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Proposed text for a merged and simplified page - Organizations & Companies

NOTABILITY OF ORGANIZATIONS & COMPANIES

An organization or company, as defined below, is notable if it meets one or more of the following criteria:


1. The organization has had a substantial and demonstrable effect on culture, society, entertainment, athletics, economies, history, literature, science, or education.

  • Please consider not only the importance of the organization, but also the importance of its effect including how it affects a culture, discipline or industry.
  • By nature large organizations are more likely to be notable; however, smaller organizations can be notable just as individuals can be notable.


2. The organization has been the subject of multiple non-trivial published works. In all cases the neutrality, independence, and credibility of the source should be considered.

  • Examples of Published Works can be in many forms of media, such as newspapers, periodicals, books, television, published reports by governmental and other organizations, and credible web-sources.
  • Specific Exclusions of Published Sources are: press releases, advertising and quotes of press releases or advertising in independent articles. Interviews or other sources where the organization talks about itself are not to be considered independent. Published notices, such as articles or lists that simply show: shopping hours, telephone numbers and addresses are considered trivial.

DEFINITION OF ORGANIZATIONS & COMPANIES

These guidelines should be applied to any group of people interacting for a purpose commercial, charitable, social, or otherwise constitute an organization, this includes: charities, religions, clubs, companies, corporations, partnerships, societies, chains, franchises, etc. 

 Please note that I would move discussions of products and services, and issues of special cases to other pages (if there is merit to the special case).  There is already
 a separate page which displays and discusses precedents; I believe that examples discussing specific criteria such as indices etc.
 should be featured there, otherwise we have potential for redundancy, conflict, and confusion.  I believe that this format is simple, clear, and concise; furthermore it
 allows the combination of two somewhat redundant pages: "Companies and Corporations" and "Organizations."

Kevin Murray 21:15, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

I really disapprove of extending this in any way, because it's such a bad way of establishing notability, especially, as WP:CORP is often used, to try and do so at gunpoint. This encourages people to put articles about organisations they do not know about on AfD, and finding good sources to fulfil the "published works" criteria (as opposed to any old crap which might just sway some voters) takes time, especially if offline research is required. It's also really bad for systemic bias, as references are going to be a lot easier to come by for a US company or organisation than they are for, say, an Algerian one. I realise it's trying to create a universal standard, but it's really just arbitrary - stuff that shouldn't get kept gets kept if a decent newspaper article or website happens to be easily available, where stuff that should be kept gets deleted if no one happens to be around that week with access to a decent library and the time to go through it. Rebecca 21:32, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
I wholly agree with Rebecca that the notability guidelines are often poorly applied; however, I'm hoping that simplification and clarification makes it a lesser evil. Since there are already guidelines for Organizations, this is not extending, just condensing. Kevin Murray 21:46, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
I realise that, but this guideline is a bad one, and I'd rather its damage be limited to corporations only. Rebecca 23:10, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
I think you're overreacting, Rebecca ... ANY article that I read here, I'm going to look for some WP:V and WP:RS fodder to back it up. If someone wants to start work on an article that has no references at hand (not even print ones), then it ought to be under their user namespace until they can "back it up." David Spalding (☎ ✉ ✍)
I'm not talking about articles where the content itself is disputed - I'm talking about cases where there is no real dispute over the content, but where - as here - sources are being requested to "prove" notability. And I'm getting sick of certain areas being singled out for disproportionate attention in this area - a vast majority of articles on Wikipedia are unsourced, but it's only those that certain deletionists can't get a consensus to delete on notability grounds that seem to get targeted in these witchhunts. Rebecca 23:10, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
I started to really sniff at the criteria under 1., as I don't see how an objective criteria -- yardstick -- can be found to determine if a company, corporation, or organization has had "a substantial and demonstrable effect on culture, society, entertainment, athletics, economies, history, literature, science, or education" without any reliable sources or citations. Granted, you let criteria 2 suffice, as well, but I think 1 needs some work, or demoted below 2. A good test is Jennifer Ann's Group which has had questional "effect" but has been at least mentioned in teh news twice. Is it notable? Good question.... Other than my complaint about #1, I like your text, and concur with the merge effort. David Spalding (☎ ✉ ✍) 21:51, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
David, I agree with you about the fallibility of item 1 as being too subjective – maybe we can find a solution together. I originally had it as number 2; however, I thought that moving it to number one created a better opening to emphasize that editors can use some judgment. One of my concerns is that some novice editors, with the best of intent, are applying the letter of the rules without looking at the spirit of the rules. Kevin Murray 22:04, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
Exactly my concern, a lot of editors -- and not just the li'l sprouts -- are pointing at policies and guidelines and using them for mayhem and censuring. Examples: wholesale page moves of film/tv pages, refusal to allow links to certain sites, blah blah blah. I think an easier criteria is your second, ("got cites? you got an article. no cites? welcome to CsD, population: you"), since a citation or two or three are easier to check than someone's alleged claims of notability or "impact." Again I point at that page where the author is the founder of the group, the father of the victim and of course an expert authority in how much impact his group has had (and he's effectively oblivious to those who cited WP:COI). Citations and third party references have been much, much, much (yawn) slower in coming. I'd move our "easy criteria" up to #1. David Spalding (☎ ✉ ✍) 23:02, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
We're still getting caught up in trying to tie notability in with referencing, which really are two separate issues. If you want to know how notable, say, a church in one state is, asking people in another state is a good way of roughly ascertaining the impact of that particular church. On the other hand, tying verifiability into it means that people who have no clue whether something is notable or not are making a very bad guess depending on what someone manages to frantically turn up during the deletion period. Rebecca 23:10, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
Magnificent and tactful job of condensation. I assume these are guidelines, because there are exceptions in both a positive and negative sense. For example an interview with a particular important trade publication may be independent, reliability coming from the reputation of the interviewer. (I am NOT suggesting this as a specific change to the text above, just as an example. )
What I do suggest is that we need some guidelines for notability of parent vs. branches, as quite a lot of fighting takes place over this. and perhaps you will be able to do this next in such a way that it will have general applicability. DGG 04:02, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
Note, these two comments have been copied from the parallel discussion at Notability Organizations. --Kevin Murray 00:32, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Looks good to me, but I think it would be useful to take a look at WP:FICT and add a paragraph to state that (depending on article size, amount of avaible information, and resemblance to similar articles) information about products by some company may be best represented in merged list articles, rather than separate articles for each product or type. >Radiant< 16:12, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Good start, but because different forms of organizations have different charateristics, allowances must be made for criteria that are broad, but not universal. One size does not fit all. For example, a corporation might be listed on a major stock exchange, whereas a charity will not. Because of that, it would be appropriate to include criteria that might be specific to a corporation but not a charity, and vice versa. Consideration also ought to be given to the size of the organization (be it membership, employees, number of branches, etc.); length of operation (longevity); size of budget; whether or not a charitable-type organization is registered with its national tax authority as a charity (or similar); notable "alumni", sponsors, or chairpeople; acheivements; nature of operations; size of events it operates, sponsors, or organizes; role in historical events; etc. Credence also ought to be given to the impact or notability of an organization within a region of significant size or population (i.e. a subdivision of a federal state; a major world city; etc.). Agent 86 19:36, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

I'll repeat my earlier objection to the page name: don't use redundant legalistic phrases like "organizations and companies". Considering that the text defines organizations to include companies anyway, and considering the unlikeliness of someone claiming that their company is exempt from the rule because it's not an organization, the name should refer to "organizations" only.

This gets even sillier considering that the section "definition of organizations and companies" has companies as part of the definition; you can't define something in terms of itself. Ken Arromdee 17:46, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Conclusion of Discussion It seems this topic has been well discussed in theory, it is time to make the choices: (a) merger or not, and (b) simplify or not. I propose that we wrap up the discussion by end of January and begin preparing the specific text with a goal of posting at the merged site by January 15. --Kevin Murray 14:52, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Stock market index criterion suggestion

This currently reads:

The company's or corporation's share price is used to calculate stock market indices. Being used to calculate an index that simply comprises the entire market is excluded.

This seems to be widely misread or misunderstood. Several AfDs quote a company as being listed on a stock market and reference this criterion as being sufficient to establish notability. Also, overly broad indices (still not necessarily full market indices) may be brought up as justification. With this is mind, I'd like to reword as so:

The company's or corporation's share price is used to calculate a major, managed stock market index. {{fn|4}}. Note: this is not the same as simply being listed on a stock market. The broader, or the more specialized, the index the less notability it establishes for the company. An index that simply comprises the whole market does not establish notability.

Thoughts? Akihabara 06:20, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Proposed tweak made above. See diff. Rossami (talk) 15:25, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

I've updated the text as discussed above, as I believe it is merely a clarification of existing policy and not particularly controversial. However I've kept the original first sentence instead of adding "major, managed". I'm not sure what managed means in this context (reviewed regularly perhaps - aren't they all?), and I think major is redundant with the clarifications added. Further such wording may exclude specialized yet narrow indices; say an index of 25 companies from the technology sector, which I am not sure we should exclude. Akihabara 22:55, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

"Managed" in this context has a specific meaning. The DJIA and S&P500 are "managed" in the sense that an editorial board researches and deliberately selects the stocks in the index. There are explicit selection criteria and the members of the index change with some regularity. An "unmanaged" index is one whose members do not change (other than through IPO or delisting of the stock) and is composed of essentially all members in that class. Specifying "managed" indices is part of ruling out the overly broad indices you first mentioned.
The intent of including the word "major" was to limit the list to only the reputable publishers of stock market indices. We should not expose ourselves to gamesmanship just because someone gets themselves listed in the Bob's Bait Shop & Brokerage Index.Rossami (talk) 04:31, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the clarification. Please update the text if you feel it is appropriate. Akihabara 09:58, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Criterion #2: Ranking Indices

A recent AfD has me questioning how people should interpret the second criterion for notability. The primary question I came up with is: What ranking indices count towards notability? The specific instance is that "the third largest law firm in the country" was given as argument for keeping an article that made no other assertion of notability. This was based on a reliable source that ranked law firms in that country based on employee count. The question that rose to my mind is that even the smallest firm could be ranked on that scale and therefore meet Criterion #2 (be listed on a ranking indice from a reliable source). When the rank is based on a criteria that does not filter notability, then is it notable just to exist and be counted? That's hardly the point of having notability criteria in the first place, right? Clearly this criterion was intended to encompass more notable rankings (such as Fortune 500 or the Best Places to Work list) that garner the attention of news organizations and the general public. I feel the wording for criterion #2 needs to be better stated or it's going to be used to draw in even the most mind-numbing corporations so long as reliable sources continue to index everything for public searchability. ju66l3r 21:21, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

See the discussion immediately above this one (which is resulting in some minor tweaks to the wording on the third criterion). As you note, any ranking by size is a listing of essentially all organizations in that class. It's presence on the list verifies the existence of the company but is a very poor argument for notability or for our ability to write a proper encyclopedia article. Criterion 2 was intended to refer to the major published rankings such as you describe and in fact, Fortune is listed as the primary example in the footnote to that criterion. I would argue that the qualifier "produced by well-known and independent publications" would probably exclude the minor indexes that you describe. On the other hand, we're always working to improve the wording of the page. Do you have a recommended improvement?
In this specific case, being third largest may be an indicator of notability regardless of the exact wording of the criterion. Being big is generally associated with having lots of news coverage. Unfortunately, rankings based on size have always been problematic for us - particularly size measured by employee count. As you note, any organization can be the largest in its class if you define the class narrowly enough. There is a great deal of difference between the third largest company in the world, the third largest retailer in the US, the third largest sporting goods store in the SouthWest US and the third largest bait shop in downtown Phoenix, AZ. (I'm not even sure there are three bait shops in Phoenix.) We've never been able to draw a clear line that gave any workable guidance based on the size of the company. I would consider "third largest" to be a reasonable argument to consider in a deletion discussion but not a definitive argument one way or the other. Rossami (talk) 22:33, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
Do I have a recommended improvement?: I didn't off the top of my head, but I have been giving it some thought. I would like to see something in the criterion or the footnote mention that the ranking indices should entail something more than a simple attribute (i.e., an attribute that simply existing bestows upon the company... like size, rather than an attribute the company has achieved...like market share or happy employees). If criterion#2 is reasonable but not definitive for something like "third largest" then maybe it might be clearer if the guideline spoke to the idea that #2 is less important than meeting #1 or #3 for notability. One idea may even be to switch #2 and #3, since forming a stock market index seems much more establishable and concrete an index than just "a ranking index". ju66l3r 05:40, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

BALLOT: Merger to Organizations & Companies

The ballot idea has been cancelled as a consensus of editiors feel that voting is not the WP way. I stand convinced. Please see discussion below. --Kevin Murray 16:21, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

In December I began a renewed discussion to merge Organizations with Companies and Corporations, and delete the term "corporation" from the title as it is a sub-class of company. In my mind a company is sub-class of Organization, but people seem to equate organization with non-profit, so "Company was kept for clarity.

In mid-January I suggested closing the discussion at the end of January '07 and move to a consensus, with the next goal being developing the text for the new combined page by mid-February.

BALLOT: Please express your opinion under the appropriate category.

  • Merge the pages:
  • Do not Merge the pages:
  • Six of One, Half Dozen of the Other I do not have a strong preference, as long as either solution results in and provides clearer criteria and recognizes that not all "organizations" are the same. If I have to pick, it may be easier to have separate policies for the larger groupings (i.e. one for corporations/businesses/companies, one for charities/non-profits, another for social/fraternal/community groups). It would help avoid the pitfalls of a "one size fits all" policy and would help avoid having a really long policy/guideline page. That said, there's no reason it could not be covered off in a single page as long as it's well organized and recognizes the differences. (And whatever the result, I'd like to see better criteria than over-reliance on external media.) Agent 86 20:44, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
  • It seems that from this comment and others you have a concern about the external media criteria as being too restrictive. In a way I agree, but without external source material, how can we avoid the issue of "primary research"? I have no problem with specific inclusion criteria, but for example if a company qualifies because it is Fortune 500, how do you write the article without (1)citing independent sources, (2) rely on non-independent sources, or (3) performing primary research? --Kevin Murray 21:31, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
  • I think that we disagree only slightly in the "one size fits all" issue. While I agree that special circimstances need to be acknowledged, I'd prefer that we have "precedents" page(s) rather than an overly detailed notability criteria page. --Kevin Murray 21:31, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Note: The ballot has been modified to address the concerns of Agent86 and TheronJ (below).

Note: I've been contacted by the coordinator for the Organizations Project. I am pasting his comments here:

  • Hi Kevin. I've not yet read into this merger thing you've been talking about with Companies & Organizations, but I think it definitely falls within the scope of the Organizations WikiProject. I need a few good coordinators to help me, if you pardon the pun, organize the project. Oldsoul 18:30, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Hey thanks for your in-depth reply. After reading through some of those pages you've talked about, I realized how superfluous a lot of those debates have become. Instead of focusing on the micro analyzation of policy, we should all be focusing on the meta-framework for all organizations on wikipedia. Which is exactly what I aim to foster over at the WikiProject mentioned above. I hope you'll find time to read through some of our discussions there, and consider join as a project coordinator. Best, Oldsoul 20:26, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Do I consider corporations to be a subset of organizations? Yes. In my mind, they are by definition, a type of business organization. Yourself? Oldsoul 21:04, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
  • It's good to know that there is some consensus on that. Thanks, and look forward to working with you on the Project. Oldsoul 21:23, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

END OF QUOTE

Discussion

  • No Vote. I do not think it is appropriate to have a "vote" on this matter. First, it is not clear what we are "voting" on, although I assume that this is the form proposed. There are several suggestions posted above and in the talk page for Wikipedia talk:Notability (organizations) that are not reflected in the proposal. The proposed wording that I think we are "voting" for is too broad and vague in the first section and has too much emphasis on external publications. I do not think we need to restrict the guideline to language that covers anything that could be considered an organization or company; in fact, it should reflect the fact that a charity is different from a company is different from a society is different from an institution. Agent 86 03:32, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
  • The vote is to accept the proposal to MERGE: "with the goal of developing the text for the new combined page by mid-February."
  • It seems like we have stagnated in the discussion and need some division between discussing the IF and the HOW. Perhaps I have been to vague and will try to make the issue more clear. Thanks! --Kevin Murray 03:59, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
  • To clarify I made the choices "merge ..." or "do not merge ...". Is this better? --Kevin Murray 04:03, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment. If the merge happens the name should be 'Companies and organizations'. If consensus is that companies are a subset of organizations, then just use organizations in the title and explain that it includes companies and corporations in the introduction. Vegaswikian 00:20, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

No vote I favor merging, but if the discussion "stagnated," then it's time for an admin to call it a draw, win, lose, whatever. WP policies are clear, we do not vote here, we reach consensus. In cases where no clear consensus is reached, the action is to leave it be. Calling for a vote just is not the way. Just my two cents. David Spalding (☎ ✉ ✍) 14:32, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Ballot idea - Bad idea! Sorry. Now several people here and at my talk page have said that taking a "vote" is not the WP style. I feel that the participants in the discussion have had adequate opportunity to comment and the comments run from "just do it" to "Six of One, Half Dozen of the Other," so lets do it since there seems to be no clear objection and the merge tag has been at Organization for months. --Kevin Murray 15:42, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

  • I believe the merge is a good idea, and that such editing actions need not be voted upon. Be WP:BOLD. >Radiant< 15:43, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
  • I said above that the merger was probably a good idea. Haven't changed my mind. As Radiant said, be bold. Rossami (talk) 23:32, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Undo the merge It was performed without a consensus 2 days after the discussion was opened. Many editors (such as myself) might have had input if a reasonable time such as five days had been provided for comment, I see some support for the merg, by the proposer Kevin Murray, by David Spalding, by Radiant, and by Rossami. Agent 86 sounds doubtful and I am doubtful. So far, there is clearly no consensus, so it should be left unmerged for at least a five day discussion period. Edison 22:50, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
  • You had plenty of opportunity to be heard: (a) the merger tag was added to the article in Sept. 2006, (b) discussion has been ongoing since then, (c) discussion was combined to one location in December to avoid redundant debate, this was noteda t the other talk page, (d) notes were put at both articles in mid January that a decision would be called for at the end of January, (e) notices were sent to all editors who participated in the merger discussion (f) a consensus was formed among the recent participating editors, with only moderate objection from one participant. I believe that we had prior objections from one editor Rebecca, who did not respond recently; her objection seemed to be to having either page, rather than protecting the separation. --Kevin Murray 00:33, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Merger Perfomed

I merged the proposals. I tried to eliminate redundancies between the articles and among the included sections by having one section at the beginning which states the common criteria, then stated the specific conditions for automatic notabiliyt etc. in special sections referenced from the table of contents. I treied to simplify but strengthen the note regarding advertising in the preface. Of course I understand that my attempt will be limited by my frame of reference and understanding. Cheers! --Kevin Murray 17:34, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Notability of Wineries

Editors of the Wine Project are having a discussion over on the talk page of WP:WINEGUIDE about the notability of wineries that would merit an article. One editor proposes that all wineries are notable, while another editor and myself do think that WP:CORP tempers that though I don't think we can do a cut and dry application at least with the way that WP:CORP is written. We would appreciate any input or additional perspective by editors who are more familiar with dealing with this guideline and business articles to chim in with their views. Thanks Agne 19:54, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

  • In California, where I live, wineries are more prolific than body shops, though some people think that the use of one product can lead to demand for the other. To the point, why should wineries receive notablility greater than any other company? On the other hand, wine is a topic of broad interest and WP can provide a meaningful service by providing verifiable information, without being overly restrictive on the notabillity criteria. --Kevin Murray 22:07, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I've added the section on notability to the essay itself. In dwelling on WP:CORP, I honestly think it is too lax in regards to wineries since many of what I would consider distinctly non-notable wineries could merit an article based on being written about in multiple non-trivial sources. So I proposed some more defined parameters and I would like to get some input. Thanks! Agne 22:20, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

  • I think your comments about the laxity of the guideline isn't limited to wineries. This is one of the many things I am trying to put my mind to in the broader scheme of the guideline; hopefully, others are too. Agent 86 22:34, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
I don't think there is a general "overall" problem of laxity but rather the difficulties in the cookie-cutter approach to all types of businesses and organizations. As a baseline level of notability, it is okay but I think when you have a case of a lot of businesses doing the same thing (like wineries), you need a finer criteria to distinguish the notable ones from the non-notable ones. When you have an area that is very specialized in a niche sort of way, then there needs to a different level of criteria that takes into account the notability of the specialized area as well as the individual business.Agne 22:45, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Changed to proposed guideline

While there was consensus to merge the two separate guidelines, I do not think that there was consensus as to the content of the guidelines. There is still a lot of discussion to be had as to the acceptability of the criteria, as was set out in the talk pages of both guidelines before the merge. Agent 86 22:45, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

  • 86, I agree; however, it was impossible to merge without modifying the text in some way. I agree with the tag you added though; thanks. --Kevin Murray 22:53, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
  • I tried to reduce redundancy but still keep all of the information and include the spirit of the streamlined text from December (popular), without eliminating the old text, so where there was an overlap, I left the old text. It seems as though we needed some starting point. --Kevin Murray 22:53, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
  • I don't think it's all that impossible to set out the criteria (assuming this merge remains). Generally speaking, I find the current criteria far too broad and far to easy to meet. The current criteria leave out a lot of concerns and a lot of suggestions as to objective criteria. I am also always sceptical of "automatic" notability. There must always be room for intelligent consideration of the specific circumstances of any case. Agent 86 23:07, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Can you be specific about criteria which are too broad? Did I delete something that should have been included? --Kevin Murray 23:54, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
  • I don't like the "automatic" criteria either. I think that if notabillity can't be demonstrated by independent sources, then the verifiability can't either. I think that allowing unsubstantiated information from the organizations' own documents as sources contradicts other WP guidelines. --Kevin Murray 23:54, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Are you now in opposition to the merger? Your prior comments seemed neutral "six or half dozen" --Kevin Murray 23:54, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
  • I never opposed merger. However, the contents of the guidelines, merged or unmerged, have always been a concern. I have always been consistent in that regard. Agent 86 00:37, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
    • It also seems the merge came a little too soon and a little too quick. The former [[WP:CORP]] pretty much had consensus as a guideline, while there was never a consensus on Wikipedia:Notability (organizations). It seems, with hindsight, that consensus should have been reached on the notability for organizations before merging it with notability for companies. Agent 86 00:40, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
      • Regardless of the timing, which we could talk about for months, why don't we agree that despite your concerns over logistics of the merger, the bigger issue is content. Can we get a better picture of what you would like to change, add, subtract. I might agree and so might others if you would state your case more specifically. --Kevin Murray 00:54, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
        • That's what I've been saying - content is the key issue, not merging or the timing. I've pretty much stated my concerns in the talk pages of both pages over the last few months, I don't think they need repeating. Agent 86 10:14, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Sorry, I'm trying to be difficult. I'm just trying to understand your concern, It seems that while the attention of so many people is focused here due to the merger, this might be a good time to handle some of the lingering issues. I will read what you've written. --Kevin Murray 16:21, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
  • I disagree the merge was at all premature. In fact it was discussed for months. Rather, we should discuss what people disagree to regarding the present wording, and fix that. >Radiant< 11:55, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
    • I've added a "disputed" tag instead; that seems to be more appropriate than the reasoning that it's not a guideline since it was modified recently. Indeed, most guidelines are modified regularly. >Radiant< 12:00, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
      • Fair enough with the "disputed" tag; however, this was more than a modification. I still disagree with labelling this as a "guideline", given that half of the "new" unified set of criteria were never a guideline. To me, that's like saying if you pour tap water into distilled water, the result is distilled water. However, there's little to be gained flipping between templates. Hopefully this can be sorted out quickly. It would be unfortunate if AfDs were being determined on what are marked as "guidelines" despite being "disputed". It would also be nice if there was greater contribution to developing the synthesized guidelines, instead of the very few that are. (It would also be nice if I won the lottery, lost weight, got more sleep...). Agent 86 22:43, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
        • That's a good point, but a significant part of the page merged here was rather similar, and one of the reasons that page was not a guideline is overlap with this. Please tell us what sections you object to, so we can discuss, edit or remove them. >Radiant< 10:48, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Notes on merger logisitics

Listing on major stock exchange

I know that this has been discussed before without reaching consensus, but companies listed on a major stock exchange should be notable, because they will have passed a review by the exchange, and must have audited financials, thereby creating two sources of WP:V information independent of the company itself. So does anyone have objections to adding:

Public ompanies listed on a major stock exchange that maintains standards for listing, and enforces these standards by delisting are generally notable. This notability is persistent, and applies even if the company is subsequently delisted.Dhaluza 12:15, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Since, as you say, 'notability is persistent', then you only need to add:
    Public companies listed on a major stock exchange that maintains standards for listing, and enforces these standards by delisting are generally notable.
    Right? Vegaswikian 19:24, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
  • I agree that listing on a major exchange make the company notable, but why does this have to be a special case. For these companies to meet the proposed criteria, they would already qualify as being notable under the general standard. I object to adding superfluous rules that leave room for greater misinterpretation and/or greater misapplication to clog-up the XfD processes. You also get into wrangling over whether an exchange is major, so that would need to be defined. The instruction creep will grow and grow.
  • On the audited financial this is not much of a barrier, since non-notable companies have audited financials.
  • I am uncomfortable with most "automatic" notability critera, because without verifiable information you can't populate the text of the article, and if you have the verifiable information from acceptable sources, you generally prove the notability. Instruction creep adds little benefit, and is just a greater source for debate.
--Kevin Murray 19:46, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
  • I agree with Dhaluza's proposal. I don't see this as superfluous at all - it is perfectly conceivable for a company to carry on business without a lot of fanfare and media attention, so it is reasonable to look to other criteria of notability. I don't think we need a lot of definitions or rules beyond what is proposed; it's certainly more clear than a number of the otherwise vague general criteria, and it still leaves room for independent critical thought so that notability is not "automatic" (which I agree is not desirable). The suggestion says "are generally notable", not "automatic". Purhaps one could rephrase things to say, "Indicia of notability include (criteria x, y, z). An organization meeting any of these criteria may be generally notable, but failure to meet any of these criteria is a strong indication of no notability". I'm just winging it there, I still have to find the time to give the "big picture" more thought. Agent 86 20:00, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
  • I have a major objection to; "failure to meet any of these criteria is a strong indication of no notability"
  • I think that the proposed criteria are addressing non-issues. Perhaps the proposers could cite a couple of example of companies where the criteria would apply and we can do a case study or two to analyze the concept further, to see whether my premise is correct that in a practical manner you can't have independent verifiable content without establishing notability.
--Kevin Murray 20:07, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
  • I'm confused. If an organization fails to meet any of the criteria of Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies), how does that not suggest the organization is non-notable? Doesn't that just defeat the purpose of having notability guidelines? Does rephrasing it to say "failure to meet any of the following criteria is an indication that the organization might not be notable" help clarify?
  • I oppose this recommendation strongly (and have done so in previous discussions where it's been proposed). While it is very likely that a company on a major stock listing wll have the kind of coverage that we would need to write a fair, balanced and properly sourced article, merely being listed on a stock exchange is not a guarantee that this is true. If a company has flown so far under the radar screen that there is no independent coverage of the company, it doesn't matter how nice they are or how well they work, we simply don't have the sources with which to write the article. Audited financials tell very little about a company and it's impact on the world - certainly not enough to write an [WP:NPOV|]] article on the topic. Despite being audited, they do not qualify as an independent source.
    The last time this suggestion was made, I asked for an example of a company which met the proposed criterion but which failed all the other criteria on the page and for which sources existed with which to write an article which meets all our required standards. No counter-example was ever found. I'll propose the same challenge again. If anyone can find such a company, I'll change my mind. Rossami (talk) 22:03, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
    • As a side note, I also challenge the assertion that "notability is persistent". Notability is merely a proxy for our expected ability to find reliable, independent sources by which a balanced article can be written and for our expected ability to find the necessary critical mass of informed reader/editors to maintain the article over time. If an article fails those criteria in the future and can not be reliably repaired based on the sources available then, we will have no choice but to delete that future article. What was notable in the 1911 Encyclopedia Brittanica is not necessarily what is notable today. Rossami (talk)
      • Have a look at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Fairpoint Communications. Here is a US$680M company spun off from Verizon, publicly traded on the NYSE, that generates multiple news items every day, and it is put up for deletion based on these notability guidelines. I think the present guidelines probably made sense when WP had 10,000 or even 100,000 articles, and there was a perceived need to focus editor's attention on higher priority subjects. But they are no longer reasonable now that the en:WP has passed 1,000,000 articles, and will be completely irrelevant when it passes 10,000,000. Dhaluza 23:29, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
        • this is a good example of a poorly constructed article on a notable topic. The AfD was inappropriate as well; the nominator should have cited this for not having references and contacted the author with a suggestion to read the guidelines. Too bad the nominator took a short cut in the process. Now after some collaboration from AfD participants it almost makes the verifiability standards with one non-trivial mention at Hoovers, and a marginaly significant reference in an article about telecoms in the Midwest. This will pass AfD if someone does minor research. --Kevin Murray 23:56, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
        • I'm afraid I have to agree with Kevin. It did not take me very long to find more than a few examples of non-trivial independent coverage of this company. I also found a few online mentions under their predecessor name YCOM Networks though those were somewhat more trivial. Rossami (talk)
      • On the side note, notability is persistent--what you correctly point out is that verifiability may not be. My main point was to prevent a misguided editor from turning the guideline on its head by arguing that delisting a stock is evidence of non-notability. Because delisting is unusual and newsworthy, it would actually improve notability not negate it. Dhaluza 23:42, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

I provided a recent example of how these arbitrary guidelines were causing harm, so now I pose a counter-challenge: Can anyone provide an example of how they do good by posting the ticker symbol of a company listed on the NYSE, that is not notable enough to have an article with enough WP:V information from WP:RS to create an article that meets WP:NPOV? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dhaluza (talk • contribs) 2007-02-08 11:32:13

  • No you didn't. You provided an example of an AFD nomination where the nominator apparently didn't do any research to see whether the criteria were satisfied. Indeed, you provided an example that showed that the criteria do good, because in discussing notability editors discussed sources, rather than arguing over subjective criteria as they would have done some years ago. Uncle G 13:32, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Does anyone have an example of a non-notable company listed on the NYSE, or is it safe to assume that companies listed on a major exchange like this are notable?Dhaluza 00:30, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure that you've proposed a fair test. A responder would have to find a listed company that they somehow knew about but that didn't meet the criteria. Since few of us are securities professionals and all of us have other obligations in our lives, you're going to have to be very patient before insisting on a negative proof. Rossami (talk) 16:00, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
No, I was not asking for a negative proof, just asking a rhetorical question. Any company listed on the NYSE is going to generate enough press to support notability. Now, some qualification is required, because the NYSE lists funds and related companies that would only be notable as a group, or as part of an article on the main subject. If you want to check this out, the list is accessible here:[1]. The most obscure example I could find was Wolverine Worldwide. Although this article could use improvement, the subject is obviously notable. Dhaluza 00:07, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Proposal to remove paragraphs from the guideline

Based on the discussion above as to why we should not increase the guidelines to include members of stock exchanges, I propose that we delete the following as being redundant in practice to the general guidelines:

  • The commercial organization is listed on ranking indices of important companies produced by well-known and independent publications.3
  • The commercial organizations share price is used to calculate one or more of the major managed stock market indices.4 Note this is not the same as simply being listed on a stock market. Nor is it the same as being included in an index that comprises the entire market. The broader or the more specialized the index, the less notability it establishes for the company.

This may seem like a way to disinclude more companies, but I don't believe that is the case practically speaking. And I don't see how the removal would protect non-notable companies either. Truly I think that the removal would mostly benefit us by reducing the ongoing debate about hypothetical instances with no empirical basis. --Kevin Murray 20:19, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

  • I'm all for reducing instruction creep, but I wasn't WP:BOLD enough to suggest the shock treatment. I think the present standards for notability are outdated, and in need of a complete overhaul, and since the page content was recently merged, this is a good time to address it. The stock listing is just the most obvious example. Setting an arbitrary standard that limited notability to a few thousand companies probably sounded like a good idea at some time in the past, but that time has passed. Dhaluza 23:33, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
    • You don't understand these criteria, and are focussing upon the secondary criteria, putting them ahead of the primary criterion, despite the explanatory footnote on the page, and the very deliberate ordering that this page has always had. You have no basis whatsoever for thinking that "a few thousand companies" will satisfy the primary criterion. Please remember that the primary criterion exists. Uncle G 13:46, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Those two secondary criteria have been here from the start. There are reasons for their inclusion, which have been discussed many times on this talk page. Please read the prior discussions. As the footnote on the page itself explains, they are safety nets, for those (exceedingly) rare cases when the PNC fails. They make Wikipedia business-directory-like in some specific, narrow, areas, so that our articles on the various stock market indices and ranking indices can be simple lists with bluelinks. They are consequences of how we want to lay out certain specific parts, our coverage of stock market indices and ranking indices, of Wikipedia. Uncle G 13:46, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

  • I can't agree that a couple of special purpose lists merit the inclusion of specific circumstance guidelines here. It seems that the examples you give are articles which would stand alone as notable as do other prominent lists. This argument could be used to support Dhaluza's proposal that it is needed to protect a list of NYSE companies, and the the NFL, to the NHL, to the National Association of Grocers, etc. until the page is just one big bloat
  • My concern is misapplication and an implication that ony big companies are notable. Personally I think that big, medium or small, they should only be included if notable by the general definition.
  • Because something was in the original draft, does not make it right. Since WP is organic in its development, the rules need to be flexible as well.
--Kevin Murray 17:58, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
The distinction is that Wikipedia would never tolerate a "list of all NYSE companies" article. It would be utterly unmaintainable and a duplication of information which is freely available and better maintained other places. We don't even allow the Russell 3000 article to attempt to list all the companies. We do, however, tolerate list-pages of the more significant (and more selective) market indices like the DJIA. Rossami (talk) 22:57, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

I previously addressed this matter with regards to the "it's on a list" criteria (I did not expand those thoughts to the stock market criteria). I was concerned because a particular AfD discussion led to keeping an article because the law firm was one of the ten largest law firms in a specific country. There was no other suggested notability except for it being on this specific list, which was given as qualifying for the "it's on a list" criteria of WP:CORP. I disagreed, since it was arbitrary that the list existed (it could have been top 5 or top 15, except that the author chose to go/stop at 10) and that the list/article gave no mention of why the size of a law firm made it particularly notable nor what threshold of size might make for notability (does it matter if #6 has 10 or 199 employees...does that change if #5 has 200?). For these reasons, I sought to gather opinions on changing this criteria and only got one response asking me what I would change...and I didn't have a good answer, but if others feel the same way then maybe it's time to remove it and return to a more primary notability criteria. I have seen a definite increase in shady lists being given such that a company can skirt WP:SPAM in order to be mentioned on Wikipedia. If a company is notable by the primary criteria, it may or may not be on a list or market index. If it is on a list or market index, it may or may not be notable by the primary criteria. Since the two are not necessarily mutually inclusive, then one should not be a definition for the other. I am more hesitant to remove the market index, simply because it connotes that they have been assigned a level of notability within the market that they should be used to define how the market is doing...but I tend to agree that any company with that sort of respect within the marketplace should easily be able to establish an article based on the primary criteria as well, making the market index criteria somewhat redundant. ju66l3r 05:01, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

  • There has never been an "It's on a list." criterion in WP:CORP. The secondary criteria that it actually contains are quite specific. The criteria do not involve any old list that a Wikipedia editor may have invented xyrself. The lists that it covers are those researched and published by entities such as Fortune magazine. Uncle G 21:52, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Coming to consensus

It appears that Agent 86, Badlydrawnjeff, and Uncle G strongly oppose removing these criteria. I don't have a firm feeling for Rossami's position. I see about five editors (Dhaluza, kevin murray, akihabara, and unitedstatesian. I think Ju66l3r supports, but I have asked for his specific opinion) who have supported removal in this section, above and below. I think that Uncle G's concern about protecting some specific lists can be achieved in other ways which should be explored, if the problem he presents becomes an issue, and I would support him in that. Seeing consensus reached I would like to make the change unless some other editors bring opposition. --Kevin Murray 04:28, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

  • I support removal for the reasons you have better stated elsewhere: roughly, that the primary criterion is sufficient for notability, and without such references we cannot create verifiable sourced articles. Akihabara 08:30, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Consensus Achieved Based on the consensus the special cases for commercial organizations will be removed. --Kevin Murray 21:48, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Is it really primary?

I ask because it's becoming awfully misleading awfully fast. The guideline itself acts as a pointer to the individual subject-specific guidelines, and, contrary to the wording here, "nearly all" of them do not, in fact, share the criterion. The section should probably be reworded to reflect this. --badlydrawnjeff talk 14:43, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

  • The words "nearly all" do not occur anywhere on this page. You appear not to be reading the correct page. As for whether it is primary here: It has been listed first since the very first version of this page, has always been intended to be the primary criterion, and has been discussed as such on this very talk page since September 2005. Please read the talk page archive. Uncle G 15:00, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Subsidiaries

Is the any chance that a section on subsidiaries could be added, to clarify the notability requirements - after reading the page I have no idea whether:

  • A subsidiary of a notable company is automatically considered notable
  • A subsidiary of a notable company is not automatically considered notable, but will not have to provide as much evidence of notability if this has already been done for the parent
  • A subsidiary of a notable company must meet the same notability requirements as any other company or organisation

For some idea of context, it may be useful to see my comments at User talk:70.23.226.191#Proposed deletion of Greenbee

Cheers, Davidprior 16:49, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

  • David, please look at the primary criteria. If the organization makes the grade, then its notable. Why would the notability of the ownership have a bearing here. If a football star owned a McDonald's franchise, the franchise location would not be inherently notable, though it might be an interesting piece of info at the article on the football star. A further parallel would be children of famous parents etc. Why would we need a specific rule for this case? --Kevin Murray 17:08, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
Good analogy, makes sense to me - would it not be worth including something specifically stating this though, if only to save people like me who were too dense to realise this at first reading from asking stupid questions on the talk page :-) ? Davidprior 19:12, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
  • David, I did a Google search which yielded 10 hits on greenbee, most of which were links to its site, and none of which looked to be independent verifiable sources. This by itself does not refute notability, but indicates that it would be a difficult chore to demonstrate. Good luck! --Kevin Murray 17:22, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
I don't actually consider the subject of this article particularly notable, and have updated my comments at the talk page of the user who prod-ed it. Davidprior 19:12, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
As it happens, this {prod} has been removed by User:Cordless Larry. I've let the {prod}-er know. Cheers,
Having said that, am I right to assume that the GHits you quote are from Google.com? A UK Google for "greenbee john lewis" gives 937 results [2] (simply searching for "greenbee" gives around 97k [3]), a quick look suggests that roughly 50% come from www.johnlewis.com, www.waitrose.com, www.greenbee.com or www.johnlewispartnership.co.uk. There are also 9 results on Google news [4] including 2 different broadsheet newspapers. Of course, you said that you weren't using Ghits to disprove Notability, I wouldn't attempt to use it to prove notability either. Cheers, Davidprior 02:44, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
  • The section on Chains and franchises is where we tried to answer that question. Some subsidiaries might be notable (and if so, there will be multiple independent sources demonstrating the fact) but most are not. Re-reading the section and seeing how the examples have slowly been changed, we could probably make the wording clearer. Any suggestions? Rossami (talk) 19:29, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
  • I would have to say that A subsidiary of a notable company must meet the same notability requirements as any other company or organisation. This is because of the nature of corporations (depending on jurisdiction) and their structure. For example, XYZ Co. could be a notable seventy year-old manufacturer and marketer of WidgetBall(TM), with annual sales of mulitiple hundreds of millions of dollars and stores in eleven countries. Amongst its assets, XYZ Co. owns 100% of all the shares of ABC Co., thus making ABC Co. a wholly-owned subsidiary of XYZ. In most common law countries, ABC Co. would be considered a separate legal entity from XYZ (like they were separate people, if corporations were living beings). However, just because XYZ owns all the shares does not mean ABC is notable. ABC could simply be a holding company or it could be an active business itself, being a major distributor of Thingamajig Sockets (TM). ABC might not be a separate company at all. It could be XYZ operating a subdivision under the trade name ABC, in which case one needs to consider whether ABC ought to have its own article or be a part of the XYZ article. The guideline needs to be flexible enough to account for the many possibilities and allow for a critical analysis. Agent 86 21:29, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
  • The above makes sense - if it'd been in the guideline, I'd not have had to ask for clarification. The only thing I'd add to it is a comment that a subsidiary not worthy of an article in its own right may still merit a mention in the article on its parent company. Cheers, Davidprior 22:45, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
Have you two ever heard of Who's on First? But who wants to be Abbott? --Kevin Murray 00:56, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
I only recognise it 'cos it's referenced in Rain Man - I've had a look at the Who's on First? article, but still don't "get" your comment - am you saying I'm misinterpreting User:Agent 86? - if you are, I'd like to apologise. Cheers, Davidprior 01:13, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, what I'm saying is that 86 is being a bit windy, and you're not getting the point of the primary criterion. Talking in circles is the meaning of Who's on First. We don't need more rules, just better understanding of how the existing rules work. Yes, in this case a rule might cause no harm, but multiply it by a thousand special cases and we will have the US Tax Code. I guess you have to be an old-person to get the Abbott & Costello reference --Kevin Murray 01:22, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
Sorry to be "windy" on your parade. The A&C ref was lost on me, too, despite having seen the routine countless times. The only implication I was able to take from the analogy is that that only one of us - myself or Davidprior - knows exactly what we're talking about, while the other does not. You seem to think I am advocating more rules. I am not. I never said anything about a tax code sized compendium of rules. All I did was answer a question requesting an opinion on three options. I chose the latter option, and explained my choice. I do not oppose a concise statement of criteria in plain english; however, I do not want to see an oversimplified set of criteria over-stretched to suit all circumstances. Clarity cannot be sacrificed for the sake of conciseness or simplicity, and I remain convinced that it is possible to balance both. Agent 86 01:39, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
Relax Max, I'm just bustin your balls. Have a great weekend. Kevin --Kevin Murray 01:49, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, I could have phrased that comment better, my bad. I think it's time to have a weekend. In fact, I think I will. Hopefully I can spend that $0.02 I keep talking about. Agent 86 02:20, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
(Oh, joy of joys - edit conflict) Hey, if Kevin was suggesting I didn't know what I was talking about, he'd have been right :-) What i was getting at was that if the line that User:Agent 86 includes in italics above was included in the guideline, I'd not have wasted your time querying this here. Cheers, Davidprior 02:24, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Example nit question

In note 1, one of the examples given relates to cars with Haynes manuals. Since this is only one published work, and the criterion requires multiple published works, isn't it true that cars with Haynes manuals are only halfway to meeting the criterion? Can we find a better example than this, or delete this exmple? UnitedStatesian 21:35, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

  • I agree this is a poor example and can be a bit misleading as a service manual is a poor example of the notability of a product. I see no real value to this third example. --Kevin Murray 21:44, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
Is there then consensus to remove this example from the project page?DGG 21:22, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Exception standards - seeking consensus

Does anyone else think that Note 4 sets a completely arbitrary standard?

To add to the confusion Note 3 says that the Forbes 2000 is notable while note 4 says the Russell 3000 isn't. Where is the borderline? 2100? 2500? 2999?

  • ^3 Examples of company ranking indices: Fortune 500 and Forbes Global 2000 (which has replaced the discontinued Forbes 500). Companies listed on such indices will almost certainly satisfy the first criterion. However, this criterion ensures that our coverage of such rankings will be complete.

All of this index based notability is an arbitrary set of criteria which is sacrosanct because it's been here for a while. --Kevin Murray 03:34, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

  • 2 Comments: 1) the Forbes Global 2000 is a GLOBAL index, with (if memory serves) only about 700 or so U.S. companies. The Russell 3000 is all U.S. companies, so on an apples-to-apples basis the Russell 3000 is >4 times "broader" than the Forbes list. Yes, the cutoff is arbitrary, but not as close as Dhaluza's comment implies. 2) To Murray's comment, I thought there were only 3 things sancrosanct on WP (WP:NOR, WP:NPOV, and WP:V), and the index-based notability was not one of them. I for one would not mind if BOTH exceptions (published lists and stock indices) disappeared: IMHO they are a window for lazy article writing by folks who want to add companies without tracking down sources for their notability. UnitedStatesian 04:39, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
  • I would like to see them go for the opposite reason--I think they are an excuse for lazy deletionists to AfD articles without doing research on notability. I also think that these arbitrary standards are not compatible with the growth of WP, which is most "sacrosanct." Dhaluza 11:30, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Wow, three people agree! Is that sound I hear the far off rumble of consensus building? Dhaluza, I changed the title of this comment section to try to attract more contributors to the discussion and see if we can move forward. UnitedStatesian 12:30, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Please see Uncle G's comments above about what those exceptions are listed for. Is it an "arbitrary" cut-off? Not really. We have articles which list all the current members of the DJIA. This clause ensures that those lists will always be able to be blue-linked. We would never tolerate an article which attempted to include all the companies on the Russell 3000. Such a list would include many companies which would not survive an AFD discussion. Others have already said this better than I am doing. Please read the archives. Rossami (talk) 16:04, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
  • I think you are confusing the suitability of list articles, and the notability of the subject items on the list. Even if a list of the Russel 3000 companies would be considered inappropriate, all 3000 companies could still be notable enough to be included in an article (either alone or in a sub-group). Your comment provides some background on how the criteria came to be, but there should be no linkage between List articles and the articles they link to. Each article subject must stand on its own. Dhaluza 23:58, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
  • I read UncleG's comments (and yours, and the others) before making my post, and have just gone back and reread them, and I think I was not clear in making my initial point. To retry: I am NOT proposing that footnotes 3 & 4 should be expanded to broader lists/indices. Instead, I propose the two subcriteria be deleted completely, along with footontes 3 & 4, becasue I think the primary criteria stands on its own. So what if one of the DJIA names is red-linked (very unlikely in my opinion): I can't imagine this situation lasting for more than a few hours. At the same time, a number of the S&P 500 companies are red-linked, have been for a while, and footnote four has not helped that situation. To sum: these two sub criteria do nothing to make WP a better encyclopedia, and I think often make it worse. Why? Becasue 1) editors of a number of the index/list companies have done nothing to demonstrate their notability, relying instead on the "they're in the index/on the list, case closed" argument, and 2) editors (all of us included) spend time debating/adjusting these arbitrary cutoffs that the primary criterion actually makes unnecessary, instead of doing the more valuable (to WP) work of writing well-sourced articles on notable companies. To summarize: The subccriteria are a distraction and should go - the primary criterion is sufficient. UnitedStatesian 19:41, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
    • Thank you. I now understand your point much better. I'm neutral on the specific suggestion. On the one hand, you are right that the criteria are functionally redundant to the "primary" criterion. On the other hand, they do provide some supplemental commentary which helps new readers to interpret the "primary" criterion more clearly. I'm uncertain where the balance lies. I can probably live with either answer. Rossami (talk) 19:53, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
  • This seems rather silly. Is there evidence that the clause is causing problems? --badlydrawnjeff talk 13:27, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
  • I see the problem in three ways: (1) redundancy which creates confusion (2) implying that smaller companies are not notable, (3) setting the precedent for more special cases instruction creep (see CREEP). I have definately seen this section cited to reverse purpose at AfD to argue for the deletion of smaller firms, albeit incorrectly, but for the drive-by voters it can seem compelling. --Kevin Murray 16:22, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
  • 1) what redunancy? 2) How so? 3) Really? So what if that's really the case? If it's being used improperly, then i hope the closing admins are bright enough to take that into consideration. --badlydrawnjeff talk 16:26, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
  • BDJ, I think you can see the point, but apparently disagree. It is pointless to belabor the discussion with mounds of rehash here. Please read through the discussions above and at CREEP, it is all well explained. But I will consider you as opposed to the removal when evaluating consensus. Thanks. --Kevin Murray 16:41, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
  • As someone who respects your opinion and discussion elsewhere, I'm sad that I can not convince you about this, but we each must follow our instincts and experiences. In the section above we are trying to form a consensus and I have made a note of your opposition at Coming to consensus (above) and directed readers to look below for your comments. Cheers! --Kevin Murray 16:49, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
    • Here's a recent example of how it causes problems Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/M&A International Inc.. Nobody made any cogent argument about why the article should be deleted, just someone claiming that it is NN because it is not in a stock index, then a bunch of drive-by me-too's leading to deletion. I don't think the closing admin did any real analysis (I don't even see where he could determine consensus one way or the other). I have no real investment in the article other than some drive-by cleanup attempts, so it's not personal to me, other than as another example of why these guidelines are a problem and should be canned. Dhaluza 22:45, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
    • That is not a demonstration of any problem whatsoever in the criteria, and an entirely spurious justification for what is a very bad idea. It's actually a demonstration of what happens when editors don't actually look for themselves to see whether published works exist, and base their rationales on what the article currently cites. This is nothing whatsoever to do with the criteria, and everything to do with editors not doing the research at AFD. Your complaint is with those editors, and the closing administrator, not with these criteria. Uncle G 22:08, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
      • You are correct that the editors (and the closing admin) are misguided, but WP:AGF says we cannot blame them. We must assume they would do the right thing, but were confused by the guidelines they are citing. It happens often enough that the criteria need a rethink to address it. As has been pointed out, the criteria for inclusion are often used to either keep obvious junk because it technically meets the arbitrary criteria, or the criteria are turned upside down, and used to delete otherwise notable content. In both cases the criteria provide an excuse for editors (and admins) to not do their own checking as you say. Dhaluza 00:09, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
        • Our assume good faith guideline says nothing of the sort. That people sometimes don't apply criteria properly doesn't mean that there's a need to re-think the criteria. What is needed is continual encouragement for people to apply the criteria properly. Tell them that they have not applied the criteria properly when they have not. The AGF guideline actually says this. Read ¶3. It's absurd to invoke AGF in one breath and in the next to say that we need to modify a set of criteria because we aren't allowed to point out where people are making mistakes and misapplying them. It's absurd to think that changing these criteria is the correct course of action when one doesn't agree with the decision that an administrator has made in closing an AFD discussion. The correct action of course is to talk to the administrator.

          Your entire argument on this talk page so far is an attempt to fix entirely the wrong thing. If you see editors not doing the research, encourage them to do so. If you disagree with an AFD discussion's closure, use the recourses that are provided in the policy. The WP:CORP criteria have nothing whatsoever to do with either the causes of the problems that you are pointing to or their remedies.

          Your incidental characterization of the criteria as arbitrary is a false one, by the way. These criteria are delberately not arbitrary. Uncle G 00:36, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

  • The answer to Dhaluza's question "Does anyone else think that Note 4 sets a completely arbitrary standard?" should be "No.". Any editor who has read the first word of the footnote, which is "Examples", would realize that the footnote doesn't set a standard. Uncle G 22:08, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Proposal to delete section on sporting groups

"Sporting groups English men's football clubs competing in Levels 1-10 of the English football league system are notable."

  • wholheartedly agree Hey, I love football, and am proud of the breadth of WP's coverage on same. But this is an arbitrary criterion that elevates that sport, in that country, above all others. It is thus geographically biased: what about the equivalent levels in Nigerian football? This criterion has to go. UnitedStatesian 12:30, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
  • I too thought this was an oddly specific criterion. As a sporting group is an organization, the existing proposed criteria should suffice, as I cannot think of a sports team that would not pass. In fact, it might be too easy to pass. I know in the past that there have been discussions in the various sports-related wikiprojects and AfDs of sports teams that relate to the notability of minor league and junior sports teams (altho only the briefest consideration in the talk for WikiProject Sports itself). I'm sure that it wouldn't be hard to find media coverage of most pee wee, minor league, junior, or other otherwise non-notable teams. (I was also surprised to learn just now that WP:SPORT links to Portal:Sikhism.) Agent 86 20:06, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
  • I quite like that it's stated, Levels 1-10 (about 900 teams) are the leagues most likely to have professional players, their own pitch or ground and also regular non-local press attention. Levels 11-24 (somewhere between 6-15,000 teams) are not and are more likely to be made up of Pub teams or other groups of non-professional players.
And since every team that plays in an English league gets local newspaper coverage of some description[5] (albeit in some cases only for the score of a match), entries in national football journals and sporting yearbooks and plays in a Football Association sanctioned league; there is the potential to create an article on every team playing football in England from school sides to Sunday league. With that would come the 50-150,000 instantly killable articles on non-notable players who are plumbers during the week and Beckham on Saturday.
For instance; there are 28 professional or semi-professional football teams in the town of 180,000 people that I live in. Only one is in the Football League, yet 3 others currently qualify for Wikipedia articles. There are at least 112 amateur teams in the town and surrounding villages of all ages, with teams playing either in the regional FA Amateur competitions, the local town league, the school leagues or playing friendly games only. With no notability criteria except the primary it would be allowable for my local primary school (5-10yr olds) to have an article for their three football teams with references from the local papers.[6][7][8]
I think there needs to be some sort of over-reaching notability criteria for sports teams in addition to the basic "been the subject of multiple non-trivial published works", especially since by that criteria I can add my local pub's darts team (a team of 4 people pulled from whoever was in the pub at the time and who play in one of the 11 darts leagues in the town and regularly get a paragraph in the paper to report their results and news) onto Wikipedia. - Foxhill 20:43, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
  • As written, the guidelines do not restrict articles, these only make the inclusion of the teams specified to be automatic. --Kevin Murray 21:44, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
  • In practice the example you give about the dart team, would not be likely to pass the "non-trivial" test in a deletion debate. We can either create a complicated set of rules which few understand, or keep the rules basic and empower our community to understand the simple elegance of the primary criterion. --Kevin Murray 21:52, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
  • I would definitely tend to agree here. No sports organization should be automatically notable or automatically excluded, existence and sufficiency of secondary coverage should determine that. (Though we should perhaps include a caution that routine coverage such as newspaper box scores are by definition trivial.) While we're at it, let's get rid of the "automatic pro sports player" exemption in WP:BIO. A lot of "pro" sports players (especially backups and the like) are nowhere near notable. Seraphimblade Talk to me Please review me! 05:13, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Non-commerical orgs

The guidelines for “non-commercial” organizations are inadequate. All we currently have is a statement about subsets of these organizations and a criterion about “local” organizations that really addresses verification more than it addresses notability.

Not every charity, non-profit, etc. is going to garner a lot of press, especially when many are really more focused on their charitable works than getting into the media spotlight. In fact, the “primary criterion” is far too focussed on what is really a criterion for verification rather than notability (but that’s a discussion for WP:Notability, not here.) The guidelines should provide more clarity on what non-commercial organizations are notable and which are not. The current criteria simply provides two narrow examples of what is not notable.

I have drafted what is a starting point for discussion. A few things come to mind of what needs to be worked on. One glaring problem that comes to mind are school, college and university clubs. I hope that the reference to “internal divisions” should exclude those school clubs that have traditionally been considered non-notable. Another example are sports teams – I am sure that you can find lots of media coverage on pee-wee level football teams in Texas or midget-level hockey teams in Saskatchewan, but from what I’ve seen at the AfD discussions of sports topics and the various sports wiki-projects, at a certain (lower) level some teams are just not considered “notable”.

I looked at WP:LOCAL for some inspiration on what might suffice for an organization that operates at the “local” level. Again, I think that I have left this general enough so that a charity operating throughout New York City may not be barred from notability simply because it’s a “municipal” group.

I am also not sure if this guideline is meant to cover organizations such as educational institutions, churches, etc. (all of which are “organizations” and long the subject of discussion at things like WP:SCHOOL and WP:CONG).

The last set of criteria in the list may be considered somewhat subjective (i.e. the size of the club, the age of the charity, “notable” works by the non-profit, etc.), but notability in and of itself is inherently subjective. While subjective, I think the items in the last item are relevant to determining notability and provide an indication of what subjective criteria are acceptable.

Finally, a few of these criteria may be applicable to for-profit orgs. Maybe they could be listed under “Alternative criteria” and then, after listing the broadly-applicable criteria, having the short sub-headings for “Commercial” and “Non-commercial” organizations.

=== Non-commercial organizations ===
“Non-commercial organizations” are all those groups whose primary purposes or goals are not profit-oriented. These include, but are not limited to, charitable organizations, non-profit groups, unincorporated associations, social clubs, foundations, and special interest or political groups.
The following criteria indicate that a non-commercial organization may be notable. This list is not exhaustive or conclusive and other factors specific to any given organization may be taken into consideration. The facts supporting the assertion of notability must meet the requirements of Wikipedia:Verifiability.
(1) The organization meets the primary criterion set out above.
(2) The organization operates internationally, nationally, or in a significant national subdivision, such as a state or province.
(a) Individual chapters, branches or internal divisions of an organization are usually not notable unless they independently meet notability guidelines.
(b) Organizations that are local in scope (i.e. operate on the municipal, county, or district level) are generally not notable unless they meet other notability criteria.
(3) Consideration may be given to the organization’s longevity, size of membership, whether it is registered as a charitable organization in the jurisdiction in which it operates, notable patronage, historical achievements, and whether its areas of operation are unusual or unique.

Please contribute, edit, comment, critique, etc.! Agent 86 21:40, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

  • 86, at first read your criteria seem unobjectionable except that I object to any rules which are redundant, but I'll hold judgement on the latter. To help in th evaluation, I put the current text below so that I/we can look at the texts together. --Kevin Murray 21:57, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
  • On a second pass I don't like #2(a) which is merely statement of the obvious, but could be misunderstood. I'm less bothered by 2(b), but don't really see the purpose in the existing or proposed criteria. Without a & b why do we need 2 at all, each example would pass if meeting the primary criteria.
  • 3 seems to be a can of worms. You are giving advice, not setting a guideline.
  • Without the others #1 just states the obvious.
  • I don't see your efforts as worse than the existing criteria, but I would vote to advocate eliminating those as well --Kevin Murray 22:26, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
  • That's bad wording. Assertions of notability are not how decisions should be made made at AFD. "Assertions of notability" as a concept applies to speedy deletions only. Decisions that come to AFD are on whether a company, corporation, organization, and whatnot actually is notable, not on merely whether the article asserts it. See the Wikipedia:Guide to deletion. Any wording here that says that a subject is notable because the article contains "assertions of notability" is going down entirely the wrong route. Uncle G 22:28, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Text as of today

Organizations are usually notable if the scope of activities are national or international in scale and information can be verified by sources that are reliable and independent of the organization. In other words, they satisfy the primary criterion above. Other criteria are:
  • Individual chapters of national and international organizations are usually not notable enough to warrant a separate article unless sufficient notability is established through reliable sources. However, chapter information is welcome for inclusion into wikipedia in list articles as long as only verifiable information is included.
  • Organizations whose activities are local in scope are usually not notable unless verifiable information from reliable independent sources can be found.
--Kevin Murray 21:57, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Nearly all of the criteria in the draft I presented come from the current (as of today) text - this includes 2(a) and (b), which I have tweaked from the current version. The only real addition is #3. 2(a) might be "obvious", but it's not out of the ordinary to see an article on a branch or local chapter of an org up for deletion at AfD, so it may bear being stated. I think 2(b) flows from the primary statement in 2 and 2(a). Without 2(b), I'm sure we could see a lot of "delete" comments based on the fact the article is about a locally based org without something else. If anything is redundant, it's probably those things I was thinking of when I wrote the last paragraph before the proposed draft. The proposed (or any) draft also needs to be thought of in context of the "problem issues" and how they can be dealt with (not just those few examples I gave above). Agent 86 22:31, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Conflation of verifiability and notability is not the actual conflation that is going on here. The actual conflation occurring here is the conflation of "garner a lot of press" with "multiple non-trivial published works from sources independent of the subject". The page explicitly states that "published works" is broad and does not equal solely "newspaper articles". Uncle G 22:28, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
    • No such conflation (man, why did I use such a word?). I never said "newspaper articles" and could have easily said "a lot of attention", "a lot of media", etc. The real point is that a local org, such as a charity, isn't always going to have TV, newspapers, magazines, books, etc. chasing them down. While promotion of the charity is needed in order to bring in the donations and volunteers, many charities are not filled with PR flacks and do not do such a good job in this regard, but contribute so much to their local areas. Such notability can be verified through means other than published works (i.e. a citation or proclamation issued by a legislative body, awards presented to the charity by third-parties, etc.) Agent 86 22:57, 19 February 2007 (UTC)


Non-commercial orgs, redux

Following up on the previous conversation about non-commercial orgs, I’d like to see if we can’t get the current topics under the rubric of this guideline sorted out. I’ve reviewed the comments of other editors and revised the proposal accordingly:

=== Non-commercial organizations ===
“Non-commercial organizations” are all those groups whose primary purposes or goals are not profit-oriented. These include, but are not limited to, charitable organizations, non-profit groups, unincorporated associations, social clubs, foundations, and special interest or political groups.
In addition to considering the primary criterion set out above, the following criteria may indicate that a non-commercial organization is notable. The facts supporting notability must meet the requirements of Wikipedia:Verifiability.
(1) The organization operates internationally, nationally, or in a significant national subdivision, such as a state or province.
(a) Individual chapters, branches or internal divisions of an organization are usually not notable unless they independently meet notability guidelines.
(b) Organizations that are local in scope (i.e. operate on the municipal, county, or district level) are generally not notable unless they meet other notability criteria.
(2) Consideration may be given to the organization’s longevity, size of membership, whether it is registered as a charitable organization in the jurisdiction in which it operates, notable patronage, historical achievements, and whether the purpose it serves is unusual or unique.
This list is not exhaustive and not conclusive. Other factors specific to any given organization may be taken into consideration.

Please contribute, edit, comment, critique, etc.! Agent 86 19:09, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Existing text copied here for easier comparison:

=== Non-commercial organizations ===

Organizations are usually notable if the scope of activities are national or international in scale and information can be verified by sources that are reliable and independent of the organization. In other words, they satisfy the primary criterion above. Other criteria are:

  • Individual chapters of national and international organizations are usually not notable enough to warrant a separate article unless sufficient notability is established through reliable sources. However, chapter information is welcome for inclusion into wikipedia in list articles as long as only verifiable information is included.
  • Organizations whose activities are local in scope are usually not notable unless verifiable information from reliable independent sources can be found.

Discussion

  • 86, I don't see an improvement, just more text which adds no clarity. And, this list of examples is not inclusive enough -- no point to it. The profit motivation of an organization is irrelevant; it seems that having this under Non-commercial is self explanatory. Why restate the primary criterion again here? Your item 2 is nonsense only leading to more subjectivity. Why? This example is overly wordy to no advantage. The exisiting is fine. No one has objected to it. --Kevin Murray 20:35, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Not for profit status is highly restrictive and many organizations which are non-commercial prefer not to have to walk that line. As a former officer and director of a non profit, it is a pain in the ass. --Kevin Murray 20:35, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
  • There has been plenty of discussion that this section needs work. It just gets buried or forgotten in other discussions about matters that are not yet part of this guideline. Why not present some alternative wording that works rather than dismiss the proposal with vague objections? Agent 86 00:08, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
    • Oh really! Vague? Pardon me, let me be more precise: (1) redundant, (2) irrelevant, (3) unnecessary, (4) repetitive, and (5) wordy. --Kevin Murray 00:53, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
      • I'm not looking for a string of adjectives. I'm looking for specifics as to how it's any of these things, particularly as it is not too far off the existing version and it incorporates your (and other commentator's) comments from previous discussions. Please feel free to provide revisions, etc. I know I'm treading on a guideline that you seem to have taken ownership of, but constructive commentary will go a long way to getting this guideline up to par so that we can remove the big red question-mark template from its face. Agent 86 05:31, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Agent 86, I would be reluctant to support your version due to the concern about instruction creep. Let's try to keep the text as simple as reasonably possible. Never use 100 words when ten will do. Dino 21:16, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

I would welcome your suggested revisions to pare it down. Good drafting requires good editing. Agent 86 03:12, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
If it is pared down to the essentials it is basically what we have now. --Kevin Murray 18:41, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Agent 86, take the existing text and add this bullet point:

  • The organization’s longevity, size of membership, or major achievements, or other factors specific to the organization may be considered. This list is not exhaustive and not conclusive.

That boils down what you're trying to say into the minimum number of words. I will use the Boy Scouts as my teaching tool to teach everyone what I'm trying to say, since I'm familiar with the Boy Scouts. A national Scouting organization in a large country (such as Germany or the USA) is notable. A national Scouting organization in a small country (such as Luxembourg) is not notable. A local Scouting organization (such as Troop 77, Randomburg, Wyoming) might be notable if it has produced 50 Eagle Scouts in the past five years, or if Dick Cheney is the Scoutmaster.

Notability guidelines on other organizations such as schools should be merged here, and it should be policy. Also, COI and libel considerations found at WP:AAOE should be merged here. I strongly advocate a smaller number of "rules" that all have the same weight. They'd be easier to understand and easier to enforce. Dino 13:42, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

  • Thanks. My concerns about the existing text is that it's more or less written in the negative, to give a few examples of what is not notable. Kind of like how being Canadian is too often defined by how it's not like being American. In the revision I proposed, I turned it around to say what does indicate notability. Cheers, Agent 86 18:30, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
I can see problems no matter what is agreed. There will always be disputes about what is and isn't notable no matter what the guideline is. For example, using Kevin's idea, which I like the best, the disputes will be about when an article is too long and when a subunit of an org is worth splitting out and when it is or isn't notable in itself. For example, look at all the stubs in our Scouting project because people think their council camp, lodge, etc is notable. Most of these could be merged, few are truly notable. IMHO, the only OA lodge that is notable outside of it's council or state article is Unami, Lodge 1, because of its historical interest. The vast majority of camp articles aren't notable either. Now I've said my 2 cents.Rlevse 21:28, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Redux revisited

I would like to see this expanded (and implemented). This is an issue in the Scouting articles. As an example, Scouting in Pennsylvania is a very long article. The information on Cradle of Liberty Council was broken out. When that became too long Unami Lodge was broken out as well as its camps (Resica Falls Scout Reservation, Musser Scout Reservation and Treasure Island (Scout reservation). These have all been deemed notable and in one case, have been featured on the main page. I don't want articles like this be tagged for deletion because they don't meet this guideline. --evrik (talk) 17:46, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

  • The solution which I have seen at other guidelines is to say: "when the main article becomes too long it should be broken into sub-topics" (paraphrase). I would support such an addition to this guideline. Other than that we open Pandora's box. --Kevin Murray 18:03, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
    • How about (3) When the main article of an organization becomes too long it should be broken into sub-topics. These sub-topics may be the local organizations.
--evrik (talk) 01:19, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

I have a suggestion for this sentence:

Individual chapters of national and international organizations are usually not may not be notable enough to warrant a separate article unless sufficient notability is established through reliable sources.

--evrik (talk) 01:19, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

  • How about this, which makes the criteria clear with an already established standard:
Individual chapters of national and international organizations are not be notable enough to warrant a separate article unless notability can be demonstrated using the general notability guideline.

--Kevin Murray 01:29, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

I suggest that you mean more specifically that "Even though the parent organization may be notable, .... (& I agree)DGG 03:41, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
Even though the parent organization may be notable, individual chapters of national and international organizations are not be notable enough to warrant a separate article unless notability can be demonstrated using the general notability guideline. --Kevin Murray 05:12, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
  • What usually works best for this is the top-down approach, which is for instance used in WP:FICT. Make a broad-scope article and split it if it becomes too long, or conversely if there are narrow-scope articles that are too short, merge them together. If there's not enough information on a character to write a full article, we use a "list of characters in <book>" instead, which has a couple of lines on each, and links to the characters that do have a full article. Likewise, if there's not enough information on a scouting chapter to write a full article, instead add a few lines to "list of scouting groups in <country or state>". >Radiant< 14:15, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
  • I would support either Radiant's proposal or the evolution we have collaborated on above. --Kevin Murray 15:45, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

How about:

Even though the parent organization may be notable, individual chapters of national and international organizations are may not be notable enough to warrant a separate article unless notability can be demonstrated using the general notability guideline.

To that I would then add:

The preference is for local chapter articles to start as a section of the parent organization article. If it grows to the point where it may be split to a new article, then it can be split. This should occur as a top down process. See {{splitsection}}


Existing text with proposed additions:

=== Non-commercial organizations ===

Organizations are usually notable if the scope of activities are national or international in scale and information can be verified by sources that are reliable and independent of the organization. In other words, they satisfy the primary criterion above. Other criteria are:

  • Individual chapters of national and international organizations are usually not notable enough to warrant a separate article unless sufficient notability is established through reliable sources. However, chapter information is welcome for inclusion into wikipedia in list articles as long as only verifiable information is included.
  • Organizations whose activities are local in scope are usually not notable unless verifiable information from reliable independent sources can be found.
  • The organization’s longevity, size of membership, or major achievements, or other factors specific to the organization may be considered. This list is not exhaustive and not conclusive.
    • Even though the parent organization may be notable, individual chapters of national and international organizations may not be notable enough to warrant a separate article.
    • Local chapter articles should start as a section of the parent organization article. If the parent article grows to the point where it may be split to a new article, and notability can be demonstrated using the general notability guideline, then it can be split. This should occur as a top down process. See {{splitsection}}

Thoughts? --evrik (talk) 16:39, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

comment on "local in scope"

Revised introductory paragraph

I have removed the specific reference to religious and educational institutions as examples of organizations given in the introductory paragraph. There has been no consideration given to whether this guideline is meant to or ought to supercede WP:SCHOOL or WP:CONG (see my earlier comment on these, above). There was never a discussion of merging those guidelines into this one. Those proposed guidelines have their own long history and controversies by themselves.

I have also removed the reference to specific articles given as examples. We ought to leave the description as generic as possible without having to resort to WP:INN type references. Agent 86 03:45, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree that the changes were an improvement, and that WP:SCHOOL and WP:CONG are exceptions, but added back the overall religious and educational coverage, as this is distinct from the localized exceptions. Dhaluza 10:05, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Merger of WP:CONG and WP:SCHOOL here

86, I support your edit. Another editor put in the examples and I was reluctant to remove. I agree that these added to clutter, but maybe we could put them in a footnote? I was unaware pending guidelines at WP:SCHOOL or WP:CONG. If compatible, I'd like to see them incorporated here, but that is another discussion. Thanks. --Kevin Murray 03:48, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

  • If you're willing to rush into where angels fear to tread, wade into the school and church notability discussions! Any merge or incorporation of those two sets of criteria into this one will absolutely require notice on the talk pages of those two proposals, with plenty of time for debate. Agent 86 03:56, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Yes, we think alike. That should scare the hell out of you! I've placed the notices. Actually I think that neither brings anything new other than a bunch of special cases, which fall apart under some scrutiny. --Kevin Murray 04:06, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Disagree with the merger of WP:CONG for churches and religious organizations here. A great deal of collaborative editing has gone into that proposal, and I am unwilling to see it thrown away with a redirect to this guideline. If all the text of that guideline were added to this one, I suppose that could work, but that has not been the past practice in such merger attempts. A redirect here would allow deletion of any church whose effects were not "national or international in scale." Are you willing to add criteria 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, and 11 which are specific to churches? Edison 06:44, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Disagree with the merger of WP:SCHOOL here. What you see as "clutter" in the proposal is the result of painstaking collaborative editing. The only way it would work would be by adding here the criteria for schools, and that would amount to the dreaded WP:CREEP which is just the adding of more lines to a guideline. Otherwise, you would be looking only at the "national or international" impact, which might work for a corporation, but clearly works less well for the organizations judged by this criterion since WP:ORG was replaced by this, and would work even less well for schools or churches. It makes no sense to use one yardstick for Standard Oil, Microsoft, Pilgrim Baptist Church, and North Shore Country Day School. Since Wikipedia is not paper, we don't have to worry about the shelf space required by having different guidelines specific to radically different classes of subjects. A church or school is not either your typical company or your typical organization. And to head you off, neither are shopping malls, per WP:MALL. For cripes sake, we have a separate guideline for porn actors WP:PORNBIO ! Why not for schools, and churches? Having such guidelines by no means guarantees inclusion of all such entities, but it focusses deletion debates. A guide a vague and general as this one could be redirected to WP:N and eliminate yet more "instruction creep." Edison 07:46, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
  • The earliest drafts of this page were originally intended to cover religious organizations (and predated the discussions at WP:CONG). I could support a merger if it acknowledged the issues which have been raised since the proposal first forked. The arguments that led to WP:SCHOOL, on the other hand, predated the first drafts of this page. Given how hostile those discussions have always been, I do not think that we are ready to consider merging that page in. I recommend leaving that page separate. Rossami (talk) 15:44, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
  • I believe that CONG belongs here (well, to be precise, I believe the CONG guideline does not really enjoy consensus support because it's way too specific, so we might as well cover the material here). I don't think that drawing in SCHOOL is such a good idea because it's too controversial. I agree with Kevin that PORN is overly specific as well. >Radiant< 16:54, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Disagree. I think any merging would be premature. We should wait until each has reached its consensus (or not), and then see if it is mergeable (with either ORG or LOCAL). Schools and churches may well have categorically different issues to companies and organizations, as both current proposals seem to indicate. But since they are not yet consensus, they may later be reduced to something that merges nicely. 99of9 22:56, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
  • A week has gone by. Considering the comments here and in the corresponding talk pages of the other 2 proposed guidelines, there is a consensus against merger at this time, so I have removed the merger templates. Edison 20:56, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
      • Fuzzy math! I see three support for merger with two against if we ignore your second "vote." Non consensus yet either way. Considering the substantial revisions happening for the entire notability section, a wee k si a very short time to try to reach a consensu on this small matter. --Kevin Murray 22:55, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
Fuzzy math yourself. Maybe your haste to merge 2 other guidelines into this one has left the evaluation of comments harder than it might have been if the mergers had been considered separately. With 2 mergers, I am entitled to express my views on each separately. I did not "vote," much less "vote twice." But to see if there is consensus for merging WP:CONG here, I see on this page opposing arguments from 99of9 and from me. On the talk page of WP:CONG, I see opposing arguments from JROBBO, Yechielman, and GRBerry, for a total of five expressing opposition. On this page I see support for merging WP:CHURCH by you, Agent 86, Rossami (only if the issued raised at WP:CHURCH are included here), and by Radiant, with no support at WP:CHURCH for the merger. That is a total of three or four in favor of merging WP:CHURCH, depending on the incorporation of the church specific guidelines. That is clearly a failure to show consensus for a merge. It is not really necessary to show a consensus against merge, because failure favors the status quo. I feel the failure to show consensus for merger in a week requires me to once again remove the merger template which you restored with respect to merging WP:CONG into this guideline. Edison 00:12, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

I have no problems with removing the merge templates. I'd say that there isn't consensus to merge, and extending the discussion isn't going to achieve much. One should also look at the discussion that occurred on the SCHOOL and CONG talk pages - there is certainly no consensus to merge based on the comments there. I agree that attempting to incorporate other guidelines into this one is not a prudent thing to do until this guideline stabilizes, and there is too much to sort out on the other guidelines before attempting to merge them here. It's far from being a small matter. Agent 86 23:20, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Evaluating for consensus 2-22-07

--Kevin Murray 23:22, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

  • It appears that 86 and Murray support the merger, while 86 has not so stated specifically, he has facilitated the proposal. This should be clarified.
  • Edison definately opposes both mergers
  • Rossami and Radiant oppose merging schools, and I have included 4 more no comments from the Schools page below.
  • Rossami and Radiant support merging congregations
  • JROBBO,YechielMan, oppose the merger of congregations. GRBerry and 99of9 oppose any action until the pages stabilize. See discussions below copied from the congregation discussion page.
  • There is a lot of discussion now about the whole concept of notability guidelines, and much energy is being absorbed there, while this discussion has become a backwater. I think that this discussion should remain active while other issues are decided which could materially affect the structure of the pages being considerd here.
  • In the mean time, I think that we should encourage more people to join this discussion in order to develop a more robust consensus.
  • I feel less strongly about Schools after reading some of the comments there, which I ahve added here below. But still I think there are more parties to weigh in. Let's give a bit more time? --Kevin Murray 23:29, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
    • Umm, I just said that I don't support the merger nor have I ever implied that I do. It was not until now that I put forth an opinion on the matter one way or another. I simply stated all along that the proposal needs discussion. I would have thought the edit summary I made when I first added the merge templates would have at least implied, if not made clear, that I was simply facilitating discussion. Agent 86 23:38, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
      • No problem, this gets a bit confusing among the various pages. Sorry!

Update --Kevin Murray 23:43, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

  • I think that a moderate consensus is apparent for schools not being merged at this time. --Kevin Murray 23:43, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
  • I don't see a consensus either way for congregations. --Kevin Murray 23:43, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
    • There are currently 6 against (and 3 for) the congregations merge. In order to gain consensus for, you will have to at least answer my criticism that a merger is not possible until the content has stabilized to a reasonable consensus. 99of9 00:04, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
      • I agree that no consensus should be evaluated until 3 things happen: (1) the general criteria for notability (WP:NOTE stabilizes, (2) the two pages proposed to be merged are stabilized. I don't think that 2 can happen until 1 is resolved. In my mind a successful solution at WP:NOTE could eliminate the reason for most subordinate pages and special circumstances. --Kevin Murray 00:14, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
        • I never said we should wait that long before deciding consensus on your current merge proposal. If and when those conditions one day become true, then someone can repropose a merger. 99of9 02:11, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
          • Maybe my comment sounded like saying" "til hell freezes" or "when pigs fly", but I think that what I propose is more realistic. See Rossami's note below. The tags were on Org and Corp for months while discussions waxed and waned. Having the tags help bring more people into the discussion. --Kevin Murray 03:14, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Copied from Schools discussion page

--Kevin Murray 23:29, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

  • People seem to keep forgetting that the "collaborative editing" thing is secondary to that little E-word in the tag-line. If anything, I'm against the merger, because this version does the job rather nicely, and were it proposed right now I'd support it, and urge other right-minded Wikipedians (and maybe left-minded ones too) to do so. Chris cheese whine 08:03, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Strong disagree. Schools and companies cannot be compared. The criteria for such articles need to be defined separately. Schools are generally government-run institutions or privately run non-profit organisations with charitable status. The sources used for such articles will be completely different. We need to develop this guideline to get a consensus not complicate matters by merging with another guideline. Dahliarose 17:20, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Disagree Agent 86, There is heavy opposition to the proposal on both pages. It is obvious that there is no consensus to merge. It is appropriate to remove the merger proposal from the project page now. SmokeyJoe 23:30, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Oppose There is no need for a separate notability criterion for schools. However, this merger is worse than continuing the fruitless debates at Schools_X, Y & Z.--Hjal 06:00, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Copied from Congregations discussion page

Why do we have to rehash this time and time again? We've already been over this - there is more to the church and congregation than just an "organisation" - this policy makes sense and will defeat the claims of "all churches are not notable" that have floated around Wikipedia while WP:ORG was the primary notability criterion for churches. Please read what has already been said on this and stop asking for a merge. This policy was proposed for a reason, and it should stay. JROBBO 05:11, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
I think this proposal is fine, detailed and to the point. There aren't a lot of churches on AFD, but when there are, it's good to have a resource like this. YechielMan 08:15, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Not now WP:CORP/WP:ORG is currently not stable following that merge. This isn't stable. Let them each stabilize, then decide if merging is appropriate. I continue to believe that this is unneeded instruction creep, but would disagree that the old WP:ORG was a useful guideline for churches; too many people treated local churches as chapters of a denomination, radically underplaying the significance of religion and contributing to a systemic bias against religion. WP:NOTE was the useful guideline. GRBerry 14:50, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
  • I hope all parties here will refrain from the lamentable tactic of keeping the discussion open while soliciting votes from editors likely to support their position. Edison 23:53, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
    • Merger proposals often stay on pages for months while we work out how they might work and whether the merged versions are likely to be better than the separate versions. In the meantime, merger tags are unobtrusive and solicit additional feedback from all readers to the respective pages. Leave the tags be. A week is far too short to decide that there is consensus in either direction. Rossami (talk) 03:06, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Political parties

An issue has been raised under an AfD about when a political party is so marginal as to be non-notable. I don't believe there is a policy anywhere, is there? If not, we should think about initiating one. --Selket Talk 08:50, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Be careful about WP:CREEP. I would say that if a political party can get on the ballot in more than one localized area, it would be notable under the general criteria, and does not need a separate one. Use the same standard as for a garage band. Dhaluza 09:33, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
That, I think, presents a somewhat U.S.-centric view. There are many parts of the world where there are many localized political parties. When does a local party reach notability? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Selket (talk • contribs) 17:25, 15 February 2007 (UTC).
  • Like everthing else it reaches notability when there is sufficient independent information published about it, which can be added to the article's bibliography. This includes many web sources as well. If you don't ahve sources for the information, then you can't include it at WP. I suggest that you read WP:VERIFY, which should answer most of your questions. I would be happy to confer with you on a case by case basis. --Kevin Murray 22:22, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
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