On 8/9/06, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 8/9/06, Rob gamaliel8@gmail.com wrote:
Well, there's a natural reaction to anything that looks like corporate advertising, but I wouldn't call it a "bias against corporations".
I don't see anything inherently wrong with MyWikiBiz, esp. since they are pretty open about what they're doing. But I also don't think Wikipedia's mission is served by cluttering up the place with articles on every small consulting firm in the US. This corporation has only 26 employees and the only citations are a local business journal. Is this really a significant enough company to make it into an encyclopedia?
That definitely depends on what your definition of "significant enough" is. If we had room for only 10 corporations, I would say no. But we're not pressed for space, and unlike pure vanity articles (my name is Jim and I have a dog called Nelly!), this type of article meets a genuine need.
I think there is a valid viewpoint that says "Wikipedia is the sum of human knowledge, except for a bit of total dross that doesn't interest anyone". However, a genuine company with 26 full time employees that has been around for 5 years and does some interesting things at the global level is not such dross.
Purely and simply, is Wikipedia better off *with* this information than *without* it? If the answer is "without", then why? Because we saved a couple of kilobytes?
A case could be made that this is just as much a vanity article as a personal bio. It's not just the number of employees that makes it insignificant for encyclopedic purposes. If it was indeed doing things interesting enough to be of encyclopedic note, someone other than the local Charlotte Business Journal would be writing about them.