Talk:Freudenberg Group

Identifying the company

I'm rewriting this to be about the Freudenberg group of companies headquartered in Weinheim that is the subject of the German article de:Unternehmensgruppe Freudenberg. The original version did not give enough information to be certain that they are identical, but if there is another Freudenberg conglomerate based in Germany, it is not sufficiently notable to show up in a search, and this one is. Accordingly, if kept at AfD, this article should in my opinion be moved to Freudenberg Group, which is the name used on the English version of the official website. Yngvadottir (talk) 20:04, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Infobox

I do not understand why someone has deleted the company infobox of the site?! In general, adding an infobox is a good idea especially when lots of standard information about a company are spread throughout the article, hence improving the readability a lot. Thanks. TheBraveLegal 16:12, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Infoboxes are a matter of taste and by an Arbcom ruling, in most categories of article (the big exception being species, for which they were invented) it is left up to the major contributor(s) to an article whether to include one. I do not share your opinion that they improve readability; their major function appears to be to help outside businesses such as Google to divert readers from Wikipedia and/or draw teh reader's attention to their ads. You may disagree because you prefer to read statistics and are not interested in prose, but you should remember that this is an encyclopedia and other readers may wish to read the actual articles without first having to bushwack through a great big box of what someone decided were the key points. Thank you for asking. Yngvadottir (talk) 14:35, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

I think infoboxes are great. They are incredibly helpful at quick summarization of data for books, animals, geographic locations, electronics and so forth. A weird thing to nitpick over; editors have bigger problems to worry about with regard to corps and orgs than trivial infoboxes. Either way, there seems to be consensus for its inclusion so, I'm glad that is all sorted out now. dsprc ^[talk] 17:55, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

@Dsprc: It may be trivial to you, and you may find it "incredibly helpful" to have a quick summary of data, and belittle your fellow editors who write content for "nitpicking". The existence of other problems does not mean the imposition of these things is not a problem. (I note that in this case the editor took several edits tweaking the infobox but could not be arsed to cover up the bare URL reference. The editor concerned is new, but I find the priorities skewed to say the least.) I'm half inclined to remove the damned thing again. Settled, my left big toe; this is a contentious issue in the community, and rightly so. Kindly familiarize yourself with the Arbcom decision and consider respecting others' work when they disagree with your viewpoint. Yngvadottir (talk) 18:02, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

That is because it is trivial and they are helpful; just like it is a method for "Google to divert readers from Wikipedia" to you. Also, I wasn't belittling. As an Admin you should know to assume good faith and to not bite the newcomers (including myself). Everyone's priorities are skewed but, this is a feature of Wikipedia (and humanity), not a bug. I've absolutely zero interest in reading Arbcom or other bureaucratic nonsense; I'll happily leave that to you and the rest of the Vogons, thanks. Please don't throw around weighted claims that I am "denigrating" others' POV, because when such comments are made, it is then the pot calling the kettle black. Ditto on the last point. Either way, this has carried on long enough; none of this is helpful in improving this article nor the purpose of this talkpage. If you've any other constructive critique, please address them on my talkpage. Thank you. dsprc ^[talk] 19:01, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

@Dsprc: On the contrary. You're a very fast learner, and have been reporting a lot of new users for conflict of interest, so clearly that matters to you. Your use of links, such as a referral to some Signpost article, is perhaps more belittling than you realize, perhaps because you are such a fast learner and found your niche so soon. I am not assuming bad faith - I am pointing out that (not unlike the other editors who have imposed the infobox to your great satisfaction), you are too easily assuming the infobox issue is settled because you personally like them. Please consider toning down your lip-smacking delight by not using words such as "incredibly" when you know others do not agree. The Arbcom decision matters because Arbcom is the final arbiter of disputes and actually decided infoboxes are a divisive issue that should be decided on a case by case basis. I have allowed this article - which I saved at AfD - to be defaced with an infobox because multiple editors have decided to come by and dump one in it - mucking up the references in the process. I have extended good faith that they are indeed multiple editors and perhaps a case of repeated logged-out editing, not socks. But there is no policy requiring an infobox, much less requiring me to kowtow to your judgement of how marvelous infoboxes are, or what is trivial (or to accept being called a Vogon). The infobox is not an improvement here - it is clutter imposed by those who prefer reading statistical tables and assume the reader does too. It's a price we pay for having a collaborative editing environment. I suggest you write a few articles yourself and decorate them with infoboxes; that would improve the encyclopedia a lot more than your lambasting me for responding to a drive-by comment here. Yngvadottir (talk) 19:40, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

• After consulting the Arbcom decision over infoboxes and noting that the Business WikiProject requires infoboxes, I have implemented the solution used at other articles where there has been an intractable dispute over infoboxes, for example Little Moreton Hall, and collapsed most of it. I appreciate the good-faith effort that goes into concocting one of these, but I regard them as not an improvement except in certain specific classes of articles (such as ships and species). Specifically in the case of companies, I believe they place an unencyclopedic emphasis on statistics. We are not a directory. Feel free to take me to AN/I for conduct unbecoming an administrator for disagreeing with you about infoboxes. The thing is there; it's just collapsed. Yngvadottir (talk) 15:12, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

Contested deletion

This page should not be speedy deleted as an unambiguous copyright infringement, because the first source seems to be a copy of this wikipedia page. [1] Looking through page history Their text includes text initially added in multiple revision including 2011 [2].

The second possible source has a date of 2019-04-24 after the text in the article was written. It seems to be a website lifting info from many sources. --Salix alba (talk): 05:56, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

Suggestion to update figures

Dear all,

I would like to suggest an update of sales and employee numbers after the publication of the Annual Report 2021. Please note that I have a financial conflict of interest as I am being paid by Freudenberg Group. I hope that uninvolved editors could review my suggestions and make changes if they find them appropriate.

Extended content

Suggested changes to the Infobox: Revenue 1. Please remove the current revenue from the infobox: "€8.8 billion (2020)" 2. Please add the following as revenue to the infobox: "€10.039 billion (2021)" 3. Using as the reference: Freudenberg Group Annual Report 2021 "Annual Report 2021" (PDF). Freudenberg Group. Retrieved 2022-03-30. As an alternative source – German-language newspaper: "Freudenberg macht Rekordumsatz". Weinheimer Nachrichten (in German). 2022-03-30. Retrieved 2022-03-30. 4. Reason for change being made: Revenue for fiscal year 2021. Employees 1. Please remove the current employee number from the infobox: "47,777 (2020)" 2. Please add the following employee number to the infobox: "€49,836 (2021)" 3. Using as the reference: Freudenberg Group Annual Report 2021 "Annual Report 2021" (PDF). Freudenberg Group. Retrieved 2022-03-30. As an alternative source – German-language newspaper: "Freudenberg macht Rekordumsatz". Weinheimer Nachrichten (in German). 2022-03-30. Retrieved 2022-03-30. (Please note that the employee number in the article has been rounded to 50,000 employees; the exact number can be retrieved from the Annual Report) 4. Reason for change being made: Employee number for fiscal year 2021.

I greatly appreciate everybodys time and effort with this. Thank you very much in advance for your help! All the best, Conandcon (talk) 13:27, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

 Done Happy Editing--IAmChaos 06:51, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

IAmChaos, Great, thank you! Best, Conandcon (talk) 08:17, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

Suggestions for history section

Dear all,

I would like to suggest to add information to the history section using reliable, secondary sources like (history) books or newspaper articles. Freudenberg just finished a research project aiming at adding missing sources to the history section of the German article, where such reliable sources where missing. In addition to adding missing sources to the history section, which was written before by independent editors, they corrected some false information and conservatively added some missing milestones from the company's over 170-year old history - also of course not using primary but reliable secondary sources and respecting NPOV! In addition, all changes where checked and approved by independent editors.

So, as the German history section is now fully backed by sources and as it is much more thorough now as it is currently here in WPEN, I was wondering if it would make sense that I translate the section and post a respective suggestion here on the talk page or - if more suitable - on my user page.

I also asked Yngvadottir for his opinion on this a few days ago as he was one of the main contributors to this article - especially in its "early" days. As he has not been involved in this article for some years now, he asked me to post my suggestion here on the talk page.

Also: Please note that I have a financial conflict of interest as I am being paid by Freudenberg to support here.

I am very much looking forward to feedback from independent editors on my suggestions. @Yngvadottir and IAmChaos: What do you think?

Best, Conandcon (talk) 15:33, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

Hi again Conandcon! Thanks for starting this section; I need to set aside time to go through the sourcing at German Wikipedia, and also to examine how this article has changed in the past decade (!) since I was involved in expanding it. It's highly likely that it could do with an update, but I also have no idea whether anything in the history has been removed or greatly changed in the interim. If it does indeed need an update, I don't think translating part of the German article would be necessarily the best approach, because as you noted on my talk page, the English Wikipedia article has taken a different approach, focusing more on the family. More importantly, the article can't be changed at the behest of the company; editors have to decide what to change and add based on the sources, and avoid supporting things only from primary sources, including press releases. You mention books as well as newspaper articles, and I'm hoping the German Wikipedia editors have indeed found new sources (including quite possibly things I failed to find back in 2011 or whenever it was). Those are the outlines of what I'm planning to do, and on my talk page I've explained my fear that if the article is updated with too many sources from Freudenberg itself, it may fall foul of other English Wikipedia editors considering it to be advertising. (I see it got nominated for speedy deletion while I wasn't looking.) Please forgive me for being slow; if anyone else, such as IAMChaos, gets to looking at the German sources before I do, great. Yngvadottir (talk) 03:35, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for your reply, Yngvadottir and for being willing to look into this. Just FYI, when I talked about the different approach I meant the section about Ownership and Philosophy (in German Unternehmensübersicht/Struktur). I now suggested to have look at the history section. However, I am really looking forward to your opinion. Just let me know if I can help in any way. All the best, Conandcon (talk) 20:17, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

Sorry on my delay, I haven't been online lately. Unfortunately I don't speak any german, so I can't quite go through other language texts, but if you want to do that, feel free to open an edit request like you did above, and a patroller should see it, kind of like how I did above. (I am not watching this page, so please ping me if you want my attention.) Happy Editing--IAmChaos 02:21, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for your patience, Conandcon and anyone else who was waiting :-) I went through the history section of the German article, comparing it to ours and examining its sourcing, and I saw that something has happened to degrade the citations here—the same reference repeated with multiple reference names, lots of missing authors and dates—I think someone ran an automated process to change the references to citation templates, which I didn't use at the time I expanded the article, and it went wrong somehow. So I've just edited the article to fix that, and it confirms what I'd gathered, that the article does need updating. (In addition to old statistics, we represent the Shanghai metro commission as recent; it probably needs a year.) Our article also appears to be inaccurate regarding ownership of the gardens; I think I recall disagreement over that at the time, it needs checking.

The German article uses almost entirely different sources, in particular a 2018 scholarly article (I haven't looked yet to see whether I can access this) and a book that was published after my work on the article: Scholtyseck, Joachim (2016). Freudenberg. Ein Familienunternehmen in Kaiserreich, Demokratie und Diktatur (in German). Munich: Beck. ISBN 978-3-406-68853-9.. I'm pretty sure I won't be able to see that, but some of the information, such as the Sachsenhausen tests including the company's shoe soles, should be referenceable from elsewhere.

The German article has more information about early company history, such as introduction of the chromium salts tanning technology (? My knowledge of science is very poor, I'll have to look up the terminology), the fact the company had been export-dependent (which may be in one of the sources we are already citing), and the introduction of artificial rubber. On the other hand, we have the cute story about how the experimental unwovens came to be used for cleaning. The German article focuses more on Viledon, we focus more on Vileda; these need to be clarified. The German article has more dates in the pre-WW2 section, but while we have an article on the Simmerring, German Wikipedia covers it in an unreferenced section at de:Wellendichtring#Simmerring.

The German article has an outcrop of names where it covers the development of the Simmerring (a redlink and 2 with articles on de, but not here). This strikes me as unnecessary detail. The middle section of the history in German is a bit long to my eyes, but this becomes in my view a real problem of balance in the last History section, "since the 1990s", which is a long series of opening factories and striking partnerships and restructuring of foreign endeavours and many acquisitions. There's too much detail; it gives the impression that the last 20–30 years are by far the most important period in the history of the company, or viewed another way, that the purpose is to assure the reader of the company's current prosperity and influence. I'm not sure much of that is needed except a summary of areas (of the world and of production) that the company is engaged in (I notice the medical applications of Spinnvliehstoffe, a term whose meaning the link on de basically tells me is impossible to explain!; and that the company makes flexible circuit boards), plus the spinning off of the IT division. And the list of trademarks is one of the things that presumably need updating.

The German article has information about two scholarship programmes, but no reference for either. I think those whould be good to add to the philanthropy section (probably after the statement that the Foundation focusses on education, rather than as distinct paragraphs), but there's no reference for either that I can see.

So there are my impressions. Yngvadottir (talk) 09:39, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

Dear Yngvadottir,

So sorry für my late reply. I discussed with Freudenberg and we would be happy to send you the two copies of the book (Scholtyseck and Horchler scholarly article) via mail. If you like and feel comfortable with this, just write me an e-mail. Looking at your remark regarding WWII, I would like to emphasize that Scholtyseck really is the most accurate source. So, despite there possibly being other sources they might describe the time period not actually based on facts backed by thorough research. Regarding the scholarship programs: Let me do some research and look what kind of sources I can find for the section in the German article.

What do you think?

Best, Conandcon (talk) 20:51, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

Conandcon, No worries, I've been working on this and that here and there :-) I've beaten the bushes and confirmed that I can't get on- or off-line access either to the Scholtyseck book or to Michael Horchler's "Von der Gerberei zum globalen Technologiekonzern. Die Internationalisierung der Freudenberg Gruppe (1849-2002)" (academia.edu has one article from the book Regionale Produzenten oder Global Player?, but not that one.) So how can I refuse a free book and article? I'll e-mail you via the e-mail function, and thank you. Thanks also for searching for info about the scholarships. Yngvadottir (talk) 02:46, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

I answered via mail. In addition, I will look for sources regarding the scholarships. Best, Conandcon (talk) 20:55, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

@Yngvadottir: I hope your are doing all right. Just wanted to check, if you allready had the opportunity to look into history section and the respective sources. Looking forward to hearing from you. All the best, Conandcon (talk) 08:10, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Hi again Conandcon; I'm afraid things have kept coming up off-wiki, and I planned to do this in a single big block of work. But after all this time, I should probably just work on bits of it in what time I do have. I am very sorry. Yngvadottir (talk) 10:12, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Hi Yngvadottir; No worries. I greatly appreciate the time you do spend on this and look very much forward to your changes. All the best, Conandcon (talk) 13:06, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Fiscal Year 2022 figures

Dear all,

I would like to suggest an update of sales and employee numbers after the publication of the Annual Report 2022. Please note that I have a financial conflict of interest as I am being paid by Freudenberg Group. I hope that uninvolved editors could review my suggestions and make changes if they find them appropriate.

Extended content

Suggested changes to the Infobox: Revenue 1. Please remove the current revenue from the infobox: "€10.038 billion (2021)" 2. Please add the following as revenue to the infobox: "€11.753 billion (2022)" 3. Using as the reference: Freudenberg Group Annual Report 2022 "Annual Report 2022" (PDF). Freudenberg Group. Retrieved 2022-04-03. 4. Reason for change being made: Revenue for fiscal year 2022. Employees 1. Please remove the current employee number from the infobox: "49,836 (2021)" 2. Please add the following employee number to the infobox: "51,462 (2022)" 3. Using as the reference: Freudenberg Group Annual Report 2022 "Annual Report 2022" (PDF). Freudenberg Group. Retrieved 2022-04-03. 4. Reason for change being made: Employee number for fiscal year 2022.

I greatly appreciate everybodys time and effort with this. Thank you very much in advance for your help! All the best, Conandcon (talk) 07:40, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

 Done HouseBlaster^talk 17:59, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

Fiscal Year 2023 figures

Dear all,

I would like to suggest an update of sales and employee numbers after the publication of the Annual Report 2023. Please note that I have a financial conflict of interest as I am being paid by Freudenberg Group. I hope that uninvolved editors could review my suggestions and make changes if they find them appropriate.

Suggested changes to the Infobox:

Revenue
1. Please remove the current revenue from the infobox: "€11.753 billion (2022)" 2. Please add the following as revenue to the infobox: "€11.903 billion (2023)" 3. Using as the reference: Freudenberg Group Annual Report 2023 "Annual Report 2023" (PDF). Freudenberg Group. Retrieved 2022-04-01. 4. Reason for change being made: Revenue for fiscal year 2023.

Employees
1. Please remove the current employee number from the infobox: "51,462 (2022)" 2. Please add the following employee number to the infobox: "52,241 (2023)" 3. Using as the reference: Freudenberg Group Annual Report 2023 "Annual Report 2023" (PDF). Freudenberg Group. Retrieved 2022-04-01. 4. Reason for change being made: Employee number for fiscal year 2023.

Suggested changes to the History Section:

Last sentence

1. Please remove the following sentence: "In 2022, the group was an 11.7 billion euro business with more than 51,000 employees." 2. Please add the following sentence: "In 2023, the group was an 11.9 billion euro business with more than 52,000 employees." 3. Using as the reference: Freudenberg Group Annual Report 2023 "Annual Report 2023" (PDF). Freudenberg Group. Retrieved 2022-04-01. 4. Reason for change being made: Employee and revenue numbers for fiscal year 2023.

I greatly appreciate everybodys time and effort with this. Thank you very much in advance for your help! All the best, Conandcon (talk) 11:21, 1 April 2024 (UTC)