Talk:Really Big Coloring Books

If the admin thinks this qualifies for speedy, I think it should be moved back to the user's userspace (whoever it was), so the issues can be fixed. The given sources seem to establish at least some degree of notability. — Jeraphine Gryphon (talk) 20:50, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Contested deletion
This page should not be speedily deleted because... (your reason here) --Editorck (talk) 21:01, 27 January 2012 (UTC) citations were added.


 * None of them are actually valid. You cannot use the company's own website as a source.
 * The external links (which appear to be good ones) listed in the section headed "Sources" must be actually used as proper inline citations. Roger (talk) 21:19, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Notability
This company's notability seems to be based more on the controversy its products have generated rather than the company itself. Most of the RS I have found mentioning this company do so with regards to the controversy that their 9/11 and Tea Party coloring books generated when they were published. Do we mention this? In my opinion, I feel that the controversy is the very basis for this company's notability. None but shining hours (talk) 14:06, 4 April 2012 (UTC)


 * If you believe you can make a silk purse of this pig's ear please go ahead. The "list of sources" might be productive. If controversy is a significant source of its notability then it must be included. Roger (talk) 14:20, 4 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Well its certainly no silk purse, but hopefully its less of a pig's ear at this point. I ended up deleting the majority of the content following the lede as it was poorly sourced at best.None but shining hours (talk) 03:00, 5 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Nicely done! We should try to include more "non controversy" information about the company. Unfortunately I'm a bit flooded with work and family duties so I'll not really be able to work on it much over the nexy few days. The company website says they produce promotional and fundraising material for a wide variety of clients. IIRC I believe they also have/had contracts with various authorities to supply educational material to schools. Roger (talk) 08:46, 5 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the further clean up. I agree that the article needs more balance and I'll try to find and add some more general information regarding the company and its activities a bit later on. The information that was previously in the article was a list of books and an unsupported claim that it had developed the first online coloring book.None but shining hours (talk) 15:44, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Company information
Is it a private or a public company or a subsidiary of another company? Does it publish financial reports? I've added an Infobox to the article which has fields for such information. Please can someone also add the company logo to the Infobox. Roger (talk) 09:21, 8 April 2012 (UTC)


 * It is a private company, so I imagine they do not publish audited financial statements. Based on what I have been able to gather, Really Big Coloring Books, Inc. is the parent company and it operates through different divisions and/or trade names. I am not aware if these are separate legal enties or merely trade names. As a private corporation, they are obviously not obliged to disclose such information - but there may be public records indicating whether or not separte legal entities exist. I will see if I can find a suitable logo a bit later on. None but shining hours (talk) 13:25, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Edits by company/founder
IP 66.136.191.25 has a fair few biased edits on this page - funny thing, their user history features creation of this page and almost nothing else but edits to it and coloring books (where the user added RBCB references). One exception - they added a Wayne Bell (publisher) redlink to the Wayne Bell page as their first edit in 2009.

I'm actually pretty sure that this is Wayne Bell himself. IP tracks to St. Louis, the company is in St. Louis, Bell has ties to it, etc.

"Headquartered in St. Louis, MO, RBCB is a multi-national company with market leading positions in children's coloring & activity book development and distribution. Also providing fundraising opportunities with Really Big Coloring Books for over two decades and working with some of nation's largest benevolent and social organizations. The RBCB fundraising division has helped to raise millions of dollars for local groups and community needs around the globe.

Really Big Coloring Books, ® Inc. was founded by Wayne Bell in 1981. The company incorporated in 1988, registered their Trade Mark and began its current 30+ year business into fundraising and publishing. Bell studied agriculture at the Univ. of MO has  natural speaking talents, is  a visionary, an educated sales and marketing professional and has worked in the publishing industry since his teenage years."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/66.136.191.25

Similar pattern with 99.47.205.224 - one at home, one at work, maybe? All edits are inserting company information or removing things about other companies/people from pages. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ZekeDMS (talk • contribs) 22:22, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

I have removed a few advertorial sections
They were written like press releases, even including headline-ese phrases such as "A Missouri company's coloring book..." which is a very odd way to refer to the actual subject of this article. The sections also including unreferenced direct quotes and embedded inline external links. The sections were also not added in chronological order, the most recent was at the top. If anyone believes the sections I removed were about genuinely notable publications by this company they are more than welcome to write about them - using proper encyclopedic language, proper referencing and respecting the chronological order of the "Notable products" section while also avoiding the promotional problems of the now deleted sections.

BTW I also changed the inaccurate section heading "Controversy" to "Notable products". Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 11:23, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

Still too advertorial?
The bulk of this whole entry now reads like a poorly written advertisement. It reads like it was written by Bell, who refers to himself as "Publisher Wayne Bell" or "Wayne Bell, Publisher" five times, as though he is simply cutting-and-pasting from elsewhere. The company overview says:

"Bell is often referred to as a hell raising hillbilly and at times a misfit. (As in a social Misfit). During Bell's 20's-30's he was noted for his professional anti-social behavior, social liberalism and his fire brand American capitalistic attitude. ."

(I didn't add that second period, or the explanation of a misfit in parentheses). This bizarre statement links to the "Company Overview" on Bell's website, but the website itself doesn't contain any of these references. It's not even clear what is meant by any of those things, let alone whether he has actually been called any of them. For example, what is "professional anti-social behavior?" Does he get paid for being antisocial?

The 'Notable Products' section also appears to be mainly an advertisement, stating random things like:

"This educational coloring and activity book was made for all ages and everyone."

"From the Latin word Pontifex comes the word Pontiff, which means bridge builder."

"Pope Francis has touched many people beyond Catholics."

The grammar and syntax is terrible, and there are sentence fragments all over the place:

"St. Louis publisher Really Big Coloring Books Inc. offered a soon controversial coloring and activity book featuring the Texas tea party darling. U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz to the Future is intended for 'all ages.'"

"Wayne Bell, Publisher maintains a position the book reflects the historic event of the USA's first duly elected African American Heritage President Barack H. Obama"

"Published March 26, 2013: As an innovative coloring and activity book for children, adults and educators on Gay life while introducing the Fabulous Gay Sharing Cards™ of role models."

"Designed as an introduction to the diverse LGBT community and history."

I'll correct a few grammatical issues, but I think a lot of this just needs to be deleted. I'm not familiar enough with Wikipedia or this company to do anything too dramatic, and I don't want to mess up the work others have already done to iron out the wrinkles, so I'll just politely leave this here and back quietly out of the room.Sadiemonster (talk) 10:43, 23 May 2015 (UTC)

Request Deletion
This article appears to be written by and is definitely frequently updated by the founder.

He is undoing changes that the community is making to improve the article (presumably using this article to instill some false historical importance and use it as a promotion for the business). surely this violates content guidelines? 2A02:3032:20E:5583:6460:FE66:7B5F:3188 (talk) 00:56, 15 January 2023 (UTC)