Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Podesta Group

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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 No consensus --JForget 00:16, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Podesta Group

Podesta Group (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

Non notable lobbying business. A Google search of the company name brings up less than 200 results. Article reads like an advertisement. William Graham talk 04:29, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

  • Delete: Non-notable. - Rjd0060 04:37, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete: The page has sources, but I myself have checked search engines on this article and have brought up nothing important or notable about this article. Does not seem like an encyclopedia article to me. BeanoJosh 05:20, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep: Worth keeping. Sources and more relevant data have been added to the article. Sententia 21:57, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment Two thirds of the article's content is a copy-paste from the firms website. --William Graham talk 04:05, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment: Noticed when researching that a Google search of the company's former names (Podesta Associates, podesta.com and PodesetaMattoon) yields significantly more results. Podesta Group itself seems to have only been around since Jan 07, so it is expected that there would be few results. Taking into account their entire history, the results are far greater in number. Also holds true for a Nexis search.--Sententia 18:20, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so that consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, W.marsh 14:15, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete without prejudice. Either copyvio or WP:COI, per William Graham. The only non-trivial or non-self-generated source listed among the external links is a Wired puff piece that was about the former partnership. - Smerdis of Tlön 14:46, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment - To be fair, the copy/paste portion I was talking about was a big list of clients that was edited down to 'selected clients'. Although it still seems pretty large and like an advert. I do agree that it seems like there seems to be some WP:COI going on. --William Graham talk 15:40, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment - Adding a list of clients to an article strikes me as not the sort of thing you'd expect to find in an encyclopedia article; we are not a Martindale-Hubbell style business directory. It also raises some WP:BLP-ish issues, if not falling within the scope of that policy exactly. Do these institutions want to publicize the fact that they hired a Washington lobbying firm? Assuming for the sake of argument that they gave this business to use their names in its promotional website, it doesn't necessarily cover Wikipedia. - Smerdis of Tlön 16:14, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
I agree that the list is the wrong format, so I cleaned it up. A lobbying firm's list of clients defines the firm - very different than a law office, where key clients are still important but less definitive of who they are. There's no privacy concern. A lobbyist's clients are by law public information, they're widely available, and anyone who cares about the subject knows where to find them. Plus as you note they're on the firm website. We defer to legitimate privacy concerns, not the spin that companies wish to have. But believe me, if any company felt that Podesta mentioning them as a client was the wrong kind of spin it would not be on the firm website. The abbreviated list of clients is also useful because it shows the notability of that firm. You don't get clients like that without being a high powered, important firm.Wikidemo 00:43, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment - if John Podesta is notable, isn't the Podesta Group, his main business, notable? John Podesta, as former chief of staff to President Clinton and founder of Center for American Progress, is certainly notable. Scarykitty 16:33, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Note: This debate has been included in the list of Business-related deletions. -- the wub "?!" 17:48, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete per nom. Majoreditor 21:03, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Obvious keep. Setting references aside for the moment it's clearly a significant lobbying firm and major player in Washington, with a long list of important clients. If we're going to have encyclopedic coverage of the subject of lobbying, this is a firm people need to know about. That is the definition of relevance. Sources prove relevance but they are not the same thing as relevance. Lobbying is a field where there are fewer articles written about notable subjects because lobbyists create the news and deliberately stay out of it, newspapers have considerable conflicts of interest and difficulty writing about lobbyists, and people are simply not that interested in reading news of the subject. However, this article does have major sources, certainly manyfold more than would be necessary for any general application of WP:CORP. Articles specifically about this group in New York Times, Wired, and Washington Post (X2), one of the fifty top lobbying firms in Washington? It makes one wonder why this afd is even here.Wikidemo 00:35, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Perhaps there should be an article about the business, if its public activities can be documented in independent third party sources. We do have the article on John Podesta, which may be the best place to cover it for now, especially since his firm seems to be in a state of flux recently. - Smerdis of Tlön 16:13, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
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.