Wikipedia talk:Notability (organizations and companies)/Archive 3

message: Current policy reads:
:A company [etc.] is notable if it has been the subject of multiple non-trivial published works, the source of which is both: independent of [it]; reliable.
:includes published works in all forms, such as (for examples) newspaper articles...except... works where the company...talks about itself; ... Works carrying merely trivial coverage
If you take this wording seriously, it is enough for a restaurant to be reviewed in a few newspapers, or mentioned in a few guidebooks, which hardly seems "notable".  Here in Cambridge (Mass.), if you open a restaurant with any pretentions at all (not a sandwich shop), you are surely going to get reviewed by the Cambridge Chronicle (local serious paper), the Cambridge Tab, the Boston Phoenix, the Improper Bostonian (local free newspapers) and with any luck, the Boston Globe, the Boston Herald, and Boston Magazine. You might also get reviewed in the Harvard Crimson (Harvard student newspaper), the Tech (M.I.T. student newspaper), Harvard Magazine (alumni magazine), etc.  But how does that make you notable?  --Macrakis 19:49, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Local companies, restaurants, etc.

message: This note is misleading for several reasons: (1) it only describes books as sources, (2) it over emphasises single subject references, and (3) it emphasizes on print media.  I think that the critereon is self explantatory; this note is not necessary and potentially confusing. --Kevin Murray 22:17, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Proposal to remove Note 1

message: Since the attempt to outline separate Schools crtieria has failed, it seems we should address a few of the concerns here.  The following is a brief synopsis of the proposed guidelines:
:The school is assumed to be notable if it has received significant awards or gained national or regional recognition for its curriculum, extracurricular activities, or history. 
:: --Kevin Murray 23:45, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: --Kevin Murray 01:17, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: the separate schools guideline has failed to reach a consensus

message: *Moved to Wikipedia_talk:Schools#New_proposal, the traditional place for discussing school-related guidelines. This is a contentious issue and should not be the cause of divergent discussion in multiple places. >Radiant< 08:44, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Proposed schools section

message: Over at Wikipedia:Articles about ongoing enterprises, there has been a suggestion by Kevin and Radiant to merge that suggested policy/guideline into this one. I would modify that suggestion as follows:
1. The resulting article should be "Wikipedia:Organizations and companies."
2. It should be official policy, not just a guideline.
WP:AAOE addresses the issues of edits by employees and members of the company or organization, and dealing with their COI issues. It also addresses the problem of libel. What do you think? Dino 15:51, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: * I agree!  Moving any of the notability criteria to policy is problematic, since we ahve been unable to eliminate subjectivity from the definitions.  On a side note though, I think that the definitions of "policy" and "guideline" ar WP:POLICY need some work. --Kevin Murray 18:46, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

text: I disagreed with the premise of Wikipedia:Articles about ongoing enterprises when it was a separate page.  I haven't seen anything in the subsequent discussion there or in the merger proposal here that has caused me to change my mind.  Organizations are fundamentally different from natural persons.  We tolerate the suspension of our normal processes in biographies of living persons because of the risks to the person.  While every article should be neutral and well sourced, the normal editing processes and policies are sufficient for articles about organizations.  We do not need to make further compromises to our processes.  Rossami (talk) 01:46, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There are sufficient disputed situations that I think it would be inadvisable to make it policy. We need to retain flexibility here. I areee with kevin Murray about subjectivity. We cannot clarify many of these cases exactly, & I think the AfDs prove it. DGG 00:08, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: A new proposal

message: People have complained about the single attribution requirement which was recently added here to match WP:N, but WP:N has since played down the single source.  I copied the Primary Criterion from WP:N.  However, there is substantial disagreement at WP:N on most issues.  --Kevin Murray 17:52, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Updated to current Primary Criterion at WP:N 

message: Regardless of when the merge took place, absolutely nothing has been done to resolve the issue of the criteria merged from the old ORG proposed guideline. We've wandered into all sorts of other topic areas since the merge, but there has been nothing done to resolve the issues raised here and in the talk page of the old proposed guidelines. Agent 86 17:39, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Dispute tag

message: How should we treat these? Most of them deal with national/global level issues, but a good deal of them also lack sources. Logical2uReview me! 22:13, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Regarding political organizations 

message: Wikipedia appears to have a problem with notability and publically traded companies. There's currently a DRV happening on MarchFirst, and I recall something similar with the (admittedly more complex) DRV a while back about Arch Coal. The pattern seems to be similar. Someone creates an article about a company which happens to be large and publically traded (or, in the case of MarchFirst, was so if out of business by now). That fact they mention somehow in passing in the article. An admin cruises along and sees only that there are not (other) explicit assertions of notability and speedily deletes it. DRV ensues.
Could we agree that in general large publically traded companies are notable - by the time someone gets listed on an exchange or has revenue of a few hundred million dollars or more, there are usually multiple secondary sources about it. Hey, except for penny stocks, there are usually analysts covering it! It feels silly that such a company article would need to otherwise assert notability, any more than an article about a city of a sizable population. More pragmatically, could we amend WP:CORP to say that publically traded companies are generally notable, and could we somehow encourage admins to slap a not very good article about a company like with with an improvement template or at most a PROD rather than a speedy? It just feels a tad silly to have long on-going AFD discussions about esoteric manga comic books and yet to be speedy deleting large corporations (whether current or historical) because the text so far does not fully connect the dots of the notability claim, or that no-one has bothered to check hoovers.com. Trying to keep of COI and spam is one thing, being needlessly trigger-quick on an area where wikipedia often has holes we should be trying to fill is another. Martinp 15:47, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: We've discussed this several times before and each time have rejected the idea that merely being publicly traded is automatically sufficient for inclusion.  Many public companies do not get significant analyst coverage (or do get coverage but the independence of that coverage must be questioned).  We've also rejected the idea of numerical thresholds based on headcount, revenues, profits, etc.  While being "large" by any of those measures might be circumstantial evidence of notability, they do not guarantee that we can find the independent sources we need to write a proper encyclopedia article.  On the other hand, once you find the sources, we keep the articles rather quickly.  The ones that are a problem for Wikipedia are the ones where sources can not easily be found.  We should not be creating a loophole in our policies where unsourcable articles can be forced in.   The only change I would make to the process is to encourage admins to be more aggressive about using AFD rather than speedy-deletions.  These questions really do need more than a single pair of eyes to decide.  Rossami (talk) 17:50, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

text: It seems that the problem that Martinp is describing is one of editors trying to plant seeds to let them evolve toward articles with encyclopedic suitability.  I think that the hair trigger deletion process stifles this potentially valuable aspect of WP.  However, for us to be practical in combating the mountains of spam and vanity pages we seem to need the aggressive deletion processes.  Is the solution a complex set of special case guidelines?  --Kevin Murray 18:04, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I have a slight disagreement with Kevin.  Prod, with its 5 day window, is a much better process than speedy delete.  Editors should be very careful in using speedy delete, so that they avoid the situations Martinp describes.  Better use of existing processes, rather than enumerated giudelines, seems the best solution here. UnitedStatesian 18:34, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Yes, I agree.  An idea that may not be pratical is an "article incubator", where seed articles can be protected while collective knowledge is compiled. --Kevin Murray 18:50, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Notability and publicly traded companies 

message: It would be great if the people who create or delete these 'not notable' company articles could also move it to Wikicompany using the web form. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.98.145.213 (talk • contribs) 13:25, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Why Martin?  There is no need for a special case here.  If the company is truly notable then it will be recognized as so by having a substantial amount of verifiable and independent published material to document its notability.  Why would we need a flood of special case rules?  --Kevin Murray 17:08, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

text: I'd be okay with listing an analyst report by a major analyst company as an example of an independent, non-trivial source.  We still need more than one source before we can try to write a balanced article but that would be a great start.  Rossami (talk) 17:30, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I agree. --Kevin Murray 18:19, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

text:  I agree with Rossimi: reports by major anaylsts are secondary sources that establish notability, so if a company is the subject of two, it is notable.  This is exactly what the genereic guideline says, so (to KM's point) there is no need to clutter the guideline by mentioning this as a special case.  On the other hand, analyst reports can, of course, be pointed to in prod/AfD debates. UnitedStatesian 18:25, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Wikicompany

message: *I know it sounds oversimplistic,but in practice I think the most reliable factor might be market share. That's what is usually at the basis of what companies get written about, etc. DGG 04:48, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Market share

message: OK, so can we at least agree that publically traded companies with independent analyst coverage are notable? Note that such reports may be hard to use as actual sources for the article (not freely available, $$$), but their existence should satisfy the concern of "is there someone who thinks they are important and has looked at them in an independent way". Martinp 16:29, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Why Martin?  There is no need for a special case here.  If the company is truly notable then it will be recognized as so by having a substantial amount of verifiable and independent published material to document its notability.  Why would we need a flood of special case rules?  --Kevin Murray 17:08, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

text: I'd be okay with listing an analyst report by a major analyst company as an example of an independent, non-trivial source.  We still need more than one source before we can try to write a balanced article but that would be a great start.  Rossami (talk) 17:30, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I agree. --Kevin Murray 18:19, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

text:  I agree with Rossimi: reports by major anaylsts are secondary sources that establish notability, so if a company is the subject of two, it is notable.  This is exactly what the genereic guideline says, so (to KM's point) there is no need to clutter the guideline by mentioning this as a special case.  On the other hand, analyst reports can, of course, be pointed to in prod/AfD debates. UnitedStatesian 18:25, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Analyst reports

message: Since the general notability guideline is central to most sub-pages, someone came up with the idea of creating a centralized template which will be consistent among the permutations from WP:N.  Please see whether we can make this work here.  The text is meant to be fairly generic, but it may make sense to add text following the template for fine tuning, or help us to make the template more applicable if it is not reflecting the consensus for notability.  I certainly didn't get everything that I wanted, but I'm very happy to see the compromises that make this a fairly representive of the attitude of the project.  --Kevin Murray 01:12, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  General notability guideline template 

message: See Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Template:pnc for the debate. --Kevin Murray 18:06, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Template:pnc]] nominated for deletion 

message: Since it is all a matter of degree, do we need the elaboration?DGG 05:49, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: products and services

message: As I have been through a few AFD, PROD debates recently where editors complain or simply say "the company is notable" without actually adding sources to demonstrate the notability of a company, I propose the opening section should state something along the lines of:
:A company, corporation, organization, group, product, or service is notable if it has been the subject of secondary sources. This must be demonstrated through these sources being cited in the Wikipedia article.
This first part is the current opening line to the first section, the italized line is what I propse adding, or something along those lines. Thoughts? Aboutmovies 02:44, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I am in full agreement that secondary sorces in article=good, lack of secondary sources in article=bad; however, I don't think your proposal will gain consensus.  1, I think "must" is un-Wikipedia-like. 2, articles are often, in good faith, started with no sources, which the editor expects to add (or to be added) later. so 3, I think your point is better served in the AfD debate itself: challenge the editors who claim notability to point to it in the article's sources, or go find them yourself. UnitedStatesian 18:27, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Hm. I actually ran across a number of, say, less notable products when cleaning up old articles flagged with the "notability" tag. Actually, in many cases it seemed to me that they were created by the very companies which produce these products, and I really have a hard time assuming good faith in these cases. But, of course, nothing can be proved; and actually the opinions on what to consider spam differ a lot. I would actually like a rule that would basically say, "if the article describes a company or commercial product, if no secondary sources are cited, and if the notability warning has been on the article for n months, then the article can be deleted uncontroversially without further research" (that is, via a PROD or even speedy deletion). It seems a bit strange to me to spend a lot of time searching the web for independent references to that product, while the article's creator has probably added none deliberately. Also, the AfD consumes a lot of resources. What do you think? --B. Wolterding 18:45, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Probably unnecessary.  Spam is already a speedy deletion criteria, and leaving it less well-defined is to the benefit of the project; it allows some leeway for edge cases.  If I saw an article like you are describing, I would delete it without further ado, and so would most admins.  Just tag them for speedy deletion with , no process bloat needed. --Spike Wilbury  18:54, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Well, I did so in two cases, and learned that others considered that "highly inappropriate"... Maybe that was just a misunderstanding, but I thought some clearer guidelines could help. --B. Wolterding 19:14, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  prod is a good process as well, esp. if the spamminess is less clear-cut. UnitedStatesian 19:17, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I read that on your Talk page, and "highly inappropriate" seems rather strong language.  The first was simply a mistake that anyone might make, especially if they don't know what a house fan is.  The second was also in good faith; although the subject is a major company, the article does indeed read like a marketing pamphlet.  Sometimes editors wrongly assume that because an article is about a notable corporation, it must not be spam.  That is not necessarily true.  However, in those cases the solution would be to edit out the spam instead of deleting the article. My opinion, of course. --Spike Wilbury  02:11, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Generally, when a page starts life as an advert, it's best to wipe it and start over. That also sends a very strong "No spam, ever, for any reason" message. The tagging there was not "highly inappropriate" (or inappropriate at all), and at least one of those articles is still borderline at best. Seraphimblade Talk to me 04:19, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Demonstrate Notability 

message: There is a discussion about this list at 
*Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Lists#List of companies working in Technopark
We could use some advice from editors with experience here. There are conflicting wikipedia guidelines. See WP:NOT#DIR. It states:
"Of course, there is nothing wrong with having lists if their entries are famous because they are associated with or significantly contributed to the list topic, for example Nixon's Enemies List. Wikipedia also includes reference tables and tabular information for quick reference. This site search, and this one, pull up thousands of examples of lists and comparison tables. Merged groups of small articles based on a core topic are certainly permitted."
So even if the list were made more encyclopedic by detailing the entries, the question remains about what entries to put on the list. --Timeshifter 18:10, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  List of companies working in Technopark