User:Siroxo/How to fix NORG AFDs

NORG is vital but failing us. First I want to get it out of the way. I'm not advocating removing WP:NORG/NCORP. (Please read that again, I am not advocating removing this notability guideline)

We need NORG/NCORP

I've been working heavily in AFD for the last couple months (lots of prior experience, but this has been a true deep dive). We clearly need NCORP. The amount of promotional articles that we get that can make reasonable arguments for meeting WP:GNG is immense, and almost none of the bad ones meet NCORP. A couple I've seen have been HEYed to meet NCORP, creating better, more NPOV articles. NCORP is vital for a corner of Wikipedia.

The problem

NCORP has some side-effects. The problem here is multi-faceted. I'm going to explain it via 4 short case studies.

1. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/TNT Fireworks. This is a company with a history of over 100 years. We had a weak but not hopelessly promotional article and it was clear the subject met GNG. By removing the article, we make it much harder for casual editors to improve our coverage of this company, as by jumping in on this article, they'll need to get it to NCORP levels pretty fast. We have a hole in our coverage that is hard to remedy.

2. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Valnet Inc. A difficult discussion. This content farm/holding company has been purchasing up smaller outlets for a decade, with a massive acceleration over the past few years, a decent amount (but still surprisingly small) amount has been documented in RS, the subject meets GNG. (They're incidentally a thorn in the side of Wikipedians because they inevitably make the sources they buy less reliable.) They have stayed under the "NCORP" radar in that there's not a lot of CORPDEPTH SIRS sources on them.

3. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hush Records. This is a tiny indie record label with an outsized impact on the Portland music scene, and the indie music scene as a whole. They have launched the careers of The Decemberists and many other artists. They have also helped create a catalog of sounds that even 15 years later people (yes, me) still think in awe about. Again, this label will probably meet GNG, but possibly not NCORP.

4. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/ImportGenius. This is a well-known source of data. It is heavily cited, but there's very little CORPDEPTH material. Not having coverage of this well known data company would be a gap. Closed as no-consensus but we had a good ATD in discussion. more on this later.

See the problem? Draw this brush against 100s or 1000s of AFD discussions, and we have gaps in our encyclopedia. Gaps that we either didn't used to have, or gaps that someone was trying to plug, but the effective-yet-blunt tool of NORG prevents us from remedying those gaps.

There is a solution, but we don't do it yet

There is a solution to this, and it's to merge these into concept articles. Either broad concept articles or even more narrowly focused concept articles.

1. TNT Fireworks could be part of a Fireworks industry in the United States article.

2. Valnet Inc. could probably find a home in Media conglomerates or something similar.

3. Hush Records (and several other portland indie labels) could be part of a Indie music scene in Portland, Oregon or something like that.

4. ImportGenius could be part of Trade data, a natural fit for the topic.

So why don't I be BOLD and do all this? Well, first off, a merge into a concept article is not a well-established alternative to deletion. Usually consensus merge targets are relatively precise.

Second off, AFDs are a timely event. Yes, if the consensus is to merge there's not a true deadline to complete the merge, but people think in terms of work that can be done right after the AFD expires. This type of merge takes a little extra work, it might actually require research and sourcing if creating a new concept article. We don't have an incubation area for that work. We have Drafts or Userspace, but not a "collaborative merge draft space".

Thirdly, with this type of merge there is a risk of WP:UNDUE and a related risk of WP:COATRACK. We need a way of letting the merge take some time to iron out those issues.

I think we need an explicit ATD callout that suggests this type of "incubated concept merge". This ATD avoids the risk of promotional "company profile" articles, so we don't even need the call out to have exceptions itself.

But we can already do this

Yes but we don't. Let's make it easier for all editors to do this, whether or not they're part of AFD discussions.

So while the ATD callout is necessary, I think we might need some sort of WikiProject or something to facilitate the action. I've been here a while but I took a long break so I'm not really up to date on how to make something like this work.