Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Mall Company


 * 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 all.  P h a e d r i e l  - 02:19, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

The Mall Company

 * – (View AfD) (View log)

non-notable mall, Article fails WP:NOTABILITY and WP:CORP. Wikipedia is WP:NOT a vehicle for advertising. Hu12 18:53, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

I am also nominating the following related pages:
 * Articles for deletion/The Mall (Edgware)


 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Malls-related deletions.   -- John Vandenberg 04:27, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of England-related deletions.   -- John Vandenberg 04:28, 13 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Neutral for the others as I don't know enough about them to judge, but Strong keep for The Mall Wood Green; this isn't a vanispam piece (did the nominator even read it?), but an integral part of the series of articles I wrote earlier this year on the neighbourhoods & infrastructure of Haringey; a lengthy, heavily-referenced article on one of North London's most important commercial centres (the largest shopping centre in London following its recent expansion - the reason the name may sound unfamiliar is likely because most people still know it by its former name of "Shopping City"), as well as the location of one of London's last remaining large-scale marketplaces and a large residential estate ("Sky City") - all of which are clearly mentioned (and referenced) in the article —  iride scent   (talk to me!)  19:25, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep Luton and Liberty as well, at the very least, as the most cursory searching shows that these are (by UK standards) extremely large malls that constitute the de facto town centres for their respective towns. Also Keep the company itself as it's self-evidently a major corporation in its own right (operator of two of the four largest shopping centres in London) —  iride scent   (talk to me!)  22:49, 12 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Keep all. The main article needs citations and a fuller article, but any company that owns that many malls is notable.  Some of these malls are 60,000+ square meters with 100+ stores, which means thousands of employees.  Even a smaller mall with 30 stores is often important within the context of the city in which it is located.  The point of Wikipedia is to enhance people's awareness of the world by encyclopedic coverage.  Deleting articles about significant civic institutions hurts the mission.  Wikidemo 22:25, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep all - as clear cut notability, per what's above me. Yikes... Dihydrogen Monoxide (H2O) 23:17, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Merge to parent. Maybe with exception to The Mall Wood Green. No need for multiple listings, and don't seem notble on their own to warrent seperate listings.--Hu12 23:19, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment As the current arch-mergist (with the possible exception of Guy), I disagree totally with merging in this case. The company is notable as an owner of retail premises; the malls are notable for their impact on the towns, not for their impact on their parent company —  iride scent   (talk to me!)  23:34, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep all, the main company is clearly notable, owning such a large number of shopping centres in the UK. The individual Malls are linked from several articles, and as haes been said above many have 100+ shops etc so large centres. --GazMan7 07:44, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Note Without commenting one way or the other on the article(s) editors should be aware that there has been a significant influx of links to other articles to both promote this page and also the external site for the company. See the contribution history here and here. Pedro | Chat  10:34, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment - yes, there has been a lot of spamming recently, although I'm not convinced it's all been too bad. Don't think it's really relevant to this AFD though. DWaterson 12:20, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment It's also worth noting that these articles were each started by a different editor, over a period of two years, not cut'n'paste spam from a corporate PR department —  iride scent   (talk to me!)  22:41, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep The Mall Company - clearly a significant player on UK high streets. Oppose merging the articles into The Mall Company - most of them are about the shopping centres which have existed for many years before The Mall came along and imposed the standard name branding & everything. Reject keep all/delete all format of this discussion as the individual shopping centres only have a very recent shared history and need to be assessed on their own merits rather than en mass with the company with now owns them. Timrollpickering 10:44, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete with the exception of Wood Green and Ashley. The others are not notable. Notability of the parent company does not transfer to individual stores. If that were true, Wal Mart should be next. i said 22:59, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment i, you appear to be confused as to what the articles relate to, this is not a Chain store, with articles about individual stores, but rather the Mall Company owns a number of shopping centres/Malls in the UK. As far as i am aware all of these Malls were in existance before the Mall Company, and as stated above most are a major part of the indiviual towns they are situated within. To dismiss them as stores shows that maybe you should actually read the articles before commenting?GazMan7 07:58, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Ah. Silly me, I only listed pages that were also nominated, not the company itself. Keep the main company and delete the rest, with the two exceptions I listed above. And yes, these are individual stores/shopping centers. Excuse my error in semantics by calling them stores, instead of shopping centers. That doesn't change anything however, They have to be individually notable, just like everything else. Size and importance do not equal notability. And yes, these are chain stores/shopping centers; they are a series of outlets that are owned by a central company. If I'm wrong, then these articles should go as well, because they do a poor job of describing the subject. i said 13:36, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment The key reason why the individual shopping centres do not fall under the "individual outlet of a chain" area of policy is that it is only very recently that they have come under the chain. Taking "The Mall Ashley", or as everyone in my home town calls it the Ashley Centre, this has only been under "The Mall" for a very short portion of its life. A shopping centre in the UK is commonly understood to be the building(s), rather than the firm or branch of the firm that runs it - that can change all the time (and attempts at corporate branding often founder because the existing name has a strong and unique local identity). Until relatively recently shopping centres were often locally run centres. Their primary notablity or non-notability rests on their importance in the local area and their history, not on their having been under a common company for a very tiny portion of their lives. Hence why I think a keep all/delete all discussion is highly inappropriate. You're right that some of the individual articles at present do not explain notability, but others do. This kind of discussion is not conducive to individual assessment of notability, which is essential here, as it encourages all votes. Timrollpickering 20:42, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
 * The fact that they are under a parent company, or not, does not matter. They have to be notable by themselves. Being important parts of the community do not make them notable. And I agree, they should not be lumped together, and I made this clear in my suggestion as to what should be done about these artiles. Keep the just notable ones, delete the rest. i said 00:20, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
 * "importance do not equal notability", this is starting to get rather silly. If something is important, then this is notable. If every article had to pass a test based on it being notable in every country then Wiki would have very few articles. I really cant see the problem in the articles. A quick search finds many articles on shopping centres/malls all over the world. The ownership of the centres is irelavent. So all shopping centres/malls should be listed in this discussion?--GazMan7 17:36, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
 * My dog is important. Therefore notable? No. Importance does not make something notable, significant coverage by sources independant of the subject do. These do not have them. And we know there are other malls that have articles, but they do not matter. And I'm not arguing that since they're owned by a larger company they aren't notable. I'm saying they aren't notable because they aren't. And the vast majority of mall articles should go, but to list them here would be a procedural faux pas. But they should be listed nonetheless. i said 22:04, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep all. I'm satisfied that these are notable and pass WP:CORP. All are large interests, with many thousands of employees working at many hundreds of shops. Shopping centres play an important part in British culture, often forming the centrepiece of a town centre, and to delete them would have a significantly deleterious impact on articles about the towns in which they are located. DWaterson 12:16, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment It occurs to me that non-European editors might be under a misconception as to the role of shopping centres in the UK - unlike the out-of-town malls in the US which are cut off from the community they serve, in Britain & Germany the big postwar malls generally replaced the bombed-out town centres —  iride scent   (talk to me!)  12:34, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment If that is the case, a better solution would be an article on the topic, not ten infomercials for a brand of malls. Notice that the mall articles above mention nothing of the kind. They are concerned exclusively with following kind of "vital civic" stuff: a>The Mall (Edgware) "is a single storey shopping centre and holds over 30 shops including Sainsbury's", "as well as public toilets and baby changing facilities", b> The Mall (Luton) "has 128 shop units, and parking for 2,300 cars. Key stores located in the Mall shopping centre in Luton include...", c> The Mall Trinity "has its own Gold Award Car Park. There are 408 spaces and the main entrance is on Wapping Street. The car park is on two colour coded levels and bays are numbered to help locate your car. There are currently 27 stores including...," d> Mall Galleries "is a shopping mall situated in the Broadmead shopping centre. Functioning as the one of the city's retail malls, it is a three-story building,...and faces competition from the nearby Cribbs Causeway", e> Liberty Shopping Centre "has been used as a filming location and was featured in television advertisement," f> Alhambra Centre "Most popular community activity is the Mall Monster - the pink monster usually inhabited by 'Taz', the bubbly security officer/CCO, who frequents the children's ward of Barnsley General Hospital each year to hand out Easter Eggs. Stores in the centre are as follows:..". If the articles' attempts at establishing notability weren't so comical and cute, I think I would have cried "Lord have mercy! Rid Wikipedia of spam attacks and delete all" already. But note my merger vote. Lets at least keep this kind of trivia in one place. Pia 21:53, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Again, is anyone actually reading these articles? I very much doubt that "The areas surrounding the Mall have traditionally been affected by high rates of street drinking and the accompanying alcohol-related problems" would be included in any 'infomercial', and the only reason these articles even have "The Mall" in the title is because they all happen to have been recently been bought by The Mall Company & had their names formally changed, and - as per Wikipedia policy - are listed under their correct names, rather than the names they're known by (and certainly in the case of Wood Green at least, still signposted as). Googling "The Mall xxx" doesn't bring much up, because no-one refers to them by these names - run your search on "Shopping City", "Luton Arndale" etc to get a better idea. And again (since the point seems to need labouring) Shopping City ("The Mall Wood Green", if you prefer) is the largest shopping centre in the largest city in Europe, not a little suburban stripmall; merging it to the article for the property developer which happened to buy the lease a couple of years ago as is ridiculous as merging The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel to Hilton Hotels Corporation —  iride scent   (talk to me!)  22:17, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes Sir/Madam, I read them all (which took all of 20 sec. for many of them, with the exception of one). The notability claim quote collection above is the result of that reading session. The fact that some of them may have notability (stabbings reported in the press, etc, or notability based on such things as "being the largest mall in the largest city", etc) does not transfer notability to the others in the brand and does not change the fact that the main article is an article in list format. Sorry. Pia 22:33, 18 September 2007 (UTC) (PS. Two observations: The Mall Wood Green article says that it was built in the 1970s, replacing a railway station, so your statement that these malls are notable for being built in "bombed-out town centres" actually seems at odds with the actual article text at this time. In addition, the article states that is "the largest shopping centre within the A406 ring road", not that it is "the largest shopping centre in the largest city in Europe". If you consider the argument about its size relevant for this discussion, please source the claim.) Pia 00:05, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
 * The article states that it's the largest in the A406 and that a new extension was being built that would mean it overtook Brent Cross (the only larger centre, and outside the A406). When the extension's complete, the article will be updated accordingly. Nowhere do I say that Shopping City was "built on a bombed out town centre" - it was built on bombed out housing & light-commercial sites as well as the former Noel Park station, but not on the centre of anything - but merely that British town centres generally were replaced by shopping centres. (Incidentaly, if you think "built in the 70s" is incompatiable with "built on bombsites", you're under a severe misconception of just how long it took to repair WW2 damage in Europe.) —  iride scent   (talk to me!)  00:31, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I assume you meant to say that "one day it will be the largest mall in London" then? And the relevance of all this info for keeping all the articles, or for keeping the bunch of Mall-branded shopping centres as individual articles, is? (PS. I am well aware of the trauma associated with life in a bombed-out city. But as an argument for keeping a bunch of trivia-filled shopping centre articles, I find the association a pretty lame overdramatization of facts: Obviously, the shopping centres built in the 70s did not replace "bombed out city centres", but rather replaced other urban structures, such as train stations, etc, erected 20-30 or more years prior to these malls' march into the cityscape. However, as already stated, properly sourced facts about how shopping centres are part of bomb-site revitalization efforts would make an interesting article---and if any of the Mall-branded shopping centres are part these efforts, that info would make a great addition to the article.) Pia 01:37, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Also whilst "A406 road" is indeed the article name for the road in question per convention, it makes the distinction of being the largest of something within it seem utterly trivial. It took clicking on the link to realise the road in question is the North Circular Road which is far from an insignificant line on the map of London in popular geography - it's a relatively common choice for the boundary of inner and outer London amongst the population at large. Timrollpickering 00:43, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Merge all to parent. With the exception of The Mall Wood Green they all lack reliable sources to demonstrate notability and fail Notability (organizations and companies) and Notability (organizations and companies). In addition, the main article has no content but is simply a list of commercial enterprises, masquerading as an article. Pia 08:20, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment - as Timrollpickering has pointed out above, it is extremely important to note that these are not chain stores or franchises. A more relevant example of a comparable article from an American perspective would be Chicago's Water Tower Place or any branch of Westfield Shoppingtown. Indeed, the Westfield Group article is a good notability comparable for the parent company, and see Eagle Centre or Merry Hill Shopping Centre for examples of articles about similar British Westfield-owned shopping centres. We are not talking about individual branches of a large chain, say Wal-Mart, here; each of these shopping centres houses multiple separate retail units and consequently forms a major part of the commercial centre of the town in which it is located. DWaterson 15:01, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment. Disagree with the comparison to Chicago's Water Tower Place, which is notable as one of the structures on the List of tallest buildings in the United States and which sports an article about architectural features, famous tenants, etc (i.e. has some content that goes beyond what retail units can be found in the mall, statements such as "TJMax and Ralph Lauren have outlets here"). Also disagree that it would be "utterly important" to list or have articles about malls that are not chain stores or franchises. There are thousands around the world; is Wikipedia slated to become a repository for trivial laundry list articles about shopping malls now, sorted by country? About lists such as List of Westfield Group shopping malls: Yes, WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS. However, the list is somewhat different from the current article because it makes no pretensions about being something other than a list and it is about a multinational commercial phenomenon and not just about a locally famous "town-center"-developer — but it is, IMO, also utterly irrelevant to most people, and has little value from a scholarly point of view (except for those who are researching marketing and how commercial enterprises can get into Wikipedia for some similar, "encyclopedic" coverage). Pia 19:56, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep - These are all very large shopping malls for the UK and certainly the company that owns all of them are notable too. --Oakshade 08:27, 18 September 2007 (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.