Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 03:36, 25 December 2024

Brian Thompson (businessman)

New to Articles for deletion (AfD)? Read these primers!

• How to contribute
• Introduction to deletion process
• Guide to deletion (glossary)
• Help, my article got nominated for deletion!

Brian Thompson (businessman) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

During initial discussions of the notability of the subject I favored that this article be kept for the time being, pending the emergence of articles in reliable sources on the subject. Since then there has been quite a lot of coverage in reliable sources and a problem has emerged.

It has become apparent that virtually all the coverage of Thompson in reliable sources is relevant to his murder. The little that is not is trivial in nature (e.g. he was separated from his wife and once was arrested for drunk driving). As a result, the indisputably notable and necessary article on his killing, Killing of Brian Thompson is little more than an expanded version of this article. This article is superfluous, and should be deleted or merged into that article. Coretheapple (talk) 16:58, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

• Note: This discussion has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. Coretheapple (talk) 16:58, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
• Keep His activities at UH are sufficient to meet WP:NPERSON. He is not only notable for a single event. PhotographyEdits (talk) 17:05, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
• Weak keep - while the coverage/sources have largely emerged only due to the killing, there are notable events and facts about his life that pre-date late 2024, and I think he meets WP:NPERSON as a result. Need to be careful not to let too much of the content/tone of Killing of Brian Thompson spill into here, tho. --ZimZalaBim 17:33, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

  Keep for these same reasons. AHI-3000 (talk) 19:40, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

• Merge there is far too much scrapping on any possible report about Thompson that fails BLP (which still applies). The bulk of the biographical details are routine and do not show any notability. Nearly all the criticism about him is mostly about UHC while he happened to be CEO, which doesn't automatically make him responsible for those choices, nor make him notable. We will avoid a lot of BLP problems by including the criticism of UHC within the killing article are related to the motive of the killing. But otherwise BLP1E clearly is met, and we should not have a standalone of him. Masem (t) 17:40, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
  • To add the bulk of the sources are after his death. If he was truly notable beyond BLE1E, there would be far more sourcing from before his death, but the only pieces there prevdeath are routine aspects related to his promotions at UHC. This is the type of case that BLP1E as well as BLP CRIME were written to avoid. Masem (t) 18:10, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
• Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Businesspeople and Iowa. Spiderone 17:40, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
• Keep - we have articles for CEOs of major companies, including those who aren't particularly notable except for just leading their companies. UHC is a major and controversial company, and Thompson is notable for his leadership before his murder. See WP:NPERSON. JohnAdams1800 (talk) 19:39, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
  • There is no explicit notability for CEOs of major corporations. — Masem (t) 00:04, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

  Would also point out that Thompson was not the CEO of the public entity, United Health Group. He was CEO of the United Healthcare division. Johnadams11 (talk) 17:09, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

• Merge and redirect. Thompson largely has the same characterization as Mangione I think, since he is largely WP:BLP1E, but that WP:1E is not trivial, and he played an untrivial role in that event (even unwillingly). I think the same principle applies to Thompson as to Mangione, but the difference, as I see it, is that the coverage around Mangione quickly turned him into a folk hero. Thompson has almost faded into obscurity by comparison: it's been the US healthcare system that's been vilified, not this one person. I think that if Mangione is notable enough for this 1E, Thompson should be, but the deletion discussion for Mangione didn't conclusively litigate that, in my opinion (though I was involved). But if Mangione isn't notable for simply the one event, I don't think Thompson would be notable at all. There simply hasn't been much coverage of this person, as @Coretheapple points out. I hope that was enough explanation to not just be WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS :)guninvalid (talk) 21:10, 22 December 2024 (UTC)
• Merge, as per reasoning of @Coretheapple Sushidude21! (talk) 23:44, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

And @guninvalìd Sushidude21! (talk) 23:45, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

• Merge and redirect to Killing of Brian Thompson per nom, as well as the reasonings of Masem and guninvalid. JeffSpaceman (talk) 01:38, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
• Keep per JohnAdams1800, and since the Mangione article AfD passed as keep, which was a concern of Coretheapple. Cheers! Johnson524 06:33, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

  The Mangione article's AfD did get closed as Keep, but a deletion review was initiated. There is some weak support from the admins to overturn to no-consensus, though I don't believe that's actually going to happen. guninvalid (talk) 09:58, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

  Mangione has received an avalanche of attention in RS sources, so I am not surprised by the result of the AfD. In the past such criminals (Richard Matt comes to mind) get articles, and efforts to delete them on a 1E basis are unsuccessful. I speak from experience on that. Here we have an article on a victim, and I think 1E looms especially large here, as the amount of attention focused on him has been far less than Mangione, resulting in what is essentially a duplicative article. Coretheapple (talk) 16:01, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

  In the case of Matt, he was a principal character in two film adaptations. Though I advocated for deletion of the article the community was opposed. 1E only is meaningful if it is enforced, and it was not in that instance. In this instance, we need to weigh carefully the purpose served by this article and how it replicates another article. Coretheapple (talk) 16:04, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

• Merge and redirect to Killing of Brian Thompson Let's not make this person a hero over many dead people. 190.219.101.225 (talk) 07:12, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

  Having a Misplaced Pages article does not mean he is a "hero". Iostn (talk) 11:10, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

• Merge and redirect to Killing of Brian Thompson Jotamide (talk) 21:18, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
• Keep it would be pretty questionable in terms of the reputation of this website that the alleged murderer (and his father) has been given a wikipedia article, whilst the victim's one is deleted. I would support all of these articles including the one for Mangione to be merged into a single article however Anvib (talk) 22:21, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
• Merge Notability stems from coverage of murder. Firecat93 (talk) 01:34, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
• Merge and redirect to Killing of Brian Thompson. Once again, he will always be synonymous with his murder and was not notable beforehand. Everything else pertaining to his life — his separation and DUI arrest — is trivial. 💥Casualty 04:12, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
• Keep He has become known not only for his death, but for his role in the U.S. health insurance industry; as CEO of his company, he was the person within the company that bore primary responsibility for carrying out its policies, which were remarkable even by the standards of that industry. — The Anome (talk) 14:33, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
  • It has not been shown that he was the principle decision maker or the one that directed the company to chose its approval/denial processes. His tenure at UHC was marked by these but as he was only in the CEO position since 2021, it's hard to determine how much influence he actually has or was a continuation of ongoing practices. We have no way yet to be able to attribute that all to him personally. — Masem (t) 15:51, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
• Keep Brian Thompson was the CEO of a very successful and large company and his murder was also very notable and unexpected, so I believe that he should have his own article kept because of this. I also agree with @The Anome above, on why the article should be kept. AwesomeAndEpicGamer (talk) 14:31, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
• Strong keep Idek mann (talk) 16:23, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
• Keep - I started to type out a "merge and redirect" !vote, mainly because I did a search for sources, restricting the dates to before this month, and couldn't find anything substantial. Since we already have an article on the event, merge made sense. However, stepping back for a second, his notability may have increased because of the way he died, but there are nonetheless many sources that are about him specifically now, including high-profile obituaries, and not just the killing. Seems he passes WP:BIO at this point. e.g. NYT, Star Tribune, NYT, Newsweek, WSJ, AP, CNN Business... — Rhododendrites \\ 16:48, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

Most of that coverage is rote obit aspects particularly when we compare to how the victims of tragic events that fall into BLP1E are covered similarly by the media in a sympathetic manner (eg like victims of school shootings). None of these point to any he did that was notable before he was killed. If one considers all the factors that are unique to his biography that there is not covered to a degree on the killing page, this is a very generic business person profile that would fail GNG normally. That means we can still give a few paragraphs on his bio on the killing page but shouldn't have a full article that is a honeypot for potential BLP violations. Masem (t) 18:47, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

• Keep per Masem. KOLANO12 3 19:14, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
• Keep because of WP:N and WP:V with WP:RS. IZAK (talk) 03:36, 25 December 2024 (UTC)

• AfD debates (Biographical)
• AfD debates