Wikipedia talk:Notability (organizations and companies)

Use of verfiable metrics for NCORP

Why don't we make greater use of verifiable metrics in helping to establish NCORP in the way that NPROF does. Like NPROF, we could make sure that the metrics are only to cover "obvious cases" but I think it would help.

For example:

- Any corporation listed on a stock exchange with a market cap over USD5bn, or

- Any corporation with over 5,000 employees, or

- Any corporation with an annual revenue of over USD 5 billion, or

- Any corporateion with annual net profits of over USD 1 billion.

Any of these are major - non-trivial - enterprises that are worthy of being chronicled? Aszx5000 (talk) 18:09, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

No. What's worthy of being chronicled on Wikipedia are subjects that have been written about. We shouldn't be creating more exceptions to allow articles with no outside coverage to be written about. voorts (talk/contributions) 18:21, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

But there is often a lot of confusion and debate about whether an article is promotional or other. Also, like with NPROFs, there are a lot of notable corps in terms of size an impact who just don't get independent coverage because they are boring topics that the public doesn't want to read about. We have more coverage on prominent bars in Wikipedia then we do on some very large corporations because of the flaws in relying purely on coverage to establish notability (which NPROF seemed to realise). Aszx5000 (talk) 18:42, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

I think the comparison to NPROF is flawed, since in the case of academics, the publication process and the realities of work at universities and research institutes creates a lot of coverage that is not independent, but which can nevertheless be trusted to be verifiable. The same cannot be said of companies, which are uniformly self-promotional in their coverage of themselves. Indeed, the general quality of business coverage is so low that we often can't even a priori trust professional publications to be reliable and non-promotional. Separately, even if we were to begin to consider alternate routes for notability, looking at corporate revenue, stock prices or employee counts are terrible indices, as they're all subject to creative accounting. Maybe there'd be a case to be made for notability based on majority+ market share of a key economic sector, but I am skeptical that such companies wouldn't have enough existing coverage to meet the normal notability requirements. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 18:51, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

They are self-promotional but also nobody wants to write articles on them, even when they are large and pervasive in society (unless there is a scandal). This is why I don't think NCORP, when it relies purely on coverage, fully captures all of the corporations worthy of chronicling? Aszx5000 (talk) 18:56, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

Do you have any examples of such companies? I think part of the problem is an illusion, as there is a fair amount of serious independent coverage of companies, but it's all squirreled away in academic publications and stock market analyst reports that are not typically read by the general public. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 18:59, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

If you look at the WikiPrject Companies list of AfDs, it is not uncommon to see material companies put up for deletion. Currently there is the circa USD 5bn market cap of the publically quoted Apar Industries that should really not be up for AfD if we had some metrics and could save the timesink of an AfD? Aszx5000 (talk) 19:05, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

I can see that we have a lot of corporations validly AfD'ed each month, so I would only be for metrics that are large, however, perhaps the avalanche of promotional WP corporate articles have given corporations a bad rap on WP, hence my desire to carve-out the obvious cases that should have time wasted on? Aszx5000 (talk) 19:11, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

I meant examples of companies that fall short of existing notability guidelines but which unequivocally meet metrics of meaningful impact. In the case of Apar Industries, there seems to be a fair amount of existing coverage, and the main motivator for reopening the AfD appears to have been procedural issues involving sockpuppetry that led the first AfD to end in no consensus. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 19:35, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

I'm with you on acknowledging that Wikipedia can go astray excluding boring enclyclopedic information which secondary sources tend to not write about, but I think that this comes up more in wp:weight and what are essentially sub-articles rather then Ncorp. Also, if you don't have Ncorp-suitable sources, you really don't have sources to write an article from. Something that an editor pieces together from primary, captive and promotional sources isn't really a suitable article. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 19:44, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

There was some discussion about making WP:LISTED automatically notable, but it didn't reach consensus[1][2][3]. In the NPROF case, we have people for whom it is encyclopedic to have an article, but they lack the required GNG coverage. The situation with companies is the opposite, they may have enough press but little encyclopedic value, so rules such as WP:ORGIND and WP:CORPTRIV were developed. In my opinion, the guidelines should be guided by actual practice. During AfDs, editors sometimes suspend guidelines to keep articles they deem encyclopedic. For an example, you can see the AfD mentioned in the thread above, which as a private college should pass NCORP. If such suspensions happen often enough, there may be a need to change the guidelines, but as was said above, it doesn't look like there is a practical issue with NCORP, some may argue the actual application of it at AfDs is too lenient. Finally, precise metrics are undesirable, and they are also absent from NPROF. Kelob2678 (talk) 22:17, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

WP:LISTED

Editors coming across an article on such a company without such references are encouraged to search (or request that others search) prior to nominating for deletion, given the very high (but not certain) likelihood that a publicly traded company is actually notable according to the primary criterion.

I suspect this advice was given long time ago. Because in fact "the very high likelihood" is that there will be a huge amount of promotional hype and routine public statements. In my opinion is no reason to single out this category: people are google-savy today and due diligence is relevant for all AfD nominations. Therefore I suggest to either remove iths paragraph as a potential invitation to refbombing. --Altenmann >talk 22:52, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

This shouldn't be removed as almost no one does WP:BEFORE for companies. It is reasonable to ask to do it at least for WP:LISTED. Kelob2678 (talk) 00:35, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

The refbombing will occur no matter what we write here. I agree with Kelob2678 that editors regularly do not perform WP:BEFORE searches for companies and this section should be highlighted/elevated, rather than removed. Katzrockso (talk) 13:28, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

NCORP is completely broken

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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After creating numerous articles about companies in the English and German Wikipedia, I would like to share my impressions. In the English Wikipedia, too many articles about companies are deleted or end up in the deletion review, at least in my opinion. Even companies listed on the NASDAQ or other major stock exchanges with a value of billions of USD are sometimes considered not notable. The notability criteria, which are mainly based on press reports, are very vague and lead to many problems.

• Underrepresented regions are disadvantaged because there are fewer press reports about them on the Western Internet (e.g., small start-ups from the US are notable, but not huge companies in China). For example, the Zhejiang Rongsheng Group, a Fortune Global 500 company with $90 billion in revenue, is apparently not notable enough (guess its to boring for the media, maybe in Chinese?). If I tried to create an article, it would probably end up in the AfD due to a lack of coverage. Yet, according to objective criteria, this company is clearly more notable than most companies in Wikipedia. How can this be logically justified?
• Notability is based almost exclusively on press reports and not on the real world.
• Newer articles are preferred over older ones, which leads to a double standard. There are numerous stub articles about African companies that do not receive significant press coverage and would have to be deleted according to today's criteria. If someone were to create such an article today, it would be deleted immediately.
• Many users consider the NCORP criteria too strict and inflexible, which leads to strong exclusionism. Only clearly irrelevant or promotional content should be removed. But in practice, many borderline cases are deleted. It is unrealistic to expect every company to have a detailed article in the New York Times, especially if the company comes from an underrepresented region.
• Another problem is that the boundaries between advertising and reporting in the press are often blurred and unclear. Press coverage can be perfectly used to fill an article with irrelevant PR platitudes instead of focusing on facts and data, which is what an encyclopedia should do.
• An incredible amount of time is wasted in endless and fruitless discussions.

I would strongly advise using objective criteria for companies as well, rather than relying solely on reporting from third-party sources. Especially when it comes to companies, it makes sense to use hard facts and data (e.g., number of employees, revenue, market capitalization, market share). In my opinion, the current rule is unfair and should be replaced by clearer criteria. In addition, all companies listed on stock exchanges should automatically meet NCORP, as long as they are not penny stocks. WP:LISTED is not enough, as AfD discussions usually only look at press coverage anyway. I have had relatively good experiences with these clear criteria in the German Wiki, and I think it could save a lot of frustration and arbitrariness. And if we are not going to change the NCORP, at least something should be done to make the system fairer.--Afus199620 (talk) 16:28, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

The German wikipedia is completely different. They are ridiculously strict with people articles and ridiculously lax on company articles. They basically have no GNG equivalent and work entirely off of a variety of SNGs. I once saw them delete an article on a book that had four academic articles about it because it didn't pass their book SNG. I would rather not go by their standards!

On enwiki, we prioritize significant coverage over the size or strength of the company. That is what WP:Notability is here. It was the consensus of the community to institute this guideline and while I have mixed feelings about it I see why, there is a massive company spam problem that no other topic has to the same extent. We became more restrictive over time. The older articles that fail our current standards will probably be deleted too eventually.

The "real world" does not help you write an article on the topic, it is the press coverage, the sources we have are first and foremost what we consider. What use is there to the reader to have an article that will only ever be sourced to press releases and stats databases, hopelessly biasing the article? And where will you get your facts and data if not from press coverage? The concept is not "every company must have an article in the New York Times", it is that they must have at least some sigcov that is not local and clearly independent. The problem I often see is people will discount even solid coverage as non-independent for reasons that would apply to really any coverage, but that isn't the guideline's fault. PARAKANYAA (talk) 16:48, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

No system is perfect. But I would at least go for a combination of objective size criteria and press coverage. I think the NCORP criteria right now leads to significant bias.--Afus199620 (talk) 16:59, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

But why would your proposed solution be better? Having a hundred thousand company articles that can be cited only to company stats databases and press releases is not good.

Everything leads to bias. Covering big companies would bias us towards the countries that have big companies. PARAKANYAA (talk) 17:05, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

The problem could perhaps be addressed by taking relative national or sectoral market shares into account. Clear market leadership should give notability. Third party coverage should be a factor, but also market positions, structural economic importance, market cap, revenue and number of employees. I think we should try to find a system that does not exclude so many quite important companies. --Afus199620 (talk) 21:29, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

"Clear market leadership should give notability" - why? PARAKANYAA (talk) 21:30, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

I think it would create a better, more relevant, and more useful encyclopedia. For example, a company like Haitian International should be represented in Wikipedia as a global market leader in certain specialized machinery. Why should we include a fancy AI start-up from the US with no sales, but not a global market leader with billions in sales? Such a mechanism would balance out the tendency of press coverage to focus on specific sectors and countries. In my opinion, it would be an improvement. --Afus199620 (talk) 21:46, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

Because we have coverage with which to write the article on one, and we do not have it with another. The articles this produces would be bad. PARAKANYAA (talk) 21:55, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

Haitian International has nothing to do with WP:NCORP, your article was deleted under WP:G11, which is part of the speedy deletion policy. As a listed company, it has received some analyst coverage[4][5][6], so I would support keeping it, but ultimately this depends on those who show up. Kelob2678 (talk) 22:48, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

You're making a whole bunch of claims without any evidence to back them up (e.g., that there are a bunch of stubs on African companies that would have to be deleted), so I'll address the sole example you've provided. First, you admit that you haven't done research in Chinese sources to see if there are at least three sources that meet WP:SIRS. Second, you assume that an article that has never been created on the English Wikipedia would be deleted. We can't possibly know that until you do research and determine if any sources exist. Finally, you can feel free to be bold and create the article instead of complaining that we're biased. voorts (talk/contributions) 17:09, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

The relevant company is Core Scientific, which is listed on Nasdaq. Kelob2678 (talk) 18:08, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

I didnt claim that anyone is biased. It shouldnt be seen as an attack on anyone. I just think that relying on press sources alone leads to regional and sectoral biases. A specific examble from China would be Haitian International, that got deleted despite being a global market leader in injection moulding machines and also being a public company. The NCORP right now makes it hard to create company articles for niche industries and underpresented regions, that was the point I was trying to make.

I can also make some expamples for African companies: Quality Group Limited, Swala Gas and Oil, Hass Petroleum, Nigerian Bottling Company and many more. Very hard to find truly in-depth coverage of these in independent sources. You might find something if you dig deeper. But surely not more than for a company like Core Scientific, which was nominated for AfD. A significant percentage of all African business articles would have to be deleted if today's standards were applied.--Afus199620 (talk) 21:05, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

Sure. That is something we have accepted. PARAKANYAA (talk) 21:24, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

NCORP has been debated heavily for over a decade. It's not like a couple people got together and decided to create a biased guideline for notability. That aside, this looks more like a spillover from an open AfD. Looking at that AfD, there is a claim it meets notability based on mentions, an interview with the CEO, and "normal business reporting" (a.k.a., routine coverage). These types of sources don't show notability under GNG let along NCORP. --CNMall41 (talk) 21:53, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

WP:CORPTRIV clarification

This question has been raised at AFD (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Improved Sexual Health and Rights Advocacy Initiative) regarding one of examples listed at WP:CORPTRIV. The second to last bullet is presentations, speeches, lectures, etc. given by organization's personnel. I understand that the presentation, speech, lecture, etc. itself does not contribute to notability (and raises issues of reliability as a dependent primary source). I would think that coverage of a presentation, etc. could count towards notability. There may be other issues related to promotional or routine coverage or puffery and sources would have to be assessed on a case-by-case basis, but assuming no other issues with respect to notability (or reliability), am I correct in my understanding? —Myceteae‍🌈 (talk) 05:07, 26 June 2026 (UTC)