Wikipedia talk:Notability (organizations)

message: Good start. Interested readers may also want to review WP:CORP and in fact this guideline may (or may not) want to acknowledge CORP and compare/contrast where appropriate. ++Lar: t/c 20:31, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Good start 

message: What do you think about adding churches to this criteria? Should churches have their own? Are they covered by an existing criteria?--Chaser T 07:32, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think churches can be a part of this but the structure of organization is so different from religion to religion.  Heck, the Roman Catholic Church is organized totally differenly from Pentacostal Christianty, let alone Sunni Islam.  I really don't know how to begin to tacle this. Dspserpico 05:25, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have no clue about religious organizational structures, but contacting members of relevant wikiprojects seems a decent first step. I could do that if you think it's a good idea. I suppose religious institutions more generally is what I should have said, including local chapters and their buildings. btw, the spelling change was just what I saw in the article on the greek system (not a great source, i know).--Chaser T 06:42, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think most churches on Wikipedia would be more notable for their architecture and their history than their present congregation, so I'm not sure how well the organization paradigm would apply.--Pharos 07:20, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: See WP:CONG for a proposed guideline specific to religious organizations. Your input would be appreciated in helping to develop and improve those guidelines. Edison 17:14, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It was suggested on the discussion page for WP:CONG, the proposed guideline for local churches and other religious congregations, that to have such a guideline represents "instruction creep," so they should just be judged by this guideline. Since this guideline says that things with out a national or international influence do not deserve articles, and is designed to judge national and international organizations, it might be applicable to religious movements or denominations, but would in almost every case be inappropriate for judging a local congregation. They would all automatically be non-notable, unless they had, say, a televangelist preacher with a satellite channel. If WP:CONG fails to gain usage as a guideline, it would be better replaced with WP:LOCAL than by WP:ORG. Edison 00:52, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Churches? 

message: As written, this pretty much includes every group that's ever had a write-up in the local newspaper.  Frankly, I don't think that's enough.  A group of kindergarden-age kids who pick up litter and plant flowers at the local park would easily get media coverage since it's a cute and heartwarming story, but that doesn't mean such a group would be notable or encyclopedic.  In small towns, the activities of just about any group gets in the paper: if the local VFW holds a pancake supper, that gets an article.  If the local boy sout troop collects cans of food for the poor, that gets an article.  If any one of the local church ladies' groups holds a bake sale, there's another article.  The same goes for student groups at a single school, which are virtually always AfDed by overwhelming consensus, but would theoretically be permissable under this policy if they get a write-up or two in the local paper.  This policy as written would open the floodgates for all sorts of things.  I think existing policy should be enough, but if it isn't then we must work out some sort of criteria beyond simple newspaper mentions. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 12:59, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No it wouldn't, they would not have national importance. Stifle (talk) 14:40, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Way, way, WAY too broad! 

message: I am looking at Coin Coalition.  It was an organization created by a vendor trade organization to lobby for getting rid of the US 1 dollar bill.  This was back in 2000-2001.  I have not seen anything in the news (using google) for anything since 2003.  The domain name was orphaned, and the director of the group has died.  It was probably marginally notable in 2001-2002, but it probably doesn't even exist anymore.  The creator of the article started it in 2004 and has not contributed to Wikipedia (under that name) since Jan 2005.  If someone created the page today, it would be deleted.  Should it be deleted now, or is it grandfathered in? Thanks for any advice you might give. TedTalk/Contributions 00:14, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Can organizations lose notability? 

message: The proposal is woefully inadequate and with all due respect consists of one criterion: is it "local" or not local (i.e. national, international)? It may be that an organization only operates in California, or Alaska, or Western Australia, or Quebec because of some unique characteristic of those places. The proposal ought to include organizations that are notable within a sub-division of a federal state (i.e. provincial orgs, state orgs). Other criteria ought to include: membership size; length of operation; size of budget; whether or not the org is registered with its national tax authority as a charity; notable "alumni", sponsors, or chairpeople; acheivements; nature of operations; size of events it operates, sponsors, or organizes; etc. Agent 86 17:19, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed. I have just started a new Organizations WikiProject and Portal, both of which remain under construction for the time being, but the fact is that there has to be a way for us to classify so-called insignificant organizations. There may be unions, associations and foundations that are local or regional in nature, but do not meet the classical 'notability' criterion. A local or regional group may have only a handful of directors or a couple hundred members and be notable and very important to a local community or for related group looking for partnerships outside their area. If you want to help forge a space for these types of entities on wikipedia I urge you to join in our efforts. I will add our project template to the top of this page in a minute. Cheers. Oldsoul 04:10, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Woefully inadequate

message: According to the first point of this proposed guideline "organizations are usually notable if the scope of activities are national or international in scale". It then adds a verifiability criterion.
However, the second point, saying that "organizations whose activities are local in scope are usually not notable unless verifiable information from reliable third party sources can be found" basically limits itself to the issue of verifiability with no attempt to define what would make a local organisation notable beyond this.
This comes up occasionally with student societies on AFD, where some participants claim dogmatically that student societies that only exist at one school are never notable. This is a problematic claim, and I expect that most people would agree that, for instance, the Porcellian Club is notable enough. (Despite not being Ameican myself, I am using an American example; it will be more familiar to more participants, and it is a useful contrast to the common American pattern of large national fraternities with individual chapters.)
The question I would like to ask is: if the Porcellian Club is notable, what is it that makes it so? Can these criteria be applied more generally?  up+land 15:56, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I am not convinced it is, although I haven't really looked.  A better example might be Skull and Bones.  An organization with a local scope of activities is only notable if it is well-known outside that local scope.  Normally, just having notable alumni isn't enough.  Basically, they have to have some verifiable notoriety outside the local scope.  If you mention Skull and Bones outside a group of Yale graduates, is there a chance someone else would know what you are talking about.  In that case, there has been quite a bit of national press (not necessarily good) about Skull and Bones.  TedTalk/Contributions 18:13, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Local organisations?

message: I was bold and restored the  template to the proposed article. If there is consensus to "closing" the proposal, I have no problem with that, but I could find no discussion anywhere on a consensus to move it into the historical bin. I have left the "merge" template; however, I can find no discussion supporting the rationale for a merger. I do not think it should be merged. Corporations and organizations are not necessarily the same; in fact, they are often very different creatures (including in terms of structure, membership, legal basis for existence, operations, etc.). Agent 86 21:20, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Ongoing discussion and suggestion of merge

message: Can we expand this guideline to include Charities? The notability criteria would, I feel, be the same but it would be nice to see them covered. - Foxhill 20:48, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Charities 

message: I have just switched the redirect to point towards the relevant WikiProject. Hope this doesn't bork too many of your links. Let me know if you need any help re-naming them. Oldsoul 04:31, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: WP:ORG Namepsace

message: In December I began a renewed discussion to merge Organizations with Companies and Corporations, and delete the term "corporation" from the title as it is a sub-class of company.  In my mind a company is sub-class of Organization, but people seem to equate organization with non-profit, so "Company was kept for clarity.
Among the central ideas was to eliminate all of the special conditions from the combined page, since this is about as muddled as the US Tax Code now.  The idea is to offer a precedents page.
In mid-January I suggested closing the discussion at the end of January '07 and move to a consensus, with the goal of developing the text for the new combined page by mid-February.  
The vote is now open at Wikipedia talk:Notability (companies and corporations)
--Kevin Murray 03:11, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Deadline Merger to Organizations & Companies