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I move that Wikipedia:Companies, corporations and economic information/Notability and inclusion guidelines be adopted as an official Wikipedia policy. 24.54.208.177 01:48, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
First, it entirely overlooks the first, second, and fourth criteria on the list, and argues on the basis that the third criterion is the only criterion there. Smaller companies that don't form the bases for stock market index calculations could still satisfy the other criteria. (Why this myopic concentration on only one of the criteria, that is only there in the first place to cover a few corner cases, to the complete exclusion of any of the others, including the broadest one of the lot? Given the broadness of the first criterion, any argument that ignores it totally is exceedingly ill-founded.)
Second, there is nothing in the criteria that is U.S.-centric. There's no mention of the U.S. anywhere in the criteria. The only U.S.-centric criterion mentioned anywhere so far is the one mentioned by Vegaswikian immediately above, which isn't included on the list, and which has been unanimously opposed. (Neither I nor Vegaswikian would support it.)
Third, the criteria apply in India just the same as they do elsewhere. For example: The criterion about published works applies in India, just as it does in the U.S., Australia, China, Canada, and any other country. An Indian company with independent news coverage in The Hindu qualifies under the "published works" criterion just as would an Australian company with independent news coverage in The Age or a U.K. company with independent news coverage in The Independent (or even in the Messenger — see above). Similarly, a company that forms the basis for the S&P CNX Nifty or the BSE Sensex qualifies under the stock market index criterion just as much as a company that forms the basis for the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The idea that India, or any other country, isn't adequately addressed by these criteria is entirely bogus.
Fourth, the implied notion that NGOs and public sector companies aren't covered is wrong. A public sector company that was the subject of an report published by an independent commission would qualify under "independent published works", for example, just as much as a private sector company that was the subject of an independent article published in a newspaper. (And public sector companies can be newsworthy, too, of course.)
Fifth, these criteria (in particular the first) roughly follow the models already employed in our notability and inclusion guidelines for people (which talk about "significant press coverage", "features" in magazines, and "independent biography"), web sites (which talk about "national or international media attention"), and bands, musicians, and songs (which talk about coverage in the music press). This isn't a major departure from how we already make these sorts of decisions. Uncle G 08:59, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
We had a request for a second and much discussion. I think the current proposal address most, if not all, of the concerns raised so I'll second making this an official Wikipedia policy. Vegaswikian 18:45, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
I have temporarily removed these two bullets from the inclusion criteria. Vegaswikian argues above that this is a sufficient threshold for inclusion. I'm afraid I have to disagree. Lots of companies sell their shares on a public exchange yet are in no way notable. There are some incredibly small companies listed on very small exchanges - so small that we can not write a non-stub article that is functionally verifiable. While some of those very small companies are notable, it is not true that all of them are.
I also have concerns with how that standard would be interpreted given changes in listings. If my family business gets listed, sells a few shares, then falls below one of the exchange's criteria and gets de-listed, does that mean we now have to delete the article or that we never should have had the article? I would argue for the latter. I bought stock in an internet company that tanked. It's still around but now it's a penny stock - no longer available on any exchange (though it is still available over-the-counter). It definitely does not deserve an article in its current state and in hindsight never deserved an article when it was listed.
Vegaswikian does make an argument above that we should set the bar low to be consistent with the standard he/she sees in other situations. The fact that we incorrectly set low standards for other situations is not, in my mind, a good reason to make the same mistake here. Let's set the right standard (whatever we finally decide) and then try to bring the other situations up to the same standard. Rossami (talk) 20:05, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
This discussion has evolved from the third criterion that I initially set out. I created it as subordinate criterion. We have articles on stock market indexes, listing the companies that are used to calculate them. The intent of the criterion was to prevent our coverage of those indexes from being impaired, in those rare cases where the first criterion is not satisfied. In other words: It was to ensure that all of the redlinks on List of S&P 500 companies, Nikkei 225, FTSE 100 Index, FTSE 250 Index, and so forth could become blue. It's probably the case that there are (at the very least) corporate biographies published by third parties for all such companies. If it is certainly the case, then the stock market index criterion is redundant and unnecessary. Uncle G 21:29, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
OK, what are these? I'm assuming that we are talking about the little blurbs about promotions and new hires at the various local companies. A common heading I have seen is business briefs. Vegaswikian 21:03, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
I added as a notability criterion:
205.217.105.2 20:48, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
Oppose : I'm new to Wikipedia, but have some thoughts on this topic. First, what problem is being solved? Forgive me if this represents ignorance of some other Wikipedia guideline, but as a virtual medium, the incremental cost of numerous, low-importance articles is virtually nil. What harm is there in having lots of short articles describing very small companies?
Second, and more to the point, there are countless thousands (millions?) of stories dealing with small businesses that are rarely told, but are interesting none the less. Large, publically traded companies have entire media organizations dedicated to telling their stories. Who tells the stories of small companies? If Wikipedia does not, who will?
As written, the guidelines effectively exclude small, independent businesses. That is, in my view, antithetical to the "anti-elitist" posture of Wikipedia.
Last, the one-million customers criteria represents retail-thinking. Not every company sells to consumers. There are numerous, very large, privately held companies that sell only to other companies and therefore have a fairly small customer count. Additionally, I doubt there is a company that would fail all four of the earlier tests and only become eligible based on having 1 million customers. -- TheJeffMiller 01:37, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
I was thinking the same thing when I saw this added criterion. The only case I can think of are new free web services providers, e.g. web-based e-mail and such. These companies can get millions of subscribers within a few weeks of operation, and claim them as "customers", although technically speaking their only customers are the one or two advertisers on their page. But as TheJeffMiller points out, if we are willing to list every high school in North America here, why not include smaller companies? How about the following criterion to replace criteria 2 through 5:
Essentially all companies covered by the old criteria are included in this, and many more. And if the number of people affected by a company is under 1000, it can truly be considered as non-notable. Owen× ☎ 13:25, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
A few observations, and a proposal...
Which leads to my Proposal: I believe the policy What Wikipedia is not is sufficient for Wikipedians to adjudicate the suitability (ie, notability) of companies for inclusion. No additional policy statement is necessary. Accordingly, I believe that the Wikipedia:Companies, corporations and economic information/Notability and inclusion guidelines proposed policy should be rejected entirely.
If the community determines that additional notability criteria (beyond those implicit in What Wikipedia is not) are required, then I believe they should be very simple and very inclusive. I propose a two part test:
-- TheJeffMiller 15:26, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
I am still learning my way around Wikipedia. I thank Owen× for directing me to WP:MUSIC and WP:BIO. Both are clear examples of the kind of policy making being discussed here. Accordingly, I withdraw my proposal to reject WP:CORP entirely.
I am pleased that we concur on the central point that inclusion guidelines should be "defined in broad terms". I agree completely. My reasoning for basing the criteria on revenue rather than number of affected people is two fold:
In any case, let me reiterate that it is my view that the most important considerations here are simplicity and inclusiveness. I believe that criteria such as "listed stock" are far to restrictive.
-- TheJeffMiller 16:24, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
If I have a bias here, it will be to err on the side of making more companies 'notable'. If I have a concern with the "C+E+S" test, it is that such a test may be reflecting "famous" more than "notable" (not in every case, of course, but at times). As an example, I personally know of a company in St Louis that is doing around $10 million anually. They are a pure distributorship, and their customers are all specialized manufacturers. They probably have fewer than 30 customers. They have maybe 10 suppliers, and 25 or so employees. In my opinion, such a company is notable, even though they fall far short of your proposed C+E+S count.
Conversely, there is a deli down the street. They probably have, in the course of a year, well over 1000 unique customers. But there is nothing particularly noteworthy about the deli. Actually, I retact that. The corner deli should be considered noteworthy. But my point is that is C+E+S makes the corner deli noteworthy, then the $10 million distribution company has to be noteworthy as well.
I continue to be of the opinion that annual revenue is the best overall measure of the notability of a company. However, I agree that C+E+S could be used, so long as the required total is sufficiently low. It is my view that the ultimate goal of this policy is to ensure that utterly trivial companies (eg, the two high school kids my wife pays to clean up after our dogs in the back yard) are excluded. C+E+S=100 (or even 50) would probably handle it.-- TheJeffMiller 21:03, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
So based on media reports, a company like Riviera Holdings Corporation would be OK as I read the proposed guideline. While small they get a lot of press about their plans or suggestions about who will be buying them. Information currently included with The Riv article. Vegaswikian 23:10, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
First, Vegaswikian, I'm not sure I take your point. It seems self-evident to me that the Riviera Holdings Company is noteworthy. What am I missing?
Second, Owen×, I consider the St Louis distributorship noteworthy because of the overall financial impact it has. You might say that is just because of the $10 million revenue, but I prefer to say it is because of the overall business impact. I would assert that there is no such thing as a $10 million company that is not noteworthy.-- TheJeffMiller 01:20, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
To answer your question directly, yes, I think an individual making $10M annually is notable for that fact alone. My assumption would be that such a person would have a sufficient number of mentions in the financial and or social press that they would be defined as notable on the basis of those mentions alone. Lacking those mentions, the $10M would do it.
I want to return to something I said a few days ago. It is my opinion that Wikipedia should be as inclusive as possible. In the present context, I do not see any harm in erring on the side of inclusiveness, while I see significant harm in erring on the side of exclusiveness.
In addition, to the extent that this policy is motivated by a concern of companies using Wikipedia for inappropriate commercial advantage, I think those concerns are misplaced. Gratuitous commercial content is obvious, and easy to spot, and will be quickly edited on NPOV grounds. Beyond that, I maintain that there is no real commercial advantage to be had here. Even if, as a hypothetical, a company were to put up a page that was nothing than a large advertisement, I can't see how it would do them any good. The only downside is the clutter factor to Wikipedia, and as I mentioned, that can be dealt with on other grounds.
Ultimately, this policy can only serve to protect one thing: The verifiability of Wikipedia. At some level, the overall impact of a company becomes so small that no one, with the exception perhaps of one or two principals of the company, would have any idea if some stated fact is true or not. So long as a company has enough "critical mass" that its information can be verified and edited by at least a small community of individuals, then its inclusion is warranted.-- TheJeffMiller 17:02, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
Something in your figures doesn't add up: 1.5M companies with over $10M revenue works out to a combined total revenue of $15 trillion. Total US GDP is a tad under $12 trillion, so you are way high. In any case, not every article that "could" be written "will" be written.-- TheJeffMiller 23:16, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
I don't see any way to solve the excess-participation problem. Suppose your numbers are correct, and there really are 1.5M US companies with $10M revenue, and that over the next two years or so someone related to each and every one of them decides to post an article. What to do? First, I don't see that there are any particular technical problems with that scenario. The system will be fine. So, we are left with the very real possibility of exhausting the Wikipedia community's ability to edit/sort/validate/categorize all those articles. That is a problem, but this policy doesn't solve it. It will take just as much effort to determine non-notability as anything else. I say let them post their articles. They will get sorted, and then ignored. -- TheJeffMiller 03:44, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
I'd like to highlight TheJeffMiller's comment several paragraphs up that these inclusion standards are proxies for our ability to write NPOV and functionally verifiable articles and that this implies a need for some critical mass of informed reader/editors who will find, monitor and maintain the article. Articles on topics (in this case, companies) which are too obscure are are unlikely to gather the necessary critical mass of informed reader/editors. As a community, we have found that they tend to be subject to unnoticed vandalism, bias and general abuse. Unmaintained articles discredit the entire project, not just the article in question. Overly broad or inclusive standards jeapordize our ability to maintain our standards.
The existing standards are a reasonable proxy for our ability to make sure that we will have enough informed reader/editors to evaluate, verify and correct that added content. They are a proxy for our continued ability to protect the article from subtle vandalism such as the gradual addition of incorrect facts. I do not believe that the proposed "simpler" standards meet that standard. The average corner deli is not noteworthy because there is no way to for the average reader to verify the contents of the article. Having a thousand customers does not necessarily mean that the company made any significant impact on the customer other than as the geographically-convenient provider of calories. I know I ate lunch yesterday and that I've eaten there enough to be a "regular" but I couldn't tell you anything significant or verify anything significant about the company.
Revenue alone is equally suspect. In the section above, Jeff talks about a St Louis company with "fewer than 30 customers... maybe 10 suppliers, and 25 or so employees" but which has about $10M in revenues and argues that the revenues alone are sufficient to establish notability. He later makes an assumption "that such a person would have a sufficient number of mentions in the financial and or social press". I can think of a number of counter-examples to this assumption. Many companies are able report revenues of a mere $10 M and yet have no significant mention in any independent press. Jeff is correct in his concern about companies so small that only "one or two principals of the company would have any idea if some stated fact is true". According to Wikipedia:Verifiability, such "facts" must be removed. Our standard for inclusion is "verifability, not truth". Unless there is substantial coverage in the national independent press, there is again no way for the average reader/editor to verify the contents of the article. It doesn't matter how many millions or even billions they report for revenues. Until someone independent notices them and writes something, we have no sources to verify against.
The fundamental disagreement may be best summarized in Jeff's statement that "I do not see any harm in erring on the side of inclusiveness, while I see significant harm in erring on the side of exclusiveness." I and others, on the other hand, do see significant harm in erring on the side of unverifiability and very little harm in erring on the side of exclusiveness. We desperately need an efficient way to estimate whether or not we will be able to write and maintain a neutral and verifiable article on the business. Rossami (talk) 19:15, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
I added "The company is cited in at least 10 other articles." to the list of criteria. Generally it there are red links, it is OK to add an article. I just picked the number 10 to avoid the case where someone wants to create a mention just to be able to create the article. Don't know if the number 10 is reasonable. I think 1 is too low, but if someone suggested 3-5 I would not have a problem supporting that. Vegaswikian 18:51, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
I would like to request for this page to be moved to a title that is less ludicrously long. R adiant _>|< 09:54, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
I'm generally in favor of setting the bar fairly low on notability. Continuing the criterion of verifiability will automatically eliminate a lot of the junk, like the neighborhood dry cleaner. Furthermore, corporate PR people turning their own press releases into Wikipedia articles is a different problem, one that could occur with regard to any company still lacking an article. (There are several red links on our list of Fortune 500 companies. An advertisement written up as an article for one of them surely couldn't be deleted for nonnotability under any sensible criteria.)
So, putting aside the articles that are unverifiable or puffery, do people perceive a problem with a significant number of current articles? Can someone give examples of existing articles that should be deleted? JamesMLane 23:38, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
I'm currently defending Everything Linux from being deleted, and used guideline #4 - "The company holds more than a 20% share in the market area that it competes in." to back up my claim. I was brushed off by User:ScottDavis, who said "Guideline 4 can be met by almost any corner shop for a suitably narrow definition of "market area"." It just makes me wonder, what is the point of the guideline if it can just be ignored. (By the way - the market area in this case was the entire population of Australia.)
(Also, there aren't any published market share figures for the market the company is in (the Australian online Linux retail industry) but a quick, informal poll (see AfD page above) shows that 60%+ of Australian Linux users named Everything Linux first when asked to name an Australian online Linux store.) -- Chuq 12:30, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
There's currently a debate going on over a group deletion I've proposed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Various "Mills". Regardless of the outcome of that particular AFD, I think it's important for Wikipedia to set some clear and explicit standards for the inclusion or exclusion of individual locations of a larger chain. We'd all probably agree that McDonalds as a company is clearly notable but most individual McDonalds stores clearly aren't. But what about individual malls that are part of a chain. Or each of the dozens of Six Flags amusement parks, or each of the Hard Rock Cafes?...
Where does it cross the line to being the stuff of advertizing or business directories? Blackcats 07:38, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
The above question started out on the topic of shopping malls. Mills is one of the larger companies that owns shopping malls. The AfD debate is should each mall only be listed in the Mills Corporation article or can each one get an article. So my question is, should the effort here include guidelines for listing shopping malls? They are basically a company though not listed that way. If the concensus is yes, then what criteria should be used? There may already be a concensus that if you include an article on a specific mall, individual major stores or ones of special interest can be listed but should not be linked except to the chain article. Vegaswikian 17:16, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
We currently have about 800,000 articles.
In an Encyclopedia, what proportion of the articles should be devoted to companies and corporations?
A search on the word "Corporation" in Encyclopedia Britannica and eyeballing the results seems to show roughly 120 articles devoted to individual corporations. (Others are, of course, touched on in biographies). Let's double that to account for ones I might have overlooked. That's 240. In other words, a lot more than are in the Dow Jones index, but less than are in the S&P 500. Articles on corporations account for no more than 0.1% to 0.2% of the Britannica's content.
If we apply the same proportion to Wikipedia, we ought to have about 750 to 1500 articles on individual corporations.
Unless someone has a well-articulated explanation of exactly why Wikipedia needs to have a much higher (or much lower) proportion of corporation articles in its mix than other encyclopedias do, as a starting point we should set a bar that will result in including very roughly that number of articles.
(Or, we should have a well-articulated explanation of exactly why corporations should be a higher fraction of the mix in Wikipedia than they are in other encyclopedias).
So, before I vote, I'd like to see an estimate of how many companies would be included under the proposed guidelines. Dpbsmith (talk) 00:57, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
If we start throwing out verifiable information because we think it is not interesting, I am quite sure that within our lifetime there will be people who curse us for throwing away information that, if kept, would have been priceless to someone. Look at what historians pour over. It is not the things that the people in past times thought were 'notable', it is the minutie of life. Please, don't do this. Allow anything that is verifiable. Trollderella 18:26, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
I am baffled, after everything that I have said, that you think that I am advocating relaxing our standards of verifiability. Why would you think that I am advocating an article on a laundromat in Cleveland? That's a complete misrepresentation of what I am saying. Your laundromat is not verifiable without original research. We agree. It is not verifiable. If we ever get past the strawman 'well, if you don't believe in notability then you must want an article about this laundromat', then maybe we can have a discussion. Trollderella 19:25, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
It seems from the criteria, that the issues that people are worried about are a) self promotion, b) speculation. I would suggest that simply insisting that any company or product that as several neutral (non advertising, not the company itself) sources that can be verified and referenced should go it. I think that that would be the same thing that most people mean when they say 'notable', and does not need a new rule. It's one that we already have. Trollderella 18:30, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
This policy seems to reflect superseded ideas on importance. It sets the bar far higher than is applied in practice and is wildly inconsistent with the policies for other things. Why does a company need 1,000,000 customers when a band needs to sell just 5,000 albums I believe. And Walmart doesn't meet the 20% market share criteria! But as it is having little or no effect on article retention, I can't be bothered with the hassle of fighting deletionists to get it changed. CalJW 00:05, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
Why is it that a great deal of thoughtful and productive discussion was removed when this guideline relpaced [[Wikipedia talk:Notability (organizations}]]? Are we supposed to re-fight all battles fought there which had unresolved issues? Or should I copy and paste the discussion I am interested in from there? Was the merge process supposed to discard the discussion, or was it done incorrectly? I did not see notice of the proposed merge, and if it means loss of the discussion, I suggest we undo it. Is there a consensus for such an action? This guideline may fit businesses, but it does not fir organizations that well, and there is loss of a great deal of collaborative editing. Edison 22:12, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
I move that Wikipedia:Companies, corporations and economic information/Notability and inclusion guidelines be adopted as an official Wikipedia policy. 24.54.208.177 01:48, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
First, it entirely overlooks the first, second, and fourth criteria on the list, and argues on the basis that the third criterion is the only criterion there. Smaller companies that don't form the bases for stock market index calculations could still satisfy the other criteria. (Why this myopic concentration on only one of the criteria, that is only there in the first place to cover a few corner cases, to the complete exclusion of any of the others, including the broadest one of the lot? Given the broadness of the first criterion, any argument that ignores it totally is exceedingly ill-founded.)
Second, there is nothing in the criteria that is U.S.-centric. There's no mention of the U.S. anywhere in the criteria. The only U.S.-centric criterion mentioned anywhere so far is the one mentioned by Vegaswikian immediately above, which isn't included on the list, and which has been unanimously opposed. (Neither I nor Vegaswikian would support it.)
Third, the criteria apply in India just the same as they do elsewhere. For example: The criterion about published works applies in India, just as it does in the U.S., Australia, China, Canada, and any other country. An Indian company with independent news coverage in The Hindu qualifies under the "published works" criterion just as would an Australian company with independent news coverage in The Age or a U.K. company with independent news coverage in The Independent (or even in the Messenger — see above). Similarly, a company that forms the basis for the S&P CNX Nifty or the BSE Sensex qualifies under the stock market index criterion just as much as a company that forms the basis for the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The idea that India, or any other country, isn't adequately addressed by these criteria is entirely bogus.
Fourth, the implied notion that NGOs and public sector companies aren't covered is wrong. A public sector company that was the subject of an report published by an independent commission would qualify under "independent published works", for example, just as much as a private sector company that was the subject of an independent article published in a newspaper. (And public sector companies can be newsworthy, too, of course.)
Fifth, these criteria (in particular the first) roughly follow the models already employed in our notability and inclusion guidelines for people (which talk about "significant press coverage", "features" in magazines, and "independent biography"), web sites (which talk about "national or international media attention"), and bands, musicians, and songs (which talk about coverage in the music press). This isn't a major departure from how we already make these sorts of decisions. Uncle G 08:59, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
We had a request for a second and much discussion. I think the current proposal address most, if not all, of the concerns raised so I'll second making this an official Wikipedia policy. Vegaswikian 18:45, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
I have temporarily removed these two bullets from the inclusion criteria. Vegaswikian argues above that this is a sufficient threshold for inclusion. I'm afraid I have to disagree. Lots of companies sell their shares on a public exchange yet are in no way notable. There are some incredibly small companies listed on very small exchanges - so small that we can not write a non-stub article that is functionally verifiable. While some of those very small companies are notable, it is not true that all of them are.
I also have concerns with how that standard would be interpreted given changes in listings. If my family business gets listed, sells a few shares, then falls below one of the exchange's criteria and gets de-listed, does that mean we now have to delete the article or that we never should have had the article? I would argue for the latter. I bought stock in an internet company that tanked. It's still around but now it's a penny stock - no longer available on any exchange (though it is still available over-the-counter). It definitely does not deserve an article in its current state and in hindsight never deserved an article when it was listed.
Vegaswikian does make an argument above that we should set the bar low to be consistent with the standard he/she sees in other situations. The fact that we incorrectly set low standards for other situations is not, in my mind, a good reason to make the same mistake here. Let's set the right standard (whatever we finally decide) and then try to bring the other situations up to the same standard. Rossami (talk) 20:05, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
This discussion has evolved from the third criterion that I initially set out. I created it as subordinate criterion. We have articles on stock market indexes, listing the companies that are used to calculate them. The intent of the criterion was to prevent our coverage of those indexes from being impaired, in those rare cases where the first criterion is not satisfied. In other words: It was to ensure that all of the redlinks on List of S&P 500 companies, Nikkei 225, FTSE 100 Index, FTSE 250 Index, and so forth could become blue. It's probably the case that there are (at the very least) corporate biographies published by third parties for all such companies. If it is certainly the case, then the stock market index criterion is redundant and unnecessary. Uncle G 21:29, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
OK, what are these? I'm assuming that we are talking about the little blurbs about promotions and new hires at the various local companies. A common heading I have seen is business briefs. Vegaswikian 21:03, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
I added as a notability criterion:
205.217.105.2 20:48, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
Oppose : I'm new to Wikipedia, but have some thoughts on this topic. First, what problem is being solved? Forgive me if this represents ignorance of some other Wikipedia guideline, but as a virtual medium, the incremental cost of numerous, low-importance articles is virtually nil. What harm is there in having lots of short articles describing very small companies?
Second, and more to the point, there are countless thousands (millions?) of stories dealing with small businesses that are rarely told, but are interesting none the less. Large, publically traded companies have entire media organizations dedicated to telling their stories. Who tells the stories of small companies? If Wikipedia does not, who will?
As written, the guidelines effectively exclude small, independent businesses. That is, in my view, antithetical to the "anti-elitist" posture of Wikipedia.
Last, the one-million customers criteria represents retail-thinking. Not every company sells to consumers. There are numerous, very large, privately held companies that sell only to other companies and therefore have a fairly small customer count. Additionally, I doubt there is a company that would fail all four of the earlier tests and only become eligible based on having 1 million customers. -- TheJeffMiller 01:37, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
I was thinking the same thing when I saw this added criterion. The only case I can think of are new free web services providers, e.g. web-based e-mail and such. These companies can get millions of subscribers within a few weeks of operation, and claim them as "customers", although technically speaking their only customers are the one or two advertisers on their page. But as TheJeffMiller points out, if we are willing to list every high school in North America here, why not include smaller companies? How about the following criterion to replace criteria 2 through 5:
Essentially all companies covered by the old criteria are included in this, and many more. And if the number of people affected by a company is under 1000, it can truly be considered as non-notable. Owen× ☎ 13:25, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
A few observations, and a proposal...
Which leads to my Proposal: I believe the policy What Wikipedia is not is sufficient for Wikipedians to adjudicate the suitability (ie, notability) of companies for inclusion. No additional policy statement is necessary. Accordingly, I believe that the Wikipedia:Companies, corporations and economic information/Notability and inclusion guidelines proposed policy should be rejected entirely.
If the community determines that additional notability criteria (beyond those implicit in What Wikipedia is not) are required, then I believe they should be very simple and very inclusive. I propose a two part test:
-- TheJeffMiller 15:26, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
I am still learning my way around Wikipedia. I thank Owen× for directing me to WP:MUSIC and WP:BIO. Both are clear examples of the kind of policy making being discussed here. Accordingly, I withdraw my proposal to reject WP:CORP entirely.
I am pleased that we concur on the central point that inclusion guidelines should be "defined in broad terms". I agree completely. My reasoning for basing the criteria on revenue rather than number of affected people is two fold:
In any case, let me reiterate that it is my view that the most important considerations here are simplicity and inclusiveness. I believe that criteria such as "listed stock" are far to restrictive.
-- TheJeffMiller 16:24, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
If I have a bias here, it will be to err on the side of making more companies 'notable'. If I have a concern with the "C+E+S" test, it is that such a test may be reflecting "famous" more than "notable" (not in every case, of course, but at times). As an example, I personally know of a company in St Louis that is doing around $10 million anually. They are a pure distributorship, and their customers are all specialized manufacturers. They probably have fewer than 30 customers. They have maybe 10 suppliers, and 25 or so employees. In my opinion, such a company is notable, even though they fall far short of your proposed C+E+S count.
Conversely, there is a deli down the street. They probably have, in the course of a year, well over 1000 unique customers. But there is nothing particularly noteworthy about the deli. Actually, I retact that. The corner deli should be considered noteworthy. But my point is that is C+E+S makes the corner deli noteworthy, then the $10 million distribution company has to be noteworthy as well.
I continue to be of the opinion that annual revenue is the best overall measure of the notability of a company. However, I agree that C+E+S could be used, so long as the required total is sufficiently low. It is my view that the ultimate goal of this policy is to ensure that utterly trivial companies (eg, the two high school kids my wife pays to clean up after our dogs in the back yard) are excluded. C+E+S=100 (or even 50) would probably handle it.-- TheJeffMiller 21:03, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
So based on media reports, a company like Riviera Holdings Corporation would be OK as I read the proposed guideline. While small they get a lot of press about their plans or suggestions about who will be buying them. Information currently included with The Riv article. Vegaswikian 23:10, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
First, Vegaswikian, I'm not sure I take your point. It seems self-evident to me that the Riviera Holdings Company is noteworthy. What am I missing?
Second, Owen×, I consider the St Louis distributorship noteworthy because of the overall financial impact it has. You might say that is just because of the $10 million revenue, but I prefer to say it is because of the overall business impact. I would assert that there is no such thing as a $10 million company that is not noteworthy.-- TheJeffMiller 01:20, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
To answer your question directly, yes, I think an individual making $10M annually is notable for that fact alone. My assumption would be that such a person would have a sufficient number of mentions in the financial and or social press that they would be defined as notable on the basis of those mentions alone. Lacking those mentions, the $10M would do it.
I want to return to something I said a few days ago. It is my opinion that Wikipedia should be as inclusive as possible. In the present context, I do not see any harm in erring on the side of inclusiveness, while I see significant harm in erring on the side of exclusiveness.
In addition, to the extent that this policy is motivated by a concern of companies using Wikipedia for inappropriate commercial advantage, I think those concerns are misplaced. Gratuitous commercial content is obvious, and easy to spot, and will be quickly edited on NPOV grounds. Beyond that, I maintain that there is no real commercial advantage to be had here. Even if, as a hypothetical, a company were to put up a page that was nothing than a large advertisement, I can't see how it would do them any good. The only downside is the clutter factor to Wikipedia, and as I mentioned, that can be dealt with on other grounds.
Ultimately, this policy can only serve to protect one thing: The verifiability of Wikipedia. At some level, the overall impact of a company becomes so small that no one, with the exception perhaps of one or two principals of the company, would have any idea if some stated fact is true or not. So long as a company has enough "critical mass" that its information can be verified and edited by at least a small community of individuals, then its inclusion is warranted.-- TheJeffMiller 17:02, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
Something in your figures doesn't add up: 1.5M companies with over $10M revenue works out to a combined total revenue of $15 trillion. Total US GDP is a tad under $12 trillion, so you are way high. In any case, not every article that "could" be written "will" be written.-- TheJeffMiller 23:16, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
I don't see any way to solve the excess-participation problem. Suppose your numbers are correct, and there really are 1.5M US companies with $10M revenue, and that over the next two years or so someone related to each and every one of them decides to post an article. What to do? First, I don't see that there are any particular technical problems with that scenario. The system will be fine. So, we are left with the very real possibility of exhausting the Wikipedia community's ability to edit/sort/validate/categorize all those articles. That is a problem, but this policy doesn't solve it. It will take just as much effort to determine non-notability as anything else. I say let them post their articles. They will get sorted, and then ignored. -- TheJeffMiller 03:44, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
I'd like to highlight TheJeffMiller's comment several paragraphs up that these inclusion standards are proxies for our ability to write NPOV and functionally verifiable articles and that this implies a need for some critical mass of informed reader/editors who will find, monitor and maintain the article. Articles on topics (in this case, companies) which are too obscure are are unlikely to gather the necessary critical mass of informed reader/editors. As a community, we have found that they tend to be subject to unnoticed vandalism, bias and general abuse. Unmaintained articles discredit the entire project, not just the article in question. Overly broad or inclusive standards jeapordize our ability to maintain our standards.
The existing standards are a reasonable proxy for our ability to make sure that we will have enough informed reader/editors to evaluate, verify and correct that added content. They are a proxy for our continued ability to protect the article from subtle vandalism such as the gradual addition of incorrect facts. I do not believe that the proposed "simpler" standards meet that standard. The average corner deli is not noteworthy because there is no way to for the average reader to verify the contents of the article. Having a thousand customers does not necessarily mean that the company made any significant impact on the customer other than as the geographically-convenient provider of calories. I know I ate lunch yesterday and that I've eaten there enough to be a "regular" but I couldn't tell you anything significant or verify anything significant about the company.
Revenue alone is equally suspect. In the section above, Jeff talks about a St Louis company with "fewer than 30 customers... maybe 10 suppliers, and 25 or so employees" but which has about $10M in revenues and argues that the revenues alone are sufficient to establish notability. He later makes an assumption "that such a person would have a sufficient number of mentions in the financial and or social press". I can think of a number of counter-examples to this assumption. Many companies are able report revenues of a mere $10 M and yet have no significant mention in any independent press. Jeff is correct in his concern about companies so small that only "one or two principals of the company would have any idea if some stated fact is true". According to Wikipedia:Verifiability, such "facts" must be removed. Our standard for inclusion is "verifability, not truth". Unless there is substantial coverage in the national independent press, there is again no way for the average reader/editor to verify the contents of the article. It doesn't matter how many millions or even billions they report for revenues. Until someone independent notices them and writes something, we have no sources to verify against.
The fundamental disagreement may be best summarized in Jeff's statement that "I do not see any harm in erring on the side of inclusiveness, while I see significant harm in erring on the side of exclusiveness." I and others, on the other hand, do see significant harm in erring on the side of unverifiability and very little harm in erring on the side of exclusiveness. We desperately need an efficient way to estimate whether or not we will be able to write and maintain a neutral and verifiable article on the business. Rossami (talk) 19:15, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
I added "The company is cited in at least 10 other articles." to the list of criteria. Generally it there are red links, it is OK to add an article. I just picked the number 10 to avoid the case where someone wants to create a mention just to be able to create the article. Don't know if the number 10 is reasonable. I think 1 is too low, but if someone suggested 3-5 I would not have a problem supporting that. Vegaswikian 18:51, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
I would like to request for this page to be moved to a title that is less ludicrously long. R adiant _>|< 09:54, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
I'm generally in favor of setting the bar fairly low on notability. Continuing the criterion of verifiability will automatically eliminate a lot of the junk, like the neighborhood dry cleaner. Furthermore, corporate PR people turning their own press releases into Wikipedia articles is a different problem, one that could occur with regard to any company still lacking an article. (There are several red links on our list of Fortune 500 companies. An advertisement written up as an article for one of them surely couldn't be deleted for nonnotability under any sensible criteria.)
So, putting aside the articles that are unverifiable or puffery, do people perceive a problem with a significant number of current articles? Can someone give examples of existing articles that should be deleted? JamesMLane 23:38, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
I'm currently defending Everything Linux from being deleted, and used guideline #4 - "The company holds more than a 20% share in the market area that it competes in." to back up my claim. I was brushed off by User:ScottDavis, who said "Guideline 4 can be met by almost any corner shop for a suitably narrow definition of "market area"." It just makes me wonder, what is the point of the guideline if it can just be ignored. (By the way - the market area in this case was the entire population of Australia.)
(Also, there aren't any published market share figures for the market the company is in (the Australian online Linux retail industry) but a quick, informal poll (see AfD page above) shows that 60%+ of Australian Linux users named Everything Linux first when asked to name an Australian online Linux store.) -- Chuq 12:30, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
There's currently a debate going on over a group deletion I've proposed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Various "Mills". Regardless of the outcome of that particular AFD, I think it's important for Wikipedia to set some clear and explicit standards for the inclusion or exclusion of individual locations of a larger chain. We'd all probably agree that McDonalds as a company is clearly notable but most individual McDonalds stores clearly aren't. But what about individual malls that are part of a chain. Or each of the dozens of Six Flags amusement parks, or each of the Hard Rock Cafes?...
Where does it cross the line to being the stuff of advertizing or business directories? Blackcats 07:38, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
The above question started out on the topic of shopping malls. Mills is one of the larger companies that owns shopping malls. The AfD debate is should each mall only be listed in the Mills Corporation article or can each one get an article. So my question is, should the effort here include guidelines for listing shopping malls? They are basically a company though not listed that way. If the concensus is yes, then what criteria should be used? There may already be a concensus that if you include an article on a specific mall, individual major stores or ones of special interest can be listed but should not be linked except to the chain article. Vegaswikian 17:16, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
We currently have about 800,000 articles.
In an Encyclopedia, what proportion of the articles should be devoted to companies and corporations?
A search on the word "Corporation" in Encyclopedia Britannica and eyeballing the results seems to show roughly 120 articles devoted to individual corporations. (Others are, of course, touched on in biographies). Let's double that to account for ones I might have overlooked. That's 240. In other words, a lot more than are in the Dow Jones index, but less than are in the S&P 500. Articles on corporations account for no more than 0.1% to 0.2% of the Britannica's content.
If we apply the same proportion to Wikipedia, we ought to have about 750 to 1500 articles on individual corporations.
Unless someone has a well-articulated explanation of exactly why Wikipedia needs to have a much higher (or much lower) proportion of corporation articles in its mix than other encyclopedias do, as a starting point we should set a bar that will result in including very roughly that number of articles.
(Or, we should have a well-articulated explanation of exactly why corporations should be a higher fraction of the mix in Wikipedia than they are in other encyclopedias).
So, before I vote, I'd like to see an estimate of how many companies would be included under the proposed guidelines. Dpbsmith (talk) 00:57, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
If we start throwing out verifiable information because we think it is not interesting, I am quite sure that within our lifetime there will be people who curse us for throwing away information that, if kept, would have been priceless to someone. Look at what historians pour over. It is not the things that the people in past times thought were 'notable', it is the minutie of life. Please, don't do this. Allow anything that is verifiable. Trollderella 18:26, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
I am baffled, after everything that I have said, that you think that I am advocating relaxing our standards of verifiability. Why would you think that I am advocating an article on a laundromat in Cleveland? That's a complete misrepresentation of what I am saying. Your laundromat is not verifiable without original research. We agree. It is not verifiable. If we ever get past the strawman 'well, if you don't believe in notability then you must want an article about this laundromat', then maybe we can have a discussion. Trollderella 19:25, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
It seems from the criteria, that the issues that people are worried about are a) self promotion, b) speculation. I would suggest that simply insisting that any company or product that as several neutral (non advertising, not the company itself) sources that can be verified and referenced should go it. I think that that would be the same thing that most people mean when they say 'notable', and does not need a new rule. It's one that we already have. Trollderella 18:30, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
This policy seems to reflect superseded ideas on importance. It sets the bar far higher than is applied in practice and is wildly inconsistent with the policies for other things. Why does a company need 1,000,000 customers when a band needs to sell just 5,000 albums I believe. And Walmart doesn't meet the 20% market share criteria! But as it is having little or no effect on article retention, I can't be bothered with the hassle of fighting deletionists to get it changed. CalJW 00:05, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
Why is it that a great deal of thoughtful and productive discussion was removed when this guideline relpaced [[Wikipedia talk:Notability (organizations}]]? Are we supposed to re-fight all battles fought there which had unresolved issues? Or should I copy and paste the discussion I am interested in from there? Was the merge process supposed to discard the discussion, or was it done incorrectly? I did not see notice of the proposed merge, and if it means loss of the discussion, I suggest we undo it. Is there a consensus for such an action? This guideline may fit businesses, but it does not fir organizations that well, and there is loss of a great deal of collaborative editing. Edison 22:12, 3 February 2007 (UTC)