Myths about Fan History's deletion policies I don't handle deletion requests anymore. (1) I do listen to our admins who deal with them. A couple of issues have come up. People have been contacting Fan History with misinformation regarding deletion requests. (2) So this post is designed to clear that up.
Fan History won't honor deletion requests posted!This is false. Fan History DOES honor deletion requests... so long as
they are properly submitted. If you don't follow this procedure, then the article won't be deleted. This happens more regularly than people might think because people will just send an e-mail to delete@fanhistory.com . They don't post an ADR and don't answer e-mails we send them following up with their request. If they don't follow the procedure, the article won't be deleted. (3) This is pretty much how it is on most of the Internet: To get what you want, you need to follow the rules. If you don't follow them, then you don't get what you want.
Fan History's deletion request is cumbersome and annoying!This is... true. Fan History's deletion request policy was implemented after a simpler method was found wanting and arbitrary. This method is less so.
Our request method is cumbersome because the goal is to hold three different groups accountable: Fan History, the person making the request and Fan History contributors. First, when you put in the request and we delete the article, we're accountable. The article is locked so no one can recreate an article with the same name. If the article becomes unlocked and an article created about that person that put in the ADR request,
Fan History's admins can be held accountable for our actions as we didn't honor our agreement. Second, it holds the person submitting the request accountable. They know it is their responsibility to regularly check the wiki to make sure no one mentions them. If they are mentioned elsewhere and people complain, Fan History's admins can easily say "Look, this person was aware of that this might happen and it is their responsibility to check." Third, it holds our contributors accountable. If some one asks not to be mentioned and some one does it anyway, that puts the problem with them.
We haven't found another method which holds all these groups accountable that is less cumbersome. If you can think of one, we'd love to hear it!
Fan History violates people's privacy by having pictures of their houses! Don't support this! Get your article deleted!This is false. Also, false. There aren't pictures of people's houses on Fan History. If there are, then we'd delete them. If some one posts a picture of their house and wants it up there, then yeah, we'll let them. They should put {{Privacy waived}} at the top of the article about themselves so we know. (4) If they don't, then the picture/information gets removed.
If anyone does know of a case of this, then let us know as we take this issue seriously.
Fan History mines private information! Don't support them! Get the article about you deleted to show your support!This is false. Fan History doesn't mine private information. We've had two bots which have helped create articles about members of fandom. In both cases, the bots were bot compliant with robots.txt files. In both cases, the bots pulled only public information that individuals made available to the public. None of the information that the bots picked up was behind password protection. None of the information included personal details like where people went to school, their phone number, their real name (5), their address, etc. Nothing private was mined. The only information that was gathered was public information that the person themselves provided. They knew (6) that the information would be public when they joined the service.
Related to this, if Fan History finds people putting in private information, our admins delete it. It violates our privacy rules. That's why we have admins patrolling edits. We can't guarantee we'll catch everything but we make a good faith effort and if you bring it to our attention, we'll remove private information.
Putting in a deletion request means visiting Fan History which means enriching Fan History's owner!This is false. In terms of the wiki, Fan History makes money from Google Ads. We get between $0.02 and $0.09 for every thousand articles viewed. If you're putting in an article deletion request, you're viewing the max of three pages which means we're making 6.0 × 10
-5 cents off your visit. If you have an ad blocker on, we're not even collecting that as your page views don't register.
If you're that concerned about Fan History, then you won't be able to visit and you won't be able to post your ADR request. The article will stay on Fan History. Are you more concerned about the article existing or Fan History making 6.0 × 10
-5 cents off your visit?
Posting an ADR means you support Fan History!This is false. Editing a wiki article does not imply support for Fan History. Getting your article deleted off Fan History doesn't imply support for Fan History. (7) That's not how wikis work.
Fan History doesn't answer my e-mails regarding deletion requests!This is false. Our admins are pretty rocking. (8) If you send an e-mail to delete@fanhistory.com, they are pretty on the ball at responding. In our e-mail account, admins label which e-mails they handle so we have a trail. They also do this for support@fanhistory.com. If your e-mail wasn't responded to, I'd be really surprised but stranger things have been known to happen. (9) Please resend the e-mail. If you still don't get a response, contact me on AIM at h2oequalswater, on MSN at lhale@niu.edu, on Y!M at bouncingpurplepopple, on GTalk at laura@fanhistory.com.
Footnotes1. Unless some one really has issues and our admins can't handle it. Of the last 100 or so since we've had our policy change in August, that's happened once.
2. And considering the volume with the exact same issues, this is probably pretty deliberate. If you know who is spreading that misinformation, ask them to stop. You're not helping people who want articles deleted by giving them information that will hinder their ability to get an article deleted. If their goal is to screw with Fan History, that's great. This isn't the way to do it. They're just screwing with fandom people who have privacy concerns.
3. Good analogy: If your mom tells you that you won't get to out with your friends until you clean your room, then you need to clean your room. You mom isn't going to let you out until you do that.
4. You don't need to use that article box. You can create some other statement to that effect so long as we know you're aware that this type of information isn't allowed.
5. Unless they used their real name as their user name or in their profile. If they included it themselves, they were giving permission for everyone to use it.
6. Or should have known. Remember: Nothing you put on the Internet is private. If you don't remember and get caught up on that, the fault is yours.
7. Haven't an article about you on Fan History doesn't imply support for Fan History either. It does mean you're a member of fandom... but that's about all it says.
8. And I really wish Fan History was making more money so that they could be compensated. They do a totally rocking job and I love them.
9. Check your spam filters. Maybe something happened and the e-mail went there.