User talk:Dtompos

Welcome!

Hello, Dtompos, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions, especially your edits to Product testing. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few links to pages you might find helpful:

• Introduction and Getting started
• Contributing to Wikipedia
• The five pillars of Wikipedia
• How to edit a page and How to develop articles
• How to create your first article
• Simplified Manual of Style

Please remember to sign your messages on talk pages by typing four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or click here to ask for help here on your talk page and a volunteer will visit you here shortly. Again, welcome! Blue Rasberry (talk) 20:00, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Hello, I work for a product testing organization too. Wikipedia's rules at WP:EL disallow external links to websites except in the case of an official link on an organizations' own page. I removed your link for that reason. I would love to have your help in developing the article on product testing if you are a professional in the field, though. I saw the article you made on NTA Inc. It is my expectation that whenever it gets reviewed it will be proposed for deletion immediately. All information on Wikipedia has to come from published sources not written by the subject of the article. You have two sentences in that page which have sources, so all the rest of the text could go at any time. It would be useful if you deleted all the text for which you have no source yourself.

Thanks for your attention. Let me know if you want to collaborate on something. Blue Rasberry (talk) 20:04, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of NTA (company)

The article NTA (company) has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

no satisfactory 3rd party evidence for notability

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. DGG ( talk ) 00:19, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Hi User:DGG, I've been working with User:Wscribner who is an employee of User:Dtompos (either the current CEO or the original CEO of the company -- I was never clear on whether this User:Dtompos was the father or one of the sons). Please see User_talk:Wscribner#not-so-arbitrary_section_break_.2C_for_discussion_of_wiki-notability, they have removed your PROD-tag per "WP:NORUSH" which I suppose is as valid a reason as any. I have tasked them with looking for offline sources and such, some weeks ago, which may exist, but it is slow going. p.s. User:Dtompos has not been active since May, that I am aware. Nevermind, see contribs. Best, 75.108.94.227 (talk) 13:42, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

User:Dtompos, as well as Eric Tompos, are the sons of the founder of the company, David R. Tompos.Wscribner (talk) 13:48, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

howdy

Hello, Dtompos, thanks for making a userpage. I am at your disposal if you have any questions or concerns. I've been working with User:Wscribner, whom I believe you are familiar with in real life? 75.108.94.227 (talk) 13:44, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I know User:Wscribner in real life. She is an employee of NTA (company). I am the President and CEO. I appreciate all the guidance you have been giving. Dtompos (talk) 14:10, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

No problem, you are welcome. Sorry wikipedia is a pain. Has User:Wscribner explained that, as the CEO, you should not be directly editing NTA_(company), or the pages related to it, such as Flammability? Same goes for employees/friends/family/etc doing it at your behest. You, and they, are always welcome (within reason o'course) to make suggestions on Talk:NTA_(company) and on Talk:Flammability, per the instructions I left for Wscribner.

  Second question, related to the first, is it clear that wikipedia is supposed to be an actual encyclopedia, and therefore only encyclopedic subject-matter is allowed? Specifically, that means sentences have to be in a neutral just-the-facts tone (not promotional nor biased), and backed up by wiki-reliable sources (newspapers/TV/magazines/books/academia/governmental/etc), plus that without sources material can get merged/deleted/etc? Most of this seems pretty basic, but wikipedia has pretty strict standards -- nothing like Britannica standards but still reasonably strict. At present, a *dedicated* article on NTA-the-company is unlikely to survive a deletion-or-merge-discussion, in particular, though as time goes by and more sources are found, that could easily change. But generally speaking, although the standards are poorly communicated and often haphazardly applied -- that the rules about sourcing, and 'significant' sourcing aka in-depth press-coverage, does all that stuff make sense to you?

  Also worth skimming over is WP:5, which says that wikipedia is an encyclopedia, tries to stay neutral, no copyright violation (which means no cut-n-paste from stuff that is "copyright NTA" ... write fresh sentences from scratch for wikipedia-purposes), and that folks here are always supposed to keep calm cool and collected. Plus last but not least, if any rule is messing up the encyclopedia-as-an-encyclopedia, breaking that rule is okay, which is a tricky but essential part of the wikipedia experience. Let me know if you have problems or concerns about this stuff, and I can try to explain the ropes. Also, of course, Wscribner has had the long version of this talk. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 15:03, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

I won't be making any more changes. I wasn't aware of all the rules. I don't have a problem just stating the facts about our company. But I do think it's important that we have a page because we label products to protect consumers and Wikipedia could be one place the public goes to understand why our name is on a product. We do the same thing as UL (safety organization) or Intertek but we are much smaller so we aren't in the news much.

I have made some comments on the situation of my talk page, at this edit. DGG ( talk ) 17:35, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia is a strange place, Dtompos; we have a lot of problems with realworld-important charities getting deleted, because they focus on charity-work rather that getting their founder on television. We have a lot of problems with realworld-important software applications (e.g. not just business-to-business products like eDAPIA ... but even stuff used by hundreds of thousands of people) which fail wiki-notability, again because the people behind the software concentrate more on making great software, than on getting into the newspapers. NTA is in a similar position: you have spent your time and efforts with a focus on making the company the best that it can be, and satisfying customers, and that hurts you when it comes to wiki-notability. Unlike 'encyclopedic' subjects such as ceaselessly-self-promotional Paris Hilton (sigh), NTA might get deleted in 2015 as failing to prove wiki-notability.

  Now, this is just hypothetical at the moment. Technically, what will happen upon 'deletion' is that NTA_(company) will be moved to Draft:NTA_(company), where Wscribner and myself and any other interested folks can continue to improve it, adding press-coverage and scientific-papers and such, as they are discovered (or for future ones, as they are published). As a person from a pure academia background, DGG is a bit of a hardliner when it comes to sourcing: he does not recognize the distinction between a piece of legit journalism stemming from what was originally a company-published-press-release, and something which is a straight-up-republication-of-a-press-release. So, if it ends up that User:DGG decides to put NTA up for a deletion-or-move-to-draftspace-discussion, next week there will be some wikipedia-discussions of whether NTA is "truly notable" or not, which is to say, wiki-notable. That has nothing to do with real-world notability, nor with real-world importance, unfortunately. All that matters is press-coverage (and how that press-coverage is interpreted according to the strange byzantine wiki-rules).

  NTA is currently in the position of being a company with unclear wiki-notability. The point of the discussion, whether it happens formally at the WP:AFD pages or informally here on usertalk-pages, will be to decide *how* well the wiki-notability has been proven. At present, there is one reasonably solid source, the South Bend Tribune newspaper piece from 2009. That's not enough for a keep-the-article decision, in my experience; we need at least two more independent-third-party in-depth sources like that, from different publishers, in different years. The best way to improve the chances that NTA_(company) will be kept, is to search for some older sources. Ask the founders if they have a scrapbook of newspaper clippings; see if somebody in the marketing department has kept track of times when NTA was given multiple paragraphs of prose, in publications across the years (governmental / academia / television / radio / newspapers / etc). Has to be as independent from the company as possible, but does not have to be on the web: microfiche is just as useful.

  The reason that I mention these gory details, is that although you will no longer be personally contributing to the article yourself, you have a business-decision to make, in terms of the wikipedia page about NTA. Over the next couple of weeks, the page NTA_(company) will need to get some additional sources beyond what Wscribner and I have found, or the NTA_(company) article will be deleted and the contents moved to wikipedia-draftspace, which is not indexed by search-engines. So it is a fairly straightforward cost-benefit analysis: if you think having the wikipedia page is valuable,[1] then it makes sense to spend some money and some time hunting for old newspaper clippings, and doing internet searches of the publications in scholarly journals that NTA has been involved with, and running them by myself and DGG to test wiki-reliability. However, note well that this work may *not* end up with the article on NTA being retained in the mainspace of wikipedia. In some cases, *NO* amount of press-coverage is enough; all wikipedians are human, and suffer from bias, conscious or unconscious. So I cannot guarantee success, even if you and Wscribner come up with five more independent in-depth sources about NTA, in newspapers/etc. It is a probabilistic thing: with just the South Bend Tribune of 2009 and the NREL paper, that we have already, there is about a 10% chance of wikipedia keeping the article. With two more in-depth pieces (say from the company-founding in the 1970s and from a new building expansion in the 1980s or something), we have a fighting chance of 50/50 or so. With four more in-depth pieces, and the good faith behavior that you and Wscribner have shown, the chances are more like 80% or even 90% that the article on NTA_(company) will be kept.

  Anyways, my apologies that wikipedia is such a byzantine bunch of crazy rules. Please don't be offended when people say obviously-rude things ("NTA not notable" / "that source is pure PR" / "you must be a spammer" / "your dog is ugly"). This is wikipedia, so the discourse here is ever so *slightly* higher than in other websites, but this is still the internet.  :-)     Keep 100% cool and polite at all times, no matter what anybody says to you; ask questions of myself or at WP:TEAHOUSE if you are unsure about anything (or just have concerns/etc), concentrate on digging up the WP:SOURCES that will help prove wiki-notability, and stay up-front and honest -- which is of course, why myself and DGG are trying to help out. Finally, if it ends up that wiki-notability is too difficult or expensive to demonstrate during the next couple of weeks, all is not lost; we have some press-coverage, enough to briefly mention NTA in a sentence or two, at the article about certification listings, or a similarly-appropriate location. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 22:52, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Here is a list of some things I found. There are a couple publications, some news articles. I assume our federal government is a good source. Are National Trade organizations notable? Let me know if I'm on the right track.

Dtompos (talk) 02:54, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

Nomination of NTA (company) for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article NTA (company) is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/NTA (company) until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. John from Idegon (talk) 04:12, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

Please see advice here, User_talk:Wscribner#discussion_of_the_new_information_above 75.108.94.227 (talk) 15:06, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

Update on status, ping User:Wscribner so they can read this as well. Note that I'm glossing over some 'technical' things here, to keep this message short. So currently, the AfD discussion has been open for a week, which means that it can be closed at any time, by a wikipedia admin. The closing-admin will look over the comments, and try to figure out which commentary is most closely hewing to the wikipedia-policies, specifically wiki-notability which is often shortened to WP:42. As I've mentioned before, wiki-notability is almost entirely tied to independent in-depth press-coverage. According to my wiki-eyes, the current status of the expanded reflist is borderline-wiki-notable aka questionably-proven-wiki-notability. We have some refs, and some depth, but the overall demonstration of passing WP:42 is a bit marginal at the moment, according to strict application of the wiki-laws. The best refs found so far are:

• the sbTrib'09 newspaper piece (which has reasonable depth-of-coverage but suffers from being a local newspaper)
• the DeStefano'12 academic journal piece (which suffers because it has only so-so depth)
• the Tompos&Frosch'02 thesis follow-up (which has decent scholar.google.com cite-count but which suffers from little depth specifically about NTA)
• the various mentions by governmental agencies (which suffer because they have only minor depth, except when considered in aggregate)

There are a couple more newspaper-hits from 2009, about the work done by the BYU folks, but again depth-of-coverage is a problem: NTA is mentioned in one sentence, or two sentences, but not multiple paragraphs specifically about NTA. We also have trade-rag coverage (industry-specific niche publishers like WoodallsCM.com for instance), but those tend to have less impact on wiki-notability.

  Usually, this count of sources would not be enough to demonstrate wiki-notability, which by wiki-tradition (though not written in any policy-pages) suggests that the normal threshold is to have three distinct 100% independent WP:SOURCES, each with in-depth coverage specifically about NTA. By my count, honed over long hours participating in AfD discussions, we strictly only have either one-and-a-half sources, or maybe two sources in aggregate. The reason that I can still wiki-honourably bangvote as "Weak Keep" for the article, is because the coverage is from many disparate *sectors* of the publication universe: construction industry trade-rags , standards-making bodies , governmental agencies , civil engineering academia, and general readership newspapers. It will help greatly if additional coverage can be dug up, for instance, in printed magazines and printed newspapers which may not yet be available on the internet. Depth is key here: a couple sentences of coverage, won't make a difference in terms of wiki-notability, so don't bother hunting for refs which are just namedrops, multiple paragraphs specifically about NTA or the Tompos/Norkus families are what is needed (preferably in general-readership publications with a large publication). The goal is to demonstrate, to the closing-admin, sufficient notice by independent journalists/professors/bureaucrats/etc, so that they can see WP:GNG has been satisfied; it is not necessary to convince *everybody* because the discussion is not a vote (see WP:NOTVOTE).

  It is hard to predict what the AfD outcome will be; whether it ends up as "draftify" (i.e. temporary removal of the NTA_(company) article and redirecting the current URL to some other article), or as a "no consensus" for deletion (which means that the article will stay in mainspace but can be re-nominated for deletion at a later point in time). Mostly it will depend on what other experienced wikipedians say at the AfD discussion... and somewhat surprisingly, not many folks have commented there. Unfortunately, the AfD process can be stressful, and uncertainty is high, partly due to the purposely-ambiguous wiki-policies, and partly due to the sporadic nature of participation. My recommendation is still unchanged -- that you and Wscribner continue to do as you have been doing, watching the discussion, and trying to dig up additional refs, especially newspaper-clippings and magazine-clippings from the 1970s/1980s/1990s, which are just as useful as on-the-internet refs. Let me know if you have questions/concerns/whatever, by leaving me a note on my userpage, and I'll try to explain further. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 00:26, 6 November 2015 (UTC)