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. The article's subject is found to be notable. — Coffee // have a cup // beans // 01:43, 21 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Ius Laboris

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Ius Laboris (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)
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How is this company meeting Wikipedia:Notability (companies)? It reads like WP:ADMASQ. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 09:11, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Business-related deletion discussions. NORTH AMERICA1000 12:31, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Law-related deletion discussions. NORTH AMERICA1000 12:31, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Belgium-related deletion discussions. NORTH AMERICA1000 12:32, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
As to the notability of the network (it’s a network, not a company) I linked to the two leading law firm directories, Legal 500 and Chambers. Many articles on law firms do this, e.g. Lewis Silkin LLP. I like it because it’s an objective index. Chambers has 150 researchers in London who evaluate firms according to objective criteria like general reputation, outcomes, and services. If a firm (or a network) gets ranked in Tier 1, with the best in its field, I think that should count as evidence for notability.
It's also the better sort of notability, which is too often a code word for celebrity. It's notability within the group itself.Anmccaff (talk) 12:51, 7 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately for AfD, both of these directories also allow firms to contribute profiles of themselves, which are primary sources. But note that the article uses only two facts from those sources – the number of lawyers and number of countries. Per WP:PRIMARY, it is OK to use primary sources for straightforward descriptions of easily verifiable facts, which these two facts are.
Such descriptions are also generally edited by the reviewers -it's not as if they let the firms/associations send something into the printers separately- so something factual that was jarringly opposed to their research should run by their eyes at least twice before reaching final print.Anmccaff (talk) 12:51, 7 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
As for other sources, the article was created only yesterday. If anyone wants to expand it, there are plenty of other sources, e.g. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7].
About the nom’s objection that it reads like an advertisement, I'm a bit mystified by that. To me it seems like a vanilla statement of easily verified facts. What exactly is it that sounds like an advertisement? – Margin1522 (talk) 18:42, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I think you may want to repost most of your argument at WP:LAW, crossposted to Wikipedia:Notability (companies). I note that Legal 500 is a red link, and Chambers, a disambiguation. Figuring whether and what kind of mention in those sources suffices for notability would be very helpful. As things stand, I am not convinced that any of such directories are not primarily self-promotional - but I am open to the opinion that (just like in academia) they may be helpful in juding the notability. They may even be notable themselves, but they do need to pass GNG and its ilk, which as written, I don not belive this article does. Some of the links you presented here look promising, but you should try to discuss them better; some are behind a paywall, non-English, or look like blogs, so it's a bit of a mess. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 03:04, 9 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I would be delighted if someone from WP:LAW could give us their views on this. About Legal 500 and Chambers, here are a couple of links. This is by a consultant who advises firms on how to deal with the process, which is apparently rather time consuming. This is from a former editor in chief of Legal 500. He has some large clients who are dissatisfied with their ratings. The interesting thing about that is that even the former editor doesn't seem to have all that much influence over the process. Which might be evidence for thinking that the ratings actually are pretty objective. – Margin1522 (talk) 00:59, 11 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Natg 19 (talk) 17:46, 13 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
About the "self-published" nature of the profiles, there is the fact mentioned by Anmccaff, that they appear on the websites of directories that have spent months collecting data and evaluating the network. Although they may have been submitted by the network, they were published by the directories.
Which brings me to the rating, which is the question that interests me in this discussion. I could have added material to meet GNG and NCORP in the normal way, but I didn't because I wanted to write a short, clean stub that simply describes the basic facts, like our articles on academic journals. Those articles are stubs, but we keep them because the journals are indexed by SCOPUS or another selective indexing service. Could we do the same for law firms, since the directories are also selective and also base their ratings on objective criteria? – Margin1522 (talk) 21:23, 13 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I looked through the news associated with this group a week or so ago. The articles I saw were in the form of 'Some Law Firm, a member of Ius Laboris, did thus and so'. Those articles, in my opinion, may contribute to the notability of 'Some Law Firm' but just a mention of being a member of Ius Laboris does not contribute to the subjects notability. The key here is significant depth of coverage. I have seen no articles talking about Ius Laboris as an organization rather than just something a member did. If you can find some independent third party sources which provide coverage about the article subject I will reconsider my Delete.

Even a 'short clean stub' must pass notability requirements. The tiny, nearly un-sourced stubs you see on Wikipedia exist because at some time it was decided that certain subjects have inherent notability like footballers who played in one pro game. Companies and organizations have no inherent notability. See notability guidelines for companies. We talked a bit about sourcing on my talk page where I said I did not think the sourcing you had could pass AfD. Jbh (talk) 21:57, 13 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, I forgot that you were the new page patroller. Um, as I said above, I think the sources I listed are enough to write a conventional GNG/WP:CORP article. There is also this one:
  • Bottini, A.; Rossi, L. (2014). "HR lawyers' role in a successful global merger: Firms need to get a grip on the legal realities of cross-border operation". Human Resource Management International Digest. 22 (4): 44–46.
According to the abstract:
Design/methodology/approach
– The paper examines the help that Ius Laboris, a specialist international human resources (HR) law firm alliance, was able to give in the merger of a major multinational fashion company based in Italy and a French firm.
Originality/value
– Reveals how important it is for HR to be aware of the cross-border vision and to have ready access to legal and regulatory expertise that can be relied upon whenever required.
The objection here will be that it's paywalled. But according to our policies that's not supposed to matter. I didn't register at The Lawyer because I'm not a lawyer and I'm not going to pretend to be one for the sake of a Wikipedia article. But some of our editors are lawyers, so they can register and add that source.
But again as I said above, in this discussion I am more interested in the question of whether a Tier 1 ranking should count toward notability. There is nothing inherently notable about a footballer who has played 1 pro game. He's notable because we decided that he is. We can also recognize existing practice by deciding that Tier 1 is notable. – Margin1522 (talk) 01:34, 14 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The above article improvement and sourcing discussion should take place over on the article talk page. I will be happy to join you there. As to the notability issue. The short answer is no, ratings contribute nothing to notability. Please read WP:CORP in particular WP:ORGDEPTH for what notability requirements are.

You are right about the inherent notability of footballers etc. but that, in my strong opinion, is a reason to tighten our sports notability requirements not loosen out CORP notability requirements. The whole point I was making is that while some subjects, those with those 'nice clean stubs' you want to emulate have inherent notability but corporations do not. In any case this is not the place to discuss that either. The only concern is if the subject passes Wikipedia's notability guidelines. Jbh (talk) 02:12, 14 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

OK, WP:ORGDEPTH. The operative sentence here would seem to be: "Deep coverage provides an organization with a level of attention that extends well beyond routine announcements and makes it possible to write more than a very brief, incomplete stub about an organization." (emphasis mine) Recently on another AfD, there was an editor who argued that since it says "and", the requirements in the first half of the sentence are distinct from the requirements in the second half, leaving him free to interpret the first half however he pleased. Essentially, the sources are deep enough when he says so. This is the kind of arbitrary interpretation that makes it hard to agree on AfD, and why I would like to see some more objective metrics. None of the eight independent reliable sources that I've listed so far fail any of the specific bullet points in ORGDEPTH, so why aren't they deep enough? – Margin1522 (talk) 19:29, 14 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Here are the sources you have in the article along with my comments. The only independent source is the FT article and it is only a number on a list. See WP:ORGIND
  1. Ius Laboris. "About Us – History". Retrieved 5 March 2015. - WP:SPS not contribute to WP:CORP.
  2. The Legal 500 (2014). "Ius Laboris". Retrieved 5 March 2015 - Profile in a directory at best. WP:SPS at worst. PR piece however you look at it. (it was placed at their request) PR pieces do not contribute to not contribute to WP:CORP
  3. Financial Times (2014). "Most innovative law firms in Client Service 2014".] - <Just a number on a list. Does not contribute to not contribute to WP:CORP.
  4. Ius Laboris (2015). "Global Human Resources Law – Ius Laboris Knowledge Base". WP:SPS Does not contribute to not contribute to WP:CORP.
  5. Chambers and Partners (2015). "Ius Laboris". Retrieved 5 March 2015 - Profile in a directory at best. WP:SPS at worst. PR piece however you look at it (it was placed at their request). Does not contribute to not contribute to WP:CORP
None of these show significant coverage in WP:RS that meets WP:ORGDEPTH. Find some newspaper articles that talk about the company. Find some independent trade magazines that talk about the company. That journal article you mentioned above might be good but the mere existance of one low-impact (the journal has an impact factor of 0.0) article is not enough.

Debating the propriaty of inclusion criteria here is not a discussion I will engage in.

For ease of reference I have listed some reasons a source is unacceptable per WP:ORGIND as well as what sources in the article fail these criteria:

Jbh (talk) 20:19, 14 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I'm not trying to get you to change your !vote. If we aren't going to consider sources unless they are currently present in the article, that's the end of that. I will note that the Chambers cite is not there because of the profile. It is there for a single line, on the right side, to support this: "The network's ranking from legal publishers Chambers and Partners is Elite (Band 1) for Employment.[5]" According to the footnote in WP:ORGDEPTH, inclusion in lists does count toward notability if the list itself is notable. My view is that as the most respected and widely cited guide in the field of law, the Global Guide from Chambers and Partners is a notable list. If you disagree, that's your right. Thanks for your comments. – Margin1522 (talk) 03:08, 15 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The whole point is to find sources that are not in the article. I will accept your point about notable lists and strike part of my note above about the FT article. I have no issue with the Chambers cite per se I simply do not believe the source contributes to notability. The issue with both of the guides is that, based on my reading of the web sites, firms submit entries to them so even if they are 'notable lists' as you claim they do not pass ORGIND. I think it would be great if you could find some independent sources that talk about the subject, it looks like they do good work.

If you will forgive an observation, I have found that usually, when there is an editor as passionate as you are writing about a subject, when we are as far into a discussion about sources as we are now, their are either a bunch of really good sources or they simply do not exist. As I look at the 20+ articles you have created over the last 7 years I am surprised we are discussing notability requirements. Striking, I missed the source links at the top. Anyway, best of luck in your search. Cheers. Jbh (talk) 11:38, 15 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Being paywalled is irrelevant, Bottini and Rossi (2014) article is an academic work on the topic, and a very good source, and I think Jbh's critique of it is a bit too harsh, but I agree it is not enough. It is the first good source we have found. Find another one and I'll change my vote to abstain, find few more and I'll switch to supporting. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 02:48, 16 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I looked at the sources above (Sorry, I missed them earlier). The three I list below look like they may be good. I would like to see the article improved a bit using them. If a bit more coverage like that is found and the article is improved with some of them, I will support keeping the article as well.
  • Ius Laboris Launches 'Guide To Restrictions On Executive Pay
  • Littler In, Seyfarth Out of International Labor Law Alliance
  • 'Smaller cos unaware of labour laws'
Jbh (talk) 03:39, 16 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
OK, I added a couple more things. I moved the Knowledge Base cite to External links and added the Lawyer Monthly cite in its place. Which doesn't add much to notability since it's based on a press release, but Jbh was correct that this was a primary source and doesn't belong in the footnotes. And I added the Bottini and Rossi (2014) cite, which is paywalled but does have a better than usual abstract, so readers should be able to get the point. And one new cite from the ABA Journal of Labor & Employment Law. That's a footnote, but a good one, and it is good on the context – why a network like this is needed. It's on JSTOR, so editors with access there can read it. – Margin1522 (talk) 18:18, 16 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
This is your first article?? Jbh (talk) 18:41, 16 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
No, sorry, I meant version 1.0 of the article on this topic. – Margin1522 (talk) 01:12, 17 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Ahhh... OK... That makes more sense. Took me for a loop there. :) Jbh (talk) 01:53, 17 March 2015 (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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