Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Beatty Brothers Limited


 * 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 keep. Sarahj2107 (talk) 11:31, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Beatty Brothers Limited

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Page reads like a puff piece and lacks significant notability Meatsgains (talk) 21:53, 20 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Companies-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 01:01, 21 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Ontario-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 01:01, 21 November 2016 (UTC)


 * "Puff piece?" It's a long-defunct company. I see a company pool is a provincial historic site. There's a related collection at McMaster University. We do see some coverage in Google Books as a notable equipment and appliance manufacturer and innovator of the period. I don't think this is a slamdunk. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 01:10, 21 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 01:10, 21 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Technology-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 01:11, 21 November 2016 (UTC)
 * "Puff piece" may have been a little harsh but content like this raised some red flags. Meatsgains (talk) 04:48, 21 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Delete -- a vanity page on an unremarkable business. K.e.coffman (talk) 01:11, 23 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep In addition to the McMaster University holdings, I see there's also holdings by the Canada Science and Technology Museums Corporation. This is a business that was clearly once a Canadian leader as both an equipment manufacturer and barn builder. I grant you that sources are hard to find, but it seems to have been clearly notable, and notability is not temporary. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 19:20, 23 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Canada-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 19:21, 23 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Oh and while it may not be RS, searching "Beatty Bros." reveals this article from a Canadian historical writer Pat Mestern, who has a great article on the firm, writing: "Beatty Bros. Ltd, the largest Canadian company in the manufactory of reaping machines, barn equipment, washing machines, churns, pumps, hay tools, ladders and other wooden ware. As a matter of fact, Beatty Bros. Ltd, by 1925, was the largest producer, and exporter of barn and stable equipment in the British Empire."Shawn in Montreal (talk) 19:43, 23 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I also see workers housing adjacent to the former factory is now the Brock Avenue Heritage Conservation District. Now only were workers employed there: "The houses were designed by Harvey Matthews, a self-taught architect and designer, who worked in the Beatty's design department. The designs of several other properties in Fergus, including the Melville Church Hall, are attributed to him." So the company had an impact on the very face of the town (including the historically designated pool noted above. I would go so far as to say that even if consensus is against keeping, a selective merge to Fergus,_Ontario, which makes no mention of the company and its major role in the town's development, would be preferable. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 20:04, 23 November 2016 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Delete The subject isn't notable; I'm not seeing GNG here. I found this source, too and I still am not convinced. McMaster isn't a source we can use because fonds are archival sources. That the university is holding it doesn't denote notability, either. Similarly, the Beatty stable equipment piece is from the company itself. I'm also disappointed by the lousy arguments above that ignore guidelines and facts; we should be better than this.  Chris Troutman  ( talk ) 20:10, 23 November 2016 (UTC)
 * That's a valid point about fonds and I'll remember that for the future. However I find Mestern's article about the company's scope to be persuasive, and the fact that there are a number of historically designated structures in Fergus all linked to Beatty Bros. and the role it had in shaping that town. If you find that argument to be "lousy," well, I don't see much room for polite discussion. thanks, Shawn in Montreal (talk) 20:16, 23 November 2016 (UTC)
 * We don't actually have any rule that archival fonds are always invalid sources per se; rather, the issue is whether the documents in the fonds are primary sources or not. Archives can and do also compile and collect reliable source coverage about the topic of the fonds, and that type of archival content would be acceptable for sourcing. Bearcat (talk) 16:38, 29 November 2016 (UTC)
 * No. Emphatically, no. Beatty Brothers donated business records of theirs to the university as the inventory shows. This is how archives are created. (I wrote the article on national archives. Please read it.) That those documents are archived in the university does not make the company or the records notable. Per WP:PRIMARY "All analyses and interpretive or synthetic claims about primary sources must be referenced to a secondary source, and must not be an original analysis of the primary-source material by Wikipedia editors." If scholars write secondary material based on those archival documents then we could use those scholarly articles. There is no question about the fonds being primary sources. Further, the fonds are not even used as an in-line citation, so our argument isn't about the fonds as a source but as connoting notability, which it does not. Chris Troutman  ( talk ) 17:44, 29 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I personally volunteer for an archive from time to time, and we most certainly do keep reliable source press clippings about the topics of our files if such exist and can be located and clipped or printed. And I've done enough research in other archives to know that the one I volunteer for is not an aberration in that regard — and, for that matter, even the inventory you linked above does include a file titled "Newsclippings re sale of Beatty family business. 1961-75." So I stand by what I said — an archival fonds does not necessarily comprise only the topic's own primary source documentation of itself, but most certainly can also include reliable source press coverage that does satisfy GNG. The mere fact that it is an archival fonds is not automatically disqualifying in and of itself — the content in the fonds may or may not count as reliable sourcing depending on its nature, but the mere fact that it's in an archive does not automatically render everything in the file inadmissible as sourcing. Bearcat (talk) 17:48, 29 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep - The firm has been featured a couple times in the local Wellington Advertiser, and along with the Gordon Smith article, I think the firm is notable. Whether or not the article is deleted, a couple lines from it could go into the article for A. O. Smith. Smmurphy(Talk) 16:56, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, MelanieN (talk) 01:25, 29 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Comment -- " local Wellington Advertiser" indicates that this is WP:MILL business if they are only getting local coverage. Wikipedia is not a directory. K.e.coffman (talk) 01:39, 29 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I tend to think The past is a foreign country, and that a local article about a firm which existed in the past carries more weight than a local article about a contemporary firm. I haven't had time to look through the newspapers.com archives, but I did notice that a 1979 puff piece about a Beatty grandchild claims Beatty Brothers was the "largest appliance firm in the Commonwealth". I'll look around and see if that statement might be true.Smmurphy(Talk) 02:46, 29 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Keep. I am seeing a valid potential claim of notability here ("The company had become an international business, having branches in Great Britain, Australia, and New Zealand."), although I agree that the article as written isn't properly demonstrating or sourcing it yet. However, on a ProQuest search of The Globe and Mail, I'm getting 445 hits — and while some of them are just daily stock quote listings, there are also plenty of genuinely substantive news articles about the company too. And I haven't even tried the Toronto Star or the Ottawa Journal (the other two newspapers in which I have the ability to dig back past 1981) yet. It's a key principle of WP:AFD, however, that even if the sourcing in the article is inadequate we can still keep it, and merely flag it for reference and content improvement, as long as a WP:GNG-passing volume of sourcing can be shown to exist. Bearcat (talk) 16:38, 29 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep -- having once been the largest of a kind points to notability. Devising the agitator, which was formerly important in washing machine technology, even if not so now, also points to notability.  The RS requirement is that the content should be provable, not that it is currently proved.  The article clearly needs tags for improvement both of references and content.  The presence of substantial archives in a library or record office also points to notability.  Peterkingiron (talk) 17:16, 4 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep -- the arguments above are convincing. K.e.coffman (talk) 18:57, 4 December 2016 (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.