Talk:Harry & David/Archives/2015

Reverted edits

The recent edits I reverted appear to have been added by someone from BCO (Harry & David). If you are wondering why I reverted these edits, please read about conflict of interest, ownership of articles, what Wikipedia is not (for example it's not here to provide companies with free advertising space), and about copyright violations, for example the text and images that were directly copied and pasted from the company website. If you have any questions after reading these, please ask them on this talk page. Thanks! Katr67 19:06, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree. Most of the information added was verifiable (as long as the company's own website is verifiable), but a bit "Fatty". The history of the company is (IMHO) fairly interesting, but the old edit was lifted from the H&D website. I will try to come back at some point and seperate the fact from the opinion, but if someone beats me to it, feel free! Mechroneal 20:45, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

I agree that the company history is interesting and a notable part of Oregon and Medford history as well, it just needs to be written in someone's own words and hopefully have some sources added from outside the corporate website. Thanks for considering working on it! Katr67 21:11, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

material about Harry n David

The area of original orchard pear trees from HD at the Jackson Perkins gardens says they were orginially appreciated during the 1930s among the "rich and famous" improving the local economy

Yamaouchi pharmaceuticals is reported at jackson perkins wikipedia are as having aquired BCO apparently thus also harry n david— Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.224.196.40 (talk • contribs) 14:00, November 14, 2011‎

Help with updates for this article

Hi, I'm looking for editors to review a proposed revision for this article. As I've prepared this draft on behalf of Harry and David Holdings Inc. I do have a conflict of interest that should be taken into account. Because of my relationship to the subject, I'd like to ask that other editors review what I've written and help improve this article by providing feedback, if you feel that changes are needed. If we can reach an agreement on replacing the current article with my new version I hope that an editor will be able to move the draft live for me. I would like to avoid all direct edits to this article because of my COI.

New draft for this article

The draft I've written is in my user space here:

• User:16912_Rhiannon/Harry_&_David

I've put together some notes on the changes I've made in my draft, but please feel free to ask if you have questions about something not included here. (I've aimed to keep these notes short so they aren't overwhelming.)

The updates I've made include:

• Expanding the infobox to provide a more full overview of the brand
• Adding in an Operations section to group together information about the company's brands, products, locations, leadership and current owners
• Expanding the information on the company's history, especially providing more details around the company's bankruptcy filing and recovery
• Providing reliable, independent sources throughout and replacing citations where press releases and the Oregon Encyclopedia website were used. (Though I've included the company commissioned book "First Names in Gifting" as a source, I've aimed to use this as a reference primarily in conjunction with other independent sources, however there are three pieces of information which are supported solely by the book.)
• Cleaning up the article throughout by formatting references consistently and removing duplicated external links

Just as a quick note: I've removed the Harry & David logo from my draft, since fair use images shouldn't be included in user space drafts and I've disabled categories. If the draft is taken live, both of these will need to be fixed.

Thanks in advance for reviewing this draft. I have this page on my watchlist and I'll reply to any questions or comments here. Thanks, 16912 Rhiannon (Talk · COI) 19:34, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Here are my thoughts. First, it's a bit dry, but I think that's absolutely fine for a COI editor who is using an abundance of caution. I'm not sure why the references to "Harry & David". The Oregon Encyclopedia. were removed; that article supplies some of the "color" that I find lacking, but the facts originally cited from there are uncontroversial. I would switch the "History" and "Operations" sections, unless you can point to a guideline that suggests it should be laid out the other way. I looked and couldn't find one. That said, this is a good start for expansion of the article. Since my bias is toward local and regional history, I would like to see mention of how important this company is to Medford's economy as well as adding some more info from the OE reference, but I can take care of that. Also maybe a mention of the company's best-known products, such as Moose Munch. I liked how the original lede mentioned the Fruit-of-the-Month club. Finally, not everyone knows that "Rosenberg" is a common Jewish surname; it might be spelled out more that the family is Jewish.

However, per the review instructions, I think this is good to go as is--it is without undue bias or promotional language, the independent sources have not been overly cherry picked (although I note the information cited from The New Yorker about the pension was removed--info can also be found on Bloomberg), and it is an improvement over the current content. I will assume good faith in regards to the Snyder book as it appears to be only available through H&D and so there is no preview on Google Books. (A check of WorldCat shows there is a copy in the library in Ashland.) There is some copy editing and expansion that could be done but overall this is ready to move over. I know you don't want to move the content yourself, I'll see if I can get a third opinion. I thank you for submitting your draft for review and remind you of what I'm sure you are well aware, that the company's preferred version is subject to revision and expansion. Cheers, Valfontis (talk) 17:46, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

The draft looks good to me as well, and I've moved it to the mainspace accordingly. It seems fairly neutral, well balanced, and reliably sourced. I do think that the Oregon Encyclopedia reference should be restored unless there was a valid reason for its removal. Other than that, the draft is definitely an improvement over the old version. I moved the "Operations" section below the "History" section per Valfontis's suggestion, and put the "Bibliography" section below the "References" section per common practice. I also made a few minor changes. One idea for expansion might be to write a sentence or two about the company's factory tours—I went on one several years ago and was quite impressed. The lead probably needs some work too. Anyway, thanks for the rewrite! If you'd like to make any more changes, feel free to post them here. Sincerely, LittleMountain5 06:22, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Valfontis and LittleMountain5 for your help here. I'm really happy that you both feel the draft I prepared was an improvement and have moved it to the mainspace. All your suggestions for adding more information sound good to me. I'd aimed to keep the article on the dry side so it wouldn't be viewed as promotional but I completely understand if you'd like to add some "color". Also, the reason I removed the Oregon Encylopedia source was simply due to an abundance of caution: I hadn't seen this source used elsewhere and I was concerned it might not be considered reliable. Since I was able to find the essential facts in other independent sources, I felt it better to remove it.

About the pension plan, what was in the article originally was incorrect. Though Harry and David had proposed terminating their pension plan under the restructure following their bankruptcy, this did not actually happen. Finally, I think switching around the History and Operations section is totally fine. There's no specific guide on which order these should appear and I've seen them both ways, so it's largely a judgement call.

Thanks again so much for your help, 16912 Rhiannon (Talk · COI) 21:56, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

Re: Oregon Encyclopedia, they consider themselves more reliable than us! This is the source of some amusement among the members of WikiProject Oregon. Cheers, Valfontis (talk) 22:07, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

Harry & David has a new President - Please update

Please remove Craig Johnson, chief executive officer and replace his name with Steven Lightman, President Harry & David. See reference here:http://www.mailtribune.com/article/20150410/NEWS/150419973/0/SEARCH

Thank you!63.158.90.90 (talk) 23:08, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

Done. Ron Schnell 00:31, 17 August 2015 (UTC)