Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Allison Kopf


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was no consensus. Legoktm (talk) 04:54, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

Allison Kopf

 * – ( View AfD View log | edits since nomination)

WP:BLP. Refs are interviews, profiles and PR. Fails WP:SIGCOV and WP:BIO. Not a single secondary source amongst the lot.  scope_creep Talk  18:32, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Businesspeople, Women,  and New York. Skynxnex (talk) 18:47, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Comment almost there, most of the sources are interviews or about her wining the 30 under 30 award. I find the exact same ones used in the article, so I don't think GNG has been met. Oaktree b (talk) 18:58, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
 * keep Refs 3 & 5 get it over GNG for me. YMMV. --Tagishsimon (talk) 19:18, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
 * They are interviews. The rest of the refs are much lower quality to below non-rs standard e.g. forbes x of y ref, in ref 1. Interviews are great if they're is WP:SECONDARY refs to back up it, but there is nothing. The profiles have been written by her and the rest are about the company or the non-notable trade award. There is nothing of significance present in those references that are independent of the subject.     scope_creep Talk  19:45, 30 September 2022 (UTC)


 * Delete per nom. I wish there were more coverage, given Wikipedia's paucity of women CEO biographies, but interviews are kind of an awkward spot for establishing notability. Maybe if they have substantial oversight and independent commentary, but I'm not seeing that with either source 3 or 5. I don't think her 30 Under 30 award carries too much weight either. Ovinus (talk) 20:31, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete. Fails WP: SIGCOV. The in-depth coverage in evidence are all interviews which lack independence from the subject. We need three independent sources with significant coverage to pass GNG.4meter4 (talk) 21:09, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Two. Two is "multiple". GNG has always required two. StAnselm (talk) 14:08, 1 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Uh no. I am a regular AFD patroller. The rule of three is widely used as the measuring stick in AFD discussions; unless we have two very exceptional sources (which is not the case here).4meter4 (talk) 01:54, 8 October 2022 (UTC)


 * Keep There appears to be a lot more coverage on the article subject than what's currently in the article. Here's some examples I found:
 * The Grist article is especially strong, as it has a lot of biographical details. Silver  seren C 02:47, 1 October 2022 (UTC)
 * The Grist article is especially strong, as it has a lot of biographical details. Silver  seren C 02:47, 1 October 2022 (UTC)
 * The Grist article is especially strong, as it has a lot of biographical details. Silver  seren C 02:47, 1 October 2022 (UTC)
 * The Grist article is especially strong, as it has a lot of biographical details. Silver  seren C 02:47, 1 October 2022 (UTC)
 * The Grist article is especially strong, as it has a lot of biographical details. Silver  seren C 02:47, 1 October 2022 (UTC)
 * The Grist article is especially strong, as it has a lot of biographical details. Silver  seren C 02:47, 1 October 2022 (UTC)
 * The Grist article is especially strong, as it has a lot of biographical details. Silver  seren C 02:47, 1 October 2022 (UTC)
 * The Grist article is especially strong, as it has a lot of biographical details. Silver  seren C 02:47, 1 October 2022 (UTC)
 * The Grist article is especially strong, as it has a lot of biographical details. Silver  seren C 02:47, 1 October 2022 (UTC)
 * The Grist article is especially strong, as it has a lot of biographical details. Silver  seren C 02:47, 1 October 2022 (UTC)
 * The Grist article is especially strong, as it has a lot of biographical details. Silver  seren C 02:47, 1 October 2022 (UTC)
 * The Grist article is especially strong, as it has a lot of biographical details. Silver  seren C 02:47, 1 October 2022 (UTC)


 * Comment Lets look at these above in turn:
 * It is more about the business and than it is her.
 * It is more about the business and than it is her.


 * This is the company winning a trade award. A routine annoucement.
 * This is the company winning a trade award. A routine annoucement.


 * This is the company winning a trade award. A routine annoucement. It is the same gig. It is not independent.
 * This is the company winning a trade award. A routine annoucement. It is the same gig. It is not independent.


 * This is a trade magazine and its another interview. It is not independent coverage.
 * This is a trade magazine and its another interview. It is not independent coverage.


 * This is a Non-RS as a x of y article. Why are you even listing it?????
 * This is a Non-RS as a x of y article. Why are you even listing it?????


 * This is a press-release. It is not Independent and is non-rs.
 * This is a press-release. It is not Independent and is non-rs.


 * This is primary. It another interview.
 * This is primary. It another interview.


 * It is a company listing block. It is not independent.
 * It is a company listing block. It is not independent.


 * Another interview. It is not independent.
 * Another interview. It is not independent.


 * Another interview. It is not independent.
 * Another interview. It is not independent.

Not a single one of these are worth even looking at. They are all routine coverage of a women promoting her business.  scope_creep Talk  09:16, 1 October 2022 (UTC)
 * "It is more about the business and than it is her."
 * This alone on the Grist article tells me that you're being purposefully disingenuous in your "review" there of the sources. For everyone else, have some quotes:
 * It’s this indoor farming future that Allison Kopf, founder and CEO of the agricultural technology startup Agrilyst, is curious about. In an indoor farm, water doesn’t inconveniently evaporate. LED lights can lengthen the hours of sunlight so plants can grow faster. CO2 levels can be tweaked. Even as the weather outside goes haywire, plants farmed indoors can live out an optimized version of the weather that they coevolved with — the weather of the past. The best weather of the past. Or, as Kopf calls it, a “weather-independent environment.”


 * Kopf’s journey to greenhouse tech was an unexpected one. She majored in physics and in 2009 became the project manager for Team California in the solar decathlon, a biannual competition held by the U.S. Department of Energy. Team California designed and built a house that took advantage of the local climate, but also had a control system, built from scratch, that could monitor the house’s energy and water consumption, along with other vitals, from an iPhone app.
 * Team California placed a perfectly respectable third. Kopf was looking forward to a future in solar tech. But just as her work with the decathlon ended in 2010, the solar industry hit the skids — a casualty of a trade war between the U.S. and China.
 * Team California placed a perfectly respectable third. Kopf was looking forward to a future in solar tech. But just as her work with the decathlon ended in 2010, the solar industry hit the skids — a casualty of a trade war between the U.S. and China.


 * Then she met Paul Lightfoot, a Wall Street lawyer turned restaurant reservation software magnate (his startup, Foodline, tanked in 2001) turned CEO of AL Systems (a retail supply chain software company). Lightfoot had just had a midlife crisis and decided that he wanted to “combine his career in supply chain management with his passion for bringing food to people that tastes better, is healthier, and is better for the environment.”
 * Five years ago, says Kopf, “the industry wasn’t as sexy as it is now.” She spent her four years at BrightFarms wrangling real estate and government regulations — working on local zoning and tax exemptions, trying to get some love for indoor farming and non-commodity crops into the farm bill, and generally working against the tide of decades of agricultural policy: “Our country is built on commodity crops,” she says, “It heavily incentivizes production of crops that aren’t used to feed humans.”
 * Five years ago, says Kopf, “the industry wasn’t as sexy as it is now.” She spent her four years at BrightFarms wrangling real estate and government regulations — working on local zoning and tax exemptions, trying to get some love for indoor farming and non-commodity crops into the farm bill, and generally working against the tide of decades of agricultural policy: “Our country is built on commodity crops,” she says, “It heavily incentivizes production of crops that aren’t used to feed humans.”


 * Kopf also noticed something else. She couldn’t understand why BrightFarms and other farms like it were so operationally inefficient, considering the technology that she knew was available. Readouts from high-tech sensors were taken down by hand, written into notebooks and rarely looked at again. Problems, when they developed, were farmed out to consultants. There were only a few types of sensors used in the greenhouse industry, and while it wouldn’t exactly be a walk in the park to develop software that could pull data from them all and analyze it in a centralized location, Kopf knew that it could be done. The recent surge of research into the “internet of things” also made things possible that had been impossible a decade ago.


 * Hell, she didn’t have to stop with sensors. Energy bills for greenhouses ran into the thousands of dollars — but what if they had access to software that helped them buy electricity at off-peak hours, when it was cheaper? What if everything — the fans, the vents, lighting or shade, the water — could be crunched together with the data from the networked sensors, and then controlled and monitored from a central location? What if the data, anonymously aggregated, could be used to design new greenhouses?


 * Kopf went to Lightfoot, and told him that she was leaving to start a greenhouse software company — or, as she put it, “Hey. I’m going to do this. You should be our first customer.” She found a programmer and cofounder, a Google engineer named Jason Camp, through a family friend. Agrilyst launched in spring of 2015. By autumn of 2015, the duo had beat out 1,000 other companies and were standing onstage as one of 25 finalists at the TechCrunch Disrupt startup competition in San Francisco. Much to their surprise, they won.
 * And that's just from one source. Silver  seren C 17:14, 1 October 2022 (UTC)


 * Keep. The Grist article certainly counts for significant coverage in an independent reliable source. I note the interviews, too, are all in high quality sources. And the very fact that she is being interviewed by Forbes, Business Today, and FiveThirtyEight indicates that she is not a run-of-the-mill business owner. StAnselm (talk) 14:13, 1 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete per WP:PROMO and insufficient support for WP:BASIC notability that is not dependent on the article subject, including the interviews. Source #5 (Business Today Online Journal) appears to be more of a press release written interview-style in a non-RS. The 2016 Grist article also seems dependent on her statements, and questionable as to whether there is independent fact-checking from an outlet that offers "storytelling" - to a limited extent, the writer's commentary on arugula is WP:SECONDARY content about the business, which I think in general can be relevant to a businessperson's BLP, particularly when it is connected to what the BLP subject has accomplished and can help develop the article. There also do not appear to be notable awards, and bizjournals.com content tends to be heavily promotional, e.g. instead of editorial policies, the ACBJ About page states "ACBJ offers business leaders many avenues for making connections and gives them a competitive edge locally, regionally and nationally." She was also interviewed in a 2016 538 podcast, but based on the partial transcript, it is not particularly in-depth. I think more independent, reliable, secondary coverage is needed to support notability than what is currently available. Beccaynr (talk) 21:34, 1 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Grist is one of the most prominent agricultural and climate focused magazines. Are you actually questioning its RS and journalism status because it uses the word "storytelling" on its About page? Silver  seren C 21:48, 1 October 2022 (UTC)
 * I have questioned the independence of the Grist article, because it appears to be told from the perspective of Kopf and her business partner, and dependent on their statements to tell the story, before the writer opines about indoor agriculture generally, including, "it is not so much about feeding the world as it is about bringing salad to people who feel that they deserve it in the dead of winter, but feel guilty about having it trucked to them all the way from California." I have not found evidence that Grist is one of the most prominent agricultural and climate focused magazines, but I think we can assess the source based on how it presents itself and how the article is written. If this source helps support notability, there appears to be more independent, reliable, secondary coverage still needed to support WP:BASIC notability. Beccaynr (talk) 22:23, 1 October 2022 (UTC)


 * Userfy. I think this may be WP:TOOSOON. All the sources are industry/interview. Created by a new editor who seems to be having trouble getting a handle on neutrally written articles or what constitutes a press release. They keep plugging away, so rather than delete, put back into draft form. This article was moved without the editor submitting it, again, another reason for putting back into draft. WomenArtistUpdates (talk) 22:55, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Its not as though a WP:BEFORE was not done on it.    scope_creep Talk  02:16, 4 October 2022 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.