Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Claranet

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 no consensus. -- Cirt (talk) 02:38, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Claranet[edit]

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This is at best a minor web hosting company, fails WP:CORP. With approximately 25K domain accounts, even in their own country of the UK they rank only as the 18th largest web hosting company.[1] Google Book search on them finds only minor references in newsletters or directories.[2] Hardly the significant source or references necessary to be included in Wikipedia.

Page itself is only 4 sentences. About half of the references are from their own site. Other reference are about them acquiring other non-notable companies. Dankim1180 (talk) 17:57, 8 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. Claranet may currently be the 18th largest web hosting company in the UK, but around a decade ago it was known not as a web hosting company but as one of the major Internet service providers (along with the likes of Freeserve and AOL) in the country and a pioneer of "free" Internet connections, and notability does not expire. Yes, that's from my personal knowledge, and no, I haven't yet provided any sources for it, so I haven't made a bolded "keep" recommendation, but I'm suggesting it as an area in which we should look for sources before making any decision about the disposition of the article. I'm surprised that, when the nominator was reading through those 358 Google Books results (and the 107 from Google Scholar and 805 from Google News), he didn't notice any that are more than minor references in newsletters or directories, so, unless someone else gets in first, I suppose I'll have to read through them myself. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:48, 8 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Internet-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 19:00, 8 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Business-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 19:00, 8 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Further comment. As a start, this document lists Claranet as the 9th largest UK ISP in 1993 with 450,000 subscribers, but several of those higher in the list came into the market much later than Claranet, so I'm sure an equivalent list for a few years earlier would have it higher up. Again, to avoid some of the inevitable ripostes, I am not saying that any particular position in a popularity chart or number of subscribers proves notability, but it is evidence that we should not use the 2010 position of the company in a different market as a reason to assume non-notability. Proof of notability will take more wading through sources than I'm prepared to do today. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:06, 8 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: I also remember them as one of the earliest ISPs in the UK, existing well before the Freeserve days that marked a big expansion in the British online population, but they seem to be oddly missing from the web nowadays (in evidence of notability as well as customers). Agree with Phil that it's difficult to add a keep vote with no positive results. Soupy sautoy (talk) 19:34, 8 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. I looked through the Google results and found nothing notable to add to their Wikipedia page, so that is why I added them to Articles for deletion page. I think we can both agree that the web hosting/domain registration portion and the ISP portion of Claranet are very different businesses. In the document that Phil highlights[3], they list Claranet as the 9th largest out of 10 companies. So they are next to last in regards to significant ISP companies. Even if you found a list from a few years earlier, its possible that they could be even farther down the list since another company with a larger subscription base could have been acquired by someone else.Dankim1180 (talk) 19:43, 8 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Ron Ritzman (talk) 00:00, 15 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Keep for the reasons given by User:Phil Bridger, and please note the BBC news cite I have just added. Just because it may now be unimportant as an ISP, in the 1990s it was well known, at least in Germany when Compuserve was my ISP. Just because not much can be written about it - meaning it may remain a stub - is no reason to delete it. Unless a suitable merge destination exists, it can stay a well-referenced stub. -84user (talk) 21:06, 15 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. Its my understanding that Claranet is now, and has always been, a minor company. The BBC article only tangentially references Claranet, and is really about UK millionaires. And having only 150K accounts in two countries with a population of likely over 100 million really demonstrates their minor status. A company should not be included on Wikipedia just because some people have heard about it, or may have used it in the past. Clarenet's listing needs to be supported by more relative & actual referenced articles. Dankim1180 (talk) 00:35, 16 September 2010 (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.