User talk:Davolson

Deletion of Product Development and Management Assocation Page from Wikipedia

Guy, on September 4 2008 you speedied as G11 the entry for the "Product Development and Management Association". PDMA is a 30-year-old, highly respected professional organization of 3500 members. Among other activities, it publishes a highly regarded professional academic journal called "The Journal of Product Innovation Management". You can see the association's web site at www.pdma.org.

In your reason for deletion, you called PDMA a "generic trade group"; it is not in any sense a "trade group", as it is not focused on any particular industry, does not do any lobbying, etc. It is a 501(c)3 non-profit association, and is cross-industry in its focus on improving the professional practice of developing new products and services.

An association very similar to PDMA in its professionalism and mission is the American Marketing Association; and I discovered that the AMA in fact has a Wikipedia page, and which has not been deleted like PDMA's has. There is no consistent reason as to why there should be a Wikipedia entry for the American Marketing Association, and not one for the Product Development and Management Association.

I fully understand and endorse not letting for-profit companies use Wikipedia for their commercial advertising, but what about non-profit 501(c)3 professional organizations like PDMA (and the AMA, and others)? I hope you will reconsider your decision, and/or tell me how a respected and helpful organization like PDMA can have a presence on Wikipedia like the American Marketing Association, an almost identical organization, does.

You also said, in your comments, "I believe the creator and sole editor is connected with this organisation." I do not know who created the page, but how can someone create content for the page without being knowledgeable about the organization? If it was a PDMA member who created the page, would you call that "being connected with this organization"?

Thanks very much for your reconsideration, and happy holidays. Davolson (talk) 05:05, 23 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It was pretty generic stuff, loaded with peacock terms and making no obvious claim of notability - for example, the fact that it has a magazine and an annual conference hardly distinguishes it from any other organisation, and 3,000 members worldwide is pretty small beer. Guy (Help!) 09:11, 23 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Deletion of Product Development and Management Assocation Page from Wikipedia

This page for Product_Development_and_Management_Association was just restored by Wikipedia, but when I try to edit the page it says it is protected from editing because it is transcluded on the page Wikipedia:Protected titles/September 2007, and I'm not permitted to edit it. Since it's now been restored, obviously I need the page available for editing. How do I get this done? Thanks.

Davolson (talk) 16:26, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The error is now fixed. Note, however, that this article may stand for AfD soon. - Revolving Bugbear 18:17, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

How to improve Product Development and Management Association before the AfD closes?

Hello Davolson. I notice that you've been working to make improvements to this article. I also have been giving some thought to how to rescue the article so that it might survive the AfD. A concern is that, if you are the organization's webmaster, you should not be editing the article at all per Wikipedia:Conflict of interest. However, it is possible you might be a resource for others to fix up the article. I have some ideas myself, and I wonder if you might be willing to work with me to get those improvements made. The AfD will close on 2 January, according to the five-day rule, so if you are willing, I'd appreciate a quick answer. Thanks, EdJohnston (talk) 23:30, 1 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your reply. The main problem with the article as it stands is the lack of independent reliable sources. JzG is correct that it is hard to find these. I also find it puzzling that the organization (in my view) does not explain what it actually does more clearly. The article used to include the puzzling slogan 'Connecting innovators worldwide' which on Wikipedia is like saying, This article is advertising. Please do bad things to it! It seems like PDMA is actually a professional group that promotes a certain 'curriculum' that they consider essential to the proper training of business people, though the actual degree of public acceptance of PDMA's concept of the curriculum is not documented anywhere that we can find it. (Do business schools use it? Do business schools prefer another approach that they think is better?) Since you are connected to the organization, I hope you might have access to some documents, or references, we might use. One thing that would be helpful is: are there any reviews published in serious journals (preferably peer-reviewed academic) of the various books that carry the PDMA name, such as Kahn's book? Thanks for your time. EdJohnston (talk) 00:40, 2 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Since the article has drawn so much attention due to the AfD, you should have no problem getting your valid points looked into, even if you can't edit the article directly. If you can answer my questions, please respond on User talk:EdJohnston. EdJohnston (talk) 22:22, 2 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]