Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Speaking Dictionary

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 delete, as significant coverage on independent reliable sources has not been demonstrated. Yamamoto Ichiro 会話 16:12, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Speaking Dictionary

Speaking Dictionary (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

Product promotion which violates the WP:NOT#ADVERTISING policy on behalf of a client who wants entries for company products. Written by a conflict of interest single-purpose account:

• User Susan E Webb (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log)

After being nominated for speedy deletion as spam, it was deleted, as were XS2TheWorld B.V. Speaking Dictionary, Mobile City Guide, and a company logo which was deleted three times.

The article, little changed, still sourced only to the company website, was re-created by another user. The second version was likewise nominated for speedy deletion; the second {{db-spam}} nom was removed.

In the absence of independent sources which verify the product's notability, the entry is not an encyclopedia article. I'm nominating it here for wider discussion. — Athaenara ✉ 06:35, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

• Delete per my reasoning above. — Athaenara ✉ 20:40, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
• Delete, ditto. Articles about tech and services businesses or products need to be independently sourced at the beginning. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 15:18, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

I genuinely fail to see what the problem is here. Could someone explain both how this is considered spam, and what they would prefer as citations? ǝuɪuǝsɐ ^(ʞɿɐʇ) _sʇdpǝ 15:56, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Our notability guidelines for businesses and commercial products spell out what we are looking for. Basically, we need significant coverage in verifiable edited media, preferably not Internet-only, for a product or business to become notable enough to warrant an article. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 16:05, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Last week, User:Asenine opened a discussion on User talk:Athaenara/Archive 6#Speaking Dictionary, where I explained the policies and guidelines which apply, as you have done here. I don't know what is not clear to the user. — Athaenara ✉ 20:40, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

[Postscript] Your explanation, like Accounting4Taste's on the COI editor's talk page, was better and more thorough than mine, IMO. — Athaenara ✉ 23:20, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

• Delete does not meet notability requirements as currently written Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 20:50, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
• Delete. At one point in the past I tried to advise the SPA-creator, who was frank about having been assigned the creation of this article as paid employment, about writing to avoid spam issues, infringement of COI, notability, verifiability and other policies. I guess I didn't do a good enough job; this seems to have no reliable sources and borders on, if not infringes, WP:SPAM. I'd like to see this properly sourced but perhaps that will only be possible as a small part of a generic article about such inventions, and there's nothing un-spammy to salvage from this, I estimate. Accounting4Taste:talk 21:32, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
• Delete barely any sources, these kinds of articles do not belong. - Milk's Favorite Cookie 23:03, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
• Weak delete see below I removed the speedy tag from the article, as it seemed to have a core of non-advertising information-- I trimmed a good deal of what was advertising. But there is no information to show its notable. If it were, the article would not be too aspammy. Aren't there any product reviews for it?DGG (talk) 23:10, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
• Delete - no assertion of notability. Suggest someone apply WP:SNOW at this point. --Hyperbole (talk) 23:53, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
• Strong Keep - Folks, I just can't see that it makes any sense to delete this article. The problem is not the topic, which has had international coverage (and is incidentally quite clever, although that's neither here nor there). The problem is the article's bareness of citations. So: I found a substantial piece in De Telegraaf covering the company, the founder, and this service. Also a mention from 2007 in the Sunday Express (London). I've added both. On the company's website are readable facsimiles of articles in Shanghai English language papers and others. [1] There's also coverage on Dutch news TV--Nederlandse Omroep Stichting, which the company posted on YouTube. Per AGF, unless we have good reason to suspect that the press facsimiles and the TV news show are elaborate forgeries, they bear on this subject's notability as well. I know if I were going to China I'd want to look this thing up in Wikipedia. Regards--Wageless (talk) 03:56, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

That's certainly an improvement. I found an Internet Travel News citation (author-less, hard to know if it was a press release). Anyone know what categories the article should have if it stays? — Athaenara ✉ 05:26, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm still going to have to go with delete - I fail to see any assertion of notability, even given User:Wageless's edits. Is this product actually important by any objective standard? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hyperbole (talk • contribs) 07:51, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

It certainly sounds like a nifty product, but this is an encyclopedia, not a what's new gee whiz blog. I can't find neutral third party information about it in sources which are "reliable, and independent of the subject" (WP:CORP primary criterion) which I can read. I don't read Dutch and I'm not going to subscribe to the internet edition of the Daily Express in the hope that I'll be able to find out whether it had a real article about this product or merely passed on info from a press release it received. — Athaenara ✉ 08:27, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

• Keep Sufficient sources are present., sources in any language will do, and newspapers are available in libraries. it would help to have some idea of the extent of the coverage. DGG (talk) 08:45, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Wageless cited De Telegraaf in the article. I found (here) the piece he cited. It's clear in translation that it merely relayed info from the company. That's not notability: that's marketing. I won't be surprised to learn that's what the Daily Express had, too. — Athaenara ✉ 08:56, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

A newspaper's decision to cover something constitutes a datum of notability. I think if you start trying to figure out whether a given article was "merely relaying" information about the company or not, you wade into a morass of intentionalism. Much of what newspapers and TV do begins with press releases--how else would editors and reporters find out about anything heretofore uncovered? With company materials in hand, and a sense of what their readership would want to know about, they make the decision whether to assign an article to a reporter and print it, with a photo or not, etc. That's what De Telegraaf did. Our job as I see it is to look at the independent press and say yes, this constitutes genuine, indeed wide, coverage, in a number of languages, around the world. The fact that the company actually made this easy for us, by collecting facsimiles on their website's press page and linking to TV and radio shows, shouldn't disqualify these sources. (Link again here.[2])--Wageless (talk) 11:00, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

As per the primary criterion section of WP:CORP:

The "secondary sources" in the criterion include reliable published works in all forms, such as (for example) newspaper articles, books, television documentaries, and published reports by consumer watchdog organizations except for the following: * Press releases; autobiographies; advertising for the company... and other works where the company... talks about itself... whether published by the company... or re-printed by other people.   [underlining added]

— Athaenara ✉ 22:40, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

That's a good guideline, but as you know, it isn't intended to block coverage in which a reporter uses info from a press release in writing a newspaper article--otherwise most business, entertainment, and travel coverage would be frankly unciteable.--Wageless (talk) 09:20, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

The point here is that the only sources for this are the company and those outlets which relayed its press release info. That combination, in and of itself, in the absence of independent third party reliable sources, is not sufficient to establish encyclopedic notability. — Athaenara ✉ 09:30, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Hello all, thank you for sharing your thoughts on my article. Accounting4Taste, I did try to incorporate your suggestions on notability and competition into the article a few drafts ago. I've added those sections in again (as "User Feedback" and "Competition") for consideration by all of you, although I believe that the feedback one was previously tagged as being too much like advertising. "Competition" describes some similar products (this info. was provided to me by my client) in order to provide balance. I also previously had some links posted from other newspaper articles, similar to De Telegraaf, listed on the company's website. Best regards, Susan Susan E Webb (talk) 22:30, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

• Delete as spam. A non-notable company. Jehochman ^Talk 21:04, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

• Comment Perhaps the article should be renamed XS2TheWorld, which seems to be the product's actual name. The basic point is that this mobile application--in which you can use your cellphone or pda as a speaking phrase bank--has gotten significant coverage [3] and ought to be in WP in some form because people are going to be curious about it. I've deleted the unsourced "user feedback" as irrelevant.--Wageless (talk) 09:20, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

• Comment Just to clarify, the actual name of the product is "Speaking Dictionary". Susan E Webb (talk) 20:55, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Could you cite some published source to back that name up? The press says XS2TheWorld or the prior product XS2China. I don't even see the phrase "speaking dictionary" on the XS2TheWorld.com website--what am I missing?--Wageless (talk) 02:59, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

• Comment. A google search for the phrase "translation software" specifically excluding XS2 yields over a million hits. Similarly, a search for the phrase "speaking dictionary" without XS2 yields nearly 300,000. Using Wikipedia to gain legitimacy may be a bit of a problem; the article is written as if the XS2 company's product dominates the field, which it apparently doesn't. — Athaenara ✉ 07:21, 13 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.