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Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dragonfly Productions

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. Clear consensus to delete outside the article creator, which is the founder of the company. Willing to WP:USERFY however, article creator should take WP:COI and WP:NOT#WEBHOST however. Secret account 04:44, 18 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Dragonfly Productions

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Dragonfly Productions (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)
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An article about a British film production company that has become a bit of a battleground for an off-Wikipedia dispute. There are also concerns about WP:COI since the major contributor is the company's founder. Regardless of all that, the subject fails WP:CORP. There is very little in the way of significant third-party coverage, what there is is largely local in nature or self-generated, and the rest of the references fail to establish any notability whatsoever. §FreeRangeFrogcroak 21:52, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by the articles founder

The Dragonfly Productions Wikipedia page has been under attack recently. Mainly by a competitor production company who vandalised the page repeatedly. This has bought the page under the spotlight whereby some Wikipedia editors are concerned about its place on Wikipedia. I am the company founder and I published this page in the first instance. My name is Charlie Southall. The page has been online for many years. I do not think it is uncommon for someone who is connected to a subject matter to submit and edit a Wikipedia article. Surely the founder of the company is the person most motivated to publish an article and I believe many articles come about in this way. Those connected to the subject are also best placed to ensure articles are kept up to date. I do understand the concern that the page could be used simply for self promotion of the business, so at the point I was aware of this criticism, I set about ensuring the article contained only factual content that could be substantiated and independently verified. All content which could be seen as promotional has been stripped. I do not think that the fact that I am closely connected to the enterprise is reason enough to delete the article. There is no motivation for me to publish anything untrue.

I do invite others to contribute and edit the page, but there is little motivation for many. There is clear motivation for a competitor business to vandalise however. I do however maintain that the page is of interest to internet users, it does get looked at frequently.

Since attempting to bring the page in line with Wikipedias notoriety guidelines, their has been the comment that the references are self-generated. This is quite unfair as it is not the case. None of the references are editable by me or Dragonfly and are housed on third party sites (with the exception of the link to the dragonfly site and a video example).

The truth is that the company is extremely well known in the video industry. Its also very well known in England as a creative video agency to turn to. Dragonfly have recently worked with; London Fire Brigade, The Home Office, NHS, Virgin, Hewlett Packard, Universal Music, Sony and local government - to name just a few. The company has most recently been working with the City of London Mayors office and Cambridge University too. Dragonfly is consistently chosen by professional bodies to produce video content and is approached by freelance creatives seeking work on average 10 times daily. The company turned over close to half a million UKP in financial year 2012-2013. One single public sector video contract was worth £100,000 alone. What more can a creative agency be to achieve notoriety in the eyes of Wikipedia? What can one do to prove notoriety further?

I must defend this page and the notoriety of the company I founded. The enterprise is not 'cottage industry'. I do strongly believe it is a worthy subject of a Wikipedia page, especially considering the policy of the company to mainly focus on worthy causes and charity work. Dragonfly is effecting people and is involved in many worthwhile projects. Sure, I have a vested interest in the article continuing to exist, because I am very proud of the companies achievements.

I am going to approach all previous clients and ask for a reference and credit on their websites (I have previously not given this enough attention). I will take this action to establish more evidence as to the companies notoriety. So for now, the client list has been mostly stripped from the Wikipedia article - however, as and when clients agree to credit Dragonfly, references can be added to the article and evidence of the companies valuable work can be added to the article. I am also going to invite people in positions of authority and status to contribute impartially to the article.

Any further advise about what can be done to defend the article is most welcome. Please do not delete quickly. Give me and others a chance to amend the site to be better. User talk:charliesouthall —Preceding undated comment added 22:51, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of United Kingdom-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 23:32, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Film-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 23:32, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Business-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 23:33, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. The only problem is that client testimonials cannot be seen as anything that would give notability. The first reason would be that since they are associated with your company, their testimonials would be seen as WP:PRIMARY sources at best. Primary sources are anything that is put out by you, your company, friends/family, or anyone that has used you to help make/produce something. The second reason is that even if the people involved were notable, notability is WP:NOTINHERITED by the company having been associated with notable persons or even really notable films. Now if your company was given a notable award for creating something, then that could help show notability. The problem with awards is that the vast majority of them aren't notable, not per Wikipedia's rules. Only about 2% of any award for anything ever given in any scope give some sort of notability to the subject. Of that 2%, I'd say that most of them aren't the type that would give notability on that basis alone. As far as keeping the article because you do nice things for good purposes, we can't and don't keep articles because it would be nice to do so or because it'd be useful. Your company would have to pass notability guidelines. Now as far as why it's not really a good idea to edit an article about a subject you're personally involved in is because it's so incredibly easy to not see things impartially. You'll see notability where there is none, write a sentence that you think is impartial but comes across as promotional in nature, as well as other things- all without ever really realizing that you're not being neutral. I'd somewhat recommend against telling someone to do direct editing to the article, because if they're not really familiar with how Wikipedia works then they might actually do more harm to the article than good. I'm not saying that they shouldn't contribute, just that it'd be a better idea for them to use the talk page to suggest additions and edits until they gain more familiarity with Wikipedia in general. Now as far as being well known goes, popularity and notoriety do not automatically mean notability here on Wikipedia. It's fairly common to have people, things, and companies that are well known and popular that do not pass notability guidelines. (WP:VALINFO) It's actually more common for someone to be well known but not notable than it is to have someone that is well known and notable per Wikipedia guidelines. Notability is shown through reliable sources. Now as far as that goes, just because you can't directly edit or influence a source does not mean that it is reliable. I'm giving a rundown of the sources and why they might be usable or unusable:
  1. [1] This is a business listings. Business listings are never usable as reliable sources. Part of this is because so many of them can be directly edited or influenced by the business, but it's mostly because all this does is show that your company exists. Existing is not notability. (WP:ITEXISTS)
  2. [2] The problem with this site is that it's not exactly a proven or trusted source as far as Wikipedia goes. That the piece is also called a "reader story" is probably why some would be suspicious over how much of it was written by your company and how much was written by the website under the company's direct supervision. The bottom line here is that it's not something that Wikipedia would consider a reliable source, even if it was entirely written by the website.
  3. [3] This is sort of like the business listing, although it's a list of people who work or have worked for the company. Even is some of these people are notable, notability is not inherited by them having an association with the company. At the most this might be considered a trivial source, but certainly not something that would show notability.
  4. [4] This is an article written by someone who works for the company. At most this is a primary source, but it's not really anything that would show that the company has done anything Wikipedia would consider notable. Remember, popularity does not equal notability. (WP:ITSPOPULAR) Being well known or popular only makes it more likely that you'll get coverage in RS, but it's not a guarantee.
  5. [5] The magazine itself is possibly semi-usable as a reliable source, although in general we try to avoid using magazines as sources in general. The problem here is that this isn't actually about the company, but about a summer program. The company is briefly mentioned, which would make this trivial at best. As said above, doing charitable works is not enough to merit an article. We've had to delete multiple pages for charitable organizations, some of whom deal with some rather dangerous yet noble missions. Doing nice things does not count as notability, no matter what it is, and trust me- we've had some organizations that have dealt with some pretty nasty stuff.
  6. [6], [7], [8], [9] These are just links to company websites or charitable organizations. Like with Brighton Magazine, association with charitable works or organizations will give notability based on the works themselves. Now it might lead to in-depth coverage from reliable sources, but the acts themselves do not count towards notability.
  7. [10] This is just a link to the company website. Primary sources cannot show notability, no matter what they claim or show. The reason is that anyone can claim anything on their website. I'm not saying that you would necessarily lie or stretch the truth, but it's in your best interest to promote yourself on your own website. Unless we have other sources that not only back up the claims but also establish notability, any claims made in a primary source are taken with a grain of salt and are considered unproven until we find things to say otherwise. This isn't a slur against your company, just that we've had many, many people come on here and try to claim various things, only to discover that they either didn't happen or they were exaggerating the claims.
I'll see what I can find, but if I were to make a decision based upon the current sources in the article, I'd say that the company doesn't pass notability guidelines. I'm going to search, but I wanted to take the time to explain why none of the sources are usable and why some of the things you're suggesting aren't really anything that would completely benefit the article as far as keeping it would go.Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 04:05, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I've done some paring down of the page and one of the biggest issues is that it read like an advertisement for the company. I've streamlined it and to me, it looks better. The thing about making a lot of claims and linking to a lot of sites is that if the article comes across as promotional and none of the sources are usable as RS, it's more likely to cause incoming editors to automatically assume that the article is spam, that there is no notability, and that if they can't find sources beyond 2-3 minutes of trying, it's because the company isn't notable. I'm still looking for sources, but I'll be honest when I say that there isn't a lot out there that would be considered anything other than a primary or trivial source.Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 04:16, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. I did a search and other than some passing mentions in various articles (like this [11]) that predominantly focus on other topics, there really wasn't anything out there to show notability for this company. The best I could find were these two articles. The first one mentions that the company would be making a film, the other mentions it produced it. Even put together and counting the passing mention, these are not enough to show that the company passes WP:CORP. I have no true issue with the company owner userfying it, although I'd recommend very heavily that they get a non-COI person to help edit and ensure that the article doesn't become promotional in tone or use non-reliable sources. The company might be active, might do some nice charitable work, and might be more known than Vinny's House of Video Production, but none of that in and of itself shows that the company passes notability guidelines. The company just isn't notable. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 04:33, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I do believe you have not looked at the reference links properly.

http://www.succeedfoundation.org/work/collaborators_dvd], [12] are company websites which mention our company as a suppler. You have claimed above "These are just links to company websites or charitable organizations", well no actually... these references were added because each time a project was mentioned on this page, 'citation needed' was added. So we were being asked to prove the work had been done. So now that the proof has been added in the form of these references... there is a problem with that too.

You have just set about stripping all of the companies project history.

You have also made a terrible mistake with the articles which you have searched for yourself. You said "I did a search and other than some passing mentions in various articles (like this [13]) that predominantly focus on other topics, there really wasn't anything out there to show notability for this company. The best I could find were these two articles."

Neither of these articles have anything to do with Dragonfly Productions and our company has had no involvement in these productions. So you have stripped out real references to work which is notable and you are suggesting total irrelevancies. I'm starting to wonder whether a Wikipedia article about our company is actually a liability! What with the vandalism and constant attacks. The page does not benefit me or my business one bit. The last time it was edited, it was made totally non promotional in nature, but its still being criticised as promotional. I can only guess that the fact that the page is about a business which is still in business... it will always be attacked as a promotional platform.

Just take the page down then... I give up. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Charliesouthall (talk • contribs) 10:41, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment You had no references there to begin with, at least not any that actually mattered. If you had, we wouldn't be having this discussion. §FreeRangeFrogcroak 17:03, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. The thing about proving that something exists or had happened is that existing or creating something doesn't give something notability. There's also the issue that not every project by the company needs to be listed. Sometimes it's better to give an overview of what the company does than to list every project- especially if the project is somewhat limited as far as visibility and notability goes. I'm not disparaging the merit of the item, just saying that a video on wilderness trails isn't really the same as if you were creating a video on anthropology that received an especially large amount of merit. As far as the other article not being about your specific company, that actually makes things worse because those were the only mentions I could find of any Dragonfly Productions and the only things that showed any hints of notability. As far as promotional tones go, please remember that what might sound neutral to you might not come across as neutral to others here on Wikipedia. Phrases such as "The striking result of the project has been widely distributed and shown at national conferences on the subject of child mental health" come across as promotional because while it does try to impart information, it does so by trying to put the subject (the video and company) in the best light possible. I don't necessarily think that anyone did this on purpose, but when you're not used to writing in a neutral style and more used to using buzzwords to promote your company or a product, it's easy to slip them in without realizing how they come across to other readers.Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 00:51, 14 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
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