Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Daniel Brandt

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[edit] Daniel Brandt

This article has become quite stable over the past couple of weeks and I believe has become quite neutral. It is well written, compelling, and well referenced. I've done minor editing on it, so it's not exactly a self-nom. Many Wikipedians have contributed to this article. -- Malber (talk • contribs) 20:35, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

• I'm not sure if it should be promoted (I'm looking over it), but if it is, it should not appear on the main page (it would be too inflamatory and would look improper). BrokenSegue 20:36, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
• Instead of featuring it, I think it would be smarter if Wikipedia deleted it. --Daniel Brandt 68.91.252.244 21:32, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
  • I've heard all about your privacy concerns. As legitimate as your concerns are, what is it in particular that you dislike? —THIS IS MESSEDOCKER (TALK) 01:21, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
  • The 68.91.252.0/23 IP range is an SBC San Francisco Bay Area pool. I doubt that 68.91.252.244 was Daniel Brandt, but I think I know who it really was. — May. 12, '06 [05:52] <freakofnur_xture|talk>
    • Freakofnurture has no idea what he is talking about. Every single one of the 256 addresses in the 68.91.252.* Class C block reverse-resolves from its in-addr.arpa listing to *.dsl.snantx.swbell.net. I hope Wikipedia doesn't let admins like him go around blocking people. -- Daniel Brandt 66.142.89.253 18:24, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
• Weak support. Arguments in favour: very well referenced and seems reasonably complete. Arguments against: the prose seems somehow a little dry, though perhaps that's due to the subject matter. It seems perhaps slightly short. The images could use captions. Quotes should (almost) never be italicized, and blockquotes do not have quotation marks. Doesn't seem to be that stable. Exploding Boy 00:14, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose. I agree this is closely sourced and NPOV, but I would like to see more diversity in featured biographies of living people. So far in 2006, it's been Marilyn Manson, Katie Holmes, W. Mark Felt, Thomas Pynchon, Diane Keaton, Gerald Ford, as well as Pink Floyd and The Jackson 5. All are excellent but seem a little U.S.-centric. All are from politics or the arts. Maybe a scientist or athlete or religious leader, preferably from outside North America? (added in response to comment below) No photo of subject, no birthdate confirmation, and any stability has been due to a lot of protections this year. I don't believe the "privacy activist" issue has been addressed appropriately, and I feel that the interest in featuring this is part of an ongoing dispute with the subject, who has objected to the article as an "invasion of privacy." While notable, I don't even think Brandt is among the most notable or interesting conspiracy theorists. The article does not really discuss his place in that subculture (as a catalyst for computerizing card catalog databases created by individual conspiracy buffs). Jokestress 00:15, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

• Comment: while I agree that we need more non-US bios as featured articles, that's not a good reason to oppose the feature-worthy US ones. Exploding Boy 00:35, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
• Comment: Hi Jokestress. I'd like to point out that Pink Floyd are British! ;-) Notability isn't a FA criteria. Do you have any objections that are actionable? -- Malber (talk • contribs) 02:31, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

• Comment: Ya, I know about Pink Floyd; I was listing all living people featured this year. I bolded my actionable objections above.

• Comment: When all these celebrities will be FA, then people will begin working on dead celebrities and on older people. It's the way I see it. 132.204.207.108 13:38, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

• Object lol, not a chance, this article is way too unstable for a FA 172.164.13.197 00:39, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
• "Well written", "well referenced"…are you talking about the same article that is linked? It cites a blog, a random website, a slashdot post, and a forum post. These are clearly not reliable sources that certainly should not be used to cite criticism (unless we are going to throw WP:BLP out). The sections about wikipedia are filled with either unsourced material or original research (e.g. "(It should be noted that most content is added by editors, not administrators. Wikipedia administrators are not especially responsible for article content, they are users trusted to have power to block others, manage bans, enforce rulings, and the like)"). It also certainly isn't stable as the spat over the image is a content dispute, not vandalism. Kotepho 01:04, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
• Strong oppose! There is no way this article is stable. It's a very frequent vandal target, and it's much too dangerous to try to present it on the list of featured articles (legality-wise). User:Zoe|^(talk) 02:27, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
• Object. There are several major issues which need to be addressed concerning this article.
  • The article is unstable, both currently and in the past:
    • The edit history hints at edit wars between POV forces
    • There appears to be a great deal of vandalism evident in the article's edit history.
    • The edit history of the article itself, and its FAC nomination here seem to attract sock puppets.
  • The article does not seem to be comprehensive, it doesn't even have his real birthday. There is absolutely no information regarding his life outside of his activism, and the activism sections themselves seem short.
  • The quality of writing in the article is not top notch. There are numerous one-sentence paragraphs and a bunch of awkward phrasings thorughout the article.
  • Although not a requirement, there should be a picture.

It will be difficult to achieve stability, as this is clearly a controversial topic, but before we even get to issues of sock puppetry, vandalism, and edit wars, the prose needs to be cleaned up and made more comprehensive. RyanGerbil10 02:28, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

• Abstain The person who it's about doesn't want it here. I'd object on this reason, however I am very curious what would happen if it does become featured so I'd support. Both cancel out and so I abstain. DyslexicEditor 05:45, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Neither of those points are good reasons to object or support. I'm glad you did neither. BrokenSegue 02:08, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
• I think it would be nice if Brandt could be brought around and offer some constructive suggestions for the article. That may be a crazy thing to hope for, given his opposition, but I'd really worry about the stability issue with the current situation. Everyking 10:48, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Last time he did that he mentioned that we failed to cover his past history of activism. As a result we covered the subject, and the coverage includes mention of him burning his draft card. This has become one of his primary issues with the article... not that it's factually incorrect, but that it is a skeleton that he'd rather be buried. Seems like a no win situation because his relationship with Wikipedia has become so adversarial. --Gmaxwell 20:29, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
• Comment from banned user Zordrac removed
  • Yeah, I just took it for granted that the nom was made for that reason. Everyking 04:01, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
• Object agree with RyanGerbl10, it also seems POV too me. Rlevse 00:13, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
• Strong oppose This guy does not want his bio on wikipedia - its existence has been a sore point between us and him. Whilst that is not grounds to delete the article, it would rather make featuring it look like we were deliberately trolling him. Not the image we want. --Doc ^ask? 18:29, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment I'm not 100% sure I buy this as an argument: promoting the article to featured says 'we think this is a good article' not 'Hah! Suck on this, Brandt'. Surely? --Nick Boalch 18:44, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
• Object Needs a photo. Also, it is not wise to try and bait Brandt into filing legal action. Ashibaka tock 23:18, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
• Strong oppose. Absolutely not. Why?
  • It exemplifies our very best work. False. I would not consider this article an example of our best work; I wouldn't even consider it to be "decent". It's an okay article but there is nothing there that particularly intrigues me. Featured articles are supposed to be good enough to put up on a mounted display. I would not want this article hanging up somewhere.
  • It is well written, comprehensive, factually accurate, neutral, and stable. Not really, false, uncertain, mostly true and absolutely false. The article is dry and boring. It is also by no means comprehensive. It doesn't go into detail his student activism at USC. It only briefly mentions Public Information Research, which a fair amount of higher educational institutes have used in the past. As far as being factually accurate.. unless you can convince Mr. Brandt to tell you about himself, I can't verify the factuality of the article. It is for the most part neutral (thankfully) after having a time of being rather biased. Stable? Good God no. The article itself has been the thing of controversy. No, I wouldn't consider it stable, especially while Mr. Brandt is threatening litigation.
  • It has images where appropriate, with succinct captions and acceptable copyright status; however, including images is not a prerequisite for a featured article. Two things. First, it's a biography. Biographies really need some type of image to them, and I'll be very surprised if anyone was able to put a picture of Daniel up there. He has stated to me that he hasn't posted anything to the Internet, so good luck trying to find him. Besides, even if you *were* able to find a picture of him, he would go ape (as if he isn't already). We don't need that type of headache.
  • It is of appropriate length, staying tightly focused on the main topic without going into unnecessary detail; it uses summary style to cover sub-topics that are treated in greater detail in any 'daughter' articles. This is up to interpretation, but I don't think this article qualifies. It mentions Public Information Research once.
• I apologize if I sound snippy or pushy. However, compare this article to a featured biography such as Henry Moore, Norman Borlaug, or George Fox. This article is a little breadcrumb compared to those. Linuxbeak (drop me a line) 18:05, 16 May 2006 (UTC)