I noticed a thread on Jimbo's talk page that is partly related to this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales#A_radical_idea.3B_BLP_opt...
Tarc suggested:
"Any living person, subject to identity verification via OTRS, may request the deletion of their article. No discussion, no AfD, just *poof*. In its place is a simple template explaining why there is no longer an article there, and a pointer to where the reader can find information on the subject, a link similar to Template:Find sources at the top of every AfD."
What people there seem to be missing is that the template would explicitly say "article removed at subject's request". The point being that this could well result in a big PR stink for either Wikipedia ("the article was rubbish and rightly removed") or for the subject ("they are (wrongly) trying to control what is said about them").
[This is why it relates to the topic of this thread]
This is why such a proposal might actually work.
I am rather surprised at why some people miss that this is about living people though. BWilkins said:
"You can't very well tear out "Mussolini" from every copy of EB ever printed, can you?"
Obviously, for those who are dead, this proposed policy would no longer apply, and you default back to the usual arguments about notability and so on. And I still maintain that notability cannot be properly assessed until someone's life or career has finished. The whole "notability is not temporary" thing needs serious re-examination.
Carcharoth