QUOTE(Somey @ Thu 1st March 2007, 5:47am)
As I've often done, I just want to redundantly reiterate here once again that the only way the internal WP squabbling over this will ever stop is if the article goes away completely. Regardless of what anyone here says about it, there will always be sound moral justification for getting rid of this article, and little or no sound moral justification whatsoever for keeping it. To a large extent, this debate isn't ultimately about "content" or "notability" at all, or even about bad publicity or excessive internal squabbling. It's about morality, and the people voting to delete are the ones who are guided by their sense of morality - at least to a greater extent than the people who are voting otherwise. And sure, Daniel Brandt may be a mean ol' rotten SOB, but so are a lot of folks - and in my experience at least, they usually get that way because other people just won't let them get on with their lives in peace.
If you read the rest of what I wrote, you'll realise that really the majority of people who actually expressed an opinion about the article were in favour of deleting it. Hardly anyone thought the article should be kept; the rest wanted the deletion overturned because it was "out of process". I hate the bureaucracy as much as the next man but there was no way to ignore them without starting another giant shitfight. This time there is a mandate for a full debate (which won't be speedily closed) and I think the consensus is moving towards deleting the article.
QUOTE(Daniel Brandt @ Thu 1st March 2007, 7:14am)
The thing that strikes me about this DRV, as well as the one or two AfD debates on my bio that allowed some responses instead of getting summarily aborted, is that most of those who vote on the inclusionist side are Wikipedians I've never heard of. They come out of the woodwork just for me, and know nothing about me or the history behind my bio. It's a video game, and those who happen to jerk the joystick in the right direction at the right time see that there's this Big Thing going on, and waltz right in. It's not like they have any of their own interests at stake, apart from their little joysticks driven by their little brains.
That's a fair assessment. Few of the "regulars" still want to keep the article. Also note that the vast majority of those in favour of keeping the article deleted were long-term users or admins.
QUOTE(Daniel Brandt @ Thu 1st March 2007, 7:14am)
I predict that the upcoming AfD will be about 50/50, and the person closing it won't have the guts to delete on that basis. That's because there's a myth about "consensus" in Wikipedia, and "consensus" seems to be around 70 or 80 percent.
I plan to close it. I seem to do fairly well at closing otherwise controversial debates and making the result stick. I deleted Gregory Lauder-Frost's article, for example, when the debate was split 50/50 on the numbers, and when there had been dozens of previous conversations that didn't get anywhere.