On 4/20/07, Tony Sidaway <tonysidaway(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 4/20/07, James Farrar
<james.farrar(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I don't recognise degrees of notability beyond the binary state of
"notable enough to have an article" or "not".
Notability is a chimera. Either we have enough to write a decent
article or we do not. We have enough for a decent start article on
Brandt, a little more than a stub, which is okay.
The question here is not notability, but whether it's sensible to
waste so much time and effort, and spill so much goodwill, to maintain
this article. Let's kill the silly thing and move on. The content is
free so deleting it from our site would not be an act of censorship.
I respectfully disagree with you and Fred and others. We do set a
precedent here if we delete due to the hassle and fuss raised. It's a
very bad precedent.
One should not negotiate with terrorists. Terrorist-type
indiscriminate destructive tactics can't be caved in to without
lasting damage to credibility and ability to deter future terrorism.
This is as true in online communities as it is in business and culture
and geopolitics.
One can negotiate with fierce opponents who use less scorched-earth,
less indiscriminate tactics, who believe that both sides are acting in
good faith.
Sometimes people in category one evolve into people in category two.
Right now, Jimmy's placed a bet that Brandt will make that jump. Once
that has demonstrably happened, we can revisit the question. Before
then, it's dangerous, and as slick a solution as it appears to be to
simply appease the beast, it will set a very dangerous precedent.
For now, please don't.
--
-george william herbert
george.herbert(a)gmail.com