Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sageworks

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. The delete opinions don't convincingly rebut the notability-based argument put forth by Doncram, so we have no consensus. Note that neutrality issues can also be remedied by editing. Sandstein 22:38, 3 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Sageworks

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Self-promotional article by a non-notable company--Slowestonian (talk) 20:41, 18 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Business-related deletion discussions. ^BE _CK ^Y _SA ^{Y L}E _S 15:24, 19 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions. ^BE _CK ^Y _SA ^{Y L}E _S 15:24, 19 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of North Carolina-related deletion discussions. ^BE _CK ^Y _SA ^{Y L}E _S 15:24, 19 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. While the article might be supported by COI editing (i have not investigated), the topic is notable. The firm produces aggregate analysis that is widely reported in the Wall Street Journal, in Forbes (for example in Forbes on January 15). Its financial sector software is reported upon in ABA Banking journal, is one of earlier hits in the Google Scholar link above. So many news and scholar hits that I see show this is an important source and has important products that are in fact covered. Article is tagged for COI, which may be appropriate, but that is addressed by the tag and future editing. wp:AFDISNOTFORCLEANUP. --do ncr am 01:42, 24 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Further, there is this academic working paper about Sagework's data (Added note: in fact that is titled "What do Private Firms Look Like?" and is presented all as being an appendix, presumably as a supplement to paper(s) using the data to investigate research questions. --do ncr am 18:20, 30 January 2015 (UTC)), and a number more papers by the same authors (NYU professor John Asker and Joan Farre-Menser, who finished her NYU PhD dissertation in 2012) using the data. Working papers at SSRN.COM, publications various or in pipeline still. These works are themselves cited by other academics, and also in financial press, e.g. Financial Times (FT.com) reporting on "Short-termism" (Jul 14, 2013), with article starting: "Investors depend on long-term returns from stocks to fund their retirements. What a nasty irony, therefore, that public ownership gives company managers reason to favour short-term profits over long-term growth. / In a recent paper, John Asker, Joan Farre-Mensa and Alexander Ljungqvist - researchers at New York University and Harvard - find new evidence of this. They compare investment levels at a large sample of private and publicly traded companies over a decade... ". This "short-termism" is covered in other publications too, i see from a non-free literature database search. The Sageworks database gives means for research on how private firms differ from public firms -- and they do differ greatly -- and it is highly appropriate for Wikipedia to provide a reference article about it as a major financial database, like Compustat. --do ncr am 02:23, 24 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, NORTH AMERICA¹⁰⁰⁰ 00:08, 26 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Keep and tidy up- per doncram the company is a significant one and one we should have have an article on, whatever the problems with current article. Artw (talk) 00:24, 26 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per do ncr am. VMS Mosaic (talk) 02:28, 27 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Delete The company engages in highly questionable practice of offering software as a service, and then repackaging and reselling the customer data that it was entrusted with. Private companies typically safeguard their financial and operational information and its disclosure is considered highly detrimental. Sageworks is not audited to ensure that its data collection practices do not violate its duty to protect its customer data. Data quality and resultant reports Sageworks offers for sale may be misleading because such private data collection is not subject to the disclosure and transparency laws governing the reporting of data for publicly traded companies. --Harald Forkbeard (talk) 05:41, 27 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- All the more reason to document that behavior in our article here, if it can be reliably sourced. —Cryptic 05:48, 27 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  - This behavior is openly stated by Sageworks itself in its Privacy policy. The policy is already referenced in the article. Comparison to Compustat is bogus as Compustat aggregates data for public companies. Such data is subject to the disclosure and transparency requirements of the US Securities Act of 1933. --Harald Forkbeard (talk) 05:58, 27 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    - You appear to be making a POV argument (i.e., I don't like what they do). Please see WP:NPOV. VMS Mosaic (talk) 08:52, 27 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
      - I state the facts, based on the company's own Privacy Policy. You, on the other hand, are making the WP:NPOV judgment calls without any fact based evidence being offered. --Harald Forkbeard (talk) 09:17, 27 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
      - Please consult Sageworks Privacy Policy, with links offered in the article. There is definitely a question of ethics involved in reselling and profiting from the customer provided information that the company is supposed to safeguard. --Harald Forkbeard (talk) 09:22, 27 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
        Uh, you miss the point. Ethics, right, wrong, bad, good, criminal, saint, etc. have no bearing on whether an article is kept or deleted. All that matters is if the article meets Wikipedia guidelines. So far, nothing you have said has any meaning in this discussion. VMS Mosaic (talk) 09:31, 27 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
        It is clear upon reading that the article has been created for self-promotional purposes by those affiliated with Sageworks, in violation of WK:COI. --Harald Forkbeard (talk) 22:01, 27 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Delete The academic working paper is not about Sagework's data but contains references and overview in an Appendix. Moreover, this other such publications are written by the same group of authors, who do not state what their affiliation with Sageworks is. The overall article in Wikipedia offers no information beyond obvious self-promotion by a private company seeking to exploit Wikipedia as a soapbox platform. --Slowestonian (talk) 21:47, 28 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, but:

The "appendix" is an academic paper itself. I added to my comment above, that in fact what I termed a working paper (correctly) is titled "What do Private Firms Look Like?" and is presented all as being an appendix, presumably as a supplement to paper(s) using the data to investigate research questions. It's all about the Sageworks data on private firms and how it compares to Compustat data on public companies. The working paper/"appendix" is 34 pages, 6 of them text pages, the rest mostly tables. Here's its abstract:
Private firms in the U.S. are not subject to public reporting requirements, so relatively little is known about their characteristics and behavior – until now. This Data Appendix describes a new database on private U.S. firms, created by Sageworks Inc. in cooperation with hundreds of accounting firms. The contents of the Sageworks database mirror Compustat, the standard database for public U.S. firms. It contains balance sheet and income statement data for 95,297 private firms covering 250,507 firms-years over the period 2002 to 2007. We compare this database to the joint Compustat-CRSP database of public firms and to the Federal Reserve’s 2003 National Survey of Small Business Finances.
The authors do disclose their relationship:
We are grateful to Sageworks Inc. for access to their database on private companies, and to Drew White and Tim Keogh of Sageworks for their help and advice regarding their data. The authors gratefully acknowledge generous financial support from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation under the Berkley-Kauffman Grant Program
That is how academic papers in finance and similar areas are done. Researchers request access to private datasets, and they get to publish academic papers (and advance knowledge and all that), and they acknowledge their sources. When a database is new, the first academics to use it probably have to describe it and establish that its okay/good; this supports their use of it in the main research work they proceed with. Yes, the same group of authors, or at least 2 out of 3 of them, have continued in their successful collaboration and have gotten many papers using this extraordinary dataset. Good for them!

--do ncr am 18:11, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Delete Nothing notable about company performance data collection by Sageworks. Reliable sources of such information, as an example, are Dunn & Bradstreet and Hoover's. Nothing notable or unique to be found in the articles referred to. This is a clear case of company staff trying to infiltrate Wikipedia for marketing purposes.--Physitsky (talk) 04:57, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know about those two as potential sources of databases for academic researchers to work with. There is Category:Financial data vendors with other database sources, such as Institutional Brokers' Estimate System. That's missing databases that are used. When someone goes through the expense and trouble to create a new database -- on stock prices, on financial statement data, on bankruptcies, on pensions, on salaries and bonuses paid to executives, or whatever -- where previously there was no such information generally available, then it is important and it is sold by them and academic researchers are eager to use it and do. This one is an obviously important one in the field, as previously there has been a horrendous over-focus, in the U.S. and in fact world-wide, on the 4,000 or so U.S. public companies, although other nation's datasets have gradually become available too.
Complaints about anything too promotional in the article are to be addressed by editing. wp:AFDISNOTFORCLEANUP.

--do ncr am 18:11, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

First, you are wrong in suggesting that there are no private company databases available. Data services like BizComps, Pratt's Stats and Done Deals have existed for years.

Moreover, private data collection is fraught with inaccuracies as there is no requirement for full and transparent disclosure. That's why professionals use the public company data and make adjustments for size and lack of marketability to apply data to private companies. Sageworks data collection methods are highly questionable and not subject to scrutiny, unlike the public company data that is subject to the rules under the Securities Act of 1933.

The result is that Sageworks data is of doubtful quality and may be misleading due to the highly suspicious data collection practices and lack of independent oversight. --Harald Forkbeard (talk) 21:18, 3 February 2015 (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.