The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. Lacking opposition, I've gone ahead and moved the article to List of corporate scandals. Cheers, Arbitrarily0 ^(talk) 00:22, 23 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Corporate scandal[edit]

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Delete unreferenced, and so tagged for about a year and meaningless. Our article scandal says "[a] scandal is a widely publicized allegation or set of allegations that damages the reputation of an institution, individual or creed. A scandal may be based on true or false allegations or a mixture of both." So any false accusation that is widely publicized is a scandal according to WP - and the allegations need not be of illegal behavior, just "allegations". There is no end of what then becomes a scandal: are Wall Streeters overpaid? did banks take on too much risk? do health care companies discriminate against overweight people? do luxury hotels discriminate against poor people? is WP itself a scandal with various allegations hurled against it - even being written up in Time magazine recently? is capitalism by its very nature a scandal, as Michael Moore's latest movie seems to demonstrate? So here we have an unencyclopedic article that is little more than a selective biased list of what someone may think is scandalous. - We have categories that are more complete and less biased in the choosing, time to remove this no-value-add page. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 15:49, 9 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe Keep Although the concept is kind of difficult to define, it is real and the article has useful information. See also: Accounting scandals and Journalism scandal. (Maybe there should be Wikipedia scandal.) Redddogg (talk) 16:54, 9 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Speedy Keep It is abundantly clear that it is not our policy to delete articles because they are imperfect. One simply needs to click on one of the search links above to see that there are entire books written about this topic such as A financial history of modern U.S. corporate scandals. The nomination blatantly fails our deletion policy and should be dismissed forthwith. Colonel Warden (talk) 23:55, 15 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Tim Song (talk) 01:22, 16 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. Might be suitable as a list but not as an article. As an article, the subject is too general to be anything other than a dictionary definition. Even for a list, the subject is very broad and fairly careful inclusion criteria would be needed to make such a list viable. Perhaps this could be userfied if someone wants to work on this in their userspace. Nsk92 (talk) 01:49, 16 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Rename to List of corporate scandals, because that's what this article actually is. Unsourced, yes, but a number of those entries are sourceable.—S Marshall ^Talk/_Cont 11:23, 16 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Do you have an objective definition of "scandal" that doesn't let the floodgates of crap in? AIG is on the list of corporate scandals. Is AIG itself a scandal? What scandal? Poor management, excessive bonuses, bailouts - if these had separate articles showing why they are scandals but not the poor management, excessive bonuses, and bailouts at 100s of other firms (current and defunct) perhaps this would be manageable. But currently - why not just add any company that has some "scandal" associated with it: everything from not paying overtime (100s of companies in the US have been socked with that), to doing business in [specify place we find scandalous: Sudan? Iran? Mexico? PRC?], to offshoring jobs and facilities to places where labor and environmental laws are weak (nearly any company), to screwing up the environment generally (again, most are guilty in one way or another)...since we cannot agree what is a "scandal" or such agreement is so flimsy that anything goes - the label loses meaning to the point of being un-encyclopedic...like "pretty people" (you can find lots of references on various people that will satisfy sourcing, but its purely subjective like "scandal" is here. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 18:30, 17 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  - I hear you, but the entries can be pared down to the most egregious cases. Abductive (reasoning) 06:13, 18 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    - So much for objectivity - if it's egregious, it's in; if not, it's out. This is yet further evidence that this is not encyclopedic but just opinion that people like to have around posing as fact. If we're an encyclopedia, this should go; if it stays, we're just a collective blog. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 18:22, 19 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      - I notvote delete a whole lot more than keep. This article gets 4000 page views a month. I'm sure some sort of metric can be devised; criminal indictments spring to mind. That and CEOs getting fired. Abductive (reasoning) 18:39, 19 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep I spent a few brief moments clicking on Google news search and its listed over four thousand times! You have various things called a corporate scandal by the news media. Dream Focus 21:13, 17 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep and rename to List of corporate scandals, which presently redirects to this article. Definitely a noteworthy topic; should be kept per WP:PRESERVE and WP:IMPERFECT, both of which are part of Wikipedia policy. A Stop at Willoughby (talk) 22:26, 17 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, unless a better article already exists. Possibly rename. This seems a fine topic, if we can capture the most user searches. Abductive (reasoning) 06:09, 18 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Possible rename to List of corporate scandals. Reliable sourcing required. Many corporate scandals have had several books written about them which called them "corporate scandals." The references are in the articles about the scandals, and can be imported to this article so that each entry is referenced. Edison (talk) 18:09, 20 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I agree with Suarez about the importance of keeping out minor incidents where some corporation was fined for some rule violation, or a customer wants to vent about how the airline lost his luggage. Not every lapse or crime is a "scandal." The Enron scandal should be kept, and thousands of minor infractions or consumer complaints should be kept out. That is normal editing, and nothing unique to this article. Instances where it simply states the name of a major company like AOL Time Warner must elaborate what well documented scandal in is referred to. Edison (talk) 20:13, 20 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep could not untangle a policy reason from the deletion nomination. Artw (talk) 17:39, 21 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.