Talk:Robert Denno

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User:L'Aquatique speedily deleted this article as "blatant advertising" and possible autobiography, although the article was created six months after its subject's death (on his user talk page he explained that it doesn't need to be written by the subject to be an autobiography; I think that is an error, to say the least). I restored it and did some small adaptations moving it at least slightly closer to Wikipedia's usual conventions. Then user:Garion96 deleted it as a possible copyright violation because it was substantially identical to an obituary elsewhere on the web.

So I wrote a draft that adapts material to the norms and conventions of Wikipedia, omitting material that I could not adapt because it might have required expertise in a scientific field I am not acquainted with.

Then I restored the edit history. The effect of that restoration is:

• Giving proper credit to the person who put the article here initially;
• Making material available in the edit history to be suitably adapted to Wikipedia's conventions by those able to do so.

Probably no one knows how many articles by newbie Wikipedians get speedily deleted that could be saved in this way. It's newbie biting and it's wasteful of expertise and talent. It's a basic flaw in Wikipedia's speedy deletion practices, which are supposedly intended for deletion of, e.g. non-notable rock bands formed last week that rehearse in someone's garage, vanity pages for people who shouldn't be the subject of an encyclopedia article, etc. Michael Hardy (talk) 19:18, 13 September 2008 (UTC)