Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jean Christophe Iseux von Pfetten


 * 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__EXPECTED_UNCONNECTED_PAGE__. There is a rough consensus here to Keep this article. The deletion rationale doesn't mention any factors that can't be improved through careful editing. Liz Read! Talk! 02:04, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

Jean Christophe Iseux von Pfetten

 * – ( View AfD View log | edits since nomination)

WP:BLP issues - there are too many dubious and poorly-sourced claims in this article for an article about a living person. Walsh90210 (talk) 02:18, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. Walsh90210 (talk) 02:18, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Academics and educators, Bilateral relations, China, France,  and England.  WC  Quidditch   ☎   ✎  02:26, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Comment I've tracked down a number of claims - service in Chinese parliament, involvement in Iran talks, chairing the East-West strategic studies institute, which are sourced and seem to raise at least a colorable claim of notability. The claim to serve in parliament is supported by The Diplomat article, but is probably misstated as it seems he took part in a Jilin Municipal level CPPCC meeting)] as opposed to service at the national level. Other claims like buying the palace, and testimony before parliament, are not very notable but are verifiable. And some other facts, like his history as a diplomat, are not well sourced although I haven't done searches to see if they are hoaxes.  Why is this not a situation where the article can be edited rather than deleted? Oblivy (talk) 03:32, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Comment - there are a number of issues with this article that have concerned me for some time. They are most obvious when you consider it in conjunction with a group of related articles: Institute for East West Strategic Studies, Pfetten's foundation; Apethorpe Palace, his home and the foundation's office; Owen Matthews, the foundation's vice-chair; and the International Foxhound Association - currently also up for deletion - which Pfetten chairs.
 * Promotional content - the content these editors add tends to be highly promotional. Counter wise, repeated efforts are made to remove anything they consider "negative";
 * Authorship and COI - User talk:Prinkipo71 is the major contributor to this article, and its originator. They are also the major contributor to, and originator of, the Matthews article. User talk:Baronpfetten has also edited this. Prinkipo71 is also the second major contributor to the Apethorpe Palace article. They have described themselves as "Apethope's archivist and historian",. The first contributor to the Institute article is an IP, the second, and its originator, is User talk:Baronpfetten, a user name which suggests an obvious COI. Baronpfetten is also the major contributor to, and the originator of, the International Foxhound Association article. Both Prinkipo71 and Baronpfetten are broadly single-purpose accounts, in that they only edit this group of articles. I think it highly likely there is a bunch of undeclared COI. It is also worth noting the contributions of User talk:StevenGui/User talk:GeorgeThuiller, to these articles and to that on Tactical nuclear weapon, . After an initial denial Gui acknowledged they were employed by the Chinese government, to which Pfetten has close links. Oddly, Thuiller - an editor with 11 edits - took it upon themselves to edit a comment made by Gui, on Gui's own Talkpage, to amend Gui's acknowledgement that they work "for" the Chinese Government, to suggest that they work "with" it, . Apart from Gui, none of the other editors has made any Conflict of Interest declarations regarding these articles.
 * SPA/IP editing - this is very common to all of the above, and I strongly suspect Checkuser would find connections. See, as one example, these edits, to the IFA deletion discussion by User:Tintin2004123 who joined two days ago, specifically to try to stop the deletion, the only edits they have ever made.
 * In short, I think these articles are a mess of promotional editing from editors/IPs, all certainly connected and all with undeclared COIs. I have previously flagged it with ARBs, but it has not been taken forward, as far as I am aware. KJP1 (talk) 11:39, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks for responding to my questions. I'm not sure this is something that falls within a deletion category, other than the catch-all not suitable tag (which is pretty weak sauce IMHO). OK, it's a coatrack, and it has assertions that are questionably supported by citations, and the language is promotional (although many biographies paint a positive picture of a person, particularly if they are not notorious for some bad thing). In my opinion, these content issues need to be worked out on article pages and talk pages, and not at AfD.I'm also troubled that much of what you describe is based on suspicions of the editors, their conduct and their motives, rather than identifying notability issues with the article. AfD is not for conduct issues either.  Surely if someone is being disruptive or displaying ownership behavior, there's a conduct guideline that can be invoked at ANI.  Also, no policy says someone can't be an SPA, and AFAIK there's no policy saying you can't edit while under a COI (policy says "discouraged" and "should" regarding COI, disclosure is "must" for paid editing). Oblivy (talk) 01:16, 20 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I don’t doubt that you are procedurally right, and that AfD isn’t the best venue to address a lot of this. I would say that I have tried both the Talkpage discussion route, getting mostly silence or obfuscation; and the conduct reporting route, again getting silence. My concern is that what I am quite certain we have in these articles are editors writing about themselves/their interests, without being at all transparent as to their connections to the article subjects. For me, that fundamentally conflicts with our aim of being a reliable encyclopaedia, and does a grave disservice to our readers. KJP1 (talk) 08:57, 20 June 2024 (UTC)


 * Comment. Although the article has a section for Academic career, the subject seems to have published very few articles or books.  I see little to no sign of WP:NPROF notability.  I am skeptical of GNG.  His house does appear to possibly be notable, and I suppose that redirection to a stub about the house would be an option. Russ Woodroofe (talk) 13:59, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
 * That may well be a way forward. I am very confident that Apethorpe Palace is notable, per NBUILDING. It's a Grade I listed building, has a long and illustrious history, with notable owners/visitors, and it has been very extensively covered, in architectural publications, in historical journals and in the media. I'd certainly support a re-direct, which could also cover the Institute. KJP1 (talk) 14:06, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Keep per the significant coverage in multiple independent reliable sources. The subject passes Notability (people), which says: "People are presumed if they have received significant coverage in  that are,  of each other, and .If the depth of coverage in any given source is not substantial, then multiple independent sources may be combined to demonstrate notability; trivial coverage of a subject by secondary sources is not usually sufficient to establish notability." Sources    The article notes: "A tout juste 40 ans, après une décennie passée en Chine, Jean-Christophe Iseux a décidé de revenir en France. Avec un projet en tête : faire de son château de la Loire un lieu de rencontre « personnel, élitiste et confidentiel, avec pas plus de 200 personnes ! » Sa cible ? Des leaders occidentaux et leurs homologues chinois et asiatiques. Ambitieux. Mais son excellente connaissance de la Chine et de ses gouvernants devrait lui permettre de réussir son projet. Son histoire d'amour avec l'empire du Milieu commence en 1996. Ingénieur géophysicien de formation, il oublie les sciences de la Terre pour celles de l'économie. Chercheur spécialisé dans la privatisation des entreprises d'Etat, passé par Oxford où, MBA en poche, il se concocte un remarquable carnet d'adresses, il devient le plus jeune représentant permanent aux Nations unies." From Google Translate: "At just 40 years old, after a decade spent in China, Jean-Christophe Iseux decided to return to France. With a project in mind: to make his Loire castle a “personal, elitist and confidential” meeting place, with no more than 200 people! » His target? Western leaders and their Chinese and Asian counterparts. Ambitious. But his excellent knowledge of China and its leaders should enable him to succeed in his project. His love affair with the Middle Kingdom began in 1996. A geophysicist engineer by training, he forgot Earth sciences for those of the economy. A researcher specializing in the privatisation of state enterprises, he went to Oxford where, with an MBA in hand, he built up a remarkable address book and became the youngest permanent representative to the United Nations."  The article notes: "据介绍，易思男爵为法国贵族后裔，其家族与中国有深厚渊源. 毕业于牛津大学坦普顿学院，曾任塞舌尔驻世贸组织代表、驻日内瓦裁军谈判会议代表、牛津大学管理学中心研究员、牛津大学赫特福德学院政策研究所中国研究中心主任等. 从1997年起，易思男爵频繁赴华工作，先后担任清华大学访问学者、讲师、中国人民大学客座教授等，" From Google Translate: "According to reports, Baron Eise is a descendant of the French nobility, and his family has deep roots in China. He graduated from Templeton College, Oxford University, and has served as the Seychelles representative to the WTO, the representative to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, a researcher at the Oxford University Management Center, and the director of the China Research Center of the Hertford College Policy Institute, Oxford University. Since 1997, Baron Eise has frequently traveled to China for work, and has served as a visiting scholar and lecturer at Tsinghua University, and a visiting professor at Renmin University of China."  The article notes: "Just 18 months after Jean Christophe Iseux, Baron von Pfetten, spent £2.5m on a house with 48 bedrooms but no running water, he has decided to give a little party. ... Von Pfetten, a diplomat, Oxford academic and champion foxhound breeder, has been nicknamed “the Red Baron” for his years as an adviser to the Chinese government on everything from inward investment to Iran’s nuclear programme; the Chinese guests will include a government member and the head of an oil company."</li> <li> The article notes: "I recently attended a weekend in Burgundy hosted by Jean Christophe Iseux, 37, a hunt master and special adviser to the Chinese government, who styles himself "The Red Baron". A fellow guest was Bob Hawke, the former trade unionist and Labour prime minister of Australia. ... said Iseux, referring to the pre-Revolutionary finery of dress that all hunts adopt. An aristocrat by birth, living in a family chateau near Macon, his great-uncle was a radical socialist MP for Burgundy. Oxford-educated Iseux believes that there is nothing incompatible about his love of la chasse and his work as a professor at the People's University of China in Beijing, an MP in the Chinese parliament and consultant to the Chinese government. ... Over the years, Iseux has hunted with an eclectic mixture of European ministers, aristocrats, writers, painters and even the female head of the French prison service."</li> <li> The article notes: "... said Jean Christophe Iseux, a former European diplomat. ... Iseux came to China the first time in 1997 as a visiting professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing. He traveled all around China and did case studies of state-owned enterprise reform and issues relating to agriculture, rural areas, and rural residents in China. These issues became top priorities of China's reform and opening-up policy."</li> <li> The article notes: "In 2001, a man with a pointy nose and a pair of sunken eyes arrived in northeast China's Changchun City. The man, with the name Jean Christophe Iseux von Pfetten, turned out to be the first ever non-Chinese member of the CPPCC. He was in Changchun not for travelling, but for attending its city-level CPPCC. "This was an amazing opportunity in 2001 to be invited by the then a mayor of Changchun to be a special invited member of CPPCC. But it was also a very important element of my learning curve on how the democratic system in China did work," said Pfetten, now president of the Institute for East-West Strategic Studies in Britain."</li> <li> The article notes: "Special adviser to central and local governments of China, Jean-Christophe Iseux, said ... Iseux, a Frenchman fluent in English and Mandarin, said many Malaysian investors in China have benefited from their investments. ... Iseux himself is the first and only Caucasian ever as Specially Invited Member of the Chinese Upper House of Parliament and has been ChangChun delegate of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) since December 2002. ... Iseux, who is currently an adviser on Foreign Economic Cooperation to the PCC central committee ..."</li> </ol>There is sufficient coverage in reliable sources to allow Jean Christophe Iseux von Pfetten to pass Notability, which requires "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject". Cunard (talk) 09:02, 20 June 2024 (UTC) </li></ul>
 * Concerns about the article's neutrality can be dealt with through editing as advised at Editing policy. Conflict of interest editing can be dealt with by following the advice at Conflict of interest. I don't think deletion is the right approach. Cunard (talk) 09:02, 20 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Speedy Keep for failure to state a valid deletion rationale. "BLP Issues" does not represent such a rationale.Nobody has said the article as it stands is inadequately sourced for WP:BASIC.  On my review it does cite substantial coverage of this individual (although, as I point out above, there may be some verifiability issues and one of the claims to fame seems to be overstated).  Once the additional sources identified by @Cunard are taken into consideration, a notability-based rationale is even harder to maintain.@KJP1 has made a good argument that there are conduct issues related to the page.  However, as they concede, this is not the place for such arguments. Oblivy (talk) 23:13, 20 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Keep, if you see any BLP issues remove them, don't take it to AfD. Traumnovelle (talk) 07:22, 21 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Keep As above, no reason for deletion on the typical deletion guidelines has been found.
 * However, on a separate note, I am curious if anyone has an actual (rather than potentially circular) source for his title being "Baron von Pfetten zu St. Mariakirchen". For instance, in a lot of press he is reported as Jean-Cristophe Iseux (no von Pfetten). I believe this may be his original name?
 * For instance, the Catholic Herald is very careful about his titling (not so for Lord Bamford), although the description for him seems perhaps self-sourced, here: https://catholicherald.co.uk/uk-catholic-leaders-of-today-2022-business-and-philanthropy/
 * And, the article on the noble family suggests the von Pfetten zu Mariakirchen line died out: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pfetten
 * EPEAviator (talk) 14:41, 21 June 2024 (UTC)


 * ‘’’Speedy Keep’’’sufficient reliable external sources from reputable news media (FT, WSJ, Guardian, Spiegel, etc.) to warrant retention of this page. No valid justification for deletion provided. — Preceding unsigned comment added by PeterJ111 (talk • contribs) 16:20, 23 June 2024 (UTC)  —  PeterJ111 (talk&#32;• contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
 * Speedy Keep: per Oblivy, WP:CSK#1. If there are BLP concerns about unsourced content or ambiguity of his title, those should be raised in the talk page instead of filing for deletion. WP:DELETIONISNOTCLEANUP, and I do not find this case to be necessary of WP:TNT. — Prince of Erebor （ The Book of Mazarbul ）  14:49, 24 June 2024 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. <b style="color:red">Please do not modify it.</b> 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.