On 11/13/07, Durova nadezhda.durova@gmail.com wrote:
The only exception I recognize in that realm is WP:BLP: within reason, Wikipedia should accommodate courtesy deletion requests from the subjects of these articles.
That's a really interesting point-- one that I'm sure has probably been debated. For my part, I'd argue that the subject of an article is probably one of the least qualified people to properly assess their own notability (or lack thereof). The subject could, in my eyes, legitimately request their notability be reviewed by neutral editors, but I don't really see how their opinion itself could really have much weight.
That was the principle I used to get rid of Daniel Brandt's biography. Of course, if your argument is persuasive enough, you may change my mind and I could open a discussion to have it unsalted.
If somebody's notable, I'd encourage NOT deleting their article, even if they request deletion. If somebody's not notable, I'd encourage deleting their article, even if they request undeletion. I have no idea which category Brandt falls into though.
The other thing I'd say, in the abstract, would be that I'd hope whoever did the deletion of a controversial figure would be someone fairly removed from the situation. With somebody with strongly anti-Wikipedia views, there may not be any editor who's completely unbiased-- but obviously, some editors are less biased than others.
I say that only the abstract though-- I don't know the details of Brandt's biography deletion, and i have no reason to doubt it was handled well.
Alec