Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Matthew Parish


 * 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 no consensus‎__EXPECTED_UNCONNECTED_PAGE__. Editors are divided on whether the level of coverage rises above the WP:BLP1E level. signed,Rosguill talk 16:42, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

Matthew Parish

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

WP:BLPREQUESTDELETE. The primary basis for notability seems to be the section of the article titled "Legal issues." If that section was removed, the article would be more or less simply a promotional piece, written like a resume. See also the recent discussion at the BLP Noticeboard. Geoff &#124; Who, me? 13:09, 3 November 2023 (UTC)


 * Comment the crime appears more notable than the individual is, I'd perhaps redirect to an article about the oil trading scandal and merge relevant info there. Oaktree b (talk) 14:31, 3 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Just curious, would the potential redirect target article be the one about the Sheik, where Parish is mentioned in passing in a section about one of the trials: Ahmad_Al-Fahad_Al-Ahmed_Al-Sabah. Or were you thinking of another article? Geoff &#124; Who, me? 15:16, 3 November 2023 (UTC)


 * Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Academics and educators, Authors, Crime, Law,  and England.  Spiderone (Talk to Spider) 15:18, 3 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Weak Delete as a WP:BLPREQUESTDELETE. Notability looks marginal at best, and the article is not essential. Russ Woodroofe (talk) 15:28, 3 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Inserting "weak", and expanding my rationale: The book about the controversy suggests that the subject is seeking attention, and just doesn't like the kind of attention that Wikipedia is giving him, and I think this does make a reasonable case for keeping.  Combined with reviews and other coverage, I'd probably !vote weak keep in absence of the request.  On the other hand, I also think that we should give some weight to a request from the subject, and I'm seeing someone with very marginal notability, and an article that the encyclopedia could have, but does not need.  I do not think that we should consider the subject's poor behavior with respect to the article (on- or off-wiki) in deciding whether to keep the article. Russ Woodroofe (talk) 11:02, 4 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Comment: I note that the article subject (I presume) has written some very strange things about me here. Cordless Larry (talk) 16:32, 3 November 2023 (UTC)


 * Very weak keep. At this point, Matthew Parish and/or people who may be associated with him have threatened to sue three wikipedians for writing well-sourced content on his page (see this and the reply above). I think we get these "remove the bad things about me or else" requests almost every week at the BLP noticeboard and elsewhere, I don't think it's right to essentially reward people for making WP:LEGALTHREATS against contributors of this website and the Wikimedia Foundation (yes, they just threatened the WMF recently, see the noticeboard discussion). That being said, it is pretty clear that this article is not very important to this website and its absence here would be felt by almost no one. SparklyNights 18:15, 3 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Merge as suggested above under by prior comment seems appropriate. As an aside, don't let the anonymous IP make threats against you; otherwise, give them the address of the nearest sports stadium and call it a day. Oaktree b (talk) 20:28, 3 November 2023 (UTC)


 * Weak keep. There are at least some academic reviews for his books: and  one of which in a reputable journal, there is multiple news stories about his arrest(s) which seems not to be a single instance but multiple trials  each generating their own news stories:             these are from outlets like Tages-Anzeiger, Le Temps, Bloomberg, Reuters and are not just WP:BLP1E as they cover multiple independent events. I think taking together his (i) notability as an author and his (ii) notability as a lawyer and as a (iii) criminal it seems that he would just pass the bar. It is also hard to argue how a person who specifically writes several books including one about his experiences in prison and writes a public Wikipedia article about themselves has a reasonable expectation of privacy and falls under WP:BLPREQUESTDELETE, this seems rather a case of writing a Wikipedia article about themselves and then not liking that others edit it as well. I dont think a merge would really work since there are multiple independent stories here. --hroest 21:04, 3 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom. As an editor above noted, the crime appears more notable than the subject of the article. The subject appears to be an unremarkable British attorney who committed a crime and served a short sentence and it made news at the time. It fails WP:GNG and does not meet WP:BASIC. -AuthorAuthor (talk) 02:00, 4 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Delete - Per my comments at WP:BLPN. To briefly reiterate here, despite the fact that the article was no doubt created by the subject, only to find out WP:ABOUTME applies to him and he threated to sue the WMF multiple times, I don't think keeping it on that basis of basically thumbing our noses at him is a valid reason. The article was obviously created as a vanity article, and should have been deleted as one long before all the legal stuff was inserted. His legal woes are really his only claim to fame, and, as is, the article is this weird combination of puff piece and hit piece. But all that is really small potatoes compared to the much, much larger question, which is: does it really contribute anything of value to the encyclopedia? A quick check of the page views shows it only gets an average of 15 views a day, which you can bet good money are mostly coming from the subject or people who interact with the subject. I see no real value of it as an article, as a BLP request-delete, I see no harm in deleting it. It's unfortunate this article was ever created at all, but I think the worse precedent to set is not that legal threats may get you what you want if you keep it up long enough, but that the mere act of committing a crime makes one worthy of an article should it be written about in a newspaper. That sets a very dangerous precedence. Now if any one of his crimes had gotten even a quarter the level of attention as, say... Charles Manson, then I would be singing a different tune, but I don't see several different crimes that were reported briefly and quickly forgotten as showing he's somehow noteworthy or has any historical significance. Newspapers print what people are interested in, and if no one's interested, they drop it and move onto the next shiny object. Nothing I've seen shows any real level of public interest in this guy. I don't care so much about him in particular, but articles like this are a waste of my time, and the entire community's. Zaereth (talk) 02:05, 4 November 2023 (UTC)
 * It would make my life easier if this was deleted, given the (laughable) claims made about me here when I previously intervened in debates about the article's content. However, I'm convinced by 's evidence that there's enough coverage to meet the notability criteria here, so against my own interests I'm a keep. A Free City in the Balkans has been reviewed in a number of reputable journals (e.g. here and here) and one of his other books has been reviewed in a peer-reviewed journal too. The coverage of his legal troubles comes on top of that prior coverage of his work. Incidentally, I find it odd that someone who doesn't want their legal problems to feature on Wikipedia previously self-published a book about them. Cordless Larry (talk) 09:13, 4 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Some further coverage here and here. Cordless Larry (talk) 10:00, 4 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Keep The case for a WP:AUTHOR pass by itself would be rather weak: only two of the three listed books have been reviewed that I can find, and while the reviews for A Free City in the Balkans seem to have been published in reliable sources, I'm not fully convinced about those for Mirages of International Justice. The one cited in the article already looks to be in a solid journal, but the other that I found is on a website with unclear editorial standards. The secondary sources we have about his writing might not be enough to warrant an article by themselves, but they do mean that we can say enough that merging into another article would be extremely awkward. As noted above, the news stories cover multiple incidents over a span of years. Taken all together, the sources indicate that there's an encyclopedia topic here. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 17:53, 4 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Weak delete, largely per Zaerath. I'm not going to lose any sleep if the article is kept (and as I said at the BLPN discussion, I wouldn't be surprised if it is!) but he's at best a minorly notable person who has been in the news because of a crime he committed, and I don't see that the article is all that important to the encyclopedia, so whatever, apply WP:BLPREQUESTDELETE.  (As an aside, that article about CordlessLarry is hilarious: if they think he is too prolific an editor to be a single person, what of the 1,861 accounts who per WP:EDITS have more edits than him?!) Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 16:14, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
 * How I manage to sustain my average of 8.557 edits per day, I'll never know, ! Cordless Larry (talk) 19:00, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz Read! Talk! 22:56, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Delete per WP:BLPREQUESTDELETE. Can't blame the guy for not wanting a WP article. Isaidnoway (talk) 🍁 05:55, 8 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Delete - Wikipedia is not a rap sheet, and that is exactly how this BLP is written.  Atsme 💬 📧 14:39, 8 November 2023 (UTC)
 *  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.


 * Keep I worked with Matthew personally in Ukraine, and I can attest that his interest in removing this article is to conceal his past with NGO's there. This wiki brought attention towards him, but the decision to fire him was based off of separate reliable sources. Merging this wiki may not be in the best interest because this individual is continuing to make a larger spectacle out of themselves. Although I agree that the crime is more notable than the individual is. This article has played a valuable role in providing exposure to his past. Parish likes attention, but seeks to remove any criticism in his quest for notoriety. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:204:E081:6070:7A:53E4:4DC0:3BBF (talk) 21:42, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

Relisting comment: I see strong and persuasive views on both sides, but I don’t feel comfortable closing as No Consensus just yet, so I’d like more input. Do the BLP concerns trump the demonstrated notability? Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Ritchie333 (talk) (cont)  10:14, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Keep well sourced article from reliable sources. Passes WP:N. -- Mike 🗩</b> 19:02, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Keep per hroest. Thriley (talk) 19:13, 17 November 2023 (UTC)
 * <p class="xfd_relist" style="margin:0 0 0 -1em;border-top: 1px solid #AAA; border-bottom: 1px solid #AAA; padding: 0px 2em;"> Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.


 * Delete, hit the nail on the head. We keep or delete articles on their merits, not because we want to spite the article's subject or creator, or because we want to assert our independence or thumb our noses at legal threats. The books he wrote seem to be of fairly limited notability, and would not have justified an article on their own. Only one of his legal difficulties, the one that led to his sentence in absentia, is of itself notable, but he's only a minor figure in this story, described at Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Ahmed Al-Sabah. This story hit the press because it involved the Kuwaiti royal family and an Olympic official. The sources for this are good, but they barely include two sentences about Parish, who wasn't even present at the trial, and whose role in the case is not described. On that basis we can't even justify a redirect. As a lawyer, he doesn't otherwise seem to have done anything out of the ordinary before getting himself struck off. From a UK perspective I'd bet most people coming across his article were actually looking for Matthew Parris. Elemimele (talk) 12:00, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure if you tagged the wrong editor,, but I was advocating for keeping the article, based on coverage that goes beyond the subject's recent legal difficulties. Cordless Larry (talk) 12:48, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Oh, ever so sorry, yes, I meant, I apologise profusely! Elemimele (talk) 13:43, 18 November 2023 (UTC) SineBot-->


 * Keep Passes WP:N based on reliable sources, which is all that really counts. - SchroCat (talk) 00:01, 19 November 2023 (UTC)


 * DELETE - Among other things, Wikipedia is not a rogues' gallery. BLP comes into play on this. He was tried, convicted and serving time. Yet, the Wikipedia article has his personal website, criminal record and conviction. We should not have this info out there for the rest of his life. — Maile  (talk) 02:13, 19 November 2023 (UTC)
 * What you are saying, Maile66, is not supported by Wikipedia policy. If a person, whether assessed by us as a "rogue" or not, is worthy of having an article about them in Wikipedia, the issue is decided on very specific criteria, primary one being the subject's verifiable notability. -The Gnome (talk) 14:45, 26 November 2023 (UTC)


 * Delete. WP:BLP1E. Xxanthippe (talk) 03:27, 24 November 2023 (UTC).
 * Keep. This is a person of evidently lasting importance and notability. I could potentially add to the above litany of invective but I will not.
 * Note, please: A article may have been created (a) by the subject of the article, (b) contain an excessive, overwhelming amount of promotional text, or (c) lack the necessary sources that support its notability and still merit inclusion in Wikipedia, provided the text is cleaned up, improved, and provided with the necessary sourcing. That, in a nut shell, is all! In so many words, none of the above allegations about the text's nature and provenance will be disputed by me because they do not matter. The subject is evidently notable; and certainly not in any "minor" way. -The Gnome (talk) 14:45, 26 November 2023 (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.