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 keep. Valid points have been made here that this case had no lasting impact; but equally there is a good argument that it passes the notability threshold anyway through sufficient coverage in multiple reliable sources. I personally find merit in the argument that this could possibly be better portrayed via a merge to Tiger Management, but there is certainly no consensus here to delete this or to impose a merge. ~ mazca talk 12:58, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

NOTE: this AfD was started by a userid who is now indefinitely blocked. However, it's in my view still an AfD that's worth running to conclusion, and therefore I choose to stand behind the edit that started the AfD even if I personally may not agree with the reasons offered for deletion. Determining if the article documents a notable event will be useful. ++Lar: t/c 05:49, 28 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Robertson v. McGraw-Hill Co., Weiss, and Shepard (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log • AfD statistics)
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Fails WP:EFFECT and WP:PERSISTENCE: Lawsuit filed, lawsuit withdrawn. No legal opinions issued. Much of article consists of padding, down to the index number, synthesis. Classic WP:MASK, even after some paring down. Wikipedia is not a compendium of trivial lawsuits. Compare this rubbish to articles on notable lawsuits such as the "hot coffee case," Liebeck v. McDonald's Restaurants. JohnnyB256 (talk) 16:06, 25 December 2009 (UTC) [reply]

1 & 2 would matter if the suit hadn't been settled before trial without payment of a nickel, and if it had resulted in legal precedent, which it didn't. The demand in a lawsuit is meaningless. I could sue my dry cleaner tomorrow for $1 trillion. By the way, the suit against Dow Jones that *did* result in a massive verdict isn't significant enough to have an article of its own. --JohnnyB256 (talk) 03:49, 26 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Who said that the lawsuit against Dow Jones isn't significant enough to have an article of its own? This article laid fallow for five years simply because, it appears, no one was willing or able to go and get the sources needed to develop it. Cla68 (talk) 09:08, 26 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
By the way, I notice that you drastically shortened the intro again. Why would you make such a drastic change to the article while it's undergoing AfD? Cla68 (talk) 09:18, 26 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It's routine to edit articles that are nominated for deletion, sometimes drastically, sometimes even to stubbify them if necessary.--JohnnyB256 (talk) 13:29, 26 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
If necessary being the operative phrase. Your hatchet job is not necessary, and needs reverting. ++Lar: t/c 14:07, 26 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
If you have anything of substance to say on my edits, you should say so on the talk page. As of this moment, all you've done is engaged in personal attacks. I've asked for editing help from the relevant wikiprojeccts, particularly Wikiproject Law. That's not a complete waste of time if this article is deleted, because a discussion is underway about possible other articles that may be created.--JohnnyB256 (talk) 14:45, 26 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Eh, what's going on is obvious ("well poisoning"). Let's keep this focused on the notability of the article.--JohnnyB256 (talk) 03:49, 26 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The article's plenty notable, and was a very well written work, before you started hacking away at it. Your issue with the article, I suspect, is that it's not uniformly positive about Gary Weiss and doesn't hew your party line. Notability is just what you happened to latch onto as a way to remove it. You have a long history of trying to POV push anything related to Gary Weiss, as a review of your contributions to Naked Short Selling, Overstock.com, Patrick Byrne et al will reveal. That's all the evidence an interested participant would need to draw the conclusion that it's likely you are Gary, or a close ally of his. You're clever enough to have organized your affairs so that an SPI would be a waste of time but the circumstantial evidence is strong. That's not well poisoning, that's disclosing your COI. ++Lar: t/c 14:06, 26 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Aside from "plenty notable," do you have anything of substance to add to this discussion other than personal attacks? Can you address the notability issue? Thanks, --JohnnyB256 (talk) 14:28, 26 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
If anything, the article presents a BLP issue for Robertson, not Weiss. It of necessity dredges up the long-forgotten allegations in "Fall of the Wizard," which are extremely negative to Robertson. I'm not faulting the author of the Wiki article for that, it's just inevitable were the article to be kept. I don't see a BLP issue for Weiss and I haven't raised that issue. I've raised notability issues, and I see that two editors appear to agree with me at this early stage. Do you have anything to say on the substance of this AfD, or are you going to restrict your comments here to attacking me?--JohnnyB256 (talk) 14:45, 26 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Your COI is relevant to this, regardless of how you try to spin away from it. ++Lar: t/c 15:32, 26 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
"My COI" is nonexistent. I could make an immense fuss about the author of this article along similar lines, but it just isn't relevant or helpful, and it doesn't belong here. You're attacking me in this discussion is disruptive and needs to stop. Even if I were Weiss, Robertson or Shepard, and I'm not either of those gents, this AfD would need to be determined on whether it meets notability standards. You can run but you can't hide from that. I'm surprised an administrator hasn't come along to redact your comments. No, actually I'm not surprised. --JohnnyB256 (talk) 15:39, 26 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I'd be interested in knowing what COI you think Cla has... and if you would be proved to have a COI, this would be viewed as a bad-faith nom, which could—and probably would—have a huge effect on the outcome of this AfD. —Ed (talkmajestic titan) 19:06, 27 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
That is precisely my point: this AfD has been poisoned by Lar's accusations. What's done is done. I can only hope that the closing administrator takes it into account.--JohnnyB256 (talk) 23:57, 27 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
comment - should we then lose all the rediculous amime stuff? --Rocksanddirt (talk) 03:31, 26 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
WP:OTHERSTUFF --Aka042 (talk) 18:28, 26 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Huh? On the contrary, the cash inflow indicates that the lawsuit was of zero importance. --JohnnyB256 (talk) 15:10, 27 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
What concerns me so much about this AFD, which is now spilling over to ANI, is that volunteer editors with no credentials are second guessing real journalists such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Associated Press, Economist, Mediaweek, Wall Street Journal, Technology Review. Library Journal and Fortune magazine. Some how, all of these journalists found that this story was relavant and notable, but 3 or 4 wikipedia volunteer editors WP:Wikilawyer that this article doesn't belong on wikipedia. Ikip 17:56, 27 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I addressed that above. See WP:PERSISTENCE. I know, it's just a notability guideline. But it's supposed to guide this discussion. Also it was previously pointed out that the Economist and Library Journal don't mention this lawsuit. We're not substituting our judgment for anybody, we're just applying the notbility guideline, which could not be more clear. Of the publications that actually did mention the suit, all did so at the time of the suit or after its withdrawal.--JohnnyB256 (talk) 00:04, 28 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Eh? WP:EFFECT and WP:PERSISTENCE aren't "obscure rules" - they're shortcuts to Wikipedia:Notability (events) which is a key WP guideline! So yes, they may well trump rules "which everyone knows about". I don't care a hoot if it's deleted or not (I think it should be but I won't weep either way) but to argue about whether Notability trumps Reliable Sources is weird! andy (talk) 18:43, 27 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • A handful of reliable sources with less extensive coverage than this article would suggest. Much of it should certainly go to Tiger Management, but there is not much to show the suit is independently notable from the fund, as our policies require. At any rate, this AFD is hash anyway; not surprising given that the nominator is widely believed to have a conflict of interest. I recognize that problem, but still honestly believe this suit falls on the far side of notability. Cool Hand Luke 20:12, 27 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • That's correct. The atmosphere of this AfD has been completely poisoned. I hope the closing administrator is prepared to enforce policies rather than to just blindly treat this as a "vote." The vast majority of the "keep" votes at this time don't even attempt to address the applicable notability standard. This is the kind of article (and AfD) that brings Wikipedia into disrepute. --JohnnyB256 (talk) 21:08, 27 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • You've obviously not actually looked at any of the sources. Many are simply about Tiger Management and only devote two sentences to this lawsuit. The Economist article doesn't appear to cover it at all. Look, I get that this may be a COI AFD nomination, but that doesn't mean our rules should take a holiday. Cool Hand Luke 08:09, 28 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hmm. That'll teach me to be swayed by what others say above and then use it for my argument. I've struck, but whether that changes my !vote or not is a question for tomorrow when I get back to the computer. Thanks for the comments, andy and CHL. My apologies, —Ed (talkmajestic titan) 08:22, 28 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
AmishPete (talkcontribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. Ikip 22:25, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Cla68 (talk) 07:19, 30 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • Both of those statements are true, but the nomination is not on the grounds that it's an uninteresting article. What do you think of the policy issues here? Is it notable? andy (talk) 12:31, 30 December 2009 (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.