Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dominique Xardel
Cardamom's arguments above that he meets criteria 6 and 8 of  are convincing. I won't cite all the sources, but I think we can consider things like http://www.puf.com/Auteur:Dominique_Xardelhttp://www.decitre.fr/livres/strategies-et-marketing-direct-9782840740957.htmlhttp://books.google.fr/books?id=oSew5I3CYQMC&pg=PA166http://www.aidan-college-switzerland.ch/about_us_aidan_college/faculty_members#d.xardel these reliable enough in combination to establish that he was editor-in-chief of this publication. We can rely on primary sourcing for some of this, as he is unlikely to misstate his position. The fact that one source says he was "editor" is not a convincing argument against the weight of verifiable and reliable evidence that he was editor-in-chief. The editor of, say, the New York Times may call herself the "editor of the New York Times" when in fact her official position is editor-in-chief. Calling oneself the editor of a publication does not preclude one from being its editor in chief. I also find sufficient evidence cited above that he was the director of ESSEC, and that ESSEC is a highly regarded, independent institution. The assertion that it is not a research institution may possibly be the case, but it is clear to me that it is at minimum a graduate institution that is independent, and that it meets criterion 8 in spirit, if not in letter. Now, having said all this, we come to the problem of finding sufficient sourcing with which to write the article. I've searched the French and English sources and am frankly a bit surprised that I'm unable to come up with more information about this person. I can't seem to find any coverage of him in news articles, the mentions in books are brief, and other sources are essentially resumes and short blurbs about his career. The  guidelines are unclear in this regard. They first state that "Academics/professors meeting any one of the following conditions, as substantiated through reliable sources, are notable." Xardel meets two of these criteria, and thus must be notable under the guidelines, period. And yet then the guidelines say, "It is possible for an academic to be notable according to this standard, and yet not be an appropriate topic for coverage in Wikipedia because of a lack of reliable, independent sources on the subject" and further ask us to consider: "when judged against the average impact of a researcher in his or her field, does this researcher stand out as clearly more notable or more accomplished than others in the field?" It's tough to say the answer to this second question is yes. He seems quite accomplished to me, but he doesn't ''clearly stand out''. If he clearly stood out, shouldn't we see more coverage in independent sources? Rhode Island Red's arguments are convincing in that there isn't much in the way of reliable sources to base this upon. With what we have now, I don't see how we could possibly expand it beyond a brief stub with a listing of works; that's all we have that's verifiable. Now, having said all that, I also acknowledge that this person's career took place mainly in the 1970s through the 1990s in France. Taking a look at his resume and the books he was writing at that time, it strikes me as likely that there would have been coverage of him in French sources back then, and that it would likely have been substantial under the  criteria. We won't be able to see this coverage online because French newspapers are not in the Google news archives, at least to my knowledge, and it's likely French magazines and academic journals of that era have not all put their archives up online for easy access. It's a guess, I know, and there's no guarantee that this coverage exists, but I feel at this time that we should give the subject the benefit of the doubt because we're not able to search for it properly. Rhode Island Red's arguments are well constructed, but on balance I think the best course is to keep the article
— User:Batard0, 18:05, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
Stance: keep
Cited policy: WP:ACADEMIC||WP:ACADEMIC||WP:GNG (Wikipedia:Notability)