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Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/François Asselineau (2nd nomination)

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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.

The result was KEEP. postdlf (talk) 02:15, 27 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

François Asselineau

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AfDs for this article:
François Asselineau (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)
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Relisting per Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2011 March 12. I abstain. King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 07:39, 19 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • Keep Did I vote in the last one? I don't remember. Either way, I feel that the further sources that were uncovered during the AfD and the deletion review are more than enough to show notability of the subject. It's quite clear that, while a small politician, he is a quite controversial and talked about one in France. SilverserenC 08:10, 19 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete Though there are obviously a few sources giving glimpses at Mr Asselineau, I don't think he passes WP:N or more specifically WP:POLITICIAN. I shall give details later, but to open the discussion, I underline that I disagree with Silver Seren above : Mr Asselineau is not "quite controversial" and not at all "talked about".
    The rare relevant sources about him are factual, say who he is and what he is doing, but don't go far enough to give an opinion (favorable or unfavorable) about his person ; as far as I remember only one source [1] uses one sentence to be critical about Mr Asselineau ("Convictions pas toujours très bien argumentées au regard des enjeux de la mondialisation." - rough translation "His convictions are somehow contradictory in view of the real stakes of mondialisation."), and this is about the first life of Mr Asselineau -as a civil servant ; his second life as a politician attracts virtually no attention at all. French Tourist (talk) 08:30, 19 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • If he wasn't so controversial, I don't understand why so many administrators from French Wikipedia came over here to vote Delete on this article, which then prompted a number of French IP addresses to show up to vote Keep. I think French Wikipedia should not attempt to have any hold over articles on English Wikipedia, just for the main fact that our policies and notability requirements are different. SilverserenC 08:53, 19 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Please don't consider I am here as a fighter trying to force our French way of life to the English speakers, I edit here in view of the article about François Asselineau, not in view of forcing new notability rules on this wiki. This is not an interwiki fight. Several french sysops came here because Mr Asselineau and his friends had been disruptive on :fr Wikipedia, and they were hence boiling. They were perhaps right to do it, perhaps wrong, but this can be rationally explained and has nothing to do with the knowledge relevant sources have of Mr Asselineau (and the :fr's sysops'board is not a reliable source of course). As far as I can read you, when I ask for sources proving Mr Asselineau is "controversial" and "talked about", you only produce WP:OR founded on the behavior of five Wikipédia sysops. This does not carry much weight, in my opinion. French Tourist (talk) 09:09, 19 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I gave sources in the previous AfD here and here. (Ah, looks like I did vote Keep.) And I would advise you also check out the newspaper clipping info from his press book, not to mention the myriad of sources given by other people in that AfD and the Deletion Review. SilverserenC 09:18, 19 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I already checked the press book, but intend to answer source by source : you try to prove something (that Mr Asselineau is "controversial" and "talked about"), so you show sources, and then I try to answer "OK for this one" or "definitely no for this one".
So, let's see which ones you call. The first you cite is [2]. This is a Carnet entry in Les Echos, published in 2004 (in the "first life" of FA, as a civil servant). It does not prove at all he is controversial, since this is a factual biographical note. Les Echos publishes every day an entire page of similar entries, I have at hand yesterday's issue : it contains 9 similar biographical stubs. There is one for any new appointment of a high-ranking civil servant or manager in a reasonably big company, several thousand similar notices a year. Hardly a way to prove WP:N, unless you consider that every high-ranking civil servant or manager is notable.
Next one is [3], hardly a "reliable source" : a page on a commercial website about cultural events in Nice. This page proves that Mr Asselineau has given a conference in this town, and probably copies verbatim the announcement given by Mr Asselineau himself, as far as I can judge from its laudative style. No proof that he is "controversial". As for "talked about", it proves that Mr Asselineau talks about France, not that France talks about Mr Asselineau :-).
The article [4] (a web journalism article on a right-wing website) hardly passes WP:RS (a very marginal right-wing source, not a national newspaper or a reasonably famous website), but is interesting nonetheless as far as it writes that Mr Asselineau "mérite d’être invité dans les grands médias, ce qui n’est pas le cas aujourd’hui" (deserves to get invited in mainstream media, which does not happen today). No proof at all that Mr Asselineau is controversial (the fact that his article was deleted on :fr wiki hardly proves that - being controversial helps to get an article on any language wikipedia), no proof that he is "talked about" but rather a proof of the opposite.
The very short article [5] has nothing to do with the word "controversial" as it is very factual. It is one of the most interesting in my opinion, and justified a "weak" in front of my "delete" non-vote on the first procedure. It shows that Mr Asselineau got some fame, very local in space as in time, by leaving the main opposition group in conseil de Paris to stand as an independent. As this conseil has 161 members, most of them obscure, I still don't consider that such a micro-event makes you "talked about" even if it is related by the only local newspaper for Paris town.
For [6], I am sorry not to have access to the website. "206 words" seems short, I suppose this is a biographical note similar to the Carnet entry in Les Echos. Please give us more information about this source if you think it is really relevant.
At last [7] is only very marginally about Mr Asselineau. It is linked to the same event that the one I quoted myself, his nomination in 2004 as head of a commission about economic intelligence. It does not show at all he is "controversial" and hardly that he is "talked about" - the pure fact that he is president of this commission is given, in one factual boring sentence ("La direction de cette Délégation générale de l’Intelligence économique a été confiée à François Asselineau, Inspecteur général des finances, ancien d’HEC et de l’ENA."). French Tourist (talk) 09:53, 19 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I don't have to prove that he is controversial to prove that he is notable, you know. So you don't have to go on about that. SilverserenC 09:48, 19 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
OK if "controversial" is not important in your argumentation, I have typed many words pointlessly. So you don't say anymore that he is notable because controversial, so what proves that he is notable ? French Tourist (talk) 09:53, 19 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
(Moved to the bottom so they're easier to read). I was just using controversial as a descriptor. You do know how notability is ascertained here, right? For one, I would say that he passes the general notability guideline handily. SilverserenC 09:58, 19 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
OK let's go again on general things, this goes faster than opening and discussing individual sources. WP:GNG requires "significant coverage in reliable sources" and explains shortly what "significant" means : Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention but it need not be the main topic of the source materia. In virtually every source we have met until now, we have not much more than a "trivial mention", at least for "reliable" sources. French Tourist (talk) 10:04, 19 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
There are at least 4 references that use François Asselineau in the title of their articles. Therefore it would be awkward that in those references he is not "the main topic of the source materia". source 1, source 2, source 3, source 4--Lawren00 (talk) 23:26, 20 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
these are not "press articles", but mere mentions of appointments published by Les Echos in Le Carnet, ie entries related to the appointment of civil servants or executives. The Carnet publishes brief announcements relating to deaths or appointments of civil servants or in corporates. Something similar seems to be the announcements published in The Hill. It is pretty certain that not all the people mentionned in the Carnet or in the announcements of The Hill are notable for WP. Mr Asselineau has a total of 8 hits in Les Echos over a period of 12 years, which does not seem particulmarly impressive for an average high grade civil servant. Sipahoc (talk) 06:40, 21 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Can you find the rule or the recommendation explaining that sources should have a minimum size to be valid? I did not find. Until you show us that, the combination of 19 sources from the most well-known French Newspapers allows to build a decent articles that is proving the article's Wikipedia:Notability and Wikipedia:Verifiability. --Lawren00 (talk) 14:32, 21 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
"There are at least 4 references that use François Asselineau in the title of their articles". This is factually wrong. "François Asselineau" is written in capital letters on the web references you cite, but it is not the "title" of an article but of a section of a page in the paper edition. Of course I don't have at hand these old issues of Les Echos but can give an example of how a "Carnet" page looks like in last Wednesday's issue. The title of the page is "Carnet" in 0.8 cm black letters. The page contains 2 sections, titled in 0.4 cm red letters "Entreprises" (6 items), and "Fonction publique" (also titled in 0.4 cm red letters) (2 items), but also a real short article titled "Portrait", significantly longer and with a picture. In the "Fonction publique" section, a typical article reads "MINISTERE DE L'ECOLOGIE Vincent Pourqu** de Boiss** est nommé directeur général des établissements publics d'aménagement de Marne-la-Vallée", with 0.2 black letters for the name. Note that Mr Asselineau's notices, considering their length are not similar to the day article, which is indeed a proof of notability (it is signed by a journalist who has met today's man or woman and has not the form of a curriculum vitae). French Tourist (talk) 17:37, 21 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
This is not wrong. People has to click and see for themselves source 1, source 2, source 3, source 4--Lawren00 (talk) 14:40, 22 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete There is exactly one single reliable source that is just barely more than a passing mention, Le Parisien from 2006. Everything else is either trivial or self published / blog / not a reliable source. The Parisien mention is in itself not substantial enough to verify more than two isolated events in the subject's life, let alone a full biography. There simply is not enough reliable material to assure a WP:NPOV article at this time. MLauba (Talk) 10:04, 19 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Can you point which materials are self published / blog / not a reliable source? Looks like I did not check well the sources. --Lawren00 (talk) 14:43, 22 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
"Political carreer": as a reminder (from WP:POLITICIAN#3), "Just being an elected local official, or an unelected candidate for political office, does not guarantee notability".
The provided sources are the following: general results of the local elections in Libération (so this tells us he was elected as one of the ~160 other members of the Paris council), then he is mentionned 5 times in 6 years in Le Parisien: 2004 (Mr A becomes a UMP member), 2006 (Mr A is leaving the UMP), 2007 (considers the coming elections) and 2007 again (about the non registered members of the council such as Mr A) and finally 2008 about Mr A as giving up being a candidate. So coverage by Le Parisien of this Paris politician for his tenure period (2001-2007): 2 brief articles about his party changes, 3 mentions in 2007 where he first candidates then gives up.
Then we have the one single mention of Mr A in a national newspaper : Le Figaro, a 2 pragraphs article in 2008 about Mr A saying he withdraws from the election. This is the sole article from a newspaper ever mentionning the Union populaire républicaine (UPR), the party that was then newly created (see next section).
"President of a political party": Except for this political site reproducing a press release on the creation of the new party in 2007 (and the mention of the Figaro), the only thing we have is a couple of entries in enquete-debat.fr, such as in Januray 2011, about the fact that the article of Mr A on WP:fr was deleted. But Enquête & Débat seems to be a collective newsblog created mid-2010 (see this), so based on WP:Reliable sources we cannot use it. What the party itself has to say about his press coverage does not help us: a couple (4) of annoucements of conferences in local newspapers, apparently Mr A spoke 4 times in local radios between 2007 and 2010, there is one article in a local newspaper (Le Bien Public) in 2008 and one article from 2007 in Entreprendre, an economic monthly, about a dinner-conference.
So although I would certainly favor the lowest of all possible barriers to notability for political parties, regardless of ideology, this party doesn't pass any barrier at all: it was created 4 years ago, never had any coverage in any known newspaper, no-one ever analysed the party's programme or position. I mean these guys are so minor and unknown that there isn't even a newspaper interested enough to say that they are minor and unknown!
"Staff member of various cabinets"
Mr A is a civil servant. He is inspector general of finance, which means he is one of the 260 members of the General Inspection of Finances, an auditing body of the French administration. This does not make him very notable. More important, Mr A was head of staff or staff member for ministers or similar personnalities, and this is the area where some will tell you that there are "newspapers articles whose title is the name of Asselineau".
But these are not "press articles", they are mere mentions of appointments publihed by Les Echos in what they call Le Carnet, ie entries related to the appointment of civil servants or executives. You will find in the Carnet brief announcements relating to deaths or appointments of civil servants or in corporates. Something pretty similar seems to be the announcements published in The Hill. It is pretty sure not all the people mentionned in the Carnet or in the announcements of The Hill are notable for WP.
Mr A has a total of 8 hits in Les Echos over a period of 12 years.
You can compare that with Mr Philippe Andres, 7 entries in the Carnet, or Pascal Faure 20 entries. They do not have a WP article, and probably will never have one. You can also have a look at announcements published in The Hill. Lots of people have entries therein, but have no article on Wikipedia, such as Dr. Stephen Flynn, 7 hits in The Hill over a 5 years period.
"Head of the Délégation générale de l'intelligence économique": this is the thing that almost made me swing from delete to weak keep. Almost. But the sources are Another of these Carnet entries about the creation of the Délégation générale de l'intelligence économique, A Liberation article about the creation of the General Delegation that mentions the fact that Mr A is appointed as head of the delegation, and that the delegation will count up to 15 people.
That's it. 1.5 years later, this article talks about a presentation made by Mr A regarding economic intelligence and says the delegation was dissolved in May 2006.
So this delegation was created, Mr A was heading it, and then....nothing. Nothing was produced by the delegation, nobody heard anything about it, no newspaper ever mentionned it again and...it just disappeared 1.5 years later.
Conclusion: any person holding various staff member position with ministers and the like over a 10 year period and then gets elected at a local election will certainly gather some news coverage, but is there a significant coverage here? What do we have?
  • 402 hits on Google.com, 494 hits on Google.fr (note: there seems to be a bug, as the results seem impressive when you hit the search button, but when you go ahead with the next button, you soon reach the end of the list).
  • a total of 8 Carnet entries in Les Echos on his staff positions between 1994 and 2006,
  • a total of 5 very short articles in Le Parisien covering the 2001-2007 period when he was a member of the Paris council (in 2 of these, Mr Asselineau is mentionned incidentally),
  • 1.5 article (one article about the creation of the delegation, and one announcement of the appointment of Mr Asselineau) about the delegation. This delegation was so famous that it never received any other coverage for the next 1.5 years, not even to announce the fact that it was dissolved 1.5 years later.
  • 1 article mentionning the party founded by Mr A in 2007.
This is not a significant coverage. This guy certainly does not meet WP:POLITICIAN criteria, and according to me does not meet the general notability guideline. He was not deleted from WP:fr for nothing. The only thing you need to have your article is to be notable, such as fr:Rassemblement pour l'indépendance et la souveraineté de la France to give an extreme right-wing example. Sipahoc (talk) 17:39, 19 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Please note that this AfD is about Mr Asselineau, not his political party, or any other people featured on TheHill or Les Echos, see WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. See also WP:GOOGLE for why I think your google results are biased. Regards, Comte0 (talk) 21:59, 26 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Well, I have to ask, in what sense is Sipahoc's case "compelling"? Let's analyse it.

    In the "political career" section, Sipahoc says that M. Asselineau is the subject of five "very short" articles in Le Parisien. I submit that Le Parisien is a reliable source. Sipahoc then goes on to say that M. Asselineau has been the subject of an article in Le Figaro, which is also a reliable source.

    In the "president of a political party", Sipahoc then makes a compelling case that the political party M. Asselineau led is not notable. But that does not prove that M. Asselineau himself is not notable. On en.wiki, the notability of the party is independent of the notability of the person.

    In the "Staff member of various cabinets" section, Sipahoc makes various WP:WAX-type arguments in the form, "Person X doesn't have an article, so person Y should not have an article either." These arguments are normally given little weight.

    In the next section, Sipahoc highlights coverage given to M. Asselineau in Libération, which is also a reliable source.

    In the conclusion, Sipahoc summarises what he's already said and comes to the curious conclusion that the coverage M. Asselineau has received, across multiple articles in several different reliable sources, is not sufficient to establish notability!

    I don't doubt that on fr.wiki, Sipahoc's arguments would be understood as correct: they have strict standards for politicians and M. Asselineau's article was correctly deleted from there. But on en.wiki, I respectfully submit, they establish that this gentleman is notable and merits an article.—S Marshall T/C 19:30, 19 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • I feel useful to add a precision about the "article" in Le Figaro : [8]. As precise and exhaustive Sipahoc could be, he has obviously made an error on this one. As you can check when opening it, the title of this web page begins with "Figaro : Flash Actu ...", and the webpage text terminates with "Source: AFP". For a reader used to the Figaro website, these two informations show that this is not an article from this newspaper, but simply a page on the newspaper's website, where a dispatch from Agence France-Presse is reproduced. As far as we know, no newspaper judged this dispatch worthy of an article.

    On the other hand, I willingly concede S Marshall that the articles of Le Parisien and the article in Liberation are to be taken in consideration ; the first ones because Le Parisien is the only local newspaper for Paris proper, and for this reason a primordial source for local events in Paris (including local politics at Conseil de Paris), the second one as Liberation is one of the main French national dailies. Indeed, my "delete" !-vote tends to be weak because of Le Parisien, while Sipahoc admits that he is not so far from considering Liberation. Note however that in both cases, we are quite far from the exigence of significant coverage, IMO. French Tourist (talk) 19:46, 19 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • But isn't AFP a reliable source in its own right? AFP is the world's oldest news agency! See WP:NEWSORG: we are to prioritise sources from news agencies. If AFP says a thing and Le Figaro publishes it, then doesn't that add to, rather than subtract from, the credibility associated with Le Figaro's name?—S Marshall T/C 20:22, 19 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • You are right, and I should modify my arguments. AFP is obviously a reliable source ; note however that you cannot say that there is credibility in "Le Figaro" publishing this dispatch, since it did not publish it - it is not in Le Figaro it is on the website. After making this concession, I don't change my opinion but formulate it differently : if a very short article of twenty lines in one of the main French newspapers is not much, but something (since a newspaper has limited room), one dispatch in the gigantic production of AFP is very, very little, and very far from the exigence of significant coverage. French Tourist (talk) 20:33, 19 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thank you for being a very reasonable interlocutor. I should probably draw your attention to our definition of "significant coverage", which is at WP:SIGCOV: "more than a trivial mention, but need not be the main subject of the article". Haven't we agreed that M. Asselineau has been the main subject of articles from three reliable sources?—S Marshall T/C 20:44, 19 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • As far as I understand it, the rule as it is written is an implication if a coverage is sufficient, then the article contains more than a trivial mention, but it does not work in the opposite direction - for me it is obvious that not everybody who has been the main subject of articles in important newspapers verifies WP:GNG ; for instance as you can read in this page "In particular, if reliable sources cover the person only in the context of a single event, and if that person otherwise remains, or is likely to remain, a low-profile individual, we should generally avoid having a biographical article on that individual." So we have to decide whether the global coverage of Mr Asselineau is significant or not, not by applying some automatic rule ("main topic of an article" - while the article may have only a few dozens of words), but by watching what parts of his biography is covered by these articles ; as far as I judge, very little. Last detail : I agree that M. Asselineau is mentioned by three reliable sources (AFP, Le Parisien, Libération), but he is the "main subject" of an article only for the first two (and even for the first, the word "article" is slightly inappropriate, this is a dispatch). French Tourist (talk) 20:58, 19 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • S Marshall, If significant coverage means "more than a trivial mention, but need not be the main subject of the article", then we remain with 2 one-paragraph articles in the local edition of Le Parisien (2004 and 2006) and the two-pragraph article in the Figaro (the article about him, in 2008)(a mere reproduction of an AFP press release only published on the electronic version of the Figaro, if I understand correctly what FrenchTourist says). All other articles who mention Mr Asselineau are about another subject. I guess the 3 said "article" do not allow to consider somebody notable? Sipahoc (talk) 21:43, 19 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • On fr.wiki, three articles in two journals wouldn't be sufficient for a politician, but here on en.wiki they can be. My position is that M. Assilineau is notable, and Sipahoc has already linked to the reliable sources that have noted him.

    In response to French Tourist: it's true that some people are notable only for one event, and these people are excluded from our encyclopaedia. This is our rule about WP:BLP1E. However, M. Asselineau is notable for several things: being elected to the Paris council (source), becoming a member of the UMP (source), leaving the UMP (source), putting himself forward as a candidate for the elections (source), and withdrawing (source). These things took place in different years and were reported separately in different reliable sources, so they are clearly more than one event.

    M. Asselineau is not an important figure in French politics. He is a very minor one, and I agree that he has not been very successful. By fr.wiki's rules I'm sure it was right delete his article. But by en.wiki's rules I'm sure it's right to keep it.—S Marshall T/C 22:46, 19 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • Well, as a matter of fact, I think there must be on WP:fr a number of articles based on 3 articles in 2 journals or even less. But then you would have a short article based on said newspaper articles. In this case, there are two problems: (i) the only thing these sources indicate is that the guy was elected at a local election in 2001, jumped a bit from party to party and finally decided to give up being a candidate for his reelection, which does not make somebody notable enough for WP:fr (FYI, fr:Wikipédia:Notoriété des personnalités politiques). The fact that said 3 articles are: 2 times 1 paragraph in the local pages of Le Parisien and 1 time a 2 paragraph article in the internet version of the Figaro wouldn't have helped either. Worse, the article that was created on WP:fr (and here) was/is not about a local politician that was once elected and then never again. It is about some kind of Superman, a powerfull intellectual that had a brilliant carreer but that no party was good enough for him so he created his own party. So although an AfD debate is not about the content, I think you cannot disregard it in this case. What will you accept in the article? ;-) Because the only significant coverage is about a single event (although you say there are many): the short life of Mr A as a member of the UMP. Because that is the single event that received a significant coverage: he entered the UMP 5 years after his election (no significant coverage for his election), left it 2 years later, which made his reelection impossible. Sipahoc (talk) 10:48, 20 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
*Here's a fourth reliable source: Le Monde published this about M. Asselineau, which is useful in establishing biographical details. It was published in 1995, well before the "single event" to which you refer.—S Marshall T/C 11:29, 20 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • That is just a Carnet entry. Look at the top of the entry: "nomination" (appointement). It just says the same (or even a bit less) than the Carnet entry about the same in Asselineau Les Echos. Le Monde also has that kind of Carnet, being the subject of one of these does not make of you "the subject of an article", does it? Sipahoc (talk) 13:59, 20 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of France-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 01:00, 20 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 01:01, 20 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - I am not a French speaker and have no idea why there is such rabid opposition to this article. I do know how to run a Google search and to count, however, and there is no way that this individual should fail a notability challenge. The frenzy over the topic here is highly indicative of notability in and of itself. Now it's time for some people to buckle down and craft a fair and informative biography on the subject. Carrite (talk) 16:09, 20 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    So you cannot understand what the warning I put at the top of this subpage refers to. Sorry about that.
    The first link is the facebook page of François Asselineau and his staff. During the first AfD, there was a call there to vote keep or strong keep. Amusingly, people had to contribute to wikipedia in order to game the system, therefore at some point somebody explained how to edit the page to another people who couldn't understand how to contribute. He concluded his explanation by saying that he'd been found out and quoting my answer to the ip to explain why he couldn't write on that page any more.
    The second link is a call on fr.wp administrator's notice board to come here delete the article because of Lawren00. Although a checkuser result proved he was not a vandal, the demander still had reservations (J'en tire d'autres hypothèses personnelles). I haven't followed what happened as a result of that french AfD, but the obvious result is that François Asselineau is not a contested people in France, but only on the French Wikipedia. Regards, Comte0 (talk) 23:28, 26 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Delete How many times do we have to do this to get this article out of Wikipedia ? This person is a perfect unknown in France. He is a middle rank civil servant, who tried to launch a personnal political career, but failed. There is no news article that deals specifically with him. All the articles quoted only refer to him superficially as they are about politicians for whom he worked. The sources that refer specifically to him are only very short notifications of his appointment to some civil servants jobs. A proper search on Google, using the exact wording function, only gives 392 "real" hits : [9]. To sum up: a perfect unknown who's trying to use Wikipedia for his (desperate) PR. It's time to stop him. Gede (talk) 16:08, 21 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I would seriously like to know why, if Asselineau is a complete unknown and totally unimportant, are admins from French wikipedia coming onto English wikipedia to make sure that his article gets deleted here as well? Do all of you do this for every counterpart article on English wikipedia that gets deleted on French wikipedia? Because I haven't really seen that, which seems to insinuate that there is something slightly more important about Asselineau for all of you to make sure he gets deleted. SilverserenC 16:19, 21 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I didn't say anything personal about the user, I think it's a legitimate question that contributes to the fact that, no matter what may be claimed about if Asselineau is controversial or not, the fact that this very AfD is going on (and the AfD and Deletion Review that came before) show that he is controversial or, at least, that there's something else going on here. SilverserenC 16:58, 21 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • As I had already answered, but without sources, French admins are fed up with Mr Asselineau because of the disruptive actions of his fan-club on Wikipédia in French, see for instance fr:Wikipédia:Vérificateur_d'adresses_IP/Requêtes/décembre_2010#Demande_concernant_:_Trilaterale_etc_-_12_d.C3.A9cembre (and the next section) for sockpupettry. Our interest for this problem can be explained this way ; you seem to suggest that they are proof of some importance of Mr Asselineau outside the administrative pages of Wikipédia in French, perhaps that we act as the arm of some political opponent of Mr Asselineau, you are wrong - Mr Asselineau is known by most Wikipédia admins because his fan-club has kept annoying us. For a broad majority of people in France, the checkuser pages are not their favorite reading, and they don't know at all this obscure politician. Local notability among french sysops is not notability. It would be a bit paradoxal that disrupting a wiki of the WF might be deemed a valid motive for inclusion in another ! French Tourist (talk) 17:06, 21 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Actually, neither the motivations of any participant nor a description of the behaviour of some FR users on FR-wiki have any relevance on a policy-based discussion on whether Asselineau meets the EN inclusion guidelines. It is however a huge distraction. MLauba (Talk) 17:40, 21 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think there is cause for concern when half of the delete votes in a discussion are by admins from another Wikipedia, one of which has just admitted to there being conflict between admins of said Wikipedia and the subject that is to be deleted. SilverserenC 17:56, 21 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • One could just as easily respond by pointing out that those same admins offer a detailed source analysis that many EN posters cannot refute because they cannot actually read them without resorting to inadequate tools like google translate. It is not a vote, and AfDs are, fortunately, only rarely affected by an attack on the motivations of the nominator or specific voters. MLauba (Talk) 18:08, 21 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • I can understand Silver seren's concerns (although of course his aggressive approach is less understandable, as well as his vote on a matter he readily admits not to understand) and maybe a little explanation from someone who hadn't heard of Mr Asselineau until I started looking at this AfD. What happened Silver seren is the following: the article about Asselineau was created in January 2008 on WP:fr and it was quickly sent to the equivalebnt of the AfD's, see fr:Discussion:François Asselineau/Suppression. You will note that there is little discussion, a consensus is quickly reached, and, more interestingly, note that amongst the 11 people who choose for "delete", there are only 2 admins, none of which came here. A third admin (again, none of the ones who came here) deleted the page accordingly. And between that and the Checkuser page (December 2010, 3 years later) there seems to have been a constant war by a couple of editors creating sockpuppets, creating articles about the new and unknown party, etc, becoming something really disruptive on WP:fr. With the creation of the WP:en article of Asselineau, we enter into the realm of cross-wiki disruption (as it is quite clear that a WP:en article will serve to create others on other wikis, and to try to force the re-creation on WP:fr). Now, do you see anything wrong about being helped by contributors from the original Wiki when there is a cross-wiki disruption? No, of course! Such cross-wiki help is generally managed by very seasonned users, active on both wikis or on meta....ie sysops, quite often. What is the problem with that? Sipahoc (talk) 20:55, 21 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • The rules for notability are significantly different from one language Wikipedia to the next and no language Wikipedia should tell another what articles it should or should not have. In this manner, some articles will be allowed in one Wikipedia without being in the others. For example, Japanese wikipedia is far more strict about such things than we are (and yet is almost entirely pop culture articles for some reason). I would expect all of you on French wikipedia would highly object to a number of English wikipedians going over to French wikipedia to vote to delete an article that was deleted here on English wikipedia, would you not? SilverserenC 21:39, 21 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • delete He doesn't meet the notability criteria of WP:POLITICIAN and even not the general notability guideline. The few references in newspapers articles are merely carnet information and cannot be regarded as sources allowing to create an article on Mr. Asselineau. --Lebob (talk) 14:24, 23 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Really? You maybe skipped the 3 first line of Wikipedia:Notability. I quote it here for you "On Wikipedia, notability is a test used by editors to decide whether a topic can have its own article. Information on Wikipedia must be verifiable; if no reliable third-party sources can be found on a topic, then it should not have a separate article. The 19 sources, are all coming from the most well-known French Newspaper such as Les_Échos_(France), Libération, Le Monde, Le Parisien and Le Figaro. So are you saying that those newspapers are not reliable? --Lawren00 (talk) 04:45, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
You seem to make the usual confusion between if and if and only if. Wikipedia:Notability does not assert if some reliable third-party source can be found on a topic, then it should have a separate article : if some reliable third-party source can be found, then we have to weigh it, that is what Lebob and others are doing. French Tourist (talk) 07:03, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
French Tourist, I know you like a lot to write. But I think Lebob can answer by himself, can he? --Lawren00 (talk) 14:34, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
He can indeed, which does not preclude me to point the fallacies of your reasonings. I have no intention to restrict myself, as long as I have the feeling to add something new. French Tourist (talk) 14:49, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Dear French Tourist, it seems like you did not get my point, so let me explain more in details. This page here is for discussion to reach a consensus. And to reach a consensus, me and Lebob need to discuss to understand what are the reasons and root cause for his deletion vote. These reasons, only Lebob can explain. However, if you keep answering instead of him, we might think that you think exactly the same. So is there any French Wiki admins point of view that is coming from the French wikipedia administrators' noticeboard? If there is, maybe all the messages from Lebob, User:Sipahoc, User:Gede should be signed directly by '"Wiki admins" represented by French Tourist. If not, please let him answer. :) --Lawren00 (talk) 00:28, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I would like not to answer, but your factual inaccuracies might deceive the admin who will close this AfD, so I have to. It is true that Gede and myself are admins on :fr Wikipédia, as far as I know, Lebob and Sipahoc are not. As can be seen through their contributions, they have a common field of interest on :en, that is politics in Belgium. Don't try to relaunch the theory of a plot by Wikipédia admins, this backfired already and is absolutely untrue. French Tourist (talk) 08:33, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Plot theory is the last argument of those who have none. Do you really want to have us to believe that the sysops on :fr have ploted against FA for some reasons ? The story is much simpler: FA is a just a nobody who's tried desperatly to promote himself on :fr and failed. As far as I'm concerned, I'm a contributor here (though not very active, lately). I created a couple of articles, contributed to many more, and given my opinion on AfD where it could be useful (because I had some insights on the debated issues). And that's just what I'm doing here. Gede (talk) 16:58, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Who talks about plot theory? It's you. I just talk about facts, and to prove it I have this source French wikipedia administrators' noticeboard. And the non-answer of Lebob that you are trying to hide with this decoy discussion is another evidence that you are a little group that is expressing a single point of view. You may not like it but it's like that. --Lawren00 (talk) 02:55, 26 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Do you mean that 19 sources that are all coming from the most well-known French Newspaper such as Les_Échos_(France), Libération, Le Monde, Le Parisien and Le Figaro are not sufficient? Then how many do you need? 25, 50? --Lawren00 (talk) 04:45, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Repeating the same thing again and again does not make it true. The source supposed to be coming from the "well-known French newspaper" Le Figaro comes from the website lefigaro.fr from this newspaper, and we have no proof that the text linked by this source has ever been printed in the paper edition of this newspaper. Incidentally, the comment of Brilliantine is not about number, but about depth. French Tourist (talk) 07:03, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I am not interested in the number of sources, I am interested in the depth of coverage shown by the sources. They are all very brief, nothing more than one or two sentences relating to Asselineau at best (most of them are passing mentions), which is certainly not enough to demonstrate any kind of notability. Seriously, if these were our standards we'd have 10,000+ articles on local councillors in England. Brilliantine (talk) 10:39, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Interesting point of view. And where is the rule / recommendation mentioning that sources should be at least 5, 10, 20 lines to be valid? Maybe you can help us to find? --Lawren00 (talk) 14:34, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I don't consider the coverage to be "significant" as required by WP:GNG. Also see Note 5 on that page - "Moreover, not all coverage in reliable sources constitutes evidence of notability for the purposes of article creation; for example, directories and databases, advertisements, announcements columns, and minor news stories are all examples of coverage that may not actually support notability when examined, despite their existence as reliable sources." Brilliantine (talk) 17:52, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
So your point is that the coverage is not "significant" which bring us to the Wikipedia:GNG#cite_note-0 where they give 2 examples to make us understand the meaning of significance. The example to show insignificance is a mention of half a line in a 138 lines article . Brought in percentage, it is 0.4% of the article. However, here, source 1, source 2, source 3, source 4, I bring 4 articles where Asselineau is 100% the topic of the article. So the significance as defined in the WP:GNG is met. --Lawren00 (talk) 23:35, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I think the Note 5 that I quoted above makes it quite clear that "announcement columns and minor news stories", which all of these Les Echos sources are, do not necessarily confer notability. Brilliantine (talk) 00:56, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I see. So your point was not about the "significant coverage" that is proven (and refers to note 1) but the "presumption" of notability in note 5 which says "Moreover, not all coverage in reliable sources constitutes evidence of notability for the purposes of article creation; for example, directories and databases, advertisements,'announcements columns, and minor news stories". So here, Source 1 or again here source 2, you can find articles that are not announcements columns, and minor news stories that are evidence of Asselineau's notability for the purposes of article creation. --Lawren00 (talk) 02:36, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think significant coverage is proven and don't consider the announcements columns and minor news stories to be of any significance whatsoever. The other sources are just passing mentions. So, all of the sources are either "announcement columns and minor news stories" or they are trivial passing mentions and for that reason, he cannot be presumed to be notable. Brilliantine (talk) 04:39, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Dear Brilliantine, thank you for your answer. The Wikipedia:GNG#cite_note-0 shown what is an insignificant coverage. It's half a sentence in a 138 lines article, 0,4% of the article. For instance, the article about Asselineau in Libération is mentioning about him and his activity in 124 words out of 622, which means 20% of the article directly on François Asselineau. But I know what you can answer and the debate can continue Does 20% of an article is enough to be a valid source? And we can go on and on on each details of the recommendations: What part of Le Monde's article can be considered as valid for being called "source"? What is a minor news? From how many lines a news can be considered as a news and not an announcement? How to be sure that an article publish on Liberation.fr is also published in the hard-copy of the newspaper? Debates will never finish. Moreover, we will never reach a consensus if we try to agree on mathematical definitions of each recommendations. I think that by going into such details, we forget to look at the big picture and answer to the real question. Do I have enough notable (from famous Newspaper) and verifiable (facts that can be directly sourced) pieces of information to build an article that is long enough to understand who is this person? Every single piece of information in this article is sourced and the article has a quiet good size hasn't it? That is why I see this article fully valid. I would agree with you with a deletion if the article was a 5 lines article and no other information could be brought from notable and verifiable source. But here, I see a quiet decent article in term of size made of notable and verifiable sources. --Lawren00 (talk) 03:50, 26 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
BTW, and as minor as it can be, since I think useful to expose any inaccuracy, 6 appearances of Mr Asselineau name in Les Echos, 1 in Le Monde, 5 in Le Parisien, 2 in Libération and 1 on lefigaro.fr (not in Le Figaro paper edition) make a total of 15, not 19. As you seem to think all of these sources are supporting your cause, I incidentally point that the second Liberation entry [10] is a page of electoral results with no human comment inserted, only a list of figures. French Tourist (talk) 14:49, 24 March 2011 (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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