Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/FreeWill

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 after three relists. (non-admin closure) Vaticidalprophet (talk) 11:54, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

FreeWill[edit]

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Full of promotional fluff and non-encyclopaedic content, 'supported' by cites to company's own website and sources that are primary and/or don't mention the company at all. The closest to RS seems to be the NYT article that actually mentions FreeWill a few times, albeit somewhat incidentally in a wider context. The Yahoo Finance piece is about FreeWill and gives good coverage, but I don't know how RS it is. IMO, fails WP:GNG and WP:CORP. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 07:50, 31 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

KEEP: The Sullivan NYT article devotes 4 paragraphs to FreeWill. The Forbes article, by a staff writer, is entirely devoted to FreeWill. The Town and Country listing calls this effort one of the top 50 philanthropic efforts of 2019. Reuters article devotes 4 paragraphs to FreeWill. AARP devotes 2 of 7 paragraphs to FreeWill. Numbersinstitute (talk) 19:34, 1 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Companies-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 08:05, 31 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of California-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 08:05, 31 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: If it is determined that the article about this company doesn't meet our notability requirements, please restore FreeWill back to being a redirect to free will, as this was pre-April 2020. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 18:12, 31 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Onel5969 ^{TT me} 03:28, 8 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 18:48, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: Boldly relisting for a third time, in the hope that editors can review the article and determine if its issues are fatal or not. Thanks!
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Daniel (talk) 04:46, 24 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

If kept, move to FreeWill (company), and redirect this title to Free will, as is done with Freewill (despite the Rush song). BD2412 T 05:12, 24 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Delete: I have never gone through so many references that tell me how to make a will, and that, online. This is a non-encyclopaedic article with a lot of cites to the company's website. This is really about making a will online and FreeWill - will help you - if you give to charity. Well, its time for WP:TNT, blow it up and start again. --Whiteguru (talk) 06:39, 24 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Leaving aside the fact that this article has been WP:REFBOMBed with 36 listed references, I agree with Whiteguru above that there's very little in the article that provides in-depth information on the company. It's PR and reads like a proposal to a VC firm to raise money. Of the 36 references, the majority (12) don't even mention the company and 10 are PRIMARY and link to the company's website leaving 14 references. 4 are adverts from charities (Red Cross, DAV, Defenders of Wildlife, United Way) looking for donations and pointing to the freewill website as a service (fails WP:CORPDEPTH and WP:ORGIND). The Town and Country reference is an inclusion of the founders in a "top 50" list and says nothing about the company, fails WP:CORPDEPTH. The OpenDataNY is simply the information the company filed with the New York State Dept of State (fails ORGIND), and the angel.co reference is a job advert by the company that includes its own description (fails ORGIND). The AARP reference is a mention-in-passing (fails CORPDEPTH). That leaves 6 references:
- This from the NYT is really also a mention-in-passing. The article is about whether making wills is cheaper without a lawyer by using online services and they talk to several people who have used the services, two of which simply mentioned that they'd used this company. There's also a quote from the founder. This reference doesn't have sufficient in-depth information on the company nor have any independent opinion, fails CORPDEPTH and ORGIND
- This from USNews is a list of various services for online wills but which has insufficient in-depth information and insufficient independent opinion on the company, fails ORGIND and CORPDEPTH.
- The Forbes reference is from Forbes staff on the "sites" portion of the website. Leaving that aside, it relies entirely on an interview with the founders and information provided by the company with zero independent opinion/analysis/etc from the journalist, fails ORGIND
- This Yahoo reference is a promotional piece from when the company was starting out where the founders/company discuss their objectives and competition. Fails ORGIND for the same reasons as above.
- This Reuters reference is a mention-in-passing and relies on a quotation from the founder and information provided by the company, fails ORGIND for the same reasons as above
- This from Philanthropy is a podcast where the founder was interviewed with no Independent Content, fails ORGIND.

Despite the volume of references, the simply demonstrate the effect of an echo chamber and PR. Not a single reference contains "Independent Content" as per ORGIND nor meets the criteria for establishing notability. Topic fails GNG/NCORP. HighKing⁺⁺ 13:52, 26 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The above criticisms are strange. Town & Country (magazine) "is the oldest continually published general interest magazine in the United States." It evaluated (as used in WP:CORPDEPTH) that FreeWill was significant enough all by itself to put its founders among the top 50 philanthropists of 2019:

"Grand Plan They founded FreeWill, a free online estate planning tool that encourages users to leave money to charity.
Making Headlines FreeWill has earned $404 million in nonprofit commitments."

so it's quite wrong to say that T&C "says nothing about the company". The company is the reason for being on the top 50 list. The Sullivan NYT article evaluates FreeWill by (a) including it in the article, (b) citing that a fundraiser for a national animal welfare organization chose FreeWill for her orgaization over its competitors, and (c) quoting lawyers on its limitations. News stories in papers like NYT use quotes, not their own voice, to give "overview, description, commentary, ..., discussion," (as used in WP:CORPDEPTH). This is also clearly independent coverage (WP:ORGIND). The article has lesser coverage of Rocket Lawyer and LegalZoom which have their own WP articles. The Reuters article similarly compares FreeWill to using a lawyer, and evaluates it fairly negatively: "Keep in mind that these are very generic forms and may not suit your specific needs, especially for complicated estates and guardianship issues." The USN&WR article is explicitly a review and comparison to other products, all of which are evaluated as "The Best Online Will Making Programs". Compare this level of notability to the vast number of businesses which no independent source has ever thought were the best at anything, and whose WP articles have few or no independent evaluations, such as Florida National Bank, Broad and Cassel, The Palm Beach Post, Sarasota Herald-Tribune, or even Pulitzer Prize-winning papers: Palestine Herald-Press and Ames Tribune. The WP article on FreeWill is not PR, and no doubt has material the company would prefer to drop. The WP article repeats the critiques made by those independent sources, and situates the company in its competitive landscape and in issues of privacy and dispute resolution. I have no relation to the company, but recognize its significance in the field and believe an encyclopedia needs to cover it. Numbersinstitute (talk) 01:55, 29 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Keep per the significant coverage in multiple independent reliable sources.
1. Wilson, Alexandra (2020-03-13). "The Will To Give: This End-Of-Life Platform Is Facilitating $1.1 Billion In Charitable Donations". Forbes. Archived from the original on 2021-02-01. Retrieved 2021-02-01.
  The article is from a Forbes staff member. It has quotations from people affiliated with the company. But it also has independently researched content: "Though FreeWill does not require individuals to make charitable donations in their wills, it does experiment in methods to increase charitable giving. At the moment, roughly 19% do elect to include donations, with the average user donating around $111,000. The American Red Cross has received the most donations, with organizations like the United Way, Defenders of Wildlife and Disabled American Veterans garnering significant contributions. The New York-based company, which now has 50 full-time employees, derives its revenue entirely from selling subscriptions to non-profits. Over 300 charities pay FreeWill to create customized donation pages and deliver data that gives them insights into the type of people that are electing to donate."
2. Guzman, Zack (2018-10-16). "This startup lets you write a will for free by donating to charity". Yahoo! News. Archived from the original on 2021-02-01. Retrieved 2021-02-01.
  The article has quotations from people affiliated with the company. But it also has independently researched content: "But a new startup founded by two Stanford Graduate School of Business grads is working to reframe the thinking around end-of-life planning from something morose and depressing into something uplifting by bringing charitable donations to the forefront and removing financial burdens. The aptly named FreeWill lets users draft a will for free and instead charges participating nonprofits an annual subscription fee, ranging from a few thousand dollars to over $50,000 depending on the size of the organization. FreeWill works with more than 70 nonprofits, including the American Red Cross and United Way, which hope to gain from users’ donations."
There is sufficient coverage in reliable sources to allow FreeWill to pass Wikipedia:Notability#General notability guideline, which requires "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject".
Cunard (talk) 11:22, 1 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Websites-related deletion discussions. 𝟙𝟤𝟯𝟺𝐪𝑤𝒆𝓇𝟷𝟮𝟥𝟜𝓺𝔴𝕖𝖗𝟰 (𝗍𝗮𝘭𝙠) 11:42, 3 February 2021 (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.