Talk:1.800.Vending

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This article was nominated for deletion on December 17, 2005. The result of the discussion was NO CONSENSUS. An archived record of this discussion can be found here.
Articles for deletion This article was nominated for deletion on Jan. 27, 2007. The result of the discussion was no consensus.

Contents

[edit] Deletions

Those who have been deleting large segments of text from this article, please give a rationale. 24.54.208.177 18:11, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

I just deleted most of it. The subject of the article has protested about factual accuracy and bias in the article and has offered in good faith to work with us to create a neutral version. This does not mean that they want a "glowing article about our company" (and they said so specifically). What happened, as far as I can see, is that a company stumbled on a very negative entry about them and didn't understand our community norms. I'm sure a compromise version will be easy to achieve. --Jimbo Wales 14:24, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
Note, Jimbo, that as far as I can see, they have not submitted a compromise version in the past month -- they just complain when anyone restores the material you deleted. Since they haven't held up their end, I suggest we restore the version that included the links to the fines and their text about how the fines were just technicalities based on a misunderstanding of their business model.--SarekOfVulcan 20:08, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Changes

Updated information on this company based on information from the BBB, State of CT and FTC. Deleted link to Critique information from company who is no longer in business and had invalid link. Deleted misquoted information from the company's web site.

Why should the vandalized version be reinstated? The information wasn't "updated," it was deleted. As for the "company who is no longer in business," are you referring to North American Vending? Also, why delete allegedly "misquoted" information from that company website rather than putting the correct information? Captain Zyrain 18:00, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Protected

Protected the page to hopefully spur on discussion about this information that keeps getting removed. --Woohookitty(cat scratches) 23:41, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Further complaint

The subject of this article is complaining further about it. I have blanked it again, pending further dialogue with them.--Jimbo Wales 21:40, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Request for unprotection

Can someone please unprotect this article, or atleast semi-protect it so that regular users of Wikipedia can expand this page? Perhaps I missed something, but why was this page blanked? Can't sleep, clown will eat me 08:31, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Reaching consensus

The article is probably going to remain protected for a while. I have created a temporary sub page here in an attempt to try and get the involved parties to work towards a consensus version. This has been done with the agreement of Jimbo.

Please do not use the temporary version to simply paste in an earlier version of the original article which did not even come close to conforming to the Wikipedia policy on neutrality. Start the article as you would approach writing a new entry from scratch and use the talk page to try and resolve any conflicts without resorting to edit warring.

Quoting from an email from Jimbo:

A *proper* article would start as we usually do -- with a neutral factual description of them, how many employees, how long they have been in business, what they do, anything we can find from news reports about them, etc. And then we would have a 'controversies' section further down which would simply report briefly on what we know, but placed as well into the full context of our knowledge (which, presumably, is limited).
Since we don't know whether such fines are routine in this industry or not, it seems bizarre that we highlight them so prominently. I am sure that if we take any random big company or organization (General Motors? The Red Cross? etc.) we will quickly find dozens of legal judgements against them and business practice fines. It's part of our culture, for better or worse.

Again, please keep the article neutral. You may find it useful to search out other company articles which contain criticism sections to get a grasp of the community standards for handling them. Your cooperation is appreciated. --GraemeL (talk) 15:56, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Latest deletion

I don't see why we should delete all the links and references to official government sites detailing fines and sanctions against this company. These are well-attested facts. Of course, there ought to also be some article text giving more context behind these facts, but that's where you wind up knee-deep in POV territory, so it's tough to do. Nevertheless, sweeping the facts under the rug "on request" doesn't seem like a good thing. *Dan T.* 22:11, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Of course. However, having one introductory paragraph and 10 attack links doesn't work very well, and that's why I deleted that.--SarekOfVulcan 23:50, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
Additionally, it's worth adding to what Sarek is saying by noting that as more and more government databases come online, it can be highly POV as well as original research to link to such stuff in a disproportionate way. Consider any large organization in any nation in the world -- it is nearly inevitable that any large organization will have lawsuits, fines, etc., even if they are an exemplary, and pointing to those things in cases where they are trivial can easily be not neutral at all. --Jimbo Wales 19:00, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
So how are we going to come up with some objective, NPOV, non-original-research balanced facts about this company -- that's neither an ad for it nor an attack on it, but doesn't leave out important facts? It's silly to have it stripped down to an uninformative single line. *Dan T.* 20:01, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
Actually, I think it was reasonably well-balanced before Jimbo cut out 99% of the article. It had the links to the fines, but it also included the company's statements explaining why the fines were just technicalities.--SarekOfVulcan 20:06, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] External Links Legitimate or No?

From the history I see:

02:57, 16 January 2006 SarekOfVulcan (rv per request)
(cur) (last) 16:54, 15 January 2006 Can't sleep, clown will eat me (see also North American Vending)
(cur) (last) 16:51, 15 January 2006 Can't sleep, clown will eat me (restored references, please revert me if this is inappropriate content)

Does this mean that those External Links are somehow "inappropriate"? Ewlyahoocom 15:23, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

They are not necessarily inappropriate in the context of a longer article that conforms to Wikipedia neutrality policy. Having an article with a one sentence description, followed by a bunch of links criticising the company can not in any way be seen as being neutral. See the thread above with comments from an email from Jimbo for his thoughts. --GraemeL (talk) 15:43, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't want to step on anyone's toes here (random article to blame if I am) but it seems there was a lot longer article here but it all got cut. If editors insist on removing all the content that the links are references for, that sort of leaves you with the no content you're complaining about. Is there any way round the impasse? How about including some more of the content, and then the links become more appropriate? Or am I misunderstanding what "appropriate" means in some way? James James 06:20, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

The content was removed by Jimbo. If you go back and read the article in the history, it might be long, but it is basically an attack page and did not conform to Wikipedia neutrality standards. The way forward is to write a new, neutral, article from scratch, but nobody seems willing to do the job. --GraemeL (talk) 14:23, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
Okay, Graeme, I've had a look back through the history. I can't really agree that it was all "attack" page. It looked a bit negative but more because of negative outcomes the company has had than because of the negative tone. It had a bit of POV floating around but not so much that I'd have thought scrubbing the article was merited. Certainly, it needed paring down, as many articles do that fairly clearly take a particular view. That's just my view, of course. I can't see anyone being willing to rewrite the article though if they're not allowed to report the negative side of this business. It's quite noteworthy. And how to report it without citing government sources as references is a problem that I don't think I could resolve. James James 22:16, 17 January 2006 (UTC)


It's pages like nthis one that make it clear to me that wikipedia in essence is just an unrealisable dream. Shane 21:37, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

This is, well, appalling. I don't know how else to put it. Did Jimbo Wales really just say that the State of Connecticut (ct.gov) and Federal Trade Commission (ftc.gov) were censored for being "too POV"?? Is it any wonder that no one has attempted to rewrite this article since it was effectively deleted months ago? Wow. Just wow. I'm losing faith, fast. [1] [2] Silensor 22:24, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
To be fair, it did border on original research. (I have no connection with this company or dispute.) Quatloo 00:28, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
Your comment is somewhat irrelevant to my concern, as I'm much more interested why Mr. Wales believes providing links to the State of Connecticut (ct.gov) and Federal Trade Commission (ftc.gov) are POV and censored as such. To be clear, I was not referring to the subsequent interpretation of said links in any way. The fact that this article has not made any progress under these conditions is self evident of a problem which is quite sadly beginning to appear systemic. Silensor 03:29, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Good to have it back

Thanks for re-instating this article in it's entirety, and supporting an uncensored Wikipedia! Grins, Sfacets 03:00, 18 April 2006 (UTC) [3]

[edit] New Article

As called for by many over the last year or so a new article is posted. The old article needed to be replaced rather than just modified for several reasons:

1. Nearly the entire old article was information on fines. These are very minor issues. They should be included in the article but not its focus. There was almost no information on the company itself or the product it sells. 2. The quote from the 1.800.VENDING web site was no longer accurate. 3. The old article indicated that 1.800.VENDING was founded after “TurnKey’s dissolution”. In reality, both companies were formed in 1999. Turnkey Vending was not dissolved and continues to operate – now under a new owner as of August 2006. 4. The CT fine was not for a violation of the FTC order. It was for an incomplete CT application. States do not enforce federal franchise rules. They are separate and sometimes even contradictory. As the owner of the company it is probably impossible for me to write a completely neutral article. When writing this new article I did get feedback from people outside the company and industry.

[edit] Removed hatchet job

A random collection of negative claims about an earlier company made this article extremely one-sided. I have removed that, and I have also removed (to maintain balance) an unsourced positive claim as well. The article as it currently stands is simple and factual.

Unless and until someone comes up with something OTHER than original research, or unless and until someone is willing to write a balanced article citing proper sources, I think it should remain a stub.

For the record: I did not receive any complaint from the company about the article this time, but I have received complaints from them in the past. I am acting of my own accord here as an ordinary editor.--Jimbo Wales 14:41, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

I think the article is pretty good as it is now - is anything missing? Sfacets 10:36, 12 November 2007 (UTC)