Wikipedia talk:Companies, corporations and economic information/Notability and inclusion guidelines/Archive

Is there a second?

I move that Wikipedia:Companies, corporations and economic information/Notability and inclusion guidelines be adopted as an official Wikipedia policy. 24.54.208.177 01:48, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

• Not unless it is changed to include being a listed stock. Being in an index is too flakey since stocks can be added or removed. There is no reason for such a high bar for companies when it seems that you can have an article on a commerical weight loss school! For me being a listed company on a stock exchange is sufficent. Vegaswikian 05:32, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
  • It does not set a high bar. Stop concentrating upon the stock market criteria and ignoring the first criterion. The stock market criteria are there to catch the companies that don't qualify under the first criterion, but that we include nonetheless as part of our coverage of stock market indexes. Uncle G 19:57, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose: -I'd like to see a benchmark for privately held companies. Not all companies are publicly held, and there are large companies that are privately held. There's no certainty that such a company would be covered by the first benchmark (subject of published works...). Perhaps sales figures as a benchmark? US$10/50/100mil per year? I'd also like to see some clarification on where this guideline would apply. There are a number of non-profit agencies that are, by definition, corporations. However, they would probably fail the criteria as they exist. There's probably a lot more work that needs to be done to this proposal before it's ready for a discussion on advancing it to policy status. --Durin 17:07, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
  • May be we need to be bold and modify the proposal. Vegaswikian 17:51, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
    • :-) I was simply making a suggestion. Maybe you should be bold and make yours? :-) --Durin 18:12, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
  • Introducing sales figures is a bad idea. Wikipedia is not a corporate directory. The first criterion works just as well for privately held companies and non-profit agencies as it does for publicly listed companies. If you think otherwise, please provide a concrete example of a notable non-profit agency that does not satisfy the first criterion. Your argument is so far based upon the guess that such organizations exist. Uncle G 19:57, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
• Technically speaking, NASDAQ is not a stock exchange, but an over-the-counter trading network. So a company like Starbucks would fail this test. On the other hand, there are thousands of tiny non-notable companies trading on secondary exchanges (like the TSX Venture Exchange) which do not deserve an article. I think the determining criteria for both public and private companies should be sales/assets (absolute or market share), number of employees, and notable achievements or failures. Owen× ☎ 18:53, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
  • Starbucks easily satisfies the first criterion (see the external links section of the article, for starters). You are arguing that the secondary criteria should be changed because a company that already satisfies the primary criterion doesn't satisfy them as well. A company doesn't have to satisfy all of the criteria. Attempting to modify the second and subsequent criteria when the first criterion is satisfied is a bad idea. Uncle G 19:57, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
    • Are you suggesting that to meet the first crieria, any notable paper can be used? I have seen a VfD supported because an article was not in the NYT or WSJ. Vegaswikian 20:12, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
      • Excluding everything except those two specific newspapers is systemic bias, and I personally do not support introducing such a bias. Those two newspapers are certainly not the only reliable sources in this field. Indeed, Trufab (UK) (AfD discussion) satisfies the first criterion because of news coverage concering it in the Messenger, for example. Also note that the first criterion is not restricted to just newspapers. For example: If people have published independently written books on the history of the company, they should count as well. Uncle G 20:34, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
        • OK, that's what I was hoping you intended. Vegaswikian 20:41, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
  • Also note that "notable achievements and failures" is, by definition, going to be covered by the first criterion. The answer to "What constitutes a notable achievement or failure?" is "An achievement or failure that people independent of the company have considered to be notable." and the answer to "How do we determine what people independent of the company have considered to be notable?" is "We look to see whether they have considered the achievement or failure notable enough to have expended the effort to publish stuff about it." If people have independently written about a company's notable achievements or failures, then the "published works" criterion is satisfied. The only cases where this excludes notable achievements and failures is where only the company itself has considered them notable. A company bragging about itself doesn't make it notable. Its achievements and failures have to be independently recognized. Uncle G 08:59, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
• 'Oppose I have nothing against using this as a loose criterion for establishing notability, but against making it a policy. For one, its too US-centric. In India, for instance, there are plenty of large Public Sector Undertakings, Co-operatives, NGO's,etc., Secondly, the criterion that the company's or corporation's share price is used to calculate stock market indexes may exclude smaller companies. I think a better way to go about would be to test these against a sample of failed & successful AFD candidates (related to companies, corporations, etc.,) and check which of these criterion they pass/fail. Pamri • Talk 05:59, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
  • That argument appears not to be based upon the criteria at hand at all, and is almost entirely wrong.

    First, it entirely overlooks the first, second, and fourth criteria on the list, and argues on the basis that the third criterion is the only criterion there. Smaller companies that don't form the bases for stock market index calculations could still satisfy the other criteria. (Why this myopic concentration on only one of the criteria, that is only there in the first place to cover a few corner cases, to the complete exclusion of any of the others, including the broadest one of the lot? Given the broadness of the first criterion, any argument that ignores it totally is exceedingly ill-founded.)

    Second, there is nothing in the criteria that is U.S.-centric. There's no mention of the U.S. anywhere in the criteria. The only U.S.-centric criterion mentioned anywhere so far is the one mentioned by Vegaswikian immediately above, which isn't included on the list, and which has been unanimously opposed. (Neither I nor Vegaswikian would support it.)

    Third, the criteria apply in India just the same as they do elsewhere. For example: The criterion about published works applies in India, just as it does in the U.S., Australia, China, Canada, and any other country. An Indian company with independent news coverage in The Hindu qualifies under the "published works" criterion just as would an Australian company with independent news coverage in The Age or a U.K. company with independent news coverage in The Independent (or even in the Messenger — see above). Similarly, a company that forms the basis for the S&P CNX Nifty or the BSE Sensex qualifies under the stock market index criterion just as much as a company that forms the basis for the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The idea that India, or any other country, isn't adequately addressed by these criteria is entirely bogus.

    Fourth, the implied notion that NGOs and public sector companies aren't covered is wrong. A public sector company that was the subject of an report published by an independent commission would qualify under "independent published works", for example, just as much as a private sector company that was the subject of an independent article published in a newspaper. (And public sector companies can be newsworthy, too, of course.)

    Fifth, these criteria (in particular the first) roughly follow the models already employed in our notability and inclusion guidelines for people (which talk about "significant press coverage", "features" in magazines, and "independent biography"), web sites (which talk about "national or international media attention"), and bands, musicians, and songs (which talk about coverage in the music press). This isn't a major departure from how we already make these sorts of decisions. Uncle G 08:59, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

Ok, cool. That was my vague opinion after just glancing at the proposal. For PSU's, can we have a simple criterion which says, The company is a statutory company (ie., bought into existence by legislation). Of course, I think the first criterion should satisfy most companies. Pamri • Talk 12:14, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

• Provisional oppose. As noted below, I think the bar should be set at a level at which articles on companies and corporations would comprise about 0.1% to 0.2% of the total number of articles in Wikipedia—currently that would mean about 800-1600 articles, growing as Wikipedia grows. I'd like to see an estimate of the number of companies that would be included under the current guideline. The first section, if I'm reading it right, would weigh in at about that degree of inclusion.

I'm concerned about the second section (products and services). particularly "The product or service has been the subject of published works whose source is independent of the company itself," which seems to me to be a loophole through which one could drive a truck, since (for example) specialty magazines will routinely carry articles on _many_ small companies. You can make a case for including the top three bicycle companies (say) even if they're not huge companies, but a cycling magazine is likely to carry articles that mention dozens of brands, ditto a snowboarding magazine, a photography magazine, etc. Now in many, many cases those articles will just happen to be about brands that coincidentally have ads in the magazine in which the articles appear, but on the face of it they are not press releases or advertising themselves. Dpbsmith (talk) 01:04, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

What does "The company holds more than a 20% share in the market area that it competes in" mean? I see that OwenX cites this provisional policy here and says "a hospital with 230 beds and 900 babies delivered each year will more than likely" qualify as notable under this proposal. Does this mean that "the market area" means only the local community served by any small company? That is, would Dick's Supermarket in Lancaster, Wisconsin count (because Lancaster, Wisconsin, a town of 3,000, is served by only one grocery store which therefore has almost 100% of the market)? If this is the interpretation, it seems a little out of scale with the criterion that "The company has more than one million customers," and it seems as if the number of companies qualifying under the "20% share" criterion would be several orders of magnitude higher than those qualifying under any of the other criteria. Dpbsmith (talk) 14:46, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

• Oppose This is wildly inconsistent with the standards for every other field and is unrelated to practice. Most of the articles do not meet it, including nearly all of the airline articles for example. CalJW 18:17, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Is there a second?

We had a request for a second and much discussion. I think the current proposal address most, if not all, of the concerns raised so I'll second making this an official Wikipedia policy. Vegaswikian 18:45, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Is "being a listed company" sufficient?

I have temporarily removed these two bullets from the inclusion criteria. Vegaswikian argues above that this is a sufficient threshold for inclusion. I'm afraid I have to disagree. Lots of companies sell their shares on a public exchange yet are in no way notable. There are some incredibly small companies listed on very small exchanges - so small that we can not write a non-stub article that is functionally verifiable. While some of those very small companies are notable, it is not true that all of them are.

I also have concerns with how that standard would be interpreted given changes in listings. If my family business gets listed, sells a few shares, then falls below one of the exchange's criteria and gets de-listed, does that mean we now have to delete the article or that we never should have had the article? I would argue for the latter. I bought stock in an internet company that tanked. It's still around but now it's a penny stock - no longer available on any exchange (though it is still available over-the-counter). It definitely does not deserve an article in its current state and in hindsight never deserved an article when it was listed.

Vegaswikian does make an argument above that we should set the bar low to be consistent with the standard he/she sees in other situations. The fact that we incorrectly set low standards for other situations is not, in my mind, a good reason to make the same mistake here. Let's set the right standard (whatever we finally decide) and then try to bring the other situations up to the same standard. Rossami (talk) 20:05, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

1. For a public company or corporation, the stock is listed and traded on a stock exchange.
2. A private corporation or company needs to own a notable company or building.

• The new set of criteria (without the exchange listed provision) looks good. Support. Owen× ☎ 20:23, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

This discussion has evolved from the third criterion that I initially set out. I created it as subordinate criterion. We have articles on stock market indexes, listing the companies that are used to calculate them. The intent of the criterion was to prevent our coverage of those indexes from being impaired, in those rare cases where the first criterion is not satisfied. In other words: It was to ensure that all of the redlinks on List of S&P 500 companies, Nikkei 225, FTSE 100 Index, FTSE 250 Index, and so forth could become blue. It's probably the case that there are (at the very least) corporate biographies published by third parties for all such companies. If it is certainly the case, then the stock market index criterion is redundant and unnecessary. Uncle G 21:29, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Routine articles

OK, what are these? I'm assuming that we are talking about the little blurbs about promotions and new hires at the various local companies. A common heading I have seen is business briefs. Vegaswikian 21:03, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

The blurbs about promotions and new hires would generally be excluded as press-releases. No newspaper that I know actively investigates for that content.

I had intended this clause to exclude the larger article that is only carried by the local paper. When LTV Steel laid off 500 workers, it got a fair number of column-inches in the business section of the Cleveland Plain Dealer but to the best of my knowledge got no significant coverage outside the immediate area and never made it out of the business section even in Cleveland. LTV may have been notable for other reasons but I would be uncomfortable with someone basing their claim of inclusion solely on those articles. Is there better wording? Rossami (talk) 21:36, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Don't know if there is better wording. I can find multiple versions of facts locally in one of the daily papers and then in one of the free weekly papers. Then it will appear in a few months in several of the local magazines. We now have a glossy free distribution magazine who's name is your zip code. So media source can be multiple in an area and not get much distribution outside of the local area. Most of these don't have web sites so those outside the area can not check on these.

Maybe the better wording is standard finanical reporting material? Vegaswikian 23:07, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Number of customers

I added as a notability criterion:

1. The company has more than one million customers.

205.217.105.2 20:48, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Oppose : I'm new to Wikipedia, but have some thoughts on this topic. First, what problem is being solved? Forgive me if this represents ignorance of some other Wikipedia guideline, but as a virtual medium, the incremental cost of numerous, low-importance articles is virtually nil. What harm is there in having lots of short articles describing very small companies?

Second, and more to the point, there are countless thousands (millions?) of stories dealing with small businesses that are rarely told, but are interesting none the less. Large, publically traded companies have entire media organizations dedicated to telling their stories. Who tells the stories of small companies? If Wikipedia does not, who will?

As written, the guidelines effectively exclude small, independent businesses. That is, in my view, antithetical to the "anti-elitist" posture of Wikipedia.

Last, the one-million customers criteria represents retail-thinking. Not every company sells to consumers. There are numerous, very large, privately held companies that sell only to other companies and therefore have a fairly small customer count. Additionally, I doubt there is a company that would fail all four of the earlier tests and only become eligible based on having 1 million customers. --TheJeffMiller 01:37, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Do remember that this is an or with the other criteria. You only need to meet one. See the previous discussions. Vegaswikian 05:15, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Point taken, but I still believe that the million customers criteria is redundant. I find it inconceivable that there is a company with a million customers that does not qualify under the other criteria.--TheJeffMiller 11:07, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

I was thinking the same thing when I saw this added criterion. The only case I can think of are new free web services providers, e.g. web-based e-mail and such. These companies can get millions of subscribers within a few weeks of operation, and claim them as "customers", although technically speaking their only customers are the one or two advertisers on their page. But as TheJeffMiller points out, if we are willing to list every high school in North America here, why not include smaller companies? How about the following criterion to replace criteria 2 through 5:

2. The combined total of regular customers, employees, and shareholders exceeds 1000.

Essentially all companies covered by the old criteria are included in this, and many more. And if the number of people affected by a company is under 1000, it can truly be considered as non-notable. Owen× ☎ 13:25, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

• That standard sets the bar much too low. My local dry cleaner has turned far more than a thousand customers over the years. Yet there is nothing that could be written about the company that would be functionally verifiable by anyone living more than a few blocks away. Rossami (talk) 19:15, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
  • Under those criteria, MHM Services might not even make the cut. It has only a few customers &ndash mainly state departments of corrections – a few hundred psychiatrists and other mental health staff; a regional manager and, sometimes, an admin for each state; and a corporate office with fewer than 100 staff. It's privately-held, so doesn't have that many shareholders either. 24.54.208.177 02:33, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
    • Depends on how you define customers. Someone could say that everyone they service in a prision is a customer. Vegaswikian 02:38, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
• I changed it to: The company, if a B2C company, has more than one million customers. We may want to establish separate criteria for B2B and B2G companies. 24.54.208.177 14:54, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

  You are correct that this particular criterion is unlikely to apply to companies who do not sell directly to end consumers. However, we already have other criteria on the list which could apply to them. The fact that a B2B company does not have 1M customers does not mean that they can't qualify for an article - only that this particular criterion doesn't apply. A company can be encyclopedic by meeting any one (or preferably more) of the criteria. It does not have to meet all of them. I'm changing it back because I think the old language meant the same thing but said it in fewer words. It also keeps the list in a form that is easier for a general reader to understand. The concepts of B2B, B2C, etc are understood by most MBAs but are not widely used by the general public. Rossami (talk) 16:25, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Different Tack

A few observations, and a proposal...

• Considerations of inappropriate advertising are not relevent here. The policy page starts with a statement of opposition to inappropriate advertising, and then sets forth a set of criteria that are not related to advertising. Inappropriate advertising (already covered under other policies) is not a function of the notability of the company.
• As currently constructed, the criteria boil down to "Only very large companies are sufficiently notable for inclusion". As stated earlier, I believe this is antithetical to the anti-elitist foundation of Wikipedia.
• Any attempt to objectively define a concept such as a "noteworthy company" is almost certainly impossible. For any set of objective criteria, one could always imagine a noteworthy exception.
• The What Wikipedia is not page contains the following: "Articles about companies and products are fine if they are written in an objective and unbiased style. Furthermore, all article topics must be third-party verifiable, so articles about very small 'garage' companies are not likely to be acceptable."

Which leads to my Proposal: I believe the policy What Wikipedia is not is sufficient for Wikipedians to adjudicate the suitability (ie, notability) of companies for inclusion. No additional policy statement is necessary. Accordingly, I believe that the Wikipedia:Companies, corporations and economic information/Notability and inclusion guidelines proposed policy should be rejected entirely.

If the community determines that additional notability criteria (beyond those implicit in What Wikipedia is not) are required, then I believe they should be very simple and very inclusive. I propose a two part test:

• Annual revenue of at least $1 million (US). __or__
• Notable through the "halo" of some other notable entity (eg, founded by a celebrity).

--TheJeffMiller 15:26, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

• Oppose. While WP:NOT is an excellent guideline, it is far too general to be a useful policy for specific cases, which is why we have WP:MUSIC, WP:BIO, etc. I believe we still need WP:CORP, although I agree with TheJeffMiller that the criteria should be defined in broader terms. My "number of affected people" criterion above may not be perfect, but I think it is a worthwhile direction to consider. Owen× ☎ 15:50, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

I am still learning my way around Wikipedia. I thank Owen× for directing me to WP:MUSIC and WP:BIO. Both are clear examples of the kind of policy making being discussed here. Accordingly, I withdraw my proposal to reject WP:CORP entirely.

I am pleased that we concur on the central point that inclusion guidelines should be "defined in broad terms". I agree completely. My reasoning for basing the criteria on revenue rather than number of affected people is two fold:

• Some companies, by virtue of what they do and who they sell to, may be very significant, but only have a small number of employees or customers.
• Companies do not track, as a matter of course, their number of affected people. However, they track their revenue carefully. I believe revenue is a simpler measure, simply by virtue of the availability of information.

In any case, let me reiterate that it is my view that the most important considerations here are simplicity and inclusiveness. I believe that criteria such as "listed stock" are far to restrictive.

--TheJeffMiller 16:24, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

For publicly traded companies, the number of employees and shareholders is a matter of public record. For the number of customers, you usually have to rely on company-supplied figures. The sum of all three, which is how I defined the "number of affected people" for this policy, should not be difficult to estimate with reasonable accuracy. Of course, it is even easier to get revenue figures, but is that a good measure of notability?

An electronics manufacturer with $200M of annual revenues will probably be notable. What about a $200M realty firm? Realtors often measure revenue by the total cost of properties sold through their agents. A local agency with a 20 realtors could easily generate that kind of turnaround. Does that make them notable? A single supermarket store or car dealership (just one location—not a chain) generates the same revenues (but not the same profit!) as a factory employing hundreds; do they all rate the same on our notability scale?

When we say "notable", we usually mean, "How many people know of it? How many lives are affected by it?" This is why we should probably combine some kind of "people affected" count ($C+E+S$) alongside the straight revenue figure. Owen× ☎ 19:59, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

If I have a bias here, it will be to err on the side of making more companies 'notable'. If I have a concern with the "C+E+S" test, it is that such a test may be reflecting "famous" more than "notable" (not in every case, of course, but at times). As an example, I personally know of a company in St Louis that is doing around $10 million anually. They are a pure distributorship, and their customers are all specialized manufacturers. They probably have fewer than 30 customers. They have maybe 10 suppliers, and 25 or so employees. In my opinion, such a company is notable, even though they fall far short of your proposed C+E+S count.

Conversely, there is a deli down the street. They probably have, in the course of a year, well over 1000 unique customers. But there is nothing particularly noteworthy about the deli. Actually, I retact that. The corner deli should be considered noteworthy. But my point is that is C+E+S makes the corner deli noteworthy, then the $10 million distribution company has to be noteworthy as well.

I continue to be of the opinion that annual revenue is the best overall measure of the notability of a company. However, I agree that C+E+S could be used, so long as the required total is sufficiently low. It is my view that the ultimate goal of this policy is to ensure that utterly trivial companies (eg, the two high school kids my wife pays to clean up after our dogs in the back yard) are excluded. C+E+S=100 (or even 50) would probably handle it.--TheJeffMiller 21:03, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Good points! I think we're zooming in on a good definition. Please note that my original definition talked about "regular customers", which is not the same as unique customers. Not many delis have 1000 regulars frequenting it, and those that do are most likely notable, even by other definitions. I'm curious about the St. Louis distributorship: why do you consider it notable? Is it just the $10M annual revenue? Owen× ☎ 22:16, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Examples. Do these meet the criteria

So based on media reports, a company like Riviera Holdings Corporation would be OK as I read the proposed guideline. While small they get a lot of press about their plans or suggestions about who will be buying them. Information currently included with The Riv article. Vegaswikian 23:10, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

First, Vegaswikian, I'm not sure I take your point. It seems self-evident to me that the Riviera Holdings Company is noteworthy. What am I missing?

Nothing. Since WP:CORP is gaining tracting in AfD, I wanted to make sure I understand what it allows. I choose this example since I though that while appearing to meet the criteria, others might not see it that way. I believe that the company meets the criteria, but I'm not sure that it should have an article. Bottom line seems to be that while a company may meet the criteria for having an article, that does not mean it should have one. It's better to develop the some company articles in their major holding and then split it out when appropiate. Vegaswikian 06:36, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Second, Owen×, I consider the St Louis distributorship noteworthy because of the overall financial impact it has. You might say that is just because of the $10 million revenue, but I prefer to say it is because of the overall business impact. I would assert that there is no such thing as a $10 million company that is not noteworthy.--TheJeffMiller 01:20, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Riviera Holdings Corporation has $200M in annual revenues, 1600 employees, 600 shareholders of record, and probably several thousand regular customers who stay at their hotel at least once every few years. By both TheJeffMiller's criteria and mine, it is notable. However, as a holding company with one major asset, it would make more sense to keep Riviera Holdings Corporation as a redirect to the Riviera (hotel and casino), where it already has a section. If this section grows enough, and someone writes an article about Riviera Black Hawk Casino (their other asset), it might be time to have the holding company have its own article.

TheJeffMiller: No argument regarding the economic effect of a company with large revenues. I'm just not sure $10M is the right number. Some CEOs, COOs, and hedge-fund managers make over $10M in salary, and hence have a similar overall business impact. Does each of them become notable as a result? Owen× ☎ 01:39, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

To answer your question directly, yes, I think an individual making $10M annually is notable for that fact alone. My assumption would be that such a person would have a sufficient number of mentions in the financial and or social press that they would be defined as notable on the basis of those mentions alone. Lacking those mentions, the $10M would do it.

I want to return to something I said a few days ago. It is my opinion that Wikipedia should be as inclusive as possible. In the present context, I do not see any harm in erring on the side of inclusiveness, while I see significant harm in erring on the side of exclusiveness.

In addition, to the extent that this policy is motivated by a concern of companies using Wikipedia for inappropriate commercial advantage, I think those concerns are misplaced. Gratuitous commercial content is obvious, and easy to spot, and will be quickly edited on NPOV grounds. Beyond that, I maintain that there is no real commercial advantage to be had here. Even if, as a hypothetical, a company were to put up a page that was nothing than a large advertisement, I can't see how it would do them any good. The only downside is the clutter factor to Wikipedia, and as I mentioned, that can be dealt with on other grounds.

Ultimately, this policy can only serve to protect one thing: The verifiability of Wikipedia. At some level, the overall impact of a company becomes so small that no one, with the exception perhaps of one or two principals of the company, would have any idea if some stated fact is true or not. So long as a company has enough "critical mass" that its information can be verified and edited by at least a small community of individuals, then its inclusion is warranted.--TheJeffMiller 17:02, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree, revenues imply notability; the only question is how much revenue makes a company notable enough for an article here. I'm not sure you realize the implication of your $10M threshold. According to the US Federal Small Business Administration ([1]), there are 1,500,000 businesses with over $10M in annual revenues each in the US alone; worldwide the figure is probably closer to 20 million companies, each of which qualifies for a Wikipedia article under your guideline. For comparison, there are currently about 750,000 articles in all of en.wiki. I realize Wikipedia is not paper, but if even half of those companies got an article here, Wikipedia will essentially become a business directory, with a small encyclopedic appendix. Is this what we want here? I suggest a more reasonable threshold that would limit the total number of qualifying companies to well under a million. Owen× ☎ 20:07, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Isn't this similar to the issue of how many schools to include? If every school is entitled to an entry by default, then most of the articles will be about schools. If your numbers are correct and editors started to write articles on corporations and schools only everything else would be only noise. Now, the question is how many articles will be written just because they are acceptable? I suspect that the number will not be large. Vegaswikian 23:03, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Something in your figures doesn't add up: 1.5M companies with over $10M revenue works out to a combined total revenue of $15 trillion. Total US GDP is a tad under $12 trillion, so you are way high. In any case, not every article that "could" be written "will" be written.--TheJeffMiller 23:16, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Economy 101: GDP only counts the added value, not total revenues. If you buy $5 of material to make a widget, sell this widget to me for $10 and I resell it for $12, total revenue is $27, but we've only added $12 to the GDP. Total revenue of all US companies is in the order of $25 Trillion, but since goods and services produced pass an average of 3 "hands" before they are consumed (or exported), the net contribution to the GDP of all companies is in the order of only $8 Trillion.

I also doubt your "partial participation" assumption. We are already seeing the signs that given enough time (probably months, not years), every high school with a student or graduate who has heard of Wikipedia will get an article here, and--in all likelihood--every company with an employee or shareholder who uses WP will get an article too. Owen× ☎ 23:50, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

I don't see any way to solve the excess-participation problem. Suppose your numbers are correct, and there really are 1.5M US companies with $10M revenue, and that over the next two years or so someone related to each and every one of them decides to post an article. What to do? First, I don't see that there are any particular technical problems with that scenario. The system will be fine. So, we are left with the very real possibility of exhausting the Wikipedia community's ability to edit/sort/validate/categorize all those articles. That is a problem, but this policy doesn't solve it. It will take just as much effort to determine non-notability as anything else. I say let them post their articles. They will get sorted, and then ignored. --TheJeffMiller 03:44, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

I'd like to highlight TheJeffMiller's comment several paragraphs up that these inclusion standards are proxies for our ability to write NPOV and functionally verifiable articles and that this implies a need for some critical mass of informed reader/editors who will find, monitor and maintain the article. Articles on topics (in this case, companies) which are too obscure are are unlikely to gather the necessary critical mass of informed reader/editors. As a community, we have found that they tend to be subject to unnoticed vandalism, bias and general abuse. Unmaintained articles discredit the entire project, not just the article in question. Overly broad or inclusive standards jeapordize our ability to maintain our standards.

The existing standards are a reasonable proxy for our ability to make sure that we will have enough informed reader/editors to evaluate, verify and correct that added content. They are a proxy for our continued ability to protect the article from subtle vandalism such as the gradual addition of incorrect facts. I do not believe that the proposed "simpler" standards meet that standard. The average corner deli is not noteworthy because there is no way to for the average reader to verify the contents of the article. Having a thousand customers does not necessarily mean that the company made any significant impact on the customer other than as the geographically-convenient provider of calories. I know I ate lunch yesterday and that I've eaten there enough to be a "regular" but I couldn't tell you anything significant or verify anything significant about the company.

Revenue alone is equally suspect. In the section above, Jeff talks about a St Louis company with "fewer than 30 customers... maybe 10 suppliers, and 25 or so employees" but which has about $10M in revenues and argues that the revenues alone are sufficient to establish notability. He later makes an assumption "that such a person would have a sufficient number of mentions in the financial and or social press". I can think of a number of counter-examples to this assumption. Many companies are able report revenues of a mere $10 M and yet have no significant mention in any independent press. Jeff is correct in his concern about companies so small that only "one or two principals of the company would have any idea if some stated fact is true". According to Wikipedia:Verifiability, such "facts" must be removed. Our standard for inclusion is "verifability, not truth". Unless there is substantial coverage in the national independent press, there is again no way for the average reader/editor to verify the contents of the article. It doesn't matter how many millions or even billions they report for revenues. Until someone independent notices them and writes something, we have no sources to verify against.

The fundamental disagreement may be best summarized in Jeff's statement that "I do not see any harm in erring on the side of inclusiveness, while I see significant harm in erring on the side of exclusiveness." I and others, on the other hand, do see significant harm in erring on the side of unverifiability and very little harm in erring on the side of exclusiveness. We desperately need an efficient way to estimate whether or not we will be able to write and maintain a neutral and verifiable article on the business. Rossami (talk) 19:15, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

This is where I get lost. If the central issues are NPOV and verifiability, then why is there a unique policy WRT companies? As I stated some days ago, can't NPOV and verifiability be used as functional proxies for notability?--TheJeffMiller 03:54, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

No, it's the other way around. NPOV, verifiability and no original research are the absolutes, the trickiest one generally being verifiabilty. I could write a true article about the fire hydrant on my street but it would be functionally unverifiable. Over time, we've found that notability is a reasonably efficient proxy for our ability to write a verifiable article. Rossami (talk) 04:18, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

It may be good to also look at Wikipedia talk:Notability proposal. Vegaswikian 05:18, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

• But a deli or dry cleaner would be an example of a service and the second set of criteria would apply, right? Maybe the problem is that we need a better definition of what type of company we are talking about. Vegaswikian 19:23, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

The only issue here should be the same one as with any other type of article - can we write a verifiable, factual and neutral article on this subject. If not, it has to go, if so, it stays. Otherwise we're just indulging in POVmongering by legislating what other people have the right to read about. How can we possibly claim to know what all current and future readers will find 'notable'? Trollderella 01:29, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

The company is cited in other articles

I added "The company is cited in at least 10 other articles." to the list of criteria. Generally it there are red links, it is OK to add an article. I just picked the number 10 to avoid the case where someone wants to create a mention just to be able to create the article. Don't know if the number 10 is reasonable. I think 1 is too low, but if someone suggested 3-5 I would not have a problem supporting that. Vegaswikian 18:51, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

• We should think very carefully about having this as an explicit standard. In other situations, it has encouraged link-spamming by vandals who then tried to argue that theirs was a "requested article". I agree that redlinks added to multiple articles by independent people and which have survived the editing process for a significant period of time would constitute evidence that we should have an article on the topic. But sockpuppet-supported spam should not. I have concerns about our ability to efficiently detect the difference between the two. I would really prefer this to be an unwritten rule. Good editors already know the principles behind requested articles and orphans. We don't need to give the vandals ideas. Rossami (talk) 19:29, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
  • Can you suggest wording so that this class of articles could be added without the explicit listing? I would not like to see good articles being sent to AfD because they do not meet the criteria listed here. Those good articles are likely to survive a AfD, but there are too many nominations there now. Actually Importance items 1 and 3 many address this. Vegaswikian 19:34, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Requested move

I would like to request for this page to be moved to a title that is less ludicrously long. Radiant_>|< 09:54, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

• How about Corporate/Notability and Corporate Guidelines to match WP:MUSIC? Vegaswikian 18:42, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

A solution in search of a problem?

I'm generally in favor of setting the bar fairly low on notability. Continuing the criterion of verifiability will automatically eliminate a lot of the junk, like the neighborhood dry cleaner. Furthermore, corporate PR people turning their own press releases into Wikipedia articles is a different problem, one that could occur with regard to any company still lacking an article. (There are several red links on our list of Fortune 500 companies. An advertisement written up as an article for one of them surely couldn't be deleted for nonnotability under any sensible criteria.)

So, putting aside the articles that are unverifiable or puffery, do people perceive a problem with a significant number of current articles? Can someone give examples of existing articles that should be deleted? JamesMLane 23:38, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

• I don't think anyone is looking to delete existing articles. The goal is to set a standard for new articles. I want to be able to create articles on small companies that are not well know without worrying that someone will try to AfD them. Lets say on Mair Holdings I probably have enough for a small stub right now. Vegaswikian 23:48, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
  • With 3,000 employees and $450M in revenues, there shouldn't be any doubt that MAIR Holdings (not Mair Holdings) deserves an article, whether you are using my criteria or others proposed here. Owen× ☎ 15:56, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
    • Would it be fair to say that any company that owns a company, product or service that has an article meets this proposed criteria for having an article? Vegaswikian 22:32, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
      • Not necessarily because that would open you up to unverifiable articles about shell companies and holding companies. It could also open you up to lots of vanity articles about start-up companies with only a single, very new and only marginally notable product. In such cases, the company should be discussed in the context of the article about the product. If the article gets very large, you might have an argument to make a break-out article but the company does not, in my mind, automatically inherit "notability" for itself. On the other hand, having several products that already have articles might be justification. Rossami (talk) 22:48, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
      • One more thought. Mere "ownership" of the product might not be relevant to our encyclopedia. If a hot new product is developed and then the rights are sold off, I'd be more interested in the company that created it. The company currently holding the rights to the product may or may not be interesting. Rossami (talk) 22:48, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
        • Not every holding company of a notable company is itself notable. Each major bank or airline, for example, is owned by a holding company, usually to comply with securities regulations and such. These holding companies are usually of no interest in and by themselves, since they have no operations, and their only asset is the bank or airline. In those cases, I would just make the holding corporation a redirect to the operational company. Owen× ☎ 22:58, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Verifiability is enough! To whom are they of no interest? To you? How can you possibly know that the structure of holding companies is not of interest to anyone? Trollderella 01:15, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Guideline #4.

I'm currently defending Everything Linux from being deleted, and used guideline #4 - "The company holds more than a 20% share in the market area that it competes in." to back up my claim. I was brushed off by User:ScottDavis, who said "Guideline 4 can be met by almost any corner shop for a suitably narrow definition of "market area"." It just makes me wonder, what is the point of the guideline if it can just be ignored. (By the way - the market area in this case was the entire population of Australia.)

(Also, there aren't any published market share figures for the market the company is in (the Australian online Linux retail industry) but a quick, informal poll (see AfD page above) shows that 60%+ of Australian Linux users named Everything Linux first when asked to name an Australian online Linux store.) -- Chuq 12:30, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

• Is that data verifiable? If not, the objections to keeping the aricle would be valid and likely wind up wining at AfD. Now a poll showing that it is know by 60% of online shoppers could prove noteable. Remember that the guideslines are meant to weed out some companies. Your options may be to accept defeat and when it is gone, add it to requested articles or greatly improve the quality of the article so that it establishes notability on its own. Vegaswikian 17:49, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
• ScottDavis raises a serious and credible concern with guideline 4 - a concern that has troubled management for several decades. When, for example, Jack Welch ordered every division of GE to "either be #1 or 2 in your market or get out", many divisions met the challenge by raising standards, market share, etc. Some, however, defined their "market" downward until it was so narrowly scoped that they were essentially the only player. The market-share rule was eventually discarded as too difficult to administer. We should put equal thought into how the rule will be used and how the appropriate market will be defined. In the meantime, I would argue that we should follow Welch's example and treat it as a guideline that illuminates but does not replace judgment. Rossami (talk) 13:44, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
  • Broad market definitions should always be OK, albeit subjective. The issue is how to exclude narrowly defined market share definitions intended to defeat the intent of the rule. Using the case that started this, having 20% of the market share for computer sales in a country would clearly be OK since the market definition is broad. Should the fact that a company has 20% of a specific distribution method, or an ordering method, allow it to have an article? Vegaswikian 22:28, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Criteria for individual stores that are part of a chain

There's currently a debate going on over a group deletion I've proposed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Various "Mills". Regardless of the outcome of that particular AFD, I think it's important for Wikipedia to set some clear and explicit standards for the inclusion or exclusion of individual locations of a larger chain. We'd all probably agree that McDonalds as a company is clearly notable but most individual McDonalds stores clearly aren't. But what about individual malls that are part of a chain. Or each of the dozens of Six Flags amusement parks, or each of the Hard Rock Cafes?...

Where does it cross the line to being the stuff of advertizing or business directories? Blackcats 07:38, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Advertising is a different issue. You could write an article about McDonald's Corporation that was advertising, and you could write an article about your local McDonald's that wasn't advertising. As for business directories, I agree that lowering the bar of notability for companies moves us in that direction, but what's wrong with that? Wikipedia has some characteristics of specialized reference sources in many fields, such as IMDB. JamesMLane 12:24, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

You have crossed the line when you include a list of stores with phone numbers. Or when you include every store. Yes, this type of data was in several mall articles before they were cleaned up. Vegaswikian 17:16, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Shopping Malls

The above question started out on the topic of shopping malls. Mills is one of the larger companies that owns shopping malls. The AfD debate is should each mall only be listed in the Mills Corporation article or can each one get an article. So my question is, should the effort here include guidelines for listing shopping malls? They are basically a company though not listed that way. If the concensus is yes, then what criteria should be used? There may already be a concensus that if you include an article on a specific mall, individual major stores or ones of special interest can be listed but should not be linked except to the chain article. Vegaswikian 17:16, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

• In my mind, regional shopping malls should be included in the guidelines. The local malls you see on most street corners in major cities should not be included. How to write that as the guideline could be a problem unless there was an article on the types of malls or one on regional malls. Vegaswikian 17:24, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

I recommend these criteria. A mall would have to meet one (or two?) of these criteria to be considered "notable" under the Companies guidelines

1. The mall has at least a million square feet of enclosed retail space
2. The mall has at least 200 stores and services
3. The mall contains at least four department stores or anchor tenants
4. The mall is an important public transportation hub (for example, it has a bus/coach terminal or connections to a subway/train network, etc.)
5. The mall is of some historical or cultural significance to the local retail scene.

--Madchester 15:25, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

Enclosed should not be part of a guideline. Malls can be greater then 1 million square feet and be open air. Vegaswikian 16:51, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

I was thinking of "enclosed" in the sense that all the shops and services are "connected" with one another, because big box outlets and power centres shouldn't be included. Like those places may have a combined square footage over 1 million square feet, but they're just a collection of 10-12 stores and lack the "cohesion" found at a regular mall/shopping centre. --Madchester 19:06, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

A structural approach

We currently have about 800,000 articles.

In an Encyclopedia, what proportion of the articles should be devoted to companies and corporations?

A search on the word "Corporation" in Encyclopedia Britannica and eyeballing the results seems to show roughly 120 articles devoted to individual corporations. (Others are, of course, touched on in biographies). Let's double that to account for ones I might have overlooked. That's 240. In other words, a lot more than are in the Dow Jones index, but less than are in the S&P 500. Articles on corporations account for no more than 0.1% to 0.2% of the Britannica's content.

If we apply the same proportion to Wikipedia, we ought to have about 750 to 1500 articles on individual corporations.

Unless someone has a well-articulated explanation of exactly why Wikipedia needs to have a much higher (or much lower) proportion of corporation articles in its mix than other encyclopedias do, as a starting point we should set a bar that will result in including very roughly that number of articles.

(Or, we should have a well-articulated explanation of exactly why corporations should be a higher fraction of the mix in Wikipedia than they are in other encyclopedias).

So, before I vote, I'd like to see an estimate of how many companies would be included under the proposed guidelines. Dpbsmith (talk) 00:57, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Oh God. You're surely not saying that just because EB only has space / capacity to have a certain number, then we should?

Correct. I'm not saying that. That's why I said "mix" and "proportion."

Argh, so you kind of are - you're placing limits on what articles we should have, not on the basis of the merits of the article, but on what EB has!

That's insane. We need to have factually correct, verifiable information on actual companies because if we start chosing which ones other people and future readers will be interested in we are censoring the availablity of information using our own biases. We have no need to limit the coverage we give other than making sure it is factual and verifiable. Trollderella 01:13, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Well, if "encyclopedia" means "something that includes everything that is factual and verifiable" then you'd better update our article on encyclopedias to reflect that. Dpbsmith (talk) 19:35, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Well, not really, the article reflects what traditional encyclopedias have had to be, not what current ones could be. Trollderella 19:44, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Then you'd better update our article on Wikipedia, which calls it a "multilingual, Web-based, free-content encyclopedia" to clarify that it isn't an encyclopedia as the word is understood now, but as it will someday be understood. Dpbsmith (talk) 19:57, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

On the contrary, since you think there's confusion, you should list all current events, which have never been part of the traditional coverage of encyclopedias, for a start, for deletion, and start a 'return to traditional values' drive. Trollderella 20:03, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

• Dpbsmith, I like your approach! We need to define our criteria in such a way that the top few hundred (maybe few thousand) meet it, but definitely not hundreds of thousands, unless we want to turn Wikipedia into another "Thomas Register". If we were going by market capitalisation, that would amount to listing companies with over $5B of market cap (or assets, for private corporations). I think this direction is worth investigating! Owen× ☎ 01:20, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

What terrible thing would happen if we listed all of these, assuming that the information that we provided was factual and verifiable? I don't understand why we would choose to exclude information that some people might want, just because most people will not. The same logic would cause us to exclude most towns and most plant species just for a start. We can aford to be broad and deep in our coverage, and should not settle for being shallow and narrow just because Britanica is. Trollderella 01:25, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure about this one. If the criteria is reasonable, does it matter if it allows 100,000 companies or 100 million companies? A resonable standard that is better then allowing every company should be able to receive concensus. Vegaswikian 01:27, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

If we start throwing out verifiable information because we think it is not interesting, I am quite sure that within our lifetime there will be people who curse us for throwing away information that, if kept, would have been priceless to someone. Look at what historians pour over. It is not the things that the people in past times thought were 'notable', it is the minutie of life. Please, don't do this. Allow anything that is verifiable. Trollderella 18:26, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

You're still missing the point. We are throwing it out because it is not functionally verifiable. Remember that "functional verifiability" is very different from "theoretical verifiability". Sure, a reader could fly to Cleveland to check out my article about the local laundromat but that's an unreasonable standard. Instead, we trust that the community will have enough interested and informed volunteers to evaluate the article and to keep it factual and NPOV. A topic that can draw 10-20 different reader/editors is likely to be a good, trustworthy article. An article that only draws one or two editors is highly susceptible to the biases of those few authors. Over time, we have found that topics which only interest a few people fail to meet that standard. Topics on trivia are poorly written and not verifiable and tend to stay that way.

Historians might be disappointed that we chose to omit something that later becomes significant. Historians (and everyone else) will be disappointed if we relax our standards of verifiability. Rossami (talk) 19:00, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

I am baffled, after everything that I have said, that you think that I am advocating relaxing our standards of verifiability. Why would you think that I am advocating an article on a laundromat in Cleveland? That's a complete misrepresentation of what I am saying. Your laundromat is not verifiable without original research. We agree. It is not verifiable. If we ever get past the strawman 'well, if you don't believe in notability then you must want an article about this laundromat', then maybe we can have a discussion. Trollderella 19:25, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Verifible companies / services / products

It seems from the criteria, that the issues that people are worried about are a) self promotion, b) speculation. I would suggest that simply insisting that any company or product that as several neutral (non advertising, not the company itself) sources that can be verified and referenced should go it. I think that that would be the same thing that most people mean when they say 'notable', and does not need a new rule. It's one that we already have. Trollderella 18:30, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

This looks out of date and misleading

This policy seems to reflect superseded ideas on importance. It sets the bar far higher than is applied in practice and is wildly inconsistent with the policies for other things. Why does a company need 1,000,000 customers when a band needs to sell just 5,000 albums I believe. And Walmart doesn't meet the 20% market share criteria! But as it is having little or no effect on article retention, I can't be bothered with the hassle of fighting deletionists to get it changed. CalJW 00:05, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Where is the discussion previouly at Wikipedia talk:Notability (organizations)?

Why is it that a great deal of thoughtful and productive discussion was removed when this guideline relpaced [[Wikipedia talk:Notability (organizations}]]? Are we supposed to re-fight all battles fought there which had unresolved issues? Or should I copy and paste the discussion I am interested in from there? Was the merge process supposed to discard the discussion, or was it done incorrectly? I did not see notice of the proposed merge, and if it means loss of the discussion, I suggest we undo it. Is there a consensus for such an action? This guideline may fit businesses, but it does not fir organizations that well, and there is loss of a great deal of collaborative editing. Edison 22:12, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

• The talk page is still there. You're missing the closing parenthesis in your link: Wikipedia talk:Notability (organizations). Agent 86 22:37, 3 February 2007 (UTC)