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Continue with status quo. —Kurykh 04:44, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

The following discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Moved to DRV 4 as the third DRV on Brandt was at Misplaced Pages:Deletion review/Log/2007 December 9. Thatcher131 17:47, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
Peace dove with olive branch in its beakPlease stay calm and civil while commenting or presenting evidence, and do not make personal attacks. Be patient when approaching solutions to any issues. If consensus is not reached, other solutions exist to draw attention and ensure that more editors mediate or comment on the dispute.

Daniel Brandt

Daniel Brandt (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (restore|cache|AfD)

I'm not sure how many people realized what actually ended up happening in all of this. Despite claims that the edit history was preserved, and despite the restoration of the redirect, all that remains of the edit history of the article Daniel Brandt is a copy/paste of edit history (as in, view the edit history in a browser window, select that text, and then paste it). GFDL compliant, yes, but I don't recall the total deletion of the article to have been discussed, nor was it necessary.

AMIB said in his close of the final AfD "We will need to keep the article history at Daniel Brandt, because of GFDL concerns. Should Brandt need old revisions of Daniel Brandt oversighted, he can use OTRS or list the specific revisions on my talk page."

BLP policy does not support deleting a page that has non-violating revisions of it. Revisions that are problematic can removed, making a total-deletion grossly unnecessary, and against community consensus.

See also WP:AN#JoshuaZ and Daniel Brandt. This is very much gaming the system. -- Ned Scott 12:03, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

  • Comment from nominator: The rationale for this DRV is completely unrelated to the GFDL requirements. I agree that we appear to have met the basic requirements, because we are still attributing the authors. However, this is literally now an article that has been deleted, despite the lack of consensus to do so. The BLP argument was made, and editors in good standing on both sides, admins and non-admins alike, evaluated those arguments. There is nothing here that justifies deletion. Support for deletion did not succeed, but (while they believed they were acting in Misplaced Pages's best interest) some users made that deletion anyways. This has become a backdoor deletion, and most of us were mislead to believe that the history was specifically preserved during other DRVs, and were under this impression this whole time. -- Ned Scott 00:05, 19 December 2007 (UTC)


  • 1) If Daniel Brandt is now a redirect to Public Information Research, why does it need any history?
  • 2) I'll admit to not having a good understanding of the GFDL and its implications, but still, how many words of Public Information Research are really descended from Daniel Brandt anyway? And what are the relative risks to Misplaced Pages of being sued by Brandt versus being sued by User:HorsePunchKid or any of the other contributors?
  • 3) What is the point of deleting biographies if we are going to keep all the history so that everyone's diffs and links still work? The point of deleting an article is that we shouldn't have it (for whichever reason) so why the hell should links to it work? We might as well never delete any article since it probably breaks someone's link to it somewhere.
  • 4) The BLP policy now says that we will consider the requests of the subjects when they are of minor notability. If we really mean that policy, we should be prepared to follow it even when the subject titillates us, like in the case of Daniel Brandt or Angela Beesley. If we only delete bios upon request of people we aren't interested in, that's just a new way of expressing the notability standard, and we don't really mean what we say.
  • 5) Can't we just let this die once and for all?

Thatcher131 13:01, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Oh, and the argument that Brandt could ask for selected revisions to be oversighted just proves that the GFDL argument is completely bogus. Deleted revisions and oversighted revisions are all still kept in the database, but oversighted revisions are impossible to retrieve without a developer, while deleted revisions can be viewed and recovered by any of 1500+ admins. If removing edits by oversight does not create a GFDL objection, then how can deletion? Thatcher131 13:37, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
The idea about oversight is that if it's used, the revision would most probably not contain information that could be used in the article - it would be a useless revision so would not be a GFDL violation. Ryan Postlethwaite 13:39, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
  • I really don't understand what on earth JoshuaZ is playing at here. I deleted the redirect of Daniel Brandt to Public Information Research, and then due to Joshua's "concerns" about GFDL, instead of leaving the history deleted, I moved it to Talk:Public Information Research/merged material, and redirected that to Public Information Research. All was well. Then DRV unfortunately chose to overturn my deletion of the original redirect - fair enough. But why on earth did Joshua complicate matters by replacing the controversial history at the controversial redirect?? There's no possible GFDL justification for this? It simply looks like a pointless attempt to undo everything I did and simultaneously stick one in the eye to Brandt. I decided to leave this well alone when me deletion of the redirect was rejected by the community - why do others seem to want to fight on? I'm not going to "vote" here, cos frankly I've had enough.--Doc 13:40, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
I don't know why you accuse me of "playing". Indeed, you gave explicit permission to restore to the status quo where you said "I don't much care if I'm fully reverted here now" . In any event, GFDL isn't the only conern. I've discussed this before and will do so in more detail below. JoshuaZ (talk) 15:11, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Who filed a GFDL complaint against Doc's move? The history is still on that talk page, and unless there is some complaint, why oh why would we want to put the community through more of this same crap? Mahalo. --Ali'i 14:51, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
  • overturn/undelete I'm getting very tired of out-of-process deletions of material on the Brandt redirect. I undeleted with permission of both Doc (note above) and Xoloz who closed the DRV. There are a variety of different reasons to undelete. The zeroth level is that this isn't very good with for the GFDL- I agree that keeping the revisions deleted likely doesn't violate the GFDL but there is a definite spirit to the GFDL and this doesn't follow it. Now, as to the better reasons (which I mainly mentioned on AN, and elsewhere so I don't know why people keep focusing on the GFDL element). First, this deletion was out of process and there is no policy or community backing for simply deleting difs. Second, all material which Brandt claimed was potentially libelous have been oversighted. None of the restored difs contain any material that Brandt has objected to other than that he doesn't want an article. History is not an article. Third, deletion of this history breaks many difs and archival links in both Misplaced Pages and on other sites. If we claim to be proponents of transparency we should not do so lightly. Fourth, this deletion will not satisfy Brandt one iota. It should be apparent to everyone that Brandt is a troll with an agenda that stops nothing short of the destruction of Misplaced Pages (or at minimum the removal of any mention of his name from Misplaced Pages). Half measures simply embolden him further to try to damage the project more. Capitulation and attempted compromise is not the answer. Saying "No. That's enough" is. JoshuaZ (talk) 15:11, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
    • I'm really not interested in fighting a war with, for or against Brandt (he occasionally has some very astute points to make). As the GFDL concerns are bullshit (and the "spirit" of it certainly doesn't require us to wikilawyer over where the history is located) I really fail to see why you needed to poke a stick in here. Not doing pointless provocative things isn't "capitulation and compromise" - it's just being sensible: only trolls troll trolls. And I didn't give "permission" (that's not mine to give), I said didn't care if Xoloz decided there was a reason to move it back (I could see none), but I dislike it being done as part of some "resist Brandt" agenda.--Doc 15:45, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
      • I'm not particularly interested in as you put it "in fighting a war with, for or against Brandt". I don't have "resist Brandt agenda". I'd be very happy if he went away and did something other than bother us. Maybe run a gas station or a quickie-mart, or use his clearly prodigious investigative skills as a PI or almost anything else. But the fact is that he isn't doing that. And it doesn't take two sides to have a war, it takes one side (or in this case, one person) to decide that he wants to get his way and won't stop until he gets every single piece of it. And be under no illusions that he won't. As to the GFDL, there's a reason I labeled it zeroth, as I said, I agree that that isn't a very good argument. However, damage to transparency and capitulation to someone who isn't going to stop isn't helpful. Brandt isn't going to stop trying out people he dislikes, he isn't going to stop posting on hivemind and he isn't going to stop agitating until every single detail about him is wiped clean from Misplaced Pages. And he likely won't stop there. We don't need to fight a war with him for him to damage the project, he just needs to carry on his obsession. JoshuaZ (talk) 16:10, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
        • Obsession? Hm, look in the mirror.--Doc 16:13, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
          • Right, I have an obsession with writing an NPOV encyclopedia that has all the information an NPOV encylopedia should have. As I said, if Brandt goes away I'd be very happy. Snide remarks aren't really helpful anyways and ad hominem attacks have no bearing on the matter in question. (And if running a website outing Misplaced Pages admins and spending the amount of time he does trying to get things deleted from Misplaced Pages isn't an obsession I don't know what is). JoshuaZ (talk) 16:22, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
  • I agree completely with Doc on this. The GFDL concerns have taken care of, and our BLP policies are clear. Now can we please stop wasting time and effort over this obscure self-styled internet tough guy just because of a mutual vendetta? --krimpet✽ 15:50, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
    • Oh really, can you point to me what line in BLP justifies this? JoshuaZ (talk) 16:11, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
      • Using comments and edit summaries like "O RLY?" are borderline trolling - you should be upholding the decorum expected of an administrator here, JoshuaZ. Anyway, on the subject at hand, I note the current consensus at Misplaced Pages:BLP#BLP deletion standards which clearly addresses cases like this, as well as the Badlydrawnjeff decision stating that restoration of BLPs must be done with utmost care. krimpet✽ 16:25, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
        • Thanks for making more irrelevant comments attacking my edit summaries rather than the arguments. Using an edit summary that asks whether someone is really true seems perfectly reasonable to me. I've seen far more uncivil and snarky edit summaries. And again, that's completely utterly irrelevant to the matter at hand. I could have used an edit summary filled with profanity or commenting on Jimbo Wales' parentage or hummed a little song and it wouldn't have any bearing on the validity of the argument whatsoever. Now to address the more substantive part of your remark, point to me the sentence in the BLP section that backs up your argument. I don't see it. And your claim regarding the Badlydrawnjeff decision is simply irrelevant, I agree we should excercise care, when I undeleted I did so with Doc (the original deleter's) ok. Saying we should approach these things carefully is something we all agree on. It is not an argument for keeping something deleted by itself. JoshuaZ (talk) 16:34, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
  • There is no GFDL problem. We keep every previous revision to facilitate tracking and possibly reversing edits over time, not because the GFDL requires us to. If it's going to be undeleted there needs to be an editorial reason for doing so. I'm not convinced one has been provided. Chick Bowen 16:20, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
    • Actually no. We keep the edit history of merged articles because the editors own the rights to their particular contributions. So if User:Foo adds "Goo is a noo" to the Goo article, by the attribution requirement we have to preserve a link to User:Foo's edit. The copy-and-paste job above is certainly not sufficient. We can still delete and redirect of course, in which case we can delete the edit history of the D****l B****t article and add content to the PIR article from scratch. ~ trialsanderrors (talk) 16:36, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
      • Not quite - the GFDL requires derived works to preserve the "History" section, but not the actual content of any previous versions. Keep in mind it was originally intended for free-content books and manuals - it would be completely impractical if all previous revisions had to be included. Section 4 of the GFDL has more details. --krimpet✽ 16:42, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
        • Part J is what I'm referring to. It's not necessary to provide the actual content of the revisions, but the locations of the previous versions. Which is what the clickable edit history does. ~ trialsanderrors (talk) 17:01, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
          • That's true. I think it's satisfactory though that any administrator can provide a copy of a deleted revision upon request, as long as the location where one can make this request is made clear - moving GFDL images to Commons is in much the same boat. --krimpet✽ 17:15, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
          • Moving images to Commons isn't really the same situation, as it's not a modification of the prior version, just a change of the location of the original document. But that's very much an academic discussion. The point of Sections I and J is to make sure any reader can identify the modifications from one version to the next. If that's possible, it's GFDL compliant. ~ trialsanderrors (talk) 22:07, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment Rough consensus has been that if an organization is notable, its founder is. If there's a special rule for this guy, no one has made me aware of it. If after this debate, we determine that notable organizations' founders aren't notable, there's lots of cleaning up. A7 bait everywhere and perhaps not the worst result. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 18:14, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
    • That's an argument to have an article on Brandt himself which we likely won't have for the foreseeable future. See previous DRVs and AfDs. This DRV is focusing on the history, not whether to have an article on Brandt. JoshuaZ (talk) 18:41, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
  • This is why the "merge" close of the AFD was a bad idea. Regardless, Keep Deleted and get off the merry-go-round. We don't need endless arguments over articles about borderline notable individuals who don't want an article anyway, nor do we need to keep dredging this up perennially. It meets GFDL. That should be sufficient.--Isotope23 19:18, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Let's keep it deleted. Yes, I know this hands a bunch of sociopaths, and one in particular, something of a victory in their own disturbed heads. But there's nothing that can be done to please them and they will happily argue for both sides in any dispute. I love drama in the way any once aspiring actor does. But this is just boring. And, to ignore the sociopaths, there's no reason to keep the history and no reason get all finger-waggy lawyery (they're words) about these things. Ultimately, this is a storm-teacup interface situation. ➔ REDVEЯS likes kittens... and you 20:39, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
  • (To Redvers) Users who wish to endorse because they do not wish to deal with the issue should simply not participate in the discussion. No one is forcing anyone to talk about it, and there are those who rightfully believe that this needs to be addressed. -- Ned Scott 00:19, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Users who wish to endorse because they do not wish to deal with the issue... - doesn't apply to me and that's not what I've been arguing. ...should simply not participate in the discussion... is very poor reasoning as it precludes discussion in most cases. ...those who rightfully believe that this needs to be addressed. - I'm one of them; it must be addressed. And the best way of addressing it is to keep it deleted. ➔ REDVEЯS is wearing a pointy red hat 09:24, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Over turn and list in the first place per Josh and Ned. Non-speedy deletions require community input, regardless of GFPL concerns being met by this "textification." This is completely out of process; we already have the technology to WP:OVERsight any individual edits with WP:BLP problems. Allowing this to stand would suggest any administrator can delete and "textify" any merged article's history -- or perhaps any article's history -- at a whim, which is a complete novelty. -- Kendrick7 22:18, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Good grief, keep deleted. The previous DRV had absolutely no bearing on what to do with the history; it shouldn't have been restored without consensus. The current situation satisfies any GFDL concerns as the history is preserved somewhere. The history does not have to be at Daniel Brandt if the content of that page is a redirect. If there is a situation where the history needs to be consulted, it can be undeleted on demand, then redeleted later, although hopefully preserving it elsewhere will negate the need to flood the deletion log with such deletions/restorations. I just can't believe we're here again - why can't we just let this go? It shouldn't be a matter of whether Brandt "wins" or not, it's not a competition or war. --Coredesat 22:39, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
  • The deletion of the content was what should have not happened in the first place, and violates the previous discussions had on the article, and what we were lead to believe (that the edit history was preserved). -- Ned Scott 00:13, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment Additionally, I believe many of us at the redirect-DRV believed that we were supporting the restoration of the redirect with it's history. This is evident in several user statements. There was also no deadline on when content was to be merged, preventing other valid, non BLP violating content, to be merged into a relevant article. And if anyone wants to pass blame for us continuing this issue, blame the admins who made the inappropriate deletions, not those seeking to correct the situation. -- Ned Scott 00:13, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
  • wtf? Consensus is pretty much established here: we don't have an article on Brandt because we have to scratch around for sources and the presence of any kind of content at all about him drives him to acts of batshit insanity. Why would we want to open that can of worms again? Guy (Help!) 00:15, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Because it's what the community decided, or I should say, was generally agreed to be acceptable. The deletion of the history was never discussed, or was the result of any DRV or AfD. This certainly was not consensus for this. This is what they call gaming the system. -- Ned Scott 00:23, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Guy, please see the earlier DRVs and the final AfD. Consensus was that Brandt was notable. No claim that we need to "scratch around for sources" was established and indeed we have many sources. That wasn't the reason for the earlier "complex merge" although yes, Brandt's tendencies to go batshit insane were relevant. However, as I've explained before, Brandt will act batshit insane to us regardless and indeed will likely act more batshit insane if he thinks it can get yet more concessions from us. Appeasement really doesn't work well. JoshuaZ (talk) 02:08, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Restore as redirect, (possibly restore history under that redirect), list at WP:RFD. Alright, first things first - why not have a redirect here? This specific issue has not been discussed very well, and I don't see why we shouldn't maintain a redirect to Public Information Research. This redirect was apparently deleted for "privacy reasons" - I can only assume this was due to the history of the article. However, there's no good reason to delete the redirect. List it at WP:RFD, or just keep it, since I personally doubt any consensus would form to get rid of it. Second, what about the history? Is there really anything private in here? What revisions contain apparently "private" information? --- RockMFR 01:28, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
    Huh? The staying per the previous DRV. That isn't the issue here. JoshuaZ (talk) 02:08, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
    Oh. Hmm. Didn't even see the other one. Hard to keep track of these things.... this would be the 16th discussion on this, I think. --- RockMFR 02:17, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
  • I am finding it difficult to work out what is going on here. However if the article was deleted citing BLP reasons, then the history should definitely remain deleted, the subpage with the history list satisfies any copyright issues. If it wasnt deleted citing BLP, then there is still no reason to keep the history under the redirect as, once again, the subpage satisfies any copyright issues. So Keep history deleted because there is no reason not to - also per krimpets rationale. Viridae 01:59, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
  • That's not what was agreed upon, and that's not what people were told was going to happen. The community never agreed to this, nor was it the result of BLP or any of the deletion discussions. Being manipulative as a means to an end is simply not acceptable. -- Ned Scott 02:04, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Viridae, The issue isn't that complicated and it might be helpful if you actually commented on matters where you didn't find "difficult to work out what was going on". No one is claiming that there was any new BLP issue at all. Nor is anyone claiming that there was any process to or consensus to justify this deletion. JoshuaZ (talk) 02:08, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
My response does not really rely on what came before, but largely stands up on its own as a reason for the history to be deleted and remain that way. So, given that the article has been deleted, why do you feel we need the history to remain under the redirect? Viridae 05:12, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Leave history deleted (when I moved it to the other location I mistakenly thought it was needed for gfdl, I now see I was wrong).--Doc 09:13, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
  • How does this support the deletion? This is not a vote, nor is this AfD. Doc glasgow, of all people, should know that. An argument was made to delete this content, and that argument failed to gain a consensus. Your judgement in this situation missed the mark in the redirect deletion, and I think the same can be said for your judgement about the history. -- Ned Scott 01:46, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Out of process and BLP don't belong in the same breath. The former is an internal concept (much abused), the latter has a direct bearing on the well-being of a living person. We don't have, need, or especially want an article on Brandt; I agree with those who argue he's marginally notable (at best), and if a marginally notable subject doesn't want the attention Misplaced Pages brings I can't fault him. So, endorse the deletion of the history under WP:BLP. Can we be done with this? Mackensen (talk) 03:51, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
  • A multitude of problems with your above comment. I won't for now address how the notion that process has no bearing on BLP issues does nothing other than turn admins who are supposed to be simple janitors into something much more. Nor will I discuss in detail why it doesn't make sense to conflate all BLP issues into the same category, not distinguishing negative unsourced content from good content that people don't like. For that issue, I'll simply point to my collection of thoughts on the matter. And there's a good reason why I'm not going to discuss those issues in detail; they don't even get to matter in this case. First, the last AfD didn't establish anything remotely resembling a consensus that he was "marginally notable". Quite the opposite was what occurred the "complex merge" was an attempt to end a never-ending series of discussions which was then primarily endorsed because people were sick of the matter). The real kicker is that even if you believe that he is "marginally notable" (never minding how many sources we have about Brandt and never mind that there are even more reliable sources focusing on him than there were at that point), there's nothing in BLP which accounts for deletion of histories like this. It doesn't exist anywhere in the text. I asked earlier for someone to point out a line in BLP that justified this, and they still haven't done so (other than pointing to a nice little section). So you can't claim that BLP somehow justifies this when nothing in BLP talks about history deletions. And this is of course before we even get to the fact that the last DRV seemed to show a consensus to keep these revisions and moreover that this breaks a carefully constructed compromise. (And incidentally, Daniel Brandt "doesn't want the attention Misplaced Pages brings"- he just gave another interview about Scroogle last week. What he really doesn't want is a genuinely NPOV article about him that he can't control). JoshuaZ (talk) 04:08, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
  • The article is deleted. A redirect with a full history is not a deleted article, and we're playing silly semantic games to argue otherwise. I don't care what Brandt does in his spare time; we lack the sources to construct a proper biography. This is true for many people, he's one of the few who has bothered to write in. Perhaps many don't care. In any event, this has little bearing on the subject at hand. I endorse Doc's views on the matter (specifically, his interpretation), and note that all outstanding GFDL issues have been satisfied. Let's move on. Mackensen (talk) 04:26, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
  • This is not a BLP deletion. BLP was claimed to be the reason the redirect was removed, which is the only reason the history was moved from that. We already addressed this in the redirect DRV, as well as the last AfD. Yet sill, the same people who we've shown to have acted poorly, are deleting this article. -- Ned Scott 05:13, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Can we just be done with this? I haven't spoken up on these affairs in the past, that I can recall. I think we've gone well past the point where continued dickering about this one article the vast majority of people have no idea exists or ever existed is doing us any good. It's been a source of an absolutely ridiculous amount of drama for as long as I can remember. What is the point? The horse is dead. The horse died a long time ago. Stop beating the horse. Just move on. – Luna Santin (talk) 04:13, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
  • It's unacceptable to get your way by badgering people till they're tired of dealing with the situation. As far as I'm concerned, we made this decision three times already, and we should not need a DRV to restore the history. -- Ned Scott 05:09, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page, such as the current discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.