Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Heritage Makers (2nd nomination)

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. After the two early keep votes which apparently did not consider WP:NCORP, this discussion essentially came down to HighKing vs. Cunard's assessment of whether the available sources met that guideline. Other participants were evenly split on which they agreed with and I can find no basis for finding a consensus either way. – Joe (talk) 10:20, 2 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Heritage Makers

AfDs for this article:

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Heritage Makers (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)
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No indication of real notability. Written in a promotional manner. Also look at the COI issues w/r/t this article's creation, raised in the previous deletion discussion in 2007. QueenofBithynia (talk) 16:53, 5 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  • Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Literature, Companies, and Utah. CAPTAIN RAJU(T) 16:57, 5 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. There are multiple WP:RS articles about the company listed right in the references used: two from the Daily Herald and one from the Deseret News. It's definitely written in a promotional manner, but that can be easily fixed. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 07:33, 6 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • I've cleaned it up a bit now, removing a couple useless refs and organizing the refs so they didn't duplicate each other. The wording has been cleaned up, too. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 08:52, 6 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak keep There are two specific sources (Daily Herald and Deseret news). Both sources are rather fluff - nothing hard-hitting about the company but praise for their scrapbooking products. Other sources are routine business info like being purchased. Those don't establish notability but do provide facts on the history of the company. Lamona (talk) 03:38, 8 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: Is Weak Keep enough to Keep?
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz Read! Talk! 21:05, 12 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  • Delete This is a company/organization therefore NCORP guidelines apply. Unless blatantly obvious, I'm assuming all the sources are reliable and the publishers are corporately independent from the topic organization - but there's more requirements than just "RS" for establishing notability.
  • As per WP:SIRS *each* reference must meet the criteria for establishing notability - the quantity of coverage is irrelevant so long as we find a minimum of two
  • WP:NCORP requires multiple sources (at least two) of deep or significant coverage with in-depth information *on the company* and (this bit is important!) containing "Independent Content".
  • None of the references meet the criteria for establishing notability of the company. Leaving aside the obvious primary sources, directory entries and Press Release announcements - this Herald Extra article is an ad masquerading as news. It relies entirely on an interview with the owners and it has no "Independent Content", fails ORGIND.
  • Next from the Herald Extra is a simple repeat of a company announcement and a press release some days earlier, fails ORGIND. Similarly, a lengthy profile is contained in this magazine but the only problem is that there's no "Independent Content" - all of the information on the company is provided by people affiliated with (a "consultant" who assists in creating the book) the company or from the company website, fails ORGIND.
  • Finally, this from Desert News is an article about one of the "consultants" who work for the topic company, has no "Independent Content", also fails ORGIND.
I've searched for other article and I cannot find any that meets the criteria for establishing notability. Topic therefore fails WP:NCORP. HighKing++ 19:41, 13 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep per the significant coverage in multiple independent reliable sources.
    1. Gorrell, Mike (2009-12-23). "Heritage Makers earns attention". The Salt Lake Tribune. Archived from the original on 2022-04-18. Retrieved 2022-04-18.

      The article includes quotes from people affiliated with the company but there is enough independent reporting and analysis to pass Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies)#Independent sources. The article notes (my bolding): "The five-year-old Provo company, which uses a direct-selling approach in marketing its self-publishing products, has received several bits of national recognition in recent months. Its storybooks were described on CBS's "The Early Show" as one of the best personalized gifts around. Over on ABC, a "Good Morning America" segment cited Heritage Makers as a good direct-selling company to join. Oprah Winfrey had good things to say about the storybooks on her TV show and in her magazine. And Inc. magazine put Heritage Makers 132nd on its list of the 500 fastest-growing private companies, citing revenues that grew from $587,636 in 2004 to $8.5 million this year."

    2. Clark, Cody. (2005-07-17). "Self-made memoirs" (pages 1 and 2). Daily Herald. Archived from the original (pages 1 and 2) on 2022-04-18. Retrieved 2022-04-18 – via Newspapers.com.

      The article includes quotes from people affiliated with the company but there is enough independent reporting and analysis to pass Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies)#Independent sources. The article notes (my bolding): "It's not surprise that the product is popular in Utah Valley, where family industry and anything connected to it is as much an industry as it is a hobby. ... As evidenced by the breadth of its consultant network, however, Heritage Makers has appeal to people who don't have a built-in motivation to keep personal records. The company and its products were the subject of a six-minute segment on The Early Show on CBS, and have been featured in magazines like Redbook and InStyle. And while creating a storybook that celebrates an individual or preserves a cherished memory is perhaps the most obvious application of the Heritage Makers technology, the product is versatile enough to inspire interest that goes beyond personal record keeping."

    3. Leong, Grace (2005-04-24). "Springville's Heritage Makers captures family histories in storybooks". Daily Herald. Archived from the original on 2022-04-18. Retrieved 2022-04-18.

      The article includes quotes from people affiliated with the company but there is enough independent reporting and analysis to pass Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies)#Independent sources. The article notes: "The idea for Heritage Makers began in a storybooking kit created in 2002 by Sharon Murdoch, a former English professor at Brigham Young University. ... Heritage Makers was the result of a merger in January 2004 between Murdoch’s My Family Tales and Cloward’s company, Heritage Home Studios, which creates DVDs of photographs and videos. With help from a few tech-savvy BYU students and funding from Randall Harward, founder of neighboring Harward Irrigation Systems, a sprinkler and irrigation systems supplier in Springville, Heritage created Heritage Publisher, software that allows customers to scan, load, crop and size photos and create text for a 28-page storybook."

    There is sufficient coverage in reliable sources to allow Heritage Makers to pass Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies)#Primary criteria, which requires "significant coverage in multiple reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject".

    Cunard (talk) 04:59, 18 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment just noted the discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#New(ish)_edit_non-admin_closing_AfDs_-_queries_being_ignored_on_Talk_page. While I stand by my close, happy to give @HighKing: the chance to respond. As such, changing my close into a keep !vote and won't close it. While HighKing raises valid CORP-adjacent points, it appears that the sources Cunard identified address most of those depth issues. Star Mississippi 02:12, 20 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Response to sources posted by Cunard. It is very notable that Cunard does not address the specific requirements of WP:CORPDEPTH and WP:ORGIND. "Independent reporting" is *not* the same thing as "Independent Content" and is not one of NCORP's criteria. Cunard says the articles also provide "analysis" but fails to provide any examples which would meet ORGIND and CORPDEPTH. Similarly, Cunard's reasoning of "Significant coverage in reliable sources" is not sufficient to pass NCORP - for example you can have "significant coverage" based on an interview but which contains no "Independent Content", thus failing ORGIND.
    • The first reference is from the Salt Lake Tribune. Cunard says "there is enough independent reporting and analysis" to meet NCORP criteria. I disagree. It is a "puff profile" which relies entirely on information provided by spokeswoman Jennifer Ringger who provides a ton of information about the company. The quote provided by Cunard is the lede, right before we get introduced to Jennnifer Ringger and this is not "analysis", merely mentioning the fact that the company received exposure in the media. It is notable too that this same exposure is also mentioned in the next reference from The Daily Herald and also appears on multiple blogs created by the company's "consultants" to drum up sales and promotion. You can even see on their archived website that they provided PDFs of the "coverage" (although no longer downloadable). Rather than this being "analysis", I say it is a standard part of the info pack provided by the company when being interviewed. Regardless, there is insufficient details in the quoted article to see whether those media slots, in turn, may be used to establish notability. From the looks of things, some of the media exposure was a result of Oprah's inclusion of their products in her list of gifts under $100. I found this blog post and interview which mentions both the Oprah and the CBS coverage. The Oprah mention is specifically in relation to a book written by one of the company's "consultants" for Oprah about her pet that died - Oprah called the consultant to thank her and later listed the company's books as one of her All-Time favorite Gifts under $100 in her Nov. 2008 O Magazine. That does not meet our criteria for notability. The "feature" in Oprah's November 2008 issue of the O Magazine simple says the following: ""This is an online publishing center that allows you to upload your photos and write captions for each; you can preserve your memories and record your legacy in one beautiful book." ($4 per page; heritagemakers.com)" The aforementioned blog also suggests that the "Early Show" picked up on Oprah's mention and showed one of the books on the show - no indications that the show profiled the company, only the book. Again, this is not even close to our criteria for establishing notability. Similarly, we've all seen the Inc.com list of growing companies and inclusion on the Inc.com list (with a profile provided by the company) is not sufficient to meet our criteria. This article fails both WP:CORPDEPTH and WP:ORGIND.
    • The next reference is from "Life & Style" of the Daily Herald. Cunard says "there is enough independent reporting and analysis" to meet NCORP criteria. I disagree. The article starts by mentioned a "Wendy McGee" who is one of the company's "consultants" and also a "client" and goes on to also quote from the company's president, Sharon Murdoch and her daughter, Candace May and the company's publicist, Jennifer Vance. Clearly, this article was written to publicise the company and the article relies entirely on information provided by people associated and affiliated with the company. There is no "Independent Content". It is notable that, just as in the previous reference, mentions are made of the "media coverage" on Oprah and ABC, etc. The quote provided by Cunard is made up of different cuts from various areas of the article - but, especially in light of the reliance on information clearly provided by people associated with the company for the vast majority of the article, the parts highlighted by Cunard are not clearly attributable to the journalist and are definitely "analysis" sufficient to meet CORPDEPTH. I am sure that most people who read the text of the article will reach the same conclusion. Fails ORGIND and CORPDEPTH.
    • The next reference is from the Daily Herald. It is clearly a "puff profile" and once again we see that the article relies entirely on information provided by Doug Cloward, a co-owner of the company. It has no "Independent Content". Cunard's extract is not an example of "analysis" by the journalist. The "origin story" (part of every puff profile) appears in various forms in lots of articles including the two previous references provided by Cunard and the blog post I referenced above. It is not directly attributed to a source but the context of the text within the overall article strongly suggests it was information provided to the journalist by Cloward and/or the company. Regardless, it is also not clearly attributable to a source unaffiliated with the company and fails our "Independent Content" test from ORGIND.
None of those references meet NCORP's criteria for establishing notability. They are standard company profiles that rely entirely on interviews with company execs (or "consultants") and are designed to promote the company. HighKing++ 14:08, 20 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: To allow for adequate ventilation of the points raised by and in response to Cunard.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Stifle (talk) 14:22, 20 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  • Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies)#Independent sources says:

    There are two types of independence to consider when evaluating sources:

    • Independence of the author (or functional independence): the author must be unrelated to the company, organization, or product. Related persons include organization's personnel, owners, investors, (sub)contractors, vendors, distributors, suppliers, other business partners and associates, customers, competitors, sponsors and sponsorees (including astroturfing), and other parties that have something, financially or otherwise, to gain or lose.
    • Independence of the content (or intellectual independence): the content must not be produced by interested parties. Often a related party produces a narrative that is then copied, regurgitated, and published in whole or in part by independent parties (as exemplified by churnalism). Independent content, in order to count towards establishing notability, must include original and independent opinion, analysis, investigation, and fact checking that are clearly attributable to a source unaffiliated to the subject.
    The sources I provided have "functional independence" as the journalists from The Salt Lake Tribune and the Daily Herald are unaffiliated with the company. The sources I provided have "intellectual independence" as they include "original and independent" investigation and fact checking that is "clearly attributable to a source unaffiliated to the subject". The Salt Lake Tribune wrote, "The five-year-old Provo company, which uses a direct-selling approach in marketing its self-publishing products, has received several bits of national recognition in recent months." The article then provided examples: CBS's "The Early Show", ABC's "Good Morning America", Oprah Winfrey's TV show and magazine, and Inc. magazine. This is an independent synthesis of and reporting about the national attention that the company has received. Heritage Makers' press page does not include these examples of national coverage.

    The coverage in Daily Herald also provides independent analysis. The article notes, "As evidenced by the breadth of its consultant network, however, Heritage Makers has appeal to people who don't have a built-in motivation to keep personal records." This is analysis about what the journalist thinks about the company. The article continues, "The company and its products were the subject of a six-minute segment on The Early Show on CBS, and have been featured in magazines like Redbook and InStyle."  Heritage Makers' press page does not include these examples of national coverage. Six minutes of coverage on CBS's The Early Show strongly contributes to notability. The article continues, "And while creating a storybook that celebrates an individual or preserves a cherished memory is perhaps the most obvious application of the Heritage Makers technology, the product is versatile enough to inspire interest that goes beyond personal record keeping." This is more analysis about the company.

    Although the sources include quotes from people affiliated with the company, there is enough independent analysis, reporting, and fact checking to meet Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies)#Independent sources.

    Cunard (talk) 06:52, 22 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  • Response It seems to me that you are making some unsafe and unproven assumptions about content being *clearly attributable* to the journalist and you are also ignoring the SIGCOV/CORPDEPTH test on the "Independent Content" you claim to have identified.
Firstly, it is not clear that any investigation or fact checking took place by the journalist. Sure, you've extracted a small amount of content relative to the size of the article, but that content is not *clearly attributable* to any source. The content itself is very high-level and which appears to me to have likely been provided by the company or their execs. The context of the text also cannot be brushed aside - over 95%+ of the article content has *clearly* been provided by the company and/or the execs, the text you've highlighted, which is unattributed to any source, should not be assumed to be "Independent Content" especially also in circumstances where there is no indications of any kind in the articles that the journalist claims to have done any homework or is expressing any opinion.
Also and as a small point, it is incorrect to say that the website Press page doesn't provide examples of national coverage - I provided a archived snapshot of the website previous which listed the newspaper articles and if you take a look at a later archived press page the national coverage such as the Oprah show was, in fact, listed and points to the ABC News website with the clip. This is not "independent synthesis of and reporting", it is repeating information provided by the company for promotional purposes. Also, comments about the product (the storybook) is not about the *company*, the topic we're examining for notability, as per CORPDEPTH's section "Significant coverage of the Company itself".
But for me, the biggest and more obvious flaw in your reasoning is that you haven't then applied the SIGCOV/CORPDEPTH test on the content you claim to be "Independent Content". Any "Independent Content" in an article (see WP:SIRS) must also meet WP:CORPDEPTH and WP:SIGCCOV. The "Independent Content" you've provided, when looked through a CORPDEPTH/SIGCOV lens, are examples of trivial coverage. So even if we were to agree the articles contain a small amount of "Independent Content", it still wouldn't be enough to satisfy CORPDEPTH/SIGCOV. HighKing++ 13:31, 23 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • My assessment of the sources is that in each source there is enough intellectually independent content that is "clearly attributable to a source unaffiliated to the subject" (Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies)#Independent sources) to meet the significant coverage requirement of Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies)#Significant coverage. Although you write, "The content itself is very high-level and which appears to me to have likely been provided by the company or their execs", this is not my assessment of the sources. The sources contain quotes from people affiliated with the company, but the sources also have plenty of independent analysis, reporting, and fact checking of content about the company. Cunard (talk) 07:35, 25 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • For clarity for the closer and anybody else, what you're in fact saying is that this part of the Salt Lake Tribune article for example, "The five-year-old Provo company, which uses a direct-selling approach in marketing its self-publishing products, has received several bits of national recognition in recent months." meets SIGCCOV and CORPDEPTH and therefore that reference meets NCORP? That is not CORPDEPTH, sorry. We can do the same for the other extracts. None meets CORPDEPTH once you remove content that fails ORGIND. HighKing++ 11:32, 25 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete per HighKing's analysis of the sources. Stifle (talk) 15:02, 29 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep per Cunard's argument NemesisAT (talk) 15:09, 29 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete I was all set to close this as Keep, basically based on a head count, until I looked at the references. All three independent references are from Utah (in other words, local) papers: Deseret News and Daily Herald. To me a company that cannot get any national press - or even a mention in the most important Utah paper, the Salt Lake Tribune - is not notable enough for inclusion. -- MelanieN (talk) 01:46, 30 April 2022 (UTC) P.S. I see from Cunard's analysis above that the company actually did get a story in the Salt Lake Tribune, although nobody has seen fit to add it to the article. My opinion stands. -- MelanieN (talk) 01:49, 30 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • MelanieN (talk · contribs), I added The Salt Lake Tribune source to the article. The sentence I added says:

    A 2009 The Salt Lake Tribune article said that ABC's Good Morning America viewed Heritage Makers as "a good direct-selling company to join" and CBS's The Early Show saw it as "one of the best personalized gifts around".

    This shows that Heritage Makers has received national coverage on national television. The Daily Herald article published on 17 July 2005 says, "The company and its products were the subject of a six-minute segment on The Early Show on CBS". Would you review this? Thank you, Cunard (talk) 02:04, 30 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thank you, Cunard. That article, with its documentation of national attention to the company by multiple sources, changes my opinion to Keep. It would be even better if some of the national mentions cited by the SLT could be added to the references. -- MelanieN (talk) 02:12, 30 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hi MelanieN, the entire argument for Keep appears to be the fact that various media coverage mentions the topic company's product appeared on Oprah and then that, in turn, led to mentions on other TV shows. Have I got that right? And that, according to some, meets our standard for in-depth and significant coverage (containing "Independent Content") *on the company*??? Seriously? Cunard has been pushing this for a while now and when asked to point to the parts of those various articles that meet both CORPDEPTH and ORGIND, his first effort waws analysed and found to fail and there hasn't been any meaningful further attempts. You've !voted Keep based on Cunard's analysis - perhaps you've spotted something that meets NCORP? Can you point to it here? HighKing++ 13:10, 1 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete: per Nom and HighKing. There has been a lot of discussion about a subject that, on the first fast look, is shown by sources to be promotional. It is a promotional type company that would absolutely know how to spin promotion public relations through the media. The intent of Wikipedia is "supposed to be" world knowledge. It is not intended to be a business stepping stone. -- Otr500 (talk) 23:26, 1 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Many would consider information on businesses to be part of "world knowledge". Let's not pretend Wikipedia only covers what a traditional encyclopedia would. NemesisAT (talk) 23:48, 1 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete As per HighKing's analysis of the sources. MrsSnoozyTurtle 05:05, 2 May 2022 (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.
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