Wikipedia talk:FAQ/Organizations

No AfD participation

We should tell people not to participate in AfD's of articles where they are the subject. That's part of the COI guideline. People also shouldn't edit their own articles. Yeah, some non-controversial edits are OK, like fixing spelling and reverting obvious vandalism, but with AfD, nothing good comes from having the subject argue their own notability. Jehochman ^Hablar 06:40, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I wouldn't go that far. Yes, it's going to be a problem if they bicker with every participant, but they are allowed to produce an argument against deletion, especially if they can make it based on Wikipedia policy. --W.marsh 12:44, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No, it's not banned. From WP:COI:

Wikipedia is "the encyclopedia that anyone can edit," but if you have a conflict of interest avoid, or exercise great caution when:

Editing articles related to you, your organization, or its competitors, as well as projects and products they are involved with,

Participating in deletion discussions about articles related to your organization or its competitors,

Linking to the Wikipedia article or website of your organization in other articles (see Wikipedia:Spam);
and you must always:

Avoid breaching relevant policies and guidelines, especially neutral point of view, verifiability, and autobiography.

I would avoid taking an overly negative or aggressive tone. I would rather us try to work with these people and show them how they can help us, rather than scaring them off and making them use more underhand tactics. Kamryn Matika 13:37, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed, I wrote some of the above text. I'll try to strike a better balance. Jehochman ^Hablar 15:17, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Great job

I've changed this from an essay to an FAQ page and linked it into the other FAQ pages. There is a real need for this page. The essay tag made it look like something that can be ignored. I don't think there is anything controversial on this page, it just restates policies and guidelines found elsewhere. It should be linked wherever appropriate. -- ☑ SamuelWantman 07:57, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wow - looking good :) I love Wikipedia! Being able to knock something up in twenty minutes and then have a bunch of other people come along and improve my work of their own accord is the best. I'm hoping more people who deal with this kind of user frequently will come along and add other stuff that commonly comes up. I think the next stop now is making this page as visible as possible to the right people. Kamryn Matika 14:00, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Business, Business', Businesses or Businesses'?

I've renamed this as "Business'" in line with the other plural possessive FAQs. Business can be used as a plural, and "Business'" would be pronounced "biznesses". If we used the possessive of the alternate plural "businesses" that would lead to "biznesseses". I've never come up against this usage question before. Anyone know what the acceptable plural possessive is for "Business"? -- ☑ SamuelWantman 09:47, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Visibility

Based on the AN/I thread, this FAQ will hopefully actually answer FAQs without the need of e-mailing OTRS. So, I think we should make sure those people have a reasonable chance of seeing this page when heading towards OTRS. When ready, this page should be linked to prominently from Wikipedia:Contact us/Article problem/Factual error (from enterprise), which seems to be where you'd end up if you were a COI and clicked on "Contact us". --W.marsh 12:45, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

We can also make a "corporation template" and put it in talk pages of articles about corporations (similar to BLP articles). That template would redirect user to this instruction.Biophys 13:36, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Contradictions between company web site and independent sources

We should tell in FAC that in the case of such contradictions, we are going to use independent secondary sources about the company (which satisfy WP:SOURCE) rather than information that company provides itself.Biophys 13:29, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Repetitions

The sections "Why doesn't Wikipedia have an article on my company?" and "I think my company deserves an article on Wikipedia but none exists. What can I do?" cover very similar ground (even their titles are similar). Anyone mind if I try merging them?

This is a great article and (I hope) will save us a lot of repetitive explanation. Raymond Arritt 18:11, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think they're different... but perhaps "How do I create an article?" should be trimmed for redundancy. From what I recall OTRS gets a lot of outright demands that Wikipedia write an article for some random company or business venture, as odd as that sounds... this seems like something the FAQ should clearly address. --W.marsh 00:37, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Now that you explained it, I see. I'll add just a few words to try to make the reasoning clearer. Raymond Arritt 01:31, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Examples of good articles and featured articles about corporations

Wikipedia:FAQ/Organizations does not seem to direct the reader to examples of good articles or featured articles about businesses. WP:GA#Businesses groups several good articles about businesses together; WP:FA, on the other hand, has articles about businesses appearing under several different headings. I think it would be helpful to include a list of links to articles about businesses which have attained good or featured rank. That should give the reader concrete examples to help him or her understand the sometimes abstract policies and guidelines. For all we know, businesspeople who want to create articles about their businesses on Wikipedia may have only viewed a few articles, perhaps of low quality (for example, articles by and about their competitors, which for all we know might have escaped scrutiny thus far). Since only a tiny fraction of articles on Wikipedia are good or featured, articles that turn up under random browsing will usually have problems, and may mislead someone who assumes those articles fully exemplify what Wikipedia is trying to be. --Teratornis 22:56, 30 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If we were to point someone to a good or featured article about a business, it should be with a caveat that the articles were written by many community members, working together. We should not give the impression that good or featured articles about businesses are often written by people who represent the company. Is there any business article that you are aware of where a representative of the company participated in the creation or editing of the article, and there contributions were accepted without controversy? That might be a useful example to highlight. -- ☑ SamuelWantman 00:38, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think that's a good idea... from recent experience trying to submit work in good faith to another site, and it kept getting rejected for vague reasons, I just felt like "Well if you'd show me something acceptable then I'd know what to do". A question could be like 'What would an acceptable article look like?' or something along those lines. I created a "good idea, bad idea" table like this in a minor essay I wrote at User:W.marsh/Blatant advertising. --W.marsh 00:40, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

A missing FAQ

I believe there is a missing FAQ: "My boss told me to advertise our business on Wikipedia. How do I do that?" or "I'm (so and so) in the Marketing Dept. of (some company) and I want to advertise our business. What do I do?" In other words, I feel there should be a FAQ entry specifically for marketing people that tells them that Wikipedia is not a bulletin board for advertisements. The last FAQ listed ("What can I upload?") gets into the PR thing, but I don't think a PR person would look at the "What can I upload?" title and read what it says. Perhaps, it can be retitled "Can I advertise my company? What can I upload?" -- Kainaw^(what?) 02:50, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I added this at the beginning, as it is perhaps the most important thing we need to state. It's a bit short and to the point though - feel free to reword. Kamryn Matika 03:34, 1 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]