slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
[...]
What's wrong with being decent all of a sudden?
Isn't that against policy?
:-)
More seriously, I think this guy's case is difficult because it's right at the edge of what we consider valid WP content. He doesn't have any notability outside the Usenet connection, and yet it would be somewhat contorted to explain "Kook of the Millennium" without naming names.
To take an example from other encyclopedias, Britannica, Oxford Classical Dictionary, etc, have a number of short articles on various obscure disreputable figures of ancient Rome. They are included not because they have accomplishments of their own, but because notable authors will make casual references to them ("as smelly as Acilius"), and the puzzled reader needs a reference work to explain that, say, this Acilius was an annoying beggar in the Forum, and not evidence that the consul of the same name had a BO problem.
So I guess that means that we can include the astrologer's name if he's alluded to in a Philip Roth novel...
Stan