Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tradeking


 * 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. We don't punish subversion of the encyclopaedia's goals by tearing pages out of it. That there may have been promotional content in the article or unbecoming behaviour by editors speaks nothing to the notability of the topic, which has been convincingly asserted here. Skomorokh, barbarian  23:56, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Tradeking

 * – (View AfD) (View log)

Article fails WP:NOTABILITY, WP:CORP, WP:NOT, WP:SPAM. Article was created by an WP:SPA account with no other edits other than related to Tradeking. Was speedied twice under WP:CSD and and once as spam advertising.
 * Part of a long history of Spam and promotion on Wikipedia, see also -Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Spam

Has a few links but they seem to be press releases and merely trivial coverage or mentions. Trivial or incidental coverage of a subject by secondary sources is not sufficient to establish notability. I am also nominating the following related pages because of the same spam campaign:

Seems to be nothing more than Self-promotion and product placement, which wikipedia is WP:NOT. Hu12 (talk) 16:31, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Response from TradeKing
Hi, my name is Jude Stewart, and I’m director of online content at TradeKing. Among other responsibilities, I keep track of our TradeKing Wikipedia entry. I noted this discussion about whether the TradeKing entry should be considered spam and wanted to weigh in if I can.

First, though, I edited the entry to address some of the complaints so far. I removed the TradeKing logo and the link to one, positive TradeKing product review. The entry also includes a new “Product reviews and criticisms” section, which summarizes the chief advantages and disadvantages product reviewers have cited about TradeKing’s product offering and service. All references are cited to original source; we encourage Wikipedia participants to add others, good or bad.

TradeKing emphasizes transparency and accountability in a real way. Since 2005 we’ve hosted an active social community of investors and traders, who interact with our CEO and senior staff on a daily basis. We welcome dialogue from clients or prospective clients, we hear both real-world criticisms and praise from them, and we try to respond to all of it out in the open.

We think Web 2.0 holds amazing benefits for individual investors. Before this era, people were trading alone in their basements, learning from their own mistakes the hard way. Now traders can freely share information about trading strategies, learn from each others’ mistakes (the easier way), and keep each other informed as to which news sources, tools, and brokerage platforms offer the squarest and best deal. Wikipedia is an important collaborative resource in this new era. In fact, we started our Wikipedia entry to get a better grip on what investors are saying about us, and to improve our services accordingly.

We’re not a publicly-traded company like E*TRADE or TD Ameritrade, so we won’t make that argument for our continued presence on Wikipedia. But we are a public brand, much-discussed in the investing community. Not all of that discussion results in a new account for us, but all of it serves to better inform any investor who’s trying to decide if we’re the broker who should be trusted with their hard-earned money.

In that spirit, we’d submit that the TradeKing entry on Wikipedia should stand. But if the group here decides otherwise, of course we’ll respect that.

Best, Jude Stewart, Director of Online Content, http://www.tradeking.com Joodferl (talk) 21:58, 14 October 2009 (UTC)joodferlJoodferl (talk) 21:58, 14 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Delete, advertising. Joodfer's response above does not address the major issue, which is that this company appears to be non-notable. TJRC (talk) 23:26, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Response from TradeKing
We disagree. I’ve reviewed Wikipedia’s notability policy WP:NOTABILITY and can offer you the following points:


 * To general notability GNG, we’ve seen significant coverage year after year by Barron’s, Smart Money, Kiplinger’s, Consumer Reports among others. These are, as GNG stipulates, reliable secondary sources, independent of their subject, who presume TradeKing is a noteworthy company in our space. All these references are cited in our entry. I believe these sources and coverage also meet our corporate notability WP:CORP criteria.
 * That press coverage has happened year after year, since our inception in 2005. For this reason we believe we meet the criteria of not being temporary WP:NTEMP.
 * This is a difficult claim to prove conclusively, but we believe our CEO was the first among financial-services CEOs to blog actively, starting in 2005. We actively welcome any evidence to support or deny this claim, but if it stands, we argue this bolsters our entry’s notability.

We’ve edited the article to address issues in WP:SPAM and improve the article’s balance.

As for WP:SPA, yes, I established this account to be able to address TradeKing’s Wikipedia entry. As a FINRA-regulated firm, every public communication by a TradeKing representative requires prior approval by our internal compliance officer. For this reason I don’t freely edit other articles on Wikipedia – each such edit would require prior compliance approval. You can imagine what a logistical burden a lot of extra editing would impose, and why we avoid it.

Best regards, Joodferl (talk) 14:18, 15 October 2009 (UTC)JoodferlJoodferl (talk) 14:18, 15 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Delete. Explicity stating my position per my nomination. Wikipedia owes much of its success to its openness. However, that very openness sometimes attracts people who seek to exploit the site, such as TradeKing;
 * Fails Wikipedia's core content policy, WP:NOTABILITY:
 * Multiple instances of misues and abuse on wikipedia including, but not limited to;
 * SPAM
 * Advertisements masquerading as articles
 * Advertising and conflicts of interest
 * Conflict of interest
 * Editors who have a conflict of interest
 * Accounts used for promotion
 * Law Of Unintended Consequences
 * What Wikipedia is not
 * Wikipedia is not a vehicle for advertising
 * SOCK
 * Inappropriate uses of alternative accounts
 * 'Role' accounts
 * BLOCK
 * Accounts that appear, based on their edit history, to exist for the sole or primary purpose of promoting a person, company, product, service, or organization in apparent violation of Conflict of interest or anti-spam guidelines.


 * Your contributions to wikipedia under Joodferl and IP 76.127.179.227, consist entirely of promoting TradeKing and is considered  WP:Spam. You even created a vanity page for yourself, "jude stewart". It has become apparently clear that your account and IP's are only using Wikipedia for advertising and promotional purposes. Wikipedia is NOT a "vehicle for advertising".  Equally Wikipedia is not a place to to promote TradeKing.com --Hu12 (talk) 15:17, 15 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Comment. Are there sources that are both independent of the subject and reliable that discuss the company? I'm not seeing them, and without those sources we can't keep the article, regardless of its tone or concerns about its author and defender(s). UltraExactZZ Claims~ Evidence 20:42, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Strong keep Very notable trading platform. Plenty of sources available. ChildofMidnight (talk) 21:38, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep. The sources referenced in the article, such as Business Week, SmartMoney, Barron's Magazine and MSNBC, are independent of the subject and generally considered reliable, and the coverage they give of TradeKing is significant, so this company meets the notability requirements as set forth in WP:CORP. COI should be avoided but is not by itself a ground for deletion. --Lambiam 00:43, 17 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep at least in the present form., Despite the way it was created, it seems it is notable based on the ratings.  Other articles from the same source should be judged on their individual merits.  DGG ( talk ) 00:49, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep TradeKing entry for others to learn about the excellent services, teaching programs, and productive and informative forums used to discuss a wide variety of issues regarding investing and stock trading. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.216.143.245 (talk) 16:38, 19 October 2009 (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.