User:K.e.coffman/Email to The Telegraph

Response from Wikipedia editor to "Top UK tech investors deemed not famous enough"

I read your recent article with interest: Top UK tech investors deemed not famous enough for Wikipedia. I am one of the editors indirectly referred to in the piece, so I thought I would respond. As a follow-up, the Blomfield article's discussion closed as "no consensus", defaults to keep: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tom Blomfield.

As you can see from the linked deletion discussion, the page was created by a single-purpose account, who also created the Mondo article, so likely COI-based (conflict of interest) editing. Promotional editing is a big issue for Wikipedia, that's why the corporate notability guideline has been tightened significantly. Here's the current guideline: Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies).

The articles that were deleted were deemed not to have met it. Understandably, people who are involved in the space could be upset or perceive the action as wrong, although "anti-UK sentiment" is way out there. See also the "Deletion review" for Mangrove Capital: Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2018 June 19. (This is a process that can be used to challenge the result of a deletion discussion). It was initiated by a user who states:

I work for an organisation that seeks to attract investment in UK technology. Wikipedia is an invaluable source of information for entrepreneurs seeking investment. I have a list of VC firms which have recently been deleted from Wikipedia (they include Notion Capital, Episode 1 Ventures and Scottish Equity Partners). (...) Allthingsrosy (talk) 14:46, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Source: [1]. Full thread here: User talk:Spartaz/Archive23#Mangrove Capital Partners – this is clearly someone who wants to use Wikipedia for promotion.

Another point I'd like to highlight is that having a Wikipedia page can also be a double-edged sword, especially when it comes to BLPs (biographies of living people). For example, an apparent PR person created a biography of an entrepreneur (Gurbaksh Chahal) who was subsequently convicted of domestic abuse. It's safe to say that a volunteer editor would not have created a page on this marginally notable person, to begin with. But once the page is there, all sorts of thing can appear on Wikipedia and the subject of the page has no control about what's in "their" page.

Hope this gives you additional perspective on these deletion debates. In general, if you have any questions about how Wikipedia processes and guideline work, I would be happy to provide additional information.

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