Talk:Raritan Inc.

Copyright

The original text was posted by the copyright owner; I am the VP of Marketing of Raritan Computer. Subsequently rewritten so there is no copyright issue. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Vsevolod4 (talk • contribs) 22:06, 1 June 2006.

Notability

A listing of all product names is not notable. The release dates of every Raritan technology is similarly non-notable. There may be some notable achievements made by Raritan, but they are getting lost in the spam. -- Austin Murphy 22:34, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

I beg to differ. This is not SPAM. There is no POV; there is no marketing spin, just facts. This is information that a systems administrator or data center manager or other interested party seeks. It is both notable and relevant, and represents only key presence in the market. This (partial) list of products is shorter and in principle no different than the list of products that is featured prominently on the entries for Cisco Systems, Juniper Networks, American Power Conversion and others. If you want to edit this entry down; you must do the same consistently. -- User:Vsevolod4 01:00 (UTC); 13 December 2006

The revised entry (12/04/06) was created after reviewing other company entries, rereading Wiki rules and drawing conclusions as to what the general public would agree is both notable and non-promotional. Specifically, if someone objects to a product name listing (with no links to promotional sites), one would then presume that the reader/editor would also have a problem with Dell's links to its Axim, Dimension, Latitude, Inspiron, OptiPlex and XPS product line, or HP's mention of its Pavilion, Presario, VoodooPC and iPAQ products, etc. Regarding the issue of Raritan's release dates, in many cases they are firsts in the industry, which do make them notable. I actually edited that material out to avoid the appearance of promoting those products. --Raritan1 14:44, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Gave this some time to see if others would like to comment/edit. No one stepped forward. Therefore, I again assert that this is not SPAM, this is a factual description of what Raritan is, what Raritan does and what products Raritan makes. And again, if someone objects to a product name listing, one would then presume that he/she also has a problem with Dell, HP, cisco, CA, Acer, AMD, Gateway, LG, Motorola, NCR, Seagate, Sony, TI, Apple, Fujitsu and SAP, to name a few. Those entries, however, are not labeled as advertisements. I encourage feedback. In the meantime, I have removed the Advertisement label. Raritan1 13:48, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

POV

You (Raritan1 and Vsevold4) can not be expected to be objective in your opinions or neutral in your point of view regarding your employer. Please take a moment to read the NPOV policy guidelines: WP:NPOV and WP:NPOVFAQ. The recommended process is for you to submit proposed changes to the talk page so more neutral parties can actually edit the article. All articles in Wikipedia are expected to be notable and written from a Neutral point of view. If you are concerned that the articles listed above do not meet these guidelines, feel free to make the necessary edits. (Be Bold!) If it becomes controversial, those edits should be discussed on the talk pages. -- Austin Murphy 17:23, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

3O

If I understand correctly, the disagreement is about whether or not the article contains (or is) spam.

• One aspect of spam would be self-serving and advertising. With this type of spam, I would anticipate finding:

1. Numerous URL's which point to the companies products and advertising.
2. Detailed 'advertising' type comments and statements which talk up how 'good' one or more of the products are.

I see neither of those in this article.

In any article about a company, it is expected that things about that company, its products, product development, history and future plans, would be mentioned and discussed. And that is what I see in this article.

That being said, what I don't see here, is a much more serious issue. Namely that this article has no primary or secondary sourcing. None of the statements here are referenced by any external verifiable sourcing and the only external link in this article is the companies own website.

Linking to a companies website is common and is to be expected. However, unless the statements in this article are backed up by secondary or primary sources, any editor can challenge or remove them at any time with {{fact}}.

The remainder of the links in this article are links to other Wikipedia articles. Though helpful for the reader, other Wikipedia articles are not considered valid as secondary sources.

As Wikipedia editors, we are not allowed to write our own articles from our own knowledge, as this would violate the no original research policy. Our articles must be written based on what other authors have said in reliable verifiable published sources.

I strongly encourage all editors here to look for publications, articles, reports and books which have been written about this company and use them to write (and backup the statement in) this article.

Hopefully this has helped. Lsi john 17:07, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

I added a {{primarysources}} ("This article needs sources or references that appear in credible, third-party publications") tag to the article. — Athaenara ✉ 22:50, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Thank you, Lsi John, for your contribution. Athaenara, I will attempt to verify as much of the content (which was originally written by a VP within the company) as I can. Raritan1 23:54, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Remember that it is not a company's role to write, via its agents, an encyclopedia article about itself. Participation on the article's talk page (including offering verifiable citations from reliable sources not affiliated with the company) is appropriate. — Athaenara ✉ 02:49, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Athaenara. It is a serious conflict of interest for a company to write its own article. As I stated below, the current version is much spammier (my word) than the one I evaluated previously. Lsi john 02:53, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

I believe the version that you reviewed was the condensed version that I edited in an attempt to make an encyclopedic article from the existing material. I think this version or the following version with the primarysources banner, is still a better page than the current one. The current page is still unfocused and repetitive and name drops too many product names and locations. Is there any reason not to revert back to this version and work from there on sources? -- Austin Murphy 13:32, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Unsourced

I believe that reverting entire versions is unproductive. While I was disappointed to see the wholesale revert after giving a 3O, even that, in my mind, would not justify reverting again. Also, we do not 'write an article and then find sourcing'. And, therefore, we also do not 'revert an article to a preferred version and then find sourcing'.

The facts are:

1. The current article contains zero external sources.
2. The version for which I provided a 3O contained zero external sources.
3. Your preferred version contains zero cited sources.
4. The article was written by a company representative, which violates WP:COI.
5. Some versions of this article clearly contain material that leans toward advertising, also a violation.
6. This article has existed for almost 1 full year.
7. As the article now stands, it can be speedy deleted based on notability, COI and advertising, if an admin choses to do so.

Wikipedia is not a place for companies to write articles about themselves and unsourced articles are not permitted.

If sources are not found for the claims made in this article, both the claims and the entire article, can (and probably will) be deleted.

I strongly encourage you to stop trying to decide which 'unsourced' version you like best and concentrate on finding external sources which back up the claims made in the article. Short of listing the article for {{speedy}} myself, I'm not sure how much clearer I can be. Lsi john 14:51, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you are getting at. I doubt it would be helpful to tag it for speedy deletion as it has already been subject to AfD review and the decision was keep.

The real point of contention is whether this article is encyclopedic or written like an advertisement. Your valid concerns regarding Notability, COI, and Advertising are all addressed by my significant condensation that I referenced above. The remaining concern of not having enough external source material is easily addressable without resorting to deletion or threats of deletion. Furthermore it is invalid to claim that the article can't be improved until it is completely sourced or that such improvements are not allowed by policy.

Verifiability is an important part of Wikipedia, of course, but it doesn't mean that every statement must be sourced or that mostly unsourced articles must be deleted. If you read the text of the policy (WP:V) that you linked, you can see that the section WP:V#Self-published_and_questionable_sources_in_articles_about_themselves directly addresses the issue at hand. The verifiability is not even the point of contention. Nobody doubts that Raritan makes KVM switches. If you doubt the specifics in the list of inventions (or anywhere else), tag them. The burden of verification lies with the editor who posted the info.

If it is not clear already, let me state that I (Austinmurphy) have no relation to Raritan, Inc. It is my understanding that the editors Vsevold4 and Raritan1 ARE employees of the company. That being the case, I'm having trouble understanding why my desire to return to a neutral version of the article is controversial. -- Austin Murphy 19:39, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand where you are going with this. You asked my opinion and I gave it. I do not like reverting entire articles. I prefer editing forward. If I were you (which I'm not), and if I saw some part of the other version which I preferred, then I'd migrate that part into this article and simultaneously find sources to support it. If, for some reason, it was extremely complicated and too messy to integrate my desired changes into the existing article, I might consider a wholesale revert as a last resort (in combination with adding sources).

With respect to this version being an advertisement, I have already removed several sections, and I believe an admin has also removed 'puff' (his words). If you believe that anything remains which qualifies as advertising, you are welcome to remove it. If you believe that some other version is much better, then you're welcome to revert to it. I wouldn't, but thats an opinion, not a rule.

After I gave a 3O, I found the article had been reverted to another version and you are asking about yet another revert. In my opinion its silly to revert to an unsourced version before you have any sources to add. The priority here should be to find sources that back up the claims in the article.

This is not an article which is 'mostly unsourced', this is an article that is 'completely unsourced'. Without sourcing, anyone can delete anything in the article at any time. My advice (opinion) was: Go get some sourcing and edit the article as you go along. Whether you revert and then get sources, or get sources and then revert, or get sources and edit them into the existing article is simply a matter of preference.

I never suggested that the article could not be improved and I never said that policy prevents making any improvements. I'm not sure how you read that into my posting. Read my 3O (above and below). My advice has always been to go get sources and make improvements.

And you are correct, after an AfD to keep, speedy no longer applies. I misspoke. Lsi john 21:40, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

3O Followup

The previous version, that I evaluated, was much more neutral. This current version is much more like spam. Links to a companies primary website are acceptable. Links which add value and information to the article are acceptable. However, links to functional NOC interfaces, which effectively are nothing more than advertising, are not informative to the average reader and begin to cross into the realm of spam.

I have deleted several unsourced statments which, if sourced, can be re-added. However, as unsourced statements, they were too close to spam and in my opinion needed to be deleted until they are sourced by reliable secondary sources (not company marketing material).

I marked several statements with {{fact}}. If there are not reliable published sources (not company marketing material) which makes these statements, then the statements need to be deleted from the article.

Hopefully this helps clarify a bit more. Lsi john 02:51, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

My apologies, Lsi John and Athaenara. I thought you looked at the entry as a whole, including the parts that were deleted by another editor. I won't argue your edit re: the link, and I will try to find some source for the others. I'm in a bit of a difficult situation about citation, however, since this company is privately held. All of the information is correct, but I understand why you wouldn't take my word for it. Thanks again for your input. Raritan1 12:15, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Raritan1, my evaluation and third opinion were based on the article as it was when I gave the 3O.

I understand, and even sympathize with your situation regarding sourcing. However, the policies on verifiability and original research are there for a reason.

The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth.

If Raritan has not been written about in external sources, then you may need to consider the possibility that it does not meet the guideline for notability. Keep in mind that wikipedia is not a soapbox for self promotion:

"Self-promotion. It can be tempting to write about yourself or projects you have a strong personal involvement in. However, do remember that the standards for encyclopedic articles apply to such pages just like any other, including the requirement to maintain a neutral point of view, which is difficult when writing about yourself. Creating overly abundant links and references to autobiographical articles is unacceptable. See Wikipedia:Autobiography, Wikipedia:Notability and Wikipedia:Conflict of interest."

I encourage you to look for secondary sourcing where this company has been reported on by news media, or other sources. And, I look forward to checking back and finding a bigger well-sourced article. Lsi john 03:07, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Raritan.jpg

Image:Raritan.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot (talk) 03:59, 24 January 2008 (UTC)