Talk:Eric LeCompte (non-profit)

Merge proposal

The following discussion is closed and will soon be archived.

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LeCompte is notable as the director of Jubilee Network. It is based on this connection that he has had the platform to discuss the issues he writes about. Although the extensive referencing shows that he is often published, it does not demonstrate that anyone has written about him. I propose that the article be converted to a redirect to Jubilee USA Network. WikiDan61^ChatMe!_ReadMe!! 20:32, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

I disagree. I think the number of citations shows he's a notable commentator and would likely be so with or without his current platform. It also seems this page is still under construction and I would suggest it be given time to see what else is added before moving it around. Lovealwayswins12 (talk) 20:36, 1 July 2015 (UTC) — Lovealwayswins12 (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.

I believe that as an expert in the field who serves on multiple UN working groups his work extends beyond the role of Executive Director of Jubilee USA Network. I would also agree with the poster above me, that this site may need some more time to become whole before it can be fairly judged. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rob205162 (talk • contribs) 20:46, 1 July 2015 (UTC) — Rob205162 (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.

@Lovealwayswins12: @Rob205162: Given that you both have concentrated your entire Wikipedia editing contributions on the creation of this article, your neutrality in this discussion might be questioned. Addressing the points raised:

1. The number of citations shows that, as the director of a national organization, LeCompte comments in a variety of platforms. It is unclear that he would be so widely published otherwise.
2. His role in the UN committees appears to arise from his role as the director of the Jubilee USA Network.
3. A point which neither of you have addressed: there are no independent sources writing significantly about LeCompte. If those can be found, that will greatly help.

-- WikiDan61^ChatMe!_ReadMe!! 20:52, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

I just started on wikipedia so your first point isn't really relevant. I think the page should be developed more before being merged. And I think the central question is whether or not this is a notable person. I would argue yes. Lovealwayswins12 (talk) 20:58, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

@Lovealwayswins12: Yes, I understand you would argue that he is notable. I would argue that he is not, based on Wikipedia's notability guidelines. Why don't we let others weigh in on the discussion? WikiDan61^ChatMe!_ReadMe!! 21:00, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

That's fine. I read the guidelines and I think we'll have to just agree to disagree, but my main point is I think this page is clearly under construction and I think it should be allowed to be more fully formed before talking about merging it. Lovealwayswins12 (talk) 15:11, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

I don't think being executive director of an organization gets you an automatic spot as an expert at the UN - it would seem to me he earned that on his own.Run4Peace (talk) 17:52, 2 July 2015 (UTC) — Run4Peace (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.

There are many other Wiki pages about individuals who are heads of organizations, but many are not as notable as LeCompte. The current and former executive directors of Amnesty International have their own pages but no media mentions. They have pages even though their opinion is not as sought out by the media as LeCompte. Ggxoxo15 (talk) 13:55, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

This page deserves to exist separate from Jubilee USA not only because it meets all the required guidelines but also because the person for whom the page was created is clearly notable and influential. It seems that LeCompte has been active since 1999 or earlier. Just through simple Google searches it is clear that he has been sought out by the media to comment on the issues written about on the Wikipedia page and other relevant issues. JC14119 (talk) 14:07, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

Your issue with LeCompte v. Jubilee makes no sense. By your rationale, Mick Jagger's page should be merged into the one for the Rolling Stones, Bob Woodward's into the Washington Post or one of his books. In other words, you are taking the point of view that no one's notoriety can be distinct from one's work, organization, etc. There's also a chicken and egg argument you are making which is fundamentally wrong. Was LeCompte named to the UN groups because of Jubilee? It goes without saying that the UN selected him for his background and experience, including Jubilee. So the answer is not to make Jubilee is sole definition of Mr. Le Compte's life. Finally, I find myself wondering if you have taken a similar position about some of the other people and organizations in Wikipedia's 4.8 million-plus entries. If so, can you tell us which ones and why? In other words, what's really going on here?Nickcjacobs (talk) 19:55, 8 July 2015 (UTC) Nick Jacobs, nick.jacobs@verizon.net

WikiDan61, I think the third point you make is addressed by the new section added today. I think it's time to take down this merge proposal as your concerns have been addressed and there seems to be no other support for a merge from anybody commenting here. Lovealwayswins12 (talk) 18:35, 14 July 2015 (UTC)

• Finding no support for a merge, the proposal is withdrawn. WikiDan61^ChatMe!_ReadMe!! 12:08, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

Citations

This article suffers from citation overkill. 23 citations to verify that LeCompte comments on politics, finance and religion is truly unnecessary, especially in the lead, where facts generally do not need to be cited at all, relying on the body of the article to contain factual statements that can easily be verified by one or two references. Thus, if we claim that LeCompte is a sought-after commentator in the area of international finance, we shouldn't rely on 17 instance where he has been quoted in this area, but rather a single source where an independent writer has noted this fact about LeCompte. WikiDan61^ChatMe!_ReadMe!! 19:18, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

Agreed. The sources don't really fall under our notability guidelines, as notability relies on sources ABOUT the subject, not FROM the subject. --LoveSometimesLoses (talk) 17:13, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

UN affiliation

This article says that LeCompte "served on expert working groups for the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development and the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights". I can't find any reliable source that says that this is true. There are a variety of sources that interview LeCompte that simply repeat this bio line back, but those sources obviously took it directly from LeCompte himself, it's not anything they researched. The UN Conference on Trade and Development has an Intergovernmental Working Group of Experts on International Standards of Accounting and Reporting, but that group is for member states, not individual members, and so LeCompte can't be on it. I can't really find anything on him and the UNHCHR. I think that this information if dubious and I will delete it unless anyone has a good source for it. --LoveSometimesLoses (talk) 17:13, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

UN afflilation

Tightened up language, introduced additional citations.Citizenlandi (talk) 00:51, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

Non-notable role

Older, non-notable roles are not supposed to be included in introductory paragraphs for biographical entries.Citizenlandi (talk) 00:52, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

Just because something happened prior to now or that it would not, on its own, meet wikipedia's notability standards doesn't mean that it can't go in the introductory paragraph. We very commonly briefly explain the career trajectory of professionals in the opening paragraph. 1983 is a long-enough time ago and earning an undergraduate degree from Columbia Certainly isn't enough to, on its own, meet wikipedia's notability standards, and yet the opening paragraph of Barack Obama mentions that in 1983 he earned an undergraduate degree from Columbia. Certainly Eric LeCompte isn't so noteworthy for what he's doing now that it overshadows his past to a greater degree than Barack Obama. --LoveSometimesLoses (talk) 04:43, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

While some might argue a well known University could be added, I believe the guidelines would disagree. In the case of this wiki page - the guidelines are clear:

"The notable position(s) or role(s) the person held should usually be stated in the opening paragraph. However, avoid overloading the lead sentence with various sundry roles; instead, emphasize what made the person notable. Incidental and non-notable roles (i.e. activities that are not integral to the person's notability) should usually not be mentioned in the lead paragraph."

The way the paragraph is written now is clear and precise. Other roles are mentioned later in the article which I believe is appropriate. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Citizenlandi (talk • contribs) 01:27, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

Various webpages indicate the Eric LeCompte was the events coordinator for School of the Americas Watch, a well-known organisation within the human rights world, for over a decade. Given that this page says LeCompte has been "active" since 1994 and it's hard to imagine he's beyond his mid 40s, that means that bulk, probably the majority of his entire working career was spent at School of the Americas Watch. To suggest that his employment there was entirely "incidental and non-notable" strikes me as incorrect, especially in light of the fact that you have been adding information to the opening paragraph indicating that he once, several years ago, gave a talk at an event coordinated by the UN, and we're also using the lead paragraph to mention the fact that he is (or was) an unpaid member of one apparently non-permanent working group that is overseen by one subset of the UN system. Again, if we can use the lead paragraph to mention fact that Barack Obama spent a few years at Columbia before going on to be a state senator, the keynote speaker at the Democrats' convention, a US senator, and the president of the United States, certainly there is enough room in this article for us to briefly mention what appears to be the longest-lasting part of Eric LeCompte's career. For that reason, I am reinstating the information. --LoveSometimesLoses (talk) 10:07, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

"United Nations finance expert"

We open this article by calling LeCompte a "United Nations finance expert". I think that there are a few different reasons why we should consider rephrasing this term which I'd like to explain below before I make any edits so that they can be individually discussed.

1. I think the "United Nations" part is somewhat objectionable because it is misleading. If someone were to be called "a Cambridge physicist", a reasonable person would assume that that person is on the faculty of the Department of Physics at the University of Cambridge, not someone who merely once gave a talk at Cambridge. In the same way, a reasonable person would assume that by calling LeCompte a "United Nations finance expert", we are saying that he is employed by the United Nations to work on issues relate to finance. But the sources that we have indicate that this is not at all true: he does not appear to be employed by the UN, and although he has worked on a volunteer working group that is or was overseen by the UN Conference on Trade and Development (which is actually mostly focused on trade, rather than finance, but that's a different story) and in 2013 gave a talk at a meeting convoked by a UN independent expert on human rights, he doesn't have any major relation to the overall United Nations organisation.

2. I also think that the "expert" part is somewhat objectionable, albeit for entirely different reasons. While the meaning of "expert" is quite clear, I think it's a violation of the NPOV policy to use it in the narrative voice of the article. It's worth noting, for example, that we don't use the narrative voice to call Paul Romer, who is Chief Economist at the World Bank, one of Time magazine's 25 most influential people in the United States, and widely considered to be a front-runner for the 2016 Nobel Prize in Economics, an "expert". Doing so would be seen as a sort of endorsement of his ideas, which is a bit improper. I think the same principal applies to this article as well.

I'd like to change this, but thought it would be useful to float the idea here first. --LoveSometimesLoses (talk) 10:45, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

It's been five days and there has been no response so I am implementing the change. --LoveSometimesLoses (talk) 05:23, 12 October 2016 (UTC)

"Raised a devout Catholic"

In a moment I'm going to delete the first sentence from the early life section and I want to explain why here. It says that LeCompte was raised a devout Catholic, but the article that is cited seems to argue almost the exact opposite:

He recalls being “disenchanted” with the church and Christianity when in high school, and he links that to one of his earliest memories in grade school when his parents often took him to church to see the statues and lights.

He was 5 or 6 when, on a weekday visit, he went to the front of the church and saw the cross with a person on it, “dying, bloody, a complete failure.” He didn’t understand when his parents told him, “That’s Jesus, the son of God.” His dad continued to instruct him, “Eric, your mother and I and you, we’re all children of God.”

LeCompte recalls “looking back up at that cross and thinking, ‘If that’s what happens to children of God, I want no part of it.’”

If LeCompte was uncomfortable (to say the least) with Christianity from one of his first encounters with it through high school, I'm not sure it can be said that he was a particularly "devout" Catholic while he was being raised. While the last line does say that he better understood what his parents were trying to teach him later on in his life, I still don't think that rescues the claim that he was raised devout. --LoveSometimesLoses (talk) 06:31, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

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