User talk:TrueADM

Hello, and thank you for your message. To answer your question, there are two issues here:
 * 1) The tone of an article. It is an uncontestable principle of Wikipedia that it maintains a neutral point of view. This is as much the case for articles about corporations as it is for those on any topic. A neutral point of view article about a corporation would describe that company in unbiased terms: describing their turnover, product range, and history. For example, whose viewpoint is it that the ADM portfolio is 'interesting'? What does it mean to say that the company follows the words 'There are no limits to your imagination'. In short, what would the article look like if written by a dispassionate outsider who neither cared whether the company made millions or went bust, but simply wanted to record its salient features to an audience of equally dispassionate outsiders? The final sentence really needs review: "Our greatest, yet unkown, achievement was...". This is Wikipedia, an encylopaedia. Who are the 'we' mentioned in the article?


 * 1) The other issue, as I am sure you have been reading about in the AfD discussion is about the notability of the subject matter. This is always difficult to pin down, but at WP:CORP there are some guidelines concerning whether a corporation meets requirements for inclusion. No-one would doubt that Microsoft, Boeing and Ford Motor Company are big enough, and important enough, to have Wikipedia articles about them. But what about the family-owned convenience store across the road from me? Of course not. So somewhere in between lies a boundary which divides the notable from the non-notable, and this is where the guidelines in WP:CORP come into play.

I don't know if you feel slighted by the notices I posted on that article, and comments people have made on the AfD. If so, I'm genuinely sorry. But the reality is, that if I hadn't stumbled across it and placed them, another experienced editor would have done so sooner or later.

I hope this answers your questions and that you don't feel discouraged from editing Wikipedia in the future. You can always drop me another message via my talk page or via e-mail if you want to do so. --BillC 01:24, 10 May 2006 (UTC)