Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Casual Courier

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was no consensus. Exactly what the article covers can be discussed on its talk page. Petros471 17:14, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Casual Courier

spam. prod contested by author Bachrach44 17:54, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

• Delete. spam. very spam. THE KING 18:24, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Casual Courier is NOT spam, any more than FedEx, UPS, DHL, USPS or any other unique and innovative technology or industry development. Please voice your actual objections to this entry. The term "casual courier" is a new innovation in package delivery and gaining extroidinary recognition around the world. The term certainly has a valid place on Wikipedia as a developing concept, technology and international phenomena. Further discussion and suggestions would be greatly appreciated to remove this improper and inaccurate flagging. --Jjacobs 18:46, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

• Delete per nom and THE KING. Ad for company that doesn't meet WP:CORP. DVD+ R/W 18:49, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

• Thanks for your feedback, however, the focus of the listing is NOT for the corporatation, but rather for the term "casual courier." The term is widely used now in the shipping industry, and happens to be a registered trademark of the The Casual Courier, Inc. (that is the only reason why the corporation is listed in the entry). Furthermore, according the the Wiki policies, if a company has had a number of articles published about it from reputable news sources, then it has the right to be included on Wikipedia. Numerous articles have been independantly published about The Casual Courier, Inc. (which again, is NOT the focus of this entry) in Wired News, the front page of the Boston Herald Business section and a number of other publications available here. So, on both grounds, the entry casual courier should remain and the flagging removed please. Looking forward to your continued feedback. Thanks for taking the time to comment.

• Cleanup and disambiguate. The article for the term "casual courier" should be separated from the article for the company called "Casual Courier", which would make this article seem a lot less like advertising. The term appears to be in casual (haha) use by other sources (with or without reference to the trademark) -- try a quick Google and you'll see that it occasionally shows up as usage unrelated to the company name itself (and more related to the concept discussed in the first part of the page). However, there's less than 4,500 hits total (including hits on the company name), so this may well be a neologism. The company is arguably notable : for example, Wired did a story on them, which included discussion of their business model and security issues. On the other hand, I'd feel better about this article if it wasn't written by someone with the same name as the company's founder ("J(ack) Jacobs"). So, any volunteers to clean this one up bigtime? Best, Docether 19:09, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Also, when the separate corporate article is created, I advise culling the most notable writeups and linking to them in the "External Links" section, to preempt AfD'ing. -- Docether 19:13, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
• Delete If the term is trademarked, it cannot be used without being an article about the company, even if it were in common use (or the company explicit waives trademark rights in a manner consistent with the GFDL). And the company is not notable. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 19:36, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

• I appreciate all of your comments and feedback. We took into account all opinions above in the new revision of the entry just posted. Please note that we removed almost all references to the company, without relinquishing our legal rights to the term. In addtion, you'll notice we added a "see also" section that brings together other types of courier delivery, thereby contributing to the overall understanding and knowledge of readers who are genuinely interested in learning about the full spectrum of delivery options that exist in the world, both traditional AND innovative are now represented on Wikipedia! Please feel free offer further comments so that the final entry can be acceptable to all members and offer a quality contribution to Wikipedias extroidinary resource for valid information. --Jjacobs 20:36, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

• Keep the page, but really clean it up, and make it a disambig page (per Docether) —Mets501^talk 22:44, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

• Comment — the inherent problem with this entry is pointed out by Arthur Rubin. With the phrase "casual courier" being the trademarked name of the company, the article is linked to the company. Especially with the title being "Casual Courier" versus "casual courier" (a concept), it is advertising and at this point, there is no article on the company — which might not make it as an article based on WP:CORP. (Even with "cleanup", the article reads completely like an ad.) —ERcheck (talk) @ 23:47, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
• Comment. I think we may need to pass this on to the lawyers, but it appears to me that the trademark is on "The" followed by the paper airplane followed by "Casual Courier", and may not be a trademark on the name without the symbol. It's still a problem, as they've added the paper airplane to the article.... — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 00:03, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
• Comment I agree with ERcheck. Only when this page is broken into separate articles can we determine whether "casual courier" (the concept) and "(The?) Casual Courier" (the company) are each nonnotable and encyclopedic in its own right. Currently, even with the "cleanup," the article does read like an advertisement. With luck, a good disambig and cleanup should take care of Arthur Rubin's concerns, as the trademark will only be included in the article on the -company-. As far as I can tell, trademarks can be part of articles which unambiguously focus on particular companies (for example, UPS and DHL. However, contra Jjacobs's assertion, the article currently combines discussion of the "casual courier" concept and the "(The?) Casual Courier" company in a manner which is likely to confuse readers of Wikipedia. This is unacceptable -- if the article is not cleaned up, it should be deleted without prejudice. Best, Docether 13:09, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

• OK. We considered all of the above comments and made some MAJOR changes to the entry in order to seperate out the casual courier concept from the corporation, and thereby reduce confusion to readers. To begin with, we changed the page title from "Casual Courier" to "casual courier", and as a result made a deeper division between the concept and the company. We also added a completely new entry for the corporation The Casual Courier, Inc. which has a number of external links to notable news articles written about the company, and clearly identified the unique innovations introduced to the shipping industry by the company. We sincerely hope that the Wikipedia community will accept these changes. If you have further comments, please feel free to send them along and we will be happy to further edit the entry until it is fully acceptable to all. Thanks for your continued feedback.--Jjacobs 11:20, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

• Keep It's a notable enough concept with a few companies around the world working this way and thousands of volunteers doing this. Ben W Bell talk 13:12, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

• Delete: User Jjacobs has now said several times that they have taken the comments in consideration and changed the article accordingly: however, when I look at AirSitter (referenced from Casual Courier), it is an advertisement for the company: so is Casual Courier, "TCC", and of course The Casual Courier. This doesn't look to me like a honest try to make encyclopedic articles, but more like a large promo action. So I would suggest to just delete the lot. Fram 13:31, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment I agree there is a large promotional advertising component here, but casual couriering itself is a large scale concept and is used around the world. I personally have had the oppurtunity to participate in schemes like this, though change of plans forced me to decline. The Casual Courier is a company that is being promoted at the moment I agree, but the concept and action of casual couriering is separate enough from the company that I think it should stay whatever the views on the company are. Just my thoughts. Ben W Bell talk 13:36, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

• Keep, but remove the advertising ... I also have some comments - "trademark" is not the same as "copyright". Anyone can put TM by anything they want. That isn't a prohibition against mentioning the word or term they trademarked. If I open a fast food chain called "Great Scott's Dining", I could sue someone who subsequently opened a restaurant called "Great Scott's Kitchen" in the same area where I'm doing business. I would not, however, have cause to stop anyone from using the exclamation "Great Scott". Similarly, if "casual courier" is a commonly used term, (I don't know whether it is - but the article asserts it is, so I'm going from that), then (1) you can't stop people who were already using the term from continuing to do so and (2) you certainly can't stop an encyclopedia from writing about the concept. From g-hits, "casual courier" appears to be used beyond this company. A simple link to the company's website would suffice and maybe a note of disambiguation at the top of the page. The rest can be about the term itself. BigDT 15:22, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
• One further comment - from g-hits, the term is unquestionably used apart from this company itself. However, this keep should be without prejudice. If users from this company make cleanup impossible and insist on using it for adverstising, deletion should be reconsidered. BigDT 15:34, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
• Comment This item has been listed for deleted for a week's time. However, during that time, it has not been appropriately cleaned up to disambiguate the term "casual courier" from the company "The Casual Courier" (even though its primary editor has posted to this discussion repeatedly). This article continues to read as advertising, which is not allowed on Wikipedia. Additionally, as Fram points out, the user creating this article has begun another series of related articles which read as out-and-out promotion and advertising. For the moment, I retain my cleanup (and keep) vote, but if this item survives AfD and is not cleaned up to adhere to Wikipedia guidelines, it should be relisted for deletion with prejudice, along with its related items. -- Docether 15:50, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

• Comment - I've taken a stab at removing the advertising. BigDT 16:05, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.