Wikipedia:Notability (companies and corporations)

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This page is a notability criteria guideline for Wikipedia, reflecting how authors of this encyclopedia address certain issues. This guideline is intended to help you improve Wikipedia content. Feel free to update this page as needed, but please use the discussion page to propose major changes.

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This page gives some rough guidelines used by Wikipedia editors to decide if a product, company, corporation or other economic entity should have an article on Wikipedia.

Many Wikipedians are wholly averse to the use of Wikipedia for advertising, and Wikipedia articles are not advertisements is an official policy of long standing. Advertising is either cleaned up to adhere to the neutral point of view or deleted. In the latter case, it is listed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion, and Wikipedia editors may apply the criteria outlined here. If an article is blatant advertising, it may also be tagged for speedy deletion.

1 Criteria for companies and corporations
2 Criteria for products and services
- 2.1 Recommendations for products and services
3 Criteria for clubs, societies, and organizations
4 Chains and franchises
5 Notes
6 See also

[edit] Criteria for companies and corporations

A company or corporation is notable if it meets any of the following criteria:

The company or corporation has been the subject of multiple non-trivial published works whose source is independent of the company or corporation itself.
- This criterion includes published works in all forms, such as newspaper articles, books, television documentaries, and published reports by consumer watchdog organizations² except for the following:
  - Media reprints of press releases, other publications where the company or corporation talks about itself, and advertising for the company. ¹
  - Works carrying merely trivial coverage, such as newspaper articles that simply report extended shopping hours or the publications of telephone numbers and addresses in business directories.
The company or corporation is listed on ranking indices of important companies produced by well-known and independent publications.³
The company's or corporation's share price is used to calculate stock market indices.⁴ Being used to calculate an index that simply comprises the entire market is excluded.

[edit] Criteria for products and services

A product or service is notable if it meets any of the following criteria:

The product or service has been the subject of multiple non-trivial published works whose source is independent of the company itself.
- This criterion includes published works in all forms, such as newspaper articles, books, television documentaries, and published reports by consumer watchdog organizations⁵ except for the following:
  - Media re-prints of press releases, other publications where the company or corporation talks about its products or services, and advertising for the product or service. Newspaper stories that do not credit a reporter or a news service and simply present company news in an uncritical or positive way may be treated as press releases unless there is evidence to the contrary. ¹
  - Works carrying merely trivial coverage, such as simple price listings in product catalogues.
The product or service is so well-known that its trademark has suffered from genericization.

[edit] Recommendations for products and services

Information on products and services should generally be included in the article on the company itself, unless the company is so large that this would make the article unwieldy. In that case, it is preferable to keep minor products in lists, and major products in their own article.

The distinction between a 'minor' and a 'major' product is somewhat arbitrary. The main point is that if a lot of information is available on a product, it should be split out, and if little is available, it should be merged into a list.

For instance, if a company has twenty different models of cell phone, and there is little difference between them, then compiling a single article for all of them would help readers in spotting the differences and similarities. On the other hand, a new model of car (as opposed to the same model with an 'extra' or two) is generally rather different and should have its own article.

[edit] Criteria for clubs, societies, and organizations

A club, society, or organization is notable if it meets any of the following criteria:

The club, society, or organization has been the subject of multiple non-trivial published works whose source is independent of the club, society, or organization itself.
- This criterion includes published works in all forms, such as newspaper articles, books, television documentaries, and published reports by consumer watchdog organizations⁶ except for the following:
  - Media reprints of press releases, other publications where the club or organization talks about itself, and advertising for the club, society, or organization. ¹
  - Works carrying merely trivial coverage, such as newspaper articles that simply announce forthcoming club meetings or the publications of telephone numbers and addresses in directories.
It is an English men's football club competing in Levels 1-10 of the English football league system.⁷

[edit] Chains and franchises

Many companies have chains of local stores or franchises that are individually pretty much interchangeable—for instance, your local McDonald's. Since there is generally very little to say about individual stores or franchises that isn't true for the chain in general, we should not have articles on such individual stores. However, a "List of Wal-Marts in China" would be informative. Also, an exception can be made if some major event took place at a local store (however this would most likely be created under an article name which describes the event, not the location. See San Ysidro McDonald's massacre for an example).

[edit] Notes

Note 1: Self-promotion and product placement are not the routes to having an encyclopaedia article. The published works must be someone else writing about the company, corporation, club, organization, product, or service. (See Wikipedia:Autobiography for the verifiability and neutrality problems that affect material where the subject of the article itself is the source of the material.) The barometer of notability is whether people independent of the subject itself (or of its manufacturer, creator, or vendor) have actually considered the company, corporation, product or service notable enough that they have written and published non-trivial works that focus upon it.
Note 2: Two examples: Many people independent of the Mavalli Tiffin Rooms have published their own accounts of eating there. Hewlett-Packard satisfies this criterion by, amongst other things, being covered in a feature article in the Palo Alto Weekly.
Note 3: Examples of company ranking indices: Fortune 500 and Forbes Global 2000 (which has replaced the discontinued Forbes 500). Companies listed on such indices will almost certainly satisfy the first criterion. However, this criterion ensures that our coverage of such rankings will be complete regardless.
Note 4: Examples of such stock market indices: Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P 500, S&P 400, and S&P 600, CAC 40, Nikkei 225, FTSE 100 Index, FTSE 250 Index. See list of stock market indices for more. Companies that form the bases for stock market indices will almost certainly satisfy the first criterion. However, this criterion ensures that our coverage of such indices will be complete regardless.
Note 5: Two examples: Microsoft Word satisfies this criterion because, amongst many other reasons, people who are wholly independent of Microsoft have written books about it. All cars that have had Haynes Manuals written about them satisfy this criterion.
Note 6: Two examples: The Oxford Union satisfies this criterion for having two books (by Graham and by Walter) written and published about it. Skull and Bones satisfies this criterion for having three books (by Millegan, Sutton, and Robbins) written and published about it.
Note 7: This is a secondary criterion. Clubs that satisfy this criterion will almost certainly satisfy the first criterion. However, this criterion ensures that our coverage of the the leagues will be complete regardless.