gwalla | Rummaging through Wikipedia's trash bin

I regularly participate on Wikipedia's Votes for Deletion page, doing my part to rid the wiki of vanity pages, nonsense, advertising, pranks, and other unencyclopedic detritus. IT's sometimes rewarding, sometimes frustrating, and even occasionally amusing. As an example of the last, here are the contents of an article "Al-Gebra", which was nominated for deletion:

Al Gebra is a terrorist movement which has reportedly infiltrated American schools. It began at the undergraduate level and has spread to secondary schools, according to US Attorney General John Ashcroft. Academics dismiss the Ashcroft's accusations as pandering to the lowest common denominator of anti-Arab prejudice.

The web of deception was first uncovered at New York's Kennedy Airport when an individual claiming to be a school teacher was arrested trying to board a flight while in possession of a ruler, protractor, set square, slide rule and calculator. At a morning press conference, Attorney General John Ashcroft, said he believes the man is:

"a member of the notorious al-gebra movement. He is being charged by the FBI with carrying weapons of math instruction." A SNIE reveals that al-Gebra uses use secret code names like 'x' and 'y' and refer to themselves as 'unknowns', and the CIA has determined they belong to an axis of medieval with coordinates in every country.

As the Greek philanderer Isosceles used to say, "there are three sides to every triangle."

The article has been deleted and replaced with a redirect to algebra.