A more neutral way to put it would be "is there a need to review the notability requirements for commercial organisations". Tighten up rather skews the debate. As for why we should be discussing this, a lobby group for paid editors has published a somewhat flawed report dissing Wikipedia and Wikipedians, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Wikipedia_Signpost/2012-04-23/I… the whole issue of COI and paid editing is somewhat topical. Whilst I normally consider myself one of the more inclusionist members of the community, I'd concede that we have an unusual situation re business related topics, and that a more deletionist approach might be helpful. In my view:   1. The ratio of volunteers whose hobby it is to write about business to   hired hands operating covertly is probably not as healthy for Wikipedia on   general business issues as it would be re hill forts, classic cars or   hurricanes.   2. Some businesses have annoyed people, and I suspect that articles on   businesses in general get more hostile unbalanced editing than do articles   on extinct megafauna, asteroids or mathematical formulae.   3. There are areas where our coverage is, or aims to be, comprehensive,   and there are areas where we merely cover the most notable. with crinoids,   cathedrals and corsairs this doesn't bring up a fairness issue. But with   business it does. If we only create articles for the "main players" in a   market then we are potentially giving them an advantage over smaller or   newer rivals, especially if those articles emphasise the positive. In my view it would be fair and reasonable to respond to the existence of paid editing in business related articles by upping our minimum requirement for referencing new articles on businesses. So following on from the sticky prods we introduced for BLPs, we could introduce a BizProd; Any article created after 1st June 2012 where the subject is a currently trading business needs at least one independent reliable source. This would be a tougher and simpler standard than for BLPs, but that reflects the reality that some of these authors are actually paid to edit, and if our rules clearly state that they must be able to cite a reliable source such as a newspaper then it is reasonable to expect them to do so. It doesn't directly address the fairness issue, but IMHO there is more of a responsibility on the community to keep business articles neutral than there is for articles on waterways or wrestlers, and requiring a reliable source is a step in the right direction. If we did this then we would not need to simultaneously review the notability criteria. Also the NoIndex until patrolled feature that is likely to be implemented would take away some of the incentive for businesses to create articles knowing they would only be up for a few days to take advantage of search engines WSC On 27 April 2012 05:17, Alan Liefting <aliefting(a)ihug.co.nz> wrote: _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l