On Sat, 4 Oct 2003 13:52:41 -0700, Jimmy Wales jwales@joey.bomis.com gave utterance to the following:
user_Jamesday wrote:
Don't just delete the article. Keep it with the requested attribution until it can be rewritten. We don't want to destroy the evidence of the Wikipedia complying with such requests. It'll be useful for establishing a pattern of compliance in any future defence.
The mailing list archives serve that purpose well enough. It's better to just delete it, because in the future someone might peruse the history and think "Oh, look, this article used to say thus-and-so, and now it doesn't, so I'll revive it."
Hopefully they won't if the history shows the comment "article removed at copyright owner's request"