Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/David Marchick

David Marchick

David Marchick (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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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) 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?