From: "David Gerard" dgerard@gmail.com
I am shocked, _shocked_ that it would ever occur to anybody that Wikipedia could be used as a vehicle for self-promotion...
By the way, did anyone else follow the course of the Universism article? A gentleman going by the name of Ford Vox played Wikipedia like a violin on that one. Universism is a "new religion" which claimed, I think, seven or eight thousand "members"--counting as an member anyone who signed up on their website. It had a very impressive-looking website. In meatspace, there seemed to be a few chapters of about twenty or so in a few university towns; the one in Birmingham, where the movement began, was sufficiently small that it met in a coffee shop. (But of course that was irrelevant in the brave new Internet world).
Ford Vox, by dint of pitbull-tenacious self-promotion, taking every AfD to DRV, etc., and by carefully and methodically and cleverly understanding Wikipedia policies and making the very best case possible within them, finally got the article to stick.
Then, some months later, there arose some complicated schism within the Universist ranks and Ford Vox fell out with the group (fell, or was pushed.)
So... he now wanted the article deleted. So, this time he argued with pitbull tenacity, carefully and methodically and with a clever understanding of Wikipedia policies, making the very best possible case for deletion... and got it deleted.