Talk:Blackwater (company)

Federal prosecution

The subsection "Federal prosecution" has become confused, especially now that there are pardons (which Biden may be asked to cancel). Who was convicted of what and who was sentenced to what? Errantius (talk) 00:29, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

Requested move 12 January 2021

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Moved to Blackwater (company) (closed by non-admin page mover) BegbertBiggs (talk) 15:17, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

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• Academi → Blackwater
• Blackwater → Blackwater (disambiguation)

– Blackwater is plainly the WP:COMMONNAME and appropriate title for this article. Sources from after the name change (other than the company itself) most frequently refer to it as "Blackwater," and that is the name by which it is best known to the public. For example, the Guardian publishes in 2014 "US jury convicts Blackwater guards in 2007 killing of Iraqi civilians" and Foreign Policy that same year "Blackwater's Descendants Are Doing Just Fine". Years after the name change, journalists understand that Blackwater is still the name their readers will recognize, and "Academi," while official, remains obscure. The company changed its name twice specifically to escape its own notoriety, so this is by design. The disambiguation page also needs to be moved to "Blackwater (disambiguation)," for which "Blackwater" would be the primary topic. I'm aware this has been discussed before, but the arguments for the current name had little relation to naming policy, and the original move discussion was closed with only six participants. —Rutebega (talk) 05:02, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

• Support rename to some variation of Blackwater. I raised this discussion earlier elsewhere myself. Modern coverage near-uniformly refers to the company as Blackwater even today, even when referring to its current activities; the rush to change the article's name was plainly a mistake. I am uncertain whether it is appropriate for this to claim the disambiguation or whether it would make more sense to move it to Blackwater USA or the like - either could be appropriate. --Aquillion (talk) 00:25, 13 January 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose primarytopic grab. OK to rename to some variant of Blackwater X, but not displace the disambig page. Dicklyon (talk) 03:48, 13 January 2021 (UTC)
• Move to Blackwater (company), which already redirects to it. Not the primary topic for Blackwater, but Blackwater is certainly its common name. -- Necrothesp (talk) 11:33, 14 January 2021 (UTC)
• Move to Blackwater (company), my searches indicate that it is not the primary topic, but its common name is Blackwater. (t · c) buidhe 15:12, 15 January 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose Per WP:NCCORP. It specifies we don't include the legal status portion of the name (e.g., "inc.", "ltd.", etc.), and to exclude extra verbiage when that is not commonly in use. But it does not say to use a name which is unrelated to the corporate name. The company Academi IS a descendant of Blackwater, after several changes of ownership, management and mergers. But if you get an invoice today, it doesn't say Blackwater. If you write a contract with them, you don't specify Blackwater. If you sue them, you don't send the notification to Blackwater (or the judge throws the case out for issues of fact). Blackwater is a common name only when used as a curse word, which is rather WP:NPOV. Tarl N. (discuss) 19:08, 15 January 2021 (UTC)

  Tarl N., it is a blessing that we are not bound by what wikipedia's many guidelines do not say. Our naming policy is clear in directing us to follow what reliable sources say, not invoices or company letterhead. And, as long as we stick to what reliable sources report, we are also kept safe from violating NPOV. Our little project can at times be quite elegant in its simplicity. —Rutebega (talk) 04:11, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

  What this RFC is asking is the equivalent of renaming Russia to Soviet Union. Because the Russia IS the successor to the Soviet Union, after several changes of ownership and management, mergers and splits. And we need to hammer everyone with the memories of the horrible things done by the Soviet Union, as opposed to what Russia IS. The way to handle this would be to have a separate article for history of Blackwater, not say that an article about a current company must be renamed to a historical legacy name. This article makes no bones about the history of the company and redirects are in place for Blackwater->Academi. The "most frequently referenced" applies only to those referring specifically to the circa 2007 incidents, not current usage. Tarl N. (discuss) 11:13, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

• Move to Blackwater (company), for reasons given by Necrothesp and buidhe and, primarily, recognizability per WP:CRITERIA. Errantius (talk) 00:32, 16 January 2021 (UTC)
• Move to Blackwater (company) Rreagan007 (talk) 20:20, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

I also support a move to Blackwater (company) if that option has greater consensus. —Rutebega (talk) 04:22, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Fully protected edit request

Please fix the double redirect Blackwater USA by retargeting it to Blackwater (company). This is necessary due to the recent move (see above section). BegbertBiggs (talk) 15:41, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

 Done Izno (talk) 18:48, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

Academi? Blackwater? Constellis? Oh my...

I just edited the lead to reflect the naming history of this company as I've been able to ascertain it. Much of the previous lead appeared to lean on the Constellis company's official site 'About us' section [1], which on its own is a little problematic (see WP:PRIMARY). But the real problem I found with that is that site claims (both) that Constellis was formed in 2010, but that "Constellis Group, Inc." was first established in 2011 (as a holding company that included Triple Canopy). In addition, I was unable to find ANY mention of Constellis in ANY news sources prior to 2014 [2]. Taken together, that seriously discounts the reliability of the website. So I've added what I can from other reliable sources. PhotogenicScientist (talk) 15:18, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for trying to fix this mess, although it's still a mess. The infobox… the title is "Blackwater (company)" but then the infobox refers to Constellis. The former is, as the infobox says, defunct since 2014. The latter isn't, but it also isn't (supposed to be) the topic of this article.

A mess.

What there should be is two articles, one talking about Blackwater (and maybe Xe/Academi) and one about Constellis. This mixing of articles is just a recipe for a messy disaster, but unfortunately, it's what Wikipedia (the "majority" of editors (the majority of the people with power)) seems to prefer. jae (talk) 02:35, 4 August 2023 (UTC)