On 4/20/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
If Brandt wants to sincerely work with us to achieve that -- fixing any remaining flaws in his biography, and working with us to identify strategies to keep it, and other similar articles, sane -- then he should say so. He should stop his obsessive-compulsive crusade against Wikipedia, including his ridiculous attempts to unmask individual users, and recognize that he is dealing with a group of people who mean him no harm. He could have worked with this group of people a long time ago. But apparently having some enemy to rail against is more satisfying.
Would it be an accceptable compromise to revert the article to the version Brandt declared himself happy with in October 2005, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Daniel_Brandt&oldid=25614242 update it a little, add some citations, then protect it for a longish period until feelings have died down? If Brandt reciprocates by refraining from commenting elsewhere on Wikpedia issues, the excitement over his bio will diminish and most reasonable people will be too bored to start the issue up again when it's unprotected.
Part of the problem with the bio is that it has been unstable -- 2446 edits by 718 unique editors, including 271 IP addresses, which is a lot for a borderline notable page. That is the core of Brandt's objection, namely that there are too many anonymous editors involved in writing it, so that he has to keep on checking it, and he feels this is a burden. The flaw in his position is that Brandt himself caused this situation by stirring up people's interest. If he would stop doing that once the page was protected, the issue would die down, and he'd be left with a brief, factual entry that would do him no harm at all.
Sarah