The result of the debate was no consensus to delete --Celestianpower hablamé 19:46, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, I happen to have a lot of respect for Tim, being a board member and such. And I don't believe much in the notability thing. But, Tim doesn't seem notable to me. His assertions to notability are being the Bomis CEO and being a Wikimedia board member. We should not make special exceptions for people who work with Wikimedia, this is bad. It seems like a huge self-reference to me. And, it uses information from the Wikimedia Foundation wiki. I feel this is original research because it's written by Wikimedia. I hope to soon become as notable as Tim Shell, and I would make a self-nomination for VFD if an article was written about me at the same level of notability. --Phroziac(talk) 01:38, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Furthermore, as Geogre says, it is a disservice to AFD and to the encyclopaedia as a whole to apply criteria erratically and inconsistently. It is wrong to hold the Wikimedia Foundation, its board members, and its web sites to standards that are different to the standards to which one holds other companies, people, and web sites.
Researching this person, I have yet to find anything published about him by someone independent of Bomis or the Wikimedia Foundation that isn't a straight one-sentence mention, as an aside, that parrots Wikimedia:Board of Trustees, Bomis (from the version before Jimbo Wales removed mention of Tim Shell from that article), or Wikimedia. See the one-sentence mention of Tim Shell in this article in Florida Trend for example.
Additionally, Lord Bob's argument is wrong. Claiming that someone is notable within the group of users of a web site does not wash for Wikimedia board members and Wikmedia project editors any more than it washes when people assert that their BBS sysop is notable within the users of their BBS, or that a web discussion forum participant is notable within that discussion forum, even though unremarked upon elsewhere. Other people, independent of the subject, have to regard the subject as notable, and have to demonstrate the extent to which they find the subject notable by creating and publishing works of their own about it.
As such, this person does not satisfy the criteria for notability. Delete. Uncle G 16:55, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Looking for multiple independent sources is just as much good encyclopaedism as it is good journalism. The problem with the source is not that it is external. It is that it is not independent of Tim Shell himself, and is tantamount to autobiography. As Wikipedia:autobiography says, and as the preceding quotation implies, autobiographies have verifiability problems. Furthermore: They definitely cannot contribute towards notability. Self-promotion does not automatically make one notable. Other people have to regard the person as notable. See above. Uncle G 16:18, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]