investigation that demanded my fingerprints.
In my case, who I am is public knowledge, and I decided to make it
that way. But that's not the case for everyone on Brandt's Hive Mind
site. A lot of them are people who didn't accept their RFA expecting
that they'd have their names, cities of residence, and photos
released. Nobody on Wikipedia, I don't think, realized that accepting
adminship meant painting a target on yourself, and, frankly, on your
family and friends.
The Foundation doesn't and can't provide admins with protection here.
And we need protection. The other admins on this site should not get
to go through what I did, or any of the far worse things that can and
will eventually happen to us.
But, after thinking about it, its my belief that the Foundation owes
its editors and admins the protections it can give. And one of those
is offering to delete Brandt's article in exchange for the removal of
the Hive Mind site. It's an awful trade. It's a horrible, awful
trade. We should hate making it, and we should hate Brandt for
forcing us to make it.
But we should make it. Because the consequences of not making it are
just too dangerous.
-Phil