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Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jack Greenberg (lawyer)

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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.

Jack Greenberg (lawyer)

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The result was WP:SNOW closing as a keeper / withdrawing by nom. The major issues with this article have been resolved, especially to the satisfaction of the (somewhat notable :) ) subject. Some of the article edits have been oversighted due to privacy issues. Will update OTRS later. Thanks, all Alison ❤ 19:25, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Jack Greenberg (lawyer) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log • AfD statistics)
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A completely unsourced BLP of a largely non-notable lawyer (WP:BLP1E applies on the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund link). Moreover, the subject of this BLP has explicitly expressed a desire to have it deleted - see OTRS Ticket #2010020810005618. Please let's do the proper thing here - Alison ❤ 23:24, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Can you please point to a wikipedia policy that says that "the proper thing" is to delete articles on subjects who want them deleted? Or that otherwise bears on the issue? I imagine that Bernie Madoff, Anwar al-Awlaki, and a host of others might well desire the same.--Epeefleche (talk) 01:17, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm pretty certain you'll find that there are no policies whatsoever which suggest we do the proper thing, which is largely why Wikipedia consistently fails to do same. Still, all I can do is ask people to be kind - Alison ❤ 01:47, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Well, we do have policies -- such as those at BLP -- which take into consideration doing the right thing, try to determine what the right thing might be, and develop policies accordingly. Interestingly, your inline for "to be kind" led me to the words "If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it." I don't see how deleting bios of people who are notable only because they request it will improve or maintain wikipedia. If the article needs protection, protect it. If it needs improvement, improve it. IMHO, that is the way to improve wikipedia. The subject of the article has a bio up at the Law School that is online; much of what is in his bio here is reflected there as well, so I would think that a properly written and administered article should not cause him (or us) concern.--Epeefleche (talk) 02:24, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia has proven consistently unable to offer its article subjects a guarantee that they will not be the victims of malicious or inept editing being damaging to their reputations or careers. As long as we can't do that, Wikipedia is improved by deleting the bios of those who wish it, as doing otherwise is evil. I am functioning on the assumption that we can all agree that a reduction of evil is an improvement, though I may find variable mileage on that point. Steve Smith (talk) 02:29, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It's also true that the New York Times can't offer that guarantee. Deleting the bio doesn't solve anything; notice that he already has a second bio in Wikipedia under NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and his name could be added any number of places. It is evil to try and censor information and promote ignorance; I find that evil here to be greater than any good that comes from the minimal help that deleting the bio page would bring. Note that it's pretty unlikely for any issues to pop up on the page now that it's been featured here and many people have added it to their watch lists.--Prosfilaes (talk) 02:37, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I did not realize that the New York Times allowed anybody to come by and anonymously write anything they like about the subjects it covers; thank you for enlightening me. Thank you also for advising us that you find the evil that would result from deletion greater than the good; with respect, I find Mr. Greenberg in a better position than you to make that evaluation. Steve Smith (talk) 02:40, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Pro answered your comment fairly, considering how you worded it. You said "Wikipedia has proven consistently unable to offer its article subjects a guarantee that they will not be the victims of malicious or inept editing". Pro said, neither can the NYT. You then put words in Pro's mouth. The issue of the quality of the editors was not what you raised; rather it was the issue of a guarantee.--Epeefleche (talk) 08:53, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
There needs to be a WP:DAYENU established to address situations like this. THF (talk) 17:10, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • How about: showing a little respect for the man's wishes and concerns here? Given that you've not mentioned that at all, settling instead to max out his article in whatever way possible, it clearly means nothing to you? - Alison ❤ 00:17, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        • On the contrary, I am sympathetic to his desire to have the article deleted. However, for a highly notable subject this factor is overriden by the encyclopedic value of the article. Nsk92 (talk) 00:24, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
          • Translation: I listened. I don't care. Too bad, now on with the show. - Alison ❤ 00:34, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
            • He listened, he even cared, but he felt the balance of evidence went against deletion. I fail to see how the proper thing to do in a discussion is to abuse anyone who disagrees with you.--Prosfilaes (talk) 02:07, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. We should respect the requests of living subjects when dealing with cases of borderline notability such as this. JBsupreme (talk) 00:41, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Once again, how is that a borderline case? Nsk92 (talk) 00:51, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep and cleanup - this is not close to being a borderline case. Now, I am a borderline case, but not Jack Greenberg. I'll erase the unsourced material myself. Bearian (talk) 00:54, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
FYI: in addition to erasing unsourced matters, I sourced two sentences and placed a tag to prevent indexing by search engines. Bearian (talk) 01:24, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Speedy keep. If notability were marginal, it would be one thing, but this isn't even a remotely close case. (Please discount my WP:ILIKEIT: Greenberg has long been one of my heroes.) I hope whatever nasties that prompted the OTRS ticket get handled, and the article gets appropriately sourced and brought up to the appropriate level of quality, but quality issues should be addressed separately from deletion issues. If there's a risk of vandalism and BLP violations, then provide appropriate protection for the article. THF (talk) 01:33, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Agreed. Bearian has removed some BLP stuff and I removed the "Family" section of the article (it was unsourced and of little encyclopedic value; we really don't need to know whom he was married to/divorced from, etc). If there are concerns about whatever was in that section, perhaps the article can be referred to oversight to suppress the prior page history). In fact, in its current form the article is pretty well referenced. Nsk92 (talk) 01:43, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete according to subject's request. Xxanthippe (talk) 01:34, 10 February 2010 (UTC).[reply]
  • Delete per JBSupreme. Steve Smith (talk) 01:42, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Clearly meets the criteria of WP:ACADEMIC. Meets # 1 (and only has to meet one criterion), in that he has made significant impact in his scholarly discipline, broadly construed, as demonstrated by independent reliable sources. May meet # 2 in that he has received a highly prestigious award or honor at a national level -- if his awards are considered to be for his academic work. Meets # 6 in that he has held a major highest-level elected or appointed academic post at an academic institution. And finally, he meets the general notability requirement of WP:PEOPLE in that he has been the subject of published secondary source material which is reliable, intellectually independent, and independent of the subject. I don't see what wikipedia policy supports deleting the article because he requests that it be deleted (nor, as yet, do those who hang their hat on that reason cite one), and imagine that if there is such a policy we will shortly see the deletion of the articles on Bernie Madoff, Anwar al-Awlaki, and assorted other felons, terrorists, and individuals of questionable repute.--Epeefleche (talk) 01:47, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • zOMG - slippery slope fallacy. Sorry, but Mr. Greenberg is neither felon nor terrorist - Alison ❤ 01:49, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • Correct, and that's all the more reason to keep the article. There is no negative or contentious info in the article and all the info there is overwhelmingly positive. The subject is a famous lawyer, who has argued two landmark Supreme Court cases (Brown V. Board of Education and Furman v. Georgia), received numerous awards and honors, including Presidential Citizens Medal and being a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a named chair professorship, has his biography posted at the National Parks Service website[3], and so on. If we start deleting articles about highly notable individuals like this one, where will that slippery slope end? Nsk92 (talk) 02:01, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • The funny thing about those other guys is that they're sufficiently inundated with negative coverage elsewhere that their Wikipedia article is unlikely to be of much concern to them. That Greenberg isn't, and that he is concerned about his article here, is perhaps telling. Steve Smith (talk) 01:54, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps there is some negative material in RSs that we could find if we look a bit harder.--Epeefleche (talk) 09:28, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep; a largely non-notable lawyer? He's argued before the Supreme Court in very influential cases, he's one of six leaders the NAACP Legal Defense has had. I can't find hard numbers on the Presidential Citizens Medal, but it looks like presidents give out no more than 30 a year, so there's at most 1200 of them floating around. His academics alone meet WP:ACADEMIC. He well and clearly meets Wikipedia standards for entry. His request doesn't override that fact.--Prosfilaes (talk) 02:07, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. Per subject request. As JB pointed out, notability is not solid. We can do without this biography. Lara 02:29, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Well, when JB made his comment I had not yet made mine. But your comment comes after I pointed to four criteria that he has met either squarely (three of them), or quite possibly (one). And he only has to meet one criterion. So we can better understand your view, might you explain why he does not solidly meet each of those four criteria? Thanks.--Epeefleche (talk) 05:18, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. As pointed out by Nsk92 and others, he's not merely notable, he's famous. The extensively sourced, non-negative article in its current condition leaves no hints of why this should even be a contentious discussion.--Arxiloxos (talk) 02:36, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. I'm willing to listen to the subject in borderline cases, but this is not a borderline case. He played a significant role in many important civil rights cases, has several high honors, was dean of a major law school and holds a named professorship. In some cases the lack of an article on someone becomes an embarrassment to the encyclopedia and, if deleted, this would become one. —David Eppstein (talk) 03:03, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. If the subject (do we know it is really the subject who made the request?) had expressed a compelling reason to delete, or any reason at all, beyond some capricious dislike of exposure on Wikipedia as a medium (since all these mostly laudatory facts are easily available elsewhere) I might be inclined toward doubting my position. But without any reason, I'm not. Cjs2111 (talk) 03:50, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: I think this matter has been resolved, or at least the mystery has been solved. The problem appears to have been created by a relative by affinity of the said subject, who has been a block-evading sockpuppet. Long-term semi-protection will help, too. Bearian (talk) 04:23, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Yes, inclined to delete borderline subject-requested articles, but this is not borderline, and is certainly not unsourced. The number of meaningful incoming links persuades me most strongly. If the article were an orphan, then delete. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:48, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Of course. The Jack Greenberg?! He decided a long time ago to do stuff that made him deservedly famous and emphatically encyclopedically notable. Get an acceptable version and protect it forever. Way, way, way past borderline notability. Plenty of senators and governors affected history less. Would we honor their request for deletion?John Z (talk) 08:27, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. The subject is established to be a person of high distinction and consequently WP notable. I voted above for delete because of the subject's request. Xxanthippe (talk) 09:00, 10 February 2010 (UTC).[reply]
Understood. Nor did you ever say he was not notable. (Though I remain surprised still by the assertions of each of your fellow delete voters that the subject is either "largely non-notable", or "borderline notability", or "notability is not solid").--Epeefleche (talk) 09:20, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. Just to reinforce what others have said, per our current guidelines Greenberg is not of marginal notability. No doubt like a number of others here I was certainly well aware of him, as would be anyone with a good amount of familiarity with the civil rights movement. I'm extremely willing to delete bios of marginally notable people when the subject requests it and think we should do it in basically every case. The current policy on this is found at WP:DEL, specifically here, where it notes "discussions concerning biographical articles of relatively unknown, non-public figures, where the subject has requested deletion and there is no rough consensus may be closed as delete." It's just not credible to assert that Greenberg is "relatively unknown" or "non-public" so there's no getting around the fact that deleting would go against our current standards (undoubtedly some disagree with those standards, of course, and that's quite legitimate). Nonetheless, I'm still quite concerned given the subject's desire to have this deleted and wonder if there are other options here. First (and I guess this is for Alison), is it possible to get more detail on the OTRS ticket? I don't know if this is kosher or not, but it could be useful to note what the specific concerns were (obviously I don't want to infringe on the privacy of the request in any way). I'm also wondering if anyone has been back in touch with Greenberg now that the article is apparently improved, sourced, and stripped of some personal info. If he finds the current version acceptable, perhaps we could consider long-term full protection. He might be more amenable to the existence of an article if it was largely locked on a decent version. Finally I guess I'd be willing to consider going a bit WP:IAR and doing a merge if Greenberg was still not happy with this. However beyond NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund I'm not sure what our merge target would be, and that article might not be the best place to put a good chunk of info about one person. It's very hard to justify deleting this, but if that can't happen we should still try to do right by Mr. Greenberg as much as possible. Talking to him again via OTRS, if no one has done that as yet, might be a good idea for starters. --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 09:22, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The subject appears not to have understood the range of options available at the time of his request to delete, such as page protection, blocking of a vandal/sockpuppet, etc. This is a great man, who has done much to help move the law to improve social justice in the United States. He just wanted to protect his privacy. He communicated to me that he extends his thanks to all of you who have removed the personal information. This very discussion of his notability has, I believe, honored him. Bearian (talk) 16:39, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
If my comments and actions were not obvious, I did get in touch with Professor Greenberg, and he graciously returned my email. Bearian (talk) 16:40, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the explanation, it certainly clarifies things. If the article is kept (or maybe even before the end of the AfD), perhaps a request be filed at WP:OVERSIGHT to suppress the portion of the page history containing the "Family" section (which has been removed from the article). Or can even a regular admin do that? Nsk92 (talk) 17:15, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, per request, almost 120 revisions of the article have been suppressed. I'll likely update the OTRS ticket and, as nom, withdraw this AfD, especially if Mr. Greenberg is okay with this now - Alison ❤ 19:10, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment A glance at the article talk page and IMDB would show that a major Hollywood studio is in the process of making a movie about him, based on his memoirs, apparently with his participation. Would this happen with a nobody, or someone who wants to be a private figure? This is one of the most notable public figures I have ever seen nominated at AfD. Deletion or merging would be ludicrous.John Z (talk) 09:36, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The movie thing is "in progress", Hollywood-speak for, "it might happen if we can get everybody to do the deals"; sometimes such projects get far enough to leak proposed casting, get some press (which helps them do the deals) and get an IMDB page. And sometimes those projects still never get made. ATM, this looks like such a one. However, the essential point here is that Greenberg is notable enough that Hollywood was seriously considering casting a famous actor to play him. Studerby (talk) 18:23, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep/protect Established notability, article is now much more substantially referenced. Subject request is only a factor in marginal cases. If Charles Manson set an OTRS request from prison asking that we delete his article, would anyone seriously consider it? Or if Jimmy Carter wanted his article dropped? While Greenberg is not that notable, he's much more notable than all but a handful of sports figures, the majority of entertainers, and easily in the top 100 of American living lawyers (IMHO). When he dies, I expect at least minor coverage in all the national media. Studerby (talk) 18:22, 10 February 2010 (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.
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