On 11/06/06, Erik Moeller eloquence@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/11/06, Sarah slimvirgin@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.