Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Marko Elez

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. I see a consensus to Keep this article. Editors are welcome to also Merge content if they believe it is suitable. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 23:12, 18 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Marko Elez

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Merge with Department of Government Efficiency. The Person doesn't hold any important positions nor has done anything notable to have his own article. The only activity mentioned in the sources are inappropriate tweets, which isn't notable enough for a separate article SKAG123 (talk) 22:00, 11 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - Clearly passes WP:GNG per significant coverage in multiple independent secondary reliable sources such as The New York Times, the BBC, Wall Street Journal, NBC News, ~~Newsweek,~~ National Public Radio, and many others. Netherzone (talk) 22:39, 11 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - in addition to what Netherzone said, he's continuing to get coverage, and contrary to what SKAG123 said, it's not simply because of the tweets, it looks like he was given inappropriate access to various records as well, so it's just NOT one event (his tweets) that is indicative of his notability. See this new article from today for example: ^[1]. Cononsense (talk) 04:00, 12 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - this individual continues to receive significant news coverage across all mainstream news outlets (eg from a recent mainstream talk show [1]) well after the initial drama died down. I argue the two significant events here: 1. the individual reportedly having administrative access to the treasury's payment system (which is notable in itself) and 2. the resignation/rehiring arc which involved the richest man in the world, the President of the United States, and the Vice President of the United States are strongly indicative that this article should be kept. 129.222.162.136 (talk) 00:07, 18 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ Stein, Jeff (February 11, 2025). "Treasury revoked editing access 'mistakenly' given to DOGE staffer". The Washington Post. Retrieved February 11, 2025.

Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: People, Finance, Politics, Engineering, Software, United States of America, and New Jersey. WCQuidditch ☎ ✎ 05:26, 12 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Merge to Department of Government Efficiency. Seems to be solely notable for his work there, which is most of the prose of the article. Esolo5002 (talk) 05:35, 12 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The President of the U.S., the Vice President of the U.S., and the world's richest person were all involved this individual's resignation/rehiring arc. The individual was also put in charge of the U.S. Treasury's payment systems acting as a DOGE liaison. He is also involved in several ongoing lawsuits around access to Treasury systems and data. The argument that he is "solely notable for his affiliation with DOGE" strikes me as very weak. Xy1231321 (talk) 00:17, 18 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Merge to Department of Government Efficiency. It is relevant because of DOGE. It is better to create a better DOGE article, rather than focusing on this individual who will likely be forgotten in a year (and if not, we can create the article again). Dajasj (talk) 08:20, 12 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Notability is not temporary, so it does not matter whether he will be well remembered a year from now. 2407:7000:B218:2573:8559:E255:3053:DFE6 (talk) 11:14, 12 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This logic is weak. The individual would be notable with or without his affiliation with DOGE. Xy1231321 (talk) 00:20, 18 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Substantial coverage in reliable sources, which establishes notability. 2407:7000:B218:2573:8559:E255:3053:DFE6 (talk) 11:17, 12 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect to Department of Government Efficiency#Identified members. Not individually notable. Reywas92^Talk 17:24, 12 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

By that logic, most of our career representatives should be redirected. KEEP 192.156.215.1 (talk) 18:08, 12 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Merge and Redirect to Department of Government Efficiency for now. There's no evidence yet that the subject is independently notable outside the context of that agency. Yes, there is a spate of recent news coverage that mentions the subject by name, but I see no reason to believe this is anything different about this from any other news coverage of a governmental event that mentions by name some government employee. Strongly object to outright deletion however. Ford MF (talk) 23:36, 12 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - there are more than six on point reliable sources well over a week. (Newsweek is now deprecated, however.) He was given a huge amount of power over a country with 330 million people. I don't oppose a merger, but a deletion would be against policy and precedent. Bearian (talk) 03:09, 13 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - Y'all are making up rules like "independently notable" when the policy clearly states notability is the standard. Pick any reliable source (New York Times, Politico, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, BBC, etc etc), and you'll find an article about who this guy is. If that doesn't make you notable, I don't know what does.

Motjustescribe (talk) 17:35, 13 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Keep, GNG is met a few times over... We have a large amount of significant coverage in reliable sources, these are not passing mentions of the subject in articles about DOGE these are articles about the subject. When the President of the US, the Vice President of the US, and the world's richest person are all involved in a subject getting publicly hired, fired, and hired again we're so far into independently notable that I question why we're even having this discussion. The argument that people are making that independent means "outside the context of that agency" is just bizzare, by that logic almost no professional athletes would be notable as the coverage is almost all within the context of their league... Almost no military figures would be notable... Neither would be most elected officials... The list goes on and on, the logic just isn't there. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:19, 13 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Keep: Nobody actually wants to delete this article! The multiple independent reliable sources with in-depth coverage are several times as much as we need to earn a special award from WP:Notability people. The only thing left to consider is whether it comes under WP:BLP1E - since he's been in the public eye for less than one month.
Let's count the events

He gains (read - only) access to one of the most sensitive financial databases in the world: US Treasury payments (amounting to "$5 Trillion per year, which likely includes name, address, bank account number, social seurity number for all federal employees, social security recipients, government contractors and others who get paid by the gov't
He was then caught having made racist comments on social media.
He resigns.
Musk conducts a survey of his Twitter followers on whether he should be rehired
Musk, the Vice-President, and the President all agree at a news conference that he should be rehired.
Whoops! It's reported that he he actually had read-write access to the database

That looks like more than 1 event to me.

I suppose we could theoretically consider merging into DOGE, but that article is huge already, we'd have to split the Elez part off almost immendiately.

Note to closer, !votes that don't mention notability or BLP1E should be discarded as not addressing policy or guidelines.

In short, it's starting to snow. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 21:59, 13 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Almost all of the DOGE workforce articles are unnecessary, but I think this one as well as Luke Farritor are potential exceptions due to some notability on their own. In this case, the whole rehiring drama and JD Vance and Trump commenting on it in my opinion means that WP:BLP1E doesn't necessarily apply here. Though if we do indeed keep the article, that incident should become much more of a prominent focus. Mystic Cornball (talk) 23:16, 13 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
~~Weak Keep~~ Keep / Move The 'rehiring controversy' points to some notability, though at this point I'm not fully convinced the article isn't WP:BLP1E. I don't think the 'read-write access controversy' confers notability since he reportedly didn't know he had such access or used it; that controversy more directly implicates the US Treasury "mistakenly" giving improper access to DOGE. I'd be more convinced if we see more things happen in his story, like he actually does rejoin DOGE and that's widely covered, or he becomes a right-wing influencer or something. ^Falling_Gravity 04:02, 14 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Given that none of the 3 BLP1E criteria are clearly met its pretty obvious that the article isn't BLP1E. Remember it for an article to be BLP1E it has to be all three, its actually a really high bar. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:50, 14 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

On points 2 and 3 he's a low-profile individual, and we don't know the full extent of his involvement in the controversies pending an investigation. However, I'm changing my vote to move to an article focused on the DOGE–Treasury access controversy, maybe called "Marko Elez laptop controversy". While I assumed the controversies were separate, Marcy Wheeler argues his resignation could have been because of that controversy instead of the WSJ reporting on racist tweets. ^Falling_Gravity 02:28, 15 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I would argue that there is far more evidence that he resigned because of his old tweets than the DOGE-Treasury access controversy (which I would not characterize as a *controversy* in the same sense as the resigning/rehiring arc). I think it makes far more sense to keep and potentially reassess if we get incontrovertible proof in the other direction. Xy1231321 (talk) 17:09, 15 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It's possible both played a role and he just got cold feet when things started to pile up. The point is we shouldn't confuse correlation with causation. ^Falling_Gravity 22:28, 15 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

He isn't a low profile individual because he "Has sought or holds a position of pre-eminence, power, or authority in a field of research, a sport, a business market, a political sphere, or other area of human endeavor, usually at more than a locally-significant level." Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:20, 15 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think that means people seeking political office or influence, not everyone who has ever worked for the federal government. He also wasn't a "special government employee" as some early reports suggested, just a regular employee. ^Falling_Gravity 21:20, 15 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

We aren't talking about everyone who has ever worked for the federal government... We're talking about an employee who has apparently sought (and to an unclear extent achieved) vast pre-eminence, power, and authority in multiple federal agencies according to the reliable sources. This is not a "regular" employee in any way, this employee is highly notable. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 21:39, 15 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

All the sources I'm reading say he resigned as soon as he faced public scrutiny, and he hasn't returned despite being "rehired" with support from his top bosses (Musk, Vance, and Trump). If he is seeking "vast pre-eminence, power, and authority" like you claim then he's doing a poor job at it. He hasn't given any interviews, even in right-wing media, and he hasn't even emerged as a social media personality. All this to me doesn't signal high profile status. ^Falling_Gravity 22:16, 15 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

it doesn't expire quickly, once you've held or sought pre-eminence, power, or authority you're a public figure for a decade at least (some argue for an exception for minors which is sometimes implemented, but this is not a minor). The way we have it written doing any part of the standard makes you high profile, you don't have to do everything (for example you don't have to give interviews to be high profile). We also seem to have two notable events, his activities at the treasury and the kerfuffle over his posts. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 22:27, 15 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Two notes:

> "All the sources I'm reading say he resigned as soon as he faced public scrutiny"

He started to receive public scrutiny when the story broke that he had admin privileges on the treasury payment computer systems. This was an entirely separate news-cycle from the whole resignation/rehiring.

> "he hasn't returned"

We don't actually know this to be *true* apart from the fact that nothing suggesting otherwise has leaked to the media. Considering Musk, Vance, and Trump all suggested he'd come back, it seems more fair to place the burden of proof on showing that he hasn't been rehired. Xy1231321 (talk) 23:34, 15 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

According to the emptywheel: "But multiple court filings claim that Elez resigned and never came back, at least not to Treasury." That article's timeline of events is also worth checking out. ^Falling_Gravity 04:48, 16 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Keep But changing the subject from the person to the breach/event might make sense. Meesher (talk) 18:26, 14 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Keep without prejudice to refactoring the article to focus on the controversy rather than a biography. There are enough sources focusing on him specifically that a separate article makes sense, but not necessarily a full biography. Eluchil404 (talk) 00:29, 18 February 2025 (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.

[wapo-feb11-1] Stein, Jeff (February 11, 2025). "Treasury revoked editing access 'mistakenly' given to DOGE staffer". The Washington Post. Retrieved February 11, 2025.

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Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Marko Elez

Marko Elez

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