Talk:The Herb Chambers Companies

Is this a major company?

I was just wondering if this company even needs and article. 44 dealership is a fair amount, but nonetheless it's not a major company in my point of viw and I think the article should jst be deleted. I may be wrong, but to me this doesn't seem like a majr company. Yialanliu (talk) 17:06, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm with you. This company isn't large enough to warrant the type of attention or article that exists. Prefer to see it removed myself. 72.195.158.122 (talk) 12:45, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Herb Chambers is one of the biggest car dealerships in the United States (14th of 22,000). It is the largest in New England. It is definitely sourced in numerous reliable sources as being one of the biggest. It meets the criteria of WP:CORP. ju66l3r (talk) 18:22, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Blogs

BostonBrew: Feel free to lock or mark as spam or whatever you'd like. Fact is, you're trying to push information into the article to damage the brand based on one blogger's account of things. Are we to trust the word of all bloggers? Do we know in certainty that the blogger's experience is complete factual?

Furthermore, the Boston Globe article clearly indicates that officers FROM the Herb Chambers Companies donated -- not the company itself.

This is an encyclopedia. Let's stick to facts rather than putting a spin on things, no? - EddieLang (talk) 12:42, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it sure is an encyclopedia, so let's discuss. (Some of this is pasted over from your personal (talk) page for consistency.)

First, we're not talking about "all bloggers" - both The Boston Globe article and The Cosmic Tap article are written by reputable national journalists with significant bona fides, and are thus legitimate sources. They both fit the Wikipedia standards for media citation and therefore merit inclusion.

Further, the 300+ company employees and past / present customers who've spoken on that Cosmic Tap thread are very relevant to this subject, as unpleasant as it may be for the company. It should be included as an external link at least. The company is free to add other, positive objective links - but its surrogates cannot simply delete things it deems unpleasant.

Earlier, you said:

I just wanted to thank you for your edits on the Herb Chambers Companies entry as well as your commentary. I was previously under an anonymous account, but registered in order to communicate and contribute more. I appreciate your input on this article as I get more acclimated to Wikipedia and how it works. After talking with other users here, I understand your point of view and will work according to the guidelines to provide a factual base to all information on this page.

And I responded that my main concern with your edits to the article is that they seem designed to flush out any controversial information and show only positive, marketing-focused, information.

Articles are not supposed to be advertisements for the company. You continue to delete any information regarding the significant controversies the company has faced here in Massachusetts, and these have a legitimate place in an encyclopedia article. I am not out to smear HC or delete the positive things, I merely am asking for an article that is neutral in its point of view. Your insistence on inserting piles of fluff and deleting controversial news articles by reputable journalists looks like corporate vanity in action, and the page you keep publishing looks very much like spam under the WP definitions for each.

You cannot just keep cleansing the article of unpleasant realities without good reason (other than the fact that you're very likely on their payroll.) I will state my motivations clearly: I am a past customer and Massachusetts voter who would like the public record to include the articles about the gubernatorial contributions and the customer complaints.

If you insist on reverting these edits, we should post the article to either Conflict of interest or Third opinion to bring some outside, impartial views into the matter.

It may simply be your (however indirect) objective to get this article deleted, which is fine, but the article on Herb Chambers the individual is then likely to suffer the same fate.

Look, I have no interest in smearing the company, merely representing both sides of it in the way any reader would expect of Wikipedia. If you want, we can suggest administrative or other review per the above options, but I doubt you're going to like the results of that, given WP's notoriously anti-commercial approach to such matters. Perhaps, then, it's best if we come to a fair resolution ourselves. - BostonBrew (talk) 21:17, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

RfC: On Applicability of Controversial Company Information

At this point the WP community is going to need to decide on whether the controversial company information can stand.

• That blog link and commentary does not meet the reliable sources guideline. I could write a blog entry talking about how Herb Chambers ate puppies each day for a year and it doesn't make it valid and certainly doesn't qualify for something that should be sourced in Wikipedia. The first half of that paragraph needs to be removed. The Boston Globe article reference is fine but needs to be edited to better match the logic behind Herb Chambers' name being brought up in conjunction with O'Reilly's fundraising. Furthermore from all of this, the entire page needs to be redrafted quite a bit to better fit formatting and style. Listing every make sold is more than due weight and needs to be trimmed. It would probably be easier to say they sell all major makes and models except X and Y, than to list A-Z without X and Y listed. The individual locations are not notable themselves so there's no need to specify which received award recognition. It would be just as fitting to say that X dealerships received recognition or something like that. ju66l3r (talk) 19:57, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Ju66l3r, good thoughts... but I think the blog link does meet the guideline, which states: "Self-published material may, in some circumstances, be acceptable when produced by an established expert on the topic of the article whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications." The writer meets that test. BostonBrew (talk) 23:52, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Citrano is not an established expert in a relevant field. Furthermore, the linked blog article is just his complaints about one experience with the company. It's exactly what the reliable sourcing guidelines intend to prevent. If he were a part of the auto industry or a consumer reporting group or some other related field and if this was a self-published article on the statistics of the industry being compared to equivalent metrics of Herb Chambers customer service, then this would be a reliable and relevant link. Instead it's just a techie complaining about the service on his Infiniti. ju66l3r (talk) 19:26, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

I took the article to be about blogging, "Google cred", and companies that don't "get it", with this company as an example. That's why I felt he fell into that category as expert, and def. has the prior publications to back it up. It was the follow-on comments (employees and other customers) that turned it into such a controversy for the company. BostonBrew (talk) 19:58, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

But that is exactly one of the reasons why something like that source is not valid. Each of those follow-up comments is now just another unreliable source. There's no proof that anyone writing there is an employee or that they are even customers of Herb Chambers and not just jumping on board to have fun trashing Herb Chambers or not. There's absolutely no verifiability control for that entire page, comments or article. It's not a valid source for Wikipedia. ju66l3r (talk) 20:07, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Excellent points, J6, and I will edit it back out. BostonBrew (talk) 23:42, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Outside RFC comment. I agree that this was an inappropriate self-published source. Since the dispute appears to be over, I've removed the RFC tag. Cool Hand Luke 04:16, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

The link to the blog is not using it as a reference source - it's just an external link. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.236.108.2 (talk) 12:25, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Cleanup still needed

This article is still written like an advertisement and needs more help. BostonBrew (talk) 23:47, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

I agree it needs more information. The Herb Chambers auto group is pretty big and has a lot of influence on the New England auto market. I have to imagine that there should be a lot of well-sourced material on them out there. I don't personally have the interest in searching for that info and summarizing it here though. I'll leave that to more capable and interested parties. I don't believe it's any more ad-like than many other company pages. Having a list of their awards isn't advertising, in fact it's one of the ways that the company satisfies the notability criteria, and the rest of it is pretty basic information about the company. I'm not sure if the company falls into any of the WikiProject domains, but that is always a good way to get it more attention if you wanted to try and bring more editors with specific interests to an article. ju66l3r (talk) 03:28, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Cleanup started

As a member of Wikipedia:WikiProject Business and a long time New Englander, I will be giving this article a cleanup. My goal is to add more factual information, removing any remnants of advertising, and to add more sources and references. Whoisjohngalt (talk) 13:34, 28 November 2015 (UTC)