Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/David Marchick

David Marchick

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Insufficiently notable person. Fails WP:BIO in that he has not "received significant coverage in reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject", and does not pass any sub-criterion such as WP:AUTHOR or otherwise achieve notability.

Mr Marchick falls in the category I call "ordinary accomplished person". He is accomplished and is having a fine career, but a very large number of people are similarly accomplished. Whether we want to go down the road of beginning to include such people is something that we ought to consider very carefully, I think.

From a purely policy standpoint, he's not notable, I wouldn't say. Let's drill down.

• He was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State. Mind you that there is an unmentioned level here, Undersecretary, so he was three levels down from the Secretary. A distinguished position to be sure, but it says here "Assistant Secretary of State is a title used for many executive positions in the United States State Department", and he was a level below that. So unless we want to greatly expand WP:DIPLOMAT this does not confer notability.
• He had desk jobs in the White House, the Office of the United States Trade Representative and the Department of Commerce. This is nice but is very far from conferring notability. During this time, important things happened (North American Free Trade Agreement, creation of World Trade Organization) and Mr Marchick presumably did some office work connected with that, which is also nice but not germane for our purposes.
• He was a partner at a big law firm, a lobbyist, and is now a director at a large asset management firm, which are useful things to be, but not germane for our purposes.
• He's a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, which is good but the Council does have 4,700 members.

In my view, his notability would hinge on one of these (quite slim) threads:

1. He co-wrote a published book (at 43 pages it's really only a white paper I would infer). It may (or may not) be erudite, but it's not very well-known and hasn't garnered any reviews that I could find. Fails WP:AUTHOR by a mile; one might consider it more of an academic paper, but Mr Marchick also fails WP:ACADEMIC by a big margin.
2. He's published pieces in the Far Eastern Economic Review, Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal (no refs given, but let's assume that that's true). The first is out of business but the latter two are important publications. I don't know what the articles were or how many, but there's no notability criteria for writing newspaper or magazine articles per se, except WP:AUTHOR which he doesn't meet.
3. Finally, one could say "Yes, he doesn't meet WP:BIO or any of its sub-criteria in any one activity, but he's done a little of this and a little of that and taken together he's notable". I wouldn't agree with that at all, this would be a new thing for the Wikipedia, and if we want to have a policy to confer notability on persons who are just generally somewhat accomplished, we ought to create WP:ACCOMPLISHED or something as a sub-criteria for WP:BIO (and be prepared to handle an awful lot articles for doctors, lawyers, business vice-presidents, local dignitaries, etc.). The community hasn't seen fit to do that and I'd not be favor of doing it here.

I get that he's a big shot, has talked with people who are notable, is in "the club", and so forth, but I'm not seeing the Wikipedia notability here.

(N.B.: there may (or may not) be some content problems with this article, and his current employer has had a hand in the making of this article, but before tackling that I want to see if he's notable, which I don't think he is.) Herostratus (talk) 03:55, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

• Delete — Searching on this subject and then peeling back many WP:PRIMARY and WP:BLPSPS left me with very little indicating this subject might approach WP:GNG. And while quite impressive, he fails WP:ANYBIO. I agree with the very detailed nomination's' rationale that the subject also fails various alternative criteria. I'm also confident that if we actually had a WP:NJOURNALIST, this subject would fail that as well. JFHJr (㊟) 06:12, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
• Keep. I am collecting what RSes exist about Marchik. Found this article in Journal of Economic Literature, Vol XLV, 2007, pp. 1042–44 on his book; says it is really good. Also says it is 190 pages. Hosting that article per fair use to facilitate discussion. The jstor link is [1]. There is a capsule review here. The book is cited in a report in the Journal of Homeland Security. Per this US government site, the guy is on the US–China Economic and Security Review Commission. Sounds important. He testified before the US senate on behalf of Carlyle group. Carlyle is the third-largest private-equity firm in the world, after TPG and Goldman, raising $40 billion in 2011. The person they sent to the US Senate to speak on their behalf was Marchik. When they hired him, it was reported prominently in the Washington Post and Financial times (pay link). His wedding, of all things, was covered in the New York Times Style section. His book is the course material for a law course at Georgetown University. And all this after completely ignoring his work as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State. A Google books search is returning so many hits it will take me awhile to winnow them and collect the information.

The various categories such as author, diplomat and so on are meant to be examples, not an exhaustive list every notable person has to fit into. The central notability guideline is non-trivial coverage in multiple, independent, reliable secondary sources. I have posted multiple, independent, reliable sources. Some can be thought primary, but the book reviews and other articles are secondary sources. Multi-faceted notability is notability for WP:GNG purposes. Churn and change (talk) 02:35, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

• Oh, OK, he (co-)wrote Foreign Investment and National Security which is 43 pages, but US National Security and Foreign Direct Investment is another entity, which is 190 pages. He is also only a co-writer on that. WP:AUTHOR does allow for "The person is regarded as an important figure or is widely cited by peers or successors" (he fails all the other WP:AUTHOR criteria by a lot). Is he an "important figure"? No, he's not. Is he widely cited by peers? He's not, as far as I can see. ("Important" and "widely" are subject to interpretation, but I think it's safe to say that Mr Marchik was not that type of author they had in mind when they wrote that clause.) Now, there's a caveat, which I think is part of what you're getting at: if (let us say) only 20 people read his book but one of them was the Secretary of State and she based policy decisions on what he wrote then he could be arguably considered "important". It is in this and only this way that he could possibly be considered important as a writer, I think. So: did the State Department base policy on his writings? I'd like to see evidence of that. It's not something we can just assume. I'm even more skeptical since the review says "The economic analysis is very simple minded". (I'm not seeing the "says it is really good" beyond being well written; the review is mixed I'd say and makes it sound rather polemical more than anything ("The important thing to note is that the book has a strong message: allow free international investment flows... [and] minimize Congressional oversight...").) (Hmmmm where have I heard that before?)

Stuff like "is on the US–China Economic and Security Review Commission. Sounds important." leave me pretty cold, actually. I mean everybody does something. Is he more "important" than (let us say) the Director for New York State Operations for UPS? He's not. After all, UPS is a large and very famous company that is a very key part of the communications infrastructure of the United States. And New York is big; as big and rich as the Netherlands and a lot bigger and richer than Sweden or Greece. It's a very important job, and how well he does it materially affects the economy of New York State and the lives of its many citizens. Not to mention that he has supervisory authority over thousands of employees and responsibility for a multi-million dollar budget. Far, far more important than Marchick and this is not even arguable I don't think. The problem is, if he's in, so is the director of California operations, and Texas, and so on, and then you have his boss (Vice-President for Northeast Operations) and of course the CEO and CFO and CTO and board chairman and probably a bunch of people, so you've talking several score people just for UPS. Do we want to go down this path? Maybe we do, but if so why has no one written this into any policy?

Similarly, he had a desk job in the State Department (I don't know the department's table of organizations, but I think it likely there are hundreds of people there at his level, and if not then certainly several score). This really does count as nothing (and by that I don't mean that he's a worthless person, just that this means nothing as regards the Wikipedia notability standards).

Yes Carlyle Group is big and important and I'd grant its president notability, but how deep into the lower ranks do we want to go with this? They sent him to testify to the Senate. Well somebody had to go. An awful lot of people testify on Capitol Hill. Are they notable? His promotion was mentioned in the Post (probably briefly; link doesn't work, ditto the link re the Georgetown course syllabus). I get that, but passing mentions are not sufficient to create a biographical article, I don't think. His wedding was briefly noted in the Times society pages... yeesh. I already granted that he's a the kind of person who would have their wedding reported in the society pages, but, ultimately, so what? Are there any articles about this person as opposed to brief press notes basically mentioning his name? There aren't, that I have found.

Look, I think I can show the problem here. How should the article, if kept, open? ""David M. Marchick is ______..." Well, is what? Right now it says "David M. Marchick is an American lawyer and former diplomat..." but that's not right. He's a partner in a white-shoe law firm... so are a lot of people. Has he done anything notable as a lawyer? No. He's not a diplomat ("A diplomat is a person appointed by a country to conduct diplomacy with another state or international organization") as near as I can tell; he's a mid-level government functionary. So what is he? "David M. Marchick is an American writer..." based on co-writing one book that did not exactly set the world on fire? Maybe "David M. Marchick is an American C-list Beltway personality..." or "David M. Marchick is a generally accomplished and well-educated person with a successful career..."? Or what? Help me out here. Because I'm not seeing this person's notability, is what. Herostratus (talk) 08:16, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

• Comment — Despite assertions in the above !vote, unless third party coverage exists, we can't just imagine his government roles are "important," and primary sources don't establish any importance. Testifying as a spokesperson is in the normal course of his duties in his Carlyle group; a record about having done so might show the topic of testimony or the company itself is noteworthy, but not its spokesperson, at least not without coverage substantially about him. That aside, his books have been reviewed, and so he might most clearly approach WP:AUTHOR; his textbook might be additive to WP:ACADEMIC, but it's far below that threshold on its own. What we have is very little in the way of biographical detail of objective importance as shown in coverage by parties that are not actually associated with the subject. JFHJr (㊟) 19:19, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

• Keep. Notability is not limited to people who are easily pigeonholed. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 23:00, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Note: This debate has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 17:45, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 17:45, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

• Keep Meets guidelines for notability. Hell In A Bucket (talk) 16:25, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

• Comment — Which one? Even if in spirit, not letter? I've edited the article to remove cites to press releases and several primary sources that are unsuitable to indicate any particular importance or appropriate overall weight for the claims asserted. There are still some rather grand claims that rest on crap sources such as WP:BLPSPS and (likely more) press release material. At this point, I think a good, hard look at WP:42 is in order. JFHJr (㊟) 16:31, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
• Request re-listing so that a clearer consensus might emerge. JFHJr (㊟) 19:19, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

• Delete. Coverage of him has been WP:ROUTINE announcements about hirings, minor quotations in articles and his wedding announcement. These must not be considered in a notability discussion. A search turned up nothing beyond that. I find no significant coverage of the man himself. Hence it fails the WP:GNG requirements and other more specific criteria for authors already discussed above. Some people arguing keep say that his status as an executive at Carlyle Group confers notability upon him; yet notability cannot be inherited from an organization. See WP:ORGIN. Therefore this argument fails. His book has not been widely reviewed or taken notice of. He may have testified before the Senate, but I find no secondary reports on the testimony. --Batard0 (talk) 07:09, 19 October 2012 (UTC)
• Comment I'm neutral on this because it seems like there is a potential for this page to develop, but as it stands I see no point of notability that justifies the page. Finding references to him is one thing - but what is he notable for? Why does WP require an entry on him? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fireflo (talk • contribs) 11:13, 19 October 2012 (UTC)
• Comment Looks like nom is stuck on the "is he an author," "is he a diplomat" questions. Notability is simply non-trivial (not necessarily in-depth) coverage in multiple independent, reliable, third-party sources (see WP:BASIC), with sources sufficient to provide enough material for a start-class article. Marchick meets that, and that is all that is relevant to this Afd. There isn't a need for in-depth coverage in a single place; multiple references which together provide enough material is good. In this case that does exist. Churn and change (talk) 13:54, 19 October 2012 (UTC)
  • The guidelines do require some in-depth coverage; the WP:GNG say "significant coverage" that addresses the subject "directly and in detail," not trivial coverage. WP:BASIC speaks of "non-trivial" coverage. I do not see any real difference between "in-depth" and "significant" coverage. Perhaps you could argue that coverage is significant but not in-depth if it is composed of passing mentions in a wide variety of reliable sources, which may accord with WP:BASIC. And yet in my view these qualify as "trivial coverage of a subject by secondary sources," which "may not be sufficient to establish notability". If you have evidence of significant coverage beyond the routine (wedding announcements and job moves are routine, I think, as are quotes in articles that don't focus on him) please let me know and I'll change my vote. --Batard0 (talk) 17:18, 19 October 2012 (UTC)
    • The NY Times coverage is not a "wedding announcement"; it is coverage by a newspaper reporter in the style section. The book review is in a journal (Journal of Economic Literature), and yes, authors do inherit notability from books (inherited notability doesn't work just the other way around, from author to book). The book is used in a law course in a university, as noted above, and that counts. His coverage in Washington Post and Financial Times are about his appointment at Caryle; they are not in-depth but neither are they trivial. Taken together (there are more hits on Google search related to the Senate testimony, by the way) they provide sufficient non-trivial, reliable, third-party coverage for a start-class article. The nom's rationale, that the person has to be an expert at something and not some kind of a jack-of-all-trades, is not the WP criterion for notability of people. Churn and change (talk) 18:33, 19 October 2012 (UTC)
      • I have to disagree about the wedding announcement; in my view, that's what it is. The NYT publishes wedding announcements of people it considers notable enough for wedding announcements, including lots of lawyers, bankers, politicians, etc. I don't think the NYT's judgment of the notability of his wedding is anything beyond trivial coverage. It's not even as detailed as many other wedding stories published by the paper. See here for the section, and plenty more of this. To take a random example, does this article qualify Hannah Meyers, an intelligence researcher at the New York Police Department, as in any way notable? I know you're not asserting that the wedding announcement alone makes Marchick notable, but I would argue that it's so trivial that it ought to be ignored. See WP:ROUTINE, although that applies to events, not people. Second, where does it say in WP:AUTHOR that an author inherits notability from his/her books? I sometimes stupidly miss things, but I can't find this. Is it in a different guideline? The coverage about his appointment at Carlyle is routine and doesn't rise to the level of significant, in my view, even in combination with other trivial sources. Journalists are more or less forced to cover these things. Carlyle is a major company, and Marchick is in an executive position. I'd draw a distinction between this kind of coverage (based on a press release from Carlyle, no doubt) and the sort of non-trivial coverage where an journalist at a reliable publication decided independently that Marchick was worth profiling, doing a story about, etc. If our interpretation of the standards is too lax, we'll set a precedent where pretty much any minor executive at a large company warrants an article, because most of them have been the subject of such routine comings-and-goings articles. Having said this, I'm still willing to change my vote if something that treats the subject in a significant way turns up. --Batard0 (talk) 20:42, 19 October 2012 (UTC)
        • I can't answer the WP:OSE arguments. As to an author inheriting notability from a book, check WP:AUTHOR; a notable author is one who writes notable books. Note the book is a text for at least one course at a reputed institution. It has a major review (debating what the review says is not an Afd discussion). If you go to books.google.com and search, you will see mentions to Marchik in [2] (Palgrave MacMillan), [3] (W.W. Norton), [4] (Kluwer Law: pages 51, 168, 169), [5] (Edward Elgar: page 57 in biblio and a bunch of other pages, check with a search), [6] (Peterson Institute for International Economics, pages 192, 200, 202), [7] (Edward Elgar), [8] (Yale University Press), [9] (Cengage learning—a textbook in its 13th edition, clearly instructors are using it to teach) and still more, too numerous to mention here. If an author's work is notable, the author is notable per WP:AUTHOR. Considering that he is also many other things, and considering RSes have covered his work in those fields (appointment to Carlyle, a previous house testimony here at a reliable third-party source, William Mitchell College of Law publication) he passes our notability threshold. Churn and change (talk) 21:33, 19 October 2012 (UTC)
          • With regard to the WP:OSE argument, I'm only attempting to show that these wedding announcements cover insignificant, non-notable people. This doesn't necessarily mean that Marchick himself must be non-notable; only that these announcements themselves don't mean much in those terms. In other words, I am not saying "other people who are covered by wedding announcements don't have wikipedia articles, so Marchick shouldn't either," which would be a WP:OSE argument. Rather, I'm saying simply that Marchick's announcement itself can't be taken seriously when considering notability because it's trivial and fits in the context of other trivial coverage of weddings. I don't think this should be controversial, although as always I could be wrong. As to the WP:AUTHOR argument, I accept as a given that the book in question is notable based on your sources (although this probably tenuous given the WP:BK requirement for multiple and non-trivial coverage, which could be argued against here, and it is only taught in one institution as far as we know, while the requirement is "the subject of instruction at multiple grade schools, high schools, universities or post-graduate programs"). But as I said, I leave that aside for now and accept that it's notable. Marchick has written one notable book. We agree on that, right? Now, where in WP:AUTHOR do I get to the part where this one notable book makes the author notable? I'll go through the criteria. First, "The person is regarded as an important figure or is widely cited by peers or successors." Do the smattering of references we find in a Google Books search constitute "widely cited"? I argue that they don't, but this is a judgment call. I could only find 50-odd non-duplicative citations of Marchick in books (as opposed to magazines) in a search. I don't think this shows he is regarded as an important figure or is widely cited by peers. The second criterion, "The person is known for originating a significant new concept, theory or technique," hasn't been asserted or shown to be true, so I'll assume for now that this doesn't apply. The next criterion says "The person has created, or played a major role in co-creating, a significant or well-known work, or collective body of work, that has been the subject of an independent book or feature-length film, or of multiple independent periodical articles or reviews." First, I would argue that this book is not significant nor well-known. Second, even if it were significant and well-known, it has not been shown to be the subject of a book, a film or multiple independent periodical articles or reviews. One review has been cited; no others seem to exist. So it must fail this criterion barring new evidence that shows otherwise. The third criterion says "The person's work either (a) has become a significant monument, (b) has been a substantial part of a significant exhibition, (c) has won significant critical attention, or (d) is represented within the permanent collections of several notable galleries or museums." His work plainly has not "become a significant monument". This seems to apply more to visual artists who put on exhibitions, etc. The final criterion applies to academics, which is outside the scope of this discussion unless someone would like to go through the academic notability requirements as they apply to Marchick. To sum up, as far as I can tell, the assertion that an author is notable for their work under WP:AUTHOR is true to a degree. But I don't think this particular author's work is itself notable enough to make the author notable on a reading of the guidelines. The house testimony also isn't convincing to me as evidence of notability, as discussed earlier. Saying that it's given substantial coverage in the William Mitchell College of Law publication doesn't do it for me. He's discussed in passing in a footnote on page 2, unless I'm missing something. This is clearly trivial coverage if there ever was such a thing. --Batard0 (talk) 06:55, 20 October 2012 (UTC)
• Comment. I oppose relisting. The thread has already run for 12 days, which practically means it has been relisted once. There is sufficient discussion, and sufficient information unearthed, to decide for good. Deletion is not necessarily based on consensus, it is based on policy and guidelines. One doesn't relist just because there was a lengthy discussion; an Afd tag has real consequences: it scares editors off the page (why put in what could vanish tomorrow), and it leaves readers with a vague idea there is something not fine with the subject. There isn't anything stuck here, since we don't need a consensus to decide an Afd. Here are the sources collected in one place: Journal of Economic Literature, Vol XLV, 2007, pp. 1042–44, an in-depth review of his book, here, Journal of Homeland Security, citation to book, [10] (Palgrave MacMillan), [11] (W.W. Norton), [12] (Kluwer Law: pages 51, 168, 169), [13] (Edward Elgar: page 57 in biblio and a bunch of other pages, check with a search), [14] (Peterson Institute for International Economics, pages 192, 200, 202), [15] (Edward Elgar), [16] (Yale University Press), [17] (Cengage learning—a textbook in its 13th edition, clearly instructors are using it to teach), Washington Post and Financial times (pay link), New York Times Style section, book as the course material for a law course at Georgetown University. That coverage, largely non-trivial (a footnote is not trivial since it is a citation and one should look at the cited material to see the coverage), meets WP:BASIC, which asks for reliable, third-party, non-trivial coverage, and nothing else. Relisting is when sufficient discussion has not occurred, not when there is lack of consensus. Churn and change (talk) 14:53, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

• Without actual relisting, this transclusion does not appear on the AfD today list. Listing thus increases the chances of neutral, informed !votes. What's to fear? There's no rush. JFHJr (㊟) 01:42, 20 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Agreed -- relist and get fresh eyes. --Batard0 (talk) 06:55, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

I agree to relist, seems this is stuck in the middle and fresh eyes will help. Hell In A Bucket (talk) 14:11, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, j⚛e decker^talk 21:42, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

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• Further comment from nominator. To summarize from this point, I think the following is probably true and more or less established:
  • Subject probably does does not meet the general WP:GNG or WP:BIO criteria (this is arguable, depending on how you parse various clauses, but probably true IMO). That's OK, there are other sub-criteria we can then look at.
  • Subject does not meet any criterion of WP:DIPLOMAT or WP:ACADEMIC. This seems fairly well established I think.
  • There is no WP:ATTORNEY, WP:LOBBYIST, WP:EXECUTIVE, WP:CONSULTANT, or WP:OFFICIAL (possibly there should be). If there were, it's very doubtful Marchick would meet them -- he's done all these things, but not been at the very top in any of them.
  • He does arguably meet criteria #1 (and only #1) of WP:AUTHOR "The person is regarded as an important figure or is widely cited..." He co-wrote one book, U.S. National Security and Foreign Direct Investment. A number of books do cite this book. And here you'll see Brent Scowcroft calling it "very important", Larry Summers calling it "an insightful analysis", and Bill Emmott strongly recommending it. It did get a full review in the Journal of Economic Literature. (Incidentally his co-author, Edward M. Graham, is probably a lot more notable.)

WP:AUTHOR criterion #1 is kind of vague, but it is a valid criterion. We do have articles on writers who wrote basically one book (Malcolm Lowry and (sort of) Henry Roth for instance). I can't really rate U.S. National Security and Foreign Direct Investment up with Under the Volcano or Call It Sleep, though, and only being a co-writer bothers me quite a bit. (FWIW the other author, Edward M. Graham, is probably a lot more notable.)

• • There is sufficient material to write at least a brief article (primary sources can be used for this, judiciously) so this is not a deal-killer.
  • Finally, the point that he doesn't meet WP:DIPLOMAT or WP:ACADEMIC or WP:ATTORNEY or WP:LOBBYIST or WP:EXECUTIVE or WP:CONSULTANT or WP:OFFICIAL (and assuming he doesn't meet WP:AUTHOR) but can at least be considered under each of them, and this has some bearing, is reasonable. I don't agree with that but it's not unreasonable.

It's a tough question and kind of on the bubble. Moving David Marchick to U.S. National Security and Foreign Direct Investment might well be the best solution. We could still include a paragraph on Marchick, and this would give the opportunity to include a paragraph on the probably more notable Edward M. Graham. (I'd be willing to do the work if this course is taken.) Herostratus (talk) 01:36, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

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