QUOTE(Alkivar @ Sat 3rd March 2007, 3:28am)
For whatever its worth Mr. Brandt...
When this whole debate over your article started I was of the "screw him, lets keep it" camp. I dunno how or why... but I guess at some point the bulb over my head lit up.
this is a shameful disgrace, and I'm sorry.
It's worth a lot; thank you.
I just discovered that SlimVirgin is
resurrecting her efforts to get a new policy in place for marginal notables who don't want an article. She worked on this a bit starting at the end of December, but after a few weeks decided it wasn't taking off. This time, thanks to the situation with Essjay, as well as the debacle with AfD, there may be additional interest. Eloquence has made a comment, and I think that there's even a chance that Jimbo might be receptive this time around. It's becoming clearer, I hope, that Wikipedia's best bet for the future (and an option that is easy to implement) is to become much more considerate of the wishes of people with biographies. This doesn't mean that Wikipedia has to let them edit the article in ways that are unencyclopedic, but it means that the person should have veto power over whether there's an bio on him at all.
Another option would be to block all search engines and as many scrapers as you can catch from all of Wikipedia's pages. Now
that would also be very honorable, but it's not about to happen given the current state of the web, and the importance of Google for driving traffice to Wikipedia.
It's one or the other: veto power for subjects of bios, or keep the bots out. One is easy and the other will never happen.
The ironic thing is that Jimbo could bless this veto-power policy and save Wikipedia with a few well-chosen words. You might get a few whiners, but it would all be over in a day or two, and the policy would be in place.