Erik Moeller wrote:
We have Angela (Beesley) on AfD now: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Angela_Beesley_...
The fact that Angela does not want this article to exist has been cited as a reason to delete. It looks like this deletion will go through.
Two related examples are Seth Finkelstein: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Seth_Finkelstei...
These nominations confuse me, because they seem to identify a problem but then propose a solution other than the obvious one.
In both cases the primary complaint is that the articles contain (or have at times contained) untrue, misleading, or irrelevant information. The obvious way to fix that problem is to remove such information, and make the articles contain only information that is: 1) sourced; 2) presented neutrally; and 3) of sufficient relevance to be worth mentioning in an encyclopedia article.
Deleting the articles is of course one way of making sure they contain no low-quality content, but that seems less direct that simply removing the low-quality content while keeping the verifiable content. In Seth's case, for example, it's undisputed that he formed the Censorware Project, that he either coined or at least popularized the term "censorware", and so on. I see no reason that an article stating these verifiable and notable facts should be deleted. If it contains other nonsense, then that nonsense should be removed, rather than used as an excuse to delete the entire article.
-Mark