Talk:Picaboo

Recent edit

Preserving here by providing this link. K.e.coffman (talk) 06:13, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

Hello @K.e.coffman: I restored the product section, I removed it myself originally as it was sourced only by pages of the company. I restored it when I could find enough independent sources to reference it properly and I did neutralize it then.

I reviewed the text and eliminated the only two adjetives left ("large variety" and "high level"), so I think it is fully compliant with WP:PROMO:

Advertising, marketing or public relations. Information about companies and products must be written in an objective and unbiased style, free of puffery. All article topics must be verifiable with independent, third-party sources, so articles about very small "garage" or local companies are typically unacceptable. Wikipedia articles about a company or organization are not an extension of their website or other social media marketing efforts. External links to commercial organizations are acceptable if they identify notable organizations which are the topic of the article. Wikipedia neither endorses organizations nor runs affiliate programs. See also Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies) for guidelines on corporate notability. Those promoting causes or events, or issuing public service announcements, even if noncommercial, should use a forum other than Wikipedia to do so. Contributors must disclose any payments they receive for editing Wikipedia. See also Wikipedia:Conflict of interest.

Please let me know if you agree.

I will re-open the AfD for this page with a second nomination latter on today. I think there is still room for trying to reach a consensus. I think it is a very interesting discussion and I would really appreciate your participation in the debate once I re-open it. If there is a reasoned argument of why notability is not met or why it does not meet what Wikipedia is not or if there are objective reasons to deem it promotional I would happily change my tune and recommend its deletion. At this point I feel that many of the sources I added to the article do contribute to establish notability and that WP:GNG is clearly met. However I very much welcome your comments and those of the other people I respect that did not share my analysis on the previous AfD as this are key policies and if my interpretation on how to apply them is wrong I need to re-tune it as soon as possible. Best regards.--Crystallizedcarbon (talk) 08:08, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

@K.e.coffman: Hello again, SwisterTwister made this request to overturn the AfD close to delete. I have requested that the AfD be reopen to allow a discussion on notability and what is deemed promotional so that weather it is kept or deleted we try to reach a consensus based on policy. Before opening a second AfD I will wait for the resolution of that request. Best regards. --Crystallizedcarbon (talk) 19:01, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

Additional comment on notability

On my search for sources I have found that besides the references included in the article, Picaboo is cited extensively in specialized books along with other notable established printing services like Snapfish, Shutterfly and others. Here are links to some examples:

The Graphic Designer's Guide to Portfolio Design, BarbwireDigi's Guide to Creating A Digital Genealogy Scrapbook, Lessons in DSLR Workflow with Lightroom and Photoshop, Sharing Digital Photos For Dummies, Mass Customization and Sustainability, Destination Weddings For Dummies, PHOTOVIDEOi, The $1,000,000 Desktop Publishing Idea Book, Your $1500 Frugal Wedding, Your Family. Your Photos. Your Stories and more...

Should there be a mention in the article that like some of its competitors it is commonly recommended option for photo book printing? --Crystallizedcarbon (talk) 21:17, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

Debate on weather this article meets WP:GNG and if it violates WP:PROMO

Pinging @Ritchie333: @K.e.coffman: @Bejnar: @DGG: @Cunard: @SwisterTwister: The AfD for this article was closed with no consensus and I had no chance to respond to the last delete !vote. I still feel that the article meets the requirements for inclusion. My interpretation is that it clearly meets WP:GNG and that it does not violate WP:ISNOT. I personally added multiple references from reliable sources to the article and following the guidelines in WP:PROMO I neutralized it removing puffery and adding some of the negative comments in the reviews to reach a NPOV. I also removed multiple references to the company webpage. Still, since a consensus was not reached I would like to invite the people involved in the discussion to share their points of view on Notability and promotional content with the idea of having a constructive dialog an hopefully reaching consensus.

There are a few questions for which I would appreciate to get your inputs. We can start with notability. please let me know if you agree with the following statements, and if not, why:

1. I think that if a reliable source includes praise towards a company or product or uses a press release as one of its primary sources, unless it is proven that is not independent still qualifies and contributes to establishing notability as outlined at WP:GNG.
2. I think that if an article has at least three sources with in-depth coverage from separate independent and reliable sources It can be defended that it meets GNG.
3. The AfD for this article lists multiple sources found by myself and Cunard. Even if there is no consensus on my first question, I think that reviews by reliable sources that point both advantages and disadvantages of the tool and compare it to others like the reviews at the WSJ, PC Magazine, Tom's Guide and the extensive comparative review with other tools at the book Create Your Own Photo Book... are more than enough to establish notability in this case.
4. I think that an article that lists the features of a product is not promotional, if those features are covered by independent reliable sources and as long as no peacock terms or weasel words are included.
5. I think this article was promotional, as a significant amount of its content was originally sourced by the company webpage and the author seemed to be a SPA but I think now that is no longer the case. I think that if an editor improves a promotional article by neutralizing it and establishing notability it should be kept, even if it might (or may not) be helping the objectives of the company providing they were behind its creation.
6. I believe that we should try to make our policies, guidelines and their application as objective as possible, understanding that while there is always some room for interpretation, overstretching them is usually not a good idea. I think that the better choice if we feel that they can be improved is to propose those changes to our community.

I look forward to your comments. Regards. --Crystallizedcarbon (talk) 18:08, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

I thought it was a marginal case myself, but I only found a few sources. If Cunard has found more, it's probably a keep. Since the AfD has closed as "no consensus", which defaults to the article staying, I would best leave it. Remember that these are guidelines, not rules, so they may or may not apply in each instance. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 18:12, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

@Ritchie333: Thank you for your input. I will leave the AfD as is. I understand from your comment that guidelines should be followed unless doing so would come in conflict with a policy. So if an article has in-depth coverage from multiple independent and reliable sources as long as it does not violate WP:NOT or any other policy it should be kept. Correct? --Crystallizedcarbon (talk) 19:49, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

a source based on a press release is not a RS for notability, because it is not independent. in judging if sources are sufficient, it's the quality of the sources that matters, not how many there are. The depth of a review matters as much as its neutrality, and good technical advertising includes the problematic aspects if it expects to be taken seriously. If the features are in sufficient detail that only a potential purchaser would be interested, it's promotional. Our current policies are not objective; if we had objective policies for companies, they would include company size and market share. I continue to think the firm fails notability and the article continues to be promotional. DGG ( talk ) 21:41, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

Hello @DGG: thank you very much for participating and for your comments. I would really appreciate it if you could explain with more detail how we can apply our guidelines or policies to justify some of your claims:

The first one is that if an articles bases some of its content on a press release it is not independent. But according to our general notability guideline independent is defined as:

"Independent of the subject" excludes works produced by the article's subject or someone affiliated with it. For example, advertising, press releases, autobiographies, and the subject's website are not considered independent.

It does explicitly exclude press releases, but not secondary sources based on press releases. If an independent source chooses to write an article basing some of its information on a press release, and adds its own analysis or views my understanding was that it is conferring some notability. Saying it is not independent does not seem to fit the definition in the guideline, as even though some of its content may be based on a PR published by the subject the article itself, if it is published by a reliable source the choice of its sources can not be automatically attributed to some affiliation with the subject (for example if it was paid to write the article). If that is the case, How can you prove that the author is indeed affiliated with the subject?

Your second claim used to dismiss the reviews by the WSJ and three others including a whole book with an extensive review is that good technical advertising includes problematic aspects. That may be the case, but how can you use that to prove that the article's authors of the three reviews and of the book were all payed by or affiliated with the company? Also it seems very hard to believe and even harder to justify that a company would pay to have a review that said that it was easy to use but that the quality of the printed pictures and the fonts were not good. Don't you agree?

The claim that including sufficient detail that only a potential purchaser would be interested makes an article promotional also seems hard for me to back by policy as WP:PROMO reads:

Advertising, marketing or public relations. Information about companies and products must be written in an objective and unbiased style, free of puffery. All article topics must be verifiable with independent, third-party sources, so articles about very small "garage" or local companies are typically unacceptable. Wikipedia articles about a company or organization are not an extension of their website or other social media marketing efforts. External links to commercial organizations are acceptable if they identify notable organizations which are the topic of the article. Wikipedia neither endorses organizations nor runs affiliate programs. See also Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies) for guidelines on corporate notability. Those promoting causes or events, or issuing public service announcements, even if noncommercial, should use a forum other than Wikipedia to do so. Contributors must disclose any payments they receive for editing Wikipedia. See also Wikipedia:Conflict of interest.

I think that the policy clearly states that information about companies and products is OK as long as it is backed by third party sources written in an objective and unbiased style and free from puffery, (peacock terms, weasel words). I agree that there should be a limit to the amount of detail to be introduced in the articles but including some of the main features backed by reliable sources makes sense to me. In any case, the current wording of the policy does not mention the amount of detail backed by RS in the product description as a criteria. Do you agree? if not, how could it be justified based on WP:PROMO?

Thanks again for taking the time to answer. I look forward to your comments. --Crystallizedcarbon (talk) 21:31, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

rather, the policy that you quoted defines some sorts of content that is not acceptable. The formal basis for my statement about product details is NOT CATALOG, supplemented by the tens of thousands of discussions leading to the removal of excessively detailed content. There is obviously an overlap between what is of concern to a general audience with interest in the topic and what is of concern to a prospective purchaser, and this will vary with the subject. For example, our practice is considerably more detailed with computer hardware and motor vehicles, basically because so many of us here are aficionados of one or the other. Even for prices, I've previously argued that we need to give some idea of the price range of a product so people know where it fits into the world, but I'm not sure this has been accepted. There is also the question of the importance of the company or product--though we have never had a formal rule on this, see WP:EINSTEIN. Ever more than potential purchaser, there are matters that concern only a prospective or current employee : he qualification for entrance into a position, the amenities of the workplace, the retirement plan. Or concern only an immediate neighbor of the business: the exact local charities it gave a few thousand dollars to. There will be be exceptions where they might well be general interest, especially for a major company: if it gave a few hundred million dollars, or sponsors a major sports team, or the controversy about Uber's pay scales.

As for your first point, the criterion for independent is the expected review by competent professional journalists. Reprinted press releases may be common practice but it's still not professional by our standards. DGG ( talk ) 00:13, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

Hello @DGG: You make a very interesting point. Personally I agree that different subjects should receive different amount of coverage and I fully agree with you that there should be a lot more detail in Einstein's biography that in the biography of a notable mathematician with only three valid sources (to put an example). I personally use the amount of coverage by reliable sources and the potential interest to a reader as an indicator of the correct level of detail.

As far as the current article is concerned, the problem again is that If WP:GNG is met and WP:PROMO is not violated I can't see the way to use the current wording of WP:NOTCATALOG to justify the article's deletion. It makes reference to not including pricing or availability information, which I also share, and to not include simple listings. But I could not find an explicit mention to not include a prose description the features of a product in its own article as long as they are covered by independent reliable sources. I have never used Picaboo, and I don't think I ever will as all my new pictures are now digital and I no longer print them, but after reading the article, at least I have a good Idea of what they do. I doubt I will use that information, but it could be of value to other users with interests in the company, photography or self-publishing.

Finally, I also agree with you in that if the article is just a reprinted press release (just a copy) it adds very little value (just that the publisher deemed it interesting enough for republishing). I would not consider such sources towards meeting GNG, but if the article uses a press release as one of its sources and it adds some of its content or analysis then I understand that it is valid and unless proven otherwise also independent. Would you agree?

Regards. --Crystallizedcarbon (talk) 16:43, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

i it uses it as one of its sources, it would depend on the other sources. If they were for example self serving interviews with the president of the company as is all too many articles, they don't help. There are 2 diagnostic features I use in examining whether a source is independent: one is that there be some analysis of the information from the press release, second that the language and tone of the press release not be copied in the article. DGG ( talk ) 01:05, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

Hello @DGG: I do agree with your analysis and I will keep it in mind when reviewing sources. The only thing I find difficult to defend is the part about the tone and language, While I agree that it may be an indication, I don't think that it can be used as sufficient proof to establish that the article's author is affiliated to or received compensation from the subject. Thank you again for your comments, they have been very useful for me. Best regards. --Crystallizedcarbon (talk) 08:30, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

I don't see the consensus yet that this company is notable per wikipedia standards. K.e.coffman (talk) 20:47, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Hello @K.e.coffman: Thank you for participating in the discussion. I would really appreciate it if you could enumerate which sources of the ones used in the article you feel that do not meet the requirements outlined in our general notability guidelines and to please explain why. --Crystallizedcarbon (talk) 20:56, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

• DGG writes, "a source based on a press release is not a RS for notability, because it is not independent."  No, not even close.  As per WP:N, we consider evidence from reliable independent sources.  Independence is a matter of journalistic ethics.  If a publisher reworks a press release, we trust, and must trust since we do not have independent fact checking, the publisher's quality control to ensure that the material is accurate.  To conclude otherwise would be require evidence from reliable independent sources that the publisher was known for failing to practice independence in their journalistic ethics.  We decided long ago that the opinion of Wikipedia editors could not be the basis for inclusion decisions.  Unscintillating (talk) 14:02, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

• For the exceptions, see an essay I wrote, WP:Inaccuracy.  That essay also reviews the concept of "reliability in the context".  Unscintillating (talk) 14:06, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

Hello @Unscintillating: Thank you for participating and for your valuable input. Another exception in which I agreed with DGG above would be the case of press releases that are reprinted word by word without adding any analysis or additional content by the author where all they show is that the author deemed the content worth of reprinting, but I believe that in that particular case its contribution towards establishing notability should be negligible. If the author uses the PR as a source but adds content or analysis then I feel it can be used. Do you agree?

Well, of course you are into grey areas.  If the press release is copied verbatim, this falls onto the publisher, because the publisher is part of how we analyze reliability.  PRnewswire is still a press release from the original company and is a primary source.  I'd wonder why a magazine with an editorial staff would reprint a press release verbatim, so maybe you can provide an example of such, but in principle I think this is going to be a secondary source with limited weight.  Unscintillating (talk) 23:11, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

Right, I think that a subject with one or various sources that copied press releases verbatim without any additional content or analysis by the author provide very limited notability and would need to have additional multiple independent reliable sources with more than trivial coverage to meet GNG. However, I also understand that a secondary independent source as defined by WP:SECONDARY based on a press release would be fully qualified unless it can be proven that the author received payment or is affiliated with the subject. Both the articles from Valley News and New Hampshire Business Review used in this article seem to be valid sources to me. --Crystallizedcarbon (talk) 22:31, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

• Unfortunately the New Hampshire Business Review is a publication that promotes N.H. businesses, it does not engage in much, if any, independent evaluation. It is not on par with neutral business reviews such as Forbes, Business Week or the Harvard Business Review. It is more like the Albuquerque Business First magazine. My evaluation of the New Hampshire Business Review is that, in general, it does not meet the standards of WP:RS. The Valley News is a local paper covering the northern part of the Connecticut River valley of New Hampshire and Vermont. --Bejnar (talk) 06:47, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

Hello @Bejnar: Thank you for participating in the discussion. You rise an interesting point. While I fully agree that Forbes, Business Week or even the review from the WSJ included as a source in this article clearly carry more weight than the New Hampshire Business Review that does not mean that the latter does not fully qualify as WP:RS. Most of their articles are not about companies. Yes they have a Business Excellence Awards program that follows a judging criteria to select recipients for the award among business active in the state. It is understandable that those articles and others about companies that they choose to publish may be written in a positive, non-neutral tone, like the one used as a source in this article. My understanding according to WP:BIASED:

Wikipedia articles are required to present a neutral point of view. However, reliable sources are not required to be neutral, unbiased, or objective. Sometimes non-neutral sources are the best possible sources for supporting information about the different viewpoints held on a subject.

is that even if the tone of the article is promotional that does not disqualify the source. The New Hampshire Business Review is published both online and in paper, and is subject to editorial control. Is there another issue why you would think it does not qualify as a reliable source?

Its article was used to source that the company has a yearbook service and that the WSJ selected it over three competitors in terms of finish product quality. Neither claim seems to be controversial. We have to assume that the New Hampshire Business Review published the article about this company, both online and in its printed version of the paper, because it deemed it notable enough to interest their readers and so, I understand that it meets the requirements set forth in the guideline for contributing to establish notability: In-depth coverage by a reliable source that is independent of the subject.

Regarding Valley News, is there a policy or guideline that invalidates local sources as reliable or independent? If all the sources of an article are local I understand that that may be an issue, but this is not the case here (Please see WP:AUD).

Since you did not raise objections to the remaining sources should I understand that you consider that the article meets WP:GNG? Regards. --Crystallizedcarbon (talk) 19:46, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

You may not so assume. ----Bejnar (talk) 06:47, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

That is of course fine, but I would really appreciate it if you could justify why not, based on our current guidelines and policies. Do you have anything to add to my arguments about the New Hampshire Business Review and Valley News? Do you think that the different reviews by the WSJ and others (one of them negative) or even a whole book that analyzes Picaboo and 3 competitors don't meet the requirements specified in our general notability guidelines? If so I would really appreciate it if you could let me know why based on the current wording of the guidelines. Thank you. --Crystallizedcarbon (talk) 14:12, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

If by book you are talking about Vogt, Petra (2012). Create Your Own Photo Book: Design a Stunning Portfolio, Make a Bookstore-Quality Book, that is not significantly about Picaboo, it is essentially a manual. But my time is better spent on other things than trying to convince you on this topic. --Bejnar (talk) 19:27, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

I am sorry to hear that Bejnar, If you believe that you are right I think that you should be willing to defend your statements with arguments based on policy or guidelines. That is also the best way to learn, and if you can't or even if you changed your opinion there is absolutely nothing wrong with admitting it.

If you don't want to do either that is obviously also your choice. Regards. --Crystallizedcarbon (talk) 20:21, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

I forgot to answer your comment. This features comparison is only a small part of the book you mentioned where Picaboo is cited over 40 times, Does this really seem like just a manual to you? --Crystallizedcarbon (talk) 20:42, 11 August 2017 (UTC)