Brandt's article deleted, undeleted, stubbed, ad infinitum..., The BLP war era continues Options

[Alex]

So it's gone now. Deleted by Yanksox, speedily endorsed by our friend Gaillimh. Three cheers all round? (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/cool.gif)

[LamontStormstar]

Brandt's notable for mainly that Seigler(sp?) thing where Brandt found the guy's info.

[a view from the hive]

Brandt's notable for mainly that Seigler(sp?) thing where Brandt found the guy's info.

I guess your definition of "notable" is something other than mine. I don't consider that notable at all.

[thebainer]

Brandt's notable for mainly that Seigler(sp?) thing where Brandt found the guy's info.

I guess your definition of "notable" is something other than mine. I don't consider that notable at all.

There's a few things about Brandt that could be considered notable:

• was a draft resister who appealed his conviction and won;
• created NameBase;
• started Google Watch;
• exposed Brian Chase in the Seigenthaler controversy.

Note that I have no idea how rare the first thing actually is, I have no idea how many draft resisters were able to successfully appeal their convictions. Can anyone inform me?

Now, I'm a mergist; that is, I think that "while much information may warrant inclusion somewhere, very little of it probably warrants its own article." The main reason I hold this view is that one of the biggest problems with Wikipedia is the large number of short pages with little context. Many of them could be merged together, with no other changes, and become quite good articles because there would simply be more context to help understand the information.

You'll note that much of the stuff that could potentially be notable about Brandt is not really about him at all, but about something else: about conscription, about Google Watch, about the Seigenthaler controversy. So really, it should be entirely feasible to move all of the Google Watch information into Google Watch, move all of the Seigenthaler material into John Seigenthaler Sr. Wikipedia biography controversy and so on. The rest is mostly self-referential and can be discarded.

Now I don't care enough about Brandt to have followed the whole saga around the article, but can recall if a serious merge proposal has been put forward before?

[Somey]

I dunno, Stephen... There seems to be almost no point in discussing Wikipedia's notability standards (or whatever they're called) on an "external" forum like this. From an outside perspective, those standards are basically a joke. And it's not just me - there's a discussion about this on WikiEN-L going on right now, along with several articles on the subject in the press, etc...

Essentially, you've got exhaustively detailed articles about multiple Japanese anime artists and Silicon Valley video game designers and various people in various social movements whom I've never heard of, indeed whom hardly anyone outside of their immediate circles and fanbases have heard of. Meanwhile, I own three fine CD's by a now-defunct shoegazer band called An April March. I love this band, can't say enough good things about 'em. But there's no article on WP for them - I guess they're not "notable" enough, which I can certainly understand (they're hardly famous), but I can hardly condone it.

I just think WP'ers have got to get off their high horses, start thinking about these things in terms of real human and social impact, and stop acting like it's their God-given right to invade the privacy of whoever they please with amateur-written crap that anyone can vandalize at will, with only the flimsiest assurances imaginable that something will be done about it before those vandalizations get picked up by all the major search engines. Not to mention the fact that their actions (and inactions) represent a substantial risk to the entire concept of anonymous free speech on the internet, in general.

Nevertheless...

Note that I have no idea how rare the first thing actually is, I have no idea how many draft resisters were able to successfully appeal their convictions. Can anyone inform me?

As the WP article states, one of the first things Jimmy Carter did upon being inaugurated in 1977 was to sign an order providing amnesty to pretty much all Vietnam-era draft evaders, so if you include that, then pretty much all such convictions were overturned en masse. Assuming the rest of it is correct and Brandt's appeal was based on an argument that he should have been given a student deferment, that wasn't the least bit unusual either, prior to 1977. Nor was it unusual to see successful appeals based on various physical or mental ailments, family obligations, or war casualties already suffered by the same family (a la Saving Private Ryan).

So, after that you have Namebase and Google Watch (not to mention Wikipedia Watch) - both of which are interesting, if not "notable," websites - but as you've stated, the notability of the sites doesn't imply notability of the sites' creator. Particularly if that person hasn't shown a propensity for seeking personal publicity, either from the sites themselves or from the media in general.

Now I don't care enough about Brandt to have followed the whole saga around the article, but can recall if a serious merge proposal has been put forward before?

Yes, by Brandt himself. Perhaps that's rather suggestive...? (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/dry.gif)