Quoting Gwern Branwen gwern0@gmail.com:
On 2007.11.15 16:43:27 +0000, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net scribbled 0 lines:
On Thu, 15 Nov 2007 16:30:27 +0000, "James Farrar" james.farrar@gmail.com wrote:
Having an article because they hate us is no better than not having one because they hate us.
[[Daniel Brandt]], for instance...
(OK, technically we don't have an article on him not because he hates us, /per se/, but because after 14 AFDs reasonable people got bored with the circus and threw in the towel.)
Got good, non-trivial biographical sources about Brandt? I know where to find deletion review.
Brandt's article was deleted for lack of sources.
Guy (JzG)
Just for those who weren't around for the Brandt articles: what Guy is saying here is arrant nonsense. The Brandt article had dozens of good sources stretching back decades. It was deleted out of a combination of WP:IDONTLIKEIT and WP:NEVILLECHAMBERLAIN.
To clarify - what actually happened was after repeated AfDs (13 of them) and Brandt repeated harassment, the current clause in BLP that allows for deletion for marginally notable people was added. A 14th AfD occurred. This AfD was closed with a "complex merge" attempting to preserve as much of the articles material as possible while respecting a possible privacy right for Brandt.
Now my editorializing: It is clear that if Brandt were not Brandt it would have been almost certainly kept. As far as I can tell, there have been exactly two cases where the community has been willing to delete an article of a willing public figure; Daniel Brandt, and Seth Finkelstein. In both cases, there was not a clear consensus in the AfD, both had a DRV and the response in the DRVs in both cases was more or less "we're sick of this. enough". However, there was not a lack of sources.
Now, as an aside can we please discuss this rationally without insulting each other and making Hitler comparisons?