Talk:Benchmarking

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[edit] Organizations list

Does this article really need a list of organizations that do benchmarking? After all, Wikipedia is not a web directory. Aapo Laitinen 19:39, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree and tagged the section with a spam cleanup message. Rfrisbie^talk 03:29, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

The title for that section may be inappropriate, but SPAM is a harsh label to assign it - ot this topic. Some of these firms, including the one that I work for, actually have the publications and papers that established portions of the discipline over 25 years ago. I thought the article was a bit "shallow" in not mentioning Deming and his early work with measurement. But a "list of organizations is used with many other "Wiki" articles - so "consistency" is another issue that must be considered. G. Beat 14:23, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Aapo Laitinen that this list is undesirable. And I think it was appropriate for Rfrisbie to insert the {{cleanup-spam}} template. Whether the term spam is harsh or not, or whether the links were intended as spam does not matter. What matters is that the list violates guidelines on external links. And it also violates guidelines on what Wikipedia is not—namely a repository of links. As for consistency, the guidelines are the only things we need to be consistent with. The fact that there are other poorly structured articles is not an excuse for refraining from fixing this article. — Veyklevar 01:05, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi, G. Beat. In this case, "SPAM" is a bit of a "technical" wikiterm that applies to any section like this. Based on your expertise, it should be easy and more "encyclopedic" to make a statement in the body of the article and then back it up with a reference. If it's from one of your company's publications, then it should stand up on its own merit as an authoritative source. I'm going to reinsert the tag and ask it remain until the underlying issue is addressed through a consensus of editors here. Rfrisbie^talk 01:35, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

If a commercial site is truly useful as a source for some fact stated in the article, I have no problems with that. But the list of consulting organizations is just a "spam-magnet" that will only get worse with time. I suggest deleting it and replacing it with a link to a directory of benchmarking related sites, e.g. an ODP category. That way this article wouldn't be a link repository, yet someone who needed such a link repository could quickly find one. — Veyklevar 02:18, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Your suggestion seems reasonable. There seems to be plenty there, e.g., ODP - search on "benchmarking". Rfrisbie^talk 03:14, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps http://dmoz.org/Business/Management/Benchmarking_and_Best_Practices/ -- Veyklevar 03:32, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

A consistent approach and reasonable handling - although the DMOZ list is quite different (broader defintion than here in Wiki). G. Beat 06:30. 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. Rfrisbie^talk 14:23, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Rfrisbie - Why is ZATA, a commercial firm listed in References? 207.232.123.40 was addition. Time for WHOIS? Did we not just agree to to remove these listings? G. Beat 08:30. 1 July 2006 (UTC)