Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ted Decker

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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 per WP:SNOW. Everyone's coming up with the same answer, and this is holding up a DYK nomination. So please, let's move on. (non-admin closure) —VersaceSpace 🌃 23:58, 29 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Ted Decker

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Ted Decker (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)
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being the CEO of a company, no matter how notable the company, does not on it's own make an individual notable. There is no actual meaningful coverage of Decker, everything is basically "Decker is the new CEO/set to takeover in October 2022". No objections to a redirect to Home Depot, where it should be mentioned. PICKLEDICAE🥒 19:36, 27 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  • Speedy keep I'll post a longer explanation later today, but suffice to say that this AfD fails on several ground: 1.) there are multiple reliable sources of coverage that discuss multiple points regarding the subject, including his educational history, prior employment, and heading of Home Depot during its highest-earning quarter (WP:BEFORE); 2.) this article is sourced reliably and can not flunk on BLP grounds (even the less-than-ideal Insider source is used with caution); 3.) nominating editor fails to demonstrate how the additional coverage of Decker doesn't demonstrate notability, even if his CEO position is not sufficient in of itself. Self-disclosure: I am the creating editor ~ Pbritti (talk) 19:57, 27 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Which of those sources aren't a press release or basic business announcement? How does this qualify for SK? I clearly did research and found everything is just press releases and business announcements and nothing in depth. PICKLEDICAE🥒 19:58, 27 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm glad you asked! First off, I have concerns regarding the research you performed before your non-procedural blanking of the article. You were editing other articles up until six minutes before that edit, suggesting less than five minutes of reviewing the content on the page and in the sources; unless you had previously familiarity with who Ted Decker is or had previously researched him, I have a hard time believing you did a significant degree of research before say "literally nothing more can be said about him other htan [sic] his HD position" or in the 11 minutes between when I procedurally reverted the deletion and you created this AfD. A maximum of 17 minutes, including performing the edits themselves, really doesn't say you did any serious research in the matter. Of course, that's not your job (and certainly not your job alone) and why I requested this process (thanks for going to AfD, by the way, makes things easier).
    As for the rationale for SK: A substantial amount of this AfD is premised on WP:SINGLEEVENT (or at least a tangentially related notion that the one-time conferral of an executive position is insufficient for notability). However, with sources initiated by multiple events–Decker's appointment to an executive position in 2020, his announcement as CEO and president in Jan 2022, his role in Home Depot's highest-earning quarter on 16 August, and the announcement of his future chairmanship on 18 August–this barrier is surpassed. Even if we applied some of the more strict standards that result in redirects (e.g. George Holliday (witness) to Rodney King) Decker is the primary subject of multiple sources, thereby overcoming that barrier. Looking at WP:GNG, an article is generally suitable when the subject "has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject." We have non-trivial mentions of Decker in several independent sources–Yahoo News, Insider, and two from CNN the best examples here–so that general guideline is passed. There are further details about Decker's life in sources of less independence, hence their inclusion here, but overall we have a properly-sourced article covering a subject that has received multiple instances of coverage and a nominator who seems to have failed WP:BEFORE (but has also only acted in good faith and has a very cool username mod going on, it should be noted). So, speedy keep. ~ Pbritti (talk) 20:50, 27 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I did my research, if you'd like to provide evidence that I didn't, I'll gladly withdraw. All I see here is a diatribe and no substance to your answer. :) Provide some non-PR, non-announcement, non-WP:MILL sources, and it'll solve the entire problem. PICKLEDICAE🥒 20:53, 27 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Again, I have concerns: you responded in less than three minutes; you clearly did not consider everything I said with serious depth–or even noticed my compliment! :( Slow down, please, and consider what I've written in response to you. WP:MILL clearly does not apply when multiple individualized, narrowly-focused articles discuss the a specific person in a position of notability. As the article stands, we have at least four (and, if we're being generous with the college sources, six) independent, non-PR sources. Announcements, it should be noted, are reliable sources–particularly when they have additional information attached. I've given research you hadn't done your research, I gave you reasons why your nomination is flawed (you've only cited an essay with no official weight in your defense). In fact, the only thing you've said is that you don't like the breadth of coverage, despite me explaining detail why and how it passes Wikipedia (actual) standards. Not every criticism is personal diatribe, by the way, remember AGF! ~ Pbritti (talk) 21:05, 27 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

(Edit Conflict:) Okay, uninvolved editor here, saw this being halted at DYK. First off, @Pbritti & @PICKLEDICAE, let's calm down here. I recognize that blanking and redirecting is acceptable per policy, but it was still not a nice move given that it was at DYK then. A quick heads-up note to the involved parties would have been easy, PICKLEDICAE. Conversely, it doesn't help to accuse other editors of taking "too little time" to review content: I often have multiple tabs open at once, and the chronological order of my edits does not correspond to the time spent on evaluating the respective articles. So, also not so great, Pbritti.

Anyway, let's forget about this and instead turn to an analysis of the actual sources and notability, since this is what we are supposed to do at AfD:

Okay actually will be doing that tomorrow, since the article seems to be heavily edited atm. --LordPeterII (talk) 21:53, 27 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  • Keep significant profile here[1] which is not yet incorporated into the article. There's too much to be said about Decker to incorporate it all into the article about Home Depot. Yes, just being CEO of a notable company doesn't make you notable, but being CEO of one of the largest companies in the country generally does and Home Depot is 35 on the Fortune 500[2] and the largest in its category.--Jahaza (talk) 21:34, 27 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks, Jahaza. If you haven't already beat me to it, I'll add that material ASAP. Thoroughly embarrassed that slipped through my dragnet. ~ Pbritti (talk) 21:37, 27 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    @Pbritti: I would highly recommend checking out the Wikipedia Library if you haven't already. I have found some more coverage of Decker on ProQuest and Gale under his given name Edward, although you should be weary of press release wires as those are primary. DigitalIceAge (talk) 21:41, 27 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    @DigitalIceAge: Here's where I admit something: I tried getting the Library to work for me but only made good use of it once before becoming confused and resorting to my old undergrad permissions that are expiring soon. I might ask you specific questions about it in a couple days once this has been resolved, as I will lose my old accesses very soon. Also, yes, those PR releases disguised as new sites are nasty things and I have an unfortunate familiarity with those outside Wikipedia (hence my limited use of the one here). If you say they're considered primary, I'll probably delete it and its material out of an abundance of caution. ~ Pbritti (talk) 21:45, 27 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    @Pbritti: Fortunately ProQuest has the ability to exclude Wire Feeds from search results using the settings at the sidebar. I can't say the same for Gale.com (or maybe I'm just not looking hard enough). DigitalIceAge (talk) 02:52, 28 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Incorporated the aforementioned profile article. Just eeks out in notability IMO, will surely have more coverage in the coming months as the CEO of a Fortune 100. DigitalIceAge (talk) 21:38, 27 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Passes WP:GNG - ample coverage in RS and no doubt more to come. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 22:16, 27 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Merge to Home Depot. No notability aside from Home Depot. Andre🚐 01:10, 28 August 2022 (UTC) Weak keep, at least one source seems non-Home Depot-related. Andre🚐 04:34, 28 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep The references in the article are perfectly adequate to establish notability and all of the content is verifiable. Decker is the current president and CEO of a company with over $150 billion in annual sales and nearly 500,000 employees. He will be the chairman of the board in a month. This is an encyclopedia with 6.5 million articles including biographies of countless young rappers and actors and athletes at the beginnings of their careers. Certainly, it ought to have room for a biography of a very senior corporate executive. Cullen328 (talk) 02:30, 28 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment @Cullen328, Hawkeye7, DigitalIceAge, and Jahaza: I haven't been around at AfD for very long, but I must admit I am very confused by (parts of) your reasonings here. Voting 'Keep' might be appropriate, but imo we need to be very careful how we argue. I'll go through some percieved errors:
a) The article has been nominated now, which means we should evaluate its notability at this point ("However, once an article's notability has been challenged, merely asserting that unspecified sources exist is seldom persuasive, especially if time passes and actual proof does not surface"). True, it is likely that coverage will increase in the future; but we don't have a crystal ball, we don't know that for sure. If we allow hypothetical, future sources to be considered as contributing to establishing notability, we would have tens of thousands of articles who should be kept, for now, because who knows, maybe the future will bring more sources? Again, in this case it is much more likely than in many others, but we must not allow this fallacy to be thought a valid reason.
b) Notability has to established for every article subject, individually. Yes, Home Depot is a large company and yes, it is likely that their CEO would be notable. But arguing that he is notable purely due to the size of the company, is another dangerous fallacy. Again, this opens the door for keeping thousands of bogus articles whose subject is related to someone or something famous, and derives all their notability from the related article.
c) That we have countless biographies of people at the start of their carreer does not imply that we should accept some other article of a person who is at a later stage of their carreer. Notability does depend on the sources available, and these may vary wildly for reasons beyond our influence. WP:Otherstuffexists, albeit only an essay, sums this up pretty well.
Feel free to reply to this and point out any errors on my side (again, I'm still learning). Also, I didn't meant to criticise you or your vote, but merely your reasoning. --LordPeterII (talk) 12:22, 28 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

In order to finally cast my own vote, I'll use a nifty template I've recently came across, Template:Source assess table. I'd like to note that sourcing has improved a lot since this was nominated for deletion, so being assessed are the current sources:


Source assessment table: prepared by User:LordPeterII
Source Independent? Reliable? Significant coverage? Count source toward GNG?
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/27/home-depot-names-ted-decker-ceo-craig-menear-will-remain-board-chair.html Yes Yes No The article is mainly about the company, Home Depot, and mentions both current and new CEOs only briefly ✘ No
https://eu.goerie.com/story/business/2020/10/19/fairview-native-ted-decker-named-president-coo-home-depot-erie/5978002002/ Yes Yes Yes This is in-depth and primarily about Decker, his life, education and (also) his new role ✔ Yes
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/01/27/business/home-depot-ceo-ted-decker/index.html Yes Yes ~ Is partly about Decker, but very short ~ Partial
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/home-depot-appoints-ted-decker-161718440.html No Seems to reproduce a company statement, with the majority being a quote by the board director, full of PR talk Yes No Very short, and equally about Decker and previous CEO Menear ✘ No
https://www.proquest.com/docview/2448032435 ~ Part article, part reproduction of company announcements (actually states that in the article, you can check per Wikimedia Library) Yes ~ Decker is the first point, but a list of other appointments and company revenues follows ~ Partial
https://www.cmu.edu/tepper/recruiting-and-partnerships/partner-with-the-tepper-school/wl-mellon-speaker-series/ted-decker.html ~ This is explicitly filed under "Recruiters & Partners > Corporate Partnerships", so even though this is from a university, I am sceptical of it being truly independent Yes Yes Actually about him and somewhat in-depth, no doubt ~ Partial
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/18/home-depot-ceo-ted-decker-to-replace-retiring-craig-menear-as-chairman.html ~ Mostly a repetition of the press releases already featured in several of the other sources Yes ~ Not just a passing mention, but still mostly saying "this guy has been with the company before, here are some basic facts, he's a good choice" ~ Partial
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/08/16/investing/home-depot-earnings-housing/index.html Yes Mostly original text for once, actual journalism Yes No This is mostly Ted Decker discussing the company. When his name comes up, he is quoted saying something. We learn little to nothing about him, he is just a speaker here ✘ No
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/home-depot-elects-ted-decker-as-chair-of-board-authorizes-15-bln-share-repurchase-1031694257 No This is a repetition of press releases again Yes ~ Again very short, if mostly about Decker. We learn a little about his previous company posts, but not much else ✘ No
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/15/joe-manchin-raises-1-million-from-bob-kraft-wall-street-energy-companies.html Yes Completely independent (text), has nothing to do with Home Depot or Decker Yes No Decker is mentioned exactly once, at the very end, for donating money to a reelection campaign. ✘ No
This table may not be a final or consensus view; it may summarize developing consensus, or reflect assessments of a single editor. Created using {{source assess table}}.

If you agree with this assessment (and I do), that leaves us with one (1) good source, and four (4) partially-acceptable sources. Ideally, we would have three (3) good sources, which satisfy all three criteria. This is thus not an obvious and easy pass of WP:GNG, but a very difficult and close one. And again, this only after the recent work; previously e.g. the source identified as good was not in the article. --LordPeterII (talk) 13:40, 28 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  • Weak Keep is my resulting vote. I am going to count each "partial" source as equivalent of half a good source, which results in a combined three "usable sources". This is exactly the minimum that I and many other editors have for establishing notability. I would not object to a Merge, since this is very borderline; but voting seems to be rather leaning towards Keep. Again, I encourage everyone who cast their votes above to carefully evaluate the sources again, and check if they were actually voting based on these and policy, or on their subjective impressions. Of course I have come to a similar conclusion now, so it might just be that the other Keep votes were only phrased poorly. But I don't believe PICKLEDICAE made a mistake in nominating this, it was a tough and close one. --LordPeterII (talk) 13:47, 28 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Reply to LordPeterII. I did not argue that he is notable purely due to the size of the company. I began my comment with The references in the article are perfectly adequate to establish notability and all of the content is verifiable. In essence, I concluded succinctly what you later concluded in much greater detail. I mentioned Verifiability, which is a core content policy that this article meets. It also meets the other two core content policies because it is neutrally written and contains no original research. Notability is not a policy; it is a very important guideline, but not one that should be mistaken for a policy. Its language says that it is a guideline that editors should attempt to follow, though it is best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply. Yes, we should be guided by common sense not cookie cutter logic. The guideline goes on to say Wikipedia's concept of notability applies this basic standard to avoid indiscriminate inclusion of topics. Article and list topics must be notable, or "worthy of notice". Determining notability does not necessarily depend on things such as fame, importance, or popularity—although those may enhance the acceptability of a subject that meets the guidelines explained below. Yes, "indiscriminate inclusion" is a concern, which is why AfD is clogged up with massive numbers of articles about obscure cricketers and footballers and other such microstubs . But as far as I know, nobody is complaining about an excessive number of biographies of the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. The language of the guideline says that notability does not depend on importance but it indisputably permits us to consider importance in borderline cases. All experienced editors know that promotional biographies are a serious problem here, which is why I mentioned the young rappers, actors and athletes. We are by some measures the #7 website in the world, and clearly #1 in terms of originally written educational content. Countless people yearn for their own Wikipedia biography. So, we must always be on the alert for promotional content about "up and coming" people and companies, especially in borderline cases. Our special notability guidelines about people and companies accordingly are shaped largely by concerns about promotionslism. We should be far less concerned about biographies of people who are self-evidently at the pinnacle of success, at the helms of gigantic, indisputably notable corporations. You raised concerns about WP:CRYSTAL but that forbids unverifiable speculation, rumors or presumptions and in this case we know with almost complete certainty that he will become chairman of the board on October 1. Therefore, crystal ball concerns are not valid. In the end, this is a test of good editorial judgment. Our goal should always be to improve and expand an excellent encyclopedia. I am convinced that this encyclopedia is better off with this article than without it. Cullen328 (talk) 16:33, 28 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Cullen328: Interesting. I actually wasn't aware of the (technical, but important) distinction between Verifiability and Notability as policy and guideline, respectively. I shall aim to remember that henceforth! I also acknowledge that my allusion to WP:CRYSTAL was not great, as you pointed out. And I wholeheartedly agree on the issue that people yearn for their own Wikipedia biography. I think I was being overly pedantic in this instance, because I wanted to make sure that the apparent ease at which Keep votes were given out was not due to us having lax rules. Yes, I trust you and the other editors I pinged to have checked the article, but I wanted to point out what you would likely have done behind the scenes, lest some phrasing of your replies might be misinterpreted.
I should add that I am lately trying to be as critical towards "veteran" editors as I am towards "new" ones, for fairness' sake. But I have seen you around (the Teahouse especially), Cullen328, and know you are an asset to this community; so please know that the critical analysis above was also me practicing arguing here, even though I knew you were likely not in the wrong :) --LordPeterII (talk) 17:57, 28 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Wanted to chime in and thank LordPeterII for the review of sources (was not previously aware of that template despite participating in a dozen AfDs) and Cullen328 for the comprehensive explanation of policy and guidelines. Might end up linking both of your contributions in this thread for my own use down the line. ~ Pbritti (talk) 22:35, 28 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - The article meets WP:GNG because the subject has received significant coverage about him directly, beyond just his work with his company, in reliable sources independent of the subject. In this case, the subject has been covered by multiple national news sources (CNBC, CNN, Business Insider) and multiple sources with knowledge of him on a local level (AJC, Erie Times-News). The article references these multiple independent sources that talk about the subject directly, which is why it meets WP:GNG. David Stargell (talk) 02:00, 29 August 2022 (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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