User talk:Walkranrunning

THIS DISCUSSION IS ABOUT MY DRAFT PAGE FOR A NEW PAGE: POLY INC

WRITER: User Walkranrunning, known by day as Jeff Rodman, co-founder of Polycom, Inc. and hence Poly, Inc.

REASON FOR THIS PAGE: To document history and current relationship among several companies that already have Wikipedia pages. These companies are:


 * PictureTel (VP HW Engrg, Employee #5, 1984-1987)
 * Polycom (Co-founder, CTO, various roles 1990-2020)
 * Poly Inc (Co-founder to 2020, consultant 2020-now)
 * Plantronics (Co-founder, engineer, or...subject to interpretation - see below)

I am currently making updates and corrections in those others. While I am and have been associated with all these companies, I am aware of and sympathetic to Wikipedia concerns about conflict of interest, and am doing a reasonable job, I think, of stripping out my own biases and deleting the marketing-heavy content of others that forms some of the existing criticisms of those existing pages - in particular, Polycom and Plantronics. I have been responsible for legal and technical product compliance with governmental and other organizations' requirements, and have gotten pretty good at sticking to the straight and narrow.

The relationships among these four companies are a bit complex, and I plan to explain them and to restructure their pages in a way that is more accurate, clear, and current than is currently the case. Broadly speaking, here's the history.

But then,
 * Plantronics was founded in 1961 as a headset manufacturer.
 * PictureTel was founded in 1984 as a videoconferencing manufacturer.
 * Polycom was founded in 1990 as an audio, video, and content (graphics, basically) manufacturer
 * Polycom acquired PictureTel in 2001
 * Plantronics acquired Polycom in 2018
 * Plantronics changed its name to Poly (or Poly, Inc.) in 2019 because the scope of its products had expanded a lot due to the Polycom acquisition.

This can all be summarized this way: Plantronics + PictureTel + Polycom + Other acquisitions = Poly, Inc.

To maintain separate pages for Plantronics, PictureTel, and Polycom seems the most complete and accurate way of documenting those organizations because their products, histories, and focus were very different from one another (it also involves less change to existing pages). Also bear in mind that more organizations were acquired by them through the years, so merging all into a single entry would obscure a lot of information and be a much larger job than is anticipated here.

So this page exists to cover the newly named entity Poly, Inc., and contains both new information and references to the pages for Plantronics, PictureTel, Polycom, and numerous other independent sources.

Currently, the relevant Wikipedia disambiguation entry for Poly redirects to Plantronics, which will not be a viable path as time goes forward, because the overall company is indeed Poly, not Plantronics.

Walkranrunning (talk) 21:34, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Rich, Thank you for your comments on the proposed Poly page. I had thought about that also, and this was the best solution I could find. My intention is to initially create a minimal page under this new Poly Inc name; this page will become the dominant focus for the businesses as the combined company develops because added information will happen here, but for now it's pretty small. Hence, the original Plantronics and Polycom pages (the two companies that combined to become Poly) remain in place, referenced by this Poly page. I have added minimal redundancy under "Poly" (also am taking out a bit more of that detailed headset history, as that actually is redundant to information on the Plantronics page). I think it's less confusing for the reader this way: Plantronics and Polycom exist with equal weight, in effect, and the new Poly Inc. bridges the two. The alternative, I suppose, would be to change the name of the Plantronics entry to Poly Inc itself (with other changes within the article to make that work), but I am concerned about the added confusion for people who have known that company as Plantronics since 1961, especially as the Polycom page (another name people have known for 30 years) would continue to exist under its own name. Bear in mind that both companies are pretty large, ~$1bn - 2bn, and they both have fairly significant histories already attached to those names. Please let me know your thoughts. Thanks! Walkranrunning (talk) 21:19, 29 June 2020 (UTC)walkranrunning

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Your submission at Articles for creation: Poly Inc (June 26)
 Your recent article submission to Articles for Creation has been reviewed! Unfortunately, it has not been accepted at this time. The reason left by Rich Smith was:

Please check the submission for any additional comments left by the reviewer. You are encouraged to edit the submission to address the issues raised and resubmit when they have been resolved.


 * If you would like to continue working on the submission, go to Draft:Poly Inc and click on the "Edit" tab at the top of the window.
 * If you now believe the draft cannot meet Wikipedia's standards or do not wish to progress it further, you may request deletion. Please go to Draft:Poly Inc, click on the "Edit" tab at the top of the window, add "Db-g7" at the top of the draft text and click the blue "publish changes" button to save this edit.
 * If you do not make any further changes to your draft, in 6 months, it will be considered abandoned and may be deleted.
 * If you need any assistance, you can ask for help at the [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:WikiProject_Articles_for_creation/Help_desk&action=edit&section=new&nosummary=1&preload=Template:Afc_decline/HD_preload&preloadparams%5B%5D=Draft:Poly_Inc Articles for creation help desk], on the [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Rich_Smith&action=edit&section=new&nosummary=1&preload=Template:Afc_decline/HD_preload&preloadparams%5B%5D=Draft:Poly_Inc reviewer's talk page] or use Wikipedia's real-time chat help from experienced editors.

- Rich T&#124;C&#124;E-Mail 20:20, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Rick, Thank you for your comments on the proposed Poly page. I had thought about that also, and this was the best solution I could find. My intention is to initially create a minimal page under this new Poly Inc name; this page will become the dominant focus for the businesses as the combined company develops because added information will happen here, but for now it's pretty small. Hence, the original Plantronics and Polycom pages (the two companies that combined to become Poly) remain in place, referenced by this Poly page.

I have added minimal redundancy under "Poly" (also am taking out a bit more of that detailed headset history, as that actually is redundant to information on the Plantronics page). I think it's less confusing for the reader this way: Plantronics and Polycom exist with equal weight, in effect, and the new Poly Inc. bridges the two.

The alternative, I suppose, would be to change the name of the Plantronics entry to Poly Inc itself (with other changes within the article to make that work), but I am concerned about the added confusion for people who have known that company as Plantronics since 1961, especially as the Polycom page (another name people have known for 30 years) would continue to exist under its own name. Bear in mind that both companies are pretty large, ~$1bn - 2bn, and they both have fairly significant histories already attached to those names.

Please let me know your thoughts. Thanks! Walkranrunning (talk) 20:56, 26 June 2020 (UTC)Walkranrunning (aka Jeff Rodman)
 * in relation to the message you left on my talk page, don't worry about my name, you'll be surprised how many people do that. It might be worth starting a Proposed Article Merge discussion at WP:PM in order to merge the Plantronics and Polycom pages together under one Poly page. I have a question though, are you connected to Poly in any way? An employee? - Rich T&#124;C&#124;E-Mail 21:16, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

Your draft article, Draft:Poly Inc


Hello, Walkranrunning. It has been over six months since you last edited the Articles for Creation submission or Draft page you started, "Poly Inc".

In accordance with our policy that Wikipedia is not for the indefinite hosting of material deemed unsuitable for the encyclopedia mainspace, the draft has been nominated for deletion. If you plan on working on it further, or editing it to address the issues raised if it was declined, simply and remove the, , or  code.

If your submission has already been deleted by the time you get there, and you wish to retrieve it, you can request its undeletion by following the instructions at this link. An administrator will, in most cases, restore the submission so you can continue to work on it.

Thank you for your submission to Wikipedia! UnitedStatesian (talk) 23:02, 23 February 2021 (UTC)