Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mark Gettleson

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. Spartaz ^Humbug! 03:19, 5 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Mark Gettleson[edit]

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There is a large volume of text in this article regarding a fairly low-level campaign staffer, but none of it adds up to encyclopedic notability. This is basically a glorified resume capped with unremarkable punditry. bd2412 T 12:57, 26 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of England-related deletion discussions. Every morning (there's a halo...) 13:44, 26 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - Fails WP:GNG and WP:BIO. The article is held up by many references, very few of which are reliable and none of which talk about the subject in depth for anything he could be notable for. --CNMall41 (talk) 19:17, 26 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - I removed the references from Twitter, some original research, and additional from unreliable sources. It looks like a big puff piece of original research. I have a headache trying to go through it but will likely return later. --CNMall41 (talk) 19:29, 26 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Delete nothing shows notability.John Pack Lambert (talk) 00:25, 29 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - basically a case of WP:ONEEVENT - he has been in the media thanks to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, but is not otherwise notable. NB that it isn't a 'puff piece', quite the opposite - if you read the version by the original author it is clear that that person went out of their way to paint everything Gettleson has done in a negative light. [Disclaimer: Mark Gettleson is known to me through the Liberal Democrats (UK), though I haven't spoken to him for at least five years and probably not for ten...] The Land (talk) 19:31, 29 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Keep - although I can see why there were opinions to the contrary, once CNMall41 had made a series of curious and arbitrary edits, which emasculated the article of much of its most noteworthy content. Nonetheless, I would like to make the following points:

The article does indeed meet Wikipedia's notability guidelines - "If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject". In support of this, the following items referenced in the article would qualify:

As the above references show, the subject is not just a case of WP:ONEEVENT, not least as there are at least two major notable events which have had the subject at the centre of them, the 2015 push-polling allegations during the Liberal Democrats leadership election, 2015, and the 2018 Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal. Furthermore, the subject's prominent role in the latter, now flagged up in the top line of the article, is indeed reason enough for the article. As WP:ONEEVENT says, "If the event is highly significant, and the individual's role within it is a large one, a separate article is generally appropriate." ABeLeaver (talk) 11:42, 30 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

This is a rampant WP:COATHOOK situation. By this reasoning, every employee of any company would get their own article if it could be shown that they were employed by that company during two notable events involving that company. We would need to have articles on every programmer at Facebook who played some part in programming their privacy criteria, every lawyer on Microsoft's legal team down to the lowest level associate, and every branch manager at Wells Fargo who pushed the company sales goals. bd2412 T 14:25, 30 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

An oddly misleading response. The subject was not some low-level employee who was coincidentally employed at the time these two stories happened. In the case of the Lib Dem leadership election push-polling allegations, referenced above in multiple reputable sources including the BBC, Times, Guardian and Telegraph, the subject was one of two individuals at the centre of the story (the other, Gavin Grant (executive), already merits their own Wikipedia article). In the case of the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal, the only reason the story has emerged at all is that the subject was one of a handful of eyewitnesses to act as "whistleblower", in his case, over the Brexit dimension of the story - another, Christopher Wylie, already merits their own Wikipedia article. The subject is not some incidental employee, as you seem to be suggesting. ABeLeaver (talk) 18:44, 30 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The article variously describes him as "a contractor", "an advisor", a "focus group expert" and "Senior Consultant (Messaging and Branding)" for the company that would later become Cambridge Analytica, but which this person left "early in 2015", which is before that company even did any of its encyclopedically notable work. The next company where he is described as "director of communications" is not even a notable company, and appears to have done nothing more than make unsuccessful bids to work on other projects. Worse than someone working for a company that happened to do notable things, this is a person who happened to work for a company and then left before it did notable things. This is a pastiche of misses papered together to look like a hit. bd2412 T 19:13, 30 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Delete The amount of content in this article is striking and maybe a bit misleading. There seems to be a lot of dot-connecting that creates tenuous conclusions about the subject's involvement in a wide range of events. Some sources used do not mention Gettleson even once. I'll grant that the articles listed above do come from independent, reliable sources, but that's not quite enough to pass WP:GNG. The way the article's written also makes it seem like Gettleson was the primary actor in the Cambridge Analytica/Vote Leave scandal. Gettleson was a background player at best or at least not the center of the scandal (he doesn't even warrant conclusion in the scandal's own Wikipedia article or in the Cambridge Analytica or Vote Leave pages). I do think this article qualifies as both WP:COATHOOK (because, in many areas, its goal seems to be building a case against the subject, using information from a broader, actually notable topic and occasionally using sources in which the subject isn't even mentioned) and WP:ONEEVENT (because the 2015 Lib Dem scandal—a non-event for which Gettleson was exonerated—was relatively minor and would never be enough to establish notability on its own).Gargleafg (talk) 01:26, 1 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. Necrothesp (talk) 12:16, 2 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Delete It's a rambling mess of an article. I think there's a nugget of why he might be notable in there with the whole Cambridge Analytica thing, but a BEFORE search doesn't show enough reliable sources for me to assume a keep off of that, and as noted above he's such a minor player he doesn't get mentioned in other sources. A keep vote would require massive amounts WP:TNT to narrowly focus why he's notable. Also fails WP:NPOL, for what it's worth. SportingFlyer talk 02:21, 4 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

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.