Talk:CNW Marketing Research/Archives/2012

Non-free use rationale

For use of company logo in infobox:

-Agyle 04:39, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

How is this not spam?

How is this entire page not considered SPAM? It seems to me like a simple advertisement. Nrcjersey 19:33, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

I created it, as a good faith effort to write an article about the company. At the time, I was not as familiar with WP's verifiability guidelines, and depended far too much (though not exclusively) on the company's website for information. Statements by the company's Art Spinella are extremely widely quoted (3440 occurrences of "art spinella" in news.google.com), and have at times been extremely controversial, which is what interested me in the company. I don't agree that it serves as an advertisement, or would be considered spam, but that's a subjective call. I do agree that most information attributed to the company's website should be removed, with perhaps some of it described in the article with something like "According to the company's website..." rather than stating it as a fact and including a footnote to the website. -Agyle 02:12, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

I did some edits, and will try to do some more later. Do you have specific criticisms of what seems advertising-like? I removed the deletion notice, as the notice said to remove it if anyone objects, and I object. If you still think it warrants deletion, Wikipedia:Guide_to_deletion explains the process if someone objected, which is similar but puts it up to a vote, where a few different editors take a look at the deletion request and give their opinion. While I disagree with deleting it, let me know if you want to do the vote thing but have some difficulty. I've used it once, and found it a little confusing. :-) -Agyle 08:03, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

I understand that the article is now mainly factual and reads in an objective tone. That is good. However, I don't understand the value that this knowledge offers to an encyclopeia. If Art Spinella has valuable opinions to be shared on specific topics, then his work should be included and cited in other articles that are relevant. However, an article specifically on one company that is in existance and seeking a profit seems to serve more purpose in lead generation (as in advertising) than public education (as an encyclopedia would). If CNW gets a corporate profile page on Wikipedia, shouldn't every company have the right to post their corporate profile on Wikipedia? I sure would like to post a corporate profile on my corporation for everyone to find. Can I? Nrcjersey 12:38, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

The value is just what's obvious: if someone wants a concise summary about the company, it's here. Spinella's views are shared in other Wikipedia articles, and so its seemed useful to provide information on the company behind those claims. I was curious about the company for because of its frequent reference in articles critical of hybrids; the New York Times quotes CNW/Spinella very regularly, but never supplies more than a sentence explaining who it is. As to lead generation, I honestly hadn't considered it, and don't think this would be good for that, but I really don't know. Either way though, that's how it goes. Articles on any product, TV show, or rock group could be viewed as an advertisement in that sense as well.

As to other companies, there are a lot of other companies covered in Wikipedia, probably all the major companies you could think of, and many obscure ones. Wikipedia has articles on tremendously obscure topics; it's not comparable in breadth to any conventional encyclopedia. WP's policy is that no company or person should post about themselves, so there is no "right" to post their corporate profile, and you shouldn't post about your own company. And this is also a publicly-edited, publicly-reviewed site, so if a company did contravene that by adding boilerplate marketspeak, it could be deleted, or edited with objective information.

As to this article, it does cover a company, but I tried to keep it objective: what the company does, who runs it, how long they've been around, what products/services they provide, and where they're located. There are no claims about the quality of their work or other subjective descriptions. I chose to list their starting subscription price and claimed subscriber base only to give some idea of claimed revenue; the numbers were attributed to CNW, so hopefully a reader would infer that it should be treated skeptically, although it's rather iffy to include that at all. -Agyle 13:58, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

I would like to voice my opinion for keeping this article. my friend had cited "Dust to Dust," written by CNW Research, and I wanted to see if the company was legitimate. like any other company that is on wikipedia, it is there to provide information about the company, as well as on any controversy that has surrounded that company. -roberchr 1/6/08

Some Rather Serious Accuracy and Attribution Issues

I think there are a number of issues with the article as it stands. 1. "CNW's publication "From Dust to Dust" [1] claims that a Hummer is more efficient than a Prius, despite the fact that a Prius is one-third the weight of a hummer and gets between four and six times better mileage." This is not what "Dust to Dust" says, and adding the weight and mileage figures is misleading, since the study itself is about the energy usage of hundreds of vehicles throughout their life from extraction of raw materials to recycling. It would be far more accurate to say that the Dust to Dust study "examines the total energy cost of hundreds of vehicles from extraction of raw material to manufacturing to use and eventual disposal or recycling." If you want to add something at that point about the controversy with the Prius and the Hummer, that's probably fine, but it also seems misleading to me not to include some of the other conclusions of the study that aren't so irritating to environmentalists, for instance, that the lowest energy use footprint car is the Toyota Scion xB. This article also claims that "CNW claims that their efficiencies are based on Priuses lasting only 109,000 miles whilst Hummers run for more than 300,000." This is also false. If you read the study you will see that this figure is only a portion of the calculation involving the Prius and Hummer. Not to mention that CNW has put together some extensive discussion about the rationale behind their figure for the Prius, and the Hummer none of which has, to my knowledge, been "debunked." Finally, "Neither of these figures are properly documented and this study has been roundly debunked." "Roundly debunked," is pretty subjective. The closest I have seen is the Pacific Institute's paper, which leaves much to be desired. You only cite a pair of popular publication articles (The San Francisco Chronicle and Slate are not exactly the best neutral reporting parties on this issue either) for this debunking proposition and I think that insufficient. See the Pacific Institute study: http://www.pacinst.org/topics/integrity_of_science/case_studies/hummer_versus_prius.html -Suisse Banker —Preceding comment was added at 20:55, 23 March 2008 (UTC)