Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Waterloo Music 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. No arguments for deletion aside from the nominator. (non-admin closure) Ron Ritzman (talk) 00:22, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

Waterloo Music Company

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No indication of how this company meets notability guidelines. Only a single reference provided to the Canadian Encyclopedia. Google News has zero hits on the title, Google books has some hits but all are to phonebook like directories which do little to establish the notability of the company. There are citations in Google scholar but all appear to be in the context of music published by this company. I'm having difficulty finding coverage of the recent acquisition even in local papers. Contested prod.RadioFan (talk) 22:30, 22 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Keep - The article has a reference in the Canadian Encyclopedia. I don't see the relevance of the proposer's "Only a single reference provided" as the article is short and there isn't anything else in there that might need referencing. I don't have time right now to check it out further, but the Can. En. cites several people whose works were published by the company, suggesting some degree of notability. The article was created by an editor with the creation of a couple of music-related DYK articles to his/her credit, so I take it for granted that an article created by this editor - and referenced in another encyclopedia - has some level of credibility.--Technopat (talk) 23:03, 22 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Speedy Keep. An entry in The Canadian Encyclopedia clearly establishes this article's notability.4meter4 (talk) 00:09, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Speedy keep. The Canadian Encyclopedia entry is sizable and clearly reflects material that can be incorporated into the article. Tabercil (talk) 00:59, 23 April 2010 (UTC)


 * comment Is there any coverage beyond the encyclopedia? RadioFan (talk) 11:41, 23 April 2010 (UTC)


 * The name is mentioned in several archival Google News hits - see the "news" link above. I don't have time right at the moment to read the sources in-depth, but at least one of them could be used for basic verification of the article.  There's a primary source to verify the acquisition at . --Darkwind (talk) 22:31, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment Unfortunately the link you mention is a primary source and does little to establish the notability of this company here.  There are a number of hits from the news link above but they are largely biographies of people who worked there in the past or musicians and mention the company only in passing rather than articles which focus on the company in detail.--RadioFan (talk) 13:08, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment on comment Is there really any need for another reference?--Technopat (talk) 22:37, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment on comment on comment WP:N does ask define "Significant coverage" means that sources address the subject directly in detail. Nothing in there about "unless in a published encyclopedia".--RadioFan (talk) 00:13, 24 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Business-related deletion discussions.  -- • Gene93k (talk) 02:10, 24 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Music-related deletion discussions.  -- • Gene93k (talk) 02:10, 24 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Keep - A large part of the difficulty is that much of this company's work seems to have been before the digital age. If the Canadian Encyclopedia was able to find and verify enough information about the company to make an article, so can we. --Darkwind (talk) 08:42, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment The company existed under that name until 2004. Companies that existed before the advent of the internet can be difficult to source but that does not appear to be the case with this one. Google News includes Ottawa Citizen, Montreal Gazette and Ottawa Times back to the mid 1800's, I would think that if this company had made a significant national impact, there would be some mention in these papers sometime during it's years of operation. Also, I am finding mentions of the company in magazines dated back to 1912, but they are just entries in a directory.  Not coverage where the company is the subject of the article.   The Waterloo Region Record has online archives going back to 1990 and I'm finding only 2 hits on the name there.  Both of those articles include only single very brief mentions of the company (articles on the building's landlord and a biography on a former employee). This Wikipedia article makes no claim of notability beyond the fact that it  exists and it's age. The Canadian Encyclopedia entry has a nice history on the business, but I'm not really seeing anything in the claiming notability either. --RadioFan (talk) 13:04, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Have you even read the Canadian Encyclopedia article? An 83 year publishing history that includes published works by multiple notable Canadian composers ( Violet Archer, John Beckwith, Keith Bissell, Jean Coulthard, Samuel Dolin, Robert Fleming, Talivaldis Kenins, Walter MacNutt, Barbara Pentland, Godfrey Ridout, Eric Wild, and Healey Willan to name just a few) seems pretty notable to me.4meter4 (talk) 13:14, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I dont doubt the notability of those composers but the lack of reliable sources with significant coverage of this company is still a problem. We have one, the Canadian Encyclopedia.  If this company is notable, there should be more references available, I'm having trouble finding them.--RadioFan (talk) 13:30, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
 * The Canadian Encyclopedia is a major reference work and the article by itself is enough to establish this subject's notability in my opinion. As for the difficulty in finding sources, you might consider the fact that many potential sources for this company are probably written in French and not English. Also many sources are probably not available online without a subscription access to newspaper/journal databases. It's an obscure topic so referencing is going to be more challenging.4meter4 (talk) 13:43, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
 * French sources would be fine in establishing notability, there is no restriction to English sources only, please add any you have.--RadioFan (talk) 13:54, 26 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Keep. The whole point of the notability guidelines is to provide a method of deciding whether the world outside of Wikipedia has taken enough note of a subject for an encyclopedia article to be written. If a print encyclopedia article has an article then that decision is made for us, so there's no need to go into any other criteria. We follow what the outside world does, rather than make our own subjective decisions by original research. Phil Bridger (talk) 22:02, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment Notability guidelines offer no special status to any one reference it just calls for references in reliable sources. I dont doubt the reliability of this encyclopedia but there still have been no additional references where this company is the subject of the article uncovered in this AFD.--RadioFan (talk) 22:43, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Please think about the spirit of the guidelines rather than the letter. The whole point of the guidelines is that they exist to make the decision about whether a subject is appropriate for an encyclopedia article, based on the outside, non-Wikipedia, world. That world has made the decision that this is an appropriate article for an encyclopedia. If you want to ignore this basic common sense and come to a decision based on lawyering then take a look through the 435 Google Books linked by your very own nomination above. Phil Bridger (talk) 22:54, 26 April 2010 (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.