Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 13:46, 5 October 2006

Full reviews may be found in this page history. For a summary, see Misplaced Pages:Deletion review/Recently concluded (2006 October)

5 October 2006

Arch Coal

Arch Coal was deleted by Jimbo Wales with the edit summery of "rm corporate spam." This content was created by a commercial source and released under GFDL. But it was placed in good faith within the rules of wikipedia by an unconnected third party (myself). The content was legitimate and the article was neutral. I haven't been able to identify what, if any, policy the article violated... so I request the article be undeleted and a proper AFD could be preformed to gain community consensus. ---J.S (t|c) 05:21, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

I am happy for this to go through deletion review. The issue with the article is that it was written by someone who is inappropriately using the Misplaced Pages name in commerce. Articles written for pay by consultants being paid by the subject of the article pose some very difficult conflict-of-interest issues about which we should be extremely careful. DRV provides a reasonable forum to study the article carefully. Probably not the best forum, but rules in this area are of course still evolving, so it seems like the only reasonable place to discuss it at the moment.--Jimbo Wales 13:46, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

• Put frankly, I have no idea. It is generally accepted that you don't over-rule Jimmy when it comes to admin actions - many arbcom cases (the userbox wheel war comes to mind) have resulted in admins losing their administrative powers because they reverted Jimmy in a wheel-war situation. I honestly don't think DRV is going to get anywhere on this topic. The only way this will serve a purpose is if Jimbo Wales (talk · contribs · count) reads it, and decides to act upon arguments (if they are presented) to restore. Having never seen the article, and not knowing terribly much about Jimmy's action in this case (I've read the talk page of User:MyWikiBiz, that's about all), I have no idea. Daniel.Bryant 07:13, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Unless he's acting as WP:OFFICE/in an official capacity (in which case that should be made clear in the admin summary), Jimbo's admin actions should be subject to scrutiny like those of the rest of us. I propose ignoring that it was Jimbo who deleted it, and we just consider the actual article and the deletion. If the consensus is to undelete, it can then be put to Jimbo and he can decide whether to respect consensus or not (perhaps along with a note asking him to make clear when he's acting as an admin and when he's acting as head of the Wikimedia board, which wouldn't be the first such request I think). --kingboyk 12:30, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
• Per Daniel Bryant, this DRV is moot because overturning a Jimbo action is verboten. Take it up with him. FCYTravis 08:16, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
• I've had a look at the article, and its not one that I would have speedied, and I'd possibly even have voted keep at an AfD. It does need a bit of tidying up and rewriting to bring it into line with Misplaced Pages style - but not much (admins may like to contrast it to ). I personally recommend undelete, but as reverting Jimbo being an admin is a grey area (reverting him acting as an editor is fine, reverting him acting as head honcho is a Bad Thing.), I will leave a note on his talk page inviting him to comment here. Thryduulf 09:46, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
• I'm inclined to endorse deletion - and I'm completely ignoring the Jimbo factor here. The main assertion of notability is that it's the second-largest coal producer in the US, and that seems weak to me. Largest would probably be OK, second-largest sounds pretty good, but how far down do we go? Given that, I'd like to see it verified, which would indicate notability via external coverage - and it isn't. The biggest factor for me is that this article is completely unverified, but according to the edit history this is a MyWikiBiz article - for those that haven't followed this, the company paid a writer to write a professional-looking Misplaced Pages article. That means there can be no excuse for 'undelete and make it into a proper article' - if it doesn't meet standards now, then it probably won't. If someone does come up with some non-trivial third-party coverage that verifies an assertion of notability, I might change my mind, but I don't particularly encourage them to try since I look on that as kinda the job of the guy who was being paid to write an article that wouldn't be deleted.

Incidentally, I think we should argue how we want in this DRV, and then leave it up to Jimbo whether he wants to act on the consensus (which I hope will be an endorsement anyway), rather than muddy the waters with speculation over whether this DRV is moot or not - we can cross that bridge when we come to it, at time of closing. --Sam Blanning 11:15, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Right, yes, sorry, pretty much stole your point up above :) --kingboyk 12:32, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Ignoring the verifiability concerns for a second, I was under the impression that all companies listed in NYSE were notable. -- Rune Welsh | ταλκ 13:00, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

• Assuming the data in the article is true, Undelete of course. Second-largest coal producer in the United States (12% of US coal supply), $2.5 billion turnover. If that's not notable we'd better get busy on AFD folks, we have about 100,000 less-notable companies to get rid of. I'm not sure I'm even looking at the right article... looks like a perfectly acceptable Misplaced Pages article on a company to me. As for spam... what, am I gonna go out and order a million tons of coal from them to feed my power station because I've seen this humble piece on Misplaced Pages? Erm, no. --kingboyk 12:25, 5 October 2006 (UTC)