Wikipedia talk:Notability (organizations and companies)/Archive3

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Contents

Local companies, restaurants, etc.

Current policy reads:

A company [etc.] is notable if it has been the subject of multiple non-trivial published works, the source of which is both: independent of [it]; reliable.
includes published works in all forms, such as (for examples) newspaper articles...except... works where the company...talks about itself; ... Works carrying merely trivial coverage

If you take this wording seriously, it is enough for a restaurant to be reviewed in a few newspapers, or mentioned in a few guidebooks, which hardly seems "notable". Here in Cambridge (Mass.), if you open a restaurant with any pretentions at all (not a sandwich shop), you are surely going to get reviewed by the Cambridge Chronicle (local serious paper), the Cambridge Tab, the Boston Phoenix, the Improper Bostonian (local free newspapers) and with any luck, the Boston Globe, the Boston Herald, and Boston Magazine. You might also get reviewed in the Harvard Crimson (Harvard student newspaper), the Tech (M.I.T. student newspaper), Harvard Magazine (alumni magazine), etc. But how does that make you notable? --Macrakis 19:49, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

  • unfortunately, if we ask for multiple non-local publication, it excludes much valid local history. I do not see a solution, except to begin to abandon the principle that Notability is demonstrated by publication rather than accomplishments. The restaurant problem is real in general--almost all restaurants get reviewed by local papers--and setting a special rule for them is probably excessive rule creep. DGG 19:55, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Part of the problem is that somewhere along the line, "verifiability" became conflated with "notability". I suppose it runs on the theory that if something gets a lot of press, it must be notable. However, that's like saying popularity and notability are the same (and maybe they are, in some aspects). It also overlooks the fact that the media can spend a lot of time on stories that are about trivial matters or fluff pieces but are interesting or draw in the viewers. I know this is really a discussion for WP:N itself, but the problem carries over to here. Agent 86 20:01, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
  • I consider a local restaurant review to be equivalent to a local business review - verified but not non-trivial. Given enough time, essentially any restaurant will be reviewed by someone. There is no degree of exclusivity in the selection of restaurant reviews at the local level. On the other hand, if a restaurant gets covered by the Michelin Guide or a publication with that level of exclusivity, I'll give it a lot more weight.
    A business needs to do more than merely open its doors and serve customers to earn an encyclopedia article. Rossami (talk) 20:03, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
    • There's no dichotomy here. A newspaper's regular reviews of local businesses (whether it's a restaurant review or some type of weekly "Local business feature") are trivial, they happen all the time and eventually everything will get one. WP:N requires non-trivial mention. There's no need for new rules or alarm, the ones we've got are just fine. Seraphimblade Talk to me Please review me! 22:20, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
      • Why should a restaurant have to meet a higher standard than an author, academic, or charity? If it has been reviewed by an acceptable source, then it's in. Just because one person preferes the Michelin Guide to the Kansas City Star, or Pierpont Upnoses's Culinary Clammerings to the New York Times should be irrelevant if the sources meet WP:VERIFY. --Kevin Murray 22:28, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
        • Because if we accept trivial, routine news coverage, we'll have articles on Santa Claus' 2007 appearance at Municipal Park or Obituaries on March 20, 2007 for San Francisco. (Those better never turn blue.) Both of these things are routinely reported in newspapers, even multiple ones, and they are appropriate for the paper's scope-a local audience who expects such coverage out of a local paper, and which covers events which are newsworthy to that population. On the other hand, they are not appropriate to our scope, as an encyclopedia with a worldwide audience, even if they in the most technical sense fulfill WP:N. Seraphimblade Talk to me Please review me! 22:49, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
          • The PNC explicitly says non-trivial. You cannot base an argument upon the notion that published works that have no depth of content, and are trivial, satisfy it. You are also making the mistake of thinking that size and geographical extent of readership are relevant. Readership is not relevant. Thinking that it is is to mistake notability for fame and importance. We don't exclude obscure species of beetles because they are of interest only to a small segment of the world's population. Worldwide fame and importance are not criteria here. Uncle G 01:28, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
      • Agent86, Rossami, and Seraphimblade bring up a good point -- that if a review is essentially automatic, it is not meaningful, just like being in the Yellow Pages or the Thomas Directory. On the other hand, I don't think showing up in guidebooks is an indication of notability, either. After all, Wikipedia is neither a restaurant reviewing site nor a directory of restaurant reviews. There are thousands of restaurants in France in the Michelin and Gault et Millau and other guides that don't seem like material for an encyclopedia article. Now, three-star restaurants might merit an article....

        Even the invention of some famous dish, e.g. fried clams at Woodman's of Essex, or Caesar salad at the Hotel Caesar in Tijuana or fettuccine Alfredo at Alfredo's trattoria in Rome (well, he didn't invent it, but the name comes from him...) -- even that really isn't enough, since there's not much else to say about these places besides the invention of the dish. Same thing for a notorious mobster shooting, or the place where some well-known socialite made a witty comment.

        What would make a restaurant notable in itself is that the restaurant, not the dish, nor the event has something special about it: Sardi's of New York or as a hangout of celebrities; Chez Panisse as the starting place of California cuisine and lots of other things; that sounds like notability.

        We don't need any new nit-picking policy, we just need to say the the primary criterion for notability is, well, notability, not some count of mentions in print -- those are just minimums. --Macrakis 23:03, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

        • You, too, are conflating notability with fame and importance, as well as basing your argument on the erroneous idea that notability is subjective. There are plenty of notable things that are neither famous nor important. There are even (cf. Anna Marek (AfD discussion)) famous things that aren't notable — things that are widely recognized, but that no-one has ever considered notable enough to sit down and create non-trivial published works of their own about. Fame and importance are not criteria for having or not having articles here. And notability is not a personal "Well, I think that it's special!" judgement on the part of Wikipedia editors. There are plenty of encyclopaedia subjects that are not special. Being distinctive is not the same as being notable.

          The criterion that is staring you in the face is your very own words: "there's not much else to say about these places besides the invention of the dish". The reason that there's not much else to say is that there aren't the non-trivial published works available from which such further things to say can be gleaned. There are no histories, documentaries, analyses, and so forth of them. Their only mention is tangential or brief in works whose primary subjects are other things. (And hence that is how they should be handled in Wikipedia, too.) And that's what the PNC is: multiple non-trivial published works from sources independent of the subject. No concepts of fame, importance, specialness, or non-locality are involved.

          The entire "restaurant review" argument is a perennial one that is entirely bogus. It completely ignores the word "non-trivial" in the PNC. Every part of the PNC is important. Two sentences in some guidebook giving the restaurant's telephone number, address, and opening hours, and recommending the swordfish steak aren't "non-trivial". That doesn't satisfy the PNC and so doesn't mean that the restaurant deserves an article. Conversely, a guide book that gives a 3-page in-depth discussion of the restaurant's architecture, history, ownership, cultural influence and so forth is non-trivial. That (as long as there are multiple such works, and they are from sources independent of the subject) does satisfy the PNC. Uncle G 01:28, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

          • You have a good point, but it's also unclear whether such guide books would qualify as secondary sources-quite often, those rely on press releases or other information provided by the businesses themselves. On the other hand, if some restaurant had received tons of secondary source mention for (as you said) its unique architecture, history, etc., it would be notable. I think, quite realistically, that in many of these discussions, everyone involved ends up saying the same thing in a few different ways. Seraphimblade Talk to me Please review me! 01:43, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
            • I don't know what size of town or what quality of newspaper Seraphimblade or Rossami are familiar with. In my medium sized town, the local newspaper may have reviews of unusual restaurants or of destination restaurants (ones you would drive a long way to reach) but in decades, many of the lesser neighborhood restaurants have been ignored completely, other than as a directory type listing which we specifically exclude as an index of notability. If the newspaper in a town has a story with a particular restaurant as a primary subject, that specifically meets the requirement of WP:N that there be "sufficient source material to include a verifiable, encyclopedic article about each topic." Such a restaurant review is clearly one part of "multiple, non-trivial, independent published works that are reliable and can act as the basis for an encyclopedic article." If the restaurant has been written about in a nontrivial way numerous times, it meets the notability threshold. I have not seen articles even in my own medium sized town about every neighborhood restaurant, no matter how many decades you wait, so that argument is a red herring. If there are good sources sufficient to write a good article, since Wikipedia is not paper, we should have the article. I do not see the basis for raising the bar so that a restuarant could have been the subject of multiple independent articles in reliable sources, i.e. the newspapers of all the surrounding towns, and this could be rejected since it is not internationally famous, when from AFDs people are happy to keep articles which have no nontrivial and independent sources, just because there is a project to create the article (roads, minor British aristocracy, videogame and cartoon characters, porn actors). If a restaurant, church, school, shopping mall, or library has sources to satisfy WP:RS, WP:V, and WP:N, it is senseless to erect barriers so that those particular entities have to meet a super level of notability that is not imposed on other subjects. Edison 15:34, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Proposal to remove Note 1

This note is misleading for several reasons: (1) it only describes books as sources, (2) it over emphasises single subject references, and (3) it emphasizes on print media. I think that the critereon is self explantatory; this note is not necessary and potentially confusing. --Kevin Murray 22:17, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

  • As the note explicitly states, it's a set of examples, showing how the criterion works in practice. It doesn't emphasize anything. It's a footnote. We used to have several more examples in that note. We had the Mavalli Tiffin Rooms in the earliest versions, for example. Another example that could be added is BETDAQ (AfD discussion). Uncle G 22:42, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
    • G-wizz G, do we really think that our editors can't figure out that a book is printed material? OK, I'm kidding a bit. How does offering a complicated list of examples clarify the point? --Kevin Murray 23:09, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
      • Your first question is a non-sequitur. Your second question takes a falsehood as its premise and is unanswerable. It's not a complicated list. It's quite a simple list. Uncle G 00:44, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
        • You are cleverly taking the focus off the issue and focusing on my attempt at humor. Complicated is relative, and if there is no need for examples, any list adds complication. The foul here is in the subtle manipualtion of the examples. --Kevin Murray 00:55, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
          • It's your non-sequitur that took the focus off the issue, not I. And there's no subtle manipulation of anything. It's a footnote. Giving examples. Uncle G 01:44, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
            • Denial is not a valid argument. If you don't see the problem by now, we should just agree to disagree and move on. Cheers! --Kevin Murray 02:36, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
    • BETDAQ shows twelve footnotes. While a paragon of bibliography, it is not a valid example. Picking the wrong examples can bias the impression of the readers. Let's not try to micro-manage the thought process of our editors. --Kevin Murray 23:12, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
      • That it has 12 citations does not magically make it invalid. Uncle G 00:44, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
        • I think you're smarter than that comment, so I think you're trying to spin away from the issues. The point is not magic, the point is misleading novices through manipulating the examples. --Kevin Murray 00:51, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
          • The only "spinning away from the issues" being done here is your introduction of innuendo and personal comments about other editors, when the actual issue, your assertion that it isn't a valid example because it has 12 citations, is addressed directly and contradicted. Not spinning away from the issues, in contrast, would have simply involved offering an explanation of why 12 citations make it an invalid example. Uncle G 01:44, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
            • I have clearly explained why an example with 12 citations is not a proper example. I think that you can't refute the point and are getting wikidramatic here. --Kevin Murray 02:32, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
              • You've given zero explanation, as can readily be seen from the above. Uncle G 16:31, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
                • G, I have tremendous respect for your contributions to WP, and don't want to quibble with you on this minor matter. If I have failed to illustrate my point to you, I'll shall accept my failure and move on. --Kevin Murray 22:14, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

the separate schools guideline has failed to reach a consensus

Since the attempt to outline separate Schools crtieria has failed, it seems we should address a few of the concerns here. The following is a brief synopsis of the proposed guidelines:

The school is assumed to be notable if it has received significant awards or gained national or regional recognition for its curriculum, extracurricular activities, or history.
--Kevin Murray 23:45, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Where was the straw pole that failed? Vegaswikian 00:50, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Per Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines: "A rejected page is any proposal for which consensus support is not present, regardless of whether there's active discussion or not. Consensus need not be fully opposed; if consensus is neutral on the issue and unlikely to improve, the proposal is likewise rejected. Making small changes will not change this fact, nor will repetitive arguments. Generally it is wiser to rewrite a rejected proposal from scratch and start in a different direction."

--Kevin Murray 01:17, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
  • I do believe school-related discussion belongs on the schools page, because it can get quite lengthy and has no direct bearing on this page until and unless that discussion gets resolved. >Radiant< 10:40, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
    • In the interim then we have no guidelines on schools. I propose that we post some basic guidance here while that is resolved. I've posted a condensed version from Schools. I would not object to some reduction, but thought we could start with something that covers the breadth of ideas. --Kevin Murray 19:35, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
  • I have removed the section on schools. To include such a section runs completely contrary to the failure to reach consensus to merge WP:SCHOOL. A great deal of time and effort is being spent by other editors to work out an agreed guideline for schools, we shouldn't be imposing a solution here using criteria that have not been discussed here and have not achieved resolution elsewhere. Let's fix the current problems with this guideline before tackling the problems of other proposed guidelines. Agent 86 20:06, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
    • Surpisingly we disagree. However, with opposition I won't push for immediate inclusion here, but encourage people to consider the following as a starting point for discussion of the text:

Proposed schools section

  • Moved to Wikipedia_talk:Schools#New_proposal, the traditional place for discussing school-related guidelines. This is a contentious issue and should not be the cause of divergent discussion in multiple places. >Radiant< 08:44, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
    • I won't move the discussion back here without some consensu; however, it seems inappropriate to continue discussion at a rejected location, and the tradition is to discuss the subject matter to be included at the target location. --Kevin Murray 16:17, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
      • That's not a rejected location, merely a failed attempt that can be retried. Also, you're one of the few in favor of merging schools into here. >Radiant< 16:21, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

A new proposal

Over at Wikipedia:Articles about ongoing enterprises, there has been a suggestion by Kevin and Radiant to merge that suggested policy/guideline into this one. I would modify that suggestion as follows:

1. The resulting article should be "Wikipedia:Organizations and companies."

2. It should be official policy, not just a guideline.

WP:AAOE addresses the issues of edits by employees and members of the company or organization, and dealing with their COI issues. It also addresses the problem of libel. What do you think? Dino 15:51, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

  • I don't mind discussion of yet another thing to merge here, but as for making it official policy, I am very much against that. WP:N isn't even a policy. This particular guideline already seems to be applied too strictly by some, without any room for flexibility, without making it a policy. At least in guideline form there is the ability to truly consider an article on its merits without being bound and gagged by more rules. Agent 86 18:41, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
  • I agree! Moving any of the notability criteria to policy is problematic, since we ahve been unable to eliminate subjectivity from the definitions. On a side note though, I think that the definitions of "policy" and "guideline" ar WP:POLICY need some work. --Kevin Murray 18:46, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

In response to Agent 86, we must be able to "truly consider an article on its merits." I couldn't agree more. Any policy or guideline that is genuinely getting in the way of that fundamental principle needs revision. But in my (admittedly limited) experience, people who don't want to be constrained by rules are generally POV pushers of one sort or another ... either supporters or detractors of the subject of the article. Hope you're not one of those.

In response to Kevin Murray, I strongly feel that the AAOE content relating to libel and COI needs to be policy: preferably now, hopefully soon, and (IMHO) it will inevitably happen as a cure rather than a prevention. If merging it with WP:ORG may prevent it from becoming policy because notability guidelines can't become policy, then we shouldn't merge. Dino 18:53, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

I disagreed with the premise of Wikipedia:Articles about ongoing enterprises when it was a separate page. I haven't seen anything in the subsequent discussion there or in the merger proposal here that has caused me to change my mind. Organizations are fundamentally different from natural persons. We tolerate the suspension of our normal processes in biographies of living persons because of the risks to the person. While every article should be neutral and well sourced, the normal editing processes and policies are sufficient for articles about organizations. We do not need to make further compromises to our processes. Rossami (talk) 01:46, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
There are sufficient disputed situations that I think it would be inadvisable to make it policy. We need to retain flexibility here. I areee with kevin Murray about subjectivity. We cannot clarify many of these cases exactly, & I think the AfDs prove it. DGG 00:08, 21 March 2007 (UTC)


Updated to current Primary Criterion at WP:N

People have complained about the single attribution requirement which was recently added here to match WP:N, but WP:N has since played down the single source. I copied the Primary Criterion from WP:N. However, there is substantial disagreement at WP:N on most issues. --Kevin Murray 17:52, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Dispute tag

Regardless of when the merge took place, absolutely nothing has been done to resolve the issue of the criteria merged from the old ORG proposed guideline. We've wandered into all sorts of other topic areas since the merge, but there has been nothing done to resolve the issues raised here and in the talk page of the old proposed guidelines. Agent 86 17:39, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

  • Perhaps that is because to most people they aren't actual issues. >Radiant< 12:57, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
    • 86, you are the one person still complaining. This does not represent a consensus against the current version. Why don't you state the precise issues which you belive to be no longer covered here? --Kevin Murray 14:25, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
      • I'm not quite sure how many times you want me to repeat myself - I'm starting to get tired of myself at this point. To tell you the truth, I see no consensus either way. As far as I can see, the only ones discussing this issue are you, me and Radiant. I've combed the combined archives of all discussions, and it pretty much comes down to that. I've repeated my concerns over and over, and put forward concrete positive proposals for discussion, simply to be asked again what my concerns are. Here are some links to some of the past discussions relevant to non-commercial orgs:[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]. The current wording does nothing to resolve any of these discussions. The current text is written too poorly and in the negative - it more or less says what is not notable, but not what is notable. The aim of the text I suggested was to put it into the positive, among other things. I am tired of simply being blown off and your having taken ownership of this proposed guideline. Agent 86 17:57, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
        • If you are getting tired, take a nap. However, I can see that your repetitive discussion could become tiresome to us all. No one has take "ownership", it's just that nobody is backing your position. --Kevin Murray 19:45, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
          • If you are getting tired, take a nap. Again, I just happened to wander by, and asked myself, how did that comment help the argument here? Point is, it didn't. Kopf1988 04:52, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
            • I noticed that the above almost seemed like an attack, so I apologize for my terse language. I just wanted to point out that comments like that in no way help the argument. 86 was making a point that 86(gender?) believes 86s arguments were being ignored. Kopf1988 05:16, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
          • That's the problem - no one's backing your position, either. Three editors ought not to be setting policy. Your refusal to discuss the outstanding issues is troubling. I have posted a Request for Comment on this proposed guideline in hopes of bringing in some fresh blood. (Given that Wikipedia:Notability itself is disputed, I cannot see how this proposed guideline could be resolved in any event.) 23:40, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
            • Actually that's false, several people are backing Kevin's opinion that there is not a big dispute going on here. It has been well-established that "dispute" tags on guideline pages are not appropriate if there is a lone dissident, or a handful of people who don't like the guideline. Additionally, since this page predates WP:N by more than a year, the dispute there is irrelevant to this particular matter. >Radiant< 08:21, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
              • Actually that's false, several people are backing Kevin's opinion that there is not a big dispute going on here. I just happened to wander by and read this discussion, and I am wondering who is backing his opinion? You can't make such large claims without backing them up. Kopf1988 04:50, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Regarding political organizations

How should we treat these? Most of them deal with national/global level issues, but a good deal of them also lack sources. Logical2uReview me! 22:13, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Notability and publicly traded companies

Wikipedia appears to have a problem with notability and publically traded companies. There's currently a DRV happening on MarchFirst, and I recall something similar with the (admittedly more complex) DRV a while back about Arch Coal. The pattern seems to be similar. Someone creates an article about a company which happens to be large and publically traded (or, in the case of MarchFirst, was so if out of business by now). That fact they mention somehow in passing in the article. An admin cruises along and sees only that there are not (other) explicit assertions of notability and speedily deletes it. DRV ensues.

Could we agree that in general large publically traded companies are notable - by the time someone gets listed on an exchange or has revenue of a few hundred million dollars or more, there are usually multiple secondary sources about it. Hey, except for penny stocks, there are usually analysts covering it! It feels silly that such a company article would need to otherwise assert notability, any more than an article about a city of a sizable population. More pragmatically, could we amend WP:CORP to say that publically traded companies are generally notable, and could we somehow encourage admins to slap a not very good article about a company like with with an improvement template or at most a PROD rather than a speedy? It just feels a tad silly to have long on-going AFD discussions about esoteric manga comic books and yet to be speedy deleting large corporations (whether current or historical) because the text so far does not fully connect the dots of the notability claim, or that no-one has bothered to check hoovers.com. Trying to keep of COI and spam is one thing, being needlessly trigger-quick on an area where wikipedia often has holes we should be trying to fill is another. Martinp 15:47, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

We've discussed this several times before and each time have rejected the idea that merely being publicly traded is automatically sufficient for inclusion. Many public companies do not get significant analyst coverage (or do get coverage but the independence of that coverage must be questioned). We've also rejected the idea of numerical thresholds based on headcount, revenues, profits, etc. While being "large" by any of those measures might be circumstantial evidence of notability, they do not guarantee that we can find the independent sources we need to write a proper encyclopedia article. On the other hand, once you find the sources, we keep the articles rather quickly. The ones that are a problem for Wikipedia are the ones where sources can not easily be found. We should not be creating a loophole in our policies where unsourcable articles can be forced in.
The only change I would make to the process is to encourage admins to be more aggressive about using AFD rather than speedy-deletions. These questions really do need more than a single pair of eyes to decide. Rossami (talk) 17:50, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
It seems that the problem that Martinp is describing is one of editors trying to plant seeds to let them evolve toward articles with encyclopedic suitability. I think that the hair trigger deletion process stifles this potentially valuable aspect of WP. However, for us to be practical in combating the mountains of spam and vanity pages we seem to need the aggressive deletion processes. Is the solution a complex set of special case guidelines? --Kevin Murray 18:04, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
I have a slight disagreement with Kevin. Prod, with its 5 day window, is a much better process than speedy delete. Editors should be very careful in using speedy delete, so that they avoid the situations Martinp describes. Better use of existing processes, rather than enumerated giudelines, seems the best solution here. UnitedStatesian 18:34, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
Yes, I agree. An idea that may not be pratical is an "article incubator", where seed articles can be protected while collective knowledge is compiled. --Kevin Murray 18:50, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
  • All publicly traded companies in the US will be subject of multiple secondary sources; each must report quarterly results and file them publicly with the government (called form 10-Q or 10-K for the 4th fiscal quarter). There are dozens of organizations that collect, collate, and report on everything that gets filed: CNN finance, Yahoo finance, and many others are available free online. Many more are available by subscription (virtually every brokerage has a captive information machine, and others such as Forbes, Fortune, ValueLine are well known among Wall Street types). If having multiple sources is the threshhold, all US public companies will qualify. So, now that the policy has been relaxed from the more restricted one which had some references to stock indices, let's just get about writing an encyclopedia rather than trying to determine how a US public comany could be non-notable. Carlossuarez46 00:57, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
    • I am not sure I agree. Doesn't the criterion explicitly exclude " other works where the company . . . talks about itself — whether published by the company . . . itself, or re-printed by other people"? I believe that company filings that are reprinted by the SEC, Yahoo!, or any other source fall under this explicit exclusion, and so do not qualify as secondary sources to establish notability. Similarly, sources that state "the company's earnings in the X-quarter were Y" are also sourced from the company (where else could this information come from, but from the company?) and so also fail as secondary sources. While I agree with CS46's encouragement that we "just get about wrinting an encyclopedia," I cannot agree that EVERY public company, in the U.S. or in other countries, is a notable company. UnitedStatesian 02:44, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
      • On a minor point: audited financial statements (earnings) do have a third party review with some expectation of independence. --Kevin Murray 02:58, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
      • I agree with UnitedStatesian. A company's financial statements, even if audited, are still self-reported information - primary source information. (And as someone who has worked with financial statements and auditors extensively, I will tell you that there are sharp limits on the degree of independence that you can expect.) Financial statements and self-reported information alone is sufficient to support a directory listing like Hoovers or Yahoo Finance but not sufficient to support an encyclopedia article. Rossami (talk) 05:40, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
      • Self-reported information may or may not be suitable for notability (if a reliable media outlet republishes it, that seems to connote notability; they don't republish press releases or the results of joe's flower shop). In any event, we use a helluva lot of self-published material at WP, just look at the template Infobox_Company that has key people and their titles, revenues, profits - do we do WP:OR, no, we take what the company tells us (and the government) as a reliable source. The source is also a collaborative job between the company and the auditors, who are taken to be reliable sources (Enron notwithstanding). Yahoo and CNN finance distill this information, just like any media would do with any data and re-cast it; it becomes a lot less the company speaking than the media speaking. This is more so the more the information is tailored to investing, so company X reports its results (were they good, bad? is the stock overpriced, underpriced? someone's doing some thinking and analyzing based on the numbers, the market conditions, whether Bernanke has a cold that day, or whatever), but there are multiple sources that mention the company. I note that for schools, multiple mentions that create notability can be found in local newspapers or even (ugh!) apparently school district directories, if we are so lenient, any trade association website that mentions the company's membership + a newspaper picking up a press release or two would appear to connote notability, but we need not delve so far, because CNN and/or Yahoo and probably others mention all public companies. Carlossuarez46 07:44, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
      • Follow-on: at the official WP policy (does that trump a guideline such as this?), self-published material may be used for notability, see WP:ATT#Using_questionable_or_self-published_sources, for what it's worth. Carlossuarez46 18:09, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
        • I think it is absolutely essential that we make a distinction between two uses of sources: 1) sources that are used to provide content for an article, and 2) sources that are used to establish the notability of the article's subject in the first place. I have no problem with using self-published material for 1): as CS46 correctly points out, the company is often the only source for useful information about it (such as what goes in the info. box). However, we must have a higher standard for 2), the information used to establish the company's notability, because every company, notable and non-notable alike, has the infobox-type information: all companies have some number of employees, all companies have earnings (positive or negative, that go up and down), all public companies have a stock price. The sources used to establish the company's notability must do just that: they must establish the company's notability! An earnings filing just does not cut the mustard. Unfortunately this puts us back to the subjective (albeit consensus-based) collective judgement of WP editors: it is kind of like the obscene - difficult to define, but we all know sources that establish notability when we see them. As an aside, the section of WP:ATT that CS46 cites above relates only to 1) and not 2): the section does not use the term notability at all, so I don't think it trumps. UnitedStatesian 19:46, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Wikicompany

It would be great if the people who create or delete these 'not notable' company articles could also move it to Wikicompany using the web form. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.98.145.213 (talk • contribs) 13:25, 4 April 2007 (UTC)


Market share

  • I know it sounds oversimplistic,but in practice I think the most reliable factor might be market share. That's what is usually at the basis of what companies get written about, etc. DGG 04:48, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
    • Like many other business metrics, market share is too easily gamed. The problem is in the definition of the "market" of which you have the share. Nothing prevents you from parsing your target market down to such a narrow degree that you are the only player in the space (and thus have 100% market share). We see companies do this all the time. SAP still dominates the global ERP technology market so other players advertise themselves as "leading" in the healthcare ERP market or the US healthcare ERP market or the US mid-market for healthcare ERP, etc. Any marketing department worth its salt can find a way to parse and spin their revenue numbers to show the company as a leader at some level. Rossami (talk) 14:59, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
    • I seems that we try to avoid arbitrary quantitative measurement of notability, at least in theory. I think that market share is a surrogate measurement which is a byproduct of the essence of the organization's notability. It seems that a substantial market share can't be achieved without some other demonstrable claim to notability. --Kevin Murray 17:32, 5 April 2007 (UTC)


Analyst reports

OK, so can we at least agree that publically traded companies with independent analyst coverage are notable? Note that such reports may be hard to use as actual sources for the article (not freely available, $$$), but their existence should satisfy the concern of "is there someone who thinks they are important and has looked at them in an independent way". Martinp 16:29, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Why Martin? There is no need for a special case here. If the company is truly notable then it will be recognized as so by having a substantial amount of verifiable and independent published material to document its notability. Why would we need a flood of special case rules? --Kevin Murray 17:08, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
I'd be okay with listing an analyst report by a major analyst company as an example of an independent, non-trivial source. We still need more than one source before we can try to write a balanced article but that would be a great start. Rossami (talk) 17:30, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
I agree. --Kevin Murray 18:19, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
I agree with Rossimi: reports by major anaylsts are secondary sources that establish notability, so if a company is the subject of two, it is notable. This is exactly what the genereic guideline says, so (to KM's point) there is no need to clutter the guideline by mentioning this as a special case. On the other hand, analyst reports can, of course, be pointed to in prod/AfD debates. UnitedStatesian 18:25, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

General notability guideline template

Since the general notability guideline is central to most sub-pages, someone came up with the idea of creating a centralized template which will be consistent among the permutations from WP:N. Please see whether we can make this work here. The text is meant to be fairly generic, but it may make sense to add text following the template for fine tuning, or help us to make the template more applicable if it is not reflecting the consensus for notability. I certainly didn't get everything that I wanted, but I'm very happy to see the compromises that make this a fairly representive of the attitude of the project. --Kevin Murray 01:12, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

  • There's absolutely no consensus here for insertion of this tag. It's just one user suggesting it be inserted. The "No basis for removal or reversion at talk page" comment has no basis on reality here. --Oakshade 16:15, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
    • It is arguable for inclusion in three ways: (1) It's been here for a week without other objection, at a page where the custom has been massive discussion if there is opposition, (2) there is arguably consensus at WP:N and elsewhere (not at all) in the notability infrastructure for continuity, and (3) the current message in the template is consistent with what it replaced, though this is changeable. However, as time passes there does seem to be growing opposition to the template at the sub-guidelines, while the original authors have mostly remained silent. A week ago Oakshade objected by reversion and then reversed himself, but now he legitimately reasserts his claim, perhaps feeling more support. I encourage more discussion here, as I would prefer more clear evidence of approval. --Kevin Murray 17:28, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
      • (1) Something could be there a year that hadn't been removed but that doesn't mean it was inserted with consensus and besides, this was there for only a week. (2) There is arguably non-consensus for its inclusion at WP:N, nor anywhere else for that matter and certainly not here. (3) The only reason I reverted myself a week ago when removing the tag was because I accidentally caused reverting other text that didn't include this tag. Yes, as with any major change there should be a great amount of discussion and consensus. As it stands now, it's just one user in this talk page who stated that want this tag, not at all a proper basis for making a major change. --Oakshade 17:51, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
        • I share Oakshade’s disappointment in the lack of discussion, though I don't think that the conclusion is as clear cut. --Kevin Murray 17:57, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Template:pnc nominated for deletion

See Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Template:pnc for the debate. --Kevin Murray 18:06, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

products and services

Since it is all a matter of degree, do we need the elaboration?DGG 05:49, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Demonstrate Notability

As I have been through a few AFD, PROD debates recently where editors complain or simply say "the company is notable" without actually adding sources to demonstrate the notability of a company, I propose the opening section should state something along the lines of:

A company, corporation, organization, group, product, or service is notable if it has been the subject of secondary sources. This must be demonstrated through these sources being cited in the Wikipedia article.

This first part is the current opening line to the first section, the italized line is what I propse adding, or something along those lines. Thoughts? Aboutmovies 02:44, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

I am in full agreement that secondary sorces in article=good, lack of secondary sources in article=bad; however, I don't think your proposal will gain consensus. 1, I think "must" is un-Wikipedia-like. 2, articles are often, in good faith, started with no sources, which the editor expects to add (or to be added) later. so 3, I think your point is better served in the AfD debate itself: challenge the editors who claim notability to point to it in the article's sources, or go find them yourself. UnitedStatesian 18:27, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
Hm. I actually ran across a number of, say, less notable products when cleaning up old articles flagged with the "notability" tag. Actually, in many cases it seemed to me that they were created by the very companies which produce these products, and I really have a hard time assuming good faith in these cases. But, of course, nothing can be proved; and actually the opinions on what to consider spam differ a lot. I would actually like a rule that would basically say, "if the article describes a company or commercial product, if no secondary sources are cited, and if the notability warning has been on the article for n months, then the article can be deleted uncontroversially without further research" (that is, via a PROD or even speedy deletion). It seems a bit strange to me to spend a lot of time searching the web for independent references to that product, while the article's creator has probably added none deliberately. Also, the AfD consumes a lot of resources. What do you think? --B. Wolterding 18:45, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
Probably unnecessary. Spam is already a speedy deletion criteria, and leaving it less well-defined is to the benefit of the project; it allows some leeway for edge cases. If I saw an article like you are describing, I would delete it without further ado, and so would most admins. Just tag them for speedy deletion with {{db-spam}}, no process bloat needed. --Spike Wilbury 18:54, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
Well, I did so in two cases, and learned that others considered that "highly inappropriate"... Maybe that was just a misunderstanding, but I thought some clearer guidelines could help. --B. Wolterding 19:14, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
prod is a good process as well, esp. if the spamminess is less clear-cut. UnitedStatesian 19:17, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
I read that on your Talk page, and "highly inappropriate" seems rather strong language. The first was simply a mistake that anyone might make, especially if they don't know what a house fan is. The second was also in good faith; although the subject is a major company, the article does indeed read like a marketing pamphlet. Sometimes editors wrongly assume that because an article is about a notable corporation, it must not be spam. That is not necessarily true. However, in those cases the solution would be to edit out the spam instead of deleting the article. My opinion, of course. --Spike Wilbury 02:11, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
Generally, when a page starts life as an advert, it's best to wipe it and start over. That also sends a very strong "No spam, ever, for any reason" message. The tagging there was not "highly inappropriate" (or inappropriate at all), and at least one of those articles is still borderline at best. Seraphimblade Talk to me 04:19, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia editors make anyone writing about a company submit a veritable 10K statement to prove a company is notable but then haplessly allow garbage like O Rly be permitted. For the 95% of people who participate in the economy (i.e. people who don’t have dozens of hours a week to devote to Wikipedia) information on companies is inherently more notable than the latest IM slang. If the intent is to completely kill the credibility that this site might have had keep up the instantaneous deletes and the capricious application of the “notability” criterion.--MD277711 03:54, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

List of companies working in Technopark

List of companies working in Technopark (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs)

There is a discussion about this list at

We could use some advice from editors with experience here. There are conflicting wikipedia guidelines. See WP:NOT#DIR. It states:

"Of course, there is nothing wrong with having lists if their entries are famous because they are associated with or significantly contributed to the list topic, for example Nixon's Enemies List. Wikipedia also includes reference tables and tabular information for quick reference. This site search, and this one, pull up thousands of examples of lists and comparison tables. Merged groups of small articles based on a core topic are certainly permitted."

So even if the list were made more encyclopedic by detailing the entries, the question remains about what entries to put on the list. --Timeshifter 18:10, 31 May 2007 (UTC)