Talk:Whistle (company)

One of our best defenses against undisclosed paid editing is redirecting brands to generics. This gives our community less articles to keep an eye on which is essential given the volume of concerns that we are now experiencing. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:51, 9 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Sarah, I have been on decent terms with the writer of this draft for a while and keep abreast of how much trouble they're getting into; sometimes I agree with CorporateM, sometimes I don't. Sometimes he asks me for advice, sometimes I give it unasked. I think we've been talking for three or four years, maybe more. In this case, I strongly disagree with the speedy nomination and subsequent deletion. The article clearly is not irredeemable spam. It may well be a new company, but it's a new company that's been written up in a number of newspapers/magazines/etc. Pointing at a generic article for the product they're selling is kind of a ruse, since the question here is about whether the company is notable by our standards or not. The best test for that is simply to send it through AfD; you have my blessing to do so. The worst you can throw at this article is that it's well-written and clean and all that--you can call it slick, if you like: CorpM is pretty good at what he does. But speedily deleting articles that don't quality for G11 is not the proper way to go even if you have a suspicion that there was a conflict of interest--well, CorpM wrote it and so there is paid editing, yeah, but they play by the rules, as far as I know. Doc, this is not a particularly problematic editor, nor am I convinced that there is some crisis going on. Drmies (talk) 03:52, 9 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Drmies and Yngvadottir, hosting articles about products is fine when RS write about them independently of the company. But this article is pure PR based on company press releases, via the media they were sent to.

Note the date clusters. Five sources from June 2013 announce the launch, based on a press release. [1][2][3][4][5] In November 2013 the company sends out samples, which produces another three sources. [6][7][8] Three sources are produced by a press release in February 2014 announcing that PetSmart will sell the tracker. [9][10][11] A press release about the GPS feature produces five sources in May 2014. [12][13][14][15][16] Then they hire a PR professional to create a Wikipedia page. Including all the sources gives the appearance of lots of RS, but the sense in which they're independent is minimal.

A section in Activity monitor about pet trackers would avoid the advocacy; the Whistle tracker isn't the only one. And something can be added to Mars Petcare about the company. SarahSV ^(talk) 15:02, 9 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Sarah, if you want to take it to AfD, that's fine with me--that's how the process goes. Thanks, Drmies (talk) 15:57, 9 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I've been staying out of this, but I decided to see whether I could make it more acceptable, and I've just added a few more recent references. Also, I happen to have written activity tracker, though I've been told (a) that my scientific ignorance shows—the sources I found neglected to make sufficiently clear that they are glorified pedometers and that there were antecedent devices that all fitness fanatics are aware of, and like that ... (b) that any list of them, and in particular if I also covered the pet trackers, would make the article hopelessly baggy and inevitably look like an endorsement in a competitive field. So I haven't looked at it recently, but I think that point about potential bagginess and the risk of seeming to endorse is valid. If we have a Fitbit article—and indeed we have not just that, but a List of Fitbit products, which does seem to me to be getting out of scope but I know there are similar lists for a number of companies—it seems to me that we should have a brief, neutral article on the major producer(s) of pet trackers, providing the sources exist. And in my view they do. There's a Catch 22 in writing about any company that's currently marketing new products: for the sources to exist, there has to be marketing to make journalists aware of the new product. All things being equal, I'm an inclusionist, but I don't see the reliable sources rules saying anywhere that we ban sources because the writer may have first received a press release or a review copy; we ban sources that are regurgitated press releases. In any case ... would one of you consider mainspacing this, or at least replacing the AfC header, in your capacity as admins? I asked CorporateM whether he wanted to do the latter, but he's evidently too much retired. The status quo ante was that it was tagged as needing AfC review, but I don't feel right as a non-admin either mainspacing it or replacing that tag. Yngvadottir (talk) 16:41, 9 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]
- I had a quick look at the Slate article, and that was not simply a rehashing of a press release. Drmies (talk) 17:06, 9 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  - I see other sources that I also consider valid in establishing notability, but on consideration I don't regard the Reception section as justifiable. So I deleted that and am about to mainspace the article myself. Yngvadottir (talk) 14:03, 13 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Tag

I've removed the tag of this article as an advert. I invite further cleansing, since I'm sure I'm not 100% reliable as a remover of promotional language, but who created it and the fact I hadn't seen where the discussion around deletion had taken place (see tag rationale and edit summary link in the edit adding the tag) are not sufficient reasons to tag the article as advertising. Yngvadottir (talk) 02:40, 1 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yngvadottir, this is advertising. There is no sense in which it isn't. The manufacturer hired a PR professional to place it for them. They may have written some of it. They did write the press releases on which it's based. It serves only to promote. But we don't alert the reader to any of that, so it's misleading, masquerading as an independent account. SarahSV ^(talk) 03:27, 1 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I've done my best to remove anything in the actual article that can be construed as advertising, and in my considered opinion the sources available exceed the threshold of notability. So I can only suggest that you or someone else sharing the view it is advertising further edit the prose; or in view of what you say both here and above, that you AfD it. I hope if you take the latter route you'll notify Drmies and other significant contributors as well as me and CorporateM. Yngvadottir (talk) 03:35, 1 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The tag is meant not to be removed while the issue is under discussion. [17] I'm not sure it's reasonable to say "AfD it, or it's not an ad" (i.e. spend more of your volunteer time dealing with this), because it is an ad, and there isn't any editing that will make it not an ad. The sources were created by the company sending out press releases and samples. The article was created by a company-paid PR person. At least the tag alerts the reader. SarahSV ^(talk) 03:50, 1 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

You have said that, and I have kept examining the article, but I still see independent sources, and I have taken responsibility for the article after editing it (excising an entire section, among other things). We allow editors to do that for banned editors; we can do no less for COI editors who followed the rules. In short, I disagree and regard the tag as invalid and placed for invalid reasons. You are under no personal obligation to AfD it, of course, any more than any one editor was under personal obligation to go through it, and the decision to main-space it was entirely mine, but I do stand by that decision and my evaluation of the article. Your assessment differs. Yngvadottir (talk) 07:10, 1 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I am the Wikipedian who (re?)tagged it as advertisement in mid-Feb 2017. In fact, I did it back then after a quick perusal, WITHOUT reading this Talk Page. I read the Talk discussion only now. I still think that:

the article reads as an ad,
the company is not notable, and
the major raison d'etre of this piece is undue promotion,

so I fully agree with SarahSV that at least we should warn the reader. Zezen (talk) 12:01, 5 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It might be worth summarizing the history:

On 16 January CorporateM, paid by or on behalf of the company, created the article in draftspace for AfC. The sources were based on company press releases; some of the press releases had been accompanied by samples to generate independent-looking stories. If we ignore the churnalism, there was no "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the topic".
On 16 January SisterTwister marked it for speedy deletion as an ad (G11), [18] and on 17 January RHaworth deleted it. [19]
CorporateM did not object to this onwiki. Instead he appears to have emailed Drmies, who undeleted it on 8 February [20] and began editing it.
On 8 February I suggested it be merged into Activity tracker. DocJames agreed. The article was still in draftspace at this point.
On 9 February Yngvadottir began editing it and on 13 February moved it to mainspace. [21]
On 24 February Zezen tagged it as an ad, [22] and on 1 March Yngvadottir removed the tag. [23]

As Doc James said, redirecting brands to generics is one of our best defences. It makes a lot of sense to do this, unless the brand has become well-known: we get to keep anything useful, but without misleading the reader into thinking a paid ad is an encyclopaedia entry. SarahSV ^(talk) 20:31, 5 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@SlimVirgin, Zezen, and Doc James: I keep looking at the article and its sources, trying to see this churnalism. Instead I see articles in the Wall Street Journal, Inc, and Fortune before even getting to articles that are about the product more than about the company. I just don't see the basis for this argument, I'm afraid. And I've rewritten it carefully; I don't see the adspeak. I'm going to ping in Drmies again at this point; it seems only fair. But I just cannot see the lack of notability or the inappropriate referencing that would warrant deletion or redirection/merger, nor the undue promotion in the way it's written, so I have to disagree with pretty much all the statements on which you are basing your arguments. Yngvadottir (talk) 22:09, 5 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Pinging SwisterTwister and RHaworth too in case they want to comment. Yngvadottir, are there sources in the article that don't summarize a company press release or base a story on a press release that was accompanied by a sample? (See here for pitching with samples.) That is, are there any sources that offer entirely independent coverage? Listing them here would be a good start. SarahSV ^(talk) 22:17, 5 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I am unable to read the minds of the reporting staff of the Wall Street Journal, Inc, or Fortune (among the first 6 references), but they decided to write articles substantially about the company (WSJ on two different occasions), so they found its founding and its acquisition of Tagg to be notable. CNN and CNET are also usually accepted as reliable sources, too? (I'm less sure about Gigaom and TechCrunch, and the TechCrunch reporter did get a sample of the product.) The articles also differ entirely in their wording. So even if the company issued press releases announcing its foundation, its acquisition of Tagg, and its success in getting venture capitalization funding, I fail to see how that makes the coverage invalid for meeting our notability guidelines. Journalists from multiple major reliable sources still decided to cover the company in depth. If the article summarizes those reliable sources in bizspeak, I'm truly sorry, but I can't see the further changes that need to be made. Yngvadottir (talk) 05:37, 6 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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