Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Appian Corporation

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 keep. Despite the ~~strong whiff of undisclosed~~ paid COI editing and the participation of two article contributors with only a handful of edits, who nevertheless seem to be very familiar with our policies, there appears to be a consensus to keep this article. Randykitty (talk) 14:29, 12 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Appian Corporation

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Non-notable company that fails WP:NCORP and WP:CORPDEPTH. The article subject does seems to not have a claim to significance, and the coverage of the company is lacking in depth. The sources that do cover the company are by-and-large product reviews or standard business announcements, both of which type of sources do not meet the strengthened NCORP guideline. Furthermore, the company should not (per WP:NOTINHERITED) coverage of projects Appian has participated in. The article also does not make the case for why Appian is unique or significant when judged against other, more notable cloud computing companies, which brings up WP:MILL for consideration. SamHolt6 (talk) 23:55, 4 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Technology-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 01:05, 5 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Military-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 01:05, 5 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Computing-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 01:06, 5 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Virginia-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 01:07, 5 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Companies-related deletion discussions. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 06:02, 5 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Author Response

Edited addressing Nosebagbear's feedback (thanks)

I believe article meets WP:NCORP and WP:CORPDEPTH. I would also like to mention that I don't not think this AfD was properly tagged per the pre-checks set in WP:BEFORE and purpose in WP:INTROTODELETE. If my concerns are unfounded, please let me know. For some additional context, I had a talk with CNMall41 about the issue on notability & significance in a previously rejected submission for this article. From that discussion, I was led to believe that not every citation need meet every criteria specified in WP:ORGCRITE, just enough (i.e. multiple sources). Can someone confirm that not every citation need to meet notability requirements?

The following citations meet WP:SIGCOV & WP:CORPDEPTH requirements:

The Washington Post article covers Appian significantly, referencing the company over 40 times and devote an entire sub-section of the company.
The Wired article focuses on Army Knowledge Online, which is a product developed by Appian (If the concern here is WP:INHERITORG, I don't think it applies, because, is the developer of the product. This system was never acquired by Appian (more on this later)). There are also multiple references to Appian as a company and interviews of employees of that company.
The PC Mag article The article in an in depth review of the is primarily about Appian and a feature of the product.
The industry analyst reports could also be considered as significant coverage - 1, 2, 3. They are independent reliable, and secondary. The only issue with proving significant coverage is that the report is behind a paywall. This should not exclude these as viable references, however. The report does provide significant coverage. You may try to obtain one by contacting any of the companies listed in the report. They may be able to give you a copy of the analysis. More to this point, I would argue that these are excellent sources of notability because in order to even be considered in industry analysis, you have to be a significant contributor in this market segment. Gartner specifies vendor inclusion criteria on its site. These requirements are set by the Analyst organization. Companies have no say in this criteria. I feel that this characteristic makes these reports and excellent resource for independent notoriety.

There was concern regarding product reviews and business announcements. The PC Mag article. I believe the author of the PC mag article independently reviewed the product, talks about other products out there in the market, and expands the article to a broader discussion about the differences between no-code and low code. I feel like this satisfies the requirement of significance for product reviews, as the author was under no obligation to write the review as it was presented about the company.

Regarding standard business announcements, I think the issue might be in the Washington Post article regarding funding capital. I was a little hesitant to include this, but decided that the article was not a standard PR news wire source. A lay person may not see the difference or car, but there are people in financial & business circles who understand this information and would learn something from knowing that Appian spent 2 years between this series funding and IPO.

In this article there are no references to projects that Appian as participated in. There are some citations (Wired and PC Mag) that describe Appian's product, but this is something that was created by Appian. I'd hate to speculate about this but it seems like software creation is not given the same treatment as a tangible creation, like a piece of art or novel, etc... Using this logic, JD Salinger could WP:NOTINHERITED the significance of Catcher in the Rye, and would have to be notable by the minor other works he did. If the issue is the fact that Appian was commissioned to make Army Knowledge Online, then Michelangelo could [[WP:NOTINHERITED] significance from the Sistine Chapel ceiling (it was one of his defining works). Can WP:NOTINHERITED be applied to the creator of the notable source?

I don't think WP:MILL can be considered as a reason for AfD. The industry analyst reports- 1, 2, 3 contradict this claim. WP:MILL have a similar consideration when evaluating companies to put in their reports. I've tried to address all concerns. However, Please let me know if you need any other clarification.

AfD Label Concern

Now regarding my other concern about this AfD submission, would you be able to help me understand why this was marked as an Afd, and not something like WP:CLEAN and WP:PNA. AfD is supposed to be used for only four things: Neutral point of view, verifiability, Original research, or non-encyclopedic? The comments make it sound like the issue was verifiability, but I'm not sure. If it is, I've tried to address those concerns.

However, before AfD was used, were the WP:BEFORE checks followed? The AfD was submitted about 4 hours after article approval/creation. Section C of WP:BEFORE says, consider whether the article could be improved rather than deleted and that if the article was recently created, please consider allowing the contributors more time to develop the article. Also, it's recommended, if an article has issues, try first raising your concerns on the article's talk page. I didn't see this action taken.

I apologize if I'm sounding like a jerk, I'm not trying to be. I want to understand how the decision to tag as AfD came about and whether WP:CLEAN and WP:PNA were considered?

If you were to ask me if this is a great Wikipedia article, I would definitely say no. But isn't it the purpose of WP:CLEAN to fix up bad articles? The AfD page suggests this as well.

Please let me know if you need any clarification. Thanks! Jonkatora (talk) 06:27, 5 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Comments to @Jonkatora: - it might be worth having a look at some other AfDs (especially on companies) to see how to make a good justification, of which one aspect is: brevity isn't necessary, but essays are counter-productive at convincing others, additionally you don't need both "big" tags and bolding. More importantly, challenges on allow clean-up etc are generally not suited to notability nominations, where clean-up shouldn't actually matter, so long as the Nom (and any !voting editor) do their own WP:BEFORE checks to find sources outside the article - if clean-up in an aspect is impossible then it shouldn't be enabled. Recent is usually intended to apply on 1/2 hours scale, more relevantly, it doesn't really apply to AfC-authorised drafts, since it has already had time. Nosebagbear (talk)

@Nosebagbear: Thanks for the help and feedback. I've tried to cleanup my original response based on your feedback. Regarding your comments on WP:BEFORE and clean-up, I can't really find any of your responses in Wiki guidelines. Are these community best practices? If so, how are newbs supposed to get this information if they are not in the guidelines? Thanks. Jonkatora (talk)

Industry reports are an interesting source issue (one that is frequently "re-litigated") as they have a vested interest in reporting on companies, usually in a positive sense. It is probably worth specifically discussing what makes these ones reliable in terms of neutrality, fact-checking etc. It might be a little odd for someone on "the same side" to point out potential issues, but articles (especially corporations) need to be well justified to remain - I appreciate it's unreasonably hard for editors whose first contact with AfD is defending an article they are the primary editor on. Nosebagbear (talk) 11:03, 5 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

So there definitely is a pressure for industry reports to have a positive spin (they get paid when companies are able to share the report to prospective customers). If someone was trying to quote something said in an industry report, I would not consider that information as un-biased. However, I think it's perfectly acceptable to use industry reports to qualify that a company is operating in a certain industry (which is how I used these references). While the authoring of industry content could be considered bias, the selection of which companies are included in the report is independent and objective. A company can't game inclusion into an analyst report if the requirements for include include 10 $1 million sales in a calendar year. Jonkatora (talk)

Keep (Somewhat shorter reasoning) - This was a somewhat marginal case (hence the talk post). I believe notability is best demonstrated by these three summaries: Wired talking about Army Portal; WashingtonPost on alternative to Silicon Valley, using Appian as an example; PCMag on what they do (Little less trustworthy via some Appian involvement). Two of these sources are product-based articles but they cover the parent company in good detail, so I don't believe inherited applies. The sources were narrowed to satisfy NCORP. Regarding the use of WP:MILL I'd first say that it doesn't apply, since it's designed to apply to things where there are countless equivalents - more importantly it is an essay on notability and WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS is more relevant, where other companies existing or not existing is irrelevant to Appian being notable. Nosebagbear (talk) 11:03, 5 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

(Disclosure that I am the AfC Reviewer, so obviously some inherent desire to keep, but I feel I have a suitable explanation)

Weak Keep. or at least redirect to Army Knowledge Online, which was notable. The quality of PC mag reviewa vary, but this one seems acceptable. DGG ( talk ) 23:42, 5 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Keep @Jonkatora: Per Wikipedia:Deletion policy, there are fourteen reasons for putting an article up at AfD, not just four. In my experience, the most common is #8, lack of notability, which is what is alleged here. The relevant guideline here is WP:NCORP, one of the most difficult to parse. I am in agreement with DGG and Nosebagbear in that I think it squeaks through. Tech companies are notorious for appearing in the night like mushrooms and disappearing after a short time, but articles may still benefit the reader. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 21:07, 10 August 2018 (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.