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Speedy deletion nomination of Molly Maid

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A tag has been placed on Molly Maid, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section G11 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the page seems to be unambiguous advertising which only promotes a company, product, group, service or person and would need to be fundamentally rewritten in order to become an encyclopedia article. Please read the guidelines on spam and Wikipedia:FAQ/Business for more information.

If you think that the page was nominated in error, contest the nomination by clicking on the button labelled "Click here to contest this speedy deletion" in the speedy deletion tag. Doing so will take you to the talk page where you can explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. You can also visit the page's talk page directly to give your reasons, but be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be removed without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but do not hesitate to add information that is consistent with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If the page is deleted, you can contact one of these administrators to request that the administrator userfy the page or email a copy to you. Scopecreep (talk) 21:28, 11 May 2012 (UTC)Reply

May 2012

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  Please do not add promotional material to Wikipedia. While objective prose about beliefs, products or services is acceptable, Wikipedia is not intended to be a vehicle for soapboxing, advertising or promotion. Thank you. JamesBWatson (talk) 21:33, 11 May 2012 (UTC)Reply

Speedy deletion nomination of Molly Maid

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If this is the first article that you have created, you may want to read the guide to writing your first article.

You may want to consider using the Article Wizard to help you create articles.

A tag has been placed on Molly Maid, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section G11 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the page seems to be unambiguous advertising which only promotes a company, product, group, service or person and would need to be fundamentally rewritten in order to become encyclopedic. Please read the guidelines on spam and Wikipedia:FAQ/Business for more information.

If you think that the page was nominated in error, contest the nomination by clicking on the button labelled "Click here to contest this speedy deletion" in the speedy deletion tag. Doing so will take you to the talk page where you can explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. You can also visit the page's talk page directly to give your reasons, but be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be removed without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but do not hesitate to add information that is consistent with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If the page is deleted, you can contact one of these administrators to request that the administrator userfy the page or email a copy to you. Spartaz Humbug! 17:14, 19 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

Comments and advice

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I'm afraid before I even got to read your message on my talk page, the new version of the article had already been deleted. Evidently your attempt to make it non-promotional was not enough. I can imagine how frustrating it must be to see your efforts repeatedly destroyed, and I have a few things to say which possibly may be helpful to you. I normally prefer to keep a conversation in one place to make it easier to keep track of, but this time I think the information I am giving you may be more convenient to refer to if it's on your own talk page, so I am putting it here.
  1. Judging by your editing history, it looks as though you are working for "Molly Maid". If so, you may find it very difficult to stand back from the subject and see how your writing will look from the detached perspective of an outsider. It can be very difficult to be objective about a subject you are closely connected to, even if you sincerely intend to do so. That is, in fact, one of the main reasons why Wikipedia's conflict of interest guidelines strongly discourage writing about such a subject.
  2. You may, of course, make a third attempt to write an article, but I think it is only fair to warn you that doing so may possibly be a waste of your time. Time and time again I have seen people come along to write about a subject they are close to, see their efforts deleted as being promotional, spend more time and effort in rewriting it, and when they finally get a version written that does not come across as promotional, they see it deleted because the subject does not satisfy Wikipedia's notability criteria. Before you even start to write an article it is necessary to decide whether the article satisfies the notability guidelines, because if it doesn't then no matter how you write and rewrite the article, it is likely to be deleted. Rewriting may turn a promotional article into a non-promotional one, but no amount of rewriting an article can turn a non-notable subject into a notable one, so if the subject is not notable by Wikipedia's standards then any time spent writing about it is likely to be wasted. The welcome message at the top of this page gives links to some pages with information about how Wikipedia works, and I am now giving you a longer welcome message with a wider range of links. I suggest you look at Wikipedia:FAQ/Organizations, which gives quite a lot of information relevant to writing articles on businesses, possibly in a more easily digestible form than the official policy documents and guidelines. If you do want to read further after looking at that page, Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies) and the general notability guideline are relevant.
  3. If you do decide to have another go at writing the article, I suggest you start off writing it in your own "user space", by giving it a title such as User:Contenteditor291/Molly Maid, and also put the tag {{userspace draft}} at the top of the page. That way, you should be given a chance to develop it without so much risk of speedy deletion. It could still be deleted if there are serious problems (for example, if it is found to be a copyright infringement), but you should be given much more leeway in what you write in userspace than in an article. You can then ask for feedback, and move it to the main space where articles belong if and when it is acceptable as an article. JamesBWatson (talk) 20:30, 19 June 2012 (UTC)Reply
Hello, Contenteditor291, and Welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions to this free encyclopedia. If you decide that you need help, check out Getting Help below, ask me on my talk page, or place {{Help me}} on your talk page and ask your question there. Please remember to sign your name on talk pages by using four tildes (~~~~) or by clicking   if shown; this will automatically produce your username and the date. Also, please do your best to always fill in the edit summary field with your edits. Below are some useful links to facilitate your involvement. Happy editing! JamesBWatson (talk) 20:30, 19 June 2012 (UTC)Reply
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Molly Maid

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In case you did not follow the last conversation with James, I requested that a copy of the article be placed in draft form on my userpage. I will work on the page as part of the Article Rescue Squadron. If I can find citations to show the articles notability, I will just need to write the article to conform to Wikipedia standards and then introduce the citations that I located. In the meantime, if you could supply me with a list of any sources that you are familiar with that can help me that would be greatly appreciated. I will be offline tomorrow but will follow up with you on Thursday. --Morning277 (talk) 20:50, 19 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

I am going to go through a few updates on the draft today. Before I start, can you tell me what your intentions are with Wikipedia? Do you plan on staying here and contributing for a while or are you just wanting to make sure that this article gets posted? The reason I ask is becuause I can go about this one of two ways (either way is fine with me and I will not be offended if all you want is the article posted). The first is to help you through the article and show you some of the different Wikipedia guidelines as we go along (such as conflict of interest, notability, citing references, etc.). However, I do not want to waste your time if all you want is the article (in which case I can just go through, clean up the article, and have it posted again in a couple of days). Let me know. Thanks again. --Morning277 (talk) 12:29, 21 June 2012 (UTC)Reply
Thanks Morning. I definitely plan on staying around. Though this is my first article, and though I may not contribute as regularly as I would like, I definitely plan to contribute more in the future. Any information you are willing to share, I am certainly open for the lessons. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 23.29.38.62 (talk) 14:02, 21 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

Excellent. I like to hear that. For starters (and hopefully my comments here will not lead you in the wrong direction and I invite anyone watching to page to chime in in case I am), anything about the year of start up and the founders needs to be placed further down in the article unless they are significant to the notability of the company. The introduction paragraph should start with a brief overview of what is in the article and also state what their "claim to fame" (referred to on Wikipedia as Notability) is. Since it is a company, we need to start with the policy on notability for companies found HERE. As Molly Maid is a franchise, please note that there is a section specifically set up to talk about what should and should not be included for franchises (it speaks about not listing all of the individual locations which should not apply to this article as it is about the parent). For notability, there must be significant coverage from independent sources. A Google search shows a ton of sources from reliable and independent sources but what is their notability? Well, there are a number of things that I would point out as being notable: 1) over 400 franchises (large franchises like McDonalds, etc. are generally notable if they have significant reliable coverage from independent sources). 2) it is not just a local franchise, national franchise, BUT IT IS AN International Franchise (this shows that their concept has spread across the globe). 3) the franchise ranking of the company is listed by Entrepreneur HERE and companies that are listed in the top or among other notable companies on the same lists I would say make a claim of notability. 4) while not necessarily notable, anything regarding “public interest” is always good to list. These would be using the environmentally friendly products and philanthropy. Again, while these do not necessarily make the company notable, it is always good to include this information is you can present it in an objective way. The Ms Molly Maid Foundation looks like a pretty large organization and deserves more coverage than the one-liner in the article now. We can get to that later. While any single item listed above may not be notable in itself (although I would claim #1 would be by itself), the combination of the above makes it notable. So, here is my suggestion for an opening paragraph (making sure that we state the FACTS about the company and what the article is about).

MOLLY MAID is an international franchise with over 400 individual franchisees throughout the world. They engage in cleaning services for residential properties and are known for using environmentally friendly cleaning products. They are listed on the Franchise 500 List and one of America’s Top Global Franchises by Entrepreneur Magazine.

Here is the reference that can be used: http://www.entrepreneur.com/franchises/mollymaid/282594-0.html Finally, make sure that you wiki-link anything in the paragraph to other articles within Wikipedia.

I have made the change to the opening paragraph and you can see it on the userpage. --Morning277 (talk) 14:48, 21 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

  • This is fantastic information. Thank you. I am scouring for additional information regarding the Ms. Molly Maid foundation, which I agree would be great information to build upon. The opening paragraph, too, looks great. I definitely see how a shift in focus (from the relatively non-notable CEO to the Entrepreneur Magazine data) leads the article with more credibility. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 23.29.38.62 (talk) 15:31, 21 June 2012 (UTC)Reply
That is correct. A lot of first time editors really have great content to contribute; however, (and please don't be offended) their lack of experience in being able to point out notability, keeping their point of view out of the content, and properly citing an article is what gets the article into trouble. I am familiar with Molly Maid (never used them but they are very prominent in the eyes of US residents - it's like any other commercial you see on TV for companies) and looking at the draft knew that it was notable, but just needed to be worded and cited correctly. We will work on the advertisement wording next (removing it). In the meantime, any sources that you can find to Ms Molly Maid would definitely come in handy shortly. Thanks again. --Morning277 (talk) 15:44, 21 June 2012 (UTC)Reply
  • History - For the history section, it should give a short view of what has taken place in the company history (nothing too detailed unless there are notable events such as being purchased by another company, going public on teh stock exchange, etc.). Also, remove any type of descriptive wording as word pairs (regardless of their meaning) always tend to seem promotional on their face.

Here is the history section as it was.

MOLLY MAID was named after The Unsinkable Molly Brown , a popular movie in the 1960s starring Debbie Reynolds. Molly Brown (her real name was Margaret) was born on July 18, 1967, and became a famous socialite and activist. The movie shows how she survived a flood that consumed her family when she was baby (hence the description “Unsinkable”). She capped her extraordinary life by being a survivor of the sinking of the Titantic. Molly was on the British luxury passenger liner en route to New York from Southampton, England, when it hit an iceberg and sank on April 15, 1912. Just one year after the Stringers started MOLLY MAID, Jim MacKenzie, the current chairman and CEO of the company, and other individuals still active on its board of directors invested in the business. Today the company has over 400 active Franchises across the globe.

Here is what I changed it to (re-writing much of the content so that it flows better - more like an encyclopedia and less like an "about us" page of a website). You will need to add the information that is missing (replace the ???).

MOLLY MAID was founded in 1979 by (????). The company was named after the character Molly Brown from the 1964 film The Unsinkable Molly Brown.

I did not change any information about the investors as this is a good statement to have in the article. However, I cannot readily locate any references that talks about it. If you could point me to some references that talk about how the company started off (the founder names, when they franchised, when they moved into the United States, and when they went international) we can include ALL of this information in the article. Please let me know and leave a response on my talk page when you come up with them. Thanks. --Morning277 (talk) 17:43, 22 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

  • Thank you. I have updated the ??? section with the founders' names including a reference to an interview I found reference these names. Regarding the History section, because the current reference 4 (International Franchise Association (IFA). "Molly Maid Franchise Information". Retrieved 22 June 2012) is a citation for not only the founding year but also the number of franchises, should the citation appear both after the year and after the number of franchises (which appears later in the same section)? Or, is that overdoing it? Contenteditor291 (talk) 20:41, 22 June 2012 (UTC)Reply
Great question. You are picking up things pretty quickly. The reason I put it there is because articles need Inline Citations that support content within a paragraph and not the paragraph as a whole. I put that citation there to establish the year and will use another citation near the end of the paragraph that supports the year and the number of franchises. Inline citations also help to show Significant Coverage of the topic for the purpose of establishing notability. I will be off most of the weekend but PLEASE add more information to the history. Remember to stick with the facts and give a brief overview of what I requested before (how they received funding, year they moved into different markets, etc.). Just simply write the content that you are familiar with and we can search out citations to support it later (this is usually done the other way around but since you are so familiar with the topic, we are going to go backwards with this one - we will also need to keep out any information that you cannot support with a citation). --Morning277 (talk) 20:49, 22 June 2012 (UTC)Reply


Here is some additional information I was able to find:

  • I added some more information regarding the year that the company expanded into other markets, specifically Canada and the US (I couldn't find specific years for the other markets.)
  • I also added a dollar amount to the residential cleaning market in the Industry section.
  • I added a mention in the history section regarding the company being a subsidiary of another company, though this may fit better in the Overview section, right? Additionally, I added the note about the subsidiary to another one of the subsidiary company pages (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Handyman). I imagine that this cross-referencing is a good thing (at least in terms of user friendliness).

What additional information do you feel the article requires at this time? I definitely don't want to risk having the article rejected again, as I understand the more an article gets rejected, the more likely it is to be permanently rejected.

Also, I've started compiling information on some other topics of interest. This data curation thing is kinda fun! Contenteditor291 (talk) 17:47, 25 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

Looks good. I would suggest that the next step to take is removing any material that has nothing to do with Molly Maid itself. For instance, statistics for the cleaning industry would belong in a cleaning industry article and not in Molly Maid. Why this main be a reason why Molly Maid exists or should be used, it does not have anything to do with the company itself. If you want to use the information, it would need to be something like "It was started after the founders read that the cleaning industry......50% of households, etc........" It would also need to be supported by a citation. I recommend start stripping out any information that is not directly about Molly Maid (this will leave very little information left in the article but we will work on that next). Once that happens, we can start to fill up the gaps with information that is specific to the business (especially Mr. Handyman which is going to be good information for the article). --Morning277 (talk) 14:38, 26 June 2012 (UTC)Reply
That makes sense. Thanks. I have removed the Industry information. If I am able to find a way to make this correlate directly with the company, I will re-add it (with citations, of course). Contenteditor291 (talk) 14:44, 27 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

Your recent edits

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  Hello. In case you didn't know, when you add content to talk pages and Wikipedia pages that have open discussion, you should sign your posts by typing four tildes ( ~~~~ ) at the end of your comment. You could also click on the signature button   or   located above the edit window. This will automatically insert a signature with your username or IP address and the time you posted the comment. This information is useful because other editors will be able to tell who said what, and when they said it. Thank you. --SineBot (talk) 21:24, 19 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

Here is a good one for you

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If you want to get some experience for what is allowed and not allowed (I should say what is acceptable and not acceptable) regarding content and edits, keep an eye out HERE. There are many articles at this location that are being recommended for deletion because they do not (or the nominator feels that they do not) conform to Wikipedia guidelines. Read the comments that are left by each user for the different articles and you will QUICKLY gain an understanding of the numerous (AND I MEAN NUMEROUS) amount of Wikipedia guidelines out there. Have fun this weekend. --Morning277 (talk) 20:51, 22 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

Molly Maid - New Section

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Just created a new section as the other one was getting pretty long. Sorry I have not contributed in a while. I like the information that was added and believe that maybe Service Brands International deserves their own Wikipedia page as well. Anyways, I think adding the information about Ms Molly Maid could be next as there is plenty of notable information on this. I think it should be added under charitable activities. I would suggest adding an opening paragraph that states something like "MOLLY MAID contributes to charities such as ???, ???, and ???. In addition, they founded Ms Molly Maid which is a ????? (simple sentence explaining what they support).

Next, put the information that is already there and then follow with a subsection (use 3 === on either side of the heading) under charitable activities entitled Ms Molly Maid. Then, write to your heart's content about the organization (with citations of course). Make sure to keep it neutral. When you are finished, I can go back and give you any suggestions for clean up (if needed as it looks like you are definitely getting the hang of how a new article should be written).--Morning277 (talk) 15:36, 4 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

Thanks. I've added some more about the Ms. Molly Foundation. I found some yearly donation numbers that I think are important (sourced figures seem to be very "encyclopedic"). I've also added some more about the foundation itself. How does Wikipedia feel about blog posts and Press Releases from a company? I found some of the data only supported in those areas, but it seems that they may not be as reliable as true 3rd party sources, right?-- Contenteditor291 (talk) 18:29, 5 July 2012 (UTC)Reply

Your submission at Articles for creation

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Your submission at Articles for creation

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Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Molly Maid concern

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Your article submission Molly Maid

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The page will shortly be deleted. If you plan on editing the page to address the issues raised when it was declined and resubmit it, simply edit the submission and remove the {{db-afc}} or {{db-g13}} code. Please note that Articles for Creation is not for indefinite hosting of material deemed unsuitable for the encyclopedia mainspace.

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Thanks for your submission to Wikipedia, and happy editing. HasteurBot (talk) 17:01, 28 November 2013 (UTC)Reply