Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jean-Paul Philippot


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. North America1000 22:30, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

Jean-Paul Philippot

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I prodded it with the following rationale: "The coverage (references, external links, etc.) does not seem sufficient to justify this article passing General notability guideline and the more detailed Notability (biographies) requirement. " It was deprodded by User:Necrothesp with the following rationale "certainly seems to hold a senior enough post to be notable". This is, however, not a valid argument for notability - it is nowhere to be seen in Notability (people). WP:BUSINESSPERSONOUTCOME does note some exceptions but only for "Presidents, Chief Executive Officers, and Chairpersons of the Boards of Directors of companies listed in the Fortune 500 (US) or the FTSE 100 Index (UK)". Granted, this needs to be globalized, but I don't think this unreferenced bio fits this treshold. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 06:39, 1 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep. The nominator seems to have misunderstood what this man is. He is not a businessman. He is head (or maybe deputy head) of a national public broadcasting network (the Walloon equivalent of the BBC, for example) and president of the European Broadcasting Union, an exceptionally notable international organisation. Even a very brief Google search will confirm he holds these positions and bring up numerous references. I fail to see how on earth someone in this position could not be notable and how deletion would benefit Wikipedia. -- Necrothesp (talk) 08:42, 1 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I classified him as businessmen because this is the closed specialized guideline I could find. If you don't want to use it, we fall back on general WP:BIO, and you still have not made any argument other then "I think he is important" here. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 08:59, 1 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Apart from (a) I think he clearly meets WP:GNG - there's quite a lot of coverage out there - and (b) Wikipedia is, of course, largely governed by common sense and not unwavering "rules" (if it was then we wouldn't even be having this discussion - there would be a clearcut set of criteria that determined whether he was or was not worthy of an article). And I can't believe anyone's common sense would tell them that the president of the EBU wasn't notable! Given your long experience here I'm frankly very surprised you would think so. -- Necrothesp (talk) 11:37, 1 November 2016 (UTC)
 * It is exactly of my long experience that I think I am able to see the big picture, which is that we are drawning in quasi-spam like this: entries on people or organizations which would never appear in any traditional encyclopedia because they are just having semi-successful careers. I don't see why a CEO or director or such are notable simply by the virtue of their position. If they do something special, they will be written about and they will pass GNG. Simply doing their managerial job reasonably well is not enough, IMHO. Just like a reasonably big company is not notable because it is reasonably big, if there are no sources for it. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here  10:10, 3 November 2016 (UTC)
 * "people or organizations which would never appear in any traditional encyclopedia". What, you mean like every minor pop star or person who's played in a single professional sports game? Oh wait, we do include them on Wikipedia! The problem is, if you delete every article on a person who's notable just for holding a major post in a national or international organisation then you risk drowning in articles about minor celebrities who are gushed about on the internet for five minutes but will be completely forgotten in three years time! I don't think that's what we want Wikipedia to be, do you? An encyclopaedia of pop culture which ignores people who have actually done something in a significant but not populist field? I don't know about you, but I don't devote my time to this project to see it go that way. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:21, 3 November 2016 (UTC)
 * User:Necrothesp, first, note WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS. Even through I do think that we are way to inclusive for "every minor pop star or person who's played in a single professional sports game", this problem is something to discuss elsewhere. We cannot argue "keep it because of bias". Just like while I am very understanding of WP:SYSTEMICBIAS and under-representation of women, for example, I'd never support and argument that we should include articles about women just because we need them to balance the number of articles per gender. Now, I am actually thinking of writing an Op-Ed to signpost about the over-represenation of sports and music bios, and I'd be happy to collaborate with you on this if you'd like, but at the same time I do not believe that the solution is to lower the bar (or not enforce the rules) on other types of bios. For such middling CEOs, I think the best that they deserve is the same as those musicians and sportspeople: a note in the company that such and such had a position. They merit a mention in the organization's article, but not an article themselves. Because they do not pass GNG, and that's the bottom line here, IMHO. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 04:00, 10 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm not arguing for "balance"; I am arguing for application of common sense. It was you who said we should not have articles on people other encyclopaedias wouldn't have articles on. I was just pointing out that we do already; many thousands of them, mandated by guidelines. Sorry, but I am at a loss to understand how you could possibly describe the president of a major international organisation and the head (or even deputy head) of a national broadcasting organisation as a "middling CEO"! If you tried to delete articles on senior executives of the BBC (or equivalent organisations in other English-speaking countries) you would be laughed out of AfD! In any case, I do not agree that he fails GNG. There is plenty of coverage on the internet; I'm sure there's even more in the print media. -- Necrothesp (talk) 08:43, 10 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. Necrothesp (talk) 13:17, 9 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Belgium-related deletion discussions. Necrothesp (talk) 13:17, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Natg 19 (talk) 00:35, 11 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of News media-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 02:10, 11 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Keep. Would have said delete for an unsourced BLP, but simply clicking on the "Find sources" bar turned up lots of stuff and I've put the most obvious in the article. Hope it won't be taken amiss if I suggest that WP:BEFORE might have avoided this AfD. --Andreas Philopater (talk) 00:41, 12 November 2016 (UTC)
 * To ensure complete independence of sources I have not included news published by the RTBF itself (which he heads), nor press releases from the EBU (which he heads), nor interviews with him. Doing so would much increase the range of coverage.--Andreas Philopater (talk) 00:52, 12 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Or the whole "Poland could be excluded from Eurovision if they adopt illiberal broadcast laws that contravene EBU norms" thing, which gets the bulk of coverage in English and Polish. Too much of a can of worms. --Andreas Philopater (talk) 00:53, 12 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Keep. Plenty of references are available. Clearly meets WP:GNG. --Edcolins (talk) 20:50, 17 November 2016 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.