Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Michael Hiller


 * 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 delete. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 15:10, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

Michael Hiller

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Does not meet WP:NOTABILITY or WP:ANYBIO. The article appears to be well-referenced, but most of the references aren't about the subject, merely mentioning him in passing. ubiquity (talk) 13:00, 27 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Comment: I've done a full source analysis (numbers correspond with reviewed version at Special:Permalink/928197567) and I'm pasting it below, I'll base my !vote off it once I've had time to consider it.   SITH   (talk)   14:39, 27 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Update: now done, please see below.   SITH   (talk)   14:59, 27 November 2019 (UTC)


 * Keep by a gnat's whisker. Wikipedia isn't the place for your curriculum vitae.  However, I get that a lawyer will generally be covered secondarily to their casework, so I think giving him the benefit of the doubt on articles where he's quoted extensively such as in sources 7, 8, 9, 16 and 17 is fair.  The article is a mess though, there are plenty of sources as per my analysis below, based on Special:Permalink/928197567, that are totally unnecessary for various reasons such as linkspam with sources 1 and 2, affiliation or lack of neutrality with sources 5 and 6, circular referencing with source 10, further linkspam and likely self-published nature of sources 11 and 31, etcetera, etcetera.  But Wikipedia is a work in progress, and we can fix all that instead of deleting it.  While it is a borderline case, in my opinion the biographical and general notability guidelines are just about satisfied by virtue of sources 8, 9, 17 and 20.  If kept, I think tagging this article for BLP source improvement is a must and potentially a conflict of interest tag, because a lot of the unreferenced personal material does not appear to be published on the internet, indicating that a contributor could have a conflict of interest.   SITH   (talk)   14:59, 27 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Comment: amazing work, SITH. I'm still not convinced, though. Taking the article paragraph by paragraph, I see:
 * 1. Somewhat promotional. "Protector of the Little Guy", indeed.
 * 2. Says he founded his own firm. In most cases this is not notable, some people do it because they can't get into an already existing good firm. The entire rest of the pp is about someone else. I do not have a WP article. Can I get one by saying I was inspired by Alan Turing?
 * 3. Entire pp is about a case-not-covered-by-WP, not Hiller.
 * 4. Lots of this pp is not about the subject; what is about the subject is promotional. Of the 10 references, SITH's analysis shows only two clearly valid ones, and even they are not about the subject himself.
 * 5. Seems promotional. No valid refs according to SITH's analysis.
 * The rest of the article is about his personal life, which doesn't seem particularly notable to me. Yes, he got a good degree from a good law school, but so did my brother, my sister, my dad and my son (none in WP). Because I am familiar with lawyers, I know that being named Superlawyer is not necessarily an indicator of notability (again, my brother, sister, dad and HIS brother got this -- my son didn't, but he's quit law to become a Hollywood screenwriter). He taught law at John Jay but nothing in the article says that was notable. He wrote two screenplays, neither was filmed, and one lost three rounds before the end of a contest (which means his name does not appear in the WP article he references). I'm sorry, I'm just not impressed. The article seems like a vanity piece to me, without any of the real meat of notability. ubiquity (talk) 16:30, 27 November 2019 (UTC)
 * , thanks! I've been mulling this one over and I think I may have been a bit hasty in deciding on keep from the analysis.  The main delete argument would come from ANYBIO in conjunction with BLP1E or NOTINHERITED.  I'll take a look at the sources again and weigh it up and update accordingly.  For now I've just withdrawn my !vote.    SITH   (talk)   18:10, 27 November 2019 (UTC)


 * Delete - per the table, and the promotional/COI nature of the article. Basically, notability here would be marginal at best, with a following wind and a few nice glasses of port. There's really nothing to make this guy notable, just a lot of fluff whipped up to look impressive. Chiswick Chap (talk) 21:50, 27 November 2019 (UTC)


 * Delete (switched from weak keep) : reading over the sources again, I'm seeing a few of the quotes being repeated, so they were likely given at press conferences. None of the sources which meet all three criteria (independence, reliability and coverage) actually cover his role in the cases as the primary topic of attention.  Again, it's marginal but the promotionalism both in the article and in many of the sources also fares poorly.    SITH   (talk)   14:13, 28 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete The article engages in NPOV violating promotionalism.John Pack Lambert (talk) 04:50, 30 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Delete - while his work is no doubt laudable, he's not notable per WP:GNG (as seen in the table of sources above), nor even one factor for my standards of notable attorneys. Bearian (talk) 16:03, 3 December 2019 (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.