Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Fifth Dimension Computing

Fifth Dimension Computing was proposed for deletion. This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record. The result of the debate was DELETE

Self-promotion (User:Vaelor). Not notable--10 hits[1]. Niteowlneils 20:55, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Delete: Not a significant or notable company at this point, and its enterprises make me a little nervous. Geogre 01:40, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Okay, so I'm new here - humor me: Show me where it states in the deletion policy that an article should be deleted automatically because the author is directly affiliated with the subject of the article? If by self-promotion you mean vanity page, I don't see that it meets any of the criteria of a vanity page whatsoever. It's not highly opinionative/POV, it's not poorly written, it interacts with other articles, and it has informative/interesting merit, albeit currently only to residents of a small geographic area plus a fairly niche selection of internet users. From Wikipedia:Vanity_page: "A page should not be cast away as "vanity" simply because it may have been authored by its subject, or because the subject is unfamous." Keep, unless/until somebody can show me a Wikipedia policy specifically saying why it shouldn't be? -- Vaelor 15:45, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)
- [Edit] Oh, and "its enterprises make me a little nervous" - isn't this tantamount to saying "delete because I don't like the sound of it"?? I don't recall seeing "articles on topics that may make some people uncomfortable" in the deletion policy either, must be my bad... -- Vaelor 15:51, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Comment: No. What it amounts to, if I'm going to be honest, is that your writing seemed nebulous and diffuse, as if it were obscuring its object. I was suspicious that the activities were MLM or mass-e-mailing. Both of those activities would have made the article a deletion candidate for being promotion of illegal activities in some jurisdictions. As for the real reason for deletion, though, it is exactly as stated in the nomination: self-promotion. No advertising. My rationale was intended to be in addition to that, not instead of. Geogre 18:49, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)

#18 on Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not--doesn't sound like a "major corporation". Principle expressed at Wikipedia:Auto-biography seems to apply. Nor does it seem to be a "household name" as cited at Wikipedia:What's_in,_what's_out#Companies. Wikipedia:Tutorial_(Keep_in_mind)#Subject_matter is also relevant. I doubt there is any Wikipedia article on a contemporary topic that's been kept that only gets 10 hits. Niteowlneils 02:31, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Niteowlneils - Thankyou for taking the time to point out these references. Having read these links I see now that this article seems to fall under less "do's" than "do not's" by Wikipedia policy. While this article is by no means intended to be - nor, I still firmly assert, could be classed as - vanity, self-promotion, or advertising, I see that the article does not have a broad enough scope and would be of interest to too small a niche group to merit being "Encyclopedic". Geogre - To the best of my extensive knowledge on the subject, bulk emailing is not illegal anywhere in the world, providing that the sender acts within the constraints of the US CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 (and/or its various international counterparts) and that the recipients have requested the information (or have prior contact with the sender) and are not just web harvested email addresses. Hence your fears and suspicions have no bearing whatsoever on this article's candidacy for deletion. That said, of course my vote is still Keep, but is unfortunately now purely bias rather than my previous solid belief that the article was within the boundaries of Wikipedia's content policies. -- Vaelor 05:14, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Yes, the tone of the article is NPOV and suitable. With unsolicted email running about 30 to 1 against email I'm actually interested in, I strongly object to the practice. The CAN-SPAM act was seriously watered down by the time it was enacted, and invalidated stronger state measures, such as laws of Washington and California. However, neither of those issues factored into my listing (I wasn't even aware of the latter at the time). It just didn't seem to be a notable enuf subject. Niteowlneils 19:01, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Niteowlneils, I wholeheartedly agree - I am strongly against spam both for the same personal reasons you mentioned, and also for the serious damage it causes my legitimate marketing company and my ability to send requested bulk email to legitimate recipients, with overzealous spam filters becoming prevalent all over the internet, and with good reason. I was simply objecting to Geogre's unwarranted implication that his ignorant suspicion that one of my company's websites was engaged in spamming was in itself a reason to vote for the deletion of my company's article. Having read your arguments though, as I mentioned above, I do now concur that by Wikipedia's standards, this article is likely not considered notable or Encyclopedic enough to be kept at this point. (Oh, and for the record, I completely agree with you about the CAN-SPAM Act's impotence and in fact damaging effect on the prevention of spam, but whether we like it or not, it's still the "law of the land", which means that contrary to Geogre's opinion, bulk email that complies with the Act is 100% legal in ALL "jurisdictions"..) Vaelor 14:03, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Delete. Self-promotion of a non-notable company. jni 06:33, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

(Question primarily directed at Niteowlneils, but appreciate feedback/advise from any Wikipedian here.) Apologies if this is the wrong place to be discussing this, but I feel it's directly relevant to this article's candidacy for deletion, as it questions Wikipedia's deletion policies. Niteowlneils, when you patiently explained above why this article was a deletion candidate based on its lack of notability, I understood and concurred. But recent surfing of Wikipedia has caused me to question how this standard is applied. Case in point, to use geographically localised articles, I refer to the pages on Hallam, the Monash Freeway, and Ashburton railway station. Now, for the purpose of determining notability/Encyclopedic merit, one might argue that unless you were a resident of the outer south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne, Australia, a suburb to city commuter in Melbourne, or a regular passenger of public transport on the Alamein train line in Melbourne, you have probably never heard of any of these things. Granted, these terms show a number of search results in Google, but they're primary corporate websites located in, on, or near these places respectively and with their address on the page, or other Wiki sites. So, is the matter of notability purely based on Google linkage? If so, it wouldn't take a whole lot of effort to write a creative script that would within weeks have "Fifth Dimension Computing" listed on Google a thousand useless times. Furthermore, the odds of somebody searching Google for "Ashburton railway station, Melbourne" seem to me to be about as likely as somebody specifically searching for "Fifth Dimension Computing" - which is nil, unless the searcher had prior knowledge of the existence of the topic to begin with. Ergo, the number of Google links seem to be a great way to "fact check", or verify the legitimate existence of, the subject of an article, but hardly a way to assess its notability.

The only legitimate comparison could be if somebody could statistically compare the daily number of commuters on the Monash Freeway, the daily number of passengers passing through Ashburton train station, and the number of residents of Hallam, to the daily number of customers to Fifth Dimension Computing/number of hits to the company website. Arguably, if the website received half a million hits a day, but happened to not derive that traffic from link exchanges on sites that happen to have been indexed by Google at the time of the article's listing on Wikipedia, one might say that the company could be considered much more notable than these three other topics and doubtlessly many more.

When I first visited Wikipedia, I was amazed and impressed that things as pointlessly trivial as little middle-of-nowhere suburbs and train stations in Melbourne, Australia, had their own articles, when clearly extremely few people, from a global perspective, would consider them notable. And yet my company, which has a global internet presence and is known, although by arguably a small number of people, over most parts of the world, is considered less notable than small geographical localities that in and of themselves, are not notable whatsoever, let alone on a global scale.

Please excuse the essay - as I mentioned above, I apologise if this isn't the correct forum for such considerations, I'm still learning as I go here - and I'm no longer arguing this particular article's candidacy for deletion. That, as I said above, I understand based on Wikipedia policy. But now, mentally applying that same policy to many other articles I see here, I'm confused as to how it is being applied, and if it is being done fairly and judiciously.

So, that said, Niteowlneils or any other intelligent and experienced Wikipedian, could you please explain this predicament to me? Is this article's candidacy for deletion based solely on the low number of references found on Google, or are there simply just a LOT of other articles out there that haven't been caught by the VfD radar yet? Or do articles about businesses or other corporate entities follow a different set of rules than geographical localities, buildings, and government organisations?

Thanks in advance for your patience and time. Vaelor 16:04, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)

This page is now preserved as an archive of the debate and, like other '/delete' pages is no longer 'live'. Subsequent comments on the issue, the deletion or on the decision-making process should be placed on the relevant 'live' pages. Please do not edit this page.