Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of online DVD rental companies


 * 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 Delete - can't sum it better than the nominator. Yomangani talk 14:58, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

List of online DVD rental companies
Wikipedia does not "attempt to provide a comprehensive listing" of businesses, and the usual inclusion criterion for such lists - including only those companies notable enough to have a stand-alone article - won't work here, as there are only a handful of online dvd rental companies that will meet WP:CORP. The article as it stands is a repository for advertising, including such gems as, , , and. Fully half of the remaining non-redlinks in this list are a7 candidates, though I'm not going to speedy them myself so as not to prejudice this discussion. The ideal solution for those companies that have a proper article is incorporation into the prose of the parent article, Online DVD rental, where, in fact, they already are. While I sympathize with editors of Online DVD rental who wanted to cut down on rampant redlinks, external links, and outright advertising, the proper solution to spam is to remove it, not spin it off into a subarticle. &mdash;Cryptic 08:16, 30 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Delete listcruft. Elomis 08:29, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete as per above. - jlao   0  4  12:06, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete agree wholeheartedly with nominator's reasoning. This is just a redlink farm. Andrew Lenahan -  St ar bli nd  14:02, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete All or none! To be persistent, Cryptic, - I would delete even entries for ALL corporations (Netflix,Microsoft, etc...), since they also can be considered as advirtizing. The size should not matter.--Bakhteiarov 14:21, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment Not "all or none". Wikipedia has no policy on keeping similar articles, while it does have a policy on verifiability.  Microsoft and Netflix have multiple third-party verification.  ColourBurst 19:27, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment Not "all or none". I see here a conflict of Wikipedia policies however. Having said this, - it should be a certain priority assigned (some metrics) to polices in order to solve conflicts like this one. Obviously allowing big companies like Netflix to stay creates a competitive advantage for them, which is not an Wikipedia intention.--Bakhteiarov 20:13, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment Wikipedia prevents advertising in the sense that it will not allow material with a biased point of view. I don't see much of a conflict here.  (There's the argument that articles with third-party neutral sources get more coverage on WP, but that has to do with the third-parties themselves, not WP.)  This certainly doesn't mean that everything should have an article regardless of notability or verifiability.  ColourBurst 20:23, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment Verifiability, - one can easily verify the existence of say, RussArt.com just ordereing DVDs online and get them in the mailbox. Notability, - creating policy like this, Wikipedia builds a huge "barrier of entry" increasing chances for startups to be not notable even further. An encyclopidia, by definition, is supposed to reflect the reality and not restrict it creating its own one. If an entity exists, - it is supposed to be noted and catalogolized. --Bakhteiarov 21:11, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment Verifiability isn't just about verifying the existence of something - even though in this case "ordering a DVD from the store" would be considered original research - it's to verify everything that's written about it. If a third-party source hasn't written anything about it, the only things that can be verified are directory-entry style information, and Wikipedia is not a directory of anything.  Frankly, barrier to entry problems are not really a concern of Wikipedia, which is an encyclopedia.  We have things like yellowiki to take care of business directory entries.  ColourBurst 22:06, 30 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Question: I note that the Technical Video Rental article was recently deleted. I looked at comparable firm GameZnFlix and note that TVR (now SmartFlix) has the same revenue, a similar employee count, higher customer count, and has had press mention from Make magazine, Home Shop Machinist magazine, etc. I think that perhaps the TVR / SmartFlix article should be reconstituted, with this information.  I note that according to WP:CORP, such an article would be justified under justification #1 there...but instead of just blindly reconstituting the article, I wanted to run it past some folks who seem to be active editors in the area.  So: thoughts?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tjic (talk • contribs) 17:43, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
 * This isn't really the place to discuss this matter, but the standard for companies is given in WP:CORP. If you believe that TVR satisfies WP:CORP, and have sources to prove it, then create the article, be sure to cite reliable sources (hint: TVR's website doesn't count), and be prepared for ruthless editing. But basically, if Technical Video Rental was truly notable, then you wouldn't have to create the article; others (who don't work for the company in question) would do it for you. Cheers, Vectro 16:26, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Weak keep, though it's a little unclear whether the list is maintainable. Haikupoet 01:16, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom. is not complaining about deletion of this article, but rather of articles that it (formerly) linked to. Vectro 16:26, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom. Mango juice talk 13:05, 5 November 2006 (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.