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The length and visibility of this list of examples overshadows the fact that they're supposed to be used as examples of "trivial coverage", leading to really unhelpful discussions of whether a source was "based on an interview" or "an announcement from the company" (aside: how many news articles aren't...?) rather than whether the coverage is "trivial", itself a reference to the GNG/significant coverage. I'd pare down the list or at the very least heavily emphasize the word "trivial".  czar 16:05, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

I think that most of the list you mention is concerned with the "well beyond routine announcements" bit (i.e., trivial-because-unimportant sources) rather than the "brief" (trivial-because-short sources). WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:50, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

Regular discussion of restaurant chains and justification for inclusion is often based on discussion in major outlets. One line of argument is the regionality of the source. The New York Times is considered national coverage; For a Virginia restaurant, the Richmond Times Dispatch is not. I suggest we also consider that the section in which an article appears counts, too. The Travel section in the NYT doesn't carry the weight the front page or business sections do. Has the NYT Travel section won a Pulitzer? A paid NYT obit doesn't count. An NYT obit with a byline does. I was astounded by a recent discussion which conflated National Geographic with National Geographic Traveler. I suggest we be more cynical when an article proponent brings a stack of references from national sources. Rhadow (talk) 12:26, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

The RfC that was here has been repeatedly disrupted.  We will probably want to regroup at WT:N, or possibly at WP:VPP.  Unscintillating (talk) 06:58, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

"a notable person buys a restaurant, the restaurant does not "inherit" notability from its owner"

I understand many problems wtih article for 1. each such restaurant, but 2. all restaurants can be listed at page dedicated to person?

Articles about 1 would have little content, but 2 will boost article about person with reasonable details. D1gggg (talk) 15:09, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

• I generally agree with this, and for businesses in a broader sense. If a notable person buys or starts an otherwise non-notable business, this should be mentioned in the article on the notable person (to the extent that it is reliably sourced) and the name of the business can redirect to that section of the article on its notable owner. bd2412 T 22:31, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

I ran across a questionably notable local church article (Immanuel Lutheran Church (Hodgkins, Illinois)) and noticed that Wikipedia talk:Notability (local churches and other religious congregations) had never gone anywhere as far as gaining support, but it was suggested on its talk page that it be merged with this guideline. It has quite an extensive list of qualifications which could probably be trimmed down considerably, but since schools are here it seems like something should be said of churches as well. Wikipedia:Notability (buildings, structures, and landmarks) is another failed and possibly relevant proposal. Any interest in reviving discussion on this topic and maybe adding something here? Having a uniform standard would be helpful, like how we say high schools are notable but not primary schools (generally), if I'm not mistaken, although I don't see that spelled out here. —DIYeditor (talk) 09:21, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

Independence is a matter of journalistic ethics, not propinquity.  02:14, 1 December 2017 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Unscintillating (talk • contribs)

• I have no idea what this RfC question is asking because its not formatted in the way of any RfC I've ever seen while on Wikipedia, but I am assuming it is regards to this addition to WP:ORGIND based on the conversation above, which the OP has tried to remove despite it being the stable version of the guideline. So, to answer the question as to if we should remove the addition, my answer is clear: no, we should not remove the addition to the guideline concerning press release based sources. We require intellectual independence, not structural independence. If a source is not intellectually independent of the subject, it does not count towards notability. WP:SPIP already makes this clear, and this addition simply spells out more clearly what SPIP already implies.TonyBallioni (talk) 02:33, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

[I have removed the modified version of the above RfC that was posted here 2017-12-01T05:00:33 by User:JJMC89 in this diff.  There was an additional edit made to this text by Jytdog to remove a template, an action he below calls "killed the RfC".  I will allow the RfC bot to restore the RfCID.  Unscintillating (talk) 03:20, 2 December 2017 (UTC)]

I killed the RfC because it doesn't ask a question and removed the listing at centralized discussion, and warned the OP. Jytdog (talk) 05:13, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

I again killed the RfC and am giving an edit war warning. Jytdog (talk) 03:35, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

• Comment  For a second time, User:JJMC89 has copied and moved the RfC as a quiet move, and Jytdog has "killed" the ersatz RfC.  On his talk page I have told JJMC89 that he doesn't know what a signature is, and doesn't know how to format an RfC, and asked him to stop refactoring.  Hopefully, Jytdog is done with being afraid that the community will discuss independence in journalistic ethics.  Unscintillating (talk) 05:18, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

Just reminding, that WP:NPA is a policy.And egregious violations like this can lead to a block.Regards:)Winged Blades ^Godric 07:17, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

It would be wonderful if highly experienced editors could write clearly worded RfCs, and also write English prose that ordinary people can understand. Start by explaining the issue. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 07:47, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

You have to actually remove the ((rfc)) tag to stop the RfC. I have done that. Fine, if you don't want to get the community's feedback on the change you want to make, so be it. Jytdog (talk) 04:45, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

You are the first editor I have met capable of disrupting a minor edit.  Unscintillating (talk) 05:20, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

@Unscintillating:--I have redacted the accusations you have thrown at Jytdog, while collapsing the RFC.This is a gen. talk page, not your own t/p to house your own commentary bordering on unsubstantiated accusations on the summary-notes of a disc.And, clearly hatting was neither the apt response nor something to be executed by you.This template should only be used by uninvolved editors... Cheers! Winged Blades ^Godric 07:49, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

The close here is erroneous, because it fails to document that there are no requestors in this "Request for comment", and that that is why it was closed.  This was a classic WP:POINT RfC.  Sorry you didn't like the template I used, but for people who don't use javascript, the difference is indistinguishable.  Unscintillating (talk) 20:11, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

So now there are three editors in the last 48 hours "helping" me with what I write here.  This "help" includes adding, rewriting, and redacting.  Unscintillating (talk) 19:19, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

There is a general consensus as to the manner in which article t/p(s) are maintained and templates used.And, it is not the trio of us but the broader community that did set it up.So, you know your way forward.At any case, if you really want any help as to framing the RFC, feel free to ask:)Winged Blades ^Godric 16:03, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

As per Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Kenta_Kawanaka, you are not an expert on "community consensus" or the "broader community".

As for your suggestion, I guess you could comment on the RfC, such as by stating if you agree or disagree with the statement in the RfC and why.  Unscintillating (talk) 22:17, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

I needed a good laugh! And, no RFC is currently running at this t/p.Winged Blades ^Godric 08:59, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

At Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/TeamHealth, I provided two sources about which HighKing wrote on User talk:Cunard, "I don't believe either of those references meets the criteria for establishing notability".

Here are the two sources:

1. "Fortune 500 2012: Rank 672. Team Health Holdings, Inc". Fortune. 2012. Archived from the original on 2017-12-18. Retrieved 2017-12-18.

   The article notes that TeamHealth's ranked 672 on the Fortune 1000 and had $3,141,700,000 in revenue, $65,500,000 in profit, and $928,300,000 in assets.

2. Brass, Larisa (2010-08-26). "From ER to executive suite, physician created an industry leader". Knoxville News Sentinel. Archived from the original on 2017-12-29. Retrieved 2017-12-29.

   The article notes:

   Emergency department services comprise about 80 percent of TeamHealth's business. The second largest segment is active-duty military hospitals. The company is the country's second largest hospitalist provider, and provides medical staff in psychiatry, radiology, pediatrics and locum tenens - industry speak for temporary physicians.

   In addition, TeamHealth's services have evolved to include billing, coding and collections, and in 2000 the company launched its own malpractice insurance.

   TeamHealth grew from a regional to a national provider through a series of acquisitions in the 1990s.

   ...

   Between 1992 and 1997, TeamHealth acquired or merged with a series of medical outsourcing firms, tapping each for particular skills - the solid managed care experience of a California firm, the best fee-for-service management in South Florida, a quality residency training program for ER physicians in Ohio, risk management skills in New Jersey.

My explanation for why these sources help establish notability:

1. The Fortune link helps establish notability not because it provides analysis or opinion or significant coverage. It helps establish notability because it verifies that TeamHealth was a Fortune 1000 company in 2012. That is the sole reason I included that link.
2. The article contains quotations from the company's founder. But it also has substantial independent material the journalist researched and verified about the company. The quotes help demonstrate notability by verifying that TeamHealth is "the country's second largest hospitalist provider" and that it "grew from a regional to a national provider through a series of acquisitions in the 1990s".

We agreed to open a discussion on this talk page about whether these two sources help establish notability.

Cunard (talk) 03:44, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

Thank you Cunard for opening this discussion. For a while now, I've questioned Cunard's responses at AfD, both the overly-long formatting and selective quotes that I believe is disruptive and unnecessary especially since (in my opinion) most of the references posted by Cunard fail the criteria for establishing notability. We've had a short discussion and agreed to use a couple of examples and discuss here to understand that opinion of the wider community. Cunard's views are above and he has kindly replicated what was posted at the AfD. I disagree that either of those references meet the criteria for establishing notability.

The Fortune reference fails WP:CORPDEPTH, third point, inclusion in lists of similar organizations. The footnote states Inclusion in "best of", "top 100", and similar lists does not count towards notability at all, unless the list itself is notable, such as the Fortune 500 and the Michelin Guide. Inclusion in a notable list counts like any other reliable source, but it does not exempt the article from the normal value of providing evidence that independent sources discuss the subject. The fortune link provided by Cunard shows that the company is outside the Fortune500 therefore this reference fails the criteria for establishing notability.

The knoxnews reference fails WP:ORGIND. It is based on an interview, therefore a PRIMARY source with no independent analysis or opinion. The facts and data provided in the article are not the independent opinion of the journalist and were like provided to the journalist by the company.

Can we get other opinons please? HighKing⁺⁺ 12:54, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

So wait, is the question whether the two sources count towards notability, or whether they establish notability themselves? Definitely not to the second, but "meh, they don't hurt, but they don't add a ton" to the first. They're sources, but weak sources -- a fact of sometime inclusion in a moderately significant list and an interview in a local business journal. That said, if Cunard just linked them with the others in a short list of links rather than expanding to take up the whole page, I imagine this wouldn't be much of an issue (but that's not really a matter for this page). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 16:02, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

Rhododendrites, the question is whether these references should be considered when determining if the topic company is notable. That is, that the references meet the criteria for establishing the notability of the company in question. We have a different opinion - I say they fail the criteria, Cunard disagrees. I have raised the point about his formatting elsewhere. HighKing⁺⁺ 18:01, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

• Do we have a sample list of generally accepted articles that would be failed by the acceptance of the above? Thanks.L3X1 Become a New Page Patroller! (distænt write) 02:42, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

A few were listed above, here. But you can look at companies listed in

• Category:Companies established in 2017
• Category:Companies established in 2016
• Category:Companies established in 2015
• Category:Companies established in 2014
• Category:Companies established in 2013

and see that many of those would fail. Jytdog (talk) 02:50, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

I know where the intent is, but I'm worried that the last point is going to raise a lot of issues and debate at AFD where "significant impact" falls (even with the added "in their industry" field. I know the goal is to prevent COI and commercial interests in company articles, but I'm wondering if we need, in this case, the bright line (the first 4 points at least + GNG), a prohibited line (eg only sourced to dependent sources, etc.), and acknowledgement of a grey area where editors should try to determine if the coverage is being promotional or that the company is notable and not build off COI sources. There are companies that I'd say don't necessarily make a significant impact (if one wants to be pedantic about it) in their field, but are still discussed at depth by independent sources to build out full articles that are far from promotional. We need something of this grey area for proper discussion at AFD. --Masem (t) 02:58, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

As the person who proposed those points: this acknowledges the grey area, while limiting the type of coverage: it must talk about impact to demonstrate notability. We could find enough verifiable information on literally any company created after 1950 to write an article on it. The point here is that as written, NCORP is basically a list of reasons to pretend that the GNG doesn't say what it actually says. This would move away from the GNG vs. NCORP games that are currently played at AfD and bring substantially more uniformity to corporate AfDs, while allowing for grey areas for corporations whose importance is not most easily judged objectively (such as historical corps or corps in developing nations). TonyBallioni (talk) 03:05, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

The points as read do not give a grey area here. It gives a bunch of wikilawyering on bullet #5 as a black-or-white thing because of the fact this is to override the GNG. It's problematic in that regard. I know we shouldn't read it like that, but less experienced editors will. --Masem (t) 03:42, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

• User:The Drover's Wife, I asked you above if you could make a concrete proposal to carve out the kinds of companies you are concerned about. Would you please define "historical companies" for example? Would a criterion like "No longer exists" meet your needs? Jytdog (talk) 03:00, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
  • What I was trying to get at was that the whole thrust of the proposal was focused entirely on US-based companies in the present day. There was no thought given to companies outside the United States or historically notable companies: all of the specific criteria (and all of the discussion, which I was following) doesn't apply. The end result is that it quite literally forces everything non-US and non-current to be stuffed in #4 and #5, which makes even the most inarguably notable company in either category absolutely up for debate. This would have a catastrophic chilling effect right across this area - a disastrous end result considering these areas of business coverage are terrible as it is and badly in need of expansion. I don't have a good (or at least, an easy) fix for this: this was why I was trying to point out during the previous discussion that it was becoming a runaway train in ignoring all of this stuff. The Drover's Wife (talk) 03:08, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
    • It's also extremely frustrating that US-based editors who entirely see this as a spam reduction measure won't engage with these issues. The Drover's Wife (talk) 03:12, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
      • How about if this set of criteria was applied only to extant companies (at least in first-world markets)? Obviously, defunct companies are far less likely to have spammers trying to market them, so if an article is made on a company that is out of business, the motives of the article creator should be given greater leeway. bd2412 T 03:43, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
        • I'd be fine with that for extant companies. TonyBallioni (talk) 03:44, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
          • Yeah I think I suggested that above. Galobtter (pingó mió) 03:45, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
            • I think this would be a very useful step: it would eliminate one of the major problems with this entirely. It would be great if someone could come up with a solution for the non-US problem though: I am extremely against the possibility of having to argue deletion battles over Australian household-name companies any more than we already do. There also absolutely needs to be a solution to Cullen's concerns above or the impact of this is going to be catastrophic in ways that weren't even on my radar. The Drover's Wife (talk) 03:49, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
              • This is why I suggested the geographic area part of the cultural impact criteria above, but people raised objections to it. It's important to take into account regionally and nationally important corps. TonyBallioni (talk) 03:54, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
• Does it have to be WP:NCRIME - coverage about civil litigation should be included also. Seraphim System ^(talk) 03:41, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
  • This is a good point. A company that has received publicity for alleged tortious conduct, even if not criminal, should count. As a WikiProject Law member, I would also put a thumb on the scale of any company that has been a named party in a case heard by the U.S. Supreme Court (or equivalents in other countries). bd2412 T 03:45, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
    • I think this is a really important expansion too. The Drover's Wife (talk) 03:50, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
    • Agreed. TonyBallioni (talk) 03:54, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
      • I would be extremely careful of basing notability on accusations of a crime, if that's the only reason for notability. Yes, corps are not people but the logic of WP:BLPCRIME applies here too. --Masem (t) 03:56, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
        • WP:BLPCRIME does not prevent us from covering publicized accusations that have not resulted in (or will not result in) a conviction. It merely requires that we couch our descriptions in language that reflects the sources without suggesting an outcome or making claims in Wikipedia's voice. bd2412 T 04:02, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
          • No, but basing an article principally based on accusations (even if properly claimed) could be a problem. --Masem (t) 04:10, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
• In retrospect, I would also like to suggest a provision for including companies that have demonstrably existed for a long period of time - perhaps a hundred years. bd2412 T 04:18, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

Just a few problems that come to mind from what has been raised:

1. Why not in business for 50 years? 75? 95? 99?
2. Do secondary sources define "historically notable" for companies no longer in business? Do they have to term it "historically notable"? Non-trivial coverage in multiple sources isn't enough? Is this something editors decide?
3. Similarly, who interprets "significant impact" (culture or industry) if the source doesn't explicitly saying anything like "significant impact", will the AfD be an original research majority vote on the matter?
4. Why the US Supreme Court? What's equivalent to that in other countries? Is the high court of Andorra equivalent to that? But the high court of Androrra is of greater importance than the high court of California? Liechtenstein is of greater import than New York City? Lesser?
5. What of a company that is primarily local like Katz's Delicatessen but not regional or national yet (to me) clearly deserves an article for cultural notability? How does the logic of TonyBallioni's "geographic area" apply to that - I don't understand his reasoning at all - if it has a significant cultural impact, a regional company already qualifies, what does "geographic area" have to do with it? What isn't in some geographic area?
6. What of companies just under any of the hard number limits for dollar value, revenue, ranking (Fortune 1001? 2? 7?), employees? What makes those magic numbers have any validity? A company in Bangladesh is less significant purely because it is worth less? How exactly do we equate the Bangladeshi corporate rankings to US? The top Bangladeshi, Liechtenstein, Malta company is equivalent to the top US company? Less than equivalent? The top 50 Bangladeshi Companies vs. the top 1000 US? 1000 vs 1000? Whatever number the arbitrarily selected rankings happen to include?

To sum it up: What of a company that is clearly notable and worthy of a Wikpedia article but somehow falls through the crack of all these micromanaged qualifications and exceptions? —DIYeditor (talk) 06:17, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

• @DIYeditor: The U.S. Supreme Court has certiorari jurisdiction - that is, it can decide which appeals it wants to hear. Supreme courts that do not have that that discretion basically have to hear all appeals brought before them. When a court that has such discretion chooses to hear a case, it amplifies the importance of the parties involved. bd2412 T 21:43, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

To follow up one of DIYeditor's question Katz's is an icon but I think it's better to keep the article because it meets WP:GNG then to base the deletion decision on whether a consensus emerges at AfD that recognizes it as "culturally significant" - we may keep Katz's because media sources constantly refer to it as an "icon", but would we keep Gray's Papaya - they both meet WP:GNG but would we have to discuss individually whether each one was "culturally significant"? It sounds like it would come down to JDLI at AfD.Seraphim System ^(talk) 07:00, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

• The prohibition on "original research" applies only in article space. Existing policy requiring "significant coverage" already implies the making of analogous judgments: Noyster (talk), 13:25, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

• A question to ask : can anyone provide examples of articles that fall under NCORP that 1) are clearly promotional material but 2) pass the GNG, or at least have been argued to pass the GNG at AFD? There seems to be a claim those supporting these that the GNG would allow purely promotional material to pass through which I seriously doubt, due to the need for works to be independent. --Masem (t) 15:37, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

There are a lot of pieces in newspapers that a reasonably clearly self-promotion/press release base or just a press release etc but because they aren't marked as such, people still argue for keeping on that basis (one person even said that it's perfectly natural that all newspaper articles on companies are positive, and that doesn't mean they aren't good sources). Other-times people don't really realize they are press releases, routine etc. I'd just say take a look at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Deletion_sorting/Companies - it's dime a dozen. Galobtter (pingó mió) 15:45, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

Which should be properly called out during AFD when those type of sources are presented. It would also make sense for NCORP to have a section for how to determine when a source is a press release or similar dependent promotional material. --Masem (t) 15:51, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

Of course - but often it feels like a sisyphean task when the fact that it is a press release isn't explicit (and when it appears in publications generally reliable) That'd definitely be useful. Galobtter (pingó mió) 15:58, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

However even currently a lot of articles on companies could be deleted under current criterion. Galobtter (pingó mió) 16:00, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

Making NCORP more explicit could help; otherwise just going and nominating articles for deletion. Galobtter (pingó mió) 16:10, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

• I am going to leave this going for another day or two but am going to pull it before it ends, to refine and relaunch. I'll note that stuff people are writing here about sourcing doesn't reflect what WP:CORPDEPTH and following sections -- especially WP:ORGIND -- actually say. User:Masem, User:Bilby, User:Seraphim System and User:SmokeyJoe please go read them; you may want to strike or refine what you have said here. When I relaunch this I will copy paste that section of the guideline or be sure to link to it, so that the next one isn't derailed by this kind of stuff. Jytdog (talk) 16:51, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
  • @Jytdog: WP:GNG says "Independent of the subject" excludes works produced by the article's subject or someone affiliated with it. For example, advertising, press releases, autobiographies, and the subject's website are not considered independent. - I have reviewed a lot of articles at AfC and I can not remember ever seeing one that would pass WP:GNG and fail WP:NCORP, I don't think this is a significant contributing factor to the overall problem. Sometimes there are disagreements about whether a source is substantially based on on a press release, but usualy the issue is that the article is promotional in its current state - in that case, the nuclear option is G11 and admins gotta use it. Some articles that go up for AfD should have, imo, been speedy deleted as G11.SeraphWiki (talk) 21:07, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
    • OK, so on the one hand you are agreeing that both N (which I didn't discuss) as well as this guideline are very clear already that press release, churnalism, etc, are not OK to use in considerations of notability. That is what my note above was about, with regard to these strange objections that we should do something that has already been done.
    • As for whether this is helpful or not, I hear you that you believe it is not. DGG suggested away below that we are probably going to have to do some case studies of AfDs that ended in "keep" that should not have. I guess that is what we need... Jytdog (talk) 21:17, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
  • Jytdog, I don't see what you think your proposals has to do with WP:CORPDEPTH and WP:ORGIND. WP:CORPDEPTH and WP:ORGIND speak to qualities of the sources. You proposal speaks to facts regardless of sourcing. Your proposal #1 1,2,3 and #2 are source-independent factual criteria. They can be sourced to the company website, or a directory-stle listing. #1 4-5 are no-better alternative phrasings of ways to meet the GNG. #1 6 is a mixed fact-based criteria and cross reference to another guideline. On the whole, unimpressive. I think your approach is wrong. The right way to go is to focus on quality sources. A WP:CORP emphasis on what makes a source independent, and reliable, and of substantial coverage, would be good. Business partners, and publishers that advertise, should be be declared non-independent. Customer supplied reviews are not reliable. A thorough description of the products of the business is not substantial coverage. A major problem with reviewing CORP drafts is WP:Reference bombing. Checking all the references is a barrier to efficient reviewing. That is why I suggested turning around the onus to do the work to the author, to idenetify the best notability attesting sources, as opposed to the usual standards of AfD participants supposedly needing to argue that no good sourcing exists. If the author's opinion of the two best sources are non-suitable sources, the topic is to be deleted, and/or the author needs to learn what makes quality sourcing for starting an article. Your criteria, #1 1-3 & #2, will give a pass to articles on companies that have been written with no suitable sources suitable for writing any prose. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:41, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Hi SmokeyJoe. yep the proposal was built on what is already in the guideline about sourcing. Your vote is all focused on problems with sourcing, as are your comments just above, which again puzzlingly don't deal with what those sections actually say and you write things like it "would be good" if NCORP did ... exactly what it does, via CORPDEPTH and ORGIND, which are part of NCORP. So... ?

I agree that people don't apply what is already in the guideline well, and one of the goals here is exactly to add additional criteria to help alleviate that problem.

Please also be aware that this is not "my proposal" - it summarizes discussions that have been ongoing since the summer, which are linked in the intro. All these criteria were suggested by other people and received some level of support from yet others. I am however, shepherding this along.... the issue of raising NCORP standards has been stated so many times, and we need a focused effort to do it. Am very open to taking this where ever it goes, as long as we end up with something that makes it easier to keep promotional articles about companies out. Jytdog (talk) 16:30, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Refining

Additional introductory content.

Please read WP:CORPDEPTH and especially WP:ORGIND before you comment. We already require multiple, independent sources for articles about companies; press releases and churnalism refs are already excluded from notability considerations. We do need more clearcut criteria for companies, to help people who work at AfC and NPP, and to improve deletion discussions, to ensure that articles about new/recent companies are appropriately encyclopedic and are not hijacked pages in Wikipedia that are just providing visibility to companies that are seeking it.

Main proposal (#1 if you like)

A for-profit company that is a going concern and was established after 1990 is considered "notable" in Wikipedia if it satisfies the GNG criteria and, in addition, any of the following criteria are met:

1. It is a publicly traded company with at least a $1B market capitalization
2. It is a private company that has raised more than $100M and has been in business for at least 5 years
3. It has been listed as a member of the Fortune 1000, Forbes Global 2000, or an equivalently regarded national or global business ranking based on size or quality -- inclusion in the Michelin Guide, for example, qualifies.
4. It is considered by multiple independent reliable sources to have made a culturally significant impact cultural, artistic, scientific, technical, economic, or political impact as judged on a national basis. This is distinct from passing local controversies, local patronage (custom), getting good reviews, or the like.
5. It is regarded by ongoing national coverage in multiple independent reliable sources as having significant impact in its industry, including technical breakthroughs in marketed products. This is distinct from mundane product differentiation-type claims; every company is "unique".
6. It has been involved in fraud, antitrust, or another activity that receives enough ongoing coverage to meet WP:NCRIME or the equivalent for a civil matter.

Additional criterion (#2 if you like)

• It employs at least 1,500 people

I've added limitations that this applies to extant business founded after 1990, and added some refinement to #3, based on some of discussion above. If folks have other ideas, am all ears. User:DGG do these refinements help bring this where it should be, in your view? Jytdog (talk) 17:24, 21 January 2018 (UTC) (amended to explicitly include civil matters as discussed below and some changes suggested by DGG. Jytdog (talk) 17:53, 22 January 2018 (UTC))

Poasible changes:

2. At least 5 years is too narrow. There will be some that have had great public interest before that point, often on account of the very notable founders. This can in some cases be the case even if the company is only planned.

3. "national or global."

4. "culturally significant" is can be interpreted very narrowly, or very widely. I anticipate many years of interest AfDs. To indicate a little what is meant, possibly "cultural , artistic, scientifically , technical , economic or political impact , as judged on a national basis. "

5. "ongoing national coverage"

6 It employs at least 1500 people full-time

However we word it, thee are going to be exceptions in both directions.

I also have a problem with extant companies. This should apply to ones that have closed down also. As worded, any such company only needs to meet the GNG. There's also a problem with mergers. We normally write the article on the successor or principal company, unless the earlier of minor ones are of special importance. I would suggest some time to think of the details, before this is finalized. I think it needs to be analyzed against some AfD results. DGG ( talk ) 18:08, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

Re: "employs at least 1500 people full-time" - how would you treat a business for which a reliable source indicates that it employs 1,500+ people, but does not indicate full-time/part-time status? My thinking in requesting this provision was that a company that employs a large number of people will touch a lot of lives, irrespective of how fully employed they are. If full-time employment is a substantial consideration, I would suggest a separate figure - say, at least 1,000 full-time employees, or at least 1,500 employees overall. bd2412 T 21:22, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

Also, I otherwise agree with the above points of refinement (1-5_. bd2412 T 21:23, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

User:DGG I am not sure we are pulling in the same direction here... my understanding is that we want to raise NCORP standards primarily to help stem the torrent of articles about companies looking to abuse WP for promotion. In my view these are generally existing, small-to-medium companies looking to gain visibility through WP. I cannot imagine that we have any sizable problem with spam articles about companies that are not going-concerns. I added that specifically to address objections from User:The Drover's Wife about ensuring that we don't exclude "historical companies" - I am still a bit unclear about what they mean by that, but a defunct company would definitely be "historical". So i don't get why you are objecting to that. Please explain. Jytdog (talk) 17:32, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

• I'm not fully understanding why inclusion in a national stock market index was dropped. Including companies above a market capitalization floor or are/were in a national index would be one way of addressing the systemic bias concerns raised above. MER-C 19:46, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

• User:MER-C thanks for your question. Please see the remarks of User:Rentier here, and the two remarks right above that. Perhaps the two of you could discuss? Jytdog (talk) 17:26, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Nothing against having the stock marked index-based criterion in addition to the market cap. However, I don't think it substantially addresses the systemic bias concerns raised by others. The major indexes cover only a handful of companies, then the are private companies, etc. Rentier (talk) 17:35, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Concerns:

• Biggest problem, the hard line numbers are US-centric and arbitrary. What of something slightly below the hard line? What of a company in less developed country that's still significant? Market capitalization, profit margins, etc. do not absolutely determine notability especially when they have arbitrary cut-offs. DGG: A company with 1450 employees is not notable but 1500 is?
• DGG: "National or global" ranking standard - a national ranking in Andorra is more important than one for California? Similarly, ongoing national coverage in Somalia or Liechtenstein is of greater importance than ongoing coverage across New York City? How do we equate foreign countries?
• Culturally significant is the best part of this proposal but doesn't this leave a lot of personal judgment in AfDs? It's difficult to interpret. Closers would have a lot of power and there would be arguments ad infinitum. Does it become of a majority vote of whoever happens to show up? Does the closer become arbiter of cultural significance? Same could be said for industry impact. "Interesting AfDs" indeed - participation would become mandatory and the time sink would be profound.
• NCRIME is somehow specially worthy of mention but other ongoing major coverage is not? I don't get that. Again, arbitrary.

Again, I would like to see all the hard number figures and ranking lists dropped and the cultural and industry impact provisions added as positive and negative qualifications to CORPDEPTH. —DIYeditor (talk) 21:35, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

• @DGG: failed to correctly notify you of mention above. —DIYeditor (talk) 03:01, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
• This is not an improvement. 1) #3 is worse because it now includes a requirement that these sources be "global" (even though all the examples are from the United States), when the point that other equivalent sources from other regions/countries could be used was the whole argument for that not being a mess last time around. 2) 1990 is too early a cutoff: it doesn't need to be that late to target the plethora of startups looking for articles today, and retains a lot of problems in regard to major non-US companies that took off in that decade. 3) I agree with DGG's point that this is going to lead to many years of unnecessary AfDs to clarify what #4 and #5 mean because they're so vague, and suggest this would have a chilling effect on long-term editors working on notable business coverage, further abandoning the whole area to spammers and newbies. 4) Conversely, DIYEditor raises good points about the impact of arbitrary cutoffs. The Drover's Wife (talk) 21:55, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

• Beyond this, I think this proposal is still barking up the wrong tree. The current proposal appears like it is going to be rejected, and the attempt to put it again after 24 hours with comparatively very minor amendments (picking off two of the issues raised, but ignoring the others - most notably the non-US issue) suggests the same disinterest in engaging with editors who are critical for various reasons that doomed this attempt. There are a number of alternatives that have been raised, such as Bilby's suggestion of clarifying and strengthening WP:CORPDEPTH to target issues of quality sourcing, rather than having this messy argument about worthiness, and it would be great to see them engaged with rather than being absolutely determined to proceed on exactly the same path of this failed attempt. The Drover's Wife (talk) 21:55, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
  • I agree, there is no reason for Michelin Stars to be singled out, especially when so many chefs are giving them back. The assumption implicit in our policy is that if a subject has won a Michelin Star, or has won a Grammy, then it most likely will meet WP:GNG anyway. This is fair and impartial - if they haven't won a Grammy but meet WP:GNG that is ok too. I don't follow this policy because I think Michelin Stars are particularly impressive or inherently notable, but because sources usually exist for these subjects. These sources are usually in-depth "independent" reviews. This moves us away from a neutral notability policy, closer to a statement about the worthiness of restaurants that don't have Michelin Stars but otherwise meet WP:GNG with similar sourcing. Like the article I created last night Harry & Ida's Meat and Supply Co..
  • Also, the WP:NCRIME needs to be broadened to include coverage civil litigation and there was consensus for this last night - there is no conceivable reason why a criminal matter would make a company notable, but a civil matter would not. Seraphim System ^(talk) 22:33, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
    • • Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Harry & Ida's Meat and Supply Co. Jytdog (talk) 17:46, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
      •  Done on the civil thing. Please don't treat this discussion as urgent. The refinement process is going to take time. This is a discussion that has been ongoing since last summer and just gathers up stuff that has been discussed for a much longer time. Jytdog (talk) 17:56, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
  • User: The Drover's Wife you are personalizing this in a very odd way. What I wrote was I am going to leave this going for another day or two but am going to pull it before it ends, to refine and relaunch. I never said i was going to relaunch it right away. That would indeed be stupid. Stop misrepresenting me and please see your talk page Jytdog (talk) 16:50, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
  • User: The Drover's Wife - when you write "barking up the wrong tree" I am not sure you understand what the tree is, that is being barked up. There is a torrent of spam articles from companies that are marginally notable or not notable, looking to abuse WP for promotion, and people from those companies argue like mad to keep them - they view WP as an essential vehicle for promotion. Raising NCORP standards has been suggested a zillion times as a way to stem that torrent. That is the tree being barked up.

It would be very helpful to hear ideas from you about ways we can exclude such spam articles but keep ones that should exist - that are indeed encyclopedia-worthy. Thanks. Jytdog (talk) 17:38, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

There is a torrent of spam articles from companies that are marginally notable or not notable, looking to abuse WP for promotion, and people from those companies argue like mad to keep them - they view WP as an essential vehicle for promotion. It would be very helpful to point out a half-dozen of so of the "worst offenders" here of AFDs where they were argued kept that should have failed the GNG or the like. All this sounds like a issue to firm up what sources are appropriate for corps to meet the GNG, not to restrict the GNG, but its hard to tell without having examples. --Masem (t) 17:41, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

I have stated very specific concerns about the impact of this specific proposal on our business coverage in ways that have absolutely nothing to do with stopping a "torrent of spam articles from companies that are marginally notable or not notable, looking to abuse WP for promotion". It is extremely frustrating that these problems with your five specific criteria are continually being interpreted as not understanding the problem or not being sympathetic to the problem. As I said on your talk page, I'm an AfC reviewer: I've declined tons of corpspam and had still tons further that I left in the queue because I couldn't be bothered delving through the 20 or 40 crap references in order to justify a decline. You come up with a solution that makes that easier, I'm all ears. What I am absolutely not here for, however, is treating the project's entire business coverage as acceptable collateral damage. The Drover's Wife (talk) 17:55, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

User:The Drover's Wife

a) please stop representing these as "my proposals". They are not "mine".

b) With these or similar criteria, you wouldn't have to wade through twenty sources on some articles, right? that is a good thing for you and everyone, if we can get there.

c) if you review what you have actually written here, all you have said is "no".

d) What I and others keep asking you for, is what you would say "yes" to. It doesn't have to be related to any of these five or six things - the intention is just to add new matter to this guideline to improve our ability to exclude promotional articles about companies that are not really encyclopedia worthy. If you want to add criteria to this list, that specifically 'saves" the kinds of articles you think are in danger, that would also be great. (I added the "going-concern" thing - this applies only to going-concerns, specifically to deal with your objection about "historical companies", and I am still unclear exactly what you mean when you say that). If you propose something (anything) that gains consensus I will be very happy.

But if, in your view, there is no way to change NCORP to more easily exclude promo articles, other than for editors to apply the existing guidelines better, so be it.

But continuing to misrepresent what is happening here is not helpful. I am not going to respond further to your misrepresentations as this is becoming distracting drama. But please stop. Jytdog (talk) 18:39, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

For someone who talks so much about being misrepresented, you keep suggesting that I think there's "no way to change NCORP to more easily exclde promo articles, other than for editors to apply the existing guidelines", even though I have at no point even remotely implied this. As I said on your talk page earlier, the most common sentiment in the RfC - including from me - was "I sympathise with the problem and agree with the idea of raising standards in principle, but this is not the way to do it", so claiming that this means "we want the status quo" is not remotely helpful. This is not a simple fix, and I don't have easy answers. The change about historical companies was great - but it didn't address other issues (most notably the non-US companies, the notable-small-business issues, fix for Michelin restaurants only aside, or the concerns about arbitrariness). As another one we didn't quite get to: having #1 centre on market capitalisation basically means that you need an economics degree to know whether any given company meets notability guidelines or not. The Drover's Wife (talk) 18:56, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

I have been looking for ways forward with you and I appreciate your thoughts on sourcing below. I am hopeful we will be able to find at least some high level ways, via this list (or a completely different one) where we could quickly exclude some companies. Looking at a draft article about a young company and being able to quickly determine that it is less than five years old and has raised just $1M and is just selling yet another Fidget spinner and being able to determine, "out it goes", without having to wade through the 15 crappy refs they provided, would be great right? Are there any criteria like that, that you would find helpful? You don't have to answer right away... this refining process is going to take a while. The pre-RFC discussion was open for a month a half, and this one has only open a few days. Jytdog (talk) 19:11, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

• I would oppose any draft adding extra requirements over and above the GNG, regardless of how it is written. Your only hope of success is to try to define "churnalism" in a way that would guide editors to exclude certain sources and articles as not truly secondary sources or not truly independent of the corporation. This may be doable. Wnt (talk) 01:56, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
• Since MrX and Seraphim System have mentioned some of theirs, I too have created an article, Tom Bihn, that I think meets GNG for repeated national and international coverage that I think would not survive this proposal. I think people come to Wikipedia for a (hopefully) reliable collection of information on that sort of thing when they encounter a mention of it.
• And to expand slightly upon the problems with arbitrary cutoffs, are we to delete and recreate an article every time a marginal company slips off and back on of these lists of the largest? Or every time the currency a company's assets and income rely on gains or loses relative value to US$? I find the basic premise of dollar values, hard numbers, and lists to be entirely unworkable. It's inclusion by lottery, not relevance. —DIYeditor (talk) 02:56, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
  • As someone totally unfamiliar with the subject matter, Tom Bihn reads like it might only be known for a minor controversy. This said, I'm absolutely sick to death of having to defend household-name Australian companies against deletion bids from editors who know nothing about Australia. The Drover's Wife (talk) 03:15, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
  • Fails WP:NOT#NEWS. If there was more existing coverage of the company besides that, that would be an interesting antecote, but even then might not be appropriate to include. --Masem (t) 03:41, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
    • It's not one news event and it's not a current event so WP:NOT#NEWS does not really seem to apply, it's several events over more than a decade. Indeed it is a small company primarily known for a repeated controversy, so maybe it is really not a good example for this discussion where we are looking for things we could not risk not having an article on, but it is not a "passing local controversy"; it's a persisting international one with fairly in-depth and specific coverage in multiple reliable sources. Just thought I would put something marginal of my own out there since other editors had. —DIYeditor (talk) 03:54, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
      • No, it was not an "in-depth" controversy. It's the type of thing that is liner notes for a serious work. If this was a person at the center of this, we'd not include it per BLP, much less have an article about it. NOT#NEWS applies to any past or present news event to understand that we want to only cover events with enduring notability, which this controversy did not have. --Masem (t) 06:37, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
        • I don't see anything at all in NOT#NEWS that reflects what you are saying. Perhaps you could quote it. This might be better left for elsewhere; I think we are distracting from the real issues here. Since you have some question about whether the article even meets notability or what Wikipedia is not, it's hard to discuss how this proposal relates. By my reading of the letter of those rules it qualifies, but it would be more useful to focus on something that we could agree definitely meets current standards and would be eliminated by the proposal. —DIYeditor (talk) 08:25, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
          • I think it's recognizing that just because a company appears in the national/global news scale at any time doesn't necessarily make it notable. Being in the news may lead to more attention about the business overall, but that's not an assurance. We should look to whether it is the event or the business that is notable. Take for example, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. This is an ongoing SCOTUS case that involves a specific business (I've written a lot for this). I can tell you that the business has been mentioned several times in the news, but I would maintain it is not notable by itself, it is notable for being part of this event, which has a different set of notability considerations. It is a similar approach to when we talk BLPCRIME for persons; for example while Steven Slater is the person well known for the JetBlue flight attendant incident, we don't have an article on him because he's not notable for anything else outside that. Same principle has to apply to businesses (though we're not as bound by BLP there) --Masem (t) 16:42, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

• DIYeditor makes a good point above. The individual fortunes of companies change. In addition, we have the issue of national currency collapses relative to USD -- does Brexit mean that only half as many British companies are notable? And of course (perish the thought) what if the USD should suffer a collapse and abruptly small businesses all over the world are valued in the trillions of dollars? I mean, it's silly, but it exposes a systematic national bias of a form that should be highly worrisome where biases of interest to business and nations are concerned. Wnt (talk) 16:21, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

• No: "once notable, always notable" so once a company has cleared whatever thresholds we set, then it stays in WP for all time (like former sports players, long-dead historical figures and so on): Noyster (talk), 17:51, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

• Comment I'd be curious to know how we treat the other for-profit organisations that are not "companies" as such but fall under NORG such as " charitable organizations, educational institutions, political parties, hospitals, institutions, interest groups, social clubs, sports teams, companies, partnerships, proprietorships, religious denominations, sects", a lot of these will have been registered as a company so that they can have a legal identity but would not meet any of the criteria. The only way for these to pass is to prove their impact as per N°4 and that is even more vague than GNG. I can see a lot of sports teams being nominated for deletion, for-profit schools, social clubs or hospital trusts. Domdeparis (talk) 16:18, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

Here is what this guideline currently says about sourcing

Depth of coverage aka CORPDEPTH/ORGDEPTH

The depth of coverage of the subject by the source must be considered. If the depth of coverage is not substantial, then multiple^[1] independent sources should be cited to establish notability. Trivial or incidental coverage of a subject is not sufficient to establish notability.

Deep coverage provides an organization with a level of attention that extends well beyond routine announcements and makes it possible to write more than a very brief, incomplete stub about an organization. Acceptable sources under this criterion include all types of reliable sources except works carrying merely trivial coverage, such as:

• sources that simply report meeting times, shopping hours or event schedules,
• the publications of telephone numbers, addresses, and directions in business directories,
• inclusion in lists of similar organizations,^[2]
• the season schedule or final score from sporting events,
• routine communiqués announcing such matters as the hiring or departure of personnel,
• brief announcements of mergers or sales of part of the business,
• simple statements that a product line is being sold, changed, or discontinued,
• routine notices of facility openings or closings (e.g., closure for a holiday or the end of the regular season),
• routine notices of the opening or closing of local branches, franchises, or shops,
• routine restaurant reviews,
• quotations from an organization's personnel as story sources, or
• passing mention, such as identifying a quoted person as working for an organization.

Audience aka AUD

The source's audience must also be considered. Evidence of significant coverage by international or national, or at least regional, media is a strong indication of notability. On the other hand, attention solely from local media, or media of limited interest and circulation, is not an indication of notability; at least one regional, statewide, provincial, national, or international source is necessary.

Independence of sources aka ORGIND

A primary test of notability is whether people independent of the subject itself (or its manufacturer, creator, or vendor) have actually considered the company, corporation, product or service notable enough that they have written and published non-trivial, non-routine works that focus upon it.

Sources used to support a claim of notability include independent, reliable publications in all forms, such as newspaper articles, books, television documentaries, websites, and published reports by consumer watchdog organizations^[3] except for the following:

• press releases, press kits, or similar works;
• any material which is substantially based on a press release;
• self-published materials;
• any material written by the organization, its members, or sources closely associated with it;
• advertising and marketing materials by, about, or on behalf of the organization;
• corporate websites or other websites written, published, or controlled by the organization;
• patents, whether pending or granted;^[4]
• any material written or published by the organization, directly or indirectly;
• other works in which the company, corporation, organization, or group talks about itself—whether published by the company, corporation, organization, or group itself, or re-printed by other people.

Self-promotion and product placement are not routes to qualifying for an encyclopaedia article. Qualifying published works must be someone else writing about the company, corporation, club, organization, product, or service.

Once notability is established, primary sources and self-published sources may be used to verify some of the article's content. See Wikipedia:Autobiography for the verifiability and neutrality problems that affect material where the subject of the article itself is the source of the material.

Improvements?

How would people improve those sections to raise NCORP standards without excluding truly encyclopedia-worthy subject matter? Jytdog (talk) 18:18, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

As I said in response to your user talk discussion, I'd like to see NCORP clarified to make clear what we would be consider to be good business coverage - because it's so vague (very strictly applied, it could just about take out all MSM business reporting) that it gives PR types a chance to play in the grey area. This would make it much clearer and less arguable what doesn't meet that bar. I'm specifically thinking of the millions of crappy trade and industry journals/websites/magazines that get used to bolster the sourcing of articles on companies too insignificant to have had more than passing attention from mainstream media. Hell, while we've been having this discussion I had someone leave a message on my talk page arguing that a couple of these got his company to notability. A clearer guideline that explicitly knocked that stuff out (and contrasted it with what we consider acceptable) would make everybody's lives easier. The Drover's Wife (talk) 18:44, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Yep trade rags are difficult. I work a lot on biotech/pharma articles, and there are some trade rags in that space that are total garbage, and some that can provide great in-depth coverage of the kind we need, but that still also republish press releases, have churnalism, or will publish something pretty crappy (obviously promotional and placed) on a slow day. Excluding trade rags them from notability considerations could be a great way to go.... Jytdog (talk) 19:05, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

A very valid point. Like much provincial journalism these days, certainly in the UK, these trade gazettes survive on re-hashing PR handouts, or by "sponsored" content or by running "interviews" which are really just variant PR approaches. As a consequence, it's pretty easy to get a half-dozen of these, often all recycling the same PR handout, and assert "significant coverage". One I'm arguing about at the moment has a small print disclaimer " "NewsBTC is not responsible for the accuracy of any of the information supplied in Sponsored Stories/Press Releases such as this one"! KJP1 (talk) 19:33, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

That "sponsored" ref is already excluded by the guideline. I hope you are able to bring that argument successfully! Jytdog (talk) 19:46, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Jytdog,The Drover's Wife. I'd support something along the lines of "publications specific to the industry in which the company operates may be used as sources (if reliable) but do not contribute to notability; a company must receive coverage in reliable secondary sources outside its own industry to be deemed notable". — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 23:17, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

I'd be keen on that. I'm not sure it gets to the plethora of "entrepreneur"-themed crap publications, but it's certainly a start. The Drover's Wife (talk) 23:56, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

I haven't the expertise or experience to make suggestions, but I would support any steps, even if they are partial as they are likely to be, to strengthen and tighten Notability standards around companies. Having taken up Afc reviewing fairly recently, I've been amazed, and appalled, at the sheer volume of company drafts coming though, so many of which appear, to me at least, to be not very well disguised advertising for non-notable businesses. Very often written by single-purpose authors who almost certainly have undisclosed conflicts of interest. In almost every instance, another existing article is cited in support of Accepting their draft which, when one looks at the comparator, one wonders how the hell it got here. I very much liked the proposal above, is that not being proceeded with? KJP1 (talk) 18:53, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

I withdrew the RfC as it was trending toward "no consensus" at best. Am trying to hear where there were "opposes" that raised objections that can be addressed. There are "inclusionists" in WP who will say "no" regardless and there is nothing to do about that. But it is undergoing refinement now, and I or someone else will relaunch it if/when it feels like there is a better chance of getting consensus. Any input you have here - to tighten our sourcing standards -- or above, would be great. Jytdog (talk) 19:05, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

You need a line or section to omit local sources as not being independent, putting stress that there may be metro papers that have a worldwide audience but that they also cover local businesses too, and thus these should still be considered local source and not sufficient for independent coverage for sourcing evaluation (eg restaurant reviews in the NYTimes). We can use these sources after notability has been shown otherwise.

Also, consider the "enduring" factor of the coverage of a business. Even if the coverage is not fully local, if the business is only covered in a superficial manner over a couple of dates when it was launched and no implication that any further news about it will be coming, that's probably a problem and that we shouldn't have an article. --Masem (t) 19:43, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Those are both helpful for what we need. :) btw the second sentence is horrible, right? "If the depth of coverage is not substantial, then multiple[1] independent sources should be cited to establish notability" This is the gaping hole that these companies try to exploit all the time. That "if...not" is killer and we should remove that. Jytdog (talk) 19:48, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Something like that. It has to start with "deep coverage from independent sources from the company" to meet the GNG, no ifs-ands-buts. I think I can see the problem that if read as a hard-nosed statement, that all I need is a press release regurgitated in several trade works to be notable. But that's neither the point the GNG makes, and what NCORP absolutely needs to make crystal clear. Once you establish a statement without any "ifs", then the advice here to establish what we mean (or, more what we don't mean) for deep coverage, and what we mean by independent sources. --Masem (t) 19:58, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

I think this is exactly the kind of tightening up we need to get to, on both counts. The Drover's Wife (talk) 20:51, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Having both positive and negative examples would be useful. With positive examples there is a standard to compare against for inclusion. Some ideas...

Examples of depth:

• Significant artistic, cultural, economic, political, scientific, or technical impact [per DGG but eliminating "national" for Liechtenstein vs. California reason]
• Significant impact on the industry
• Prolonged controversy ranging outside local area
• Prolonged legal issues with impact outside local area
• Major recalls, product safety issues, defective products
• Overwhelmingly positive or negative reception of products or services with widespread coverage

Trivial (in addition to existing):

• Local patronage (custom)
• Passing local controversies
• Mundane lawsuits by or against other commercial entities
• Routine product reviews
• Innovations that do not significantly affect the industry

Non-independent sources:

• Probable conflict of interest or pattern of promoting that particular entity

The examples of trivial need expansion, that's what I could think of. —DIYeditor (talk) 20:12, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Hm that is kind of interesting. You are applying the criteria about the company in the section above, to what the sources discuss - to the analysis of sources step. That is interesting. Jytdog (talk) 20:41, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

• Make it abundantly clear that postings on various sites by freelance contributors without editorial review or fact-checking contribute nothing to notability. I believe this is covered by existing policy, but it is still argued to death at AfD. Specific examples to include:
  • articles by Forbes contributors - these are routinely bought and sold on Upwork just like Wikipedia articles, see for example this gem,
  • Huffington Post, Entreprenur.com, Inc.com, TechCrunch, etc. [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], etc.

A fraction of those postings may be acceptable for verification of specific claims, but notability should never be established based on them. Rentier (talk) 21:07, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

I'm not super-familiar with that site - how many of those are likely to actually get fulfilled by contributors with that access, as opposed to PR flacks being optimistic? The Drover's Wife (talk) 21:26, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

The Drover's Wife, Upwork shows when money exchanges hands. The amounts range from hundreds to thousands of dollars. I see lots of completed contracts with positive reviews, certainly enough to believe that those posting the ads know what they are doing. See also [7] about a Forbes contributor asking £300 for a company profile. Rentier (talk) 22:01, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Interesting. How would you draw the line with those kinds of things? The Drover's Wife (talk) 23:59, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

• The words added by Jytdog below are a good start. I would like "and the like" to be better defined, but I am not sure how to formulate a general rule. Some of the common features of the contributor networks that I believe should be excluded:

• there is no editorial oversight,
• the contributors are not paid for the articles or paid only based on the number of views,
• there is a disclaimer "Opinions expressed by contributors are their own".

There is no real drawback to broadly excluding them all. I doubt a legitimately notable business can have no coverage other than the contributor/guest postings. How about:

"Pieces by non-staff "contributors" in publications like Forbes, Huffington Post, Entreprenur.com, Inc.com, TechCrunch, Medium, and other publications allowing a wide range of contributors to publish without significant editorial control should not be counted toward notability."?

It might be redundant but I would also add "Guest posts should not be counted toward notability unless the author is recognized as an authority on the subject by independent reliable sources." Rentier (talk) 08:32, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

• I think this proposal is fairly good. WHat is non-independent could be more specific. I am supportive of significant and influential reviews being treated as independent sources. They are at least as independent as major press stories on the academy awards, or NY Fashion Week, or the grammys. It shouldn't be pushed to the point of Reductio ad absurdum - just what is needed to more effectively manage the low quality COI article problem. On a practical note, one valuable addition that was discussed in passing yesterday was to add a note to the policy that ref-bombing a draft does not make it more likely to be accepted. Opening up a new A7-type speedy cat for AfC submitted drafts would also help reviewers - but most editors are against this being applied in draft space. (I think it could be limited to resubmitted drafts).Seraphim System ^(talk) 00:37, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

• What do we primarily want to do? I think it is to address the problem of WP:ADVOCACY by dealing with a class of particularly susceptible targets (not the only class to be sure, but currently the most prominent one--others can be dealt with subsequently. This is supplementary to other even more difficult ways to reduce promotionalism -- finding some way of identifying undeclared paid editors, increasing our efforts to remove their work regardless of notability, finding some way to more effectively control content within an article to reduce our dependence of article removal. I think we need all these approaches simultaneously. The reason this is the priority is that the entire purpose of WP is a community written NPOV resource, and if we allow large parts of it to be written by people interested only in their commercial POV,it will create an environment where very few volunteer editors want to work, and destroy our purposes altogether. It's not that large company articles will be free from promotionalism , but there will be fewer of them to watch, and more volunteers interested in working on them.

A secondary factor is to actually mean something by NOT DIRECTORY. Routine factual information about companies of all sizes is a reasonable thing to ha e, but is not an encyclopedia. I would not at all be opposed to having a volunteer-compiled web directory, but it lowers the value of an encyclopedia if it includes material that that over-emphasises the most minor .

If we want to raise the notability standard for this type of article, there are two methods: we can stick with the GNG, and decide in practice by having stricter requirements for what sources are reliable and independent enough for notability. We're getting a little more sophisticated here, but this will always be totally subjective. So many sources are borderline in these respects that it can be equally argued in either direction. The result of that is that the decisions will be based upon the essentially random factor of who comes around, and how good they are at the necessary techniques of AfD. The net effect of such a procedure is to make erratic decisions, and give a public impression of incompetence.

The other way is to have additional or alternative standards that limit the articles beyond the GNG. Many of the ones proposed are objected to as too USA-centric, and I agree--we will need to adjust them further, but we have to start somewhere. Similarly, many of them have subjective factors, and it might be good to rely only on numbers, but I think the consensus would be there are other indications of what's appropriate for an encyclopedia . At least this will focus the arguments where they belong, on whether the subject should or should not be in the encyclopedia . People will always differ about some, but it will give more rational results than going only by sources. For the numerical factors, there are no obvious numbers,and the only approach here is to compromise, which is exactly what consensus is good for.

Why would someone oppose this? There are still some people who think including promotionalism is an unimportant problem. Spending a few hours at WP:COIN, the conflict of interest noticeboard, will I think show them otherwise. There are still many people who think the GNG objective--they really haven't looked at the absurdity of the results that this leads to. In this field in particular, applying it blindly leads to saying that whoever advertises effectively enough should have an article. When I came here, I thought the GNG a very clever simple idea to avoid disputes, but the extent of disagreement at AfD soon convinced me otherwise. DGG ( talk ) 00:50, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

DGG, I have to agree 100% with your last paragraph, having once been one of those editors that didn't understand the extent of the issues that result from applying unrestricted GNG to CORPs. I think it is necessary to include wording such as "if the suitability of a source is 'borderline' or in doubt, it is better to exercise caution, and exclude the source for the purposes of establishing notability." The notability of CORPS in an AfD should never be a contentious matter IMO, notability should be more than obvious, or else it should be removed, other topic types might be discussed as 'borderline' but we should generally er on the side of deletion when it comes to the notability of CORPs (due to their increased ability to manipulate the press and plant coverage). — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 01:12, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Insertcleverphrasehere: added that to that proposed re-write below. Will see if it survives. Thanks, Renata (talk) 02:36, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

(In response to DGG) I think it's unhelpful to think that deleting content alone is the solution to preventing large parts of the encyclopedia written by people interested only in their commercial POV. We have (to my knowledge) no active business WikiProjects on the site - and that's because there's no way to contribute in this area without being prepared for very regular trips to AfD, because the solution to "the site is getting used by businesses for promotionalism" is being treated by some editors as "whack every company article that I come across". I also think an overzealous approach to WP:DIRECTORY is extremely unhelpful: if I go to an article, I want to know information about the subject - starting with the basic stuff. Treating basic information that would be completely uncontroversial about any other subject as an ad or a directory listing when it concerns a notable company is a disaster, and ensures that Wikipedia will never develop good business coverage written by uninvolved editors. We need a middle ground that actually targets the advocacy stuff without driving regular editors out of the area wholesale - because we're succeeding at the latter and utterly failing at the former right now. And this is why we need solid sourcing standards: defining what is good allows us to much more clearly identify what we consider to be not good and turf it, and reduce the debatable areas that PR flacks have a field day with. GNG is only struggling in this area because we can't make up our mind what we consider to be good coverage and what we consider to be insufficient coverage, which can be easily fixed with a consensus high standard. The Drover's Wife (talk) 01:23, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

(In response to Insertcleverphrasehere) Erring on the side of deletion is also a disaster when basically any company is bound to get nominated for deletion at some point. We need to get a consensus on an actual standard of what we think is good coverage and what we won't accept, because having to fight to keep articles on national-household-name-for-generations-companies is doing absolutely nothing to stop the reams of startup spam. The Drover's Wife (talk) 01:26, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

​I was referring specifically to judging whether individual sources contribute to notability. In short; when in doubt, no they shouldn't. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 01:30, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

One issue that concerns me is the differentiation between local daily newspapers and regional daily newspapers, which is clearly not defined in the link in the guideline to Newspaper#Local or regional, which is piped to "regional". I am confident in saying, that where I live, the Napa Valley Register is a perfectly respectable local daily newspaper, whereas the San Francisco Chronicle is a trusted regional newspaper. However, there is nothing in that link that would allow a less experienced editor in doubt to make that differentiation about another pair of newspapers elsewhere. How could someone determine whether the Los Angeles Times is a regional or a national newspaper, and does that distinction have any functional significance?

Another issue of concern is our stance on trade publications. I agree that many trade magazines are worthless for establishing notability, but there are some exceptions, in my opinion. I believe that repeated, in depth coverage of a company in Aviation Week & Space Technology for example, is a strong indicator of notability, whereas a personnel or product announcement would not be. In the discussion above, I raised the issue of the notability of wine businesses. I believe that detailed, multipage feature coverage of a winery in a prestigious publication like the Wine Spectator is an indicator of notability, whereas a brief mention in their wine tasting notes is not.

I also have a concern about the opinion expressed above that a restaurant review in the New York Times does not contribute to notability. I consider an in-depth review of a fine dining establishment in that newspaper to be a very strong indicator of notability, especially if the restaurant is located outside the New York metropolitan area.

I believe that the section "Special note: advertising and promotion" is either confusing or logically weak. First, we are supposed to edit the article for NPOV, then we are supposed to remove any advertising content that remains. I have a hard time understanding how advertising content could remain if the text meets NPOV -perhaps specific examples could be provided. Aggressive editing for NPOV by experienced, uninvolved editors is a better solution than deletion for many company articles, and I also believe that lengthy protection of articles subject to chronic promotionalism is a tool that can be used more widely. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 01:01, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Cullen328, Wouldn't a company with repeated in-depth coverage in Aviation Week & Space Technology also be very likely to have at least some coverage in non-industry publications to establish independent notability? The same would be true of Wineries with regards to Wine Spectator. If we allow some trade publications, this opens the rabbit maze to the point that it invalidates the criteria entirely (everything becomes subjective and an exercise in 'weighing the sources' against some arcane metric where there is no one-size-fits-all). The solution of aggressive NPOV editing by experienced users is the current status quo, and it is failing. We don't have enough of those editors, and the volume of promotional CORP articles is only on the rise. It also violates WP:BOGOF, which I believe is always good to keep in mind. In protecting the wiki, the last thing we want is to encourage a system that just enables the COI editors at the expense of volunteers. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 01:26, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Cullen, I come across so many articles that are not selling ginzu knives (buy one get one free!) but were so obviously placed in WP to gain visibility for the company. Having a WP article at all is seen as being essential for business visibility. Have a look at the marketing of paid editing companies -- here are some:

• Mister Wiki:

SEO

According to Alexa, Wikipedia is the 5th most trafficked website in the world, and the 7th most trafficked website in the United States. Additionally, Wikipedia pages are usually in the top 5 links to show up on Google results of your name.

By having a Wikipedia page, your brand or organization can appear at the top of search results and also obtain a Google Knowledge Graph."

Narrative

Through a Wikipedia page, you can more easily direct people to read about your story from one credible source, instead of having obtaining different information from various sources.

Brand Perception

The largest companies, figure, and brands have Wikipedia pages. By having a Wikipedia page, readers will have a larger perception of your name online.

• Legal morning;

Why have a Wikipedia page?

Google loves Wikipedia and as such ranks it high in search results. Wikipedia is also the first place people go when they Google your name. By leveraging Wikipedia, you can help control your brand and present yourself to the world.

If you do not already know the stats behind Wikipedia, here are a few that should consider if you are thinking of creating a Wikipedia page (see image

This goes on and on. There are zillions of these (google search results), all saying over and over that "It is essential for your business to have a WP article"! That is the pressure that we are dealing with. That is why we have all this mundane articles about non-notable companies pouring into WP every day.

A page doesn't have to say "buy a ginzu knife and get one free!" to be an advertisement. The point is to simply be in Wikipedia. Jytdog (talk) 01:54, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Jytdog, I am well aware of most of that material and the underlying problems, and I favor aggressive pushback by WMF legal, high visibility spokespeople (JW) and volunteers worldwide against paid-editing-for-hire operations. I favor stricter standards for declared paid editors, including an outright ban on direct editing of paid articles except for reverting blatant vandalism. I would favor some sort of advisory to administrators encouraging full protection of company articles subjected to persistent promotional editing. But this discussion is about something different: how we evaluate the notability of companies so that we permit a well-referenced NPOV article about that company. There are actually experienced generalist editors here (like me) who sometimes write and improve articles about small and medium sized businesses we sincerely believe to be notable, without payment or COI, even though they would be subject to deletion under the drastic tightening of notability standards advocated here. I think that we need more NPOV coverage of businesses worldwide, not less.

As for the trade publications issue, perhaps the companies receiving in-depth multipage coverage in respected trade publications will also have received dozens or hundreds of briefer mentions or a sentence or even a paragraph in broader circulation publications. But determined deletionists will always argue that this is insufficient. I believe that in-depth, author signed reliable trade publication coverage can be considered as an indicator of notability, along with other type of sourcing. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 02:30, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

There is some "philosophical divide" but we all want the same thing - articles that provide knowledge to the world. I do not believe that an article about a company that is really just a mundane (or even fluffy) directory listing provides knowledge... there should be something to say. There are so many subjects that really are notable that we don't cover yet. I don't think we are ever going to run out of stuff to write about if that is what worries you :) Jytdog (talk) 02:36, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

I do not write or expand mundane directory listings, Jytdog, and I recommend deleting much more often than keeping at AfD. And when I learn of what I believe to be a notable topic at AfD, I will do the work to expand and reference the article if I am the least bit interested in the topic. It would be terribly disappointing to me if a radical restriction in business notability resulted in the deletion of most of my business related contributions. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 02:51, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

I didn't mean to imply in any way that you do! Jytdog (talk) 02:55, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Depth of coverage aka CORPDEPTH/ORGDEPTH

The depth of coverage of the subject by the source must be considered. If the depth of coverage is not substantial, then m Multiple^[1] independent sources with ongoing coverage should be cited to establish notability. Trivial or incidental coverage of a subject is not sufficient to establish notability.

Deep coverage provides an organization with a level of attention that extends well beyond routine announcements and makes it possible to write more than a very brief, incomplete stub about an organization. Acceptable sources under this criterion include all types of reliable sources except works carrying merely trivial coverage, such as:

• sources that simply report meeting times, shopping hours or event schedules,
• the publications of telephone numbers, addresses, and directions in business directories,
• inclusion in lists of similar organizations,^[2]
• the season schedule or final score from sporting events,
• routine communiqués announcing such matters as the hiring or departure of personnel,
• brief announcements of mergers or sales of part of the business,
• simple statements that a product line is being sold, changed, or discontinued,
• routine notices of facility openings or closings (e.g., closure for a holiday or the end of the regular season),
• routine notices of the opening or closing of local branches, franchises, or shops,
• routine restaurant or other reviews,
• quotations from an organization's personnel as story sources, or
• passing mention, such as identifying a quoted person as working for an organization.
• Passing local controversies
• Mundane lawsuits by or against other commercial entities
• Innovations that do not significantly affect the industry

• Significant artistic, cultural, economic, political, scientific, or technical impact
• Significant impact on the industry
• Prolonged controversy ranging outside local area
• Prolonged legal issues with impact outside local area
• Major recalls, product safety issues, defective products
• Overwhelmingly positive or negative reception of products or services with widespread coverage

Audience aka AUD

The source's audience must also be considered. Evidence of significant coverage by international or national, or at least regional, media is a strong indication of notability. On the other hand, attention solely from local media, or media of limited interest and circulation, is not an indication of notability; at least one regional, statewide, provincial, national, or international source is necessary.

Trade magazines must be used with great care. We have a presumption against counting sources in trade magazines toward notability as these are widely used by businesses to increase their visibility.^[3] That said, feature stories only from leading trade magazines can be used but the burden is on the person proposing it to obtain confirmation at RSN that the specific source contributes to notability.

Pieces by "contributors" in publications like Forbes, Huffington Post, Entreprenur.com, Inc.com, TechCrunch, Medium, and the like should not be counted toward notability. These are often similar to trade publication pieces and often serve to promote an organization, product, or concept

Independence of sources aka ORGIND

A primary test of notability is whether people independent of the subject itself (or its manufacturer, creator, or vendor) have actually considered the company, corporation, product or service notable enough that they have written and published non-trivial, non-routine works that focus upon it.

Sources used to support a claim of notability include independent, reliable publications in all forms, such as newspaper articles, books, television documentaries, websites, and published reports by consumer watchdog organizations^[4] except for the following:

• press releases, press kits, or similar works;
• any material which is substantially based on a press release (churnalism);
• self-published materials;
• any material written by the organization, its members, or sources closely associated with it;
• advertising and marketing materials by, about, or on behalf of the organization;
• corporate websites or other websites written, published, or controlled by the organization;
• patents, whether pending or granted;^[5]
• any material written or published by the organization, directly or indirectly;
• other works in which the company, corporation, organization, or group talks about itself—whether published by the company, corporation, organization, or group itself, or re-printed by other people.

Self-promotion and product placement are not routes to qualifying for an encyclopaedia article. Qualifying published works must be someone else writing about the company, corporation, club, organization, product, or service.

Once notability is established, primary sources and self-published sources may be used to verify some of the article's content. See Wikipedia:Autobiography for the verifiability and neutrality problems that affect material where the subject of the article itself is the source of the material.

Sourcing part 2 discussion for concrete proposals

Concrete proposals only, if it is possible... I have offered some changes above, based on the discussion in the section above... I acknowledge that the thing about trade publications may be controversial but i am looking for a way to establish WP precedents that can be cited rather than establishing them by fiat here.... Jytdog (talk) 01:53, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

• I think you've handled the trade publications issue well (possibly more generously than I might have). I think the main ongoing issue with this is that it needs to do a better job of clarifying what we consider to be acceptable sourcing. The suggested additions in this new draft are a start, but they're very slanted towards companies that've done something wrong: most notable companies that've been involved in a scandal (and probably some that aren't notable) could get up, while notable companies that haven't are held to an extremely high bar. To illustrate just how high a bar (compared to every other notability guideline we have on the project), what would be an individual source that would indisputably establish "significant artistic, cultural, economic, political, scientific or technical impact" or "significant on the industry"? The answer is that you're probably taking out literally all media coverage and left to only topics with their own books. This is unworkable in practice, which means that people have to really stretch these terms to cover even very notable companies - which makes everything arguable - and takes us back to where we started. I feel like it might be a good idea to hash out what people think a good source in this area looks like before we start trying to hammer out a specific proposal - we've skimmed over it here but not really done it in detail. The Drover's Wife (talk) 02:12, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

What we say now is "Deep coverage provides an organization with a level of attention that extends well beyond routine announcements and makes it possible to write more than a very brief, incomplete stub about an organization.". Would it be helpful to move the list of examples up? About what you said about needing a book-length treatment, I don't know that this is true. this piece in Bloomberg is a marvel of in-depth reporting on how Mylan was able to raise the price of the EpiPen - it gets into society and culture stuff (worried parents), politics (the lobbying Mylan did to change laws to make it OK for anyone to inject anyone with it, which they needed to get schools to stockpile them), patent law stuff, regulatory stuff... it is deep. This NYT piece goes into depth about a major deal between two pharma companies, with each one trying to manage the risks of the business by concentrating on X and getting rid of Y and vice versa, so they swapped assets. here is a ref by a Forbes editor (not contributor) - one of the main biotech commentators today - talking about George Scangos, and executive about whom we really should have an article and don't - it talks about how he has managed things when he made the move from a small old-school biotech to the giant Biogen... These are all in-depth, careful, thoughtful, stuff you can learn from... Jytdog (talk) 03:07, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

• I sometimes create articles about Linux and FOSS software and one issue is that as these standards increase, I think it is also time to separate WP:NSOFTWARE - it is currently a pretty good and thorough essay. I don't think FOSS software should get mixed up with this commercial organization fracas, and WP:NSOFTWARE notes this difference and recommends WP:NCORP for commercial software. (Some guy's homebrewed Unix clone is hilariously Linus Torvalds' posts about the History of Linux) - this does come up at AfD, and I think the sooner FOSS software is formally separated from WP:NCORP's higher and stricter standards, the better for Wikipedia's coverage of software and technology. SeraphWiki (talk) 03:23, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
• The additions to examples of trivial coverage seem fine, although I'm don't really like "innovations that do not significantly affect the industry" - it doesn't really fit in with the others. As to examples of what counts, they're not really examples of good coverage as such, so much as a restatement of the previously proposed criteria. I'm aware that this is in keeping with DIYeditor's suggestion, but I don't think it works- what we need here is about extent of coverage rather than focusing on topic of coverage. What I'd like is discussion about the impact the company had on the industry (if any) rather than specifically significant impact; I'm more interested in coverage of how the company was formed than on a specific controversy. What I think we're looking for are sources that allow us to write about the organisation in detail and from a NPOV, rather that sources that demonstrate worthiness. - Bilby (talk) 12:22, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Some people want the discussion to focus on source analysis, some people want to try to develop criteria about the companies themselves. We will see where the consensus-building process takes us. What DiYeditor was up to, was a consideration of what kinds of things a source with "deep coverage" will discuss. That was an interesting suggestion (after all, if we are to know if a company has made "an impact", we will know that because it is in a source... I do hear you that an independent source that describes the history of how the company was formed in detail would probably be "deep coverage"; will consider how to add that sort of thing...Jytdog (talk) 12:52, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Criteria about the companies themselves isn't a direction a like. I much prefer saying that we can write about a company so long as it meets the GNG, but this is what we mean by non-trivial, independent sources. In which case, our interest isn't in the topics that the sources cover, but the extent to which they discuss the company. The list of examples is about the topics - it is possible, for example, that a source discussing a major recall would fail to have anything viable to build an article around, or that a source looking at a prolonged controversy would be a company's equivalent of BLP1E, and not discuss the organisation outside of the controversy. I feel that the focus should be on sources that allow us to write an NPOV article, rather than sources that speak to the worth of the topic. - Bilby (talk) 12:59, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

I second this FWIW. The Drover's Wife (talk) 13:45, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

• I agree with Bilby’s take on this. We should focus on the sourcing not the company itself. However, there is a second part to it that is key... I think we need to better clarify what we mean by INDEPENDENT sourcing. Blueboar (talk) 14:19, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

That's all great. Can we please use this section to make actual proposals, rather than high level stuff? Bilby/Drover' Wife would you please propose language that says what you are after? Blueboar would you please review what the ORGIND already says and suggest improvements (I think this is fairly well beat to death but perhaps it can be improved further...)? thx Jytdog (talk) 14:21, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Where do we comment on your proposal, then? - Bilby (talk) 17:02, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

The concrete proposal above distills stuff from the section above it. It is not my proposal. Feel free to redact the thing above or post something here. Whatever. Jytdog (talk) 17:17, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

A comment about the trade journal/AUD piece. I don't disagree with this, but we want to be clear that there may be fields with field-specific works that are not trade journals but otherwise reliable and which coverage is good to have. For example, the Hollywood Reporter and Variety are works primarily on the US film industry, but they would not be considered trade journals so company news that appears in those, assuming depth of coverage, would be just fine for us. --Masem (t) 20:05, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

• Regarding trade journals I think they have to be allowed - otherwise, it would completely halt link development on any article but the parent. I'm not saying CloseUp media is the greatest source, but even LexisNexis includes it so it's probably a must-have for companies, and we should allow it too. We're all about making a free encyclopedia right? What I would support is clarifying the policy to protect legitimate articles - like, do we treat software as a "commercial product" even if its FOSS?
• The solution for promotional articles is clear, ignore the notability debate and G11 the offending articles. If there is something preventing this, or drafts are passing review before they are ready, or being kept at AfD - adding more layers to tighten up the notability policy is not going to cure this. It's only going to hurt legitimate article creation. I don't think AfC reviewers need more reasons to decline articles. I've still seen drafts pass with external links in the article text, even though the policy about this is unambiguous - reviewers work fast and the process is imperfect. I don't think there is a policy fix for that.Seraphim System ^(talk) 21:48, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

I believe that we tend to have groups of articles with the same kinds of sourcing issues arising out of the same kinds of industries. I would like to propose as a general rule that we basically have list articles on companies in these industries which get borderline coverage. Redirect the article title to the list, merge in the content up to a limit of, say, 500 or 700 words, with the best handful of sources, and let it sit with every other thing of its kind until it can be demonstrated that the sort of better sources exist to separate it out of this status. Remember that subjects named in a list do not need to be independently inherently notable if the subject of the list as a whole is notable. I think a list of companies in a given field of business would be an inherently notable list, with at least some sources discussing the subject for every field that is conceived broadly enough. I also tend to think that a "merge" argument is a lighter load to carry in a discussion. bd2412 T 05:14, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

Not a fan of this. I've almost never seen a "list" of that nature that actually gives any useful information to the reader - usually, it winds up as a "merge" to a list that just mentions the name of the thing. Even if this were the exception that did have useful content, this would inevitably sprawl into very long lists of barely-related subjects. Either it is notable, in which case it should have its own article, or it is not, and it should be deleted. The Drover's Wife (talk) 05:24, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

• Support BD2412’s proposal, but reword without using the word “list”. Cover kinds of industries, yes! Put the individual companies in context, yes. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:33, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

I read most of the opposes below as based on likely consequences of it being a list. Requiring prose implicitly requires secondary sources which fits WP:PSTS and the GNG, unlike lisitified data. One problem with orphan small company promotional articles is the lack of industry articles that would provide the context. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:59, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

• I oppose this. It would become a spam magnet, and we are not a directory or a collector of indiscriminate information. So, would be very difficult to manage and is not what we do. Jytdog (talk) 13:02, 26 January 2018 (UTC)
• If there are 500 words to be written about it, then it deserves it's own article - likely those words are going to be promotional if it isn't notable. Oppose, also per Jytdog Galobtter (pingó mió) 13:16, 26 January 2018 (UTC)
• Strong oppose. The point is to reduce spam, and if a subject is non-notable and too spammy for its own article, including it in a stub-list type of article isn't going to fix that. Kb.au (talk) 14:05, 26 January 2018 (UTC)
• The more I think about it, the less I like it. These list articles would be difficult to maintain, would grow into hodgepodge of random stuff, and would have an unclear inclusion criteria (list of companies that did not survive deletion but are not entirely hopeless?) Renata (talk) 14:21, 26 January 2018 (UTC)
• Personally I think this would be useful but doesn't it conflict with Wikipedia:NOTDIRECTORY? Also how would spam be controlled per Jytdog? I have recently started to offer a "move to draft" (or is that called draftify?) option for these cases - not GNG now but marginal and may in the future. —DIYeditor (talk) 00:08, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
  • We have existing articles like List of helicopter airlines and List of microbreweries and List of bitcoin companies, which have not been objected to on that basis. Such lists (or however they are formatted) are already policed for spam the same way that all other articles are. bd2412 T 04:24, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
    • These work because these are lists of articles. "Merging" to these kinds of lists is even more useless than deletion, because instead of telling the user you don't have any information on what you're looking for, you instead intentionally send them to a page that tells them the microbrewery they're looking for information about is indeed a microbrewery. The Drover's Wife (talk) 04:38, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
    • bd2412, List of bitcoin companies appears to be a notable-only list. I just cleaned up a few entries at List of helicopter airlines to make it a notable-only list. (Someone is responding to my edits right now, but they appear to agree it should only list companies with articles.) I'm probably not going to fiddle with List of microbreweries, but anyone who wants to strip out the redlink listings has my support vote. There are kinds of lists that can include non-notable items, but lists that can work well as "notable lists" generally should be limited to notable items. A random selection of non-notable companies is generally a lousy list. We're not a phonebook or business directory. Alsee (talk) 16:56, 2 February 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose -- if a company is nn, then putting it on a list does not help things. It would be a spam magnet, as noted by others. "Lists of companies" should be reserved for those with stand-alone articles. K.e.coffman (talk) 05:40, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose. The list articles are already by themselves spam magnets; I've semi-protected List of bitcoin companies among others to keep out spammers who want publicity but are too lazy to write their own article. Wikipedia is not a business directory. MER-C 11:48, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose WP:LISTCRUFT -- Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 15:17, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose In my opinion, lists of companies should be limited to notable companies that already have acceptable Wikipedia articles. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 23:54, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose. Any sort of "industry-overview" article must obviously focus on notable companies. Any page explicitly dedicated to non-notable companies is just a centralized spam preservation page. NOTDIRECTORY/NOTCATALOG. NOSPAM. Alsee (talk) 15:19, 2 February 2018 (UTC)