Mark Ryan wrote:
Administrator Yanksox has deleted Daniel Brandt's article with the following summary: "privacy concerns, more trouble than it is actually worth. Are you people even human?"
Yanksox then proceeded to delete his or her user page with the summary "My, My. Hey, Hey / Won't you let me burnout or fadeaway?"
Cool Cat has started a Deletion Review on this, at the following URL:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2007_February_23#...
Consensus there appears to be to endorse the deletion.
I thought it would be important to mention this on the mailing list, considering the number of people who have participated in debates over the existence of the Daniel Brandt article over the years.
~Mark Ryan
I'm caught in a bit of a paradox...I didn't know who Daniel Brandt was until I went to the article history, which might suggest that having an entry on him is useful. Of course, the only reason his name even came to my attention was the debate about the article's deletion... :)
It seems like he may be a marginally notable character, and if indeed there is precedent for respecting deletion requests for marginally notable characters, then it's probably best to keep it deleted.
However, it must have been pretty predictable that a speedy delete would cause controversy, and accusations of abuse of admin powers. If we do have such a practice of removing marginally notable characters at their request, shouldn't we codify that somehow, so as to avoid (or at least reduce) the controversy?
-Rich Holton