On 02/07/2008, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
2008/7/1 Ian Woollard ian.woollard@gmail.com:
I find it leaves out the truism that if people that own or work for the company have to create the article themselves, it's very unlikely to be truly notable. (Irrespective of whatever the policy says today).
There's a lot to be said for organic growth and shamefacedly poking you or your company in the wikipedia is in no way organic.
More seriously, they're going to do it anyway, whether we tell them to or not. We may as well encourage people to tell them how to do it effectively and without causing trouble or producing actively bad material.
My point about organic growth is that if an article isn't linked in, then in a hypertext environment like the wikipedia, it shouldn't be there. And there's a lot of companies sitting there, unlinked, because every time they linked themselves, somebody went 'who cares' or 'link spam' and unlinked them. That doesn't happen with truly notable companies though.
I think any guidelines should start from another article, whereas right now it starts from the company. Just adding in data along the lines of 'there exists a company called X that makes Y, and Z said they were really good!' into the wikipedia is ultimately useless.
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- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk