Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Deeplink (company)

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 no consensus. Randykitty (talk) 17:59, 5 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Deeplink (company)

Deeplink (company) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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Article is an advertisement for a non-notable startup that fails WP:NCORP. Sources are press releases or not independent. Vrac (talk) 02:10, 4 January 2015 (UTC) Vrac (talk) 02:10, 4 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Israel-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 03:40, 4 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of New York-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 03:40, 4 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Business-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 03:40, 4 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Internet-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 03:40, 4 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Article creator responds:

Company is one of only a small handful of companies developing an emerging technology - Mobile deep linking, and is leading development in that space.

Competing URX (company) has a smaller article with less sources and is not challenged under WP:NCORP - filing AfD against one and not the other is biased. Either all the companies of the same size and developing the same product at the same time are equally notable, or else none of them are, and all of them should be deleted.

Article sources (currently eight, in addition to three company sources) are from five different organizations:

• AngelList (1) - which admittedly, as a directory of startups may cover both notable and non-notable companies
• Kiip (7) - a broadcaster of news snippets that are inserted into video games
• TechCrunch (2,3,6,8) - a professionally edited, industry "insider" news source covering evolving technologies, which has cited Deeplink in four different articles (at least)
• The American Genius (5) - a general news site
• Yahoo! New Zealand (9) - an even more general news site

Sources 2, 5, and 6 describe the company and its products in the context of new releases, with en passant references to competitors.

Source 3 compares the company's product to two other similar products.

Source 7 discusses the company and its product as one of four new companies/products being reviewed.

Source 8 discusses a new feature release in the context of other products.

Source 9 compares three companies operating in the new technology space.

For a new company developing a new technology, that is a significant amount of coverage, and the notability is because they are advancing the state of the art.

I've not found more coverage than that because it is, after all, an arcane, back-end technology without a consumer face; it is meant to be used by mobile developers to transparently provide a better user experience; non-developers and users won't be aware that this technology is powering their product.

The sources I discussed in detail were written by different professional journalists on different, edited news sites, and are neither press releases nor written by company employees, so neither of the template claims that "Sources are press releases or not independent" are true.

In short, I consider this delete proposal to be entirely without merit or justification. --Eliyahu S ^Talk 05:49, 4 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete. Fails WP:ORG. The article is clearly a promotional piece for a company that has not been around long enough to accumulate any encyclopedic status. The linked sources are clearly either based on press releases, primary sources, or inadmissible blogs and search engine page, and some of the sources are completely disallowed by Wikipedia including the external links. When something substantial has been written in multiple sources in the traditional established business press - preferably in print media, or a TV documentary has been dedicated to it, then someone who is not connected with the company can write an article about it. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:32, 11 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I am not associated with the company and I did not write a "promotional piece." I do not understand why several other editors have leveled this accusation at me - if the tone is not "encyclopedic" enough, then I would like assistance to improve it. Your stringencies of sources are more than are called for by WP:RS. I researched Mobile deep linking for my RL day job, and I found three companies offering products / services in that sphere. Deeplink (founded 2010, as Cellogic,) was the only one of the three without a WP article, so I created one. Of the other two – URX (company) (founded 2013) and Quixey (founded 2009,) the former has a briefer article with fewer citations than this one, yet no one has slapped an AfD on it. The latter has many more sources, but includes all kinds of irrelevancies like the fact that they had a coding contest or that they have designer-themed conference rooms in the office, which are hardly things that I consider "encyclopedic," and which seem to have been written up simply because Quixey is in Silicon Valley, while URX is in San Francisco and Deeplink is in NYC and Jerusalem. Yet that list of sources, too, is mostly Mashable, TechCrunch, and other technology "blog-zines" exactly the same as I used for this article. If we have WP articles about the other two companies, one with fewer citations and one with lots of irrelevant fluff, then I would like to know why only Deeplink out of the three companies has been singled out as not "notable." --Eliyahu S ^Talk 17:36, 11 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

See WP:OTHERSTUFF. We have over 3,000 people patrolling new articles. They are not all as experienced as the nominator or I am so a lot of stuff gets let through. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 17:53, 11 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

This is not about Pokémon. There are a total of three articles about three similar startups doing the same kind of work. The company in question is actually the middle one in terms of number of sources and “notability” by media references (URX (company) has 5, Deeplink (company) has 8, Quixey has 23.) The kinds of sources are largely the same - high tech blogzines, Mashable, TechCrunch, et al. IMO, AfD should either apply to all three or to none. Saying that the other two articles "got let through" by other patrollers and they are now "safe," while the one that I wrote is not, is risibly unfair. I am asking my article to be judged on the same merits as the other two articles, and that ALL THREE be deleted, or else NONE. Otherwise I feel unjustly singled out.

And that says nothing about my request for help with copyediting. If the complaint is about the tone of the article, as User:Lamerparlepont expressed by slapping an {{advert}} tag on it, then I think that improving the article is called for, rather than deleting it. --Eliyahu S ^Talk 08:39, 13 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Then nominate the other pages for deletion. As one of the people who regularly go through not only the new pages, but also the orphanage to weed out the abandoned pages about once-promising startups, I'd be grateful. (See also WP:MULTIAFD for why pages are typically nominated one-by-one.) QVVERTYVS (hm?) 13:25, 13 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Speedy Keep. TechCrunch is a very reputable independent publication, not a PR site. Perhaps nominator should research common tech publications before nominating tech articles for deletion. Does look like some PRish language snuck in from the original sources - so the (likely accidental) WP:PEACOCK needs fixing. Earflaps (talk) 20:43, 18 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete Per WP:ORG. TechCrunch clearly wrote about the Deeplink company, but the other sources either mention the company in passing (i.e. not "significant coverage" about "the subject") or are not "reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy". AngelList, for example - that has a partnership with CrunchBase, which is operated by TechCrunch, by the way - looks like a business directory and doesn't indicate notability. Kiip just mentions the subject in passing (and appears to be an advertising network). While The American Genius writes about the subject, it is a blog-like source. Mashable (@Yahoo! NZ) also only mentions the company in passing. In response to the "creator responds" remark that "Competing URX (company) has a smaller article with less sources [...]". The size of the articles is irrelevant. Counting the number of sources will not tell you whether a subject is notable enough for inclusion, nor whether the sources are "reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy". This article should be judged on its own merit. (As a side note, I do think the article about URX has more reliable sources that discuss the subject, including The Wall Street Journal, but not by much.) Earflaps, your claim that TechCrunch is "very reputable" is dubious. It certainly is not "very reputable" as a source for Wikipedia articles. Also, may I suggest you (re)read WP:SK. --82.136.210.153 (talk) 13:28, 24 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

On what basis are you surmising that TechCrunch "isn't very reputable?" I'm not sure their impressive stable of journalists would appreciate that. the crunchie awards are a big deal, and TechCrunch articles are regularly included as sources in Good Articles about tech companies (see Facebook). On top of that, their journalists have won international awards, and the publication won a webby award. in the future, glancing at a website's design to see if it looks "reputable" doesn't do much good, you might want to try research. Earflaps (talk) 14:14, 24 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I don't mind TechCrunch as a source. As I started my previous post: "TechCrunch clearly wrote about the Deeplink company, but the other sources [...]" Note that my opinion is not that TechCrunch is not (very) reputable, but "not "very reputable" as a source for Wikipedia articles". By that I mean(t) that it is not very reputable as a reliable source with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, for example, are. There are obviously lots of ways in which technology/news/business websites can excel. The user-friendliness of a website, for example, can be one of the reasons it receives a Webby Award. A statement such as "impressive stable of journalists" without citations to back up that claim is fairly pointless. I think there is a reason that Alexia Tsotsis is mentioned first and that the overview is not in alphabetical order. Remarks like "Perhaps nominator should research common tech publications before [...]" and "in the future [...] you might want to try research" come across as rude, are counter-productive, and imply certain assumptions about fellow editors that, in line with WP:GF, maybe you should not be making. But, again, that TechCrunch is used as a reference is not this article's problem. --82.136.210.153 (talk) 15:23, 24 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Ah. Not as reputable as a 150 year-old print newspaper? Well of course it isn't, but it's still "very reputable." The Facebook article, for example, uses TechCrunch as a breaking source for coverage on multi-million dollar transactions. Forgive me for being rude, but nominating a page for deletion without fact-checking first, is, to me, the height of rudeness, and I try to politely point that out when I can. Otherwise people spend time arguing pointlessly, when they could be editing or improving. Earflaps (talk) 15:44, 24 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You're still focusing on TechCrunch too much. Plus "nominating a page for deletion without fact-checking first" is yet another problematic remark. It implies that Vrac did not "fact-check" and the remark (thus) goes against WP:GF. Maybe Vrac did "fact-check" and simply came to a different conclusion than you. I agree with the scope of his nomination, Deeplink is a non-notable startup and the references are clearly insufficient. TechCrunch, that's one usable source; that's simply not enough. --82.136.210.153 (talk) 17:11, 24 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You're certainly entitled to your opinion. I personally find this deletion discussion absurd, but then, as you point out, we seem to have different working definitions of "sufficient and reputable coverage." Earflaps (talk) 08:48, 27 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Assuming that TechCrunch is reliable, then why doesn't a total of four different articles from that source over more than a year create a case for notability? And the Yahoo! article doesn't just mention the company "in passing"; the article is talking about three different companies, and has one paragraph each for Deeplink's two competitors, and then includes two paragraphs about Deeplink, followed by several paragraphs explaining the technology that all three are developing. And please don't get me started on NYT's "fact-checking"; I personally know someone who was slandered on the cover of the New York Times - they subsequently apologized after he threatened legal action, as his notification to them that they had misidentified him and wrongly accused him was insufficient for their "fact checkers" to bother with.

The simple fact is that Mobile deep linking is simply too obscure a topic to ever receive much mainstream media publicity. The only print coverage of any of these three companies comes because A) the investor in one of the companies is famous, and so his giving them startup money was covered, or B) the office at the same startup has weird interior decorating and fancy meals, even by Silicon Valley standards, and so they got written up because of the work environment, not because of the technology, which the print sources don't even bother trying to explain. These companies are developing mobile infrastructure software that is rapidly becoming ubiquitous, but which may never meet the stringent definitions of WP:ORG as some here interpret it. I'll wager that every editor discussing this has at least one app on their smartphone with at least one of these three companies' products embedded within, and yet that will not be considered "notable." Does that make sense?!!--Eliyahu S ^Talk 02:14, 25 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment - a present just for you IP, I found an article at CNBC. Earflaps (talk) 08:57, 27 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep - The article could do with some tweaking, but it is far from advertising. The obscure nature of their area of expertise does mean it has to be explained what they do, which leans towards promotional in writing. I really can't be bothered arguing about you suggesting TechCrunch is not reliable as that is just stupid. Here Reuters cites them, here ABC News cites them. That's about all I feel we need to determine TechCrunch is reliable. JT_dale^Talk~ 10:36, 3 February 2015 (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.