[Foundation-l] Corporate vanity policy enforcement

[Robert Scott Horning]

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.

-- 
Robert Scott Horning