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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 speedy delete by original/only editor's request. —C.Fred (talk) 17:00, 30 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

MetaCarta[edit]

MetaCarta (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (delete) – (View log)

Non-notable company that has been speedy-deleted and recreated by original author. No independent media coverage apparent. Recommend Delete. // Chris (complaints)•(contribs) 14:49, 28 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • No independent media coverage?

Lets see...

http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9901084-7.html
http://media.baliz-geospatial.com/fr/blogue/quels-sont-les-grands-titres-des-nouvelles-pres-de-chez-vous
http://www.visualbeta.es/3802/aplicaciones-web/metacarta-noticias-geolocalizadas/
http://www.journalism.co.uk/2/articles/531211.php
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9901084-7.html?tag=blog.1

  • I think it's a notable company but the article as it is now is speediable under criterion A7 as it does not assert the significance of the company. I have removed the "controversy" section as the source is clearly not reliable, and I could not find the information from any other sources. --Snigbrook (talk) 17:53, 28 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]


  • ^Ok, I agree with part about controversy - maybe it wasn't necessary. I'll add more outside sources of information about company eventually.
  • Hopefully it looks much better now...

By the usual measures of size (over 50 employees, over $5m in receipts) MetaCarta is somewhere in the top 100,000 US firms, perhaps not notable in and of itself, but quite sizeable for high tech. More importantly, MetaCarta has been singled out for innovation on several occasions, e.g. as a Red Herring Top 100 innovator (2005) and as one of KMWorld's 100 Companies that Matter (2007). I'd be happy to add links but I'm not sure it's right for me to edit the page (the info is available from the company website). The controversy mentioned earlier may not matter much now, but was very real at the time. Another aspect of the company that may be more worth mentioning is its support for FOSS, in particular the OpenLayers library. MetaCartaEmployee (talk) 00:11, 29 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

My calendar is one year off. The awards were 2004, http://www.redherring.com/Home/11067 and 2006 http://www.kmworld.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=15156&PageNum=2 , sorry. MetaCartaEmployee (talk) 00:46, 29 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Another factor toward notability is that industry analysts from the major research and advisory firms (Gartner, Forrester, Seybold, IDG, etc) now consider the company notable enough to cover it. MetaCartaEmployee (talk) 00:54, 29 April 2008 (UTC)— MetaCartaEmployee (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. [reply]

  • Speedy keep close It hasn't been up for a day yet. Give it time to develop. Some of what their employee has posted may be useful. (I'll note that, unless they're a sock, that user has only posted here, not edited the article itself.) JeremyMcCracken (talk) (contribs) 01:05, 29 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • So, all in all - I think that its entirely unfair that this whole article was deleted for a second time due to a particular editor lack of knowledge about the company.
  • Comment User:SitnikovI and an unregistered IP (98.216.128.107) has left a string of messages on my talk in response to my reversion of his MetaCarta advertising related to edits to MIT ([1], [2], [3]) and later tried to blank them using an unregistered account .

Talk edits to User:Madcoverboy include calling me a "moron", refusing to engage in a dialogue by blanking comments, etc.: [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] Looking at SitnikovI's talk page, he has engaged in a series of actions that have been warned against in connection with advertising. As always I try to WP:AGF, but it seems the user is trying really hard to get blocked. Madcoverboy (talk) 17:43, 29 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • First of all - I deleted the comment with a word in question this morning (I admit that its a bit childish to start virtual war here, after all) and now you're bringing it up again - how nice of you. After all, it was you who made Forbes 500 [[10]] comment first. Your comment above have nothing to do with an actual debate on whether or not this page should be deleted.
  • I can hardly see where you're trying to WP:AGF, sorry.
  • Hah! That Forbes 500 comment is teddy bear stuff. Pretty small beans compared to vandalizing someone's userspace and calling them a moron. Protonk (talk) 07:56, 30 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Say what you will, but pretty much its all "Whatever you'll say, will be used against you..." principle.
  • Delete, can't see how this is notable. Stifle (talk) 18:57, 29 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]


I looked at the corporate notability guidelines at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:CORP, and I think the criteria listed there are easily met. The company is regularly written about in business publications such as the Boston Business Journal and Forbes.com, in trade publications such as SearchEngineJournal, Directions Magazine, AllPointsBlog, and IEEEE Computer, and is regularly covered by analysts (IDG, Forrester, Gartner etc.) The company web page at http://www.metacarta.com/news-and-events-in-the-news.htm documents over a hundred and fifty such writeups, and less than half of these are occasioned by press releases by the company itself. The rest is self-standing, clearly meeting the WP:CORP guidelines -- this is particularly clear for the awards. Add to the print material a rather sizeable web footprint (Google has over 81,000 hits, and only a small fraction of these are at the company website) and it seems the company passes the notability criteria easily. MetaCartaEmployee (talk) 03:05, 30 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • Delete. Non-notable company. ➪HiDrNick! 03:17, 30 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • weak delete It's pretty borderline. The company appears notable, but what worries me are the SPA's posting here and the very likely COI in building this website. I'm prepared to go either way. IF the SPA issue gets worse or there are some sockpuppet problems, then I'll switch to strong delete and file a checkuser and put something up on ANI. I presume MetaCartaEmployee is already on the list to get a name change for violation of naming policy, right? Protonk (talk) 07:54, 30 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • They were reported as a possible username violation, but consensus was that it's wasn't enough to block. They'd contacted me already and I warned them of the COI concern of editing the article. JeremyMcCracken (talk) (contribs) 14:09, 30 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • And I'm not interested in personal attacks or anything of that nature and this whole thing with bickering is idiotic, for a lack of a better word, as it have nothing to do with this debate.

I find Forbes 500 comment insulting, still - "teddy bear stuff" or not, advertising or not, right or wrong - yes, it wasn't personal, but it was meant to provoke me anyway and maybe I shouldn't have used the word "moron", but there you go. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.216.128.107 (talk) 14:32, 30 April 2008 (UTC) — 98.216.128.107 (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. [reply]


  • I'm curious - do you guys argue in the same way about career criminals and how many people they murdered and whether they are notable or not because they killed 4 people, and not 14? I know - it may sound like a terrible analogy, but I'm just wondering if this whole issue have to do with my personal interest in this - I'm not going to get anything out of writing article about MetaCarta (except for personal satisfaction) and I'm not going to be rich/famous when (or if) it will be published.
  • That's seems like an odd thing to be curious about unless you want to provoke someone. As a matter of fact, articles for criminals on WP have to follow the same guidelines for notability as any other biography(WP:BIO). If the subject has seen sustained, significant coverage in secondary sources then it is notable for wikipedia. If it isn't, then it isn't. It is that simple. For corporations there are guidelines (WP:CORP) in place to make sure that wikipedia doesn't serve as a venue for advertising. This includes guidelines that frown on (but do not prohibit) articles formed by people with a conflict of interest (WP:COI). Also, because decisions are made by consensus--in other words, we are not blindly bound to policy, if you convince us here that the article should be included then it will be--wikipedia has a strong policy against the use of accounts made for the sole purpose of influencing the debate (WP:SPA). All of those policies existed before you got here. None of them are personal attacks. None of them hinge upon your financial fortunes. So please don't say things like this: "do you guys argue in the same way about career criminals and how many people they murdered and whether they are notable or not because they killed 4 people, and not 14?" It doesn't help your case in the least. Protonk (talk) 15:34, 30 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Well, if this is not personal, then why would Madcoverboy would bring up the whole story with deleted comment(s)? And why would someone bring those comments up again once I deleted them, because I wanted to avoid personal conflict with editors (well, that's "vandalism", apparently)? Isn't that an odd thing too?

No, this isn't a personal thing - I'm sorry, I'm the only one who see it that way, of course. And thank you for educating me on the matters of Wikipedia and how it existed along with all the policies/guidelines before I started this article and, of course, tried to destroy it all in the process - now I'm feeling so enlightened, its just amazing. Live and learn, as they say. Would I make it easier for you if I'll just delete an article right now? Would you breathe a sigh of relief, perhaps?

  • Aren't you charming? Presumably madcoverboy brought up your disruptive behavior on his talk page because he felt it was inappropriate. And given the way you are behaving after I've been pleasant with you, I don't blame him. We all try to assume good faith and be nice to people who are new to wikipedia, but don't assume that means you can talk smack and not have it brought up later. In that case it is pretty clear. Someone hoping to promote metacarta put a link to their page from the MIT page. That link got removed. Then contribs et al vandalized madcoverboy's page for removing it. To think that this ISN'T connected to the case of metacarta in the eyes of madcoverboy is silly. In the end, someone other than him or me will decide whether or not the page is notable. But more to the point, if you are just going to be a jerk on wikipedia I have no trouble telling you that you won't be missed. At all. Protonk (talk) 15:58, 30 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Great. So you'll blank the page and we can have it speedily deleted? That's wonderful. Just post on here when you've done that. Protonk (talk) 16:03, 30 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
He's been blanking the page repeatedly. I'll be bold and speedy delete the page per author's request. Useight (talk) 16:17, 30 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, at least someone around here have some decency in not trying to turn this into an idiotic spectacle, even though it took me such a long time to prove that this have nothing to do with vandalism.

Bye now. —Preceding unsigned comment added by SitnikovI (talk • contribs) 16:19, 30 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have deleted the page per G7, single author who requests deletion or blanked the page. Feel free to contact me if you feel this was done in error. Useight (talk) 16:21, 30 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
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.
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