Talk:Whitepages (company)

Untitled
What are their information sources?

How about the role of this website in stalking and debt collecting?

173.245.87.91 (talk) 02:15, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Trans Union is one of Whitepages data providers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.45.112.66 (talk) 13:52, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

Introduction
I'll be supporting WhitePages in a public relations capacity on Wikipedia with the aim of improving and maintaining their article up to Wikipedia's standards in a manner compliant with WP:COI. I wanted to start out by introducing myself here to any watchlisters. I'll be working on a first draft offline for consideration by impartial editors. While I'm not always completely neutral, organizations tend to do fairly well improving Wikipedia with my help. I thought I would introduce myself here to any watchlisters. CorporateM (Talk) 00:04, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

Draft
On WhitePages' behalf, I would like to request an impartial editor consider the proposed contributed article located at: User:CorporateM/WhitePages, which would substantially expand this article. I believe it is neutral, well-sourced and an improvement to Wikipedia. There are two areas where my conflict of interest is more pronounced on this article that I would like to draw attention to, in order to make it easier for a potential reviewer:

CorporateM (Talk) 13:37, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
 * I did not find as much source material regarding privacy concerns as I would have expected. Just that it's a concern and the site has features around it.
 * VentureBeat posted a very critical piece, followed by another article saying they "cleaned up their act" only two months later (cites 18 & 19). It's very confusing - the original article has four "updates" at the bottom with clarifications or comments. It looks like the reporter may not have realized that when he clicked on US Search, he was no longer on WhitePages.com, because his criticisms are leveled at US Search, which is just an advertiser. I think it would be best for a regular disinterested editor to take a look.

Request edit
User:EdJohnston said here that the proposed draft at User:CorporateM/WhitePages was an improvement, though he corrected my spelling (thank you). Since the criticisms I drew attention to are not currently included at all, he felt it was an improvement to just get them in there and let the article improve incrementally, even if they may not be perfect. One of the benefits of taking my COI works through the GA round is getting a second pair of eyes later on.

Anyways, if an editor agrees and feels the content would serve Wikipedia's readers, I would like to ask that someone fulfill the Request Edit by adding it to article-space. CorporateM (Talk) 03:43, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I replied to the edit request and modified the template to indicate my support for this edit. Since this is a low-traffic page it's probably not worthwhile to wait longer for comments. But anyone who has an opinion should go ahead and add it here. EdJohnston (talk) 13:55, 13 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks User:EdJohnston. I went ahead and moved the article to article-space. Often editors agree my COI contributions improve Wikipedia, but insist that I make the edit myself, so I'm usually comfortable doing so as long is it's not a controversial area and I have a clear, unambiguous go-ahead.


 * Do you think there's anything preventing it from a GAN? I like to use GA reviews just to get second pair of eyes on my COI works and make sure my contributions are up to Wikipedia's standards. CorporateM (Talk) 14:07, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Article name
The current article is called "WhitePages.com" but the article reflects that Whitepages has mobile apps, APIs, business services and other products that are not covered by the ".com" aspect of the article-title. Was thinking we should move the article to something like WhitePages (company)? CorporateM (Talk) 14:20, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
 * It's fine to move the article to WhitePages (company). EdJohnston (talk) 14:35, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Good article
I've nominated the article for a Good Article review. This is a good way to get a second pair of eyes on the article and to just make sure my COI works are up to Wikipedia's standards. My hope is the GA reviewer will take a closer look at the criticisms from VentureBeat I mentioned to make sure it's done properly one way or another. In the meanwhile it usually takes about three months for a review, which is plenty of time to see if anyone chirps in on the recent changes. I've also added a connected contributor tag to the top of the Talk page, so if the discussion is archived, my COI disclosure will still be present. CorporateM (Talk) 01:28, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Updates
It's been about a year since I helped bring the article up to "Good Article" status and I wanted to suggest a couple small updates/additions based on new sources that have come out.


 * Add to the end of the History section in a new paragraph:

In August 2013 WhitePages purchased all the interests in the company owned by investors for $80 million.


 * The beginning of the Services section as a summary/introduction:

WhitePages has three primary lines of business: its consumer business of online directories like WhitePages.com, 411.com and other domains; mobile apps; and selling data to businesses for things like verifying data submitted by customers.

CorporateM (Talk) 14:52, 1 October 2014 (UTC)


 * I implemented the changes after reviewing them for neutrality. As always, I take full responsibility for edits I make under my name. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:53, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

Updates 2
It's been almost two years since I proposed any updates to this article. In that time period some good sources have come out that have made the current article substantially out-of-date, regarding:
 * A change in business model to focus on paid subscription services to business customers, rather than advertising-funded online consumer services
 * A rough patch around 2010 leading up to the investors being bought-out that was covered in Forbes.
 * The phone app service, Hiya, being spun-off into its own company

I've put together a draft at User:CorporateM/WhitePages with bold text indicating requested new or replaced text and crossouts for trims. In addition to the updates pointed above, it has other corrections/clarifications/updates/etc. Please feel free to ping me for any questions or clarifications on why specific changes are being requested. CorporateM (Talk) 18:36, 14 September 2016 (UTC)


 * I reviewed the proposed changes for any COI or NPOV problems, and it looks good to me, so I made the changes. As always, I take full responsibility for all edits I make.


 * I considered making the references to Yellowpages.com and Superpages.com wikilinks, but oddly could not find a Wikipedia page for Superpages. This seems odd seeing as they were once big enough to have an amphitheatre in Texas named after them. Perhaps we could create a stub article? --Guy Macon (talk) 14:59, 12 October 2016 (UTC)
 * also left a note about this draft on my talk, but I'm glad User:Guy Macon went ahead and added CorporateM's proposed updates. When I look over the current version, I see there is an open question whether Superpages and Yellowpages ought to redirect here. It's hard to justify making redirects unless there is at least a small amount of information about those companies. Also I have an observation about spelling (use of upper case) in the company names. Superpages is sometimes spelled SuperPages in this text. Yellowpages has the same problem. Both names are sometimes shown without the suffix .com. It would look better if we can be consistent.  Per WP:MOSTM we don't like eccentric capitalization in company names, so it may be better to standardize on the lower case form. We could also drop the .com suffix at least on all mentions after the first. Though CorporateM's version is better than the previous, it still offers mostly a view of the company from the inside. One would hope that this company gets some mention in the trade press. This could be a way to expand the article in the future. One would suspect that Whitepages may have competitors for the same business, and if so their names could be mentioned. EdJohnston (talk) 22:17, 20 October 2016 (UTC)


 * (Sidenote) Since the bulk of this edit request has been fulfilled, I have marked it as answered. Altamel (talk) 03:35, 23 October 2016 (UTC)

Superpages, Yellowpages and Whitepages, oh my!
In my opinion, Superpages and Yellowpages should not be redirects, but rather stubs titled Superpages (company) and Yellowpages (company). --Guy Macon (talk) 04:41, 23 October 2016 (UTC)
 * A quick search suggests Superpages and YellowPages probably qualify for articles, but a redirect seems like a potentially sensible temporary fix since there are no articles about them at-the-moment (not sure what the rules are). I've also fixed the capitalization of trademarks and the dot-com at the end when referring to the business, rather than the website. CorporateM (Talk) 12:59, 23 October 2016 (UTC)