Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hendrick Manufacturing Company

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 was keep as a notable company - Philippe | Talk 22:31, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Hendrick Manufacturing Company

Hendrick Manufacturing Company (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) (delete) – (View log)

Delete Fails WP:CORP. Google search shows 80 ghits,[1] but do not establish notability. No hint in google news search[2]. Otolemur crassicaudatus (talk) 15:23, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

• Delete, weakly, and without prejudice. Google News brings forth mostly investment listings and obituaries of people who used to work there. As a factory business making solid goods, I'm inclined to give them some leeway, but I'm coming up with blanks here. There may be something available in histories of the areas in which it ran plants that might push this over the edge, though. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 15:57, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

• I am inclined to change my opinion to keep and stub this. As Gatoclass points out, this business has a long history. The links given establish that it has contributed industrial drawing materials to the Smithsonian; notability doesn't get much better than that. The plumboleum invention is sourceable to a Texaco journal from 1944, a third party source from people who presumably know something about industrial lubricants, and therefore reliable and objective enough for our purposes.

  It is not without regret that I have to conclude that most of the company history must go. As the talk page indicates, much of the history was compiled for this article by someone with access to company documents. While conflict of interest issues can be forgiven IMO if the writer with the conflict writes well and keeps objective - and for me, this is a well written and reasonably neutral article - verifiability is a core policy that can't be met by referring to private, unpublished sources; this is original research, unfortunately.

  I'd give the author every encouragement to keep writing his history of the company. If he gets it published in an edited source, we can expand this article with information taken from it. But until that time, we probably need to cut this back substantially. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 18:38, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

• Comment - article does include one piece on the company from fabricator.com, which appears to be a reliable industry publication. But I'm not sure if one article from one independent source is quite enough to establish notability. The company has been around a long while, which is one thing in its favour. But if the article stayed, it would have to be completely rewritten to read less like an ad and to stick only to what secondary sources have found worth mentioning. Gatoclass (talk) 16:11, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
• Strong keep - Article needs to be revised and sourced (as stated above), but the subject matter is clearly notable, and the article's newbie contributor should be encouraged, not bitten. Writing decent well-sourced articles about industrial businesses is difficult (one reason why there are so many more Wikipedia articles about new music CDs than about companies that have been in business for 132 years). I imagine that many of the company documents in the Hendrick archives are old newspaper accounts and similar items that could be cited as sources. Even a quick Google search turned up some material that helps to corroborate, in some instances contradict, or could supplement the information in the article, such as this genealogical article mentioning Eli Hendrick's wife, generic industry information, this article that mentions the company's relocation in 1976, this short historical account about a related company, and a recent press release. --Orlady (talk) 16:37, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Additional info: Eli Hendrick apparently is covered in The Book of prominent Pennsylvanians a standard reference, Pub. Date 1913, 258 pages, which is supposedly online at http://apps.libraries.psu.edu/digitalbookshelf/bookindex.cfm?oclc=29242741 (returns a 403 error). --Orlady (talk) 16:55, 26 February 2008 (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.