Talk:The Data Incubator

Contested deletion

This page is not unambiguously promotional, because...

To Chrisw80:

Regarding WP:RS: The article is about a bootcamp / fellowship. It is similar to other articles about bootcamps / fellowships like Dev Bootcamp, Hack Reactor, General Assembly (school). It contains 17 external references, which is more than many of the other bootcamp pages cited above. All the sources for the external references themselves have wikipedia articles. Furthermore, it is the primary feature in 3 of these references, which are independent news articles cited as references:

• http://venturebeat.com/2014/04/15/ny-gets-new-bootcamp-for-data-scientists-its-free-but-harder-to-get-into-than-harvard/
• http://www.computerworld.com/article/2488869/big-data/cornell-tech-funded-startup-launching-bootcamp-for-data-scientists.html
• http://thenextweb.com/insider/2015/07/02/data-incubator-opens-a-west-coast-campus-to-groom-the-next-generation-of-data-scientists/

The first two featuring extensive interviews with employees, advisors, and independent experts, who themselves have wikipedia pages (Yann LeCun). These sources each meet the independence, depth of coverage, and breadth of audience requirements in Wikipedia:Notability_(organizations_and_companies)#Primary_criteria.

Regarding CSD G11: The article reads similarly to those about Dev Bootcamp, Hack Reactor, General Assembly (school). If there are specific language changes you would like to make, please do so.

--Afghan3948 (talk) 23:10, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

Hello Afghan3948 (talk · contribs), thank you for replying to contest deletion, I appreciate open discussion. It appears almost every single one of the 17 references other than the three you point out were written by Michael Li. Also, please read WP:OTHERSTUFF, the existence and nature of other articles on Wikipedia doesn't apply here (though I will probably take a look at those, too, as you've pointed them out). Also please note that the existence of a Wikipedia page for someone or some company does not confer notability, as Wikipedia itself is not considered a reliable source. I'm also concerned about the extensive inappropriate linking that occurred concurrently on at least a dozen other related pages by the two other editors of this article (an article just created hours ago). In addition, there are a wide variety of exceptional claims unsupported by the sources, including "Hiring companies include..." in the lede where the cited article contains none of the company names. Also, the statement "As a result, The Data Incubator is regularly invited to comment about big data, hiring, and training in the business and technology press..." is only supported by statements made by Michael Li across a wide variety of websites. I'm also concerned about the independence of the Venture Beat/Eric Blattberg source, as it seems Michael Li has some connection there, thus it may not be independent. I'm concerned about the TNW source, as it's my understanding that they are essentially a blog site, and blog sites rarely have comprehensive editorial oversight. I'm also concerned by the repeated external linking to the website for the article's subject. This is not an exhaustive list of my concerns here, but what I've presented is sufficient, to warrant speedy deletion per G11. Fortunately, my assessment is not the only one that matters, an admin will review and make their own assessment. Thank you for your time. Chrisw80 (talk) 00:10, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

-- thank you for replying. I also appreciate the open discussion. Responses below:

• "Hiring companies include...": I must have forgotten to cite those ... I will add in the references.
• "As a result, The Data Incubator is regularly invited to comment about big data, hiring, and training in the business and technology press ...": if you read the links in question are The Data Incubator / Michael Li commenting about big data, hiring, and training in the business and technology press. They directly demonstrate the claim. I'm not sure what could more definitely demonstrate this.
• "I'm also concerned about the independence of the Venture Beat/Eric Blattberg source": there is no independent source to verify this claim and it clearly relies on "Weasel Words" like "concerned". This sentence would never be accepted in a wikipedia article. It appears from the source and Google that their relationship is that one interviewed the other.
• " I'm concerned about the TNW source, as it's my understanding that they are essentially a blog site,": there is no independent source to verify Chrisw80's assertion about TNW and he has clearly labeled it as his opinion. According to it's wikipedia article, TNW "is an online publisher of tech and web development news" and "It employs 35 people in Amsterdam and 12 journalists across the globe." The source is also commonly cited in wikipedia articles about technology (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stickers_as_a_Service, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSpy, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sticker_(Internet)).
• "I'm also concerned by the repeated external linking to the website for the article's subject." > I think you mean the linking to the subject's webpage. I can remove them.
• Note that the response has not responded to how this article compares to Dev Bootcamp, Hack Reactor, General Assembly (school). Nor has he said anything about the ComputerWorld article (and presumably accepts it's authority).

I understand from Chrisw80's previous comments that he does not place much store in the validity of wikipedia articles. However, he surely must understand that they are better evidence than his own unsupported conjecture. This is not an exhaustive list of my concerns about Chrisw80's comments but is sufficient to dismiss his claims.

However, if Chrisw80 has specific objections to statements, I invite him to edit them: it's easy to be destructive, harder to constructive. Afghan3948 (talk) 00:58, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

I wanted to add that I am new to this. However, it seems to me that:

• the references cited are often used in wikipedia (e.g. VB, Computer World, TNW).
• the tone does not differ much from the tone of other wikipedia pages on similar companies: Dev Bootcamp, Hack Reactor, General Assembly (school).
• Chrisw80's other arguments are primarily conjecture and hearsay.

If this article warrants speedy deletion per G11 for the reasons that Chrisw80 outlined, then so do the 6 other wikipedia I have cited in this Talk Page. If Chrisw80 were being consistent and not singling out this article, he should flag all of those (and others ones that fall under this criteria). Afghan3948 (talk) 01:19, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

Hello, we seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot here. My apologies if I've made this seem confrontational. I'm sharing my concerns, please do not take it personally. Regarding "Michael Li commenting about big data, hiring, and training in the business and technology press. They directly demonstrate the claim." The content has been changed somewhat since I commented, but it's still problematic. It's a primary source, and the statement "...regularly invited to comment about big data, hiring..." would be WP:OR. Given that the majority of the article references are written by him, that raises a lot of red flags. Regarding "there is no independent source to verify this claim and it clearly relies on "Weasel Words" like "concerned"." Please be polite, saying I'm using "weasel words" isn't called for. The connection I refer to is based on that Michael Li contributed an article to Venture Beat and contributed one of the articles used in the references, therefore he has an association of some sort with Venture Beat, easily verified. The exact nature and depth of the connection is unknown, which is why I only used the word "concerned". I did not wish to entirely dismiss the source based only on the one article he contributed, again why I only used the word "concerned". Regarding TNW, from their website "Probably the brand we're best known for, TNW Blog launched in 2006." Again, I wasn't sure whether the article in question was specifically a blog, so I used the word "concerned", however I will admit my original statement was poorly chosen and inaccurate especially when I said "essentially a blog site". I did respond to your comment about other Wikipedia pages. Did you read WP:OTHERSTUFF that I linked to? Existing articles aren't a good argument. Your article was new and subject to direct review, as explained when the article was created. I haven't reviewed the other pages yet, but may at some point. I understand that you are new, which is why the article creation wizard is highly recommended over simply creating a page as it gives a chance for an article to be drafted, reviewed, and improved. If you'd like, I can move this article to Draft space for you to work on it further? Regarding the ComputerWorld article, no I didn't find anything particularly wrong with it, but I didn't spend much time with it either. My statements are supported to the extent I have noted above. Please also take a look at WP:CIRC, Wikipedia is officially and self-admittedly a non-reliable source. Thank you for your time. I'll leave it at that. Chrisw80 (talk) 01:40, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

Hi Chrisw80,

Thank you for your response. My apologies if I may have seemed snarky.

• "Michael Li commenting about big data, hiring, and training in the business and technology press." I understand your point about original research. I don't think it's an important aspect of the article so if you would like to remove it, I will not object.
• Regarding VB: Thank you for being specific about your concern about a contributed piece and a reporting piece from VB. Most media publications have contributed pieces as well as original content and those two groups are usually separate staff (for both practical and editorial reasons). To put it another way, just because the NYTimes runs an op ed by the Speaker of the House does not mean they have a "relationship" or that the Time's reporting on the Speaker, or the Hosue of Representatives should necessarily be questioned. For VB specifically, there is a web form for submitting contributed pieces: http://venturebeat.com/guest-posts/, and Michael Li's contributed piece fits the requirements for submission. Finally, the contributed piece (which allegedly indicates a relationship) was published on July 18, 2015, over one year after the original reporting on the company (April 15, 2014). The scant evidence for the alleged relationship only appeared a year after the original reporting.
• RE TNW: the reporter appears to write multiple news posts (i.e. not opinion pieces) a day and is TNW's "West Coast writer" http://thenextweb.com/author/nateswanner/. This suggests more than a casual blogging relationship.
• RE ComputeWorld: just noting you still have no complaints about it.
• Thanks for expalining WP:OTHERSTUFF: I didn't understand what that was a response to. I am sorry about that. However, the article does say OTHERSTUFF "may be an argument that this article is not bad enough to be speedily deleted;") so I think my point about Speedy deletion still stands. Also, G11 states "Any article that describes its subject from a neutral point of view does not qualify for this criterion [G11]." I believe the language is neutral but if you disagree, please let me know what you disagree with and I will be happy to find mutually acceptable language.
• "If you'd like, I can move this article to Draft space for you to work on it further?": To be completely frank: I'm most frustrated by two aspects:

First is when there are general complaints (e.g.

) without any details. I have nothing to respond to. Like I said: it's easy to destroy, hard to create.

Secondly, when you outlied concerns, I either address them in Talk or make accommodating changes in the Main Page (and I have on done so for a number of points). However, you explicitly said "This is not an exhaustive list of my concerns", setting up a kafkaesque endless queue of litmus tests. My sense is that your main concerns are not notability but promotion. I would prefer if you just listed all your concerns about promotion and just gave me a chance to fix them all at once. Otherwise, moving to draft just feels like a backdoor article deletion.

I hope I wasn't too blunt and thank you for taking the time to explain the wikipedia editing process to me.

Afghan3948 (talk) 02:09, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

Neutrality

removed non-neutral language. +1 remove npov tag. 166.184.175.194 (talk) 13:45, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

+1 remove NPOV tag. No specific complaints and the article seems OK to me 23brinslow (talk) 16:06, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

The neutrality problem is pervasive through the article, as MOST of the references are written by the owner of the company. I can't support removing the neutrality tag with that content still there unless it is supported instead by reliable independent sources. You would like specifics?

• Guidelines for infoboxes are generally that only the most prominent items are to go there, not comprehensive lists. Extensive lists like this look like marketing fluff.
• "Private" is also the correct information for the 'Type' field for a school, not "Free Big Data Fellowship".
• "Selectivity" has serious undue weight in the article. Presumably there is more important things about this school to talk about? The first two sentences are redundant and the third is supported by a primary source. Put the Venture Beat sentence in the lede, and drop the selectivity section altogether.
• "The Data Incubator was founded in 2014 in New York City by Michael Li, a former data scientist at JPMorgan Chase, Hedge Fund D. E. Shaw & Co., VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, and..." is not supported by the source.
• "The Data Incubator is regularly invited to comment about big data, hiring, and training in the business and technology press, including..." is only supported by primary sources, and as the page author noted, it is a simple thing to submit an article for consideration..this does NOT equal "regularly 'invited' to comment" (emphasis added). It is purely promotional and needs to go.
• "...ranked second by Data Economy for Data Science..." The external link to Data Economy should be removed. Chrisw80 (talk) 19:04, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for responding with specific comments Chrisw80. I really appreciate your taking the time.

• I have removed "The Data Incubator is regularly invited to comment about big data" that only you seem to object to for now as I don't think it adds that much to the article.
• "Guidelines for infoboxes ... only the most prominent items are to go there, not comprehensive lists."> I'm not in a position to say what is most prominent (but I encourage you to take a stab at it).
• "Selectivity has serious undue weight in the article" > the title of the two cited articles (""NY Gets New Bootcamp for Data Scientists: It's free but Harder to get into than Harvard" and "15-things-that-are-harder-to-get-into-than-harvard-2015-11") basically say the school is selective. As such, it appears that this is the most salient point.
• "The first two sentences are redundant" > The first two sentences explain "selectivity": they are actually different facts and hence not redundant. But I swapped the order and removed the section heading for the sake of compromise.
• I have changed to private (I guess this is a convention, and sorry if I'm ignorant of these).
• "The Data Incubator was founded in 2014 in New York City by Michael Li" > added the original source I found (sorry about this one, I forgot it).
• "The external link to Data Economy should be removed" > I personally find links useful (saves a roundtrip to Google) but if you insist ...

I would kindly ask Chrisw80 to make your proposed edits on the Main Page rather than ordering others to fix things on this Talk Page. Many of your proposed changes are simple two line edits. It would really save everyone a lot of time. Like I said, it's easy to destroy, hard to build.

Afghan3948 (talk) 02:43, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

I would like to apologize for my tone. I need to keep that in check. I have been making what should be suggestions here on the talk page, rather than changing the article as if I make my changes to the article, they may be more drastic, and it is considered good form to discuss what might be considered major changes on the talk page before doing so. If I may ask, what is your association with The Data Incubator? Chrisw80 (talk) 02:50, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

Additional Verification

Page is well referenced. User:Chrisw80: can you be more specific? If not, +1 for removal of sources template. 23brinslow (talk) 16:10, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

No, the page is poorly referenced. The sheer quantity of references does NOT make it well referenced. Only 4 out of the 17 references I looked at yesterday (up to 6 out of 21) now, I think) were written by someone OTHER than the company owner, were simply near verbatim interviews of him, or were short-lists of related companies. Primary sourced content should only be used to verify trivial information (like locations of campuses), not to make up the bulk of the article. Chrisw80 (talk) 19:04, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

Hi User:Chrisw80: I made some edits and there are now 6 sources:

• Venture Beat
• Computer World
• Business Insider
• Data Economy
• The Next Web
• HertzFoundation,

At this point, every sentence has a supporting reference. I agree that it is not about the number of references (this is a short article) but when almost every sentence is referenced, it is hard to say it needs additional verification. But if you have specifics, please list them below. I am happy to make reasonable changes as I did above. +1 for remove of sources template (if I get a vote).

Afghan3948 (talk) 02:49, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

At a quick glance it shows remarkable improvement. I'll admit I was wrong with the CSD, CSDs are for articles that show no promise of being salvageable without a complete rewrite. Everyone gets a vote on Wikipedia, but your vote is only as good as your reasoning behind it. I'll read it more carefully later, but I will likely remove the tags when I do, at the same time making a few edits to clarify things a bit. If you're not happy with my edits, we can discuss further here. I am still curious about your affiliation with The Data Incubator. If you are associated with them, you need to declare your association. Chrisw80 (talk) 03:25, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

Update: I've made a variety of edits to improve the quality of the article. I recommend you go through fill out the citations with the author, date, and access date tags also. I've removed the issue tags also. Chrisw80 (talk) 05:23, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

:: I will have to look up how to do these in a bit. Thank you also for explaining the discussion policy and making these edit suggestions. The only change I would suggest is replacing Computational number theory with Machine Learning in the info box (they really have nothing in common). Afghan3948 (talk) 13:41, 2 February 2016 (UTC)