Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Babylon Ltd

 This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion of the article below. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record. The result of the debate was delete as copyvio. This decision should not be interpreted as precedent against the creation of a non-copyvio article about this company. Rossami (talk) 03:00, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Babylon Ltd
Delete Non-notable/Spam Company person admits to as much on talk page. --CVaneg 06:40, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Note: article deleted after listing on Copyright problems --Duk 07:03, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

1.) I didn't write the first version of this article, someone else in the company did, simple copy & pasted some of the texts in our website. 2.) I inherited it as – god forbid, I wrote an article about Joshua Sobol (Israeli author), which makes me the “wiki-pro” in our company. 3.) I was more then happy about the changes done by Hoary, and even more delighted by his kindness to help. 4.) The changes I did, and that found so much criticism by Hoary, were mainly a response to some of the votes above from people being unsure if Babylon is “worth”  an WP article. I had the feeling that important info was missing in the article and that it simple became too short. So I made a new version. 5.) My mother tongue is German, I raise two kids that answer me only in Hebrew (we are living in Israel), so no wonder that I relay on people that should know better and took the “leverage” stuff from someone who speaks English as her mother tongue. I looked the phrase up now – and it doesn’t make sense to me either and it is gone from my new version. 6.) Making a search on "instant information retrieval" in Google I see that Babylon is not the only one to use this phrase to describe their way of information delivery. 7.) My personal opinion set aside – have you got any notion of how many of WP’s company articles have been written by a “disinterested person” and how many are done by the companies themselves? 8.) greetings to all UrsulaR 17:59, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep: I'm having trouble parsing that comment. Do you mean "Both non-notable and spam: a company person admits as much on the talk page"? If so, I disagree. She does say there that it was created elsewhere as corporate advertising and copied to WP. She also says that she realizes that the advertising tone is inappropriate. She doesn't say that she intended to advertise on WP, let alone to spam WP, and she certainly doesn't say the company isn't notable. I'm not happy with the article myself: it needs more work. But the company has a certain notability and the article is salvagable. -- Hoary 06:55, 2005 Mar 27 (UTC) ......PS vote canceled for now; see my "comment" below for the reason. -- Hoary 04:45, 2005 Mar 31 (UTC)
 * Keep since salvage efforts are underway and it looks notable. Bring back to Vfd if salvage efforts fail. Kappa 07:32, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Weak keep despite low quality of article; 10 kilogoogles is probably worth it. Radiant_* 15:21, Mar 27, 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete. It's a fairly young company with nothing special to set it apart from millions of other companies. --NormanEinstein 16:51, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep I am not sure if I am allowed to vote (this is the site of the company I am working for), but Hoary understood me completely right, and after his kind editorial help our article is anything else then an "advertisement". As to the age of our company (see NormanEinstein's remark) - one-click-translation tools are a very narrow niche, but in this field we are certainly one of the main players and being in the Internet business for about eight years - that makes us almost a "dinosaurian". I do not say that we are the best, but we are certainly not less important then a large part of the software companies that are listed in WP. Best regards to all UrsulaR 12:37, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Comment: thank you, UrsulaR. But shortly after you wrote that "keep" vote, you made these changes, adding such material as Babylon has now leveraged its patented technology in an integrated server and client system that gives business customers a unified platform for instant retrieval of critical information from corporate information systems. This is pretty much the kind of stuff that I'd earlier taken out, because of its low signal/noise ratio. (Just in this new addition: What does "leveraged" mean beyond "used"? We don't need to be told that its "technology" is "patented". Retrieval can't be "instant".) So what is it that you're you voting to keep -- (a) something in the spirit of the version that I made, or (b) a not-too-obvious corporate puff (just a little milder than the original, which you thanked me for rewriting)? If it's the latter, I vote to delete it. (Incidentally, my own employer is a large institution that unquestionably meets the criteria for an article on WP. Rather to my surprise, it doesn't yet have an article -- but I'm not going to create one, precisely because it's my employer. Somebody else is sure to create an article eventually. Similarly, if Babylon is important enough, won't some other, disinterested person eventually write an article about it too?) -- Hoary 03:30, 2005 Mar 31 (UTC)
 * Keep providing that this is a legitimate company. Its not a great article but do not see how it fits any criteria for deletion.  Sirkumsize 04:43, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Unsure if it's a copyvio it has to go. Rich Farmbrough 21:16, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * Comment: In the article's discussion page, UrsulaR seems to say that the company releases this as GFDL, but still wants to say that all rights are reserved. (Yes, this seems daft to me too.) -- Hoary 03:52, 2005 Apr 2 (UTC)
 * Delete. Earlier, I got the impression that the author realized that it was too much of an advertising page and was happy with changes making it less of one; since then, she has in effect reverted a number of these changes. If some person outside the company wants to make an article about it at some later time, fine; in the meantime, attempts to rewrite this corporate vanity article to make it more "encyclopedic" are likely to be thwarted. I regret the time that I've wasted editing and defending it. -- Hoary 03:52, 2005 Apr 2 (UTC)
 * Comment:
 * Keep Dsmdgold 15:56, Apr 3, 2005 (UTC)


 * This page is now preserved as an archive of the debate and, like some other VfD subpages, is no longer 'live'. Subsequent comments on the issue, the deletion, or the decision-making process should be placed on the relevant 'live' pages. Please do not edit this page.