Yes. No reasonable person could even contest this. Randal Schwartz has been written about in reliable sources extensively, owing to an incident in which he was convicted for a felony involving breaking into Intel servers.
•••• PEOPLE OF HN: ANYBODY CAN PROPOSE ANY ARTICLE ON WP FOR DELETION. THERE IS NO BAR FOR IT. ••••
If you make comically stupid proposals, like "[Barack Obama] isn't notable and should be deleted", an admin will shut you down. But otherwise, if even an iota of thought is required to make the decision, it will go to AfD and get shouted down.
This AfD is not going close "deleted"; by WP's own rules, it basically can't be deleted. This isn't newsworthy. If we had an HN story any time anyone made a misguided AfD posting, that's all we'd ever talk about here.
Meanwhile, before anyone suggests that they've done the world a favor by directing attention to the AfD: canvassing support for a "keep" vote actually makes the admin's job harder. It muddies the issue. It means that every well-reasoned comment will carry a subtext of "maybe this is a sockpuppeted comment". Not a win.
And: before anyone complains about the damage done to the encyclopedia by the big ugly "this page might get deleted" tag: this article actually is poorly sourced and needs improvement. WP's immune response to non-notable articles is going to end up improving this particular article by inciting WP nerds to dredge up the (numerous) news stories that reference him.
PS: Not for nothing, but WP's coverage of Randal Schartz is wanting, in that it drastically pares back what is notable about him (his felony hacking conviction) in favor of what he is "locally famous" for (his Perl advocacy). This is a consequence of a very vocal FORS contingent that watches that page.
If it drags in my interest I might try to rescue the article tomorrow. The lack of sources at the moment means it runs a reasonable chance of people mindlessly !voting delete.
(but to echo tptacek; if you are going to follow this link and comment on the proposed deletion ''please'' take a moment to review the notability policies and make a sensible, valid argument rather than the "this is ridiculous" sort that has already appeared. If anything, that sort of thing usually goes against the article)
Yes, anyone can propose an article for deletion. However, I see two problems with what you've said.
First, yes, the "immune response" usually manages to produce some improvement, but often it just produces a deleted article because nobody who might have cared managed to notice. Whenever I observe those processes, I see two primary forces: many people with way too much time on their hands arguing policies without thinking, and people tired of trying to explain common sense via citations to chapter and verse of Wikipedia policy. (See also: wrestling a pig in mud.)
Second, the article links to various policy changes that suggest Wikipedia no longer considers "published author" a sufficient criteria for notability. That seems like a severe problem quite aside from this particular article.
Fundamentally, proposing an AfD means precisely one thing: "I think this article has negative value for Wikipedia, such that deleting it would improve Wikipedia.". All too often I see articles proposed for deletion (and "successfully" deleted) which have clearly positive value for Wikipedia.
"Meanwhile, before anyone suggests that they've done the world a favor by directing attention to the AfD: canvassing support for a "keep" vote actually makes the admin's job harder."
I think that's all we can really hope for. In reality, you should say it makes it easier.
Let's be honest, here; what's actually notable about Randal is that he lives in Portland, OR, the best city in the world, and moreover, since I happen to live in Portland and am unemployed, I think I'll use my spare time to edit Randal's WP page to make this more obvious, and revert people who undo my work.
•••• PEOPLE OF HN: ANYBODY CAN PROPOSE ANY ARTICLE ON WP FOR DELETION. THERE IS NO BAR FOR IT. ••••
If you make comically stupid proposals, like "[Barack Obama] isn't notable and should be deleted", an admin will shut you down. But otherwise, if even an iota of thought is required to make the decision, it will go to AfD and get shouted down.
This AfD is not going close "deleted"; by WP's own rules, it basically can't be deleted. This isn't newsworthy. If we had an HN story any time anyone made a misguided AfD posting, that's all we'd ever talk about here.
Meanwhile, before anyone suggests that they've done the world a favor by directing attention to the AfD: canvassing support for a "keep" vote actually makes the admin's job harder. It muddies the issue. It means that every well-reasoned comment will carry a subtext of "maybe this is a sockpuppeted comment". Not a win.
And: before anyone complains about the damage done to the encyclopedia by the big ugly "this page might get deleted" tag: this article actually is poorly sourced and needs improvement. WP's immune response to non-notable articles is going to end up improving this particular article by inciting WP nerds to dredge up the (numerous) news stories that reference him.
PS: Not for nothing, but WP's coverage of Randal Schartz is wanting, in that it drastically pares back what is notable about him (his felony hacking conviction) in favor of what he is "locally famous" for (his Perl advocacy). This is a consequence of a very vocal FORS contingent that watches that page.