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Saturday, October 29, 2005

Wikipedia’s Entry on Daniel Brandt

Daniel Brandt, self-proclaimed Google watcher of Google-Watch.org, says he didn’t like that Wikipedia had an entry on him – so he asked Jimmy Wales for deletion in an open letter (published on his Wikipedia Watch site) after he was unable to edit it to his likings:

“I ask that this page be permanently deleted. It was started as a stub by SlimVirgin on September 28 [2005], apparently acting as an authorized agent of Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. This anonymous person started the stub without my knowledge, and cited sources for information on me without vetting these sources.

She and I went back and forth on this piece for several days, and she reverted me more than once. In the end, I remained unsatisfied with my ability to influence this article about me, particularly with respect to the sources cited. At this point I renewed my original request to have the entire thing deleted.”

I wasn’t successful in contacting SlimVirgin so far, but I’m still trying. In the meantime, I created a new entry for Daniel Brandt. It has since been removed again (Daniel edited the page only hours later, before it was removed by an editor nicknamed Willmcw) even though I tried my best to remain objective. Here’s the full copy:

“Daniel Brandt is the author of Google Watch, a well-known Google criticism site at Google-Watch.org. His topics focus on Google privacy issues, Google censorship, Googlebombs, and Google spam (spam pages displaying Google AdSense ads, found via search engines). While his criticism is often harsh in style and some think Daniel’s content is close to conspiracy theories, the articles also often focus on issues worth of discussion.

[Edit: The article contained two more paragraphs, though I removed this on request from Daniel now that Wikipedia removed the bio page too.]

What do you think; does Daniel have the right to have the entry on him permanently deleted? Do the Wikipedia editors need to oblige to deletion requests of this sort?

Update: The article has been restored.

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