Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/USP Networks

VP Planner covered in publisher's article (which shares text and I suspect origins with this article). Having said that, I should note that size of a company doesn't inherently bar it from inclusion. --Nat Gertler (talk) 17:51, 23 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the content in the publisher's article was lifted from this article per this edit summary. Neither company appears to pass WP:CORP. Toddst1 (talk) 17:57, 23 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

VP Planner is probably a bit of a Red Herring! The commercial internet was actually lead out of academic purdah in the UK (and Europe) by a creative Cambridge Company company called Unipalm Pipex whose original leased service customer - Demon Internet - addressed the "end user" market with a famous £10/month proposition when mainstream telcos like British telecom denied the existence of the public internet. You had to be there, and there is a terrific story to be told if we can gather all those who were involved back in the day. Many Wiki contributors and readers were barely out of nappies when all this was going on. If you look at the entries for Unipalm and Demon you will see WP is asking for more information. USP was very much involved at the sharp end of what was going on as the provider of Unipalm's monthly "blog" (a term yet to be coined) in the form of a hardcopy printed information newsletter. Several of USP's online pioneering moments aren't covered in depth at all, so whoever wrote this might have been involved only tangentially in the core of the business. So let's use the opportunity to tell the complete story of the formative years of the UK internet. The Unipalm entry doesn't even mention that the Pipex company ended up in the MFS/Worldcom camp. The story of the evolution of the internet is very much one that involves the companies who where there at the time, and this is an opportunity to try and fill in gaps in several entries. It may take a little while to go around all those with something useful to contribute, I have only just been made aware of this effort and been pressed into getting embroiled, but this could amount to historically significant perspective. So stick with it and well may all learn. Incidentally, the Demon Internet. Geraldgorilla (talk) 19:21, 23 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The important thing is to get an account of these events down in History. I'm not a sock puppet for Wpoel, but worked occasionally for the company at the time. Whilst it may be an idea to move the information elsewhere once it is in place, I see no harm in getting it together here under the USP Networks banner for the time being. The reason was that USP sold a large number of copies of the paperback software in the UK due in part to the tie-in with Alan Sugar and the Amstrad, which was the best attempt made at producing a commodity PC. USP and NewStar delivered the very cheap software to go with it, sourced from Paperback and NewStar. I'd have thought that it was a genuine milestone because a huge number of people in the UK experienced their first computer (the Amstrad models) as a cheap commodity device with cheap software, and refused to move on to more expensive softwware. It changed the game as far as software prices went. I'd have said that USP played a major role in that. AndrewRMClarke (talk) 19:47, 23 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It sounds to me like you're seeking to round up a lot of the first-person stories of the folks who were there, which is simultaneously a great thing and inappropriate to Wikipedia. Wikipedia has guidelines against original research; if I may oversimplify, it exists not to tell the untold story, but to keep track of the story which has been told. I heartily encourage the data-gathering and the story sharing, but the outlet for it should be somewhere else; if it's in a significant and reliable source, Wikipedia is likely to then reflect what has been told elsewhere. --Nat Gertler (talk) 19:53, 23 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That's an understandable POV Nat, but as this tale unfolds it should encourage the (many) others who were around at the time to contribute their knowledge, references and observations. As has been said, a lot of this background pre-dates Google, and there is now a generation emerging who seem to dismiss anything that Google cannot tell them in a billionth of a second. The early days of the internet has been followed by a diaspora - and this needs to be rounded up, frankly, before we're all dead. We also need to dispel the impression the the internet was invented by and exclusively developed for the benefit of and the greater glorification of the United States. Especially at a time when the US is acting as a global enforcer global jurisdictions in pursuit of US interests. Also the note that has appeared at the top observing that there are new and previously unmotivated participants converging on this article is perfectly correct - and you might even rejoice if the USP article succeeds in sucking more (long in tooth) talent to the cause. Several of us have been surprised in recent times that some quite famous characters from the UK technology scene over the years have been bounced, including the first ever Professor of Public Understanding of Science & Technology. The overriding point is that everything listed should be demonstrably accurate and "true" (not always exactly the same thing), so if you ever catch me describing Bill Gates as "the inventor of the internet" - as has been reported many times in the less well-informed media - you can assume my login has been hacked.Geraldgorilla (talk) 20:55, 23 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Which is all a very good argument for why you folks should collaborate on building a history, but a poor one for using Wikipedia as the tool to do so. Just as my rock band may be a wonderful thing, and the supermarket may be a popular place to be, it doesn't mean that my band should go perform at the supermarket; they're there to sell asparagus, not to provide the public with dynamic Acid Flashback riffs. You want to do original research and have primary sources tell their tales? There are a plentitude of other web tools out there. The folks behind Wikipedia will even provide you with the same software used to run this site so that you can make your own wiki, which is a good way to go. Now, if you want to argue for keeping this article on Wikipedia, you should review WP:AFDFORMAT, which explains that arguments should be built in terms of Wikipedia policy, and suggests some relevant policies to consider. --Nat Gertler (talk) 22:42, 23 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]