Forum:Deletion of content by request of subject

Professional portraits of two different actors who had minor roles in the Harry Potter films have been deleted at their request (or the request of their agents/representatives) in the past week. This strikes me as uncontroversial, given that professional portraits are used on this wiki on a fair-use basis, and thus we should naturally honour any request from an actor or his/her representative(s) to remove such images.

What's less clear cut is whether actors should be able to request the deletion of articles on them. I'm bringing this up for discussion because an actor has apparently requested the deletion of the article on her. Her appearance as a Gryffindor extra in the fourth film is backed up her profile on her management agency's site.

I don't think there's any precedent for deleting articles on actors at their request. The closest I can remember off-hand is the Johnpaul Castrianni case, but deletion wasn't the subject's initial request, but a last-resort solution agreed upon when a disagreement over the subject's name could not be resolved.

I tend to think that allowing actors to have articles on them deleted, even if their appearance in one of the HP films is backed up by a valid source, is crossing the line from showing respect into rewriting history/censorship. That runs counter to our goal of providing as comprehensive of a guide to the Potter books, films, etc as possible.

We should probably have an official policy on this.

&#x2605; S t a r s t u f f  (Owl me!) 00:39, March 28, 2016 (UTC)