GerardM wrote:
PS I am totally behind the notion that we should not have non-encyclopedic content in Wikipedia.. for me it is a matter of strategy.
Thanks, GerardM
While on the surface I totally support this idea and philosophy, the problem is in the details. There is a legitimate reason to have encyclopedic articles about major notable businesses and organizations such as Coca-Cola and General Motors. The problem is when the POV of these articles shift from a NPOV exercise to simply a glowing P.R. astroturfing exercise that wipes out any criticism or negative (to the company) publicity, even if it is factual and verifiable.
I'm currently engaged directly in one of these efforts where there have been close to 100 edits about a particular company that has been edited to wildly different points of view and little middle ground is seemingly possible. Some of the edits are by (I suspect) employees of the company in question.
As for business that are not notable, that is of course subject to interpretation but even then some sort of good faith ought to go into some of the suggestions. Historical significance should play as much a role as Alexa ranking or other factors. John's "Gently Used Cars" should not be considered a notable business by all of these factors and more, and certainly does not deserve note in Wikipedia, even if it might help improve rankings on Google for their website. This is perhaps one of the motivations for this type of behavior, unfortunately.
There are some companies that while small now, did have a small but important historical significance to the area where they are located, or to the industry they are in.
Somehow I don't think that most of the web pages that Brad is complaining about here really fit this sort of criteria.