Internet mugshot of a brit who may or may not be involved.
-->A handful of brits may be ready to start the "Save Psion from Save the Netbooks" campaign if this afternoon's antics over at Wikipedia are any indication. You see up until User:842U was banned the only permitted discussion of the trademark in the Netbook article was some unjustified rubbish about how "this article refers to the term 'netbook' as a genericized trademark'". Now most of you likely believe this to be true (we certainly do) but Wikipedia's an encyclopedia so such claims rightly need to be justified.
Anyway the result was that the netbook trademark and Save the Netbooks articles were created to track information that otherwise belonged in the netbook article. This of course attracted attention from Psion supporters in the UK who wanted every second word justified with a citation and who insisted on attaching scary templates like this one. They also called us cyber bullies, idiots, poisonous and a bunch of other things (both within Wikipedia and outside on Twitter, in article comments, etc.), apparently because they were "shocked and saddened" by the whole affair with Psion who they call a "good British company".

Well today an anonymous editor (who happens to have an interest in wholesome british topics like Sherlock Holmes and Scotland Yard) took it upon himself to brutally savage the article and then list it for deletion. It then took all of seven minutes for one of the two main opponents to chime in with his delete vote and the second was also on board within half an hour, adding charges of slander and libel along with a bunch of other patent nonsense. Most deletion debates are all but decided within the first few votes but for good measure an IP from Cambridge University in the UK (likely one of their sock puppets) also had their bit to say.

Hopefully these are just other (overly) concerned individuals and not Psion's shills, but in any case the important stuff will soon end up in the netbook article where it should have been all along. In the mean time there are some important lessons. First, the most efficient way to have content you don't like deleted from Wikipedia:

1. Remove all citations and references from the article, whether reliable or not.
2. Tag the hell out of it. Advert and COI work well but don't forget Cleanup and friends too. The more the merrier.
3. If the article was written by someone in any way related to the subject then make a big deal out of it. Everyone knows you can't write an unbiased article about something you care about, right?
4. Even if there's now hundreds of people involved in the subject, act like it's only one.
5. Make sure you get some delete votes before anyone else has a chance to say anything; within half an hour if possible. Sock puppets and meat puppets are fine too. It's well established that people tend to follow the leader.
6. Forget all about any bias you might have from previous debates (especially ones you lost).
7. Ignore the rules, remember even if this content is verifiably notable you don't like it so it's got to go.

On a more serious note, the (perceived) presence of a conflict of interest does not in any way imply that an article is problematic and this alone should never be used as justification for deletion. Similarly, the templates are intended for cleaning up articles, not permanently branding them as broken. More often than not the people closest to the subject matter are the best equipped to write on it, provided their writings are balanced (which admittedly is often not the case). Beating the hell out of them is a very effective way of killing off a significant source of contributions.

Anyway now that Intel is going in for the kill y'all have a hell of a lot more to worry about than a few trademarks and a couple of Wikipedia articles.

P.S. Don't bother contributing to the debate - as we said before so far as we're concerned the show's already over.

P.P.S. Don't bother pointing out that some of the voters could be sock puppets either because one of the admins who's already voted will probably just close the investigation as a 'frivolous request' with no further explanation, bury your complaints as 'irrelevant digression' (so as not to interfere with the all important debate) and then threaten to block you for no apparent reason. You can be sure we've just broken some obscure rule by even telling you this too.