Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Praescient Analytics

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. Mark Arsten (talk) 01:45, 11 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Praescient Analytics

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See article talk page for detailed comments on individual sources. Relies largely upon self-published sources, and sources of IMO questionable reliability to establish notability. This is a recent posting from the WP:AFC process, where i first looked at it, and I don't think it was ready for the move to mainspace. DES ^(talk) 01:37, 4 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Delete or Move back to AfC space, as nominator. DES ^(talk) 01:38, 4 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per DES. I think AFC needs some discrimination. Someone else moved an article to main space to decide whether or not the article was a hoax. Just do not bring these to mainspace without sufficient sources and notability. Eau (talk) 02:15, 4 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - I approved this article. I was ready to tag the editor until I read all the talk pages. From the conversations, I don't know why the submitting editor was not blocked. Since he was not, I approved it. I assumed there would be problems, but the last person I expected was DES. There are some subjects where third party sources are non-existent, because some things are SECRET, such as movie productions and military companies, so we have to use primary sources. I'm in the same industry, and my clients don't like that they are even mentioned in my customer list, let alone any projects or products I've worked on. I'm surprised they have as much open coverage as they have. I did not think the article was blatant advertising and I don't consider SmartCEO or The Center for Public Integrity all that unreliable. The one article is mainly about the CEO, I'll give you that and the other barely more than a passing mention but as I said, knowing the business they are in, it was good enough for me. -- :- ) Don 02:23, 4 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Then we should add WP:OR to its sourcing problems? We can't decide it is notable based on insider knowledge. That's not our job. Eau (talk) 02:42, 4 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I don't say it was blatant advertising, and I don't see any reason to block the submitter. True he has a COI, but he disclosed it openly and submitted the content to vetting which he didn't have to do. I see no violation of the Conflict of interest guideline. My entire issue is with notability. I rather suspect that this firm will be notable in time, if they go on as they have started, but I think they are at best marginal at this time. SmartCEO seems to be supported by advertising from their subjects and to take their facts from questionnaires filled out by the subject firms, and to explicitly deny that any quality ratings are their own opinions. Sounds rather like glorified press releases to me -- and even if it isn't, are they more than purely local coverage? WP:LOCAL says that coverage beyond the local is normally required for notability, although I grant that DC as the capitol of the USA is an unusual locality. DES ^(talk) 05:22, 4 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The Center for Public Integrity isn't cited in the article as it now stands. If you mean the ICIJ report, the subject is mentioned in one passing sentence. DES ^(talk) 05:22, 4 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

As to things being SECRET, that may well be true, but as long as they are effective in their secrecy they cant come to general notice, and so aren't notable, almost by definition. If a field is such that we can't gt secondary sources for many items, then we won't write about many items. There seem to be plenty of secondary sources about movie productions. No doubt there are lots of interesting military topics where we won't have good sources until many years after the event, if then, but I don't think that means we should relax sourcing and notability rules. DES ^(talk) 05:22, 4 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Not much argument from me. They are marginally notable. They appear to be kind of a sub-contractor or a preferred vendor for certain tasks, not a Raytheon or Lockheed. It's not likely that much about what they do will ever get big, if much of any media coverage. So we have the choice of leaving it in AfC maybe forever, or MFD, or put it out and see if it survives PROD. Yes with big budget block buster films, production information is available third party, but if the movie does not have a big star, the production is pretty much ignored by the media, leaving only primary sources, the people involved. This is a similar situation. The Center for Public Integrity publishes the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. I'm pretty sure I've said everything. We will just wait for consensus. -- :- ) Don 07:43, 4 September 2012

If I may weigh in... Don, the clandestine nature of this industry definitely contributes to the lack of third party information; Although there is coverage of the companies that Praescient works with. These don't mention Praescient by name, so they cannot be used as reliable sources. I feel that I've used the biased sources (main webpage and SmartCEO) only as sources for uncontroversial information, like type of business, % of employees in the military, and the facts about the Knowlton Project. I'll continue to scour the web for any other coverage, as well as add new articles/sources as the become available. Could we add some kind of disclaimer like I've seen on other pages? Thanks to everyone for working with me; this is my first submission and the world of Wikipedia takes some getting used to! --ScottPraescient (talk) 13:51, 4 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

@Don, you are right that the production of smaller movies and various other potentially interesting events often have few or no secondary sources. Unfortunately, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and until someone collects those primary sources and writes and publishes a reliable secondary source, Wikipedia won't have an article. That is even more basic than notability, that is part of WP:NOT, particularly WP:NOT#OR, which is one of the Five Pillars. So there will always be topics which exist, which are even verifiable, and which wikipedia won't cover. DES ^(talk) 16:01, 4 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

@Scott, you and Praescient may be caught in one of those situations -- which side of the line you are on is precisely what this discussion will decide. I'm not sure what kind of disclaimer you are thinking of, in principle wikipedia articles don't carry disclaimers beyond the General Disclaimer that all articles carry. You may be thinking about cleanup templates such as {{notability}} or {{refimprove}}. Those are not intended as disclaimers, they are notices that there is (or some editor thinks that there is, at least) a problem with the article that should be fixed as soon as possible. If the problem cannot be fixed, or hasn't been fixed after a while, an editor may well start a deletion discussion such as this one, depending on the precise circumstances. If the current article does get deleted I'll be happy to copy the source to a user sub-page for you, and as additional sources are available it can be improved, until it seems ready to try article space again.

Yes wikipedia can be confusing to a new editor. I hope you haven't found your experience too negative, and have come to understand a bit better what Wikipedia is and isn't. Perhaps you will even choose to edit other articles where your knowledge and skills can help without the problems faced in this instance. DES ^(talk) 16:01, 4 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Software-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 02:52, 4 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Business-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 02:53, 4 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Delete: notability is not questionable here, it is clearly missing. The only (pathetic) effort to establish it is the awards spam. Be this company's operations secret or not, it doesn't excuse it from notability requirements. FWIW if there could be some content verifiable with primary sources, definitely this company's operations are not secret enough to bar reliable sources from writing about it; otherwise the very existence of this article violates two policies and endangers Wikimedia Foundation (from legal point of view). — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk•track) 12:12, 5 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

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.