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Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Skymind

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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 delete. ♠PMC(talk) 21:38, 23 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Skymind (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)
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An advertorially toned page on an unremarkable private company. Significant RS coverage not found; what comes up is PR-driven and / or WP:SPIP. The talk page includes a list of sources, but they are passing mentions, quotes from the company executives, or PR driven. The company raised $3M in funding and has 10-50(?) employees, strongly suggesting that it's WP:TOOSOON for an encyclopedia entry. Fails WP:CORPDEPTH and WP:NCORP. K.e.coffman (talk) 02:59, 9 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Companies-related deletion discussions. K.e.coffman (talk) 02:59, 9 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

While K.e.coffman cites the tone of the page and claims no RS coverage was found, K.e.coffman did not flag the article for notability, tone or source citation before proposing deletion, when in fact all of these can be improved by editing the article.

No attempt was made by K.e.coffman to salvage a viable article, not even by alerting others who read the article that improvements should be made. Instead it was immediately nominated for deletion.

Simply because Skymind appears obscure to K.e.coffman doesn't mean its page should be deleted. In fact, in the field of artificial intelligence, the company is well known.

In addition, significant RS coverage does exist, some of it included on the article page and some of it yet to be included.

For example, the AI software written by Skymind, Deeplearning4j, has been cited 411 times in Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=deeplearning4j&btnG=

This shows Skymind has had a significant or demonstrable effect on technology and research in an important field.

The Wikipedia page lists articles that have mentioned Skymind which have appeared in the New York Times, The Washington Post, Bloomberg News, WIRED, Forbes and Buzzfeed, as well as tech publications such as TechCrunch, VentureBeat and others. Some of those articles simply quote Skymind executives. Others, such as this profile in the tech magazine WIRED, below, are exclusively devoted to describing the company and its significance.

https://www.wired.com/2014/06/skymind-deep-learning/

  • the company has attracted the notice of multiple, independent, reliable sources over several years

--Therefore WP:TOOSOON does not apply.

  • while not all RS have been cited in the Wikipedia article, those sources have been published

--Skymind comes up over 940 times in Google News

https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS713US713&biw=1092&bih=573&tbm=nws&ei=3ygEWtPhFcaN0gKen4SYAw&q=skymind+ai&oq=skymind+ai&gs_l=psy-ab.3...5524.6461.0.6680.3.3.0.0.0.0.133.335.1j2.3.0....0...1.1.64.psy-ab..0.0.0....0.n3CexKRWElo

These are more than routine communiques or announcements. Many of them are devoted to the company and its technology. Most are neither press releases, material substantially based on press releases nor self-published material (the PR-driven announcements by other companies about Skymind are the minority).

The media coverage is national and international. Gartner Consulting named Skymind a Cool Vendor in 2017. CB Insights, a well known tech news publication, named Skymind to its list of the top 100 companies working in AI. TechCrunch named Skymind as one of the top seven startup to come out of Y Combinator's Winter 2016 demo day.

Skymind has been noticed by people outside the organization, and they have seen fit to tell their readers about it, and to give it awards.

Taken together, the media coverage of Skymind, and the wide citation of its technology by researchers, meet the criteria of notability and depth of coverage.

Some claims that K.e.coffman makes factually incorrect, and contradict both the page and external sources. For example, the company has raised double the funds cited, or $6.3 million, not 3 million, as cited on the article's talk page.

As pointed out on the talk page, software companies are not like traditional manufacturers. They don't rely on headcount to attain significance. Google had 20 employees in 1999. Valve, one of the most important gaming companies in America, has a mere 360 employees.

Skymind has 24 employees according to LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/3793671/

Like.liberation 10:54, 9 November 2017 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Like.liberation (talkcontribs)

The concerns with WP:CORPDEPTH are mitigated by the strong presence of Skymind outside of journalistic publication, and has been cited multiple times by financial analysts.

- Goldman Sachs has cited Skymind in a key industry report http://www.goldmansachs.com/our-thinking/pages/artificial-intelligence.html - Skymind is listed alongside Microsoft, NVIDIA, Google, and IBM in this financial analyst report as a key player https://www.newsmaker.com.au/news/227641/deep-learning-market-key-players-active-networks-are-google-ibm-microsoft-skymind-baidu-hewlett-packard-enterprise-sensory-inc-intel-general-vision-inc-nvidia-corp-#.WgTCYLaZNE4 - Capgemini has cited Skymind in their own A.I. industry report https://www.capgemini.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/dti-ai-report_final1.pdf

Additionally, large/significant companies who do meet this criteria are found alongside Skymind in materials published by them.

- See page 2 of a joint paper between Skymind, Huawei, and Softbank http://www.gtigroup.org/d/file/Resources/rep/2017-06-23/d2235d29625e7811f57d73fad279af7a.pdf

Acglab (talk) 21:16, 9 November 2017 (UTC) acglab 13:15, 9 November 2017 (PST)[reply]

Possible COI Note The above user created the Justin Long article, then returned after a two year break to post the above. Justin Long is now the Head of Business Development at Skymind.--Pontificalibus (talk) 06:33, 17 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
The Justin Long article does not, to me, appear to meet the criteria for notability. Thoughts? -- HighKing++ 20:02, 22 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, North America1000 02:20, 16 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Sufficient in-depth coverage in reliable sources to satisfy WP:GNG e.g. 1, 2, 3.--Pontificalibus (talk) 08:10, 16 November 2017 (UTC
1 is a funding announcement based on company's words, 2 is a guide (WP:Not guide) and 3 is yet another announcement based on company's words. Your link to WP:GNG says we need significant independent coverage independent of the subject therefore a repaste somewhere is still within grounds of being primary. Trampton (talk) 22:07, 17 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Pontificalibus, a press release issued by a company and published verbatim by The Times could still meet the criteria you posted of "in-depth coverage in reliable sources" but would still fail the criteria for establishing notability since the article must also be intellectually independent. None of the three references mentioned by you above, although published by reliable sources, are intellectually independent. The wired.com article relies exclusively on information and quotations provided by Gibson and therefore fails as a PRIMARY source and fails WP:ORGIND and/or WP:CORPDEPTH. The techcrunch article is an announcement of funding raised and relies on information provided by the company and/or the investors and does not contain and independent analysis or opinion, therefore fails WP:ORGIND. The final reference relies exclusively on an interview with Nicholson and fails WP:ORGIND. -- HighKing++ 20:11, 22 November 2017 (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.