Wikipedia:WikiProject Companies/Guidelines

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This section provides editors with guidelines regarding the structure and content of articles on companies, corporations, and related legal structures. Its intent is to provide some element of consistency throughout Wikipedia, while allowing flexibility as needed by specific industries. The overall goal is for these guidelines to receive consensus from the project and community, becoming part of the Manual of Style.

Please feel free to provide your input into these guidelines directly.

Matters dealt with in detail elsewhere

Notability

Articles on companies or a company's brands or products and services first need to meet Wikipedia's notability guidelines to qualify for inclusion in Wikipedia. Specific notability guidelines have been crafted for organizations and companies, usually abbreviated as WP:CORP. Ideally before an article is released into the main Article space, you should review it in the context of this notability guideline.

Article naming

There are both general naming conventions and company-related naming conventions; the former carry the weight of policy, while the latter are guidelines that build on the core policy. The most common naming problem appears to be the inclusion of "Inc.", "LLC" and other legal status addenda (don't include).

Infobox

All company articles should have an infobox with as much available/relevant information included as possible.

For both active and defunct companies, use Template:Infobox Company
Corporate logos, if available, should be included in the Company Infobox, consult WP:LOGO for guidance.

Article categories

There are various categories set up in order to help users navigate through Wikipedia, which should be added to company articles.

All companies

Year of establishment

[[Category:Companies established in xxxx]] where xxxx is the year the company was established.

All active companies

Company location (country)

[[Category:Companies of xxxx]] where xxxx is the country within which the company is based.

Company location (city)

[[Category:Companies based in xxxx]] where xxxx is the city within which the company is based.

Stock exchange membership

Add the article to the relevant "Companies listed on the . . . " stock exchange category.

If not already included companies listed on a stock exchange should be included in the [[List of members of xxxx]] where xxxx is the name of the stock exchange.

Industry

See Category:Companies by industry for a listing of the currently available industry categories.

Industry and company location (country)

See Category:Companies by country and industry for a listing of the currently available Industry and Country combinations.

All defunct companies

Year of disestablishment

[[Category:xxxx disestablishments]] where xxxx is the year the company was acquired or liquidated

Company former location (country)

[[Category:Defunct companies of xxxx]] where xxxx is the country within which the company used to be based

Former industry and former company location (country)

[[Category:Defunct xxxx companies of yyyy]] where xxxx is the industry and yyyy is the country within which the company used to be based

If the category needed for a particular country, city or industry does not exist it, feel free to create it so long as you follow the above naming conventions. Also note that these are the minimum categories as established by this task force, it is possible that other categories are added to a company article by other projects or random editors. It is important that these categories remain in place on the article unless their relevance to the company is questionable.

Article lists

There are currently several different lists within Wikipedia grouping companies by country, stock exchange, oldest etc. A discussion is underway on the talk page to reach consensus upon which of these the project should support/adopt. Please join the discussion and add your views!

Stub templates

Any article which meets the criteria of a stub should be tagged with an applicable template. Currently available stub templates are listed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types#Companies. If a new stub type is required it should be discussed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Proposals prior to its creation

Article importance

There are custom guidelines in place to help you determine what "importance" to rate an WP:Companies article. Please note that importance refers to the company's or article's relative importance in the global economy, lifestyle, or a major industry. Importance should not be used to bolster visibility on Wikipedia for a gain or to promote products.

See Guidelines here: Wikipedia:WikiProject_Companies/Assessment