[WikiEN-l] an ED article (was Featured Editors?)

[Gwern Branwen]

On 2007.11.15 13:44:42 -0500, joshua.zelinsky at yale.edu scribbled 0 lines:
> Quoting Gwern Branwen <gwern0 at gmail.com>:
>
> > On 2007.11.15 16:43:27 +0000, Guy Chapman aka JzG
> > <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> scribbled 0 lines:
> >> On Thu, 15 Nov 2007 16:30:27 +0000, "James Farrar"
> >> <james.farrar at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> >> Having an article because they hate us is no better than not having
> >> >> one because they hate us.
> >> >
> >> >[[Daniel Brandt]], for instance...
> >> >
> >> >(OK, technically we don't have an article on him not because he hates
> >> >us, /per se/, but because after 14 AFDs reasonable people got bored
> >> >with the circus and threw in the towel.)
> >>
> >> Got good, non-trivial biographical sources about Brandt?  I know
> >> where to find deletion review.
> >>
> >> Brandt's article was deleted for lack of sources.
> >>
> >> Guy (JzG)
> >> --
> >
> > Just for those who weren't around for the Brandt articles: what Guy
> > is saying here is arrant nonsense. The Brandt article had dozens of
> > good sources stretching back decades. It was deleted out of a
> > combination of WP:IDONTLIKEIT and WP:NEVILLECHAMBERLAIN.
>
> To clarify - what actually happened was after repeated AfDs (13 of them) and
> Brandt repeated harassment, the current clause in BLP that allows for deletion
> for marginally notable people was added. A 14th AfD occurred. This AfD was
> closed with a "complex merge" attempting to preserve as much of the articles
> material as possible while respecting a possible privacy right for Brandt.
>
> Now my editorializing: It is clear that if Brandt were not Brandt it
> would have
> been almost certainly kept. As far as I can tell, there have been exactly two
> cases where the community has been willing to delete an article of a willing
> public figure; Daniel Brandt, and Seth Finkelstein. In both cases, there was
> not a clear consensus in the AfD, both had a DRV and the response in the DRVs
> in both cases was more or less "we're sick of this. enough". However,
> there was
> not a lack of sources.
>
> Now, as an aside can we please discuss this rationally without insulting each
> other and making Hitler comparisons?

The deletionists long ago showed that they'd already irrationally made up their minds, that no amount of sources would ever be sufficiently reliable, notable, or 'about' Brandt to count. Hence, they are in effect cloaking their IDONTLIKEIT arguments in rhetoric about RS and V and so on. You just saw an example of this by Guy in another email.

Many people have also said that Brandt was not worth the trouble of covering and that the article should just be deleted or that they should give in to those who wanted it deleted. Can you think of any better examples of appeasement than Neville Chamberlain?

--
gwern
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