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 as failure of WP:CORP and WP:COI. KrakatoaKatie 16:51, 21 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

L.E.K. Consulting (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)

Article fails WP:NOTABILITY, WP:CORP, WP:NOT, WP:SPAM and WP:COI. Article was created by an WP:SPA account(s) with no other edits other than related to L.E.K. Consulting. Was speedied three times under WP:CSD#G11 and WP:CSD#A7. Hu12 21:03, 15 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

→ See also: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Spam#http:.2F.2Fspam.lek.com

• Delete.--Hu12 21:42, 15 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. -- no references demonstrating notability. 774 unique Google hits. --A. B. ^(talk) 23:49, 15 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. I was going to propose this for deletion too, since the article appears to be created solely for the purpose of adding "wikilinkspam" to other articles (as opposed to external link spam). =Axlq 05:20, 16 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep That's funny - I get just over 58 000 unique google hits for "L.E.K Consulting" in quotes [1] . Some of those google hits say that the company has won the Queen's Award for Enterprise (see:[2]) awarded by Queen Elizabeth II on her birthday, heeding the advice of the Prime Minister and others. It is described as the UK's most prestigious business award. (official site: [3]) Other results suggest the company is notable in other respects as well. It has advised government bodies like the Strategic Rail Authority (here is a House of Lords transcript just for starters [4] ) as well as several famous companies. I'm not familiar with the business press, so it may be difficult for me to analyse such sources. I submit that if the company is notable enough for Her Majesty, it is notable enough for an article in Wikipedia :-) --TreeKittens 06:01, 16 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • consider also the 5 seperate Spam WP:SPA WP:SPAM only accounts and IP's noted in the WikiProject Spam Case mentioned above.--Hu12 07:14, 16 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Hu12 - I'm sure you have done excellent work uncovering spam at Wikiproject:spam, but may I suggest that you change your nomination? A google news search [5] clearly shows that this company passes WP:NOTABILITY and WP:CORP. The Queen's Award for Enterprise alone clearly show that it not a candidate for WP:CSD#G11 or WP:CSD#A7. A google books search [6] and a google scholar search [7] add to this perception. I don't see how the article content violates WP:NOT, and I don't really see that any of the internal links created by the accounts you mention are at all problematic - they are all fair edits in my opinion, added to relevant articles and should probably not have been reverted. Naturally only administrators can see the deleted contributions. Conflict of interest is a major concern, but WP:COI is not grounds for deletion. Furthermore, WP:SPAM suggests that deletion is a last resort if attempts to edit the article to comply with WP:NPOV have failed. I see no evidence of this. The article can easily be edited to comply with all our policies and guidelines. Deleting verifiable information on a notable topic because of a user conduct issues goes against the project's main goals, in my opinion. Again, I congratulate you on your work but request a more convincing deletion rationale. Best regards --TreeKittens 10:14, 16 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      • First the WP:SPAM accounts. WP:COI. It is quite evident that the accounts and IP are only contributing to Wikipedia in order to promote L.E.K. Consulting. Two of the 5 WP:SPA accounts do not publicly show contribs, so I'll explain. Agentpanda (talk · contribs) created the fist version (Only contributor not including tags added), Sebvan (talk · contribs) created the second (Only contributor not including tags added), Kid291uk (talk · contribs) created both the third and current version of the article. IP 59.154.61.35 (talk · contribs) (registered to LEK Consulting) has only edited the curent version. Kid1983uk (talk · contribs) has no edits outside LEK Consulting. Second, Non-Notable. It was speedied three times already, under WP:CSD#G11 and WP:CSD#A7. Simply having search results, may mean well paid Search engine optimization, however those results do seem to be merely trivial coverage or mentions. Trivial or incidental coverage of a subject by secondary sources is not sufficient to establish notability. The depth of coverage of the subject by the source must be considered. This is clearly noted in the notability guidelines. Spam Advertising is prohibited as an official Wikipedia policy of long standing. Advertising is covered in WP:CORP, WP:NOT and WP:SPAM. --Hu12 12:07, 16 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
        • Let's not forget contributions and contributions wikispamming this article all over the place, singling out this company within the text of articles and in "see also" sections where it isn't appropriate to do so. I am willing to bet these are sockpuppets, especially contributions and contributions (which I have just tagged). =Axlq 15:20, 16 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
          • With all due respect, I believe both those accusations are unwarranted. Firstly, contributions has made no edits at all that refer to LEK Consulting. Secondly, contributions has inserted a few links to the article from Richard Koch, the co-founder of LEK consulting , and from other companies in the same industry. See [8] to verify this. Furthermore, a 75 page (including 8 pages of references) literature review authored by Prof. Werner Bruggeman is a detailed analysis of LEK Consulting's methodology in comparison with that of McKinsey and four others.[9] This provides third-party verification of its relevance to that article. I am not experienced with these kind of sources, and it seems that much of the third-party coverage is subscription only, so I think it would be good to get some specialist help here. Thanks --TreeKittens 17:24, 16 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
            • My mistake, I got confused. contributions wikispammed ARGE Consulting as you can see by the edit history. Apologies for that. I stand by the sockpuppet accusation of kid291uk and kid1983uk, however, as well as the assertion that the article was created for the purpose of promoting L.E.K. Consulting on other articles such as Management consulting. =Axlq 05:12, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
              • OK, no worries. I agree that the Kid(x)uk accounts are almost certainly the same person. All I would say is that it is possible he just kept losing his password and so had to create new accounts. I don't see any bad edits here and all of the articles he linked from seem perfectly relevant to me so I think we should assume good faith here. Anyway, if the consensus here is that articles with some WP:COI issues should simply be deleted, then I don't want to be the one to break it - I'm just trying to do the right thing by this article. Best regards, and thanks for your honesty. TreeKittens 12:31, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete unless non trivial sources are provided. Even the Queen's Award appears to have gone totally unnoticed by any form of press. Nuttah68 10:10, 20 August 2007 (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.