Wikipeda recently featured a discussion about whether the article about me should be deleted:
Caplan is an associate professor, who wrote a few articles, and has a number of opinions. He certainly isn’t notable.
It seems to me that the fact that someone would bother to try to delete me is notable per se.
Anyway, I made the cut.
Mar 20 2006
Will Wilkinson writes, I believe that the state’s grant of monopoly privelege to certain official certifying agencies has a lot do do with the high cost of health care. Besides creating artificial scarcity (and therefore huge rents for M.D.s), the certification cartel violates our natural liberty to cooperate. The m...
Mar 20 2006
Andrew Samwick quotes a New York Times story on how Congress is "improving" the private pension system. Someone must pay for this. Currently, the pension agency finances itself in part through the insurance premiums that companies are required to pay into the system. Raising the premiums to support pilots or help oth...
Mar 20 2006
Wikipeda recently featured a discussion about whether the article about me should be deleted: Caplan is an associate professor, who wrote a few articles, and has a number of opinions. He certainly isn't notable. It seems to me that the fact that someone would bother to try to delete me is notable per se. Anyway, I...
READER COMMENTS
Gabriel Mihalache
Mar 20 2006 at 6:58pm
Who wrote it?
Won’t the contributors mind?
Scott Scheule
Mar 20 2006 at 8:23pm
Mazel tov.
Eric
Mar 20 2006 at 8:44pm
Follow the links provided by Bryan — the user who recommended that Bryan be deleted is director of the “Jesus Christ Saves Ministries”. Hilarious.
Collin Imhof
Mar 20 2006 at 10:29pm
Come on, cut the guy a little slack. He is a licensed soccer coach after all.
mthomas
Mar 21 2006 at 10:27am
I wonder what set him off. That is really funny stuff (irony mostly), thanks for sharing. It is interesting to see how the community handles this within a structure of spontaneous order. Mr. Gastrich seems to be the only champion of enforcable rules (however malevolent his intentions are).
Zac
Mar 21 2006 at 2:32pm
I wrote the bulk of this wikipedia article (although I didn’t create it). At several points the page has been vandalized, but wasn’t nominated for deletion until I listed the article under Category: Atheists. As you can see, many parties not particularly interested in Bryan showed up to vote “Keep,” as the nomination was made in bad faith by a religious nut trying to reduce the atheist presence on wikipedia. Its an interesting community…
Of course, the fact that someone sought to delete Bryan in no way makes him particularly notable, as there are several “deletionist” wikipedians who spend considerable time scouring wikipedia for non-notable or unencyclopedic articles and nominating them for deletion (AfD). The decision to keep, in this case, was because the nomination was made in bad faith – but were a good faith nomination made, I’m confident the article would stand up, as Bryan has major publications, a strong internet presence, and impressive returns from google / google scholar (all benchmarks for academic notability on wikipedia). Even the left-anarchists who have spent so much time berating him would not support deletion on the basis of non-notability…
David Youngberg
Mar 22 2006 at 10:12am
Oh wow that guy from the Christian organization has the creepiest smile I’ve ever seen.
tom
Mar 22 2006 at 8:38pm
Now that’s almost funny. To look at all of the work Professor Caplan has done in various topics and say he’s “not notable?”
I’ve seen some articles on Wikipedia for stuff that is not only not notable but not even worth debating about being notable. Professor Caplan is definitely notable compared to some of the trash on wikipedia.
But I guess, as was mentioned, the guy who nominated professor Caplan was what I would classify a religious nut.
In any event, I’m glad you made the cut, Dr. Caplan.
Matthew
Mar 24 2006 at 2:58pm
Some list–no Romers, DeLong, Stetser, Roubini, Sala-i-Martin, Weingast, Dixit, Kreps, Varian, Hume, Blanchard, Hall, etc., etc.
Even so, congratulations Bryan.
Jim Bim
Mar 25 2006 at 9:40pm
So if I edited the article for some notable person, say the president of the United States, and said, he has received many letters from Jim Bim with policy recomendations, and he has failed to act on any of this advice, and then someone tried to remove my edit, that would mean I was a notable person myself? Because if that was an “unworthy” mention and I didn’t really belong in this article, no one should bother cleaning it up?
Comments are closed.